Archive of Our Own

They had settled in Fhirdiad on Felix’s recommendation, not that Claude would ever let him forget it. A city with an undercurrent of humility, hard work, honesty would never be the right place for him, though Petra seemed to be acclimating nicely — no surprises there.

With things the way they are, Felix had said, the first time Claude tossed his handsome head back, eyes rolling their gold underpinnings, we’ll be moving soon either way. You can pick where we go next.

Maybe Almyra, Claude kept saying. Prairies and mountains and no people for miles, just the hot blood of deer and birds the size of dragons and, if Claude was to be believed, maybe real dragons. Less danger. More freedom. We can be in the sun, Claude said, twisting a finger in the longest of Felix’s bangs, and he knew he was trying to irritate him but he rose to the bait anyway, snapping at the digit where it moved.

Dorothea had settled the argument, the way she always did unless she was one of the people in it. We’re here now. We’ll make it work.

Easy for her to say, and Claude and Felix shared a look that said exactly that. Eternal life, or as close as you could get, was a better deal with a partner. Either of them would have been lucky to get Dorothea. Instead, Fhirdiad was looking like another city with no prospects, ten years at most of draining office interactions or, worse, public life in government or local celebrity. Dorothea was hard to steer from that path.

As Felix settled in to yet another pointless, sleepless night in the vaguely garish penthouse of a downtown high rise among all the others, working out until he could almost imagine he felt the sweet cotton of fatigue at the edge of his hunger, he couldn’t possibly have known how wrong he was.

//

“Why am I always the one who has to fix your fuck-ups?”

Claude unsuccessfully hid a grin behind a book that he’d mysteriously become interested in throughout the course of the conversation. Dorothea and Petra were doing their simultaneous arm-cross, the way they knew got Felix just so in the part of him that was lonely, that longed for someone to watch his back and take on his idiosyncrasies and contribute to the broken furniture in the house. Claude at least had the decency to debauch himself away from the apartment.

“Fe, it’s just a bed,” Dorothea said, using her persuasive-exasperated voice, like Felix was a toddler she was trying to talk down from a tantrum. “It’s not like it’s hard to find.”

“And the sky is being covered in clouds,” Petra added. She uncrossed her arms only to wind one of them around Dorothea’s shoulders. Wife, partner were maybe too weak to describe the bond between them, grown through time. It made Felix sick to look at them sometimes, sick with something he wouldn’t give a name. “You will not be having trouble.”

“You know, Petra, your Faerghan is getting really good,” Claude offered, still behind the book. “We’d better move before you start sounding like a native.”

“You will be shutting your trap,” Petra offered, cheerfully. Dorothea chuckled. “Felix, you should have haste. If you are not leaving soon you will need to be going during the day, you will be having more risk.”

“Yes, Felix, go quickly,” Dorothea echoed. “Petra and I need another bed to break. And we’re just not as good at finding the sympathetic cashiers as you are.”

Felix frowned like he wouldn’t move heaven and earth for the women he’d grown to think of as sisters, but he was already rising from his spot, moving like water to the coat rack. A human seeing one of them without a jacket in the Fhirdiad winter would be more than suspicious, and the last thing their family needed was attention.

“Look online for a bedframe that can stand you two,” he spat out, shoving his feet into his shoes and doing the laces deftly. Dorothea and Petra both had smiles on their faces, he didn’t need to look at them to know that. Claude’s laughter had faded into relief at not being the one chosen to go out. “In the meantime I’ll buy you imbeciles some tools. Surely even you can fix something simple with the right equipment.”

“You’re sleeping in the downstairs apartment tonight!” Dorothea called after him, as though it was a punishment and not a blessed facsimile of privacy from the constant reminder of just how alone he was, had been for dozens of years.

Felix's walk, at excruciating human speed, to the only hardware store still in the area code through the light snow was long and dull without the laughter of his coven. Petra, ancient beyond all telling, nearly as old as Brigid itself but still bright and strong and sharp, exercising her gift for languages any time their travels took them to a place with a new mother tongue. She taught them about hunting animals, how it could keep them safe and satisfied living among humans. Dorothea, beautiful and dangerous, precise and persuasive, the only semi-living thing that could keep pace with Petra, keep her happy and on her toes. Claude, something of a stranger when Petra brought him back from a trip to Almyra, hungry but smart as a whip and with sight like a scope. He’d taken time to mellow but mellow he had.

And Felix himself… the less said the better. It was enough that they trusted each other, that he had seen their true characters as was his curse and deemed them worth his time. The rest was history.

The sight of the hardware store, a relic of another time in a flatiron frame, was almost enough for a completely pointless sigh, but Felix knew better than to risk an inhale with people flowing around him, the post-post-work commute, so he just pushed through the door. He could feel them before he could even hear them, the gift that had traveled and intensified through death with him, the immediate read on someone’s true nature. In another life he had been perceptive, cutting through bullshit, now it was just stronger, more certain. Aura-reading, Dorothea called it when she wanted to piss him off. One earnest, one perfectly balanced between smart and sweet, and—

“Double As, can you start grabbing those pots off the back shelf that we got the order for earlier?”

Felix was rooted to the spot, the way he usually never allowed himself to be around humans, as an impossible but undeniable third head popped around the set of shelves nearest him. Someone he hadn’t felt. Red hair, brown eyes, tall, Felix’s eyes took in what his mind couldn’t, mapping the face and form he couldn’t understand, absorbing Earnest’s and Smart-Sweet’s coworker banter in the background of what almost felt like the memory of his heart when it could still pound.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, voice low.

The redheaded question mark, unbelievably, laughed, fully out from behind the shelves now. “You may look like a gift right from the goddess herself but you aren’t too friendly after all, huh?”

It… sounded like a line. Felix was getting lazy, relying too much on his latent abilities and not enough on intellect, which still didn’t explain why the fuck he couldn’t rely on his usual method of reading a person. Smart-Sweet was wobbling at the lop of the ladder, but Earnest adjusted his grip. “I don’t believe in the goddess,” Felix said by way of a reply. Tools, he was there for tools.

“Then where did you blow in from, huh?” Redhead smiled. It looked like the smile of a decent person. He was just someone working at a hardware store, after all, it wasn’t like it mattered much at all who he was. “Maybe it’s fate.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Felix half-repeated, stoically as he could manage.

Redhead didn’t seem fazed. In fact he leaned in a bit closer. Felix held his inhale, chest moving robotically, almost as natural as breathing used to feel. “I do,” he said. His voice was quieter. “I’ve been looking for someone like you for a while.”

Felix let his brow furrow, just slightly, yet another mystery to piece through. Was Redhead coming onto him? Did he… recognize him? “Meaning?” Felix asked, flatly, rather than waiting. He decided it was safe enough to move, so he did, grabbing a basket he wouldn’t need and squinting at a sign he could already see just fine.

“Boxes are in the back!” Redhead called behind him, and Earnest and Smart-Sweet practically chirped in understanding, disappearing through a door half-hidden behind towering stacks of terra cotta pots. Redhead’s movement behind him was obvious, even for a human, and Felix did his best impersonation of a sigh. It probably wouldn’t kill him, wouldn’t kill either of them, if he breathed, he thought, idly, under once more the crushing weight of the inability to tell what kind of person was following him past the rows of garden hoses and lightbulbs and whatever else hardware stores stocked.

“Meaning,” Redhead said, and Felix turned to face him. His eyes hit the nametag first — Sylvain, with a sticker that looked like a cartoonish sun — then the face which, up close, in full focus, was unfortunately handsome. Good thing Felix had decided he wasn’t ready to commit a murder next to a shelf full of hammers, because he inhaled out of reflex.

Redhead — Sylvain? — was speaking, Felix could see his lips moving, his ears could hear the words, but his mind was crashing under a wave of sensation, lungs seizing against the urge to breathe in again, decadence and all things good and evil mixed with… mixed with who the fuck cared. This was breathing air for the first time, this was hot blood and warm brown eyes and a pulse Felix could practically see pounding under the freckled skin on his neck. He reeled back, painful self-control honed over several lifetimes of hunting animals with Petra pulling at his nerves like piano wire, and something in Redhead’s/Sylvain’s face changed enough that Felix could rein himself in to pause. He looked scared, there was no other way to put it, for an interminably long second before he was back to smiling.

“So?” he asked, hands behind his neck, cocksure for a guy talking to his own personal apex predator, and reluctantly Felix set his jaw to reply, to expose himself, to act like nothing strange and life-changing had just happened in his own mind. If his mouth could water anymore he’d be drowning in it.

“So what?” he replied, hard-bitten, snapped shut like a trap. He’d heard about this kind of thing before, the smell of blood his kind would more than kill for, but he’d assumed it had come from the types of old legends that people made into movies — Nosferatu, Dracula, Blade. No one in his group had ever experienced anything like it, which as far as Felix was concerned meant it didn’t exist. Yet here he was, surrounded by tools, staring at the first person he’d met in this new life that he didn’t understand to the bone from the moment he’d seen them with the memory of the smell of his blood like a knife in his lungs.

“So, am I right?” Redhead said, as if that explained anything. Now that the flash of fear was gone he was too confident, too comfortable, like this was a situation he’d been in a hundred times and not a chance encounter with nature’s intended end for his path. And Felix, for his part, mostly wanted to go along with him, to emerge unscathed. Sure, there was some part of him that had already planned the swift and untraceable disposal of Earnest and Smart-Sweet, taken care of in an instant, so he could lock the building down from human intervention and savor as many courses as the meal in front of him might offer. But that part was small, right? That was the benefit of all that time with Petra. All this occurred to him, passed through his mind, in the second between Redhead’s first sentence and his second. “About what you are.”

What. “Besides late to get back home with a toolbox?” he asked. It was more than unusual for him to be caught so off guard, missing sentences, not knowing how to respond based on who he was talking to.

Redhead laughed. It was charming, settling around Felix’s senses like a pleasant cloud, obscuring danger. He was taller than Felix, broader, red hair and green shirt and eyes brown as the dirt Felix should have been six feet under a long time ago, but instead he was in a hardware store losing his fucking mind over, of all things, a human being. “Okay, didn’t know your type had jokes,” he said, still grinning, still a dimple on one cheek, still somehow the most appealing and mystifying thing Felix had ever seen — and it meant more coming from someone who had spent decades now surrounded by otherworldly beauty and exceptional talent. Dorothea could never find out about this. She savored being the loveliest thing in the room.

“My type?” Felix repeated. Redhead nodded. His hair moved when he did.

“You know,” he said. Felix did not know, didn’t have space in his brain for knowing anything beyond the man in front of him and everything he did not, in fact, know about him. His ears still heard Smart-Sweet and Earnest in the back, packing boxes and humming a charming little harmony that Felix did not recognize. His eyes still saw the tools and equipment around them. His skin could still feel each fluctuation in the temperature of the hardware store, each shift in the direction of the air blown by the circulation system, every tiny, human movement of the person in front of him. His mind, though, laser-focused on the complete mystery of Redhead, an unread and unreadable message in a package unfairly handsome for a mere human being. He was leaning in again, which was absolutely unnecessary. The store was empty, close enough to closing time that Felix had felt like an asshole coming in at all, only the two co-workers in the back and out of hearing range. But Felix let him in anyway. “A vamp.”

Felix didn’t laugh often, even in his past life he wasn’t the type, but the casual shortening of the species he’d belonged to out of Redhead’s mouth (plush, flushed with the blood running right below the skin) was almost enough to break his streak. Instead, he frowned. It wasn't like it was especially dangerous for someone, a random person, to make him. He and his coven had been made before. It just had to be the right type of person, someone gossipy enough to not be taken seriously or timid enough to be scared into silence. Redhead looked like he fit the first type, not that Felix had any damn real insight into it. “A vamp,” he repeated.

“Vampire, whatever,” Redhead said, unfazed, which was frustrating if he already knew how in danger he was in Felix’s reach. “I wasn’t kidding when I said it was fate to run into you. Do you know what tools you’re looking for?”

Right, Petra and Dorothea. They could survive a night without a bed while Felix chased down this rabbit hole as far as it could go, right? Let them have sex in the bathtub. Live a little. But he would have to come home with the tools at some point. “The type doesn’t matter,” he replied.

“Then I recommend these,” Redhead, Sylvain, said, indicating a minimal-frills black box set. “Any chance you’re free after this? Or that you’d ditch whoever’s waiting at home for the tools? I have kind of a situation I wanted to talk with you about.”

Felix had no idea who he was dealing with that thought he had any kind of right to explain a situation to him, but the fact that there was a situation at all was, he had to admit, vaguely interesting. He took the black box, an olive branch, and nodded.

“There’s a breakfast place down the street that’s open overnight on weekends,” Redhead said, gesturing in the direction of down the street. “Wanna chill there for like half an hour? Chill, get it? You guys run cold, right?”

Not for the first time, Felix wished his teeth looked like they did in the movies so he could bare them. This guy had some nerve, grinning at him like that. Maybe that’s the type he was — brave, foolish. Felix had the intriguing thought that he might have to stick around to find out. Which would be new. He nodded yet again, slow and steady.

“Great.” Redhead looked too happy at that, beaming, the kind of smile that would be near-fatal on one of his kind. It was already pretty devastating on a warm, imperfect, freckled human face. “Ashe will check you out, I just have to get those two little lovebirds out of the back. Don’t tell them I told you, they think they’re sneaky.”

“I’m not—” Felix began, but Redhead was already walking away, taking a few steps backwards so he could wave to Felix before turning around and disappearing at the end of the aisle, leaving Felix to take stock of the enormous, ridiculous number of things that had happened to him in what was supposed to be a five minute trip to the hardware store.

Ashe turned out to be Earnest, silvery hair and green eyes and more freckles, like it was a requirement for working here. His nametag had a sticker that looked like a cat, black and white striped, and Felix pointed at it. “Do you have one?” he asked.

Ashe gulped, blushing under those freckles. He was cute too, like something Felix might have wanted to eat a few dozen years ago, but after Redhead his blood was like microwaved soup — edible but not appealing. “Y—yes. Me and my roommate. That is, we have a…” He cleared his throat again, and Felix indulged in a smirk, just to see him fumble the toolbox loudly into a bag, but then he remembered Smart-Sweet and let his face relax. “His name is Hot Dog.”

“The roommate?” Felix asked, dryly, and Ashe laughed entirely too much.

//

Claude texted twice in the time it took to get from the hardware store to the breakfast place, spilling a syrupy sweet smell out between the crevices at its windows and doors.

dorothea is gonna freak it dude, where are you?

i’m not gonna say anyone is getting worried but you’re, like, the least likely to snap on anyone.

Felix settled down with a Bloody Mary, which was disgusting enough to at least present some interest among the ashes of human food in his mouth, and deliberated on how much to share of what all had happened. In the end he decided to just put it in the group chat.

make do with the floor tonight, i’m going to be out longer.

Just picturing Dorothea and Claude looking at each other over their phones at that was enough to bring a grin to Felix’s face. It ended up being much less than 30 minutes when Redhead blew through the door, still unfortunately just as appealing with the wind literally at his back, drawing Felix’s mechanical breathing to a stop. It wasn’t enough that his blood smelled better than sin, better than anything Felix could ever have imagined, no he had to look unfairly and effortlessly handsome even in a hoodie thrown on carelessly enough to let the collar of his work uniform poke out over the neckline. He scanned the place for a moment, grinning when his eyes caught Felix’s where they were, oh, right, absolutely staring at him. He’d seen already, no point being coy.

Once Redhead was settled across from Felix with a very strong looking tequila sunrise and an order for some kind of pancakes in, the smile and the smell of his blood and that whatever else it was that seemed to sit on his clothes were overall a lot harder to ignore, and Felix could feel himself being stiff, could also feel himself trying to counteract it which he had a feeling was just making it worse, but Redhead didn’t let on if he thought so. “So, maybe I should introduce myself,” he said, clinking the ice meaninglessly in his glass. “I’m Sylvain. In case you missed the nametag. Which I’m guessing you didn’t, because of the crazy perception you probably have.”

Felix hadn’t. Sylvain. Still red-haired. “Felix,” he said, and Sylvain smiled again. It was like being stabbed, by something that could actually make it past the surface of his skin. “So, you wanted to tell me something.”

“I’ve got a few things I could say,” Sylvain said, and then he winked. He fucking winked at Felix. Like he was in control of the situation — and maybe this was the sort of person Sylvain was deep down, false confidence, or maybe controlling, or maybe the type that couldn’t be serious. Felix felt for a moment like he was flipping through a mental Rolodex, trying to match Sylvain to someone he’d met before and coming up short. “But for right now I’ll tell you about my brother. Later we can get to the fun stuff.”

He sounded like he was joking. It was so fucking hard to tell without his ability, his crutch. “Your brother,” Felix repeated, trying to sound interested. The Bloody Mary was taunting him at his elbow.

“Yeah, my older brother,” Sylvain said. “His name’s Miklan. Anyway, he’s kind of… messed up. Like pretty bad. My parents are assholes, not that you need the whole sob story, but to make it shorter they’re obsessed with, like, pitting us against each other. It’s sick.” He took a sip that was too shaky to be casual. Felix could see his pulse in his throat, which didn’t do anything to soothe the stiffness. Goddess he was handsome. Vulnerable. Maybe that was the type of person Sylvain was. “Anyway, he’s tried to get the drop on me a bunch of times, doesn’t really matter much, but then he met this… girl, I guess? She was like you. She told him they could give him some kind of power, whatever he wanted, and he just up and vanished one day.” He grinned again, but this one looked stretched like a canvas, held in place with a clamp. “I’m really making a good impression, huh?”

The pancakes were mostly gone by the time Felix was done asking his questions, about Miklan, about their parents, about Sylvain. How he’d moved to Fhirdiad out of their big fancy country house the second he’d turned eighteen and had been at Faerghus U, working at the hardware store, tutoring kids for their entry exams to the Officer’s Academy and the Fhirdiad School ever since. How Miklan was five years older, how he’d disappeared when Sylvain had been seventeen and he’d never forgotten how the girl looked that he’d come home with the night he packed his bags, orange hair and pale skin and beautiful the way a finely-made dagger was beautiful. “Beautiful like you,” Sylvain had said at that part, not winking, because Felix was an apex predator, like an enticing Venus fly trap, but he found it still pleased him to hear it was working. How Sylvain had spent his twelfth birthday at the bottom of a well on his family’s property because it had taken him the whole day to climb out after Miklan had pushed him in. How he had to leave by 11:30 because the last bus to his neighborhood left the nearest stop at 11:37 and he hated rushing to catch it, and someone named Dedue was fixing his car after the serpentine belt had snapped, again.

Felix had an incredibly stupid feeling, watching Sylvain polish off the last of his pancakes, more cheerful than anyone had the right to be after telling a near-complete stranger about how his brother had tried to kill him as a kid, had left to potentially gain the kind of power that could allow him to come back and seal the deal. Felix felt for a moment that grew longer and longer the more he looked at him, a moment that refused to end, that he might be in love with him. He tried not to breathe. “So, what is it you want from me?”

“Hmm,” Sylvain said, mock-thoughtfully. Felix thought it was mocking, at least. It was infuriating not to be sure, to make uneducated guesses. “For the moment, I was wondering whether you might be open to, like, trying to help me find him, to stop him. It’s probably too late to bring him home, but if I could I’d want to.”

“Even after all that?” Felix asked, and maybe this was the kind of person Sylvain was — the kind to set himself on fire if it meant someone he cared about would be warm. He nodded. Felix sat with that for a moment. “I had a brother once,” he said. Sylvain looked like he was listening, with flattering intensity. It was the prey response, Felix had to remind himself, before he let himself read too much into it, like a damn teenager. “Back before this. Something happened to him, happened to a lot of people at once. Something happened to me too.”

“That sucks,” Sylvain said, and he sounded sympathetic. It was 11:22, but he hadn’t noticed, or at least hadn’t said anything.

“It’s in the past,” Felix replied, as if it were anywhere but with him, in him, at every minute of every day. “I only bring it up because I think I may know where to go for help with your brother.”

He perked up, visibly, endearingly. Felix could almost feel the arrow in his heart — he’d been lonely for too long. He could have at least tried Claude’s methods of chasing isolation away. Fuck. “You do?”

Felix nodded. “There’s a… family, or group, of my kind that has a lot of power, a lot of knowledge and access. They owe me one. It might be time to call in that favor.”

Sylvain’s eyes, brown as a dog’s, lit up further. “You’d really do that for me?”

As soon as he asked, Felix knew, pathetically, that he’d do anything for Sylvain, for his mysterious and hidden personality, for his decadent blood, for his dimple on the side of his mouth, for his freckles that spun a constellation down the column of his neck. He nodded, to give himself time not to say all of that. “They killed my brother back then. They turned me. The least I could do is keep someone else’s brother from the same fate.”

Sylvain didn’t say anything to that, but he did leave Felix his number before he left.

//

“Okay, something happened,” Dorothea announced when Felix stepped back inside, ignoring the previous order to sleep in the apartment below theirs, which they also leased under a separate set of names and circumstances and bank accounts as insulation from their neighbors.

“What are you, psychic now?” he snapped, not really mad but plenty willing to act it, tossing the toolbox at her.

She caught it, effortlessly of course. “It’s called reading a room, Felix,” she replied, irritatingly melodic. “You might try it sometime.”

Petra sauntered over to him while Dorothea was rather unnecessarily loudly taking a hammer and nails to the damaged frame of their bed. “You are acting with strangeness,” she offered, propping an elbow on his shoulder, looking out the window at the streets below next to him. “You may be annoying Dorothea into ignoring you but you will not be getting rid of me so easily.”

“I know,” Felix replied. Claude was out, he noticed, maybe pretending to be warm in someone’s bed for the night. Petra felt warm against him — she was warm for their kind. “Something strange happened.”

“If you are wanting your privacy you do not need to be telling me,” Petra said, and somehow although Felix was wanting his privacy he still found himself telling her everything. Things with Petra were simple like that, it’s what made her the heart of their coven even without a beating one to guide her. She listened, and she was silent, and when he was done she nodded. “So. You will be seeing the Nabateans.”

Felix nodded too then, like it was that simple. “I guess so.” It had been a long time since he’d seen them, a long time nursing a deep hurt. “Hopefully not for long.”

“Are you wanting us to be going with you?” Petra asked.

“Maybe,” Felix said. “Maybe I’ll take… Claude.”

Petra chuckled, like wind. “You will be tearing each other from limb to limb.”

“It’ll be like bonding,” Felix countered, not really believing it. But two days later, under the cover of night, he and Claude were being waved off from the parking garage of their complex, house music blasting in Felix’s ears louder than he would have thought possible. Then again, Claude’s car was as obnoxious as everything else about him, subtle and charming on the outside, too much to handle underneath. Felix drummed his fingertips on the seam where the passenger side door met the window, getting ready to pretend to be very interested in his phone should Claude decide to start chatting, but thankfully it buzzed all on its own, without prompting.

don’t think you’re getting away so easily. Dorothea. Another buzz. must be someone awfully special for you to be seeing the nabateans.

There were three days of barely-legal, non-stop driving between Fhirdiad and Garreg Mach, and out of the two of them Felix figured he’d rather weather the winds of Claude’s still-unpredictable personality than Dorothea’s entirely too unsurprising one. He set his phone screen-down into the cupholder and turned, robotically, in his seat to face the driver.

Three days. Three torturous days, time stretching the way it does when you’re with your favorite sibling who nevertheless delights in nothing more than giving you a hard time, no breaks except to switch positions, and once between Tailtean and Charon on a back road to pull over and drink, deeply, from a few stragglers in a herd of deer Claude had spotted from the passenger seat. Alive, or as alive as their kind could be, and unharmed save for some light ego bruising (on both sides, Felix hoped), they made it to Garreg Mach right on time.

It was a good thing they’d brought Claude’s car rather than just running the distance. For one thing, the city that had grown up around the Nabateans’ compound was bustling. Getting in on foot in the spotty sunshine of the day would have been a risk, and Felix knew it as he watched Claude charm his way through the toll both into the outskirts. Certainly vampires were a fact of life to many of the humans who lived in this town, who might spend their whole lives hoping for a green-haired benefaction to descend upon them and lift them out of their misery, but as far as Felix knew there was only one vampire existing who had been turned by the Nabateans, not simply devoured by them — him.

“Wanna tell me why we’re here?” Claude asked from the driver’s seat. He’d slowed down considerably, traffic this close to The Monastery was unbearable but they needed the relative shelter of the car for as long as they could get it. They would barely be able to crawl once they were within the city limits. Unfortunately, they had time. “I know Petra knows. I’m guessing you wanted to get here so quickly to keep Dorothea from finding out too, or doing her damndest to, in any case.”

Felix thought for a moment. He’d been with Dorothea and Petra for longer than Claude, but they all trusted each other. Yes, he trusted him. Claude wasn’t the most faithful person by nature, anyone could see that, but he had stuck with them, helped them. It couldn’t hurt. “Maybe you’ve heard of the Tragedy of Duscur?” Felix asked, to give himself time.

Claude nodded. “Sure, I’ve heard the name.”

“It was a terrible situation. There were shapeshifter clan wars happening all across that region, hundreds of years ago. My father was a sort of… bonded mate to the alpha of one of the packs.”

“Imprinting,” Claude said, because of course he knew about that part of things. The romantic part. Felix found it disgusting, thinking about how that had turned out for his father. “Right, I’ve heard that can happen.”

“Yes. Well, he brought my brother, Glenn, and I on a trip he took to the Duscur region to help broker some peace discussions between Lambert’s pack and some of the others in the area. It was despicable, to be honest, what the shapeshifters had already done to Duscur, using the lands as essentially battlegrounds with little regard to the inhabitants. My father and the alpha he was bonded to, Lambert, had ideas of how they might rectify this.” He paused. Even a hundred-odd years later this part still stung. “The Nabateans had somehow caught wind of all this happening, off in their ivory tower, and decided to put an end to it swiftly rather than try to draw it out. They obliterated Duscur, the entire country, the majority of its people. They killed Lambert and his pack, they killed Glenn, my father… they thought they killed me.” He frowned. “I was turned. My friend at the time — Dimitri, Lambert’s son — was forced to phase and become the new alpha of a pack that no longer existed, to defend against a new enemy.”

Claude let that sit for a moment. “Who?” he asked, quite a good audience. They inched forward behind a Jeep practically rattling with the bass blasting from the speakers.

“You’re sitting next to him,” Felix replied. “I haven’t seen or spoken to the Nabateans since. They blew up my life.”

“You could say that again,” Claude said. Another silent, painfully slow moment passed between them. “Have you ever wondered why I want to go to Almyra next?” Felix just stared through the windshield. He didn’t have to expose himself; Claude understood, chuckling. “Flattered. Well, I’ll tell you anyway, since I never really wondered where you came from until now either. That’s where I was born. Our kind is treated pretty differently there, up on a pedestal, feared and revered in pretty equal measure. It’s not a secret anyone’s keeping. When my dad suggested they turn me once I hit a certain age my mom lost it. She was from here, you know. Fodlan. So things looked pretty different to her, but once she saw how some of the others like us were treated she relented I guess. That’s what my dad told me at least, goddess only knows how she really felt about it. My dad’s family acted like I was made out of gold. Talking about who I might be mated to in the echelons of the Almyran covens, which towns might be paying tribute — this was hundreds of years ago, you know, things were different. I was turned and joined a coven near the Throat.” Silence, minus the music drifting out of some of the cars in the crush around them. It wasn’t even a particularly busy time of day, Garreg Mach was just that much of a hub. Felix found himself more compelled than expected by Claude’s story. “That was rough, you know how it is, but after the newborn phase it was good for a while. A long while, even, decades, a century. Then the family of one of my father’s cousins was selected for tribute. I’d been the guest of honor at the birth celebration. He was a grown man when they brought him to us, one among others, but his face still looked like the baby I’d seen on that day in his mother’s arms, both of them smiling like anything.”

“That’s difficult,” Felix said. They were within the city limits now, street vendors floating around them, filling the air with the heavy smells of human food.

“It was no different from a hundred, a thousand, other times. But I’m self-centered enough that it finally felt like too much to bear. I left, stayed on my own for a while, starving, ran into Petra, and the rest you know.” Claude paused once more, turning onto a side street at the sight of the first parking spot they’d seen in the area code. “All that to say I know what power can do to our kind.”

//

Covens often called each other family but the word took on a new meaning when it came to the Nabateans. They actually looked related, green haired and tall and gifted, so gifted the rest of their world feared them. The nerves Felix felt vanished as he entered the room where the four leaders received visitors, no thanks to his own mind or will but courtesy of Sothis. Rumor said that Sothis was the oldest, the first, vampire in Fodlan. Older than Petra, older than the legends of Macuil and Indech, older than the land and the sky perhaps. In their presence you felt how they wanted you to feel, which was generally relaxed and unguarded. Cethleann next to them, with a memory so sharp she could pluck weaknesses from the past to exploit in the present. Seiros to her right, radiant and powerful, a legendary fighter who could manipulate fire, the natural enemy of the vampire. Farthest right Cichol, quiet and stern, the group’s impenetrable shield. Combative as he was, Felix would never dream of approaching them with a fight on his mind. Claude was by his side, strange and yet comforting in his relative familiarity.

Cethleann smiled, waving at him from her seat, the most energetic of the group. She had turned at a young age, her face still had a roundness to it that reminded Felix of childhood. “Felix!” she called, voice high and slightly piercing. He knew when she looked at him that she saw his body, bleeding out in the fire that was Duscur, the light wolf he’d seen Dimitri as last by his side. “We were so pleased to hear that you had joined us after that unfortunate business with Lambert.”

“Spare me the pleasantries,” he snapped, not sure he could stop himself even with Sothis’ calm an unrendable net around him. “You owe me.”

“What Felix means," Claude cut across smoothly, slinging a cold arm over his shoulders, bracing, restraining, “is that we were hoping for your help with something.”

“We are always happy to help,” Cichol said. His voice was flat, professional, like he was discussing an insurance plan Claude and Felix were looking into. “We will do what we can to aid the appropriate cause.”

“The best part is, you don’t even have to do anything,” Claude said. Felix almost frowned at that, but he knew getting the Nabateans to actually step in was an incredibly long shot. Better to aim low for a likelier hit. “We just figured if anyone knew it would be you. I hear you have ears all over the continent.”

“We do.” Seiros’ voice was strong, like a blade through the air. “Beyond even — Brigid, Almyra.” The red gleam of her ancient eyes pinned Claude, Felix could feel it in the stony stiffness of his arm around his shoulders. She certainly hadn’t picked those names at random, out of a hat. “Ask your question.”

Claude looked to Felix for this part. It wasn’t that he didn’t know why they were here, more that he respected Felix enough to let him explain as much as he wanted without saying more. His elbow, crooked at the side of his neck, was weighty still. Cautionary. Felix spoke, leaning ever so slightly into Sothis’ projection. “There are… rumors in Fhirdiad. Rumors of a group that’s turning people and implanting abilities.”

“But you were never one for gossip,” Cethleann said, brightly, as if this was the important part of what he had said. “So surely someone you know is involved, are they not?”

“Not as such,” Felix managed. Not yet. If thinking about someone could translate to knowing them then he would certainly know Sylvain by now. But as it stood, all Felix knew was what Sylvain told him, and without a sense for what kind of person he was that could be truthful or meaningless. “I’ve gotten friendlier since the last time I saw you.”

Sothis let out a noise that might have been a chuckle, as papery as their finely-lined skin, and Felix realized he had half expected dust to puff out of their mouth as they spoke. They were the definition of ancient, like a quasi-living museum exhibit, their eyes clouded over from the effort of existing for so long.

“I’m afraid such a thing is not possible,” Cichol said, returning to Felix’s statement. “As I’m sure you know, abilities are latently present or they are not. They appear at the time of rebirth, or they do not. It is quite out of the question that one could be created, or… implanted, I think you said?” He paused, infinitesimal. Felix had a feeling he was saying more with that pause than with his words, but he couldn’t make anything out of it. “Surely we would already have heard of such a thing.”

“Should you learn more,” Seiros said, “and prove this to be more than simple rumor, we would welcome more information.” Her tone was one of finality. Felix felt about a foot tall. Cethleann waved cheerfully, the motion like the deliberate scrubbing of salt in an open wound, as he and Claude thanked them and left.

“All that driving for that,” Claude said when they were out of earshot, moving between the shades of Garreg Mach’s awnings and scaffolding and buttresses, the deliberate mix of ancient and modern. “At least the girls will be happy we bonded.” Felix snorted for the effect of it, caught an inhale of the crowd around them, let it pale in comparison to the lingering memory of Sylvain’s smell. It was a little pathetic, really. And maybe Claude knew that, because his next sentence was cautious. “So… this really matters to you, huh?”

A bigger question than it sounded. “I suppose,” Felix conceded.

“Because of some guy you met at the hardware store?” Claude had easily bypassed his wariness to dip into incredulity. It did sound ridiculous when he put it like that. And maybe it was just because of Sylvain. Maybe it was because of Sylvain’s missing brother, how broken Felix still felt when he tried to remember Glenn’s face. Maybe it was because of the brush-off and the ignorance of the Nabateans, their creeping power willfully useless against the underbelly of their kind, that went beyond predator-prey with human life, that saw them as nothing more than playthings. But after all, maybe it was just Sylvain, Sylvain who had made Felix feel something more than he’d felt in a hundred years, something beyond grinding loneliness only so able to be mitigated by his sisters, by Claude. He felt that he wanted to see Sylvain again, suddenly, in spite of the torturous limits he tested on Felix’s self-restraint.

“It’s not just that,” Felix said finally, summing it up, and if that explanation wasn’t good enough for Claude he didn’t let on, just put his hands thoughtfully in his pockets as they wound through the shadows.

“You know,” Claude said, when they were back in his car, back in the traffic on the way out of the city which was only marginally less terrible than the traffic on the way into the city, “we could ask the Enbarr coven. Just call Bernadetta. The worst thing that could happen has already happened once — they don’t know anything.”

Felix frowned, but pulled out his phone nonetheless, sending Dorothea and Petra an update before considering further. He was on what he would consider a reasonable footing with the Enbarr coven, maybe somewhat more so with Bernadetta than the others. Their true connection was with Dorothea and Petra, who had lived with them for a long time before splitting off to experiment with what was, at the time, their new lifestyle. It couldn’t hurt, he reasoned after a moment, deciding to swallow the potential blow to his pride should one of Claude’s ideas pan out. He was insufferable when he was right about something.

Bernadetta answered on the second ring. “Felix!” she squealed, half delight, half fear, all familiarity. “W-what’s going on?”

“Always so happy to talk to me,” he replied, feeling a smile rise unbidden to his own face. So shy, even when she had the entirety of immortality to back her up. “How’s Enbarr?”

“Just as dangerous as ever!” she huffed. “It’s so sunny here all the time. Linhardt is the only one who ever enjoys it because he doesn’t care enough.”

“He always was an odd one,” Felix agreed. “Listen, I’m not calling to get you all riled up about the weather in the inordinately temperate place you’ve decided to live for some reason. I have a… request. Or a question.”

“Okay?” Everything Bernadetta said that didn’t sound like a whine sounded like a question. From what Felix knew her human life had been terrible. It had followed her forever, a shadow across her endless path.

“Okay,” he repeated. “I’m looking for a coven. It sounds ridiculous but I don’t really know who they are, just what they do. It’s a group that’s promising to implant abilities at the point of turning. Instead of just leaving them to appear latently they can somehow… force them, or create them.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, then two, long enough that Felix looked at Claude and saw what he was sure was reflected despair in his eyes, sympathy, resignation. Then Bernadetta spoke up again. “I… I might know someone who can help.”

//

The Enbarr coven, or at least a subset of it, was coming to Fhirdiad, a mutual agreement thanks to the more persistent cloud cover and Felix’s embarrassing reluctance to leave the city again so soon — embarrassing not at all less because it seemed at least tentatively reciprocated. He had texted Sylvain the moment Claude’s front bumper crossed the county line, trying not to think about how desperate he might come off, hey i’m back in fhirdiad. we should talk. The same all-weekend breakfast spot, just as sick-sweet as last time, putting in work to counteract the singing smell of Sylvain’s blood, sheltered them as Felix relayed what had happened in Garreg Mach, the complete shutdown of the Nabateans, the strange feeling he had that they would circle back into the story at some point despite their surface-level disengagement.

Sylvain watched him as he spoke, pushing his eggs around his plate blindly. “That much have been awful for you,” he said at last, and not for the first time Felix wondered what he was missing about Sylvain that had him so blindsided by this simple compassion. What had happened to Felix was so long ago, quite literally out of living memory, and Sylvain’s brother had disappeared less than ten years back with the intent of gaining the inescapable power to fucking kill him, and yet he was under the diner lights, garishly bright against the nightfall outside, looking at Felix with warmth and sympathy.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t try to stop Sylvain when he leant down to kiss him on the sidewalk outside, breath heavy with breakfast, Felix’s skin sheened in the streetlight. Sylvain wasn’t the first human being Felix had done this with — it had been a long afterlife, after all — but maybe it was the heat of Sylvain’s mouth, redolent with the smell of his blood, that made Felix pull him down closer, press their bodies together, drink in Sylvain’s gasp at his cold tongue behind his teeth. Pulling away was like recoiling from the sun, unnatural, self-sacrificing, and Felix knew his eyes were wide but Sylvain’s were too, mouth agape like he’d just seen the goddess.

“More of my kind are coming here,” Felix said suddenly, realizing he hadn’t even covered this earlier, and Sylvain swallowed hard. “A friend of mine thinks she can help.”

“Okay.” Sylvain’s exhale was enough to physically stir against Felix’s face, hot in the chilly Fhirdiad air, and suddenly Felix was regretting the change in subject, the fading flush under the freckles across Sylvain’s nose and cheekbones, but then he was leaning in again and saying can we maybe talk about that later? and it was like they’d never separated, lips and tongues and fingers curled in the lapel of Felix’s jacket. Sylvain’s hands were warm, even without gloves, and Felix felt guilty at the hiss of breath sucked from his mouth as his own fingers hit the skin of Sylvain’s neck, under his collar. “Fuck,” he panted, lips moving against Felix’s, almost unbearably soft and warm, “your skin is cold.”

“I thought you knew what my type was like,” Felix said, unable to help himself, one dig in against the self-restraint that kept his fingers from crushing Sylvain’s hyoid like a twig. Humans were just so fragile, so tempting.

Sylvain grinned, fuck. “Not as well as I’d like.” His fingers were hot, trailing down Felix’s neck, and if he could gooseflesh still he surely would. “There’s a few other things I still need to find out.”

//

As Felix had feared when he’d made the incredibly irresponsible decision to bring him home the night before, Sylvain and Dorothea got on immediately like a house on fire — so well, in fact, that eventually Felix decided it was a perfect opportunity to take Claude and Petra outside the city for some hunting. It was nearly dark when they returned, but Sylvain and Dorothea were still prattling away, Sylvain eating something from a takeout container in their criminally underused kitchen, Dorothea leaning on the counter like he was the one playing piano for her in a cabaret bar.

“You guys were gone a while,” Sylvain said, the barest shade of shakiness at addressing Claude and Petra for the first time, but both of them seemed determined to be friendly to him. Anyone Dorothea and Felix both liked was almost certainly a difficult person but not one the rest of the family could antagonize.

“We chased some deer halfway to Adrestia,” Claude explained, smiling easily. “We’re faster but we can’t just run across the road somewhere the way they can. You missed out, Dorothea,” he added, and she raised an eyebrow. “Plenty to go around.”

“I’ll go later,” Dorothea replied, dipping her head to greet Petra.

Felix looked to Claude, ready for mutual exasperation, and when Claude rolled his eyes without meeting Felix’s something interesting occurred to him. He too had someone to greet. Sylvain might be sitting there, waiting for him to do the same, to tell him or not that he had missed him, had wanted him by his side, the way Dorothea and Petra could do with a look and a touch. When Felix looked to Sylvain he was surprisingly shy, neither ribbing Felix’s sisters for their affection nor expecting his, just tracing an invisible shape on the counter with his finger. Something about it was endearing, and almost faster than his own thought Felix found himself at Sylvain’s side, one hand on his shoulder, a smile as warm and dangerous as the sun in return.

“Hey,” Sylvain said, looking maybe a little relieved, then his brow furrowed, leaving a crease in the center. “Your eyes look different. Is that like a vampire thing?”

Felix chuckled. It didn’t happen often, infrequent enough that he could feel the eyes of his family on him even from where they were spreading out into routine. “Sure,” he replied. “Vampire thing.”

“Gods,” Claude groaned from across the room, hand dramatically to forehead, “this is great. All I was missing was a second set of lovebirds around at all times. Really makes me feel good about how long I’ve been single.”

Felix glared at him, but when he glanced back to Sylvain and saw what looked like a hint of a flush creeping under his freckles he couldn’t bring himself to be too mad at Claude.

“So,” Dorothea said with the air of a subject change, gracefully hopping to sit on the counter where she’d been leaning a moment ago, “I hear we’re having visitors.”

Felix nodded. Claude sighed loud enough to be heard for theatrical, relieved effect. “I called Bernadetta after the Nabateans turned us away. She said there was someone she used to travel with who might be able to help us. He’s working with some kind of… hunter.”

Dorothea raised an eyebrow. “And… you think a hunter is going to, what, give us special treatment or something? Our diet gives us a lot of credit but hunters are hunters, generally.”

“Are they dangerous?” asked Sylvain, curiously.

Petra shrugged. “Hunters are mainly being thorns in our sides,” she explained. “The kind that we are have rulings we must follow, and hunters are knowing these things. They are trying to exploit them to trap us into getting ourselves being killed.”

“Oh!” Sylvain said, like a lightbulb going off. “Okay, so like you guys have vampire cops and if these hunters can get you to break vampire laws they know the vampire cops are going to run you down and do the work for them.”

“Mostly, yeah,” Claude chimed in. “That’s how it works around here anyway. In Almyra the hunters just go for it, working in groups, getting vampires cornered. They understand each other better over there though.”

“Bernadetta said this one is more like the Almyrans,” Felix said. Sylvain’s shoulder was still warm under his palm through the cotton of his shirt. It was an irrationally good feeling. Felix had to keep reminding himself that he didn’t know Sylvain, not the way he knew every other person he’d come into contact with in this phase of his life. “She’s working with one of us.”

“Oh-kay,” Dorothea said, straightening up again, making the word feel like it lasted for ten syllables. “That’s interesting.”

“Very interesting,” Claude agreed. “So, Sylvain,” he added, turning to face the only person in the room, and Felix felt his deltoid tense, “I hope you’re not sick of us just yet.”

Sylvain chuckled, and if he was nervous he was doing a good job hiding it. “I’ve got a lot riding on this,” he said. Whatever else was or wasn’t true about him, Felix supposed that was.

//

Bernadetta came with Jeritza and Constance, which wasn’t exactly what Felix had expected but wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. He’d wanted to see Lysithea but that wasn’t always possible, and of course Linhardt putting forth the least effort and staying behind with her wasn’t surprising in the least. At least Bernadetta was here.

With Jeritza and Constance established in their apartment in the floor below the penthouse, Bernadetta and Felix left with Sylvain for the spot she’d brokered to meet with the hunter. With an ease that begged to establish a pattern, Sylvain asked Bernadetta about herself, about her found family, and Felix thought he heard her speak more on their overcast and painfully slow trek to a wooded spot outside the city than she had during almost the entire time he had known her.

So maybe this was who Sylvain was, someone who could make other people open themselves to him, who could keep the plates of personalities spinning all the while putting himself last. Bernadetta was sweet, shy to a painful point, but Sylvain had her singing like a bird and not asking anything of him. Felix wondered what that meant, for a moment or two watching them perched on rocks opposite each other, Bernadetta leaning in. Then the hunter showed and he forgot anything else.

Felix had not been tall as a man, and he certainly was not tall among the undead, but still his first thought was that she was small. Small but not unimposing, light hair and eyes gleaming in the dim light around them. Bernadetta rose at human speed.

“Hubert!” she called, which was surprising. Felix looked to Sylvain, who was looking right back at him. Then he caught a second person, as if on the wind. Or rather, not exactly a person. He was tall where the hunter was short, no pulse pounding in the air to clog the sounds of their voices, dark hair and paler skin than any living person. His eyes were red, and something like happiness flashed through them at Bernadetta’s voice. Without thinking, Felix drifted over to stand next to Sylvain. Neither Hubert nor the hunter seemed immediately threatening — not to them at least; Hubert’s aura was miasmic in general but did not seem directed toward their group — but he felt better being by his side. Something to put away and examine later, or never, at his earliest convenience.

“Bernadetta,” the vampire said, and it was her turn to smile. Strange, Felix thought, since his voice was like a diaphanous slick of oil over the atmosphere, but she seemed comfortable. They had traveled together, he remembered, which was saying something for Bernadetta. “I thought I might never see you again.”

“I beg everyone’s pardon,” the hunter said, and as she addressed them everyone’s eyes turned to her. She was magnetic. Felix could feel the strength of her personality, the intensity, like a wave crashing over him. When he’d been mortal he’d had a fear of water, of the lack of air that it necessitated. Now it was like the memory of that rolling through the moment. “Perhaps we could introduce ourselves. I don’t have the network it seems you do.” She smiled, slightly.

“Sure,” Sylvain said, like she’d been speaking to him directly. In a way, instinctively, she had been, directing her gaze and her words toward the only other human in the clearing. “I’m Sylvain.”

The hunter smiled again, differently this time, like she was humoring him. Felix didn’t exactly like it. “Felix,” he interjected, to take some of the attention away from Sylvain. “I called Bernadetta for information after we failed getting it from the Nabateans.”

“Yes,” the hunter agreed, “Hubert informed me about that. From what I understand, they are uninterested in fulfilling their responsibilities within your world in this situation.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Felix said. “I assume you’re Hubert?”

The towering vampire nodded, but did not elaborate.

“Hubert and I work together,” the hunter said. “My name is Edelgard. I’m very interested in your situation.”

“Everyone knows Bernie!” Bernadetta squeaked, completing the introductions. She perched back on her rock, faster than thought. Hubert and Edelgard completed their circle. Being close to her was overwhelming, Felix could feel the force of her almost physically. Sylvain seemed blissfully unaffected, and it was grounding to have him nearer.

“Please, share your story,” Edelgard prompted, and once again Sylvain took the reins.

“This is mostly my fault,” he began, and Felix considered this as another facet of his inscrutable personality, like a prism reflecting responsibility back onto himself whether it belonged there or not. “My brother has some… let’s say problems. He left home with another vampire, someone I’d never met before, saying he was going to get some kind of new power. I want to find him. And I want to find out what they’re doing. I don’t know much about this stuff but I know it must be dangerous.”

Edelgard looked at Sylvain, her gaze penetrating. “He went with the group that is implanting abilities,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Sylvain nodded. “I’ve encountered them before.”

“They turned Lysithea.” Everyone turned to Bernadetta. Felix hadn’t even known this, not that he considered himself the closest friend to the Enbarr coven. “She was an… experiment for them. They implanted her with an ability when they turned her, even though she’d already shown signs that she would have one naturally. It worked, but…”

But. Felix had seen the but, the papery, brittle feel of her skin like she was thousands of sedentary years older than she was, the sheer amount of blood she required to keep herself going, her pale hair. The same color as Edelgard’s. He looked at her with new intensity.

“Yes, they attempted to turn me as well,” she said, reading his gaze accurately. “They failed in their intent but they succeeded in something new — a human with a natural and an implanted ability. They considered it the first step to creating something with potentially unlimited powers. I considered it torture. I escaped.”

“That’s horrible,” Sylvain said. He sounded sincere, sympathetic. “Do you think that’s what might happen to my brother?”

“I think it depends on his strength of will,” Edelgard said. “I believe if he has less potential they may just make him into a soldier in their group. He may be another strong body to serve and protect them, to further their agenda.”

Felix could feel Sylvain’s heart pounding in the air, could smell his blood like something literally irresistible. It was hard to ignore. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“I don’t mean to be discouraging, but that’s the reality of how they operate,” Edelgard added. She straightened up, ramrod beyond what Felix had thought was humanly possible. “I want to help you. I will be candid, though, if he is complicit in their work then he is beyond help. Hubert and I have a not-insignificant network looking into them and they are responsible for some terrible things.”

“Our kind is not inherently evil,” Hubert said, the villainous nature of his voice directly contradicting his statement, “but they have certainly not used their power for any other reason.”

“We’ll help too,” Bernadetta said, unusually firm. “For Lysithea.”

“Sylvain,” Edelgard said, “we will need your help as well. You may be of use if we encounter your brother.”

“Heh.” It was like a chuckle but sick. Felix did not like the sound of it. “Yeah, he knows a punching bag when he sees one. He’ll come running, no question.”

“Felix,” Edelgard said then, turning to fix him with that amethyst stare, “are you part of a coven? Would you and they be willing to help us?”

Felix nodded. Claude was already involved, Petra would do anything in pursuit of justice, and Dorothea would do anything in pursuit of Petra. And him? Well. Before even drawing the connection with Lysithea, before knowing in full the atrocities these vampires had committed, he’d already had too much stake in this just knowing that Sylvain wanted it, to find his brother, to get closure, to have his life back in his own hands.

“Good,” she said, firmly. She rose and Hubert followed her, like a string was pulled between them. “Then we will be seeing you very soon. Bernadetta,” she added, turning to her, who to her credit only squealed a little, “Hubert and I would love to catch up if you’d like to show us where you’re staying.”

She looked to Felix, who nodded again, and with a wave they disappeared into the darkening forest, headed back toward the apartment below the family’s penthouse.

Sylvain let out a long sigh, his breath fogging just a touch in the chill of the evening. “I don’t know what I expected,” he said, aloud but seemingly to no one. Felix put a hand on his shoulder anyway, and he didn’t pull away. That was surely a good sign. “I know Miklan is no good, but I guess I hoped…”

“Here’s what I hope,” Felix interrupted, and Sylvain cut himself off, jerking his head around to look fully at Felix. “I hope if your brother is suffering that we can end it. I hope that if there’s injustice that’s not being rectified that we can set things right. And I hope that even once this particular coven is out of your life for good that you’ll still keep seeing me.”

Sylvain looked at him for a moment. Felix didn’t really feel things like embarrassment or shame much anymore — it was too easy to envision how simple it would be to destroy anyone who could attest to whatever foolish thing he’d said or done — but right now, not being able to see what kind of person Sylvain was, whether he was the type to lie or to laugh at him or to run away, he did wonder whether he had gone too far.

But then he grinned, a grin that set Felix’s mind reeling more so even than the siren song of his blood, the scent that cost everything to resist that Felix would willingly give over and over again just to keep seeing that dimple in Sylvain’s cheek, the hint of teeth where his lips parted, the crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “You are way out of my league,” he said, and maybe that was the kind of person Sylvain was, the kind that didn’t think he deserved what was right in front of him. “I’d be stupid to let you get away.”

It was hot, the kiss Sylvain gave him under the piney canopy. Everything Sylvain did was hot, literally, his blood running like magma right under his skin where Felix grazed him, where he lingered and longed to grip harder, his wrists under the cuffs of his jacket, his waist where with a gasp Felix slid his cold hands under his shirt, his neck where the collar didn’t quite rise. And Sylvain’s fingers too were warm as sin at Felix’s jaw, where his thumb worked into Felix’s mouth at the corner, framing his tongue with his own.

They kissed long, slow, then picking up speed and intensity only to drop back to a smoldering ember, enough time for Felix to learn an entirely new kind of hunger, strong enough that his head spun between wanting Sylvain’s blood and wanting Sylvain’s entirety, his self and his body pressed up against Felix for time immemorial until they fused together, until they sunk into the earth.

When they broke apart, Sylvain panting into Felix’s mouth, one damp string of his spit connecting them like the thread of fate, Felix had the sudden and frightening thought that he might be the stupid one, to consider letting Sylvain go, ever. “Let’s see how you feel about me after all this is over,” he said, like a promise out loud to himself, but when Sylvain nodded, eyes glinting with intuition, Felix thought maybe the promise wasn’t to himself after all.