“Steward?” Llywellyn looked at his adviser. “If Lewis kills Avery is it a royal incident or can I let him do it?”

Simone sighed a bit as Avery’s advisers dragged him to a library for them to meet in. “Did you just punch Avery out while holding my child?”

“It’s my first response to even seeing his face…” Llywellyn looked down to Teagan who looked happy.

“I was just going to say… that’s impressive.” She held out her arms as she took Teagan and cooed at her with Lewis. Teagan kicked her legs at her parents and Mone smirked a bit. “You missed us?” There was a squeal from Teagan. “Ohhh~”

Mone and Lewis were snuggling very close so when Avery woke up and saw Lewis his eyes got big. “Which one of the princes was he?

“My prince charming,” Simone answered dryly. “You didn’t chase me here did you?”

“N-no, my adviser said Llywellyn was holding a party…” Avery looked away with guilt. “I just thought you would be here since you were best friends.”

Simone’s eyes narrowed down and Avery put himself behind Llywellyn the best he could. “She’s being scary again.”

Lewis eyed the man carefully. The way that Simone was reacting was almost conflicted. She was angry, of course, that Avery had more or less followed her. But, from what Lewis could tell, they had been friends in some capacity, but the ex-assassin couldn’t quite tell how close.

“Is it a royal incident if I cut his balls off?” Lewis asked, looking at Simone. “I mean…as an alternative to killing him…” The reality was, though, that it seemed neither Simone nor Llywellyn were very happy that he was here. And that meant that Lewis wasn’t happy that he was here.

“So, Avery, was it?” Lewis asked, sitting forward. “My name is Lewis Terrowin. Pleasure to meet you…” If Simone was considered ‘scary’, then Lewis was much, much worse. He held a sadist’s smile with a wicked grin and hunger in his eyes. He knew how to play up his fear factor, and just what buttons to press.

“Unfortunately, eventually he needs to procreate…” She sighed a bit.

Avery gave them a pouting look, “But Monemone that’s so mean…” The look that Avery was getting from Lewis made him cower more. “Greeting Lewis Dusk…”

The door slammed open as two little kids ran in. Avery bent over and watched as Simone lookalikes ran in. They ran right over to him and kicked him in both his shins. “Hey!”

“Kids, we’ve talked about this,” Simone smirked a bit. They ran over to Lewis and Simone who gave them kisses. “What do you need?”

“Auntie Jehanne said that we could have sweets if you allowed it.” The kids had taken to Jehanne after she opened up to Simone and fostered a relationship. That caused a smile to form across Llywellyn’s face.

“I don’t see why not but make sure that Everett doesn’t just eat chocolate okay? You each get a handful and that’s it…” Simone kissed their heads again and the twins turned around to leave but not before nailing Avery’s other shin respectively.

“…Those twins of yours are terrifying,” Llywellyn chuckled a bit. “It always overjoys me to see them though.”

“They are terrifying,” Avery was trying to get the feeling back in his legs. “They are yours?”

Simone nodded, “Two of our four biological. The rest of our beloved children like Teagan here are adopted.”

“Speaking of which,” Llywellyn locked Avery in a headlock, “You interrupted my time with my new niece you bastard.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he started to flail but wasn’t strong enough against the elf as he was choked.

Llywellyn stopped and looked up at Lewis, “Avery devoted a lot of resources to finding Simone like I did. He’s a good person. He was there in Auclair with me after the fire. He’s just special…”

“I am not!” Avery was still flailing. “I’m just humble.”

Simone relaxed a bit when she heard that, “You tried to find me?”

Avery nodded a bit, “Jerome was an asshole. I figured he had something to do with it which is why Llywellyn went to war against him first for clues where you were. Even with our advanced magic, we couldn’t pinpoint where you were. It was like the magic we had was void against you so we figured Jerome had told the fey lord about how it worked. Eventually, the magic dropped off altogether and it was only recently it managed to even pinpoint you again.”

“When you were Somerset’s wife in Adeluna,” Llywellyn explained. “It’s how I was able to track you but even then it was always too late. Then you fell off the map again because you were with Lewis.”

It was always awkward for Lewis when he was dealing with Simone’s past. The problem was the almost unique expectation that Simone was the same as she was back during their time. It used to be something he got jealous over, but now…now he just got bored of it. At least Avery seemed interesting. A buffoon, but a helpful one.

And apparently he always opened himself up to easy abuse. Lewis was never one to like punching down on someone, so to speak, but people like Avery made it nearly impossible to do so when they antagonized the situation. It almost reminded Lewis of Jack, though at least jack had the common sense to know when to back away.

“So what happens now,” Lewis asked. “Do we kill him? He knows too much.” He was deadpan, and looked serious, though Simone knew otherwise. With Llywellyn, it was a tossup on whether or not the elf could catch on to the joke. “Could just take him to the dungeon…”

“KI-KILL ME?!” Avery stuttered and started to hyperventilate.

Llywellyn smirked a bit, “Oh yeah, let me write an extradition treaty out to the Terrowin Island. You can string him up in your basement!”

“BASEMENT?! YOU HAVE A DUNGEON IN YOUR BASEMENT?!” Avery was panicking at Lewis.

Simone waved her hand a bit and giggled, “You two are too much alike in some aspects. Don’t egg each other on… Poor Avery is going to shit himself if you don’t stop.”

“You would think he would be used to it…” Llywellyn looked at Avery and sighed a bit. “In any case, as you can see Simone is married and no you can’t have her.”

“It’s fine. She never wanted me anyways,” Avery gave a smile. “In a lot of ways this Simone is just like the one we grew up with. I can sense the deep magic of Auclair still in her.”

“Deep magic of Auclair?” Simone straightened out. “What are you talking about?”

“Auclair had it’s own unique type of magic. It was hard, at first, for me to sense it when I first arrived in Auclair but in the king and his daughter I sensed it more than in Felix. Simone, the curse that was on you…” Avery looked at her. “Wasn’t entirely the Fey Lord’s concoction. It reacted to the magic already flowing within you. The natural force that Auclair had. The king of Auclair wasn’t just king for nothing after all. Jurien was talented in many different forms of magic but he didn’t want to show you that world. Camille didn’t have any magic and since you didn’t blossom with any yourself… He probably thought you didn’t have any.”

“So? What does that mean?” Simone tilted her head.

“The curse absorbed it. You were a late bloomer and you would have been an exceptionally strong mage had you been left alone. You weren’t as defenseless as you probably thought you were.” Avery was surprisingly serious right now as he explained his theories. “My people have always studied the land's magic and we always tried to form bonds with families who also had strong magic. The Auclairs were one such family even if they didn’t naturally understand the nature of their magic.”

Lewis sat forward, putting his hands together. There were things that he was saying that started to make Lewis think hard about the magic, and back to the deep dream dive that he had done so long ago. His eyes closed as he remembered the haunting landscape of her mind, and what had occurred there.

“None of that was natural. The split versions of yourself. Sloth, at the bottom of the lake. I remember clearly looking down at her, looking past my own reflection to see her sleeping the pain away…” It was strange, he could almost feel the cold water wash over him as he dove down. “And Envy…Greed…” The images of them pointing their fingers at one other, a mirror of each other as they blamed the other for their suffering. “Killing them was difficult…”

Simone looked at her husband with concern. It wasn’t often he talked about that place.

“Gluttony was…different. She stole me away into a fantasy world…one that was happy. One that I would have been okay living in. But it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t Simone…” There was the flash of an image of the Guide smashing the mirror, cutting herself on it as she desperately tried to save him. The guide that he later had to kill…the Guide that had forgiven him, even if he never really forgave himself.

“Pride…wielding magics from afar as an army of the dead persona’s of Simone marched on. For every death she experienced, a new personality was created…for every personality that was created, another was resurrected.” The rotting corpses of Simone were always hard to remember. He never wanted to see her like that again…

“Lust and Pride…both of them held too much power. Corrupted, hateful versions of Simone…born through sexual abuse and hatred. One wanted nothing but to lose herself in pleasure and forget the pain…and the other nothing but the pain, to feed on that hatred.” He winced. “So many Simone’s…all of them a perfect reflection…”

The fact that he was even opening up about it all…Xeik would have been proud.

This was the first time that Avery was hearing what Simone had gone through. He had a guilty look on his face at first but he held out a hand as words formed, “It is a secret that Jurien would have told her when the time came because her future child could have carried the magic unlike herself. We will need to recover the books that Auclair had.”

“But everything was burned up…” Simone tilted her head.

“Restoration magic for excavations do exist. It wouldn’t be hard to restore Auclair for a time. It would take a large body of mages but we would have full access to the castle,” Avery very quietly spoke about it. “I know Jurien had a secret area he kept stuff in. It would have been in there.”

“He has a second office,” Simone spoke up. “Through the hidden passages in the castle. The passages were only known by him and myself.”

“Understanding everything Lewis has said… Simone should have the ability to mirror herself or anything in general. To survive she broke the reflection of herself and splintered it. It could have been that the emotions that disappeared came off as if they were killed but in reality…” Llywellyn thought about it. “They were too smashed to repair. This explains how Simone was able to survive this whole time and how she became whole. But to understand this magic… we would need to learn more about it.”

“…I could have saved Auclair…” Simone frowned.

“I don’t think so,” Avery spoke up. “You didn’t know you had this magic for one and for two you are still too unskilled with the magic you have. Simone do you have mana deficiency?”

Simone sat there with a shocked look on her face, “How did you know that?”

“Even now I can see your mana veins skipping like a heart on the verge of death would do. It’s not lethal like that though. It means it exhausts you. You must get lethargic after using large amounts of magic maybe even falling asleep for long periods of time afterward,” Avery explained to the group.

“That does make sense,” Lewis stated. When it came down to it, Simone had always been the better caster, but Lewis had the endurance for multiple casts ever since he started drawing on Simone’s power. He smirked. “That explains the twins…perfect little mirrors they are…” His smile faded, though, as he thought back to the task at hand.

“So…we need mages to help restore Auclair, even if temporarily.” Lewis sighed. “That’s a hell of a task. I wonder if…” His eyes twinkled. “I wonder if a certain Goddess would have any interest in learning Aucilair’s secrets.”

Xeik was a powerful mage in his own right, even if his speciality was in healing. And the power of Angela…well… who needs an army when you have a deity?

“You think she’d be up for it?”

Simone looked at Lewis and nodded, “I think she would do it regardless. She’s been big on helping us. Plus Xeik is a nerd for new magic even if we’re the only ones able to use it. It also means that the twins might have access to it and have been experimenting with it. They might have no idea that its unique magic I can’t use yet.”

Llywellyn smirked a bit, “I think seeing Auclair the way it was meant to be… in real life will be good for Lewis too. Auclair holds good memories for all of us. Simone too.”

Simone nodded and smiled, “We’ve always dreamed of our own Auclair and what it would look like if we had it ourselves. We could bring… the kids… At least the twins. I would worry about Alshaya and Everett getting into a fight there.”

Avery nodded, “I volunteer to go with you and offer to do the best I can to understand the type of magic this is and how we can unlock it. Also, your mana deficiency… I can probably make something to make it better… OH! We developed a massage that helps with the mana veins to lessen the effects of it. If Lewis wishes we could teach it to him.”

It was an odd string of coincidences that led to this new idea. The resurrection of Auclair…well, at least for a time.

Lewis smirked. “So, then we just have to go talk with them. We’ll set a date and send it out…we’ll have to make sure we’re well prepared. No telling what we’ll find. We’ll need books, paper, pens, ink…whatever we need to copy the important bits. Raine might be able to help as well, as much as I dread the idea. Between all of us, we should be able to get what we need…”

With the plan set-

“I’m sorry, did you say massages?” Lewis asked with a sly smirk. He eyed Simone for a moment. “Yes…teach me…”

Simone had a feeling that these mana related massages would never end normally…