Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Despite Cian’s moderate reply, Antha still took offense on his part, narrowing a dark gaze on Dorian. “Cian is a dad, and an exceptionally good one. It would be strange if he didn’t sound like one.” Taking Sebastien off of Cian’s hands, she harrumphed at her cousin, seething with the aura of someone who has taken offense. To her son she murmured as she set him down on the changing table, “We don’t let people doubt daddy, do we sweetheart? No, we don’t. Because we love daddy. What do we call it when someone doubts daddy?” When his little sweater was pulled off, Sebastien blinked his big eyes up at his mother for several moments, for all the world seeming to be waiting for the answer. Tapping a finger very gently against his nose, she answered sweetly, “We call those fighting words!” The baby gave a little screech of delight, flailing his limbs and giving a big, toothless smile. Antha simply laughed to herself, trying to still his arms to put him in his pajamas. “Ahaha…you really do take after mommy, don’t you Bash? Just remember---no witnesses.”
“Antha…” Michael sighed as he entered the nursery, more resigned than disappointed, “Your son isn’t even a year old, don’t teach him how to get away with crimes.”
“I’m not telling him to commit them,” Antha retorted, rolling her eyes as she snapped Sebastien’s pajamas closed, carefully taking him up in her arms with a little kiss to the side of his head, “But if he does, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let any son of mine get caught.”
“As I recall,” Michael hummed, narrowing an accusatory gaze at her, “You used to get caught. Frequently.”
“Minor crimes!” Antha retorted insistently, “Underage drinking, arson, possession, breaking and entering, driving fifty miles over the speed limit while intoxicated…all nonsense charges, really.”
“I seem to recall a cargo ship blowing up, along with hundreds of gallons of liquor, and the very serious question of whether or not anyone had been on board.”
“Of course there wasn’t, we’re not evil, Uncle Michael. And that was Courtland anyways, they only got me as an accessory, and then they couldn’t even prove it. I mean really...who thought we were intentionally destroying alcohol?”
While Antha continued to brush the subject off, Michael switched his focus to Cian. “Do you know, we never knew when she’d gotten arrested until some stray piece of paperwork flitted across Barclay’s desk days or weeks later, or someone happened to mention it at the courthouse. Julien and Barclay used to berate her furiously, but no matter what they did, we couldn’t figure out how she kept getting out. The arrest reports always mysteriously disappeared of course, so they could never make any charges stick, but we just didn’t understand how she kept getting out of lockup without any of us knowing she’d even been there. And then one day, by chance, Julien and I went to the police station to deal with a citation he’d gotten, and the officer at the front desk remarked that it was funny, but there was another Julien Mayfair there. He’d come to get his niece out of lockup. And who do you think walked into the lobby ten minutes later with Antha?” His gaze flickered, narrowing at Dorian, as Antha traded a guilty glance with her cousin. “Between us and the police, we figured out that Dorian had been impersonating Julien to claim her when she got arrested. She’d even hacked into the police records to change their number on file for Julien to Dorian’s number. She wouldn’t say anything to Julien or Barclay of course, but when I asked her why Dorian, she gave me that look---you know the one, like it’s something glaringly obvious and she doesn’t know why it even has to be asked, it’s a pain to even point it out---and shrugged her shoulders and said because he always had her back, and obviously because he was a better actor than Courtland.”
Michael laughed then, as Antha rocked her son with her back to Michael, feigning ignorance of the conversation. “You used to be so close,” he murmured suddenly, with a pointed edge, “Antha’s partner in crime was always Courtland, and Dorian was always otherwise preoccupied with an endless stream of women, but…honestly, I don’t think anyone else in your generation took care of one another as much as you two took care of each other.” And then he sighed, dramatically enough to suggest that it was intentional, musing, “And I never could figure out what happened, you simply stopped one day. It drives me crazy, really.”
A moment passed in silence, with Michael bustling around and feigning oblivious innocence. Antha narrowed her eyes at him---she knew exactly what he was doing, and she was a little annoyed at the way he did it, but Michael always had been able to coerce things out of her. “It’s not that shocking really, is it?” she muttered, preoccupied gently stroking Sebastien’s back as he mercifully began to drift off, “It was more shocking that I never expected him to abandon me for some strange woman until it happened.” Preoccupying herself with gently laying her son in his crib, settling him with his blanket and little stuffed bear, she continued absently, “I could have died. I nearly did.” That was probably news to Dorian. All he knew of that night, as far as she knew, was that he was supposed to meet her and hadn’t, ignoring her calls in favor of a conquest, and she’d been too angry afterwards to even tell him. “I tried to call Courtland when I gave up on Dorian, but I passed out before I could tell him where I was. He barely managed to track me down in time to get me to the hospital. I was in a coma for three days. News to you I’m sure, Lawrence and Tori covered for me.” Standing straight over her son’s crib as he made that final drop into sleep, his little chest heaving rhythmically, Antha tilted her head, relieved and weary. “How do you ever trust someone again after that, Uncle Michael? When they break a promise to you for something so trite and it almost kills you? How do you ever forgive them?” She sighed, very softly, withdrawing from the crib. “You don’t. Maybe you let it go, because that’s easier in the end, but you never forgive them for it, and you certainly never trust them again.” Finally, she shrugged, turning for the door. “But that was ages ago, hardly any point in bringing it up now. The kids are down and I have to be up early, I think I’ll turn in now. Bon nuit, good luck.” And then she was gone, a little more abruptly than usual, the bedroom door down the hall closing.
“Ah,” Michael sighed, “I…wasn’t expecting that, honestly. Strangely subtle, for Antha. She usually makes such a fuss over these things.” Which only went to show how deeply it had affected her, but Michael didn’t mention that. No point in provoking Dorian. “Cian, you should get to bed, too. Yours are already taken care of and Dorian and I can finish up here, go get some sleep, you’ll need it. Magnus is a good man, as far as I can tell, but he does have a sister complex, and you’re a stranger who knocked his little sister up. It’s going to be a long day for you.” He waited until he was gone, juggling Olivier in one arm while he moved bottles and blankets with the other, to say quietly to Dorian, “You held up well today. Better than you could have, in these circumstances.” Olivier yawned and Michael set him gently down in his little bed, rotating the sides up to keep him from rolling off. “I am proud of you, Dorian. You were a grown-up today, you did the right thing.” And then, gently patting his shoulder, added, “They are right, though. You’re going to have to get along with Melody, it’ll only cause more problems if you don’t, and fighting certainly won’t solve anything in this situation. Simply…smile and bite your tongue. I did it with the b*****d who stole my wife and what should have been my daughter and it didn’t kill me, you can survive doing it with the mother of your child. Maybe when things have calmed down you two can talk rationally, but for now that’s not likely. Now go on, I can finish up here, go see your daughter before she has to leave.”

When Cian arrived in their room, Antha was sitting on the foot of the bed, irritably trying to kick off her shoes. She looked briefly up at him, her eyes bleary, and then back to her feet until her shoes skidded across the floor, first one and then the other. Finally, she sunk down on her back, eyes closed, nestled into the plush comforter. “I might have to sleep right here,” she murmured, turning over onto her side with a great deal of effort, “There are just too many babies in this house, my brother not least amongst them. I wonder if Lawrence ever got him out of the treehouse…” She hummed to herself, but ultimately was too tired to care, instead reaching a hand out to Cian. Once her fingers were in his, she yanked him down beside her, inching closer to rest her head on his shoulder. “And Magnus takes so much energy to deal with. He’s so obstinate, it’s exhausting.” She stopped abruptly, her fingers idly smoothing his collar, and turned her large, concerned eyes on her husband. “You’re not terribly worried about him, are you?” She’d certainly seen something of the like flashing in his eyes, a certain anxiety. “He can’t really do anything, after all. And…alright, so we were appallingly irresponsible miscreants the night we met and had a little accident. I can see his point. But all’s well that ends well, right? We’re happily married and all that, we just accidentally jumped the gun with the pregnancy part. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have Vanessa and Sebastien, and I refuse to even entertain that thought. And if Julien of all people can get over it, Magnus certainly can. So…” She sighed, lifting her head enough to press a soft kiss to his lips. “Don’t worry about Magnus. It might be rough at first, but he’ll come around. He has to---you’re the father of my children, and my husband, and I love you, he really doesn’t have much choice in the matter. Now, for the love of god, can you get me out of this dress? I can’t even reach these buttons.”

Alistair stilled for several moments in the water, silent, before a little chuckle trickled into Rynn’s ear. “So completely in love with me, then,” he murmured. And then, calmly, continued, “You don’t have to worry about me, Rynn. Magnus is…a complication. He’s thrown me off. But everything else? I’ve had a long, long time to think about who I am, what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do. All of that was the easy part, once I was alive.” Over on the shore, the tinkling melody of his ringtone began to sound and Alistair drew Rynn a little closer to himself. “Ah…we’ve been caught. I wondered when they’d catch on.” He laid a brief kiss on the curve of his jaw, sighing softly. He would have to be up earlier than usual. “What do you think, should we head home?” In a little whisper, he added, “I'll make it up to you, even though you're a liar and you say you don't want anything.”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian's lips had thinned with pressure as Michael spoke, and his gaze seemed to focus in on the empty air directly in front of him. His eyes didn't flicker even once; he was listening.
...because he always had her back...
He didn't have to dredge his mind for the memories. You didn't forget the kind of trouble Antha could get you into. Although he'd never thought of it as 'trouble' at the time…
Dorian seemed to come back to himself from a long ways off, and lifted his head to direct a stare like a slap at Michael. Shutupshutupshutup. Stop interfering, you nosy b*****d.
But he didn't protest, although he could feel the anger and misery like a brand inside his ribs, and—god, he hated Antha sometimes. The way she talked—like he wasn't worth any more than one of her dismissive little sighs now, like he wasn't even there, she wouldn't even ******** look at him—it made him want to wail like a banshee, mourning the dead, stupid little kids they had been--or savage her with some vicious, elegant turn of phrase that would hurt her as badly as she liked to hurt him—or just leave, slink off into some filthy corner of the attic and make himself as small and dusty and forgotten as the rest of the abandoned junk up there.
But instead Dorian just stood there, woodenly, and watched her parade out of the nursery. He refused to give her the pleasure of seeing him lash out, didn't want her to know how badly she'd gotten to him.

Cian wasn't oblivious. He recognized a scar when he saw one, and this—this one was old, and it had never healed right, so what ought to have been a thin little line of white, flat pain hung like an infected weal in the air between them instead. He could almost see a nebula of emotion around Dorian, all purple and red like a fresh bruise…
Then he blinked, and the nebula disappeared. “Right. Right you are, Michael.” he said, a little unsteadily, gripping the edge of the crib to keep himself straight. “I think we're all a little overtired, at the moment.”

After a moment, when Cian had gone, Dorian blinked, and his features softened and rearranged themselves into a frown.
“She used to recognize when I was acting,” he said, aloud. “Out of everyone, she could always tell when I was...deflecting.” He could feel his throat tighten around the word. She'd used to think all his lordly graces and brattish behavior had been fun. Those were some of his favorite roles to play—the flippant a*****e, devil's advocate, philandering rake, poet laureate...jester and target, or perhaps siphon, for all the little tensions that developed so quickly amongst the Mayfairs. He didn't even pretend to himself that he'd become a better actor—it was only that now, she thought that was all he was. “It's funny, you know, how you can prove your loyalty over and over again, for years—all she needs is one mistake.” he muttered, bitterly. “One mistake, and none of it matters.” He passed a hand over his face, concealing a wince of anguish. He sounded pathetic. Best not to dwell on it. Best to just sweep it under the rug, pretend none of it had ever mattered, or maybe even happened. Antha had so clearly decided to do the same, after all. She'd never even told him—left him to find out at the behest of one of Courtland's blackout-drunk, holier-than-thou lectures. Secrets didn't stay secret for long, not within those inner circles. That's almost what had stung the most, the first of his many petty banishments from her good graces. And then they wondered why he left...
“I don't feel like an adult,” he told Michael, quietly. “It feels like every time I take one step forward, it's just taking me farther away from all of you. I'm--” Lonely. He bit that one back. “I'm not ready, and worst of all, I can see it--I can see the shape of the future coming towards me, and it's not good, Michael.” He drew a long, ragged breath, staring down at the crib, at the half-fae child which still was applying saliva liberally to her father's free hand. There was a hard, sharp little point in the roof of her mouth—the beginning of a tooth, he thought—and that wasn't right, either, she was far too young to have her first teeth starting to come in. Then again, what was 'right' for a child from Elfhame? “I don't know what I'm doing,” he admitted. “but I think that doing it here and now is just making it worse. I mean—the only person in the entire household who thinks I've got even a whiff of merit to my name is a six-year-old girl, Michael, and that's not exactly reassuring--” There was the faintest note of hysteria in his voice, showing through, before his sentence ended halfway though with a yelp. Bella had bitten him. A droplet of blood welled up from his finger, and he glowered at the wound briefly. Did this need antiseptic? Was it safe to lick the blood off after his finger had been in a baby's mouth? Why didn't children come with owner's manuals?
"I'm sure everyone's sick of me complaining." he finished, dully. "But it's not their life, is it?" He didn't say it out loud, but he thought it: they aren't the ones that got trapped--and immediately regretted it. Antha, in all her mother-bear-hormonal-glory, would have taken him out to the garden and had him shot within the hour had she heard him refer to his children as a 'trap'. He shouldn't resent them; they couldn't help being born. But even knowing that, Dorian couldn't help but miss the freedom he'd possessed up until a week ago. It had been a gift to know that, whenever the whim took him, he could be divorced of his family, of the criticism and the judgement and the scorn that awaited him every time he came home. And now, he was drowning in it.

Cian had to admit that he found the sight of his wife struggling to disengage her heels—there was no other word for it—adorable. He leaned into the doorway, watching her while she blearily fought them off her feet, seemingly too worn out to notice his approach. That was untrue, of course, although Cian wouldn't have minded if it hadn't been. This was his favorite part about being Antha's husband—the times when he got to see her like this, her guard down, without any need to conduct herself as that iron-willed doyenne of witches that everyone expected her to be. She could just be Antha. Forget the lace-edged lingerie and stiletto Louboutins, that was Cian's greatest weakness. And he couldn't resist joining her when she fell back onto the coverlet, although it took him a great deal less time to kick off his own shoes. “Worried?” he repeated, arching one eyebrow. “My querida, I consider it a challenge. After all, I never had to meet your parents, so I very nearly expected that something like this had to happen sooner or later. It's part of the gauntlet of courtship--although we did start off rather backwards, what with the wedding going first.” He paused, and a little of the confidence went out of his voice. “...we did remember to invite him to the wedding, didn't we?”
s**t. Who had been in charge of invitations? Cian didn't remember. He tried to dismiss the niggling sensation of concern, distracting himself instead by gently extricating himself from beneath Antha and rolling her onto her stomach in order to reach the long row of tiny, pearly buttons that ran from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine. “You know, I can see why ladies used to need maids for this sort of thing,” he murmured, his long fingers dancing down the buttons with ease. Cian had experience getting women in and out of complicated clothing. “Although--” he paused, halfway down her spine, and laid a kiss where the ridge of bone rose under her skin. “I would consider it an absolute deprivation if I had to hire someone else to touch you like this.” With that, he slid his hands beneath the parted 'V' of fabric and up, cupping his hands around her shoulders as he eased the back of her dress apart and over them...

It took Rynn a long time to respond, until the pond's chill had nearly become second nature to his skin. He had known for a while what Alistair was referring to—the way his eyes, at times, grew as deep and old as Antha's—how his body, young and beautifully unblemished as it was, contained a vast wealth of sordid experience by virtue of the soul which inhabited it. He sometimes wondered if that was why Alistair had been drawn to him in the first place. Out of all their peers, Rynn was certainly the one who might understand, without ever forcing an explanation, what it was like to flourish in utter darkness. And what it was like to lose your innocence before the concept of such was even explained to you…
He tread the black waters and thought about wishes that pride or kindness would not allow him to make—for he was no Orpheus to the Eurydices of his brothers, nor did he pretend that they would have welcomed his rescue. The dead deserved their peace, what little of it they might be granted by the living. And it occurred to him, perhaps too late, that his wishes, as they had come to him, were nearly all regrets.
Was it any use to wish for a future?--Rynn was nearly certain that this was considered cheating. Futures couldn't be summoned at will, even by a djinn in a lamp; they had to be earned. Rynn knew well enough about that, at least, balancing power as though it were a ledger-book. There was nothing Rynn hated more than an unpaid debt, and that was all the magic he knew how to work—debts, contracts, and bargains with the dead.
Or maybe that was why Alistair and he got along so well. Airi had certainly spent more time as a dead man than anyone else Rynn knew.
The impulse to ask Do we have to go home? was almost impossible to resist, but Rynn turned and put his face into Alistair's chest until it subsided long enough for him to nod. “We'd better, before someone comes looking for us. I mean, d'you think Antha would ever honestly forgive me if I let you catch pneumonia from staying out swimming all night?” A wan twitch of a smile. The joke was bad, but it was preferable to the all-too-needy question that he truly wanted to ask.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“To be fair, Dorian---” Michael had that look on his face, that calm, sympathetic look of a patient father who did not judge. “---it was a very, very large mistake.” He laid a hand gently on his arm, inspecting the little wound on his finger. Once he had judged it was not terribly serious, he continued softly, “You and Antha have always had different ways of coping, maybe that’s why you can’t see eye to eye. You both have terrible abandonment issues, like most of your generation. But you protect yourself by distancing people from the start, by convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter, while Antha…” He sighed, brushing aside the hair on his forehead and trying to think how to put the mad workings of Antha’s mind into words. “She clings to people. She thinks if she binds them to her tightly enough, they can’t abandon her. But once that idea gets into her mind, that someone’s drawing away from her, that there’s the slightest chance they might abandon her…she panics, and she pushes them as far away from her as quickly as she can before they get the chance.” Michael smiled, ruefully, tapping the side of his head as he bustled around. “You children forget how closely I watch all of you. But I’m like a hawk. You grew up here, most of you, I raised you. I know you little monsters better than any of you would like.”
In the door, Lawrence interrupted with a great whoosh of a sigh, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. “That’s the real problem,” he muttered, rolling his eyes, “Everyone accuses Antha of coddling Dorian, but the rest of you do it, too. All of this you’re bitching about---being guilted and bound by the family, these sudden kids of yours, the whole thing with Melody, Antha not forgiving you…this is what happens in real life, Dorian. This is how everyone else in the world lives. We make mistakes, and we pay for them. But you never pay for yours, not until now.” He raked a hand back through his silver hair, suddenly looking very tired. “Don’t look at me like that, Uncle Michael. It’s time someone told him. Dorian---you’re a child. Of course you can’t handle adult responsibilities like this, you’ve never taken responsibility for anything in your life. While everyone else, even Antha and Courtland for christ’s sake, started growing up, taking responsibility for at least some of their actions, learning from their mistakes, you were out doing whatever you wanted without consequence.” The lawyer’s eyes went momentarily sharp, severe. “You could be a decent person, Dorian. That’s what I can’t forgive you for, that you could be perfectly decent except that in your mind, it’s always someone else’s fault. It’s always that someone is being too harsh on you, that they’re not being fair, that they’re looking down on you, that the whole world is somehow against you when you didn’t do anything wrong, you’re the only one that’s ever really hurt. You’re an absolute brat and a b*****d, Dorian, you’ve never been innocent in anything. You could say the same for a lot of the rest of us, but at least we admit it. And that’s why even Jack is a more capable adult than you.”
“Did you need something?” Michael cut in abruptly, before Lawrence’s words could get any sharper.
He glanced at his uncle, almost as if he’d forgotten, and then turned subdued. “Someone has to be blunt with him, at least for Malakai’s sake. How many people in this family has Dorian absolutely torn apart just to turn around and run away from the consequences? Antha, Malakai, and Oncle Stefan, at least. I’m sick of him whining about the s**t he’s done wrong, it got old a long time ago. But to answer your question, I came to let you know I’m taking Malakai to stay with me for a while. I don’t know how long, he needs some distance. That, and Melody and Magdalena will be leaving soon, if you wanted to see them off.” He gave Dorian one parting glance, as if to convey that he had absolutely no interest in anything Dorian could respond to his rant with, before turning to leave.
And then he held up one finger for them to wait, turning to add quietly, “Antha was crying for you in the hospital, Dorian. You abandoned her for some slut and she very nearly died, but she woke up from a coma sobbing and calling for you, and we couldn’t find you for a week. And you kept hurting her, over and over again, you could fill a book with all of the mistakes you’ve made towards Antha alone. And Nicolae? Nicolae tried to poison you three times after that. He laced your food with strychnine twice before he got his hands on some cyanide and soaked your clothes in it. Antha got rid of it all three times and they fought until he agreed to stop. But she never told you about any of that ugliness, did she? Just because someone doesn’t show you their feelings doesn’t mean they don’t exist, Dorian.” And then he was gone down the stairs.
Michael stayed behind, sighing and scratching his head. “It astounds me sometimes how opposite my sons are,” he murmured, shaking his head, “Nicolae throws his feelings everywhere at once, and Malakai withdraws completely.” But he dismissed the thought with a gesture, turning back to the babies. Dorian didn’t need to hear his inner fatherly concerns. “I won’t pile onto Lawrence’s rant. However, I have to correct you on one thing. It is our lives, Dorian. Everything you do affects us. And it’s terrible---more terrible than anything else you’ve done---to hear you dismissing us like that. We’re trying to help you. No matter how much you struggle with this situation, we’re trying to help you, but what’s it for if all you do is complain about your own rotten luck and how badly we treat you? It pushes everyone away. It’s ungrateful, and if you don’t learn how to appreciate what you have and what other people are doing for you, you’re going to end up alone. Not free, just alone. This world is cold, Dorian…you don’t want to see what it’s like without a family to fall back on in the end.”
Michael stopped, letting out a little sigh like a heavy stone. Subtly, quietly, Michael was hurt. But he waved Dorian away, murmuring, “Go on, I’ll finish up here.”

Magdalena was waiting for Dorian in the atrium when he came downstairs, holding onto her mother’s hand while they talked to Courtland. As soon as she saw him, she beamed, beginning excitedly, “Papa, Uncle Lawrence says I can go to school next week, and Uncle Courtland says it’s a fancy school, with uniforms and everything!”
Her present uncle gave a tight smile, muttering to Melody, “She has no idea what Catholic school entails, does she?”
“Not a bit,” she responded breezily, shrugging, “She’s hardly had a religious upbringing. She went to church with her friend’s family once, but she hated it. She ended up drawing hearts and bunnies in the margins of the bible and they called me to pick her up.”
Courtland grinned, turning and patting Magdalena’s head. “ ‘Atta girl.”
The child smiled beautifully at the compliment, before turning back to her father and continuing, “Uncle Courtland says we can’t come for dinner tomorrow, because the Magnus person is coming and it’s going to be hard on Aunt Evie, and mama has her tests all day.”
“Vittorio bribed her,” Melody sighed, “He said he’d treat us to dinner at the hospital restaurant if she’s good tomorrow.”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Uncle Tori says they have chocolate-strawberry cheesecake and I want it. I won’t follow any doctors around or play with the machines or anything.”
“And the surgical tools?” her mother prompted with narrowed eyes.
“I told you, I didn’t mean to take them! But I won’t play with them anymore, I promise.” The child pouted slightly, but drew an ‘X’ over her heart in a very familiar gesture, as if this was how her mother would know she was serious.
“Alright, alright,” Melody sighed, “Come on, infanta terrible, we have an early start tomorrow.”
Magdalena nodded, turning and throwing her arms demandingly out for Dorian until he lifted her up and then squeezing his neck in a hug, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I’ll come back the day after tomorrow, mama and Uncle Courtland promised.” And then she scrambled back to her feet, rushing past her mother to the car.
Sighing as the little hurricane left the building, Melody gave Courtland a passing smile and little nod of farewell before, reluctantly, turning her gaze on Dorian. Her color was not as bad as before, but she still looked distinctly pale and sickly, her eyes a little bloodshot. Her mouth opened as if she wanted to say something, before her eyes flashed and she clamped it shut, finally muttering instead, “Good night,” before hastily retreating.
Courtland shut the door behind them, sighing as if the day had taken everything out of him. “Mon dieu,” he muttered, massaging the back of his neck, “Everyone’s so emotionally shattered today. It’s exhausting. I really hope this whole Magnus thing ends up doing more good than harm.” He opened his eyes, turning a suddenly keen gaze on Dorian. “It really will be hard on her, I think. Apparently his resemblance to Leon is just uncanny. I can’t imagine what it must be like in her head right now. You might want to take a moment to think about that next time before you pull a Dorian and she snaps on you.” But he shook his head, breezing past Dorian and up the stairs. “Try to get some sleep, it’s going to be another long day.”

With the buttons undone, Antha rolled onto her side, gazing over at Cian with somewhat bleary, mockingly incredulous eyes. “Did you just use Spanish in this house? In this house, to a Mayfair? Why don’t you just turn the lights off and say ‘Candyman’ three times?” She shook her head, shifting until she could slip her dress off and kick it into the floor. “You’re lucky I don’t make you take French lessons.” But she yawned, carelessly, relaxing a bit more against him. “Of course he wasn’t invited to the wedding. Ignoring the fact that it was decided upon and occurred in the same day, Magnus…well, I told you, remember, he wasn’t exactly happy about it. His parents married because his mother was pregnant and then his father married my mother because she was pregnant, he didn’t want me falling into the same trap. Besides…he never would have been able to sit in a room with the entire Mayfair family. He might be able to handle the ones just in the house, but the whole damned clan at once would drive him over the edge. No, I didn’t even tell him until the next day, and then avoided his phone calls for a week until he calmed down. He’s terribly intense, and Swedish is difficult enough to understand when someone’s not hysterically screaming it.”
Another yawn, her eyes fluttering closed unbidden, before she began murmuring drowsily, “He used to tell me Swedish folktales. Scandinavians love folktales, and they’re all terrifying. When I told him I’d married you and everything was fine, he started ranting about Kitta Grau. She was this witch in Swedish folklore that even the devil was afraid of. Supposedly, the devil was trying to cause discord between the happiest couple in the world. Kitta Grau mocked him for not being able to do it and wagered that she could. So she went to the wife and told her that she had a wonderful husband, but all men have evil in them. However, she said if the wife shaved under her husband’s chin, it would remove the last little bit of evil from him. Then she went to the husband and told him that he had a wonderful wife, but she had psychotic episodes and would slit his throat. So the husband went to take his nap one day but was paranoid and only pretended to sleep. The wife then went to shave under his chin, thinking it could do nothing but good, and the husband became convinced she was trying to slit his throat and became enraged, so they fought and accidentally killed one another.” She shifted, her eyes parting in a slitted gaze directed up at Cian. “That’s how Magnus thinks, in the Old World ways, with misfortune and drama. He also tells just the worst bedtime stories, but that’s beside the point.” Eyes fluttering closed again, her voice grew sleepily thick. “He thinks you’re the wolf. You have to show him you’re the hunter.” And then she drifted off, her breath going slow and steady with sleep.

For a moment, Alistair just chuckled very softly in Rynn’s ear, wading quietly in the water. “Come on,” he murmured, taking him by the hand and heading back towards land, shaking out his hair and slipping on his clothes. They headed back towards First Street initially, until they came upon the main road, mere blocks from the house, and Alistair grabbed Rynn’s hand to stop him, instead hailing a taxi and dragging the other boy in with him. He gave the driver an address---only a street corner, actually---and then sat back, silently staring out the window. The only thing he did the entire ride was to take his ringing phone from his pocket, glance at Julien’s name on the screen, and then shut it off entirely.
The cab took them to a lesser-used street of the Quarter, mostly residential, from which Alistair set out as if he was intimately acquainted with the way forward. It was only a few short blocks before they came upon an iron gate leading into a dark, small alley, through which he led Rynn, ending up in a courtyard between the surrounding apartment buildings. It was populated by several narrow two-story cottages which had been slave quarters long ago. They had since been fixed up, the old wood patched or replaced, the violet paint fresh and clean, but were still distinctly ancient, and never built to be aesthetically pleasing. He went to the nearest one, pattering up the stairs, before finally turning a little secretive smirk on Rynn. “You’ve heard everyone talk about it, right? All of the secret little places Antha had where no one could ever find her?” He’d climbed up on the banister as he spoke, which was wobbly at best, bracing himself on a wooden column as he felt around the molding of the overhang and finally withdrew a key from a loose board, turning and hopping back down to the porch.
The inside was small---cozy, an optimist might say---with a little sitting area on one side and a kitchenette on the other, a set of stairs against the opposite wall. In opposition to Mayfair Manor, it was decorated with an art deco flair, all of the furniture worn and faded, the few ornaments and pictures slightly tarnished. Alistair passed through here without so much as switching on the light, beckoning Rynn to follow him up the creaking stairs into the slightly less sparsely appointed bedroom. The entire floor was only slightly larger than the master bathroom in Antha and Cian’s room.
“Most of her hideouts were hotel rooms,” he continued explaining then, unfastening the buttons of his damp shirt and draping it over a nearby lamp, which he consequently switched on, throwing pale yellow light across the room, “A few apartments. Antha liked to hide in the middle of a crowd, it was amusing. But I liked this place best. It’s…calm. You can hear the crickets.” He glanced sidelong, giving Rynn one of those suddenly keen, perceptive looks. “You didn’t want to go home, right?”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian did not sleep well even at the best of times. Tonight, he took a bottle of wine with him to the attic. The last few nights, he’d fallen asleep on the sofa in the library, but after everything that had happened this evening, the house below felt claustrophobic. The familiar creaks and groans as its timbers settled, which Dorian knew so well that he could nearly set his watch by them, served only to grate further upon his already-shredded nerves.
He’d tried to tell them. Nobody could say that he hadn’t tried.
Opening up the dust-grey lace curtains, Dorian let a draft of cold moonlight into the room like a wind. He’d managed to stifle his emotions (mostly) for the past few days, but he was worried that Magdalena had seen it—the way his face had gone white as a sheet whilst upstairs, the tension in his hands and jaw when he hugged her goodbye, becoming, for a moment, the mechanical automaton that he was supposed to be—reciting lines like, be good to your mother and i’ll see you soon—of course you’ll go to the fancy school, if you want—and giving her a artificial-silk-flower smile, always smile for the children.
Perhaps that was what he was supposed to be: a mute, mindless, and totally agreeable automaton. It would be better if he had a script, just so he’d never be in danger of ‘pulling a Dorian’ again. He poured himself a glass of wine, far more than necessary, and savagely drained it, remembering Lawrence’s inditement of his character.
Lawrence! Of all the smug bastards that had to confront him tonight!
And that was the ******** worst of it, wasn’t it? Dorian couldn’t even remember the last time that Lawrence had spoken to him, and now he acted as though—well, as though the rumors and hearsay espoused by all the other cousins were credible fact. You would think a lawyer would have known better. Dorian had very nearly hit him—might have done, if Lawrence hadn’t scuttled away like the vermin that he was as soon as his pronouncement of Dorian’s inferior moral aptitude was completed.
It never seemed to occur to any of them that, while Dorian had been gone, he hadn’t been indulging exclusively in rampant hedonism.
No, nobody ever believed that Dorian ever had a reason to do anything, unless it involved getting his d**k wet.
I mean, a little rampant hedonism, yes, but it wasn’t my raison d’être.
Another glass of wine, and he quit his pacing and fell into one of the dusty, white-sheeted chairs that the attic contained so many of, French relics from the Belle Epoque which Julien would have murdered in the name of. Propping his feet up on another of the seats, he leaned back and tested his balance briefly before slouching down comfortably.
Part of the reason Dorian was drinking tonight was because he didn’t want more dreams. It was irresponsible as a parent, waking up with a hangover, and he’d probably get s**t for it at breakfast, but it was the dreams that got to him worse than anything they could say, it was the dreams that woke him up at 3a.m. and left him tossing and turning until sunrise, and after two nights he welcomed the idea of a thick, black, alcoholically-induced oblivion that would carry him through until morning without interrupton
It was always the same dream, or at least it started the same.
Her name had been Michelle, but she’d gone by Mitch. Her tomboyish sense of style—scrappy jackets, fraying patches, an assortment of various piercings, close-cropped hair— and slightly masculine, exotically slanted features only made that nickname all the more confusing, but Dorian had gotten along with her. They’d frequented the same bars often enough, and although she’d always laughed off his attempts to hit on her whenever he’d been prowling for someone to take home, he’d never taken offense. They’d been friends, even though such a word ordinarily meant nothing to Mayfairs outside of their own clan.
She’d been ambitious, too—always talking about her next scheme to move out of her parent’s house, where she’d go once her career took off. He’d made light of those big dreams, comedy was no way to make a living, but she was young when he met her—perhaps two to three years younger than himself—and who knows? Maybe she would have made it, if she hadn’t given up.
In his dreams, Mitch always shows up dripping wet and talkative, but Dorian can’t hear what she says; just see her lips moving and her open, laughing mouth when he tries to fight his way through the river towards her. Every time he gets close enough to reach for her, she slips under the water and away, a ripple of golden skin underneath the surface, like a mermaid that doesn’t want to be caught.
Then, he wakes up with the back of his shirt stuck to his sweaty spine.
He doesn’t know if it’s bringing up Antha’s overdose, and what happened that night, or the sudden introduction of four children (and all the ensuing responsibility) into his life which brings Mitch to mind. He’d heard about what happened to her, although none of the details had been easy to pry out of their mutual acquaintances—nobody wanted to talk about it. It’d been too fresh of a wound, too messy, too many regrets to stomach.
In the dream, he can see the roundness of her belly as she stands waist-deep in the water that comes up to his ears, the current that makes each stroke of his arms a struggle. She reminds him of the Madonna, except the traditional expression of beatific ecstasy is nowhere to be found. Tonight, she’s scolding him—mockingly, cruelly. He can see the angry knit of her brows, her frustration in the tautness of her mouth.
Tonight, he does not struggle. He does not swim towards her. He lies passively in the current, waiting for it to sweep him away, and although he is motionless, it carries him contrary to its direction. As he floats past her, he can finally make out the words, her voice despite the distortion of a gurgling, water-logged gasp:
“I told you so.”
and he wakes up, with a noise like a scream halfway though his throat, which is quickly strangled and silenced. He has to grip the edge of the chair to keep from falling off.
The wine bottle is still half-full, and although a cloud is over the moon by now, there is enough light for him to pour a third, trembling glass-full.
Dorian tries to tell himself that the dreams are not a premonition, but he is not sure if he believes himself. Instead, reluctantly, his gaze drifts towards the airship door.
It’s been years since he’d been inside, it felt like. He could still remember his own mask, and the sour, hot scent of his own breath within the narrow paper bag. Almost unconsciously, he draws himself upright, and steps closer to the door.
That was where they’d gone to punish wickedness, hadn’t they? In a true court of justice. Another step nearer. Surely, they would know what he deserved. If he ventured inside now, the imps might eat him all up, so wicked was he, leave nothing but bones behind. The idea sounds strangely attractive, in the dead midst of the witching hour, and he surveys the portal with the wineglass in his hand, swirling it in a kind of rote memorization of good form.
Then, impulsively, he reaches for the handle.
He knows what is waiting beyond. But tonight, even that seems better than staying in this house.

Rynn seemed a little star-struck. He’d felt it when they first arrived, and again when they entered the apartment—a jangling of bright noise against his skin, the tell-tale scent of Antha’s perfume in his nose as he passed over the threshold. Even he could pick out a few distinctive wards in the place—for security, for words whispered in perfect trust, for peace of mind and the prohibition of enemies.
It startled him, a bit, to feel a zap from that last one, like a prickle of electricity along the tops of his arms. It did not sting, but it recognized what he was, who he had been, and it gave him due warning. Antha’s work was unmistakable. He turned slowly, in the warm, soft light of the little copper lamp, holding his hands out at his waist with all the fingers spread slightly, as though he was an antennae searching to tune itself to the correct position. It was funny—the whole apartment reeked of her, and yet Rynn could not imagine Antha here, picking out these small, simplistic ornaments, putting up spices on the rack in the kitchenette, sleeping underneath the thick goosedown coverlet upon the bed until noon. She belonged as utterly to the grandiose, pseudo-victoriana decor of Satis House and Mayfair Manor, as surely as Rynn belonged to the motley assortment of baroque and neoclassical architecture that was Llyr’s Court.
“It’s very pretty. I knew Antha owned property in the city, but I always thought it was business-related rather than—“
Rynn sneezed, halfway through the vague gesture that was meant to indicate the room around them. The chill of the lake had already begun to seep through his shirt and deprived of the balmy night air outside, he was actually starting to feel it. Beginning to unbutton his shirt: “Do you know all of Antha’s secrets, then?” he asked Alistair, more to tease than out of any real expectation that he would receive a straight answer. “Only, it does make me wonder. She must have known that you would, when she brought you back, but she tried anyways. In my house--”
In his house, a sibling who matched one's own talents would have been seen as a rival, and killed off at the soonest possible opportunity. Rynn did not elaborate--simply cut himself off, and fell silent listening to the crickets. He could not imagine that Antha did not know that they were here tonight, not with the sound/sensation that the wards had made. He’d known what that was like, once: to have a twin whose every thought you could not help but hear, whose every movement seemed to align with yours, the signal beam that you could track across the world, no matter the distance, the person whose distress rang in your ears like alarm bells. In a way, he was jealous that Airi and Antha still retained that closeness.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Likely, Dorian hadn’t expected anyone to come find him. No one should have, at this time of night. But if someone did, it wouldn’t be difficult to guess who. Sure enough, before he could even touch the handle, a hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him around, face to face with a bleary-eyed, bed-ruffled Antha. She simply looked at him for a moment, with those tired eyes, before very abruptly the palm of her hand came soundly across his cheek with a resounding slap.
“Are you <******** out of your mind?” she whispered, as if she didn’t quite dare to break the silent spell of the sleeping house. Grabbing his sleeve, she yanked him away from the door and flung him into the chaise lounge, standing next to it in her little silk pajamas with one hand on her hip, the other irritably taking up his bottle of wine. She didn’t say anything about it---what was the point?---but took a long drink, turning and dropping down beside him. “You’re a pain in the a**, Dorian.” It was too late in the night for niceties and preamble, too late to even chastise him. Antha was exhausted---she’d been exhausted to the point of tears for weeks, and it showed, but she’d woken with a start at that faint little trill from the attic, the excitement of the airship at being opened, and gone upstairs before he could make such a mistake. “But I’m still here, aren’t I?” She sighed, as if none of this surprised her---as if it was all ridiculous but there was no help for it. For a while, while Dorian had been in charge of saving Antha from overdoses and bailing her out of jail, she had been in charge of saving him from more or less his own complete stupidity and dangerous theatrics. She had gotten the short end of the stick on that deal, but god knew no one else was going to do it, especially after Melody. “I might never forgive you, but I’m still here. So talk, then. But don’t give me any of your usual bullshit, I’m so tired I want to cry, I don’t want to hear the ‘poor Dorian’ tirade and I don’t want to be here bickering all night. If you were willing to walk into the airship alone only this far into the bottle---” She held the wine up, swirling the bottle to illustrate that there was still a fair amount left. “---there’s actually something on your mind besides the usual dramatics.”
She took another swig, sighing and reaching out to cup her hand around his neck, bringing his head down to lay in her lap. “You’re only alone because you think you are, Dorian. Your idea of family is so screwed up…” She shook her head. It wasn’t important. “It doesn’t matter what we think of you, or you think of us, any more than it really matters what your children think of you. You understand that much now, don’t you? When it comes down to the wire, we’re blood. We share the same corner of human creation, all of the little molecules of our bodies come from the same fount. Family is of paramount importance because they’ll always be there in the end, no matter what’s happened. We put such gravity on it because we’re terrible, troublesome people and we need this. We need to know that at the end of the day, someone is sitting at home who will still love us, even if we come home covered in blood.” She’d always done this, once upon a time, as Dorian was bound to remember. Whenever he’d been upset---and Dorian, terribly sensitive, dramatic Dorian, was always upset about something---she had laid his head in her lap and gently stroked his golden curls, as she did now, if somewhat less familiarly than she used to. That had usually been in the garden, in the old days, under the apricot tree, in the sun, picking the petals from daisies.
But that was then and this was now, in the dusty attic, in the dark, Antha with her mussed hair and Dorian with his rumpled clothes. Neither of them were golden little children anymore. This probably suited them better now. “You used to understand that, when we were children. No matter how terrible we were, we came home at the end of the day and the other was here. Everything was alright because someone was still here for us.” He could complain all he wanted about her holding ‘one mistake’ over his head, for being unreasonably unforgiving, but he wasn’t considering the mistake.
They had judged her. When Courtland had come and taken her to the hospital, when Lawrence and Vittorio had come to help, they had judged her for what she’d done. When she’d woken up, she’d seen the look in their eyes and for a little while, Antha had been completely alone, because she’d always relied on Dorian to be there for her when she did the terrible thing and he had let her completely down. Their entire relationship had been built on taking care of each other and he had failed miserably, he had let her almost die and then left her alone with people who didn’t understand. It didn’t matter that it was an accident, that he hadn’t meant to, that he couldn’t have known what would happen. She couldn’t have trusted him again if she’d tried.
But it wasn’t a mistake she could have made even if she’d tried. Especially Dorian…she couldn’t leave Dorian alone, because he’d already alienated the rest of the family. He needed her, even if he was loathed to admit it, needed her to take care of him, to not judge him for whatever terrible things he did out in the world. “Talk,” she murmured, quietly, her fingers combing soothingly through his hair, “I’ll listen.”

Alistair quirked an eyebrow, facing Rynn with a quizzical look. “You know better than anyone what it’s like. It doesn’t matter with Antha and me, knowing each other’s secrets. We could have secrets from one another if we wanted, because we’d never pry past each other’s barriers, but we’ve never felt the need. I am Antha, and Antha is me. A long time ago, we were the same person. And then we split---in part to accommodate the two bodies we were expected to claim, but foremost because we had reached our limit, because we couldn’t accumulate any more power in our singular mass without collapsing under the weight of it, so we had to become two entities, bound but separate. But there’s always the part of us that’s the same. It’s just natural.” He shrugged, as if it was the simplest thing. “What did Antha have to be worried about, bringing me back? I was always there anyways, in the back of her mind. If anything, we’re further apart with me in the flesh. But never a threat---we’re always of the same mind, even if we disagree. We’re always on the same side.”
He stopped, visibly switching gears, head tilting as he looked at Rynn, reaching out and pulling him close enough to kiss. “You’re covered in lake muck,” he murmured, before drawing him into the cramped little bathroom separated only by a curtain. There was a window on the far side, positioned so that the moonlight hit the frosted glass of the shower doors as Airi slid them open, turning the water faucets. “You’re probably in worse danger of getting a cold than me,” he teased, pressing another kiss to his lips, his fingers popping open buttons, “And while it is so very tempting to see you feverish and helpless, we should probably warm you up. Just leave it to me.”
Afterwards, with their damp clothes hanging over the door of the shower stall, Airi was sitting on the edge of the bed by the open window, leaning back against the dented iron bedframe with a cigarette. “She doesn’t know we’re here,” he said after a long time, quietly, as if continuing an earlier conversation, or else responding to something Rynn hadn’t said, “My sister. I don’t let her in, when it has to do with you, and she doesn’t push. Not unless she senses danger, but this hardly qualifies as danger. And she wouldn’t come looking…not today, of all days, and not tomorrow. She trusts me to find my way home again, like a cat, when the time is right.” He threw Rynn a glance. “You’re jealous, I think. You wish you were still like Antha and I am. But you’re wrong. The scale is wrong. You drifted apart once, but we keep separating, further and further apart…from one entity to two, from one living body and a ghost in the back of her head to two bodies, walls of earthly flesh between us.” He realized, of course, that he was saying too much. Antha had hardly even whispered little clues---she didn’t want to talk about it---but Alistair was less particular. And Rynn might understand, if he ever learned the full truth of it, which couldn’t be said for most people, particularly Mayfairs. Mayfairs understood ghosts, but the Calais had a better understanding of spirits, and Rynn in particular understood twins.
Besides, Rynn could never tell. No one would believe him. “People forget. Everyone forgets.” He put the cigarette briefly to his lips, the cherry burning brightly in the darkness, his gaze on the window as he blew ribbons of smoke out into the night breeze. “You all go ‘round and ‘round again, like a carousel, and every time you lose something, the large degree of power it takes to meld with flesh and with it all the memories of before, and it doesn’t come back. Once you have enough power, you stop, you linger, but then you just…forget. Forget who you were once---your name, your face, the things you liked, the people you loved. And then, you start the carousel again. But Evie and I…we stopped, and we mostly forgot, and we took so, so long to get back on the carousel that when we did, we remembered. Not at once, and not completely, but it came back to us over time, that long stretch of millennia since the last time we’d been on the carousel. And then when the flesh was gone, we lingered and we probably would have forgotten again, except we didn’t get the chance. We were forced back on the carousel, except this time we were too great, we had too much power, we would have collapsed. So we split. It…made sense, at the time, tearing in two. It was what we had to do to survive. It was only afterwards, when there was a definitive me and a definitive her, that we regretted it, but it could never be undone. We can never be whole again, and our memory is too long to ever be erased like everyone else’s.”
The boy stood, going over to the window and flicking the smoldering cigarette butt into the courtyard, a little wry grin twisting his lips. “The only funny thing in all of it is that they’ve been looking for us, all this time, and they’ve never even begun to guess that we’ve been here all along. How could they? No one should have been able to take a turn again so soon. It’s only because of our power and our mother’s frantic ambition that we’re here now. We didn’t have a choice, she dragged us back. Well---” His head tilted, sighing reluctantly as if he’d caught himself in a lie. “We might have been angry, if it was anyone else. We took one turn on the carousel because the opportunity was too good to resist, we didn’t want to go around again, but this…this was too good to resist too, in the end. Even if she’d given us a choice, I don’t think we could have passed it up. Everyone wanted to be Antha and Alistair Mayfair---you saw them once, when Nero took you to the place between, all of those other great spirits that have been hounding Antha since she was born, who were vying for our bodies from conception until we claimed them. All she had to do was call us and we simply stepped through the fray and took the prize, because we were better than them. These kinds of bodies, the ones that can hold great spirits---old, old creatures who stepped off the carousel, who have been accumulating power since the dawn of recorded history, like we were---they only come around once every millennium or more.” He gave a little ruminative sigh, tilting his head back and glancing up at the rafters. “If we’d known what it meant, we would have found a way around it. If we’d known when she summoned us that taking another body would mean ripping our self in two, we probably never would have stepped back on the carousel again. But it’s done now. We’re here, with the memory of all those eons when we were the same, and the knowledge that we can never go back. Honestly, I would kill for the relationship you have with Liesse, because you only know such a small degree of separation.”
And then, so very typically, Alistair shrugged, as if it was all of such little consequence, dropping back down on the side of the bed. “I had a point originally, I think. I seem to have lost it for a moment there.”  

[Okimiyage]

When Rynn re-emerged from the sauna that he’d made of the bathroom back into the loft, he was shaking the last of the water from the tips of his hair, one of Antha’s thick white towels looped around his hips, his face flushed from the heat. He’d stayed in for longer than Airi, letting the water drum away the fog of exhaustion that was beginning to cloud his vision. But Airi seemed to know exactly when he returned, without even glancing over, because he started talking, and Rynn sat down on the bed next to him.
Rynn looked at him, for a long time, and there was a queer kind of light in his eyes that did not correspond to the low glow of the lamps.
“Sometimes, it makes me nervous when you talk like you’re not a person.”
Without realizing it, he’d been holding his breath for some time—he let it go now in a faint, airless laugh. He ought to have felt far more than nervous, Rynn realized, but instead there was this sort of…anticipation, the impending promise of curiosity to be satisfied.
“Although it shouldn’t surprise me, at this point.”
As far as their psychic talents went, Rynn did not have a patch on his lover, but he wasn’t blind, either. There were times when he caught glimpses of Airi’s mind—not so much the shape of it, as with others, but as far as effect went: looking at it gave him a distinct sense of vertigo. It was like being unable to tell the difference between a massive object at a vast distance and a small object up close. He was beginning to suspect this was intentional. And it made Rynn feel—well, like a fisherman who’d never seen a tsunami before now. Understandable how the concept of sea gods might come about, then…
“I suppose if you remember being soundly merged with one another, then any kind of schism must seem ghastly.” he murmured. “I suppose I had better count myself lucky that I don’t remember that far back. I think, in a way, that forgetting is meant to be a blessing for humans. If I remembered the way Liesse and I were as clearly as you remember your time as part of Antha, it would certainly cause me grief…and if I remembered a time of existence before the body I live in now, I think it would perhaps drive me mad.”
He leaned back onto the bed alongside and opposite Alistair, propping himself up at the foot of the bed so that he could look back at the other. His damp hair left little splotches atop the quilt.
“Did you know that Alistair would—“ He stopped himself, shut his eyes. “Sorry—that you would be trapped in Antha’s head as a ghost for nearly the next two decades? Did you know that she’d bring you back? Was all of this just—predestination, do you think, or prophecy, or just blind chance that—” we found each other?—no, you sappy ********, get your head out of that gutter harlequin romance trash, “—that any of this came to pass?”
Because if the former was the case, well, it explained why Antha was so damn set on going to face her death at Nero’s hands, without raising the call for an army. She would have had one, too.
Then, slowly, he sat up. He hadn’t thought about Nero in a while. “Airi, what does that mean for you? When her body…stops…what happens to the part of yourself—herself that was inside of it? Does it go back to—wherever you are, when you’re off the carousel? Or does it cease to exist?”

Quote:

"if you don’t take this seriously, nobody in the family will ever forgive you.”

When Antha grabbed him, it seemed to break Dorian out of his trance: he gave this wretched, guttural kind of sob and slammed his hand against the door, immediately—and fell back just as quickly, as the hollow boom of his knock seemed to hurl him physically away from the portal. Glass tinkled as the wine-flute shattered in the corner, against one of the looming steamer trunks.
Dorian didn’t cry out, although it had to hurt, that kind of force. And then came Antha’s slap, and again he did not stir, his eyes fixed glassily on hers. His hands were cupped to his chest, but they were trembling.
He went obediently to the chaise lounge, when directed, and when she sat down beside him and began to stroke his hair—
That was what almost undid him, right there, the mere pressure of a gentle hand against his head. For a quarter of a second, he could shut his eyes and pretend everything was like it used to be—and that thought alone made him want to cry, because everything was so different now.
His fault.
He’d been hearing that so often, from so many people, so it must be true. He shut his eyes briefly, his face screwing up painfully, and then said,
“Doesn’t matter.” His voice was raw, and stiff, without any of the usual poetry or flourishes. He opened his eyes, a maudlin cornflower gaze that was as blunt as a billy club to the head. Like she was a light too bright to be looked at, eye contact only lasted for a minute before he squinted and shut them again.
“You already made up your mind about me, that night they gave me Lily, and Briar, and Belle.”
This seemed to exhaust him. It was one of the few times than he had used all of their names, in quick succession, and he had purposely refrained from doing so, because it seemed only to make them more real to him. His children. The names he’d given them. No doubt their mothers had names for them, too.
“Pierce said it himself, that night, and, my god, I guess he was right. You really are the only one in the world that’s on my side. And like you said, too, it’s my fault.” His voice was pitched higher than usual, and unsteady despite the fact that his liver should have been in fine processing form that night.
“I was the one who went along with it. I agreed to the pact between us. But I don’t remember. I shouldn’t have been that drunk, I know I couldn’t have been, not on wine, but everything there was—different. The whole world is twilight, there, filled with fog, and you never see the days pass by, never feel the time disappear. There’s nothing but the night before and then waking up in a hospital. You’d think that a week of your life—“
He was rambling, he realized. It must have sounded like nonsense. It had felt like nonsense at the time, like an atmosphere made out of every illicit drug that humanity had concocted.
“You don’t remember, but you must have deserved it. That’s what her family told her, too, you know? Mitch.”
And there came that horrible, mocking laugh that Dorian was capable of unleashing, although previously it had always been upon his enemies, and not himself. “I told her that it couldn’t be that bad, that she’d pull through, just wait it out, but she just—“ he threw up a hand, let his palm open towards the ceiling as though flinging the memory away.
“I hated her for giving up, and then I hated her for taking me away from you on the night that it mattered most.” he said, quietly. “As I’m sure Magdalena would hate me. But if none of it matters, their opinions, her opinion, then it makes it so, so easy to be selfish.”
A pause, and he let his hand fall to his side.
“Everyone keeps telling me that family will be there for me, when nobody else is. But whenever I try to ask for their support, I think…I know that I disappoint them. I think it would be so much simpler if I wasn’t…there. Here. I—“ he had a hard time drawing the next breath. Tears were leaking from his eyes, freely and steadily. “I wanted to go into the airship because it’s fair. Once you get punished, you’re forgiven. And I could come back, then, after I was punished enough. I could hang as a mermaid until all the sin had leaked out of me.” Dorian paused, and took a deep breath, as though he was about to let Antha in on some great secret:
“I thought about killing myself, but that would only make Magdalena sad.”
Dully, he went on, “But if I did, it would work out perfectly. The family would take care of itself. That’s the one thing I can rely on it for. Hell, you broke into a burning orphanage for Henry.”
That, at least, had some trace of humor, but it was clear he’d been thinking about this seriously despite the brief interlude of levity.
“Courtland and Jack could take care of the children. Courtland—” a smile twitched at the corner of Dorian’s mouth, and for a moment, some of his old beauty shone through. “He’d be a wonderful father. He’s so kind.”
He’d thought that he was done with crying, but then he felt the familiar heat blooming in the corner of his eyes. “I’m not looking for sympathy. I don’t want pity. I need help. I know that I’m nothing without this family. I know that I’ve made mistakes, god, I’ve let my guard down more than once. How do I come back from that? At this point—I don’t know how. And I’m so scared, Antha.” His voice cracked. “I know it’s childish, but I’m scared. I don’t know what kind of father I can be like this. It’s not like the Mayfairs have always been a stable, supportive family environment, and what if they end up just as ******** up as me?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a little while, Antha simply listened, silent, her nimble fingers gently smoothing his golden curls back from his temple, slipping them softly behind his ear. And then, so very softly, she gave a breath that somewhat resembled a laugh, or perhaps a sigh, or both. “And there it is,” she whispered softly when he finished, “There it is…you’ve hit bottom, Dorian. You’ve scrapped with it for a long time, but here you are at last, at the end of your rope. You’re not falling anymore…there’s nowhere to go but up from here.” She bent over---and for a moment there was that old familiarity, the physical comfort, those walls evaporating---and pressed a kiss to his temple, as she had when they were children. “Start again, Dorian. Stop dwelling on the past. Every time someone reminds you of it, every time someone thinks badly of you for what you’ve done, you give up on moving forward. Just stop. Keep moving forward until they see what you can be.” Her cheek fell to rest naturally on the curve of his neck, like kittens nestled together in their little basket. “You’ve never admitted that you need us before, do you realize that? You breeze in and out like don’t need us, like you tolerate us because we’re here. No one is going to help you if you don’t ask Dorian. Even if they did…how would they know what to do if you don’t tell them what you need?” A very soft sigh escaped her lips, her fingers idly twisting a little lock of his hair as she closed her eyes. “You’re going to be fine. You are. But you have to open up. When something’s on your mind, say it. When you need help, ask. And when someone thinks the worst of you, prove them wrong. You’re the only father your children have, you know that. It’s…surprisingly easy, more than you can imagine, not to fall back into bad habits, once you have them. Surprisingly easy to always do your best without even realizing it, because it’s for them. But you have to change, and you can’t turn around and change your mind just because things are hard or the others don’t think you can.”
Slowly, quietly, Antha lifted her head again, rubbing her tired eyes before her hand fell back to his hair. “I’m going to take away this wine, and you’re going to sleep this off, and then tomorrow, everything will be new. You have to trust me on that, Dorian, just trust me and look at it fresh in the morning.” And then, a final time, to drive the point across, “You’re going to be fine, Dorian. I promise. I give you my absolute and ultimate word, and you know my word is law.” The smallest smile flitted across her lips, one of the old sweet smiles, acknowledging that she had made a joke, before she pressed another gentle kiss to his forehead. “It’s alright to be scared. It’s terrifying, all of it. But you’re going to be fine, cher. You are capable of doing this right, no matter what anyone thinks of you. Opinion doesn’t affect the outcome.”
She almost moved. Almost. But then she sat still, with her hand across the top of his head, his cheek on her leg, and suddenly did something that she hadn’t in a very long time. Very softly, she quoted, “‘Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.’” The softest sigh, pulling a blanket from the back of the chaise lounge and easing it over Dorian, tucking it around his shoulders. “Go to sleep, little lovely boy. I’ll be here, I’ll chase away the demons. Go to sleep and everything will be better in the morning.”

Alistair was silent for several moments, his gaze directed at the window but on something else, something very, very far away. “I don’t know, really. We’ll always be connected, but I don’t know if she’ll linger as ‘Antha’. When you die…either you cling to your old life, you linger as a ghost, or you let go. But Antha and I haven’t forgotten entirely in a long time.” He sighed, the faintest whisper of a breath, stretching and leaning back until his head was laid against Rynn’s shoulder, his eyes fluttering dreamily closed. “It was the strangest thing, you know, we didn’t completely remember the time before last, we had little scraps. We remembered worshipping the sun, thinking it was a god that could die, praying every night around a fire that tomorrow it would be reborn, or else the world would collapse around us. And then one day, the last time we were alive…oh, it was the strangest ******** thing. It came back to us. One day we were in a museum in London, looking down at this withered little old mummy and all of the pretty things they’d found in its tomb, and it was us. And it all came back to us, that old sense of self. We were so disturbed. We remembered dancing in the sun, painting our skin with a golden tincture for ceremonies, and there we were, the body we’d lived in, petrified and dusty and dry, all of our carefully hoarded provisions for the afterlife sitting in glass cases. We were so angry that we plotted for two centuries, until half of us was Antha, with her resources, and she threatened and bribed that museum until she bought our old body and all of our things that they’d taken from our tomb and sent them back, to a new tomb on private property, with security, and laid it back to rest.” He laughed once, dryly. “Back then, for a split second, we were so, so very angry that we’d never become Osiris. We paid every extra penny we ever made for spells for the afterlife, and they were all lies. And then we thought ‘no’. We had, in a way. We’d managed to step off the carousel, to grow powerful, the closest thing to a god we could be. We’d never become Osiris, but…thousands and thousands of years later, we’d been drifting somewhere---somewhere so green, green fields and green mountains and little crystal creeks---and we’d felt this little, inexplicable spark. And we followed it all the way here, all the way to some poor servant girl living in a terrible little hut, her mind completely ravaged with vampire blood---Sleet’s blood, scars all over her neck from his attack---her dress torn from some bratty little French aristocrat she worked for, the first signs of his child growing in her, and we thought ‘yes, this is what it was all for.’ We’d been in the afterlife, a spirit, and then we’d followed the call here and there it was…a god on earth, a first-generation witch, a match for our unearthly power. We’d faced the trials of death and we were reborn.”
His eyes opened gently, slightly dazed with recollection. “I suppose it made sense to Mary Beth, calling us. She’d worked so hard for her magnificent child, a child to revive our blood, to strengthen our family. Didn’t it make such perfect sense to animate that child with the person who began it all---the founder of our family, the wellspring of our blood?” His gaze shifted, settling on Rynn and narrowing. “It becomes distant once you die, your life. Who you were. I still am Deborah, or at least half of her, I remember every detail of that life. But it feels…removed. It---” He struggled for the words for a moment, trying to find the right ones to convey the feeling, but there was no such thing. So instead he showed him, with the slightest touch on his fingers, with the memory of being a child and standing in that little rickety hut, bare feet on the dirt floor, lifting the hem of sullied skirts and moving to the cupboard. There were thoughts---lists of ingredients, the location of certain tools, the idea that this was the beginning of something new. Maman was gone, her corpse hanging by a rope from the rafters, her blood draining into a little basin, and she would have all the proper rituals to honor her. And then she---that sense of self, not particularly Deborah though it was her, simply self---would be alone, but free. There was some little whisper in the back of her mind of the Talamascan, the one she’d never spoken to but had been lurking for months, who had approached maman about her. He felt like…destiny. She couldn’t describe it, it was not love---not yet, at least---but there was something about him that made her see miles into the future, that made her certain of some success, of greatness. There was something else, a newer thought, whispering that the Talamascan, Petyr, had been the one to solidify their bloodline. If he hadn’t been the father of their children, the Mayfairs would not have amounted to what they did.
But none of this was Deborah. It had been her, physically, at the time, but it was no longer. It wasn’t Alistair either, or Antha. It was a greater sense of overarching self, something that was greater than all three of them, that encompassed them all, and to a lesser degree some shadow of an Egyptian priest long before that, a girl stringing seashells together by the river, and the faintest hint of anonymous men and women before that who could never really be recalled, their concrete memory lost.
“A ‘person,’ you say…people are temporal, Rynn. We are flesh and circumstance. But there’s something beneath it, something eternal. You want to attach a sense of personhood to this body, but I can’t see it that way. I have a greater sense of self that is not ‘Alistair Mayfair,’ but he is part of it. He’s a piece of me.” Slowly, he sat up straight again, pressing his lips so very softly against Rynn’s. “That’s not a bad thing. I don’t know anything about ‘fate,’ I don’t know what is predestined, or if it is at all. But that’s fine. It would be bad if I was only Alistair Mayfair, if I could only speak for him.” His fingers traced the curve of Rynn’s jaw, so lightly they were hardly there, his lips pressing a soft, slow kiss just under his ear, whispering, “Would you ever feel safe if I could only say the sense of self in this body is the one that loves you? Be glad that I have a greater consciousness, because I can speak for that eternal sense of self, too.”  

[Okimiyage]

The kiss between them came and broke, but Rynn did not seem relieved, strangely enough. On the contrary, he appeared to be thinking deeply, although when Airi sat back then he followed almost unconsciously, nestling up against him.
“I’m glad, in a way.” he said, mildly. “I always used to wonder what would have happened to the ancestors. You have no idea how—“ he stopped himself.
Well, Alistair, of all people, might have an idea.
“I was immensely disturbed by the idea of ‘Heaven’ when it was introduced to me, you know. I think one of my older brothers found a Bible somewhere in the house, although only God knows why we had one in the first place. I’m not sure whether the story about the Witch of Endor bothered me more, because she was condemned, or whether it was the idea of ‘Heaven’ which I disliked more--the idea that there was some peerless utopia in the clouds that none of us would ever be able to reach. But if it’s all just a matter of waiting out the—revolutions, as it were, then maybe being a ghost is not so bad, or at least not so different from what we become outside of our time alive.”
He fell quiet again.
There was something that was bothering him about this particular topic, but Rynn couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Then, with a sudden clarity, he understood, and sat up to face Airi.
“It’s not that I’m worried or anything,” he started off, perhaps a tad defensively, “In fact, I feel I ought be be grateful, but…” His hand trailed across the stitch work of the blanket, heavy white thread that lay, immaculately camouflaged, into the fabric. The patterns it made felt like braille beneath his fingertips. Then, he stopped, and looked up, “I mean, for the longest time, I didn’t believe I was worthy of your attention, let alone your affection, even before I realized what that entailed.” It was bad enough thinking that he’d aroused the interest of one of the most popular boys in school as well as being Antha’s little brother, but the explanation that Airi had just given was on an entirely different scale. There was a part of Rynn that wondered, how small must the consciousness of the rest of the human race look to them? It must be like what a human would feel like if they lived among ants, and had to walk very, very carefully in order to avoid squishing any. And how could he not know, at some point, that someone with a soul as vast and varied as Alistair’s wouldn’t grow…well, tired of Rynn? As it was, humans who could only remember one facet of themselves must seem rather one-dimensional.
Flopping back on the pillows, he tried to keep his mind off of that, and instead rolled over and buried his face in the crook of Airi’s arm. Within an instant, though, he peeked up, a decidedly impish glint in his eye. A thought had occurred to him. “I hate to be so...mundane, but...does that explain why you’re better in bed than any high school student has a right to be? Your other selves must have had their own lovers, right?” Pushing the hair out of his face, he cupped his hand about his jaw. "Not that I'm jealous, or anything."

Curled up beneath the thickly, patterned plush blanket, Dorian watched Antha with wary eyes as she drew back, drawing the covers up to his nose in order to hide how he bit his lip beneath. There was a part of him that wanted to call her back to him, to beg him to stay with him like when they were children, but he could not bear the thought that she might refuse—
instead, the faint, plaintive whisper came cutting through the still black air of the attic.
"Antha?"
The unhallowed sanctuary of the attic made the silence seem to drag on for far longer than it should have. He could swear he could hear the knob to the door of the airship twitch against its bolts.
“Thank you.”
Dorian seemed to lose his breath with the uttering of those two syllables; he drew it in rather desperately forthwith. But he stoically withheld his urge to call after her--that's what he told himself.
Had told himself. It almost surprised him, the way his chest seemed to tense around the words until they burst with him with an urgency that was unnerving.
"YousaidtoaskforwhatIneed."
There was a sudden, wet heat in the bridge of his nostrils, a familiar precursor to tears. He knew well full what he wanted to ask.
Don't leave us. Stay here.
But that was selfish, wasn't it? He was only thinking of himself, of the fear of what the family might be like, without...her. Dorian had be long estranged from the family, and only recently tolerated by dint of Antha's influence.
And besides, he knew how pointless it was to ask for a miracle.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Alistair hummed to himself, brushing his lips across Rynn’s temple. “No, no…of course not. Except that you’re usually worried, at least a little bit.” He grinned, teasingly, taking Rynn’s face in his hands and laying another kiss on his lips. And then, sighing deeply, pressed their foreheads together. “You’re worrying now, I can feel you overthinking everything into oblivion. You---” The boy smiled, amusedly, his voice lowering to a whisper. “You keep using words like that. ‘Worthy.’ What even is that? Who decides that? Seriously, Rynn, think about it…why would I want someone like me? What would I do with someone else bright and cheery and charming like I am? That sounds so intolerably boring. You…you’re a pain in the a**. You’re stubborn, and sharp, and skeptical. You never say what you feel, you’re always just worrying everything to death, but you’re completely transparent. And you’re never, ever, ever boring. Everyone else is---especially the ‘popular’ ones. At best, they’re pale imitations of me.” Without warning, he rolled over, pinning Rynn beneath him and looking him dead in the eye. “I’ve been at this a long time, I’ve seen everything, nothing is mysterious anymore. I was a goddamn high priest of Amun Ra in Heliopolis, I was Deborah ******** Mayfair. I’ll say it as many ways as I can, people are boring, boring, boring. Everyone---absolutely everyone---bores the ever-loving hell out of me. You’re the sole exception.” His lips moved down to the hollow of his throat, trailing down over his collarbone. “I like to watch you. The only interesting thing in the world to me used to be Antha, and then one day there you were, lying so badly and with such purpose---with such gall, to the most terrifying person you could ever find. That was the interesting thing…I could see right through you, but I didn’t know what you were going to do next. Even now, even when I can see exactly what you’re thinking, you’re either going to do just what I expect or something I never expected, and there’s no way to tell which.”
Quietly, with his usual finesse and the darkening of his eyes that meant the beast was emerging, he yanked the towel out from between them. “Of course, you’re also terribly beautiful, but that didn’t matter until later. It’s strange, all the things you start to feel once you’re back in the flesh. You never stood a chance.”

In the darkness of the attic, Antha said nothing for a while, only gently stroking his curls. “I would if I could.” Her whisper was thin, a wisp against the wind and cicadas outside. “You know I would stay if I had any choice, Dorian.” She wasn’t that selfless. If there was any way she could have gotten around it, she would have.
But even she couldn’t trade her single life for the thousands it would take as a replacement sacrifice.
Her breath came in an unsteady roll from her lips, laying her forehead against the side of his head. “Don’t tell,” she whispered, a split second before the first tears splashed against his neck. “I need them to give up, and they won’t if they know I’m afraid.”
After a few moments, they stopped. If Antha couldn’t keep herself together, everything was going to fall apart. “I can’t stay,” she said finally, with a muted emptiness to her voice, “That’s why you have to start being nice to Cian, for both of your sakes. He’ll need you---he’ll need everyone he can get. And you’re going to need him. When I’m gone, and Melody is gone, and our children are running around this house, you’re going to need each other in ways you can’t see now.” And then she paused, trying---honestly, she did try her very hardest---not to say what was on her mind. She failed. “You can’t hide it from me, you know. You can’t hide anything from me. You went about it the wrong way, and that’s not entirely your fault---we never learned how to tell people we care and we express it in ******** up ways instead, but if you don’t tell people how you feel, they’ll never know. Maybe Melody will never take you seriously, maybe she’ll never forgive you, and for that matter, maybe Malakai never will either. Maybe it’s all doomed from the start. But cher, you at least have to tell them how you feel, for your own sake. And the reasoning…it changes things.”
Downstairs, distantly in the parlor, the old grandfather clock gave a deep chime and Antha sighed, smoothing down Dorian’s curls, and circled back to her original thought. One of, anyways. “You and Cian should be friends. You have an alarming number of things in common, I don’t see why you took so badly to him. Besides…” She tilted her head, sighing as if she was loathed to mention something so indelicate. “When I’m gone, the family will be left primarily in Airi’s hands, but he really doesn’t have any interest in ruling. His methods are more subtle. Lawrence will take over as the caretaker and Julien will have his title, head of the family, but no real power. So the main influencing factor will be control of the legacy---custody of the money, the house, the businesses, and of course the Designee. For the next sixteen years, that will be split between Malakai and Cian. And Malakai…well, he hates you, in his own polite, quiet way. I can’t imagine either of them would ever push you out, but still…it’s in your best interest to be on Cian’s good side. Besides---” Her fingers stilled in his hair, gaze narrowing seriously. “He is my husband, you know, and the father of my children. I’d like to know you won’t go kicking him in the face anymore.” Without warning, a little yawn escaped her lips. “It was abominably rude, anyways.”
And that was the last thing Antha remembered saying.

It was Michael who woke Cian the next morning, concurrent with the rising of the sun, alone in his bed. “Come on,” he was saying quietly, shaking his shoulder, “I don’t dare to take on two of the sleepy beasts by myself, you come handle yours.” He had learned that lesson when they were younger, it was like waking feral dogs in the street, he could handle one on his own, but two of them together could overpower him. In the past, he had enlisted Stefan to help. They would drift back to sleep if each of the men took a child in his arms and returned them quietly to where they were supposed to be, Antha to her bed and Dorian to his. It had become routine, so often did the children drift off together, and frankly, it gave Michael a warm, nostalgic, bubbling sensation in his heart that he wouldn’t admit aloud to see it again.
Likely, none of the other Mayfairs would have brought Cian up to the attic in that moment. Being Antha, they would have expected the situation to evoke some sort of jealousy. But Michael trusted Cian to see exactly what he did; Antha and Dorian looked astonishingly like children again, all twisted up like kittens in a basket for comfort, wound around one another with an irreverent sort of innocence. As best as Michael could tell, Dorian had had his head in Antha’s lap---which he guessed from history---and fallen asleep, after which Antha had fallen asleep sideways, her head resting on his waist and arms falling over his chest, and then in her sleep pulled her legs up onto the divan, so that Dorian had been forced to wriggle upwards, resting his head on the side of her leg with an arm around her knees in an effort to keep his pillow from shifting again. The blanket had mostly fallen in all of this, part of it remaining on Dorian’s torso beneath Antha’s arm but the rest of it heaped on the floor.
Standing at the top of the stairs in his flannel pajamas and robe, calmly sipping a cup of coffee as he observed the tangled mess, Michael remarked quietly to Cian, “Funny, how easily everything returns. They used to fall asleep exactly like this, though it was usually out in the garden under a nice, shady tree, their fingers green and yellow from picking apart flowers. Sometimes it was in the parlor or the coat closet---they’d go in there to hide and we’d open the door for a coat or umbrella hours later and find them all tangled up. Stefan was always acutely terrified of them developing scoliosis.” He took another sip of coffee, very casually, turning to briefly look at Cian, “They’re always so cute when they’re little, and then they grow up and stop doing cute things, but every once in a while…” He looked back to Antha and Dorian, as Dorian gave the smallest shift and Antha batted ever so slightly at him to make him stop. “I can hardly carry Dorian anymore, but if you can untangle your wife and get her down to the shower, I can drag him downstairs to his bed. Magnus’s flight arrives in an hour, I believe?”
They never got that far. They had hardly begun to extricate the two from one another when Antha popped up, dazed and rubbing her bleary eyes with the back of her hand, muttering thickly, “…time izzit?”
“Six o’clock,” Michael answered quietly, and she sat processing that for a moment, her fingers running drowsily around her eyes, the other hand latching automatically onto Cian’s shoulder.
And then her eyes went abruptly wide, alarmed, her hands stilling. “Oh my god---Magnus!” She scrambled to her feet before she knew what she was doing, knocking Dorian half into the floor, and took off running down the stairs. There was a small thud at the foot of them, and Michael thought it was a safe bet that she’d tripped and fallen, but a moment later her footsteps receded hastily back to her room so he had to assume she was fine.
“Like a hurricane, that child,” Michael sighed, helping Dorian up out of the floor, “And if I know her, she’s neglected to pick an outfit and is precisely three minutes away from panicking. Cian, it’s your time to shine.” He took Dorian by his arm, leading him downstairs and towards his makeshift bedroom in the back sitting room.
He was off by one minute; when Cian returned to their bedroom, Antha was already panicking, a mountain of discarded clothes heaped on the bed behind her and more flying constantly from the closet. She peeked out very briefly at the sound of the door, noting Cian, and immediately held up two dresses, demanding urgently, “Which one? The one with the cherries is…flippant, but the velvet one is too dreary. Then, I have the green plaid in here somewhere---” She cast the two dresses on the back of the nearby chair, diving back into her closet and flipping rapidly through articles of clothing. “Where the hell is my mint green sweater? It’s the only pastel I can wear, goddamn it---Airi! Ugh, he’s not even here!” She dropped what she had, throwing on a sheer cream-colored blouse and black chiffon skirt simply for the purpose of being dressed and darting for the door, only stopping to point to the closet, instructing her husband, “The green plaid dress, the one with the skirt---” She made a small gesture to indicate a full skirt almost to her knees. “---and the white tea dress with the flouncy skirt and the watercolor sunflowers. For the love of god, find them, please.”
And then, hardly ten seconds later, she came darting back through the door, muttering frantically “Nonononononononono---” en route to the bed, hopping in and darting under the covers. “He lied, I don’t want to see him! Cian, make him go away!”
If there was any question as to whom he was supposed to make go away, a quiet knock sounded at the front door a moment later and Antha froze, the sheets pulled tight down around her. But Cian had no such opportunity, as the door opened and the sound of Michael’s voice drifted up the stairs, followed by am unfamiliar, thickly accented voice. She bolted up all over again, the sheets falling down over her shoulders, and seized Cian frantically by the arm, burying her face against the side of his waist. “I need more time, get rid of him!” And then immediately, rethinking it, gave a little squeak of alarm and jumped bodily onto him, knocking him back into the bed. “No, you can’t be left alone with him!” Laying across her husband, half pinning him down, Antha paused, her fluster and panic melting away for all of ten seconds as she said seriously, “I realize that, in this particular moment, I am completely ridiculous and probably coming across crazier than usual, but I am utterly unprepared for this and I’m beginning to feel a little panicked. More than a little. Cian, I don’t know how to face him. What do I say? After fifteen years, what do I say when I see him? Just…‘hi’? ‘Did you get taller’? ‘How ‘bout those last fifteen Superbowls’?” Her eyes narrowed, panicked and desperate, a moment before she buried her face in the crook of his neck. “I need a minute. Just…I need a minute, to calm down.”  

[Okimiyage]

When Rynn woke up, it was to slanting rays of morning sunlight, peeking in-between the heavy curtains that Antha must have invested in for the sake of hangover days. Rynn had always thought it must be wonderful to be a heavy sleeper, but he’d been cursed with the kind of sensitivity to light which normally roused him with the dawn. Today, though, he felt unusually rested, and was surprised to miss the absence of the chirping birds which usually accompanied his morning experience…
…today. What day was it, anyways?
He did not get up out of bed so much as he fell out of it, due to his legs being hopelessly entangled in the sheets. A few swift kicks, and he made a dash for the bathroom, and to last night’s clothes where they had been carelessly slung over the towel rack. “Come on, come on,” he muttered, patting the pockets of his trousers and then his jacket. “—there—“

8:00a.m.
Thursday

His groan could be heard from the other room, as was the ‘thud’ of Rynn’s forehead hitting the wall. He stared at his phone as though, by will, he could change the date and time on it.
(He rather suspected that he could, but he’d never tried it before and wouldn’t know the first way to convince an electronic gizmo to listen to the suggestions of magic. It wouldn’t have changed the actual time, anyways, altering that seemed far too complex to be bothered with.)
Great. What a stellar impression he must be making on the school. He’d planned to make up for being an academic dunce by making an exhibition out of his earnestness. Waking up late, uniform-less, without his books, and in a strange apartment had not been part of the plan.
When he thought about it like that, it sounded way worse than it was. This better not be a thought I have to think more than once in my life, Rynn told himself sternly. If it was anyone except Airi, he would have been absolutely ashamed of himself. He still should be absolutely ashamed, maybe, but it was better, like in crime, to have a partner to share the guilt with.
Oh, right. Alistair.
He grabbed his—partner’s—clothes, and dashed back into the room:
“Airi, wake up, we’ve got to get to school, we’re already late—call Jacob and ask if he can bring our uniforms to us, we don’t have time to stop at the house—oh, and our bags—oh, goddammit, I did none of those worksheets—“

In a way—and Rynn would have never admitted it, and perhaps should not have allowed the thought to happen—it was a relief, the haste, the worry, because it meant that Rynn didn’t have to think about what Alistair had said last night, and how…strange it had felt, to hear those words coming from another human be—
well, it was somewhat uncertain whether Alistair fell into that classification, anymore.
But hearing it had felt good, and that is what surprised him. He was so used to questioning himself that he hadn’t realized how…reassuring it was to find someone who had utter confidence in him already.

Dorian woke up when he hit the floor, although thankfully the fallen blanket cushioned most of the blow to his head.
The noise he made sounded though it could have come from a lovesick cat, though.
“What was that for—“ he started to grumble, sitting up from the heap, but he didn’t get a chance to finish complaining. Antha had already fled.
Somehow, he couldn’t find it in him to be upset at the rude awakening. They’d find time to talk later, when Dorian could tell her all the things that he’d wanted to, before they fell asleep. Things like, 'I miss you’ and, ’I’m sorry’, and ’This is why…’
But he’d have to wait. Seemed like something big was up right now. Michael wouldn’t have woken Cian and brought him all the way up to the attic just to show him how Antha and Dorian were cuddling, right?
His mouth open in a wide pink yawn, he allowed Michael to help him up. “G’morning,” he announced, blearily. “Wh’s go’innon?” His eyes focused in on the coffee mug, vulture-like.

Cian sighed a little regretfully at seeing the tableaux broken, remarking to Michael, “They make a fetching pair, huh?” It would have been petty to deny it. No matter what you had to say about Dorian’s personality—and something had to be said—he was as beautiful as a young god, the only person Cian could think of that could stand next to Antha’s flame-colored hair and brilliant emerald eyes and fail to be dimmed by comparison. Maybe it was that sort of beauty, though, that allowed one to get away with being a real brat sometimes. Antha had mostly quelled that trait in herself, but the stories lingered. And this morning, seeing her under high stress—he had to laugh at Michael’s suggestion. “‘My time to shine’? You give me too much credit, sir. I’ll try to play storm breaker for a little while, but I make no promises.” With that, he briskly trotted down the steps in the wake of his wife.

Referring to himself as a ‘storm breaker’ had not been incorrect, because when Cian opened the door, it looked like a hurricane had been through the room. He allowed himself only a moment to gape. “How—“ She’d been in the room less than five minutes. How did she have—
Nevermind. He pushed his questions to the back of his head and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him before the mess inside had the chance to invade the hallway. “Antha, calm down, take a few deep breaths, you have time—“ Wading through the heaps of clothing, Cian opened the door to the wardrobe; a particularly full pannier exploded out of it. Batting tulle out of his face, he started sifting through the wreckage. Despite what all the garments on the floor might suggest, Antha’s closet seemed to have exactly the same number of clothes in it as before, i.e. the precise number of hangers that could fit on the bar. You didn’t need to be able to move them, and extracting one was a process of surgical precision and delicacy. Nevertheless, Cian prevailed.
“Alright, here’s the plaid—“ he notified her, coming up for air a few seconds later, a swatch of Scotsman-green tartan clutched victoriously in his hand.
Aaaand he was too late.
Cian listened, pieced together the hints, and reached his conclusion at the same time as the knock below sounded.
“Alright, so—we don’t exactly have time,” he amended his previous statement hastily. “But Antha, it’s alright, I’ll stall him—ooFF—“ He had not been expecting the tackle.
Although he wouldn’t say that he disliked the position.
Mind out of the gutter, Cian. Back to the subject at hand.
He tried again, using his most soothing voice. “Don’t worry, Antha, it’s not that hard. You just go out there and say things like, ‘It’s so good to see you’, and, ‘How was your flight?’ and, ‘This is my husband, Cian’. And ask him about Sweden. It was Sweden, right? Just…make him talk about himself, first.” He noted that the worried look in her eyes had yet to entirely dissipate. “Look, I can handle myself, I’ll stall him for now. Get dressed—we’ll look for the white sundress later—Michael and I will get him some coffee and hold him hostage in the kitchen with our scintillating charm and wit.” Cian found himself stroking her hair, and spine, as though she were a cat that needed reassurance. “It’ll be fine.” he told her. “Take however long you need to prepare. We’ll wait. What’s the worst that could happen? He has to endure one of Jacob’s wonderful breakfast spreads?”
He paused for a moment, and then added to the previous questions, “Not that this isn’t fun, but can I get up now?”
His bravado was very nearly genuine. Somehow, seeing Antha afraid made him want to be courageous. Even if the idea of this Magnus person was scary as s**t. Then again, anyone who had taken care of Antha as a child, out of the goodness of their hearts, couldn’t be all that terrifying, could they? There was no way that sort of boy had grown up into the projected boogeyman that was now driving her into a panic.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Nestled comfortably in the sheets, Alistair opened one drowsy eye beneath the scarlet tangle of his curls. For a while he ignored the way Rynn was running around, rolling over and burying his face in his pillow. But then he returned, flustered and calling his name, and Airi realized there was no chance of him being able to peacefully slip back into sleep.
He wasn’t sure why it didn’t occur to Rynn that once he got close enough, the other boy would simply reach over and snatch him, dragging him back under the sheets in one fluid motion. But he looked relatively startled once it happened, Alistair drawing an arm around his waist and settling back into his pillow with the obstinately murmured, “No.” He couldn’t see any reason to go, honestly. God knew his cousins never had. But to Rynn, who needed more concrete reasons for things, he said instead, “If you call now, they’ll know what we were doing. Otherwise, I doubt they’ll ever even realize we were gone. Besides---” He shifted just slightly, leaning over and quickly biting the side of Rynn’s neck, just precisely hard enough to leave red imprints without being particularly painful, and then plopped back down. “---you don’t want anyone to see that mark, they’ll never let you live it down. It’s probably best if you just stay here. Anyways, could you bear it?”
That one eye slid open again, focusing drowsily on Rynn. “It’s a school for rich kids, they expect us to skip. It doesn’t really matter, as long as you do well on the tests and assignments. My cousins always skipped and look at them.” A little grin began to manifest in the corners of his mouth. “Lawrence was so mad. He was the only one who always went to school like a good boy and was so proud of getting into Yale. Then Antha made straight A’s and got accepted to all of the Ivy League schools, Vittorio went to Johns Hopkins for med school, and even Courtland, the worst of them, got into Stanford. Poor Laurie, they could barely get him to come home for holidays, he was sulking so badly. When Courtland came back from California after a year complaining that he was bored, Lawrence refused to come home for Christmas, and he threw a huge fit and wouldn’t come back for six months when Evie sent a formal refusal to Oxford.”
There was a little flash in the back of his head then, a split-second stab of guilt that he worked hard to shut down. He briefly considered telling Rynn, but…well, there was nothing to tell him yet.
His arms clamped down on the other boy, pulling him comfortably against him. Resting his chin on his shoulder, he murmured softly in his ear, “Stay with me.” It was the closest thing to a plea anyone would probably ever get out of Alistair.
Eventually, he would have to go home and face Magnus, to lie about his existence. For as long as he could until then, he wanted to put off the real world.

Michael was not quite himself yet, with limited caffeine in his system, and so had answered the gentle knock on the door without much thinking about it, and then…
It was like a cold punch to his gut, the face on the other side of the oak and stained glass. Squinting, his voice thick and startled, he muttered uncertainly, “Leon…?”
The man’s face, singularly handsome, lean and composed of angular features in the Scandinavian fashion, briefly stiffened, his stocky eyebrows knitting and eyes flashing. In an impossibly thick accent, he corrected Michael pointedly, “Magnus.”
The older man’s breath came out in a little relieved sigh, smiling uncomfortably at himself for the very obvious mistake. “Oh…of course. Of course, I’m so sorry. Please, come in.” The Swede’s head bobbed in a little nod, gliding in the door on impressively long legs at the invitation and setting his heavy suitcase aside. Michael took the coat slung over his arm to hang it on the rack, all but babbling as he did so. “I’m sorry, we weren’t expecting you. Antha said she was going to fetch you from the airport around seven.”
Again that little bob of his head, answering with reserve, “My flight, it arrives early. The tail caught the wind.”
“I see.” Michael wasn’t sure what else to say. He was unreasonably alarmed by the man’s presence, his initial appearance had been too shocking. It had brought it all back, for one awful moment, the memory of a terribly similar man with his thin, reserved smile, chatting so easily about modern art to his enraptured wife. He’d been such a fool not to see trouble coming, with that stark creature involved…
But this wasn’t the same man, no matter how similar they were, he had to remember that. “I’m Michael York,” he introduced himself, holding out his hand.
Magnus’s eyes flashed again, this time with a deep and equally startled recognition. He stood still for a moment, arms folded over his chest, just looking at Michael in a dark sort of wonder. He knew of course…Michael knew that he knew, the whole sordid tale. And then, slowly and uneasily, he unwound his arms and brought his hand out to Michael’s. “…ett nöje. Ah...a pleasure, as you say, Herr York.” He cleared his throat, withdrawing his hand and adjusting the collar of his turtleneck sweater. “Ja, I recognize sound of voice. Tjejen tells me many things about Uncle Michael.” At the confused look in his eyes, Magnus frowned, searching for the words. “Tjejen, ja? The ah…young sister?” Finally, he shook his head as if it was beyond him, giving one abrupt wave of his hand to dismiss it. “Ahnsa. Min Ahnsa tells me many things about Uncle Michael.” He pronounced her name with a particularly thick accent, ‘Auhn-suh,’ as if he had been used to saying it before he ever learned how to pronounce English and so had never questioned how it was properly pronounced
Michael smiled at that, genuinely for the first time in front of Magnus. “Antha is probably still getting ready, she should be down in a bit.”
It was in the middle of this that Cian arrived. Michael was visibly and powerfully relieved for the reinforcements, giving a grateful little smile behind Magnus’s back. “Ah, here we are. Mr. Eriksson---”
He froze at the sharp look Magnus shot him then, his arms crossed and face unreadable. To Magnus’s credit, he cleared his throat and seemed to try to appear unaffected a moment later. “Nyström,” he corrected lowly, “I take my mother’s last name, after I return to Stockholm.” He made that gesture again, that single severe wave as if to cut the subject off. “But please, just Magnus.”
“Magnus,” Michael repeated obligingly. Frankly, it was a relief to him. “Let me introduce you, this is---”
But he was cut off by Antha, who came running down the hall and then froze at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed and breathless as she clutched the banister, all of the color drained out of her face. She hadn’t changed clothes, and honestly hadn’t thought about it since Cian had left, leaving her slightly disheveled and a great deal less modest than she had intended in sheer silk and chiffon, one or two less buttons than she would have liked fastened on her blouse. All of this was a surprise to Magnus when he first saw her; he’d left a small, adorable child behind and though he’d realized she would be grown now, he hadn’t expected…well, this. Antha was a bombshell in her own right even when she wasn’t dressed the part.
For a few moments, the two simply stood staring at one another across the stairs, motionless, in something like wonder. It had been nearly sixteen years after all, they were both greatly changed. And then gradually, for the first time since he’d arrived, Magnus’s face lightened, a smile slowly curling the corners of his lips as he reached his arms out towards the stairs. It was an expression Leon had never made, absolutely nothing even remotely similar, and Michael felt some of his anxiety seep away. “Min lilla Ahnsa.” The girl in question let out a deep breath, her eyes shining unusually, before she ran down the stairs and---
Shoved him squarely in the chest, knocking him flat on his back.
“You swore you were going to wait quietly for me at the airport! Lögnare! Oäkta!” She kicked him in the leg as she spoke, several times.
Magnus was utterly unruffled, not even attempting to defend against her assault. “My flight arrives early,” he dismissed it easily, giving a little shrug, “Airport is boring---the coffee is undrinkable. I ask taxi if he knows Mayfair house, he says yes and brings me here. Detta är.”
“You promised!”
“I promise many things,” he murmured ruminatively as he returned to his feet, as if it was a thing not necessarily to be trusted. But while Antha pouted and glared at him like an impetuous child, he smiled again, holding his arms out demandingly. For another brief moment, Antha just stared at him, making faces, before abruptly flinging herself against him and bursting into tears. This more than anything seemed to please him, his unnaturally long and slender arms closing around her and his cheek resting on the top of her head, gently rocking her back and forth. “Det är okej. Storebror är här nu.”
“Håll käften! Jag mår bra. Jag bryr mig inte!”
While Michael couldn’t ever begin to guess what she was yelling at him, he did note a certain look in Magnus’s eyes---a sort of glazed, doubtful look, as if he was used to her impetuous outbursts and didn’t take them seriously, but was displeased by it nonetheless. Definitely an older brother, he thought, even before the man leaned over to look her in the eye and, strangely, poked her with his index finger, very precisely on the dark beauty mark beneath her eye. “No lies.”
Antha met his stare, her own narrowing. “I am an adult. I’m not going to fall for it.” Her eyes flickered reluctantly. “…anymore.”
Magnus withdrew, very slightly, giving that little unaffected shrug of his shoulders. “Nej. Ahnsa is always baby to me.”
At the top of the stairs, Courtland and Jack had snuck out to watch, both laying on their stomachs with their chins in their palms. Courtland, snatching his first clear look at Magnus as he moved back, gave a little murmur of, “Oh my...” He really did look like his father, as startlingly as Nicolae looked like Julien, a little carbon copy down to the dark blonde hair and cold, deep set eyes, the Scandinavian nose, square jaw, and high, sharp cheekbones.
Antha directed a glance up the stairs, visibly irritated to have an unexpected audience, wiping the evidence of her earlier tears from her eyes. Magnus followed her gaze, his face taking on some of the previous severity. Clucking his tongue, he declared distastefully, “Ofin.”
The boys, seeing no point in hiding anymore, emerged and tromped down the stairs, Courtland muttering uncertainly, “I feel like I’ve probably been insulted…”
“You were,” Antha assured him without concern. To Magnus, she sighed and said, “These are my cousins, Courtland and Jack. They have no boundaries.”
At this, a hint of recognition flickered in his eyes as he thoughtfully rubbed the hint of dark golden stubble on his chin. “Courtland…oh, little monster, ja?” While Antha nodded, Courtland pouted and Jack snickered, the latter seated on the bottom stair with his chin in his palm. Magnus ignored them, musing instead, “Very listig. Introduce kusiner, but not make.”
His gaze slid sidelong, narrowing at Cian, and Antha hissed, “How could you possibly even recognize him?!” For a single moment, he smirked victoriously, purring as if he was pleased with himself, “I look up on internet. I assume Ahnsa tries to hide him from me.”
At that, Antha pouted, muttering irritably to herself, “I knew I should have had Armand keep him prisoner…”
Bewildered, Michael exclaimed, “You what now?” but went ignored.
Magnus was severe again, inspecting Cian mercilessly from head to toe with sharp eyes. It wasn’t clear what he thought of what he saw, but when he was done he looked the other man dead in the eyes and announced flatly, “When I have coffee, we discuss what happens to man who violates other man’s lillasyster.”
“Magnus,” Antha said lowly in warning, her eyes darkening and arms crossing, “We discussed this. Repeatedly.”
“I just have words,” he answered casually, though nothing about his tone was reassuring.
“Nej. I demand three meters between you at all times.”
“I just have words with make.”
“I said no!” Antha hissed, jumping on his back without warning so that he fell over. Before he could even move to push her off, she had grabbed both of his ears and tugged hard on them, demanding, “Promise!”
“Agh! Okej, okej! Sluta!”
Clearing his throat, Michael announced, “Why don’t I go start on that coffee?”
On the floor, Magnus spared him a glance, Antha’s arms pulled over his shoulders and her wrists grasped tightly in his hands, her knees braced on his back as she tried to tug them free. “Ja, bra. Tack.” Taking firm hold of his sister’s arms, he rose again to his feet, Antha hanging against his back and kicking her feet a foot off the floor, and followed after Michael down the hall.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn protested at first, but not for long.
“Airi, you don’t understand, it’s fine for you—ow—“
The n** to his neck only seemed to exacerbate his distress. Rynn clapped a hand over the bite-mark, his brow furrowing hard before he pulled the sheets up to his nose and turned away with a noise like, harrumph.
It was fine for Airi, he knew all of the curriculum already, probably practically by heart—the history classes, for certain. Rynn was the one who hadn’t been to school—whose education had been solely the burden of his brothers, and the limited, charred remains of the occult library which had been in the safekeeping of their bloodline. He was dreading the maths and sciences.
The plan had been to catch up as quickly as he could, and fake what he couldn’t. While Rynn didn’t have any use for Ivy League scholarships, he couldn’t abide the thought of the other students thinking him stupid.
And while he couldn’t exactly argue against Airi’s logic—seemed the school would print almost anyone a diploma, given a considerable enough ‘donation’—he was worried nonetheless. And Liesse would be, too, if he didn’t show up to homeroom. Rynn could only imagine the severity of the scolding he’d receive from her later on.
…when he put it to himself like that, the urge to clap a pillow around his ears and go back to bed was nearly irresistible. But instead, he rolled back over onto his stomach—his attempt at giving the cold shoulder had lasted perhaps forty-five seconds in all— and crossed his arms, propping himself up to stare directly at Airi and pushing his fingers up into the loose, sleep-tangled locks of his hair. “Did you ever think about it? Going to university, I mean—in a different city and everything, where nobody knew about the Mayfairs—or the Calais—or what either of those names entailed. I mean, I know you’re meant to be the next Designee, but—if you could choose.”
He closed his eyes, briefly. “I never thought about it, until this year, but now I have to. My ‘potential’, and what it means if I don’t live up to it. That’s why it matters.”

Cian had promised to stall Magnus as long as he could; when he’d left the room, he hadn’t even stopped to change, and so it was in the white egyptian cotton dressing robe which he made Magnus’s acquaintance, his hair in a state which suggested that it had only recently been finger combed through on the way downstairs. If Antha had not told him who they were expecting, he would have not recognized the arrival; in his lean, angular features, straight brows, and piercing eyes, he could see very little of Antha. The cheekbones were there, unmistakable as a stamp, but the severity of expression upon his face was utterly foreign.
It seemed to make slightly more sense now, why Antha had been so worried. Cian would have said, were it physically possible, that the way he corrected Michael was directly responsible for a temperature drop of several degrees.
No matter. Cian had promised to play nice. He tried a smile—a little cautiously, keeping in mind that if Magnus was anything like his wife, he’d be able to see through a pretense.
“So this is the fellow that has Antha in such a state,” he commented lightly, descending to the foyer & taking up a place beside Michael. Putting his hands into his pockets, he rocked back lightly on his heels, his eyes dragging up and down the other in a singularly focused once-over. He didn’t seem so bad, just stiff. By the comments that Antha had made prior, Cian had been expecting some kind of seven-foot Spanish Inquisition type. “I’ll have to warn you, she may be a moment—it was a rather late night—and we didn’t expect to see you so soo—“
He didn’t get a chance to finish that thought. Cian saw the other man’s mouth go a little slack, and his pupils dilated like someone had just given him a bump of cocaine. He had a feeling he knew what the other man was looking at even before he turned around.
And there was Antha, her red halo, still loosely wrapped in that gossamer nightgown, and staring right back at Magnus like she’d seen a best-beloved ghost. Even before she flung herself down the stairs, the thrill of her anticipation was apparent. Cian had the presence of mind to step aside just before she could barrel between Michael and himself.
Well, so much for stalling.
“The reunion seems to be going well,” he leaned in to stage-whisper to Michael, as the reunited siblings embraced. He would say his concerns were eased, but then Magnus had to come along with ‘we discuss what happens to man who violates other man’s lillasyster’
Cian felt himself bristle at that. He didn’t know Swedish, but it was close enough that he could guess what that word meant. Violate didn’t belong near it, in his opinion.
Still, he’d promised his wife that he would ‘play nice’, which meant letting the insult pass unchallenged—at least for the moment—although the hard look he directed towards Magnus made it clear that he wasn’t about to forget it.
Anyways, Antha’s response was equally unreasonable. “Three meters at all times? How the devil are we going to pass one another in the hallways?” Cian rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Looked like the tunnel network would have to be dug a bit early, then…  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Alistair slid his gaze sidelong, somewhat surprised. “The Designee passes from mother to daughter. It was set up that way so we could ensure the legitimacy of the bloodline. Vanessa will be the next Designee.” He hummed to himself, resting back on his pillow. “Technically, I’m supposed to be the next head of the family after Julien, but I already refused outright. I have no interest in it. Julien was understandably irritated; usually it goes to a son of a designee, that’s how it’s supposed to be, unless they’re all unsuitable or someone else is particularly powerful or influential. Julien kept---” He sighed, rolling his eyes and making little impatient circular motions with his hand, “---yelling and yelling and yelling about how I was the perfect candidate, he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to be head of the family. And it puts him in an irritating position. Nicolae used to be the heir apparent, but he’s ineligible as a vampire, and Malakai wouldn’t want it even if he was capable of handling the job. So it goes to the best candidate in the inner circle---Courtland. And to Julien…that must be hell. I certainly wouldn’t want to be stuck grooming Courtland for a position of power. But even so…they’ll never get me to take it.”
His eyes flashed then in response to Rynn’s question, ruminatively, his voice going low. It struck too close to his guilty thoughts. “Antha applied to all the best schools just to throw it in Julien’s face, to show him she could get in. She didn’t intend to go because she knew the family would collapse if she left. She gave up her dreams for the family. But when I do it…it’ll be for real.” He sat up, languidly, draping an arm over his knee and resting his chin on his wrist. There was something distant and serious in his eyes, something he’d clearly thought long and hard about. “I don’t want to be like most of my cousins. I don’t see how they stand it, sitting around and doing absolutely nothing. They don’t have to, the legacy supports them, but I just can’t imagine being that idle, it sounds like a nightmare. I want to do something, like Tori and Lawrence. Not medicine or law, specifically---actually, they both sound dreadful---but something of my own, something that I actually like. But to do that, first I have to go away, I have to learn how to do it, and being me, I have to learn how to do it better than anyone else.” He laid back down, turning and resting his cheek against Rynn’s shoulder. “But there’s no point in talking about it now, is there? We have two more years before any of this potentially happens.”
He didn’t like talking about it, for very specific reasons. He knew exactly what his plan was, and that was Antha’s plan. She’d wanted to go to Oxford to study literature, and it aligned closely enough with his own interests that he was determined to see it through, for her sake. However…the Mayfairs had very little influence in that sphere, and while he had no concerns about being able to make it in himself, he doubted Rynn ever would. And the thought of being separated from Rynn by an entire ocean for years…
He pushed these thoughts aside, rolling over onto Rynn with the brush of his lips along his jaw, determined to distract him.

In the kitchen, Antha had taken to anxiously flitting around as Michael set to work brewing the coffee and the others all seated themselves around the table, very carefully positioning her chair so that it was precisely between Magnus and Cian before restlessly sitting down.
Courtland did what he could to help, questioning casually, “So, Magnus…how do you like the new job? Comparative literature, isn’t it?”
The man nodded shortly. “I haven’t been to the campus, but the job is good. Classes are not too large. In Stockholm, my largest class was over a hundred.” He bristled, and it was hard to tell if it was with irritation or dry amusement. “Not that most come to class.”
“When do you start?”
“Next month, for summer courses. Classes are very small, is easier to get used to university before fall.” He turned to Antha very suddenly, his eyes narrowing. “Ahnsa is keeping up with her Viking sagas, ja?”
“Yes,” she groaned, rolling her eyes, and Courtland noted to himself how much of a little sister she really seemed next to him. “I remember the bedtime stories, tack. Do I have to show you my senior paper on the Volsunga Saga?”
He smiled, very slightly but fondly, patting her on the top of the head. “Ahnsa is good girl.”
Just as she began to pout and brush him off, a hint of color in her cheeks, the first thin wail sounded upstairs and she bolted up, panicked, looking between Magnus and Cian. Pointing between them as she slowly backed towards the door, she instructed severely, “Nobody talk. At least not about me. Okay? Okay??”
Magnus shooed her with a little gesture of his hand as Michael set a cup of coffee in front of him. “Ja, ja. Go take care of bairn, I am eager to see when fed and calm.”
Reluctantly, Antha vanished out the door and went running upstairs to see to her children. Courtland, glancing anxiously between Magnus and Cian, hurried to fill the silence. “Antha’s certainly happy to see you. It’s a little difficult to tell, but…it’s in her eyes.”
“Ja visst,” the man replied stolidly, as if it was too obvious to even be mentioned, his brows furrowing slightly, “I raise Ahnsa since lilla.”
“I’m a bit jealous,” Michael jumped in, taking a seat now that he’d set coffee in front of everyone, clutching his own cup, “She must have been terribly cute when she was a toddler. None of us got to see anything of her until she was nine.”
Oddly, this seemed to set something off in Magnus that the Mayfairs couldn’t quite place. His brows furrowed and his eyes narrowed, his lips set in a slight but hard frown. Abruptly, he rose from the table and turned, going back the way they’d come in. The Mayfairs glanced at one another for several moments, bewildered and alarmed, but before they could think to act, he returned with a book in his hand, setting it down on the table between himself and Michael and flipping it open to reveal a great many faded polaroids. Michael gave a little sound of shock and delight, leaning eagerly over the photo album as Courtland and Jack rushed around the table to look. Pointing to one of the pictures, he announced, “Ahnsa’s first spaghetti. She does not like to eat, but draws in sauce with her fingers. This is first tooth coming in, and this is first steps. She falls on carpet and cries until I pick her up.” Flipping several pages, Michael gave a little coo at the toddler Antha, already possessed of impressively long, wild hair, her bright eyes nearly overtaking her face. “Here is first dance recital. She found ballet skirt in attic and insists I teach her to dance. I had to go find book, I know nothing about dancing.”
Glancing up, Michael noted the intimately fond look on the man’s face, the sweet nostalgia, and found himself naturally remarking, “You’re like her father.”
Magnus gave a small start, narrowing his eyes on Michael, and responded very seriously, “I was child when Ahnsa was born. But Mary Beth dies and fader hands me baby and I have to keep her alive. Fader never comes out of study---is always drunk anyway---so I raise lilla Ahnsa. She depends on me to survive.” Abruptly, looking down at the picture, he gave a small but infinitely loving smile that completely relaxed his face, giving him an almost warm countenance. “Ahnsa was so cute. Such a good girl…” And then, just as quickly, his entire expression fell, his eyes going frightfully dark. None of the Mayfairs quite dared to ask why, only sat silent and nervous for several moments before he finally asked lowly, “What did he do to min lilla Ahnsa?”
Michael could feel the first stab of cold panic in his stomach, scrambling to make himself look oblivious. “What do you mean?”
But Magnus shot him another of those frightfully severe looks, as if he could see straight through him. “I never want to leave Ahnsa. She needs me, fader will never take care of her. I knew from day she was born, fader…he hates Ahnsa. When Mary Beth is taken away for burying, he tells me Ahnsa is not his, and I realize he will never take care of her. I fought mamma, but she forces me to come back, and fader…” His index finger fell lightly, almost unconsciously, on a picture of the little toddler Antha giving the camera a bright smile. Following his gaze, Michael noticed something he hadn’t before in the pictures, the first hints of neglect hanging around the two children. In all of the pictures, Antha either wore very old clothes that had obviously been salvaged from the attic storage or oversized shirts that had probably been either Magnus’s or Leon’s, the sleeves rolled up with mismatched ribbons and the hems tied up around her little knees. Magnus, in the few pictures in which he was present, a young boy just shy of puberty, was dressed in what appeared to be his father’s worn and ill-fitting cast-offs. It made sense that Leon, who never left his office and had his groceries and liquor delivered to the house, wouldn’t bother with something like getting clothing for his children.
Magnus’s voice brought him back to the present. “Fader says Ahnsa will not use phone, that she is afraid of phone. But I know is all lies. Ahnsa played with phone, pretended to call friends. Mamma did not believe me, says I am being dramatic, but I knew he does something to her. I thought…” A look flashed through his eyes, his jaw tightening in a grimace. “…I thought he’d killed her. Do you know---” He grimaced, his eyes flashing, as if forcing himself to say something terribly painful. “---Mary Beth…she has twins. The other one, the boy, he is born first and he dies. I keep remembering how easy it was for fader, taking poor bairn out to yard and burying him. I think…it would probably be easy for him like that, burying precious Ahnsa when I’m not there to take care of her. I worry every day for five years. By the time I can return on my own, Ahnsa calls and says fader is dead. But she never tells truth, she never tells me what he did.” His eyes narrowed again, forcefully on Michael, sharp with determination. “What did he do to her?”
Michael panicked, and a slight glimmer of it showed. “I’m…not sure what to tell you. We weren’t there, of course, we can only go by what Antha tells us, and she doesn’t…I mean, she hasn’t…”
While he floundered, Courtland had taken his seat again, quietly sipping his coffee, lost in thought. It was while Michael was struggling, becoming more and more obvious to a sharp eye like Magnus’s, that Courtland relented, announcing quietly, “He locked her in the attic.”
Magnus turned the great force of his attention on Courtland with that, his eyes gone a little wide, the coffee cup shattering in his hand. Michael snatched up the photo album, holding it above the damaging spilled coffee, but Magnus hardly seemed to notice. “…he hurts min lilla Ahnsa?”
Despite the frantic look Michael gave him, Courtland nodded shortly, continuing with all due austerity, “He chained her to the radiator, starved her, beat her, and mentally terrorized her. I’d rather not go into the details…and I rather think you wouldn’t like me to anyways.”
Magnus sat back, very quietly, his gaze falling down to the dark puddles and broken bits of ceramic on the table before him. All of the color had left his face, but his features were still tense, his eyes sharp. “I always wondered what happened to make him die. I thought…maybe Mayfairs kill him to get to Ahnsa.” He stopped, shaking his head, and looked back to Courtland. “I don’t need to know how he really dies, if heart attack or…other things. But did he suffer?”
The boy nodded intently, his eyes narrowing in such a way that left little doubt that Leon’s death hadn’t been natural, taking another sip of his coffee before answering darkly, “Greatly.”
He gave a little nod of comprehension, some of the tension draining out of him. “Bra. Good.”
“It’s probably best if you don’t mention to Antha that you know,” Courtland continued then, more casually, “Understandably, she doesn’t like to talk about it, and she wouldn’t want you to know about it.”
He gave another of those little bobs of his head to show he understood, still clearly absorbed in the revelations. “Why did he really not want Mayfairs to know Ahnsa was alive?”
It was Michael who answered now that the proverbial jig was up, resigned, his voice low. “Because Antha was the only one who could be Designee of the Legacy. Leon knew that without her, the family would collapse.”
Magnus briefly thought that over, before narrowing another gaze at Michael. “And other reasons?”
He sighed. Magnus was proving sharper than anyone expected. “And he also knew that Antha’s biological father was a Mayfair, and that he knew Antha was his. I suppose Leon wanted to spite him.”
Hearing this, Magnus let out a long, quiet sigh, his hands clasped together on the tabletop. “Is very typical of fader, such spite. I always hated him. And I never liked Mary Beth, either. The way she talks about Ahnsa before she is born…like she is not even person, only object to be her heir. She never even talked about other child, the boy, like he doesn’t matter. Even then, my heart aches for poor bairn, and then he dies without even a name and fader buries in swamp.”
Cautiously, Courtland interrupted. “Did you ever tell Antha about her brother? The twin, I mean.”
He shook his head. “Nej, but fader must. Since she learns to talk, she makes up imaginary friend from twin and talks to him and plays with him. She makes me talk to him, and set him plate for meals, and make bed for him.” He sighed, his fingers flexing oddly around each other. “Fader becomes very angry whenever he hears about ‘Alistair’, he tells her is wrong to pretend dead bairn is still there. He tells me to put a stop to it. But…I never did. Somebody had to name him, ja? Somebody had to remember him.” At this point, he very quickly switched gears. Only the conversation itself suggested that he was trying to change the subject, Magnus was a brick wall. “I apologize,” he murmured slowly, glancing at Michael, “For talk of Mary Beth. I know…well, I know.”
Michael gave a little thin smile, shaking his head. “It’s alright, it’s been nearly twenty years since she left me. Believe me, I’ve said worse in that time.”
“If it makes you feel better, all they ever did is fight,” he added casually, his color gradually recovering, sipping his coffee, “They scream and scream all day. Fader only marries her for bairn, he hates her, and she hates that she can’t change his mind. She tried to kill him several times, once with shovel.”
The woman in question’s ex-husband pursed his lips, his eyebrows raised, and finally nodded his head. “I actually am glad to know that. Thank you.”
Meanwhile, Courtland was looking at Magnus with that keen gleam in his eyes that only manifested when no one was looking, the one that exposed the intelligence through his usual foolish persona. “Ah,” he murmured after a few moments, leaning forward with his hands folded beneath his chin, grinning triumphantly, “That’s why you don’t like Cian.”
This caught Jack’s attention; he’d been leaning on his fist, dozing, but now looked up, dazed. “Because of Leon?”
Magnus was staring hard at Courtland, nearly a threat, but the boy just kept grinning, quietly pleased. “Leon married Mary Beth because he’d knocked her up, but he treated her and then Antha terribly because of it.”
For a moment, the two stared across the table at one another in chilly civility, observing each other as if they had to size one another up all over again, just to be certain. Finally, leaning back in his seat with his arms folded, Magnus gave a rigid smile and asked, “You are the psychologist, ja?”
“I have a psychology degree,” Courtland corrected him very politely, giving that sweet, charming smile and an unaffected shrug of his shoulders, “Calling me a psychologist implies the profession, and I’ve never been gainfully employed in my life.”
“Is not something to brag about, I think,” Magnus murmured, but then shook his head, “You do not have lillasyster, do you?”
“No, I suppose I don’t.” Courtland didn’t consider that a lie for the purpose that Magnus was asking. Courtland had younger half-sisters, Antha included, but they hadn’t been raised as such and so he didn’t see them quite the way a brother like Magnus would.
“Then you would not understand,” Magnus said flatly, eyes narrowing, “The most terrible fear you have for the lillasyster as she grows up is that when she is a teenager, she is impregnated by a strange drunk man. This---” He pointed at Cian, his attention still wholly focused on Courtland. The tension in the room was palpable, and none of it was actually directed at Cian anymore. “---is worst fear in the flesh.”
“That’s probably also the case,” Courtland responded with a little nod, flashing a particularly bright smile that was all the more irritating in such a situation, “But on a deeper level, you want to protect her from becoming her mother, whom you’ve already admitted you hated and according to your observations was miserable in her marriage, which ultimately killed her.” Almost imperceptibly, his smile shifted into a grin as he leaned back in his chair and tipped it back onto its back legs. “Textbook.”
Magnus was frowning, clearly irritated. “You I do not think I like.”
“But you shouldn’t take it out on Cian,” Courtland continued heedlessly, “It was a nightmare situation when it first happened, I’ll give you that---”
“You know, he’s right here,” Jack muttered, gesturing at Cian, “You guys know that, right?”
“---and I assumed Cian would vanish in the night and I would have to marry her and raise the poor things---”
“Courtland,” Michael groaned lowly in warning, “Is this really necessary?”
“---but---” His eyes darted between Michael and Jack, as if chastising them for doubting him, before settling back on Magnus. “---all’s well that ends well, right?”
The other two Mayfairs sat silently for a moment, waiting for him to continue. When the anticlimactic end was clearly all he intended, Jack threw his hands down on the table, yelling, “Oh come on!”
To that, and the doubtful look on Magnus’s face, Courtland rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. “Mon dieu, do I have to connect all of the dots for you? My point is, even though it was a complete and utter accident, Antha and Cian fell in love. So rather than her mother, she’s a happily married woman, and Cian is a good father to their children. So, you know…maybe go easy on him.” The boy shrugged, putting his chair back down on four feet and taking up his coffee cup. “This concludes my excellent analysis.”
Jack was still staring at him, eyes glazed, before finally glancing away with the muttered, “I want a divorce.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that you’re a freakin’ idiot.”
“Fair,” Courtland hummed, nodding, and then quickly called, “Dibs on Laurie as my lawyer.”
The other boy swore under his breath, banging his fist on the table. “Damn it…fine, I guess we can stay married.”
“If only to spite old people.”
“Obviously.” They high-fived, and then immediately returned to mundanely drinking their coffee as if the preceding conversation had never taken place. Magnus was watching them like strange zoo animals.
“Ignoring the idiot savant for a moment,” Michael interrupted, sighing at their antics---he hadn’t stopped either of them before because he knew them well enough to see what they were doing, Courtland drawing Magnus’s ire before they teamed up to simply confound him until Cian was securely out of his crosshairs---before turning to Magnus, “Perhaps you should talk to the husband and father in question before making up your mind? For what it’s worth---” He rose to his feet, occupying himself with gathering up broken ceramic shards. “---I’ve raised Antha for the last ten years, she might as well be my own daughter. I never would have let her marry Cian if I didn’t think they were in love and they would be happy together. And for that matter, neither would she.”
Nodding as if he had a fair point, Courtland added, “She could’ve married pretty much anyone, but she chose to marry Cian. Give her a little credit, she grew up with the same father as you, she wouldn’t marry the wrong guy.” Of course, he also knew more acutely than most that Magnus was never likely to see Antha as anything other than his little baby sister whom he had to protect from the big, bad world, but it was worth the effort anyways.
Abruptly, Magnus held up a hand for them to stop. It was honestly getting tiresome. “Anything else?” he questioned, flashing a sidelong glance at Cian. It was difficult to tell if they’d swayed him in the slightest.  

[Okimiyage]

Alistair was altogether too adept at being a distraction. Rynn did not like to think about how difficult it had become to resist. Nevertheless, he persisted. “There is a point,” he said, faintly, clumsily wriggling out from underneath the embrace that Alistair had thrown around him. His eyes were pensive; he drew his legs up and crossed them. “Even if it’s two years away, it never hurts to plan ahead.” By his tone, it was clear that he wasn’t exactly thinking of Alistair’s plans, either. He turned to the other, clasped his hands with a sudden urgency—not just to demand his attention, but also to keep him from…distracting. “In a way, you’ve already been the Designee—you’ve been inside her head all this time, haven’t you? But if you don’t have to go on bearing the title, then you might as well do what you like. Nobody would deny you that.” Rynn’s face had, quite by accident, rearranged itself in a gravely somber expression.
she knew the family would collapse if she left. She gave up her dreams for the family. But when I do it…
“When you do leave,” he began, and his voice was different—a little higher, a little chillier, stifling a note of panic that he did not want Alistair to hear—“you have to promise to come back, alright? You’re not allowed to just stay away for months and months and forget about me.” Rynn was trying to make it into a joke, but the grim smile he offered up was not very convincing. Realizing this, he turned his face away. “Besides, what do you want to do in the first place that you couldn’t do wi—“ with me?
He corrected himself. “That you couldn’t do here?”

Cian had been holding back, appraising the stranger from a distance, but the allure of those faded photo albums had been too much to resist. He had drawn closer, then, enough to peer over Courtland’s shoulder at the sepia-toned imaged of the wee, flame-haired girl whom his wife had once been. Beaming that gap-toothed grin, prancing about in an altogether-too-long tutu—somehow, it was jarring. The Antha that he knew, well…he’d gotten used to the idea, he supposed, of her childhood gone badly awry. It was odd, almost painful, to see what had come before that breaking point. And it was clear now why Magnus was so beloved in her eyes. He had given her a taste of what having a parent felt like.
Cian himself had to wonder if there were any photo albums of his own childhood stashed away in that creaking old ruin of a house, Llyr’s Court. Likely not. He couldn’t imagine Rubideus as the kind of doting father that would take the time to run around after his children with a Polaroid at the ready.
And then, after a nostalgic moment, came the question that any father would have asked—the question, Cian thought, they had all been hoping that he wouldn’t ask.
What did he do to her?
It was typical that only Courtland had the balls to answer. Cian didn’t quite dare—he was, after all, only recently introduced to the family. He wouldn’t have known how to answer the questions that inevitably came afterwards. But Courtland’s answers seemed to give Magnus some measure of peace, although he did not ask what was meant by the modest adjective: “Greatly.” In some cases, he preferred not to know.
Somehow, this whole time, Cian had been biting his lower lip without quite realizing it. He realized it when Courtland made his announcement—that’s why you don’t like Cian—and the startle it incurred was nearly enough to draw blood.
Ah. That did make sense, didn’t it? In a way, presuming one had never observed the interactions between Antha and Cian, which Magnus, of course, would have no opportunity to.
Sometimes he could kill the Mayfairs for the way they orchestrated things. He’d known that this topic might come up, but what he had planned to do was to have it in a hallway, or maybe the pantry, out of sight and straight-forward, man-to-man. Not in the middle of breakfast.
Cian gave a great sigh. Well, you played the hand that you were dealt.
His hand landed lightly, briefly, on Magnus’s shoulder, in order to draw his attention.
“I’d preferred a word in private, but I suppose you might as well know that there’s not much of that—privacy—in this house.”
“Hear, hear,” came a voice that was muffled, but distinctly Dorian’s, from the direction of the kitchen.
Cian’s eyes flickered briefly, but he did not let his desire to cast a fierce glower interrupt his speech further. He had been—well, ‘planning’ would have implied far more preparation, but he had definitely been ruminating on how to broach this subject to Magnus since the man had entered the house.
“I can’t blame you for being protective of your—er—lillaster? Of Antha. She…inspires that feeling among the best of us. But I want to reassure you.”
Cian took a seat at the table, leaning forward and steepling his hands between his knees.
“Look, I know that we haven’t known one another for long, but I feel that it’s our duty—my duty— to convince you that we would never, never let anyone come into this house that intended her harm. Like Michael mentioned, any man who tried would have found himself missing his balls and bleeding out in a gutter before dawn.” Alright, so it wasn’t exactly what Michael had said, but it was what would have happened. Cian spoke carelessly enough, but there was an edge to his voice that rang of truth.
“So—I don’t know what exactly you’ve heard about this family, but we protect our own. Even in the scant amount of time that I’ve been here, I’ve seen enough to attest to that. No matter what you think of me, personally—I’d rather that we be friendly, but I get why you’re cautious—as long as you’re in this house, have the grace to respect her judgement.” The tension in his shoulders let up for a second; a kind of softness eked through that hard, defensive shell that he’d adopted for this conversation. “She’s not her mother; she won’t make the same mistakes as Mary Beth did.” It was the duty of every generation, Cian thought, to learn from the mistakes of the previous one. Antha’s parents had certainly made an example of themselves.
And thinking of that, a sudden heat infused his voice: “And I’m not the type of man that would resent a child for something they can’t help, either.
“Even if your niece and nephew weren’t mine—and yes, the suggestion has been brought up in gossip rags—hell, even by my own brother— it doesn’t change anything.” He straightened his back, and lifted his chin with the confidence of a young Marlon Brando, daring Magnus to throw that statement into question. Cian didn’t know much about Leon, but from what he did know, the comparison to such a man was a gross insult.
“I love Antha. That’s all it comes down to. I’d rather walk on broken glass than give her grief, alright? I know how fortunate I am to be with her, to be here right now, and I’m not the type of man that forgets it.”
Dorian was watching at this point, lured into the dining room by the dramatic tones of a monologue. He lifted his coffee cup briefly, and repeated quietly:
“Hear, hear.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Alistair gave a little uncomfortable groan as if he didn’t like where the conversation was going, twisting and wriggling until he was draped bodily across Rynn, his face half-buried in the sheets. “What I want to do…” he muttered ruminatively, muffled, sighing to himself, “That’s probably something I should think about, huh?” His fingers crept out, sliding over Rynn’s, tracing the hints of color where his veins ran beneath his fair skin. “I don’t know, honestly. The world is so new to me…I have no idea what to do in it. Not yet. I just know that first…first, I have to leave for a while. If nothing else, I owe it to Evie.” His fingers stilled for all of a second, his eyes flashing darkly, before sliding between Rynn’s, lacing gently together. “And then I’ll come back. I have no desire to stay elsewhere, this is my home, I belong here.” He glanced up, sharp-eyed but with the hint of a teasing grin around the corners of his mouth. “I’ll make Courtland keep an eye on you, you know. And if he says anything about anyone getting suspiciously close to you, I’ll lock you up and hide you somewhere where no one else can find you.” His eyes flashed briefly thoughtful, lips pursed. “Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t make jokes like that. My ancestors have a bad track record with keeping their paramours under lock and key.”
He rolled over onto his back on the mattress with a little sigh, pulling Rynn down beside him. “You can say it, you know,” he murmured softly, flashing those terribly open, earnest eyes, their intertwined hands laid between them. “‘With me.’ I can read you like a book anyways…you might as well say it honestly. But, no rush. It’s cuter when you get flustered and don’t say what you want to.”

Magnus quirked an eyebrow at the newcomer, his eyes raking up and down. But before anyone could introduce him, Magnus pointed a finger and announced, “Dorian.”
While Courtland and Jack looked at him, impressed, Michael sighed to himself. “Those damned society papers…”
“Nej,” he responded, with an unusual roll of his eyes as if something had irritated him, “Ahnsa. She tells me little about family, but she tells me much about Uncle Michael who raises her, lately she tells me much about Cian, and between she tells me all the time about Dorian.” The man gave a little disapproving hiss of a breath, his head tilting just a few degrees. “I think is bad influence---and Courtland, for that matter---” The boy beamed, unrepentant under the Swede’s scrutinizing gaze, and Magnus finally gave up and turned his attention back on Dorian, “But Ahnsa adores Dorian, he is her ‘lovely, golden boy’.” Another roll of his eyes, sighing and sitting back with his arms folded, observing Dorian for a moment before turning back to Cian. His eyes were sharp again. “Now…we discuss what your broder suggests about Ahnsa’s honor, ja?”
“Yeah,” Courtland hummed, clicking his tongue, “Maybe not the best thing to tell him, Cian.”
“Perhaps we can leave Rynn out of this?” Michael suggested with a thin smile, “At least for the moment? He’s only a boy, and a sheltered one at that.”
Courtland snickered to himself, muttering into his cup, “A lot less sheltered, since Airi got his hands on him. Pun intended.” He was silenced by a sharp pinch on the side of his neck and Michael’s stern glance of warning.
Magnus, disregarding Courtland, gave a tacit wave of his hand, giving in. But that only brought his attention more intently on Cian. “I cannot change blood of bairn,” he said, slowly and pointedly, “And I do not kill you because you take responsibility, like a man. But do not mistake me, min Ahnsa is precious angel, and I do not think you are good enough.”
“To be fair,” Courtland cut in, purring thoughtfully, “Would anyone be good enough, to your mind?”
He looked offended at the very question. “Of course not.” Michael gave a quiet, exhausted chuckle to himself, as if it was terribly typical and he understood completely in his own way, while Magnus took a sip of his coffee, utterly unmoved. “But drunk man who sleeps with her on first night without protection is very low on list.”
“He does have a point,” Courtland continued in a hum. Jack, lifting his head from his half-slumber, turned and outright slapped him across the face for the betrayal, before setting his head back down on his folded arms. “…cheap shot, Jackie.”
“Traitor.”
“Do they always do this?” Magnus grumbled to Michael, gesturing irritably at the two boys.
“Constantly.”
“I’m just saying it’s a fair point!” Courtland whined, rubbing his reddened cheek, “I mean seriously, Cian, have you never heard of condoms? You, too.” The last was said to Dorian, flickering his eyes in his direction.
It was this which made Michael step in, his eyes narrowing at Courtland in quiet disapproval. “Where exactly was your protection when you slept with Sera, Courtland? Because the last time I checked, she’s carrying around your child.”
“Hey, I was perfectly safe,” the boy protested, grown unusually serious, “It’s not my fault it broke. Besides…it’s Sera. But whatever.” He shrugged, that blissfully unconcerned smile spreading across his face. “Five more months and I’ll get Adair out of the mishap, so what does it matter? All’s well that ends well, that’s my motto.”
“So this is prominent problem in Mayfair family?” Magnus questioned Michael, his eyes flashing in disapproval.
“That’s actually Antha’s influence,” Michael explained quickly, scrubbing the counter as he spoke. The Mayfairs present knew that Michael only cleaned when he was nervous, and he was likely to wear a hole through the countertop. “The family has always had a bit of an issue with...er…infidelity. That used to mean that when a girl in the family found herself pregnant, she either passed it off as her husband’s or quickly found someone to marry and then passed it off as his. Or hid it and gave the baby up in secret.”
Courtland raised his coffee cup with a little disgruntled sound. “Cheers.”
“My line came from the latter as well, my great-great-great grandmother was a Mayfair. But Antha was appalled by all the dishonesty and the problems it created, so she threatened to disown anyone who didn’t take responsibility for their children or lied about their children’s parentage. So…” He shrugged. “All of the suspect pregnancies that used to get swept under the rug started coming to light. It comes off badly from an outside perspective, but it really works out better.”
“Or Mayfairs could learn self-control,” Magnus grumbled, “Would be better, I think.”
“Oh, there’s no chance of that,” Courtland cut in, intently shaking his head, “We’re nothing without our vices, you may as well just kill us all.”
Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “Do not tempt me.”
“Please don’t.” This came from Antha, returning to the kitchen with a particularly exhausted sigh and a child in each arm. Vanessa, mewling with helpless, inconsolable cries, found herself immediately deposited with Cian. Her teary eyes opened a sliver when she felt the shift and, predictably, her crying dwindled and then ceased with a little sniffle once she recognized her father, her tiny fingers grasping at his shirt as she gave an affectionate coo. Her mother, taking pains not to pout, muttered beneath her breath, “Traitor.”
“You’re still Sebastien’s favorite,” Courtland reminded her comfortingly.
She acknowledged that begrudgingly, gently stroking the baby’s back. He at least was already pacified, half-dozing against his mother’s shoulder. He gave the smallest hiccup, stirring just enough to smack his lips and settle his chin on Antha’s shoulder before nodding off again. Even Magnus could see the favoritism system at work.
“Ahnsa,” Magnus said immediately, bolting to his feet and throwing his arms out demandingly, “Farbror sees bairn now. You will hand over.”
“But---” Her eyes flashed with panic, her arms going defensively up around her son, angling him away from his uncle. “It’s his after-breakfast nap time! If you wake him up, he’s going to sleep too long during his mid-morning nap, and then he won’t sleep during after-lunch nap time, and then he’ll oversleep during pre-dinner nap time, and then he’ll wake up at three in the morning and the whole system will be irreparably thrown off and I’ll never sleep again! Cian and I can’t even take turns because one of them will never be happy, and they’ll cry forever, and it breaks my heart and I need to sleep, Magnus. I need sleep. And at least half an hour between sleep and crying infants to---” Her lips abruptly clamped shut, her gaze wandering up and to the side, painstakingly away from Cian, finishing hastily with a forced sort of innocence, “Do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Don’t think about it. Pancakes, anyone?”
Courtland, idly smoothing out Jack’s bedhead, clarified shortly, “Antha and Cian have a lot of sex.”
“Courtland!” Antha shrieked, her hand over Sebastien’s ears. Jack roused himself long enough to administer another slap straight across his face before laying back down.
Magnus, his eyes narrowed to pinpricks, was hissing in Swedish, gesturing violently between Courtland and Antha and back again. “Vad är fel med dig, din äckliga hund?! Säg inte sådana saker om min lillasyster! Jag borde döda dig där du står!”
The boy sat with his eyes wide, glancing back and fourth between the siblings. “...Evie, I don’t speak Swedish. Should I run now?”
“I would.”
He nodded, gulping down the last of his coffee, and then turned and made a run for it, knocking his chair over in the process and then scrambling up the stairs. Magnus stood glaring after him for several moments, the very picture of terror, before finally turning back to Antha. “These are people I trust you to? That---that---” A breath hissed through his teeth, followed by a string of irritated Swedish beneath his breath. “I should have come and took you anyway. Stockholm is much better for lilla Ahnsa.”
“They’re not so bad,” Antha sighed, softly rocking Sebastien now that he’d been awakened and was beginning to fuss, “I would suggest you give them a fair chance if I ever thought there was a chance of that happening. At the very least, can you please not make death threats? It’s very---oh, no, don’t do that. It’s alright, precious. Mommy’s here, don’t cry. No, it’s okay.”
“Here,” Magnus interrupted, stretching his arms out again and all but wrestling the baby away from her. He very nearly began to cry once he was separated from his mother, his face scrunching up. But Magnus positioned him very precisely in his long arms, gently rocking him and bouncing slightly on one knee, and Sebastien eventually grew calm again, his eyes staring up at Magnus for a moment, flickering at his mother as if to be sure she was still there, before slowly beginning to flutter closed.
“How did you do that?!” Antha demanded in an urgent whisper, eyes wide, following intently a half-step behind him to observe.
“Ahnsa was fussy baby,” he answered quietly, his attention focused on the infant in his arms, “I do not sleep for days on end, I have to learn how to make bairn sleep quickly, or I die with exhaustion.” He flashed her an oddly smug gaze, giving an affectionate twist of his lips. “Is an art, it takes long to master.” Sebastien yawned, his little limbs slowly going slack, and Magnus gave a full smile at that, very gently rearranging the blanket around him. “He has same eyes as Ahnsa, but with gold. Aj, min lilla värdefulla. Oroa dig inte, farbror har dig.” Leaning over, he placed the softest kiss on his forehead, which wrinkled for a split second before smoothing over again in sleep. “Farbror Magnus lär dig många saker.”
“He takes a fair bit after Cian, don’t you think?” Antha commented, taking up a coffee cup and shooting him a pointed glance over the rim.
Her brother’s lips twitched against a scowl, muttering in response, “Takes more after Ahnsa, I think.”
“Vanessa, perhaps,” their mother purred, almost a challenge, “But Sebastien is a fairly even mix of Mayfair and Calais. He really takes after his Uncle Rynn.”
“I do not see,” Magnus persisted stubbornly, “He reminds me of when Ahnsa is bairn. Same eyes, same mouth, same cheeks---”
“He absolutely has Cian’s cheekbones,” Antha interrupted, carefully hiding her expression in her coffee cup. Magnus merely gave her a look, and then returned his attention to Sebastien while his sister rolled her eyes. “Du är svår.”
“Du gjorde situationen själv,” he muttered in response, shooting her a sharp glance.
Antha nearly flinched---almost, but it was enough to be alarming to the others on its own---and sighed at the response, leaning back against the counter. “Jag älskar honom.”
“Is not the point,” Magnus shot back, nearly a hiss.
“Is it not?” Her brows lifted, her eyes focused on him as if he’d said something curious, “I thought that was the central issue in marriage?”
“You have bad judgment,” he said instead, rather than arguing the previous point with her.
“I hardly married him in a fit of passion,” Antha sighed, her head to the side as she rubbed her eyes, “I was barely willing to let him stay, in the beginning.”
Face pressed down against the table, Jack muttered, “Am I the only one who can see Cian sitting here? Is he a ghost now?”
Antha brushed her cousin’s concerns aside with a roll of her eyes, but took the few steps that put her next to Cian and laid a gentle hand across his head as if to reassure him. “Everyone knows already. Look, Magnus---” He tried to avoid her eye, but with a little maneuvering she caught his gaze and he sighed, relenting. “Cian and I were stupid kids when we met, we know that. But we grew up real fast after that night. If you’re not going to hold the person I was then against me, you can’t hold who he was then against him.”
“I can if I like,” he insisted stubbornly. At that point, Antha broke out into a pout the likes of which her family had never seen, like a stubborn child threatening to hold her breath until she passed out, and Magnus wavered. As they watched, his protests slowly began to break down, it was in the look in his eyes, and finally he was reduced to turning away and muttering, “I can promise not to call names. That is best I can give you.”
Antha sighed. “Well…it’s a start.” To Cian, bending down and whispering in his ear under the pretext of kissing his cheek, she said simply, “One step at a time, darling.” In his arms, Vanessa gave a sudden little gurgle of irritation, her fingers grasping Cian’s shirt, and her mother reared back in shock, eyes wide and brows knitted. After a moment of contemplation, she said sternly, “Oh, no. No, ma’am. I am not fighting with you for daddy’s affection. He’s allowed to love you more, but I have claims on him.”
In the hallway, Courtland’s voice called out hesitantly, “You know, psychologically speaking---”
“None of your psychology, Court. You just hush.”
“I think we’ve had quite enough of it for today,” Michael agreed gently, nodding to himself as he wrestled the broom out of the pantry. Antha and Jack glanced at one another, trading a knowing look, but neither said a word about it. Whatever was bothering him, it was best to let him clean it away.
“And where is this ‘Julien’ person?” Magnus questioned abruptly, as if he’d just thought about it, and Antha visibly tensed. “The way Ahnsa describes, I would think he is awake before everyone.”
“Usually,” Antha muttered, her gaze flickering at the stairs. She’d heard him milling about in his room before, but rather suspected he was putting off meeting Magnus for as long as he could. A wise decision, she thought; she hadn’t painted a very pretty picture of him over the years. “Does it matter, really?”
“I would like to meet,” Magnus said, and there was something oddly sinister about it. But he shifted to normal quickly enough, continuing, “And other bröder, as much as Ahnsa tells me.”
”Nicolae doesn’t live here,” she answered hastily, “And anyways, he’s not completely thrilled about you just showing up. And Malakai---” She faltered for a moment as she searched for the right phrase, finally giving a little fluttering wave of her hand, “---fled, for the moment. Nothing to do with you, though. He’ll find his way back eventually.”
“Like a cat,” Courtland added helpfully from the hallway.
“Now that I think about it…” Jack muttered suddenly, lifting his head and glancing groggily around the room, “Isn’t it time for school? Did Airi and Rynn even come home last night?”
Antha answered without an ounce of hesitation or concern, coffee cup clasped in both hands, glancing coyly off towards the door. “Nope.”
That brought the usual amused, impish grin to Jack’s lips, settling his chin back on his arm. “‘Atta boys.”