Summertime.

In fair Okinawa, where we lay our scene.

The weather has been overcast: a weeks' worth of storms softening into a shimmer-mist. The monsoons have rolled inland now. At the beach-head, the ocean stretches out serenely. The sky is unclouded, a low-lying sun halved by the horizon. Its reflective rays transform the colors of the world by degrees; the fine golden slice of sand paling into incandescent whiteness, the waters shot through with inky veins. The world goes hypnotically dark, strewn with stars.

At the shores, the wedding party is in full swing.

The lamplit marquee, swagged in white silk, glows like mother-of-pearl. The decor is classically simple. My handiwork, bien sûr! Subdued palettes of cream and peach. Pillars decorated with exquisite garlands of pink roses. Teak chairs swathed in pale embroidered lace. A frosted-glass dining table that runs the length of the space, culminating in a sumptuous five-tier vanilla croquembouche, its surface scattered with pink meringue rosebuds.

The designer? Pierre Hermé, of course! A little pricey—but the bride and groom can damn well afford it.

Under the teardrops of a glittering chandelier, the guests schmooze. The subtle gleam of wineglasses competes with the low burnish of silver cutlery. And ooh! Did I mention the menu? Okinawan cuisine mixed with Continental fare: skewers of sizzling-hot rafute and deep-fried balls of sata andagi on one side, fancy glazed-fruit tartlets and creamy bites of fromage fort on the other. Outdoors, at the barbecue pit, herbed steer is grilled alongside lobster and coconut crab. We're also serving pheasant stuffed with wild rice, sausage ragù over parmesan polenta, and smoked salmon with deviled quail eggs.

If that's not to your taste, try the booze! There's an extravagance of fine liqueurs and home-brewed awamori. Not to mention a champagne tower overflowing with Veuve Clicquot.

Don't be shy! It's been thirty years! Snag a glass, and take a sip.

We have loads of catching up to do.

The big tent is cheerful with chatter. I'll play the host, and you play my date. I'll guide you around the dozens of guests crammed inside. We'll dish out Hellos here, we'll drop hugs-and-kissies there. Mind the children! There's a whole gaggle of them—squealing-shouting-squabbling. Some I'll kneel to exchange playful banter with. Others I'll catch up in my arms and hurl to the ceiling amid giggles from them and gasps from their parents.

I can't help it. Family reunions make me sentimental.

It's been eons since my last.

These children are Chiropteran Queens. Descendants of Sayumi and Sayuri. Daughters, and granddaughters. There's Sayumi's eldest child, Saori, waltzing with her Chevalier. There's her sister, Sayaka, crouching to scold her two five-year-olds for ruining their corsages. They'll get over it soon enough. Plenty of cousins to play with and corners to crawl into.

Plenty of time to make memories—or unmake them. Despite your snide suspicions to the contrary, I do not guide their narrative. I merely record it. Each Queen is the ruler of her own Wyrd.

Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel.

Speaking of—where are Sayumi and Sayuri?

Ah! There by the shoreline. They are virtually unchanged since we last left them. On the surface, anyway.

Sayumi dazzles in a clinging maroon gown, cut low at the bodice and slitted at the thigh. Sultry as always, her aura enhanced lately by a businesswoman-on-the-go quality. She runs a chain of highly-successful dojos across the Ryukyus. She is accompanied by Sayuri. Ethereally lovely as always in a lavender dress of chiffon. The scars sustained from the wolfsbane remain a dark spiderweb across her pale skin. Like all Blue Queens, she wears them not as an affliction but an ornament.

They are less livid now. Fading like the echoes of a terrible scream.

The brain damage that she sustained from the toxin was harder to shake. She passed seventeen years unable to remember anything of her past. Sayumi moved back to Omoro to help Kai with her. It was a necessity. Sayuri was the most docile under her sister's care. Sometimes, her company would stir an absent memory. Snatches of songs. Names and places. At night, she'd suffer bad dreams, thrashing and shrieking, and only the shape of Sayumi, snugged up beside her, would lull her to sleep.

It's inevitable. Blood recognizes blood.

For Sayumi, the early years were a heartbreaking replication of their childhood. At the park, they played together on the monkey bars while Kai watched from Omoro's porch. Afterwards, in the spreading shade of the hibiscus tree, they ate from bento boxes, while Yumi coaxed Yuri into remembering the calls of the tropical birds. At night, they sat together on the old sofa where they'd once watched cartoons, the side-by-side warmth of their bodies a flawless synchronicity that dislodged old memories at the strangest moments.

"We're here from Saturday," Yuri would murmur, swiping a hand across her nose, a childishly dreamy gesture, "From Saturday… till eternity."

"Yeah." Yumi's soft voice wavered with tears. "We are."

So it is between Queens.

A blood-pact that spans forever—even if forever is merely an eyeblink.

As the years passed, Yuri would succumb less and less to corkscrewing fits of blankness. Sometimes she'd awaken from sleep, able to conjure past moments with Kai and Yumi in gut-wrenching detail. Slowly, she would come back to herself, yet never quite recapture the cool-eyed, self-possessed woman she'd once been.

Even now, she remains a half-haunted echo of her old self. A smile of pure loveliness, but hands as disfigured as stumps. When she speaks, her voice is barely above a jittery whisper.

Wind skates across the shoreline. The sisters twine arms, and pad barefoot through the sand. Their Chevaliers stroll behind them. Untouched too, by the erosions of time. Sachi is svelte and sinewy as ever, but his sharp gaze has mellowed into a wistful contentment. V remains a beefcake of buffness, but his half-smile has shaded into a quiet maturity.

The biggest difference is their positions. V behind Yuri. Sachi behind Yumi.

A chess-swap. That's how I envision it. The four of them on a black-and-white chessboard together. Two Queens and their Knights. Then one Knight makes his way, by an enigmatic sequence of events, to the opposite Queen. His counterpart, mirroring the move, dances step-by-step toward the other.

It's only natural. The call-and-response of blood.

Oh—Sachi never abandoned Yuri! Get that out of your head! The poor boy stayed by her side, as he'd pledged. A Chevalier, and a caretaker. But as the years passed, the latter superseded the former. He could not in good conscience share Yuri's bed. Not when she was so fragile in her mind. Some nights, he'd help Sayumi bathe her sister in the tub. He'd find his gaze wandering over his nude Queen, lovely and sudsy. But where the sight once conjured a thrilling heat, all that remained anymore was a brotherly lovingconcern.

Whereas Yumi, with her lush laugh and curly cedarwood-smelling hair, became a cynosure that every particle of his body yearned towards.

One night Sachi and Yumi sat together on the beach. Yuri, on a blanket, slept her innocent sleep.

"She'll come back to herself," Yumi said, hopeful but with a bittersweet edge.

Sachi nodded. "She won't be like this forever."

"We'll take care of her. Both of us."

"We will."

His hand touched hers, the lightest skim of knuckles. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except something passed between them, shivery-hot and mysterious. Something rooted in their intense love for Yuri. A love that had conspired, day-by-day, to lure them together in a way that had nothing to do with Yuri at all.

Later that night, with uncharacteristic shyness, Yumi invited Sachi upstairs. She held her hand out. If Sachi declined, she would never have chased it further. He belonged to her sister. And Yuri needed them both.

But perhaps, in their own way, they needed each other more.

Sachi put his hand in Yumi's—and that was that.

Years later, when Yuri regained her memory, she was bitterly angry. Betrayal is never easy to swallow. Especially not when it is your sister and the man you love. She called them names I shall tactfully omit. She asserted that they had treated her as a child. Less than that. A thing of no consequence at all.

Yumi and Sachi, hand-in-hand, endured her invective. They knew it was warranted. They also knew it was worth it. It didn't negate their love for Yuri. You'll notice, if you filch Yumi's phone, that her screensaver is still a childhood photo of herself and her sister. You'll notice, if you lift up Sachi's sleeve, that he still bears the swirling hiragana tattoo that says Sayuri.

In their own ways, they never forgot her. But in their own ways, they had changed.

Like all Blue Queens, Yumi's rage remained a whirlpool at sea, unpredictable and terrifying. Like all Blue Queens, she eventually made her peace. She had to, because she loved both Sachi and Yumi too much to nourish resentment against them.

Especially since they already had two daughters.

Saori and Sayaka came first. They were followed five years later by Sanae and Satomi. Then, a half-decade after that, Saki and Sawako. Yumi and Sachi are a marvel as parents—she a doting, ferocious mother, and he a watchful, considerate father. Their marriage too, has the novelty of a matched set: a yin-yang pendant, a salt-and-pepper shaker, a balance of binaries where their happiness lies in the golden mean at the center.

Saori and Sayaka have Chevaliers, and daughters, of their own now. So do Sanae and Satomi. Saki and Sawako are still young, but I'll certainly do my best to shove some eligible boys their way. Their parents won't necessarily approve. Distractions from school, etcetera. But hey! You only live once.

That's as true for Chiropterans as for humans.

Hm? What about V, you ask?

Oh, he didn't take kindly to Yumi moving on. But he channeled his ire toward Sachi rather than his Queen. Poor schlub. I think he believed there was a shot at winning her back. Now that I recall, there was an epic duel between them. Right here, at this beach. Blows like thunder rolling across the sky, bodies streaking in blurs like lightning, crashing across the sea in great billows of froth, shredding the shores apart like some crazy two-man tornado.

Red Shield's troops were deployed to break up their dogfight. They summoned Haji at its zenith for the cease-and-desist.

Afterward, both V and Sachi were a mess. Shredded, slashed, scorched. I remember the bloody imprint of their bodies in the sand. I remember Yumi unfolding herself from a car to race toward them. She crouched beside V, patted him until he roused—and then flung herself at Sachi.

Poor V! I dare not imagine what went through his head. Sprawled in the sand, he watched Yumi kneel to cradle Sachi's head in her lap, bloodying her dress. He saw the other Chevalier's features—white-lipped and tight-jawed against the pain—soften into a tender regard. He saw Yumi smile, as if she was lit up from her tiptoes right up to her squiggly curls.

He lost consciousness, knowing he had lost his Queen for good.

For months afterward, V was a wreck. Sobriety was anathema to the boy. Sixpack for lunch and hard liquor for dinner. Kai and Dee tried to break his funk. But it was an uphill struggle, and they had enough on their plate already. For a while, it seemed V was doomed to wander the earth alone—or maybe drunkenly reel in between fits of barfing.

It was Yuri who snapped him out of it.

By then, she'd slowly regained her memory. Regained it—and her daughters in the bargain.

Tsk! You'd forgotten about them, hadn't you? Seiki and Seina! Yuri's daughters by V. Poor darlings. They were born in such dreadful circumstances. Their mother half-erased. Their home half-broken by grief.

But the family didn't neglect them. How could they? Not after all that struggle and strife that preceded their birth. The babies stood for it all somehow, two treasures rescued from a sinking ship.

In the early days, they were reared by Kai and Dee. Or, when he was in town, Haji. Yumi and Sachi lent a hand. But their energies were increasingly funneled elsewhere. Both were admittedly forgetful in their over-concern about Yuri. Both of them made mistakes. It's tragic, but I can't blame them. They could only take each day as it came.

The aftermath of Tórir's agenda left them all indelibly scarred.

It was V who threw himself into caring for little Seiki and Seina. No one could have anticipated the depth of his devotion to them. In his own words: Momma is out of commission. But Poppa is alive and kickin.' In their infancy, he delighted in bottle-feeding them and changing their nappies. When they were kindergartners, he would use Kai's recipe books to whip up snacks for their lunch boxes. When they came back from school, he would be waiting by the gates, ready to zip them off on his motorbike for ice creams.

The girls grew up adorable and adored by the entire family. Adored—especially, entirely, effusively—by their Poppa.

By the time Yuri recovered, she had missed nearly two decades of her daughters' lives. She threw herself with singleminded zeal into remedying it. When Yumi rejected V for Sachi, she was there to patch him up.

Soon, their tentative time-share blossomed into something more life-sustaining. V began to grow mushy roots in Yuri's heart. On his part, V had always had a low-key crush on Yumi's prissy sister. Even when he was with Yumi—and he loved her, madly—he could just as easily imagine himself with Yuri.

Now he no longer had to imagine.

I must say, the relationship has done wonders for his sartorial sense. Haircut, shave, swanky wardrobe. Striding behind Yuri, suited and spiffed up, he's left off all the marks of menace—spiky hair, tattoos, piercings. But he looks no less tough. It's a different kind of toughness now. Less Jason Mamoa, more Idris Elba. He treats Yuri with the quiet awe of a wine connoisseur marveling over a chipped glass of Cheval Blanc—and she basks in the attention as is her due.

They have three pairs of twins, too. Seiki and Seina, of course. But also Sakiko and Asami. And their youngest, born just four years ago, Sari and Suki. Seiki and Seina, like Yumi's twins, already have both Chevaliers and children. Sakiko and Asami are bound to follow. I hear Asami has a little ménage-e-trois going on with two handsome men. Which bodes well for plenty of little Queens on the horizon.

Try not to hold my obsession with lineage against me. I admit—it is an obsession. And, in its own way, the most sublime form of vengeance.

Against Tórir, and his plans to enslave the Queens. Against his brothers, who massacred an entire dynasty.

Against any who stand in our way.

Hm? You'd hoped the twins' stories would go differently? Well, perdoname! I'm not the omniscient narrator. Merely the dutiful scribe.

If you'd prefer to rewrite the script, knock yourself out. We are Chiropterans. We are not bound by human conventions. Who knows? In another century, Sachi and Sayumi (Sachimi?) might swap partners again. Vicente and Sayuri (Vicuri?) might end up where they first began.

All possibilities are open. In this millennium, or the next.

What's that? Is Red Shield still around? Of course! August remains at the helm, a silver-haired force of nature. Ne is at the wedding party, signaling to a waiter. Another glass of champagne, another strawberry tart. Ta, love. Still sporting those silly studs all over the face—but ne does look fetching in a charcoal gray zoot suit and a wide-brimmed hat with a pluming purple feather.

Pssst. I'm going to steal it. (The hat, not the tart, silly.)

Nearby, you'll spy Lewis and Lulu, toasting to glasses of champagne. At their table are also Ezra and Adam Silverstein, with their wives and children. Ezra is dorky as ever, his hair still prone to frizzing, and he still wears wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. It is crooked from the attack by Collins' henchmen, thirty years ago. He's never had it corrected. Saya told him it looked rugged. So, in a puppyish fit of pride, he kept the schnozzle as a souvenir.

Both David and Julia are gone: he of heart failure at eighty-five, she of a cancerous tumor that felled her six years afterward. Unfortunate. But they had good innings. A solid marriage, three children, a legacy in the spheres of warfare and science. Ezra carries on Julia's research on the enigmatic Chiropteran genome. Dee holds her father's torch high on the frontline.

Hm? Kai and Dee? Yes, they're alive!

They're at the bar. Drinking awamori and chatting it up with guests. They're both getting on in years. He's seventy-eight. She's sixty. Yet they remain two dynamos of feistiness. He runs a chain of Omoro-style cafes. She is a formidable force on Red Shield ops.

I admit, happiness hangs well on them. Kai's angular face is deeply-lined by weather and age, but his eyes are bright as ever. Right now, he's sharing a knee-slapper about a cat and a thumbtack. Dee, over the years, has come to resemble her father more than her mother: her body possessing the leanness of a stiletto, her blue eyes cutting to the quick. But there is warm luster in her smile, borrowed from her years with Kai. When she laughs, she tosses her head back, her shorn hair glossy as Peruvian gold.

I shouldn't divulge this—but she and Kai won't laugh forever. A month from now, they will go on a hiking trip to Kumejima. There, at a cliff by the seaside, Kai will slip and plunge to his death two-hundred feet below. Dee will just barely survive, blood spilling across the rocks and half the bones in her body shattered to powder.

To save her life, Saya will do the unthinkable—with a slit palm and a blood kiss. The transformation will be deafening in its intensity: thrashings and shriekings that obliterate the dead calm of the seaside. Every part of the poor woman flexing hard enough to burst.

Hm?

Well, of course we have female Chevaliers! Or Chevalière, as is the proper term. They're a rarity, but hardly improbable. As Yuri remarked, decades ago, they are useful for espionage. Not to mention for serving Queens during their sequesterings in pregnancy.

Not that either of those things will be on Saya's mind when the transformation occurs. Her brainpan will be a melted clock of deja vu, ticking away in liquid drips with memories of Haji, and Riku. She won't see Dee at all, not in the moment of the crisis, or in the weeks while she convalesces, the pallid heap of her body an afterthought that is overshadowed by the family's grief over Kai's death.

I won't bore you with the details. I wager the scene is more or less memorized at this point: the tedious Saya-script of Woe is Me and Oh How Could I? First time was tragedy, second was farce, and by the third my interest has wilted into a dry chaff of non-existence.

Regardless, Saya will get over her self-inflicted dramatics and visit Dee. Shellshockedly sheepish, with a bouquet of violets cradled in her arms. Some small part of Dee will try to crack a funny—a neuromuscular reflex that is a leftover from her years with Kai—but instead her mouth will spasm out of shape and her eyes will burn. They will sit together, Queen and Chevalière, in trepidation and in tears, thinking of Kai, and how he'd react to the latest disaster they have stumbled into.

Then Dee will take Saya's hand, and squeeze it in both her own.

"Kai never wanted to go on a deathbed," she will whisper. "That was his second least-favorite scenario."

"And the first?" Saya will ask.

Dee's lips will be a dry curl. "Dying-as-human. Waking-as-Chevalier."

Saya's tears will threaten to spill. But her smile will mirror Dee's, a cocksure attempt at irony. "Lucky for him I turned you instead."

In answer, Dee will do something unexpected: grab Saya and pull her close, an awkward clap of comfort aimed haphazardly at her new Queen or her own self, as the tears finally brim her eyelids and overflow. In answer, Saya will rub her shoulders tentatively, the downturn of her mouth heavy with unspoken words. And then she will do the unexpected herself, and kiss Dee on the lips.

An innocent kiss. Nothing loaded or lesbo. But it will dig like a warm spur into Dee's mind as the years pass. The ache of Kai's absence will never abate for her. But as the seasons cycle, she will thank her lucky stars for the near-fatal slip-slide along karma's blade. Kai's life was sliced in half. Hers was doubled, a single turn of humanity stretching into infinity and beyond.

She will adapt to it as to a jazzy new weapon. With gusto.

Yumi, Yuri, Sachi and V will show her the ropes. The rest, she will learn from Saya. The two already share a mutual respect, rooted in a similar straightforwardness of nature. Their blood-bond will lend it another dimension, a layer of intimacy that deepens into... not sisterhood. Nothing so simple. But a solid undergirding of trust.

As for Haji?

We-e-ell. He will be ambivalent about having a 'sister.' In the past, he'd had a tacit understanding with David, and a quiet fraternal bond with Kai. But Dee was an auxiliary, valued only for her expertise in combat. He'd never considered her as anything beyond the quintessential G.I. Jane: a crackshot with a mouthful of cusswords, but otherwise as blandly unremarkable as only an American can be. She failed to take up private residence in his heart the way Riku once had.

Her transformation won't change that. At first. She will be interesting to him only as her presence affects Saya's moods. In general, he will give her wide berth, circling the newly-defined boundaries between himself and the latest 'family' member like a wolf marking his territory.

On Dee's part, Haji was never anything beyond a dark shadow at the corner of the eye—there, then gone. Whenever he was in her sightlines, his good looks were intense enough to render him abstract. Kai had treated the Chevalier as a fellow soldier. Someone who was a little chilly up top, but fundamentally his ride-or-die. But Dee had never warmed up to Haji the same way. He carried himself differently from Sachi and V, or from her old Marine buddies. His silences weren't like her father's. They were unnatural and unnerving, and when he did speak, his tone smoothed on a dime from perfect politeness to inhuman indifference in a way that creeped her out.

Now here she and Haji were, in a post-Kai world, trying to patch over the empty space he'd left behind.

Developing a rapport would prove difficult. Stoic last-century man versus straight-shooting soldier-lady—a strange combination in the best of times. But they will make an effort. Or try to—tight-lipped and monosyllabic, their distance a cover for their deep mutual discomfort. They will be thrown together frequently for missions, or family events, or simple outings with Saya. Each one standing at an arm's length, a mirror-dance kindled not by the bonds of blood, but the diligence of duty-bound sentries.

Their awkwardness will annoy Saya to no end. More than once, hands-on-hips, she will scold them to make an effort, because for better or worse, they're family now.

So, as the months melt into years, Dee and Haji will negotiate the tricky path toward kinship. Battlefields, books, ballroom dancing. (Yes, really.) They will find they have more in common besides fixating on Saya's safety or missing Kai, although both areas will dominate their minds with one-track predictability. Sometimes they will go on road-trips with their Queen, commiserating with shared glances over the insipidness of the pop songs Saya loves so much. Other times, they will watch movies on the same couch, Saya nestled in a comfortably dainty heap between them, Haji's shoulders settled in lines of relaxation and a warm twist of humor in Dee's smile between crunches of buttery popcorn. In battles, they will be a fearsome trio: a tripe entente of cool-eyed, steel-nerved fighters. In private, as the years pass, they will work as a vaudevillian triptych, Saya a ray of disarmingly sweet sunshine, while Dee supplies the caustic wisecrack, and Haji plays—if you'll excuse the pun—the straight man.

A happy arrangement, if unexpected. Certainly, it will come in handy once Saya—

Ah, but we're getting ahead of ourselves!

Right now, that's all pie in the sky. Right now, Dee is knocking back her second drink while Kai entertains the little Queens by stuffing his mouth with crackers and reciting the alphabet backwards. Crumbs fly, and the little Queens go Eeeee! in delight.

It delights me, in turn, to hear it.

My Wyrd has proved as wayward as the roads I walked upon. But l no longer walk alone. The massive web of blood binds me to each Queen. Sister to sister. Mother to daughter.

The threads of each story are complex from start to finish. A Blue Queen locked in a tower, then freed by bartering her death for the life of her daughters. A Red Queen swearing revenge on the men who stole her sister's life, and bleeding her own life away in the bargain. Their daughters, recreating their ancestors' saga in sorrowful echoes, only to find salvation through their own daughters. Those daughters in turn, shaped by the errors of their mother and aunt, and scarred by those of their grandmothers.

Inevitability, or plain cruelty?

I cannot say. The bonds of Wyrd are impossible to break. We are trapped in its tangle, and each movement vibrates across the web, altering our fate, and the fates of others. As to whether happiness is the outcome … that depends solely on our choices.

What we choose to become.

Speaking of—

The highlight of the night! The bride and groom!

Of course, Saya and Haji. Who else would it be?

They walk hand-in-hand downshore. Starlight hits the spray of the seaside. The droplets caught in their hair are a constellation in miniature. Their bodies seem sharply delineated the same way, a layer of brightness melting into dark. A vision captured for a heartbeat—yet effortlessly beautiful for it.

I could swoon about mono no aware—the pathos of transience—and its paler sisters of yūgen and miyabi. But I hardly fancy myself a philosopher, much less a poet.

To quote Nabokov, who was ironically both, I am only a very conscientious recorder.

Still, for the sake of posterity, I will take a moment to admire them.

I arranged for their stylist, after all.

Haji is. Well… Look at him. In a swallowtail tuxedo, black with a white silk tie, a pink rose pinned to the lapel. He moves with the louche insouciance of a man born in the era of formal eveningwear. The wind flirts with his untied curls, stirring them around his face. His scars are nearly gone—except for the sickle around his throat, hidden beneath a high collar, an omnipresent reminder of his brush-off with doom. In profile (lord, what a profile!), the sharpish line of his cheekbone is pinked with heat. The ceremony has left him moonstruck and little shy.

And Saya?

She looks radiant, of course. More than radiant. She glows like comet, burning as Sunako once did through the pages of history. Like Sunako, she exudes the same strength, but oh-so-softly.

It is a quality afforded by her family, and the steadfast adoration of the man she loves.

The sea-wind rolls across the shore, fluttering the hem of her dress. It is a brilliant ivory, satin and Chantilly lace, strapless and bias-cut across the bodice and pluming into rich folds like crème fraiche around her knees. Too much like a frock for my tastes. But she wears it divinely, her skin all gold and roses, wisps of hair floating from her sleek updo, her shapely legs flashing beneath the cloud of lace. The kneecaps, I should note are a little reddened. I wonder if she's been building sandcastles. Or if she blew her brand-new husband before the reception, on her dainty knees.

I'll leave the juicer details for you to visualize.

Hm? Oh yes! The vows are over. You missed them. They didn't take long. Under the open sky, its colors prismatic with the sunset, they exchanged their promises before the minister, and a circle of witnesses. All the traditional stuff. To have and to hold, for better or for worse etc. A few extras. To be each other's best friends. To be faithful, and forthright, and fearless. Against life, and death itself.

Honestly, they needn't have spoken a word. Standing with gazes and palms linked, a peculiar silence enclosed them, speech a superfluity in the face of their blood-pact.

Pour aimer et chérir
Jusqu'à la mort nous sépare.

I admit. I got a little sniffly toward the end.

What's that? Oh, Haji's no longer with the Philharmonic! They're old news! Mothballs and dust. But their last album, a swan song released in 2046, went triple platinum. Thanks to my shrewd business acumen, Haji raked in enough royalties to keep his Queen in the lap of luxury for several generations.

Ere long, I plan to reincarnate his virtuoso persona under a different guise. Maybe Beethoven mixed with Tibetan chants?

That's all pie-in-the-sky, of course. Right now, let's skip the light fantastic! The string quartet have struck up a jaunty number. Couples are gravitating to the dancefloor. Let's join 'em!

I'll teach you how to do the Okinawan kachashi.

The lilt of violins merges with the rich music of nightfall: rustling sago palms, the sloshing of the seawaves, the songs of the cicadas. Saya lays her cheek on Haji's chest as they glide in between the other couples. The quiet thump of his heart suffuses her, until the dancefloor fades away. There is only the silence around them, a bubble of bittersweet serenity.

"Haji?"

"Hm?"

She doesn't fully meet his soft blue eyes. "Are you nervous?"

"Of what?"

"This. Us." A tiny smile. "The fact that... there is an Us."

Haji's palm cradles the curve of her cheek, thumb stroking her lips. During the vows, he kept his face smoothed in perfect artifice. Here, his gaze is hot and tender and possessive, speaking the thousands of truths he couldn't say in words.

"If you are asking," he says, half-serious, "whether or not we can be normal?"

"Normal is a silly, subjective word." She nuzzles his palm. "I'd rather shape it to our life. The one we'll have together."

"We have always had a life together, Saya."

"Lots of lives." She laughs, but without humor. "Too many deaths."

She still has nightmares of them. Vietnam. Russia. The bloodbath in Karachi. The attack of the Diva-monsters in Okinawa. The buzzing lights of the hospital room where Yuri lay dying. Figments of safekeeping from the old Queens, that deepen into waking hallucinations of other lives, other deaths.

Sometimes Tórir's. Sometimes Diva's.

She still feels out-of-balance without her sister. Robbed even of her ghost. Over sixty years have passed and Saya misses her, thinks of her as intensely as in the war. Sometimes she meditates, hopeful that, trancelike, the lines of spiritual communication between them might re-open. So far, her attempts have yielded no success. Maybe it's foolish to believe they ever will.

Some losses remain a negative space, a black hole in eternal collapse

There is no still point, but she doesn't want there to be. She wants the world to keep spinning, no exceptions for her exceptional loss. Hopefully—inevitably—it will transform from an off-limits zone to a slow restoration into normalcy.

Whatever the means for her now.

Haji stops in the middle the swaying bodies. Encircles her close. "Is it on your mind? Death?"

"It was last night." She sighs. "I'm tired of dreaming of death."

"It will get easier."

"I know." She steadies on a smile. "I'm ready to get home, and get started. With life. Our life."

He considers her gently. "Home?"

Their exquisite little villa at Naminoue Beach is gone. So is the original Omoro. She's spent her latest Awakening at Red Shield's resthouse in Nago. The existence she'd grown used to is unrecognizable: the solace of the music room, the stained-glass windows, the circle of friends. But in its place is something infinitely more miraculous: Yumi and Yuri's daughters, and their Chevaliers, and their grandchildren.

A flesh-and-blood legacy that Tórir sought to erase.

Saya is but a link in that living chain, the keeper of the lives before her, the guardian of the lives after. A duty that she accepts gladly, because it allows her to reconcile with life, and its darker undertow of death.

Choose what truly matters.

So she exhales, and dwells beyond the heartsore condition of herself. It is easy, when tonight is the sum of all her hopes. When Haji—the most solid shape in her ever-changing world—lays a path for her to move forward upon. Different era, same old slippers.

"We'll find a home," she says. "Someplace by the beach. Cozy, private, safe."

"With a solarium," Haji murmurs.

"And a music room."

"And a grand piano."

"Mm." She presses up against him, twinkling, tantalizing. "All the better to butcher Chopin with."

Haji dips close and kisses her. Not the formality of their wedding-kiss. A real kiss, his cool palm tipping her neck up, his cool mouth turning Saya's whole body airy, like she is about to float up into the stars.

A giddiness at risk for bleeding into bliss.

At the stage, the band kicks up the slow waltz into a hot swing. Saya doesn't know the dance; her satin slippers knock against Haji's polished shoes. Gently, he puts her right, and this time, Saya watches the oscillations of his feet as she moves with him. Someone—maybe Yuri and Yumi?—taught him the basics of the steps. She giggles to imagine them as children, balanced on his insteps, clutching his fingers as he sailed them around the livingroom to late-night Jazz.

As he surely did with Yumi and Yuri's children and grandchildren, decades after.

It's too late for our own.

Instantly she regrets the thought, and her cheeks burn at her penchant for brooding even at the brightest moments.

Haji's eyes are a patient query. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Just… remembering."

"Death?"

"Disappointment." She swallows. "For what couldn't be."

Understanding darkens Haji's gaze, even as his face stays deliberately inexpressive. They've shared this conversation before, in small doses to ration the bitterness. The battle. The miscarriage. Her moment of calculated intimacy with Tórir, and the anguish it wrought inside Haji for thirty years afterward to think of it.

She feels it now, in his light-fingered caress across her spine, and the enfolding tightness of his arms.

Quietly, he says, "At the Zoo, when I first loved you, I sometimes dreamt of our children."

"Did you?"

"Yes. I could picture it as an Edward Lamson Henry painting. A houseful of splendid antiques, a rose garden, the company of celebrated musicians, an armful of dark-haired girls with your smile." His mouth twists in self-deprecation. "Even in those days, it felt like a fantasy. Somehow, I understood the cult of domesticity was not for me. My place was elsewhere."

It is startling to hear him say it so plainly. Her eyes widen. "So where was your place?"

"With you." He doesn't smile, but he softens. His hand rests on her nape, thumb smoothing below her ear. "So long as I have that, I will be as happy as I can be on earth."

His words dislodge the remnants of her sorrow. Sliding an arm around his neck, she settles herself against his shoulder. Her smile is hidden against his shirt. "Because you delight in sacrifice?"

She can't see Haji's face. But the air around him lightens with shared recognition. A role-reversal of Jane Eyre, still their favorite book.

"Sacrifice?" he says, pulling the words from memory. "What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—" he squeezes her until she squeaks, "to press my lips to what I love—" he steals the squeak with a kiss, "to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice."

Saya bites her lip around a smile. She loves that he can match her line for line; she's yet to come up with a quote that stumps him. But she isn't going to give up, either.

"Eh bien alors," she says, "il faudra nous marier immédiatement."

"Nous sommes déjà mariés, ma petite succube."

She shivers as his hand coasts from her nape to the small of her back, thumb circling there. Copping a wistful feel. His dark curls flirt across her face before his cool forehead butts gently into place against hers. She doesn't yet know it, but as the decades pass and the world spins into strangeness, their selves spinning with it, unraveling into strangeness and out of it, the gesture will remain theirs, its intimacy like a placeholder.

Like the web of blood that binds her to each Queen.

Like the memories she can conjure up, distinct as snowflakes, of Diva.

Balance.

That is what Sunako and her mother lived for. What they died for. Maybe this is Saya's repayment? Keeping their dynasty alive, not through wars or voyages, nor through her own children, but through her sister's. Through their daughters, and granddaughters, and great-granddaughters.

This is her family. All the family she will ever have.

Waves wash dreamily across the shore. Starlight imbues the moving water with dappled threads of silver. At the dancefloor, couples match their movements to the jaunty music, sedate steps transforming into spin-gigs. Close to the speakers, the noise is a manic throb. Beyond the luminous marquees, it is a snaking pulsebeat. Halfway down the shores, a shiver of sound.

Saya is no longer watching Haji's feet. They move together as one, simplicity without superfluity, and it is like being in bed, or playing the cello, or fighting side by side: the spell of the past evolving into smooth synchronicity. She's greedy for when they're finally alone together, behind a cherry tree or in a hotel room, anywhere where she can taste the salt on his skin, gnaw the vulnerable line of his neck, hijack his control and fly it straight out of the stratosphere.

In the meantime, his secret smile is an aphrodisiac. She blushes as their bodies detach in the signature swingout, then spin together again, melding with a grace that is half aesthetics, half sex. The gazes of a few couples stray to them; there are smiles and a smattering of applause. Saya giggles as a few dances try to replicate the move, with less success.

See? Haji's hand squeezes hers. You've got it.

Then the band breaks out a familiar song. The trumpet riffs go jazzily berserk, the piano notes sparkling like the swish of a flapper's beaded skirt. Up ahead, Sayumi squeals with unconcealed glee.

"Oh yeah. That's my jam! Turn it up!"

She rolls out a few steps, perfectly timed to the warble of saxophone. Then a pale arm reaches out languorously. Yumi catches it, and spins Yuri into her orbit. They break into a Lindy-hop, twirling and torqueing in perfect harmony, heels kicking and hair tossing, their laughter a sweet scintilla that overlaps the song.

Don't go 'round tonight
It's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise…

Bit by bit, the dancefloor clears. Yumi and Yuri soak up the limelight. Their bodies are in live-wire communication: clasped tight one moment, then breaking away the next to improvise their own steps, Yumi moving with an elastic sinuosity while Yuri launches a gravity-defying series of aerials.

Their energy is different from the first time Saya saw them dance at the beach. Not just entangled but infused. Then they fling themselves apart, and Yumi pirouettes toward the newlyweds.

"C'mon, Saya!"

Haji lets go of Saya, and suddenly she is gliding forward alone, into Yumi and Yuri's orbit, into a space where the black hole of Diva's loss and the ache for her own daughters collapses on itself and she belongs completely, fractals of starlight catching in her eyes and memories pinwheeling through her mind: the happy night at Makishi Market, Tórir's slow slither of a smile, Bach on the cello and the Fantaisie Impromptu on the piano, Dee's smoky laughter and the tiger-roar of Kai's motorbike, the kaleidoscope of the mosaic windows and the soft sheaves of blue roses in the solarium, the supernatural effervescence of the yuta's eyes and the space outside of time where Saya embraced her mother and aunt, all the moments gone so far away while she occupies the latest.

The latest, but never the last.

And then Yumi and Yuri laugh, spilling their own music into the night, and Saya has to laugh too, blue roses sprouting across the sand with her every footstep, because—

Because of what?

Sheer joy? A secret to share?

That's not for me to say. Scribe, not scriptwriter, remember? I've stated before: everything is within the realm of possibility. That includes happiness. Perhaps Saya has finally understood what it means to be unshackled from her sister? Perhaps she's learnt to make peace with the blown-apart spaces inside her?

Or could the blue roses symbolize something else? Could her body have clutched at life despite a lifetime of dispensing death? Could she still be fertile this Awakening, with Julia's newfangled drug a wedding gift to manifest the miraculous? Could she soon be, dare I say it, up the duff, in the pudding club, wearing the bustle wrong?

Who knows?

Queens' bodies work in mysterious ways.

Whether or not Saya's future includes the pitter-patter of little feet is up to you. Babies ever after? Knock yourself out. A pas de trois with her, Haji and Dee? Go ahead. A cozy coupling of just her and Haji? That's fine too.

I can promise that each of the actors in this play will find happiness. Ordinary-sized, or cosmos-sized. How they come by it, struggle with it, suffer without it, snatch it for themselves or squander it, depends on their choices. We've journeyed together, side-by-side, and watched them make each choice. Watched them become what they were meant to be.

And on and on it will go.

Becoming is a process, not a pinnacle. And the knot of Wyrd is difficult to unravel.

Strange, that when I began this tale, I posited its main character not as a single person, but a civilization. I grieved for the tragedy of its unforeseen destruction. I pined for the life, however brutal or bloodthirsty, that was governed by codes of conduct rooted in balance. That world is gone, and yet it remains. Here, on this beach. My world, the heart of the Blodfødt, their pulse a moon cycle marked by loss and laughter, defeat and victory.

All things in balance.

Speaking of: we're nearing the end of our tale. Don't cry for me, Argentina! It was loads of laughs while it lasted. You taught me a thing or two, I taught you a thing or a thousand, and we each part from this encounter more enriched than before. So for now, adiós, adieu, arrivederci!

Perhaps we'll meet again. Someday. Somewhere.

Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel!

Fate goes ever as she must – and so did my itchy writer-fingers when crafting this fic. Whoo!

This has been one of my longest and most ambitious endeavors to date, and has solidly knocked both Unvollendete and Bloodstone outta the park where the word-count is concerned. The astute among you (and loyal lurkers on tumblr) will note that this tale is in fact two different fic-ideas blended together into one unsavory, angsty, smutty goop. One premise dealt with Saya's budding relationship with Haji, her PTSD, and general hangups while transitioning into her new life. The other involved possession, supernatural drama, and the secrets of Chiropteran genealogy. The end result, you see before you – 51 chapters and many writerly breakdowns later :)

In addition, this fic closely mirrors, or draws inspiration from, works of mythology (because I'm eternally a sucker for the mythopoetic). Some of these include the Sumerian tale of Inanna's Descent, its later Greek kissing-cousin The Abduction of Persephone, the Norse Eddas, and of course Joseph Campell's The Hero's Journey, because if I had to write a 50-chapter fic, I ought to do it right.

Whether I succeeded or not, I leave up to you to decide. But either way, this project was loads of fun, and incredibly gratifying. When I began, I feared the fandom was dead – but your amazing comments have heartily proven me otherwise. Seriously, I can't thank y'all enough for sticking with this tale, and for encouraging me to stick with it whenever I was daunted by the chapter-count or the general direction of the narrative. Heaps of smoochies, and lots of cuddles! You guys are fan-fucking-tastic and the best readers a fanficcer could ask for!

As ever, I await your thoughts on the tale's conclusion. Liked it? Loathed it? Lemme know! And lurkers too – I know you're out there, hehehe 3

Until then, stay safe, and I wish you endless goodness and blessings! If you'd like to keep it touch, I'm active on tumblr (lullabyes22-blog) with Blood+ related memes, crack, visualosities, headcanons, ask-boxes, and other fangirly content. Don't be a stranger! Come say 'Hi' whenever you like :)

Peace out until then, and stay awesome!