Disclaimer: Still don't own Carmilla (the series), or any recognizable characters.

Author's Note: Well, as it turns out, my job situation is affecting my writing. Luckily, this is the story that no one seems to care about, so it going up a week later than my self-imposed schedule says it should likely won't be a problem. (And since the schedule is self-imposed, I can really post updates whenever I want, I suppose. *lol*)

Silas University, Austria

October 31, 1904

Josie hadn't really ever wanted to attend Silas University.

For a long while, she hadn't been sure she would go to a human school at all. As her sister had predicted, immediately after the attack when she'd been eight, Queen Titania had come to check on her as soon as she'd been able... and had then brought Josie home with her, judging it too great a risk to let her stay in the human world, despite the benefits it would offer, both to the Summer Court as a whole and Josie personally. She was allowed to visit her father frequently (he'd explained her disappearance by truthfully telling anyone who asked that she'd moved in with her mother, with whom he'd separated; she was pretty sure some fae magic explained why no one found that even the slightest bit odd), but it had been made clear to her that she lived in Faerie, now, and unless she Chose humanity, that was where she would be staying. (Choosing one side of her heritage over the other had always seemed, to her, like she'd be saying the side she didn't choose simply didn't matter, that she had no use for it. That was why, even when she was living in Faerie, she'd never been able to do it.) She'd gotten used to that, and not having to hide who and what she was had been wonderful. (The rules and politics and such she could have done without, but balance was everything in Faerie, so she supposed she couldn't really complain.) Had she been inclined to resume her mortal education, she probably would have wanted to go to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Not only would it have been familiar surroundings, but her father would have been close by, and much easier to visit. (Most human schools didn't offer quite the same educational opportunities to women that they did to men, but a little magic would have ensured that no one at the university cared about her gender one bit.)

Silas University would not have even been a vague consideration.

She knew who ran it, of course. Everyone in the supernatural world did. She knew about the Gate, and all that was required in keeping it safe. She didn't like the cycle of sacrifices to keep the guardian creature somnolent and docile until such time as it was needed, but only the Gate's Keeper was permitted to replace it, and that was beyond even the abilities of a vampire as old and powerful as Lilith. Why she wouldn't try and arrange for someone to help her do something about that, Josie didn't understand. It wasn't like Lophiiformes was a necessary part of whatever duty or punishment that had lead to Lilith being the Gatekeeper. (Josie had no idea exactly who had placed Lilith there, or why they'd done so. Knowledge was power, and therefore couldn't simply be given away, and even with her mother - who had far more leeway in telling her things than anyone else - she'd never been able to find anything equal in value to trade.) There needed to be a guardian beast, true, in order to deal with the obvious threats - invading armies, discovery by humans, or, most of all, something trying to get through from the other side - but it didn't need to specifically be that one. Yet, Lilith simply continued with the sacrifices. It was well known that she cared little for humanity, so that wasn't exactly a surprise.

Maybe they were necessary. That didn't mean Josie wanted to be anywhere near the place where they happened, or the woman who carried them out.

The Queen had decided otherwise, however. Due to certain... events... in 1815, the supernatural community as a whole had decided that Lilith needed... assistance, in overseeing the Gate. When she'd founded Silas University in 1871 in order to guard the Gate full-time, the Summer Court had been allowed to establish an outpost of sorts, to prevent anyone from physically or magically accessing the Gate, and to monitor and protect those not intended to be sacrificed to the Light. As payment for being allowed to remain in power for the entirety of 1816, the Winter Court not only supported them in that, but didn't take advantage of Summer devoting any of their time or attention to Silas. The Queen, being no fool, hadn't been inclined to trust them not to try and exploit that eventually, when Summer had dropped their guard, so the outpost - the Summer Society, as it came to be known - was run mostly by human mages - as well as a few regular human girls - who'd sworn their allegiance to the Summer Court.

Mostly.

It was an all-girls organization because it had also been created by the Queen for her daughters, so that those in the mortal world would have a place to go where they could belong, where they could be accepted, and where they'd have friends ('sisters', as it were) that they could really talk to... and because while it wasn't unheard of for a Faerie princess to prefer the company of those of her own gender, it wasn't overly common, either, and a princess being intimate with a mage could easily kill him or her. That was one of the reasons most princesses over the millennia, Summer and Winter alike, took either human or fae lovers.

(There were male mages who'd also sworn themselves to Summer, of course. They simply had an entirely different location to watch over. Knowing what she did about it... Josie didn't envy them the task.)

Truthfully, the Summer Society was one of the few things that had made being at Silas not only bearable, but occasionally enjoyable. They knew whose daughter she was, but she had (more-or-less) gotten them to stop practically bowing to her whenever she entered the room. Respect was fine, but she wasn't there to be worshiped. She was there to attend classes, make friends, and watch over the Gate. (Not necessarily in that order.) They'd gotten used to her, over the past few years, seeing her as just Josie more than as the Queen's daughter. Besides, it wasn't like she was the Princess - if Hazel or Titania were there, the Society would act appropriately.

She was pretty sure Lilith had been as unhappy to have her register as a student as she had been to do so. They'd actually reached an odd sort of mutual understanding on that point: neither of them had really wanted Josie to be there, and both would be counting down the time until she left for good. They'd then proceeded to stay out of each other's way as much as possible, with Lilith even having her children refrain from attacking or killing anyone on campus, so that the Summer Society wouldn't be compelled to intervene. They still fed on them, she was fairly certain, but if they did no real harm in the process, she was inclined to let it go. Vampires needed blood, after all, and she could hardly be upset with them because of a basic fact of their biology that they had no way to change.

Then there was Kheelan.

She smiled to herself as she walked down the paved walkway that lead to the Summer Society House, on her way back from her Underworld Geography class. If there was one other definite bright spot in being sent to school at Silas, it was being able to spend time unsupervised with Kheelan. Technically, he was her instructor in both Court matters and combat (those lessons that she didn't learn from her mother - or, more rarely, her sister - that was), but when she'd come of age, and had been noticing for a while how much he appealed to her, both in looks and personality... She'd taken a chance. Oh, she was sure he wouldn't have said anything to anyone else about it if he hadn't been interested (except possibly the Queen, which would have been mortifying, but she was sure Titania would understand - she tended to follow her heart, even to the point of letting it override her head, at times, and her children often inherited that from her)... but, to her delight, he had been. She was one of the very few people he dropped his mask of professionalism for. (Not that he was all that different when he did, but she was willing to bet almost no one else at Court knew what his smile looked like, let alone had ever heard him laugh.) In Faerie, they tended to have to be discreet, sneaking away to find somewhere private for any rendezvous. At Silas, though, if anyone recognized him, they'd just think he was there as a bodyguard... which wasn't entirely untrue, really. She was perfectly happy to let him keep an eye on her body, too - all of it.

She'd been born twenty years ago, as far as the human world was concerned, but due to time passing differently in Faerie, she was a bit older than that.

For three years, she'd enjoyed an odd sort of freedom, even as she'd had a bigger responsibility than she'd ever been given in Faerie. Fortunately, they were between sacrifice cycles, as she wasn't entirely sure she could ignore something like that. (She was pretty sure that was a factor in the Queen's thinking for sending her there when she did, subtly reminding Lilith that they were watching her all the time, not just once every twenty years. She was also pretty sure that Lilith did not appreciate it.) She'd tried, over the years, to live up to her sister's example as best she could. She'd gotten to know Hazel since then, so she knew it wasn't just something that she did when her little sister was in danger. Hazel was a good person, kind and loving. She looked for ways to help people without indebting them to herself, even if she could only do so in an indirect fashion.

She'd also looked different than she had that first night, but Josie knew she hadn't been taking in details very well by that point, so she wasn't surprised. Hazel had recognized her, of course, and had assured her that she didn't owe her anything. No one would tell Josie much about who it was exactly that had attacked her, though she'd learned enough over the years to have a general idea as to the who and why of it. Since she'd learned to defend herself, they hadn't tried again. If anything, she knew she had to be more wary of her relatives in the Winter Court.

She'd met her cousin, Maeve, a few times over the years... and every time she did, she decided all over again that she would be perfectly happy if that was the last time they ever crossed paths. There was something seriously wrong with that girl.

She felt the refreshing tingle of the wards as she walked through the front door of the Summer Society House, relaxing ever-so-slightly as she did. It wasn't that she believed the Dean would try anything - she knew better, after all - though she didn't doubt that Lilith would keep her mouth shut if she learned of any plots against her or anyone in the Society. Ever since the attack when she was eight, though, she was always a tiny bit nervous out in the open, especially at Silas, where she knew the number of guards her mother was allowed to (officially) post was limited by the terms of the Unseelie Accords. Sure, that also meant that anyone caught launching an attack upon her would risk the collective weight of all of the other signatories coming down on them, but the key word there was 'caught'. That also didn't apply to those who hadn't signed the Accords... though, unless they were mercenaries, such people were unlikely to come after the Summer Queen's daughter.

Inside the House, however, she knew she was safe. The Queen had personally established the building's defenses, and they drew their power from Summer itself. Not only did that make her feel safe, it made the House feel like home.

That had been her last class of the day, which gave her plenty of time to attend to Society business. She hadn't really run for President of the Summer Society, but being a princess of Summer had wound up landing her in the position, whether she'd wanted it or not. As such, she'd decided to simply do her best to be the leader her Summer sisters deserved. Unless there was a crisis of some kind, she didn't really have to do much, so it worked out.

Not that she would have had much to do that day in any event. Preparations for the Summers' Samhain celebration had been completed days ago, and everything was already in place, waiting for sundown. (The rest of the student body, if they celebrated anything at all, would be observing the beginning of Allhallowtide, which consisted of All Hallow's Eve - or All Saints' Eve, depending on who you asked - All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day. Knowing her fellow students as she did, she was pretty sure that whatever celebrations that didn't involve the Dudley Chapel - the sole church on campus, which was only there because they were fairly well required to have one - would include consuming significant amounts of alcohol.) They'd also made sure that their magical defenses were operating at maximum strength, as this was the one night of the year when the barriers between worlds were at their thinnest. The custom of wearing masks or costumes if you left your home that evening had come about so that any hungry beings or creatures that made it through to Earth wouldn't know whether or not there was something even stronger under that mask, waiting to devour them if they got too close... because sometimes there was. If it also helped people avoid being recognized by any vengeful spirits that might be wandering around, then so much the better, she thought.

She would need to be joining the rest of the Council shortly, to get ready to lead the night's festivities. That meant changing into her ceremonial robes - green with gold trim, as befitted a Summer princess - but she had a little time left before she had to do that. She ascended the stairs - she'd found it a little odd that they were hidden, when she'd first arrived, but had quickly gotten used to that - heading for the fifth floor. The inside of the building wasn't entirely in the human world, as evidenced by how there were five large floors contained within a much smaller, two-story building. It was probably as close to Faerie as most of the Society would get, and even then the two realms didn't actually touch at all.

The Otherworld was a very, very big place. The biggest place, in fact - if there was a limit to how much space it contained, she didn't know what it was. Faerie was there, along with at least one hell dimension, Olympus, Hades... Well, the list went on. They were all located in different dimensions, though, countless realms that had one main thing in common: none of them were on Earth.

(No one had been able to tell her whether or not there was a corresponding 'heaven' dimension, or possibly even the actual Heaven of Christian religious texts, however, and she hadn't really had any chances to explore the Otherworld herself to try and find out.)

She stifled a sigh when she saw Tina waiting for her in front of her bedroom door. Christina Harper was ostensibly her second-in-command, but there were times when it seemed like the girl couldn't make a decision to save her life. While all three of the other members of the Summer Society's ruling Council tended to defer to her on matters, Tina took it one step further, coming to check with her before deciding pretty much anything Summer-related, and anything she did decide on her own, she always needed Josie's approval on, even if it was too late by then to change anything. It could be immensely frustrating, and made her genuinely worry about the Summer Society's future once she graduated from Silas. She was going to have to appoint someone from one of the lower grades, that was all there was to it. It was figuring out how to do that without utterly crushing Tina's self-esteem that was the problem.

Compared to that, finding a more suitable candidate would be easy. "Tina?" she prompted in as pleasant a tone as she could muster just then.

Tina gave her a smile that was both apologetic and self-deprecating. "I know," she began, pushing a stray lock of auburn hair out of her face as she briefly looked down at the clipboard she was holding. She was already wearing her robes (plain white, as most of the Summer sisters' would be), her shoulder-length hair making a definite contrast against it. "But the Dean just had someone drop this form off, and it needs your signature by the end of the workday."

Which would be in a matter of minutes. This time, Josie did sigh; this wasn't the first passive-aggressive stunt the Dean had pulled (that month alone), but she usually didn't do so on their holidays. Fortunately, it was a minor annoyance at most, as speeding herself up relative to normal time was something her mother had taught her back when she'd been living with her father. Time around her and Tina subjectively stopped even as she took the clipboard and began reading.

One never, ever signed a form - contracts particularly, but even school paperwork - you hadn't read, even if you weren't part of the supernatural world. If you were, particularly if you were a mage or one of the Fae, it was even more important. The old joke about signing away your soul or your firstborn?

Not actually a joke, for them.

The paper she was reading through was just an acknowledgement that they'd received and would abide by the latest noise regulation form. Given that their Samhain celebrations never made all that much noise (they did have loud festivities, at times, but this was never one of them), she knew the Summers wouldn't have any trouble abiding by it. She kept reading anyway, of course, to make sure nothing had been added, or any slight alterations made. So far, so good. (She knew this had likely been prompted by Zeta Omega Mu's latest party, which they'd been able to hear even through the magical sound dampening around the building. It was being applied equally to everyone, though, which was at least fair - and there hadn't just been Zetas at that party, so they actually weren't solely at fault.) Once she'd finished carefully reading every word of the form, she signed her name on the appointed line and handed the clipboard back to Tina. "Go drop this off. I'll slow you back down to normal after you're safely out of her office." She'd asked her mother, shortly after her arrival at Silas, if it was appropriate for her to be issuing orders when she was only a freshman, and not even the Princess. Titania hadn't quite seemed to understand the question, and told her that she was their princess, by birthright if not by station. Of course it was.

She'd still tried not to abuse that 'right' (as she kept being told it was), at least until she was actually appointed President of the Summer Society. Then, at least, she'd finally felt like she should have been issuing instructions to her Summer sisters. Even then, she'd tried limit it to things that actually needed doing, more in terms of what the Society needed than she did. Sometimes, though, she slipped. Forgot where she was and ordered someone around like she had the courtiers in the Summer Court.

She'd have had an easier time catching herself if any of them ever actually told her 'no'.

After Tina headed off - because this was official Summer Society business, so even the Dean wouldn't be able to object about her magically "cheating" to make sure the signed form got there on time - Josie slipped into her room and took her robes out from the drawer they were tucked away in, spreading them out on her bed. She wanted to take a shower, first, wash away the random magical energies she'd accumulated over the course of the day, and it would be easier to do that when she wasn't holding Tina in an accelerated state. So she'd do that, she'd shower, she'd change, she'd make sure there was no other last-minute business to attend to, then she'd finally begin preparing herself for the ritual, itself. It was, after all, going to be her last Samhain celebration at Silas.

She just knew it would be a night to remember.

If there was any downside to going all out on a ceremony, it was the cleanup afterward. Conversely, one of the perks of being President was that she could delegate that work to others.

Josie still helped out, of course. She didn't think she was above getting her hands dirty, so to speak, when it came to menial tasks such as that. (She sometimes suspected that one of the unspoken reasons Titania liked her changeling children - not that she'd had any other kind in centuries, if not longer... and sadly, Josie and Hazel were her only remaining living children of any kind - to be raised in the mortal world: to avoid becoming overly self-centered and egotistical. Coincidentally, Maeve had been born and raised in Winter.) She'd helped make the mess, she could help clean it up. Besides, if she was working alongside her Summer sisters, it didn't really seem so much like work.

Also, the cleanup that night (and the more thorough one the next morning) helped distract her from Kheelan's absence.

It was nothing new. More than any other time of year (and there were a few others), he'd been absent from her side for every Samhain she'd been in the mortal world. Because there were those predators running around, and they were looking for those they could devour for their power... or just for food. While she might think of him in more unofficial (and far more intimate) terms, he was technically her bodyguard, which meant he spent the evening fending off threats to her. She was pretty sure he reported to the Queen afterward, so she typically didn't worry overmuch when he didn't turn up promptly at the first natural birdsong that signified the end of All Hallow's Eve.

Typically.

This year, though, was different. He'd warned her specifically not to leave the House grounds - which she'd found odd, since she'd never done that any other year, and he knew it - and said that he might be late getting back. He'd been vague as to the reasoning, which was nothing new when it came to the Fae, though him doing so with her usually meant he was acting on instructions from the Summer Queen or Princess. From what she'd gleaned, it had something to do with some kind of bizarre and unlikely set of circumstances that happened once every 3,000 years. (She'd asked if that had anything to do with why she'd been sent to Silas when she had, which he hadn't known. She'd made a mental note to ask her mother later, even as she knew she wasn't likely to get an answer.) Lacking any other details, all she really knew was that this year would evidently be much worse than usual, and even by mid-morning she hadn't heard anything from Kheelan. Or anyone in Summer, for that matter.

So she worried. She focused as best as she could during her Comparative Dracōnēs Anatomy class (one of her favorite classes, as it actually applied to her life; one of her pet projects was dragon conservation - this past summer she'd overseen the establishment of a dragon refuge in a previously unoccupied pocket dimension in Summer), but once that was over, she'd gone right back to worrying. It hadn't been too bad until she'd tried to call her mother - just to talk and maybe see how things were going there, of course - and hadn't gotten an answer.

Titania never ignored her calls.

She'd tried twice more - the Rule of Three was a real thing in Faerie - and gotten no answer those times, either. She knew she wasn't going to be able to get much of anything done while she was in such a state, so, after reassuring her sisters that she was fine (she doubted they believed that anymore than she did, but they were polite enough to let her poor lies pass unchallenged), she headed to the second floor... and the summoning room contained therein.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd needed to use a summoning circle. If she wanted to talk to her mother or sister, she'd use a specially prepared crystal ball, or mirror, or even pool of water. (In an emergency, she could usually talk the Greek goddess Iris into relaying her message, provided she had a drachma on her - which was exactly why her mother insisted that she always did.) Failing that, she could magically call out to them, essentially asking them to come to her. As for Kheelan, he was always around, so all she had to do with him was raise her voice a little to ask him to do so. She'd summoned her mother perhaps a handful of times over the course of her life, and most of those had been back when she'd been learning how to summon beings of Faerie, since she'd known both that her mother wouldn't mind being called to see her, and that she wouldn't be upset if Josie hadn't gotten things quite right at first. (Also, if she learned how to summon a Faerie Queen, summoning comparatively tiny fish would much easier.) She'd never summoned Hazel, and never needed to summon Kheelan. She wouldn't even try for anyone else in the Summer Court. She might have known a lot of them, but this was a personal matter.

She'd barely closed the door behind her, however, when she felt the telltale magical shiver in the air that signified someone crossing over from Faerie... and Kheelan was there. She gaped at him for a moment in sheer relief.

Then she all but tackled him off his feet.

He remained standing only because he'd clearly been expecting it and had braced himself, but she still managed to rock him back a couple steps. "There you are!" she exclaimed, fighting down a prickling feeling in her eyes. She was not going to cry, damn it. "I've been calling, and calling..."

"I know," he began. "I'm sorry that-"

She shut him up by the simple expedient of kissing him soundly.

Something wasn't right, she sensed immediately. Ordinarily, he was perfectly happy to kiss her back when she was being so forward, but today he was remaining stiff in her arms. Standing at attention. Formal. Things he never did with her unless they were being watched. She broke the kiss and stepped back. "What? What is it?"

"Your Highness..." Her eyebrows shot up. She'd finally gotten him to stop calling her that, at least when they were alone, last year. "I'm not..." Her stomach began clenching; Kheelan was never lost for words. Even if things were bad, if there was something to be said, he'd say it. Often utilizing stilted, formal phrases, but still, he'd know what to say. This... was completely out of character. "I'm sorry, Your Highness..." His next words made everything horrifyingly clear.

"Princess Hazel is dead."