i belong to the ground now

They are not related by blood, though once upon a time they might have been related by marriage if the same Bisset’s that haunt her are the ones who haunted Odette centuries ago. Regardless, it’s a bond, and the only one that allows her to speak freely about her own time under a Bisset’s thumb without garnering useless sympathy, and the reverse is true too, even if Aurélie holds her cards close to her chest. Fresh, still, clearly, but how can it heal when her abuser walks among them? Odette grimaces, and doesn’t bother smoothing out her expression as she waits for Aurélie to answer her door. “You are quite late to our meeting, it was several hours and a day prior,” she tells her gently. She doesn’t miss the deadbolt on the door, or the heightened security, and Odette continues on as if she doesn’t. “C’est d’accord. Last I checked, he was at the inn, and there is nobody else out here. You may let me in, if you wish, or I can speak through a door.” Preferably not, as the discussion of Bisset’s has her looking over her own shoulder, even though Remy Bisset has been dead for two centuries now and unlikely to return. The door opens, and she turns back and halts, blinking. “Merde, what happened to you?”

Nikolai presses his lips into a thin line. “Killing is easy. It’s the sparing that’s tricky,” he replies flatly, sinking deeper into his seat. Lockhart does keep around comfortable chairs. “I believe in a ‘the right tool for the job’ mindset. In some situations, killing is the fastest way to eliminate a threat, but there is always a complication. Sometimes, a subtler way works better.” Nikolai is not a trigger happy maniac going around murdering people for no reasons. There is a time and place for violence. “Hypothetically speaking,” Nikolai says, although in his mind, he is racking his memories for her relatives, specifically vampires, “a dead body is a dead body. A dead vampire still leaves a dead body.” He explains in some morbid simplicity. “I can’t imagine you killing Katherine Irving– or is she Antrim now? Anyway, I can’t think of anyone who could actually kill her. But didn’t she have a brother?” Notable people in Lethe, especially the Council Members have their own files in Nikolai’s ‘dirt cabinets’. If he remembers correctly, the only ‘relative’ (excluding her children) in Lethe would be Katherine Irving now-Antrim. But he would have known if Irving-Antrim was killed… That leaves the other one of her ancestors, perhaps an uncle, even.

Spare him? The idea brings a laugh to her lips, a short huffing sound that is more like an exhale. “Hypothetically, this was the right tool for the job. The only one, really, because you can’t let some people go free,” she says with a shrug. Nikolai is the easiest person to talk about this, she realizes, his expression unchanging no matter what detail she drops on him. When he settles on a chair, she takes that as a sign to sit on the edge of her desk, frowning all the while. “They do,” she agrees, brow up, a grim smile on her lips. There is, after all, one of them on the floor in her basement just awaiting clean up. She blinks, trying to imagine any circumstances where she would kill Katherine and drawing a blank, but her expression smooths at his accurate deduction. “She did, I assume that’s in whatever files you keep on everyone here? His name was Edmund, and he killed my children.” Blunt, and yet subtly doesn’t seem necessary anymore. It’s time to let the hypothetical go, and her lips are a thin line as she debates what to say, though the details are already obvious. Odette eyes him, and continues with a sigh. “He is not unlike your aunt, or at least she has the type of influence that he wished he did, his influence is a lot more selective. He is quite dead obviously, and it is no great loss, but it puts me in a bind. I can’t exactly cart myself off to America as I did the last time. So, vampire disposal? How?” She shakes her head. “No, I’m not asking you to do it. Just advice.”

“One of mine?” She slid down the ladder she had been on and lowered her hand on the file to keep Odette from swinging it around too much. “Ah… how unfortunate, whoever mixed up our work needs to be more careful. I do, but I didn’t read nearly as many details.” Seiha twirled away from the ladder with the file in hand and then retrieved what she needed. She extended Odette’s paperwork over. “I feel you’d be better at explaining it anyways… Hmm, but really, I wish I had gotten this sooner.” She knew from experience how it was like to get jammed or stuck in animal form. Seiha hated it. “Not everything, I’m a student for life, always ready to learn. Nothing of interest here… not to me anyway. Outdated books on the mind and techniques to train dogs…” Mostly garbage about her predecessor’s hobbies. “I don’t fault them for that. We all need some privacy and healthy boundaries. Ah, but after I get through this lovely collection, I’ll be sure to send you some of the things!”

A wiser person might have waited at the festival to see its conclusion, but it’s been several hours since its start and Odette has no doubts it can get through the last half an hour without her there. This thought alone propels her home -- or another version of home, at any rate, as she bypasses her own home in favor of Katherine’s. When times are uneasy, she tends to fallback on the usual person after all. She lets herself inside with only a call as a greeting, setting her keys and purse on the entry table. No Patrick still, and that’s her other reason for visiting: her pseudo mother could spend days in her home if someone let her, and Patrick wasn’t there to urge her out. “I thought we would see you at the festival for a few minutes, if only to give the remaining council members a look of disdain,” she comments. The room is dark, illuminated by various candles and a cheerfully popping fire, but she knows this home like the back of her hand and wiggles onto the couch beside Katherine.“I bring news on that end: Javier is stepping down, he wants to focus on other things. So we will be looking for another new person. If you might find a way to become a fae, it would greatly help out, we could use your presence.” Heels are deposited under the table, and her feet tuck beneath her in the pause between words. She laugh, a quiet sound in the silence of Katherine’s home. “I am starting to think he has the right idea. Get away before something else goes wrong, but I fear it might be too late for that.”

Date: December 23, 2020 Time: 4PM Location: backyard of Odette’s home

@riley-voss​

It’s snowing still, as if buckets of it haven’t been dropping the last couple days, and it blankets the ground like a white duvet. She admires it from the swinging bench on her porch, legs tucked beneath her, gently rocking as she waits. Waits, mostly, for whenever Delilah decides to cut the games and move to her decision, though she expects she will not hear anything for several days yet. Odette lifts her head at the scuff of shoes in the snow, and blinks in surprise as Riley appears. “I could have come find you rather than send you navigating through this storm,” she says, scooting over on the bench to allow Riley and whatever package she holds to sit beside her. She explains the lack of invitation inside with a light shrug. “The power is out inside, and while Orion can navigate well in the dark still, I’m more eager to sit outside while I can.” A pause, and several things she nearly says, but their last conversation lingers, and the stilted conversations to follow it are a reminder. Odette smiles, a little huff as she shakes her head. “I am always happy to see you, but if you are here for Orion, he is at a session with someone across town.” In some ways, it pains her to know how much closer Orion is with Riley than herself, but she lives with it, as she does with most things. The living with it rather than fighting for it is probably why she’s ended up here, sitting next to a daughter she still struggles to understand, who struggles to understand her, and she ponders this in the time takes Riley to reply. She can offer this out to Riley, if she wants it. “Its been a while since I’ve seen you last.”

Date: December 13, 2020 Time: 2:15pm Location: Liam’s place of residence.

@liamlockhart​

How many times has she thought about this moment over the last month? Too many to count, certainly, enough that her work is slipping through her fingertips like water, and she’s helpless to stop it. Two hundred years of grief and mourning over... over nothing, truly, because both her children are alive, and it leaves her feel bereft to have this emotion yanked away from her. No, not bereft, though she doesn’t know what exactly is sustaining her until she’s knocking on the door, waiting for his response. If he gives one. Relief, maybe, for knowing she might see them even once, when she’s thought thus far she would be stuck imagining it. Guilt, maybe more so, for the years they haven’t been together, and the suffering that has brought them to this moment, standing on a threshold hoping someone will open the door. “You already know who I am, there is no privacy in this town. And everyone in my family kind, but meddlesome, they will have told you my story already,” she starts, sighing heavily, hoping he is there to hear it. “I am sorry I could not tell you myself, I will not lie and say it was for your sake. It was for mine, I...” Odette falters, heart in her throat. She’s hoped for a reunion where she would simply cry, and hold onto the things she’s thought long lost. It seems cruel to make her hold onto a semblance of control when all foundations seem to be breaking, the things holding her aloft falling one by one. The loss of her children, and Lethe, and Edmund’s shadow, and all are a pillar of who she is, but no longer. No children mourn, only time to regret. Lethe to worry about, but it seems so much farther away. Edmund, his threat and shadow is laughable, but it still squeezes at her lungs, now more than ever, to know she took his life. Took his life for the ones he had stolen from her. “I have spent two hundred years thinking I would only ever see and know you as messy haired boy who wouldn’t sleep without the red blanket and the little tin soldier. So if you do not want to speak, if the story matters little to you, may I at least see you once?”

@takancshi​

The shifter councilwoman wasn’t hard to find, their office hadn’t moved and it was easy enough to slip away from her own work to the other side of the building where Seiha’s was located. “I think these are one of yours,” she said, waving a file around on a twitchy shifter jammed into a mouse for the last several days. “Think someone mixed up our paperwork, I’m afraid I can’t help your mouse problem. Do you happen to have mine, or did they send everyone’s to the wrong person?” Most of the files would be discussed in a council meeting anyway, but Odette preferred looking over her things ahead of time and preparing. She leaned against the door, arms crossing, studying the shifter with curiosity. “What is it you are studying? I had thought you had read everything in here on zoology already, or have you found something of interest in here? I have been waiting to get a peek on the books in here for ages, your predecessor was quite private sometimes.”

Nikolai stares at her, studying her demeanor closely. She is on guard, more so than usual, and her shoulders are tense. He supposes it is an emergency for her. “You must be desperate, giving me a blank check like that.” He remarks offhandedly, watching her with disinterest as she closes the blinds. He tilts his head to the side, narrows his eyes as in ‘spill it out or I’m leaving’. Her question is rather surprising, even for someone like Nikolai. “The best way to dispose of a body is not to make a body to begin with. But from the way you’re acting, the body is always here, huh.” He started, considering several options at hands. “Dismember it, seal it in a non-corrosive container with lye, heat it up until it liquefies the body.” He says as if he was discussing how to fix a lawnmower. “Who’s the unlucky fucker?” asks him out of curiosity, and possibly for a blackmail material.

Odette lifts her hands, in a gesture that is half shrug and half sigh, unable to settle on one emotion over the other. “Something along the lines,” she mutters back, ignoring his impatience in favor of settling herself. Speaking it out loud to someone other than the people who were in the know already was... not freeing so much as worrying, and she frowns as if she could take the words back. Too late, and she nods to his words, committing them to memory. “If I can avoid making a body, I intend to do it though it does not always work out that way. I suppose you are familiar with that, or do you only have bodies in the ground you intend to put there?” Its an offhand question, only half an attempt at mustering up her usual curiosity, her thoughts racing. His question has her brows raising, and when she smiles, its amused and a little tired than before. “I think telling you would be unwise, but you are not the only person in Lethe with... unfortunate relatives like aunts and uncles. Speaking of which, will that method work on vampires, or is this strictly restricted to average humans? Hypothetically speaking.” Both of them know its not.

“There are no best choices where Edmund Irving is concerned, my darling. That’s what you’re missing here. You leave him go, he kills again, he attacks your daughter again, and what? We give him a spanking? Lock him in the basement again for a few weeks?” Orion didn’t expect an answer to these questions, but they needed to be voiced to bolster her past actions and her argument. So he said them, stroking her hair as he did so, and he let silence fall between them for a long moment. A comfortable silence, made even more so by the number of duvets and pillows that they were nestled in right now. An excellent way to spend an afternoon, he thought, and needed given her state of mind. “Katherine has made that choice before, letting him go. And where did that take us? Here, now, after he’s caused more pain in the world than he has ever felt himself. No, he deserved to die. End of story.” Light it on fire in the basement? His hand paused on her hair and he sighed loudly, shaking his head. “Well, regardless of how Riley feels about it, I think burning a body in the basement would not have gone as smoothly as letting them handle it.” The real hurdle was one he had been thinking about since she told him the full story of what had happened. He had been prodding at it, working all the angles, and none of them were going as he would have liked. It would be messy, this whole thing once it got out. Messy, dangerous, but possibly useful in the long run. Time would tell, and they had that on their side. “But my love, we cannot work under the assumption that this will stay under wraps. This is Lethe. It won’t, we know it won’t, so we best prepare now before it explodes. Guide the story ourselves.”

She had forgotten in the time he was gone what it was like to have someone who trusted her so completely that he didn’t question her reasons. It was Edmund, sure, a subject so thoroughly spoken about to bring a headache to someone who didn’t feel them anymore, but Odette knew it was also just Orion, and his faith in her. Her faith in him. She nodded against him, silent, rolling over things in her head, knowing without asking that he did the same with every stroke of her hair. “No, we have too many books in the basement. We should invest in a fireplace, I think, we only have the one in the living room and it is small.” Did she plan on needing to incinerate anymore bodies? No, but Odette wouldn’t mind being prepared for the possibility, it seemed necessary with a family like theirs. “Perhaps we can toss Maksim in it, and be done with that problem, too,” she murmured, only slightly joking, given he was the thorn bothering her most now that Edmund was gone. Gone, how the thought made her hands still on his chest with surprise, and then continue their mindless tracing. “Even if there is no body, people will have questions eventually. Delilah already has a fair few, I believe Riley spoke with her.” She hid her hurt fairly well, a part of her knowing why Riley had gone to her and other feeling a tinge betrayed by it. “I assume you have an idea? We will need someone to tell the story, and a million other things, I am not sure how to contain this properly without someone getting hurt.”

“How am I supposed to feel anything but tainted when the only thing I am is what he made me?” Riley murmurs, shaking her head. “All the happy memories from before, they’re all tainted, because the moment I think about them..” she trails off, shaking her head. They weren’t happy anymore. They were poisoned by him the moment his teeth sunk into her flesh.  “Anything I try to remember is just another thing that Edmund’s taken away from me. So please,” she says, looking Odette in the eyes now. “Tell me how I’m supposed to wipe out years, and years of pain. Please, tell me, since you know so much.” She knows her mother doesn’t deserve her harsh words and yet she still can’t help but say them. For so many years her mother hadn’t been around to comfort her and protect her in the way she’s trying to do now. Riley doesn’t know what to do with all this love, much less who to target her anger at now that the man who caused all of this torment is dead. But behind all this rage is a little girl who just wants to held by her mother. It’s that part of Riley that’s touched by Odette’s words, and that part of her reaches out. Her hand slows, the motion feeling a bit foreign. That anger hasn’t dissolved, not completely, but it has lessened a bit.  “It doesn’t repulse me to have a mother like you. You…you make choices to protect those around you despite what it may do to you. I find that brave,” she says softly, the tips of her fingers just inches from Odette’s. They can’t quite make it all the way, like they’re waiting for some sort of response to tie everything up into a neat little bow. There’s a chance they may never get past this point of distrust, a feeling Riley hasn’t realized she’s harbored for the last year until now. Until Edmund’s presence made that distrust resurface.

 “But these choices you’ve made, they…they don’t just affect you. Despite you trying to have my best interests at heart, I was hurt by your actions. I was hurt by the choice you made then, and by the one you’ve made now.” Perhaps that had not been her mother’s intention with both instances, but nonetheless here they stand now, angry, fighting. And it hits her suddenly as she’s standing there, looking at her mother’s face and listening to her speak. She and Liam were doomed from the start. Decision after decision, their relatives made choices that eventually down the line came back to hurt to those after them. Riley and Liam were merely collateral damage in a long line of other people’s decisions. Of her mother’s, of Katherine’s, of Edmund’s, of her father’s…how many more decisions had to be made before Riley decided to make some of her own? After Odette finishes, and only then, does Riley finally speak. Her words come out raw, tired, the anger beginning to drain from her body.  “Mom…before you brought him here we were okay. We were doing just fine and I…I met someone. For the first time in a long time, I was actually happy. I forgot about everything else, it just…didn’t matter anymore. And even with his past, it just…didn’t matter.” Riley sucks in a breath of air, trying to steady voice as she goes on. “Bringing him here took that away. And you can blame Edmund for what he did to me all those years ago, but you can’t blame him for this. You chose to bring him here. You chose to put faith in Lethe, and it was your decision to me keep this from me.” By now bloody tears began forming in Riley’s eyes, dropping down her cheeks. “You…you let the one person in this whole fucking town who actually gets me, who, who sees past everything I hate in myself and loves every part,” she breathes out, feeling as though her lungs are being constricted. It’s silly. They aren’t, they can’t be, but it still feels like she’s suffocating under the weight of her pain. “Be a part of this mess. Our mess. He could have died. Mom he could’ve died protecting me, twice, and I can’t…I couldn’t-” she says through heaves of breaths, bracing the counter top as she lowers herself to the ground, surrendering to her own tears. 

“You are more than he made you! So much more, Riley, he did not make you funny, or kind, or strong, or so, so brave,” she insists, eyes wider, some of her own hurt leaking away at Riley’s long unspoken pain. It doesn’t make the harshness any easier to bear, but if she pretends for a moment that its someone else, someone with broken pieces of them sharpening each word, she can handle it. Her lips press together, so thin she feels a pain from the motion. Riley reaches for her, and then falters, and the moment is long enough for Odette to take a step forward, reaching out a hand to touch Riley’s cheek lightly, gently. She prepares for the moment Riley might strike her hand away, the movement too much for such a tenuous moment, and she speaks through it, willing her voice to stay strong when it wants to break. “You keep moving, knowing that you’re doing all the things he didn’t want you to do when he tried to kill you.” Tried, because no matter how they feel, no matter how long Odette has mourned, Riley is in front of her, breathing, so much more alive than Odette thought two years ago. Her daughter’s skin is cold, as much as her own touch, and yet the softness of it and the familiarity of the moment, even if she hasn’t had to comfort Riley in over two hundred years, makes her choke on old memories. She swallows roughly, feeling more human and alive than she has since she died, and wishing for a moment as Riley’s words slap her that she weren’t. Its a strange feeling, how much her daughter’s disapproval and anger can make her feel small, but it does.

She starts speaking after a ragged moment, during which she can only stare and not speak, mouth opening and closing, fighting a losing battle against the tears now streaking down her face. “Look at me, Riley, I’m not alive, someone came to me on my way home back to my family and murdered me, and I couldn’t hide that forever. I did the only thing I could do,” she says, hands falling to the bottom of her shirt and yanking it up to display the scars across her abdomen from the stab wounds that ended her life. After a second, she drops it. “You know I wouldn’t choose something to hurt you, I know they don’t affect me. But not doing something? It would hurt you worse, and I’d rather you hate me than watch you die.” She wipes her face, frustrated. “Do you think it took Isaac long to find him? Of course not, because he was already coming here. Riley, it was either he came in on his own terms or we brought him in. I am sorry - so sorry - that he still managed to hurt you. I am sorry that I didn’t tell you about my plan either, I couldn’t bear watching you suffer anymore.” She watches Riley dissolve, and feels a bit like she’s watching from somewhere far away, as she always does when confronted with emotions that are apart of her. She cannot think of Riley as another patient, she can only think of her daughter, small and young, replaced with the young woman in front of her, but the need for a mother no different in both. Slowly, she approaches her and then crouches beside her, drawing her tightly to her. “He didn’t die, Bright Eyes, and he won’t. Whatever problems we might face from this, I won’t let it hit him, and if it pleases you, if it makes you feel better, I won’t...” She sighs, stroking Riley’s hair slowly, afraid of saying the wrong thing. “I will not bring him into this, but if he asks, if he wants to, I will not stop him." The smile on her face is small, but a little amused as she adds, “Just as you wouldn’t let anyone stop you from saving him if you could. Would you not do anything to keep Arthur safe, or Isaac safe? It is what they are doing for you.”

@odettelockhart​

Landon gave a light knock on the door of Oddette’s office before poking his head in and lifting two cups of coffee from TriBeCa. “Hey, just wondering if you’d like a coffee? Maybe a small chat to catch up?” It sounded strange leaving his own lips, to suggest catching up to someone he saw and worked with daily, but the chances to talk one on one weren’t that huge given that most of their time was filled with talking to various people. 

But he tried to do this every so often, to take time to talk to his coworkers. And he liked Odette; she was easy to talk to and a genuinely good person to be around. Besides, she was always overwhelmingly kind about him taking off October 11 every year, which was something that he was always grateful for, even on the years where it landed on a weekend anyway, because most people wouldn’t appreciate an employee taking a particular day off all the time. But that day was different, not just an anniversary but a remembrance. 

Landon was the sort who came and went from Lethe, following his own steps, and Odette’s strategy for handling him mostly involved letting him do his own thing until it became clear his head was too far up in the clouds to help him. Today was one of those those days, clearly, and she settled her paperwork down on her desk. Slowly, she looked up at him, a gentle smile on her face to lessen the blow of her words: “I’m afraid you’d have more use for coffee than me, but I would be glad to hold it.” Her office wasn’t the right place for chatting, not for the casual sort of thing that he needed, and she stood up, gesturing for him to follow her. Their office was a long hallway attached to Lethe General Hospital, and she led the way to another little area with seats next to a window. “Much less formal, and no less private,” she said, sinking into one of the seats with a sigh. “How are you holding up?” 

Things could be tidied up quieter and less…angry, but Riley can’t seem to help herself. Slamming drawers a little too loud, grumbling to herself when she thinks her mother can’t hear. It’s evident in her behavior that she has a bone to pick with Odette, and she’s sure her mother can see it too. She is after all one of the town’s leading therapists. “Yes. It must have been terrifying to hear about over the phone,” Riley snorts, shaking her head as she begins straightening up a row of various colored rolls of thread. A large part of her feels a familiar certain betrayal, one that when left festering to long can leave a relationship bruised. In this case, theirs has been beaten so bad they have to walk around the broken pieces just to talk to one another. One misstep and…this. Confrontation, anger, resentment against the past, all mixed into one petite vampire named Riley. “I’m not safe with anyone,” Riley counters, her face scrunching up into a frown as she turns to face her mother. “I’m not even safe with the people I feel the most protected by, and it’s because of him. It’s because of him and it’s because no matter what I do or who I meet, what he has done to be will always be here.” 

With her palm resting on her chest, Riley turns away suddenly, unable to look her mother in the eye. It’s because of you too. Because you left me. Because you lied to me and kept me in the dark. These thoughts run through her mind and they’re like wildfire, spreading, spreading and spreading, until there’s no space left for her to think about anything else. Riley loves her mother. God, she really does. But sometimes the things Odette does to help her hurts so badly, she wonders if she can ever truly forgive. “I know your side, mom. Your side is that you did what you thought needed to be done in order to keep all of us safe, right? To end all this? You asked my boyfriend, who has been working his whole life at a chance to get away from this sort of thing, to bring a murderer to Lethe. A murderer who killed your own daughter, your son, and after everyone else dealt with the repercussions of what you did, you killed him. Then Arthur and Isaac just, what, volunteered to help you out? To dispose of the body?” As she began speaking her voice begun raising, and she’s sure if Isaac’s home he can hear them from his apartment upstairs. “I almost died! What would have happened then, huh? Would it have been worth it, mom? All of this, the lying, going behind my back, asking my people-” Riley cuts off, feeling her eyes fill with tears. “You knew they would do it. You knew they would because you knew they would for me and I hate that. I’m so sick of people going behind my back to try to protect me. I don’t need you to protect me.” 

Riley looks to her, and she frowns. “You are hurt, Riley, more deeply than any person should be hurting. I don’t want his shadow to haunt you forever. You deserve so much more than feeling like he’s... he’s tainted you somehow.” The more she speaks, the more she feels a tremble in her lips. Anger over what was done to her, or grief over the innocence she’s lost, Odette doesn’t know, but its boiling still, as it had when the phone call ended and the dizziness washed away, as it had when she picked up the stake and made her decision. Riley turns away from her, and she realizes there’s no anger left in her, only an aching sadness for something that she can see crumbling before her very eyes. She doesn’t interrupt Riley’s tirade, her teeth gritting together against the urge to speak so hard an ache builds in her jaw. How can she argue, when most of it is the truth? Not all of it, but enough, and she only waits till Riley finishes before she shakes her head sharply, dispelling the part of her that wants to speak softly, that wants to salvage. The rest is angry, and scared, and it leaks out into her words. “I don’t need to protect you? Is that what you really think? You are my daughter! I did not bring you into this world to watch you die! I did not leave my heart behind in that cottage two hundred years ago to do nothing when I know you are bleeding and hurt. You don’t need my protection, no, but I will always protect you because I am your mother, even if the idea repulses you.” She tries not to make it clear how much the idea of Riley hating her show, but it does, in the crack in her voice and the shaking of her hands.

Date: October 23rd, 2020 Time: 3AM Location: Orion and Odette’s home on Sycamore Ct

@odettelockhart​

“Well, I don’t think it was a wrong choice, per say. Not from a moral standpoint or a safety related one.” Orion said finally, once Odette had gone through the grim details of the Edmund Irving situation. It was an odd thought, that the man had been in their basement a time before being staked, but Orion hardly went into the basement anyway. Once home and his carry on bag put away they had retired to their bedroom and to what could only be compared to a nest made of soft, fluffy blankets on top of their mattress. An excellent place to talk, to hold each other, and to kiss, but there had been far less of the last than he would have preferred. It didn’t matter. They had matters of more import to discuss, and now that he had the details he felt as if his mind was whirring at high speed as he held Odette in his arms. “Lethe, unfortunately, is small and clannish. Certainly you picked solid people to trust. That young man of Riley’s seems like he would do anything for her and for you. But there are eyes in the streets, my love.” Not his, but that was self explanatory. His ears did the job for him, as people tended to assume that the blind man must be deaf as well. “If and when this gets out, we need solid reasoning. Something to back us up. Ah, don’t make that face. Us. I didn’t take vows in the courthouse for naught, Odette. I stand with you.”

“But not the best choice either,” she supplied with an arched brow, leaning up on her elbow to gently trace over his face. Neither were cold, temperate held no meaning for people who couldn’t feel it unless it were extreme, and yet she still dragged the blanket higher over them like it were a security against the outside world. She hadn’t needed it in a while, but she hadn’t killed someone in several centuries either. “I had no other choice-- No, that’s not it, I had one. I could have... let him go somewhere, turned him in, but that? That was not a good enough option.” Let him go, the very idea of it made her want to scoff, and she settled back down, head on his chest and feeling some of the frustration ebb just from Orion’s presence. The stake had long since been out of her hand, but the phantom feel of it had haunted her for days, like Edmund’s last laugh was the strange echo of the events replaying in her head. Not regret, no, but something akin to anxiousness. “I didn’t intend to involve anyone in the latter half, Riley’s boy are a stubborn lot and they love her dearly. I couldn’t keep them away even if I tried, but I can’t say I wanted to light his body on fire in our basement,” she confessed, reaching a hand out blindly to seek out his and twining their fingers together on his chest, too. Ah, he knew her well enough to predict the frown in the same moment it crossed her face, and she shook her head, clearing it with a quiet laugh. One that ended quickly in light of what they had to discuss. “He hurt my kids, that is reason enough, no? I could not bear knowing he was out there, forever a shadow over us.”