#deep-damasked

[literaryvein-reblogs]

A List of "Beautiful" Words: Red

for your next poem/story

Cardinal - a brilliant red

Carmine - a vivid red

Carnation - a moderate red

Carnelian - a red or brownish-red

Cerise - a moderate red

Cherry - a variable color averaging a moderate red

Crimson - any of several deep purplish reds

Damask - a grayish red

Erythematous - exhibiting abnormal redness of the skin or mucous membranes due to the accumulation of blood in dilated capillaries (as in inflammation)

Erythrism - a condition marked by exceptional prevalence of red pigmentation (as in hair or feathers)

Ferruginous - resembling iron rust in color

Floridity - tinged with red

Gules - the heraldic color red

Hectic - red, flushed

Laky - a purplish red

Lateritious - of the color of red brick

Lurid - shining with the red glow of fire seen through smoke or cloud

Magenta - a deep purplish red

Maroon - a dark red

Miniate - to paint with red lead or vermilion

Puce - a dark red

Raddle - red ocher

Rouge - a red powder consisting essentially of ferric oxide used in polishing glass, metal, or gems and as a pigment

Rubefaction - the act or process of causing redness

Rubicundity - having a healthy reddish color

Rubor - redness of the skin (as from inflammation)

Rubricity - redness

Ruby - the dark red color of the ruby

Rufescence - a reddish or bronze color

Rufosity - quality of being reddish

Sanguine - a moderate to strong red; bloodred

Scarlet - any of various bright reds

Stammel - archaic: the bright red color of stammel (i.e., obsolete: a coarse woolen clothing fabric usually dyed red and used sometimes for undershirts of penitents)

Vermeil - vermilion (i.e., any of various red pigments)

Vinaceous - of the color of red wine

More: Lists of Beautiful Words ⚜ Word Lists

[perlelune]

no body, no crime | Coriolanus Snow | iv.

Your childhood friend returns from his exile in district 12, but he's not the sweet, quiet boy you once knew anymore.

Warnings: NON-CON, Plinth!Reader, Gaslighting, Drugging, Murder, Forced Marriage, Forced Pregnancy, Loss of Virginity, Somnophilia

This is a dark story. Heed warnings before reading under the cut.

𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘 𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

The warmth of the sun caresses  your eyelids as they quake open. You groan, stirring under the sheets. But instantly, you freeze. Pain cascades through your body. A soreness starting at the apex of your thighs and radiating through your limbs has you struggling to move.

Still, you do it, pushing past the weird feeling embedded in your flesh. 

Your brows collide as you attempt to remember. 

Where are you? How did you get here?

The damask walls are unfamiliar and the gigantic bed even more so. You comb through your memories but nothing surfaces, a violent headache assailing your senses whenever you think too hard. You squint at light pouring through the half-drawn velvet curtains. You peel off the heavy blanket, gaze traveling downward. Ice spreads through your veins. 

You’re shocked to find yourself stark naked, skin speckled with darkening bruises. Even worse, a tiny crimson spot stains the white sheet covering the mattress. You shudder. 

Your breaths start to quicken. Quivering, you grip the sheet, twisting it between your fingers as disbelief rocks through your core. The blood on it seems to enlarge, painting your whole vision red.

As you inspect the room, noticing the state of the rumpled bedding and your clothes lying in a heap near the bed, denial clashes with the blatant truth. 

It can’t be. Yet all the evidence is staring right at you. 

You start to hyperventilate. 

The door cracks open and your head jerks to the side. Coriolanus’ towering frame fills the doorway. There’s a silver tray in his hands and the smell of coffee and fresh toast rise from it.

You take in his tousled blonde locks and his half-unbuttoned blouse. He looks more disheveled than you’ve ever seen him. A gentle smile hovers on his lips. But, as he registers your distressed state, it vanishes. He rushes to you, placing the tray on the mahogany nightstand near the bed.

Face growing hot, you tug the blanket so it conceals your nakedness.

“Hey, take it easy, princess,” he whispers, brows knitting as his hands reach your cheeks to cup them.

Chest rising and falling at a fast pace, you stutter, “C-Coryo, what happened last night?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Concern sparkles in his cobalt orbs, pellucid as crystal in the morning light.

He caresses your face and gingerly says, “It was…a bit of a wild night.”

You scowl at his response. It’s not what you’re asking and he knows it. 

You lick your lips, gathering the tiny embers of courage sizzling within you.

You don’t want to ask what you’re about to ask. Hell, you might not even want to know. But you have to. You have to because there’s a pit of discomfort and confusion within you and it’s swelling by the second.

You take a deep breath and inquire, “Why am I naked? Why…Why is there blood on the sheets?”

His frown accentuates.

“Princess…”

You nudge his hands away from your face as your patience dissolves.

“Tell me,” you emphasize.

His jaw ticks at your reaction. He then releases a deep sigh.

“You drank a bit too much. We both did.”

A sinking feeling blooms in your stomach. Your eyes grow saucer-wide as the words are snatched from your tongue.

You’re statue-still as Coriolanus’ fingertips wander over your arm, stroking up and down lightly. 

“You were having so much fun, genuine fun.” His voice softens. “It was the first time in a long time I saw you smiling this much.” He pauses, holding your gaze. “And I suppose…there were budding feelings and we got carried away.” Your jaw drops. “You told me you needed me. And I had quite a few drinks myself.” He chuckles but it’s bereft of humor. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t remember all of it either, just you begging for me and screaming my name.”

Warmth gathers in your cheeks. 

“God. You and I, we…”

Coriolanus nods. “Yes.”

Tears well up in your eyes. Coriolanus wipes each of them, uttering tenderly, “I know you didn’t want it to happen that way, but at least it was with me, right?”

You’re at a loss for words. Sure, it’s better for it to be Coryo than a stranger…at least in some way. But as naive and old-fashioned as it is, you wanted to save yourself for your first love, for your future husband. You looked forward to your first experience being one of absolute love and trust…one you actually could cherish and, most crucially, remember. 

Now it’s forever ruined. 

Your heart plummets.

“I need to go home. I need to-” Clutching the sheet against your bare form, you try to climb off the bed. 

Coriolanus seizes your shoulders, easily cinching you to your spot.

You glower at him, puzzled and frustrated. 

Still holding your shoulders, he explains, “Like this, princess? Are you sure that this is a good idea?” His soft inflection drips concern. He bends closer to you. “Your parents, William…What would they think?”

This gives you pause.

You lower your head, pondering his words.

Dread mounts within you as you realize how right he is. You could spin falsehoods to your parents until you’re blue in the face but they’ll know something is off the second they lay their eyes on you. Especially your mom.

One look at you and she’ll guess exactly what occurred. Or some of it at least.

It’s been like this since you were brought into their home as a little girl.

Nothing ever gets past Demetria Plinth’s keen eye.

Then who knows what they might ask you to do to preserve your honor and dignity? 

The thought makes your insides twist in knots.

You tossed away your virtue out of wedlock, you betrayed William, you besmirched your family name. You’re a disgrace.

There aren’t a million options in cases such as yours, and it’s a scenario you’d like to avoid. 

It guts you to imagine not only ruining your life, but Coriolanus’ as well. All because of one stupid drunken mistake. 

Besides, while it might be foolish and presumptuous in your current predicament, you still want to marry William. He’s the man of your dreams. You suppose it’s just a matter of whether or not he’ll even want you now.

Folding your knees, you tuck them against your chest and wrap your arms around your ankles. Tears stream down your face as you quaver, “I don’t know what to do.”

Silence hangs in the air as you weep, Coriolanus rubbing your shoulder in quiet support.

After a while, he suggests, “You could come to my place.”

Your head snaps up.

“What?”

His thumb presses along your collarbone.

“Just for a few days. It’ll give you time to rest, get yourself together.”

“No, Coryo, I can’t ask you…” You shake your head, guilt clawing at your heart. “I’m horrible and I should-”

“You’re far from horrible,” he interrupts, placing his long fingers on the side of your face. “But you need a little time, right?”

You give a shaky nod, despising yourself. You’re a coward. Instead of facing your actions and their consequences, you’re running away, hiding. 

“Just let me handle everything, princess.” His knuckles sweep over your cheek, collecting more fresh tears. “I’ll take care of it and it’ll be like none of it ever happened.”

“W-Where are we right now?” you ask, trying to distract yourself from the storm of anguish raging inside you.

“Oh, this is one of the many spare rooms of the Dovecote estate,” he replies casually, though you discern a hint of something. Disdain, perhaps? 

“Clemensia…”

“I talked to her,” he reassures. “Don’t worry, she won’t tell a soul.”

You can’t imagine Clemensia doing anything to help you but you suppose, for Coryo, she would.

“She also made sure to quell any rumors before they can start.”

Your forehead creases. “Rumors?”

He gives your hair absent strokes as he sighs. “People know how close we are, princess.” Your heart skips a beat. He angles your chin upward, his gaze confident. “Don’t you worry, okay? I’ll take care of you. All you need to do is trust me.”

You acquiesce and it elicits a broad, tight-lipped smile from him.

He rises from the bed.

“How about you grab a bite?” he offers, bending to graze his lips over your forehead. “The car will be here in less than an hour.”

A car, already? Part of you is astounded by his swiftness but your distress overtakes everything else. You should count your blessings that no one else knows about last night.

You take perfunctory bites of the toast on the tray and sip a few gulps of the tepid coffee.

Once more, you try to remember. You wince when another throbbing headache hits you. 

All you can see are Coriolanus’ bright blue eyes and his smile. Nothing else emerges. 

So, you give it a rest. Maybe in time, everything will come back to you. 

For now, you just need to trust your friend. 

You shroud yourself in silence the entire drive to Coriolanus’ home. He keeps smiling at you from the seat near yours and you return it meekly. While you know it’s not his fault, you find it nearly impossible to meet his gaze, an uncomfortable feeling pitting in your stomach whenever you do. Anxiety bounces in your gut when the Corso comes into view. 

You haven’t been here very often, though your dad often spoke of moving here, where most of Panem’s elite resides. The thought of leaving your childhood home doesn’t thrill you but you’re keenly aware of what the Corso represents in Strabo’s eyes. The sign that the Plinth family made it. And to add this kind of feather in his cap, your father would move you and your mother to a smaller place in a heartbeat. You know he is only waiting for the paperwork to be signed.

It’s something you’ve tried to forget as of late. And now you’re cruelly reminded of it.

The car comes to a stop in front of an antique apartment building. Your eyes wander above the window. Piles of rubble still sit amidst the place, a reminder of the Dark Days perhaps.

Coriolanus opens your door and offers you his hand. You accept it and stagger out of the car.

He removes his coat and throws it on your shoulders, swaddling your shivering frame. You’re thankful. You’re still wearing the same red dress from the night before and it hardly shields you from the cold. 

You can’t help but soak in every detail as you and Coryo take the elevator to the penthouse. You sometimes wondered how the wealthiest in Panem lived. Your parent’s house is nice but this is different. Every inch of the building from floor to ceiling screams luxury.

As soon as you’ve crossed the doorstep of the penthouse, slender arms wrap you in a warm hug.

Tigris’ eyes glimmer as they rest on you.

“Coryo said you’re going to stay with us for a while,” she chimes. “How wonderful.”

“Only for a day or two,” you correct.

She squeezes your hands. “Then we’ll have to make the best of it.”

An old woman appears from an adjacent room. She strolls to you, a small smile etched on her lips. Uttering no word, she presses a white rose between your hands. You examine it. It looks exactly like the ones Coriolanus sometimes wears on his breast pocket. 

“Is this your grandma?” you whisper as the old woman wanders off, humming a tune you vaguely recognize as Panem’s anthem.

Tigris’ lips curl skywards. “Yes, but we call her grandma’am.” She giggles. “It’s much more distinguished.” Sadness glistens in her amber gaze. “She isn’t…all the way here these days, but she still tends to her roses.”

Coriolanus wedges himself between the two of you.

“She’s tired, Tigris. You have to let her rest,” he informs.

“Of course. We’ll catch up tomorrow. Promise?”

You give a weary smile. “Promise.”

“I’m so very glad you’re here,” she says, hugging you again before taking her leave.

Coriolanus guides you through the apartment, his hand curled around the small of your back.

“I’ll show you to your room.”

He takes you to an opulent room with a massive bed in the middle. 

“I had a bath drawn for you,” he announces.

Your eyes round as you note the copper clawfoot tub sitting near the bed. Stunned, you approach it. Your fingers drag along the edge of the tub.

Flower petals float atop the steaming water. 

“I’ll leave you to it, princess.” He drops a quick peck on your forehead before disappearing.

You lock the door as soon as he leaves and peel the crimson dress off your body. You’ve half a mind to destroy it once you return home. Your mother would probably be appalled at that considering its price…but you can’t see yourself wearing it ever again.

The water’s burning hot when you plop inside the tub. You welcome it.

You bring your knees to your chest as you stare at the rose petals. You wish your worries could melt away in the water the way dirt and grime can.

But no such luck. So you’re left contemplating the tiny ripples form above the surface as you swallow yet another surge of tears threatening to spill.

A soft high-pitched voice draws you back to consciousness. Groggily, you sit up in the bed.

Tigris’ beaming face greets you.

“Are you okay? You slept past dinner. Coryo said not to disturb you.”

You look around.

Stars pepper the night sky outside the stained glass windows. You can’t believe you took such a long nap. You vaguely remember burying yourself between the sheets after your bath. You didn’t want to think, or even be awake. You wished for oblivion. So you let sleep ensnare you as soon as your head hit the pillows.

Your features scrunch. Your memory’s still foggy, but the headaches have abated at least.

“The maid can warm you a plate if you like,” Tigris offers.

You shake your head. You have no appetite.

“I just hate that I overslept.”

Sympathy dawns on the young woman’s face.

“Your body must have needed it. Coryo said you guys partied pretty hard last night?”

Your heart wrenches. But you try not to let anything show on your face, giving a placid nod.

“Besides, you don’t have anywhere to be, do you?” she inquires.

Your stomach sinks. You were supposed to meet with William today, but you can’t imagine seeing him in your current state. 

“No, I don’t,” you lie.

Your gaze meanders about the room. Surprise ripples through you at the wooden trunk you detect in a corner of the room by the wardrobe.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, Coryo had your things brought over,” Tigris replies casually.

You gasp. “But I won’t be staying long. He shouldn’t have gone through the trouble.”

“He said he wants you to be as comfortable as possible.”

A deep, familiar voice echoes in the room. “She’s right. After all, our home is your home, princess.”

Your eyes find Coriolanus'. His tall frame fills the door. He looks like his usual self now, his blond locks neatly slicked back and his outfit impeccable.

Guilt creeps inside you following his statement.

“I should warn my parents,” you muse aloud as you rise from the bed. 

Coriolanus shares a look with his cousin.

“Tigris, can you give us a moment?”

She nods before heading for the door.

You try to do the same, panic swelling inside you, but Coriolanus blocks your way as he stands before the door. He towers over you with ease, hands clasped at his back as he leans against the doorjamb. 

You give him a puzzled look.

“I already sent them a letter,” he reveals.

“Oh,” you mumble.

“I just told them you’re with us and you’re fine.” He smiles. “It’s the least I could do.”

“The least?” you scoff. “You’ve already done so much for me, Coryo.”

“Like I said, I don’t want you to worry about a thing.”

He licks his lips, scrutinizing you a while before continuing, “You’re not just a guest. You’re family. You can stay for as long as necessary.”

This makes tears spring to your eyes. You dip your head but his digits sneak below your chin, tilting it upward so your gazes meet.

“What’s wrong?”

Your voice comes out a watery croak.

“You shouldn’t be so nice to me,” you sob, tears skipping down your face freely now.

You erected a fence around your emotions and now the dam is shattering.

He slants his head. “Why not?”

You don’t reply, a flood of tears blurring your vision. You grow overwhelmed, unable to utter a word as strangled sobs spill from your throat.

Coriolanus’ arms coil around your frame. He cradles the back of your head, tucking it against his chest.

His dulcet timbre breezes over the top of your head.

“It’s okay, princess. You’re safe. You’re always safe with me,” he whispers, letting your tears drench his blouse.

[leomitchellart]

'Magister Illyrio murmured a command, and four burly slaves hurried forward, bearing between them a great cedar chest bound in bronze. When she opened it, she found piles of the finest velvets and damasks the Free Cities could produce . . . and resting on top, nestled in the soft cloth, three huge eggs. Dany gasped. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, each different than the others, patterned in such rich colors that at first she thought they were crusted with jewels, and so large it took both of her hands to hold one. She lifted it delicately, expecting that it would be made of some fine porcelain or delicate enamel, or even blown glass, but it was much heavier than that, as if it were all of solid stone. The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers, they shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold. The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls.  "What are they?" she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder. "Dragon's eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai," said Magister Illyrio. "The eons have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty." 

A Game of Thrones, Chapter 11, Daenerys II

[chivalrychained]

What about a prince getting ahold of his knight's armor while he's not wearing it (somehow. Maybe being sneaky while the knight is bathing or something). Touching all the little details and the dents fondly... Pining... Bonus if he's a little weird about the way it smells. Do you feel me does this make any sense . I don't know. This is my humble idea 🙂‍↕️

(you are so right and correct on this. this got kind of long, so I’ll throw in a read more)

The prince finds his knight’s borrowed chambers are empty, with only his armor, laid out on the bed on a thin muslin blanket. The armor is finely-wrought steel, plain and proud as his knight’s visage.

It predates the knight’s service; in this, and only this, his knight has been solely unbending. When it is beyond repair, then you can dress me in as much gilt as you want, and put your damn falcons on my breastplate.

Privately, the prince prefers him like this; in his well-worn, plain breastplate of harsh steel and his chainmail hauberk and his great bascinet helm, the picture of honest violence. What a pair they make, the prince in his silver-gilt armor, the knight in his plain steel, a pair well-matched in battle and so unlike in every other way.

Hesitantly — fervently — the prince runs his fingers over the steel. Here and there, he can feel the marks that great blows have left, not yet set to right by smith’s hammer; here is where the Damask knight had driven his great warhammer into his knight’s chest, and nearly thrown him off his feet; here, the notch at the armpit, where the knight had taken a blow meant to open the prince’s throat.

What other memories did the steel hold, memories already beaten from its frame? Fights long since forgotten by its wearer, no doubt, or buried so deep it made no difference. If the prince asked, his knight would smile in that bluff way of his, and declare himself an open book, and lie with clear eyes.

The sun has sunken beneath the mountains, and the deep chill of spring has settled over the darker alcoves of this borrowed keep, but the breastplate still holds a little of the day’s warmth; or perhaps that is the warmth of the knight’s body, still clinging to the metal even in this cold room. He takes a breath; he can smell leather and the slight sweetness of the oil the knight lavishes it with to keep rust at bay, and the tang of blood and sweat, and something else, warm and autumnal, that could only be the knight himself.

“My prince?” The words snap the prince back to himself; suddenly, he knows what a fool he looks, sitting here in the dark. His knight is standing at the doorway, half-dressed in borrowed robes no doubted sent by their host, his dark hair mussed and wet, his dark eyes shining. “What are you doing, here in the dark?”

“Thinking,” the prince says, taking his hands from the armor as if it has burned him.

The knight’s gaze follows his hands. “Brooding over that old harness?" he says.

The prince shakes his head. "Admiring it," he says. “For the service it has done you.”

“It’s been useful enough,” the knight says, tilting his head. “You’re in a queer mood, my prince.”

That draws a laugh from the prince. “No stranger than usual, folk would say.”

“I’m not folk,” the knight says. “What are you doing here, skulking in the dark and not yet washed from the road?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Does Your Grace wish me to attend him in the baths?”

Desire flames hot , wicking at the Prince’s core, dangerous and guttering. It could so quickly unmake him, from this careful construct to an ill-made thing. “No doubt my lord’s attendants will find themselves equal to that task,” the prince says. He runs a hand through his hair — the knight speaks the truth, it’s still dusty from the road.

“I will attend you all the same,” the knight says, catching his sword up from where it rests on the bed. He belts it at his waist, but leaves the rest laid out. The robe shifts, revealing gnarled ropes of scars that criss-cross his chest. “I don’t like the way our host looks at you; he’s an ambitious man, Your Grace.”

“The same could be said of me,” the prince says.

“But you’re my lord,” the knight says. And that makes all the difference. The words are unspoken.

The prince smiles. “Lead on, then.”

[tessasinclair]

𖧷 𖧷 𖧷 　　 𖧷 𖧷 𖧷

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗜𝗦𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗥𝗢𝗢𝗠 ₍ obx fandom, 𝗂𝗇𝗍𝖾𝗋𝖾𝗌𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖿𝖺𝖼𝗍𝗌 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝖻𝗒 𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘳 ₎

𝒯𝒽ℯ 𝒯𝒶𝓃𝓃𝓎𝒽𝒾𝓁𝓁'𝓈 𝓂𝒾𝓈𝓉ℯ𝓇𝓎

┃ 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙄𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙢 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙩 𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙?

› The mysteries in Outer Banks are closely connected to each other, and John, Pope, and their friends must solve one mystery to move on to the next. They first learn about the key when Pope visits Carla Limbrey, who offers to give him the proof of John’s innocence in Sheriff Peterkin’s murder if Pope gives her the key. However, Pope has no idea what she is talking about and barely escapes when Limbrey instructs her half-brother Renfield to capture him. Pope later finds out that he is a descendant of Denmark Tanny, the sole survivor of the Royal Merchant shipwreck. Tanny not only retrieved the 400 million dollars worth of British gold that was the cargo of the Royal Merchant but also the giant and golden Cross of Santo Domingo, which the crew of the Merchant stole from a burning Spanish ship.

› After Pope finds the key, he discovers the following words are inscribed on it, “Path to the tomb begins in the island room.” This riddle confuses him and his friends and stops their search for the Cross on its track. Meanwhile, Limbrey has spent a lifetime looking for the Cross. She seems to be suffering from some terminal illness, and the Cross is said to contain the Garment of the Savior, a holy relic that can cure several diseases. She figures out that the Island Room must be somewhere in the house currently owned by the Cameron family. After all, it was Tanny who built the house. She subsequently shows up there with Renfield.

ּ ֶָ֢ .

› Rafe likely knows who Limbrey is, considering her family supposedly owns half of Charleston and has little choice but to let her in. With his help, Limbrey finds the Island Room at Tannyhill's dining room. When Sarah comes home the following day, she discovers all the wallpapers of a room have been ripped out, revealing an intricate drawing of the entire island. Realizing what she has found, she rushes to inform her friends. In the 1800s, Tanny himself drew all the paintings on the wall, leaving clues for not just the Cross and the gold but the burial site of his wife as well.

› Steeped in history and Southern tradition, the Island Room at Tannyhill is more than just a formal dining space — it is a testament to generations of Camerons who have gathered beneath its vaulted ceilings. The walls, once adorned with intricate gray wallpaper featuring classic damask patterns, evoke the genteel elegance of a bygone era, reflecting the refined tastes of the Lowcountry aristocracy.

A massive mahogany table, hand-crafted and polished by skilled artisans long before modern times, commands the room’s center. Its surface bears the faint scars of countless family meals, celebrations, and whispered conversations, where the weight of legacy was often felt as keenly as the clink of fine china.

Tall sash windows framed by simple linen drapes let in the soft coastal light, casting a muted glow on the room’s crown moldings and aged hardwood floors. This light reveals subtle imperfections — the marks left by time and the occasional rebellious hand — reminding all who enter that history is a living, breathing force, both fragile and enduring.

Within these walls, the Island Room holds stories of fortune and loss, of love and sacrifice, woven deep into the fabric of the Cameron lineage. It is a sacred space where the past lingers quietly, urging those who gather here to honor their roots even as they chart the uncertain course of their future.

ּ ֶָ֢ .

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 !

₍ 𝗉𝗁𝗈𝗍𝗈 resources : pinterest.com ₎

𝗆𝖺𝖽𝖾 𝖻𝗒: 𝗍𝖾𝗌𝗌𝖺𝗌𝗂𝗇𝖼𝗅𝖺𝗋, 𝗉𝗅𝖾𝖺𝗌𝖾 𝖽𝗈𝗇𝗍 𝖼𝗈𝗉𝗒

[valyrielwrites]

A Facade of Frost and Flame

Part 1/? - Next Part >

(full fic available on Ao3)

Relationship: Kaeya / Reader Word Count: 5866 Tags: Major Character Death, Royalty AU, Arranged Marriage, Multiple POV, Slow Burn, Forbidden Love, Prince Diluc, Knight Kaeya, Angst, 18+ Eventual Smut

❄️ Summary:

As Grand Duchess of Snezhnaya - daughter of the reigning monarch - you have always known that your fate was never your own to choose, yet found comfort in the sheltered life you had in the Winter Palace. However, your whole world is soon turned upside down when you are promised to a man you have never met, to become the future Queen Consort of a country that you’ve never been to, and be used as a pawn in a game that you have no desire to play.

In your despair, you take comfort in a man who shares the pain of being separated from one’s home.

Daughter,I am sure that it is quite easy to hate me for all the choices that I have made, especially when you have the sweet naivety of youth and time to dwell on such things.Please find it in your heart to remember that I, too, was once a young girl in your position.I will not explain myself, other than to say that sending you away is necessary. For the Empire, for this family, for you. As you are of my blood, I trust that you have enough sense to understand your duty.I know that you will not grant me your forgiveness, so I shall not ask for it.I ask instead that you make the best of your new life. I hope that you find love and comfort in the match that I have made well for you, and pray that you will never have to do the things that I have done to ensure this family's survival.

You stare blankly out of the porthole of your cabin, eyes stretched out to beyond the edge of the horizon, trying to ignore the ship’s endless unsettled rocking against the open ocean that carries you to your new home. Even after a week of sailing, you still haven't grown accustomed to it. Perhaps you never will.

It's difficult to focus beyond your nerves as your attendant Tonia makes a fuss over your appearance. You had both been preparing since dawn, combing and pinning your hair half up, applying just enough makeup to enhance your natural features, and laying out an assortment of dresses on the bed for you to choose from.

"First impressions are everything," she says, and you feel your head spin. "What about pale pink? I'm sure he will like that. Or the - "

"Your Highness?" Another servant appears in the doorway, peeking her head around the frame as she knocks to see if you are in a fit state to receive guests. "Grand Duke Tartaglia is here to see you before we arrive. The Captain says we shall be at the port before noon.”

“I’m not yet dressed. Give me a moment!” you reply, blinking away the tears behind your eyes that threaten to spill over. You look down at your white linen chemise, and Tonia makes a show of bowing her head when she hands you a thick blue velvet robe to cover yourself with. "You may enter."

Your older brother Ajax enters the room, closing the door behind himself. His mess of ginger hair falls softly into his eyes, as he carries a large flat box that he sets down on the bed with a warm grin.

He’s dressed in his finest ceremonial attire - a white brocade sash draped over a long forest green coat, adorned with silver aiguillettes and medals of distinction, with a pair of grey riding breeches and black leather boots to match. In every regard, he looks to be the perfect prince.

It’s a stark contrast to the plainer grey dress that Tonia wears, a girl two years your senior yet much lower in station. Bastard-born to a well-regarded Courtier and one of his own servants, your attendant would never have the luxury of wealth or titles that you possess, even though her features resemble your brother more than yours ever had.

“I brought you a gift,” he unfastens the buckle and carefully lifts the lid to reveal a beautiful mantua gown. It is the same deep green as his uniform with an ornate silver thread damask embroidered into the fine silk skirt.

He reaches in and removes the dress, holding it out at arms length for you to inspect.  “I wanted to give it to you for your birthday but… perhaps you’ll have use of it before then.”   

You feel a lump form in your throat when you bring your hand up to touch it, catching the expectant look in his bright blue eyes as he waits for you to respond.

Smooth to the touch - the fabric is so light and intricately stitched that it’s hard to believe that anyone could make something this perfect with human hands alone. “Ajax… You didn’t need to -”

“Of course I did. I promised I would,” he laughs, as if he’s proud of himself for remembering. “I had it handmade back in Liyue before I came home, the finest silk that money can buy, painstakingly crafted by the Tianquan’s personal modiste. I had to call in a lot of favours to make that connection - but based on the results I believe it was entirely worth the wait.”

You’re speechless.

You still remember the way that you had sobbed as he said his goodbyes, all those years ago when he was sent half-a-world away, after first being appointed as the Snezhnayan ambassador to the Empire of Liyue in the South. You had begged him not to leave you behind at the Winter Palace.

Back then, he had held you tight and reassured you that he’d be home soon with more gifts than he could carry.

When you met him again three years later, his brief return was accompanied by another two coaches filled with souvenirs from his travels. The only allied country that he hadn’t gotten you anything from was Liyue simply because he could fit nothing else in the carriages. Tonia had joked that there would’ve been more room if he had stayed behind, but he promised you that the next time you saw each other, he would make up for it by giving you the most exquisite and expensive gift that the Southern Empire had to offer.  

“I can’t believe you remembered… This must have cost a small fortune,” you laugh in disbelief.

“A large fortune,” he shrugs with an easy smile. “I thought that you could wear it when you are presented at court. It matches my uniform so it’ll make a strong first impression - really show off just how united we are so they know not to mess with you. Mondstadt’s little Prince and his courtiers won’t know what hit him.”

Mondstadt’s Prince, you nervously swallow. Other than his name and the fact that he is the descendent of one of the Knights that overthrew your Great Grandfather King Decarabian, you know next to nothing about Diluc Ragnvindr - the man you are to marry.

Shock rippled through the Winter Palace when the announcement was made. The Tsaritsa, Empress and Autocrat of all Snezhnaya, was planning to offer her only daughter as a bride to the usurpers in the South, to solidify a prospective military alliance between the two countries after decades of mistrust and animosity.

Back then you had spent a whole month begging your Mother’s advisors and attendants for a meeting, just five minutes to plead your case and implore her to call it off, for a chance to change her mind and see what a terrible mistake this was.

But she refused to see you.

The Tsaritsa already had an heir in her first legitimate son the Tsesarevich - your other distant brother that you barely spoke a word to - and a spare in Tartaglia as the Grand Duke. Two sons to serve Snezhnaya as Harbingers in her court whilst you had enjoyed your sheltered life as a Duchess away from the politics and games.

But as a woman, there was only one way that you could serve your country. Your Empress expected this of you, and there was no escaping it.

So you were met with nothing more than a letter of well wishes, not even granted the satisfaction of a face-to-face argument or explanation. She had left you to wait, confined to your apartments in the palace until the day that Grand Duke Tartaglia arrived to escort you from your home one last time.

Some empty words on a page and the knowledge that you would be dragged kicking and screaming if you continued to refuse led you to finally relent. The rift between you and your Mother stretching so wide now that, when the gates of Zapolyarny closed behind you for the last time, it was almost a relief to leave that Court of Frost behind.

There was no going back now.

“Your Highness?” you hear Tonia speak, although at this moment she feels so far away. It’s too difficult to hide your emotions, the burn in your eyes breaking through as tears begin to fall, and you cast your gaze down in a futile attempt to hide your face from everyone in the room. “____?” she lowers her voice now as she addresses you again, but by your own name and not a title this time.

If anyone else dared to speak so freely, it would be considered improper. But for someone you have spent your entire childhood with and consider as close as a sister, you find comfort in the reminder that you’re actually a person outside of the role you were born to play.  

“I’m sorry, it’s nothing,” you give a faint smile as you lie. “I was just… it’s such a beautiful dress.”

Tonia looks at you with concern as your words trail off, stepping forward to place her hand on your arms and guide you back towards one of the chairs, before going to take the gown from your brother.

He steps forward and drops to his knees in front of you, his hands reaching up to pat your cheeks dry without smearing the thin layer of makeup on your face. You can see there’s a panicked look in his eyes now, as if he is as terrified as you are, as if he blames himself for not being able to stop this.

“Are you scared?” Tonia asks from across the room as she lays your new dress out.

“I don’t know,” you half laugh.

“You’ll be safe in Mondstadt, I swear to you,” you see Tartaglia’s eyes darken as his jaw clenches. “None would dare to lay a hand on you. Our armies are the strongest in the world and the Fatui’s influence is far-reaching, any threats will be severely dealt with before you even know they exist. That’s only if anyone is foolish enough to try and cross us in the first place.”

“That’s certainly one way to reassure her.” Tonia’s brows raise and she gives you a knowing look, as if to make light of his intensity.

“No matter what the danger is, I will parry it. Isn’t that what any older brother would do? If you have anything better to offer, feel free to speak up.”

She sighs and holds her head high as she replies, tongue in cheek, “I ought to know my place. A lowly servant such as I has no business in your family affairs.”

“And yet you're still talking,” he laughs and cocks his head. “Besides, when have I ever given you the impression that your insight is unwelcome?”

“Enough,” you give a half-hearted smile and decide to interrupt before the playful squabbling can escalate into an actual argument. “I’m just nervous, I think. I don’t really know what to expect.”

“Well… They say the Prince is quite handsome and brave. Apparently he became a Knight when he was just fourteen, although how much of that is down to his natural talent or his father just being King is anyone’s guess.” Tonia tries to reassure you.

“Right.”

It doesn’t really work.

“Okay,” she rocks back on her feet as she racks her brain for anything else. “They also say he’s a King in the making, many expect that he will be elected by the council once Crepus dies.”

“Who’s 'they'?” It's Tartaglia’s turn to raise a brown now.

“You know… people… generally,” she shrugs. “Surely you’ve heard the rumours? You’re much closer to the world of royal gossip than I am.”

“So much for abolishing hereditary monarchy,” he scoffs.

After King Decarabian lost the war, Barbatos the Usurper shocked the world by allowing his council to elect Mondstadt's next King from among themselves. Although, now the various factions have begun to struggle against one another in the absence of a strong, unbroken line of succession.

Your marriage to Diluc, and the military backing of your Mother’s empire, is likely to cement the Ragnvindr clan as a political juggernaut that dominates the council for years to come. But it also has the potential to shatter it entirely if you’re unable to step out of your Great-Grandfather’s shadow.

“Look, I’m just saying that there are worse complete strangers that you could’ve ended up betrothed to - better a foreign prince than some aging provincial lord allied to your Mother or the Tsesarevich. Think of it as an opportunity to heal and settle the wounds of the past between your family and their nation.”

“Our nation,” Tartaglia corrects, albeit as if he’s mocking those that say such things and still believe them to be true. “Technically, I am still Decarabian’s lawful heir. Some may argue that this marriage is a compromise far better than those usurpers deserve.”

“Funnily enough, it is only Snezhnaya that still recognises your claim,” Tonia points out. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Be careful who you say that in front of.”

“I’m not stupid Ajax,” she rolls her eyes. “I wouldn’t repeat it outside of this room.”  

Your brother visibly relaxes when he hears you chuckle at the pair of them bickering, his thumb ghosting across your cheek one more time to catch the last tear as it rolls down your face when you weakly smile.

He goes to stand and turns to Tonia a little lighter than before, grateful that she came to be with you through all of this, knowing that when he returns to Liyue he will at least be leaving you in her safe hands.

“What if the people don’t like me?” you quietly ask. “What if he doesn’t like me?”

"Don’t be ridiculous. What’s there to dislike about you?” he replies.

“You’re beautiful… exceptionally wealthy and have royal blood… sometimes you’re very amusing too, I suppose - ” Tonia pauses to watch for your reaction, slightly irked when she sees the way you cringe at what she’s saying. “Shit, I don’t know, I’m not good at this, what do you want me to say?”

“It’s the thought that counts, Tonia,” Tartaglia offers a smug reply.

She lets out a sarcastic laugh, “Well, I did try my best.”

“If that’s your best, I’d hate to see your worst,” you say.  

Tonia takes mock offence, grabbing one of the cushions off the bed and tossing it in your direction only to miss and hit Tartaglia square in the shoulder with a light hearted laugh, “You’ll be fine ____. There’s no point worrying about the ‘what ifs’ until we get to them, and when we do, I’ll be there with you every step of the way.”

You had no reason to doubt what she said. Tonia had always been there for as long as you could remember, had grown up with you and served not only as an attendant but as a friend and confidant too. She was loyal to a fault almost, having been the first of your staff to volunteer to make the journey with you, even if it meant leaving the rest of her family behind.

You’re about to open your mouth to respond, to tell her how grateful you are to have her, when there comes a soft knock on the door.

“The Grand Duchess shall not be disturbed,” she says, turning her head towards the sound and dismissing whoever had interrupted.

“I must report to the Grand Duke,” The muffled voice of a soldier responds from the other side.

Tartaglia rolls his eyes just ever so slightly, almost imperceptible had it not been for the frustrated huff he releases before calling out “Enter,” and straightens his back.

Within a matter of seconds you all slip back into the roles you play in public - two noble and respected members of the royal household and their poor little servant that blends in the background.

“Your Highness,” the soldier stands to attention after opening the door, and silently waits for your brother’s nod of approval before daring to set foot over the threshold.

“At ease Grigory.”

“The fools at the port have advised that the north wind may make it difficult to dock in a timely manner,” his eyes nervously dart towards you and then away again when he realises that you are also paying close attention to his every word. “The Captain would like to know your thoughts.”

Tartaglia stiffens slightly, “The weather seems fair enough to carry on. Half our escort should continue as expected, but we shall change course to enjoy the Falcon Coast instead.”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

To the unsuspecting passer-by, this exchange would seem entirely innocent, pointless even, but from their tone it was clear that these two were discussing something far more sinister.

You were not privy to the exact meaning of their coded language. Perhaps that is exactly why they had spoken in such a way, but from the atmosphere in the room, you pick up on the fact that whatever it was - it wasn’t anything good.

“What’s happened?” you ask the moment the door clicks shut once more.

“Nothing you need to worry yourself with. Everything is under control,” he puts on a fake reassuring smile, another mask for his face to hide behind. “We’re taking a detour - just means that you two have more time to make yourselves pretty.”

“Are you saying we aren’t already?” Tonia teases.

“Prettier then,” he scoffs and heads for the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

There’s a moment's silence after he’s gone, the little joy left in the room dissipating into nothing but a lingering numbness that washes over you with the ebb and flow of the sea.

“He has agents keeping an eye on the port. It’s not safe for us to dock there,” Tonia turns to you and speaks. “Ajax wants to keep a low profile and split the fleet so that we’re a less obvious target.”

Your stomach drops, his earlier words ringing in the back of your head:

“...any threats will be severely dealt with before you even know they exist.”

How typical of your brother to try and shelter you, even if it left you feeling utterly unprepared and blind to what you may be about to face.

“You understood what they were saying?”

Tonia nods and purses her lips,“You pick up on lots of things when people forget that you’re there.”

“What’s the danger?” you dare to ask, part of you not wanting to know the answer.

“They didn’t say,” she releases an uneasy sigh and steps toward you again. “But considering that they don’t intend to turn the ship around and take us home, I’d say they’re either being overly cautious or it’s already been dealt with.”

A thousand different threats fly through your mind - an angry mob, pirates, assassins, or spies from Khaenri'ah set on causing you harm - all absurd yet possible the more you allow your thoughts to spiral, and if not for Tonia, you likely would’ve spent the rest of the journey pondering the horror that awaited upon your arrival.

“Trust your brother,” she says, her blue eyes flicking towards the gorgeous gown that lies draped across your bed waiting for you. “When has he ever not kept his word?”    

You say nothing in response at first, slowly getting out of your chair and walking towards the edge of the bed to stroke your hand across the smooth green fabric, tracing the silver thread pattern with your forefinger and as you close your eyes and gather yourself.

“Do you think we’ll ever be able to go back to Snezhnaya one day?”

“Perhaps,” she replies. “Maybe your prince won't be chosen as the next king. Perhaps you could bring him back with you and we can all go home.”

It was a silly question, really. You doubt that you would ever be allowed to return to court if you fail to become Queen. But Tonia's answer had lifted a weight from your spirit, like a window cracked open after the closing of a door, and for a moment, you could fool yourself into believing you have any choice at all.

“You make a pinkie promise, you keep it all your life,” you whisper to yourself.  

“I break a pinkie promise, I get thrown on the ice,” she continues the next line of that morbid nursery rhyme that all the children back home love to sing, and holds her little finger out for you to take as you finish it together.

“... The cold will kill the pinkie that once betrayed your friend, the frost will freeze your tongue off so you never lie again!”   

You let out a deflated laugh and let your hand drop to your side again, your eyes looking back towards the endless waves on the other side of the porthole.

The wooden oars moan against the water as a doleful wind beats the smaller boats back against the tide that carries you and your retinue ashore. You had known the air would be different here, so unlike the bracing cold of home, but nothing could prepare you for just how blustery this land is.

An open coastline rests a short distance away, a bay which sits at the edge of a verdant plain that stretches as far as your eyes can see, sheltered by cliffs carved from jagged grey stone that has been weathered by centuries of wind and wave.

Everyone is quiet as you approach, although if anyone spoke, you doubt that you’d be able to hear them well enough to reply. Your hands wind into tight fists against your lap as you try to steady your breathing and try not to look too unsettled in front of the strangers set to greet you.

A small group of soldiers stands to attention nearby on the beach, observing you, unmoving as your little boat finally touches the pale sand beneath the shallows and can travel no further alone.

You look away in an attempt to feign disinterest, remaining seated beside your brother and Tonia as the sailors strap their guns to their backs and haul themselves into the sea to drag the vessel onto dry land.

The second you step out of the boat you feel your leather boots sink into the sand, relieved that you decided to wear something more practical upon arrival and save the exquisite dress for a more appropriate time and affair, the fabric of your green cloak flapping behind you as Tartaglia takes your gloved hand with a cautious smile.

“It’s time,” he says, his voice less sure than he expected it to be.

You take one last chance to look back towards the ship that lingers in the bay, frowning as you watch your family coat of arms - a golden mask set against an imperial blue flag - whip so violently against the wind that at any moment you think it might tear away and be lost forever.

“____,” he calls your name.

You feel your throat tighten as you turn back to your brother, allowing yourself one last moment to waver before you step forward.

The soldiers regard you with caution, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords as they throw disapproving glares in your direction when you, Tonia, and Tartaglia, come to stop halfway between them and your own men, parting their formation to allow two figures to approach.

A man and a woman.

They’re both wearing the same black and silver uniform as the rest of their men, although they both wear long overcoats to signify their more senior rank.

The woman is fair of face, walking slightly ahead with her long golden hair pulled back into a high ponytail that passes the length of her coat’s collar. Clearly the one in charge of this unit, yet deceptively soft in appearance compared to the tall man trailing slightly behind.

You recall Tonia’s words back on the boat, how she mentioned that Mondstadt's Prince was said to be handsome and an exceptionally talented member of the Knights of Favonius. You wonder if this could possibly be your fiancé.

Everything about this stranger draws your attention, the warmth of his tanned skin compared to everyone else from his group, his deep indigo hair resting in a lovelock across his left shoulder, the clean black patch obscuring his right eye from view.

He radiates confidence to such a degree that you can’t help but recognise him as nobility, standing out against the rest of the crowd gathered at the beach. You feel an uneasy flutter in your stomach when you notice the curious expression on his face as he stops a short distance away and crosses his arms with a slight grin.

“Well, well… what do we have here?” his voice is teasing and smooth, almost too relaxed for what ought to be a formal affair.

His uncovered eye seems to dance between the three of you - glancing at you, your brother, then Tonia, and back to you again - and it's clear what he’s thinking even without him needing to say it out loud.

The difference in appearance between you and Tartaglia all but confirms the rumours that the Tsaritsa is a woman that enjoys the company of many lovers, although there doesn’t seem to be any judgement or scorn behind the curious look on his face as looks between you both.

“Long time no see… Your Highness,” the man you assume to be Diluc addresses your brother, the use of his title tacked onto the end almost antagonistically, as if it were a playful taunt. “I trust your journey was pleasant enough, although you seem to have missed your destination by a fair few miles.”

You feel Tartaglia squeeze your hand slightly as he laughs, perhaps to reassure you, perhaps to reassure himself.

“And yet you still managed to arrive before us! Although, there’s fewer than I expected. Are the Knights still having a recruitment problem or are they too busy tidying things up at the port to give us a proper reception?”

“We had hardly any notice of your sudden change of plans. There was really no need for the detour. I assure you that everything is under control now,” the man’s eye narrows as he replies, taking another step closer to stand beside his female companion. “But where are my manners? Allow me to introduce Jean, Lieutenant of this unit and one of the Grand Master’s most trusted advisors.”

“Mondstadt welcomes you, Your Highnesses,” Jean gives you a polite smile and bows slightly, although there's no warmth behind it. “The Grand Master knows that you’ve had a long journey. He has asked us to bring you directly to the capital so that you may rest before being presented to the King.”

Given the fact that you didn’t arrive when and where you were expected, that your brother mentioned the port again, and that the handsome man before you seems to want to downplay whatever the disruption was - you don’t believe for a second that your comfort is the reason why your host doesn’t want to delay things any longer.

“We are grateful for his hospitality,” Tartaglia nods and goes to introduce you. “This is my sister, the illustrious Grand Duchess  ____ of Snezhnaya, and her attendant Miss Tonia.”

“I’m honoured to meet you, Lady Jean,” you muster the energy to offer a convincing sweet smile, and then turn to the man beside her. “And you too, Your Highness. I look forward to -”

He cuts you off before you can finish your sentence, the sound of a short involuntary laugh escaping his throat as he stares at you in bemusement.

“I’m flattered that you think so highly of me! I hate to disappoint - but I’m not your Prince.”

Your heart drops. Barely ten minutes in and you’ve already made your first mistake.

“Kaeya,” he continues, introducing himself with a self-satisfied smile as if he relishes the fact that you were naive enough to make the assumption, before he bows his head. “Knight of Favonius. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Tartaglia laughs awkwardly and then turns his head to you, lowering his voice slightly to explain, “Prince Diluc’s right hand man,” before he looks back up at Kaeya and Jean to continue on with the pleasantries.

The clarification leaves you with more questions than answers, and an unsettling mix of relief and disappointment.

Part of you wishes that he had been your betrothed - if only for the sake of getting your first meeting out of the way as soon as possible - but you also can’t help but feel more nervous now that you know the type of company that Diluc seems to keep.

The insincere smile drops from his face when he catches you looking a little longer than you ought to, the both of you forgetting yourselves for a moment before you divert your attention to the ground.

Kaeya hadn’t been outright rude to you per se, but it was clear from his demeanour that he had little respect for you. Perhaps this was a small taste of what you should expect from the rest of the people of Mondstadt too.

“It’s been a long morning and I’m eager to see more of our ancestral home. Will we be travelling the main road?” Tartaglia asks.

“It’s the fastest and most secure route,” Jean says and warily looks to the Sailors that escorted you to shore that stand almost level with you - twenty altogether - split equally either side with their guns held diagonally across their bodies with the muzzles rested towards the sky. “If you wouldn’t mind handing over your weapons?”

Your brother releases you and tenses, shifting his weight and bringing his hand up to rest at the ornate silver hilt of the sword attached to his belt

“I certainly would mind.”

Out of the corner of your eye you watch as Kaeya does the same.

“We cannot permit entry to those bearing arms. I ask that you hand them over to our custody for the duration of your visit to be returned upon your departure.” Jean stands firm.

“It would be a violation of our military protocol to surrender such advanced weaponry to those with inadequate training in handling firearms. Wouldn’t want anyone to hurt themselves.”

There’s venom laced between his words and Jean picks right up on it, clenching her jaw slightly at the suggestion that her men are improperly trained, although, she’s smart enough to recognise Tartaglia’s attempt at deflection.

You look back to the formation behind Jean and Kaeya, every single man equipped with nothing more than armour and swords, and it's clear that he doesn’t trust that they won’t just take the guns to try and reproduce them.

“I’m afraid I must insist.”

“I don’t think you understand. We -”

“I apologise for my brother,” you step out and interrupt him before the situation can escalate, addressing Jean directly. “You must forgive his caution; we are aware that there was trouble before our arrival. He just wants to ensure my safety.”

“I assure you that the Knights will do our utmost to protect you, Your Highness,” she replies.

“Perhaps a compromise then?” you force yourself to smile and try not to feel guilty for stepping on your brother's toes. “One of our men takes the guns back to the ship, and the rest remain with us to bolster your escort.”

“What about him?” Kaeya nods his head towards Tartaglia.

“He keeps the sword,” you answer bluntly.

“Oh?”

Kaeya stares you down, waiting to see if you blink first. You don’t. Your heart races as you offer an ultimatum:

“Or we can all return to our ship and make our way back to Snezhnaya. I’m sure that my Mother will be greatly disappointed with the reception we received.”

For a moment, they say nothing - exchanging knowing looks between one another until Kaeya gives a silent nod, as if to make his feelings on the matter known before he looks toward you with thinly veiled contempt.

“Very well,” Jean replies. “I suggest you make your arrangements, a carriage awaits at the edge of Windrise.”

The two bow, leaving without another word, and you feel the tension in your body release.

“You handled that well,” Tartaglia says, a little proud of you, as if he’s forgotten that he was part of the problem.

“I would’ve handled it better if you told me what was going on,” you hiss.

“It’s nothing.”

Tonia, who has remained silent until this point, chimes in, “Clearly not,”

“Some of the locals at the port had been drinking. Getting restless, throwing bottles and jeering,” he snaps defensively. “You didn’t need to know something so trivial.”

You doubt that what he says was the true extent of it - given the fact that the knights had only sent a small portion of their men to meet you, when you had been expecting a ceremonial affair. But you see no need to argue with so many watching. There was likely a riot then. You make a note to find out more about it later.

You follow your hosts to the edge of the beach, your feet occasionally falling atop the footprints they leave in the sand that trail towards the lush grass of Windrise.

At the start of a winding dirt road you see a large yet plain wooden carriage attached to two enormous black Friesian horses, hardly suitable for someone of your status - although you imagine that is exactly the reason why it was chosen in the first place. Seeing as you aren’t sure of the risks that lie ahead, perhaps it’s better not to draw too much attention.

Tartaglia steps into the carriage first, inspecting the interior before turning and holding out a hand to help you inside, his grip tightening around your fingers when you feel your boot slip against the mounting block.  

“Watch your step, Princess,” Kaeya pulls up beside you atop a grey Andalusian stallion, tugging on the reigns with one hand to bring it to a shuddering halt. “I’m supposed to get that pretty little face of yours back to the city in one piece, remember?”

“Thank you so much for your concern,” you reply, teeth gritting together. “I wish you a safe journey as well. It would be a shame if you fell off that high horse.”

You don’t stop to look back at him as you hear him chuckle to himself, the sound of hooves kicking up dirt as he directs the horse away, taking a deep breath as you successfully climb into the carriage and try to remain calm after embarrassing yourself for a second time.

Once you’re all seated and ready to depart, you watch as Tartaglia draws the thin curtains closed, hiding you away again until you reach your new and unfamiliar home.

Next Part >

[rumbelleshowdown]

⭐️⭐️

Author: Curiosity Shop

Group A: Belladonna, lost in the woods, and music box

⭐️⭐️

The Healing Poison

Three months into her eternal stay at the Dark Castle and finally, Belle thinks that she may be settling into her new life here. She has exchanged her beautiful golden-yellow gown for a far more practical dress. She no longer gets turned around trying to navigate the seemingly endless corridors. She is becoming familiar with some of the Dark One’s odd routines and mercurial moods. She has even learned to cook several decent meals, nothing too fancy or fine but still; her food is filling and hearty.

Just as she finishes restocking straw for the spinning wheel in The Great Hall, she finds herself engulfed in a puff of purple colored smoke. She appears an instant later outside in a clearing of what she assumes is a forest. She is wrapped in a beautiful green damask cloak that she has never seen before and her hands are covered in a pair of thick leather work gloves.

This, she thinks, is the one thing she will never get used to: being one place one moment and in the blink of an eye she is somewhere else. It's dizzying and she nearly stumbles in her disorientation.

The Dark One’s twittering laugh fills her ears, “Careful Dearies, or you’re likely to trip.”

“Why did you bring me here?” She asks as she finds her footing and looks around.

“Why else? because I have a job for you.” He gestures to a small basket sitting on the ground not far from her feet. Belle picks it up as he conjures a smaller puff of the same smoke, a clear sign of his magic. When it clears, a dark black berry appears in his hand. It's shiny and smooth and looks a bit like a cherry or a small tomato. “Tell me, are you familiar with this plant?”

She shakes her head because while it looks familiar, she can not name it.

“Where I’m from,” he explains, “they were called belladonna, but the locals here call them sorcerer’s berries.”

“Beautiful woman,” she translates, “why was it called that?”

“Because long ago, vain women used parts of the plant to try to make themselves more attractive. Tell me Belle, are you a vain woman?”

There is some deeper meaning in his question that she does not understand. Something raw and jagged, something more like an accusation than a question.

“I don’t think so, not usually no.” Belle thought of the men she had known that had called her beautiful in the past, it had felt like most of them were more interested in looking at her than listening to her and that had been frustrating you more than flattering.

“Well good.” He barked. If that had been a test, she had no idea if she had passed or not. “Because if you try to steal so much as a berry or a leaf and use it for yourself, that could prove very dangerous and I will know.” He dropped the berry into her palm. “Now, don’t come back until you have filled the basket. I will be in my study.”

“Wait,” she says before he can vanish, “I don’t even know where here is, how will I find my way back?”

He laughs again; apparently there is something amusing about her confusion, “You are deep in the woods around the Dark Castle. Wander all you like, all paths will always lead you back to the castle eventually. Why do you think I let you roam around so freely outside? If you should ever try to leave without my express permission or be so foolish as to try to run away, you will be lost in these woods running in the same circles forever.”

“I am not going to run away.” She says dropping the berry into her basket. As long as she stays, everyone she loves is safe. She has never had any intention of attempting to back out of their deal.

“We shall see.” Is all she hears before he disappears.

The next night, Belle finds herself in the library, pouring over books on herbology. Like a burr in her stocking or a pebble in her shoe, there is something about the belladonna that she cannot ignore. She expected to feel pleased at his gleeful smile when she handed him the full basket, but instead she felt unsettled. It’s hardly the first time he has asked her to fetch ingredients for his spells or plants from the garden but something about this time is different and she must learn why. At last she locates an entry and her breath catches as she reads.

“Belladonna, or as it is more frequently called, deadly nightshade, is a highly

poisonous plant. While all parts of the plant from leaf to roots to flower are

considered active, the berries pose the greatest threat as their sweet taste and cherry-like appearance make them especially enticing.”

She drops the book on the table in shock. What has she done? Belle had gathered and handed over the tools to poison someone to the most feared sorcerer in several realms and she had done it without question. Someone somewhere could at this moment be writhing in agony and dying and it would be all her fault!

“I’m a monster.” she says to herself as the cold truth settles over her. She buries her head in her hands and tries not to cry.

“What’s this I hear about a monster?” Comes the almost cheery voice of Rumpelstiltskin as he enters the room. “You’re not talking about me are you?”

“I’m a monster.” Belle repeats with her head still in her hands.

“Oh I highly doubt that.” For the first time since she had known him, he sounds genuinely concerned. “I’ve met a few monsters in my time and none of them looked a thing like you.”

“I knew something wasn’t right about the belladonna. I knew it, but I didn’t ask why you needed it or anything about what it would be used for and now I’ve given you the means to poison someone, to poison so many people. Their blood is on my hands. What do you call someone like that?”

“I see.” he says quietly before enveloping them both in a plume of smoke.

Belle looks up to see herself in a humble room. A man and a woman sit anxiously in a pair of rough handmade chairs beside a bed where a small shape is covered in blankets.

“Dark One, you’ve returned!” the man said in shock as they both rise to their feet.

“Is anything wrong?” the woman asks. Belle can see clearly that days of worry have worn away at the pair of them.

“No, nothing at all. We’re just here to check on the patient.”

Belle gasps, “Why would you bring me here?” she turns to Rumpelstiltskin

“I thought you ought to see for yourself what your efforts have wrought.” So he means for her to watch her victim die? Cruel, but it was no less than she deserved.

“She started to turn a corner last night.” said the woman gesturing for them to approach the bed “After you brought back that salve. We rubbed it on her spots thrice a day, just as you said, and last night for the first time in weeks, she started to breathe a little easier.”

Belle looks at the bed where a small child lays. She can not be any older than seven. Her hair sticks to her head with fevered sweat. Her skin is sickly pale and covered in small red spots. Scarlet fever then, highly contagious and very often fatal. Was the poison meant to ease her passing? But it sounded like she was getting better?

“The little girl is their only surviving child. Though, yesterday, it did not look like she would survive much longer." Rumpelstiltskin explains, “Belladonna is highly poisonous, that is common enough knowledge. What isn’t commonly known is that if used correctly, it can also create highly effective medicines. As you can now see.”

The child slowly begins to open her eyes. Instead of the glassy eyes of fever, hers are clear to her parents obvious relief and great delight.

“Well then Belle, as the child is clearly recovering, I think it high time you claimed your prize.”

“My prize?”

“Her blood is on your hands as you claimed.” Rumpelstiltskin locks eyes with Belle but waves a sweeping hand across and above the child’s body, “and as she is clearly healing, well, a deal is a deal.”

“What exactly was the deal for?” Belle asked wary. She felt lighter than she had before knowing now what the belladonna had been used for.

“A music box,” Rumpelstiltskin giggled.

“Choose any box in the shop!” the father tells her as he happily hugs his daughter close.

She can not imagine why Rumpelstiltskin would have wanted the music box, but she will treasure it. When the music plays, it will remind her of the poison that brought forth a cure and the man condemned as a monster who saved her people. Perhaps, she thinks, dark things are not always evil.

[goodomensafterdark]

Writers Guild Cock Fight

Art by woaini_ogelskerdig

Summary:

Crowley wants Aziraphale, but does Aziraphale want Crowley?

Moreover, Crowley has the hots for Aziraphale, hasn't ever had the hots before, and isn't even sure what "hots" are supposed to feel like. He can't even cuss properly because every sex-related cuss word just reminds him how fucking (see?) confused he is.

But there's help on the horizon -- in the form of one Greek demigod they just happened to rescue off the side of a mountain. Not that our ineffable idiots have the sense to ask for help. But they're getting it anyway.

Written by startledplatypus, find them on Reddit and AO3!

Word count: 16,049 words

Trigger/Content Warnings: Explicit; dubcon; sex pollen; anal sex; oral sex; masturbation; mild exhibitionism; naga sex; snake sex: Ancient Greece religion and lore

Excerpt:

Crawly woke up on a low couch covered in deep navy velvet studded with tiny gold stars. A matching neckroll pillow nuzzled his head. The air was warm but pleasant, scented with cinnamon and cassia and… myrrh.

F---

“OH, my God,” he heard from across the… room? Well, it was more cylindrical than that, with fluted columns around its circumference and a ceiling lurking somewhere above. Night-dark curtains of tassel-edged heavy damask hung between each pair of columns, masking whatever lay beyond. Tiny lanterns floated here and there, strobing saturated, shifting colors across what little he could see of the lush, carpeted floor.

The Greeks did not have carpet any more than they had soap.

“OH, my GOD,” he heard again. This time it sounded less surprised and more mortified. And more familiar.

It sounded like Aziraphale when he’d realized one of his “rare statuettes” was a dildo.

Crawly groaned. Quietly. This was not going well. He thought about calling out to the angel, but changed his mind when he looked down.

He was starkers. Even his sunglasses were gone. And he was very… male.

Something made a muffled sound from not nearly far enough away. Then there was a thump, a quavery curse which might have been that awful “f” word, and a rather desperate groan. And a cream-colored neckroll pillow with pale blue stitchwork came sailing toward the demon’s head.

Crawly, too busy considering the ramifications of this situation, failed to duck. The pillow flumphed into his face and fell onto the couch-bed. It was, of course, tartan.

Shit.

A feminine alto laugh echoed around the chamber. And something ssssed.

“What the FUCK,” a very Aziraphale voice shrilled… and all the lanterns flared, revealing a too-tall woman standing on a low, round, central marble platform with a long, sinuous snake coiling up her linen-draped legs, over her cloth-covered shoulders, and down her bare arms. Its great head lifted, amber eyes lazily opening.

“Ohhhh,” it said. “Guessssts.”

Read more on AO3!

Special thanks to!!!

For beta-reading: DoonaRose, harlotupdog, ckocek, Paperclip_Ninja, and blackjeans93

For snek-jucation: blackjeans93

For ao3 formatting help: cheeseplants, GaiasEyes, mrscakeishere, and polychrome

For ART!: woaini_ogelskerdig

[marzipanandminutiae]

It started off quite normally- deceptively so, as such things tend to.

"What, none at all?" Edith blinked over her glasses, the movement of her pen slowing but not stilling on the page.

"Surely you've met people with no middle names before. It can't be that unusual, even in America."

"Yes, but Thomas has two." Now the scratching finally stopped. A smile creased the skin around her eyes as she glanced at her husband. "Thomas Chetwynde Firenze Sharpe. I was quite surprised to hear the minister say that, I can tell you!"

Thomas rounded on her, albeit with more playfulness than real heat. "Curse it, I told you never to repeat it aloud!" Crossing the mezzanine with long strides, he took hold of her shoulders and mimed shaking her (an effect thoroughly spoiled by her poorly stifled laughter).

Their mutual wife rolled her eyes and resumed rubbing polish into the rich mahogany of the sofa's carved back. "Thomas has two because he was the heir and could do no wrong," she said wryly. "I have none because I was a nuisance and could do no right."

"I must have vengeance," Thomas interjected. Despite the lingering smile, a hint of concern had crept into his eyes, and he raced on, "I can keep silent no longer- Lucille, my love, the M in our own dear Edith M. Cushing Sharpe's name stands for...Melusine!" On the last word, an ill-considered dramatic flourish made him stumble a bit, and set Edith giggling all over again.

At that, Lucille finally looked up from her task with mild interest. "Was that the late Mrs. Cushing's notion? I can hardly imagine your father as a scholar of medieval literature."

"Don't talk about my father," Edith replied, automatically and without any ire. "But yes, it was Mama's idea. She'd had such a hard labor, and they picked my first name together, so it seemed right to give her the choice. I suppose I can't blame her."

Lucille hummed assent. "She cared. That's good."

And if pressed, in the weeks and months that followed, any of them would have said that was where it started. For in the next moment, after a moment of that deep-in-thought expression that creased Edith's brow so often, she said in carefully teasing tones, "Perhaps we ought to think of a middle name for you."

"Edith-"

"You deserve one! But it must be something that suits. What about...Macaria?"

Thomas blinked at her quizzically, but the object of her game merely sighed and adjusted the placement of a damask cushion.

"The blessed death- I suppose I should be flattered, but I question your assessment of the facts."

"Ligeia?"

"You may leave that drunkard Poe out of this."

"I'm going to keep trying," Edith said serenely, removing her spectacles and capping her inkwell as she prepared to descend the staircase.

"And I'm going to keep wondering why I married you." But the astute observer might have caught a hint of a smile on Lucille's rouged lips.

In time, the game would become well-worn and familiar- a name here or there, thrown out seemingly at random over supper or tending the kitchen garden or even lying sleepily in bed as weak dawn light crept through the attic window. Its roles were finite: of course, Edith acted as mischief itself, and of course, Lucille played the beleaguered victim.

But the latter party never cried halt to it, not in earnest, and the former never stopped.

Because sometimes, even thirty-seven years too late, you need someone to care.

(with credit to @gaslightgallows for Thomas' middle names)

[bluejaysandblackbats]

Keepsafes

Fandom: Batman, DC Comics

Summary: AU where Martha and Thomas survive, and they adopt the batkids.

Chapters: 54/?

Characters: Bruce Wayne, Thomas Wayne, Martha Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Harvey Dent, Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain, David Cain, Talia al Ghul, Damian Wayne, Jason Todd, Tim Drake

Relationships: Thomas Wayne/Martha Wayne/Alfred Pennyworth, BruHarvey, BruTalia

Additional Tags: Canon Divergent AU, Hurt/Comfort, Bruce Wayne is Not Batman, Angst, Alfred Pennyworth Knows All, Bruce Wayne Only Has One Child, Bruce Wayne is Not An Only Child, Bi Bruce Wayne, Unsafe for Work

Chapter Fifty-Four: Hummer

Bruce stopped by a flower shop right after his shift, dragging Harley along for a second opinion. “I was thinking about these peach blossoms the other day when I was passing by,” Bruce suggested. He needed Harley shuffling around the shop, distracting the owner while he checked to see if the owner received his anonymous gift. 

“I thought we were doing Harvey a favor,” Harley replied. 

“We are… But I wanted to pick up something for the woman I’m seeing,” Bruce explained. Harley’s eyes widened. 

“You’re getting serious with someone?” Harley asked. Bruce nodded as he casually circled the pre-arranged bouquets, occasionally glancing in the direction of the newly installed and carefully concealed cameras. “Spill.” 

“Nothing to tell yet other than the fact that it’s moving along quickly,” Bruce replied. 

“Moving along? To what?” Harley asked. 

Bruce smiled at her and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it yet,” Bruce answered as the owner entered the room. “Oh, hi. Hello. I’d like to make two separate orders, but I need a little help with the second one. I—.” 

The owner was a young woman with brown eyes and blonde hair, covered up by heavy layered sweaters and earthy-colored cotton palazzo pants. She wore tinted glasses, but they sat at the edge of her nose, failing to hide her blackened eye. “It’s fine. This happened a few days ago,” she whispered. 

“Well, how are you holding up now?” Bruce asked. 

She rocked up onto the balls of her feet. “Actually, I’m doing a lot better. I must have some sort of secret admirer or something. I got a gift the other day,” she smiled, “Um… You’re Bruce Wayne, aren’t you?” 

“Yeah, this is my colleague and friend, Dr. Quinzel,” Bruce replied, “And I’m happy to hear that your situation seems to have improved slightly.” 

“Thank you… Um, your question. You had a question,” she reminded him. 

Bruce looked around and took a breath. “First and foremost, my friend asked me to put in a delivery order for a bouquet of orange blossoms and white and orange roses for his fiancée,” Bruce stated. 

“And your second question?” she asked. 

“I was wondering what you’d suggest for a bouquet of peach blossoms?” Bruce questioned in reply. 

“A few damask roses… Maybe some forget-me-nots for a pop of blue,” she replied. 

“Sold,” Bruce smiled, “What’s your name, by the way? I’ve passed by this shop hundreds of times, but I never expected it to be this big inside.” 

**

Harvey received a call from Gilda at work, and he smiled. “Hi, snookums. How’s my favorite—?”

“Apollo, honey, I got the flowers and note you sent me. I’m gonna make you something super special for dinner tonight. Thank you so much. They smell so good,” Gilda interrupted. Harvey scratched his head. 

“Orange blossoms and roses?” Harvey asked. 

“You remembered they were my favorites. You’re such a doll,” Gilda answered sweetly, “I won’t take up too much of your time. I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate them, and I love you.”

“I love you too. I’ll pick up a funny movie on the way home,” Harvey suggested, “I’ll see you in a little bit.” 

“See you soon,” Gilda replied as she hung up. 

Harvey leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. “What the hell?” Harvey whispered before receiving a knock on his office door. He got up and answered. “Bruce?” 

“You went with it when Gilda said thanks, right?” Bruce asked. 

Harvey shut the door behind Bruce. “You sly dog. Sending flowers to my girl,” Harvey chuckled as he gave Bruce a quick peck. “What do I owe this visit?”

“Nothin’. I just felt like doing something nice for you. You’re working pretty late. Big case?” Bruce asked. 

“Actually, I was about to head home. Thought about taking the train, but I guess if you’re in a good mood—.”

“Say no more. I’ve got you, Harv,” Bruce grinned.

**

“Bruce, I’m close,” Harvey mumbled, startling Bruce awake. He took a moment to process what Harvey said before smiling. 

“Good dream?” Bruce asked. 

“Weird,” Harvey whispered, “You were giving me the best hummer I’ve ever had in my life, and Gilda was sitting in the living room watching… And I swear you two were both getting off on it.” 

“There is something sensual about the idea of being watched—.”

“Have you thought about this?” Harvey asked. 

“It’s like a subconscious thing… Sometimes when I feel like she can hear us it makes—. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not an attraction thing. It’s an adrenaline thing. Adrenaline makes for better sex,” Bruce replied, “Do you want me to—?” 

Harvey rolled onto his back and propped up on his elbows. Bruce spat in his palm and stuck his hand down Harvey’s pants. “Bruce? You—. Oh, fuck… I—. You’ve changed,” Harvey whispered. Bruce kept stroking as he looked at Harvey’s side profile.

“How so?” Bruce asked. Harvey didn’t answer until after he came in Bruce’s hand. 

Harvey lay back, staring at the ceiling. “You have a secret,” Harvey whispered. 

“It’s not a secret. If you ask the right question, I’ll give you a good answer,” Bruce answered as he took a towel off the nightstand and wiped his hands. 

“Are you seeing someone?” Harvey asked.

“Talia’s here in Gotham. I’ve seen her twice since she’s been here. I’m gonna see her tomorrow night,” Bruce whispered. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Harvey asked as he laughed and rolled out of bed. 

Bruce followed him and washed his hands in the bathroom while Harvey went. “Remember last year when Gilda went on that five-day writer’s retreat, and I didn’t hear from you at all when she got home?” Bruce asked. 

“Understood,” Harvey smiled, “We should double date. Now, we can do that for real.”

“I’ll ask her,” Bruce replied.

“And Bruce… I love you so much,” Harvey warmly stated. 

“I love you more, handsome,” Bruce grinned. 

**

The following morning, Bruce strolled into the gym and saw Dick eating breakfast with a girl on the floor. “Oh, I—. I can come back later,” Bruce replied.

“Wait, no. Bruce, this is Leah. I met her two weeks ago. I had a meet at her school,” Dick explained, “This is our third date.” 

“So, are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?” Bruce asked. 

“Um… I hope so at this point,” Dick replied, “Leah?”

Leah took his smoothie from him and took a sip. “For sure,” Leah smiled.

“You’re the first girl he’s ever brought home. Dick’s pretty old-fashioned about these sorts of things, so you must be special to him,” Bruce replied. Leah looked at Dick and reached for his hand. 

“Well, I’ll see you guys later. I have to get ready for the main event tonight,” Bruce waved. 

After he left the room, Leah cocked her head and smiled. “What’s the main event?” Leah questioned. Dick finished eating his oatmeal. 

“My little sister is having her first ever sleepover tonight. It’s a big deal because she’s had a tough time making friends… She invited every kid that got left out of this one popular kid’s blowout class sleepover. Now, she’s got five kids coming over. Three boys and two girls,” Dick explained, “It’s kind of amazing. Earlier this year, I didn’t even want her here and now I can’t imagine not having her around.”

[hardyshoe]

Sonnenblumen, chapter ten - Heather, wishes will be fulfilled.

Masterlist.

Also posted on AO3 - here.

⚘⚘⚘

 The scullery maid who takes you into the back of the house, behind the shiny veneer of the main rooms, keeps looking at you with suspicion. She is an unassuming girl, who would be pretty if it were not for the horrible spectacles she has, they make her look like an old marm. 

 You were hardly expecting a riveting conversation from her but she speaks no more than a few words in a papery voice, she has an accent you cannot place and she seems skittish. She closes every door in front of her with a small hand before you can see what lies behind inside the cupboards and storeroom.

 Mills, the man who first greeted you at the front door, pokes his head and the young maid goes stock-still. “What is she doing back here?”

 “Sir I was just-” she starts, voice stuttering and uncertain. 

 “I asked to see the phonebook,” you say with a smile, feeling a little bad for putting her in a spot. 

 His eyes narrow, he moves into the hallway proper. “We can make any call you need, there is also a phone in the hall for your personal use.”

 “Oh no, I am looking someone up,” you say, the lightness in what you thought to be an easy request lands like you asking for the keys to the shiny black Bentley that sits outside the front door. “It won’t take me more than an hour, I’m sure.”

 You can tell he does not want to give you anything, not a look into the darkened room from whence he came nor a smile in reciprocation of your politeness. The maid beside you has a finger wrapped tightly in the apron she loops the hem of around it. 

 “I assure you, we would have no problem finding someone.” You are beginning to get annoyed by him, the ache in your ankles from balancing the razor’s edge for the last day is already nearing unbearable pain. You feel closer at base to irritation and the mask of ease you have scraped onto your face feels like it is breaking your flesh into a rash at the corners. 

 “I will only be an hour,” you say finally, in the same precise manner of speaking as you would tell the young miners that the last drinks have been poured. 

 He gives a short hmph that pinches in his nose in a grim nasally whine, then turns back to his little dungeon and shuts the door. In the wake, you look at the maid and find only the back of her head, she is staring resolutely at the skirting boards with their too-thick yellowing pain that attests to the juxtaposition between the front and the back of the house. You are not all too sure that he is coming back but you will stick around until asked to leave. 

 It is no different really to how you have been made to feel by Mrs Targaryen and Otto. Perhaps if Mr Targaryen was cognizant enough to register your presence he would too but as it stands, he has been firmly reduced to the wheelchair that aches and strains across the floors. Though, in fact, both the mother and grandfather of the family seem to be playing a similar game wherein they ignore you as much as they physically can. You have been addressed directly precisely twice by the former and once by the latter, including when they had arrived home and your stay was announced. 

 They had both left after breakfast with Aemond in tow, some nonsense in town you did not care to pay attention to. Now, with just you and the other children in the house, you wonder if there will be any change when they return. You do doubt it, maybe they intend to pretend you are not there until you have left. 

 You play games counting the pattern in the bizarre floral damask of the wallpaper, it is faded and the seams between the sheets have darkened a little. It is age without damage, just a little bit of wear. What jars you the most is the full deep red carpet that runs down the middle of the corridor, the worn-light strip of decades of footsteps down the very middle. The echo of ghosts rather than a sign of life. 

 The door clicks open and you jump, hand pressing into the softness between your ribs as if you push your heart back into a resting rhythm. Mills has a thick cream book in his hand and a rodenty look in his weird little eyes. 

 “Thank you, I will bring it back as soon as I am finished," you say, reaching out to take the book. He holds onto it like he is playing a joke but his face is fully stern. It is meant to make you feel like you are taking it without permission, like you are doing something wrong. It is a stupid and unfair game and it makes you wish you had not thanked him. 

 He says nothing and you give him nothing more, taking the book with a jerk and a thin smile. The maid still has her eyes on the floor and you hope she does not get it in the teeth for your request. 

 You make your way through the house again, feet padding on cold tile, up the stairs to the room down at the end of the little hallway upstairs. 

 Helaena’s rooms is warm somehow, full with mid morning light beaming off glass artifact cases and fragmenting through rainbow makers that hang from the cross poles of the yellow curtains. It is a comfort stepping into here, a room entire that hums with character and the very essence of a person. 

 You hardly heard her quiet permission to enter and you find her sitting on crossed legs in the middle of a wide blue rug in the centre of a room too big for a girl who hardly seems to take up any space at all. 

 “Hello,” you greet her warmly and she looks up at you from whatever it is in her lap that has her captivated so. “Aegon was dragged out to play knights.”

 She nods, twisting in her gauzy, nightgown-like dress to look behind her at the wall that leads to the garden. Her gaze is absent, like she can see right through the wall. The sun does not reflect off of her, rather seems to take it in like a lifeforce, it shines in her veins like liquid gold and she glows. She looks like a pre-Raphaelite painting, distracted and unaware of the viewer’s gaze. 

 “They will be gone some time,” she says, hands shifting to bridge flat in front of one another again, a little flash leaps between the two. “Daeron likes to win and Aegon does not like to lose.”

  That makes you smile, you tip onto your toes to see their figures swimming in silent joy at the very end of the garden, right in front of the gangly green stems of the unbloomed sunflowers. 

 “I thought as much, do you mind if I join you in the meantime?” You wave the hefty phone book at her. She looks confused but gestures to you to sit with the hand not lying flat in the air in front of her. The soft pile of the blue carpet is a welcome relief from the stone and polished wood of the rest of the house in the way the one of the servant’s quarters had not been. Warmed by the sun as it falls in patches and swathes across it is a contrast to everything else. 

 You have never been much good at sitting with your legs crossed like she is, it gives you pins and needles too quickly, but you do not think she will begrudge you a little eccentricity. So, you stretch a leg out into a particularly bright patch of sun so it glints off your stocking and tuck the other up on a bent knee. The book flops open heavily on the middle L section, you flip on further and tuck the springing back section under your toes to stop it flipping shut again. 

 “What are you looking for?” She asks, you look up and finally see what is roaming across her papery knuckles. A plumed black and yellow caterpillar bounces its front end across the dips between her fingers. It is a lovely little thing. 

 You let the book shut, nails exploring the tiny dipped depression of the townhouses printed below the blocked title, ‘London postal area, alphabetical telephone directory.

 “I am half afraid of saying it aloud, it feels like such a long shot as it is,” you tell her but there is nothing in her that would take the information and do anything malicious at all. You are not sure she exists on the same planet as the word. So, you explain it to her.

  Helaena gets her eyes from her mother, not the colouring of course, but the open wideness and the shine like she is on the brink of tears. You remember thinking of a taxidermied deer when you first saw Mrs Targaryen, looking into her daughter’s, it is like seeing what she could have been in life. The lilac is her lineage but the acute sadness that permeates her waterline is all her mother. 

 She does not respond for so long that you return to the dense walls of text in the book, skirting down alphabetical columns while her gaze shrouds your shoulders. You do not know if she is not responding for a lack of remembrance of a figure long repressed or if she does not know what to say, it doesn’t really matter either way. It just feels nice to have unburdened yourself.

 The letters jumble closer to that holy grail name of abstract familiarity and you feel your muscles getting antsy and tense at the drawing up to final understanding. 

 “Heather will suit her,” she says, voice lilting in that uncommon intonation of hers. You are startled and find her looking almost clean through you, like she is seeing something far beyond the room you sit with her in. “Blooms in the summer, flowers all through the autumn.”

 It is cryptic and strange and you do not know what to make of it yet you feel those intangible memories of hope calling at you again, unbidden. Aegon tucking tiny hands through the sleeves of his own huge jumper, the way he has looked at you holding his brother’s tear streaked face against your shoulder. In the meeting of your eyes those months ago you had felt it, seen a future in the space between. 

 What can you say? How can you put it into words? The yearning you feel from what she has just said despite the mad prognostication. The regret you had felt, despite the madness of such a feeling, at the first blood you had shed two weeks after you learned your carnal knowledge of each other under the dangling, waxy lightbulb of his dorm. You had laid in your bed with your nails digging into the flesh of your cramping womb and cursed the fact that something there was yet no place for had not taken root to grow. 

 It was silly and juvenile but there had been a brief period of hope against sense that had fleeted with the cycle of the moon. 

  You look at her and she is focused on her pretty little caterpillar. Maybe she meant nothing by it, maybe it was nonsensical and she is truly mad. Your thumb digs into the flesh of your stomach all the same and your heart beats thick over dreams and wishes. 

 Then you see it, and you gasp. Helaena looks up at you sharply and you show her the tiny little name in between all the others of insignificance on the page. You are nearly squealing to yourself when her little comment slips between your twitching fingers and giddy smile. 

 “You suit him, like you were made for him. I think he was made for you.”

 ⚘⚘⚘

Supper on that second day in the house is a taciturn affair, more formal than any meal you have ever eaten. Served in courses of meticulous but unappealing intricacy. You successfully picked your way through a thin cress salad with bits of meat you truly could not identify if pressed but you are struggling with an artfully vile salmon mousse. Aegon is across from you, drinking his wine too quickly and giving you grey smiles when you catch his eye. Daeron is to your left with Helaena across from him, she is rearranging a small stack of blue and purple rocks. Mrs Targaryen winces visibly whenever the little stacks clatter down.

 You are wearing a dress which was originally Helaena’s, Aegon told you about their habit of formal dress for evening meals and you had sheepishly shown him your good dress for Easter and christenings. It was nothing grand at all, really, a pink chiffon thing with a scalloped neck and little flowers in the layers of the skirts but, you remember being given it for your sixteenth birthday and how you had pranced around in your lamp-lit room in your mother’s white shoes she had married your father in, feeling so terribly grown up.

 When you wore it last night though, you felt drab and outdated. The men, even Daeron with his little black shorts, were in full suits and waistcoats. Aegon looked like he wanted the fabric to catch fire and burn up with him inside it, he fidgeted with his collar the entire evening and when you had peeled back the cotton later that night, his skin was flushed angrily underneath. Mrs Targaryen was in the finest gown you have ever seen in the flesh, nicer even than Marlene’s wedding dress. She looked like the prettiest of painted ponies and the way she looked down on you. 

 This morning, Helaena had brought you an intricately beaded champagne gown dripping with blue and amber accents. It fit like a glove and you had protested her giving it to you but she just left it on your bed when you tried to return it. Aegon told you she wouldn’t wear it for the way the beadwork itched against the bare skin of her arms anyway. 

 Now, clad in her lovely gift, you look at Helaena and see the differences in her attire more clearly. She is bathed in gauzy fabric in a light blue, it clings nowhere and when she had drifted into the room with Daeron traipsing behind, she had almost been carried by the ghosts in the room. Mrs Targaryen had looked between the two of you, her will ‘o the wisp daughter and you, and given you a look of utter contempt. 

 The table is too long and too wide, an uncomfortable thing too beautiful to be eaten off of which was made for hosting not family dining. There's a triangular band of deep walnut running the length of the middle of the table, serving to divide you from those across from you. Everyone has to raise their voices to be heard, even by the person across, fostering a weirdly public conversation which feels too watched to really accomplish anything. 

 You have managed to stretch your leg out far enough to scuff at Aegon’s socked foot but it isn’t enough. He isn’t talking and you can feel him drawing further into the shadowy corners of the room. He periodically tries to catch the eye of the server with the wine but the young man remains looking resolutely away. 

 Daeron too, is quiet, he is poking at his loose tooth between halfhearted mouthfuls. His mother is shooting him foul looks from down the table but he doesn’t notice. 

 You lean over to whisper in his ear when he gets so fully distracted that he misses the clearing of his grandfather’s throat. Mrs Targaryen’s mouth has ticked down further at the corner and her eyes narrow every time he wiggles at the loose tooth. 

 “Do you think the tooth fairy likes salmon mousse?”

 He startles out of his own little world, looking at his barely touched plate before shaking his head solemnly. 

 It is such a serious gesture that it makes you cackle, Daeron looks taken aback for a moment but he cracks quickly, devolving into a fit of giggles. The sound smacks off the walls with an unfamiliar echo, like they don't know how to reflect the foreign sound. When you tip back in mirth, the rafters seem to jerk dizzily with the atmosphere holding them up.

 The strange coldness of the room and its stilted politeness catches up to you and you find yourself laughing to the point of tears, a borderline hysteria creeping at you. Daeron has his head in his hands and can see his cheeks blooming pink behind them. Something in that warmth punctuating the cold sobers you a little, just enough to wipe your eyes and take a breath. It is the first bit of unmitigated joy you have really seen from any of them and that troubles you deeply. 

 Aegon has that look on his face and he knocks his foot against your under the table, his fingers tracing the pattern just out of your reach. 

 “Would you care to share with the rest of us what it is you find so funny?” Otto’s voice curts sharply through the stale air between the children and the adults. The fact that Aegon sits amongst them and not you does not escape your notice. There is a difference of five or six cavernous inches between his placemat and Otto’s and your own. 

 You and Daeron look at each other and start giggling again. Otto’s ire grows with each second he goes unanswered but youre so happy to see the little boy smiling despite the anger that you don’t care. 

 “It was just a silly joke about the tooth fairy,” you say, smiling despite your discomfort at the way you feel like you have to shout to be heard. Daeron starts up again and you have to cover your mouth with the back of your hand. 

“Yes, well, if you would please refrain from such outbursts again. It is not good for digestion.” Mrs Targaryen’s tone brokers no argument despite the absurdity of her words and Daeron tucks his chin to his chest, silent again. 

 “Mama!” Aegon exclaims, looking riotously pissed off.

 You would try to stop what you know is coming but he has a glint in his eyes which speaks of a final straw starting to splinter. 

 “Aegon you know I cannot bear shouting,” she dismisses, hiding behind movement as she pats at her senile husband’s mouth.

“They weren’t shouting though, were they?” he counters, inciting a tut from Aemond. Aegon glares at him. 

 “There really is no need to be difficult,” she says, eyes narrowing in warning at him. Something about the way she looks at him lights a flame under your pretty velvet cushioned seat. “I’m sure your friend meant no harm but we don't behave that way at the dinner table.”

 She means to chastise you like a child, fortunately you had a mother loving enough to teach you when punishment is deserved and when it is not. The emphasis on friend is deliberate and it ticks you off, you watch Aegon bristle too. 

 Helaena has stopped stacking her stones, hovering over the unfinished tower with the final tiny rock between her pale fingers. She is looking down at them with an air of resigned trepidation. 

 Aegon leans forward in his seat, laying his cutlery across his plate in an angle for a fight. You can feel things nearing a point of no return, you think Aegon has already gone far beyond the line. Funnily enough, you have little desire to pull him back when every step further feels like an achievement. “You’re being rude on purpose.”

“I will not be spoken to like that, by you.” The hurt she feigns is brittle. 

Aegon’s hand smacks against the table, jumping the silverware and tinkling up the stem of his empty glass. Helaena’s tower topples, crystals scattering across the varnish.  “And you will not speak to her like that!”

 A flare of warmth drags through the mire of uncertain worry within you. 

 “I won’t do this here, Aegon,” she warns. You watch Viserys blink at her tone, alertness twitching in him, though he manages nothing more than a pitiful groan which goes ignored. 

 Otto has his fingers curled around the handle of one of his dinner knives, the gesture is almost frighteningly intentional. 

 “Why not? You must know that I will tell her whatever it is you want to say to me in private.” 

 Aemond’s brow raises in the most overt display of surprise you have seen from him. He looks at you, speaking low but somehow carrying his voice across the distance. “Such fidelity.”

 You’re quite sick of him, the way he speaks like he has any idea of what lies between you and Aegon. You don’t think he would understand if you hammered it out in stone. You smile at him and shrug, he purses his lips and quiet rage twitches his jaw. 

 “Those are very strong words for someone you hardly know.” Mrs Targaryen is playing a game, she surveys the table like chess pieces on a board each time she finishes speaking. Unfortunately for her, you don’t know the rules and have very little interest in trying to guess them enough to play the proper way. 

 “Family matters are private, boy, they are not to be discussed with those whom they do not concern.” Otto says, like he is reciting an ancient law. 

 “You are literally talking about her!” Aegon shouts, his neck is warmed with fury and he jumps from his seat to stand. “She is sitting right there and you're talking about her like she can’t hear you.”

 They all seem unaffected by his outburst, like they don’t care enough to react. The unopened pot of vitriol for these people is boiling under the lid in such a way that it is dancing with escaping energy. 

  Mrs Targaryen lays her hands on her lap calmly. “I’m afraid, if you allow strangers to come and stay without warning then you cannot expect us to be overjoyed.”

 “I cannot believe how you’re acting right now,” Aegon says, then huffs a humourless laugh. “Actually, I can. I just thought that there might be the tiniest chance of you at least pretending to be nice. Sunflower has done nothing but lovely and kind and you're acting  like she doesn’t matter, like she is a problem to will away.”

 Mrs Targaryen somehow manages to maintain an infuriating cool. She doesn’t even blink. “There is no need to be so dramatic”

 “You’re being fooled, boy,” Otto spits, flinging a hand in your direction while still not looking at you. “You must be able to see that, or maybe you are just as stupid as I always thought you were.”

 “Are you fucking insinuating what I think you are?” Aegon asks, suddenly cold in a way you have never seen him. He has a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table and his shoulders are shaking. You can define that as the very moment your own control falls apart, a wave of steam and fury boils over, the lid clangs to the floor. 

 Helaena is staring openly at the conflict while Daeron sinks lover and lover in his chair. Something in her expression speaks of fear, something else of morbid curiosity in the way she watches her brother’s hand go bloodless on the table.

  Mrs Targaryen chastises him slowly for his language but it gets swept up in the tension of the room. Viserys is shaking his head limply but no one is looking. 

 “Well, she certainly isn’t here on account of your glowing personality and witty humour, is she?” Otto asks, voice mocking and sarcastic. 

 You find you have had quite enough of all their shit. The screech of your chair’s legs on the parquet floor is like the cry of a wounded animal.

 “Don’t talk about him like that.” For the first time in the evening, they actually look at you. Three pairs, and one incomplete pair, of eyes turn to you in varying degrees of shock and anger. “You are more than welcome to speak about me however you like, I couldn’t care less, but you will not speak about Aegon like that.”

 Mrs Targaryen looks at you with offense radiating from her low brows. “He is my son and this is my house, I will speak however I want to.”

 “Just what is it you are aiming to accomplish here?” Otto asks, eyes narrowed and disturbingly cool. “A little social climbing with the thickest rich boy you could find?”

 Helaena is watching you speak with an almost unnervingly solid gaze. 

 “You don’t know me. Don’t pretend you have any idea about me at all.” You say, voice almost unrecognisable to your own ears but the resolution that drips from your tongue is all yours. Aegon is looking at you with bright eyes, he looks frightened in a way, though not of you. Looking at him you know your decision to be right. 

 “I am here because I love Aegon,” you hear him take a ragged inhale but you need to finish what you are saying so you force your gaze into Otto and Mrs Targaryen, even Aemond and Viserys. “He is my sun and my every star and I would follow him to the centre of the earth and stand by him until the world ends.”

 They gape at you, you think it must be the sincerity that gets them. Even Aemond looks startled, the expression playing out on his features like they haven’t moved that way in a very long time. That gives you a rather sick sense of pride. 

 “But, the world is not ending. Instead he is here, being treated like nothing more than an inconvenience to you. How you can expect him to be this shining model of fallacy you so want him to be when he is staring down the barrel of the misery it would cause him I really do not know. Maybe you would have to be a bit stupid not to see how that is doomed to fail.”

 You look right at Otto with that final line and he ignites, voice raising in the first show of emotion you have seen from him. “You insolent girl-”

 He is cut off though, unexpectedly, by his daughter. “You don’t love him,” she says, meeting your gaze with eyes of fire. “You don’t even know what love is.”

 You look at the way she is sitting, chair turned in towards Viserys’, her hand on his arm and her whole body twisted towards him. Yet the entire thing is a façade, she cannot see him at all. He is looking at her helplessly, head lolling weakly on his shoulders and mouth moving in some approximation of words without sound and she cannot see any of it. It is pathetic.

 “Funny that, Mrs Targaryen,” you say her name like an officer addressing a soldier of lower rank. Pity runs thick in your tone. “You speak like you do.”

 “How dare you?” She goes white with rage and you feel a relief in finally seeing her crack, you don’t know what that makes you but you don’t find you particularly care when Aegon is staring at you like that across the table. 

 “Like I said, I do not care what you think of me but I happen to care very much about what you say about him. I won’t stand here will you abuse the man I love and suggest I am here for the money or what comes with it. Look around you,” you implore, gesturing to the tactless opulence and feeling your movement echoed in the tension hanging in the air, laughing a little at the absurdity, “there is nothing here anyone would want.”

 You can see she is racing in the corner of your eye but you don’t care to see, you are looking at Aegon. He is watching you, his chest rising and falling with quick breaths and his fists clenched tight at his sides. You nod at him and he nods back, stepping away from the table. 

 You bend to kiss the top of Daeron’s head, whispering a promise in his ear, before standing and walking to the door. You don’t want to leave him but he will be okay, the blame is squarely on you and that is precisely where you want it. 

 Voices raise in anger and protest behind you but you aren’t listening. You make your way to the end of the eventual end of the fucking table and meet Aegon in the middle. He looks shell shocked when you find his eyes and he links his fingers between yours like a lifeline. 

 When the door to the dining room swings shut behind you he stops and pulls you in quickly to an embrace that has you twisting your hands into his horrible suit jacket and blinking furiously. He is taking deep, tortured breaths and his lips are on your hairline.

 “Can we get out of here? Please, even if it's just for a bit.” He is desperate and you hold him tighter, keeping the pieces of him together. 

 “I have no intention of staying here right now.” you say, his response coming in a relieved fanning of a sigh across your forehead. 

 He releases you but takes your hand again, pulling you upstairs to get a coat and your purse. He takes off the suit jacket, trading it for his leather one, and you watch just a little of his tension drop with it into a crumpled heap on the floor.

 The house is eerily quiet as you walk out, footsteps loud on the hardwood and breathing echoing off of the chamber walls. The first step outside is like emerging from a frozen lake and when he shuts the door behind the two of you, Aegon stops looking quite so much like he is scared he is going to die. However, he remains silent as you walk down the automobile lined street and he seems to pay little mind to where you are going. You don’t mind, you know he needs some time with this in his head first and you will not force him to speak. Instead, you hold his hand tightly and bring the joined pair to your lips from time to time to kiss the back.

 After some fifteen minutes of walking without purpose, just going anywhere further from the chasing ghosts of the house, you come to a phone box and squeeze Aegon’s hand before ducking inside. He looks confused but you ask him to trust you and he nods in return, sitting on the edge of the pavement. 

 The lights are harsh inside compared to the murky water of the street lamps. It smells vaguely of damp and forget but you ignore that, fumbling through your bag for the little piece of paper you slid between the two mirrors of your enamel backed compact a few days ago, it has a line of dusty powder down the side now but that hardly matters. You slot a few coins in and dial up the number, hoping against hope that someone will answer. 

 Six rings later and, “-Yes hello, hello. Is that you Marge? I was just bathing the little ones.”

 You smile a little at the flustered voice on the other end, clearly a woman who receives few calls she isn’t expecting. “No, sorry. This is a little odd and I do apologise for telephoning out of the blue but, are you Mrs Spinnet?” 

 She pauses for a second and you twist the cord around your finger, directing your hope somewhere. “Yes dear, who is this?”

You give her your name though she will not know it, you don’t want to keep her so you get to the point. “I was hoping to ask about one of your sons.”

⚘⚘⚘

 London shines from the window of the taxi, lights glimmering from windows behind curtains and people milling from bar to clubs. You watch them devolve from polished glamour to more normal looking outfits devoid of furs and dripping jewels as you get closer to your destination.

 Unlike the first ride you took, you do not talk with the driver this time, he is a quiet gentleman anyway who seems content to let you sit in silence and watch the streets go by. Aegon fell asleep on your shoulder some minutes into the journey and you aren’t planning on waking him until you arrive. He was so drawn out, and you know how terribly he slept last night. He needs a bit of time to recalibrate so you trace shapes on his skin with your fingertips and try not to move. 

 With his soft breaths huffing against your collarbone, the world seems smaller, everything more achievable. Leaving the house, however temporary the exile, has left you lighter, no longer toting around the weight of the cold lack of privacy and the uncomfortable tension that lingers in every corner. 

 Here, with the sounds of the city washing over the car, you feel a quietude fall over your very being. Each hour you have spent at the townhouse has had you feeling angrier and more off-kilter. It is a disorienting experience. You cannot fathom living there, existing as Helaena does with the breadth of her world confined to those observant walls. It makes you feel like pulling out your hair. 

 As the streets start to narrow down, resembling the Victorian photographs in the books you have at home , you think back to the phone call and to the relief of Mrs Spinnet’s excitement at her remembrance. She had given you the pub to find and a wish to pass on a love you did not know she would be harbouring. You have not told Aegon that yet, waiting to see if he will be okay first. 

 He rouses with the stopping of the car, lulling into you heavily before blinking awake with a hum. 

 “Hello again,” you say, hedging your bets on him having recovered a little. 

 He smiles softly and you breathe a sigh that takes the weight of worry with it. “Hello sunflower.”

  A throat clearing the front pulls your eyes from his, you and Aegon fumble for money to pay the driver but he beats you to it. You thank the driver and poke Aegon in the arm, he waves his wallet at you and grins in victory, 

Still, he stocks you under his arms when you have both ducked out onto the street. You can see the pub a few doors down and a small spike of anticipation rocks you at the sight of the raided navy sign with its gold letters. 

 First though, you take Aegon to the riverbank and lean with him against the mossy bricks to look over the shining water and the docks. Like this, everything is just you and him. He is the water and you are the light, he is the stars in your sky. The moss wedging between your brickwork. 

 “You love me?” he asks quietly, voice laced with a trepidation like he does not know if he is banking on a dream. 

 It does not break your heart like it would have if you had said it sooner and received the same response. You know it is not you he doesn’t believe, rather his own judgement. 

 You turn under his arm, stare at him for a second and get lost in his eyes and the way his hair looks in the dancing light of the Thames. “I have loved you long enough now to know that I did even when it was too soon not to doubt myself.”

 He looks struck, like it is too much. You shake your head with a smile playing on you. “I love you, Aegon.”

 For nearly a minute, the world is just you, and him looking at you, and a definitive surety for the first time that he knows he is loved by at least one person. 

 A tear drops heavily from his waterline and you are in his arms before it hits his cheek. When he has you plastered to his chest, your arms weaving into his hair and the creased leather of his jacket, he laughs. It is a ragged, wet, glorious sound. He spins you until your feet forget their weight of your own body as they glide through the air. 

 The world keeps spinning when his hands find the sides of your face, the tips of his indexes lining the dips of your temples. “I hope you know, I am going to ask you to marry me one day.” 

 That silly, selfish part of yourself who had mourned the stain of blood in your knickers  those months ago asks ‘why not now?’ The rest of you cannot stop the grin from splitting your face, would not want to try if it could.

 “One day, Aegon Targaryen,” you tell him between the kisses he is planting on your lips, “I am going to say yes.”

 He places his lips definitely over your own, then he turns to the docks and yells in a perfect shout of jubilation, it echoes across London and you hope it bounces like the aftershocks of an explosion against the Targaryen house. 

 “Come on,” you say through smarting laughter, pulling him by the hand down the road as it is populated by milling dockworkers and factory men, “I did not bring you here without reason.” 

 He walks in a bouncing dance, energy spilling out of his smile, “alright, nutcase.”

 You are too giddy to feign annoyance, the doors of the snug terrace building swoosh with the force of your joy when you push them open. 

It is bizarre how stepping into a pub, even one so far from home that rings with cockney accents and lights unfamiliar faces with its fire, calms you. Something in the heady air of hops and ale, a room warmed with drunken adulation, feels like home. It puts you at ease when it smacks in contention with the coldness of the unpopulated Targaryen house. How welcome the feeling is to be somewhere where noise is celebrated. 

 “You know, there are pubs nearer Kensington that this one,” he teases, a smile playing on his lips. 

 He receives a sharp look in return, bluntened by your affection. “Oh ye of little faith.”

 He makes to follow you as you step towards the bar but you still him with a hand pressed against the half-done zip of his jacket and an evasive grin. His eyes follow you the whole way and you can feel the pull of his lips smiling morphing your own. 

 The barkeep is friendly, a middle aged gentleman who pours your drinks happily and asks about your accent. There is something nice, you think, in being the different one for a reason outside of your personality. No one expects anything of you and most people you have encountered so far have worn an edge to their questioning like they agree that your little mining corner of the world is a bit of a dead end. Though, when you look at the worn faces of the older dockworkers, you see nothing but a reflection of the miners back home. Grit worn so deep under fingernails it has become a part of them and chairs that sag impressions of the men who inhabit them for the hours in between their residence. 

 Maybe nowhere is ever that different really or maybe this is the England you cannot run from.

 A few lads give you funny looks when you ask what you need to of the barkeep, looking to Aegon where he stands near the door searching around with wide and inquisitive eyes, foot tapping on the mucky green carpet. He makes for just as funny a sight as usual, hair too blond, eyes too bright and utterly too alive. He is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.

 You give the lads a shrug when they ask why you are asking after who you are, smiling back at the man you love who loves you too and feeling a little dizzy with the maelstrom of feelings ripping a tornado through you. 

 Two pints slide across the bar, one too full and dripping down the side onto the glossy wood, and you are pointed towards a booth near the back which is crowded with young men and circled with too many chairs and young men sitting wherever they can find purchase. 

 You jerk your head in their direction and Aegon follows on, head shaking with confusion even as he follows you. In all honesty, you feel unsure too. The plan you muddled together felt hazy and impossible until now, too variable and too reliant on people who may have forgotten things, people even. However, you think back to Aegon asking you in the cold corridor of his dorm whether you would be willing to go a little further for him, and how you had known then that you would go anywhere should he ask; you know he will trust you just a little longer.

 On the way, you put down your drinks on an adjacent empty table, smoothing down your skirt and begging the universe once more for this little kindness. 

  A crowd of intrigue assesses you when you greet the table as a whole, voices quieting and drinks being sipped in the recess. You flit from face to face, looking for recognition where you cannot hope to find any. Warmth lines your back as Aegon comes to stand behind you, a hand skimming through the volume of your evening dress.

 “Sorry to bother you all but, I was wondering if you know where to find-”

 “Hells teeth!” Exclaims a young man from the back of the table, his face bare with an amalgam of shock, and something you think might be damned close to miraculous joy. “Aegon?”

 You spin on a penny, neck tweaking a little with your speed, to find said man in an equal state. His mouth parts and you can see his throat catching on the importance in the air. He sounds like he has been gargling disbelief when he speaks. “Davey?”

 What follows is a struggle of the unassuming brown haired man practically crawling across the table while Aegon nearly knocks it over himself in his own effort to meet him in the middle. When they finally do, Aegon half pulling Davey from the floor as he rolls off the wooden top now covered in spilled beer, it parts the world like a dam breaking. 

 They grip each other desperately, clapping each other on the back while their common laughter bursts in harmony. It is jubilant peace and you are, for a time which feels like an aeon, not worried a shred about the future. 

 Words bounce quickly in unanswered questions between the two, Davey holding Aegon’s face between his hands in a way that squishes his cheeks and makes him look terribly young. A pale hand stays firm on a factory uniform’s shoulder, fingers digging tight into the blue material. 

 “Where have you been all these years I-”

 “Canny believe it, after all this time.”

 “-So sorry, you have no idea how sorry I am for leaving-”

 “Missed you like hell-”

 “-Thought I would never see you again.”

 They laugh, both pulling together again in a way that highlights the funny similarities between them. While Davey is lanky, a string bean of a man who’s cuffs ride high on his ankles, and Aegon wears his hair long and uncropped, they both simmer with energy and they share a mirrored glint in their eyes which promises a mischief that would make any school teacher run for the hills. 

 One of the lads at the table pipes up, sleeve wet with drink spilled in the scuffle and eyes on him like he has been elected spokesman for the bewildered gaggle. “You going to tell us who this is that you’re greetin’ like your best china plate?”

 “And if the fine young lady he brought with him is spoken for…” Chips in a bugger at the back with fewer teeth than buttons done up on his shirt. 

“Impatient bastards, the lot of you. More than ten years since I have seen ‘im and you all want to talk to ‘im. Wait your bloody turn.” Davey says, shooting withering looks at the loudest ones of the group though you can tell it is with good meaning. He shakes Aegon’s shoulder and twists him to face the waiting crowd. “This boys, is Aegon. My brother.”

 Aegon turns his head to look at Davey, a gaggle of confused men racketing questions at the pair, and finds the taller boy grinning at him with relief dripping from his form. Aegon smiles so very wide. 

 “And who is his lovely friend?” Jeers a the dentally challenged one from before. 

 Aegon gives him a look and the boy shrugs unapologetically in return. You are pulled by the hand into the fold of energy. 

 “This beautiful, brilliant woman,” Aegon says to the group, though his eyes are dead set on yours. “Is the love of my life. My sunflower.”

 Your cheeks flame and your brain goes a little fuzzy. He runs his thumb over your naked ring finger in a way that feels like a promise. 

 “Well it is an absolute pleasure to meet you Miss,” Davey offers his hand and a wide smile. He kisses your knuckles instead of shaking and you get a sense of the boy Aegon has told you so much about, he has this cheekiness laced into the fibres that comprise him and it's hard not to watch him. 

 It is clear he is something of an unofficial leader to the rowdy gaggle, they look to him for cues when Aegon grabs your two drinks from the table behind and makes you sit down. A great shuffle takes place, displacing boys onto the high tops of the benches and some onto more crowded chairs around the end. You end up on Aegon's lap at the edge of the bench, his arm belted around your waist and his chin perched on your shoulder when he isn’t speaking. 

 The conversation is quick and loud, excitable as the boys fall into a rapport that feels so natural. While he is still in his crisply ironed suit trousers and his accent is so very different to the rest, he fits in here. He seems rattled when his jokes are found funny or when people listen with interest to the things he says, blinking in confusion the first time the group laughs with him, looking at you for a second with pinched brows. 

 You lean forward to whisper in his ear, ignoring the whistles from the surrounding crowd, “They can see you for what you are, Aegon.” You kiss him on the tender flesh that bridges his cheekbones and the cartilage of his ear, feeling the dip of softness into the hollow, “Let that be a good thing.”

 His intake of breath, catching on his tonsils and the vulnerability of his palette, rises louder than the whoops and whistles of those around you. He turns to look at you in such a way that his brows entangle with yours, twisting and bending back and unifying. Perspective warps in your now tiny field of vision, his eyelashes elongating and darkening your periphery while his lavender eyes meld with your own in colour and light. 

 His eyes close and you watch his waterline fragment with shining moisture, a crystalline juncture between the darkening blond of his fine white eyelashes. Then they open, and the dissipating vacuum brings some of that glitter back into the way he looks at you and he nods in a scraping of hairs and a commingling of the oils of your respective skins. 

 And the conversation continues, Aegon is swept into Davey once more and the two begin to talk in low tones with an almost unbelievable familiarity. You split your time between listening in on them when the conversation is loud enough for the public and chipping in with little comments with the boys around you. 

 Davey talks in meant extremes, definitive promises of jubilation. He grips Aegon’s arm and shakes his joy into him, in time, Aegon shakes back and laughs in a harmonic tune with him. With who ought to have been his flesh and blood all along. 

 Aegon gets up to go to the bathroom after a while, sliding you across the groove between his legs and onto the shiny red leather of the seat. You and Davey both watch him shimmy between patrons to the brass plated door of the loo. 

 “Thank you, really, thank you,” Davey says, eyes still on the door. You look at him and his brown gaze flicks to yours and he nods, “I didn’t think there was any chance of finding ‘im after all this time.”

 You shrug, evening dress squeaking a bit on the leather. “I just looked you up in the phonebook, Aegon wouldn’t have-”

 “Thought of it,” he laughs, nodding knowingly, “You know, I had to tell ‘im what a chamber pot was?”

 He pitches around his blue factory uniform, grimy black at the creases and giggles to himself. “I mean, can you imagine a bastard with indoor bogs in nineteen thirty nine? I thought he was taking the mick but he wasn't of course, just came from that fucked up castle of his. Oh, sorry for my language,”

 “It’s quite alright ,”you tell him, the sinew in your cheeks aching for your smile at his story, the fondness in his story nearly killing you. “My parents run the pub he sneaks out to twice a week, I assure you I have heard worse.”

 “I knew you were good from the minute you came over,” he tells you, a hand massaging into his intercostal muscles between fits of boyish giggles. He wipes his tears and sobers just a little, “You are the best thing that could have happened to him, you know?”

 It does not make you still like it would have if it had come from a mouth that had known him less, instead it makes you smile. “I have thought the same of you for quite some time.”

 Davey just tilts his head like it is nothing, because it is nothing to love someone who means the entire world to you. “He is my brother.” he says simply, his finger drawing a spiral down the condensation of his pint glass. 

 Just then, the bathroom door swings open and Aegon comes out. His eyes meet yours and his face splits clean into a grin. He is framed momentarily, in a picture you will never forget for the rest of your life, against the brown lacquered wallpaper and the waxy yellow lights that shine through his hair like the light of the sun. 

 He is light itself, he is the sun and the stars and he is everything. For the first time, you let yourself truly become something new, see a different painting in your reflection, “Bauerngarten mit Sonnenblumen.’ All those bright flowers entwined with one another, a garden of vibrancy and joy and love. In that painting of Klimt’s, the sunflower is not the subject of the painting, she is not observed as a new thing and a dangerous thing. No, she is beautiful for how she is one with the rest, for how the poppies of his blood and the violets of his hair are just as much singular as they are a unity. In those others, the future glimmers in technicolour like you have only ever seen on Pathé reels. 

 ‘Heather will suit her.’ Helaena had said and you want to weep for the yearning it inspires in your blood to know what she means. 

 In the seconds of you standing to let him slip himself below you, he absorbs all of it. 

 “Dancing!” One of the gobby lads proclaims, “let’s go to the dancehall!”

 A hearty groan of dissent rings around from his position, you realise it is the git without teeth and you shake your head at him in disbelief. Aegon’s hand is playing with the beading on the darts of mesh at your waist, a pale finger defining the pattern as adjacent to itself, and you just look at him.

 Davey shrugs, looking at Aegon to see what he thinks, Aegon proceeds to defer to you. It is comical. 

 “I am up for it,” you say, a little delighted by the idea of some more adventure in this already spontaneous evening. You feel like you are fizzing. “I have to get some wear out of this dress.”

 “You heard the lady, let’s go,” Davey says with a jaunty grin, smacking his hands on his knees. The group rises like a flock of startled birds in a single flurry of movement and jostles into the street. You bring up the rear alone, happily following between a dichotomous pair who leap around in broken tandem. They flick and jump against each other and you think of the atoms Mary had told you about, how they smacked and ricocheted. They are an ever increasing chain of energy.  

⚘⚘⚘

 What follows is hours of spinning and cavorting around a dimly lit hall, your nice shoes clipping with your movements and you dance on the worn down wood. The group peels off with the young women sitting around the edges of the dance floor and the night plays in with you in Aegon’s arms, occasionally in Davey’s with you and him trading stories back and forth about your lovely interlink. 

 Aegon looks around the bustle enraptured, captured by the music and the movement and the boundless way couples jig and laugh with one another. He seems so thoroughly amazed it nearly sparks his hair alight. 

 It makes you think of all he has missed, what he has been robbed of by his particular prison and how little he has experienced of this world which seems to fit him so perfectly. He does not seem to mind his suit trousers so much when he loops one of their legs around the back of yours to dip you comically at the end of the final song for the night. When the lights come on, signalling the end of the evening’s revelry, his face is pink and his grin could light up the entire city. 

 He and Davey share an embrace as he puts you into a taxi home, he and Aegon trade contact details and you give him yours too so he can send letters there instead of the school. He kisses your knuckles again and pats Aegon on the cheek. 

 “Next time, you are coming ‘round mine for Sunday dinner, both of you,” he insists, a demand not an invitation. “Mum is going to be so annoyed to ‘ave missed you.”

 “I look forward to meeting her,” Aegon says, so sincere it hurts a bit. “I will see you soon, I hope.”

 Davey laughs, “sooner than another decade, me old mucker, I promise you that.”

 Aegon is still laughing happily to himself when Davey has shut the door and shot him a last jaunty grin before jumping to click his ankles and waltzing off down the road.

 The car ride that follows is primed by the frenetic energy of the night and you have to stop yourself from going mad by steadying yourself in the weight of his hand high on your knee. 

 The front door clicks shut behind him with a deafening echo and he winces and he pulls you up the stairs, there is no question of splitting for different rooms as sleep has taken everyone in the house. If it has not taken Mrs Targaryen, as you remember Aegon saying she slept so rarely, if ever, she could politely go fuck herself. You have entered into a feeling beyond care of what she thinks.

 You want many things as he pulls you down to lay beside him, things intangible and rawly distinct. He wants them too, you know as much as it is laced through his breaths, warm against your neck. You can feel as much when you shiver and he draws your back against himself with a hand yearning through the thin cotton of the slip you are left in. 

 “I do not think I will live another moment without thinking of you,” he whispers, voice soft like water damp feathers, beaten from your pillow and soaked in the indecency of your dreams. 

 It hardly feels like breathing at all, what you are doing then, more of a great sharing of something in the thin air between you and him. A simultaneous engagement of existence, drawn from one body into the other, to be let out into the other again. And again, and again. 

 “I haven’t stopped thinking about you, not really since you first came into my sight.” Your words fall on his skin like a balm and he stutters the relief of healing in his tightened grip on the soft skin of your abdomen. For a brief moment that leaves you permanently altered, you want to crawl into his skin so as to feel everything just as vibrantly as him. 

 “Not even…” He cannot finish the sentence, but he does not need to, not now when you understand him as you do. 

 “Never,”  you breathe, fingers shifting under his still buttoned shirt to dance across his lowest rib. You play along the slight ridges in the bone and find the very line where his intercostal muscle ends in a furrowing flicker. You feel made from him like Eve, homemade for you like Adam. 

 You measure his reaction in the sinew that comprises him, how sensation chases from his bowed spine down his arms, culminating in the fibrous contraction of the ligaments in the backs of his hands. It is captivating, watching the moon’s shadows pitch themselves in a bending absence of light across the dance under his skin. 

 “Can I-” He chokes off when you turn in his hold to find him through the material of his loose underwear, tracing the pockets of air between him and you and the fabric. “Please, sunflower, let me have you.”

 “You already have me, I am yours in totality,” you tell him in a hum, then you kiss him in an act that feels more like a reinvention of life. 

 In a conjunction of time that warps perception, any vestiges of clothing are dragged from where they do not belong. Pulled in stitches that ache as they are taken away from skins that were only ever meant to be touching. He is nearly feverish against you, you burn up at the touch of his full alignment with your own body. Everything is skinned down to nerves, lingering in the air left behind when everything else is stripped away. 

 An attempt is made by the house, a prickle of air on what is still exposed to its clammy, unkind hands. You smile against Aegon’s lips, tilt your head back and catch laughter in your thorax as he presses his lips to your beating heart and his thrums under the hand you still have tangled in between his ribs. Really, it is a weak and futile retaliation. You blossom from naval to clavicle in a mottling of flushed desire. 

 His hand trembles down you, dipping into the softness between your legs with roughly padded fingers and old cicatrice against your innards. It is a reckoning, a harmonisation. He finds that spot where the memory of his tongue has lingered outside the reach of the trepidation of your own hands on yourself since it left you. Ecstasy strikes through you in a flash of blinding white. It is almost too much because he is everywhere and yet he is not lacing himself into your fibres and it is all you want. 

 So you stretch the desire crystallising in your muscles and take his hand away, relishing in the way he does not look confused, just knows what you mean. You are one, after all. 

 “I love you,” he tells you when the meat of your legs is sticking to the sides of his hips and he has clustered you against his heaving chest, one with you again. He has a hand cupped against the back of your head, holding you safe from dropping clean back in weightless abandon, fingers holding your skull between the dips of tendons. 

 You make a sound you did not know you could, forges in vocal chords tunes by his ministrations and affections, he mirrors it back like birds calling out to one another in the dawn’s early light. “I love you,” you surrender again, feeling close to losing control as you relinquish yourself to the fervor of your hips' instinctive movement against his. 

 You want him to climax first, only so you can watch him as he crests. His eyes grow heavy and his lashes fan out in mercury threads across his warm flushed cheeks. Through your madness you can feel him drawing closer to the edge and you smile with a dazed mania as he starts to falter in his pace, starts to whimper at the height of his breaths. 

 Then he breaks, and it is like watching the sunrise. His mouth falls open and he goes perfectly still, spine taught like the strings of a violin. The only movement is a shimmer behind his eyelids when his eyes roll back. He sounds like a chorus of fallen angels, voices plied to sing songs of a god who rejected them, tempered by flames into a cry of beautiful freedom. 

 Watching him like that is enough, and as his heart stutters under your hand, you follow him into the void, you hear the second he feels it against himself. It is like watching the birth of the universe, the colourful death of a star. History and time and rapture explode in the ends of your nerves and you hear yourself like a stranger in the abstract. 

The come down is all him, his hands still on you, his lips soothing your pulse in your neck on their way to your own and his hair sticking in waves to your collarbones. When your vision fades back into clear view and the image of him is solid once more, you find him grinning.

 “That was the best thing I have ever seen,” he says, stroking up the curve of your spine with his fingertip. It sends a shiver in its wake. 

 You tip your forehead against his and feel the salt of exertion slide in unity. “You should have seen my view.”

 His lips find yours and mould the two of you together. 

 The sunflower could almost be smiling for her relief. She blows warm in the wind, and eternal embracing with that which she holds dear. The little flowers all around her reach for her and she reaches back. When the petals touch, their downy holds brush against each other with aching permanence. 

 “I do not know how to thank you for tonight, for finding him,” he says deliberately, pulling you back to meet his sincerity laced eyes, “I am not worrying.”

 You smile but he shakes his head. 

 “No, sunflower I-” a hand rakes through sated clumping hair, “I have worried for Davey every minute since I waved him goodbye at that shitty little train station eleven years ago and now, suddenly, I know he is okay and I know I will see him again and I did not know just how much it was hurting to carry all of it around.”

 You try to kiss him but he does not quite let you, holding your cheeks in his gentle grasp. “You are brilliant and beautiful and I love you.”

 It is a compliment of such searing truth and intention that it has your instincts itching to hide away in your blushing cheeks. However you do not, he does not let you, he holds your face in his gaze until you feel like you're going to cry the blood from your veins. 

 “Do you believe me?” He asks, jogging you with light emphasis, “because I will tell you every chance I get if you do not just yet.”

 You do not know what to say, not in the face of the absolution from more than you knew was aching at your muscles. You shed fears of never belonging, that nigh unkillable frightening dream of being petrified into the coal mines and being forgotten there. You do not want a big life, that is not what you are asking for.; no lights and glory and praise, all you want is for your own little dreams to come true. Nothing more. 

 “I believe you,” you say, because you do. You would be a hypocrite not to after every time you have asked him to have faith in your judgement over the hundreds of others he has felt. 

 The universe gives you a little more, breaks the crest of the clouds to let the moon filter through the gap in the curtains and you shudder at the touch of her featherlight rays. 

 “Good,” he says simply, kissing you finally. He lets you sob against him, even when your teeth knock against his and the slickness of your cheeks goes cold in the night air. He just holds you tighter and blesses the tracks of your tears with his touch. “Because I am going to tell you all the time anyway.”

 You laugh wetly against him and shiver with the delicious vulnerability of being loved with abandon. Tomorrow you can have another staring match with his mother and pity his rotting father in his moldering chair. You will unpack your weapons and your armour and march down into battle at the breakfast table, fight the good fight for the man you love because that is who you are.

 In the light of this waxing moon, you trace his face as fatigue creeps into his bones and let yourself be nothing more, and nothing less than content.

⚘⚘⚘

Dearest readers! Happy Friday! I dearly hope you are all well and have enjoyed this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. It is bloody long (eleven thousand words! I am so sorry but I could not help myself) and I have been looking forward to posting it for so long. Please let me know what you think, I would love to know. All my love, SlaginSecret xx

@neithriddle

[eolewyn1010]

Downton Abbey Fashion 89 - wedding gowns in 1925

We have three brides this season (well, Isobel marries Lord Merton at some point, but that happens offscreen, so, no dress to talk about): Mrs Hughes, Mary, and Edith, respectively warranting the comments nice and appropriate, underwhelming, and so pretty!

Mrs Hughes in Cora’s velvet coat. Making this a whole story arc was kind of not warranted when, y’know, we’ve never actually seen Cora wear this coat, so I don’t get the feeling that she would miss it. But alright. It harmonizes well with the lavender dress, although I would’ve liked it if the belt had a little trim or something that would make it pop more. As it is, the buckle looks a little random in the middle of nowhere. But let’s focus on the glorious applications instead! Purple flowers on a lot of white wavy leaves, and it’s paired with that charming lace-brimmed hat. I also cannot help my love for smooth, well-done box pleats.

I’m glad they took off the huge fur and the clunky hem trim before Mrs Hughes wore this. Honestly, I’m not sure why the fur was a part of this in the first place; usually, they wear separate fur stolas on top of their coats. Cora, what on earth were you keeping in your dust corner there? I’m wondering a little why Mrs Hughes, who’s presumably a virgin well into her 50s, won’t marry in white (whereas Mary, who is very officially not a virgin anymore, with a child in wedlock and all, does wear white, or at least champagne, even for the second go), but that’s more of an idle notion than a concern because this ensemble looks very nice on her and fits the down-to-earth vibe of her wedding. Although I find it ironic that, after all her insistence on the wedding being hers and not one of House Crawley, she does marry in the Crawleys’ signature dusty purple.

--------------

Mary’s second wedding look is. Well, it is a second wedding, and a very quick one at that, but I’m still underwhelmed. Mary, you could at least repeat the flowers on the hat; there’s not much on it except a bit of ruffled tulle! I do like her hair for a change, at least in the front because she still refuses to even out that fur patch in the nape of her neck. But why is this so unspectacular? This is not a charity tea; this is her wedding! And she has prided herself from the start of the series as a fashion queen, and dares to show up in this bland outfit.

If I have to suffer, so do you: Frock Flicks pointed out that this dress has a giant V pointing at Mary’s vagina, and now I can’t unsee it. I suspect the deep cut down the front was supposed to bring in some drama, but the zigzag lace band is not not showy enough for that. I’ll say this: Overall, I think the lower part of the outfit is better than the boring upper half; it has a sweet knife-pleated skirt and kick pleats in the back of the coat. Still. Mary, for this coat to work, you should have filled out the front V at least with a shiny damask pattern.

--------------

And Edith, mah gurl, gets her happy ending! And looks pretty damn glorious in the process. Fun fact, she wears not one, but two lovely tiaras for the occasion, the little curlicue number for her veiled look to church, and later for the party a more streamlined one with lots of pearls, including a fashionable tassel design at the side of her head that is, yep, more pearls. Which, instead of crushing the impression of the lace under it or being crushed by it, perfectly harmonizes with it. Thank Edith’s taste that the necklace is a very simple deal and she lets her tiaras be the only noteworthy jewelry.

The dress itself is a fairly simple deal in terms of shape, 1920s-typical length, sleeves a little more fitted than I would expect (and also pretty short for a winter wedding; Edith is the only woman in that church who’s not wearing fur), and then there is this lovely neckline. Who ever came up with that particular lace was a goddamn genius. It’s not only the neckline; some of the glory also goes to the skirt hem, layers of lightweight, translucent scallops. It doesn’t try to be all glam’n’glitz, and there have been more spectacular looks on the show, but this fits her character so well and she makes a lovely bride.

To be honest, I would make less of a fuss about this if it were only the outfit she wore to her party, the basic dress. But what she wears to church has, one, a very long lace cape down from the shoulders that I’m in love with, and two, a glorious cathedral veil. The cape and the veil are not easy to tell apart; they kind of fuse into each other, and imho they lift this outfit from quite pretty to stunning. The dress is fairly simple in and of itself, but the composition of the entire look? Gorgeous.

[magicpaint]

Perfume for characters like Marie Lottie Duchess etc.?

Movie Characters —

Katrina van Tassel (The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad)

Strawberry Scarecrow (Birch & Besom) — Strawberry milk, a warm flaky croissant, cozy flannel stuffed with sun-baked hay, marshmallow meringue

Bobbing For Apples (CocoaPink) — Orchard peaches, Honey Crisp apples, glowing Jack O' lanterns, pumpkin flesh, and layers of creamy vanilla with just a touch of the warm patchouli fragrance of Witch's Brew.

Coquette (Siren Song Elixirs) — Meyer lemon, Freesia, Coconut milk, Tahitian vanilla, Cream, Shortbread, Honey

Kiss Me At Midnight (Nui Cobalt) — Languid patchouli, clove bud, ylang ylang, labdanum absolute, skin-warmed suede, and syrupy black fig.

She Poisoned the Strawberries (Death & Floral) — Fresh picked strawberries, the musk of a scorned lover, cold sparkling champagne.

Madame Adelaide Bonfamille (The Aristocats) —

Dressing Table (Pulp Fragrance) — Red lipstick, white oak, face powder, tonka and vanilla beans, & a cup of coffee with milk and sugar.

Aphrodite's Temple (Luvmilk) — Honey slathered peaches with a hint of spice and vanilla, rounded out with rose and a touch of sweet burning wood.

Warm Heart (Lovesick Witchery) — Notes of drizzled honey, cardamom cream, milk, vanilla, gingerbread spice syrup, and espresso.

Chantilly Lace (Deep Midnight) — Warm Vanilla, Eastern Sandalwood, Sweet Honeysuckle, Sweet Musk, and a sprinkling of White and Pink Florals.

Baroness (Laurel & June) — rich amber, spicy vanilla and a touch of heavenly musk

Duchess (The Aristocats)

White Robe (Luvmilk) — Creamy coconut milk, sweet sugar cane, a hint of smoke, white amber, and pure honey.

Serene Queen (Lovesick Witchery) — Notes of orange blossom, chamomile tea, rice milk, vanilla, and tonka bean.

Signature White (CocoaPink) — A blend of delicate shea blossoms, rice flowers, vanilla cream, sweet sugar and heliotrope with delicate undertones of amber and sandalwood.

Dreaming Ever So Peacefully (Laurel & June) — Puffy lavender clouds, cashmere, clean sheets, white tea, thyme, star jasmine, a touch of fresh bergamot and coconut, Egyptian musk, warm woods

Grace (Nui Cobalt) — Sun-warmed pink magnolia, wild rose, pearl musk, vanilla orchid, and organic tonka bean butter.

Marie (The Aristocats)

Kneady Kitten (Luvmilk) — Warm sweet bread, melting butter, a base of rich vanilla.

Purrgeoisie (Pierrot Perfumery) — Strawberry shampoo, petit fours, steamed almond milk, vanilla resin, caramelized amber

Cotton Candy (Morari) — Delightfully sweet, floaty clouds of spun sugar

Blanket Fort (Nui Colbalt) — Cotton flower, grey suede, warm amber, green fig, tumbled teakwood, and raw vanilla bean.

Tiara (Damask Haus) — Radiant white pink iris, gleaming musk, ambroxan, peach flesh, cashmere, peru balsam, benzoin, silk.

Bianca (The Rescuers)

Divine Femininity (Lovesick Witchery) — Notes of lavender, rose, vanilla, myrrh, and cedarwood.

Éclair Violet (Laurel & June) — Soft powdery violets, blue iris blossoms, vanilla, tonka bean, sandalwood, and electrifying Iso E

The Lingering Scent of Invisible Lilacs (Morari) — Lilac, Violet, Violet Leaf, Humid Air, Gentle Rain

Iris Royale (Smoky Mountain Scents) — A classic opening of fresh bergamot and sweet violet is quickly joined by a heart of creamy Iris and soft rose. A base of sweet, woody amyris and earthy patchouli is accented beautifully by traces of cedar and brown sugar.

Dusk (CJScents) — Lavender, sandalwood, and vanilla

Charlotte La Bouf (The Princess & the Frog)

Heart Breaker (Luvmilk) — Rich butterscotch, warm graham crackers, faint notes of cinnamon and brown sugar, and a drizzle of caramel.

Sweet Talk (Deep Midnight) — Caramel, Spun Sugars, Pink Cocoa, White Florals, Raspberries, and Blush Apricots

Toujours Doux (Laurel & June) — Sweet red cherries, almond, a big pink rose bloom, bright white lilies, vanilla, and vetiver

2AM in Lafayette (Sorce) — Vanilla co2, oakmoss, cafe au lait, ribbons of caramel, beignets dusted with powdered sugar

Parisian Pink (Nui Cobalt) — Peony petals, a suede settee, osmanthus, silk tree, spun sugar, Margaret Merril roses, pink grapefruit, and antique sandalwood.

Disney Parks Characters —

Sally Slater / The Tightrope Walker (The Haunted Mansion)

Ballet Arabesque (Pulp Fragrance) — Dark rum, dulce de leche, roasted chestnuts, rockrose resin, Moroccan bakhoor, black vanilla bean, spikenard, oakmoss, & coffee CO2.

Girls and Graves (Death & Floral) — Sugare’d grapefruit, pink musk, soft cherry blossoms, fluffy pink clouds of fairy floss

Swamp Elixir (Death & Floral) — Soft honeysuckle and mossy oak trees, blended with water lilies and sparkling pink lemonade.

Cirque Sombre (Pierrot Perfumery) — A mysterious blend of midnight jasmine, smoky incense, nighttime breeze, and a deep, dusty note.

Southern Gothic (Siren Song Elixirs) — Magnolia, Vanilla Accord, Night blooming Jasmine, Oakmoss, Tobacco leaf, Cedar wood, Sandalwood, Black amber

Melanie Ravenswood (Phantom Manor)

The Secret of Wives and Widows (Death & Floral) — A dark and mysterious blend of Arabian sandalwood, luscious vanilla, orchids and southern night air; white tea in a fine cup of china held by a figure with long painted nails.

Lace Draped Spectre (Solstice Scents) — Vanilla Musk, Spicy Pink Carnation, Pink Pepper, Rose, White Musk

Flowers Nocturnal (Solstice Scents) — Jasmine, gardenia, moonflower, tuberose, vanilla.

The Widow in White (Pulp Fragrance) — Meyer lemon, white grapefruit, orange blossom, sandalwood and vanilla.

You Are Mine (Sorce) — Black cherry, ginger, lemon, saffron, dark chocolate shavings, rose absolute, osmanthus, leather, almond, tonka bean, oud, vanilla bean, cedar, a stretch of softly powdered skin

Website Links —

Birch & Besom

CJScents

CocoaPink

Damask Haus

Death & Floral

Deep Midnight

Laurel & June

Lovesick Witchery

Luvmilk

Morari

Nui Cobalt

Pierrot Perfumery

Pulp Fragrance

Siren Song Elixirs

Smoky Mountain Scents

Solstice Scents

Sorce

[voivodeoftransylvania]

Dwellings with pointed arches, stained-glass windows and spires Homes with a bedroom space in the attic area where two flowers, Two scions of a wealthy family have never seen the light hours Guiltless, free of sin, two withered blooms filled with need, and bleeding bowels. It's been downhill ever since, i have felt you on my lips, under this vaulted ceiling While gargoyles and ornate decoration stones in exhaust were squealing And the walls, enriched with monsters and devils tempting Christians, are screaming: ''Every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood, every feeling!'' I know i'm no ones daughter, weak and much more smaller But i'm cold and filled with red, and in need, of my stronger Father-like brother, whose fingers go deep, as deep as undersea water I feel you inside, you grow taller, and your love that i don't need, opens me broader. In canopy beds, on dark velvet bedding, among damask patterned fabrics, i creep Down the floor, to your feet, under haunting pictures with Victorian styled frames where i sleep Covered in white cum stained sheets, i'm pale, shivering, sick and weak At night, all the darkness goes into you, you reach inside me with two fingers, and go deep. Tie me up, keep me in this bedroom, filled with smoky fragrance note perfume That spreads among this frightening gloom, while you slowly start to consume My purity, you break down vows of chastity way too soon, and hell breaks loose upon us, in June A sense of doom hung over the whole room, and that night moonflowers no longer bloomed. Among the terror of shuttered windows and closed doors, this bloody narrow corridor And four other corpses under our floor, you reach inside me and hide me, my sanity's restorator.

[emilykaldwen]

For medieval and regency courting prompts

Write a scene where a nobleman uses a dance at a royal ball to secretly profess his love for a woman already promised to another.

Abby and Aegon!

I know this isn't what you were looking for but Aegon took over. Seriously, the timed stream of consciousness exercises are really helping so thank you <3

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“Stop it.”

A hiss from a rosebud mouth, fingers clawing into his arm with a grip that sought to drag Aegon in, not push him away. He knows her by now, has known her as he knows himself, years and years of this beneath the touch, within his lilac gaze that targets her the way those desperate fingers, pricked from her embroidery needle, targets him.

“I won’t. I won’t ever stop.” Closer now. Closer until he could count her eyelashes, mouth against hers. Sliding. Melting. No more whispers or hisses, just the taste of her against his tongue, better than the Arbor red splashed across the rug and soaking in as the scent of her, roses and bergamot, soak into him. Comfort in the uplifting scent, pulling the weeds from his bones that have grown over him as he languished in his misery.

To the Stormlands she’s to go.

Fury may be the Baratheon, but his are words of fire and blood. His is the name of a conqueror who dreamed.

Abby is weak against him and Aegon draws his arm around her waist, holds her close, fingers bunching in the vibrant red damask. Red, red as roses, red as blood, red as fire. If he bites into her rosy skin, will her blood be just as stark? Drink her up until she fills his belly and pumps through his own veins.

“We’re leaving.”

She pushes at him, searching his face for answers plain. He doesn’t let go, hauls her with him further through the wisteria garden and further into the shadow, away from the light and merry song of her betrothal party. The queen’s ward, the Hand’s great-niece. A bartering piece in the war Aegon doesn’t want, the war he can put a stop to.

It would be his rights to burn Borros to ash on the wind for daring to take what is rightfully his, but that is another war he can stop. He would fight if he had to, but why fight when they can simply leave.

She weeps for the dead, tender hearted rabbit that she is. He would give her no more tears, no bloodshed in her name lest he’s pushed to it. Aegon greens at the thought of blood. He is not a warrior-heart, not like his brother, thought the same violence lingers deep in his gut.

[starsandink13]

The White Crow Game Chapter 2

You woke up with a sudden start and your eyes flashed open. You sucked up a deep breath as you jolted upwards. Your shoulders heaved as the faint memories of what transpired looped in your head. Underneath your fingers, you felt a soft velvet upholstery.

"W-what?" You squinted your eyes and looked around.

Although it was dark, you could clearly tell that you were no longer in your workplace's restroom, but rather an old parlor room. The furniture was expensive and antique, dating back to at around the early 1900s or late 1800s. Even in the dark, you could see how rich the colors of the furniture was. You ran your finger against the velvet once more, feeling an intricate damask pattern.

"Glad to see that you've finally woken up, (Y/N)," a voice said from behind you.

You whipped your head around to see an extremely tall man turning on the tassel light next to his chair. He wore a red and gold coat with a black top hat that casted half of his face in shadows. Pinned to his hat and white shirt were black broaches with a golden moon and eye in them. He held an unearthly and eldritch beauty to him, with ghostly white hair that framed his pale face, sharp features, and red eyes with gold rings in them. His lips were pulled into a slight smile as he reclined further into his seat.

"Where am I?" You asked, unable to keep the dread creeping into your voice.

"An estate of mine that's on the border between realms," he answered calmly, took off his hat, and brushed back a lock of hair that revealed a pointed ear.

"W-what the--"

"What am I?" The stranger cut you off and crossed one of his legs over the other. "I believe that you humans call my kind the good-folk, the fair-folk, the fae, or most commonly: fairies."

Before you could ask, he spoke again: "And you're wondering why you're here, am I right?"

You numbly nodded your head, your mind racing with countless questions as you tried to process what was going on.

"Well to put it simply: I am here to collect your debt."

"D-debt?"

"You wished for your life to improve, grades to rise, a higher pay, better living quarters, and the internship of your dreams," he waved his hand. "I overheard you and granted that wish, so now it's time to collect that debt."

"Wait!" You stammered. "But I didn't make any sort of deal with you or anything! This is hardly fair!"

"Sorry dear, but you should have been more careful with your wishing. However, I am far more fair and generous compared to other members of my kind. I didn't suddenly make your life much worse than it was, steal your firstborn, or strike you with a terrible ailment the next week. "

"How can I repay you then? Money? A yearly sacrifice? A--"

"You'll have to come with me back to the fae realm."

"What? Why for?"

"What do you think it might be for?" The fairy's eyes glittered with amusement. "Think about all of the old stories that humans have told for centuries about us; long before you imagined us as tiny, glittery, winged people that frolicked in flowers and played silly little pranks."

"A- a servant?"

"Good guess, but that's not it."

Your stomach dropped at what he meant. Swallowing back the lump in your throat, you barely managed to stammer out: "The reason you're doing this-- why you want to take me away...is to get a bride, right?"

"Correct."

Your heart dropped and you leaned away from the fairy. The thought of being taken away to a land far from your home, married to that monster and left at its mercy with no hope of escape made your stomach turn and churn. Sweat rolled down your forehead and you gripped your knees as you breathed heavily and tears started to form in your eyes.

There's got to be a way out of here! Think, damn it, think!

"If we're done here, then I'll prepare a coach and start wedding--"

"Wait." You spoke up.

"What is it?"

"Your kind likes to play games and bets, right?"

"Yes they do-- however, I am an exception to the rule," he said. "But for you, I am willing to hear where you're going with this."

You licked your lips and took a deep breath. Your heart drummed against your chest as blood pounded in your ears and gripped your knees. His dual-colored eyes twinkled with amusement as he tapped his long fingers against the arm of his chair. 

"If I can escape this mansion of yours, you'll have to let me go," you chewed the inside of your mouth. "If I lose or I give up..."

"You'll have to come with me," he finished with a small smile.

You nodded your head, trying to keep yourself from vomiting the bile in the back of your throat. The fairy noticed your consternation and grinned wider, his teeth glinted like white daggers in the dim light.

"And why should I agree to this little game of yours when I can just spirit you away right now?" He leaned in.

"You pride yourself on being more generous and just compared to other fairies, so wouldn't it be fair to give me a chance to earn my freedom?"

"I suppose so," he mused and drummed his index finger harder against the chair's arm. After several seconds, he sighed and gently straightened up the front of his coat.

"I accept to play your game. But before we do that, I want to establish a few rules."

"What are they?" You felt your stomach clamping with fear.

"First off, under no circumstance are you to get help from any of the other residents in the mansion, nor are you to help them so that they may try to return the favor to you. You are to complete this game by yourself, understood?"

"I-I think so..."

"It's a yes or a no, my dear. What is it that you don't understand?"

"The other residents. What do you mean by that?"

"They are...what remains of those that thought they could cheat their way out of their deals with me," he answered. "They've been here for so long, that for most of them the only thing that remains is their desire to swindle you for their own gain: which can mean disastrous results for you. Does this make sense?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then on to rule two: the game doesn't start until you exit through those double doors there that leads into the main hall." He pointed to the golden doors a few yards away from you.

"Understood." 

"Now onto the third and final rule: the only way you can exit and win this game is by going out of the mansion's front doors. So do not cheat by breaking a window and crawling out of it. The only thing you're going to accomplish is breaking a perfectly good window and annoying me."

"I understand."

"Excellent. Now that we have that established, you can feel free to relax for as long as you'd like in here or ask me any questions in the meantime," the right corner of his mouth twitched into a smile.

"W-what's your name?" You licked your teeth.

"Since my true name is impossible to pronounce with the human tongue, you may call me whatever you'd like," he said. "However, do not call me what you would be insulting or belittling, or as your generation would call 'smartass' names."

"How about Corvin?"

"That's an acceptable name." He nodded his head. "Anything else you'd like to ask?"

"How bad are the other fairies?" You asked.

"Much, much worse than I am." He responded and leaned in, half of his face was covered in heavy shadows. "The old stories you've heard about us using half and metaphorical truths to manipulate, making crops wither overnight, stealing away children and replacing them with ours are very true. But those are just barely scratching the surface of what kind of mischief we do regularly. Any other questions you have for me, my dear?"

"Is this what you actually look like?" You scratched your hand, "Or is this just a form you're taking?"

"The general shape of this form is what I truly look like, just with a few...more humanlike attributes than I actually have." The fairy responded with a light laugh.

"I have one more question."

"What is it?"

"If I win, will I be back to where I started?"

"You mean going back to the life you had before I blessed you?" Corvin said. "No. Especially during my observations I've noticed how hard you worked in your personal ambitions once everything improved. If that's all of the questions you wanted answered, then now would be a good time to finally start our game."

Hesitantly, you got out of your chair and slowly walked towards the double doors. You looked over your shoulder to see Corvin grinning at you.

"Go on. You're just delaying the inevitable by standing there, unless you want to surrender already," his eyes shining with amusement.

With a shaking sigh, you opened the double doors and took your first step outside. With a phantom strike of an unseen grandfather clock, the game has officially begun.