Brad's Point of View
"Stay still, Kat!" Reka chided.
Their daughter, of course, did not obey.
After that little adventure off the Angolan coast and Katalin coming into the world near the equator, the journey home was uneventful, mostly. The thing was, Kat could do magic, and didn't know why she shouldn't with people around!
Toys she wanted just floated to her, and one terrifying time they found her crib empty. The baby flew right out to join Brad and Reka in the big bed.
So, uh, they had to let Julie and their guard detail know about the whole "magic" thing. Up to this point, knowledge had been compartmentalized to Alice, who knew Reka from the other world, and Brad himself, who couldn't avoid noticing things about his then girlfriend, now wife. They studiously avoided any mention of a "Demon Queen", though. People might take it the wrong way.
Little Princess Katalin was three months old now, so they were trying, and failing, to take a new official family portrait.
"Sweetie," Brad begged, "I promise, if you can be good for just a while longer, we'll play all day together, just the three of us."
Kat gurgled, but looked up at him with those big red eyes, steady, frighteningly intelligent, almost shrewd. Those eyes blinked at him indulgently, patronizingly, as if to say, "dummy daddy, all you had to do was ask!"
Reka adjusted the baby on her lap. "What are we going to do with her?" she complained.
As if she had her fill of causing trouble that day, Katalin actually looked at the camera and smiled.
"That's perfect!" the cameraman said. Brad and Reka snapped their attention to him instantly and posed, anxious not to waste this chance.
When they saw how the picture came out they were thrilled.
As promised, the rest of the day was dedicated to playing with their daughter. They had a wonderful playroom built in the royal apartments where Kat could chase Brad around. To his terror, it was in the air. She couldn't walk yet, but she could fly! Other times, Reka would play piano and Brad would sing. Music was one of the few things that could always get Kat to sit still and pay attention.
When the princess finally grew tired, they tucked her into her special, magically-reinforced crib for a nap.
Looking down, smiling fondly, Reka said, "She's beyond powerful, my love, just as I foresaw."
"But she hasn't done anything you can't do," Brad replied. "You can fly too," he said, blushing at the memory.
"Not without wings," his wife said, "not without charging from you. Your love has strengthened me, but I wasn't born from it. Katalin was. The laws of physics will be but suggestions for the likes of her."
His daughter looked so peaceful right now. With a father's eye for detail, he watched her chest rise and fall to make sure she was still breathing. "So it's not just a difference of degree, but of kind," he commented.
Reka paused for a moment, considering. Nodding firmly, she agreed. "Just so, Brad. Fundamentally, I'm a demon, a succubus to be precise. My power derives from life force. Only recently have I learned that thaumaturgy, that is, magic that affects physical reality, could be wrought from love itself. For Katalin it's instinctual. There isn't a word to describe what she is. We've made something, someone, entirely new," she said fondly.
How about that?
Of course, every father thinks their daughter is unique and perfect. Brad just had more evidence than most!
The next morning, Reka was breastfeeding at the breakfast table because she just didn't give a fuck. Kat was an unusually chill infant who hardly ever cried, but she was especially chill at feeding time, greedy little demon baby that she was.
Julie and Galiban walked in together. As Brad understood it, they were an item now. Galiban was definitely sentient, and if he wanted to date a human that was his business. Hopefully they were getting along well.
"Just have the girls out, huh?" Julie said cheekily.
Reka had that look. This was gonna be good.
"Kat needs to eat like everyone else," she said innocently. "You know, just the other day I was reviewing incoming shipments to the palace. Whyever did you need all of those attachments? Those dimensions, why, I'm sure I'm not familiar with any outlet that needs plugs that size."
Julie, unflappable Julie, usually the one to do the teasing, had become a lot more vulnerable lately. His wife really was merciless.
"Oh my god, Reka! Not in front of the baby!" Her cheeks puffed out in indignation.
Galiban, their faithful butler, said nothing and hastily busied himself with serving breakfast.
Oh boy, waffles!
"The Princess Royal is hardly paying attention, I assure you," Reka said primly, which was true. Kat was really going to town.
"Don't tease her too much, honey," Brad said after swallowing a mouthful of waffle. "This is really great, Galiban. You've been outdoing yourself lately."
He really was, what with the new baby and the world economy being on fire, their butler was working harder than anyone.
Galiban bowed. "Your Majesty is too kind."
Julie pulled out her phone. "Oh, Princess Kat is going viral again," she said, absentmindedly chewing a bite of waffle. "It would be nice to take her out of the palace more, but, you know, the m-word," she whispered.
"You can say 'magic', Julie," Reka said. "Everyone here already knows."
"I knew it. I knew you weren't normal, but still, it was a hell of a shock. The mad scientist stuff, the miracle cures, no human can do what you do," her friend said. "What are we going to do about the baby? She's too young to hide what she is."
"That's not all," Reka said, flipping Kat to her other boob and eating with one hand at the same time.
Brad felt a sudden sting of guilt. Should he be helping her eat?
"That's not necessary, my love," Reka said out loud. "As I was saying, that's not all. Katalin's magic is different from my own." Her brow furrowed in thought. "My magic doesn't belong here. It's like trying to light a fire without oxygen. With a few exceptions, I need a special sealed environment to weave a proper incantation. My daughter does not. Her energy is more in tune with this world. And she receives a lot of love, not just from us, but the world."
"That is crazy," Julie remarked. "You mean to tell me the more popular she gets the more, for lack of a better term, 'juice' she has?"
"Indeed," Reka confirmed. "It is not always to our advantage for her to 'go viral'. She's near enough to overloading the magic circles in her crib as it is. We don't want to go back to the bad old days when there were explosions whenever Brad and I made love."
"So that's what that was," Julie pointed accusingly. "You are such a gaslighter, Reka! I thought you were doing science experiments in bed!"
Reka shrugged. "It is what it is."
"Brad, you shouldn't have taught your wife to say that!" Julie scolded.
He ignored her. "So, about those plans," Brad segued.
Reka saw the opportunity and seized it. "Right you are, my love. We must be about our royal business. How stands the current situation, Galiban?"
Their butler's eyes went pure white and he projected a map on the wall. "Our shipping lanes are finally secure," he narrated. "We've purchased all the frigates the Chinese are willing to sell and outfitted them with Dragonlances. Our burgeoning Navy has learned a lot from operating them."
Brad had experienced that directly. Navigation, ship systems, and command at sea had been added to his curriculum on gram.com. Last month he led a convoy to Mombasa himself.
"Permanent land fortifications have been erected at the Suez Canal and Djibouti," he continued. "Piracy suppression operations along the horn of Africa have been largely successful and we are now free to ship whatever we desire to Mombasa Spaceport."
"All the frigates the Chinese are 'willing to sell'," Reka repeated.
"Indeed, Your Majesty. They have been preoccupied with digesting their Siberian conquests but the Chinese are no fools. It is only natural that they have become wary of us. Once the orbital semiconductor fabs enter production, dominance in the global electronics industry will pass to us. There are many other fields where the RECA countries will inevitably surpass them. It is only a matter of time."
"And what are we doing to reduce our dependency on them?" Reka asked.
"Keels have already been laid, keels for ships of my own design, made with your fusion technology in mind from the very first. We have shipyards in Croatia, Poland, and Sweden commissioned, with more on the way. Your great fleet is taking shape even as we speak."
"Excellent," Reka complimented, "but the Chinese are still our allies, officially. I would use them for as long as they are willing to be used. We can prolong this by focusing on the Americans, who, in any case, are the proximate cause of most of our current troubles."
Galiban inclined his head and blinked, changing the map he was projecting on the wall to a graph. "Disruptions in Russia agriculture have proven disastrous. The proliferation of American-made unmanned weapons systems has ignited global chaos. Famine, war, and mass unemployment drive unrest across the developing world. Would you have us strike America directly? That might provoke war with western Europe, who still hold most stubbornly to NATO."
Brad really didn't understand that at all. What in the world motivated Germany and Italy to stay in NATO after America abandoned Hungary to Russian attack? Norway, Spain, Portugal, France, the UK, Greece, and even Turkey remained as well. It just didn't make sense to him.
"I don't think open war is necessary at present," Reka said. "We will squeeze America, quietly at first. The realms of RECA must build an alternative to everything American, from WacArnold's to Rainforest. When the time is right we'll seize American corporate assets and transfer them to our equivalents. The United States will be deprived of global trade. Every American product will face competition from cheaper and higher-quality RECA merchandise. China will be harmed by this same competition but if we frame it in terms of opposing America they will go along with it, for a while."
Brad didn't quite follow. "It's not that I'm against kicking WacArnold's out of Europe, honey, but will that really hurt them enough to make them stop giving drones to terrorists?"
"Not alone, my love. We must deprive them of markets but also raw materials. I plan to announce an unprecedented investment in infrastructure in the developing world. Local workers will be hired in every case, offered mind-acceleration pills, and trained to build everything from fusion plants to railroads to bridges to irrigating the Sahara Desert with desalinated seawater. It would be more efficient to use robots but this is as much about putting cash in their hand as building their countries up."
"Right," Brad acknowledged, "unemployment is bad everywhere, but especially bad in the global south, with AI destroying so many jobs. If we can put these people to work then maybe they won't turn to terrorism. So that's the deal? We build up their country and they agree not to sell minerals to America?"
His wife nodded.
"And that, Your Majesty, is why we need a bigger fleet to protect expanding trade," Galiban said. "Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, we'll develop them all with the sovereign wealth fund bankrolling the project. In exchange, they will kick the Americans out. The dollar won't be worth the paper it's printed on, anywhere."
"We should cut the Chinese in, at least to start," Brad said. "This is basically their "belt and road" idea on steroids."
"Just so, my love," Reka said, smiling that smile again. "Our Chinese friends have coveted our mind pills for some time. They'll get their share, along with the rest."
Something about the way she said it set his teeth on edge.
"The mind acceleration pills are too powerful," Julie pointed out. "Right now, they can compress four years of education into four weeks. Giving them out to random workers so they can learn how to pour concrete faster is just overkill."
If anything, Reka's smile grew sharper. "Then we will develop a weaker, low-dose version," she said. "You and Galiban can get right on that, can't you, Julie?"
Julie saluted sarcastically. "Right away, boss!"
She left the room, but Galiban lingered.
"I am in need of more faithful servants, Galiban," Reka said meaningfully. "Do make sure the new mind pills are formulated properly."