Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

88 - Chapter LXXXVIII: A Rule of Separation

Content warning:  This story is rated Mature, and there is a content warning for this chapter. If you want to read it first, please either view the end notes or scroll to the bottom of this chapter.  If you want to avoid scrolling, navigate to the following URL to see the end notes: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749807/chapters/141904045#chapter_88_endnotes

o...o...o

It was the same hour that the clock struck twelve. The dollhouse now quiet in the Eastern Wing, while a flurry of activity began on the levels below. The teas put aside, the ice sculptures removed and the ballroom emptied. As though the eve of good cheer had been all that was needed before each guest flung themselves into the new theme. The brilliant masque in which all ladies were belles on the arm of beastly winter. Each servant having their part to play in what was understandably the event of the decade, if not the century...

...the illustrious and highly anticipated third and final night of Hangrove. A night that in time would go down in history as the first fracture in what ought to have been an immutable foundation. A fracture that would ruin everything. To the point that in decades to come, the Hangrove Society would be disbanded and its affiliated ball relegated to the annals of Things One Did Not Repeat Lest One Wished to be Shepherded Through a List of Reasons for Why Courting Rituals No Longer Included the Lycan French Quadrille.

And yet it started so well.

With a bow...

...and a curtsey.

And a mask.

o...o...o

Four in the afternoon.

Lucian was standing precisely two feet from a gilded mirror in a vaulted dressing room, alone save for the disconcerting fact that he was fucking up his tie. He knew he was fucking it up because typically around then, Raze would have said he was fucking it up. Typically he'd have been surrounded at such times by not only Raze, but at least twenty other souls, many of whom were determined to make their mark in politics and others simply foolish enough to brave his company while preparing for a ball.

Four hundred years of lycan tradition—specifically the masque with its dinner and dance—having created an unspoken rule of separation in any den hosting such an event. Breakfast always served in one's quarters, followed by the sound of an ominous gong for those who had slept in. Enough to ensure that by three in the afternoon, those subscribing to a more feminine tradition—Dante for one— could abscond to a private drawing room for the sake of pampering themselves before the grand event...

...thereby leaving anyone in tails to gather where fortune might lead. Like a fucking wedding, he realised, suddenly clawing the tie off, stiff-collar and all, and starting again. His quarters usually the first stop on what ought to have been a two-hour wine tour before they headed down to the dining room. But he was avoiding Raze...and rather than allowing Langley to handle the finishing touches on his obscenely expensive attire, he'd thrown everyone out before sending the boy on a final errand. One that ought to be taking him a very long time to complete and in so doing, making it wholly unexpected when he heard a knock on the hallway door.

Twice.

And a third time.

"Langley," he barked.

The name bellowed before he remembered he was alone in his dressing room, twenty-six steps from the door in question. The principle of the matter leading him to take his blood-forsaken time and finish the damned tie, so he could tap the silk fabric satisfactorily in the centre, sling back a portion of his brandy—which according to the Lycan Women's Temperance Society, he was not drinking—and only then, head for the front door of his quarters.