Page 12 of Devotion

Eden’s little face went from sunny smiles to broody storm clouds. “Nack. Now!” She stomped her tiny leg for good measure.

My girl had a temper befitting the Berserker blood that surely ran through her veins.

“No, you will wait. Mama made you a special lunch and everything.”

“Nack! Nack! Nack, Papa!”

“Oh, Alek, get the poor child her nack,” Quinn said through laughter.

“She’s wasting away over there, son. Can’t you hearher?”

Sighing, I strode into the kitchen and grabbed her a pouch of applesauce before twisting off the top and returning to the minuscule dictator’s side. “Here we are. A snack to tide you over.”

Eden spotted the applesauce and her cheeks went bright pink. “No! Bad Papa.” She smacked the pouch from my hand when I attempted to pass it to her. “Want fishies.”

“But you loved applesauce yesterday,” I muttered, at a complete loss.

“That was yesterday, darling. Today she loves fishies.” My mother was full-on laughing at my plight.

“I’ll remember this when you’ve gotten so old you can’t take care of yourself any longer.”

“Too bad for you I have stopped aging. Your father made me immortal, remember?”

I glowered at her. “You could at least pretend to be on my side.”

“Oh, my darling, I am always on your side. But after what you and your brother put me through, I consider this just desserts.”

“Fishies! Fishies! Fishies!” Eden chanted from her pen.

“Loki’s chiseled jaw,” I swore, squeezing the bridge of my nose.

It was my mother’s gasp and Quinn’s heaving guffaws that had my eyes snapping back open.

Eden had stopped her chants because she was stuffing her mouth full of tiny orange fish-shaped crackers. But it wasn’t the fact that she somehow had them now that startled me. It was the sheer multitude of them. My daughter hadn’t just manifested herself a handful of crackers; she’d created a godsdamned lake of them.

“Is she supposed to be able to do that already?” I asked,panicking over what I was supposed to do about the thousand-odd tiny crackers before my daughter tried to eat her weight in them.

“No. Definitely not.” Mother watched Eden with awe on her face.

Quinn bit her lower lip. “We’re gonna need to do something about that. She’s likely to manifest a giant purple hippopotamus with wings if she gets a wild hair now that she’s realized what she can do.”

“How am I supposed to stop her?” I hissed.

“You should probably call your witch friend,” Quinn said.

“Moira’s out of the country until after the new year.”

“Then I guess you better pray. I hate to break it to you, Tiny, but this is just the beginning. It’s going to get so much worse.”

My mother nodded in agreement. “Good luck, sweet boy. We’ll leave you to it. Love you!”

“Mother, wait?—”

The transmission between us ended, and my focus returned to Eden, who was happily munching away. She looked at me, her face beaming with pride as she held up a sticky fist full of crackers.

“Fishies!”

I sighed. “Yes, little one. You got your fishies.”

---