Sloane Briallen

I woke up on my back with Karhi’s arm slung around my stomach.  He was curled against me, one arm beneath his pillow.  My shirt had ridden up, and his hand was a nice weight against my hip.

I realized that I hadn’t had a single nightmare.  No reruns of my death in October.  No reruns of my fourteenth birthday.  No reruns of anything that had happened since I’d entered Montana.  I had slept through dreamlessly.

And so had Karhi.

Maybe Karhi and I needed to sleep together more often.  In the less charged way.  The more charged way had started to go south the night before.

Baby steps. 

The curtains were opened enough to cast a single strip of light at the foot of the bed.  The comforter was white, but the light from outside and the curtains gave everything a pale blue tint.  It was cozy.

Karhi’s head was against my shoulder, his hair a mess of waves covering his eyes.  He looked peaceful.  It was rare that I got to see him relaxed like this.  He was always thinking so much that I never just got to see him be still.

He had a faint bit of stubble along his jaw and across his chin and cheeks.  Vampire hair grew slowly.  He had to have been ignoring shaving for a week at this point.  He must have grown facial hair so quickly as a human.

Karhi as a human. 

What had been his name?  Had it been Karhi before?  Karhi was a Finnish name, so it could have been.

I didn’t actually know anything about him from when he was alive.  I had never asked.  I knew that his turning had been traumatic.  He’d told me about it one night when he came home high as a kite in November.  His family killed and worse by some drifter while he was forced to watch.

But what had things been like before that?

I felt him wake up before his eyes opened.  It was like a prick at my brain when he became aware—the noise of a TV turning on.

He opened his eyes and blinked up blearily at me.  He gave me a sleepy raised eyebrow.  “You watching me sleep?”

“What was your name when you were human?”

His brow furrowed.  “Why?”

“I’ve never asked about you before you became a vampire.  Like, we’ve talked about when you were sired—it was fucked up.  But never about anything before that.”

He paused for a moment, gaze drifting in thought.  “Huh . . . I guess not.  Antti.  My name was Antti.”

“You had siblings?”

“Two sisters and a brother.  Helena, Pirjo, and Veli.”

“You lived together?”

He nodded, though I detected a hint of some old sorrow there.  Maybe for how his family died.

“Were you married?”

He shook his head.  “My parents were picky.  They didn’t want us to marry just anyone.  So, I was in my twenties and still hadn’t even been on an escorted outing when I was turned.”

Huh.  “They didn’t want you to have babies to continue the line?”

He shrugged.  “It was ingrained pretty heavily in the culture, yes, but my parents each married when they were teenagers, and their spouses died before they even reached eighteen.  They met each other when they were twenty-seven and married.  It wasn’t as important to them as it was to other people.”

“They loved each other?”

He thought about it for a moment.  I could feel the gears turning.  “Yeah,” he finally said.  “I think so.  They wanted that for us, too.”

That was sweet.

He looked up at the ceiling for a moment.  His emotions were quiet, contemplative.  After a moment, he sat up.  “Well, I think we can leave today.”

“That would be ideal,” I said.

He turned from me to get off the bed, and I caught sight of his back tattoo.

It was a piece that went from the tops of his shoulders down to the base of his spine.  Black ink interspersed with the brightest colors I had ever seen on a tattoo.  It was a nature scene.  A lake and some trees; in the distance there were mountains.  The trees and mountains were silhouettes done in heavy black ink.

But the sky was a rainbow of colors.  Streams of greens, blues, purples, pinks—everything.  And they reflected in the water of the lake where the landscape wasn’t reflected.

The aurora borealis.

For the first time, it finally dawned on me.  “Is that a scene from where you grew up?”

He glanced at me over his shoulder.  He looked down at his back.  “Not an exact rendering, more stylized and based on memory.  But yeah, it’s a scene from my home.”

I reached out and brushed the color in the sky with my fingertips.  “How long ago did you get this?  The pigments are bright.”

“The 80s,” he said.  “A few years ago, I had them pack in more color because the array of colors is so much better now.  I’ll probably get it updated every few decades.”

It was beautiful.  I never usually liked watercolor tattoos, but the juxtaposition of the blending of colors with the hard black lines and shading in other parts of the piece was a nice contrast.

“I think I’d look good with a tattoo,” I said.

“I’m honestly surprised you don’t already have some.  Maybe some stick-and-poke thing.”

I shook my head.  “No, I didn’t trust some rando with sticking that shit in my skin.  Annie and Mikko have a few, though.  Knew plenty of people who had a needle and some ink.”  Mikko had the initials of foster homes on the back of one thigh.

“Fair enough.”  He got up.  “I’m going to go talk to Aoife and see if there’s anything left, or if we can just leave.”

“I should go check on Mira,” I said, rolling out of bed. 

We got dressed and stepped outside the door.  I moved to head to Mira, and he moved to head to Aoife, and we realized we were going in opposite directions and stopped.

“Uh,” I said, suddenly at a loss for how to leave.

“Yeah,” he said. 

“We . . .”

“I . . .”

We stared at each other.  What . . . how did we say goodbye?  Last night had been . . . something.  We were . . . something. 

A laugh I couldn’t control bubbled up, and I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head.

“What?” Karhi asked, uncertain and just a bit defensive.

“We’re a mess.”  I looked up at him.  “A fucking mess.”

That made him smile, a quirk of one corner of his mouth.  “We are.”

I kissed his cheek.  It felt like a safe middle ground.

He blinked at me, a stunned look on his face.  It must have been how I looked after he kissed me on the cheek the day before.

“I’ll see you later,” I said.

“Y . . . yeah.”

I turned from him and headed towards Mira’s room.  I felt his eyes on me until I was out of sight.

Mira shouted at me through the door to come back later when I knocked.  When I knocked again, pain flared behind my eyes, and I winced. 

“Mature,” I muttered.  We called them “brain flicks”, where Mira made our head hurt because she was annoyed.  Like a forehead flick, but beneath the skull instead.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.  I pulled it out to see Mira House calling.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Happy birthday,” Mikko said.  “Sorry it took me so long to call you.”

I glanced at my phone to see it was past noon.  “I woke up like twenty minutes ago.”

He huffed out a laugh.  “Same.  Actually, I’m the only one awake.”

My brow furrowed in confusion.  “Why?”

“Sloane, do I have a fucking story for you.”

I knew a bit about what they’d been through in the past week, but as Mikko gave me the fully fleshed out story, I found myself sometimes pulling the phone away from my ear to stare at it.  When he got to the part about Lina being gone, I started to shout, but he interrupted me that she was fine, and everyone was fine.

By the time he was done, I was standing on one of the castle walls again, staring at my phone once more.  “Holy fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“All of that to be a creepy fuckhead obsessed with a lady who wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

“Yep.”

“You’re all okay?”

“Yeah.  Annie is still healing.  Bell got a call from Mickey last night.  He slept for a couple hours and then left.  When I woke up, he was gone.”

Oh, right.  That conversation felt like so long ago.  Had I really only talked to Mickey last night?  Jesus Christ.

“Did you guys make up then?” Mikko asked.

Of course he knew.  “Yeah,” I said.  I smiled softly.  “I talked with Mickey.  Haven’t been able to talk to Bell yet, but I will when I get home.”

“When is that?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t know.  Probably leaving today.  But I don’t know how we’re leaving.  I got here by running.  Not sure how Karhi got here.”

“You a full vampire now?”

“Yup.”  And then I launched into our story from what had happened in the past twenty-four hours.  I didn’t tell him about siring Alice or Amara or any of the stuff that was sensitive information. 

“Holy shit,” Mikko whispered.  “That’s intense.”

“It is.  There’s more, but I can’t really talk about it.”  I hoped he got the subtext that I would tell him later.

“Yeah, of course.”  I heard his smile.  I hoped that meant he knew what I meant.  Mira may have been bound by confidentiality, but no one had thought to ask me to do that, too.  Though, that might change.

“How’s it feel being a full vampire?”

“I haven’t really noticed a difference yet.  But I also haven’t really had the reason to use the speed or strength.”  I had noticed the intensity of tasting Karhi’s blood the night before.  And the intensity of melding with him.  But Mikko did not need to know about that.

“Fair.”

We chatted a bit longer.  Talked about what he and Bell had discussed.  Talked about how funny it was that that mage had underestimated them.  Talked about how it was probably for the best that Annie stopped boxing.

At that last one, I paused.  “Mikko—I need to tell you a secret.”

“Yeah, anything.”  His voice was hushed.

“Promise you won’t tell Annie or the kids.  Mira would be so mad because I think she wants to tell you.”

“I promise.” I could hear the eagerness in his voice.

“Mira’s moving to Minnesota.  With the family.  All of you.”

Silence met that.  I gave him a moment to process.  It was a big deal.

When he still hadn’t said anything, I started to worry.  “Mikko?”

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” I whispered back.

“Holy shit.  Holy shit.  Holy shit.  HOLY SHIT!”  That last one was screamed in my ear.

“Mikko!” I hissed.

“Right, right,” he said.  His voice was breathy with excitement.  “Fuck.  Like . . . fuck.”

“Right?”

“That’s the best fucking thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

“I know!”

There was a pause.  And then, “Fuck you for making me promise not to tell.”

I shrugged one shoulder.  “I needed to tell someone, and you called.  Someone else needed to be excited.”

He growled in irritation but there was no real heat behind it.  “It’s cruel.”

“Tough shit.”

“Fuck you”

“Fuck you, too.”

He chuckled.  “Alright.  I hear creaking upstairs.  I think I woke someone up.”

“You probably woke up the neighbors with that shout.”

“Shut it.  I’ll talk to you later.  We’ll probably call with a more rousing rendition of ‘happy birthday’.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“Too bad.”

I shook my head, rolling my eyes.  But I was smiling. 

“Love you,” he said.

“Love you, too.”

I hung up before turning around and startling so hard that I actually jumped into the air.

“Fucking Christ, Devlin!” I shouted

He held up his hands in a placating gesture.  “I’m sorry!  I tried to be loud.”

“You’re a fucking vampire; loud isn’t our strong suit.”  I shoved my phone in my pocket, putting my hand over my chest where it was beating a mile a minute. 

He grimaced sheepishly.  “Sorry.”

“What are you even doing out here?” I asked.  Probably a little more aggressively than was warranted, but he had scared the shit out of me, and it pissed me off.

“I was looking for you, but you weren’t in your room.”

I scrubbed my hair out of my face.  “You found me.”

“I wanted to apologize.”

Apologize?  Why—oh.  My conversation with him felt like it had been so long ago.  All of my conversations from before the fight felt like so long ago.  “Hey, it’s okay.  I was being kind of dramatic.”  I actually felt a little embarrassed.

“No, I shouldn’t have said that.  Family shit is complicated.  I was just . . . jealous, I guess.  That you even had brothers to fight with.”

I winced in sympathy.  “I’m sorry for yelling at you and storming away.”

“I’m sorry for basically telling you that it could be worse.”

I held out a fist.  He bumped it.

“We’re good,” I said.

“I took your advice.”

“I heard.”

He smiled.  “Yeah, I’m sure Alice told you.  But I also told Fiachra.”

I blinked, both eyebrows raised now.  “Oh?”

“He was mad at me for not telling him sooner.  But he was also really nice about it.”

“Well, yeah.  What do you do?  Mock someone for losing a loved one?”

He shrugged, shaking his head.  There was an embarrassed smile.  “No.  But I’ve been on my own for so long that I didn’t really know how to tell him.  I’m used to doing everything by myself.”

Yeah.  I wasn’t one to talk.  “I’m glad.  I, uh, made up with my brothers.”

The smile turned from embarrassed to happy.  “Oh, good.”

“Yeah.  When I get out of here, I’m going to go see them.”  I paused for a second, a thought percolating.  “Hm . . . maybe they’ll be there before my birthday is over.”  We could go see if there were any places that gave you as many wings as years you were.

Devlin’s eyebrows rose.  “Oh?  Is it your birthday?  Like, on top of your year mark?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.  Well, happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” I said.  And while I wasn’t ecstatic about my birthday . . . I also wasn’t dreading it.

Baby steps.

I made my way back to my quarters after saying goodbye to Devlin.  As I reentered the Royal Wing, I found Hazel on her way out.  I nodded to her, planning on continuing, but she stopped.  “Sloane.”

I stopped.  “Your Majesty.”

“Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.”

She motioned for me to follow her.

We ended up back in her quarters, just us.

“I just left from speaking with Karhi.  I’ve requested a helicopter to take you to the airport.  You’ll take a plane back with him to the Twin Cities.”

I raised an eyebrow.  “Private plane?”

“Private plane.”

“Dope.”

“I wanted to speak with you before you left.  First, I wanted to thank you.  I asked you to do something that wasn’t completely above board.  I want you to know that I don’t take that lightly.  And for that I owe you a debt.  It would be very rare that I would ask a human vampire to do what you did.”

“But you would ask a living vampire.”

She had been about to continue on, but her mouth snapped shut.  She inhaled through her nose before huffing it out.  “I must remember that it is a mistake to forget how observant you are.”

“You knew a lot about how to sire a vampire using a fledgling.  I imagine you do that in the house.  Probably with spouses or other people who are human but want to turn.”  I don’t know at what point I had figured that out, but I had.

“The fledgling-sire connection is complicated.”

Boy, did I know that.

“You know how to reach me should you ever choose to cash in that debt. 

“I also wanted to apologize.  I failed to protect you from my son.  I let my feelings for him as his mother cloud my judgment.  I should have sent him home after the first time you fought.”

I didn’t say anything.  At this point, anything that any of this family said about Saeran—apologies, promises of doing better, empty platitudes—didn’t mean anything.  I just wanted to be gone.

“He’s been imprisoned and relieved of his duties until further notice.”

I . . . may have been wrong in saying that anything she could have said meant nothing.  Because this was definitely not within the realm of possibilities I had considered.

“What?” I said.

“What he did to you is unacceptable and grounds for losing his heirship.  He will be working to receive his duties back, on top of receiving treatment.”

“Like therapy?”

“Exactly like therapy.  I do not know how I failed him, but I am going to remedy it.”

“And if he doesn’t get better?”

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing that my youngest child has a level-headed wife and good advisors at his side.  I have learned that my eldest is going to be officially abdicating the throne soon.  And she is taking my Captain of the Guard with her.”  Her voice was tight as she said that last sentence.

“Go Faolan.  They decided that bounty hunting was the way?”

“She decided that she was not interested in the crown.”

“Same thing, different name.”  Any trepidation I had felt before at not speaking my mind was gone.  I had almost died for these fucking people.  I would say what I wanted.  “Makes sense anyway.  I’ve heard the H-slur more times here than I’ve ever heard in my life.  And people calling Alice Indian.  And just so, so much racism.”

She paused, caught off guard.

“Just saying.  Maybe if you made sure that there was a zero tolerance policy in your kingdom, your kid would want to stick around.  For someone who wants to make contracts with the underprivileged, maybe you should check your own kingdom first.”

She opened her mouth to say something but thought better of it.  “I’ll . . . look into that.”

I shrugged.

I had clearly caught her off guard with that.  She sounded stunned as she said,  “Cyly has asked to see you before you leave.  Will you see him?”

“Is Alice awake?”

“No.  It will likely take another day or so.”

I guessed I could do the diplomatic thing and go see Cyly.  He had it in his favor that he had made no threats or attempts on my life.  He also had it in his favor that I really liked his wife.  And I was pretty okay with him.

“Alright,” I said.

“I can escort you,” she said, moving to the door and opening it for me.

The walk to Cyly’s room was short.  He was barely more than a stone’s throw from his mother.

Hazel motioned to the door when we arrived.  “I have something else to attend to, but his door is unlocked.  When you turn the knob, it will alert him that someone is there.”

“Sure.”  I reached for the knob to walk in before stopping.  I looked up to see Hazel watching me curiously.  I worried at the inside of my bottom lip for a moment before deciding that I could ask.  The worst she could do was ignore my question.  “Why didn’t you ever do anything to stop Ilona?”

I had heard it in Karhi and Aoife’s retelling of their conversation with Ameya.  Karhi had pretended to go along with Ameya to get an opening.  But her question had been legitimate.  Why didn’t Karhi hold it against Hazel?

I could see from her expression that of all the questions she thought I could ask, that hadn’t even been remotely on her radar.  Which was something, considering I had literally just told her to make her kingdom less racist. 

I saw several emotions cycle through on her face—surprise, confusion, anger, and finally an old, bone deep sadness.

“Ilona was terrifying,” Hazel said.  She sounded tired.  “And even with all the power I have at my disposal . . . she always knew my weaknesses.  I only ever went against my sister once.  And it only took once to learn my lesson.”

I tilted my head at her in a silent question.

“You’re about to see my son.  You’re astute.”  She nodded to me.  “Thank you again, Sloane.  I will make sure to say goodbye before you leave.”

And with that, she left.

I watched her go.  When she had left my sight, I shook my head, opening the door into Cyly’s suite.  I heard a chime as I did.  It sounded familiar.

It wasn’t until I was inside his suite, in their living room, that it hit me what the song was.  Pun intended.

“Was that Baby One More Time?” I asked Cyly as he emerged from one of the other rooms in the suite.

One corner of his mouth turned up.  “It was I Want It That Way for a while.  Alice has a taste for nineties pop.”

“She used to wear handkerchiefs as shirts,” I replied.  “I should have seen this coming.”

He chuckled.  “True.” 

Their quarters were similar to others that I had seen.  A living room, this one with a nice sunken couch and a projector screen, and an open kitchen to one side.  One wall was windows that looked out onto the forest.  On this side, I realized there was a small lake not too far outside of the walls of the castle.  I hadn’t noticed it during my wandering.

Cyly wore a deep orange robe belted at the waist with two pockets at thigh height.  His hair had been pulled back into a protective style, five thick braids that fell down his back.

He reached into one pocket and produced a piece of thick card stock.  He held it out to me, saying, “Our wedding is July seventeenth.  Would you honor us by attending with Karhi?”

My eyebrows almost disappeared into my hairline.  “Seriously?” 

“Seriously.”

I took the card and looked down to see the invitation in flowing metallic purple script on a beige card.  It had the date and venue for the wedding.  After a moment of stunned silence, I realized I needed to say something.  “Of course.”  I frowned as I looked at the invitation.  “Wow.”

“What?”

I looked back up at him, eyebrows knitted together.  “I’ve never been to a wedding.  Are they fun?  The movies are unclear on the subject.”

His expression changed, confused, too.  “Um . . . I don’t know.  I’ve gotten out of every one my parents have been invited to in the past.”

Royalty or not, I saw, kids always wormed their ways out of events their parents were invited to.  I had snuck out of dumb publicist events with Mickey and Bell all the time when we were teenagers and Mauve dragged us along.  Same with Leah’s nursing unit’s holiday parties.

“Well, hopefully, since it’s your wedding, theoretically it should be good?”

“In theory.”  He didn’t look convinced, though.

“No idea.”  I nodded to where Cyly had come out.  I assumed it was his room.  “How is she?”

“Stable.  Lavender comes in occasionally to check on her.”  At my confused expression he said, “The doctor who was in the panic room with us.”

“Ah.  Uh, sorry about turning her after my year mark.”

He shrugged one shoulder.  “Not optimal, but also, I think she’ll be glad when she comes out of it.  I don’t think she would have been happy if anyone else had done it.  Even if it takes a bit longer to break the connection, I’m not worried.  You don’t strike me as someone to use the connection adversely.”

I shook my head.  “I’m not stupid enough to try to fuck around with someone’s head.  And anyway, we’ll be too far away from each other for it to matter.”

“That’s true.”  He glanced towards his bedroom.  “I also wanted to say—your control is impressive.”

I tilted my head at him.  “What?”

“The other day, you high-fived Alice.  I was worried you’d hurt her.  But you didn’t.  You controlled your strength.”

I remembered that.  He had started to say something but stopped himself.  “I’ve been told I have good self-control.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

I shrugged.

He held out his hand to me to shake.  I took it, my spider hand dwarfed by his bear paw.  His shake was firm but not bone crushing.

We shook and the shoulder of his robe fell down his bicep, revealing his shoulder and part of his chest.

I had to force myself not to stare, but it was difficult.

I couldn’t see a lot of skin, but what I could see was absolutely ravaged.  Pale, almost white, scars cut across his chest and shoulders.  He looked like a cutting board several years into use.  There was hardly a patch of brown skin anywhere in the web of scars.

He pulled up his robe.  “Apologies,” he said.  “I was in an accident when I was young.”

I shook my head.  “No.  Thanks, actually.”

“Thanks?”

“Something your mother said suddenly makes sense.”

His brow furrowed, but he didn’t ask.

“If I don’t see you before I leave, goodbye.  Tell Alice, too.”

“Goodbye, Sloane.  Be well.”

“You, too.”

As I closed the door to his room, I heard Hazel again.  I only ever went against my sister once.  And it only took once to learn my lesson.

Fucking Christ.