Aroacemushroom

We’re back kiddos

MILD FOURTH WING SPOILERS BELOW! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

I was meant to draw Violet and Xaden but dragons are still my fav (I kind of feel 15 again with the dragon renaissance, anyone else?). So when I saw a baby tiger playing with its mum's tail, I just had to draw Tairn and Andarna like this.

You can't tell me it's not possible that she played like this when she was younger.

Obvious disclaimer that I'm still not a creature artist. I'm just having fun with this.

Inspired by Tairn and Andarna from Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

‼️ DO NOT REPOST WITHOUT PERMISSION!

Imogen and the others when violent offered to break into her moms office:

some fluff for your saturday 🫶🏻

***

Xaden’s favorite time was the middle of the night, when his wife slept peacefully and he got to hold his daughter and watch the snow falling.

Fia, like her mother, liked the library. Xaden was sure it was the floating mage lights that kept her attention—at seven months old, she certainly couldn’t read—but it was the place that calmed her the quickest when she wouldn’t sleep. He liked to think it was something she’d gotten from Violet.

Fia looked like him: his warm brown skin, his dark hair and dark eyes, his mouth. But she had Violet in the shape of her nose, the fullness of her cheeks. She was calm and quiet like Violet, attentive and curious, even just beginning to sit up and grab for anything within reach. She liked Xaden’s wedding ring, liked the texture of Violet’s dragon scale corset. She liked looking at the dragons: she would sit and stare at Andarna for hours if Xaden let her, endlessly fascinated by her shifting scales as Andarna stretched her wings in the sun.

She was an easy baby for the most part, but Violet’s pregnancy had been hard.

They’d assumed it would be, but she’d been in pain almost constantly—aching joints and swollen feet and hands. By the second half, she spent more time in bed than out of it, barely sleeping due to the pain. Thanks to Brennan and the best midwife in Tyrrendor, the birth had been smooth, though long; Violet labored for over a day before Fia joined them. Then she’d spent more weeks recovering, Fia sleeping on her chest as Violet read to her.

It was why Xaden always got up in the night when Fia woke. Violet would have done it gladly, he knew that, but she’d given so much to bring Fia into the world while he’d only been able to watch. Rocking her back to sleep once or twice a week was the least he could do. Violet protested, and he ignored her. Sometimes she’d come find them, but more often than not she slept on comfortably and didn’t wake until Xaden joined her in bed again.

“What do you think?” Xaden murmured to Fia, stopping in front of a window and turning her around so she could look outside. She pressed a chubby little hand to the glass and cooed. “How long are we gonna be awake tonight?”

Fia babbled unintelligibly. Once the window had lost her attention, he shifted her in his arms so her head could rest against his shoulder, and she lay limply against his chest. He rubbed a broad hand up and down her back, marveling, not for the first time, at how tiny she was. How easily she fit into his arms. He never wanted to let her go.

Violet protested that it was bad for Fia to be held constantly. She needed to move and look and engage with the world around her. Xaden argued that she’d have years to do those things, and he only had a few months to hold her like this. That usually made Violet soften, and she got that tender expression on her face that he never tired of because it reminded him that she loved him just as much as he loved her.

He walked half a dozen laps around the library, humming under his breath. Fia settled slowly as he rocked her, bouncing her lightly in the way she liked and stroking along her spine. He felt her little form go entirely limp, finally asleep; her head tipped to press against his neck, her breath against his skin, the beat of her heart against his own. He could go put her back to bed, but he didn’t stop walking.

Just a little longer, he decided. Just a few more minutes holding her.

“I think she’s drooling on you,” a voice whispered, breaking through the still serenity of the library.

Xaden turned and found Violet leaning against a shelf, watching him with a soft look on her face.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Xaden murmured.

She smiled sleepily. She was in a nightgown and thin robe, barefoot with her hair loose and tangled, like she’d woken and hadn’t wanted to be alone. “Come here,” she said quietly.

Xaden went. He held Fia with one arm, and reached out with the other to take Violet’s hand. She fit her fingers into the spaces between his and stepped in close, resting her head against his chest next to their daughter. She stretched on her toes to brush a fleeting kiss against Fia’s soft cheek, and then titled her face up to Xaden expectantly.

He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, and finally pressed his mouth to hers. “I love you,” he murmured.

Violet’s eyes fell shut, contentment written in every line of her expression. “I love you, too.”

“You should be scared of me.”

Violet and Xaden - Fourth Wing

Artist: @kotikomori for @readingportal