Tao dropped his bags, nearly collapsing in the doorway, but instead just making it over the threshold before crumbling, door closing behind him. Groaning as sore muscles complained, ones he had never even known he had now loudly announcing themselves in the most painful of ways. Inhaling the dusty, grime caked concoction that coated the floors had him coughing, rolling onto his back as he dragged in air to clear his lungs. He stayed there a while, staring at the ceiling, thinking of his past, of his life, the universe and what it had in store for him.  Rather heavy thoughts for such a young man, but ones he felt he needed to contemplate. 

Zitao had a secret. 

Perhaps that was obvious by now, due to the rather foreboding note this story started upon, but the details still remained to be seen. This secret meant certain death, as it had for his mother. It meant trial by fire, water, air and earth, depending on which ever so 'merciful' captor you received. It was the fire that Zitao feared above all the others. And it was times like these where in his moments of introspection he wondered what it would feel like. To burn alive. To have those yellow-orange devils at his skin, the heat that would suffocate, scald his throat. Smoke that would make his eyes smart and assault his olfactory. Watching as his skin made that change from bronze to red, to charred, glossy black like magma solidifying. How he would surely throw back his head and scream and scream, plead for the gods to save him but they never would. To die alone, surrounded by watching eyes but still so alone. 

It would happen, one day, and one day soon. 

Sighing, deciding that pondering his fate would have to wait until a different day, or perhaps a different hour, he pulled himself to his feet through sheer force of will. Stumbling through the deteriorating shack on the outskirts of the rich district, he did his best to memorize the floorplan. He hadn't been there since the tender age of three, and while he could boast an excellent memory, he had no recollection of the rundown building, only that it had been entrusted to him in his mother's will. In all fairness, referring to it as a shack was a bit of a misnomer. It was, at one point, a beautiful manor. But time had not been kind to the fading, torn wallpaper, or the stained Turkish area rugs, or the no doubt once grand paintings with contents now so disfigured what they once were was impossible to ordain. 

Trekking through his new home he formulated a plan for cleaning. It was not that he was the most meticulous of people when it came to neatness, it was merely that he could clean, had nothing better to do, and he was probably going to die due to some horrifying lurking disease in the wallpaper otherwise. Lingering memories of a certain Prince of the realm had him blushing. Patting his cheeks in confusion he paused in front of the dirty mirror above the old fireplace, chalked with soot. Smoothing a hand across the once cared for glass he was able to see his own expression. Light pink dusting his normally tanned cheeks, so out of place, he could only stare in consternation. It was staring into his own black eyes that he suddenly tensed. Like a film being lifted, a flash of a story, a different time, jolted across his memory like lighting in the night sky. 

Cold nights. Curled against his mother's legs in her black velvet gown. The death of his father long past, but the grief was still thick. A hand his hair, twisting her hair tie around his locks, as she often did to keep the hair from her growing son's eyes. Looking up, his mother's red, red lips, fair as the moon, her hair as black as the night that surrounded it. Her ageless eyes, it would not be long now before they were found out for what they were. 

He stumbled back, only to run directly into another figure. Knocking the smaller man nearly to the ground, Zitao gasped, 

"I am so sorry, I did not hear you come in!"

"Are you aware that you are trespassing on private property?" the small, dark haired man asked.

"Oh! Actually, this was bequeathed to me in a will, here," he hurriedly fished the required documents from his jacket pocket, only now realizing what a sight he must have made. Covered in cobwebs and dust from il-advisedly rolling on the ground, he certainly was not the polished society gentleman he had hoped to appear. Alas. 

The man...or perhaps boy, now that Zitao was looking closer, the individual's unworn skin and soft hands that spoke of high class and little work aside from lifting teacups, frowned as he began to look through the packet. It was several tense moments with Zitao shifting from foot to foot like a child before a scolding. Finally, eyebrows lifted before dark blue eyes followed, staring up at Tao with a piercing perusal of his physical character. 

"You are the son of the House of Lalique?" 

"Yes, though now I go by the name of Huang. Huang Zitao, and I would appreciate it if you would not make my heritage public," he murmured softly.

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