Having grown up without a family, Emma had been spared the view that greets her the next morning. The happy scene of the whole clann drinking and laughing and eating far too much has been replaced by bodies everywhere, across the sofas and rugs, two brothers passed out on the dining room table and a chorus of snores.

"Fuck," Killian swore, picking Emma up and gingerly stepping over a couple of the sisters-in-law littering the drawing room floor. "It looks like the Jolly Roger, first night in port after months at sea."

Emma snorted in laughter. "If I had to pick a family for you, this would be it. Drunken and carousing."

He smiled at her. "A family. Tis very odd." He found a cloak and wrapped it around her, stepping out into the garden with her for some much-needed fresh air. They wandered until they found a bench wrapped around an oak tree in the back of the garden. Emma snuggled up to him, her arms around him and underneath his warm coat. He used his nose to tilt her face to his and kissed her, then added: "I miss your Nespresso machine."

"I miss it, too," she sighed, craving expresso now that he had mentioned it. "So did you gather any intel yesterday at dinner or was it all just mindless bonding?"

"Hey, no one's ordering me sea green silk for a dress," he countered. She remembered the sisters-in-law insisting that had been her best colour. She remembered that a seamstress had been sent for immediately to take her measurements. The seamstress had seemed unperturbed at being called out late at night by a group of rowdy, drunken family members who could not wait until tomorrow to order a dress. That sort of thing must happen from time to time in the Jones household.

"They're quite the bunch," she nodded.

"Aye, they are. And they said they had already set up a network of informants in the surrounding towns to let us know about Arthur's movements," he added.

Emma had managed to finesse her hands up under Killian's shirt. She dragged her fingernails lightly down his back and then moved them round to the same thing to his chest. He dropped his head down and caught her bottom lip in his teeth for a fraction of a second, then teased his tongue in between her lips. Emma manoeuvred them around to the back of the tree, so they couldn't be seen from the house. Killian tilted her head to taste more of her mouth. He untied her cloak and dropped it to the ground, then unlaced the blue dress that one of the sisters-in-law had insisted she wear. Emma had left off the corset, so his hands had an uninterrupted path to her breasts. He bundled her back to the oak tree, kissing and licking and biting his way down to a nipple. He tenderly sucked one nipple into his mouth, his other hand stroking her inner thigh. He smiled as slid his fingers against her wetness.

"What is it with you and trees?" Killian wondered, lifting his head from her nipple long enough to ask the question.

"I have an unstoppable desire for you," she replied, "and you just happen to spend a lot of time near trees. Enchanted Forest, clue's in the name."

Killian rubbed his thumb in lazy circles against her clit. She unknotted the laces on his trousers and eased them off him. Breaking away from his touch and his tongue with a smile, Emma dropped down to sit on the bench that wrapped around the tree. She ran her hands up his thighs and he shivered. Gently, she slid her hand up to hold his balls in one hand and gripped his cock with the other. Killian groaned and dropped his head against the bark for support. She licked up and down, then closed her mouth over the head of his cock. She teased him for a while, running her tongue over the sensitive head. Finally she closed her lips over his cock and began to suck, softly at first, then greedily. When she opened to move him to the back of her throat, he wound his hand around her hair and eased her off him. "Get up here, spread your legs," he ordered hoarsely. Emma gave him one last, long lick up his length, curling her tongue around to touch as much of him as she could, and finally leaving him with an appreciative kiss to the tip.

Killian lifted her dress over her head and dropped it next to her cloak on the grass. He lifted her against the tree and she wrapped her legs around his hips, spread as wide as she could. Killian could feel her arousal dripping onto his cock as he lined himself up.

"Take me hard, pirate," she whispered in his ear. Killian moaned and thrust in hard and fast, stilling for just a moment while she shifted the angle. Then he did as she had asked, nailing her fast and solid to the tree. When she began moaning and writhing, and he knew she was close, he demanded, "Touch yourself." Emma moved one hand to her swollen clit.

"Killian, Killian, Killian," she panted, and he was hitting her g-spot with every thrust. "Don't scream, love, you don't want to wake the whole clann," he warned in a low voice that suggested he was still in a surprising amount of control. Emma lost hers completely, and she opened her mouth against his jaw as she came, stilling her cries into his scruff, her muscles clamping down on his cock. He snapped in an instant, emptying himself into her as she came down from her high.

"Oh, God, Emma," he kissed her again, regaining his senses. "I love you so much."

Emma grinned. "I love you, too," she laughed. "But I already know that, look, we're actually glowing a bit." She held up his hand between their faces. Somehow the fairies' true love detector had not quite worn off. "Still, I like hearing you say it."

"Are we going to keep glowing every time we make love?" he asked.

Emma eased her legs back onto the bench, and he handed her back her dress. She shrugged. "Maybe it's a tree thing."

They put their clothes back on and slumped back under the tree, until they had caught their breath and the glow had settled to an almost imperceptible level.

Killian straightened her clothing and retied her cloak. She buttoned his shirt back up and then his waistcoat. They crept back through the garden and into the house. As they entered, one of the brothers on the dining room table turned to Killian, not bothering to lift his head from the wood as he spoke. "I hope you're going to marry the girl after that display, cousin," he said, raising an eyebrow to punctuate his statement. "Maybe it's not traditional in the world where you've been living, but here we don't in for quite so much screaming outside wedlock."

Emma didn't miss a beat. "I thought I kept it pretty quiet for once," she answered, straight-faced. "Killian usually has me screaming way louder than that for him." And with that she sashayed slowly out of the room.

"That one there's a keeper, cousin," he laughed. "Get a ring on that finger before she gets away."

Killian laughed uncomfortably, trying to imagine Swan going from a hard-won admission of love to a marriage proposal in a week. It seemed unlikely.

…

The rest of the house started to wake slowly, buzzing around each other carefully, nursing a mass hangover. Mac and his brothers reassembled at the dining room table with Emma and Oona and Killian, to discuss the way forward with Arthur.

"Why is he trying to take out that side of the Jones family then? You must be some sort of threat to him," Mac surmised.

Oona had to clear her throat several times before the men took any notice of her. Emma finally whistled and they shut up. She nodded towards Oona.

"The answer has to lie with Killian's mother and father," Oona said. "Something was going on there, and the only surviving member of the family was too young to remember what it might be. Did Liam ever speak about it?"

Killian shook his head. "Liam didn't really know what was going on either, and it probably all seemed moot when we were left to fend for ourselves on a naval vessel after dear Da disappeared," he said. "There may be information in his journals, but those are back in Storybrooke."

They all agreed that come what may, they needed to set up a protective defence against Arthur. They would kill Arthur if it came to it, rather than surrender Emma and Killian. They would assemble a fighting force as quickly as possible and arm themselves. Emma could cast a protection spell on Oona and Mac's house. If Arthur brought a war to the clann, the clann would fight back.

…

David and Mary Margaret dug through Emma's boxes again in the loft, while Will and Belle ploughed through Killian's stuff in his room at Granny's. It had been a month since their daughter disappeared with the pirate, and they were no closer to an answer. Regina had been able to identify that they had gone through a portal, and that the portal had been opened from the other side, but she didn't know who opened it, or why, or where to. Whoever did it had covered their tracks.

"We have been over everything they own three times in the last month. There's no clues," David kicked at a door in the loft.

Mary Margaret heard a knock at the door. She trudged down the stairs to answer it, and to give herself some space from her husband's pent-up frustration. Standing before her was Smee, red cap in his hand and three boxes at his feet. Mary Margaret raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Smee? What are you doing here? Did you hear something about Killian?"

"No, ma'am, sorry. We've been hunting for any trace of the Captain, but nothing's turned up. We did find these, though. He'd stored them in my quarters when he traded away the Jolly Roger. I'd forgotten all about them." Smee nodded to the boxes at his feet. "I've kept them all this time. I don't know, maybe something in here will help?"

"Smee," Mary Margaret beamed at him. "Thank you. We'll go through everything straight away."

Smee nodded and backed towards the stairs. "Just let me know if I can help with anything," he called back, halfway down the stairs by the time he finished his sentence.

"David," Mary Margaret yelled up the stairs to the loft. "Call Belle and Will to come over. Smee's found some boxes of Killian's. Looks like a lot of books and journals."

Within half an hour, the four of them were sitting in Mary Margaret and David's living room, reading endless journal entries in Liam's elegant script. Mostly they had to do with the running of the ship, accounts, the crew, their orders. But Liam sometimes talked about his background and family, or about Killian. Most of the entries were overflowing with Liam's love and pride for his little brother. The journals began when Killian was only 10, and Liam was a young naval officer. All but Will felt a bit unsure about reading through such personal information. Will only saw it as an opportunity to bait the pirate on his return.

After hours of reading, the four compared notes. Several names came up more than once, but one came back with menacing frequency whenever Liam wrote about his family: Arthur of Camelot. Belle put it together first. Liam wrote out the history of his family in bits and pieces, but there was enough to establish that his mother had been born to a noble family in Camelot, and that Killian had been born there, though raised in the Enchanted Forest. Liam told the story of a sword that was supposed to unite the Kingdom of Camelot under Arthur, but that Arthur had never found. He had heard rumours that his mother knew of the sword and had, in her youth, some sort of relationship with the sorcerer who guarded the blade, Merlin.

After hours of notes and discussion, Belle distilled this: "Somehow Camelot, and Arthur, are important to Killian's family. And somehow they managed to travel back and forth between Camelot and the Enchanted Forest without too much bother. Killian's mother may have had access to the sword that Arthur wanted desperately and never found."

David banged the table. "This makes no sense. What would Arthur want with Killian? He knew nothing of this; he was only a tiny boy when his father abandoned him. Even Liam didn't know much," he argued.

"But if Arthur has the sorcerer, then he could have opened up a portal like the one Regina described," Mary Margaret replied. She reached out for David's arm. "He could have pulled Emma and Killian into Camelot. Or into the Enchanted Forest, and then into Camelot from there."

Belle nodded. "We need to get to Camelot. It's the best lead we have, and we won't find any more answers from here."

"All right then," Will stood up, slapping his leg in resolution. "Let's go find the Evil Queen and make whatever unholy deals we need to to open a portal and get some answers."

With that, they headed down the stairs in search of Regina and Henry.