Kamchatka: Aug. 1917

Afternoon sun crested through the valley, beat down in heavy rays of cloud-dusted light promising a rare warm evening so close to autumn. Maybe a week left, Miles supposed, if they were lucky before the green-flushed forest surrounding the compound, now only sprinkled with a fleck of gold here and there, became a sea of flaming orange and yellow dotted instead by cool, tall evergreens. It was for the best that Osian got in his gardening time as often as he could now, before the sun grew too cold and the ground became unsuitable.

The sun cast a heavy blue shade across the vampire's face where he knelt, gently manipulating the tip of a trowel in the loamy, dark soil. He fussed over his thyme like an old woman, but in truth, Miles was happy to simply see the land worked again. Roman, with no one but himself and Osian to provide for, had grown lazy before Artyom's birth.

Life bloomed here again, and though the whisper of who came before the great monster of the valley was a virulent one, Roman had done a good job at quashing it. It was a whisper, and Miles preferred it that way. His old friend lived on better.

Life bloomed here again indeed, and his attention was torn between simultaneous peals of laughter. In the distance, an acute laugh, a shrieking sound like glass bells, tinkling at a speed unsafe for its fragility. Miroslava danced amid the wind, free for once with her flaxen hair gusting against the blowing laundry line. She ducked, and, ah--! There, Miles smiled with another of her wisp-like laughs, as hands appeared through the strung sheets and clothes, grabbing playfully at her sides to interrupt her choring. Darcy, the ghost through the sheets, enveloped her, wrestled until his own grin split into a laugh. She'd been a right mess that morning, sick again and sunken-eyed as though she hadn't slept, and to see her laughing, full of life, was satisfying to his heart.

And yet, before him, the same giggles he'd listened to for the last year, a more nourishing sound than any other.

Few months, really, but he liked to round up. He'd had them for a year, but the laughter was a treat that had taken him a solid four months to incur. To build, really.

On the downward slope toward the western forest, his offspring wrestled. Over a toy, at one point, still attached to those little things, but where Marla's ragdoll now lay discarded in the grass, she'd taken to harassing her brother instead. Nothing new; squeals and yips of play-fighting were a victory. Toys they didn't purposefully destroy were a victory -- he should've known better, questioned himself long enough, but the sound of one porcelain babydoll being swung against a wall was one enough for him -- and toys that weren't sacrificed for the sake of getting his attention, like burning Vincent's blocks, had stopped entirely. Marla's snotty, gutted sobbing when he'd had to explain to her she couldn't have back the ragdoll she drowned because she'd hurt it had done something well for her; this one still at times was a weapon against Vinny, but he'd seen her, once or twice when she thought she was alone, giving a tender kiss to the doll's forehead. Vincent had chewed his way through his wooden pencils, broke them down to the stubs and growled with anger, but dense graphite sticks had given him a medium, and he'd started to bring unsolicited drawings to him to discuss.

So wrestling, playing, laughing -- Miles wished he had enough sunscreen to warrant napping here, just to listen to them. But he'd been waiting for a moment just so, peacefully punctuated by the quiet bucking of a pair of hens that wandered into Osian's garden in search of stray bugs. He hoped they didn't tell Marla if they found any.

"Pups." Irish was still most comforting for them for now, but he didn't begrudge their difficulties with Russian. He whistled once.

Both responded with a single grunt or yip, a flurry of flapping hands. Marla upset Vincent's grip on her, wormed out from under him with a decent bite on his forearm, and she crawled over him, twisting his shoulder through the mud with a slurred half-language between them he could only best translate loosely as the extrapolated babbling of isolated toddlers.

"Mar, Mar, Mar, ow. Dirt, ow."

This did him no good, it seemed, as her muddy knees slotted into place under his arms, her bite transferred to his hand. She growled quietly, spoke around his hand. "Be dead! Dead, dead!"

"Dead, dead! Move!"

So much of their conversations existed in these semi-sentences, words that slurred into sounds that weren't truly Irish anymore but whose meanings had slowly become clear from listening to them.

Marla listened this time, climbing off him without releasing her sharp-toothed bite. He graciously pushed himself along the ground with her as she crawled, allowing her to "drag" him toward Miles.

The old vampire held his hand out for her, her intent clear. Her cheek caught right into his palm, and Vincent's hand was released finally, flopping limply against Miles's thigh. Humoring them, he took the boy's hand too, playfully miming a vicious feast on his wrist.

"My good hunter," he hummed, "a hearty meal indeed."

The marks of her teeth would bruise. It was a side effect he'd learned to live with; both were often freckled blue and violet.

"Vinny's bad roasting," she slurred, smearing her underlid against his thumb. "Stew bones."

"I'm stew bones? You're stew bones," he argued.

They both were, Miles wanted to explain, but he kissed Vincent's knuckles, pinched the edge of Marla's cheekbones. They were getting meat on them, slowly but surely.

"There's something we need to talk about, pups." Both of them alerted, in their own ways. Marla's lip drooped slightly; Vinny's nostrils flared. "Have you understood what we're doing here? Why Uncle Roman keeps us locked down tight?"

Somewhere long ago, his son had looked at him with those round, dark eyes. How had it gone so wrong?

Both stared with empty darkness.

"You said we're safe here," Marla answered. Perhaps she supposed that was reason enough.

Miles plucked a clump of grass from her hair.

"You are, darling. But the world outside us, here, isn't safe."

"For us?" He nodded, and the succession of their following questions were too quick for him to notice who spoke. "Because we're us?" -- "Or because we're you?"

With a thoughtful pause, Miles weighed the validity of his answer.

"Both. It isn't safe for wolves. It isn't safe for you. But more than that. It's unsafe for lots of people, lots of not-people. Humans are unsafe right now."

"War!" Marla exclaimed, arms over her head.

"Right. They're going to war. I don't know how much it'll mean to you, but there's more than that."

"Bombs." Vincent rolled upright, his cheek muddy and his chemise seemingly grateful for a more natural pose. "You said weapons humans shouldn't have. Do you mean bombs?"

"Among other things, yes." Now, Miles took the chance to pluck a beetle from the boy's hair, tossed it to the hens who paid it no mind. "But you remember I told you I've lived a long time and seen a lot of things that might be scary to you. Humans going to war doesn't scare me."

"King Granddad," Marla announced.

Vinny concurred, "King Granddad."

The laugh that sputtered out of him felt like thorns in his ribcage. How was it their abnormal ways had made him feel so normal again?

Maybe it was Fyodor, reaching out the way he could, without the chance to really reach to earth. The endless churning slosh of souls through assimilated heaven was no comfort to him, nor to Roman, but the old hermit's ways had left a print on Miles he wished he had given more to his own son.

It was Fyodor's patience he called upon. Fyodor's radical gratitude for the gift of life. Fyodor's simple trust of his loved ones.

He prayed -- for what good it did him -- that if he met the same end as the old hermit, the agony the twins' cries roused was a fraction Roman's had been. The valley had heard that sound once; there need be no more porcelain babydolls.

"King Granddad won a lot of wars in his time, pups. But there is war brewing that scares even big, scary old me." The grin Marla gave told him she didn't find him scary at all; good. "This war is going to be very hard. Vampires like me are... amassing an army. I brought you to Uncle Roman's because you'll be safe here, so it doesn't affect you."

Marla, bless her empty doe eyes, the idle gnawing she had started on her own hand, mumbled her question. "'Cause we're wolves?"

"Mh-hm."

"How?" Vinny demanded, rolling his shoulders. "Why would it?"

That was the hard part.

The way the world outside had become, the height of tension that had him flitting country-to-country like a genuine runaway, that was what was hardest to explain. Nothing like this had happened before, not in their measly seventeen years, not in his mighty thousand. Even the Templars had known their limits.

"There's... a man behind the war. Another king."

"Usurp him," Marla commanded, and his head spun a second. How had she learned so much and yet so little in that attic of theirs?

"I wish I could, dear. But my responsibility is to take care of you two." The memory of his son had darkened enough already. "He's a very powerful king. He thinks that vampires are... superior to other races."

Vinny muttered something to Marla, a cryptophasic slur that Miles could only best translate as, "Is this what she meant?" She gave a shrugging nod in response.

Miles's brow furrowed. He stayed quiet.

"Uncle Osian." Miles flinched, but Marla sat up on her knees to see the other vampire over his head. "Do you know the king?"

Osian's Irish was haphazard and antique, sprinkled with Russian endearments, but he answered simply.

"I do, my darling little pooch. Who said?"

Breath caught in Miles's throat. If he'd had a second longer, he could've stopped her. Might've.

"We made Mira tell us but she wasn't helpful much."

Golden eyes cast over his shoulder, Miles was able only briefly to meet Osian's eyes. A plea in his own, a silent acceptance of anticipatory disappointment. Brilliant, cruel mirth in Osian's.

With a deep sigh, Miles settled back, puffed a lungful back through.

"Pups. It's nothing to be afraid of. You're safe here. Uncle Osian and I are working to do what we can, but keeping you safe here will require your help too." Marla sat again, and something stilled in his chest, satisfied she was no longer engaging the other. "Stay on the property. Go with a demon if you leave for the forest, and if the patrol tells you to do something, do it. That could be any of your cousins, or anyone who joins us."

"I don't want to go anywhere." Then, echoing Marla, Vinny added, "It's big outside."

For all that he worried about them, he wondered why he worried sometimes.

If his whole life had been locked in an attic, he supposed he might've been overwhelmed by the size of the world too.

"Another thing, before you get back to your hunt." They traded a nerve-stiffened glance, as if bracing for the other to pounce once freed. "Miss Miroslava. It may be hard to remember, but try to keep in mind that she... follows more strict rules than you do. You have more freedoms than she does. It wouldn't be very fair if you made her break her own rules, would it?"

Almost scolded, they both fell quiet. "We didn't pressure her or nothing," Marla fibbed in a murmur.

Darcy's voice crested over the hill, through the buffeting laundry, just one word:

"Arrival!"

***

Miroslava was in the kitchen before the horses rounded the curve of the path. Hot water on for tea, and she stared warily out the kitchen window. The nausea that had stricken her had yet to fully pass, and while the insomnia didn't help, she was used to working tired. Two well-toned work horses of faun and chocolate rounded the curve, with one rider each astride and bags loaded down on their saddles. A flood of Sokolovs seemed to pour out of the woodwork, with Darcy championing the herd.

Artyom and Roman emerged from the living room. Roman's stride was quick, confident; Artyom's dragged.

She cried once to get Roman's attention, begged of him what to prepare for the newcomers. He passed simpler instructions to Artyom, who made a show of rolling his eyes once his father left.

"Kettle," the boy commanded.

"On."

"Mugs?"

"What size?"

Stormy eyes more than a full head higher than hers, it was but a flick of his eyes out the window, where she had to tiptoe to see as they drew closer.

"Just Ulric and Belle. Get the small ones, they don't stay long." Her quizzical sound drew a furrow to his brow. "Like birds."

It didn't explain much.

She supposed she didn't need it to.

Gracious, she chose the medium-sized mugs, just in case the newcomers needed a break, and with that in mind, she decided a small platter might be in order. Artyom set to putting tea in either mug.

On tip-toes, she pulled a petite gilded platter from the curtain-shaded cabinet. Somewhere deep inside her, a feeling was rising, slowly and steadily. A churning of an unsettled sea, and she stopped, returned to the earth, held her body still lest it flow into a wave of nausea again.

Artyom's voice, distant at sea.

"You'll probably like Ulric. Everybody likes Ulric. I like his bird 'cause it eats anything." He turned to grab for the jarred honey, seemed to notice her sudden calm. "Hey. You listening? -- Oh, is it... like yesterday, huh?"

Answering him with patient nods, just a tiny buoy rather than a quake, and the storm seemed to quell.

"Ulric's the other incubus, right?" Like Darcy, who at present embraced the first rider, a man, in a large, warm hug. Hood thrown off her head, the other rider was caught by Hyunwoo -- lifted off the ground onto her toes -- and Mira despised the flavor of bitter jealousy of all things on her tongue.

"Mh-hm. And Belle's the succubus. They're alright, I guess."

Succubus. Maybe that was what about her inflamed her so, but Mira despised the feeling it set in her, and she tried instead to continue readying the platter.

"Lovrenc's my friend. He'll be here soon. You'll like him more."

What place did he think he had telling her who she would and wouldn't like? Even if he was sometimes right. She could decide for herself.

With a slow sigh, she steadied herself. She was just tired. Irritable. It wasn't right to put that on him, not when he was so comfortable just talking calmly with her.

Hyun held on longer than she liked. The cookie jar lid smacked hard against the countertop.

Artyom snagged the steaming kettle before it screamed.

"How many days has it been?" He asked, over pouring steam. "Maybe since you're all ancient and shit, your immune system is out of whack and you caught something from one of us."

She parroted him in a dull, disinterested manner. "Immune system?"

"Maybe you should see Rune for a check-up and... a basic... medical... rundown. He dumbed it down for me when I was a kid, I'm sure he can help you." As if she was dumb. Or maybe he didn't even notice.

The door sprung open, and the air that flowed through the kitchen was awash with herbs and spices and the scent of polished leather. It seemed as if the whole clan filtered back in suddenly, and Mira froze in place, frightful of what her stomach might do if jostled too hard.

Dima was already deep in conversation with the robed, now hoodless, man, who skin was sun-rich and olivine and whose loose black waves cascaded over his shoulder. He bore a dazzling smile.

"Absolutely," Ulric agreed, to whatever Dima had been saying. "Absolutely. Give me a few days to get settled, I'd be honored."

A hearty laugh erupted. Roman, from wherever he'd entered, added, "Don't let it go to your ego, Dima." And again, they chortled.

One tea to the platter. Artyom was watching her.

Ten biscuits, nearly finished off the jar and she would need to bake another batch, to the little saucer, to the platter.

"Lovrenc should be a week behind us," the woman, Belle, said. Her eyes were an illegible hazel, hair a rich coffee shade, but she scanned the room with a fervor in her eyes that Mira hoped did not land on her.

The cloud, thankfully, migrated toward the living room. Osian had joined them, too, shedding his gardening gloves and the hat that shaded him from the sun.

"He said he found an adorable orphanage and was taking just a touch to wrap up there. Thirty-four little souls; can you believe how small they're making them? Trying to put us out of work." Belle's voice carried a lilting accent, trailed through the house like a siren announcing exactly where she was at all times. "Almost like they give a shit about the little fuckers."

Second tea to the platter, cream poured and cubes dishes, she lifted the tray. It trembled in her hands, but she sucked in a slow breath, tried steeling herself.

"Mira, the spoons," Artyom whispered, stopping her dead in her tracks. He held out an extra pair of cup saucers and two thin spoons. She sighed, set her tray down. He moved to help her reassemble the tray properly. "Are you sure you should carry that? You're definitely shaking."

"Withdrawal shakes are worse," she stated, with a conviction meant to convince herself more than anything. "I've got this."

Tray assembled properly, the mobile swarm of monsters situated, Artyom followed her quietly into the living room.

Belle, in a navy walking dress, intimidated her. She was tall, to start with, although shorter still than Artyom who towered over the rest of them, but her build was wide, stocky and voluptuous. More than anything, it was her eyes, which bored into the men around her strangely, which fell once on her as she approached.

Belle and Ulric sat side-by-side on the larger sofa, a short table in front of them to which their platter was delivered. Shakily, but with nary a slip.

"What a lovely treat!" Belle chirped. There was an odd scar in the middle of her forehead, now that Mira stood before her. Otherwise lovely, with rounded apples and plump lips, a small dimple on either side as she smiled -- but that scar stared back at Mira. "Aren't you just the cutest thing? This was your doing, Dmitrii?" Oh! The look of grated embarrassment on Dima's face was to die for! Mira felt herself smiling before she could stop. "Come here, let me get a good look at you. --- Oh, no, no, smells more like Hyun's doing. Something this cute, Dima? You would never!"

Praise.

Whatever it was didn't matter, the fact that Belle dared lavish her with such descriptors had some kind of relief washing over her, a warm flush to her cheeks.

"I found her in a mine," Dmitrii reminded, as if that was what had sullied her and not him. Belle and Hyun traded a laugh.

Ulric's eyes, a warm honey gold, crinkled at the corners. He had already plucked a biscuit, paid her an illuminating smile. "You find diamonds in mines, too, Dima."

Roman took that as his cue to introduce her, and she stood numb, stupid, and silent for as long as it took. Osian watched the little parade with eyes on her like knives -- maybe, she supposed, it was like their wealth, just another thing they could show off.

And like that, his attention was away, turned back to Roman. "We won't be long in the house, Master. I believe we're both itching to get away from each other."

"You'll still bunk together for now. Miles's twins need space, but the remaining unit has two beds in it. With you here, Ulric..." A side-to-side gesture. "Maybe three or four days left before their house is ready, and the units freed."

"You boys build at an alarming rate. But we're grateful, Master, really," Belle wheedled, "eternally grateful, Master, for your grace and protection."

"You know the rules."

"We do."

The conversation droned into the better part of a five minute span, with her undismissed, lingering at the edge of the room. Ulric spun stories for them at Osian's demand, catching up on political events. Russia was increasingly hostile to itself, which most but her seemed already to know, and she quietly snuck out of the room. Another slow-rising wave buffeted her a moment, and at the edge of the ingress kitchenward, Miroslava gently palmed Rune's arm, whispered softly to let him know she was going to lay down a spell, should she be needed.

He nodded once; released her.

Collapsing on her straw-bed was not going to be so easy, it seemed.

Vincent's menacing dark pits eyed her from the barn doorway. She almost turned away, if not for how damn poor she felt. If not for how her heartbeat radiated from the nauseous pit of her stomach, she might've let it deter her.

The teen disappeared before she reached the doors.

He stood just inside, underneath the unlit sconce nearest the center.

"Hello, Vinny," was all Mira paid him in a tired rasp, shouldering by with no protest from him. She alighted the ladder at a pace that surprised her.

Vincent, she realized at the top, didn't care too much about her, still stood where he stood, stared up toward her tiny straw castle of a bedroom.

Marla was crouched inside. One of the ribbons Mira used to tie her hair was clutched in her hand, and she whipped to look at her over her shoulder, stood in a fluid motion.

"I wanna braid your hair," she commanded.

"Now?"

Something about her appearance must've communicated her exact position. The girl worried her torn lips together, gaze flickering around her space. "This is all you have?"

"Marla, I need to lie down. Please. I don't feel well."

Another thought roll of her lips, buck teeth nipping into the bottom. "Can I brush it?"

Another girl was alright touching her hair, she supposed. If it let her soothe her body just a damn minute. She nodded, and Marla moved out of her way.

"Have you learned the word 'please'?"

Settling on her meagre bed, Mira laid on her back atop the furs, bundled her body in the old blanket she'd been gifted to try and retain some warmth. Her hair was pulled out from under her, and Marla, having found the brush in one corner of her square 'room,' set right to it.

Mira let her eyes unfocus toward the ceiling. Cobwebs and fragments of hay dusted the corners of the rafters, but below, the sound of the heifer and her new calf, born one noisy fortnight prior, returning in for a drink were familiar, soothing.

"I don't need it." Somehow, her hands were delicate. Nothing else about her seemed to be, but she started slow, brushed at the tips of Mira's hair first. "I don't care. If I want it, it happens."

From what she'd gleaned from Miles, that was hardly true. Orphaned by their own abandonment, by their own carnivorous hate. She wasn't sure she blamed them.

And after she'd complied with them, they'd been kind to her. So far.

Marla settled on her knobby bum. Dried mud flecked her legs. She brushed in patient, methodical sections.

Finally, her stomach began to ebb again. If only her mind didn't keep her up, she wouldn't have gotten so weak. If only she could catch a moment of sleep that wasn't nauseous or soaked in fear-sweat. Perhaps she wouldn't feel so awful.

"Granddad said to be nice to you."

Almost, almost she sputtered an incredulous laugh. It gulped back down her throat.

"Well, I appreciate it," she mumbled. "He seems nice, your granddad. Is... he nice to you?"

Where Marla hung over her, Mira could study her face -- or, at least, a portion of it. At present, her brow furrowed a deeply dimpled frown. Silent, she seemed to have an internal debate.

"He's the nicest. Honest." The words came from somewhere in her ribcage, somewhere stirred and fluttering out of her with an unexpected authenticity. "Our old family was the worst. No good but meat. Hits us. Binds us. Hides us upstairs."

That, she supposed, was why the both of them were so easily reddened by the sun. Why every piece of nature seemed to catch their fragile attention spans.

"That's good. He's... not what I expected of Master Roman's brother. Softer."

The dimples left, but there was the faint sound of her chewing on her bottom lip again.

"Granddad says Uncle Roman's a dangerous man with a bad life. But that means he'll protect us. Vinny drew a picture--" There was a soft whistling, a word Mira didn't recognize hollered up from downstairs. "He did! He drew a picture of us hiding behind the monsters. Us little good pups."

Something in their innocence distressed her. Or was it her own maturity that should've distressed her? Hard to tell anymore.

"That would be nice. I hope I feel safe here, some day."

Quiet.

Marla moved to another section of hair. Worried her lip. Pulled straw out.

"Granddad says you follow different rules."

"I'm a slave. Do you know what that is?"

"Mh-hm. And we're family. But we're the same age. We should be working together."

A curl formed at the corner of Mira's lip. Her stomach settled gently. "I wish we could. I'd hate to get you in trouble with me."

"No trouble for us! We are going to be spoiled babies, Granddad says. From now on."

"You didn't have much either, then."

She was almost done brushing, and the barn door parted quietly. Mira sighed; had Vincent left, or someone joined? Both introduced complications.

"Vinny and I could read and we had books. Old stories. Some pamphlets. Whatever they put up in the attic, we got to play with."

Wasn't too unlike herself now. The ladder creaked quietly.

"Can you sit up? I can braid it if you sit up."

Mira tried slowly, supporting her weight. Her stomach obeyed, for now. Marla chirped a happy noise, beginning to part her hair.

Rune's snowy crown crested the ladder posts first. His eyes sought clearly for her, and he wandered in on silent, ghostly steps. Mira watched him blandly.

"I guess that's why you two are so weird." She had no filter for those who couldn't truly destroy her, but it brought a delighted giggle from the other girl.

Her fingers were tight, directed, as she braided.

"We don't have to be normal. Granddad says we're royalty 'cause of him."

"Royalty, and they hid you upstairs?"

"Weren't royalty no more by the time we were born. None of them had been royalty in a long time. Didn't taste like royalty neither."

The cringe that Mira gave was uncontrollable. A grimace, really, a frightful reminder of what Miles had said they'd done in the interim of waiting for him. An impromptu surgery. A house full of rotting corpses. And two wolves, determined not to starve to death.

She shook the thought free---

Marla yelped. "No! Don't shake! I'll lose my tension. Hold still!"

Quiet, Rune rustled a bit of the straw on one bale, ducking his way inside. "Do you ladies mind if I join the braiding party?"

"Won't be much longer," Marla confessed. Mira supposed she had a use for people, but hell if she could tell what hers was. "I'm doing something pretty for her."

"That's a lovely idea," he said, plain as water.

Something though seemed to pass through Marla in silence, her fingers working a methodical pattern that held close to Mira's head. She could feel the well-worn softness of her ribbon threaded through.

"Did you really eat them? I mean..."

Cackling burst out of her.

Her grip stayed true, but she swayed behind Mira.

"Those motherfuckers were going to make me ca---"

"Marla, would you teach me that pattern sometime?"

Rune's voice was forceful, sudden.

"Sure. I can. Do you like it?"

"It looks like it'd be difficult to do on myself, but I think it'd be nice to tuck flowers into in place of a ribbon."

"You could wear a ribbon."

Rune's gaze did not turn to Miroslava until the barn doors had shut behind the twins, Marla well and truly satisfied, somehow, with braiding once and moving on.

He did not come in for a braiding lesson, and that much was clear by the clasp of his hands between his knees. Something inside her whispered please, not him.

***

Commanded into the cellar, into the measly golden bulb-light, Mira still avoided her gaze from the back portion of the room. It smelled of bleach down here, both her own doing and Roman's, and each step trembled her flesh further, until Rune sat her upon that rickety metal table. He plucked another light on near his desk, eyeballed her.

"Artyom said you've been sick a few days. That right?"

She nodded once, body growing cold down here in the semi-dark. A metal table was a terrible idea.

"It's nothing. Master Dima says I get sick sometimes because sickness has gotten stronger since I was alive." She'd had perfect confidence it would go away, before she set foot in the cellar. "He usually just gives me a potion and I'm better."

"Why in the hell would you trust Dima's medical opinion?"

Rune waited longer than she liked for some kind of verbal response. His body seemed to grow tense as he did, and it culminated in an almost pained sigh. Whatever line of questioning he was going to pursue, he abandoned, turned his back to her in favor of a large wall-piece of tiny metal lockers.

What little comfort she could find in the room evaporated as the cellar door creaked open, the encroaching sounds of footsteps.

It seemed by their reluctant expressions that Rune had summoned all of the Sokolov boys -- Roman included -- and they littered themselves through the meagre space.

She felt so suddenly on display again. Even without Osian here, hooked to her throat, prying her open for his boys to see, she felt on display. Fully clothed, but for all to see.

Rune sucked in a sharp breath.

"Well, now. Let's keep this short, shall we?" He spoke relentlessly. "I'm not going to point fingers or name names. But unless someone would like to step up right now for a hearty congratulations," his pause was barely that, "we all need to address that the maid is now pregnant."

That word, she didn't know.

Must not've if it stung so deep in her ears, like needles piercing the drum inside.

Surely what it sounded like, the long word that kind of sounded like take and variable and wasn't either of them, wasn't what it was.

Silence washed over the line of demons -- and Artyom.

None of them looked at one another.

Dmitrii, in the middle of the room, pinched the bridge of his nose. Hyunwoo in the doorway inspected his fingernails while Darcy, beside Dima, looked expectantly at Rune. Both Roman and Artyom stood nearest to the cabinet where Rune kept his delicate tools staring at the ground, but where Artyom's jaw was clenched, fingers templed over his face, Roman's expression remained completely lax, as if the news -- no, no, it wasn't news, it was a misunderstanding -- hadn't hit him at all.

Dmitrii was the first to speak. "It's been two months, guys."

Darcy, defensive: "Didn't you say to enjoy your gift?"

Thumb to his teeth, plucking away a hangnail, Hyun ground out, "How do we know it wasn't you?"

Where had her heart gone? It had just up and disappeared, leaving her chest locked tight where she could not draw in enough air.

Not understanding a word shouldn't have been allowed to do this to her.

That's all it was.

Her voice wasn't her own when she spoke. It was that of a smaller girl, a girl scared like she was the day her vault opened.

"Master Dima? What is that word?"

"Don't be stupid." Dima's face contorted, a sour pinch like he didn't even have the time for her. "You know that one." He repeated the word in her first language, and sure enough, it was the same.

Pregnant.

Well and truly the same word, through and through.

There was life inside her. Already.

Bluish shadows had taken Artyom's face. Just a second's worth of disgust roiled over her; he hadn't even so much as tried to kiss her since fishing, and here he had to sit through this shameful mess.

"She responded well on the road to marsh tea, Rune. If you're out, we can--"

"I'm not out. I'm preparing a blend."

With a wave of his hand, Rune cast Dima off. Rifling through his herb cabinet against the wall, he fingered open a few drawers. Passed Dima an envelope of dried herbs, who passed it to Rune's desk.

"I tried not to make such a big deal about it," he muttered. "She understands what a potion is."

The ocean of nausea buffeted her. Alone on a scrap of a raft, adrift with the thought that she had missed the first time there was life in her. That Dima's potions were not medicine, but thievery.

Rune's voice shook her. It became a poisonous thing, a threat spoken barely above usual.

"Do you think this isn't a big deal? ---Because it is. Do you know what pregnancy does to a body, to regulatory systems, to fucking anything, Dmitrii?"

Tension rose in her 'master's' shoulders. Bitten smiles grew on Hyun and Darcy's faces.

"Don't treat me like I'm fucking stupid," came his threat, a whispered thing given at the tip of his index finger. "We made it just fucking fine without your medicine before you came. You know who did that? Me."

"And yet you still fail to see it as inferior to the scientific method, you fucking witch doctor."

Dmitrii seethed, moved to speak.

Rune beat him to it. "Yes, I can say that. And while I am busy aborting a fucking fetus--" This time, his hateful stare cast out to his other brothers, their father who remain so god-damned still. "--I hope you all have a long think about how to prevent another patient for me."

"Fucking freak," Dmitrii swore. He chewed at his already-bruised bottom lip.

Hyun caught his shoulder, smiled a bit. "He's young. Leave him alone."

This time, it was Rune whose voice began to rise, a stiff sort of rage building in him that never wavered in its laser-pointed direction. "My age is not---"

"Here's what we're going to do," Roman announced in a soft rumble. His sons' attentions turned to him, but there was an indignant squeak between the elf's teeth. "Rune, give her the tea. And no one touches her. Miroslava, you're going to go as long as you possibly can without a dose. When you can't, come talk to Osian and I. Osian has come off a few times for travel, he can help."

Was she going to come off it for good? Did that mean the rapes would stop? Did it mean the attention would stop?

And why did the latter twist her stomach so?

Inside her, a growing sense of injustice, of jealousy-like anger.

Every ounce of her heart said please. Horrified by the feeling, but she wanted to keep it. Something that was hers. Something that she could cling to, care for, love in the way she needed. She hadn't been too young to be a mother before she was put away, had considered it with pride that she would teach her daughters to rule with more strength than their husbands, but now, the feeling was both gutting and desperate.

She wanted to keep it. She didn't want a child born into this. She didn't want to be alone. She didn't want to let this repeat. It had to go. It had gone before. She hadn't even noticed.

So she stayed numb.

Let the feeling wash over her like she wasn't there at all. Let tears crawl from her eyes and air gasp tersely between her lips.

Violent crunch. Artyom's fist slamming into the metal cabinet beside him was all that preceded his exit.

The rest filtered out on their own, slow murmurings of displeasure among them, but it didn't matter.

It didn't matter at all, as it seemed this was between her and Rune for now. Until she had to tell Osian, she supposed.

The tea, brewed dark, was bitter, no matter how much honey Rune added. He retrieved her blanket from the loft, warned her it was going to be a long afternoon, a hard night.

His gramophone was crooning soft jazz by the time the pain began.

The whole awful thing was bled out of her by the night, but as her fever pitched, sweat on her temples, Mira kneaded the soft flesh of her now-burning thighs, clung to what felt like a thousand explosions in her stomach.

"Why does it hurt worse this time?"

With a displeased furrow of his brow, Rune moved from organizing his tools to his desk. He shuffled a few sheafs of paper.

"Tch. Transposed a number. I'll fix that."

***

Artyom stalked through the woods like the devil was in him.

Rage boiled in him like a kettle, an overdue storm within, and took the periodic careless rasp of bark against his skin as a welcome diversion from his rage. Anything. Anything to soothe it.

Few things ever worked. This worked, he knew.

Thorns and burs clung to his careless skin and clothes. Hurdled a fallen log, climbed a valley bank with dirt crumbling under him.

The first few landmarks were a blur, followed mindlessly in the blindness of fury.

Burl like a horse's head, affixed to a pine.

Rock-strewn hovel hole under an elm, whose inhabitants had changed over the years. Shaggy mountain hare glaring out at him now.

Giant crag of grey stone he'd pretended was a castle when he was little.

This feeling -- it was terrible. Artyom knew hate. And he hated this.

Hated himself. Hated his fucking brothers. Hated his father for being the most useless damn god he could've thought up. Hated that he knew he still loved them anyway. Hated feeling so fucking powerless over even himself, when control seemed to be cat's cradle to everyone else.

So he needed it out.

And this always worked. Always.

It was the fourth landmark, up the deer-path opposite the river, that he finally stopped, only briefly.

Leaves scattered the teeming surface of the pond. Soon, he knew, they would rot, fall to the bottom, create another layer of bitter, foul sludge substrate. Like everything.

For now, it writhed with life.

Frogs and water skimmers. Darting fish beneath the greenish tinge of its algae-shackled depths. This used to be a good hiding place, and he seethed a bit more. It had been, until Dima had found him here, once. There were tall reeds and cattails then, a barely noticeable divide between the mossy ground and the gently lapping mossy surface of the pond, and water snakes that slithered through past his long legs when he waded in.

It'd had the time since Dima left to recover from his attempts to beautify it. Idyllic, he called it.

So he'd dredged the pond. 'Cleaned' it. Trimmed the long grasses where little things could hide, removed the saplings around the edges and left only the one weeping willow whose leaves had, just this year, begun to tickle the surface of the water again.

It, the pond, the forest, the valley, was healing.

So was he.

He wondered if the earth had to force it so hard too.

Artyom skirted the pond, seized the opportunity as it presented itself to rear back and kick a leathery turtle back into the water with a hearty ploosh. It was probably fine, but he found he didn't give a shit if it was.

For a moment, he let himself start to think of Dima. But the first thought, in a cruel hiss in his mind, counted the days since Dima had been home, since Artyom had been clean, weighed and measured the time between the two. How little it was. How fucking sick he still felt. How angry. How long Dima had been gone, and how big the gap was between then and now and the tiny sliver of sobriety and how he wished he could turn himself inside out just once so something else felt this horrible.

He turned again at the rotten tree overlooking a little half-meter drop, its gnarled limbs twisted open from the inside. Gave up, not for the first time, thinking about his only blood brother.

How could his father have all the power in the world, and none over Dima?

Artyom's heels skidded slightly down an embankment. He hung a left, and the mouth of the cave greeted him.

Fresh paw prints pressed into the mud of the dim entrance. Something had been here since he last was; a bear, by the shape, the dig of the claws. It did nothing to deter him; he entered anyway, confident in his memory. Wouldn't be the first time there was a bear in here -- likely wouldn't be the last, knowing his father.

Tiny chirps floated through the air, the sleep-sounds of a colony of bats high above his head.

This forced him to stop. Hold himself still. Suck in a deep breath of the musty, ammonia-damp earth, wait for his eyes to adjust. High above, the microscope glitter of eyes across the ceiling, blinking and breathing and huddling away from him -- him!

Somewhere deeper in, a stalactite dripped, echoed.

It was only the first chamber that he'd left it in, and the light disappeared further around the corner.

Digging it back up was the tedious part.

Down on his knees, shoveling handfuls of dirt, he could see the prints more clearly now, and they were indeed bears. He wondered which family had returned this year. Dirt clumped under his nails.

It was the faint scent of sweet decay that alerted him first when he reached it. Artyom found a grasp on the slimy surface beneath the mud, and its rotten housing slowly gave it up with a slow sucking noise.

The rib bone in his hand, slick with tar-like decay, was smaller than he wanted. Smaller than he liked.

He slammed one end to the wall. The bone chipped, slipped out of his hand. Fine.

With a growl in his chest, he dug for another. This one, larger, and he had to place a foot on the stone to wrench it free with a satisfying crunch.

He grasped it with both hands, pressed to break.

Three tries, and it snapped. Biceps burned. Chest burned. Lungs panted for air.

No release.

No change in the pressure in his chest.

Raw, visceral anger ripped out of him in a scream that tore his throat.

The ribs tinked uselessly against the wall. Let the damn bears have her, then.

Artyom was back to square one:

Nothing fucking helped.

***

Osian and Ulric devised a simple stew between the two of them. Once he'd had time to unpack a bit, shake hands with Belle that he would take the unit after the new one opened up, and relax into his tea, Ulric had a plethora of spices he cheerfully added to the already-populated cabinet of other spices. Belle, on the other hand, was eager to stretch her limbs -- and after downing her tea, she and Hyunwoo had quickly scampered away to spar as usual.

Rune and Mira took their dinners in the cellar, but Artyom joined his fathers and uncle at the dinner table. Roman watched the boy closely; he had been livid when he stormed away, but whatever he'd found out in the woods seemed to have helped him mellow out again.

Like a warning siren, the telephone rang during dinner.

It silenced all of them, and Artyom eyed his father nervously. It felt like it'd been years since it rang. Emergencies didn't happen often enough to warrant it. Only Osian quietly sipped at the bowl of broth he held, as if he hadn't a care in the world.

"Do you want me to get it?" Miles offered at the second ring. Something like apprehension glimmered in his golden eyes.

Roman shook his head, swallowed his mouthful of food. Third ring, and he stood, napkin left in his seat.

Artyom listened intently. Stared in the warm kitchen light at the shorn and scarred back of his father's head.

The voice on the other end of the little cone held to his father's ear was hard to understand, if indeed they at all were speaking Russian. Roman responded in it nonetheless, back turned to hold the speaker.

"Good. The drop address?" --- "When should I expect another call?" --- "Yes. Good."

And he hung up the cone. Put down the speaker.

Settled back in to his seat at dinner, like nothing happened.

Artyom peeled the crust off the outside of his bread. Ate it first with big gulps of tea, then tore little pieces out and balled them up in his fingers to drop in his soup.

Mindless, wide-eyed. Thinking.

"I take it he's arrived." Miles ate with a soft touch to his utensils, mouth hardly even wet from the broth. "What did he say?"

Roman, on the contrary, tore a piece of his bread away, soaked it in stew. He caught the dribble on his chin with imprecise napkin-work.

"It's midnight for him. He expects to find the drop address and be bunked by dawn. He'll call from where he bunks."

Artyom ate a spoonful of tiny bread-pills that had expanded into not-so-tiny stew-bloated messes. Osian slid him a napkin, which he promptly ignored.

"Who? Who was that?"

Roman only shook his head.

"Nothing to worry about. Political contact, dear."

"I'm seventeen, you don't have to lie to me."

Silence over the table indicated disagreement. Of course, something burbled inside him, none of them were even human anymore. What did he fucking know.

"It's not a lie. If I tell you everything, you will worry about things that you don't need to worry about." Simple. Roman shrugged. Useless, useless god.

With a frustrated sigh, Artyom slurped down the last of his soup, tossed the bowl in the sink -- then stopped. A ghost passed by the kitchen window.

Not a ghost, but Rune, with his long, pale hair. Beside him, a petite and exhausted-looking figure. Miroslava had been crying, from the red tinge of her eyes and the glistening surface below her nose, but while exhaustion seemed innate on both of them, her face was scored deep by the furrows of pain she had either recovered from, or pushed herself through at present. Good, he thought, good that she was in pain. Good that she'd been crying.

In the back of his mind, a question whispered why. He wanted to rip the asker apart.

Roman had her attention before anyone else.

"Mira, go get Hyun and Belle from their fight, huh?" He inhaled another piece of what was left of his bread, spoke around it. "They're probably at the ritual clearing by the river."

She stopped like an insect that'd been seen.

She stopped fully, totally, dead in place, bowl in hand, turned carefully to observe him like his words alone were a threat. Like at any moment, the parasite infecting her body would unravel out her back end and scurry away, leave her shell to collapse in front of him.

Something felt hollow in Artyom's lungs.

"I don't think she's been out there, Dad," he offered.

He didn't want to take her there. He didn't want to be around her at all. He wanted her sunk at the bottom of the ocean, where she'd stay stone forever. Never laugh like glass again.

"I can go with her. I can bully Hyun better."

Roman chuckled; agreed.

Why had he offered? With a second to think, he called it for next time. For whatever next time she would need to go out to the ritual site for. Like collecting Hyun.

He discarded the thought before he found it stupider.

Mira didn't offer much resistance.

***

Artyom shoveled her out the door like she didn't belong in there in the first place. Or perhaps it was himself he felt that about.

Either way, Mira didn't resist. She didn't really want to walk with how exhausted her body was, but Rune's medicines worked wonders. He'd said most of the bleeding had passed with the first wave, but they'd packed her undergarments well so whatever leaked could be disposed of. Most of the vomiting should have been over too, he promised, and her stomach had thus far taken dinner well, but that remained to be seen.

Turning to stone was an exhausting affair. The first time, she'd had centuries to experience it, to space out the feeling. It'd been falling asleep, angry and dying of thirst, and then waking up fully refreshed, with Dmitrii Sokolov clutching her cheek.

Today, it was a passing out. The burn of her lungs starved of oxygen, kicking at the blanket Miles gave her, wishing she could beg Rune to help her breathe. Then it was waking up, robbed of rest, to a body still exhausted and aching and angry with her for coming back to life against its will. Darcy had even tried to make it more pleasant, waking her with a gentle scrub to the back of her head. Stone heals slowly.

She didn't want to walk all that way, but her afternoon proved how little that mattered. Compliant, Mira walked alongside Artyom, loosely familiar with the path. He remained silent -- fine enough.

There was plenty to distract herself with, her mind made comfortable by another of Rune's medicines. Where usually the pain of purging sickness that came after Dima's potions could only be dulled by further potions, Rune's medicines were efficient. Her legs felt forgiving.

The forest bore a soft breeze that rustled through the paths wrought between trees. Errant leaves shook from their places, cast along the wind that blew her hair, tossed the edges of her dress.

Birds of prey careened overhead. Circled for food, dipped and flew and she wished so badly to join them. Let herself be carried by the wind and lost amid clouds. Birds had a freedom to escape, to go when they pleased, and the wish to join them had overwhelmed her at times.

Artyom's voice was a soft whisper, not enough to shake her from her haze, but she caught a single glimpse of his finger toward the sky.

"See that big black one? That's Ulric's bird. His name is Likho."

"He has a bird?" She echoed, following the line of his finger. In the sky, it looked huge. The birds she'd seen kept as pets were usually no larger than her forearm. This one bore a massive wingspan, a powerful silhouette of fluted feathers that crossed her vision every so often.

"He's had Likho as long as I've been alive, at least." Why, every time they had to go somewhere, did he have to spend his time explaining every little thing to her?

Although, on second thought, she was grateful for that. His explanations could be out of the blue, otherwise useless -- but she'd found herself drawing on them more than once.

Mira gave him one careful, sidelong glance. He was already looking at her. Soothed by Rune's medicines, she didn't look away for once.

"What?" Artyom demanded. "Do you... want more information about the bird? I mean, I've met him a few times, but I don't know much else."

"I don't want to know anything," she stated plainly, "I don't care about the bird."

His face screwed up. "Okay then."

She hadn't meant to discourage him, but what exactly she meant to do, she wasn't sure. To tell him, perhaps, that wasn't all their conversations had to be.

"Do you like birds?" she asked, instead.

The laugh he gave was a bark.

But it tumbled, just like before, a crack of stone and the same guttural reediness as the birdcall above.

"Do I like birds? Wh-what?" Face split by a grin, he crossed his lanky arms across his body, followed out the rest of his laugh. "I like hunting them. The puff of feathers is perfection."

Between her teeth, Mira's tongue clicked.

"I'm serious, Master Artyom."

"Serious? About birds?" Eyes to the canopy, he hummed in thought. "Sure. Let's say I do."

"No, no. We can't just say you do."

"Why not? What's your game?" His chin tipped as if he could see through her at the right angle.

Mira shook her head, plain.

"No game. Just... making conversation."

"Oh, smalltalk." As if he'd finally identified it. "Right, so you pretend you give a shit about my interests so I tell you stuff that'll help you survive. I'm the weak link."

This time, it was her face that screwed up.

"Nevermind," she said in a sigh. Up ahead, there was a small path off downward, a metal emblem tied to a twisted tree denoting the entrance to something. Beside it, a stone cairn. "Is that the ritual site, then?"

Artyom nodded solemnly. They trekked up the small path, the sounds of fighting -- shuffling, grunting, exclamations -- warning them sooner than they realized.

Words meant for Hyunwoo died on her lips. Beside her, Artyom's hand slapped out, grasped nervously at her bicep and squeezed.

It seemed that fighting, if ever they had, had taken secondary priority to fornication.

Down the other side of the hill, Hyunwoo had Belle pinned. Face pressed to one side in the mud, she panted with the force of him, her arms trapped behind her back by the weight of one large hand. He curled over her, every strong thrust he gave bouncing her hearty curves.

Fingers kneading into the meat of her ass, their arrival was just close enough to hear him growl with self-satisfaction, to hear her mumble into the earth.

"God, I missed you."

Something terrible dropped in the pit of her stomach. Something like horror.

Something like jealousy, and the happy haze of Rune's medicine could not slow the immediate rebuttal of guilt.

Artyom's grip tugged her back.

Mira hated herself. Hated that little whispered reminder that she was not special and Hyun's choice was something off limits anyway. She meant nothing.

Hated that Artyom didn't tug her hard enough. Hated that the both of them stood there, staring blankly.

From where they stood, she could hear the wet slapping of flesh on flesh. Heavy breathing. Quiet laughter. Every little bounce of her hips and thighs were visible, the spill of her breasts over the top of her dress.

The attention Hyun gave her was not unique. She should've expected as much. Here with all these monsters, how could she expect to be treated as anything other than a piece of meat? A service to be used like the bulbs, like the refrigerator, like the tools. The fact that Belle was not enraged, humiliated, degraded as Mira felt -- it stung in a way she couldn't comprehend.

Although it was not the first, there were three possible culprits who could've made her sick this time: Darcy, Dmitrii, and Hyunwoo. Any one of them could have put life in her, but only one of them had threatened to.

Maybe it was that she expected it to have been special.

Even though Dima had told her well enough how Artyom was made, the gruesome agony of what they reduced her to, how each of his brothers played a welcoming hand in her dismemberment, she had hoped it could be different. Better. She could keep her limbs, and her baby, and oh, the thought that it would've been a baby had her chest growing tight again.

Mira turned at once into Artyom, who pulled her away with full force. Surely her feet, crashing through the underbrush, made noise, but she didn't stick around to find out.

Tears bubbled up behind her eyes, spilled over with hot shame and hatred.

Artyom waited to speak until they had long left the ritual site -- which, for all she'd seen, just looked like a damn clearing -- and the hill disappeared behind them.

"You know, the more I think about it? --- I think I like birds."

Laughter sputtered out of her, a weak giggle when she realized what he meant.

"How are you thinking about birds right now?" She left what else he'd be thinking about unspoken.

The sunlight flared behind his head, made him difficult to see clearly when she looked up.

"I think I like that they can fly away. I always wanted to join them."

***

Dmitrii visited her that evening. Long after she was sent to bed to rest up, recover her body, she was still awake, oil lamp aflame beside her. The ache in her abdomen was exhausting, and yet she couldn't sleep, so Miroslava occupied her time with darning a pair of socks Osian had entrusted to her, singing softly to the barn.

There weren't many songs she remembered from her childhood. A few melodies, here and there, but what she sang was translated several times over. Dmitrii had a fair collection of American jazz and ragtime among his gramophone records, and though she didn't know a lick of English, she sang a conglomeration of mispronounced words and syllables that fit the tune.

The animals were responsive tonight.

Lyuba's calf played a call-and-response with her. Mira sang a line, paused, and the calf mooed once, picking up the game here and there throughout the night.

A hen startled as the door slid open.

She stopped singing; listened for the creaking of the ladder.

Her heart raced in her throat.

It could be anyone. Anything.

Yet, somehow, it was relieving that it was Dima.

His face was familiar, even if exhausted. When she'd first arrived, she'd had the thought that Roman and Artyom looked an awful lot like Dmitrii. She supposed she knew even then that it was the other way around, but she had grown used to him first. Learned to hate him first. Learned that what he did wouldn't let her hate him.

"I didn't expect you to be awake," he rumbled, turning the corner from the ladder to peer through her hay bale castle. Sometimes he was almost affectionate.

"I can't sleep." With a shrug, she pulled her needle through. "It hurts too much."

"Yeah, Rune told me he fucked up your meds earlier." Cigarette dangling between his lips, he sat on one of the overturned bales, long legs invading her personal space. She despised being at his knee level, and yet it felt right, the only place she'd ever been. "He sent me with some more pills for you."

"How did he know I was awake?"

"He's how I knew. He saw your lamp on through the window."

Dima's knee bonked against her shoulder. Her skin crawled, but all he did was reach into his pocket, offer up a small cluster of four tablets that she promptly took with her flask.

With a flick of his finger, he lit the cigarette between his lips, took in a deep breath.

"I'm sorry," her ears almost stung at the unfamiliarity of the phrase, "for how you found out earlier."

She wanted to ask what about.

About putting life in her, she knew. About pregnancy.

"I know you don't think of it as a big deal. But it is to me." Voice a soft whisper, she didn't expect him to listen. Just to hear. "I wanted to be a mom someday."

"Not here you don't. Here, if you're pregnant..." Shook his head, blew smoke up against her bales. "You lose everything. Won't be your baby. You won't have any say."

"I would marry, if it's what you want." She tied off the thread, leaned back against his leg. "One of you. I'd marry one of you and bear as many children as you want."

Dima sat up. His leg tucked behind her back, he leaned to caress her hair, pulling her toward him. The sock was put aside, and he guided her head to his thigh.

"I know you would. But no one wants you, Mira. You're a reusable hole and that needs treatment to stay usable."

How could he say such awful things and stroke her hair?

"Tell me what you think about Belle."

Head tipped, she turned herself, cheek to his thigh. His fingers threaded through her hair, leaning back to smoke thoughtfully. What he thought her motivation was, she was unsure.

"I've never been all that fond of her. Don't think Dad is either. She makes me think too much of my own damn mother." Dmitrii gave a rueful shake of his head. "Loud. Thinks having a pussy makes her the most valuable fuckin' thing on earth. She talks a load about being a new age woman and some jazz like that."

Somehow, none of it made her feel any better.

She wanted a reason to hate Belle. She wanted to feel like she was a choice worth making, but where Dima stroked her hair, told her his feelings -- she wasn't like that. Mira was quiet, compliant, didn't present herself like Belle at all. The fact that Dima didn't like her made the traits somehow desirable.

"You know what the withdrawal's gonna be like?" This question was asked in a cloud of smoke. "You haven't come off it before."

She shook her head no.

"It won't be pretty. It'll hurt. You'll shake and drop shit. You'll be cold and angry. You'll do shit you don't want to do. And it'll drive you crazy."

Sounded like he was trying to upset her again, and she sighed, nuzzled his thigh like he could've given her what she wanted. As much as she wanted to hate him, she would take Mrs. Dmitrii Sokolov if it meant things would change.

Even if it meant he whispered horrible things to her in bed for the rest of their lives, just to feel her fear.

"It's going to be terrible no matter what I do," she conceded.

"Exactly. So I wanted to bring you a little something to make it easier." Dmitrii's hand cupped her face, lifted her head to look her in the eye. With his cigarette between his lips, he spoiled his own surprise with the movement of his free hand.

His fingers plucked at his trouser buttons. One undone. Then another.

Her heart raced.

How was that supposed to make it easier?

"Master Dima..."

He shushed her rapidly, tucked his trousers down a notch. His undergarments unbuttoned even faster.

"One last dose. Don't be a fussy girl, you'll appreciate it, I promise." With strength in his touch, he maneuvered her, tugged his underthings open further. "Just your mouth. I know you're sore. It'll help with that too. Come on. Open..."

Whimpering, she shifted on her knees. Large eyes pleading on him not to, to just let it pass.

Her lips stayed sealed.

"Don't make me get rough with you, princess." Voice a rising husk, Dmitrii sucked in a slow breath. The diamond in his throat bobbed as he blew another cloud into the air. "Open your mouth."

Maybe if he left her now she'd get an ounce of fucking sleep.

Her lips wobbled.

Dmitrii's grip on her hair turned vice.

Pain bit in the shape of Dima's hand on her cheek.

The breath knocked out of her.

His grip pulled her between his legs. Pressed her face to the opening of his trousers, felt the start of him plumping against her smashed lips. She tried to mumble -- but he only moaned into his cigarette.

"Tongue, or I'm cutting it out, Miroslava."

Relinquished sigh, she parted her lips -- the force with which he held her there fed his flaccid penis between her lips, into her mouth. She let it lay across her tongue, curled it at his head, licked along the growing girth of his shaft.

"Good girl," Dmitrii gave in a pleased moan, relinquishing his hold on her now that she'd stopped fighting. He was stiff enough to wrap her fingers around his base, stroking everything she couldn't fit in her mouth. Of the three of them who had made use of her, Dima was most unwieldy, but she'd gotten good at meeting the limits of her throat with her palm. He gave a pleased moan, relaxed where he sat. "I want you to keep something in mind, Miroslava. Look at me."

Hands off her completely, he propped one arm up against the straw.

She glanced up; felt him pulse in her mouth as she met his eyes. There was a wicked slash on his face.

"Everyone else can play with you. Borrow you. Take you out. But at the end of the day, I want you to remember that you're my toy." Lord help her, she swallowed at his head, and he groaned with audible, breathless delight. "I found you. I trained you. I own you."

What the hell was she supposed to do? Nod?

She sighed, licked up the bottom of his underside -- and his hand caught her, forced her back down his shaft. Mira gagged once, but Dima set a sudden, harsh pace to the invasion of her throat, panting with every push. Her nose was beginning to run.

"That's my good girl," he repeated, breathless and gasping. "My girl. My good girl..."

The more he said it, the less she believed it, but he muttered, panted, gasped --- and forced her head down. She gagged around his cock, stomach filling with that tingling heat that always accompanied this, it, him.

Nothing spilled onto her tongue by the time he let her up. She licked at his tip, the last milky pearl dissolving in her mouth. He used the grip on her hair to press a small kiss to her cheek. "My toy," he reminded, the last thing he had to say before leaving her for the night.

Hopefully Rune's meds kicked in first.

***

The telephone did not ring inside the cabin until late into the night.

Most of the Sokolovs inside rested, only Dmitrii in his room awake enough to hear the alarming little ring and Rune were he not in the cellar still, but Roman had insisted on waiting up for the blasted thing to chime finally. That meant three in the morning, coffee and vodka, but it also meant quiet time alone in the kitchen with his husband. It meant voices traded in solemn whispers so as not to wake their sleeping sons, and Osian had come to miss the docile coziness of such moments. Just the same as he'd come to miss a busy house, crowded voices, clamoring boys.

But the call came, and Osian was left to nurse the steaming latter half of his coffee, the taste of sugar still sticking to his fangs.

The cone was staticky in its feedback, but a honed ear, in the silence of the kitchen, could discern clearly.

"The drop location... I've found a bed and breakfast down the street with a decent view."

"Binoculars?"

"Several, sir."

"Initial observations?"

"It's an old residence. Perhaps a business, but a small house in construction. Flowerbeds aren't kept---" At this, Roman chuckled. Knew who it wasn't. "---and thus far, I've witnessed a single individual entering and exiting."

"Mh-hm. Anything?"

"Hard to say. Thirty-something white male. Species indeterminate, seems working class so far."

"Your records?"

"Began at exactly six-thirty-seven this morning, sir. Observed three small children out front. All appear unrelated."

"Remember spies can be any age. Many species age slowly, or stop entirely."

"Yes, sir "

"Remember: one report a day now. Until it's solved."

"To your glory, sir."

"Don't disappoint me."

Gently placed back on its holder, the cone fell silent.

"Well, it's not the queen bitch herself," Roman slurred. Such intoxication had been hiding well in his voice over the phone, but his appetite for drink always evolved when he was stressed. And whether he was willing to admit it or not, Roman didn't lean on the phone like that, like he'd lost a coin beneath his own machine, when he was calm. "Unless she's lost that zest for flowers."

"N'deige's woman would never." His sire's wife -- ha! did that make his sire the king bitch? he wondered -- had built herself on making life. And damn his blood-kin, he thought with a sneer, for siding with her. For thinking they of all monsters could give life. "Even their little brats obsess over flowers."

He liked his flowers plenty. Grew his own, dried them, used them. There was something pitiable about the way they kept useless things, just because they were alive. Perpetuated the hopelessness of dying species, because they were pretty.

"Did you hear the description?" the demon slurred, a dark storm in his eyes.

"It could be anyone," Osian sighed, leaned against his chair with a hand wedged between his crossed legs. "If it's a business, we may not see results for weeks."

"Mh-hm."

Finally, straightening up, Roman stretched his back, popped a few bones in the process. He crossed the kitchen, poured them both another drink and returned at last to the seat across from him, where he belonged. If Osian could've purred, he would have, quiet, low.

"Do you have any thoughts rattling around up there?" he needled, passing an unnecessary moment of silence. "Or are you going to drink in silence all night?"

The last of Roman's coffee, grown cold from the call, upended down his throat, hardly a mouthful left. No amount of caffeine or alcohol in the world could numb guilt. Fear. Mania.

"It's too soon to make any judgements," Roman admitted, slowly. Sometimes it was like pulling teeth with his dear monster, but perhaps that would've been more of a problem if some part of him didn't enjoy his pain. "I have a few suspicions, but..." A sharp inhale through his teeth. "I don't know, my love. I don't want to cast aspersions."

"More like you don't want us to fear who it could be. Correct?"

Odd, Osian noted, but the rising frustration in his chest was making him feel poised like a snake. Always his demon he would strike, but it was the power that made him feel drunk.

No one got secrets out of him like Osian did. No one knew his evil like Osian did.

No one made the other worse like they could, and the thought of it was titillating.

Roman hung his head, rubbed the shorn, scarred backside of it. The muscles in his shoulders carved dark gaps, and his tired blue eyes snapped up with an exasperated glaze. How much longer until he whittled him down this time?

"A lot of angels want me dead. A lot of humans want me dead. A lot of demons want me dead. Can you name more species?" Though his words were venomous, they were biteless, and he drank half of his glass in one go. "You know better than anyone I didn't get here on a gold-paved road and golden fucking chariot."

"This isn't a commentary on your life," Osian hissed. Again, Roman seemed to fiddle with something at the back of his head, but so long as Osian couldn't smell blood, they wouldn't have a problem there. He paused for a soothing breath. "This is a test of trust, my dear. Now, do you have it for me or not?" The roll of Roman's eyes rose that fury in him, and his fangs ground together. "Do not act like this is trust, Roman. You are purposely obfuscating something from me and that is a lie, my love. A lie. Is that trust?"

Silence hung in the whisper-bitten air.

Roman rocked back. His chair creaked, shadow cast longer across the floor.

With arms folded across his chest, he measured his words carefully.

"There are several princes who are jealous of me. Hell is a hierarchical place. It's nothing but war in the levels. And if you want power, you take it by force."

"Who the fuck would be stupid enough to challenge you?" Osian's voice was an almost accusatory hiss, as if it was Roman's fault for being such a tantalizing target.

"I can think of one."

***

Lovrenc arrived three days after the completion of the O'Reilly home, the first day after it was outfitted with a slew of basic furniture.

It was modest, a cramped two-storey, but it gave both Miles and the twins a modicum more privacy than they'd had before. The twins made a great show of demanding the first floor, with the exception that the living room and kitchen would of course be communal, given that neither of them yet had much patience for food that had been so much as salted before being thrown on a pan in oil. Miles complied gladly; it meant he'd have to keep an eye on them more, to be downstairs cooking so often.

For Miroslava, however, the week had dragged on. Longer than she was used to, time was, and all of it she had to spend sleeping or not sleeping, working or not working, close to demons on all sides.

Her Sololov's curse had turned into a slow-wilting ache.

Once the exhaustion of the abortion had truly run its course, she'd begun a new round of lying awake, staring at the rafters, shivering.

Twice now, she'd gone down and bundled up with Lyuba and her calf. While the furry bovine were a soothing pressure where either laid their head upon her side in the pile of fresh straw, neither helped the bone-deep cold. She was beginning to worry that with the precedent she'd started, the cows would start to expect their nightly cuddles.

Beyond the shivering and freezing, there was the dizziness, the nausea, the growing ache in her muscles.

There was the loneliness. The endless, gaping loneliness, and that crying that'd started up at the drop of a hat, and the back-and-forth between vomiting and being trapped in the outhouse at the edge of the woods. It was only her pride that kept her from crawling into bed with any of them, just to be touched, to be held.

Marla and Vinny provided her one solemn distraction, Marla the only reason she hadn't had to wash vomit out of her hair more often.

Vincent had graduated from lingering in the barn while the girls spoke, and now lingered in the loft, seeming to watch the rats that scampered among the rafters.

From Marla, she'd learned more about their lives before the compound. Just passing things here and there, of starvation, of weak limbs that had to adjust to standing, of the taste of her ancestors' organs. Neither of them seemed keen to mention why they'd chosen to kill them all -- all the mortal and werewolf members of Miles's living bloodline -- though, and perhaps that was for the best.

Mira wasn't sure she would understand, even if they explained.

The important thing was that neither of them set off the creeping hunger that the demons' presence did, as if her body knew from smell alone whether they could give her whatever chemical it was her body needed.

Needed, now. Not wanted.

And that was a hard realization to come to, chewing on her knuckles on the sixth day of nothing, hair full of straw from tossing and turning and contorting to try and find a position that didn't ache.

Dmitrii had already proven he needed it too. Gotten used to it as a habit.

He'd crept up to her hayloft that night, careless that she only pretended to be asleep. Tucked in behind her, ground himself against the division of her ass until his breathing grew ragged and her body seemed to preternaturally know when his seed touched the air, that it would be so easy to just turn around and break her fast. He'd left without so much as a goodbye, if he even noticed that she was, in fact, awake.

So when the barn doors opened again, later, later that night, part of her worried that his dry massage hadn't worked quite so well for Dima, and he was coming back to spoil the effort she was putting in.

But Dmitrii didn't sing. Not like this.

When he sang, it was charming, off-key, American in all the wrong ways.

The singing that alighted through the barn was heavenly.

Voice unrecognizable, she stirred as it rose. Like a choir, but only one voice to occupy the lofty ceilings it demanded. Almost feminine.

Thoroughly disturbed, Mira crept to the edge of the loft, peeked her head over. In the barn below, a new mare with a coat like dirty snow was lashed to a post. Beside her, the source of the song: a thin man of considerable height, with platinum hair braided long behind his head.

He seemed to feel her eyes on him, turned to find her with a curious smile. She was only a second too late to hide.

"Oh, hello up there." His voice was lyrical, lilting. "You must be Artyom's new toy. Well---" Behind the lip of the hayloft floor, Mira frowned. Perhaps he was misremembering who'd brought her here. "---my apologies if I woke you. Oksana here is just happy not to be travelling anymore, but she's young and excitable still."

With that, he tickled the horse's chin, who tossed her massive head and nuzzled him. More affectionate than Dima's horses, at least.

"It's no trouble," Mira admitted after a moment. Graciously, she allowed the rest of her head to peek over the loft, a few locks of her hair dangling over the edge. "I can't sleep anyway."

"Ah, well. Can't imagine it's too inviting up there. Care to join me down here for a drink in that case?"

So blasė.

Familiar was the tickling of fear in her belly. Familiar he was not, and yet he spoke to her like he was.

"Are you... Artyom's friend?" He really hadn't expounded on that when he'd said it, she realized. "One of... Master Roman's slaves?"

A wave of a cringe washed over the newcomer's face, but he nodded and chuckled quietly.

"I should introduce myself, shouldn't I?" Sharp sigh. "I'm Lovrenc, and yes, I'm one of the Hounds. Slave is accurate, but distasteful."

Lovrenc, yes, that was the name of Artyom's friend. The one.

Allah, he really had only spoken of one friend, hadn't he?

"One drink," she conceded, curiosity driving her slowly down the rungs of the ladder.

By the time she made it to the floor, Lovrenc had removed most of his belongings from the horse's saddle, and she showed her gratitude for the lack of weight by shaking and stomping and tossing her head.

Bags set atop a nearby crate, he leafed through one, humming as he did so. Mira approached the horse, gently scratched her bristly grey nose. Heat gusted her palm with each of the mare's breaths.

The sound of a bottle being uncorked, then a splash of liquid into two cups. Little tankards, as he turned, beaten traveling mugs that had weathered well.

Up close, there was something deeply androgynous about him. Features fine and long, almost feminine, yet those same features gave a definition, a bony edge to his face. His blue eyes were an unsettling shade of almost-colorlessness, but his smile was gentle, ambivalent.

As if he was playing some sort of game she wasn't aware of.

The mug was cold in her hand when Mira took it from him.

And, without further adieu, he sat with his long legs crossed, atop a massive crate labeled only stone in what she'd come to know as Roman's messy, loopy cursive. He relaxed into the old crate as if it was the softest seat he'd had the liberty of sinking into.

The fluid inside was amber like a well-brewed tea, and almost syrupy to her tongue. It burned like alcohol, but instead of the sensation of drowning in fire that she'd come to associate with vodka, it soothed her palate as it stung. Like honey, gone off.

"Have you been here long?" Lovrenc began. He shrugged off his coat as he spoke, revealing well-tailored trousers and a pressed button-down. Just as her heart began again to rise a flag of fear into her throat, he sagged again, sipped his drink. "Artyom only wrote me last month about you, but he's terrible with the details, to which I find myself meticulously desperate for."

Brow furrowing, there it was again.

But, it explained how he'd known about her. Artyom had written about her, but that was what she had trouble with; what did he have to write about her for? And, furthermore, if he was just updating Lovrenc on the state of the compound and its inhabitants, what had he had to say about her?

Curiosity nagged almost like jealousy.

Another sip of her drink drowned it, warmed her belly against the cold night outside. Lyuba grunted a groggy sound over her shoulder, demanding Mira cuddle up in the pen again. Her calf yawned, tongue curling in her pink mouth casting an odd, flickering shadow on the wall.

"You better answer that." Lovrenc gave another laugh, and she moved to rest instead leaning against the outside of the heifer's pen, where she could reach to gently scrub at the broad space between her eyes.

"It hasn't been very long," Mira confessed finally. Something in her said if she was with the cows, she was safe. If he came at her, she could hop into the pen, hope Lyuba's shiny horns could do a bit of damage. "Three months maybe. But I was with Master Dima for a year."

With a sharp whistle, he shook his head. Braided metal dangled from his ears, and it swayed with the motion, sparkling with the lantern-light.

"Lord almighty. You don't even look twenty."

Were demons allowed to swear like that, she wondered? Didn't seem to hurt him, at least.

"I'm not."

Something about his teeth were a touch too perfect, when he grimaced. Lyuba nosed a daub of mucus on her forearm; licked it off. One bubble remained on her flesh.

"Should I venture a guess?"

Mira shrugged, looked at the calf slowly dozing back off against its mum. "I was fifteen when I was locked away. Then Master Dima found me, and it's been a year. So I'm sixteen."

Lovrenc massaged the bridge of his nose for a moment, then nodded in quiet confirmation.

"I have no idea why I'm surprised, really. It's a terrible way to return to reality, really dreadful. Waking up one day belonging to a Sokolov... Well, let's say we're familiar there, shall we?"

She caught a glimpse of his sardonic smile before she turned, plucked a piece of straw off Lyuba's nose and tossed it down. Artyom had told him her story, then.

Which meant he did know she 'belonged' to Dima. Hm.

"Happier things, then. The cows seem quite familiar with you."

"I made a mistake a few days back... started sleeping in the pen with them." None of the Sokolovs even knew that yet. "Didn't help me, but now Lyuba seems to think I must cushion her head with my belly every night."

Bells tolled in his laughter, morning sun and long breezes. He seemed almost warmed by the thought.

"They're simple, the hearts of animals. You know, I've heard it said that the trust you're able to build with an animal can be an indicator of a pure heart."

This time, it was she who sputtered, laughing unabashedly despite the way it stole her air and dizzied her head again. Her, a pure heart. Unlikely. Lyuba only liked the patterns her nails dug into the bristles of her fur, the warmth of a body around her cold head at night.

"What's the alcohol?" she asked finally.

Lovrenc only answered after taking a drink of his own. One hand curled around his head, seeking the tie for his hair, freed it with a gentle shake. The silken texture slipped apart almost immediately.

"Cognac."

"I've only had vodka and wine and ale."

"Oh, you poor dear. Not that there aren't standouts in each category, of course, but cognac is a refined drink."

Refined. The drinks her 'master' called refined were dry, aggressive, tasted like different poisons she could just put in her body for fun, she supposed. Dmitrii had once given a long-winded explanation about the English differentiation between the two spellings of whiskey, and she'd just sat beside him blankly, stupid, listening but absorbing nothing. She didn't even speak English.

Perhaps that's why she parrotted him, squeaked out a playful response of the same critique she'd heard Dima give.

"It's a bit sweet to be refined."

Lovrenc's mouth hung open on a dramatic, delighted gape. He sucked in a shocked breath.

"You've been deprived," he declared. "Do you know that sweet things can be refined, too? Not just cruel, aggressive things. Do it with me. Inhale deeply into the cup, swirl it around. Then let it coat your tongue when you drink. Try to taste for apricots, and candied litchi."

As he spoke, she did so.

A deep breath revealed it was indeed alcohol with a gentle spice in its fragrance. The coating of her tongue burned, and though it was sweet, something like frosted pears, the flavors were unfamiliar.

"Well?"

"I like it. But... I think I've only had apricot a few times. And I don't know what litchi is."

Again, Lovrenc let out a bubbling, chiming laugh. Lyuba wrapped her needle-ridden tongue around Mira's arm, trying to use the great muscle to pull her in.

"Goodness gracious girl. I see what my project is going to be for the foreseeable future."

"Teaching me about alcohol?"

"About the world, dear. There's a lot out there this little compound won't give you." There was a gleam in his eye, peculiar and plotting, and she'd long learned not to trust demons when she could see them thinking, but this gleam felt like a weapon meant for her to catch not in her body as a wound -- but in her hand, by the hilt. "Maybe I can bring a little bit of the world to you and Arty. And I heard Miles has children now, too. Or again, I guess. Either way--- We'll have fun, you and I. I happen to be quite fond of pure hearts."

Shooting back the last of his alcohol, Lovrenc pried himself up from his seat, stretched, began to pack.

The very heart he mentioned tumbled headlong through her limbs, careening like a drunk runner. What the hell did that mean?

Was he going to be a danger too?

"You can't say that. What does that mean?"

Coat shrugged back over his shoulders, his eyes were only tiny glimpses, little gleams that tightened the knot cinching around her chest. Lyuba's teeth pinched her arm.

"What does that mean?" she demanded again, but he threw his head back in a delighted laugh. It didn't ease her any.

"Don't be so scared." Helpful. "Have you ever heard the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin?" She said no, and he nodded, arms loading down with bags. From his coat pocket, he extracted a key ring, hefted the last few bags into his arms. "That's alright. Think of me this way: not everyone who was an angel hated being one."

Then, with a long smile and the lantern in hand, and he stopped at the barn door, hollered to his horse. "Take good care of her, Oksana. I'll see you both in the morning."

Arm still manipulated by the heifer in her pen, who knew soon her sleepy wheedling would win her over and Mira would indeed crawl into the straw with a belly full of warmth and a hope to sleep for once, Miroslava was left to think. Darcy and Hyun were angels once. Both had been clear, playfully talking game about how terrible it was. What a mistake it was. How much happier they were as demons.

The cognac indeed warmed her belly, and she crawled in beside Lyuba's calf. They had named her Liliya, in the heat of the moment. Roman was already looking for a buyer, said the cycle was like this. They didn't need the money. Just the milk, and the calves, who went on to provide milk to others on the run from the slowly tightening fist of what Dima and Roman and Osian kept calling the Provisional Government.

For tonight, little Liliya shuffled her awkward hooves and curled fur onto Mira's lap, pressed a warm and tired head to her belly. How could someone hate being an angel? How could someone love it?

***

Lovrenc loitered in the kitchen the next morning, along with Ulric, Darcy, and Artyom. Hyunwoo and Dmitrii had gone off scouting for lumber for the next house, which would belong to Roman's other 'brother' and his fourth slave, as well as their two adopted children. Vampires, Roman said, nothing more to worry about.

Miroslava, anxious and dissatisfied, trembled with every movement, but she needed to keep doing things. Her mind raced, tumbled, tangled over itself. She couldn't think straight, and the threads she did have were knotted together and intangible.

Thus, the kitchen was deep-cleaned. Sour vinegar flooded the kitchen, scrubbed down into tiles and corners and seams. Everything was stripped from the refrigerator, re-organized, cleaned, and her body was begging for rest. But she knew if she stopped, she would stop for too long. Forever again, perhaps.

Snacks littered a tray on the table. The last dregs of tea and alcohol remained, but with them so deep in conversation, she'd hated to interrupt, and instead set herself to slowly rearranging the cookware cabinet.

"Sibelius was amazing to see." Ulric popped an olive into his mouth. The four of them had nearly emptied the saucer of olives since the start of their conversation, but they were still second to the little slices of dense cheese from the last round of nursing Lyuba had. "Symphony no. 5 really left me feeling... unwell, in a good way."

Lovrenc, seated beside him, hummed softly. "I much prefer the violin work of Alpine Symphony. It's inescapable and welling, but so powerful."

There was a spark in Darcy's eyes, out of sight of Mira, but she could hear it clearly in his voice.

"I'm fucking desperate to find a human orchestra that hits like a heavenly one."

"Oh--- Never. You'll never." Lovrenc was confident. "The acoustics are different on this plane, to begin with."

"Is that what it is?"

At the counter, the telephone rang.

The room fell silent, and Mira shot up, rocked to her feet on the other side of it.

On its side, the cone rattled. Wide-eyed, Mira stared. Watched. Waited. Wondered if she was supposed to answer it for them.

All of the men at the table seemed to wonder much the same.

It rang again, and Mira frowned. Maybe she could. Maybe she could jot it down for him. Or maybe that'd be the straw that turned him against her.

Roman appeared in the doorway. Glanced to her. Grabbed the cone.

Answered with one word.

Mira froze in place. She could hear the voice on the other line. A man, indeterminate.

"Master. I'm ready."

"Go ahead."

"White male, Irish, thirty-three. Unaffiliated werewolf."

"You're positive?"

"He's no demon, but he read the letters."

"No mistake?"

"No mistake, sir. He's doing something with them, but he's not sending more out."

"Are we seen?"

"No, sir."

"Then strike."

The cone was hung back up.

Roman made eye contact with her. Pointedly.

The silence gaped, and Artyom spoke up: "Update, Dad?"

"No," the elder cast over his shoulder. Mira cowed, abandoned the counter in favor of her cabinet. Held to a quiet hope that Roman didn't know she'd heard, just wanted to look at her like that. Tried to disappear again into her work.

"Sure sounded like an update," Darcy teased.

"No update."

No matter what she did, she couldn't escape the old demon's eyes locked on her. Mira worked hard to organize the pans, tidy the assortment, work hard and work well and hope that was enough for him. The further he stayed from her, the better.

With an odd, playful tone, Roman questioned, "What in the hell have you done to my kitchen, princess?"

"Probably getting out the withdrawal energy," Darcy supplied around a mouthful of olive and pickled fish.

Mira could only nod, glance over her shoulder.

"Go get some fresh air, girl," Roman commanded. "You made bread, right? Leave the kitchen alone. Hyun said the chicken feeder needed refilled, why don't you and Artyom go fill it?"

"Why me?" Artyom barked, drawing a gentle laugh from Lovrenc.

With a shrug, a grin, Roman's hands crossed over his chest. "Thought you were pretty strong, eh? You want me to make the dinky girl fill the feed on her own with the barrow?"

The boy's sigh was all the answer that was given.

Roman didn't stand in the way of her leaving.

Miroslava emerged into the morning sun with a grateful shiver for what little warmth greeted her. It only touched the surface of her flesh, didn't sink in really, but it was enough. Nothing really helped.

Artyom stumbled out after her, hollering to wait up, and she did so only until he fell in step with her.

Wringing her fingers together helped, a little. Until they popped and cracked, and she stretched them in wide curling arcs.

"Stop doing that," her young 'master' instructed. Sunlight turned his eyes the shade of some of her bruises, a flooded gunmetal just under the flesh.

"Why?"

With a grimace on his face, he caught her elbow. "I don't know, just quit."

Terrible reasoning, but with a faint nod, she did, choosing instead to wrap her arms around her chest, the buttons of her pink pinafore catching on the ruffles of her sleeves. It served to, at least, give her the impression she was retaining some heat in her body.

"I need to do something," came her whine, not a moment later, toes curling and cracking in the chilly grass on the gentle descent toward the barn.

As much as anything here could be, her home was beginning to be a comfort. Simple log construction, one wider tier to denote the boundary of her loft, capped with a square roof where the owls roosted at night, and the occasional bat would dangle.

It wasn't much at all, but it was beginning, in a way, to feel like hers.

"Why?"

"It feels like my skin is going to come off. My blood is going to... jump out and do a dance, or something."

In the way that it sagged. Sloped so she got a touch of vertigo each night before she fell asleep.

In the way that the front left support was brand-new compared to the rest of it. Hyunwoo had said they'd had to replace it the year before, from a lightning strike.

Artyom had fallen silent. When she turned to look at him, he was staring straight ahead, posture loose. Dark lashes squinted against the sun.

"We could chop wood together sometime." Passingly, he winced at his own words, and proceeded to do so for each of his following attempts to correct himself. "I mean I could teach you to chop wood. We could go chopping together. God damn it."

A bitten sigh, glaring at the barn though it seemed himself he was angry with.

Be it feeling poorly or the hint of freedom she had with him, she grinned. Took the opportunity.

"If it's alright with you, Master Artyom, I think I know enough about wood." Her turn to wince as a sharp stone jabbed the sole of her foot, and she scrubbed the offending pain off in the soft grass. "Besides, I doubt I'll be able to really lift an axe."

Artyom's whiplash was instant.

"I could teach you how to handle my axe. ---Motherfucker."

Laughter like that rarely made it out of her anymore.

Head thrown back, a sound like glass bubbles poured out of her. Delight tickled her belly, and something soothed the frenetic energy buzzing inside her.

His breath rose high in his throat.

"I promise I'm not trying to get you in bed. I mean, not that I wouldn't, you're--- I mean, you know, I'd--- I'm not trying---"

"Master---" Mira interrupted, louder than the windtunnel of anxiety his voice and nerves had become. "---Artyom. I understand. I... appreciate it. I really do."

Hadn't been the nicest to her, really.

Glared at her most days, huffed and guffawed everytime they were sent off to chore together purely for being close in age. Or, perhaps, because compliance was most assured from the young maid if he who could best communicate with her was the one to introduce changes of plans.

Certainly didn't seem interested in talking to her, only at her.

But kindness, in this damned place, was kindness -- no matter the flavor.

At the corner of the barn, he stopped dead, a moment of silence passed between them broken only by the distant caw of a raven.

When he turned to face her, something odd had entered those darkened glaciers hiding under his lashes. Not the hollowness. Not the deep, embracing darkness she'd come to know.

And yet, not anything she did know. Not anything she had yet known.

"You do?"

Mira rolled her lips together. Somewhere nearby, there was whispering soft as their own. Some other private conversation, perhaps.

Her answer filled her chest for a moment.

"I do. You don't try to make me like you." It was honest, but the desired effect, even she wasn't sure. "And at least I know you're not who..." There, she was wringing her hands again. Sighed, plunged them against the sides of her dress. "You're not the one who got me sick."

Something churned in his head. Behind the lock-strewn divide of his dark hair, he studied something intangible, away from her.

"Come on." Practically shivering out here, in the sunlight, in a blouse and woolen pinafore, and her gut was beginning to ache again. Soon there would be the hunger and nausea, the sweating, and really, it was a process she'd rather undergo in Rune's office. Mira grabbed Artyom's warm hand, still soft from lack of work unlike his brothers. "The chickens won't let me sleep if they aren't fed."

And the whispering, of course, preceded them, but drowning in the heat of her own confusion, the rush in her body to get somewhere more horizontal, the thought was discarded as soon as it was noticed.

Around the back of the barn, where the forest-edge met the property and Roman had left a few ancient tools no longer useful compared to the modern ones to rot, be reclaimed by nature, the source of the whispering became apparent.

Artyom's hand clapped over her mouth.

Yanked her down, forward, ducked behind a mass of rotting wood and rusted metal. A seed drill, Hyunwoo had called it, last time they were back here foraging.

From between the chunks of collapsed wood, tall reeds grown up around it, and the sanguine-crusted spokes of neglected metal, where Artyom's hips pressed close to hers and his hand remained over her mouth, she followed his doe-eyed gaze. Horror? Or confusion?

The twins.

At first, all Mira really saw was the familiar, pale glimpse of the twins' visage, cuddled together as they often were.

On second glance, she questioned herself entirely. It was somewhat like watching a battle, where the incomprehensible wave of emotion forces the eye to remain beholden, some kind of deep-seeded evolutionary need to watch for threats. She knew it was wrong to be looking again.

An abandoned machine nestled amid the grass, a wheel-like thing to one side of it where the spokes pointed outward sitting crookedly and missing one of its tines. Harvester of sorts, she supposed, for the back of it bore a plane to catch whatever the tines could trim, the front a dingy connector once meant for a horse's bridle.

On that plane, Vincent slouched. Sloped, though sat was closer than lounged. Across his lap sat Marla.

One side of her puff-sleeve dress, a stiff and cottony thing meant to play outdoors, was rucked up over her waist. Mira's heart skipped a beat; prayed she hadn't truly seen it the moment she looked away again.

It burned in her mind for a moment longer than she liked. The whispering didn't help.

Giggling. Breathy, soft laughter, Marla's voice honey-sweet on words she couldn't understand, a heartful repetition of his name.

Miles had warned them this was a possibility, that the isolation had given them odd behaviors for which they should receive no attention, but it offset something primal in Mira's body that she couldn't place. A ricocheting of her worldview, perfectly in frame -- just a little to the left now.

Tiny brown curls of identical off-blonde shades met there, at the angle of her skirt, where the gauzy thing dipped just past a knotted and gnarled scar carved below her belly. One of Vincent's hands disappeared there, the other wrapped tightly around her waist, holding up the layers of fabric. These things occurred to Mira first, and with sweat on her brow, she whipped away, gulped for air past Artyom's parted fingers.

An awful feeling akin to buzzing set in behind her eyes. Why were they witnessing this?

Marla was laughing. And this, damn it, she looked again.

Maybe she could purge the thought someday.

Or maybe she was already damned by the things she'd witnessed here.

Laughter like yips and growls pealed from Marla, her upper torso rotated to meet her brother's mouth with her own. Her giggles, it seemed, came from fiery-eyed nips that he gave to her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, whispered back in the language that neither could parse. What boggled Miroslava's mind -- and, in truth, she wasn't even sure why -- was that, for all intents and purposes, Marla seemed happy.

Where she was perched, her hips ground out a gentle rhythm, Vinny's cock clutched in her hand to hold him close. The hand he had around her waist drifted, gently, upward, gripped tight to her breast, and the way she moaned was beyond anything Mira had heard before.

Was it abject terror, she wondered, that kept her glued there, or Artyom's genuinely escapable grip? Or, and she quashed this one with the fear it'd return, curiosity?

Before she could again escape that feeling of her eyes locked on crisis searching for threats, it happened without much adieu -- a simple, unassuming roll of Marla's hips, and the pink tip of his cock notched against her entrance; slipped inside and sunk with a chorus of moans that harmonized too well, too closely.

Whatever was wrong inside her, she needed to go.

Mira forced herself past Artyom's grip. Thrust herself on hands-and-knees and crawled as quickly as she could toward the corner of the barn again. Nausea rocketed through her.

Let for just a moment the thought stick in her gullet that she'd felt Artyom's erection bump against her ass when she pushed off of him, then discarded it with the same force she used to push up, stand, run back around to the front of the barn, before she could finally stop and breathe again.

Artyom -- and she shouldn't have felt the need to thank Allah for this -- met her a second later, wide-eyed and wired. His face had something indescribable to it, a rocking of his worldview too, and for a moment, when their eyes met, it seemed he too remembered to breathe.

Only his was a gasped laugh, and the hysteria gave her no choice but to join him. Nervous, awful laughter, but it helped shake off the dismal creeping feeling it gave her, brought her back to what was real. What was normal. The nausea refused to quell.

Nothing here was normal, that much was clear.

As the laughter was infectious, so too was the silence that followed, the flush-cheeked embarrassment of the moment passing with a sort of eye contact she wasn't sure what to make of. Perhaps best not to.

His question came out panted, quiet.

"Wha... what do we do now?"

Mira swallowed hard.

Her smile died. We was perhaps not ideal right now.

"I'm going to see Master Rune. I need to lie down."

He nodded, vigorously. Swallowed hard too.

Still didn't break eye contact.

"Good idea. I'm-- gonna go hang out in the woods for a bit."

"Don't tell me that," she breathed. There were too many variables for that to be a reasonable answer, but he looked frightened by her request. "Don't. Just... don't ever tell me where you're going, please."

"Right. Okay. Um... feel better."

Allah, he ran fast.

Just like that, a quick breath over his shoulder, and his height was running, booking it over the hill toward the woods.

Mira buried her face in her hands, tried to decide if the whisperings were trapped in her head forever or if they were still leaking out from behind the barn. Didn't matter; she rubbed her face, threw down her hands, and stalked her way to Rune's office. Threw herself up onto his cold metal table, and laid there for what felt like an hour. Two hearty waves of nausea carried her through it, the sweat on her brow turning the surface damp.

When he finally arrived, startled, in the cellar, he demanded why she was there.

"Can you knock me out?"

The elf stopped wholesale, books thick with notes clutched to his chest. Nearly bloodless pink eyes blinked once.

"Excuse me?"

"I don't think I want to think for a while. Or feel."

The frown that drew across his face was weighty. Thoughtful.

His books deposited on the desk with a thump.

"What happened?"

Mira only shook her head. Pressed her face to the cooler parts of the table, where her fever had not already fogged.

"Just knock me out."

"One condition." Prying one of the books out of the stack, he held one finger up. "May I practice my sutures on you?"

Sutures. Stitches. He wanted to put needles and thread in her while she was asleep.

"Will it turn me to stone?"

"No. Superficial, needlework. It'll be somewhere inconspicuous. Leg, perhaps."

Of all things. She could deal with that, sure. Stitches in her flesh. Just for a bit of sleep.

Just for something that would fucking help.

***

August closed in on the compound with great waves of golden leaves turning the mountains and valley awash with gentle flame. Even the fields at the edge of the property had grown tall and lackadaisical, and as the warmth of summer waned and the scent of rotting leaves began to sweeten the air, the entire compound seemed unanimously to decide that the dwindling days would be best spent enjoying the outside air. Each day that Miroslava hung out the laundry, refilled the feeders, harvested vegetables, weeded the garden, each time that she took a step outside -- someone else was already out there.

Today, riding out the final edge of August's tailcoats, it seemed as if the whole clan had left the indoors.

Out in the gilded field-edges of the property, a small flock of horses -- Sviatopolk included, rearing his great blue head at the neighbouring gelding -- pulled along a strange metal contraption which bore a large belt. Roman had proudly chattered to Dmitrii the ridiculous pricetag he'd paid for it, called it a combination, and though Miroslava hadn't given much care to the conversation at the time, now she could see what he'd meant by the difference in how long it took him. Just this afternoon, and he'd already gotten a third of the modest plot harvested, and though she couldn't see from this distance to verify, if Roman was to be believed, then it was also threshing and removing the hulls of the grain.

By mid-day tomorrow, he'd likely have it all finished, ready for the mill, then for her. It was only the thought of what things she would make with all that flour that kept her afloat in her body, away from the persistent shiver and the constant slow-twinge of pain in her bones. Her plans for the flour, and the rising knots in her belly, and the resinous trail of Dmitrii's cologne where he lounged on the blanket beside her.

Everything smelled like them, anymore. Every scrap of cloth she washed, folded, dried, used, bore a scent that turned the knots in her belly into hunger.

Hunger, which in its infinite wisdom, rejected most foods.

Only by the grace of Rune's medicines was she holding down her breakfast, holding her own against the ambient scent of invitation from within Dima's blood.

Merriment carried along the wind.

A game was afoot.

Lovrenc had gotten both Artyom and the twins running, together. Blind man's bluff, he called it, before promptly tying a cloth around Marla's eyes. She'd taken off screaming with delight, bolting around the hillside with arms outstretched to catch the boys fleeing from her.

A colony of birds startled from the trees, pursued by some large raptor.

"Lovrenc seemed awfully persistent," Dmitrii drawled, and Mira shook her head, tried to find herself there, on the blanket beside him. Her fingers only then seemed to remind her she'd stopped darning for a moment too long. One eyebrow arched, carved a curious wrinkle in his forehead. His eye fell on her from behind his book. "In getting you to join them."

As if that itself were a question, and Mira looked away from their game, back to the threadbare sock before her.

Humiliating, it was, that she couldn't even remember whose it was and yet, clean as it was, she could tell it was a demon's just by the lingering scent soaked into the fibers. Rune had called it pheromones, but having a word for it didn't make her body any less likely to tremble with it in hand, her mind any more likely to allow her to resist the instinctive desire to chew on it.

"Why didn't you?"

Overhead, the raptor called in a pronounced, throaty gurgle.

"Because..." Mouth moving before her mind noticed, she pulled the stitch taut, cast a shrugging glance over her shoulder. "I wanted to sit and enjoy the sunshine with you."

Growl escaping from him, the book tipped only slightly out of the way. It'd been too long since he shaved. The usual stubble on his face was growing soft, shaggy in its silhouette. Almost made him look like a different man, entirely.

But, there was a smile on his face, and that was good enough for now.

Dmitrii sat up slowly on one elbow, encroached to cup her cheek. Even like this, even when he acted sweet, there was that severity in his brow, where his oaken-dark hair fell in his face, betraying his cruelty.

That damn pheromone was inescapable, overwhelming. A hateful pang in her gut urged her to kiss him, find an excuse to drink his saliva.

"You know I like it when you sweet talk me. But I hate when you bullshit me. It's so transparent." Thumb sweeping across her cheek, he laid back again, book propped on his chest. "How many times did I rape you this year, Miroslava? Did you keep count? --- You don't want to spend time with me. Why didn't you go play? With Artyom?"

Allah. He pecked like a crow, right in her eyes.

Lashes fluttering nervously, Mira's head juddered. Her fingers fumbled at the stitching; mis-stitch. Undo.

The raptor called again, no little songbirds left in the sky. Hard thump and visceral oof as a now blind-folded Vincent tackled Artyom. Each of them laughed when they landed.

"Why would I?" She answered with an air of finality. "I don't feel well. And I have things to do."

"You're younger than all of them by a year, technically." There was a spark in his eyes more than just the brilliant sunlight beneath a nearly-cloudless sky. "Are you sure you don't feel the urge to go off and... frolic, or something?"

In the distance, Sviatopolk whinnied, the only one of his comrades to kick up a fuss.

A blindfold sounded dreadful now. Not to see who she was grabbing or near, or what was going to happen once she could no longer see.

"I don't feel well at all," was the only answer, whispered, she could give.

Ears stung with the beating pulse of wings to earth.

Cacophony of tiny squeaks, then thump-thump-thump.

Mira whipped to her right; the raptor.

Black feathers. Wings wider than her arms, and she nearly scrambled back into Dmitrii.

Sleek, shiny black feathers coated its massive body, its bone-white beak protruding from its face as if it didn't belong there.

Powerful, thick legs gripped at something in the grass; wings flapped again.

Beak struck like a spear -- pierced through the skull of a small rodent. Another.

For just a moment, its head cocked to look at her. As if she had invaded its lunch time. Only one beady black eye stared back at her, the other featherless and hollow as a skull.

Eat, it did.

Swallowed one rodent whole, then tore the other in two, in a mess of bloody little organs spilling out into the earth.

Likho.

Ulric's bird, and Mira swallowed hard, felt her heart lowering in her chest.

She'd seen him, from time to time, in the sky as Artyom had first pointed out, or perched upon the barn to caw cruelly at her while she worked, but she had never been so close.

Close enough to touch, if she'd rolled to the edge of the blanket. Close enough to lay hands on his sleek feathers, see if those legs were as strong as they looked.

But the sight of him, even as normal as this should have been, began an exponentially mounting sense of dread in her that she could not shake. No question seemed right to ask of his presence -- he was, after all, only a bird and only eating and only observing her during his brief moment of vulnerability while he ate and in truth had every right to be there in that moment -- and yet something seemed deeply wrong about him.

Perhaps the way he looked at her.

Like a man, she thought, but wasn't certain what that really meant.

Like he understood her, comprehended her existence, knew the role she played here.

He was just a bird, but in the one eye he had, he looked at her like Roman.

Knowing. Expectant. Controlling.

Mira's breath caught in her chest.

"Princess," Dmitrii ordered. Unfazed.

He'd rolled to his side, one hand supporting his head, and laid his marked book beside him.

"Cigarette."

A familiar command, and Mira set down the darning, wrenched her eyes away from the bird and his remains.

Dima's cigarette case occupied the space between them, and she plucked one out from its velvet insides to give to him, then gently braced it between his lips so he could flick a spark to the end. Her hands had hardly ever shook this much, made the whole process feel so unsteady.

Beside her, there came a great ruffling of feathers.

Cold, sour smoke met her, and she let go, sat back.

"Withdrawal must be getting hard. How much longer can you hold out?"

Meat flung onto her cheek. Smaller than the tip of her finger, bloody raw, and it clung, still warm.

The retch she gave was involuntary.

Deep, hearty chuckling came from Dmitrii, around the clutch of his cigarette.

There, she saw it most of all: he was a spitting image of his father, twenty years younger. Their laughs carried the same buckling cadence, the same crushing granite gravel, the same toothy stretch to their cheeks.

His kerchief shook out with a thwip, and he wiped the offal from her face, tender enough for but a moment that she could see he had once been a real brother here, once cared for little things, but not tender enough to lean into.

"I'm going to hold out as long as I have to."

Another shuffle of feathers denoted Likho's exit, back up into the sky.

Where he'd been, little spatters of blood dripped from the blades of grass, onto the soft earth, who for her part absorbed it with greedy thirst.

This time, it was Artyom's roar, bringing down a shrieking Marla. They laughed together, in the grass. Something inside Mira changed course, revolted in her stomach, and she hated the feeling, the ricochet of pain blistering through her muscles that it brought her.

"I've never seen you so certain about something."

Maybe this evening, she would bully him into a shave. If she did it right, got him with tea and bourbon and a cigar, he'd have no choice but to acquiesce. Always had before, though it was usually to get a dose when she'd upset him well enough to be deprived of one.

Likho was hunting again. Roman's combination machine finished an exaggerated turn.

"Master Roman said he and Master Osian can help me come off it for good."

Why wasn't it obvious that was what she wanted?

Dima gave that laugh again. This time, he pried the cigarette from his lips, offered it up to her.

Mira paused.

It was common, for him to offer them up. Stinking, awful things, and she much preferred the hashish Artyom stole from his parents, snuck up into her loft to share.

Something was different this time. In her belly, in the hollow chambers of her organs, in the way that laughter seemed to echo across the valley. Leaned in to take it.

Cologne. Smoke. Pheromone.

Her breath caught in her throat. Lingered close there, tried to fight the rising agony of sharing breath with him. Tried hard to defy the urge to kiss him.

Dima's finger caught on her bottom lip. He tutted, disentangled their hands, left the cigarette between her fingers. "You're coming off, remember?"

The breath she took in of it was cold, harsh. Likho cawed overhead. Fleeting happiness filled her chest, but for the nicotine or the lingering taste of Dmitrii on the cigarette's tip, she couldn't be sure.