Ch. 46 – A Modest Proposal

Despite the lingering, suffocating ghost of what had transpired across the street, a genuine spark of relief flickered in Rhys’s chest at the sight of Darius. Darius was a sturdy, reliable rock of a man—a retired hero whose ironclad moral center had pulled Rhys out of dark places back in their active days. Even after the bizarre, uncomfortably charged dinner they had shared just a couple of nights ago, seeing his old friend’s familiar, grounded presence felt like a temporary life raft in the turbulent ocean Rhys was currently drowning in.

He wanted nothing more than to sink into the plush leather of his own couch, sip a cup of warm tea, and drown out the memory of silk sheets, golden skin, and desperate lies with mindless, comforting domestic chatter. He wanted to feel safe in his own living room.

Then he looked at Shula.

She sat on the far end of the sectional, her deep red, embers-kissed hair falling over one shoulder, her striking, fiery eyes locking onto him the absolute second he stepped past the threshold. She didn’t blink. She didn’t offer the polite, casual greeting of a long-time friend. The sheer intensity of her gaze sent a sharp, icy shudder running straight down Rhys’s spine, cutting through the heat of his recent exhaustion.

As Rhys walked deeper into the room, he picked up on the subtle, razor-thin tension hanging in the air. The living room didn’t feel like a cozy sanctuary for four old friends. It felt like a battleground.

He glanced down at Lira, who was standing beside the coffee table. Her radiant face was locked in a tight, stoic mask. Her shoulders were set, her posture rigid, her bright blue eyes carrying the distinct, exhausted sheen of someone who had been fighting a relentless, two-on-one defensive war for the past hour. The moment her eyes met Rhys’s, her entire frame softened with profound, desperate relief. She wasn’t just happy he was back; she was clinging to the fact that her reinforcement had finally arrived.

“So...” Rhys began, stepping over to the couch. He wrapped a thick, protective arm around Lira’s waist, pulling her flush against his side and pressing a warm, grounding kiss against her temple. He looked across the table at Darius and Shula, taking in the heavy, pregnant silence. “What’s going on? It feels like I walked straight into a debriefing.”

“We were actually just talking about you before you came in, brother,” Darius offered, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He forced a small, tentative smile, though his eyes looked strangely conflicted, darting briefly toward his wife before settling back on Rhys.

Interesting, Rhys thought, his internal alarm bells chiming softly. He could feel Lira’s fingers gently digging into the fabric of his shirt at his waist, her body trembling with a suppressed, anxious tension. He was only seeing the absolute tip of a massive, submerged iceberg, and he needed to break the frost before it completely encased the room.

Rhys offered a warm, self-deprecating chuckle, attempting to melt the ice with familiar, easy humor. “Let me guess... you two were sitting here complaining to my wife about how I’m still notoriously late to everything? Some things never change, even in retirement.”

Darius let out a hearty, booming laugh, clearly eager to grasp at any semblance of normal banter. “You said it, not me!”

Lira offered a soft, delicate laugh of her own, but it sounded fragile, strained, and entirely hollow. Her eyes remained fixed on the rug, her shoulders refusing to drop.

Shula, however, didn’t laugh at all. She didn’t even crack a polite smile. Her fiery gaze remained glued to Rhys’s face, her lips set in a firm, unyielding line.

I see, Rhys thought, the lighthearted warmth draining from his chest as he locked eyes with her. So you’re the elephant in the room.

Shula leaned back against the leather cushions, crossing her long legs with an agonizingly deliberate grace. “Actually, Rhys, we weren’t talking about your punctuality,” she said, her voice smooth, low, and carrying a sharp, dangerous edge. “We were reflecting on our dinner together the other night. Specifically... the conversation we were having before things got a bit derailed.”

Rhys felt his jaw tighten. A cold, familiar warning signal flared at the base of his skull. “Derailed?”

“Yes,” Shula continued, leaning her head on her hand, her eyes flashing with an unbothered, terrifying confidence. “I was bringing up the question I asked Lira back then. About your intimate life. About how you two manage your... physical connection... now that you’re both out of the hero game and settled into this quiet suburban routine.”

The temperature in the living room plummeted. Rhys’s gaze snapped down to Lira. His wife was holding a brave, polite smile for their guests, but her cheeks were flushed with a deep, humiliating crimson, her eyes tight with agonizing discomfort.

A dark, protective anger flared in Rhys’s chest. So that’s what she’s been dealing with alone while I was across the street, he thought bitterly. Shula has been sitting in our home, picking at my wife’s private life like a hawk.

“Shula,” Rhys said, his voice dropping into a low, firm register that warned of an approaching boundary. “I don’t think—”

“I was just bringing Lira up to speed,” Shula interrupted smoothly, entirely unbothered by his tone. She gestured toward Darius, who suddenly looked intensely fascinated by his own footwear, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. “Darius and I were sharing our own experiences. I was telling Lira that between my husband and me... the love is still overwhelmingly strong. There is absolutely no lack of passion, no lack of heat, and certainly no problem with intimacy in our bedroom.”

She paused, letting the statement hang in the air like a thick, heavy smog. She stared directly into Rhys’s eyes, her gaze lingering with a strange, deliberate weight that made the skin on his arms crawl.

Okayyyyy, Rhys thought sarcastically, his mind racing to process the absolute absurdity of the situation. Good for you guys. I’m thrilled your marriage is booming. But what in the absolute hell does your sex life have to do with us on a Thursday afternoon?

He looked down at Lira, who squirmed slightly against his side, shifting her weight as if she desperately wanted to dissolve into the floorboards and disappear.

Shula uncrossed her legs, leaning forward and resting her hands on the glass top of the coffee table. The confident, boastful edge in her voice softened into something heavier, darker, and laced with a profound, simmering frustration.

“However,” Shula said quietly, “despite all of that passion... despite years of trying... Darius and I have reached an absolute wall. We cannot have a child.”

A heavy, sudden silence fell over the room. The air felt thick, suffocatingly still.

“We’ve tried everything,” Shula continued, her eyes flickering with a rare, raw vulnerability that quickly turned back to steel. “Magical restoration, high-end fertility specialists, elemental balancing. Nothing works. The doctors finally confirmed what we feared: my Ifrit physiology—my elemental heat—is simply too hostile, too volatile, to blend with Darius’s natural human biology. His DNA cannot survive the process. We are fundamentally, biologically incompatible.”

You could practically hear a cold, hollow breeze wafting straight through the center of Rhys’s mind right now. The words echoed in the spacious room, floating out the open window and dissolving into the quiet suburban neighborhood outside.

“I’m... I’m really sorry to hear that, Shula,” Rhys blurted out.

He just said it. It was the standard, polite, human response to tragic news—but in truth, unashamedly and completely, Rhys could not bring himself to truly care about this right now.

Deep down in the back of his soul, he felt a genuine, distant pang of sympathy for his old friends. Infertility was a tragic, heartbreaking reality for anyone. But Rhys’s mind was already at absolute capacity, overflowing with a chaotic, terrifying maelstrom of horror. He had spent the morning lying to his wife about a former villain crouched under their table, the afternoon navigating his best friend falling in love with his blackmailer, and the last two hours engaged in a raw, dangerous, marriage-destroying encounter with the woman directly across the street. He had literally just burned a bridge on Durin’s lawn, his hands still shaking from the guilt of manipulating a good man to his face.

He didn’t have the emotional bandwidth for a heavy medical tragedy. He just wanted them to leave.

Rhys tried to snap his scattered, spiraling focus back to the living room. He looked down at Lira, seeking some kind of anchor in this bizarre, sudden emotional windstorm that had invaded his house.

Lira looked up at him, her eyes filled with a sad, helpless dread. She wasn’t looking for an anchor—she was looking at him with the painful knowledge of someone who had already been forced to listen to the prelude, already knowing the catastrophic punchline that was about to hit him.

Rhys’s brow furrowed. He turned his head back toward Shula.

He hadn’t been paying close attention to her face, busy managing his own internal panic—but as his eyes locked onto hers again, he realized her entire demeanor had shifted.

The cold, defensive steel in Shula’s eyes was completely gone. In its place was a burning, molten intensity—a look of absolute, unbridled, starry-eyed enamorement. She was staring at Rhys not as an old friend, not as a fellow retired hero, but as a starving person looking at a feast. Her lips parted, a breathless, glowing smile spreading across her face.

Slowly, deliberately, leaning over the table toward him, Shula spoke.

“Which is why, Rhys...” Shula purred, her voice dripping with an intense, reverent warmth that made the air in the room feel scorching hot, “...Darius and I came here today to happily extend the offer... for you to be the biological donor for our future child.”

The world stopped.

The air was completely sucked out of Rhys’s lungs. The quiet ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway sounded like deafening, metallic thunderclaps.

Rhys sat entirely paralyzed, his mind completely freezing as the full, massive, terrifying scope of the iceberg finally breached the surface—looming over his broken, fragile life with absolute, unavoidable destruction, and leaving him with nowhere left to run.