Page 95 of The Witch They Fear

He smiles.

It is the easiest, warmest smile in the world. The smile that makes other people relax.

It’s fake as fuck.

"Friends. Welcome. To my family's bonfire. To my family's fire on my family's stone. On a night, by my count, that is three hundred and one years to the evening since the first one of these was lit."

A murmur—warm, well-bred. Like the entire crowd is taking in a deep breath, ready for the excitement to begin.

"Three hundred Octobers," he says, and he begins to walk. Slow, easy, hands loose at his sides, pacing the inside of the fire ring. "Three hundred years of our noble houses gathering this academy and these friends and these old, beloved enemies into the same circle of light. To do what?" He stops. He smiles. "To remember."

He lets it sit. The crowd is leaning in.

"My ancestors did not invent grief. They invented something better. They looked at their dead and they said—not silence. Not whispering in halls. Not the long thin face we wear in mourning rooms." His arms spread wide. "This."

He gestures at the fire. The linens. The wine. The hundred-and-fifty bodies in their finery.

"Light. Heat. Music. The best wine in three states. The most beautiful people in five. Not in spite of the dead. For them. The Vassards have always understood that the dead are not honored by quiet. The dead are honored by living so loudly they can hear us."

A swell of agreement. Someone in the front whoops, low and delighted. The older vampires are smiling, an approval for the prince of a new generation.

"This year's theme."

He pauses. Long. Theatrical. The crowd holds.

"Memento mori."

He says it like a benediction. A breath of approval moves through the quad. Some of the older vampires close their eyes. A few raise their glasses.

"Remember that you must die." Leopold's voice has gone quieter. Every word is a coin he is laying into a palm. "An old phrase. An honest phrase. Some hear it and feel chilled. My family hears it and feels grateful. Because the only people in this world who know what the wine actually tastes like are the ones who remember it has an end."

He lets that sit.

"For the next month, we will remember the people we have lost. We will set their places at every table. We will pour their cups. We will tell their stories—we will laugh at the parts that should be laughed at, and we will weep at the parts that should be wept at." His mouth tilts. A small, conspiratorial smile. "And then. Because this is a Vassard month, my friends, and the Vassards do not do quiet—"

A laugh from the front row. Somebody in the back claps once.

"—we will eat the meals they would have wanted to eat. We will drink the wines they would have raised a glass to. We will dance the dances they cannot dance anymore. We will take the pleasures they no longer can." His eyes begin to travel the crowd. Easy. Generous. They find me for half a heartbeat. They keep moving. "We will live. In their honor. Loud and full and well. As only a body can live."

The roar that goes up is the kind that fills your chest whether you wanted it to or not. It’s overwhelming and chills pop up on my bare arms.

"And on the night of the Revel—" he gathers them with a hand "—on All Hallows', when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest and our dead can hear us best, we will speak the toast my house has spoken for three centuries." He raises his glass. The fire catches the white of his coat and turns him into something half-alive, half-saint. "Memento mori. Remember that you must die." A beat. The smile breaks across his face. "And so, my friends— live."

The crowd loses it. He holds the glass higher.

"To absent friends."

The quad answers him in one voice.

"To absent friends."

Nellie's hand is at my elbow.

I have not raised my glass. I am holding it because Nellie put it in my hand and told me to hold it, and the cheering is still going around me, and I will admit—privately, and only because nobody is going to ever ask me about it—that the speech was good. Half the crowd is in love with him. The older half is remembering being in love with those like him. The younger half is calculating how to get into a room with him before midnight.

His eyes touched mine once. Half a heartbeat. Probably crowd-work. Probably nothing.

I file it anyway.