#(art thou not entertained

[partyinthemysterymachine]

ah, yes: the door.......

the d o o r, ✨indeed✨

wouldn't you like to know, weather boy.....?????? we will just have to see, now won't we...??????? >:3c!!!!!

eheheheheheh h e h e......... the d o o r....

[r0semultiverse]

Okay, just call me out I guess. 👀

[multifandomgirl94]

someone left their reddit account logged in in the communal work computer….. following 8 anime subreddits and 2 genshin subreddits….. their home feed is a mass of posts marked nsfw

intriguing………

[dumbsoftheart]

threads of fate

pairing: peacekeeper!coriolanus snow x preachers daughter!reader

tags: 18+, mdni. dub-con, heavy and dark religious themes, dark themes, fingering, kissing, swearing, sliiight voyerism, corruption and innocence kink,

summary: after a chase in the woods, coriolanus becomes devoted to making you his one and only follower.

notes: i don't know what came over me.. enjoy!

word count: 7.2k

౨ׅৎ

the blood of the lamb, washed over the sins of those strayed away from god, atones those begging to be spared from destruction. the saccharine ichor was the ultimate gateway towards deliverance- and thus sought out by sinners and saints alike to be granted eternal redemption for the transgressions that permeated the sweats and tears of the individuals whose secrets would have them damned to the dreadful inferno beneath their feet. the sweet lamb; symbol of innocence and purity, and the wolf who hunted it, the face of deception and treachery, stood now in the heart of the woodlands, the sweet kill hidden shamefully in the asylum of the crowded aspen as it’s predator tauntingly whistled in pursuit of it’s coveted prize. 

tears fell in a waterfall down into the vessels of your collarbones, trailing down and staining the frail white fabric of your dress, unveiling the soft tanned skin of your chest in its wake. with one hand clasped tightly against your mouth, you tried to conceal your wails of fear and the threatening thumping of your heart so as not to draw attention to the towering figure looming dangerously close to you, chuckling lowly as he carefully made his way through the maze of trees and forestry. your other hand was clutched desperately on the golden cross that hung around your neck, thumb haphazardly caressing the delicate engravings and etchings of the cool metal. 

hail mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee. blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, jesus. holy mary, mother of god, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of death.

shame washed over you as you thought of your mother and father- your dear father, and what they would make of your inevitable disappearance. you were taught the way of the lord since you emerged from your mothers womb; it followed you everywhere you went. by all means, you had lived your life for god himself. what would he think of you now? the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of god. and yet there you were, a thief, running from, no doubt, god’s punishment for your sins. 

despite your fathers widespread fame throughout the district, your family struggled to bring food and water to the table regularly. seeing the despair that clouded your mothers eyes as she failed to provide a dinner some nights for her family had driven you towards madness. you grew desperate- desperate to alleviate the stress that haunted her and satiate the hunger that settled in your stomach for the fifth day in a row. you rationalised, that with your undying devotion, god would find it in him to forgive you. with all the work your father put into his sermons and dedication to delivering god's word to the poverty stricken peoples of district 12, the divine being would be forgiving in his punishment in recognition of the loyalty you harboured. 

now, you knew you were wrong. 

you berate yourself for even entertaining the stupid idea of pilfering from the small bakery near the marketplace. in truth, it wasn’t even stealing. you had waited until dark threatened the sky, then snuck behind the establishment to snatch a few meagre, stale loaves that had been carelessly discarded in a small bin beside the refuse receptacles. combined with the butter you had been gifted earlier in the week, these provisions would barely suffice to stifle the persistent pangs in your stomach for a few days, at most. you naively assumed you were in solitude and hastily fled when you’d filled up your small leather bag with as many old rolls and loaves as possible. 

oh, how wrong could you have been? you never caught sight of the face of the man who now charged after you- only a faint glance at a familiar blue that weaved its way through the trees- but the adrenaline rushing through your veins urged you to run, and to never stop. and now, here you were, caught in the act, pathetically weeping as you waited for the repercussions of your actions to find you. 

you moved to press your back harder against the thin trunk of the tree, a twig snapping under the weight of your foot, and your eyes widened with fear as the sound reverberated against the still of the forest, the soft footsteps that trailed behind you coming to an abrupt stop. then, a voice. 

“my dear, it would make it so much easier for us if you just came out. i promise you, i don’t bite.” it purred. the way he spoke was low and unrecognisable, laced with an amusement that had you shiver with the depravity of it. your crying ceased at an attempt to remain as hidden as possible, nary a whimper escaping from behind the painful grip of your hand across your mouth. 

“i know you know what you did was wrong. i mean, stealing from a bakery? i wonder what your father would think of you now, his daughter a thief.”

you fought back tears at the mention of your father, shame once again weighing at your conscience, “come out, and i promise your punishment won't be as harsh as it should be.”

the proposition had you thinking for a bit, the truth behind the words appealing to you for a sliver of a moment. before you could consider your next step; find an out or comply to the omnipresent man’s offering, a gunshot pierces your ears, and you let out a shriek so loud you swore all of panem could hear you.

you begin to wail again then, uncontrollably, screaming and begging for respite as your body gave in under the weight of itself; your knees buckling and falling harshly against the ground. you shake with the ferocity of a small rodent before you’re pulled up by your shoulders and engulfed into a familiar, warm hug. your eyes wide with panic, you thrash your head back in forth in an attempt to find the man who was tormenting you, only to see that he was now gone, and in his place, a small search party lead by a peacekeeper cheered in glory at the sight of you. relief washed over you as you looked up to find your father, falling into the safety of his arms as he escorted you out of the forest, giving a curt thank you to the peacekeeper and another man you recognized to be one of your fathers students, before dragging you to the comfort of your home. 

౨ׅৎ

when your father found out the reason behind your being in the woods, you’d landed yourself a life of extra chores and punished to more frequent church visits until your father decided you had repent enough. your father, reassuring you of god's forgiveness as his child, warned that your actions wouldn't fade from memory. he emphasised the necessity of restoring your relationship with the lord and savior. you were under his constant watch, now. each morning, before dropping you off at school, he compelled you to pray fervently for protection over your family and yourself, urging you to plead for deliverance from the consequences of your actions.

with your increased presence in church taking up most of the time you had to yourself, you found yourself taking note of the other frequent church goers. your father, of course, and his dedicated student, were a constant in your peripheral vision. the old couple who lived only a few minutes away from you, mrs. harmon and her froofy, dirty church outfits, her boisterous children, and her grumbling husband. you noticed small things; like how the wife of the newly-wed couple in town had stopped wearing her wedding ring, and how her husband seemed to never give her a second look. how the twin boys in the grade below you suddenly surpassed you in height, and their younger sister now seemed to lack a certain innocence that was pertinent in her character before. you made a small promise to yourself to pray for her. 

there was one person, however, who you were not familiar with, yet you could feel it in the deep ends of your bones that you knew exactly who he was. he had begun to appear only once a week, his shiny buzzcut and blue peacekeeper uniform sticking out sorely from the rest of the crowd. then, twice a week- then three- and then suddenly you found you could not escape from him. everywhere you turned, he was there. when you walked home from school, you would catch him patrolling somewhere nearby, or laughing and chatting with his peacekeeper friends. when you opened the church doors for mass, he would be first to walk in, handing you a small smile before making his way to sit in the pew farthest away from you. he was there, everywhere you looked, and it unsettled you greatly. there was a lack of sincerity in his eyes when he smiled, and for a moment you thought that it had seemed like hunger, but you pushed the idea away before your brain could process it. one night, when closing the church doors and heading to your home, the small sound of rapid footsteps triggered your fight or flight response, the latter winning. when the man rested his hand on your shoulder politely, handing you a handkerchief you had dropped, you felt a strange sense of deja vu. the speed at which it sounded he had ran towards you didn’t match how he stood before you now; breathing even, chest pushed out pridefully, his dark sapphire eyes never leaving yours. but you were so sure that the man had been sprinting, just like the man who had sprinted after you a few weeks ago had. you gave him a small thank you before speed-walking your way to the front door, panting heavily as you locked it shut behind you and your hand made its way back to the pendant on your neck, grasping it so tightly it hurt, the stipe digging into the soft flesh of your palms as a way of grounding yourself back to your senses. 

that night, when you got on your knees to pray, you couldn’t shake the look on the mans face from your thoughts. his features themselves were even, lacking any sense of emotion, but his eyes troubled you the most. the way they bore into yours made you feel as if you would burst into flames right then. it made you feel as if there was something he wanted from you, but your poor innocent soul couldn’t figure out what. when you nestled yourself into your bed that same night, you vowed to stay as far away from him as possible. 

you hadn't realised how hard that would be. 

he approached you the next morning. it was saturday, and the usual gloomy weather of district 12 had been forced away and replaced with the harsh, bright sunlight. it shone spectacularly through the stained-glass windows, gracing the dark wood of each side aisle with vibrant reds and yellows and blues  and brightening the deep red carpet that lay evenly along the nave. you stood behind the pulpit, readying your fathers sermons and homilies for that week's sabbath. he had barged in unannounced, making his way towards you slowly as you pretended to ignore the tall figure making its way down the red path. 

“good morning, miss,” he spoke lowly towards you, peering upwards slightly as the pulpit was slightly taller than the rest of the church, and you pretended to read through the cards and flip through your bible as if it were you preparing to speak in a mere 15 minutes. he cleared his throat once, and you waved your hand nonchalantly towards the pews, “the preacher will be ready shortly. please, have a seat.” 

from behind your fathers flashcards, you could see a small tick of his jaw and he pressed his lips together tightly, nodding slowly before making his way to his usual seat, feigning interest in the architecture of the building. 

“its quite beautiful, no?”

you hummed. 

“i wonder how the district could afford to pay for it.”

the comment caught you off guard, causing you too look up at him with scrunched brows, your lips parted in confusion. surely, he knew the capitol had paid for it- and even then, what did it matter? a sanctuary for god deserved only the best of resources, you thought. the beauty of the church was a reflection of the beauty of your religion, the intricacies and meticulous carpentry of the building spoke to one of the three transcendentals that point to god. of course, it would be beautiful. 

before you could think of a response to the bizarre musing, your father burst in, pressing a light kiss to your cheek and thanking you kindly for preparing for him. the man stood up to make his way to greet the preacher, and you were out of sight as fast as lightning. 

that cycle continued for a while. he would sit in the pews, admiring the architecture (when really, he was admiring you), then stand to greet your father enthusiastically, frowning ever so slightly when you disappeared the moment he made any closer to your father. eventually, you had become quite good at avoiding him. you saw him less in the markets, saw less of him in church, and rarely caught sight of him anywhere else. that was, until you found him at your doorstep one hot summer day. 

you and your mother swore it was the hottest day to see district 12, and you sat on the porch in a small, lace trimmed top and cut-off jean shorts. your hair was carelessly tossed into an updo to relieve your neck of some heat, and you sat in your fathers old chair as you sipped on some juice your family had been given earlier that day. 

you weren’t expecting any visitors that day, so it was safe to say you nearly choked when the man appeared from behind the path of thrush that hid your small home from sight of the church, dressed only in the blue dress pants of his peacekeeper uniform and a thin white shirt, silver dog tag swinging like a pendulum across his chest as he made his way towards you. your father had emerged delighted, mr. snow!, he cheered, patting the man- snow, what a fitting name- on his back and urging him inside. you scrambled to the backdoor and into the kitchen where your mother rest, the door slamming behind you loudly as you entered, causing her to jump. 

“dear?”

“that man daddy’s talking to- who is he?”

she gave you a halfhearted shrug, “i wouldnt know, pumpkin, it’s probably business with your father. he goes to the church, no?” 

you nodded, pacing back and forth, ignoring the crazed look your mother threw at you as you processed the information. 

“do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” she reminded you, and your jaw dropped at the silent accusation she threw at you. 

“absolutely not, mother!” you stormed back out the door, drowning your mother’s laughter out with frustrated mumbles of has she lost her mind? and what a woman! how she could ever think something about snow was tempting you was beyond your understanding. however, when you made it back to your chair and your watered down glass of juice, the sight of a shirtless ‘mr. snow’ and your, otherwise fully dressed, father in the garden, dripping sweat shamelessly into your mothers vegetable patch, a snap thought breached your mind that perhaps there was something tempting about the mysterious man. 

that sent you into a frenzy. your knee bounced anxiously as you silently begged god to forgive you for the thought, and that it was simply intrusive, and not reflective of the morals and high grounds you held closely to your heart. nervously, you grabbed the book you had abandoned weeks ago and shoved your nose into the pages as if to distract yourself from your own brain and its wicked ministrations.  

you weren't sure of how much time had passed, yet it felt like the man's stay was suspiciously short as he and your father made their way inside. you gave him a curt nod, and your father gave you a small lecture about manners, insisting that the two of you become accustomed to one another. and there you were, legs drawn up to your chest as if to protect yourself from the sinful looking man before you. 

“my name is coriolanus snow,” he said. coriolanus. it was unlike any name you’d heard before. you returned the gesture softly, hoping that he would disappear behind your father into the house and you could breathe again, but he stayed and stared at you with that look, “your father tells me we’re the same age. he’s a nice man.”

you bit your lip at that. the same age? there was something about coriolanus that seemed older. it also begged the question: what was someone his age doing as a peacekeeper? you opened your mouth to pry at him, but he cut you off, stepping closer. 

“tell me, dear, what sins weigh in your heart?” 

you drew yourself back further into the safety of your chair, face laced with disgust as you tried as hard as possible to distance yourself from the imposing man now caging you into your confinement. his breath was heavy on your nose, and your heart pounded harshly- from what, you weren’t sure. fear? a sense of danger? temptation? his lips were so close to yours now, you could smell the faint scent of cologne that mingled with the saltiness of his sweat, and you tried your best to keep your breathing as even as possible, feigning indifference to his proximity to you poorly. 

“i dont know what you mean, mr. snow.”

he smiled at that, laughing lowly. he didn’t expect you to know what he meant, of course, but he had an inkling that if he played his cards just right, he’d have you right where he wanted. he leaned closer now, lips dodging yours, lightly brushing your nose as his head turned to whisper in your ear. 

“do you think of me at night? our little chase?”

“wh-what?”

“you’re smart, miss. think about it.”

he disappeared into the house, bidding goodbye to your mother and father and whisking himself away. your mouth remained parted, eyes wide with confusion as you tried to process what his words could have meant. 

surely, he couldn’t mean.. 

no. absolutely not, you decided. coriolanus may have unsettled you ungreatly, but he was a peacekeeper- and your father had always told you that they served to protect you, that they would never harm you purposely. you stood shakily and made your way quietly into the old house, reeking of old wood and boiled vegetables. you sat on the couch near your brother, holding his head to your chest as you stroked his hair comfortingly, still trying to process. from the kitchen, your father called, “he’s a nice boy, no? perhaps he could be of some influence to you, sweetheart.” 

you agreed meekly, despite disagreeing with your father completely. you werent entirely sure what he saw in the man at all, yet you were adamant that he was, in fact, not a good influence, but a parasite. you wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. he made you feel unsafe- unsure of yourself, and for some reason, your faith. you decided he was no good; but yet you couldnt make any understanding of the bittersweet ache between your thighs. 

when coriolanus walked home that evening, he couldn’t fight his smile. he saw you, in all his glory, struggling pathetically under his gaze, squirming and fidgeting uncontrollably as he trapped you within the cage of his arms. 

the sacrificial lamb has been caught, he thought. 

what a stupid, stupid lamb. 

౨ׅৎ

you rushed into church near 5 am the next day, sleep deprived from the constant running of your mind and the damned words of coriolanus snow. 

“our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” you repeated to yourself, kneeled below the large wooden crucifixion of jesus, hands clasped tightly together, your head resting painfully against the white of your knuckles. 

what you were praying for, you didn’t know. you couldn't go to the confessional- heavens forbid, no. confessing secrets of your dreams of coriolanus’s hands, the outline of his jaw, the way he whispered his sinister words so sweetly into your ear- to your father? you would rather be hanged for the whole district to see. there was nothing sinful about your dreams, exactly, but it felt sinful, dirty, downright hellish. you thought of his lips, the soft and pink flesh of them, the stormy blue of his eyes- and, oh god, you couldn't stop replaying his words in your head. 

‘do you think of me at night?’ he had asked you so earnestly. as if he needed you to tell him yes, you did think of him, every night. it wasn't a lie, of course, only the way you had begun thinking about him had changed. but that wasn't your doing at all, was it? no, he was to blame, for speaking to you like that, for dangling his dog tag so close that it brushed your cross indecently, for showing up to your house and stripping himself half naked, sweating impurely over the soil you and your mother sowed and reaped with love, with innocence, purity. it was entirely his fault, from the way he seemed to be forcing himself into your life. the church door creaked open, and you continued to pray, “give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

your heart raced as footsteps neared closer, as if you knew exactly who they belonged to. 

“what troubles you, little lamb?” his voice took you with fear, the way it rumbled in his chest and reverberated on the walls confining the two of you, alone. you raised your head, refusing to look back at him, “i do believe that's none of your concern, mr. snow.”

you heard him chuckle lowly, repeating the words mr. snow to himself under his breath. it made you shiver, and you recited the bible verses your father drilled into your head from as young as you could remember: vindicate me, o god, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.

you could feel him now, knee pressed lightly against your back. you stood up and turned to face him, eyes wild and daring as they searched the azure maze of his own. his hand reached to stroke your hair, and you flinched. 

“why is it that you fear me so much, do you think?”

“i’m not afraid of you.”

he tsked, “‘fear’ is different than ‘being afraid’, darling. to be afraid is a fleeting moment. your brain's immediate response towards danger,” he moved to touch your hair again, now more forcefully, tucking the loose strands along your hairline behind your ear. 

keep back your servant also from willful sins.

he continued, “i asked, why do you fear me?”

you tried to search deeper into his eyes, trying to grasp any understanding at what he was trying to communicate to you. your mind ran amok, and it was no help that coriolanus's hand now snuck its way into your fingers, fidgeting with the soft digits mindlessly. 

“i don't.. i don't know-” he cut you off by stepping closer before you finished. you had wanted to tell him that you didn't know why he thought you feared him, that you didnt understand the question, and that you needed to get home soon, so to please excuse you. 

“i think you fear what i impose between you and your precious god.”

you let out an involuntary laugh, giggling childlishly at the accusation. you stopped, when his eyes darkened. 

“i’m sorry, mr. snow, but i really don’t know what you mean!” you were struggling to contain your girlish giggles. what he imposes between me and god? it was such a bizarre statement, so plainly laid out for you, that you couldn’t even comprehend it entirely. your laughing ceased, for good now, when his hand circled tightly around your wrist. 

let them not have dominion over me.

then i will be upright.

“i’m not stupid, love. i saw you, yesterday, practically drooling over me. i wonder what your father would have to say if he saw the sinful way you ogled at me,” he paused, and you swallowed painfully, “and dont tell me you’ve forgotten all about our little chase, hm? wasnt it exhilarating?” now, panic engulfed you. you tried to back away from him as the pieces etched themselves together in your brain, but his hold on your wrist was only getting tighter. 

“that was you?” your voice was impossibly small, weak from the alarm that blared in your head. your eyes darted back and forth desperately, searching for an out, hoping and praying that someone might burst in and see the scene before you, tear hades away from his persephone and save her from her impending doom. 

i will be blameless and innocent of great transgression.

he dipped his head to your neck, lips deliciously grazing over the supple skin of your collar bone, pressing kisses so light you could barely feel them as you tried to wriggle from his grasp. 

“of course it was me, darling,” the way you felt him smile against your skin was chilling, and you fought back tears as he moved impossibly closer to you, “isn’t that adrenaline rush just addicting? tell me, dove, what do you think about me when you lie in bed and replay our precious little moments together in that pretty head of yours?” 

your breathing quickened, and you winced as coriolanus gripped tighter at your wrist, his other hand painfully gripping the small of your waist, massaging the gentle muscle of it. you could feel his entire body pressed against yours, and a tear threatened to slip when you felt the hard pressing of his lower region on your stomach. you shook your head, refusing to give in to his line of questioning, but his grip on your waist tightened and you cried out in pain, “your hands!” you whined, relief slowly making its way to the sore area of your waist as he loosened his grip. he made to grasp your chin under his index, forcing you to keep eye contact with him and urged you silently to keep going. 

“your..” you let out a shaky sigh, “your h-ands, your voice, the words you speak to me. i don't understand why.” 

he cooed at you now, as if proud of you for speaking up. your eyes darted to his lips, and you saw something flash in his eyes, “anything else?”

let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight,

lord, my rock, and my redeemer. 

you tried to look down at your feet as if to run away from the question, but his hold on your chin was unrelenting. shamefully, you whispered, “your lips.” 

he let out a small ahhh, as if the admission shocked him. he knew, of course. of course he knew. you poor thing. sweet, little lamb, so innocent and pure. untouched by lust, blind to its deceptive allure. he knew from the moment he’d gone after you in those woods and failed to catch you, that he would do everything in his power to make sure you would never escape his grasp again. he knew when his frail attempts at getting closer to you failed, he had to resort to a harsher solution. he needed to infiltrate every space you breathed in, and break his was into your mind until he had you right where he needed you to be: malleable, so he could corrupt you just as easy. 

he knew your father protected you, the extent to which he went to protect you, as well. banning sex education in your school, ensuring your mind stays as pure as possible to the exploits of fickle men and their wants. you knew the basics, thanks to your mother and her worrisome self, but her teachings were meddled down into some confusing allegory that left your mind as clueless as before, so that you stayed intact, perfect and pristine in the lords eye as well as the rest of the district, in your white frilly dresses, light makeup, and perfectly crafted manners. 

he knew how easy it would be to get in your head. the human body is funny, like that, wherein it begs for things it doesn’t know of. he knew when he flexed his hands you caught sight of it, when he swallowed you intently watched the way his adams apple bobbed, he knew when he showed up to your home and stripped himself almost bare it would plague your mind with an unknowing want and desire, and soon enough, you’d have no choice but to give in to it, abandon your god and his lessons for coriolanus alone. 

he ran his tongue across his bottom lip, swiping his thumb across yours as if to mirror himself, and then ducked his head closer, “go on.”

you squeezed your eyes shut. everything felt so, so wrong, and you didn't know why, but you couldn't stop. when he continued to toy with your lip, slightly plunging the tip of his finger past them and into your mouth, you let out an involuntary, small moan, and your legs shook and quivered as the strange ache from yesterday returned. 

“wh-what?”

“kiss me.”

your eyes widened, and you shook your head. coriolanus thought it was adorable, how you struggled to piece together what was about to happen, how your brain tried desperately to fill in the blanks with information it didnt know. you heard coriolanus sigh disapprovingly at your protests and he shoved his thumb further into your mouth, causing you to choke. he removed it, then wiped the saliva that remained over your bottom lip before inserting the digit in his mouth, tasting you. 

“its okay, little one. you can kiss me. he wont mind,” you didnt realize your fingers lingered over the necklace nestled on your chest, and your gaze followed his finger as he gestured upwards. he wont mind. you racked your brain over the things coriolanus said to you from he entered the church.

“i think you fear what i impose between you and your precious god.”

now, you truly hoped someone would burst in, and you could scream and wail as you explained the horrors coriolanus was about to commit to you (even if those horrors were unclear). he was so close, and something still pressed hardly against your stomach, and suddenly you couldn't breathe, “he would mind. i promise to pray for you coriolanus, i don't know what troubles you, but the lord-” 

he cut you off by shoving his lips onto yours harshly, groaning at the contact. his hands made their way to rest on your clothed breasts, and you wriggled and struggled to try get away from him, but your efforts were fruitless. you were cornered, now. a lamb with nowhere to run or hide, forced to face its fate. he ravaged your lips, hands restless as they caressed all over your protesting body. the ache between your legs grew, and a small part of you realized that the last thing you wanted right now was for someone to walk in, and see the preacher's daughter being completely defaced by a peacekeeper. 

“your god cant give me what i need, angel. cant you see? you did this to me,” his hand grabbed yours as he pulled away to speak, trailing it down the hard muscle of his abdomen and palming the hardness that threatened to burst through the seam of his pants. your eyes were wide and doe-like, and coriolanus never needed to fuck you more. his lips met yours again, and his other hand fumbled to remove his pants, hissing when the air hit his straining cock, all while you tried your best to distance yourself from him as much as possible. your face was hot, and your hands remained in the air, unsure of where to rest them, as you slowly allowed coriolanus to slip his tongue into your mouth. 

“good girl,” he practically growled, and you let out a pathetic squeak when you felt your core tighten, pleasure washing over you at the small praise. coriolanus was turned on beyond conception, moaning disgracefully as he stroked himself through the fabric of his underwear. if you could see the spectacle the two of you were making, in the middle of church- no less, the thought alone had coriolanus close to the edge. you gasped when you saw him palm himself, and without thinking, your hand brushing his ever so slightly, lingering a second too long before his eyes snapped up at yours, pleading you to go ahead and touch him. 

when you finally pressed your hand to his clothed region, you swore the way coriolanus threw his head back with a small mewl and moan would land you an eternity in hell alone. 

“thats it, baby, jus’ like that.. keep going..” you gasped when his hand sneaked its way under your dress- your sunday best- your hand faltering a bit when his long middle finger lightly grazed your clothed cunt. the foreign feeling it elicited from you had you desperately searching coriolanus’s eyes for an answer, unable to speak as his fingers that toyed with the most intimate parts of you had you moaning softly and lowly, uncontrollably. you continued to palm him, and his hand slipped into the lacy cotton of your panties, cursing hotly under his breath when he feels you. 

“so wet for me. you dirty fucking girl, look at you: making a mess in church.” you didnt know what he meant, but shame burned through your skin. confusion grappled at you and you began to sob, not ignoring the way your tears seemed to make coriolanus throb beneath you, “please stop, coriolanus, this is immoral.”

“baby, if it feels good, then it cant be bad,” he stroked the tear stains on your cheek softly, cupping your face with false earnest as he pulled your head to lay on his chest, “does it feel good?”

coriolanus reveled in the way you looked up at him, like a devoted follower in the arms of their saviour. when you nodded slowly, he gently spun you around and shoved your face into the cool wood of the crucifixion behind you, his hand painfully pushing against your cheek enough so that you couldn't look anywhere but above you, into the sad eyes of jesus. 

your panties were ripped off with a shriek that was muffled by coriolanus’s hand around your mouth, and you sobbed as pain mixed with pleasure as he gave a few slaps to your dripping cunt, mumbling about how pretty it is. in a desperate attempt to wiggle out of your new position, you accidentally arched your back further, giving him more access. 

“let me show you how i can love you,” he whispered into your ear, before returning his fingers to the slick mess that coated your cunt, your body jolting when they occasionally brushed over your clit, the unfamiliar sensation already too overwhelming for you to handle. with a few more agonising strokes of his fingers, he prodded at your hole, teasing your entrance in a way that had your eyes roll to the back of your head. when he finally slipped them in, your hand pounded desperately against the cross you were pressed up on, pleads to stop falling pathetically into the hand of coriolanus and onto deaf ears. he was merciless with it, greedily pounding his fingers into you in a way that had your knees gravitating towards each other and animalistic grunts of pleasure vibrating through his hand. 

something in you burned, your body was pleading for more as an unfamiliar coil formed in the pit of your stomach. your hand continued to bang against the cross, tears falling as you forcibly peered into the eyes of your saviour while you got your cunt ravaged in the middle of his shrine. 

“oh god, oh god” you mumbled through his hand. you were unsure if it was shame, or the delicious way coryo pumped his fingers into you, but you grew lightheaded and dumb, eyes hazy as you grew closer to your release. 

“thats it, take it. you’re filthy, taking my fingers so well in the middle of church.” now, both hands scraped desperately against the cross, leaving marks in the wake of your fingernails digging into the hardwood. coriolanus tugged your head further up, forcing you to stare at him with tears streaming down your face and desperate pleas for him to stop going unheard. he smiled coyly when he felt your pussy clench around his fingers, and he withdrew them just before you reached your release, a loud, agonising whine of relief and desperation leaving your smushed lips. he was quick to replace his fingers with his cock, the slow intrusion of it making you let out a low, droned out groan as he stretched your virgin cunt past its limit.

he removed his hand from your mouth, and a string of prayers tumbled out of it, “o my god, i am heartily sorry for having offended thee,” and “and i detest all my sins because of thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend thee, my god, who art all good and deserving of all my love.” it earned you a slap to your ass, and you cried out loudly as coriolanus shoved your dress off of you, watching as it fell uselessly around your legs into a pool of white. he flipped you around, admiring your soft breasts and the way they spilled over in the hold of his fingers, and he traced the soft, plumpness of your belly as he chuckled lowly at your continuous prayer. with his cock still nestled into you, he leaned forward to whisper in your ear. 

“god loves you, but not as much as i do,” and then he thrust his cock into you with such force that you nearly tumbled to the floor. his hand rest on your lower back, forcing you to arch closer to him, your hips meeting his unwillingly at his fast pace. coriolanus’s cock grazed the inside of your gummy walls perfectly, and you found yourself slipping from reality as he continued to pound his dick into you, moaning when you contracted around him without rhythm, your inexperienced self almost overloaded with pleasure, unable to control your body. 

“you’re being such a good girl, taking my cock like this,” he weaved a hand through your hair, “‘n you’re gonna let me cum inside you, yeah? gonna make a woman out of you.” you couldnt focus on the words he was throwing at you, lost in pleasure as the tip of coryo’s dick hit that one spot over and over again. the way he spoke to you had you at a crossroads, and it didnt help that he was fucking you into oblivion, and now you understood what he had meant when he said he imposed between you and god, because you were becoming addicted to the push and pull of his cock inside of you. 

“thats right, take it. you look so pretty all dumb and fucked out on my cock,” you reached to grab his arm to steady yourself, your orgasm creeping in closely, “you gonna cum for me?” 

you didn't know what it meant, but you nodded anyways, completely lost in bliss, “coryo..” you moaned out, his brows raising slightly at the new nickname, a smirk settling on his face. moans and mewls lewdly left your mouth as he quickened his pace, his unused hand massaging at your tits, twisting and pinching softly at your nipples as you thrashed with pleasure under him. 

“gonna make you worship this fucking cock, baby” he was close himself now, his head falling and his voice itching up an octave, lewd moans clashing with yours as the rhythm and pace he set began to falter, and he fucked you as hard as he could as he chased your high and his own, “gonna make you devoted to me. you’re never gonna wanna be away from me again,” his face twisted with pleasure, and you circled your arms around his neck as you tried to ground yourself, the coil in your stomach slowly beginning to unravel and threatening to snap. a shadow passed, and your eyes widened with terror as you slapped coryo’s arm haphazardly, begs falling from your mouth to stop. he turned his head lazily to look at what you were whining about, but his thrusts didn't stop. 

“let them see what a dirty fucking girl you are.” 

your walls tightened and your eyes rolled so far back into your head you were scared they wouldn't come back up as your orgasm reached you. you covered your mouth, shrieking desperately as the shockwaves of pleasure rolled over you, the newfound feeling unrelenting as it took over every part of your body. coriolanus repeated words of encouragement and praise as he fucked you through your high, before bottoming out and releasing his load in you, christening your walls. you whined at the feeling, so full and drunk off of it that your concerns of the passerby faded. the both of you stood there, panting heavily, both groaning when coryo slid out of you. he slapped his tip on your puffy clit one, two, three times, before a loud knock rapped on the church door. 

you could feel coriolanus’s spill leaking out of you as you crouched on your knees, hidden, and you cried silently, the reality of what had just happened to you settling in. coriolanus snow had corrupted you, in the worst possible way, and now you could only feel yourself crave more of him. as he spoke to the intruder, egging them to run along, a thumb caressed your head gently, as if to tell you he had everything under control. the small southern drawl he’d begun to pick up was more prominent. when the intruder finally left, you were forced to your feet, and coriolanus grabbed your ruined panties, resting on his knees below you to shove them into your used cunt, before making his way back to his feet, towering over you. he spoke to you like he would if he were on duty:

“you go on home now, miss. and tell your father i say hello.” 

and you did. 

౨ׅৎ

@dumbsoftheart, 2023

[stellar-constellations]

Uppermoon trio+Muzan Kibutsuji with a sick!female s/o headcanons? :3 (as in her getting sick with the flu or cold, having a fever..anything really)

Muzan + the Upper Moon trio with a Sick! Fem! reader

Ask and thou shall receive.

Wordcount: 1.1k

Muzan:

        Muzan doesn't like that you're sick. He might be a little snappy, but he's really worried for your health. He remembers during his human life he was plagued by sickness his whole life, so he's a bit fearful that you've caught something that will leave you bedridden for the rest of your life (which, he might be thinking it'll be a short life because of the sickness).

        Even when he gets a grip and diagnoses you with the common cold, he still ponders the idea of your death, so he's a bit doting on you. Yes, it makes it a bit hard to rest up, but you can understand his concerns. In your time and world, sickness is extremely common and a main cause of death. 

        He even goes as far as to thinking if you'll die, he'll never replace you with another wife, his go-to human disguise would be a widowed old man. He feels that it'd be disrespectful to your memory for him to have the audacity to replace you with a wife that could never be you. You were his first love and will be his last, human or demon, that doesn't matter to him.

        Muzan might have a sharper tongue than usual, clicking his tongue when you ask something of him, or complaining about how long you've had your high fever, but his actions will always speak what he really means to say. 

        He's more gentle than usual. He won't let you out of bed that way you can rest and he'll personally go outside and get you soup (considering it's probably the best you can eat without throwing up). He could get another demon to do it, but he doesn't trust a demon to satisfy your humans needs, not like he could. 

Kokushibo: 

        Kokushibo is a bit more on the calm side. He does worry about if you'd die or not, but his intuition tells him that you won't, so it's more laid-back. He would act like you're not sick, the only time he decides to take responsibility of nurturing you back to health was when you stood up to go to the bathroom and fainted (luckily, he caught you before you hit your head). 

        He won't allow you to stand up after that and he'll make sure you're hydrated with enough blankets (if it's too hot, he'll tell you that sweating helps fight the sickness). He might make you soup if you beg him enough, but it's a slim chance. 

        He doesn't look like it with how quiet he is, but he's silently observing your symptoms and looking for any increase or decrease of severity along with any new or old symptoms fading/appearing. The only way you can actually tell is because of how he's staring at you more than what he's doing (either cleaning his katana or reading a book).

        Kokushibo might read his books to you if you ask. There's not much for you to do other than sleep, so he supposes he can entertain your little request (no, he won't change his voice to match each character's dialogue in the book). 

        Kokushibo will gladly enjoy hot tea with you in hopes that you can sleep so he can enjoy peace and quiet reading his book without hearing you cough or sneeze (he also doesn't want to read anymore to you, stop telling him to do voices for the characters). 

Douma:

        Douma sees this as exciting! You're bedridden and you get to spend the entire day with him, how fun! He'd try to see if he can get sick too (he knows he can't, he just wants to piss you off by drinking your beverages and cuddling up to you). 

        Douma will cuddle up to you and claim he's trying to keep you warm, but because of his Cryokinetic Blood Demon Art, it makes his body run cold and he just makes you feel like you're hanging out in an ice lake instead of your bed. 

        If you're coughing and sneezing awfully a lot, he'll bring his cult followers in and act like you're dying so that they'd get worried, then to laugh and say it's a joke. He'll ask them to help diagnose you so they know what's wrong. He'll tell his followers to fetch medicine and to cook soup while he warms (freezes) you up. 

        You can't even sleep and get rest because of how noisy he is. Douma will talk to you about everything and anything. He'll bother you every five minutes and ask if you're feeling better or if your symptoms have changed. It's okay to kick him out of your room so you can sleep.

        Douma's not exactly worried because if you do end up dying, he'll just turn you into a demon so you can forever be by his side. You'll be his most favored follower for all of time, you really can't resist. 

Akaza:

        Akaza doesn't like you being sick. He doesn't like how much it drains your personality and strength and urges you to get plenty of rest. He'd be extra gentle and worried, he feels like he's seen this sight before but he's not exactly sure where. 

        He's the most helpful out of all the demons. Water, soup, a trash can, a wet towel, blankets, warm pajamas, a fan—he has it all prepared for you. He wants you to gain your strength as fast as possible that way you're not in a such a vulnerable state like you are now.

        Akaza might bring (kidnap) a doctor from a nearby village to ensure that your condition isn't severe. Don't worry, he'll make sure the doctor will be female. He doesn't trust the male human species, from what he's seen from them in his era, he finds that they lack self-control and use their strength to prey against the weak (like a certain rainbow-eyed demon).

        Akaza would rather talk with you when you're awake, he doesn't exactly enjoy reading much (why doesn't the main character just punch the man who poisoned his wife?). But if you ask him, he'll find a book in your house and read it to you (he finds it silly that you want the characters to have their own voices, but he'll change his voice for you as long as it helps you recover quicker). 

        He'll ask if you want to become a demon. He promises he'll stay by your side for life, help you get strong to where you can beat any demon and human and you won't get sick again! That's for you to decide. 

        Thank you for requesting! I had fun writing this and feel free to request again!

        These demons all have their own masterlists! Feel free to check them out and see more content of Muzan, Kokushibo, Douma, and Akaza!

        Have any other requests for these or other characters? Check my official masterlist to see the characters I write for: Masterlist

[sassenach77yle]

What are ye laughing at, a nighean?” Her father loomed out of the night, smelling of horses. “Everything,” she said, scooching over to make room for him to sit beside her. It was true. Everything seemed suddenly bright, the candlelight from the windows of the Big House, the fireflies in the grass, the glow of Roger’s face when he told her his desire. She could still feel the touch of his mouth on hers; it fizzed in her blood.

Jamie reached up and fielded a passing firefly, holding it for a moment cupped in the dark hollow of his hand, where it flashed on and off, the cool light seeping through his fingers. Far off, she heard a brief snatch of her mother’s voice, coming through an open window;

Claire was singing “Clementine.” Now the boys—and Roger—were howling at the moon, though it was no more than a pale sickle on the horizon. She felt her father’s body shake with silent laughter, too.

“It reminds me of Disneyland,” she said on impulse.

“Oh, aye? Where’s that?” “It’s an amusement park—for children,” she added, knowing that while there were such things as amusement parks in places like London and Paris, these were purely adult places. No one ever thought of entertaining children now, beyond their own games and the occasional toy. “Daddy and Mama took me there every summer,” she said, slipping back without effort to the hot, bright days and warm California nights.

“The trees all had little sparkling lights in them—the fireflies reminded me.” Jamie spread his palm; the firefly, suddenly free, pulsed to itself once or twice, then spread its wings with a tiny whir and lifted into the air, floating up and away.

“Dwelt a miner, forty-niner, and his daugh-ter, Clementine . . .”

“What was it like, then?” he asked curiously. “Oh . . . it was wonderful.” She smiled to herself, seeing the brilliant lights of Main Street, the music and mirrors and beautiful, beribboned horses of King Arthur’s Carrousel. “There were . . . rides, we called them. A boat, where you could float through the jungle on a river, and see crocodiles and hippopotamuses and headhunters . . .” “Headhunters?” he said, intrigued. “Not real ones,” she assured him. “It’s all make-believe—but it’s . . . well, it’s a world to itself. When you’re there, the real world sort of disappears; nothing bad can happen there.

They call it ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’—and for a little while, it really seems that way.”

“Light she was, and like a fairy, and her shoes were number nine, Herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.”“And you’d hear music everywhere, all the time,” she said, smiling. “Bands—groups of musicians playing instruments, horns and drums and things—would march up and down the streets, and play in pavilions. . . .” “Aye, that happens in amusement parks. Or it did, the once I was in one.” She could hear a smile in his voice, as well. “Mm-hm. And there are cartoon characters—I told you about cartoons—walking around. You can go up and shake hands with Mickey Mouse, or—” “With what?” “Mickey Mouse.” She laughed. “A big mouse, life-size—human-size, I mean. He wears gloves.” “A giant rat?” he said, sounding slightly stunned. “And they take the weans to play with it?” “Not a rat, a mouse,” she corrected him. “And it’s really a person dressed up like a mouse.” “Oh, aye?” he said, not sounding terribly reassured. “Yes. And an enormous carrousel with painted horses, and a railroad train that goes through the Rainbow Caverns, where there are big jewels sticking out of the walls, and colored streams with red and blue water . . . and orange-juice bars. Oh, orange-juice bars!” She moaned softly in ecstatic remembrance of the cold, tart, overwhelming sweetness. “It was nice, then?” he said softly.

“Thou art lost and gone forever, Dreadful sor-ry . . . Clementine.”

“Yes,” she said, sighed, and was silent for a moment. Then she leaned her head against his shoulder, and wrapped her hand around his arm, big and solid. “You know what?” she said, and he made a small interrogatory noise in reply.

It was nice—it was great—but what I really, really loved about it was that when we were there, it was just the three of us, and everything was perfect. Mama wasn’t worrying about her patients, Daddy wasn’t working on a paper—they weren’t ever silent or angry with each other. Both of them laughed—we all laughed, all the time . . . while we were there.” He made no reply, but tilted his head so it rested against hers. She sighed again, deeply.

“Jemmy won’t get to go to Disneyland—but he’ll have that. A family that laughs—and millions of little lights in the trees.”

A breath of snow and ashes

Season 7 episode 2 “The Happiest Place on Earth”

[mxmorbidmidnight]

Salutations lords, ladies and waterfowl, might I take a GANDER at entertaining thee today!! Not a fan of puns?!? Well my apologeese, thou art going to be real flippered off for the next four hours. I guess I could try wing it but I’m not a bird of that kind of feather. Besides what good is it formulating sophisticated comedy when it always flies over the audience’s head? That and also flew seasons here and I’m feeling a little under the feather, I can feel a migration coming on.

Eesh seems this gaggle doesn’t appreciate decent comedy, thou hath made quite a silly goose of thineselves!! Chasing thine approval has been a wild goose chase and quite the displeasure. Thou art softer than a goose down pillow!! Can’t take a joke Cleary.

Better save my skein and waddle off while I’ve got my tail feathers intact, lettuce never meet again. Goose night everyone!! Waddle waddle goose goose honk honk.

[brucesterling]

Gray-Hawk and his last crooked gambit

The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain Volume 1 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Volume 1 spanish history translation of 10th century book

INTERNET ARCHIVE

*If you were a bandit in Al-Andalus, the medieval Islamic Spanish territories, then your worst enemies were the heavily-armed Christians, the "followers of the crucified."

*But that wouldn't stop you from diligently robbing your own people, and getting publicly crucified yourself, that was just a minor occupational hazard. It wouldn't even slow you down in your scams and robberies.

*******

"A very entertaining anecdote is told of a famous highwayman, called Al-bdsiyu-l-ash'ab (the Grey-hawk), who lived in the time of Al-Mu'atamed, King of Seville. He was renowned for his dexterity and courage, and soon became the scourge of the country; for at the head of a small band of chosen followers he began to scour the fields, surprising the inhabitants in their farms and villages, and depriving them of their valuables.

"Long did he baffle the search of justice, and escape from every troop sent for his apprehension; but, at last, he fell one day into the hands of the king's officers, and the event being reported to Al-Mu'atamed, he was sentenced to be crucified by the side of a much-frequented path, in the midst of the very district which had been the principal theatre of his depredations.

"The sentence having been duly carried into execution, the poor man was hanging miserably stretched on the cross, when, behold ! his wife and daughters came up, and began to sob and wail around him, exclaiming, in the midst of their tears, 'Our doom is signed, and our deaths are certain; who shall provide for us when thou art no more?'

"They were thus lamenting over their misfortune when a peasant happened to pass by, riding on a mule, and having before him something like a large bundle of clothes or goods.

"'Friend,"'said the robber on the cross to the passenger, 'take pity on me, and, since thou seest me in this condition, grant me a last favour, which will prove beneficial to thee too.'

"'And what is it, pray?' said the peasant.

"'Go to yonder well,' replied the robber, 'and thou shalt find at the bottom one hundred dinars in a purse, which, as I was closely pursued by the constables, I threw therein; if thou succeed in getting them out, half shall be thy reward; the remaining half thou must give to my wife and daughters here, that they may support themselves for a while after my death. Go, hasten to the spot, and do not be afraid; my wife will assist thee in thy descent by holding a rope, and my daughters will take care of thy mule.'

"The peasant consented, upon the offered conditions, and bent his steps towards the well; there he tied a rope round his waist, and, assisted by the woman, began to let himself down, but no sooner had he reached the bottom than the robber's wife cut the rope, and the poor wretch was left in the water struggling and screaming, while his deceiver, as may easily be imagined, hastened to the spot where his mule was, seized on whatever property he carried, and quickly disappeared with her daughters.

"The poor man, in the meanwhile, finding the depth of the well, and that he had not the means of getting out, began to cry out as loud as he could, in hopes of calling the attention of some passenger; and the hollow of the wel rang with his cries of 'help! help!'

"It was summer time, and the weather very hot, so that many travellers approached the wel to draw water for themselves and their beasts; but the moment one of them came near to it, and heard the voice of the poor peasant inside, he ran away from it in great fright and consternation, not knowing what caused the pitiful lamentations and wailings that issued from the water.

"For many a long hour did the unhappy man remain in this miserable plight, until some of the passengers having acquainted each other with the circumstance, they came to the resolution of returning to the spot, and ascertaining the cause of the strange noises they had heard. Hastening back to the well, they soon discovered the peasant lying at the bottom of it, who, by means of a rope thrown him, was speedily extricated from the dangerous situation in which he lay.

"Being asked how he had come by his misfortune, he told them that he had been deceived, and pointing to the highwayman on the cross.

"'Yonder knave,' said he, 'was the cause of it, in order to give his wife and daughters an opportunity tom plunder me.'

"However, the adventure soon became known in Seville, whither the peasant directed his course, and being reported to Al-Mu'atamed, he was surprised to hear of the robber's cunning and impudence; and wishing to see him, and interrogate him on the subject, he commanded that Grey-hawk should be made to appear in his presence.

"Agreeably to his orders, the robber was let down from the cross, and brought before the King, who addressed him thus: 'Tell me, O Grey-hawk ! how couldst thou be guilty of such a crime as that now imputed to thee, and that too, being, as it were, under the clutch of death?'

"'O King!' replied the robber, 'if thou knewest how strongly nature impels me to the perpetration of such acts, and how great is the pleasure I enjoy while I commit them, I have no doubt but that thou wouldst relinquish the royal power, and embrace my profession.'

"Al-Mu'atamed could not help smiling when he heard this; he then said, after some time, 'O Grey-hawk I were I to set thee at liberty, and treat thee kindly, were I to act generously towards thee, and allow thee a pension for thy maintenance and that of thy family, tell me, wouldst thou repent of thy misdeeds, and forsake thy criminal practices?'

"'If repentance,' said Grey-hawk, 'is to be my only way to salvation, I do not hesitate to accept life under such conditions.'

"Upon which, Al-Mu'atamed, having previously made him swear to keep his engagement, liberated him, and gave him the command of a resolute band for the prosecution and detection of thieves in a particular quarter of the city."

****

*So not only do you survive being publicly crucified, the experience makes you turn intio a cop.

[midnight-talescape]

𝒲𝒾𝓈𝒽(𝒵𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒾𝒶𝓁 𝓍 𝒪𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓁𝑜𝓇𝒹 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹𝑒𝓇)

Kinktober Day 15: Size Difference (sorta)

Brooooo u guys don’t understand I had like two more story planned the last two days but I couldn’t finish one and the Mewtwo one was literal garbage so I gave up 😭😭😭

So anyway heres the Zestial one that I promise, never in my life do I want to see thee thy and other similar language again I want to die.

I want to write egg laying so bad, but I shouldn’t.

Warning: egg laying, bdsm, bad use of Shakespeare language, ooc, etc etc you get the point not for kid

Genre: filthy filthy smut

Word Count: 3.2kish

｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡

Everyone have heard the rumor…

A powerful overlord who can grant ones wish in exchange for their soul and entertainment…

Zestial watched in silence, a dangerous smile on his lip as he thought back to the other overlords who have already sold their soul to you.

And how broken and shattered they become when their soul was returned.

The pain and agony they felt as they realize that they no longer entertain you, that they no longer deserve to be your toy.

When they realize that true desperation is when they can no longer feel your imprint on their soul.

As he heard the tell tale sound of butterflies, Zestial knows what he want…

As insane as it sound, he want to be own by you.

To become the most important soul you own.

｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡+☆+｡･ﾟ･｡

You hummed as you walked out of the shadow, stopping in front of him and doing a curtsy before greeting him.

“Hello, Zestial right? I’m here to make a deal with you for your soul.”

Zestial green eyes flick to you, his smile raising by a fraction, not at all surprise by your request. before he lean in closer to you. His tall, imposing figure loom over you, his black cloak billowing slightly in the choleric air of the Pride Ring.

"A deal, a pact, a contract. It is all a matter of give and take, is it not? So tell me, what dost thou offer in exchange for my soul?"

The lime green spider on his cloak seemed to dance and twitch with anticipation almost as if alive, the glimmer in his eyes matching with Zestial’s as he spoke.

Unfazed, although uncomfortable with how close he was to you, you take a few step back before answering, “What will you like in exchange for your soul? I can give you anything I can give.”

His smile grew as he watch you back away, a low chuckle escaping his throat. He took a step closer, closing the distance between you once more, wanting to be as close to you as possible.

"Thou art a curious one, are thou not? To offer such a tantalizing proposition without first knowing the desires of the one thou seek to bargain with.”

His gloved hand reaches out, gently tucking a strand of your black hair behind your ear, his touch lingering for a moment longer than necessary.

“I crave not wealth, for I have already possessed much. Neither doth the power of the underworld intrigue me. No, what I do seek is something rarer than gold or gems. It is something intangible, yet just as precious."

The overlord's head tilts to the side, his gaze roaming over your form as if inspecting you, to memorize every curve of your body. "I offer thee my soul, my power, and my allegiance for as long as thou wants, if in return, thou wilt grant me one year of servitude. One year of unadulterated attention and affection from thee alone. Day and night, under thy tender care."

He extend his hand towards you, his voice lowering to a husky whisper. "Will thou accept my offer?" His eyes stared unblinkingly at you as he waited for your answer, his body trembling slightly in excitement,

“I accept your proposal.” You said almost immediately, shaking his hand without hesitation,

A year of your endless and boring existence, for a soul who will bring you entertainment. It was a deal you had no reason to decline.

With a snap of your finger, a beautiful clear crystal float out of your chest and stopped in front of him. Silently asking for Zestial to sign the deal.

Zestial reach out and gently took the crystal heart from your hand, cradling it in his large palms, studying the intricate etchings and runes etched elegantly along its surface.

"Thou art truly a generous one, to accept my offer so readily," he purred, his voice low and smooth as silk. "But know this, sweet one, I am a possessive creature, and thou art now bound to me."

He close his fingers around the crystal, feeling its warmth seeping into his skin as he began to forge the deal.

"I, Zestial, hereby pledge my soul, my power, and my allegiance to thee. In exchange, I demand thy servitude, thy care, and thy affection for one year. My signature is my binding word, sealed with my very essence."

As if on cue, a swirl of dark energy emerged from Zestial's chest, coiling around the crystal before sinking deep into its core.

Zestial let out a groan, the weight of his soul leave his body was both terrifying and exhilarating. After a few moment he calm down, his four eyes glowing and his breathing slightly ragged. In a instant as if unable to control himself, the overlord brought the crystal close to his lips, kissing it gently as if in a trance.

“D-don’t do that.” You pant out almost immediately, practically snatching the crystal back and placing it back your chest. Your skin flushing lightly as the sensation of his lip seems to be imprinted on your own soul,

Zestial doesn’t feel the least bit apologetic at his actions, finding your flustered state utterly charming.

"Apologies. Dost thou find my words unsettling, sweet one?" he asks, his eyes blinking almost playfully, "I assure thee, I merely meant to express my gratitude. For my soul is thine, and I, in turn, claim thee as mine. Mine to cherish, mine to protect, and mine to...possess."

His hand reach out, cupping your chin and tilting your face up to meet his gaze. His thumb brush over your lower lip, applying just the barest hint of pressure.

"But if thou art so easily undone by a mere glance or caress, then I fear what thou art in for during our year together."

His other hand came to rest on the small of your back, pulling you flush against his tall frame. The heat of his body seeped into you as gaze at your lips, then back up to meet your own. "Shall we seal our pact with a kiss, my dear? To mark the beginning of our arrangement?"

It was a absolutely scandalous request, especially for a gentleman like him. But he couldn’t resist. He want to know what your lip feels like under his.

Were they as soft as they look?

You look up at him, a rare moment of confusion in your eyes.

It was a odd request.

Or at the very least no one had dare ask that of you before.

But you nodded, after a moment of hesitation. You did agree to be his for a year, and you honor your deals.

You waited for hum to lean down to your height, before placing a chaste kiss on his lip, it was supposed to be quick and easy. But as you pull away, you felt him place his hand on the back of your head.

Zestial's eyes fluttered shut as he deepen the kiss, his lips moving against yours with a slow grace. He tasted of tea and something distinctly otherworldly, a flavor unique to the demons that inhabited the depths of Hell.

After a long moment, he reluctantly pulled away, leaving you breathless and flushed. He licked his lips, savoring the taste of you still lingering on his tongue, a grin spreading across his face.

"My, my... Thou art a delightful surprise," he purred, his voice husky with desire. "I cannot wait to unravel the many secrets thou holdest."

With a flourish, Zestial swept you up into his arms, cradling you against his broad chest. "Come, let us retire to my abode. I would hate for any to interrupt our little... celebration."

He carried you through a portal he summoned and you soon arrived in his bedroom. You let out a muffled groan when he dropped you onto his bed. His lip curling as he watched you bounce slightly on the plush bed, your form sinking into the silk sheets.

His knee press into the mattress as he lean down, caging you beneath his tall frame. His hands came to rest on either side of your head, his face mere inches from your own.

"Thou art as delicate as a flower, yet with a strength that belies thy fragile appearance,"

His eyes grew dark as he stare at your delicate neck. He lean down almost hungrily, his lips trailing down your neck, leaving a trail of scorching kisses in their wake as he tore at your shirt.

“Zestial…” your voice tremble as you pant out his name, instinctively arching your neck wanting to get away from his kisses.

Zestial smile against your skin as he heard the breathy moan escape your lips. He can feel your pulse racing beneath his lips, a delicious flutter that only stoke the flames of his desire. His hand trailed down your body, fingers splaying across your stomach, teasing the waistband of your pants.

"Shh, my sweet. There is no need to be afraid," he purred, his voice a low, soothing rumble. "Just relax and let me take care of thee."

Without warning, a silken thread of webbing materializing between his fingers. In one swift motion, he wrap it around your wrists, binding them together above your head.

He lean back, leaving you bare before him. Your skin marred with scratches and love bite as he admire his handiwork with a grin. "There now, is that not better? Thou art positively radiant, all tied up and helpless like this."

You struggle unhappily as you were tied to the headboard. The thread was thin, but strong, holding firm against your movement and digging into your wrist.

“I don’t like being tied up…” you complain softly, trying not to tremble as you felt his sharp claw on your thigh,

Zestial's eyes gleamed with wicked amusement as he watched you squirm beneath him, your protests only serving to fuel his desire.

"Oh? But thou art so beautiful like this, my sweet," he purred, his hand sliding higher up your thigh. "Bound and helpless, at the mercy of my whims."

He leaned down, his breath hot against your ear as he whispered, "And as for liking it... Well, that remains to be seen, doth it not?"

His eyes rake over your form, drinking in every dip and curve. His hand gripping onto you, fingers digging into your thigh as he muse to himself. "I wonder... Shall I devour thee whole, or savor thee bite by bite?"

You open your mouth to say something, but he didn’t give you time. The next thing you know, his face was between your legs as you arched your back. Pressing your pussy into his mouth as you cried out, your leg wrapping tightly around his head as his tongue delved into your wet cunt.

"Mmm... Thou taste divine," he groan against your pussy as you grind into him, "I could feast upon thee for hours, days even."

Without further word, he buried his face back in between your legs. He could taste your arousal on his tongue, a intoxicating flavor that only spur him on. His tongue swirl around your sensitive bud, flicking and teasing until you were writhing beneath him.

His hands grip your hip tighter, holding you in place as he feasted on your cunt. He could feel your thighs trembling around his head, your moans and whimpers music to his ears. His actions were fueled by pure hunger, an insatiable need to taste and claim every part of you.

He want to hear you fall apart, want to feel you clench and spasm against his mouth as he drove you to the brink of ecstasy. His eyes lock onto yours, watching you with a predatory intensity as he continued his relentless assault on your cunt.

“D-don’t— too much!” You cried out, your body filled with unfamiliar sensations,

It was ironic.

As a demon who gain power through emotions, this was something you have never felt and least of all familiar with. You felt like your body was melting and all you can feel was his tongue in your pussy.

He could feel your control slipping, your defenses crumbling with each flick of his tongue and press of his lips, your body arching and writhing beneath him. Could sense your confusion and pleasure, and it only excite him further.

"Shh, my sweet," he purr, his voice a low, soothing rumble against your core. "Just let go. Let me take care of thee."

He felt your body tense, coiling like a spring ready to snap as your moans grow louder and desperate. He could feel your climax building, your walls fluttering around his tongue as he push you towards the brink.

With a final, hard suck, he sent you hurtling over the edge. Your body convulse, your thighs clamping around his head as you cried out in ecstasy. He lap and lick, prolonging your orgasm until you were a boneless heap on the bed.

As you pant on the bed, your skin glistening with sweat, he sat up licking his lip. "Mmm... Thou art exquisite when thou art undone. I look forward to doing that again... and again."

You let out a broken sob at his word, your leg still shaking as you try to come down from the high. You felt like your body was no longer yours, and the night haven’t even started.

After all this was just the beginning, and he was going to ravage you to the fullest.

With a lazy flick of his wrist, another strand of webbing shot out, binding your ankle to the footboard. He could feel the power thrumming through his veins, fed by your emotions and excitement. It was intoxicating, addictive even. You were now fully at his mercy, spread out and vulnerable before him like a feast waiting to be devoured.

"I could get used to this view," he said as he pull back, his eyes hungry as he stare at your bound form. "Thou art a work of art, my sweet. And I intend to worship every inch of thee."

His hand trails down your body, fingers ghosting over your skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. He could feel your body trembling beneath his touch, anticipation and fear mingling together in your veins.

You grit your teeth as you felt his cock head nudging at your entrance, the taper head forceful and insistent. You wanted to close your legs, the sheer size of it making you wonder if it will even fit, but the web left you unable to move. So you can only watch as Zestial sank deep inside you, your scream swallow by him as he kiss you.

He groan into the kiss as he felt your tight heat envelop him, your walls clenching around his cock. He could feel your body tense beneath him, your screams muffled against his lips as he sank deeper and deeper into your welcoming warmth.

He broke the kiss after a few seconds, watching you with a predatory intensity as he began to move. He started slow, giving you time to adjust to his cock, he could feel your body softening, yielding to him as he filled you again and again.

"Thou feel divine, my sweet," he groan, his pace becoming more erratic, more desperate. "So tight and perfect, like thou were made for me."

As he started to pick up the pace he could feel your body responding to his thrusts, your moans growing louder and more desperate with each passing moment.

“S-stop…” you managed to beg out, before you felt yourself cumming again,

Not even getting a chance to catch your breath before he was pounding into you again. It was only till you started losing count, did you felt his thrusting getting erratic as he get ready to fill you with his cum.

With a wail, your body tremble and shake as you felt Zestial crammed his cock into your womb, spilling his cum into you with a grunt as he tightened the web on your limbs.

You didn’t know how long it lasted, you just felt so so full. You couldn’t think or make a sound, your brain practically fried with unfamiliar sensations and pleasure.

Your face was wet with tears and your hair messy as it cling to your body. You couldn’t remember the last time you were so weak and vulnerable.

Not that you can remember much by this point.

After a few minutes, you let out a soft whine as you felt his cock still buried deep inside you. You look up at him your voice hoarse and broken as you ask,

“Are you not pulling out?”

Zestial laugh as he felt your body go limp beneath him, the sight of your overstimulated form feeding him just as much as the physical pleasure you brought him.

"Pull out, my sweet?" he repeated, his voice a low, husky rumble. "Whatever gave thee that idea? I have no intention of finishing our little... encounter so quickly."

To emphasize his point, he gave you another particularly hard thrust. You wailed and he could feel your walls fluttering around him again, your body still sensitized from your earlier climaxes.

"If anything, I intend to fill thee even further. To see thee swollen with my seed, my mark etched upon thy very flesh."

His hand slid down your body, coming to rest on your lower belly. "Wouldst thou like that, my sweet? To be bred and claimed, marked as mine for all to see?"

As he said that he ground his hips against yours again, and you felt something hard and ridged prodding at your entrance. With a sadistic smile, Zestial pushed forward, and you felt a strange, bulbous shape sliding into your womb.

Seeing the shock and confusion on your face, he stroke your belly softly, “Don't worry, my dear. These eggs are but a mere token of my affection for thee." his touch gentle compared to the brutal and lewd action he’s forcing upon you.

One by one, your womb was filled with his eggs. After a eternity, the last of them enter your womb and with a hint of disappointment Zestial pull out of you.

A whimper fell from your lip as he cut you free from his web, your body landing on the soft bed again as you immediately curl up. You can feel the eggs floating in the copious amount of cum inside your womb, pushing against each other and grinding against your sensitive wall. It was a absurd feeling, like you’re actually filled with his young.

Humming softly Zestial pulled you against his chest, his cock already hard again as he pressed it against your ass. Ignoring your instinctive struggle he whisper in your ears.

“Come now, my sweet. Be good and bear my eggs, for thou canst do that for me, canst thou not?”

Before you could answer he was already ramming his cock into your ass, his hand wrap around your throat as he begin to fuck you into oblivion.

You were going to lay those eggs eventually, but he certainly don’t mind fucking you through it. After all the night is long and you will be with him for a long long time.

[tanadrin]

(Note: this is all totally non-rigorous free association)

Famously, the King James Version of the Bible translates Exodus 22:18 as "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This is one of those translations, though, that has suffered for passing through multiple different cultural lenses over the textual history of Exodus. Alternate modern translations say things like "put to death any woman who does evil magic," "*wizards* thou shalt not suffer to live," or even "whoever has sexual relations with an animal must be put to death."

In the Septuagint, the underlying word is translated φάρμακος; despite the connotation of the English word, a masculine noun; the word is associated with magical arts in general, but is *especially* associated with poison. It's from φάρμακον, a word which can mean either "poison" or "drug," and is the origin of "pharmacy." Greek had a rich vocabulary for the supernatural: an older and more general word seems to be γοητεία, "charm, jugglery, sorcery," from γόης, "sorcerer, wizard, juggler, cheat." That it includes in its semantic field the concept of sleight-of-hand shows that mundane deception is countenanced as a possible explanation for claims of magical power, which no doubt contributes to the dim social reception of magic, but also shows a neat symmetry with the modern concept of the stage magician, whom we publicly acknowledge as really being just a particular kind of illusionist and entertainer. Another Greek word for magic is, well, μάγος, the source of the English word, ultimately a borrowing from Old Persian maguš. A maguš was simply a priest of Mazda in the old Zoroastrian religion; the word is of uncertain etymology, but its connotations in Greek arise from crediting a Greek mythical version of Zoroaster with the invention of magic and astrology, showing us that perhaps orientalism of one sort or another has long been part of European traditions of the occult. There is also  θαυματουργία, "wonder-working, doing miracles, wizardry."

But the Septuagint word choice is an odd one; as I understand it, the actual underlying lexical item is מְכַשֵּׁפָה/mekhashefah, the feminine form of מְכַשֵּׁף/mekhashef. The root of this word seems to be כשף/KH-SH-F, which has been glossed various ways. One gloss I find particularly interesting is "cut." Kenneth Kitchen links this etymology to the cutting of herbs; thus, a mekhashef is a kind of herbalist, and the context, as with pharmakos, is the fear of poisons--the feminine form might also make sense here, as it seems plausible that just as in our modern society, poisoning was a more reliable tool for killing for women than for men, for whom the possibility of physically overpowering their enemies was less likely.

But I think it's interesting to note other ways in which magic is about division and breaking. Though in modern fantasy a "warlock" is either just a generic wicked sorcerer, or a summoner of demons, the word comes from Old English wǣrloga ("promise-deceiver"), a deceiver, a breaker of oaths. A warlock is thus someone who dissolves social ties, or even betrays their baptismal vows by making an unholy vow, an un-promise, to Satan himself. The English "witch" comes from the Old English wiċċa or wiċċe (masculine and feminine forms respectively), from Proto-Germanic *wikkô, "sorcerer, necromancer," from the verb *wikkōną, "to practice sorcery." One likely derivation of *wikkōną is the Proto-Indo-European stem *weyk-, "to separate, to divide, to choose." This may be a reference to cleromancy, the casting of lots; many ancient words for magic link together fortunetelling of various kinds (the second element in words like "necromancy" and "cleromancy" is ancient Greek μᾰντείᾱ, "divination, prophecy, fortune-telling), but here again the concept of separation appears in a way that is difficult to ignore.

The Romans, like the Greeks, looked east for their wisdom, and were also obsessed with divination in particular, so their words for magic are often borrowed from Greek, or concern forms of fortune-telling in particular: haruspicina, the inspection of entrails; the genius or numen, language of spiritual presence and will (the latter not dissimilar to the mana of Polynesia); auspicium, the interpretation of omens, especially the flights of birds. Perhaps other kinds of magic invoked skepticism: Pliny argues that, except possibly in the making of potions (the Romans, no less than the Greeks and the Hebrews, knew that the right herbs could kill!), most claims of magic were simply lies--though there was little harm in apotropaic wards to set the mind at ease. Apuleius granted the existence of spirits and demons, and both Augustus and Constantine worried enough about magic to try to suppress its practice.

In Sanskrit, magic was apparently sometimes called इन्द्रजाल/indrajala, "Indra's net," a metaphor for emptiness, a word that foregrounds the idea of fraud and illusion. Similarly, the word माया/maya means "magic," but also "illusion," being in that way akin to the English notion of glamour found in fairy-stories. There is also possibly semantic overlap with German Zauber, whose meaning is "magic," but which is etymologically connected to Old English tēafor, "to paint [a picture]," and Icelandic töfrar, "enchantment." (Icelandic also has galdur, "sorcery," but also "[conjuring] trick.") Chinese offers the root 魔/mo2, which according to Wiktionary is from Sanskrit मार/mara, "death, pestilence;" in Chinese it takes on theurgic qualities: "devil, demon, magic, the unnatural, crazy," depending on the context it's found in: 魔羅, a kind of Buddhist demon; 魔術, "magic," as in an illusion imitating the supernatural; 瘋魔, "to be insane, to be fascinated by, to be enchanted by," a concept of obsessive madness shared in other cultures, including our own.

A full cross-cultural, historical comparison of words pertaining to magic is far beyond my capabilities, of course; but exploring current in the vocabulary and historical development of words around magic is interesting so far as it peels back the thick systematizing, empirical layer within our culture and helps us glimpse how these ideas functioned in the past. Nowadays, magic is often prototypically the magic of high fantasy: it is systematic, little more than a flashy kind of science, even if it is one accessed through mental discipline rather than mechanical instruments. Magic is patterned, stable, fundamentally knowable, because we are so thoroughly grounded in systems of knowledge that understand the whole world as patterned and knowable that we cannot imagine anything else. We redefine magic in ways that simplify it down to nothing: to be little more than abstract spiritual practice, moral therapeutic deism with countercultural window-dressing, or to mean nothing more than simply acting on the world. But is that really in keeping with the spirit of the thing, as it is has been imagined for most of history?

Magic is about many things. It is about division: discrimination, separation, cutting. Cutting the body of the sacrifice, to prod at its bloody insides; cutting breath from a living victim; cutting off the sacred from the unholy, and vice-versa. It is about speaking, chanting, singing, the form and the performance of words. It is about writing (itself a word which means to cut or carve into something). It is about deception: lies in pursuit of status or money, lies to avoid culpability for murder, lies about secret knowledge. It is about feeling oneself inhabiting a world filled with intentional beings, beings with a will and nature unknown and perhaps unknowable to you. Spirits of the dead, of the air, and of the wild world; the genius loci, the demon, the hungry ghost. It of a world when the night could claim real darkness, when the stars were forever an inscrutable mystery, and when the terrifying unknown could intrude into your life at a moment's notice. Even modern occultism feels like a nonsensical imitation of the past, with emphasis on benign enlightenment or spiritual growth, when ancient magic was rife with murder, curses, treachery, and simple human greed. The huckster fortune-teller, who cynically defrauds their customrs, is closer to the spirit of magic than the observant neo-pagan.

We are mostly too sure of ourselves, and too confident in our ability to understand even that which is at first horrifying and inexplicable, to really replicate the feeling of that kind of magic. A world in which that kind of magic is possible is a world in which the last few centuries of philosophy and epistemology and science are shown to be so profoundly wrong that we are left with nothing but naive superstition and fear. Or else, it is a world where all these basic forms of inquiry that we take for granted simply do not work--because if they did work, we would be back in our own comforting, familiar world, a world of rationalism and enlightenment, albeit perhaps with a few of the phenomenological incidentals changed. I wonder if it is really possibly anymore for us to tell stories in the mode of that older world. With the exception of certain kinds of horror, I don't really know of anything that comes close.

[tragedybunny]

Slow Dancing In a Burning Room - Chapter 3

༺Summary༻

In a moment of weakness, Serafina helped Astarion ascend, forever altering him and their relationship. Irrevocably bonded in violence, can she survive life at his side, or will she be broken by the cycle of pain and terror.

༺Pairing༻ Astarion x Serafina (Female Tav)

༺Warnings༻ Dubcon / Noncon elements , violence, toxic / abusive relationships

༺Word Count༻ 3057

༺Masterlist༻

༺A/N༻ I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out! Hope you enjoy it.

Huge thanks to @leomonae for the fantastic beta work and for showing me the art of the semicolon.

Read on AO3

꧁༺Chapter 3 - Second, Thou Shalt Drink Blood as I Have Commanded ༻꧂

༺ Astarion brings Serafina a gift and the second of his rules is made clear to her.༻

How long Serafina had waited for Astarion to return, she couldn’t say. One day flowed into another, all of them soon becoming like one. The servants still came, to tend to her and their rooms, but they were always silent. The smell of living blood in their veins stirred the growing ache in her stomach, the feeling of emptiness. It never truly went away, even the Ascendant’s gifts couldn’t protect his spawn from that curse, but the denial of even a drop of animal blood turned the subtle burn into an inferno. And then the servants stopped coming, because Astarion knew, even in his absence, what was happening to her. Whatever he had planned, he wanted her hungry, and it seemed he didn’t want to risk her breaking before he was ready. 

Their rooms offered little entertainment to distract from the hunger. She could read from their private library, bathe, watch the streets of the Gate from her window, write letters to old companions – and wait for responses that had been increasingly sparse since they parted ways – but that was it. After a while, sleep became her favorite activity, her head too foggy for anything more involved. 

She spent unknown hours lying motionless among a sea of black silk sheets, staring at the tapestries and paintings that lined the walls: scenes Astarion’s defeat of Cazador, his ascension, the saving of Baldur’s Gate, and the day they claimed Szarr manor as their rightful home. And there she was, beside him through it all. His beloved. 

And then, the mental haze was erased in a moment when an envelope slid under her door one morning. “My Precious Treasure,” was written on it, in Astarion’s immaculate script. Despite the betrayal of her imprisonment, Serafina’s heart leapt. She’d known he wouldn’t abandon her entirely, but how long he would make her wait had been in question. Astarion had proven himself capable of the most stubborn grudge holding. 

Fingers hastily tore into it, yanking the letter free with ragged anticipation. The words adorning the parchment were a sliver of hope that she eagerly clung to. 

“Serafina, my beloved,

Tonight, I will come to you, and we will end this unpleasantness between us. Not having you in my arms every night has been a great suffering, but I know we will be stronger for this, our love deeper. Tonight I will come bearing a gift, and show you how strong my love for you is. 

Until then, my love,

Your Astarion”

Deep down, something within her recoiled at the happiness the words sparked. Something that remembered her past; something that had fought for her freedom, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Something that bristled at this gilded cage. 

How long had it been since the Netherbrain? Time was strange, as a vampire who spent most of her days in Astarion’s palace. Serafina tried to think back: it had undergone some of his grand renovation plans, and he had made two other spawn to assist with his aspirations among the city’s elite. Which suggested that it had been a few years, at least. 

Not that it mattered; she was where she had chosen to be. She had loved Astarion, and had tried to give him everything – for that matter, she loved him still. And he still loved her, Serafina knew, it was just… different, now. But even that too could change, the letter evidence he’d already begun to soften. 

With the new burst of energy brought by the letter and her anticipation of Astarion’s imminent return, the rest of the day was spent carefully readying herself. A bath with his favorite scents; hair left loose and flowing, so he could run his fingers through it. And a dress that was little more than a swath of crimson silk over the intimate parts of her body, to complete the image. The Ascendant’s consort; just the way he desired her. 

The sun was just setting when the door to the grand bedchamber opened. Her lord and lover entered; Sera had been seated in a plush chair near the fire, built up to blazing despite the warm weather with her body so cold from lack of blood these days, but a sharp burst of warmth shot through her at the sight of him. Dressed in black silk with fine gold embroidered details, Astarion looked more than regal: he looked divine. 

Serafina rose to greet him; the corners of her lips curled up into a smile. 

“My darling,” he purred, pulling her into his arms and kissing her deeply. “I’ve missed you so, my love.” 

“I was here, but you-” she started to protest; he gently placed a finger to her lips. 

“Shh, we can talk about all of that later. Let me give you your gift first.” 

Serafina nodded; there was nothing to be gained from spoiling his soft mood.

Arm still hooked around her waist, Astarion turned them both toward the door. “Enter, Navril.” 

Sera tensed against Astarion as a beautiful young elven man entered. Red hair cascaded down his back; his eyes were like liquid gold, as he gazed at Astarion with the besotted look she’d seen in others so often before. His sun-kissed skin glowed with the blush of life; he was vibrant and warm, and each beat of his heart sent a feast of blood pulsing through his veins. 

Her stomach clenched; she tried not to start salivating. 

“Command me, my lord,” Navril said, his voice airy and musical.

Rather than replying, Astarion looked over to Serafina, then nodded her over towards the young man.  A gift, he had said.

“What am I to do with him?” Serafina’s eyes dropped to the floor as she spoke; she could almost hear that blood singing to her. 

Astarion chuckled. “Let him pleasure you – well, us – of course.” 

A sharpened fang dug into her lip; she was so hungry. But doing what Astarion wanted would please him, and make their reunion easier. She could ask him for blood afterwards. And anyway, this wasn’t the first playmate he’d dragged to their bed. The first had been a plump little blonde human he’d tried to keep as a spawn. She’d met a stake one night in the castle gardens, when Serafina had found her there alone. Strangely, he’d seemed more proud than angry. But from then on, spawn were not for pleasure, and his toys always disappeared again after one night. 

“If you command it, my love.” She stepped away from Astarion and glanced Navril up and down before addressing him. “Disrobe. Let me see what my lord has brought to me.” 

Navril hesitated, looking between the two of them and seeming unsure. 

“You heard her,” Astarion said, tone cool. 

This time Navril listened,  his simple tunic and pants quickly discarded. His skin was free from anything that would mar it, suggesting the warm tone was gained through pleasure, not work, and the same for the softness of his body. Perhaps a man of learning, or the son of a noble? Not that it would matter, when Astarion was done with him. All that mattered in here was the cock between Navril’s legs, already stirring to life.

“Now, what ever should we do with him,” Astarion coaxed, leaning over to kiss and nibble at her neck. 

Serafina considered the question. Truthfully, the additions to their bed held little interest for her, but it pleased Astarion to have her participate. And there were ways to do that without her own direct involvement. 

“I want to watch him suck your cock.”

Her words earned a toothy smile from him, fangs flashing alluringly from between his lips; she had fallen in love with that smile once upon a time. “A delightful start.” He placed her hands on his trousers, a silent command for her to open them. 

Obeying, she took him in her hand, stroking with a light, teasing touch, before backing away to gesture to their guest. Navril obediently dropped to his knees, mouth opening to accept Astarion’s cock. He ran his tongue along the length and over the head, coating it in saliva, before taking it all the way inside. 

Astarion gave a muted groan. 

Sera settled herself on the bed, legs spread, watching the lewd spectacle Astarion was making of Navril. But it didn’t last long at all.

“Not one whiff of arousal from my treasure; you’re boring her,” Astarion snapped suddenly, and gripped Navril’s hair in unrelenting fingers. With a violent thrust, he plunged the length of himself into Navril’s throat. 

Serafina felt a pang of regret for the too-soon loss of Astarion’s softer manner, muted by relief she wasn’t on the receiving end of this mood swing. 

Navril gagged as Astarion roughly fucked his face, still snapping orders at him. “That’s it, make a show for her. This is all for her, and you wouldn’t want to disappoint my consort, would you Navril? ” 

All for her. That stirred her, and her hand drifted between her thighs. Astarion froze, pulling back from Navril’s lips, leaving the man to mop the tears from his face. 

“Your turn, my sweet Serafina.” Astarion stalked toward the bed, discarding clothing and boots in his wake. 

“Come here,” he ordered the waiting Navril, pointing to the spot on the ground between her legs. 

“Yes, my lord.” The man’s eyes were hazy and he spoke as though enthralled. Not an impossible prospect. 

When he rose to obey, Astarion stopped him with a noise of disapproval. “On your knees, lest you forget how far above you she is.”

Sera blushed at the praise as Astarion settled himself behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. Kissing and nipping at her ear, he whispered gently, “You’re so beautiful when you get excited, my love.”

Pulling down the shoulders of her gown, he exposed her pale breasts and pebbled nipples to Navril. “Touch her,” Astarion’s velvet voice commanded. 

Kneeling between her legs, Navril reached for her to obey. Fingers traced over her skin gently, circling the sensitive buds; Astarion made a noise of impatience. His own elegant fingers came around to pinch and roll them instead, much more harshly. Serafina whimpered and squirmed against him, his growing hardness pressing against her backside. He always knew how to drive her mad. 

“Shh, pet, you’re going to have every pleasure soon enough.” He gave her nipples a rough tug that left them stinging. “Now keep your legs spread.”

Obediently, she left them open wide, as Astarion reached out and tugged Navril by his hair toward her waiting sex. And then the same tongue that had tasted her lover tasted her, too, dipping into her folds and exploring her. 

“Does she not have the sweetest taste?” Astarion asked. Not that Navril could reply, of course.

Little licks went from teasing her hole to caressing her wanting clit. Her hips rolled against Navril’s face as Astarion continued to hold him in place. Warmth was building inside her, and she began to lose herself in the euphoric sensations. 

“Do you think you can make her come?” Astarion said, almost taunting. His free hand cupped Sera's breast, abusing her sore nipple again.

Turning her head, she tried to bury her face in his neck as she whined. She felt Navril pick up the pace, sucking at her clit ravenously. “Astarion,” she moaned, pleading; Navril was but the tool, it was Astarion who dictated her pleasure. 

“Come my love.” Astarion’s hand slipped down to slide fingers inside her, while Navril continued to suckle at her most sensitive part. 

With all of Astarion’s attention on her, Serafina lost herself, whimpering and crying out. 

“Good pet,” he crooned, fingers still playing with her briefly before he withdrew them, then took his time to lick each one clean, the lewd, wet sounds echoing in her ear. “Lay back,” he commanded. 

Sera felt herself tense; she never liked having anyone else besides Astarion himself inside her like that. But he was in such a good mood today, even after the earlier threat that it might turn worse. So she let herself be guided down onto the mattress, as Astarion moved out from behind her and slid her back from the edge. The fabric of her dress fanned out around her as she laid back, barely clinging to her body. 

Astarion looked to Navril, who waited on his knees still. “Fuck her; take my little love to ecstasy.” 

Wasting no time, Navril scrambled onto the bed and settled himself between her thighs. Looking down at her with eyes hazy from lust, he leaned his head toward her lips. 

Astarion struck lightning fast, his hand cracking against Navril’s cheek. “Those are mine alone.” His words came on a low, dangerous growl, and Navril tensed for a second. “As you were.” 

Seemingly afraid to disappoint again, Navril slid himself inside her quickly. Sera silently thanked the gods she was already ready for him as his girth stretched her. This close, the scent of his blood was almost overpowering, her hunger no longer so easily forgotten in the chaos of Astarion’s game. She found herself salivating again as Navril moved inside her, her fangs almost aching. 

“Astarion, I can’t,” she whined, the pleasure between her legs background noise to her rising desire for Navril’s blood. 

Astarion answered her with a predatory smile. Moving with unnatural grace, he left from her side, positioning himself behind Navril. Peering over Navril’s shoulder, he locked eyes with her and brought two fingers to his mouth, sucking on them just enough to wet them. Eyes never leaving hers, his hand drifted downwards. 

Navril groaned; Sera almost pitied him. Pleasure was often short-lived, with Astarion. 

“So greedy for both of us.” Astarion's voice was silken and beguiling, a tone he'd used with her once long ago, in a hidden clearing in the woods. 

Gripping Navril’s hips, Astarion drove forward, and Navril yelped in pain. “Take what you want,” he ordered, thrusting into Navril, causing him to move inside Sera.

She rolled her hips into it and moaned. It felt sinfully delicious to be fucked with Navril’s cock by Astarion like this. 

“You like that, little love?” he teased. 

Navril’s face scrunched in pain when Astarion moved again, pushing him forward, drawing more sounds from Sera in the process. Loved, spoiled, treasured… only Astarion could make her feel this way. 

As Astarion picked up his rhythm, Navril flailed for purchase, hands coming to grip the sheets desperately as he tried to remain upright. He grunted, almost collapsing under the assault as Astarion leaned over him,hips pumping relentlessly. 

Sera ignored him, looking up past him to Astarion’s face, watching him chase his own release as the body he forced into her pushed her to her own. She was so close, and Astarion was fucking into Navril with reckless violence. 

“Please,” the elf between them whimpered. 

“I…” Sera breathed, her body contracting around Navril, banishing all thoughts. 

Time slowed; she watched, transfixed, as Astarion’s mouth moved toward Navril’s throat. A cruel motion wrenched his head to the side; predatory fangs tore into his flesh. 

A rain of red spattered against her skin, the scent making her stomach roil. “Astarion,” she whispered through the haze of lust and hunger. A satisfied smirk answered her before he leaned over to lap at the blood now dripping from Navril’s neck. A pained whimper escaped her and she felt her hands come to rest on Navril’s shoulders, fingernails digging into the skin. 

What little blood there was in her thundered in her veins, a noise to drown out Navril’s suffering. Her mouth salivated as the coppery tang of his blood consumed all her senses. She was so, so hungry, and a feast was spilling down onto her. Distantly, she heard her own protests in her mind, her horror at the urge for a thinking creature’s blood. 

She pulled Navril toward herself as his eyes widened in horror, no escape possible trapped between the two of them. Mouth opening, her tongue caressed his blood-slick skin, a taste like nothing else in the world sending a new kind of pleasure pulsing through her. Hands moving from shoulders to hair, she forced his neck to her waiting teeth, body and mind demanding she sate herself. 

The wound Astarion had opened allowed just enough to tease; she tore into it further, sucking at the sweet nectar released. 

“That’s it, my sweet love, drink your fill,” Astarion encouraged, watching her from above Navril’s shuddering form. 

With his blood flowing into her, she could hear Navril’s heart, hear how it grew weaker with every swallowed mouthful. Again, her mind railed: she was killing him, just as she said she would never do. But the taste was so luscious, and her stomach didn’t hurt for the first time in years. 

Navril made a horrible rattling sound; she felt the flow of blood slow, then stop. The warmth filling her mouth ebbed away, and sanity returned. Hands and teeth released him, but he remained slumped over her. Navril was dead. 

“Oh gods,” she said softly, awareness washing over her. “I - I…”

“You ate properly for the first time,” Astarion said, tone gentle, at least for the moment. “As you deserve.  As you’ve always deserved.”

Standing, he pulled Navril’s body off of her, casually discarding him onto the floor, his purpose served. He settled himself onto the sheets next to Sera and pulled her into his arms. “I’m so proud of you, my love, taking care of yourself.” 

“But he, he was alive. And -” 

And she’d killed him. Murdered a thinking creature, a person, to quiet her own aching hunger. 

“Stop that,” Astarion responded sharply. “You’ve done what you needed to do. I don’t need you to backslide. I want my pretty little consort as healthy as she can be. I have great plans for the next few months, and you need to be fit to be by my side.” 

Fingers stroked her hair as he spoke, their gentleness in direct opposition to the demanding words. Astarion was happy with her, and she finally had peace from the awful hunger that haunted her. And so, resting her cheek against his chest, smearing gore from her face across that perfect ivory skin, she gave in. 

Even if she resisted, there was no doubt he would just find some other way to help her. 

[2demondogs]

You, Covered in Spring | Hosea/Dutch

Tags: Drabble, fluff, young VanDerMatthews, drunk foolery Word Count: 753 A/N: Hosea seems like a piano guy. Finding GIFs is fucking hard bee tee dub dubs.

The small piano is old, although it is new to the saloon. Hosea had struck up an unfortunate conversation with the barkeep on the matter; it sobered him painfully from the comfortable buzz he'd been drifting on for the last hour.

He was tipsy, didn't give a damn who Shelby is and what his Pa sold the thing for; he just wanted to play the godblessed piano.

Fingers feeling as rusty as the key levers beneath the top, the extra shot of whiskey is the only thing staving off a rather uncharacteristic anxiety. 

Dutch went to the restroom, and Hosea supposes he'd gotten lost around the staircase, considering it's been a half hour with no sign of that brand-spanking-new, gaudy purple vest of his. It fits him nicely, so nicely — he cracks his knuckles as he slides onto the bench, shakes his hands free of the moderate ache it sparks in his joints — his neck warms at the thought of how it hugs his ribcage like a second skin.

Dutch knows how fine he looks, is especially aware of it as drunk as he was when Hosea last saw him. He doesn't worry he'll bed someone else; he doesn't really mind, so long as he gets a piece.

The cringe as he presses a key is hard to fight off — it is loud, and makes a few saloon-goers turn their heads. Thankfully, it's dim inside, and they can't see the burn of his neck; it's less excusable by drink than the flush on his cheeks, and for some reason the shame in his skill seems shameful in and of itself.

Closing his eyes, he lets his hands wander, feel. The gentler he presses the keys, the louder they seem, and he punches them instead, perhaps too rough. He readjusts when the ivory hits the wood too loud, too many times.

Soon, muscle memory has taken over his fingers and his mind. Clementine was the first song he'd learned all the way through, decades ago in his very first theatre group — they needed an organ-grinder, so to speak, and at the time he was the least convincing face they had on deck.

Late-teenaged Hosea was fine with that. He liked learning, although he would've preferred to learn how to lie with his eyes.

Eyes that must be glazed over, now, unwatching of the wall in front of him and instead seeing in his mind the cluttered costume closets of that backstage and the young, bright faces of the fresh adults he'd somehow found himself scowling between; he wishes, at times, he'd been a little—

"Thou art lost 'n' gon' for'ver."

Hosea nearly jumps out of his skin, overwhelmed with the saloon coming back into shape around him. That gaudy purple vest is by the piano, and he skips a note in his surprise; really, he should've seen Dutch standing just at the edge of his vision, but it's his voice that shocks him more.

He's never heard him sing, he realizes. Hosea is not a musician, not truly, and he does not play guitar or harmonica at their campfires. Neither does Dutch. The only music he ever seems interested in is wordless, or operas.

Now that he thinks of it, he'd pay good money to hear Dutch try to belt out one of those.

His voice is rich with alcohol and smoother than usual. They meet eyes, Dutch grinning broad around the words of a song not worth a smile; herring boxes with-out topses. He's gotten another drink, leans himself on the top of the piano as if it is belongs to him and Hosea is his paid entertainment — though the look in his eyes would suggest he were paid for something quite different.

Hosea returns his gaze to the keys; drove she ducklings to the water. Now that he's focusing, although not very well given that he cannot pay too intense an attention without fumbling the notes and rhythym, he hears other, very slurred voices join Dutch's. Fell in' the foamin' brine, ruby lips above th' wah-ter.

His own partner's words are sloshing some, his voice cracking handsomely around every few lines. How Hosea loves his crackling timbre, how it makes him sound his age for once instead of tired and dreadful like himself.

It loosens his collar, and he smiles wide when Dutch holds his glass to his mouth — wine, not his choice, but it burns pleasantly and the bitterness offsets just how sweet he feels meeting Dutch's crinkled, drink-bleary eyes.

[medievalandfantasymelee]

THE HOT MEDIEVAL & FANTASY MEN MELEE

QUALIFYING ROUND: 45th Tilt

Cesare Borgia, The Borgias (2011-2013) VS. Ancelyn ap Gwalchmai, Doctor Who: “Battlefield” (1989)

Propaganda

Cesare Borgia, The Borgias (2011-2013) Portrayed by: Francois Arnaud

“How do I even begin to explain Cesare Borgia? - Cesare Borgia is flawless. - He has one duchy and two cardinalates. - I hear his hair is insured for 10,000 ducates. - I hear he does Church speeches… in Spain. - His favorite painter is Pinturicchio - One time, he met Caterina Sforza in Forlì. And she told him he was pretty. - One time, he threatened to kill me… it was awesome! This man.... this man, this man. He is the complete package: a perfect case of competent kink, a ruthless bastard (ie sexy) AND he's so irredeemably fucked up you also get the "I could fix him" complex. This is the man who could had it all and yet he wasn't enough (again, sexy). (Cont. under the Cut)

Ancelyn ap Gwalchmai, Doctor Who: “Battlefield” (1989) Portrayed by: Marcus Gilbert

“A brave and loyal, if somewhat stubborn, Arthurian knight, who helped the Doctor out and fell head-over-heels in love with a badass 20th century brigadier in the process. There's nothing like trying to flirt with a lady while you're being chased by an evil army and she has just threatened to kill you if you don't start running. ("Art thou betrothed?" "NOT NOW, ANCELYN!")

Additional Propaganda Under the Cut

Additional Propaganda

For Cesare Borgia:

He's serving cunt at ALL times. In Cardinal clothes? Serving cunt. In "civil" clothes? Serving cunt. In armor? Serving cunt. He had one of the most competent thinkers and do I say philosopher of his time (Machiavelli) *fawning* over him. Was he a tyrant? Possibly, but it's one we LOVE. The man [Machiavelli] literally BASED A BOOK on him...

"He has a personal assassin of ...unmatched abilities and YET he's even better than the man himself!!! He tries to kill his own would be killer in like the pilot episode and the man was ready to swear absolute fealty to him. As would I, to be honest. As would anyone and everyone. SO much cunt is Cesare Borgia serving at all times!!!

"We love him and loathe him and love to loathe him. His father loves and hates him bc they're too similar. His brother wishes he were him (he's not) His sister doesn't see anyone else. Lucrezia... yes: the incest is fucked up. Also that's why we love it- it's so unhinged, as anything Borgia should be!!! Their relationship... perfect. She's the only one that can possibly understand him, she's the only one he truly loves. She loves him and always has - only a Borgia can truly love a Borgia amirite?

This is a man who is clearly Not Okay and you want so much for him to Be Okay but at the same time not, because it's so much more entertaining when he's not and also we love a hopeless case. I rest my case only bc I lose any trace of coherence when talking about him so I dont know what more to add.”

For Ancelyn ap Gwalchmai:

[little-journeys-fic]

Please tell me Lucifer actually TALKED to Alastor first?! XD

Zestial: Has been an age since I have laid eyes upon thy Radio Demon.....methinks I shall call upon him. *He makes his way to the Hazbin Hotel, knocking on the door*

Charlie: Hello? *Holding Vincent on her hip*

Zestial: Greetings, Princess of the Morning Star. How fair thee this day?

Charlie: Oh! Uh, I'm good! You must be Zestial?

Zestial: Thou art correct, Princess. Who is thee on thy hip? *Pointing to the baby*

Charlie: This is my son, Vincent. I adopted him.

Zestial: Truly, thy heart be noble. I came to enquire of Alastor?

Charlie: Well then come in! I'll go grab him, I think him and my Dad were talking about something.

Zestial: Most appreciated, Princess. *Sits at the bar to wait*

Charlie: *knocks on Alastor's door* Alastor? There's someone here to see you.

Alastor: *opens the door after a moment, hair slightly askew* Oh? And who might that be?

Vincent: Ze!

Charlie: *giggles* Zestial. I think that's what Vin was trying to say.

Alastor: Oh! I'll be right down! *Slips into the shadows and appears beside Zestial* Ah, hello! It's been quite awhile, Zestial!

Zestial: Alastor, tis good to see thou art in good health! How is thy little one?

Alastor: Oh, Honey? I have Husker watching her at the moment, Lucifer and I were having a.....meeting.

Zestial: *notices Alastor's unkept hair* I see. Must have been a tiring meeting. *Smirks*

Alastor: *hastily fixes his hair with a slight blush* Now now, Zestial, why don't you and I take a stroll? I could use the entertainment of watching sinners flee from us.

Zestial: *chuckles and stands with Alastor* 'Twould be my pleasure to accompany you.

Lucifer: *watching them leave from the top of the stairs, in complete disarray himself* "Meeting". Sure~

[lilibethwrites]

Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end

Aemond Targaryen x OFC

Warnings: Angst, heavy violence, eventual smut, Targcest. This will be a very dark fic with potentially multiple disturbing or triggering elements. Each chapter will have warnings accordingly.

Summary: Rhaenyra’s firstborn daughter, Aelenore Velaryon is as vicious as she is ambitious. Growing up knowing she is a bastard and bitterly rejected by Prince Daemon, when she finds herself beginning to lose the favour of her family and infatuated with Aemond, an opportunity to earn more than any woman can have in the Seven Kingdoms presents itself. With a man as broken and wronged as herself, they burn everything around them to feel the warmth denied to them, even if their own flesh may catch on fire. Ambition and greed beget violence, and the blood of the dragon spills like wine.

Word count: 6k

Also on AO3

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

(Richard III, I.i.37–40)

It was a humid, scorching summer’s eve. The flowers of the royal garden had all turned shades of burned pigments heated over a candle for too long. Grasshoppers lay heavy where they had ceased flapping their wings. The nightingales that lent their name to the hour were quiet. It was only Princess Rhaenyra’s wails and groans peppered with curses and insults that echoed off the polished walls of the Red Keep. The heir to the throne, the beloved daughter of King Viserys has been in labour for so long that the younger Maesters made to stand back and observe behind the ranks of seniors and midwives began to whisper the long winter would come before the babe ever did.

Some wondered where Ser Laenor was, others remarked that it was the Breakbones pacing the hall beyond the door, and that it was rather odd that the Commander of the City Watch took such interest in the first labour of the princess.

But the babe came, persistent as she was in remaining in the womb as if she possessed prescience enough to know the realm she was brought into would have no joy to offer.

With the blood still on her, Rhaenyra cradled the babe to her bare chest, weeping and thanking the gods of old. Even a slight rub of her hand over the babe’s head was enough to furrow brows and a new wave of mumbling to rise as if dust after her dragon’s landing. Dark hair; unmistakably, uncharacteristically dark, like the night she was delivered. Dark hair, unlike the kind on the head of the second son Queen Alicent had recently delivered in a chamber nearby.

Ser Laenor was the first to see the babe, though she was cleaned and swaddled in an ornately embroidered blanket that could tear down and rebuild the entire Flea Bottom with how many yards of soft velvet and spools of gold threads it took to weave, then.

Then joined them Harwin Strong, and only then the babe was lifted from Rhaenyra’s arms, and given a name.

“Aelenore,” Rhaenyra said proudly, still keen on the name she had come across in a tome on Old Valyria while the babe was no bigger than a fig in her belly.

“Aelenore,” Ser Harwin Strong raised the babe to his chest and whispered in her ear as Ser Laenor looked on with a proud, warm smile.

By late morrow, King Viserys was cradling his first grandchild, a babe he hadn’t once found unlikely to be the fruit of the marriage he had imposed upon two young people with the blood of Valyria in their veins.

King Viserys blessed the babe’s name, with the swaddle in his arms and pride in his eyes.

“Princess Aelenore Velaryon,” he declared, “may her life be long and prosperous.”

He commended his daughter and her husband, Ser Laenor Velaryon. Yet, Queen Alicent did not share the spirit of festivities. Having given birth to her third babe recently, another boy with the proud colours of Old Valyria, her brows creased when she beheld the babe in her husband’s arms.

Neither Aegon nor Aemond, the heirs Viserys so desperately desired that he would butcher his lover, were welcomed into the world as fervently as her husband’s first grandchild was by him.

The King was still in his prime, then, and he could pace the chamber with the babe in his arms until he grew restless, then, he would tour the shorter halls, stop by alcoves with stones warmed by the broiling sun. He accepted praises and well wishes from his court, with Rhaenyra still reclined on a chaise and Queen Alicent left alone with her.

“Congratulations,” she begrudgingly said at last.

The room was cold with resentment, and the bodies that filled it were all stiff like corpses washed ashore.

“My congratulations, as well,” Rhaenyra repaid the kindness, or the visage of it, just before Aelenore was returned.

“Rather short and without a fuss, mine own labour was,” the Queen spoke without patience at her stepdaughter’s nonchalant disregard of the rules of nature herself. Bastards were cursed, this, everyone knew. Bad omens; treacherous, sly, with deformed souls and frightening capacity for evil.

“And a rather unmistakable likeness to his sire, Aemond bears… Though, ‘tis only the first of yours,” she spoke disdainfully, then. The gentle tone with which she spoke couldn’t veil the anger stirring within her.

“I shall pray that the Gods will give you a babe that resembles… either of you next time.” Her smile was bitter, her eyes hostile.

Yet, the Gods didn’t. Next came a brother for Aelenore, with the same dark hair that tended to curl into ringlets. Aelenore gave up her toys, save for a wooden replica of her quickly growing dragon, to instead spend her waking hours near her brother. Not long after came Lucerys. Aelenore was grown enough then to participate in at least the first hour of the labour with her hand on her mother’s swollen belly. After that, she was hastily escorted out to wait along with the rest of the court. Such sights were not for a girl who would labour in a birthing bed of her own eventually.

Rhaenyra was not allowed to ever forget it, that her firstborn child was no true Targaryen, and none other that came after was any different. As if she knew from when she was a babe the meaning behind hushed whispers hidden with jewelled fingers and curious looks with thinly veiled disdain, Aelenore grew into a difficult character, unfriendly to all save her siblings.

It was King Viserys’s suggestion that the girl might enjoy playtime with a boy senior to her only by a year, and a quiet girl that never cried unless pinched or spooked. It was one of the rare times Viserys remembered at all that he had other children beyond his beloved Rhaenyra. So, Aelenore was brought with her basket of carved and painted toys to the chamber where Aegon, Helaena and Aemond were tended to. She sulked the entire time, ignoring her much-loved toys to attempt to rip the carpet out with her fingernails whenever she wasn’t attempting to decapitate her uncles with her eyes. She resented them, she suffered terribly from green-eyed jealousy that she spent all the hours thinking of all the ways she could upset the boys. She wondered if their hair would stain if she boiled flowers torn from the gardens, and dropped the concoction over their heads. She wondered if she could sneak a pair of scissors the next time royal seamstresses came to measure her for a new dress. She could chop a braid right off, or cut through the tomes the boy closer to her in age seemed to be mesmerised with. But, she never had another hour with them after the first few disastrous ones, and so her plans never came to fruition.

Aelenore surprised not a soul when she grew into a brooding young princess; quiet yet unsettling with eyes severe and pale as the smoke dancing over the sea. She was old enough to understand what it meant that her eyes were grey as a rainy morrow, and her hair dark as earth after the heavy clouds passed. She was swiftly assigned a Maester to be tutored in the proud history of her blood. She found it a rather cheap charade, and her lips were often twisted into an irreverent, lopsided smirk as the Maester harped on.

“I know what I am,” she once told her mother over tea. “I do not wish to entertain trivial lies anymore.”

But Rhaenyra was patient with her, and each time Aelenore brought the subject up, she took her hand and asked her if a child without the blood of Valyria could ever ride a dragon. To that, Aelenore shook her head. The more she was posed with the impossibility of her inferior nature by virtue of the beautiful wyrm resting in the Pit, the more her self-disdain turned to vanity.

The court was reminded of the unruly princess in her youth when her daughter insisted that she would only ever wear her riding habits. Even to breakfasts and lessons, she would don coats and trousers with gloves always neatly tucked around a belt or hanging from a pocket, and always complete with a jewelled pin of dragons.

She was a curious young woman, raining questions down upon anyone nearby about Valyria and dragons. When she wasn’t interrogating the Maesters of the Red Keep or unsettling the courtiers with her unwavering gaze set upon anyone she suspected to have whispered about her, or eating, reading and writing near her beloved dragon, she fast became a second mother to Lucerys, demanding that she learned all she could about tending to a babe. To anyone except Rhaenyra, Ser Laenor and Ser Harwin, it was so unlike that a child as cold as her eyes would ever possess the capacity for affection. Even then, they watched her with well-concealed fright when she looked over the bassinet for the first few times. Lucerys must have immediately taken a liking to his sister as well; where Rhaenyra, Leanor Velaryon and Harwin Strong all failed to lull him to sleep, Aelenore managed to soothe the fussy babe into slumber with ease that surprised even the most weathered of wetnurses.

She was proud when Lucerys’s egg hatched, swelling her chest and proclaiming that it was her choice, that egg. Luke, Jace, and Nole, as she was so adoringly and adorably called by Luke from the moment he could speak, the three siblings became inseparable... and perhaps, rather insufferable to some. They loved mischief. From tying buckets of cold water over doors to soak Maesters at early morning lectures, spilling ink on the newly-washed garbs of Septas and Septons when they delivered the daily service of the Seven, taking their dragons out of the Pit to stomp around and frightening the poor smallfolk nearby, they have become a trio of terror. Aelenore was the mastermind, the one that came up with jokes and pranks bordered on cruelty while Lucerys and Jacaerys gladly played her henchmen. Aemond had his fair share when he found his neatly written summary of a manuscript on Valyrian traditions torn to pieces on his assigned desk and the siblings missing from the lecture altogether, or when his book was drenched in ink so badly he couldn’t read a word anymore while Aelenore and Jacaerys were markedly keeping their hands gloved and under a table or behind their backs the whole day.

“I wish they would go away,” Aemond once complained to his mother. He needn’t name them.

“I know,” was all the woman could offer, and a sweet kiss to the growing boy’s temple. She was helpless in the matter; Viserys loved Rhaenyra and his grandchildren more than he ever did Alicent or the babes she produced.

Aelenore still dreamed of staining and chopping silver hairs and upsetting her uncles, though less often with her mind always on her beloved pale and crimson, slender Naerax. On the opposite end of the wing, curled up on his bed, however, Aemond began to dream of upsetting his niece, as well. He couldn’t bring himself to be anywhere as cruel and calloused as she was, and whenever his fists were squeezed into balls and he attempted to strike back with a sharp word, Aelenore happened to rub her thumb over the silver three-headed dragon pinned to her collar, and the boy stepped back.

“He’s not a real Targaryen,” she began to say to her peers, pompously and with a grotesquely mature lilt to her tone. “I am. Hair makes a man not Targaryen, but the dragon that resides within the Pit.”

On the morrow when she greeted Aemond with a smile, he thought perhaps Aelenore could yet be a friend to him despite all the mockery and cruelty. She even abandoned her usual seat between her brute of brothers and instead sat next to Aemond. He suspected she needed his neatly drawn table of irregular verbs in High Valyrian for the lesson on the afternoon, but instead, she leaned over and promised him “a grand surprise” after lunch. She claimed it was an offer of friendship, to start anew.

“What is it?” He asked, cautious still but naively excited deep down.

“Would hardly be a surprise if I said, no?”

Just a few hours after, the blush was wiped from his cheeks. His face was dirt and tear-stained; he was in Alicent’s arms, bemoaning that the grand surprise was a pig with haphazardly attached wings and his own brother in on the terrible spectacle, laughing along with the rest of them.

When Helaena’s sight came true, Aemond didn’t only find trading an eye for a dragon—the biggest and the mightiest of the realm, that was— fair. He found it a payment, a rather steep but justified cost for his prayers that Rhaenyra and her children be removed. They were. As Aemond mounted Vhagar and followed the ship that carried his family back to King’s Landing, Rhaenyra and her kin made for Dragonstone.

He found the Red Keep opened up to him with the chambers of his tormentors vacant and halls safe to roam as he pleased. The library was all his, the tutoring chamber was freed of pranks and loud chatter when it should have always been a quiet, contemplative haven of studies. He came and went as he pleased without ever having to look over his shoulder. He had Ser Criston all to himself, as well, since Aegon delved too deep into his cups to participate in sword practice.

Years passed easier for Aemond, and faster, too. A punctual man down to the mere second, he awoke, followed his schedule and slumbered expeditiously, never a minute off. He was Alicent’s honour and pride, as well as her one true friend. Days never started or ended without a visit from her beloved son, even if all they did was sit in silence by the fireplace and sip tea or wine.

It was one such day, though Aemond would look back on it later and recognise the omens that had eluded him. He was up much earlier than he should’ve been. The hour was so early that the sky was still dark. He turned to the window, and then, frustratedly, gave his back to it. He pulled the covers over his naked shoulder, then, pushed them down to his waist. He hugged a pillow to his chest, then, pushed it away, too. Nothing helped, and he knew he would go through his day exhausted, with merely a few hours of sleep.

So, he bathed longer, dressed slower, and visited Queen Alicent before breakfast. She gave him a smile that would’ve seemed like all the other smiles to any other eyes. Aemond, however, saw distress from the way his mother’s lips pursed.

He wasn’t one for empty niceties or belabouring, so his hands shifted from Alicent’s elbows to her wrists, to the raw and picked cuticles.

“Tell me, mother.”

Alicent shook her head at first, and stared out of the stained-glass windows. She knew she would be delaying the inevitable, her discomfort hardly ever eluded Aemond. She knew he would abandon his entire day’s plans to sit here with her, caring and stubborn, until she told him.

“We shall have visitors soon,” she spoke through clenched teeth, her eyes shifting to the missive left on the table where Criston had delivered it.

The downturn of Alicent’s mouth was nearly enough, though Aemond still cocked his head in a quiet question. Who?

Alicent scoffed, looking down at her son’s pale, graceful hands.

“Princess Rhaenyra and her children. Prince Daemon along with them, of course.”

If Aemond had had !breakfast, it would have heaved in his stomach.

“Why?” He nearly lamented after a moment’s silence.

“Why?!” Aelenore echoed petulantly across the sea, on Dragonstone. “Why must we go? Can you not go alone?!”

Aelenore was happy on Dragonstone. The entire land from the shores to the peaks of volcanoes was her oyster. She woke up as she pleased, strolled and flew to her heart’s desire. No one was there to accuse her own acting untoward when she unlaced her boots, uncuffed her sleeves and chased Luke across the sandy beach and the waves carried their joyous screams while their dragons flew overhead.

King’s Landing was stifling. The Red Keep’s stones did make a prison and the stained windows a cage. Aelenore almost forgot she didn’t look the part of Princess Rhaenyra’s daughter on Dragonstone. Unless Prince Daemon’s cold gaze lingered, she hardly thought of how would it be to have silver hair and violet eyes, and if they would indeed escalate one above men all by themselves. She would be abandoning her home for a sea of pale hairs and hostile eyes.

“Because,” Rhaenyra sighed over the cup she nursed as men paced around the room hurriedly. “Your grandsire’s health is in fast decline.”

“That cannot be all. We are not Maesters. What good are we to his decay?”

“But we are bringing Maesters of our own… I do not quite like you when you are so… without compassion.”

So, Prince Daemon spoke, and her mother listened, then? The conviction wasn’t Rhaenyra’s, Aelenore knew. She remained quiet yet didn’t make a move to leave the hall.

“The matter of your brother’s inheritance must be resolved,” Rhaenyra spoke again after a surrendering sigh. She only understood how difficult she had once been when her own stubbornness stared back at her.

“I will not let them rob Luke of what is rightfully his. We cannot permit it.”

Aelenore nodded to it. That, she would help her maids pack up for. That she would tolerate King’s Landing for.

“Thieves,” Aelenore spat. “They shall steal all their covetous eyes may fall upon.”

Rhaenyra shifted in her seat. She thought that Aelenore sounded too much like Daemon at times. Perhaps that was why the two were like wildfire and a burning candle.

For the following days, Aemond felt the transitory nature of all things deeply within him. Sometimes, when the halls were empty, he ran his fingers over the stone walls. Even to them he felt as though he was giving his farewell. For an hour or a moon, he would be robbed of the freedom he perhaps came to take for granted. They would be anywhere at any time; she, the head of the poisonous serpent, would be, and the rest would follow slithering.

On the morrow the entire King’s Landing crowded the crooked streets to catch a glimpse of the horde of dragons, Aemond watched the sky with disdain, with his arms folded behind him and the skin of this thumb picked so tragically alike his mother’s. The cavalry was led by Caraxes and Syrax, the unmistakable red and yellow that flew side by side. Behind them were three others, one in the front and two in the back, like an arrowhead loosened to pierce Aemond’s serenity. His eye was glued to the last two, looping around each other. The pale one with crimson wings and waxen belly that resembled Aemond curdled milk dipped and rose while the smaller, pearlescent-and-yellow one tried to sink his teeth into the elongated neck of the other.

Aemond looked to the side. Helaena didn’t seem to bother that they were so brazenly being marched upon, Aegon was hungover from a long night’s tryst to care; it was only his mother and Ser Criston among the Kingsguard that seemed tense. He would not have don a thing beyond an undershirt for a company as undeserving had it not been for Queen Alicent visiting his chambers, begging so selflessly for him to behave, for her if for nobody else.

When the heavy gates were pulled open and the vapid bunch marched on, it was only Alicent and Rhaenyra that shared a smile in courtesy. Prince Daemon’s chin was high, his nose was scrunched up as if the mere sight of the Keep nauseated him. Behind him, Jacaerys was nudging his sister and his younger brother to cease the gossip. Aemond’s eye fell and remained on the girl, taller and more mature, though only in appearance, since he last saw her. Her hair was down, though the damage to the curls showed it wasn’t always so freely flowing.

While Helaena simply embraced a new friend she barely remembered and Aegon was delighted that a pert arse under heavy skirts, pronounced waist squeezed by corsets and exposed flesh were now present to ogle, Aemond simply scoffed.

When it came to acknowledge her at all, Aemond nodded sharply. His greeting was as cold as the pale icicles that stared at him. Unsettling, he thought, her irises almost bled into the whites of her eyes. She simply nodded, as one would dismissively to a servant. Aemond’s arms were still folded behind him. He made no move to touch her; not to take her hand and press a kiss, not to offer a half-hearted hug. Aelenore didn’t seem willing to offer an olive branch either, with her gloved fingers tightly intertwined in front of her with an arrogant smirk plastered on her face.

Oh, how Aemond desired violence.

“What a warm welcome, this is,” she muttered under her breath, loud enough for Aemond to hear and Lucerys to snicker.

Behind them, servants began to drag heavy packs to the Keep. Aemond hoped it was simply out of vanity that they each brought more changes of clothes than necessary. While their chambers were prepared, Rhaenyra insisted on a visit to the King. There, it was only willing ignorance that barely maintained Rhaenyra’s illusion of her daughter. The young princess barely approached the bed and pointedly kept a handkerchief to her nose. The King’s beloved first grandchild looked down upon him with disgust, sneering at the rotting body and the dying face as his hand was left untouched by her.

“Sweet girl…” Viserys strained to no avail.

“Grandsire,” Aelenore muttered coldly after Jacaerys nudged her once again. “Lovely to see you.”

Aelenore rolled her eyes after that, looking around the room and wondering what was for supper while his mother silently wept at the corner of her father’s bed.

If the exchange in the King’s chambers was cold, the supper was the never-melting ice of the North. Where Alicent was covered to her neck, Rhaenyra and her daughter wore dresses that left their shoulders bare, and as if that was not enough, the young princess’ sleeves were split from the highest seam to the cuffs, exposing the entirety of her arms each time she so much as breathed. Aemond shook his head again and again, stabbing the pie in his plate, his eye burning into the shameless woman sitting at his side. Aelenore barely wore headdresses, and barely pinned her hair all the way up. Queen Alicent shared her son’s mind, she was one busted seam away from a harlot of the Street of Silk.

Aelenore was all wrong, Aemond thought. Untoward, improper, exposed like a desperate wench of a cheap pillow house. She laughed loudly, she moved in a manner that was ill-fitting to a princess. Aemond looked to his side again, and his brother was already charmed. Aemond hummed. Of course he would be.

“Say, when has she… blossomed and—and, sprouted such teats, hm?” Aegon slurred behind his cup to Aemond.

“I would rather not think about her… flesh,” Aemond lowered his voice along with his head, “if it’s all the same to you, brother. You’d do well to remember your wife, as well.”

The banter was cut short by Rhaenyra’s dry cough. Onto the matters at hand. She shared a look with Daemon, and he nodded in support.

“For our Maesters to study and prepare cures of their own, we must needs give them sufficient time. A moon’s time,” Rhaenyra spoke.

“During that time, my children must not fall behind in their studies. Yet, to allow Maester Gerardys to work uninterrupted, the princess and the princes must share the library yet again.”

Aemond’s head shot up along with Aelenore’s. They wouldn’t look at each other, but they shared the same sentiment. No. Absolutely not.

“Oh? So, the princess will not trust our Maesters with the care of the King, but she will entrust her children to their lectures?” Alicent was bitter in response, her brows were knitted above the practised, tight smile of courtesy.

“I trust my children to know the truth from a lie.”

Come morrow, it was very little consolation to Aemond that Rhaenyra’s bastards might be feeling as discomfited about their forced reunion as he was. He paced his room and fiddled with the neat stacks of tomes and the line of inkwells. He was always early, three days early than a minute late, he often defended his being too early that the Maester soon began to feel guilty for his being on time and not as early as his pupil was. But that morning, he wouldn’t be.

“No,” Aemond murmured to himself. That might show a sense of eagerness, and present the three-headed serpent with an opportunity to bother him. Yet, how late he had thought he was, he wasn’t as late as his tutoring partners. It was only Maester when Aemond took his seat, and it remained so for one full turn of the hourglass before the door swung open.

Aelenore was the first to enter, snickering with a tome under her arm and in yet another dress that bared more than concealed for Aemond’s taste.

“Oh?” she stopped in her tracks as though she expected the chamber to be empty, and looked back at her brothers, who were just as vain and proud of the interruption.

Aemond squeezed his fist under the table, dug his nails into his palm and with a clenched jaw, stared ahead and away from the girl that stood between him and the Maester.

“I see you start terribly earlier than Maester Gerardys does on Dragonstone. My brothers and I are rather fond of late eves, might it be that—”

Unapologetic. Proud. Without shame or decorum, Aemond thought to himself, the true mark of a bastard. Rotten to the core, a scourge. The Gods are truly testing us this time.

“And I am fond of order and duty. We shall be at odds, it seems,” he spoke up with vitriol the likes he hadn’t allowed to bubble up to the surface in so long.

Aelenore turned to him with a raised brow and a bemused smirk. At least her words were not lies, her eyes were swollen from slumber with a faint touch of darkness around them, only exacerbated by how pale her irises were.

“So it seems, Prince Aemond.”

She took her seat right next to Aemond, then, with her brothers by her side. The entire session was marred by their obnoxious giggling and the passing of notes. Aemond wondered why they would even bother to show up, though he reminded himself to be easy on them. It wasn’t their blood nor their history that was taught. Very little must have concerned them beyond a mere mention of a Valyrian lord and his harem that made the boys snicker.

As soon as the morning’s tutoring was concluded, Aemond departed without so much as a nod to the Maester and with his belongings so uncharacteristically collected in haste. Large steps carried him to the comfort of the secluded corner of the Keep’s larger library, to the dim spot that became a second bedchamber to him. He went to scribbling angrily. He was distracted, his cursive was sloppy, his words out of order, his thoughts mismanaged. The treatise was all wrong, he knew, yet the more he crumpled up parchments and started anew, the worse it got.

He heard the clicking of heels on the stone floor, then. Curious, he thought, as Queen Alicent knew not to disturb Aemond unless an urgency demanded it. Yet, the heels that dragged without hurry didn’t denote any such urgency. For once, Aemond hoped to be wrong in his conjecture as he looked up from his work.

There she was, the bane of his peace, the curse of all the malicious spirits of Valyrian mythos. She had a thin stack of parchment in her hands, strolling as if she were in the gardens between aisles of tall bookshelves. Aemond watched her with the suspended fury of a dragon prepared to strike out of the dark. She stopped soon after, reached up for a book and only raised dust. She stepped back, looked around once again, and pulled a few heavier tomes without discrimination only to toss them to the floor and step on them. Aemond had half a mind to jump from his seat and strangle the girl. A barbarian would be more reverent than she was, he thought. Gods, the state of Dragonstone must make even an untaught common man weep. A wicked den of sin where the heraldry of the Seven must be mocked in orgies and the written word was torn from bindings to wipe the aftermath off.

“You again,” Aelenore’s contemptuous acknowledgement pulled Aemond out of his thoughts. “I was hoping to be alone.”

“You would be, if you remained in your chamber and spared us the displeasure of your company.”

How dare she? This very spot has been always his from the moment the pain in his eye subsided. Would she be so misled of the mind to think she could usurp his home?

Aelenore seemed unbothered by his retort. In fact, it was Aemond who was the more perplexed one. He expected all sorts of disgrace from her, yet such blatant disrespect from a prince would—should have sent any woman with a modicum of virtue fleeing from his presence in shame. He assumed even Aegon’s whores must be more dignified than Princess Eleanore. Some princess she made.

“Do you not have more… princely pastimes?” She retorted.

“Are scholarly endeavours not princely enough for you?”

“No. Scholarly work is a consolatory waste of time for those who are not befitting to don a sword or fly a dragon.”

Aelenore turned her back to Aemond without waiting for his response and tossed the book to a table nearby. She was used to having the final say so long as the addressee wasn’t Prince Daemon.

“Both I can do,” Aemond rose from his seat and followed her, aggravated and ready to prove his words should she question his proficiency with either.

“Hm. No doubt,” she snorted with her head buried in the old tome.

“Who are you to subject me to lowly mockery?!” Aemond thought to demand with his hands wrapped around her neck. It was slender enough that even a single hand would do, and her body was easy enough to fling out of the window. But instead, his hand moved to his eyepatch. A reminder, a reassurance, a prayer: It passed, this will, too. It passed, she will pass, too. Only a matter of time. All passes, the good and the bad.

“But how well is the question, is it not, Prince Aemond?” She spoke up again. It seemed it wasn’t only Aemond who wasn’t willing to conclude this exchange.

“You do have certain… odds against you, do you not?” She pulled back from the book with a menacing look and an ugly smirk that Aemond wanted nothing more than to cut from her face with a letter opener.

“You did start flying later than all of us, and the sword? With your… unfortunate circumstance… well.” Her cold gaze shifted so pointedly from his face to the sword leaning against his desk, then, back to him.

“If you wish to challenge me to a flight or a duel, say it so plainly, Princess,” he spat the title as if it were a curse.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Though I am surprised you wouldthink to take for an opponent a woman rather than your own sex.”

The Stranger’s mistress. A vermin. A freak of nature. Something to be eradicated, stomped out before it sprouts her branches further.

“Apologies. I mistook your brothers for proper princes, but they are not the kind to be your champions, are they?” The fire within him was stoked with each moment he spent standing near her. He knew it to be a mistake, a man in command of his emotions wouldn’t have entertained a bastard who clearly wished to drag him down to the depths of hell she swam in. Yet, Aemond remained as if stuck to the mast of a ship drifting towards tall rocks.

“They would much rather hide behind skirts than face me.”

“They would not face you, that much is true, though for entirely different reasons.” She didn’t give Aemond the chance to give in to his impulses entirely. In a matter that seemed radically different from the frivolous villain she has been so far, Aelenore discarded her quill and reasoned. Though she spoke too slowly for it not to be insulting at least in the slightest.

“Because I am no more pleased than you are that I am here and neither are my brothers. Yet, no blood shall be drawn as I would like to fancy us all, yes, even you, Aemond, above simple brutes or mindless animals. No iron shall be drawn, no duels shall be had. I assure you I count the days until I am gone more eagerly than you.”

Aemond remained quiet with his lips pursed and his eye slowly dragging across her face. Maybe she could be reasoned with, after all. But he reminded himself that a bastard’s oath was bound with a withering twig; an easy tug and it was undone.

Both Aelenore and Aemond stayed in their heads for a moment, staring at each other but entirely unseeing. Aemond thought of all the ways Aelenore had wronged him. He remembered how she had run to Jace and Luke, how she had kneeled by them, holding washcloths to their noses and lips while his eye was sewn shut by a needle about the size used to weave thick blankets. He remembered how she had encouraged the boys to speak up, how she was the one to give voice to them.

“Aemond” she had called him with disdain, “slandered the princes.” Princes. Bastards. Treacherous liars.

“He called my brothers bastards, mother,” she had spoken with false solemnity, her pale, lifeless eyes dragging from Rhaenyra to Viserys so deviously.

On the morrow, they had all laughed. They had broken fast, they had jested and chatted while Aemond’s life changed forever. That was her, that has always been her. An uncaring, dangerous creature in love with misery and misfortune so long as none befell her.

He realized she was indeed at his mercy then and there. He could claim an eye for his, perhaps do not stop there and cut an ear, too, for interest. Perhaps even half of her ugly, upturned nose that perpetually disdained everything it saw. Consequences be damned, he thought, yet his shoulders fell and he blinked out of trance all the same. He felt the familiar throbbing in the back of his head slowly creeping to surround the precious stone lodged in his eye.

“I do not want you here, in the library,” Aemond spoke sharply. He was threatening enough that Aelenore was no longer too eager to tease him. “Find yourself elsewhere to spread your rot.”

It was his turn to speak the final word, and Aemond spun on his heels to abandon his study and Aelenore both. For once, he would break his schedule to demand Ser Criston’s time without a prior appointment, and he would do unto a sturdy shield and a worthier opponent perhaps half of what he so passionately desired to do to the girl invading his sanctuary.

[comewithmeintothedeep]

yeah so i meant like actual LGBTQ spaces that don't 99% cater to cishet women but thanks for the holier-than-thou answer.

As a bisexual bigender woman who has one partner who's non-binary and ace and the other who's cis and demisexual, I do not appreciate this answer nor the snide dismissive tone in response to my attempt to simply kindly educate people about the reality that 'cishet' isn't something you can assume based on...anything, really.

Like, the fact of the matter is that you cannot assume that anyone is 'catering to the cishets' in any capacity. That kind of attitude is how we have situations like Becky Albertalli, the author of Love, Simon, who had been accused for a long time of being a 'cishet white woman writing gays for the straights' until she had to come out publicly about being bisexual - not because she wanted to or felt comfortable doing so, but because she specifically wanted to stop people throwing hate and vitriol at her because they just...assumed that she was a straight writing gays to pander to the straights, so she had to make this aspect of her that she didn't want to make public public to stem the flow of harassment she was getting because of this.

To this day, she STILL gets this treatment/false assumption thrown her way (albeit significantly less, though it still happens).

Bottom line, you cannot assume ANYONE is straight or queer if they have not specifically said so and you ESPECIALLY cannot assume anything of the sort based on their writing or what they produce. If you could, I would have some very interesting assumptions about the authors and artists behind the original Argentinian Cybersix comic because...well, the themes in it are very telling.

But both gentlemen are dead and have been for decades, and thus cannot confirm or deny the idea that they may have been entertaining and expressing a desire to be transgender by expressing it through their work. They cannot speak for themselves, so I cannot assume that they are or are not. The themes are present even if the gentlemen themselves are not and it's an important piece of art that yes, while DEEPLY flawed and sometimes extremely inappropriate and entirely fair to criticize, is an important window into post WWII Argentinian culture, including how they saw queerness and gender.

So no, I'm not gonna make my space 'not friendly' to 'cishet women.' It is not my place nor yours to assume anyone's gender or sexuality when they consume or produce art and writing and is it not reasonable to expect anyone to prove that they have 'queerness cred' to be accepted as 'valid.'

Every single reader here is entitled to their identity and is entitled to enjoy - or not enjoy, that's fine too - my content or anyone else's content in this space in peace and the reasonable expectation that they are welcome and that their identities are welcome and accepted, but ALLOWED to be private. No one should have to prove that they're 'queer' enough to belong.

And, quite frankly, if you're not willing to let cishets who AREN'T queer into your spaces if they do so with innocent/good intentions, you will alienate plenty of people who will be frightened away from accepting/learning about identities that might open their eyes to their own misconceptions about gender and sexuality and introduce them to different kinds of relationships outside of sexuality and their relationship with their own genders, even if they still don't turn out to be queer. We need to be open to allowing people who aren't queer into our spaces because that's how we get meaningful conversations that lead the way to progress.

Either we get more members of our minority, more genuinely meaningful and strong allies who will stand with us and support us, or our ideas won't be seen as so alien and strange and will be more widespread and accepted. If you ask me, these benefits are worth the risks, especially in low-risk and low-stakes spaces as literature and spaces devoted to smutty (and non-smutty) monster-themed fiction.

Everyone belongs here so long as you mean no harm, and NOBODY is required to 'prove their validity' to belong. You're entitled to your identity, you're entitled to keep it private if you're not comfortable being open about it or if you're still figuring it out, and you don't even have to be queer to belong here as long as you're here in good faith to share our space and learn more about us as a community, as people, and treat us with respect.

This is no space for exclusionists. End of story.