A/N: Happy holidays to all! I hope to have the next chapter up sometime in January.

Chapter 21: Begot of Monsters

I'm sitting outside the Questing Beast's cell in the dungeons, legs hugged to my chest and the hounds curled against me, when Alastar finds me. The Beast is huddled in the far corner, away from the small amount of dim dawn light that the narrow, barred windows let in. It paced and howled and let out that awful barking sound for hours until it exhausted itself.

But once, when I called Tor's name, it looked at me like it recognized me.

"I see that you are following in Balthazar's footsteps." Alastar states without preamble. I expected the disapproval in his voice, but not the layers of sadness and regret and old pain on his face.

"I couldn't leave him out there with all those nobles coming. They could've killed him, or the other way around."

"He'll die if you keep him here." Alastar reminds me, voice gentle but firm. "Perhaps in two seasons, perhaps a year. But a creature like that wastes away in captivity, and when it does, the curse will pass to one of you."

"I know."

"And you will keep him here anyway?"

"If I can save him-"

"You won't." He snaps. "Balthazar couldn't. A Dark One who spent his entire life around magic, and he could not find a cure, not in a hundred years! He drowned himself in this grief over and over until he could not bear the sight of his own home. And you think that a sailor's daughter and that murdering usurper can do what he could not?"

The hounds lift their heads and growl. "Careful, Alastar." I warn, low and sharp. "I value your advice, but that doesn't mean you can speak to me like that."

His ghostly form flickers briefly, and then stills. "If you value my advice-" He begins, and I brace myself for another argument. But then he pauses, thinks for a second. "If you would follow Balthazar's path, you should know all that he knew. Activate the shortest of the crystals he left you. Perhaps you can avoid his mistakes."

I nod. "I will. Alastar, I know this hard-"

"Not in the way I do. I have already seen how this will end, and can only watch it happen again."

His gaze lingers on the Barking Beast for one long moment before his form fades from view. I sit in silence for several minutes after he leaves, staring in the same direction, and then I stand and make my way back to the library. The hounds watching tensley as I cross to my desk and summon the small box of crystals at the same time that I call for Rum. He appears in a swirl of purple-black smoke just as I've popped the lid on the box.

"Ready for round two?" I ask grimly.

Rum glances from me to the box with distaste and resignation. "If you must. Will it be as pleasant as last time?"

"Don't know. That's why I called. Watch my back, yeah?"

He sighs dramatically. "Someone has to."

He pulls a chair up next to mine, our knees touching as he settles next to me. I hold out one hand, and he takes it automatically. I take a deep breath, give myself one second to enjoy the warmth of his skin against mine, and then pick up the crystal with the other hand.

Balthazar paces the length of a spacious bedroom antechamber that has been styled as a study, every nerve on end. The silence is occasionally punctuated by a distant scream or a moan that makes his heart wrench and his muscles tense, and makes the young boy sitting in an armchair by the fire look up with wide-eyed concern. He has near-black eyes and shaggy, wavy brown hair.

"It's alright, Fillin." Balthazar assures tightly. "This is the way of childbirth."

"Okay, Papa." The boy replies immediately, but he jumps at the next scream; to be fair, so does Balthazar. A door opens, and both Balthazar and Fillin look up hopefully. A deep, burning rage spikes through Balthazar's chest with such speed and ferocity that it takes me by surprise.

"Zoso." The new man greets coldly. He is taller, spindly, with emotionless green eyes and sandy-brown hair. "Why am I still surprised to find you lurking outside my wife's room?"

"I have no idea. Perhaps you've forgotten that she prefers me here." Balthazar snarls back. Immediately, he looks to Fillin, who has been watching the exchange with that anxious attention of a boy who knows that a fight is about to break out. "Fillin, wait outside."

The boy glances between the two men, neither wanting to remain in the midst of their brewing spat nor wanting to leave his father. He obediently slides to the floor and edges around the other man, and practically flees out the door.

The minute the boy is gone, the man says, "I thought we talked about bringing your bastard into my castle."

"You're about to have one of my bastards living in your castle, Zander. Your wants are obviously irrelevant."

A slow, smug grin breaks over Zander's face. "But this one's not really yours, is he?"

There's that spike of rage again. "Perivida would never allow you in her bed, but that does not mean you are safe to imply such vulgarity to me. You would do well to keep that in mind."

"You mistake my meaning. Of course, the child is yours by blood." He stalks closer, slowly circling Balthazar from arm's length. "But he will grow up in my castle. He will call me father. As far as he will ever know, you will be nothing more than the shadow that haunts his mother's chambers, and I will be the one to mold him into a man." He stops in front of Balthazar and steps up to him, nearly chest-to-chest with him. Never in my life have I seen a man act like this to my mentor, and from the feeling of a bulging vein in his forehead, it is rare for Balthazar as well. Zander smiles at his open anger. "And you will do absolutely nothing about it, because if that pack of vultures we call the Council of Lords learns that this child is begot of a demon, this kingdom will eat itself alive. And our dear Perivida would be so upset by that."

Balthazar's teeth are grinding together so hard that his jaw hurts. "Is that a threat, little man?" He snarls lowly.

"Hardly. They only tolerate Perivida's rule because they believe you are well in her past. If they learn of even that bastard of yours, their tolerance will end, and that boy has no trueborn claim to the throne. Can you imagine what they would do if it was her heir?" Zoso only glares, because he knows as well as Zander that that is true. At his silence, Zander smiles wider, leans in even closer. "But since you're looking for one, my good man, here is a threat for you. When my son is grown, he will hunt down that little monster you sired on my wife, and rectify the mistake you made when you allowed it to live."

Zoso grabs him by the throat and slams him into the wall, lifting him up with one hand until Zander's feet dangle off the ground. His pitiful gasps for breath barely satisfy the blind rage in Zoso's chest, but it is a good start for whatever will come next.

"Balthazar!" A woman yells, voice livid, and Zoso looks over to see a midwife standing in the now-open bedroom door and, in the bed beyond her, an exhausted and angry woman holding a blanket-wrapped bundle to her chest. "Put him down!"

Joy crashes over him in one great wave, leaving him floating. He drops Zander without a second thought and crosses to her bed, a barely-conscious flick of the wrist closing the door behind him. Zoso sits on the edge of his lover's bed and wraps one arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his chest to press a kiss to her forehead.

The touch and the kiss only eases Perivida's anger a fraction. "You can't keep fighting with him like that." She scolds. "He's the King Consort."

"He's a prat." Zoso corrects lightly, tugging the blanket back from around the baby's head. A round face and wide, cherubic eyes blink back up at him, and another wave of affection floods his chest. "He's beautiful, Vida. What will you name him?"

She leans into his chest and rests her head on his shoulder, her gaze following his down to the baby with the same infinite love and affection. "His name is Pellinore."

As I come back to myself, I spend several seconds in shock, and can only stare at the opposite wall in bewilderment. Some part of me is distantly amused by the revelation that the royal family, so obsessed with maintaining the appearance of wealth and honor and fine breeding, are descended of the bastard of a man they called a demon. Then the real realization hits me, the one that Zoso must have wanted to impart. Because if the d'Corbins and the Pellinores are both descended from his children, then that means-

"Bloody fucking hell," I mutter in realization and horror, and Rum raises a questioning eyebrow. "Every security measure in this place, it's all fucking blood magic. They can walk right through it. And they're coming here for a gods-damned ball while we've got the Barking Beast in our basement."

"Who can?"

"The goddamn Pellinores."

His eyebrows shoot up as he begins to parse together some of what I must have seen. "Zoso fathered both lines?" When I nod, he makes a high, bitterly-amused and exaggerated hmph. "Didn't think he had it in him. You'd think a princess wouldn't have settled for him. That poor girl must have been half as mad as-" I whip my head around to glare at him, and he blinks dumbly at me. "What?"

"Aye, you'd have to be a special kind of stupid to be close to a Dark One." I grumble.

He scoffs. "That's apples and putrid oranges, dearest! I am clever and charming. Zoso was neither."

A small smile tugs at my lips, but Rum doesn't seem to notice that he said dearest and not dearie.

"No, he wasn't." I agree with begrudging fondness for both Dark Ones. My mind drifts back to the memory, to the pure joy and love that Zoso shared with Perivida as they held their son. "Perivida really seemed to love him, though. Gods, it must have torn his heart out to watch what his son grew up to be."

My knowledge of Listenese history is limited, but I know that Pellinore's name has endured for two things: building the Castle de Pellinore, still the royal palace in the capitol to this day; and enshrining the hunt for the Beast into family doctrine. Alastar said that losing his oldest son to the Curse of the Barking Beast is what drove him away, but I wonder if it wasn't worse to have watched his baby boy grow up to become the family's persecutor.

"The bitter consequences of his actions." Rum mutters, almost to himself. I look over at him, brow furrowing.

"What do you mean?"

"You know the rules of magic: everything comes with a price. Everything. His bill came due."

"So, what, you think he deserved all this?"

Rum gives me a strange look. "Didn't he?" He challenges quietly. There's that look in his eyes again, that oddly-introspective, self-loathing look, that leaves the unsaid hanging in the air between us: Wouldn't we?

Some part of me wants to argue, wants to hold onto hope, but then I think of all the blood I've spilt, all the people I've let down, all the ways I've hurt Rum and Ian and all the ways I will hurt them in the not-so-distant future. I sigh and lean back in my chair to look into the fire.

"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose you're right."

Rum doesn't say a word, but at the look on my face, he takes my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze.

Time passes in a rush, days and nights bleeding into each other. I hold myself to morning trainings with Phelan and Tara and the kids, and often to breakfast afterwards, but everything beyond those few hours of routine is an unstructured maelstrom of activity. I spend hours on end pouring over Zoso' research on the Barking Beast and a tome on Venedotian magic, certain that there has to be something we're missing, that there has to be a solution somewhere.

I also spend hours with my journal on the Venedotians' Standing Stones, staring down at my sketches and trying to decipher why and how and when a trap was added to the stone, and who possibly could have placed it. As I learn more of their magic and language, I also begin to develop symbols of my own that I hope will counteract it. More than once while dealing with the consequences of their magic, I think, No wonder Zoso fought with these fucking Venedotian pricks, Or, Hope he made these fuckers suffer for all this bullshit.

The workers I hired from Astolat arrive not long after we capture the Barking Beast to begin the minor cosmetic renovation that the exterior of the castle will need, chiefly a new drawbridge and stables, and a complete renovation of the gardens. Apart of the plans in an expansive saltwater pond for Kraken; he'll outgrow it quickly, but one of these days when I finally have the time, I'll fix a portal into the bottom of it so Graham's pet can come and go to the sea as he pleases.

I visit the Barking Beast every day, sometimes only for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour or more. Each time I call Tor's name. Most often, the creature only hisses and snarls and makes that infernal barking noise. Sometimes, though, sometimes he recognizes me, and his eyes fade from the yellow and reptilian to the deep brown I remember so well. Every time, it is a joy to see his eyes again, and every time it is an agony to see them looking at me through bars, scared and trapped and confused. One day, three weeks into it's captivity, it even seems to register what I'm saying, and it presses it's head into the bars so that I can set my hand on it's broad head. The moment of lucidity passes all too soon, and as my brother's eyes return to reptile pupils and gold irises, my soaring, aching hope come crashing down in an instant.

In the next instance I appear behind my desk in the library and close the doors with a flick of the wrist. Then I sweep every book and paper off my desk, throw a chair into the fireplace, and hurl a crystal whiskey tumbler to shatter against the wall. I spin back to plant my hands flat on my desk, head hanging, every muscle trembling with anger and frustration and pain.

"Ellie?" Rum asks gently from across the room, and I look up, momentarily embarrassed to have not noticed him standing between the bookshelves. He sometimes waits for me to get back from these nightly excursions; I should've anticipated his presence.

I look back down and simply explain, "He recognized me. He even understood what I was saying. And then he was just… gone." Rum crosses to my side, puts a comforting hand on my back. I lean into him and take a deep, shaking breath. "I've never known how to deal with this. How to watch people I care about be in pain."

"No one could do more for him than you are, Ellie." He soothes, hand rubbing gently across my back.

"I'm keeping my brother in a fucking dungeon!" I snap, and then immediately wince. I draw back just enough to look at him sheepishly, touch his arm. "Sorry, Rum."

He shakes his head. "No, I understand. Words are an empty comfort-"

"No comfort from you could be empty." I immediately feel myself flush for that dramatic, sappy declaration, but a slow, warm smile spreads over his face.

"And here I expected some juvenile innuendo about other methods of comfort."

I raise an eyebrow and lean into his chest. "Got something in mind, pretty boy?" I tease, lifting my hand to trace the side of his neck with my thumb.

His eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles. "Ah, there's the woman I know." His arms slide around my waist, holding me to him. I rest my head into the curve of his neck, enjoying the warmth of his body and the roughness of his skin under my fingertips.

After a long second, I pull away. "Let's get started. I've got a few ideas I want to look into tonight."

The one-month mark before the Solstice Ball comes, and despite my constant anxiety and guilt, I turn to spending several hours of the day preparing for it. Formal invitations, servants, catering, clothes- so many details that don't mean anything, that won't change anyone's day to day life or matter for more than one day. I resent the work, and am relieved and impressed the handful of times that Rum steps in to help and proves himself exceptionally adept at picking apart the small details and arranging logistics.

I spend the first week of this familiarizing myself with Listenoise customs and with the personal traditions of our once-noble ancestors. One thing that I learn- one that concerns me- is that though women are generally just as legally entitled to inheritance as men, noble houses are able to set their own internal rules of succession. Many have instituted the system I know so well from Mysthaven, where all sons come before any daughters.

When I ask him of it, Alastar confirms that succession within our house was decided by birth order only, but adds, "From what I understand, that policy may be a bit, well, a bit too inclusive for your family's taste. The rural poor are not known for their worldly views on these matters."

That statement and the judgment lurking under his tone is a stark reminder that Alastar and Zoso were, once upon a time, a pair of highborn pricks. Still, after seeing their reactions when I proposed training everyone in martial skills, I have to acknowledge that he's likely right about at least a few of them.

I talk it over with Rum. The next morning after breakfast, I ask Bethanny to meet me in the library. Anxiety curls through my chest as I wait for her to arrive and wonder if I'm doing the right thing. Fourteen is so young to be deciding things like this, to be making decisions that will affect the rest of her life. I was around this age when I entered my apprenticeship with Zoso, so I think- I hope, I pray- that she can handle this. My hounds sense my anxiety and sit close at hand to either side of my desk chair, their sides leaned into my knees.

Beth slips into the library, and I look up. Some part of me distantly muses that this is what Zoso saw when he first met me: near-black eyes, brown wavy hair, awkward gangly limbs already covered in wiry muscle. Fire in her eyes but too much responsibility on her shoulders. Would I even consider asking this of her, at this age, if she didn't remind me of myself? Seeing her standing in front of me, knowing what I am about to ask her, I for the first time question if it was good for me, or if it was right of them, for Darius Jones to have left me as Ian's guardian, or for Zoso to have pulled me into a mage's dangerous life. Am I granting her the opportunities I would've wanted, or am I continuing some fucked-up cycle of loading an adult's responsibilities onto the too-young shoulders of the eldest daughter?

"Long day already, Auntie?" My grand-niece asks lightly at seeing my expression, her dark eyes slightly concerned as she settles in the seat across from me, tilts it back on two legs, and braces her knees against the desk. Padfoot walks over to sit next to her and insistently nuzzles his head against her arm, and she pets him absentmindedly.

"Long life." I return, only half-joking. My expression slowly sombers as I spend a long second in indecision. "Bethanny, I need to talk to you about the order of succession in this house."

"Oo-kay." She begins, curious and slightly confused. "What about it?"

"I don't have kids, and don't plan to-"

"You have Graham." She interrupts.

I flash a tight smile. "Aye, I have Graham, but he'll be heir to my personal estate. By legal tradition, your father would be heir to this castle and my position."

"...Yeah?"

"And you would be his heir one day."

"Yeah, I know. Me and my brothers."

"Only one of you can hold the title, Beth." I give her a moment to absorb that before asking, "Do you want it?"

She doesn't hesitate. "Yes. And before you say it, I have thought it over. Even before now."

I regard her for a long second, then reach inward and pull the Veil over my eyes, turning them black from corner to corner for one heartbeat as I search for the truth in her eyes. I See and sense only resolute determination, and drop the Netherworld Sight so quickly that my eyes have only been black for one blink. If Bethanny has noticed, she doesn't react.

"Are you sure?" I ask. "Beth, this position is going to ask alot of you. And I know the family already expects a lot of you. If you do this, most of the rest of your life is going to revolve around them, not you. Now, I of all people won't fault you for making that decision, but you deserve to be warned of it."

She regards me for a long moment. "Auntie, I'm going to be blunt. You're a witch with professional blades training. You've been able to take care of yourself since you were my age. I'm a farmer's daughter turned noble's daughter. If I want any control over my life, and any way to protect the people around me, I have to do this."

I suspected she would say something like this, but it certainly doesn't help to know that she might not want this if she had some semblance of freedom and stability in her life. For the first time in a long time, I care if my actions are the right thing to do, and have no idea if it is.

I run a hand through my hair and let out a slow breath. "Alright. If this is what you want to do, I'll back you."

Her eyes flicker over me appraisingly. "What's going on? Why are we talking about this now?"

"I found out that the noble families don't have to stick to the rules of legal inheritance. They can set their own, and a lot of them put sons first."

"You think they'd skip over me for Aedan. Gods, can you imagine? My annoying little brother as lord of a castle?" The thought amuses her for a second, but then she sobers. "You said you'd back me. Do you have a plan?"

I lay the plan out to her the same way I laid it out to Rum last night. When I'm done, we sit in silence for a few seconds. "When do we tell them?" She eventually asks.

"I'll talk to them after dinner tonight. There are some things you can't unhear, Beth. Leave this to me."

We both know she won't. But I told her the real time, and will let her make the decision with the illusion of privacy.

The day passes in a jumble. I'm a tense, jumpy, irritable mess the whole time, my mind continuously turning back to my conversation with Bethanny and what consequences this path will have for her. I've finally gotten the family to take dinners in the Great Hall to ease them into a more 'noble' lifestyle before the Solstice Ball, which I count as a small victory. Rum joins us for dinner, and laughing at him and Graham as they go back and forth about increasingly ridiculous hypothetical scenarios brings me a few precious moments of joy. After we've cleaned up, I wait for the children to start to scatter, and then Rum and I slip around to each of the adults and tell them to meet us in the library.

I lean on one corner of the desk as the others filter in, Rum automatically stepping up to my side. I pull the Veil over my eyes and glance around the room, and the silvery glow of a soul draws my eyes through the floor of the balcony level above us, where Beth huddles out of mortal sight, but well in earshot for a young lycanthrope. I swallow a sigh and lean my shoulder against Rum's. Elaine begins to walk our mother to one of the chairs in front of the nearby fireplace, and Elizabeth squints at me and Rum. Elaine joins Arran and their children and daughter-in-law at the table, and I call Alastar's name into the empty air. He appears a second later.

"I'll try to make this brief." I say to the room. "Alastar, tell me if I'm explaining anything incorrectly." I quickly explain the noble's ability to determine their own succession rules, and the trends that that has led to.

Arran's face pinches as they all realize why I've called them here, and he nods jerkily to Rum. "What is he doing here? This is a family matter."

I glare at him and snap, "If you want him to go, you and Aisling are out too." For a minute, the room goes dead-quiet. In my peripheral vision, I see that even Rum raises an eyebrow to that, and it's not until he glances over at me that I realize what I've unintentionally implied by grouping him with the others' spouses. I hastily clarify, "Blood doesn't make family. Let's not start suddenly acting like it does."

"Your family, maybe." Arran snarls.

"Arran." Elaine interjects tiredly, and sets a hand on his arm. "Leave it. Please."

He glares over at her but says nothing more. I continue, "I'll get to the point. By almost every system of succession, Phelan is my heir. But I won't have Bethanny passed over in favor of a son, so I am going to give you a choice. I will name Phelan my heir on the condition that he names Beth as his in the same ceremony. We'll establish birth order alone as the determinant." I look at Arran and Elaine pointedly as I continue, cold and hard and deadly serious, "But if you insist on gender playing a factor, then I will name Bethanny as my heir, Tara as her regent- if you accept, Tara- and establish House Corbin as matrilineal."

It takes a second for everyone to process. Then Phelan demands, in a wounded and angry voice, "You think I'd pass over my daughter?!" At the same time that Arran cries, "You'd disinherit my grandson!?"

Tara looks at the both of them for a long moment, sensing just as well as the rest of us that this is about to be an argument. "Act like fools over this if you'd like." She snaps, shoving back from the table. "I'll have no part of it."

She snaps her gaze around to me at that last statement, face livid, and I wince and nod understanding. I didn't want to leave her in the dark, but I couldn't be confident that she'd be on board. IF she'd warned her father, he might've tried to pressure Bethanny into stepping aside, into ending this meeting before it began. I'd risk Tara's displeasure before I risked Bethanny's comfort and future.

Tara stalks from the room, and Arran and Phelan are already shouting at each other behind her. I watch them with a near-disinterest, now secure in the knowledge that Phelan will support his daughter even against his father's wishes.

"I'm not passing over my oldest-" Phelan is saying.

"Would you think for once in your life, boy?!" Arran shoots back. "The other houses put their sons first. Do you think we'll be taken seriously if we're led by a woman?" My neutral expression starts to twitch toward a scowl; either he's conveniently forgotten that I'm a woman, or he's openly insulting me. "Do you think it will do anything to help our position? We can't afford to single ourselves out-"

"I will remind you," Alastar interrupts, "That the royal family itself follows the country's succession laws, as do the provinces of Avondael and Isca, the latter of which is currently headed by a woman whom I am given to understand garners great respect from her peers."

"They are ancient houses." Arran argues. "Their members are bred to lead. We were not, and Bethanny is already fourteen. She would have only a few years to learn what the nobles are taught from birth. Aedan is younger, he has more time to prepare-"

"I said no, Pop. She can handle it, and she has time. Honestly, you should be more worried about my ability to do this. I'll have had less experience in this life than her when I take over."

"You'll do lovely, dear." Elizabeth says from next to the fire. "And so will Beth."

"Mum," Elaine protests, "This is too much to put on a young girl. She'll already have to give so much to her husband and children. We can't ask her to give her entire future."

That rouses our mother, has her leaning forward and pointing as she talks. "Now you talk of asking too much of her? Hypocrites! Two-faced hypocrites! Since the day that Aedan was born, each and every one of you has asked, nay, expected that poor baby to put the needs of your children and grandchildren before herself. And now that she has decided on her own future, now you say that it asks too much? You should be ashamed of yourselves!"

The room is quiet for a long moment, and the look that Beth gives her great-grandmother is full of love and respect and triumph. For once, Alastar and I seem to be on the same page, because an openly-impressed look passes between us.

"Elizabeth, I understand that we may have expected certain levels of responsibility-" Arran begins.

"You could not possibly understand, Arran." She snaps. "You were barely expected to raise your own children, let alone your siblings and cousins."

Arran's face goes red, and he pushes to his feet, his chair scraping back against the floor. "You have no right to criticize how I raised my children! Not when you-"

"Arran." Elaine and I say at the same time, but I continue, "If you don't like how you're being spoken to, you're welcome to leave. But you're not going to yell at my mother in front of me."

He spins towards me. "You have even less right to tell me how to speak to my family."

Rum makes a high hmmph of amusement and says, "Ever heard the phrase might makes right, dearie? No? Do you remember what happened to the last man to insult our dear Elizabeth?"

Arran's eyes flicker from Rum to me, and I don't know who the question is meant for when he asks, "Are you threatening me?"

"Reminding you of your manners." Rum cocks his head slightly and flashes a cold, mocking smile. "Why? Do you feel threatened?"

"Pop," Phelan cuts in before his father can reply, "This is over. We've made our decision."

Arran stares at his son for a second, the anger on his face falling into exhaustion and resignation. "Your children will suffer for this one day, Phelan." He says. "I hope I am long dead by then."

Phelan's face is set as his father stalks from the room, and is only slightly gentler as Elaine stands and follows her husband at a slower pace. When they are both gone, the cool facade melts away, and he slumps back in his seat and runs a hand down his face.

"Why'd you have to do this in front of my parents?" Phelan asks bitterly. "If you'd come to me, we could have had it done and out of the way before they knew."

Rum gives me a pointed look; that was his advice as well. Your support is invaluable, mate, I think sarcastically in his direction.

I raise an eyebrow at my nephew. "Is that how you want me to operate with you all? Leaving you out of decisions, keeping secrets? Do you think it would've gone over better if we just did it and then they found out?"

His shoulders slump. "No. Maybe. I don't know. Gods, this is a mess."

After a long second of silence, Alastar says, "It is tradition for the whole family to attend the inauguration of an Heir. In my time, our cousins and cadet houses traveled for miles to see it. If you will agree, I would wait to perform the ceremony. Cooler heads may yet prevail." He pauses, and adds, "While we are speaking of the future, we will one day need to designate the next Keeper-in-waiting. Their curriculum will need to begin at sixteen."

I shoot him a questioning look. "You don't plan to stay on?"

"I will until Bethanny, but the Keeper's commitment is only meant to last for a few generations. From Balthazar to her, I will have held it for four. It would be better for the next generations to be advised by one who better knows their own time, and I would take my rest."

I nod slowly, absorbing the information and wondering why it fills me with such sadness to know that I will live to see Zoso's brother pass completely from the world. I am surrounded by connections to him, and that should be enough, but I already know that I will mourn the loss of the only other person to have known him.

"We don't need to decide that now, do we?" Aisling asks. Her steady composure so far has been impressive, but the idea of deciding the future of yet another of her children has anxiety cracking through it.

"No, of course not. It will likely take years to decide, but we will need to watch for the best aptitude for the position. I will tell Tara tomorrow as well. Her children are also eligible for the position."

Phelan and Aisling nod, their relief palpable. I look around at the stressed and anxious faces and stand from my desk.

"That's enough for tonight. We'll pick this back up after the solstice."

The last week before the Solstice Ball rush by. The contractors I hired to renovate the outside of the castle finish their work a safe ten days before the event, and their constant coming and going around the castle is replaced by that of a small team of seamstresses and tailors as they fit our outfits and make last-minute alterations; I have formal clothes that will suit well enough, and the children will be kept well away from the nobles, but the other adults of the family are in dire need of fine clothes. In the last week, hired servants begin circulating as well, preparing the extra bedrooms and deep-cleaning the areas of the castle that will be open to our guests.

Replies to invitations are all in by then, and I'm relieved to find that Pelagios is sending two diplomatic guests in place of him and his wife; I half expected as much, given that his son Peleus is already coming, and I'm sure that to have the king and the prince in the same place is a security risk that my half-brother would never trust with me.

The increased number of people roaming the halls has me hiding in the library whenever I can, trying to work on a cure for the Barking Beast and alterations to the Standing Stones in every moment I can spare. My anxiety slowly mounts as the day approaches. A small part of it is, naturally, for the event itself, but in the quiet moments of the night, as I pour over books and experiment with Venedotian runes, my mind turns again to what comes after this. When I finally have a few months without these damnable nobles and a looming deadline to worry about, when I finally take that last step and go to Neverland. When I regain my brother and lose the life I cherish.

Several times during these quiet nights- and with increasing frequency- I begin to spiral into the fear and grief and guilt that came over me that day I first took Rum to see the Standing Stones. A few times Rum is there to notice the early stages and call me back to the moment with a touch and soft word. Twice, he isn't, and I come back to myself sitting in front of the fire with no awareness of having moved there, cradling an otherwise untouched bottle of rum on habit, and realize I've wasted an hour or more in a fugue state.

That comes to a head two nights before the ball. Rum and I have replicated the symbols I saw on the trapped Standing Stone onto several fist-sized rocks, and together we spend hours brainstorming alterations on paper and then testing the most promising on the stones. For the first half of the night, no matter what we try, the prototype stones still let out a muted bang of concussive energy when I send a small current of magic through them. Rum steps out on business after another hour of failures, but I continue on, every unsuccessful test making frustration and desperation and anger build in my chest. Within another hour I am down to my last three replica stones and my last shreds of emotion control.

I draw out a new combination of runes on paper, looking them over with a keen eye before selecting one and copying it onto a stone. Then I set the rock aside, folding my arms on my desk and resting my head on them. If this doesn't work, I'm done for the night, I try to command myself, knowing on an intellectual level that a break will be more beneficial than continuing in abject failure, even if my emotions demand I throw myself against this project until either it or I crack under the strain.

I bang my head gently against the table twice to vent my frustration, then sit up and take a deep breath. I extend a hand toward the rock at the center of the table, reach for magic, and send a small current of energy into it. Nothing happens. I stare blankly, by now so used to a miniature explosion and a rush of disappointment that my mind stalls when none comes. I lean forward, barely daring to believe it as the symbols on the rock glow just faintly, and then some of the lines begin to fade, leaving only the original teleportation runes behind.

My disarming spell has finally, finally worked.

I scoop the rock up in one hand and the paper in the other as elation washes over me, turning it over in my hands in giddy disbelief and checking the runes on the paper over and over. I'm going to get him back. I'm really going to do it. My joy crashes almost immediately at the thought, that increasingly-familiar fear and guilt rushing up in it's place. For a moment I envision the loathing on Ian's face during our parting argument; the way Graham looked at Rum and me when we found Kraken, like he had every trust that we would make things right; the way Rum looked at me during our first trip to the Vault, so surprised and vulnerable but with so much warmth in his eyes.

I never register moving, but in the next moment I hear Rum call my name, and jolt back to myself in front of the fire, the paper of runes in my hand. The page slips from my fingers when I jump, and my eyes go wide as it drifts down toward the fire. The edges begin to curl as it falls, and on instinct I swipe my hand through the flames and grab it. White-hot agony lights up every nerve in my arm, and I yelp even as I jump back with the paper and switch it to my uninjured hand, cursing like the sailor I once was.

"Ellyn!" Rum exclaims, coming to my side. "What were you thinking?! Your hand-"

I round on him and scream, "What have I told you about fucking sneaking up on me?!" He recoils, hurt flashing so brightly across his face that I'm immediately slammed with guilt. I shake my head in muted horror, back away, and crumple into an armchair with my hand cradled to my chest. I rock in my seat, trying to distract from the pain while I summon the focus to heal it. "I'm sorry, Rum. I didn't- I'm sorry."

He steps up to me slowly, cautiously, like someone afraid to spook a skittish animal, his eyes darting from my hand to my face. I can't stand to look at him for more than a few seconds, not when he's looking at me like that, with such naked distress that he's trying to cover with gentleness. He kneels next to my chair, holds his hands out, and simply prompts, "Ellie."

I hold out my increasingly-bright-red hand, and he hovers his own over it, waiting until magic has soothed away the pain. Then he takes my hand even though he no longer has a need to, the emotion on his face easing from a nearly-pained distress to concern. "Ellie, what happened?"

I only hold out the paper I burned my hand to save, now singed along one edge. Rum keeps one hand on mine as he takes it, eyes running down the combination of runes until he reaches the bottom. His eyes light up when he reads the last one.

"You did it? Ellie, this is-" He looks up, and when he sees my face, his expression falls again, eyes darting across my face searchingly. "-not good?"

"It is. Or, it should be. I don't know- I don't know what happened." I explain haltingly, voice jagged. I drop my face into my free hand and mutter, "I don't know if I can do this." I don't know if I can lose you. I don't know if I can lose Ian for-

"I do." Rum says, gentle but firm. His fingers curl around my forearm, slowly pulling my hand away from my face. I meet his gaze, grip his hand in mine on reflex. His face is set, determined, but there's something else there too, a depth of tenderness and respect and affection that comforts and torments me in equal measure. "I know you can do this, Ellie."

I shake my head, look away. "I don't know how many more people I can stand to lose."

"You won't lose him." He implores, and I don't know how he can't see it written all over my face that I wasn't talking about Ian. "It won't be easy. Nothing will ever be easy for us. But you'll get him back."

The barest hint of desperation is creeping into his voice, the kind that implies an unspoken you have to. I look up, realizing where his mind must be going, and I lift a hand to his face, run my thumb across his jaw in a slow, soothing motion.

"Baelfire will forgive you, Rum. I know he will." He tenses, indignation and a defensive anger and, buried far underneath it all, hope bursting to life on his face. I squeeze his hand, ignore the voice in my head that says I'm crossing too many lines, and continue gently, "Maybe not at first, maybe not for a long while, but… I just want you to know that I forgave my father for walking out on us. For all that I loved him, he was a gambler and an alcoholic who did far less for us than you did for your son, and I still forgave him."

But I hated him for a long time first, and was lost and hurt for even longer. I don't say that part aloud; it won't comfort him, and as an orphan himself, I'm sure he already knows it firsthand.

He reaches up to cover my hand with his own, then pulls it gently from his face and looks down at both of my hands in his. He won't meet my eyes, but I can still see the depth of his pain and regret written in the hunch of his shoulders and tilt of his head.

"You don't know what I did." He snarls lowly, voice hard and bitter, but the gentleness with which he holds my hands tells me that it's not directed at me.

"Did you beat him? Belittle him?" I challenge quietly.

He jerks back, head snapping up to look at me. "No! I would never-"

"Then I don't need to know." I say with iron conviction. "I know you made a mistake, Rum. I know it must've hurt Baelfire and I see how bad it hurt you. The details aren't going to change what I think of your chances with him, or what I think of you."

He opens his mouth as though to respond, but only stares, momentarily stunned. Affection- no, something deeper and stronger- floods his face first, and then it is washed away by bone-deep guilt. He looks down to our hands again, grip tightening as though his next words bring him physical pain; I've never heard his voice more ragged, more close to tears.

"I let go of him, Ellie. I had his hand in mine, but I- I wouldn't have been able to protect him, and I couldn't…" He closes his eyes, takes a shaking breath. "I couldn't be who he wanted me to be. I couldn't be powerless again."

I fit the pieces together slowly. The Blue Fairy had said that she had tried to help Baelfire, and that Rum was trying to get to the Land Without Magic. This was her help, then? She opened a portal, or gave a fucking teenager a way to, and told him to drop himself and his father through it? Anger howls through me for just how effectively that little blue hypocrite schemed and manipulated to get rid of a Dark One. And the fact that Rum didn't go through with it, that he lost his son to it…

It takes a long second for me to fully comprehend; it's antithetical to the person I have been since I was thirteen. So much of me has changed over time, hardened or chipped away altogether with each loss and betrayal, but the core of my being has always been my family. Everything that was mine, everything that was me felt as much theirs as my own. I told my brother, in the midst of a painful and heated argument, that I wouldn't stick around if it was just to watch him die, but I could never have dropped him into the portal myself, and certainly not in exchange for something like power.

But if it wasn't power? If it were something, anything else, anything that was just my own, that I wanted just for myself, in selfish disregard of whatever it did or didn't mean for others… I might be tempted, then, I think, my eyes sliding over Rum. Like a corruption, a spreading disease. Have one thing that's just for yourself, and it plants the seed, and you don't realize how selfish it's made you until you've already acted in its defense.

And when the person on the receiving end is the one person you value most in the world, and when it has these kinds of consequences… No wonder his moods are so volatile. He's been cut to the core, cracked down to the foundation, and all by his own hand. I don't know if that's something that can be healed from, not fully, and a few decades in the life of someone who could live hundreds is barely enough time for the scar to form.

I have nothing to say, and no idea what to do to comfort him. What could possibly soothe this kind of hurt? I reach a hand towards his face, but he looks so fragile in this moment, so unsteady. I stop short of touching him and instead slide to the floor next to him and hold out my arm, inviting him for a hug as I did in his laboratory months ago. For a second there's something on his face, something that betrays an animal urge to lash out in a moment of weakness, but then it crumbles, and all that's left is raw pain and bone-deep exhaustion.

He buries his head in my shoulder and wraps both arms around my waist, pulling me to him, and I rest my cheek against his head and run my fingers through his hair as I hold him. I don't know which of us begins to cry first, but then we're both shaking with silent sobs- for the people we lost, for our own grief, for the pain we can barely begin to soothe in each other. Years of old emotion and months of new grief roll over me in waves, and I've held it back for so long that once the dam breaks I can only accept it, can only open my lungs and wait to drown.

Only the warmth of Rum's body against mine calls me back to the present and lets my head eventually break the surface again. We stay there until the sobbing passes, until my knees begin to ache from the stone floor, but I'm not willing to let go. I press a kiss to Rum's head; in that moment, I'd wait as long as he needed, even if the castle crumbled around us.

And I think I know, then, that I'm in love with him.

Gods, I'm screwed, I'm so bloody screwed. This is the rope that hangs me, and I tied the fucking noose myself.

But for as terrified as I am, I can't bring myself to regret it.