Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons KINGS AND KINGDOMS MERRY FARMER FATHERS AND SONS Copyright ©2023 by Merry Farmer This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your digital retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill (who is completely fabulous) ASIN: Paperback: Click here for a complete list of other works by Merry Farmer. If you’d like to be the first to learn about when the next books in the series come out and more, please sign up for my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/RQ-KX Created with Vellum Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 About the Author Acknowledgments Chapter One Magnus resigned as king the day Ziggy was born. Three years, four months, and eight days from the day he’d grudgingly agreed to wear the crown, after Edik had stabbed him and nearly taken him from me and Neil forever. Neil won the bet, of course. He’d predicted Magnus would resign three years after his coronation. Ziggy’s birth was a month after that third anniversary. All three of us were in the room as Annika quietly and faithfully struggled through labor. “That’s it,” Appius told her as he crouched at the end of the bed, peering intently between her parted, shaking legs. “You’re close. The baby’s head is crowning.” “Is it?” Neil asked, hovering excitedly just behind Appius and trying to get a good look. “Oh, God,” I gasped, all but cowering in the corner with Magnus. “This can’t be happening. It can’t!” “It is, my darling, it is,” Magnus said. He had one arm thrown around me and was rubbing one of my arms with his other hand. He was just as excited as Neil, but had no more interest in getting a close view of our baby coming into the world than I had. “Ooh! Ooh!” Annika squealed. It was the closest sound to fussing that she’d made since she’d gone into labor in the middle of the night, about eight hours ago. “Ooooh!” I swallowed hard. Annika was drenched in sweat and pink from exertion. Her hair was matted to her head, and she was weeping as she bore down and pushed. I was horrified that bringing babies into the world involved so much pain and trauma. Then again, it reminded me a lot of bringing kingdoms into the world—immense pain and strife, but with creation and life as its outcome. “That’s it,” Appius repeated in a surprisingly soothing voice. “We’re almost done. Keep at it.” Of course, Appius would be as calm as a spring day. Almost from the moment he’d taken up a position as one of the healers at the infirmary here in New Hope, where Magnus, Neil, and I had come—along with Annika and Ox, Jace and Gennadi—for the autumn sessions of the Kingdom Councils, he’d banded together with Galina to specialize in the particular healing art of bringing babies into the world. Both in terms of what he was doing now with Annika, and in getting those babies into willing surrogate mothers in the first place. “Oh!” Annika cried out, obviously nearing the end of her endurance. “This is barbaric,” Ox blurted in a panic from where she sat on the bed with Annika, holding her hand. “This is obscene. Who thought of this system? It’s a crime against nature.” “One more push,” Appius called out, ignoring her. “One more!” Annika screamed and pushed. “I am not doing this!” Ox shouted, jumping up from the bed. Or, at least, jumping as fast as her prodigiously round body would allow her. “I think it’s a little late to say you aren’t doing this,” I called across the room to her, nodding to her massive belly. Ox made a rude gesture at me in return. “If I had known this is how things would happen, I never would have agreed to host your spawn,” she said, more panicked than I’d ever seen her. “You don’t know if it’s mine,” I shot back to her, laughing a bit hysterically. In fact, almost a year ago, when Magnus, Neil, and I made the decision to finally do our duty and start a family, we’d approached Ox and asked her to be the mother of our child. She was the natural choice for us, since she’d been by my side from nearly the start of my journey. However, since she was a blood relation of Magnus, it was out of the question that he would be the sire of her baby. That would have to be me or Neil. During the course of that discussion—which we’d been having in the women’s neighborhood of Gravlock, at the house Ox shared with her lover, Viki, and a few others, including Annika—Annika had timidly approached us and offered herself as a mother for Magnus’s child, since there was no sanguinity problem. We’d accepted almost at once, and Magnus had taken Annika into our household and our family as thanks as well. Annika’s baby was indisputably Magnus’s child, but when it had come time to impregnate Ox using the methods Galina and Appius had developed, we’d used a mixture of my and Neil’s seed. So when she gave birth—any time now, really, since she and Annika had successfully become pregnant within a week of each