"Helia, my daughter." Nova kissed her forehead and leaned away just enough to look her up and down. "You're so big, and so beautiful." Her mother trailed her hands down Helia's robes, and Helia couldn't help but blush as her mother ran her fingers over the embroidered flames. "You've become a fine mage as well. I can feel your magic so strongly." Though Nova started the statement with a smile, it faded and her eyes dimmed. "You must fight as your father and I did."

"I do," Helia lowered her hands to hold her mothers', squeezing gently as she composed her racing thoughts and mind. "That is my duty as the leader of the Cinders, to fight when necessary, but I am trying to change us from the hostile house we used to be. I am also forging alliances and making friends with mages who work with the vampire-mage alliance. It's not quite as much as the other houses have committed to, but it is a start to the slow process of changing old stubborn minds for a new way."

"You are leading our house? What of Pyre? Horus?"

"I am here, Nova." Pyre came into the room, and Nova regraded him near as nervous as Helia had her.

The moment Nova saw Pyre, tears filled her eyes, but they were nowhere near the volume of Helia's. They also dried up as her mother took in Pyre's arm in a sling and his cold yet tired mahogany eyes. No amount of Cinder robes nor pride could hide that he was no longer fit to lead their house.

"You are injured. Was there not a healing mage to attend to you?" Nova almost seemed like she was offerings, but Pyre held up a hand to stop her.

"It is as healed as it's getting, Nova. The injury was too grave and I lost the use of my arm. Horus is alive and well, though angry with you for leaving, so he did not come with us. Our people look to Helia for guidance and leadership in my absence. They would not accept Horus. He is not a leader. There is not much more to it."

"I see." Nova's voice sank as she released Helia and took a shallow step back. The hurt was clear as her shoulders sank. "You must also resent me." Nova found the ground at Pyre's feet, and her father shifted uncomfortably in his robes."

"No, Nova. I understand. I just like the use of my remaining arm, so I will not be approaching you with those two ready to take it." Pyre lifted his chin to direct attention behind her mother, and Helia got her first look at the dhampirs.

All she'd been able to see when she'd entered the cave was her mother, after all the years of longing and searching. It was shameful as a mage to get so caught up in emotion that she hadn't thoroughly assessed the threat of the dhampirs behind, but her father would not admonish her here. With him and Vice, she had feared nothing.

Two full-grown men flanked Nova not a few yards behind either shoulder. With wavy, churning red hair, they screamed Cinder as much as the rest of them. One had eyes deep like blood and his lifted lips showed his fangs as he focused on her father, but the other remained calm and contemplative. Dark magic filled the air around the more dangerous looking one where his mellower twin was all light.

"The boys won't harm you, Pyre." Nova started to say, but Pyre's lips twisting into a scowl as his eyebrows crunched down had her stopping. "They wouldn't." The dip in Nova's tone as she understood her husband without words had her hands trembling as she turned to the dhampirs behind her.

"Agni, please tell me you didn't do this to my husband." Nova's voice was brittle as she raised her eyes, and both dhampirs took a full step back. The panic was broadcast on their features, Agni's fangs bared but not in anger and his eyes wide as he looked for away out of the situation. There was no real way they could have known Pyre's relation to her, and they clearly hadn't wanted to hurt her.

"Leave them be, Nova." Pyre's voice jerked Nova's focus back. "They saw a Cinder who ordered their death not the man you once loved. It was no fault of theirs." Pyre taking the high road for a vampire was new, but her father also understood the issues it would cause otherwise. "I'm not here for revenge nor an apology. I'm not even here because I was looking for you. I gave up on you long ago, thought you dead to our enemies. It was Helia who spent her entire life chasing your shadow. I merely accompanied her because that is my duty as a father."

"How is it you even gained entry here? Harper cannot open the doorway without Agni or Alev." That dawned on Nova last, and she swept the cave for someone else. That was Shan's invitation to join them, and he leaned against the wall furthest from her with his arms crossed and his lips pursed.

"I allowed them entry." Shan's distaste was clear, and it had the dhampirs pulling closer to Nova. "I am Shan Sol, Rivin Sol's biological son before we both became vampires. My magic is parallel with my father's and gives me entry to his domain. I understand he harbored you here, but you had no right to give refuge to hostile Songs."

"Harper and Cadence just wanted to live." Nova snapped back with every ounce of her Cinder pride.

"And Riff?" Shan cut her off before she could say much else.

Nova clenched her hands. "Rivin may have saved me and the boys, but you slaughtered their people. Harper came to me from the deserts with a baby in his arms, and I did not turn him away. If that is crime enough worth a scuffle between the Sols and me, then you are welcome to it." Cinder magic filled the cavern, but Shan did not so much as lean off the wall to answer.

"Your punishment is not mine to render," Shan replied with a frustrated sigh. "The moment I entered here, Rivin knew."

Right on cue, dark magic spiraled at the doorway to the cave, and Helia backed right into Stone and Ghost as Vice surrounded her from oncoming threat. Pyre too was at her side quicker than the transportation spell could fade away, and they stood together as Shan's greatest nightmare formed up in front of them.

A man who had to be Rivin Sol slipped up out of the spell with a flip of his long black hair and a fang baring smile that stretched his dark skin with mischief more than anything. Like Shan, he had a commanding presence, but his face was a bit smoother with a defined male jawline. Between the two of them, Shan definitely looked like he fought men for a living, while Rivin struck her as a bouncer for a fancy club in his slick Armani.

The powerful dark magic coming from him was suffocating until he pulled it back and focused on the scene around him. Crimson eyes deeper and darker than Talamayas' scanned the room and landed on her before anything else. Before she could even croak a response, his focus changed to Shan. Vice shimmered into view, both of him in the tight body suits of vampire assassins, but he tucked himself behind Shan. It was Vice Rivin had focused on first, not her, even though he was supposed to be invisible.

"Infiltrators in my domain?" Rivin's voice rolled smooth like melted chocolate but the bite was as bitter as a dark barking bar.

"They belong to Talamayas, Father. Something you would know had you not left." Despite how Shan did not seem to get along fully with Vice, he was quick to defend him from real danger, of which Vice knew considering he'd hid behind him for safety.

"Strange they are not of our blood and he still keeps them around, but as you say, I do not run the show in the deserts anymore. This issue with the Songs though." Rivin turned his attention to Nova, but he reached back behind him for... a drink.

Helia figured out just about then that Rivin wasn't alone, but he wasn't with an ally of any kind. A petite blond woman in a skimpy black skirt that would show half her ass if she bent over stood there with a platter of shots. With her golden curls tightly tied up against the back of her head and the silver name tag on her blue blouse, she looked like cocktail waitress. The clearly out of place human looked around the cave like this was a bad trip.

"Father!" Shan growled low, and Rivin looked to his son with curiosity as to what he might want. Like that wasn't obvious. "Do you really pay so little attention that you accidentally brought a waitress from the casino here?"

"Accidentally?" Riven's slow smile told Helia exactly why Shan had not wanted to find his father in the first place. "Don't be ridiculous. Emily, give me another one of those. My son is quite trying." The waitress walked up to Rivin like she was still on the job and lowered the platter so he could down a shot, or four. The man really just dumped one by one down his throat.

"Would you like one?" Emily offered to Shan, her voice all honey and as suggestive as her open blouse, but Shan was staring at her like she was something out of a horror film.

"No, but thank you." Shan sighed, dropping his hostility when he was facing a woman innocent of his father's stupidity. "I apologize if my father has caused you grief. Please do not fear. We will return you to where you belong shorty." Helia jumped when Shan's dark eyes pulsed with magic. She'd never seen a vampire directly use allure before, but from what Pyre told her it was supposed to melt a human's mind to the suggestion.

Emily looked anything but melted as a small smile curled her lips. "Rivin, they pay me be the hour, and you just drank people's orders. Can you make this cave diving trip quick?"

"Yes, forgive me." Rivin turned to her with a smug smile but dropped it as he cast his eyes over everyone gathered. "Nova, your sheltering my house's enemies here cannot be overlooked, and you are worse than the Sols and their deserts, hiding out here in the caves this long. For your crimes, I remove my protection of this place and banish you from it." Rivin lifted his hand and the dark magic lining the walls and ground fell away like shattered glass, leaving Nova and the dhampirs backing away from them.

"Rivin please," Nova started, but he raised a hand to silence her. The action in itself had Pyre as ready as Helia was to snap it off at the wrist. No matter how Nova had betrayed the Sol's trust, she was still a grand mage that the Cinders would protect at all costs, even if it was just her pride.

"Nova, this place was meant to protect children in a time of danger. The world has changed drastically since then, and you don't need to hide here any more. Go. Get out. Go find a place for yourself and your children. It's not in these caves."

What Rivin was saying didn't seem so much as he was upset with her for betraying his people as much as it was encouragement for her to stop hiding. That was kindness not anger, a strange emotion for a Sol vampire from what she knew of Shan. Talamayas was like that with the ones he cared about but he was death to his enemies, and Shan was prickly as a pear. Rivin was something unique to himself.

Rivin turned to Shan then, and gave him a wave as he slung his arm around the waitress's shoulders. "Call me some time, Shan." The man made a phone with his fingers and chuckles as his dark magic wound up around them. Shan merely grunted as his father pulled the waitress in for his spell, and the woman nearly dropped the glasses but laughed as they disappeared.

Rivin's absence left the cave full of tension that Pyre sliced with a knife by walking to Nova—slow steps accompanied a wary stare as he approached her with the dhampirs still in tow, but they didn't attack him.

"I know it's no spell protected cave, but the vampire-mage alliance has several dhampirs within its ranks, I'm told. They were born not a few years past but appear as yours, grown and formidable. It might lessen their aggression to see mages and vampire working together, and more so to meet some of their own kind. I can show you to them." Pyre offered his hand, but her mother withheld hers as she looked deeply into his eyes.

"You will not be coming with."

"No. I will always love you, Nova, but our time together ended when you left. Let me get you out of here before the Sols get other ideas. I don't trust them." Pyre's urgency had Nova glancing at Shan, but he just let out a disdainful breath as he stood.

"Yes, because we've been so untrustworthy, taking your family in, housing you, leading you to your wife." Shan scoffed as he headed out of the caves, leaving them completely alone in the maze of death.

"I can show you all out. You don't need him." Harper said, coming up with several bags packed over his shoulders. The guy looked like an overworked bell hop, but his grey eyes shined with contentedness at his life here. Pyre too, did not seem unhappy living with the Sols.

"I cannot go with you either," Helia said as her mother motioned for Agni and Alev to come with them, and the stopped for a moment to face her. "But I would like to visit and get to know you." Helia sounded so nervous even though she was a leader of her people now. Something so simple as her mother wiped out all of her years of training and composure.

"I would like that, Helia." Nova gave a slight bow that had Helia teetering from the respect, but four arms resumed supporting her as Vice joined her. Her mother gave them a curious look, but now was not the time nor the place to tell her she was with a vampire, let alone two.

That would happen later, after she settled withthe vampire-mage alliance, after Helia returned home and somehow found anotherday off, and she hoped it would be less stressful than this one. No vampireoverlords, cocktail waitresses, or threats to Vice or her mother's life, just acalm day, her mother and her, and the future that was changing and advancingeven if they couldn't keep up.

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