Amara and Cole are technically “regents”, as their mother is high vampire queen of the highgarden winters. They both work in the museum Yoobin runs as museum curators, but have their own duties. Amara is a head of magic as high witch of Seoul and Cole is head of the Steel Wolves; his mother’s personal guard.
Amara doesn’t usually see her brother. Cole is busy, always busy. Hell, he’s spent the last forty years in Los Angeles and given up his spot as their adopted mother’s second-in-command to Jinyoung, her boyfriend. Her brother had black hair the last time she saw him, and the two of them standing at a stand-in grave, she can see that her brother has not dyed his hair back to its natural silver, but the weariness on her brother’s shoulders is enough to have her worried that she hadn’t been paying attention.
Right now they’re really trying to achieve peace. Their mother is pregnant again, Sunhyeon is somewhere. She hasn’t exactly been looking for her brother. He seems preoccupied. And now that they’re all back in the same city, their mother has been placing them in positions of power. Sunhyeon, Prince of Winter. Amara, Princess of Spring. Cole, Prince of Fall. Their sibling will be the Prince or Princess of Summer, and it’s quite fitting. Cole seems to have gained some sort of regal aura, Amara notes. His hair’s grown out again, falling into his eyes. How he even thought of cutting it for someone else’s pleasure before she couldn’t imagine. Cole was always the chilly brother out of all of them, but despite that very potent chill, he was such a good man. She’d seen that when he adopted his children, how her usually stoic brother had warmed up when holding a baby.
“No, but I wasn’t about to leave you alone.” Her brother’s voice is gentle, he’s always had some sort of gentleness with her. He’s prickly with Sunhyeon, but her brothers have always been at each other’s throats. She’s not totally sure why.
They’ve both been through literal hell in the past six months. And she won’t be mad that it took Maechang’s death to bring him home, she’s just glad her brother is back and that Insu gets to cling to ‘his favorite hyung’ again. Cole’s already given more than enough approval of Jinyoung without much thought, too. It’s nice to have some feeling of normalcy, now that she thought about it. Normalcy. They’d never actually had that, but she’d never forget the look on Berry’s face when she saw her Uncle for the first time. The last time he’d seen Berry she was just an infant and now her daughter was nearly six. “What, are you worried about me all of a sudden?”
“When am I not worried about you, Mara?” Cole’s dark eyes sparkle with a gentle mischief and she gently elbows her brother. “Shut it, Colie. Just don’t go away again.” She shook her head, laying a flower down at the grave along with Cole. “She didn’t want you to hear her die. That’s why she called you first. She didn’t want you to feel guilty that you were cautious about getting to know her again. She loved you, she was okay with what you guys had going. I think Mom was just glad that you were open to it.” She admitted, looking at her brother. It’s weird that Damon has their father’s heart, but they’ve both felt free since he was killed, and both Hati and Skoll have left them. They both have their werewolf blood, but it’s nice to not be sharing a brain with a feral direwolf anymore.
“I want to hope she doesn’t hate me.” Cole said gently. “I mean, I don’t think she does. But I hope she knows that I was wanting to get to know her more, especially these days.” Amara bit her lip, nodding her head and grabbing her brother’s arm. “All we can do is live up to her memory and make her proud, Colie.”
