Belisario did not attend his father’s funeral. The idea of spending his entire day on the old man made him want to be sick. Everyone thought Olivier was some sort of paragon of the Night Court, but Belisario knew they were all wrong.
All he’d wanted his entire life was all the love and adoration his parents had, but they were always focused on his brother, Tobias. Even after all these years, the mere thought of Tobias made Belisario’s blood boil. At first, Belisario was ignored because Tobias was born sickly, something Belisario could never understand. He assumed it was the Heliotrope weakness that drove his parents to care for the sick infant instead of letting it die. It made no sense to Belisario, even as a child, to waste time and effort and attention on something that clearly had one foot in the grave from birth. Showering that attention on the child they had would have been the right thing from a numbers standpoint. Later, after Tobias recovered, the attention Belisario was owed as the oldest was denied him because Tobias was so good at everything. Tobias, the perfect Heliotrope, even as a child, though that really had no worth. What value did softness, empathy, and warmth really have? They were useless coins that his weak parents valued above all else, leading them to ignore the only child they had of any worth: Belisario. His sisters were not even worth mentioning or thinking about. They were stronger from birth, he begrudgingly gave them that. They survived the few times he tried to remove them. Belisario was already out of Heliotrope by the time Tobias’s “accident” finally fell into place. A lesser man would have moved on from the mistreatment and let his brother live, but Belisario was a strong man who was willing to do what needed to be done. Olivier and Geraldine deserved to know a fraction of the pain they’d put Belisario through with their choice to ignore him.
“Now that the old man was finally dead,” Bellisario thought, “I can finally claim what should rightfully be mine.” He sealed the letter to the advocate he used for all his legal matters then dropped it in the bowl in the main hall of Bryony. A runner would deliver it, and the first steps of taking back all that the old man owned from that weak, caged bird would begin. Belisario came first, it was time to make sure she understood that.
~
On the other side of the city, far from Mont Nuit and the wealth that surrounded it, was a modest townhouse. It sat on the far edge of a respectable quarter, a fact that drove its occupant crazy. Kyrian had been told by his last landlady that a man banned from the Night Court was not welcome in her establishment. The only reason he’d had to listen to her was that she called the guard after he’d made his stance on women telling him what to do clear to her. He snorted, she was weak of course, she was only a woman after all, but the guards were weak and that angered Kyrian. After all, they were men, trained to fight, to keep the King’s law, to be strong. When they sided with her and had physically removed him from his rooms, all Kyrian felt was red hot rage.
Women needed to be reminded of their place. The angels knew, none of the women tried to counsel Elua or tell him what to do: they followed Him obediently, used the only value they had to ensure His comfort, and elevated Him.
His pet needed the reminder more than most. Now that the old man was dead, Kyrian could get to her again. He was unafraid of anyone in that House, even the freak half-breed. He had shown that with his funerary arrangement. It was only the start of his plans for his pet. She thought she could get away from him when she chose. He would show her that Kyrian was the only one allowed to decide how things went.