An arch made of woven lavender roots draped purple blossoms above their heads. Spying the underlying wooden structure that gave the arch its form, he shared a smirk with Elizabeth over the owner’s efforts to do what she birthed with only her souls glory. What took sweat and years of careful cultivation for him, was a few seconds of thought for her. The garden was a wonderland for the unblessed, but to a goddess of the earth, it was merely the stumbling efforts of a half blind creature devoid of the senses of the truly gifted.

Standing in the forest, elder trees towering up around it, the building was cedar stained a subtle red. Blending with the green around it, there was no transition between the forest and the sanctuary, as if it too had been birthed from the earth. Floor to ceiling windows gave a panoramic view of the fantastical garden. A floor of warm glossy wood polished to a mirror shine reflected his feet back at him. Beeswax candles shed their light from inside paper lanterns along the walls. Exposed wooden ribs spanned across the open ceiling. There was an ancient grace to the building, stripped of pretension and artifice, it was simplicity turned into beauty.

In the middle of the room, a low, black table stood with five cushions around it. Kali pulled him down on the side that had two cushions, the others finding their spots on the other sides. Fading back into the walls, the blade thin shadows of the harem stilled.

Coming into the room, the old man set an iron tea pot on the table. Laying out small porcelain cups, the click of wood and stone was the only sound in the room. The white of the cup’s stark against the lacquered black wood of the table. “I'll have tea shortly.”

Elizabeth’s quiet voice stopped the man as he straightened. “None for us,” she said, pushing a tea bag across the table to Cesare with a smile.

Taking up the hand wrapped tea bag, he considered the dark leaves, spices, and herbs, that formed a singular alchemical brew, never be replicated. Returning her smile with one of his own, Cesare set the tea bag into his cup with a sense of finality. Taking out her own tea bag, she set it into her cup with a triumphant smile. No one else was offered one and no one asked. Messages, subtle and feminine ran under the skin of the room.

Returning to the room, the man’s quiet steps ghosted across the floor. A stately grace possessed the man, slipping to his knees, he set a tea ball in each of the others cups before taking up the iron teapot and adding water. Done in silence, only the brush of fabric betrayed his movements. “The food should be ready soon,” he said, putting the cast iron tea pot back in its place in the center of the table.

Taking the warm cup in his hands, Cesare breathed in the acrid smell of black tea, hints of spices and stranger things threading through it. No two cups of tea were the same, each was an experience never repeated. Sipping the tea, Cesare let the taste roll through his mouth and saturate his world before swallowing. Besides Elizabeth, the others didn’t seem nearly as happy with their tea.

“Are you going to graduate?” Kali asked, the click of her tea cup against the table loud in the silence.

“I talked to Jerold about the credits from the … help … you’ve given him.” Elizabeth's quiet voice hesitated, grappling with the savage duties Jerold had forced on Cesare.

The others locked on her. If his grades weren’t good enough, he wouldn't be back next year. They weren't worried about Cesare. No, their interest was the damage they'd suffer if he was kicked to the curb.

“I got his figure in before I brought up your other classes.” Her tone was hard, eyes probing the darkness of her tea. “I got the impression he wasn’t exactly going to lie but shading the truth isn’t a lie, is it?” She sighed, looking over at him. “You’ll graduate, but by the thinnest of margins. Even with the help of the others, your work is barely passing. Your decision to opt out of the project decimated your grade. Only the high marks of Viktor and your other elective carried you.”

A low breath of tension released from the others at Elizabeth’s words. Alexandra and Anastasia had a lot on the line for it to go to shit now. Cesare had raised them from the daughters of legends into myths in their own right. If he could do that in one year ... His ideas had opened vistas of lethality that had never been mapped. And they wanted to explore those places, claim that power for themselves before he was cast out.

Elizabeth was different. He’d made strides in expanding her political base, carving out a place for her in the school’s power structure, but all he'd done was add another dimension to her already strong standing. She had the destructive power to dominate the school, and now she had the soldiers. For some reason she still held off on exercising that control.

Kali was the big mystery, she wasn’t looking at today, her plans were for tomorrow. She was betting he'd turn into what she wanted. But only a fraction of wannabe’s come close to making potential into skill. Most never get beyond the cage of laziness and shit luck. Opportunities would only open if he became something more than he was, and she wanted the finished product not the beta version.

“Then you’ll be at Primrose next year?” Kali asked, eyes never leaving Cesare.

Taking a sip of his tea, he waited as thoughts hardened in his mind. It wasn’t a given. This school had been the diseased womb he’d been rebirthed in. And like any birthing, it was torturous thing tainted with pain that ravaged and clawed with hates own claws. He’d walked with legends, fought monsters, and bleed his life into the ground. The people he’d found couldn’t accept him for who he was, in that they were like the faceless thousands that ruled his past and nightmares, but they’d given him more than anyone had before.

Coming back was dangerous, a gamble that could only end in a messy death. There was no end to the dangers in the Umbrae Lunae world, the deeper fell into its darkness, the more it would twist him into its shape. The pervasive carnage reinforcing his own anemic morality. Killing for necessity the kissing cousin of killing to ease the way.

Another year would change him. He'd have to if he wanted to live in the world of the moon shadows. The more power he took as his own, the more he became part of their world and less what he’d been. He hadn't loved who he'd been, but that was different than wanting to see it die by inches so a new him could be birthed from its rotting flesh.

“If I’m alive, I’ll be back next year.” A breath left the collective at the quiet words. They didn’t hear the qualifier, in the world of the strong, it was a given they'd live forever.

“Abraxas was pulled out of school before the event today,” Kali said, tip toeing around her words. “After the last incident with Anastasia, I made a call. I have long standing holdings with the Dragon Confederacy. I diverted twenty percent of my accounts to dragons not on the Board. That got me immediate calls from their subordinates. Once I moved company profiles, land, and bank accounts, they called me personally. The serpents have rules against taking from anothers hoard, but nothing says I can't move my wealth. I made it clear I'd move my assets into younger dragon’s hands if they allowed a Neolate to harass my daughter. Abraxas was pulled the next day.”

Cesare settled back, eyes on Kali. He'd never had a chance against the dragon. The tricks that had got him this far didn’t wouldn’t put a dragon down. If Abraxas changed into his true form, Cesare was dead as dog shit. There was no way around that.

It would've impressed him if she'd done it for him, but his needs were only a small part of her equation. You didn't fuck with Kali's family. She couldn’t let the dragon’s actions stand, if people thought they could fuck with her family they’d push into other areas. Fear was the soil every empire was built on. Fear kept the barbarians from the door, citizens in line, and Kali in power. Let the bitches take an inch, and they’d rip your arm off.

The Sanguinem Nativitate was different, woven through their culture, bloody fingerprints staining history with depraved needs. A way to prove future generations were ruthless enough to take the reins of power. The blood games proved the character of those rising into rulership of the shadows.

If he’d factored into her decision at all, it was only for what he could do for her in the future. That he was playing rabbit to her fox meant less than light entertainment to her. She'd never given him anything that cost her anything she valued.

For all that she'd saved his life, it was hard to not let that glaring thread wash out her selfish reasons. Did it matter why she'd saved his life or was the fact she'd done it enough? He'd live because she'd stepped in, isn’t that what mattered?

A smile spread across his face as he considered Kali’s neutral expression. She knew he’d tease out the hidden poison behind the posturing. Knowing he'd hunt out the truth, she didn't try to hide it. Instead, she’d laid it out her unflinchingly selfish truth.

“Your concern touches me.” The words carried a knowledge that brought narrowed eyes from the others. No one believed Kali had done it out of the goodness of her dead heart, but they hadn’t chased the tiger back into its den like Cesare had either.

The old man started bringing in plates. A bowl of rice was set on the table, slivers of jasmine sprinkled through white grains. A plate of small pieces of sushi was set beside it, dark green wraps off set by snow white rice, pink flesh and the orange of carrots. Arrayed in a star shape, the plate was pristine as much a work of art as an invitation to eat. The star was followed by a cross plate set below it, a pale sublime yellow a few shades off white. Like a mandala, each plate was a piece to something larger, a conversation had with color, shape, texture, the food only a solitary note in the symphony.

The distinct click of porcelain meeting wood marked each plate. Done with choreographed grace, a bend from the waist, fingers placed with deliberate intent on white porcelain, even the cut of the robe as it hugged his body. The movements were a lesson in beauty wedded to the gifting of food, elevating the dinner from a meal to an experience.

It was over thirty minutes before the man bowed out of the room quietly. The whole had become more than the sum of its parts. Subtle colors blended together, shapes teased the eye and pulled at the sublime parts of the soul. The geometric shapes meant something, born out of the chaos of the soul or implanted there by the old man.

Taking up their chopsticks, the others picked out their food. Reaching down, Cesare lifted the sticks uncertainly.

Kali laid her hand on his, gently adjusting his fingers. “Grasp the top one like a pencil, that gives you the dexterity you need to position it. The bottom stick acts as a stable platform to brace against.”

Awkward and shaky, Cesare managed to get the food off the plates and onto his own, but he was as wobbly as a newborn colt. Getting the food to his mouth was more luck than anything. Despite his struggles, the food was worth the work. Light and airy, threaded with flavors that were as much imagination as real.

Everyone fell into the silence, as if the ritual had skinned their worries from them. There was nowhere to be, nothing to rush to, and no reason to leave this island of peace. The same thought played out across everyone's mind. This would be the last meal they shared this year.

Alexandra would go back to the Order of the Dragon, life given over to training and fighting. Thrown into a place that looked on her as a mad dog to let loose on their enemies.

Anastasia would return to the privileged worlds of gold and champagne, back in the life of dreams. Flying around the world draped in thousands of dollars in clothes and jewels, she’d slip back into the halls of power with barely a ripple of disturbance.

He wasn’t sure where the older women would go, he’d never asked them, and they'd never offered. Their time together existed in a bubble of fantasy. Outside their normal lives, broken free of the moorings of the rules they lived by. It was nothing more than wish fulfillment, eventually the realities of their lives would strangle the fantasy dead in its womb. There was no way past that inevitable ending.

With summer coming on, ghostly fingers crept around the throat of the fantasies they’d built. School was an illusion that fed upon itself. Part nightmare and all dream, it meant nothing when you got out of it, consuming you while you lived inside the beast.

Cesare sat back as he finished his last bite. The others shared looks, but Elizabeth cornered the question they all hunted. “Where will you go?”

Sipping his tea, Cesare thought it over. “Back to the streets.” He rolled the words around his mind. They lacked the surge of angry disgust that had ridden them like undead horses on the way to the apocalypse. There was no fear or shame, instead a quiet thread of longing wove through them.

He loved being with the women, but it was exhausting. Every day his time was devoured by them, training, learning, working, planning, and fighting. Each day a raced he could only lose, places he had to be, and people he had to deal with. Pushed into a mold, cut, sliced, and butchered until he fit, stripped of choice, his life riding on the slaughter of self. Bleeding out slowly, little pieces torn from his soul to shore up plans, bones ripped from weeping flesh to throw to the monsters watching from the sewers. After months of working with the women, he was threadbare in heart and soul.

For better or worse, the streets were home. It was the one place he fit; its rules written in scars across his body. In that concrete abattoir with the pushers, pimps, monsters, and victim,s he could renew the stygian darkness of his soul. It was the place he hated more than any other, and it was the place he was comfortable. A paradox every victim understands, the streets had burned, cut, degraded, and broken him, it was the only place he felt home. Its embrace sliced into his skin, burned his heart and soul, jagged laugh welcoming him time and again, the mother and father of his soul. If a god had birthed him, it was that concrete womb.

“You have other options.” Kali's words ghosted through the air. “I could take you with me for the summer.” Anastasia’s breath made a sharp, angry sound. “I could arrange tutors to help you with your studies, instructors to work with you on tactics, strategy, hand to hand, and weapon work.”

Glaring at her mother, Anastasia stepped into the silence. “You could come with me instead.” Her words drew a frown from her mother, but Kali didn’t forbid it. “We’d be able to keep training, and I’d love to have you with me.”

Reaching out, he picked up the tea kettle, adding hot water to his cup. It gave him time to let his rage settle after hearing their words. They wanted to help him, Cesare knew that, but it was second to using him. Anastasia wanted more training, Kali wanted to develop an asset.

Cesare set his cup down on the table with a click that echoed with a sense of finality. The others watched as he got to his feet and left without a word

You can’t hold a wild animal; a wolf may come to your door to eat from a dog’s dish but that didn’t make it a dog. A wolf needed the wild more than breath. Dog's flourished in captivity, worshipped the hands that brought food and comfort. Wolves valued food, shelter, and a caressing hand, but they lived and loved only freedom. When the pack became a cage, when love demanded your honor, integrity, beauty, and goodness, only then did you realize freedom was the only thing that didn’t take.