Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“I would remember someone named Magnus Mayfair,” Courtland mumbled irritably, his chin in his palm, “And I know the family register backwards and forwards. And we don’t have family in Sweden. We don’t even have business in Sweden, I don’t understand where this Swedish guy came from.”
Down the table, Airi’s eyes flashed, but he said nothing. Michael and Julien both quietly watched their plates, preoccupying themselves utterly with eating. “And Magdalena was talking about Nicolae,” Melody sighed, the little girl nodding enthusiastically, “She really has the worst taste.” She froze then, as Nicolae reappeared steering Liesse back into the dining room, but he only spared her the briefest roll of his eyes before shutting the doors between him and Liesse. He was the last person to treat her gently, or anyone for that matter.
“Leave Malakai to them,” Pierce said gently, with a little smile to try and reassure her, “He’s so skiddish, he can only handle his siblings when he’s upset. And Lawrence---the ‘cavalry’, I assume.”
“He doesn’t even like for me to see him upset,” Michael sighed, giving a little dramatic sniffle. Julien simply patted his hand, once, without looking up. “But he’ll be fine, just leave him to Nicolae and Antha. Come on kitten, sit down and try to eat something.”
“What the hell kind of name is Magnus anyways?” Courtland was mumbling meanwhile, “Who names their kid that?”
“Apparently it’s rather common in Sweden,” Alistair answered shortly, a hint of amusement behind his voice, “But you surprise me, Courtland. It’s not a difficult puzzle, and you have all the pieces.” The boy’s forehead pinched with renewed concentration, hell-set on figuring it out, while Alistair switched his gaze to Cian with a reassuring smile. “Antha never mentions Magnus. Never. It’s…complicated, but there’s no need for you to worry. Nicolae has every reason to be jealous, but there’s nothing for you to worry about.” Except what was happening in the garden, but that was an entirely different issue, and he didn’t even mention it. Sometimes, Airi’s knowledge was like sitting on a mountain of landmines.
At this point, Courtland shook his head and banged his fist on the table, demanding, “Everybody shut up, I’m trying to think!” A crooked grin crossed Alistair’s lips, amused, as Courtland mumbled to himself. “Nicolae can be jealous, Cian can’t. What’s the difference between Nicolae and Cian, to Antha? It can’t be the legality of her marriage, Evie doesn’t care about legalities. Cian is the father of her children, but that doesn’t…”
Surprisingly, it was Vittorio who answered, with his usual calm and collected logic. “That’s simple, isn’t it? Nicolae is her brother, and Cian isn’t.”
Courtland glanced up sharply---they had a tendency to forget that simple thing sometimes, with the mechanics of their family. “Brother…” he repeated, lowly and thoughtfully, and for one moment his cousins noted a similarity between his eyes and Antha’s. They shifted as hers did, the thoughts visibly racing through his mind, things clicking into place. They forgot sometimes, with his personality and physical effort to conceal it, that Courtland was actually keenly intelligent. “Ah!” A light went off in his eyes, a triumphant grin crossing from ear to ear as he pattered his hands on the table in excitement. “Sweden! Sweden!”
“I think he’s got it,” Alistair purred in a low warning to Julien.
“That’s fine,” the man snapped, waving his hand, “But keep your mouth closed and don’t let her know that you figured it out. She’s very touchy about Magnus, I can’t even imagine how paranoid she is about him coming here.”
“Literally on the last threads of her sanity,” Alistair answered, just a little too sharply to be casual. He made up for it with a disarming smile, all sugar and sunshine, and continued sweetly, “I’m really quite amazed that no one else has noticed.” And abruptly, the Mayfairs all realized that Alistair was pissed. Still smiling as sweetly as ever, he drove the knife in a little deeper. “Except for Nicolae, I mean. He does tend to pick up on these things immediately.”
“Airi,” Michael called lowly, flashing him a glance that clearly said to stop. The boy just smiled, the picture of innocence.
“Complain about it all you want, Uncle Julien,” he continued, seriously this time, “But it’s good that Magnus is coming. Even if it does pose a serious logistical issue for me…” His brow briefly furrowed in concern, but then smoothed over with a careless shrug. “Don’t let Evie fool you, she’s absolutely thrilled to see him, no matter what problems it might cause. And she needs that right now.” His eyes narrowed, flickering around the table, as that frighteningly sweet smile came back to his face. “And no more stories, alright?”
“Lesson learned,” Melody answered with a little nod, “Sorry…it was my small form of revenge.”
It was then that the door opened and Lawrence entered, exhausted and slightly flustered. “What happened? Has Antha physically hurt anyone? Is Malakai still on the premises?”
“No to the first, maybe to the second.”
The lawyer sighed heavily with relief, reaching up and crooking a finger around the knot of his tie to loosen it. “Good, good…she’s run me ragged today, I was afraid of what I was walking into.” He dropped into Malakai’s unoccupied chair, reaching for a dinner roll and scarfing it down.
“Did you get Melody and Magdalena all set up?” Michael questioned in passing.
“I made all the arrangements for the hotel and got started on Magdalena’s trust, now I just have to wait for the paperwork to go through and find a suitable apartment. That was one thing, but then she sprung Magnus on me. She won’t let him handle his own visa, she insists he’ll ******** it up, and the university was supposed to handle all of that paperwork, but you can’t trust their administration for anything---”
“University?” Julien questioned abruptly, looking up from his plate, “What about the university?”
Lawrence froze, looking around to confirm his sudden fear that he’d let something unnecessary slip. Too late now. “Ah…she didn’t tell you? Magnus has taken up a position at the University of Osiris City. He’s the new comparative literature professor. He was teaching at Stockholm University, but he applied for a post here when Antha got pregnant. Or at least I think that’s what he was saying...his accent is really impossibly thick. His grasp of English isn’t that great, either. Not sure he’s the greatest choice for a literature professor, actually. But hell, they gave it to him without any help from Antha…”
“So he didn’t spring this on her?” Julien continued, jaw clenched, “This was an actual plan, she just chose not to tell us?”
“I doubt she thought he’d ever go through with it,” Lawrence murmured somewhat uncomfortably, “He never does. She seemed genuinely shocked when he wouldn’t turn around at the airport---she kept calling him a ‘javlar’, or something.”
“Jävla,” Alistair corrected him fluidly, “It can mean ‘stupid’, ‘damn’, or ‘********’, depending on the rest of the sentence. Convenient word, really.”
“Did she tell you about Magnus, too?” Courtland asked jealously.
“She had to,” he sighed, as if it wasn’t his first time in this exact situation, “I’m the executor of her will---I wrote the damn thing, all fifty versions of it, I had to have his contact information.”
“Out of curiosity,” Julien murmured, “Exactly how many revisions is she up to now from her original will?”
Lawrence didn’t miss a beat, replying instantly, “Eighty-three.”
“And Magnus,” he continued, leaning forward with his hands folded seriously under his chin, eyes narrowed seriously, “What exactly has dear Antha left Magnus out of our family’s legacy?”
Oddly, this seemed to set something off in Lawrence. He sat up straighter, eyes sharp, slightly revived. “If Antha left everything that came to her as Designee of the Legacy when she turned sixteen to Vanessa, a fourth of the fortune would still be left over. When you put Antha in front of a computer with access to our stock portfolio, she can generate enough to sustain a small country. If you put her on the phone with Claire Leonelli at the same time…well it’s not strictly legal---it’s actually usually several federal crimes cleverly disguised as acts of god or pinned on the media---but one night they actually generated the GDP of Liberia. And then spent half of it bribing the Prime Minister of Japan to cosplay on international TV, if I remember correctly…” He stopped, abruptly shaking his head and holding a hand out to stop himself. “But that’s beside the point. Anything beyond what Antha inherited, she has every right to dispose of as she wishes. She’s managed to sustain all of us, run all of our businesses, and still increase the Mayfair fortune by literally---literally---billions. No, Antha is absolutely ridiculous and reckless bordering on psychotically suicidal, but she’s earned the right to do whatever the hell she wants with her money. Besides…the rest of us own literally nothing. Our bank accounts are all in a shell account in her name, she literally owns every cent we have to our names.” And then, with the briefest smug flicker in his eyes, added, “Except for Tori and me, as the only gainfully employed people at this table.”
“Antha still signs your paychecks,” Courtland pointed out impetuously.
“But they’re ours,” Vittorio answered, with an unusual amount of vigor, “That money is ours and ours alone. I literally have to get up to my wrists in strangers’ intestines for it, but it’s all mine. I haven’t touched my allowance from the family in years.” Dolly Jean beamed at him with this, patting his arm proudly. The touch brought his attention to her and he faltered, correcting himself after a moment, “No, that’s not true. I took two-thousand out to cover the payment for Dolly’s engagement ring.” He shrugged. “But that was worth it.”
Suddenly, Lucy gave a little shriek of excitement, leaning completely over Pierce to seize Dolly Jean’s hand. “You didn’t tell me he’d given you your ring yet! Show me, show me, show me!” The girl flushed a deep, rosy pink as Lucy seized her fingers, holding the glittering diamond up to the light. “Oh wow…Tori, that is a serious rock. You only had to take two grand out of your trust fund for this?”
“Sales tax,” he murmured mutedly, “…part of the sales tax.”
“It’s too much,” Dolly Jean fretted quietly, anxiously fiddling with the sparkling band on her thin finger.
“Absolutely not,” Lucy soothed her gently, “You can give it to Olivier when he’s ready to get married. If this doesn’t net him the hottest girl in the city, I don’t know what will.”
“Laurie, what year did you say that Prime Minister thing was?” Courtland asked meanwhile, tapping furiously on his phone.
Nearly unnoticed, the phone rang elsewhere in the house and Jacob ran to answer it. But they did notice roughly a minute later when the screen door in the kitchen creaked open and Jacob called into the garden, “Antha, Magnus is on the phone.” They watched her dart out of the darkness of the trees and bushes through the window as Courtland fumbled and bolted up, scrambling to reach the phone before her, and then listened to their scuffle in the kitchen, like children fighting over a favorite toy.
“I guess he didn’t get on the flight after all,” Lawrence murmured, somewhat surprised and more irked (there were few things he hated more than doing paperwork for no reason), snapping his wrist around to look at his watch. “Well…no, I suppose he would be arriving in New York right about now, if he did.”
“He would call Antha the second he landed,” Michael chuckled to himself, “I’m surprised he didn’t call her from the plane.”
The door to the kitchen swung open and Antha darted in, the receiver cradled between her cheek and shoulder as she held the door shut against Courtland’s pushing. “Yes, the buildings are very tall,” she answered idly into the phone as she shoved the door, which gave a dull thud against Courtland’s face before he rallied and started pushing again, “No, Magnus, don’t stock up on apples. Because that’s not what ‘the Big Apple’ means. Yes, I am positive, you goddamn Swedish idiot. You have six hours until your connecting flight, just go take a nap.”
“Evie, no, give me the phooooo~ne!” Courtland whined, less pushing on the door now than banging childishly on it.
“No, listen to me, do not take a nap on the sidewalk. I sent you a credit card, just go get a hotel room. It really doesn’t---well just go sleep in a terminal if you don’t want to use my money!”
“Antha, let me talk to---” Michael began, reaching for the phone, but she slapped his hand away.
“No, the bus is not faster. The bus is slower and intensely uncomfortable. Oh my god, will you just calm the ******** down? You’ll get here when you get here. No, absolutely do not take a cab from the airport! You promised me Magnus, you promised you would have no contact with any strangers whatsoever when you got here. Du lovade, jäkel! Stanna där! You just sit quietly outside and don’t talk to anyone and I’ll come get you.” The voice on the other end became audibly loud at that and Antha moved it away from her ear with a small wince. “Magnus, calm down or I will hide Cian in a closet and you will never meet him. No, Vanessa and Sebastien either. You’ll be stuck in America for no damn reason!” But the voice continued chattering in a rapid yell and Antha went lax in surrender, rolling her eyes. “Ja ... Eh va... Okej, jag älskar dig också, fårskalle.”
“Evie, no!” Courtland squealed, a moment before she stepped aside and he spilled through the door.
“Have at it,” she said simply, her thumb on the erase button, before handing him the receiver, “But you’ll never find his number, I’ve forbidden anyone to write it down.”
Courtland pouted intensely, scrolling through the call history in vain and pushing redial only for Lawrence’s phone to ring. “You’re such a spoilsport, Evie.”
“She talks tough,” Michael chuckled mischievously, “But ‘älskar dig’ means ‘love you’. I at least remember that.”
“Shut up!” she hissed, turning her head to hide a highly uncharacteristic blush, “I also called him an idiot, you just don’t know enough Swedish.”
“‘Remember that’?” Pierce repeated, his eyebrows furrowing, “Uncle Michael, where did you learn…wait. Swedish…Swedish. Leon was Swedish, wasn’t he?”
Antha rounded on him immediately, her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Shut up!” But there was a trace of panic there, he thought. An immediate fear that he was onto something she didn’t want him to know.
But Vittorio wasn’t afraid of Antha, for the most part, and he was a good deal cleverer than Pierce. “Leon had a son, if I recall,” he mused, “From a first marriage. I remember because I ran into him in a convenience store once---he was only a few years older than me, I think---and he bolted as soon as I mentioned my last name.”
While Courtland grinned triumphantly, Pierce gave a sudden shocked gasp, turning wide eyes on Antha. “Then Magnus…he’s your brother, isn’t he? He’s your brother by Leon.”
Antha opened her mouth, but faltered. Unusually, her cheeks flushed scarlet and she could only repeat in a squeak, “Shut up!” before turning and bolting through the swinging door and back out into the garden, screaming desperately, “Malakai!”
“She does have the worst brother complex…” Lawrence sighed, rising and turning to follow her. She’d called him over to help cheer Malakai up, after all.
“You would all do very well not to talk about this around her,” Michael suggested sweetly, “She really doesn’t know how to deal with it. And you’d do especially well not to mention Leon.”
“But the questions---!” Courtland whined, sagging against the wall, “The burning questions!”
“He lived in Satis House until Antha was three,” Alistair said shortly, “He’s nine years older than her. He took care of her while Leon kept himself locked in his study, and he has no idea what Leon did to her afterwards and he doesn’t know anything about what our family really is. So keep your mouths shut.” He shoved the last bite of his dinner in his mouth then with an air of utter finality, allowing for no questions.  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian, clearly jarred by this revelation, cast his eyes heavenwards. “Lord preserve us all,” he sighed. “Melody, when was Lena’s last eye exam? He’s not that handsome…” This was clearly a lie, or at least the subject of intensive debate between the two men’s respective social circles. Magdalena had struck a nerve.
Cian had been watching Michael and Julien while the other members of the family bickered amicably.
It was something about the way they’d both clammed up, but he felt rather certain that they knew more about this Magnus fellow than they were letting on.
The door opened, and Liesse was pushed back into the dining room, but Dorian was too preoccupied with trying to figure out how best to demonstrate Nicolae’s objective awfulness to notice. Rynn, however, was acutely aware of the way that, within the span of a few seconds outside the doors, her face had gone white and stiff, and how her small hands had knotted into weak fists. Just for an instant, he allowed himself to feel the shape of her mind, and his chest tightened in sympathy.
There was a little well of bitter words that were building up inside of her, as she slunk obediently back to her place at the dinner table and stared resentfully at the nearly-untouched plate set before her. All the appetite had gone out of her; the thoughts in her head had left her throat feeling strangled as she struggled not to respond. It was childish, she told herself. It was selfish to feel this way. She couldn’t imagine how Malakai must be feeling.
But if he felt so strongly that just seeing this woman had sent him into a state of—well, emergency, and this after years of separation…the only explanation for that was simple. A person could only affect a person so much as one still prized their importance and relevance to one’s life.
She wanted to laugh and hit herself at the same time. Was it really that obvious? Had she been that stupid? Of course he didn’t want to see her, then. How awkward, for the ingenue to come chasing after her lover while he pined for his long-lost amour. Put it in the context of a story, and it suddenly all seemed clear.
Rynn gave his sister’s vacant face puzzled regard, as the identity of ‘Magnus’ became the subject of debate. He could afford to ignore the conversation, not having much vested personal interest in the man’s arrival, himself.
People who were too much put off by the subject of witches or magic were, in Rynn’s opinion, small-minded bigots. It was hard not to feel that way when your entire identity had revolved around one’s place in a necromantic dynasty for most of one’s life.
But whatever it was, Liesse would have to wait. Cian leaned back in his chair as Courtland hit his ‘eureka’ moment, and Airi gave him due response. He’d been patiently listening all this time, as there are few contributions one is able to make in a conversation about a person whom has never been met. No wonder Antha was stressed. The atmosphere in here was enough to drive anyone up the wall. But Airi was wrong about one thing—it wasn’t that Cian hadn’t noticed, but only that he’d hoped—a nice dinner, with good food and light conversation and no ******** bickering—would help relieve some of that. And maybe it would have been, at a different time. He hadn’t realized that asking for stories about what seemed to be a rather colorful and exciting childhood, in comparison to his own, would set her off. He would have regaled the table with some of his own exploits, but most of them would not have been suitable for Magdalena’s ears. “I’ll owe her an apology, then,” he said, mildly. “If I’d realized we were throwing a welcome party… Of course, any friend of Antha’s is a friend of the family—only it’s natural to be curious when she’s never mentioned the bloke before.”
Lawrence’s arrival, however, put off the need for any more prompting on the topic. And it seemed as though Cian had spoken too soon. From Julien’s cold probing, he could well imagine that the patriarch did not necessarily feel…positively about their imminent guest. “Is this the first time he’s been introduced to the whole family?” Cian asked carefully, watching Julien’s face for a reaction. Privately, he was thinking, that means we’ll have to be on our best behavior. oh, christ. but he didn’t let it show on his face. Cian’s experience with ‘happy, normal families’ was pretty much limited to a few episodes of ‘The Brady Bunch’ that he’d once seen on television. But if that’s what Antha wanted, well, they’d just have to hope none of the ghosts chose to manifest out of spite.
Cian took the revelation well in stride. Of course it was family—only family could get Antha that worked up. Only over family did she become that protective. “He’s her half-brother, then…” he mused. “I didn’t realize Antha was still in contact.” He paused, thinking of the implications there. After her experiences at Leon’s hands, it was surprising that she would have anything to do with his son. Magnus must have made a strong impression.
Abruptly, “She said that he’d be here in six hours, didn’t she? We’ll have to prepare a room for him, then.” And they’d have to ward up the attic so he didn’t go up there, and put away all the even vaguely occult items lying around the house. Oh, and caps for the little changelings, to cover their ears… Rynn raised an eyebrow at his brother. “You know, you react astonishingly well to hearing your wife tell another man she loves him.”
Outrage seemed like too much of an effort, but Cian sighed testily. “Push your luck and I will find a way for you to make you regret it.”
Liesse stood up, as Antha fled the room, and put down her napkin with an ungainly flap. With a very poor imitation of her usual good humor, she asked with artificial brightness, “Since the hostess has fled the table, does that mean we are permitted to retire as well? I have some homework assignments to attempt.” Underneath the table, Rynn’s foot nudged Alistair’s, and he gave the other a meaningful look. This was their opportunity to opt out, too! Not only that, but Liesse was acting…strange. Rynn wanted to keep an eye on her.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Lawrence paused in the doorway to the kitchen, his hand on the painted white swinging door, and half-turned to narrow a glance at the table. And then very suddenly he gave something between a laugh and a sigh, his free hand brushing against his temple. “Antha was antagonizing Julien, wasn’t she?”
“Laurie,” Courtland called, rolling his eyes, “If Evie is awake, she’s antagonizing Julien.”
He nodded as if it was a fair point, with another weary laugh before continuing. “I see. Well, she misled you, Oncle Julien. Magnus is staying in a hotel until his apartment is ready.”
Julien groaned, sitting irritably back in his seat. “Is it really so necessary to antagonize me to this extent?”
“Yes,” Courtland answered instantly, not stopping a moment to think about it. And then, turning to Alistair, he asked the question he’d been turning around in his mind for the last few moments. “But how is that possible? Magnus not knowing about Antha, I mean. About…any of it.”
“Antha was too small to do much,” he answered simply, shrugging, “Leon certainly never told him about it. He couldn’t have heard any of the rumors because he only left the house on Fridays, to go grocery shopping, and he was forbidden from talking to anyone. He never saw the ghosts because he didn’t have any power, and he thought I was Antha’s imaginary friend. Since then…I mean, there aren’t many occult cities like this one in the world. Stockholm certainly isn’t one. How could he know?”
Lawrence turned to leave, sighing, and then stopped. “Oh.” He turned, setting his briefcase on the sideboard and popping it open. “I almost forgot. Rynn, Liesse---” He handed each of them a cellphone in turn, both shiny new models. “Welcome to the 21st century.”
“I’ll just---” Alistair scrambled to reach over to Rynn, snatching the phone out of his hand almost as soon as it was in it, and began rapidly typing, programming his contact information in and sending himself Rynn’s number. Courtland noted that it was a little too obvious to not be on purpose, considering Alistair’s usual perfect composure. “Aaaaand there,” he announced, pleased, handing the phone back over to Rynn.
“Well I’m excited to meet Magnus,” Lucy declared imperiously, harrumphing at the conversation, “Annie certainly seems attached to him. And I’ve always been a fan of the Swedes. We’re talking about Viking descendants here.”
Alistair, meanwhile, cast a gaze on Rynn in response to his kick under the table. Gently, a weak smile touched his lips and he glanced after Liesse, nodding his head for Rynn to follow her. Airi…well, he wasn’t in the mood for anyone else’s s**t right now. He had his own problems to deal with, and frankly he didn’t know what to say to Liesse. Heartbreak sucked, and nothing particularly helped but time. Besides, it was his brother involved.
“But really, can you imagine!” Lucy continued, chattering excitedly, “With the exception of Alistair, who admits his recollection is fuzzy, this person is the only one who knew little, little Annie. I want to know what she was like as a toddler.”
“Precocious, I’m sure,” Julien answered dryly, and then added, “But Antha has just banned stories, if you will recall.”
Alistair gave a muffled snort of laughter, immediately shaking his head. “Ah, but you’re overlooking one key detail. Magnus is the only person in the entire world who, to Antha’s mind, is above her. Magnus can do no wrong, or if he does, she doesn’t consider herself to have the right to correct or scold him. This is the man who taught her to walk and talk, who made airplane sounds while he spoon-fed her applesauce, who tucked her in every night with a kiss on her forehead.” He laughed silently to himself for a moment, his chin in his palm, and Courtland noted a fleeting flash in his eyes through his carefully-constructed easygoing persona, a brief gleam of something sharp and immensely intelligent. Something that could probably destroy all of them on a whim, if he ever cared to. “Our fathers are our models for god. To Antha, who had no concept of blood ties---who didn’t even have the faintest perception of blood relations or what they meant---Magnus, who taught her and cared for her, filled the role of ‘father’. Ergo, very far back in her subconscious, Magnus is god.”
There was the briefest moment of silence, before very suddenly Courtland burst into uncontrollable laughter. “Jesus ******** Christ,” he sighed when he’d had a moment to catch his breath, slumped comfortably back in his seat, “To the rest of us, Evie is god. How frightening to think there’s someone above her.”
“Antha is the god of our little universes,” Alistair corrected him evenly, making a gesture around the table, “Magnus is the god of hers.”
Oddly, it was Magdalena who made a face then, picking up on what the others hadn’t. “But, if he thinks you were an imaginary friend, what are you going to tell him now?”
Everyone stopped at that, mostly in shock. Alistair outright froze, for at least a fraction of a second, unnerved to have his quiet anxieties voiced by this little girl. At first all he could do was smile, somewhat uncomfortably, his eyes flashing. “What indeed…” he murmured quietly before coming back to himself, disarming smile and all.
Melody, meanwhile, had glanced uncertainly out the window into the garden, watching the very faint shadows of movement past the rose bushes, and turned to murmur to Cian, “Shouldn’t you go after her? She was so mad…”
“Evie will be back soon,” Courtland cut in reassuringly, “Cian is like her magnet, she always wanders back to where he is before long. She just needs to let her temper settle first. Despite what that look she gave earlier might imply---” He paused, his hands folded on his knee, and gave a little fond laugh to himself. “Marriage agrees with Antha and Cian shockingly well.”
“Oh, I’m not surprised,” Melody said, shrugging, “Antha was always so serious and terrifyingly loyal. Even if you keep saying how much she changed…”
There was a hint of a question that Melody was not quite brave enough to ask left hanging on the end, which brought a low, dry chuckle from Courtland, his lashes lowering as his flickering gaze settled on his knee. “Nikki ruined her,” he said after a long moment, while the rest of the Mayfairs stiffened and went quiet at the mention of the forbidden topic. “I can’t say exactly what was between them, how deep things went, but it was…bigger than this family, certainly. But he betrayed her, and that ruined her. For a while all she cared about was completely destroying him, but then that white-hot drive of vengeance faded and she…” His eyes went dark at the memory, his voice low. “And then just didn’t care about anything. Nothing mattered and she couldn’t trust anyone.”
“Tell her what you did then,” Julien said when he paused, with a sharp edge of accusation.
Courtland, unusually, bristled at that. It was difficult to hit a nerve with Courtland, but this was clearly a big one. “I saved her,” he snapped, eyes narrowing, “She didn’t do anything, care about anything, she just…locked herself in her room or drifted around like a ghost. She was lost, and she got dangerously close to never getting found again.” Glaring at Julien, he turned back to Melody, explaining very seriously this time, “The way I saw it, there are two ways not to care. You can give up, withdraw, and do nothing, or you can lay all your cards on the table and set everything else on fire. She did the first, and then I forced her to do the second.” He sat back again, shrugging slightly. “I threw her in the deep end, it was my only choice if I was going to save her. Sink or swim. And Antha…oh, did she swim. It’s amazing and horrifying what someone can accomplish when they just don’t care about a damn thing. But on the bright side, Dorian finally had a partner in crime on his own level.”
“The four most stressful years of my entire life,” Julien mumbled irritably, dropping his napkin on the table as if he had finally given up. “You would be traumatized if you knew what Antha, Dorian, and Courtland can accomplish when they team up.”
“I want to hear!” Magdalena shouted, throwing her hand up in the air.
“Absolutely not,” Melody cut in quickly, grabbing her hand and pulling it back down to her lap.
The little girl pouted, put out. “It’s not like I’ll be shocked,” she mumbled sulkily, “You already said he was a whore…”
“I absolutely did not!”
“But you thought it. A lot. Before you did that singing songs loudly in your head thing so I wouldn’t hear your thoughts. And then you’d feel bad for thinking so badly of my papa when I might hear it. And then you’d think about him being a drunk and a whore again and then start thought-singing again.”
“Maggie!” She groaned, putting her face in her hands. “Sweetie, seriously, how many times do I have to tell you to stay out of peoples’ minds?”
“I can’t help it! Especially with you mama, you think loud. Oh!” Turning to Dorian, her blue eyes oh-so earnest, she assured him sweetly, “But you’re still princely, papa. I don’t care even if you are---err, that word that mama’s going to get mad at me for saying.”
“It’s a very, very, very bad word,” Melody murmured, visibly a little mortified.
“And on that note,” Alistair interrupted, rising to his feet with the scrape of his chair, “I’m going to go take a walk and figure out what to say when Magnus gets here in the morning. Cian---” His eyes flashed briefly towards the garden. “If you’re going to go after your wife, I think this is about the best chance you’re going to get. She’s in the orchard looking for her shoe.” And then, in answer to the quizzical looks he was being shot. “Nicolae was slapping Malakai, so Antha kicked him, so he stole her shoe and threw it out into the orchard.” He shrugged. “Siblings are still siblings.”
A minute later, he was leaning back on the other side of the front gate, letting out a deep breath as he pulled on his jacket. He was happy that Magnus was coming, in a way---Magnus had always been nice to him, even if he didn’t think Alistair was real. But…his very existence was problematic, suddenly. It wasn’t something he could put on Antha’s shoulders, not when it concerned Magnus.
He pulled out his phone, turning it in his hands a few times and then pulling up Rynn’s number. He stared at it for a moment, thoughtfully, and then slid his phone back into his pocket.
Rynn had his own sibling problems, and Alistair didn’t think he could get him away from Liesse even if he wanted to. “Thinking or drinking?” he hummed to himself, leaning his head back, eyes closed, “Thinking or drinking, thinking or…?” He sighed, running a hand back through his hair, and turned right from the gate, towards the main street.  

[Okimiyage]

Cian relaxed infinitesimally as Lawrence’s news, although that did mean he’d have to come up with another excuse to make Rynn sleep on the couch.
Rynn, for his own part, was much too baffled the smartphone that he was consequently handed to feel relief. “I don’t know anything about phones,” he protested. “Do I really need one? People can just call the house line.” He would have maybe been slightly more impressed if he’d realized that this particular model of phone wouldn’t be released to market for a good month. How on earth Lawrence had gotten hold of two of them was anyone’s guess. After an apprehensive moment, he made a few awkward taps on the screen. Airi’s phone, consequently, jingled. Well, that would be handy.
(The message was made up of an assortment of apparently unrelated emoji. Rynn seemed to favor the skull and easter-island-head.)
Liesse looked at her own phone, although with a great deal more interest, although it was devoid of cute casings like the ones she’d noticed on other girls phones at school. Well, no matter. She could finally download some dating sim apps. Jackie had seemed to think that they were necessities…and perhaps it would help her practice for when she saw Malakai next…
After a moment, she seemed to realize that a response was due. “Thank you, Lawrence,” she said, with a stiff little smile. It was at least an attempt at enthusiasm. “I suppose I’ll have to get everyone’s numbers at school tomorrow.” Said more like it was a chore rather than something to look forward to. “I’m sure Airi has them,” Rynn interrupted, his forehead creasing. “You could…chat with one of the girls, tonight, if you’d like.”
Liesse reminded herself that this was her brother’s way of ‘trying’, but it was really only wearing on her usually bulletproof nerves. “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go to be early tonight.” she said, avoiding the implied offer as she backed out of the room. “Someone tell Jacob thanks for dinner, it was good.”
Cian noted that she’d barely touched her plate, but didn’t want to pressure her further. Liesse normally didn’t seem this…stressed by socializing.

Dorian looked appalled. “I wasn’t a—I wasn’t that,” he protested. Whores got paid, after all. He slept with other people out of pure and irresistible attraction—much more reputable.
He was surprised at how much it stung, though, hearing her condemnation out of the mouth of their child. So that was what she thought of him—what she’d been thinking of him, all these years.
He couldn’t make up his mind whether to be ashamed. There was a part of him that aggressively wanted to seize hold of the insult, and claim it as his own. Yes, he’d been a whore, or a slut, or whatever other term she wanted to use, and he didn’t give a damn what she thought of that now. He didn’t give a damn what any of them thought, except…and he smiled down at her, now…
“‘Whore’ is a not-nice word that people use when they don’t like who you spend the night with,” he explained to Magdalena. “Or how many people you spend the night with, or how often. Although actually, it means people who have sex with other people for money, when it’s not being used in the rudest sense. It’s not that bad—I’ve known some very nice women who made their living that way, as a matter of fact. They tend towards the sensible.” Known not as a patron, of course, but they tended to populate the bars with the latest closing times. ‘Pragmatic’ might have been more fitting, but he didn’t know how expansive Lena’s vocabulary was, yet.
“I’ll admit that I was a bit of a lush,” he added, retrospectively. “But that’s nearly tradition.” All of the Mayfairs seemed to have a sordid few teenage years in their history. He suspected even Julien did, even if the old b*****d refused to talk about them. Mayfair bastards—in the literal sense—were not uncommon, but they did tend to stir up controversy when the subject was raised.

Cian put his head in his hands. If there was a worse response to give to a small child, he couldn’t think of one. Dorian was going to be a…different…kind of father. But Alistair’s suggestion gave him pause. “Do you know everything that happens to my wife?” he asked, carefully. There was a premonition brewing in the back of his head that he did not want to address. And then, after a second, he decided he did not want to know the answer: he shook his head, and smiled. “Nevermind. I’ll track her down out there.”
The sun had gone down some time ago, but there were still rays of blue-green grass and black tree-shadows slatted across the lawn like floorboards. Cian picked his way, as carefully as a child avoiding sidewalk cracks, through these after he exited the house. Eventually, he began to notice petals beneath his shoes. If that was not enough of a clue, the voices up ahead gave him a lead to follow.
Fat pink roses sprinkled the lawn ahead like lanterns, spreading their heady fragrance beneath his footfall. There had been a cold snap this past week, and the delicate blooms had not responded kindly to it. The remaining heads of their spindly, dark stems poked out of the hedges like an armory.
Ah— there it was, practically invisible beneath the dark shadow of a rosebush—the strap had broken, which explained why Antha’s kick had been able to fling it from her foot. It was not the sort of footwear that was normally considered appropriate to go frolicking around a garden with, but Antha had never been the sort to take her environment into consideration when she wanted to be stylish. He picked the shoe up, and brushed some of the dirt off from the heel from where it had embedded itself in the grass.
“Antha,” he called out, and watched the slender, torch-headed figure across the hedges swing around towards him. If he’d bothered to look, he might have noticed the small white face—his sister’s new face—that appeared behind him, in the dark windows which faced the house’s gardens. She’d been told not to interfere, but there was a part of her that could not resist the opportunity to at least watch. It seemed now as though a strange feeling had been building all day, some inner unease which manifested itself in restlessness, and she could not exorcise it from herself without participating, in some small and involuntary way, in Malakai’s story.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha had been picking her way through the grass by silver moonlight for some minutes, like a deer navigating underbrush. Her bare feet were wet with dew, little ragged pieces of grass stuck to the moisture, the strap of her other shoe hooked on her finger. In the darkness of the thin, short fruit trees, she was all ghost and flame, silent and luminous. She hadn’t heard Cian approach, the crunch of damp grass or the snap of a twig under his feet, she’d been too preoccupied scanning the ground, so she was a little surprised when she turned at the sound of her name and found him there, his tousled hair catching a slatted moonbeam. “Ah,” she murmured, with the most softly amused hint of a laugh, one hand to her hip and the other brushing her temple, “You would show up like prince charming with my shoe.”
She crossed the orchard as she had been wading through it, tiptoeing with long strides to make as little contact with the soft earth as possible, only now with clear direction. She stopped two feet short of her husband, firmly holding a hand out for her shoe. “The strap is broken,” she noted when she had it again, turning it around in her fingers, “Wounded in battle. Pity…they charge a fortune to mend one silly little strap on a Louboutin.” But then she shrugged, unconcerned, hanging the broken shoe on her finger with the good one. “I was going to tell you about Magnus,” she remarked after a moment, very casually, her gaze venturing sidelong at nothing in particular, “Twice, I think. But the first time, Courtland ran into the room, and the second time you said something very sly and I couldn’t get the words out after that.” Her fingers fluttered at her temple, brushing back a stray curl that wasn’t really in the way of anything. “I’ve never told anyone about Magnus, actually. He told Julien and Michael who he was himself, the first time I called. Michael told Lawrence when I put him in my will and he asked how to contact him, and Nicolae found out about him when he was going through some of Leon’s papers in the library. No one else knew, until tonight.” Her eyes narrowed, a series of thoughts passing darkly through them. “I suppose everyone will know, after he gets here…”
Abruptly, she shook her head, clearing out these thoughts. Instead she held her free hand out to Cian, quietly, threading her pale fingers through his, and turned to begin slowly along the old, worn flagstone path. “He knows Leon wasn’t my real father,” she said evenly, gazing straightforward at the path in front of her, unseeing, “Not by blood. He probably always knew…Leon certainly did, and he was never shy about announcing it. But I guess things like that aren’t as important to normal people. Our bloodlines mean everything to us because of our nature, but to someone like Magnus…what’s the difference, really? It’s nothing but cells and platelets and water and hemoglobin. To Magnus, the important thing was that he took care of me. I would be dead without him, you know---that’s not speculation, it’s straight fact. Leon never would have taken care of me, I would have starved, or fallen off of some table or bed where he’d left me, or just died of exposure. I doubt I had more than an hour of contact with him total in those first nearly four years of my life. Magnus was nine, and he knew that. He knew his father was…upset, to put it delicately, and couldn’t be trusted with a tiny little life. He’d already let Alistair die of neglect and buried him in the backyard. So Magnus took care of me. He loved me. That’s why he can’t ever find out…about what Leon did after he was gone. He’d blame himself, and never forgive his father. From his point of view, I was a secret because the Mayfairs were terrible, evil, abusive monsters and they’d use their money to take me away if they knew I was alive. That was Leon’s excuse, rather than admit to his son that he’d kept me out of spite. That he was the real monster in the whole situation, after my mother. I won’t put that on Magnus. He’s always been a good brother to me, he did everything he could for me, I can’t let him question that.”
Antha paused then, standing still, her lips pursing thoughtfully before a sudden smile crossed them. “He used to have the stupidest game,” she murmured with a small laugh, “He’d pinch both of my cheeks, cooing about ‘chubby little baby cheeks’ until I started making faces and whining, and then he’d press his finger here---” She touched a nail to the solitary dark beauty mark just beneath her right eye and above the cheekbone. “---and say it was my ‘truth button,’ and now I had to tell him how much I loved him.” She laughed for another moment, before very abruptly sobering. “Anyone else would have to die for that. But I was two, and I had no reason not to believe him.”
She said nothing for a few minutes then, taking a few steps ahead of Cian to pull him along by the hand, slipping between two trees off the path and into the near-total darkness beneath the leaves. She navigated by memory, snaking through trees and around flowering bushes. This part of the garden was wild and cluttered, a heady jungle of fruit and vibrant blossoms, no one quite dared to touch it anymore. It reminded Antha just how large their property was, enough for a park, enough to get lost in.
But Antha never got lost. The fruit trees ended abruptly in a small clearing, just large enough for an old stone fountain that hadn’t pumped water since before Antha was born. The basin was filled with rainwater and moss, a few scattered leaves floating over the murky depths. “They tried to make a map of this garden a few years ago,” she said quietly, releasing Cian to turn a slow circle around the fountain, stepping over upraised tree roots and turning an apricot that she had snagged around in her fingers, “I expressly forbade it. The little places like these…they’re mine.” Taking his hand again, she sat down on the stone rim of the basin, pulling him down beside her and placing the apricot in his hands. “Oncle Louis used to give me riddles, and they always led to some little place like this one that no one knew about. He only gave them to me, and sometimes Malakai, because we liked to hide. He used to say that if he looked down from his window in the attic, he could see us running into the garden and it would swallow us whole.” She sighed, somewhat contentedly, leaning her head back to look up at the stars. “We’d always come back covered in mud and grass stains and little scratches. Julien would be yelling about our clothes and threatening to hose us off in the yard, and Oncle Louis would laugh and sit me on his knee and tell Julien there was no use trying to change a fairy child.” She wondered, idly, what Louis would think of Dorian’s brood.
Another sigh, deeper this time, as her head dropped on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have encouraged her,” she said quietly, as if to acknowledge that she had overreacted earlier. Slightly. “It already takes most of my energy not to run Melody through when my husband isn’t playing along with her schemes to irritate me. And I…I don’t like it, Cian. You felt like one of them, like one of my cousins, or an outsider. I felt betrayed. I just don’t like it.” She had made the conscious choice not to marry any of them for more or less that reason. Antha wasn’t their priority in day to day life, that was why they teased her the way they did, and why she teased them, it was just something they did as cousins. But Cian was supposed to be different…he was her top priority after their children, and she was supposed to be his. He wasn’t supposed to push her the way they did, he was supposed to have her back. “You’re supposed to protect me,” she said in a quiet murmur after a moment of thought, “When someone starts to cross the line, you’re supposed to protect me, not help them over the line.”

Inside, Magdalena spent a few long minutes simply…blinking at Dorian, blankly, as if she had absolutely no idea how to react. She didn’t actually, because no one had ever spoken so explicitly around her, and she had only half-absorbed the light ‘birds and the bees’ talk her mother had tried giving her. Finally, after a little while, she admitted carefully, “I don’t know what that means.” She knew that ‘sleeping’ with someone didn’t actually mean sleeping with them, because she’d made that mistake once when she was talking to one of her mother’s friends, but no one had actually explained what it was.
“Oh, you sweet little lamb,” Courtland sighed, reaching over and patting her head, “Of course you don’t. You shouldn’t---you’re far too little. Your daddy just forgets what an innocent little angel you are.”
The child was at least half appeased by this, if no less confused. “I wasn’t supposed to give her ‘the talk’ until she was nine, according to her schools,” Melody commented with a sigh, “But I had to at least give her the intro early. I blame Manhattan---those kids had some serious home issues, they told her all kinds of things she wasn’t ready for. I’m sure the Mayfair blood didn’t help the issue.”
“She is Dorian’s child,” Pierce agreed with a little nod, as if there was no help for it.
“If this is what his normal child is like, I don’t want to imagine what the fairy offspring are going to be like,” Julien groaned.
Melody nearly dropped her fork, her eyes narrowing at Julien. “Fairies?” He nodded, shrugging as if it was a subject he had already given up on. “Seriously? Fairies?” She turned to Dorian, repeating dumbly, “You slept with fairies?”
“Speaking of,” Courtland interrupted helpfully, to give Dorian a moment to not make a snide remark for once, “Magdalena, you still have to meet your little siblings.”
“I don’t want to,” she answered hastily, turning her full attention on the plate in front of her.
“Maggie,” her mother interjected, softly coaxing, “You’ve been begging me for a little sister since you were old enough to talk.”
“Yeah, from you,” the child answered before she could stop herself.
“Ah…” Clearing his throat, Courtland turned a sweet smile on Henry, who had been suspiciously quiet at the other end of the table, sitting by Dolly Jean. “Henry, why don’t you go play with your cousin for a little while?”
The boy’s silence was explained in an instant then as his eyes reflexively met Magdalena’s and he went red from his neck to the roots of his dark hair, his lips moving but failing to produce words. Dolly Jean laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, flashing a sweet smile, and encouraged him gently, “Go on, sweetheart. You can show her the dollhouse in the sitting room.”
“Oh, I love dollhouses!” Magdalena exclaimed, climbing eagerly down out of her seat and rounding the table to seize Henry’s hand. He panicked, looking to Courtland for help, but his uncle was too busy hiding a laugh in his napkin to do anything. “Come on, show me! Is it down this hall? It must be.” Though his eyes were reluctant, the boy followed obediently behind his new cousin (Sibling? Aunt? Anything was possible, with Henry’s unknown parentage), all but melting at the smile she flashed him.
“She tends to have that effect on boys,” Melody sighed, shaking her head, when they were gone.
“I don’t think she’s happy about the little brood upstairs,” Courtland commented thoughtfully then, when his laughter had died out, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but she seemed a little resentful.”
“She wanted her father exclusively to herself,” Pierce offered, nodding sagely to himself as if he was the expert on the subject.
“Oh shut up, Pierce,” Courtland scoffed, and then added, “But you are probably right.”
“Then don’t tell me to shut up!”
Courtland rolled his eyes, but was distracted from his retort by the buzz of his phone in his pocket. Clicking it open, he gave a very abrupt laugh, hiding the screen down beneath the table as he tapped out a response. “Oh, how sly,” he purred, amused, “We didn’t even think to question him.”
“Didn’t think to question wh---” Julien began, before freezing and looking down the table, groaning. “Mon dieu, we’ve let Alistair go traipsing out of the house at night as he pleases. Where is he, what has he done?”
“I couldn’t say where, exactly,” Courtland taunted him. He was clearly pleased at how much it aggravated Julien. “A bar, I assume. As for what…well, he asked me how many Irish car bombs I thought he could physically handle, so I assume we’ll find out in the paper tomorrow.”
Julien flushed irritably, making a little impatient gesture with his hand. “Oh, good grief! Go get him before he hurts himself. Or destroys something…”
“I wouldn’t even if I could,” Courtland answered sweetly, and then added a little more seriously, “I doubt he’d tell me where he is anyways. He’s clearly going through something, it was written all over his face.” Finally, Julien gave up, rising abruptly from his chair and stalking out of the room, muttering to himself. Most of the others followed him out, now that they could without being reprimanded. Pierce in particular was threatening Dorian with photo albums from his youth, running off to find them to show Magdalena. Courtland, grinning to himself in satisfaction, stayed seated and cast a sly glance at Rynn when they were gone, dark and suggestive, humming quietly, “But I bet he’d tell you. Airi’s crafty, we could spend all night looking for him and we’d never find him if he didn’t want to be found. But I bet he’d tell you just where to find him, if you just asked.” Standing up, he flashed the boy a mischievous grin---he’d been eavesdropping earlier, and he didn’t mind if Rynn knew it. “There’s no reason that anyone likes anyone, Rynn. Not really. There are no explanations. But Airi is the very soul of earnesty and loyalty, once he latches onto someone, he’s the type to revolve around that person completely. I think it’s good for him. Evie seems to think that without someone to latch onto, he’d be all over the place, his head up in space, and she’s probably right. And you…” He laughed without meaning to, nostalgically. “You’re barely the same person you were when Alistair showed up. I was pretty sure you were either going to kill yourself or all the rest of us, maybe get ahold of a grenade and just frag us all. You wouldn’t give anything a chance. But you do, with Airi around. The sort of things Liesse used to drag you kicking and screaming into trying---going to school, making friends, actually living your life…you go with him willingly, if he just takes your hand and smiles. Granted, he has the most charming smile of anyone in this city. That seems pretty complimentary to me, non?” He stood then, languidly, rapping his fingers once against the table with a passive sense of finality. “Sounds like love to me. But hey, I’m just a casual observer with a psychology degree.” And then, laughing to himself as he stuck his hands in his pockets and headed for the door, added, “Just imagine what I could accomplish if I was ever sober. The world may never know.”

While Pierce was ecstatically fetching photo albums, Melody had stopped in the hallway, listening to the sound of her daughter’s voice from the sitting room as she fawned over the antique dollhouse they left out for Victoria and Belle. Catching Dorian’s eye, she rolled her own, sighing with resignation, and said finally, “I’m sorry, okay? I never said anything to her. I didn’t want to, I don’t know, poison her against you, or something. But when I left seven years ago, you were just…god, just the worst person I knew.” She stopped abruptly, groaning and cupping a hand around the back of her neck. “That’s an awful apology. Maybe I can do better later, my head is killing me right now. Brain cancer, you know?” A weak smile flitted across her lips, as if it was some sort of joke. “My point is, I never told her anything bad about you. Anything she might have heard me think, she doesn’t know what it means. In her mind, you’re a prince and you can do no wrong. It’s always been that way.” And even if she did know what it meant, she probably wouldn’t care. Her mind was capable of doing incredible acrobatics to justify Dorian’s behavior and keep him nicely fitted into the ‘prince’ category. But Melody didn’t know quite how to explain that.  

[Okimiyage]

While Antha spoke, Cian stepped up onto the low edge of the fountain and paced along its rim, pretending to focus on balancing while, instead, he considered his wife’s point. Antha was still mad. He shouldn’t have been surprised— it was just the first time he’d ever felt it directed at himself, and he hadn’t even seen it coming. The cousin’s anecdotes about Antha’s life were practically part of the family’s daily routine—they loved cooing nostalgically over what a precious terror she’d been. He’d thought it was a safe choice for a topic.
If Melody hadn’t been the one telling the stories, maybe it would have been.
Abruptly, he turned around and strode back to where she sat, hopping off the fountain lip and dropping to sit on the, wide flat-cut stones beside her.
“Oh, hell,” he said, with a kind of wondering despair. “I botched it terribly, didn’t I?” Her hands lay loosely in her lap, and reflexively he reached to put his hand into one. “Antha Mayfair, sometimes I’m afraid that you’ve married a fool.” he murmured, although that term seemed inadequate, and the laugh that followed only whiffed of good humor. She hated Melody—he’d known that, and he’d known what kind of pressure she was under, but he’d thought—
What? that she could handle it on top of everything else?
—that this afternoon had meant some kind of equilibrium had been reached, some pax romana of the Manor signed on the steps when Antha had agreed to stop trying to kill the woman. Of course it wasn’t that simple.
True, if Antha disliked someone, she usually had a good reason for it. Witch’s intuition was not to be sneezed at, either. And Malakai…Malakai had no thirst for revenge—what some would call ‘justice’.
“I should have stopped it,” he said, lowering his eyes upon the mirror-black surface of the dark pond. For some reason, the thought rose buoyantly into his mind—even if they had tried to make a map, they wouldn’t have found this place. Despite the cold snap of the previous week, he couldn’t help but notice that none of the hanging fruit had been touched by frost. Cian could not help but suspect that, in certain regards, the Mayfair gardens were as eldritch as the Calais grounds (although significantly prettier). Magic had a tendency to steep into an area if it was continuously practiced there, and the stronger the magic, the more pronounced the impression it left. The Mayfair soil was probably stuffed with it.
When was apricot season, anyways…?
Shaking his head, Cian realized that this was not the time to be contemplating the mysteries of his environment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go that far. I had hoped to sort of—clear the air, relieve some of the tension of the whole—cancer thing.” This time, something did make him laugh—just a brief chuckle, but a genuine one, and he dropped his head, shaking it ruefully. “‘Brain parasites’…that kid is something else.” A hank of loose honey-brown hair fell over his eyes, and when he raised his head again, there was that familiar crinkle at their edges. “ I did like hearing about how you tormented the invading forces, though. None of my brothers ever got that inventive. The most fiendish plan they ever devised was Aedan pitching a bucket of water on my bed when he wanted the company out.” Admittedly, this had happened far too frequently for Cian’s liking. “And Liesse used to hide my clothes when she didn’t want me to go into the city,” he added, reflectively. “Which is almost sweet, if you think about it. You sound like you were a good deal more effective at your terrorist activities.”
After a moment, he added, “It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that you need protecting. When the cousins look at you, even when I look at you, sometimes, we don’t see ‘fragile’. You wipe out entire vampire covens, wrestle with werewolves, raise the dead, walk on water—okay, that last one I haven’t seen yet, but probably. Maybe we all forget after a while; that maintaining that kind of burden isn’t as easy as you make it look. And if the cousins forget, the flighty bastards, that’s almost forgivable, but I shouldn’t disappoint you like that.”
He leaned into her, bumping his forehead gently against hers, and murmured, "Next time, I'll do better."

Dorian looked around the table as though surprised. “What? She has to learn about these things at some point. Might as well have it properly explained, none of this mucking about with hearing it from other kids and getting it confused.” That was how you got girls who thought that they wouldn’t get pregnant if they did it standing up, or more precisely, how they got their offspring. “But don’t worry, Lena, darling,” he added, reassuringly. “You don’t have to worry about that until you’re at least—“ He glanced over at Melody, his perfect brow creasing again. “When are we letting her date, again? Eighteen, surely, all teenage boys are pond scum.” “I object to that stereotype,” said Rynn, without looking up from his phone, which was beeping erratically. Dorian crossed his arms. “Well, you’re not part of the prospective dating pool, so don’t worry your precious head about it.” This did make Rynn look up, his nose half-wrinkled in annoyance, but Dorian paid him no attention.
Sex was easy to explain. Fairies…fairies were harder. He put a hand thoughtfully to his chin. “Well, there are nice fairies in stories like…Cinderella, for example, but then there are not-so-nice ones that live, mm…other places. Like this world, but right next-door. And in certain spots, at certain times, you can get a little muddled about which world is which, and accidentally slide into the one next door.” He turned to Magdalena expectantly, proud of his explanation, and shoulders only fell a little when he realized she was drawing an utter blank. “It’s alright if you don’t understand it now,” he added. “It’s all mucking about with ‘parallel dimensions’ and frankly, you needn’t worry about all that until you’re older. The point is, now we have a matching set of triplets upstairs.” He looked vaguely embarrassed by this, like a tomcat when you’ve caught him trying to push the fishbowl off its table. “It’s rather a pity, actually. Their mothers live on the other side, and without a proper female role model in their lives…” he turned lugubrious eyes upon the table, spreading his hands hopelessly, and let each of his audience fill in the dreaded fate indicated by his countenance and tone for themselves.
Except for Rynn, who was still laboriously tapping on his phone.
Rynn was well aware that he wasn’t what you’d call, ‘socially adept’. ‘Prickly’ was the term that his peers might have used, followed by comparing him to either a flowering cactus or a porcupine. He was always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or in a much too condescending way, or saying much more than was needed.
But words, words were different. You could take your time with words. He liked this.

Quote:

are you okay? you looked tense @dinner sad

He wasn’t good with phone keypads yet, and it took him a long time of carefully smashing his finger against the screen before the message was completed, and he looked up to see Melody’s kid—whatshername— and Henry bounding out of the room. Well, good. It would be beneficial for Henry to have someone to play with; Rynn didn’t know that he’d heard so much as a peep out of the boy since he got here.
Dorian relaxed noticeably as Magdalena left the room, and very seriously considered draining the rest of Antha’s half-finished wine in relief. Kids were hard. Especially when one of them thought so highly of you. Instead, cognizant of Melody’s watchful eye, he took a resolute sip of water. “I’m sure they’ll all get along fine,” he told Courtland, a little defensively. “She hasn’t met them yet, after all. They might take to one another like ducks to water.” Magdalena didn’t exactly seem like the mothering type of little girl—she was more likely to practice surgery on her baby dolls than practice tucking them into bed, Dorian suspected—but surely she’d behave herself. He put his faith in Melody’s parenting. As he reassured himself thusly, he pushed back his chair and stood. “I’ll pass on dessert, I think Jacob made one of those sorbet types of dishes again.” When Jacob had guests, he made arrangements to impress. It was an impressive sign of self-restraint that he’d been able to resist the urge to turn in a four-course dinner like last time. That, and the idea of Henry and Lena playing together was too cute to resist peeking in on them. He had a suspicion that Henry needed someone with a strong will to lead him out of his shell a bit more.
Rynn, in the meantime, glanced over at Courtland, and his shoulders hunched in a bit in embarrassment. The older man was right, of course, but Rynn hadn’t thought that anyone would notice. He was different since he came here. He was less sure of himself, of his place in the world. In some ways, being angry and hostile had been…safer. He didn’t have to worry about this kind of thing.
But if Courtland had picked up on that through his haze on constant inebriation, Rynn was beginning to worry that the two of them were not being as subtle as they thought that they were. That, or the intuitive leaps that Courtland became capable of when he hit sobriety were actually terrifying.
Rynn looked down at his phone again, thought for a moment, then begin pressing letters.

Quote:

don’t leave me here by myself! this is boring crying

The emoji, he felt, added dramatic effect.

In the hallway, Dorian began to notice that Melody had abruptly halted behind him, and he turned around to face her, tucking his hands into his pockets. His face was stiff, mask-like.
“It’s funny, isn’t it? Seven years ago. You’d think we’d all have forgiven some of it by now, but our feelings against one another have only gotten more stubborn, like a stain that’s set in fabric for years.”
He looked down at the carpet, some expression that he was trying to hide from her flashing briefly over his face.
“Funny.” he repeated, in a tone like a stone dropping into a deep well.
“You weren’t alone in hating me. They all did. It was the worst betrayal of darling Malakai that they could imagine. It would be one thing if it was with a total stranger, but with family…” He laughed, sharply. “I couldn’t flee the city like you, but that probably would have only made things worse anyways. We both knew what we were doing, Melody, neither of us are stupid. All those years that you were with Malakai, you surely noticed how I looked at you.” Suddenly, he raised his chin, revealing a hard glint in his eye, and stepped forward. “You could have chosen any other man in this city, but you came to me.” he said, slowly. “You used me like a pawn in some game between you and your boyfriend, the man who everyone thought that you were going to marry. Dear god, he handled you like a sacred idol. It's no wonder he can't face you, now.” Dorian was not normally the type to respond to conflict with anger, but when he did, it was as though a porcelain exterior had turned to cold steel. Beneath all his foppish poetry and snark, Dorian had Mayfair nerves. His voice had dropped, as he had closed the distance between them, and now as he took another step it lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “You know what I think? Call me crazy, but I think you wanted me just as much as I wanted you.” And Dorian had gone along with it, knowing his complicity was wrong, but still hoping it was more than just a spiteful gesture. He wondered if Melody would have gone through with that night if she’d known that the grudge it spawned would still be haunting her to this day.
After a moment, he stepped back. He was strongly anticipating a slap, to be honest.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha sighed, very softly, her eyes fluttering closed as his forehead touched hers. “You’re not a fool,” she murmured quietly, “Dorian is a fool. Julien is a fool. You’re not. You just…startled me.” But she dropped the subject---she didn’t like to remember the feeling---climbing to her feet on the spot and turning on the rim of the fountain. “Probably, you say. Should we see?” Tentatively, her toes touched the surface of the water, testing it at first, before her foot slipped down to the mossy bottom of the basin. “It doesn’t seem to be working,” she hummed regretfully, climbing down until the water was nearly up to her knees with the hem of her skirt gathered up in her fist at her side. “Ah…see? There are things even I can’t do.”
Her head tilted back, eyes flickering briefly in Cian’s direction as the teasing smile touched her lips. “You’re wrong, you know,” she whispered after a moment, gently, staring now up at the uneven circle of starry sky through the trees, “They could have found this place, because Julien knows.” Again her eyes closed, ruminatively this time, a sigh blowing through her lips before she admitted quietly, “This is where he used to meet my mother. When they were teenagers, and then when she was married, this is where they met so that no one in the house would find them. I don’t think Julien could ever forget this place if he tried.” In all likelihood, she and her brothers had been conceived there. But Julien hadn’t stepped foot there since the day Mary Beth had left to marry Leon.
Turning, her foot became unstable on the moss and she went carefully still, holding her arms out demandingly for him. “It’s slippery, help me out.” Her hands on his shoulders, she climbed very cautiously out of the basin and up onto the rim, and then stopped. There was something ruminative in her eyes, her hand lifting to comb back through his hair. “I take it back, you must be a fool. You would have to be, to marry me.” She stooped over slightly, draping her arms around his neck, and pressed a kiss to his lips, purring sweetly, “Lucky me.”

A response to Rynn’s text didn’t come right away. It took several minutes for the notification to pop up, and even then it was simply ‘Hahaha emojis. Perhaps sensing the error in this response, a few moments later he sent a picture which consisted of six pint glasses lined up on a bar top, drained, with empty shot glasses sitting in the bottom. Irish car bombs had been a favorite of his sister’s, when she had been wilder. But Alistair didn’t have her liver---his was fresh and new and tender and Airi was drunk.
It took him at least another minute to finally break down and answer the question Rynn had posed. He listened to the people around him, chattering happily and drunkenly, running his hands back through his hair, and then hastily typed out a reply before he could change his mind.
‘I don’t want to be no one again.’
Who was he once Magnus showed up? He could think of half a dozen passable explanations for who he was, with varying degrees of truth to them, but once they were told…what was to keep him from becoming an imaginary friend again?
He would run away first. As much as he loved his family, Alistair refused to be no one.
Pulling out his phone, he sent Rynn one more message: ‘McKenzie’s Pub, five blocks down First Street from the house. I’m not boring.’ And then he set his phone back down on the bar and flagged the bartender down for another drink. She was easy---all fluttering eyelashes and unnecessarily low-cut shirt, giggling and angling her cleavage at him as she poured his drink. Absolutely no challenge. He smiled politely, but leaned back and said nothing.

Melody didn’t back away from Dorian when he loomed over her, though her eyes flashed as if she wanted to. She stood her ground, quietly for a moment, until he had finished and she shook her head, almost pityingly. “I paid for my sin, Dorian. Maybe it’s unforgiveable, and I can accept that, but I paid for what we did. I was sixteen, pregnant, completely alone in the world, and without a penny to my name. I lost everything I ever had, except for Maggie, and I’ve worked myself to the bone for seven years just to keep her fed. So don’t try to make me feel bad, because I’ve paid for it.” Her voice was not particularly angry---she spoke almost calmly, her tone very cool. But then her eyes darkened, and she continued a little more sharply, as if she wanted to return his attempt at hurting her. “I looked for you specifically that night. Not because it was you, but because I knew you were the only one who would do it. Courtland, Jack, Pierce, any of your cousins or our classmates who were at that party, they would have been appalled. They would have refused, gotten angry, and tried to set me straight. I went to you because nothing was ever sacred to you, Dorian. You had no loyalty at all, and I knew a little thing like betrayal wouldn’t stop you. That’s why I went to you that night, and you didn’t even hesitate.” She gave another shake of her head, vaguely pitying and disgusted. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. Yes, I used you, and you went along with it. I used you because I was hurt and insecure and it seemed like a good idea, in a very drunken moment. You used me for your tenth ******** of the week. I’ll stack what I did up against what you did anytime.”
Finally, she groaned, throwing her hands up in surrender. “God, you’re impossible. I wanted to be civil, I really did. Getting angry takes days off of my life at this point, with all the blood rushing to my head. But you just can’t help yourself, can you? You always have to be better than everyone, you always have to be right. I hope you’ve grown up. For our daughter’s sake, my greatest wish in the entire world is that you’re not still the selfish brat you were back then, because you’re about to be all she has. But if you’ve changed at all, I haven’t seen it yet. Case and point---” Her hand made a small, irritated gesture between them, indicating the moment happening right then. “Magdalena idolizes you. She loves you. But if you show her this ugly, spiteful side of you, you’ll crush her. And I need you to be a grown-up for her, Dorian. I’ve always been her whole world, and she’s about to lose me. You said you would take responsibility as her father, and being a parent…you don’t matter anymore, Dorian. Neither of us do. Magdalena is all that matters. So get over yourself and stop trying to pick fights with the mother of your child.”  

[Okimiyage]

“I’m the one picking a fight?” he asked incredulously, his voice rising in indignation. “When you come here asking my help, and then tell me how horrible I am, and then act as though somehow you deserve an apology for the choices that you made—“ his right hand was clenched at his side, white-knuckled, and his laughter was brittle and bright as glass. “I know you don’t remember that night well. I daresay that we were both under some influence at the time. The difference between us, Melody, is that I don’t blame drinking for what I did. I knew what you were doing when you showed up piss-drunk at my door and practically leapt into my arms, but I let you use me like a tool in your little power-play because—“
His breath came out of his nose, in an amused huff directed at his own naiveté. “—because I believe that you have the free will to get yourself inebriated and make horrible choices, I suppose. I wasn’t the one in a committed relationship, and it’s not my job to save yours for you, not even for Malakai’s sake. If I refused, you could have found someone else to take my place with ease. Hell, though, I wish I’d known it was all just a ******** for you. I wouldn’t have thought, or tried to convince myself, that there was even the faintest *glimmer* of hope that you might actually have decided to reciprocate some kind of feeling towards me.” His gaze hung on Melody, diamond-sharp and blue as the infinite sky, for just a moment longer than necessary, searching for some reaction, before it dropped, and Dorian unclenched his fist in order to pretend to inspect his nails. It was like seeing a cat fall off a ledge and then pretend it had done so intentionally in order to groom itself.
“But then you left, and I had to wonder for years, without so much as a word from you. Sometimes, the only thing that made it better was thinking that you were dead, that you must be dead, because otherwise you would have sent word. And knowing why now, that’s what makes it worse. Ask yourself this—if you hadn’t been diagnosed, would you have ever even informed me of Lena’s existence? Would you have ever brought her back here?” His tone was vague, cruelly casual, but there was something desperate in the way that he looked at her, as though he was pleading for her to deny the accusation.
He had wanted to be civil, too. But this was what Dorian had been holding back all evening, the reason he’d refused to drink, because he didn’t want Magdalena to bear witness to the strange, adult resentments that both her and her mother held towards one another.
After a moment, he forced himself to tuck his hand into his pocket once more with exaggerated nonchalance. Dorian’s voice was low, when he spoke again, but not without feeling.
“You could have made amends, Melody, but you chose to ‘pay for your sin’ instead, like a contrite Catholic. Malakai would have taken you back, if you had asked forgiveness; that was how much you were loved. Even I would have—“
He stopped himself before he could speak the worst of it. Renounce the Mayfair name? He’d thought about it. When he spoke again, some of the cold scorn had faded from his words, and he just sounded sad, and tired. “I would have helped you, if you’d let me.” Admittedly, Dorian knew less than nothing about the kind of methods that single-parent households used to survive, but he’d heard of them. Welfare. Food stamps. Child support, for heaven’s sakes, at the very least.
But she’d chosen to disappear, instead. It was easier. Dorian understood the attraction.
Then he bristled, again, all of that hidden melancholy going up in smoke, because he had invoked the name of his child. “But that, what happened seven years ago, is between you and I,” he snapped. “Don’t involve Lena in order to sanctify your actions. You’re not above criticism simply by virtue of being a mother, Melody, and you are no martyr by any hand excepting your own.”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond to that. Dorian always liked having the last word in an argument—the hallmark of a man whose intellectual vanity was practically a defining characteristic. Turning on his heel, he stalked away down the hall. He’d behaved himself for long enough. Now, he needed a stiff drink.

Outside, amidst the dark and tangled web of the orchard, Cian laughed faintly to see Antha wade in and test his theory. “You’ll get your dress wet,” he reminded her, although it was almost certain that this would nothing that would actually dissuade his wife. At her command, he stepped up to the ledge of the fountain once more and put his hands out to lift her out of the water. He was always astonished at how very little she seemed to weigh in his arms, the way her skin seemed to take on a milky glow, a sort of phosphorescence, in the darkness and the silence of the orchard’s glade. Cian didn’t doubt his own foolishness: when he had overheard Antha Mayfair’s name downtown, on more than a few occasions, there was a saying that often went along with it— ‘She’s to men as an open flame is to moths’. They said that boys had killed themselves over lesser women; nobody could quite agree on what Antha’s track record actually was, but they all were convinced that it had to be impressive.
But despite all of that, he couldn’t have stopped himself from being drawn to her if he had tried. He had sort of expected to be rebuffed, burnt up to a crisp, deemed unworthy and undeserving of every kindness she’d shown him, but instead…
“Sometimes, a little foolishness pays off,” he acknowledged, returning her kiss very gently, and lifting her up by her waist to swing her to the ground. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”
He wondered, as they walked arm-in-arm on a sedated, wandering stroll back to the house, how Antha had found out about the fountain in the orchard in the first place. It had been their secret place, she had said, Julien and Mary Beth’s. He couldn’t imagine Julien showing it to a young, impressionable Antha, or telling her about the history he had shared with her mother there. He had felt echoes of it, around that fountain—the memory of a slanting ray of sunlight, illuminating strands of fire and gold in a woman’s long hair, the smell of her perfume—and trails of laughter, circling the flagstones like the broken recording of some long-ago chase. The atmosphere had been…pleasant. Cian knew that he couldn’t possibly imagine the depths of Antha’s feelings about her mother, but it was clear why she liked the place, reeking as it was of young love.
As they ambled along a garden path, strewn with fallen petals, Cian brought up the subject conversationally: “Did Magnus know your mother? I expect he would have been old enough to have some recollection of her.” And then, after a second, he added, “And, alright, I’ve been curious about this for a while. Who took him to Sweden? And why has it been so long since he’s been back? Have you really never seen one another in all this time?”


((i am working on rynn's bit right now but it may not be up until tomorrow because company is coming over
feel free to formulate your response in the meanwhile))  

[Okimiyage]

“I’m the one picking a fight?” he asked incredulously, his voice rising in indignation. “When you come here asking my help, and then tell me how horrible I am, and then act as though somehow you deserve an apology for the choices that you made—“ his right hand was clenched at his side, white-knuckled, and his laughter was brittle and bright as glass. “I know you don’t remember that night well. I daresay that we were both under some influence at the time. The difference between us, Melody, is that I don’t blame drinking for what I did. I knew what you were doing when you showed up piss-drunk at my door and practically leapt into my arms, but I let you use me like a tool in your little power-play because—“
His breath came out of his nose, in an amused huff directed at his own naiveté. “—because I believe that you have the free will to get yourself inebriated and make horrible choices, I suppose. I wasn’t the one in a committed relationship, and it’s not my job to save yours for you, not even for Malakai’s sake. If I refused, you could have found someone else to take my place with ease. Hell, though, I wish I’d known it was all just a ******** for you. I wouldn’t have thought, or tried to convince myself, that there was even the faintest *glimmer* of hope that you might actually have decided to reciprocate some kind of feeling towards me.” His gaze hung on Melody, diamond-sharp and blue as the infinite sky, for just a moment longer than necessary, searching for some reaction, before it dropped, and Dorian unclenched his fist in order to pretend to inspect his nails. It was like seeing a cat fall off a ledge and then pretend it had done so intentionally in order to groom itself.
“But then you left, and I had to wonder for years, without so much as a word from you. Sometimes, the only thing that made it better was thinking that you were dead, that you must be dead, because otherwise you would have sent word. And knowing why now, that’s what makes it worse. Ask yourself this—if you hadn’t been diagnosed, would you have ever even informed me of Lena’s existence? Would you have ever brought her back here?” His tone was vague, cruelly casual, but there was something desperate in the way that he looked at her, as though he was pleading for her to deny the accusation.
He had wanted to be civil, too. But this was what Dorian had been holding back all evening, the reason he’d refused to drink, because he didn’t want Magdalena to bear witness to the strange, adult resentments that both her and her mother held towards one another.
After a moment, he forced himself to tuck his hand into his pocket once more with exaggerated nonchalance. Dorian’s voice was low, when he spoke again, but not without feeling.
“You could have made amends, Melody, but you chose to ‘pay for your sin’ instead, like a contrite Catholic. Infidelity isn't unforgivable. Malakai would have taken you back, if you had asked; that was how much you were loved. Even I would have—“
He stopped himself before he could speak the worst of it. Renounce the Mayfair name? He’d thought about it. When he spoke again, some of the cold scorn had faded from his words, and he just sounded sad, and tired. “I would have helped you, if you’d let me.” Admittedly, Dorian knew less than nothing about the kind of methods that single-parent households used to survive, but he’d heard of them. Welfare. Food stamps. Child support, for heaven’s sakes, at the very least.
But she’d chosen to disappear, instead. It was easier. Dorian understood the attraction.
Then he bristled, again, all of that hidden melancholy going up in smoke, because he had invoked the name of his child. “But that, what happened seven years ago, is between you and I,” he snapped. “Don’t involve Lena in order to sanctify your actions. You’re not above criticism simply by virtue of being a mother, Melody, and you are no martyr by any hand excepting your own.”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond to that. Dorian always liked having the last word in an argument—the hallmark of a man whose intellectual vanity was practically a defining characteristic. Turning on his heel, he stalked away down the hall. He’d behaved himself for long enough. Now, he needed a stiff drink.

Outside, amidst the dark and tangled web of the orchard, Cian laughed faintly to see Antha wade in and test his theory. “You’ll get your dress wet,” he reminded her, although it was almost certain that this would nothing that would actually dissuade his wife. At her command, he stepped up to the ledge of the fountain once more and put his hands out to lift her out of the water. He was always astonished at how very little she seemed to weigh in his arms, the way her skin seemed to take on a milky glow, a sort of phosphorescence, in the darkness and the silence of the orchard’s glade. Cian didn’t doubt his own foolishness: when he had overheard Antha Mayfair’s name downtown, on more than a few occasions, there was a saying that often went along with it— ‘She’s to men as an open flame is to moths’. They said that boys had killed themselves over lesser women; nobody could quite agree on what Antha’s track record actually was, but they all were convinced that it had to be impressive.
But despite all of that, he couldn’t have stopped himself from being drawn to her if he had tried. He had sort of expected to be rebuffed, burnt up to a crisp, deemed unworthy and undeserving of every kindness she’d shown him, but instead…
“Sometimes, a little foolishness pays off,” he acknowledged, returning her kiss very gently, and lifting her up by her waist to swing her to the ground. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”
He wondered, as they walked arm-in-arm on a sedated, wandering stroll back to the house, how Antha had found out about the fountain in the orchard in the first place. It had been their secret place, she had said, Julien and Mary Beth’s. He couldn’t imagine Julien showing it to a young, impressionable Antha, or telling her about the history he had shared with her mother there. He had felt echoes of it, around that fountain—the memory of a slanting ray of sunlight, illuminating strands of fire and gold in a woman’s long hair, the smell of her perfume—and trails of laughter, circling the flagstones like the broken recording of some long-ago chase. The atmosphere had been…pleasant. Cian knew that he couldn’t possibly imagine the depths of Antha’s feelings about her mother, but it was clear why she liked the place, reeking as it was of young love.
As they ambled along a garden path, strewn with fallen petals, Cian brought up the subject conversationally: “Did Magnus know your mother? I expect he would have been old enough to have some recollection of her.” And then, after a second, he added, “And, alright, I’ve been curious about this for a while. Who took him to Sweden? And why has it been so long since he’s been back? Have you really never seen one another in all this time?”

In the dining room, Rynn’s ringtone made him jump as it dinged to announce Alistair’s response. Almost fumbling the phone as he drew it out, Rynn swiped it open just in time to catch the next ding as it arrived. Pint glasses with shot glasses on the bottom, a whole line of them. Rynn didn’t know what Irish car bombs were, but he figured that didn’t bode well.
He sent a rather concerned-looking yellow face back.

Quote:

sweatdrop

and then, a few moments later, received a puzzling response.
‘I don’t want to be no one again.’
Which seemed to make no sense at first—how could Airi be ‘no one’?—until Rynn thought about the way that Antha had lit up, invoking the name of Magnus, and how she’d reminded them all how little they meant to her in the face of that ferociously protective love.
Antha had something of a brother complex, but Airi was her twin. You’d think that would have been a trump card to play. Then again, Rynn couldn’t very well talk. He and Liesse had not been particularly close, lately
And that thought was what made him hesitate, before answering the third text that lit up his phone—this time, he had turned the ringtone off—
He knew the proper, brotherly thing to do in his sister’s time of distress was to rush to her side, comfort her through her grief, talk her out of doing anything stupid, and remind her to take her makeup off before she cried herself to sleep. He had an obligation. Frankly, he wanted to ignore it and go investigate whatever had been in those pint glasses before they were drained.
He briefly thought about inviting Liesse along, but…the mood that she was in wasn’t exactly appropriate. Bringing both Airi and Liesse into the same room right now would smother any enjoyable atmosphere like two wet blankets.

Quote:

pace yourself on the drinking, i need to catch up.
on my way.

Airi had said five blocks, but Rynn was a fast walker. There was a spare coat on the rack next to the front door—Dorian’s, Rynn thought—and he tore it off its hook and onto his shoulders in a single fluid gesture as he pushed the door open and went out into the chilly night.
He remembered seeing the bar as they’d driven past, but he’d never actually been inside. Someone with money had invested in the place a few years ago, and what had been a neighborhood dive bar was transformed within a few weeks into a classic pub in the British style, all gleaming mirrors, lights inside bulging, frosted glass globes, and honey-gold wood. But while the makeover had been impressive, it hadn’t kept out the regulars, who had protested the price hike on their favorite beers and eventually, after enough fits were pitched by elderly alcoholics, reached a grudging compromise with the management. Prices were lower, and the regulars had ‘the back room’, a separate bar area which, while manned by the same staff, was quite a bit smokier and dingier than the immaculately-presented front of shop. The bar top actually had scuffs, like people used it or something.
He spotted Airi from across the room—that flaming hair was hard to hide—and skirted around the crowd in-between them, coming up from behind to clap a hand on the other boys’ shoulder.
“Really? You left me all alone and defenseless with those guys?” he asked accusatorially, but there was a grin on his face that made his tone utterly unbelievable.
“Christ, Airi, I never thought you were that cruel.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

At Cian’s question, Antha stopped, her eyes flashing with buried thoughts. “He knew her,” she said after a moment, with painful reserve, “Very, very briefly. A month I think, before I was born and she died. He didn’t like her. He said she was vain and demanding and always seemed very secretive. I suppose it could have been the madness from the vampire blood…she ingested it before I was conceived, so it would have been corroding her brain for at least nine months by then.” She shook her head, dismissing the train of thought. “Leon was Swedish, you know. He came here to teach at the university. That’s how my mother met him, at some gala for the university’s benefactors. We’ve been throwing money at that school for over a century, every so often we have to send a representative for them to suck up to at some party. My mother went with Michael---they were still married, but she always did tire of anything that wasn’t shiny and new. Leon was the new comparative literature professor, he was dark and brooding and Nordic and essentially the polar opposite of everything it meant to be a Mayfair, golden and extravagant and French. Leon probably had no idea what he was getting into when they started having an affair, he didn’t know all the rumors, he probably thought she was just some shallow socialite. And then she got pregnant with Alistair and me and convinced him we were his, left Michael and her sons and the rest of the family, and vanished into the swamp. He told me once, in one of the rare instances that he wasn’t screaming unintelligibly, that he couldn’t really remember any of it happening, it had just happened, that she had dragged him along so quickly that he was already trapped in Satis House, married, before he could get a word out on the matter. I think he was afraid to refuse her, once he knew what she was. Magnus was his son from his first marriage, and Magnus’s mother sent him here to meet his new stepmother and siblings. I think it was only supposed to be for the summer, but when Mary Beth died it took almost four years for Leon to agree to send him back. It was a difficult position for him, I guess. I don’t think he ever intended to chain me up in the attic until he’d done it, but he refused to take care of me or even look at me, and at the same time, no one could know I existed. Magnus was convenient because he could be trusted, and he took care of me. Looking back on it, I feel sorry for him. He was only nine when he had to take complete responsibility for a newborn, and Leon forbade him from leaving the house. Except for Fridays…he got to go to the grocery store on Fridays, because Leon could only be bothered to leave his study to go to the liquor store.” She paused, her serious mood visibly lightening, and gave that little amused, nostalgic laugh that was clearly particular to memories of Magnus. “He used to come back with one pocket stuffed full of candy and the other full of little capsules from the quarter machines with little toys in them and he’d sit me on the floor with him, our feet pressed together in a circle, and dump it all out on the floor between us so we could take turns opening them. Leon hated it, he said it was a waste of money, so we had to wait until he passed out to open them and then hide them all when we were done. We’d put the candy in the plastic capsules, so the rats couldn’t get to it, and stuff it between our mattresses, and then stick the little toys anywhere we could find that Leon wouldn’t look. I actually found some when I was moving my things out a couple of months ago---a whole row of tiny rubber duckies and little green soldiers lined up on a wooden ledge behind one of the drawers in my dresser.”
Another pause, her eyes flashing with a complicated nostalgia, before she shook her head and continued. “Eventually, Magnus’s mother found out he was virtually a prisoner in Satis House and ordered Leon to send him home. It was just before my fourth birthday, I remember because I’d made him promise to make me a chocolate cake with pink roses. Leon wouldn’t let me go with them to the airport---it was the same old story, that someone would recognize all of my Mayfair traits and the bad people would take me away---but then he came home and locked himself in his study for three days. I lived off of bologna and peanut butter because that was all I could reach in the fridge.” Her eyes flashed again, with a remarkably dark, deep horror, and this time she physically stopped where she stood, shuddering and staring off into nothing. “And then he came out drunk, and he looked at my little sixth finger and said it was a mark of the devil, and he sat me on a stool at the kitchen counter and held my hand down on the cutting board and chopped it off. I remember there were these little oily stains…I don’t remember if it was peanut butter or grease from Magnus making meatballs or what, I just remember the dark stains on the wood and how the blood slid off of them. I’d never…I mean, I’d never really thought about what he thought of me. He was this large, intimidating, distant figure that had always loomed over us, but…he was my father, I’d never thought about it until Magnus left. But he went back into his study and I tried to take care of my wound and be very, very quiet and stay hidden in my bed. The next day he came out even more drunk and alarmingly sleep deprived and grabbed me by my hair, muttering wildly to himself, and dragged me out of bed and up into the attic. He just threw me in and locked it, without saying anything, and I didn’t leave it again for five years. For a little while I thought Magnus would come when Leon would never let him talk to me on the phone, but then I realized that he was still a kid too, he couldn’t just do things like that as he pleased. When Michael found me, after I’d killed Leon, after he convinced me to come back with them, the first thing I did was call Magnus. I told him that his father had had a heart attack and died. He was eighteen then and he wanted to bring me to Stockholm to live with him. He still believed everything that Leon said about the Mayfairs, how evil they were, how they would hurt and use me. Hell, I still believed it. But I knew what I was then, and I didn’t want to drag him into it, all of the magic and vampires and spirits and s**t I didn’t even have words for. So I lied and told him they were nice people---Michael had only just barely convinced me not to murder him on the spot, and I blamed Julien for absolutely every awful thing that had ever happened to me---and I’ve been convincing him not to come here for nine years since. I still don’t want him involved, he’s a remarkably easy target for my enemies, and I…I don’t know how to explain it to him. What I am, what my family is, all of the inhuman creatures lurking around this city. I don’t know how to explain Alistair, how the infant he helped his father bury in the swamp is up walking around, and that it was my doing. Alistair has to be the first explanation. If I lie about him…Airi couldn’t handle lying about who he is, it would tear him apart. He’s only just gotten an identity after two decades, he couldn’t handle giving it up, even temporarily.”
Briefly, a look crossed her face that was between concern and acute distress. Her fingers flexed nervously around Cian’s, tightening briefly on his hand. “There’s nothing I could do, anyways…” she murmured uncertainly, her free hand coming up to her lips and teeth nipping unconsciously at her glossy, manicured nails. “I tried to keep him from coming. That’s all I can do, but he’s so stubborn. I thought about having him put on the no-fly list, but…I didn’t want to pay Claire’s price. And I really didn’t want Magnus to find out I’m mixed up with the mafia. But, well…he’s going to find that out anyways, isn’t he?” She grimaced, eyes flashing. “He’s going to find out everything, isn’t he? With the way people talk…he’s going to find out about all of the sketchy, illegal, and morally corrupt things I’ve done, isn’t he?”
Antha didn’t know how to handle that thought. She had never particularly cared what anyone thought about her exploits---if anything, she had reveled in the scandal. But Magnus…Magnus had always thought the world of her. He knew about her terrible attitude, and that was one thing, but she didn’t want him to know just how far she’d fallen from the sweet, innocent toddler who had adored him. She’d really been such a good, obedient girl…
Swiping the back of her hand across her eyes, she said quietly, “It’s about time for the children to wake and demand dinner. Shall we?”

It was the thought of what Antha had mentioned---the idea of denying his identity---that had driven Alistair to drink…heavily. When Rynn’s hand clapped down on his shoulder, he gave a start, leaning back in his barstool with wide, curious eyes. Abruptly upon realizing who it was, Airi smiled---of course his smiles were always bright and charming and honest, but this one in particular was dazzling and genuine and overwhelmingly pleased to see Rynn. “You came,” he purred, with the vaguest hint of a slur.
The bartender, busy cleaning up glasses, flickered a glance at Rynn before commenting casually, “He must belong to you, then.”
“That’s very rude,” Alistair hummed with a little shake of his head.
“I don’t want to hear that from you, kid.” Begrudgingly, she set another pint of dark beer in front of him. “What about you? No more liquor for your friend, he’s getting belligerent.”
“I’m not belligerent, you’re belligerent.” The bartender rolled her eyes, turning and drifting towards the other end of the bar to take other orders. “I didn’t actually think you’d come,” Alistair murmured when they were alone, turning the glass around in his hands, “I thought you’d be busy with the brother thing. My siblings are busy with the brother thing. Except for the one brother, who’s the subject of the brother thing. Because he’s the brother.” He paused, briefly as if he had confused himself, before bursting into laughter. “I might be drunk,” he murmured, his head dropping briefly on the bar top before he turned to look up at Rynn, eyes gleaming conflictedly. “I don’t want to lie, Rynn. I don’t want to say I’m someone I’m not. Then I’m just…nobody. Again.”
Seeing him put his head down, the first bartender made her way back over, glancing curiously between the two boys. “Are you his friend?” she asked Rynn sweetly, smiling and leaning forward against the bar, “And after he was so mopey about his friends all being busy. You’re pretty cute, too---”
Airi’s head bolted up, his eyes narrowing while maintaining a drunken lack of focus, lips pursed irritably and arms spreading possessively across Rynn. “Mine. You touch him, you die.” The woman threw her hands up in surrender, her eyes a little wide in shock, as Alistair calmed and simply slid over, nestling against Rynn’s lap.
“He was so charming when he walked in here,” the bartender sighed, taking up his freshly emptied glass, “But the drunker he gets, the snappier he gets. Can’t even be bothered to turn poor girls down nicely anymore.”
Alistair adjusted his head against Rynn’s leg, unconcerned, like nothing so much as a cat content in its owner’s lap after an endless day of wandering an empty house. “Don’t matter,” he mumbled, slurred. And then, bolting up, he turned and scrambled out of his seat, rushing into the restroom.
The bartender took advantage of his absence, sliding a pint of Guinness and a shot of Bailey’s over to Rynn. “You drop the shot into the glass and chug it,” she explained to his confused look, “Your little boyfriend has been inhaling them.” Leaning very close to him over the bar, her hands folded beneath her chin, she whispered dreamily, “How nice, the way he looks at you. He’s been moping something awful since he walked in here, but he does look at you with so many pretty stars in his eyes. It’s enviable.” Sighing, she withdrew and returned to work once she saw Alistair returning, still drunk but somewhat refreshed.
He slid back into his seat, taking up the glass of water she’d left him, and then slammed his hands down on the bar, eyes gleaming. “Rynn, where do you think is the nearest park? I’ve got to see some ducks, like, right now.”

For a moment, Melody legitimately looked as if she wanted to slap Dorian. And then she froze, startled, her eyes going wide with a few uncomprehending blinks. She didn’t even think to respond to his bitchiness, his accusations, simply, “Dorian, are you…do you…?” To be perfectly honest, Melody had never considered that Dorian might have feelings before. To her mind, he was a hedonistic mass of flesh and vices and really nothing else. The idea that he might actually feel things, real things…
Melody gave a sudden start. “Magdalena!” The little girl bristled, half-hidden in the doorway, watching her parents with intent and vaguely fearful eyes. “Honey, what are you doing?”
“I heard yelling…” she murmured, shuffling her feet, her fingers nervously tracing the edge of the wooden doorframe. “You’re not supposed to yell, mama. The doctor said so, it’s bad for your tumor.”
“We weren’t yelling,” Melody hurried to reassure her. Seeing the little spark of relief in the child’s eyes, she continued hurriedly, “It’s the way the sound travels in this old house. Your father and I were just catching up.”
“…really?”
“Of course, sweetie.” Elbowing Dorian, she urged him intently, “Right?”  

[Okimiyage]

Cian stopped, on the crumbling flagstone path, and his hand in Antha’s held fast as she pulled ahead.
There was a part of him that wanted to pull her into his arms, to wrap her up inside himself like a cocoon and defend her from all the evilness and wickedness in this world, when he heard these kinds of stories from his wife. He couldn’t say ‘sorry’ or ‘how horrible’—what good would those trite, repetitive phrases do? She’d probably heard them a thousand times over, from anyone who’d ever heard the rumor in passing. If Cian only had the witchcraft in him to turn back time…
But at the same moment, Cian was well aware that was no way to go through life.
You couldn’t protect someone for forever, and especially not from their past. No matter how much he wanted to say the words, ‘it’ll be alright’, he knew he couldn’t lie to her that way.
“Magnus will…probably find out,” Cian answered her, hesitantly.
“But Antha, really…” And he placed his free hand on top of hers, and met her eyes earnestly, and his voice warmed with confidence.
“I know that you hold his opinion in high regard. But nobody should expect anyone else in this world to be some kind of paragon of morality, and I’m sure that Magnus knows that. Even without witchcraft running in the family, you’d still have been a hell raiser.”
Relaxing a bit, his mouth twitched back into that familiar, faintly catlike smile. “Anyways, if Magnus has any fathoming of the world’s order, I’d dare to say that he’ll be rather impressed. Any moral qualms about the family business…es…should be silenced by pointing out the sheer number of lives which Mayfair Medical’s contributions to the field of science have saved, and do you even know—I mean, of course you know, but I’d doubt that he does—how hard it is to get in with the Mafia? They don’t pull strings for just anybody.”
Not outside their family, at least. In a certain respect, it was remarkably similar to the way that the Mayfairs operated. Finally releasing her hand, he stepped up to match her pace and dropped his arm around her shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “Don’t worry. It’ll only take a few days for him to see how much of the Big Bad Mayfair Heritage is pure propaganda, no matter what he’s heard. I mean, now that we’ve both settled down, we’re practically respectable these days. All we need to do is throw a couple of fundraisers and maybe a gala.” Catching her expression as he glanced aside, Cian couldn’t help but laugh, and his voice rang out over the twilight-lit gardens. “Look, let’s just not worry about it until the man actually arrives. We’ll just practice being respectable until then.”

Dorian froze when he saw Magdalena. It was like seeing a trip in the space-time continuum; one second he was striding confidently down the hall in search of a pitcher of brandy, and the next he was standing next to Melody as though he’d never moved, smiling warmly at their child. “No need to worry, darling,” he told her. “Merely a little reminiscing.” And it was a credit to Dorian’s acting abilities that he didn’t even wince at the enormity of the falsehood.
The truth was, Melody got under his skin in a way that few people could. With anyone else, it would have been easy to laugh, toss out a few scathing witticisms and a few ‘darling’s, as insincerely as he could pronounce them, and exit stage right. Dorian didn’t care. He’d been telling himself that he didn’t care about Melody, either, for the past seven years, because it was utterly clear that she didn’t care about him. And he probably could have maintained that deception, both inwardly and outwardly, if Melody hadn’t shown up with their daughter in tow.
Dorian didn’t quite understand why, but it was one thing to pretend to not care about Melody—even though seven years had passed, the wounds she inflicted had not healed easily—but he couldn’t bring himself to be cold towards Lena. The circumstances she was born into weren’t her fault. And…he didn’t want to show her, the child who thought of him as a prince, the ugliest and darkest parts of himself. Princes weren’t supposed to be cruel, or selfish, or vicious as a cornered cat, and Dorian was all of those things and more. Magdalena wanted a fairy-tale prince, or a knight on a white horse—the sort of character that rescued the whole story and then rode off into the happily-ever-after. Dorian didn’t know how to tell Lena that he wasn’t that sort of character. If there was any trace of nobility in his heart, it was of the Lord Byron variety.
Brightly, he changed the subject. “I think there was mention of some dessert in the fridge, although the dinner party’s all but scattered to the winds. Magdalena, you ought to ask Henry if he’d like to join us for ice-cream in the kitchen.”
When all else failed, resort to distraction.

Rynn had sort of been expecting something like this. He’d noticed how unusually quiet Alistair had been during dinner. It was as though pressure had been building all evening, and—as the saying went—now it was time to let off steam.
He was glad that he arrived when he did, though. The bartender was about to cut Alistair off, and Rynn had no sympathy for anyone who took that burden upon themselves.
And yet, here he was, trying to—what? Rynn didn’t know how to finish that thought. It wasn’t as though trying to force Alistair to sober up or go home had even the remotest possibility of success. Alistair always did exactly what he wanted to, and let the consequences hang.
But the truth was, even that approach hadn’t been on Rynn’s mind when he saw Alistair’s text. He hadn’t thought much of anything, actually, just whipped on a coat and ran out the door. If his brothers could have seen him, they would have been appalled. A Calais didn’t come and go at another man’s beck and call.
But now that he was here, red-cheeked and a little out of breath, he was suddenly at a loss for words. Airi was doing that golden purr of a voice again, and he could sense more than one malignant glare on the back of his neck as he dropped into the stool next to his—‘friend’, as the bartender so diplomatically put it. “He’s not mine, he’s his own,” Rynn retorted, hedgehoggish nature suddenly prickling up inside of him. “We just…happen to look after one another, thank you.” The ‘thank you’ was announced in the same tone of voice that one would use for ‘bugger off’.
Rynn was something of the polar opposite of Alistair when they were drinking. Alcohol encouraged Alistair’s snappishness in the same way that it soothed Rynn’s hackles.
However, he wasn’t able to maintain his prickliness for long, or at least not until the inevitable line of questioning arose and Rynn found himself suddenly under the protection (and arms) of a rather petulant Airi. Mine.
Rynn went stiff, his spine going ramrod-straight, and then relaxed infinitesimally, although his poker face lingered on for a second further. “Fine. If you say so. Yours.” he muttered, going pink in the cheeks.
He didn’t have long to bask in Airi’s attention, though—and he could tell, by the way the stares intensified, that it wasn’t helping. One woman, at the end of the bar, was distracted enough that she spilled an entire mug of beer down the front of her shirt. Rynn nearly laughed at that, but it would have been bad form.
Instead, as Alistair went, pale and scrambling, towards the bathroom, Rynn reluctantly took the proffered drink from the bartender and sipped cautiously at it. “Chug,” came the reminder, and the boy was only just barely able to stop himself from cringing. That was how you were supposed to do it? Fine. He threw back his head.
A few moments later, Rynn let his hand (and mug) fall on the countertop with a triumphant bang. At least now he had an excuse for the perpetual blush. He could feel slow and steady heat rising out of his breastbone, and he hiccuped faintly and tried to shrug off Dorian’s coat, much too warm for it now. “How many of those did you say he had?” If Alistair had been looking at him with stars in his eyes, Rynn could think of a good reason—this stuff was powerful.
“It’s funny how you start to see people differently after a few drinks,” he said, after a moment spent staring ruminatively at the rim of his empty glass. “I ought to be grateful, I think, that anyone looks at me like that. But it’s scary, too, when someone…important…looks at you like that, and all I can think is that—that I don’t deserve this, that I’m going to mess it up, all the innumerable accidents that I’m capable of, and how everyone will hate me when—“ He stopped abruptly, as he saw the bathroom door swing open in the mirror behind the bar. “Anyways.”
Airi slid into the seat next to Rynn a few moments later, and Rynn had to admit that his color was improved. His words, however, we still making absolutely no sense. Rynn blinked twice, and then repeated, “Ducks?”
Was this just a Mayfair thing? First Antha with her ‘ducklings’, and now this. However, after a moment, the question finally seemed to register.
“Er, there’s a pond not far from here, I think. It’s not exactly a park, but…” Frankly, Rynn didn’t want to encourage the drive to a larger locale. Besides, didn’t most of them shut down after dark? At least the police didn’t watch the smaller ones.
Rynn sensed that the bartender had been waiting for this moment, and saw the appreciative gleam in her eye as Airi closed out his tab. That was one rule of drinking out that was never forgotten amongst the Mayfairs. It was one thing to be a belligerent drunk, it was another thing entirely—and frankly, worse—to be a poor tipper. Wait staff could excuse an belligerent drunk, but they remembered a poor tipper.
Rynn and Airi staggered out into the street, with significantly more stagger on Alistair’s behalf. Rynn had looped the other boys arm around his shoulder, and was making a valiant attempt to keep him steady, mumbling something about taking up weight-lifting tomorrow.
The pond was closer than Rynn had remembered it, and larger. There had been a house at the northernmost edge at one point, a small cottage-like thing which had been almost entirely overtaken by kudzu. The neighbors would have considered it a kindness to call the land an ‘eyesore’, but Rynn had always thought that the place contained a certain mysterious allure.
And it had ducks, as per Airi’s request. Admittedly, they were mostly sleeping in the reeds at the moment; ducks were not nocturnal animals. Rynn, however, had a plan.
There was a ring of mismatched garden furniture gathered around a pit that had obviously once been used for bonfires, most likely by mischievous frat boys if the array of crushed beer cans at its edge were anything to go by. Rynn arranged Alistair painstakingly into one of the metal-mesh rocking chairs, not trusting him not to fall over if he was let go, and then sat down beside him with a little huff. “Give me a second.”
Rynn concentrated.
It wasn’t the type of magic he was used to. Necromancy, ancestor worship, all those things and their rotting trappings were second nature to Rynn, not…this. He was half expecting it not to work, before he noticed the faint blue glow spreading out from his fingertips towards the lake. He had to stifle a soft gasp of excitement, and his eyes sharpened as he looked up at his handiwork.
A swarm of witch lights, no larger than fireflies, hung in a softly glowing cloud over the water. Little arcs and jettisons of droplets spun across the smooth surface of the pond, winking like stars as they caught the light, and then suddenly—Rynn bit his lip, and the tips of his fingers twitched—out of the water rose six perfect, shimmering ducks, transparent as glass, the witch lights glimmering blue of the edge of their feathers. They were not so much of Rynn’s own crafting as they were from the lake’s memory of what had once swam in its waters, and they preened and dove in perfect imitation of the originals. There was even a mother duck, with three of her young obediently trailing after her as she paddled proudly amongst her raft. “Sorry,” he said, faintly, and his fingers untensed. “I’m not very good at illusions, but…they wouldn’t be nearly so charming if we tried to wake them up at this hour.”
As if to emphasis his point, one of the water-fowl gave out a damp quack.
Finally, Rynn felt as though he could relax. Leaning into the back of his weatherbeaten chair, he looked up at what stars were strong enough to leak light past the city’s pollution. “You shouldn’t be afraid of this ‘Magnus’ guy.” he added, quietly. “No matter how it feels, nobody wants to…erase you. You can’t become nobody again, once you’re—“ he waved a hand vaguely at Airi, and blue glowed briefly beneath his fingernails.” —all this. It just can’t happen. There’s no way any of us could forget about you. And…Antha wouldn’t allow it, anyways.” He tried for a smile, then. “I wouldn’t allow it. It’s hard enough to get you off my mind without having to worry about you disappearing into some junk bar and ruining your immaculate liver. So.”
That seemed to be it, for a moment at least. And then Rynn added, impetuously, “You shouldn’t let other people define your identity for you, anyways. Even if you didn’t know your own name, you’d still be somebody. That won’t change when Magnus gets here. Heck, if our origin story matters that much to him, we’ll all be pretending to be other people, Antha especially.”
Rynn made an effort at a nonchalant stretch, but was less subtle when he allowed his hands to drop conveniently within grasp of Airi’s. He was carefully avoiding the other boy’s gaze when he tipped his chin back defiantly and announced, “I’ll be right there every step of the way, okay? I just want to know that you’re alright.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Despite herself, Antha laughed, softly and a million miles away. “Respectable,” she echoed thoughtfully, as if it were amusing, “That…just doesn’t sound right.” And she laughed again, without a great deal of humor, flashing her husband a resigned smile. “I know,” she said softly, “I know he’ll find out. I know that I’m probably overreacting, and I know that there’s nothing I can really do. But…” She paused to bite the inside corner of her lip, her gaze drifting sidelong out over the dark, empty garden before snapping back to the ground before her. “If only you knew the child he’d been taken away from, how good and sweet I was before Leon stepped in, and how earnestly he adored me. He took such pains to raise me to be good and honest and kind and…all of that nonsense. And then I killed his father. No matter how intensely justified that action was---and I’ll never second-guess what I did, because he deserved it a thousand times over---the important thing is that I had that in me. After all the virtues he tried to instill in me, I still had it in me to kill with my own hands. And even besides that, I…maybe I’m not so bad now. But I strayed so very, very far from what he tried to teach me. Maybe he can’t expect me to have been perfect, but…I don’t want him to be disappointed in me, Cian. No one else had specific expectations for me, they didn’t raise me, they met me after I’d already taken a life. But Magnus did. He taught me what right and wrong was, he has every right to expect that I at least know that much, but I spent so long disregarding everything he taught me.”
Antha broke off then, hearing the first thin, groggy cry from the house that she knew instinctively was her daughter’s. “It’ll be alright,” she said quietly, pausing where she was with a glance halfway in Cian’s direction, “In the end, it’ll probably be alright. I’m just nervous about the middle part.” Finally, she shook her head and stepped up onto the first stair of the porch, turning on her heel and taking Cian’s face gently in her hands, leaning over to press a gentle kiss to his lips. “Don’t fret about it, darling. It was a very, very long time ago, it hardly seems real anymore.” And through the touch of her fingers on his cheek came a little flash of memory, mostly unintentional, of her own small, bloodied hands clenched around a butcher knife in her lap, her fingers tense and struggling not to tremble, while Michael inched towards her and went carefully down on one knee, the phone receiver dropped on the floor behind him with a very small, distant dial tone. He was afraid of her, that was clear in his eyes, he was panicking deep down, but he was steady, his hand reaching gently out towards her. This can all go away. You just have to trust me, sweetheart. Distantly up the stairs, Julien was screaming hysterically about blood and her own voice came from elsewhere, disconnected, her own words to Thorne from another time. You will be shocked how much this never happened. Her fingers tightened on the knife, like a prayer, like she didn’t know how to give it up, and Michael repeated desperately, extending his fingers, It’ll all go away. You just have to give me the knife.
Antha stepped back, her hands falling at her sides. After a moment, she said quietly, “I wouldn’t be here, if things had been different. If Leon hadn’t tortured me, if he hadn’t driven me to kill him, if I hadn’t been backed into a corner, I wouldn’t be here. If Michael hadn’t held his hand out to me then, if he hadn’t given me the only foreseeable way out, then I would have run and I never would have stopped, and I wouldn’t be here and this family already would have fallen apart. It’s alright, since that’s the case. It’s remarkable, really…how very little it exists if I don’t invoke it.” And then she sighed, very gently, taking his hand up again and turning back towards the house.
In the hallway they came across Magdalena, listening halfheartedly to her mother while peeking up the stairs. The child looked wary and uncertain. “It’s not your siblings,” Antha said to her unasked question, and saw a quickly suppressed flicker in the girl’s eyes as if she’d been caught, “That one’s mine, my daughter. But the others will start any moment now.” At the sound of her voice, Henry had emerged from the sitting room and ran to take Antha’s hand. He acted like a child younger than his own years with Antha, Melody noted, clinging sheepishly to her skirts like a toddler to his mother. It seemed strange to her, not knowing the context and being intimately acquainted with just how terrifying Antha could really be, seeing the gentle affection she brought out in the little boy.
In her mind, she could still see Antha, twelve years old, in her sweet little collared dress and stockings, a black ribbon tied in her hair, sitting in a chair beside the window in an office at Mayfair & Mayfair, her fingertips pressed together into a steeple beneath her chin. Julien and Barclay were there, she remembered that, and Melody’s own parents had been there with her and everyone knew every terrible detail, but she could only remember any feelings of fear or shame being utterly eclipsed by that sharp look in little Antha’s eyes. Melody had been sixteen and the adults didn’t frighten her, but Antha did. If you come back, I will kill you. That was what she had said, so very intently, not a threat but a promise. Barclay had been explaining to her parents how their business could no longer survive in Osiris City, now that the Mayfairs had set sanctions against them, that it was best for them to leave. Antha, ignoring all of that, had simply and bluntly threatened to kill her.
Upstairs, the other babies all set to crying at more or less the same time and Antha hurried up with Henry in tow. “You should go, too,” Melody urged Magdalena gently, “Honey, you shouldn’t put off meeting your siblings.”
The child tried to protest, but Courtland swooped in and lifted Magdalena by an arm around her waist. “I got this,” he announced playfully, hoisting the little girl with a startled and amused shriek and starting down the hall, “To the ice cream, eh Lena? You can meet them after they're fed.”
When he was gone with her, Vittorio, who had appeared trailing suspiciously after him, said firmly to Melody, “You need to lie down before you have a seizure.”
The woman gave a strained smile, her fingers fluttering at her temple. “You noticed that, did you?” Indeed, her color had gone bad in the last few minutes and her eyes were visibly having difficulty focusing. “That’s been happening more and more lately, and I don’t like for Maggie to see.”
Vittorio stepped aside, wordlessly inviting her into the parlor, and she went without a fight, settling herself carefully on the couch and closing her eyes. “As the tumor grows larger, the mass puts more pressure on vital sections of the brain, which then triggers a seizure,” he explained, pulling a chair up beside the couch and measuring her vital signs, “Your daughter is right, you can’t afford to strain yourself. If you and Dorian can’t be civil, I will have to insist that you two don’t face one another, much less exchange words.”
“I don’t think Maggie would take that well.”
“I think she’d take seeing you collapse in a violent seizure much worse,” Vittorio responded bluntly, “They’re not pretty, particularly in the late stages. Respiratory arrest is likely, I’d have to stab a hole in your throat and you’d still probably suffocate to death.”
“…your bedside manner is horrifying.”
“I attend very few patients,” Vittorio excused himself shortly, “Your vitals are improving, at least. Just lie down until it passes, and don’t get up a moment before.” With that he stood up, excusing himself and closing the doors to the parlor behind him. In the hallway, he paused long enough to cast his piercing eyes on Dorian with unusual severity, instructing very sharply, “Don’t upset her. I mean it, little brother, she has one foot in the grave and one wrong word will kill her. She’s my patient, her life is my responsibility, and if necessary I will have Antha keep the two of you from ever setting foot in the same room.” Stepping back from the door, he adjusted the cuffs of his shirt, giving the distinct impression that he was utterly unaffected by all of this. No wonder everyone thought Vittorio was made of stone. “Besides, your daughter is old enough that she’ll blame you for murdering her mother. It’ll take some time getting used to, I imagine---” He cut a stalwart gaze at his brother, dark and teeming with suggestions unspoken. “---realizing that your child’s opinion of you is all that matters.” It was unusual for Vittorio to talk even this much, especially to Dorian---he felt, like with Dolly Jean, that even less words were required between them because they understood one another just that little bit more---and yet, strangely, he continued, making a great affair of taking out a cigarette and holding it just shy of his lips as he did so. “That is the one thing we always had in common, is it not little brother? We are as we are, and it isn’t for other people to have an opinion of us. But our children are the exception. You would have had time, with the little ones, but that girl…she can form opinions at the drop of a pin. If she sees your dark side, even for a second, it’ll stay with her forever. I guess you’d call it a matter of priorities.” He turned halfway, facing Dorian straight on for the first time in a while, his sharp and unfathomable eyes holding his gaze. “We’re unforgivably self-involved, volatile people, Dorian---our mother’s children through and through. But keep in mind that I managed to make peace with Saria, for our son’s sake, and she’s ten times the b***h that Melody could ever be. It all comes down to priorities, little brother.”

Rynn had, in Alistair’s opinion, grossly overestimated his level of inebriation. In particular, his mind was getting slowly clearer since he’d purged those last few rounds of alcohol. But he was still drunk, so he went along with it, at least until they reached the pond and he went bright-eyed and electrified, like a child, pitching himself forward and running straight for the ducks only to stop just where the water met the ground and dropping abruptly where he was, his arms folded on his knees and his chin on his arms, just staring through the reeds at the sleeping ducks.
“I suppose it’s hard to understand,” he said after what felt like a very long time, very quietly, watching the bristle of feathers as the ducks breathed gently in their sleep, “You’ve always been you, Rynn. You’ve always been here, always been in your body. I…never saw myself as a person. I was a spirit, I didn’t remember a single moment of being in my body, existing in this world. I was never ‘Alistair Mayfair’---I didn’t even have a name until Antha was five and said I should have one, that it was unbearably sad for me not to have a name.”
Airi rose back to his feet, slowly, stretching his back and running a hand idly through his hair. He certainly looked surreal in that moment, his pale and slender form framed in silver moonlight, the gleam of the moonbeams bouncing off of the water, his bright curls and loose collar stirring in the breeze. “You can’t imagine how fleeting it is, my sense of self. Sometimes I think that if I pretend I’m someone else, even for a moment, I’ll just forget who I am. That I’ll just slip away, into nothing. I know it doesn’t make sense, and it probably sounds ridiculous, but…” He trailed off, with no apparent intentions of finishing the train of thought. Instead he turned and went over to the chair beside Rynn, sinking languidly down into the seat, legs stretched out and head hanging back.
When Rynn’s hand fell between them, he gave a little smirk to himself, the smallest hint of a laugh rumbling in his throat. He didn’t look once, his gaze remained steadfast on the faint speckling of stars up in the sky as he reached out and caught up Rynn’s hand. First just their little fingers, hooking his gently around Rynn’s. “You’re at least half in love with me, you know,” he murmured with absolute easy certainty, the rest of his fingers sliding around Rynn’s, not tightly but firmly, securely. He sat like that for a few minutes, silently, enjoying the fresh air. And then he stood again, pulling Rynn up with him. “Come on. We’re teenagers, let’s break rules.” If there was any question to the rule he had in mind, it was made clear soon enough when he went up to the edge of the pond and set about unbuttoning his shirt, discarding it on the ground before kicking off his shoes and snapping open his belt buckle.
As he moved, the differences in his physique became suddenly apparent. When Antha and Rynn had revived him, Alistair had been like a fawn, thin and lanky, a rough sketch of what he could fill out to be. He was still slender of course, and he probably always would be, he had that Mayfair way about him, but his back and shoulders were broad for his frame, prepared to fill out as he grew up, and with his new rigorous soccer practice the muscles of his back had begun to fill out, swelling and constricting, shifting the few scattered dark freckles on his fair skin---‘beauty marks,’ Suzette called them.
Half-turning, he paused just long enough to flash Rynn a roguish, inviting grin, shedding the last of his clothes and diving into the pond. The ducks nearby stirred at the splashing, giving a few aggravated quacks and paddling a little further away. Alistair, summoning all of his self-restraint, managed to disregard them, motioning for Rynn to follow him in. “It’s warm, I promise.”  

[Okimiyage]

It was at times like this that one could see how much of Dorian’s witchcraft ran to glamour. When he was happy, Dorian had a kind of devilish sparkle that set him apart from anyone in the room—his hair shone, his eyes were brighter, his movements more graceful, and his smile more winning than any other. He had what some grizzled studio executive would have called ‘star quality’.
But now, all of that drained away, and Dorian seemed—desaturated, only half-there, as if he might disappear into the wallpaper like a ghost.
Dorian couldn’t help but feel his temper flare at his brother’s admonitions, but uncharacteristically, he couldn’t find it within himself to respond to it. His face was stony, jaw set tight, while Vittorio spoke, but afterwards, all he did was sigh, look at the floor, and fiddle reflectively with one of the Soubranie cigarettes in his pocket. After a moment, he said, in a dull, flat tone that was quite different from his usual flippant candor, “Saria wasn’t holding you hostage with the threat of an aneurysm if you said the wrong thing to her, Vittorio. And I…don’t know that I can interact with her without provoking her. I didn’t mean to, this time, but—“ he pressed his lips together. “—even back then, every time I try to set the record straight, it gets like this. I thought maybe there was some chance of reconciliation, but if we can’t even t-talk about it, that’s—“ It was unlike the normally eloquent Dorian to stammer, but there weren’t many people that he let his guard down. Vittorio, for all that he had the emotional range of a block of wood, was trustworthy. He was used to keeping confidence for his patients, and he’d known Dorian all his life. “It was foolish to get my hopes up.” Dorian said, through a tight throat, after a moment’s tremulous pause. “I suppose I should just…move on. Or go hide out in the treehouse with Malakai until they leave, huh?” It was a weak attempt at a joke, but commendable for this kind of mood. He shook his head, regretfully. “Lena’d never forgive me if she didn’t get to say goodbye.” Dorian shuddered, and visibly pulled himself together. “The things we do for the children…”
it was odd to imagine that, less than a week ago, he had been without any idea of the very special, personal family crisis that was going to be thrust upon him. He turned away, and began to walk toward the kitchen, but then stopped in the doorway and half-turned to Vittorio. “You know, I’m not very good at this ‘fatherhood’ thing. I’m trying my best, but…” It’s not enough. The more he tried, the more he seemed to make things worse, and the more difficult the situation became, and he couldn’t keep up. Dorian thought about how to explain any of this, his total ineptitude, to his brother, and bit his lip instead. “…never mind. Just—forgive me, alright? For whatever mistakes I make along the way.”

Following his wife up the stairs, Cian noticed that the crying had stopped, but instead, the sound of faint giggling had replaced Vanessa’s mournful, violin-thin wails. It was…strange laughter, though, not like that of a child at all.
Cian raised his eyebrows as he entered the room behind Antha. “Huh.” he said carefully, still not sure whether the additions to the decor were a good thing or not. “Well, this is, uh…” Gaudy as ********, “…very sparkly. I suppose it’s meant in the way of a housewarming gift for their children.”
What he was referring to were the mobiles. The nursery had only contained one before, charmingly antiquated and featuring a parade of small wooden ducks. Now, there were four. Each of the new additions was to a mobile what the Rococo period was to the Puritans. An array of transparent globes tilted gently above the first crib, each containing a different specimen of fish, insect or, in one bubble, a rather ornery-looking frog. The column of the mobile was swathed in leaves and dew-speckled, living flowers—a fountain of starlets, twining violets and bluebells, while white-winged butterflies, smaller than a thumbnail, fluttered from blossom to blossom. The body of the second was not so much a body as it was a prism of blackness, in which tiny motes of light wove in and out of nebulous patterns, and six miniature, beringed moons appeared to be orbiting around in defiance of gravity. The last, and most ostentatious, appeared to be made out of white gold, a lantern with panels of marvelously intricate, flourishing fretwork, and suspended from the corners of which spun six large, cut crystals. It resembled a chandelier more than anything which ought to hanging above an infant, and Cian unthinkingly went to take it down from about the crib when, abruptly—at the slightest brush from his fingertip—all three of the new mobiles burst into sparkling dust.
The fairy children seemed to think this was quite funny; they cooed and gurgled and waved their pudgy digits awkwardly in the air, trying to catch some of the glitter as it rained down on them and disappeared.
“The mothers idea of a joke, I suppose,” Cian muttered, swiping golden particles from his hair. “They could have at least closed this behind them,” he added irritably, crossing now to close and latch the ajar window. To be honest, he was relieved—just as long as they didn’t try any of this while Magnus was around, at least not for a little while. They didn’t want to immediately thrust him into the deep end, although the nature of the Mayfair heritage mean that ‘the deep end’ encompassed a lot more than just a few over-attentive fairy mothers.
Approaching his wife, he leaned over the fence of the crib and watched Sebastian struggle to fit his mouth around an oversized rattle handle. Cian hung back for a moment, not sure how to begin, but wanting to continue the conversation tha had started in the gardens. After a moment, his hand found her shoulder.
“Antha, you know—what Leon did to you didn’t ruin you. You’re still good, and sweet, just—not in the same way that a child is. A child trusts unconditionally, until the first time that someone hurts them. But even those experiences teach…judgement, a sense of when and whom to give your your trust. Innocence is all well and good in the stories, but it’s not possible to go through life like that, unless perhaps you’re someone like Dolly Jean.”
He was quiet for a moment, toying with one of the ordinary wooden ducks that hung on the mobile, and the clock of the nursery ticked like a metronome in the silence.
“You know, Magnus explains a lot. They say that young children which experience extreme isolation or abuse—simply put, they go feral. I never saw that in you. I chalked it up to sheer witchcraft whenever I thought about it, but…at least part of it was Magnus, wasn’t it? Your…experiences with him, the love that he showed you, was what made you able to come back from what happened afterwards.”
Sebastian, ending his inspection of the rattle, cast it aside disdainfully and began to struggle for his father’s attention, making dissatisfied grunts and waving his arms in the air. Cian picked him up—“Yes, yes, all you had to do was ask,” and began to jiggle him dutifully.
“In a certain sense, I owe him a debt of gratitude, just as much as you. The whole family does.”
Cian shook his head, abruptly realizing how somber his tone had become. “I’m sorry—we don’t have to talk about it further. Until he gets here, there’s no use in worrying, anyways.” He smiled down at his son, gently, and then lifted that smile to Antha. “More than enough to occupy us, already, I’d say.”

At the side of the lake, Rynn let the water-ghosts of the ducks dissolve back into ripples on the pond. Airi only liked real things, didn’t he? He should have known. He’d been trying to spare the ducks the disturbance, but what Airi wanted…
He tipped his head back, suddenly wishing he’d had the forethought to bring beer or cigarettes or something with which to cloud his perspective. Alistair had that effect on him, particularly when the other boy was drunk. It was like looking into the sun without shade, so much that he wanted to flinch away and squint his eyes, or don some kind of smoked lenses that could dim Airi’s radiance. It was strange to Rynn—not necessarily unpleasant, but unnatural—to be affected so much by another person. “There are plenty of people who would give their eye teeth to be able to pretend they were someone else,” he said, quietly. Rynn had never been one of them, up until the fall of his house. ********, he wished he hadn’t been human, then. Nonexistence would have been a blessing—better than the horror of the memories, and the guilt, and the knowing…but that was insensitive, wasn’t it? It was all a matter of perspective, presumably.
“Anyways, why do you worry about that now? It isn’t as though anyone could simply—wish you out of existence or something, now that you’ve become manifest.” He looked up, attempting to meet Alistair’s eyes, but the gaze of the other was on the stars far above. Relinquishing the tentative grasp between them, Rynn turned his face upwards in the same manner, trying to ignore the way that Airi’s accusation—you’re at least half in love with me, you know—seemed to reverberate, faint yet persistent, through this skull. Through the veil of clouds above, he could identify the dim glow of—what was it? Orion’s belt? Aedan would have known. He didn’t have long to try to remember—Airi had tired of stargazing almost instantaneously. He wasn’t a placid drunk in the least. Rynn staggered to his feet as his companion rushed to the water’s edge, and raised a skeptical eyebrow at the encouragement. Watching further, his skepticism quickly turned to awe—he didn’t realize, oddly enough, how beautiful Alistair had become—but he didn’t let the other boy see that. He made a swift about-face, only realizing afterwards that may have seemed…prudish…considering the circumstances. They’d both already seen one another naked, but it somehow seemed—inappropriate—to watch the other boy disrobe. Rynn took a good deal more time than Alistair did, laying Dorian’s peacoat and his own shirt aside with care. He’d even folded it after he pulled it over his head, revealing a physique that was mostly rib and ivory-colored, clinging skin. Rynn’s build was almost elfish, narrow as a whip, like something out of an Egon Schiele sketchbook. There was something both beautiful and uncanny about the way that the bones in his hands and wrists seemed to separate the moonlight into black shadows and brilliant planes, as he worked the button of his jeans out of its gap and slid them down, in one unhesitating movement, to his ankles.
He ought to have felt some kind of shame, but as long as he didn’t think about it, it didn’t feel all that real. Instead, he followed Alistair’s path with a whoop, toppling off’ve the mossy remains of the boat-pier and into the lake with a splash.
The water closed over his head, and for a brief moment, all around him was perfect darkness, the absence of any distraction. He wondered if that was what it was like, not existing.
And then he kicked, sending up a cloud of mud from the shallow lakebed, and resurfaced gasping to face a grinning Alistair. “You liar, it’s freezing in here. I didn’t have your number of drinks to insulate me from the chill.”
Still, now that he’d dunked his head, it was getting better. He tread water patiently, eying Alistair with the look of a person who has never had a chance to dunk another into a pond but has perhaps been dreaming of the opportunity.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Vittorio cocked his head to the side, his arms folding stalwartly over his chest. Something flashed in his eyes that was not quite interest, but might pass for it in just the right light, at precisely the right angle. “If I didn’t know better, I would say that you like her. But I’ll assume that’s not the case, considering that you are you and this would be the worst possible way to win someone over, even by my standards.” He gave a casual shrug of his shoulders, as if it was a trivial matter, and then continued, “You haven’t ******** up yet. Maybe you will, who knows, but you can only do what you can do. What was that thing grandmother used to say? ‘Hope for the best, prepare for the worst’?” Another shrug, this one even less concerned than the last. “You’ll get better, probably. Everyone told me I’d be a s**t father, probably for good reason, but I’m doing alright.”
Just then, his shirt pocket lit up and rattled with vibration. He retrieved it with the deft swiftness of someone used to answering pages that were often life or death, tapping on the screen only for his eyes to narrow very seriously at the words. Slipping it back into his pocket, he turned and briskly started for the door with his usual lack of pleasantries, only mentioning lowly to Dorian as he left, “Don’t tell Antha I got a page.” The last thing he needed was for her to show up in a wild and violent panic over the wellbeing of her unborn child. It was probably nothing, but he couldn’t afford to let anyone get in the way. And in this matter, Antha was the very definition of ‘in the way’.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” Antha groaned when she saw the new additions to the nursery, “They cannot breach our defenses and waltz into our home whenever the hell they like. No.” Agitated, she crossed over to the French windows and paused at one of the end tables, rifling around in a little box beside Oliver’s chalkboard that Vittorio used to try and teach him words. Pulling out a piece of chalk, she stepped onto the balcony with her hands on her hips, announcing, “You want to see your children, fine, that’s reasonable. But you don’t break into my goddamn house. If you want in---” She stooped over, drawing an ‘X’ on the floor of the balcony before the window and then setting the chalk pointedly on the window trim, “---you have to ask, like civilized goddamn people.” Erasing the chalk mark with her foot, she turned on her heel and stalked back inside, shutting the windows with a definitive thud. “Dorian will have to move into the slave quarters when they’re renovated. I think he more or less forfeited his right to privacy when he knocked up fairies, let them break into his room.” As she spoke, she plucked several strands of hair and wound them around the knobs of the windows. Each one gave a very faint shimmer, emitting a low pulse of power. If the fairies managed to get through that, Antha was prepared to declare war.
“I am not overreacting,” she said abruptly to Cian before he could get a word in, with the defensive reflexes of someone who was used to being accused of grossly overreacting, “I don’t know anything about fairies, I refuse to have them waltzing in around our children whenever they like. I don’t know how in the hell they got past our defenses, but it’s not happening again.”
Across the room, Olivier had grappled himself to his feet by the slats of his crib and watched Antha for several moments, his face falling with every moment that she didn’t notice him. Finally, despondent, he grasped the slats and shook them violently, bursting into tears and shrieking, “Eeeebiiiiiiee~! Ebie, Ebie, Ebiiiiiiiiiiie!”
“Oh good lord,” his aunt sighed, rushing over and lifting him out of his crib, “Livy, no, shush. Please?”
The boy sniffled, nestling heavily against her shoulder and sticking his thumb in his mouth. “Nesha,” he mumbled pointedly around his thumb as Antha gently stroked his hair, his watery eyes focused on Vanessa’s crib. Obligingly, Antha set him down next to her daughter and he went calm, picking up a nearby teddy bear and offering it wordlessly to the infant designee.
Pausing for a moment to watch them as Cian spoke, Antha gave a little wry smile. “I’m glad you think so,” she said, turning suspiciously away to occupy herself tending to Vanessa and Olivier, “Magnus---ah…well…” She seemed to struggle with the words for a moment, finally standing straight and putting one hand on her hip, the other laid across the top of her head as if at a loss. “He wasn’t exactly happy when he found out I got knocked up by a total stranger. Apparently I was ‘very, very, very irresponsible’ and ‘should never trust some guy who seduces teenage girls without protection’. I mean…he wasn’t wrong, as a general rule. It was difficult to argue, in the beginning.” And then, hurrying to explain as if it somehow made things better, added, “He called off the duel when we got married. But, well…I think he thought maybe you were threatened into it, and I don’t think he’s totally buying anything I say to the contrary. Let’s just say he’s going to be scrutinizing you a lot more closely than everyone else.”
Clearing her throat, she immediately set about looking too busy to talk. Visibly, the subject made her uneasy, she had struggled to get it out and was now taking pains not to continue the conversation. And yet, even if she didn’t quite notice it herself, it was progress. A few months ago, she never would have told him. She would have tried to handle the situation herself, to act as a buffer between Cian and Magnus until she could resolve it. Telling Cian about such situations made her…nervous. This was particularly true for anything involving Magnus---he had power over her, authority, and she didn’t want anyone to see that side of her. But she had, naturally if not totally willingly.
Antha was maturing, in her own way.
“He’ll like you eventually,” she assured him hastily after a moment, hoisting Vanessa in one arm and taking up a bottle in the other while Olivier happily chewed on a stick of frozen yogurt, “Once he figures out that you’re dependable. He just…wants to make sure you’re not flighty, or something. He’ll understand once he gets to know you. Eventually.” Once again clearing her throat, she quickly turned her attention on Vanessa, cooing sweetly, “Is that better, sweetheart? Finish your dinner and mommy will change you into your jammies. And daddy will put you to bed, since apparently mommy isn’t good enough.” There was an edge of accusation to this last part, corresponding to the brief look she shot her husband, as if it was his fault. “It’s fine,” she dismissed it after a moment, setting the empty bottle aside and propping Vanessa against her shoulder, gently rubbing her back, “I can accept that you love daddy more. But just remember that mommy made you.”
Nearby, busy feeding Briar, Henry made a face, terrified and disgusted and a little fascinated. “Aunt Evie, that’s gross.”
“That’s biology, ducky. Science is your friend, embrace it.”
“Uncle Jack said science is for nerds and drug cookers.”
“…Uncle Jack and I will be having words. Many, many words. Now forget anything he’s ever told you, or else I’ll sit you down with Uncle Tori for a great deal of tutoring.” The boy made a face typical of a child who knows his next words may very well ruin all of his playtime for what might as well be forever, and so said nothing. “Henry, sweetheart, why don’t you go play with Magdalena downstairs? We can get Uncle Michael if we need help.”
The boy flushed scarlet from his hair to his chin, hastily squeaking out, “No, no, I’d rather help you, Aunt Evie.”
Carefully setting Vanessa back in her crib, Antha turned to Henry, pinching his cheek and cooing, “Oh, what a sweet boy you are. So sweet and such a little liar.” He reddened all over again and Antha gave him a little reassuring smile, smoothing his hair neatly back into place. “Don’t be nervous, Henry, she’s just a little girl and you have Mayfair cheekbones.”
“She’s not just a little girl!” Henry argued, opening up in a great rush of nerves and indignation as Antha quietly fussed over his hair and collar, “She’s the prettiest girl in the whole world! And she has shiny hair, and her eyes are really blue, and she keeps grabbing my hand and then I don’t remember how to breathe! I could die, Aunt Evie!” He wrinkled his nose then, realizing he’d said too much, glancing up at Antha through his eyelashes as she swept his hair behind his ear. “I’m too little to die, I can’t even drive a car yet.”
“No one dies from holding hands, Henry. You’ll get used to her dragging you around, I promise.”
“She likes sparkly guys like Uncle Courtland,” he further complained then with a little pout as he brushed his hair back down over his forehead, “I’m not sparkly.”
“You can be sparkly. And you’re cute. Belle certainly thinks so.”
“Belle likes everyone!” the boy whined loudly, completely unswayed, “She has like a hundred boyfriends! I’m really concerned about her, she’s going to have to move to India or China or somewhere where she can marry lots of people at the same time! And she’s going to get mad if she finds out I think Magdalena is prettier than her and she’ll make me play Snow White again and I hate that game. I have to kiss her, it’s gross, and she never lets me be one of the dwarves.”
Antha stopped, briefly pursing her lips. “I’m really going to have to talk to Barclay about what his daughter is up to…” Glancing over her shoulder, her gaze landed intently on Cian, asking for help. Little boys didn’t take advice from their aunts very seriously, Antha knew that. He needed a man’s advice, even if it was the same thing.

In the pond, Airi fell into peels of laughter, paddling idly around as Rynn spluttered and gasped. “I like it, it’s bracing,” he snickered, a moment before he dipped down and vanished in the dark, murky water. He resurfaced a moment later with a great splash behind Rynn, his arms already clamping down around his shoulders. “Want me to warm you up?” he whispered in his ear, taunting but with clear undertones of a genuine offer.
Slicking his hair back, droplets of water flying everywhere, he rested his chin in the crook of Rynn’s neck, his arms draped languidly around him. “Thanks,” he murmured after a moment, very quietly, “For coming to find me.” He moved somewhat oddly, his chin dropping so that his lips pressed to Rynn’s shoulder, the rest of him unusually still. But Alistair had calculated this, creeping up behind Rynn specifically so he couldn’t see his face and the vaguely embarrassed look on it. He hadn’t expected anyone to come after him, not with all that was going on, and he wasn’t used to it. Granted, he usually didn’t run away, but…
“You can have one wish,” he continued suddenly, pressing a fleeting kiss low on Rynn’s neck, “Anything that’s in my power, I’ll do it. Just tell me what you want.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian wouldn’t stoop to telling the truth, but his brother might have seen it anyways, in the way his eyes jolted from the floor at the sentence: ‘If I didn’t know better, I would say that you like her.’
After a moment’s worth of staring, those long, straw-pale eyelashes shut again, clamping down hard, and Dorian rubbed his forehead. ‘Winning Melody over’…he’d tried not to imagine that. The most he could hope for was being friends, finding some measure of peace between the two of them for Lena’s sake. He wouldn’t deny that he had dreamed, sometimes, in the sleepless wee hours of the morning…but no, Dorian wouldn’t let himself follow that train of thought. He’d been down the rabbit hole too many times before. There were too many ‘what ifs’ and ‘but whys’ and ‘if onlys’.
But explaining that would mean explaining much more than Dorian was prepared to, right now.
Still, he was grateful for any display of support right now. Sometimes it felt as though the rest of the family thought he was some kind of sociopath or a monster. Vittorio might not have had a high opinion of his little brother, but at least he was willing to be here.
As Vittorio passed him by, Dorian reached out & settled a hand briefly on his brother’s shoulder. “Thanks.” A brief squeeze, and then he let go. Vittorio was already halfway out the door. “Good luck,” he called after him. Dorian didn’t know what the nature of the problem which sent his brother rushing off into the night was, but he figured, if the urgent expression, the well-wishing would be needed.
“Dorian!” came the sharp call, and his eyes swiveled guiltily towards the stairwell. It was Cian’s voice, which he hadn’t expected, but…
“Dorian, get up here now.”
His heart skipped a beat. They’d gone to the nursery, hadn’t they? Dorian could immediately imagine a plethora of things that had gone wrong. He’d heard about this before, changeling children turning into lumps of peat moss or logs of wood—or disappearing—or maybe they’d sprouted wings like a Cicely Barker painting—
He discovered that he was taking the stairs two at a time, without quite being conscious of the decision to move in the first place. The nursery door burst open—
And there was Cian, and Antha, both of them looking peeved, and the rest of the children, who appeared quite pleased by the presence of their respective parents. The changelings sent up a chorus of cooing gurgles at the sight of Dorian, who collapsed against the doorframe in relief. “Jesus, Cian, don’t scare me like that. I thought there was something wrong.”
“There is something wrong,” Cian said, tartly, scrubbing at head irritably. A shower of gold flakes drifted out of his hair. “The mothers of your children broke into the house and left us a set of goddamn chandeliers—“
“Chandeliers?”
“Mobiles. Toys. They exploded when I touched them. I don’t know if you’re in contact with your estranged lovers—” He glanced towards Antha. “—Is that too formal? What do I call them?” Turning a skeptical look on his wife’s cousin, he demanded, “Did you even get their names?”
“They go where they want,” Dorian protested. “I’m not responsible for what they do. And I did get names—I just—can’t remember them.”
Crossing over to the crib, pretending to be oblivious to Cian’s doubting glower, he leaned over and trailed a finger across the milk-swollen belly of one of the changelings. So that was why they hadn’t been crying before now. “At least they fed while their mothers were here. Anyways, what’s wrong with leaving the kids with a few toys?” He glanced up at Antha, and his eyes drifted to the strands of red copper wrapped around the window knobs. “You might as well put up iron over the lintel.” he commented. “That’s the traditional defense. Or a bowl of milk on the porch at night, to appease them.”
Cian had to check himself to keep from rolling his eyes, as he paced the room with a delighted Sebastien on his hip. “The point is not to appease them, Dorian, the point is to keep them out. We don’t know anything about their motivations, and until we do, is it really too much to ask that we limit contact?”
Dorian straightened, leaning on the rail of the crib, and widened his eyes at Cian. “The others weren’t wrong. You really are starting to sound like a dad.”
Cian could feel Sebastien starting to squirm again. He had to remind himself that even ordinary children were sensitive to tone and mood, and witch children probably twice as much so. And with Magnus coming, the stress would only be growing. Just when he thought that he’d already proved himself to the family, here came the final boss…
But at least he had warning, this time, and more than one ally.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, levelly. As much as he wanted to go off on Dorian, at times, there was that unwritten rule: not in front of the children.
Swinging Sebastien up into the air, he lowered the boy onto his shoulder with an exaggerated oof. “I swear, this healthy little chap is getting heavier every day. I’ll have to start carrying him around for exercise.”
Dorian had, despite his best intentions to be in and out before Magdalena had noticed his absence, found that one of his younger daughters had a fast hold on his finger and was refusing to let go; in fact, she had begun to slobber on it. There was no recourse for him. If he tried to move his hand away, her face tensed and crinkled up into the warning stage of a meltdown. He gave Antha a rather desperate look over his shoulder. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Stay up here until she fell asleep?
But he perked up quickly enough when he noticed that the subject had changed to something that he considered himself an authority on: Magdalena.
Or at least, as much of an authority as one could be within forty-eight hours of meeting the person in question. Hearing Henry describe her made his chest swell with pride. Of course she was the prettiest girl in the world—didn’t she have Dorian’s genes?
“I like this kid,” Dorian said, aloud. “He recognizes quality.”
Cian noticed his wife’s look. A little reluctantly, he settled Sebastien into the crib. Cian usually did not consider himself a master of the pep talk, but where it was called for…
Crouching down in front of Henry, he put his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands, trying to think of the right words. “Look, Henry…” he began, opening his palms, “Girls are…different. Even the ones who aren’t witches can sometimes make you forget how to breathe, when you’re holding their hand. But it’s when you feel the most nervous that you must do your best to appear confident, and soldier on. After all, if you run away every time, she’ll start to get the idea that you don’t like her at all, and I can’t imagine that you’d want to make her unhappy in that way. Besides, sparkle isn’t everything. It’s certainly not something you’re born with—you’ve got to grow into it, like a hat that doesn’t fit quite just yet.”
Cian leaned back, studying Henry theatrically with one hand cupped to his chin. “And I mean, well. Even I can see that there’s definite potential for sparkle, there—right out of the corner of your eye. It’ll take a few years to cultivate, but I do believe you’ll be a contender for the books.” He winked at Henry. “Just go talk to the lass.”
Dorian felt compelled to interject. She was his daughter, after all. “Anyways, you’re already approved, Henry. Magdalena likes you.” he announced. “She wouldn’t have taken you to the parlor with her, otherwise. Like father, like daughter. I never spend my time in the company of people that I don’t like. It sounds miserable.”
And if it meant that Lena would moon on more about Henry and less about Nicolae, that was just an added bonus.

Rynn gave out a small yeeeeep—which sounded more like a bird call than any noise that a human should be able to make—when he felt Airi’s arms descend around him, preparing himself to be forced underwater again. To his surprise there was no such force imposed. He wouldn’t have been in any position to resist, anyways. After a moment, his fingers worked his way, hesitantly, up to the hand that cupped his shoulder, gently tracing the curve of his palm from beneath. He didn’t know how to respond to the first offer, at least not immediately—but if that query hadn’t given him hesitation, the second one certainly did.
The moon came out from behind a cloud, and suddenly the pond was a rippling black mirror. The bottom of the lakebed had vanished—from this perspective, it was easy to imagine that there was none, that perhaps the lake went fathoms upon untold fathoms deep, into the center of the world or into some other lightless dimension.
Rynn bit his lip. There was so much to wish for. Stay with me sprang almost immediately to his mind, as did Let’s run away together, Is time travel impossible?, and Help me release my brother’s souls.
But in the end, he pushed all of that out of his mind, and looked at his own shadow on the water, the hump over his shoulder that denoted Airi’s presence behind him.
His voice was almost wistful when he said, “I don’t want anything, Airi.”
Realizing abruptly how that could be misinterpreted, Rynn added hastily, “Or at least, not for myself. If I could wish for anything, I’d wish for you—um, for your happiness. For you to find your place in the world, and…” He let his gaze drift over the water, the reflected pinpricks of yellow light from windows upon the other shore. “…to grow, I suppose, in a way which most of us can’t.” He turned his head slightly, and Alistair might have seen a ghost of a smile cross Rynn’s face if he had looked up before Rynn laid a chaste kiss to the side of his brow. “Just—let me come along for the ride, okay? In case you need backup or anything. And to make sure you don’t drink yourself to death.”