Ivan Press

Grey

Maybe it means something that she wears that red diamond like a talisman. Surely it means something that as she surfaced from the depths, the name she whispered was not Oliver's, not Edmund's,

not even that long-lost brother of hers'.

Whatever it means, it hardly seems to matter now. The lens is fractured. The casing is cracked. The light comes through; doesn't show anything coherent.

--

The house is quiet and darkened when she emerges. Stairs lead to darkness: no one's downstairs anymore. Upstairs, three bedrooms. The door to the master suite is closed, and no one comes from beneath. The doors to the other bedrooms are open. Through one of them she can see that the brothers have set up a temporary mattress beside the bed. Oliver is lounging on the airbed, playing with his cellphone. He turns his head and sees Hilary as she stands in the hallway. His eyes linger shamelessly on her; the smirk he gives her is full of suggestion. Then John steps into the doorway, frowning at Hilary. He closes the door to the bedroom the brothers, at least for tonight, share.

It leaves only one room, then. An open door, a slanted square of light on the floor. Her lodging for the night. If she goes to it, if she walks into that room, she finds a pleasant, modest space; neither terribly large nor grand. A dresser, a small walk-in closet, a dainty little writing desk, a bed. The sheets are new and the comforters are soft, already turned down. A silk nightgown awaits her atop the bedspread.

Edmund Grey awaits her, sitting at the desk. He is composed and neat, patient: his feet together, his hands resting on his thighs. He turns when he sees her, rises and smiles.

"Feeling a little better, my darling? I've come to wish you goodnight."

Hilary, momentarily warmed and human, has become something else again. Distant. Cool. Uncaring. She settles into it easily, walking through the hall to the top of the stairs, where she briefly considers throwing herself down to the floorboards where her neck will break, where she will lie twisted, limbs akimbo, headwound bleeding, seeping into the runner rug. She tips her head to the side, almost able to see it in the flesh, then turns slowly away and walks past John and Oliver's room. She does not look inside. She does not see Oliver's smirk, or John's frowning. She passes them by, drifting, more ghost than woman.

To the bedroom where there is a silk nightgown laid out for her. Was it there before? Was it bought while she was in the bath, some servant rushed out to bring it back for her? These, and others, are questions Hilary doesn't even entertain. She doesn't wonder. She would be more surprised if there wasn't something to wear waiting for her.

She is not surprised to find Edmund there, though she was not expecting him. She finds a horrifying heat in her all over again, sudden and flaring in the ice, only it is a dominating, vengeful sort of thing: she wants to untie her robe and let it fall in front of him. She wants to climb on top of him and stroke her bare breasts against his jacket's lapels. She wants to feel him growing hard against everything he believes, panting for her even though he despises her, despises her wetness and her eagerness. She wants to abuse him, and Hilary does not understand this desire to shred him from his illusions and delusions; she does not see it for the desire to punish him that it is.

Hilary keeps her robe on as she looks at him, as he rises, smiling.

She smiles back. It is what you do.

"I am perfection," she says, with a soft air of self-deprecation and pleasure. "Will you sit and talk with me a bit, before you go? We've had... no time at all to truly get to know one another. Intellectually. Thoughtfully."

She has that in common with Oliver Grey. Vengefulness. An urge to punish. An urge to shred and destroy. The difference is, Oliver Grey cares. He wants his father to suffer. He fears retribution, himself. His desire and his fear war with one another and keep him contained, shunts his deviance to these hidden, surreptitious means.

Hilary: none of these things are true for her. What contains her is something a little more amorphous. A very basic form of survival instinct, perhaps. The sort of false social graces mimed by sociopaths and madmen; those born without or shorn of that part of their brain or their soul that allows them to connect to others, to understand human connection, to cherish it.

Edmund Grey smiles. He smiles back. It's what you do.

The patriarch of the house -- and the House -- hesitates. Then he nods. "I would like that," he says. He steps away from the bed. She is given room to settle herself, to slip her feet under the covers if she would like. Then he pulls the chair up beside the bed and sits again.

His eyes move over her face. He looks pleased. She must be quite lovely in this light, which gives a touch of artificial warmth and color to her skin. She must be, for him to admire her like that.

"I am so pleased we found each other," he says: as though she had anything to do with it at all.

Hilary smiles, but excuses herself first. Either in the closet or with Edmund stepping outside, she removes that robe and settles herself instead in the silk nightgown, coming back in its long, shoulder-covering swath of pale fabric. Her breasts are bare beneath, and move slightly as she walks back towards him, the shape of her hips moving against the fabric from beneath. But she walks so shyly, smiling at him, her shoulders hugged a bit, her expression timid as she comes back to the bed and tucks herself into the covers where she can be concealed, where they will be safe from each other.

He comes to sit beside her then, on a chair instead of at the edge of the mattress, and she leans back into the pillows. Her hair is long and dark and lovely, dried before she came out of the bathroom, soft as silk. Her face is bare but lovely, so fair that even the faintest blush of color shows.

Grey looks pleased to look at her like that, tucked away in this bed, in clothes he bought for her, in the house he bought to see her in, nicely covered up but right there, right there if he should want, or permit himself, to take her. Like a flower in his garden. It must give him such peace. It must be such contentment, after all he has worked for. After all he's given.

--

"I am as well," she whispers. "There were nights I thought I would never find a love like this," Hilary confesses, watching his eyes. It is easy to lie when you feel nothing. It is familiar. "A love like the one my parents had."

Of course Edmund steps outside when Hilary indicates she would like to change. Of course he swings the close mostly-closed behind himself. Of course, of course, he doesn't peek, he doesn't look, he doesn't do anything at all.

The nightgown is a lovely, old-fashioned, modest thing. It skims her breasts and falls loose around her hips, her legs. It is not so sheer that the color of her skin can be seen beneath, but -- the shadow of her form, yes. The promise of tiny little ribbon-ties at the collar, which could,

with just a few deft tugs,

reveal her breasts to the man fortunate enough to have the privilege.

Those are the thoughts that flit transiently through Edmund's mind, banished a moment after. He is a noble thing. He is kind and polite and he will protect her from both their baser natures. Their lust. Or is it the other way around? He will protect both of them from her lust? The pronouns mix a little. Nevermind: he taps the door with his knuckles, and he returns.

She tucks herself into bed. He does not look at her breasts, but they cannot escape notice entirely. He looks pleased; he looks adoring. As she whispers of her parents, he smiles and takes her hand.

"I hardly knew my parents," he confesses. "My mother was a great warrior who died when I was small; my father a statesman who rarely had time for the children. I am so happy you were close to yours. Tell me about them."

There is a moment, brief, when she thinks that his parents almost sound like Ivan's -- at least in their absence. It passes as fleetingly through her mind as adoration of her tits passes through Edmund's, only not because she banishes it. She simply does not dwell on such things.

Hilary does not correct him when he says that she was close to her parents. It's hardly true. What she does say is:

"Well," softly, her brow stitching, her lips faltering, "they both passed during my infancy. But I am told that I was very, very loved. In particular," Hilary murmurs, her head lolling gently against the pillows, dreamily, "my mother adored me." She smiles, lost in the fantasy of this beautiful life that was over before she could talk. "In fact, she loved me so much that my father was actually a little jealous," she adds, in a tone almost teasing.

Grey's brow knits as well; his eyes soften. He kisses Hilary's hand: "Then that's one more thing we have in common."

She speaks of those parents of hers, then, so long-dead. Her adoring mother. Her father, who loved her mother so much that he was actually a little jealous. Her tone teases. Grey smiles again.

"Oh? I'm sure he never really minded having such a daughter as you."

One more thing: their poor dead mothers. She smiles, achingly, but it never quite reaches her eyes. Very little does. Oliver has seen true emotion in her eyes, but likely did not recognize it, did not care to look on it, did not focus on it. Edmund never has. Edmund never will. So he won't notice its lack.

She huffs a soft laugh. "I really don't know about that. I do know the stories, though. How deep their passion for one another was. How profoundly she loved her children. How when she would hold me to her breast, he would pace up and down the halls in his hunting form or his warform, howling for her in his longing," she whispers, watching his eyes, speaking as though casting a spell. "When I was older and walking through those halls, I sometimes tried to find the bloodstains in the stone or wood or carpets where they say he would cut at himself with his claws, screaming for her."

Hilary gives a little shake of her head. "I never found them. Maybe that was only pretend,"

and maybe they cleaned it all, scrubbed it out, erased it from the home where those children were raised.

--

She exhales softly, only a half-heartbeat later. "She did love him more, though, even if it pained him to think she might not," Hilary tells Edmund. "I know that her love for him was true and eternal, because when he begged for her vow, she promised proof to him, and she kept her oath."

She sounds

almost proud.

"I would let you kill me, too, my darling Edmund," Hilary whispers, searching his eyes, her hand turning under his until they are palm to palm, until he can feel how cold those long fingers of hers have become. "If you needed me to promise that so you could believe I love you above all others, even my children, even myself, I would let you kill me, as papa did mama."

She never fucking calls them that.

Her voice is breathy, ardent, even, grotesquely... a little lustful. "As long as you followed me then, at your own hand, so we could be together and alone forever. Just like my mother and father." There would be tears in her eyes if she could summon them. But she just looks overcome with emotion, with adoration, looking at him with such

bliss

in her small, cold black eyes. Her hand tightens gently on his, holding, clinging, almost pulling but not quite. Not that.

"I would even kill our babies," Hilary whispers to him, hushed and worshipful, "so that you could believe how passionately I adore you." She exhales, sighing, her cheeks high with color. "Oh, my love, kiss me. Tell me you are pleased with me."

How deep their passion was. How profoundly she loved her children.

Oh, Edmund Grey is still smiling then. He is smiling into her eyes, lovingly, approvingly, thinking to himself how beautiful she is, how sweet, how pure, how chaste, how lovely, how perfect, how romantic and idealistic and sheltered. He must shelter her, yes. He must nurture this gentleness in her, wall her away from the dark and cold world, protect her, protect her, keep her.

And then she tells him: her father paced the halls. Howled for her mother. Clawed at himself. Left bloodstains that she, years later, looked for and never found. She tells him: her mother did love her father more. She must have, because they made a vow. Proof. An oath kept.

By then Grey's hand has stilled in hers. There is something drawn and hollow in his eyes. He watches her without moving, without blinking, as she tells him

just

what she would let him do to her. And what she would do to their children, if he wouldn't fulfill that vow. His hand has gone slack by then. Her is tightening, and it is gentle -- she is not capable of much strength, let's be honest -- but his eyes flick down and there is horror there, horror and revulsion and --

Edmund Grey pulls his hand out of Hilary's. The gesture is quick, too-quick, though he tries to master himself. "My dearest," he says, "you are overwrought. I... I must leave you now. Perhaps we will speak again in the morning."

And then he stands. He turns from her, as quickly as he turned from the bathroom door; as quickly as he withdrew from each and every flickering hint of her desire, her lust. If she reaches for him he evades; if she calls after him he does not turn. He pauses at the door only to speak a single word of courtesy over his shoulder, because that is what you do:

"Goodnight."

And then he is gone. The door remains ajar. He didn't even stop to close it.Hilary

Hilary does call for him. She does reach. She leans after him, all but clawing the air, and her eyes are frantic, her breath rapid, and as he is telling her Goodnight she is saying his name a second, third, fourth time: edmund. edmund. edmund.

"Edmund!" Hilary shrieks, the plaintive cries growing almost ferocious, angry, manic, like a tantrum. He is gone, the door left half-open, swinging slightly in the dim room, and her breathing comes rapid, her eyes narrowed and savage.

Again, louder now, roaring with that shrill edge to cut the air: "EDMUND!"

She was an infant.

She can't possibly remember the way her father screamed for her mother.

She can't.

She couldn't.

"EDMUND!"

Naturally, she is mad.

They all are. They're all mad in their own special ways, and perhaps part of Edmund's madness is the ability to ignore hers. To ignore not only her madness but all the pieces that don't quite fit. The pieces that keep her from perfection, keep her from being that quiet, passive, docile, beautiful ornament in a glass bubble that he wants. He ignores it all, overwrites it in his mind, creates her in the image of his own fantasies until,

of course,

he can't anymore. And all it takes is the tiniest hairline crack.

--

Edmund Grey does not turn. He does not come back. He does not look back. With each rising iteration of his name his shoulders hunch down, his pace quickens. He is striding by the time he's in the hall. Quick-stepping by the time he's walking down the stairs. Nearly running as he hits the ground floor,

hits the foyer,

slams open the door and walks out without a single glance backward; a single thought spared to coming back.

None of that changes the fact that Hilary is still screaming. Shocking that so much power can come from that frail too-thin frame; those lungs encased in those slender ribs. Shocking that she screams like that, unflagging, louder and louder, unceasing until somewhere down the hall Edmund Grey's sons stop staring at each other in consternation and move.

She hears them coming; both of them spurred suddenly to action almost in the same instant. The thunder of their feet hitting the ground, the slam of their door open, their footsteps coming up the hall. Her door slamming open then, and the wolf-men piling in, Oliver coming immediately to her and clamping his hand over her mouth, shh!ing her while his brother casts about, baffled. Comes to her side too, puts his big hand on her shoulder, drops to a knee and joins Oliver in trying to shush her,

shh, shh, hush, what's the matter,

turning, looking over his shoulder at the empty doorway where surely his father should have long since manifested himself.

She screams and screams. Edmund flees, and her nails rake down her arms as she shrieks, leaving red weals, but not breaking the skin. Eventually, and truthfully it doesn't take that long, his sons come running. The one who distrusts her wholesale and the one who was fucking her, was going to keep fucking her,

the one who left her when she was broken.

When the boys come into the room, Hilary grabs the lamb on the bedside and hurls it at Oliver, the cord yanking from the wall, her scream following the ceramic base and glass bulb towards him. The sound of her scream then is not need and love but a faint, barely perceptible tenor of outright hatred. She throws, and maybe it connects, but either way she still ends up pinned down to the bed, a firm hand over her mouth, another hand or more hands holding her slender wrists because she is clawing, clawing, wild-eyed and insane.

It takes time, though perhaps not as long as they'd think, for her to stop trying to bite and scratch. For her to submit. For her to stare, wild-eyed, shaking, until through a series of mute nods and assurances, Oliver takes his hand.

"He doesn't believe I love him," she whispers, her voice ragged and dredged from screams. She sounds overwhelmed, terrified, on the verge of sobs. "He doesn't." Hilary looks pleadingly at Oliver, shaking. "You have to tell him. Make him believe it. You have to tell him I'll let him do anything he wants to me. Tell him it's okay," she urges, nodding rapidly. "Tell him I like it."

Oliver has certain similarities to Ivan, doesn't he? A certain talent for cruelty and fucking; a certain resemblance, even, in the close-cut golden hair and wicked smirks. But Hilary was always infuriatingly unable to strike Ivan when she really wanted to, whereas Oliver --

well; that lamp clocks him in the face. Or it would have, if he hadn't thrown up an arm to fend it off at the last second. It bangs off his forearm instead, tumbling secondarily against his head, making him double over and swear. It delays his arrival at her side to silence her but makes him twice as vengeful about it. Shut up! he shouts at her once he has his hands on her, several times, the last one accompanied by a vicious short shake that has John shooting a warning glance at him.

But she does calm. She does calm, and Oliver's hands stay clamped furiously there for another beat before his brother's hand on his wrist more than Hilary's nods and assurances get him to let go.

And she pleads. Speaks of love, of willingness to do anything for Edmund, willingness to let Edmund do anything to her. Oliver's face twists in disgust and anger. He shoves himself upright and turns away from her. John turns to him accusingly:

"What the hell did you do to her?"

"Me?" Oliver is incredulous. He is also choosing his words carefully. "I didn't do anything to make her like this. She's a crazy bitch."

"You didn't do anything to her? Nothing?"

"Not to make her scream like a stuck pig for Father."

They talk, and Hilary whimpers. "He doesn't believe me," she gasps, throat still raw, sobbing softly. "You have to make him believe me."

A hard stare passes between the brothers, broken only when Hilary whimpers again. John sighs suddenly, harsh.

"Get out." It's an unmitigated order. "I'll deal with her."

Oliver casts another glance at Hilary. Distrustful and wary; perhaps a touch baleful. Beneath all that: uncertain. Yet for all that, he turns; he walks away, letting himself through that door, closing it behind him.

Which leaves Hilary with John Grey. Who looks at her a moment, then pulls up the same chair his father occupied. Lowers himself into it. He is perhaps the huskiest of the Greys; square-jawed and rough at the edges, rather unlike the rest of them. Whether Hilary continues to whimper or not, he lowers his head into his palm for a moment, scrubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand.

Then, raising his head: "You understand that I'm a Philodox, trained to tell lie from truth?"

And so she is alone with John.

She has been alone with Oliver, and even now the seeds of his destruction are growing, planted in that one brief encounter. She has been alone with Edmund, and now he has fled the house, fled his sons and the woman he was to marry.

One might look at her track record and realize that no one should ever, ever be left alone with Hilary, lest she ruin them.

--

John pulls up the chair that Edmund nearly tipped over in his haste to get out. She sobs, whimpering, choking on her tears, looking at the ceiling. Occasionally her chest convulses slightly with her weeping. He asks her if she knows what he is and she twists her head away, then nods, eyes closed.

Perhaps he is using his gift of truth even now. Perhaps those dark eyes of his -- dark where his father's and his brothers' are pale -- are prying into her soul even now. Or perhaps he wouldn't dare. Who would want to see into Hilary's soul?

A moment passes. Then:

"Do you love my father?"

His eyes are dark.

Hers are darker.

It's hard to say if there has ever been anything he's seen that should have been living but in truth is so cold, so removed from what is commonly known as human. That darkness is chilling. She thinks momentarily of a line she heard once, that meant so much to her that she tucked it away in her heart to keep forever and ever, where no one would try and understand what it meant to her, because no one really could.

I do not love men. I love what devours them.

Hilary has turned her head back towards him. She has opened her eyes.

"It must be wretched to be what you are," she says, and from someone else this might sound like sympathy, true pity. "To know that those around you only speak the truth out of fear of your retribution, and not because you have earned it from them."

And so the mask drops.

And so John Grey is the first and only of his long and storied lineage to see Hilary as she is. Cold. Removed. Inhuman. Terrifyingly mad -- though perhaps not in the way that Edmund thinks.

A small, sad smile moves the corner of the Philodox's mouth. He shrugs his shoulders a little; it is a helpless gesture.

"We are what we are," he says quietly, "and there's nothing we can do to change it. Isn't that right?

"Do you want to marry my father?"

It happened that quick. The slow turn of her head. The opening of her eyes. The realization that there were never any tears. The coldness of her eyes. The truth of what she is, which is far more chilling than what she showed Edmund and Oliver, because it encompasses those things. This is a woman who may very well murder a child for some mad reason. John doesn't even know that sometimes she still has to have one of her handlers, one of her servants, go places with her

to steer her by the elbow gently away from some fallen pigeon on the ground, the ruby-red puddles of its blood, the artful and wrenching twist of its limbs. Lest she stare too long. Lest she bring it home, cradling that obsession with dead and broken things like she is worried someone might take it from her.

Hilary, this Hilary, quirks her brows at his words, one brief and bitter flick. Oh. Someone thinks to ask. How precious.

"It will end badly for all of you if I do," she says,

and that is the truth.

This time the smile is less sad, more bitter. "All of my father's marriages end badly for all of us. One way or another."

It fades.

"Whatever you've said to him has driven him out of your arms and out of this house. It is entirely possible his infatuation is broken and he'll never return to seek your hand again. It is also possible that by morning he'll have found a way to forget it all. He has a ... talent for that. Amongst other things.

"Sometimes I can get through to him. Sometimes -- not often, but sometimes -- I can sway him one way or another. So I need you to tell me, honestly and without evasion, what it is you want.

"Your answer will not bring you to harm at my hand. On that, you have my word."

he'll have found a way to forget it all

does not strike fear into Hilary's heart. She does not think he will forget what she said to him. She knows the way that story tattoos itself on the mind, scratches memory til it bleeds, scabs over, scars, stays. The way it crawls up from behind you in the dark, when you dare to feel things like affection, like loyalty, like love. It reminds you of where such things can lead, of how hollow such things really are.

Hilary knows what stories like that will do to a person.

--

"He won't forget," she says quietly, levelly, with certainty, watching John with those unafraid, endless black eyes. She is no frail flower, however delicate she seems, however thin she has become in recent weeks. No one fragile could look into his eyes for so long, and react so little.

Her brows tug together, narrowly at his 'at my hand' bit. He could be a contract lawyer. "Why." It is only barely a question.

Why.

Only barely a question, that. A fair one, though, and one that brings a moment's pause. Bring shadows to John Grey's eyes, turning them away from Hilary.

He leans back in that chair beside her bed. He rubs a hand over his face, his fingertips scratching at his beard. His eyes turn to the window and he shrugs a little. For a moment it seems that may be all the answer he will provide -- he who asked so many questions -- but then he speaks.

"I was only a year old when my mother died and my father remarried. Growing up, I was told the sad, romantic story again and again. My mother was beautiful, my mother was virtuous. My mother loved my father and my father loved my mother. It was love match, rare amongst our tribe, and she bore him a lovely daughter and a strong son. Then one day she took ill. It broke my father's heart when she died.

"My mother was beautiful. She was virtuous, by all accounts. She did love my father, and perhaps in the beginning he returned the favor. But as I grew older, as I honed my ear for truth and untruth, I began to detect flaws in the story. Cracks that made themselves evident in everything around me; everything I saw of my family, everything my father did. Eventually, I sussed out the truth for myself.

"You see, my father's ... peculiarity is a certain fixation with how things should be. A man's tie must be tied a certain way. The table must be set a certain way. Children should laugh a certain way. Women should behave a certain way. His pack should be assembled a certain way, with a certain assortment of auspices, and ... it goes on. I think he can control himself sometimes, with the smaller things. But the ones that affect his world in some profound way -- he is a slave to those, and grows more so with every passing year.

"What actually happened was this: somehow -- and it could have been anything, a word, a laugh out of turn, or maybe he just woke up one day and his mind was changed -- my mother fell from my father's grace. Suddenly she was no longer the perfect creature he envisioned. She slipped from her pedestal and there was no putting her back. He abandoned her without warning, he put her out of Wilton Castle, he hid her away in some tiny cage of a country house where she was allowed no visitors and no freedom.

"She tried to win her way back into his heart for a while. She couldn't. Then she tried to escape. She didn't manage that, either. Finally, unable to stand the solitude and the shame that my father had subjected her to, she tried to kill herself. At that, she succeeded admirably.

"By then, of course, my father had remarried. I hear he was displeased that Emmaline gave him a Garou daughter instead of a son -- my sister Margaret -- and so Emmaline too was sent to some remote village or other. By the time my father married Liliane, Oliver's mother, he had convinced himself that this parade of wives was somehow Gaia's will. I think after six children and the better part of a decade, that became his excuse for abandoning her: that she had already given him one Garou child, and so it was time to move on. Then came Nathalie, who gave him Dickie, Ally and Ben before being sent to retire on ... I think it was the Normandy coastline.

"And now there's you. Doubtlessly he has some grand fantasy of the life he will lead with you. Some lovely, civil romance in his twilight years. Some fairytale in which you are the princess in the tower and he is your white knight and you could ride off into the sunset together -- though for all I know in another month or year he might decide to replace Margaret entirely and sire a Ragabash on you, or god knows what else. All I know is it won't last. It never does. And sooner or later his madness will break over him and...

"I'm tired of watching it happen. I was tired of it years ago. I'm tired of seeing what it does to my brothers and sisters to be raised by him, to lose their mothers one day without warning or explanation, to be afraid to move or breathe the wrong way lest it spoil my father's grand plan. Some of them, like Margaret, have run as far as they can. Some of them, like Dickie, are still doing their best to make him proud as though that might fix him, or them. And some of them, like Oliver -- and maybe like me, too -- thwart him at every turn possible without ever daring to truly speak against him. Whatever our coping strategies, not a one of us has survived unscathed.

"Now: if you still want to marry him, then it's your life to live as you like. But if you don't, and never did, then I will help you if I can."

Mad thing. Thoughtless thing, with no real desire or consideration for her own safety or survival. Even her submission to Ivan is terrifying; she relies on him entirely to know when to stop, to say stop, to hold back, to control every piece of it, because she will almost never stop him. It's hard to even say, when she pulls away from him in tears, if it is out of fear or self-preservation or simply that she can't take any more pleasure, any more pain, or the bliss will shatter her.

She does not make choices that are good for anyone. Look at her stepson. Look at her child. Look at Ivan, and the chaos she has wrought in his heart and life. On little more than a whim, a changed mind, they upended everything they'd decided, and she went to Novgorod to be with Anton. To hold him. To feed him. To put him to her breast. To love him, and for the first time in her wretched, beautiful life, to consider that she might have not just a soul, but maybe even a heart, even if both are shattered into tiny, skin-slicing shards she can never hope to completely put back together.

Hilary listens to John's story. She is good at listening to these stories. Stories her caregivers told her about her parents. Stories told to her about her brother, lovely stories that always turned into nightmares when she closed her eyes, his memory trapped forever in the horror and carnage of his death. Hilary listens obediently to John, even with interest, as he tells her about the fiction he was given, that sounds so like the fiction they would have given Anton. The way he learned, later on, that it was a lie.

Were she human, she might feel sympathy for John: both of their mothers committed suicide.

Hilary does not feel that. She does not even think of it.

--

"No one survives unscathed," is the first thing she says, quiet, a deadened set of words that she speaks flatly without quite being numb, without quite being bitter.

It rings with truth in John's ears. And not just subjective truth.

Mad thing, thoughtless thing.

The things she says.

--

"I am tired of being a whore for this tribe," Hilary whispers, resting her head on the propped-up pillows, watching him with eyes that seem almost lazy, almost dreamy.

No.

Weary.

"And if I marry your father, I will not do him the favor of killing myself out of his sight." She sounds so tired. So bored.

Then thoughtful: "Or mix colloidal silver into his food until he frenzies and does it for me."

The things she says.

His blood would run cold if it had not already. If a lifetime of watching his father wreak subtle barbarism and horror upon a string of women, a string of offspring, had not already chilled him to the bone. Left him numb and bitter and very nearly unable to connect in any meaningful way to his own mate, his own wife, just in case --

just in case he was his father's son. Just in case he, too, is doomed to follow the same path.

--

A few moments go by in silence so absolute that they can hear each other breathing. Edmund has left; Oliver has slunk off somewhere. Somewhere, perhaps, there are servants, but such not-people don't even matter to the likes of them; sovereignty amongst sovereigns. And so they may as well be alone here in this modest little room,

in this modest little house,

removed from the city and the neighbors, where perhaps one day Hilary herself would have been sent to retire.

Except she would have killed herself first. Except she would have tried to kill Grey first.

--

"Tell me what you told my father," John Grey says at last, and quietly, "so I can remind him if he forgets."

Hilary smiles at John, still with that worn out, dreamy look.

She tells him. In mostly the same words she used when she told his father. Only now she does not look lovestruck, overwhelmed, eager to please. She looks cold. She speaks almost viciously, with a sort of bitter satisfaction in the retelling. John asked. This is what he gets. Now he gets to know, now he gets to carry that forever, and it's the details that for him are terror and for her are memory.

Like a little girl, dark-haired and dark-eyed and pale-skinned, searching hallways for clawmarks, for bloodstains.

Like a woman trying to nurse an infant daughter while a crinos beat at the door, screaming, scratching at himself, howling.

Like the mad promises that mad people make to each other, breathless and in the dark, swearing fealty unto death, and racing towards that death together.

A wolf slaughtering his mate because she promised, she promised that it would make him feel loved, and he believed it.

Someone telling a little girl this, over and over, like a fairy tale.

--

Hilary finishes, and watches John, but she is sitting up in bed now, in that ridiculous nightgown, and the lamplight comes from the floor as it has since she threw it at Oliver. "May I go now?"

One more piece of horror strewn into the world. One more ghastly memory for John Grey to carry, even as Hilary carries John's own harrowing tale. Perhaps it hardly even matters anymore to her, though. She has so much darkness inside her. She is brimming over with so much hate, and madness, and grief, that it's a wonder that Ivan sees any light in her at all.

Or perhaps, like Grey, he imagines that.

--

John Grey looks tired. He looks worn and exhausted and what she says makes him shake his head a little.

"You don't need my permission to go." He stands, though, going to pick that lamp off the floor. Straighten the shade, set it back on the nightstand. "But I'll have the car take you home. Or call you a cab, if you prefer."

A small pause.

"It might be a good idea for you to find a way to be unreachable for a while. Just in case my father tries to call on you again."

Hilary watches him as he rises, fixing the lamp. Her eyes flick back to his.

"I'll have one of my people fetch me," she says. "And don't worry. He won't find me at my apartment."

"As you wish," John Grey replies. There's a space there -- room for admonitions, advice, goodbyes; something. Nothing comes to fill it. After a moment, the Philodox nods to Hilary, turns, departs.

The door snicks shut behind him and it stays shut. She is left to herself. Down the hall the brothers converse briefly, too quietly for her to make out words. She can hear the tone, though, and it is tense, terse, occasionally rising into anger. Soon enough even that falls into silence. She does not hear Edmund Grey's voice in the house again.

Eventually, a car comes for her. Her own people come for her. Grey's servants do not answer the door for her. They do not bar her from leaving. John Grey does not see her off at the door, and neither does Oliver -- though Oliver is there in the sitting room as she departs. He is sulking. His eyes glitter as they follow her. He does not attempt to stay her.

Possibly, he would not dare.

Hilary looks down at the ring on her hand as John leaves her. She tosses the covers back, going to her clutch, lifting out her phone -- which is always in 'easy' mode, since otherwise she bricks it -- and presses the button that shows Miranda's face. Dimly through the door she can be heard talking, but no one listens. Downstairs, the brothers argue. Tightly.

Upstairs, she sits on the bed, silent, waiting. Her servants are not terribly far. They did, after all, follow her north when Edmund's car arrived for her. She waits, and waits until she hears someone downstairs knocking. John and Oliver, though more likely one of their household staff, find a young blonde woman with round eyes standing there, carrying a leather overnight bag and requesting to see Ms. de Broqueville.

Later, Darya helps Hilary unbutton the nightgown to leave it behind. Darya collects her dress and shoes and lingerie and jewelry from the bathroom. Darya combs her hair and dresses her anew in the clean clothes she brought to her. Darya slips her shoes onto her feet. Darya walks her out of the bedroom, and downstairs, and to the door.

Oliver sulks, watching her as she leaves. Hilary does not look at him at all.

--

The car outside is warm, and the two servants to attend to her while the third watches over all of her affairs and manages the unseen details of her life handles the rapid emptying of the apartment in Chicago. Even this late, you can find a truck and able-bodied men if you need them. If you pay them enough. She is writing checks and transferring payments and setting up appointments for the removal of particular pieces of art or lighting arrays.

Up north, Hilary looks out the window as the car she is in drives her gently, inexorably away from the Greys

towards the lake house.