Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“Torturing you?” Alistair smiled, as blindingly sweet as could be, “I have no idea what you could possibly mean.” In contrast to that smile, he had stepped forward until Rynn was trapped between himself and the metal bars of the bedframe, his arms stretching past him to the post until he was trapped. “Rather, you seem to be torturing yourself.” He moved, keeping a careful sliver of space between them, his lips beside the other boy’s ear as he whispered, “It would be so easy to admit you’re attracted to me.” And then, abruptly, he released him, grinning to himself. “Too easy for your pride, it seems.”
Returning to his usual easy demeanor, he patted Rynn’s head and started towards the door, only calling after himself, “Told you I could make you red,” before he was gone.

As luck would have it, most of the cousins found themselves converging in the hallway at the foot of the stairs at the same time. Jack and Lawrence were outside with the aunts and uncles and lesser cousins, the groom-to-be nervously adjusting and readjusting his tie. Courtland, meanwhile, was flitting eagerly around, happily adjusting his white and gold frock coat trimmed in snowy lace and rows upon rows of pearl buttons.
Quietly soothing the fussing infant in her arms, all done up in his new little suit and pulling at the bowtie sewn onto his shirt, Antha cast her cousin a look, purring tauntingly, “Who’s the bride again, Court?”
“That’s enough out of you, centerfold.”
While Antha pouted irritably, Pierce and Lucy fought to disguise their snickering. She certainly looked the part in the outfit Courtland had chosen---a scandalously short skirt, button-up shirt that was only half buttoned with a loosely knotted tie, lace stockings, and heels. “This isn’t even the worst part,” she sighed in complaint to her twin beside her, “He tried to make me wear cat ears.”
“You make a cute kitty, Annie,” Lucy assured her sympathetically, with a tone meant to suggest she’d seen it. “But I’ll wear them if you won’t.”
Courtland, to no one’s surprise, pulled the glittery metal outline of cat ears out of his pocket and immediately stuck them on the girl’s head. “Tres bonne! You’re a real trooper, Luce.”
The girl grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and turned to lick Antha’s cheek. “Meow~!”
Antha did her best to feign displeasure, sticking her tongue out in disgust, but could not stop herself from laughing with the rest of her cousins. Except for Pierce, who very nearly died on the spot for jealousy.
Victoria came in from the garden some moments later, in a cloud of lavender chiffon with a little white basket full of rose petals. “Uncle Courtland, do I make a pretty flower girl?” she demanded, tugging on his sleeve.
He smiled, taking up a small wreath of pink tea roses and white ribbons he had laid aside and getting down on one knee to settle them in her hair. “The very prettiest,” he assured her kindly, and the girl beamed.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Cyrus laughed, trailing just behind his daughter and hoisting her up in his arms, “Everyone’s already told her ten times today how pretty she looks.”
“Yes, but it’s much more important coming from me,” Courtland declared, flashing his niece a secretive smile and pinching her cheek, “Isn’t that right?”
“Right,” she agreed, nodding very seriously, and the adults all took pains not to laugh at her childish determination in the matter.
It was at this time that the last guest arrived, quite unexpectedly, ambling through the door on Suzette’s arm. “There they are,” the old woman exclaimed to find the cousins---who, outsiders might note, had all been seized with a dire look of discomfort. Except for Courtland, who was at first too shocked to move but quickly fell to glaring at the newcomer as sharply as Antha ever had at Julien. “Honeybee,” Suzette greeted Cian, like she hadn’t noticed the sudden tension, affectionately pinching his cheek. “Cian, Rynn, Liesse, I should like to introduce all of you to my little sister, your Aunt Julianne. Her health doesn’t permit her to go out very often, I’m afraid.”
Julianne Mayfair, besides being a good twenty years younger than her ancient sister, looked a great deal like her. She was as naturally delicate, pale with soft, lovely features and fair hair turned silvery, and those Mayfair china-blue eyes. She greeted each of the Calais siblings in turn, in a very gentle voice, and then Alistair whom she had never officially met, though the boy didn’t return her greeting. He looked as displeased as the rest of them to see her there. It was when she turned to Courtland that all of them tensed, not quite certain what to do, not least of all the groom in question. She had barely opened her mouth before he turned on his heel and abruptly stormed out of the room.
Antha, making a sound of displeasure at the turn of events, hastily turned and set her son in her older brother’s arms, grumbling to Julianne as she did so, “You have no right to be here.” She was gone a split second later, chasing after Courtland.
Paying them no mind, nor the vaguely despondent look on Julianne’s face, Suzette took her sister’s arm again and cheerfully led her out into the garden, making an excuse about greeting Barclay. Cyrus took Victoria and followed them, if only so she wouldn’t hear the following conversation when Alistair cleared his throat uncomfortably and pointed after them, saying to the Calais siblings. “That…” For once, he struggled uncomfortably for his words, his brow furrowing as he tried to think how to phrase it. “That was the woman who gave birth to Courtland.”
“Really?” Lucy demanded, staring after the woman, “But she’s so old! And I’ve never seen her before.”
“She was over forty when she had him,” Malakai murmured uncomfortably, “Which accounts for her delicate health.”
“And as far as I know,” Pierce concluded, arms folded, “She’s never had direct contact with Courtland once in his life. Which raises the question, why in the hell is she here?”
“A question better asked on another day, perhaps,” Alistair murmured tactfully.
Lucy just shook her head. “You have horrible parents in this family. Horrible. When I have a Mayfair baby, I’ll only let it go over my cold, dead body.”
This raised a couple of curious eyebrows (and hopes, in one particular case which doesn’t bear naming). “And which Mayfair is reproducing with you, exactly?” Alistair asked, highly amused.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she said, like it was a matter of absolutely no consequence, “Maybe I’ll just let a bottle of whiskey decide. But Annie’s children and mine will be cousins. And if I have a boy, he’ll grow up and marry Vanessa. If I have a girl, she’ll marry Sebastien.” Malakai opened his mouth, likely to protest that eventually, the infants were going to have free will and she shouldn’t be making decisions for them, but Lucy held up a hand to silence him, exclaiming sharply, “It’s already been decided and no one’s going to stop it.” With that, she turned and tromped off after Antha and Courtland.
The minute she was out of earshot, to absolutely no one’s surprise, Pierce fell on his knees and violently clapped his hands together, praying fervently, “Let it me be. If there’s anyone up there, for the love of all that is holy, let it be me.”
“Not to belabor the point, but it might help if you, you know, told her that you’re madly in love with her,” Alistair pointed out, grabbing his cousin by the arm and dragging him back up to his feet, “Honesty is the best policy.”
“The ceremony is supposed to start in a few minutes,” Malakai noted meanwhile, anxiously soothing his fussing nephew, “Should we go after Courtland, too?”
“Let Evie handle him,” Alistair answered firmly, shaking his head, “It’s probably best if we go outside and wait with Jack.”
The second groom was certainly happy to see them when they filed outside, outright fleeing from his grandmother and taking refuge behind Pierce. “She won’t leave me alone,” he hissed, peeking over his cousin’s shoulder, “She’s changed my hair four times. Four times! And my slutty little sister is making a fool of herself, and Julien has his murderous eyes going on, and Sera is bitching about pregnancy stuff, and what in the hell is Julianne doing here?!”
While Lawrence showed up behind his younger brother, uncertainly trying to soothe him, it was Pierce who took action, taking the groom by the shoulder and soundly slapping him with the other hand. “Get ahold of yourself, this is your special day, goddamn it!”
“Oh my!” Stepping out intot he garden, the door slamming shut behind her, Lucy gave a wicked grin, her gaze glittering in Pierce’s direction while the color drained out of his face. “Look at you, all commanding.”
“Pierce is good in a crisis,” Alistair assured her, nodding.
Jack, ignoring them, demanded, “How’s Courtland?” It was interesting, at least to the cousins, that he didn’t ask where he was or if he’d actually seen Julianne yet or even if he’d gotten cold feet and run off. There was something very trusting in the way he asked it, some deep certainty to Courtland’s nature.
“He’ll be fine,” Lucy answered, shrugging, “He was pretty pissed that Suzette brought his---oh, what did he call her? His incubator. But you know how it is, Annie has him wrapped around her little finger. Or he has her around his. It’s hard to tell sometimes. Either way, they’re arguing about glitter.”
“That’s good,” Jack sighed in immense relief, still wringing his hands. “She can handle him. Now can we focus on me here, please?”
“Could we focus on the ceremony instead?” another man asked, joining the group by the porch. He had something of a Mayfair air around him, at least in the way he carried himself and his auburn hair, but oozed none of the usual Mayfair charm. He was all business, stern and imposing. “We should be starting. Where’s Courtland?” While the rest of the cousins hmm’d and made excuses, Pierce outright hissed, like any angry cat, skittering behind Jack. The man just sighed, as if it was very usual and he was very fed up with it. “You. Your mother told me you were holed up here, hiding behind Antha’s skirts. I can’t get her off my back about it, I’m about ready to ship you back in a crate.”
Pierce, eye twitching with indignant rage, pointed a finger at him, declaring, “Try it, old man! I’m not scared of you, I’ll give you a fight. And I scratch!”
He made a sound low in his throat, his eyes sharpening frighteningly behind his glasses. “Pierce Mayfair, I am your father and you will not speak to me that way,” he growled, with enough force that even the Mayfair cousins were a little wary.
Only Pierce was unaffected, refusing to back down, even coming out from his hiding place behind Jack. “I’ll say whatever I want! And you tell my mother I hope she rots in exile, I’m not going back! I hate Paris, everyone’s mean, and every time I’m drunk, I think the Eiffel Tower is stalking me.”
“Uncle Lionel,” Lawrence interjected, sighing wearily, “Perhaps we can put a pin in this conversation? It’s hardly the time or place, and you’re upsetting the infants.”
Casting his son one last sharp look, the man scoffed and abruptly left, like he’d had enough of them. Pierce, devolving to the antics of an angry child, stuck his tongue out at his back. “Miserable old man,” he muttered irritably, “Trying to threaten me with my mother. He’s the goddamn fool who married her, I don’t want to hear any of that from him.”
“Family troubles aside, perhaps we should all get into position while we wait for Courtland?” Lawrence suggested, gesturing at the chairs and altar nearby.
Obligingly, the cousins scattered to find seats, Jack pacing at the back of the entire arrangement with Lawrence beside him. Suzette was quick enough to seize the rest of them, directing each to the seats she’d saved in the front row. She was very meticulous in ushering Malakai and Liesse into chairs next to one another (snickering, Pierce remarked that maybe she was finally paying attention). But the boy was quick enough to rise again when she was gone and switch Liesse and Lucy on either side of him, ostensibly so that Liesse and Rynn were together, but as it happened it also put Lucy next to Pierce. Alistair, grinning to himself beside Cian, wondered if perhaps they should rethink their official family matchmaker.
A few minutes later, Jack was relieved to see Courtland waltzing out of the house in his usual exuberance, towing Antha by the hand. Lawrence motioned to Lionel, who pressed play on the sound system to start the soft instrumental music, signaling that it was time to start. Deciding that his family was too slow, Courtland yelled, “Everybody sit down and shut up, we’re starting!”
Finally, with everyone seated and quiet, Victoria began happily down the aisle, reaching into her basket and throwing fistfuls of rose petals every few steps, basking in the various whispers of how adorable she was before she came to the front and scampered into her father’s lap, cheeks rosy with excitement. Jack and Lawrence went next, the former with eyes downcast and cheeks burning, walking quickly to get it over with. Finally, Courtland came down the aisle with Antha, outright skipping and dragging her behind him as she tried not to trip on her heels in the grass.
By the time they made it to the arch, Lionel was visibly over the entire thing. “Alright,” he sighed, adopting his most respectable posture with hands clasped together before him as Courtland and Jack stood facing each other, “Friends and family, we are gathered here today to celebrate the love of Jack and Courtland Mayfair, and to join them in holy---”
“Legal,” Courtland interrupted sharply, to a chorus of snickering from the audience.
“Fine. To join them in legal matrimony---which, let’s be honest, they’re far more afraid of than god.”
In the front row, Julien rolled his eyes, putting a hand to his temple as he groaned, “Sacre bleu, I knew it was going to go like this.” In the absence of anyone who was not a close friend or family, no one else seemed particularly bothered by the informal display, or at least not surprised.
Clearing his throat, Lionel continued. “Who’s giving these men away?”
Lawrence stepped forward, taking Jack’s hand and offering it towards Courtland with the murmured, “I am.”
Antha took the more direct route, placing both hands on Courtland’s back and shoving him at Jack outright. “For the love of god, take him.”
The boy whirled around, pouting fiercely. “Evie, you can’t shove the groom!”
But she shrugged, unconcerned, putting a finger to her lips for silence. “Shut up, I already gave you to Jack.”
So Courtland turned to Jack, pointing behind himself at Antha and whining, “Jackie, she’s picking on me!”
As it was getting harder for the audience to withhold their snickering, Lionel gave each of them a sharp look and continued loudly, skipping ahead a few sentences, “The grooms have insisted on writing their own vows.” He glanced at each other them to see that they were ready, ignoring the deep sense of foreboding in the pit of his stomach. “Let’s see that goes, I guess.”
Casting the officiant a brief dirty look, Courtland cleared his throat and seized both of Jack’s hands in his own. “Jackie,” he began, loudly and solemnly, so intently that his family very nearly took him seriously for a moment, “I vow to always---always---save you the last piece of bacon. Even if I have to club Pierce and pry it out of his hands first.”
“Screw you, Court,” Pierce called irritably before he could stop himself, followed by Lucy clapping a hand over his mouth.
“And I promise that when you’re hungover, I’ll barricade the door as securely as a fortress and not let anyone come in screaming about whatever we’ve done. And when you’re sick, I promise not to make you soup, because I can’t work the oven and I’d probably give you food poisoning, but I will get you soup from that Chinese place downtown with the delicious little wontons. And even when we’re old and gray and wrinkly, I promise to administer the lovin’ at least once a week. At least!”
By this time, while Courtland wrapped up his fervent series of vows, Lawrence was red-faced and massaging his temples, quietly shaking his head, while the audience fought to contain their laughter, only snickering behind their hands. Jack, sighing because it was so very typical and Courtland was beaming, thoroughly proud of himself, glanced briefly at the paper in his hands and, after a moment of consideration, shoved it back in his pocket. “Courtland Mayfair,” he said finally, with a definitive tone of resolution at discarding what he’d written in favor of what he said next, “I vow to love you despite every stupid thing you will always inevitably do, because you’re a goddamn idiot, but I love that part of you, too.”
While Courtland broke out into the widest, brightest grin at these words, the entire front row of cousins all jumped to their feet cheering, everyone else finally breaking down into laughter. Antha, chuckling to herself, leaned forward and whispered in Courtland’s ear, “I think Jack wins the entirety of vows.”
“For the love of god,” Lionel sighed, shaking his head while the aunts wrestled the cousins back into their seats, “Oh, forget it. Give them the rings.” Antha and Lawrence each retrieved the rings from their pockets, handing them over to their respective groom. “Jacques Pierre Mayfair, do you take Courtland as your lawfully wedded husband?”
“Yep, I do,” the boy answered cheerfully.
“Courtland Alois Mayfair, do you take Jack to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“Damn straight I do.”
“Then by the power vested in me by the authority of Osiris City, I now pronounce you legally married. You may kiss the…oh, just kiss.”
Courtland hardly waited to be told, seizing Jack by the shoulders and dipping him low in his arms, kissing him breathless as the entire family burst into thunderous applause and cheering, the cousins laughing at the ardent display even as Jack flailed and the boys both fell over, knocking Lawrence straight off of his feet with a yelp before they both landed on him in a heap. “And that’s a wrap!” Courtland declared when Antha had helped him back to his feet, seizing Jack’s hand and holding it with his up in the air, “To the alcohol!” While the cousins cheered anew, Courtland turned in his excitement and made a great show of kicking the arch over as if to signal that debauchery was afoot. When everyone else looked at him, some of them in alarm, he simply pointed a finger at Antha, exclaiming cheerfully, “Evie and Cian broke it first.”
“Damn it, Courtland!”
In the midst of the sudden chaos, Belle was pouting furiously, tugging on Malakai’s sleeve and demanding, “What about the bouquet toss?!”
“Well…” he began uncertainly.
But Courtland, always one to please, grabbed up a nearby bouquet of roses and set them in Jack’s hands. “Alright ladies, gather around!” he called, loudly. Antha outright screamed at the ensuing stampede and ran to hide behind Cian, carefully moving the bassinet holding her children out of the way. “Ready?” Courtland called when the single girls were all gathered together, grabbing Jack by the shoulders and turning him around.
“You cannot be serious,” his groom groaned reluctantly.
“Just toss the flowers already, Jackie.”
Sighing, Jack glanced once over his shoulder and locked eyes with Liesse, a little grin flitting across his lips before he threw the flowers in a wide arc over his head. Even unable to aim, the bouquet would’ve flown straight into Liesse’s hands, except that Rowan, who was much taller, had made a desperate grab for it in the air and sent it bouncing sideways, nearly torn apart by the sea of hands grasping for it until it slipped through and plummeted straight into Lucy’s arms. Alarmed, the girl went down where she was, the flowers in her lap and her arms tightly wrapped around her legs, screaming, “Annie, help, they’re scaring me!”
Moments later, Antha, Pierce, and Alistair had managed to slip into the screaming, frantic throng of girls and haul Lucy out, her eyes squeezed shut and the bouquet jealously clasped to her chest. Malakai had Liesse by an arm around her shoulders, staring in open shock at the battle royale that was only just dying down as he ushered her away from it. Courtland was on the ground laughing, Jack sighing as he watched his little sister shove another girl over some flowers that had already been claimed. “That was terrifying,” Lucy declared when she was safe again, carefully straightening the roses back out, “But it was worth it. I like to win.”
“Now you have to decide who you’re going to marry,” Antha taunted her, grinning, “And you’d better do it fast.”
“Now that is terrifying.”
“Come on, come on, come on!” Courtland whined meanwhile, rushing up and ushering them towards the house, “There’s a lot of alcohol and a giant cake inside. If we don’t get started immediately, we’ll never finish either of them!”
While the cousins gave in and let Courtland herd them inside, Antha let out a heavy sigh, glancing at Cian. “What in the hell was I just part of?” she asked, still reeling from the entire event. “Ah…but what did I expect from Courtland and Jack?” Shaking her head, she turned and took up her daughter, bouncing her softly on her shoulder to soothe her. “I think it’s about somebody’s nap time,” she whispered, laying a kiss on Vanessa’s tiny ear, “They’re getting fussy. We should go put them down before this party starts for real. And maybe barricade the door before the aunts decide they want to see them…”  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn thought he might have had imprints from the bed frame worked into his jacket, from how hard his back had been pressing up against it.
But if he did, good taste prevented all from commenting on it, and he was grateful.
Cian ushered him along the aisle, showing the proper place to sit—how Cian knew the details of these things, Rynn had no idea. As far as he was aware, Cian had never been to a wedding.
Then again, there was a lot in Cian’s checkered past that Rynn had not been privy to.
Settling down into his seat, Rynn gave a faint harrumph and crossed his arms, trying not to glance across at Alistair. It wasn’t easy. The other boy was only a few seats down, wearing the distinctly smug kind of smle that made Rynn want to slug him.
“How long is this going to take?” he hissed in Cian’s direction. His brother gave him a hapless shrug, and grinned. “******** if I know.”
Of course Cian didn’t care. He was with Antha. The ceremony could have taken hours, and he still would have worn that sappy expression like a badge of honor.
Dorian, as extended family, took his place in the row behind them. Leaning forward, his hand snaked around to pinch Rynn’s still-pink cheeks. “Well, don’t you look fresh as a daisy,” he commented. His mild tone was almost more insulting than if it had been intentionally mocking. When Rynn turned his head to shoot a scathing glare, the man only laughed. “Don’t worry, it suits you. Just like when I was your age.”
Rynn gritted his teeth. “God forbid that I should end up like you.” he shot back, lacking any more cutting ammunition.
Still, it seemed to do the trick. Dorian receded into his chair, huffing and crossing his arms like an offended child.
“Rude.”
Then, glancing around as if to find something less offensive with which to occupy his attention, Dorian lit up at the sight of the new arrivals. “Oh, good. Family drama. That’ll make the reception a bit more interesting, anyways.”
Liesse scooted into position a few seats down from Rynn, clasping Malakai’s hand exuberantly. From the look of her grip, she was about to squeeze his fingers off. Dolly Jean and Liesse were not quite the same height to share wardrobes indiscriminately, but they had found one of Dolly Jean’s tea-length frocks which worked quite well as a sundress on Liesse’s taller frame. The layers of white lace looked like dollops of icing on the butter-yellow chiffon beneath. “They fixed the frame quite nicely, I think, it hardly looks broken at all,” Liesse whispered to Malakai. By now, the story of how it had been fractured had circulated amongst nearly every wedding guest. Some were taking it as a bad omen, whereas others seemed to regard it as a hilarious joke. Cian would be lucky if he was spared any ribbing on the subject.
If he had been chided, it certainly did not seem as though it had taken. Cian settled into his chair next to Rynn, adjusting his scarlet tie (chosen with intent to match Antha’s formalwear) and flashed a smile over his shoulder at the approaching procession. It was intended to be a much more seductive expression, before he noticed the young Victoria galloping down the aisle flinging rose petals everywhere. Maybe later, then.
When Malakai and Liesse switched places, Rynn could not deny that he was grateful for it. He released his breath in a long whoosh of air.
“Finally. I was bored stiff up here,” he whispered to her. His fingers instinctively sought her grasp—before he noticed how her other hand was intertwined with Malakai’s. Slowly, he withdrew his hand, pretending that he had only been searching to rid himself of an itch on the side of his thigh.
Sitting up straight, he tugged self-consciously on the vest that Alistair had loaned him instead. Cian gave him a calculating sidelong glance, jiggling Sebastien soothingly on his lap. Suddenly, he held out the child towards his brother. “Here, you take him.”
“What?—oh”
Rynn very nearly fumbled the child, but he knew that Liesse would have murdered him if he had. Anyways, he recognized Cian’s game—Sebastien was insurance. A chip that made sure Liesse would pay him attention instead of being entirely monopolized by Malakai. A trade-off, so that Rynn’s vanity wouldn’t be entirely wounded by how quickly she’d replaced him.
But no, that was silly. As quickly as they had risen, Rynn’s cynical thoughts were dismissed. Why poison the occasion? As Liesse cooed over infant in his arms, her brother raised a knowing eye towards its father, and flashed him a knowing smile.
When he looked back down, Sebastien was looking back up, with those peculiarly blue eyes of all infants. Rynn, caught off guard, could not help but stare.
Even Liesse noticed the shift in his mood.
Cian, in the meantime, was in the midst of watching the family reunion over his shoulder, Dorian observing in the keen manner of a sports spectator right behind him.
Eventually, though, Cian had to admit:
“Dorian? I have no idea what’s going on,” he hissed.
Dorian sighed.
“Look, Mayfair politics are pretty simple when it comes to formal functions. Behave as if everyone in the vicinity hates everyone else in the vicinity and-or is ******** them. Or they did ********. Assume both. Just be charming and light-hearted, alright? This whole thing is a joke, anyways. Not that they’re happy about it. If you want to meet the older generation later, just follow the sound of ceaseless griping during the reception, if any of them even stick around that long.”
Cian paid Dorian no mind, but gave a thoughtful nod as if he was considering his opinion, and it seemed to placate the man. As the ceremony began, though, and Liesse instantly perked up, though, he had to wonder if anyone had told Liesse that the whole thing was just, as Dorian put it, a joke.
Apparently not. She looked like she was on the verge of tears when they started the bridal march. Cian had to very carefully scoop Sebastien away from Rynn as he saw Antha—experience told him that nothing except being in familiar arms would keep him from crying out once he sensed his mother’s approach.
Even if it was all legally binding, the ceremony couldn’t have been said to be taken seriously. Liesse was rapt, whereas Dorian was all but stuffing his own fist in his mouth to keep himself from giggling, and Rynn looked utterly mortified—although whether this was in response to the ceremony or the looks that Alistair had been flashing him over the past few minutes, Cian didn’t know. He was mostly concerning himself with keeping the children happy and—most importantly—silent.
They were angels, of course, but Cian was still relieved when the ceremony was over, and Antha returned to his side to help.
“It was cute,” he acknowledged, while Liesse scuttled off towards the bouquet toss with Malakai in tow. “Courtland and Jack looked like they were having fun up there.” Glancing towards Rynn, he asked, “Shouldn’t you be over there vying for the bouquet, little brother? It’s not long until it’ll be your turn, next.”
Rynn shrugged. “I’d just be more competition for Liesse, and I can’t marry her.” Wincing as the throng of girls turned into a shrieking mob upon the bouquet’s descent, he tried to resist the temptation to stop up both his ears with his fingers.
He would have been perfectly content to stand to the side of the crowd, except as the bouquet toss was concluded, and he saw Alistair approach alongside Pierce, Lucy and Antha.
Before Cian could grab his arm, Rynn had turned and slipped away into the crowd of guests. Antha replaced him at Cian’s side, though, and her husband was forced to offset his glare at the coward’s retreating back with something more suitable for the occasion.
“I suppose congratulations are in order,” he said, cheerfully, as he clapped his arm around Antha’s shoulder. “You survived. That’s more that most can say. Now, I’m sure the aunts will be wanting a gander at our offspring, and you seem like you deserve a drink after that ordeal. Shall we?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

By the time the aunts had ooh’d and aah’d over Vanessa and Sebastien (and Antha and Cian, to the former’s great annoyance) and their parents had managed to smuggle them upstairs and coax them to sleep, the wedding reception had begun in earnest. Courtland had promised a truckload of alcohol and he had delivered it, as well as a four-tier cake that very nearly rivaled the one for Antha and Cian’s wedding. As soon as the new parents returned downstairs, they were ushered into the dining room to see Courtland waving a knife around, to everyone’s great terror, until Jack seized his hand and together they cut into their cake to great applause and the flash of cameras.
“Alright, Jackie.” Courtland had taken the first slice up with his fingers, turning and very clearly aiming.
“Courtland---Don’t. You. Dare.” He had barely gotten out the last word before he found his face covered in frosting, and wasted precisely no time in taking another chunk out of the cake and smashing it against Courtland’s face in retaliation. They spent the next few moments staring intently at one another, the atmosphere tense, both quietly reaching towards the cake until Michael threw himself between them, handing them each a towel. None of the cousins doubted for a moment that they had just come mere seconds from an outright food fight.
“It’s pretty good though,” Courtland decided, licking frosting from his lips before going to wash his face.
When that was done, Pierce hurried to gather the cousins together in the sitting room, along with the Calais siblings, Lucy, and Gerard Astoria, who had no idea why he was even at the wedding to begin with. “I’m going to give you your wedding present in a minute,” Pierce began, switching on the TV and excitedly shoving a tape into the VCR while Alistair closed the doors on the rest of the family, “But I found this while I was putting it together and it is not for the aunts’ eyes.”
“I’m terrified and excited,” Courtland assured him, staring at the screen as he pushed play only to exclaim, “Ah! My Evie!”
The very pointed ‘my’ in his exclamation, though seemingly innocent, was obvious to the cousins when her face popped up on the television, considerably younger than she was now, in heavy punk makeup with notably dilated eyes. It was the version of her he had described to Cian only the night before, fourteen and terrifyingly reckless, sitting beside seventeen-year-old Courtland at a table in a dim, smoky club with pulsing lights, staring one another down over an immense number of shot glasses, only a third of them still full.
Behind the camera, Pierce’s voice noted, “We’ve lost Jack.”
“Shut up,” Antha commanded sharply, holding a finger up to Pierce for his silence, never breaking her intense eye contact with Courtland as they each took up a shot. The camera panned around, lingering briefly on Dorian stretched out on a couch a few feet away, tangled up with a girl, while Antha’s voice continued in the background. “If I win…” she began , taking pains not to slur her words, and paused for a moment before laughing in such a way that assured she had more than just alcohol in her system, “We burn the ******** house down, with Julien in it.”
“That’ll be the day…” Pierce murmured as if this was a common threat, swiveling back around the face the drinking contest.
“Deal,” Courtland said, grinning wildly, dazedly, the same drugs likely thick in his system, “And if I win…” He paused uncertainly, staring for a moment down at the golden liquid in his glass and then suddenly looking wildly all around himself, gaze finally stopping at the bar as he pointed at a figure beside it, “You have to bring him back to the hotel with us, and come what may.” He giggled to himself, proud at what his drugged mind considered a wonderful pun, while Pierce zoomed in at the target of the wager.
In the present, Pierce excitedly jammed his finger on the pause button, pointing at the boy on the screen. “Do you see it? Do you see?!”
While the rest of the cousins squinted and tried to discern the slightly blurry but familiar features, Antha recognized it immediately, putting a hand to her forehead and groaning, “Oh my god, it’s Cian…”
“Oh my god!” Courtland was instantly in peals of laughter, excitedly shaking Antha’s shoulder, “Evie, Evie---we were wagering over Cian! Do you see it?! Pierce, keep playing it, I want to see if we took him home with us!”
“There’s no way,” Antha said quickly, eyes widening slightly, but her cousins cackled.
“Did you even see your eyes?” Jack asked, grinning, “Evie, you were wrecked. But keep playing, I want to see where I was. And if that chick threw up on Dorian.” Obediently, Pierce pressed play.
On screen, Antha cast the younger version of Cian an appraising glance, a grin as wicked as the devil spreading across her face. “******** it, I’ll take him into the coat room right now.”
“Wait,” Courtland demanded, holding up a shot before they both downed five in rapid succession.
The tape cut off abruptly, only to immediately pick up again with Pierce in the middle of cussing, “---stupid ******** thing, never works---oh! There it goes.” Panning up, the video showed that all the shot glasses were empty and Antha was gone, Courtland cackling to himself in his seat. “What do we do now?”
“Wait for Evie,” Courtland answered, grinning and motioning lazily towards where Cian was at the bar, “Grab him, wait for Dorian to finish up---”
The camera moved slightly, as if Pierce wasn’t paying attention to it anymore, the boy bursting suddenly into laughter. “********, Dorian, take it to the coat room.”
“---find our missing comrades, and get back to the---”
He was interrupted by Antha, running up breathless and slamming her hands on the table, eyes gleaming wildly. “We have to go,” she said suddenly, grabbing Courtland by the sleeve and yanking him off of his seat.
“Antha, what---”
“I did something,” she purred, with wicked remorselessness, and then added hastily as shouts sounded from the other side of the bar, “Run.”
No one asked questions, the Mayfair all turning and bolting immediately, Dorian shouting indistinguishably in the background. The image became hectic after this, the only clear moments being them hopping over the coat check counter, running into Jack with the coat check girl behind a rack of coats, and escaping out of the emergency exit, setting off alarms and fleeing down a dark back alley, leaving blue lights and police sirens behind. When it came into focus again, Antha was laughing wildly, madly, hysterically in a dark pavilion in the French Quarter, turning and tripping over the curb only to laugh harder.
“Did we lose them?” Jack groaned, panting heavily as he laid face down on a bench.
“Probably,” Antha answered, in a dazed and careless sigh as Courtland hoisted her up and slung her over his shoulder, breathless but grinning ear to ear, “Did they catch darling Dorian?” The boy made an irritated sound and Pierce turned to look at him, doubled over and panting. “There you are! Not arrested or anything.”
Sighing in equal parts frustration and relief, Dorian turned his gaze on her and asked what they were all thinking. “What did you do?”
The girl opened her mouth as if she would answer, still hanging over Courtland’s shoulder, and then seemed to think the better of it, purring with acute pleasure, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
“She’s quoting Dorian Gray again,” Pierce pointed out, “She’s had too much. Do we take her to the hospital?”
“No!” the girl refused, childishly, “You take me to a doctor and I’ll scoop your eyes out with a melon baller!”
Sitting up, Jack blew his bangs out and shot Pierce a conspiratorial grin, demonstrating that they were teasing her. “She’s had too much,” he agreed, nodding solemnly, “We should take her to Barclay.”
“The hell you will!’ she protested further, hitting Courtland’s back, “Court!”
The boy nodded as if he understood. “I’m kidnapping you,” he assured her, a split second before he started running, Antha falling into peals of laughter.
The other Mayfair boys scrambled to their feet, simultaneously laughing and protesting that he couldn’t kidnap the Designee of the Legacy, chasing after him.
It was a few moments into this that the door opened and Pierce hastily pressed eject, grabbing up the tape and handing it over to Courtland as a handful of the aunts and uncles entered. “You haven’t played it yet, have you?” Michael asked, to which Pierce shook his head.
“Of course not,” he answered, brandishing a second tape, “But if we’re all ready…?”
When they consented, he put in the second tape and pressed play, replacing the blue screen for a close-up of a startlingly bright, crystalline blue eye. Off screen, Michael’s voice said, “Louis, you’re too close.”
Most of the cousins very visibly startled at this, most of them suddenly leaning forward towards the screen as the eye grew more distant, revealing the pale, slightly wrinkled face around it. “We have video of Oncle Louis?!” Antha demanded, casting Michael a shocked glance over her shoulder.
“Just the one,” he answered as the man came into focus on the screen, standing in the garden, with a calm and cheerful smile, his face framed in soft, snow white curls, “I forgot about it until Pierce found it in storage. But that’s not the point right now.”
In the video, he said, “There you go. Say hello to everyone in the future.”
Flashing a little amused smile, Louis graciously bowed his head. “Does anyone ever really watch these contraptions?” he asked, laughing gently.
“One day,” Michael answered, turning the camera around to face himself with his trademark warm smile, waving at it.
“Michael!” Lucy exclaimed, shocked at seeing him so young and vibrant, without the few lines in his face and gray strands in his dark hair, “You were hot!”
Michael laughed. “You think so? I’m flattered.”
The room fell silent again at the sound of crying on the video, Louis turning as a child came running around the corner with arms outstretched, blood running from his nose down to his chin. By his bright red hair and blue eyes, there was no mistaking him as anyone other than Jack. “Oncle Louis!” he sobbed, throwing his arms around the older man and falling into unintelligible babbling.
“Oh, what happened to you?” Louis asked soothingly, clearly fighting a laugh at his behavior, which could only be described as cute. Jack continued sobbing out words indistinguishable to the ear, pointing back form where he’d come as Louis tilted his head back to stop the blood. Glancing once in that direction, the man sighed and called, “Antha Evelyn.” A blotch of red vanished in the distance, at the very corner of the house, and he called more firmly, “Antha!” Very slowly, the little child Antha peeked around the corner but did not come any closer. “Antha, come here.” Begrudgingly, the little girl slid around the corner of the house and inched forward. The cousins recognized by her form, only slightly filled out from her days in the attic, and the curls cut off at her shoulders that she was nine. She made a very pretty little figure, even with her wary eyes, in her white dress and long-sleeved blue shirt, a white bow clipped into her hair, shuffling through the grass in mary janes. “Antha, what happened?” Louis asked calmly when she stood before him, quickly lowering her gaze to the ground and picking at her nails.
“He scared me,” she muttered.
“And what did you do?”
“I hit him,” she answered, remorselessly but anxious of Louis’s disapproval, “I thought he was Nicolae.” She said the last as if, somehow, it redeemed her. As if it was acceptable if it was Nicolae, that he just automatically deserved it.
Louis sighed, taking her by her shoulders and turning her to face Jack. “Bon, now apologize to your cousin.” Antha stood very still, staring at her feet and not saying a word. “Antha, you hurt him. You have to apologize. He’s your family, you two have to play nice.”
Tensing, Antha stalled for another moment and then, beneath her breath, murmured reluctantly, “…sorry.”
Little Jack sniffed, pinching his nose closed, and stared at her for a moment. And then, abruptly, he stepped forward and threw his arms around her. Antha shrieked, putting a hand on his chest to shove him away and just staring at him with wide, incredulous eyes, rather like she might punch him again. But Louis said her name again in warning and, casting his a fleeting despondent glance, she turned and fled into the house. Jack ran after her, like nothing more than a puppy seeking affection, and when they were gone, Louis and Michael but began to laugh.
“They are cute, aren’t they?” Louis sighed, glancing at the camera.
“Violent,” Michael added before agreeing, “But quite cute. I just wish they’d learn not to gang up on her like---oh dear.” The door to the house opened and again and Antha ran out whining frantically, hurling herself at Louis, whose old limbs struggled for a moment before he managed to pick her up. A pack of little boys came out chasing after her, distinguishable as Jack, Courtland, Nicolae, and Pierce, the last with his natural auburn hair and uncharacteristically muddied hands and knees.
“Boys,” Michael said quickly, stepping forward and laying a hand on Nicolae’s shoulder, “Calm down, now. Come on, leave her alone.” Antha was staring down at them like they were a pack of wild, vicious animals, clinging to Louis with all her might.
Jack obeyed, like a good little boy, turning away and pinching his nose again, wiping the blood away from his chin with the back of his hand. Courtland, eleven or twelve years old, turned his attention fully on him, the boys murmuring together as Courtland inspected him. While Jack seemed to be assuring him that he was fine, Courtland’s eyebrows knitted together in concern and deep thought before he took Jack’s hand and moved it away, leaning forward to very gently kiss the tip of his nose. “All better, right?” he asked, like he truly believed it. Jack, his eyes still wet and red, sniffled and wiggled his nose, clearly still in pain, but smiled and nodded regardless. Courtland lit up happily, throwing his arms protectively around the other boy. “I told you, my kisses are magic,” the child said, very matter-of-factly, “When you get hurt, just come to me and I’ll kiss it and make it all better.”
Louis, barely holding back a laugh, nodded towards the house, shooing them away with, “Alright boys, go play. And be good.” They obeyed while Anth clung steadfast to him, burying her face against his shoulder. The moment they were inside, Michael laughed, Louis chuckling and turning to the camera. “That’s going to be trouble one day.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Michael murmured thoughtfully, “They’re very attached, like Antha and Malakai.”
“Antha is Malakai’s little duckling,” Louis responded, smoothing down the child’s hair, “But those two are going to be trouble.”
“Trouble like Julien?” Almost imperceptibly, there was just the vaguest hint of spite in that statement. At that point in time, it had hardly been a decade since Michael’s wife had betrayed him with Julien.
“Julien is Julien,” Louis sighed, like he was talking about a lost cause, “But I tell you now, Courtland’s not going to let go of Jacques when they grow up. It’s going to be trouble for one or both of them.” And then, casting Michael a glance, said before he could respond, “Don’t question your elders, Michael York.”
Michael made a small sound like he was smiling. “Sorry, sorry…”
“What do you think?” Louis asked, turning instead to Antha, who curiously lifted her head, “Will you keep them out of trouble, ma petite?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed, brows knitting. “I don’t care,” she announced sharply, “I don’t like them anyways.”
But Louis just laughed, laying a kiss on the side of her head. “You will, my little darling.”
In the present, Jack turned to Antha with a teasing grin. “I forgot what a b***h you were, Evie.”
“Oh shut up,” she murmured, reaching over and pushing him by the shoulder, “You were loud and annoying and always jumping on me out of nowhere.”
“You don’t think it’s funny, though?” Armand questioned as Pierce switched off the tape, “That Oncle Louis knew? This was ten years ago.”
“Oncle Louis knew everything,” Antha reminded him sharply, as if she found it offensive that he would question Louis’s innate greatness.
“He certainly said a lot of things that came true,” Michael murmured, coming up and teasingly pinching Antha’s cheek, “I never would’ve believed back then that you’d ever like these wild boys.”
“I still don’t like them,” she insisted stubbornly, and then shrieked as Courtland launched himself at her, pinning her flat on the floor.
“You love us and you know it,” he taunted her, grinning as he tried to kiss her cheek while she dodged every attempt, “Come on, admit it!”
“Over my cold, dead body!” she shouted, flailing under the weight of his body.
“It’s okay, Evie,” he cooed, mockingly, “My kisses are magic, stop fighting it.”
“Courtland, I’ll scoop out your eyes with a melon baller!” she hissed, whining at her confinement until Jack took pity and dragged Courtland off of her, laughing.
Turning to Pierce, he said sincerely, “Thank you. This was really a nice present.”
“I forgot we had home movies,” Courtland added, patting his cousin on the shoulder.
Pierce, grinning, covertly tapped the first tape and said, “There’s more. Tons more.”
“If we’re doing presents already,” Antha sighed, smoothing out her clothes again and motioning to the corner, where something very large sat wrapped in white gift paper with a massive red bow around it, “That one’s from me.”
“For us?” Courtland asked, giddy with excitement, “Jackie, can I open it?!”
“Go on.”
Courtland all but pranced over, excitedly ripping apart the paper to reveal…the same Victrola that always sat in the same corner. The same one that Alistair and Rynn had seen the phantom version fo her dragging down the hall of Satis House only the night before. “It’s Oncle Louis’s Victrola,” Courtland said, stating the obvious with some confusion, “This is always here, why---”
“It’s yours,” Antha said shortly, uncomfortably clearing her throat.
The entire room fell silent, all eyes staring incredulously at the girl as she stood trying to affect a casual nonchalance about the whole thing. “Evie…” Courtland began, staring at her with a completely uncharacteristic seriousness, not quite believing what he was hearing, “Evie, are you sure? You can’t be serious.”
“It’s yours,” she repeated, a little more firmly than before, “Really Courtland, I want you and Jack to have it. I thought about leaving it to one of my children, but…well, it wouldn’t mean much to them, would it? Not compared to what it means to us.” She’d hardly gotten the last word out of her mouth before Courtland flung himself at her, squeezing her desperately tight in his arms. If the rest of the family wasn’t still reeling, they might have noticed that Jack was trying to hide a few tears in the corners of his eyes.
“Thank you,” Courtland said quietly, with a dire earnestness that sounded foreign coming from his lips, stepping back just enough to take her face in his hands, laying a kiss on her forehead, “Really, Evie, thank you. So much.”
Taking his hands and stepping back, Antha cleared her throat again---suddenly, the cousins realized she was doing it to keep herself from crying---and forced a cheerful smile. “This got very serious all of a sudden,” she said like she’d just noticed it, forcing a little laugh, “I thought we were doing everything in our power not to be serious today?”
Courtland smiled, turning to the group and sliding and arm around Antha’s shoulders. (Fleetingly, Jack wondered if it was a pact made after he’d stopped eavesdropping the night before. It seemed like the sort of thing they’d do.) “You’re right. This is a party! Everybody to the bar, now!”
The cousins cheered, spilling out of the room and back to the parlor with the aunts and uncles cautiously slipping out behind them. Only Courtland trailed behind, grabbing both Dorian and Cian by the sleeves keeping them put until everyone else was gone, out of earshot. It was then that he put his arm around Dorian’s shoulders, in what was not exactly a threatening gesture but certainly not friendly. Cian was kept as an audient, because Courtland wanted to be very clear. “You don’t know what it took to get to this day,” he said to Cian after a moment, very quietly, smiling despite the sharply serious look in his eyes, and then looked straightforward under the guise of watching people milling around at the end of the hall, patting Dorian’s chest with his other hand so that he knew he was talking to him, “You do. You know what ******** hell Jack and I endured falling in love. This is our wedding, our day, and we decided to do it how we wanted. But make no mistake, this entire thing---this day, this wedding, this marriage---is completely, perfectly serious. No matter how we did it, I just stood up in front of the people I love and pledged my entire life to my soulmate. And I don’t appreciate anyone dismissing it as a joke.”
Giving him another seemingly good-natured pat, he released his cousin abruptly, a split second before Antha peeked in curiously. “Courtland, it’s time for your first dance. Everyone’s waiting.”
The boy had brightened instantly, his same blissful, exuberant self as always. “Coming! Someone’s still recording, right? I want Adair to see his daddies’ first dance as husband and husband.”
“And be utterly mortified to see your sick dance moves?” Antha purred, a taunting grin from ear to ear.
The father-to-be poked her forehead, laughing slightly. “I don’t want to hear that from a woman with an entire album of her infant children dressed as waterfowl and forest critters.”
Antha pouted, somewhat like she’d been caught, turning and yelling after him as he scampered off, “But they were so cute~!”
In the parlor, as Antha and Courtland came running in, Alistair slid up beside Rynn in the circle of guests formed around the makeshift dancefloor, grabbing his sleeve before he could run off. He had turned off the charm, at least for the moment, all seriousness as he leaned over to whisper, “Antha can’t have anything to drink tonight. She’s been passing them off to me when someone gives her one, but it’s rough drinking for two, so you have to help. At least until Nicolae gets here.” And as extra incentive, he added, “Otherwise I might get so drunk that I lose all self-control. Just think how uncomfortable that would be for you.” And then, in something like a peace offering, he stepped back and vanished into the crowd.
A few moments later, Jack and Courtland stood in the middle of circle, readying themselves, as Antha worked the stereo. “Ready?” she called, her finger on the play button, and the boys nodded.
Returning to her husband as the slow song started, Antha found him beside Suzette, who she was surprised to see unusually distant, dazed. “Are you alright, Aunt Suzette?” she whispered very quickly, laying a gentle hand on the old woman’s shoulder.
She gave a start, glancing over to Antha with teary eyes. “Oh, yes,” she whispered, smiling softly, “I was only thinking how silly my grandson is. They’ve made such a show of this, of being wild and foolish, but…” She sighed, dreamily, pulling her shawl a little more tightly around her shoulders. “They’re so afraid to look sentimental, but look at that.” She nodded towards the boys, waltzing around the room. If they were paying a bit of attention to anyone else, Antha couldn’t tell. They were wrapped up in their movements, in the little whispers they shared with quiet smiles, the teasing laughs. It was true love, even at a glance. “You’re a good girl,” Suzette said after a moment, with an air of certainty, patting Antha’s hand, “You did a good thing.”
“What I did was evil,” Antha told her certainly. There was no use denying it.
“It could have been,” Suzette assented gently, nodding her head, “But all’s well that ends well, sugarplum.”
Antha said nothing else, merely watched Courtland and Jack and mulled over that idea until the song ended and the next one began, the circle of guests all spilling onto the dance floor with the newlyweds. “Shall we?” she asked, turning to Cian with a little smile and offering him her hand.
Across the room, Malakai had cleared his throat and lowered his gaze, cheeks red, silently holding his hand out to Liesse to ask her to dance.  

[Okimiyage]

Cian settled alongside his fellow audience members on the couch, leaning forward with pleasurable anticipation as Pierce started the aged VHS player up.
Well, obviously they hadn’t burned the house down. So Antha had won.
Honestly, Cian couldn’t say that he was surprised. Both he and Antha had track records across almost every bar in Osiris City. It would have been more miraculous if their paths hadn’t crossed at some point. And it was undeniably Cian in that video—the same broad shoulders, the same beaming, drug-addled smile and quizzical c**k of the head, clad in the same familiar velvet blazer that he’d been so fond of at the time.
Dorian grinned at the husband and wife, swirling a glass of wine in his hand. “Well, Antha, what did you do to the poor boy? It must have been an extraordinarily persuasive technique, seeing as how he came back for seconds.”
Liesse swatted her hands at the air in front of Dorian’s mouth— “Shh—shh—they’re putting another one on.”— and then clung to Malakai’s leg, looking thrilled.
Rynn didn’t exactly know who Oncle Louis was, but it was clear from the reverential silence that fell all around the room at the sight of him that he was important.
Then again, there was something familiar about the man—in his voice, in the way his blue eyes twinkled. It was almost as if Rynn had seen him once before in a dream, or a vision.
“Oh, Jack, you were adorable!” Dorian exclaimed, as the boy ran into sight on-screen. “I had almost forgotten.”
“Antha was cuter back then,” Rynn murmured. It had been intended only for his own ears, but Cian, next to his brother, picked up on it. “Next to Antha, no other child could look cute,” he answered absently. “No offense, Jack.”
“Even when she’s beating up on you?” Rynn rejoined, dubiously.
“Even so.” With that, Cian winked and leaned his head against his wife’s in a way that indicated he was no longer interested in interrupting the movie.

Dorian’s eyes darkened as Courtland swept Cian and himself off to a corner. He knew what was coming next, or could make an educated guess anyways. And the groom didn’t disappoint.
“You know what I mean,” Dorian said brusquely, jerking his arm free from Courtland’s grip. “Even Antha admitted it.” He didn’t feel like mollifying the bride anymore. Even if it was their special day, Courtland and Jack—and the rest of their crew, for that matter—had been treating him like a leper ever since he’d come back, and Dorian had been taking their s**t without complaint. If they couldn’t give him a break today, of all days, they didn’t deserve one. “You had the opportunity to make Suzette and her insufferable horde take this seriously, but you can’t stand the idea of actually admitting that you love anybody, no gimmicks, no cute quips. Everything has to be a joke with you, Courtland. You couldn’t even propose with a straight face. And the only part that’s actually funny is how now, the one time you do take anything seriously, it’s because you can’t stand it when even you detect even the remotest hint of criticism being made about how you’re conducting yourself.”
Dorian, stiff as a porcupine, looked like he was ready to punch Courtland at that moment, but instead he groped in his breastpocket, drew out a pack of gold-tipped cigarettes, and stuck one in-between his lips. “I need a smoke,” he muttered. “Don’t expect me back. For the record, I thought it was a good joke; everything I say these days, somebody gets insulted by…”
Still grumbling to himself, he stuck his hands in his pockets, skimmed around Antha in the doorway, and trudged out towards the porch.
Cian did his best to smooth away his own shell-shocked expression before Courtland could look to him for his reaction. Holding out his arms, he gave a noncommittal shrug. Antha had reassured him that this was the Mayfair way. The cousins fought all the time. Better not to intervene. “Don’t worry about Dorian,” he said, reassuringly. “You have more pressing responsibilities today than keeping him in line.”

For a half-second, standing outside, fingertips lit by the cherry of his cigarette, Dorian wondered if he should go back inside for his gift.
Then again, that seemed petty to think of. Let them have it. It wasn’t much anyways; a few volumes of poetry, of sentimental value more than anything. One of them, a slim ribbon-bound volume, contained some of Dorian’s own work, before he’d given up on his literary aspirations.

Still, Courtland didn’t seem all that perturbed. It was true that he had more entertaining affairs with which to occupy him at the moment. The guests cleared away for the makeshift dance floor to emerge from the crowd, and somewhere in the press, Rynn felt Alistair’s hand on his shoulder, and his breath against his ear in a hurried warning.
Before he could turn around, Alistair was gone. Rynn grimaced. If this was true, it meant he’d have to be following Antha around all night. Mayfair or not, alcoholic consumption wasn’t good for a pregnancy, Rynn knew that much.
Luckily, he didn’t have to look far. At the far end of the dance floor, where the sound system was set up in a hazardous snare of wires and speakers, Antha was at work putting on the first song.
Rynn shouldered his way up towards the ‘DJ booth’, as the boys insisted on calling it, and only narrowly got there before a glass of champagne did. ********. This was going to be harder than he expected.
At the door, Liesse conscientiously dimmed the lights before rushing into Malakai’s arms. It was a good thing that her skirts weren’t long enough to reach the floor, or she would have tripped.
Cian was patient enough to wait for the next song, but Liesse, ever the romantic, couldn’t help but lean in toward Malakai, commenting softly: “They look like a king and queen, don’t they?”
One might assume that Liesse had very odd standards where queenly attire was confirmed, but it wasn’t simply that. It was Antha’s bearing, the lift in Cian’s chin, the proud glow in their eyes as they stepped forth onto the dance floor. It was the way they moved in perfect sync with one another. Watching them, Liesse could imagine what it must have been like during the golden days of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
(Liesse’s references for celebrity romance were somewhat antiquated.)
Still, she couldn’t complain with her own partner, either. If Cian was king, then Malakai was a prince, the sort who rescued maidens and probably slew dragons, too. Liesse felt safe with him, in a way that even Rynn’s presence did not encourage.
Leaning into his chest, she tried to dismiss those thoughts and focus on the steps of the dance, and resist the altogether-too-natural inclination to step on his foot.

Outside, a chilly wind rustled through the trees. Dorian shivered, and wished that he had brought along a proper jacket. He’d been so eager to show Courtland and Jack how grown-up he could be, but apparently all it took was one off-color comment and—hurrah!—back in the doghouse with him. Dorian sucked moodily on his cigarette, exhaling great clouds of smoke in his wake as he hopped over the edge of the porch balustrade and trampled a few tulips on the way down the path.
Suddenly, though, Dorian stopped. There was someone watching him across the street—a tall, sort of fox-faced woman, too thin to be considered ‘pretty’, with hair the color of twigs. She was holding something close to her chest, and her eyes did not move as they met his. His immediate thought was that she was holding a gun, and she had come to kill him.
But no, that would have been ludicrous. Right?
Her mouth moved, and Dorian saw his name leaving her lips even though he could not hear it. All the same, as though summoned, his feet started moving down the path towards her again.
As he got closer, he began to see that she wasn’t really as unfortunate as she had looked before. Her hair wasn’t really dun brown, but glinted with strands of luminescent gold. The fox-like look of her face was merely her extraordinarily high, sharp cheekbones, framing eyes like two pieces of black jet, lashes jutting like spikes from their perimeter. She seemed to fill out as he approached, like a hot air balloon fills with gas, until all of a sudden she was radiantly beautiful, halo’d with it like a saint, and Dorian could not refuse her anything. He felt as though he could hear sirens in her presence.
Wordlessly, she smiled, her perfect lips curving upwards in a perfectly calculated arc. Dorian wondered if he should fall to his knees, but she put her hand out, and he stepped forward instead. The bundle in her arms put out a fist, and garbled something in an impossibly clear, high tone, like glass rubbed by a finger. She held it towards Rynn, and her black, all-knowing eyes bored into him. He had no choice but to take the burden she carried.
As soon as it was passed into his arms, the siren song stopped. The woman sighed—and the sigh was like a hole in her, out of which all her luminescent glory rushed, and there was the fox-faced, dun-haired woman again—there were her thin limbs, and her long fingers, knobbled as a crone’s—clapping together, as she turned about three times with glee, and vanished utterly into thin air.
Dorian was left standing, bewildered and alone, on the sidewalk. In his arms, something cooed and clutched at his shirt.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Inside, no one else heard the siren fey song that pulled Dorian in. But Antha, as she usually did, felt it. She laid her hand briefly on Cian’s shoulder, as if to assure him that everything was alright and to stay put, she would be back, and then slipping out of the room. Once out of sight, she started running.
She had an inkling of what this whisper of power was, and recalled vividly David’s story about fairies, how they drew mortals in and all the terrible things they did to them. And Dorian was outside, she’d seen him go with his cigarette. They were already familiar with him, they’d already drawn him in once, she shouldn’t have left him alone. For a fleeting moment in the back of her head, she saw a little golden-haired child with big, innocent blue eyes, crying over his trampled flower, and she couldn’t breathe.
Dorian was walking out of the gate when she threw open the door, to an unfamiliar figure swimming in strange power. She screamed his name, hysterically, bolting across the yard, frantic to get to him before something happened. But by the time she reached him, the stranger was gone and she seized her cousin in a panic, hands shaking, checking to make sure that he was alright, whole and unharmed. “Get back in the yard,” she ordered, breathlessly, seizing his sleeve and dragging him back towards the gate. The house was safe, everything within the fence, it was protected, nothing could snatch him while he was in the perimeter of their property. She only began to calm when she got him back into the garden, the gate clanking shut behind them, and that was when she noticed what was in his arms.
“Mon dieu,” she whispered breathlessly in astonishment, very cautiously plucking at the infant’s wrappings as if to make sure of what was inside and very nearly recoiling, “Oh god…I thought it was a joke…” But she shook her head, glancing at the windows to the parlor to be sure no one was looking, and put a hand to the small of Dorian’s back, ushering him around the house. The switch in her brain had been flipped, all business. “We’ll go in the back door,” she murmured, bewildered, not totally herself, “In the kitchen. We’ll just take a moment and figure this out before anyone comes looking.”
Fortunately, no one had any business in the kitchen for the time being. The food was in the dining room, separated by a swinging door, and everyone was dancing anyways. The noise was distant, the kitchen quiet. “Okay…” Antha sat down next to Dorian at the table, fingers laced, blinking wildly as she tried to bring herself back to her senses. And then, abruptly, she stood and went over to the refrigerator, taking out a bottle of milk and then holding it up, perplexed. “Can fairies drink human milk?” she asked, staring at the bottle, and then shook her head, “I don’t know, and I’m sure you don’t know.”
Letting a deep, unsteady breath, she returned to the table, running a hand back through her hair, and took a long, intent look at Dorian. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” she said, quiet but threatening, thick with relief, “What she could have done to you---” She couldn’t even say it. Instead, she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and pressed a fervent kiss in his golden hair, holding him protectively for several prolonged moments before retreating, sitting across from him and shifting her focus entirely on the child in his arms. “Dorian, you need to decide what you want to do,” she whispered firmly, “You have some time before you have to make a lifelong commitment to your decision but for now, someone’s going to stumble across us within the next few minutes and if you don’t know what to tell them, people are going to start making choices for you.” Her eyes moved upwards, meeting his, and narrowed. “Dorian, this child---your child---has fey blood. This isn’t like finding any accidental child on our doorstep, other people are going to want to take control of the situation. Just tell me what you want to do, and I’ll help you.” There was, unusually, no judgment in her tone. Antha had always taken care of Dorian, she had protected him since they were small, and those instincts had just kicked in again.
And then, untensing slightly, her gaze fell back on the baby and she asked quietly, “Is it a boy or a girl?”  

[Okimiyage]

Antha arrived on the scene so quickly that Dorian did not even have time to fold back the child's blanket. She seized him, dragging him back within boundary of the house--Dorian's gold-tipped cigarette hit the ground behind them, not even half-smoked. He swung at the end of Antha's grasp like a ragdoll, his shirt clenched in her fist, and the only thing that kept him from stumbling was the bundle in his arms, and the knowledge that he must keep it safe.
The child's hand was tiny, but its nails had already formed a point. When it clutched at his sleeve, they felt as though they could draw blood. And its eyes, gleaming out from between the folds of the gauzy blanket it had been delivered in, were the color of autumn leaves and honey...
Dorian was shocked, more than anything, that they’d been spared some brief privacy in the kitchen from the revelry in the front of the house. Then again, Antha knew this house like it was mapped on her bones. If anyone was to be able to sense one spot where they wouldn’t be disturbed, it was her.
Finally, tentatively, Dorian folded back the blanket. It was too loosely woven to be called a blanket, in truth; it seemed as flimsy as a shroud, but Dorian discovered, when he tugged, that the fibers were strong as steel. Magic? Spider silk, perhaps? He didn’t know what to make of it.
The child was as dun-brown as its mother. Her mother, Dorian corrected himself, flipping back the blanket quickly to check. But unlike her mother’s dull, unkempt locks, their daughter’s hair was a lustrous blonde, milky as cream, just the same shade as her father’s. As if there had been any question of paternity, really…
Dorian went pale. He had been unsure up until this very point, but now…”This really is—mine, isn’t it?” he whispered, almost as though in a trance. “s**t. Shitshitshit.”
He looked up at Antha, wide-eyed and terrified, and bolted to his feet. The baby squirmed in his arms, preparing to fuss. “Antha, what do I do with it? Her! I’m not ready for this! I don’t know how to raise a child!” he hissed.
Dorian wanted to drop the thing and start pacing, but as soon as its tiny face started to screw up, he was helpless before it. “Nononono, don’t cry, shh…” he whispered desperately, it what he hoped was an appropriately modulated tone instead of just ‘Dorian’s completely ******** and freaking out’ voice. Glancing back towards Antha, he whispered, “I don’t know, Antha, I can’t think about anything straight right now. Can we hide it? Her? God, she doesn’t even have a name!”
Dorian did not feel like the poster boy for confidence right now.
“Why did she drop it off here?” Dorian muttered to himself. “They don’t know the meaning of the word ‘subtlety’…”
Then, jerking his attention back to the demands of the impending crisis, Dorian worked a hand nervously through his hair. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he repeated anxiously. “Oh, ********, I knew this was coming. Antha—“ Her name had a distinctly plaintive inflection placed upon it.He wasn’t ready to be a father, gods knew. But he’d be damned if he’d let anyone in the family take the poor half-bred thing away from him.
His eyes caught the glint of light in his daughter’s, and they flashed honey and sunshine, and the color of good whiskey, up at him again. Dorian sighed. “I’m keeping her,” he whispered finally, as if entrapped by the same glamour that her mother had produced, lingering now long after she had gone. “I don’t care what it takes. I’m not letting any of them take this away from me.”
Very carefully, he settled onto one of the kitchen stools, and bowed over the child protectively.
“She needs a name,” he muttered, thickly. “You name a thing and it becomes yours, at least for a little while. She needs a name. Something about the coming summer, the afternoon sunlight through branches, the sound of a deer’s hoof on dead leaves.” He glanced up, more than a little wild-eyed. “I have to find a name before they get to her, Antha. Don't tell the family, for the love of god.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Almost imperceptibly, a relieved sigh slipped from Antha’s lips and she sat back in her seat, calming somewhat. She had a very strange feeling deep in her chest, something gentle and unfamiliar. For the first time in her life, she was actually proud of Dorian. “Calm down,” she bid him softly, going over to the stove and checking the bottle she had warmed, “Here, we have to make sure she’s not hungry…” She spent just a moment adjusting the infant in his arms and another showing him how to feed her. “Dorian, I’m going to go get Vittorio,” she said then, cautiously, and quickly explained herself before he could protest, “She’s no one’s right now, and if we want to keep anyone else from taking her, we need him. I’ll be right back.”
She was gone for, at most, two minutes before returning with the family doctor, who by the look on his face had been briefed on the situation. Still, it was a surprise to see Dorian with a child, particularly one that looked so like him. “I need to examine her,” he said, softly, like he was used to dealing with parents who didn’t want to let go of their newborns. “What about her mother?”
“If she has a name, I’m not sure it matters. Fairies are hardly registered citizens, Tori. Make one up.”
“Then what about the child?” he asked, weighing her in his hands, “Birth certificates aren’t valid until the child has a name.”
Antha retook her seat at the table, thoughtfully humming to herself as she stared at the baby. “You could just name her Summer,” she suggested offhand, and then began throwing out names, “Or Ivy…June…Skylar…Brooke…Daisy...Bunny...” Leaning over the infant to take a closer look at her, quietly brushing her fair hair aside, she suddenly said, “Lily. She looks like a Lily to me, with their white petals and golden pistils.”
Vittorio, meanwhile, had handed her back to her father, taking a notepad out of his pocket and jotting down notes. “We will need a paternity test, at some point,” he pointed out.
“The birth certificate will do for now,” Antha said, laying a comforting hand on Dorian’s shoulder, “As long as you can work faster than anyone else.”
“It’ll take five minutes once I get to the hospital,” he answered with stern certainty.
But then she made a gesture for him to be quite. Business had to be taken care of, of course, but there was no point in making Dorian needlessly nervous. “It’s alright,” she assured him quietly, petting his golden locks, sliding her fingers soothing through it like silk, “It’ll be alright, just take it one step at a time. For now, she just needs a name.”
“I’m going to go ahead to the hospital,” Vittorio said, uncomfortably clearing his throat, “I can fill in everything else. Just call me when you decide. It’ll be faster that way.” Antha nodded and Vittorio quickly slipped out again, making a beeline for the front door.
He was apprehended by Courtland just short of the door, with the groom expressing some confusion as to why he was leaving. “I have work to do,” Vittorio dismissed it, shaking him off and hastily leaving.
Courtland just stood there for a moment, watching him flee with great haste and then staring curiously at the dining room door from which he’d come. It continued to perplex him through the next two rounds of aunts congratulating him and pinching his cheeks, quietly smiling as he tried to slip away.
Antha was visibly alarmed when he entered the kitchen, brows knitted, jumping up from her seat and standing before Dorian, but he’d already seen what was in his cousin’s arms. “Antha…” Courtland began quizzically, going forward and looking over her shoulder, “That’s not one of your babies.”
“No…” she admitted, slowly.
He stared at the child for another few moments, until the pieces visibly clicked into place in his mind and he pointed over his shoulder where Vittorio had gone. “Tori was going to make a birth certificate,” he guessed, still working it out in his head, pointing now at the infant, “Because that’s a fairy baby and Julien will take it away from Dorian if he doesn’t have any rights to it…”
“Or one of the aunts, or the Talamasca, or---god help us---the church,” Antha added, sighing, “You don’t exactly run across a fairy every day, Court.”
“But does anyone even know about it?”
“Her,” Antha corrected.
“Does anyone even know about her?” he amended, his mind working like Antha’s, in crisis mode, “How did you get her here?”
“From what I can tell, her mother dropped her off. As Dorian says, it wasn’t exactly subtle. Anyone could’ve seen it happen, and I’ll be shocked if the Talamasca aren’t loitering around here somewhere, watching. You know how they like to document all of our events.”
“But they can’t get in here,” Courtland reminded her, going over to gently touch the infant’s silken curls, “You’ve got her in the house, so all you have to worry about is the family.”
“Who don’t need to know until Dorian has a legal claim on her,” she concluded, eyes narrowing.
Courtland just nodded, as if he understood completely. “You need a distraction.” He grinned, every bit the impish little troublemaker. “I’m a wonderful distraction, Evie. Leave it to me.” Leaning over his new little niece, he laid a kiss on the top of her head and cooed, “You stay quiet so no one finds you, okay little tiny party crasher?”
He had been gone hardly a minute when something broke in the parlor, the sound of his laughter trailing after it. Antha ignored it, still intently trying to calm Dorian.
“This is the one thing I don’t think you ever really understood about us,” she said after a moment, with a twinge of regret, “You were always off on your own, determined to be different from the rest of us, separate. But we’re family, Dorian, we have to stick together. You never learned the rules because you were always running away. That’s why they’re so mad at you---you have no covenant with the rest of us, no fidelity, and they end up thinking ‘if he can just leave like that whenever he wants, if he can be snide and hurtful, how can we trust him?’ so they push you out. You always say you’re no worse than Courtland, but dearest, you don’t have a right to your behavior like he does. He’s suffered and bled for this family, for our cousins, he has a place in the order of things, and you don’t.” She shook her head, sighing, and laid her hand gently across his child’s forehead. “That has to change, Dorian. It has to. I don’t think you have any idea what pains I’ve taken to protect you these last few years, to keep you in this family with all of its protection when you haven’t been a part of it. But I’m going to be dead in less than a month, I can’t protect you anymore. You need our cousins. Without them, standing on your own, you’re going to lose everything.”
She was aware how harsh her words sounded, and it showed in her eyes. Dorian wasn’t used to hearing this blunt sincerity from her, she had always dismissed his bad behavior and assured him everything would be alright because deep down, she blamed herself for the way he had turned out. He acted the way he did because she had been his safety net, he’d never had to face reality or consequences before because she took care of him no matter what he did. She couldn’t bring herself to just stop, to leave him helplessly on his own. But it was different now, with a child involved. He had something substantial to lose and as she had said, she had no way of protecting him from that, it was entirely in his hands.
Silently, she noted to herself that Dorian had never had to fight his own battles before. Looking back on it, she had probably done him a great disservice in the long run.
“Just give her a name and she's yours," she said softly, returning to the short-term, "I won't let anyone take her.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian looked like he was about to piss himself when Antha left to look for Vittorio. “I said no family!” he hissed. “Why do you have to—“
It was no use. She was already gone.
With a sigh, Dorian glanced down towards his daughter. “It hasn’t even been thirty minutes since you’ve come into my life, and already you’re causing trouble,” he said, sternly. “Kids today, jeez.”
The infant was happily slurping away at her bottle of milk, and paid Dorian absolutely no mind. Reluctantly—seeing as how the tough-guy approach didn’t seem to have much effect—Dorian dropped the act. “Don’t see why she’d even give you to me in the first place. I’m not a dad. Unless there was something wrong with you—and there couldn’t be, could there? You’re perfect…”
Dorian trailed off, realizing that he was lapsing into the same sappy talk that he had heard from Cian before. Oh, s**t. It was trying to brainwash him or something.
He jerked upright when the door swung open, but drooped again when he saw that it was Vittorio and Antha. His nerves were fraught at this point; he didn’t have the strength to engage in an argument with them both. The baby was half-way through the bottle already, and god, what if it needed to be burped? Dorian didn’t know how to do that. “At least she has a healthy appetite,” he muttered, as Antha laid her hand on his shoulder. And it made sense that she drank milk; wasn’t that an old custom, saucers of cream left out for the fairies? When he tried to pull the bottle away, one of her hands settled endearingly around his finger. Dorian was hopelessly lost.
Still, they had more problems than just figuring out what the baby ate.
“Antha, what are we going to do?” he whispered. “I could fight Julien all I want for legal—rights to the kid—“ That felt weird to say, like he was referring to a car or a property rather than a child. “—but I don’t think it’d work. All he has to do is pull out my record, and the courts will side in his favor. We can’t let anyone know—“ At that moment, the kitchen door swung open again, and Dorian’s eyes open wide at what he saw over Antha’s shoulder.
“Goddammit.”
Dorian was not a very intimidating figure, with a baby in his arms, but bless his heart, the expression on his face was a good attempt.
“Courtland, so help me—“ He’d forgotten himself. The baby’s eyes screwed up upon hearing his harsh tone, her mouth puckered, and she spat out the bottle. “No—goddammit—shh, shh!”
Dorian was utterly distracted from their conversation as he worked to soothe the baby, but it was effective; at least he was able to stop her from crying.
When Courtland approached anyways, Dorian stiffened like a porcupine, but at least he wasn’t foolhardy enough to have another outburst. “Just keep everyone out of the kitchen,” he whispered. “And I’ll forgive you anything. You can tell them I’m throwing up in here or engaged in devious sexual acts—actually, don’t tell them that, it would probably only bring them running. Just—” Dorian’s perfect brow creased, and he glanced down at the fairy child in his arms. “—I know we haven’t been getting along, but don’t take it out on her. Please.”
When he looked up again, Courtland was gone. He could heard the distant sounds of the party, starting back up again as he conducted it through the halls and away from the kitchen. Dorian let out a huge sigh of relief, but it was short-lived.
Now, it was Antha that he had to worry about, if the intent look on her face was anything to go by.
He allowed her to say her piece, although as she went on, his jaw got tighter and tighter, and he kept biting his lip. Throughout it all, he kept rocking the baby.
Finally, after she was finished, a terse silence filled the room. Dorian gave a sort of laugh and shook his head. “I’ve tried to explain my reasoning to you before. I’ve tried to tell everyone why I stay away from this house, from this family, and it never really sticks, does it? I suppose it’s hard for you to imagine. I’m not trying to be a villain, here. I just—I know my capacities. Being in this house makes me crazy. Maybe it’s different for all of you, but Christ—you have to realize, this lifestyle just isn’t normal. Most people don’t operate like this, Antha. They see the fam on special occasions and holidays, and nobody gets offended if someone falls out of touch for a season. I wanted to have a life that didn’t just—revolve around the latest family intrigue, or what horrible games the cousins were playing with mutual acquaintances, or getting blisteringly drunk so that I could ignore all of it enough to cope. And then getting blisteringly drunk or high just turned into a habit, which turned into a police record, which turned into this—“ He made wide eyes at the infant in his lap, which caused her to laugh. For just a second, the tension drained out of his shoulders, and Dorian’s face relaxed into a smile. “The cousins don’t understand. I wouldn’t come back if I wasn’t trying, but they just insist that I’m not trying enough, or that I’m doing it wrong. Honestly, I’m on the verge of giving up. What the ******** kind of city is this to raise a child in, anyways? The Talamasca will want her as a new specimen to lock away in their vaults, and Julien—we’ll be lucky if he doesn’t snap her up like the vulture he is.” He scuffed his boot against the floor, impatiently. “It’d be a good excuse to get out of here. I just wish I’d gotten her mom’s address or something.”
Looking down, he admitted, “Lily would be a good name for her. Lily Estella. Like the girl from the ‘Great Expectations’ books. ‘Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces—‘“ he trailed off. “You said, Antha, you promised you wouldn't let anyone take her away," he said, as if the thought had come urgently to mind once more. "I'll make my peace with the cousins, I promise, only swear on it."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Listening to Dorian, Antha gave a quiet sigh of immense relief, returning to her feet and wrapping her arms around Dorian, cradling his head to her chest. “I will always protect you,” she whispered, as fervently as she had when he’d been a small, helpless little golden-haired child, “And I will never, ever let anyone take her away. This is why we live the way we do, because we’re Mayfairs, and there’s always something, always some threat. We cling to each other for survival. Just trust our cousins, instead of treating them like enemies, and they’ll help you. And god knows, we understand. Vittorio’s a parent, and Cyrus, and me and Cian, and Courtland and Jack are going to be soon. Just trust us, we won’t let anyone take her from you, not ever.” With a parting kiss, she took out her phone and sent Vittorio a text with the girl’s name, murmuring as she did, “You can change it later, if you change your mind.”
When he called some five minutes later, she gave a sigh that washed away a great deal of the tension in her body. “She belongs to Dorian legally now, right? Tres bien. Get back here with a copy as quick as you can.” Sighing again as she hung up, she nodded at Dorian and said, “She’s yours. Whether or not anyone has the power to take her now…”
The door opened as if on cue, producing a cheerful Alistair followed by a stricken Lawrence, the latter’s eyes locking on the baby in astonishment. “And here I thought you were all absolute fools,” he muttered, shaking his head, “Dear god, it’s really a changeling baby.”
“It’s only a changeling if another child was switched out for the fairy,” Antha pointed out, as if it was terribly common knowledge, “Your fay lore needs work, Laurie.”
“I’m a lawyer!” he protested, succumbing easily to his usual stress and then dismissing it with a groan, “What do you want, Antha?”
“Tori’s made up a birth certificate---the real thing, perfectly legitimate---but we need to make sure no one can take her from Dorian.”
“Legally speaking,” the boy sighed, taking a seat and rubbing circles in his temple with his fingertips, “Dorian only has two immediate relatives, his mother and his brother, but since Mandy is dead and Vittorio isn’t likely to try and take the child, anyone else’s legal claim on her is tenuous, at best. Someone could try to claim him as an unfit parent, given his record, but…well, you know how it is Antha, everything boils down to money.” Turning to Dorian, he explained, “If someone did try, you’d have to go to court, but if you could prove that you can provide for her and you’ve changed your ways, they have nothing to go on. I would litigate with extreme confidence.”
“So we have all of our legal bases covered,” Antha murmured thoughtfully, “What we need to worry about now is…let’s call it unofficial opposition.”
“Julien and the Talamasca,” Lawrence guessed quietly, and she nodded.
“They might know already. The Talamasca, I mean. Even if they didn’t see what just happened, they at least know what that reporter knew, and even we figured it out from his information. Lying wouldn’t do any good anyway, the more mysterious she is, the more curious they’ll be.”
“And Julien?”
Antha had nothing to say to that for several minutes. She sat quietly, her eyes intense and distant, deep in thought. “Airi…” The boy, busy teasing his new niece by poking her nose, perked up to full attention, blinking curiously at his sister. “Everyone’s still here…right?”
“For the most part,” he murmured, trying to think back to any missing faces, “A few of the older aunts and uncles left. But why…” He trailed off, their eyes locking very seriously, the thoughts passing silently between them.
“There’s only one way to deal with Julien,” she concluded, as if at the end of a grueling discussion, sighing and rising from her chair, “And it’s not waiting for him to find out and blow his lid.” Turning to Dorian with her serious eyes, she held his face in her hands, murmuring direly, “Trust me.”
When she was gone, Alistair just smiled as cheerfully as possible, patting Dorian’s head. “It’ll be fine,” he reassured him, “There might be a fuss, but she is yours and that counts for a lot. And what can they do when they haven’t said a word about Antha and Cian raising their children? Antha’s rap sheet is twice as long and ten times as bad as yours.”
At the table, Lawrence groaned. “All you’re doing is making me nervous about the future…”
But Alistair shook his head. “Things change, you know? People change, especially when children are involved.” With that, at least, Lawrence was silenced.

Back in the parlor, where Courtland’s reckless behavior had proven quite the distraction, most of the family was glad to see Antha reappear, slipping across the room and dragging Courtland aside, both of them whispering fervently to one another. They were less relieved to see the look of shock on Jack’s face when he approached them, the way his brow furrowed and he fell so easily into those suspicious whispers. But no one took it very seriously---Antha and Courtland were always up to something.
Antha walked away after a few minutes, vanishing from the room, and Courtland kept himself busy reassuring Jack, smoothing the worry lines out of his forehead. The remaining cousins, curious to the point of driving themselves mad, were not quite brave enough to ask what was going on but did manage to get close enough to hear Jack murmuring, “I’m not worried about a scene, I just…I mean, is she going to be alright facing him head-on like this? That’s a lot of cards to just throw on the table.” It took most of them less than a minute to realize that Julien had vanished along with Antha.
None of them were surprised, therefore, some minutes later when a door slammed down the hall and Julien came trudging hastily down it, Antha at his heels, both still wrapped in an argument. “This is not over,” Antha was protesting, seizing his arm only to be shaken off.
“You’ve said enough,” he grumbled sharply, “You can make all the excuses for him you like, this is bigger than bailing him out of jail. There is a child on the line here, Antha, a life.”
“I’m not making excuses!” she hissed, grabbing his sleeve more firmly this time, halting him just short of the parlor. The cousins, naturally, had all come running at the first sign of trouble with Courtland at their head. “It’s his child, there’s nothing you can do to change that.”
“That may be!” Julien protested vehemently, so consumed with irritation that he hardly noticed they had an audience, “But that doesn’t change the facts. This is Dorian---the selfish, irresponsible prodigal child. Do you really think you can put him in charge of someone else’s life? A child?” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t comprehend her foolishness. “You can spend all your time protecting him from himself if you insist, but someone has to protect that child from him.”
“I’m not saying this to protect him!” she argued as he slipped from her fingers, briefly alarmed to realize the cousins were watching, Courtland standing firmly in the door to the dining room as if to block access to the kitchen, his eyes narrowed. Scowling that he was trying to brush her off so easily, Antha made one final grab for his attention, hissing demandingly, “Dad!”
A panic swept the cousins as Julien froze in place, an unsettling look flitting across his face as she stood her ground, glaring at him with steadfast, determined eyes. Antha had never referred to him as anything but ‘Uncle Julien’ in her life. Satisfied that she had his full attention, she stood up straight and continued, with ruthless conviction. “I’m not saying this for Dorian’s sake. I’m saying this as your daughter, who you abandoned for your own already ruined reputation. He wants to raise his daughter, and you’re not going to take her away from him. If you decide to try it, you will literally---literally---have to go through me with a knife.”
In the face of all this, Julien was left speechless and uncertain, standing still and staring at Antha like he wasn’t even sure he knew her. “This baby is still part of the family,” he said after a moment, slowly and quietly, “Dorian doesn’t even know how to take care of himself. How do you expect him to care for her?”
“Can you really say that?” Antha demanded, irritated all over again, “You haven’t even given him the chance! What the hell did I know about taking care of a child when I had two of them?! What does Courtland know?” In the background, Courtland paled. She’d hit too close to his quiet, buried insecurities for comfort. In truth, he was probably a great deal more intent on making sure no one tried to take Dorian’s child away because he was afraid it would pave the way for doing the same thing to him and his unborn son. “It’s one thing for you to stomp around here like a tyrant telling us how to live our lives, how to keep up the family façade for the rest of the world,” Antha concluded after a moment, brutally sincere, “But you can’t just go around trying to take someone’s child away from them. Have you even stopped for two seconds to think how unbelievably cruel that is? I don’t care who you are, or who you think you are, you don’t have that right.”
While Julien was still stunned and quiet, Cyrus cleared his throat, taking a few steps closer. “You can’t take his child,” he agreed, quietly but seriously, “Don’t think a day goes by that I don’t remember when Margaret left me and her mother tried to take Victoria. She said all the same things---that I wasn’t fit, that I couldn’t take care of her. I won’t let you do the same thing. It’s too cruel.”
“Speaking as another, or at least soon to be, father with a terrifyingly checkered past,” Courtland added with a sharp smile, “And quoting Evie, you’ll have to go through me with a knife if you want at that poor little girl.”
Vittorio piped up next, having returned in the midst of the argument. “The very thought appalls me, as a parent.”
“Even not as parents,” Armand said, folding his arms, “That’s truly despicable, Julien. Even for you.”
“We’ll fight you if we have to,” Pierce added with a cutting smile, “She’s family, we can’t just have you taking her away from her father.”
Finally, Julien threw his hands up, not exactly in surrender but to make them quiet, one hand moving quickly to his temple. “This is on all of you,” he stated after a moment, in his low, threatening tone, “If you really, really think that he can do this, then it’s on all of you. If anything happens, I will blame all of you.”
Though the cousins weren’t done---Julien could physically watch them banding together with the sort of mob mentality that made them dangerous---Suzette bustled through their ranks, casting a sharp eye across the entire group. “What’s this?” she demanded, “My sugar bear? With a child?” She shook her head, sighing. “Oh, I’ve been expecting this day for the longest time.” She continued shuffling along the hall, pausing only momentarily to smack her cane soundly across Julien’s legs, muttering as he yelped, “Trying to take a baby from its father…do you even listen to yourself when you speak, Julien?” Having said her piece, she clasped Antha’s arm, leaning on her for support, “Sugarplum, show me this little changeling.”
“Okay, once again,” Antha sighed, looking around her at everyone, “It’s not a changeling. Changelings replace other children.” But, obediently, she led the old woman into the kitchen, the rest of the cousins on their heels.
Suzette lost no time in leaning over the bundle in Dorian’s arms, exclaiming lowly, “Oh my! Look at those eyes.” Smiling gently, she tapped the infant’s chest beneath her wrappings, taking up her tiny hand and feeling her fingers curl. “The universe does have a sense of humor,” she sighed in conclusion, turning and laying an affectionate kiss on Dorian’s forehead, “This one won’t be an easy teenager. She’ll be a heartbreaker, all right. You’ll worry about her twice as much as we ever worried about you.”
Remy, lingering in the doorway with his niece and nephews, chuckled to himself, murmuring, “Sweet revenge…”
That was the moment that the cousins could take no more and they spilled into the kitchen, swarming around Dorian and the baby in his arms, each babbling over the other.
“Is she seriously a fairy?” Jack asked, eyes impossibly wide, “Can woodland critters sense her? Are they going to swarm the house? I can live with a mob of squirrels, but I don’t know about deer.”
“We can get her a pet bunny,” Courtland answered, grinning ear to ear, “It can be her familiar.”
“Do fairies have familiars?”
“But she’s only half fairy, right? How much fairy-ness does that actually translate into?”
“I was really hoping for a litter…”
“Alright,” Antha interrupted, making a gesture to keep them at bay, “Everyone settle down or you’re going to overwhelm the poor thing.”
Grinning, Pierce asked, “Do you mean the baby, or Dorian?”
“Both,” she sighed, turning and laying a gentle hand on Dorian’s shoulder, “Julien’s backed down, and no one else in the family has a chance if Julien let it go. No one’s going to take her from you.”
“I should think not!” Suzette scoffed, as if the very idea was ridiculous.
“But you can’t take her out of the house,” Antha continued, sternly, “Not until we have a handle on things. Just to be perfectly safe.”
“Does she have a name?” Lucy asked meanwhile, thoroughly unconcerned with their matters of business and instead smiling and waving at the baby, “She’s so pretty, she needs a pretty name.”
Speaking of which, Vittorio gave a start and took a folded piece of paper from his coat, laying it on the counter before Dorian. “A copy of her birth certificate,” he explained, “Keep it somewhere safe.”
“Tori,” Antha sighed, exasperated, “Did you really list her mother as ‘Jane Doe’? You have no imagination.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian appeared to have utterly given up hope by the time that the rest of the family was ushered into the kitchen. “You said you wouldn’t tell, Antha,” he moaned. There was no point in getting upset now; the cat was out of the bag. Honestly, he felt like a tantrum would have been appropriate for the situation—but that was Lily’s domain, now. The one thing that he asked was that she wouldn’t tell the family, and instead she brought the whole party into the kitchen.
Tucking the bundle of swaddling into his chest, he glared protectively at the cousins encircling him. “Don’t crowd her! She’s little! She needs air!”
Suzette didn’t pay any attention to his show of bravado, of course. Her wizened hands pried the child back to face the light, her honey-gold eyes blinking curiously up at those of an unfamiliar sky-blue, framed in wrinkles.
After a moment, the child cooed, gurgled, and waved a hand presumptuously up at the old woman.
Dorian blinked, and the stiff set of his shoulders softened.
“…she likes you.”
He hadn’t seen the stand that they’d all taken for him, in front of Julien. But his rusty powers were not so dull that he could not sense the warmth, the protective radiance, that emanated now from the crowd which now presented itself around him.
Dorian tucked his chin down and tried not to look embarrassed. He had a right to be, he supposed; it was embarrassing enough for any single parent, presenting their case to the family. Then again, the Mayfairs were used to dealing with…unusual parenting arrangements.
And, admittedly, they all seemed very…welcoming. It’d been a good year for babies in the Mayfair dynasty. If Dorian was a girl, he would have said they’d all been just waiting for him to come home knocked up. This was somehow worse. After all, he never expected any of his…conquests…to follow him home like this.
Liesse scooted forward to the the front of the crowd, although she had to nudge several cousins aside with the point of her elbows in order to do so. “May I hold her?” she asked, stretching out white-gloved hands towards Dorian.
At first, he was visibly reluctant. They had to coax the baby out of his hands like it was a bomb that might go off at the first jostle. “Careful, careful—!” he whispered. He knew better, but he couldn’t help himself. Liesse was good with babies; everyone admitted it. She would have died sooner than drop one, but still— the possibility was always there, and it set Dorian’s teeth on edge.
“Her name’s Lily.” he managed, anyways, for the benefit of all surrounding.
“Oh, the darling,” Liesse whispered, as Lily blinked quizzically up at the new face. “She’s so calm…!”
Rynn peeked to the side of his sister, watching the baby warily. He didn't know anything about babies, and was determined to keep it that way.
Still, even he couldn't deny that this one was cute, gurgling and kicking and rolling its eyes around at the crowd. It looked like it was a few months along, even as old as Sebastien and Vanessa--which was odd--still, Rynn reminded himself that time worked differently for the fae. Perhaps this was just a side-effect.
Dorian’s fingers were twitching from the effort of not grabbing his daughter back. He gave Antha a mournful little glance to the side. “Is it always like this?” he asked, plaintively.
Cian, at the back of the crowd, gave Antha a sort of haphazard shrug, then answered Dorian. “It depends on how well you trust whoever’s holding her.” It hadn’t been a question that needed to be fulfilled with an answer, but…Dorian was new to this. He seemed like he needed some reassurance.
Not that it had any impact.
Dorian was sat straight up again, spine as stiff as a ramrod, head cocked slightly to one side.
He could hear the sirens singing, faintly, in the distance, again.
“She’s back,” he whispered, only slightly off-color. “She’s—“
Liesse looked up from her armful, a little startled by the sudden shift in the father’s mood.
“She?”
Dorian didn’t give her an answer. He had already bolted out of the kitchen, setting the door swinging behind him.
If anyone had been quick enough to see him dart out into the yard, they might have seen the look of distress on his face, the trail of trampled flowerbeds which he left behind. Michael might be furious, but Dorian didn’t care—there were more pressing matters to attend to.
In the street again, the siren song was louder than ever. The sun was almost setting over the trees, casting dim blue shadows in its wake, and the sidewalk was deserted.
“Show yourself,” he whispered. It was a request at first, then a command. “Show yourself!”
Still, though the siren-song swelled, no dun-brown woman materialized out of the grey tree trunks to reveal her purpose, to give him an explanation.
Dorian was almost ready to go back inside, when he finally turned around, and found a woman standing in his shadow.
He could not see her straight-on, only out of the corner of his vision. She flickered like a waning candle-flame. Her skin was the color of milk, and her hair billowed around her like a great, indigo cloak; it might as well have been her only garment, for all that could be seen of what she wore underneath. But all other detail fell away, meaningless, when Dorian caught her eye, and was dragged into it. He thought he might drown in that blue, the cerulean shade of a twilight sky.
And then he saw that she carried something in her arms, a white-shrouded bundle, the edges of her blanket as ragged as spider’s webs…
“No, no, no.” he murmured, but the words felt thick and stifled in his mouth, as though he was choking on them. The woman smiled, her teeth gleaming sharp and white against blue-black lips, and held out her child.
Without warning, without thinking, Dorian’s arms raised automatically to accept it, as though pulled by strings.
“Who are you?” he whispered. “Why is this happening?”
The woman had no reply, other than to stroke back her hair, and tuck it behind a pointed ear. Her smile was all sweet nightshade.
After she had gone, and the world had ceased to ripple around him, Dorian stood blank-faced in the street. The bundle in his arms was crying. He was almost afraid to look down.
Ok, now it was time to throw a tantrum. Taking a deep breath, Dorian prepared his forthcoming wail.
“Anthaaaaaaaa!!!”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Dorian hardly had to call, Antha was only moments behind him in the same panicked fashion as earlier, and Courtland was only seconds behind her. “Oh dear lord,” she groaned, seeing the child in his arms, and then said nothing until she had dragged him safely back inside to the kitchen, where the cousins made a collective uproar to see a second strange child. But Antha was having none of it, depositing him back in his seat and irritably slapping him in the back of the head. “Stop following fairies into the street!” she hissed, her fingers clutched on his shoulder to keep him in place, “I’m still not convinced one of them won’t try to eat you! Do I have to stuff your ears with cotton?!” But then she lost her steam, the anxiety flooding out of her with the next sigh. “Uncle Michael, could you please warm up another bottle.”
Vittorio, brows furrowed at he stared at the new child, muttered a note to himself: “We’re going to need a second wet nurse…”
“Is that where all this milk is coming from?” Courtland demanded, eyes gone wide like he’d never thought of it, “Are you just hanging out at the hospital milking people?”
“Formula isn’t good for newborns,” Antha murmured, taking a seat beside Dorian with her chin propped on her fist, staring down at the new baby with infinitely tired eyes, “And I wasn’t pregnant long enough to develop it myself.”
Vittorio, scowling, pushed Courtland away from himself, the latter having come within an inch of his face, staring intently. “I’m not milking anyone! It’s standard maternity ward protocol.”
“Dorian,” Antha said after a moment, thoughtfully lacing her fingers, “I assume you weren’t perfectly in your senses, but how many girls did you hook up with at this party? I’m just trying to plan the rest of the day before we send Jacob for cribs.”
“This is okay,” Alistair said meanwhile, cheerful as could be, patting Dorian’s shoulder in an attempt to calm him, “It’s fine. There are like, a dozen capable adults living in this house. We can take care of four babies.”
“Five,” Courtland reminded him, “Adair is due in three months.”
“Or more,” Antha murmured, ostensibly about the possibility of more fairies showing up, but in the quiet, well-protected place in the back of her mind, she was thinking of her own child that she was still carrying.
“It’ll be fine,” Michael said, echoing Alistair as he ruffled Dorian’s hair, “We’ve still got them outnumbered. The nursery might be a little crowded, but…well, if orphanages can manage it…”
Lucy, hanging onto Antha’s shoulder as she watched the babies, smiled and said cheerfully, “This si the strangest wedding reception I’ve ever been to.”
But Courtland just shrugged, unperturbed by what would’ve been a disaster to any other newlywed. “It’s not a family function without some sort of crisis.” And then, leaning over the newest baby with a smile, added, “At least this crisis is cute. Yes, you’re a cute little, tiny sprite.”
“We need another name,” Vittorio pointed out, “If I’m going to draw up another birth certificate. Boy or girl?”
“Let’s just hold off on the birth certificate for a minute,” Antha answered hastily, “Just in case. Do you want to be running back and forth to the hospital all night?” And then, barely managing to hide the stricken look on her face, excused herself as she flitted out of the room with, “I need to check on Vanessa and Sebastien.”
Alistair, deeming it crucial that no one else follow her, likewise excused himself with, “I’ll help!” and then chased after her upstairs and into the bathroom to hold her hair while she suffered her morning sickness.
Jack, meanwhile, had taken Lily from Liesse and was thoughtfully examining her. “Lily…didn’t we have a Lily in the family?”
“Lilian,” Suzette corrected him, “Lilian Bracey, Stefan’s wife.”
“Our grandmother,” Armand added, motioning at Cyrus and Dolly Jean to indicate the plural.
“Oh yeah…” he murmured with recognition, smiling at the baby in his arms, “I was really little when she died. But I remember she had pretty, fair hair like you.”
“It suits her,” Courtland agreed, peering over his shoulder, “Little Lily. And if she’s as mischievous as the rest of us when she grows up, we can call her Lily-of the valley.”
“Tiger Lily,” Jack countered.
“Cobra Lily,” Pierce said, jumping in.
“Moon Lily if she’s terribly sweet.”
“There are far too many kinds of lilies in the world,” Lawrence sighed, rolling his eyes at the exchange, “Instead of nicknaming her, maybe we should help Dorian think of a name for his second child?”
It was the single worst moment for the doorbell to ring, considering who was on the other side of it. So naturally, it did, and Jacob gave a little yelp of shock when he opened the door. He didn’t even greet the visitor, only hovered anxiously in the door and called, at the top of his lungs, “Antha!” It did not bode well that he had dropped the formalities, referring to her by her first name, but Antha had run back down the stairs before the cousins could properly investigate.
Only Courtland had glanced down the hall and then hastily withdrawn, groaning, “Oh ********, what is Aaron Lightner doing here?”
“The Talamasca don’t waste any time, do they?” Lawrence sighed, shaking his head and returning calmly to his feet, “Everyone stay here and try to keep the babies quiet.” He alone exited the kitchen, going to see what the Talamascan wanted alongside Antha.
“Which one is he again?” Lucy asked, drumming her fingers against her lips in thought.
“Shoulder-length blonde hair, cold blue eyes,” Jack said, motioning vaguely about how tall he was, “Considerably attractive, smokes nonstop. In charge of the division that spies on our family.” When Lucy shrugged, blinking in confusion, the boy sighed and added, “He and Antha used to have angry hookups. Like…’I hate you so much that I absolutely have to ravish you this very moment’ hookups.”
A light in her eyes went off, accompanied by a salacious little grin. “Ohhhh…I remember him. You never knew if they were going to start tearing each other’s throats out with their bare hands or just start ripping each other’s clothes off in public. It was intensely entertaining.” And then, her smile growing a little more playful, she turned ran towards the door, calling after herself, “I’m just going to say hello!”
Pierce, a hand on his forehead and eyes squeezed irritably shut, said flatly, “I’ll kill him. I don’t see any other option, I just have to kill him before he sleeps with her. That’s it.”
“Come now,” Michael said, pouting slightly, “Aaron’s my protégé, you can’t kill him.”
“Your protégé in spying on our family,” Courtland pointed out, busy petting Dorian’s hair as adamantly as a cat. He at least seemed to think it was a soothing gesture. “I say go for it, Pierce. If we don’t kill the head of the Mayfair investigation branch every so often, they start connecting the dots, and that’s just bad business for us.”
“As irritating as the little stalkers are, I’m not sure it justifies murdering them…”
“You think they’re not going to get worse?” Courtland countered, eyes narrowing. He was unusually serious at the moment, which the cousins all recognized as a bad sign, “Antha’s kept the Talamasca in line because she was sleeping with their supreme leader, or whatever the hell they call David. And I’m pretty sure she was blackmailing him about sleeping with her when she was underage.”
“It was more emotional blackmail,” Armand corrected him knowingly, “He’s a fine, noble sort of man, he didn’t react well to being seduced by a psychotic teenager. She just pounced on his guilt until he couldn’t bear hassling us.”
“Point is, they’re going to become unmanageable again. We have to remind them that Talamascans tend to disappear when they start prying into our business. I think we’ve still got one of them rolled up in a carpet in the attic from Marguerite’s days…”
The conversation ended abruptly as Antha and Lawrence returned, bitterly embroiled in an argument. “I didn’t know he’d show up,” she was hissing in her own defense, shooting him a sharp glare, “I told Atticus tomorrow, and I figure they’d send a lackey to deliver them.”
“He saw the fairy, Antha. This is not ideal.”
“No, he sensed the fairy. There’s a very large difference in that he doesn’t know what she was doing here. Our house is a mecca of supernatural energy, strange creatures tend to come take a look at it. And we have very nice gardens.”
“Wait, Evie, he was making a delivery?” Courtland cut in, brows furrowing, “From Atticus?” Antha sighed, exchanging a look with him, and all at once Courtland brightened like a Christmas tree, throwing up his arms and squealing, “They’re here!” before flying out of the room.
While most of the cousins looked perplexed, Lawrence rapidly turned on Antha with narrowed eyes. “Antha, was that…?” He paled drastically, his hands tensing at his sides. “Tell me I was not just carrying….” He trailed off, and since she could tell him no such thing, Antha folded her arms and glanced elsewhere, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Why the hell would you have them brought---Courtland, put that down!”
The boy paused at the foot of the stairs, peering curiously at Lawrence through the door to the kitchen. In direct contrast to Lawrence’s reaction, he seemed happy as a clam, brimming with cheerful enthusiasm. The cousins suspected it had something to do with the large, plain black box clutched in his arms, but were understandably too terrified to ask questions. “What’s the matter, Laurie?” he asked, genuinely confused as he stepped into the doorway. Lawrence took an automatic step back, eyes trained intently on the box in his arms. But Courtland forgot him quickly enough, turning and continuing back up the stairs.
For her part, Antha just held up a hand and told her cousins flatly, “Don’t ask questions. Just…don’t ask.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian appeared to be taking the day hard.
“Wait!” he shouted, his voice rising with panic as the woman faded out of sight. “Come back! I’m not ready for another one yet!”
He received no response, other than a rather cruel giggle from somewhere just behind his left shoulder.
For a moment, Dorian swung about, glancing up and down the street as though he expected the mother to rematerialize. When it became apparent that no such relief was coming, he finally looked down at his unexpected ‘delivery’.
Oh, god, another girl. He didn’t know how to deal with these, why did they keep leaving them with him?
This one bore a distinct resemblance to her mother. She was pale as milk, so pale hat he could see the veins in her wrist as she rubbed her eyes. Her hair was black, with the sheen and silky texture of a cat’s, and just long enough to reach the tips of her delicately pointed ears. Dorian could not see a speck of himself in her, until she opened her eyes; blue as cornflowers! Not the wan, pale blue that was usually associated with the eyes of children, but a rich, full, summery color. It was as though each mother had made certain that he could not deny his hand in the making of their child.
When Antha darted out and seized his arm, he gave her a look of long suffering.
“They brought me another one,” he moaned. Inside the blanket, tiny feet kicked in mutual distress.
He seemed to be in somewhat of a daze as they brought him back into the house, walking as though he barely remembered to bring his feet along on the verge of each step.
“How did they even know that I’d be here today?” he muttered. “Were they just following me this whole time?”
Inside, Antha and the cousins clustered around, and sat him down at the table. Someone in the crowd had the foresight—or perhaps it was simply thoughtlessness—to retrieve one of the innumerable bottles of liquor from around the party and leave a neatly-poured glass of whiskey for him on the table. At least, he assumed it was for him. God knew that he needed it, if any god was paying attention. Then again, the Good Neighbors and gods didn’t tend to get along, from what Dorian remembered of his Celtic lore.
Falling back into his chair in relief, Dorian blinked up at Antha’s question. “…there might have been an orgy. I don’t remember, ok? A lot happened that night, even if I don’t take the substance abuse into consideration…”
Liesse scooted forward to look over his shoulder, then sucked in her cheeks. “Another one? Another one? Where are they coming from?”
“Hell if I know,” Dorian mumbled, completely at his wit’s end. “It’s something to do with ‘when a mommy and daddy love each other very much’. Ask Rynn when you’re older.”
Liesse wrinkled her nose. “Oh, I know all about that, Dorian. Don’t be crass.”
It was all Rynn could do not to exclaim ‘You do?’ and stare in horror.
If Liesse was offended, she didn’t show it, happy to jostle Lily comfortingly while the hubbub around her ebbed and flowed.
Even though privately he thought that calling some members of the house ‘capable adults’ might be exaggerating a smidge, Dorian didn’t protest. He was looking at the new addition to what he was starting to suspect might be a litter. Names, he needed a name. “Belladonna?” he mumbled. “That’s a flower, isn’t it? Flowers are nice. It’ll match with ‘Lily’, too.”
“Not exactly flattering, though. Isn’t Belladonna poisonous?” Cian asked, rubbing his chin. Dorian shrugged. “It’s pretty, though. Doesn’t that make it a good name for a woman?”
“She’s your daughter,” Cian pointed out. “Not just a woman.”
“Well, I didn’t know about her until five minutes ago, so I’m forming attachments as fast as I can, OK? It’s gonna take a while.”
“Hmm.”
Cian’s easy-going smile twisted into something vaguely judgmental.
“Well, work fast. We can always call Julien back—“
“No.”
Dorian twisted around to glare at Cian over his shoulder. “Don’t even joke about that.”
Cian laughed anyways, pleased to have provoked such an expression out of the haughty Dorian. “Don’t worry, Antha would never—“
Elsewhere in the house, Jacob’s voice rang through the halls.
“Antha!”
…and the subject of their discussion bolted out of the room like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
“We’re going to need to give her something to drink after all this is over,” Cian sighed. “This has been a hell of a day.” He considered asking rhetorically whether she ever stopped rushing about fixing things, but he didn’t like the inevitable answer. Rynn gave a small groan at the prospect of more liquor. Thank god he didn’t have Dorian to drink for, at least. For a second, he wondered if he should follow her, before remembering that the party-goers and toast-makers had all primarily relocated to the kitchen around him.
Cian didn’t hear Rynn’s incomprehensible complaint. He was too busy listening to the description of Aaron Lightner, his face slowly growing serious as they described him.
“This Lightner guy sounds like quite a card. I’d like to meet him.”
As if utterly by chance, Cian wandered to the doorway after Lucy had passed through it. Then, suddenly remembering, he popped his head back in. “But, Pierce? I think I might have dibs on killing him if he ravishes Antha in our foyer. Even if he is Michael’s protégé. OK? Grand.”
With that, and a rustle of stiffly starched fabric, Cian disappeared into the hallway again. Liesse was beginning to give Rynn a worried look; even the placid Lily had started to squirm in her arms. Dorian’s foot tapped restlessly beneath the child in his lap, staring at his daughter with matching eyes. Unusually for a baby of her apparent age, Belladonna had a peculiar focus to her gaze, steadily and unflinchingly meeting her father’s quizzical stare.
“I don’t even know where I’m going to keep them,” he sighed, getting to his feet at last and readjusting the bundle of swaddling-cloth. “********.”
“Don’t curse,” Liesse reminded him. “You’re a father now! You have to set a good example.”
Dorian bit back a sharp retort that would have contained several choice curse words, and nodded slowly, trying to appear agreeable.
When Antha returned, he breathed a sigh of relief. Dorian didn’t deal with girls very well—women: yes. Girls: no. Liesse unnerved him. She was cute in the same way as a small, fluffy animal was. Besides Antha, he dealt with most women by flirting with them, and you couldn’t exactly do that to someone who reminded you of a bunny rabbit.
“What’d he say?” he demanded, even before she could explain. Then, as Courtland fled in apparent good spirits, Dorian’s expression turned to confusion. “…I’m not going to ask what Court’s doing with the Talamasca that puts him in position for Atticus to send him wedding gifts and Aaron Lightner to play delivery boy,” he said flatly. “Just promise me that it doesn’t…bite or explode or anything. That’s the last thing we need, tonight.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“It doesn’t do anything,” she promised hastily, seemingly struggling to find words without giving herself away, “It’s just…something I gave to Atticus for safekeeping that I wanted back before…” Before she died and no one else in the family could convince him to give it back, but she left that part unsaid. And it had really been for Courtland’s benefit---it had hardly occurred to her before he’d asked, she had too much else on her mind---but she couldn’t say that either, not without giving it away.
When Jacob returned anxiously to the kitchen, Antha cast him a tired gaze, gesturing at Dorian’s children and ordering, “Jacob darling, I need you to go buy two cribs. If any more show up, we can double them up. Just…get ones that are already put together, or get them to put it together at the store, or something. We’ve already put two of them together and I’m not putting anyone through that again. We need---” She blew a sigh out through her lips, stirring her hair as she sat thinking, “Oooh, let’s see, more clothing, bottles, blankets, basic supplies…and for the love of god, no more stuffed animals. There’s a mountain of them already.” The boy smiled and nodded, shooting her a very quick salute and turning for the door. “And Jacob---” He paused, poking his head back in the door. “Take a good look around the neighborhood when you drive away, even in the cars parked on the street. If you see Aaron lingering in the area, let me know.”
“Roger,” he murmured, a little uncertainly, and then took his leave, his old truck audibly thundering to life in the driveway.
“We have got to get him a new truck,” Armand commented, wincing at the sound, “That one’s going to break down on him at any moment.”
“He won’t let us buy things for him,” Antha pointed out, as if they’d had the conversation a number of times in the past, “He’ll hardly take leftovers. And frankly, he can get one on his own. Do you have any idea what we pay him?”
“A king’s ransom for household chores,” Vittorio murmured, almost amused.
“He keeps our secrets,” Antha said sharply, “Loyalty has to be rewarded, and Jacob is loyal to the marrow of his bones.”
It seemed to her cousins that Antha was unusually taxed by this point, even considering the burden of Dorian’s ordeal. Of course, only Alistair and Rynn knew what was really weighing on her mind, and her twin thought she was actually holding it together remarkably well, considering. The others, as they usually did, found their own ways to express their concern without asking, because really, they lived in mortal terror of Antha’s secrets. There were some things you were just better off never knowing, and Antha seemed to know all of those things.
Wordlessly, Malakai set of teacup of something fragrant and vaguely milky in front of her, pushing it pointedly in her direction, and she gave a small start at being interrupted from her thoughts. Beside her, Pierce wrinkled his nose distastefully. “I hate rose milk tea. It’s just not right, drinking dairy and garden flowers…”
Malakai went unperturbed. Antha was his little sister, he knew better than anyone that it was her favorite, and was glad to see her shoulders untense at least slightly with her first sip. “Belladonna is too long,” she hummed thoughtfully after a moment, her brain visibly switching gears, “You can name her whatever you want, but I’m going to call her Bella.”
“We can call her whatever we want,” Vittorio began sternly, “The more important question by far is how we’re going to hide what she, and Lily, are.”
But Antha shook her head, as if it wasn’t really a problem. “They look human, and their power isn’t so drastically different that we can’t pass them off as just witches. We just have to hide them for a little while, so no one connects it with the fairies showing up here, and stick with the basic story. Dorian knocked some girl up and she gave over custody of them as soon as they were born. Women do it all the time, have a Mayfair child and then run away. Witch babies are disturbing to them, they can’t handle it. All we have to do is not make a big deal out of it, act…” She paused, casting a gaze over her cousins and lowly muttering the word even as she realized how ridiculous it sounded, with this group, “…normal.”
Lucy, pouting thoughtfully, shook her head. “That’s just awful. And here some of us are just dying for a beautiful, magical little Mayfair baby.”
“No one in their right mind is ever going to call you a normal woman, Luce,” Antha said, and then added in a murmur, “Showing up at our door, asking if we’re witches…should’ve punched you …”
“You terrified me witless,” Lucy responded, in an affectionate little purr, “Isn’t that enough?”
“Clearly not, the way you’re still hanging around.”
“Oh shush,” Lucy said, just as affectionately, “You can’t complain, I’m your only friend.”
Armand, brows furrowing, was the only one to voice opposition, “I don’t think that’s---”
“Excluding family and business,” Lucy added hastily, shooting him a sharp glare. Clearly, she was jealously protective of her self-ascribed title, and she would suffer no argument on the matter.
Sighing, Antha pushed her empty teacup aside and rose to her feet. “Cian darling, can you take Dorian to the nursery and help him get the babies settled? They can borrow some of Vanessa’s clothes for the time being, and her crib. She just cries when we take her out of Sebastien’s anyways...” Going to the door, she motioned at Vittorio to follow. “Come on Tori, we have urgent business to attend to.”
The doctor groaned, trudging begrudgingly after her up the stairs. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the delivery from the Talamasca, does it?”
It didn’t take long for him to find out what the business was, as well as what Atticus had sent Antha. Entering Marguerite’s lab, he found Courtland busy happily unpacking the mysterious black boxes, six in total, removing the plain exterior to reveal sealed jars containing perfectly preserved, if terribly deformed, infant corpses. They were the exact opposite of Marguerite’s corpses, shoddily preserved specimens that had once been perfect, all of which he had pushed to the very corner of the room, out of the way. He had already lined three of the jars up on their own special shelf at eye level, two of them with nameplates across the front---Tristan and Violetta.
“A designee…” Vittorio muttered thoughtfully to himself, observing the latter of the jars while Antha shuffled through papers on the operating table.
“For about five minutes,” she said haltingly, casting it a fleeting glance.
Courtland, lacking Antha’s vague, reverent sort of unease, went over and placed his hands on either side of the jar, smiling at the disfigured little thing. “She has my eyes, doesn’t she? And those golden curls. She would have been so lovely, don’t you think?”
Except for the malformed limbs, Vittorio thought, but carefully held his tongue. He was a doctor, he only had to glance at the infant to see all the little deformities that had made her survival so impossible, but he didn’t dare mention them to Courtland. The boy was morbidly happy with his dead children, there was no point in antagonizing him about it.
“Court,” Antha called, straightening out the sheaf of papers in her hands, “May we have the room, please? This is a rather sensitive topic.”
“Not about my babies?” he demanded rapidly, turning to narrow his eyes at her, but she shook her head and he reluctantly took his leave, Antha locking the door behind him.
“You realize this is completely ********?” Vittorio asked the moment he was gone, pointing at the jars on the shelf.
“I’m well aware,” she sighed, casting them one brief, pained glance, “But he wanted them here. Far be it from me to tell him how to grieve. But Nicolae will probably bury Ezra, that was always what he wanted. More importantly---” She thrust the papers in his hands, letting him cast a critical eye over them.
“Marguerite’s notes? Antha, what is all of this?”
“I’m pregnant,” she stated bluntly, leaning against the operating table with arms crossed, “And I need the child out of me and somewhere that he can continue to grow immediately.”
“Ah.” That was it, no more expression of surprise than if she’d told him she wanted a new machine for the hospital, his eyes focusing a little more seriously on the papers in his hands now. “She was working on a few methods, it seems…”
“I think she put most of her effort into the incubator,” she noted, picking out one of the pages, “But I don’t like the idea, it seems like a particularly long-term risk. A transplant seems like our best option---here, see?”
“It’s an interesting theory,” he agreed, slowly and uncertainly, “I’ve read something similar before. But the trouble is attaching the embryo to---”
“Here, look at this,” Antha cut in, flipping to the next page, “It needs work, but the basic idea is brilliant. Disturbing, but brilliant.”
Vittorio was silent for several moments, intently reading and studying the ancient sketches. “Maybe. It’s a massive risk even if we can get this perfectly right, but in your situation…”
“It’s the best shot we have,” Antha finished for him, her eyes sharp.
Almost simultaneously, the two glanced up at the floating corpses lined up on the shelf, with an eerie feeling that they were being watched. “They do give that impression…” Antha murmured uncomfortably, forcing her gaze back to the papers.

Downstairs, the moment Antha was out of earshot, Pierce turned intently on Malakai, demanding, “You saw it, right? That look in her eyes. I know you did.” And then, turning to Dorian, said sternly as an aside, “I hope you know what a disgusting thing she just did for your sake.”
Malakai said nothing, but could not quite disguise the guilty look on his face. Jack answered instead, in a stunned tone. “She called him ‘dad’. Dad. Like he’s not the person she hates most in the world.”
“She’s always called him a sperm donor,” Armand murmured, gaze distant, “She always said ti didn’t matter, that it was no big deal, that it could’ve been anyone. But…I mean is it even possible---”
“I wouldn’t have believed it before today,” Pierce agreed seriously, “I never even considered it, she never let on.”
“Never let on what?” Jack shouted, looking between them in confusion.
It was Malakai who answered, quietly. “That she actually thinks of him as her dad.”
“It’s a terrible thing to imagine,” Armand lamented, still mulling the idea around, “For her sake. I mean it’s one thing to fight with Uncle Julien the tyrant, but to be in the perpetual bloody war she is with him, all the time secretly acknowledging him as her father…that’s tragic.” He made a small sound of sympathy, but then just as quickly looked up, as casually as ever. “But it is a great idea for a book.”
“Will you be serious for two seconds!” Pierce hissed, smacking him in the back of his head, “No wonder she’s so upset, saying something like that out loud. Have a little sympathy!”
“I have the greatest sympathy for sweet Evie,” he assured him, insulted that he would suggest otherwise, “But I don’t know what you expect me to do. She won’t admit it. She’d probably explode if we even insinuated it.”
“You can’t say things to her directly,” Malakai jumped in, speaking as the resident expert, “It makes her feel…out of control.”
“Evie’s emotions are like a Rubik’s cube…” Jack mused, his face in his hands on the counter with an overwhelmed expression.
“Hey.” Poking his head in the door, Alistair gave the cousins a stern look, pointing out, “There’s still a party going on in here, you know. You can’t leave me and Courtland alone with the aunts. They’re trying to fatten me up.”
Collectively sighing, the whole group eventually rose to their feet, shuffling back into the hall. “You are terribly slender,” Armand noted, pinching Alistair’s arm as he passed by, “That girlish figure is going to stop being cute in a couple of years.”
“I’m delicate,” the boy protested, following after him with a rare pout that was strongly reminiscent of Antha, “Give me three months, I’m joining the soccer team.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian glared.
“I know you, Antha. If it wasn’t a big deal, then why the secrecy?—oops, no, wait—must be! Otherwise you’d just throw it in Satis House to collect rot and dust.”
Belladonna—or ‘Bella’ as Antha seemed fit to christen her—was beginning to squirm, and mewl, at the sound of her father's aggravated tone. Dorian readjusted the child as best as he could, but it was to little avail.
Maybe Antha was right. They could just—sweep all of this under the rug, like she’d swept all the evidence of that Talamasca delivery away. They could excuse Bella’s ears, Lily’s eyes, as a mishap courtesy of the Mayfair demon-genes.
Bella’s cries turned into squeaks of alarm when Dorian attempted to fold the blankets in around her cheeks, but the warmth seemed to comfort her, and she quieted in a few moments.
“You’re a natural,” encouraged Liesse. Lily hadn’t thrashed once in her arms, and her tiny, white-lashed eyelids were even beginning to flutter closed. “Just keep rocking her.”
Cian folded an arm around Dorian. “There’s a crib for that, don’t worry. Although your foot will get sore from keeping it going. Let me take her for a little while.”
Dorian turned grateful eyes on Antha’s husband— “Appreciated.”—and handed Bella up to him.
At first, the child squinted, blinked, and opened her mouth to wail—
Cian pressed a finger to her mouth, and remembered when he had been mute.
“Shh,” he whispered, comfortingly, imparting the memory of silence in a spell.
Bella’s mouth worked, and her blue eyes filled with errant tears, but no sound issued forth to disturb the rest of the gathering. For the moment, Dorian breathed a sigh of relief.
“Luce, I hate to break it to you, but a cute little magical witch baby is absolutely the last item that should be on your wish list.” he sighed. “Sure, they look sweet now, but wait until they get old enough to start toddling around, getting sticky fingerprints all over the artifacts, fumbling their first spells…we’ll be lucky if this next generation doesn’t drive us all to the brink of madness—”
“What Dorian’s trying to say is, I think, enjoy them while they’re little and manageable,” interrupted Cian. “Isn’t that right?”
Dorian wrinkled his nose, but decided that Cian’s interpretation was a bit less offensive than his own. “Exactly.”
Cian exited the room, and headed upstairs to the nursery, trying to avoid eye contact with the various party attendees milling about the halls. A few tried to stop Cian in order to coo over the baby, but they were skillfully deflected with smiles and nods and allusions to ‘the poor sleepy thing’ and how tired she was after all the excitement.
Rynn looked after his brother, reluctantly wondering if he should follow, and then stumbled as Liesse edged past him with little Lily in her protective grasp. “You stay down here,” she whispered. “Keep an eye on Antha, okay? She trusts you.”
Something weird was going on. Liesse was too tactful to mention it aloud, but she was sure that Rynn had picked up on it, as well.
From the look that he gave her, and the slow nod, she wasn’t mistaken.
Antha might have liked to pretend that she had called upon the various favors of the Talamasca simply for Courtland’s pleasure, but Rynn wasn’t so sure. Whatever had been in that black box, it wasn’t a wedding present. The Talamasca didn’t give up their secrets just for the sake of a little celebration, and judging by how eager Courtland had been to receive his gift…well, it seemed a fair assessment to assume that he wouldn’t have been able to withdraw the items by dint of his own personal authority.

In the kitchen, as the space began to clear, Dorian worked his neck back and forth, hearing his spine crack like an old man. Christ. Was this really how his reign as king of the nightlife would end? In this house, surrounded by cheerfully inebriated family members, faeries on the sidewalk and infants in his arms?
It had to happen to even the best of them sometime, he figured. He just never thought it would happen to him.
Draining his tumbler of whiskey, Dorian sighed as the burning liquor travelled down his throat.
“I know. I know.” he answered Pierce, off-handedly at first. Then, his expression turned thoughtful, and a little sobering. “But, Pierce…”

“You have to admit, it was a long time coming.”
“You don’t think that—maybe—she just didn’t want to leave any loose ends, do you? Unfinished business? We all know what that leads to.”
Rynn stiffened a little. He knew what Dorian referred to.
“She’s already got unfinished business, Dor.” he pointed out, raising his eyes in allusion to the nursery above, where even now his brother was rocking the grumbling infants back to sleep. “And it isn’t the sort that can be tied up as simply as all that. She paid a rather extravagant price for you and yours, with her pride.” Now it’s your duty to return the favor.
The latter statement wasn’t said aloud, but it was implied from the scathing look that Rynn gave the blonde aesthete.
Dorian’s cheeks heated. He wasn’t a frequent blusher, like Rynn, but when he got drunk enough—or angry enough—his skin was too fair to conceal it.
“I didn’t ask for this,” he said, hotly. “Hell, I could call all of this a horrible mistake—but I won’t, because at least now something good might come out of it.”
Rynn shrugged. “It’s all just words. ‘Dad’, ‘father’, ‘pops’—pretend that your part in all of this was a mistake, if you like, but don’t fuss about it later if you end up getting referred to as ‘sperm donor’ by your own children.”
It was unusually harsh of Rynn to take such a tone, especially to a man who was several years his elder.
Then again, his words rang of the boy he had once been, when he and Antha had originally met at the Talamasca: cold, beautiful, bright as a diamond. And it seemed to do the trick. Dorian settled back into his chair, when a moment before he had looked to be on the verge of bolting.
“I won’t be blamed for it, anyways.” he said, pouring himself another glass of whiskey. “It’s been a long time coming. They might never really reconcile with one another, but at least it’s a step. Right?”
Rynn shrugged, not knowing what to say. Alistair had just popped his head in the door, and he was a little distracted. Dorian followed his gaze, gave a faint chuckle, and offered up his glass. “You look like you need this more than I do. A little liquid courage, hmm?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For the most part, Pierce listened to the exchange with a strange look on his face, somewhere between disgust and unease. He took his phone out once, his fingers flying across the keys, and then had hardly put it away when Alistair popped in and then back out.
“Dorian…” he said, lowly, like he didn’t even know how to say what he wanted to. But eventually he shook his head and said, with just a hint of sympathy that obviously wasn’t meant for Dorian, rising calmly to his feet, “Antha’s the only person in the world that’s on your side. Would it kill you to just be grateful?” Heading for the door, he paused long enough to fling one arm around Rynn’s shoulders in a brief embrace---he was absolutely swelling with affection for the boy at the moment, if a little disturbed to realize that Rynn was acting a hell of a lot more like family than Dorian---and then let him go. “Vittorio left a minute ago,” he added, like he’d just remembered, pausing in the door, “Antha came down after him, but I guess she left after she heard you.” He had been watching her from his seat, barely visible in the hallway, as her steps faltered and she stood still on the bottom stair with ears pricked, eyes darkening, before turning and retreating back up them.
He wanted to ask what was so horribly wrong. He knew Antha, to the bottom of her complicated heart, fractured in pieces of shadow and dazzling light. It was the effect of that which Dorian so loathed, the deep and unbreakable bond between the whole lot of them in which he refused to share. And so Pierce and the other cousins knew with unshakeable certainty that she bore some terrible burden she would not share and they were dying to ask what. More than what had happened with Julien, more than the ordeal with Dorian, they could just feel something deeply, irrevocably wrong. But he didn’t dare, none of them did. Even if he wasn’t afraid of the answer, he knew Antha better than that, he knew she wouldn’t tell in the same way Jack did, for the same reasons. And he was worried sick for her.
He had hardly left the room when the back door slid open and closed, Nicolae more or less appearing in the middle of the kitchen and casting a critical eye around. His gaze landed briefly on Rynn, with a complex tension that was hard to place, before turning and narrowing in Antha’s direction upstairs to which he disappeared without ever uttering a word. Dorian he had ignored entirely, as if he just didn’t see the point in acknowledging him.
Armand, strolling into the kitchen with an unlit cigarette in his lips and Jack at his heel, watched him vanish in a blur, blinking critical eyes. “Somehow, I don’t think this is going to help…” he murmured, sighing as he paused just before the door, “What a pity. Remember how useful it was, being able to count on him to cheer her up?”
His cousin shrugged uneasily. “He’s hurt, and he’s trying to deny a much worse hurt yet to come.”
His hand on the door handle, Armand faltered, eyes narrowing. “It just occurred to me…” he murmured, in dire realization, “Nicolae is Julien.”
“Eh?” Jack’s brow furrowed, a cigarette falling out of his fingers in shock, “That’s a stupid thing to say. They’re nothing alike, and Nikki hates Julien almost as much as Evie does.”
“Think about it,” his cousin urged him lowly, “The mischievous family golden boy who fell madly, irrevocably, single-mindedly in love with his precious sister, lost her to another man, and was completely consumed with bitterness even as he loved her as much as ever. And what happened to Julien when Mary Beth’s life was tragically cut short? His heart broke and never mended, he still mourns her daily. Don’t you think Nicolae will be the same? Don’t you think that if he lives another five-thousand years, he’ll still spend every day of it mourning Antha?”
Quietly, turning the idea over in his mind, Jack tensed uncomfortably. “That is…the most terrifying and tragic thing I think I’ve ever heard.”
“But I wonder…” Armand continued, his eyes suddenly lighting up as if another thought had struck him, “Hmm…perhaps I could take a page out of Nicolae’s book.”
Jack settled somewhat at that, casting his cousin a suspicious side-eye. “I don’t like that grin. What are you planning?”
“Oh,” he purred, pulling open the door and fishing his car keys from his pocket, “You’re all about to hate me, but even you will have to admit that I’m brilliant.”
He was gone a split second later, leaving Jack to stare bewildered after him as he hurried towards his car, lighting his cigarette on the way. “Should we be afraid, you think?” he asked, casting his wide-eyed gaze on Rynn and Dorian, “Armand is diabolically clever when he puts his mind to it…”
It was another ten minutes before Antha and Nicolae reemerged from the sanctuary of Marguerite’s lab, fresh off of an argument that had only ended because they were too exhausted of it to continue. Jack had watched them go upstairs, presumably to the nursery, so was surprised some minutes later to hear a vague commotion in the hall that, on investigation, turned out to be Antha and Julien arguing on the stairs, with Alistair, Pierce, and Cyrus haphazardly thrown into the mix. “What’s going on?” Courtland asked, popping up and resting his chin on his shoulder.
“I don’t know…” the boy murmured uneasily, inching forward as if he wasn’t sure he should enter the fray.
But the dilemma was bypassed for the most part moments later. Antha, listening to Julien with a decidedly strained look on her face, finally curled her fingers into fists and bowed over, screaming for several brief moments at the top of her lungs until the rest of house in its entirety was silenced. Julien in particular was staring at her with wide, stunned eyes, like he didn’t even know how to react. But Antha just threw her hands up and shook her head, utterly unconcerned with the scene she had just made. “I…” she announced, slowly but decidedly, pointing up the stairs, “…am going to bed.”
Ignoring anything else that was said, the girl turned and vanished upstairs, her bedroom door slamming behind her, and laid down fully clothed on top of the sheets in the darkness. The cousins chased after her, overcome with concern, but Alistair headed them off, throwing his arms out wide. “Just let her take a nap,” he murmured, shaking his head, “Just let her sleep for a little while.” To Cian in particular he said reassuringly, “She just needs some rest.” Reluctantly, the cousins agreed, all drifting back downstairs and trying to continue with the party in its final hours.
Armand returned some hour later, with an abnormally large box in his arms, running upstairs with a little devious grin on his lips. The cousins speculated amongst themselves but didn’t dare follow him---whatever it was, they were afraid to be implicated in it.