Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"This floor was made for dancing," Malakai informed her eagerly, as if it was a real pleasure to get to talk about the house itself, "It was built by Mayfairs, after all. Angelique---that is, my great-great-great-grandmother---was a debutante, she lived to throw balls, so when she had this house built, the floor had to be made to dance. Oncle Louis had it redone some fifty years ago, to keep it in pristine shape, and Antha always said she'd get around to redoing it again one of these days." The boy simply smiled then, milk and honey Malakai, his steps slowing half a pace, enough to put him in sync with Liesse, his hand on the small of her back readjusting her posture.
The next few moments turned out in a blur. He knew, with hazy senses, that Courtland was laughing on the other side of the house and that Nicolae was arguing with him. He knew that Liesse was assuring him that he didn’t talk too much, which made him smile even if it didn’t convince him of it, and then he knew that Liesse had stumbled and instinctively he had brought his other arm around her, clutched her against his chest where she couldn't fall, couldn’t hurt herself. "Are you alright?" were his immediate panicked words, his eyes brimming over with such earnest concern, and then she had all but thrown herself out of the circle of his arms, stumbling away from him, and his cheeks had flushed that deep, vivid shade of scarlet that had him turning his head, a hand clapped over his mouth with fingers spread, as if he could hide. "I'm fine," he murmured, words muffled behind his hand.
It took a moment for the color to begin to recede from his cheeks, that glassy, drunken panic in his eyes to soften, but when it did he merely smiled, taking her hand back in his and murmuring, “You can’t rely on watching your feet, especially when your senses are compromised.” But because her senses were compromised, and because she was likely still shook up from her stumble, he picked her up some inch or so off her feet, his own moving easily to those steps that were as innate as walking, and laughed in that soft, easy way he had. “You’ll learn,” he said surely, “And if Courtland has anything to say about it, you’ll be waltzing in drunker states than this in no time.” And then, with another laugh, “And you have to learn, so you can help me teach Vanessa and Sebastien when they get old enough. We can’t leave them to the mercy of Courtland’s wild dance lessons, or Julien’s severe ones. And I don’t know if Cian can dance. Though, if he can’t, I’m sure Antha will have that fixed in no time. She’s spent more than one drunken night twirling around a hotel room, teaching her one night stands to waltz. I think there was an article about it once in one of those god-awful gossip magazines we’re always in. Well not me so much, I hardly do anything worth writing about, so why write about me when Antha’s refusing to sleep with men until they learn to dance and Courtland’s sending girls running out of hotels wrapped in sheets, screaming about ghosts? And Dorian running around the city doing God knows what, there’s just no predicting him, and he loves the attention as much as the rest of them. But you’ll meet him later, whenever he shows up again, out of money or out of stamina.” He paused, eyes flashing dark, and murmured very seriously, “Watch out for Dorian, he and Pierce are cut from the same cloth, only Pierce is the suave one and Dorian is the poetic one.”

“Poor Malakai,” Pierce sighed, shaking his head as Courtland laughed, “You should have taught him your tricks, Nicolae. He has no way with the ladies, none at all.”
“Have you started to wonder about your children yet, Cian?” Remy asked errantly, ignoring the boys as they bickered about their cousin nearby, “I know you haven’t had much time for it. I used to dream about what a sweet little angel Sera would be. When Millie was on her way, I worried constantly that she would be as conniving as her sister. Oh, it kept me up at night, I was absolutely terrified of going through the same tricks and tantrums.”
“Their parents are made from the same mold,” Courtland snickered, his eyes rolling at his uncle, “How far from the tree can they possibly fall?”
“Just because between Antha and Cian they’ve probably seduced the entire town doesn’t mean their children are going to be as bad,” Pierce disagreed.
“Bad? That’s an absolute gift, a talent, they should be so lucky to pass it on to their children,” came his responding scoff, “God help me if I ever have a child and don’t pass them my powers of seduction, I will cry with disappointment.” Almost instantly his hands touched at his temple, head swimming, that flash of pain as the room shifted, sunlight filtering through the glass doors, voices echoing---

“Sebastien Asher Mayfair, you explain yourself this instant!”
The refrigerator door shut quietly, a glass clinking as it was set on the counter, but the boy said nothing. Across the counter, Vanessa was watching in quiet amusement, her eyes---her mother’s eyes, through and through, perfect mirrors of her brother’s---flickering between her brother and Julien, standing in the doorway in that tense fury that seemed second nature to him.
“Sebastien!” The boy paused, eyes blinking innocently, the glass of milk still held to his lips as he watched his uncle, letting him rant as he wished. He was fifteen, he knew how these things tended to work out, the way that Julien would scream no matter what he said, and as he had not inherited his mother’s love of arguing, it suited him better to let Julien work himself into more and more of a rage at the boy’s silence. That was his amusement as Antha’s had been provoking him.
Across the room, seated languidly at the table, Courtland was trying very hard not to laugh. He had inherited Julien’s graceful aging, or else his ability to mask the aging process with magic, passing sometimes for his late twenties, not a single white hair on his head and only laugh lines carved into his face, his form still slender. What he had not inherited was the ability to mature with age, as Julien had, he was more or less the same reckless creature he had always been, and at the moment he had no hope of hiding how amusing it was to him that his son had inherited his penchant for getting beaten up by his cousins.
“You are infuriatingly your mother’s child,” Julien hissed finally, making an angry gesture of his hand at Sebastien who had taken hold of the newspaper on the counter, unfolding it to scan the headlines, completely ignoring his wrathful great-uncle.
“Yes, this does seem to be the exact sort of situation of fifteen years ago,” Courtland murmured, and the laughter he had tried so hard to contain seeped out a little into his tone, “Your mother would have beaten me harder for much less. Adair, what do we say?”
Across the table from him, his head tilted back with a bloody tissue clasped to his nose, a fourteen-year-old version of Courtland, save for the heterochromatic eyes of blue and green and even wilder, curlier texture of his white-blonde hair, said simply, “I didn’t do anything.”
Courtland did laugh at that, riotously, and it was only by a great dint of effort that Vanessa did not follow suit, instead biting her lip as she watched her brother’s eyes narrow at the boy, Julien pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He loved both of the boys dearly, of course, they were his blood, but sometimes he couldn't stand them. Sebastien was generally mild-mannered enough, but Adair...well, part of him despised the boy. He was already more trouble than his father had been at his age, and he refused to refer to Julien as anything but 'gramps', with that sharp, puckish grin. “Adair Mayfair, the next time you decide to set yourself upon your cousin---“
“I was only playing,” he muttered, rolling his eyes as he lifted his head, moving the tissue to test if his nose had stopped bleeding, “But then Bastien had to go all Neanderthal on me and break my goddamn nose.”
“Language!” Julien hissed rapidly before continuing, “Honestly, both of you, the spitting image of your parents! It is absolutely maddening to be settling these skirmishes all over again, a decade and a half later! And your uncle, you take too much after him, that he didn't kill Pierce for flirting with your aunt Liesse is nothing short of a miracle.”
“Oh, go take your medication and lay down, Julien,” Courtland laughed, patting his son’s shoulder, “Now Adair, remember, we do not tackle girls, particularly not ma papillon." Butterfly. He had always called her his butterfly as he had always called her mother 'ma belle' and her father had always been 'mon peche', which was rude really because her name meant butterfly, and her mother had been beautiful, but her father's nickname---and no one said a cruel word about her father, she wouldn't stand for it, it was the only real way to incur her wrath---had been chosen because of how they bruised, referring to her mother's death and her father's subsequent state of depression, which the family still spoke of in sympathetic whispers. But these thoughts, those ambling things, dissipated as Sebastien took her hand, errantly, and Courtland kept talking. "It's too barbaric. We learn their weaknesses and charm them onto their backs.”
“Oncle Courtland,” Sebastien murmured, using that tone that they all knew meant to pay heed or things would get ugly. Vanessa only laughed, silently. She hadn’t minded, really, it wasn’t like anything had actually happened, nor would they have without the interference, but it was exciting to see everyone so very animated. Julien, the wrathful relic (and shouldn't he be dead by now? Sometimes she thought they lived too long in the Mayfair family, anyone else would crash and burn around the age of fifty), oncle Courtland as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning, probably on one of those pills that he and uncle Jack gambled with when they played poker in the parlor (she had begun to suspect that they weren't candy around the age of four, but he was sticking to his story, even after Adair ate one at the age of eight and spent four hours screaming about the dragons in the kitchen), and Adair---beautiful, vibrant Adair with his wayward grin and startling eyes, the left one emerald and the right one sapphire, obscured by the froth of wild little white-blonde curls---grinning despite his bloody nose, completely and utterly satisfied with himself because in the five minutes that Sebastien had been on the phone in the library he had managed to get her pinned beneath him in the garden, hidden in a nest of rose bushes, and managed to steal a kiss before Bastien had jerked him up by the collar and tried to bash his face in. “Adair, the next time you touch my sister, or even look at her the wrong way, you will pay with every bone in your face.” Vanessa laughed again at the responding scowl their cousin gave, that gleam in his eyes that spoke of both fear and coming revenge. It was so like Sebastien, to cut to the quick with whatever his enemy loved most, just one warning with that ever calm voice.
Sebastien was gone through the glass doors in the next few moments, a book tucked under his arm, and Julien had gone groaning up the stairs, muttering angrily to himself. Vanessa, on her way to following Sebastien out the door because one twin was not very likely to ever be seen without the other, paused only briefly beside Adair, her long, delicate fingers gripping the back of his chair as her pretty lips came close to his ear, whispering teasingly, “You got scol~ded.” But she kissed his cheek to assure him she wasn’t mad before she went skipping out the door, giggling her amusement.
Adair, a little self-satisfied smirk to his lips as he watched her leave, turned his two-tone eyes to his father and said, very simply, “She wants me.” Not that such a thing was unusual. He had inherited his father's good looks and innate charm, and Courtland had never been greedy with his secrets to the art of seduction, not where his son was concerned. Adair, who at fourteen passed so easily for seventeen, older still to untrained eyes, was no stranger to women, they had loved him since his earliest memories and oh, he had loved them back. He was no stranger either to sex, not since he had made his way into his first bar at thirteen---and he had thought horrible Julien would kill uncle Cian for accidentally mentioning the little dive bar that catered to the underworld of the city which he had frequented in his youth, before aunt Antha had come along, however innocent his intentions had been, because how could Courtland Mayfair's son ever resist such a temptation?---and after that he had turned on his cousins. But Vanessa...Vanessa was a dream, really, as pretty as an angel with those doll-like features, a laugh like the pealing of bells, enormous eyes with unfathomable emerald depths, and she was the ultimate challenge so long as Sebastien still breathed.
“Of course, son,” Courtland agreed with only a hint of amusement, patting his hand and rising from the table, “Just remember, if you ambush her again Bastien will beat the living daylights out of you. Olivier too, for that matter, he’s just as determined as you and with all the charm his father never possessed, and all of the competitive spirit he did.”
Adair, gazing out the window at the figures that climbed the wooden ladder to the tree house, gave the smallest little snicker. “Worth it.”

“Courtland, why on earth are you rolling around on the floor this time?” Remy, watching the boy as he rocked this way and that, laughing until the tears sprung to his eyes, gave a little sigh and shook his head.
Unabashed, Courtland just wiped the glistening tears from his eyelashes, taking deep breaths to stop the uncontrollable flow of laughter. “Oh, I did something right with that one. I did hope that if I ever had a son---and God, what poor soul is supposed to bear my spawn?---that the apple would plop straight down onto the roots of the tree. I should congratulate myself, really. Job well done, self. And Cian, too, job excellently done.”
Pierce, blinking at his cousin as if he had finally cracked, finally been hurled off the deep end, reached out to brush his fingers across his forehead and feel his temperature, but almost as soon as their skin made contact there came that same brief jolt, that haze of Pierce’s eyes as his mind went somewhere else for a short moment, and in the next few seconds he was laughing beside Courtland, scrambling eagerly to his feet and announcing, “Oh, this is too good, I have to go find Vittorio. How old is Olivier now, almost one? I was hoping he would take after the rest of us, with our burning passions and endless conquests. Vittorio!”
“I suppose they had no chance, being raised by the lot of you,” Remy murmured airily, having pried into Courtland’s mind to steal the flash of premonition from it. Not that he made it hard, it was considered something worth sharing. “Oh, Antha’s going to be terribly angry when she gets back from wherever she’s run off to now. You should know better than to let your son go throwing himself at her daughter.”
“I didn’t. I don’t even have a son, and won’t until she’s already gone. How can I condone the actions of someone that doesn’t exist yet concerning a person that isn’t even born yet?”
“I knew I should have had you sterilized,” Julien groaned, shaking his head, “It may be too late now. That boy was less than a year younger than the twins, oui? He might already be conceived, if that is the case.”
"I did have a busy last few weeks. Maybe I should make some calls soon. And someone should keep an eye on Sera." Courtland laughed, undaunted by the concept.
"My daughter?" Remy asked in true astonishment.
"Malakai kept dodging her after the wedding. Someone had to keep her amused." The boy just shrugged. “I am sorry, though,” he apologized preemptively to Cian, giving those frightfully earnest eyes despite the grin on his lips, “But there’s no helping my son chasing after your daughter, really. She is going to be a great beauty like her mother, and from the looks of it every bit the teasing, spirited little mynx she is. It’s probably for the best that she’ll have a brother to beat up anyone in pursuit of her.”
Jack, who had been left alone to restrain Nicolae and very quickly been thrown off his back, only murmured a short, amused, “Amen.” And then, turning to yell at Pierce who was laughing in another part of the house while Vittorio swore at him, “Pierce! We’re being left out, we need to step up our game!”
“At this point,” Julien groaned, “I’m not sure whether it’s wiser to lock you all in this house or not. It’s hard to tell which way you will get into the most trouble. Mon dieu, is it so very difficult for one of you to reproduce legitimately?”
"Antha and Cian are married," Courtland reminded him, pouting angrily, "And they're his kids and everything. That's as legit as it gets in this family."
"And Antha already pregnant on their wedding day. Granted, there were no shotguns involved, but it was a rather patched-up affair. No offense of course, Cian."
"Says the man without a single legitimate child to his name," Courtland murmured in response, and then "OW!" as the vase from the table fell and struck his foot, "DAMN IT, DAD, DON'T BE A HYPOCRITE IF YOU'RE JUST GOING TO GET MAD!"  

[Okimiyage]

Leaning back in his chair under the pretense of a leisurely stretch, Cian sought out a glimpse of the vision that they shared. He was surprised to find himself sobered by what brought others to howling laughter—faking a narrow smile anyways, he gazed into the shallows of his glass. Smart as their mother, it would be said. There was so much of Antha in her daughter, and yet the difference between them could not be ignored. Vanessa was a little queen already, as young as she was, poised as a jaguar. Bastien seemed similar, but Cian could detect a vast capacity for mischief in him that his silence bespoke. That one would be a pleasure. They certainly wouldn’t want for benefactors—if their good looks and charm didn’t win them friends, then their name and the reputation of their mother would make up for the slack. And whoever was chosen to act as godparents to the twins would be a force to be reckoned with. It was a pleasant vision. The children seemed to have grown up well, or at least happy, and their problems were trivial enough in the way of adolescents.
And yet, the longer he dwelled on the mental picture he’d been presented with, the more it disquieted him. It was difficult to see the trace of their father in their behavior. They were thoroughbred Mayfairs. It made him wonder about his own fate. Shaking it off, Cian returned to the conversation just in time to catch Julien’s remark about Antha’s quickened circumstances.
“Let’s be honest, we never made it a secret anyways. Nobody would have even noticed if the process wasn’t accelerated.” Cian pointed out. “It’ll all be fine in the paperwork. Besides, scandal is all part of the family tradition, in a way. They’re off to an excellent start, so.” No offense had been taken, of course, but he did want to clarify. Even they had to admit that in normal circumstances these things took a while. In any other family, the timing might have been considered ‘suspect’, but certainly not enough to warrant anything more than perhaps a snarky bit of gossip. “Besides,” he announced, rising from his chair, “if anyone outside the family says anything untoward about it, I’ll make a drunken lynch mob with the cousins. And we’ll clobber ‘em.” He formed a fist with one hand, and punched it into his open palm for emphasis. Although likely physical violence would be the least of anyone’s worries when facing a gang of Mayfairs. “It’ll be fun. Like a family sporting event.”
Speaking of ‘family sporting events’, he wondered how Liesse and her new beau were getting along…
Malakai and Liesse were both shy. He should give them a few more minutes before checking in.
Downstairs, the tinny waltz, full of chiming minor notes, played on. Liesse watched Malakai’s lips move as he spoke , breathlessly hovering beyond arm’s length. She let out a shaky laugh, more nerves than actual pleasure, but moved closer none the less. “We never had occasion to dance when—“
Well. Maybe her new body was more suited for it. If a Calais had never had dancing in their blood, if her ancestors had never seen fit to include festivity among their traditions and rites—now, Liesse at least had the benefit of wearing a Mayfair’s feet to guide her. She wondered who the cousin they had scalped this body from had been, which school she had attended, what name she had responded to. Whether she’d known they were coming for her. “I’m only intimidated,” she protested, uncomfortably. “Hard not to be, when everyone else in the household does this as effortlessly as breathing.” The story about Antha didn’t surprise her. She undoubtedly had little patience for men who were incapable of keeping up with her. “And for all your warnings, I can’t possibly bring myself to believe you. Rynn warned me about the Mayfairs, too. There’s no end to the—hah—legends about that name. Even I knew a few. But you—well, all of the family, everyone’s been perfectly nice. I’m finding it difficult to believe that any of you are quite as dreadful as you’re painted to be.”
Slowly, she stepped again into Malakai’s arms. This time, she relaxed. The body, at some point in its life up until now, had indeed been taught to waltz. Liesse’s inexperience and inebriation gradually gave way to her partner’s patient tutelage, and it was no time until she found herself moving to a steady rhythm, and found his eyes with a delighted smile.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Oh, enough of this." Sighing, Courtland rose from the floor just long enough to plop himself down in Cian's lap, laying a dramatic kiss upon his cheek. "It was a shotgun wedding of love, everyone can see that. In this day and age, it's nothing too scandalous to knock someone up before you marry them anyways. And if anyone says anything about it, we will all rally to your banner and, as you say, clobber them. We make an excellent angry mob, with pitchforks and gardening shears and broken scotch bottles."
"Enough of this indeed," Remy sighed, waving the entire subject away, "Let us get back to the matter of you and my daughter. You do realize, I hope, that southern law dictates I must chase you mercilessly through this city with a shotgun and a lynching mob if you have 'knocked her up', as the saying goes."
"I'm not going to marry her, if it turns out to be true," Courtland offered very plainly in response, shrugging his shouders and drawing an affectionate arm around Cian's shoulders, "I would kill her, or she would kill me. I am a philandering man, and a drinking man, and a master of disappearing acts from time to time, and she is a vicious, opportunistic, self-serving creature. No offense."
"There is no offense to be taken from the truth."
"But I will---and I do not question that Antha would support me fully on this---take custody of my child if she bears him, and raise him here with Antha's children, as all of us were raised here together. Of course she would be compensated, if all of this were the case."
"Ah, you do know the way to her heart, don't you?" He sighed, giving a helpless shrug of his shoulders.
"Would you all stop yapping for just one minute?" Jack, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, eyes closed, snapped, brows furrowing in concentration, "I'm curious and I'm going to get to the bottom of this, damn it."
"Bottom of what?" Courtland, intrigued, threw himself out of Cian's lap with one fluid motion, going to sit knee to knee with Jack, clasping their hands together, and with Courtland's power at his disposal and the proper focus, Jack took one deep breath and---

"Daddy, wake up!" It had become too common, Courtland thought, for the entire house to be awakened by Vanessa's voice reverberating through the halls at ungodly hours of the morning.
"Ma papillon, please, you're going to wake the children. For the love of God, don't wake the children, there are too many of them, they're far too loud, and I haven't had nearly enough sleep. And little Michael may well kill your poor uncle Malakai trying to wake him up. He's too much like you, always screaming 'daddy, daddy, wake up!' at the top of his lungs when the sun is hardly up."
"Oncle Courtland, please, we are trying to concentrate."
"The mere fact that you are concentrating so hard on making one omelet, using half a dozen cook books in the process, means it is probably not the wisest idea."
"Hush," Sebastien murmured shortly, glancing between two such cookbooks on the counter as Vanessa surveyed the contents of the fridge, sifting through vegetables and deli meats looking for something suitable to add.
"Cilantro?" Sebastien shook his head and she returned the handful of greens to the fridge. "Ham?" He made a gesture and she set the package of deli meat on the counter beside the eggs.
"This one says to add a splash of milk to make it fluffy." She went immediately to the table across the room, taking the carton of milk from Courtland where he was making his coffee, and added it to the collection.
"I was using that."
"Hush, this is for daddy."
Courtland was silent. It was hard to argue with anything that would make Cian feel better on this, of all days. It was the day, after all, that sixteen years ago he had married Antha. Annually, a dark cloud fell over him and whenever it did, the twins were always to be found wrapped up in some scheme Vanessa had fashioned to make him feel better. And it didn't matter that neither of them had cooked anything other than a microwave dinner in their lives, never touched a skillet, or they hadn't known anything about taking care of baby ducks when they had brought one home the year before, or that they had no knowledge of construction when they had tried to build him a desk the year before that, and so on for years and years, since the very first picture of glitter and stickers with his stick-figure portrait when they were toddlers.
Personally, Courtland thought this cooking venture was almost as amusing as the duck fiasco (Julien had nearly cried for all the antiques the creature had broken). They were out of their element, in over their heads, but Vanessa was never to be deterred in anything, and Sebastien would always go along with Vanessa's whims without the slightest complaint.
"Bastien, focus all of your love on this egg. Come on, it's for daddy, don't look at me like I'm crazy."
"You are your mother's daughter, there was no help for that," Courtland murmured, flipping through his magazine and sipping his coffee as Vanessa held an egg between herself and her brother, her face set in determined lines, and then turned to crack it into the skillet that had been overheating on the stove, sizzling angrily.
"Piece of this shell is missing," Sebastien murmured when all of the eggs, some dozen of them, had been emptied into the skillet, "A big piece."
"Well I don't see them in here," she muttered back defensively, taking a little iron whisk to the sloshy yellow goop, "Chop the ham up." Sebastien obeyed silently, as always, taking a butcher knife to the lunch meat until it was only the tiniest shreds. The end product was a large, messy heap upon the fine Mayfair china with burned blotches, cheese running across the plate, set upon a tray beside a plate of burned bacon and undertoasted toast soggy with too much butter. "Daddy!" Vanessa called, running up the stairs while Sebastien safely carried the tray behind her, looking uncertainly down at their work of the morning.
"We should get Cian a dog," Courtland sighed as Malakai ambled groggily into the kitchen, "He's going to need one, now that Vanessa has convinced herself she can cook. I see him with a doberman, maybe mixed with something fluffy. What do you think?"
"I think that it would turn out as disastrously as Vanessa's brilliant idea to bring him a duck."
"Dogs cannot fly, Malakai, and therefore cannot ravage this house as that evil waterfowl did."
"They are heavier and they can jump, it's enough, and when we want this house in ruins, there are more than enough children under this roof to do the job well."
Courtland laughed, sliding the french press over to Malakai as he settled heavily into the seat next to him. "You're as much to blame as the rest of us." Malakai said nothing, only sipped at his coffee. "You think he'll get out of bed today?" he asked in a low murmur, eyes flickering towards the stairs to indicate Cian.
"He will if Vanessa and Liesse have anything to say about it, pajamas or not." They went silent at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Sebastien strolling casually back into the kitchen and rummaging through the medicine cabinet. "Everything alright, Bastien?"
"Came to get dad some seltzer."
"He asked for it? I can't even imagine, Vanessa would cry until this house was in ruins."
"No," Sebastien murmured, filling a glass and then adding a few drops of food coloring until it looked enough like soda that Vanessa wouldn't question it, "He puts on a brave face, but...he's going to need this."
"You're a good son, Bastien. And a good brother, at that. That's the Mayfair genes at work. That and you two refusing to sleep in separate beds a single night of your ******** off, oncle Courtland," the boy called flatly, climbing the stairs with the innocent looking digestive aide, and Courtland laughed.
"One of these days, Courtland," Malakai sighed, shaking his head, "One of your nieces or nephews is going to put you in a shallow grave. And everyone will mourn you, of course, but they will completely understand why the deed was done."

Courtland was back in Cian's lap when Jack zoned back into the present, his arms squeezing his shoulders tight as he rubbed his cheek against his hair. "Poor thing," he cooed sympathetically, Julien and Remy going very quiet at the table on either side of them. They both knew all too well what it was like, losing the love of your life, and they both let him know in their own silent ways. Julien still drank himself into oblivion on the anniversary of Mary Beth's death, and Remy still kept everything in his house the way his wife had left it the day she had died. "But that settles your fate, doesn't it? Living in this house, with your loving, adoring children. You worry too much, my pet. Your children will love you immensely, that's plain enough, they're going to bring you a pet duck for God's sake---and if they are anything like their mother, their love of ducks will be immense, intense, and completely ******** insane, I watched that girl run squealing across the park waving a loaf of bread and chasing after a flock of ducks like a five-year-old just a few months ago, ducks are the ultimate symbol of love to that girl---and we love you immensely."
"Poor thing nothing," Jack scoffed, blinking up at them, "I want kids that make me omelets and bring me baby ducks and draw glittery pictures of me. Why don't you ever make me breakfast in bed?"
"Do you want food poisoning?" Courtland snapped, standing up with his hands to his hips, "Because that's what my cooking skills amount to, a big bowl of death. I can't even tell when milk is spoiled! Why don't you ever make me breakfast in bed?!"
"What do I look like, your housewife?" Jack shook his head, pointing a finger in the general direction of the hallway, "Jacob is our housewife! Speaking of which, we should give him some flowers or something, this is really a lot of people to be cooking and cleaning for."
"Noted. Meanwhile, it's been a while, what do you think they're doing in there?" Peeking his head through the doorway, Courtland narrowed his eyes at the parlor door down the hall.
"You're not interrupting them to find out," Pierce ordered shortly, showing back up in the kitchen doorway pushing Courtland back, "Leave them be, they're having a moment."
"They're not the only ones," Jack murmured, putting a hand to his bowed head, "What's Antha doing?"
"Don't ask," Pierce said sharply, his eyes flashing oddly dark, "She's cut off the chains that bind us, she doesn't want us interfering with whatever it is.

Malakai laughed, shaking his head. "Oh, the legends. There are more legends about our family than there are words in my vocabulary. They just build up every generation, and they're all entirely founded if not completely accurate. Did you hear the one where Antha set her school on fire when she was eleven? Really, she just set a boy who teased her's book on fire. And there was the one where Courtland was caught grave robbing. That one was...mostly true, actually. He was drunk and broke into one of the Mayfair family burial vaults to have a drink with oncle Louis."
He laughed again, stepping back to venture a slow, easy spin of Liesse before pulling her back into his arms. "We're not dreadful people, really. Some of the cousins and aunts and uncles can be severe---aunt Mary Jane is severely Catholic, she's all about hell and the glory of God, and of course Julien is obsessed with keeping up appearances and precedents, and Vittorio is overzealous about maintaining our powerful bloodline---but mostly, we are just wild creatures. Mayfairs don't know moderation, we've never had to. We're...selfish, and abide by our own set of right and wrong. That's the worst thing about us, really, our selfishness and questionable morals." There was laughter down the hall, the wild kind that usually meant Courtland was up to something. "We're demonized because we're different."
He paused, his earnest eyes inspecting Liesse's face. "Don't think about her," he whispered quietly, as if it was of the greatest importance, "The girl that used to be in this body...she was very bad. She was the illegitimate daughter of a distant uncle, less than half Mayfair, a runaway, and she did horrible things, take my word on that." He smiled, a little awkwardly, trying to lighten the mood. "Nothing like you. You have light." The smile softened affectionately then, as he tucked a white-blonde strand of hair behind her ear, and then...
He would maintain for the longest time that Courtland had possessed him for the span of at least ten seconds. After all, never once in his life had Malakai just...kissed a girl, just like that. One moment he was just standing there, himself, and the next his lips had brushed hers, his head swimming. And in the next moment he was five feet away, a hand clapped over his mouth, eyes wide with shock at his own actions, face scarlet. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, eyes downcast, and in his head he called a million curses on Pierce that the door was locked, that he couldn't flee to his room and bury himself under the covers and hide until Antha came home to coax him out of bed and stroke his hair and tell him it was alright, he wasn't the biggest fool who had ever lived and she would beat the living hell out of the cousins when they inevitably teased him about this. And protect him from Rynn...he was very afraid of Rynn, suddenly. "I...really, I didn't mean...I just...lost...I'm sorry." He wished he was Nicolae. Nicolae would have laughed and shrugged his shoulders and probably done it again, and it would have seemed the most natural thing in the world. But Malakai was Malakai, bright red from head to toe, afraid his eyes were going to mist over, and he didn't know what to do, what to say, he was just very aware that he was a terribly awkward creature and that his hands seemed stupid, he didn't know what to do with them but cover his mouth and grab his shoulder, waiting for a miracle to set him free.
It wasn't the first time someone had considered Pierce a miracle, though it was a first for Malakai as a heavy metal key scraped in the lock and the door swung open, the boy peeking in to say, "Hey, did Nicolae come in he---" Malakai had scrambled past him before he could finish, knocking him out of the way as he fled to his room, footsteps rapid and clumsy on the stairs before the door slammed and he dove under his covers, pulling them in tight around himself, determined not to be moved or unearthed until Antha came home.
"Hey, what the hell?!" Pierce shouted irritably after him, "Malakai, why are you so red?!" He paused, glanced to Liesse, and sighed, "He made a move on you, didn't he? Malakai, you socially crippled crybaby!" Chasing after him, he was halted by the locked door, though he couldn't be stopped from banging on it, calling through it with, "What are you going to do, hide in there until Antha comes home to tell you everything's alright?" He gave up with a little kick to the door, muttering bitterly, "She's not going to be here to hold your hand through everything forever, you know."  

[Okimiyage]

"To be fair," Cian offered, before Courtland flung himself out of arm's reach, "the lady in question has very little excuse to expect anything else. She's a Mayfair. She ought to know the perils of romancing a member of your family just as well, if not better, than any other woman. At least you don't have to expect quite the same fit-of-epic-proportions as you would from--"
And that was when Cian stopped, and his eyes went glassy, and saw into something--distant and foggy, that he was not meant to know yet.
When he came to, he found that there were tears stuck in his eyes. He was unreasonably irritated by this. Grown men were not expected to cry in the presence of their peers. He swallowed his emotions before the tightness in his throat could manifest into speech, and threw back the last of his brandy. The heat in his throat disguised what hoarseness remained as the effects of his alcohol. He shook his head, a little too fiercely, to clear away what remained of the dulling mind-fog, and pushed Courtland off his lap with a gruff, "Heavy, geroff."

Some part of him wanted to snap at Jack, to level curses at him for poking his nose into a future that didn't belong to him. But even Cian knew that would be unreasonable. And besides--"They look like good kids," he muttered. At least there was that. It didn't do to dwell on what their activities implied about his own involvement. At least the family would be there. The family was always there, when you really needed it. In some ways, it was similar enough to the ruthless loyalty that his own bloodline prided itself on. But that cold, disparate shell of a house had been nothing compared to the fragmented, chaotic circus that was Mayfair territory. Standing, Cian brushed his hands across the leg of his pants to dislodge a patch of dust and crossed to the door. "Come on, I can't take any more of this sentimental prophesying. Do you think it's safe to barge in yet? How long does Malakai take?"

Pierce's voice raised in alarm answered him. Cian's eyebrows shot high in surprise, and then his mouth curled into a devilish smirk. Without another word, he slipped out the door.

Downstairs, Malakai was enacting a spectacularly embarrassing story to follow him around for the rest of his life.
Liesse, in the darkened parlor, touched the very tip of her index finger to her lips. She felt dazed. The experience of being electrocuted was a very close comparison, but this was softer, not as painful. Around her, the phonograph's haunting aria distorted, the cycle of the disc winding to a dissonant halt. She half-imagined her touch might quell the throbbing sparks which the pit of her stomach had cast out at Malakai's--
but it was not so, if anything they called it to memory all the more strongly.
Pierce's thudding on the door down the hall caught her attention.
Damn him!--
her unexpected thought.
Some part of her had wanted to fling herself at Malakai just then, and it wasn't just the physical half. Although the bloodlines probably did have something to do with it. Mayfair 'kissing cousins' were practically a family tradition by now.
Underneath the couch, her kittens kneaded at one another drowsily, just now struggling out of sleep. The door's creak disturbed them, and when Liesse padded out of the room they followed behind, on clumsy paws, until she took pity on them and picked up each in the crook of her arms.
She drifted up the stairs until she caught sight of Pierce--beyond him, Cian's head poking around the corner of the corridor. She approached until proximity was enough to warrant his attention, and then stopped. In a firm whisper:
"Shhhh. you're going to wake the whole house. i'm the only one who has the right to give him hell at the moment anyways. you can harass him in the morning."

((I love you, Ellie.
thank you for your patience.
real life is kind of a killer.))  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a moment, before the usual ruckus stirred elsewhere in the house, Julien sat silently regarding Cian across the table, puffing idly on his delicate little golden cigarette holder. When he rose, several moments before Cian did, he paused briefly beside the boy and, in a gesture that would have made the cousins scream 'possession', he laid a hand across Cian's shoulder. It was momentary, his touch light, but it couldn't be mistaken for anything other than a comforting gesture. And then, before any of the children could notice it, he took his leave of the room without a word.
Upstairs, Pierce was scowling at Malakai's closed door as Liesse padded up to him, his arms crossed and eyes narrowed threateningly at the helpless door. "Who am I going to wake up? Rynn's the only one asleep and I'm half tempted to to tell on Malakai as it is," he hissed, though his voice did drop to more hushed tones. "He can't keep relying on Antha for everything. This situation here, it's become natural to him, accidentally do something that mortifies him and hide from the world in a panic until Antha comes to coax him out of hiding and soothe him with assurances that he isn't the horribly awkward, hopeless creature that he is. And she shouldn't let him do it---lord knows if it was any of the rest of us, she would hit us and tell us to suck it up---but she does because Malakai is the sweet one, the vulnerable one, her poor, beloved big brother." Pierce made a little 'hmph!' sound, banging his fist once on the door, and muttered, "Nope, not this time." He vanished then, appearing again some moments later with Jacob's large, jingling cluster of keys in one hand and Amadeo haphazardly slung over the other arm. The cat mewed pathetically in frantic little tones as Pierce unlocked the door, scrambling gladly down to the floor and into Malakai's room before Pierce shut the door again.
Beneath his covers, Malakai only peeked out at the creak of the door, watching Amadeo trot gladly over to his bed and hop up beside him, purring and kneading at his mattress. He was still for a few moments, glaring sourly at the carefree little creature, before finally he stretched out an arm and caught the kitten up, pulling him into the safe zone under his sheets and against his chest where he curled up happily, settling himself around Malakai's arm. The boy's cheeks were still scarlet, his eyes distant, and he couldn't seem to stop pressing his fingertips to his lips. Let Pierce say what he wanted, Malakai was not emotionally equipped to deal with anything while inebriated without Antha, all he knew to do was hide under his covers and pretend nothing existed outside of the dark veil of linen, just a tiny universe of himself and the little cat that loved him unconditionally and never judged him for his awkwardness. In this way, with his mind hazy and clouded with liquor, still reeling from the shock of his own actions even as the initial pump of adrenaline receded and left him exhausted, he began to drift in a place between consciousness and sleep, vaguely aware of his surroundings as sublime, comforting darkness washed over his thoughts.
"Giving him hell aside, just...go easy on him. He's already halfway broken himself, you hold the power of destroying him utterly at the moment." Pierce paused out in the hallway, eyes gazing thoughtfully down at the key in his hand and then at Liesse before he took her hand, pressing the key into her palm, and murmured, "I guess I owe you one for interrupting earlier." He shrugged then, turning just in time to be blinded by the flash of a camera in his face. "Dolly Jean," he murmured, taking great pains not to immediately lose his temper with the girl as his vision flashed with colorful stars and white dots, "What in the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Photo album," she replied cheerfully, clearly unaware of Pierce's irritation as she plucked the polaroid from the camera and waved it in the air, "For the twins. Antha and Cian's wedding pictures came back today, so I thought I'd make an album." Her face lit up suddenly as she turned to Liesse, and with a sigh Pierce realized she had no idea of the small-scale drama that was happening around her. "Do you want to see them, Liesse? Oh, they're so beautiful, just like a fairytale! There's this one of them at the altar, and Courtland---he was Cian's best man---he was crying---"
"You got evidence of Courtland crying at the wedding?" Pierce interrupted, the devilish smirk curling automatically to his lips before he shook his head, making a mental note to seize it later as he took Dolly Jean by the shoulder and gently steered her towards the stairs, "Liesse can look at the photos later, right now she's busy with Malakai."
"Is something wrong with him?" the poor, innocent girl questioned curiously, put on alarm.
"He's...ah, sick. Yes, poor, beloved Malakai is sick."
"He's sick?!" He had done nothing to ease her sudden panic.
"A kind of sick," Pierce chuckled darkly, "Let's call it 'love sick'. Don't worry, he'll be fine, Liesse just needs to give him a good punch." He patted her head as they descended the stairs, easily dismissing her apparent confusion. "Really, don't fret about it, it's his own fault anyways."
Courtland meanwhile, who had slunk into the hallway and spied on the fiasco with Malakai, shaking his head and grinning, turned as Pierce did, heading the opposite direction into Dolly Jean's room where Rynn had tucked himself away and tossing himself carelessly on the bed beside Rynn, watching him with those sparkling, mischievous eyes. "What about you, eh? Content to lay up here pretending to be a bad drunk while Antha gets to commit all of the evil vampire slaughter?" He laughed, eyes rolling to glance up at the ceiling as if he were looking into his own mind as he murmured thoughtfully, "Or so I assume. The bond that binds me to her is a little chaotic at the moment---dark, powerful magic, manic bloodlust, and all these little wisps of angry thoughts, mostly a rather unnerving fixation on you. I don't know what else would bring you so strongly to her mind." Another laugh as he patted Rynn's head, not so much condescending as affectionate, "It's almost sweet in a really twisted, Antha-esque way, how she rages when someone else tries to ******** with you."
"Courtland." The door creaked open, revealing Armand standing in it sighing and ruffling his hair, "Leave him alone, anyone who has to suffer through Antha's tutelage deserves some alone time."
"I was trying to make him feel better!" Courtland whined, a split second before his arms came around Rynn in a hug that was just barely this side of innocent, "Besides, I'm an excellent stress reliever."
"Courtland," came Armand's voice again, sharply this time, so that Courtland could only sigh and throw his hands up in surrender, muttering, "See this is what I don't like about you guys, the ones that were born way before us. You're not enough like us."
"If we were all exactly the same as you and Pierce and Antha and so on, this house, this city, and possibly the entire world would be in ruins," Armand pointed out flatly, only to have Courtland laugh riotously at the idea, sliding easily off the end of the bed. "Rynn," Armand began, his tone lightening as his gaze settled on the boy, "Don't let him bother you. Courtland is little more than an oversized, frisky puppy. He has the attention span of one, too."
"Oi!" the boy protested, pouting.
"I think I'll brew some tea. Courtland?"
"I'll get my whiskey!" the boy exclaimed happily, jumping up, his attention entirely diverted.
"You're welcome to join us, Rynn. You must be hungry, between the lack of dinner and...whatever it is Antha had you doing in the airship."
"Armand!" Courtland exclaimed in mock horror, following him out the door, "Get your mind out of the gutter!"
"My mind isn't the one in the gutter," he murmured back, sighing, "It was in a darker, bloodier, more exhausting place."
"If that's not the gutter for you, I think you're doing sex wrong."
"Actually, sometimes I think I'm the only one in this family that does it right."
As the boys vanished down the stairs with their lop-sided banter, Jack stopped in the doorway to Dolly Jean's room on his way after them, blinking innocently at Rynn. "We won't try to get you drunk again," he promised earnestly, offering him a hand, "Or drug you. Or take advantage of you. Not tonight anyways, it's only half as fun when Antha's not here to get all possessive. Besides, we have great sympathy for people freshly emerged from the airship, and even more for people that Antha tries to teach magic to." The boy cracked a smile then, as if it were some inside joke, before continuing. "I'm Jack by the way, since we never really met, Courtland's better half. Much, much better. Promise." And he made a slashing gesture over his heart in the form of an X, grinning. "Come on, you already missed the first round of tea, and it was a real doozy."
On his way out, Jack turned just in time to see Armand and Vittorio begin to pass each other in the hallway, Vittorio wrapped up in his own thoughts as ever and Armand as lax and unconcerned with anything as always until, in the blink of an eye, he had turned, his fist making contact with the side of Vittorio's face before anyone even had the time to lift their eyebrows in response. Courtland blinked between them as Vittorio went reeling, his hand to the side of his face as his eyes lit up with murder, Armand towering over him with a decidedly dark expression, the cigarette still hanging from his lips. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" the younger boy hissed, glaring up at him as if retaliation wasn't a question, it was going to happen, he just needed to know why this had begun first.
"That was for luring my little sister into the gardening shed in the middle of the night," Armand said flatly, still glaring down at him before he abruptly turned on his heel, striding off in that same lax manner that was usual to him, calling, "You're lucky you're marrying her, otherwise I'd have to break your entire face."
As Vittorio rose, scowling and cursing under his breath, and Armand vanished down the stairs, Courtland and Jack merely stared down the hallway at one another in wide-eyed confusion, finally giving identical little shrugs before continuing on after Armand. If there was one thing the Mayfair family had absolutely no lack of, it was overprotective brothers.
As he followed after his cousins, Jack only just noticed Remy slipping soundlessly into Julien's study, the golden glint of Julien's curls as he sat with his back to the door by the windows. He didn't even want to know.
"You wouldn't have known how to deal with her either," the man was sighing in a low murmur, and creeping quietly closer Remy noticed the portrait of Mary Beth that Julien kept locked in a drawer clasped in his hand, a glass of scotch in the other. "She inherited the best and the worst of the both of us, our little minx of a daughter. Even as she hates me, she would have pushed you even further over the edge." The was the faint hum of what was almost a laugh, the office chair creaking as Julien settled back in it, eyes closed. "But don't go feeling superior to me, she hates you too, even dead. You were the one who never planned anything, never thought ahead, who left her in her miserable predicament with your half-baked, selfish schemes. I've never seen her more determined with anything than she is to leave her children in their rightful father's care." There was a thoughtful, oddly somber pause, Remy watching on in concerned silence. "I don't know what to do with the boy, Mary Beth. He's in a worse position than Michael was when you brought him home, and he'll suffer worse than either of us did at your passing because she doesn't treat him in the cruel way you treated us. Even so...God, what I wouldn't give to have one more day, to have you for one more minute. And now the universe wants to take our daughter away from me."
"You're particularly brooding tonight." Julien gave a start at the sudden interruption, Remy taking a seat on the edge of his desk and pouring himself a glass of scotch from the cut crystal decanter. "Really Jules, I didn't know you cared so much. About Cian, I mean."
"He reminds me of my own misfortune," Julien murmured irritably, yanking open the top right drawer of the desk and locking Mary Beth's picture hastily away.
"Oh yes," Remy purred, murmuring into his glass, "We widowers are a pitiful, unfortunate lot. Michael, Cian and I should start a club in, oh, three months. You could be an honorary member."
"What a depressing concept."
"Isn't it? But I suppose carrying on conversations with a picture of your dead lover and drowning your sorrows in scotch is healthy." Remy gave a little snort of subdued laughter. "Don't look back, little brother, keep your eyes forward." He paused just long enough to smile, ruffling Julien's hair, and in a reaction common to little brothers everywhere Julien scowled, swatting his hand away. "I'm more concerned about Cian's brother than Cian. That boy will do fine, he's as firmly lodged in place in this family as anyone possibly can be and soon he's going to be the father of the most beloved children the entire world over."
"Rynn is a rather pitiable creature, isn't he?"
"A homeless orphan mourning the loss of most of his siblings, suffering under Antha's obsessive interest? Yes, I would say so." Again that subdued laughter, the murmured musing, "You wanted Antha to marry him when you first found out about the Calais family, didn't you? Before their name became the greatest curse in this city overnight? I would have liked to see that. You know, before they killed each other."
"He fit my criteria well enough, before the downfall of their family. And truth be told, no matter how advantageous the match, I was loathed to bring Christian Parker into our family. That boy is the biggest jackass I think I've ever met, and I'm involved in politics." Remy gave a sudden shocked snort of laughter at this, the unusually candid remark from reserved, proper Julien. "Here's the frustrating truth of the matter, I might have seen Cian as a fitting suitor before the incident. If Cian is of no social standing---worse yet, his brother has brought their name to a venomous reputation---at least he is an amiable, charming boy. He doesn't look bad in the society section either."
"Oh, don't act like it's such a tragic situation," Remy sighed, adding a little laugh before he continued, "You're growing fond of the boy, don't try to deny it."
"I decline to comment," Julien murmured, his chair swiveling so that he faced the windows. "How long do you think it'll take the rest of the family to swoop down on Rynn?"
"I'm surprised they haven't already. According to Sera, the only thing any of the girls are talking about are the Calais brothers. Cian's at the top of their list of course, the soon-to-be widower of the Designee of the Legacy and father to the next, and they all think him 'so hot'---" Julien smirked to hear his brother's mimicry of his daughter's diction. "---but they've got their eyes on Rynn, too. Apparently danger is an attraction to them."
"Of course it is. Thorn in my side as Antha may be, I thank God she isn't the frivolous little fool all of these other girls are."
"Watch your mouth, Jules, our sister was a frivolous little fool in her time." Julien merely scowled at him. "Regardless, we need to take some proactive measures before the Mayfair girls all descend upon the Calais boys like birds of prey. They wouldn't dare while Antha is still alive, they fear her like death itself, but once she's gone the floodgates will open."
"You never considered they might like some of the girls?"
"No," Remy replied flatly, downing the last bit of his bourbon, "No, I did not. I have a better opinion of their sense of taste than that."
"Antha would throw the most dreadful fit if she heard us talking like this," Julien sighed, refilling Remy's glass and taking a few swallows from his own, "To be so shamelessly fickle, that girl is the most jealous, possessive creature that ever lived."

((I'M JUST GLAD YOU'RE ALIVE, I THOUGHT PIRATES HAD GOTTEN TO YOU! T.T And yes...yes it is.))  

[Okimiyage]

Liesse lingered at the door long after Pierce had gone wandering down the hall, Dolly Jean in tow. Did no-one sleep in this house at all? --there seemed to be an air of anticipation as the night wore on, as though a vigil was being held until Antha's return. Even Rynn, in the room below, could not put his sense of unease to rest--although he had yet to rejoin the company of the Mayfairs, his mind felt tangled, a yawning, indecipherable menagerie of fever-dreams.
Liesse hesitated. The kittens in her arms squirmed--gently, she set them down on the carpet, where they began to revolve around her ankles, making tiny mewls. Beneath, Rynn tossed and turned, the sheets tangling around his narrow limbs. For some reason, her heart was hammering against her ribcage. What was this? All that was on the other side of that door was--was a boy, not anyone of consequence, not a monster with which to do battle. There was no reason she should be afraid. And yet her hand shook as she raised it to knock upon the door of his bedroom, and the sound of her knuckles rapping upon the wood was so faint and tremulous that it could scarcely be registered. Liesse wasn't certain that she wanted to risk requesting entry. It would be all too easy, she imagined, for Malakai to turn her away. He was drunk and embarrassed and--just a boy, anyways, a silly boy. What did it matter whether he wanted her there? But it did, most likely for the same reason that made Liesse's heart fair near rattle her own ribcage. Liesse wanted to be there. She wanted to touch down, oh-so-lightly, her fingers just the right weight on the handle to coax open Malakai's door, the softest click of the latch ever sounded. It was something the old Liesse would have never dared, not without Rynn's approval--or was it permission? But now, to her own chagrin, she found herself doing exactly that. Her footsteps were silenced by the Oriental rug. She moved as stiltedly as a fawn across the wide expanse of carpeting, slowly making her way towards the heap beneath the coverlet as if she thought sudden movements might startle it into flight. In fact, so focused was she upon stealth that she was halfway to the bed before she realised she ought to announce herself. Nervously: "Malakai?"
And then, a little louder, "Hey." A weight settled into the mattress next to him with a soft thump, followed by two smaller thumps as Liesse's kittens joined them. She studied the lumpy form beneath the fabric, half-amused by the idea of the boy cowering beneath, from a kiss, as though it were a thunderstorm or monsters in the closet. "Look, I--" she began, and then hesitated. She put out a hand atop the lump, felt the bony ridge of spine, then shoulder--softening her tone, she began again. "I'm not precisely sure why you're hiding up here, but--it's alright, you know, nothing's going to happen because of it. I know Rynn is rather intimidating, but I swear I won't let him--you know, do anything to you. Nothing untoward. Anyways, it's not anything you ought to be ashamed of--at least, I didn't mind it--and--it was my first, but I don't mind that it goes to you, I'd much rather you than someone unpleasant or mean-spirited or--" She began to realize that she was starting to sound like a gibbering idiot. Liesse gave a great sigh, more a frantic huff of air than any gesture of relief, and began finger-combing her forelock in a distressed sort of way. She wasn't exactly sure she should be here, sneaking into another's bedroom in the middle of the night seemed like the sort of action that could be dreadfully misinterpreted even if it was for the most innocuous of reasons. "Anyways, you should think of my feelings," she added, trying to adopt a lighter tone. "I mean, what am I supposed to think if the only boy I've ever kissed immediately runs away afterwards? It's the sort of thing that puts girls off the sport altogether. You ought to be more considerate of your partner." she said, mock-sternly. Her smile could not be seen in the darkness, but her hand felt along the outline of his arm, landed briefly upon the vibrating bundle which was the cat. Eventually, the weight of her touch settled upon the curve of his skull, just above the nape of his neck. "Come on. If you stay up here for the rest of the night, you'll just be giving Pierce more ammo to work with in the morning. He only likes torturing you because you respond so well to it."

On the floor below, Malakai was not the only one who was experiencing a certain degree of torture from the cousins. The dreams which he was roused from had been full of burning blood and falling stones--the smell of burning hair, and screaming. His hand, the mess of scabbed-over metal and burn scars--the ugly reminder of his contract with Cyrus--itched faintly when he awoke. He tried to pretend to be asleep for a moment anyways, before Courtland bounced onto the mattress. Rynn had rather thought his impression of a bad drunk was a convincing one. He was convinced, at least--convinced he was too light to handle his alcohol anywhere near as well as the Mayfair lushes. Struggling to free himself from their silky and entangly sheets, he nearly kicked Courtland in the family jewels.
"I'm not bothered," he grumbled half-heartedly. "I'm incensed. I don't think I've gotten a full night's sleep in weeks, with all the running around with every nocturnal creepy-crawly in Osiris City that this household seems to do. And the one time I'm offered a nightcap, I can't even get a full hour to myself within which to drift off." He slitted his eyes at Courtland, and gave an almighty heave with the sharp ends of his elbows behind it. "Geroff." And he had thought his brothers were bad. They might have planned to kill him once or twice, but at least they had never broken into his room while he was sleeping to ply him with hugs and alcoholic beverages. The Mayfair way of doing things was going to take a while to get used to. Cian would have been happy about it, he supposed--and it was that thought, finally, that roused Rynn out of the bed. Cian had adapted to this way of life remarkably well. And Liesse--well, anyone would take to Liesse. She was sweet. Rynn was the one who was having trouble fitting in now, for the first time in his life in a position where he felt out-of-place, his powers, his bloodline, his entire life's work all reduced to the singular definition--'worthless'. He was like a pet that they kept around for the entertainment of teaching tricks, now. And like any pet, he would have to learn the rules of his new household if he wanted to stick around. Not that he thought that they would throw him out--at least, not while Antha was still around, not while--well, it was funny, wasn't it? He never would have thought it would be Cian who he would one day call on as support, at least not reliably. And he still wasn't certain that he could, but it was time to start consolidating his allies, or the closest that he could get to them.

Beneath, unaware that Rynn was contemplating his usefulness, Cian set a small kettle of hot water atop the stove. He'd discovered an astonishing assortment of tea-making things in one of the cabinets--small, unusually-shaped spoons, things that looked like miniature fire-tongs, a mesh tea ball, strainers of various sizes, and an ungodly number of tea-bags stuffed into an ornamental brass tin. Cian was studying one whose tag was hand-written in an archaic foreign script--Arabic?--when Rynn came in. "Ah, just in time." he said, with false brightness. "Assam or chai?--or gris-gris bags, I guess it could be either in a witch's house, but it smells more like herbs than voodoo." Tapping the bag against his palm, he gave his little brother a rather wicked smile. The gold flecks in his eyes glinted madly. "I guess we'll find out~"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The scrape of the key in the lock and the quiet opening of the door found Malakai half-conscious, drifting just on the edge of sleep, shifting and fidgeting under the sheets as Amadeo rested his cheek against the boy's, his skin thrumming with his purring like a lullaby. It was the soft creak of the floorboards that snapped him into semi-alertness, made him roll over onto his stomach with a loud creak of the bed springs as he groaned, "Lea' me 'lone, Pierce." But it was strange how Amadeo wasn't reacting, how he didn't scramble away at the first whiff of the boy who liked to spin the poor little thing around and toss him in the air, making all sorts of loud and horrifying noises.
Liesse spoke his name and the boy seized up, frozen in place with his eyes popped open, his breath caught in his throat. Amadeo stirred to hear her, crawling drowsily to peek out from under the blanket and mew at the girl he had tentatively labeled as an ally against the rowdy creatures, but no sooner had he moved to near her than Malakai frantically locked his arms around the cat, drawing him back under the blanket in a flash and holding him tight to his chest. He could feel the shift of weight on the bed beside him, feel Liesse's gentle warmth, and then the soft, vague pressure of her touch through the blanket and he felt his face go uncomfortably hot with the rush of blood to his cheeks. He didn't move as she spoke---couldn't, had he wished to---he just listened quietly, feeling his flushed skin burn more and more until she said those horrifying words and all at once he bolted up, the blanket still draped over his head and shoulders, his eyes wide and glimmering in panic as he squealed, "That was your first?!"
He regretted the reaction even as it was happening, right down to the high-pitched tone of his voice for which he clapped a hand hastily over his mouth, but it was too late now, all he could do was sit beside her, his face finding newer, brighter shades of red as the blanket slipped down to his shoulders, nervously diverting his gaze as he calmed from his burst of panic. "I'm sorry," he repeated quietly, his words muffled behind his fingers before they dropped down to nervously cup the back of his neck, his lips moving as he began to form words that went from stutters to silence. "It wasn't...because of you, it...it was m-me. I...just...not...not like...this..." He made a small sound of frustration, his golden eyes sliding nervously up to glance fleetingly at Liesse before they dropped again and he continued to stammer, "The truth...er...truth is...I...knew...about you...before..." It couldn't be safe for his face to feel this hot, it had to be killing off brain cells in droves, he just knew it, but he had already started and he didn't know how to stop, he could only listen to himself blurt it out like an idiot in slow motion. "From Antha...I knew about you."
He felt incoherent, worse than Courtland on opium drawling on about human politics, of which he knew nothing, and in his frustration Malakai rashly touched his fingertips against the back of Liesse's hand, gave her that memory of Antha in the hallway just outside of the room they now sat in while dying Stefan spoke to Cian inside it. She had been preoccupied, on edge, gnawing shamelessly on her darkly painted nails, after all she had just been informed that she was pregnant---carrying Calais spawn no less, and that had been alarming to her at the very beginning, not to mention that she didn't know Cian, not one bit, and she wasn't in the habit of trusting strangers---but they had coaxed her into whispering about what had happened at Llyr's Court, glancing nervously at the door to Stefan's room in case Cian emerged, and when her big brother had clasped her pale, tense hand in his own he had seen it: Rynn and Liesse greeting them, Antha's fingers laced with Nicolae's and that fleeting thought that passed between them, 'What game are they playing at?, meeting the other three brothers, none of whom the Mayfairs had liked---Antha's curiosity had been piqued with Cian, he was amusing, and charming in the way most pleasantly inebriated junkies were, but in her head he had been the same shady, venomous threat as his siblings, hiding the same agenda that the Mayfairs had yet to figure out---and then the scene with the ghost of Mary, and Malakai knew his siblings well enough to identify their tactics as they were employed. Nicolae had talked, tried to draw out little pieces of information by way of irritating Rynn and the eldest brother, the rude one, and while Antha had assumed her usual whimsical, devilish persona she had imperceptibly zeroed in on Liesse. The girl wasn't acting normally, not even for the victim of violent possession, and the piece of Antha that had learned over time that everyone was looking to screw her over in one way or another had whispered quietly, 'weak link.'
That was how Antha had seen it; Malakai had his own way of seeing things, even through someone else's eyes, with events that were already over and done with, and just like his sister his attention had automatically focused in on Liesse. But it wasn't any scheming piece of his brain as it had been Antha's---Malakai didn't have a scheming bone in his body---no, he was more like a moth. When Malakai looked at things he saw colors, glows, light or darkness, and as he had said, Liesse had light. Not like Antha's, hers was aggressively bright, blinding, and constantly in the throws of bloody battle with her equally overpowering darkness. No, Liesse had a soft, comforting sort of light, brilliant but soothing, and that little bit of darkness from her seemed more circumstantial, not quite a piece of the girl herself, and when Antha's vision in the memory had turned elsewhere, to Rynn or Cian or Nicolae, Malakai's mind had protested in vain. There was something about that light, something about the shape of her soul, as if it were a puzzle piece he'd been searching for forever.
He had wanted to cry with those last flashes of memory, Liesse bloody on the ground as the vault burned, her light seeping away into nothingness. He didn't---even in this horrendously serious time his cousins would have teased him mercilessly, but he had wanted to, and later when he had gone out into the backyard in the rain to see if Antha was trying to drown herself in the pool again, shrugging on his jacket, feeling the unbearably heavy burden of grief in every cell in his body, he had seen Antha standing like a ghost in her white dress, heavy and stained from the rain, staring down into the bright blue basin. She had turned to him, her make-up all washed away, a darkened red tendril of hair plastered to her cheek, and put a hand on his shoulder, whispering over the pitter-patter of rain those heart-wrenching words---Don't fall in love with a girl that's already dead, mon frere----and then she was gone into the orchard and Rynn had stumbled after her, never noticing Malakai standing in the shadows beside the porch, watching the rain hit the petals of his flowers as his eyes burned and he ordered himself not to cry, demanded it, there was too much happening in the small world of the Mayfairs for him to be acting this way.
His mind tried, in the fragment of memory, to hide how his eyes had strayed to the trees, fixing on the distant glow of Antha, her soul, and the glow of Rynn's as he neared her, clashing even as they matched so perfectly they almost blended. They were like dragons, snarling and breathing fire even as they twisted together into a perfect knot, like yin and yang, like magnets. And there was that revelation, that quiet knowledge that Rynn was never going to escape Antha in the long run, they had already naturally ensnared one another whether they liked it or not.
Later there was the guilt, gnawing silently at him from inside because he had been horribly selfish, he had asked Cian about his sister in the guise of making small talk, and the boy had looked so torn up as he whispered a few things about her, so depressed, and that wasn't fair to him. More guilt later, because Antha was in his room, standing before him as he sat on his bed, and she had said something astonishing---she wanted to bring Liesse back from the dead. She had been watching him for a few moments with concern, because even if she never said anything, Antha knew her big brother like the back of her hand, could guess every thought that ran through his mind, and no matter how he had tried to hide it, she knew about his morbid secret obsession, the one he just couldn't get out of his head, that haunting, beautiful light. It wasn't right, bringing the dead back to life, it went against nature, it was monumentally dangerous to everyone and everything, and yet he couldn't voice a single word of the protests he had fashioned in his head, couldn't bring himself to try and stop this from happening, he would have done anything to bring that light back into the world of the living, to be able to look at it, touch it, not just dream of it, to long for it in pitiful vain.
He had tried very hard to distance himself from Liesse when it had actually worked. She didn't know him, didn't even know of him, and really he didn't actually know her either. But she still had that same light, no matter what body she possessed, and he had wanted to make her more comfortable, to make her feel at ease in that crazy, noisy house. And he wanted desperately to protect her from the corrupting influences of his cousins, those shameless beasts, but they had seen right through him immediately and so it had begun, the teasing, those passing insinuations---You were never interested in girls before, Malakai...maybe we should bring Sera over, clear your head?---and he had never wanted to physically harm anyone as badly as he had wanted to punch Courtland and Pierce that night. Or Sera, who had been physically on him since the moment she had entered the house, whispering things he really, reeeeally didn't want to hear from her in his ear, he had never liked her to begin with, not in any sense of the word, and try as he might he absolutely could not worm his way free of her, all he could do was stare at the floor with his burning cheeks and pray Liesse wasn't looking, wasn't watching and thinking that he was the same as all of the others, the same shameless, wanton beast as them. But that fear was at its worst later, in the same parlor, when he was scrambling away from her because he didn't remember consciously making the decision to kiss her, he had just sort of lost control for a moment, and the only thing he could think to do to keep himself from making some frantic, panicked speech about how he wasn't like the rest of them, that he wasn't just hitting on her at random or out of boredom, was to run. Run and hide because Antha would be home soon and Antha always knew how to fix his messes. She, and she alone, knew his borderline stalkerish obsession, she understood it, knew what it had done to him bringing Liesse back to life after months of his brooding, of remembering that light and mourning with his whole heart and soul that he would never get to see it with his own eyes. She had been expecting it probably. What was it she had said to him just the night before? She doesn't know anything about any of this, Malakai. He had felt agitated at the way her eyes watched him, full of so much concern, sitting beside him on the back porch in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep, him keeping guard against Cian, Michael, and Julien while she took a few drags of the cigarette she always went to great lengths to keep hidden from those three. He had been concerned about it the first time she woke him up in the middle of the night to keep watch, her pregnancy was too uncertain already, too important, but then she was hardly a normal girl, this was definitely not a normal pregnancy, and Antha had a way of doing absolutely whatever the hell she wanted anyways so what was the use in fighting with her about it? I understand it, I do, you see things about people from one glance that they don't even know about themselves, you know a person's character from first glance, but if we're being honest...this whole thing is a little creepy. She sighed once, softly, drawing her legs up into her chair and wrapping an arm around them. If you want her to fall in love with you, just---
I never said that! he had protested hastily, feeling his cheeks begin to burn as he turned his face from Antha under the pretense of glancing into the kitchen like a good lookout.
Regardless, just...try to forget about it, everything up until we resurrected her. Make a fresh start, take it slow. And maybe try to keep some distance between your thoughts and Rynn. She smiled wryly, trying to lighten the atmosphere, but alone amongst everyone he knew, he was the one who always noticed that tiny, wispy little change in her tone with his name. He had stared at her, his problems momentarily forgotten with his concern for his little sister, but she had hastily looked away, busying herself hiding the remains of her cigarette before she hissed gruffly, Shut up, don't even say anything.
I didn't. He couldn't had he wanted to, couldn't find the words to express how alarmingly those two shapes fit together, and besides, she probably already knew. Rynn was the blissfully ignorant one.
Good, because some things...some things just never, ever need to be said out loud. She poked his cheek, like any normal little sister in the world, her tone warping from deadly serious to taunting as she murmured, You're the best man I know, big brother...but it might be a little hard to explain these months of your torment over her while she was dead if you slip up.
Back in reality, in the present, Malakai's hand withdrew hastily from Liesse's, his fingers tightly grasping the hem of his blanket and pulling it down over his eyes like a hood as he made a small, helpless groan. "Maybe it was impossible with the Mayfair genes to completely escape being creepy." He attempted to smile through the suffocating feeling of awkwardness, and in that action there was a natural resemblance to Antha, but in the end his face was too hot and he frowned, gaze downcast. "It's not even like I was the first Mayfair to form a fixation on someone who was already dead...vampires excluded." Pierce should have just left him the hell alone, he thought glumly in the back of his mind. He should have left his door locked, with Liesse on the other side of it, and then Antha could have come home and kept him from spilling...well, pretty much everything she had warned him against spilling. He felt like the worst kind of stalker and he couldn't face Liesse, he just couldn't. But he had had to tell...she was upset, and he had outright stolen her first kiss, and she had to understand why he had run away, he had to at least make her understand that much... "I see things differently," he murmured in the faintest whisper, peeking hesitantly out from beneath the blanket only to drop his gaze, "That's what Antha always says...I look at people and see everything immediately, all the bad and all the good, the entire shape and shade of their soul. That night, when Cian came to live with us, when I saw you in my sister's memories..." He paused, fingers tensing as they clasped around his ankles, eyes staring past the floor at nothing in particular as he searched frantically for the words, "Your light, your soul, it...it resonated with me. I just...needed...you...to understand..." And finally that agonizing confession, that faintest of whispers, his fingertips pressing gingerly to his lips, "I didn't want it to happen like that..."
He went quiet, his lips hot beneath his fingertips, and recalled what she'd said. It was fine, she hadn't minded that it was him. She preferred him over, well, someone unpleasant. That was...something, right? He cringed inwardly. What could he expect, it wasn't like he was suave like Pierce, or poetic like Dorian, or ethereally beautiful like Courtland (plenty of people would have fiercely argued with him on this point, he was every bit as beautiful as his twin if in a slightly different way, but Malakai had never quite grasped the concept that he might be beautiful), nor did he have Antha's complete mastery of seduction. His eyes dimmed despondently and his poor heart gave a pang; he had never felt quite so acutely how brightly they outshined him, nor how hopeless he was in comparison. And all Liesse knew was that he was Antha's creepy older brother whose cousins always picked on him and who panicked far too easily.
He paused, reflected over his thoughts, and then suddenly, as if he would change the subject altogether---and really, he hoped if he gave her an out, a way to pretend he hadn't said anything, she would do so instead of run screaming from him---he gave a half-laugh, without humor, still staring down at the bed, "It's almost funny, isn't it? It's...hard to say, what Antha thought of all of you when she met you. It wasn't good, in any case, she expected nothing but trouble from you. And then somehow she brought the three of you here, one by one, labeled you all as part of our family. She even married Cian, of all things..." He reached out, sliding a picture off of the stack on the table beside his bed, Antha and Cian's kiss up on the altar. "...I think they're happy, despite all of that before."

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you." No sooner had Cian touched the little tea bag than Courtland was leaning against the counter on folded arms, that wicked little Cheshire grin spread from ear to ear. "Well, I would, and old you would have, but new you probably wouldn't. Rynn definitely wouldn't, he takes himself too seriously." He leaned briefly over the counter---laid himself across it, really, in order to reach far enough---and poked at either corner of Rynn's mouth, lifting his lips into a smile for the briefest second before he withdrew to safety, laughing.
"Courtland," Armand sighed anew, seating himself at the kitchen table and cracking the door before he lit up a cigarette.
"That's Marguerite's tea," the boy further elaborated, his eyes gleaming to match his wicked, incorrigible tone, "She used to brew it up in that laboratory of hers and drink it to give herself visions, like the old oracles of Greece. Some people even say it's what drove her mad..."
"Most people just chalk it up to the Mayfair genes," Armand muttered, rolling his eyes.
Courtland momentarily stood up straight, turning to glare at Armand over his shoulder and hiss childishly, "Ohmygod, will you let me tell the damn story the right way please?!" When Armand only gave a gesture of his hand for him to continue, eyebrows slightly arched, Courtland turned back and resumed his lax posture, that mischievous grin to his lips as he took the tea bag from Cian and turned it slowly by its string. "They say she got it from a mountain witch in the orient during the mid-nineteenth century. But then...well, Mad Aunt Maggie just had to try and perfect it. The herbs she got to brew it...she started growing them out of a special fertilizer she made with the remains of her experiments in her lab." He grinned all the wider, placing the tea bag back in Cian's palm as he whispered darkly, "Antha, Jack, and I tried it once, you know. We saw hell."
"Stop trying to scare them," Armand interrupted abruptly with an exasperated sigh, "It's like summer camp all over again, you getting kicked out because of the campfire stories you told. Seven kids under the age of ten put in therapy because of you."
"Whyareyouruiningthisforme?!" Courtland hissed in one long, shrill breath, turning to glare spitefully at Armand, "And I hardly think I'm going to be the thing to put the Calais boys in therapy."
But his words fell on deaf ears, Armand only gazed out the door in puzzlement, going to the windowsill and digging out a couple of cigarettes that had been jammed between the metal. "Who's hiding cigarettes out here?"
Courtland shook his head, giving into defeat, and settled into one of the bar stools at the counter, his chin resting listlessly in his hand. "Anyways, it's one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man. She put some DMT in it...just sort of scraped it out of some poor b*****d and---" He made a plopping sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, gesturing as if he had a syringe he was using to inject the tea with. "Funny to think she was actually worse than us, all the way back then..." He dropped one of the tea bags into the kettle as he spoke, watching it bleed a dark, reddish brown and muted, poisonous green into the water. "You should try it, Rynn. It shows you things about yourself you never even knew, cracks open your heart and shows you the truth. But then...I'd understand if you don't want to face what's really in your heart." He grinned teasingly, brimming with devilish charm.
"Lawrence is here," Armand announced shortly, and almost immediately Courtland had snatched the tea bags away, frantically hiding them in a drawer of oven mitts.
"We told him we threw it all away...he really is such a buzzkill, dear Laurie."
"I'm not even going to ask," the boy sighed even before he had fully entered the kitchen, his fingers clutching a thick file and his other hand massaging his temple, "I don't want to know. It's just...easier, not knowing what you lot are doing at any given time."
"We love you too, Laurie," Courtland beamed, jumping up to drape his arms lovingly around Lawrence, who could suddenly hear the veins in his head snapping.
"I only came by for this," he sighed, shaking Courtland loose and dropping the manila envelope down on the counter before he went to take a seat beside Armand and light up the cigarette he was offered.
"What is it?!" Courtland squealed excitedly, grabbing it up and flipping through the papers for a brief moment before unceremoniously dropping it back upon the counter, "Boring! Too many files."
"It's for Rynn," Lawrence hissed as if he was nearly at his limit, taking long, deep drags of his cigarette, and then making a hasty gesture at the file, "Antha said he'd probably get sick of sitting around this damned circus of a house before long, and even more so being dependent on her, since he hates her and everything, so she had me look up jobs he might like in case he gets fed up and vanishes again. You know, besides servant to invading vampires."
"Laurie, you're being me~an!" Courtland whined, popping up beside Rynn to squeeze his arms protectively around his shoulders.
"Am I?" Lawrence seemed genuinely surprised, putting a hand to his temple, "I don't mean to be. It's just been a long week is all. We're understaffed at the firm, considering I'm the only one in our entire goddamned generation who saw fit to pursue gainful employment." His eyes cut sharply at Courtland, who shrank under the implied accusation, hiding behind Rynn's back.
"I will remind you, Lawrence, that I am a published author," Armand retorted, giving a little 'hmph!' of indignation.
"You write dime store romance novels. Trashy ones, at that," Lawrence snapped back before turning his tired gaze back to Rynn, "I threw in some information on the firm in that file, while I was at it. Antha made the joke that you might like to be a lawyer one day, with the way you argue even when you're dead wrong. She may have been kidding, but all in all you're a pretty sharp kid. And your hair's already turning prematurely gray, that's half of the initiation to being a lawyer right there." He idly swept a hand back through his own silver hair, giving a half-smirk to himself.
Armand stared strangely at him. Courtland, peeping over Rynn's shoulder, let his jaw drop and squeaked, "Oh my God, Lawrence made a joke!"
"First time for everything," Armand murmured, almost as if he were dazed, quietly inching his chair away from his cousin.
"Shut it, all of you." He stubbed his cigarette out in the nearby ashtray, folding his hands demurely on his knee, and continued in his usual professional tone, "Cian, how are things? Antha tells me Julien seems to have abandoned his plans to make you conveniently disappear into a shallow grave, but that just doesn't sound like him."
"He needs Cian on his side," Jack interrupted, strolling casually into the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey in his hand only to have Courtland snatch it the moment he entered, hopping wildly onto the other boy's back with his legs hitched around his waist as he unstoppered the bottle. "Antha set up the line of succession too well. Everyone knows they're Cian's kids---we told everyone, the whole city knows---and Julien doesn't have a chance in hell of getting custody of them without killing off half of the family, starting with Malakai, the only good son amongst all of us. So the only way to his grandchildren is through Cian. And let's not forget, Cian managed to get Antha to do what they've been trying to get her to do for years in a matter of days. Besides...I think he feels bad for him."
"Unfathomable," Courtland muttered, taking a long drink of the whiskey before holding it to Jack's lips over his shoulder, "Oh, Laurie, did you hear the news? I'm going to have a son!"
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Lawrence swore under his breath, putting a hand to his forehead as he grimaced, "Who on earth consented to bearing your demonic spawn?"
"Don't know yet," he sighed, shrugging his shoulders, "Maybe Sera? Or that girl from that little dive bar? Or any of them, really. Maybe Liesse?"
"Get off, I'm getting out of the line of fire," Jack hissed hastily, throwing his cousin violently off of his back and scrambling across the room to the table.
"I'm kidding! Just kidding! I wouldn't Rynn, scout's honor. I wouldn't do that to Malakai, anyways. He's too good, I couldn't screw him over like that, it's like sleeping with an angel and not calling him afterwards. Maybe taking money from his wallet before you slip out in the middle of the night."
"You're losing your point, Courtland..."
"It's probably not Jack, with biology and all, so...I don't know, do you have any idea how many girls I go through in a month?"
"Better than you, probably. I have to deal with the media, after all, and you seem to forget about half of them when your drugs wear off."
"Speaking of which---" Courtland vanished for the span of a few moments, returning with four tiny cups that were probably older than sin itself, carved from jade into fierce little dragon heads, "You should try it, Rynn." He poured the tea with a certain amount of care, which was unusual for him, and then took up one of the cups and handed another to Jack. "This brew is pretty diluted, so no trips to hell, but..."
"Courtland!" Jack whined, pouting, "I told him we wouldn't try to drug him anymore tonight! How do you expect him to ever stop wandering around the house like he's a prisoner if we're not keeping our word?"
"I'm giving him the choice," Courtland retorted matter-of-factly, "He doesn't have to drink it if he doesn't want to. Not tonight, anyways. I wouldn't make a liar of you, love." Jack's fierce pout dissipated as Courtland's lips pressed affectionately to his cheek and eventually he turned, clenching his eyes shut and throwing back the small cup of tea, and returned the cup gingerly back to the counter, sticking out his tongue with the small utterance of, "Blegh!"
"Here, take a sugar cube," Courtland laughed, pushing the little sugar bowl at him before knocking his own cup back, with a great deal more finesse than his cousin.
"I'm telling you now," Lawrence sighed, the vein in his forehead visibly throbbing beneath his skin as he placed the thick, hypnotic scent of the tea, "If you start crying and confessing your love again, I'll lock the both of you out in the garden."
"Fine," Courtland purred, drawing his arms around Jack and resting his chin on his shoulder, the wicked grin spreading across his lips, "We've been meaning to christen the gardening shed anyways."
"I feel pretty certain the two of you have christened that gardening shed before. Repeatedly."
"Yes, but now everyone else is using it," Courtland pouted, tightening his grip on Jack, "Dolly Jean and Vittorio, Antha and Cian...next thing you know, Rynn's going to be violating it, too."
Lawrence gave a sudden snort of laughter, covering his mouth demurely with his hand, "That implies a Mayfair being involved. What Mayfair do you expect Rynn to end up in the gardening shed with?"
Courtland and Jack both looked at the boy in question, taking his measure. "Well I guess the answer you're looking for isn't me, sooo...Rowan?"
Armand and Lawrence, banding together now that Jack and Courtland had synced up, laughed identically. "Don't insult him," Armand murmured, shaking his head and taking a drag of his cigarette.
"Sera?"
Again the dual derisive laughter. "Only slightly less insulting. Besides, judging by her phone conversations with Saria, she's just waiting for Antha to die so she can make a pass at Cian."
A moment of silence. "That's pretty despicable," Courtland murmured lowly, his brows knitting over his wide eyes, and Jack nodded angrily, his lips puckered in disgust, "What makes her think we'd ever let her near Cian? We won't even let her have Malakai, and he's completely hopeless with girls."
"She underestimates the band of drunken ninjas determined to fend the likes of her off of poor, dear Cian," Lawrence murmured, and there was almost a hint of approval in his tone, something like affection, "And believe you me, you'll have your work cut out for you. Cian is Antha's husband, and father to the next designee, so when Antha is gone, he'll be the best match in the entire family, and those vultures will all descend upon him. But while you're fending off opportunistic little minxes, don't forget Rynn. He has his own club of admirers waiting to strike when Antha isn't around to keep them at bay. Apparently your air of danger is an attraction to them, Rynn. I swear, I will never understand women. Oh, our sister is among them, Jack."
"Nooooo," the boy protested with a great amount of gravity, shaking his head and crossing his arms to make an 'X'. "That's just no good. Seriously Rynn, if she ever makes a move on you, run screaming." He paused thoughtfully. "But I think Rynn's shrewd enough not to fall for any of them. Cian's the one who's weak to women." He grinned in the boy's direction, only slightly apologetic. "If you can ever bear to be with another girl again, after Antha."
"Somehow, I think he'll manage," Lawrence murmured, hastily trying to end the topic. His mouth had set into a hard line, his cold eyes gleaming murderously as they zeroed in on Jack. It was one of the few voices in the world that carried enough authority to actually silence the boy, his eyes widening a little at being so severely reprimanded with such indirect words. No matter what his cousins ever said against him, Lawrence was at least always mindful of other people's feelings, a virtue completely and totally lost on some of his cousins.
"Speaking of hopeless situations," Courtland murmured suddenly, his eyes turning to gaze at the ceiling, "Do you think it's time to intervene with Malakai?"
"I don't even know what you're talking about," Lawrence sighed, casting a sharp gaze at his cousins, "But don't. The last time you 'intervened on his behalf,' you locked him in a room with Sera and a bottle of whiskey until she outright stole his virginity. He cried for days, and I really can't stand to see Malakai cry. Neither can Antha, she was running around demanding someone file rape charges, do you remember? When she wasn't beating the hell out of you three, that is, that little twelve-year-old nymph child with the endless wrath of a harpy. Rynn, Cian, you might find it hard to believe but Antha has rather...mellowed out, over the years. It began shortly after she arrived here, when she was about ten, and she didn't even begin to calm down until she was fourteen. She was all boundless energy and ambition, the most wanton creature you could ever find, unconcerned with any damage she caused that did not somehow affect her. Oh, she destroyed everything and everyone and then laughed at it, passed it off as insignificant with her cherubic little smile, and always on just as many drugs as these two---" He motioned fleetingly at Courtland and Jack, who laughed, "Nothing could touch her---nothing could stop her---before the hunger for power stirred in her and, on a whim, she moved to overtake the entire city, bringing with it the burden of responsibility that forced her to begin to grow up. But even back then it was considered one of the gravest offenses even by her irrational standards to make her beloved big brother Malakai cry. She always delighted in being his precious baby sister, and he let her get away with everything, just so long as she made her puppy dog eyes at him."
"He's crying anyways," Pierce called from the parlor, and Lawrence gave a little sound of irritation as his cousin came to stand in the doorway to the kitchen, "He ran to his room and hid under the covers and tried to wait for Antha to come and coax him out. But I gave Liesse the key to his room and told her to slap him. Also, I threw the cat in there. Seemed like the right thing to do." He paused then, staring curiously at Armand, "Did you really punch Tori? Dolly Jean is beside herself about his black eye."
"You should have waited for Antha," Armand called in exasperation, shaking his head, "She's the only one who can handle him when he gets flustered like that. Lord, that boy is the most anxious creature that ever lived, we should really have him on medication." He said nothing relating to the matter of Vittorio, only fumbled in his shirt pocket and lit another cigarette, and Pierce gave a wry smile watching him before he rushed off to deal with Dolly Jean's sobs.
"I think Liesse will be able to manage him just fine," Jack weighed in thoughtfully, "Besides...judging by the way she blocked off the ties that bind us to her, and that power flare that even she couldn't shield us from completely, I don't think Evie's going to want to do anything when she gets home. She always gets so listless when she's been slaughtering things. Or when she loses control of her temper, and I definitely felt that. It's been a long time since she was that royally, maniacally, hellishly pissed off."
"I felt it, too," Armand murmured, the other two Mayfairs nodding silently in agreement, and Armand's eyes flashed uneasily at Rynn, "You've sealed that vampire's fate, you realize this don't you? She blames him for just how low you fell, even if she acknowledges it wasn't initially his fault---even if, hypothetically speaking of course, she subconsciously blames herself for how you initially began to spiral down and the guilt of it unhinges her---and nothing short of beating his shredded corpse into the ground is ever going to satisfy her."
"You say that like she wasn't going to kill him anyways," Lawrence murmured, casting Armand a sidelong glance, "Besides, he already enraged her with his treatment of Vikteren. Their history together is rather brutal, apparently."
Armand smiled darkly. "There is a very real difference between eliminating a threat and wanting with your whole heart to rip a creature's flesh from their bones and feel the death you caused in every last inch of them. You know that, Laurie, even if you like to pretend you don't. No, she's taking this all quite personally, and her composure was lost ages ago." There came then a short, dark laugh as Armand cast his fathomless gaze on Rynn and Cian. "There must be something in that Calais blood of yours, the way you two can stir things in our darling brat princess, drive her over the edge. Or, I guess she would be our queen now, wouldn't she? And Cian our king consort." He paused, throwing the boy a wink. "A heavy burden, to be sure. Honestly, I'm a little surprised you showed up at the wedding."
"I had handcuffs," Courtland announced cheerfully, his voice beginning to grow a little thick, "Just in case. But Cian was very good, he didn't make a break for it even once."
"I don't think anyone was more surprised than Antha," Lawrence chuckled, his voice betraying just a little of his exhaustion, "You should have seen her before the ceremony, she had at least six nervous breakdowns in the course of an hour, wringing her hands and pacing endlessly, eyes like a deer caught in the headlights. Uncle Michael was the only one who could talk her down, and I didn't think she was ever going to release her death grip on his arm."
"Hissing curses at Vera," Armand added, snickering, "She wanted her thrown out of the church. I thought it was just about the dress at first, but then she mentioned Cian and well...she's always had a habit of stealing anything that's Antha's like her life depends on it. Completely ruined Nicolae's life, had him drunk and trying to drown himself in the bathtub because Evie wouldn't even look at him, just scream at him about how much she hated him. She is rather cruel when she decides someone is dead to her."
"He was weak," came Lawrence's sudden sharp retort, eyes glassing over, "Couldn't even deny Vera when he supposedly loved Antha soooo much, enough to try to take her away from us, abandon us, to completely and utterly destroy the entire family---"
"Lawrence!" The sudden bark of his name snapped the boy back into reality where he sat blinking rapidly for a moment before his usual collected demeanor settled back over him, "Let it go, Laurie, it never came to pass. Besides, just a couple of days ago, weren't you the one who declared her the devil and chased her through the airship for two hours with a butcher knife?"
Lawrence shrugged just a little stiffly, trying to shake off the sudden awkward turn of conversation, "I don't recall very clearly..."
"...I think I can taste my emotions."
Lawrence only glanced at Courtland, his hazy eyes, before giving a shake of his head and a deep, heartfelt sigh. "There's the tea."
"Tastes like...love."
"Here it goes." Lawrence groaned anew, but the boys were mostly quiet, clinging to one another, those hazy eyes watching nothing in particular as Courtland's arms tightened quietly around Jack, whose fingers gently closed on his sleeve.
"What the hell," Armand sighed, going to the counter and pouring himself a cup of the tea, downing it with a little shudder of disgust, "I'd like to know my own feelings for once, too."
"Et tu, Brute? When is it ever a good idea to follow Courtland and Jack's example?"
"It feels like there's such a taboo on emotions lately. Like if we push them all back, they're not real. I'd like to actually feel something, at least for a little while. Besides...it helps me sleep." Setting the tea cup back down, he slid it gently across the counter towards Cian, a soft smile playing on his lips. "Well boys? There's two cups left. And don't let Courtland's story scare you---it takes three hours of brewing for one of these to make a draught such as he described. But the sleep that follows this diluted brew is heavenly, no dreams at all." He winked at Rynn, turned where the others could not notice it.

((...I so did not mean to write this much...))  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Mayfair Manor was not quite a house of sleep yet when Antha and Nicolae returned. It was quieter than usual, but there was still light and activity, still shadows cast on the lawn from movement inside, and Antha could only venture a silent sigh as she stood at the gate, idly turning the latch back and forth as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to go inside. “I could take you to Satis House,” Nicolae murmured beside her, and he couldn’t quite disguise the wistfulness in his voice, that hint of longing, that desire to have her to himself, just for a night, just this once…
Antha stepped through the gate without a word, padding up the stairs and into the house. She wouldn’t say it wasn’t tempting, that a small piece of her heart did not ache at the thought, however…that was long past, all of that. She was married. She was going to have children. She was going to be dead in a few months. She could do at least that much for Cian, she could be good in the short time she had left.
Courtland’s ears perked up at the sound of the front door, Antha’s familiar steps in the hallway, and moved to stand in line of sight of the stairs through the kitchen door, calling out before he even saw her, "Evie! You took forever, it was terrible here without y---" The boy stopped cold as he caught sight of his cousin, pausing at the bottom of the stairs with her hand laid listlessly on the banister, covered every inch from head to toe in that dark, sickly reddish brown of dried blood. Her head turned slowly, automatically, to look at him and their eyes met, his gone wide and blank with shock, hers dark and dead, listless. They said nothing---Antha didn’t want to talk about it, and Courtland simply didn’t have the words---and after a few seemingly endless moments she turned her head mechanically, facing forward, and continued silently up the stairs. All Courtland could think, in that little piece of his mind that refused to ever be serious even when the rest of it was blank, was that it would have been an excellent scene to put in The Shining. “Evie’s had a rough night…” he murmured at length, quietly.
Lawrence watched in silent concern, only moving to make a gesture towards the stairs and mutter hoarsely, "Cian, go."
But Courtland stopped him. "No, no, no," he protested, a hand on Cian's chest as he rapidly shook his head. They listened then for a moment in the silence as water began to flow through the old pipes before Courtland dropped his hand, staring hard at the floor. "She doesn't want us to see her like that," he said, slowly but with great certainty, an unusual ring of lucid authority, "Whatever happened...it was bad, guys, really bad, even by her standards. She won't want any of us to see her, to be around her until she calms down. Only someone she considers to be roughly as ******** as she is..." Courtland fell silent, and in the next few seconds all of the eyes present had settled with dark consideration on Rynn.
"You say that like she's going to be conscious for long at all," Armand murmured at length, turning and lighting a cigarette, "Even now I can feel her pulling on the chains that bind us, using our energy just to be able to move. I can feel the pain in every inch of her, inside and out, feel that distant horror caged in the back of her mind while the rest of it is numb, and I am neither the closest to her nor the most powerful among us." His eyes narrowed at Courtland, who went unusually still and stony-eyed. Say what one would about him, he was loyal to a fault and he wasn't about to say a word.
No sooner had Armand said his theories than they all felt that hold abruptly loosen, that pull on their energy vanishing, and immediately Jack was in a frenzy, trying to run for the stairs before Courtland caught him. "She's only passed out," he soothed his cousin with soft words, wrapping his arms around the panicked boy before making a gesture at Cian towards the stairs, murmuring pointedly, "Go." It was his job now, saving her, at least when she was in the house, and they had no right to do it for him. Even if Courtland did want to be the hero as he had always been, to pull her out of the glass prison and dry her off, tuck her into bed and watch over her as she slept, it was no longer his place, and he could respect that.
Armand gave a half-laugh, taking a long drag of his cigarette. “Great witches scare everyone around them,” he murmured thoughtfully, “But I guess demi-gods even scare themselves.”
As the others fell silent around him, Lawrence glanced at Courtland. He had felt it earlier, the slightest flash of power from Antha that she couldn't contain and had seeped through the chains that bound them, that even so distant, even through the barriers she had thrown up between herself and her cousins, had threatened to knock him violently out of consciousness, or sanity, with its force before it even reached him. He was certain the others had felt it too, for that split second before it had mysteriously vanished elsewhere and discreetly in the silent confusion, Courtland had turned his head to mask the strange look in his eyes, to press his sleeve to the trickle of blood from his nose before anyone noticed. And maybe no one else had noticed it, along with the quiet tensing of his muscles that had persisted until shortly before Antha returned and that hint of red like dried blood around his ears that his hair almost-but-not-quite hid, but Lawrence had sharp eyes and he had trained them well. Though Lawrence would never admit it and hardly anyone had witnessed it, Courtland was second only to Antha in his power, and when push came to shove he would do the most dangerous things to protect his family. Years ago, he had nearly killed Jack---his other half, his treasure, the last person he would ever hurt---in order to protect their family. In the course of that night, he had taken a great risk to his own life in shouldering the force of Antha's power, redirecting it from all of those many chains to himself, and probably hurt himself all the more in pretending he hadn't.
"Courtland," he sighed at length, with carefully restrained tones of irritation, "Go to bed before I take your damned tea and throw it down the sink."
The boy squealed in horror, clinging to Jack and whining, "You're so mean, Laurie!" before taking the convenient excuse, fleeing up the stairs and to his room without a fight where he finally collapsed.
As Lawrence gave a softer sigh, this one of exhaustion, Armand sat quietly regarding him with a bemused little smile. "Do I want to know?"
"No."
Armand simply gave a smirk and a dismissive shrug of his shoulders, glancing out the window as he murmured, "It feels a bit odd, doesn't it? A few months ago if Antha had dragged herself in like that we would have thrown her bloodied little self right into bed and all crawled in around her. But it just doesn't feel right these days, and anyways I don't think Cian would appreciate it."
"I think Antha would appreciate it even less," Lawrence replied shortly, "If she woke up to find that Courtland had been within ten feet of Cian while he slept, defenseless. I don't know about you, but she is the last person in the world that I want to see fly into a rage right now."
Armand gave a quiet laugh. "Ah, but that's a good thing, don't you think? If her fickle, secretive little heart did not love him, it wouldn't even be an issue."
Across from him, Lawrence merely fell silent in assent.

All Antha wanted was to lay down. She wanted to crawl into her sheets, to hide safely beneath them, and force herself into a deep, dreamless sleep. Maybe she wanted Cian there, wanted to bury her face in his chest and pull her arms around him just short of crushing him, but she wasn’t entirely sure about that point yet. But as usually tended to be the case when Antha was exhausted, drained of her power, and horrified at something or another, she found herself moving somewhat mechanically and ended up in her bathroom, pulling her dress over her head and dropping it into the bathtub where she could deal with it later. She stepped into the shower as she was turning it on, before it had even a moment to warm up (and it always took so long with those old pipes…). The icy splash on her skin brought her back to the moment as she stood with her forehead pressed to the antique tiles of the wall, forced her out of that eternity in darkness and blood and madness that she didn’t want to think about. It was all she could do not to start screaming, and if she started she wasn’t sure she would ever stop.
She had already begun to scrub the dried blood clean of her skin when the first hint of warmth flowed from the shower. It was comforting, the warmth, even when it turned scalding and her skin flushed scarlet beneath the touch of it. She didn’t even touch the knob for the cold water until she was satisfied that she was as clean as she was ever going to get, and that was when she leaned her back against the fogged-over glass wall of the shower, when she slipped listlessly down to the porcelain floor, her hands clenched uselessly in her lap, where through the heavy steam she could just make out the swirl of clear water, and that was where her vision blurred, her mind shutting down to spare her from the memories that threatened to surface, and the world went black and silent.

She didn’t know who had found or moved her, or if she had done it herself, only that the next thing she knew she had drifted into a semi-conscious state and she was nestled beneath her sheets in her own bed, swathed in her usual sleep shirt, her room dark around her but for the incandescent glow of moonlight through the sheer curtains. She could feel warmth at her back---Cian’s warmth, to be precise, and she gave a drowsy half-smile to herself that she recognized such an insignificant thing as the feel of his warmth in particular---and she found herself reaching instinctively for his arm, pulling it tight around herself before she fell back to mercifully dreamless sleep.

Will we have your power, mommy?
Antha could feel something like a smile, though she was not aware of any body with which to smile, only darkness and echoing voices. No, darling, not quite.
But why not?
She smiled again at this new voice, wryly. No one should have this power. I should never have had it, and I would never wish it upon you.
What about our Calais power?
That made her pause. She didn’t know much about the powers particular to the Calais, only the general feel of it, and she found herself whispering, You’ll have to ask your father, when you are old enough.
Mommy, you love daddy, don’t you?
Of course I do. What sort of question is that?
There was a thoughtful pause, a sense of hesitation that wasn’t hers before two voices whispered in perfect harmony, What about uncle Rynn?

Julien thought it one of the greatest shocks of his life when he awoke the next morning to discover Antha already closeted away in his study at such an early hour. He pressed his ear to the door, heard the rapid scrape of a pen flying across paper, the pages of books turning, the creak of the desk chair, and finally withdrew silently down to the kitchen and then the parlor with his paper.
Jacob, who had been downstairs when she arose, had offered her something to eat but she had refused and then vanished, leaving him anxiously cleaning the kitchen from the night before and then setting to preparing breakfast. Concern came naturally to Jacob, especially towards Antha who had seemed the only creature in the city to notice the lonely, destitute child hardly older than herself on the street, who had seen good in him and tugged on Julien's hand and demanded he find some useful employment for the boy, who had brought him into her family home and always treated him kindly, and he had as a result always tried to slyly force his mistress to take better care of her health. This concern was particularly acute now that she was pregnant, but as always Antha lived in her own world of preoccupation and was not easily forced into doing anything, slyly or otherwise.
Hence, Jacob milled about the kitchen with his brows knit, only half aware that he was waiting for one of the Calais boys to show up. He knew they would rise before the Mayfairs, and they were both capable of handling princess Mayfair, in their own distinct ways, so with the first one he saw enter the kitchen he was immediately upon him with the small tray he had prepared, bearing a tea service and several of Antha’s favorite things, begging in soft, rapid tones, “Oh, thank goodness! Mr. Calais, please, can you take this up to mademoiselle Mayfair in the study? She’s been up for a while and I couldn’t get her to eat, and she ordered me not to disturb her. Please?” He turned before an answer was given, refusing to accept a ‘no’, and continued with breakfast preparations.
Upstairs, the clock chimed nine o’clock. Antha glanced at the nearest clock on the wall to confirm the hour, returning her pen tiredly to its anchor and leaning back in the plush leather office chair with a sigh. She had hardly slept---it had been impossible, with the chattering of voices in the back of her head that grew progressively louder as she slept, and the unnerving questions they asked so persistently. They really did take after her, her children, and it gave her a moment of pause, reflecting on her own similar tendencies.
The girl turned, opening the drawers of the desk one by one and rummaging through them until she finally came across one of the slender packs of cigarettes Julien kept hidden amongst his things, revealing beneath them the framed picture of her mother. She retrieved them both, her gaze settling darkly on the portrait as her fingers idly removed one of the cigarettes from the pack.
The picture was cast hastily aside in a flash, tossed down on the desk amongst the scattered envelopes that had come to populate it over the course of the morning, labeled with various names from her cousins to Khayman, Vikteren, Atticus, Singe, and half a dozen others. The ones nearest her were labeled with the names of the three Calais siblings, with the ones for Rynn and Cian being particularly thick, and she glanced thoughtfully at them before rising from the chair and stepping with a sigh through the doors to the balcony, leaning her back against the wall where no one could see her even if they were awake, and lighting up the cigarette.
It had seemed monstrously important to her suddenly that she divide up her legacy for safe keeping as soon as possible. There were too many loose ends, too many secrets and duties, too many reminders to be made and places and people to protect, and she couldn’t trust all of it to any one person. Courtland and Rynn were almost capable of it, true, but Courtland was carefree and drug-addled and Rynn was…well, Rynn. No, Sebastien was the only one who could properly pick up all the pieces and rebuild them into a kingdom, the trick was keeping those pieces safe in the meantime. Besides...who knew when she would be gone, and she had things she needed to say, things that the timing never seemed right for.
Antha sighed heavily. The family meeting had been arranged for that afternoon, where she had to sign the papers to make Julien the official head of the family (or not, which was always an option, if an unthinkable one) and properly designate the unborn Vanessa as heiress to the family legacy. And she had to meet with David, which was a pain whenever business was involved, and it didn’t help that this particular bit of business had her enraged at the entire damned order.
Yes, it was going to be a very long day indeed.  

[Okimiyage]

The first Calais to awake was not Rynn, who had (despite his consistently aggravated demeanor) consented at last to drunk with his new-made cousins last night, nor Liesse, who had gone to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, having stolen softly beneath Malakai's covers.
The sunlight spilled across the coverlet, illuminating the streaks of gold in Cian's curls. Begrudgingly, he stirred and rose, and found himself in a waking dream.
He froze. He had not had one of these since he was very small, and the father of their lineage still lived to guide him. The sunlit sheets dissolved into planks of wood, and the lushly polished furniture dissipated into cobwebs and shrouded silhouettes. The attic. He moved without seeing, without realizing the intent of his motion, until his runes were well marked upon the floor.
They were shaped like the path antlers take as they grow, the pattern in which skin splits as it is gnawed apart by tooth or claw. It was marked in deep crimson, although by the time he had finished, it had dried to dirt rust, and he could hear the c**k crow beginning to announce the hour.
His fingernails, in the dream, were gnawed to bloody stubs; his own digits ached in sympathy, knotting in the sheets as he slept.
The dream-self knew how to complete the ritual; the seeing-self watched, paralyzed, as the body that was his began to strike the runes, the floor, and his mouth opened in a scream that had words and rhythm to it. The entire house shook. He could feel the spell in his bones, making his fingers tremble, jarring his teeth in a mouth that tasted like salt and copper-blood. The very foundations shuddered in apprehension of the coming words. He could not see his own face in the dream--the Cian whose fists became raw and embedded with splinters upon the rough attic floorboards was facing away from him, always facing away. But like a Noh actor, his gestures were theatrical enough that they were easily interpreted. He shook the house to its very foundations, but after the syllables were all spat out--and blood with it, the dream-self coughed blood with all the force that had ruptured through its throat--the apprehensive moments of silence gave way to nothing.
Nothing.
And the dream-self covered his face, and lifted it to the ceiling, and gave out a low and torturous utterance that went on for eons. There was that curious quality of pure and untouched despair in the sound, a longing for the hope that has been utterly snuffed out.
Cian watched the cry go out, and the poor simulacrum of himself fall prone upon the floor, bloody up to his wrists. The floor trembled. His heart ached in sympathy.
Little white ghosts began to steal about his body then, as the light in the room dimmed, icy fingers trailing the length of his spine. When his voice came unbidden, aloud, although he had not had the tongue with which to speak before--"Enough!"--it left ice crystals hovering in the air.
It seemed as if all the dream had waited for was a cue. The house sundered. In a roar of groaning wood, the floor erupted in a wall of splinters and beams. Cian watched the dream-self folded up into his own blood-runes like a paper doll, and then he was falling through the air, crashing through the stair-well and endless velvet drapes.
He almost did not remember the words his father had taught him to end the dreams, but in the end they came willingly enough, if jerkily and ill-pronounced from disuse. And he came awake in a cold sweat, and
alone in Antha's grand four-poster canopy, the sheets all a-tangle around his ankles.
Cian half-climbed, half-fell out of bed, and dressed himself with a hastiness that left his hair in a gravity-defying state and half the buttons on his shirt assigned to the wrong holes. Finger-combing his bangs back hastily, he threw himself out into the hallway and nearly collided head-first into Liesse.
The girl colored, and threw herself back against the wall-paneling. Her hair, like her brother's, was in a state of complete disarray, and she was still wearing her dress from the night before. "Don't tell Rynn!" she squeaked, with all the authority that a mouse queen might demand, and bolted down the hall without another word. Cian blinked, hardly daring to believe what his eyes had just witnessed, and took a long and questioning look down the hall after his little sister. She had come from the direction of Malakai's room. Could it be--?
(In fact, she had done nothing more than sleep in the hours between, albeit in the bed of what was somewhat a stranger. It was a credit to Cian that he silenced his own suspicions without giving them much thought, although it has to be said that in some part this was also due to his eagerness to see his wife.)
Rattling down the stairs at a cheerful pace, Cian opened his mind to the house and searched at leisure for Antha's presence. Rynn was still asleep--not in their room, oddly enough, into which Liesse presently fled, but on the couch in one of the parlors. Presumably he had been a victim of that 'herbal tea' which the cousins had introduced them to--Cian wished he had known sooner how susceptible his brother was to drugs of that nature. In the study, he detected signs of activity that were immediately identifiable as coming from Antha. Nothing else had her peculiar brilliant acidity. She must have gotten up even earlier than he, although for what purpose Cian couldn't imagine. Bad dreams, too, perhaps. But he was eager to see her, enough that when Jacob arrested him with his request, Cian was happy to take any excuse. "Ach, thanks,"--as he lifted the tray out of the other man's hands. "It'll be a grand entry with this to offer up. I was going to just barge on in, but this'll make the barging much more appealing, I'm sure." He gave Jacob a grin, because he was trying to mask the sense of trepidation that his morning's dreams had left him with, and fair whisked out of the kitchen with it humming. Cian had that rare but simple talent of pleasing himself, if demanded. He didn't want to greet Antha in a foul mood--what was the point of wasting their time together like that? He knocked on the door of the study twice before he entered, short raps, and--if that didn't get her attention--the enormous "Ta-DAAAHHH!" would as he held aloft Antha's tray of breakfast goods. He had the enormously wicked impulse to put it down on top of all her papers--she had surrounded herself with a veritable nest of them--but the good sense to clear off an area nearby first instead. "Couldn't sleep? There's caffeine to make it better." He eyed one of the papers close at hand just long enough to recognize the legal heading, and stretched out a hand to examine the document. "You're working early. What's all this, then?"

Rynn jerked awake, highly disturbed to find himself not at all where he expected to end up last night. That is, surrounded by the cousins, all of whom were presumably passed out. So that's why they had such heavy drapes on all the rooms. Not for the vampires amongst their cohort, but so they could sleep inebriated until high noon. Unlike Cian, who was in the practice of going to bed with someone and waking up alone, Rynn was not accustomed to peculiar sleeping arrangements like these. He had the feeling he was going to have to make some adjustments in his expectations if he continued to live among the Mayfairs. Grumbling, he lifted someone's arm off his hip and gingerly withdrew his legs from beneath one of the cousin's heads. The names would come eventually, he was sure, but for now it was hard to keep them all straight. Standing, he brushed ineffectively at the creases in his pants. What had woken him up?--oh yes. He crossed to the door of the hallway, opened it, and looked down at the persistently scratching kittens on the other side. There were already a significant number of needle-thin scratches on the beautifully finished hardwood. The kittens blinked at him, and then opened wide pink mouths in a simultaneous miaow, the most plaintive that Rynn had ever heard. Rynn had not kept cats around much in the past.
Which meant he was particularly susceptible to their whining.
He followed them obediently into the kitchen, both scrambling to keep ahead of the other, and nearly did not notice Jacob while he watched them. When he did, he stiffly straightened his back and gave an embarrassed cough. "I believe they're hungry. They woke me up--" Casting his glance around the kitchen, anywhere rather than meet the other's eyes, he tried a cabinet and looked inside. Soap flakes. "What do kittens eat? Do we have a plate for them, or...?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

As it was, Cian didn't need the knocks upon the door or the loud exclamation to announce himself, Antha knew the sound of his step on the stairs, and hastily had flicked the cigarette out across the garden, through the trees and into the street, before darting to the desk and downing the last of her cold tea and spritzing herself with air freshener, hiding the evidence. It was a ritual that she and Courtland had perfected some years ago, when Julien gave them no end of grief for their smoking.
When he entered, she blinked big eyes at him and the tray in his hands, the small, slow smile coming easily to her lips. "Ah, drats, you're up. I meant to crawl back into bed before you woke up, but the time seems to have slipped away from me." She sighed softly, shaking her head. "We never seem to wake up together, do we? It feels a bit like missing out on one of the fundamentals of marriage. But anyways, Jacob got to you then? Ah, that fretful boy. But I very much doubt there's caffeine to be found here, unfortunately." She gave an irksome smile gazing at the tray, laying a hand pointedly across her stomach before she shook her head, dismissing the whole sad affair, and leaned across the desk to give him a light kiss of greeting. It was then that her eyes raked over him in inspection, giving a curious tilt of her head before her fingers went nimbly to the buttons of his shirt, rearranging them in the proper order, and then to his hair to comb it out where, at the very least, it did not sneer in the face of physics. "But I'll warn you, you do anything to these papers and it'll be your head, love." She dropped softly into the office chair then, scooping up some of the envelopes and thumbing through them like a flip book. "These envelopes hold my entire legacy between them, split into pieces for safekeeping, among other things." A soft sigh escaped her lips as she tossed the letters errantly back onto the desk with the others, briefly taking up the particularly thick envelope that bore his name and turning it around and around in her fingers before tossing it back into the pile, leaning back in her chair and rubbing the backs of her eyes. "Seemed like the thing to do, once it became impossible to sleep. Although, I strictly forbid anyone from opening them until I'm gone." Somewhere deep down, that power thunked against the lock she had placed haphazardly upon it and it was all she could do not to cringe.
"But enough of that," she dismissed the subject, sweeping up the letters and sealing them away in one of the drawers of the desk, the key to it vanishing in her fingers, before she moved to pour two cups of tea, tossing the picture of her mother back into its drawer as if it were nothing in the process, "I hope you slept well, at least, you're going to need it. The family meeting has been scheduled for today, and you have no choice but to attend. We have a special conference room for it on the top floor of the Mayfair and Mayfair offices, which is one of those monstrous, gleaming skyscrapers that dragons would guard, in another reality, with at least fifty Mayfairs seated around a big, polished table and me and Julien staring one another down from either side of it. Think of it like the breakfast table, only three-hundred times worse." She paused, taking up her teacup and sipping the muted yellow contents, her eyes flashing thoughtfully at the trees. "It's essentially a courtroom, actually. Everyone presents their issues and everyone else bickers about it, and then I have to give my proclamations as Designee of the Legacy. Oh, and..." She smiled, apologetic and amused all at once. "You have to officially either accept or deny the invitation into the family which Stefan, bless his thoughtful soul, extended to you as an outsider before he died. Nothing terribly important, you don't have to make any oaths by blood or renounce your own name or anything, only make the declaration of your intentions to either be a true and loyal member of the family or not, typical of our sort of clan and the slavish devotion we pay to our name. Technically, this is the time where family members may make objections to your addition amongst our numbers but...well, I'd like to see them try. Anyways, I do not know who ever would, except for Julien on his worse days. No one would ever second guess Stefan's decision to ask you into the family even if we hadn't married, and anyways the mainstream cousins adore you, the girls are enraptured with you, and the old ones are only happy to see someone taking the traditional route in this day and age. And Julien actually seems rather impressed by you, now that he's taking a proper look."
A door creaked open in the hallway, slow footsteps shuffling carefully down the hallway, and Antha's eyes narrowed at the door before they stopped hesitantly, lingering. "Don't make me say it again," the girl called, out loud this time, and finally Malakai slunk quietly into the study, his cheeks preemptively flushed. "Take a seat," she offered, and despite her best efforts she could not quite disguise the bright glimmer in her eyes or the mischievous smile that clung to her lips. "You know, it's quite useful to be able to recognize something like a particular set of footsteps in the hallway. When someone tries to sneak by..." She made a small passing gesture at her ears, her eyes sharpening with that teasing glimmer, "I don't miss a thing. Actually, there were two sets of footsteps the first time you went down the hall, wasn't there Cian?"
Malakai, who had made himself very small in the chair across from Antha, turned all the redder, glancing up and uttering a hasty squeak of, "I didn't do anything!"
"Oh, I believe that," Antha sighed at length, growing just a touch more serious, "At least in the way you mean it. But you told her everything, didn't you?" Malakai lowered his gaze, nodding slowly, and Antha gave a small, exasperated sigh. "Ah, big brother, what did I tell you?"
"She was so sad!" Malakai protested, his hands clenched together in his lap, "And I...well, you weren't here, and I messed up."
Another sigh, Antha leaning back in her chair. "Nothing to be done about it now, I suppose, the cat's out of the bag. The creepy, creepy cat. And what's she going to do, run screaming from you? Thanks to her connection with Rynn, you're the only one that can keep her in her body. It's sort of fitting though, don't you think? Weeks upon weeks of obsessing about a dead girl, tormenting yourself with the memory of her, and when she's brought back, it falls on you to keep her on this side of the great divide."
"More importantly," Malakai stuttered hastily in an attempt to change the subject, "How are you? That thing last night...it didn't feel very good."
"You felt that, did you?" Antha touched a hand to her temple in a gesture that innately resembled Julien, though no one would ever mention such a similarity aloud. "I'm fine, now. Only exhausted. Which reminds me, the last thing I remember last night was being in the shower. I wasn't sleepwalking again, was I?"
"Bad day for it..." Malakai murmured to the former comment, not having been present to witness who had dragged her out or if she had done it herself.
Antha laughed. "That's for certain. Oh, I do despise these family meetings. If they're not horribly drear, then they're an absolute headache. Ah, right, but Liesse will have to come, considering the Mayfair blood in her new veins. I'm trusting you to watch out for her, big brother, or else the wolves will set upon her." Malakai nodded seriously, brows furrowed with concentration as he listened. "Not least of all aunt Suzette. Oh, I can only imagine how much she would love to go matchmaking for a sweet little thing like Liesse." The boy paled anew, his eyes flashing panic, and Antha laughed all over again. "You are a terribly open book, Malakai."
He pouted, folding his arms on the desk and resting his head against them, facing Cian. "Cian, tell your wife it's not nice to tease her brother for things like this."
"Nice, no, but terribly fun." With a final small, bemused laugh, Antha dismissed her brother, letting him amble groggily out the door and down the stairs anxiously picking at the cuffs of his shirt. Antha sat quietly back in her chair, legs crossed, fingers laced, eyes still focused on the closed door behind her brother with that Cheshire grin curling her lips. "Do you ever wonder if fate is simply sick of dealing with all of these separate witching families? If maybe they make us so that we are all born for one another, families pairing into one another until we are all one mass to deal with? Let's see...I found my way to you, and Malakai found his way to Liesse, so who gets Rynn?" The girl laughed, tracing idle figures on the glossy wood of the desktop. "I wondered how your siblings would fare under the immense weight of my own family's, shall we say, peculiarities. I expected Rynn to last longer before he began cracking, but that tea might as well have been cult Kool-aid, as far as my cousins are concerned. He's in the thick of it now, Courtland and Jack are going to claim him, and Liesse..." There was a sudden furrowing of her brow, a dark flash in her eyes as she glanced out the window, murmuring almost to herself, "Ah, but Malakai is a good boy, he does as he is told, and the moment they find him an arranged match that he can't make a good complaint against, his fate is sealed. It's the cruelest thing, with the way he's brightened up ever since Liesse came here..."
The girl paused thoughtfully, diverting her eyes to hide that dark flash of pain in them, the helplessness, and only snapped out of her thoughts to turn her gaze to the tray in preoccupation, sighing. "Jacob is slipping, not sending me any milk. One moment, love." She was gone in a flash, her footsteps rapid on the stairs, and was back in mere moments. "Breakfast should be ready soon. It's a good thing, too, we don't have long before the meeting is scheduled. You had better start steeling yourself now, there are going to be a lot of eyes on you, taking your measure. Allowing people into the family proper isn't something we do often, it generally isn't considered to be worth the risk when an outsider marries into the family. Even my great-grandfather was denied true admittance when he married the Designee of the Legacy, too many people were uneasy giving him access to our dark, dirty little secrets. Uncle Michael was the last one to be accepted, and that was two and a half decades ago, a dozen people have been denied since then, so no one takes this decision lightly."
It was at this moment that the doorbell began to resound throughout the halls, a dull chiming like heavy church bells in a slow, melodic rhythm.
The doors along the upper hallway opened one by one, feet shuffling sleepily as the cousins came to stand in their doorways, peering down the hall with bleary eyes. Who the hell rang the doorbell?

Jacob watched Rynn only idly from the corner of his eye as he went about his business, not saying anything until the boy noticed him at the stove, flipping pancakes, and then he just gave a small, airy laugh. "If I may, Mr. Calais," he began gently, wiping his hands on a dishtowel and going into the pantry to fetch the bag of cat food, "Let me offer you some advice. You're far too stiff, and the Mayfair boys will never let you rest so long as you are." He retrieved a comparatively plain porcelain bowl from the cupboard as he spoke, filling it with the cat food and setting it on the floor for the kittens. Amadeo came running at the sound, and Jacob paused long enough to give him a scratch on the head before going to wash his hands and return to the stove. "And the longer you resist them, the more zealously they will try to force their love upon you."
Amadeo watched Jacob as he moved, standing courteously aside and letting the kittens eat first, but when he stopped he trotted his way over to Rynn, winding his way around the boy's ankles and rubbing his cheek against his leg until his ears perked up at the sound of footsteps on the stairs and Antha appeared in the doorway, at which point he bounded towards her, mewling pitifully until he was brought up into her arms.
"Mademoiselle," Jacob greeted her with more than a hint of relief.
Antha smiled at Jacob, scratching idly between Amadeo's ears before she turned to Rynn, that glimmer springing to her eyes as the smile sharpened into something taunting. "Good morning, Rynn. Care for a cup of tea?"
"Evie!" Pierce scolded her, strolling into the kitchen after her, "For shame, taunting a boy about his drug use. I didn't expect it from you of all people, especially after that time under the bridge---"
"That'll do, Pierce," she shut him down hastily, letting Amadeo crawl up onto her shoulder before going to lay a light, fleeting kiss on Rynn's cheek. "I was only teasing, Rynn."
In the hallway, they could dimly hear Julien complaining about how no one was getting ready when the appointed time of the meeting was drawing near. "You had better eat fast, mademoiselle Mayfair," Jacob warned quietly.
"I'm not hungry," she dismissed it airily, retrieving a glass of milk from the fridge and prancing back up the stairs almost soundlessly.
"Speaking of the family meeting," Pierce purred, leaning against the counter and snatching a piece of bacon while Jacob's back was turned, "Your attendance isn't mandatory, Rynn, so you can have a little time to yourself today if you like. Jacob will be the only one at home, everyone else has to go, including Cian and Liesse. Of course, if you want to listen to everyone arguing with the rest of us..." He grinned, but did not quite finish his sentence before the doorbell sounded.
Jacob startled, looking wildly towards the dining room door. "Who on earth could that be? And at this hour?"
By the time Jacob finally came running to answer the door the Mayfairs all stood either at the top of the stairs, peering down them, or behind them, spying from around them, depending upon the location of their room. It was hard to tell who stood upon their porch at first, Jacob was in the way, but when Antha tentatively began to venture down the stairs her cousins followed curiously behind her, their consciousness still fragmented. It was only when they had reached the atrium that Jacob stepped politely aside, asking the visitor inside, and all at once Jack startled, calling, “Grandmother!”
The Mayfairs, even disheveled and clothed (or half-clothed, as was the case with the vast majority of them) in their pajamas, bleary eyed and desperate for more sleep, all suddenly seemed to stand a little straighter, to fidget nervously just a little, their eyes shifting back and forth from blinking curiously at the old woman to lowering respectfully.
Suzette Mayfair was a willow of a woman and always had been, clothed in a long, fine silken dress that was very typical of her and an aged white fur coat that Jacob took gently from her shoulders, and when the bright blue eyes set in her pale, wrinkled face cast her gaze across the young Mayfairs from beneath her wide hat of flowers and lace and pearls, they all took on the countenances of children waiting to be scolded until her eyes zeroed in on Jack. “Jacques Pierre Mayfair, would it kill you to pick up a phone and call your grandmother?”
Jack flinched, primarily from being scolded, but only muttered, “Grandma, it’s Jack, just Jack.”
“I shall call you no such thing!” the woman snapped, though her voice was always soft, the power of her words came more from those pale, ancient eyes, “You were named for two of your distinguished ancestors, sons of Deborah no less, and I will call you as such!” Again that flinch, ducking his head and drawing a half-inch closer to Courtland before, mercifully, her eyes turned and settled on Pierce. “Have you come home to us, Pierce?”
“Yes, aunt Suzette,” the boy mumbled, staring down at his feet and fiddling nervously with the band around his wrist.
The old woman nodded approvingly before her gaze moved on, narrowing now at Courtland. “Courtland Alois, what is this I hear about you and Mrs. Astoria’s grandson? She’s quite up in arms about it all, we can’t even carry on a proper book club meeting.”
“I don’t know, how much did he cop to?” Courtland asked, a split second before the old woman’s elegantly gloved hand popped him in the back of the head and he flinched, his hand rubbing the back of his head as he muttered, “He had pretty eyes, and he followed me to that hotel!”
Suzette gaze a wispy sigh and a single shake of her head before she continued on, her gaze settling on Cian, and before any of the Mayfair cousins could even begin to guess what he could possibly have done, Suzette’s face lit up, her hands coming up before her as she strode gracefully towards Cian, exclaiming, “And look at you, little honeybee!” Her hands cupped his cheeks, her fingers briefly pinching them as she said with delight, “I see Jacob has been a good boy and had you properly fed, n'est-ce pas? I might say that perhaps you do not remember me, with all that was going on when Antha first brought you to this house, but how could you possibly forget a face this old and wrinkled?” Suzette smiled at him in good humor, the pale, papery skin around her eyes crinkling.
“Honeybee…that’s a new one,” Courtland whispered very quietly.
Beside him, Antha gave the smallest shake of her head, leaning in to whisper just as quietly, “She used to call oncle Stefan honeybee.” But her whisper had brought her to attention and Suzette’s eyes turned sharply on the Designee of the Legacy, “Antha Evelyn Éclaire Cosette Mayfair, don’t you even get me started on you.”
Antha immediately turned flustered and panicked, stammering, “What did I do? I did what I was supposed to, I got married, I’m procreating, what more do you want from me?” The girl flashed her ring, which Suzette’s eyes did dart to approvingly, but her gaze was still locked sourly to the girl and Antha finally ducked behind Cian, hiding her face against his shoulder, and murmured childishly, “I’ve been alarmingly good, there's no need to go spouting off all of those names.”
“There's no need to go traipsing through this city in the thick of the night covered head to toe in blood, that's what there's no need for, young lady."
Antha rolled her eyes, murmuring, “Oh, that,” and then gave a tiny squeal and scrambled further behind Cian to avoid being smacked as Courtland had when Suzette raised her hand.
"Madame?" Jacob piped up, gesturing nervously at the breakfast table behind him which had been prepared as she spoke, and the old woman lit up happily, ambling towards the dining room, murmuring to herself, " 'Oh, that,' indeed! You had better hope for honeybee's sake that your daughter is not such a devil-may-care little princess, traipsing about this city at the witching hour with her brother, stirring up rumors. Cut from the very same fold of cloth, you and our runaway little moonpie, both of you too charming for anyone to hold you accountable..."
Antha, hovering anxiously behind Cian to keep someone Suzette liked between the two of them, had automatically given up her seat to Suzette but the old woman had gone to the other end of the table, taking her cane and smacking Julien squarely on the calf with it. "Julien, have you taken leave of your senses?! Here you have an old woman as a guest in your home and you don't even offer her your chair! Good gracious, if your father was still here, bless his soul..."
Julien, hurriedly gathering up his newspaper and jumping out of his seat, only muttered under his breath with an astounding lack of his usual airs, "Funny how some old people have the good grace to die..."
As Suzette took his chair, she paused briefly to administer another smack of her cane against his leg. "What was that, Julien? I didn't quite hear you. You know how we old people are with our hearing and refusal to roll over and die." There was a subdued smattering of laughter as the Mayfairs took their seats and Suzette glanced around herself, her eyes zeroing in now on Rynn and Liesse. "Oh no, this won't do. You children---" She motioned at the Calais twins and then the chairs to her right, "You come sit by me. Cian, I shall excuse you from my company to be by your wife. No need to look at me like that, sugarplum." The last was said to Antha, whose eyes had narrowed suspiciously as she took a possessive hold of Cian's arm, which was made clear by the term of endearment. Antha was sugarplum as Malakai was sweetpea and Dolly Jean was pumpkin and Nicolae had been moonpie and as apparently Cian was now honey bee. They were used to it after so many years.
"Whatever you do," Jack whispered to Rynn and Liesse, watching his grandmother with anxious eyes, "Do not tell her your middle names."
Beside him, Courtland smirked and faced the twins. "It's too late, she's adopted you into the fold with the rest of us as her grandchildren, biological or not. She'll be meddling in your lives until she breathes her last and knowing that old woman, she'll probably outlive us all."
"Malakai!" Suzette called and the boy blanched, having tried to make himself small and easily overlooked. "Over here child, to my right." He took the appointed seat silently, like an obedient and terrified child. "You have not told me, how was your meeting the other night?" Malakai's face colored, taking on grim lines as he stared fixedly at his empty plate, but he said nothing. "Don't be shy, child, tell me all about it. How did you like Miss La Blanc? Smart as a whip, proficient in so many skills. Just last week at her grandmother's party she played the piano for us, it was so lovely."
Malakai, his face steadily growing redder, took up his fork simply to occupy himself, muttering with some difficulty and no lack of discomfort, "She talks a lot..."
"A good balance for you, as you hardly say anything at all."
Being so easily shot down, Malakai slowly began slipping back into his seat, as if he wanted nothing more than to disappear under the table and be gone but had to settle for making himself as small as possible. "She wears too much perfume, and she thinks wildflowers are ugly, and she was rude to the waiter, and she doesn't eat anything at all, and she kept telling me how many calories were in bread and that it would make me fat..." The color of his cheeks had reached its peak, his eyes fixed on his shoes under the table as he whispered in a very small voice, "I like bread."
"Oh dear," Suzette sighed, shaking her head, "Well, there's no help for that I suppose. Cheer up, sweetpea, we'll find you a better match. But remember, the sooner the better if you are to make up for your brother's failure to continue the main branch of the family. Keep your heart open in these matters, and be prepared that no one outside of this family will ever understand you as you hope, they are vastly different from us, but there is no way around an outside match with the concentration of your Mayfair blood." Helplessly, Malakai made little soundless words with his mouth before clamping it shut.
"Aunt Suzette, stop putting so much pressure on him!" Antha interjected at long last---and everyone was greatly surprised it had taken her so long, usually she wouldn't hear any talk of the old woman's matchmaking on Malakai's behalf---throwing her fork down in irritation, "You're beginning to sound like Julien with me, and you see how that worked out. Let him do things in his own time."
Imperceptibly, Malakai released a deep, tense breath, a touch of the redness fading from his cheeks. "You engaging in acts of procreation was never an issue, Antha Evelyn, it was only a matter of time before you fulfilled your duty to this family. But Malakai is our sweet boy, these things need to be done properly with him. Now don't worry sweetpea, I was afraid this would happen and I already have another lady in mind for you, Sophie Astoria. I believe Courtland Alois is familiar with her older brother." Down the table, the boy snickered with satisfaction as the old woman's eyes pierced him. "And your sister as well." Antha said nothing, only staring in boredom down at her plate as she pushed her food around with her fork. "A fine family, they have much to do with the arts. Not a French drop of blood in their veins, unfortunately, but Sophie is a beautiful young woman, and she should suit you well with your flowers and books and classical music."
Under his breath, Malakai began murmuring in what for him constituted as outright rebellion, "Is it so much to ask to have just a little romance...?"
It was Julien who snapped out a response to this as Suzette delicately patted the boy's hand. "Romance is dead, Malakai. Your sister wanted romance and look what happened, she met a degenerate who knocked her up that very night. We must have used all of our ten generations of cumulative luck that he turned out as he did."
"Julien," Suzette began in a sharp warning, those narrowed eyes flickering in his direction, "You will watch your words concerning my little honeybee, or else I will tell him all the filthy stories of your youth. The opium trade and brothel houses in this city would never have been what they are today without you at sixteen, spoiling our fortune. You and Mary Beth, her daughter's mother for sure, romping about this town in drag, taunting the prostitutes. It's nearly enough not to blame Antha Evelyn and Nicolae for their antics, they come by it so naturally..."
"Clearly you and I have different ideas of romance, oncle Julien," Antha responded with an easy smile, cutting Suzette off, her tone spitefully sugary sweet before flashing Cian a brief, secretive smile.
Pierce, his gaze still on his plate before him, scoffed into his toast with a wicked grin, "If there's one thing Antha and Cian aren't lacking, it's probably romance. Sanity maybe, impulse control possibly, subtlety definitely, but romance not at all. Don't act like you haven't heard them in the middle of the night."
Antha, Jack, and Courtland were laughing quietly, demurely behind the cover of their hands and glasses of orange juice, hiding it from the eyes of Suzette and her sudden wide-eyed gaze of affront. "Pierce Ryno Mayfair---!"
"Bacon, anyone?" Courtland offered, a little louder than necessary, proffering the plate.
"Ah, yes," Jack responded, ignoring the bacon already piled on his plate and taking several more slices, continuing in the same loud manner as Courtland, "What is this? Hickory smoked? Maple?"
"I have absolutely no idea," Courtland continued, smiling congenially, "You know what's interesting? They don't make maple syrup with real maple anymore."
"No! Really?"
"Really! If you look on the label---"
"Enough," Julien groaned in exasperation, putting a hand up for silence, and the boys did so begrudgingly.
But they were glad to see their efforts had not gone to waste when Suzette turned instead to the Calais children, smiling sweetly, and continued speaking. "You would be the poor dears my grandson tells me about, non? Lawrence, that is. Jacques never calls his poor grandmama. Rynn and Liesse, was it? What a pretty child you are, Rynn! But you do remind me so of my grandson, with those sharp eyes and that distinguished streak of gray at your temple that you are far too young for. Lawrence was about your age when his hair went the way of quicksilver, I believe. Oh, dear me, look at those eyes---" The old woman gingerly touched Liesse's chin, smiling softly, "Ah, what a sparkle! You remind me of my aunt Eden, Antha Evelyn and Malakai's blessed grandmother. And you have the Mayfair look about you, with that pretty porcelain skin, fair hair, and blue eyes."
"Yes, grandmother, Liesse is our little fairy princess. So you can understand why we can't allow it if you try to play matchmaker for her," Jack said quietly, his eyes on his plate like the rest of his cousins. They feared the power of the old woman's sharp gaze.
"Oh no, she's a little young for that. I only permitted it with Antha's young age due to her circumstances. But isn't it just a shame! She has only a small strain of Mayfair blood, and such a gentle countenance, she would be such a lovely match for Malakai if she were only a few years older."
Several things occurred simultaneously then. Antha, quietly eating a piece of toast, gagged on it, reaching hurriedly for her milk to wash it down, and spent the next few moments coughing and then gasping for air as Armand gently patted her back, folding his lips and biting his tongue just short of drawing blood. Courtland, drinking his orange juice, gave a snort of surprise that both brought some of the orange juice in his mouth upwards and choked him on the rest, reaching for a napkin to clutch over his mouth and nose. Jack had been unable to contain his immediate, shocked laughter and had just barely managed to camouflage it in a series of coughs to match Antha's. Pierce, cutting up his pancakes like a proper gentleman, stopped his hand so that the heavy silver knife fell on his leg, bringing from him a small yelp of pain. Dolly Jean, not realizing it was a hypothetical suggestion, made a small squeal of delight as if she had never considered it, her fork clattering down to her plate in her excitement, and only Vittorio's firm hand on her shoulder and the finger he pressed to his lips for silence could calm her down. And finally Malakai, who was only just recovering, turned every shade of red in his blood in the blink of an eye, his wide, incredulous eyes darting to Suzette, mouth agape.
It was Jack, glancing around the table with rapid, uneasy eyes, who raised his voice and called in hurried words, "Grandmama, did you hear, Courtland is going to be a father soon!"
As this conversation commenced, Courtland taking pains to be as loud and carefree as he possibly could about it as Suzette scolded him for his lack of propriety, Malakai continued to make himself very small and look at nothing. Antha, watching him, was overcome with pity and finally rose, announcing that they should get ready to head downtown for the meeting. Malakai was gone from the room before anyone else could even rise from their chair, making a clatter of hasty footsteps on the stairs.
"You children go get dressed," Suzette said kindly, patting Liesse's hand before her eyes narrowed at Julien, "I have a few words for the high and mighty Julien Mayfair as it is." Unusually, Julien paled and the cousins fled gratefully from the dining room.
"If I were Malakai," Jack whispered as they ascended the stairs, leaning towards Courtland, "I would drink more, for all they put him through." Antha, behind Jack on the stairs, kicked him square in the back of the knee so that he tumbled forward on the stairs, and then stepped easily over him. "Hey, don't blame me! I told him to claim he was in a monogamous threesome with me and Courtland, but he wouldn't! You think I'm going to like it when they bring some strange, random girl to live here and be his wife? I don't want any guilt trips for devouring a whole loaf of bread in one sitting!"
"You're going to get fat," Courtland teased in a purr, holding out a hand to help him up, "And how are we both going to fit on our bed then? I'll have to sleep on top of you!"
"You say that like it's supposed to dissuade me from my ravenous bread-eating instead of encouraging it."
"Please," Vittorio groaned, putting an irritated hand to his temple, "No more."
Dolly Jean, flouncing up the stairs beside and then past him, had eagerly taken Liesse's hand, her eyes sparkling, and announced, "I can help you pick out something to wear!" before fluttering off with her to their room.  

[Okimiyage]

Cian ambled over to the desk, put down the silver serving tray, and leaned against Antha's chair to drop a chaste kiss upon her forehead. "Hardly my fault we never wake up together," he answered her, withdrawing and raising an eyebrow. "You're the one who's always rushing off somewhere, and I count myself fortunate if I know what for, half the time. I swear, you're the only person that I know who gets up early to do--" as Cian cast a despairing glance at the documents that littered the table profusely, "--paperwork. You'd think we were a law firm by the amount that the family seems to generate. Or perhaps a very successful money laundering business." He picked up a leaflet that seemed to be written half in English, and half in legal jargon. "Which isn't too far from what most of the city thinks, actually. There are some quite elaborate rumors involving our purported mob connections, as well."
That one might have some truth to it, actually. Cian couldn't say for certain, but he wouldn't have put it past some of the younger cousins. Certainly they operated like a very ruthless and efficient corporation at times.
"I don't much fancy the idea of standing trial in front of a bunch judgmental elders." he admitted, picking up one of the fine bone china cups, so thin he could see his tea through the porcelain. "But I understand the need for formality. We've been rather lacking in that department, I suppose, to the minds of the older generation. Whole 'shotgun wedding' and all." He was turning the teacup around and around in his hands rather than drinking it, watching the light glint off the gold thread running along the edge. The cup had sat with immaculately staid grace upon the tray, but now seemed rather fragile within his hands. Cian was of a disposition that, whenever he held something delicate, he could not help but imagine how it might slip and smash.
He took a sip, and set it again on the tray just as the door opened. Malakai slunk into the room with all the dreadful apprehension of a wet cat. "Well!" Cian's expression changed to one of distinctly wicked amusement. "If it isn't the man of the evening. You ought to be quite pleased, to my mind." Cian was, certainly. It was about time Liesse developed some sort of relationship outside of her slavish devotion to Rynn--it would be good for her. Malakai wouldn't have been his first choice--the boy had charm, certainly, but he would have imagined Liesse would have been drawn to a rather more dominant personality. Then again, she had been led about her entire life by her twin brother--perhaps that was why she did not mind Malakai. "You flatter me by assuming that I have any control over who my wife chooses to tease," he answered pitilessly, in response to Malakai's request. "Wild horses couldn't stop her from badgering you if she found it amusing to do so."
His heart wasn't in the banter, though. Abruptly, as Malakai departed, Cian had found himself faced with a sobering thought. Liesse was to join the family as well, then. What reaction this would provoke from Rynn, he couldn't imagine--sullen resignation, if they were lucky. Poor little brother. "They all took such great pride in it," he found himself murmuring, just beneath his breath. "Aleric could recite the bloodline all the way into the tenth generation. I think he could have drawn the family trees--briar-patches, rather--by memory if he'd been given sufficiently large parchment." He gave a great heave of breath and glance up at Antha again. There was something odd in his voice, a little deeper than usual, his laughter a little ragged. "Rynn had Liesse--that's all he needed. Or he thought he did, I'm sure. Twins must belong together, of course, because they come into this world together. How could it be any other way? When she was dragged into the realm of death, he went half-way with her. She remained attached to this world only because of Rynn. If the soul can take on physical form, it is that of pure muscle--ligaments and tendons that are as thin as a thread, red as blood, stronger than steel, and can stretch to span beyond the globe." And he cracked a smile as thin as a knife's blade at this. "I can't even imagine what Malakai's in for. I mean, I thought your older brother was protective. An arranged match might be a mercy for the boy." If Liesse returned his feelings, though…
She'd never been in love before, had she? Cian couldn't remember. There had been nobody in her life besides her brothers, not for years, not even a handsome gardener or chauffeur to distract her. No servants after the fire. Cian could hardly remember what had happened after the fire. It was so long ago. Imagining the situation now, it was a miracle they had not all been deported to some foster home. Had anyone even come to check on them? Aedan would have known.
Looking back on it now, it seemed that Liesse had lived a pitiable life. But she had seemed happy with it. She had never complained.
She had her roses.
Filling his lungs with another sigh, Cian rose to his feet and stretched. "I'll try to pick out something suitable to wear, I suppose. Impress everyone with my excellent taste and all." He could help but chuckle at his own boast. "I'll be down in a half hour. Keep something caffeinated warm for me, will you?" With that, Cian went to Antha, kissed her--at the junction between throat and chin, where white and faded scar marks patterned her jugular vein like camoflage--called her his darling, and left the room. He did not quite make it to the second floor before the knock sounded upon their front door.

Rynn, in the kitchen, gave Jacob's opinion due consideration. (In Rynn's opinion, it was due about two seconds. That was all.)
Then he shrugged his shoulders dismissively and twisted his lips in an obliging smile. "Thank you for the advice." The kittens gravitated towards the food bowl as though it were a black hole. The mocking smile became genuine as Rynn watched on, and softened the entirety of his features. For a moment, his face was that of the angelic boy who had first pleadingly approached the Talamasca.
Then Antha appeared in the doorway, and he re-stiffened like a living statue. It made sense that Rynn got along with cats--he was about as sensitive as one. If he'd had a tail, it would have fluffed aggressively.
As it turned out, his reaction was preemptive to that of the entire house, although not for the same reasons. At the call-out of, Grandmother! the atmosphere changed as though electrified. Rynn couldn't help but be curious as to what sort of person might provoke such a reaction from the Mayfair clan in its entirety, but as it turned out he didn't have to wonder for long.
The woman smelled like iron. Her mind was as finely honed as a blade. Her skin had the pearly luster of someone who had never worked in the sun for a single day of their life. Her hair looked like spun sugar--and he could imagine that the jeweled comb which held it in place was tipped with poison. As soon as Rynn poked his head out into the hall, he wanted to withdraw--but that would only have attracted her attention. And after seeing how she reacted to Cian, Rynn felt his apprehension was not unreasonable.
Fortunately Cian was much better at putting on a brave face than Rynn would have been, in his situation.
For some reason, Rynn had never noticed that Antha's middle names resembled the title of a pastry. He resolved to mock her about this the next time she became confrontational. However, he didn't have long to gloat before the old woman--Suzette?--turned on him, and Liesse in turn. He hadn't notice her slip into the hallway behind him, but like a ghost it seemed she had appeared behind him. Rynn lit up. It didn't matter if this old woman had come to visit and she was horrid and nosy and had everyone seemingly scared shitless of her. Liesse and he were together again. Falling asleep last night, there was nothing that he had longed to feel more than her small hand held within his own as he drifted off to sleep. Instinctively he seized upon it as she approached him, holding her own out obligingly, and drew her beside him.
And then he frowned, because the sensation was distinctly off. Her hand was different. Rynn could honestly say that he had known Liesse's hand as well as his own, and this was not--well, it wouldn't be the same, of course, would it? He suppose he still couldn't reconcile the idea that, although he recognized her soul as clearly as his own, it belonged to a different body now.
They sat at the table together. Someone had given him a plate heaped high with mounds of buttery scrambled eggs. Liesse had stacks of toast, and what looked like a small herd of assorted jams in front of her. When Malakai spoke up in his defense of bread, Rynn could not help but notice that she sat up a little straighter in her chair, and her breath hitched inwards as though she had just barely stopped herself from speaking.
Down the table, though a fog of clinking silverware, Rynn heard Cian speak up -- "I think there are a number of best-selling authors who would argue that there is a great deal of romance in the reform of an incorrigible degenerate--you have not been keeping up-to-date with your Harlequin novels, dear oncle--" and the smattering of laughter which followed. Rynn was looking intently at Malakai, and hardly noticed the conversation turning in his direction--or rather, that of his sister.
He caught Suzette's comment, though, ringing through his ears like a bell. His pupils dilated nearly imperceptibly. He watched Malakai's cheeks turn scarlet, as red as a war-pennant, and Rynn's knuckles whitened around his fork. Expletives blurred through his mind. He glanced over at Suzette. So that was the power of this old woman, who so carelessly brought secrets to light. No wonder they were all looking at her like she was a dragon from the deep come to visit. He hadn't said a word to her throughout the entire breakfast, and now he rose from his seat in slow, deliberate silence as well. "Excuse me," he announced, stiffly. Staring down the rest of the room, he sought out Jacob's eye and gave a slight, stiff bow. "It was very good. Thank you."
Then, he departed in the same direction as Malakai. Liesse's eyes were wide as saucers, blue as a china porcelain plate. She looked mortified. If Dolly-Jean had not taken her hand, she might have sat there like a puppet with broken strings for a good half-hour or more.

Rynn's height had one good advantage. His long legs easily caught him up to Malakai as he headed down the hall, seeking refuge in some rat-hole, no doubt. His shirt was good linen; Rynn did not speak before he grabbed the younger boy by the back of it, and threw him bodily against the wall as though he were a rag-doll. Seizing upon his shirt collar now, the two men found their faces within a hair's breadth of one another. Rynn's eyes bored holes into the other's, his expression one of utter contempt. "If you're looking for romance, you're better off investigating the back-alleys of Osiris City like Cian has done all his life. Look how well it worked out for him." he spat out, carelessly. He felt drunk on his anger. "My sister is not some ******** for you and your cousins to toss between one another from night to night. You have your pedigree'd betrothals to look forward to. Leave. Liesse. Alone."
He hadn't realized that he'd been dragging the younger boy up on his toes, but when Rynn let go of his collar, it was to fall a good two inches upon his heels. Casting an evil look behind him, Rynn turned and stalked back down the hall towards the kitchen. He wanted to have a talk with Liesse.
Who, by this time, was well on her way back to Dolly Jean's room. Rynn only found the kittens waiting for him with inquisitive sniffs when he turned the corner into the dining room.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a while, Malakai said nothing as Rynn manhandled him. His cousins had warned him after all, that Rynn would kill him, so he clenched his eyes shut and he took the venom being spat at him as if he had expected it. When he was released, he glanced at Rynn through one cautious eye. He was a little surprised that the boy was smaller than him. Granted, Malakai had seven years on him, but he was used to being the runt of the litter, the sinewy waif amongst leanly muscled giants, and he forgot sometimes that compared to the greater pool of men in the world he was moderately tall and built like his brother, predisposed to those lean muscles even if he had never built them up.
It took Rynn’s back to him and several steps put between their bodies before Malakai could find his words, piping up hesitantly, "I wasn’t…" He hesitated for another split second, his words all jumbled in his head, his cheeks flushed. "I wouldn't do that to her...I’m not like them, I don’t…"
God, how he despised being compared to his cousins. He loved them endlessly of course, would have died for them if it was necessary, but he was very keenly aware of how different he was from them and how the world viewed their behavior, and he didn't like being thought of like them. But there was no help for that, not so long as he was a Mayfair, living under this roof, passing his time with them, and with a sullen glance at his feet, his arms pulled nervously around himself, Malakai turned rapidly and ran into his room, slamming the door and locking it behind himself.
While Rynn might only have found kittens waiting for him moments later in the dining room, he was not alone with them for long. It took mere moments after he had entered the room for Antha to turn the corner, nimbly grasping his wrist in her slender fingers, and another split second for her open hand to crash into his cheek, resounding with a solid smack! in the quiet room. Jacob, who had been clearing the dishes, going between rooms, wisely retreated from the doorway and silently back to the kitchen. It had been ages since he had seen such murder in Antha's eyes, such cold, cloying rage. "Never," she whispered, in the low, icy tones of true danger, "Don't you ever speak to Malakai like that again. The others, fine, they deserve it, but Malakai...you have no right, not with an angel like him, and it will not be tolerated." Antha scowled, which was a rare thing, and her eyes flashed an odd contempt, as if Rynn were some low and disgusting creature comparable to a slug. "Don’t you dare compare him to rest of us as if he’s some miserable degenerate. And if he was interested in Liesse…well that’s just none of your goddamn business, Rynn, it’s their own lives, not yours."
The girl said nothing more, only turned on her heel and returned up the stairs. It was only then that Jacob, peeking out from the kitchen, slunk out and returned to the task of clearing the table. "Above all," he whispered, quietly, not looking up from the table, "Malakai is the one you never want to hurt. Amongst all of the Mayfairs, he is the one the others would die to preserve." His gray eyes glanced fleetingly at Rynn, his face expressionless, his demeanor uncomfortable. "They call him 'Saint Malakai'---the good one, their sweet boy, their little lamb. It's an oddity in this family, and there isn't much the Mayfairs would not do to preserve his sweet, gentle demeanor, Antha above all. I think they see all the good in him that they wish they had."
A door slammed upstairs, feet pounding on the floorboards, Antha desperately calling, "Julien's never right! Malakai!" Jacob only saw the boy as a blur rushing past the doorway, the slam of the front door as he bolted out of it and the groan of the front gate. Antha was only a few steps behind him, running frantically after the boy and calling his name, and Courtland was out the door after them mere moments later but returned alone, shaking his head at his cousins who had gathered in the hallway in confusion, reporting that he had seen Malakai and Antha run out into the street from the doorway but had then lost sight of them and there was no trace to be found, they were gone from the vicinity of the house. This led to a great deal of speculation, because the cousins had never seen Malakai act in such a way and Antha was clearly concerned, but they had no idea what might have brought it on except for Suzette's comments, which hardly seemed like enough. Jacob went about his business, tight-lipped, never saying a word. His allegiance was strictly to Antha, he had no reason to go betraying Rynn to the cousins.

For two hours the house was in an uproar, a downright panic. Courtland and Jack had gone out scouting for their cousins but came up with nothing. Lawrence, who had been telecommuted into the frenzy, could find no whisper of them from any of his contacts in the city. Julien had postponed the meeting, and then again when the first hour had passed, and had finally taken to anxiously pacing the parlor. Michael and Vittorio were both out scouring everything from parks to back alleys, but all to no avail. No one had the vaguest idea what to make of the situation, they only knew that Malakai was distraught and Antha was operating in a greatly weakened state.
The front door finally opened again at slightly after one o'clock. Courtland, meandering tensely around the house, running his hands through his hair, was the first into the hallway, to fervently cry his relief in the form of, "Evie!" The girl gave a dismissive wave of her hand, demanding silence, her head lulled back onto the door and a hand pressed to her temple.
"Where’s my sweetpea?" Suzette demanded, once she had taken the time to note that Antha was safe and breathe a sigh of relief for it.
Antha groaned, shaking her head, and gave a weak push away from the door. "I chased him all the way to the goddamn city park, and I probably would have lost him if he hadn’t run into a briar patch and stopped to look at the roses. Thorny bastards..." She stopped briefly to glare at the few small scratches on her hands, as thin as red threads.
"You didn't leave him in the woods tending to wild roses, did you?" Pierce questioned as if he knew the answer but wanted it to be true.
Another shake of her head. "He refused to come back just yet, he didn't want to be here. I took him to uncle Barclay's."
Courtland sighed. "I'm sure darling Belle is over the moon, but what in the hell set him off? Was it what Julien said?"
"Partly," Antha sighed, beginning towards the narrow set of stairs that led up to his room over the garage. "Look, just let him have his breakdown. He's due one, after so many years in this house, this family. I'm going to get him a change of clothes."
The cousins said very little regarding that. Most of them drifted quietly into the parlor, not doing much of anything, and the others returned to their rooms with the exception of Courtland, who took the stairs after Antha. Armand had taken up a book of Ghalib's poetry and made the occasional sigh at the bittersweet words, glancing out the window to the gardens. Jack was on the floor, winding Rex around and around his fingers, eyes distant. Dolly Jean was sorting idly through the closet, sighing to herself, her delicate brow furrowed. Liesse needed something appropriate to wear for the meeting, a task the girl had thrown herself into in order to distract herself, but it was working very poorly. She was worried for Malakai, even if she didn't fully understand his predicament. After all, she had never been the victim of attempted arranged marriages, never been pressured to marry as he and Antha had. Falling in love had happened so naturally for her, so easily, and it had progressed with very little hardship, only secrecy, and now she was getting married. She didn't understand why these things had to be so difficult with other people. Antha certainly fell in love enough, it couldn't be that hard, could it?

Half an hour later, the cousins were all in various stages of dress, preparing for the family meeting. Antha was on her stomach on her bed, half dressed and freshly showered, surrounded by discarded dresses as she sighed pitifully to herself. "My dresses are all getting too tight," she whined finally to Cian, with the acute frustration of a child, "I can't breathe in half of them!" Indeed, as Pierce liked to tease her, the girl was no longer the little slip of a thing she had always been, she was beginning to resemble a normal person, her figure fleshed out.
"Ah, to hell with this, I'm not going!" she whined, shoving her dresses off of the bed, and in the next second had taken hold of Cian's wrist, yanking him down into the bed beneath her, his wrists pinned beneath her expert fingers. "Play hooky with me. I'll make it worth your while." She purred the last part, leaning over to lay a kiss on his lips before moving to whisper in his ear. "Besides, I still have to punish you." She rose with all the lanky grace of a cat, pouting at him as she ran a finger up from the base of his neck to the tip of his chin, her eyes glimmering darkly. "You hurt my feelings this morning, you know. My rushing off to see to business is a necessary evil, I hardly like it myself. Besides...do you think I'd ever let you get any rest if I didn't have something to see to at an ungodly hour of the morning? I would wear you down to mere bones." The suggestive grin curled her lips to match the gleam in her eyes, though only for a moment before her lips were on his.
Then, for the second time that day, Antha was rudely interrupted by a knock. It was on her bedroom door this time, polite and even, and Antha gave the unknown nuisance a death glare from the other side of the door, groaning and hissing all at once, "Mon dieu, go away!"
“Antha Evelyn, where are your manners!” Suzette called from the other side of the door, and Antha outright collapsed on Cian in defeat at the sound of the old woman’s voice.
“Je suis désolée, aunt Suzette,” she called, groaning into Cian’s shoulder, “What’s the matter?”
“I wanted to make sure you are dressing my little honeybee properly. This is an important day for him, after all.”
“Aunt Suzette, Cian is perfectly capable of dressing himself.”
“This is a Mayfair event, sugarplum, not any old thing will do.”
“This is my family too, I know our style, between the two of us I think we can manage.”
“Oh, I just don’t know...Jacob!” She called the boy’s name down the hall and Antha groaned anew, rolling over onto the bed beside Cian and kicking her legs in frustration. “Ah, Jacob my boy, go fetch one of Louis’s suits out of storage for me, will you? I think the navy blue one will do. And some of his cufflinks. Gold ones I think, they’ll suit his complexion.”
“Aunt Suzette! They won’t fit him right, and they’ll have to be cleaned, we don’t have the time for that. Cian has perfectly good clothes waiting in the closet, I assure you.”
Courtland’s voice chimed down the hall then, backing her up. “It’s true, aunt Suzette, Cian has perfectly good taste in these things.”
“Courtland Alois, what on earth do you mean coming into the hallway in your underwear?!”
“Oh, this? It’s not a big de---OW! Aunt Suzette, not the face! Ow! Hey! Okay, I’m going! I SAID I’M GOING! OW!” The door to his room slammed closed and Suzette sighed, her feet tapping lightly on the floorboards.
“Very well, but do not disappoint me, Evie dear.” Her footsteps tapped away down the hall and Antha laid still on her stomach, her face buried in the sheets.
“This goddamn house…as if my cousins aren’t bad enough, and Julien, a ninety-year-old woman has to go interrupting my little bit of spare time for absolutely nothing at all.” She turned on her side just enough to pull her arms around Cian in a loose circle, sighing. “Let’s just skip the whole terrible affair. You can go and tell them that I’m plagued by unrelenting morning sickness and you have to stay to attend to me, seeing as how it’s all your fault.” Her arms tightened around him, sighing before she pressed a single affectionate kiss to his waist and rose to her knees. “Hmm, but that wouldn’t work, would it? They can’t hold a family meeting without the Designee to the Legacy, and you’re half the reason we’re having one in the first place.” She fell momentarily silent, glancing thoughtfully towards the windows, before she slid her arms over his shoulders, laying a kiss on his neck and whispering, “I'll make you a deal, mon cheri. Tonight, when all of my business is finished, we'll come back here and lock the door and I'll threaten everyone with their lives if they come with ten feet of that door, and I won't step outside of it tomorrow until you say I can. But in return, I get to do whatever I want to you.” She paused just long enough for her eyes to flash darkly, the grin returned to her lips. "In the interest of full disclosure...ah, it could get messy. But think it over, darling."
Yet another knock sounded on the door, Courtland's voice calling loudly, “Evie! Cian! Are you guys ready yet? I don’t want to have to wait for an elevator!”
Antha sighed, a little irritated smile touching her lips before she gave Cian a final kiss and went to get dressed. She could hear Suzette down the hall, fussing over Liesse's dress, straightening the folds of fabric and adjusting her hair, babbling on as if she hadn't caused enough damage that day, "Oh, and Thorne will be there, it will give you a chance to meet him. He's Pierce's younger brother, you know, right about your age. He's quite a handsome boy, when he isn't dying his hair every shade of the rainbow. What is it now, Dolly Jean, blue? Oh yes, purple. He's an unmanageable child, but he's a good boy. Ah, and James too, he's the same age. He isn't one of the 'mainstream' of the family, which might account for his gentle disposition. He goes to the Sacred Heart preparatory school, he's set to intern for Vittorio at Mayfair Medical when it opens."
"Grandmother!" Jack interrupted, standing in the doorway with his cheeks puffed out, staring the old woman down. He hardly looked like himself, in respectable black slacks and a cashmere sweater that hid most of his tattoos, his hair uncharacteristically combed and brushed out of his eyes. "Will you stop trying to play matchmaker for her!" He grabbed Liesse protectively up in his arms, turning her so that he was between her and the old woman. "Dolly Jean's getting married, there's a whole wedding for you to plan, so preoccupy yourself with that and leave our fairy princess alone."
The span of less than five seconds passed between Jack's words and him being dragged down the hallway, his ear pinched between Suzette's thumb and forefinger as he whined to be released, wincing. "Perhaps it is time I put more serious consideration into your marriage, Jacques Pierre. I think you've put it off quite long enough."
"Nooooo," the boy whined, disappearing into his room behind his grandmother, stumbling, "I refuse! Refuse! Courtland~!"
Courtland, peeking out from the library door, reached out for Jack with a teary grimace but said nothing. Someone had to suffer the old woman's matchmaking, and it was better Jack than him.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn was not in the habit of being hit. His cheeks colored instantly, the print of her fingers as evident as warpaint on his face. He did not try to pull his wrist out of her grasp, at least not at first--he hadn't thought his actions through well enough to even consider the reactions of others. Rynn had very little experience with punishment, anyways. There had been none who had dared in the Calais household, not after the fire. Even the older brothers were a tad nervous around Rynn, after what had happened between Mary and the rest.
Her eyes were like green ice, he found the thought arise distantly. Opaque arctic waters. His immediate instinct was to announce, I'm not afraid of you.
But even to Rynn's own mind, that sounded unbearably childish. They weren't kids, anymore.
He adopted an expression of disgust, and yanked his wrist out of her grasp. He wouldn't give her the privilege of letting go, herself. If he had possessed a little less self-restraint, he might have growled like one of Antha's vampires.
Her solution to anything Antha found distasteful was to run against it headlong. If she'd been a little less powerful, a personality ilke hers would have never been allowed to develop. But who would ever dare to spank the Designee of the Mayfair legacy? (As none had ever dared in his own household.)
His fist was trembling with anger when he lowered it to his side. He wanted to strike her back, just as hard, and tell her that it was as much of his goddamn business as it was hers. If she felt it her duty to intervene when a member of her family was threatened, then it was his duty to intervene when Liesse was already being courted with not even a week in the house. If the Malakai boy was that desperate to get into someone's pants, he could certainly find willing company out in a bar somewhere. The kid wasn't bad-looking. To go after Liesse, though--Rynn would have been surprised if he'd been told it was all some massive, snarky Mayfair joke, just another way of getting even with the decimated name of the Calais.
His brows knit together in a deep scowl as he glanced over at Jacob. The kittens wound about his ankles, mewing, which somewhat lessened the intimidating effect. I would not care if the boy was Christ re-born, he thought, fiercely. Although to be the saint that he is claimed to represent amongst this company, he must have been kept in a box all his life. He wanted to snap out the thoughts with a tongue sharp enough to draw blood, but Jacob was no priest to unburden his soul to. Rubbing his sleeve against his stinging cheek, he answered with curt civility, "If Malakai is the saint of your family, then Liesse was ours. Now, there is no-one left to us but each other. If Antha thinks that I do not understand her desire to protect that which has yet to be sullied in this ugly world, she is a blind woman. The difference between us is that the children of the Mayfair name are endless. There will always be another generation to guard the innocence of. And I--" he stopped himself before he said what was too pitiful to be announced. I only have her.
He turned away so that Jacob could not see the way that his face could no longer remain impassive.
"I am glad I do not have heirs," he muttered, allowing his voice to color with anger in order that the sob in it might be masked, "so there will never be any more progeny of this bloodline that will know my shame, or study my failures. My surname dies with me, alone."
He shook Liesse's white kitten off his foot, and glared at it mercilessly when it tried to toddle back to him on unsteady paws. Picking the two animals up by the scruffs of their neck, he tried to ignore the way Jacob was looking at him (like he was a monster. As if he cared whatever the other man thought) and stalked out of the room.
His chest hurt like hell. The kittens were crying. He went for Dolly-Jean's room.

Liesse was sitting on the bed when he burst in, wearing an ivory peignoir, champagne-colored slippers, and very little else. Dolly-Jean had selected a marvelous frock for her, all layers of lilac chiffon and a high-necked collar trimmed with lace. It was trés chic, the other girl had told her. She had been partially through the process of donning lace stockings when Rynn entered, and she looked up, startled. "Knock!" she demanded, sternly.
This, again, was jarring for Rynn. In the old house there had never been a question of sharing rooms, but Liesse's door had never been locked. "I'm sleeping here, too," he said, irritably, crossing to the bed and dumping both kittens unceremoniously upon the covers. Liesse instinctively leaned towards them and put out her hands. "Although I can't resist asking, where were you last night? Because by the way Malakai was looking at you during breakfast--"
His sister's cheeks colored, and she did not look at him. "I spent a little time with him," she announced, with surprising strength in her voice, "because he was sad, and everyone else was drunk. That's not a crime, he's--he's just a boy, and he's sweet, and nothing happened between us."
"If nothing happened, then why did he grow as red as Old Scratch when that miserable old woman started questioning him, then?"
Liesse couldn't answer this. She gave a helpless shrug, and turned her attention on the white kitten that was butting its head against her breast. It began purring with delight, and started to knead Dolly-Jean's coverlet, completely oblivious to the tension in the air. Rynn's black cat flopped onto its belly and turned every inch of the fuzzy black surface upwards, then stared at his human demandingly.
When it became apparent that his sister didn't plan on offering him an answer, Rynn shouted, "Liesse!" to make her look at him. His arms were crossed, and his expression was one of distinct displeasure. "If this is how you plan on starting out your life in this house, you can't blame anyone if they get the wrong impression. You can't trust someone just because they seem 'sweet'. You remember the stories that Cian used to bring back from his outings, right?" Liesse remembered with painful accuracy. If it wasn't a story about the conquests of his friends, it was a story about his own. And in a matter of days, the names of those girls would disappear from his vocabulary, and they'd never be spoken of again. He had never once brought girls home. Eventually, all of their names began to blur together. Even Cian would get mixed up, referring to Emily as Eliza and Angela as Angelica, or any number of variations.
Rynn was watching her face carefully. He saw the way her brow tightened with worry. Softly, he said, "I'm just trying to protect you. I don't want you to get used."

And then he saw the way Dolly-Jean was looking at him, and stepped back, his back flattened against the wall. He didn't like the way that her wide, innocent eyes looked at him. It made him feel coarse and cruel.

Half an hour later, Cian was in the process of attempting to tie a complicated tie knot beneath his crisp white shirt when Antha pounced on him. All his good work promptly became undone; he did not mind in the least. He fell back onto the sheets beneath her, and couldn't have stopped the grin that spread from ear to ear if he had been trying to. When she kissed him, he could taste the tea and sugar on her lips, and he was the luckiest man in the world.
The tie was thrown off, and the buttons of her dress were already beneath his hands before Suzette's voice broke between them, and halted his fingers in their nimble path.
Damn.
Cian sighed with frustration. It was a test of his willpower that he restrained from grabbing Antha and dragging her back down again, as she rose and threw her most disdainful look at the door across the room. Sometimes he really did think longingly back to the joke of elopement that had once been made. It certainly would have involved fewer formalities.
"I've never been a patient man. But for you, I don't mind the wait. Although I'll admit that I'd love the opportunity to have your undivided attention."
Sitting up, he met Antha's throat with a kiss that trailed enticingly up and along her jawline. "I suppose we'll have plenty of time for all this tonight. Mess included. Lord knows it's expected of us both."
With another amused flash of his teeth, Cian slipped out from underneath her.
He took Aunt Suzette's advice when he picked out his coat, a subdued navy jacquard with buttons of white gold. The cufflinks to his shirt, found in one of the small boxes which had arrived like magic to accompany Cian's move-in, were made of the same metal, although the crest on their head was so worn-away that it was nearly impossible to decipher. He helped Antha zip up her dress (with reluctance) and fasten the antique clasps of her chosen jewelry before they both exited the room, in part due to Cian's unrelenting fascination with the chaos that Suzette seemed to spread in her wake like a horseman of the apocalypse. He'd never seen a single individual exert such overwhelming influence over the rest of the Mayfair clan, and couldn't help but think she seemed like a valuable ally to have on their side. If Rynn had the ambition that he'd once possessed, the two of them would have been stuck together like glue. Instead, Cian's brother seemed perfectly content to play Liesse's shadow. He was dressed in the same colors as Liesse--but where the lace on her dress was white, his lilac vest was contrasted by a black long-sleeved shirt with silver buttons, and chose a mandarin collar rather than the traditional western three-piece. Rynn and Liesse had always been a picturesque pair, but now, in Liesse's new body, the only thing they had in common was the lavender hue. Rynn stuck to her like a shadow, regardless. In particular, when the male members of the family were mentioned by Suzette, he stiffened up and moved closer like a protective guardian. He had enough good sense, however, to shield his thoughts to the umpteenth tier when he thought, Damn this meddling old biddy! I wish she'd quit--Liesse doesn't need a Mayfair mate to integrate gracefully.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Something's missing..." Antha was standing at the foot of her bed, looking (alarmingly, to the minds of her cousins) like an adult in a modern-cut dress of black velvet patterned with large, faint red roses, the flared skirt shorter than her usual hem with tufts of taffeta beneath it, the Mayfair emerald framed with several varying lengths of strings of pearls. Her brows were knitted thoughtfully over her eyes as they quietly observed Cian, discontent, before all at once they lit up, the girl exclaiming, "Ah!" and running to her vanity, sorting through leagues of priceless gems in various forms as if they were mere baubles. "I think this should just about do it." She went to Cian, taking his lapel and carefully spearing a small pin on it, just a thin length of gold ornamented with a small, champagne colored diamond heart at the head. Antha smiled at it, her eyes flashing with bittersweet nostalgia as she smoothed the dark fabric back out. "This was oncle Louis's. Aunt Suzette was right, the color suits you. You can have it then, for luck." She smiled, glancing up at him, and seemed to snap back into herself, her eyes flashing teasingly. "Hmm, no, you're still missing something...ah!" Her lips pressed firmly to his cheek, not taking quite all of her burgundy lipstick away with them, and she laughed as she drew back, announcing, "There we are. Perfect."
Pierce was in the doorway to Dolly Jean's room, trying to hurry the other residents of the house up, when he caught Rynn's words. "No danger of that," he laughed, his fingers clamped down over his eyes because he was at least polite enough not to go looking at half-dressed women who were not Antha without permission, "Ah, that's funny, comparing Malakai to men like us and Cian. That boy has absolutely no spine. Actually, if I recall correctly, he was in love once---well, he had a very pronounced crush, at least. Antha was about twelve, so he must have been fifteen or sixteen. We were still in school then, and she was in his class. God, it was so sweet and adorable it was absolutely sickening. He was like something out of a Disney movie, it made us all look bad. He wrote her love letters and brought her flowers from the garden, and laid around all day daydreaming with this stupid smile on his face. Then we threw this party while the adults were away for a few days, and she got drunk and took him up to his room and tried to get him to sleep with her and he wouldn't, it seemed wrong and he was too embarrassed, and blah, blah, blah." Pierce scoffed, shaking his head. "So he went to get her a glass of water, that poor, precious boy, and she came downstairs and downed half of my bottle of vodka and let Dorian have his way with her in the garage. They were loud, that girl had a voice like a banshee, we heard them all through the house, and Malakai was utterly crushed. And you know what? He wasn't even mad at Dorian! He blamed himself, if you can believe that! That's when we got him drunk and locked him in a room with Sera. His whole virgin thing was really becoming a nuisance, he was so lily-white. Of course Nicolae beat the living daylights out of us, and that girl---I don't remember her name, and I'm sure Dorian didn't after he told the story a couple of times, if he knew it to begin with, but I'd bet my life Malakai still does---she found herself kicked out of school for no definable reason at all and her family had to move to another city under mysterious circumstances. I always imagined Antha sitting in a dark room conspiratorially drumming her fingers together when I thought of that."
He continued to laugh while Dolly Jean, turning with a fierce, disapproving pout, said, "Melody."
"Eh?"
"The girl. Her name was Melody. He used to tell me about her, even though I wasn't allowed to go to school. How can you not remember? He was so upset, he cried for a whole day, and he wouldn't eat, and he burned all of his beautiful poems." The girl sighed despairingly. "Antha always said he was a better writer than Armand, she tried so hard to get him to write after that but he wouldn't. Oh, wicked, wicked Dorian!" She stamped her foot, her eyes misty, and Pierce reached blindly out for her with his free hand, briefly embracing her and laying a light kiss on the crown of her head.
"But whatever. So I suppose it's safe to assume you were the reason he ran out of the house in such a misty-eyed frenzy, Rynn? That's really terrible of you, driving a boy out of his own home when he didn't even do anything, and now he won't come back. Ah, the poor thing. But don't worry, Malakai doesn't even form grudges, and Antha will forgive you. Eventually."
The front door opened downstairs, a woman's voice calling through the house, "Good lord, is anyone in this house ever ready?" Pierce was gone in a flash, fleeing to his room and slamming the door. Two sets of feet were on the stairs, meandering slowly down the hallway, until finally two women appeared in Suzette's line of view, standing in the open door of Dolly Jean's room, the older of the two exclaiming, "Mother! So this is where you went off to!"
"Claire-Marie, darling, you should be at Mayfair and Mayfair," Suzette responded easily, waving the woman's words gracefully away.
Claire-Marie resembled her mother, or at least as she had been in her youth, her white-blonde hair pinned up into a stylish yet reserved coif, her pale blue eyes set in porcelain skin, and the girl at her shoulder was a carbon copy of Claire-Marie in her teens, her own white-blonde hair in loose curls down her back, dressed less modestly than her prim and proper mother though they both wore China blue accented with white. Claire-Marie could have been off to tea on Sunday afternoon in ages past---the younger girl could have been on her way to prom. But her own pale blue eyes were not quite so innocent in their similar severity to her mother and grandmother as they zeroed without hesitation on Rynn.
She didn't move from her mother's side, only hung in the doorway as if held there by Claire-Marie's force of gravity, but very pointedly faced Rynn with her most charming smile and the flutter of her eyelashes as she said alluringly, "You must be Rynn, right? My cousin Sera told me about you. I'm Rowan Mayfair."
"I came to be sure you were here," Claire-Marie responded to her mother, as if she were oblivious of her daughter's less than appropriate behavior, "Barclay has already gone to the firm with Lawrence and Malakai, and of course Belle would only be pried from Malakai with the jaws of life."
"That's all well and good," Jack said, appearing beside them in the doorway with his eyes plastered to Rowan, scowling, "But why didn't you go with them? We don't want you here."
"Mother!" the girl exclaimed, turning with a furious pout to Jack, "Do you see the way he talks to me?!"
"Jack," Claire-Marie sighed in warning, "Be nice to your little sister."
"I am," Jack retorted, "I'm very kind to Belle, she's my utterly precious little sister. But I don't know what bowel of hell you pulled Rowan from."
"Mother---!"
"Jack!"
"Alright, alright," he muttered, scowling, and then seeing that Rowan's gaze had settled squarely back on Rynn, "Ohmygawd, would you stop staring at him!" He picked her bodily up, turning as she squealed in unhappy shock, and set her down in the hallway facing the wall, "Rynn's not a piece of meat! You just sit here in the corner and cool down."
"What on earth is all of this yelling about?" Sighing, Antha joined the group in the hallway only to instantly regret stepping into the fray. "Ah. Rowan. You're here."
"Why is everyone in this house so rude?" the girl demanded, struggling against Jack, "Is it something in the water?! Oh..." Her eyes fell on Cian, and immediately her indignant expression gave way to a dazzling smile, all fluttering eyelashes and the flip of her blond curls over her shoulder. "Cian, you're still here."
"Isn't it natural for him to still be here if I am?" Antha questioned, with a sharp smile and chilling tone, her gaze threatening the sorts of things nightmares were made of. "Or does the hot air in your head not allow enough room to think these things through?"
"She was undressing Rynn with her eyes, too," Jack supplied helpfully, nodding his head as he glanced between the two girls, "I think you should send her off to a nunnery, it would do her worlds of good."
"Alright, children, that's enough. Mother, are you ready to leave?" Claire-Marie sighed with exasperation, turning to Suzette.
"I suppose so. I had hoped to take a look around and find a skirt for my granddaughter, as she seems to have forgotten hers," the old woman murmured, her hard gaze piercing Rowan, "But I suppose she will just have to suffer the embarrassment of running around with all the decency of a harlot in front of the entire family."
"Mother!" Claire-Marie exclaimed as the old woman passed her, just as Jack squealed a triumphant, adoring, "Grandmother!"
"Let's be off, shall we?"
Antha only glared after the younger girl, positioned precisely between her and Cian with her arms crossed as Rowan was led off down the stairs with her mother and grandmother, Suzette dragging Jack behind them.
"Yes," Antha sighed at length when they were out of sight, "Shall we?"
"I call Antha's car!" Courtland shouted, popping up from nowhere in his usual dramatic, slightly effeminate style, made several degrees more formal.
Pierce, slinking up at his shoulder in his very usual style of a suave Italian-made suit, his hair as flawless as ever, purred, "Seconded."
"That will put you two with us, then," Michael concluded, putting a hand on either of the twins' shoulders and smiling at them as Julien stepped out of his room. "Just remember, Courtland, you promised to help protect them today."
"I will, I will," he brushed the reminder off, rolling his eyes. "But I might need a fire hose, if you want me to keep Rowan off of the Calais boys."
Antha, meanwhile, had her arms crossed uncomfortably, her eyes flitting occasionally to Pierce though she was trying to ignore him and the obvious gaze he raked over her figure. "Pierce, if you don't stop staring at me like that---!" she exploded finally, her jaw clenched.
"I can't help it!" he defended himself, pouting, "You're all...I don't know, curvy! I am a man, Evie!"
"Enough's enough," Courtland merely sighed, and in the next second, with a little yelp of shock, had Antha slung over his shoulder, kicking her legs and holding onto his shoulder for dear life. "Shall we boldly go?"
Pierce grinned, pressing Cian forward with a hand on his back. "Let's."

Most of the family had already arrived when the core group of Mayfairs entered the great glass tower that was Mayfair and Mayfair Law Firm, with it's dark oak paneling and leather-upholstered seats, the very stern portraits of men long dead and deeply green potted plants scattered around the room. Most of them were still waiting for one of the three elevators to return from the top floor, milling around and socializing as they did so.
Antha found Malakai like a radar, sitting in the far corner with Belle and Millie, the former of which found Antha only moments after she found Malakai and ran at her squealing, seizing Malakai's hand and dragging the poor boy after her.
"Aunt Antha!" she cried, throwing herself at her even as she refused to release Malakai's hand, and then with a glance beside her and an equally pleased smile, "Uncle Cian! You look fancy." Her massive blue eyes turned, settling then on Rynn and Liesse, and with a slight tilt of her head and the unabashed bluntness of a child she exclaimed, "Uncle Rynn, why are you so purple?! You look like Thorne's hair!" No one said anything about Belle referring to Rynn as her uncle, though there were a few raised eyebrows at it. The child had such a legion of uncles that it did not seem particularly strange for her to throw the word around.
"Belle," Malakai chided her, infinitely gentle, squeezing her hand, and she abruptly clamped her mouth shut, looking just a little abashed.
"I didn't mean to be rude," she swore profusely when a moment had passed, gazing up at Malakai as she spoke, as his opinion was the one that really mattered, "Honestly I didn't. Uncle Rynn is my fourth choice for my future husband, after you and uncle Cian and uncle Pierce."
The small group of Mayfairs around her laughed gently at that, Antha stooping down to lay a kiss on her golden head. Courtland pursed his lips, brows knitted. "What, not me? Belle, I thought you loved me!"
"I did love you, but I decided you're not fancy enough for me," she announced very surely, holding tight to Malakai's hand and drawing a little closer to his leg. Malakai was the only one amongst her choices who was not 'fancy,' as apparently the child liked her men (her father swore up and down on numerous occasions that she spent far too much time around Antha). Certainly he was dapper today with his soft ebony hair combed back, clad in black slacks and Oxford shirt beneath a cream-colored suit jacket fitted to his slender waist, the antiquated pendant of the Mayfair family crest strung from around his neck. But that wasn't Malakai's style as it was the others, he was usually to be found with grass stains on his jeans, his Oxford shirts untucked, an oversized cardigan of some soft color every now and then. But that didn't matter to Belle as it did with anyone else, nor to his other admirers. She loved him for those gentle eyes and that soft voice, his easy smile and the way he always humored her without being condescending. Malakai was all warm sunshine and summer breezes through rose bushes, naps in hammocks beneath oak trees, that was the kind of easygoing aura he had, and Belle could never imagine loving anyone better because of it.
Courtland, sighing in resignation, only ruffled the girl's hair, at which she shrieked and tugged frantically on Malakai's hand, squealing, "Fix it, fix it, fix it!"
"It's getting close to time to begin," Antha sighed, glancing at the nearby clock before, without warning, she was blinded by a brilliant flash.
Rubbing his eyes against the rotating blobs of colorful light, Pierce groaned. "You damned brat! What are you doing with that, put it away!"
From across the room an office chair came rolling by the cousins, the boy seated backwards in it shuffling his feet on the floor to make it move. "I was taking a picture of the newlyweds. Is that a crime?" There was the loud pop of a blue bubble of gum following the lazy drawl of a voice, sharp green eyes focused boredly on Pierce as the boy came to a halt, his arms draped over the back of the rolling chair as he wound the film reel of his disposable camera, flicking his long lilac-colored ponytail of hair over his shoulder. He looked quite bored with the entirety of everything around him, and used to being so. "Sup, big bro? Long time no see."
"Not long enough," Pierce groaned with exasperation, shaking his head.
Thorne ignored him, his gaze shifting stoically to Cian. "I remember you. We rode to oncle Stefan's funeral together." He paused, cocking his head very slightly to the side. "I guess I was at your wedding, too. It's hard to remember, I was hiding from my mother in the rafters."
"At least that's one thing we can agree on," Pierce muttered, and then walked away towards the elevators to receive his adoring fans in the form of giggling Mayfair girls without so much as a goodbye.
Thorne only crossed his arms on the back of the chair, his gaze dropping unceremoniously on Liesse. "Aunt Suzette told me to introduce you to James," he said blandly, inclining his head to indicate a boy in a Catholic school uniform standing not too far away, a thin creature with pale brown hair and rectangular glasses, fair skin, speaking in a calm, diligent manner to several of his cousins in the same uniforms. "Tell her I did." With that, he swiveled the chair around and gave the ground a little kick that sent him rolling away from them again. Courtland only sighed after him.
"Twenty minutes," Antha counted off, glancing again at the clock and taking Cian's hand. "We'll meet you up there."
"Oi!" Courtland called, staring curiously after her, "What are you---" His words stopped short as Antha seized a newly arrived elevator for herself and Cian, pressing the button to close the doors before anyone else had the chance to board it, and then watched the little dial above the steel doors until it stopped very suddenly between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth floors and stayed there, giving a little laugh.
The elevators held roughly twenty people a piece, and the Mayfairs went up in groups of fifteen or so in the two remaining elevators. The main branch of the family all went up together, taking with them Rynn and Liesse, and the moment Rynn had entered the metal box, Rowan had dashed in after them, wedging herself meticulously between Rynn and Pierce until Jack squeezed between them, glaring threateningly at his little sister as he grabbed Rynn possessively in his arms. In the corner, lifted in Malakai's arms with her own pulled about his neck, Belle mused that uncle Jack really loved uncle Rynn, didn't he? What would uncle Courtland say? Malakai, who had very carefully not laid eyes on either Rynn or Liesse since they had arrived, only stared at his shoes and murmured not to worry about it. Belle commented that he was very lethargic today---Big brother had taught her that word, was he impressed?----he seemed like something was on his mind, was everything alright? Malakai patted her head gently, telling her not to worry about so many things.
While the rest of the family had filed into the conference room, the cousins had waited patiently for Antha in the waiting room and when she arrived only a few minutes before the meeting, still smoothing her skirt out, they followed obediently at her heels as she strolled in, the great oak doors flying open for her without so much as a touch.
The room beyond those doors was massive, recently remodeled into a startlingly modern contrast of white walls, sculpted metal sconces, and black leather upholstered chairs lined up around a triangular glass table made to fit an entire royal court. The scene was bathed in the natural light from the long wall of glass opposite the doors, the entire city spread out beneath it like a city of Legos beneath a child’s feet. Modern minimalist, meant not to take away from the intricate web that began just to the right of the windows with ‘Suzanne Mayfair’ in a curling font and burst into the long lineage of the Mayfairs in crisp black ink, hundreds and hundreds of names upon two walls, the freshest being the addition of ‘Cian Calais’ connected by a thread of ink to Antha’s name (enlarged, as were all of the other Designee of the Legacy’s names). Vanessa and Sebastien would be added when they were born.
The first thing the Mayfairs all noticed, and which Antha's cousins had taken for granted up until that moment, was the change in their Designee. They had joked here and there how she had been made from brat princess to queen but they had not fully realized how true it was. It had something to do with the gleam of her eyes that had somewhat morphed, the subtle changes to her movements and posture, the unusually modern, mature flair to her dark dress and the way she had smoothly pinned up her wild scarlet curls, the odd new hint of added authority to her regal air as she gracefully took her seat at the third corner of the table. The other two corners had been occupied by Barclay, the family caretaker, with his son Lawrence at his right side as successor to the position, and Julien at the other corner as the de facto head of the family with Courtland at his right side as successor to that position, with Jack two seats down and Liesse and Rynn firmly placed between them. The last seat, at Antha’s right hand, was by right Cian’s as there was currently no successor to her position to take it. Malakai was seated across from the twins, as there were no empty seats that did not face them, and unfortunately that put him directly next to Sera. She murmured to him, batting her eyelashes as usual, but Malakai didn't look at her either even as he murmured responses to her greetings and Belle, watching this happen with a furious pout of indignation, bolted out of her seat near her father and climbed with great determination into Malakai's lap, whether he liked it or not, and sat quietly regarding Sera with fierce eyes. (Definitely spending too much time around Antha, Barclay noted mentally.) Malakai only smiled weakly at her, whispering a few words to her and then the cousin on the other side of him, who nodded and rose from his seat so that Malakai could place Belle in it, though she scooted the chair directly up against his and held firmly to his hand as he sat quietly staring down at the table, listless.
The rest of the family had risen at Antha’s arrival, deferentially regarding her, and only lowered back into their seats when she had taken hers, crossing her legs with one heeled foot dangling, and made a gesture for them to be seated. There was a brief moment of silence, even the chairs gliding smoothly, soundlessly on the marble floor, the Mayfairs settling themselves respectably and turning their eyes with expectation to Antha who smiled demurely back at them, eyes sharpening. “Let’s begin then, shall we?" The vaulted, frescoed ceiling had been very precisely designed, even her softest whisper carried easily over to the opposite side of the enormous room. "Foremost, now that oncle Stefan is settled in his grave, it is time to address the matter of his successor.” Julien, settled back in his seat with one elbow on either armrest, his fingers steepled beneath his chin, narrowed his eyes at Antha and she narrowed hers back. “As we all know, Stefan named Julien as his successor before he died and so he has acted as de facto head of the family since his passing. But as we all know, as Designee of the Legacy the decision is ultimately mine.” One could have heard a heart sputter in the silence that followed, the family anxiously glancing between Antha and Julien as they stared one another down, imagining in their heads daggers flying across the table between them. It was only after several eternal moments of this that Antha’s lips parted again and she purred quietly, “I’ve decided to honor Stefan’s wishes and name Julien, following the conditions that he names Courtland as his own successor, and acts alongside Courtland and uncle Barclay in the governing of the family in the time between my passing and my successor’s sixteenth birthday, when she may take charge of the family.”
“I accept,” Julien replied demurely, giving a gracious bow of his head in Antha’s direction, “I shall do everything in my power to help wisely and efficiently govern the family, and to train Courtland to take over upon my death.”
“Then that brings us to the next item on the agenda: the matter of my successor. As the family rules state, each Designee of the Legacy is charged with naming amongst her daughters the most powerful as their rightful successor to the Mayfair legacy and estates. As no doubt you all know---“ She cut her eyes at Courtland, whose face split into a guilty grin. “---Cian and I are soon expecting twins, one of them a daughter.” Her cousins bit their lips on the grins her words inspired, the careful phrasing that shushed the whispered rumors of her children’s paternity. “Needless as it may seem, in keeping with family law, I hereby name my unborn daughter, Vanessa Mayfair, my successor as Designee of the Legacy, under the legal care of her father, Cian Calais, and my brother Malakai upon my passing. If, God forbid, she passes before she is of age, I name Belle Mayfair as the alternate Designee of the Legacy as a granddaughter of a past designee and the most powerful Mayfair girl of her generation to date.”
There was a smattering of murmurs at this, happy whispers and small exclamations of approval, a few appraising glances towards Cian, and then Antha gestured for silence and it was hastily given. “Which brings us to the next matter. Before he died, Stefan asked Cian, as the father of my children, into the Mayfair family. Uncle Barclay, as caretaker of the family, has accepted Stefan’s decision.” Barclay offered a polite smile, nodding his head in acknowledgement. “As Designee of the Legacy, I also give my consent." She glanced briefly at Cian, flashing a small, gentle smile before turning back to address the family. “Does any member of the family have any objections?”
The Mayfairs glanced surreptitiously around at one another, curiously, some uneasily, no one saying anything. Most eyes flitted, at some point or another, at Julien who sat casually back in his seat, watching Cian. Antha outright stared him down, almost as if she was challenging him, and when it was made clear that no one had any objections to speak of, he finally made a small gesture for attention and spoke. “Since I am the main antagonist in this particular situation and as I am clearly expected to speak, I shall do so.” Antha’s eyes narrowed dangerously as she continued to stare at him, going frighteningly still in her seat. Julien only smiled at her with an equally narrowed gaze and continued calmly. “As a Mayfair, and the newly named head of the family, I haven’t the slightest objection.”
There was a pause, all eyes staring confounded at Julien, before Courtland voiced their collective question in a thick, suspicious exclamation of, “…really?”
“Really,” Julien answered very simply, glancing at the boy and then back to Antha, “It isn’t the marriage I desired for you, I think everyone’s perfectly aware of that, but what’s done is done and why should I object to him considering that fact?” Antha only stared in stunned silence, blinking her great eyes as if she wasn't exactly sure what was happening, so Julien continued, turning his gaze now to Cian. “He’s a handsome boy, he’s shown he knows how to properly conduct himself when it is called for, he chose to take responsibility for his children even when you gave him the opportunity to run, he is clearly quite beloved by our family---“
“Damn straight!” Courtland concurred, Jack emphatically nodding his head down the table from him, before Julien shot them a threatening glare.
“---he is a witch of satisfying ability, he has done exactly as I instructed him to in relentlessly studying our family history, and most importantly, he puts up with you, which is not something that can be said of many men outside of our family. Besides…” Julien moved slightly to better adjust himself, folding his hands atop his knee as a little smirk briefly touched his lips, “…I like his style.”
More thick silence then, the Mayfairs all making strange faces as if they were not sure whether they wanted to laugh or continue staring at him in dumbfounded amazement. Antha had never looked so stunned in her life, brows knitted, lips slightly parted, eyes locked on Julien as if he were an animal that had decided on a whim to begin playing the violin. This went on for several moments before Antha gave a small start, returning to her senses, and with one final, disbelieving glance at Julien, turned finally to Cian, her hand briefly squeezing his beneath the table. “Cian, you have approval from the three scions of power within the Mayfair family and there are no objections to your joining the family. It is your decision to either accept or deny the invitation, not as my husband but as an active member and contributor to our bloodline.” She gestured for him to rise and address the family, all eyes turning expectantly to him, and then gave a sweet smile, whispering beneath her breath, “Showtime, darling.”
Courtland, his gaze sweeping around the table as Cian rose, did what he did best, throwing his arms in the air and calling in a jokingly shrill voice that imitated any rabid fangirl, “We love you, Cian!” Again there was the murmur of laughter, as well as the stern looks from some of the older Mayfairs directed at Courtland, and most importantly, the brightest smile that he had seen Antha flash him in the longest time because the heavy atmosphere had lightened and the intense gazes of the Mayfairs had softened, even briefly diverting from their rapt attention upon Cian, save for the handful of girls that joined in on his declaration of admiration (which Antha took great pains not to scowl at). But there was no way around their complete focus for long, no way around Cian saying his piece, and eventually they all sat quietly watching him, waiting for his verdict, either his acceptance and the declarations of his intention to be a good and loyal member of the Mayfair family, or his rejection of them which, as they had learned from history, usually ended in a very mysterious death shortly thereafter.  

[Okimiyage]

It almost hurt how well Cian fit into the Mayfair hierarchy. Almost. And then Rynn told himself that it did not matter what the general opinion of his older brother was, that nothing they thought mattered at all to him. They had known him for so little time--barely enough for Antha's pregnancy to swell and show--that how any found the passion to applaud, Rynn couldn't imagine. It was their blinding love for family, and the brat princess who led them, which had paved the way for Cian's ascension. In his youth, Cian had sometimes joked that he would eventually run away from home and become a high-priced gigolo. Rynn had never taken him seriously before, but now wondered if Cian had harbored a latent talent for prophecy.
Rynn had not wanted to join the rest of the table--he had been drawn instead to the long stretch of floor-to-ceiling glass, fascinated by the wispy clouds beneath his feet. His eyes caught the reflections of blue sky in his irises, like a kid in an airplane for the first time.
Eventually Liesse was the one who approached him.
He did not look at her when she came near, but spoke instead to the window, quietly, so close that his breath left it fogged: "It's funny how--even though I know there's glass in the way--I can't stop imagining what it would be like to fall from here."

Liesse didn't know what to say to this. She rarely could think of the right words to soothe Rynn--her touch had always been more than enough. But now when her hands closed around his, she could feel the tension in them. The trouble would not simply melt away as it had before--especially now, when Rynn was not in his own court with all the privilege that he'd been afforded before. Liesse wondered if the aristocrats of the French Revolution had felt such a sense of displacement after being driven into England.

But at least they had been driven into sympathetic arms, whereas Rynn seemed to regard the Mayfairs as though they were judge, jury and jailor all in one.
Cian had always been the one that the family had all thought they couldn't rely upon--always running off, always making a scene, pissing off whoever was available.
But here, he fit in even better than Liesse, made the both of them look awkward in comparison. When Rowan had made eyes at Rynn, his immediate instinct had been to bristle, immediately suspecting foul intent (and with that one, he might not have been wrong. But it was still rude.) In comparison, Cian had subtlety, and just enough mischief to insure that whenever Rowan glanced at him, he was directing the full force of his devotion upon Antha. The whole affair might have been cruel if it hadn't been so funny to watch her steam. Certainly, Liesse couldn't fault her taste. They'd said Malakai had been subjected to similar abuse from his flirtatious cousin before, too.

…on the subject of which, Liesse was not inclined to delve. The events of the previous night made her uncomfortable to think about. Liesse was in no way sexually experienced, although Cian had told her incredibly explicit stories when, in a fit of curiosity, she'd prodded him for knowledge. The only person that she'd ever shared a bed with was her twin. Now, Malakai. And…she hadn't been entirely truthful with Rynn about the what had happened. 'Nothing happened.'
Technically, they'd kissed. But Liesse had been more than a little tipsy, so was Malakai, and she wasn't exactly sure that she wanted Rynn to know everything, all of a sudden. She wasn't sure what he would say if she told him the truth--that, despite the circumstances, Liesse had liked the kiss. She liked Malakai, too. It was the first time that Liesse had ever received attention like this from anybody, let alone from someone as attractive as Malakai. She found herself unexpectedly enjoying the entire situation--and yet at the same time was ashamed to admit it.
It was the first secret Liesse had ever kept from Rynn.

Dorian did a very poor job of sneaking into the meeting mid-attendance. But he was just in time to catch the scene of all-inclusive rejoicing as Julien announced his approval. Grateful for the diversion and general hubbub amongst the younger cousins, he scooted down to an empty chair at the end of the table and slouched with desperate inconspicuousness into the rich leather seat. Dorian was very good at being invisible when he wanted to be, but everyone else in the family was also highly skilled in picking up things that were a thousand times sneakier than he was, or existed within a different dimension, sometimes. He was slightly inclined to be pissed off. Dorian had swung by the Mayfair Manor and initially assumed that the empty house most likely meant he was in the Twilight Zone. Eventually (simply by the deduction of the familial ******** aura around Mayfair & Mayfair) he'd managed to figure out where they'd gone, and followed. Why had nobody told him this was today?

He was just in time to catch Cian's acceptance, although he didn't know it at the time. Dorian was more fascinated by Antha's dress--he'd never seen his dear Designee so buxom before.

Cian found himself taking a deep breath and letting it out. He hadn't exactly planned a speech, but there was a general air of expectance in the room. All eyes fell to him. And Cian felt his throat clench for a second, thinking, How damned lucky am I? He'd never, never once in a million years, imagined that this was where he would end up. He would have laughed at anyone who suggested it, calling them a dreamer and a Cinderella and making snarky remarks about the illusion of romance for the rest of the evening. But now, he had the chance to make his home here. Not just to live in the same house, but to be part of their family. It was more than he'd ever expected out of life. For a minute there, Court, I could almost take you seriously. He cleared his throat, and tried to sit up straight (it had been difficult not to slouch with relief after Julien had given as good as an official blessing upon the marriage.) "To say that I'm grateful for this is an understatement. You've all been incredibly generous--not just towards myself, but towards my entire family." His eyes flickered towards Rynn, who was biting his lip unconsciously as he watched Cian. "If there were anything more I could repay you with, I would give it gladly. As it is, you may rely upon my loyalty for life--mind, body and soul--and afterlife, if I should linger on."
Cian felt like letting a huge breath of relief. Public speaking was not his forté; the more pomp and dignity that a speaker possessed, the more Cian usually felt like laughing at them. He'd never expected the tables would be turned like this,