Mayfair Manor

[Okimiyage]

Dorian listened patiently to her throughout her little speech, until she got to the end. Please don’t be drunk.
Well, there was no call for that. That was rude. That rankled. She hadn’t seen him in over half a decade and the first request she made of him—after demanding that the family take in her child, which she had stolen away from them in the first place—was that he not be drunk. As though he was still that same damaged, reckless alcoholic as he had been six—seven? years ago.
The drink, he wanted to tell her, was a damn panacea at that point. It blurred the lines of reality. The bad parts didn’t seem so bad anymore, or else they seemed hilarious. The part of him that was the laughing, happy Dorian, that part seemed suddenly easier to find. There had been a reason he’d been drinking all the time, but it was hard to remember now. Maybe he’d been drinking to forget. That sounded about right—he’d needed to forget how lonely he was, how disenchanted he was with everyone he met in those days, or maybe he was trying to catch up—maybe he had needed the loss of his inhibitions to howl and scratch like Antha had been able to—an ‘it girl’ of the Mayfair tradition in those days, if ever there was one.
Dorian gritted his teeth, and tried to bite back the curses that blighted his tongue. If they’d have only—
if she’d had only—
But that was worthless speculation. And suddenly, the fight drained away from him with his sigh. “I would have stood by you, Melody.” he said, tiredly. “If you’d asked it of me. Though no-one in this family might believe it, I do still have some notions of honor.”
But she hadn’t asked. She hadn’t said—hardly anything to him, afterwards, that wasn’t laced with spite, and then she’d disappeared.
Dorian had wondered, some nights, before the drink and the opiates lulled him to sleep, whether he’d loved her, really. He’d desired her, certainly, from the moment Malakai had brought her home. Sweet, dull Malakai, who’d orbited Melody like the planets around the sun, obedient and loyal and loving.
And Dorian had always thought it seemed strange, that a girl like her would settle for that. Love was supposed to be challenging, he thought. Passionate. A relationship was supposed to—to make you want to improve yourself, to be better for that other person, and they for you. Malakai’s love was like the love in fairy-tales—charming and slightly insipid and guaranteeing a neat happily-ever-after.
But had he really loved her, or had he merely been envious of how happy they had seemed with one another? Had he only really desired Melody because he wanted a taste of the peace that Malakai had?
It hadn’t worked, anyways. She’d only divorced herself of the entire city in return. He hadn’t thought he’d been that bad in bed—that was the joke, anyways, which he’d repeated to audiences in dozens of bars across Osiris while luridly recounting the affair, in the weeks after. (Perhaps it would have been better to keep mum, but Dorian always thought it was best to address rumors head-on—that way you could at least alter the narrative a bit)
He waved her on, remembering with a wince the person he had been at eighteen. Perhaps it was better that she’d left. If they’d gotten to know one another, well, he really might have fallen in love with her, after all.
He couldn’t really blame her. Dorian wouldn’t have wanted to live with that version of himself, either. He hadn’t regretted it. Or, well—he had regretted hurting Malakai. He had regretted it when she left. But that night, that blissfully inebriated night, when the barrier of skin seemed so thin that it might melt away between the two of them, no.
Dorian grimaced, and pushed his hands back through his hair so that it fanned out around his fingertips into whorls of gold.
He had no regrets about that. And maybe that meant he was just as ******** up as everyone else thought.

If Alistair had thought he was reassuring Liesse by telling her that she didn’t need to worry about being abandoned…well, he could have phrased it better. Although, to be fair, now she was worrying about something else entirely. She stood to hug Gretchen and the others goodbye, but her heart didn’t seem to be in it.
“Liesse, put it out of mind.” Rynn murmured. “You’re going to give yourself wrinkles, screwing up your forehead like that.”
She hadn’t even realized that the stress was showing itself on her face. Raising her hands to her brow, she tried to smooth away the creases. “I’m sorry, I just…” “There’s no point in worrying unless there’s something you can do about it,” Rynn said, firmly. Like he was one to talk…
But it seemed to do the trick for his sister. A contemplative look came over her face and settled with determination. Well, it was better than watching her chew her lip and fret.
But he could hear the incessant patter of her thoughts, and when she opened her mouth, he interrupted only because he knew what was coming out next. “Has anyone seen where—“
“Give him some time, Liesse. He’s probably had a pretty strong shock just now, you know?”
“But doesn’t that mean that he’ll need someone there? To be—you know—supportive and everything?”
“If he wants ‘supportive’, he’ll seek it out.” said Rynn, again as authoritatively as though he’d written books on the subject. “Just be patient. The worst thing you could do right now is barge in and add more to the situation.”
Liesse thought about this, but couldn’t seem to pinpoint a good reason to disagree. “Fine.” she huffed, and plopped down on the edge of the bed.

See, that was where Rynn disagreed with Thorne. It was one thing to have that ugly, secret core in him—Rynn could very well believe that—but then there was Liesse, who just wanted…fairy-tales. Not the hard, cruel fables that mothers had told to their children centuries ago, but the ones the Victorians had reinvented, all watered-down and suitably illustrated for children. He couldn’t imagine that darkness in her.
And anyways, he wasn’t even sure that what Thorne was describing was love. (And Rynn wondered, too, if he would have even recognized it, if it was) It sounded more mixed-up and convoluted than anything else he’d heard of before. Thorne hadn’t wanted to be loved—by his own admission, he wanted to be abused. But who was he to say that wasn’t a type of real love?
And Thorne hadn’t died of a broken heart, after all. He’d merely closed off a part of himself, hiding behind that simple, stoic persona like it was a wall. Maybe it was because Antha had changed, and she wasn’t that cruel child that he had longed for anymore—or at least, not outwardly.
“Love sounds like hell, when I hear him describe it,” he muttered. Maybe it was supposed to be—or at least, unrequited love certainly was. Picking up one of Aedan’s locked books from where it had fallen on the floor, he tossed the slim, brass-bound volume idly from hand to hand. “There has to be more to it than that.”
Liesse worked the hem of her skirt between her hands, picking off bits of fluff that had stuck to it throughout the day. “It’s different for everyone,” she said, absently. “Malakai and I, Cian and Antha, you and Alistair…wouldn’t it be boring if it was all alike?”
But Rynn was gone, the steady tread of his footsteps vanishing down the hall towards the attic, and she glanced up to find herself in an empty room—an imperceptible wind fluttered the pages of Aedan’s sketchbook, beneath the bed—that smelled of sea moss and lilies.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

A few moments after Melody was gone, the front door opened and, surprisingly, Jack came stumbling out, pausing to give Dorian a long, quiet look. Courtland’s idea of ‘managing’ Jack had clearly been to get him drunk, or else slip him some mystery drugs, and the boy was now flushed and swaying, but at least didn’t take a swing at Dorian before stumbling over and dropping onto the swing beside him with a clatter. Legs splayed, head hanging over the back of the swing, he let out a long, low sigh and cast a tired hand over his eyes. “I was in the hallway, you know,” he mumbled after a moment, thick with inebriation. “Not now,” he added hastily, gesturing clumsily at the front door, “Not for this. The night that my mother told Barclay he wasn’t my real father. I heard them yelling, so Lawrence and I went to go see what was wrong. And I was…shocked, and heartbroken, and just sick that I was another of Julien’s spawn. But it…it didn’t occur to me that my father would reject me once he found out we didn’t share blood. He had raised me for four years, I thought…I thought that he loved me, regardless of my blood.” Jack paused here, idly hiccupping, and turned a heavy, narrowed sidelong gaze on Dorian. “You can imagine my world-shattering disbelief when he suddenly announced that I couldn’t stay in his house---that he didn’t want mother’s b*****d spawn walking around reminding him of her betrayal. When my own ******** mother packed my bags the next morning and threw me out of the house while my brother and sister stayed, while they were a normal family and I was…an orphan, with two and a half living parents.” His gaze darkened and finally had to divert, his eyelashes quivering before his eyes went expertly hard. “It ******** sucks, Dorian. I don’t know a better way to put it, it just…sucks. Being a child, rejected by one of the two people in the whole world you’re supposed to be able to depend on---well, you know that much. But you don’t know what it’s like to be told you’re lesser than. To be some freak your own family can’t even accept while they go on with their own happy little family unit. The anger---the murderous ******** loathing for those filthy bastards called your siblings because they just got lucky---because it’s not fair, it should’ve been them, they should have had to suffer just like you did---” Abruptly, Jack went quiet, hunched forward with his face in his white-knuckled hands. For a moment at the end, he’d gotten a little hysteric…deranged.
“Funny…” he murmured, quietly again now, his wrists on his knees, head hung, “How awful and honest inebriation can make you.” He even laughed, dryly, with nothing behind it. “Funnier still that I could tell you something I’ve never said out loud before.”
But the boy quieted again abruptly, sweeping a hand back through his hair, and fell to gazing off into the distance. “We’ve never gotten along, Dorian. Maybe we never will. But if you’d turned your back on that little girl…that’s the one thing I never could have forgiven. You can…try and ******** up for the next thirty years, for all it matters, but the only unforgiveable thing is to deny your child. That’s when you’ve ******** up so badly you can never come back from it.” Shaking his head, he rose again unsteadily, massaging his temple, and announced that he needed to go lay down. At the door, pausing, he added quietly. “Don’t tell Lawrence…that I hate him, I mean. That I can’t help hating him, and most of the time I wish he was dead, and Rowan and Belle too.”

While Thorne was leaving, Pierce was just stepping into his room, glancing curiously back at his little brother and then to the Calais twins. Abruptly, seeing the looks on their faces, he gave a little chuckling sigh. “Ah…did he show you his true colors?” Shaking his head, he apologized amusedly, “We take it for granted, so I guess no one thought to warn you, but…really, Thorne is the most twisted out of all of us. By like…leagues. I don’t think it was even Antha, he’s just always been that way.” Continuing on to his side of the room, where he had already begun packing his things, he continued with an incongruous cheerfulness, “It’s lucky he’s a stone cold, stoic little sociopath, or else we’d never be able to let him out of the house. That is probably Antha’s fault---his masochism was a lot more overt before she made him terrified of expressing himself.”
And then, shrugging, he continued quietly about his business. At least until Rynn outright vanished, and he was suddenly compelled not to hold his tongue. “You know…” Pierce pursed his lips, a sweater half-folded in his hands, and tried to think how to phrase it. “I don’t mean this to sound cruel,” he said apologetically to Liesse, as a disclaimer, “But…you really don’t know Malakai that well. It’s really only a matter of time---familiarity, really---but it’s still the case. You think he’s not like the rest of us---he’s not, on the whole, he’s still our sweet, innocent little saint---but…he does have his own darkness. It’s not twisted or violent like ours, but it’s still dark. Just…sad, and insecure, and deeply, deeply traumatized. And not knowing any of that, honestly…anything you could do right now would probably do more harm than good.” He shrugged, somewhat uncomfortably, hoping he hadn’t upset her. “But Malakai will be fine. He vanishes into dark, tiny cubbyholes where even Antha can’t find him to lick his wounds while Angelique---his great-great-great-grandmother, the one who built this house---pats his head and tells him he’s her dear, sweet boy. He’s the only one that ever really sees her, so he likes that part.”
(Predictably, Malakai was in fact curled up in a small, dark pocket of the house that no one knew about, with his head in the ghost’s pink-skirted lap as she stroked his dark hair and whispered reassuringly that he was her dear, sweet boy.)

When Rynn reached the top of the stairs, Alistair was already curled up in the large round window at the far side of the attic, physically contorted with all the careless fluidity of a cat, melded into the bottom of the curving sill with his legs stretched up the side, an ancient tome propped on his stomach and his unfastened tie hanging loosely from under his collar. “I think Uncle James could have put Dorian to shame,” he commented in passing when he heard Rynn’s step on the creaking floorboards, flipping a yellowed page, “His memoirs are like a traveler’s guide to Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s…inspiring, really. No wonder Julien locked it up.” The evidence of this was on the floor beside him in the form of a broken strongbox, the lock in pieces. “He even made sketches. How many bodies would you say that is?” Grinning, every bit the mischievous wolf, he set the open book on a nearby box and pushed it towards Rynn.
Casting a hand back through his curls, he gestured around the cluttered, quiet attic and purred, “You wanted to be alone, right?” Alistair certainly looked like the sort of boy one would want to be alone with at the moment, stretched and twisted and bathed in the sunlight coming through the window, his clothes just disheveled enough to be inviting, the smallest sliver of his pale stomach exposed. “Or did Thorne scare you off?” He half-laughed, rolling his eyes. “Thorne has a habit of perverting things, if you didn’t notice. He’s not wrong, technically, but everything he says is always twisted…extreme. But then, who am I to say anything?” He laughed, flashing one of his expertly charming guilty grins. “I’m not that much better than him, really. Just…different.” Jealous. Possessive. Obsessive. But he didn’t admit to any of that aloud. If Rynn didn’t already know then, well…he’d learn sooner or later.  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian could tell that Jack was drunk, and some part of him was even grateful for it. He appreciated the company, anyways—he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts, not right now.
Whatever Courtland had given the fellow, Dorian was impressed by it. He’d seen Jack down whole bottles of whiskey and be steadier on his feet afterwards than now. Less honest, too.
Dorian found himself fumbling for one of the gold-tipped cigarettes he kept in the tin in his breast pocket, lighting up with shaky hands and a sigh that blew out the flame of his lighter at first. “I’m not going to tell anyone,” he said, with finality, exhaling smoke in a long plume, like the smokestack of a train, as he lifted his head. “But you should. Did you ever get an apology from him? Were you ever…honest with any of them?” He lifted an eyebrow.
“You know, we are a family that is made up of, or made from, some astonishingly selfish men. I almost wonder if it’s something in the bloodline, at times. You and I aren’t much different. Malakai is probably…some kind of mutant.” He laughed. “Maybe that’s why you and I hate one another and he gets along with everyone.” He took another drag of his cigarette and flicked the cherry from its tip. “If we’re being honest, I thought about it, you know? When the faeries came, I thought <******** it. ******** this whole…this whole game. The only sensible solution seemed not to play. I didn’t want to be anyone’s pawn. If we’re being honest—“ And they were, since it seemed likely that Jack wouldn’t even recall the conversation tomorrow, “—I thought maybe it would be better if I just…disappeared. Left all of this up to, to more responsible kin of ours. I know what everyone in this house thinks of me. I know what I am, and it’s not what you would call a suitable father figure.” His laughter conjured forth a puff of smoke. “But then, who among us really had any example to learn from?”
He didn’t expand upon what he meant by disappeared, but it was clear enough in his mind. A noose dangling from the rafters of a creaking airship…Most of the time I wish he was dead, and Rowan and Belle, too…

Liesse had picked up the sketchbook, and her hands traced over the hair-thin line’s of Aedan’s handiwork, the watery paint that had crinkled the edges of each page while she bent her head over it, a curtain of coppery curls obscuring her face. “I just want to help,” she said, her voice made high and small and wretched by the way her throat tightened around it. “If you’d shown me someone like Thorne a few months ago, before I came here, I would have thought it was—such a tragedy, to love someone so much that you’d let them—“ The red curls shook. “—and to see them with someone else, afterwards, so much happier than they ever were with you. I can’t imagine what it’s like.”
This wasn’t strictly true. In fact, Liesse could imagine what it was like, exceedingly well, and that was what scared her now. The look on Malakai’s face, seeing Melody, and hearing Alistair describe how well they had loved one another, six years ago…
“I want to help,” she repeated, stubbornly. “Isn’t that what you do, when you love somebody? But I don’t know how, or whether I should even try when I haven’t been asked.” The red curls were tossed back and forth again. “It probably seems so very silly and inconsequential to the rest of you, and I can see why. It’s not as though I have any…experience, and first loves are rarely reliable. I shouldn’t get my hopes up. It would be foolish to get my hopes up.”
She laughed a little, although it might have been a sob, her fingers settling against the painted petals. “I’m trying to be good, but it’s almost impossible. I know Rynn thinks I’m such a hopeless romantic, that I just want a prince or a knight on a white horse to gallop in and give me a happy ending like in a story-book, but I know that’s not how it works. I always liked ‘Rapunzel’ the best, actually…”

The creak on the stairs announced Rynn’s approach long before he appeared in the doorway of the attic. The golden, slanting light through the air illuminated hundreds of dust motes in the air, spinning in the wake of every movement like the golden sparkles that followed pixies in movies. Time seemed to pass more slowly up here, Rynn thought, or perhaps that was the molasses-thick quality of the history that stood around them in labyrinthine heaps. When Alistair thumped the open book onto the nearby crate, the dust made a fountain around it. Rynn gave the illustrated page a trifling glance, then did a double-take and raised both eyebrows. “Your ancestors got around. No wondering where you get it from. And here, I thought you were just naturally talented.” He reached out and turned the page; opposite to a wall of tightly-knit cursive, an illustration of a nude youth being flogged by a fully-dressed woman in antiquated garb had been drawn. “Thorne would have liked this fellow. James, you said his name was?”
There was a chaise-longue nearby, the carved wooden frame chipped and the red velvet bleached pink by the sun. Rynn settled on the edge, giving the door of the airship a slightly uneasy sidelong glance. He hadn’t forgotten what his last trip up to the attic had been like. But Alistair’s posturing—there was no other word for it—was enough to distract his attention from those thoughts. Sometimes, Rynn could almost see the appeal of—what had Airi called it? A neko costume? It was in the way the other boy stretched, bones and muscle moving gracefully under his milky skin, and in the chesire-like quality of his smile, and the way he sought out the sun, framing his head through the streaky window-panes like a halo. “It’s not that I disapprove, you know? Your sister’s always been…a force to be reckoned with. If not outright witchcraft—and I could see why the used to suspect us of that—it’d be due animal magnetism or something, I’m sure. It makes me wonder.” He leaned back against the seat, squinting at the glint of sky that could be seen through the window, all shades of flame. “Do you think you can ever come back from that? Loving someone like her. Or like…Malakai, even. Or do you think it just sits in you, dormant for years, those feelings, that obsession? And…if you’re someone like Thorne, do you ever get over it? Or is it just part of you from then on?”
Reflectively, he added, “Love seems like a scary thing, if that’s what it does to someone.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Sighing, Pierce dropped the folded shirt in his hands and crossed the room over to Liesse, offering her a sympathetic smile and the gentle pat of his hand on the top of her head. “I know, kitten,” he said softly, “I know. It’s…difficult, I know. First loves are the worst specifically because they’re new and unfamiliar and there’s nothing you can do. Or if there is, there’s no way to know what or how because all of it is so inexplicably new.” Glancing once covertly around the room, he went and closed the door against prying ears, dropping onto the foot of the bed with a heavy sigh. “Did they tell you Lucy was my first love? They all think so, but they’re wrong.” He smiled, eyes flashing, and for a moment he looked just a bit bitter, strained. “Courtland was my first love,” he whispered, and his eyes showed some old, distant hurt that hadn’t healed quite right, “I really don’t think he ever knew. It was back when he was in utter torment over his love for Jack, and he used me because I was just similar enough that he could pretend I was him. And I let him because…because I thought he’d come to his senses eventually, I suppose.” He laughed once, ironically, given the current state of things. “That he’d realize Jack wasn’t right for him and I was. But then he turned to Antha instead, because she had that damned crimson hair, and Antha…I feel like we say this too much, but you guys would be in awe and terror at Antha at fourteen. When she started pushing Jack, trying to break him, I saw what was happening, and I got so---so desperate, that I just wouldn’t leave him alone, because I knew I was losing him. That was a mistake. It’s always a mistake to cling like that, tooth and nail, no matter how much you want to. Of course I never had any chance with Courtland, really---and that was just the worst thing, because damn it, I’m sooo much prettier than Jack---” Another laugh, genuine this time, tossing his perfectly molded hair. “What I mean is…I made it worse, because I wouldn’t just calm down and let what was going to happen, happen. I clung to Courtland so tightly that when I lost him, it hurt me so much more. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
In all likelihood, Pierce didn’t think Liesse and Malakai would work out, for a great variety of reasons. But he didn’t tell her this, obviously. Instead he just stood up again, laying a kiss on her forehead, and resumed packing. “It was a good thing, in the end. I love Lucy so much more than I ever did Courtland, and if things had ever worked out with him, I wouldn’t be with her. Some things just have to fall apart to make way for better things. But then---” He shrugged. "Courtland's first love was Jack, and that ended up alright. And Vittorio's first love was Dolly Jean. God knows neither of them had an easy time getting where they were. So it does happen, sometimes."

“Love is always part of you,” Alistair answered very surely, “It never goes away completely. It can be buried deep, deep down, but it never completely goes away. Just look at poor, wretched Julien. No matter how many years go by, and no matter how bitter he is at her, part of him will always be in love with my mother. And James---James loved George until the day he died, and all the debauchery in the world couldn’t make it go away. It’s like they say, love is forever.” He shrugged. “If it wasn’t, what would be the point? Love is intense and magnificent because it affects you so deeply. Of course, I’m only speaking from Evie’s experience, but…” He pursed his lips, eyes narrowing, utterly and brutally earnest. “Love has to be terrifying, on a fundamental level. Love is opening yourself up to someone else, putting yourself out there with the risk that you’re going to be utterly crushed one day. What isn’t terrifying about that?”
He wondered, discreetly, if Rynn was musing on Liesse’s behalf or his own. Either way, there was really nothing Alistair could honestly say to reassure him. Love was terrifying, and it did linger within you in some way forever. But he didn’t like where Rynn’s thoughts were taking him---he was such a skittish thing as it was, these kinds of thoughts could only work to Alistair’s disadvantage, and so he set to work distracting him. “I am naturally talented,” he announced conclusively, leaving no room for doubt, slipping out of the window and over to the chaise lounge. “But with these genes, this ancestral legacy---” Plucking the book from Rynn’s hands, he gently cast it aside and yanked Rynn down onto his back, pinning him down with his hands pressed down on either side of his head, his knee firmly planted on the edge of the seat between his legs. “---it just makes it that much more impressive to be naturally talented, in this family. Can you even imagine what it takes?” That wolfish grin flashed across his face, one bright curl falling over his darkened eye, as he cupped Rynn’s chin gently in hand. “Being compared to James, or Courtland, or Pierce, and still coming out victorious? That takes an enormous amount of talent. Or were you baiting me into giving you a demonstration?” As if Alistair needed much baiting in that respect. "I really don't see any way around it, n'est pas?"  

[Okimiyage]

Liesse’s bowed head lifted, at last. Her eyes were wet when they met Pierce’s.
“Do you think I’ll lose Malakai?” she asked, softly and slowly. Her words were like stones thumping into moss. It was the most honest question she had asked yet.
“How do you…” The curtain of her hair trembled. “How do you stop, Pierce? Does it ever stop? Or…do you keep loving someone forever, even when they’ve left you, even when you’ve realized it’s hopeless?” Her fingers tightened in in her skirt, rumpling the pleats. “I don’t think I’ve ever had to lose someone before, except the dead. If—” her laughter choked. “—if I knew how to pray, I would pray for them. But I don’t even know the words. Maybe—maybe there are different words, for witches. Maybe instead of praying, you’re supposed to cast a spell to lay their souls to rest.” Her cheeks creased, the laughter bubbling out of her again. “It’s funny. I feel almost blinkered, like a horse drawing a carriage, and all of this momentum behind me, and all I can see is the blank stretch of road before me. If there’s something better out there, how do you know? How do you know that once you—once you turn away from that road, that you won’t regret it forever?”
The book in her lap stirred, pages lapping at their covers.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. Maybe it always feels right at first. Like…before, when Rynn needed me, like I’d never been needed before in my life. I would have—“ She stuttered, “—I would have—“ and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I did go along with murder, because he asked it of me. All my life, I’ve been led about by other people, telling me what’s best and what’s good for you, and now I don’t know how to decide any of that for myself.”
A huff of breath, something like impatience.
“I’m not like Antha. I’m not strong like she is, or beautiful, and I can’t imagine what anyone would see in me that’s worth falling in love with. But despite all that, Malakai…”
She was crying again, but without any sound, and that’s what made it worse. The tears rolled down her cheeks and struck the pages of Aedan’s book, beneath her, with a pang of scent.
“…for a night, he made me feel like—like something marvelous was on the verge of happening. I was certain that this was how it started, my great—“ Her tone took on a mocking edge, being cruel to herself, “—romance.” She shook her head, as though chiding herself for hoping.
“I’m not sure of anything, now.”

Rynn laughed a little. “Is that what love is? Possessiveness, bitterness, jealousy, entitlement. How could you do that to someone you profess to care for?”
Then again, Rynn’s experiences with the subject were extremely limited.
‘Love’, for him, had largely been under the domain of the familial. He had loved his sister. His mother, she was a faint shade moving through the gardens, casting adoring glances over her orphaned children. The love for his brothers had been an obligation, a duty that he was burdened with no matter their indiscretions. His father…was a distant, deep-voiced blur in his memory, and what he had felt for Mary bore no resemblance to love in the slightest. Romantic love had never even been considered up until now.
They could agree on one point. Love was intense.
“It’s hard to accept.” Rynn admitted. In school, one just wrote down what you read in the textbooks, or off the blackboard, and that was fact. But this was uncharted territory, and even the conclusions drawn from one’s own experiences couldn’t be trusted. There were people who you would have thought were authorities on the subject, who had loved more frequently and more passionately than most anyone could lay claim to, and they still couldn’t be trusted. If anything, Rynn was starting to suspect that love was a subjective experience.
Alistair straddled his knees, and Rynn let his head tip back against the worn velvet cushion, exposing the pale, vulnerable length of tendons and veins beneath his chin. His lashes fluttered, eyes half-lidded, as he watched Airi from beneath the net of their entwined limbs. “Steady, boy,” he drawled, teasingly. Then his head cocked, and the sun glinted green-gold in his eye as he speared Alistair with his glance. “Is that what you aspire to, then? To trump all your predecessors at their own game? It’s a lofty goal, when neither of us is even old enough to drink.” His laughter was kind, despite his testing tone. “It makes me wonder. How did their…indulgences…benefit James, or any of the rest of them, hmm? Do you think it made them happier? Or was the point to leave a wake of broken hearts behind them, all for bragging rights?” Hedonistic though the Mayfairs might be, Rynn thought—he worried that it hadn’t done any of them much good. Worried because, well, it was fine when it was in a book, and he couldn’t deny that Antha’s stories were sometimes entertaining, but this was Airi.
And if Rynn was only being courted because Alistair was trying to one-up his ancestors, well, that made him want to—well, wriggle out from underneath and pin him down, for starters—which didn’t seem so difficult if he just struck out Alistair’s wrist against the chaise lounge like that, and set his toe against Alistair’s heel and pulled like that, and wrapped his free arm around the other’s shoulder and pulled down like this, while twisting his body at such an angle that he would be free to put his weight on the other as he fell…
Leaning in close, Rynn’s breath stirred Airi’s coppery hair, as he nipped lightly at the other boy’s ear. “Here’s a challenge for you, then.” Sex was a cheap shot, by comparison.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Before he could even stop himself, a little laugh spilled out of Pierce’s lips. He hastily put his hand over his mouth, trying to cover it, but it was too late and all he could do was flash her apologetic and oddly sympathetic eyes. “Ah, I’m sorry, kitten,” he murmured, sighing at himself, “I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just…you’re growing up. I think it’s happening to you a lot more abruptly than most of us, but that feeling that you just don’t know anything anymore, that all of your dreams were just wrong…that’s growing up.”
Gently, he put his arms around the girl, comfortingly, wiping a tear off of her cheek. “Come on, now. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You might still end up with Malakai---really, given all this craziness and the craziness that’s about to happen, I can’t even begin to tell you how that might turn out---and if you don’t, you’ll meet someone else to live happily ever after with. I believe it. And you have to believe it, because that’s all you can ever do. Just live your life and have faith that the right person is going to come along.” He pressed another kiss to her forehead, gently smoothing back her hair. “And it doesn’t hurt forever. It doesn’t even hurt as long as you expect it to. Before you even know it, you’re just happy to see them happy, and once you make peace with that you don’t even want them anymore. And if you want my opinion---” He paused briefly, just long enough to check that Rynn wasn’t listening. “You shouldn’t be trying to be in love right now anyway. I don’t think you even know yourself well enough. You’re sixteen, Liesse---go have fun. Make friends, get into trouble…figure out what you really want. Then go looking for love.”
He had hardly finished when the door burst open and Lucy came tromping in, dragging heavy swatches of cloth behind her. “Drapes!” she announced, somewhat irritably, lifting the heavy bundles on either arm, “I just can’t decide, we’re going to have to have them all. I’ll change them out every week, it’ll be fine.”
Pierce, however, was only paying attention to the cloth as far as ripping it out of her hands in a panic, squeaking, “Lucy, the baby!”
“Hm?” She put a hand idly over her stomach, cocking her head and giving Pierce a long, steady gaze with her heady eyes, “Oh, it’ll be fine. It’s so tiny, and it’s wonderfully cushy in there. Pierce, did you make her cry?!”
“It wasn’t me!” he protested hastily, though not quickly enough to avoid a sharp slap on his shoulder, “It’s life! You can’t blame me for life being hard, Luce.”
“I can if I want to.”
Pierce just grinned, devilishly. “…hit me again?”
Lucy pinched him instead, rolling her eyes even as the mischievous, suggestive grin spread across her lips. “Don’t be your brother, darling. Now where were we on the nursery wallpaper?”

As well as Alistair fit the role of the wolf, he adapted astonishingly well to the part of the prey, curled against the upholstery and casting a distinctly sultry gaze out from under his eyelashes. “Do you disagree?” His grin was not quite as broad in this position, less sharp but equally mischievous, and endlessly seductive. “Are you going to tell me you weren’t jealous today? That you don’t hate the way all of those blushing, giggling girls look at me? That you don’t hate how Tyler hangs all over me?” He very nearly laughed---half because he knew the answer, he could feel the jealousy and irritation rolling off of Rynn when it happened, and half because of what Rynn said next.
Airi’s eyes narrowed with abrupt realization, the grin on his lips sharpening. “You still think I’m playing with you,” he purred, and again almost laughed. Instead he moved so that his lips brushed Rynn’s---more breath than skin, the most taunting almost-touch---whispering lowly, seductively, “I could beat them all at their game right now, if I wanted---Courtland, Pierce, Julien, James, Dorian, all of them. It’s all about numbers, depravity, and I could run circles around them. I’m not even new to it, I was in Antha’s head when she learned to play the game. But what I want is to eclipse them. I want them to be invisible beside me---completely unimpressive compared to my charms. But their game?” He did laugh then, derisive and feather-light, his fingertips dancing up the buttons of Rynn’s shirt until he could brush his collar aside. “Their game bores me. I have no interest in quantity.” His breath swirled quietly against Rynn’s neck for a moment, his teeth nipping at the pale skin over the rapidly pulsing blue artery, his fingers sliding back through the other boy’s hair. “I don’t need numbers when I’m incomparably more impressive than them. They like their great masses of brief flings, it’s all good fun for them, but I’m much more interested in quality.” He said it pointedly, in a husky little breath, just to be sure Rynn didn’t misunderstand. He had a habit of that, and an even nastier habit of underestimating Airi.
Alistair would be one of the first to agree with Pierce concerning first loves, but that didn’t apply to him. Airi was the exception---he was tenacious, he didn’t accept losing.
"I'm not interested in other people," he said finally, simply, unwavering, his leg sliding up against Rynn's, "If it's not you, it might as well be a table lamp. But I've already told you that, remember? I'm intensely single-minded."  

[Okimiyage]

“I don’t want to grow up,” Liesse muttered stubbornly. “I’ve seen what it does to people.”
Her irritability melted away, though, as soon as Lucy burst into the room. It might occur to one, if they studied Liesse’s patterns of behavior, that she was remarkably reflective at times. Growing up in a household like that of the viciously petty and squabbling Calais brothers made one, if nothing else, exceedingly sensitive to the mood of a room. When her world had orbited around Rynn, she had been quite a different person than here, now that she had things like high school dances to occupy her mind with, and people like Katie or Lucy or even Gretchen to distract her with things like—boys, or shopping, or curtains. Liesse fell in line almost immediately. “This one is beautiful,” she announced, seizing hold of a sea-green brocade amidst the heap. The ends had pale golden tassels. “But a bit heavy, isn’t it? What if you did something in chiffon in the same color? Or you could layer them, perhaps. Which room were you thinking of making the nursery out of?”
Speaking of nurseries, Dorian had retired to the current abode of the three hell-children. Lily and Bella were easy enough to put back to sleep, but Briar had gone down fighting. Ginsy hadn’t helped, either, whimpering and pawing at the cradle with his smol & tufty paw-stubbs until Dorian had eventually had to put him outside in the hall. Eventually, the child’s eyes had blinked themselves shut, but Dorian still stood at the window, absently rocking him back and forth in his arms.

“And what if I did?” Rynn took Alistair’s jaw with his hand, tilting it up with languid possessiveness and studying the way the other boy’s eyes gleamed. “What if I hated all of it just as much as you think? Would I be able to do anything about it? Could you change what you are?” He let his hand drop, and the gesture spoke for him. Rynn knew well enough that he was all but impotent in the situation. If Alistair chose another, it wasn’t his place to—to cling on, like some kind of needy child, and it would only drive him further away. “It’s not my intention to impose. Although sometimes, the way you flirt, I think it gives you pleasure to watch me squirm.” He laughed a little, his eyes twinkling like the dust motes which spun in the sunlight above them. “Actually, I know how you like watching me squirm.” In the farthest reaches of the attic, a string of bells chimed softly.
“You seem so sure that I’m worth it,” he said, quietly sitting back. “I don’t understand it. Like you said, you could have your pick of the litter, wherever you went. At what point did you decide you wanted me? And was it before or after I tried to kill your sister?” He was watching Airi very carefully, and he leaned forward again so that their lips were almost, but not quite, close enough to touch, and lifted his chin so that his breath stirred the fine hairs on Airi’s brow. “You realize that, if I’d been successful, you wouldn’t exist now.” He didn’t know why he said it. Maybe just to see what Alistair’s reaction would be. They’d never talked about it before, but the other Mayfair must have been there, in Llyr’s Court, watching from the back of Antha’s mind as she navigated the spider-like trap Rynn had laid for her. He wondered if the ancestors had recognized that in her, a spark of the same necromantic lineage that they themselves were the result of. He made a sort of low, hungry growl back in his throat, as he felt Airi’s leg moving up against his inner thigh. “Most people wouldn’t have given anyone who did that to them so much as a second chance, let alone—“ this.
“It’s not that I’m ungrateful, you realize.” Rynn admitted, releasing Alistair’s wrists almost regretfully. “Merely confused. There’s a part of me that perhaps will always wonder if I deserve this, and if I don’t, why the king has chosen to make me his favorite plaything.” He added, quietly, “And how easily he could throw me away again. I know you claim to like a challenge, but as Cian and Liesse will attest, I’m not…easy to live with. I got my way too often, and now I’ve gotten used to it.” His fingers traced down the narrow V of flesh, exposed by Airi’s half-buttoned shirt, until they reached the final clasps. “I worry that you’ll get sick of that.” Their hips rolled against one another as Rynn pushed back against the other’s leg, working his way down until his head was level with Alistair’s chest, and his breath moved across that sensitive skin like the breeze across a parched desert.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

At the suggestion, Lucy gave a little horrified gasp, pressing her perfectly manicured fingers against her lips. “Oh good god, never! Chiffon is barely acceptable for clothing, but drapes?”
She turned her amber eyes on Pierce, seeking agreement, but he had positioned himself comfortably in the loveseat that straddled the border between his and Airi’s sides of the room, legs crossed and fingers laced, shrugging. “Don’t mind me, I thought we’d decided on venetian blinds because drapes are so passé.”
But Lucy rolled her eyes, making a little frustrated gesture in his direction. “We agreed that drapes are horrendously unfashionable, but you’re the one that bought a gothic mansion. We can hardly decorate the interior in modern chic, can we now?”
“Ah,” Pierce sighed, throwing his head back as if only just realizing he was a fool, “C’est vrai! You’re right of course. But how long are you really going to pretend I have a say in any of this?”
“Satin and batiste should suffice for most of the house,” Lucy continued heedlessly, more thinking out loud than seeking his opinion or agreement. It was really quite remarkable how rapidly Lucy had utterly domineered their relationship. “But we need heavier drapes for the nursery, to block out the light. Damask is out of the question---it’s absolutely archaic---but cotton and linen are just cheap.”
“Brocade?” he suggested offhand, fully aware that she already had the answer in mind.
“This room is for a baby, Pierce, not my grandmother.”
The boy hummed, his eyes sharpening and studying her features, trying to discern the correct answer. “Velvet drapes could be rather avant-garde, depending on how it’s done.”
He congratulated himself internally then for the pleased smile that crossed her lips, unceremoniously dropping the bolts of fabric and falling gracefully into his lap. “Clever boy,” she praised him in a little purr, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
Across the room, leaning against the doorframe with arms folded, Armand rolled his eyes, sighing, “How it took you pretentious fools seven years to get together, I’ll never understand.”
“Hush, you,” Lucy ordered shortly, pouting.
“I mean it’s one thing that you’re a little fashionista princess,” he continued, grinning sharply, “But really, Pierce…man the hell up.”
“Shut it, hipster. It's not going to do you any good envying my good taste.”
Armand feigned shock, laying an offended hand across his heart. “What, so fashion scarves make me a hipster now? I’m hurt, Pierce. But not nearly as frightening as Airi is going to be when I tell him you called him a hipster.”
“All that aside,” Pierce scoffed, “I’d be a lot more afraid of interrupting him right now than anything else. But it’s your life, Armand.”
“Even I’m not that brave,” Armand laughed hastily, shaking his head, “Not even for my next book. You’d never find a single shred of me afterwards.”
While the boys snickered amongst themselves, Lucy glanced wildly between them, finally demanding, “What am I missing here?”
“Don’t worry about it, Luce. Seriously. You’ll figure it out soon enough anyways.” Lord knew everyone else had. But then, they spent a lot more time in the house than Lucy did.

A small, rolling breath whispered through Alistair’s lips, followed by the faintest hint of a laugh. “Rynn---” His arms stretched out, wrists locking casually behind Rynn’s neck, drawing him in close. “You never had any chance of killing Antha. Even if she hadn’t known she was walking into a trap---and I knew it from the moment you walked into the Talamasca motherhouse, everything about you screamed treachery, even if Antha wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt---you and your siblings and your ancestors were never going to bring her down. You know that. You don’t want to admit it, but you know it. As for the attempt…we’ve done worse for our family, without ever being in such dire circumstances as yours. It’s difficult to fault you for that. Personally, I don’t care. It didn’t succeed, so why bother dwelling on what might have been?”
Giving the smallest sigh, Alistair abruptly hooked his leg around Rynn’s, snatching it out from under him and flipping them around again, his hands firmly planted on the upholstery just above Rynn’s shoulders. He wasn’t grinning anymore, rather he looked intensely serious, his eyes dark and gaze sharply direct. “She only did it for me anyways. As curious as she was about your trap and your family, Antha never would have walked willingly into it for nothing. She went because I was always bound to her, and I wanted you. I don’t know why---I don’t think there’s ever a real reason for these things, what draws one random person to another, it’s ineffable, they just happen. It wasn’t even this---this was something of a surprise when it came later, once there was something physical of me to feel it. But---” Tilting his head, he skimmed his lips briefly up along the curve of Rynn’s jaw, his fingers sliding testingly up from his waist beneath his shirt. “I was never fooled by you. I wasn’t even in the flesh, I saw you a lot more clearly than anyone else. I know you better than you’d ever like me to, all the dark and ugly parts. And I wouldn’t have you any other way. Not easier, not more challenging, not less psychotically set on your family legacy, not one bit less goddamn irritating or stubborn.” The serious set of his expression broke then, just a little, allowing for a knowing little smirk. “No one worth having is ever easy, Rynn. At least you’re aware that you’re a pain in the a**. And I…ha, I’ll never be easy. I’ll always tease you, because I like to, and I’ll never discourage anyone from adoring me, because politically, I need the city to love me. And, to be perfectly honest, I like the attention. I’ve been invisible my entire life, two long decades, and I want everyone to look at me now, to see me. I have absolutely zero interest in any of them, but I want them to notice me. And if I’m being even more honest, I want to make you jealous. Not so much to see you squirm---though it is amusing---but because it makes me feel intensely cherished. And because if I don’t remind you sometimes how much you want me, you’ll get caught up in your own head and convince yourself it isn’t a good idea, and I just can’t allow that to happen.” The mischief flickered in his eyes again, an ember igniting a deep, smoldering desire as he pressed his forehead gently against Rynn’s, their lips brushing as he whispered, “It doesn’t have anything to do with a challenge or deserving it. I’ve caught you, you’re mine. Not a plaything, not a starting point, not in any way replaceable. Just deeply, inescapably mine.”
He kissed him briefly, so very sweetly, his thumb pressing gently to his bottom lip. He had that look again, that terribly earnest and straightforward one that cut sharply through everything else. “And I’m going to need you to stop second-guessing me. There’s no stopping you from assaulting everything with relentless logic, even if it won’t do you any good, but you absolutely can’t second-guess my motivations. If there’s anything that could ever compel me to let you escape from me, I can’t even think of it. Now---” His eyes gleamed, shifting so effortlessly into the dark, beastly part of him that dwelled beneath the surface. “Are you quite done overthinking everything? Because I’d like to finish what you started before I reach my limit.”  

[Okimiyage]

“Chiffon lets the light through,” Liesse protested, but half-heartedly. ‘It’ll regulate their circadian rhythms. Velvet collects dust.” Nobody was listening to her. Her heart sank a bit. Liesse liked brocade—the heavy texture of the fabric, the foliage-like patterns embossed on the cloth, the rich hues and sheen of the material. But how much of that preference was habit from Llyr’s Court?—where every room had been swaddled in crushed velvet for the upholstery and diaphanous shrouds for the furniture. Alright, so maybe decorating tips from a couple of decades ago weren’t quite what you’d call ‘relevant’, at least not for a children’s nursery. Liesse resisted the urge to disappear into the wood paneling of the walls, but the way she leaned against them made it clear that she was thinking about it seriously.
But when the conversation turned to Alistair, she felt she had to speak up. It was just their luck that Liesse happened to be a terrible liar.
It was the whole nine yards. The blushing, the way her hands clenched in her skirt, the way she wouldn’t meet the eyes of anyone in the room. One would have thought she was a schoolgirl confessing to her first crush. “R-Rynn and Airi went out to talk,” she said, defensively. “It’s only natural for the scions of two houses to find some—some common ground, together. Nothing wrong with it.”
Raising her chin, defying anyone to question her appraisal of the situation, Liesse left, feeling that she’d done all that she could.

Outside, a wind stirred the trees. The leaves had begun to grow yellowed and aged at the edges, like old paper, but were still plentiful enough that the wind soughed through them with a cry like a banshee.
Antha
Vikteren stood on the edge of the property, in the dim and disappearing last light of sunset, and looked out upon Mayfair Manor. Lights in the windows blinked on and off at intervals, as the evening wore on, but little changed of the vampire.
The lights of the street glowed gold upon the black blazer he wore, his long grey hands tucked deeply into the silk-lined pockets therein. His collar, white as snow, spotted by blood, peeked out from the lapel. He was not often in the habit of wearing jackets—he preferred, instead, the comfort of the loose, simple shirts that had been his habitual wear for centuries. He was lucky in this: men’s fashion did not change much. A button-up shirt from 1890 was much the same as a button-up from 2016, or could at least pass for such at a distance. Vikteren stood on the sidewalk, his chin lifted to observe the house, for approximately an hour. He could have crossed to the porch and knocked, but that seemed strangely…inappropriate for such an occasion. Vikteren wasn’t a part of this story-line any longer: this life that Antha had made for herself had no place for the undead, except as the final, penultimate enemy for her to fling herself into ashes against.
Vikteren sighed, though he had no use for breath—a hard habit to break—and cast his mind out over the city, combing it for Nicolae’s presence. The coven-master had been oddly withdrawn, lately. The affairs of an entire city’s vampires was usually taxing for most, especially if rivals were to be considered, but everything had been…quiet, lately. The calm before a storm, perhaps. A storm that might still be turned away, if only…
If only Antha would listen. That, in itself, was laughable.

Upstairs, the floorboards creaked against the weight of the chaise lounge as Rynn leaned deeply into the kiss that Alistair had been teasing him with ever since they got upstairs.
“I knew it was a gamble,” he said, quietly, when they had finally broken apart. “That’s what I never told anyone. But in a way, I used Antha. The ancestors demanded a sacrifice. As heir, it was my duty that I should be the first to volunteer. My power would strengthen the others, as theirs has strengthened and guided me throughout my life. But I didn’t want to go.” He smiled, wanly. “I can make all the excuses I want about protecting my sister or our good family name, but that’s the truth. I didn’t want to die.”
He licked his lips, and his voice trembled only a little.
“That’s why I brought Antha there. Because I knew that, even if we couldn’t kill her with all of our efforts combined—and perhaps it was stupid to expect that all efforts would combine, because I know how my brothers hated me—she would be the catalyst for the sacrifice that was needed. Whether it was me, or—or Aedan, and Aleric, and Liesse. The way it turned out. I was rather imagining that it would be Cian to go, but I suppose he—grabbed her attention, little monster that he was back then.” His eyes were sad, but he laughed anyways.
“I suppose you might think me some kind of sociopath after that confession—what else do you call person who does evil without a care to whom it might affect? But Antha—the whole Mayfair legacy, all of you—I resented them. They lived on in affluence, in the spotlights of Osiris City, acclaimed and applauded, while we were left out in the woods to rot.” His hand caressed the curvature of Airi’s jaw, trailed down to the raw and sensitive skin below his collar, and gripped. “It’s because I know myself that I second-guess your choice. I can’t change what I am, darling.” he whispered. “All I can ask is that you accept it.”
And their lips met, and passion poured down his throat like lava. There was a heaving moment of struggle, each one vying for dominance, before Alistair found the précise niche to push into, and the proper way to pull Rynn’s hair, and their roles were reversed in an instant.
The light overhead flickered out, and for a few scant moments, all that illuminated their frantic struggling was the dying rays of the sun.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“Accept what you are?” The little ruminative murmur was made at the hollow of Rynn’s throat, a split second before the sharp grin spread to his lips and his hand slid into Rynn’s curls, pulling his head to the side and moving to whisper in his ear, his voice a warm velvet purr, “Ah---no, no. I adore what you are. All of those complicated little parts of you, even the vicious, awkward, dishonest, and blunt parts---especially the blunt parts.” His fingers trailed down the front of his shirt, effortlessly popping buttons, before sliding lower. “That’s what you just don’t get, Rynn…I love all of your terrible traits as much as the good ones, because you wouldn’t be you without them.” Arguably, he was composed more of bad traits than good ones, but Alistair judged it wise not to mention this out loud. Instead he smirked and sealed his lips with his own, because Rynn was always full of so many goddamn words and Airi was over them, for the moment. He had other things on his mind, much more pressing things.
By the time they’d finished, the daylight was a fiery sliver on the horizon and Michael was calling out below for everyone to get ready for dinner. “Don’t get me wrong,” he murmured, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he slipped his shirt back on, “I’d be perfectly happy if you threw a fit any time I so much as look at anyone else. But---” His fingers worked nimbly to slip the buttons back into place, sweeping back his damp-rooted curls so that they tumbled wildly back and to the side. “Since you’re so ill at ease with uncertainty, I might as well tell you. Everyone else…” He threw his head back, taking the cigarette between his fingers and exhaling a ribbon of blue smoke to break against the thin golden boxes of light on the ceiling. There was a flicker in his eyes, only for a few moments, of something very like Antha---sharp and brilliant, an entire world flashing rapidly just beyond the surface. It wasn’t as plain as it was with his sister---she was methodically brilliant, possessed of infinite knowledge readily available at the slightest provocation, her inner machinations always working in her eyes, while Alistair’s comparable brilliance lurked quietly beneath the surface of his easy-going charm. It was only in moments such as these, when he dropped the disarming persona, that it was readily apparent.
He grinned mischievously, placing his hands down on the cushion and leaning forward to whisper against Rynn’s lips, “---they’re all fools. Ultimately necessary, but inconsequential. Outside of my family, you’re the only thing precious in the world.” He didn’t persist in teasing him, but instead pressed the withheld kiss to his lips before standing and offering him his hand, all of his easy charm sliding back into place. “Come on, before they come looking for us.”
Down the stairs, he ran into his sister as she was emerging from her room, smoothing out the flared skirt of her cream-colored silk dress. The twins exchanged a look, only a split second, before a trace of a teasing smile touched Antha’s lips. “Dare I ask?”
“I’m sure you would dare,” Alistair answered sweetly, his smile exasperated, “But you already know, and you’re hardly one to judge.” His eyes flickered pointedly at her bedroom door.
Antha laughed at that, quietly---whatever Cian had done had drastically improved her mood, he noted--- and shook her head. “Ah, but that’s not the same at all. Cian and I are married, not teenagers engaged in an illicit love affair.” She paused, thoughtfully cocking her head, before the teasing smile spread across her lips again, shining in her eyes. “I can’t say I don’t envy you at least a little.”
“I have no idea what you could possibly be talking about,” he replied, so flatly that it couldn’t be meant to convince anyone, and turned to head downstairs to his room.
His sister laughed again when he was gone, reaching out to gently smooth Rynn’s incriminatingly mussed hair. “You should take more care,” she advised him with quiet amusement, “He’s not actually trying to keep it a secret. Airi’s very…territorial. He likes for everyone to be very clear about what’s his, like a child. Or, you know, someone who was nothing and had nothing for twenty years.” Patting his head, she turned for the stairs just as the bedroom door began to open for Cian, feigning innocent nonchalance. “You should go get dressed for dinner. Julien’s just gotten back and he’s already in a fury thanks to Dorian.”

Melody and Magdalena returned a little after seven. Magdalena had dressed up for the occasion, in a blue lace dress that complimented her eyes with a white ribbon tied meticulously in her golden corkscrew curls. She had been watching Antha earlier, after the episode with the katana, noting her style and the way she moved. Magdalena’s own mother was a disappointment to her, she was lax and carefree and thoroughly unstylish, but Antha…Antha was a proper lady, at least by appearances, as Magdalena wanted to be. She watched her like a hawk, her eyes narrowing studiously at her stylishly arranged hair and the way her hand skimmed the banister.
At least until Dorian showed up, and her little eyes lit up as she darted to his side and seized his hand, instantly glued to his side. Michael gave a little laugh at the blatant sign of attachment, teasing Dorian gently with, “And you warned Cian that he was going to turn Vanessa into a daddy’s girl…”
“There was no helping that,” Melody sighed, giving a flat little defeated laugh as her head fell to the side. And then, suddenly glancing around, murmured, “Where’s Malakai?”
Antha instantly flared up, irritated, but Alistair---quickly changed into something respectable, his curls brushed smooth again---clapped a heavy hand on her shoulder and she just barely managed to bite her tongue. “Sulking, I imagine,” Michael sighed, shaking his head.
This only made Melody give a few curious blinks before glancing around the atrium. Distracted, she gave her daughter a little pat on the head (which the child was immediately irked by, hurriedly smoothing back her hair) and drifting down the hall, intently inspecting the wall before, abruptly, reaching out and yanking open a panel. There was a small, startled yelp from within the concealed compartment that made her laugh, amused, before noting, “Your hiding places haven’t changed. But I’m glad you’re only at level seven.”
Malakai climbed out from the wall then, a little shaken, with Amadeo on his shoulder, murmuring, “I wish you wouldn’t rank my hiding spots…”
“Oh?” She laughed all over again, in the same sunny, musical way. “I was just observing. You always pick your hiding spots by how upset you are.” The boy opened his mouth to protest, but Melody kept smiling, cutting him off with the question, “Do you still go hide in the gazebo at level ten? The rose bushes at level one and the roof at level two?”
The boy flushed red to the tips of his ears, murmuring lowly in a clear lie, “…no…”
Antha nearly boiled over at the exchange, until her twin outright shoved her into Cian’s arms and she reluctantly cooled to an irritated simmer. “What a handy little trick,” Courtland murmured, eyes twinkling teasingly as he flashed a little grin at Cian, “It’s really so much less violent around here since you came.” The corner of Antha’s eye gave the smallest twitch, but she restrained herself to a pout, irritably drawing Cian's arms around herself and turning away from Courtland, to avoid seeing that sharp, smug smile when he was proven right. Cian soothed her, but it irked her that her family was using that to control her.
Melody was watching with great interest, meanwhile, commenting when it was over, “I’ve never seen that before. Even when she was a child, no one could calm Antha down. Not even Nicolae.” She giggled, amused at a sudden memory. “He usually just made her angrier. And then he got angry, and it was bedlam.”
“If that isn’t the damned truth,” Julien muttered, rolling his eyes, and then quickly recomposed himself.
“So, Melody…” Courtland began, with a particular gleam in his eyes that could only mean calculated mischief, “How’s your love life?”
The woman was clearly shocked by the question---as was the rest of the family---and momentarily seemed at a loss for an answer. But it was all said in Magdalena’s reflexive scoff of a laugh (and it was a sound so reminiscent of Dorian that Julien cringed). “Mama’s been on two dates in my whole life,” she murmured, as if she thought it was a true disgrace, “She was home before my bedtime both times.”
“Maggie!” Melody cried, a faint flush to her cheeks, “I’m your mother, why are you turning on me?!”
“If you’re embarrassed, you should’ve gone on more dates,” the little girl mumbled, utterly remorseless, clinging to the hem of Dorian’s shirt. Her mother sighed, crossing her arms. She could hardly point out that being a single mother left her virtually no time for anything else, so she could say nothing. Besides…arguments with her daughter were pointless, Magdalena was always going to win, even if the effort killed her.
Malakai had vanished meanwhile, so stealthily that no one had even noticed. He had a knack for that, vanishing as effectively as a ghost when things were uncomfortable for him. And lord knows it was awkward for him, watching the girl he’d loved talking about dating with the child she’d borne his cousin, while the child clung to the cousin who had so deeply betrayed him. When Antha noticed that he’d gone moments later, she caught Dorian’s eye and shot him a particularly vicious look. She had a habit of forgetting that Dorian was just as guilty as Melody, so she had to make up for it in the moments when she did remember.
It was for the best though in the next moment, when the color drained from Melody’s face and her hand flew to the side of her head, making a small sound of pain. It was only a split second, before she tried to hide it, forcing a smile and hastily putting her hand back at her side, but Magdalena’s eyes were too quick. She rushed at her mother in a frenzy, seizing her hands and pulling her down to gently stroke her hair, demanding frantically, “Mama, did you take your medicine? I told you to let me hold it, you always forget everything! Should you sit? Or was it the trip? It was too tiring, we should’ve stopped another night, and the sun was in your eyes for too long---”
“Maggie!” she interjected, sighing and trying to give her daughter her most reassuring smile, taking her little face in her hands and smoothing back a stray curl. “It was just a little flash, that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about.”
Unusually, Magdalena’s composure broke. “It is not nothing!” she hissed, stomping her foot, her little hands white-knuckled on her mother’s, “It’s like the nurse said, it’s a little fleshy parasite eating your brain! I told you the trip was too long, we should’ve waited until the sun was lower, but you didn’t listen---”
While Melody floundered, desperate for some way to soothe the child, Vittorio stepped forward, clearing his throat and motioning for her to stand. “Was it a sharp pain or a dull pain?” he questioned, lifting her eyelids with his thumb, one after the other, and inspecting her pupils.
“Ah, well…sharp at first, for a second, and then dull for a few seconds afterwards.”
He nodded, as if he had expected as much. “Do me a favor,” he murmured, checking her pulse now, “Next time, try to time it. Tomorrow, I’ll take a CAT scan and see where we’re at.”
“Tomorrow?” she repeated questioningly.
“Yes,” he answered, briefly uncomfortable when he realized she didn’t know, “Antha made an appointment for you at the hospital. She told me to look into your condition---”
“I must have forgotten to mention it,” Antha murmured, arms folded, clearly trying to dismiss the conversation as quickly as possible. Her sense of responsibility was conflicting with her feelings concerning Melody and she didn’t like to call attention to it. “Seven o’clock. Don’t eat after midnight.”
“She’ll go,” Magdalena answered quickly and firmly, before her mother could protest, clinging very tightly to her hand. And then, narrowing her gaze at Vittorio, asked, “Are you a doctor or a surgeon?”
He was clearly surprised by the question, answering slowly, “A surgeon, primarily. I do a little of both.”
The child nodded as if she understood, replying with ironclad certainty, “I’m going to be a surgeon. The doctor in California said I could be an intern at his hospital when I’m sixteen, but since I’m here now, you have to let me do it at your hospital.”
“Oh really?” At this declaration, Vittorio’s gaze narrowed to study hers a little more earnestly, “…alright, if you’re serious.”
“Of course I’m serious,” she scoffed, while Melody sighed as if she had listened to this same conversation too many times, putting her hands on both of the girl’s shoulders and drawing her to herself to keep her under control.
“It started when I was diagnosed,” she explained quietly, as if she felt guilty, “She convinced a medical student to give her one of his old textbooks. She studies it religiously. And if she pesters you with endless medical questions---which she will---I’m sorry, but there’s no stopping her once she has her mind made up.”  

[Okimiyage]

Upstairs, Rynn felt the head under his collar rise into his face. He hadn’t quite managed to calm it before they found themselves in an abrupt encounter with a bemused Antha. Somehow, Rynn found himself oddly put off by it. It was like everyone around them knew exactly what they were doing, and everyone thought it was some great game that Rynn didn’t want it announced with fanfare and banners.
Rubbing his eye wearily, he let his head disappear briefly into his palm. “I know he’s not trying to keep it a secret,” he said. “Airi’s much trickier than this when he’s trying.” He paused, and then said with a certain sort of quiet resignation: “I suppose I just don’t want to admit that I’m giving up—that this is how our name dies. I expect there are worse ways to go, though…”
He moved vaguely down the hall past Antha, thinking about ghosts in the gardens and the flowers that his brother had drawn, and where a soul might go if it was tethered to a structure that still existed after its death but had not died with proximity to it, nor with the proper consecration or ritual…and then he stopped, and listened to a noise like infant thunder as something rolled across the floorboards of the attic above them.
“You know him better than anyone in this house, but I suppose it’s useless to ask why he does things like this. He didn’t elaborate on what ‘like this’ meant, but presumably ‘pick completely unsuitable and recalcitrant lovers to fixate upon’ was included.
Love had always been off the table for Rynn. He was raised to expect a marriage of either political or financial gain, arranged by his older brothers when they had found a suitable candidate. It wasn’t as though, living in Llyr’s Court, there had been much of a chance to even meet girls. Oh, there had been the odd maid or cook when he was younger, when they had still been able to afford hired help, but they had all eventually left, or—in the case of one elderly groundskeeper—died in their cottage. (The ancestors had told Rynn with some satisfaction, once, how they had feasted on his soul as it tried to flee its body, savaging the old man into imperceptible shreds)
And now here this was, this great torrential passion and whirlwind romance and promises of lifelong devotion and—and all those other things that Liesse liked to read about in her romance novels. He briefly thought of how Liesse would have probably committed cold-blooded murder to be in his shoes at the moment, and the thought almost made him laugh. “You know, I always thought—if I ever found someone to, to partner with—that it would be because we complemented one another beautifully, and were good for each another, balancing one another out—like you and Cian. I suppose I just worry that I’m not very good for anyone, or at least I haven’t been so far.” He kept meaning to work on that.

Dorian’s ears perked up when he heard the car pull into the driveway. He’d tried to pretend that he wasn’t nervous, but he’d been pacing and preening all evening (when he hadn’t been attending to the fae, the ‘changelings’ as he had starred to think of them) and everyone in the house knew what that meant. His black brocade waistcoat was one of the most iconic garments in Dorian's wardrobe; today, he had paired it with a sax blue cravat, neatly folded at his throat.
The truth was, this little girl—she unnerved him. He had the distinct desire to impress her, which normally only occurred when Dorian happened to encounter a rather attractive potential conquest at a bar or one of the bohemian downtown coffee parlors.
But Magdalena looked at him like he was something out of a romance novel, some impossibly charming creature fetched from imagination. Dorian, normally, was used to this. It was how the rest of the city saw the Mayfairs, after all. But something about her, her naiveté, her complete trust, that—somehow—staggered him.
He’d arranged himself artfully in the foyer before they arrived, a gold-filtered cigarette held lightly in-between his fingertips, the glowing cherry only halfway-burnt when he ashed it. No need to subject the child to second-hand smoke, after all. Magdalena had darted out of the car like a magnet.
Laughing as she affixed herself to his leg, he admonished her, “Woah there, Lena. I still need to be able to walk.”
She was light enough still that he was able to hobble into the house with her, though. To Melody, he merely gave the coolest of nods, as though her presence was hardly worth noting. Frankly, he didn’t want her to know how much she had pissed him off with her parting shot, as she left. What kind of man let the opinions of his old flame *get* to him like that? Regardless of that logic, his eyes still followed her as she stepped past.
He had often thought that Melody and Antha disliked one another so much because, in certain aspects, both of the scandalous little things were identical. Both avidly loving and protective mothers, for starters. And before either of them had been mothers, her siblings and cousins had been like Antha’s children—Malakai, at least, had certainly triggered her protective instincts. And nowhere was this more apparent than in the way that Antha treated Melody now.
As grossly inappropriate as it would have been to admit it, though, Dorian was annoyed by this display from Malakai. If Malakai had gotten angry at him or Melody when it had happened—or when she came back— he could have understood that. But Malakai just hid, and allowed his wars be fought by proxies.

When Rynn came downstairs, he was dressed with remarkable reserve—he had learned from the lavender waistcoat incident. He wore a vertically pinstriped shirt, pencil-thin blue lines on a white background, and the tailored dove-gray trousers that had seemed the only suitable choice for a formal dinner—but had chosen to go without his customary waistcoat or cravat, or tiepin, or watch, or indeed, anything more ostentatious than the black leather belt, with a glossy silver clasp, that he wore around his waist. Liesse, on the other hand, was still in her school uniform, looking rather worn out. She’d been asleep in their room when Rynn found her, and had napped all throughout the dinner preparations.
She apparently hadn’t realized that it was supposed to be a formal dinner, since Rynn had dressed in what was, for him, ‘low-key’ style, but upon seeing Antha (and Magdalena, to some extent) she squeaked and disappeared back down the hallway to change.
Cian stood behind Antha like a , as portentously unruffled as ever, the calm eye of Antha’s storm. Or at least, he usually was. Today, Antha was making a concerted effort to show her less unpredictable side. There was no more talk of katanas and beheadings, anyways. Dorian mused, as he watched her glide around the room serenely, thinking that she would have made an excellent socialite if she’d had any inclination towards the job.
She certainly had the cutting glare for it. He winced as she speared him with a glance, placing a hand dramatically over his heart.
His theatrics were soon overshadowed by Melody’s own dramatic reaction to what must’ve been her—her condition. Calling it ‘dramatic’ was perhaps a bit cruel, but it was true; all eyes were upon her as she rocked on her feet. Something else had caught Dorian’s attention, too—Maggie. He smiled as Magdalena darted forth, the first time since she had released him from her clinging grip since they’d arrived. She’d told him she hated that name, but perhaps Melody had the trademark on it.
Dorian raised his eyebrow at the mother. “‘It’s a little fleshy parasite eating your brain’ as the nurse said? What kind of hospitals have you been going to, darling?” He was honestly concerned, if this was the kind of medical treatment she’d been subjected to. Or perhaps Magdalena merely had an overactive imagination. He glanced towards Vittorio. “Are brain-eating parasites a thing, now? Is that an actual medical thing?” His tone was incredulous.
Rynn, who had somehow shouldered his way into the circle of people and wound up on Airi’s right flank, noted, “You’re a bit young to be considering becoming a surgeon, aren’t you? There’s an awful lot of blood and mess and gore that’s involved in a job like that.” Somehow it was hard to imagine Magdalena—a picture of girlish innocence that would have shamed Shirley Temple—up to her elbows in viscera, setting bones and stitching wounds instead of embroidery samplers.
Although it wasn’t hard to see why she’d pick such an interest, if ‘Mama’ was as sickly as Antha and Vittorio seemed to think. She hadn’t been here even twenty-four hours and already they were sending her to the hospital…  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Immediately, Magdalena’s lips pursed and her rosy cheeks rounded, indignant, her innocent eyes narrowing warily at Rynn. “I can handle it! Gore is just the stuff we’re made out of, I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. And I know it’s not a real parasite.” This was said, though in response to Dorian, not directly to him. She wouldn’t dare. “It’s a lump of flesh that’s not supposed to be there. They say tumor because it sounds better, but the kind mama has in her brain, that attacks the stuff around it, is really cancer. The nurse thought I wouldn’t understand, and she was annoyed with all of my questions, so she said it was like a brain-eating parasite. Which was rude. Just because she didn’t want to be pregnant and her husband was cheating on her---”
“Magdalena Elaine!” Melody scolded her hastily, pinching her arm, “What did I tell you about that? You stay out of people’s heads, it’s not right.”
The child pouted all over again, almost guiltily, her gaze dropping to her feet as she muttered defensively, “She was practically screaming it…”
“Oh my,” Courtland murmured, grinning with amused delight, “So you’re a little witch after all. How ever did you manage, Melody?”
“By threatening to revoke her ice-cream privileges for life and make her wear burlap if she didn’t stop turning her babysitters’ darkest secrets against them,” she sighed, “And her teachers. She went through so many teachers, they kept having nervous breakdowns, they were so---” She faltered, pressing her fingertips to her lips. She had almost said ‘afraid of her’.
Observing the dark flash of her eyes, Courtland nodded as if he suddenly understood. “Ah…so that’s why you never stayed in one place.” Melody said nothing, pressing her hands over her daughter’s ears just in time for her not to hear and mouthing at Courtland ‘don’t’.
Meanwhile, Vittorio had gotten down on one knee to look Magdalena very seriously in the eyes. The child didn’t flinch, meeting his naturally intense gaze with the curious blink of her own eyes and eventually a slow, sweet smile, utterly disarming, as she brushed her mother’s hands away from her ears. “You’re tougher than you look,” he concluded after a few moments, humming to himself. “Why a surgeon?”
“Because people die every day,” she answered immediately, with unwavering simplicity, “From cancer, and knots on their bones, and blood clots, and jagged wounds, and all kinds of stupid things like that. The doctors should be able to cut it out, and I asked them why not, but they said they just couldn’t do it. But I could be better than them.” The doctor was briefly taken aback by the easy, overwhelming confidence in her voice, her little head bobbing in a nod, golden curls rustling around her face, before she abruptly flared up. “And don’t tell me I’ll change my mind, I hate that, it makes me want to just…just scream. I’m little, not stupid.”
Vittorio observed her for another moment, sharply, before a hint of one of his painfully rare smiles tugged at the corners of his mouth, drawing a business card out of the pocket of his coat. “This is my number. I’m the head of surgery at Mayfair Medical,” he explained, pressing the card into her outstretched palm, “I’m going to be taking care of your mom, and your dad is my little brother, so if you need anything, call me. Alright?” Magdalena nodded eagerly, clutching the card to her chest, and smiled with fluttering eyelashes, all innate charm. “You are Dorian’s child,” was all Vittorio said, patting her head with a sigh and returning to his feet.
The child beamed, responding with a smugly pleased, “Uh-huh.”
Melody sighed this time, squeezing her shoulder. “Alright, little miss lady, go wash your hands for dinner. The bathroom’s down there, on the left.” When she was gone, Melody shook her head, putting a hand to her temple and forced a little smile. “I don’t want to drag this out,” she said quietly, glancing between Vittorio and Antha, “The tumor is on my amygdala, and it’s cancerous. It’s going to kill me soon no matter what treatments I get, but if I drag it out…” Her expression crumpled, shaking her head. “I can’t let Magdalena see that. I’ve had doctors run me through the entire process, and I can’t let her watch me waste away while my nervous system breaks down and all of my memories slip away. She’s just a child, I won’t put her through that.”
Vittorio stopped her with a gesture, murmuring simply, “Just let me take a look and we can figure out your options.”
If he was not particularly encouraging, Antha was nearly discouraging. “The amygdala?” she repeated thoughtfully, eyes flashing, “It’s surprising you’ve survived this long. Cancerous growths on the amygdala are technically inoperable without destroying the brain’s entire control system.”
“Antha!” Michael scolded her, “Have a little sympathy.”
But he had misjudged Antha’s tone, as was apparent in the next moment when she ignored him, the thoughts racing visibly in her eyes as she mumbled to herself, “They’re quite rare. With the new technology I’ve equipped the hospital with…”
“Can we wait and see what the situation is?” Vittorio sighed wearily. Not for the first time, the Mayfairs found that his words came a little easier when they had something to do with hospital business. “It may be too late to see or do anything. If the tumor has progressed too far, I won’t even be able to acquire a fluid sample without having my medical license revoked. And I’ve told you, Antha---I’ve told you a thousand times, I’ll break the ethical codes, but I won’t lose my license for your research. I won’t be reduced to a back-alley, black market surgeon, not even for you.”
“And I wouldn’t dare risk losing you,” she replied easily, only just tearing herself away from her thoughts. “She’ll probably die,” she continued, her eyes flickering in Melody’s direction, “But you might find something. And if you do, you could be famous---you could be the top neurosurgeon in the world. And you might save her.” She shrugged her shoulders, as if she didn’t particularly care, but her cousins sensed a lie in the gesture. “It doesn’t really matter to me, but you do have a niece to consider.”
His eyes flashing knowingly, Courtland quietly put words to the implication. “A child needs their mother,” he murmured, and Antha very, very carefully did not allow herself to react.
“I’ll leave it to you,” she said blandly to Vittorio, turning and vanishing into the dining room as Magdalena reappeared.
Courtland chuckled beneath his breath, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling that the thought of Antha’s death had brought over him. “She does care,” he assured Melody gently, “I know it’s difficult to tell, but she does.” Vittorio nodded mutely in agreement.
Melody laughed, shaking her head. “Do you remember how I met Antha?” The boys shook their heads no, looking slightly confused. “Malakai and I had been dating for two months, and he brought me over to finally meet this darling little sister of his. I swear, he couldn’t go ten minutes without talking about her, it was…just the biggest turn-off, actually, but kind of sweet, too. I thought she was going to be some little angel, the way Malakai just adored her. She was about nine then, and small for her age, and Michael used to dress her up like a little porcelain doll, remember?”
“I had been waiting fifteen years for a daughter,” Michael protested gently, “It was my due.”
“God, she was the cutest little thing,” Melody continued, laughing, “She really did look like she would be an angel. But Armand had just brought his new girlfriend over and they were alone in the parlor when we walked in, and I had just one moment to think what a sweet little thing Antha was before I realized she was graphically explaining pagan human sacrifice rituals to this poor, horrified girl, stressing the importance of sacrificing teenaged girls. And then the girl ran out screaming bloody murder and Armand walked in and just…sighed, like he’d expected it, and she smiled so, so sweetly and asked if he’d take her to the park to see the ducks.”
Pursing his lips, Pierce snickered, “I forgot what a problem that used to be, Antha and Armand’s girlfriends…”
“And then she gave me this terrible, piercing stare and grilled me relentlessly for about twenty minutes, and then announced that I wasn’t suited for her big brother and she’d never, ever accept me.”
“Sounds like Antha,” Courtland commented, nodding as if it checked out.
“But you know,” Melody continued, laughing, “She never did anything to me for the entire three years we were dating. She made her feelings perfectly, abundantly clear, but she never actually did anything. And as far as I know, she never laid a finger on any of Armand’s girlfriends either.”
“Come to think of it,” Courtland murmured, lips pursing in thought, “All she ever did was tell them horrifying things in the most terrifyingly sweet voice. The only thing that ever got hurt was, you know, Armand’s chances of ever getting laid.”
“The point,” Melody interrupted as he cackled at his joke, “Is that I know Antha lets on like she’s just terrible, but I also know she’s not. She’s terrifying, but I think that’s mostly defense mechanisms.”
Though he didn’t comment, a wry grin flashed across Alistair’s lips when no one was looking. “I think it’s time to go through,” he was all he said, pointing quietly at the dining room.
“I want to sit with papa,” Magdalena declared, seizing his hand as if daring anyone to stop her.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn raised an eyebrow as Magdalena was interrupted by her mother. “You have a talent for eavesdropping. That’s considered rude, too.”
Dorian stroked Magdalena’s hair gently, his fingers tugging on her loose ringlets. “Well, if she’s going to lie and try to frighten a little girl with stories about ‘brain-eating parasites’, maybe she deserved a little rudeness.”
To be honest, he wasn’t surprised by the revelation that Lena had powers. She had Mayfair blood, didn’t she? Straight from the heart of the family, and with only a single generation’s worth of dilution. Hell, the talent had been known to pop up in children as many as three or four times removed from the family—usually only in piddling ways, mind you: an aptitude for fortune-telling, an uncannily spot-on intuition, or the ability to faintly discern the presence of a whispering apparition.
But Magdalena—she had a willfulness that reminded him of a younger, tamer Antha, to be honest. Always coming out with those unfortunate, ugly truths at the worst moments. Antha had reveled in it, though, whereas at least Magdalena was still scolded.
“You’re a little spitfire, aren’t you?” he said fondly, dropping his hand to around Magdalena’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “I can see Mel—your mother’s been doing a fine job of raising you.”
He risked a glance up at Melody, a sliver of blue flashing from underneath long lashes, the abstract curve of his smile.
Cian, in the meanwhile, was staring at Magdalena with no small fascination as she explained her reasons for wanting to be a surgeon. “Nobody suggested that you’d change your mind,” he replied, mildly, to her small explosion. She reminded him of an angry kitten. “In fact, that’s a very good reason to want to become a doctor. And you’re very confident in yourself, I can see.” It wasn’t as though that was a bad thing, necessarily, but he wondered how long it lasted—that total, unspoiled, childish surety. With Magdalena, the enfant terrible incarnate, she’d probably been testing boundaries since she was old enough to talk, and had no reason to doubt her rate of success now.
But that ego, that surety, was that really an asset to a surgeon? Surely it was fear of failure that encouraged caution, while an over-inflated ego could provoke carelessness where it was most regretted. Then again, for all he knew, that was just part of the Mayfair package deal, along with facial symmetry and a temper like a glass teakettle.
Dorian glanced up, and the look in his eyes was one of warning.
Just then, Liesse arrived on the scene, slightly out of breath and red-cheeked. She was at least dressed appropriately, though—a rather maidenly green dress, with puffed sleeves and a matching emerald chiffon sash wrapped around around her waist, before the whole thing cascaded into a full and flowing tea-length skirt.
“What did I miss?” she whispered to Rynn. He blinked at her. There was a time that she would have just thought the question at him, but now her whisper seemed to pierce through the air like a stiletto blade.
“Er, nothing.” he murmured, as Magdalena was led back onto the scene. I’ll tell you about it later.
“Vittorio and Antha are simply competing with one another to see who can be the most terribly depressing bore, is all.” Dorian organized his face into one of the sunny, artful smiles that let him get away with saying awful things in most any situation, and kept his tone light. “None of that at the dining table, either of you. There, we are only permitted to discuss subjects that will not impede our peace of mind. Religion and politics are strictly off-limits, too.”
“Embarrassing family stories, though, are completely kosher,” Cian announced, to take some of the edge off. “Especially if they involve my wife.” He put an arm around her shoulder and winked down at Antha. “Sorry. You just sound like you were such a cute kid.”
Liesse glanced around anxiously. Rynn noticed that she had stuck a pearl hairpin into her hair. “Did anyone see Malakai?” she asked, a little hesitantly. Rynn winced—tactless as ever. “Only, I thought we might see him tonight…”
“Don’t worry about him,” Rynn said firmly, putting his hand on the small of her back and giving her pointed encouragement towards the dining room. A look of distress flashed briefly over Liesse’s face, but she complied. And Dorian, for his part, announced that he would be honored to accompany the charming young lady to dinner, before offering Magdalena his hand in a ceremonial fashion. It would have been more gentlemanly to offer his arm, but the height difference made that something of a challenge.
The table was already laid when the dining party entered, and various dishes steamed and gleamed on the sideboard. “Jacob must’ve been working all day for this,” murmured an appreciative Cian, following a low whistle. “Do we pay that man enough?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

At Dorian’s fond tone, Magdalena beamed, all fluttering and bright as she clung intently to his hand. Tugging on his fingers, she looked up at him and pointed at Rynn with her free hand, murmuring in a little pout, “Papa, he’s not princely at all. He looks it, but he’s not. He’s not even a knight, or a dwarf.” Turning her gaze on Rynn, she drew a little closer to Dorian like a shield, pressing her cheek against the side of his waist and clenching her little fingers in his shirt, and stuck her tongue out, muttering, “I’m not rude, I’m just little. You’re rude, what’s your excuse?” Courtland had to clap both hands over his mouth to keep from bursting out laughing, reaching over to reassuringly pat Rynn on the shoulder. To be fair, he didn’t have an excuse.
Melody only sighed at the interaction, as if it was terribly typical, and turned to respond to Cian instead with a bright smile. “Oh, stories about Antha? I have a ton. Do you know, when she was little, she’d run all the way over from the elementary school to our school at lunch to trade half of her sandwich for half of Malakai’s? And one time she opened her lunch bag and Jacob had made them both the same sandwich and she threw this crazy fit, screaming and flailing around, and ran all the way home to get onto Jacob for it. Michael was still freaking out about her leaving school in the middle of the day to run through the city by herself when we got here three hours later.”
While she laughed fondly at the memory, Antha bristled irritably, finally interrupting with the sharp snap of, “That’s quite enough of that, thank you.”
But Melody brushed off her ire, making a little dismissive gesture and laughing breezily, “Oh it’s fine, he wants to hear. You were so cute when you were little, you know? Totally effing terrifying, but so cute.”
Unusually, Antha’s composure briefly cracked, her jaw clenching and the smallest twitch going off in her cheek. “I wasn’t asking,” she hissed, but to no effect.
“She walked in on me and Malakai making out once,” Melody continued, amused, “Her eyes went huge and she turned around and ran away just screaming bloody murder and bursting into tears. Poor M, he went as red as her hair and then pale as a sheet and tried to run after her. It took us hours before we finally found her hiding up in one of the big oak trees with a stuffed bunny rabbit. She threw her arms around the branch when we tried to get her down, screaming that she was never, ever coming down, and even Armand couldn’t pull her loose. Finally Malakai got so panicked---it had been hours and it was dark and he was swearing hysterically that she’d freeze to death, or starve, or get attacked by rabid owls---that he burst into tears and she finally slunk down like a little kitty, patting his head and sulking.”
While they all took their seats at the dining room table, Melody wrapping up her story in peels of laughter, Antha sulked. Only Courtland, with his usual razor perception concerning Antha, hummed and finally announced, “Evie, you’re watching the door.”
She shot him a sharp glance, but didn’t deny it. She only paused, eyes flashing, before murmuring, “I had to call in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the cavalry was otherwise detained, so I was forced to turn to the heavy artillery.”
“Antha Evelyn, I’ve already warned you once today about bloodshed in the house,” Julien grumbled.
Magdalena, her chair pulled completely up against Dorian’s, gave the daintiest tug on his sleeve and asked, “Is Aunt Antha always like this? Mama told me not to worry, but it seems exhausting.”
“Oh, Evie is terribly exhausting,” Courtland sighed, a little grin around the corners of his mouth as he shrugged, “But she keeps us from ruin, so it’s fine.”
There were a few snickers that Antha pointedly ignored, including Melody, who waited for the subject to conclude before leaning forward over the table and continuing intently, “And one time I ran into her in the hallway, and she was staring at one of the doors like she was trying to burn a hole in it and turning something around in her fingers. It was so odd, so I asked her what she was doing and she was actually intently focused enough on this door not to snub me and told me she was waiting for a good moment. Then she took this weird red clay or something she’d been rolling between her hands and dabbed it all up her arms and face until she was splattered in red and finally burst into the room, screaming ‘they did it, they killed him! He’s dead! Oh, the horror!’ and this half-dressed girl ran out screaming hysterically. And poor Armand was just sitting on the side of his bed all in disarray, his face in his hands, groaning and swearing that Antha was going to kill him before he made it through puberty.”
Despite the clear discomfort of the entire situation, Courtland at least was thoroughly entertained. He roared with laughter, dropping his fork back onto his plate. “Oh, Evie, I forgot what a sly little fox you were. Poor Armand, he had to move out before he could finally seal the deal with a girl. And Evie was so irritated by it, always pacing anxiously around and insisting that someone should really bring Armand home, he wasn’t ready to live on his own.”
“Which made Nicolae mad,” Pierce reminded him, grinning, “Well…jealous. He started doing the stupidest things to get her attention, remember?”
“He jumped off the roof and fell face-first into a briar bush,” Courtland snickered.
Abruptly, Antha’s fork slammed down on her plate with a loud clatter that brought the dining room into shocked silence, shouting, “Enough!” Courtland and Pierce both dropped their gazes guiltily to their plates a moment before the rest of the family did the same, all realizing too late that they’d gone too far. “This is all just a big joke to all of you, isn’t it?” she hissed, getting to her feet with the scrape of her chair and angrily throwing her folded napkin on her barely touched plate. “It’s not a joke. None of this is funny.” Down the table, Courtland cringed. He was more at fault than anyone, and he knew it.
But, unusually, her sharp gaze moved from her cousins and flickered at Cian as well. For the first time that she could remember, she was actually angry at him---angry that he had gone along with their joking and teasing, and angrier that he’d encouraged Melody.
“Finally, someone else sees some sense,” Julien scoffed, giving the table a scornful glance, “As I’ve been saying, this---”
But Antha cut him off with the exasperated roll of her eyes and the truly pissed off hiss of, “Oh, just shut up, Julien. We never listen to you, we’re never going to listen to you. I’d rather claw my own goddamn eyes out than listen to you, so just shut up!” For a moment, Julien just sat wide-eyed and dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open, while Antha’s cousins sat staring at her in very clear and slightly frightened shock. Only Alistair was not openly alarmed, but instead gave her a faintly quizzical look as he sat calmly sipping seltzer from a cut crystal glass.
“Well said,” came the abrupt compliment from the door to the hallway where Nicolae was leaning, with his usual languid, jungle cat demeanor.
Recovering from the shock of his unnoticed appearance, Courtland pointed at him and guessed, “Heavy artillery?”
He responded with his usual cool smugness, his gold-green eyes flashing. “Who else?”
Noticeably, his presence calmed Antha down at least enough that she sat back down, less murder flashing in her eyes. On the other hand, Melody had tensed, and when their eyes met something passed between the woman and the vampire like the crackle of lightning, tense and threatening. Nicolae acknowledged her first, with a smile like ice, arms crossed. “Melody.”
But she met his passively hostile expression with one of her own, her absolute sweetest, brightest smile with sharp and untrusting eyes. “Nicolae.” Even Julien had to acknowledge that it was impressive how well she held up under the force of his gaze. Nicolae had always been the intimidating figure in the family---Antha was the most frightening of course, but it took a sense of her power or the knowledge of what cruelty she was capable of to feel the full effect, and Vittorio had a naturally intimidating look to him but it translated mostly into stoicism. Surface value, Nicolae was the single most terrifying person in the family and had been since he was thirteen, but Melody was able to face the full force of his intensity with passable grace.
When she didn’t flinch (there had been a time that she would, and he was a little disappointed that she didn’t now), he turned back to Antha. “Is he hiding?” She nodded once in affirmation and he clucked his tongue in thoughtful irritation. “Inconvenient. He changed up his hiding spots when our twin senses disconnected.”
“That can’t be a real thing,” Melody exclaimed before she remembered who she was talking to, her eyebrows furrowing.
“It absolutely is,” Antha replied mildly.
“It’s super freaky,” Courtland added with a little nod.
Nicolae smiled sharply with scorn, purring, “Did he never tell you about that? Pity. I guess he never trusted you. At least that’s one thing he got right.”
Melody did waver then, the slightest scowl crossing her face. “You’re still a jerk.”
“And you’re still a---” A fork hit him square in the chest before he could finish and he stopped, his eyes flickering at Magdalena as if he’d just remembered her existence. Scoffing, he dropped the fork back on Antha’s plate (he didn’t dare meet her glare of warning) and continued, “You only dated him in the first place because Lawrence turned you down.”
“Lies,” she said flatly, now openly glaring at the vampire, “I just didn’t look at him like that before.”
While they bickered, Antha sat back in her seat---there was no use even carrying out the charade of dinner anymore, to her mind---and narrowed her eyes at Julien, stating shortly, “I might as well go ahead and tell you, since civilities have already broken down. Magnus will be arriving in the next few days.”
He briefly considered maintaining some semblance of composure, but very quickly decided that there was no use in being the only one and slammed his hands down on the table, hissing, “Antha Evelyn, of all the---that man is hurricane, he’s the last thing we need right now!”
Antha shrugged, rolling her eyes. “That’s too bad, it’s done. I briefly tried to stop him when he got in the cab for the airport, but I ran out of Swedish curse words and hung up in a fit.”
“He was bound to go through with it one of these days,” Michael added in a thoughtful hum, sighing to himself, “I hate to imagine what he’s spent on cab fare to and from the airport for flights he never actually got on.”
Glancing between them (and ignoring the still bickering Nicolae and Melody), Courtland demanded, “Who the hell is Magnus?” But he went utterly ignored.
Far from mollified, Julien groaned. “Mon dieu, have we not had enough surprises? What’s next, are you selling the house? Are you getting divorced?”
Gasping sharply, Courtland threw his hands on the table and looked at Anthaa, shouting, “You’re cheating on Cian with some Swedish guy and getting divorced?!” Without a word, Pierce reached over and smacked him in the back of the head.
“Why is he coming now?” Nicolae asked, suddenly diverting his attention to Antha. While they had assumed Courtland’s joke had been nonsense, it was hard to deny the distinct bite of jealousy in Nicolae’s tone.
“How do you know who he is?” Courtland asked, pouting.
Nicolae brushed the question off, with just a hint of smug satisfaction. “Because Evie tells me everything.”
“He can’t stay here,” Julien continued then, “We’re full as it is. Besides, he’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
That, at least, sparked something intensely hostile and protective in Antha. “I would throw every last one of you out before I turned Magnus away,” she hissed before she’d even thought about it, leaning forward to glare at Julien.
While Julien was taken aback, Michael gave a little chuckle to himself. “You’re still so loyal to him, Evie. It’s unusually sweet of you. Particularly how you always insist that he just absolutely irritates the living hell out of you and should go fall off an iceberg.”
Antha threw him a glance, compelling him to chuckle to himself without incriminating commentary, and then, quickly recovering herself, shrugged and continued to Julien, “Fortunately, that shouldn’t be necessary. If it comes to it, I’ll only have to throw you out, Uncle Julien. But we’ve erred completely from my point.” Her knuckles rapped once against the table, bringing the hectic chatter of the room to silence as the family all turned to look at her, curious. “While Magnus is here---and I don’t know how long that shall be, I assume he’ll be very difficult to get rid of---” Her eyes narrowed and fingers folded on the tabletop, her demeanor switching into one of absolute seriousness. “---there is not to be one single whisper of anything unnatural. In particular, there will be no hint of magic and absolutely no mention of…” She faltered, her gaze flickering pointedly first to Nicolae and then to Julien. She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘incest’ in front of Magdalena. Or, honestly, to admit it aloud around Melody. The girl had always been so intensely creeped out by the way she and Nicolae acted around one another and Antha refused to confirm her suspicions. “Am I clear?”
For the most part, the Mayfairs just stared blankly back at her, as if she’d said something impossibly foreign and they couldn’t comprehend it. After a moment, only courtland stirred, shaking his head as if coming back to himself and pounding his fists back on the table, shouting impetuously, “Who the hell is Magnus?”
Antha blatantly---or rather, pointedly---ignored the question, refusing to answer it, and no one else who seemed to know dared. Instead she reached across her plate and picked up a platter of sweet breads, rising from her chair. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve quite lost my appetite and I’d like to lure my brother out of hiding before he falls asleep. Nikki?”
“Garden first,” he replied instantly, turning and heading with her down the hall.
“Guys, I am so serious,” Courtland grumbled when they were gone, “If someone doesn’t tell me who Magnus is, I’m going to start screaming and throwing things. You have no idea of the tantrum brewing in me right now. And I refuse to let Nicolae know a secret I don’t, I just refuse! Cian, join me in outrage!”
“Nicolae?” Magdalena repeated softly while Courtland continued to pout and throw his fit, turning straight in her seat again with dreamy eyes. “He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. He’s as pretty as an angel, or a famous statue. He could be in art books.”
Her mother, still unsettled from their argument, stated flatly, “Maggie, you have bad taste in men. Michael, for the love of all that is holy, I’m going to need you to arrange her marriage when she’s old enough, because you can’t trust any pretty boy she picks for herself.”
“Mama, if you don’t stop calling me ‘Maggie’, I’m going to marry a thug when I turn sixteen.”
“Until Dorian shoots him,” Alistair added helpfully, calmly continuing with his meal.
Magdalena lit up happily at the suggestion, enthusiastically nodding. “Right, until papa shoots him with a shotgun. But if you don’t want my first husband to be a thug, you stop calling me ‘Maggie’!”
“What even happened to this dinner?” Vittorio muttered meanwhile in the background, massaging his temples as Dolly Jean reassuringly patted his shoulder.  

[Okimiyage]

“I’m not rude! All I did was point out that most people leave off making enormous life choices until they have a bit more experience,” Rynn huffed, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. Leave it to a kid half his age to make him feel defensive. “I mean, you don’t even—“ He paused, thought about this carefully, and then rephrased it as a question. You never could tell with the Mayfairs. “Do you even know whether you like blood and guts, yet?” As if that were all being a surgeon was—but the more Rynn considered the other aspects of the job, the less he liked the thought of describing them to a small child. Dorian flashed that warning smile again, with just a hint more fang this time. “I really do remember warning you about suitable subjects of conversation at the dinner table.” With that, he began to usher the little Magdalena in that direction, neatly stepping between the two of them. Rynn scowled, and opened his mouth—
“For heaven’s sake, Rynn,” Liesse interrupted. “It’s really no more terrible than anything you’d find in a kitchen, and you do sound rather patronizing. If you’re a prince, you’re a barbarian one.” She marched past him into the dining room, following the tide of people, while Rynn stopped in his tracks, looking a little stunned. Liesse was supposed to have his back. “[i}Barbarian? I was trying to be friendly!” he protested, feebly. If she heard him, she had no response—or perhaps she was only fixating on Malakai’s absence again. After a moment, he trailed after the rest of them, leaving behind an empty room.

They were already telling stories by the time that Rynn found his place, by Liesse’s side as per the usual. He could feel Alistair’s glance like the touch of a red-hot brand on his neck as he took his seat. The table had already been set, and it was interesting to note that, while wine had been provided for most of the family according to preference, with Jacob’s customary attention to detail, Dorian’s was curiously absent. Rynn couldn’t recall when the last time he’d seen the man drink water had been.
Cian, in the meantime, leaned forward in rapt fascination as the cousins regaled him with their stories of little Antha. He could see her heating up next to him whenever he glanced to the side, saw the tension in her jaw, and the way she bristled at Melody’s comments, but he had thought it was rather…cute, actually. It was a very rare occasion that one saw Antha Mayfair anywhere close to flustered. And besides, the conversational gambit had worked in the regard which was intended: that is, to take everyone’s mind off of various impending crises. More of them seemed to pop up every day now.
And Dorian was right—the previous sort of conversation wasn’t suitable for dinner. People ended up storming out and not finishing their meals, for one thing.
…As Antha looked dangerously close to now, erupting in front of the whole dinner table. Cian jolted slightly, as she stood. He’d seen the pressure building, but hadn’t figured that it would actually blow. Then again, Antha had a hair-trigger temper, and it looked like she was under some additional stressors tonight. It had only been Cian’s naive assumption that this dinner was intended to be a diplomatic operation, rather than a council of war.
That being said, telling her to calm down would probably only make matters worse.
Liesse, picking at his food while Antha snarled, raised her eyes just long enough to acknowledge her brother’s shock. Really, her older brother was dashing, but he could be a little slow sometimes.
Alistair was the only one who didn’t seem perturbed, Rynn noticed. And if ‘twin senses’ were a real thing, Antha and Airi definitely would qualify for it. So it couldn’t be that bad, right?
Although he didn’t think even Airi had been expecting Nicolae. Beautiful Nicolae, as regal and ferocious as a lion, who still looked at Cian like he was the enemy when he bothered to look at him at all. The display of jealousy would have been endearing if it hadn’t been so dangerous. Nobody wanted to cross a vampire, and fewer still cared to cross one of their ‘kings’ of Osiris City—especially, as Cian now sensed, with one of his bodyguards hovering in the hall behind him like a shadow. There was something curiously familiar about the presence, like an echo just beyond the range of hearing, but Cian did not press his mind to remember—there was enough to occupy it with, already. It said something about Melody that, even after years away from the family, she could hold up against Nicolae like a tide wall. Maybe that was the kind of thing becoming a mother prepared you for.
“Why are you looking for Malakai, anyways?” Rynn asked, and Liesse perked up like a flower when she heard his name. “Why not let him have his space? He’s been through enough for one day.” Dorian raised his eyes heavenwards. Privately, he thought Malakai was being dramatic. It’d been years, for chrissakes. “Brotherly concern, Rynn.” he said, with the air of a tired-out excuse that had been trotted out one too many times to be convincing any longer.
Cian leaned forward, steepling his fingers atop the tablecloth. All of the humor had gone out of his eyes. “Do stop baiting everyone you can, Dorian,” he said, wearily. “I’m of the same mind as Courtland. Who is this ‘Magnus’ fellow, and why haven’t we heard about him before now?”
He shouldn’t have been jealous, and he certainly didn’t display it with venom like Nicolae did, but it was hard to deny the—the savage immediacy with which Antha had lashed out. I would throw every last one of you out before I turned Magnus away.
“He’s not a Mayfair, is he?” Rynn toyed with his glass idly, sending sparks of light scattering across the wall as the chandelier caught facets of the cut crystal. “Why should we have to hide what we are? It’s practically urban legend in this city.”
Dorian, in the meanwhile, frowned at Magdalena’s appraisal. “You’ve met him before, have you?” Pretty as an angel, huh! Dorian didn’t like the sound of this. Not simply because this ‘Magnus’ person sounded like a completely unsuitable crush for his first daughter…Dorian himself had acted as the muse for several local artists in the early stages of their careers, before their paintings had commanded the five-figure price ranges for which they were now recognized. Art books…hah!
Even Dorian, if pressed, would have to admit that this was petty, but his ego had been roused.
“I want to come, too,” Liesse announced, getting to her feet to follow Antha and Nicolae. “I won’t be a bother.”
“Liesse…” came Rynn’s lonesome protest, but it was too late. She had made up her mind, and could be surprisingly quick on her feet when she’d found a direction to point herself in.