Chapter 5.4--Faye

She rose and swept out. Faye sat stunned for a moment. Professor Deneuve's mention of dragons dying reminded her of her premonition about Aristide. Professor Deneuve was right on some fronts--that professor who got shot would not be the last dragon casualty. She stopped at the doorway and sighed, peering down the hall towards the front door. After a long pause, she turned and walked towards the sound of the television. The TV was showing some hysterical drivel about Lucien. Liv was perched on the arm of the couch, while Gérard paced behind it. “Why are you watching that?” Faye snapped, turning the TV off. “You're just going to make yourself upset.” “It is important to know what is happening, I think,” Gérard said. “It's like picking at a wound. Knock it off.” She stretched out on the couch, putting her feet up where Liv was sitting. “So, do you think Professor Deneuve knows what she's doing?” Liv bit her lip. Gérard began, “I do not feel comfortable--” when a thin voice cut him off. “Gérard... I need tiny pizzas, Gérard.” Faye sat up. It was a child with a round baby face, big round eyes and frowzy brown hair that made him look like an owl. Tall as a teenager—a dragon. Raoul, she assumed. He and Gérard headed out towards the kitchen, Gérard attempting to gently explain that there were no tiny pizzas in the house over Raoul's quiet insistence that he needed them. “I don't think those two could look any less like each other,” Faye remarked. Nor did either of them look at all like Lucien. “They're probably all half-brothers,” Liv chirped. Faye rolled her eyes. “Dragons in France live in all-female clans and the males drop by only to make baby dragons, so siblings having the same father is actually pretty unusual.” “Why do you do that?” Faye said. “What?” “You sound like the computer in some sci-fi show. The captain says 'We're landing on Eritania in ten minutes,' and the computer says 'Eritania is the largest planet in the solar system that is made entirely out of waffles' or something.” “I... I think this stuff is interesting,” Liv said softly. Faye shook her head. “No, it really isn't. And I even already knew—are you crying? Come on, don't cry.” She glanced around nervously. “They're going to think I'm picking on you. I'm not being mean—I'm trying to help you! I'm just being a good friend.” Liv smiled weakly. “Thank you. It's nice to have a friend here.” If Faye had been a better person, she would have felt guilty. But she had battled through too many years of psychological warfare to apologize for the only way of survival she knew. She turned away and walked towards the kitchen, Liv trailing on her heels. In the kitchen, Gérard was stirring a pot of soup. Raoul was in a chair and slumped on the table, coughing pathetically and unconvincingly. Faye raised an eyebrow. Gérard set a bowl of soup in front of Raoul, who popped upright and took a sip. “Super soup!” he exclaimed. “I am good as new!” Turning to Faye, he put on a hard glower and pointed at her with his spoon. “You have a right to remain silent,” he said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.” Faye stared at him, speechless, then looked at Gérard. This kid seemed a bit old to be that wacko, although something about his delivery made her think of her own half-siblings with a small smile. Gérard was smiling too, down at Raoul, and a sense of familiarity trickled warm and bittersweet into the void left by Lucien. She'd thought before that Lucien and each of his brothers must have looked exactly like their respective fathers, they had so little in common. Raoul was round-faced, downy-haired, still awkward and not fully formed, but clearly destined to grow up into a round-faced, owlish man. Lucien was a perfect miniature of some sort of sun-god, golden-haired and golden-skinned, barely taller than Faye but with a warrior's body. Gérard was tall and dark-haired, with a fishbelly complexion and a permanently downcast face, as if he were being berated without pause by some invisible authority figure. But as he smiled down at Raoul, Faye saw a flash of Lucien. Not just of Lucien, but of the part of Lucien that she had loved so much. The part that ran gleefully through neighborhoods he had refurbished both through political power and with his own two hands, children clinging to his back and shrieking with laughter as he leapt and wove. He was more than a hero to those children. He was an idol, a god, and they were his favorite worshippers. She wondered what those children were doing now. Did they feel betrayed by Lucien? Were they following him blindly? She moved forward and laid a hand gently on Gérard's. He jerked his hand away and looked at her fearfully. His look of fear deepened as tears welled up in her eyes. “We've gotta protect him,” she whispered.

Chapter 5.3--Faye

“Can we just talk about the issue here?” Faye snapped. “So you think the three of us can get Lucien to back down?” The infuriating small smile Professor Deneuve had been wearing faded. She spoke softly, evincing none of her usual disdain for Faye. and leaned forward to look Faye in the eye. “Lucien does not back down.” She looked away, giving Faye time to process this statement. Faye knew she was right. Lucien had been unshakable since the day they first met, when she had happened across him sitting outside her father's office. Thirteen years old, dressed in a suit tailored to his tiny body, with a face of stone determination, he had been waiting to plead with her father for money to rebuild the dragon community. The child-hero of his people. “So let him do it, then,” she said. “Count me out.” Professor Deneuve recoiled. “You know what he has done. Do you not care?” Faye shrugged. “Humans kind of deserve what they get, I think. As far as I can tell they're a bunch of monsters. Even the people who were nice to me were just trying to shape me in their image, and now I'm a monster too.” She gave a queasy smile. Her initial smugness was undercut by sudden revulsion at the humans around her and the human within her. “Tell me you're not a monster. You're making a guy try to kill his own brother. Not just his—practically his kid, right? Gérard raised Lucien? Honestly, that's sick.” Professor Deneuve paused, closing her eyes and pressing on her temples. She spoke with her eyes still closed. “Sometimes individuals suffer for the good of the world. Gérard—I--I do not know why I am explaining myself to you!” She opened her eyes, dark thunder in her expression. “Leave, Faye. Thousands will die as displays of force escalate—humans, dragons, someday Lucien—because Faye Withers thinks that hiding will keep her hands clean. So hide.”

Chapter 5.2-Faye

Lucien was a wicked storyteller, and had told Faye tales about his childhood so intense that Professor Deneuve's house felt haunted by them. Corners of rooms she had never seen sparked deja vu. She was in Professor Deneuve's bedroom now, had been left unceremoniously there for some time, giving her ample opportunity to explore.

When Faye was a child she'd had a deck for the card game Old Maid that she'd kept in a shoebox, under her bed where it haunted her for unknown reasons. Later, in her preteen years, she had stumbled across it and been startled to find it just as chilling. The Old Maid card wasn't comically illustrated like many she had seen, no old lady with a crooked nose and bug eyes who no man could ever love. Instead it was a gentle colored pencil drawing of a woman whose prime had quietly passed her by, gazing alone into a vanity, an old-fashioned brush clasped in her hand as she prepared for a beau who would never come. The beauty that she had clearly once possessed had chilled Faye in its impotence.

This room reminded her of that card, down to the vanity with old-fashioned brush and powder box. The curtains were lacy and clearly handmade, the bed with its ornate headboard too large for its single occupant. The dust ruffle sparked a memory—not hers, but Lucien's, but almost like hers thanks to its vividness.

Lucien had recounted hiding under that bed almost every day, imagining himself the lost prince of some mythical kingdom called Lockoff, watching the Imposter Prince toddle by or the Imposter Queen sit at her vanity and brush out her hair. Only when the Faithful Knight passed by the door was it safe to reveal himself, bursting out and shouting “I'm here! I'm here!” as his skittish brother dropped what he was carrying and leapt sideways into the wall. Then Lucien would scamper out to him and beg to be picked up, pleading for them to return to France.

She couldn't imagine anyone, especially someone as vibrant as Lucien, playing here. Far back in her earliest childhood, she could recall grey houses occupied by wailing women on featureless plains. This house felt colder.

The door opened, startling Faye. Professor Deneuve entered and sat on the bed, her voluminous black skirt pooling around her. “I assume you know of the news?”

Faye nodded, pushing aside the frightened questions rising up, forcing them out of mind. “Yeah. I know.”

“And I suppose you know what this is.” Professor Deneuve reached into some hidden pocket of her dress and drew something out. Faye's fingers knew what it was before her eyes did—twitching, needling her to snatch the tarot deck from Professor Deneuve's grasp. She forced herself to put her hand out calmly, but her faerie blood was boiling at the delay. The rational part of her mind, the Faye part, felt like a flimsy cage for a sinewy, primal beast.

When the deck was finally placed in her hand, she was startled by the sudden silence. She hadn't realized how hard her pulse had been pounding. This deck called to her in a way no deck ever had before, in the way that mushroom rings and hawthorn trees called to her. She shuffled, eyes unfocused, concentrating not on finding the strands—for the strands found her fingers, the cards slid amongst themselves in her hands—but simply on the sweetness of shuffling such a deck. “Celtic cross?” she asked herself out loud. “Tetractys?”

“No spreads,” Professor Deneuve said. “You know what to do.” And Faye found that she did, sliding three cards from the top of the deck. Professor Deneuve inhaled audibly as they were flipped. “Exactly as Cyrus found. You have the touch. You are trained in reading these?”

Faye looked down to see what she had turned up. “The Star is... hope,” she said. “The Emperor is stability. And the Queen of Wands is, um, strength... but not just strength. There's more.” Dredging her mind did no good. She leaned forward, examining the card. The queen was illustrated with minuscule brushstrokes, and she gazed back at Faye with defiance. “Passion,” Faye said finally. “Strength through charisma and passion.”

“And?”

Faye shook her head in confusion. “And?”

“What is the warning in the Queen of Wands?”

“Jealousy, selfishness, stubbornness... hey! You said Gérard was the emperor. Are these us?” Faye scowled at Professor Deneuve, uncomfortably aware of how she must look like the queen with the flashing eyes. “I'm guessing I'm not the Star.” Professor Deneuve twitched a smile. “Why do I only have to give the warning reading for me? I suppose Liv and Gérard are absolute paragons?”

“I don't think you suppose that at all,” Professor Deneuve said. “I think you suppose something very different. But instead, suppose their personal growth is not your concern until you have tools for building up as well as tearing down.”

Chapter 5.1--Faye

Lucien was a wicked storyteller, and had told Faye tales about his childhood so intense that Professor Deneuve's house felt haunted by them. Corners of rooms she had never seen sparked deja vu. She was in Professor Deneuve's bedroom now, had been left unceremoniously there for some time, giving her ample opportunity to explore. When Faye was a child she'd had a deck for the card game Old Maid that she'd kept in a shoebox, under her bed where it haunted her for unknown reasons. Later, in her preteen years, she had stumbled across it and been startled to find it just as chilling. The Old Maid card wasn't comically illustrated like many she had seen, no old lady with a crooked nose and bug eyes who no man could ever love. Instead it was a gentle colored pencil drawing of a woman whose prime had quietly passed her by, gazing alone into a vanity, an old-fashioned brush clasped in her hand as she prepared for a beau who would never come. The beauty that she had clearly once possessed had chilled Faye in its impotence. This room reminded her of that card, down to the vanity with old-fashioned brush and powder box. The curtains were lacy and clearly handmade, the bed with its ornate headboard too large for its single occupant. The dust ruffle sparked a memory—not hers, but Lucien's, but almost like hers thanks to its vividness. Lucien had recounted hiding under that bed almost every day, imagining himself the lost prince of some mythical kingdom called Lockoff, watching the Imposter Prince toddle by or the Imposter Queen sit at her vanity and brush out her hair. Only when the Faithful Knight passed by the door was it safe to reveal himself, bursting out and shouting “I'm here! I'm here!” as his skittish brother dropped what he was carrying and leapt sideways into the wall. Then Lucien would scamper out to him and beg to be picked up, pleading for them to return to France. Gérard would pretend not to understand French, in the hopes of making Lucien practice for school--although when Lucien switched to English Gérard generally truly didn't understand, so these adventures tended to end unsatisfyingly.

Chapter 4.6--Gérard

He seated himself across the table from her, turning his chair so the side of his head faced her.  In his peripheral vision he could see her sit up and lean towards him on her elbows.  He ignored her and instead looked towards Vivienne.

"My darlings," Vivienne said softly.  "My emperor.  My star."

"I'm the star?" Liv asked in hushed delight.

"My star," Vivienne repeated with a slight smile, "my emperor.  Finally we are together again.  I regret that this is not a happier time."

Gérard traced the wood grain of the table with his fingernail, thinking about Yves in a drifting, disconnected way.  The wood grain looked like ripples in a warm amber pond.  Vivienne had sparkled when Yves visited.  Although she'd never married, she'd always reminded him of a widow.  And Yves had lifted her veil on those evenings.  He placed a fingertip at the center of a knot, where a stone would have fallen to make those rings.

"It is... so very difficult... when two tragedies visit us together," Vivienne continued.  Two?  Gérard started.  Liv cocked her head, puppylike, her innocence needling Gérard's conscience.  "But to have the two fall so close not by chance, but as a prelude to further tragedy--these are dark times to be a dragon.  Or to love a dragon."

Liv and Gérard locked eyes.  Her eyes were the same glowing honey color as the table.  She raised her eyebrows, pleading.  Ask her what she's talking about.  Take charge.  Gérard looked away.

The silence hovered.  Gérard stole a glance at Vivienne, who was lost in some twilight of the mind.  Liv finally broke the silence, her voice cracking.  "There's been another incident?  Where did he strike?"

"I thought they caught him!" Gérard burst out.  "Someone is still shooting dragons?"

"What?"  Liv and Gérard started at each other with a wild blankness.

"Ah-mm!" Vivienne barked.  "Would you care to hear what I have to say, or do you like playing junior detectives?"

Gérard looked towards her and clasped his hands.  Nothing you could explain or shout could influence Vivienne more than simply being still.  Satisfied, she turned to Gérard.  "How much do you know?"

"Yves..." he began, and his English failed him.  He switched to French, and found little more.  "I am sorry, Vivienne.  I am so sorry."

Grief fell heavily across Vivienne's face, but also something else.  Her eyes widened and her mouth stiffened in something almost like... fear?

"Yves?" Liv whispered, largely unheeded.

"Lucien has been a good boy these last years, n'est-ce pas?" she asked.  Gérard nodded, smiling wistfully.  The Lucien he saw on TV, accepting awards for bringing peace to the dragon communities of L.A., looking into the camera with bright eyes and a loose grin--it was like a daydream Lucien.  The kind of life he had dreamed Lucien would make with this precious gift of escaping the hierarchical French dragon clans.  He liked to tell himself that they had somehow done his little brother an injustice in raising him, that there was a golden boy that  had waited inside him and was now free.  A golden boy who was far removed from the child they had raised, who had gotten strapped, screaming to a bed--a boy a thousand miles away from the one who had done things that still woke Gérard up in cold sweat and hot tears.  But he knew in that moment, from Professor Deneuve's face and the way she hesitated--"Gérard..."--that there was only one Lucien.  Had only ever been one.  "I am so sorry," she said.

Chapter 4.5--Gérard

The ceiling above the bed was made of chalky white tiles, each covered with a grid of small holes. Some holes were little more than pinpricks, while the rest were nearly big enough to fit a pencil through, and Gérard had spent many hours in this room laying back on the bed as he did now and trying to find a pattern in their distribution. It nagged at his core that the layout could simply be random.

He had swallowed Vivienne's lecture dutifully, a bitter medicine for the fever of hate that had gripped him. Faye herself was simply so horrible that she could not be anything but retribution for some wrong he'd forgotten. But Liv--

Liv's presence even in his thoughts made Gérard squirm.  What were you thinking? he snarled at himself.  Who did you think you were, trying to treat her like one of your own?  Letting her think you could make everything OK?  Liv had family, and her family had friends.  Lucien and Raoul had no one to care for them, no choice but to depend on a failure.  But Liv had relied on him because he let her--encouraged it, even.  He'd hoped that one she left Professor Deneuve's she'd left him behind too, but here she was again.  And she looked at him with such unbearable hope.  This time, at least, she would know what he was up front.  She had to be too smart to get attached to him again.

The entire mood of the room suddenly grew grave, and he propped himself up on his elbows to look at Vivienne.

"Do you think," she asked in French, "that you and Liv can be in the same room without anyone needing to cry?"

Gérard gave a half-nod, not meeting her eyes, and followed her out to the dining room.  Liv was already sprawled in a chair.  She sat like a cat, limbs tucked in awkward configurations that somehow managed to look elegant rather than accidental.

Chapter 4.4--Liv

Faye was staring at Gérard with her head cocked slightly, her expression caught between confusion, pain and disgust. Liv imagined hers was similar, as when she looked at him he immediately pretended to find cascades of lint to pick off Raoul's shoulders. The relief on his face was painfully earnest when Professor Deneuve interrupted the moment.

“Ah, yes, Gérard,” she said with a satisfied nod. “Yes, I know but one emperor. Gérard and Liv, what will you have for breakfast?”

“What is this emperor deal?” Faye demanded, ignored.

Liv said, “What happened to my eggs?”

“We're out of eggs,” said Professor Deneuve.

“But you were just--”

“Out of eggs.” A glare silenced Liv, but didn't explain what had happened to her eggs.

Gérard sighed. “Let her to eat her eggs.” Then “May I put Raoul to bed? I am large, but he is heavy.” Professor Deneuve indicated the hall.

As soon as he was out of sight, Faye hissed, “Are you retarded? Obviously they bother him.”

It wasn't so obvious to Liv, who looked to Professor Deneuve for reassurance, but she was gazing down the hall after Gérard. “My little emperor,” she murmured.

When he returned, Liv asked him, “Do eggs bother your OCD?” Profesor Deneuve jabbed her in the side, and Liv didn't know why until she saw Faye sneer.

“Hah! A dragon with OCD?” The laugh didn't sound so much the product of amusement as it did like a bark, summoning the pack to a kill and the last sound many ever heard. Professor Deneuve put a comforting hand on Gérard's shoulder.

“Actually,” Liv babbled, trying to reverse course, “it's quite common in dragons. Their love of gold--” Gérard was scowling at the ground, clearly thinking hard. At this his right hand went to the gold chain around his neck, showing a small, lettered ring on each finger, “--is a low-level obsession already and it only takes a very small genetic change to tip it into a full-blown case of OCD.”

Gérard suddenly looked up, and his eyes locked on Faye. He was not yelling, but his voice was unexpectedly loud and strong. “I was good enough for my mother to want me.”

Dead silence flooded the room. Gérard looked at Faye. Professor Deneuve looked at Gérard. Liv looked around. Faye looked at the floor. She had an affected pout, concealing whatever she was really feeling, but the fact that she was concealing it said everything.

The silence was barely broken when Professor Deneuve finally spoke. Rather, she seemed an integral part of it. “Gérard-Cécile de l'Aigu,” she said quietly, “go sit with Raoul. Liv, wait in your room. Faye, you will stay here.”

Gérard and Liv walked down the hallway in silence. Gérard had always been and would always be “Lucien's brother” to Liv, but not in the way he thought. He had always been “Lucien's big brother,” her first hint that a special feeling could be stirred in her by boys—men, rather. His height, his job, and even the peach fuzz that seemed at the time like the manliest of stubble set him miles away from Liv and Lucien and their world of play on the floor. When he'd carried her into the house after the attack, holding her nestled against his chest with blood streaming down his shirt, he'd seemed to her a hero. A legend. A demigod. To see him wounded now was not only heartbreaking, but terrifying. Gently, she reached out to touch the back of his hand.

Slowly he turned to her, brought that hand up to run a finger along her scar. He bit his lip and the hand raised, hovered for a moment as if he would touch her hair—then pulled it away. “I am sorry about that scar,” he mumbled to his feet. “That must have hurt.” He turned abruptly into the room where Raoul was sleeping, closing the door quietly behind him.

Liv stood staring at the closed door for a moment. Lucien had opened up her face that day, but Gérard had soothed a wound she hadn't known could stop hurting. Between food and shelter on her list of basic needs was a little gap where something she didn't understand belonged. She tried to pin it down. It was—well, it was—basically, all she knew was that for that one day it had felt all right.