Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Before Dorian could reach the top of the ladder, Antha had leaned over the edge of the platform, chucking a small branch at the top of his head with all her might. "Where were you?" she screamed, with all the hysteria of someone who had just really begun to grieve, "He was dying, Dorian, you should have been here!" She withdrew briefly, snatching another branch from the nearest tree and hurling it down at him. She almost wanted to scream at him about how he was never there, accuse him of abandoning his family at every turn, of not loving them, but she bit her tongue, withdrawing into the safety of her tree house. Dorian was the only thing between her and Cian at the moment, and if she didn't get to Cian she was going to scream.
"Stefan wanted to see you before he died," she mumbled at length, leaning back against the wooden railing with her arms and legs crossed impetuously, "He missed you. Though how could I expect you to know that? You're never here, you never call, you---you---" She fell silent then, wiping away the tears that glittered on her pale cheeks, because nothing she could say would be enough. She was too angry, too depressed, too worried, and the whole world was spinning wildly out of control.
But there was, however, the consolation that the darkness was no longer threatening. Rather, it was the element in which she could beat Dorian black and blue without witnesses. Either that or ravish him---she wasn't quite sure which she wanted to do at the moment.  

[Okimiyage]

"And after I brought you roses!" Dorian cried out indignantly, shielding his face instinctively from the blow. After Antha withdrew, he gave her a moment before lowering his hand from his features, to make sure no more branches were coming. Slowly, he peeked up over the floor of the platform. Crossing his arms on the floor of the tree-house, he rested his chin on his folded hands and looked up at her with impossibly deep blue eyes.
"Oh, darling," he said, softly. It was so easy to believe him, when he used that voice. He was good enough at pretending to care that sometimes it was difficult to tell when he actually meant it. "I've made you cry. I'm so--I'm so sorry." He might actually have been upset. He wasn't speaking in rhyme, at least.

Cian, at his feet, ruined the moment by making a noise of impatience and pushing at his feet. "Shut up," Dorian hissed, heeling him in the face. <********> Cian's shout of pain exploded in his head as Dorian hoisted himself up into the treehouse. Aside from a slight flinch, Dorian mostly ignored the silent stream of obscenity. Retreating to the corner opposite from Antha, he crossed his legs in a mimicry of her own posture and steepled his fingers, watching like a hawk for any reaction from Antha. He knew his cousin well enough to understand that approaching her while in such disfavor would only end poorly for him. After him, Cian climbed up slowly, wiping blood dripping from his lip. He didn't say anything, but when he saw Antha's face his breath hitched in his chest, and he went to her side and, hesitantly, slid his arms about her shoulders. The embrace was brief, but left him feeling empty when he pulled away, and turned to glare at Antha's cousin over his shoulder. Dorian's perfect lips had thinned to a perfect line.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"The hell you are, you heartless b*****d!" Instinctively when Antha saw the blood on Cian's lip, she went straight to Dorian and hit him---hard---on the arm, enough to leave a bruise black as night. "He's family," she hissed at him, drawing Cian's arms back around herself, laying soft kisses on his bloodied lips, "Not that family seems to matter much to you, Dorian dear, but you wouldn't very well go around kicking Courtland in the face, would you now?"
These things she said aloud, hissing angrily, but quietly. But within his head she screamed, berated him with every mean thing her mind could fashion, accused him again and again of not loving his family, not loving her. "Why did you even bother coming back? You've practically renounced the Mayfair name as it is." She thought then---briefly, fleetingly---of disinheriting him, of cleaning out his bank accounts and severing any ties he had to the Mayfair family. What was the point if he was only going to leave them again when he grew bored? He was a terrible excuse for a cousin, really, and she told him as much. "You can pretend you're sorry all you like, but I don't believe you for a moment. Roses don't make up for not ******** being here."
Finally, when the bulk of her anger had seethed away, she turned back to Cian, touched her cold fingers gently to his cheek and whispered, "Are you all right, darling? Should we have Vittorio take a look at you?"  

[Okimiyage]

"Ow!" Rubbing his arm, Dorian's elegant brows arched up, and his tone took a scathing twist. "Darling Antha, you may be Designee of the Legacy, but even you have to face the truth every once in the while." He jerked his head towards Cian. "The whole city is afire with rumours, and while you've been sitting up in your ivory tower in your lovely white frock, Princess, I've been responsible for damage control. You don't even want to hear what they've been saying about his family, I'm certain. It is beyond vulgar." Dorian tossed his head, and set his mouth into a frown. "He is not family."
To the cruel words she roared inside his mind--like an angry mother cat, he thought, absently--Dorian neither flinched nor gave any outward response to. Two could play at that game; and it was a game that the Mayfair cousins had elevated to practically an art. But inside, he could not help but protest, I went to the funeral...I wore the white suit...I am here now. What else do you want for me, when I am the one who calms those who hiss our name and call our actions--your actions, my darling, most especially--a disgrace to the city. You may be princess, Antha, you may be the youngest tyrant in all of history, but even you cannot ignore such unrest amongst the entire supernatural population of Osiris City.
Rubbing his arm, he added, "You wound me, Antha. And yet, I would willingly bear the shadow of this bruise until the day it fades, if your hatred would fade with it. Even the greatest of wordsmiths could not describe the regret I feel, that I was not here to witness Stefan's last moments on this earth." He placed a hand over his heart, bowing his head briefly.

Cian, who had reacted with mild surprise and alarm at the Antha's sudden affection, had began to calm down when she turned on him again, her lips bright with his blood. She looked like some fey creature of the night, with her porcelain skin and brilliant eyes, iridescent in the moon's illumination. I'm fine, he said, his voice warm with a smile that he could not show on his face for fear of cracking the blood that already was proceeding to dry upon his split lip. It didn't stop him from wrinkling his nose in a playful grimace as he added, But I'm beginning to suspect someone or something of having it in for my face, you know? This is the second time I've had my lip busted in less than a week. He had to remind himself not to smile, or he would have when he suggested, Maybe it's the Calais curse after all. If so, it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Have I ever given the slightest indication that I give a damn what anyone else says?" she hissed, rounding again on Dorian, "I am powerful enough that I do not need to go out into the city to hear the same things you do. Yes, they speak terribly ill of me, but their fear keeps us safe. And as far as Cian is concerned---" Her eyes flashed venomous for a fraction of a second, threatening, a clear warning to her cousin to keep his mouth shut, "---his blood has been added to our gene pool. You will treat him as family or else." This last word was said seriously enough, venomously enough, that the particulars were irrelevant.
But it was his last statement---which she did not truly trust, but accepted for the sake of simplicity---which softened her, drew her out of Cian's arms and to his side, laying a brief kiss upon his cheek. "I know you loved him as we did," she whispered, running her fingers through his fair hair, "I would not question that, my darling, and I'm sorry if I was too harsh with you." She leaned in then, her fingers closed on his shoulder and lips against his ear so that Cian would not hear when she whispered, "But I am quite serious when I say that the next time you leave us, I will have you disowned from the family."
It was easier now not to be angry with her cousin. Her grief and rage had needed a target, something to attack, and Dorian had been convenient at the time. But Nicolae's whispered words in her mind had given her a far better victim, a real a true reason to unleash her wrath. God help Vikteren if she saw him, for she was fairly certain she would kill him.  

[Okimiyage]

"Of course you are far above such petty affairs," Dorian said, shaking back his head with a laugh like shards of glass; all brilliance and sharp edges. "That does not mean the rest of us are above the city's stabbing knife of a rumor-mill. If you care so much about your new--" He bit off the word boy-toy before it could surface and get him beheaded by Antha. "Your new beau, I would humbly offer up my advice in this matter: no matter what name you call him by, he and his brother are causing--ah--quite a dangerous stir. You know the number of our enemies even more intimately than I do, my darling cousin. If they had no interest in Cian Calais, they certainly are taking a lively one in Cian Mayfair."
Dorian's eyes lit up suddenly, as a new thought came to mind and tore away the grim tone of his voice. "Oh! And they want to know if you're getting married. You should, you know. A beautiful girl who dies without ever wearing a wedding dress...it's appallingly tragic, isn't it?" Dorian came forward, studying her face, and pushed Antha's ringlets behind her ears. "Besides, I want to see you in one of those long lacy wedding veils. You don't wear white enough, and it suits you so well--"

"Antha!"
The voice of the man who she least wanted to see echoed a crack of thunder, and the lightning that streaked across the sky briefly illuminated the dark hair, the violently green eyes, the pale and lanky form of Vikteren d'Argnet. He could sense the seething waves of her anger, making his skin prickle as though he wore her fury beneath his own flesh. He'd been able to sense it from miles away.
He'd come anyways. He was not certain whether to attribute this to his sense of honor (as twisted as it might be, after all these years), or he was developing a distinctly masochistic streak. Certainly it would have been far easier to simply skip town.
But Vikteren had wanted to say goodbye.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"I do not like weddings," Antha reminded him shortly, before the sour look came to her face, recalling the moment in which Julien had drawn her aside before the funeral and stolen her ear for a space of some seconds, "But oncle Julien has his own plans for my marriage, as always. He is still determined that I shall be married to Claire Leonelli. Of course he has an alternative now, as if Christian Parker is any better." She scoffed at the idea, in the sad little way that meant she knew she would have to give in to him eventually. "I cannot imagine how he thinks to make such a thing work, marrying me to Claire when everyone already knows I'm carrying Cian's child, but he does tend to get his way in these things, doesn't he?"
It was when she heard Vikteren's voice that she went still, rigid and silent with anger, and then all at once turned and took the ladder down to face him, her eyes oddly bright with anger. "You dare?" she hissed, stalking towards him with her fists clenched, her nails digging into the flesh of her palms, "You traitorous coward, you dare to show your face to me?" This last became, after a moment, an outright scream. Even Courtland, glancing out the window to look out on the garden, admitted to himself that he hadn't seen her so very livid in a long time. "Go!" she continued, making great violent gestures of her arms, "I want you the hell out of my sight and out of my city immediately! If I ever see you again, if you are ever within my reach---" The trees quivered with the force of her anger, the wind howled it through the garden, and within the attic, the thing breathed a sigh of anticipation. "---I will ******** massacre you, you lying, heartless b*****d. I will cut your heart out and feed it to the alligators in the swamp." She stepped back when the first traces of blood beaded on her hands beneath her nails, her arms shaking with the strain of not hitting him, not beating him black and blue and dragging him into the earth, burying him beside the mangled skeletons beneath their feet. "Don't you dare try to say your goodbyes, I refuse to listen to them and I will change my mind about letting you live if you try," she hissed at length, turning in a great flourish of skirts and curls and stalking off again, into the darkness of the garden, calling venomously over her shoulder, "And rest assured, if Cyrus happens to show up, I will point him in your direction."
She was gone then, vanished in the haze of rain, calling Cian to her side. Had she not been crying all damn day, she might have shed more than the few tears now upon her cheeks, might have had enough energy to cry and scream and throw a tantrum the likes of which he had never seen.But she had been, she didn't, and she was instead simply very, very angry, ready to pounce upon anything that crossed her. And she had no time for the voice that whispered her name through the darkness, for the lights that fell upon the soggy ground from the house in the distance, for the drizzle that beaded her hair and skin with cold water. No, none of these things mattered, only the flare of anger that knotted her stomach and made her skin tremble.  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian came forward to put an arm around Antha's shoulders--separating her and Cian in a very nonchalant but effective fashion--and said, "See, my darling, why sometimes it is useful to have damage control for one's public image? Rumors are to you as the winds are to the eye of a hurricane. Even if you are not directly in the path of their effects, there can be no denying the destruction that they ca--hey!" He had but a fraction of a second to feel his cousin go stiff as a puppet before she darted out from under his arm and disappeared down the ladder of the treehouse. Cian rushed to the side of the platform, following her with his eyes as well as he could--for it was dark, and raining, and visibility was low. He recognized, dimly, the figure whom Antha stalked towards--but he could not hear her words, for suddenly the wind had doubled in strength, and the sound of it rushing through the leaves, making the limbs of the trees creak and groan, made it impossible to hear over. Dorian was at his side before he realized it, pulling him away from the edge of the platform just as a great gust rattled the little tree-house like a doll's house. "Don't," he hissed, "get involved, my little ill-made mute. Don't even think about it. Even you can't calm our dear cousin when she's like this." Dorian had been a part of the family for longer than Cian had. He recognized the anger radiating from Antha like--like steam off a hot stove. But he could not imagine what had brought it on--and particularly from the unprepossessing figure that stood in the gardens, his back straight, his head a little bowed, as Antha advanced upon him.
Vikteren looked at her, through a curtain of dark, wet hair. He did not move, not even when she came towards him, spitting obscenities and wrath. His lips moved, formed words, but no sound came out. I want to explain.
But his throat was too stiff to make even a sigh, and the words choked him, everything that he wanted to say coming too fast to get even a syllable out.
'I'm sorry.' 'Good-bye'. 'I love you.' 'Run away with me.'
He held out his open hands to her, uselessly; she had already turned her back, and fled into the dark gardens.
It would have been much easier, if he was human, to pretend that what wet his cheeks was only rain. But one could not pass tears of blood, staining one's cheeks scarlet, off as raindrops.

Cian, in the platform, felt Antha's presence drop. It was his turn, now, to pull his elbow back into Dorian's throat sharply, with a grunt and a Get off me! She needs me, you idiot--
He didn't stop to look if Antha's cousin was alright; it was enough that he was coughing, which meant his windpipe wasn't broken and he was probably fine (although his throat would be sore for a while, which suited Cian just dandy). Scrambling down the ladder, he jumped off about half-way to the ground and hit it running. He knew exactly where Antha was; she shone like a beacon, a high and leaping flame. The cousins in the house were probably going mad wondering what was going on--if they could feel Antha's state of mind like he could, at least--but at the moment, Cian would've gladly told the cousins to get themselves hanged if it interfered with finding Antha.
As it was, he did not have to be rude to the cousins after all. Pushing his way through a particularly thorny rose-bush, he nearly stumbled over her. The roses, dripping and heavy with water, had not been enjoying the recent abundance of rain. The weight of their blooms bent the stems, making a bower about the Mayfair girl whose hair was as red as rosepetals. Cian dropped slowly to his knees, not caring whether he got muddy or not. He did not venture any question, nor opinion--not even her name--but he crept forward on his hands and knees until the two of them were side-by-side, and he coaxed open her bloody palms with a touch that left her wounded flesh numbed. He only wished he could do more.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It took several moments for Antha to realize that Cian was at her side, his hands upon hers. Her mind had gone oddly blank for a space of seconds, numb, and it came back quietly as she brushed his fingers away from her own, shaking her head and whispering, "No, I want the pain."
Across the yard, far out of Antha's sight, Courtland stepped out into the rain from the back porch, passing by Vikteren with a short, dark look and the quiet words, "I think you should be leaving now." He went then not to Antha---he feared her too much to be in her company at the moment---but to the tree house, climbing the ladder to peek over the edge at Dorian, grinning darkly. "It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for," he said, laughing vaguely as he hoisted himself into the shelter and patted his cousin's back, "But you know, he's really not that bad. You could at least give him a chance before you start physically abusing him."
Meanwhile, now that Antha had regained control of her senses and the terrible knot of rage had begun to subside, the spill of tears through her lashes had begun again, racking her thin shoulders with sobs as she grasped for Cian, pressing her forehead to his chest as her fingers knotted in the fabric of his shirt. "You would think," she murmured, releasing Cian and wiping her eyes, "That statistically, someone would have to keep their word. Even by sheer coincidence, you would think someone in this wretched world would keep their promises." Quietly, brushing the wet tendrils of hair from her face, she wondered why she was letting Vikteren walk out unharmed. He had lied to her, broken his promises---broken her heart---and yet she denied that dark, controlling force what it demanded of her. It had called for his blood and she had ignored it, had screamed and cried and walked away without striking.
Of course, the lack of bloodshed all depended on how quickly he was gone, didn't it?  

[Okimiyage]

His fingers withdrew as hesitantly as they had met her own, and Cian looked away briefly, a little ashamed that he could not offer any consolance to her, now, when he could feel the hurt in her like a lead anchor in his breast. Then let me at least-- he began, and then stopped. Something came over him, then, that paused his speech and lowered his eyes, and his lashes were thick with raindrops that broke and ran down his cheeks to mirror Antha's own spare tears. Allow me to hold you, he said--barely a whisper, even in her mind, For I cannot bear to see you suffer like this alone.

The words were barely out of Courtland's mouth before Vikteren was no longer there--they did not have to tell him to go, he knew well enough himself he should have left hours ago, from the instant he saw Lisaveta's mangled visage once more. He had not. Vikteren had wanted to say goodbye.
Antha hadn't even allowed him that. He wanted to pretend that it was because this wasn't really goodbye--that he would see her again, quite soon, as soon as he had lost his sire's trail. Even the heartless vampire could not allow himself to think, What if I never come back? Or I do, but too late? What if--
Thinking like that just led his state of mind into a kamikaze bomber suicide dive.
The weight of Antha's locket had begun to bruise where it made contact with his chest as he ran, but that was the one thing that he would not leave. He felt like a thief, but as long as he had it, he could convince himself that he--well, he'd have to come back, wouldn't he? He had to return it to her.

Dorian's dulcet tones were ruined. "He's none of ours," the man croaked, coughing violently as he stood. "It was incredibly rash of Antha to induct this boy into our family just because he's become the latest in her reputable string of lovers. I'm sure she would have rather had his brother, if the bloody fool wasn't off dabbling in necromancy and hosting orgies and consulting pythian oracles and bloody playing hospice with vampires, which would all be well and fine without being connected to us, dear cousin." Cian had apparently annoyed Dorian enough to denounce his name regardless of how painful it was at the moment. Standing up, Dorian began brushing off his shirt in an agitated fashion. It was a nice shirt; watered ivory silk. It didn't deserve what had been done to it by the tree-house. "Anyways, he stinks like one of the populace. He's awfully common, don't you think? I don't understand what she sees in him." The last was said with a sigh, and an emphatic toss of his head. Dorian really could be a rather jealous creature sometimes.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Her hands still shaking, her body convulsing with silent sobs, Antha touched his hand with her bloodied one, twined their fingers and brought the back of his hand against her cheek. "Since when are you so polite?" she questioned, even as her lips brushed his in an act reminiscent of desperation, sad and lonely and craving the touch of another body, "It doesn't suit you and I don't like it."
"Is that what he's been up to?" Courtland asked, throwing his head back and laughing before he slid to the side of the platform to let his feet dangle in the air, "Or is that just what they're saying? Not that I blame them---he's downright unpleasant." He glanced over his shoulder at his cousin, smirking, and continued in a lower tone, "Of course she preferred his brother. They're disturbingly like each other from what I can tell, and she always did like someone that could get under her skin, just look at her and Nicolae. But, well, Cian gave into her first."
Outside, beyond the small circle around them left dry, the rain was beginning to pick up again, warmer than the last few days so that the air around Courtland was thick with it, smotheringly so. Ah, the weather in the south. "He would have been a fling," the boy sighed at length, looking to Dorian a little more seriously, "If he hadn't been so lucky as to contribute his blood to our family tree. But he did---is---and now we're stuck with him for better or worse, pending the sex of the baby of course. It's easier to just go with it. Besides---" Again he flashed that grin, patting his cousin's knee as his eyes sparkled darkly and he cooed, "You're so much prettier than he is."  

[Okimiyage]

Cian had never been good at comforting girls. He didn't need any more evidence of this than the acute unease that filled him whenever he saw a woman in tears. He simply didn't know what to say. The man made a small grimace that briefly allowed one to imagine him as he had been a child, all mop-headed cherubic hellion, before his mouth twitched into a lopsided smile, and he looked up at Antha with a dark affection in his eyes. Beg your pardon. The Calais witch took her hand up in his, twining their fingers together and kissing her palm tenderly, again and again. But I think you need someone rather desperately to be nice to you right now. Reaching out, he deftly tugged her dark and water-logged curls behind her ear, and his fingertips brushed the rain from Antha's cheeks. When he kissed her, his pale lips were ruddy with the hue of her blood, and the taste of copper and salt made his mouth sweet. When his arms slid around her shoulders, they brought the welcome heat of another body to her chilled skin. You're so cold. His voice was soft in her mind; if a tone could have a texture, his was ermine. Like Snow White in her coffin, but with no apple-bite to coax from your throat, to restore you to life. Saying thus, he kissed the place in her neck where her pulse hammered. But even if you were, I think I'd make a dreadful mess of it as a prince.

"Who knows?" said Dorian, flippantly, pulling his fingers roughly through his hair and scowling at the twigs and leaves that he drew out. "Hardly anyone's seen him. Doesn't mean you can't walk but two feet anywhere without hearing someone discussing the Mayfair family's new 'liability'." He sighed, and gave Courtland the look of noble despair he did so well. If Cian was no prince to speak of, he could have taken lessons from Dorian on at least how to look like one. Sitting down next to Courtland, he leaned into his cousin's shoulder and, in Dorian's typically intimate manner, found a comfortable crook in which to nestle his head almost immediately. "At least we'll only have to bear with him for a little while." Then, as a thought struck him, Dorian sat up straight, very slowly. "Speaking of which," he murmured, "who's the current favorite for Antha's groom at the moment?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Princes are overrated," she whispered knowingly, tracing the curve of his jawline with the tips of her cold fingers, "Particularly the ones with swords and white horses. They're all show---dashing smiles and pretty words. They're useless in reality." The rain had begun to come down harder just as Antha began to tremble again, though from the cold this time. "We'll catch our deaths out here," she murmured finally, taking his hand in her own icy one and running for the shelter of the garden shed. She still refused to be in that house, between the same walls as Julien, not without throwing him down the stairs, and she didn't trust Cian and Dorian around one another anymore. The shed was the last place left that was safe. "I always imagined myself as Ophelia more than Snow White," she murmured idly over the pounding of the raindrops on the metal roof, wringing the water from her hair and skirt, "Trying to drown the life out of myself in the pool until Malakai came to drag me out again, to wrap me up all warm and safe."

"Everyone has a favorite," Courtland sighed, flopping down onto his back, his arms folded beneath his head, "Julien still favors a good political alliance outside the family. He was very keen on the Calais boys until their name went all to hell overnight. Everyone else...I don't know, there are too many contenders. Most of them still favor me, God help my soul, some are stacking their chips with Cian, and some hopeless romantics are still betting on her and Nicolae running away together. I don't know, it's anyone's guess really. It could be me, it could be you, it could be Cian or Claire, or it could be Jack or Vittorio or any of our cousins. The politics of it all make my head hurt, I feel like we're living in the dark ages."  

[Okimiyage]

Ophelia didn't actually commit suicide, to my mind, Cian murmured, shaking the water from his hair like a wet dog and then wringing out what was left dripping. She simply didn't try to save herself. 'As one incapable of her own distress'. But--perhaps it's all the same thing. His shirt he pulled off and set to twisting in his hands, kneading the rain from the fabric. His jeans, artfully bleached and distressed to within an inch of their ridiculous pricetag, were going to need the attention of a professional laundrywoman and maybe a wizard. Cian didn't seem to mind. He cleared off a line of dusty gardening tools from atop a trunk and sat down, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together loosely between his legs. Why did you try to drown yourself in the pool, Antha?

Dorian wrinkled his nose at the list of contenders. "My sympathies, Courtland. The whole thing reminds me of horse breeding, to be frank. Whose blood will prove most suitable, which will be the most profitable match--" Dorian covered his mouth and yawned elaborately, his spine curving like a bow as he stretched back. "Dreadfully boring. And it takes so long. I say we should have a tournament, like in the old days. Invite the whole slew of suitors around for dinner and dancing and pick from among them. Isn't that how they do it in the stories?" He laughed out loud at this, his foul mood lifting at the thought of such a glittering evening. Dorian was a social creature; if Antha was going to insist that he remain at the Mayfair Mansion for the time being, he would oblige--but he could still very well bring the outside world to their doorstep. At least he had that much influence, although who knew how long he would retain it after disappearing from the scene without a trace.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha laughed once, quietly, as she wrung out the material of her dress. It clung oddly to her figure in places and hung oddly in others, gone heavy with the cold rainwater that had tarnished the perfectly pure white hue. She was willing to bet it was ruined. "Because I hated everything," she answered simply, setting herself down beside him and pulling the silver pins from her hair, letting the wet scarlet curls fall over her shoulders and down her back like a river of blood, "Do you think I was always this way? Powerful, confident, clever, loved? I was pitiful back then. My family were strangers to me---strangers that had left me to rot in that attic, and the family legacy was too great a burden to bear. I couldn't handle it, I was just a severely abused child with dangerously underdeveloped social skills." She shrugged lightly, as if it were nothing but a distant memory, stretching her arms and legs. "It was after Louis' funeral. I didn't think about it, I just walked into the pool and closed my eyes and waited for death until Malakai came in after me." A small sigh dropped from her lips as she brushed out his wet hair, and damn him if he didn't like it because she had no intentions of stopping. She liked his hair. "People do strange things when they lose their loved ones. My cousins, my brothers---even darling Nicolae, who thought the world revolved around me---they meant nothing without Louis, and when he died I felt terribly alone."
She fell silent for a moment then, her black-rimmed emerald eyes focused thoughtfully on his profile in the moonlight. "Why are you putting up with this?" she asked finally, in the quiet sort of seriousness that made her seem momentarily older than her years, "With me, my family, all of our problems? No one is going to blame you for running for your life---they will only think better of you for it, I imagine. You could still be free, or with your brother. You do not have to subject yourself to my whims, Julien's ambitions, Dorian's cruelty, and my cousins' games." Her lips pressed briefly to his bare shoulder---almost innocently---before she rested her cheek against it, her arms winding around his. "Julien will have me married before the week is over, or at the very least at the end of the next, of that I am unfortunately certain. Will you want to be stuck here when Claire Leonelli or that awful Christian Parker comes to play husband?" Again there came the press of her lips, against the side of his neck this time. "When whoever it is comes to live here and will not let you within shouting distance of me? You will have lost your main link to the family, at least until our child is born, and will have only Courtland and Jack to keep you company. That, my darling, is not much of a life."

"It's all up to Antha, in the end," he said, shrugging, "Julien can pressure her all she wants, she's the one who has to sign the papers." His voice dropped then, his eyes shifting as if he were afraid Antha might hear him, even over the great amount of distance and rain that separated them. "And she is Mary Beth's daughter. If you will recall, she was never one for marrying as she was expected to. Two outsiders, one of them disturbingly human and neither with a penny or any amount of prestige to their names." He laughed then, for a moment or two, and then sobered immediately, staring up at his cousin. "She's serious, you know. She's already gone after your bank accounts, had Lawrence tie them up so that you can't take a penny out without her consent. As soon as you disappear again, that's it, she's taking your allowance and denouncing you as a member of the family. Do you know how dangerous it is to be a non-Mayfair witch out there?"