The world before him was filled with snow and trees.  Behind him was his house, but before him was forever.  Colour danced through the air. 

The aurora borealis was a wash of green and white over the sky.  Pockets of deep red faded into dark, inky blue.  Thousands of stars glittered in the night, pinpricks of light in the vastness of the heavens above.

This had been his peace as a child.  The night sky in the dead of winter.  The waves of green and white that flickered and glided across the sky.  It was almost silent out here, only the occasional brush of wind through trees and bare branches interrupting the sounds of the light show above.

A faint crackling noise whispered in the air above him.  It changed tone and volume with the flickering and dancing of the light above him.  Sometimes it sounded like rustling, sometimes hissing.  Äiti had always said it was the sky talking.  She told him if he listened hard enough, the sky would speak to him.

But, if it was speaking, it wasn’t to him.

Awareness of someone else beside him came slowly.  It was dreamy and unhurried, as if the recognition was taking a meandering path to the forefront of his mind.

Then the person next to him snapped into focus all at once.  Karhi didn’t have to look, though.  He knew who it was.

“I wish that we didn’t do this.”

The corner of Karhi’s mouth twitched up in a smirk.  “I’ll make sure to call you next time to coordinate our sleep schedules.”

Surprisingly, that earned a laugh.  It was quiet, and it was harsh, but there was amusement bubbling all the same beneath it.

“Where are you?” Karhi asked.

“Botswana.  You?”

“Rocky Mountains.”

“The living vamps?  I’d think, with Ilona being practically dead, you wouldn’t have to do things for her sister anymore.”

Karhi shrugged.  His eyes remained on the shifting sky above them.  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his companion, almost as tall as him.  His gaze was towards the sky with Karhi’s.  “It’s complicated.”

“It always is for you.”

Karhi sneered but still didn’t look away from the sky.  “As if you’re so simple.”

There was no response.

“When’s the last time you saw this?  In real life?”

“The aurora borealis?  Or when was the last time I was here?”

“Here.”

“With you.”

“Me, too.”

Silence fell between them, and the crackling filled it.  Every movement of the lights above them changed the sound.  An omnipresent melody of flickering sounds and dancing lights.

“Did it ever speak to you?” Karhi asked.

“You mean like äiti used to say?”

“Yeah.”

“No.  Maybe it just skipped the Y chromosomes.  Helena and Pirjo said that they could hear it,” his companion said.

“No, isä could hear it.”

He didn’t see his companion’s shrug, but he felt it.  Karhi huffed out a breathy laugh through his nose.  “Earth’s atmosphere playing favourites.”

“But just with our family.”

The bit of humour Karhi felt disappeared, replaced with a weight in his stomach.  “Maybe it’s why we survived.  They could all hear the lights.  They were welcomed into the heavens.  We were cursed to eternity like this.”

There was a pause.  Then, “I was actually cursed.  Quit being so fucking dramatic.”

“Me?  Who’s being dramatic?”  Karhi turned to face his companion.  He was little more than an unresolved, vaguely human-shaped mass of dark smoke and mist.  “You weren’t cursed.”

“I wasn’t?” he shot back.  “Then what am I?  What’s that?”  Something like an arm pointed behind him.

Karhi looked to see a dense thatch of pine trees.  Among them was another mass of smoke, this one an electric blue.  Karhi couldn’t look at it directly.  It wasn’t too bright, but there was something very wrong about it.  Looking at it for too long made him uneasy.

Karhi didn’t have an answer.

“I thought so.  You’re free of your monster.  I’m stuck with mine until I die.  God, you’ve always been so fucking selfish.  Ever since you and isä sent me off to that—”

A knock woke him up, and he didn’t get to hear the rest of the rant that he had heard dozens of times over the past five hundred years.  Karhi’s brother didn’t have many talking points, but he certainly had that one.

Karhi rolled out of bed.  He only wore boxers, but there was a robe in the closet that he put on.  He tied it at the waist, answering at a second knock.

Sloane stood outside, accompanied by a woman he didn’t recognize.

“Get dressed and meet us in the king and queen’s quarters.  I’ve made a decision about her.”  She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder at the other woman.

Karhi looked from Sloane to the woman and back.  “You found someone else to hook up with?” 

The woman snorted, and Sloane let out an exaggerated sigh of annoyance.  “No, dummy.  This is Alice Costa.”  The annoyance mixed with confusion.  “Wait, what the fuck?  Why would I go talk to the king and queen about a hook-up?  What, ask for their permission?” 

He shook his head, irritation bubbling in his throat.  He kept it from frothing over in front of the future princess consort.  “I need to shower.”

“Good.  Do that.  You reek of booze.  We’ll meet you there.”  She was already turning away from him, Alice following behind her.  Alice had an amused smile on her face, and she winked at Karhi as they left.

Karhi closed the door behind them, stripping off his robe and underwear to get in the shower.

He had heard that Prince Cyly had a fiancée, before he had come here to find out about Hazel’s request, but he didn’t know anything about her other than that she was a human.  And now, that she wanted to be turned into a human vampire.

Of the three siblings, Cyly was the one with whom Karhi had interacted the most.  Karhi had seen him as a baby, a toddler, and all the way up until he turned himself in his early thirties.  He was the youngest of the three siblings.

The conversation he had overheard between Aoife, Cyly, and Saeran the day before had piqued his interest.  The three siblings had been raised together with the intention that they would one day rule as a triumvirate.  Cailean pulling out was unexpected, but not entirely shocking.  She had spent most of her life under scrutiny for being a halfblood.  It got even worse when she partnered with Faolan, another halfblood.  No wonder she wanted to completely wash her hands of it all.

Karhi had always thought that Cyly was the best option to succeed Hazel and Matadi.  Some would call him milquetoast, but he was just reserved.  Anyone he was close to knew better.  Especially when you had the knowledge that he was involved with the crop circles in Britain in the 60s and 70s.  He had a quietly mischievous streak.

Karhi showered quickly, pulling on jeans and a maroon sweater before leaving.

Mira, Aoife, Cyly, Alice, and Sloane were already outside the king and queen’s quarters when he arrived.  Cyly held Alice tight to his side, thanking Sloane.

Cyly was a large man with broad shoulders and wide hips.  He had the same high cheekbones as his dad and his mom’s killer jawline. His hair was in long thick black twists that went past his shoulders.  He had his father’s dark umber skin and the same eyes that fluctuated through shades of blue, red, and purple that all three of the Ruaidhrí children had.

“We can stop with the grovelling,” Sloane said, holding her hands up.  “If I wanted that I would have drawn out the decision longer.”

“I am still incredibly grateful,” he said.  He bowed to Sloane and the look of horror on Sloane’s face was comical.

“Why can’t you be the only sibling I have to deal with?” Sloane asked, looking from Cyly to Alice.

“If I only ever had to deal with Prince Cyly, I think I would work with the living vampires far more than I do,” Karhi said as he joined them.  He nodded to Cyly.

“Nice to see you, again,” Cyly said, nodding back to Karhi.  “I don’t believe we’ve seen each other since you came to stay here.”

“Not seen, no.  Good to see you, your Highness,” Karhi said.

“Alright,” Alice said, clapping her hands together.  “You’re all here now.   I double checked already.  Matadi and Hazel are available.”  She knocked on the door.

Matadi answered.  When he saw all of them, his eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything.  He allowed them in.

They sat in the same couches as before, Alice and Cyly taking a loveseat while Sloane and Mira sat next to each other.  Karhi took a chair next to their couch.

Hazel joined them from somewhere further in their quarters.  She and Matadi sat on the same couch together.  Aoife remained standing behind the king and queen.

“I’ll turn Alice,” Sloane said.  “I’ll do it in return for a favour.”

“What favour?” Hazel asked.

Sloane shrugged.  “TBD.”

Hazel’s brow furrowed.  “TBD?”

“To be determined,” Cyly supplied.  There was a glint in his eyes.  He was amused by Sloane’s request.

Hazel blinked at Sloane, stunned.

Asking for a favour from the living vampires . . . that was ballsy.

“You asked me to do something illegal.  I’m going to milk it for what it’s worth.  An open-ended favour that I can ask for whenever I decide to.”

He felt triumph and self-satisfaction from Sloane.  He glanced at her to see that her face was impassive, but her gaze was directly on Hazel. 

There was a game being played here that Karhi only knew part of.  Asking for a favour was ballsy, and not what Karhi had expected.  But there was something in Sloane’s triumph that spoke of a story he didn’t know.

“That’s my price.  Non-negotiable.  Otherwise, I decline and take my chances with the courts.”  Sloane crossed her arms over her chest and settled back to wait Hazel out.

Karhi took the opportunity to look at the others in the room. 

Alice looked amused like her fiancé.  Matadi’s expression was intrigued; he wasn’t shocked like Hazel.  Aoife looked like she was struggling to hold back a smile.   

Mira looked positively gleeful.  There was no smile on her face, but her eyes sparkled. 

Moments passed in this stalemate.  Karhi was struggling to put together what was happening.

It didn’t occur to Hazel that Sloane would notask for money.

Karhi barely clamped down the urge to jump at the sudden voice in his head.  His shoulders went rigid, but he didn’t otherwise move.  Stay out of my head.

I can do that, Mira said, but then you won’t know what this struggle is about.

Karhi started to argue before he realized she was right.  Having someone feed him the information he was missing would help him support Sloane better, if he needed to.  Fine.

Hazel made the offer to pay Sloane what she wanted, thinking that Sloane would take it.  She assumed Sloane was desperate for money, and that it would cloud her judgment. 

That doesn’t make sense.  Sloane isn’t desperate for money.  She lives with me.

Any money Sloane makes gets sent to me.

I know.  But aren’t you getting paid well for this job?

I am.  But Hazel made certain assumptions that failed her.

Karhi was getting annoyed.  I need you to be straightforward.  He didn’t want to play games with someone in his own head.

I’ve been poor my entire life until I started working for Hazel.  She paid me a lot for this job.  But the thing about poverty is that it teaches you that even if you’re doing well right now, one bad week—hell, one bad day—and you’re fucked.  Hazel is paying me six digits for this job.  That’s good fucking money.  It will keep us going for a long time.  But we all know that shit happens, and you don’t stop worrying about money just because you have some.

It finally clicked for Karhi.  Karhi had never been poor, even as a human.  He had never had to worry about money, where his next meals were coming from, or any of that.  Even when Ilona had that company he had primarily relied on for income, he had still had backups.  She assumed Sloane would ask for money because Sloane also has that mentality.

Yes.  But Sloane’s been out of poverty longer than the rest of us.  She lived with Mickey and Bell, and then she lived on her own making good money at the bar and through her mother’s life insurance.  She’s been comfortable for four years.  So, before this, Sloane came to me to ask how much I was getting paid.  I told her, and she decided that asking for money wasn’t the move.

And Hazel didn’t see that coming because she thought she could take advantage of your poverty.

Correct.

Karhi ground his teeth.  He knew that manipulation was just what Hazel had to do as a queen, but he hated how much it reminded him of Ilona.  Some naïve part of him had still separated Hazel from Ilona.  She was nicer, and she wasn’t cruel, so she wasn’t as manipulative, right?

Foolish.

Well, I’m going to nope out of whatever is happening in your head now because it’s depressing, and I don’t need that.

“I accept.”

Hazel’s voice brought Karhi out of his head.  Her gaze was steady on Sloane.

Sloane nodded.  “When do we begin?”

“On your birthday,” Hazel answered.

Sloane’s confusion echoed Karhi’s.

Hazel continued.  “We have learned that, if a vampire, just before their year mark, sires someone, then the child-sire bond frays quickly.”

Karhi had never heard that before.  “How so?”

“The magic of a year mark is strong.  Something about it taking place for the fledgling sire during the dhampir stage of the child sired frays the connection.”  Hazel shook her head.  “We don’t know why.”

The dhampir stage referred to the transitional time when a human turned into vampire.  It was typically referred to as a turning coma.  “How quickly does it fray?” Karhi asked.

“It depends on the child and the sire, but within a year or two.”

Karhi’s eyes went wide, staring at Hazel.  “What?” he breathed.

“It was something we learned while Hazel and I were trying to break our bond,” Matadi said, speaking for the first time since they had entered the room.  “When vampire covens were still common, we learned that it was their practice for any planned turning like what we’re doing—Alice is marrying into our family, and she will become a vampire.”

Vampire covens.  Those hadn’t been around in a long, long time.  Groups of vampires, ranging anywhere from a half dozen to a hundred or more vampires.  They had protected each other, policed each other, and it had been where the practice of reparations for dead humans had come from. 

They hadn’t been common for original vampires, and non-existent for human vampires, but they had been almost expected for living vampires.  Covens had been a way for families to live peacefully without infighting.  However, Hazel’s rise to power as queen of the living vampires had wiped out the need for covens. 

“So, I have to do this on my birthday?” Sloane asked.

“That’s when you were turned, correct?”

“Roughly late on my birthday or early the day after.”  Sloane didn’t look at Karhi as she said this.

“Then we would probably do it in the afternoon on your birthday.”

Sloane didn’t say anything.  Karhi could feel the gears in her head working, but he didn’t know what she was thinking.

“Someone will be there to guide me?” she asked.

“I will,” Aoife confirmed.

Interesting.  Karhi didn’t know that Aoife was well-versed in siring.  He only knew that she had sired Sevilen.  He hadn’t known of any other children of hers.

He felt Sloane’s relief that Aoife would be her mentor. 

“We’ll have you leave here immediately after you bite her,” Hazel said.  “The sooner you are gone, the sooner, and faster, the fledgling-sire connection starts to degrade.”

“Okay,”  Sloane said.  She glanced at Mira for a second before saying to Hazel, “So, we’re good here, then?  I can go?”

“Yes,” Hazel said.  “We are finished.”

Sloane and Mira stood up.  Karhi moved to follow them.

“Karhi,” Hazel said.  “A word?”

Karhi held back the urge to glare at her.  He was still angry with her.  And he was angry at himself for his naïveté.  He stopped, anyway, sitting back down. 

Cyly, Alice, Mira, and Sloane left together.  Matadi and Aoife followed them out shortly, leaving just Hazel and Karhi.

Karhi braced himself to be reprimanded for his behaviour the last time they were together.  He looked at her without actually meeting her gaze, something he had perfected with Ilona over the years.

“I want to circle back to our conversation from the other day.  I apologize, I wanted to speak with you sooner, but things came up.”

Karhi didn’t say anything.

“Can you tell me what assumptions you made about my intentions?”

He finally met her gaze, surprise making him pause.  “What?”

“You correctly identified that there was something I didn’t tell you.  But you seem to have jumped to conclusions about my intentions.  Even if Sloane had turned down my request—I wasn’t going to make any threats.  I wasn’t going to pull the penance.”

“You weren’t going to send the request back to the courts as punishment?”  He kept the question from sounding quite as adversarial as he felt.  He was ready to argue with Hazel, but he also knew that he had been walking on thin ice with diplomacy the past few days.  Hazel hadn’t yet taken umbrage with him, but it was bound to happen if he didn’t rein himself in.

“No.   If she declined, I was just going to change the request to what I’m going to ask you to do.”

The wind disappeared from his combative sails.  “What?”

“Karhi, I don’t know where you went in your head, but I’m not here to do wrong by either you or Sloance.  One, it does not serve any purpose for me.  Mira is a huge asset to me, and if I were to do something that affected Sloane significantly?  Mira could do a lot to make my life harder.

“Two, I am not my sister.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

“It has never served me to operate how she does.  I would not be able to run my kingdom if I was as cruel as she is.  And frankly, I also just don’t have the stomach for it.”

He . . . had grossly misjudged this. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally said.  “I have spent a long time under her thumb.  And I know you don’t like to hear it, but you look just like her, and your voices are similar.”

He could see, from the way the corners of her eyes tightened and the thin line of her mouth, that he had touched a nerve.  Hazel and Ilona hated being compared to each other.  Ilona because she thought Hazel weak and a fraud.  Hazel because she liked to think that she was better than Ilona.

“I think any of my siblings would have similar reactions to Amlaíb Cuarán’s children.”

She raised an eyebrow, the tightness disappearing from around her eyes.  “Are you trying to say that my brother has the same voice as Ilona and I do?”

He snorted, finally relaxing for the first time since he had entered the room.  “No, but he does look painfully similar.  Whichever of your parents you look like, they had strong genes.”

She chuckled, shaking her head.  “So, can we start over?”

He nodded.

“Karhi, I would like to use you and your ability.  You would be working with Mira.”

Working with Mira . . . “Is this going to be similar to when you paired me with Savita when I worked for you at the turn of the century?”

Hazel nodded.  “Yes.”

The last time he had worked for Hazel had been in the 40s.  One of her vampires that worked for the courts was killed by a vampire hunter.  At the time, Hazel had thought that someone on the inside had helped the vampire hunter.  She had used Karhi and her best truthseeker for interrogations.

Most people couldn’t hold lies in their heads easily.  However, those that were trained against mindreaders or neuromancers could.  Karhi’s ability was useful for softening people like that, even if they had good mental defences.  Forgetting what was going on broke down someone’s ability to focus on holding a lie in their head and allowed neuropaths to get inside better.

“Why?” he finally asked.

“Someone has killed two of my lieutenant generals and made an attempt on one of my generals.  I am searching for the culprit or culprits.”

His brow furrowed.  Hazel had nine generals that worked for her.  Karhi only knew the titles of a few because some of them were secret even to living vampires.

“Aren’t your generals based out of Ireland?”

“Yes.  The murders were in Ireland and the attempt was here.”

“Who was it that died?”

“I don’t know if you would know the names of the lieutenants.  One worked under Aoife, but the lieutenant that was killed and the one who almost died were both for the ‘bae.”

The ‘bae, succubae and incubi, were a special type of living vampire.  They were vampires that fed on energy on top of feeding on blood.

Karhi huffed out a surprised laugh through his nose.  “Someone tried to take out Faren?”  Faren was the general of the ‘bae.  He was one of the most terrifying vampires that Karhi had ever met.  Faren could kill just by draining someone’s will to live, never touching their blood.  It was a rare ability for an incubus.

“Correct.  It failed, but it was close enough that I have concerns about the security of my castle and whether I have traitors in my midst.”

“Someone almost killed Faren.”  Karhi had assumed that the attempt had failed miserably.  But the idea that someone had gotten close to killing Faren . . . he was a difficult man to kill.  Ilona had tried once, and he had almost annihilated her.

“Yes.  So you can understand my concerns.”

He could.  “Is that why Mira’s here?”

“Originally, no.  She was hired to be party to the meetings I’ve been having, like what we did with the mages.”

“Because she doesn’t have to go into people’s heads to read their minds.” 

Hazel nodded. 

Sloane’s explanation of Mira’s abilities was helping him keep up.  If Mira couldn’t be detected, like a truthseeker could, because she could just listen without intruding—that was invaluable.  Especially with mages and any other type of magic with whom they signed contracts.  Karhi had to imagine that Hazel wanted to know who she was getting into bed with just as much as her contractors did.

“Whoever perpetrated these killings and attempted killings, they have gone undetected for months.  My best truthseekers could not find them.  And someone went after Faren last week.  So it has to be someone who has both been in the Irish castle as well as the American castle.”

“So, you’re going to reinterview everyone who overlaps with this castle and the Irish castle, and you want Mira and I to be present.”

“Correct.  I think that together, the two of you may help us find more than we could initially.”

That . . . was so much less than he was expecting.  He felt foolish.  He had let himself get carried away with paranoia, something he had learned too much of from Ilona.

Hazel was not her sister.

“Why were you waiting to ask me?” Karhi asked.  He wanted to put that concern to rest.

“I wasn’t actively not asking you.  Karhi—I know you and I are very casual when we’re alone, and I allow it because I respect you and have no reason to try to exert any type of ‘queenly authority’.”  She used finger quotes.  “But, for my kingdom, I am a queen with responsibilities.  You just took a backburner in the grand scheme of things.”

“Alright,” he said after a moment of mulling it over.

“Will you do it?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.  I would like us to start with Faren right now, if that works.”

Her request was actually that—a request.  She wasn’t asking him with the expectation that he would say yes.

Okay.  He could do this. “Sure.”