Mayfair Manor

[Okimiyage]

Rynn felt like he was in the same boat as Antha's pursuers, blindly following where she led, just barely keeping her in sight as she dipped and wove through the oncoming throng of panicked citizens.
The stairs were at least a little less crowded than the city below. As they rose over the steps of bright, fresh marble, Rynn tried not to glance behind them. He was very nearly successful--enormous globes of flame that were being volleyed across the sky & landing nearby were difficult to resist, as far as distractions went. He very nearly felt his eyebrows singe from the impact.
The temple was shoulder-to-shoulder with kneeling penitents, worshipers come to beg their gods for forgiveness. Some of them sported bleeding wounds, evidence of the struggle it had been to make it to this 'refuge'.
If Rynn listened, he could hear the sound of the blast as fireballs fell behind him, and the screams of the dying--some of them altogether too drawn-out.
Flies buzzed around the head of a temple sentinel at the door. Whether his eyes ought to have been, there was nothing but scabby red sockets, blood streaming down his sallow cheeks like tears.
And so there was no one to stop Rynn and Antha as they put their shoulders together against the massive portal--and slowly but surely, with no small effort, scraped the groaning doors into opening the scant few inches it took to wriggle through and into the temple's sanctum. (this can't be good for the wound, came the thought--but if Antha suffered during her exertion, she made no evidence of it--)
Inside, Rynn was struck by how eerily quiet it was. He could not hear the sounds of the city any longer. Even the chants of the worshipers outside seemed to have disappeared. The space felt...hallowed. There was even something different about the air--the temperature was a good ten degrees colder--even Rynn's sensitive nose could not detect the odor of smoke or charring flesh in this room.
Rynn leaned gratefully against a fluted column, clutching his side and breathing hard, trying to massage the stitch out of his ribs. The boy did not see the blood make its way from her lips, but when he glanced up again, he made note of the smear of red across the side of her hand, and his eyes narrowed. "We can't keep running like this," he stated flatly.
She didn't seem to pay attention to him--going off about Hell and Purgatory and all those spaces in-between. Even though Rynn wanted to write it off as nonsense, and pay it no attention at all, his witch's instinct kept his ears unrelentingly alert.
And he hated to admit how much it all made sense. Despite the coolness of the temple, the Calais witch found himself sweating profusely.

The ancestors had told him a little about hell. "Told" wasn't exactly the right word for it, but he had glimpsed it in bits and pieces through their eyes, on the rare occasion that the whole of the family had been summoned for ritual purposes.
And he wondered if any of them were waiting for him here, whether the desecration and destruction of their sacred family tombs had released any of those spirits into their natural place--
(But at the same time, he knew he should not dwell on those topics. Like in the waking world, thinking too much of spirits was prone to draw their attention all the more strongly to you--)
Instead, he shook off his fears--they served no purpose in this moment-- and took Antha's hands. He tried to disguise the note of unease in his voice by masking it with scorn. "Never thought I'd see the day when I'd willingly enter into a working with you. Hell, though--it's better than any of my ideas. If it gets us out of here any quicker, I'll be of whatever use I can."
Good old Rynn, same as always. Stubborn as a mule, unrelenting until the end.
He glanced up at the enormous statue above them, the magnificently sculpted folds of his robe, the classically perfect features that Rynn refused to admit that he recognized.
It was one thing to have a family spirit, a supernatural patron of some sort--in fact, it was all but tradition for a witch to acquire some manner of familiar--but adopting a god was a little out of the ordinary.
Then again, with the power Antha normally commanded, the source had to be either god or demon. "I certainly hope he's paying close attention," The witch-boy muttered under his breath. "Otherwise I'll be more than a little put out. Ignoring a sacrificial goat or something is one matter, I'd like to think we count for a tad more than that." This was Rynn's not-so-subtle way of pointing out the rapidly pooling blood on the seat next to Antha. He went to her and knelt down on one knee beside the bench, inspecting the saturated shirt-sleeve critically. "You ought to be putting pressure on that." The boy reached out, applying the broad of his palm over the makeshift bandage. His touch was surprisingly gentle--something that one might not have expected from the Calais heir. But he'd tended to Liesse's scratches and thornpricks all his life, and it had made him a not-entirely-inept nurse.
With his free hand, he clasped Antha's. If this worked, he owed her one. Or maybe she owed him. It was difficult to reckon.
Rynn took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let it out slowly. With Antha as his anchor, he cast his mind out into the unending darkness that was, for the moment, all he could make out of the outside world. He had to wonder if this was what it felt like to be deaf and dumb. Somewhere out there, he had to believe Liesse was listening for ******** this post-eating bullshit, gaia. ******** hell.))

In the waking world, the Mayfair family home was as quiet as the grave.
Liesse sat in the front parlor, huddled over Rynn, her long hair falling around her like a veil of morning. It was a testament to her distraction that she did not look up when Michael came into the room, and approached with steps not-entirely-muffled by the thick Persian rug, but only at last when his touch stirred the hair of her scalp.
She swung about with a slightly wild look in her red-rimmed gaze. Her cheeks were wet. While the cousins had all been in the room with her, she'd been able to hold it back, telling herself how Rynn wouldn't have wanted her to show weakness like that. Telling herself that the Mayfairs would figure it out, they would help. They had brought her back from the dead--a coma would be nothing to them.
But then they had left, and somehow it had become so much harder to keep telling herself those lies.
Liesse recognized in herself the feelings that Rynn had entertained, in the days after his defeat, her death. There had been so much despair in him. Even suspended inbetween life and death, she'd been able to smell it on him, rising like the perfume of a rare flower. Now, all around her, fear riddled the air of the household.
When she saw it was only Michael, she settled back a little and turned around again, pressing her knuckles against her lashes in some vain attempt to dry her eyes. She did not sob--that would have been somehow too theatrical, a gaudy display of grief. Liesse was not such an open soul--but there was a tightness in her chest, in the way that her narrow shoulders had become tight as bowstrings.
"It feels like sitting up with the dead," she murmured quietly, almost to herself.
In a moment more, it would be to herself. The cousins had all vacated the premises; Cian was useless, and much more concerned with his wife, besides. Rightly so.
No, it was just her and Rynn now. Like they'd always been--except Rynn wasn't in his body anymore. It was just her and the husk, an empty shell like the kind june-bugs left behind on trees.
Liesse could understand why Rynn was so afraid to lose his twin again. She'd have to reassure him when he came back. If he came back.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a split second, Antha couldn't help but laugh. Not a true laugh, no, the kind of sound people made when they were hysterical and at the end of their rope. "Just once..." she murmured, giving a slow shake of her head from side to side that swept her chaotic curls across her sullied cheeks, "Just once, Rynn, before I die, I wish I could see what you're like when you're being agreeable. But unfortunately, I don't think you know how to go through life without trying to pick a fight." But then his hand was on her, laid across the bloodied and aching wound that stretched so deeply into the soft tissue beneath her ribs. She tensed, for more than one reason, like a cat faced with a bucket of water except that she didn't move, didn't speak, her dark and narrowed eyes stayed glued to the small space of floor before her as she sat frozen.
A loud crash sounded distantly from outside the temple, panicked voices screaming madly, and Antha fell back into motion, glancing towards the massive stone doors with no lack of anxiety. When Rynn took her hand, the girl released a wisp of an aggravated sigh, another of those faint shakes of her head before she cupped a hand around the back of his neck, drawing him in closer. She wondered, for a split second, if he feared she would kiss him again---she had almost forgotten about that, but immediately cast it back out of her mind---but instead her forehead pressed gently to his, her free hand taking up his between them, her fingers slipping unwaveringly through his and latching on. It wasn't a great deal unlike praying---had been the basis for mortal prayers, actually---but it took the kind of dedicated focus that most humans did not possess in these things, an ability of the mind to reach out and look for something. With every fiber of her being, every thought in her head, and every word in her vocabulary, Antha screamed for the creature that had guarded her family for generations.

In the attic of Mayfair Manor, the entrance to the airship that was somewhere between the two places, that dusty old back room of boarded up windows and a crate and tarp altar, the cousins were all on their knees on the floor, arranged into a tight circle with a bowl between them, into which they cast droplets of their blood, one by one. They twined their fingers together through one another, pressed together their pricked and bloodied palms, closed their eyes and demanded answers, solutions.To what they weren't sure, but damn it if they didn't try their best anyways.
Nicolae sat at their head, between Courtland and Pierce, his eyes shut very tightly and his brow furrowed into a deep crease with concentration. Evie, Evie, Evie... He barely felt in his body, he looked so far out for her. Heaven, hell, the molten core of the earth, it didn't matter. He would find her if it killed him.
The Mayfair familial spirit froze very abruptly around them, as if it was trying to listen in, and then gave the finest shiver. Pierce, wedged between Nicolae and Dorian, opened one eye as if to peer at it curiously. What in the world...?
Nicolae's face went rigid at the same time that Alistair gave a single sharp intake of breath downstairs. They almost weren't sure what the flicker they had just felt was, it had been so brief, so...
There it was again, like a distant whisper, and the spirit shuddered violently, buzzing suddenly with the need for action. Where it went, running off between worlds, no one was quite sure. But when it struggled, the cousins all but shoved at it. Even Alistair relinquished possession of his twin to clamor up the stairs, dropping to his knees with his arms around Nicolae's neck, his head against his shoulder, eyes closed as he focused and the house shook around him.

Before the altar, Antha gave a small sound to match the quaking of the temple. She could feel it, something like a hairline crack snaking across the surface of the world, power seeping through, and behind it there was that familiar thrum of energy that she knew so well.
Nero had felt it, too. He was angry. He was coming.
Antha's hands tightened desperately around Rynn's, fighting the urge to shake as the earth did beneath them, her mind pressing at his as if to egg it on. And that was something...a touch of power, no matter how weak, proof that they were making progress.
The world wavered the slightest bit just as the temple doors burst open, Nero standing in the glow from the roaring blaze outside the doors. There was nothing left outside, only fire. But Antha held her ground, no matter how wrathfully he stomped down the aisle towards them. Mentally, she screamed for the thing bound to her between the worlds, reached for him through the cracks as he pounded against them from the other side.
"Filthy little witch."
Antha flinched just as Nero's fingers closed around the crown of her head, shrieking as he tugged on her hair and turned her to face him, staring one another down from two feet away. Antha could barely breath through the hatred that burned in those crimson eyes, the pure ill will. The vampire scowled, all bloody fangs, and tossed her backwards until she was sprawled against the stone altar, her legs scrambling on the few small stairs to press her further away from the vampire and...she wasn't sure what was at his back. Faces, dark and grotesque, sneering things, indistinct figures that flickered and advanced on the girl.
Distantly, they were familiar to Antha. She almost recognized them, and gradually she understood them as creatures that had been chasing her her entire life. Demons from the abyss between worlds, parasites that wanted her power, to devour her consciousness whole and use her shell as their puppet. She had warded them away easily over the years---if she could all but enslave the Mayfair familial spirit, they stood no chance against her---but here...here, Antha didn't have that kind of power.
It was impressive, she thought, that she did not scream when they advanced on her, growling and hissing and baring long, jagged teeth over her as she slid further down as if she could sink straight into the stone and escape.
Nero stepped towards her, one foot laid firmly on the step between her knees, glaring down at her with fangs bared. Her blood smelled terribly sweet, even without the heady allure of her power running beneath it.
The cracks in the surface of the world shattered abruptly, the spirit behind them reaching out to shove Nero just as he descended upon Antha, tossing back the various demons that hovered around her. Behind the altar, the massive statue of Jupiter cracked and came crumbling down to the ground and before anyone could move back towards her, the spirit wound itself tightly around Antha. In turn, she threw herself at Rynn, pulling her arms tightly around him.
She tugged at the spirit, pulled the last piece of his power into the small sphere of a world as she felt something---her cousins, she realized shortly---shoving at it from the other side, and the entirety of the intangible creature coiled around the witches. Nero did not advance again.
The world wavered again, more definitively this time, until the temple was no longer around them. There were no screams, no crashes, no crackle and roar of fire. There was only the very gentle, droning song of the cicadas and swamp insects, but that was all very distant. The walls of the cathedral---old and abandoned, the marble floor cracked and the stained glass windows either shattered or clouded---kept the song at bay, echoing eerily through the massive vault of a room. Antha didn't remember standing, only knew that she was very suddenly, staring down at her feet and the pool of blood standing around them, dark and grotesque under the silvery moonlight flooding through a broken window.
She didn't move for what felt like an eternity, her breath caught painfully in her throat. Because Antha knew...this was her own premonition brought to life before her very eyes, every sight and sound of it. She didn't even need the sight that met her eyes when her gaze flickered up from her feet, tracing the thick pools of blood to her own body laying disturbingly still on the marble, her white dress marred with great splashes of crimson from some gaping wound over her stomach, the blood trickling from her still lips and staining her fingers. It was too grotesque the way her limbs were arranged, she thought---one arm laying across her stomach, the other bent up by her head, as if she could just be asleep if it weren't for the blood and wound and her blank, glassy eyes.
Something fell with an echoing metallic clatter to the floor, startling Antha, and unthinkingly her hand reached out and snatched Rynn's, her fingers closing tightly around his. Judging by the trembling of her fingers, it was more for her benefit than his protection.
Glancing up from the butcher knife laying on the ground, Antha was a bit more shocked to see Nero standing still and nearly drenched from head to toe in her blood than she logically should have been. There was no part of it that wasn't unnerving---not the blood, the very simple and modern knife that somehow seemed wrong, or the way his thin, bloodied lips curled very slowly at the edges into a cruelly pleased smile. When the storm hit, marking the death of a Mayfair, it hit with a ferocity the girl had never seen. The sky blackened in seconds, the rain carried on the gale-force winds thick enough to be opaque outside the windows, the thunder loud enough to violently shake the entire church. When the lightning tore at the sky, the light that flashed through the window illuminated the vampire standing across the decrepit, hollow room and his deranged smile, and it was finally enough to make Antha scream bloody murder.
Nero only watched with intense pleasure, his crimson eyes narrowed at his prize, and the message was clear. This episode didn't matter, not really...in three months, the game was over for real.
Antha tightened her hand around Rynn's, not really for any benefit but her own, and in the next moment everything shattered, being sucked into the darkness, replaced by an odd sense of motion and nothingness.

In Mayfair Manor, Antha awoke already screaming, her eyes flying open as she bolted up and, to her surprise, took in her surroundings. Her house, her room, her own world and time. Breathlessly, chest heaving, she turned and glanced around herself with wide, panicked eyes, glanced at the windows just before the curtains flew open as if she were testing her powers, making sure they were there.
Her shoulders shook, just once, and her hands went to her side, fumbling in a trembling panic for where her wound had been. There was no sign of it. Next, her hand spread out before her, her eyes meticulously inspecting her burned palm, but it had never been so. None of it had carried over, not the slightest burn or scratch, and Antha's wild eyes met Cian's beside her. There was no end to the things those eyes spoke.
The footsteps sounded coming down the stairs, the cousins running to see her, but Antha had already bolted out of bed and was running down the stairs before them, bursting into the parlor to stand over Rynn, to look for his presence in his own body. When she found him whole and intact in his unmarred body, she released something like a relieved sob and sank to her knees beside the couch, clutching anxiously at her heart.
When the cousins rushed into the parlor, her head had already fallen into her hands, her shoulders shaking with what they could only assume were sobs. Alistair approached her first, all but shoving his cousins out of the way, but only brushed a hand through her hair and briefly squeezed her shoulder before quietly falling back as if he had been told to do so.
The other cousins, being less tactful that Alistair on the whole, took a few steps forward, Courtland and Nicolae going forth to each take one of her arms, trying to lift her to her feet and soothe her with soft words. She jerked her arms out of their grips each time they tried, squirming away from them as she murmured, "No...quit it...stop..." Still the boys persisted, arguing very softly that she should get up, she should go to bed, something. But before long, her attempts to throw them off of her grew panicked and all at once, she snapped.
The boys both stumbled back from the sudden wild forcefulness of her arms as she struck back against them, jumping to her feet in one rapid motion as she shrieked, "DON'T TOUCH ME, DON'T TOUCH ME, DON'T TOUCH ME!" Her wide, darkened eyes, already reddened and wet with tears, darted frantically between them, her chest heaving with panicked breath before, after a few fleeting moments of careful silence and stillness, Antha threw Rynn a fleeting glance that said worlds of things and then bolted abruptly from the room, fleeing up the stairs and to the attic.
No one moved for several minutes following this, not daring to go after the girl. Courtland was the exception, moving very slowly to sit beside Liesse on the edge of the couch and touch a hand with incredible caution to a tendril of Rynn's hair, whispering very quietly, "Are you alright?"
Upstairs, something very big shattered very violently. Outside, something heavy crashed into the ground. Still, no one dared to move but Pierce and Nicolae, who went to the window and pushed aside the curtains, gazing out at the dark gardens spotted with clusters of square light. Pieces of fabric fluttered from the sky to crumple on the ground, scattered gems glittered in the grass, and a steamer trunk lay open and splintered on its side.
Quietly, as if he was more weary than surprised, Pierce murmured, "Is that...?"
Nicolae nodded shortly, whispering in return, "Mother's things."
Courtland made a small, helpless sound, dropping his head and massaging the backs of his eyes as he murmured, almost by habit now, "Cian, could you go---"
Abruptly, Vittorio cut him off. "He can't handle her when she's like this."
Courtland glanced up, eyes narrowed, and opened his mouth as if he would protest before hastily snapping it shut again, seeming to think the better of it. "You might be right."
"He is," Lawrence murmured very surely, more somber than usual as he watched boxes go soaring from the attic window to crash into the yard.
Surprisingly, Alistair quietly offered up his two cents. "Cian is very good at managing Evie. But right now..."
The cousins glanced covertly at one another, the same thought seeming to pass through their minds simultaneously. Without a word, Nicolae's hand fell away from the curtain and he vanished with the smallest sound like a sigh, his footsteps echoing up the stairs.
Alistair was the only one to move at first, drifting wordlessly outside to begin gathering up the things in the yard. Upstairs, Antha was screaming at Nicolae as he grabbed at her arms, snatching a box out of her grip and casting it aside.
"Why are you yelling at me?!"
"When was I yelling?!"
"Right now!"
"You're the one yelling!"
"I don't need this right now!"
"Christ, will you calm down?! Evie, put down the box!"
The cousins listened silently to the quick escalation, until they were yelling at and over each other, the creaks and thuds of movement growing more frequent and violent until the attic erupted into small screams and the crash of boxes, unintelligible words and groaning wood as someone fell. Unable to listen any long, most of them followed Alistair into the garden to gather Mary Beth's personal effects from the flowerbeds.
"Let go of me!"
Lawrence noted, with a foggy sort of awareness, that they were in the second floor hallway now, still arguing violently. "This takes me back," he murmured beneath his breath, half to himself.
Nicolae made a sound between a growl and a yell, followed by a short scream from Antha, and Cyrus flinched. "That it does. I don't miss it. No one else fights like Antha and Nicolae do."
As if to prove their cousins' point, in the next moment a clatter ensued and Nicolae came tumbling down the stairs, cussing lowly as he rose on unsteady arms and wiped a spot of blood from his lip. "Are we back to this, Evie?" he screamed up the stairs, rising with a small groan and rubbing his bruised shoulder, eyes narrowed at the girl at the top of the stairs, "Which part comes next? Oh, right---Jacob!" Something like a tea tray clattered in the kitchen. "Fetch darling Antha a knife, I think that's the next part. Right, Evie?" In response, a vase shot down the stairs and hurtled just past Nicolae's head as he craned it to the side, crashing into the floor and shattering. "Does it help, Antha? Does it <******** help you, attacking me because I look so much like her? Does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy ******** you, Nicolae!" the girl screamed down the stairs, with feeling.
"One of these ******** days, I swear I'm going to throw you off of the balcony! It'll be soooo easy, Evie. You don't weigh a thing. One shove and you'll go tumbling down into the garden and break every ******** bone in your body and then what could you do? How are you going to stab me when you can't move?"
There was the briefest pause, Antha giving something almost like a laugh except that it was a little too scornful and hysteric, before calling in a chillingly serious tone, "You're the devil."
The vampire scowled, calling back, "That makes two of us, doesn't it!" a fraction of a second before her bedroom door slammed violently shut. Nicolae turned, still scowling as he dropped angrily into a chair in the parlor and the sound of water rushing through the pipes in the walls started up, signaling that the shower was running.
Glancing up with those weary eyes, his hand against his temple, Lawrence muttered irritably, "Was all of that really necessary?"
Nicolae scoffed, turning his head to gaze off into the hallway. "She can't panic if she's angry enough. You should know that by now, Laurie. You're the one that watched her tear through Sleet's coven and burn the entire lot of them ten years ago. Back when his coven was worth something." And then, with a particularly acute scowl as his eyes gazed off into something else. "Back before she convinced me to ******** eat him and take his place. But I suppose I have the Calais family to thank for giving her that deranged idea."
Alistair, appearing in the doorway with his arms full of his mother's things, interrupted very abruptly, "Don't put that on them. They can't help it if they gave Evie a horrendously grotesque idea. Everything does."
Nicolae glanced up, his face relaxing just a bit as his features shifted into vague, unconcerned confusion. "Right. I was wondering this earlier, but...who exactly are you and why do you look so much like Evie?"
With a sudden laugh as if he had only just realized that he was still a stranger to his brother, Alistair nodded his head towards the garden and the piles of things still waiting to be gathered. "It's a secret. But grab a box and I'll tell you."
"Here," Courtland offered, shoving the box he carried into the vampire's arms, "Take mine." And then, when the two boys had left up towards the attic, he turned to Cian and said quietly but with intense severity, "Go. Now. Before her anger fades and she has time to panic again. Ambush her if you have to, just don't let her think about whatever happened while she was...out." That seemed to be the source of it, after all. Whatever it was, it had driven her over the edge and she was panicking like he'd never seen, never even imagined.
It was, surprisingly, Jack who returned to the room and, with a brief glance up the stairs, turned to Rynn to question, "What in the name of god happened to you two? I think Alistair murmured something about hell and a church just now, but then he rambled off into twin speak."
"Jack," Lawrence called in sudden warning, his tone severe and his eyes more so, "Do you suppose you could perhaps find a better time to ask such a question?"
The boy hastily clamped his mouth shut, his gaze dropping to the floor as he shuffled his feet and murmured an apology to Rynn. It was about that time that Michael returned to the parlor, carrying a tray of tea in place of Jacob. "Lawrence is quite right. We should be content to have them back safe and sound for now. Here---" He had poured some fragrant golden tea into one of the fine painted china cups, accenting it with a small spoonful of honey, and handed it over to Rynn. "Chamomile. Just chamomile. It's good for the nerves." The next one he set down before Liesse, flashing her his most gentle smile. "Drink up, buttercup."
"I'll be taking the rest of that," Courtland said shortly, pulling the tray towards himself only for Lawrence to throw a hand roughly down onto his wrist, eyes narrowing.
"Courtland Alois Mayfair, you hand me one of those cups or so help me God, I will slap you with so many lawsuits---"
"Alright, alright...geez, Laurie, you're scary about your tea."
Lawrence only took a single demure sip from his cup, murmuring, "It soothes me."
Courtland's eyes glanced covertly to his cousin, murmuring beneath his breath, "How can you tell?" Seconds later, he was rubbing the point of impact on the back of his head. "Lay off Laurie, I just want to drink my tea in peace!"
"You and peace cannot exist in the same room, Courtland. You should know that by now."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn half-flinched, when Antha began to draw him close, but he did not pull away. Her fingers were cold against the back of his neck, tangled in the fine sensitive hairs at the base of his skull. She had lost a lot of blood. Too much, he feared—they didn’t have time for his feeble, prideful protestations. Instead he closed his eyes, and sighed deeply, and sank into the depths of his focus.
The abyss waited for him, black and unending.
He could feel something anticipating his arrival at its uttermost depths.

Rynn didn’t know exactly how Antha was doing what she was, but the temple began to respond to it. The entire construct began to shudder, the earth beneath them groaning as though a quake was rumbling to the surface. Suddenly the temperature in the temple began to rise, swiftly as though the inferno which had blazed its way through the city had finally caught up with them. The temple wavered like the mirage over a desert horizon; when the doors threw themselves open, Nero roared in along with a blast of desiccated air; Rynn felt his eyes go red and dry instantly. It was hard to see features, there was nothing but silhouette in front of the glaring red light of the fire, as Nero advanced down the aisle of the temple towards them. But Rynn, even ‘deaf and dumb’ as he was without his magic, could feel the power that radiated off of the master vampire. It made the air thick as tar, pressurized every second into slow-motion. Through the haze, Rynn saw him pick up Antha, felt their hands ripped apart, and thought, it didn’t work.

And then he saw the things behind Nero, and his focus returned a hundred fold. He knew what those were. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, made out of pure fear, a renewal of the determination to survive, or at least not die like this.
Rynn lifted himself up off the flagstones.
“This is not my hell,” he hissed, knowing they heard even his thoughts but wanting to voice them aloud in spite. “I am not your prey, and you will not be my end. Let your hounds be unleashed, call your devils forth. Do your worst.”
They washed over the temple in a black flood.
There was no light anymore, none visible past the wall of dark spirits.
Rynn wondered if he screamed, but he could not hear it if he did.
His vision began to blur. The sight of his pale hands, which had formed claws at the last moment, began to dim before his eyes.
so this is how goes. this is what dying is like.
and then he felt someone grab him, and arms around him, and the world shattered.

As his vision returned, he realized that they were still not home.
But he could hear the sound of insects chirping outside, the drone of swamp life as the moon rose through the ruined roof above them. The remnants of high gothic arches pierced the sky with stony claws.
He recognized the hair before the rest of the body, even though her face was unobscured. But thats what his gaze was drawn to above all else, that mass of lively red curls spilling over her bloodless shoulders. The blood that pooled beneath her, the same crimson hue, spread a rich stain across the bodice of her dress. It was, aesthetically, a perfect death. Her pose looked like it had been arranged by a Renaissance artist according to the principles of composition; the light illuminated her skin with an unearthly glow. Rynn half expected her to lift her head and trot out an extensive ode to martyrdom, like an actress in a play would have delivered her deathbed speech.
But that was the way plays worked. Not death.
Why did he feel such distress? It wasn’t real. Nero looked at them and smiled, and Rynn knew that was his way of recognizing their presence, and that this, this was what he wanted out of them, their impotent horror and rage. And it had worked. That was why this moment was shown to them.

When Antha woke up, the whole house was alerted. Screams echoed throughout those long, embellished hallways.
Cian, who had not left his wife’s side (but had resumed pacing immediately upon isolation), felt his heart leap into his mouth at the sound. It was the noise that every husband, every lover, feared from the subject of their affection. She stared down at herself, at her trembling hands, with an expression of unmistakeable—well, he did not like to think of it. It was an expression that Cian had sometimes seen the mad ghosts wear, when their horde of ancestors had been summoned. These were the ones whose specters wore predatory masks, whose hands had smelt like spilled blood. (Rynn had never seemed to fear them, but he had been the commander of that army—whereas Cian was an expendable and knew it.)
He rushed to Antha, without a single coherent thought in his head, and Cian reached to seize her hand with relief, half to reassure himself that his hand would meet solid flesh and not spirit—
she turned that expression on him and his fingertips stopped a scant centimeter from hers, and he froze, wanted to wince—she seemed to tremble with repressed energy, and then burst out from underneath the sheets without even a word, and fled their room in her bare feet—

Beneath, in the parlor, Liesse felt some strange heat, some vibration, in Rynn’s hands—like a cat you have been holding for several minutes slowly beginning to purr—almost without realizing it. But she noticed when his pattern of shallow breath changed. She had been paying close attention to that, focused on every exhalation, praying for the next intake of air.
For a moment, Rynn’s was hesitant.
Then, a deep breath. The witch boy, in his mind, clawed towards—what was it? a beam of light, a crack in the ceiling of the black & ash-ridden world—
he burst back into consciousness—his eyes flew open—in the same instant, Liesse cried out and flung her arms around him, buried her face in his chest. His heart was beating like a hummingbird’s.
Rynn found himself staring up at the ceiling of the Mayfair front parlor, which he had never particularly paid attention to before but was now probably going to be permanently etched on his metaphorical mental retinas, gulping for air—which Liesse seemed intent on squeezing out of him as quickly as he could take it in. “What happened to you?!” she demanded, pulling away (Rynn wheezed) and seizing his face in her palms instead.
“—let me sit up—“
“One second you were up and standing around and functioning and then the next second you were out. Same as Antha, and no-one could figure out what was wrong—it was something to do with her, wasn’t it? Everyone was thinking it, but no-one was saying anything, they all just ran off—“
Liesse was trying not to sound hysterical, but it was becoming difficult as she became more and more animated. Rynn slowly rose up onto his elbows, glancing wearily around the room. “How long have I been out?” he asked.
Liesse didn’t get a chance to answer him. Suddenly, Antha burst through the doors, like a colt that had just figured out its legs for the first time.
She looked at Rynn, fell to the ground, and burst into tears.
Surprise shut Liesse up where probably nothing else in the world would have done the trick. Her mouth opened, made a half-hearted attempt to form a syllable, then shut again. She reached out a tentative hand, and nearly made it to Antha’s shoulder
before a flood of cousins followed in the wake of the Designee.
Cian made it in at the tail end of the entourage. The room was suddenly awash with the murmur of comforting voices—the lamps brightened, the clink of cups could be heard as someone (Jacob?) was heard with the idea of offering tea, and Dorian brought out the glass decanter of best brandy in response. A crowd formed around the little velvet couch, a ring of hands around the three who sat there.
They were all trying to be sympathetic, of course, but to Rynn’s mind, none of them could have chosen a worse moment. Antha’s eyes met him for a single split moment. He saw the ache of despair flicker recognizably in her, reflected in him,
He was not surprised when she leaped to her feet, burst into a shriek, and fled the front parlor.
Thankfully, none of the cousins were foolish enough to go after her. Rynn, stoic as ever, said nothing—just swung his legs off the couch, and reached for Liesse’s hand. They were silent for a moment. Rynn let his gaze drop to the floor; Liesse’s dark lashes leaked tears against her cheek. The twins, whatever they shared between them in that moment, flinched and turned bright eyes on Courtland in unison when he tried to speak. The moment of peace did not last long. Upstairs, a crash resounded throughout the house; alarmed eyes of all turned heavenwards. In under a minute, another echoed it outside.
When Cian started to follow Antha out of the room, it was Dorian—surprisingly enough—who put his hands on the man’s shoulder, murmured a prohibitive don’t. Just the syllable was enough; the tone of warning in his voice spoke worlds. The time it took Cian to hesitate was enough in which to convince Nicolae to go in his place.

For a moment, sending a diplomat appeared to prove successful. The crashing stopped.
Then, it started up again with a fury.

Apparently, Nicolae couldn’t handle her at the moment, either.
Dorian sighed wistfully. “Ah, nostalgia.” And then quoted, “These fragments I have shored against my ruins,” and gave a kind of mad bark of laughter as he strolled out into the night garden. The lawn was studded with gemstones, richly decorated collars of diamonds and braces upon braces of emeralds strewn upon the grass. Swaths of finest silk hung from the trees like festive streamers, velvet frocks and scarves and fur coats caught in their limbs. “I actually quite like the effect,” Dorian admitted, as he began to pick up bits of glass from a broken perfume bottle. “Maybe we should leave those up, you know? I’ve seen garden parties with worst decorations.”
The joke didn’t seem to be well-received by those around him. Dorian sighed and went back to searching for shards amongst the flowerbeds.
When Jack entered the room, he would have found Rynn and Liesse huddled together on the couch, shoulder-to-shoulder, their hands clasped tightly between the two of them. They weren’t talking, but glanced up at him together as though he’d interrupted a conversation. After a moment, they exchanged a look and Rynn cleared his throat. They moved aside in unison to make space on the couch, and the boy raised an eyebrow at Jack. “Do you want the short or the long answer?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Courtland and Cian exchange a brief, whispered conversation, and then Cian hurried out of the room. For a half-second, Rynn was tempted to follow. Not for the purpose of distracting Antha, but because he knew they had to talk. Antha had accepted the prophecy, Antha had already accepted her death. But Rynn wasn't so resigned to the idea just yet. And besides, what he had witnessed shook him to the core. That wasn't the way it was supposed to end. It couldn't end like that. Antha was supposed to kill Nero, too. She couldn't just bleed out (and the wound, he thought, was it not in the exact place where Antha had bled in the hell-construct?) with her nemesis standing triumphantly over her, smiling like that.

But then the cousins converged around them, with comforting words and plying them with honey-golden tea and he could feel Liesse's hand clench around his. When he looked over, she was smiling at last. It was the first time he'd seen the look of worry leave her face.
Rynn settled back down into the couch cushions. He didn't want to leave her just yet. Even through dimensions, he had felt her loss like that of a limb. It had been too much like before. "Thank you," he murmured, as Lawrence passed him a cup, although he raised an eyebrow at the emphasis on 'just' chanomile. "It seems like you have the same reverence for tea as a sommelier does wine."
Liesse piped up without warning, feeling emboldened by her brother's well-meant attempt at polite conversation: "I love your teacups, these are exquisite!"

Above-stairs, Cian slipped into the bathroom, his footsteps unheard beneath the hiss of the shower. He didn't expect for Antha to enjoy the surprise of being snuck up on in this moment, but neither did he trust her not to command him to 'GO AWAY' if he knocked before coming inside. He knew what it was like to need to feel clean. Even when there wasn't a speck of dirt on your body, Cian knew what it was like to need the feeling of filth drummed out of you beneath a showerhead. And in most of those situations, he didn't want anyone to talk to.
But that was OK. He wasn't going to ask; there were already enough people doing that, and Cian figured there would be plenty of time for an explanation when Antha was ready.
The shower curtain rustled when Cian put his hand against it. "Antha?" he called out, cautiously. "I brought you a towel." It was one of the enormously plush luxury-monogrammed rugs that the Mayfairs called towels, anyways. The point wasn't to tell her that, though.
Emboldened by Courtland's suggestion to distract her, Cian unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and stepped behind the steam-filled barricade. He could do 'distracting' very well--for as long as she needed something to occupy her attention.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

In the parlor, Jack and Courtland exchanged a look of the quintessential couple variety, one that seemed to hold an entire conversation without need of telepathy. The former sat in one of the great, plush armchairs upholstered in damask perpendicular to the couch, the latter lounging on the arm of it beside him, and identical smirks passed across their lips. "You're more like Evie than you realize," Courtland murmured with a knowing toast of his glass to Rynn, pleased that their distraction had at least somewhat worked. And then, rather than continue where Jack had left off, changed the subject again with a pointed gaze down at Lawrence. "Laurie, you're not going to make them go to school tomorrow, are you? It's terribly late already, you should let Rynn sleep in tomorrow."
Lawrence only cast a flickering gaze at his cousins before glancing instead to the twins. "That would be up to them, I suppose. Under the circumstances, I don't think Antha would object to postponing their first day until Tuesday."
"Alistair might object," Michael murmured thoughtfully, glancing off towards the stairs where the boys had disappeared.
"What's he got to do with it?" Jack questioned, turning his curious gaze on his uncle.
Michael just smiled, teasing him with knowledge he didn't have, before Lawrence answered for him. "Didn't you know? Alistair will be going to school with them. He can pass well enough as sixteen, and he wants to. I've made up all the necessary documents and spoken with the headmaster."
"And besides," Michael chipped in cheerfully, "He's quite a...disarming little fellow. It might help the twins to integrate smoothly, having him around. He'll make friends so easily."
"Truly," Courtland agreed, giving a shrug of his shoulders as if consenting to the plan, "He's such a chipper, earnest little pretty boy. I can't imagine anyone not liking him."
"But we'll leave the decision to Rynn," Lawrence concluded with a note of final authority in Antha's place.
"Did Jacob get the kitty notebooks for Rynn?" Courtland questioned in passing, still sipping on his tea, and then without waiting for an answer, "No matter. I picked some up this afternoon."
"Courtland, so help me, if you touch anything in that boy's backpack---"
Courtland pouted as if he were offended, setting his teacup back on the saucer as if he were offended. "Excuse you, Laurie, but I got them for Liesse, thankyouverymuch." He turned his head, the indignant pout still on his lips, and said very seriously to Liesse. "They're utterly adorable, and you're not even allowed to share them with your brother. So Lawrence can take that and shove it---"
"Enough, Court," Armand groaned at long last, shaking his head and putting a cigarette to his lips. "Christ. If Rynn doesn't want to talk about it, he won't. You don't need to go blabbering on like that to fill the silence."
The boy cocked his head at his cousin, staring back at him as if he didn't understand. "Of course I do. I really can't stand silence, it's so dull. Besides, if I'm not distracting everyone then you're all going to realize that Malakai is still in the yard and go bother him."
"Courtland!" came the simultaneous exasperated cry from several points in the room, the cousins all glancing outside to realize that yes, the boy was still meandering through the yard, delicately picking up items from the grass. Groaning, Armand rose and stalked outside to fetch him, followed by Cyrus.
"See?" Courtland exclaimed matter-of-factly, "There they go, bothering him. Malakai likes to be alone when he's upset."
"It's not that he prefers it." Courtland glanced up at the voice, smiling congenially as Nicolae and Alistair appeared again in the doorway, the former's eyes tracing his twin's movements through the window. "He just doesn't know how to interact with people when he's upset."
"It's better than you," Courtland replied, his tone still very matter-of-fact, "You deal with it by getting angry."
"Anger serves me well," the vampire responded with a simple shrug of his shoulders, and then as if to change the subject, "We're fire and ice, M and I. Always have been. Is it any wonder that he withdraws where I explode?"
The running water stopped in the walls, nearly imperceptible, and Nicolae's eyes flickered rapidly to the stairs and back. The emotion that flashed in them had almost been too quick to even exist, the desperate longing. Almost.
Courtland saw, as he usually did, and he responded with his most pleasant smile in contrast to his suddenly serious eyes. "It's over, Nikki," he said, very carefully, unusually diplomatic, and then with a subtle severity, "You can't have her again. I wouldn't allow it even if she would." Behind his words, his silent urging was thinly veiled. You have to give up, Nikki. You have to stop. For his own sake, and they all knew it.
Nicolae went rigid in the doorway, his eyes sharpening so severely that Courtland had to glance away from them. When he looked up again, Nicolae was gone. "What was it he said?" Pierce murmured, gaze cast at the floor, "When Antha was first brought here ten years ago?"
While the cousins tried to reach back into their hazy memories to recall the words, it was Malakai who answered very solemnly from the door to the garden. " 'She was born for me.' "
"That was it," Pierce sighed, resting his chin in his palm, "He does take that concept to heart, doesn't he? It is a romantic idea, I'll give him that."
"It's not romance," Malakai snapped very suddenly, and everyone in the room glanced up in shock, "It's childish."
Alistair only smiled, a little too serenely, but in his eyes there was knowledge, understanding. "You might be right about that."
"Here," Cyrus whispered, going to take the armful of clothes and sparkling necklaces from the boy's arms, but he turned away from him and clutched viciously onto them, his fingers still trembling the slightest bit. "Alright...okay..." Cyrus murmured cautiously, holding up his hands in surrender and stepping back.
"This isn't like you, kiddo," Michael called quietly to his son, and Malakai turned his gaze to the floor. "It's been a long night. We should all retire to bed, I think."
"Brilliant idea," Armand concurred, and without another word swept out of the room.
With their murmured goodnights, the Mayfairs filed obediently out, leaving only Malakai with the twins, his arms still full of his mother's things. "You can't change her mind," he murmured at length, his dark golden gaze sliding over to Rynn, "You think we all haven't tried? You think you can say something to convince her that we can't? I can't stand to imagine her going that way...but that's why she needs you. Without his burning desire to be the death of her, Nero can be put back to sleep. A fate worse than death, as far as he's concerned. He can be sealed deep down in the ground to waste away like he has for thousands of years." Abruptly, his arms fell and gems and vintage party dresses spilled across the floor, his gaze darkening with knowledge and purpose. "He wasn't around for long after that, you know. Rome. He took it over as emperor---one of the most reviled in history---and when his children came to put him away, he set it all on fire to try and stop them." Again that shifting of his eyes, this time to the stairs and towards the attic, where the door to the airship sat with Cassian waiting behind it. "I had a plan, you know. To take him out of his body. I wasn't going to let him have my little sister, I would have died first. But...you've seen what he can do when he's not in the flesh. He would have been all the more dangerous if I freed him from his earthly restraints. He's determined to have Evie, and even just trying to stop him is dangerous for all of us, vampire and witch alike." Seeming to return to himself, to the present time and place, the boy turned his gaze back to the mess at his feet and nudged a fur coat with the tip of his shoe. "But don't take my word for it. I know better than to try and change your mind about anything."
In the hallway, Pierce's voice called alluringly down the narrow stairs from Malakai's room over the garage. "Malakai! Hurry up, I'm waiting for you!"
With a small, exasperated groan, Malakai pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger before arming himself with an umbrella and heading off to bed. "Pierce, if you're naked in my bed again, I'm burning it!"
"You're no fun. ---Oi! What do you think you're doing with that---OW! Alright, geez, I'm leaving!"

The water sloshed carelessly on the floor of the bathroom when Antha stepped into the bathtub, sinking down into it like a stone still fully clothed. The heat almost made her flinch, dredging up recent memories that she was desperately scrambling to repress, but after a moment when it reached her muscles, sore just from the idea of all the running she had done, she was glad for it.
Her skirt floating around her like the ghost of a drowned woman, Antha sank back until the length of her body made contact with the rounded porcelain floor. As with many things in the house, the original tub from the time of construction had been preserved, a great claw-footed work of art large enough for her to stretch out in situated in the corner against the windows, the curtains of which she had drawn back to let the moonlight filter in in place of the electric overhead lights.
When she felt the bedroom door open through the vibrations of the water, she surfaced warily, eyes narrowing at the closed bathroom door until she registered that it was Cian. Without even considering that he might do anything else, she drifted over to the side of the tub and rested her cheek on the warm porcelain, one dripping arm hanging over the side, and waited for him. When he called out to her, she merely stared mutely at his silhouette through the gauzy white curtains, already dripping with condensation from the steam.
While he unfastened the cuffs of his shirt, Antha mentally calculated his size and compared it to hers and the width of the bathtub. She finished before he did, and in the next instant her fingers had closed on the fabric of his shirt, yanking him abruptly down into the water beside her, clothes and all. Without a word, or even a glance, she pressed him against the sloped back of the tub and immediately curled up in his lap, her arms snaking tightly around him as she pressed her cheek to his shoulder. It was only then that her tense limbs softened, her eyes daring to close despite her sheer exhaustion.
"I wanted to be in water for a while," she whispered, quieter than the drip of the faucet over the placid pool of water, as if that explained everything. If he had seen the fire, he might have understood. But Antha said nothing about it---nothing at all, in fact. This silence, just the slow, echoing drip, drip, drip, was golden.
The thought had occurred to Antha before, when similar conditions had been created, but the atmosphere was quite surreal. The trees outside the windows hid the buildings and the city lights and everything past the garden really, as if the world ended with the wrought iron gate and the glittering sky above it. The moonlight caught in the gauzy white shroud that marked the perimeter of the bathtub, filtering through and bouncing off of the delicately painted white tiles that covered the walls, illuminating the space. And the steam, more or less trapped between the curtains, only very slowly trickling out, made a soft fog that gradually coated the windowpanes. Along with the garden, it had been one of her few safe places as a child, a magical realm where she couldn't see or hear Julien. But where her cousins could (and usually would, when they found all of her secret little niches) always find her in the garden, Nicolae was the only one who could find her here. The room attached to it had been his and Malakai's back then, marked with a sign on the door warning trespassers that Nicolae would kill anyone who invaded his quarters. They had taken him quite seriously at his word.
This felt more or less the same. Cian felt safe like Nicolae had felt safe back then, when they had died the water blue and declared themselves mermaids, scattering bath salts on the floor as white sand and gluing shells to the windowpanes. That probably meant she was beginning to trust Cian. Not like she trusted David or Atticus or Nicholas---temporally and conditionally, because she had to put her trust in someone when there was business at hand---but like she trusted Courtland or Malakai or Michael, lovingly and unconditionally.
In the same soft, wispy murmur, just a bit groggier, less lucid, Antha found the words coming unbidden from her lips. "...you really do love me, don't you?" As if she had just realized it, or else had never quite believed it. But Alistair had believed it, and if he'd had any doubt it had been soothed earlier, watching the way he fretted over Antha. All of this she knew from the link that existed between them.
With the tension draining steadily from her body and the screams in her head growing more distant, eventually, Antha drifted off to sleep.

The water was cool when she awoke some time later, startled into consciousness by some unidentified source. There were still thin trails of water on the windows from the condensation, so she couldn't have been asleep for terribly long she reasoned. But then...
The course of her consciousness made itself known as another vague, throbbing pain ripped through her abdomen. She winced, but did not move, trying her best to mentally sort out the cause. She could find none, and when the third wave came she finally surmised that the cause was internal. This was what finally had her sitting up, the water rippling around her, laying a hand on Cian's shoulder and shaking him slightly.
"Cian," she murmured as if she were afraid to shatter the quiet surrounding them, her voice carrying an unusual, stoic sort of calm, "Can you go wake Tori for me? I think I should go to the hospital."
Down the hall, Courtland snapped awake and bolted up in his bed, looking wildly all around himself. As if by magic (and it was hard to tell whether it was or not, with Courtland), he repeated the word loudly and with no reservation of confused panic. "Hospital?!"
Beside hi, Jack stirred yanked the sheets back up over himself, murmuring groggily, "Court, go back to sleep."
But the boy was wired, looking every which way for...something, he didn't know what exactly. It came in the form of two pairs of feet pounding on the stairs, emerged from the downstairs bedrooms. The first pair stopped at Courtland and Jack's door, throwing it open to reveal Alistair in Nicolae's baggy old striped pajamas, his hair mussed from his pillow. Behind him, Vittorio streaked past the door and further down the hall to Antha and Cian's room. His eyes narrowing at his confounded cousin, whose golden locks were likewise frizzed and tangled, he reached out and abruptly tossed Antha's set of keys across the room and into Courtland's fumbling fingers. "How fast can you drive, Court?"
Courtland's eyes likewise narrowed, brightening with comprehension. "Fast."
Pierce, half sitting up from his designated space at the foot of the bed, groggily ruffled his hair and murmured, "I'm confused."
Jack, rubbing his eyes and searching blindly for a pair of pants on the floor beside the bed as Courtand skidded into the hallway and ran for the garage, mumbled groggily, "I think Antha's in labor."
"Oh," Pierce said, falling back down onto the mattress and curling up to go back to sleep before abruptly bolting back up. "WHAT?!"  

[Okimiyage]

It was uncanny, the ease with which a Mayfair returned to their usual operations. Every-day life went on. Even though he’d been trapped in a literal hell-hole not thirty minutes ago, there was school tomorrow. A freshly pressed set of uniforms for he and Liesse, and Antha’s newest addition to the family—Alistair.
He glanced to the side. Well, that settled the matter.
To be honest, Rynn had very little interest in compulsory education. How effective could one’s ‘education’ be in a stuffy little classroom with twenty-something reluctant and unenthused peers to hamper any sort of discussion?
But Liesse’s eyes lit up when they mentioned the school, and her spine straightened, and she leaned in towards the conversation. He didn’t even have to ask.
Rynn took a sip of tea, then set his cup down and leaned back, with a gentle shrug. “Well, I won’t promise to be at my most chipper, but I wouldn’t mind attending. There’s no excuse for Liesse not to go, either.”
“The first day is supposed to be when the pecking order amongst students is sorted out,” Dorian misinformed them. “You have to make a grand entrance! Display physical prowess and any special talents with aplomb! Intellectuals sit at the back of the bus. Don’t be afraid to deck someone for showing disrespect, especially towards your sister.” Nodding sagely, he folded his arms over his chest with finality. Liesse was left wide-eyed, a little unsure whether he was joking or not.
Rynn rolled his eyes. “Don’t scare her.”
“I liked the part about the kitten notebooks,” she volunteered. Especially now that she had the real thing waiting for her at home. It would be a happy little reminder all day.
Dorian merely laughed, and returned to the decanter of brandy before someone could take it away from him. “There’s nothing to get excited over. You’ll see soon enough, I expect.”
As for the topic of what had happened during the coma, it was carefully skirted about. Rynn wasn’t certain how much of his own experience was proper to divulge. It had been Antha’s hell, after all. He’d simply been along for—
for what? Tourist’s benefit? Moral support?
As a witness?

But one good thing did come out of the whole thing. Malakai’s name, when it was mentioned—he could see the same kind of perk in Liesse that the word ‘school’ had prompted. But she didn’t leave his side. She glanced over, brow creased, and reknit their fingers. Something passed between the twins, some internal conversation that the rest of the room was not privy too, that had ten-foot-thick brick walls around it. (it is not worth the effort to describe this conversation, comprised of impression and imagery more than actual vocabulary—suffice it be said that, eventually, Liesse’s brother acknowledged that he may have been a tad overprotective where her romantic prospects were concerned.)
And when Malakai entered the parlor, Rynn gently prized her hand away from his.
It took much of Liesse’s self-restraint not to jump to her feet. Even if she had, Malakai didn’t seem particularly receptive at the moment. It had been a long night for all of them.
Rynn maintained eye contact throughout the other’s little speech—and it was difficult not to think of him as ‘that boy’ even though their ages were not dissimilar.
Privately, he thought that the Mayfairs had given up too easily. If it were Liesse dying—even by her own hand—he would have fought her tooth and nail the entire time, to the very hour if that was what it took. “Well, if you can’t change her mind, and you can’t change my mind, consider yourself absolved of any guilt when we start butting heads trying to change one another’s.” He raised a cautionary brow. “Interfere only if there’s blood.”
Then, as Malakai exited, he put a gentle hand at the small of Liesse’s back and pushed her to rise from the couch. “Get on with the both of you.”

Cian did not know the amount of time that passed in-between, but when he woke, wolf-grey light was seeping through the window above them.
They had fallen asleep together, his long legs twined with hers, caught in the fabric of her skirts. She had spoken with faint astonishment in her voice: “You really do love me, don’t you?” that Cian was determined to prove it to her. If they had been in arctic waters, he still would have held her for as long as she desired.
There was a cramp in his back. He adjusted in the chilly water slowly, trying not to disturb Antha, but it was difficult when she was sitting right on his chest.
Perhaps it was morning, or close to. His sense of time was off, with the long days he’d pulled lately. Being inducted into the Mayfair family was the hardest he’d worked in his life, to be quite honest. And Cian yawned and stretched, stirring water that had long ago cooled to tepid—
when he saw the blood floating, swirling in skeins of red thread, through the water.

His heart just about stopped.
Already?
That couldn’t be right. Cian didn’t know much about babies, but didn’t it usually take more time than this to grow them?

He didn’t want to think about that.
Instead, he trusted his instincts. A wave of water cascaded over the edges of the tub as he rose up; a collective mental shout rang out through the household. In verbal terms it could have been translated as get the car. NOW.—but instead it flashed across the minds of all awake as garage, keys, car, urgency. a memory of the way antha drove, disregarding all red lights. blood in the water.
He picked her up in both arms, water sleeting off the both of them like the falls of a national landmark. In the driveway, bereft of its key, Antha’s black sports car—some high-powered import that Cian would never remember the name of—roared into life, spurred to action by Cian’s demand. Three or more cars in the garage followed, spun their wheels against the concrete.
Surprisingly, he kept a clear head throughout the actual process of action. Calling down the staircase as he descended, leaving a dripping trail behind him, “TORI”
It took him a second to realize that she had meant Vittorio; by the time he got downstairs, the cousins were beginning to blearily assemble. He caught a blur of silk pajama bottoms and pale skin, which he followed to the garage. The door was already beginning to open, as though the very house itself was able to anticipate their desires by this point.
Cian fumbled with a the door lock, his free hand behind Antha’s back grasping unevenly at the silver handle. “It’ll be okay,” he said, almost as much to reassure Antha as himself. “We’ll get you there.” With the number of insiders the Mayfairs were reputed to have at the Medical Center? He’d be surprised if there wash’t a team waiting for them when they pulled into the parking lot.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

None of the Mayfairs were entirely sure what was going on for several moments when they spilled out into the hallway, looking around them with bleary eyes. They murmured protests at being awoken, confusion at all the noise, and then Cian, Alistair, and Vittorio appeared shuffling Antha down the hallway. "Tori, I can walk on my own," she protested, a white towel clutched around her dripping shoulders as Vittorio tried to lift her, "I'm not---" But her protests became somewhat insubstantial when she halted and doubled over, hissing creative curses as she winced and clutched at Cian's arm.
Hastily, Vittorio tore the watch from his wrist and shoved it into Alistair's hands, taking on the authoritative tone of the resident doctor as he barked, "Time her contractions. I need to know how long they last and how far apart they are." Forty-two seconds later, when Antha had traded in her curses for deep, relieved breaths and released her vice-like grip on Cian's arm, Michael appeared at her back and helped shepherd her to the car despite her weakening protests.
Courtland was already behind the wheel, half dressed and grinning wildly at Antha as she slid into the passenger seat. "I got this," he said simply to Cian, waving him into the backseat with Vittorio and Alistair, the latter of whom sat directly behind Antha, reaching forward to yank the lever to lower her seat until it was against his knees. With expert handling that promised he had been directly issued lessons by Antha, Courtland backed out fo the driveway in one rapid, fluid motion and in the next split second was gunning it down the residential road and onto the main street, weaving impressively through the few cars on the road at such a late hour.
Laying languidly back in her seat, one hand cast over her stomach and the other in Vittorio's expert fingers as he measured her pulse, Antha tilted her head enough to gaze dazedly at Cian, her eyes still managing to give a hint of that teasing sparkle. "Honestly, why are you panicking? I don't see any living beings trying to explode out of you."
Vittorio was on his phone, sending out word that all staff members were to be at the hospital when they arrived. Whent he obvious question was raised of how they were going to perform a delivery in an unfinished hospital, he stated very simply that he had prepared in case Antha went into early labor, they would find the first operating room fully equipped. "Just be there," he concluded brusquely, and hung up.
"Evie," Alistair murmured with just a hint of an amused smile, brushing wet tendrils of hair back from her forehead, "You are entirely too calm about all of this. Poor Cian has to do all of the panicking for the both of you."
"Calm?" she repeated back, and indeed she did sound it, as if she had already been administered the drugs, "Hardly. I'm fairly certain I'm in Alien 4 right now."
Despite themselves, Alistair and Courtland couldn't help cracking up at that. "If they start clawing their way out through your skin, I'm calling a priest," Courtland said firmly, giving a little grin as he turned sharply onto the highway.

While Courtland pulled out of the driveway, the other Mayfairs were still piling into cars. The bulk of them went to the town car, which had Pierce behind the wheel, while Cyrus took Julien and Michael in his car and Armand shoved the twins into the backseat of his own car. Jack, standing in the open passenger side door of Armand's little sports car (which, in contrast to Antha, he only cared about for appearances), seized Malakai's shirtsleeve as he ran by, hastily shoving him into the backseat beside Liesse before climbing in and Armand hit the road behind Antha's car, which had already vanished like magic.
"I don't know why I ever try to sleep in that goddamn house," Armand sighed irritably, shaking his head, "It's always something."
Jack, narrowing his eyes at his cousin, responded simply, "Then go the ******** home. You don't live with us."
"It's convenient."
"Apparently not, if you're going to b***h about it." Turning in his seat, Jack's eyes narrowed as he studied Malakai. The boy was white as a sheet, his eyes still a little hazy from being woken up so harshly, his hands clasped together in his lap and shaking as he stared out the window without seeing the scenery that sped past his eyes. Immediately concerned, Jack baited him by jabbing a finger over his seat at the floorboard behind him. "You're missing one of your bunny slippers, M. When did that start, anyways? Wearing bunny slippers isn't exactly something that goes unnoticed in our house."
Malakai said nothing, didn't even appear to hear him, too wrapped up in his own chaotic, unguarded thoughts. Blood. Bloodbloodblood. Little sister. Blood. Don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie.
Jack narrowed his eyes at his cousin, swaying as Armand made a sharp turn, and inspected the seams of the sweater he had thrown on, inside-out, the deep wrinkles in his jeans, his raven hair sticking out all over the place. Roughly, his eyes speaking worlds of pity, Jack reached his arms around his headrest and seized Malakai by the shoulders, pulling him roughly against the back of the seat and hugging him until he couldn't breathe. "Evie's going to be fine," he assured him sweetly, planting a kiss on his forehead, "It's just labor. Women give birth all the time."
Still in Jack's hold and staring intently but distantly out the window, Malakai murmured as if he didn't quite realize he was speaking, his voice low and flat, "My mother died giving birth. Aunt Georgiana and Aunt Mandy died giving birth."
"But none of them were Evie," Jack pointed out hastily, adding with a dire gravity, "This is Antha ******** Mayfair we're talking about here. I'd like to see some petty force of nature try to kill her. Remember that tornado we got once? Remember what Antha did to it? She stared a tornado out of existence, Malakai."
"Do you remember that playground we used to go to?" Malakai countered in the lowest whisper, eyes never wavering for a second from the window, "The one with the octopus? One day dad took us there, and Antha fell from the monkey bars and scraped her arm. She came to me crying and told me I had to kiss it and make it better. But it just wouldn't stop bleeding. Then she got a fever and before we could get her to the car, she collapsed. She was in the hospital for two days, remember? She had bruised her kidney and she was missing something in her blood that helped seal up cuts."
This time, though Jack opened his mouth to protest, it was Armand who interjected. "That was right after Liam, if I'm not mistaken. Right after she escaped the attic. She was so malnourished back then, Malakai, it's not the same. A strong wind could have killed her back then. She's not that frail anymore. She's been beaten, stabbed, set on fire, kept as a personal juice box, and thrown down a pit in a cage since then."
Far from helping, Malakai blanched and Jack cut his eyes severely at Armand for it. Shifting tactics, Jack quickly changed the subject. "Why were they wet? I mean it's one thing to have sexy bath time, but Antha and Cian were both fully clothed. What's that about?"
Armand, picking up on his cousin's strategy, played along with a small smirk. "There's seduction and then there's romance, Jackie. Really, you should learn the latter. Courtland's going to leave you one day if you don't."
Jack turned in his seat to face Armand, giving a derisive snort and matching roll of his eyes. "It's been twenty years, Armand. He will literally die if he leaves me."
Again that little teasing smirk as Armand pulled onto the highway, his gaze flashing at Jack. "Oh? I didn't know you were the cocky sort. Careful one of his conquests doesn't steal him away while you're being full of yourself."
"You think I'm kidding? I won't even have to kill him, he will seriously just fall over and stop existing."
Begrudgingly, Armand laughed. "It worries me to think you two may actually have a healthy relationship."
"What, just because we're drug addled, stereotypical bisexual sluts means we can't have a good relationship?"
"...that's more or less exactly my point."
Jack nearly made a snarky reply, but glancing behind him noticed that Malakai wasn't paying attention and instead simply sighed. "Enough. It's not working."
"What's not working?"
The car swerved slightly in the next second as Jack punched his cousin squarely on the shoulder, pouting fiercely as he retrieved his little garden snake from his pocket and stroked its head. "You just wait until Rex grows into a giant python and I send him into your room in the middle of the night..."
"That's not how nature works," Armand protested, and then abruptly, "Wait a minute, are you implying you're going to send a snake to rape me?!"
Jack scoffed. "As if Rex would want you."
When they pulled up to the hospital, dark but for the lights in the front section of the third floor, Malakai leapt out of the car and hit the pavement running before they were even at a full stop behind Antha's abandoned car. Cutting the engine, Jack and Armand fell silent and remained in their seats, both staring anxiously at the dashboard.
"You're not getting out."
"Neither are you."
Silence.
"We should go."
"Probably."
More silence.
"...it's real if we go in there, Armand. Whatever happens, it's real."
The older man cast a sidelong glance at his cousin, sitting back in his seat and idly turning his keys in his fingers. "It's real whether we go up there or sit here all night, Jackie."
With a small sigh, the boys reached simultaneously for the door handles and went running for the door just as the other cars pulled up.

In operating room one, Antha was screaming curses. Her contractions were growing closer together at an alarming rate, according to Vittorio, and their durations and severity scaled accordingly. In the waiting room before the swinging double doors, a lavish space of pristine white tiles and Italian leather with massive classical paintings and intricate, colorful murals adorning the walls, the Mayfairs who had accompanied her in the first car were scattered and waiting along with Lawrence, who lived quite close to the hospital and arrived before them.
"Alistair," Lawrence called in warning, seated on the edge of one of the long, plush leather upholstered benches lined up in the middle of the room, his head in his hands, "Vittorio was very clear, only authorized personnel in the delivery room."
With the slightest glance at Lawrence, Alistair all but ignored him. He stood at the swinging doors, taking hesitant half-steps forwards and then quickly backwards, craning to try and see something through the small round windows. Rather like a puppy that had been told to wait by its master, whining for them to return.
When Malakai burst into the room, breathless, Courtland threw his arms around him and guided him gently to a seat, combing his hair out with his fingers. "You really are a mess," he murmured as if to distract himself, lifting the boy's arms to divest him of his sweater and turn it right-side out. And then, when Malakai rose and took to pacing the room, refusing to be still, he vanished and returned shortly with a towel that he draped over Cian's shoulders, murmuring, "This is not the time to be catching a cold."
Over the next fifteen minutes, a large portion of the family appeared in the waiting room, flitting about and chattering anxiously to one another until the room resounded with another string of Antha's curses, muffled behind soundproof walls (the door, unfortunately, was not similarly made) and following that, Vittorio appeared in the doorway in his scrubs, sweeping a glance around the room before motioning Lawrence over so that they could whisper together. The family fell silent, straining their ears to listen.
"Can't he go in? He's just one person, he won't be in your way. It might help her."
Vittorio rapidly shook his head. "There was no time to administer pain medication and she's quite hysteric. She's threatening to alternately either kill him or have him fixed, depending on whether she's suffering a contraction. If she sees him, her blood pressure might spike and we can't risk that."
Lawrence's face set in hard lines, his eyes flashing as if remembering something he had said earlier. "Now, when you say 'hemorrhaging'..."
"There's sufficient tearing," Vittorio responded quickly, glancing over his shoulder as if to make sure he wasn't need just yet, "It's hard to say exactly, but it appears they've grown too much too fast. Human flesh only has so much elasticity. We've given her an IV and drugs to slow the bleeding, as well as to induce the labor, which should speed the process up. She should make it through fine, if we can get it done quickly enough---"
"Let me get this straight," Courtland interrupted, stepping up to them, not even attempting to whisper if they did, what was the point in the quiet, echoing room, "If you don't get them delivered fast enough, they're going to rip her apart from the inside?"
"...that would be the gist, in simplest terms."
A small shriek sounded from within and Vittorio vanished as if he'd never been, swallowed by the white paper curtains as the door electronically bolted behind him. The waiting room buzzed nervously, even more cousins and aunts and uncles pouring in. Malakai was white as a sheet, alternately pacing the room and sitting with his head in his trembling fingers, looking at and speaking to no one. Pierce followed him, trying to soothe him with gentle touches and soft words. Alistair remained at the door, looking very much like he might try to claw his way through it at any given moment. Julien anxiously bit his nails as Michael patted his shoulder.
"Thank God you’re here!" It took all of two seconds following this shriek for Malakai to find a body smashing against his, arms wrapping tightly around his neck and glossy golden curls flying in his face.
"Saria," he murmured gently in surprise, trying politely to remove her slender arms from around his neck. This was not the time for this, Malakai had no patience at the moment.
"Tori called me," she said breathlessly, finally releasing him, "He wanted me to bring Olivier. He thought he should be here for the birth of his designee."
Behind her trailed an elderly woman all done up in stiff black clothes with a large iron cross strung around her neck, the famous Mary Jane of fire and brimstone and the almighty word of God. In her arms she carried an infant, only a year old with a head of thick golden locks and big, bright blue eyes, whom Saria abruptly took into her own arms, cooing, "Yes, daddy's going to introduce you to your cousins, isn't he?" The infant made a small, presumably pleased babbling noise, glancing wildly around him.
Moments later, Barclay and Claire-Marie appeared with their children and Suzette in tow. Without hesitation, Rowan flung herself at Rynn, taking hold of his arm and whimpering tearfully, "It's so terrible, isn't it?" Though the rest of her family seemed to have managed to clothe themselves, the girl was clad only in a short length of purple satin trimmed in lace, a thin robe draped around her shoulders.
She shrieked in the next moment, turning wildly around as Suzette's cane retreated from her leg. "Grandmother!"
"Rowan, darling," the old woman said sweetly, a brittle smile touching her wrinkled lips, "Perhaps you could not use your cousin's suffering to your advantage, hmm?" She brandished her cane, to which Rowan jumped and shrieked anew. "Now I will have to ask you to release my sugar bear. He doesn't need you clinging to him like a dog in heat." Protectively, she patted Rynn's arm as Rowan scampered away back to her mother. "Shameless girl," the old woman muttered, shaking her head. "Now. Where's my honeybee?" Kindly---or, more likely, out of fear---Jack pointed Cian out and Suzette drifted over to him, affectionately patting his arm as she murmured assurances. "Tough as nails, that girl. Stubborn enough to turn away death if he comes calling, too."
It had been roughly half an hour and the screaming began in earnest all at once, bloodcurdling and hysteric, the building trembling around them. "Dear me," Saria murmured, glancing around at the clattering paintings on the walls, "Well, I don't know what I expected. I would have shook the building if I could've when I was in labor, and I only had one." But Malakai wasn't listening---his rapt, terrified attention was on the door.
Another scream, longer and louder than ever this time, the painting nearest the door dropping as if it were attempting a swan dive from the wall. The Mayfairs held their collective breaths, watching the door as, without warning, Antha's scream cut off and was replaced by smaller, more uncertain cries that were not hers. From the door, Alistair let out a heavy breath and whispered with relief so great it physically hurt him, "Bastien...that's Sebastien." No one asked if he was alright, judging by the way his irritated cries grew stronger and firmer.
All was calm for a few moments, only the infant Sebastien’s small cries, and then all of a sudden Antha screamed all over again, more terrifyingly than ever, as if she were dying. "I said again!" The Mayfairs---and there were several dozen of them by this point, nervously watching the door---held their breath as they listened to Vittorio shout, and Antha’s wails which were rapidly growing pathetic, miserable, helpless. Alistair outright whimpered, dropping down to one knee and wrapping his arms around his stomach as if he could feel it, her pain. The cousins assumed rather easily that that was the case.
"I can’t!" Antha sobbed in response, "I don’t---" And she screamed anew, crying as she did so.
"One more push! We can do this, we can, but it has to be done now!"
"I don’t have the energy!" she screamed back, more helplessly than anyone ever thought she could sound, much less be. Her own body was failing her, a concept most had never even considered, not for a moment..
Alistair was struggling viciously to get to the door, the tears running down his cheeks, but two nurses held him back. Antha was shielding him from the pain, but there was no helping some of it seeping over and it was utter agony, he felt like something was twisting his insides and trying to rip them apart.
"Antha, if you have any energy left---"
"I don't!"
"Use it! She's so close!"
Pierce, in an unprecedented show of kindness, reached mutely over and took Malakai's hand. The boy was white as a sheet, his eyes speaking the fear of innumerable horrors, and when Pierce's hand clutched his he squeezed it just short of snapping bones.
Antha's screams abruptly cut off just as a second small, wailing voice joined the first. The Mayfairs would have breathed a sigh of relief, except the commotion inside was audible, the rapid shuffle of footsteps and the clatter of medical instruments, the high screech of a monitor, Vittorio first hysterically calling Antha's name to no response and then shouting orders at his assistants. She needed a blood transfusion, she needed water, she needed air. Give him a goddamn scalpel, get the defibrillator, something! The few nurses outside of the operating room didn't have much of an easier time, fending off the small group of cousins that were going to get inside if it killed them. "Please," they begged frantically, "They need space to work!"
Courtland might have thrown one of the poor, frightened women clear across the room to get inside if Julien had not gone up and soundly slapped him hard enough to make him collapse, sitting with his legs splayed on the floor, holding his cheek as the tears finally spilled over. Pierce was on the floor beside where Malakai had fallen to his knees, slowly shaking his head as if he refused to accept any of this, ignoring the arm Pierce pulled around his shoulders. Belle was on the other side of him, shaking his shoulder and sobbing hysterically. It was all very confusing for the poor child.
"Antha's not..." Thorne took a deep breath, still staring at the door. "...she's not dead...is she?"
Alistair shrieked at the mere mention of it, rapidly shaking his head and muttering, "No! Evie no---not dead---no!"
Silence fell again, ears craning to listen as a nurse within shouted, "Dr. Mayfair! We have a pulse!"
Another, shrieking in relief, "She's breathing! I think---ah! She's coming to!"
The Mayfairs, the whole legion of them, fell into hysterical relief all at once, motion returning to the crowded room. Several minutes passed then in relative tense silence, Michael putting an arm around Cian and patting his shoulder, murmuring quietly that it would be alright, everything would be okay. Malakai was openly sobbing now that he knew his little sister was alive, still on his knees on the floor, Belle anxiously petting his soft raven hair as if he were a cat. Pierce, sitting on the floor beside him in a decidedly more lax manner, had lit up a cigarette and was sucking eagerly on it.
"Pierce, put that away!" one of the aunts hissed at him, "This is a hospital!"
He rolled his eyes, which were red around the edges. "It's not like there are sick people here yet." Suzette smacked him in the back of the head and, grudgingly, he put it out.
Vittorio appeared in the doorway moments later, shrugging wearily out of an alarmingly bloodied apron, and was immediately set upon with questions. He held his hands up, demanding silence, and called loudly enough so everyone could hear, "She's fine! They're all fine! The nurses are getting the babies cleaned up and Antha's passed out. She lost a lot of blood, but she's stable. We pumped her with a lot of drugs just now, she'll be out for a few hours and then she'll be extremely groggy."
No one was listening to Vittorio anymore. They were staring in intense fascination at the nurses that appeared behind him, each carrying an infant wrapped in blankets. "Ah, right," he said, and turned to take one of the infants in his own arms before his eyes sought out Cian and Courtland gave the boy a push forward. "Cian," Vittorio began, offering one of his terribly rare smiles at the red-faced, squirming creature in his arms, "I'd like you to meet your daughter." Very carefully, he handed the blanketed bundle over to Cian, adjusting the infant in the boy's arms.
Vanessa's crying, which had carried on lowly for some time, wavered as her eyes opened---Antha's eyes, through and through---and then immediately ceased, her cloudy eyes working to process Cian's face before her. Behind Vittorio, the nurse handed the second infant over to Alistair's eager arms and the boy smiled brilliantly down at his nephew as he, too, ceased his crying.
"What a head of hair for such a little thing," Courtland murmured happily, touching an incredibly gentle hand to the wispy little locks of soft brown hair on Vanessa's head, and then smiled broadly at the small coo she made.
Alistair likewise had a group of cousins around him, affectionately gazing down at Sebastien until, without warning, Alistair looked up and his eyes narrowed, a somewhat guilty grin spreading to his lips.
"Evie's up."
Vittorio spared a fleeting glance, saying in passing, "Don't be ridiculous, she has enough painkillers in her to---"
One of the nurses shrieked lowly in the operating room and, without warning, the doors flew open and sure enough, there was Antha, her hair an incredibly wild tangle of curls and her dress bloodied, paler than ever, and hell in her eyes. Vittorio rushed at her, wide-eyed, trying to put a hand on her shoulder as he yelled. "Antha Evelyn Mayfair, you get back in that bed!" he screamed, snapping into a panic, "You should not be standing! You shouldn’t even be conscious! You could kill yourself!"
The look she shot him silenced him abruptly, the color draining from his face as she hissed dangerously, her words threateningly slow and deliberate, "Give. Me. My. Children."
"Antha---" he tried to plead desperately, but the building shook violently.
"If I have to repeat myself, Tori, they will be the last words you ever hear."
"If you just go lay down, we'll bring them to you---"
"Now."
"Lord, Evie," Alistair sighed, smiling despite the horror that had struck the rest of the room, pressing his cousins out of his way with his shoulders as he made his way to his twin, "Always with the dramatics. Here." Without a word, Antha demandingly stretched out her arms and Alistair, with infinite care, handed Sebastien over to her.
From the very second Sebastien touched his mother’s arms, his low wailing ceased, replaced by a curious gaze which studied her features. For Antha’s part, no one would have guessed that half a second earlier she had been outright murderous, not with the gentleness of her expression now, that light, slow smile and the complete, absolute, boundless affection in her eyes as she looked down at her son. "Bonjour, mon petit chou," she murmured, adjusting the blanket around his chest, and his little red face relaxed, his wrinkled hands reaching clumsily for one of her stray curls.
"Well if that’s not just the cutest damn thing," Pierce murmured, smiling. Courtland was leaning against Jack’s shoulder, having his shoulder patted as he cried incessantly (though he would deny it for the rest of his life).
"Gently, now," Michael whispered, edging Cian forward with Vanessa as Vittorio reached hesitantly out to steer Antha towards the hospital bed. To the great shock of the entire family, and truly the majority of them were in the waiting room, she simply turned, allowing herself to be quietly led back to the delivery room and climbing with absolutely no fuss back into the bed, murmuring sweetly to Sebastien as she went along. Alistair ran after her, followed immediately by Courtland, Jack, and Julien as he gently ferried Cian through the doors.
Antha, a pillow laid across her lap, had settled Sebastien down on one side of it and then reached hastily for Vanessa, her eyes flashing once, darkly, until her daughter was set in her arms and settled carefully down next to her brother in their mother’s lap.
“Now you stay in that bed until you’ve recovered,” Vittorio ordered sternly, pulling a blanket up over her legs, “For your health, Antha.”
She said nothing to him, only kept murmuring her soft French to her children, stroking their wispy little brown curls. Alistair, smiling enough to make his cheeks hurt, reached over and gently tapped the tip of Sebastien's nose, murmuring, "They look a little like Cian, don't they?"
Antha, in that disconcertingly serene, blissful tone, murmured to the infants, "Yes, you have daddy's nose, don't you?" Vanessa cooed happily as Antha ran a slow, gentle finger down the short length of her pale nose, then along the faint ridge of Sebastien's cheekbones under his pudgy cheeks, "And his cheekbones. Yes, you're going to be handsome like daddy when you grow up, aren't you?" The infants squirmed happily, Sebastien reaching idly for Antha's curls as Vanessa gave a broad yawn, her eyelids fluttering, and Antha gave the brightest smile her cousins had ever seen.
"We could all turn into ducks on the spot and she wouldn't notice, would she?" Courtland questioned, grinning as he watched her.
Jack, likewise grinning, didn't tear his eyes away from her once as he responded simply, "Nope."
"Antha," Julien began, in an unusually careful tone of reprimanding, "You do realize that your children have two parents, yes?"
Without a word, or a glance away from her children, Antha slid over in the narrow hospital bed to make room for Cian. Watching her in incomprehension, Vittorio just complained, "You're on enough painkillers and tranquilizers to take down the Hulk right now, Antha. How are you doing this?"
Antha smiled blissfully, pressing a finger into Sebastien's small palm so that his tiny fingers clenched automatically around it. "Who knows. Did you ever consider that I might be Thor, Tori?"
"That many drugs would take down Thor, too."
"Then maybe I'm just the devil."
"None of these are explanations for how you are possibly conscious right now. Do you have any idea how little blood is left in your body?"
"Irrelevant," Antha dismissed it easily, carefully lifting Sebastien as he began to squirm and placing him gingerly in Cian's arms. From the doorway, several clicks went off as Thorne idly snapped pictures.
"Out!" Vittorio shouted, "There's too many people in here as it is. I need room to give her a transfusion."
"You get near me with a needle and I'll toss you out the window," Antha responded lightly, taking both of Vanessa's hands in hers and lifting her arms, smiling broadly down at her, "I don't trust your blood bags, you've probably drugged them."
Vittorio opened his mouth to protest, but in the end said nothing, his eyes flashing as if he'd been caught. "I'll do it," Alistair volunteered happily, a moment before Courtland pushed another hospital bed up beside Antha's and the boy hopped into it, proffering his arm. With an endlessly weary sigh, Vittorio shook his head and set to hooking him up to the appropriate machine. As he did, the babies made the rounds through the cousins and Julien before Antha reached for them again, Vanessa being returned to her and Sebastien to Cian.
"Alright," Julien sighed at length, as Alistair's blood first began pulling through the tubes attached to his veins, spiraling through the machine and then draining into an empty packet, "We should go. Everyone else wants to see her, too."
Begrudgingly, Courtland and Jack let themselves be led out of the room, replaced very shortly by Malakai and, moments later, Michael ushering Rynn and Liesse in. If Antha noticed at all, she didn't show it for several moments until she glanced up, apparently startled and then pleased to see her brother. "Do you want to meet your uncle?" she murmured with infinite sweetness, cradling Vanessa. She took her silence as tacit consent and, surprisingly to Vittorio, handed her daughter over to her uncle.
Malakai's eyes flew open wide, his mouth gaping as one of the nurses helped to adjust the infant in his arms. His voice a high, panicked whisper, he exclaimed, "Oh my god, I'm holding her. Evie, Evie...I don't like this. I'm going to drop her, or hold her too hard, or---" Without warning, Vanessa's fumbling fingers reached out and powerfully clasped the fabric of his sweater, her eyes lighting up as if she liked the feel of the deep red cashmere, and Malakai gave an odd squeal, muttering in that same high frequency beneath his breath, like he was afraid to disturb her, "Oh my god, what's happening? Hi."
Antha outright laughed, turning to gently trail her fingers through Sebastien's wispy chocolate-colored curls, murmuring in that sweet voice, "Oh, but you owe your Uncle Rynn an apology, don't you?" Antha had gathered, in the time before their birth, what had led to Rynn's appearance in the hell construct and the children's reasoning for it. Though she was sorry for Rynn and all he'd been put through, more than anything she was simply proud.
Unconcerned, Sebastien gave a great yawn, nestling comfortably against Cian's chest as his eyes fluttered closed. Babies were a bit unnervingly like cats, Antha concluded silently to herself as she watched him.
Her gaze bypassing Rynn, figuring this wasn't particularly his cup of tea, Antha smiled instead at Liesse, asking softly, "Do you want to hold one of them?"
Malakai, rocking Vanessa very slowly in his arms with infinite care, murmured quietly, "Oh no, you're never taking her away from me again. Isn't that right, precious?" The baby made a small sound that could have been agreement, her fingers flexing in the fabric of his sweater, and the boy beamed delightedly at his little niece. However, despite his words, he turned to face Liesse, his eyes glancing between the two girls as he offered the blanketed bundle to her.
Meanwhile, Michael had snaked his way over to Cian, holding his hands politely out towards Sebastien as he questioned, "May I?" To Michael, it felt rather like gazing down at his own grandchild. After all, Antha was nearly as much his daughter as Malakai and Nicolae were his sons, he had helped raise her as if she were his and loved her as if it were the case. And so it was that he gazed down at Sebastien in his arms with twinkling eyes, every bit the doting grandfather. Glancing at Malakai, he even managed to say very seriously despite the easy smile on his lips, "When are you going to have me more of these? I've told you, I want no less than ten grandchildren and your brother is no help."
"Dad!" Malakai exclaimed in a stutter, his face flushing that usual shade of scarlet to match Antha's curls. Side by side on the hospital beds, Antha and Alistair flashed each other a glance and snickered identically. "That's not---you get two at once, can't you be content with that?!" Embarrassed, his gaze dropped to the floor as he anxiously pulled his shirtsleeves down over his fingers. "I'm not a cat, I can't produce an entire litter anyways."
"You're young," Michael responded cheerfully, ignoring his son's flagrant discomfort as he rocked Sebastien, "You have plenty of time. Though, you'd best start right away."
"Dad!"
Grinning just a bit mischievously to himself, giddy from the moment, Michael turned his gaze conspiratorially towards Cian, instructing him gently, "Watch and learn, Cian. You will never get more satisfaction in your life than you will out of embarrassing your children. It's a delicate art form, to be sure."
"Dad, come on!" Pouting fiercely, Malakai turned a disapproving gaze on his father, the scarlet fading a bit from his cheeks.
Through the doorway, Pierce's voice called as he struggled against Courtland's hold, "Other people want to see the babies too, you know!"
In an unusually unsympathetic, merciless maneuver, Malakai walked over and casually swung the door shut, clicking as it locked automatically, then returned to the small gathering as if he hadn't done a thing.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn felt discord jangling throughout the household before Cian even made his first mental bellowing.
Panic. Urgency, speed. Blood in the water.
That was all it took to send a horde of Mayfairs, bleary-eyed and night-clothed, into the halls. And Rynn, too, felt the grip of fear seize his heart and clench.
When he padded out into the hallway, it was only to nearly plow into Cian as he rushed past, with Antha supported between himself, Alistair and Vittorio.
Liesse appeared alongside Malakai in the follow-up crowd, rubbing her eyes, with a tell-tale yawn in her voice as she asked, “What’s going on?”
“Babies,” announced Dorian, languidly swirling his tumblr of brandy. He still had yet to retire to an appropriate resting place. For some reason, the night left him oddly invigorated. “Come on, let’s follow them to the hospital. I’ve got keys—“
Dorian raised the keyring above his head triumphantly only to have them snatched out of his grasp by an unidentified paw. “Hey!” he protested, but they’d already disappeared.
Rynn glanced over at him with a slight, but non-apologetic smile. “You can hitch a ride.”

The entourage of vehicles that followed Antha to the hospital took a slightly more relaxed pace, even though a ‘relaxed’ pace for a Mayfair was more than enough to merit honks and curses from the other drivers. Liesse was as much a bundle of nerves as Cian, if her fidgeting was any indication, and being crammed into the backseat of Armand’s tiny, high-engine import didn’t help. She was prone to squeak at every squeal of the tires.

In the hospital, Cian felt his siblings minds crowd in around him. It was that which gave him strength, which allowed him to summon breath while Antha screamed for hers in the other room.
He could feel pain radiating throughout the ward. No, pain was an insufficient word—agony.
Ripping through her, the staggering need for relief. He wanted to curse the nurses and doctors who crowded around her for their ineptitude. Help her, he begged, putting his throbbing head in his hands.
What could he do, other than throw open the doors of his mind, other than share in her suffering? What could he offer her?
He felt helpless. As though seeing her fall into a coma mere hours ago wasn’t enough—no, she woke up only to be plunged into another emergency.
Honestly, why are you panicking?
Antha’s teasing words echoed through his mind.
But how could he not?

The family suffocated the halls, a throng of bodies moving through the narrow veins of architecture, and he straightened his back as they approached, lifting with a groan off the lavishly upholstered chairs of the private waiting room. Had to greet the folks appropriately, after all—it was only protocol. His clothes were still sticking damply to his skin, hair still in wet spikes, but even a veteran gambler would have admired Cian’s poker face. It was difficult to tell that only a moment ago he had been close to a nervous breakdown.
(Not that Cian would have allowed that—he remembered only too well what he had been taught.
The father of a family had to be strong, a pillar that would hold up when everything around him collapsed.
When things were at their worst for one parent, that’s when the other had to be the counterbalance.
And that was what was scariest—thinking of how soon that he would qualify for that job, without preparation or training of any sort. Father. It had been so long since he had thought seriously about that role, how did he even manage to qualify?)

Alistair was one of the first on the scene, but he was wholly focused on Antha—Cian didn’t qualify even for a nod. Not that he was blamed for it; everyone knew how close the connection between those two was. Courtland, Lawrencce and Malakai were shortly behind; Vittorio came out to report only once, before the rest of the crowd had gotten within swarming reach. It was wise of him to vanish when he did, even though Cian had to resist the urge to press for details.
Liesse was practically dragging Rynn down the hall when he caught sight of his siblings. The latter was complaining the whole way—“There’s no need to rush so, it’ll take them a while, we’re not missing out on anything! They told us we had to wait outside anyways, there’s nothing to see—“
Liesse was ignoring him utterly.
Babies made Rynn nervous; he didn’t know how to handle them. His expertise lay with dead humans, not—little squirming flesh-potatoes bursting with life. But Liesse liked the idea of children. She’d make an excellent mother one day. Rynn?—well, he was happy to be the creepy uncle.
But when Liesse heard the screams from within the delivery room, her smile faded, and she came to Cian quite pale. “Is—is everything alright?” she whispered uncertainly, releasing Rynn’s hand long enough to knit her own.
Rynn patted her on the back, making a ginger attempt at reassurance. Although the rest of the fraying nerves in the room didn’t help. “It will be,” he murmured, under his breath. He glanced over at Cian, his terse lips, bloodless cheeks. Don’t worry.
Startled, Cian’s eyes flickered towards his little brother, his brow wrinkling in undisguised surprise. It seemed like a long time since Rynn had deigned to speak to him in the privacy of their own heads.
I’ve seen how she dies. This isn’t it. None of you have anything to be concerned about—
Cian almost laughed. It would have been wholly inappropriate, but he could barely hold it in at the moment. Rynn could be charming at times. At others, he was the most tactless, socially inept and graceless idiot in the world.
But it was a well-meaning attempt to comfort: so Cian took a deep breath, swallowed his chuckle, and granted him a bemused tweak of the lips. Thank you.
When Rowan appeared, it was easy enough for Rynn cringe away at the thought of reproduction right now, no matter how scantily clad and silken her night-clothes were. Thrown off balance as she flung herself—both literally and metaphorically—at him, he turned around with a cold stare. “Are you daft, woman? Think of where you are.” Luckily for both of them, Suzette interfered in the next second. Rynn tried not to snicker. Despite his general prejudices, he was starting to like this Mayfair. She had an aura of no-nonsense worth twice that of all his childhood governesses combined together.
At that moment, Antha screamed again, and the room went breathless. Cian tensed beneath Michael’s arm, every muscle in his upper back going rigid. Cian wasn’t normally what you’d call a violent personality, and he knew at the moment there was absolutely nothing he could do for the situation—yet there was nothing in his mind except a wild desire to stop whatever was hurting her like that.

Liesse touched his arm gently, reminding him: “Breathe.”
Her brother’s sigh released air that he hadn’t realized he’d been bottling up for the past minute or so. Although if there was anyplace that was a good place to black out in, it was most likely a hospital full of medical professionals.

Dorian sat down beside Pierce and made grabby fingers for his cigarette. When the aunt made her hiss of disapproval, he glared and gave an enormous roll of his frosty eyes. In lieu of nicotine, alcohol would have to do. Dorian groped within his coat, frowning. They had to have brought his flask. Did he remember to bring his flask? How did one celebrate properly without drinking? Or grieve, depending on the outcome?
Then again, Vittorio was a top-notch doctor—no point in imagining the worst, Dorian was almost certain nothing dreadful would happen.
Almost.

And then Vittorio emerged from behind the wide white doors, covered in blood, and the room erupted again into comment and clucking. The aunts were feisty in particular, having dealt with more than enough M.D.s in their own personal lives as to never be intimidated by one again.
Cian’s shoulders sagged at the news that he brought. For just a moment, it felt like the tension had all drained out of his body. She was going to be fine, he said. “When can we see her?” he asked, over the heads of the cousins, all craning forward with questions. And then his eyes went wide and distracted at something behind Vittorio, and the family behind him fell silent in unison.
Behind Cian, Dorian gave him a shove to the front lines and out of the rest of the congregation.
It wasn’t like this was unexpected. Still, Cian didn’t know how to cope with the surge of emotion that rose up in him at the sight of his children. Some part of him wanted to rush forth to meet the nurses in the doorway, but he didn’t even know how to hold them properly yet. He stepped forward hesitantly, but as though sensing Cian’s apprehension, Vittorio made the choice easy for him. Probably he encountered dozens of fresh parents as part of his daily routine; the only difference here is that this was family. The baby—no, Vanessa was wrapped in a pink-edged blanket decorated with yellow ducklings, but he could see her squirming within soft fleece, her mouth open in a mewling square of disapproval. Didn’t blame her for that; it must feel cold outside of her mother, after all. Despite his fears, her father couldn’t help but smile down on her as she calmed in his arms, and opened her eyes. His heart nearly stopped. But then, what had he expected? “Of course you have your mother’s eyes.” he murmured.
Alistair seemed to know what was coming through those doors before even Vittorio—he certainly wasn’t ready for the red-haired, blood-soaked wraith that launched itself at him. Oh, wait, that was just Antha.
Which was, in many ways, worse. As though sensing her distress, the twins began to whimper.
Cian said “Antha,” his tone of mixed relief. His feet didn’t seem to want to move; he was grateful to be swept along with her back into the delivery room.
Filled with beeping monitors, white machinery, the metal tray of blood-soaked sheets and utensils being ferried away by a nurse as they entered. He tried not to look at the red-soaked linens, it was amazing that Antha was still—
“You have to listen to the doctors, love,” he sighed, setting down at her side. Vanessa cooed at the sight of her mother, fighting to extract a plump fist from the nest of blankets. “They’re here to help.”
For a moment, there was nothing but the hum of electronics and the steady beep of the monitors. Despite the circumstances, Antha was radiant. Liesse looked delighted to be introduced to the inner sanctum, which was to be expected, but even Rynn was smiling after a moment in the room.
So this was what they meant by a mother’s glow.
Peeking over Malakai’s shoulder at the infant in his arms, Liesse briefly touched his arm. “You’re doing fine. She’s beautiful,” the girl murmured, half not even realizing she’d spoken aloud.
Rynn said, “Hmm.”
Of course, voicing his suspicions aloud would have sounded ludicrous. But Rynn trusted his instincts, knew them to be good. He recognized something in this room. Each witch’s mind had a ‘fingerprint’ to Rynn, unique to its owner. He’d met these two before, just not in this form. Edging behind Liesse, he peered down at the baby as Malakai gave Liesse the unspoken offer to hold her. His sister was only too delighted to accept; for just a moment, Rynn could half-imagine a flash of uncanny intelligence in those round green eyes.
Then she blinked, and gave a large pink yawn, and Rynn shook the feeling off. “She’ll be a heartbreaker.” he murmured, thinking of that pale, heart-shaped face in the mass of dark and tawny curls. Girls and boys both, if Antha’s escapades were any indicator.
Liesse’s expression failed to change from its beatific smile as she cooed, “Don’t call her that! Heartbreaker is such an ugly title. She will lead a cult of devotion, if I have anything to say about it.” Jiggling the blanket-burrito, she turned around to Cian. “Rynn and I will help, don’t worry.” Rynn startled, stiffening like an outraged feline. “I don’t see how. Neither of us have experience with—“ “We’ll learn along with Cian,” his twin stated, firmly. “This is your niece and nephew, Rynn. They’re family, too. Take a little responsibility.”
Rynn opened his mouth, about to argue, and then saw the twinkle in her eye. So this was how all his talk about the Calais name and duty to blood came back to bite him.
“…it’s no use protesting, is it? You’ve signed me up for babysitting duty already.”
“Yes,” Liesse smiled down at her armful. “It’ll be good for you.” Here came the sigh. The new father glanced up, although it took a lot to divert his attention from Sebastien at this moment. Rynn didn’t forget, and he didn’t forgive easily. Cian knew how stubborn his little brother could be at times. And he knew, too, that Rynn still hadn’t wholly forgiven him for what had happened at Llyr’s Court. The way he’d stood by, as the pillars crumbled around them. The brothers they’d left behind.
But after a moment, the tension drained out of Rynn and ebbed away. Cian saw it go. He couldn’t be angry, at least not now. “Fine.” He threw up his hands, in a gesture that was meant to illustrate how useless arguing with her was right now. “I’m not changing diapers, though.”
Cian laughed, without being able to help it. It just bubbled out of him, more relief than amusement. “Nobody’s asking you to. Yet. Anyways, you have school to worry about, now. ”
Turning to Antha, he put a hand on hers, fingers knit in the soft fleece. They’d most likely keep her overnight, with the amount of blood that she had lost. He knew that she wouldn't go down easily, but even she needed time to recover from something like this. I wish you’d rest. You need it. Although he didn't know what had gone on during the time she'd been out, they'd already had one medical emergency this evening. An hour longer in that coma, and she would've ended up here anyways. Going into labor couldn't have helped things.
He could hear the family clamoring outside already. There would be a horde of great-aunts, uncles and cousins all waiting to see the new heirs, but he could deal with that. It was Antha that needed tending to, right now.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Midway through Rynn's surrender, the door clicked and all at once there was a very small stampede as, without warning, half a dozen children flooded into the delivery room and crowded immediately around the hospital bed, flagrantly ignoring Vittorio's stern protests and demands that they wait outside. Behind them, Pierce trailed in with Olivier settled in one arm, the other around Dorian's shoulders as they strolled in. "Are you trying to spark a revolt amongst the tiny terrors, Tori? I thought they were going beat down the doors with their little fists of fury."
The eldest of the children at eleven years old, Eleanor---little seen by the Calais children, no doubt, though she had only moved out of Mayfair Manor the day before---turned with a swish of her lacy black skirts, her short cloud of pale yellow hair a severe frame for her pale face as she narrowed expressionless gray eyes at Pierce and murmured flatly, "Shut up, Uncle Pierce."
The other children ignored him altogether, their ranks closed around Antha and Cian. For her part, Antha blinked wide eyes both curious and cautious at them, both of the babies settled back on the pillow on her lap. "What's all this?" she questioned slowly, her voice betraying a hint of suspicion.
It was Belle, who had gravitated naturally to Malakai's side and then tugged on his sweater until he hoisted her up in his arms, who peered with her big, curious blue eyes at Antha and responded very seriously, "She made us."
Malakai cocked his head, brow furrowing. "Who did?" In response, Belle merely jabbed a finger towards Vanessa, her free arm clinging around Malakai's neck.
"Ahh..." Antha murmured, with a sudden smile of understanding as she glanced down at her daughter, "The chains that bind are forming. Quite early, at that."
"It's better than you," Pierce snapped suddenly in accusation, "You were bossing us around before you were ever born. Do you remember, Dorian? It was a month before she was even born and we all simply had to go see her out in that godawful haunted house in the woods. But the adults wouldn't let us, because Aunt Mary Beth refused to have anything more to do with the family, so we packed up our snacks and went to go see her ourselves." Turning, his eyes narrowed with accusation at Malakai as he concluded in an impetuous hiss, "And then Malakai went and told the adults on us. We got halfway there before they showed up and threw us into the car."
Malakai, blinking wildly, as if he couldn't believe they were serious, shot back indignantly, "We were four! The whole lot of you went tromping out into the swamp in the middle of the night, what was I supposed to do?!"
"We had protection!" Pierce argued.
Malakai only grew more incredulous, exclaiming, "It was a plastic sword, Pierce! Dorian had a fork and Jack had an inflatable mallet from the fair!"
Shaking his head, Pierce scoffed and looked away. "We were about to show that alligator what for when Julien showed up. You just couldn't stand how cool it was going to be and that you weren't there." And then, in a smaller voice as he pouted, "We would have made it if Courtland were there."
"Pierce," Antha began suddenly in a low warning.
The boy only cocked an eyebrow. "What? Everyone already knows he was in an orphanage until we were six anyways. No use getting mad at me, I didn't leave him on that doorstep."
"Pierce!"
Irritably, Vittorio rounded the bed and removed Olivier from the boy's hold before abruptly kicking him physically out of the operating room. It was only then that he allowed his eyes to flash with an unusual affection, the toddler settling comfortably in his arms. "Here we are, sport. Are you ready to meet your Designee of the Legacy?" Olivier, gazing with those big, innocent eyes up at his father, moved his lips furiously in determined gibberish. Vittorio just smiled with affection that looked completely out of place on his usually stern face, turning and setting him down on the hospital bed beside the newborns. Curiously, as if he were trying to figure them out, his lips puckered and his hand grabbed clumsily at Vanessa's as she waved it.
Taking a brief moment to smile at the interaction, Antha turned and sought out a small figure that she finally found hidden half behind Victoria, the slow, easy smile touching her lips as she reached out a beckoning hand. "Millie dear," she said with a very careful softness, coaxing the fair-haired child half an inch out from behind her cousin's back, "Don't you want to see them too?"
The little creature, thin as a waif with white-blonde hair nearly as long as she was tall, her complexion almost as fair as Antha's, glanced hesitantly up, taking a half breath as if she wanted to reply before her eyes flickered to Cian and she retreated again. With the same coaxing gentleness, Antha gave another smile and softly touched a hand to Cian's shoulder. "Millie, this is your Uncle Cian. You want to meet him too, don't you?"
Rapidly, Millie seized Victoria's shoulders and buried her face in her back, her head shaking rapidly from side to side. It was Belle, squirming until Malakai set her down, who trounced up to her cousin and asked, with a child's lack of empathy, "What, you're not afraid of Uncle Cian, are you?" The girl's shoulders hunched, her face still hidden behind her cousin's back, and Belle put her hands indignantly to her hips, exclaiming in a quite familiar matter-of-fact tone (which she had picked up from Antha, and a little from Courtland), "I'll have you know that Uncle Cian is my back-up husband after Uncle Malakai. So if you're afraid of him, you can never be a bridesmaid at our wedding and you won't get to wear the pretty bridesmaid dress. It's going to be pink."
Protectively, Victoria frowned at Belle, her small, delicate voice exclaiming, "You can't have Uncle Malakai and Uncle Cian. You have to choose."
"Nuh-uh!" Belle refuted, though something in her eyes sparked with the fear that it might be true, "I have to have a back-up in case Uncle Malakai gets married before I'm grown-up! And Uncle Rynn is my back-up in case I can't marry Uncle Cian!"
"You can't have all three of them!"
"Yes I can!"
With the same earlier gentleness but a sudden firmness to her tone, Antha said again, "Millie." The girl peaked hesitantly over Victoria's shoulder and Antha smiled, proffering her hand. "Do you trust me?" Slowly, the girl nodded. "Do you want to meet your cousins." Again that slow nod and Antha reached a half-inch further until, finally, Millie reached out and took her hand, darting out from behind Victoria and hopping into the hospital bed beside Antha as quickly as possible, tucked between her waist and her arm, and gazed curiously at Vanessa and Sebastien.
"Aunt Evie, they have your eyes," she murmured in the quietest whisper, watching as Olivier's hand touched Vanessa's cheek and the girl reflexively seized his fingers, sending the boy into wild, delighted peals of laughter at his game.
"That they do," Antha murmured serenely, running a gentle hand through the fine strands of the little girl's hair. She thought---dimly, in the back of her mind---that Millie must have been the most closely related to Liesse's host body of all the main Mayfairs. They bore a considerable resemblance in their coloring and delicate bone structure, and Antha could imagine Millie looking rather like her when she grew into a teenager. And then, glancing at the Calais children with a vague smile, "You shouldn't take it personally. Millie dear has the same...condition as Dolly Jean." Like the older girl, the inbreeding had caused a peculiar little error with her genes that kept her mind from functioning quite normally. Sweet as could be, just like her aunt, but she was terrified of anyone and anything she wasn't familiar with and she didn't always grasp simple concepts. This much was conveyed wordlessly, the thoughts drifting through the room where the children had no hope of noticing. "She'll warm to you eventually," Antha continued in a distracted murmur, her fingers idly trailing through the girl's hair as she clung to her aunt---her favorite aunt, specifically. Antha was surprisingly popular with her young nieces and nephews, Belle was not alone in her idol worship. "Really, she's quite a little chatterbox when she's not flustered. Aren't you, Millie dear?" The girl said nothing, only turned her face to bury it between Antha's back and the pillow against which she was propped, her fingers clutching nervously at the folds of Antha's dress.
"Shouldn't you all be introducing yourselves?" Vittorio murmured, his voice betraying a hint of fatigue as he stared wearily down at the children.
They glanced at one another as if to take a consensus, then at the newborns, then Vittorio. "You can't tell us what to do anymore," one of the boys declared abruptly, speaking for the lot of them with a little self-assured nod of his head, "We have a Designee of the Legacy now. She's the only one who can tell us what to do. And Aunt Evie." The last he added hastily, glancing with his briefly panicked eyes to the current designee. Fortunately, she was watching them with arched eyebrows and a bemused smile.
Without giving the child's words much thought, Vittorio sighed. "Ryan, you little brat, you know better. You think Evie's the only one who bosses us around?"
In passing, her focus having returned to Vanessa and Sebastien, Antha murmured with a small, self-assured smirk, "Yes."
"You've got years before she can stick up for you, kid," Vittorio continued, ignoring Antha's commentary, "So watch your manners when you're speaking to your elders."
The boy, Ryan, pouted fiercely, the tears welling up in his eyes as he turned and exclaimed helplessly, "Aunt Evie---!"
"Hmm? What do you expect me to do, ducky? Even I don't start fights with Tori if I can't help it."
With a nod of agreement, Victoria leaned over enough to whisper (with very little tact) into Belle's ear, "That's right, Uncle Tori is scary. Isn't Aunt Dolly Jean afraid to marry him?"
Almost imperceptibly, Vittorio's eyebrow twitched in irritation, his eyes closing as he released a long sigh. "There's no getting through to those tiny heads of yours..."
"Did Uncle Armand really punch you?!" one of the other boys demanded suddenly, grinning wildly, and Vittorio abruptly gave up.
With a little giggle of satisfaction, Belle turned and explained sweetly to the Calais siblings, "We're the mainstream of the eleventh generation. We'll be to Vanessa what Uncle Courtland and Uncle Tori and all them are to Aunt Evie." And then, her pretty face momentarily marred by a look of very deep concentration, she turned in a whirl of lacy white skirts, the pink ribbon in her hair fluttering against her cheek, and stood staring very pointedly at Rynn. "Uncle Rynn, you're supposed to read me my story! Did you forget?!"
"Belle," Antha sighed in exasperation, "Uncle Rynn has had a long day. Can't you take it easy on him?"
The girl pouted fiercely---another of the habits she'd picked up from Antha with careful observation, the look on her face both threatening and yet still heartrending---as she latched very pointedly onto Rynn's leg. "Fine," she relented at last, then glancing up at Rynn with her imploring big blue eyes, "But just for today, okay? Tomorrow you have to read me the story---and you have to do the voices and everything!"
Acting in their best interests, none of Mayfairs of any age said anything to try and dissuade Belle. When her mind was made up, the girl was going to get what she wanted, end of story.
Silently, Vittorio checked the bag into which Alistair's blood had drained and then set about hooking Antha up to it. For the following ten minutes, the children poked and prodded at the newborns, bantering strictly amongst themselves, and the older Mayfairs thought they could feel something off in the air---a click, almost, something attaching, linking together. It took most of them longer than Antha to recognize that their minds and powers were being linked together, connected around the central point that was Vanessa.
When finally one of the children thought to speak to one of the adults, it was Millie who peeked out from the safety of Antha's arm and turned sheepishly to look at Malakai, venturing quietly, "Sissy is here." As if it made her nervous to mention it, to even bring it to his attention.
To her great relief, Malakai gave a very soft smile, responding sweetly, "Don't worry, Millie dear. I'm not worried about your sissy."
"You're not?" Victoria questioned, her eyebrows arching and turning into a deep 'V' as if she didn't understand.
"I know why!" Belle exclaimed proudly, turning to her cousins, "I heard Rowan talking about it. It's because Uncle Courtland 'knocked her up' and now she doesn't stand a chance."
Far from clearing the matter up, the rest of the children gazed in confusion at Belle, one of the boys questioning, "What does that mean?"
Before the girl could answer, Malakai hurriedly intervened, "It's nothing! Really, don't worry about it."
One of the other, considerably younger boys, a smirk just beginning to spread across his round face, quickly jumped in. "That's not it. It's because Uncle Malakai has a gi-rl-fri-end. Wuzzername? The pretty girl that wears the dresses that go like this?" His arms swayed animatedly as he spoke the last part, imitating a swishing skirt. "The stalker lezbanian."
"What's a 'lezbanian'?"
"I don't know, I heard pops say it."
His face wholly, deeply, and vividly red, Malakai threw a hand to his forehead and squeezed his eyes closed, his jaw clenching with an odd mixture of frustration and embarrassment.
"Sophie?" Belle offered, her voice unusually harsh.
"Yeah! Sophie!"
"That's not right!" one of the other girls cut in, adamantly shaking her head, "It's not Sophie! Uncle Remy was telling Uncle Julien and my daddy this morning, that he saw Uncle Malakai kissing Aunt Liesse in the gard---"
Abruptly, Malakai's hand clapped to the girl's mouth, muffling any further divulging as he hastily lifted her in his arms, excusing himself very quickly with, "Marilyn, you're hysterical, I should really get you back to your mother now."
In an instant he was out the door with the child, the others glancing briefly at one another and then after him, one of the boys yelling quite loudly after him, "Uncle Malakai, why were you kissing Aunt Liesse?!"
In the waiting room, Courtland's sudden gleeful shriek was loud enough to shake the building nearly as much as Antha's unchecked power had. "You did what?!"
Simultaneously, Pierce yelled, "Malakai, why are you cheating on me?! Give our love a chance!"
At the end of his rope, the boy in question groaned, "Will the both of you get off of me please?!"
The only child left in the operating room, Belle's brow furrowed and her cheeks puffed out slightly, her gaze turning and setting very seriously on Liesse. After a moment of thought, her arms folding impetuously across her chest, she finally blurted out staunchly, "I'm not giving him up, you know. I love him immensely." Across the room, Alistair bit his lip on his laughter. The child really did copy Antha too much. "But..." she continued after a moment, with an air of reluctant compliance, "You're better than that horrible, horrible, horrible---"
"Sophie?" Vittorio offered, quirking an eyebrow, and the girl nearly hissed.
"Don't say her name! I hate her, she feels wrong! She's all dark and twisted deep down inside, I can see it! She can't have my Uncle Malakai!"
"Don't worry, Belle," Alistair offered with a bright smile, the laugh evident in his voice, "It's Evie she's after."
"She can't have Aunt Evie either! She can't have any of my family! She's not even a witch!" With that and a little huff, the girl turned on the soles of her patent leather shoes and darted from the room as if she simply couldn't continue the conversation.
Vittorio had quirked a curious eyebrow staring after the children, Alistair laughing riotously in the second hospital bed. "You know Evie, I think---" Vittorio froze abruptly after he turned to look at Antha, his gaze narrowing. Her head had lulled over onto Cian's shoulder, her eyelashes firmly spread against her skin like delicate ink, pale lips open in the thinnest line as she took her slow, even breaths. She was fast asleep, and deeply at that.
Pierce, who had come to complain to her of Malakai's supposed infidelity to him, stopped and shot her a strange look. "Tori, how did you manage that? You know she's going to throw you out of the window for drugging her more when she wakes up, right?"
"I didn't do a damned thing!" he protested in a hissing whisper, afraid to wake her, "I just took the blood straight out of Alistair and..."
Simultaneously, both of the boys turned their gazes narrowly on Alistair. He merely smiled, as bright and innocent as ever, but there was something about his eyes that unnervingly didn't match up. "What? I didn't give her anything. Although..." His brows furrowed dramatically, an exaggerated pout of deep thought touching his lips before he gave a great, fake gasp, questioning mockingly, "Courtland did give me this little white pill in the waiting room. You don't think...no! It couldn't possibly have gotten into my blood stream already, could it?"
The Mayfair boys, at a loss, simply gaped in astonishment at the little nymph of a boy, the dramatic look of horror slowly melting away from his face to be replaced by that serene mock innocence, eyelashes batting sweetly. "You're diabolical," Pierce said lowly, and there was an intense, unmistakeable undertone of admiration.
"You drugged Antha?" Vittorio asked for clarification, the only one whispering, and there was the same hint of reverence to his voice, "And she didn't even notice?"
Alistair laughed, sweet as could be, and then said very simply, as if they were fools not to have realized it, "I'm part of Evie, and Evie's part of me. What exactly were you expecting? Ineptitude? Please. Just because I was born yesterday..." He trailed off, laughing in amusement at his own joke.
Wide-eyed with astonishment, a sudden laugh came from Pierce's lips. "You suddenly terrify me and I think I love you madly." Turning, he called very loudly out the door (making Vittorio cringe, reaching for Antha as if he wanted to put his hands over her ears but then thought better of it), "Malakai, I'm over you! I love Alistair now!"
Malakai, flustered and trying to escape the questions being zealously hurled at him, screamed back, "Good! Stop sneaking into my room in the middle of the night!" And then, after a brief moment in which another awkward question demanding an answer had been uttered, he snapped rebelliously, "So what if I did?!"
Having finally recovered from his wonderment, Vittorio's eyes took on their usual stern sharpness as he jabbed a finger at the door, murmuring very strictly, "Alright, everyone out. Antha has to sleep. It's the last of it she'll be getting. Ever."
"That's fine," Alistair replied simply, still smiling as he easily yanked the massive needles out of his veins, the small punctures covering over with skin in a matter of seconds, and hopped lightly out of the hospital bed, "Evie won't be out of bed any time soon. I took four of those pills, it would have killed the Hulk."
"Alistair! How are you even---I mean---I don't understand, how are you lucid?!"
"Eh? Tori, do you have any idea how much vampire blood runs through our veins? Evie's weak right now, so they'll make her sleep for so very, very long. But me?" Again that charming, innocent smile as he snapped his fingers. "They just burn right up in my system." And then, without further explanation, he excused himself briefly with, "Pardon me, I think I should go save my big brother." As he traipsed lithely out the door, Vittorio just gaped.
Pierce, grinning wildly, gave a happy little moan as he threw his hand over his heart, declaring with rapture, "Mon dieu, I never want to be without him." Then he was gone, chasing happily after his new cousin.
Shaking his head, Vittorio sighed, "Alright, let's go. Cian, you take Vanessa and I'll take Sebastien." Shepherding everyone else out, he took the infant carefully in his arms and headed for the door, clicking the lights off before he emerged in the waiting room.

It was four o'clock in the morning and the family was terribly lively in the hospital waiting room, despite Vittorio instructing them that they should all go home, Antha was out cold and the newborns needed their rest, too. Among the points of interest, Malakai was standing with a hand over his horribly red face as Suzette lectured him and one of the young boys from earlier---Ryan, a fair-haired, blue-eyed Mayfair boy of five---hung from his arm, demanding very loudly to know what a 'lezbanian' was. Across the room, Sera and Courtland were arguing with great animation, making wild gestures of their arms, yelling, and stomping their feet.
"I always knew you were going to father the antichrist, I just didn't think you were going to use me as your unwitting vessel!"
"Woman, that's my son you're talking about, so watch your smart mouth for once!"
"It's my son, too! And I don't want your horrible genes in him!"
"You do realize that nearly all of our genes come from the same place, right? We have the same goddamned grandparents, Sera!"
"Ohmygawd, just stop talking! I'm from, like, the complete opposite side of the gene pool from you!"
"Hey, don't blame me just because I got all of the attractive, talented genes!"
"Uuuugh, you little brat!"
"You're lucky my boy is in there, otherwise this could get very ugly very fast!"
"Are you threatening me, Courtland?! Ohhh, I ought to throw this little hellspawn out right now!"
Abruptly, Courtland's irritated expression became very serious and very furious, his eyes conveying so much danger that Sera paled and nearly flinched. "Try it. Go on, just ******** try it. See-how-long-you-live."
"You---!"
"Sera!" Remy interrupted, frowning with a certain terrified concern, "Sweetheart, don't get yourself so worked up, it's not good for the baby."
The girl, glancing at her father, her usually pretty face contorted with indignation, screamed back, "I don't care!"
Courtland nearly screamed something back, but was cut off by a shockingly stern outburst from the usually easygoing Remy. "Sera!" She did flinch that time, and in turning to look at her father again realized suddenly that all of the cousins had their eyes narrowed threateningly at her and had begun to close in around her, step by step. Even Malakai, who---though she knew he didn't like her---was at least always the courteous gentleman, was staring at her with undisguised disgust.
Without warning, the girl burst into tears and turned on her heel, running from the room. Giving the smallest sigh, Remy shook his head and started after her. "Uncle Remy!" Courtland called after him, bringing the man momentarily to a halt to observe his very stern expression, "If she does anything to hurt my son---anything at all..."
"She won't," Remy assured him quickly and quietly, "She's just upset right now. But I'll keep an eye on her. And when the time comes, she'll be happy to hand him over to you. For the right price, if I know my daughter." Courtland scowled at the notion but said nothing and Remy, flashing a weak but reassuring smile, turned and continued after his daughter.
Armand, with a wispy little sigh, leaned against the wall and murmured, "Well this is a fine mess."
Still staring down the hallway though they had disappeared, Courtland suddenly gave a long, frustrated groan and ruffled his hair, exclaiming loudly and abruptly, "I NEED A ******** DRINK!"
At his shoulder, Jack gently stroked the boy's chaotic white-blonde locks, soothing him with, "There, there. Sera loves money more than spite. Come on, there's a bar just three minutes away, why don't we go take a little break?"
Courtland's eyes lit desperately up. "Bar?"
"Yeah, Schizerade."
"Schizerade? Doesn't Antha own that one? Well, that's convenient."
Seated nearby, his fingers tapping rapidly on the screen of his phone, Lawrence gave a weary little scoff. "Convenient? Hardly. Antha may have the city's best interests at heart, but you seem to forget that she also has a very shrewd mind for business. People like to drink when they're upset. She owned a bar next to a lot of condemned buildings that needed to be torn down. Where did you think she was going to build her massive hospital?"
Courtland quirked an eyebrow, but then just shook his head and waved the subject away. "Don't care. Jack, let's go get drunk. Massively, apocalyptically drunk."
As they turned for the door, Alistair ran enthusiastically after them. "Wait! I'm coming too~!" Without a word, Pierce trailed behind him.
"Don't you guys dare leave me here alone!" Malakai yelled suddenly, making a break from Suzette and Ryan and dashing after them. With a little grin, Pierce threw an arm around his shoulders as he reached him and continued walking.
Bandying glances amongst themselves, after a few moments the other cousins all rose and headed after them with the exception of Vittorio, who continued telling everyone they should go home. "Cian, I'll go ahead and make the assumption that you'd like to stay," he sighed, as if he didn't even want to argue about it, "You can use the second hospital bed beside Antha's, just Do. Not. Wake. Her. Up. We'll be running the standard examinations on Vanessa and Sebastien for a few hours, just down the hall here, so call me if you need anything. Everyone else, get the hell out of my waiting room."
"Yeah, yeah," Armand sighed, rolling his eyes, and then in a split-second decision before he stepped into the hallway, turned and threw an arm around Rynn's shoulders, steering him towards the hall with him. "Come on, little hedgehog, it's boys' night now. You'll like Laurie when he's drunk, he falls on the bar top and whines incessantly about how troublesome we are and how much he hates us. Then he gets affectionate. Reeeeeally, affectionate." He paused as if something had just occurred to him, turning his head to call out to Dorian, "You coming, golden boy? I think five different people would beat me senseless if they found out I'd left you alone with Liesse. Besides, when's the last time we all had a night out together?"
Sighing as they all disappeared around the corner, Vittorio stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat and let his eyes wearily flutter shut for a brief moment before returning to himself, looking over to Liesse. "Actually, now that I think about it, would you mind staying? I wouldn't feel right leaving Cian here on his own and I'm not about to leave a bunch of shaken nurses in charge of the babies."
"That's probably wise," Michael murmured with his usual soft smile, stepping up beside Liesse, "Though you can hardly blame them for being shaken, being around our family in this sort of situation. Do you mind if I stay as well?"
"No, as long as it's you two. My cousins, on the other hand, can't be trusted not to raid the pharmacy."
Miachel smiled warmly. "Oh, you know they would, without a doubt. Fortunately, they're taken with other vices tonight."
"Well then..." Shrugging off his weariness, Vittorio turned his eyes to Cian and managed a small smile---or what passed for one with him anyways, which was only a faint tug at the corners of his lips---and offered a low, "Congratulations. Now get some sleep---as much of it as you can, before you're trapped in a house with wailing infants every night. Oh---" He had begun to turn but halted, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a bottle of pills that he pressed into Cian's hand, "And if Antha happens to wake up, shove two of these down her throat by any means necessary. It's for her own good." And then he was gone down the hallway and into another room.
Dropping down into one of the plush recliners---the kind that stretched all the way out to serve as a makeshift bed---Michael released a small, exhausted sigh. "You know, I almost forgot how exhausting this all is. Though I am grateful that I didn't have a wife trying to shatter every bone in my hand this time. And just think, tomorrow we'll be taking the babies home and...and..." Sitting back in the chair, Michael drifted off almost instantly, slumping down into the plush depths of the chair and going totally slack.

By the time Armand ushered Rynn into the dim, faintly smoky bar one parking garage and one crosswalk away from the hospital, the rest of his cousins were already upwards of three shots deep each. Courtland in particular had ten shots of whiskey lined up on the bar in front of him and was knocking back the next to last when the door swung open, Jack watching him intently with furrowed brow.
"Drowning your frustration, Court?" Armand asked with a hint of amusement, quirking an eyebrow.
The boy downed the last shot and then held the empty glass straight above his head face puckering briefly from the burn in his throat. "You know it. Bridgett!"
Rolling her eyes, the bartender sauntered down the length of the bar to stand before Courtland, sighing in irritation, "How many times do I have to tell you, my name isn't Bridgett."
Courtland shook his head, slapping his hand down on the polished wooden surface of the bar, "You look like a Bridgett, so I'm going to call you Bridgett. Now give me a rum and coke."
"Don't you think you---"
"Rum and coke, woman! I'm trying to block things out here!"
Taking a moment to indulge in an exasperated sigh, the woman---who could only have been a few years older than Courtland, really---jabbed a finger at him, muttering, "You're lucky you tip like the money's burning a hole in your pocket, kid," and then wandered off to fetch the rum.
Several seats down, Malakai had his face planted firmly down on the bar top, his arms folded around his head as he moaned helplessly, "My heart can't take any more of these episodes. Really, it can't."
Despite the reassuring way that Pierce stroked his back, he grinned and mused, "How is it even possible for the liquor to hit you this fast...?"
"I don't want them to grow up without their mother. I grew up without one, it was terrible."
"This is different," Pierce assured him calmly, "Your mother sat you down in the hallway and just never came back. Antha's just going to be dead---it's much less traumatic."
Without warning, Malakai gave a disparate little wail, tightening his arms around his head, and Cyrus quickly turned and slapped Pierce, hissing incredulously, "What's the matter with you?!"
Pierce sighed, unruffled. "So many things, Cy. So, so many things..."
"Get away from him! Now!"
With a small shrug, Pierce relented and slid out of his seat before turning to Armand and Rynn. "Fancy running into you two here."
"Where's Alistair?" Armand questioned, glancing around the bar, but didn't see a trace of him.
"Hm? Oh, ********, where did he go?"
"How could you lose him?!" Jack squealed, overhearing the conversation, "I thought you never wanted to be without him!"
"I don't," Pierce said, peering into the dark corners of the bar, "But I also didn't want to be without a drink."
"Pierce---!"
Across the bar, the bathroom door swung closed and the cousins glanced up to see Alistair adjusting the cuffs of his shirt. He glanced up, meandering easily back over them, and smiled with surprise to see everyone looking at him. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing," Lawrence sighed, his chin in his palm as he swirled the contents of his glass around.
"Actually, Airi, you've got something..." Reaching for the collar of the boy's shirt, Cyrus's face became momentarily serious as he touched a dark sliver, though Alistair's easy smile never wavered, "...is that...?"
The door to the men's room swung closed again and the cousins glanced over, eyebrows arching as a girl slipped out combing her fingers through her hair, glancing covertly around herself and tracing the outside edges of her darkly painted lips with her thumb. Tactfully, Alistair cleared his throat and turned towards the bar, holding a hand up to call for the bartender's attention as she set Courtland's drink in front of him. "Can I get one of those too, please?"
But the cousins weren't about to let this one go. While most of them just continued staring in amazement at the boy, Pierce and Jack both burst into laughter, the latter exclaiming, "How does someone even move that fast?"
As Alistair blinked innocently at his cousins, Armand offered a grin and the purr, "Antha moves that fast."
"Did move that fast," Pierce corrected him, "Before Cian."
"She moved that fast with Cian," Jack pointed out, grinning, "Well...almost. All in all, it was pretty fast."
"That was wondrously impressive," Pierce continued to Alistair as the boy picked up his drink, flashing a smile at the bartender that brought a very slight flush to her cheeks and sent her fluttering off, "Your skills are utterly terrifying int he best possible way."
Alistair gave a small laugh, his grin flashing suggestive for the space of a heartbeat before he put his glass to his lips, "You haven't seen anything yet."
"We should have a toast," Armand announced abruptly, gesturing to the bartender for a round, "It's been an outright horror show of a day, but still, we have every reason to celebrate."
"And we should," Pierce added, giving Malakai a brief slap on the back, "You guys are bringing me down. Don't bring me down."
With another little helpless moan, Malakai muttered against the bar, "She hates me now, I know it..."
"Malakai, stop being socially awkward! Here---" With the shots poured, Pierce distributed them around.
"How old is this kid?" the bartender groaned, gesturing at Rynn, but Alistair and Pierce simultaneously flashed her their most charming smiles, the latter responding, "Hm? Oh, no, he's fine," as he set the shot in Rynn's hand.
Begrudgingly, Malakai lifted his head and Courtland straightened himself out, all of them turning to face the center of the group as Armand help up his glass, announcing, "Guys, we have an heir. An heir. We have an adorable little niece and nephew and Antha pulled through it."
Jack, smiling brightly, clapped a hand on Courtland's shoulder and added, "Courtland's going to be a dad."
The boy in question glanced up from his glass, his eyes flashing thoughtfully for a split second before they became suddenly determined, spurred on by the sudden hazy gleam of liquor. "Yeah...yeah! To hell with Sera, she's not ruining this for me! I'm going to have a son!" Relieved to see him returning to his usual self, the other boys offered a low chorus of 'Yeah!'.
"And we have Alistair now," Cyrus offered, Armand slinging an arm around the boy's slender shoulders as he grinned with a slight but genuine sheepishness.
"And Cian and Rynn and Liesse," Lawrence added.
Courtland, his lips beginning to curl deviously, continued, "And Malakai's in lo~ve!"
The boy flushed again, reaching across the bar to grab a lime wedge and flinging it at Courtland, "Shut up!"
"There's plenty of reasons to celebrate," Armand concluded, the relief that the atmosphere had turned around visible in his shoulders, which no one had noticed until then had been tensed all night, "So, cheers."
"Cheers," all of the boys agreed, their glasses thumping against the bar top before they threw them back.
Wincing very slightly against the burn, Malakai shook his head and declared, "Just one more and then I'm going to go home and take a nap."
"Oh, stop being a cat for one night," PIerce sighed in exasperation, shoving another drink at him, "It's a party."
"Speaking of parties," Courtland purred, his eyes gleaming conspiratorially, "We never got to throw Cian a bachelor party. We should get on that."
"It's a bit late for that, don't you think? He's not a bachelor anymore. It kind of defeats the entire purpose."
"Hey," Courtland shot back, pouting fiercely, "It's not our fault that Antha just woke up one morning and decided, 'Oh, we should get married today'." His pitch heightened as he imitated Antha, rolling his eyes and flailing his arms strangely in the air, "We had no time to prepare! And since I was his best man, the bachelor party was my duty. I refuse to have such a failure on my record, we're having one! End of story!" His fist came rapidly down on the bar top, marking the end of the conversation, and with that his cousins shot one another a few brief glances and then shrugged in consent.
Down the bar, Lawrence had his head in his hands, groaning slightly, "Sounds like a lot of paperwork for me, when it's all said and done. I just want one week where no one gets arrested. That's all I want out of life at this point. Maybe I could sleep the whole night through or something. Is that really so much to ask? I really hate you guys, do you know that?"
"Laurie, are you drunk already?" Courtland demanded excitedly as Pierce pulled an arm around the irritated boy, planting a kiss on his forehead.
"No. Be quiet."
"You are!" Jack exclaimed, clapping his hands together in delight, "You are, you are!"
"I said that I'm not! Just shut up, you're all terrible people and just leave me alone right now!" His eyes glazing over, Lawrence turned with a faint scowl and a little hiccup that he tried to cough up in a highly unconvincing cough, muttering, "Terrible people, all of you...always getting arrested, or expelled...with your horrible drugs...none of you ever bothering to get a driver's license...paternity suits..."
Sighing, Malakai very gently patted Lawrence's back, murmuring, "It's okay, Laurie..."
Lawrence turned abruptly, his eyes softening in ways they never did when he was sober, and for a split second he very nearly looked as if he might cry. "Malakai, no...you're the good one. I love you, you know that? You never get in trouble...never got arrested, not even once..."
"Laurie---"
Lawrence's head dropped very suddenly onto Malakai's shoulder, his arms latching on around the boy's shoulders, and Malakai settled into rather helplessly patting his cousin's back, his head falling to the side as he sighed as if he were used to it. "It's okay, Lawrence. I love you, too."
"I really love you guys," Lawrence continued in a low whine, sniffling slightly, "I'm glad none of you are dead. I always think you're dead, and then I come home and you're not and I'm surprised but that's a good thing."
"We love you too, Laurie!" Courtland squealed, throwing himself at Lawrence and Malakai so that the latter gave a small yelp, one second two late to do anything before the whole group of them fell onto the floor in a heap.
"Guys!" Malakai gasped desperately, "Come on, you're heavy! Guys!"
"We should always keep Lawrence drunk," Jack sighed dreamily, his smile from ear to ear, "He's so full of love."
"We could," Pierce murmured, "But then who would get us out of jail?"
"...you have a point. Sorry, Laurie, but we still love you! We swear it! Cross our hearts and hope to die!"  

[Okimiyage]

In the hospital room, a crowd of small humans gathered around the bedside briefly. Rynn watched wide-eyed. He’d never realized that the Mayfairs had so many children. A prosperous generation, indeed.
The feeling that stirred in his breast was almost like envy.
Llyr’s Court was an empty mansion now. There would never be—what was the sickening phrase? ‘the pitter-patter of little feet’ echoing down its labyrinthine hallways. At least Liesse could live vicariously through these—and good thing, as it looks like the cousins would need all the help they could get.
But what was he thinking? He ought to be looking forward to watching the kids give everyone else hell.
Speaking of:
“You won’t need a back-up, my darling.” Dorian countered the girls, picking up a silvery thermometer from a tray nearby and twirling it like a baton. One of the nurses snatched up the instrument and gave him a swift glower before wheeling the gleaming implements away from him. Dorian hardly seemed to notice; his eyes followed Belle’s tirade through the room with amusement. “You’ll have the menfolk beating a path to your door before you’re fifteen—you’ll be lucky, in fact, if a dozen don’t kill themselves upon receiving your rejection. But isn’t that the dilemma of every great beauty? You can’t marry us all.”
Rynn carefully (although with a complete lack of subtlety) tried to avoid the eyes of any of the children after this. Just in case they were planning something.
“I have a beau already,” Cian said kindly. “Although I consider myself flattered by the offer.” If the words seemed absent, it was because half of his attention was focused on Millie as she crept towards the hospital bed. Curious little thing. She reminded him of the fawns that used to creep across the mist-covered greens of Llyr’s Court in the wee hours of the morning. During one incident, when Cian had returned home particularly late and particularly inebriated, he’d found himself locked out and too drunk to make it up the ivy-covered wall to his window. He’d passed out on the lawn instead, and awoken to found a herd of black nosed and tawny-furred deer nosing his damp coat and curls.
He got the distinct impression that this was the trick with Millie, too. You had to be very, very still around her at first.
Dorian had no experience with fawns. “Anyways, I want to know where I fall on this marriage roster you girls apparently have.” he declared, crossing his arms indignantly. “I’ll be heart-broken if I haven’t made it into the top five.”
Unsurprisingly, it seemed he’d have to follow them out of the room for his answer. Nobody wanted to confront such a loaded question.

On the bed, Cian reluctantly released Antha’s hand and inched back to allow Vittorio space to work. All they had to do was make it through tonight. He had a feeling this thought was a lie, but it was one that allowed him to keep calm amidst all the hubbub. ‘Hubbub’ was a good word for it, too. He’d never thought a kiss was anything to get excited over, but he was surprised that Courtland didn’t have confetti to throw if the tone of his voice was anything to judge by. Liesse, for her part, fidgeted with her hair.
Rynn’s eyes had been resolutely focused on the empty screen of the television in the corner for several minutes, trying to avoid Belle’s attention by pretending to be a potted plant. When one of the children spilled the beans, his gaze wavered to Liesse for only a split second. Yep. Red as a tomato. He let her stew in it for just a second before Rynn casually nudged her in the ribcage.
Sure that ‘Aunt Liesse’ wasn’t the one kissing ‘Uncle Malakai’ instead of the other way around?
Liesse’s head whipped around. Shhh! Don’t be a—
Relax. I was joking.
He knew how she felt, after all. If that was their decision—well, let it be. This was his way of saying it was alright. She was off the hook.
After a second, Liesse’s shoulders untensed. With a quick, apologetic look towards Cian—“You don’t have to stay, you know, I didn’t expect it,”—she all but skipped through the doors after Malakai.
Rynn sighed, and crossed his arms. He could hear the argument ascending already through the doors. Putting a dozen Mayfairs together under one roof was a bad idea, cramming the entire clan into a single room was a surefire way to get someone killed. They’d be lucky if it wasn’t part of the staff.

Still, he was determined to remain optimistic. At least it wasn’t Hell.
Besides, Alistair was out there, he’d probably stop anyone from dying. The boy seemed to have a level head. And maybe an iron-clad stomach, too, if the way he’d thrown back those pills was anything to go by. With Antha out of commission, the twins too young to rule, he assumed what seemed to be his rightful duty as heir apparent. The cousins certainly seemed willing to follow, anyways.

The bar had been densely packed when it had opened its doors earlier in the evening, but by four in the morning it was nearly deserted except for the die-hard drinkers. Rynn settled hesitantly into his seat at the bar, gingerly amazed that no one had dared to card him and kick him out. Then again, the bartenders probably had more pressing issues to worry about with a group like this.
Dorian came to him carrying a neon-colored drink with an umbrella on this, and pushed it in front of him. He leaned forward, grinning in a way that reminded Rynn far too much of a cat which had caught a canary.
“Congratulations, Rynn! You’re a brand new uncle. How does it feel? Are you nervous?”
Normally Dorian would have found this invitation promptly refused, but for some reason Rynn hesitated. Shouldn’t he get to be irresponsible for once? Liesse had her fling with Malakai to contend with, Cian had just become a new father, but what did Rynn have to worry about? School? (That was a joke.)
He picked up the cocktail, swirled the tall glass tentatively, and took a hesitant sip. It tasted like fruit juice, something with citrus in it. It wasn’t until the third sip that Rynn started to feel a slow heat spreading from his chest and up through his throat. “It feels—well.” For a second, Rynn’s straight-laced composure began to slide. He loosened his collar and blew out a citrus-scented huff of air. “Funny, I guess. Bit of a relief, not to be the one that everyone’s looking to right now. This is no kind of honeymoon for the newly-weds, though, is it? Cian’s always been such an irresponsible goof-off and now he’s a dad, no time for fun. I s’pose it’s good for him, he needed something to make him man up and settle down. Listen to me, telling him to man up. He’s older than me. He got off lucky. It’s tradition that the youngest son leads the family, goes all the way back to Donatien. Glory days. Gory days. Doesn’t that equate to the same thing? More successful than I was, at least.” Rynn seemed to realize just then that his tirade was not being addressed to the empty air. “Thanks for the drink, by the way. Can I have another one of these?—pay you back, I swear. What’s in this?”
“Tequila!” Dorian answered, all cheerful aplomb as he flagged down the bartender.
Behind Malakai, who she’d been trailing since the hospital, Liesse’s eyes widened. Glancing over at her—was this a ‘date’? She wasn’t sure—at Malakai, she asked hesitantly, “Should someone be keeping an eye on those two?”
The tentative query went unanswered, unheard beneath Laurie’s sudden outpouring of emotion. They were about two minutes away from an impromptu karaoke ballad, if his level of inebriation was anything to judge by. Or a riot. The bartenders had bigger things to worry about than Dorian’s latest cat-and-mouse game with one of his own crew.
Dorian had bestowed her own cocktail upon Liesse earlier, like some kind of deranged christmas fairy that left behind potently alcoholic beverages instead of presents. This one was the color of milky coffee and tasted vaguely of eggnog and chocolate. And whatever was in it was making Liesse decidedly less concerned about Rynn’s capacity for drink. If he got a hangover, she reasoned, through the fuzzed lens of tipsiness, it was his own fault. He’d already said they’d go to school together tomorrow. Anyways, drinking a little would probably be good for her brother. He needed to loosen up, everyone was thinking it.

Back in the hospital, Cian folded the blanket snugly around Vanessa's dainty shoulders and handed her off to one of the nurses, who whisked her into one of the square, plastic-sealed cradles for bloodwork. His head ached; his clothes were still damp. Luckily, neither of the twins had woken up during being transferred around the hospital as long as they were in family hands. He didn't know what to do with a crying baby, yet. "I feel like I need to ask the aunts for a tutorial. What do you do with infants?" he muttered, rubbing his eyes drowsily. He had to admit, he was impressed with Vittorio. The older man's energy showed no signs of flagging. Then again, all-nighters like these would be standard for a doctor of his standing at Mayfair Medical.
For now, all he could do was try to catch up on his own sleep. Until some new emergency sent alarms sounding again, at least.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

To say that the cousins had ended up drunk would be an understatement. Collectively, their bar tab when they left at roughly noon the next day had been four digits before the decimal point and the first number hadn't been a one. Part of it had been that they had taken bottles home with them---home, for the moment, being the hospital waiting room where they were currently all passed out on the plush leather seats or else sprawled out on the floor. Gazing down at them, her eyes roving across the clutter of empty bottles, Antha gave an exasperated sigh and administered a single decisive kick to Courtland's leg.
The boy startled awake---somewhat, groggily, hardly aware of what was going on around him. "Whazza matta'?" he mumbled, his tongue decidedly swollen with dehydration, coated with alcohol that had fermented sourly while he had slept.
Her eyes narrowed and head tilted slightly, gazing down at her disheveled cousin, Antha made a 'hmm' of disapproval, folding her arms over her chest. "It's seven o'clock in the evening and you've wrecked my waiting room, Court."
The boy glanced briefly around himself, eyes half-lidded and hazy, bloodshot, and then back up to Antha. "Eh? You should be asleep."
"I slept for fifteen hours, I'm fine."
"No, Evie, no...go back to sleep." Another swift kick and he laid back down groaning, fumbling blindly for his leg but unable to find it. "Did Rynn and Liesse and Airi get to school okay?"
Antha made a brief, impatient noise, gesturing without a word to the twins passed out nearby, Alistair sprawled out on the bench nearest the door, his shirt unbuttoned and one shoe fallen on the floor by his feet. Courtland only gave a quiet, groggily hysteric laugh and fell back onto the cool floor. "Kids...can't hold their liquor..."
Another sigh came from Antha's lips, this time of resignation as she glanced around at her cousins and then abruptly turned on her heel, heading back into the delivery room where Cian was still sleeping on the hospital bed pressed up against hers. He had to be exhausted, poor thing, and he had a legitimate reason for it. Vanessa and Sebastien were swaddled and sleeping in a crib in the corner of the room, their small heads pressed together and tiny hands knotted in one another's blankets. She knew through the nurses that they had put the newborns in separate cribs when they had brought them in at eight, but they had cried so hysterically then that they had woken Michael and Cian and the former had suggested to put them together, at which point they had quieted and dozed off. Michael had woken with her ten minutes ago, but abruptly offered to go out and fetch coffee and breakfast, gently urging her to take it easy. "The children look as if they're going to need it," he had murmured with a small, amused grin, eyes flickering over their limp, splayed bodies.
Silently, Antha drew up a chair from the wall and placed it beside the crib, climbing into it on her knees and leaned against the hard plastic edge, her chin resting on her folded hands, and for about ten minutes she merely watched her newborns sleep, the flaring of their little nostrils as they breathed and twitching of their wrinkled fingers in their blankets. When they stirred with whispery coos, their little eyelids fluttering and gazing curiously up at her with her own eyes, she felt herself smile before she could even think of it, whispering very quietly so that she wouldn't wake Cian, "Bon matin, mes petit choux. Ça va?" The babies blinked curiously, making small, gentle sounds and kicking their feet as they stared up at her, and Antha was perfectly pleased with it as a response. It was when their legs kicked a little more urgently and eyes began to crinkle that her easy demeanor shattered and she set into motion, quietly shushing them as for the very first time since she was nine years old, the girl lifted the massive Mayfair emerald from around her neck, twisting the glittering silver chain around her fingers as the gem swayed over the crib and the twins fell silent, watching in mesmerized fascination at the sparkling thing. "No tears, little ones," she entreated them softly, smiling sweetly at their reaction, "Ah, you like mama's necklace? Pretty, isn't it?" The gem lowered a few inches, close enough that they could reflexively reach out and press their fingers against the shining rock. "It's going to be yours one day, ma papillon."
Pacified, the babies cooed happily and Antha slipped the Mayfair emerald back around her neck, gingerly taking the handle of the crib and rolling it over to the bedside, climbing up on top of her twisted and crumpled sheets and reaching out first for Vanessa, lifting her out of her blankets and laying her down very carefully on the thin mattress beside Cian, and then before he could even cry for being separated from his sister she retrieved Sebastien, laying him down beside Vanessa between herself and Cian, and laid down. Her head propped up on one arm, she idly stroked the wispy chocolate-colored curls on the twins heads for a few minutes as they seemed to drift in and out of sleep, smiling faintly at them before she stretched above their heads, leaning over to lay a brief kiss against Cian's cheek, whispering softly in his ear, "Réveille-toi, mon cheri." And then she retreated, nestling her head into her pillow scant inches from Sebastien's, gingerly stroking the back of Vanessa's hand as her fingers grabbed at hers.
Michael returned very shortly thereafter, making his way down the aisle of bodies setting down trays of coffee and paper bags crammed with croissants and pastries as Vittorio trailed after him, his eyes bloodshot and skin drawn, kicking his cousins and loudly demanding that they wake up.
"Tori, you monster," Pierce groaned, lifting his head from the bench with the wet pop of leather separating from skin, "Can we have a little quiet, please?"
"It's seven o'clock in the goddamn evening, you good-for-nothing louts, get up!"
Across the room, Jack hissed a desperate, "Shhhh!" and then plopped his head back down on the curve of Dorian's back.
Alistair made a small groan, lifting himself as if he were made of lead and swinging his legs over to put his feet on the floor with no small amount of effort. Malakai had risen enough to lean listlessly back against the wall, his head in his hands as he gave a low, droning whine deep in his throat. Courtland had slithered several feet across the floor, gathering several cups of coffee greedily up in his arms and retreating with them, downing the first one and tossing the empty paper cup aside.
"Vittorio, you're going to wake Evie if you keep yelling like that," Jack groaned miserably, turning and burying his face in Dorian's shirt, and there was a hint of desperation in his voice.
"Antha's awake," Vittorio snapped irritably in response, shattering all hope that he would be quiet enough not to make their heads pound (more), "She slept for fifteen hours. When did you all get to sleep?"
"Well first the sun rose," Courtland murmured, giving vague gestures of his hands in the air to indicate sunrise as he slumped against the wall, "Then we talked Bridgett into breaking out the absinthe---the real stuff, not that ******** licorice water, this was certified illegal, wormwood and all."
"I saw a green fairy," Alistair chipped in happily despite the dark circles beneath his eyes.
"Given the roll you were on last night," Pierce muttered, shooting him a glance and a grin as he ran an exhausted hand through his hair, "You probably ******** her, too."
"Christ," Vittorio muttered, massaging his temple and shaking his head.
Across the room, Lawrence gave a sudden yelp and patted himself down, retrieving his phone and checking his many, many missed calls. "Sacred Heart...the headmaster---"
"Julien called him this morning," Michael said hastily, bringing a great, relieved sigh from Lawrence's lips, "He told him we'd had a family emergency and the children would start tomorrow instead."
Ignoring the ongoing conversation, Armand glanced hastily up and questioned earnestly, "How is Antha?"
"She's fine," Vittorio responded with a small, baffled sigh, "Her blood cell count is a little low and her organs are a little bruised from the damage yesterday, but she's recovering rapidly. As always. I'm sending her home in an hour, once her prescription is filled. But she's strictly on bed rest for the next week---"
Courtland abruptly scoffed, chuckling lowly beneath his breath. "Good ******** luck with that, Tori."
"You know she's going to take them to school tomorrow," Pierce joined in with a brief jab of her finger towards Rynn, Liesse, and Alistair, "And she's going to want to take Vanessa and Sebastien to the park. And go see Nicholas's new performance when it premieres Friday. And go yell at the Talamasca about whatever it is they've done now, and---"
"You keep her in that bed as much as you can," Vittorio interrupted in a harsh hiss, eyes narrowed at Pierce, "This is her health we're talking about here. And you know how she is---her physical health correlates directly to her mental health. When one breaks down, so does the other."
"You may as well tell the sun not to shine, Tori," Pierce sighed, shrugging, and with a roll of his eyes Vittorio dropped the conversation as fruitless for the time being.

Shortly afterwards, the nurses arrived to instruct Antha and Cian in the finer points of caring for the infants, feeding them and changing them and whatnot, how they should be laid down to sleep without risk of suffocation. Michael, returning from installing the car seats in Antha's car, smiled and promised he could pick up the slack on everything else until the new parents got the hang of it and Vittorio, shoving a bag of pill bottles at Antha, discharged her. "You're going to go see your home now, aren't you darlings?" Antha cooed sweetly to them as she carried Sebastien in her arms down the hallway, Cian behind ehr with Vanessa. She had flatly refused to be carried out in a wheelchair, and dared anyone to try and stop her from walking out on her own.
Vittorio helped strap the infants into their car seat, briefly demonstrating how the contraptions worked, and then sent them off. With stern instructions that the car was not to go over thirty miles an hour, Antha tossed the keys at Cian and settled into the passenger seat, turning to watch the infants as their eyes took in their surroundings, curiously watching the scenery that passed the darkly tinted windows. "I hope Jacob thought to get clothes for them," she murmured anxiously as they headed home, "Oh, I should have told him not to get them all matching things. I really hate that, Airi and I never would have stood for it if we'd grown up together. Ah, I wonder what kind of sheets he got? I heard once that people can be allergic to certain materials. Cian, quick, turn around, we need to get them an allergy test!"
Glancing over to him with wide eyes, Antha's abrupt panic was interrupted by the buzzing of her phone, which she hastily answered with, "Court---"
She moved the phone quickly away from her ear, cringing against the yell that sounded from the receiver. "WILL YOU QUIT FREAKING OUT?! Christ, woman, you're about to give Alistair a nervous breakdown here! Jacob said he got hypoallergenic sheets, and detergent, and stuffed animals, so chill the ******** out already."
Antha gave a deep sigh of relief, slumping back in her seat as if the episode had drained her, but still managed to snap, "I'd like to be around to remind you of this when Adair is born, Courtland. I would buy him dozens of blankets and sneak them into his crib and never tell you what they're made out of."
"...you monster."
"Not a pretty thought, is it?"
"I'm hanging up now."
Antha beat him to it, irritably mashing the red button and dropping her phone carelessly down into a cup holder, turning back to smile at Vanessa and Sebastien as if the last two minutes had never happened. "Your Oncle Courtland is terrible, isn't he? But we know he would run around screaming if his darling little niece and nephew broke out with a rash because of some blankets, wouldn't he? Yes he would." Smiling, she gave a light tickle to Vanessa's stomach and the girl screeched happily, her lips twisted into a wide grin and eyes crinkled. Beside her, Sebastien cooed curiously, staring at his mother as if to demand an explanation.

Back at Mayfair Manor, the cousins all returned to find Jacob trapped firmly down in Ikea hell, armed with a screwdriver in one hand and a sheet of instructions in the other, tears in his eyes as he sat cross-legged on the floor amid whitewashed sections of a crib.
"You poor thing," Courtland sighed as Alistair and Michael settled down on the floor to help him, patting his back. Some kind aunt---Madison, he recalled with a little dry sob---had brought by a cradle of beautifully carved mahogany, to which Antha carefully deposited the newborns as he spoke, and he had gotten the high-chairs set up just fine, but the damned crib made no sense.
"Just go make dinner," Michael told him softly, taking the screwdriver and nudging him towards the kitchen, "We can handle this, just go."
Obedient as always, the boy turned and began for the kitchen but then stopped, instead retrieving a rectangular package from the coffee table wrapped in flower-print paper which he delivered to Antha. "I nearly forgot, one of Claire Leonelli's bodyguards brought this by for you. He said Mr. Leonelli wished to send you a congratulatory gift, but that he himself had picked it out and brought it over since his boss was busy with meetings."
Antha's eyes narrowed with suspicion as she glanced up from the package to Jacob, hesitantly receiving the inauspicious box. Too thin to be a bomb, her mind deduced, and too light for any other sorts of explosives. Nothing seemed to be moving around in it... "Which bodyguard?"
"I'm afraid I don't remember," Jacob murmured, wringing his hands, "But he was wearing a very severe black suit."
With a sigh, Antha responded, "They're the mafia, Jacob, they all wear severe black suits."
The boy pursed his lips. "Oh! He had rather long, wavy blonde hair. Kind of honey-colored."
"Mitchal?"
"Ah, yes! Mitchal!"
Her hesitation vanishing, Antha gently ripped into the package. She trusted Mitchal, he was kind and level-headed and had a hint of whimsy to him that the other members of the 'family' sadly lacked, with the exception of Claire himself. But Claire was psychotically whimsical and that wasn't exactly safe. "Oh---!" Antha hastily threw a hand up over her mouth to keep herself from making an audible reaction, biting her lip and smiling at the opened box.
Popping up at her shoulder, Courtland observed the contents and squealed, seizing the contents for himself to get a better look at them. "Oh Mitchal, you brilliant soul! I always knew I liked him." Wordlessly, Jacob took the empty box from Antha and she took the contents from Courtland, unfolding them on the nearby table. "So Evie, who's going to be the panda and who's going to be the bunny?"
Gazing down with an amused smile, Antha quietly observed the two small onesies, one black and white with a white poofball tail and little panda ears on the hood and the other white and pink with corresponding white poofball tail and tiny, flopping bunny ears. "Vanessa should be the bunny, of course," she mused at length, and Courtland wasted no time in taking the outfit to his little niece, unwrapping her from her blankets and buttoning her into her new outfit.
"Aren't you the cutest little thing in the whole damned world," Courtland cooed affectionately, putting her back in the cradle while Antha changed Sebastien, "Yes, you are."
Julien, sighing in the doorway, managed to murmur sternly, "Watch your language around the little ones, Courtland. I will not tolerate them growing up to be as foul-mouthed as the lot of you."
"Oh, there's no help for that, is there?" Antha whispered sweetly, settling down in the rocking chair beside the cradle with Sebastien laid the length of her legs, his eyes rolling every which way as he tried to take in the various contents of the room. "No, there's not." Sebastien made a small sound as his mother gently pulled the hood up over his head, folding the hem up from his eyes, and giggled outright for the way she smiled at him then.
"Perhaps, Antha," were Julien's next weary words, "You'd like to go take a bath? Your dress is still covered in blood."
"No, I'm not leaving them for one second," the girl murmured, gently stroking a thumb across her son's cheek.
"Antha---" he snapped then, exasperated, and Alistair took Sebastien before the situation could explode unnecessarily, pressing Antha towards the stairs with murmured assurances.
"Go. Cian and I can handle this. Go take a shower at least."
Sighing and flashing a small pout, eventually Antha laid a kiss on each of their heads and flitted up the stairs, running for her room. "You are endlessly useful, you know that?" Courtland asked with a small grin to Alistair, "We can't ever get Antha to do a damned thing."
"Oh, I know," Alistair laughed in response, rocking his nephew gently in his arms, "You shouldn't take it personally, I don't do anything special. Evie only listens to me because we're connected, that's all." That's all...as if it weren't something wholly surreal in and of itself. But none of the cousins said a word.
It was half an hour before Antha reappeared, running down the stairs with her hair still damp, her skin scrubbed clean and a fresh new dress swaying around her lithe form. The twins had been crying for five minutes, unable to be soothed even by Cian, but one look at their mother calmed them as she rushed to take Vanessa from Courtland's arms, shushing her with soft assurances that everything was alright. Michael and Lawrence were testing the crib, all of the pieces now screwed into place, shaking it as if they feared an earthquake was soon to strike, but it was solid.
It was roughly at this time that the door burst open and without warning, Belle stood in the parlor clutching her heavy book of fairytales to her chest, her eyes sparkling as she sought out Rynn. "Uncle Ryyyyyynnnn!" she squealed, and launched herself at him, tugging at his sleeve, "It's tomorrow so you have to read me my story now!"
"Belle," Malakai chided softly, touching the crown of her golden head, "It's almost dinnertime, maybe---"
"Nooo, it has to be nooooow!" she declared, pouting piteously as she thrust the book at him, knocking him back onto the couch and climbing without hesitation into his lap, thumbing through the book until she landed upon 'Rapunzel'. "And remember, you have to do the voices!"
"I'll read it," Courtland offered, only to be given a sharp glare from the child.
"No! I want Uncle Rynn to read it!"
Sighing with a slight grin to his lips, Courtland continued heedlessly, "What if Uncle Dorian read it to you?"
"Noooooo!" the child whined, shaking her head, "It has to be Uncle Rynn!"
"Why? What's wrong with Dorian, isn't he on your list?"
"No!" the child declared with the same obstinate pout, clinging to Rynn's arm, "He's always gone, I don't trust him, even if he is pretty!" And then, those imploring big eyes turning to Rynn, she continued, "So you have to read it! Here---" She jabbed a hasty finger at the page, starting it off with, "Once upon a time..." and then trailing off, waiting.
"Antha, will you put a stop to this madness?" Pierce sighed, turning only to find her seated demurely back in the rocking chair, Vanessa in her arms as she watched Rynn with a tilt of her head and an amused little smile. "By all means," she purred, "Do go on. 'Once upon a time...' "
Silently, glancing briefly at one another, the cousins all settled in a half-circle on the floor before Rynn, grinning up at him as they waited. "Come on, Rynn, let's hear it."
"Let's get to the princesses already."
"Just skip to the dragon."
"Nooooo, don't skip any of it! From the start!"

It was two hours later, when dinner was finished and the cousins were scattered around the parlor, that Antha had Jacob bring all of the school supplies he had gotten and spread them out on the floor where she picked through them. There were three backpacks---a standard black one for Rynn, covered in pouches and compartments to keep everything organized; a flower-print one in pastels for Liesse; Alistair's was the only one that was not new, the boy having requested Nicolae's old backpack which was kept in the attic with his other things, black and white checkerboard with various figures drawn into the white squares, old band patches stuck in various places, and he squealed happily to receive it---which Antha sat side by side on the couch, and started on the task of splitting everything into threes. Paper, which she handed to Courtland and Alistair to be dispersed into binders, calculators, handfuls of pens and pencils, notebooks of various colors---as promised, Courtland proffered several with kittens across the front and stuck them in Liesse's pile of things---scheduling books for them to keep track of their homework, and all the other bits and pieces they needed.
"I forgot how much trouble this all was," Courtland sighed, arranging the binder and notebooks so that they easily slipped into Liesse's backpack.
Antha, separating utensils out into the pockets of Rynn's backpack as Alistair cheerfully sat gluing pictures onto his binder, was rattling off instructions. "We'll need to leave the house at 6:45 precisely, so make sure you're ready. Jacob will have your lunches made. Uncle Michael and I will be taking you. We'll meet with the headmaster first, he'll want to go off on his whole speech about the integrity of the school and all that nonsense. Then he'll take you around the school, go over all of the elective classes with you and whatever else, and then take you for your placement tests. That'll determine which classes you'll be taking. While you're doing that, Michael and I will have to take our leave. When you're finished, Thorne will fetch you and take you to the cafeteria with him for lunch while they tally your results. The headmaster will meet you after lunch and give you your schedules and you'll go to your last two classes for the day. After school, Thorne and James will walk you back home to make sure you know the way. You got all that?"
"I can't believe you're going to leave your little ones for entire hours to be in school," Pierce scoffed, shaking his head with a little shiver.
Antha sighed. "There's no help for it, I share joint custody of all three of them---Liesse and Alistair with Michael, and Rynn with Cian. Besides...it's a little nostalgic, don't you think?"
"Oh lord," Armand sighed dramatically, as if he'd only just realized, "You have legal authority over the lives of five people. That just can't be safe."
"Oh, you want nostalgia?" Courtland purred meanwhile, the wicked grin springing to his lips as he ran up the stairs and appeared moments later with his arms full of photo albums that he dropped onto the coffee table, cracking them open. "These are all from high school---some from middle school, in Antha's case. Look, here's Malakai---"
Belle screeched, hastily claiming the book from Courtland as she settled on the floor beside the table. "Oh my gosh, Malakai, you looked like a doll!"
"Courtland," Malakai groaned, a hand to his forehead, "Leave me out of this..."
"But you really do," Courtland protested, glancing at the picture, "You must have been, what, fifteen here? That was, oh, eight years ago, so this was about the time you were born, Belle."
"Girls must have liked Malakai," Belle mused, suddenly up in arms.
Antha, peering over at the albums, gave a small smile. "Oh, they really did. But he was always socially awkward, he didn't know how to deal with them. Most days, he spent all of his free time in the art room or napping on the roof. But ah, Nicolae---" She idly flipped a page, revealing a photo of herself---fourteen, a nymph child all of pale skin, enormous eyes, and a wealth of outrageous scarlet curls, small and unusually slender, an electric gleam in her eyes and wicked smile upon her lips to match Courtland and Jack---in her middle school uniform, which bore only small differences to the high school counterpart, lounging on the hood of a car with Nicolae's head on her shoulder. Like Malakai, adolescence had lent him those delicate, doll-like features their sister was known for, his eyes larger and golden curls wilder, his tie askew around his neck. Always the golden god. "---it was Nicolae they really loved. You're too young to remember what he was like back then, Belle, but everybody loved him, he was dangerously charming. Though, I think all of the Mayfair boys were considerably popular."
"It's true," Courtland concurred, jabbing a finger at his own countenance in the picture, hunched down before the front of the car beside Jack, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he tugged on his tie, glancing at the camera as if he'd only just noticed it. "Even Pierce. But look at that!"
As Courtland laughed, Pierce flushed and grabbed for the album, hissing, "Give me that! It's not my fault, my hair clashed with the damned blazer!"
"It really did," Antha murmured in amusement, glancing to the picture on the opposite side, the same general set-up from another angle, Pierce laid out in the back seat of the convertible. Where Antha's bright hair had been rather charming against the vibrant blue of her uniform, Pierce's dark auburn locks---chestnut with gleaming, fiery strands of red, as perfectly arranged and immoveable when he was eighteen as in the present---looked strange with the color, grotesque to his critical eye
"You're so tiny, Aunt Antha!" the girl exclaimed in wonder.
"Evie was probably thirteen or fourteen here," Pierce explained idly, studying the picture, "That's definitely the middle school uniform. Our favorite game was setting her up in the parking lot and watching the torment play out over the boys' faces. She was practically a child, but she was so pretty and alluring. Some of them went for it anyways and were lucky to walk away with their lives once Nikki got involved."
"Really?"
"Oh yes. Courtland and Dorian were always having to step in before things got too bad. Antha was terrible, she would just watch and laugh."
"It was funny," Antha snapped in defensive, "Besides, it was your game, all I ever did was sit there."
"You baited them and you know it, with your damned batting eyelashes and that smile of yours." Courtland sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "Nicolae didn't like our game to begin with, even without Antha toying with the poor creatures. He didn't like boys looking at her. You would think by the time she got to high school with us, they would've all been too afraid of Antha Mayfair's insanely protective big brother to go near her. But no dice, it just kept getting worse. Some of them liked her more for it---she was dangerous."
"Since when have I needed Nicolae to be dangerous?"
"...touche, mademoiselle."
"Who's that?" Belle demanded meanwhile, pointing at the edge of the picture which showed Malakai curled up in the driver's seat, chatting easily with a considerably pretty girl in the passenger seat. She was too pretty for Belle's liking, tanned and freckled, her wavy brown hair cascading over one shoulder as she gave a brilliant smile in Malakai's direction. There was something carefree about her, tranquil and easygoing, even in a photograph. It was easy to guess, at least, why a person as calm and gentle as Malakai would be drawn to her.
Antha made a face as Courtland inspected the picture, murmuring suddenly, "Ah...that's Melody. This must have been right before..."
The page flipped abruptly, and no one said another word about it. Malakai, shadows flickering in his eyes, had turned his gaze to the window and was watching the passing headlights.
"Aunt Antha, why are you shoving Uncle Nikki into the trunk of the car?" Belle exclaimed suddenly, as if she thought being loud was the best way to change the subject.
Antha, happy for a change of topic, glanced curiously over at the book, a devious grin curling her lips as she murmured, "Who could say? Nicolae warranted a number of punishments on a daily basis. It was always something with him...but you should know that, you have older brothers of your own."
Without a word, the girl cut her eyes pointedly at Jack across the room and then continued flipping curiously through the book, making animated comments as she did so. This carried on until long after Michael suggested that everyone getting up for school in the morning should head to bed, a suggestion that Antha took happily to. She was surprisingly tired, and six A.M. was a terribly early hour after all. So, with her newborns settled into their crib in the corner of her room, slowly drifting off, the girl all but collapsed into bed, halfheartedly kicking at the sheets until her legs were beneath them. "Feels like centuries..." she mumbled in a low sigh as her eyes slid closed, her cheek pressed into her pillow, and then continued even as she began to doze off, "You really should make them apologize one day...dragging their Uncle Rynn into Hell like that...miracle we both made it out alive..." Something passed through her mind then, some recollection of all that had happened while she was out, the fire and blood and that ultimate horror, her own murder, her brow momentarily furrowing with distaste at the memories, before the last trace of consciousness drained out of her.

When six rolled around, Alistair was the first person awake. His alarm clock buzzed and he bolted up, his mind sending signals to Antha that had her stirring without waking Vanessa and Sebastien. Laying a brief kiss on Cian's lips, she rose and set to groggily changing her clothes.
Dolly Jean, who was used to getting up at dawn with Vittorio when he either had to go to work or stumbled in from an on-call shift, went to check on Rynn and Liesse at 6:15, excitedly offering to fix Liesse's hair for her.
Jacob had prepared a light breakfast which he served in the kitchen at 6:20. By the time Rynn and Liesse came downstairs, Alistair and Antha were already at the small wooden table, the former shoveling down scrambled eggs as his eyes scanned the morning paper at dizzying rates while the latter downed pale, sugary coffee by the cup. She had truly missed her caffeine in the last few months. Michael was in his usual chair by the door, smoking.
"Here are your lunches," Jacob informed the children when their breakfasts had been set before them, lining three paper bags up on the counter, "Chicken bagel sandwiches, fruit cups, chilled oolong tea, and two cookies each."
"You're an angel, Jacob," Alistair murmured sweetly, and the boy lit up happily as he returned to cleaning up the stove.
"Mm!" Antha murmured, glancing at the clock and hastily setting down her coffee cup, "Grab them, we need to get going." Grabbing up his backpack and snagging a paper bag from the counter, Alistair chased after his sister out the door and hopped into the car, Antha taking the wheel as Michael settled into the passenger seat.
"Everybody ready?" the older man questioned with an easy smile, glancing into the backseat as the three uniformed passengers buckled themselves in.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn had made out with one of the bartenders in the back alley and thrown up on his fancy shoes. He’d also managed to lose his shirt. He was in the process of being coaxed into another drink by the bartender before being rescued by—of all people—Dorian, with a beckon to join the rest of the Mayfairs in cabs waiting outside.
Liesse, in Malakai’s lap, acted appalled when she saw how drunk he was, but Rynn merely shrugged her concerns off. “Hush it,” he slurred, when she tried to harangue him. “‘m an uncle tonight. How else ‘m I s’posed to celebrate?” Rynn had never been drunk before—but he was starting to understand why Cian had enjoyed this sort of thing so often. Rynn had spent a good half-hour bemoaning the absence of his brother to anyone who would listen at the bar. If there was anyone whom he would have thought would have celebrated all night through with them, it was Cian.

The new father felt he was quite justifiably excused from party activities for a good while. He was exhausted. He woke up only once—at an indeterminate hour, dimly aware of Antha’s cooing tones as she spoke to the children—and then, finally, when Michael arrived delivering french pastries and assorted breakfast fare. Dorian, who seemed to have a miraculous resistance to hangovers, bounded in bright and smiley, carrying a platter heaped high with pillow-soft croissants. The smell of fresh-baked bread and coffee summoned Cian from sleep like nothing else could—the effect was as transformative and miraculous as Snow White’s kiss.
Still, the artificial energy boost didn’t last long. At least the nurses helped in clearing the waiting room of it inebriated population—although Cian was more than a little shocked to see his little brother among the body count, he was too exhausted to give the younger boy grief about it.
Rynn woke up with no idea of where he was, no idea of he’d even got there. Nerves sent his heart thudding, dry with panic, into his throat. This wasn’t even a bed.
Then, the events of the previous night, like magic, came flooding back into his memory. There had been red lights, and drinks that burned—Dorian laughed, out of the corner of his eye, and he glanced down—oh no—fumbled to do up his unbuttoned shirt collar and cover the hickeys that marbled his chest. He had a headache already. Dorian wasn’t helping either, leaping about with his trays of breakfast bread. It all smelled vile to Rynn, but he gave a meager smile and accepted a styrofoam cup of coffee when it came his turn to be accosted. Liesse would have been proud.
Speaking of, he glanced around to find that she had apparently chosen to sleep sprawled in the arms of a particularly cushy floral seat, directly across from Malakai. He couldn’t remember whether she’d thrown herself at him or not last night, but seeing as how they had apparently ended up sleeping in a public place with all their clothes on, he would assume that the courtship wasn’t going too fast to suit Rynn’s antiquated moral code.

Outside, Cian bundled the twins into their confounded contraptions of safety vessels with a minimum of cursing. He was already feeling over-protective of the two—he wouldn’t let the nurses intervene, hardly, insisting that he had to learn for himself, they couldn’t do it for him at home.
The drive was uneventful; Cian took a scenic route rather than the main roads, crowded with morning traffic as they would have been. He didn’t want to take any risks, not with his children in the car.
His children. And that was such a funny phrase, one that he never imagined he would have welcomed. The gods were laughing at him now, Cian was certain. This was exactly the sort of irony they loved.
He didn’t understand how Antha had as much energy as she seemed to at this moment. She’d just given birth. Where did she summon the strength with which to worry about hypoallergenic linens?
Anyways, sometimes you just had to try things out. That was Cian’s opinion. What if the kids were allergic to peanuts, or strawberries, or shellfish? It’d be a life half-lived.
At last they turned into the long grey driveway of Mayfair Manor once again. To be honest, Cian was surprised he’d been allowed to drive—but even Antha would acknowledge that his steering was less likely to upset the infants than hers. They passed three taxis in the drive, the large and antiquated black sort that were common downtown, with the Mayfair menagerie of cousins piling out slowly as Cian & Antha pulled up. Most looked like they’d been rather squashed—there was much unbuttoning of shirt collars and be-ruffling of hair. The cab drivers looked traumatized.

Inside, Cian found himself banished to bathe. What, did he smell or something?
Then again, these were the clothes he’d been wearing for well over two days, wasn’t it?
It seemed like shorter. Time was beginning to become rather malleable to Cian’s mind, with all the stress it was currently enduring. But Rynn, poor boy—he looked to Cian with desperation when the kids started swarming him, demanding stories. But Cian merely laughed, and Rynn thought, you a*****e and turned his face away contemptuously. The next thing he knew, he nearly fell over as a small but firm grip took hold with its whole weight on his arm, and he found himself surrounded by the next generation of Mayfairs. Lord have mercy. Pausing in the doorway, Cian grinned at the sight of them all. “Weirdly enough, I rather prefer the old cradle to the new. Even if it is very—er—aesthetic, there’s still something about having a bed steeped in the memories of one’s family. I suppose it doesn’t matter—they might not know the difference either way.”

Across the room: “Fine,” Rynn managed to croak out, giving up against the tyranny of begging eyes. Belle swooped in with her book and a triumphant smile, and pointed out the page to begin on.
“Wait a second,”
Rynn gave her a wary look. “I don’t know about this one. Isn’t the witch supposed to be the bad guy?”
Dorian, who had hopped up into the thick of the crew with an expression of anticipatory thrill, was the one who pushed him down onto the couch and then sat on his feet. “I’m not gone all the time, I was here to hear that,” he interjected, at Belle’s slight. “You’re breaking my heart, babe.” Adopting a dramatic posture, Dorian pressed imaginary tears into the crook of his arm. “One day, perhaps you’ll experience what it’s like to live freely. Maybe then you’ll understand, and forgive me.”
Dorian’s theatrics were shushhhed by the audience around him. They had come there for Rapunzel. Anyways, Rynn was clearing his throat. That meant ‘about to read’.

The evening passed in a blur. The children seemed to enjoy the story, especially after Rynn told them the ‘real ending’. At dinner, Dorian kept refilling his glass of wine far more frequently than needed—the older boy had apparently decided that Rynn severely needed to ‘cut loose’ more than he had in the past. The newborns were good as gold. Antha wouldn’t let them out of her sight, either, she hadn’t been joking about that. They only got half into a sob before she would rush to their side to discern the needs of either. Cian felt like a surgeons assistant, fetching things as needed, holding either Sebastien or Vanessa as called for or when Antha’s arms were occupied.
Liesse found herself standing in Rynn’s shadow once again as they observed the opening of the school album. Liesse was fascinated, and drew near to look over Malakai’s shoulder at the book. So these were the children that the inner circle of Mayfairs had once been. The hair was different, the proportions of their face younger, but she could immediately pick out her new cousins amongst the huge class photos towards the beginning. They all stood together, and each had the same fox-fine bone structure and luminous eyes. She touched her cheek briefly. Her own, now. She’d blend in with the rest of them. Now it was Rynn who would stand out, without her features to mirror his. He’d always been beautiful, but Liesse had imagined a large part of that as her own vanity. Now, in another body, it was difficult to look at him sometimes. It hadn’t been vanity. Rynn sometimes had the face of an angel. Her heart ached to think that it had been hers as well.

It was nigh impossible to resist the urge to lean on Malakai’s shoulder, as she peered over him. She had not quite gathered the courage—only a fingertip rested on the very edge of his jacket lapel—but she felt him violently twitch at the photo of the girl, this Melody, when the page was turned. He was very careful not to change his expression, but Liesse, from her sidewards angle, thought she could see his eyes soften, and he looked away for just a little too long before he spoke on the subject.

The next morning, Liesse was the first out of bed. She hadn’t set an alarm; it was as though she knew instinctively that the sun was beginning to rise.
Rynn clamped his pillow down around his head when she tried to rouse him. It took ten minutes of coaxing to get him to sit up so she could comb his hair. He was like a zombie until they got him into the kitchen and secured his hand into position around a mug of coffee. Afterwards, he had to run upstairs, brush his teeth, change into his uniform, and splash down his face in approximately a minute-and-a-half before he sped out the door. Thankfully, Liesse had the mind to grab his lunch for him, but it was still a close call.

((I--I want to write a rapunzel
but make it better
put dragons in
however story is not done and ellie presses for post or she ghost
i sleep now
i fix when story is done
uhjjjhghhhh
have you ever seen poison for the fairies? i think that should be our next movie night))  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

By the time Antha returned home, Vanessa and Sebastien had been inconsolable for half an hour. It had begun when they first woke, shortly after Antha's departure. Cian's presence had been enough to soothe them for a little while, cooing groggily to one another and their clumsy fingers fumbled together, and they had seemed more or less placated when Vittorio had dragged himself upstairs with a cooler of bottles to help feed them. But eventually, it hadn't been enough and they had wailed mercilessly, each spurring the other on, until the front door finally slammed at eight-thirty and Antha had scrambled frantically up the stairs, rushing to her babies with soft assurances that everything was all right, brushing her fingers through their wispy little curls until they settled down and eventually drifted back to sleep. Likewise, Antha collapsed back on her bed the moment they were unconscious, limp and unmoving. "Cian," she called in exhaustion, quietly enough not to wake the children, throwing an arm pointedly down on the bed beside her as if to say that he should be there. "I've had to spend the morning being accused of starting fires and lab explosions and recovering stolen artwork. It's utterly exhausting and you should comfort me now."
That lasted all of half an hour, before the cousins were up and the infants with them. "Oh, for heaven's sake..." Antha groaned, lifting her head from her pillow with the groggy blinking of her eyes, pulling Cian's arms briefly tighter around herself though she knew it was in vain.
The infants screamed and Antha bolted up, sighing tiredly, "Hush, darlings. Mama's coming. Yes..." The infants' wailing lowered slightly as their mother leaned over their crib, reaching demandingly for her scarlet curls. "There's no need for that, is there? Here, look---" For the second time since she had first put it on, Antha slipped the Mayfair emerald quietly from around her neck and dangled it carefully over the crib, all but hypnotizing the curious infants. "Yes, you like mama's sparkly necklace, don't you?" As if to answer her, Vanessa made a small sound, reaching with determination out to the massive emerald, and Antha laughed affectionately. "Not yet, precious. It's too heavy for you now. But one day..."
"Antha, what are these paintings doing in the living room?" Courtland's voice called up the stairs, "They give off these terrible pure, innocent vibes...it's making me nauseous."
"THose are mine!" came Malakai's sudden cry of revelation as Antha slipped the Mayfair emerald back around her neck and took up Sebastien in her arms, nodding her head for Cian to grab Vanessa and follow her as she swept out of the room and down the stairs into the parlor where Malakai was cross-legged on the floor, seven paintings spread out on the carpet before him. "Evie, wherever did you find these?"
"Mrs. Harris stole them when you graduated, as it turns out. They were hanging on the walls of the art room."
"No!" Malakai responded, turning to look at her wide-eyed and heartbroken, "She promised me she hadn't seen any of them!"
"There are people in the world who lie, Malakai," his little sister sighed at his innocence, settling her son comfortably down into the old cradle and then his sister beside him before dropping into the rocking chair, one hand on the edge of the cradle to gently rock it. "I wonder how the children are faring? Their tests must nearly be over..."
"Alistair did fine, I assume?"
"Naturally. He'll be in all the advanced classes by day's end. And in the music club, if his meeting with Mrs. Ghast is anything to go by..."
"What about Liesse?" Courtland pried, plopping down on his stomach on the couch and peering curiously at Antha over the armrest. "I can see her eyes sparkling at the art club or home economics or something like that. Oh, wasn't there a gardening club?"
"She should join the music club, too," Jack said very surely, elbowing Malakai in the ribs with a little wink, "Malakai can give her private lessons. You know, all alone in the parlor...side by side on that tiny little bench...maybe her hand slips and he has to show her the right keys..."
"Jack!" the boy in question protested hurriedly, flustered, and then pointedly invested all of his attention in his recovered artwork.
"Think Rynn will join any clubs?" Courtland continued.
"Student council," Pierce replied very surely, "He'll start as a secretary or something and then embark on a hostile takeover until he's president and rules the school with an iron fist."
"...isn't that what Lawrence did?"
"Not exactly," Antha murmured, with more than a hint of appreciation, "He swept in and explained to them why they absolutely needed for him to be the president. By the end of it, they were so terrified and confounded that they more or less just let him claim the title."
"Ah, sweet, ruthless Laurie..."
"I feel like Rynn would rather fly under the radar," Jack mused quietly, laid out on the floor twining Rex around and around his arm.
"I don't know...based on everything that happened last night, he may end up as bad as we were in school. There are so many pretty creatures in those little uniforms...oh, Cian! You should have seen your little brother!" Courtland laughed wildly, turning circles on the couch. "You would have been proud! I certainly was. When he gets home, accost him and take a look at his chest. I knew he couldn't be pretty for nothing...Antha, aren't you jealous you didn't get to see---"
The boy fell abruptly silent, his gaze turned to Antha only to find her soundly asleep in her rocking chair, the infants grabbing ineptly at her fingers on the edge of the cradle. "That's a new mother, alright," Julien murmured, standing in the doorway with a cup of coffee and eying his niece, "I told her not to overexert herself in her condition...hardly a day since she gave birth..."
"Evie," Courtland sighed, going to brush a strand of hair from her face, only to have the girl bolt back up, bleary-eyed and overly on alert.
"I'm awake. What?"
"You weren't a minute ago."
"I was just resting my eyes," she snapped, easing slowly back into her chair, "It's been a long morning, and I hardly got any sleep. Shut up."
"Antha, go take a nap," Julien grumbled, rolling his eyes at her obstinance.
"We'll watch the little ones!" Courtland offered cheerfully, reaching down into the cradle to pinch Sebastien's cheek. "Won't we, precious? Yes, you want to spend time with your Uncle Courtland and Auntie Jack, don't you?"
"Why am I a woman in your head right now...?" Jack hissed, cutting his eyes at the boy.
"I'm fine," Antha continued to protest, waving their sentiments away, "I'm hardly even tired anymore, really. Besides, there's moving to be done, this is hardly the time to rest."
"We''ll take care of it!" Courtland continued heedlessly, waving his hands in dismissal, "It's not like we were going to let you do any heavy lifting anyways."
"Who's moving?" Jack questioned, perking up uneasily at the unfamiliar turn in conversation, "Are we moving? I like our room, I won't do it."
An exasperated sigh whispering through her lips, Antha managed to explain, "No one is moving. As we seem to be terribly short on rooms these days---a total of six new occupants, and only one gone---we're going to clear out the study and move everything into storage or the library---"
"And we're going to turn it into a nursery!" Courtland cheered, clapping his hands together, "Really Evie, go rest and we'll take care of it. We'll even paint it for you!"
"There's really no need---"
"Antha," Vittorio cut in, stern as usual, "Go get some rest. Doctor's orders."
"I told you, I'm fine!" the girl continued to protest, anger flaring, but the words had hardly left her lips before she found herself hoisted into the air with a little shriek, kicking her legs as Courtland all but shoved her into Cian's arms.
"Cian, take your stubborn damned wife to her room and make her take a nap," the boy demanded in his best impression of Vittorio, stern and imposing, "We've got the babies, and the moving, and the furniture assembly. Don't worry about a thing---Cian can pay me back when Adair is born."
"You bully," Antha hissed irritably, her arms clutched around Cian's neck for fear of falling, "Don't think you can go bossing me around just because I'm a little weak."
"And you're going to stay weak until you go get some goddamn rest!"
"Cian, will you tell the bossy little degenerate to stop picking on me?" Antha pouted at length, her arms readjusting and securing around his shoulders and neck, turning to bury her face in his collar, "Just because he has a loud mouth---"
"That's a dirty trick, Evie! Cian, don't fall for the pitiful act!"
"Act? What 'act'? The last few days have been absolute hell, I'm allowed to be pitiful for a little while. What's your excuse, Courtland?"
Courtland would have retorted, and had even opened his mouth to deliver a speech he had prepared in his head, but it was rendered unnecessary as Antha's head fell abruptly onto Cian's shoulder, her arms loosening. Pierce, blinking rapidly at the sudden change, demanded with a little sigh, "Alright, who drugged her this time?"
"Just me," Vittorio murmured, running a tired hand through his hair, "Though, it took longer than I expected to take effect. She had her coffee at six, so she should have been out by ten, and it's noon now..."
"You should really stop drugging Evie, you know. It's just rude."
"Why? You used to do it all the time."
"Yes, Tori, but those were fun drugs. And I wasn't sneaky about it, I threw them in her mouth and clapped my hand over it until she swallowed."
"When she wasn't stealing them from us and taking them of her own will," Jack added in a murmur, his eyes then turning to Cian, "It really is a pity you never knew her back in the day. At least, not as far as any of us are aware."
"The important thing now," Vittorio continued with a note of finality, "Is that you go tuck her into bed. She needs her rest, whether she wants it or not."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Courtland Mayfair was living out his nightmare for the hundredth time. He had already suffered it in the flesh, watched with his own eyes, but yet again it had come back to torment him outside of the waking world. He wasn’t exactly aware of being asleep, that the scene before him was already over and done with…all he knew was Antha’s screams, the swell of her power shivering in the walls and ripping rain down from the sky in a violent pathetic fallacy, bringing with it wind and thunder and lightning that illuminated the windows of Satis House for scant seconds before darkness smothered the swamp anew.
He felt the same helplessness he had before, standing still and dumbfounded in the middle of Antha’s room, watching her writhe in her sheets as if caught in death throes. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop---! She had bolted up, breathless, her fingers clenched in the mess of white sheets and face streaked with glistening tears, lines of black makeup running down her cheeks. It’s not right, it’s not! It’s not time yet!
The third and last occupant of the room only then came into focus in the dream construct, his frightfully pale fingers closing on her bare ankle as if to take control of her, to stop her thrashing since his words had no effect on her. Breathe. You must breathe or you will not survive.
Antha’s voice cracked and then dragged out into a helpless moan, her arms thrown up over her face. I can’t! I can’t breathe, I can’t do anything! It’s just pain, nothing else!
For reasons unknown to the dream Courtland, he had an odd sense of deja-vu. But he said nothing, his tongue stiff and his throat hot and swollen. Instead it was Atticus who spoke, as calmly as ever. You have no choice in the matter.
Courtland cringed the same as he did every time he relived the moment, shrinking at her frantic screams and sounds he couldn’t identify. Through his eyelashes there were flashes of red that he confused for Antha’s hair until he glanced up and was transfixed in horror at the spill of blood, oblivious to the screams that must have been tearing the universe asunder.
Atticus was moving, slowly and carefully, while Antha languished on the bed, her fingers convulsing in the sheets. Swallowing his fear and discomfort and a million other complex feelings he was not equipped to deal with, Courtland finally managed to speak. Is it…
Her breath somewhat restored to her lungs, still weak, Antha managed to lift her head enough to look. That was when another scream shook the house, the girl bolting up and pressing herself as hard as she could against the headboard. What in the hell is that?!
It couldn’t be a good sign, Courtland knew that, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to look, inching his way up beside Atticus to peek at what lay in the bloodied mess of Antha’s sheets. His vision blurred, head swimming, he nearly dropped. Barely supporting himself on the bedpost, his hand slid in horror over his mouth as he tried to process what he was seeing, the small and twisted thing of grayed, rubbery flesh, eyes mismatched, head disproportioned, and lacking any flesh over its back to cover the sharp, curved spine. Dumbly, voice quaking, Courtland echoed Antha. What is this?
Curiously probing the misshapen corpse, Atticus hesitated for a moment and then answered. A boy, I think. A boy that paid the price of the grand Mayfair blood.
Antha was still pressed as flat as she could make herself against the headboard, trembling, a piteous nightmare with her face streaked with kohl and dress tinged with her own blood spatters. The hurricane lamps brought a pale glow from her profile, the other side of her face cast in shadow. Get rid of it, she said at length, her voice shaking with the rest of her.
Again that hesitation, the vampire’s dark eyes narrowed at her. Your son?
It was Courtland’s turn to speak up again, the word spilling desperately from his lips unbidden. Don’t. He literally could not bear it. The moment he began thinking of this thing, this abomination of monstrous flesh and deformities, as his son, he knew he would break.
It’s dead, Antha said instead, in the smallest voice, It’s been dead. No one outside of this room ever even knew. Just get rid of it.
Atticus obliged quietly, his hands sliding beneath the sheets and lifting the gore-spattered little creature in its wrappings with a stomach-churning squish. And then Courtland did break, at least a little, the bile burning the back of his throat as he turned on his heel and went running through the faint, flickering shadows and into the cool darkness of the hallway, dashing for the bathroom. The contents of his stomach spilled in a timeless blur, his eyes wet and stinging, gasping against the bitter sourness on his tongue.
He felt empty by the time he’d washed his face and stumbled into the hallway, his mind a white static haze that set him automatically down the hall on unsteady feet, holding to the wall for balance. He just wanted a drink, a blind ambition that found him in the parlor, groaning against the dazzling sun in the French windows, bouncing off the vibrant colors in the garden.
Make your move already.
Whiskey in hand, the throbbing of his head beginning to subside, Courtland turned and set his gaze across the Mayfair Manor parlor to the old chess set against the windows. There was stillness for a few moments, only an exasperated tsk, before pale, nimble fingers took hold of the white queen and executed several moves that put it directly before the black king.
Adair outright revolted, bolting up and turning to flip his chair. I quit! I’m done! This game is rigged! Go to hell, Shell.
You’re as graceful a loser as I ever was, Courtland murmured with a twinge of amusement, trying to remember where all of this tension and chaotic static had come from.
I didn’t -lose-, it’s rigged. Shenanigans, I say!
Settle down, pet. Adair obeyed his father only begrudgingly, giving an impetuous toss of his golden curls that reminded Courtland horribly of Sera and then stalking out of the room.
Rough night, Uncle Court? Courtland tried to focus, tried to think past the sound of a lighter striking and the sudden crackle of a cigarette. His eyes landed on the back of the other boy’s head, picked strands of red and gold out of the mass of his silken brown curls, illuminated by the sun.
You know, I’m not sure.
The boy said nothing, instead glancing out the window and breathing through his cigarette. At length he turned, moving with more grace than was due any mere mortal, settling back and turning his large eyes on Courtland. They were not Mayfair blue, that deep and vibrant hue, but pale and bright as crystal, translucent and striking. They were set in a face of a roses and cream complexion, more beautiful than any Courtland could ever remember seeing, the expression innately impassive.
Do you ever wonder what’s going on in your own head, Ciel?
The boy spared him a glance, seeming to ponder the question quietly to himself for a moment. Everything flows through my head as music notes. I don’t worry about what they are…just how to express them.
Despite himself, Courtland smirked. Does self-expression come so difficult for you? He glanced the length of his slender, unfinished frame, swathed in tight pinstriped jeans and a gauzy, ripped shirt several sizes too large for him over a black sweater, accessorized in an assortment of little gothic trinkets old and new. Really, his appearance and his music were the only forms of expression Courtland could associate with the boy. He was such a quiet thing, inert and utterly malleable. But how could anyone blame him? He was the baby of the family, though he was mere months younger than Adair, he had been fussed over and treated like a doll his entire life. His cousins still bossed him around and his older sister referred to him almost exclusively as her baby brother, cooing and fretting over him.
Ciel’s eyes turned again to the window, pressing his cigarette to his lips. Maybe. Or maybe I’m the one making it difficult. Who could say?
Courtland did not answer immediately, instead taking the seat his son had vacated as Ciel turned those vivid eyes back towards the window. His nimble fingers toyed with the overturned chess pieces, setting the black queen upright amongst her fallen comrades and foes. Are you going to be the new architect, Ciel? he asked quietly, glancing up at the boy’s beautiful profile in the golden light, The puppet master of the city?
The boy hesitated, reaching out to turn the white queen on her base with the tip of one long, pale finger, his nails painted black. Who could say? He ran a hand back through his beautiful curls, gleaming softly in a symphony of autumn colors. He reminded Courtland so strongly of someone that it was maddening, he simply couldn’t place the likeness. Nothing’s ever set in stone until it happens, Uncle Courtland.

Courtland awoke with a start and a great gasp for air, bolting upright on the sofa. It took several moments to orient himself, to remember that he had been taking a break from clearing out the study and laid down on the sofa in the parlor to take a nap.
He laid a hand across his pounding heart, fingers spreading uneasily in the fine fabric of his shirt, and raked the other back through his hair. When he had gotten a handle on his breathing, he slid uneasily off of the couch and made his way over to the windows, lifting the bottom panel so that the breeze flowed in and rustled the curtains. Breathe in, breathe out.. He pressed his face into the soft, gauzy folds of the French curtains, eyes closed, letting the spring breeze sweep his senses away.
“Hey. ”
He gave another start, turning rapidly on his heel with wide eyes only to find Alistair in the doorway, his head tilted and eyes brimming with concern. “You alright, Court?”
The front door opened and closed, the other teenagers filing into the house, and Courtland hurried to compose himself with a dazzling smile. “Perfectly fine, of course.”
Alistair remained unconvinced but said no more, only watching him with vaguely furrowed brows as Thorne tromped in without so much as a greeting and dropped onto the piano stool, curling up for a nap. Rynn and Liesse followed, to which Courtland put on his most cheerful front. “Ah, you’re back. Good timing, too…you narrowly missed the fight.”
“What fight?”
“Antha and Julien’s fight, of course,” Courtland replied, his usual mischievous glimmer returning to him, “Wicked Julien has arranged for a dinner party tonight, it seems. More or less, it’s to mark his ascendance to head of the family. He’s invited all the big names in the city---the Astorias, the Parkers, the Rodgers, all of those terribly droll people.” He fumbled in his pocket as he spoke, retrieving his cigarettes and taking a brief moment to light one up. “Antha, even being drugged, declared that she wouldn’t stand for it. I can’t speak for the specifics, Julien seemed to understand her issue with it more than the rest of us, but she mentioned something about not wanting ‘those people’ around Rynn and Cian. She went on an outright rampage before Cian got her back into bed.”
“It all sounds like a fine mess in the making,” Alistair sighed, dropping into the nearest chair and kicking off his shoes.
“Oh, you have no idea.” Though, by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, he was willing to bet they were about to find out.
Antha seemed spry enough for a girl who was supposed to be under the influence of powerful narcotics, her eyes bright and oddly hazy yet sharp. To Alistair’s mind, she looked unsettlingly normal in pinstriped sleep shorts and a black cashmere sweater several times too large for her, hanging off one thin shoulder. She looked like milk against all that severe black, the spill of her hair like blood. No pretty dress and no perfect composure, her usually immaculate makeup smudged into wisps around her eyes.
Courtland grinned, eyes sparkling as he watched her lean against the door frame, arms folded. “I thought you were going to stop stealing Cian’s sweaters, Evie?” By her own earlier admission, she had taken the current one from his side of the closet. They’d made her promise to give it back to him, like a child who had stolen another child’s toy and was lovingly protecting it with their life.
Her head leaned briefly against the wall, arms falling down at her sides as she watched her cousin in consideration. He was trying his best not to think that she looked incredibly alluring in her disheveled state, their sultry princess with sleeping pills still lingering in her veins.
Abruptly, the girl crossed the parlor in a saunter of liquid grace, her bare feet silent on the oriental carpet, and snatched the cigarette from Courtland’s fingers. Cutting her eyes at him, she took a long drag before answering him, flatly. “I lied.”
The boy laughed outright as she turned on her heel, sinking down onto the sofa, legs crossed and arms laid across the carved mahogany backing. Another moment for her to breathe curling streams of smoke, stirred by the breeze from the window, eyes narrowing at Rynn as her lips curled into a deviously amused grin. “You’re back, then. How was it? Nobody died, I take it?”
It was Alistair who answered first, pulling his legs up into his chair and leaning eagerly over the armrest to tell her with big eyes, “Evie, Geoffrey Parker is a witch.”
Her head fell back, a sudden laugh trailing through her lips before she set herself upright again, red tendrils sliding over one gleaming eye. “Christian’s little brother? Of course he is, the little brat.”
“He broke James’s nose,” Alistair pressed, to which Thorne nodded mutely across the room.
Antha pursed her lips, eyes flashing with thought before that grin came back to her lips, more devious than ever. “Shall we make tonight interesting, then?”
“What,” Courtland interrupted, voice thick with sarcasm, “A bunch of kiss-a** rich people having dinner isn’t interesting enough for you?”
“Not by leagues,” Antha purred, and abruptly rose from the sofa, heading back towards the hallway as she called towards the kitchen, “Jacob!” China shook and clattered, though thankfully they heard nothing break. “We’ll be expecting three more for dinner tonight. Make the arrangements.”
That much caught Julien’s attention from the library, bringing him with his usual airy, angry grace down the stairs to glare at his niece. She stared innocently back, gracing him with a smile of blinding self-satisfaction. “Antha Evelyn, what exactly do you think---“
“Why do you always suspect me of things?” Her laughter echoed vaguely throughout the halls like the pealing of bells, bright and oddly unsettling. “You’re too suspicious, Julien. It’ll cut years off of your life.”
“I have a right,” he retorted angrily, following her as she returned to the parlor, “If you will recall, the last time I failed to be suspicious of you for even a moment, you put an entire wedding into works against my wishes.”
The girl continued to grin, half-falling onto the couch with her arms open wide as if to gesture at the world around her. “And see how well that worked out? You just can’t stand that my ideas turn out better than yours.”
“Where is Cian?” Courtland interrupted, glancing around as if he might be hiding in a corner somewhere. They had entrusted Antha to him and the thought that she had been running around with free reign for however long was a bit unsettling.
“Asleep. Or at least I assume it was him in my bed, I didn’t exactly check. He’s had a rough week, poor thing.”
Irritated at being ignored, Julien scowled and glanced at the door, muttering, “Where on earth is Vittorio with that cleanse?”
“Oh, that?” Antha shrugged, lounging carelessly the length on the sofa in the manner of a restless cat, “He brought it by a bit ago. I threw it away.”
“Antha!” Julien hissed, turning and darting towards the kitchen.
“Probably shouldn’t have told him that,” the girl sighed meanwhile, moments before scrambling to her feet and vanishing from the room, only to appear minutes later with Julien and Vittorio in pursuit. The latter caught her when she slipped on the rug, bringing her into fits of amused laughter until Vittorio’s arms closed like iron around her torso.
Julien neared her slowly, wary of her kicking legs and gathering that no one else was willing to help subdue her, carefully cradling a glass of translucent scarlet liquid. “Antha, just drink it.”
“I shan’t,” the girl declared abruptly, giving an impetuous toss of her head.
“Antha---“
“Oh, give me that,” Vittorio snapped, tightening one arm around her and taking the glass from Julien with the other, holding it against her mouth until she was forced to either drink or drown.
He gave her a moment to breathe when the liquid was half-consumed, coughing and making faces. “What is this, poison? Good god, it’s like hell in liquid form.”
“Stop complaining and just drink it.”
“Who drugged me in the first place!”
“Fair enough. But no one forced you to take any of Jack’s little yellow pills.”
She opened her mouth as if to protest but immediately stopped, falling instead into a small string of laughter. “Touche, Tori.”
Despite her struggling, he managed to force the other half of the glass on her and then held her for another moment, waiting for her to grow still. By the time he released her, she fell like a stone onto the carpet. Concerned, Courtland leaned over her, asking softly, “How ya’ feeling, Evie?”
“I…feel…awesome.”
Vittorio, suddenly finding all eyes upon him, shrugged and held his hands up to declare innocence. “Technically, it’s a drug in itself until it counteracts the narcotics. It should be done in about an hour and she’ll be back to normal.”
Antha bolted up at that, her eyes shining as she glanced dazedly around her. “An hour?” Vittorio nodded and the girl scrambled to her feet, bolting for the hallway and starting up the stairs.
“What on earth…” Julien began, groaning, but couldn’t seem to find the words.
It was Courtland, grinning, who clarified. “She’s drugged. I’m willing to bet she went to find Cian. You know, for the same reason Jack and I are never far apart when we’re drugged.”
Julien refused to acknowledge that, turning instead to Jacob who stood in the doorway hoisting three garment bags. “What is it?”
Jacob shrank, gaze dropping. “The outfits you wanted from the tailor’s, sir…”
That much seemed to calm him from his rage, a hand going to his temple. “Right, right…my apologies, Jacob. How is dinner coming?”
“Everything should be ready by six, sir.”
“Good,” he sighed, taking the garment bags from Jacob and laying them across the couch, removing the contents---two suits and one dress---before handing them out to Rynn, Liesse, and Alistair. “These are for tonight. It’s your first introduction to society, you’ll need to look your best.”
Alistair took a moment to appreciate the fine new suit, a Mayfair creation of updated classical fashion in black with an ivory vest and cravat. “Did Pierce pick them out?”
“Yes, and gave your various measurements to the tailor. You know Pierce, he cannot stand to let anyone walk around in anything other than perfectly tailored designer wear. I hate to admit it, but it has been somewhat useful having him around again.”
The boy smiled, picking at the lapel of his pristine new suit jacket and feeling a rush of affection for his cousin. It was then that his eyes turned to see what he had chosen for Rynn and Liesse. For the former it was a suit of a severe cut, dark gray with accents in green and gold. For the latter it was vaguely shimmering silk in light blue to match her eyes layered over white satin, the skirts flowing and shorter than anything he’d seen her wear, the long sleeves just off the shoulder. Smiling, a hint of a laugh on his lips, he exclaimed, “You’re going to look like Cinderella.”
Courtland, likewise taking a moment to admire the fine dress, gave a nod of agreement. “Lovely. It’ll suit you better than your doll dresses, certainly.”
Giving them a moment to inspect the new outfits, Julien finally cleared his throat to announce, “Our guests will be arriving at five-thirty, in approximately two hours. Suzette will want you all down for inspection at that time.”
“She likes to line us up and be sure we won’t embarrass the family before we even open our mouths,” Courtland sighed, shrugging as if there was no help for it. “But Pierce has impeccable taste, you should be fine. It’s me and Antha she likes to pick on.”
“I’m going to go get ready!” Alistair squealed, taking his suit carefully in his arms and rushing towards his room.
“I think I’ll wait,” Courtland murmured, glancing above him at the ceiling. “Antha and Cian can get loud, when they put their minds to it." And then, glancing thoughtfully to the twins, "Come to think of it, you don't know how Mayfair society functions work, do you?" Of course they didn't, they'd never been to one. Sometimes he forgot that they'd been there for so very, very short a time. "Jacob puts all the leaves in the dining table, and makes his fanciest food to cover it---it's pretty awesome---except then everyone starts talking and the room turns into a passive aggressive hornet's nest. Everyone watches everything you do, say, wear, and analyzes it all, looking for weaknesses, or whatever. Then dinner's over and we all go into the parlor for drinks. Invariably, someone always gets drunk and makes at a** of himself---someone besides us, that is. Sometimes there ends up being a fight, sometimes there ends up being dancing. You can never tell. The guests always want to go upstairs to the far hallway and look at the family portraits---come to think of it, I'm not sure you've seen those yet---and then try to poke around in the library. You never leave the guests alone, they go rifling through everything looking for secrets. If it's nice, like today, everyone generally spills into the garden. Jacob will have the glass pane put over the pool to avoid any accidents and Malakai has been trying to tame those damn roses all day. Anyways, then we spend the next three hours trying to get everyone the hell out of our house. That's more or less the gist of it."
Again, Julien cleared his throat. He had taken up Alistair's vacated armchair in his usual regal fashion, absently adjusting his tie before he spoke. "Let me be clear, though. To this city, the Mayfair family is royalty. The other families live under our rule."
"We own their asses," Courtland clarified with a grin.
"The two of you fall under the Mayfair name now," Julien pressed on, "Part of our conglomerate of bloodlines, Calais blood flows in our next Designee of the Legacy just as strongly as Mayfair blood. Liesse, legally you have the Mayfair name and technically the blood. You both represent this family---or, more precisely, the future of the family." As Courtland passed to take a seat on the sofa, Julien nimbly snatched the cigarette from his fingers, puffing somewhat inelegantly on it. To those that knew him well, it was a sign that he was more stressed than usual. "I am counting on you two. Protect the family name and it will protect you. And while you're at it..." He took another brief drag of the cigarette, brushing lint from his sleeve as he did so, eyes narrowing more specifically at Rynn. "Contacts are invaluable to a person with ambition. While we may rule over the people you will meet tonight, our empire is stabilized by them, like the pillars upon which a palace stands. All of this assuming, of course, that you are a boy of ambition, Rynn." He took another drag, a few brief moments in which, unusually, his composure went lax, sinking into the back of his chair and propping his feet up on the table. "You have the sharp eyes of one, at least. Antha Evelyn certainly thinks you'll amount to something grand, and she's rarely mistaken about these sorts of things."
"Julien!" Courtland exclaimed, his eyes lighting up to match the teasing grin that snaked across his face, "Are you offering encouragement? Oh, the years are softening you, aren't they old man?"
"Do not mistake me," Julien cut in abruptly, his posture stiffening as he resumed his usual imposing airs, "Twenty years from now, when your son is pulling the same outrageous stunts as you, I will chase him all across this city and paint him black and blue." He gave a vague 'hmph' of irritation, stubbing out his cigarette and rising to his feet. "Imagine, this family without me to keep the children in line. What ruin you would wreak."
Courtland cackled lowly to himself as Julien took his leave, calling after him, "We take after our father, so sue us." And then, turning back to Rynn and Liesse, "Ask Suzette what Julien was like as a teenager sometime, he was worse than any of us. He fought duels and passed out for days at a time in opium dens and took his sister out to the brothels dressed as a man. The family could never keep any help because Julien was always seducing them until they broke down completely. Except Richard...Richard was here for twenty years, as Julien's personal attendant. God, I hated him when I was a child, he was more strict than Lawrence with even less personality." The boy shrugged, throwing himself down the length of the sofa and lighting up his third cigarette, his fingers like iron around it. "Speaking of dressing up, Liesse, you should go try on your dress. Pierce will be eager to figure out how to do your hair, I'm sure. He replaces us with the dolls no one would ever let him have when we were children, he likes to dress us up and make us pretty."

There were two things that Antha did before returning to her room. The first was to shut herself up in the study with the phone, struggling past the haze of her mind. The second was to check on her children in the half-finished nursery, tucked into their ducky-print sheets with their arms intertwined, fast asleep. Cian was likewise occupied when she finally stumbled back into their room, collapsed atop the sheets fully dressed. Antha took a moment to smile at the sight, creeping across the floor until, without warning, she attacked the bed.
Her laughter was madly amused to see the way his eyes flew open, the mattress still bobbing with the creak of springs beneath them, Antha on her knees where she had landed. “What’s the matter, love? Did I startle you?” More of that laughter before she closed her lips over his, sweeping a hand back through his hair. By her count, she had forty-five minutes before Vittorio’s anti-drug drugs swept everything out of her system and she was determined to make the most of them. “You owe me, darling. Vittorio and Julien tried to kill me with liquid hell while you were passed out. I’m here to collect. Oh, and...” The sweater came over her head in a wild mess of tumbling curls that she pushed back with a rake of her hand, grinning deviously as it dropped into the sheets beside her. "Courtland made me promise to give this back. Though, I'm just going to steal it again. But he didn't say anything about that."  

[Okimiyage]

When Rynn got home, the first thing he did was drop his backpack, unbutton his collar, and head directly into the kitchen to make himself a drink. Liesse, too—if only to stop her from watching him reproachfully. Toeing off his shoes, Rynn headed for the murmur of conversation just out of sight in the parlor. Liesse fumbled with the tumblr of brandy that her twin had given her, but only for a moment. Taking a ginger sip, Liesse immediately screwed up her face and put the drink down quite readily on one of the foyer’s side-tables and followed Rynn. She made a valiant attempt to resist the impulse of sticking out her tongue (if only to get the awful taste of liquor out of her mouth. Liesse was much more of a cocktail sort of girl.)
He entered just in time to catch wind of the dinner party event. Of all the days to schedule a party, Julien arranged for such a night to follow the first day of school? He was as mad as they said. Rynn sighed, sank into a thickly stuffed suede armchair, and swirled his glass ’til ice clinked.
He didn’t pay attention to the conversation until, “..Evie, Geoffrey Parker is a witch.”
Rynn’s eyebrow quirked at that, but he resisted the impulse to look up until he had taken a deep drink. “Is that who’s coming to dinner tonight?”
Liesse settled into an armchair, pressing her interlocked hands into her lap and looking rather uncomfortable. She wanted to go find Malakai, but it seemed as though there was a meeting of some kind going on here—and from what she had witnessed from this family, it seemed like it was a good idea to stay in the loop about current affairs. Keeping up to date with gossip was a survival instinct in this house.
But there was nothing involving her, and so as she waited, Liesse couldn’t help but allow her mind to drift. The vodka didn’t help, either.

Antha scrambled upstairs, and Rynn couldn’t help but pity his poor brother. He had one hell of an hour awaiting him.
Then again, Cian would probably find it enjoyable.

Liesse, for her part, showed very respectable restraint when presented with her new outfit. She didn’t squeal. But she thought she might faint. Everything else in the room seemed to fade away. Her vision sparkled.
Reverently, she accepted the dress in outstretched arms. She held it like a new mother might hold her child. Rynn sniffed, and examined his vestments. “Needs more lavender.”
Liesse was about to slug him before she noticed the hint of a smile playing about the crease of his lips. “I was joking,” he added, just to put her mind at rest.
The light was waning, and the golden cast of sunset through the windows turned Rynn’s skin to mellow gold as he held up the emerald-colored waistcoat. The tie was black, but the fabric was a glossy damask pattern…and there was an emerald tiepin stuck into his pocket. The outer coat was a plain, but smooth and tightly-woven fabric, matching the fitted trousers, but the style of gold-edged buttons mirrored the tiepin in material. All in all, it was a neatly put together outfit…whoever had done it knew Rynn’s (admittedly somewhat foppish) tastes, at least. He'd have to find a way to thank Jacob for it, later.

Alistair immediately took the opportunity to try his party outfit on, but Rynn and Liesse were slower to depart. It was for good reason in Rynn’s part, anyways—Julien seemed to have taken a shine to the newest tag-along of the Mayfair entourage.
Above, there was a squeal of bedsprings.
Rynn glanced down into the brilliant red contents of his drink, as he swirled it gently and listened to Julien’s advice. He knew what he was being warned about. Don’t embarrass us.
For a Mayfair, a family dinner wasn’t just a friendly get-together. It was an opportunity to forge relationships that could sink or buoy the ship, should it tip. And now that Rynn was on board, he had a vested interest in the welfare of that ship.
Rynn understood this. He felt a mild sensation of affront that Julien did not already expect him to know this concept by heart.
The Calais boy gave his senior Mayfair a tight, careful smile. “Never you fret. I’ll be on my best behavior.”
His eyes slowly passed to Courtland, and the smile softened into something similar to humor. “If I chance to involve myself in any duels, though, I suppose I’ll know whom to call upon.”
Liesse, rolling her eyes, was only too happy to be offered the excuse to depart. This time, she failed to contain the squeak of excitement. She dashed out into the hallway, while Rynn collected his things more slowly. He left the drink, though—the boy didn’t need any further clouding of his judgement. He had enough to focus on with the dinner party, now.
Anyways, Liesse had given him ample evidence of her disapproval.
In the room now, she held up necklaces to her throat, jewels so large they looked like paste, and searched in vain for matching earrings. The ceiling sparkled with reflected light from the jewels strewn across her dresser.
“Dear sister, you’re making a mess,” Rynn remarked, strolling into the room and throwing his outfit upon the bed. She’d wasted no time in changing, he noticed. “Are you going to put all of that up?”
Well, at least they didn't have any homework to finish from their first day. He supposed she might as well have the chance to enjoy herself tonight.
Although he suspected that Liesse had gotten the entirely wrong impression from the fact that they'd called it a 'dinner party'. Party was not the type of word to describe what Rynn suspected would be a very polite baring of teeth.

(gaia ate my hour and a half worth of edting & new post material and I'm going to kill myself. ******** ******** ******** Cian was awoken from a sorely-needed to something small, energetic and red-headed leaping on top of him. Alarm gave way to relief in a moment when what he mistook for an imminent attacker was revealed to actually be his wife--although admittedly with more than a glint of madness in her eye, which he recognized once she got close enough to kiss. "Evie, the hell did they give you--" he managed. He'd nearly finished the question--nearly made it into a half-upright position, too, at least until until Antha's lips locked with his and, with the full weight of her body behind her, threw him back into the pillows.


Afterwards, he reassured her that she could make use of his sweaters any time she damn well pleased. Especially if he got to help take them off like this.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

((Baxter, you know I don't speak Spanish.　スペイン語をはなすじゃないです。))