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Born in Tennessee and named in honor of her father’s favorite racetrack, Bristol King was born into mayhem. She couldn’t recall a day when her mother wasn’t staring at her with glazed-over eyes, or when her bones didn’t seem to poke through translucent, needle-speckled skin. When the smile of a proffered flower, handpicked from the neighbor’s garden, never quite reached her eyes. Her father wasn’t much better, though at eight she didn’t know what else to expect. When he was home, she would be plied with a shiny doll and shuffled out of the way so that he could lie down next to the ball on the couch that was her mother. And then he was gone, a specter who haunted the house when he could and not for a second more. The only constant in her life were her siblings, namely her older brother. 

They would sit together with stolen art books, Cairo teaching her about Bosch, Degas, and Monet with the same enthusiasm as if they were personal friends of his. He would sketch recreations and she would do her best to follow along, washed-out watercolors scavenged from the goodwill lending themselves to her creativity. He was her closest friend and confidant, and more of a role model than either of their parents combined. Each report card garnered his praise, and the promise of a life beyond the endless carousel of ramshackle homes fueled her ambition. 

Bristol remembers the day her brother was sent away. She told him not to go through with it, that following in their father’s footsteps wasn’t worth it for anything beyond the basics. Yet there was nothing she could do but look on with tear-stained cheeks as they led him away. 

Things got worse, then. 

Word of her father’s death came first, sending her mother into a spiral so deep she never came out of it. She took on her brother’s role of looking after their youngest sibling, ensuring that homework was done, and taking up a job at the local bar to put dinner on the table. College became a distant dream, a myth not meant for people like her. 

Her mother’s death was the nail in the coffin. Too old to enter the system yet considered too young and 'at risk’ to attain custody of her younger sibling, Bristol fought to keep them together. But it didn’t matter. CPS whisked them away in a puff of smoke and Bristol was left to pick up the pieces in a house that was weeks away from foreclosure. 

She wasn’t alone for long. 

A man in a suit entirely too expensive for that side of town crossed her path in the bar where she was moonlighting. He visited every night for the better part of two weeks, though she never saw him order more than a whiskey sour. On the twelfth night, he promised her a change, so long as she was willing to leave her life behind. Without a family or prospects of a life beyond a musty beerhall, she told him there was nothing to leave. She remembers the flash of a white smile and then he bit her. 

The first year was long, and the second even longer. She relished the invulnerability her vampirism gave her, the freedom of doing as she pleased without a thought for anyone else; selfishness twinged with animalistic hunger painted a dark shadow across her back. 

It was hard to say how many lives she took during her feral days, her sire kept score but refused to tell her. “You have been hungry for a long time.”

And it was true, she was hungry for her lost siblings, for a future that had once seemed so uncertain, for the stability she had never once been afforded that now her sire gave to her freely. Just as he enabled her bloodlust, the man guided her through the lessons of the undead, teaching her to control her thirst and mask her nature from the world. Then, just shy of what would have been her twenty-third birthday, her sire gave her a choice: If she could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Her life underwent a second rebirth. The home of Picasso and Dalí, Spain was everything she dreamed it would be. She studied at a university in Barcelona, fascinated by the artists she’d heard her brother idolize all those years ago. He would be proud, she decided, even if he never saw her again.

Her mother had rarely spoken of Cairo after he was caught, and eventually, she stopped asking. What had been so important for him to abandon them? Wasn’t it bad enough that their father was a career criminal? 

No, it was safer to tuck the feelings of her past away into her artwork, unearthing them just long enough to select the right hue of melancholy. Painting didn’t enrapture her in quite the same way that it did Cairo. Paintings were abiotic, snapshots of a moment captured in time, unchanging. She was dynamic, all blurred edges and impulsive decisions. The stagnancy of immortality stared her in the eye yet she was intent on beating it back, and it was her stubborn refusal that led her to tattooing. 

She honed her craft in Madrid, gaining a following amongst fine art enthusiasts. For once, her existence didn’t rely on the financial investment of others. Life continued that way until four months ago when her sire announced that they would be returning to America. Keen to chart her own path for a while and find a place that would accept her for what she had become, Bristol caught word of Calypso Cove. 

What do you make of a boy fed by golden spoons and high expectations his entire life? You take from him the fear of consequences, but place the burdens of Atlas on his shoulders and demand him to carry it with his head held high. Lorcan Olazor was shaped like clay under the neat hands of the Winter Court; more specifically, by the blood dripping hands of a queen holding his strings like a puppet master commanding a show. The youngest of four siblings, Lorcan had never been the jewel in his father's eyes - That spot was held by the eldest one; a woman beautiful as she is certain, stric as she is kind. The princess was the next in line to a throne meaningless to any but their court, and their father took pride in it. Prince Lorcan was just that; the youngest prince, conceived by the King's second wife, who would bear titles but never the crown. But he was his mother's strongest card. Spoiled, perhaps, and always manipulated, Lorcan seemed to always be doing his mother's wills. Her only child, it only felt natural he would stick to her in a court of knives. Of course, Lorcan could often be found with his siblings causing mischief they would never be held accountable for, and at lessons with his father - who loved him dearly, but not true enough. But he would always gravitate towards the Queen when the day was done, sitting by the fire while his mother filled his head with poisonous words and greed that didn't quite feel like his own.