Photographs are taken almost nonstop of her beside Jules.
Dancing together.Laughing together.Posing shoulder to shoulder beneath the arches.Even eating together.Private moments staged to look real.
Sorrenko has clearly said something to Roman beforehand.The boy looks carved from stone all evening, visibly unhappy beneath the surface, but he still performs when required.They all do.
Beautiful.Controlled.Perfect.
It’s how they were raised.
Jules is ignoring Lachlan, who feels increasingly untethered.
Before, Lachlan could have gone numb and endured, but not anymore.
Something has changed in him.A creature locked away, now shown sunlight and sky, cannot go back into the darkness.
Not without a fight at least.
He’s fucked up.Unstable.
It’s better that Jules stay away for now.
Lachlan notes how much everyone is drinking, except for Ariadne, who sticks to bottled water and Savannah, who isn’t allowed to drink alcohol despite it being her twenty-first.Lachlan wonders at the hypocrisy of such a decision.Alistair is constantly encouraging Jules to drink and Roman has free rein too, although he’s more balanced than Jules.
Replaying the first part of his conversation with Sorrenko out by the water isn’t advisable while Lachlan is in such a state of mind, so he locks in and focuses on the necessary, tells himself to forget it.
Everyone but the two Alderwyck women are drinking heavily.More than Lachlan has ever seen, even during the height of the summer parties in the West Wing.Lachlan is dangerously close to exhausted at this point.Without his customary four and three hours a day, always split, his body is reacting to sleep deprivation the way all bodies do, by shutting down.
Lachlan can forestall it, knows all the tricks, just needs to stay sharp.There’s cocaine absolutely everywhere.He won’t consider that unless it’s serious.
With Jules ignoring him, the first part of the night passes quickly, at least because without distractions, Lachlan can access the slipstream of his mind to become a machine.Nothing marks time like feelings, even good ones.
Without them, it flies by.
At around eleven PM, Ariadne proposes a toast to her daughter, champagne in hand, music lowered.She’s wearing white too, form fitting, dripping in sapphires.
‘I’d like to thank all of you for being here to share this momentous occasion with us.’Savannah smiles at her mother.Ariadne looks out at the rest of the group.‘Twenty-first birthdays are so special to us and must always be marked with the traditions befitting the elite beings that we are.Society evolves into dilution, and we…’ She smiles wide, inclines her head.‘Werefine.’Her gaze lands on Jules.‘We unite.Great families are born of legacy, and legacy is carried by more than just love.I am proud to wish my beautiful daughter, my precious ruby, my darling treasure, a happy twenty-first birthday.You’ll never know how proud I am to be your mother.’She raises her glass high.‘Your life has only just begun.’
‘To a new cycle,’ Prescott Delacroix calls out.
The group echoes the toast, drinking.
The music resumes.
Photographs are taken.
Wake is becoming more demanding in his suggestions for poses, moving Jules and Savannah together increasingly until Jules whispers something to her and she nods.
They kiss for the camera.
It’s light, barely there.
Chaste, picture perfect and sweet.
Lachlan has to look away.
He’s not doing well.
He needs… well, fuck.Whatdoesn’the need?
