state of grace | mikaelson men

8 | MIKAEL

"But I need to know he's okay," she said quietly.

"You'd know if something was wrong," Finn reminded her. "Once Niklaus is in town again, you can warn him. The others won't even think of keeping you away from him because there's no way for you to know this plan. Kol and I will take turns watching our father's every move. I may be furious at Niklaus for killing Mother, but not even I would go to our father."

"Anymore," Kol muttered. It earned a glare from Finn, so he quickly put his hands up in defense. "Right. We agreed to not talk about that."

"Talk about what?" Lottie asked with a frown. There were still a lot of stories she hadn't heard from the brothers — a thousand years was a lot to cover, after all.

Finn shot Kol a pleading look, clearly not wanting to talk about whatever it was. "Perhaps another time, Darling," Kol told her after a moment. Finn visibly relaxed. "After all, you've got to focus on getting ready for the Homecoming dance."

This time, Lottie wasn't a chaperone for the dance. Last year's Homecoming Queen got sick with the flu, and so as the Queen from two years ago, Lottie would be crowning the new one. Caroline called her frantically at eight in the morning, begging her to appear at the event last minute. So, Lottie was going to throw on the dress from her senior year and be there long enough to appease Caroline, who did not run for Queen, surprisingly.

"I'm assuming Bekah is getting ready at the Boarding House," Lottie said while sitting at her desk and pulling out makeup.

"I think she wants to keep an eye on father," Kol said. "Now that he's here, now that Klaus has been called... when the time comes, I think she'll regret it."

"I hope so," Lottie mumbled sadly. "Or he might never forgive her."

☽︎

It took almost two hours to finish her hair and makeup for Homecoming. It was all Kol's fault though. While Finn was monitoring the situation with Mikael, Kol stayed behind and took every opportunity to distract Lottie, either with a dumb joke or a riveting story that had her forgetting she was meant to be applying shimmering eyeshadow.

To Kol's credit, the only reason he was trying to distract her was because they didn't want her going to Homecoming. With Mikael roaming around town and having no idea when Klaus would appear, the brothers didn't want Lottie to leave the house. And if they could physically stop her, they would've.

"Okay, Caroline should be here in thirty minutes to pick me up, so I should get—"

Lottie was cut off by her doorbell ringing. She groaned, figuring that Caroline showed up early. After throwing on her bathrobe, she rushed downstairs to tell Caroline and Bonnie to wait while she finished getting ready.

But the girls weren't on the other side of the door. Given that the sun was going down, she almost didn't spot the matte black box that was on her porch. She quickly gathered it up and went back into her house.

"People sure love leaving things on your doorstep," Kol noted. A small, paranoid part of him was worried that Mikael found out about Lottie from Stefan and sent her something threatening — was this what Klaus felt like all the time?

"It's a dress," Lottie said, her eyes going wide as she pulled the lid off. She instantly picked the garment up to examine it. It was a sort of champagne-pink color. The corset bodice with a sweetheart neckline was a bit sheer, and the skirt flared out at the waist. Gold flowers were weaved into the fabric. "It's beautiful."

"Note," Kol said, peering inside the book. He was frustrated that he couldn't pick it up, flip it, and read it himself. So, Lottie did it for the both of them.