/of an approaching storm/

Caius paced, a nerve-straining habit that burrowed beneath Didyme's skin. His heavy footfalls were arrhythmic, as though they matched the tempo of his thoughts. With the threat of a storm and a sky made sodden by rain, he was a trapped thing, chafing at the bars of some cage his mind had constructed for him.

She found him in a perfectly public corridor soon enough, with uncertain intentions. This difficult, white-haired man startled her as much as ever, unyielding and unforgiving as stone.

There was something to be said for lethal curiosity. That something probably wasn't good, but Didyme could not bring herself to care. Endless thirst and noise had stripped her of caution.

"You are avoiding me," she said, matching his steps. The silver bracelets she had twined around her wrists sparked and sang, unravelling the silence with trills of laughter.

Caius said nothing at all.

"And I don't know why. You see, I'm famously likeable," Didyme grinned, voicing the most honest of exaggerations. It was her talent, Aro had explained, that drew men to her like wasps to rotting fruit, but he was wrong. He had not known her while she was mortal.

"Infamously," he corrected, matching her with a smile as sudden and swift as summer lightning.

"That too."

"I have nothing to say to you."

She could tell that he aimed for calmness, the self-reproach only the lonely could summon, but it came out wrong. Harsh and closed.

"You can think of something, I'm sure."

Prying fingers and meandering wit had worked well in the past, with different subjects.

"Isn't there someone elsewhere whom you can bother?" he said, exasperated.

And then, she caught it. A shadow and a sliver of caution, as though Caius was afraid of over-stepping some nameless boundary. Painful surprise whirled aimlessly in her chest, as she realized that she was already Marcus', though no words and fewer promises had been exchanged.

Didyme wondered if that needled her companion half as much as it bothered her.

"You are a terrible brother," she dismissed, her voice teasing though her eyes remained berry-dark and untouched by merriment.

There was a certain safety in seeing him as a sibling. She found that it displeased her—one brother was more than enough.

"We are family now?"

He nearly laughed, and Didyme knew that she had won herself a tolerant acquaintance at very least.

"Of course."

"That would make you the worst little sister possible," Caius said. His fingers, paler than her own and rougher, tangled in her hair for a heartbeat, but the gesture was so quick that she could have imagined it.