princess | kol mikaelson

10 | sleeping beauty

Anastasia straightened up at the mention of the hybrid. The fact that he called Kol gave her a bad feeling about the nature of his call. Since they left Mystic Falls, Klaus always called her for updates and to make sure she remained alive and well in his baby brother's company. If he wanted to say something to Kol, he'd do it during their call.

Silently she observed Kol's expression, trying to determine what Nik was telling him. Once more she cursed her lack of supernatural hearing since she never could have a conversation without the vampires hearing it from two rooms away while she couldn't hear a thing despite sitting two metres away.

Whenever Kol spoke with his siblings – especially Klaus or Elijah – the main feeling expressed on his face would be annoyance; probably because their conversations usually involved him being reprimanded for something he'd done. The fact that his irritation quickly dissipated only to be replaced by stone cold indifference did nothing to calm her down.

It felt like minutes passed before Kol ended the call and tossed the phone. It landed on the opposite side of the couch and bounced down on the floor. A century spent in the presence of a short-tempered hybrid taught her to not push a Mikaelson when he processed information that clearly hit close to home. Therefore, she silently waited for Kol to break the silence that had fallen over the hotel room.

Kol walked across the room and grabbed a bottle of scotch. Silently pouring himself a full crystal glass, Kol drank it all at once and refilled the glass while saying, "The Bennett witch unlinked us."

"That's good," Anastasia said carefully, assuming that this reaction wasn't connected to the news that Kol no longer had to worry about being daggered or killed alongside his siblings. She no longer had to worry about Nik dying because one of his siblings died. "No matter where your mother is hiding, this certainly puts a hitch in her plan."

"My mother is not our main problem, it seems," Kol muttered, swallowing another mouthful of expensive scotch. "Finn is dead."

Anastasia's eyes widened at the statement. She'd exchanged a few words with Finn at the Mikaelson ball but that was pretty much it – yet the thought of him still didn't sit right with her. From what Klaus told her over the years, Finn always loathed being a vampire and while his other siblings had been daggered on and off for a millenia, the eldest Mikaelson spent the past nine hundred years in a box.

"How?" Anastasia asked quietly.

"The dopplegänger and her pathetic little friends seem to be in possession of White Oak stakes now," Kol revealed, sneering at the mention of the people who murdered his brother. Another silence fell over them.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Anastasia finally said.

"It doesn't matter," Kol said dismissively. "I hated him, and he hated me."

"He was still your brother," Anastasia reasoned; something about the way Kol tried to be apathetic about his brother's death made her heart ache for him. And knowing that he easily could have stormed off after sharing the news made her wonder if he deep down wanted to talk about it. "Your family."

Kol laughed humorlessly, "Family," he said the word like it tasted sour. "That is a word Nik, Elijah and Rebekah love to use. We stay together like a family – Always and Forever," he said, putting the glass down with enough force for the crystal to break into small pieces. "Those words never applied to Finn. Nor me."