In the past year, Grayson Wilkes had had a lot of time to himself to think. Granted, most of that time had been spent having something of a psychotic break -- but the last month or so, he'd just been thinking. His brother was dead -- by his own hand -- and his family was more on the rocks than they'd been in years. He'd spent a good deal of time regretting Amery's death, but the fact was ... if he hadn't ended his brother's life, their entire family would've suffered even more than they were suffering now. It had been a long, hard road to this conclusion, but he had to believe it.

None of this silly regressing bullshit: he was the only son of the family now, and he needed to pull himself together. Continuing to wallow was just going to drag his family through the mud again, and that wasn't something he was going to tolerate.

Truth be told, he'd been well enough for the last few weeks. He knew he should've been the one to contact Ophelia, but he'd spent the majority of his time getting back into shape (apparently not eating and subsisting mostly on grain alcohols did not do wonders for a man's figure) and finding house elves to replace the ones that he'd messily thrown out windows or through walls. He needed to know that Ophelia would still come back to him, that he was (at least in his opinion) in control of that situation.

The manor looked lovely now, though; fresh coats of paint on some of the walls, flowers in the vase by the door. Grayson himself looked for every intent and purpose like he had before his brother's death; the fire was back in his eyes and he felt sharper than ever.

No more of this failure nonsense.

Cael couldn’t remember the last time he wanted a drink so badly. He had been out of the house while he was talking to Cecilia, needing to pull himself away from the blueprints he had been going over just so he could finish the conversation and figure out some sort of excuse to tell his boss so he could get out of work. He wound up going with some bullshit excuse about how he felt like he was getting sick from lunch, and despite the glare of death he got, he packed up his things and headed home.

She was engaged. Her parents had arranged for her to be married, and now she was engaged…

He wound up taking a cab, instead of just apparating, needing time to himself to sort through what he was going to say when he finally got there – when he finally saw her, and the reality of the situation really sunk in.

When the vehicle finally stopped in front of his house, Cael hesitated before finally climbing out of the car, paying the driver, watching him drive off, leaving him standing in the bitter cold autumn weather.

He couldn’t remember the last time he wanted a drink so badly.

Stepping to his front door, he pulled it open, expecting to be greeted by Karma as he usually was when he came home from work. But she never came. His brows stitched together in confusion, but it wasn’t until he hung up his coat and walked upstairs to his room, where Cecilia had been sleeping since a few days after she had arrived, did he understand why the dog hadn’t given him her usual greeting.

Instead, she was seated outside of the closed door, whimpering and nudging her nose against the doorknob. She could sense something was wrong with the girl who was sitting inside. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, and Cael let out a sigh, stepping forward to rub her behind the ears.

“Good girl.”

He spoke quietly to his canine companion, and then finally braved reaching for the doorknob to open the door. Karma trotted in first, lifting her front paws up onto the bed. Cael stepped forward, bringing himself closer to the bed. He didn’t know what to say, so he said the first thing that came to his mind.

“…she’s taken a liking to you.”