Free Eternally Yours by Cate Tiernan

ground flaxseed was nowhere in sight as I stood at the big stove, pouring pancakes onto a griddle. Not buckwheat; not whole wheat with extra wheat germ. Plain old pancakes.
    Anne was cutting up oranges. Solis, the third member of our team, was manning the eggs and bacon. I hadn’t forgotten that he had seemed to agree with Ottavio about the danger I presented, so I was a little stiff with him this morning. Okay, actually I was refusing to acknowledge hisexistence. There are so many forgiving and mature people here that I have to provide some kind of balance.
    Anne put the sliced oranges into a bowl, glanced at the clock, then perched on a stool and took out a fuzzy little something she was knitting.
    “Is that a hat?” I asked, pouring eight rounds of batter onto the griddle.
    She grinned at me. “A sweater.” She held it up—it was triangular, made of speckled brown and white mohair.
    “For… a Muppet?” I asked.
    “For the naked chicken,” she said, and snickered.
    I flipped the eight rounds and gave her a look, and she started chuckling outright. Yes, word had gotten around about my amusing little defeathering trick. Apparently we couldn’t just eat the poor thing and be done with it. Apparently we had to knit cunning lil’ sweaters for it so it could squawk around the yard, feeling fancy.
    “Nastasya?” Solis was right next to me at the stove, so it was extra work to ignore him, but I managed.
    “Nastasya, you know I care about you,” he went on. I quickly flipped the done pancakes onto a platter and covered them with a clean dish towel. As Solis waited, I poured eight more rounds of batter, then gave him a bland look.
    “Did you say something?”
    “Nastasya.” He looked at me patiently, which is something many people around me have to learn to do. “I care about you, and I find your power, the possibilities you represent,to be very exciting. But you’re not just another immortal with a hard past.”
    Anne was watching us, her face now solemn.
    “You’re the sole heir of one of the eight houses. That will make you a target for the rest of—forever.”
    “How do other people handle it?” I asked, piling more onto the platter. I decided to get artistic and made the next ones in the shapes of crescent moons and amoebic blobs that were supposed to be stars.
    “They have a lot of power. They’ve created safe networks around themselves. They know how to work powerful spells of protection.”
    I drizzled batter, giving myself time to think. I made a bunny head and a tulip shape and a bunch of squiggles, but I felt myself getting angrier.
    “I can’t help who I am,” I pointed out. “I mean, do you think I should just hide?” I tapped one finger against my chin. “Gee, if only there was
some place
, some
safe
place, like in the middle of freaking
nowhere
, where I could surround myself with strong immortals and maybe learn how to protect myself and… oh, wait!” I looked at Solis, my eyes wide with excitement. “Oh my God—that sounds like
here
! It sounds like I’m
already
actually doing
exactly
what
you
think I should be doing! Awesome!”
    A muscle in Solis’s jaw twitched as he regarded me, embarrassment and anger on his face. Obviously I was totally right. It was a relative rarity, so I savored it. Solisdumped the scrambled eggs into a serving bowl, grabbed the platter of bacon, and headed into the dining room. River and Ottavio came in on the next door swing, and I gritted my teeth. It was barely seven in the morning, and already my stomach was in knots. Thank God I had the hot memories of being with Reyn last night, or this morning would be sucking.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Morning, sweetie,” River said easily, opening the fridge and taking out bottles of juice and milk.
    I poured more batter and glanced at Ottavio to see him looking at me with narrowed eyes, like he was trying to read me. River’s back was to me, so I stuck out my tongue at him. His dark eyes flared in outrage