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“Don’t you look energetic,” Arpina comments as Miraak enters their chambers, freshly washed up and looking like he’s about to keel over from exhaustion. He makes it to the bed and drops onto it, knocking Arpina’s book from her lap as the mattress sinks deeply on his side. “Oi.”
“Spare me,” he murmurs as presses his cheek into the pillow, lying stomach-down. “I am tired.”
“Color me surprised,” she says, and takes her book to set it on the nightstand. She turns on her side to run a hand through his hair, gently scrunching the dark, grey-streaked locks he had grown out over the last few months. It’s a charming look, she thinks, smiling. “Why are you so tired then? Tell me what you and the children got up to while I was away.”
“They are the cause of that,” he says, sounding grudgingly endeared. “Surely they spare you the roughhousing? I feel five thousand years old. Let’s see… Hroar and Sofie asked me to spin them around until none of us could walk straight. One. Then, Runa asked me to spar with her, and I, of course allowed her to win and she would not stop smashing that play-sword of hers on my shins. Two. Sissel set my coat on fire. Three. And Blaise and Lucia… nothing, actually. Blaise asked for them to stop talking so I could tell them stories. He was good. Lucia brought me a sweet roll after.”
Arpina can’t help but laugh. “M-Ma paour gwaz,” she says, addressing him in an attempt to sober down.
“Very funny.”
“But it is,” she says, and does not stop laughing for the next minute. Finally, she wipes the tears from her eyes and shakes her head. “Goodness. Ma paour gwaz, bested by his children.”
“I was ganged up on,” he grumbles, but even he cannot help the slightest tilt of a smile. “Is it going to be like this for the next five years?”
“Seven to ten, actually.”
His eyes were on her face prior to her response to his question, but when he had said it, he could only shut his eyes and groan in response. “Seven years is a long time, dii yolos.”
“Big talk, coming from you,” Arpina responds, pressing her hand to his cheek and squishing it with an amused grin on her face. “Just wait. Maximum of ten years and they will be gone, forging their own paths in the world.”
“What? Gone?”
“Yes?” she asks in amusement. “What did you think young adults do when they are old enough to leave home?”
Miraak frowns, opens his mouth to answer, but no sound comes out, until he manages, “They can’t leave.”
“What, you’re gonna stand at the door and go ‘don’t you take another step through the door!’? They’ll just go for the windows. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“They take after you,” Miraak says after giving her a scrutinizingly affectionate glare, and he turns his head to press his lips into her palm, taking her hand and kissing the inside of her wrist.
“I wouldn’t have realized, you only say it five times a d—hey!”
Arpina’s fingers reach to pull on his ear as he bites her wrist, and he lets go, lambent green eyes flashing with amusement. “I could not resist.”
She rolls her eyes and leans over to kiss the smug smile from his face. “Will you ever resist?”
“That,” Miraak murmurs, brushing her hair back with a hand, nothing but fondness in his eyes, “is in the realm of impossibility.”
Arpina laughs, rolls her eyes, and kisses him on the mouth soundly.