The Sigh Of Things (19)   And then there was a king with his own agenda… No one could hold him. Many tried. Nursemaids in whose arms he would squirm; his small form writhing; his tiny limbs exploding to force himself free of each restrictive embrace. Soon followed the string of nannies by whom he would not be bathed. And once he found his feet, the legion of governesses giving chase, hands reaching out to grasp nothing but the air he'd left behind. The groomsmen he would not permit to assist in his mounting, the trainers he trained to instruct him from afar, the parents to whom he would present only a cheek for the kissing or a hand his father might formally clasp in congratulation of a deed done well. Never had he come close enough to enclose, to enfold, to envelop in the warmth of their affection. So physically distant had he been as a child, and so accustomed had they become to this, that his younger brother's willingness to be touched seemed a base thing; a weakness to be repulsed and routed out. It was not until Mikkos' death, until the test of his mettle and his…alteration…that he began to allow her near. And near she had come, touching him constantly; stroking him, caressing his face, his hair, and sometimes going so far as to cradle his grown body in her arms. Perhaps she had saved all of that affection, perhaps it had been stored through those years somewhere deep within, biding its time, building to the day she could express her love in this tangible manner. Perhaps. In the end she was certain of one thing only. She was not empty yet. She was not finished with the wanting of him. She was not close to being done. How much she could miss him! She had forgotten this over the years, when he lay in his chamber and could with confidence be found precisely where he'd been left. She'd forgotten the surge of glorious pride at the sight of him striding toward her. Forgotten this need to draw him near - the craving she had for his eye, the appetite for his attention, this hunger to hold the primary place in his heart. She had lived on the memory of his pleasures for far too long and, as was memory's wont, it had slowly eroded with the passage of time. Now, as he mounted the shallow stone steps to her door, the fever of her greed for him returned in full. The vibrant ache of the vice infused her with life and energy; a vitality she brought with her as she turned from the window to wait for his entrance from the hall. "Mother," he said when he saw her; this rakishly handsome prince who had gone to the trouble of a dinner jacket yet had not quite bothered with a tie. A touch informal, she thought, as the housekeeper motioned him forward. When he did not cross the room to greet her she grew concerned, sensing something was amiss. Her outstretched arm begged him those last few steps; a coming that seemed less a desire than the perfunctory duty of a son. His cold kiss grazed her cheek. Too swift, that, before his lips departed to speak. "I see you've hired Stefan's maid. Is this wise?" "Quite the reverse, my darling," she replied as he stepped away. "Stefan hired my housekeeper. Isn't that so, Mrs. Garber?" The old woman nodded, turning to lift her curled hands toward the second son still standing in the entryway. "May I take your coat, Father?" Stefan eyed her coldly. "Would you take your penance in its stead?" he asked, waiting for those hands to fall. "No? Then go find your fellow sinners. Considering the purgatorial temperament of your mistress, they cannot have wandered far." One son, at least, had not changed in her absence. Black as a crow and dour as dusty death itself. It grated to have him here at all. "You may go, Mrs. Garber. Please tell the staff we will be in momentarily." "You have a rose, I believe?" All starch and sticking points. It was irritating to realize one had given birth to a child without the least sense of decorum. "Two, in fact," she announced, her attention returning to Stavros who was wandering the room. "One not so fine a bloom as the other. I question how long it will last before it turns." "A wild rose is a sturdy thing…I remember this." Stavros' hand curled around the base of a statue; a small yet terribly distinctive rendering of Oedipus blinded and banished to his fate. He lifted the piece and ran a finger over its viciously damaged eyes. "The consequence of a mother's love. How brave you are to leave it where everyone may see." Stefan's voice came over her shoulder, so close to her ear it was startling. "That a son could put out his sight upon hearing he'd slept with the woman who bore him. Did he over-react, do you think?" Stavros laughed ruefully. "His first choice had been taken. She'd killed herself before he had the chance." The moment had gone beyond her and Helena would have it back. "Put that down, Stavros, and come escort me in to dinner." Her left arm crooked in invitation, suspended for the time it took him to casually replace the sculpture and saunter to her side. "Laura?" he asked slyly. "Patience," she soothed, laying her hand over his sleeve. "She's just around the next corner." The morning room had been turned to use for this intimate family meal; its center space furnished by a long mahogany table set for three. Her favorite Limoge china nestled inside their silver chargers with companion bread plates off to the side. Each setting was banked by the Cassadine-crested sterling flatware and matching knife rests, a trio of delicately-etched crystal glasses - water and wine, both white and red - and, at the very heart of it all, her own antique damask napkins thrust through her sons' personally-engraved napkin rings. A sentimental touch, this, harkening back to a younger day when each child was given his proper name at table. They did remember, she saw, as she watched them find their places using that traditional family cue - Helena at the longer edge, Stefan at the left head and Stavros at the right. That neither son moved to hold her chair was irksome, yet a servant slipped in quickly enough to solve the matter. Once seated, Helena signaled for the first bottle of wine. "I assume your newly-acquired rose is not a part of the centerpiece," observed Stefan as he unfurled his napkin and laid it to his lap. "I must agree," added Stavros, fingering the rim of his dinner plate. "Hang that bait before us any longer and it will begin to draw flies." Helena pressed her lips together, aggrieved to find her sons in concurrence on even so small a point as this. She tossed her napkin off her plate and revealed the remote control hidden there. A touch to a button brought a whirring from the wall as a painting lifted to expose a wide plasma screen mounted beneath. Her touch to another button brought that screen to life, if one could go so far as to call it that. Laura. Lethargic Laura Spencer sitting like a lump on a bench as Regret drew a brush through her hair. The younger woman's lips were moving, speaking, perhaps singing to the emptiness that had once been Helena's most troublesome foe. Stavros cocked his head toward the screen, then fell back to his seat in disgust. "Proof of dogs and tricks," he proclaimed, calling the steward forward to fill his glass with wine. Bewildered, she turned to her second son whom she saw was fighting the urge to smile. Her back arched haughtily. "There's no trick here, I can assure you." "He means old dogs and new tricks, Mother. In the interest of clarity, allow me to point out he's placed you with the dogs and not the tricks." That the reference remained elusive caused Stavros to remark derisively, "Sound, Mother. Sound. You remember. What went missing when you brought Nikolas to meet me in that seventh ring of hell beneath the hospital? What you needed to hear him tell of how deep his hatred ran, how I would never be his father, never find a place in his heart?" "True," his brother conceded, cheekily she thought, from the other end of the table. "I was there, tied to a chair. I remember this very clearly. You had no sound. Just the picture. Do you have another button on that device? No?" He caught his brother's eye and gave a small shake of his head. "Apparently not." Helena's indignation grew to a blaze of heated rage. She shut the screen off and dropped the control beside her plate. "Sound or no, I have her. This is more than can be said for either one of you." Forced into quiet with the arrival of their salads, she pulled the reins on her anger and the room fell silent for the duration of this course. It was not until the plates were cleared that the conversation began again. "Why?" Stefan enquired, straightening the silverware remaining at his place. "You have a reason, I'm sure. A reason beyond the small thrill of besting me in the art of abduction. You have a purpose, Mother. What is it?" Helena sighed and grew still, her gaze hardening to fix upon an invisible point in the air. "How difficult a day it is when a mother realizes her sons no longer come when she calls." Her voice was steady yet her attention seemed to straddle both the present and a past neither man could see. "This is the day, the very hour, she ceases all struggle and surrenders to the truth that she has been abandoned. Cast off like an old coat that once kept them warm, cradled them in comfort through their colder days, held them safe from the start to the finish of their boldly blustering childhoods." Her hand reached across the table toward Stavros but he made no move to take it, simply sat, almost sullen in the space between her words. "I knew you would come for her, my darling. If not for me, for her. Such a hurtful boy you've been, to deny your mother your love." "Then you will give her back to me," he replied carefully, his eye rising up in challenge. Helena's hand withdrew, retreating from the table to rest in her lap. "No." "So Laura is what?" Stefan interrupted in irritation. "A carrot on a stick? A coin for our service? The boon to be obtained at the altar of your worship?" "Currency," Helena said, ripping her regard from the one favorite son to address the other. "A motivating force. Laura's well-being, her very life in fact, will rest upon the alacrity with which my sons respond to my desires and commit the full weight of their formidable talents to the successful execution of my plans. There is work to be done. I would have you do it." "And now we come to the meat of the matter," Stavros declared as his entrée was set on a plate before him. "Mother has a scheme. Please don't tell me there's a freezing involved. I've had enough of ice to last a lifetime." Helena's lips pursed at the coarseness of the gibe and the lightness he spun about what was, for her, a manifestly grave business. "Laugh now, Stavros, while there is still time for it. I believe you and your brother will find the rest of this evening distinctly less amusing." Her hand returned to the remote control and lifted it once again from the table. A third button was depressed, throwing a large color photograph onto the flat screen before them. It was the face of a man in his middle years, attractive to a degree; tan, lean, his nose a straight bone between two hooded eyes that appeared at once both earnest and mocking. The feature most to be remarked, however, was his hair; thick and dark and grown in such quantity that it had to be fastened back by a tie; hair that would put a romantic mind to the image of Vikings, Visigoths and, more in line with his obviously Mediterranean extraction, the armies of Homeric myth. Hector. Achilles. A hero from the Trojan field of battle. "I recognize that face," said Stavros, setting down his fork. "He's one of the cousins." "Argos," supplied Stefan. "Argos Antonovich Cassadine. One of your Uncle Tony's spawn. The only one of consequence," Helena informed them, gratified at last to have peaked their interest. "An ambitious man, and becoming more so by the minute. Like most of the kin, he suffers from an exaggerated sense of his own importance. Unlike most of the kin, however, he has taken steps to ground that sense in the firmament of fact. He has done so well for himself over the last few years that he now possesses the substance to merit our complete and undivided attention." "Argos?" scoffed Stavros in patent disbelief. "Prince Argos, were he to have his way." Her eldest straightened in his chair. "Oh, I think not." Helena narrowed her eye to his, pure of purpose and sharply sincere. "Then you would do well, my son, to think again." The Sigh Of Things (20)   …it was the ease of this you meant to introduce, that I should be terrified of a prospect… The table had long since been cleared of the remnants of the meal; the food barely touched, then gone cold to the questions that now lay before them. And as if it were a confection a flambé, his mother had served her incendiary documents. Investment portfolios, purchase agreements, title transfers and a plethora of personal financial statements were currently strewn across the cloth - all bearing, if not the Cassadine name itself, then a name that with a small amount of digging could be cleanly trailed to the family holdings. Though it took a rigorous eye, Stefan found he could apprehend - even in the most innocuous transaction, on the most straight-forward balance sheet - the presence of a hand that did not belong. No matter the angle of approach or the manner in which he engineered the equation, the shadow of that hand remained. And that hand belonged to Argos Antonovich Cassadine. The existence of several shell companies had been detected - the discovery of which, for him, had been disconcerting to say the least. Stefan knew the purposeful ambiguity such constructions afforded. Here lay the camouflage, the veil, the screen behind which Argos performed his most manipulative magics. Here the invisible shield; the hidden sieve through which his cousin poured the measure of his wildly avaricious discontent. What had been set into motion beneath this cloak involved others, of this he was certain. Try as he might to reject the possibility of a coup being mounted from within, the evidence provided by these reports left little room for doubt. How many of the kin had he enlisted in this enterprise? The Romans, to be sure, as this was his cousin's base of operation. Stefan could see, plainly too, the grasping hand of Marseilles, the tight fist of Frankfurt, the insinuating fingers of Seville. Had all of Western Europe, then, fallen into league against the Greek? This possibility became more probable with the passing of each minute, the turning of each carefully compiled page. The maze of corporations, consortiums and cleverly-crafted holding companies through which this treason turned was no less than Byzantine in its intricacy and would take weeks, if not months, to map with any surety of fact. Blame stood at his back now, whispering imprecations ripe with the cursed folly of Milan; the shallow idiocy of his belief that he could unchain himself so easily from the albatross that was The Empire. Old he would be, and crooked with the weight, when death finally came to take this burden from his shoulder. "Where is Nikolas in this?" his brother asked, raising his head from one of the many black-bound reports. "Not only has Argos succeeded in consolidating the holdings of a least a dozen kin, he's plucked away a few of our own as well. In real estate alone he's managed to acquire more than half of what we've put on the market. And here," he snapped, stabbing his finger to the page before him. "Did it not occur to anyone to check who might be buying what we've seen fit to auction off? He's taken all the art, the antique treasures and every ancient heirloom with a verifiable provenance." Stavros cast a stern glance across the table, one that verged on the precipice of blame. "What my son has been weeding from our assets, my cousin has been scuttling to obtain. This bears the mark of ego, Stefan. Mother is correct. He would be prince." "And better at the business of it," Helena asserted, tossing another folder to the pile in front of him. "Argos has gone out of his way to meet the titular head of every Western European family with a tie to Cassadine Industries, as well as a good number of our subsidiaries. Relationships have been built, most of them strategic. It would not surprise me in the least to discover every contract Nikolas sends them to sign is first reviewed by his cousin once-removed before putting pen to page. Argos has the advantage of personal contact. It affords an emotional access that quickly turns into an edge. I ask myself why my grandson has failed to establish similar alliances with these men? Americans have a number of expressions for the practice. Face time. Glad-handing. Wining and dining. He has done none of this. When was the last time he traveled to Europe, much less greeted or graced a table aside those with whom our modern-day fortunes are so closely intertwined?" Stefan set down the document he was reading with a barely-suppressed ire. "As usual, Mother, you attempt to solve the problem by beating it to death with a stick. Yes, perhaps Nikolas should have a closer acquaintance with our European partners. Yet criticizing your grandson will not assist in addressing the threat you seem so eager to have us contain. And you," he declared, turning to face his brother. "I might have expected more from the mighty Prince of the Cassadine than that he encourage such a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Argos can never obtain the title. You know as well as I, it passes from eldest son to eldest son. Upon the absence of a qualified heir, The Empire is dismantled and every family is given its share. No new prince is made. To say otherwise is to pander to the worst sort of infamy. You would seed sedition. Promote insurgency. And for what? A crown no man outside our blood could ever hope to hold in his hand, much less lay to rest on his brow." Stavros seemed genuinely taken aback by this tirade. His eye narrowed as he unceremoniously dropped his report and leaned into the corner of his chair. "Oh, Stefan," he admonished gravely. "Have you said those words so many times you've actually come to believe them true?" "No," his brother retorted, shaking his head and raising his hand as if it might stave off the argument. "I will not revisit this issue with you. While it may be painful for you to hear, I still believe the response to Cyrus was excessive and completely unwarranted. She pushed you into it. You know she did." "My actions were my own," Stavros countered fiercely, sparing not a glance for the mother at his side who had grown so still she might, in a lesser light, have been honestly mistaken for a statue. "And warranted they were. Nikolas would not rule the Cassadine family today had I not met that challenge in the manner I did. The manner, I might remind you, that the Cassadine princes before me have used to meet each similar threat. Our father came to that table, as did his father and his father's father before him. Finding the means distasteful, as you so obviously do, does not serve to reduce their efficacy or the definitive end that they achieve." His eyes flashed, his emotions rising. "Challengers come, Stefan, especially against an untried prince. Such was I when Cyrus came. Our father? Dead. One uncle lost, one rotting in a prison. Our name a blight. The bulk of our fortune squandered on a lust for world domination. Cyrus saw my weakness and he came. Cyrus with his clean hands, his power, his wealth, his reputation intact. Our relations ran to him like lemmings to the beckoning embrace of the sea. Who was I then, brother? Little more than the arrogant seed of a madman. Untested by Fate, unblooded in battle and, to the majority of our ever-calculating kin, eminently unfit to rule. A prince in title only, Stefan. And that is not a prince at all." Stavros drew his wineglass to his lips, visibly shaken by this recounting. Yet within a span of seconds his features stilled and his voice, firmer now with a hint of its natural arrogance, came to deliver its lesson. "How many times did you ask, Stefan, what Father told me in our private conversations? Those many singular sessions we had, just the two of us, as you sat jealous outside that door? You thought he gifted me the secrets of a Prince, magical insights and mysterious wisdoms that would guide me true in the years to come. And this he did, yet not in the way you might suppose." His brother's expression grew hard in an instant, his eyes glazed with the memory of a father Stefan had never truly known. "'Stavros,' he said to me, 'the Cassadines will always want their Prince. They do not care who it is, just that he be the strongest among them, the most brutal carnivore, the most vicious and ambitious predator to walk the face of this earth. It is good to leave them believe we hold this position by the blood in our veins, but never believe this yourself. It is the blood on the floor that matters, my son. The blood on the floor and the man who drew it.'" Stefan pulled back from the table, jarred by the echo of his father's voice alive in the air between them. He glanced at Helena and knew she'd heard it too. How else to explain the wideness of her eye and those lips now pressed to a line so tight they grew white from the force she expended? He attempted to recover and assemble a response but was startled to find he had no words. Stavros spared him the trouble. "A prince minus his power, his wealth and his authority over this family becomes little more than a figurehead. Father knew, as I do, that the title in and of itself confers nothing. It is a very fickle designation in the end. As a student of history, Stefan, one wonders that you can still cling to the illusion of such a construct. But no matter, you are correct. Should Argos succeed he will not be prince, not to us nor to any of our generation. All will call him Argos the Pretender. Yet he will hold the reins of The Empire firm within his grasp, releasing them only at the last to his eldest son. That son, too, may not be prince to the purists. But how long, Stefan? How long until the kin forgive the line of Anton and forget the line of Mikkos completely? This will happen, brother. You should have no doubt that, for some of the kin, it already has." "No. I will not accept this," Stefan inserted, having finally found his voice. "Why would the kin shift their loyalties to any usurper? They are jackals, all of them. Selfish and diseased with greed - to a man intent upon the quest for their own enrichment and personal gain. I can state with confidence that many of the kin long for the day there is no Prince and they may finally sue for their rightful share of the Cassadine fortune." "Then why haven't they killed him? Answer me that, Stefan. Why is Nikolas still alive?" Because I was there. Such a reassuring vanity to press so close to the soul; to justify every sacrifice he'd made; to rationalize a life given over to the service of preserving this boy, his interests, his future. Yet it had to be faced that in the two years since he'd relinquished this role, Nikolas, while not prospering, had indeed survived. It shamed him to admit, on the turn of such an oddly-inappropriate moment, that this fact actually brought him pain. "The Cassadines want their prince, Stefan. It is how we are made. Call it tradition. Call it compulsion. Call it blind allegiance to an ancient pack-mentality. It matters not. One man will rule above them all - then, now and forever more." Stavros paused for the weight of this truth to settle in, then brought the conversation back to its purpose. "Nikolas has his first challenge. I would know the reason why." "Because your brother deserted him," announced Helena, breaking her silence to deftly deliver her poison. "It is as I've always suspected. Stefan was not preparing the boy to rule, but fostering a dependence; crafting a vacuum in his training that only his uncle could fill. Now that he's departed the scene, the boy flounders. This does not come as a surprise." Stefan moved to dispute this charge but halted at a steadying sign from his brother. "A floundering does not bring the sharks to circle, Mother. There must already be blood in the water." Stavros began to pick through the documents arrayed before him until he found the one he was looking for. He quickly scanned the contents and came to the item he sought. "Something of consequence took place three…no, four years ago. What was it?" His eye rose to question first Stefan, then Helena, but neither had an answer to give. "Argos began this mudwork four years ago. He must have seen an opening; some crack or crevice he could wriggle through. As I was not awake at the time," he offered bitingly, "I'm afraid it's up to you to remember what that was." Stefan recalled the event to which his brother referred in stark and painful detail. A glance at his mother revealed she had done the same. In what could only be termed a bizarre moment of psychic harmony, they both recognized the need to impart this information judiciously, in as non-specific a manner as was possible. Care would have to be taken. What they could omit from this particular page in history, they would. "Tell me," ordered Stavros, quiet now and alert to the secret they were keeping. "Alexis contested the primogeniture," Stefan stated flatly, with as much derision as his voice could muster. "She fell under the sway of a corporate raider. Jasper Jacks intended to attempt a takeover of Cassadine Industries and he was soundly repelled. In all likelihood you are correct. Argos must have misread this coup as a weakness in our corporate structure. A weakness he set out to exploit." "No," his brother correctly gently, like a tutor to a refractory student. "He wants to be Prince, not president. The answer lies in the primogeniture. Mother, perhaps you'd like to try your hand at this?" Helena shook her head and laughed. "A ridiculously absurd little ploy, my darling. You must remember Alexis had just gone from cousin to illegitimate sister. As she pretends at a profession in the law, it is understandable that the word 'illegitimate' would hold a sour taste for her. Mr. Jacks played on this sore spot and spun her loyalties to his advantage. The matter was resolved in short order. If this is the weakness Argos has sighted, we have only that baseborn mongrel to blame." "Invalidating the primogeniture would not make her any more legitimate, Mother. Enough, really," he announced, waving a hand through the air as if it were possible to swat away the lies. "Money or power, those are the reasons to contest the bloodline of a prince. And this is what we're talking about, isn't it? The bloodline of the Cassadine Prince? Nikolas in this case, yes?" He stared at them pointedly, then swept up their silence as consent. "Who did she suggest was his father? And what was her proof?" Stefan was disturbed by the manner in which his brother approached these dangerous questions. As if the paternity of Nikolas had nothing whatsoever to do with him. That he could put such a distance between himself and a challenge to his siring - the siring of his only child, his only son, this son who would be prince - was a certain signal of trouble. Knowing Stavros as he did, he apprehended the import of this reaction and understood, almost immediately, how perilous the path on which they walked had become. "Her charges were specious," he responded. "Suffice it to say her proof was proven false in the end." Stavros was staring at him now, his gaze searching, his look invasive. Stefan knew what he wanted; knew the declaration his brother would have him make. He discerned it as clearly as if it were written in script on the air between them. But this he would not say. Were it to cost him his wealth, his family, this empire or life itself, he knew he would forever hold back those words. Stavros could wait throughout the span of an infinite eternity and even then, at the very last, his ears would echo with the silence of a truth that would never tumble from his brother's lips. A moment passed, then two. "Nikolas is your son," said his mother, unable to endure a single second more. Stefan arched a brow, his expression chilled with a cold amusement that offered up the prickled question: Yes, but do you believe her? And he saw his brother sink deeper beneath the baleful black ice that covered his eyes. Helena drew an indignant breath. "I cannot see how dwelling on the actions of that senseless, over-reaching whorespawn is of any benefit to this discussion." "Argos would challenge a Prince," mused Stavros, speaking to no one more than himself. "But is our Prince a prince at all? Alexis brought this question to the world, and the world was left to wonder." That it was, thought Stefan in the lethal quiet that followed this dark declaration. While he may chafe against the abrasive nature of the issue of Nikolas' parentage, reject its evidentiary grain entirely - the way it scoured him down to nothing but a prince's regent when, in fact, his soul argued for so much more - he could not dispute the conclusion to which his brother had come. Alexis' challenge had put to question the integrity of the Cassadine line of succession. No retraction of the charge or pure proof come late to such an accusation would erase it from the covetous minds of the kin. She had given them doubt, and upon that doubt they would build an alternate Empire with Argos at its head. As he embraced that truth he found folded within it the sudden recognition that his mother had known this all along. She had known the basis of Argos' claim, known the fiend had been provoked by the cloud cast over her grandson's legitimacy; a cloud she herself had hung in the sky. How much damage had she done to them all, seeding their minds with the lie that Nikolas had actually been his son? Four years gone and the costs were still mounting. With the full measure of facts set before him, it was all too simple to see what she had planned. Helena would have Stavros reveal himself, pure of blood and direct in descent, to the empire over which he retained full and complete authority. Stefan, having stewarded the Cassadine holdings through the last twenty years by the cunning of his talent and his nimble expertise, would appear to have come out of his well-deserved retirement to stand at his brother's side, adding an indisputable legitimacy to his claim. A claim which, in the end, would be no claim at all but the mere re-statement of a fundamental truth. And the threat would vanish into air. "You will bring him forward, then," Stefan averred, articulating for the first time the purpose of their presence at the table that night. "Stavros will reclaim the title of Prince. And what, if I may ask, are your plans for the prince you already possess? Is Nikolas to bow to your wishes as well? Will you use his mother in the same manner you have used her here tonight? As currency? Your motivating force?" "I will do what I must to preserve my legacy," Helena asserted disdainfully. "Nikolas will be prince again in time. Perhaps when he is more seasoned and better prepared to make the sacrifices such a position demands." "One is never prepared," remarked Stavros, rising at last from the depth of his quiet contemplation. "This is a baptism of fire, as you well know." It was a rare thing to witness; the visible shudder of the Dowager Princess Helena Cassadine. Rare and brief as the life of a moth finally reaching its flame. Her entire being shivered for a moment, then grew still and strong with purpose. "Before we go any further, I should tell you that certain overtures have been made. I have been…approached," she informed them, with what Stefan thought to be a small degree of pride. "If given the proper encouragement, I have no doubt I would be asked to join this alliance. A very clever move, and one that could only increase their strength against you." "Do you offer this as an inroad, Mother, or another means of extortion?" "Which would serve me more, Stefan?" Helena scowled in a familiar way, her expression reverting to the common contempt she displayed when addressing her second son. "As the keeper of the Cassadine flame, I tell you now it flickers. Would you cup that fire or draw a breath to blow it out?" His mouth opened to deliver a particularly sharp retort but stopped short when Stavros lifted himself from his chair and tossed his napkin to the table. Both mother and brother watched as he swept his wineglass to his lips and drained the final swallow. Replacing the crystal stem to the cloth, he gave a curt nod and made his way out of the room. "Stavros," his mother called in concern. "Where are you going?" A strong hand caught the doorframe and he turned. "I did not come to see a picture of a rose," he announced over his shoulder, then disappeared from view. Stefan pressed his weight to the arms of his chair and made to rise. "No," Helena barked, her palm held flat to halt his progress. "This could prove informative." Her fingers burrowed beneath a cluttered pile of documents and withdrew the remote control. A tip to the screen and the signal ignited its power, pulling up the same view of Laura's room. Darker now with the coming of night, it took a moment to distinguish her sleeping form, lit only by the lamp at her bedside table. Stefan bridled at the voyeuristic stench of his mother's suggestion and moved again to rise, but caught himself as the image altered to reveal a second room from the obvious vantage of a second camera. A wisp of memory recalled this sitting area; a connector to the bedrooms that together constituted the suite in which her prisoners were confined. The light was brighter here, illuminating the dusky pink shades of the rug, the wallpaper and the bountifully over-stuffed chairs. Alone at the center of this soft tableau, in the single hardwood seat, sat the woman he was certain his life would benefit from never seeing again. She seemed smaller here, and stiff as the burnished walnut rails that pressed against her spine to stretch above her head and join themselves to the arch of the chairback. She had adopted an almost penitential pose; hands clasped in her lap, shoulders straight, eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance between herself and the lens now trained upon her. Deceptively innocuous, he thought - perhaps felt was a better word, or knew in the way a victim could know and assess the threat of a danger already met. He couldn't tell if she were waiting for someone or something. He didn't care. She had contracted to a minor element in his life and soon, he imagined, even her negligible presence there would shrivel into an irrelevance. Her head jerked up suddenly, her body half-lurching from the chair. He watched her eyes seek out the space just beneath the camera, her hands falling to that habit she had of pressing down the front of her skirt. Her chin lifted and, though he could not yet be seen, Stefan knew his brother had entered the room. It gave him a certain vindictive pleasure to watch her look past Stavros, to search the empty corridor behind him for the brother who had not come. A momentary victory of sorts, before that dark form crossed the room and took its place at her side. There was no way to know what he said, only that the words caused her entire body to sag; her face collapsing in sorrow, her lower lip quivering so mightily she had to snag it with a tooth to hold it fast. His hand must have found its way into her hair because her head wrenched back unexpectedly and it could be seen, now, that she wept. He pitied her in the way any creature Stavros snared should be pitied. His brother could be a cruel and violent man. His brother could be merciless. "Regrets?" Helena asked in a voice dripping with subtext. "None," answered her son in so succinct a tone that it ruined her mood completely. The Sigh Of Things (21)   Come, walk the length of the rack and recall how far we could stretch ourselves. What surprised us in its need for breaking… Another pain pursued in silence. She was running after them now, her savage little psychic beasts; harassing them, chasing them, hunting them down to the point where they were forced to turn and face her. The hubris it took to believe she knew what was best for Laura. The arrogance to imagine her vision was sharper than Stefan's. The presumption of an absolute confidence that she could cross this Cassadine sea unscathed, deliver her cargo and consider herself the savior of all. The folly of thinking, even for a moment, that the sacrifice of his love was the only sacrifice worthy of measure. What had he not lost at her hand? Laura. Gone. Worse than gone. Turned like a gun to his head, forcing him to his knees before a woman he abhorred. His struggle with Stavros, all the energy expended, come to waste on the spin of an idealistic whim. His designs in ruin. His today, his tomorrow, the landscape of his future and whatever peace that may have afforded, all jeopardized by the single misstep of a heart she'd sworn would never play him false. She would confront all of this; every dragon, every demon, every dark and desperate failing that had led her to betray him so unwittingly. So senselessly. Because she had to make sense of this. She had to mark the road she'd traveled. She had to own it and move on. She would emerge from the dungeon of this despair and, as miserable as the prospect of it was to her, she knew the only way out was through. Regret thought she committed herself to the task completely, but no. In the end her ears deserted her to strain for the sound of him; sifting through the newly-familiar noises of Helena's household - the gentle thrush of the air-conditioning, the opening and closing of the linen cabinet doors, the soft tread of a maid's shoe and the impatient shifting of the guard at the stair - attempting to detect some sensory evidence of his approach. The arrival of The Sons had been the cause of great activity throughout that afternoon. A room had been prepared, instructions given, twitterings of gossip exchanged among the younger girls whenever Mrs. Garber moved beyond hearing. And once, many hours ago, she imagined she heard the baritone timbre of their voices below. This would be the night, she decided. This would be the moment her heart, suspended as it was in its listless limbo, would finally shatter into pieces at his feet. How it could come as a surprise to her then, she didn't know. Yet the firm step on the stair and the louder, lower voices of men startled her so much that she launched at once from the chair. Her balance faltered, but soon came steady as the blood flowed faster through her veins. Her palms pressed down the front of her skirt, unconsciously activated by the anxiety of the moment; the fearful trepidation she felt as these seconds fell like grains of sand to the base of the devil's hourglass. Her time of reckoning had arrived. Stavros came first, filling the door with his presence. The starched white shirt lay in stark contrast to the black of him blocking her view - drawing her eye up to its carelessly open collar, his short beard, his gambler's gaze. What he might be marking of her place, her face, the expression she wore, held no interest for Regret. Only what lay beyond, behind this man, was possessed of any relevance to her now. That he appeared to purposely pause in this space smacked to her of an intent to deny his brother access; to preclude the meeting her destiny had come to demand. How could he begrudge her this? How could he believe any mischief worthy of prolonging the wait for that authentic distress? It was not like him to dally in the presence of prospective pain. More that he would hurry it along, promote its passage with the impatience of a child on a rare sweet treat. What was wrong with him? Even as he walked forward he did so at an angle that prevented her from looking beyond him. When finally, finally, he moved off to the side and she could see the doorway clearly, Regret did not register its emptiness. Some magician's trick. Some Cassadine contrivance, she deduced, as she strained to expose the secret in this. It did not dawn on her at all that he simply…was…not…there. Had never been there to begin with. And it was not until she felt Stavros' steadying hand at the base of her back that she stopped the search, her eyes clouding with a prospect she'd found far too frightening to consider. "He will not come." The softness of his voice did her in at the last. A gentle tone that lied to her, told her he could sense her distress and empathize with her pain. That was impossible. Yet this was the impression he gave and she was not capable, in that moment, of fighting off the warmth he offered, no matter the significance it might contain. Her spirit spilled out on his one quiet note of concern; her shoulders sagging, her throat closing, her tears on the way. "No!" he commanded beneath his breath. "You will not do this!" His palm rose up the length of her spine until it reached the curve of her neck. His fingers thrust themselves into her hair and yanked her head sharply back. "Listen to me," he insisted gruffly. "She watches, even now. Show her weakness and she will kill you." "Let her," spat Regret, daring him to do the same. "My life holds no value here. I play no part in anyone's grand design." "And that," he remarked, loosening his grip, "is exactly what will save you in the end." Regret broke away and he allowed this, his fingers combing through her hair as it left his hand. She felt the lingering and, upon his smile, had to resist the urge to touch those curls; to assure herself she had gotten them back. "I find it hard to believe I'm worth the trouble of your time. You're free now, Stavros. You may go where you wish. If Laura is your object you will find her there, just beyond that door." "You have no fear for her, then?" he asked, ignoring her dismissal. "Alone with the madman, the animal, the despicable degenerate who was once her husband? You would simply let him pass?" "Could I stop you?" "Would you try?" He sought a sparring she could not provide and she raised her head bleakly, her resignation plain. "What I might try will have to wait on another day, I'm afraid." A dark cloud passed over his features; the lines of his face hardening, his look fired for a moment with rage. "And how many days will there be, Regret? How many chances will you have? Are you so rich in options you can afford to let even the smallest opportunity pass you by?" He scoffed at her then, his eyes closing on an indignant sigh. "There are two types of imprisonment. The one embraced and the one repelled. Embrace this and the time will pass peacefully as you sink into the mire of your grief. Repel it and you will never know a moment's rest. Be careful which you choose." His hand rose in the air between them and his eyes came open once again. "Your wrist." It was an order. Regret took a stubborn step back and he a step forward, his hand still open and extended. "Here," he said impatiently. "Let me see it." She lifted her wrist and set it in his palm gingerly. The bruises there were still yellow and green, the cut a staggered wound freshly-closed. To her relief he did not wrap his fingers around the band but slid his hand further down, to grasp at a place empty of pain. "She did this?" "The band, yes. The injury, no. I was…upset." Regret attempted to pull away but he met this retreat with a force of his own. In one sudden, disconcerting motion, he tightened his hold and drew her forward; closing the distance between them to inches. She stumbled toward him and stopped short - near enough now to turn aside, if she chose, and meditate on the fixed rhythm of the pulse beating beneath his skin, the resolute set of his jaw, the captive cord of muscle twining tight to the back of his neck. Here she held immobile, frozen in a moment of sheer uncertainty - alarmed less by the closeness than her body's desire to yield to this; to lean, for the swiftest second, against a strength it remembered having but could now no longer find. Stavros wrestled with no such ambivalence as his head came to rest aside her own, his breath a gentle warmth in her hair, his lips poised soft at the crest of her ear. "It was a cruel theft, the loss of the scent of you. I had it for days. Then, sadly, it was gone." The words were almost liquid in texture and seemed to melt into her mind. So simple, she thought, to just fall forward. So fewer reasons, today, to resist. She found the temptation daunting, yet fought it if for no other reason than to prove to herself that she could. His grip on her arm slackened, and she felt his fingers slowly trace down the skin to her wrist. Once there, his thumb found the bruise and pressed against it, triggering a pain that lanced all the way to her shoulder. She fought to move away and he drew her back, raising that wrist between them. "This was beneath you," he stated, with more than a hint of condemnation. Regret met his gaze with defiance. "You will find there is little beneath me anymore, Stavros Cassadine. Deceiver. Betrayer. Liar. Thief. I am not at all the woman you remember." He weighed the statement for a moment before the sharp angles of his anger fled, his hold relaxed and he surrendered her wrist. "The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us," he quoted as he watched her back away. When she eyed him suspiciously he shrugged the meaning off. "Nietzsche can be convenient at times." "I'm sure you find him so," she replied, shuddering at the thought that he'd just given voice to his personal doctrine. He laughed at this. "Ah, Regret, are you embracing or resisting?" The question gave no quarter and he knew it. Embrace Nietzsche. Resist imprisonment. Neither. Both. The way he said her name, the thrust of its emphasis on his tongue, was a challenge in and of itself. Contend with me. She could hear the invitation even in the ease of his amusement. And it occurred to her then, in the midst of these disordered thoughts, that this was precisely what he had her doing. Where was her despair? "I will see her now," he declared, the remnants of a smile still playing on his lips. "This may take awhile. I have quite a bit to say to our harsh Dulcinea." By the time she placed the reference, and understood its import, he had already vanished through the door. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece; this the only sound in her room with courage enough to greet his ear. The light was dim from the bedside lamp yet still sufficient to focus his eye and accustom his vision to its muted glow. From the doorway he noted the middling size of the space and the furnishings it contained; a rocker by the empty hearth, a bureau of drawers, a small vanity on the opposite wall. And there in the bed, like a long shadow of hills in a landscape of fine linen, lay his wife, his partner, his Laura. He crossed the room to the vanity and, with one hand, swept up the bench to set it in a place directly before her. Had she opened her eyes she would find him close enough to speak to in her lowest tone of voice. Not that he expected her to speak. Or even to awaken to his presence under these conditions. For that he understood she would need a reason. It was fortunate, indeed, that he had one. He studied her for a long time, there at the side of her bed. He watched the sheet rise and fall in rhythm with her breathing. He noted the way she seemed to sleep, half-curled on her side with her arms drawn up to her chest, her wrists crossed, her hands folded against her chin. The gold of her hair spread across the pillow, framing a face calm and slack with the placid pose of rest. How swiftly was the mind running now, he wondered? She gave not a single indication. He could respect this. "The question of his paternity has come to the attention of the kin," he disclosed, breaking the silence with a quiet voice. No bone shifted, no muscle seized. Not even a breath betrayed her. "Did you prepare him for it? Did you at least have the courtesy to warn him before Alexis made her challenge? Before that noose came tight around your neck? I imagine not." He let out a meditative sigh and brought the elbows of his jacket to rest on his knees. "I know of only one other who grudges a secret the way you do. What does it give in the end, Laura, holding it tight 'til it strangles like that? Does it give you pleasure to watch them squirm? No. She didn't show you this, did she? How to tease satisfaction from the pain. Yet you keep trying - hoping, I'm sure, some day you'll find the trick of it. I could teach you that, if you like." He didn't expect an answer and hadn't asked to get one. He was putting this off, he knew, and his body tensed in expectation of the rage that would soon consume him. "Stefan still plays with the possibility that Nikolas is not my son. My brother finds power in the thought of this being true. Power, Laura. Not satisfaction. Not consolation. Not vindication. Power. Pure, preening power." His jaw flexed and his tone took on a lethal edge. "Such a gift to give him, my love. All those years to have his allegiance skewered to the tip of your lie. What would Stefan not do for the mother of his son? Yes, I see it. I know what you've done," he informed her with a cold rancor that proved that he did. He shot up from the bench, unable to restrain his fury in such a humbling posture. He would find a way to contain this. He would find a way to bring himself to heel. Striding to the fireplace, he gripped one hand to the mantle and drew the other through his hair. It was then he recalled the camera above him. If he'd gauged the distances correctly, he was now standing beyond its range. His mind tumbled to a torturous page and his rage found its cue. What one couldn't kill one could certainly torment. "I should tell everyone, you know," he offered brightly. "Yours is a delicious little artifice. Mother would find it particularly tasteful. She might actually savor it," he teased, chuckling at the thought. "Of course, she'd put you down again in seven seconds flat. And what fun would that be, really?" He turned to face her, crossing his arms and leaning jauntily against the hearth. "What I can't understand, for the life of me, is why you let that silly girl take you in the first place. Did you think her plan would work? You must have sniffed them out. Mother's little spies. You must have known she was circling. How could you just go along? Was Stefan's care so unspeakably bad that anything would come as an improvement? This I might believe." He watched her shoulders roll in the bed, her arms readjusting to settle themselves as her head came to face him. Still the munchkin look to her though; the puff-pressed awe of a child's wonder crafted into her expression. "Do I have your attention at last?" he asked, his voice quite suddenly serious and seeded with his wrath. "Excellent. We have other matters to discuss." He moved purposely forward then and took position at the bottom of the bed, effectively blocking the camera's view of the captured Laura Spencer. Five minutes passed to the piercing scream that echoed throughout the mansion. And while they had no view of the screamer, just the black of Stavros' jacketed back, Helena still turned to her lesser son with the smug appearance of victory. "There," she announced proudly. "You now have sound."