Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Cian," the girl sighed, helplessly, "I do not, nor shall I ever, fear Rynn on his own. He is half the witch I am, if that, and nowhere near the expert saboteur. But he is not alone, mon cheri. He is a puppet, a tool, and none of us can be sure who is truly running this show just yet. That is the danger, Rynn's new puppet master. I actually rather hope it is Vikteren's sire, I prefer the enemy I know. Well, not me, but..."
Silence fell for a moment or two, Antha's gaze cast distantly at the sheets, unseeing, the thoughts swirling beneath that emerald veil. "I was so angry with him," she whispered, glancing up at Cian, and something between that whisper and the look in her eyes, the guilt, the remorse, promised confession, "I do not take abandonment well, it was too prevalent a force in my childhood. So I had my cousins take him. I think I meant to kill him originally---one cannot really be sure, in that place---but Laurie messed everything up and I came to my senses. I had to let him out. If I had waited until afternoon, there is no telling how long it would have been for him. I told you, time holds no sway in that wild fey land. And if it really is his sire, the dreaded Cyrus, if he really is here, I need his help. So do you, if he is the one pulling Rynn's puppet strings."
Antha paused for a moment, long enough to shift beneath the sheets, sitting up with her legs folded beneath her, her eyes staring down at Cian. "I do not like the truly old ones. They have never been anything but trouble for me. The younger ones, with only a few centuries to their name, they may hate witches but they are nothing like their predecessors. A thousand years ago, witches were akin to gods, they had that kind of power, and the ones old enough to recall those days are dangerous to me. Some of them would have all of our kind dead, just to be sure, but even those that do not bother with these diminished bloodlines...I remind them of what it used to be like. If I am no ally to them, they cannot suffer me to go on. They---" Quickly, her hand went to her temple, her fingers pressing into her skin as if her head hurt. There was that flash again, that burning glow of scarlet, the flutter of dark lashes. That whisper through her head---abomination---before it was just as suddenly gone.
"This old one, whether he is Cyrus or not, he cannot mean us anything but harm. Chances are, he would rather see all of us dead. I have to dispose of him, Cian, that is absolutely imperative. To protect those dear to me, he must be dealt with, and what do you think the chances are that Rynn will stand aside and simply let that happen? If he can be avoided, I shall avoid him---if only for you, because I know all too well what it is like to suffer for the sins of the brother---but if he stands to protect this threat, I do not think there is anything else to do but kill him." Quietly, in a slow and almost unnoticed fashion, Antha's fingers found Cian's, gently tangling themselves around one another. "Rynn is only an obstacle to the real threat. The question is whether or not he can be circumvented. If not...his fate is sealed."  

[Okimiyage]

Cian lay there, his thoughts disquieted by her words, calmed by the touch of her skin against his. Restlessly, he unlaced and re-laced their fingers over and over again, his fingertips moving over the crest of her palm, the lunula of her fingernails. His family had so suddenly become such a stunted wretch of a lineage, and he could not deny--nor fathom why--his pride was hurt by the flippancy with which his wife dismissed their talents. Of course, there was no living witch that he could think of who would compare to Antha, but their own talents had never been considered meager by the standards of antiquity. Of course, the Calais bloodline had not thrived like the Mayfair's; perhaps Cian's ancestors had been too prudish, or too noble, to sow their seed more widely. Perhaps they had simply not had the forethought. A great deal of the family's witch-craft was tied up in ghosts and ancestor-worship; they were not the sort of folk who thought often of the fate of their progeny. They did not look forward. Perhaps that was why, for decades, the Mayfairs had been all but running the city, while the Calais family had devoted their energies to creating a damn mausoleum for the last of the family heirs.
Cian closed his eyes. He knew how this would work out if it were a fairy tale; some grand scene of reconciliation between his led-astray younger brother and himself, and then the crows would come to peck out the eyes of whatever deranged monster Rynn found himself in the unwilling service of.
Osiris City was not a place in which to depend on fairy tale endings.
Even more so when one was intimately familiar with the stubborn streak in Cian's younger brother.
"I was always very bad with confrontation," he said at last, in what was not quite a whisper. His brow creased, notching the skin between his eyes in a furrow of concentration. "I think that's why I spent so much time away from my brothers. They were always so certain in their beliefs. I am afraid that the schism between us will have only set his mind, but if I could speak with him..." Cian trailed off.
Then, softly but firmly, and half to himself, he murmured under his breath,
"No, that's only sentiment."
"I don't think Rynn will come back from it, wherever he's gone. Or if he does, he won't be my brother anymore. He'd--probably say that I haven't been his brother since-- since I accepted the protection of your family."
Cian's eyes came back to seeing the room around him, instead of whatever foggy inwards dimension they had previously viewed. He looked at Antha, and gave her a wan smile. "I want to come with you when you go to hunt him, this 'puppetmaster', whoever made my brother like this. You didn't see him as I did last." Swinging his legs off the bed, Cian made slowly to separate the two of them and begin to dress himself. But as he rose to his feet, pulling his arms through sharp-creased sleeves, he stopped. Cian pressed his lips together, suddenly aching for a cigarette at the memory, and passed his hand across his mouth as though to waft away invisible smoke. From between his fingers came the confession; "I'm afraid for him, I suppose."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha remained for a moment or two in the position he had left her, curled quietly on the bed, her gaze cast somberly off in thought. If he had looked, he might have seen that hint of something in her eyes quite like remorse, guilt. Though, by the same hand, an audience would have made that hint of emotion vanish entirely. By the time his words, which made her heart feel heavy and dreadful, ceased her arms were around him, dragging him back down onto the bed so that she could drape those arms around his shoulders. "Qui craint de souffrir, il souffre déjà de ce qu'il craint," she murmured against his ear, her lips tracing his jaw, the curve of his neck where she pressed a few lingering kisses. "He who fears suffering is already suffering that which he fears." And with those words there came one of those brief flashes through the touch of her skin---that pain in her chest that brought black spots to her vision, the sheer agonizing discomfort of choking on blood spilling from between her lips, those scrambling fingers slipping across the tiles that were slick with warm blood, the pain of immensely strong fingers that bruised her aching arm as they turned her violently onto her back so she could see that dangerous red glow of eyes, eyes that struck true terror into a fearless heart, a split second before the sharp pain rammed into her neck again and she heard her own rasping screams as the world wavered and finally went black---and she paused, going very briefly rigid and then pretending as if it had never happened. "We are ahead of ourselves, mon cher. Tides are always turning with every moment, every breath. There is no telling what they will be when the suns sets on the horizon, or when it bursts again into the sky. It is my habit to be prepared for the worst, it is the only way I have ever survived, but the outcome may yet surprise us. Either way...whatever will be, will be."
As she spoke she tugged gently at the collar of his shirt, moved it aside to press her lips against his shoulder, and there was almost something desperate about it, that touch of her lips and the press of her fingers against his other shoulder. She felt quite as she had for that fleeting moment their first night together, tangled together on the worn carpet in the flickering firelight, wanting to wrap the lost boy up in her arms and stroke his pretty curls. She felt...possessive and protective of him in a manner that rarely occurred when it wasn't Nicolae. Too often she had pulled that wayward boy into her arms and twined his golden curls around her fingers, whispering reassurances in his ear.
He had been too stunned during his brief visit the previous evening to really be angry, too afraid of this great shift in the global power structure, this siren of Antha's gruesome end. But when it wore off---and things like this never did bring Nicolae down for long, not outwardly anyways---he was going to be furious. Part of him had hoped to somehow sabotage her engagement, to scare Cian off, or at the very least to delay it until it was too late. The other part of course wanted more for her children, his little niece and nephew, than they had been given in the parent department. Nicolae had had Michael at least, and Michael had always loved his boys unconditionally, no matter the truth of their paternity, but there was always that shadow of Julien hanging over them, that fury and despair over his lack of responsibility for his incestuous b*****d children. All dozen or so of them spread across the Mayfair family tree.
But mostly, Nicolae just couldn't stand the thought of some other man playing such a prevalent role in Antha's life.
“Stay in bed with me,” she whispered temptingly into his ear, her arms snaking back around him, pressing her firmly against his back as her teeth nipped briefly at his neck, “We are newlyweds, darling, and there was never a better excuse to lock one’s self up and ******** all day. At least until the business of the night is at hand.”

When that night fell, it was upon a rather tense atmosphere.
It began with Atticus, one of the first of his kind in the city to rise from the daily death, staring out of his tower window at the distant lights of the city. He was looking, with the eye wrought by Antha’s magic that saw so much more than the physical world, for Rynn. He was looking for the intruder, the puppet master, the threat to their city’s delicate peace.
Khayman was up very soon afterwards, sorting through the reports from his daytime servants. Antha had asked him to find Vikteren’s maker and he was going to do as she wished, no matter how her motivations changed. Antha, the little prodigy born of his blood, tied to him, his protector every bit as much as he was hers. They were bound by fate and their own survival instincts as co-conspirators, concrete allies, and if something concerned Antha, it concerned him.
A very short while after him, Nicolae stirred in his coffin, shuffling quietly through his catacombs. He looked unusually thoughtful today, his coven members thought as they stole glances at him while setting about their tasks renovating their new home to his specifications.
By the end of the hour he had fed, and then hunted again before creeping through a window into the Mayfair Manor attic, stealing into that little back room sealed with a witch’s lock. He waited quietly, sitting with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest as he turned the water bottle filled with dark blood around and around in his long fingers, picking at the label, until Vikteren came to consciousness. “I hate it when these things happen one on top of another. First that annoying Calais boy crying vengeance, then your uninvited sire, and now…now this goddamn ancient with a real fetish for massacring ‘true’ witches. Antha was always good at multitasking, but I never had a knack for it.”
Quietly, looking up from the bottle in his hands, the boy offered it to the other vampire. It was still lukewarm, not ideal, but for a vampire that had fed so very little in what had probably been so long, it would help. “Antha will be up shortly I’m sure. She’s all consumed with an overprotective rage over all of this. And a little bit of a panic that her death has just woken up from a truly epic sleep just for her.”
Nicolae paused for a minute or two, lacing his hands atop his knees and staring past them at the old, dusty floorboards in the darkness. He was very still tonight, unnervingly quiet, and uncharacteristically thoughtful. Indeed, he was terribly somber, even if it was not in the usual obvious manner of his other emotions. “Antha is never going to let you leave this city,” he stated suddenly, and even the simple, straightforward honesty did not fit his character, “Not so long as she lives, and with any hint of luck that’s still going to be a little while. You know that, don’t you?” And he gave a small, humorless laugh. “You know, I don’t think I hate you so much anymore. I guess my hatred is pretty much relative to Antha’s apparent affection for the guy. For instance, if I thought I could bear leaving my niece and nephew orphaned, I would have drained all of the goddamn blood out of Cian Calais’s veins. Every ******** drop, and then dumped him in the river. I love her too selfishly.”
He stopped then, glancing up with a little shake of his head, and forced a feeble smile to his lips. “That’s all beside the point though. The point here is that Antha wants the creature that’s in league with Rynn Calais---your maker, presumably---dead, and if it’s possible, Rynn alive.” His eyes narrowed in the split second of silence, became serious all over again. “I heartily disagree. I think, in her own twisted and psychotic way, she has feelings for Rynn. I think she loves him like she loved the corpses she transformed into ‘mermaids’ in that damned airship, and I think she wants to spare him for Cian. But I think that without a doubt, for the sake of everyone when Antha does not stand between him and the rest of us, Rynn Calais needs to die. I think nothing good can ever come from his existence and no matter which way Antha’s resolve flip-flops, when we find him, we should kill him.” Another silent moment, his ears straining to hear any sound from Antha. “Don’t you? Or are you another sucker for fairy tales of redemption?”
 

[Okimiyage]

When Vikteren awoke, there was for a moment no sign of it. His consciousness rose from whatever dreamless, murky depths they occupied while he slumbered, and while he took in no breath, the scent of the room—and another, carrying in his hand the copper-metal tang of blood—invaded his senses. The vampire opened his eyes, with slow deliberation, and drew air into his lungs with a dry hiss.
Nicolae, sitting across from him in practically a mirror image of Vikteren's own posture; he supposed they might have made a pretty drawing, together. One fair-haired, one dark—their eyes gleaming in the darkness, mirror-matched in the pale marble of their skin. Vikteren's eyes flicked across him, gauging threats, calculating Nicolae's intent. Then, Antha's cousin spoke.
There was something in his voice that told Vikteren, within the first syllable, that Nicolae was not here to fight, or to poison him with tainted blood. Drawing himself forward, the vampire took Nicolae's proffered flask, and listened.
When it last it seemed that his fellow had finished, the vampire uncorked the bottle, and put it to his lips. He had not felt the growth of his hunger, but it was upon him suddenly, enough to make his hand shake--
“Redemption relies entirely on the subject. Neither of us know Rynn Calais well enough to know whether he is capable of such a feat, although his pride would suggest this possibility to be doubtful.” His tone was cold, casually hollow of sympathy, and his words seemed to come almost too swiftly. Another drink. “He hates her.” Another.
“It's typical of Antha, isn't it? Like a child who only clutches her kitten all the harder the more it tries to scratch her. Selfish love is a good family trait-- makes for the most protective mothers.” His laughter was bittter.
Slowly, like a great puppet untangling itself, Vikteren rose from where he had crouched on the cold floorboards. Three monsters on her plate. “No wonder she seemed so—distracted.” Vikteren murmured, half to himself. Although why she wanted one of them alive was beyond him—for the thrill of the challenge, he supposed.
“We can take care of one matter for her, at least. I consider it my obligation, if nothing else.”
The vampire handed Nicolae's flask to him, now empty, and glanced slitted cat-green eyes at the door. “Will you undo that spell-lock? My sire is within the city outskirts as we speak. That-which-binds-us has lain dormant for many years, but as one of his rare progeny--” and the word was spat out like a curse, “--he is certain to feel my tug on his proverbial leash. I am going to kill him. You are welcome to come along if you'd like.”

In the room below, something stirred amidst the mass of bedsheets.
Cian drew his wife close into his arms, both unconsciously encircling his young bride. The room was dark and warm and he drifted drowsily about that state of you're-awake-but-maybe-you''ll-go-back-to-sleep-and-that-would-be-great-too, and tried to pretend not to notice when Antha began to shift and rise on her own accord. When evidence presented showed that ignoring the issue would not disperse of it, he murmured, “Five more minutes of cuddling. The night is young, you have time. The manhunts can wait.”--And he laughed into the red curls behind her ear, because he knew that she would most likely pay this feeble protest no mind.
He admired that about her. Perhaps that was why he found himself attracted to Antha—because he so rarely admired anyone. In the last croaking years of their household, women had not been a matter of import in his life beyond the dim presence of Liesse and the constant stream of girls picked up via clubs and bars. Back then, he had not given a thought to who these girls were—whatever their hopes and dreams might be, whatever secret and distant gardens of the soul they might possess, they were nothing more than flesh for a night to him. Bought for the price of a few words and a smile.
Antha was different. He responded to her in a way he did no other, and the slick words seemed suddenly cheap in front of her, the mask of a smile suddenly unconvincing.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"In five minutes, they'll be gone," Antha murmured drowsily, shaking her head even as she took his arm and held it tight to her chest, her fingers skimming his skin. And then she was up, grudgingly, picking through her clothes for that black and green plaid dress her daughter had clutched in her vision, the one she had worn in Sleet's crypt the night she had met Vikteren. "I'll be back soon," she promised Cian quietly, pausing to lay a brief kiss on his lips before she slipped out the door.
Across the room, there came with the slight chill, the faint draft, a soft string of words. "We did right with that one," the voice echoed softly, as if it emitted from all about the room, and with it there came a faded figure, soft shades of gray velvet and the spill of white lace, the curl of cigarette smoke, "Perhaps she is not quite all there in the head, not a saint, a menace from outside perspective, but she will protect this family with every fiber of her being until she draws her last breath." The figure shifted, the nonexistent cigarette being crushed out into a little silver tray nearby as long legs unfolded and propelled the figure from the chair, brought it closer to Cian and the raven curls became more defined, the pale skin less translucent, the pale blue eyes turning a rich hue. "I did my best with her back then, that monstrous, skeletal little thing that hated this family so desperately. But I bet you didn't know that, did you? That at nine years old she wanted to burn down this house with every member of her family within it? That even after a month, the only person in the world she didn't wish death upon was dear, sweet little Malakai?" The lips, full and extraordinarily well shapen for a man, twisted in a faint, good-humored crooked smile. "Nicolae was distraught with it. Even at her most hideously disfigured and malnourished, he loved her so completely, so single-mindedly. He cried to me so many nights about how she loved Malakai and not him, how she followed his brother around like an adoring puppy and spared him only the most spiteful glances. I suppose that is why he takes this so hard now, and the two of you shall never be friends." A little laugh ensued as if to clear the air, exterminating the subject entirely. "Where are my manners though? I am Louis Mayfair. You will have heard of me, no doubt. And I know all about you, of course. You're a very perceptive boy. Less powerful than other witches perhaps, but you are very open to our world, easily accessible to those of us stranded between the land of the living and whatever it is that lies beyond. My family in this realm are quite excited about it, our descendants are far too preoccupied to notice us and as they say, it is very boring to be dead. I am not sure how Antha shall handle it, she was never one to be idle." And he smiled softly, reminiscent. "She always wanted to dance. She was always climbing into my lap and tugging at my collar, begging me to teach her how to waltz. She would stand on my feet in the beginning, until she learned the steps, and Julien would get so angry that it was midnight and she was still awake. It is truly a pity you never knew that version of that girl, before the dark times came again. She was my little darling, my treasure, and I loved her more than life itself. Even when I was gone, she was unrelentingly faithful to me, viciously protective of my memory. It takes the truest of love to make a saint of the memory of such a sinner as myself."

"The door's been unlocked," Nicolae answered quietly, shrugging his shoulders and gesturing at it, "Antha left it unlocked last night. I guess she just thought not to give you time to run off." Her footsteps sounded on the stairs as he spoke, feather light, her bare feet padding across the worn carpet and the door creaking open. Her eyes found Nicolae for a moment with a complete lack of surprise, her head leaning idly against the frame as she stood in the doorway, shuffling her bare feet. "Are you going to stop us, Evie?"
The girl's gaze skimmed the floor, her lips pursing briefly. She looked...sad, to Nicolae. Terribly guilty, remorseful, but with that quiet sort of resolve despite it all. "I won't kill Rynn," she murmured, glancing briefly at her brother, "I promised I wouldn't, and anyways I don't think I have the heart for it. However..." She paused, her lips pursing again, gaze quietly diverted. "You have your own will, your own stake in this city, and if I am going to be dead soon anyways, perhaps it is time I start letting you deal with things as you see fit."
"My, my," Nicolae scoffed with that unmistakeable edge of the grievously wounded, the bitterly scorned, "I never thought I'd see the day. And it only took a decade for you to loosen your dozens of leashes."
"Deal with Rynn first," she said suddenly, and her gaze focused on Vikteren as she spoke, "However you are going to do it, he needs to be taken out of the equation before anyone attempts to rid this world of his puppet master. He is no trifle of a witch, and he is deviously clever. He is a shield, and the best way to our threat is to disarm him first."
"Speaking of which---" Nicolae paused, that fine anger and quiet depression draining from his demeanor as the clock downstairs chimed the hour, "If you want to carry out your plans tonight, I suggest we get this all over with. Vampires such as these are never ones for civil meetings with their foes."
"You still think me foolish for it?" Antha questioned quietly, her dark eyes focusing curiously on her brother.
"It doesn't really matter now, does it? Khayman put the word out, as you asked, there's no way he hasn't heard it. If he has any interest, he'll be there, and considering he wants to kill you, I assume he'll be there. But yes, I think you picked a goddamn inconvenient time to decide to try this sort of approach."
"We all have to grow up sometime, cheri. Come along then, or we'll be late."
As she turned on her heel, heading to the window and throwing it open, Nicolae unfolded himself grudgingly from the floor and spared a glance at Vikteren, muttering derisively, "We're going to go have a chat with your sire at the cafe, assuming he accepts Antha's invitation. Care to join us?" And then he had Antha in his arms, vanishing out the window.
They were at the cafe ten minutes later, nestled in the bustling quarter, seated quietly at the little wrought iron table on the patio, Antha sipping at her milk tea as Nicolae held a coffee in his hands, soaking up the warmth. "I don't like this," he muttered, staring into the impenetrable black depths as it caught the glow from the gas lamps on the street.
"Who's to say he'll even show up? He's not that fond of us, you know, and he has as little of a chance of killing us here as at Mayfair Manor. These complexes are crawling with too many ghosts, too much old magic, which we are intimately acquainted with."
"I don't see the point. Have you ever heard of two opposing forces having tea together and it ending well?"
"It is too late for your protests now, brother dearest. We are here, and what will be will be." And Nicolae did fall silent then, his barriers coming as tightly into place as Antha's, as they waited to see what was to come.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The Mayfair siblings entered the house as they had left it, by the window in the attic, Antha wrapped securely in Nicolae's arms. "Evie---" he began when she was set on her feet, only to be abruptly cut off.
"Vikteren," she began, turning to look very seriously at the vampire, "I would advise that you do not do anything too rash. I know your sentiments towards your sire, but for now he must be suffered to linger in the shadows. And you---" Her gaze turned sharply to her brother, a threatening note in them to accompany her voice, "Do nothing. Our situation is far too precarious to go forming a lynching squad for Rynn Calais simply because you do not trust him. We haven't trusted him since we saw that first dark glint in his eyes, buried beneath a mask of concern, that has not changed and we will deal with it as we have all the time up until now. If you want something useful to do, go get the affairs of your coven in order. We can't have that ragtag assortment of vampires falling into chaos amidst everything else."
"Evie---!"
"Goodnight, Nikki," she said simply, turning and descending the stairs, and Nicolae's hardened heart clenched. She hadn't called him Nikki in so many years, since his first mistake to make her cry and scream that she hated him, running into Courtland's arms.
"I told you the job was yours if you wanted it," he murmured then, as if the last hour had never happened, "My second in command, I mean. If nothing else, it'll give you a little breathing room as long as you're in this god forsaken city under the brat princess. And some authority while your sire is hounding after you, a coven at your back. Besides..." He sighed, a long, hopeless whistle of air as he scratched the back of his neck, ruffling his golden curls, and admitted begrudgingly, "I can't ******** do this on my own, I have vampires from every coven in the city and a bunch of rogues from fledglings to ones that won't shut up about how goddamn great it was when they found out about the West Indies, and I'll be damned if I'm going to go running to Khayman for help like some kid in over his head, crying for his daddy to make it all better." He sighed again, the sound twisting into a groan as he gripped the back of his neck in frustration. "I guess really...I'm asking for a favor. A favor with benefits, mind you. Otherwise I'm going to have to go talk Singe into it and do you even want to imagine that guy with political power? The universe will spiral out of sync with time, the polar ice caps will melt in a day, and the earth will fall out of the sky shortly after being taken over by some random, obscure race of animal that prove horrible overlords for the human race. And Singe will be in the middle of it all, laughing his a** off like an idiot."

"Time to get up," Antha announced even before she was properly through her bedroom door, pausing only briefly to cast a curious glance at the seat across the room before she hopped onto the bed, pressing a quick kiss to Cian's lips. "We have two hours until the show starts and it's not nearly as much fun if I'm not there in time to make fun of Nicholas for the sheer amount of glitter he's plastered to his face beforehand."
As she rose, going to the closet and picking through clothes, Courtland and Jack's muffled voices could be heard down the hall, ill tuned and repetitive verses proclaiming their love for the circus for several minutes first, and then gradually very overdramatic reenactments of their favorite scenes (what little they actually remembered through the haze of their drugged memories, anyways) before a thud ensued and footsteps sounded rapidly on the floorboards, Jack's manic laughter as Courtland screamed after him. "You b*****d, I can't believe you dropped me! I think my arm is broken! Quick, someone get me some pain pills! You just see if I ever let you dip me again! I'm dancing with Laurie from now on!"
There was the faintest echo from down the stairs following this, the voice deadly serious, "The hell you are."
"Eviiiiiiie!" Jack called meanwhile, banging his fist on the door, "Nicholas is on the phone for you! Tell him he needs more fog this time!"
"Oh, lord," the girl sighed, tossing the dress in her hand across the back of the nearest chair and going to the phone. "Bonjour, Nicholas," she purred, standing with one arm crossed and the other holding the receiver to her ear, "Comment vas-tu? Oh, ce vrai ? Non, ce n'est rien d'inquiétant, mon cher. Je n'attends pas de problèmes. Ah, mais William ne fait que vous inquiétez pas, le pauvre cher. Mais vous devez me promettre quelque chose, Nicholas. Vous ne devez pas taquiner mon pauvre mari ce soir." She paused for a few moments, listening, and then quite suddenly burst into laughter. "Poor William, indeed. If you do not make me this promise, Nicholas, I will drag William into the audience with us and use him as a buffer between your ceaseless teasing and my husband. Me? I'm used to your teasing, I can counter it and come back at you tenfold. Or else I can hide behind Klaus and he'll pierce you with that look and you will be in agony at his displeasure for days. I thought you would see things my way. Au revoir, Nicholas. We shall see you soon, mon cher."
"You didn't tell him!" Jack whined on the other side of the door a moment before Antha threw the nearest available book at it and he went scampering off, singing his own song about the circus.
"Nicholas is eager to meet you," Antha commented as she took the new dress back up, setting to the task of changing, "Though, that isn't always a good thing with him, per se. But William asked me to bring Vikteren with us, if he will come, and that should distract him. I don't think he likes Vikteren much, he seemed a little harsh towards him when they met. It makes sense I suppose, Vikteren is rather stern and quiet and serious and Nicholas is everything frivolous and loud and outrageous that a person possibly can be." Finally, she merely shrugged it off, falling onto the end of the bed with the back of her hand across her eyes. "Ah, they're all so wound up tonight! Lawrence with his paperwork and family matters, Vittorio with his experiments and research, Julien with his general meddling in our lives and making us miserable, and Courtland and Jack---" Her voice rose just a few degrees, her fingers clutching a pillow to hurl at the door, "---with their hiding outside of doors trying to spy on unsuspecting boys with the hopes that they are half dressed, or less."
"To be fair," Courtland called from the other side of the door, "We were hoping for a half dressed or less Designee of the Legacy, too." And then they were gone, their footsteps rapid in the hallway, before Antha could yell at them to go get ready, or else beat them mercilessly for their intrusion.
"I can't imagine things were this...chaotic, at Llyr's Court. The Mayfairs have always been allowed a certain amount of sheer madness deemed unacceptable for others under the guise of eccentricity. Rich old families are allowed to be eccentric, according to the laws of society. It's only recently---since my appearance, actually, Julien never lets me forget that---that our family has really learned to embrace and exploit this tradition of madness. It must be quite an adjustment for you," Antha murmured, sinking back into the mattress, "You should really keep an eye out for them though, Courtland and Jack. They have no shame and they've already marked you as their new playmate. Jack tells me I'm horribly selfish, keeping you all to myself, they don't have the patience to wait until I am gone to properly corrupt you."
A vague sigh followed, just the faintest hiss of air as she laid the back of her hand across her eyes, "I should go and ask Vikteren before he runs off. But, ah! These serious talks have worn me out! This night is supposed to be fun and they're absolutely spoiling it for me. Remind me to beat Nicholas senseless when I see him. He shall be held accountable, since I can't even imagine striking poor, dear William. He's too much the pitiable martyr."  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren had been brooding all the way home. He did not like the word--it rang too much of how pathetically rattled Rynn's conversation with Antha had left him--but there was no other way to describe his mood. When he finally swung himself over the ledge of the attic window, after Nicolae, and turned around to latch the glass, the dust-filtered moonlight illuminated a deep crease in the brow of that finely-sculpted face. In front of Antha, though--as she climbed from Nicolae's arms, and instructed her brother in his duties--his expression was stiffly guarded. She seemed to leave the room just in time. The instant that she disappeared from his sight, his shoulders sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and he leaned back against an exposed beam in the attic wall. Nicolae wasted no time in getting back to his proposal, the vampire noted dryly. Single-minded sort of man. That could be considered a valuable trait in these circumstances, perhaps. But his eyes had less of the emerald in them than usual when he replied--no less green, but softer, missing their customary venom. "I have thought it over. Initially I had planned to leave Osiris City after Antha's time came, if only to convince my sire to do the same. But by now, the idea of travelling endlessly again has lost much of its appeal. I have grown--settled, here. They say familiarity breeds contempt, but it has been a very long time since I have attained familiarity with any place. Somehow, it appeals." He sighed, a gesture that seemed strange coming from the ordinarily-poised vampire, and looked up with a cat-green gaze. It was a rare sight especially to be viewed from Nicolae's perspective, as if he had finally decided to let his guard down. "I have very little experience with covens aside from destroying them, and I have not attempted to govern any other creature besides myself in centuries, but for what it is worth, I pledge any assistance I may offer to you. You have my word in this." His smile was crooked and slightly wan. "Besides, I think I will enjoy any excuse to--ah--'hang around' after all of your sister's affairs have been settled."

Cian was already up, had been up for an hour or two, and was half-dressed and cleanshaven before he heard Antha's unmistakeable light, quick step on the stairs. Dashing across the room, he tumbled onto the bed and threw himself under the covers just in time to feign sleep as she burst through the door. It was a well-planned ruse; as she hopped into bed, he sat up quite suddenly, and sheets came up like wings to meet Antha, and these he enfolded her with and gave her kiss a warm welcome. If they couldn't rise drowsily in the morning together and spend hours cuddling each other awake, he felt entitled to make their mornings memorable in some other way, at least.
Antha rose despite her husband's tugs on her sleeve--and some very tempting offers whispered into her ear--and laughing, unabashed by his own exuberance, Cian soon followed. His own clothing had been laid out already, suitably formal for such an event in all except one detail; the coat to his suit, black all but for when the light hit it and revealed a beautiful burgundy sheen to the fabric, was cut with a high mandarin collar, and the lapels were fastened by copper scrollwork and chain. The color brought out the copper in his own curly locks. As Antha chatted, Cian searched the room for his cufflinks. The familial spies came far too late to catch anything good on his part, and he laughed at their response and flight--certainly, Llyr's Court had been nothing like this. He could not imagine one of his brothers peeking at his door, could not imagine such familiar banter in those dead halls, such quick steps on their stairs. Cian did not remember the last time that his brothers had joked together. Even when they were children--all of them had been so very grim, their fate already understood and accepted, all except Liesse and her roses. "This is better," he answered, although he did not think that she had expected a response. "Trust me, chaos is much preferred, no matter what form it takes. I would have committed stone-cold murder for playmates like those in Llyr's Court. Any kind of companionship. Maybe I would have stayed home more often--then again, maybe it was only because I didn't that I got out of their with my sanity still intact." Realising the conversation had taken a darker turn, Cian attempted a teasing grin, and rapped lightly on the side of his skull. "Most of it, anyways. I married you, didn't I? Despite all your serious talks." Approaching Antha from behind as she stood at her vanity, the witch-boy wrapped his arms loosely about her waist and leaned over her shoulder, unrepentantly getting in the way. "Don't worry. The night will be fun. If anyone tries to talk to you about anything dreary or dull in the slightest, just let me know." He kissed her throat lightly, and smiled at her reflection. "I'll whisk them away with some incredibly boring rot about thaumaturgy, before they can do the same to you."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Nicolae cringed, almost imperceptibly. "Any help I can get is welcome at this point," he murmured, though his eyes flashed distantly, his mind working furiously not to picture the grisly scenes that flashed sometimes in Antha's mind, her own murder. "We're starting damn near from scratch here, Antha's influence is the only thing keeping the seams together." He paused, gaze drifting to the stairs. He knew that downstairs Antha was in her room---what had once been his room, where they had spent their time together in the dead of night all of those endless years ago---with her new husband. He could faintly make out the trace of her laughter, hear the echo of Courtland and Jack's words down the hall, and the depression that tried to spring into his heart as a result was almost painful to suppress. When they were younger, only just teenagers, they had pretended to be engaged, had conspired about how they would run away to somewhere no one knew them and be married. Even though it had been hopeless childhood fantasies... "It doesn't hurt you?" he whispered, glancing fleetingly at Vikteren, "Her and her husband, their unborn children, their little family? No matter what happened, you loved her didn't you?" He turned away, shaking his head as he walked to the window, his fist still clenched tight.

It was almost eerie to Antha how quickly that dampened mood was dispelled, what little it took from Cian to turn her sighs to laughter, his arms about her waist. Or perhaps the reason it seemed strange, nearly disturbing, was less how easily it was accomplished and more how alike it was to Nicolae. Nicolae had always been the one to cheer her up in the old days, effortlessly, with his wanton grin and mad, exuberant character. At least until he was the one to cause all of her suffering, and that had led her to Courtland's arms. "No, darling, that's entirely the wrong way to go about it." She paused long enough to turn, her arms sliding over his shoulders as her lips touched the hollow of his throat, the line of his jaw, his cheek, and finally his lips. "I am the brat princess, after all. Therefore you have to play the prince, to whisk me away from the monsters that would lecture me to death." Her fingers twined briefly in his curls, a teasing grin curving her lips to match the glimmer in her eyes. "You certainly look the part enough." And she took just a moment to smooth out his coat, straightening his lapels, the usual unnecessary touches Antha liked to make before she rose, taking Nicholas's coat and sliding it on with a practiced sort of flair. It was the first time in a long time, she noted, that the coat had been longer than her dress. But she thought it such a pretty thing, more modern than her usual sort of ensemble, an off-white silk that clung to her bodice and flared just a little on the skirt, the thin sleeves just off her shoulders, simple enough that it went very well with the ornate coat, a working of tightly woven gray wool edged in the finest white lace, the buttons all little cameos set in silver, that flared spectacularly from her waist, the many folds of fabric swaying as she moved.
"Though you know," she murmured thoughtfully, lifting her scarlet curls from beneath the collar of her coat to spill beautifully down her back, "You can't really cite marrying me as an act of insanity. After all---" She briefly cupped his chin, pressing a kiss to his lips. "---how could you ever resist? Stronger and more virtuous men than you have failed. While you were taunting the priests in confession, I was seducing them."
In the next moment Courtland was in the doorway, and he cut almost as impressive of a figure as Antha, clothed in a similar fashion of tight jeans and dress shirt beneath a stylish and only vaguely feminine frock coat, half a dozen earrings glimmering in each ear and dark chains wrapped several times around his neck. "We're waiting," he purred dangerously, the sole of his boot pressed firmly against one side of the door frame while his back leaned languidly against the other, his black-rimmed, hazy eyes glittering wildly beneath the spill of his artfully messy golden curls. There were many people who would consider the greatest family resemblance between Antha and Courtland, more than their shared insanity, their wickedness, their wild and outrageous behavior, to be how they presented themselves, the facade of careless abandon thinly veiling well practiced movements, and moreover how very aware of it they were. They knew they were beautiful creatures, and they would be sure anyone around them was as perfectly aware of it as they possibly could be without being directly told. It was also there in the hint of their personalities that seeped into their sense of fashion, that hint of old, classic things thrown in with wilder, darker influences. They would have made extraordinary children Antha thought, had she been able to carry any of them to term. Beautiful creatures like themselves that knew it as well as they did, that knew the power of their every glance, every idle motion of their arms or head. But then...then they would have been married as Stefan and Julien had planned, with their fair-haired children, their own little family, and Cian would have passed briefly in and out of her life, and Sebastien and Vanessa never would have been.
"And we shall leave when I decide it is to be so," Antha shot back, her hands on her hips as the cousins stared one another down.
"But Evie!" Courtland whined finally, his head rolling back to rest against the door frame, "Nicholas is waiting for us!"
"We have plenty of time," Antha countered airily, giving a dismissive gesture of her hand as she shoved his leg out of the way, making her way into the hall and up the stairs into the attic. "We're leaving for the circus in a moment," she informed the vampires, preoccupied with straightening the cuffs of her sleeves. When she looked up it was only to address Vikteren, her tone very even when she said, "Vikteren, William wanted to speak with you, if you would not mind. It had something to do with that body you found, I believe. The Talamasca have already carted it away for examination but it seems they're still having some problems regarding the entire incident." And then she shrugged her shoulders lightly, as if she hadn't really bothered prying into the matter---which of course she had, it was Antha after all---and then turned on her beribboned heels and descended the stairs again. Her eyes had barely swept across Nicolae's figure, which he hadn't failed to notice, and his fingers had clenched into a painfully tight fist as a result. She didn't trust herself to look at him, to let him see her eyes, because he could see right through her and she knew that and there was something she didn't want him to know. It worried him into anger.
"Shall we?" he murmured to Vikteren, his eyes never wavering from the spot where the top of her head had vanished beneath the stairs until he vanished, out the window and into the city, headed for the circus.
Downstairs, Antha had gone to claim Cian, taking him by the hand before following Courtland and Jack down into the atrium where Courtland was trying to vain to dance with Lawrence, who looked as if he might strike him at any moment, and Jack, looking quite like any punk kid downtown who only happened to be quite beautiful, was biting his lip on his laughter. "We'll be leaving now," she called out to Julien, seated quietly in the parlor with all of his attention forced angrily on his newspaper. His eyes only flickered in their direction before he made a quick, angry little motion to straighten the paper.
"Shotgun!" Jack yelled, spilling into the yard with Courtland where they fought over the right to the front seat.
"You sit in the back like good boys, where Cian doesn't have to get caught in your crossfire," Antha ordered shortly, making her way to her car where Lawrence, gritting his teeth at their behavior, he hated when they were drugged idiots like this in public, opened the door to the driver's seat for her and politely shut her away before moving to his own car, rather than being crammed into the backseat with his troublesome cousins who tumbled in, a knot of bodies that turned round and round as they fought.
Courtland, the winner of the battle, settled onto the edge of the seat behind Antha which he had fought so hard for, Jack sulking behind Cian as he buckled himself in, sliding down until he could brace himself with his feet on the seat, his arms crossed angrily over his chest. "To the moon?" Courtland questioned Antha in exhilaration, laying a quick peck on her cheek.
"Cian darling," she purred, casting a sidelong glance at him with her fingers wrapped around the key in the ignition, "You'll want to buckle up and sit back." With that she started the car, Chopin blasting deafeningly from the speakers, and after a split second to be sure the road was clear the car was off, throwing Courtland very hard against Jack as they took the corner. He never buckled up, it was more fun that way, the jostling of Antha's driving at ninety miles an hour in the city streets, the hour drive reduced to fifteen minutes under her expert touch.  

[Okimiyage]

Nicolae’s words made the vampire stop at the door, his hand upon the latch. There was something in the other man’s voice that made him feel the need to address his question before they continued further. “Of course it hurts.” He had been expecting these accusations for a while; waiting for them, in fact. “Once, perhaps, it would have angered me. Like seeing a beautiful wild horse broken to the plow.”
And then he turned, and looked at Nicolae. Something in him rose, struggled to emerge—some word he had forgotten the definition of, some expression that he had forgotten how to make. “But this was her choice. I must respect that. And I—I cannot grieve when I see her happiness. I could not have given her the children that she carries, or the sunlit wedding day that she deserved. We had our time together—I must be grateful for that.” He was watching something beyond where Nicolae stood, something amorphous and fragile as a cobweb, and he spoke slowly as if with no wish to disturb it. “I have known a lifetime’s worth of lovers. None as beautiful, nor as spirited, but I mourned our inevitable separation none the less—and that mourning, which anchored their memories to me through the centuries, in time turned to stones about my neck.”
“I believed, as a survivor, that burden was my honorable duty. That somehow, eventually, I would become immune to those feelings, like a king who poisons himself drop by drop so that eventually he might resist death from another’s hand. And yet—now, I have come to believe that my strength would have been better spent had I not put it to the gargoyle’s task of guarding those bitter memories. I think, perhaps, that this is a chance to leave behind the ghosts of those I have carried for centuries out of fear and devotion. I would like to turn my time here, while the people I love yet live and breathe, to more productive purposes.” Finally, he looked again at Nicolae—really looked at him, and the immortal’s pale lips split to frame a rare, uncharacteristically unguarded smile. It was though a marble statue had abruptly turned its head, and stepped down from the pedestal, and it was surprisingly easy to see the sun-dappled young noble that Vikteren had once been, the grace of his injust birthright settled around his shoulders as naturally as a cloak. “Of course I loved her. I still love her—as you do—but I cannot allow that love to fester because of her decision. It would be grievously insulting to offer a newlywed, beloved or not, anything less than my blessing.” His eyes were the color of new grass, of light falling through summer leaves. “Come, now. They’ll be waiting for us below.”
And he opened the attic door, then, beckoning for Nicolae to follow.
Below, in the bedroom, Cian leaned up against his wife’s back, nuzzling brocade and breathing in the perfume of her skin. “I would offer to slay all the monsters we encounter, my darling, except that I suspect that at least half would turn out to be your friends.” Then, rising with her, he pulled the wave of her curls back and laid a kiss alongside her temple. Courtland was just in time to catch a glimpse as he stepped back to fasten his cufflinks, which were glinting chips of malachite. They’d been in his pocket the whole time. In the doorway, behind Courtland as he and Antha bickered lightly on the subject of time, a tousled mop of golden curls appeared, accompanied a moment later by the Vikteren’s own starkly contrasting profile. It was easy to see that he had annoyed her, somehow; she addressed him as briskly as a servant, and turned on her heel without even waiting for a response. The vampire, for his part, looked after her departing back but said nothing immediately. If it was not already apparent that he was intent on accompanying them, it would become so. If any other person had been threatened by the same forces that Antha now intended to face, they would have thought twice before venturing out for an evening of idle entertainment. Not Antha—never Antha, for whom nightlife was her raison d’etre. She had never found a reason to lack confidence in herself, never an enemy to go up against whom she could not outwit or overpower. Vikteren sometimes envied young humans that illusion of omnipotence.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

None of the Mayfair children were really expecting that anyone would be waiting for them when they arrived home, except perhaps an anxious Jacob, so their shock was plain to see when climbing out of the car, Julien was found sitting on the front stairs, uncharacteristically clutching a cigarette in his long fingers. He was not himself at all actually, they noticed rapidly, the aura of magic he usually held so tight around himself slipping so that the shining strands of white in his golden hair showed, his usually seemingly smooth face creased with a few lines incurred by age,and there was nothing about him of his usual stiff and proper posture, his elbows propped up on his knees and his back arched as he rested his chin in his hand, gazing out across the front garden and simply puffing on his cigarette.
"Julien," Antha greeted him carefully as she wandered up the front sidewalk, her tone and gaze speaking worlds of suspicion, unease. The boys neared slowly, positioned cautiously at her back, and said nothing.
He did not acknowledge them for a few moments, taking a particularly long drag of his cigarette as his gaze brushed the roses flourishing out by the giant oak in the corner of the garden, the ones that always grew, and then finally he glanced at them, his supposed nieces and nephews---all three of them his children, though it was not proper Mayfair etiquette to point these things out, and there were more of his children buried in the yard beneath their feet, he knew that without being told---and turned long enough to crush his cigarette out in a little golden tray beside him on the porch before motioning with a crook of his finger to Cian.
"You," he said sternly, his tone every bit the weathered and beaten down old man, "Come here." And he rose, turning with a very noticeable lack of flair and entering the house. Antha, not about to leave Cian alone in wicked Julien's company, especially not now that he was acting so alarmingly not himself, his pretenses of refinement dropped, took her husband's hand and followed the head of the family quietly up the stairs and down the hall to his office where, with absolutely no deference to Antha herself, Julien grabbed the boy by the shoulder and dragged him in, slamming the door on Antha and turning the key in the lock, ignoring her cry of protest on the other side. "Sit," he commanded shortly, motioning to the chair before the desk as he circled around it, stooping down to reach for something.
Before Antha, who quite feared he might be reaching for his gun, could knock the door down, he rose with his arms full of old ledgers, yellowed volumes bound in leather heavy enough to make the room shake when he dropped them unceremoniously onto the desk before dropping himself into his own chair behind the desk. It was only then that he seemed to draw back into himself, his blank and weary face taking on that smooth and regal mask, his posture straightening even if it was still somewhat lax. "These books are copies of the files the Talamasca keep on the Mayfair family in their motherhouse," he explained at length, his chair turned so that he had one side to Cian and the other to the windows behind the desk, his gaze watching the lazy rolling of the clouds over the moon, "I had Michael fetch them while you lot were gone. He was a Talamascan before my sister married him, he had Aaron Lightner's current job of overseeing the investigation of our family. It's not a subject we speak of too frequently in the family. When he became a Mayfair he knew every detail of our history more thoroughly than almost anyone of our blood, save perhaps Antha, every name and date, every incident down to the most minute, every tradition we had ever held dear. To top all of this off, it turns out that he had some of our blood in his veins, however distantly, the descendant of a Mayfair child thrown into an orphanage and never mentioned. You have none of these advantages, not the knowledge, the familiarity, or the blood. So..." His gaze, which had slid during his speech between the window and Cian, carelessly, now settled squarely on the boy and there was an intensity to those bright blue orbs, a severity. "If you are going to be part of this family, if you are going to raise our Designee to the Legacy and my grandchildren---" Antha, as well as Courtland and Jack who had followed and now stood pressed to her back, their ears to the door, gave a start to hear this. It was a terrible breach of protocol to openly admit that incestuous paternity, and Julien did so love his protocol. "---you are going to read these files, every last word, you will study them until your eyes bleed if you must, and when you are as thoroughly versed in every last bit of this family history as you can possibly be, I will agree to let you be a part of this family when Antha is gone, to raise your children as she wishes for you to." His eyes narrowed then, threateningly. "It's an extremely generous bargain on my behalf, don't you think?"
Without waiting for a response he rose, going to the door, and when it swung open there came the sudden tumbling heap of the Mayfair children, Antha, Courtland, Jack, and the last minute additions of Armand and Pierce, all collapsing down onto the floor at his feet, one on top of the other. "Children," he greeted them casually, and then stepping over them was gone down the hall.
The Mayfairs all stared quietly after their uncle for several moments, watching the top of his head disappear down the stairs in shocked silence, before the chaos erupted abruptly, each one struggling against the other in an effort to rise, whining about prodding elbows or being kicked, or in Antha's case, "Pierce, you're heavy!" Armand, the topmost of the pile and therefore the first to rise, was quick to push the boys aside, lifting Antha's slight figure off of the ground in his arms and setting her carefully on her feet. "Thank you," she exclaimed in exasperation, brushing the dust off of her clothes and smoothing them back out.
"What kind of demon of freakin' kindness possessed him?" Pierce demanded immediately, pointing a thumb down the hall after Julien as his eyes turned expectantly to Antha as if she would have the answer.
"He's dying," Jack said flatly, clutching the door frame as he rose from the floor, "That has to be it. He's dying and he's trying to earn some karmic goodwill, or something like that."
"Julien would grow more spiteful in the face of death, rather than try and make amends in his life," Armand muttered, shaking his head in disagreement.
"Evie, you should push him down the stairs again," Pierce said finally after what seemed to be a long pause of deep thought, announcing it with a great air of decisiveness, "Or at least that thing where it looked like you'd tried to claw his spine out. But I guess that was more---"
"Why are you here, Pierce?" Antha demanded flatly, making a great point of interrupting him, "Shouldn't you be in Paris with your mother?"
"She went back after the wedding. I, on the other hand, missed home so I cashed in my plane ticket and bought a lovely girl a lovely little sparkly bauble and spent a lovely night in a lovely hotel room. Unfortunately, she has my bank cards and good hotels in the quarter are expensive, so voila." And he made a gesture at himself, as if to say 'here I am', and then leaned his back against the door in a very relaxed attitude, as if that was all there was to it.
Amongst the Mayfair cousins, most would consider Pierce a little unusual in the way they considered Armand or Dorian unusual. He was wild as they were, a philanderer, a shameless spendthrift who always exceeded his extravagant income, a lover of beauty in himself and everything else at all costs, and yet he pulled all of this off with such a laid back air of carelessness, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing, as if he was not outrageous in the slightest. Stranger still, he was one of the few cousins who did not live the day to day life of a Mayfair, who did not exist entirely within their domain. Like Dorian, he had spent his earlier teenage years pulling disappearing acts, getting swept away into the city, and only showed up at Mayfair Manor for large events, holidays, or to recuperate from a particularly good time. Then, three years ago, his mother Vera had dragged him off with her to Paris and they had seen very little of him since. He had thought at first it would be the beginning of all new adventures, new excitement, but finding it more or less the same as Osiris City, he had begun to crave home. Mayfairs did not do so well outside of their kingdom, and Pierce did not want to test how well he could do for how long.
"I won't be long, I just need to get access to my accounts again. I don't function well under the strain of poverty." He adjusted his platinum cufflinks as he spoke, straightening and smoothing out his sharply cut, perfectly tailored designer suit. His fashion maven of a mother had taught him some things over the course of his life, at least.
"Speaking of which," Antha murmured thoughtfully, glancing around her, "Where in the hell is Dorian?"
"Tacked to a mattress in a seedy part of town," Courtland said, repeating the old phrase that always answered that question, "Pierce, what have you done to your hair?"
The boy, blinking in confusion at his cousin, took a moment to feel of his stylishly choppy locks, tousled with just a little product. When it was natural, his hair was darkest auburn, a deep brown that glinted with a hints of red, but lately he had taken to dying it a richer, truer brown. "Oh, that. Don't worry, it's temporary. Now that I'm home I suppose I'll let it fade out. Or maybe I'll just bleach it and be another goldilocks like the rest of you."
"You couldn't pull it off," Courtland taunted in a purr, throwing his head back to tousle his lovely golden hair, "But Pierce's jealousy aside, Evie, are we calling ghosts or what?"
"You lousy little eavesdropper," she hissed, staring at him in a way that promised impending punishment, but he only grinned in guilty pleasure.
"She could help us, to be fair," Courtland reasoned, looking now not at Antha but at Cian, for he was afraid that he would protest, "She seemed like a fairly reasonable girl, and capable of bringing Rynn to his senses. Let's be frank here, whether Antha gives her consent or not, someone's going to go out with the intent to kill him soon if he doesn't shape up. Probably Nicolae. If we could get a hold of Liesse, maybe she could save him. Maybe."
"That's a big maybe," Jack muttered darkly.
"Would you all mind your own business!" Antha hissed in further exasperation, but then all at once glanced to Cian, assenting, "Though, they do have a valid point. And from what I hear, it's not like she has anything better to do in the realm of the dead anyways. But she is your sister mon cheri, we'll leave the decision up to you."  

[Okimiyage]

Cian had allowed himself to be led, and thrown into a chair, and had distracted himself by focusing on the dazzling face which commanded him to--the first time anyone had been so bold in several years--study.
Or else.
Cian allowed his face to remain carefully passive as Julien spoke, arching his eyebrows only a little, and settling his ramrod-straight spine against the back of the chair. When the man was done, he tipped his chair back on its two hind legs, and let it slam with a dull thud into the lushly patterned carpet.
"Well. This doesn't sound like the kind of proposition that's supposed to leave the listener with much choice."
And he twisted his lips slightly at the pile of yellowing parchment in front of him. Like memorizing his own genealogy hadn't been enough?
His own father had been adamant on the subject. The Calais family had the advantage, though, of teaching through 'hands-on' interaction. Their great-great-great-grandfamilies had been able to be conveniently summoned. Cian doubted the elder Mayfairs would turn out quite so biddable. And he passed his hand over the aged and faded script, the cramped scribble of some archaic family scribe.
This was probably all on a computer somewhere by now, he thought. Or if it wasn't, it should be. Some carefully categorized file system that could bring up the lines of descent at the click of a mouse.
It probably was, but wouldn't it be like a Mayfair to give someone the hard copies just to make things difficult for them?
He knew that this was more than just the demand of a old-fashioned family scion, this was proof--for Julien, at least--that Cian deserved to be a part of the Mayfairs. A test to see just how far he would go, and how much he would put up with, in order to secure a place in the family. Loyalty, in other words. He had to admit, he'd expected this kind of hazing--but from the younger cousins, never the respectable, honorable-sir Julien.
Then again, it was probably the respectable, honorable-sir Julien that feared most a breach within the family's trust. And the subject of Antha's offspring, at the moment, was probably one of the most sensitive and the subject of their upbringing most likely to be controversial. God! He couldn't imagine the life that Antha's children would be exposed to at such a young age, the company that would want to surround them. It would scandalize the s**t out of the aunts, he could reckon that well enough. He could imagine the whispers already, in hushed tones, behind closed doors: is it really appropriate? for children, for a little girl at that age to be in a house with those...people?
And always the pause before people, because there was nothing else to call them, was there? Not without the risk of sounding offensive, at least.
And he had to laugh to himself, at least a little bit, as he stood from the chair and leaned over the desk, because it seemed funny in light of the promise that Antha had made him in the dying light of the circus's merry little campfire. Because Julien threatened him now by with the removal of the very privilege that would set their children apart.
Cian smiled up at Antha, a little crookedly. "Well. How long d'you think it'll take me if I start now? About a year and a half to decode everything and another to learn it by heart?--ah, that'll be the fun part, won't it?"
He wondered if Julien would administer pop quizzes.
The idea of the stately gentleman passing out sheets with a schoolmaster's squint of suspicion was worth another scoff, and Cian gave it.
Finally, directing a brief glance at the newly arrived Pierce--recognizing, not without a trace of pride, a kindred spirit by the carefree shrug beneath that carefully-made suit--Cian took his attention away from the books and circled round the far edge of the desk, letting his fingertips walk along the glossy wood-grain corners. Somehow he could feel the atmosphere of the room tensing, preparing--he was watching Courtland's lips move as he spoke, something building like a raincloud in his mind--and yes, there it was, the fatal slip. Liesse. They planned to resurrect her.
His mind immediately jumped to this, but no, of course, nothing so damn extravagant and fantastical. Of course. It wasn't possible to bring folk back from the dead. Just raise their shades for a little while. (Cian tried not to show how elated he had been, just for a disbelieving second.)
And then a possibility struck him, and he looked at Antha with a grimace, hating to bring up even the idea: "We'd have to hope that Rynn hasn't raised her first. I have no doubt that his immediate intention would be to convince her that his actions were in the right. He'd very likely encourage her to attack us, and well--I don't much fancy the odds in setting Liesse's spectre up against Antha."
He reached forwards, plucking a silver-handled compass out of a pencil-holder on the desk and toying with it, the needle against his finger-tips.
"Regardless of the risk, however, I think it's the closest chance we've got of not killing the--" He paused, right where stupid ******** b*****d should have gone, and searched for a synonym. "--my brother. And if there's at all a chance that she could reconcile the--issues--that stand between us, then I'd like to put forth the effort. I have one request, but it's simple. I'd like to be present when all of this goes down." He paused, and then added, a little more softly. "If nothing else, I never got the chance to say goodbye to my sister, and I'd like to make it up to her."

Vikteren arrived late, and by his own path. He'd gone more slowly than usual behind the rest, lingering to watch the fire die completely and taking the back roads through the forest rather than the most direct route. He could feel something watching him, some vast and invisible eye directing its attention to his back. It didn't try to come close, it didn't try to reach out or make its presence known--if anything, it liked stealth--simply followed, from a distance, and watched. About half-way to the Manor, he doubled back and took a different route, and it followed him through this, too. If he had not been so wary, and so recently exposed to Cyrus's magic, he would have dismissed it as nothing, his nerves finally fraying and breaking at last. He would have gone merrily on his way.
As it was, he only wondered whether something was following Antha home, too. This was not his imagination. Several times, he snapped his head around expecting to see his sire standing there behind him. Several times, he would have sworn he felt the head of breath against his neck.
When Vikteren got closer to the city, he could feel that something begin to happen. Something was wrong. Coming towards the line of trees, the ground beneath him began to feel alarmingly unsteady. The colors around him were losing their saturation, a buzzing sound within his skull increasing in volume. And the closer he got to the open world, the worse this sensation became, until he couldn't think, could barely see, was feeling his knees give out under the incredible pressure all around him and pitching forward, forward--

And then suddenly he stepped out into a pool of moonlight, breaking through the foliage above, and the presence was gone.
Vikteren hissed, and spun around, regaining his balance with surprising speed. He couldn't tell if that had been a joke or a threat, but he didn't like it. It felt like a gentle reminder-- and he could hear Cyrus's hoarse and rattling sneer, even now: don't put too much faith in your darling princess.
you're still mine.

Vikteren made the decision, as he threaded his way through the streets back to the Mayfair headquarters, that he should probably not tell Antha about this.
And should probably stay out of the damn forest for a little while. He wasn't going to admit it, even to himself, but several turns had been unfamiliar, the paths he usually followed misplaced. He didn't like the sensation of being lost.
As he approached the mansion, he was just in time to catch sight of one of the windows lighting up. That would be them, then. Antha always raced so to get home, although he wasn't certain whether that was due to her eagerness to arrive or simply the love of racing. If it was any other human, they would have broken their neck by now.
He made his way to the front of the house, reckoning by the light in the windows, and rightfully so, that they had taken their gathering to the study above, and slowly climbed the stairs. Julien passed him with a scowl worthy of the theatre, but they only acknowledged one another with a brief nod. Vikteren felt immensely drained suddenly, his shoulders tensing under an invisible weight. He could hear their laughter from the room above. Antha was with them, the scent of her perfume unmistakable on the banister that he now held.
The vampire thought, suddenly, this is what it will be like. The months after she is gone--no, years after she is gone, I will still find traces of her in this house, in this city. He didn't know how to express his thoughts at the moment, but they all vaguely revolved around hell, and he said it aloud.
And then kept climbing.
He padded silently along the beautifully tapestried runner until he reached the door of the study, and opened it a crack to make certain of what he already knew from the voices within; Antha was there, alive and well--he could see the pulse in her throat, half-concealed by brocaded collar, from across the room--and laughing, and surrounded by her family. He slipped inside.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"You should be grateful," Pierce purred in that very Mayfair matter-of-fact tone, running his fingers errantly through his hair, "Even in Paris, Antha called me with specific instructions that when I returned and she was dead, I was to keep Julien from killing you. I assume Courtland and Jack and the other cousins all had the same instructions."
As Antha diverted her gaze, glancing innocently at the books on the shelves as if she couldn't hear them, Courtland proclaimed proudly, "I took his guns the morning of the wedding."
"I followed him all day," Jack announced, throwing his hand wildly in the air, "And Vittorio checked the car for tampering before we took him to the church!"
"So you see," Pierce continued, pushing himself languidly away from the wall upon which he had been leaning and circling the room with long, lazy strides, "This is a good thing. Pain in the a**, yes, but if Julien is willing to accept you into the family, we can stop worrying about him killing you and live our lives, you included."
"Don't worry," Courtland continued, grinning with reassurance as he clapped a hand on Cian's shoulder, "We'll help you. We know all this nonsense like the backs of our hands. And besides, Antha put our blood in your veins, and everything that's in these books is in the blood."
"You needed to learn it anyways," Antha murmured sweetly, draping her arms lovingly around his shoulders and laying a quick kiss on his cheek, "If you are to raise our children as proper Mayfairs. I can hardly leave their family education to these miscreants, or severe Julien, or terribly kind Malakai who can hardly say a disagreeable thing about anyone."
"But that comes later," Jack groaned, running to Antha's side to take her hand and urge her towards the hall, "Come on, we're calling the dead!"
"I'm not so sure you should be there for this," she protested, to his instantly apparent dismay, "Dark magic affects you more than anyone."
"We'll need five, if your spell is to have maximum effect," Pierce pointed out, reminding them that he had once been a red crayon aristocrat too, and another student of oncle Louis's.
"Ezekiel?" Antha suggested, though she wasn't so sure he was powerful enough for it, "We can hardly ask Malakai, he would have a heart attack, and Vittorio is busy preparing the hospital for the grand opening."
"I can handle it!" Jack whined in protest, flashing his puppy dog eyes at Antha, "This isn't prolonged exposure, and you'll have a rein on me."
For a moment, Courtland and Antha exchanged a look, the same memory flashing simultaneously through their heads. Antha on her knees on the blood-smeared floor, crumpled on herself, hands clapped over her ears, crying for everything to stop, the mangled body resting limp and broken some few feet before her. Courtland, that fine edge of insanity gleaming in his eyes, that look that he had finally been pushed over the edge, his fingers wrapped angrily around the steel pipe as it came swiftly against the side of Jack's head, clanging hollowly, deafening, the other boy collapsing to the floor all at once. Antha's screams then, her delirious cries as the clanging continued, blood spurting from Jack's lips, and no one was even sure if he was alive anymore, but Courtland didn't know how to hold back anymore.
"The attic," Antha sighed finally, gesturing to the stairs, "Satis House isn't safe for this. Nowhere is, except for our fortress of an ancestral home."
Courtland led the way, Pierce bringing up the rear, flicking an ornate old silver lighter held to the cigarette in his lips as he walked. From here the Mayfair children knew their own tasks, more or less. Courtland and Jack rolled up the worn oriental carpet, moving it out of the way for Pierce to chalk the pentagram across the distressed wooden floorboards, and Antha went rummaging through various trunks, collecting objects to deposit into Jack's arms while Courtland moved about the room, retrieving the black candles hidden amongst the boxes and trunks and arranging them just so around the clearing.
"Is it just me," Pierce chuckled darkly, watching Antha move about setting things up as he continued chalking the runes and verses as easily as a child would draw a hopscotch grid on a sidewalk, "Or is this all too second nature to you these days?"
"I like the dead," she answered simply, setting a rustic engraved golden bowl in the center of the pentagram and then moving on to trace the outlying circle in salt, "They're less tricky than the living, they have virtually no ambitions. Most of the time, anyways."
"All ready," Courtland proclaimed, arranging the last crystal before he took his place in the pentagram, plopping down cross-legged on the floor.
Antha paused to check the time, absently tying her loose curls up with a length of black ribbon. They had two hours until dawn. "Then I suppose we should begin. Cian, darling." She gestured for him to step into the circle, holding out her hand for his, the little dagger appearing, as always, like magic from somewhere upon her person. "We need her blood to call her, and you just so happen to share it."
"But how are we going to find her?" Jack inquired, going to sit in his own designated spot as Courtland did. Pierce remained standing, puffing idly on his cigarette and simply watching with glazed eyes.
"I've been in Rynn's mind," she replied, making a small, clean cut across Cian's palm and holding it over the bowl so that the blood drizzled down into it, cascading over the faceted cut crystal she had placed there, "Not for long, I can't say I would want to even if he hadn't been able to throw me out, but long enough to know the feel of his mind, the shape of it, and as they were connected, that is how to find Liesse."
As Antha went to her knees before the bowl, grabbing this and that positioned around it and tossing them all in, Pierce took Cian's arm and moved him silently into the fourth designated spot while Antha worked. "It's extremely boring waiting for her to finish her work," he sighed, drawing a silver cigarette case engraved with his initials from his breast pocket and offering one to Cian, "All you can really do is focus and, since you were the only one to know her, just try and call your sister."
He was interrupted by a flash, the crackle of sparks as fire roared to life in the bowl. Always fire with Antha, he thought, shaking his head, always, whether it was necessary or not. "The moment of truth," Antha purred in a dark whisper, stepping gracefully back from the little pyre, her eyes flashing dangerously, gaze unwavering, "Well, Liesse?"  

[Okimiyage]

Cian blinked at Jack's response, and then glanced aside at Antha. Has Julien got a reputation for doing this sort of thing, then? The cousins certainly seem prepared for the worst. He wondered whether the rest of the family knew they'd raised a miniature S.W.A.T. team in their midst.

"It's not the learning I mind, it's the coercion." But Cian grinned, anyways, at the ones who had offered their assistance. The idea of a study group was a novel one for him. Even if the subject was something miserable like calculus, anything was better when endured with others.

Vikteren observed the situation, his head tipped slightly to the side, and followed behind without invitation when Antha passed him at the doorway. He'd never made an attempt to acquaint himself with the art of necromancy--Vikteren knew that he was just about useless in this kind of situation--but he wanted to be there. He didn't want to let Antha out of his sight, after what had happened in the woods. So in the attic, he folded himself up, all spidery limbs, atop one of the steamer-trunks, and watched as they arranged their candles and crystals, and chalked sigils into the floorboards. He didn't quite know what he would do if something went wrong, but he was damned if he was going to wait downstairs while they conducted their affairs.

Cian's hand was still bleeding. He had borne it without any sound, although he had bit his lip when his wife had sliced it open at first, in such a casual, practiced gesture. He clenched his fist to make it go quicker, and then knelt down at the edge of the bowl. His blood stained the shard of crystal below a lovely, glowing red. When the blaze flared up, he had to jerk his hand back quickly so as to not get burned, but singed his eyebrows all the same.
He could sense something on the other side, what housewives and old superstitions referred to as 'the veil'. Something waiting to come through. The shadows on the wall were beginning to move in a strange way, arching and twisting in a way even the flickeriest candle would not have been capable of imitating. Cian said, his voice suddenly dry, the air in the room gone very still. "Don't worry. She's coming."

The shadows in the room had gone very dark all of a sudden, the flames in the candles very small. From the unnatural blackness above the circle, a slender red thread began to descend. Then, a pale wrist, the thread woven between its fingers, the nails short but crusted with dirt, followed. Slowly fading out of the darkness, the rest of the girl-spectre followed. Her hair had been unbound, and was very long and several shades lighter than it had last been seen, and the red thread wove through her matted curls and around her throat several times over. Her eyes were absolutely luminous.

Cian stood, and reached up to his sister. She shuddered, seeming to recognize his face for the first time, and gave out a little, half-cut sob. "Oh--" and an utterance that sounded very distantly like his name. Her descent from the ceiling was slow and painful. At several points, the red thread--which disappeared above her into the shadows of the rafters--seemed to jerk, or snag, and at every point she cried out, and one could see how the thread dug into her throat so tightly, and she was forced to hang there, choking, for a minute or so before the thread became slack enough again for her to continue. At last, after what seemed like a good ten minutes, the tips of her toes brushed the floor, and she dug her fingers into the thread wrapped around her throat, until it was loose enough for her to speak.

Her sweet voice had grown hoarse with pain, but the words tumbled out with surprising vigor. "Oh, Cian, you've come for me. I was so frightened, I couldn't find them, any of them. Aedan, Aleric, Mother and Father--they said we'd all be together, when we died, but I can't find any of the ancestors, not even a whisper from them anymore. Cian, it's so lonely there, it's so empty and cold--" Her eyes were filling with misty, pearl-like tears, and she brushed them away impatiently, and twisted her head about the room. Then, in astonishment, she turned back to him, and danced on the tips of her toes closer to the edge of the circle. She reached out--she wanted to take hold of Cian's shoulders, but the salt stopped her. In frustration, her fingers clawed at the air.
"And Rynn, Rynn--he has not called for me in so long, Cian. He is so distant, I cannot follow his thread, for all that it tenses and shakes, I have walked for days and days and I cannot find the end of it. Where is Rynn? What has happened to him?"
Cian's expression was impossible to read; he had not expected her to cry. He would have been able to handle it better if she had shouted and thrown things about the room. He lowered his stricken eyes, opened his bloody palm to her in a gesture of helplessness.
"We hoped you would be able to answer some of those questions for us."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Amid the stillness outside of the circle, the quiet disturbed only by the murmur of magic, it was Antha who spoke, her voice calm and clear. "He was caught by a spider." There was something in her expression, Courtland thought, some emotion glittering in her eyes that he couldn't read, and he had thought by now that he knew the look of every emotion she was capable of. "A spider that spun a pretty web to appeal to someone desperate for power and revenge, and if that spider doesn't eat him soon, another one will. Unless we can knock some sense into his thick skull."
Antha's heart hammered painfully as she spoke, though she tried her best to pretend otherwise. But beneath the surface, there was that feeling from the night of the fire, the one that had spilled out while she sat alone on the side of her bathtub, her dress stained with Liesse's rapidly darkening blood. The girl had been innocent, all things considered, and Antha had cut her throat open in a fit of rage towards her brother. In the long history of truly terrible things Antha had done, the blood staining her hands from the countless murders, she thought it might have really been the most unjust crime of her entire repertoire. But, as she had gotten very good at doing, the girl pushed the guilt very far back in her heart and continued. "You know Rynn. You may be the only one who does, given the various facets of his personality. You're the only one who might know how to make him see reason. Otherwise---" And there came that flash then, projected out from Antha's mind to those nearby, and that included Liesse, of those terrifying red eyes, those blood stained fingers. As she had often said, there were many variants to the day of her demise and of the multiple possibilities, the one that came now included Rynn, his face slack and eyes glassy with death, his hair matted with blood as his body lay crumpled on the marble floor. It came from Antha's eyes, her gaze which swept the mess of blood beneath her as her fingers slipped on it, her tangled curls passing over her eyes, dripping even more blood, as she turned just in time to see that shadow, those red eyes glowing, mouth and chin dark with spilled blood, swoop menacingly down upon her, that one frightened, startled scream before everything went black.
"And I need him," she whispered at length, as if she couldn't bear to admit to it, "If Nero is going to be stopped, if his massacre is going to end with me, I need Rynn." Because she didn't expect him to take up her offer, she didn't hold out much hope that the lure of power would be enough for him to overcome his hatred of her, to give up his spiteful ways.
"Don't you think," Jack muttered suddenly, his uncharacteristically dark, sharp eyes gone thoughtful, "That the best way to bring him to his senses would be, now that we've managed to pull Liesse out of the void, to put her in a new body?"
"No one has ever been able to do that," Antha reminded him quickly, in hushed tones that spoke her horror at the suggestion, "Even Marguerite, who tried for decades."
"You've already done one thing she couldn't," he reminded her, eyes narrowing at her stomach, "Who's to say you couldn't do another?"
"Isn't trying to play God and defying nature itself the entire reason I'm marked for death to begin with?" she hissed at her cousin, who briefly recoiled.
Surprisingly, it was Pierce who responded in the most serious whisper, "And since you've already incurred the ultimate punishment for it, what's to stop you now?"
"Because it's wrong!" she protested, staring wildly around at her cousins.
"When has that ever stopped you?" came the chuckle from Courtland.
"There is no telling what could possibly go wrong trying to put a dead girl into a living body, but the possibilities are endless. We could kill people, ourselves even, or trap her in some new hell between worlds, or just screw up the entire balance of the world of the living and the world of the dead in general. This is, without a doubt, the single most dangerous idea that any of you have ever had---so bad that even I don't condone it!---and you see absolutely nothing wrong with the concept?!"
Her outburst was met with further resistance and Antha, not daring to look at Cian or the tragic ghost before her and doing her damned best to completely ignore the shade of Marquerite that appeared in the shadows nearby, was left looking desperately to Vikteren for help. For the first time in, well, ever, she felt like the only sane one left and she was at the truest and most complete loss of her life.  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren did not speak for a long time. He was looking at Liesse, dancing on tip-toes, dangling like a puppet from her red thread.
"We cannot deny that it's dangerous." the vampire said at last, redirecting his attention finally to Antha's wide-eyed stare. It seemed like it had been a long time since he had seen that look on her face. But it may be our best hope. You said you need Rynn, Antha. If we take this risk… He sighed. "There are a lot of unknown factors. Perhaps too many to justify. But…when we met Rynn again, I saw the shape of his mind. It's like a fortress. This may be the only front on which he has not erected a defense." His brow creased. He didn't want to tell Antha this, he could see how it disturbed her. But it might be the best chance they had, if Rynn's allegiance was this important to the war that was coming.

Cian had not turned around yet. His lips were white, pressed so hard together that all the blood had drained away, as he looked at his sister. She was tugging on the thread again, trying to look around with the extra slack, but it had become hopelessly tangled in her hair. At the sound of Antha's voice, she had startled badly, and the thread had gone taut, and in less than a second she had been lifted halfway to the roof again and had been forced to work her way slowly down again while Antha spoke. Now she stood there, her fingers trembling in their net of string, and listened to their appeal with grievous fear in her eyes.

Now Cian said, because she did not seem prepared to speak, "We have to ask first. Whether Liesse would even agree to this--" and he shut his mouth, because the first word that had come to mind was heresy.
The newest Mayfair turned around, putting his hands in his pocket. He wanted to hide how rattled he felt, seeing his sister again. He didn't want Antha to know how his heart had leapt at her cousin's proposal. "I think it would be possible," he said, carefully. "Before the library burned, my family had records of ancestral attempts. It was a subject that the family ghosts had some vested interest in, obviously. Some had even documented success, but the ones which did were so old that we were told to consider them part of our mythology collection."

Then, Liesse spoke up, in a small but piercing voice. "I think I could do it." Her fingers wound and worked nervously over the thread. She didn't know if that was true. All she could think of was, a chance to be with Rynn--like they used to do it, inside one another's heads, talking to one another until the wee hours of the morning. Morning. She'd get to see dawn again, light and air and sound. She wouldn't have to go back to the limbo-space. Rynn wouldn't have to die. It didn't even seem like it would be that difficult--like a blood transfuse that had been practiced many times before, and of course there would be no difficulty with the blood type at least.

Liesse didn't want to think about the rest of it, all those other thoughts that bubbled treacherously to the surface of her mind. What if possessing Rynn's body sent her brother to the limbo-space? What if the reason Rynn himself hadn't sent for her was because he hated her now? What if something, all of it, went horribly wrong and she just ended up--gone? Not dead, no wandering spirit, but wholly destroyed in the process of trying to break into her brother's head? What if the limbo was just her punishment, and when Rynn died at Antha's hands then she would see him walk forward out of the darkness on the other end of her thread--with such lively, lovely eyes for a ghost. What if the Mayfair girl ruined everything, like Rynn had said?
Liesse struggled to hold back the tears again. "I'll trust you." she said, too loudly, and it echoed around the room in a way that did not fit the space, "...for Cian's sake. Because you carry his children, and because--"--the scarlet cord gave another violent shake above her, and she cringed, and the tears fell from her eyes anyways. "--I am afraid for Rynn. If he is trapped as you describe, then I have no doubt that nothing will dissuade him from this path. His pride forbears it. He will never admit that he has chosen his allies poorly."