Mayfair Manor

[Okimiyage]

Dorian glared at Pierce, and raised a finger in warning. “Don’t start with me today, alright? I’m just saying, she’s grown up.” God, what he wouldn’t have given at that moment to go off on his self-righteous little b*****d of a cousin. This was exactly why he had stayed away for so long. Everything here was about fitting into the Mayfair collective. “Sometimes, that entails a little acting, to maintain the status quo. Am I not allowed to be proud of her for that?”
Rynn gave the older man a faintly quizzical look, cocking his head to one side. “I thought growing up meant you didn’t lie just to ‘maintain the status quo’…”
“Not in this family.” Dorian’s fingers grasped for a cigarette in his breast-pocket, and withdrew disappointed. He grimaced at the sight of his empty hand.
Thinking about Pierce and Antha for too long made him feel…sober, though, and that was the last thing that he wanted tonight. His hand lingered on the neck of the whiskey bottle. Wasn’t that what had gotten him into this mess, though? Nicolae’s arrival didn’t make things any better. Dorian’s eyes slitted when he left, without so much as a passing nod. “Here, Rynn.” He held out the whiskey bottle. “Help me finish this.” Better to be tipsy with good company than stumbling drunk alone. Unscrewing the lid, he took a deep draught straight from the bottle and went on rambling.
“Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘All’s fair in love and war’? We have the best of both. We might as well be running the Senate for all the family politicking that goes on around here. Then again, the infamous Mayfair temperament isn’t exactly suitable…”
As if to prove his point, a familiar scream echoed through the halls, sending the timbers of the house shivering. Dorian glanced towards the hall, then twisted his mouth in an ironic approximation of a smile. “See what I mean?” Guess he had spoken too soon on the subject of Antha’s newfound maturity.
Rynn didn’t quite share Dorian’s nonchalance. When he heard the scream, he all but jumped a foot in the air and rushed to the door in a panic, abandoning his drink in the process.
“Oh, don’t make a fuss,” Dorian called after him. “That’s the last thing we need more of today.”
And for the moment, it looked like Dorian was right. When Rynn peeked out into the hall, there was already a small huddle at the end of it, watching the scene between Julien and Antha unfold. It was clear from the expressions on the faces of the spectators that, whatever the argument had been about, they’d all been half-expecting it.
Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Dorian was standing behind him.
“Give her some space,” he said, quietly, watching through the crack in the door. “An audience isn’t going to help right now.”
At a time like this, that was all they could do. The cousins weren’t wrong about Nicolae. There was a time when he had been able to lift even the worst of Antha’s moods. But this…
The cousins seemed to think you could make any situation better just by applying a poultice of ‘family love’. Dorian may have been a romantic, but he wasn’t as optimistic as they were.
Reluctantly, Rynn followed his advice. As he withdrew, he found the glass of whiskey passed into his hand. “Thanks,” he muttered. “Your nerves look shot,” Dorian admonished. “You’re not allowed to look this haggard at your age. Drink up; we could all use a bit of the drop today.”
Dorian didn’t know the half of it, but his instincts were right on the money, and Rynn nearly laughed in his face for it. If only Antha could have gotten as merrily drunk as the rest of them. Still—taking a sip with a wince—entertaining Dorian was the least he could do at the moment.

Upstairs, Cian had just been laying down the children when Antha’s shriek reverberated throughout the house. He winced; the children woke up roaring. Luckily, Liesse was there to coo over the cradles immediately. “They can’t be hungry, they just ate—“ she muttered frantically. “It’s not that,” Cian answered, firmly. It was Antha, but he couldn’t say that. “Just—s**t—“ Bella was wriggling out of her blankets like a snake, small fists beating the air urgently. He couldn’t leave Liesse up here by herself, not with all four of them—that was a task even she couldn’t manage alone.
“I’ll be back,” he promised her, edging out of the squalling den. “Just—just give me a minute.”
His sharp-toed shoes clattered down the hall. The cousins were gathered around their bedroom door, and their expressions told Cian all he needed to know. He looked towards Alistair instinctively, who was most likely to know what was on his twin’s mind. “Can I—“
“She just needs some rest.”
Cian stopped short, his hand resting on the frame of the door, and reluctantly let it drop. He didn’t like it, but the boy was right. After a long pause, he nodded. “I’ll be looking after the kids if anyone needs me.” Glancing towards the closed door again, he added, “She could use the time off.”

After Nicolae’s arrival, it was only a few minutes before Vikteren followed him. The house was a cozy scene, at least from outside; all the windows lit, and the sound of laughter and old records emanating forth from the open porch door. He had never seen the old manor so lively before.
Honestly, it made him feel…nervous. So many humans that he’d never met before, all in formal dress, all witches. And all Antha’s family. It was a bit like meeting your date’s parents for the first time, except worse. He unconsciously found himself tucking the tails of his shirt in before he approached the open door.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha had slept for around two sorely needed hours, deeply, collapsed fully-clothed on top of the sheets. She knew because the electric glow of the alarm clock beside the bed marked it as just past nine, and the distant sound of music and chatter meant the party was still in progress. With a deep and drowsy inhale, she turned to bury her face in her pillow, her arm reflexively tightening around the little animal curled against her stomach---
Antha stopped, eyes opening and straining against the darkness. Whatever she was cuddling, it wasn’t her cat, it was too robust to be Amadeo, and the fur was different.
With a vague shift at sensing that she was awake, the little creature turned startlingly bright, pale blue eyes on her, and Antha, blinking in surprise, murmured a low, drowsy, “Hello, strange puppy.” She hardly had time to react before the dog, excitedly reacting to the sound of her voice, had twisted and jumped to his clumsy little paws, his tongue lashing happily against her cheeks, and then all she could manage was a small shriek of surprise, turning her face away and cuffing the scruff of his neck in her hand. The puppy just climbed over her, happily licking her chin, and Antha finally had to laugh. “Settle down,” she urged him gently, lifting the little thing with some difficulty in her arms. He kicked and whined in the air, curiously sniffing her wrist before sneaking a quick lick, at which point the red bow around his neck caught her attention. Taking hold of the little paper card attached to the ribbon, she could just barely make out the script in the dark, which read ‘German shepherd-husky mix, eight weeks’. The other side, when she turned it around in her fingers, was larger and clearer, reading simply ‘Cheer up!’
Despite herself, Antha laughed. The little dog’s floppy ears, large with fluff, perked straight up at the sound, his tail wagging hard enough to shake his entire body. “You’re an affectionate little thing, aren’t you?” she whispered, and he struggled hard enough that she finally had to set him back down, turning and burying her head back into the pillow with a little laugh when he darted forward to lick her face again, tightening her arms in a vain attempt to restrain him.

In the nursery, Malakai was helping Cian and Liesse attend to the various babies---it was dinner time for them---when the door cracked open and Antha quietly crept in, yawning and rubbing her eyes. He smiled with relief to see her, murmuring so as not to disturb the infants, “Feeling better, Evie?”
She nodded, standing just inside the door and casting the back of her hand across her eyes. “Tons.”
“You can’t do that to yourself,” he chastised her gently, brimming with brotherly concern and authority, “You can’t function properly without sleep.”
Antha rolled her eyes, like any little sister, sighing and muttering in rapid succession, “I know, I know, I know. Hush.”
He nodded with satisfaction, before finally noticing what was hanging over her folded arms with tongue lolled out to the side and tail wagging, happily watching the goings on in the room. “Antha…where’d the dog come from?”
For a second she just blinked at him, uncomprehending, before she looked down and the dog looked up, squirming impatiently in her arms. “What, this puppy? He’s mine.”
Almost identically, Malakai then stood blinking in incomprehension, before suddenly he recalled Armand running upstairs and realized what had been in the box. “Ahh…” he whispered, smiling just slightly to himself, “That is clever.”
Antha ignored him, turning to Cian with a little guilty smile. “I worried you, didn’t I?” she murmured apologetically, and gave him a brief kiss to make up for it. The puppy used the opportunity meanwhile to scramble up on top of her arms, first leaning over to sniff Cian’s shoulder and then turning rapidly around, happily licking Antha’s ear. She hastily clasped him to her shoulder, trying to restrain him, her head tilting to the side to escape his reach. But he wriggled forward to reach her chin and a particularly cheerful, unrestrained laugh spilled from her lips that Malakai hadn’t heard in the longest time. Very clever indeed.
Setting the puppy down on his feet, Antha adopted the most serious expression she could muster, ordering him sternly, “Ginsy, heel.” The puppy gave a low, high-pitched whine, not totally understanding the command, and finally dropped down to his belly, passing a paw over his eyes as if he were ashamed. Antha broke down in a heartbeat, taking both of his fluffy ears in hand and pressing her forehead to his. He popped back up immediately, his tongue rolling happily out of his mouth.
“Ginsy?” Malakai repeated questioningly.
“Ginsberg,” Antha clarified, flashing her brother a glance, “As in Allen.”
He just chuckled, murmuring to himself, “Of course…”
It was then that Antha went to Sebastien’s crib, Ginsberg chasing after her on clumsy, stumbling paws, as loyal as a baby duckling. “Hello, precious,” she whispered to her son, reaching down to gently stroke his wispy dark hair. She didn’t dare pick him up---he’d already been fed and it wouldn’t do to jostle him around when he’d already been settled in to sleep---but let him grab errantly at her fingers, making small cooing noises as if he was happy to see her. The puppy, meanwhile, scrambled a few times to get his front paws up on the side of the crib, stretching as far as he could to finally get his nose through the slats and cautiously licking the baby’s fingers. Sebastien gave a start at first, his big eyes landing on the dog and staring intently at it for a moment before breaking into a big, toothless grin, his fingers fumbling to grab the puppy’s nose.
Antha laughed, as quietly as she could, lifting Ginsberg in her arms. “Alright, alright,” she sighed, caving, and after taking a moment to soothingly stroke the puppy’s nose and forehead to calm him, set him very gently down in the crib beside Sebastien. He took a moment to sniff him, swaying slightly on the unfamiliar soft bedding, and then began intently licking the top of the baby’s head as lovingly as his mother had probably cleaned him as a newborn. Sebastien laughed, happily, kicking his legs and casting his hands clumsily across the dog’s fluffy, silken coat until the puppy finally dropped down with a little contented huff, tucking his feet under his stomach and resting his chin on the top of the baby’s head.
Inching forward to get a better look, Malakai broke out into a smile, whispering, “That is the single cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
His sister smiled, her chin resting on the side of the crib as she idly stroked her son’s chubby little arm. “Kids need a dog,” she murmured slowly, nodding somewhat to herself, and then said to Sebastien with a smile, “He can be your puppy when you grow up, okay?”
The baby yawned, which Ginsberg first watched and then mirrored, wiggling a little closer so that he was pressed up against the swaddled infant. Quietly, Antha took her daughter from Malakai and, pausing to lay a kiss on her forehead, laid her down on the other side of the puppy. She reacted more or less as her brother had, first curious and then delighted before she too yawned, her large green eyes fluttering drowsily. “Alright, come on,” Antha whispered, carefully extracting the puppy to let the babies sleep.
“Dad’s going to have a field day with the babies and that puppy and his camera,” Malakai mused quietly, smiling as he glanced at his sister.
“Oh, don’t I know it,” she sighed, shaking her head, “That man is incorrigible when it comes to baby pictures.”
“And who was it that spent an hour photographing them in animal costumes?” her brother shot back, acting unusually coy.
“You hush,” she grumbled quickly, shooting him a glare, “You sound like your brother, I don’t like it.”
“You mean Nikki? Our brother?”
“Your brother,” she repeated, briefly sticking her tongue out. Malakai didn’t ask what had happened during his brief visit, it would only antagonize her, and anyways he could make a fair enough assumption that it didn’t really matter. So he dropped it, which was easy enough in the next moment when Antha held Ginsberg in his face, demanding in a serious whisper, “Ginsy, get him!” The puppy, first blinking his pale blue eyes, his tail wagging happily in the air, licked Malakai’s nose once and then hung there, waiting to be petted. Antha withdrew him, holding him up to face her with a little disappointed pout. “You’re an awful guard dog,” she muttered in dissatisfaction, but eventually sighed and gave up when the puppy only continued to stare expectantly at her.

Alistair, meanwhile, had all but kidnapped Rynn from the dying remnants of the party, whisking him away to the attic on Antha’s orders. “The airship is too taxing on her, physically,” he explained, ushering him into the backroom and shutting the door, “She can’t do it, in her current condition. But you can’t skip your training, we don’t have enough time as it is.” He turned the dial but didn’t open the door, flashing Rynn as brief, dazzling smile. “So I’ll be your charming guide for the evening, in her place.” And then added, throwing his hands up innocently. “Don’t worry, I won’t try anything. That would be completely against the point anyways.”
He laid his hand on the doorknob, but then paused again, casting Rynn a sudden glance. “We were proud of you today, by the way,” he mentioned, as if just remembering it, “With Dorian, when he was being…well, Dorian. You’re finally sounding like family.” Hastily, he added , “Antha’s words.” But then, he never said he wasn’t of the same opinion.
Finally, the door opened and he hurried the boy down the hall and into the sickbay where Cassian was already waiting, floating idly across the ceiling like a spring cloud in the sky. “Regarding the incident with the last attempt…” Alistair murmured to Cassian, shifting in the blink of an eye from his usual cheery disposition to utter seriousness, all business, “It’s useless to try to block the Calais spirits, since they use Rynn almost like a portal instead of coming in externally. So the best method isn’t to ward them off but rather to get you past them, don’t you think?”
The amorphous haze that was Cassian took a moment, swirling slowly in a circle, and then abruptly stopped, calmly suspended. “Good,” Alistair concluded, interpreting his behavior as agreement, and quickly fished out a pocket knife, flicking open the blade with his usual sunny smile, “If we’re all in agreement, then I’ll be acting as a conduit. Rynn and I will link through our blood and Cassian will go through me to get to Rynn. Alright?” He looked between the two of them for compliance. Cassian’s form condensed, lowering to halfway between the floor and ceiling and then lingering, waiting to begin. Alistair said no more, only took the little knife to the palm of his hand and made a little cut, bright red against his milky skin, and then turned to hand the blade to Rynn, smiling as calmly as ever, utterly unaffected by anything and everything. “Et sic incipit. And so it begins.”  

[Okimiyage]

Cian and Liesse had just finished putting the children to bed. They’d been waking in intermittent bursts for the past hour or so; when Antha entered the room, Liesse was bent over the cribs of the half-elves while Cian had the rocking chair tipped half to the floor, a duck-patterned cloth resting over his eyes.
When Antha drew close, he jerked awake, the cloth falling into his lap with an incomprehensible sputter of syllable. “HAghafehrble-blerr—oh—“
He blinked at the new arrivals, then rubbed the sides of his face sleepily, drawing skin taut over the bones of his cheeks. “Oh, it’s you.”
Dimly, he registered the music from below. “The party’s still going on, huh?”
Liesse glanced despairingly at her brother, then nodded. Malakai’s presence had made the past hour endurable, but only just. As much as she loved her little niece and nephew—and Dorian’s children were precious little dolls, too—she found herself wishing that she could join the celebration below. Every laugh that made its way through the echoing halls set small Bella to fussing, though…
Cian blinked. “Oh, hello…” At first, he had thought Antha carried another one of Dorian’s litter, but—well, you couldn’t call only one pup a ‘litter’, could you?
“Where’d this little fellow come from?” He rose to his feet and approached Antha, holding out his hand for the dog to sniff before he fondled his ears. “It’s alright,” he murmured into his wife’s ear, as they drew close. Her kiss felt like a ray of sunlight in the middle of rain. The dog put its paws on Cian’s shoulders, and snuffled at his starched collar. “He looks like a little arctic wolf,” Cian commented, admiringly. Or was it a she?
Liesse wasn’t about to be left out when there was a puppy involved. As soon as Antha let ‘Ginsy’ down, she dropped to her knees, beckoning towards the dog and clicking her tongue. She was resolutely ignored. Cian leaned over Antha’s shoulder with concern when she lifted the dog into his cradle, but he needn’t have worried: “Bonds fast,” he murmured, watching the dog lick the soft fur atop Sebastien’s head. “They’ll be great friends, I’m sure.”
Smiling, Liesse stepped back from the scene and linked her hands with Malakai’s.
“I wish I had a camera now,” she added. “This would be something to catch on film, just think: their first meeting. I guess we’ll just have to tell Sebastien about it later.”

For the moment, the nursery was quiet. Cian leaned back, the bones of his neck cracking in the process.
“Finally.”

In the airship, the liquor was finally hitting Rynn hard.
His constitution was nothing to brag about ordinarily, but now—after making it nearly a quarter of a way through the remaining whiskey (Dorian drank the other 75%) he was beginning to stagger. Even standing up straight seemed a formidable task. Alistair had nearly had to sling him over the shoulder to carry him upstairs. Faces seemed to lurch out of the woodwork. The airship was an entirely different matter; cold as a freezer, filled by unfamiliar souls. The ancestors trailed behind in his shadow.
“Where are we going?” he managed, through a tongue that felt too thick to function.
Then, Alistair brought him into the familiar infirmary.
Rynn gave the red-haired boy a look of deep reproach, as if Alistair had somehow tricked him into following. “Oh. We’re back to this, then, are we?”
Still, he didn’t seem intimidated by the silvery cloud which swirled its course across the ceiling. Slinging an arm about Alistair’s waist, he all but dragged him towards one of the stiff, white hospital beds. “Come on, then.” At the last minute, Rynn seemed to remember that there was something inappropriate about two people sharing the same bed, and revolved on his heel, slapping his palms against Alistair’s chest at arm’s length. “Wait.”
Swaying slightly, Rynn focused his gaze on the neighboring sickbed, and pointed with a finger that refused to remain steady. “You can have that one.”
His reserve of innovation apparently exhausted, his legs seemed to give way, and he flopped with intention upon the thin, rigid mattress behind him. One of the ancestors, who had been following him since he had first entered the airship, took the opportunity to smooth his mussed forelock, in what was almost a motherly fashion. If Alistair had been watching closely, he would have caught the glimpse of a white hand as it moved tenderly across Rynn’s brow.
Alistair chatted amicably with the spirit, while the Calais boy let his eyes fall shut. “It wasn’t their fault,” he muttered. in what was seemingly a non sequitur. “They’re just a little—a little overprotective, ok?”
His eyes slitted open when he heard the click of the pocket knife blade, slotting into place. “You smile too pretty when you’re holding that thing,” Rynn sat up slowly, throwing another suspicious look in the other’s direction. Then again, Alistair being what he was, it was nigh impossible to ask for the boy to be a little less creepy. Thrusting his hand out, Rynn accepted the blade that Alistair offered.
“Et sic incipit,” he repeated. It was only a little Latin—he recognized that much—but it felt like an incantation in his mouth, the words dropping from his mouth like smooth, heavy pebbles.
With one swift, clean jerk across his palm, the white skin bloomed scarlet. Rynn had been determined not to flinch, but he dug his teeth into his lower lip and stifled a gasp instead. “Here.” His voice was only a little tight with pain. The alcohol helped numb the feeling, but it also meant that his blood flowed quicker, thinned by liquor. When he put his hand out to clasp Alistair’s, he left red spatters on the floor beneath the handshake, a smear of bright crimson across his skin.

In the other world, the ancestors fell into rank around their prince, standing in tall, shadowy wings that flanked his form.

Outside, the moon was beginning to pull into a high arc across the sky. Dorian had not yet set foot outside of the kitchen. Whenever the children’s fussing began to seep through the floorboards from above, he winced and took another sip of whiskey.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit.” He murmured to himself. It seemed to be his mantra for the evening.
When he heard the first knock on the door, Dorian’s immediate instinct was to ignore it. He’d had more than his fair share of strange visitors tonight, and everyone who should have been was already here.
But also, he’d been nursing his drink for too long to just resist the impulse to answer. And he couldn’t hear the siren-song. That was a good sign, right? Still--just in case--where were the cousins when you needed them?
Rising unsteadily to his feet, he called out, "Anthaaaa!"

Outside, an unknown gaze landed on Vikteren’s back, and he felt the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Upstairs, Dorian’s call rang through the hallway, sending the infants all into the first stirrings of a fuss. Antha’s eye twitched, her lips pressing together in a hard, irritated line. She took a moment to try and soothe her own offspring, but ultimately entrusted them to their father, turning and heading for the door. “It’s a damn good thing I got some sleep,” she hissed, stalking across the room with her dog following uncertainly at her heels and, inexplicably, across the hall into Jack and Courtland’s room.
Malakai, sensing her mood, opened his eyes wide, bouncing Bella soothingly on his shoulder but calling after his sister, “Antha, what are you doing? Take a deep breath---count to ten!---” only to whine helplessly when she reemerged, looking frantically around for a split second for somewhere to deposit the baby in his arms before finally just putting her back in her crib.
Cyrus, Michael, and Remy appeared less than a minute later, shuffling through the door with their eyes still on the stairs. “Darling Antha,” Remy sighed, affectionately without hope of her ever changing, “She does love to overreact.”
“She makes her point,” Michael dismissed it, shrugging slightly, and then turned to the infants with a cheerful smile, informing Liesse and Cian, “We’ve come to relieve you.” Taking the baby from Liesse’s arms, he cooed happily, “Yes, you come to Grandpa Michael now. No, we don’t fuss when grandpa’s here, precious.”
“And just like that,” Remy purred in amusement, flashing a grin, “You have half of those ten grandkids you keep demanding. And poor Malakai didn’t have to do a thing.”
“Oh no, he still needs to give me ten grandchildren of his own or I’m disowning him,” Michael refuted calmly, and then turning with a perfectly innocent smile gently patted the top of Liesse’s head, “But this takes some of the urgency off, so no pressure.”
“Michael,” Cyrus scolded him lightly, trying desperately not to disturb Vanessa in his arms, “That’s just not appropriate.”
But Michael shrugged, like it was common knowledge anyways so why bother not mentioning it. “If she’s not my daughter-in-law in the next seven years,” he said, nodding at Liesse and rolling his eyes at Cyrus, “I’ll eat my hat.”
Remy just shook his head, smiling, and finally shooed Liesse and Cian away. “Go on, before he gets bold. Go enjoy the party. But mind sweet Evie---she has Jack’s katana.”
True enough, Antha had descended the stairs with Jack’s pristinely-maintained weapon in hand, her puppy cautiously hopping down the stairs behind her and her brother right behind him. The point of the sword---or at least one of them---was apparent when she entered the kitchen, her eyes narrowing as she firmly pointed the blade at Dorian. “You,” she hissed, just as Malakai scrambled through the door in a panic. “You are a father now,” she said lowly, firmly, brandishing the katana with every word that she stressed in particular, “You do not make loud noises in this house after eight o’clock at night. It wakes up the babies, and if you disturb them, you’re staying up with them. Is. That. Clear? ” Not waiting for an answer, she shouldered the blade and swept past him into the dining room (Malakai released a massive sigh of relief, and then picked up the puppy and kept him from following into what might’ve ended up being a battle), mumbling irritably as she did, “If these bastards don’t stop waking my babies up…goddamn fairies showing up on my sidewalk…god only knows what’s knocking at the damn door, but if it’s another fairy, she’s getting a piece of my freakin’ mind…”
Sighing to himself, his head felling tiredly to the side, Malakai murmured, “I wouldn’t want to be whatever’s at the door right now…” It was hard enough coming face to face with Antha when she was in aggravated battle mode, the fact that she was physically armed just made it that much more terrifying.
Pausing briefly in the hallway, Antha found herself surprised to see Nicolae standing calmly at the bottom of the stairs, watching her with a sharp gaze. “I thought you’d left,” she called stiffly, still irritated from their earlier argument.
“I was thinking,” he replied, equally stiff, arms folded as he leaned against the banister, and then nodded at the door, “Go on, answer it. I can wait.”
Reluctantly---Nicolae was the only person who would willingly dive into an outright fight with her, and she kind of wanted a fight at the moment---Antha turned and grabbed the handle of the front door, the katana ready and waiting on her shoulder, and threw it open. Though she didn’t exactly calm down to find Vikteren there, the expression on her face did settle somewhat. “Oh…it’s you,” she murmured, moving the sword to rest with the point on the floor, her fingers still gripping the handle, “You I can deal with. On the other hand…” Her gaze shifted, eyes sharpening, and looked past him into the darkness, Antha bristling like a cat who just knew there was a goddamn dog in their yard.

Alistair was trying not to laugh. It was entirely inappropriate in the situation, and he really didn’t want to antagonize Rynn---the boy was difficult enough to deal with without being provoked---but it was difficult. He was undeniably cute when he was drunk, and it took all of Alistair’s willpower not to try and get him flustered. It was just so easy…
But his will was strong and he resisted in the end, sitting on the bed beside Rynn and clasping their palms together, blood to blood, his fingers wrapped firmly around his. “I’ll be awake,” he informed him simply, with just a hint of an amused smile, “I’m just a vessel, and someone has to protect you while you’re out.” And then, briefly leaning his forehead against his, murmured as an aside, “I’ve been dead for nearly twenty years, Rynn. I’m the world’s first lively, fully-functional, warm-blooded zombie, I’ll probably always be the single creepiest person you know.”
And then he withdrew, calmly rattling off last-minute instructions. “Just try to keep them at bay, alright? This is for your benefit---it’ll save you and everyone else when Nero turns up, and it’ll make you stronger in the long run.” Nodding at Cassian, the boy tightened his hand around Rynn’s and finally murmured, “Let’s go.”
It only took the slightest crack in Alistair’s shields for Cassian to pass through him, with his permission, but the entire airship shook and reverberated with the whisper of his power that shone through. It was easy to forget sometimes that Alistair was almost as powerful as Antha, mostly due to the way he hid it. Antha was all about show, fending off threats with the sheer terror her kind of power provoked, but Alistair was…quiet. If his twin was a dragon, he was a harmless little bunny rabbit that suddenly opened its mouth and an alien parasite came out to demolition everything in the area.
Alistair was actually pretty much just a slew of horror movies brought to life.
But that had no bearing on Rynn, considering they were allies. Ignoring the leak of power, Cassian passed through Alistair, through his blood and into Rynn’s, and converged on the very core of his power, trying, as Antha had instructed, to reshape it in the necessary ways that aligned it more with vampire magic.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn took a deep breath, and the long fringe of his eyelashes fluttered shut, and came to rest moth-soft upon his cheek. He remained sitting upright, hand held out to clasp Alistair’s, while blood seeped between their fingers.
“Maybe that’s why we get along so well.” Rynn had always had more of an affinity for the dead than for the living.
“You still haven’t explained what we’re doing, though.”
In truth, it might not have made much difference. Rynn let his mind drift while he focused on the calming rhythm of his breath. Unconsciously, he found himself matching it to the cadence of Alistair’s. Even though he was not fully in a trance state when Cassian bowled through the crack in Airi’s shields, he felt the ripples left in the wake of the ghost, like a little earthquake dancing over his skin. The tips of his fingers twitched against the other boy’s.
When he opened his eyes again, he was enshrouded in darkness. A pinprick of light appeared; a dim glow, which could be feebly identified as the distant cloud.
A cold hand—what Rynn could only imagine was an attempt made by the ancestors to be reassuring—landed on his shoulder. Most would have shuddered away from the clammy grip, but Rynn seemed hardly to notice. He could still feel the heat of whiskey traveling with a slow burn through his chest.
In the span of a few steps, he found himself at the threshold of the silver cloud. The ancestors wavered like a translucent army behind him.
“Well?” he announced, sharply. “I’m here to learn.”
He did not particularly like Cassian at this point; not after hearing what he had to say about Rynn to Antha, at least. He figured the best way to deal with the spirit was to be as efficient as possible, and simply get the whole ordeal over with as soon as possible.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, Dorian beamed to see Antha march in the door. Then, the expression she wore registered, and his face fell. “Oh. You’re mad.”
You would have thought that the katana gave it away.
As Antha shouldered her blade and walked away, Dorian groped in his pockets desperately. Dammit. No glove. “Wait! I demand a duel! You’re not allowed to just brandish that thing at me anytime you want!” The blonde-haired maverick hissed after her. At least some part of her tirade had sank in—he wasn’t shouting.
Still, dear Antha seemed in the mood for a tussle. And Dorian certainly wasn’t about to satisfy her in that regard.

Having the door open to a katana-wielding Antha had Vikteren somewhat taken aback, at first. His face failed to properly convey any sense of surprise; his luridly green eyes blinked, and then creased at the corners with a smile.
“Good evening. I didn’t know there was a party going on tonight.”
His eyes flicked past her, noticing Nicolae on the stairs.
“Nicolae exited so much like a bat out of hell that I thought there must be an emergency.” It was a jibe, which was rare for Vikteren, but a subtle one, as was his nature. The vampire had to admit that he was somewhat…well, ‘put-out’ by the fact that he hadn’t been invited.
Then again, this wasn’t his kind of occasion, was it? Vampires were far more suited to funerals. No party was an event to invite one of the spooky friends of the family along. It would just upset the brigade of aunts, who wore the Mayfair name like a prim badge.
“Is there an emergency?” he asked, extending one finger to indicate the katana slung across Antha’s dainty shoulders. “This seems a somewhat extreme way to answer your door.”
It might have had something to do with the woman across the street, who even now was boring a hole into the back of Vikteren’s shirt with her stare.
At least she wasn’t singing.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“‘Extreme’ is the only way I know how to operate.” Sighing, Antha cast her gaze briefly from the dark street to Vikteren, and then back. “We’ve had…particularly strange visitors, today.” And then she edged past him, taking her place on the porch at the very top of the stairs, an imposing guardian staring down the woman in the dark.
Courtland and Jack watched curiously from the window, the latter giving a start and screaming through the glass, “Evie, that’s my sword! ”
But Antha ignored him, if she even noticed him at all. She was focusing on the stranger, listening to the particular cadence of her power. It was difficult for the most part to distinguish exotic creatures from one another, she wasn’t familiar enough with the feel of their magic to tell them apart. But it certainly wasn’t human, and given the course of the day, she was willing to make an educated guess to this creature’s nature. “In the event that you’re one of the fey that’s been loitering around my house today,” Antha began, calling out into the darkness in a strict and aggravated tone, “I’d really like to have a few stern words about this delivery policy.”
“Antha!” Lawrence hissed, seizing her arm and yanking her back into the house, shutting the door behind her and Vikteren, “What are you doing?! You can’t just march outside and pick a fight with mythical creatures!”
“I can if I want to,” she answered obstinately, casting the door one sharp, longing glance, “But fine, Laurie, if you insist. But you’re going to regret it sorely.”
“Why---” He had hardly been able to form the question in his mind when it was answered for him, Antha turning to finally face Nicolae, the siblings intensely staring one another down.
“You know there’s only one way we’re going to solve this,” Antha purred after several tense moments, her mind already made up.
Slowly, every bit as resolute as his sister, Nicolae unfolded his arms and pushed away from the banister he was leaning against. “Clearly.”
Seconds later, the party guests all found themselves drawn immediately into the hallway by a clatter, only to be not terribly surprised to find Antha and Nicolae in a thrashing heap on the floor, fighting. Courtland in particular was amused, asking with a snicker, “Who are we betting on, the crazy vampire or the crazy witch with a sword?”
“It’s a physical fight,” Armand pointed out, shrugging, “Clearly the vampire has the upper hand.”
“But Evie tussles with werewolves barehanded,” Courtland pointed out, “And now she’s armed.”
Grinning slightly, Armand held out a hand and the boys shook on it. “A gentleman’s bet, then.”
Lawrence, meanwhile, his eyes wide and frightened, was demanding, “Are they going to kill each other? Seriously, are they down to murder now?”
Down the hall, finally taking notice of the sounds, the sitting room door opened and Pierce and Lucy popped out, in a notable state of disarray. Lucy in particular was only holding her dress up to shield herself, half of the pins in her sleek hair hanging by only a few strands. This proved a far more interesting sight to the cousins, who were wholly used to seeing Antha and Nicolae fight, some of their eyes going wide while the other fought not to burst into laughter. Remembering her state, Lucy glanced down at herself, shrugged, and returned to the sitting room. Pierce, as sharp eyed as Antha against the most dire of threats, took up Jack’s sword---the blade was noticeably stained with crimson---and brandished it at his family, hissing as he retreated after Lucy, “Any of you come in here and I’ll stab you in the throat.” Behind him, the door bolted with a heavy clank.
Sniffling, Jack whined, “My katana~!” and buried his head in Courtland’s chest, crying, “The blood’s going to rust it and I can never be a fearsome samurai---!”
“It’s alright, Jackie,” Courtland shushed him, soothingly patting his head and then inching them both away as Antha and Nicolae rolled closer. And then, seeming to notice Vikteren for the first time, adopted a curious expression and passed his hand in front of the vampire’s eyes. “I thought you were possessed?”
“Alistair fixed that,” Armand reminded him, “Remember?”
But Courtland shrugged. “Maybe. It’s my wedding, I’m pretty drunk.”

Five minutes later, both siblings were sitting on the couch in the parlor---the upholstery protectively covered with an old blanket---facing Michael in his armchair like scolded children, stubbornly refusing to look at each other. Besides their torn and disheveled clothes, the evidence of the fight still lingered in the stab wound made clean through Nicolae’s arm, which Courtland was still busy tightly wrapping, and the icepack Antha held irritably to her left eye.
“Children,” Michael said after a moment, sighing heavily, “Really now. Just…really now. You’re adults.”
Nicolae, scowling slightly, hissed, “She started it!”
“The hell I did!” his sister protested, turning and punching him expertly under the ribs, only to have him turn and retaliate.
“Children!” Michael scolded them again, a little more loudly, so that they both froze and then turned away from each other again, silently seething.
To Lawrence, glaring at him with her good eye, Antha muttered, “Should’ve let me fight the fairy…”
“Antha Evelyn!” Michael sighed, and she fell silent and obedient, Ginsberg hunkering down in her lap like a good (if small) guard dog. “Ah, you children! It’s no wonder my hair is turning gray. Alright, let’s see the damage.”
Nicolae sat still, pouting to himself, and said obstinately, “Just a scratch.”
“I’ll give you a scratch---” Antha hissed, but was silenced again by Michael.
“Let me see your eye.” Reluctantly, Antha took away the icepack to reveal the black eye underneath, already drastically improved from when she’d first acquired it, only strings of blotchy purple bruises beneath her eye. “Oh good, it should be gone in the morning. Still, that was quite a mark.”
“It’s nothing. He couldn’t even throw a punch, he just has sharp shoulders---”
“Alright, enough.” Shaking his head, he moved the icepack clutched in her bloodied fingers (Nicolae’s blood) back over the bruise. “I’m not going to ask what happened, but for the love of god, will someone please referee them?”
“We’ve got it,” Courtland assured him, carelessly, waving him away as he grinned at his banged-up cousins. It hardly served to reassure Michael, but he left anyways, back to the nursery in case the children woke up again.
He was hardly out of earshot when the two started in on each other again, this time with words.
“I’m not putting him in one of those cold stone boxes,” Nicolae hissed, turning irritably on Antha, “Surrounded by death. I won’t do it.”
She glared back with her free eye, equally as irritable. “And I’m not going to stick him out in the garden with a bunch of murdered corpses. I won’t, I refuse.”
“Oh lord,” Courtland scoffed as soon as he realized what they were talking about, throwing a hand up to the side of his head, “Is all this for Ezra? Guys, he’s dead---he’s been dead for five years---he doesn’t give a s**t where you bury him.”
Obstinately, Nicolae muttered, “It’s the principle.”
Rolling her eye(s), Antha finally said, simply, “Oh shut up, Nikki.” Honestly, the fight had gone out of both of them, at least towards each other. They’d always been that way---they had to physically brawl it out before they could make any sort of peace with one another. But they were also too stubborn to just let it go. “You can do whatever you want with him,” Antha finally declared, sighing, “Bury him, cremate him, leave him up in the lab with his brothers and sister, I don’t care. But you can’t bury him in the garden. End of story.”
“Frankly, I don’t see what’s wrong with keeping him in the lab,” Courtland jumped in, offering his two cents with a shrug, “At least he’ll be in good company.”
“You are a twisted little ********,” Nicolae murmured, shaking his head, and then said nothing else.
Finally, Antha concluded the entire affair, removing the icepack and tenderly touching her eye to test it as she spoke. “Shelving the matter for the time being, can we take a moment to consider that something---probably a fairy---is outside of our house?”
“Another one?” Armand questioned, his attention startled away from his glass of scotch, “Oh, that’s very cruel. Three whole babies…that’s very cruel indeed.”
“Maybe this one came to eat Dorian?” Jack offered alternately, innocent enough.
“Don’t even joke about that,” Antha murmured, shaking her head, “It might be the truth. But…wait, I had a sword a moment ago.”
“My sword!” Jack whined, stamping his foot, “That you got blood on! And now it’s going to rust, and---”
“Pierce took it,” Courtland answered, clapping a hand over his husband’s mouth, “So we wouldn’t interrupt him and Lucy.”
Despite what could’ve been a serious situation---it really depended on how much the cousins cared, and considering that it concerned Dorian, they didn’t particularly---Antha quirked an eyebrow. “Well that’s new.”
“It’s a very eventful day all around,” Armand concurred with a nod. “But back to this fairy---can you describe her? I need to know, for my manuscript.”
Subtly, Lawrence smacked him, hissing, “You can’t go writing your smut about the mothers of your cousin’s children! It’s absolutely tasteless!”  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren blinked at the scene that unfolded in front of him, not sure whether to intervene or not. On the one hand, making a move against his…’coven master’, for lack of a better word…was usually not considered a good idea. Not on your first night, anyways.
On the other hand, Antha was—well, Antha.
And that meant she could take care of her own affairs, Vikteren reminded himself.
Anyways, the cousins were already doing enough of a job, egging them on. Armand and Courtland had been so excited to be on the outcome, Vikteren didn’t even think that they’d decided on the price of the wager.
“If I had known there was going to be sword-fighting as an event, I would have brought a blade of my own,” he commented idly. Nevermind that a good sword was fiendishly difficult to come by, nowadays; there were bound to be one or two in the museums of the city.
When Courtland turned, and passed a hand in front of Vikteren’s face, the vampire’s eyes followed his fingers like a cat follows a toy on a string. “I was possessed,” he corrected, blinking free and shaking his head a little. “A nasty little…inheritance from my sire, after he was destroyed. It’s not really appropriate for small talk.” Vikteren seemed to have forgotten how the sight of his teeth might be seen as disturbing, as he smiled. “Especially not at a celebration like this one. Allow me to congratulate you on your nuptials, if I may. Who’s the lucky bride?”

Cian made a half-hearted attempt to drag Dorian in for judgement, when the ruckus finally subsided and the perpetrators were removed to the parlor.
Unfortunately, Dorian was out of whiskey. And this meant that he was being unreasonably stubborn, not to mention immature, about the whole thing.
“Nobody ever asks to knock a girl up, Dorian!” Cian snapped at the young father, giving a ferocious tug on his leg. “Sometimes—you—just—have—to—deal—“
“I deal with liquor!” Dorian hissed. “And with a lot of sex! And by staying away from small children!” He had apparently taken Antha’s advice to heart, earlier, and was determined to speak at a volume no louder than a whisper for the entire evening. That was the plan, anyways. Uncurling from the table leg he had wrapped himself around, Dorian reached out with the empty whiskey bottle, and snakelike reflexes, to give Cian a resounding whap on the hand. “OW!”
Glaring, Cian gave him one final yank with all of his strength, while Dorian had yet to re-knot himself around the table. The other man shot out from underneath the furniture like the floor was greased.
“Look,” Cian rubbed his hand, then noticed the scrabbling beginnings of Dorian trying to inch out from underneath him. “Ah-ah-ah! None of that.” Snatching hold of his arms by the wrists, Cian pinned the other man to the ground beneath him. “Look,” he repeated firmly. “For one night, grow the ******** up. You made your choices. Now, you have to live with them. Because—god forbid—if you don’t take this seriously, nobody in the family will ever forgive you.”
Dorian had gone stark white, and his china-blue eyes were wide as saucers. At first, it had only been a sort of—involuntary, automatic response to the physical aspects of their situation, but now…
Well, Dorian might not have been as gifted as Antha, but he was still a witch. And he could recognize the ring of prophecy in Cian’s words.
He swallowed hard, and tried to look away, and ignore the fact that Antha’s pretty husband was on top of him and close enough to lock hips with. The world seemed a little blurry at the moment.
“Give me this.” he said, finally. “It’s my first night being a father. I’ll be respectable tomorrow, but—by god, I feel like I’m in a house full of strangers, celebrating all by myself, and alternately pitied or hated for the interruption. I suppose—“ Cian was giving him a very strange look, full of a sort of coldness, as if he was reserving his final expression until he could decide whether to sympathize deeply with the other or to scold him for his selfishness. “Everyone’s had a long day.” he said finally, a little gruffly, and released Dorian’s wrists to sit back on his heels. “You can’t exactly blame them for negligence after all these distractions.”
Dorian began to wriggle out from under the man, and Cian let him go without protest.
Cian climbed to his feet as if they hadn’t just been scuffling like schoolboys, watching the other man’s back as Dorian got up and dusted himself off.
“…Come on. You’re not going back to that kitchen.”

Inside, Vikteren and Liesse were already present. Vikteren was a little slow on the uptake, not entirely certain what the situation was about, but Liesse could follow well enough, and translated for him.
They had very nearly finished fighting when Cian dragged Dorian in, and pushed him into a seat with a sigh. “From one baby-sitting gig to another, it seems.” Liesse whispered to Malakai, clucking sympathetically.
“Another one, huh?” Cian shook his head. “God, you have no luck, Dor’. Sounds like the Fair Folk’s idea of a good joke, anyways.”
If Dorian felt uncomfortable up against a jury of his peers, he was determined not to show it. He shrugged, and dropped the empty whiskey bottle at his feet. “Don’t encourage them. At this rate, we’ll end up with a hundred of them.”
Cian gave a low whistle. “You really got around, huh? At least you’ll have a better story than ‘the stork’ when they get old enough to ask where they came from…”
Crossing over to the couch where Antha sat in a chastised manner, Cian perched on the arm of the seat nearest to her and brushed the curls away from her shoulder, casting a disparaging eye at what would almost certainly bloom into a garden of glorious, violet-blue bruises over the next few days. “Well, the other guy got off light,” he finally acknowledged, determined not to fret over her at the moment. There were other members of the family who could certainly oblige her in that regard, later.
Since nobody else seemed ready to venture a description, Vikteren cautiously edged forth into the crowd. “I didn’t get a very good look at her,” he started off, in response to Armand’s request. “Although I suspect that even if I had, she’d still be difficult to describe. The far have a peculiar capacity for…camouflage, in that regard.” He’d heard it referred to as ‘glamour’’ before, but the tawdry associations of that word seemed to do it an injustice. He must have passed right by her in the street, yet never noticed her closely enough to study once. For a vampire’s senses to fail him in this regard was practically unheard of.
“I have a feeling that they meant these…deliveries…to be carried out in secrecy,” Vikteren continued. “However, our…initial approach has certainly done away with whatever element of surprise that we might have had before. No discredit to Antha, of course—her actions were very brave.” He coughed in order to cover his mouth with a fist, and hide the twitch of a smile that it might have otherwise given away. Dorian had, in the meantime, slumped over in his chair, head in his hands, in an over-dramatic fashion. “Three,” he moaned. He’d never get a date again. “Well, we don’t know that this one’s bringing another child,” Cian pointed out. “Or maybe you can just refuse it. A sort of, ‘thanks but no thanks’ maneuver.”
Dorian lifted his head just long enough to glare at Cian through his fingers. “It doesn’t quite work like that, dear.”
As the words left his lips, a faint knock came from within the chamber of the next room. The entirety of the parlor went still.
All except for Vikteren, who took the opportunity to pat perturbed Jack’s shoulder in a peaceable fashion. “You can clean the blood off,” he said, in what was far too helpful and reasonable of a tone for the current atmosphere. “It’s really quite easy.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It took all of Lawrence’s strength to even slightly hinder Antha at the sound of someone at the door, she was up even as the sound was still echoing in the hall. “Antha---”
“Laurie, I will bite you.”
Considering what he’d just seen, Lawrence withdrew like a bystander from a rabid animal, clutching his hand to himself with briefly frightened eyes. “Fairy or not---”
“It feels like them,” Antha responded shortly, glancing at the ceiling to indicate the fairy infants in the nursery upstairs, “That power. It’s made of the same stuff, I’m sure of it.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Lawrence argued quickly, before she could cut him off, “You can’t just rush into a fight with anything, especially a fairy, and especially if the fairy has a child!”
“I just want to talk,” Antha assured him, utterly unconvincingly, heading for the door before Courtland finally stopped her.
“Dorian,” he called, nodding at the door with one arm firmly looped around Antha’s shoulders, “I think it’s for you.”
“Court, let me go,” Antha growled meanwhile, tugging irritably at his arm. At her feet, Ginsberg stumbled uncertainly back and forth, giving his best few attempts at a bark to warn away his new mother’s assailant. “Courtland, I said I would have stern words with her and I meant it, now let go.”
“Why are you so upset with them?” Jack asked meanwhile, watching with unusually thoughtful eyes, “Like, fighting mad. It seems a little extreme.”
“Why aren’t you more upset about it?” Antha shot back, as if he had struck a nerve. “We’ve watched two---maybe three, now---mothers abandon their children today. Are you telling me that doesn’t upset you?”
“Yeah…” Jack admitted after a moment, slowly, “…but I’m not about to go get into a brawl with a fairy over it.”
“Let’s just see what’s going on,” Courtland interrupted, releasing Antha and shoving Dorian towards the door. The former followed directly behind him, close enough to step on his heels, and then stood on tip-toes to stare intently over his shoulder when they reached the door.
As for the rest of the cousins, they had dropped any notion of arguing with Antha. It was plain enough, suddenly, why these fairies pissed her off. Thinking of Dorian’s new children, abandoned, mirrored not only a lot of their own situations as children, but the fate of her own. Antha would’ve given anything in the entire world to be around to raise her children, but these women, the fairies, were just handing theirs over and vanishing without a trace. She couldn’t forgive that. As a mother, it hurt her to the core.  

[Okimiyage]

“Oh, great,” Dorian groaned. He’d been getting dirty looks from all of them over the course of the evening, but as soon as something like this happened, they wanted to use him as a human shield. Well, fine. “Are you sure you don’t want a blast-shielded door or something?” he asked, hopefully. “Wait, do we even have one of those? Or is that a Star Wars thing still?”
Dorian didn’t expect to receive an answer, although in previous times he might have been insulted by it. He was trying to lower his expectations where family was involved.
Dorian could hear the singing, faint but insistent, even before he opened the door. Somehow, it seemed a lot less alluring than the song of the first visitor, or maybe that was just the trauma. His hand clenched on empty air, wishing he had a weapon to brandish; it was just his luck that the empty whiskey bottle was in the other room, it would have made a nice shank—or a molotov cocktail.
Probably would have made a bad first impression on the mother of his child, though. One of them, anyways.
He had only opened the door a quarter of an inch when the chain rattled and burst, sending bits of the iron lock to blow past his cheek. A streak of blood cut a notch into his left cheekbone, right on the edge of the orbital socket.
This might have seemed a rather hostile way to enter, or at least a dramatic one, but it suited the woman on the other side of the door. “What was that for?” Dorian demanded, flinging the door wide in a sudden surge of indignance.
The woman merely looked at him with quicksilver, heavy-lidded eyes, smeared in kohl or ash.
While her sisters had worn heavy robes and cloaks, nothing more than layers of diaphanous white veils were twisted around her pale, narrow frame, and her fingers were gloved in soot. Small white flowers, with five pointed petals each, blossomed from the red field of her hair like stars.
It would have been hard to describe her face; or rather, to get a consensus on what it looked like. Her mouth was red, her eyes were grey, her skin was pale; all these things could be agreed upon, but when it came to features…To some, her eyes were sultry and long-lashed, slanted like a fox’s. To others, they were wide with innocence, limpid as a spring, settled pleadingly on Dorian’s face. Her mouth was pouty or dainty, depending on who was looking, but always a bloody shade of red. In Cian’s eyes, her resemblance to Antha was striking. Even Vikteren, who had seen his fair share of beauties, was a little taken aback. “You mean to tell me that you didn’t notice that?” Cian demanded of the vampire, in an aghast whisper. Vikteren shrugged, helplessly. “It’s magic,” he said, shortly, by way of explanation.
The woman peered around the Mayfair in the door, seemingly assessing their numbers, then gave a faintly disappointed sigh. “I was hoping that we might speak without an audience, Dorian.”
Her voice was the purr of a luxury car engine, and it hit exactly the right note in Dorian’s hindbrain to turn his head. Ordinarily, Dorian would have absconded with such a creature in an instant. They could have eloped within the hour. But now—swallowing his desire— he spread his arms protectively into the frame of the door. “Aren’t you going to drop off your ‘package’ and disappear like the others?” he asked suspiciously.
“Did they do that?” the faerie inquired, with an altogether too-innocent smile. “Such poor manners.”
Her gaze trailed over him, from the top of his scalp to his Italian leather shoes, and ended pointedly at the threshold. “Now, will you invite me in, or shall we stand chatting on your steps all night?”
Dorian glared, but reluctantly dropped his arms. “I suppose as long as you’re here to tell us what the hell this is all about.”
Standing aside, he allowed just enough space for the woman to sidle past him. She gracefully stepped around the man—‘sidling’ was beneath this creature—and gazed past the crowd and up the stairs. She could feel the children above, slumbering peacefully. Good.
The red-haired woman turned about, and surveyed the gathered humans with a somewhat imperious look. Her long, black nails gleamed like onyx in the light, as she raised her hand thoughtfully to cup her chin. “Which among these gathered is your matriarch? I mean her no harm.”
‘Hey—“ Dorian cut in, stepping forth in the wake of empty space that she left behind. He wasn’t about to just let them leave him out of this. The woman raised her ash-black hand, open-palmed in his direction. “We will have time for that, later. I suspect, if she has been at all paying attention tonight, she will have some questions.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

At the door, Antha had seized Dorian by the collar with the first rattle of the chain and yanked him back, though it hadn’t saved him completely from damage. It was enough of a show to make her power flare, seething, when they came face to face with the fairy. She very nearly interrupted Pierce and Lucy to retrieve Jack’s sword again, but ultimately didn’t dare to leave for even a moment.
Though her enraged power didn’t recede, it did at least calm over the course of the next few minutes, listening to the fairy speak. By the time she had asked for her, Antha was eyeing the fairy sharply, like she would see straight through her and discover her intentions. After a moment, she finally crossed her arms and shot a glance at the cousins, ordering, “Stay,” before seizing Dorian’s sleeve and dragging him after her into the kitchen, nodding at the fairy to follow.
(In all of this, it should be noted, her attention had been diverted for perhaps half a second when her husband had spoken, casting him a sharp and seething glare. Courtland, lightly clearing his throat, had leaned over and pointed out in the quietest whisper, “That was...not wise.”)
When they were alone, a kettle set on the stove to boil, Antha continued to stare eagle-eyed at the strange woman, leaning imposingly on the counter as she finally spoke. “I don’t like the way your kind operate, so far,” she said, with all the imperious ire of a declaration, “I don’t like that you showed up in my territory, unannounced and uninvited, and took possession of my cousin for weeks without him even realizing it. I don’t like having strange creatures loitering around my house, watching. We’re watched as it is, and if they see fairies hanging around here, it’s going to be a massive amount of trouble. And I particularly don’t like these women coaxing my cousin out of the house to abandon their children with him. It enrages me down to my very core, for the children rather than Dorian. So…” Behind her, the kettle began to whistle, but Antha wasn’t paying any attention at the moment. She was focused wholly and completely on their uninvited guest with deathly seriousness. “What do you want?”
The cousins, meanwhile, were pouting in the hallway, staring suspiciously at the kitchen door. “I don’t trust this,” Jack murmured, arms crossed, “I don’t trust any of it.”
“Shush, love,” Courtland bid him very gently, leaning as close as he dared to the kitchen door and straining to make words out of the muffled haze of Antha’s voice.
“Is anyone else terribly disappointed that she’s so…stereotypical?” Armand asked meanwhile, his hand swirling in the air as he tried to find the right word. “Weird hands, strange robes, kind of creepy…”
“I’m not really concerned about how she looks at all,” Courtland answered, oddly serious for himself, reluctantly drawing away from the door even as he kept his gaze fastened to it, “I’m concerned with whether or not she was seen. The last thing we need right now is for the Talamasca or one of our enemies to see a strange creature coming in here. It’ll be bad enough for us, but those two little girls---”
“So we spin it our own way,” Lawrence interrupted, returned to his usual calm, collected demeanor, “If they saw her, we make up our own story.”
“And if more of them show up?”
Armand, unusually, offered up a bit of wisdom at that. “We write the truth around here.” Eyes gleaming, he raised his glass with a little smirk. “Everyone else is playing our game. If we don’t like how they play, we change the rules.”
“Since when do you deign to get political?” Lawrence muttered, shooting him a glance.
But Armand just continued to smile. “I have to, don’t I? Every single one of us put together won’t add up to Antha’s political machinations, but we have to try and bridge as much of the gap as we can, don’t we?”
“I think we were just a little surprised to hear something so Machiavellian come out of your mouth,” Courtland clarified, with just a hint of an appreciative gleam in his eyes.
“It’s hard not to pick up, watching Antha operate,” he answered, giving a vague shrug and throwing back the rest of his bourbon.
Personally, Lawrence was a little irked by the exchange, and it showed. It was a good thing, he supposed, but…well, he’d never heard his cousins talk like that. He was used to them sitting back and watching while Antha went about her business and he picked up the slack. It was his job, his role in the family, and more than the idea of being replaced, he didn’t like the idea of what damage they could cause if they got involved in the process.
But Armand was right, they had to cover the gap when…well, when the terrible thing happened that none of them dared to mention outright. This was a good thing. He kept telling himself that, silently, trying to make himself accept it. This was a good thing.

While all of this was going on, Alistair was sitting quietly on the bed beside Rynn in the airship, their fingers locked, humming to himself. He should’ve brought a book, it was terribly uninteresting sitting around in a quiet, creaking aircraft more or less alone, acting as a power juice box for an old Roman vampire ghost.
…sometimes, Alistair was briefly struck by how intensely odd their lives were.
Nevermind. There were fairies in his house, his sister was running around with a katana and brawling with their vampire brother, and he was sitting in a pocket of another dimension, helping Cassian bypass Rynn’s stalker family ghosts so that they could twist his power and he could put the original vampire into a coma. Whatever.
His phone chimed. It had been four hours in the real world since Antha had gone to sleep, and practically an eternity in the airship. Tugging on Cassian, who gently extracted himself from the very veins of Rynn’s power, Alistair leaned over and carefully nudged Rynn awake, softly calling his name. “It’s time to wake up.” Above them, the amorphous blob of Cassian swirled and shivered, pleased that he’d made some progress, even if he’d had to use Alistair to accomplish it. When Rynn’s eyes fluttered, the other boy smiled just slightly, laying one hand across his forehead and checking his pulse with the other. “Good, everything seems in order. How do you feel?”
Briefly, Cassian stilled and watched the exchange. There was something peculiar to him about the way Alistair handled Rynn, so very gently, like something precious. Nothing like Antha, who snatched him up and threw him around. But he didn’t stop to ponder it---he had enough on his mind without getting dragged into the intrigues of these mortal children.  

[Okimiyage]

The kettle had begun to whistle.
Dorian had been seated at the table, seemingly trying to avoid looking at the faerie woman. When the keening of steam began, however, he got up and began to administer teabags to the various dainty cups he found in the cupboard. Luckily, the Mayfairs had a rather extraordinary, nigh-infinite hoard of teacups.
The woman accepted her cherry-red brew, when it was poured, and set to stirring it calmly while steam wafted up into her face, as gauzy as her robes.
“I suppose this all came to you as a surprise,” she said, slowly. “It is true that our host has not been settled here for long. And we are not usually…quite so social with mortals.”
“Didn’t seem like that at your party,” Dorian grumbled. “The last two girls wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“Our revel,” the woman corrected. Giving him a disdainful look, she turned back to Antha. “As for the rudeness of my…colleagues, I’m afraid I must ask for their pardon. Existing outside of our designated plane is somewhat taxing. It takes a supreme effort to conduct a revel on the scale of that which your pretty Dorian found himself in. However, it is our obligation to conduct such activities while our ranks remain—ahem—somewhat thinned.”
The fairy turned her cup about in her hands.
“I don’t expect you to be understanding, of course. Humans breed so rapidly. Even now, your own womb is filling—how lucky your species is. But have you never wondered why all those stories of changeling children came to exist?”
“Our race is barren. The only children that we bear come from mortals, and yet—in our realm, they cannot age. Time flows…differently there, for us all.”
“We won’t simply abandon our offspring, of course—not after this much effort. They’ll always have a place in our court, Seelie or Unseelie. But it would be foolish to pretend that we could raise them on this plane like--like fairy godmothers. Traveling from one world to another takes an unwarranted expenditure of energy, after all, and most of us are...conservative with ours, nowadays. Even a brief chat of this sort would be too wasteful for most.” The fairy sipped from her tea, and blanched at the taste. Reaching for the creamer, she continued: “Dorian knew all of this when he agreed to help us, out of the—“ her red mouth curled, like a cat enjoying a good rub. “—goodness and charity of his heart.” Dorian blinked, and his jaw dropped slightly. “I did?”
The fairy gave him a cold stare. “You came into our house, drank our wine, ate our food, and seduced our women.”
“Me? I was the one being seduced, not the other way around!”
“By right, we could have kept you with us for the rest of eternity.” she said, flatly. “There are rules, as even a child like yourself should know. But—” and her black hands uncurled upwards and made a sweeping gesture across the table, as if to deliver an unseen ball to his court. Her smile was dazzling, like cut diamonds, and just as hard. “You agreed to help us.”
Dorian rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers, and shut his eyes. The faerie woman seemed to find this amusing, like a cat watching a mouse having a mental breakdown. “Perhaps if you had not enjoyed quite so much of our hospitality, you would remember better.” she suggested pleasantly. She was putting more cream in her tea. At this point, there was hardly a point to calling it ‘tea’ anymore; it was more like flavored milk. Dorian waved her off without even opening his eyes. “But I don’t know anything about raising a kid!”
“As little as you know, I can assure you that my brethren know less,” the woman said, decisively. “And you have one of these—“ she waved her arms around the kitchen vaguely, “—dwelling things already, although the amount of iron in this room is, frankly, crippling—and the commendable name of your clan, and what seems to be a good number of servants already—” It would have amused Dorian if he had realized she was talking about the crowd of cousins that she had seen in the entrance hall. Then again, if her interactions with humans were as limited as her story suggested, it wasn’t surprising that she mistook formalwear for a butler’s uniform. He didn’t comment on it, at least for the moment: setting her straight seemed to be the more important matter at hand. “None of this is mine,” Dorian interrupted. “I can get why you’d think that, but all of that, what you just said? You picked the worst Mayfair to rely on in that department. I don’t have servants. I barely pay rent.” Admittedly, this was because the Mayfairs owned the apartment building where his penthouse was located. But a penthouse was no place for a child, let alone three!
“I don’t live here. Even if I did, the family coffers are not accessible just because I have the same last name.”
The faerie looked unsettled for the first time at this news, but appeared to shake it off after a moment. She’d heard that this sort of thing that humans did. “You need say nothing more. I can see where this is going.” she said easily. The woman stood, and reached fluidly across the table before Dorian had a chance to flinch away. When her hand withdrew, what looked like a lock of Dorian’s hair was clenched between her fingers—a lock of hair that, upon second glance, became a thick, flat disc, with a dim but unmistakable luster. “Even I’ve heard of this,” Dorian said, crossing his arms. “You try to pay me in gold, and by morning it all turns into a bunch of leaves and rocks and twigs. Nuh-uh. You can’t buy me.”
A scowl flitted across her face, marring the perfection of her features. “Do not insult me, mortal. I am giving you my grandson tonight. I would not cheapen our bargain by cheating you.”
“Our son,” Dorian couldn’t help but correct her. He was in a particularly bitchy mood; even literal faerie princesses didn’t get immunity, tonight.
Then, he blinked. Grandson? “Wait—you mean…?—Oh.”
“My youngest daughter,” the woman informed him icily. She somehow seemed as though she had grown several inches taller in the past thirty seconds. Throwing the coin down on the table, it rang against the smooth wood and spun across the table to clatter before Dorian.
He picked it up. The bitchy part of him wanted to bite it, just as a poke at the fairy grandmother, but he refrained. As her pseudo-son-in-law, he was probably going to have to see her again.
Well, at least it wasn’t another girl.
“We will not allow our children to starve,” the women continued, turning away from Dorian after throwing him an aggravated glance. “While they mature, you may expect regular deliveries of this sort; under pillows is the preferred method, I think.”
“And what if I need to get in touch with you?” Dorian demanded, rubbing at his ear as if he expected another gold coin to grow out of his scalp. The faerie woman smiled slightly, passively as a portrait. “Oh, we’ll be watching. You needn’t worry on that account.”

In the airship, Rynn swam up slowly from his trance state. Even though it had only been a few hours, he was surprised at how bleary his eyes were, and it took a few blinks to get them to focus on the face overhead. “Mmph.” His mouth was dry; Rynn blamed the whiskey. “…I think so. Bit of a headache. How am I supposed to feel?” When he tried to get up out of the hospital bed, Rynn discovered that one of his legs had gone to sleep during the ritual. “Ow,” he mumbled, rubbing his shin. He just had to pick the most awkward position to pass out in, didn’t he?
At least this was an improvement on the last time he was drunk. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement. Raising his eyes to the ceiling, Rynn nudged Alistair. “Is Cassian supposed to be here, still? Er—I just figured he’d disappear after we were done. Is there something else?“  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

In the course of a split second, Antha had gone as rigid as stone, her eyes flickering at the door and praying none of her cousins had overheard the fairy spill her secret so casually. “Do not,” she said, lowly, moving over behind Dorian with her hand closed white-knuckled on the back of the chair, “Ever repeat that again.” Her other hand briefly squeezed Dorian’s shoulder, so that he knew the warning was just as much for him.
And then she leaned over him, plucking the coin from his fingers, and set it decisively down in front of the fairy woman again, sliding it back towards her. “Whatever Dorian’s position,” she said, after a moment of thought, “We will see his children taken care of. But I want to make this very, very clear: they have our blood, and if you leave them here with us, they are ours. There is no returning when they’re grown to take them back. If they decide to seek their fey roots on their own, so be it, but we will not tolerate any interference. And whatever Dorian did or didn’t agree to that he doesn’t remember, you may consider it null and void. This is our world, our rules apply. Dorian does not, nor will he---” She nodded pointedly at the coin. “---owe you anything. They are his children, our family, and that’s all there is to it. If any of your kind need, for any reason, or want to visit them, you will do so with utmost discretion, for their sake. I want to be clear on that in particular, that none of you are to simply show up at this house again. As I said, we are watched continuously, and I will not have anyone discover these children’s origins, it would spell certain doom for them. On that, at least, I’m sure we can agree.”
And then, calmly, she took a seat beside Dorian with her cup of tea, sipping it as casually as if nothing was going on. “I am immoveable on these points,” she added, glancing up at the fairy, “If any of them are disagreeable to you, then you picked the wrong family in which to procreate.” And then she turned to Dorian. “And if any of this is disagreeable to you…well, that’s very unfortunate, but it’s not up to you. There are an alarming number of people in this city that would kill to take possession of these children, you alone cannot protect them, and as they are our blood, we won’t take any chances with their safety. As much as I overlook for your sake, this can’t be one of those things.”
Her first concern, both as the Designee of the Legacy and as a mother herself, was their safety. There were too many legends about fairies, good and bad, and too much mystery surrounding them, anything in the city with any kind of power would be desperate to either abduct them or destroy them if they knew what the infants were. “I’m not unsympathetic,” she said after a moment, reluctantly, “I understand what it means…having to give up your children.” Her voice wavered, vaguely, but Antha refused to let it break, forcing herself to continue. “I don’t know how maternal bonds work with your kind, but given your reaction just now, I know they at least exist. These women---your daughter and the other two mothers---they’ve given up their children because it’s best for them, so that they can grow. That’s why I’m asking this, that when you leave, you and yours stay away, because if anyone traces your nature back to them, I’m not sure we’ll be able to protect them against the onslaught.”

The cousins, fortunately, had not been attempting to eavesdrop when the proverbial beans were spilled. They were watching Alistair and Rynn descend the stairs, the former carefully watching the latter to be sure he was stable. Jack, seizing on the new audience for his grievances, whined, “Airi, Evie stole my katana and got blood on it and now Pierce has it and it’s going to rust~!”
“Antha and Dorian are in the kitchen with another fairy,” Armand said instead, deeming it more important than Jack’s sword, “I think there’s another fairy baby involved. Not that I was eavesdropping.”
“And Cian had a terrible reaction to her and now Evie’s even more cross than before,” Courtland concluded, nodding, “And before she was stomping around with a weapon, so…”
But Alistair just gave them a calm, reassuring smile. “You’re all worrying too much. Evie’s fine, just let her handle it.”
Mumbling, Courtland said, “It’s really Cian I’m worried for…”  

[Okimiyage]

The fairy woman raised her eyebrows at Antha’s little outburst, stirring her tea nonchalantly. “I would have thought you would be excited at the prospect,” she said, with a shrug that belied her total disinterest in the affairs of mortals. These were…an exception, true, but only because they currently possessed new members of the next generation, a fact which she envied them. Humans did not know how good they had it.
It was the other points that she actually had incentive to dispute.
“But let me remind you, little witch, that these are neither your children, nor are their fates yours to decide.” she said, in a low voice. The shadows in the room seemed to deepen terribly.
“If the bonds of family are as important to you as you claim, then let me suggest that you consider it from our perspective. If you were to give birth to a child, one which you were incapable of raising by your own abilities, and then told that—because of immutable circumstances—you would nary be able to look at it lest you be sought out, much less introduce the child the true extent of it’s heritage—hah.” She threw back her head, milky white throat rippling with laughter like bells. “Is that what you mortals think of as family?”
“I cannot impress upon you the desperation with which this plan has been enacted; it would be foolish to try.” Humans were in no danger of dying out anytime soon, much to her regret. “As for any onslaught, you need not fear. We protect our own. Hide them from your enemies: another home if you must, give them false names, barricade them in your attic, but our claim on our children will not be so easily relinquished. You cannot ask a mother who has wept and bled and endured to bring a life in this world to give it up. I will not go back to my people and tell them that I have bargained away their offspring. You would find yourself under their assault by sunrise.”
Leaning forward, the faerie put her hands on the table. “Be well aware: if you will not take them, we will find someone who will.” she said, quietly. “They will have their witch’s blood, none-the-less. Do you honestly think the parents would know the difference? Nobody outside this house believes in changelings; not in these times.” Leaning back, her black lacquered nails rapped out a swift staccato burst of percussion upon the tabletop. “I would like to give you a choice in these matters. But you are sorely mistaken if you think that we will allow a human clan—what is the term? ‘Full custody’?—over our children.” Her hands clenched, and slivers of wood shavings came up beneath her nails as they pulled across the counter. “No matter how affluent, powerful, or well-known your people might be.” Her voice was calm, but the black-knuckled clench of her hands belied her strong emotions.
Finally seeming to remember that Dorian was in the room, she cast him a rather disinterested glance. “If it were to come to that: you are welcome to come along, should you like. We are particularly adept at concealment, and—as I think we have already proven—will provide with ample resources if you should find yourself lacking. For some reason, the mothers seem to believe that it would be best if at least one parent remained with their offspring.”
Dorian looked uncertain. His eyes swiveled from between Antha and the red-haired faerie woman.
“I can’t—“ he stammered, unable to find words. “I can’t make up my mind just like that.”
True, it would solve all his problems. He wouldn't have to worry about the Mayfair trust writing him out of their will, losing his apartment, sucking up to the cousins in order to keep in their favor. But...it would mean losing all of them, too. And he couldn't reconcile that.

Outside, Cian clattered up the steps, slapping Rynn on the shoulders. “Finally, Alistair returns you to us!”
Rynn’s half-asleep leg nearly buckled under the slap, but he clung to the railing and gave his older brother a grin. “What, you thought I’d been kidnapped?”
Liesse turned worried eyes on her brother. “You were gone an awfully long time.”
Vikteren interrupted Jack quietly. “Like I sad, you can clean the blood off.” It was metal, it wasn’t like the damn thing would produce a stain.
Cian swiveled on the stairs at Courtland’s comment. “Hey! All that I was saying was that there was a woman wandering around the streets half-naked, and this one—“ he jerked a finger at Vikteren, who looked completely unremorseful. “—didn’t even notice. Is that normal? Tell me that’s normal behavior for vampires. You can’t, can you? They love women in transparent white night-dresses.”
Vikteren sighed, and dropped down into one of the chairs which flanked the entry-way. “Stereotyping at its finest.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Finally, Antha’s composure broke down. There wasn’t even any question why, it was Dorian’s fault, that much was clear by the look she gave him when he finally spoke---hurt and enraged and completely, utterly done with this nonsense. Standing up, her chair scraping on the floor, she laid one hand firmly on the table and began, sternly, “Alright, let me make this abundantly clear, because I’m just not in the mood for another fight tonight.” This was said probably in part because of the way her power had flared with her temper, making the windows rattle, and she didn’t want the fairy to take it as a challenge. She had too much on her shoulders as it was, she refused to start brawling over this. “Those children are every bit as much Mayfair as they are fey and even if we don’t need them as you do, they are our family and we will love them. So if you leave them with us, we’re not going to simply hand them over to be taken away in a number of years. We won’t hide what they are from them, and if one day they decide to return to your kind, the other half of their family, it will be their choice and we won’t stop them, but it will be their decision, not yours or their mothers’ or anyone else’s. If you can’t accept that, if you take them off to someone else as changelings, we will find them, because we have a duty to protect our blood. As for ‘visitations,’ as I said, you are not to show up here whenever you want. These women are free to visit their children as often as they wish, but they will do so with discretion and our help. To be completely explicit, this city---this entire goddamn world---is filled with vampires that would drain those poor children dry if they knew what they were on the off chance that all the legends of the power in their blood are true. The Talamasca would do everything in their power to kidnap them, to study them, and anyone else would dearly want them dead for fear of their nature. This world is a ******** dangerous place for an infant fairy, and the moment anyone gets the faintest trace of any fairy, they will connect it back to those babies. So even if I wouldn’t deny a mother the right to see her child, I will not condone risking the child’s very life for it out of carelessness. I’m sorry if it’s an inconvenience, but carefully arranging any visits is the only way to protect them and if they are to remain with us, their safety is the first priority. I won’t negotiate on this, take it or leave it. If you can’t accept the terms and Dorian decides to take his children and leave, it’s his choice, and we can’t stop him. But I should remind you---” She turned her eyes on Dorian then, with an excruciatingly complex mixture of emotions, hurt and concern chief amongst them, “---if you leave, you can’t come back. I’ll be gone, and the cousins can stop Julien from disowning you, but if you leave of your own accord, none of them has the power to force him to take you back. You and your children will be alone in this world.”
Finally, unable to stop himself, Courtland burst through the door all in a rage, eyes shining and color high in his cheeks. “You can’t take them,” he declared, hissing, “They’re my nieces, I won’t let you just take them away like that.”
“Courtland,” Antha said lowly in warning, grabbing him by the arm to stop him before he did anything too rash.
But he shook her off. “No, Evie, I won’t be quiet. Not a ******** one of you was ever a witch alone in this world, you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what hell it is, the vampires lurking in the shadows and the normal people ganging up on you because they know you’re different. No. I won’t let it happen to Dorian or my nieces.”
“Courtland!” Antha repeated, more sharply, “Stop. It’s Dorian’s life and his children. However we feel about it, we don’t have the right to stop him from making his own choices.” Turning to look at the fairy woman, she concluded stiffly, “I’ve told you my terms. If the two of you can accept them, we’ll take care of them, and we’ll keep them safe. If you can’t…we’re not a nanny service, we won’t put the entire family through such misery and peril for your convenience. Decide it between yourselves, I’ve said all that I can say.”
Courtland, however, had not. While Antha tried to drag him to the door, he pulled his arm free and stood staring intently at Dorian, more serious than he’d ever been in his life. “You’ve never been outside of this family,” he repeated, with dire gravity this time, “You’ve always had the connection, the protection of it. You can hate the family all you want, it’s the only reason you’re still alive. This world is a ******** cruel and terrifying place for our kind without that. You’re just a particularly tempting morsel against a horde of monsters and an entire human population that fears and despises you. If Antha says I can’t stop you then I can’t, but Dorian…you don’t want to be alone out there, and you sure as hell don’t want to put your children through it.”
Finally, Antha managed to get a hold of him and drag him stumbling out of the door, scattering the cousins listening intently on the other side of it. When a moment had passed, Lawrence echoed his cousin, directly to Antha this time. “You can’t let him leave. He’d be exiled from the city, there’s nothing we could do. Antha…he can’t survive alone out there, none of us could. And those children! What are they going to do when a vampire with ten times Dorian’s power shows up in the middle of the night to take them?! You can’t just let him---”
Inhaling sharply, aggravated, Antha held up both hands for silence, shaking her head. A few of the cousins who were paying close enough attention could just barely see her fingers tremble. “It’s out of our control, even mine. We can alter things within this family but we can’t stop someone from leaving it.”
“The only true witch stupid enough to do it was Catherine,” Armand reminded her, gruffly, visibly disturbed, “You remember how that turned out, don’t you? An entire coven of vampires broke into her house and drained her dry.”
“It’s out of our control,” Antha repeated, sharply, “It’s his decision, now let him make it.” With that, she tuned and tromped out of the room, up the stairs.
“Even if he doesn’t,” Jack mumbled, “We can’t let any fairies take those kids. They don’t have the right---they’re our family, too.”
“If Dorian stays, the babies stay,” Courtland declared, as if there was no question to it, no matter what Antha said, “They’re his children, we’re sure as hell not letting anyone take them away from him.”

Upstairs, Antha had slipped silently into the dark, quiet nursery to check on her children. They were asleep, all four of the infants, so Antha crept soundlessly over to Vanessa and Sebastien’s crib, setting her puppy down to curl up beside it, and rested her chin against the railing of the side, just…watching them as they slept. “Mommy’s going to take care of it,” she said after several long minutes had passed, whispering feather-light beneath her breath so as not to disturb them, “Mommy will take care of everything, so believe in me. Our family, your little brother, your future…I’ll make everything alright, for your sake.”
Honestly, Antha had very little sympathy for the mothers of Dorian’s children. She understood the pain of it, but at the same time, she was forfeiting her very life to be absolutely certain her children were safe. If all they had to do was take some precautions in seeing their children…well, they were lucky, and Antha wouldn’t cut them any slack. A mother’s feelings amounted to nothing up against the safety of her children.  

[Okimiyage]

The red-haired woman crossed her arms during Antha’s proclamation, in a manner that could have been almost testy if it wasn’t for the expression in her eyes, dancing with humor.
Dorian didn’t look happy. He knit his hands over his mouth, to hide the terse twist in it, but couldn’t cover up the steely glint in his eyes. Even when Courtland joined them, dramatically bursting in like a soap opera star, he barely glanced up.
“I understand where you’re coming from.” he said, his voice low but firm. “But you have to admit—Court, Antha, we don’t know anything about how to raise these kids. If this was a normal situation, maybe—but this is an entirely different species than ours. What do we do if they hit puberty and start—I don’t know—turning green or growing antlers or something?”
Before they could begin to form an argument, Dorian held up a hand. “I know, I know—we’ll figure it out, we’ll learn, we’d make it work. But by god, can’t we just…save ourselves some effort, here? In the case that we should have to defend ourselves against every vampire in the city, you have to admit that there are worse things to have on your side than an entire host of fairies. And…I not have been in my right mind when I gave it, but I have to stand by my word.”
The red-haired woman gave a curt little nod of agreement, and for the first time seemed to regard the human with some small measure of respect in her smile.
“We don’t wish to take your nieces, my dear.” she reassured Courtland, moving to his side to lightly rest one of her soot-black hands on his shoulder. “We did go to immense trouble to arrange the situation,” she said lightly. “It would be a pity for all that effort to be wasted. And rest assured, you shall not have a horde of my people stomping through your gardens, I can guarantee you that—at least, no more than already stomp there. It would be quite as troublesome for us as it would be for you. The mothers merely wish to…observe from afar. And of course, on Samhain, it is a time-honored tradition for us to visit amongst those guising, when the veil is thinnest.” The woman stroked a long hank of her red hair over her shoulder, dislodging one of the star-shaped flowers from within the mane. When Antha stormed out, she gave a happy little sigh. “I like her,” she announced. The fairy didn’t have quite the right vocabulary to describe it, but she could have used the word ‘spunky’ very accurately.
But for once, the faerie woman didn’t have an audience for her words. Courtland and Dorian were squared off, with both looking like they were about to read the other’s death sentence.
Court delivered his first, and finally—when he was about to leave—Dorian caught the edge of his sleeve, and spoke up.
“Court.”
“I know…things in the family haven’t exactly been all fun and games, lately. And at least part of that’s my fault. I haven’t been easy to forgive. But—s**t—I know I can’t do this alone, even if I was twice the witch that I am, but I don’t want—I won’t raise two, three kids while telling them all the while that they can’t see their mothers because the Talamascans and—and local boogeymen are all out to get them. I don’t know what that would do to a kid, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be good. So—no, I’m not leaving. Not unless you force me. But I’m sure as hell not going to deny them their—their heritage, or whatever. I mean, I don’t know anything about—‘fairy stuff’, and neither do you, and I’m not going to let my own ignorance screw them up when there’s someone around who can teach them all that.” He waved a hand vaguely but insistently at the red-haired woman, who looked distinctly unimpressed with his speech. Or maybe she just wasn’t used to ever being ignored.
“I’m their dad, Court. I have to do what’s best for them, and—I know Antha’s scared of what the consequences of that might be, but there’s more to being a parent than just keeping them safe. They have to learn what they are. And none of us know how to teach them that.”

The red-haired woman yawned in a distinctly exaggerated fashion. “So it’s decided, then?”
Dorian seemed to realize for the first time that she’d been listening in. “What? What’s decided?”
“You said three. Not two. Would you like to meet him, now?”
“Meet who?”
The fairy arched a brow, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Your son.”
“Oh, um—“ Dorian seemed to have momentarily lost his voice; he formed half-syllables for a moment, then looked doubtfully over his shoulder towards the kitchen door, where the rest of the family waited outside. “…I…think so.”
The woman smiled. “He’s waiting for you outside. I’m afraid my daughter was a little…concerned after the stir that we caused. She seemed to think you might toss hers into the fire.”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t act so surprised. You humans used to do it all the time, when you thought we’d stolen your children. Some of them were quite ordinary, too.”
She gave Dorian a sidelong glance. “If such a thing happens to my grandson, I assure you, consequences will be immediate and dire. We are not as heartless as your legends say, but we can be unnaturally cruel.”
“I wouldn’t—“ Dorian started, but the woman was already moving past him.
With a sigh, he rubbed a hand through his blonde hair, which was beginning to look quite unruly after the night’s events. The kitchen’s swinging door nearly hit him int he face as he followed her.

Outside, Cian was staring up the stairs after Antha, rubbing his shoulder and looking concerned.
“You don’t suppose that we should follow her?” he asked. Lately, his wife seemed as if she had been drawing away from him, spending more time on her own than not. He knew she liked her privacy, but still…
“You might,” Rynn answered, following his brother’s eyes. “I think she might bite off a head if anyone except Alistair or yourself made the attempt, though.”
Speaking of Alistair, he found that he was still holding on to the other boy’s arm. When he had stumbled on the stairs, he had instinctively grabbed the nearest means of support, and somehow…never let go.
Their hands twitched apart as if a bee sting had manifested between their palms.
“Er.” Liesse glanced over, noticed his pink cheeks, and gave an encouraging little smile to Alistair.
Luckily, Dorian had come out to distract them all from the budding romance. Rynn didn’t like to think what kind of ribbing he would have had to endure from the cousins, otherwise.
“Alright,” Dorian announced, cracking his knuckles. “Last one. It is the last one, right?” he asked, glancing sidelong at the red-haired woman.
She smiled, and was silent for just long enough that Dorian’s imagination had the chance to run wild.
“To the best of my knowledge.” she finally admitted, and he gave a huge sigh of relief.
“Well, then.”
He spread his hands and brought them together in an almighty clap, turning towards the cousins with a broad smile.
“I’ll be right back, folks.”
While the rest of the crowd gathered around the windows, craning over one another to see out and across the dim-lit street as Dorian exited the house, Cian took the opportunity to very quietly, one eye on the cousins, climb the stairs and follow Antha to the nursery.
The door was open a crack, just enough that he could see her bent over Sebastien and Vanessa in their crib. Ginsy looked exhausted, but that was only to be expected; he was only a puppy, after all. What worried Cian was Antha. With a light rap on the doorframe, he entered the room. “Hey,” he said softly, whispering so as not to disturb the sleeping kids. He slowly approached the cradles, his weight creaking gently across the floorboards. “Sleeping soundly, huh?” he asked, although he already knew the answer. It was really an excuse just to stand next to her, stroking her hair idly, watching protectively over their twins. “You look like you could use some of that, too.”