Mayfair Manor

[Okimiyage]

There was a long silence. Dorian did not look at her.
“I know how ugly magic can be.” he said, at last. “I can only promise what I can give, Antha. If it was up to me…” he trailed off.
“I’ve spent my whole life being selfish, but I don’t want to be that way anymore. And somehow, in a way, this feels selfish. This feels like saying, I don’t care what it costs our family, what it costs you, whether Melody even would agree to it or not. Like my feelings for her are supposed to trump every other card in the deck.” His fingers curled into his palm, nails pressing into this skin. “But if I don’t, how could I ever look her in the eye again? How could I look at Lena, in the future, if I stood by and did nothing when I had the chance?”
Finally, Dorian raised his head, with a gaze so sore that it was painful to meet. “But Evie…” her pet name, from childhood, which he used so rarely these days. Suddenly, he reached for her across the desk, taking her hand in his.
“You’ve always been a good actress, but we’d have to be blind not to notice. These past few months have taken a toll on you. They’d have to, what with Liesse, the twins…you’ve been performing miracles as though they were card tricks. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want this, if I wasn’t willing to pay whatever it costs, but I’m not the only one who has to pay the price, am I?” Here he’d been trying not to be a burden to the rest of the family, and then she had to lay this choice on the table like a royal flush. It didn’t matter to her whether Melody lived or died, she’d made that clear. This was a favor to him, and if it ended up backfiring…hurting Antha, somehow…that’d be his burden to bear, alone.
“I don’t like this,” he said, at last, finally letting her hand go. Without even thinking about it, he had reached for her with the hand that bore the old scars from the Red Crayon Court, from those long-ago blood pacts that they had enacted under the cover of the airship’s decaying canvas. Now, he turned his palm over, studying the thin white lines that marred it from any palmister’s interpretations.
“Death never used to scare me when we were younger. Maybe because it was so familiar at the time. Now…” he drew a breath in that made him shudder. “Now it’s everywhere, but just out of sight. It makes you realize why children complain about monsters in their closets, or under their bed—just close enough to invade their inner sanctums, but impossible to see in the shadows. Like a bogeyman that you can’t fight, you can only hide underneath the covers and pretend you haven’t seen the gleam of his eyes at the foot of your bed. I remember that feeling of desperation.”
Dorian closed his fingers, concealing the scars from view. There was something quiet and yet of sturdy faith in his voice when he spoke again. “I don’t like this, but I’m willing to give you my word: I’ll do what it takes.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Listening to him, Antha finally gave a very small, quietly amused laugh, the sort which usually preceded an old lady commenting on what a poor, sweet little thing one was. “As ever, you see but you do not observe,” she mused, gently, and then dismissed it, continuing more seriously, “There is very little logic involved in being human, Dorian. It’s a terribly emotional, selfish affair. We can’t blame you for that, and neither should you blame yourself. Nor should you worry about me. I know what I’m doing. This isn’t the airship, I’m not in the grips of madness and I’m not playing with magic for the sake of danger itself.”
Returning to her feet, she rounded the desk and went to Dorian, leaning over to whisper in his ear like when they were children, trading terrible secrets in the confidence that one could not sell the other out, for all the information they had on one another. “Nothing has weakened me, Dorian. Far from it. There are wells of power in me, buried and locked up, that run so deep, I can’t see the end of them, and the exercise of my abilities only beckons to them. If you see anything taking a toll on me, it is the effort of keeping my power restrained.” Withdrawing, she laid a kiss on his forehead and turned to leave, calling after herself, “I’ll do what I can, cher.”
When she returned to the nursery, she did so in a visibly distracted state, her eyes glazed and distant. Pierce began to question her, but she immediately held a hand up for silence, shushing him as she took up her son and mechanically set about dressing him. “I’m reading.”
“Evie, you are very clearly not---”
“Don’t bother,” Courtland chuckled, shaking his head, “Now that I think about it, it started when you were away. She’d already memorized the books we have, so she went through the Talamasca’s library and files and---well, think of Antha’s brain like a computer.”
“I usually do,” Pierce answered, nodding, “Continue.”
“They had too much for any one person to go through, she couldn’t read it all, so she scanned it all and stored up the information they had like files on a computer. They’re there, in her head, she just hasn’t read them yet. But when she needs something out of them, she can search it like a database.” Turning, a little amused smile on his face, he patted her head and purred, “The genius thing gets pretty annoying sometimes, but it’s impressive at least.”
When Antha gave no reaction, Pierce waved a hand in front of her, asking, “Is she even conscious? Like, should she really be moving?”
“I’m not sure how it works, exactly, but she can operate kind of mechanically while her attention is buried in her brain library. Don’t worry, I know how to pull her out of it when she needs.”
They were interrupted then by Lucy, appearing in the door with the clap of her hand bracing on the frame. For a moment, she was hardly recognizable, haggard and disheveled in her lace and satin nightgown with a silk robe hanging off her shoulders, her usually expertly made-up face bare except for a few smoky smudges of yesterday’s eyeliner. Her eyes focused immediately on Pierce and he jumped, tensing in terror. “You,” she rasped, pointing one finger at him in accusation, “You did this to me, you…you…you filthy beast!”
“You’re the one who wanted a Mayfair baby!” he protested in a squeak, backing up flat against the wall as she advanced on him, “Remember, you needed one immediately so it would be old enough to marry one of Antha’s babies! Lucy, no, just think---think about the baby! You’ve seen how much they cry, you need me! Who’s going to help you get the baby back to sleep if you kill me?! A baby needs a living father, Lucy!”
Groaning---he was right, she supposed---she turned and dropped down on the loveseat, hunching over with a little sob. “Nobody told me that morning sickness happens every day!” she whined, the tears springing to her eyes, “And it’s not just in the morning! It happens all the time! All the time”
“What a sense of déjà vu,” Michael sighed, flickering a glance at Antha, who was wholly preoccupied maneuvering Sebastien’s arm into a sweater and muttering silently to herself.
Cautiously attempting to comfort her, Pierce balanced himself on the armrest and reached to stroke her hair, but she shot him a murderous glance, one eye twitching slightly, and hissed, “Don’t you dare touch me, that’s how this happened in the first place.” He snatched his hand back, giving a distinctly terrified and helpless look as he tried to conjure up another way to soothe her rage.
“Lucy,” Courtland began, in a tone of utter sweet sympathy, “You know…you still look really hot, what with the skimpy night-wear and all.”
The tears quivered on her eyelids before spilling over in fresh sobs. “That’s all you had to say! God, Pierce, why are you so dense?!”
The man in question looked wildly around, his eyes finally settling on Cian as if to ask what he was supposed to do in this situation. He was the only one with a fresh memory of how to deal with a pregnant lover, after all.
Through all of this, Antha remained utterly oblivious. She dressed the children, rocked them, fed them when Michael put a bottle in her hand, but had no awareness of her surroundings otherwise until an hour before dinner, when Courtland clapped his hands in front of her and she blinked at him, coming back to herself.
“Find anything useful?”
She shrugged, tilting her head in consideration. “Mmm…hard to say. The Talamasca are great compilers of data, but they do very little to process it. But I do wonder about the DNA…” Her eyes taking on that distant haze of thought, she walked off murmuring thoughtfully to herself in complicated science terms that he had no hope of understanding.
While they were all getting dressed, a knock sounded on Rynn and Liesse’s door and Pierce slipped inside, clearing his throat awkwardly to announce, “So, Rynn, your---er---‘sexual counterpart’---is that something we can call him? I don’t know, is he your boyfriend? Lover? I feel like you’d give me that awful glare if I called him your better half---well, regardless, with the whole Magnus coming over thing, he’s burrowed under his covers with a pair of headphones and Edgar Allen Poe and refusing to come out or go to dinner. He’s very moody, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Airi really moody before, it’s very disorienting and he can get scary, and I have a hysterical pregnant fiancée to tend to and hide from, so…” He smiled, unabashed but almost, nearly, not quite apologetic, flashing Rynn a thumbs-up. “I’m going to leave this one to you, okay? Thanks, bye.” And then he was gone in a flash, with the expertise of someone who had grown up in the Mayfair household, dodging explosive arguments and awkward situations.
Lawrence and Malakai were the first to arrive, well ahead of time, the latter looking decidedly…well, not somber or moody exactly, but oddly disoriented and taken out of himself. He hardly greeted his family, merely turning and trudging into the parlor in a sort of daze. Antha stood considering the situation for a moment, until the unenthused plucking of piano keys sounded and Lawrence sighed as if he had been expecting it. “…so he’s made no progress, then?”
“He hasn’t done much of anything,” Lawrence sighed, folding his coat over his arm, “Except sit staring at the same page of a book for hours. He’s practically a vegetable.”
“That would be your cue,” Antha commented then to Dorian, taking his arm and all but shoving him into the parlor, closing the door behind him.
“Is that wise?” Lawrence murmured, flickering a gaze at the door, “Dorian isn’t exactly, well…delicate, with these things.”
Antha shrugged uncertainly. “It’s something, anyways. One way or another, they need resolution.”
Quickly switching the subject, Lawrence questioned, “How’s Cian? His first encounter with Magnus hardly went well, he can’t be looking forward to tonight.”
“Nervous, I think. But he has less to worry about with Julien making an appearance.” Her eyes flashed, her fingers automatically reaching up to her necklace to toy with the little jeweled pendant. “It’s…not going to be pretty. If they don’t rip each other’s throats out, the night might be a success.”
“How low our dinner party expectations have fallen,” Lawrence mused, hanging his coat and following after Antha into the kitchen.  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian grimaced at Antha’s back as she left the room. He hated when she did that, the way she would laugh, give out some patronizing reassurance, and then waltz away off, leaving her victim to fume. “You’re entirely too cavalier about all of this, you know that?” he called after her, as the door swung shut.
And he didn’t like being lied to, either. Because either those wells of infinite power existed, and they could command life and death give or take at will, or even those wells had their limits, and that was why Antha could see her own death coming at her like a freight train. And if the former was true, then it made Antha’s death a choice, not a consequence. But Antha would never voluntarily abandon her children, would she? So that couldn’t be true, either. Either way, something wasn’t right about it. Dorian sighed, and gave up trying to figure his cousin out, at least for the moment. He was just getting more annoyed the further he went down that rabbit-hole.
In the nursery, Cian was beginning to grow concerned. He hadn’t seen Antha in autopilot for this long before. Oh, he’d notice when she’d sink into this state, usually when she was overtired, but it had never lasted more than a half-hour at most. As a result, he was watching Antha with what was nearly hawkish intensity. You could have called it ‘hovering’. He was preoccupied enough with this that he hardly seemed to notice when Lucy burst into the room, filled with righteous wrath. Or perhaps he was merely getting used to a household where these sorts of dramatic episodes, in one form or another, were practically part of the daily routine. If anything, his concern was more for Vanessa, who was being comfortably jiggled in his arms, and whose ears he protectively covered when he saw how this conversation was going to start off. “Could we not shout in the nursery?” he said, mildly. It was probably bad for the children’s developing social instincts or whatever those child psychology books were going on about these days.
Rynn, however, still went wide-eyed. It was at times like these that he was grateful that neither he—nor Alistair, for that matter— would have to go through this particular gauntlet at any point in their relationship. Nor, for that matter, had Dorian. Did faeries even get morning sickness?
“How long does this last?” he asked, incredulously. Cian shrugged. “The whole time, I think. I’m not sure. Antha’s wasn’t exactly a standard by which you could compare…” Catching sight of Pierce’s desperate stare, he raised his shoulders helplessly. “You’re just going to have to stick it out, I’m afraid. But for chrissakes, get her something for the nausea, there has to be something Vittorio can prescribe.” The silver lining to the hideous snarling mess of hormones that pregnancy induced was that, although 90% of the time you might be in trouble for simply existing, the 10% of the time that you were not was usually filled with glowing praise and sometimes tears for something as simple as delivering a bar of chocolate. Or a jar of kimchi. Or both. Hormonal cravings could be strange.
A few minutes later, Briar woke up, and began to whimper and struggle against the confinement of his blanket. Almost as if summoned, djinn-like, Dorian appeared in the doorway. He’d been halfway through getting dressed for dinner, and had changed into a rather flashy white shirt, pin-striped with thin gold threads. The collar was open and he’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows; foam still clung to the corner of his jaw. It was clear that he’d been mid-way through shaving when the cry of his youngest—oldest? one of the triplets—had called him away from his mirror. No small feat when Dorian was concerned. He’d arrived in time for a grievously needed diaper change, it seemed—just his luck.

In Rynn and Liesse’s room, before dinner, Liesse was trying unsuccessfully to coax Rynn into color-coordinating their outfits for the dinner. “Look, it’s the exact same shade of green as my dress,” she argued. “It’ll be cute. I know that our faces don’t match any more, but it would be fun to dress up like we used to—“
“Green, I wouldn’t mind, but this is teal, Liesse. It’s fine for you, you’re a girl, but I don’t want to show up looking like a peacock, we already have Dorian for that—“
“Then what would you rather be, a penguin? Bo-ring. Come on, try a little color—”
Rynn seemed relieved by Pierce’s intrusion. Grasping at the get-out-jail card that he’d just been thrown, he sighed audibly, then spread his hands helplessly and started backing away from his twin towards the door. “I guess I have to see what the matter is. I’ll, uh, try to wrap it up quickly.”
“Rynn—“ Liesse began, in exasperation, but he ducked past Pierce speedily before she could finish that thought. She huffed, gave her foot a light stamp against the floor, and crossed her arms at Pierce. “I hope he owes you for that one.”

Downstairs, in the parlor, Dorian was debating whether to go after Malakai or not. His cousin had refused to meet his eyes ever since stepping through the door. There had one brief flash of recognition—an accident, most likely—and then, his head had dropped, and his eyes had stayed glued to his feet after that.
Antha, however, didn’t give him that choice to make. The door of the parlor shut behind him.
Dorian recognized the song that Malakai was playing, slowed as it was, and altered to feature a majority of minor keys. “I, ah—“ he paused, cleared his throat. Unusually for him, Dorian seemed to be at a loss for words. “Malakai, I need to talk to you.”
The tinkling notes of the piano slowed, then stopped entirely. Dorian took a few steps forward, watching the back of Malakai’s head, which still had yet to turn towards him. The distance between them narrowed to a few paces as he advanced. “I guess…I mean, I think—I owe you an apology.” There was no response to this, either, and Dorian found himself fighting the urge to fidget like a child in front of the principal. Well, now or never. The next sentence came out in a rush. “I know you must be angry with me, and I don’t blame you. We…I…never talked about this, when it happened, but…” he gave a small shrug, indicating helplessness. “Antha says that it’s important now.”
After another long pause, Dorian made a bold move. He crossed to the piano bench and sat down, next to Malakai. His fingers tip-toed across the keys, the opening notes to a piano composition that he had learned once, long ago.
“I never wanted to hurt you. Seven years ago, I was…selfish. All I could see was the opportunity right in front of me, and I didn’t think about anything other than my own desires.” He swallowed. “It was cruel to you, and to her. But it wasn’t spite. I thought—”
He stopped himself. “It doesn’t matter what I thought, I suppose. What matters is what I did, and I’m…sorry for how it hurt you, but I—“ I’m not sorry for what happened.
No, that was entirely the wrong thing to say.
“I spent years pretending that I didn’t see her, that I wasn’t…looking at her, every time that she entered the room. And that I didn’t have these feelings. Because I didn’t want to mess this up for you. And I thought that if I didn’t acknowledge those feelings, they would go away.” His laugh was bitter, and a little broken. “And maybe I was jealous, too. Because no matter how many girls I dated or slept with, I never felt as happy with them as you looked with her. With Melody.”
His fingers hesitated on the keys, then, and picked out the intro chords all over again. “And for a long time, I convinced myself that it was them, that I just hadn’t found ‘the right one’. That if I searched long and hard enough, that I’d find somebody who completed me in the same way. But it was me, all along. I was in love with her, and you can’t just…find a replacement for that, you can’t just transfer your feelings onto a surrogate.” He bit his lip.
“I’m not expecting you to forgive me, I…just…thought you should know. That maybe, it might make a difference to you, somehow.”

Upstairs, a knock sounded lightly on Alistair's door.
"Hey, it's me."
Rynn put his ear to the wood. "You know, if you're going to ditch, you could at least invite me to join. I don't want to go to this any more than you do."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

At first, Malakai said nothing. He sat still, his fingers lingering weightlessly on the keys. He listened, without looking, and then very gently, he reached forward, and slammed the key cover closed, narrowly missing Dorian’s fingers. The look he gave him following this said several things at once. For one, it said that this was his bench, his piano, and Dorian was intruding where he was not welcome. Second, it said that he’d probably had every intention of breaking Dorian’s fingers with the lid. And third, most subtly of all, it said that something in Malakai had quietly snapped.
When Dorian moved, he gently lifted the lid again, setting his fingers back on the keys and launching automatically into one of Beethoven’s sonatas by muscle memory.
“You thought,” he repeated, slowly and quietly, ruminatively, “You thought, you thought, you thought. You suppose. Maybe.” His fingers came down a little too hard on the keys for the next few notes, and then paused, repeating dryly, like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, “‘Antha says.’” And then his fingers kept moving, his eyes on the keys. “You know, I might have cared, back then. No, certainly I would have. It would have been such a big deal---I would have felt so bad, standing in the way like that. I would have thought I was selfish—funny, isn’t it? Me, thinking that I was the selfish one?” His fingers tripped on the keys, only for a split second, but it was unusual enough in itself to indicate his great aggravation. “It would have made a difference, back then. I would have been glad to step aside, to stop the charade without having to completely let her go. It would have made all the difference in the world that you were in love with her, but it stopped mattering the moment you chose betrayal over honesty. That’s what this is about, Dorian. I don’t know where you got it in your head that you being in love with Melody is wrapped up with you stabbing me in the back, but they’re entirely different issues.”
The last note came out singularly, in a little chime that reverberated for several moments in the big, silent room. “I used to wish that someone would murder you,” he said, soft and calm, “I used to watch it, all those many, many lines where your life ended abruptly, at someone else’s hands---and truly, the only thing keeping you alive every day for years was Antha’s intervention---and I used to just pray that for once you wouldn’t breeze past it. How much easier would it have been, everyone’s lives, if you were dead? If you couldn’t hurt anyone anymore---me, Antha, Stefan, Louis before him, and the endless parade of girls---how much better would it have been if you were just dead?” Finally, he turned blank, tired eyes on his cousin. “You’re the only person I’ve ever hated before, do you realize that? You brought that into my life, you created hatred in me when there had never been any before. You took the one single thing in this world that was mine away. The one thing I had that was good---the only singular person who didn’t pity me, who didn’t think I was lesser, unfortunate, a pale shadow of inferiority, the only person in the whole world who actually thought I was better than---and you sent her away somewhere that I couldn’t reach her. And for what, Dorian? Because you were selfish? Well, obviously. Because you didn’t think? Because…what, you imagine you were a lesser person back then? Because somehow, in your head, it was all in the service of love, of finding ‘the one’? You’re not different, Dorian, and love has nothing to do with your actions. There were right decisions and wrong decisions, both of them equally possible, and you chose the wrong decisions, the ones that made it easiest on you and hardest on everyone else. It doesn’t matter one bit that you loved her---you could have told me, or her. You could have waited. Instead you took advantage of her, betrayed me, and ruined both of our lives. And then you waited seven years for someone else to force you to apologize, and really you didn’t even do that. You just stood here trying to justify yourself.”
The boy shook his head and stood from the piano bench with his usual grace, perfectly composed. “I’ll never tell Melody what to do. If she thinks she might be happy with you, I won’t stop her. But we both know that’s not true, don’t we Dorian? You won’t make her happy. Here, at this very moment, and as far as we can see into the future, you haven’t changed. Oh, you’ve put in some effort, and you keep telling yourself you have, but there’s nothing different about you. You’re still the kind of person who doesn’t care what he did to a member of his family who never did anything against him---his brother, technically---because you got what you wanted out of it. You’re still the kind of man who has to be coerced into doing the right thing, even a little. You haven’t tried to change a single fundamental thing about yourself. You’re not thinking of anyone but yourself. Anything you think you’re doing for Melody or your children, it’s all really just about you. Did you give her a choice? If Antha can cure her, will you give her five measly minutes to think about anything without the weight of being a single parent and dying on her conscience before you press yourself and your ‘love’ on her? I don’t think it’s even crossed your mind. That’s not love. You’re still a bad person, Dorian, selfish and tarnished. And that’s why, without fail, you destroy everything you touch.”
Finally, Malakai cleared his throat and adjusted his tie, his hands retreating into the baggy sleeves of his sweater. There was nothing secretive about him through all of this, no turn or shift like with his cousins, when they began speaking their minds and one could see that glimmer of their true colors, or the shift back when they slipped their mask back on, continued playing a part, taking up their usual personas. Malakai was still Malakai from start to finish, soft and quiet and harmless, without an ounce of malice or the faintest intention of harming anyone. The only difference was in his lack of restraint, that his usual unwillingness to say anything harmful or cruel had faded to nothing in the face of his honest feelings and observations.
Sitting back down on the piano stool, his fingers hovered over the keys, melting back into the piano as he began plucking out a tune, his voice flat. “Don’t ever come to me again with that sort of ingenuine, half-baked nonsense. It’s insulting and it only proves what a self-centered fool you are, and I can do without the reminder. You’re not forgiven, and nothing is resolved, but you’ve done what Antha ordered you to, so please leave now.”

Poking his head cautiously in the door, Pierce took stock of the situation and then stopped to give a little laugh, watching Rynn disappear down the hall. “Can’t be helped,” he sighed, shrugging, “The kid’s in love. Not even that---he’s caught, all tied up in the sunbeams that start floating around every time Airi smiles. He would’ve gone running to him sooner or later anyways.” Grinning, he turned to Liesse and tapped the side of his head, asking, “Surely you’ve noticed by now. They’re like polarized magnets constantly pulling them together, pretty soon they’ll forget how to be apart from one another. Assuming the sexual tension doesn’t bring the house down first. They’re…well, a lot like Courtland and Jack were in the beginning, actually.” At this thought, he pursed his lips, crossing his arms as he considered it. “Huh. I can’t believe I never thought of that before. The lovelorn, ridiculously resilient little puppy and the terrified little brat trying to deny his feelings. (Sorry, don’t mind me, I never quite forgave Jack for spurning the thing I wanted so badly.) Airi probably had an easier time of it, though. He didn’t even have to go out and find someone with some vague resemblance to sleep with, and it didn’t take him years. But then, Rynn isn’t as deeply damaged as Jack was, and let’s be honest, Airi is a hell of a lot prettier.”
And then, very suddenly, he sobered, gently patting Liesse’s head and offering her a smile. “Things will change, that’s unavoidable no matter what the situation is. You can’t fight it. But you and Rynn will never break apart.” He leaned forward, planting a kiss on her forehead. “And you have us. A consolation prize, sure, but---”
“Pierce!”
He jumped, seizing up in panic before fleeing towards the stairs. “I’m getting the ice cream, I swear! Two minutes!”
Lucy came after him a moment later, stopping in the door and tightening her robe around her. “He came this way, didn’t he? Oh, that sneaky b*****d---” Grumbling, she turned a deadly serious gaze on Liesse, warning her intently, “Don’t ever let a man touch you, kitten. It leads to horrible, horrible, nauseating things. And then where are they? Hiding from you, that’s where. You throw one measly hairdryer and suddenly you’re ‘hysterical’ and they’re ‘afraid’.” She stopped, thinking back over the last sentence, and then very abruptly her wrath crumbled into pitiful sobs. “Oh god…I’m going to miss that hairdryer so much!”
Pierce approached then, with all the caution of a soldier tasked with disarming a bomb, a pint of ice cream in his hand. Flashing Liesse an apologetic look, he tentatively laid a hand on her shoulder and she all but collapsed against his chest, sobbing. “Ok, there we go,” he soothed her, stroking her hair, “Let’s just get you back to bed.”
“With my ice cream?” she asked between shaky sobs.
“With ice cream,” he promised, gently turning her around and inching her back down the hall, “Come on, back to bed.”
Snatching the container and spoon out of his hands, she allowed him to lead her away, her crying transforming into small, grateful sniffles. “I love mint chocolate chip, I really do.”
“I know, Luce, I know.”


For a moment, there was no response to Rynn. When one finally came, it was from behind him, and turning he would have found a preemptively irritated Julien stalking down the hall, fiddling with his cuffs. “I highly doubt that.” He was not so elaborately dressed as usual, but more refined, his suit of highest quality cloth and very finely cut, sapphires gleaming with the undeniable sparkle of authenticity in his cufflinks and lapel pin. He was dressed to impress, or more likely intimidate. “Move. Alistair?” He banged twice on the door, short but hard raps. “You can’t possibly imagine I’ll let you avoid this, particularly with your adventures skipping school yesterday. Alistair---” He clicked his tongue irritably, turning to glance down the hall as if he would call for Antha or Courtland. It was only a moment, a flicker, but it was enough for the door to crack and an arm to dart out, hooking around Rynn’s waist and yanking him inside. By the time Julien turned back around, the door was already locked and bolted again and Rynn was buried beneath Alistair’s thick comforter, the two boys face to face in the dim light of a little glowing plastic ball between them.
Frustrated, Julien continued banging on the door. Alistair ignored him, taking the headphone from his ear against the mattress and pressing it gently into Rynn’s exposed ear, effectively drowning out Julien’s fit. Thus, they were secluded in the little universe beneath his comforter, a book of Poe’s poems opened and discarded on the pillow above their heads. His eyes fluttering softly closed, Alistair pressed his forehead to Rynn’s, their lips nearly close enough to touch. He stayed that way until after Julien had gone to get the key, found the door bolted, and finally given up, stomping away.
It was only then, giving a little flicker of a victorious smile, that Alistair spoke. “‘And all my days are trances,/and all my nightly dreams,’” he murmured, his breath a warm swirl on Rynn’s cheek, “‘Are where thy gray eye glances,/and where thy footstep gleams---/in what ethereal dances,/by what eternal streams.’” He chuckled beneath his breath, not loudly enough to hear over the soft music. “He’s very dull, isn’t he? Poe. As a poet, anyway. Florid and lovely, but so goddamn dull. What does it matter?” He shook his head very softly, sighing and slipping an arm around Rynn’s waist, drawing him closer. “Tennessee Williams, that was a man with things to say. ‘What would you suggest I do,/wryly smile and turn away,/fox-teeth gnawing chest-bones through?/Even less would that be true,/than carnally, I was to you/many, many lives ago,/requiems of fallen snow.’” This time, the little sigh he gave was one of appreciation, pulling Rynn closer still until the space between them was obliterated, burying his face against his neck. “I don’t want to go,” he whispered, and there was the faintest tremor of insecurity in his voice, “I can’t pretend, Rynn. For all my faults, I’m still me. And I can’t tell him, but I can’t pretend not to be me. Evie says I don’t have to go if I don’t want to, even if Julien says I do, but…”
The boy trailed off, and after a moment of contemplation, snuggled himself protectively close to Rynn like a security blanket, mumbling against him, “By the way…what’s up with the teal?”  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian had gone white, but not with fear. He was staring Malakai down as if he had just truly seen him for the first time in all his life, like some mask had been ripped away, perhaps a funereal shroud.
Quietly, and in the most civil of tones, he said, “******** you, then.”
Standing swiftly, he straightened an imaginary crease in his collar, and turned away from the person who had the audacity to call himself his brother.
“You’re wrong.” he said, simply and clearly, and the clarity and strength in his voice was a sharp contradiction to the soft venom in Malakai’s. “It wasn’t for me, and it wasn’t for Antha. I was trying to apologize because of Melody, and for Magdalena. Because, like I said, I don’t expect you to forgive me, and I won’t lose sleep over it if you can’t, but if you do anything against them on account of trying to spite me—”
Dorian’s cornflower-blue eyes briefly focused on the other man in the room, stinging like pitch.
“I might be a coward, but I have something to fight for now. I won’t just bite my tongue, swallow my venom, and wish for someone else to take action, while I sit in my room playing sad music and hoping someone murders my enemies for me.”
He crossed to the other side of the room, while Malakai made tinkling little notes on the piano to drown him out.
“So you want to be honest, finally? Let’s be honest.” He leaned back against the mahogany-encased shelves of books, and crossed his arms.
“I resented you for years because I thought that you had something I couldn’t ever have. And you, and the rest of the family, have hated me ever since because you think I stole your chance at happiness from you, that I seduced her out from under your thumb by some obscure technique that consists of shelving my own desires and avoiding her as much as I could. Even I'm not that good. I held out for as long as I could, goddammit.”
He laughed at that, throwing his head back in an ugly, pained giggle that did not match his smiling countenance. “And sure, I should have let you hate a stranger. It would have been so much simpler—it could have been anyone else, for chrissakes. I could have turned Melody away when she came to my door in the middle of the night, and I know that what I did was wrong, and I’m sorry for it, because you didn’t deserve that from either of us. But what happened because of it can’t be revoked. But I can’t help but think, if it had been anyone else, she wouldn’t be here now. And Magdalena wouldn’t be who she is.”
He spoke fiercely, then. “I love Melody. I love my daughter. I’m glad she was born. So you can stew in all your bitterness, let it ruin you, if you like, but I’m not going to let you spoil a chance at happiness for them if they have even a snowflake’s chance in hell of achieving it, and I’ll stand against you with all of my strength if you try. It doesn’t matter if Melody wants to be with me afterwards—because love isn’t about possessing or controlling someone else, and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be hurt, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Magdalena will have her mother, and she’ll—Melody will be free to choose whoever she wants to, to go whichever way she pleases, afterwards. And if you loved her ever, even long ago, you’d let her make those decisions for herself.”
He turned towards the door, then, and made his way to it in three quick, long, strides.
Pausing at the threshold, his fingers tapped restlessly against the frame. Finally, he gave one last parting statement, preceded by a sigh.
“I was sincere in my apology. I feel sorry for you, Malakai. Not only because of what happened, but because you’ve stagnated in it for seven years, bottled up your emotions like they were a wine ready to ferment, and I don’t know if you’ll ever recover from that. You’ve spent all your life sweeping your feelings under the rug and pretending they didn’t exist. That’s a sad and dishonest way to live.”
But Dorian didn’t expect it to change.
Well, I tried.

In the hallway, Liesse put her hands on her hips and watched Pierce and Lucy’s backs receding down the hall. It was hard to resolve her own feelings. Everyone seemed to be confident that it would all turn out right in the end, but that was easy for them to say.
Although, it wasn’t as though life was hard—in fact, this was probably the least complicated her life had been since she was born—it was the uncertainty that troubled her. She was no longer entirely a Calais, but not entirely a Mayfair, either, a soul concealed in a body that was not her own. And for a twin whose entire identity had mostly revolved around her brother for the past sixteen years, seeing him grow distant from her left her feeling lacking, like she’d woken up one morning to find that she was missing the left half of her body. Liesse told herself that she had to be happy for him, that he was finally growing into the man he was meant to be, but it was…isolating. And she knew it meant that, if Rynn was growing into the man he was meant to be, that meant she had to grow into the woman she was meant to be, too. She just wasn’t sure who that was, yet.
With a sigh, Liesse returned to her room, and shut the door. The layered chiffon frock [http://i68.tinypic.com/2a92tnd.jpg] that Rynn had scorned the color of was laid out on the bed, waiting for her to change into it and join the party. And she had to look her best, didn’t she? After all, the whole family would be there. That meant Malakai, too.

Rynn breathed a sigh of relief when he was pulled inside the room, and heard the click of the lock behind him. “You had me worried. I figured Julien was about to put me on a fish-hook and pull me down the hall like bait if—“
He didn’t get a chance to complete the thought before he was tugged towards the bed and flung into the inner sanctum of Alistair’s refuge. A wafting strain of violin music issued from the earbud that he was gently pushed into his ear, and Rynn watched Alistair’s eyes flutter shut above him before closing his own. He felt his breathing slow, falling into sync with the rise and fall of Airi's chest. The hammering on the door eventually receded.
He opened his eyes upon hearing the whisper of poetry, like wind in reeds.
Rynn had never read either Poe or Williams, but he thought the language from each sounded familiar. And wasn’t that telling, how they both spoke of love so differently? For Poe, love was an enigma, something grand and mysterious that you must put on a pedestal and admire from afar, like a treasure displayed in a museum. Williams talked about love like it was a wild animal, the subject of some hot-blooded hunt across an inhospitable, frozen wasteland. Perhaps how you conceived of the subject depended on who you learned to love from.
“You don’t have to go,” he said, softly, and he found his arms had crept around Alistair’s shoulders, his clasped hands cupping the back of his lover’s neck. “But…you wouldn’t say ‘but’ if there wasn’t some part of you that felt like you should, would you? Why is that?”
He’d nearly forgotten about the almost-fight he’d had with Liesse about the color of his blazer until Alistair brought it up again. Rynn glanced down at himself with an embarrassed chuckle. “Liesse thought it would be…cute…to match. It’s a bit ostentatious, isn’t it?” A velvet blazer was bad enough, but the one that Liesse had picked out was dyed to match her frock, the shade of sunlight on moss-banked water, and the cream-colored shirt beneath it was akin to the ribbons on her corsage and sleeves. “Absolute madness. It would make her happy, though.” He wrinkled his nose, briefly, but then found the expression subsiding into a rather rueful smile. “I guess you know all about that, though—the things we do for family.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Malakai said nothing, but kept playing with his eyes on his fingers, utterly single-minded. If anyone had bothered to ask, Antha could have told them that it was a coping mechanism. Her older brother had become the most proficient musician in the family because when he played, he could drown out everything besides the music, completely blocking out the world and emptying his mind. So he had played very, very often as a child, Nicolae’s dull twin, Mary Beth’s abandoned son, the boy that did not quite match his dazzling lineage.
When Dorian opened the door, Melody stumbled backwards for a brief moment, squealing and flailing her arms until she regained her balance and then huffing, “Can a girl not lean against a door when she eavesdrops anymore? I’m sick, I get tired and I need to lean.” Sighing, she half-raked a hand back through her somewhat-arranged hair---she had bothered to smooth out the waves which usually fell quite wildly---and finally crossed her arms, visibly uncomfortable and not bothering to hide it. “That…didn’t go well,” she commented, cutting a rueful gaze sidelong through the door and at Malakai. “Dorian, you…”
She faltered, looking for her words, eventually sighing and cocking her head, her gaze landing on Dorian with an odd conflict. “You don’t really understand us, do you?” Immediately, she held up a finger to indicate that she wanted to amend that thought, only needed a moment to put it into words. “What am I saying, of course you don’t. Dorian, it’s…really, really hard being the ‘plain’ one of the group. Like, I can’t even begin to describe to you the kind of complexes you start developing. And growing up in your family---Jesus Christ, when was he supposed to learn to express himself?” Another sigh, another gaze trailing into the parlor where Malakai was oblivious to the world. “I don’t think anyone did it on purpose, but Malakai was the nice kid, the meek one, he always got drowned out by Nicolae and Courtland and Pierce and you and all of the other loud and willful children. I know because it was still happening when we were teenagers, every day, every moment anyone in the family was around. Of course he eventually got used to keeping everything to himself, to bottling up what he thought or felt and never expressing it---there was never anyone to listen. And…” A complicated look swept across her face, guilt and doubt and deep, cloying remorse, her gaze swiftly diverting to the floor. “…he’s not wrong, Dorian. What we did to him was unspeakably horrible. At least I had some excuse for not apologizing, I was in exile and banned from communication, but…” And then her eyes found Dorian’s, uncertain and a little taken aback. “…did you really never apologize to him before now?”
She was stopped cold by the sound of footsteps down the hall, the telltale steadfast click of heels that invariably produced Antha, her quick eyes taking in the situation. She was more imposing than usual, Melody thought, done up in an outrageously expensive navy blue cocktail dress, the sleeves just off her shoulders and the bodice fitted to her form like wet leather, the very full short skirt with a cut-out lace pattern on the bottom quarter. Somehow, it was the heels that made her most nervous, patent leather shining like glass, at least four inches tall. (Idly, Melody wondered if use as a makeshift weapon factored into Antha’s shoe selection process.) “Magdalena found Henry,” was all she said, after a contemplative moment, as if in reference to an earlier conversation, “She jumped on him and knocked him down.”
“She does that,” Melody said with a little nod as if it was perfectly usual, her shoulders giving a very light shrug. Straightening her posture---Antha did bring that out in people---her eyes flickered to the parlor and then back to Antha, pointing a finger at the former and questioning honestly, “Are you going to kill me if I go talk to him”
Antha honestly seemed to consider the proposition for a few moments, glancing between the other three, those quick glimmers of thought shooting through her eyes. Finally, she sighed, making a flit of a gesture at the parlor door. “No. Not now, anyways. You’d probably do a lot more good than me right now.”
Smiling slightly, Melody nodded and turned for the parlor. And then stopped, glancing back at Antha with pursed lips. “It’s not my fault, you know. Eight years ago.”
Antha only cocked her head, answering coolly, “Oh, I’m well aware. But it was much less problematic to blame you than Nicolae, and the rest of the family, and even myself. And to be perfectly fair, I was eleven.”
“I’ll give you that one,” Melody conceded, shrugging, and then darted into the parlor before Antha could take offense.
The designee chose not to dwell on it long enough to take offense, sighing and crossing the atrium to the foot of the stairs, situated quite close to the now partially open parlor door, and sat down, putting a finger to her lips for Dorian to be silent. It was a great leap for her to allow Melody contact with Malakai, but she would not go quite so far as to let it go unmonitored. The situation was too delicate for that.

The first awareness Malakai had of the real world since he fell into the music---admittedly before Dorian had even finished talking---was the sudden thud of being pushed to one side of the piano bench, his fingers scraping the keys in an awful screech, as Melody forcefully slid in beside him, lifting her fingers to the keys and gently plucking them. “What are we playing?”
Malakai only looked at her for a moment, blank and confused, and then back at the keys, his fingers automatically setting back into motion, before answering quite normally, “I’m playing the ‘Appassionata’ sonata. You’re playing…nothing.” Straining to listen, her cocked his head and added, “It’s…almost Hot Cross Buns?”
At that, Melody broke into a little guilty snicker, mercifully removing her fingers from the keys. “That’s fair, I haven’t had a lesson since elementary school.” Planting her hands on the bench to either side of her, she took a moment to relax, grateful that they had been able to evoke the old, comfortable atmosphere that had always been between them, instead of the tense, awkward mess it so easily could have been. “Say, M…who’s your father?”
He glanced sidelong at her, without any particular reaction to the question. “My father is my father, just as he’s always been.”
“I mean, you know, like, blood. Just now, you said that technically, Dorian is your brother by blood. It’s not by Mary Beth, and I can’t see Michael cheating on his wife or having an unclaimed, illegitimate son, so…” She pursed her lips, casting her gaze on the windows across the piano. “Is it Julien?”
He gave her another side-eye, this time tensing by a few degrees, his voice just a little stiff when he answered, “Technically speaking, by way of blood, yes. But it doesn’t particularly matter to me. It’s actions that matter, not blood.”
Melody hummed as if she understood, stroking the keys on her side of the piano without pressing them. “Makes the whole thing with Nicolae and Antha that much creepier, though.” Malakai’s fingers faltered, only for a brief moment, but it was enough to make Melody glance up in time to see him desperately suppressing a laugh, just for a split second before all evidence of it was gone. She did laugh, softly and victoriously, gloating in a sing-song murmur, “Got you~”
“I have no idea what you mean,” he said, flat and quickly enough that he obviously did.
Having managed to lighten his mood a bit, she glanced back down at the keys, quietly addressing the elephant in the room. “I don’t think Dorian really means any harm. I mean, I get it, he sounds like just the biggest, most conceited jerk in the world when he talks. But he just seems to talk before he gives it any serious thought.”
“Do you think so?” He cast her a doubtful glance, humming thoughtfully, “No, Dorian probably never intends to seriously hurt anyone. But how much harmful recklessness does it take for someone to be held accountable?”
“Ehh…” She sighed, her head falling to the side as she earnestly tried to come up with an answer. “I don’t know, M. People are complicated enough, but Mayfairs are just on a whole other level.”
“That’s fair,” he stated, echoing her earlier answer. Giving her another glance, and a few moments of silence, he continued, “You slept with him again, didn’t you?”
“I did,” she answered, without hesitation but just a hint of guilt, nodding and clicking her tongue, “Yes, I did, in fact, do that. Didn’t really plan on it, but then it happened. Sooo…”
When she trailed off, somewhat awkwardly, he held back another laugh, his lips giving just a small twitch. “You sure you know what you’re getting into?”
“Oh, good god, not at all,” she answered, shaking her head, “Nope, not one bit. I am in way over my head. But, you know…” She shrugged. “What else am I going to do?”
“Caution was never your strong suit,” he conceded, his lips turning up just slightly at the edges, and Melody reached over and pressed her palm to his cheek, turning his face the other way. “No, no, it’s fine. You’re a ditz, that’s your charm.”
“Well obviously you’re feeling better, if you’re making snarky jokes,” she said, rolling her eyes, and he finally did laugh.
It was a laugh Antha hadn’t heard in a long time, years and years, soft and gentle but…normal. Like everything else about him, Malakai’s laughs were always restrained, Melody had been the only reliable way to ever make him laugh like that. It was her perception of him, Antha theorized---she saw him very normally, either not comparing him to the rest of the family or else favoring him over them. And objectively, really, Malakai was a dazzling creature, lovely and intelligent and refined. It was only when put next to his decidedly more charismatic, sparkling family members that he seemed dull, but Melody was the only person outside of the family to ever see that.
Leaning her head against the banister, Antha sighed. She saw it too, of course---she adored her big brother, always had, and for a while she had held him very high above anyone else in the world, much less the family. (Well…maybe not above Magnus.) But then she’d been caught by Nicolae, and her perception had ceased to count to Malakai because she’d put his twin above him by falling in love with the b*****d. If it was anyone else, he would have been content to be second place to his little sister, but Nicolae was anathema to his brother.
Soundlessly, Antha stood, brushed off her skirt, and began soundlessly up the stairs. She’d been wary for so long, she had forgotten that Malakai would be okay with Melody. Whatever she did to hurt him on the whole, he was safe interacting with her.
Pausing, she turned back and gave Dorian a dark, complex look over half the length of the staircase, whispering through his mind like a confession, She’s right, we’ll never understand what it feels like. We have to give him that, even if it seems ridiculous to us, because we’ve never experienced anything like it. On the contrary, we’re the ones who make the problem. Before she withdrew, there was a flash of something else on her mind that passed to Dorian. It was the sort of thing that would make other people dizzy, a hopelessly knotted tangle of dozens of ideas all occurring simultaneously in the same split second---half-baked theories, blocks of information she’d read in medical and scientific texts, scraps from ancient arcana, and vague considerations of old folklore. Elsewhere in her mind, there was a hub of activity dwarfing the convoluted glob of what had flickered at Dorian, an absolute mountain of thoughts and information being processed simultaneously, but it vanished when Antha withdrew her mind from Dorian’s, locked up tight behind a wall of cold, blank steel.

Up the stairs, she paused in the hallway just shy of Liesse and Rynn’s door, hesitating. It wasn’t any of her business, really, there was no direct need for her to step in. And really, she had enough of her own problems to deal with at the moment, as well as Dorian’s. Why did she always have to come in and sort out everyone else’s mess anyways? Was no one else in the reliable enough to resolve a simple problem?
…no, of course they weren’t. They never had been, and wouldn’t be until several terrible problems had gone unsolved after she was gone.
Before she could change her mind, she knocked on the door, leaning in the doorway when she was invited in with her fingers at her temple, sighing. “Your anxiety is palpable,” she murmured, casting Liesse a look, “You’re really terribly unguarded with these things.” Turning her gaze on the dress laid across the bed, she spent a moment in quiet consideration before asking softly, “Is that what you’re wearing tonight?” The girl hummed thoughtfully. “It’s lovely. But…it’s rather like a doll’s dress, isn’t it? The sort of thing you dress children in when they insist on being little princesses?” Crossing over to the bed, her fingers gently brushed the gauzy edges of the skirt.
Withdrawing, she took Liesse by the shoulder and steered her over to the vanity, sitting her down in front of the mirror. “Just sit still and trust me,” she said firmly, taking a brush and eventually a handful of silver pins to her pale hair, twisting various locks this way and that, before turning the girl again and expertly taking a make-up brush to her.
When she spoke again, it was gently, with very careful measure, calculated not to hurt feelings. “Have you ever heard of Thomas Cooley? He was a sociologist, he studied the construction of identity. He became famous for a quote: ‘I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.’” Pausing to give her a moment to process the confusing string of words, Antha casually cast a compact of light blush aside and took up a tube of eyeliner. “It’s hard coming from an isolated world into society, I know. The rules are different---everything is different. But we have to make an effort to adapt, otherwise it begins to crush us.”
Capping a tube of mascara, Antha rose and crossed the room, this time to Dolly Jean’s nearly empty wardrobe, pushing aside the remaining floral dresses and picking out a dress pushed into the very back with a little sigh. It was not the sort of thing one would expect to pull out of Dolly Jean’s closet, a modern cocktail dress of deep blue satin, sleeveless, with a full knee-length skirt and moderate v-cut neckline. “I bought this for Dolly, but she never wore it. Never had the occasion, she said. Really, it was because she was afraid of people looking at her.” Returning, she laid the dress gently across the bed beside the other as if in offering, a choice opposite the teal frills. “You’re sixteen, Liesse. You’re not a child anymore, and not a doll sitting alone out in Llyr’s Court. If you look like one, that’s how people will treat you, and thus what you’ll become. If you want to be a woman, a grown-up---” Gently, she tapped the dress she’d laid out. “---you have to dress the part.”
Finally, with a little sigh, she swept a loose lock of Liesse’s hair behind her ear and laid a kiss on her forehead. “You’re going to be someone new anyways, it’s unavoidable. At least you can give yourself your best shot.”

Alistair gave a little laugh, hiding a smile against Rynn’s shoulder, his fingers idly tugging at the hem of the back of his shirt. “You might as well accept it with grace,” he murmured, trailing his fingers up the back of the blazer, “It’s pretty bad…but you know very well you’ll wear it in the end, if it makes her happy. Just like we both know we’ll end up dragging ourselves to dinner, because we’re good brothers.”
Eyes flashing, he snuggled in closer only to stop, a curious look on his face, and then press his ear to Rynn’s chest. “Ah…” A faint smile flitted across his lips, just a hint of the tension seeping out of his body. “I get it now, why Evie likes heartbeats.” His eyes fluttered closed, the boy focusing on the dull, steady sound of Rynn’s heart beating. His voice was barely a whisper when he spoke next, the words slipping out as if he hadn’t even thought about saying them first. “Our mother had an irregular heartbeat, it would skip every fifth beat. Evie doesn’t really remember, for her it’s subconscious, but I remember how uneasy it made us feel before we were born. Everything else was regular, steady, but that skipped heartbeat…it was a terrible feeling. Our entire world became unsteady, dangerous, filled with anxiety and fear. Somehow, hearing a steady, constant heartbeat…it’s calming.”
He listened for another few moments in silence, his muscles very slowly beginning to untense, before sighing and laying a kiss on Rynn’s collarbone, groaning to himself like an impetuous pet stirred from its slumber. “I should get ready, I suppose. As volatile as Julien’s temper is tonight, I’d rather give him as few reasons as possible to turn his attention on me.”
He rose to his knees in one great motion, flinging the heavy coverlet off and rubbing his eyes at the glow from the paper lamps hanging overhead. “But really, can you take that off? I can’t take you seriously at all in that color.” The usual sparkle sprang back into his eyes with this, an impish little grin curling his lips before he pressed them to Rynn’s. “It’s no good with your complexion,” he murmured, more seriously this time, sliding a finger down the side of his neck and beneath his collar, “And what a terrible crime that is, diminishing a beauty like yours. I don’t think I can stand for it.”  

[Okimiyage]

Coming out of the room, Dorian gave little reaction other than a bemused sigh when he found that the conversation had an audience. “I’m only surprised Courtland and Jack aren’t right here at the keyhole next to you, the snoops. They must be losing their touch.” After a pause, he conceded, “It could have gone better. It just confirmed what I already thought, really: I can’t get through to him.” He lifted his hand, palm-up, and then let it drop to his side in a gesture that belied his feelings of helplessness. “I wasn’t trying to antagonize him, either. All those years ago…when he wouldn’t talk to me or even be in the same room as I was, leaving seemed like the only restitution that I could offer. Isn’t that a thought every runaway has, though? ‘It would be better for everyone if I just wasn’t around’.” He stared at the ground for a moment, then gave a listless shrug. “Preferable to seppuku, I suppose.”

Antha had intruded on Liesse when she was at her most self-conscious. She’d been sitting at the edge of the bed in her robe, pinching her cheeks into an imitation of rouge, when Antha’s knock sounded, and she spun around with a look on her face like—
Well, to be honest, she had hoped it would be Rynn in the doorway. That much was clear by the way her face fell. “Oh. Hello, Antha.” Then, a wince. “Yes, I know. I’m nervous, it shows. I can’t believe everyone else isn’t, but then again, I…don’t have the experience with banquets that you do.”
Trying for a smile, then--after all, nobody wanted to be around someone who was sulking, even if she concealed it. “I never had the chance to wear these kinds of dresses. I used to look at the etchings in Father’s books and pretend, but… I suppose those styles are all a bit out-of-date, now. Not that they would have suited me in the first place.”
Flushed with embarrassment, she glanced down at her lap and said quietly, “I thought Malakai would like it, though.”
She didn’t have a chance to explain herself further before she felt a protective hand land on her shoulder. Before she had a chance to protest, she was being pushed into the chair at the vanity.
It was difficult to look at a strange face and pretend it was her own, and so she lowered her eyes while Antha worked. “Thomas Cooley? No, I’ve never heard of him. Aedan would have recognized the name, I’m sure. I wish you’d had a chance to know him—he’s so clever, cleverer than any of the rest of us.” She stopped, and corrected herself, wistfully. “He was. I’m still not used to the past tense. Not—not that any of that’s your fault. Sorry. I shouldn’t bring it up.” She raised her head unwittingly to check Antha’s reflection in the mirror, to be sure that she hadn’t offended, but stopped short when she caught sight of herself. Liesse couldn’t quite stifle her gasp.
With her hair up, pinned into tight coils about her head, she barely recognized her own face. In the mirror, her neck looked long and elegant, her hair like a crown that deserved a much finer monarch. She raised her hands hesitantly, cupping the air around her coiffure like she was afraid to touch it. This was perhaps the first time that Liesse had ever seen herself with makeup on, and it felt like a spell—like a blessing that laying her own hands on would revoke. Her expression revealed her astonishment, if that wasn’t evident in her voice when she said, in quiet awe, “You made me beautiful.” Wide-eyed, she turned her head to and fro admiringly. Then, a worrisome thought struck her, and she looked up at Antha. “It’s not…well, magic, is it? That is, I won’t turn back after midnight or anything?”

Rynn sat up, reddening even in the dim light. “Oh, stop.” he said, flustered rather than irritable. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, although he tried to muster an appropriately severe look as soon as he could. “I’m not a beauty. You’re a beauty, Antha’s a beauty, but everyone else looks like a pale reflection of themselves next to you two.” Sliding to the edge of the bed, he gave Alistair a side-long glance that would have, coming from anyone else, been considered saucy. “I’m onto your flattery.” Planting his feet on the floor, he stood and gave Alistair’s open wardrobe his apprehensive attention. “Alright, so teal is out of the question. I don’t think Liesse would forgive me if I came in black and white, though—I told her it was traditional, but she says it’s ‘penguin attire’…” he paused. “Not even sure what she means by that, really. Emperor penguins are quite flashy, aren’t they?” Crossing to the chest-of-drawers, he gave one an experimental tug. “I’m reluctant to go back, ask her to change her mind, though. She can be incredibly immat—er, sensitive over that kind of thing.” He shrugged, helplessly. “Little sisters. What are we supposed to do with them?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Alistair’s eyes followed Rynn as he moved, quietly at first, slumped on the gold railing at the foot of his bed. And then, giving a little lazy roll of his head that put his cheek against his arm, he reached out and caught Rynn’s fingers. Lightly, little more than a brush at first, and then hooking their fingertips together. “I am an excellent flatterer,” he conceded, “It’s the foundation of manipulation, and I am a master manipulator bar none. But I’ve never said a word of flattery to you. Flattery is for people who don’t matter, it’s too close to a lie. Using it on you would only establish a false relationship, the kind that crumbles with time.” His index finger slipped free, trailing up along Rynn’s palm. The gaze he had on him was steady and earnest, blunt. Not quite Black Airi, the switch hadn’t flipped, only a lack of his usual cheer and dazzling charm that left him serious and oddly sultry. “I’d never say a word to you that isn’t honest. And you are terribly, terribly beautiful.” His fingers threaded through Rynn’s, eyes flashing darkly in undisguised lust. “Trust me, my eyes are always on you. No matter how broad my frame of reference is, you’re always the most beautiful to me.”
Drawing Rynn’s hand towards himself, he turned it over and pressed a lingering kiss into his palm before gently releasing it, the serious expression on his face softening into something more passive. “Green,” he said after a moment, his gaze still locked with Rynn’s, mesmerizingly straightforward, “You look best in green.”
Finally, he broke the gaze, turning and sliding to his feet, his fingers nimbly slipping the buttons of his shirt free as he continued casually, “Hard to say. I’ve been utterly dependent on my little sister for two decades, and now that I’m not, she’s older than me.” He paused, his gaze flashing. “Hm…I never thought about it before, but I suppose I’m the youngest now.” And then he shrugged, as if it was of no real significance, dropping his shirt and running a hand back through his mussed curls. “Oh well. It just puts me further down Suzette’s list. Assuming, that is, she ever gets past the whole Courtland and Jack thing. She had such grand plans for Court too, poor old thing.”

Liesse’s suggestion made Antha laugh, softly, shaking her head. “Makeup is a kind of magic, I suppose. But real magic? No. Just powder and dye.” Taking a moment to make a final adjustment of her hair, Antha gave a vague, quiet smile. “I never had a little sister---not one raised as my sister, anyways. I’m the youngest of four, all boys. And I’ll never see my daughter grown. Given Rynn’s…developing predilections, it’s likely that you’ll never have another sister-in-law. Unless Cian remarries, and of course we should hope he finds someone else---” The last was said very quickly, a polite obligation, utterly ingenuine, her eyes flashing before she added in a little whisper, “Mon dieu, what a hideous thought.” And then she shook her head, casting the thought aside. “The point is, someone has to teach you these things. It’s difficult, being a girl raised in a sea of boys, without sisters or a mother to teach you how to be a girl. So, I can teach you at least a little of what I know.” Another of those small, fleeting smiles. “Otherwise you’ll have to learn from Lucy, and she’s absolutely Spartan when it comes to fashion.”
When the clock in the hallway chimed the hour, Antha sighed, remarking, “One more hour. As much as I’d like to stop time, waiting is such torture. Regardless, I’ll leave you to get dressed.” Her gaze flickered at the two dresses laid on the bed, but she said nothing, politely letting herself out.
Rather than risk running into one of her cousins, Antha slipped quietly back to her room and locked the door behind her. Her husband was just getting dressed and she paused a moment to run her gaze over him before sighing, a hand pressing to her temple. “Oh no…that’s awful, Cian, really awful.” Crossing to the closet, she slumped against him, her arms slipping loosely around his waist and stealthily pulling his shirt loose. “Do you have to wear clothes? I mean, really?” Burying her face in the crook of his neck, she purred, “You look so much better without them, it’s such a shame. I don’t think I’d let you, except then I’d never get Courtland off of you.” Pressing a kiss to the hollow of his throat, she barely tore herself away, muttering as she slid onto the bed, “And your hair is damp, goddamn it, that’s not playing fair…”
Admittedly, she was clingier than usual that evening, likely due to nerves. But she behaved herself, lounging across the bed with a hint of sulk, clutching a throw pillow to her chest and watching her husband dress. Truly, he was a lovely creature. As pretty as a Mayfair really, but with a level of masculinity most of them never developed. He’d probably never be the rampant libertine he had been before they’d met again, he’d matured drastically since then, but still…he could meet someone. She’d taken pains not to think about it before, but Cian was a catch in his own right, and now he was the father of the next Designee of the Mayfair Legacy. He would have to beat the girls off with a stick when she was gone, and it was almost impossible mathematically that one wouldn’t come along eventually that he liked…
“What a hateful thought,” she muttered, mostly to herself even when she addressed him, rolling over onto her side and pressing her cheek into the pillow. “It’s no good after all…I can’t give you to someone else, even when I’m gone. It’s unbearable to think of you ever not being mine.” Rolling over back onto her stomach, she gave a sigh that could have carried the weight of the world, narrowing her gaze on his. “Not that I could do anything about it even if I wanted to, but the thought is maddening.” Antha gave a little irritated pout at that and fell silent, sulking.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it unruly and tousled, and tried to pretend that he hadn’t been left as flustered by Airi’s words as he really was. It was hard to accept those words as truth, when they were so faultlessly delivered. “It’s not that I think you’d ever lie to me. I only suspect you of being kind to me, when…it isn’t altogether warranted.” He lowered his head, fiddling with the silver buttons of the blazer that Liesse had coaxed him into. “Always thought that there were no such thing as happy endings, so when a handsome prince on a white horse comes riding up…” he shrugged, let his hands drop into his lap.
“Has to be a trap, doesn’t it? And it’s a slow process, training yourself not to think of—of happiness as a threat, or a lie.” He glanced up, then, and reddened slowly at he watched Alistair undo the last few buttons of his shirt. Turning his head swiftly: “Anyways, if Courtland and Jack are disqualified, you and I’ve nothing to worry about.” Then, a thought struck Rynn. He flopped back onto the bed, crossing his hands over his stomach pensively. “Oddly enough, I always figured the inheritance would fall to you, if not Cian. That would muck up your plans for England horribly, though, wouldn’t it?”
Rynn glanced over his shoulder, then, and flashed an uncharacteristically mischievous grin. “Think we should start taking bets? It’ll be years before the children are grown, though of course they’d be shoo-ins, but someone has to take up the mantle in the meanwhile.”

Liesse thought about Antha’s word for a long time after she’d left, sitting in the stool at the vanity, coiling a loose tendril of auburn-hair-not-her-own around her finger.
It was true that all the experience that she had came from books. Fairy-tales, mostly. But none of those had been true, after all. The heroic, last-ditch effort left you dead. The prince that you danced with until midnight turned out to still be in love with his ex. The wicked witch and the fairy godmother turned out to be one and the same.
Liesse reached for the rope of pearls that lay cascading over the edge of the vanity, and fastening them around her neck with as much ceremony as a knight donning his armor. She’d made her decision.

Upstairs, Cian fiddled with his tie, unknotted it, attempted to re-tie it, and then gave up.
“You’re right. I have no idea why I wear clothes. They’re completely unreasonable. Especially this stupid—Eldredge—knot—thing.” Each word was punctuated by a tug at the offending neckpiece. Turning around, exasperated, he slung it over his neck once more. “Not that Magnus would notice if I turned up in a full coat and tails. Do you think it even matters?”
That was when he finally took note of the expression on her face. This wasn’t just a case of wanting to enjoy an afternoon delight; something was up. Cian crossed to the bed and sat down, listening to her grumblings. They weren’t actually addressed to him, but whatever was on her mind, they were certainly pertinent. After a moment, he chuckled softly. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
Well, maybe he would have been, too. He reached out, let his hand alight upon her head, stroking her hair like one would a petulant kitten. “I’m not going to leave you, Antha.” he said, softly. “I made up my mind long ago. Even if it means I had to spend the rest of my life in this house, alone—seeing you in every shadow, hearing your voice in every wind that whistles by, I’d rather go mad than take someone else into my arms.”
He paused.
“The Calais have a different marriage vow, did you know? That part where they say ‘Till death do us part’…I was the ring-carrier at my father’s wedding. They replaced it with what I later learned was Psalm 23: ‘though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me’.” His hand paused between her shoulder-blades; suddenly, he leaned in close, and laid a kiss alongside the curve of her ear. “Help me tie this damn knot, now, for the love of god. I won’t let Magnus see you in that dress without a properly outfitted escort.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Blinking curiously, Alistair glanced over at Rynn, all big, innocent eyes. “Aren’t I the first person to tell you when you’re being prickly or unreasonable?” He smiled, suppressing a laugh. “You don’t have to believe me, though. Listen to the bubbling hive of thoughts around us at school sometime. I can’t help it, when I’m involved, I hear it all the time---what a lovely sight the two of us are together, me all bright and sparkly and dazzling, you dark and mysterious and brooding. Even Thorne secretly thinks you’re the only person that can stand beside me without withering into the background.”
Fetching a new shirt, he slid it over his arms but didn’t bother buttoning it before flopping down on the bed beside Rynn, giving a little lightly pensive hum. “It’s not even that fairytales are wrong, you know? There are princes and white knights and happy endings. The trouble with fairytales is just that they end when things are good. Real life keeps going after the sunset. We could live the rest of our lives together happily, but there will always be problems scattered throughout. I could leave, and you’d get mad at me. You could want to move when I don’t want to. I could turn into a raging alcoholic for six months, break everything, insult everyone, ruin every event, and be completely impossible to deal with.” This was said with a hint of a smirk, a joke, specifically designed to ease into the next thing he said, his voice just a degree lower with the faintest hint of strain and his body going still. “Or one day you could decide you have to continue your family bloodline and leave me for some girl, and I’d turn into Richard.”
He sat up, casually enough but quickly, clearly intent on brushing past the subject, setting about buttoning up his shirt. “Even when you ride off into the sunset, the sunset turns into another day. And if Suzette has anything to say about it, the next day is full of tea with strangers she wants you to marry.” He chuckled, sweeping back the front fringe of his hair. “Mark my words, you’ll be next. She won’t mess with Cian for years after he’s widowed, she’s already pushed Malakai too far, Thorne is hopeless, Lawrence doesn’t have the time, and she’s still trying to figure me out. But she’s got your measure, and she wants to knit you into the family before you slip away. I’ll bet you anything she already has your next hundred Sundays planned out for tea with random cousins.”
Shutting his wardrobe, he turned and cast a thoughtful gaze on Rynn. He was dressed almost alarmingly normal, in dark jeans and a plain button-up. In other words, he was dressed to draw the least amount of attention to himself as possible. “At a certain point, does it even matter if it’s a trap? Once you’re already caught, what’s the point of worrying about it? Backing out would just hurt you, if you even can, so you’re not saving yourself anything, and nothing in life ever stands still. So if you’re only moving forward, even if it is a trap or a lie, there’s nothing you can do about it. Might as well enjoy the ride, right?” He sighed, shrugging his shoulders. Rynn didn’t always see things the way he did, and there wasn’t a lot of use in trying to sway him when he was being stubborn. “But for what it’s worth, it isn’t a trap.” His eyes narrowed seriously, with his usual blatant earnesty, before he leaned his forehead against Rynn’s shoulder, whispering, “Believe in me more.”

Antha’s eyes flashed as she kept herself firmly planted against the bed, turning her head away from Cian. But like a petulant kitten, it was all show, and she shifted to rest her head on his knee, still sulking. “I don’t want that either,” she grumbled, though the soft despair in her voice was genuine, “I don’t want you to be alone. And I don’t want to haunt you. I just…don’t want someone else to have you.” Giving a little sound of frustration, she turned to press her forehead against his knee, mumbling, “There’s no way to win in this situation. I’m not used to that, I don’t like it.”
Finally, after a few more sullen moments, she rose to her knees again with a low groan. Like a child, her legs folded beneath her and hands cast limply in her lap, pouting. “Magnus probably wouldn’t notice if you showed up in a burlap sack,” she sighed, reaching forward and taking either end of his tie in her fingers, expertly twisting it as she spoke, “Not tonight, at least, as long as you show up after Julien.” Her eyes flashed with a shadow of concern. “I think Uncle Michael already told you, but Magnus hates Julien. Hates him, maybe even more than I do. It started with what Leon used to tell us---he used to paint Julien as the devil himself, evil incarnate---but then they actually started talking and Julien is, well…pretty much everything that Magnus hates. The pretentious, aristocratic manners, the obsessive need to control everyone’s lives, and especially the way he likes to sweep anything ugly under the rug and pretend everything’s perfect. And that’s without him even knowing that Julien is my biological father. He honestly might explode when he finds out.” With a heavy sigh, she gave a last pull on the tie that brought the knot up to his collar, her fingers expertly straightening it.
“Your father married after you were born?” she asked, abruptly but quietly, as if she’d just realized it, that powerful emerald gaze lifting to meet his. “You know…I don’t really know much about your family. Honestly, I don’t know much about your history at all. You’re more or less a blank before I met you.” Her gaze dropped down to his tie, the fabric running between her fingers under the guise of straightening it. “It doesn’t matter in any great or significant way, I suppose. Only, it’s sad to know such a small aspect of you.” The movement deep in her eyes went dark, her mind withdrawing to some deep and shadowy place. Deborah had made that mistake, dying without ever knowing anything about Petyr that wasn’t directly in front of her, and she had counted it as the saddest mistake of her life. Alistair didn’t particularly agree, he wasn’t concerned with anything Rynn didn’t willingly offer up. But Antha remembered being Deborah much more clearly than he did, and she didn’t want to make the same mistake again.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn let himself relax, infinitesimally, enough that when he shrugged it wasn’t the robotic movement that it might have been. But his voice was flat when he spoke. “I hate feeling trapped. I hate feeling like I’m being…tugged along by an inevitable current, that I have no control over what happens to me.” He lifted his eyes, the amber flecks in them shining like the glint of hidden treasure. “But out of everything that’s happened to me in the past six months, you’re the only choice that hasn’t felt like—like an obligation, like something that I have to do because I am supposed to be—“ he heaved a sigh, kicking his feet together. “—responsible. I have to grow up and let go of of childish fancies. The person who I was before believed in that kind of thing, destiny and soul mates and…” He stopped himself.
“You know, for the longest time, I thought I was in a story—the type of story that repeated itself so often that the ending couldn’t be avoided. Like a rut that the name Calais had carved out over decades, and I was just a cogwheel rolling along it, same as my father, and my father’s father, and his father, and so on and so forth. I never saw any of this coming.” He shook his head, and lowered it. “But it was comfortable, knowing who you’re supposed to be, the standards to which you’re expected to live up to. It’s much more difficult to forge your own standards, to decide what I want instead of simply following along with what they want.” He didn’t go into specifics as to who ‘they’ were, but from the haunted flickering of his eyes, darting back to his clasped hands, it was clear who he was referring to.
But that story never had a happy ending. Even death, the final release into the afterlife, didn’t exist for the Calais. It just meant that you were incorporated into the maze like all the rest of them.
Then, glancing briefly back up again, he acknowledged: “I do believe in you. It’s hard not to, when…without you, I don’t think I would be who I am right now. I’d still be bitterly obsessing over the loss of—well, everything that I thought I was supposed to have, feeling as though the person I was supposed to be was stolen away from me. But that’s why it’s still uncomfortable. I’m not used to looking towards the future, at least not with optimism.”

Cian looked over her shoulder, averting his eyes out of a faint sense of discomfiture with the subject. “Well, it’s not sad, per se, I just never knew that you had an interest.” Although thinking of it now, she couldn’t have possibly asked Rynn—who always swore that he remembered the circumstances of his birth, right down to the moment of exiting the womb, but Cian didn’t imagine for a second that he was being realistic. He gave far more credence to Liesse’s encounters in the garden with the ghost of her mother. Liesse had described Faye Calais so perfectly, down to her favorite lacy white sunhat and rose-scented perfume, that it could not have been happenstance. “My…mother, and the mother of Rynn and Liesse, was Faye Calais. Never learned her maiden name. Aidan would have known, probably kept a record of all this stuff, but god knows where he ferreted it all away to. She died giving birth to the twins. My dad was wrecked by it. Started drinking hard after that, started spending too much time in the maze. Sometimes when he came back, he’d be more hammered than he was when he went in. He started to hit Erin, when it got too bad.” Sometimes he’d tried to hit Cian, and Erin had gotten in-between the two of them, and earned and extra wallop for it.
“It wasn’t his fault, you know?” he added, and his voice almost sounded...anxious, as if he was trying to convince himself more than Antha. “He would have these fits. He’d lose his temper. And he’d always apologize in the morning, say he wasn’t in his right mind, and that he loved us.”
But he’d do it over and over again, all the same.
“I don’t remember how old I was when someone who said he was our uncle came for my dad. I’d never seen him before in my life, never have since, but he went away with our dad for what must’ve been a year or so. When he came back…” Cian trailed off, then cleared his throat abruptly. “He had this woman with her. He’d stopped drinking, but it was also like he’d stopped…caring about anything except for her. And I mean, she was pretty, but it was like…I don’t know. Love does strange things to a man. Both Erin and I were terrified of her, but it hardly mattered, because we almost never saw the two of them after they came back. They had the whole western wing of the house to themselves for their honeymoon, month after month.” He shifted, frowning slightly. “But even after they had the baby, they were just as besotted with one another as before. And then the fire happened.”
They each had their own theories as to how it had started. Aedan suspected the foreign woman, Erin claimed their father’s mind had finally snapped, and Cian had looked ever so carefully at the twins, capering around the nursery on unsteady legs and cooing at something—or someone— that wasn’t altogether there.
“Mary survived, miraculously. I…suspect that you remember some part of how her story ended.” He didn’t particularly want to recount it again. It wasn’t entirely that he was ashamed, it was just that the whole experience—well, that had been the start of all the trouble, hadn’t it? That weird, foggy, numbing feeling, drifting through the directions of a ritual that he did not know, speaking words in a language he had never learned, and how red and cold his hands had been by the end of it. And by the end of it, he just wanted to get away, to escape that fire-stricken and bloody house, escape the miniature tyrant that he could see Rynn becoming, escape the ugly jealousy that seethed off've Erin like fog from dry ice, escape the corpse of the child in the gardens, the girl that they all had murdered and buried together. "I look back on that time and I'm ashamed. Not...altogether for what we did, because there has been a long-standing tradition of sacrifice in our family, but because of how it affected me. I don't know if it was fear or disgust or...just wanting to forget, but I convinced myself that if I didn't think about it, it didn't count. It was almost like nothing had ever happened." Cian bit his lower lip.
"But it did. It's so long ago that I could almost pretend that it was a dream, and I pretended that it was for so many years that I could almost believe it. Almost." He let out a ragged sigh. "Sorry. I don't mean to dredge all of that up again. It's better to let it sink to the bottom, isn't it?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha listened, quietly, her gaze locked on Cian as he spoke. As self-involved as everyone swore she was, she could pay such close attention to someone when she wanted to that it was alarming, unnerving. Like the entire world revolved around them as long as the words came from their lips and nothing else existed.
And then, without a word, her gaze dropped to the floor and she swung her legs over the side of the bed, sitting close enough beside her husband that their knees touched. “He apologized,” she repeated thoughtfully, glancing up at the ceiling, “That’s something, you know? They so rarely apologize. Leon never did. He never thought he was doing something wrong---that’s the big difference, whether they care enough to feel remorse. Magnus used to jump in between us when he took a hit at me, but he wasn’t even a teenager and Leon was a giant, he never lasted long. He never cared about Magnus’s bruises either, though.” She cut off there, pushing the memories back before they ever surfaced. “I wondered what it was…what was wrong with Mary, for things to end up that way. I didn’t judge it, really---she was one person, and how many children in our family did we take to the airship that never came out again? And I cast the same fate on Sleet, I got the idea from what happened to Mary. But I wondered.”
Her hand rose from her lap, snaking out and twining with his, her attention focused wholly on that small interaction. “You can’t let things sink to the bottom, Cian. They don’t die, even shoved deep down in the dark. They survive and they fester and when you’re not expecting it, they grab you.” There was a flash then, through her touch, of her tiny little hands clutched white-knuckled on the handle of a butcher knife, of the spray of blood across her chest and arms as it came down into Leon’s chest, the frantic way he had grabbed at her bony arms and hair trying to push her off, and the blind, seething, single-minded determination that he was going to die in that moment if it was the last thing she did, that he had to pay for everything even if it killed her.
The breath came out of her in a great, heavy sigh, her gaze drifting sidelong back at him. After a moment, quietly, she laid her head on his shoulder. “We don’t get to be normal, Cian. Most people learn these things slowly. Most people date, and talk, and text, for years before they get married, and then they spend decades getting old together and all of it comes out naturally. But we don’t get that. We met with a five-month time limit over our heads, and it’s almost up. We don’t get to grow old together, we don’t get to live on our own, we don’t get to stay up late arguing about how to discipline the children, we don’t get to...live on a damn boat. I always wanted to live on a boat, I don’t think I ever told anyone that. I tried to buy one in the port when I was sixteen but Julien stopped me, I think he was afraid I would run away.” With another sigh, her head shifted to look up at him. “This is pretty much all we’ve got. It’s painful, but it’s the only thing we have. And god…there’s so much to say. For you and me.” She shifted again, looking down at his hand in hers, idly tracing the lines of his palm. “I should’ve told you about Magnus sooner. I didn’t even know where to begin with that. And Richard---I’ve never told you about growing up with Richard, the abominable tyrant, and the awful fights he used to have with Julien. And my mother, and Satis House, and the Talamasca, and---” Her voice wavered, a single breath coming in a little too sharply. “And Deborah. I never told you about Deborah, or Amyrtaeus, or the girl with the seashells, or…any of the ones I can hardly remember before that.” But that part was particularly hard for her. She’d never said it out loud before, not to anyone, and she’d never really intended to. Alistair was the only person who even knew.
Except for Rynn, now, and that was somewhat irritating. It was Alistair’s secret too, of course, but it seemed somehow anticlimactic that Antha had carried the secret with her for twenty years, unspoken, only for Alistair to let it slip so easily.

But Alistair was simply that kind of person. Impossibly difficult things slipped from his lips so easily, when the right people were listening. “Ah,” he murmured, tilting his head in consideration, his gaze making an idle sweep of the room before landing back on Rynn, “But it is true. Destiny, soulmates, all of it. Ask Malakai, he’s one of the few people in the history of witches who can directly glimpse it. It’s just…less strict than we imagine it, I suppose. Destiny is a handful of decisions we might make and one will come true, and soulmates can slip past each other, or they can break apart. It makes sense, when you think about it, our personalities are in our heads after all. We’re influenced by our souls, but souls don’t have personalities. Souls bond, but they don’t fall in love. Soulmates are tied to you, but falling in love is something we do on our own.” He shrugged, sliding a brush back through his hair. His locks sprung out of it in a soft, glossy crown of artfully tousled curls without effort.
“I wonder, though---” Clicking his tongue, he dropped back onto the edge of the bed, made up as far as he cared to bother with. And really, doing anything to Alistair’s natural beauty could only diminish him. “Why bother looking towards the future? What does it matter? No one is depending on it, there’s nothing left to uphold. Isn’t it better to focus on the present? The things you want and that you do right now are what define the future, so isn’t the present comparatively more important? And, let’s be fair, what has looking ahead ever really gotten you? All of your planning and expectations, what did they actually accomplish?” His chin dropped onto his palm, his fingertips drumming against his cheek. “You’re too long-sighted, Rynn. If you just keep looking forward or backwards, you’ll miss all the things around you, and people have killed for a lot less than what you have.” The smallest smirk touched his lips, twinkling and mischievous. “Seriously look at what you have for a moment. You’ve lost a lot, but you’ve got a brother and sister who love you, a very large family of in-laws, access to pretty much endless resources, you live in a fantastic---if somewhat crowded---mansion, you go to one of the best schools in the country, and you’re sixteen, handsome, and clever. Your life right now is actually exceptionally charmed, don’t forget to stop and enjoy it every once in a while, otherwise it’s a waste. And wasting a lover like me is actually a crime, for the record, people have killed for less.”  

[Okimiyage]

“Okay, well—“ Rynn chuckled. “You’re right. When people talk about soulmates, though, they always talk about ‘the one’, though, don’t they? Well—“ he shifted restlessly. “I don’t believe that. More so, it’s that so few of us rarely get the chance to meet our soulmates. The chance of us being together at the right time, the right place, at the right age, well, it’s one in a million, isn’t it? When you look at how many billions of people there are on the planet. But you’re right. I should…enjoy the moment more. Which makes it seem all the more of a shame that we’re spending the moment on—“ he gestured towards his jacket with careless distaste, “—dinner parties.” He quirked an eyebrow as Alistair flopped back on the bed. “Especially with you going horizontal like that. It’s a good look for you. One would almost imagine you were being intentionally seductive.” Almost automatically, his hand drifted over to stroke the hair out from Alistair’s face. “You know, I can’t promise that I’ll never have doubts, or that I’ll always be cheerful. I’ll still probably slip up every now and again, but…I will promise to be there for you, whatever happens, if you will. I won’t let you turn into Richard, or anyone you don’t want to be, for that matter.” He spoke with absolute conviction, as though he could will himself into some kind of tide wall against which any natural disaster or invading force would surely break. “I know I’m lucky to be here. But nobody’s lucky forever, are they? So I’ve decided, well…I have to become someone who deserves the hand that fate’s been kind enough to give me. If you’d asked me last year, I would have called it a curse, that hand, but…” He reached for Airi’s palm, laid loosely atop the coverlet, and took it in his own, tracing the lifeline of his hand. “That was before I met you.”
As though suddenly he realized how sappy he was sounding, Rynn’s cheeks flushed red. “A-Anyways, I supposed that now you’ve gone to all the trouble of getting ready for it, we ought to join the others. Our respective siblings would probably murder us for playing hooky on a night like tonight.”

“Hey,” Cian stopped her, laying a finger on top of her lips. “You only have to tell me what you want to. Everybody has parts of themselves that…we don’t show to the rest of the world. Witches more so than most. Call it the side-effects of being persecuted for centuries.” And maybe the ‘normal’ people, non-witches, were right to do so. Certainly Cian and Antha had committed deeds that most would find monstrous, would have called them psychopaths if they had known the extent of. But Cian had always found it tiresome and pointless to live his life or keep his guilt by the standards of other people. “When you grow up like we did, you keep secrets just because it’s stupid to tell the truth to everyone. Which sometimes means that you never hear anyone else say, ‘it’s okay’, or ‘that happened to me, too’. And it changes the way you look at people, and…” He shook his head. “None of us were ever really the same after that. Maybe we would have grown apart without Mary happening to all of us, I don’t know. Maybe it was her curse. She would have been delighted to think so.” Why Mary had been so important to them as children, it wasn’t difficult to recall. She had been intrusive. A foreigner to what they thought of as family…and yet, more powerful than Rynn, and a threat to the Calais dominion as a whole.
Just like Antha. No wonder Rynn had tried to sacrifice her, too.
Then, he gave Antha an odd look, then, thoughtful and slightly calculating. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you this. I’ve never been particularly good at reading minds, unless it was intentional communication, but when I do, it tends to be…visual. Most people’s minds look like a room made all of mirrors, or a long hallway filled with locked doors, or a great black emptiness. Yours looks like a many-walled castle, with more secret passages and iron-plated drawbridges than I can count. If I explored that castle for a hundred years, the dungeons, the gardens, the royal chambers—“ he grinned at that one, trying to bring some levity back into the situation. “I still don’t think I’d see all of you. Even five months is more of a privilege than you know. Although—“ He took her hand, kissed it, and then heaved to his feet with a sigh. “—I do have to admit that I’ve fantasized a number of times about absconding with you in the night for a month-long vacation. Cruise ship, private island, complete solitude. It’s hard to say ‘to hell with responsibilities’ when you’re parenting, though, isn’t it?” He wrinkled his nose at his reflection in the mirror playfully, then tugged his now-perfectly-knotted tie up and snugly underneath his collar. Then, turning to Antha and putting his hands into his pockets, he straightened up and beamed. “Think I can pass for acceptable husband material for the night?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“The thing about soulmates…” Alistair tipped his head back, sighing, his eyes cloudy as if he was trying to find words to put to the things he knew, “It’s not random. There’s not an element of chance, like winning the lottery. When souls bond out in the aether, they take to the flesh together, at the same time, in the same place. And bonded souls always find each other. It’s not always romantic love, but they always find each other and part of them recognizes the other for what they are.” When their hands intertwined, he brought them up to his lips, pressing a kiss to the inside of Rynn’s wrist.
And then, in a whisper against his skin, “I don’t care what happens, Rynn. I signed on for this when you were at your worst. Just don’t ever leave me for some stupid reason.” Taking a firmer hold of his arm, he pulled him down onto the bed beside him and checked the time. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes,” he noted, rolling over onto Rynn with an impish grin sneaking across his lips, a little glimmer in his eyes signaling that the Black Airi switch had been flipped, “I like a challenge.”

“That’s the trouble, though.” Antha’s eyes flashed, her gaze flickering out the window. “I want to tell you. But that doesn’t make it any easier to say…”
But she dropped it when he changed the subject, pulling her legs up against her chest and resting her chin on her knees. “I’m surprised it’s that clear to you. Most people can’t get a grip on my mind,” she mused, humming to herself, “You know, Stefan took me to have my IQ tested once. It took months, they kept having to call in new specialists, I mystified them all. Julien wanted to stop after the first few, I think it frightened him, but Stefan insisted. We never got an answer, but the last specialist asked me how I would describe my mind. I asked him how he would describe his and he said it was like there were channels in his brain, winding through a great mass of information, constantly sending it through so that it made connections with other information.” Her head tilted, eyes narrowing, a faint sigh dropping from her lips. “I told him my mind was like a massive beehive, the kind in the wilds that take hundreds of generations to build, with trillions of pockets of information neatly stored away, and all of the bees have minds like his.” A smirk touched her lips, secretive and amused. “He threw down his clipboard and refused to talk to me again. We couldn’t get another one after that, they all said it was futile because only a mind on my own level could even begin to analyze me, and they couldn’t find one. Not a willing one, anyways.” At that, she finally shrugged as if it was of no consequence. “Courtland tried to read my mind against my will once. I let him in, because I was curious what he would make of it, but then he just didn’t talk for three days, only stared off into space, and couldn’t remember a single thing he’d seen afterwards. I made a special channel of thought in the front of my mind after that, a sort of simplified stream of consciousness, so that it wouldn’t happen again. It fools most people, that one channel has the same capacity as a normal mind, but Courtland swears that he can see the mass of my proper mind beyond it.” A finger touched her lips, thoughtfully. “If you see my mind like a castle, my real mind is probably the sky. What Courtland saw that day is probably like being thrown out into outer space all of a sudden.”
Reaching down, she took her shoes back up and slipped them on, thoughtfully pursing her lips. “Sebastien has a mind like mine. It’s weak, brittle, but I can see the way it’s forming and he’s going to be a Newtonian prodigy like me. That’s a warning, darling---we’re impossible to deal with, much less raise, even Uncle Michael could barely take it sometimes. Airi is your only hope, he hides it for the most part, but he’s the only other one on that level.”
At his question, she rose and meticulously brushed off his shoulders, finely adjusting the line of his collar. “You always cut an impressive figure,” she assured him in a purr, “Very princely. But it won’t help you with Magnus. It upsets him to have a more impressive figure than himself around me.” Her hands trailed down over his shoulders, gently patting his chest as if to signal that she was done. “What do you think, should we go down and sneak a stiff drink before it starts?”

They were not the first ones with the idea. Courtland, Jack, Lawrence, Pierce, and Lucy were already congregated around the bar, with Malakai and Melody at the piano. At the same time as Antha and Cian arrived, one of the far French windows slid open and Alistair ducked through it with Rynn in tow.
“Avoiding Julien,” he explained with a little shrug of his shoulders.
“What is his problem?” Pierce muttered irritably into his glass, “He’s more unpleasant than usual. I know there’s the whole Magnus thing, but he’s skulking around muttering about numbers. I mean what’s that about?”
Courtland’s eyes flashed at Antha, guiltily sipping her drink. “What?” she hissed, “I play the stock market when I’m nervous. What is he even complaining about, I made a fortune, and I only broke, like, two federal laws. Not even me, I just made some suggestions to Claire.” She threw the rest of her drink back and then pushed the glass back towards Jack, who obligingly refilled it. “I used to play Russian Roulette when I was nervous, he has no right to complain about something as trite as stocks.”
“I think it’s the bombs that concern him more,” Alistair purred, perching on the arm of the sofa with a grin, “He doesn’t have our faith in Claire’s engineering.”
Meanwhile, Lawrence was looking back and forth between Rynn and Alistair, making a little gesture of his finger between them. “You two look like shame.”
At this, Courtland snorted a laugh, leaning against the bar and draining his glass. “I think they’re pretty pleased with themselves, Laurie.”
“And each other,” Pierce added with a grin, eyes twinkling.
“You know,” Melody called from across the room, intently watching the piano to pluck a single key every few moments, “Mere days ago, I would have said that was scandalous. But in this family, it’s just serendipitous, isn’t it?”
“You know Melody, you don’t always have to say what’s on your mind,” Courtland called.
She responded very lightly, without looking, “Brain tumor, impulse control. Don’t mind me one tiny little bit.”
“But is no one else really intrigued to see Julien and the big, brooding Viking man go at it?” Lucy asked, changing the subject, her eyes a little dreamy, “You know, damask ripping, turtleneck chokeholds, French and Swedish curses flying…is it a little hot in here?”
Pierce cleared his throat as Lucy fanned herself, her eyes hazy, muttering, “Really don’t mind her, the pregnancy hormones are flaring up lately.” His gaze dropped, his voice muffled against the rim of his glass as he muttered, “She’s been having dirty dreams about cereal mascots all week.”
Antha’s fingers went to her temple, a little hopeless sigh rolling from her lips. “I hate you all. You know that, right? Please stop talking before Magnus gets here, I don’t want him to overhear anything about sexy cereal mascots.” And then, briefly knitting her brows, shot Lucy a concerned look and questioned seriously, “It’s not, like, Dig’em Frog or anything, is it?”
“No, mostly Captain Crunch. Snap, Crackles, and Pop sometimes. Count Chocula once, but---”
“No, never mind. Stop talking. Seriously.”
“Well,” Courtland interrupted, clearing his throat---beside him, Jack was doubled over with his hands clamped over his mouth, shaking with laughter---and took a long drink, “We’ll make Cian look better by comparison, at least.” He turned his head, not quite managing to hold onto a snort of laughter, finally biting his lip to keep it in. “Snap, Crackle, and Pop indeed…”  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn hastily tucked a strand of unkempt hair behind his ear as he entered the parlor, in Alistair’s wake. Why he did this, he didn’t know—it wasn’t exactly as though they were being secretive these days, was it? And there was very little to do that could disguise the high color in his cheeks, after what had gone on a few minutes before.
Cian gave him a knowing look, as though the pattering of his pulse was a drumbeat that everyone could hear, but at least had the grace not to comment. Lawrence was a different matter altogether.
“It’s only shame if you have regrets afterwards,” Rynn said airily, sinking into a well-stuffed armchair and crossing his legs. Not that he expected Lawrence to have any concept of shame to work with. Cian stifled a choked laugh. “They’ll make a libertine out of you yet, little brother.” The aforementioned libertine-in-training's shoulders worked with a shrug. “I’ve no interest in such things. If I did, I’d have adopted you all as my role models long ago.”
Cain’s eyebrows lifted briefly. “You’re getting saucy in your old age, aren’t you? Thank god. I was getting worried you'd be a robot forever.”
Turning aside from Rynn's indignant sputtering to face the long rows of vinyl near the Victrola, he let his fingers dance upon the cardboard edges. Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky…”Should we put on some music?” he suggested. “Or if Malakai would be kind enough to indulge us…I think, if we all sit very quietly in our suits and frocks and stop talking about…cereal elves, we could almost pass for respectable when our guest arrives.” Key word being ‘almost’.
As if on cue, Liesse trotted into the room, busily applying a nail file to her fingertips. “Has anyone seen Rynn? I told him to be ready by—there you are.” She briefly made to put her hands on her hips, and stopped mid-scowl. “You did wear the jacket after all.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Rynn placed a hand over his heart, pretending to be affronted. “You have such little faith in me.”
“With the fuss you were putting up, what was I supposed to think?” she said, with only a trace of huffiness.
“Well, I thought that the entire point was to match.” With a finger, he indicated her choice of outfit from head to toe. “Where’d you get this from? It doesn’t seem your usual style at all.”
Liesse’s heels clacked on the parquet flooring, as she took a step back, and glanced over at the windows to view her dim reflection. In the glass, Antha's eyes twinkled knowingly behind her. “It’s a loan. Just for tonight.” Her gaze flickered briefly in the direction of the piano, where Melody and Malakai’s backs fit together like two halves of a puzzle box. “I’ll…I’m going to go help Jacob set the table, I think.”
Jacob certainly didn’t need her help, but walking into the room with both Malakai and Melody made her feel…unbalanced. And it wasn’t just the heels. Liesse didn’t know what being a ‘third wheel’ meant, but she would have used the expression if she had.
Besides, somebody had to track Dorian down. The likelihood that he would interrupt at entirely the wrong time was too real of a risk to allow him to go unsupervised.