SEPT
1821
Through the blur, I wondered if I was
alone or if other parents felt the same
way I did — that everything involving
our children was painful in some way.
"I warned you," Elijah said without sympathy.
The look Niklaus gave him was dark enough that he half expected his brother to descend at last into violence in front of the children, but to his eternal surprise, the no doubt compunctious fool only turned and stormed out of the room, leaving Elijah alone with their brother's desiccating corpse and a pair of frightened children.
Elijah turned to check on their young wards and revised his initial assessment.
One frightened child: the young Marcellus, still sitting where Kol had left him, dazed with shock. Little Bellona merely looked curious. As usual.
Forcibly tempering his ire, Elijah went to the child and hoisted her into his arms. She settled against him with the ease of familiarity — the same ease, Elijah was disgruntled to note, with which the child had settled against Kol.
The vile wretch had fed Marcellus his blood in the single most depraved act Elijah had foolishly, sentimentally, never thought his brother capable of committing, carrying Bellona with one hand as he worked his way through those servants compelled to the role of actors in that mockery of theatre he had put on with the other.
Elijah counted the bodies around him. He was aware of the child in his grasp following his observation. Some two dozen men and women, slaughtered before her dear, innocent eyes.
Niklaus had gone through great lengths to keep the children from such violence, and all of those efforts Kol had seen to ash. The minds of children were far too delicate for compulsion. Elijah could not risk it.
He had gone boneless with relief to find them at all unharmed. The white hot sear of terror he had felt upon learning the most wildly unpredictable of his siblings had absconded with the children... Elijah would like nothing more than to dagger Niklaus himself and allow the malcontent to join Kol in whatever hellscape his ill-begotten brothers should find themselves in.
Yet Bellona looked utterly unbothered by the carnage. "What happened to Kol?" she asked.
"Nothing," murmured Elijah. "My overexcited brother has simply decided to go for a nap." He turned to Marcellus and beckoned. "Come, let us return upstairs. The dark is no place for children."
━━━━━━━━━━
Days later, young Marcel remained shaken by the encounter, though little Bellona seemed oblivious to the event, even asking after the deranged fool. She thought Kol looked like Elijah, and simply for that reason decided she liked him.
Elijah reminded himself to speak to Rebekah about the girl's education. For her own safety, he could not have the child smiling at everyone who crossed her path and handing out her trust so freely.
But needs must, and at the present moment, what needed to be done was for Niklaus to be knocked quite thoroughly upside the head. Perhaps that might shake some sense into his fool of a brother.
