bellamychevasym

[bellamychevasym]

Wings and Friends || Kalliste&Bella

Valentin had said he could not work with her wings. They were ruined. He needed new ones. He body still help the muscles and bone structure required to hold them. He just needed a new pair to attach. A healthy pair. These had practically fallen into her lap.

"It must be so challenging for your to find attire that you might wear around your wings," Bella asserted as she stood behind the woman within her private tailoring suite of Red Thread.

There was still some caution required for her expression, there was a mirror opposite Bella and the winged woman she had started to befriend so the woman would notice if she was too obvious in her true intentions. To learn enough about the structure of the wings so she might drug the harpy and remove them for herself.

Bella's measuring tape was held with both hands, one to leverage the length of the tape while the other found the actual numbers so she could determine Kalliste's height. The implication was that this was for the dress, but it was, in truth, a way for Bella to find out if the wings would be appropriate in length for Bella to wear, anything too small would not be worth the effort and anything to long and she may not have the capacity to hold them above the ground.

"In Destarin at least, there are such a variety of species it can be challenging to carry what it required for all of them, but that is part of why I like my work. It is never the same twice," she expressed before she put the tape measure between her teeth and walked towards the small desk space she had covered in work, as well as the design journal she had, marking down both the woman's actually heigh from heel to shoulder as well as the height of her wings she had taken in the prcoess.

@kallistetheharpy

[bellamychevasym]

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His affection lacks a moment of waning, a sweet affirmation of his heart. It's what she feels most of him as his hands tease sensitive nerves, pinching and rolling with calloused touch that is all his own. It nourishes both want and familiarity as smaller touches always had, making her heart feel as though it beat in her chest, swelling with a mix of comfort and desire. Her own hands flexed as the young vampire's mind thought on how those same hands had interlaced with her own, had touched her jaw softly, had played piano alongside her. This is what allows him lifting her to lack nerves, he is her calm, his lips an assurance of his love for her and his hands a revelation of him.

The metal table's familiar sensation doesn't startle, even as his lips leave hers, eyes opening to watch him, his length leaving as well. A sliver of doubt pulls up in her stomach - he doesn't want her - but his lips press with pain to her calf, risen with his grasp, as his cock sinks back inside her, and the notion sinks back down - he does, of course he does. She can see it, his fangs piercing her skin, the dark blood dripping down in a thick flow, the deep rose red caressing the shaping of her muscles and her bones beneath, circling the palette of her knee, flowing into the crevice of her tightened thigh muscles.

'I love you.'

Bella didn't say it, she knew she didn't need to, but the thought kept circling in her mind. Over and over.

Extending her toes, the muscles in her ankle's flexed beneath his grasp, as did the blood flow from her calf pulsate with additional flow. Hands reached above her head to feel the edge of the metal slab, curving around it's edge. There was a whine to the metal as her grasp tightened with the depth of his manhood, cunt wet with such arousal it steadily slipped over the curve of her arse pressed to the metal, and created an evident spill of want on the slab, and the shift in her body caused her spine to arch up, while her opposing leg wrapped around him like a python. She was lowing him, and in turn her own extended leg, towards her, delicate ribcage elongating and rising the same nipples he had played with, pointed and pink they pressed to him as Bella released a delicate drawn out moan, eyes not once leaving him.

"More," she requested, chest curling back down as her hips rose against him, cunt tightening around him while her fingers did the metal slabs edge. The scraping sound of her nails tearing into the metal with her hard grasp of the surface accompanied the sensation of her womanhood claiming his firm cock, wetness slick around such hardness unlike the fingers or toys she had used over the years to teach herself pleasure. The sensation and notion such that she could still feel herself dripping with arousal beneath her cunt.

In specificity to her request Bella didn't know if she meant harder, or faster, or for his fangs to pierce her again, she just could not concede an ounce of him. 'More' was a word - an action - she wished she'd employed sooner with the vampire, and would not allow addition regrets to build by not doing so now. Bella was so sure she saw it in her sire as well. In his lips, the way they sought her body to please, in his confidence to raise her from where they sat and lay her out for his pleasure. Surely he would no longer deny himself either. They belonged to one another.

Keep reading...

The lab changes shape. It is no longer a lab with four walls, a floor and a ceiling. It is no longer a sterile and hostile environment inhospitable to comfort and warmth. Though their bodies are cold as corpses, there is a heat there, generated through friction and tender touches. Valentin relishes in her touch, every purposeful glance of her fingers as they steeple and peak on his thighs, every roll of her hips, every press of her nose to his and into his cheek, every caress of lips. It makes the lab into a special place for just the two of them. No one where could have housed them better.

He hands land against her hips and ease her movement, following the trajectory of her body like he’s a cartographer. The dip of her hips, slant of her thighs, all unexplored territories left open for him to roam. Valentin documents the flexing of her quads, thighs firm as she moves over him and finds them marvelously proficient in their work.

Time is on their side and it shows in the way they move, languidly, like bodies made of rich molasses. Valentin loses himself in her, lets himself swallow her and lets her swallow him. He does not want to surface any time soon. This is worth savoring. She is worth savoring. His lips connect with hers, never leaving. There is no need to breath so there is no need to part. The kiss is endless. It’s impossible to determine where one ends and the next begins, it is all one continuous kiss.

The cartographer in his hands moves upwards to cup the mound of her breasts and ascend the mountainous peaks of pert nipples. He vacations there. Taking all the time to sightsee. Pinching and rolling, massaging and twisting. He would extend his stay and perhaps he will but for now, his hands return to her thighs and wrap beneath them to lift her from her seat. Valentin rises as well, holding her up against him, bodies still connected in their most intimate of places. He hasn’t stopped kissing her.

It’s only until the edge of the metal table before them hits the very base of her body that their lips part only to be economical with their maneuvering. He sets her down on the table so that he can join her on top and then makes sweet worship with the plushness of her calf as he sinks himself into her luscious folds once again. The kiss cuts, fangs puncturing through pliable skin. Her blood is a shock of color against her pale landscape, dripping down in a solid line from her lifted leg.

[bellamychevasym]

Dove Cameron via Instagram

[bellamychevasym]

Bella wondered if it had seemed a lost cause to the other vampire to synthesis blood, if he saw it as some sort of aspect drawn of sympathy from Valentin towards his kind. Bella hadn't experienced much sympathy from Valentin when she had first arrived at his door, she didn't think he cared for her plight remotely so much as he was a man of his word. Even his saving of her wings from the first she had started she knew in part was because he had told her that in exchange for his experimenting he would save her wings and he hadn't achieved that yet rather than because he knew she would want them. He cared for her enough by that point it was part of it but even if he had not cared for her it seemed only of his nature that he would have regardless.

Besides did he love anything beyond her? Bella hadn't noticed it if he did.

She allowed the consideration of where his own thoughts had come from to fade. She'd have questions for Valentin on the man's implications but more out of curiosity for what had once been, rather than any doubt her own perception of him lacked accuracy. People changed, her accurate understanding of him now did not mean it would match who he had been when he knew this...pink tongued vampire.

She half had expected the tongue to be forked with how venomous some of his words had been.

It was his own recognition of her once he stepped over the threshold that Bella's familiarity with him became clear. There was an obvious shift in her, teeth clenching within her mouth, feeling her fangs beneath her lower lip slice blood. She could remember now, the eyes of the monster that had not simply killed but tortured the low lords she had been escorting through the woods. Not quite of age but no longer a child she had watched from her tent, whispering in his mind. One she had been able to reach at the time for he was a beast and her aasimar abilities had allowed her as such then, but with such a complex mind she could not control it the way she might a kelpie or imp. All she could do was offer her gratitude, and encouragement.

Adjusting the sleeves of her gown over her hands and turning the woman spoke her answer in an old tongue. It was the language of her religion. A language that only small old towns who prayed for safety from the horrifying beasts that loomed outside their homes still knew, that temple priestesses were taught as children. Vembrasyn. Valentin knew it, by age and by his studies, she suspected Doran might too.

'Prayers cannot calm the cognitive beast who feasts on sinful flesh.'

As an old religious language it tended to be less concise as the common tongue but if he knew it he should surely place the woman's face. The encouragement she had laid in his mind as he fed on those who had hurt her with a vindictive joy.

"Fortunately the answers might still be possible," she then said in English, gifting Derya a gesture towards the stairs so she might inform Valentin of Doran's arrival if she was willing. He was private about his lab, few tended to be allowed entry and so Bella would not simply take him to Valentin without knowing what boundaries Valentin wished for his own needs.

Then she gestured for Doran to follow her to the main parlour if he wished to wait in comfort. The large windows wide and open, allowing moonlight within and a beautiful view of the garden, dew wet and fortunately not alight with the fire Doran had threatened. The decor of the room itself had clearly been somewhat influenced by Bellamy as there was more furnishings than Valentin would have wasted his time on as well as a portrait of the pair.

"You are ill now?" Bella asked, seeking some of the synthetic blood Valentin had created from a cabinet stocked with various glasses full of his work, as well as crystalware to serve it in.

Jealousy. What an odd feeling.

It settled in his stomach like wet ash, smoldering. He could name it for what it was—beneath him—but the feeling didn’t care. Doran had seen many rise under Valentin’s hand, and yet this one itched. He told himself she wasn’t remarkable, but that only made it worse. That Valentin would give this woman what he had never given Doran. Attention. Favor. Protection.

How absurd.

He hadn't even known Valentin to be sentimental, let alone gentle. And yet she walked like one kept. One treasured. How unlike him. How… insulting. Not to her, but to Doran. As if he’d ever been worth less. As if what he had wasn’t good enough.

He muttered low, but not low enough: “Miracles, no. But he always did love lost causes.”

His pride flared for one sharp, instinctual moment when she named her condition. He had opened his mouth to snarl, to toss some barbed thing back in her face, but the promise in her eyes stopped him. Not rage. Worse. Certainty.

So he did something he hadn’t done in a hundred years. 

He submitted.

Doran opened his mouth slightly, dragged his tongue across the edge of a canine just slowly enough to make Bellamy wonder if he’d do it himself, and smiled.

“A tongue for a word,” with a rakish slowness, he stuck it out, just far enough to show her. Pink, intact. Daring. “It’s a nice one. I’ve grown rather fond of it. Would hate to lose it.” A beat. “But I suppose I’ll manage.”

And then he stepped across the threshold.

He could feel the magic settle over him like a second skin. The moment of admittance. The rules had been made, and now the house knew them too. He gave a shallow nod of respect to the space around him, as if acknowledging the contract with the estate itself, not just its silent guardian.

Doran stayed in front of Bellamy. Close enough to remind her of his presence, far enough not to provoke. Watching the fall of her hair, the tension in her posture, tugged at him. Familiar.

Where had he seen her before?

“…Have we met?”

She didn’t need to answer.

Because now that he was looking closely, that tangle of jealousy was joined by something softer, stranger, and far more dangerous than pride.

Recognition.

No, not her. But someone. Someone in her bones, maybe. In her eyes. Or the shape of her silence. “…You look like someone I knew,” Doran said under his breath.

There was something tentative in it, a searching he hated himself for. His hand twitched at his side, as if reaching for a memory that might complete the image in front of him.

“How strange,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “I came here for answers, and already I’ve found ghosts.”

[bellamychevasym]

Do you ever regret the paths that led you here?

"Not particularly. I regret not seeking potentially better paths but only in so much tha it pained people I care for, not so much as what they got me. If I had not run the first time I would not have Valentin or Derya, if I had not run from Valentin I would not have Merry or Notelaih. I regret wasted years away from Valentin, the potential hurt I inflicted on him, but I have never been so fortunate in my companionship. I wouldn't go back and force a more mature response from myself."

@valentinstjohn, @nereidofneed, @madkingmerry, @djinnoffire

[bellamychevasym]

Do you have any childhood friends or companions that you miss?

"I did have others I grew up in the temple with that I enjoyed being around, especially when I was very small, but it was strange to be around them sometimes because the same things were not expected of us and it became more evident as we grew older. It is hard to not resent someone you is saved from things you aren't, and in turn hard to not resent someone who it is perceived as recieving more material treatment. As an Aasimar I had a nicer room, more gifts given to me, but other elements they were spared. Resent grew both ways. I might hope as adults maybe things would be different, more understanding between us because it would be nice to talk to someone else who understood what that environment was like to be raised in."

[bellamychevasym]

He had not seen Valentin in some time. Each time he tried to insist upon her sire's shifting nature now that she had become a part of him she knew there surely had to have been no contact between them in some time. He had not changed. To Bella's perception even the kindness and exceptions he offered her were always a part of him, awaiting the right person, but it hadn't changed his direction, his intentions or his behaviours generally. Even those she liked he didn't afford any extra kindness too. So as much as he attempted to degrade her sire all Bella saw was someone so entirely out of touch with him it wasn't worth arguing over.

The comment to her appearance was especially unendearing to the woman whose lips seemed to tighten at the notion of prettiness in her, that it might change a man. A grotesque a notion to the woman whose value had only been prettiness until she had run from such obligations.

Derya seemed far more caught up in it, which she supposed meant even if he had not seen Valentin in some time that at some point the pair had most definitely crossed paths intimately, enough for the woman to concern herself more than Bella felt she needed to, even if she didn't understand it. Certainly when he pressed his lips to his own skin she felt no emotional requirement for sympathy. Much like Merry he seemed a showman but had done little to provoke her efforts of empathy with his words.

What did seem to ingnite something in her was the notion of what existed within him.

'Yes, it's spreading.'

When she had come to Valentin's doorstep she could not even hold up one of her wings, so poisoned by then that the muscles had deteriorated and it could not be raised properly off the ground. It was an insult to allow them to drag, to have it's end as filthy as her priestess robes had been. Then they were gone. It was hard not to empathise, even when his verbiage was something to be desired.

"Valentin doesn't deal in miracles," she commented, aware he would notion the same. "And I do not appreciate threats, or insults. So I will allow you entry and escort you to my sire on a single condition."

Bella remained behind the boundaries of the estate, Derya's choice if her words did not gift her the knowledge she should retract her appendage from the other side of the threshold in case he responded poorly to her words.

"You utter a word, or a string or words at the insult of my creation or the result of it on my sire's disposition, and I get to cut out you tongue. Each time."

A contract of entrance. One that if unhonoured meant he would be thrust from the building by whatever magical means bound them from private estates and occasionally holy grounds. Sacrifice his tongue or sacrifice his entrance if insult was done to Valentin turning her, or caring for her as he did.

"I have been taught to be very efficient with a scalpel."

Irises and success. She had bite. He liked her.

“Oh, I see,” he murmured, the flame flickering gold in his hand, dancing between them like a secret. “So this is what Valentin’s been doing instead of answering my letters. Hiding in his garden with his flower and pretending the sun can’t find him.”

He tilted his head as he looked at Bellamy, amused more than anything. Not quite admiration, not quite mockery. The sort of expression a boy might wear while watching a snake swallow something bigger than itself.

“No wonder he’s gone soft. I would’ve, too. Look at you.”

He turned, flame still idly lit between his fingers, and made a show of flicking his gaze toward Derya.

“Though you are wrong about something… it would take far less than hours to set Miss Fishbait here alight,” he drawled. “Isn’t that right, darling? Still half river and half dry rot. One spark and whoosh! No more gatekeeper.”

Derya scoffed. “Try it and see what you lose.”

“Oh, sweet,” Doran crooned, a whistle dragging between his lips. “You always were the bravest piece of tinder I knew.”

She stepped between him and Bellamy then. Fool’s move. A knight’s instinct with no armor to back it. “That’s enough,” she said. “Whatever his reasons, they matter not. He’s not coming in—”

It would’ve been so easy to just say it. But Doran had forgotten how to be simple.

Her hand reached for the door, and that was all he needed. He sank his fangs into his own forearm. The sound was soft. A puncture, a tear. Blood welled up fast, dark and wrong, like ink spilled on water. Not red, not quite.

Derya froze. A beat. A breath. Her head tilted, nostrils flared, lips parted. Confusion flickered across her face before reason did.

The wound was already closing, skin knitting over in unnatural spirals.

She reached across the marble archway, fingertips brushing the drying blood, and frowned as Doran put out the match against his tongue. 

“You smell different,” she murmured, face scrunched. “Off. Like—”

“I’ve been cursed. Badly. Even worse than usual. And I need your darling alchemist.”

A pause. A lone truth hanging between ancient bloodlines.

“I really need him.”

The glint in his eye was less cruel now. Still sharp. Still dangerous. But shaded with something else. Desperation, maybe. Or grief in its cleverest disguise.

“And before you ask,” he added, glancing down at Derya, “yes, it’s permanent. Yes, it’s spreading. And yes, before you try to stab me with whatever delightful little bone needle you’ve tucked in your bodice, I’ve already tried to kill myself. Four times.”

He lifted her hand, and kissed it. Just like he had centuries ago, at that cursed ball where they first met. “Didn’t take.”

“So,” he said to Bellamy, voice silken once more. “What do you say, angel? Want to give a dying man his miracle?”

[bellamychevasym]

A sister. Bella had never had such a thing. There had been other priestesses at the temple, and the one closest to the court had a small selection of aasimar - as many were born to different celestial parents there were still so few it was rare she was close in age to any that had been born of Vembrasyn - but none had felt like sisters. Maybe it was that what Bella experienced was not much akin to the others but she'd always felt at a distance to them. It seemed especially of value because of this that Derya saw her in such a way, though only made her abandonment of the woman worse.

"It was easier to assume anger than much else," she responded, aware Derya knew enough of her past to know that she and Valentin were, at the time, some of the few people who had not used her in some capacity. Directly, yes, they had been studying her, but it had been a voluntary trade, not a demand, not an act inflicted upon her, and even in the first few days after she had lost her wings when grief consumed her and she was not the most effective of studies they had not become angry with her for her sorrow as others had in the past. It was hard to assume that eventually such kindness, as Bella saw it, would last.

There was a uniqueness to the way Derya saw her companions as opposed to the way Notelaih had described his own. Even the cruel master's the djinn had he seemed to recall with a beautiful fondness where as Derya spoke of them becoming haze in her mind. It justified the reality that romance and sex was especially different to all but, perhaps she was naive because...

"Not often but...possible," she shared this naive insistence on love as Derya pulled a chair up nearer to her. "Someone could surprise you." Surely Valentin having waited for her was proof of this for Derya. He was perpetually detached. Derya deserved someone who would surprise her. "Someone grand like a master of dragons or a victor of war or an emboldened poet." In her mind the only person who might be capable of getting Derya's notice was someone grand, larger than life.

Her words stopped with Derya's soft touches, feeling the brushing of fingerprints over her cheek as her dark hair was pushed back. Having a sister would have been nice, a comfort, as Derya felt that way now. "He complimented my work at an event in town and requested we dance, and when he came to see me at Red Thread," she mentioned the establishment where she tailored clothing - a new talent she had developed since running to impress Valentin upon breaking the charm. "Where I felt the strangest desire to feel his hands on my waist." It was a feeling she'd had with Valentin, but not one acted on, and not one she'd acted on with Notelaih either in the moment because it had felt so overwhelming. "He spoke so deeply and with such boldness for his heart I just wanted to feel it against my own."

Bella's shoulders had curled in as she spoke and the hair Derya had pushed back fell forward. "I had already begun writing down fantasies within my coffin while the sunlight trapped me in. Most of which were fictitious entirely, or focused on Valentin if they saw any true face, but one day I wrote to him instead. Half letters of emotion and thought and the other of desires and want."

Her green gaze lifted to Derya, "you have written letters of romance yes?"

Derya’s hands paused over the leather-bound book resting on her lap, the quill in her fingers hovering above the parchment as Bella’s words drifted through the humid air of the glass conservatory. The poisonous plants around them thrived in their little glass world, their sharp leaves catching the flickering candlelight like tiny blades. The steady splash of water from the fountain cradling Derya’s feet was the only sound aside from Bella’s quiet embroidery, the needle slipping rhythmically through silk, the fabric drawing soft, precise patterns beneath her delicate, pale fingers.

Eternity was a weight Derya carried like a humid cloak, thick and suffocating, syrupy slow. She had wandered far, through centuries blurring into one another, the faces of her kin faded and borrowed from old books and half-remembered stories. Before meeting Valentin, she had tried to live without blood, to step lightly on the land, but it was only with him that a new silver glimmer of hope had taken root. 

And Bellamy had encapsulated her in a joy so fierce it nearly ached, a flame in the endless night.

Derya looked up from her book, the quill tapping lightly against the page as she met Bella’s bright eyes. 

“I missed you too. You’re like the sister I lost long ago... before everything shattered and faded into silence.” Her lips curved in a faint smile that didn’t quite touch the depths of her eyes, but softened her gaze all the same. “And no, I would never be angry. You feared that, but it was needless.” She closed the book slowly, laying it on the small table beside her notes. “Though matters of the heart… those are far less my expertise. Much less fixable than potions or spells.”

She shifted her feet slightly in the cool water, watching the candlelight flicker across Bella’s focused face as the needle slipped through the silk again, pulling threads taut and steady.

Derya chuckled softly when Bella mentioned the scandalous letters to a djinn. The flush that rose to her friend’s cheeks made her feel a flicker of warmth. How far had Bellamy recovered, what a beautiful sight!

“I’ve had many lovers before,” Derya said, leaning back, eyes twinkling with a rare spark of humor. “But it gets boring, when you can barely count the centuries. Faces fade, names blur, and desire becomes... predictable.” She shook her head slightly, the faintest sigh escaping her lips. “It’s not often you find something—or someone—that makes you want to risk more than your usual detachment.”

Rising with grace, she pulled another chair beside Bella and sat, letting the rustle of the plants surround them like whispered secrets. The water lapped gently around her feet, cool and grounding.

“Well then,” she said, voice dropping to a teasing murmur, “since Valentin will not, you must tell me everything about this djinn. Every scandalous detail. Don’t leave out a single thing.”

Her hand brushed a loose strand of Bella’s hair back behind her ear, an unspoken invitation to share, to bridge the long gaps of time and distance that had stretched between them.

Inside the conservatory, warmed by candlelight and their shared closeness, the night felt almost tender.

[bellamychevasym]

When he smiled, so too did she. It was easier to smile once she felt he was not upset with her. Not so upset at least that he might refuse to smile anyway.

"I broke our promise," she asserted. Unsure if it had ever actually been a true promise, one made on some solid vow, or if it had simply been something they'd said and taken as such. Regardless it didn't actually answer his question of how she had been in any direct sense, but surely he knew that meant how she had been feeling had surrounded the idea of breaking what she felt had been a vow not only to him but to herself.

She had wanted to be better, to stop running, and yet it still had seemed this immediate reprieve from a situation that felt painful that ultimately had not gifted her with any lasting comfort.

Stepping further forward once more she too began to feel that tension. Different than the kind they typically had between them that had always felt to the vampire like some elastic trying to retract. Now it was like one ready to snap, stepping forward relieving some of that.

"I have felt guilty on it, and ashamed," she indicated of this broken promises effect on her. "Not to say other things have not been well or unwell, but I am not sure compartmentalising everything is necessarily an effective solution," Bella added. She had been doing it for decades, after all. She could offer small children blessings and feel happiness when she had been an aasimar priestess and still find herself ready to break apart mirrors when her mother informed her of 'trips' across Withermore. Bella could enjoy her time with Valentin, appreciate Derya's return, and regret abandoning Notelaih.

"Valentin has been kind and...," Bella rolled off, unsure of the word to describe how he had been. Open or accepting seemed as though he was going out of his way for her but she knew he did not see it this way and didn't want to portray how he was behaving as effort to Notelaih when it was not. "Proactively present. His colleague has made her way back to him and is a friend so she has been of great comfort, though it has not helped what has happened. Silk and Quilt have not left my sides and I have not been in attendance at work much. I - I have worried on you," she admitted. She worried for all of them, even those within the council she did not know so much like Asvari. He had been strong in his approach with her but he had seemed genuine. He did not deserve death. Merry she worried would welcome such a fate with arms too wide.

Once more Bella stepped in to him, her wolf remaining close but not in protection from Notelaih, rather from anyone who might approach the pair of them, Bella's hand reaching for his like touching him once more might shift the tension between them back to what it had been before. "If only I were so old and wise as the rest of you, will you allow me another attempt at my word?" she asked him, soft pallid fingers hoping to attain his grasp once more, to feel his warmth channel up through her ever still veins.

Notelaih had long since forgotten what it was like not to care about the opinions of those closest to him. He'd once been the rebellious youth, the one who acted before thinking. Until he'd grown used to being a servant, to serve. And he began to care about those he served. He would never think himself vain or jealous or any other negative emotion. The only flaws he saw in himself were those that were perhaps too positive. But the conversation with Bella had left him rethinking everything he'd said.

And he remained at a loss.

Meaning there was a serious flaw on his own part that he was overloooking.

He'd considered time and time again to go to Bella, to ask her if she could explain it to him. But every time he worried if this would only drive them further apart. So he continued to figure it out. Or to attempt it.

And while they were doing a similar job, their paths rarely crossed.

Until they did.

"Bella." He couldn't help but smile, something about her always set his heart in motion, it grew the heat that was already at the core of his being. He'd once admired her, and that admiration had turned to more once he'd actually gotten to know her.

He knew no other being at this moment who he cared for more.

"It's been... some time. How have you been?" Ever kind, ever patient, even if he also felt something between them was tense and tight, and perhaps ready to snap.

[bellamychevasym]

Bird. Curious sort of description. Even as aasimar her dark wings had been leathery, but she supposed he meant more metaphorically. A wounded bird, wings clipped to prevent her from flying. Cruel. Such cruelity seemed to follow through each of his words, not only insisting upon her greatest loss but of her sire's 'bad decision' of choosing her. The first could wound. The second was simply amusing.

The small shift to her expression as she heard it showed so, her pink lips rising on one side, only to fall back down. Not to mention the lack of reaction from her wolves that proceeded her own steps, each simply taking their place on the inner side of the door, one with is dark silken fur as stoic as Bella, while the other with it's coarse and mottled brown fur seemed to match Derya's energy, tense and ready.

"I think the wind might be catching your scent," Bella asserted as she stopped just behind them, her long black gown quite modest, covering her throat and the full length of her arms, over even her hands, and down legs so it dragged on the ground, even as it seemed to cling to her, though as she had walked into the light through the door it appeared to shift like she was covered with crawling spiders. In truth it had been embroidered with moon silk so that it reflected only when starlight touched it, the subtle movements of her person appearing like the embroidered spiders crawled across her. "Because I smell of success and irises," the woman responded, gaze unshifting in a way that no doubt seemed familiar.

Valentin's influence had swayed her in her infancy as a vampire, but even as a High Priestess before her express had been stoic unless emotion took hold of her. It was perhaps a look he had seen well before his arrival to the St John's estate in Destarin. When travelling through Withermore, within the forests. Certainly his own eyes seemed similar to a monster within the forest, one that devoured and her influence had never had much charge over. It left her curious, face shifting momentarily and one of her feet stepping forward between her wolves so she might get a better look at him.

Bella would never have begrudged any beast within the woods the chance to dine on any monster that had been in her company. Vampires were a kindness compared to the royals of Withermore.

"None of us fetch, however," she continued with soft brush of her long dark hair away from her shoulder, the backs of her fingers spreading the strands to waft her scent over him. She did smell of lilacs, and of grapefruit and cedar and...aldehyde. A synthetic. Valentin had made the scent she wore and Bella imagined if someone were close to Valentin they'd know he had.

"And to burn this place to the ground would take hours, by then the sun would have risen, and you would be dead with us," Bella countered, her eyes still curious observing him, trying to place a face she had never seen but eyes that had penetrated in the woods. If only she could feel his mind, but that was an ability lost when she was turned.

Her other foot joining the first, though none had stepped over the boundary of the building - none were so stupid. "That's if you don't get hungry."

Bella couldn't tell when he'd fed but she knew there would be someone around the estate that Valentin was using to either dine on himself or for experiments that she could slaughter to bring in out in him, to taunt his hunger until he conceded. Valentin could not go one day without a meal, she wondered how long the stranger in front of her might go, especially if he was so desperate for entrance.

"So, perhaps, to avoid a wasted evening, you might suggest a more convincing reason I should allow you entrance to the home of my paramour and myself." It was not on her to decide who could and could not see Valentin but she doubted her sire would allow entrance to someone Bella had deemed she did not want access to her, especially in light of all the deaths in Destarin as of late. "Surely you came for a purpose."

Love Nest, Funeral Pyre

(Starter with @bellamychevasym) Doran liked doors. They made people feel safe. As if wood and locks were anything more than hopeful gestures. He tapped once. Then twice. Then again, harder, because rhythm mattered and he was feeling theatrical. The wind howled behind him, and he imagined it as applause.

The door opened a crack.

“Miss Fishbait,” he crooned, lips stretching into something not quite a smile. “Still playing clerk to our favorite philosopher-leech.”

Derya. Still sharp. Still precise. Still giving him that disapproving schoolmistress look that made him want to track mud through her entire sterile little world.

“You’re not coming in,” she said.

No ‘hello’? No ‘you haven’t aged a day’? Rude.

He glanced at the threshold. Ancient rules, older than either of them. Even the curse hadn’t stripped those away. 

“No,” he said, with mock sorrow. “No, I’m not. But I will say it’s deeply offensive that after everything, you still remember the rules. Wound me, darling.”

“You don’t get to call me that.”

“And yet…”

“Valentin’s not here.”

He nearly laughed. She lied like someone who hated having to. Voice too clipped. Spine too stiff. Fingers twitching like she wanted to jab a needle through his eye socket and twist. Doran loved that she hated him. He loved that she didn’t pretend otherwise.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” he pouted, tongue clicking. “Because you only lie like that when you’re about to tranquilize something.”

Derya’s fingers were already twitching toward whatever cocktail she kept tucked in her belt.

“Oh, I know,” he cooed. “You’re terrifying. That’s why I like you.”

And he did. He really did. If he hadn’t been cursed to rot everything he touched, maybe he’d have tried turning her once. Just to see if she’d bite back.

His hand dipped into his coat. She tensed. Good.

“Relax,” Doran murmured, retrieving a dented silver flask, ancient and well-loved. “Not that kind of surprise.”

He uncorked it with his teeth. The whiskey reeked of old gods and older promises. He poured a line of it across the threshold, slow and deliberate, letting it soak the wood.

“Let me in,” he said mildly, watching the amber vanish into scent. “Or I turn this charming little love nest into a bonfire.”

From his inner pocket, Doran withdrew a single match. Running it across the doorframe with a hiss, a flame bloomed to life.

“If I can’t walk in,” he added, the light dancing in his too-wide eyes, “you’re coming out.”

He didn’t bluff. Not these days. He hadn’t lied since he lost the ability to taste regret.

Behind Derya, he heard the softest of sounds. The brush of footfall.

Not Valentin. Too light.

He didn’t need to look. But he did anyway.

And there she was.

Her.

Bellamy.

All softness and secrets and something new clinging to her like perfume. She hadn’t spoken, but she didn’t need to. The wolves came first—two of them, hulking and silver-eyed, flanking her with the unthinking grace of things born to protect. Doran’s gaze flicked to them, then back to her.

“Oh,” he said, grinning slow and wide. “Well, well. What do we have here?”

His gaze dragged over Bellamy. Head to toe, toe to heart.

“You must be her. The bird. Smells like Valentin’s blood and bad decisions. Gods, he went soft, didn’t he?”

He almost sounded amused. Almost. But beneath it was something hollow. He used to know what Valentin’s blood smelled like. He used to hear his voice in the dark. Now he only got echoes.

“And you brought puppies,” he added, smile curving into something wicked. “Adorable. Tell me. Do they fetch, or just maul?”

He turned the match slowly in his fingers. The flame danced.

“Be a dear,” he said, eyes still on the girl, “and fetch your alchemist. Or let me in and I’ll find him myself.”

[bellamychevasym]

Talk Amongst Maidens || Bella&Derya

"I have missed you," Bella insisted as the two took to one another's company in the small glass conservatory filled with poisonous plants, the moon from the nights' sky illuminating the vampire's pallid skin, while the flickering candles illuminated the warmth of nymphs deep tone. It was similar to the many nights spent together prior in the St John's Estate in Withermore, but, at the very least, Bellamy was a new woman, not the sorrowful girl she had been upon turning. Not wholly at least. Moments seemed to flick over her, Derya no doubt noticed that despite the large bed in Bella's private room, the woman's coffin was still what seemed primarily used, a large blanket often spilling out of it's side, and she went nearly everywhere with two large wolves.

Currently the two were alone however. Silk, the quiet one of the two wolves, had likely taken rest by Valentin's feet as he wored, while Quilt was probably running the grounds in search of jackalopes to dine on. The glass conservatory was exclusively in the use of the two women. So Derya could work, while Bella embroidered, and both could speak freely.

"I think perhaps I would not have held Valentin at a distance so long if I'd had your guidance," she spoke of the man she had befriended, though in some ways mothered. "But I did fear you would be as angry as I presumed he would be for what I had done."

The fire.

Bella had worn a charm for years to keep Valentin at bay, afraid her destruction of his life's work and home would enrage him, or at least give the tempered man a reason to seek out and kill her, or worse, if any love had grown from him because she had never been sure then that it had, that her actions had destroyed that. For Derya, Bella worried less on the genuine nature of the woman's friendship but knew her own goals had aligned with Valentin's, and that Derya was not the sort of woman one wanted as an enemy. To hide from one meant hiding from both and so she had. In truth she would not have been angry had Derya wished to kill her, yet it seemed she did not.

"I truly needed your wisdom in many ways," she began, thin fingers with long nails in a shade slightly grayer than her complexion ran a needle through silk slowly, repeating the action while she spoke. "I imagine he did not tell you what caused me to break my charm," Bella whispered despite their isolation.

Keeping to her metal chair while she worked Bella did lean nearer to the other woman. "I had been writing...intimate letters with a djinn." Bella could not flush and yet her cheeks filled as though she were, fullness rising to them, green eyes giddy with girlish excitement. The woman Bella had been in the past, that Derya no doubt recalled, had reacted violently when a man even looked at her with implication, had cried that she would never be able to be loved, had taken more than a year to voluntarily reach for Valentin. Now she giggled at the notion of her intimate letters, excited to share with her friend.

"Fantasies and confessions. The sorts of letters hundreds have probably sent you." Derya was stunning, after all. Smart and deadly. Perhaps she was especially beautiful to Bellamy because she had some of the same qualities that Valentin did, both smart and determined and...soft with her. Derya had always been understanding, and Bella suspected it was because she too understood the pain of being a woman alone and trying to survive. Both could now thrive.

"Perhaps if you had been near you would have stopped me from being so reckless with my want as to pen it down and send it."

@nereidofneed

[bellamychevasym]

Dove Cameron Via Tik Tok

[bellamychevasym]

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She couldn't sense him the way he could sense her, she'd never been able to, but much as when she had initiated something beyond formalities between them he seemed to step out of his reactions that indicated a numb banality to show her he felt something. In the past what that something was lacked a clarity, the closest she could affirm was perhaps he was fond enough of her to appease her nature. His half lidded eyes now seemed less for her sake, a soft curl to the edges of her lips looking at him, felt his hand between them as her own was.

Her smile shifts into a soft moan when he lifts himself into her, a momentary surrender to the sensation of his fullness slipping inside her, eyes closing, the flickering candlelight light within the lab disappearing. It is when he draws her lower that a happy calmness fills her, so trusting of his affections she could not feel any reactive tension in her muscles, thighs she had expected to tense at his pull instead sunk until the curve of her arse rest against the inside of his thighs, only enough tightness to her hamstrings to keep her from entirely sitting on him.

Just as she sank to him with ease she is drawn to him with the same calmness, eyes still closed when she feels the wetness of his fingers at her cheeks, suggesting her lips lower to his. She can smell the blood on them, smell her arousal he had touched between her legs, and kisses him with contented need, her lips only just parting to breath in the taste of his kiss. A chosen action, the same for her hands drawing back from him, resting behind her hips, nails grazing the curve of her arse. A show beyond what emotions of hers he could feel warming their bond that she too wished for him fully, trusted him to move and roam.

It is when her lips part against his, breathing him in, that her hips start to roll forward. Those same parted lips exhaling, a quieter moan complimenting her breath when his cock partially departs her warm entrance from the action, before filling her once more, arousal slick around the near immediately healed scratches her nails had left on his cock. A deep breath pulling into her as she sought a gentle rhythm, purposefully tightening her entrance around him, pleased with herself, nose tenderly moving from one side of his to the other, lips not departing his. No, it was not a passion to get drunk on, to be overwhelmed by, but it was the passion she had yearned for between them; slow, purposeful, loving.

Valentin could withhold his own responses, life spent with centuries of restraint and numbing boredom makes it his natural baseline, but to what point. He does not want to hold back with her. He wants to dissolve with her. Around her. Within her. He wants to dig deeply into the bosom of her body and make himself known there. She drags the blunt edges of her nails across his scalp, grips his hair and utters a command with her rolling body against him and there is nothing else. Nothing but the touch of her fingers, the sharpness of her nails, shallowly cutting through the thin skin of his cock, not enough to draw blood and the skin knits back together like a running stitch following the stroke of her fingers.

She needs him, he can feel it in the air coated with the wanton taste of her heady arousal and he wants her. A hand reaches between their bodies, trailing down the front of her abdomen, knuckles grazing an ice led pathway to coarse pubic hair. Adjusting himself, head of leaking cock presses against her tender core, a tease for her just as much as it teases him. Just a tantalizing taste.

Blood and fangs and the abyss of his half lidded gaze. He is not drunk on passion, he is not overwhelmed by her blood, he feels everything and doesn't let it move him. He moves himself and sinks into her. Slipping wet folds of her body down his length until he enters her fully. He sighs. Every action deliberately made, every touch of his fingers against her body, every location that meets his mouth is chosen. He is a scholar making study of her figure and he will annotate within her margins, no page left unturned. Religion is a book and its title is Bellamy. Blood tipped fingers touch the sides of her face, returning to her mouth with another prayer.

[bellamychevasym]

Apologies || Bellamy&Notelaih

The young vampire stood outside of Merrymock's estate, the one he had claimed as Governor, a concept that now seemed relatively up in the air. He was likely inside, but Notelaih wasn't, and Bella had not seen him since their fight. She had attempted to see him a few times, but felt uncomfortable leaving letters at his home, and once the deaths of the council members became more prominent she had taken to remaining in the St John's estate for her own safety. This cause to leave was valid, however, and she intended to remain outside in the small garden of the modest home until Notelaih's arrival, even if it meant being in the line of sight for some potential killer.

Bella could defend herself, of course, hidden within the long cloak she wore, burgandy velvet draped around her dark hair as the cloak's hood hung over her, was a blade and yet it likely would have been the last thing she'd draw after her claws and her fangs, after her companions had taken their share of flesh from whoever came close. The wolves, as such, were with her. Each more alert than normal, one by her side, the other searching the grounds on behalf of the entire council. Regardless of if she could defend herself though, she was not stupid enough to be ignorant of potential danger when it could be avoided, which was why she had remained in her home with her sire.

Bella had stilled missed Notelaih.

This missing him became especially true when Valentin mentioned he had come by the estate to introduce himself. He had wished to try and know him and Bella had to assume that was for her benefit, even without asking further on the interaction she assumed it had gone poorly. Poorly to Notelaih, at least. Valentin had seemed rather indifferent, only mentioning it as Bella had asked about the deliveries that had arrived earlier in the day, arrived at the same time Valentin had dismissed Notelaih apparently.

One of her wolves stepped forward at the djinn's familiar scent stepping onto the estate, causing Bella to do so as well. The woman's hands, covered by lace from the length of her sleeves touching her knuckles, reached for the edges of her cloak's hood and pushed it back over her shoulders. She looked quite herself, cream skin of her collarbones appearing as soft as the velvet, the lace dress contouring her form. The only evident difference was that, unlike her typical attire, the base of her garment was not half so worn away as it normally was. Both an indication she had not left home in some time, and that she'd had more time to devote to her work.

"Notelaih," she spoke at his arrival, unsure how her presence would be taken. Should he simply tolerate her there because decisions needed to be mad? Did he miss her too? Was he angry she had not seen him since she had become distressed by his words?

@djinnoffire

[bellamychevasym]

[bellamychevasym]

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As her own shoulders had rolled in, Bella observed his roll back, releasing the blouse he wore and allowing it to fall away, a sweet little smile to her lips for the moment of observation between them she was gifted because she knew the shape was not quite from a man who had, in any mortal life, sat stoic and poised at a desk reading and taking notes. His shape truly appealed, a subtle masculinity she had recalled writing in her journals on, recalled tracing beneath fingers as they laid in bed considering the origins of, they were not sized for bravado or performance but for purpose. Bella believed she would have a difficult time being unattracted to him in any form regardless, sweet fingers far more concerned with the man beneath her touch, capable of romanticising every aspect of him.

It would be hard to attribute the perfection of his tongue to her romanticism however, the woman's lashes fluttering like hummingbird wings as his tongue and hand flowed together up her form, the sensation of his saliva capturing her blood one she too would have equated to worship, a sensation she had never experienced but with him beneath her, the muscles of his own legs between the vampire woman's pliant thighs she could feel it, and could feel herself enjoying the blasphemy of it. To be worshipped in ways more intimate than she had ever offered her own diety. Perhaps she did not deserve her wings if she would allow someone to gift her such attention, a sacrilegious, self indulgent thought as she felt her berry red blood sticking their skin together once more like honey, woman appreciating the trail of ichor being dragged down her skin, a sweet sticky path of want that ran over her belly button and between evident pelvic bones.

The sensation of his tongue and teeth - of her blood felt in only thin droplets reaching the wet arousal already between the lips of her cunt - could not quiet the volume of the prayer on his lips, a promise that Bellamy would not forget. Eternally.

It was a gift felt in more than romance as his teeth caught her areola, what puffy pinkness remained hardened in time for his tongue to clean sweet blood drops from his small bite. So taken by each gesture she had barely moved since removing his blouse, one hand simply resting forgetful in his hair, lips reacting each time he had kissed her while in truth her mind was on the sensations he gave, following nerves and pressure and consistencies. These three sensations culminating when his teeth sliced through thin veins surrounding her nipple, nerves rushing to her cunt and causing him to roll over his pants once more, desperation for more of his prayers.

It was then action seemed impossible to resist, a feeling she knew from days in her coffin, where thoughts of him took hold. The woman's thin fingers, with nails sharpening as her fangs did within her mouth, pushed up through his dark hair scraping his scalp tenderly, until they grasped at the base of his skull. Small hands held hair and used her strength to slowly draw him away from her, to see the blood on his lips, to observe the sharpness of his teeth that had uttered promises, to see the face of the man worshipping her.

"Show me," she requested in Vembrasyn, continuing to enjoy the desecration of her past mixed with the privacy of a language she knew no observer could understand. His actions had illicit a confidence in the woman, her cunt rolling over his cock through fabric, mossy eyes wishing to watch his reaction as she still held his scalp within her grasp. Bella's hand that seemed to still hold scalpel moved between them to cut the buttons of his pants, as it had his blouse, before a clattering could be heard on the ground when dropped. She needed him inside her like she had never recalled needing blood, nails grazing his cock as her hand reached between them to withdraw him, no doubt leaving slight cuts over his length.

"Make your vow within my cunt."

Her emotions are a bonfire in the dark. They explode over his tongue like sparking embers. Only she can awaken feelings within him he'd believed were long ago contained.

Sharp metal cuts through the fabric of his shirt easily, the murmur of her voice a melody within a breath. He rolls his shoulders back, freeing himself from the tatters of his shirt, separating from her neck only briefly in the movement. Thick blood oozes in a slow trickle down to her collar bone and below to her breasts. His tongue follows its trail as a devoted sinner. Palms across the ridges of her spine, he pulls her in as he leans into her. Her blood squelches between their upper bodies pressing together as his tongue flicks to the point of her chin and seeks her mouth for a tainted kiss. He echoes against her teeth, speaking in Vembrasyn, "Yours, eternally." It sounds like a prayer or a promise.

His mouth continues its devotional path from her lips, back to her neck, sticky with ichor, leaving the stain of his kisses as he forges a new path to the gentle swell of a pert breast. Her nipple is reminiscent of a lilac and he catches it between his teeth first before laving over with the flat of his tongue. The tip of his fangs sink in around her areola.

[bellamychevasym]

@merrymockthejester