What Belongs to a House?

The word House means considerably more in The Kalos Chronicles than the building where someone lives.

Grey Manor is certainly a place. It stands in Chicago, with private chambers behind closed doors and common rooms where those who belong there can come and go. A member of Grey House can walk into the kitchen, sit down at the table and have breakfast without asking anyone's permission.

He belongs there.

But belonging to Grey House means something much larger than having access to the Manor.

Most Kalos pledge themselves to a House and its Master. They don't have to. A Kalos can remain unattached, although choosing to live outside that structure tends to make other Kalos uncomfortable.

There is a reason for that.

Control matters enormously to this species.

The Kalos have survived for thousands of years among humans who overwhelmingly don't know they exist, while another part of humanity knows far more than the Kalos would prefer. That kind of existence requires structure, and the Houses provide it.

Belonging has advantages. Protection is one of them.

It also requires allegiance.

I'm going to leave most of what that allegiance entails inside the books, except to say that the Kalos take a pledge considerably more seriously than we might take changing jobs or moving somewhere new.

The doors of Grey Manor don't need to be locked.

The Kalos who belong there have chosen their House.

The humans present a more complicated question.

Many of them have "chosen" to be there too.

If you've read my other dispatches, you already know why I put quotation marks around that word.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand something about the Houses is to imagine a king's forest centuries ago. The deer wandered freely through it. They weren't kept in cages and had no idea they belonged to anyone.

The king's understanding of the arrangement was somewhat different.

There is something of that old idea of possession in the Kalos world. Houses have boundaries, allegiances and claims that are expected to be respected.

Exactly what can be claimed is a question I'll let Grey House: The Feeding answer.

There are also other Houses.

And above them sits a King.

I'm leaving him in the shadows for now too.

What matters before entering Grey House: The Feeding is knowing that Grey House is much more than the beautiful Chicago Manor at its center. It is old, powerful and built around relationships of allegiance, protection and control.

Lord Grey also has a particularly uncomplicated understanding of possession.

What belongs to Grey belongs to Grey.

Which raises the obvious question.

What happens when someone else wants it?

— Antonia Portage

Grey House: The Feeding, Book One of The Kalos Chronicles, is coming January 6, 2027.