Mayfair Manor

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“Oh, mon dieu,” Courtland sighed, suppressing a laugh, “We are rubbing off on you. How terrifying. Isn’t this how Evie started?”
“Don’t talk about me like some freak force of nature.”
“Evie, you are absolutely a freak force of nature.” Crossing the room, Courtland heaved a dreamy sigh and draped his arms over the top of Rynn’s head in something vaguely reminiscent of a hug. “Rynn…shame is stupid. It’s like guilt, except it doesn’t do anybody any good. Don’t ever feel shame, it ruins lives.”
At the bar, Jack whipped his head around with an angry pout. “I was what my mother made me!”
“And I had to get Evie to totally break you down to fix you,” he concluded, rolling his eyes, “Exactly, see? Shame made you miserable, lack of shame made you happy. Ergo, shame is stupid.”
“Getting rather tired of your gross oversimplifications, Court,” Lawrence sighed wearily, sitting on the couch with his attention utterly divested in his phone, fingers flying across the screen, “I wouldn’t have a career if life was that easy.”
“You didn’t ‘get me’ to do anything,” Antha reminded him in a mutter, “I wouldn’t have done it if you’d asked.”
While Antha and Courtland stared each other down across the room, Lucy put her chin in her palm, her eyes flitting between Alistair and Rynn. “Oh…” she murmured, glittering with mischievous amusement, “I get it…you’re in love.” A little wistful sigh escaped her lips, turning to Pierce to demand sharply, “Why don’t you ever look at me like that anymore? All twinkly and glowing.”
Pierce sighed, resigned. “I’ve been looking at you like that since I was fifteen, Luce. It’s taken you that long and me knocking you up for you to notice.”
“We’re veering sharply away from normal again…” Antha sighed, setting the needle on a Duke Ellington record before leaning against Cian, dropping her forehead on his shoulder. “This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”
“Antha, you swore you’d stop comparing us to the Sith. You swore.”
They were all abruptly silenced by the slam of a door upstairs, and the angry footfall headed for the stairs. The cousins all looked at one another for a moment, warily, before Jack announced, “Every man for himself,” and immediately they were all scrambling to hide behind the bar, each trying to shove the others out of the way. Alistair ducked behind the couch, Jack finally being ousted from behind the bar and diving desperately behind the curtains, leaving Lawrence and Malakai the only Mayfairs in sight when Julien stalked into the room, already scowling. “He’s late.” Behind the bar, Courtland clapped a hand over Antha’s mouth before she could automatically argue. “It’s just typical, isn’t it? Stirring the entire household up and then showing up late. How utterly classless.” When Antha squirmed, clawing at Courtland’s hand, Pierce clapped his over it.
“You think so?” Lucy asked, inching closer with a suspicious glimmer in her eyes, “You should say something to him about it. Maybe shove him a little. Or grab him by the collar and just---”
“Lucy, please,” Lawrence interrupted, just as Antha and Courtland had grabbed Pierce to stop him from jumping up.
At this, Julien’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, looking around the room and counting off Lucy, Cian, and Rynn in turn. “You’re all three here,” he noted, eyes gone sharp, “All three of you wouldn’t be away from your partners at once.” His gaze landed on the record player and he finally gave an irritated scowl. “Duke Ellington. No one listens to Duke Ellington. Where’s Antha?” Thinking on his feet, Lawrence pointed at the open window at the far side of the room where Alistair and Rynn had entered and Julien gave a sound of aggravation, turning on his heel. “---little brats---”
When his footsteps faded away again, Courtland finally burst out in a screech, “Evie, stop biting me!” He popped up again, cradling his hand against his chest and running behind the curtains, “Jackie, look at what she did! That’s blood---she drew blood!”
“Pierce, stop kicking me---” Finally disentangled from his cousins, Pierce jumped up and grabbed Lucy by the shoulders, begging desperately, “Please, please, please…don’t say sexual things to Julien anymore. I can’t even begin to tell you how much it bums me out.”
“Don’t knock the silver foxes, Pierce.”
“Yeah, but he’s satan.”
“And sin is sexy,” she concluded, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “What are you not getting about this? And then you add the big, icy Viking man in and---”
In the door to the hallway, Magnus pointedly cleared his throat. “How long do I wait for someone to notice me?”
Behind the bar, Antha screamed silently, clenching her eyes shut and dropping her head in her hands, defeated. “Huh,” Lawrence mumbled, glancing at his watch and noting, “Look at that, you’re exactly on time.”
Magnus crossed his arms, his severe brows furrowing, visibly discontent with the scene around him. “To be fair,” Lucy cut in, placing a hand on her chest, “I’m not even a Mayfair, I just have very vivid fantasies and a thing for Vikings.” His eyes narrowed and she turned away, intently fanning herself.
This brought Antha out at last, throwing her hands down on the bar. “Lucy, what did I tell you about fantasizing about my brother!”
“Ahnsa!” She flinched, her gaze very slowly turning to meet Magnus’s, like a scolded child. He paused, sighing heavily as he considered the situation, and finally announced, “Ja, we go back to Stockholm now. Is much better environment for lilla Ahnsa.”
“You know, you’re very cavalier about your career,” she muttered, “Always trying to run off before you’ve even started.”
Magnus smiled coolly, reaching out and pinching her cheek. “Is very brave card for little heiress to play.”
“I do plenty of things!” she whined, swatting at his hands, “I’d like to see you try day trading. Or open a hospital. It’s difficult.”
“Ja, I tour hospital today,” he responded with a little nod, and Antha gave a start, “I see kusin there---Vittorio? Ja, the one I meet as child. He shows me lab and big machines. Is not bad, Vittorio…for a Mayfair. Very few words.”
“Yeah, not much of a chatterbox, our Tori,” Courtland muttered, rolling his eyes.
Magnus shot him a sharp look until he shrank and slid behind Jack, and then turned back to Antha. “We get dinner over with now, please.”
Her eyes went flat, a little sigh on her lips. “You could at least be courteous to your brother-in-law, don’t you think?”
Begrudgingly, he cast Cian a sidelong glance, his entire demeanor frosting over. “Cian,” he muttered, with the slightest little nod of greeting, “You look…less like vallusting than before.” The comment came slowly, as if he had struggled to come up with something not entirely insulting.
But Antha was less than pleased, pouting intently at her brother and admonishing him, “Ohyfsad! Du är så elak!” Seizing Cian by the sleeve, she pulled him closer and declared childishly, “I hate it when you do that! He’s still the man I chose, stop acting like I have bad taste.”
“I say nothing mean,” he insisted, stubbornly crossing his arms.
Leaning over towards Pierce, Courtland whispered, “I was wrong…this is how Evie started.”
“The resemblance is terrifying,” he responded behind the cover of his hand, “She’s more like him than any of us, don’t you think?”
Both Antha and Magnus flickered almost identical sharp glances at them before turning back to each other. “Ahnsa is cranky,” he mused after a moment, thoughtfully stroking his chin, “I think should do lamb dance.”
At the mere mention of it, Antha’s cheeks flushed, her composure briefly breaking down. “I will do absolutely no such thing. Ever. Never ever.”
It was this which finally overpowered Courtland and Jack’s caution of Magnus, drawing them both immediately in with glittering eyes, the former swearing fervently, “I have never wanted anything more in my life than to know what the lamb dance is.”
“Ahnsa makes up when she is small---”
“No.”
“---for cheering up. I sing nursery rhyme---”
“No.”
“---and Ahnsa does dance about little sheep---”
“Absolutely not.”
“---with the hopping around and ears---”
“Over my dead body.”
A door upstairs slammed and Antha’s eyes flickered uncomfortably towards the hall. Magnus, hazarding a guess, sobered from his brief glimmer of amusement into cold severity, arms crossed and eyes hard. “Nej…Julien does not see lamb dance.”
Instinctively, Antha took Cian’s arm and drew them both well out of the range of fire. Very carefully, Antha stood in front of Alistair, who had perched on the arm of Rynn’s chair, hiding him from everyone else’s sight. It was only then, for a brief moment, that Alistair’s mask broke. The pleasant expression fell away to a look of acute suffering, his shoulders tensing up and a strained sigh escaping his lips before he leaned forward, tugging at just a bit of her dress at her waist between thumb and forefinger and resting his forehead on the small of her back. Like a child, weary and struggling to cope in the wilds of the world, hiding against her. And then it was gone, like magic, and he peeked around her to witness Magnus and Julien coming face to face, arms crossed and brows furrowed, like two pillars of ice and steel.
“You’re late,” was all Julien greeted him with, sharply, a frightening fake smile stretching across his lips.
Magnus mirrored the look, all plastic and a dangerous glimmer. “I arrive precisely at time I am told,” he replied innocently, “But Julien comes several minutes later. So if late is rude…Julien is rude, ja? Very bad manners.”
“Rynn, cher,” Antha said quickly, her fingers alighting nervously on his shoulder, “Could you run and ask Jacob to start setting dinner out? Take the window and go around back.” Under her breath, she added urgently, “I don’t even care if it’s ready, I just need to end this.” Her fingers flicked in the direction of Julien and Magnus’s showdown. “Take Airi with you, you can help set the table.”
“Sly, Evie,” her brother whispered beneath his breath, rolling his eyes, “Very sly.” But he did not complain about being sent out for his own sake, only took Rynn’s hand in his own and tugged him in the direction of the open window.  

[Okimiyage]

Cian put his arm around Antha’s shoulders, protectively, even though he wasn’t exactly sure which one of their audience he was protecting her from.
“You know,” he remarked, keeping his tone light, “I figured there was going to be some tension this evening between the three of you, but I imagined that it could wait until after dinner.” Clearly, he’d been wrong about that. “Julien, I don’t imagine that you came here just to engage Magnus in a staring contest. How can we help you?” Indicating that the offer was extended to Magnus with his free hand, he then gestured to the bar. “Anything to drink to start the evening off with? Settle your nerves?”
Tactfully, he refrained from mentioning the sheep dance. Although Antha was going to find herself heavily interrogated about that later this evening.
Rynn, who had been standing behind Alistair’s chair, found his hand encased in a firm grip with a pointed indication of the direction that it would like him to take. He resisted only a moment. It wasn’t often that he got to see Cian doing his impression of an upstanding young husband, and he found it oddly amusing. “Alright, alright,” he hissed, when the tugging did not cease. “I’m coming.” Reluctantly.
Outside, Alistair dropped lightly onto the grass ahead of him.
“Is it just me, or is this a lot of subterfuge for a family get-together?” Rynn landed on his feet with an oof. If he’d known that sneaking around was going to be part of the evening, maybe a less conspicuous jacket would have been in order. Not that Liesse seemed to even care about matching anymore. He had his own thoughts on that, but now wasn’t the time to voice them. “Not that I’m complaining, the tension in there was thick enough to cut with a bandsaw.”
Straightening his blazer, he turned to face Airi’s back, then hesitated. “Are you alright? I saw…” he trailed off. “You were putting on a brave face in there, weren’t you?”
Reaching out, he clasped Airi’s shoulder gently. “Blinkers,” he said, quietly, in a seeming non sequitur. Then, clarifying, “You’ve just got to wear them for tonight. Focus on the moment, not what’s…going to happen, or has happened, or what anyone else might think about it.” He paused, then added, “I’m here with you. And if we need a big enough distraction, I’ll just—announce that we’re engaged, or something.” Maybe it would give Julien a heart attack. He could only hope. If nothing else, Lawrence would cause enough of a commotion to intervene with whatever discussion had been going on before. He felt safe in assuming that.
They circled around the house to the side entrance, and came in through the kitchen, entering just in time to see Dorian hastily screwing on the cap to a pocket flask. “Jesus, nobody knocks around here,” he complained. “It’s the kitchen, not your bedroom.” Liesse retorted, her heels clacking on the tile as she entered from the dining room. “If you want to drink in privacy, go to the attic or something.” Dorian replaced the flask in his pocket, grimacing from the taste. “In the current circumstances, I’d say we all could use a shot of liquid courage, alright? You’ve never faced down Julien when he’s in a mood, you don’t know.” Pointing at Rynn and Alistair, he indicated their expressions. “Survivors from the front line. You both look like you could use a little, too.” Rynn glanced over at Alistair doubtfully, then held up a hand, open-palmed, in a gesture of declination. “I’d prefer to keep my wits about me for the moment. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be sorting things out with Melody?” Dorian stood up abruptly at that. “Oh, blast. Did she bring Lena along?” “Not that I saw, but—“ Dorian craned to catch a glimpse of his reflection in one of the copper-bottomed pans that hung near the stove, ruffling his hair artistically as he observed himself. “Not a word of this to her, alright?”
Liesse sighed, and leaned back against a countertop. “I think everyone in the house already knows you’re a lush, Dorian. Do you really think that would surprise her?”
“Look, I’m not drunk, I just needed to take the edge off. You try remaining clear-headed when you catch your current romantic interest cozying up with a rival for their affections, alright?”
Liesse, in what was an uncharacteristically ladylike expression of disgust, snorted. “Been there, done that.”
"Where's Jacob? Are we actually helping set the table here or what?" Rynn interjected. The last thing that they needed right now is for Dorian and Liesse to bond over their unfortunate love lives.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Once outside, Alistair allowed himself a brief pause to recover, letting out a deep breath of pent-up tension. To Rynn’s question, he smiled---not earnestly, but more out of habit, as if he didn’t know how to react without a smile. There was no mask for Rynn, only a brittle smile and a dark flicker of his eyes. “It’s right now that’s difficult,” he murmured, somewhat awkwardly shrugging his shoulders, gaze shifting, “I was part of Evie when she was little, I saw the world through her. Sometimes I didn’t even know where she ended and I began.” His eyelashes wavered, the green of his eyes contracting acutely. “…he’s my brother too, you know? He just…has no idea who I am, and probably couldn’t handle it if he did.”
He moved before Rynn could respond, leaning their foreheads together, and gave a small but genuine smile, fleetingly amused. “I’ll be alright, as long as you’re worrying about me. That’s enough.” Stealing a quick peck on the lips, he continued on, taking a few steps and then hesitating, turning back around with a thoughtful look on his face. “I don’t think they’d be as surprised as you think,” he mused, his head tilting to the side in thought, “We might cop a lecture on rushing into things, but…” His eyes flashed. “I don’t think anyone would be terribly shocked, Rynn. Even Julien.” And then he turned and continued on, slipping into the kitchen and going over to inspect the last couple of pots on the stove. “Evie wants dinner put out,” he said when Jacob came hurrying in from the dining room and over to the stove, turning down the burners, “Immediately, done or not.”
“I thought she might,” the boy answered in a light, uncomfortable laugh, “When I heard the voices. Help me get what’s on the counter out and I’ll make the last two sides look presentable.”
Taking up a platter in one hand, Airi snagged the flask from Dorian with the other and took the briefest swig, mindful of his low tolerance. Upon his return from the dining room, he cast a brief but sharp glance over Liesse and Dorian at the conversation, scoffing and rolling his eyes. “Cowards,” he pronounced suddenly, unusually merciless, leaning against the counter with folded arms, “Neither of you really has a right to say anything, you’ve done pitifully little except sit around and wait for something to happen or someone to push you. If you want someone, really, honestly want them---” To illustrate his point, he reached out and grabbed the hem of Rynn’s shirt, yanking him into himself and winding an arm around his neck, “---you have to take them. They’ll either return your feelings or they won’t, but you won’t get anywhere if you do nothing.” Pressing an unabashed kiss to Rynn’s forehead, he released him and turned to take up another plate, adding as he did so, “You’re both too romantic, that’s the problem. It’s unrealistic, the universe isn’t going to just hand you a lover all giftwrapped. You’re concerned about Malakai and Melody ‘cozying up’ together? Go goddamn take them for yourselves.”
At the stove, Jacob let out a heavy sigh, flashing a little rueful smile. “You’re really ruthless where love is concerned, aren’t you monsieur?”
The boy blinked as if he didn’t understand, head tilted, a plate of salmon mousse tartlets in his hands. “It’s not difficult,” he answered, his brow briefly pinching together in incomprehension.
“Some could argue that you just got lucky,” Jacob pointed out gingerly.
But Alistair shook his head, utterly unswayed. “That doesn’t make a difference. I could have been rejected, but the point is that I made the effort.”
When he vanished back into the dining room, Armand burst into laughter, lingering in the door to the backyard with a cigarette in his lips, giving a little shake of his head. “You got told,” he purred gleefully to Dorian, and then pausing to take a drag, turned his gaze on Rynn and said rather seriously as he crushed out his cigarette, a little amused but affectionate twinkle in his eyes, “You’re pretty deeply cherished, aren’t you?”
There was an abrupt clatter in the parlor, followed by a heated string of French and another of Swedish, and Antha’s voice in the middle switching between the two. Alistair rushed into the kitchen at this, grabbing up plates and running back into the dining room to shove them onto the table, and back again. “Someone ring the wretched bell already,” Armand sighed, watching Jacob as he hurriedly dumped the last two dishes onto platters. In the dining room, Alistair yanked on the cord for the small, tinkling bell and the parlor fell silent.
Courtland and Jack were the first to enter the dining room, eager to escape the tension. The others all filed in then, with Antha and Cian dragging behind them. Her eyes quivered, threatening tears, lips folding petulantly. But it cleared almost immediately, her eyes going dark and sharp as they flashed sidelong at her husband. “Not one word about the lamb dance or I swear to god, I’m cutting you off.”
“Terrible bluff, Evie,” Pierce purred, popping his head back into the parlor to see what was keeping them, “You can hardly go a day without sexually assaulting Cian, you’d be doing more damage to yourself than him.”
Arms crossed, Antha cast Cian another sidelong glance, her gaze running up and down his form, before tsking and stamping her foot, hissing irritably, “Goddamn it.”
Once in the dining room, the party mercifully broke off into their own conversations. Antha and Julien both preoccupied themselves glancing between the table and Jacob in accusation, to which he ducked his head and slid inconspicuously around Armand. “Clever, clever,” Courtland purred, grinning at the table as he shook his napkin out, “Is there anything on the table that isn’t Antha or Julien’s favorites? Nope, I don’t think so.”
Both parties cast him a sharp look, but eventually Antha dropped into her seat, demanding, “Just hand me the salmon mousse and shut up.”
“Manners, Ahnsa,” Magnus reprimanded her, lightly but with natural authority, folding his napkin neatly in his lap. The girl mumbled incoherently to herself, but obediently complied, her posture naturally straightening. The Mayfairs, though they would say nothing, were both impressed and terrified.
Michael watched for a moment then, his gaze on Magnus as Magnus watched Antha, until a little smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “You’re struggling not to cut her food for her, aren’t you?”
Magnus shot him a startled look, the faintest hint of pink blooming high in his cheeks. Antha, glancing at her brother with knitted brows, drew her plate away from him. “Absolutely do not cut my food for me.”
“I always cut Ahnsa’s food,” he argued immediately then, in something that for him could very nearly qualify as a whine, “If I don’t, lilla Ahnsa cries and throws food on floor.”
“I was three!”
“Just let me cut vegetables.”
“You stay away from my food, I am a grown adult with a knife.”
They were interrupted from the other end of the table, where Julien cleared his throat and commented sharply, “Are these theatrics really necessary?”
Magnus was immediately sobered, flashing that sharp, cold smile down the table. “I would ask same. Is very rude to interrupt conversation when no one has invited you. And no one invites you to speak in this conversation.”
“Just ignore them,” Antha sighed to Cian, returning her attention to her food, “The children will be up for dinner soon, we don’t have time for their nonsense.”
Down the table, Melody called out sharply, “Maggie!” The little girl froze, caught, a forkful of vegetables halfway to Henry’s plate beside her. “Eat your vegetables, Henry has his own.”
“He likes mine better,” she argued, impressively maintaining a straight face. The little boy in question said not a word, only ducked his head and continued eating.
“Maggie!”
“Henry,” Antha called then, gently but firmly, “Put her vegetables back, you’re not doing her any favors.” The boy’s face went slightly pale, his big eyes glancing nervously at Magdalena, but he didn’t hesitate to follow Antha’s orders, scraping the vegetables back onto her plate.
The girl pouted fiercely, exclaiming, “Aunt Evie!”
“Henry won’t be your friend for long if you take advantage of him,” she pointed out.
Magdalena then opened her mouth to protest, but immediately closed it again, stricken, and finally obediently set about eating her vegetables. To her father beside her she whispered confidentially, “Aunt Evie is scary and she makes too much sense.”
Magnus watching passively, reached over to pat his sister’s head, remarking, “Ahnsa will be good mother when bairn are grown.”
Out of his field of vision, Antha went stiff, her eyes flashing darkly. “…right…”
Courtland likewise stiffened, but the look in his eyes was revelation. His thought swept across the table, to those who could hear it, a stunned little whisper: She would have to tell him. He swallowed uncomfortably, his thoughts reforming more coherently. If she tells him we’re witches…she has to tell him she’s going to die.
“Court, could you pass the bread?” Antha interrupted suddenly, just barely sharper than usual, enough that Magnus wouldn’t know the difference.  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian made an attempt to stifle his laugh, but it just came out through his nose instead. “Darling, everyone already thinks that I stole the love of Malakai’s life out from under him years ago, and you suggest that I go out there and stage a live reenactment now, of all times? The peace in this house is tenuous enough as it is.” His eyes, reflective as a lake, slid sharply from the windows to Alistair’s face. “I know I play an excellent villain, but I do so hate being typecast. Don’t worry—there’ll be a scene tonight, one way or another.” And it seemed that his words, as he spoke them, had an ominous ring of prophecy to them.
Liesse, on the other hand, did not respond at all, aside from a swift jerk of her head in the opposite direction, exposing a defiant profile. She did not have the excuses nor the experience that Dorian had. She had never been compelled to assume the role of agitator or invader, nor wanted to. As painful as it was, she had, for most of her life, put the happiness of others before her own, and trusted them to decide for themselves what that happiness was made up of. So what if Malakai didn’t want her? So what if she had just been a temporary distraction to make up for Melody’s absence? She didn’t need him. Oh, she wanted—she wanted so much that it ached, that her breast felt like it was being carved out with a spoon, that her heart felt as though it was being condensed into a diamond underneath the fathomless pressure of all the world’s oceans. But there was a difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’. It was better to be alone than to be taken for granted.
She took a deep breath, and loosed it. Rynn’s hawk-like eye was upon her. Irritably, she said, “Stop looking at me like that. I’m fine.”
“Mm. Right.” Unconvinced, Rynn leaned into the crook of Airi’s arms. “Well, if you want to talk about it—“
“I don’t.” Her tone wasn’t angry, but flat and clipped in a way that said that the conversation was ended. Her heels made a harsh staccato rhythm against the tile as she left the room.
Rynn’s hand found Airi’s, draped loosely around his shoulders, and held it tightly for a moment. As much as he couldn’t express it, he was worried. In so many ways, Liesse was still a child. This was her first romantic love; she’d never had a broken heart. And as much as he wanted to protect her from that experience, he was beginning to suspect, with a sinking feeling, that it was necessary.
But now was not the time to address that particular problem. Rynn rather suspected that any attempt on his behalf to do so would be met with the same chilly reception as Airi’s. At Armand’s question, he gave a faint smile and let go of Airi’s hand. “As if I didn’t already know.”
Dorian stifled the derisive laugh in the back of his throat. “The way you go about it, we have to check to make sure. He—”
The clatter, and string of what Rynn suspected were foreign obscenities, judging by the tone, interrupted him. The room fell silent, like nothing so much as children listening to their parents fight from the safety of the closet.
“Christ.” Dorian said, quietly. Then, louder, “Alright. Places, everybody, this isn’t a dress rehearsal.”
The stage had been set, the long table of the dining room glittering with crystal and china, and the Mayfairs each found their seats with a minimal amount of conflict. Cian followed behind Antha, amiably bickering with her over the legendary danse de la agneaux. “You know that this is completely futile, right? I’ll get it out of you if I have to tie you up and threaten you with tickling and implements of torture. It could take all night.”
Rynn, passing behind his brother to sit alongside Airi, hit him sharply in the shoulder, hissing, “That is not appropriate conversation for the dinner table,” to which Cian responded with a completely unrepentant grin.

Dorian had made an effort, with barely perceptible orchestration, to find his seat between Melody and Malakai; Liesse was noticeably late, arriving well after most of the family had been settled, and therefore found her options limited. She had very seriously been considering not attending at all, but somehow it was so much worse to not know whether the reality of what was going on between Malakai and what she was mentally referring to as that woman was as bad as she’d imagined. Her imagination could come up with a substantial amount of material involving significant giggling, furtive brushes against one another’s feet, and gazing into one another’s eyes with complete abandon for propriety. She finally resigned herself to taking her dinner next to Henry and Magdalene, which in other circumstances her natural fondness for children would have made rather enjoyable. Still, she reminded herself, she wasn’t here for him, she was here for Antha.
And the empty seat would have been conspicuous.
And Jacob had worked so hard on this dinner, it would be heartless to waste it.
However, it did mean that she was quite near the center of attention as Antha called out Magdalena’s undisguised attempts to dump her vegetables onto Henry’s plate.
Dorian opened his mouth to say something along the lines of, to the contrary, there are many people in this world who will be friends with you even if you go about taking advantage of them for years—as Dorian himself had proved on more than one occasion—some of them even enjoyed it, he thought—saw Melody’s face, and quickly improvised a revision. “As pleasant as it would be to only eat what we like, eating one’s vegetables does do wonders for the complexion,” he mentioned, as if in passing. “I hated eating mine as a child, until I had the most hideous case of spots—three solid weeks it took, eating nothing but leafy greens, for that to clear up.”
If Magdalena was anything like her father, the idea of Henry outranking her in attractiveness ought to be sufficient motivation to eat her brussel sprouts. Liesse, momentarily distracted from her own distress, leaned in and patted Henry’s knee as he lowered his eyes. “It’s all right, dear, you’re not in trouble.” she whispered. “Antha just likes things to be fair, here.”
At Magnus’s interjection, it seemed the entire room held its breath; silverware slowed on its path to mouths, and eyes turned towards the end of the table inquisitively, awaiting the response. Then, briskly, Cian stepped in. “You should spend some time with Sebastien and Vanessa,” he told Magnus. “They’re going to be the spitting image of her—they’ve already got eyelashes like a camel, the both of them. Antha’s an incredible mother. Sebastien will be crying fit to wake the dead, she picks him up, and—“ he snapped his fingers. “Fast asleep in five minutes. Your little sister is a miracle worker, I don’t know how we’d get along without her.”
The irony of that last comment was not lost on Rynn, who leveled a blank stare at Cian. He was playing the role of a sitcom family father with what Rynn considered to be a heavy hand.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

At catching a snippet of Cian’s teasing, Magnus fumbled with his fork, unnoticed as he narrowed a horrific gaze at his brother-in-law. Courtland could swear he almost saw his eye twitch.
It was, unexpectedly, Malakai who saved him, calling politely from several seats down, “How are you adjusting to the food, Magnus? There’s quite a difference from Swedish cuisine isn’t there?”
Startled by the question, Magnus began to relax again. To the keener observers amongst the Mayfairs, they were a little surprised to notice that Magnus was not angry, exactly, but…almost frightened, in a way. As if the merest suggestion of Antha in a sexual capacity had been too great a shock to his senses and he didn’t know how to handle it. “Is nothing too drastic,” he muttered, looking intently down at his plate as he pushed around a few green beans.
In the back of Cian’s head, Courtland’s voice whispered in a thoughtful hum, Careful, brother-in-law o’ ours…much more careful. And then, in something that was less a voice than a hazy trailing thought, ---he’s afraid of you--- Afraid of what Cian meant, what he represented, that Antha was a grown woman with a life of her own. Vanessa and Sebastien could be forgiven, Magnus clearly had a soft spot for infants, but Cian…
“I’m not worried about my complexion.” Magdalena broke the last bit of tension with this imperious declaration, even as she speared a brussel sprout and ate it. “I’ve never had one blemish, papa, not one.”
“It’s true, unfortunately,” Melody sighed, cocking her head and tapping the tongs of her fork against her lips, “I long to see her smack dab in the middle of teenage breakouts, truth be told. She could do with some humbling.”
“Mama, that’s just rude!” Magdalena pouted, eyes glassy. But her mother laughed, as good-natured as ever, utterly unconcerned. “Isn’t it good that I have high self-esteem?!”
“You have something else entirely,” Melody teased her, and then a little more seriously added, “What have I always told you, Maggie?”
The child rolled her eyes, exasperated, repeating back in deadpan, “Beauty is meaningless and if you take it too seriously, it’s harmful.” And then made a face characteristic of a child confronted with their least favorite vegetable, her nose wrinkling as she stuck out her tongue.
Restored to himself, Magnus gestured down the table at Melody with his fork and commented, “Her I like.”
“I’ve really been hearing that too much lately,” Antha sighed beneath her breath, resigned, as her fork cut into her fifth consecutive salmon mousse tartlet.
Of the smattering of soft laughter and smiles around the table, Malakai’s was not among them. Sitting next to her, he was staring very intently at Melody, his breath visibly quickening as he whispered her name. As if he’d brought something to her attention, her fingers went up to the side of her head and then came away red.
There was a sudden outcry around the table, silverware clattering, as she sat staring wide-eyed at the bright stain, hypnotized. Vittorio had already leapt from his chair, and she had tried to rise from hers in shock but Malakai had grabbed her, steadying her. By the time Vittorio’s hands touched her cheeks, his eyes frantically studying her features, a drop of blood had slithered down from her nose and was quickly cutting down her chin, dripping in her lap.
“She’s hemorrhaging,” was Vittorio’s lightning-fast diagnosis, brushing back her hair to look at the small well of blood in her ear. With the briefest, sharpest flash of his eyes at Antha, he said, “This is it.” A delicate way of saying that the moment of her death had arrived.
Antha was already on her feet, her hands down on the table, eyes narrowed. The swell of power that struck out from her was familiar to the Mayfairs, it was the same flavor of magic she had used on more than one occasion to cause a spontaneous aneurysm, only now it served in reverse, attempting to slow the rupture. “Time.” The word came from her without thinking, meaningful but disjointed, her gaze dropping to the table. Her eyes betrayed the impossibly fast procession of thoughts racing through her mind, trying to sort anything useful out of them. “Spark…I need a spark.” The last was said quietly, almost desperately, her eyes briefly squeezing shut as her fingers touched her forehead.
Though it meant very little to anyone else---and most of them were gathered around Melody, who had seized up and then gone unconscious, where Vittorio had laid her on the floor and hadn’t heard---Courtland took it as his cue, setting immediately into action.
“Clocks,” he called out, naming the first word that came to mind, and then listing all the others following it as they came to him, “Fruit. Blood. Heart. Light. Hair. Book. Paint,cat,fire,ice,balloon---" They came as quickly as he could muster breath, without thought, until they were unintelligible to the few still listening. “---blueprint---”
It was this which seemed to hit, as Antha breathed in sharply, her fingers squeezing tightly together. “Blueprint.” Her eyes narrowed to pinpricks, the thoughts still going through them at lightning speed, muttering to herself as Courtland fell breathlessly, gratefully silent. “That’s it. Is that it? Why is that it?” Her brows knitted, her fingernails digging into her palm as she tried desperately to seize what the word had caught on in her mind. “Blueprints…”
And then all at once, her expression went very clear and very, very dire, her gazing snapping to the clock. “Tori, put her in the car.” She was already moving, taking her jacket out of the hall closet, as Vittorio expertly gathered the woman in his arms and made for the door. Magdalena, frantic and clinging to Dorian, rushed to go after them but Alistair caught her by the shoulder. Moments later, her eyes fluttered and she sank, fainting.
Putting her in her father’s arms, Airi whispered, “It’s kinder, for now.”
Others, Malakai and Michael among them, moved to follow but Antha ordered very shortly, “No.” Hastily---clumsily, even---throwing on her leather jacket, she called after her as she raced down the hall after Vittorio, “Won’t have time to call, no updates.”
And then they were all three gone and the house fell into a deathly silence. “We didn’t mean for it to be this exciting,” Courtland apologized quietly to Magnus, as if he were deep in shock and could only act as he usually did, but with none of his usual spark. “Melody has cancer.”
“Herre Gud,” he whispered, lowly and reverently, his eyes still wide.
Putting a hand on Henry’s shoulder, as the boy was pale and trembling, Alistair said softly, “She’s in the best hands she could be in, in this situation.”
Within ten minutes, Magnus and Michael had gone to the nursery to take care of the children while the rest of the family gathered in the parlor with the alcohol. They were unusually attentive to Dorian, each in their own quiet ways. Lucy sat on the arm of his chair gently stroking his hair while Courtland put a glass of whiskey in his hands. “Where’s Malakai?” the former asked suddenly, glancing up from a daze.
It was Armand who stirred---they were all quite lost in their own thoughts---glancing first at her and then the door, motioning weakly to the back of the house. “Praying. Malakai still prays.” His voice lowered to a mutter. “God might actually still listen to him…” And then, shaking his head, continued, “Henry went with him, I think.”
“Why ‘blueprints,’ do you think?” Pierce asked abruptly, “What do blueprints have to do with it?”
“The only person with half the medical knowledge to answer that is Vittorio,” Armand sighed.
But Lawrence, taking his cellphone from his ear, shook his head. “They’re not at the hospital. They would have at least sent word ahead, but no one’s heard from them. Whatever she has in mind, I don’t think it’s medical.”
A few eyes strayed in Alistair’s direction, but the boy held up his hands innocently. “You can’t imagine what an impenetrable mess her thoughts are right now.”
“She asked for a spark,” Lucy interjected, as if it might be a clue.
“That’s what she does when she’s desperate,” Courtland answered darkly, “When there’s no time and she has to rely on luck. I throw out every word I can in the hopes that it evokes something helpful in her great vault of knowledge, something random that she might not have found with logic.”
“How did it even happen so fast?” Lucy demanded, “It was just…it was so quick. Wasn’t she supposed to have longer?”
“Vittorio said she was in critical condition,” Courtland reminded her, “He said ‘any moment.’ Why else do you think Antha was so eager to have her on hand, instead of halfway across the city?”
“To help with Magnus,” Lucy answered uncertainly, repeating what Antha herself had said.
But Courtland immediately shook his head. “Melody stresses Antha out, she would be the last person she’d want here with Magnus. But she would already be dead if she was at home tonight. Just like Antha is the only one who can cause an aneurysm with her powers, she’s also the only one among us who could possibly slow a brain hemorrhage. It’s…” He sighed heavily, his fingers twisting in the air as he sought an explanation. “…too delicate for our powers, the physical human brain. All we could ever do is smash it. It takes Antha’s razor-sharp focus to do such delicate work.” And then, sidetracked, he narrowed a thoughtful gaze at Alistair. “…you can do it too, can’t you?” The boy merely glanced guiltily away. It wasn’t exactly an ability to be proud of, under normal circumstances.
“So what do we do?” This from Jack, sunk into an armchair, leaning over a glass of scotch, “Just…wait?”
“What else can we do?”
“Nothing,” Alistair said in little more than a breath, sinking back into his thoughts, “Nothing but trust Antha and hope for the best. That’s all it’s down to now---luck.”

The household had long since retired, Magnus and Lawrence and Armand having returned home, when it was disturbed by a clatter downstairs. Those who had not been able to sleep, Courtland and Jack amongst them, rose immediately, poking their heads into the hallway. The former came with bat in hand, his eyes a little bleary as they made contact with Cian’s. “Talamasca?” Jack muttered questioningly.
“Who knows,” Courtland answered, and moved forward down the hall with the others behind him. At the foot of the stairs they met with Malakai and Dorian, Courtland asking, “Where did it come from?” Malakai pointed at the dark kitchen doorway, and Courtland led the slightly enlarged group again into the darkness, bat at the ready. The clock at the end of the hall showed it was just before four in the morning.
They saw nothing at first, but the pale yellow fan of light from the open fridge. Then, after a moment to adjust to the darkness, Jack touched Courtland’s shoulder and pointed at the floor by the cabinets, across the fridge, where a body was slumped. Just barely making out a spill of red, a panic seized Courtland, Antha’s name spilling in a thin whisper from his lips. He took one step forward before something crunched beneath his feet and he jumped back, his fingers tightening on the bat, before Jack drew his attention to something else, another body, slumped over at the kitchen table. “Oh good goddamn grief,” he hissed, his patience wearing thin, and finally flipped the overhead light.
None of it really made sense even in the light. The second form proved to be Antha, her breathing indicative of deep sleep, passed out at the table with a butcher knife clenched upright in her fist. She was not dressed in the clothes she had left in, except for the jacket, but shorts and a tshirt, both ripped and dirty with the miniscule dark droplets of sprayed blood. A bruise had blossomed against the side of her thigh, roughly the size of a hand, just beginning to turn brown and yellow with age.
His gaze turned to his feet, beneath which a little blue Styrofoam and cellophane container had been crushed, with several others discarded on the floor around it, all empty. Looking up and across them, he identified the first form, the one on the floor, slumped back against the cabinets, as Melody. She was also in new clothes, a tshirt many sizes too large for her, not ripped but streaked with dirt and bearing a splash of red across one shoulder. Her feet were bare, muddy and scraped, her hair in a tangled mess, but she was otherwise unscathed. To his great surprise, she even gave the smallest groan in her sleep and her head shifted just slightly.
Taking a second to absorb all of this, Courtland threw an arm out to stop Jack as he began to move forward, shaking his head. “What the ********,” he whispered, looking between them, “What…what the ******** did they do? And…where’s Tori? What happened to Tori?”
Antha stirred slightly at the sound, muttering thickly, “---took the sheets again, Cian---” before falling back into a dead sleep.  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian hadn’t been the same after Antha had left. He kept replaying the moments in his head—Malakai reaching out to touch Melody's hair, what seemed like an overly affectionate gesture, and Dorian had been prepared to snipe him down with some snarky comment—until his fingers came away red and glistening. A punch in the gut would not have been as effective at knocking the breath out of him. From there it had seemed as though time slowed—time had, but even before Antha had called out in command—and yet, in retrospect, everything seemed blurry. He couldn’t remember the order of events. He remembered the sound—like a colony of bees in his ears, this dry, endless buzzing that drowned everything else out, everything except the panic rising like bile in his throat. Knocking his chair back as he stood. Courtland’s mouth moving rapid-fire, his eyes going blank as an automaton’s. Lena trying to rush past him, and he had grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around and pulling him in close. He couldn’t remember what he’d said to her. Something about the doctors—keeping his voice low and quick and calm, because that was what overrode the panic, that veneer of authority—and Vittorio was, after all, the finest physician that the city had ever produced, they were taking her to the hospital, which Antha had made certain was equipped to be a match for the best in the nation—that was all that had mattered, keep talking, keep distracting her while they picked Melody’s limp and unresisting body from the floor—how close she had looked to a corpse, in that instant, and how that thought had twisted his stomach into a hard knot—until she broke free from his grasp, running after her mother, and it was only Alistair’s hand that had stopped her.
Dorian was on his knees to catch Magdalena when she crumpled. And he had looked up to Alistair with something that was like relief—but his face was hard, his jaw clenching back a sob, and his eyes were luminous with tears that he would not allow to surface. In any other circumstance, if this was not Melody, if this was not his daughter, he might have scoffed at the scene and said, “I told you so.” He’d sensed it like electricity in the air before a storm. Instead, he took a deep breath, and his voice broke on the following words. “Thank you.”
He didn’t remember rising to his feet, with Lena in his arms, didn’t remember being ushered into the parlor or who had prompted him in that direction or tried to put whiskey in his hands—he had shaken his head at that, his arms full of his daughter, and her steady breathing steadied his nerves more than any liquor could. That came later in the evening, when someone else had pried apart his vise-like grip and taken her upstairs to Dorian’s room.

At the first sign of upset, Liesse had, uncharacteristically, refrained from jumping in. There were more than enough people doing that, clustering towards Melody like they could prevent disaster by sheer attentiveness. “Don’t gawk,” she told the little boy next to her, standing up and taking his hand firmly in hers. “Let’s get out of the way so they’ll have space to work.” She led him through the dining room and out into the hall, behind the stairs, where they could watch from a distance as Melody was carried quickly through the doors, followed by Antha. She could sense the child next to her staring at the expressions of the adults around him, as though he could interpret by their furrowed brows whether or not to worry, himself. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, quietly. “Antha will take care of her.” A fine sentiment, coming from one whose heart was pounding fit to burst between her ribs. She’d seen Malakai’s face; as calm as he was outwardly, there was no disguising the flash of panic in his eyes. Still, it did Henry no good to realize how badly panicked the adults around him were; it would only scare him worse.
Afterwards, Liesse ushered Henry upstairs into the nursery, left him under Dolly Jean’s watchful eye, and went downstairs to help Jacob clean up the mess. Most of the dishes were still half-full, and several of the glasses had been knocked over—Dorian’s had outright shattered on the floor—but somehow it seemed nobody had the appetite to continue the meal. Still, it was too much of a burden to ask him to handle by himself. And keeping her hands busy allowed her to sink her mind into the work, instead of letting it be occupied by the expression she had seen on Malakai’s face, before he had gone into his room and locked the door.

Hours passed, and Dorian was finally starting to come down from the cocktail of adrenaline and whatever other chemicals that his brain had expelled underneath a tsunami of stress. Finally starting to feel human again, which was horrible. The windows were dark, the sun long since gone down, and Cian was sitting in chair across the parlor, his head down, and a half-filled tumbler beside him. As Dorian drained the glass which had been left beside him, though, he stirred, raised his head, and tried to smile.
“Hey.” A wan smile at that, a bad attempt at reassurance. Dorian could tell a fake when he saw one.
“Thought you’d gone comatose. Do you need—“ he reached for the decanter of whiskey next to him, but Dorian shook his head.
“Any news?”
“Not yet.”
They sat in silence together, and there was nothing except the ticking of the clock to fill the space between them. Nothing, at least, until they heard the clatter of movement outside, and Cian rose to his feet quickly and stepped out to see who it was. Dorian followed, heart half-buoyed by hope—until he saw the set of the other’s shoulders, how they fell with disappointment. He didn’t have to look to know that it wasn’t who he’d wanted to see; only Courtland and Jack, investigating the disturbance just as they were.
Malakai was next to him, suddenly; senses dulled by exhaustion, he hadn’t heard the other man approach. At least he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been able to sleep. They didn’t speak—Dorian didn’t trust himself not to say something absolutely atrocious under these circumstances—only exchanged baleful looks.
Courtland led them into the kitchen; it took a moment, eyes still adjusting to the dark, before Dorian was able to make out the shapes of two slumped-over figures, one one the floor, and one on the table. His mouth dried with abrupt dread. After all this, what if—
And then the light flipped on. He heard Cian say, shakily, “Oh, thank God,” but his attention was entirely focused elsewhere. Both of them moved in the same instant, Cian unshouldering the same jacket he’d worn to dinner, while Dorian stepped rapidly across the empty containers on the floor, not even paying attention to what they were, and all of a sudden he was next to Melody, on his knees, pulling her into his arms from where she had arranged herself against the cabinets. He didn’t realize that he was crying until he saw the droplets landing against the stains on her shirt and realized that they were sliding off the tip of his nose. “I thought I lost you,” he whispered, almost to himself, because her eyes were still shut. Glancing around wildly, he set his gaze on the trio of men clustered at the doorway. “Help me get her upstairs,” Dorian demanded, more breath than words. “We can’t let her sleep on the floor.”
Cian was at the table, just slightly beyond reach of the butcher knife, regarding it cautiously. He was more wary than Dorian was, having seen first-hand what could happen when Antha was awakened forcefully. “I don’t know if we should move her yet, Dor,” he murmured. “We don’t know what’s going on, here—“
“She’s home, that’s all that matters.” he whispered back, voice harsh with urgency.
“Dorian, be reasonable, they’re both covered in blood, something happened—“
“All the more reason to get them upstairs, I’m not leaving her on the floor—“
“Nobody’s saying we should, just—let’s find out what’s going on, first, you know?”
Dorian glowered, but didn’t say anything. Taking that as a begrudging acceptance of the circumstance, Cian moved around the back of Antha’s chair, draping his jacket over her, and gently gripped the shoulder of the arm holding the knife. Not that this would necessarily protect him if her first instinct was to go for the jugular—he knew precisely how flexible his wife was, from experience—but he hoped, at least, that the familiarity of his voice would prevent that. “Antha, are you okay?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

When Antha woke at the sound of her husband’s voice, she did so violently. One moment she was as calm and limp as death, the next rigid, her eyes open wide, fingers clenching on the hilt of the knife until her knuckles were white. The weapon came up immediately as she clattered to her feet, but not for the jugular…no, it was turned for defense.
She hardly registered Cian, or her brother and cousins, her bleary eyes went immediately to where she had last seen Melody and then went wide, the color draining from her face. “Dorian, don’t---” He was already beside her, touching her, and Antha went alarmingly still, her voice coming out in a tight warning. “Dorian, let her go. Now. Back away slowly---” But she was too late for that too as, at his touch, Melody stirred, her eyes finally snapping open.
Dorian was thrown off in a split second, with a surprising amount of force, as the woman lurched to her feet and fell over the sink, retching up bits of raw meat and bile. While Antha put her hands over her face, whining impetuously, Melody demanded raspily, “Why am I awake?” she wiped her lips, holding her mussed hair back from her face and looking to the glass doors before giving what was very nearly a sob. “It’s not morning, why am I awake again?” Without waiting for a response, she cast a drained look at Antha and whispered in alarm “Does it have to happen again?”
“Do I look like I have a say in the matter?!” she burst out, one arm slinging across her own waist as she winced, the other hand passing over her eyes. “********, just give me a minute.”
It was Melody’s turn for an outburst, though hers was a wail, crying, “Do I look like I have any control of it?!”
“Alright.” Antha took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, stabbing the knife lightly into the side of the cabinets where it would be easy to grab if she needed it. “Alright…let’s just get on with it, shall we?”
Melody was in tears, doubled over, her hands on her knees. “I don’t want to…” she gasped, and then whining, “Oh god, not again…I just want to sleep. Why isn’t it ******** dawn yet?!” She was silenced by an odd cracking sound, which she herself seemed to be the source of. She gave a little cry, her hands skittering across herself in a futile attempt to stop it, but her fingers were already quivering and cracking, and in seconds were longer, thinner. Simultaneously, her back was curving more than was natural, the vertebrae of her spine too pronounced.
Antha, hauling an armful of silver chains out of the chair next to hers, hurled them onto the floor next to Melody with a rattle. In the next moment, she had taken a running start at her, and moments later there was no Melody at all, but a snarling beast of dark fur, yellow eyes, and sharp teeth which lunged at Antha in response. They were fighting in seconds, tooth and nail, Antha clamping her hands down tightly on the beast’s snout a moment before it threw her and she gave a little shriek, the cabinets threatening to break as she hit them. The beast thrashed, snapping at the nearest thing, which happened to be Dorian, but Antha tackled her, pinning her to the floor. It took some more minutes, and a particularly savage struggle, but Antha managed to subdue her against the tiles, snatching the nearby silver chains and binding them securely first around her snout, and then her front legs, her torso, and finally the hind legs. Pulling them very tightly, she clamped a padlock down on the links and finally climbed off of her, coughing through a thin drizzle of blood. Courtland rushed to take her elbow, now that the beast was immobilized, squirming and growling roughly with pain in her throat.
Antha was livid, turning rashly on Dorian to hiss, “You can’t just rush in like a ******** fool, Dorian!” The action made her wince, sucking a breath in through her teeth, bracing against the counter. “You could have killed her, or me! Think for a goddamn minute before you act!” But her reprimands died on her tongue, overwhelmed with a low whine of pain. Courtland, catching a flash of her skin as she bent over, gently lifted the hem of her shirt to her sternum. A new bruise was already coloring between her shoulder blades where she had been thrown into the cabinets, but it was nothing compared to the ones already present, nearly black as ink, stretching to the sides of her spine, across her stomach, along her sides, and covering her ribs. Beneath her collar, another was visible on her left shoulder. “Did Melody do all this?” he whispered lowly, in sympathetic horror as his fingers skimmed the air over the bruises. But she shook her head, struggling to lower herself into one of the chairs at the counter without collapsing, her breath shallow and ragged. “Surely not Wyatt?”
“Werewolves do not do favors, Courtland,” she murmured, leaning carefully back, “They accede to requests made when someone has proven their abilities. And this…this was a big request.”
Immediately, Courtland was aghast, horrified. “Evie…you didn’t face Fenrir, did you?” Her silence was as good as a confirmation, her tired eyes casting him a sharp look. “But surely you didn’t beat him?”
“A thousand-year-old Viking werewolf?” She scoffed, wincing as she gingerly felt her ribs and found that one had broken and was only just beginning to heal. “No, I survived him. No more, no less. I bribed him and had to prove I could survive him for five minutes.”
“Five minutes!” Jack squeaked, “He did all that to you in five minutes?!”
“Thousand-year-old Viking werewolf!” Malakai, not entirely steady yet, had filled a glass with water and handed it to his sister, who took it weakly but gratefully, rinsing the blood out of her mouth. “The situation is critical,” she murmured then, letting out a deep breath as she considered the business at hand, “Until the sun rises, as long as Melody is awake, she’s going to be a beast. I can’t take on a werewolf again, my body’s taken too much damage in too short a time, it will kill me. When she transforms back, we can’t leave her in silver, it’ll kill her if she wakes up again. But no one else in this house is strong enough to get them back on her if she goes beast again. Until dawn, our lives depend on not waking her up. Because she can and will kill anyone her first night, even her own daughter.”
“Why bring her back here tonight?” Malakai asked in a whisper.
“Because there was nowhere else to take her. I asked for this, so the werewolves won’t take responsibility for her, vampires won’t have anything to do with a werewolf, and I can’t exactly risk a pedestrian seeing any of this. This was the only place that was safe, and I expected everyone to have enough sense to read that this was a dangerous situation.”
“Relief can turn a man into a fool,” Courtland sighed, his eyes flickering at Dorian. “Evie, why ‘blueprints’?”
The girl had climbed up onto the counter and now laid on her side, where there were the least bruises, sighing softly in relief. “An old theory I had,” she murmured, her eyes fluttering as she threatened to lose consciousness, “There’s nothing human left in werewolves when they transform, not even their DNA. So how do they transform back to human? It stands to reason that they retain a blueprint of their human DNA, that when they transform back it builds them all over again from the blueprint. But DNA would map a body in pristine condition, it wouldn’t have a record of a tumor.”
The boys all turned then as Alistair arrived, still pulling on his shirt. He cast one fleeting glance at the bound, struggling werewolf on the floor without much reaction and then turned back to his sister. “I can watch her. I’ll be more use than you right now, anyways.” Antha didn’t ask questions, didn’t protest, only held her arms weakly out for Cian. Alistair, as well-aware of the dangers as his twin, gently coaxed her silver knife from the cabinets and moved to the coffee maker with it in hand. “It won’t always be like this,” he answered the unasked but obvious question as he set about brewing coffee, “Tonight will be the worst. The rest of the month will be risky. After that, it will only be full moons. She’ll never have the control of a born and bred werewolf, but it shouldn’t be this bad again.” Taking the coffee cup from the machine, he took a cautious sip, sighing slightly with relief. “Don’t worry about the others, they’ll sleep until I remove the spell from the house. It’s best that they don’t notice the uproar.”  

[Okimiyage]

It was mildly impressive that, sleep-deprived as Dorian was, his reflexes kicked in almost instantaneously. As soon as he hit the floor, he was scrambling to his feet, the whites of his eyes showing in stark contrast to the dark circles underneath, and stepping towards Melody with total disregard for Antha’s warning only seconds before, as if he hadn’t heard it at all. Perhaps he hadn’t; his focus seemed to solely orbit Melody, at the moment.
But Dorian stopped when he heard the first snap of her vertebrae, rearranging itself, and his mouth drifted open in sudden, ghastly realization. “Antha, what did you do—“
There was no answer; just the rattle of silver chains, and Melody’s snarl.

Dorian didn’t appear to notice Antha afterwards, when she rounded on him and the rest of the little audience, cursing. His hands slowly curled into fists at his side, and he stood stiffly, looking at the massive, wolf-like form that writhed bound upon the kitchen floor, tossing its head and snapping its jaws at the chains that bound it. “So this is what you meant.” he said, quietly, almost talking to himself more than to her. “When you asked if I would do whatever it takes, you just needed the reassurance that you wouldn’t be judged. The ‘theory’ you were looking into, did it even exist? Or was it just so that I could have some hope? Hope lubricates things, you know, makes it easy to get someone to sign the paperwork, take the vow, say whatever you need to hear, just as long as it gets them a little closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. You dangled her life like bait in front of my nose, and I couldn’t help but bite. That’s how this works. If you find what makes people desperate—their lovers, their children, their lives—and you put in front of them like a carrot on a stick. You’d be amazed what you can convince them to go into willingly, when they have something to hope for. You’d be amazed what they’ll thank you for, afterwards.” He raised his eyes, slowly, and turned his head towards Antha as though he was suddenly seeing her in a new light. “Like Melody will probably thank you, in the morning, for saving her. Putting yourself in danger. It’s very noble, isn’t it, saving a life? Whatever it takes, that’s what you said, but I can’t complain, I agreed. Did you ask her before it happened, whether she wanted this? I bet you did. I bet you put Lena’s face into her mind’s eye before you asked. That would have done it for me.” He looked back at the creature that had been Melody--that was Melody, all the more terrifying a thought-- her chains scraping the floor as she tried to free herself, and the sizzle of flesh as the silver made contact with her skin. Maybe it was the stress, or the exhaustion, but suddenly Dorian laughed, in a high and slightly insane fashion. The laughter seemed uncontrollable; his back bowed, he put his face into his hand and staggered back, still convulsing with at the rich ******** irony of it all, what a perfect little trap he’d stumbled into, just like a ******** rabbit, until he hit the wall. “I’m so angry at you— and I don’t know why. I can’t be angry, after all—haha— I’m not allowed to be, because this—haha— this is all— my— fault.”
“Dor,” Cian began, cautiously, stepping forward and slightly in front of Antha, as though in a subconscious attempt to protect her. “You’re not making a lot of sense, there, we should probably get you upstairs and into bed—“
“No."
Dorian stopped laughing, abruptly, at that, and threw a look at Cian like a knife. "I’m not going to let Lena creep down here in the morning and see her mother like this, chained up and bloody. And I’m not going to let her spend the night, alone, on the floor.”
Cian sighed in exasperation, but threw his hands out in the universal gesture for giving up. “Whatever you say. Just, uh—get one of the throw pillows from the parlor or something while you’re at it, I’m sure the bloodthirsty werewolf will appreciate that.”
Dorian stared dubiously at Cian, then slowly looked towards the door as though he was contemplating the suggestion ******** was joking, Dorian—just keep your distance, alright? At least until she changes back. Sunrise is in, what, an hour and a half?” He didn’t have the energy to argue right now. Frankly, none of them did. And Antha needed to rest. Alistair would be there to stop Dorian from doing anything stupid again, at least.
He scooped his wife up into his arms, then, and left. If Antha had been awake, she might have heard her husband muttering to himself as he carried her out of the room, and up the stairs. “—Dammit, Antha, you could have let us know what you had planned. Nicolae and whatshisname would have kept her for the night, at least, they know you—don’t care what kind of feud there is between vampires and werewolves, that’s their business, you don’t have to turn yourself into a damn punching bag, should've let Dorian get the wind knocked out of him, maybe it'd teach the idiot some sense—“
Sometimes, he reflected, as he put Antha to bed, his wife could be a difficult woman to take care of. It was in the nature of every man to protect what they loved, and when the person you loved had a habit of putting themselves into mortal danger…it was impossible for Cian not to feel as though he had somehow failed her. If he was a stronger witch, or maybe just a smarter man, he could have followed her, somehow, taken her place, withstood the blows that Fenrir had dealt, stopped her from getting hurt. There was no way to describe what it felt like, knowing that when Antha walked out the door, sometimes, she would come home like this. But he knew just as well that these thoughts were fantasies. Antha didn’t need a knight in shining armor; she needed a healer. Someone to carry her upstairs when she came home, strip the tattered and blooded vestments from her body, and ice her bruises in the morning. At least he could do that.
But for now, sleep.

Rynn was one of the first to wake in the morning; in part, because, when he rolled over in the expectation of finding Alistair’s back, it wasn’t there. Like going down stairs on which the final step was missing, he startled into consciousness with a jolt. His first thought was, perhaps, that Airi had simply gotten up to use the bathroom, but as he listened for the familiar creak of floorboards or running of water through the pipes, he heard nothing to support this idea. Rynn sat up, groggily, and patted Airi’s side of the bed. It was cold; the washroom theory was sounding less and less likely by the minute. The house seemed swathed in silence—a heavy blanket of noiselessness lay over the bedroom, and that seemed strange, too. Normally there would be some disturbances, if only the settling of timber in the cold night air. And even though the grey light of dawn was beginning to seep through Airi’s window, he felt a push on his mind to lay back down, go to sleep, roll over and settle again into his dreams.
As drowsy as he was, Rynn could recognize magic when he felt it. And if someone wanted him to go back to sleep, he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it without first investigating why.
He groped around on the floor until he found his pants and shirt from last night, and pulled them on, doing the buttons up unevenly. The spell was powerful enough that attempting the fastening of his shirt felt like being drunk, except instead of the influence of alcohol, it was exhaustion that made his fingers stumble.
The hall was completely dark when he shuffled out into it, save for a crack of golden light under the kitchen door. Casting out his mind like a net, he felt Alistair’s presence. Airi? You’re up early— he thought, letting curiosity lead him towards the door.

The sight that greeted him, upon opening it, did little to answer any of Rynn's questions. Blood was spattered around the room, as well as white cotton stuffing and what Rynn recognized as the casing of one of the parlor's embroidered antique throw pillows. Melody lay on the floor, her clothing torn and similarly decorated, as the room was, in ichor--and for some reason, in silver chains, which were being unwrapped from around her form by the combined efforts of Dorian and Alistair. For some reason, part of the cotton stuffing was in her mouth. Rynn paused for a moment, attempting to formulate his thoughts, but the best question he could come up with seemed to be the most obvious one.
"Would any of you care to explain what the devil is going on, here?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

When Rynn opened the door, Alistair looked up and smiled in his usual sunny way, answering with his usual directness, “Melody’s a werewolf now.”
At her name, the girl gave a little jerk and then popped up on the floor, her eyes going wide open, bleary. “Eh? What? Where?” She looked every which way, at Rynn in the door, at Alistair beside her, at Courtland and Jack passed out at the table, and finally to the sliding doors, giving a deep sigh of relief. “Thank Christ, it’s morning.” Peering hopefully up at Alistair, who smiled reassuringly, she asked with great gravity, “Did I leave any meat in this house last night? Because I will go out and catch a cow if I have to.”
“That’s probably not necessary,” Alistair chuckled, rising to his feet and crossing over to the fridge. On the way, he paused to lay a gentle hand on Rynn’s head, lifting the spell, and laid a kiss on his eyelids.
“Wait,” Melody murmured, scratching her head, “Wait, it’s coming back to me…right.” Turning, her gaze connected with Dorian’s for one moment before her palm came up and made contact with his cheek in a resounding slap. “What is wrong with you?” She was looking at him like someone she didn’t know, someone she’d never met before and didn’t have a favorable first impression of. Rising to her feet, she followed over to where Alistair had gone, refusing to look at Dorian even as she spoke to him. “Go apologize to Antha, you said horrible things to her. I remember that.”
Courtland, stirring at the table, rushed to break the tension by diverting attention. “You’re very forgiving of your condition,” he said in something between a chuckle and a sigh, “How are you feeling?”
“I’m not forgiving,” Melody snapped before she could stop herself, spinning around to face him and then forcefully calming herself down, continuing more softly, “I’m grateful. I died in the car---I was looking down at myself as Vittorio tried to restart my heart. It was terrifying, I don’t know what the hell people are talking about when they say crossing over is peaceful. Antha pulled me back, and however much the transformation hurts like absolute hell, it hurts a lot less than when the tumor was stabbing me and my brain was throbbing and bleeding.” She shook her head, leaning against the cabinets and trying to comb her fingers through her wild hair. She had a defiant look on her face, a spark that no one had seen in her since she’d left seven years ago. “I like being a werewolf. IknowIknowIknow, I only just got changed, dire consequences, uncontrollable urges, terrible danger, blah blah blah, Antha told me like thirty times in a row.” She threw her hands up impatiently, rolling her eyes, as Courtland cast her a skeptical look at the announcement. “I haven’t felt this alive in years. And starving---does anyone know when that goes away, by the way?”
“It doesn’t,” Alistair answered simply, handing her a packet of ground beef tucked away in the back of the fridge.
“Fabulous,” she muttered, resigned, ripping it open and taking a bite of it raw before continuing, “I’m happy it turned out this way. Except Antha---I feel bad for Antha. I’ve never seen her tremble before.”
“She trembled?” Jack demanded, as if he must have misheard her.
“When she was getting ready to face Fenrir. She looked so scared. I thought she was dead afterwards, she just sort of threw up some blood, cried for a minute, and then collapsed. I thought the werewolves were going to make fun of her, but they just looked shocked that she survived.”
“How long did it last? Courtland asked seriously, “The fight, with Fenrir?”
“Like, five freakin’ minutes. Jesus Christ, it was brutal, he threw her around like a ragdoll. He’d throw her into a tree and I’d hear the crack all the way across the clearing.” She shook her head, shuddering slightly, before casting another sharp glance at Dorian. “You had no right to say any of that. You weren’t there, you have no idea. And how dare you speak on my behalf like that---you don’t know me, Dorian, that’s become very clear.”
“Alright.” Alistair cut in, forcing his usual smile, “Let’s leave it there, shall we? Talking does so little good when tempers are flaring.”
“Where’s Maggie?” Melody asked, glancing towards the hall, “Is it…can I see her? Is it safe?”
“You’ll be perfectly fine in the daylight,” Alistair reassured her, “Just be careful of your strength.”
“I’ll take you to her,” Jack offered, rising with a yawn, and they headed for the hallway.
Melody paused in the doorway, hesitantly, turning only to say shortly to Dorian, “I don't want to talk to you again until you apologize. To Antha and Malakai. I don't want anything to do with that kind of nastiness.”
Alistair sighed, lifting a cup of coffee to his lips, and flashed Dorian a weak, insincere smile when they were gone. “Pull back,” he advised him softly, “No one’s thanking you for any of it. Fighting with Malakai, fighting with Antha…you’re just pitting everyone against you. Pull back, Dorian.” He said nothing more, only took up a second coffee cup and brought it to Rynn, plopping it into his hands and turning him back around. To Courtland he said, as an afterthought, “Can you ask Jacob to send a tray up to Evie when he gets here? She doesn’t need to get up if she can help it.”
“Will do.” And then Courtland was left alone with Dorian, sighing and idly sipping his coffee while he considered the events of the morning. “It’s rather an elegant solution, thinking about it. It’s not a bad life. You turn into a wolf a couple of nights a month, that’s all, and you get power and glowing, immaculate health for the rest of your life. I’m sure Melody likes that part, never worrying about a disease ever again.” Swiveling around in his chair to face Dorian, he gave a little sigh and pillowed his chin in his palm, asking calmly, “Which is it going to be, Dorian? Rational or righteously indignant? Just so I know where we’re going from here.” His eyes narrowed slightly with concern, his voice dark. “You’re on the edge again, Dorian. You’re two words away from losing everything. Is that really where you want to be?”
“Of course he does.” This from Vittorio, entering with a sheaf of papers in his hand, the circles under his eyes announcing he hadn’t had a moment of sleep. Making for the coffee, he plopped the file onto the countertop, pointing at it. “X-rays. Antha didn’t know if the cancer would actually be removed, she insisted I check. Strapping down an irritated werewolf and waiting for it to fall asleep and change back so you can get it in a CAT scan, not pleasant.”
“But is it?” Courtland pressed, moving to the counter and gingerly spreading the black and white x-rays and sheets of medical jargon out.
Unusually, Vittorio’s hard eyes lit up, sparkling with the lure of a scientific marvel. “Erased, completely. It’s unaccountable---absolutely ******** impossible. But there it is. X-rays, blood tests, DNA analysis, all clean. Like she never had it.”
“Well…there you have it,” Courtland mumbled, his eyebrows arched, “All’s well that ends well.”
“Maybe.” The doctor took a long, deep drink of his black coffee, savoring the bitterness. “Melody died last night. Twice. First in the car, for two minutes and seventeen seconds. Again in the forest with the werewolves, for four minutes and three seconds. And Antha---” His eyes flashed, darkly, deeply haunted. “I thought Antha was going to die. She went into shock after the fight, her organs began shutting down from the excess of damage. I had to put her into the car, her spine was ruptured, her fingers and ribs were broken, her leg was sprained, she was vomiting blood from the window the entire ride. The only person I’ve ever seen in worse condition was a man in the ER who’d blown himself up and survived for an hour.” He shook his head. “It was reckless, her plan. Or lack thereof. I’m sure she pretended she knew exactly what she was doing when she asked Fenrir for a favor. She didn’t. His conditions surprised her, and she was afraid. Afraid like the first time we all went into the airship. I was afraid---that was the largest werewolf I’ve ever seen. Even Wyatt was afraid. Melody was the only one who wasn’t afraid, and she was dead at the time.”
“Please, stop,” Courtland groaned, squeezing his eyes shut, “This is all very dark and anxiety-inducing. Everything’s all right now, right?”
“Golden. Assuming Antha’s recovering.” Draining the last of his coffee, his shifted his serious gaze onto Dorian. “I’m sure you said something shitty. Melody should be dead right now, remember that little brother. And I’ve seen things I wish I hadn’t for it.” Casting his cup into the sink, he turned and began for his room. “I’m on call in seven hours, no disturbances until then.”

Antha woke not long after sunrise, still tired, but the ache stretching across her entire body refused to let her sleep. Her fingers traced her ribs, feeling that the broken one had nearly-but-not-quite healed.
She vaguely recalled Cian pouring her into bed and wanted to let him sleep now, but had hardly managed to sit up before she realized she needed help. “Cian.” She shook him awake very gently, coaxing him conscious again with the brush of her lips until his eyes opened. “Cian, if I don’t get in the shower, I might actually die. I need your help.”
She leaned on him on the way to the bathroom, struggling to keep herself straight, and again as she peeled off her dirtied, bloodied clothes, observing the large, aged bruises in the mirror. The hot water would help them heal, she reassured herself. “I don’t even remember where I got these clothes,” she mumbled as she fumbled with the belt cinching the too-large shorts, “They’re not mine. But you can’t exactly wrestle a werewolf in a cocktail dress and heels.” Eventually, she gave up trying and let Cian take over, studying the wispy color along her fingers that had been bruises. They were washed out now, like watercolors, mostly healed. She thought a couple of them might have been broken last night between the forest and the hospital, before she’d taken a drought of vampire blood. It would explain why she’d let Vittorio drive. “…********, I’m really a mess.”  

[Okimiyage]

Cian was quiet, listening to Antha through the hiss of steam, and gently splashing water over her knees as he did so. His eyes seemed to be a million miles away. He had to have that degree of separation, listening her talk about what had been done to her last night, because—because it was either that or swear a blood oath and go storming out of the house with a butcher knife and murder the creature that had done this to her in cold blood. 
Not that he would have been able to, if what she said about him was true. Fenrir was a ‘god’. And he didn’t have Antha’s supernatural healing abilities; his broken ribs would have stayed broken, his broken spine would have confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But he knew why it had happened. A phrase that she had used explained it all. “Of course he wanted to challenge you.” he said. His voice was thin, keeping the emotion out of it in a feat of willpower. “You said it yourself. He’s an alpha. And so are you; just of a different kind. You wander into his territory, give him the freedom to declare his terms—he had to show his dominance. In a pack like that, someone’s always looking to replace the leader. That’s how wolves work. If he had just given you what you wanted, it wouldn’t take long before there were whispers—he’s gone soft in his old age, he’s as good as one of her pets, he’s afraid of what she would have done to him in return.” Cian didn’t have much experience with werewolves, but he understood men—particularly the men who had no qualms about hurting someone who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, fight back. The logic of the two was unsurprisingly similar.
“He should be afraid. If it was a fair fight, you would have killed him.” A shadow passed over his face at a thought that suddenly jumped to the forefront of his mind: “We shouldn’t let the rest of the household see you like this. The Mayfair hand of justice has a long reach, and your kin have never been the forgiving sort. If I’m right, he has good reason to be afraid. You might have walked into that fight willingly, but the rest of your clan won’t see it that way—they’ll just see what was done to you.” The splashing stopped; Cian lifted his hand out of the water. “I don’t imagine you’d have a concrete estimate of how long it’ll take to heal, but I’d reckon you ought to stay upstairs for the moment—at least until the obvious physical signs of that fight go away. I'd say we could put you in a turtleneck and long skirt, if you'd tell me where such a thing was squirreled away in your closet—if you even own those.” Cian had certainly never seen them. “I just don't want anyone downstairs catching sight of those marks and declaring a vendetta against every lycanthrope in the city. Somehow I don't think they'll believe me if I try to claim that we got a little extra kinky last night.” 
He leaned over, kissed her forehead—the one spot on her body that he didn’t see any evidence of the conflict on—“I’ll get you an ice pack from downstairs. Just stay here for a moment, try to relax.”

“I remember what I said to her.” Dorian’s head was in his hands, his shoulders hunched over defensively. “I remember how I said it. I didn’t scream at her, which took a good deal of effort, because I feel like I'm going ******** insane. You don’t know what she told me, Courtland. She took that fight on for me. Not Melody. She said she wouldn’t care whether Melody lived or died unless I took the responsibility for it. I wish I didn’t remember that, but I do: ‘I never would have tried to help her for her sake, or even Magdalena’s.’” Sometimes, Dorian's gift for mimicry felt like a curse. “’Whatever it takes’—what I thought that meant, at the time, was that I would have to put my life on the line for her. I didn’t have a problem with that. I still don’t.” He raked his fingers back through his hair, leaving it in even more of a disheveled state than it had been before, and lifted his head, but did not look at Courtland. His eyes were staring into the wood-grain of the kitchen table like he was trying to laser through it. “I ought to be grateful that she’s alive, that they’re both still alive, but all I can think of is that I’m the one who got them hurt. I’m just as responsible for those bruises as Fenrir is; I’m just as responsible for what Melody’s been made into. You can’t tell me that was what she would have chosen, if she hadn’t been dying, you saw the pain she was in last night. And I’m probably responsible for her dying in the first place, too, because if nothing had ever happened between us, she would have been here when the tumor started growing in her head like a goddamn parasite, and she would still be with Malakai, and they would have had years to stop it—years—instead of having to come up with a hare-brained idea like, 'let's take her to the werewolves and let them beat the s**t out of me' on the spur of the moment.” Dorian hadn’t looked at Courtland, all though this little monologue, but now he did. His eyes were red, and the hollows beneath them robbed him of his beauty, made his face almost unrecognizable. The old Dorian, vain as a cat, would have been aghast at how he appeared at the moment. This Dorian was long past caring. “I feel like a ******** monster, Court. I’ve ruined every life that I’ve touched, and I can’t stand the thought of it happening to anyone else. Not Antha, not Melody, not Lena. Whenever I try to help someone, whenever I do what I think is right, people just get hurt. I can see that, now. I'm not the goddamn victim, here: everyone else is.” He raised himself off his elbows, groped in his jacket’s breast pocket for his cigarette case; there was one left. “I need a smoke,” he muttered, staggering to his feet. “I'll be outside. Don't come looking for me.”    

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha shifted, with no shortage of difficulty, pulling her legs up and her arms around them, her chin resting on her knees. The water came just short of her shoulders, the surface hazy with steam. “I didn’t know I was walking into that,” she murmured at length, turning to lay her cheek on her knees, her eyes focused on Cian, “Not that I would have told you if I had, but…I didn’t know. Fenrir is…god, old as sin. Older than most of the vampires around here. He’s one of the oldest werewolves in the world, over a thousand years. He trounces other ancient alphas, it never even occurred to me that he’d challenge me.” Her fingers skimmed over her shoulder, tracing the worst of the bruise. There was a brief flash of memory of an arm across her stomach, of being knocked off balance and stumbling, of a body made entirely of fur and muscle slamming into her and being ground between it and a tree, the bark digging into her shoulder on impact.
“I’ve never had injuries last this long,” she muttered miserably, “Tori said I had internal bleeding---apparently I left a trail of blood along the west highway from the window of the car.” She remembered that only vaguely, bent over the sill while her insides convulsed and the blood and bile splashed onto the blur of pavement, the werewolf chained and thrashing in the backseat.
Unexpectedly, she felt a burning at the back of her eyes. Her arms tightened around her knees, her face pressing into the crook of her arm, her legs sliding straight until her face slipped under the surface and she screamed into the water.
Rising with a small splash, she gave a gasp for air, her head tilted back and fingers pressed to her eyes. “I felt like a ******** child,” she whispered thinly, “I felt six years old again…being thrown into the radiator by someone twice my size. I felt weak and frightened and I wanted to hide in the corner.” A sharp breath rattled her shoulders as she tried to get herself under control again, to stave off the panic. When she spoke again, it was carefully measured. “I don’t really understand what happened last night, Cian. It wasn’t normal, it’s not the way things are done.” She sniffled, settling her cheek against the back of her arm. “I asked for something unreasonable and he asked for something unreasonable. Maybe it would have balanced out if the favor had actually been for me.”
For a moment, she sat silently skimming her fingers on the surface of the water, watching the gentle ripples flow and crash into the porcelain. And then she winced, giving a jolt and a shiver, whispering through her teeth, “There goes the vertebrae.” Her shoulders moved cautiously, testing the movement of her spine. “They’re not meant to heal like that, so they sort of…pop, when they do.”

“Dorian.” Courtland gave a very heavy sigh, his head dropping to the side. “Do you remember what you said to Antha last night? Or at least, do you remember how you said it? Because…you kind of ripped into her while she was coughing up blood and in tears, all black with bruises. And her spine was kind of…wrong, I don’t know, it was out of place.” He clucked his tongue, the expression on his face unsettled. “You asked Antha to save Melody, right? You don’t get to complain about how or why she did it. You got what you wanted, Dorian, for once just let it be enough.” With another sigh, he heaved himself out of his chair and made for the door. “Just be grateful for once, Dorian. Please. The victim act is so tired.”
A door down the hall closed and Melody brushed past, Magdalena sleeping in her arms. “It’ll wear off within an hour,” Alistair assured her, retreating to his own room.
“Thank you,” she breathed gratefully, stroking her daughter’s hair, and then gave a little laugh as he opened his mouth again to speak, cutting him off. “Really, it’s fine. It’ll be nice, her being the mystified one for once. And if she has questions---” Another of those breezy little careless laughs. “---believe me, you’ll hear them. No really, it’s fine, I just want to go home, be in my own bed, and eat like twenty hamburgers.”
She was gone in a flash, with barely a goodbye, and Alistair didn't blame her---he knew what it felt like coming back from the dead. "Well that was an eventful morning," he chuckled to himself, retreating with Rynn into his room and shutting the door behind them.  

[Okimiyage]

Cian was quiet, listening to Antha through the hiss of steam, and gently splashing water over her knees as he did so. His eyes seemed to be a million miles away. He had to have that degree of separation, listening her talk about what had been done to her last night, because—because it was either that or swear a blood oath and go storming out of the house with a butcher knife and murder the creature that had done this to her in cold blood. 
Not that he would have been able to, if what she said about him was true. Fenrir was a ‘god’. And he didn’t have Antha’s supernatural healing abilities; his broken ribs would have stayed broken, his broken spine would have confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But he knew why it had happened. A phrase that she had used explained it all. “Of course he wanted to challenge you.” he said. His voice was thin, keeping the emotion out of it in a feat of willpower. “You said it yourself. He’s an alpha. And so are you; just of a different kind. You wander into his territory, give him the freedom to declare his terms—he had to show his dominance. In a pack like that, someone’s always looking to replace the leader. That’s how wolves work. If he had just given you what you wanted, it wouldn’t take long before there were whispers—he’s gone soft in his old age, he’s as good as one of her pets, he’s afraid of what she would have done to him in return.” Cian didn’t have much experience with werewolves, but he understood men—particularly the men who had no qualms about hurting someone who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, fight back. The logic of the two was unsurprisingly similar.
“He should be afraid. If it was a fair fight, you would have killed him.” A shadow passed over his face at a thought that suddenly jumped to the forefront of his mind: “We shouldn’t let the rest of the household see you like this. The Mayfair hand of justice has a long reach, and your kin have never been the forgiving sort. If I’m right, he has good reason to be afraid. You might have walked into that fight willingly, but the rest of your clan won’t see it that way—they’ll just see what was done to you.” The splashing stopped; Cian lifted his hand out of the water. “I don’t imagine you’d have a concrete estimate of how long it’ll take to heal, but I’d reckon you ought to stay upstairs for the moment—at least until the obvious physical signs of that fight go away. I'd say we could put you in a turtleneck and long skirt, if you'd tell me where such a thing was squirreled away in your closet—if you even own those.” Cian had certainly never seen them. “I just don't want anyone downstairs catching sight of those marks and declaring a vendetta against every lycanthrope in the city. Somehow I don't think they'll believe me if I try to claim that we got a little extra kinky last night.” 
He leaned over, kissed her forehead—the one spot on her body that he didn’t see any evidence of the conflict on—“I’ll get you an ice pack from downstairs. Just stay here for a moment, try to relax.”

“I remember what I said to her.” Dorian’s head was in his hands, his shoulders hunched over defensively. “I remember how I said it. I didn’t scream at her, which took a good deal of effort, because I feel like I'm going ******** insane. You don’t know what she told me, Courtland. She took that fight on for me. Not Melody. She said she wouldn’t care whether Melody lived or died unless I took the responsibility for it. I wish I didn’t remember that, but I do: ‘I never would have tried to help her for her sake, or even Magdalena’s.’” Sometimes, Dorian's gift for mimicry felt like a curse. “’Whatever it takes’—what I thought that meant, at the time, was that I would have to put my life on the line for her. I didn’t have a problem with that. I still don’t.” He raked his fingers back through his hair, leaving it in even more of a disheveled state than it had been before, and lifted his head, but did not look at Courtland. His eyes were staring into the wood-grain of the kitchen table like he was trying to laser through it. “I ought to be grateful that she’s alive, that they’re both still alive, but all I can think of is that I’m the one who got them hurt. I’m just as responsible for those bruises as Fenrir is; I’m just as responsible for what Melody’s been made into. You can’t tell me that was what she would have chosen, if she hadn’t been dying, you saw the pain she was in last night. And I’m probably responsible for her dying in the first place, too, because if nothing had ever happened between us, she would have been here when the tumor started growing in her head like a goddamn parasite, and she would still be with Malakai, and Antha would have had years to stop it for his sake—years—instead of having to come up with a hare-brained idea like, 'let's take her to the werewolves and let them beat the s**t out of me' on the spur of the moment.” Dorian hadn’t looked at Courtland, all though this little monologue, but now he did. His eyes were red, and the hollows beneath them robbed him of his beauty, made his face almost unrecognizable. The old Dorian, vain as a cat, would have been aghast at how he appeared at the moment. This Dorian was long past caring. “I feel like a ******** monster, Court. I’ve ruined every life that I’ve touched, and I can’t stand the thought of it happening to anyone else. Not Antha, not Melody, not Lena. Whenever I try to help someone, whenever I do what I think is right, people just get hurt. I can see that, now. I'm not the goddamn victim, here: everyone else is.” He raised himself off his elbows, groped in his jacket’s breast pocket for his cigarette case; there was one left. “I need a smoke,” he muttered, staggering to his feet. “I'll be outside. Don't come looking for me.”  

Rynn all but fell into bed, arms outstretched, with a great thump against the mattress.
“Eventful is one way to put it, isn’t it.” Most people would have called it a shitshow. Rynn could deal with drama, but seeing a couple practically divorce before breakfast was a new high, even for the Mayfairs. He hadn’t stayed up last night, hadn’t witnessed the speech that Dorian had made, but from what it sounded like, this was the end of the line for him. Over and over, that man got himself in trouble. It was like he expected—or maybe just craved beyond reason for the moment that everyone else around hims would fall into line, and the Mayfairs would be a normal family. If he thought that way, he wouldn’t last long in this environment. No wonder he’d run away, before.
But with four kids—three of them in the nursery, one of them up and walking and talking—that option wasn’t available to him any longer.
Rynn rolled over to his side, making space for Alistair, and looked up at him.
“We’re coming to the end of the line, aren’t we?” he asked. It wasn’t a question that demanded an answer so much as it was a statement of the facts, with a question mark tagged on to the end. In some way, he wanted Airi to deny it, to say that everything was fine. “She’s waning like a sunset, and Nero’s the dark. I don’t know even what I’m supposed to do.” There was something desperate in the way he said that—like he thought that his lover could offer the answer. He was the one closest to Antha, after all. He’d surely know what she had planned.
But he’d thought the same thing, last night, drifting off to sleep. His faith in Alistair was all that had allowed him to drift off to sleep, reassured that no matter what happened, Airi would be there to stop it somehow. “There’s still a part of me that wonders if she should have chosen you to fight him.” he murmured. “But if anything happens to me, you’ll be here. That’s reassuring, at least. Would you promise me that you’ll protect them, if anything goes wrong? Cian, and Liesse, and Antha’s children. If I’m not here to protect them after we face Nero down—you will be?”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Alistair slid languidly into bed beside Rynn, idly skimming his fingers down his cheek, along his jaw, that sad, dark smile on his lips. “Only Antha is going to face him,” he said quietly, reassuring but…defeated. “Because no one can stand against him and survive. We’ll be here, safe, while they’re out there. Antha’s…devised it all, down to the letter. All she needed was you.” He cleared his throat, his eyes flickering downwards, unsettled. “When she retrieved my body from the Talamasca, do you remember?” He rather thought the following ritual, Airi’s own resurrection, might have somewhat obscured everything else in the memory. “She demanded a shroud from David at the same time. A prize of the Talamasca’s collection, the very burial shroud Nero had been covered in, stolen centuries ago by some fool of a rogue vampire. Which is fortunate for us, actually. It’s connected to him, and it’ll let you curse him from a distance.” His fingers trailed down, gently curling over Rynn’s. “I can’t do the ritual. Antha and I are connected, I can’t sacrifice her. But I’ll be there to help you, if you need it.”
And then, quite without warning, he felt something. Like an old wound, so old he didn’t even remember it, opening up fresh deep, deep in the back of his mind. But you’re already too late. Nero’s voice, he knew it too well to ever mistake it, the words not English but he already knew them. The ritual is already done. There is nothing you can do to stop what is complete.
Alistair’s fingers, locked white-knuckled onto Rynn’s in a deathgrip, released them quickly as he bolted up, sitting on the side of the bed and running his hands back through his hair. “Why do I know his voice?” he whispered, entirely to himself, “That didn’t come from him, it was in my head. Why was his voice in my head?” The question had hardly been asked before he had the answer and it brought a little sound to his lips, his face buried in his hands, uttering in a whisper, “What have we done?”

Cian had hardly moved before Antha’s arm came out, latching onto his sleeve before she’d thought about it. Her eyes flashed briefly panicked, desperate, begging him not to leave. And then she let go, with the faintest blush to her cheeks, pulling her legs up against her chest and resting her chin on her knees, effectively covering herself for when Rynn inevitably came chasing after her brother.
A second later, Alistair had thrown the door open and had gone over to the bath tub, perched upon the edge, his gaze on the tiles at his feet. “What do we do?”
“There’s nothing to do, Airi.”
“We should tell someone.” He hesitated, glancing at her, as if he didn’t have all the answers for once, or else trusted Antha to have better ones. “Shouldn’t we?”
“I won’t put this on our family,” she said then, resolutely, “The weight of it would crush them.” Antha sighed, her eyes flashing cautiously at Cian---that familiar look, the one that said she didn’t want to get him involved---but ultimately sighed, disregarding her instincts. He was going to have to start learning these things eventually. “I’ve arranged watchers for him, I’ll explain it to them.”
Seeing Rynn approach, Airi’s eyes narrowed before he looked back to Antha. “They should still know. Some of them, at least. The burden won’t be theirs, but…” Another sigh, grasping for what he needed to say. “We can’t ******** this up again, Evie.”
“It’s not our fault.”
“Of course it’s our fault!” he hissed, not at Antha in particular, but to something else. Himself, maybe. “We were responsible for him. But we did it wrong---I don’t know how, but we must have. Otherwise he’d still be out there, in the desert, under lock and key.”
“We weren’t responsible for him. He was taken out of our guardianship, we couldn’t have changed that.”
“We should have killed him,” he said in a small, strained whisper, full of regrets so great that Cian and Rynn could probably never even conceive of them, “Before this started. Before the bloodline was founded, before you had to die.”
It was here that Antha finally grew irritated, the water splashing as she shouted, “We tried! Did you forget that, Airi? We ******** tried. We couldn’t even kill him then. And if we had, this would never be an issue. We---me, you, Deborah, the Mayfairs---never would have existed in the first place.”
“It’s too ******** up, Evie.” His hands came up and spread over his face, running back through his hair. “How much blood do we have on our hands?” Antha said nothing for a while, only sat huddled in the water, her eyes distant. “I’m going to tell them. Rynn has to know, at the very least.” Her arms slid beneath her knees, pulling her legs a little more securely against her, her chin sliding down until her lips were hidden against her knees. Tacit consent, against her better judgment. Alistair took what he could get, turning and focusing his attention on Rynn, his eyes flickering only briefly at Cian. “We…knew Nero.”
Quietly, muffled, Antha muttered, “Mesehti.”
“Mesehti,” he repeated in agreement, giving a little sigh, “Before…when he was human. When he was a priest, roughly six millennia ago, in Thebes.” Antha’s shoulders tensed, but still she said nothing. She’d never admitted it before, that she remembered any life but her own. “I told you we used to be a priest,” he said to Rynn, his eyes flashing as he tried to put the story into proper order, to make something he could understand out of the mess of his decayed memories, “Amyrtaeus. We served Amun-Ra, and Mesehti served Seth. Or, he was supposed to. He belonged to a forbidden cult, apparently…the cult of Sekhmet.”
“The destroyer of the human race,” came Antha’s dull contribution, “Who drank rivers of blood and thrived on destruction.”
“He called her.” His throat had grown tight. It had been so many years since he’d even remembered any of this, and he rather thought his mind might have been suppressing it on purpose. “He led the cult and they summoned her, Sekhmet---or something that passed for her, anyways. Something old and terrifying. He’d meant to sacrifice himself to bring her into this world, but we found them. Someone had gotten scared and confessed it, and we interrupted the ritual, the priests and the king’s guard. Nearly everyone fell in the battle, except for us and Mesehti.”
Another mumble from Antha. “We were scared.”
“We believed in Sekhmet as much as we believed in Amun-Ra. We couldn’t let the destroyer of mankind into the world, it would have been the end of everything. So we did the only thing we could…we bound him.”
Finally, Antha stirred, though her gaze remained on the water in front of her, unfathomable. “We took away his mortality.” A laugh spilled humorlessly from her lips. “Think about it…it was us. We made him undead. We used the lives of those who had fallen in the battle and we bound his soul to his flesh so that he couldn’t pass on.”
“Without his mortality,” Alistair continued abruptly, desperate not to let Antha follow that train of thought, “He wasn’t a sacrifice. He wasn’t a portal, Sekhmet couldn’t use him to cross over, and she became trapped in his body. I don’t know if she took over, or they merged somehow, or what. But she was in there. Those of us who were left could barely restrain him---he was weak after the ritual, just like any vampire in the moments following their transformation, otherwise we never would have been able to in the first place. The pharaoh was so terrified of this creature we brought to him that he gave up him own tomb and had him locked in it, under the most powerful wards Egypt had ever devised. He assigned watchers to Mesehti, to make sure he never broke out, and all of them vanished. That was the last we heard of them, they became the greatest secret in the world, in case anyone ever got any ideas.”
“But they must have,” Antha interrupted, quiet and thoughtful, “He was roaming free four-thousand years later, in Rome. The watchers must have died out or abandoned their posts over the generations. And no one else knew, the pharaoh had forbidden it, we couldn’t even tell our own son. So no one was there to keep him contained when the watchers failed, for whatever reason. And then the vampires put him down, but they ******** up even worse, because here he is again. Angry. And overly eager for revenge.”
“But it wasn’t us---”
“We see ourselves as unique, different from Amyrtaeus, and Deborah, and the seashell girl, but Mesehti---Nero---doesn’t. We’re all the same to him, Airi, a soul is a soul, and even if this body is Antha Mayfair instead of Amyrtaeus, I’m still the one who made him a bloodthirsty monster and locked him in a tomb for god knows how many thousands of years.” A deep sigh blew through her lips, her eyes lulling shut and head tilting back. “I forgot. Our memories aren’t split evenly, I got more of Deborah Mayfair and Airi got more of Amyrtaeus. My memories of Mesehti were so…so deeply buried, and Airi wasn’t in the flesh, he couldn’t recognize the sound of his voice. And he looks so different…the eyes…”
“‘And Sekhmet drank deeply of the blood of mankind,’” Alistair quoted, pulling the words from somewhere far away, “‘For their hubris against the gods, she painted the mortal world in the shades of death, and swallowed the rivers of red until they covered the sky in her eyes. Thus the gaze of Sekhmet became a testament to the lives that had fallen in her path, and which she had slain without judgment or mercy.’” He tossed his head back, casting his sister a veiled glance. “Shouldn’t there be a way to vanquish him? The gods vanquished Sekhmet, it can’t be impossible.”
“The gods tricked Sekhmet into drinking a river of beer stained to look like blood and she exploded and became Hathor. While Mayfair resources might be able to provide us with a river of red beer, somehow I don’t think it will work on Nero. And anyways, she’s clearly not vanquished. It’s a myth, it never happened.”
Alistair was quiet for several long moments, staring at his feet. “…how long, do you think? To feel him as strongly as I did, to resonate with him like that…how far away do you think he is?”
Antha hesitated, but not for lack of an answer. “Less than a week. Maybe only a few days.”
He nodded, for lack of any appropriate reaction, his eyes going cloudy as his lips trembled and he folded them in. “Are we going to be ready?” His voice was hoarse.
“As ready as we’ll ever be.” For the first time, she turned and cast her steady gaze on Rynn, gently appraising. “You realize what you have to do, don’t you Rynn? The steps aren’t important, all you have to do is follow instructions. The important thing---”
“Evie, please don’t say it.”
She did so, heedlessly. “You have to sacrifice me, Rynn. That’s why it has to be you---why Alistair can’t do it and Nicolae won’t. At the moment of my death, you have to take it in your hands and use it to complete the ritual. Nothing less will do. Can you do that, Rynn?”
“Evie---”
There was something in her eyes as they narrowed at the boy, something new. They were dire, but…trusting. Confident. Despite everything else, Antha believed in Rynn. “He won’t let me live. He’ll never let me live, knowing what I did to him, his hatred might even be strong enough to override the spell. I have to die, and the curse needs the power of my death. Can you do that, Rynn? Think about it seriously. Can you sacrifice me?”  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn knew that he shouldn’t hesitate, but his eyes flickered—very briefly—to Cian’s face before he answered. There was a tension in Cian’s features that Rynn could not remember ever seeing there before, a sort of taut expression, that of a string stretched to the point of fraying. He did not see Rynn’s glance; Cian’s eyes were lowered, and he kept moving one of the washcloths around his already quite-dry hands in a distracted manner, as if he needed something to wring. Slowly, Rynn stepped past the threshold of the bathroom door, standing halfway behind Alistair while he spoke.
“I don’t like all this beating around the bush, Antha, so let’s just call it what it is. If I kill you, then we have a chance at peace, don’t we? There’s a chance that all this goes back to normal—well, as normal as things ever are, around here—and your children grow up without having to live in fear.” He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly; he did not quite dare to look at Alistair. He was acutely aware that he was in a room with probably the two people who loved Antha most in all the world while he was saying this. “There was a time that I would have jumped at the chance to sacrifice you, for my own purposes; it’s the reason why two of my brothers are dead. I never thought that I’d be standing here trying to figure out a good reason to deny you what I wanted most back then.” He looked down at the floor, a little ashamed. “But if I’m the only one who can go through with this sacrifice, if that’s what you really want, it wouldn’t be right to refuse you. If you’re going to die…if you’re already resigned to your death…then the worst thing I can imagine is for it to happen without meaning.”
Alistair was turned away from him; Rynn couldn’t read the expression on his face. Without thinking about it, he reached out and gently touched the other’s back. “If I do this for you…for everyone…just say that you’ll go into it with no regrets. That you’ll make sure you settle what needs to be settled here, before it’s too late. You’ve always been the one who’s held the your family together. I know what that's like. It’s a role that no-one else can fill, and you'll be leaving a hole behind you. It may sound dire, but…there’s nothing about this situation that isn’t.” His eyes raised slowly. The lights from the mirror should have made them glint, picked out the gold within his irises, but they seemed dulled instead. “I’ll do what it takes, Antha, because I know how important this is, and because I owe you for what you’ve done for me. But you should go into the next world with nothing holding you back in this one. And considering how deeply invested you are in everyone in this house, that seems impossible.”
Cian straightened up at that, and stopped fiddling with his towel. “Rynn, stop.” he said, sharply. “Nobody needs a Doubting Thomas, and especially not right now. We’ll make it work.” We have to.—but he didn’t say that aloud, although an image of the future flashed through his mind—

The nursery was dark, except for a small, revolving light on the nightstand, projecting images of stars onto the ceiling while it played a tinkling, saccharine melody. The children had started crying in the night again. It had been this way for weeks, always at the same time—3AM, the witching hour. And like every night before, Cian had dragged himself out of bed and thrown on his dressing gown, and stumbled through the halls to hold Sebastien and Vanessa until they, and he, fell asleep in the rocking chair of the nursery. They weren’t hungry, they didn’t need changing, they just—cried. And Cian took each of them in his arms, and hummed to them until the crying stopped, and thought about how Aedan had once told him that the witching hour was the time when ghosts were most often seen, when the veil between the spirit and the physical world was thinnest. Sometimes he talked to her, sometimes he just wept, in silence, grieving for what was gone, remembering what they’d had. She was still there, in his mind’s eye, as clearly as though—as though he’d go back to bed, in a few moments, and see her form beneath the covers, feel her body nestling up against his with a murmur as he climbed back onto his side. As though he’d wake up with her peeking out from underneath the sheets at him, smiling while she waited for his eyes to open. He still couldn’t manage to sleep taking full advantage of the king-sized mattress, he always left room for her, although it didn’t make any difference, he tossed and turned none less. A few of the members of the family had suggested, quietly, that he ought to seek therapy; they could see that he wasn’t sleeping. But it was better than the nightmares. It was better than the dreams he had of Rynn opening her throat with a ritual knife, of her being lowered into her casket—the worst ones were when she woke up, inside that box, blood congealing in her hair, and screamed and scratched at the lid of the coffin, until the satin lining was torn to shreds, and no-one would believe him when he told them that he could hear her…

He shook off the premonition, putting up walls as though he could prevent his brother from witnessing what he’d just seen. It was too late; Rynn had already seen it, and he could tell by the way his eyes widened. He sharpened his tone--don't you dare feel pity for me, now-- “I don’t know why you’re telling her this. I don’t know if you think you can change her mind, but you can’t. This is up to Antha. It’s her decision; all you need to do is comply.”
Rynn looked somewhat taken aback, but he didn’t argue.
“I said that I would. I’ll promise, if it makes you feel any better.”
Cian folded his arms. “We don’t need any theatrics, Rynn. Just for once in your life, all you have to do is what you’re told. Back us up. That’s all that’s being asked of you.”
In another time, Rynn would have snapped, or at least glowered in resentment. Now, that just seemed pointless. Finally, reluctantly, he agreed: “I’m not happy about it, but I’ll do it. But any unfinished business—take care of it now. If you two don’t, that’s on your heads, not mine.” He was starting to get a flickering migraine in the back of his skull; it was too early for that sort of thing. Rubbing his forehead, he said, “I need to get some coffee or something. Alistair—we should talk, when you can. I’ll be downstairs.”  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

“You’re not killing me, Rynn.” Antha gave him a weak smile, the kind that shared the same shape but carried none of the emotion behind it, only reassurance. “That’s Nero’s sin.”
Alistair gave a start, looking at Rynn as if he’d only just noticed him, his eyes flashing over at Antha before he made a little sound of shock and ran over to Rynn, throwing his hands over his eyes, and his sister rolled her own. From the doorway, she was only a head and shoulders, and she was covered by her legs anyways. To Rynn’s brother, she said quietly, “It’s how he cares, Cian. It’s clumsy and it’s fumbling, but…I’m relieved, honestly. Part of me kind of wondered if he’d actually miss me.” Which would be harder for him, but…it was always nice to know someone cared.
Her fingers skimmed the back of his hand, tracing along his fingers, back down to his palm. “We knew it was coming, Cian.” Twining her fingers around his, she drew him close enough to press a soft kiss against his lips. “Don’t mourn me. I know it’s an impossible thing to ask, but…promise me you’ll try. Because you have to take care of our children, Cian, and I don’t want my memory getting in the way. They’re already going to suffer enough because of me, growing up without a mother, I don’t want the shadow of my death hanging over them any more than it has to.”
Raising her arms, she reached out for him. “Help me up. I think the hot water’s done all it can, and these bruises are starting to itch like crazy.” Using Cian for support, she rose to her feet with a splash, groaning slightly. “Tori’s always going on about how amazing the human body is, but personally I’m finding it overrated. Why is it so slow?” She had hardly gotten clothes on and begun climbing back into bed when Jacob knocked on the door and entered with a tray. He paused when he first saw her, startled, but quickly recovered himself. “You’re an angel, Jacob,” she murmured, raising herself against the pillows with some difficulty as he set the tray on the bed beside her.
“Courtland told me you didn’t feel well,” he said quietly, automatically setting about adjusting her covers and fluffing her pillows. Sometimes, it was hard to believe that he hadn’t been bred by a long line of butlers.
When he was gone, Antha laughed very slightly. “He used to make me miso soup when I didn’t feel well as a child,” she explained, taking up one of the delicate china bowls---as keenly filled with foresight as ever, he’d brought breakfast for Cian as well. “Julien used to get so mad. The doctors had strict instructions on my diet for my poor health, nothing decadent.” She smiled mischievously at the plate of scrambled eggs with caviar and side of French toast. “But Jacob, fortunately, understood how dreadfully all that bland food affected my health.” Taking up a slice of the French toast, she folded it in half and shoved it in Cian’s mouth. “Stop worrying about me and eat,” she instructed strictly, wiping a drop of syrup from the corner of his mouth with her thumb, “It’s much more productive.”

When they were safely downstairs, Alistair pulled his arms around Rynn, burying his face in the crook of his neck. There was a flash---pale sandstone, brightly painted in blues and reds and whites, the chamber lined with crude statues, the floor covered in blood and bodies. The figure at the far end of the chamber, one of the few left standing, raised his arms, gold bangles jingling on his wrist. He spoke in a foreign tongue, but Alistair’s mind provided the words. She is with us. Hands moved on the floor, painting symbols frantically in the spilled blood. Stop, Amyrtaeus…it’s over. Give up. You have the opportunity to be the first to greet her in the mortal realm. The vision shifted, glancing up at him and then hurriedly back at the floor, enclosing the symbols in a circle. It isn’t over until I’m dead, Mesehti. We are far from done.
“It isn’t fair,” Alistair murmured, “Antha dying for something we both did when we were someone else. And it’s not fair that you have to do this.” His arms tightened around Rynn, his voice briefly going hoarse and gruff. “I wish I could kill him. But even if I had that power…he’s untouchable. His blood is in our veins, and if we kill the source, all the bloodlines are extinguished.” His arms dropped and he collapsed into a chair, his head falling down on the counter with a groan. “I feel useless and I hate it. I just have to sit back and let you and Antha do everything, when I don’t want either of you to have to do any of it.”
“Please tell me you’re not talking about more depressing stuff,” Courtland sighed, sitting up from behind the table, “Come on, guys. Isn’t it bad enough that any of this has to happen without talking about it? Can we just deal with the new werewolf in the family and leave all of this awful dying stuff until it has to happen?”
“Where’s your better half, Court?” Alistair sighed, to which his cousin knitted his brows and glanced ********>.” He scrambled to his feet, hurrying towards the door to the hall. “Jackie~! Where are you? You can’t sleep on the floor!”
“s**t is getting so weird around here,” Alistair commented when he was gone, giving a little laugh, “There are fairy babies in the nursery. Our niece’s mother is a werewolf. Malakai is praying. Courtland and Jack are married. Dolly Jean and Vittorio are getting married and adopting a child---a child that just about anyone in this family could have fathered. My non-biological Swedish brother is running around trying to abscond with Antha and pitting himself against Julien.” Getting up from his seat, he shook his head and moved towards the coffee maker. “A year ago, we were still trying to pretend to be normal. It’s funny how quickly it all went off the rails once we stopped trying.” Leaning back against the counter, he clasped his mug in both hands and took a few sips of his coffee, smiling slightly despite himself. When he looked up at Rynn again, there was resolve in his eyes. “I want to tell Magnus about me. Life is...too short, and I want him to know who I am, while Antha's still here.”