Kaatje didn't like to be around people very often, especially when she was in certain, very unforgiving, moods. It was why the rooms immediately to the left and right of her own were quite off limits except to people she put in there herself, such as her friends. (One day she'd have a sleepover and it would be quite amazing.) Her elder cousin was definitely not qualified to be in either of those places of honor. Technically, Kreszant was her third cousin. They were very nearly unrelated. But he was the closest person in the Saint-van der Weydin family tree to her in age, so of course older second cousins--in their forties and fifties now, because her father had been a good thirty years older than her mother--were passed over in favor of the third cousin.

Even if he had been her first cousin, though, she wouldn't have put him next door to her. So he'd been banished to the adult wing of the house, where her parents' bedroom had been, and this was also because as she remembered him he was quite the manwhore. He liked to sleep with women, he liked to charm women. It was all dirty and disgusting and superficial and she didn't want to see anything of it. Kaatje remembered quite distinctly the only relationship Kreszant had ever really treasured, and that was with another man. Connor Dietrich was a good friend of the both of them. He was intelligent and sarcastic, both of which were traits she appreciated.

He was also distinctly not interested in her.

There was still a reason to have put her elder cousin in the rooms near her own, and that was... well.

She could deal with his manwhoreish ways, but she was a passionate girl. She always had been and always would be and there was really no way she could change that about herself, not even if she wanted to. So when she awoke one night out of a nightmare, after she'd tried her theory of distraction, she didn't stop to think before she went to her parents' room and unlocked the door. It was empty, and dusty now; the bedclothes smelled of nothing in particular, just the ambient scent of her own house. And that, for some reason, angered her. Enraged her. She seized the pillows, ripped them off the bed, tore them out of the cases and threw them across the room, at her mother's precious vanity. It was an antique. It had been handed down through generations of Saint women, finally to become a van der Weydin heirloom from then on. The pillows weren't enough to break it, but Kaatje was a big girl, and--and--

The room was too easy of a target. She tore the comforter off the bed, emptied her father's bookshelves, tore suits and dresses off their hangers, piled them all in the middle of the floor. She overturned the bench in front of the vanity, turned the drawers inside out and then stared at the powders and tonics coating her feet, the ivory carpet. For a moment, she wanted to scream, but she held that back, because there was one thing she wanted to do right then. With shaking hands, she fumbled the lock to her hope chest open, swung it open, and reached inside. The journals and letters she threw on the stripped bed, and then everything else she added to the pile of cosmetics, clothing, memories of Jan and Eunice van der Weydin. Relics, now, because she didn't want them, didn't need them, was never going to need them because they'd never wanted her anyway.

Kaatje raked her fingernails over her head, was glad that Kreszant was gone. She could taste blood where her teeth had nicked her tongue, and she bit into her lip to have a little more, a chance for her outside to reflect how she felt right then.

She was seventeen years old, too old to cry and pitch a temper tantrum as she was doing. But she was also sixteen, and fifteen, and fourteen--she was a kid, really, emancipated or not. Kaatje took a deep breath and suddenly she was so tired, because it really took a lot of effort to overturn antique bookshelves that were built to last, and she was so astonished Andrews hadn't come up to investigate the thumps and bangs. She dropped to her knees in her parents' linens, covered her face with her hands as she curled up on top of sheets and comforters. There wasn't any scent of Eunice; a hint of cigars from Jan. The house was empty and silent, she, completely desolate and alone.

It wasn't something she knew how to explain. It seemed like the worst thing that could happen to anyone--to be alone, stuck living with someone you didn't like and didn't know, and to be expected to answer to them, to be expected to respect them. Unfair, unfair and unjust and... and she was so tired...

...

When Kreszant finally came home, it was to a concerned butler. Hearing reports of muffled screams, of things falling over, of the Master Suite's door locked, the dark-haired man was concerned too. And his concerned were not unfounded; he walked carefully, quietly, into the bedroom, and stared down at the little redhead laying in her parents' sheets, asleep.

The room looked like s**t. She'd ripped it apart, he realized, looking at her bloodied fingernails, at the bruises on her knees. Of course, Kaatje looked like crap fairly often lately. Burns all over, quickly fading scars. All the same, she was his little cousin, and as annoying as the leetle gorl was, it was his privilege to take care of her. So he knelt and picked her up, marveled at how light she was, and carried her to her room. The help could put Aunt Eunice and her husband's possessions right.

He would just have to hope he could put their daughter right.