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bloodyshirtrpg · 7 years

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♔ OC INFORMATION ♔

NAME/ALIAS & AGE:

Risa, eighteen.

PREFERRED PRONOUNS:

she/her.

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL:

EST. I would place my activity at a 6/10 at the moment. I currently have a pretty heavy courseload, so on some days I won’t be online, though on weekends I’ll try to make up for it. During school breaks, I’ll definitely be more available, with my activity rising to a 7 or 8/10.

♔ IC INFORMATION ♔

FULL NAME:

Selene Iora Avery

Selene: For moons and goddesses, soft vengeance and honeyed venom. She was named after beauty and mystique, that twilight enigma captured by no man or empire. Selas (σέλας): for the bright elite, for the numinous and the sacred. People would worship her. She would illuminate their sins like a passing crescent of light.

Iora: Greek for pure; for what true politician could resist the opportunity to prove and prove again his allegiance to his values? She was pure, she was pure like all the others of her status. Through her veins ran the ichor of the highest echelons of her race. But there is no power in the obvious. It was almost pitiful, that her name had to reflect her father’s pointed ambitions: that he would treat her as a bartering piece upon which ‘pure’ had to be written, like an envelope addressed in ink and blood.

Avery: They were immortalized in the 1920s by Cantankerus Nott; and ever since that moment there hasn’t been a day gone by in which the Averys did not strengthen their legacy. To be Sacred. They were a sly family, full of weasels and snakes — but she would be a raven with wings as black and glossy as night, set apart from her predecessors by her ability to soar.

FACECLAIM:

Nina Dobrev

FUTURE PLANS:

Heartbreak; She was a seductress of the highest degree, a white rose dipped in a sheen of thorns. All her life, Selene has been the most beautiful, the most coveted — and while her beauty was meant to attract suitors, she used it to devestate them instead. I think that it would be a very interesting plotline to reverse the roles for once: let someone else break her heart, wrench her affections from her. Let them lead her on, let them kiss her and promise her great things, let her believe them. Then, and only then; tear it all away. In a way, there’s a terrible excitement to exploring the tragic and unexpected: and I think that this would be a game-changer for Selene, to finally want someone with all her will, and have them play her dirty.

Sabotage; Did she truly hate her brother, or did she just envy him? It’s a question that I want to explore with Selene in-game. She has very mixed feelings regarding Nathaniel and his inability to uphold their family values, and I believe that there will come a time when she makes up her mind regarding her brother, and acts upon it. If she hates him, then she will cripple him, ruin him. If she envies him, then she will do all that is in her power to steal the throne and crown herself queen: but which is the lesser evil? Essentially, I would love to have her move against Nathaniel and wreak some family havoc. What’s more classic than the story of Cain and Abel; one sibling coveting the other, even to the point of murder?

DATE OF BIRTH:

November 15th, 1959 (age seventeen, nearly eighteen) / Scorpio — “The Scorpio motto might be “What is hidden is more interesting than what is obvious.” Their magnetic personality draws others to them, but they can also be secretive, for they learn early on that when you express everything, others may be afraid of the power of your feelings. They can become cold and withdrawn when hurt in love, and have the magic to light up the dark, but sometimes they would benefit by looking at the positive side of things rather than going into the darkness at all.”

SEXUALITY/SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS:

I believe Selene to be bisexual at the very least - though she has a tendancy towards hetero-romantic ideals. Her battle is against men, not women: and so she makes them her victims most often, though this isn’t to say that she hasn’t rendezvoused with the same sex before (in fact, I am certain that she has).

I’m very fluid when it comes to ships, so I don’t have a specific answer to this question. I feel that the bio sets the stage for a possible romance between Nikolai and Selene - and I would entirely be up for that, given development. But the possibilities are truly endless, and I imagine that whatever may happen, it’ll form organically as gameplay moves forward. I’m a huge fan of slow-moving, deeply built ships; so I don’t expect anything fast and furious. Angst is my middle name. Tragedy is my son. Anyways; I think you know how I tend to roll by now, and I’m too invested in crying over ships to relent my ways. Slow and steady wins the race…perhaps once in a blue moon. But isnt heartbreak always the more interesting route?

WAND, PATRONUS, & BOGGART:

Wand:

Madrona, 9 & ¾ inch, supple – “A beautiful evergreen from the Pacific Northwest region of North America, it is rare in British wandmaking. However, its distinctive peeling bark denotes its magical powers of change- hence, a powerful wood for Transfiguration.”

Veela hair core – “Veela wands are temperamental like the creatures they come from, and are considered too volatile for a decent wand core in many circles. However, some wizards enjoy the boost it gives to outdoorsy magics, divinations, and Charms. The veela’s inherent intelligence makes finding these wands among the non-Veela blooded most common in Ravenclaw.”

↳ She began with a wand of Rosewood; passed down to her from her father’s mother. The only defining trait was that it was a graceful wand wood, as if that alone merited her trust. To believe in appearances alone is the folly of a weak man. That first year was somewhat disastrous as she fanangled with the weak, graceful wand that had been pushed upon her. It was when Selene went to Ollivander’s herself that he retrieved for her a wand of Madrona, uprooted from his deep archives. Her particular wand was made in the year 1929, and the bark has been polished away from the wood.

Patronus:

Arctic Fox – “Cunning, stealth, persistence. The arctic fox is infinitely adaptable, living its life in one of the world’s most extreme climates. Arctic fox people tend to be sly, graceful, and have a near magic ability to make something out of nothing, utilizing even the most limited of resources. Arctic fox as a totem can teach us the ability to go with the flow of life, changing ourselves to suit our ever-evolving environments.”

Boggart:

“Darling, what are you afraid of?”

It was a sleepy, pleasure-fed rasp in the dark. Selene felt a body stir besides her, the boy at her side raising himself up with one arm in order to press himself to her, mouth at her ear, hands running along her skin like cold satin.

“Why do you ask?” And hers was a coy, soft response. “So that you can scare me in the dark?” She smiled for his benefit rather than her own. In truth, a trembling sort of doubt had crept into her chest with that one word. She didn’t like the concept of it.

Fear. It signified cowardice, it signified that there were things in this great, grand world which could cripple her with their potency, like a drowned man in the face of god.

He smiles into the nape of her neck. “The dark, then?” And she felt herself being tugged backwards, she felt his lips crash hungrily into her own; and she gave into it, not because she was afraid of the dark, but because she was afraid of the mundane. That fate that lay before her, every night like this one - it seized her in her most vulnerable moments, and she was entirely, helplessly afraid.

↳ Her boggart would be a vision of herself as a domestic housewife: the most mundane of existences, in her opinion. The idea that she can hold as much talent and ambition as all the world and still be confined to a lifetime of boredom - it’s more terrifying than the prospect of death. She is desperate to escape her fate and build a new one. She would rather die than be reduced to someone’s prize horse, to be ridden hard, and retired easy.

FOUR CHARACTERISTICS:

Fascinating: She was beautiful, she was full of divinity and consequence. Fascination is a curious thing: it’s striking, it’s memorable; it’s something otherworldly. She was a girl of silk and lace. The people she met, the hearts that she broke - she would never fade from them, they would never forget her. Her very presence cast an impossible imprint upon all those who looked at her and heard her speak. It made her formidable, she supposed. To be known and idolized, to be worshiped and dreamt of. Wetdream, daydream, chiffon-nightmare. Chanel No. 5, pervading their sleep and whispering sweet nothings into their ears.

Pragmatic: Her sharpness of mind was like the glint of a sword; all at once lethal and impressive. She was ambitious, yes. But beyond that, she was intelligent, sensible; possessing an enormous capacity for reason. Crime and Punishment. War and Peace. While the Slytherins followed their blind ambitions to the gates of Purgatory without blinking, she knew well what lay on the road before her. All things, even suffering, can be alleviated by planning. Her judgement is one of her greatest assets; and her mind is her greatest weapon: beyond her lips or her legs or her eyes, her mind is what truly entices. Aphrodite was beautiful, yes - but Athena had ended empires with a close of her fist.

Jealous: Even god himself is a jealous god. It seems that the fate of all divine beings is to want and hoard and hold close to them that which is theirs. Selene is often prone to envy: she envies Nathaniel for his unmerited inheritance, she envies Nikolai for stealing Evan’s affection, she envies and envies until it fills her lungs with thoughts of retribution. Things and people who she sees as “hers” are sacred in her eyes, and she will break heaven and raise hell in order to wrestle them back if they are taken from her.

Manipulative: She was a raven, but she possessed the cunning of a snake. As Helen had started a war of the ages with her manipulation and beauty, and Delilah had rendered Samson futile with her charming murmurs and a well-placed mouth; so Selene manipulated those around her with her charisma. She could be the devil’s prostitute for those boys who craved a bit of brutality, she could be a heavenly wraith for all the girls who wished to be treated softly. Her manipulation came in many forms - verbal, metaphorical, physical. Even with a single glance, she could convey entire worlds of lies. In the span of one conversation, sinners could be born again, the blinded could again see a pinprick of light. She had the tongue of a seductress, the mind of a empress, the voice of a siren, the hands of a nympth.

CONNECTIONS:

Nikolai Selwyn — “I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want to drink you in. I want to walk into the heart of you and never walk back out. “ —Nico Alvarado from “Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls”

↳ She wanted him for no rhyme or reason: just that she could. She wanted him to bow before her, she wanted to place her hand upon his cheek and see him shudder at her touch. “You cannot evade me,” she murmurs to him in the twilight. “Not all of us are conquerable,” is his flippant response, matching her every move with a mirror move of his own. In truth, she envies Nikolai: she envies his bond with Evan, she envies his promising future, she envies that he is not hers to touch and hold captive. There is a wine-dark streak of ambition in his soul, and she senses it calling to hers. She’s considered it; my god, she’s considered it. How would they look standing side by side? Would their scepters match in shades of gold? How great an empire could they build, if they were to give into their primal urges and kiss each other like the hungry, insatiable beasts they were?

Nathaniel Avery — “Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands?” —Richard Siken from “Wishbone”

↳ Her brother had everything that she ever wanted, but he still found ways to hurt her anew. But she loved him, oh she loved him with a lingering purity, an inconsolable affection. They were both children once, after all: those were the best days, weren’t they? She still sees Nathaniel as a child, given his reckless antics, and often she’s the one to clean up his messes. He resents her, she knows this. But as much as she covets what he has innately been given, she doesn’t truly hate him. They both know that she’s more capable, more dangerous, more fit for the throne. But no matter how he might shirk his responsibilities and despise his role, Selene knows that Nathaniel would never, ever relinquish his hold on the Avery legacy to her. Not without a fight, not without a blood-soaked war.

Evan Rosier — “You happened to me. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse.” —Marilyn Hacker from "Nearly a Valediction”

↳ “Do you love me?” It’s a tradition of theirs, to ask one another this. She asks him now, curled up against his shoulder as they watch the breeze roll in from the mountainpeaks, rippling across the grounds like a ghost. “Until the day the sun sets in the east,” he replies with an absolute certainty. And she smiles. All else can fade, but she’s certain that her bond with Evan will last forever. Contrary to what others might assume from their affectionate touches and deep familiarity, they are not lovers and will never be. They’re platonic soulmates, a different sort of union that is unbreakable by time or war. She worries deeply over Evan. He is her light and her shield, and she can’t imagine losing him to the hysteria which has overtaken the others of their society — he is not Achilles, golden warrior of the front lines. He is Patroclus, and she’s so desperately afraid of letting him go, only to receive him back in ashes. She does everything in her power to save them both from their impending dooms.

FREESTYLE PORTION:

Playlist: The Comets (for Selene & Evan)

Tag: (quotes, images, flashes of who I envision her to be) Click here

Diary Entry:

JULY 21ST, 1976

There is a misconception that beautiful women are thornless. We are ripe for the picking, simply a commodity to be auctioned and then bought by the highest bidder. It is just as Mary Wollstonecraft wrote: we are flowers, cultivated and planted within the shallowest of soil, so that every breath we draw depends entirely upon the whims of our masters. Our petals are ground to be their perfume, and because we were watered with wine and dreams, we inevitably wilt before our time. I am my father’s flower, a helpless, wilting bloom. I am to be here one day and gone the next, and he is to clink his pouch of gold as he makes the trade.

I fear destruction. It is like oblivion, a monstrous, infallible thing, armoured and willing to face even the strongest of souls. I feel myself hurtling towards it every day, every night. Particularly now, when I cannot breathe for the corset at my waist, and cannot cry for the mask upon my face. The monsters are already closing in. Their eyes pierce into my side and shake every foundation I have built in my seventeen years. They undress me, and I am always scrambling for honour, fighting not to lose it. There will come a day when they become too many, and even I cannot fight them any longer. My weapons are quiet ones - they brandish armories and swords, I brandish only myself.

Today, I nearly lost even that. It sickens me to write of it, but it also is a reminder that must be committed to ink, an admonition to my future and my psyche.

I am always willing to be touched, to be violated, even - for the sake of my games. Like a queen must sacrifice pieces, I must allow certain events to transpire in order to reach my goal. Some are small.

Pawns: a man’s mouth against mine, rough and hard, his teeth clicking against my own, the taste of whiskey in his breath. The warm slithering feeling of a tongue slipping past my lips, intertwining as he presses me against the edge of a table.

Rooks…wandering hands that begin at my waist and then stray to my chest — grasping, handling, lingering over the black lace and dark chiffon we women don for their imagination.

Some are larger, more important, less forgivable…and it is when they are taken from me that I feel like I may be slipping, that I may be losing this match to the enemy.

My knights, my bishops.

Last night, I suffered a loss that haunts me even now. It is not a loss that I have not already seen. And yet his hand between my thighs, thrusting, twisting, drawing this primal, feral thing out of me…I’m almost ashamed to say that I almost enjoyed it, that I arched my back and cried his name out like it meant something. Then there was his mouth, already stained crimson from my lips, and I hated it, I hated him — and yet I fell to those carnal pleasures, the stubble of his chin against my thighs, my fingers grasping the thick locks of his hair, torn between wanting him to stop and wanting more.

This is the danger of the precipice.

You think yourself powerful, guarded — and yet as your soldiers fall beneath you, you feel the urge to leap into that gorge, to face the beast yourself, to offer everything for the sake of victory. But you lose yourself to the glory, the feeling of love and sweat on your hands, spilling down your thighs like Poseidon’s saltwater spring…unintentionally wonderful and yet utterly pointless.

And that is when you fall.

Or nearly. He was naked, a beautiful youth, Adonis of our age. I did not know him, but his blood was pure like ichor, like those of the gods, he may have been Aphrodite’s favorite. And in the marble bareness of his chest, that moonlit organ hard between his legs, I found a type of twisted satisfaction. But not enough, never enough. He was a bishop, but I am the queen. When I fall, the entire board capsizes.

I left him there with a kiss and nothing more.

There was something ugly, hideous in his gaze; when I pulled from him. He made as if to grab me, to silence my cries and get it over with. I would have killed him if he had.

Perhaps the blood wouldn’t even lie on my hands — I know that there are those who would murder with a single word of my command.

WRITING SAMPLES:

( For this portion of the app, I decided to take the prompt literally, and provide a few flashes, glimpses, and short windows of insight into Selene at various points across time. Some are vague, others are fleeting — but I hope that they come together to give a somewhat holistic view of how I plan on portraying her. )

♚ ONE.

“Do you believe in omens?” Her voice is quiet, musing, a murmured menagerie of pale interest and cool apathy. She watches the bodies stream pass their perch at the banister, one after another, caught in a bacchic frenzy, food and drink fueled by an anxious trepidation. Her companion looks on at the scene below. They are like lions surveying a stampede of gazelles; choosing their prey, calculating their victories. Selene scoffs, a soft sound. “In times of war, harbingers like this always promised riots to come. Look at them. Look at their fear.”

♚ TWO.

It was always an exciting affair to return an illicit volume to its rightful place upon the shelves. A trickyaffair, dangerous, full of sleights of hands and misleading paths to fool the eyes of any beholder. Selene slipped past the stories of magical beasts and their destruction, stepped through the sector dedicated to the most famous of the wizarding race — slowed as she approached potions and alchemy. Her fingers wrapped tighter about the leather-bound notebook at her chest, remembering page 37 and its deadly advice, thinking upon it. A turn of the corner, a glance cutting across the small expanse — and dark eyes reflected dawn’s light as recognition flooded their depths. A sigh, soft, like the grey light. “I don’t trust you with your own judgment this morning, mon cher. It seems to be…lacking.”

For there Evan was, asleep on the ground. He was graceful even in his sloth, but she nonetheless goes to him, shakes him lightly; presses a chaste kiss to his forehead when he stirs but does not wake.

♚ THREE.

Her smile wavered before falling into oblivion. She did not play games where others were used as leverage, certainly not those who she had purposely excluded from her board. Nathaniel had crossed some irreversible line, broken an unspoken rule. He had involved a piece that she had expressively hidden away in his convoluted games.

“Our father must be pleased that a boy like you is his heir and that I’m only the spare.” Her voice was quiet, eerily so; the imperium was not in volume, but in nature. “But to have half a beast inherit his name would be a harrowing blow, would it not? Like Minos and his Minotaur, a creature appeased only by the blood of maidens, confined within a labyrinth where he believes himself k i n g .”

Now she leans forward as she stands from her seat, her lips inches from his ear, dark locks lending the two Avery siblings a brief moment of seclusion, a heartbeat for her to etch her murmered mark. “I suggest that you heed my warning, little king. You’re running yourself into a dead end.”

♚ FOUR.

It dripped from her, a seduction as golden-dark and rich as honey; that gilded absence of imperfection. To look at her was to die. Such a mouth, such a face, such fingers, pressing bruised kisses into the flesh of men and women alike; Eros’ executioner, bedecked in a cloak of darkness and lace, feeding upon the misguided love of her victims.

She stands now, wrapped in that invincibility (that impossibility) of bedroom eyes and smokey murmurs, champagne-kisses and the soft flutter of a dress as it falls to the floor. About her, a dozen beings are having a thousand dreams of touching and being touched by her, and she is fully aware of their hunger. They may deny it, they may suppress it, but the way that she moves, ah, she is from heaven and they are sinners begging for salvation, found in the passionate press of her lips, the flicker of her dark eyes, silver in the moonlight.

“My darling.” It’s the real executioner sweeping up to her in all his finery, smiling like a wolf, all teeth and hackles and obsidian daggers. Nikolai Selwyn. He is seventeen and already holds himself with the same air which characterizes his father’s dynasty, and though she doesn’t want to play into his game tonight, together they nonetheless exude a sense of power which is both intimidation and seduction.

Their surroundings pale, their opponents simmer with a quiet envy, daggers in their gazes and an unbidded wanting drying in their mouths. Opulence and wealth become quite inconsequential unless they are inhabited by the sure-footed elite, and in this manor of silk screens and white lace doilies, of ash fireplaces and ancient halls of secrets, they nearly dominate.

“My tormentor,” she replies to him in greeting, offering him her hand. He smiles, a crooked sort of smile that indicates that he’s genuine, if only for a night. And though she never does tell him, throughout the duration of that night, she is grateful for his company, the shadow-dark solidarity of him. If only for a night. What more should they expect; when they lived lies as extravagantly as if they were the glorious truth?

♚ FIVE.

There was a certain restlessness to the halls even in their state of solitude: but perhaps the feeling of frenzy was merely the beating of her heart. Once, she had relished its pulse. It was a sign that she was human, that despite all her wrongdoings, she had not yet risen to a place too far to be redeemed. Surely, when the day of her judgement arrived, she would hear it in the beating of her heart; it would skip and wrench, she would know with certainty that this is the end. Wretched organ of love, destroyer of worlds.

Tonight, as she steps lightly over the marble floors of a castle asleep, there is blood smeared on her mouth.No, it was merely lipstick. Hers? Theirs?

It had come to a point where she barely blinked after one such entanglement. Kiss them, lead them, lay with them; hear their breaths in the dark. These sorts of excursions had once been sparse, but now, with the last dredges of her humanity coming out in desperate attempt to change her impending fate, the nights were blurring, the sheets tangling one step closer to the ultimate picking of the rose. She was on dangerous grounds. It was her version of delirium, this uncouth consistency, one hard mouth exchanged for another, a different skin against hers each time the moon rose again. Pureblood, halfblood, blood without blood - did it matter? Promiscuity was separated from temptation by a fine division, but she could be characterized as neither. This was not a sport to enjoy, it was a hunt to numb the senses.

She walked as if in a trance. Dark cloaks drawn about her to make up for the chill of minutes prior (she was told that her collarbones could bring the sharpest of men to their knees), Selene was sweeping through the empty bones of a great establishment, and her mind was fleeing from her. Gaze lost; thoughtless. This was her delirium. And someone else was witnessing it. Darkness’ brother was fear. But she does not fear the boy in the shadows when her black gaze coolly rises to meet his.

Few specters frequented this twilight realm of hers.

“If not for your trademark arrogance, Nikolai, I might have passed you by.” She raises her chin by the slightest degrees, adjusting her tired bones to his height, adjusting her mindlessness for weary blades of steel.

“If not for the smear of your lipstick, I would have let you,” is his quaint reply, light; but carrying a far deeper connotation. He challenges her.

She meets his eyes across the moon-dark hall, and all at once they understand one another. Not like Evan understands her, no; but there is something familiar and innate in the Slytherin’s face that mirrors the hidden emotions in her own.

They had been children once. Pure, untainted. Once - though she despised the act of remembering it, she had been defenseless. Perhaps he had been as well. She wonders then, what had brought him to this place, to walk with her in shadows, to see the same dappled halls as she did, with eyes cold, serpentine…a gaze that so mirrored her own.

For her, it had been the roughness of hands in the dark, a snarling command pressed against her ear by her father and all his male companions alike, the reminder, the constant beratement that she was weak, meant only for another’s pleasure, that her power lay between her legs and no place else. She was in a labyrinth, and it was her destiny to be devoured by the beast who lusted for her flesh. Or so they insisted.

She would devour them if they spoke to her now. They would see her and want her, and she would tear their filthy hands from her waist, leave them bleeding out like dogs groveling at her feet. She was more powerful than they could ever dream to be. One movement of her hips, and she could destroy ships, obliterate mountains, move men like pawns across a board built from her fear, her anxiousness, herdetermination. There was nothing inevitable but her, and she would make them pay for what they had wished. But Nikolai— he was this world’s gentleman, void of such malignant tendencies, such terrible bigotries. There was a cool charm to him. There is now, as Selene stands across from him, drinking in the image of his dark cloaks, his dark hair, those tantalizing eyes. They may seem like equals, her cold gaze holding his accountable, but she had climbed further, run farther, reached and sacrificed and tiptoed and fought with a vigor that he would never know.

Fear, know thy master.

“I’m tired tonight, Nik.” It’s a familar nickname, too familiar perhaps. But it slips from her like water, and she doesn’t try to take it back. “Let me pass.”

“Let me see you.” He’s looking right at her. But she knows precisely what he means. This is another game, but it doesn’t feel like a game, it feels real; it feels heavy like the weight of a world. Her heart sinks, she feels her exhaustion anew. When she speaks again, her wariness is palpable

“I’m standing right here.”

But he’s adamant. Nikolai never did disappoint. His control was impressive, and she sees it now. He wants to let go, but still he holds back. He’s holding back from her. He sighs, for her. Because of her. “No you’re not, Selene. Not the real you.”

She meets his eyes for a long moment. Then Selene brings one hand to her mouth, and with an almost brutal motion, smears the rest of her lips. A scarlet slash cuts across her face in shades of creme and rose. She looks like an angel of death, just returned from swallowing a mortal heart.

“See me, then.”

Now he falters, and she drinks in his fallacy as a butterfly would nectar. Leo Tolstoy once wrote; It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. Did this boy of darkness and torn shirts fancy her in need of his protection? The thought makes her want to laugh, and if she were a being of impulse, who allowed every whim to come to fruition, perhaps she would.

Instead, a smile. It cuts like a wound, blood-red lipstick. Waning crescent, holding a transcendence like the moon in an unforgiving November sky. There are some things that she has learnt to sense. Darkness is an old friend, she has walked hand in hand with it upon many a lonely, narrow road; and she recognizes it. Tonight, it resides in Nikolai’s chest, fluttering as strongly as a dragon’s wings at her proximity. Selene knows that she has won. She sweeps forward, gliding in the silence, relishing its softness as she draws closer to this proud, tall boy who could not show his concern, could not live without his wand, cannot hope to capture her —

“I show you only what you need to see, mon amour.” A pause, and she is close to him. She can smell his cologne, and there it is again, the feverish reflection of herself in his gaze. “While you,” and she wraps one hand about his, which is slack at his side. It’s strangely warm. Her fingers intertwine with all those tendons and knuckles, calloused skin against her soft palm. “You show me everything that I want.” That flash of a smile. “Your gaze is feral, Nikolai. There are primal urges that have been awakened within you; but you crave for something more than flesh and blood.”

“You crave what you don’t understand,” She passes him like a wraith, and he makes no move to stop her. Her whisper lingers.

“And it consumes you.”

♚ SIX.

Any other would hide their marks, those shameful scars of being dominated by another. But she is not ashamed, nor is she made so by their words, those sly syllables crafted to strike, to bury themselves within her flesh and wound her psyche. But she was not ashamed. She had awned her head back, felt teeth bite. Her jugular was not so easily split.

“Do you think this is the first time someone has raised a hand to me?” A musing murmur, and as that velveteen tone slips through scarlet lips, she can see that somewhere, her words have struck a truth. She turns towards the windows, her visage illuminated by night, a small reprieve in which she will allow them to recover. The bruises upon her throat glow ghostly in the night.

“How do I cope?” It was the unasked question, so she asks it for them. “I like to think of it as a temporary affliction, an insect’s fervored kiss.” And like a velvet curtain falling to reveal the work beneath, a single movement of her head, and her cloak slips from her shoulder, revealing half a dozen more dark compressions, littered like stars upon the smoothness of her shoulder. She makes no move to hide what they already must suspect. Sex is rough. Ambition is rougher.

“Don’t worry after me, love. I have very high tolerance for suffering. ”

♚ SEVEN.

She had promised retribution, and it trembles in her bones, the sound and the fury of it, the echoes of every premonition and terror. He stands before her, gaze averted, and it’s written all over his face: the guilt, the ready admission. It’s too easy - she wishes that it were harder, that he stood tall and straight, unblinking, insisting upon his innocence, proud until the end. But it seems that tonight has changed both of them, turned one into the mirage of another, stuck pins into the hard ice of their hearts, melted them for the sake of preserving what has been tainted.

The sincerity of what is to come is heavy in the air between them, and as she swallows the lump in her throat, she thinks: how ironic, that only when a threat of such caliber hangs above them that he can face her like this, without his armour, his barbs, those offenses that would barrage her so, push her until she was gritting her teeth and at the edge of the cliff, tempted by the idea of abandoning all care for the sake of primal revenge. So when Selene does speak, she is past suppressing what has been building in her, for years and years — this is the tipping point, and he knows as well as she how terribly their ship has rocked, how monstrously the storm rages. “Look at me,” she says, once. She is the wolf and he is silent. “What did you do, Nathaniel?” Her voice is eerily calm, but then it breaks, and the anger, the emotion that she has withheld for so long; it begins to leak. She speaks in a hiss, like the snake she almost could have been. “Nathaniel.” It’s not a question, but a command, and you can see it in her gaze — she would kill to see it obeyed. “Were you or were you not part of that despicable affair?”

♚ EIGHT

Eyes are the window to the soul. It was a timeless phrase, recycled, reused, debated by philosophers who thought themselves privy to the world of inner turmoil, hidden agendas behind flashing eyes and painted smiles. Who thought themselves able to speak of a secret history. She had seen many eyes in her lifetime - met a thousand gazes. Demurely, coldly, sweetly, cruelly — and perhaps it was true, these musings. In those lingering stares, she found more than carnal desire…and oh, if the stars had only hid their heavenly fire, perhaps those veiled depths might have remained today’s gift, tomorrow’s mystery.

Nathaniel’s were dead wet, the color of sickness. A puerile sickness, all tantrums thrown at twilight and too much force behind thick fists as they pounded against mahogany tables. A vicious jealousy, fueled by rash thinking and a need to conquer all - a boy who thought his future held a crown, and thus acted like a tyrant long before it had ever touched his head. When he campaigned and lost against his self-made enemies, & all his tricks lay slain on the battlefield, the wail of rage that went up was a terrible, terrible thing…such a shame, such a waste of a pretty face, such a waste of p o w e r .

Hers were hellfire, obsidian dark and ash gray - smoking flickers of a smoldering flame contained in that crevice between her lungs and her ribcage. When you leaned into the crook of that beautiful neck, swanlike, it was the scent of jasmine…and something else. Did a m b i t i o n have a scent? Or was it a subtle thing that she tucked within herself, deep in that cold cool organ which she called a heart? A warrior queen dressed like a lamb: a long-legged, lupine thing, all silver teeth and golden claws, taking on the guise of her prey. She ate the bodies that the boy king left behind, wolfed down the remnants of his mistakes, turned that formidable pair of eyes upon another unsuspecting ruler to do it all over again. Her stealth was her weapon, it was her a d v a n t a g e .

Girls don’t speak until spoken to - and so she watched the world through heavy lashes until it bent to her bidding, until there was no creature that could resist her charms. She was not a beautiful thing, not in the classic sense, not like they wanted her to be. No, she was the crack of thunder against alabaster stone, a drop of blood in winter’s first snow, the thorn that pricks the unsuspecting finger on the underside of a rose. She was cruel, she was ruination, she was the saccharine taste of poison a moment before it grips and kills, bittersweet until the very end.

Girls don’t become powerful - and so she was not, at least, not from her appearance. She studied in secret, cut her delicate fingers fumbling with ancient pages in the midnight dark, marred those honeyed hands with the waxen heat of her quiet fury, her searing aspirations. Candlelight was where she stood her vigil, where she planned her battles. It was beneath the sun, in the clasp of daylight, that she played them out. A lovely thing she was, in these hours when she was most dangerous - soft, graceful, a vision of divine absolution, ichor flowing through her veins and making her glow, making her desirable. A lovely thing she was, when she had so much power to h u r t .

You are man’s plaything, you are their pet, their every whim. You are Eve, made for Adam’s pleasure. Their warmth, their foundation, their dearly beloved — their shadow, their buried support, the thing that they bend across the soft silk of a bed with hands rough and too accustomed to love lost. A mare to be ridden, until the sheen of sweat on her hide was broken by a cry in the dead of night, a child mewling its hallowed name. She knew what they expected, she had known it her entire life, this impending doom above her head, threatening her and constraining her, making it ten times more difficult to rise than to fall into that niche she had been born into - but her resolve was beyond what they ever could have imagined. She knew of legislation and judgement, of landmasses and kings - the history of the world perched upon her palm, and among it, there were so few women queens, so few heroines: but had they existed as she did? Quietly, a simmering force beneath a complacent exterior? Did they paint their lips, smooth the waists of their gowns and chiffon, glance at themselves in the mirror and see the serpent beneath the flower? She had been told to be men’s companion, and so she was. She was bound to them, so she made them her foundation, the poor unfortunate souls who she sucked dry, their blood smearing her mouth. And she laughed.

She laughed like a god.

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