#Ardor's Castle

[lahilden]

Ardross Castle is located in Alness, Scotland. The 1st Duke of Sutherland purchased the 60,000-acre Ardross estate on the banks of the Alness River in the late 1700s. He built a hunting lodge on the site. In 1845, he sold the property to Sir Alexander Matheson, 1st Baronet, who improved the estate. In 1847, work began until the estate had acres of gardens, miles of roads, and wire fencing. The hunting lodge was transformed into a Scottish Baronial-style mansion seen today. In 1898, the estate was sold to C.W. Dyson Perrins, who added electricity, modernized the castle, and purchased more land. In 1983, the McTaggart family purchased the estate, restoring the gardens and opening the castle as an exclusive venue. The castle also serves as the filming sight for the series Traitors.

[riverswater]

I failed again (entered a bookstore and obviously exited with books in my arms)

[sukirichi]

[ DUSK ‘TILL DAWN : 012 ]

“we who bear the burden of the crown do not need to love. you only need to stay here, with me, in power, in greed, in lust – in victory.”

cw. 18+.modern royal au. infidelity. minimal angst. reader is confused with her feelings. toxic characters. toxic relationships. explicit smut. unedited. implied dub-con. smoking. physical violence. sex tapes. reader has a gun and almost uses it.

notes. i wanted the kiyoomi and suna girlies (/gn) to win so here it is! feedbacks / reblogs/ comments are appreciated <3

wc. 12.9k

series masterlist 

[ TWELVE ] for you, i would cross the line. i would waste my time, i would lose my mind. they say “she’s gone too far this time.”

You prided yourself in being logical.

There was little to no room for measly emotions when it came to royal affairs. Granted, you had no proper training, but you were raised as a noble, and the rules were clear. Set aside your emotions, always look towards the most plausible solution, and cry about it later – where no one could see. Those were your mother’s words. You held onto them for as long as you remembered, with the exception of making only one grand mistake: proceeding with the marriage after catching your fiancé cheating on you.

But now? Now, you were about to make your next worst decision – letting Kiyoomi walk away.

It wasn’t love, of course. It couldn’t be. The odds simply weren’t in your favor, but couldn’t a Princess hope? You met him first, had him as your last dance on your debut ball. He was the first Prince who ever held your hand, the first Prince to dance with you, and the first – possibly last – who reminded what love could feel like. What love should feel like. It was explosive and angry like fire licking up at your skin, begging, pleading at you to chase after him. Every nerve in your body protested as you watched him take one more step away from you. It’s a mistake, one I’ll regret – Don’t let him go. It screamed at you, its cries desperate to be heard. You didn’t want to be here in the Palace. You didn’t want to return to your shared quarters with Rintaro.

You wanted to go back to Itachiyama – his farmhouse, the castle ruins, riding aimlessly with Astra and Lucy, picking fruits from his garden, and spending hours in his library. You hadn’t even held your end of the promise yet to learn everything about him.

What did Kiyoomi love? What did he look like in his slumber? Does he talk in sleep? Does he steal the blankets? What about his favorite song?

You moved before you could think.

Closing the distance in hurried strides, you grasped the Prince’s elbow. He stiffened under your touch, his eyes unreadable through the dimly-lit hallways. “Your Highness. Wait,” you panted, “Listen… back at Itachiyama–”

“Do you want me?”

Your grip on him faltered. Briefly, you took a step back, but the Prince was having none of it. He easily closed whatever distance you attempted to put between you two, his face hard and eyes burning with passion. With yearning. You never thought a man could look so determined yet hopeless as he did, the picture-perfect image of ardor. His brows pinched together, his lower lip trembling as he sighed. “Do you want me?”

You shook your head.

If only it could be as simple as that.

“It’s wrong, my Prince. We couldn’t… We wouldn’t work out. I only meant to say that I do adore you, and I do not want whatever complicated feelings we have to ruin our friendship,” Lies. Every word uttered from your lips were nothing but measly lies. Kiyoomi could tell too – the hesitation written all over your face said otherwise. “I hope you understand. You and I – we’re impossible.”

You couldn’t tell which one you needed more: for him to deny your worries, or for him to agree that you were right. You figured both would be just as painful.

Kiyoomi’s nostrils flared as you looked away from him, feet shuffling in the other direction already. “Stop. Do not take another step. Don’t you dare,” with a low growl, you were suddenly pulled back against his warm chest. You gasped at the hardness of his body, the warmth of his skin, the tenderness of his touch. His lips were everywhere but the one place you needed it to be – lingering at the curve of your neck, his breaths fanning over your exposed collarbones. It was like he had set you on fire with one touch alone, his firm grip around your waist both eerily intimidating and lustrous. And he must’ve laughed – you weren’t sure anymore. All you knew was that you were completely under Kiyoomi’s mercy, and quite frankly, he could have his way with you as he pleased.

“If you do not choose me…” murmuring, your breath hitched as his lips briefly grazed your skin, making your pulse jump. “You will regret it. You will be unhappy with him.”

I’m already unhappy with him, you wanted to say, but the words died in your mouth.

You’d lost all forms of coherence under Kiyoomi’s spell. Especially in this compromising position, this scandalous way his hand now slowly trailed its way from your abdomen and up to the swells on your chest – Gods, what would any witnesses say? This wasn’t how a Prince held a woman that wasn’t his.

“Your Highness,” you tried to fighting from his grasp, only to fall momentarily back against him when finally, finally, his lips were now leaving marks on your neck. It took all of your willpower to not give in right there, to not sink your fingers in his delicious curls. You had to say no. “I-I think we’ve both had a long night. We should retire to our quarters.”

“I will allow it if it’s my quarters you’ll be sharing.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck – your gaze darted around the empty hallway, paranoid.

The lights had been dimmed hours ago, the staff retiring to their rooms, but it was so quiet your breathy moans could echo. Anyone could walk in and see you like this, pleading but not quite begging for the Prince to not stop holding you.

And it was wrong, so deliciously wrong.

“Please,” you closed your eyes, unable to stop yourself from craning your neck to give him access. Above you, Kiyoomi chuckled, the rumbling of his chest deliciously low.

“You should stop lying to yourself, Princess. You do not want him. Whatever attachment you still have for my brother, it is nothing but a pitiful excuse of familiarity. You keep him around because there is no other choice, but you cannot keep lying to yourself. You cannot keep lying to me that you do not feel as I do when I see the way you look at me,” grasping your chin with his much larger hand, Kiyoomi forced you to look into his eyes. Pools of inky depths stared back at you with part frustration, part lust – his skin already flushed with sweat. You couldn’t look away even if the world ended. There was only you and Kiyoomi, with his hand resting on top of your breasts and gently caressing, so light you might’ve thought he wasn’t there.

And you, breathless and reckless, clung to him like he was your last lifeline.

Kiyoomi dipped down. His nose brushed against yours, your breaths mingled before he breathed you in greedily. “I was never a man who had many desires, but you are the greatest of them all. You run through my mind even in my sleep, and you are the first thing I search for when I wake. So do not tell me you do not want me when I know it’s my name you cry out in your sleep.”

Your knees felt impossibly weak.

“What do you want me to do? I’m married. You’re married. Are you forgetting divorce is impossible?” you snapped back, shoving him until his back hit the wall. The painting above him clattered, yet the Prince seemed uncaring, his arms crossed against his chest as you breathed hard. This was preposterous – this could not go any longer. “This would never work. The people would never understand.”

“I do not care what they think.”

“I care what they think! My husband is already cheating on me, and his own people detest him for it. What more if they find out I have taken you as my lover?”

“Then tell me to go,” he whispered, tilting his head back as he stared at you almost defiantly, mockingly. Like he knew you wouldn’t have the courage to actually say it. “Tell me, and I will walk away.”

When Kiyoomi is met with silence, he scoffed. A smirk graced his handsome face before he’s grabbing you by the arm and twisting you, the positions reversed until your back hit the wall. There’s a slight ache pounding at the back of your head, but nothing – absolutely nothing – could tear your attention away from his lips crashing into yours. The kiss is nothing short of avidity. Kiyoomi devoured you like a man starved, molding the shape of his lips into yours while his large hand encompassed the entirety of your face. Thumbs running over your cheek, his imposing frame completely dominated you. Your bodies were now pressed into each other that it became difficult to tell where you began and the Prince ended.

All you knew was Kiyoomi kissed you like he spent most of his nights dreaming about it, sighing and groaning all at once before his tongue fought for dominance.

Pushing his tongue inside your willing lips, he tasted all of you. He spoke the words he struggled to say, the firm grasp on your hip keeping you in place beneath him a clear sign he didn’t want you anywhere but here. But you weren’t leaving. You’d be a fool to walk away now that you finally had a taste of him, and it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

You wanted more, needed more.

Kissing him back harder, your palms flattened on his chest before you balled his shirt into your fists, uncaring if he’d walk back home flustered and wild. You simply needed him there; you wanted to breathe him in, to have nothing but him as your entire world.

“Stay,” you pleaded in between kisses, letting the Prince maneuver you until your bum landed flat on a table. Uncaring, the Prince swept aside all knick-knacks placed above it when his lips found yours again. And oh, a greedy man he was. Even after kissing you until you were breathless, he still hadn’t had his fill. His tongue danced with yours in this gentle melody only you two could sing, your bodies moving in sync like a choreographed dance. Your hand would wound up to tangle itself in his dark locks, his hands would scramble to undo his breeches, and willingly – wantonly – you would welcome him with all your being. It’s a dance between lovers, a forbidden tune you sang wholeheartedly, accompanied by your high-pitched moans once the Prince had himself buried in you – “Oh. Oh.”

“Who makes you feel good?”

“You, my Prince, it’s you,”

Biting down on your lip to muffle the noises you made, you heard the crescendo of the music. Rising and rising with overwhelming intensity at each note hit, each perfect thrust and drive into you. He hadn’t felt like anyone else. He was thicker and spread you open, impaled on his stiffness while you sat there helplessly to take it all. You felt empowered and weak at the same time, with your legs locking behind his chest as tears rolled down your face from the pleasure of it all, but Kiyoomi showed no signs of stopping.

Heavens, he might not even stop tonight, not when you sucked him in tight and made his breath stutter, his thrusts staggered.

“Kiyoomi,” you cried out, unable to keep quiet any longer. He simply held you carefully, a great contrast to his hips pistoning in and out of you – no, he held you like you were a porcelain doll he feared would break, someone he had to protect and cherish. And his eyes – droopy yet adoring – gazed upon you like you were worth more than any crown. “Oh, you are so…”

His forehead landed on top of yours, his lips minutely brushing against yours for a quick kiss. It’s rushed, frantic, yet intimate in ways you’d never experienced before. For once, sharing bodies with someone didn’t feel like just like sex.

For once, you finally made love with someone.

“Choose me, Princess,” he gritted his teeth, “It was always meant to be me.”

You awoke with a gasp.

Sitting up, your heart pounded in your chest, your skin clammy and drenched with sweat. A scan of your surroundings told you that you were in your room, the empty side of your bed a sign Rintaro kept to his word and left you alone. Closing your eyes, your head dropped down to your palms.

So it had been a dream, after all.

You really allowed Kiyoomi to walk away from you. And one mistake leading into another, you let Rintaro do the same.

Regret churned at your stomach. You could see it perfectly now – the drooping of the Prince’s shoulders, his gaze cast downwards when you bid him farewell. There were still traces of the happiness you felt in Itachiyama lingering on him just as he finally left, ones you were compelled to reach out to before it was too late. But it couldn’t be – you refused to give into your desires when it meant committing a sin. Rintaro didn’t deserve your loyalty, but he was still your husband, and you wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing you’d been exactly like him.

In fact, you might be becoming like him with each passing day, and although you would never say it out loud, you understood him better now.

To find someone who could’ve been yours, someone who would’ve made you so happy against all odds, and to not have them at all – it felt like a cruel joke was being played by the Universe.

Is this what Rintaro felt like? Did he feel as if the world was being unusually cruel to him? Did he wonder what he could’ve done to deserve all this? Because those thoughts ran into your head long enough that you gave up on sleep, and rolled out of bed with a heavy heart and – shamefully – aching with need. Snatching your robe from the closet, you tiptoed out of the room. Rintaro was fast asleep in the sofa, his arm shielding his eyes from the lit candles. When he didn’t budge from his spot at you poking around him, you let out a sigh of relief and left the room. Clicking the door shut, you spun around, coming face to face with a wide eyed maid.

“Heavens!” you placed a hand on your chest, and then chuckled as the maid stepped back and bowed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone would still be around.”

The maid frantically shook her head. She scratched the back of her head as her gaze darted around, seemingly determined to not look you in the eye. “No, Your Highness, it was my fault for startling you. I was reassigned to you just now, you see, and… Uhm, I’m Airi. Prince Shinsuke sent me here.”

Airi… You’d heard that name before.

“Oh! Airi. Yes, of course, I remember you,” you nodded, tying the robe around your waist tighter. “Why are you up this late?” At your question, Airi’s cheeks flushed a deep red before turning away.  You smiled to yourself, chuckling under your breath as you gently squeezed her arm. “I understand. You needn’t say anymore.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

“Would you like to accompany me for a walk?” you gestured to the empty hall. Airi nodded, a little too enthusiastic in picking up her skirts. You figured neither of you wanted to stay here any longer where anyone could easily see you.

Turning to the other direction, you headed for the gardens at the outer wing. It was the closest to your shared room with Rintaro, and coincidentally, an infamous shortcut to Belleview’s surrounding gardens. There had been rumors that Belleview was added in the palace grounds as an afterthought years ago – how a sudden need arose to have a separate place for a married couple. It was bizarre, in your opinion, how this long, seemingly endless path would certainly end up right at Kiyoomi’s doorstep if you were patient enough to brave the half hour walk.

Could you?

Would you?

Absentmindedly, you gnawed at your nails. Your Mother would chastise you for the unladylike gesture if she were here, but it was only you and Airi. She wasn’t going to judge, although you didn’t miss the way she glanced at you so often. Curiosity, maybe, but a question imposed her eyes. Deciding to break the silence, you smiled at the dark-haired maid.

“You’re very pretty. I can see why the Prince fell for you.”

Airi stuttered in her steps. “Oh! Thank you, you’re too kind for that, but I doubt it’s because of the way I look. The Prince and I have known each other since we were kids, that’s all. My mother was a maid too before she died. She was the one who helped raise His Highness,” she babbled, grimacing when she realized your patient smile held little to conceal your amusement. “Uhm… If I may be so bold, my Princess, I think you look rather great for someone who has been cheated on.”

Your brows rose. That you hadn’t expected.

“I do?”

“Yes. You look unbothered by it, or at least, you seem to be doing a great job at it,” she offered a polite smile, “Being a royal must come naturally to you as a noblewoman.”

Unable to help it, you chuckled. Oh, how wrong she was.

“Not at all. I haven’t always been this way,” you told her, watching as your surroundings changed from the marble pillars and into the night sky, where the fresh, cold breeze bit at your skin. You were thankful for it – the cold atmosphere was a great contrast to the blooming, colorful flowers.

It somehow reminded you of Kiyoomi’s gardens, and how you probably wouldn’t see it anymore.

The smile on your face disappeared. The ring on your finger grew heavier, and unbeknownst to you, you started spinning it with your thumb. It was curious, truly, how a week was all it took before you completely lost yourself. You couldn’t remember who you were even like before Itachiyama, before Kiyoomi. Or could it be that the past you had never been fulfilled to begin with? What if you were merely a work in progress, and the you in this moment was the real one?

If that was true, then that could only mean two things you would never want to admit out loud.

One: that you weren’t as in love with your husband as you thought if you couldn’t get Kiyoomi out of your mind, or Two: that the traditional saying and belief was right – your last dance would be your fated lover.

And it would make sense, too. Of course, you were happy with Rintaro. Were. You fell in love with him simply because there was no other appropriate reaction. He was the Crown Prince, a man who called on you every single day and learned about your passions until night came. He charmed your parents, loved them as his own, and proudly presented you to his regal family. It was the kind of love little girls were taught to dream about. The kind of love everyone wanted. You couldn’t blame yourself for craving the Prince’s touch, for giving him all your firsts. It seemed only the right thing to do. He courted you, committed to you, loved you as much as he could – it was logical and methodical.

It was one plus one equals two.

But Kiyoomi? It didn’t feel natural, or a step by step process.

It felt all kinds of wrong because you shouldn’t, and all kinds of right because it’s him. It’s the way he smiles at you when he thinks you’re not looking, or how his head is always turned in the other direction to act like he isn’t listening. He isn’t like Rintaro who never takes his gaze off of you – not because he can’t get enough of your beauty, but because he was watching. Rintaro was always watching, analyzing everything you did, crafting his actions and words perfectly to elicit the response he wanted from you.

His brother was the exact opposite.

Kiyoomi always stayed at the walls and blended in with the background. He never attracted any attention to himself, but would devote his entire focus on you simply because he’s entranced. Or you hoped he might. Surely it couldn’t be one-sided.

You felt it too – the frustration ebbing off of him each time you slipped away. You saw with your own eyes the way his face fell when news of your husband’s affair spread.

He didn’t hate his brother for sleeping with his mistress behind your back. He hated Rintaro for ruining a night that should’ve been yours. A night where his touch could linger on yours for a moment longer as you smiled for the cameras. A night where it’d be appropriate for him to look at you like you’re the star of the show – it’s camaraderie, you’d play off – and a night where he might’ve drove you back at the farmhouse and slowly, tenderly, begin with tugging your gloves off before he moved on to your dress.

Gods. You exhaled. You shouldn’t be doing this.

You shouldn’t be thinking about Kiyoomi, his plump lips that looked inviting, his dark eyes hungrily roaming over you and hoping, praying, that it’d been him instead. These were all wrong – so why were you walking towards Belleview?

“Your Highness?”

Airi’s voice snapped you out of your trance. Blinking, you smiled back at her in apology and continued. “Sorry, I must have been lost in my thoughts. As I was saying, though, I spent most of my life hiding behind my parents’ shadows because I struggled talking to people. And then the Crown Prince came and swept me off my feet, which changed everything. When he came into my life, I figured I had to become someone worthy enough to stay by his side, someone he could be proud to be with. It took a lot of years and effort before I could be confident enough to say I was good enough for him,” you mumbled, stopping in your tracks to look up into the dark horizon before you.

Huh. Why hadn’t you realized that before?

You’d been trying so hard to impress Rintaro all along. Isn’t that why you were so frustrated? You’d spent years molding yourself to become who he wanted, only to be slapped in the face that it was impossible because you could never be her.

You let out a dry laugh. “But apparently not. He already had someone else.”

“I’m really sorry you were dragged into this. From the stories Prince Shinsuke tells me, you’re a kind woman who deserved better.”

“I don’t know about that,” you said, “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t mad upon reading the tabloids about his affair? If anything, I was just furious he couldn’t stay out of trouble and ruined my trip to Itachiyama.”

“Did you like it there?”

“I loved it. I wanted to stay.”

Admitting it out loud felt… liberating. You were beginning to feel more like yourself, even if it meant being less of a Princess and more of this unorthodox woman who simply wanted to be. It must be the side effect of spending time with Kiyoomi. You would soon care less about the rules imposed on you, and unapologetically be yourself.

“But the world sure has a cruel way of bringing you back to reality.”

“Your Highness?”

Both yours and Airi’s head snapped at the sound. Amongst the rustling of the bushes, a tall figure suddenly appeared – all mighty and regal even in his creased blouse and loosely tied breeches. His hair, dark and tousled like he’d run his fingers through it, did little to hide the surprise on his face.

“My Prince,” you breathed out, “What are you doing out here so late?”

“I couldn’t sleep. And you?”

You fought back a smile at his raspy voice. You could almost picture it – Kiyoomi tossing and turning all night in a bed separate from Iris. The sanguine voice in your head fibbed, too, wondering if the Prince thought about you as well. “It’s a restless night,” was all you let on, and gestured to the shock-still maid beside you. “Airi, do you mind giving us some privacy?”

Vehemently, she shook her head. “Not at all, Princess. Please, call for me if you need anything. I won’t be far.”

You waited as Airi disappeared from sight before you stepped closer to the Prince, compelled by an invisible force to be closer to him. “Kiyoomi–”

“Are you well?”

“Me? Why do you ask?”

He tipped his head to the side, causing a lone curl to fall in front of his eye. You fought back the urge to brush it away, beguiled by his long fingers sweeping it away “You’re in a very difficult position right now, whatnot with the article spreading,” he gestured back to the castle, “Has he spoken to you?”

You shook your head. “He’s kept to himself the past few days. I think this is a lot harder on him than it looks. As for me, well… I’ve had better days.”

True to your word, Rintaro almost secluded himself from the world. He shut off his phone, chucked it at another corner of the room, and never touched it again. It was painful seeing your husband that way when you know of his hobby of endless scrolling. But now, he couldn’t stomach the social media wishing him ill, seeing so blatantly with his own eyes his people’s deference to him. It hurt – more so for him than you – but still, a small part of you wished he’d say something. You were there, were you not?

You cut off your trip short because your husband needed you, and he barely uttered a word since you arrived. It got at your nerves. Nevertheless, you’d give him the time he needed. You planned to keep to your word that you would fix this all for him, regardless of what that might take.

You weren’t so cruel to let your husband be dragged into the pits of hell. Because quite frankly, that wasn’t the media’s right to begin with. If anyone would unleash hell upon Rintaro and Iris, it had to be you.

Kiyoomi scanned your face. “You don’t seem upset about all of this.”

You shrugged. “Their secret would’ve gone out one way or another. It was only a matter of time. Besides, I have far, bigger things to worry about, like you,” you leveled your gaze with his, watching as the Prince sucked in a breath.

Your last conversation with him the past night still played in your mind. It ate away at you to have to say goodbye when you didn’t want to, but he was here now. You woldn’t waste the opportunity to make things right.

Steeling yourself, you shut your eyes tight to gather courage. “Kiyoomi… Your Highness. I… I do not wish to stop talking to you. I know I sound absurd because I haven’t known you that long, but everything we shared in Itachiyama, I cherish it. I won’t forget a single memory I shared with you. So please allow me to take back what I said. I didn’t mean it when I said I would stop talking to you.”

“You should, though.” Opening your eyes, your heart dropped into your stomach when the Prince took a step back. “I don’t think we can be friends, Princess.”

Your hands grew cold and clammy.

“W-Why not? Have I done something to offend you? Tell me, and I will correct it–”

“We cannot be friends because I do not wish to be just your friend.”

Whatever distance he created between you disappeared. In the blink of an eye, Kiyoomi had closed the gap in one smooth stride, leaning down close enough his nose nearly brushed yours.

You inhaled sharply at the proximity. Kiyoomi’s heat blanketed you, making you realize you’d been shivering from the cold prior to his arrival. Now, he was here, and your senses were filled to the brim with him – his scent, his warmth, his frame looming over yours making you feel protected instead of small. You couldn’t help it; your fingers twitched to pull him by his collar and finally have his lips pressed to yours. It’d been eating away at you for several nights.

A peck couldn’t hurt.

But you made no move, greedily sharing in the same breaths instead. Because if it was all you could have, then it was all you could get.

“You’re right. It does sound absurd. We have barely spoken to one another, yet I’m already tired  of this stupid game my brother is playing – his foolish plans to become King, make my wife his concubine, all with the intention of keeping you around like a pet. It makes my blood boil,” Kiyoomi grinned, though it was more sinister than genuine. “He cannot have everything for himself. I will not let him.”

“My Prince. I–”

“–Don’t get me wrong. I’m not in love with you, nor do I have any intentions of stooping down to Rintaro’s level and stealing what isn’t mine,” cruel, you think, as the Prince effectively cut you off with a brush of his thumb to your lips. You were now putty at his hands; melting and knees weakened with nothing but his touch holding you up. “But I am tired of seeing you this distraught over a man who cannot see your worth. I have had enough. So whatever plans you may have to retaliate, tell me, and I will gladly be a pawn in your game. Make your move. You may command me as you please.”

It took a moment before his words dawned on you. When it did, your palms flattened on his chest, absorbing its warmth and feeling the flutter of his heart underneath your fingertips. He felt so alive, whole, and well – you couldn’t possibly drag him into your mess.

“I could never use you like that. You know this.”

“So you do have a plan in mind,” he noted with a smirk, fingers crawling up to circle your wrist. “My brother really underestimated you, hasn’t he? You’re already proving to be far more dangerous than any sword.”

You flushed warm at his compliment. Pretty, yes, Rintaro has called you that multiple times. Beautiful, gorgeous, even, but dangerous? It made you feel powerful, like the crown was already on your head, and the kingdom was all yours for the taking. But greed often started out as a small flicker of fire, and you stomped on it as quickly as it breathed into life. You were no thrill seeker – you would not dabble or tread in dangerous, unknown, forbidden paths. Such paths like Kiyoomi, but it was there. The temptation. The calling to just reach out to the hand he’s offered.

Its voice beckoned you. Come, it whispered oh-so-sweetly at your ear, he is your puppet.

You bit the inside of your cheek in contemplation. “It isn’t a good plan at all, and the Queen has summoned us – all of us – to inform us of her decisions on how we will proceed with this scandal. There’s a good chance Her Majesty might get in the way, but I’m determined. I need this plan to work.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“I plan on turning the tables around and pinning it on Iris. I know it’s dangerous – she’s your wife, and you might get caught in the crossfire–”

“Do as you please.”

“Are you serious?”

Kiyoomi nodded with resolve. “When I said I do not wish to be just your friend, I meant it. I want you to use me. I want to be your weapon,” nudging his nose with yours, he brought up your hand to his lips, kissing the glimmering diamond on your ring. A kiss of rebellion, a war cry, or a silent plea to be dominated – it said everything and too little all at once. “If there is anything I can do to help you escape this royal hell, I will do it.”

You closed your fist around his lips, and basked in the ghostly flutters it will leave upon your skin hours after he has gone. Then, you questioned it all: how could something so poignant evoke a raging will within you?

“It will be hard for you, Your Highness,” you warned him, “My plan is not a kind one.”

“I do not have very kind thoughts myself,” he chuckled, the sound dark and ominous. “But you should be careful, Princess. Iris is not who you think she is. If you are to proceed with your plan, you need to watch out for yourself, and Maiko especially.”

Maiko? What could Maiko’s involvement with Iris be?

“She won’t hurt Maiko, will she?”

“She wouldn’t dare, but I can’t guarantee she won’t try doing something to you,” with a wary gaze, Kiyoomi immediately masked it with that of indifference. Scanning the surroundings, and hearing nothing but the crickets of insects and the rustling of bushes from the wind, Kiyoomi wrapped a protective arm around your waist. “It’s getting late. Let me walk you back. Iris is probably somewhere close.”

You were never one to feel much fear, but in that moment, a sense of numbing chill settled in your bones. Goosebumps arose on your skin. It was almost like you could feel it – her sharp gaze, her wicked and deceivingly innocent smile. You shivered despite yourself and huddled closer to the Prince, letting him guide you through the garden’s maze when his lips brushed the shell of your ear.

“Do you wish to know what would make Iris tick?”

“What?”

“It may be Rintaro who she wants,” his breathy voice caressed you, sending a different set of shivers down your spine. “But it is I whom she would kill to keep. Present yourself as a threat, make her believe you can steal me from her, and you will find her willingly offering Rintaro to you.”

You scoffed. “And if I don’t want him?”

“Then you shall always have me.”

Kiyoomi, Kiyoomi, Kiyoomi…

The Prince’s last words haunted you. Moreover, the way he looked with the moonlight illuminated upon him… he felt surreal. He came to you in your dreams more than once, caressing you in places he shouldn’t be touching, filling you in ways you never thought possible. A part of you wondered if it was merely your brain coping with the fact you’d mistakenly lain in bed with Rintaro. How you’ve felt disgusted with yourself ever since, and found it hard to look in the mirror. Perhaps it was simply a trick of the brain – replacing the man who left marks on you with the man that could’ve made you feel better. And you knew Prince Kiyoomi would – with those large, calloused hands, and luscious lips you spent countless hours gazing upon… would it be such a sin to wish they hadn’t been dreams only?

Picking up the nearby body wash, you scrubbed yourself clean of Rintaro. Your body still ached from last night’s events, but your heart clenched for an entirely different reason. Seriously. You couldn’t believe it. First, he’d let himself get caught in the action, and you let him sleep with you? You could’ve pushed him away. You could’ve said no.

It didn’t have to lead to whatever happened last night.

But then again, laughing to yourself, why did you chastise yourself so much? He was your husband. You were both married – sleeping with him wasn’t a mistake. Yet why did it feel like it? It felt as if… you kept on letting him take and take from you. How long until you’ve had enough? How much more could you give before there was nothing left of you?

You sighed, sinking deeper under the water. It’d been hours since your previous encounter with the older prince, and he hadn’t left your mind since. His offer for you to make use of him like he was a weapon, or worse, a tool, wasn’t an opportunity you could let pass by.

You could make use of him. He had more access to Iris than you ever could, and planting spies in Belleview Manor sounded terrible. She’d probably won over their loyalty judging by the way they kept their mouths shut that first night you arrived there to give her tea for her ‘headache.’ She had secrets, that you were sure of, but did Kiyoomi know them too? What was her connection with Maiko? Surely… Maiko wasn’t involved in whatever schemes they had in mind. The Princess was too sweet and innocent for that, but then again, so was Iris. The so called ‘dear friend’ of your boyfriend before he’d asked for your hand in marriage.

This was proving to be nearly impossible.

It was hard to tell who to trust within the Palace. Kita would be at your side, but you couldn’t possibly involve him in your plan. He might not even approve of it. It would be against the law, and it wasn’t the kindest thing one could think of. Kita would call it ‘the opposite of justice.’

“I hope the meeting went well, Princess?”

Popping your head from the water, you watched as Airi entered the room, folded towels in her arms. She’d prepared a bath for you long before you arrived, the water warm and filled with bubbles – just how you liked it. The room smelled faintly of roses, too, and you made a mental note to thank Airi for her efforts.

“It was great. His Highness and I discussed a lot,” he almost kissed me, too, but she didn’t need to know that, or the fact you wished he did. “Oh, and Airi.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

You pondered over it, you really did it. It was out of your character to abuse the power you had, yet you couldn’t stop the heat flaring in your veins. The pettiness that begged to be revealed. “Could you have someone call L’Essenxe Royale? Tell them I want them to discontinue their Vanilla Candy line because I’m allergic to it, and it would be a shame if I had to stop purchasing their perfumes.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Airi nodded, stopping in her tracks after a beat. “I wasn’t informed you were allergic to vanilla. I’m sorry, I’ll do better in catering to your needs more.”

“I’m not allergic. I just don’t want to smell Iris ever again.”

Just before Airi could respond, the doors swung open. Suna sauntered in like he owned the place, the top three buttons of his white shirt undone and loose. His collarbones and the top of his chest shone with sweat, his skin flushed and his dark hair messily swept to the sides. He must’ve gone for his early training – and damned him for looking good.

You snorted inwardly. But Prince Kiyoomi probably looked better.

“There you are. I didn’t get to see you before I left.”

“Airi, please give us a moment,” you requested from where you sat, arms lazily resting on the sides of the tub. Airi scurried out of the room with reddened cheeks – no doubt picturing what events could transpire between a naked wife and her insatiable husband. And speaking of said husband, he’d leant against the pristine white walls, arms crossed against his chest as he let those dark, hooded eyes roam over your exposed skin.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I think the real pleasure here is this view.”

You rolled your eyes. “Is that what you told your mistress too when you fucked her in my bed?”

Suna paused. It was a bait; he was sure of it. Choosing not to bite at your provocation, he pushed his weight off the wall and gestured to the doors. “You redecorated the room,” he announced, “Without my permission.”

“I wasn’t aware I needed your permission. I thought we made it clear – under your suggestion – that I was to sleep in that bed, and you take the couch outside. Technically, that would make it my room, no?”

“You made Airi burn the sheets.”

“Sue me.”

“You threw away Iris’ clothes.”

“They barely counted as clothes, Your Highness. They were just thongs.”

“If this is about last night–”

“Last night was a mistake. Never speak of it again,” you warned, and just the mere reminder that you’d let him have his way with you, and you were too weak to refuse, again, no longer made the relaxing bath enjoyable. All of Airi’s efforts poured down the drain because having Suna around had your muscles stiffening with tension again. Rising from the bath, you wiped off the bubbles and suds off your body before stepping out. “What did you truly come here for? You never bother me when I’m bathing.”

Suna’s hungry gaze followed your every movement. The perverted bastard wasn’t even trying to hide it – his poor attempts of adjusting his breeches a failure once you’d put on your robe. “Her Majesty has summoned us for breakfast. She has an important announcement to make. I suggest you make haste so she won’t be anymore upset with us.”

“With you, you mean,” you waved around your lip balm, “What? Don’t look so offended. I am not the one who caused a scandal here.”

“I’m tired of arguing with you.”

You couldn’t agree more. Smacking your lips together, you walked past him, making sure to sashay your hips as you did. But before you could leave the room, Suna’s hand shot out to wrap it around your wrist. Gently, he pulled you back into him until your breasts brushed with his chest, the dampness of your robe making his shirt stick even harder on his skin.

 “Wait,” he breathed out, not once taking his eyes off you as he blindly swiped for a towel. “Let me dry you off properly. It would be a shame if you made a mess on your newly decorated room.”

Your husband fell down on his knees before you could say a word.

You almost asked him what he was doing when his hands tugged at the ties of your robes, his tender touch pushing them past your shoulders until the robe pooled at your feet. You inhaled sharply. Suna was kneeling before you, caressing your leg and urging you to place at his thigh. You don’t know what compelled you to obey, but you did. Resting it on his leg, you felt too exposed – his nose was right at your stomach, his hands touching everywhere but that one place near your heat.

It was torture.

The entire act was done with slow, purposeful motions. Like an artist taking great care with his sculptures, he pressed hard on your hips to keep you in place when you shivered. His strength, his silent gestures that he wouldn’t let you slip and fall – it broke your heart.

Why couldn’t he love you?

Why couldn’t he touch you this way and mean it?

Why did he have to remove his ring?

The glint of the golden material caught your attention from the vanity. You picked it up where he left it last night, unconsciously hugging it to your chest until you fell asleep. Until now, you’d brought it with you, and stared at it hard enough it might’ve melted. It never did, just as he would never belong to you. And then – his finger swiped over your nipple, the cloth on his hands now damp and his breath staggering as he moved to kiss your bare stomach.

You pushed his head away.

Suna stumbled back, barely. He sat there with a dazed expression, the towel he used to dry you with now forgotten. His hands shook in his lap, his eyes blown wide with something you couldn’t quite name – longing, regret, frustration. Whatever it was, it matched yours.

“I’m dry enough,” you told him, snatching off his ring from the counter and flicking it his way. The two of you watched as it stumbled along the ground with a loud clink, clink, clink, before it rolled right at his feet. When you finally found the courage to speak, your voice was so quiet – you couldn’t hear yourself at all. “Wear it. I don’t care that it no longer means anything to you. I won’t have you causing anymore problems for me when your mother asks about it.”

When you and Suna sat next to each other at the dining hall, neither of you spoke a word.

In fact, not a single person present dared to. Her Majesty sat at the head of the table, the clink of her utensil the only thing audible as she furiously cut into her steak. She was furious, that much was obvious. Even Crown Prince Ushijima hadn’t touched his meal, and his young son, barely a boy of eight, had his lips shut the entire time.

Finally, she takes a bite, takes a huge drink of her wine, and slams the glass down. All of you jump at the sound.

“It is not every day we can all be gathered here, but as you are all aware, it is a trifling time for the Crown. We as the royal family need to be united now more than ever,” she announced, her back straight as she looked everyone in the eye. “Which is why I am here to inform everyone of some minor changes we will implement from now on, and some events we have planned for the next season. First of all, Princess–” she pointed her knife your way, “-I need you to hold your mother back. She’s getting on my nerves with all her incessant calling.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” she lifted her chin, “Your Mother hasn’t stopped bugging me ever since that article was released. She demands I return her to you, but I think she forgets her place and yours. You are a Princess now; you are the Crown’s property. You are to stay here and see to your duties until you take your last breath.”

Forcing a smile, you willed yourself to calm down. “My mother was merely concerned, Your Majesty. I’m sure she doesn’t mean any harm.”

“Which is exactly why I’m telling you to tell her to stand down. I have already spoken with my advisors our next course of action and have all decided that we will deny Rintaro and Iris’ affair by all means. We are to pretend as if the article never existed. We need to show we are the Crown, the monarchs and rulers of this grand kingdom. We will not be swayed by measly gossip and defaming rumors.”

“But it wasn’t a rumor. The Crown Prince did sleep with the Princess.”

Her Majesty sighed, the sound dramatically drawn out. “Do you have any complaints, my dear? Because if you did, then you should have attended the meeting this morning.”

You gritted your teeth. “I wasn’t informed there was one.”

“That’s a shame – I thought Rintaro would tell you. It seems he likes to keep his secrets, then,” she jabbed, and your husband nervously sipped his wine as you glared at the sides of his head. “Now, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, we planned a few events for this season. For this month, the four of you will be showing up to public events and you are to appear united in marriage. Laugh, kiss, hold hands – I do not care. Just make sure the cameras get it, and if anyone dares ask on any clarifications about the affair, simply tell them that it is very easy to fabricate photographs nowadays. You will deny everything. Understand?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” agreed Suna, and you scoffed. Snaking his hands under the table, he squeezed yours in assurance and whispered, “Don’t cause a scene in front of the Queen. We will talk later about this.”

“I was hoping we would.”

“Next, Iris and Y/N will be having weekend dates to show they are friends. We have already contacted an orphanage you will pay a visit to. Play with the kids, read storybooks with them, and get as many pictures as possible. Not only will it show that there’s camaraderie between you two, but hanging out with children will also imply that we can expect a next line of heirs soon.”

“A splendid idea!” Atsumu beamed, the first to dig into his meal. Rather, the Prince was halfway finished stuffing his mouth, happily rubbing his hands together at the thought. “This will all be good for the Crown, and to win the people’s trust back.”

“You really don’t know how to shut up, huh?” muttered Osamu.

“Your Majesty. Don’t you think this is going too far?” Tobio spoke up, slamming his hands on the table as he stood up. Beside him, Prince Shinsuke was pleading for him to sit back down. The youngest Prince merely slapped his hands away, looking betrayed by his brother’s words. “Why is no one speaking up? Is this how the royal family really is? You would all lie to your people, deceive them we are all in one heart and mind when we are not. Is that the kind of rulers we aspire to be? Are we really the rulers they look up to?”

Prince Shinsuke pinched the bridge of his nose. “I understand you’re upset, but the throne wouldn’t have lasted this long if none of us pulled some strings and kept up deceiving acts. Trust me, I also do not wish to take a part in this, but Her Majesty is right. The people are already growing restless that we have been without a King for years – having Crown Prince Rintaro’s reputation tarnished will not make this better. And as far as I know, there are still many protests against having an illegitimate child on the throne,” he reminded, causing Prince Ushijima to clear his throat awkwardly. Still, Shinsuke pushed on. “Rintaro is the King the Cabinet wants. We must follow the law. Ushijima can only be crowned King until we have ran out of options.”

Your jaw dropped.

“And what of me?”

“With all due respect, Your Highness, the future of the Kingdom is a heavier matter at hand than your broken heart,” Iris quipped, “Besides, if you knew about our relationship prior to the marriage, then you cannot blame anyone but yourself. You’re in this predicament because you were too cowardly to let go when given the chance.”

“That’s enough!” Tobio yelled. “You all need to stop talking about her like that. You’re all right – the Crown is more important. We need a stable ruler and for the people to not lose their trust in us. But the Princess is still a human. She was lied to, manipulated, and constantly looked down on. The least you can do right now is let her acknowledge her pain, seeing as it is clearly too much for each and every one of you to be decent human beings!”

Her Majesty paid him no mind. Waving her hand in the air dismissively, she sighed. “He is young. He will understand someday.”

At her nonchalance, Tobio’s nostrils flared. It was the last you saw of him before he kicked his chair back, storming out of the hall before everyone erupted into protests. Keiji slunk back into his seat, Shinsuke was immediately making efforts to appease the Queen by apologizing on everyone’s behalf, and Maiko was crying. And you? You glowered at the Queen before following after Tobio, the three other Princes right at your heels.

The doors slammed shut behind you.

You could hear the Princes running after you. Two pairs were rushing, but one pair of footfalls sounded more like stomping. Before you could turn down the hall where Tobio went, you were dragged by, Suna firmly gripping your elbow as he halted you in your tracks.

“Her Majesty was speaking,” he hissed, fingers digging harder to your skin. “Don’t be rude.”

“Oh, fuck off, Rintaro. I can’t believe you right now. Letting me be friends with your mistress? Really? And you didn’t even tell me there was a meeting this morning!”

His free hand ran through his hair. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you would act like this. You would’ve embarrassed me in front of the advisors. Besides, you left before I could–”

“I embarrass you? Do you even hear yourself? You’re the embarrassing one for going behind my back and sleeping with your mistress–”

“She’s not my mistress!”

“Isn’t she? I wasn’t aware there was another word to describe a woman frolicking with a married man!”

His grip grew tighter as he spoke, and you squeaked out in pain. You tried to pry his fingers off of you, but Suna wasn’t having any of it. “You’re one to talk, leaving me here in this country to go around dancing with my brother–” Your husband’s face disappeared before you. In the blink of an eye, he was shoved nearly across the room and falling right at his ass.

Kiyoomi stood protectively over you, his chest rising and falling as he shook with anger.

“Stay away from my wife!”

Meanwhile, Tooru dodged between Suna and Kiyoomi, the former rising on his feet and reeling his arm back in a punch. Tooru effortlessly caught his brother’s arm, but holding him back was a different struggle of itself. “Rin, that’s enough!”

“Are you okay?”

You blinked back from the scene. Kiyoomi was now holding your arm where Suna grabbed you, checking for any injuries. Aside from a little aching, and a possible bruise that would show up tomorrow, you were unharmed. Still, the Prince wasn’t assured. His thick brows pinched together in concern, turning your arm over and over as he muttered to himself the violent things he wished to do to his brother. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not really, but I want to go after Tobio.”

Kiyoomi nodded in understanding. “Go. I’ll handle this.”

You shared a knowing look with him. I’m on your side, his eyes said, and that was enough to reassure you. Giving him a nod, you quickly turned on your heels and ran. You ran and ran until you were out of breath, your corset digging into you uncomfortably. The youngest Prince sure was a fast one – he’d already reached his own study in such a short time.

Peeking through the partially closed door, your heart broke at the sight.

Prince Tobio sat on his painter’s stool, an unfinished portrait of you – smiling in your wedding dress – lay before him. He was crying, sniffling to himself and wiping his tears with the collar of his blouse. Even the sounds of his cries were too painful to hear.

Shutting the door behind you, you took your place behind him, gently squeezing his shoulders to make him look up. When he did, his bloodshot eyes greeted you.

“I’m sorry you had to witness all of that,” you tell him softly, “I didn’t mean to ruin breakfast for you.”

Tobio shook his head. He pulled out a handkerchief before blowing on it, and you smiled despite yourself – he’d grown so much, yet he was still that sweet, naïve boy in your eyes. It felt like a lifetime ago when he had his debut, and now he was flourishing into such a great, young man. Your little brother, the sweetest Prince – you would do anything for him.

“You don’t need to apologize for anything, sis. You’re the victim here.”

You laughed a little. Victim sounded too poor of a word choice. Turning to the canvas before you, you gestured to it. “What are you painting?”

“You,” he admitted with red cheeks, “I started on this when Rintaro announced he’d be marrying you so I could give it as a wedding gift. But Her Majesty wanted me to focus on my studies, so I didn’t have enough time to finish. I mean, it’s not even the same dress you wore on your wedding so it’s inaccurate–”

“-It looks beautiful.”

“It’s still unfinished,” his shoulders slumped in your flattery before he lightened up, already moving to pick up the brushes as he wiped his snot with his hanky. “Since you’re here, would you like me to paint you as you are now? I’ll get a new canvas.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to lose all your efforts on your previous painting.”

“It’s fine,” he reassured, and per his instruction, you sat stiffly to ‘pose’ for him. It’s a little awkward, and Tobio struggled to sketch you each time you fidgeted, but at least he wasn’t crying anymore. Midway through his sketch, though, he placed his pencil down, his eyes brimming with tears again. “I still can’t believe Rintaro was capable of being so cruel. I’ll never forgive him for what he did,” he said, his lower lip quivering. “Are they really like this? Is everyone in the Palace truly so heartless? Will I… never find love of my own, too?”

“Oh, Tobio,” you reached your arms out, crushing him to your chest. The Prince’s tears dampened your dress, though you paid it no mind. He was too young for all this hurt – this war over the crown. He was too good for a cruel place like this. “It will get easier someday.”

Fisting your skirt, he buried his face to your neck, his whole body shivering under you. “I never wanted to be a Prince. I-I wanted to keep playing sports and go pro someday. There’s a whole world out there for me to see, and I’m so afraid I’ll never become the person I want to be. I’m afraid I might turn out like my brothers.”

You pulled back to make him look at you. Cupping his face with your hands, you shook your head firmly. “That’s not true, Tobio. You’re already a thousand times better than your brothers. Look, you’re sweet, kind, and passionate. Who says you don’t deserve to achieve your dreams? You can be who you want to be. You can see the world. I promise you that I’ll support you in anything you want to do. Anything.”

“Really?” grinning, he wiped his cheeks free from his tears. “Then… will you come to my game? There’s a match and the Coach just added me to the team. It… Well, it might be a good opportunity for you and everyone else to show you’re unaffected by the scandal, too.”

“Oh, forget the scandal. I only want to see you play,” you tell him, and the Prince’s innocent smile is so big and bright it soothed all the aches in your heart. You promised to yourself, then and there, that you would do what it takes to protect that smile. “Now, should we get to this painting?”

That talk with Tobio filled you with unwavering resolve.

The poor boy didn’t deserve to spend a minute longer in the Palace. It simply wasn’t a place for him. He needed to be out there, living his life to the fullest, and to be surrounded by good people who were healthy for him. Not his greedy, cheating brothers, and most especially not with the heartless Queen as his only mother figure.

You had to do something for him. You had to weaken the throne even further, exploit their weakness and make the monarchy crumble. If not for you, then you would do it for Tobio.

It was the reason you’d gained enough courage to dial the number weighing heavily in your pockets long before Itachiyama. That piece of paper Kiyoomi slipped into your coat just before you parted ways. You should’ve known it back then – Kiyoomi was somehow always one step ahead of you. It’s like he knew what you wanted to happen before you said out loud. What you needed before you told him what it was. And you’d done it – scheduled the meeting, hired a private chauffer, and rented out a restaurant in the middle of nowhere at the dead time of the night before you could change your mind.

Do it For Tobio. For Kiyoomi. For you.

He arrived not a minute later than the designated time. He stood tall and confident – seemingly unbothered by the mass of hate he’d accumulated. Sauntering in through the doors with a smirk, he let out a low whistle, impressed with the lack of people. You had promised him privacy, after all, and if you wanted to succeed in your plans, you couldn’t be shy in splurging a little bit of money.

“Kuroo Tetsurou, was it?”

“Your Highness,” he greeted with a bow, his smile growing wider as he pulled out his chair. He’s handsome, with a smile you wouldn’t deem trustworthy, and he held an aura to him that warned you to tread carefully. He was, after all, the man who singlehandedly exposed your husband’s affair. “I am flattered by your efforts, though I must admit. I did not expect you would reach out to me of all people. I assumed you wanted my head.”

You offer him a polite smile. “You have it all wrong. In fact, I’m thankful for the opportunity you’ve presented to me,” leaning forward, you slid a thin envelope his way. Inside it contained a document of your own words, one you trusted Kuroo would twist to sound more convincing. “I want you to publish another article.”

Kuroo’s eyes widened. He waited for a beat, a moment or two, for you to say you didn’t mean it. You could’ve been joking. But you hold his gaze, your smile just as firm, refusing to waver from his intense gaze. “With all due respect, Ma’am, I think I’m already in enough trouble for that last one.”

Fair enough. You didn’t think he’d be that easy to convince.

Reaching beside you, you pulled out a case and clicked open the locks for him. If Kuroo was surprised before, he was most definitely flabbergasted by now. Wads of cash piled against each other stared back at him – temping him to reach out and take it. Smiling to yourself, you gently nudged the case in his direction.

“This is half of what I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you twice as much once you’ve done your part,” you promised, “You don’t need to fear, Mr. Kuroo. I’ll guarantee your protection if you do this for me.”

Kuroo chuckled to himself. Shutting the case back shut, he was quick to slide it to his side – deal done and closed. “If a lovely Princess is asking so nicely, I can’t possibly turn it down, can I?” pulling out a small notebook from his coat, Kuroo uncaps his pen with a twist of his teeth. “So let’s get into it. What story do you want, Ma’am? Do you want the truth or… something more scandalous than your husband’s affair?”

“I want you to ruin Iris,” you declared, “Inside that envelope is a list of people the Princess frequently interacts with, as well as records from her history dating back from when she moved here with mother. I want you to look into everything and pick apart whatever could destroy her reputation. There are secrets that she keeps, and I want them out in the public.”

Kuroo doesn’t bother writing that down. “Her reputation is well ruined already, Ma’am. I doubt much could make it worse.”

Your brow shoots up. “Are you doubting my abilities or questioning my demands?”

“Neither,” he reassured with a mischievous grin, “I shall write something about her, then, but what about the Crown Prince? Do I still have the assurance of your protection if he comes after me for messing with his precious little thing?”

Oh, please. His ‘precious little thing’ doesn’t even want him.

Spinning your wedding finger with your thumb, you stared at it. “Tell me, Kuroo. You’re a journalist, one that wasn’t invited at that private party my husband was in. So why were you there that night? Most importantly, how did you get their photos?” you brought your gaze back up to him, “You’re not secretly planning for the downfall of the crown, are you?”

Kuroo scratched the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Your Highness. But to answer your question, then no, I wasn’t invited. I wouldn’t even know a single thing about their affair if it wasn’t for one of you.”

“One of us?” you echoed, “Are you saying someone in the royal family hired you as well?”

“Indeed. Though I must say, I never expected working with just one of you could have me set for life. What more if I teamed up with you too?”

So your theories were right. That article didn’t appear out of nowhere – someone wanted it to happen. “It was Iris, wasn’t it? She asked you to publish that because she knew I was with her husband… but that wouldn’t make any sense. That article puts her in a bad light. It couldn’t be her, right?”

“You’ll be surprised, Ma’am, but it was not the Princess,” he clarified.

Kuroo’s face pinched in contemplation, and then suddenly, pulls out a different phone from his pockets. It’s a beat-up iPhone with its battery nearly dead, but with a few clicks here and there, the video played loud and clear. The camera is shaky, the angles all wrong. Whoever recorded it clearly seemed to be inebriated. Yet there it was – the unmistakable masculine voice groaning, the slapping of skin against each other, and a high-pitched womanly moan. The camera caught nothing but long, blond hair flowing on top of her bouncing breasts before the camera was flipped, finally showing the culprit –

“Atsumu?”

Atsumu gripped Yuki’s hips, shoving the phone between their bodies to show the pistoning of his cock in and out of her. There was no point denying it now. Both their faces were clear from the video, and if this got out…

Kuroo paused the video. “I’m not supposed to be showing you this, but the Prince hasn’t kept up to his end of the bargain, so I might as well ask for your help, too,” shutting the phone off, Kuroo rested his chin on his hands. “That night, he slept with an intoxicated actress and accidentally filmed themselves in the act. The Prince was drunk himself, made the mistake of posting that video online, and merely eighteen minutes later, any traces of their sex tape disappeared. Curious?”

The pieces of the puzzle finally fit.

“He called you to write about Iris and Rintaro to cover up his scandal.”

He snapped his fingers. “Bingo! And he succeeded, even if it was an impulsive decision on his side. Still, the Prince paid me handsomely because he was desperate, but he hasn’t offered me protection like he promised. I’m being hunted down by the Queen’s goons as we speak. Isn’t that why you offered to have me chauffeured here?”

You knew Kuroo prioritized his safety over money due to his current predicament. It was the reason why you risked sneaking out of the Palace and meeting him alone. His terms were clear – no witnesses, no guards, just you and him. You would keep to your word if it meant cornering Iris, but with Atsumu and that poor actress thrown into the mix… things just got more complicated.

Reaching out for Kuroo, you squeezed his hand. “You will be safe with me. I promise you this.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

You glanced at the iPhone between you two. It wasn’t that you didn’t trust Kuroo, but now that you know he’d do pretty much anything for money, you couldn’t risk it. It wasn’t just Atsumu’s reputation you were worried about – firstly, Rintaro would kill him if he found out it was all his doing. Second, that poor actress. She rose to fame in her career recently; this would ruin her image. If things took the wrong turn, who was to stop the Queen from forcing the two to get married if that tape was leaked? You couldn’t risk any cracks in your plan.

“Kuroo, may I have that phone?”

“It’s all yours if you throw in another five grand, Princess.”

“Consider it mine then.”

You and Kuroo left immediately after everything was settled. Just as promised, you would cover all his travel expenses. He would stay overseas to ensure his protection while he reached out to his connections to get all the information he needed, and once the article was ready, he’d publish it and disappear from the media. You covered that too – he was paid enough to live comfortably while in hiding. Now, you only needed to wait for everything to go according to plan.

First, the downfall of Iris. Next, her separation with Kiyoomi without having to let Rin ascend to the throne. And once she’s finally out of the picture, you’ll move on to your beloved husband. You’ll seduce him, have him fall completely to your whim, make him realize he could never have anyone like you again – and once he’s wrapped around your finger, you’ll plea for divorce.

A heart for a heart. A marriage for a marriage.

And if the odds play into your favor at the end of it all, there’s only one destination in mind: Kiyoomi’s farmhouse in Itachiyama.

You smiled to yourself – it would work out. You had a good feeling about it. Kiyoomi is supporting you and acting as your spy, Kita is backing you up on the grounds for divorce, and the nation has unwaveringly showed their support for you in these trying times. After all, you were just the poor, neglected wife. They expected you to spend your days crying and chasing after your deceitful husband, or to simply take it all – be silent and smile for the cameras.

Fuck what the Queen said. You won’t let her win.

Driving back to the Palace, you glanced at the time. It’s almost four in the morning, and soon, Her Majesty would be beginning her routine and expecting her daily calls from the Princes. Pressing harder on the gas, you sped up until a glint catches your eye. You glance at the rearview mirror, eyes widening at the fast approaching car from behind – a sleek, black car with the royal family’s crest on it. Shit. But – it couldn’t be the royal guards. You’d made sure no one would see you, and Airi had gotten your note to slip some sleeping pills into Rintaro’s tea so you could sneak out. Kiyoomi was informed of your plans, too, and he’d reassured he’d hold the fort down while you dealt with Kuroo.

Unless Iris had snooped through his phone and found everything out, then –

You wasted no time. You drove faster, reaching for the gun in your glove compartment as the roaring of the car behind you moved in closer and closer. Heart pounding in your chest, you speed-dialed Kiyoomi, praying to any God who was listening that he would pick up. It couldn’t be Iris, it shouldn’t be her. God forbid she does anything to provoke you into pulling the trigger.

Infidelity was one thing, but the murder of a royal family member was not something one could merely frown at. You didn’t want to be thrown into jail.

The call did not push through.

“Fuck!” you slammed your feet on the gas, watching as the car sped up even more until it was now next to you. You were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but the mammoth of trees and a never ending road with darkness clouding the path. Just then, the windows rolled down, and you waited with bated breath as the face finally came into view.

Dark hair was the first thing you saw. The windows rolled down, down, down, until you were staring deep into your husband’s eyes. Brow cocked, he smirked, raising the phone to show he’d been calling you – that’s why you couldn’t call Kiyoomi. Suna was interrupting the line. Shit, how was he even awake right now?

Moreover, how did he find you?

You scowled to yourself. There was no outrunning him now. Suna was a ridiculously good driver, and there was no way you would ever use a gun on him. Steeling yourself, you forced yourself to regulate your breathing – your efforts boon when Suna suddenly pressed on forward until he was a feet away from you, maneuvered his car with the hood facing your direction, and then just – stopped.

Bracing your hands on the wheel, you forced all your energy to release its power on the slamming of your brakes. The skidding of your car squeaked for what seemed like minutes until finally – finally – your came to a halt. You were breathing hard, the back of your head aching from the impact of it crashing to the headrest. Meanwhile, Suna opened his car doors in slow, languid movements, the ends of his leather black trench coat hitting the pavement. With nothing but the headlights of his car illuminating him, he looked more like an omen of death than a Prince – dressed in a white turtleneck, black pants, and a long coat that highlighted his tall figure. He looked ominous, like he carried sorrow and pain with him – pain that he was about to make you feel.

Because you knew – of course you knew; you knew him better than anyone – that the placid smile he wore was anything but.

He slammed the car doors shut. Leaning against the hood, Suna’s gloved hands reached for a lighter in his pocket as he lit his cigarette, the stick hanging from between his lips. As soon as it flickered, he pocketed the lighter back, using two of his fingers to make a ‘come hither’ gesture at you.

Clearly, you spoke too early. The odds were not in your favor.

You exited your vehicle, hands gripping the edges of the door as you gathered to courage to take one more step towards him. It wasn’t that you were afraid – he wouldn’t hurt you, not really. But too much could be taken away from you in such little time – Kuroo couldn’t have gone far, and Atsumu’s sex tape was still in the backseat. You didn’t trust Rintaro to not ruin your plans. And you wouldn’t let him, not now when you were so close to victory.

One step, two steps, three steps – your heels clicked against the road as you walked, making sure to keep your chin pointed north. Hips swaying to the side, you finally ended up before him – right between his spread legs – your husband leaning back at the hood of his car whilst he sized you up, his free hand resting behind him.

“Funny seeing you here,” he drawled out, his voice thick with barely-held back rage. “They told me you were sleeping, but last time I checked, driving while falling asleep was illegal.”

“Cheating is also illegal.”

“Your comebacks are getting old, my love.”

Your head snapped to his direction. He hadn’t called you that in forever, not since you’d returned from your honeymoon. To have him call you that now, with such a deeply rich, smooth voice and sounding like he’d just woken up, all breathy and rasp – could it be possible to fuck someone to death?

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” tipping his head to the side, Suna’s lips slowly formed into a smirk. He took a drag of his cigarette, keeping his eyes on yours as he wrapped those lips around the stick – delicately and tantalizingly slow – just like how he did when he worshipped you in bed. You breathed out hard and attempted to take a step back, but he was having none of it. Swiftly, he’d tugged on your shirt to pull you close to him, causing you to stumble and fall into his lap. Above you, your husband’s chest rumbled with amusement.

“Look at you. Always so weak for me.”

He leaned in close, his scent of smoke and expensive woodsy perfume enveloping you. It’s addicting, just as he is, and your knees grew weak. Your legs slid down just as Suna wraps a strong arm around your waist to hitch you back in place, your core resting above his thigh. There, he spreads you open with just his knees, his warm lips suddenly attaching themselves to your neck. You gasped out, hands falling to his shoulders in a measly attempt to pull him away – and oh.

Suna had different plans in mind.

“You,” he breathed in your ear, his gloved fingers popping the button of your blouse one by one. “cannot get rid of me that easily, Your Highness. You can slip in as many drugs you want in my drinks, you can kill me a hundred times and fuck me over again and again, but don’t you dare forget,” growling lowly in your ear, your husband took your chin in his hands and forced you to gaze deep into his eyes – pools of hazel swirling with need and wrath – “Not even death can do us part. I’ll keep on looking for you even if you try to hide at the ends of the earth.”

[arte072]

None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for Father. -   AGoT Sansa I

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody.  -   AGoT Sansa I

Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father's table and listen to them talk. She had loved listening to the men on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights and bold young squires, grizzled old men-at-arms. She used to throw snowballs at them and help them steal pies from the kitchen. Their wives gave her scones and she invented names for their babies and played monsters-and-maidens and hide-the-treasure and come-into-my-castle with their children. Fat Tom used to call her "Arya Underfoot," because he said that was where she always was. She'd liked that a lot better than "Arya Horseface."  - AGoT Arya II

Margaery hailed them when the two columns met and fell in beside the queen's litter. Her cheeks were flushed, her brown ringlets tumbling loosely about her shoulders, stirred by every puff of wind. "We have been picking autumn flowers in the kingswood," she told them.

I know where you were, the queen thought. Her informers were very good about keeping her apprised of Margaery's movements. Such a restless girl, our little queen. She seldom let more than three days pass without going off for a ride. Some days they would ride along the Rosby road to hunt for shells and eat beside the sea. Other times she would take her entourage across the river for an afternoon of hawking. The little queen was fond of going out on boats as well, sailing up and down the Blackwater Rush to no particular purpose. When she was feeling pious she would leave the castle to pray at Baelor's Sept. She gave her custom to a dozen different seamstresses, was well-known amongst the city's goldsmiths, and had even been known to visit the fish market by the Mud Gate for a look at the day's catch. Wherever she went, the smallfolk fawned on her, and Lady Margaery did all she could to fan their ardor. She was forever giving alms to beggars, buying hot pies off bakers' carts, and reining up to speak to common tradesmen. - AFfC  Cersei VI

I just think Arya and Margaery are neat and would really get along  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So here they are getting some street food together~ 

[thelustybraavosimaid]

Margaery hailed them when the two columns met and fell in beside the queen's litter. Her cheeks were flushed, her brown ringlets tumbling loosely about her shoulders, stirred by every puff of wind. "We have been picking autumn flowers in the kingswood," she told them. I know where you were, the queen thought. Her informers were very good about keeping her apprised of Margaery's movements. Such a restless girl, our little queen. She seldom let more than three days pass without going off for a ride. Some days they would ride along the Rosby road to hunt for shells and eat beside the sea. Other times she would take her entourage across the river for an afternoon of hawking. The little queen was fond of going out on boats as well, sailing up and down the Blackwater Rush to no particular purpose. When she was feeling pious she would leave the castle to pray at Baelor's Sept. She gave her custom to a dozen different seamstresses, was well-known amongst the city's goldsmiths, and had even been known to visit the fish market by the Mud Gate for a look at the day's catch. Wherever she went, the smallfolk fawned on her, and Lady Margaery did all she could to fan their ardor. She was forever giving alms to beggars, buying hot pies off bakers' carts, and reining up to speak to common tradesmen. (Cersei VI, AFfC)

--

"You're not supposed to leave the column," Sansa reminded her. "Father said so."

Arya shrugged. "I didn't go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with me the whole time. I don't always go off, either. Sometimes it's fun just to ride along with the wagons and talk to people."

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. This Mycah was the worst; a butcher's boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers. (Sansa I, AGoT)

[shanastoryteller]

Happy V-Day!!

More Merlin please?

a continuation of 1 2 3

After several questions about the state of Camelot, and receiving confirmation that the castle's former potions master is still here, Ygraine glares at Uther and says, "It seems I'll have to clean up your mess. As usual," before turning on her heel and heading for the stairway.

She pauses, looking back, and says, "Son, come with me."

She doesn't know Arthur's name.

Before Merlin can feel too many ways about that, Arthur is stepping forward and Merlin finds himself following behind because that's what he always does and it's too late to not do it this time.

As soon as Arthur is close enough, Ygraine slips her arm through his as they descend the stairs. "I'm sorry, this must be such a shock to you."

He's silent for a moment, because what on earth is he supposed to say to that, but then Arthur replies, "For you too."

She waves a dismissive hand. "This isn't about me."

Merlin thinks it very much is, but he at least has enough sense not to say that.

Arthur still hasn't come up with a reply by the time they make it to Gaius's rooms. Merlin thinks about shouting out some sort of warning, but before he gets the chance, Ygrain kicks the door open and shouts, "GAIUS! WHERE ARE ALL THE WIZARDS?"

Gaius is standing right there, so no one needed to yell, and he blinks rapidly for several seconds and then says uncertainly, "Your majesty?"

"There are no wizards in Camelot," Arthur says.

Merlin cringes.

Ygraine scoffs. "This is Camelot. Our very land is magic. If there are no sorcerers, she will make them. Killing magic - what shit. He'd have been better off trying to kill sunshine."

"You majesty," Gaius repeats, a tone of respect and ardor Merlin has never heard him have when addressing the king. He goes into a low bow and starts to get on his knees.

"None of that, we don't have time for it," she says, impatiently yanking him upright. "I have to go back to my own time otherwise this land will have no prince, which means I need a sorcerer powerful enough to bend time. Where can I find one?"

Gaius says, "Ah," and then, "Let me consult my old contacts."

He's so screwed.

Ygraine rolls her eyes, easily reading that Gaius is trying to put her off, but says, "Alright, Gaius. That gives me some time to get to know my son."

"Arthur," Merlin says, unable to take it anymore. Everyone looks at him and he swallows before saying, "His name is Arthur."

Ygraine softens, reaching up to run her hand through Arthur's hair. He leans into the touch, he eyes briefly falling closed.

"Arthur," she repeats warmly.

[clockys-soul]

The first Wyvern ever to be ridden, Firestorm.

He’s belonged to the ancestor of the Ardors, Pyro Ardor.

He saw 3 generations after his rider before he passed turning 166 years.

He and his rider both were Flameborn making them quite special.

His skull now hangs in the entrance hall of the Ardor Castle.

[asongoficeandfiresource]

MARGAERY TYRELL OF HIGHGARDEN

Her informers were very good about keeping her apprised of Margaery's movements. Such a restless girl, our little queen. She seldom let more than three days pass without going off for a ride. Some days they would ride along the Rosby road to hunt for shells and eat beside the sea. Other times she would take her entourage across the river for an afternoon of hawking. The little queen was fond of going out on boats as well, sailing up and down the Blackwater Rush to no particular purpose. When she was feeling pious she would leave the castle to pray at Baelor's Sept. She gave her custom to a dozen different seamstresses, was well-known amongst the city's goldsmiths, and had even been known to visit the fish market by the Mud Gate for a look at the day's catch. Wherever she went, the smallfolk fawned on her, and Lady Margaery did all she could to fan their ardor. She was forever giving alms to beggars, buying hot pies off bakers' carts, and reining up to speak to common tradesmen.

[james-joyces-right-eyeball]

Favorite Books I Read in 2023

Not including rereads and in no particular order, here are the books I loved the most this year.

Titles & Authors, from top left to bottom:

Fluids by May Leitz

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Perfume: Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

Valencia by Michelle Tea

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov

Summer by Edith Wharton

"The Echo & the Nemesis", "Life is No Abyss", "The Interior Castle", "Bad Characters", and "In the Zoo" by Jean Stafford

Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

Crash by J.G. Ballard

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde

Erasure by Percival Everett

Persuasion by Jane Austen

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

Ghosts of my Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, & Lost Futures by Mark Fisher

Girl Flesh by May Leitz

Here's to a new year, full of great reading!

[rosethroned]

throughout the series we see how cersei resents womanhood and the role westerosi society pushes on her as a result several times. she outright thinks she should've been born a man, or that she should be the one with a sword instead of jaime.

perhaps more importantly, she fails to see how her role as a woman could be of any value beyond using her beauty and sex to manipulate men around her to do her bidding. i think the battle of the blackwater has an exchange that makes it pretty blatant:

"Jaime told me once that he only feels truly alive in battle and in bed." She lifted her cup and took a long swallow. Her salad was untouched. "I would sooner face any number of swords than sit helpless like this, pretending to enjoy the company of this flock of frightened hens."

she knows what she has to do and she resents it, and she doesn't even see the value in the women themselves beyond what they mean to the men around them. given power later on, cersei emulates the men who held power over her. she doesn't seem to understand there is a form of power to be wielded in the spheres she has to play a role as queen.

margaery presents a contrast to that. where cersei chafes against femininity, she leans hard on it as a form of power. in one of her very first scenes (seen from the perspective of someone who didn't know her and to who margaery would want to project a certain image), it's her sweet and soft behavior that is noted.

King Renly looked surprised. "Lady Catelyn? We are most pleased." He turned to his young queen. "Margaery my sweet, this is the Lady Catelyn Stark of Winterfell." "You are most welcome here, Lady Stark," the girl said, all soft courtesy. "I am sorry for your loss."

the same goes for sansa, when they meet, and is generally true for how she's portrayed (except cersei is being a hater every time she's mentioned in her povs). margaery doesn't want to seem dangerous; she's energic and can be rather assertive when it suits her (she's very direct about sansa marrying willas, to the point of calling her sister after a couple days; she can definitely press the matters she wishes to press very directly), but she's also kind and sweet and soft. she leans on these qualities that westerosi society deems womanly, and she endears herself to others through them. this includes the way she is perceived by the commonfolk.

 Such a restless girl, our little queen. She seldom let more than three days pass without going off for a ride. Some days they would ride along the Rosby road to hunt for shells and eat beside the sea. Other times she would take her entourage across the river for an afternoon of hawking. The little queen was fond of going out on boats as well, sailing up and down the Blackwater Rush to no particular purpose. When she was feeling pious she would leave the castle to pray at Baelor's Sept. She gave her custom to a dozen different seamstresses, was well-known amongst the city's goldsmiths, and had even been known to visit the fish market by the Mud Gate for a look at the day's catch. Wherever she went, the smallfolk fawned on her, and Lady Margaery did all she could to fan their ardor. She was forever giving alms to beggars, buying hot pies off bakers' carts, and reining up to speak to common tradesmen.

she's active, friendly, sweet, kind, approachable. cersei doesn't seem to notice it, but this perceived restlessness is about how she exerts her power. women aren't expected to rule in the sense of sitting on the throne (or even the council) or making decisions. so she uses the spheres where women are allowed to (or welcomed to) act to make herself powerful.

she's out and about with her ladies (which might be a group comprised mostly of tyrell adjacent ladies, but is also useful to influence ladies at court. if they have such visibility, wouldn't it grow to be prestigious to be invited to be part of the queen's entourage?), she shows herself to be pious (and leaves the castle to pray at the same sept commonfolk can go to!), she interacts with crafters and traders (which is yet another way to bring her closer to them; not the individuals alone, but everyone that'll hear about the little queen treating them as, you know, people who matter instead of pretending they don't exist). a baker will remember that the queen bought from him and he'll talk about it. a beggar will remember her kindness. the commonfolk will take note of her presence as someone who listens and smiles and gives them her patronage.

the lannisters neglect it, but there is power in having the love of common people, and margaery ensures she has that on her side. and later on, when she's imprisoned by the faith, there's people shouting for her to be released, because she endeared herself to the people. the high sparrow couldn't get rid of her without causing a commotion, even should he want to. and that's just the tiniest example off of the top of my head.

she works similarly with nobility. margaery is pleasant and kind and considerate (the kettlebacks mistake it for her showing some sort of romantic/sexual interest, but giving them attention or defending them when other people tease is just what she'd do for anyone. it makes people like her! and people liking her is crucial to how she operates!). she tries to make people feel important and cared for because that in turn makes people either more pliable or more blind to her thorns.

margaery is not all sweetness; far from it. i personally don't think she's even that far from having a temper similar to loras, except he was socialized in a way that did not curb it, while she learned to bite back the anger and keep her cool because a lady must be pleasant at all times (the venom is just stored for later, really). but she doesn't resent having to pretend she is. she's great at it. femininity is her weapon to seem harmless and to influence others, without truly having to use her body (flirting is something else! there is influence in that, too, and she's not ignorant to it, but margaery only ever keeps things to teasing and empty promises of what could be.) instead of chafing against its constraints, she bends them to better suit her, unlike cersei.

[adarkrainbow]

Playin with fire, Transgression as truth (B)

And here is the sequel to this post! Now, I do believe the interpretation gets a little far-fetched sometimes and some hairs are pulled... But it stays a very interesting analysis and theory!

READING « FRAU TRUDE » QUEERLY

Diving deep into the queer possibilities of “Frau Trude,” I offer, but certainly don’t exhaust, queer understandings from both the girl’s and Frau Trude’s perspectives. I read certain passages multiply, without contradiction. More decipherment than conventional analysis, much remains to be explored in my approach. I find the girl too knowing and too anxious to leave her past behind, the witch too desirous of warmth and light, the ending too filled with jouissance, ardor and contentment, heat and brightness to regard the story simply as a caution against curiosity or a warning against an old woman’s nefarious ways. My investigation of “Frau Trude” takes further inspiration from Dinshaw’s assignment of impulse and tactility to her work on late medieval England. Following a “queer historical impulse” (1999, 1), she embraces the radical possibilities for making connections between lives in the past and present. In defining a contingent history, she takes seriously the term’s root meaning L. com + tangere, to touch, as it revises our relation to the disjunctiveness and indeterminateness of queer lives and sexualities. Deliberately celebrating fragmentation, using “new pieces of history,” Dinshaw shows that “queers can make new relations, new identifications, new communities with past figures who elude resemblance to us but with whom we can be connected partially by virtue of shared marginality, queer positionality” (39). Of course, fictional figures may provide even wider lati[1]tude for connecting past and present, existing only to be touched by and to touch the changing generations who read their stories. In this time, in this place, I touch “Frau Trude” queerly

For anyone who has gone through the emotionally demanding drill of “coming out” gay or queer, as I have, reading “Frau Trude” retrospectively as an early narrative model of this painful yet exhilarating process is revelatory. Emphasizing a conscious self-recognition of one’s homo-identity, postliberation “coming-out” narratives now occupy their own category.11 Their widespread acceptance as a popular genre, beginning in the 1990s, inspired my Winnipeg class of that era. We discovered all the motifs of the classic coming out narrative in “Frau Trude”: forbidden attraction; desire to meet the love object; parental restriction on such desire announced in a threat of disownership; stubborn determination to go, regardless of such threat; feelings of fear and self-doubt manifested in menacing images; encounter with the lover, who simultaneously calms the fear and stokes the fires of passion; and, finally, the transformation—no longer just any girl, but now a glowing gay girl. Reading “Frau Trude” as a coming-out story, our interest focused on the young woman’s compulsion, fears, courage, and identity shift. This interpretation dovetailed nicely with Stone’s emphasis on the girl’s quest for self-knowledge and freedom.1

But “Frau Trude” also touches an older, transgressive narrative tradition, alive and well in the nineteenth century and earlier. Our tale aligns nicely with the Sapphic subgenre, those steamy stories of obsession, deviance, desire, and seduction. In these narratives an older woman, schooled in seduction, lures a younger girl willing, in some sense, to learn.13 Even if positioned as an innocent, the girl, drawn to the seducer, sticks around long enough to be debauched, or at least to gain carnal awareness of her intended debauchment.14 The older woman figures as what Terry Castle calls “the apparitional lesbian” in her investigation of lesbian spectrality in novels ranging from Denis Diderot’s The Nun (1797) to Henry James’s The Bostonians (1886) and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928): “Western writing over the centuries is from one angle a kind of derealization machine: insert the lesbian and watch her disappear” (1993, 6). Yet Castle maintains that “the very frequency with which the lesbian has been ‘apparitionalized’ in the Western imagination also testifies to her peculiar cultural power” (7). She is actually “in plain view, mortal and magnificent” (2). In novels, the elder character often holds institutional power—a mother superior, for example—but fairy tales carry the spectral lesbian in the marginalized figure of the witch.1

Tension builds in Sapphic stories as the cat-and-mouse game of lure and seduction plays out. This function of transgressive mutual attraction also drives the “Frau Trude” plot, flying in the face of normative prescriptions for relations between young girls and mature women. Neither the girl’s desire to go to Frau Trude nor Frau Trude’s desire to possess the girl is ultimately interrupted; rather, the plot inexorably draws the two together, promoting their encounter’s inevitable climax. Mutual attraction is the tale’s turnkey, raising the power of desire against all others. Much of the narrative establishes this mutuality, first from the girl’s, then from Frau Trude’s, point of view.

We enter the tale at a point of exasperation and bitter argument between parents and daughter. We’re not hearing this quarrel for the first time. The willful girl insists on going to see Frau Trude then, attempting to diminish parental concern, rationalizes her desire by claiming her real interest lies not in the older woman but in getting a firsthand look at her “marvelous” house and its “weird” contents. This deflection only serves to alert the reader that “going to” Frau Trude is the girl’s real goal.16 The parents try, of course, to block her, excoriating Frau Trude as “a wicked old woman who performs godless deeds.” They are in direct competition with the witch, who appears to have a quite lively reputation. The girl has “heard so much” about her, but from whom? Likely, vicious gossip and innuendo, including suggestions of sodomitical acts, have trailed Frau Trude for some time. Whatever the daughter has heard evidently has not repelled but rather intrigued her. Over time, this feeling has cranked into high gear

I prefer “intrigued” to Stone’s gloss of the girl as “curious” to capture the sense of anxious arousal she manifests. Intrigue is a specific kind of curiosity associated with “arousal of interest,” the “fascinating,” the compelling, and hidden, often sexual, desires. It also names an illicit love affair (Brown 1993, 1405). Where attraction meets prohibition, something more than conventional cognitive curiosity is at stake. This intrigued girl allows nothing and no one to stand in the way of her fascination with the source of her allure, Frau Trude. The parents sense their daughter’s transgressive desire; whatever she wants from the witch is irredeemably contaminating. The monstrous possibility that Frau Trude’s “godless” non-normative state might become hers as well can only be addressed through the ultimate parental threat: “if you go to see her, you are no longer our child.” Disowned, she loses both her legal and her social-emotional status as blood kin, marked effectively as abnormal, unnatural.

Does she care? No. In this charged moment of disavowal by her parents, the girl senses change in herself; she’s already disavowing them. She’s transforming, even as she will soon be transformed. She heads off. Given numerous warnings and thereby chances to retreat from her mission,17 inexorably, she proceeds. Despite meeting three frightening male figures on the steps entering the Frau’s house, she still goes forward. Looking through the window and seeing the devil, she does not turn back; instead, she enters the house to finally meet her witch. Intrigue and attraction trump prohibition and trepidation every time.

This girl is but one case of the curious, willful maids found in Grimms’ tales, from “The Virgin Mary’s Child” to “Fitcher’s Bird.”18 The sin of knowledge (Eve’s error) compounds curiosity with the disorderly impulses of desire and sexuality that spur some fairy-tale girls out into the world beyond interdiction.19 Yet curiosity remains, as Michel Foucault suggests in his introduction to volume 2 of The History of Sexuality, the great stimulus for abjuring propriety to gain the knowledge that sets one free: “As for what motivated me, it is quite simple; . . . It was curiosity—the only kind of curi[1]osity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself” (1985, 8).

Fairy-tale curiosity links with inappropriate directives conventionally deemed most disastrous for women: I wish, I want, I will. Fulfilling such self-determining commands requires a determined disobedience. The girl’s curiosity demands a decision to disobey her parents and an acceptance that such defiance is tantamount to disownership. Borrowing a phrase from Judith Butler, disobedience is a failure to “repeat loyally” (1993, 220).20 If, as Butler ([1990] 1999) critically assessed, gender and sexuality norms are never original but are based on citation and repetition, then obedience, the reiteration of the normative, is the hammer of carnal conformity. Wilhelm Grimm may have rewritten “Frau Trude” to emphasize the perils of girls’ curiosity and disobedience. But for the queer reader, he unwittingly creates a perfect entrée for identification with a character who, in pursuit of her transgressive desire, declines loyal repetition. Breaking convention, her “failure” sets the girl on her own initiatory journey. As Cristina Bacchilega suggests for “Bluebeard,” “Frau Trude” is not a cautionary tale about learning to control curiosity but is about “a process of initiation which requires entering the forbidden chamber” (1997, 107). Initiation’s goal is revelation: to convert partial knowledge to full. The girl directs her curiosity toward someone she has already “heard so much” about. Something about what she almost knows—or senses—for herself about Frau Trude powers her curiosity and, more important, her shamelessness. Though she eventually feels fear, the girl never expresses a hint of regret or shame for pursuing her desire to know. With non-normative sexual desire at stake, shamelessness propels curiosity’s norm-breaking function. Specifically, for “Frau Trude’s” girl, driven by a compulsion for “unholy” alliance, shamelessness queers curiosity

Even so, she is “trembling all over her body” as she stands before the woman for the first time—with fear but also with the anxiety of first encounter and perhaps a modicum of release. Having crossed the threshold, exiled from her natal home, she stands now inside the house of marvels. Frau Trude allays the girl’s fear of the figures she has met outside. Soothingly, and perhaps with a faint inflection of flirtation, she says they are not phantoms, just the routine men—collier, hunter, butcher—who assist her in everyday living. The figure the girl saw inside the house, a fiery devil, is no phantom either, but a true manifestation of Frau Trude, who emphatically exclaims, “Then you have seen the witch in her proper dress.” Later, I will return to this dramatic self-proclamation of who Frau Trude is; for the interim, I am interested in what she wants. For at this crucial juncture the Frau identifies her witchy nature in the same breath as she unburdens her womanly need: “For you I have long waited, and longed for you” or, as Zipes translates the same passage, “I’ve been wanting you here and waiting for a long time” (1992, 160). How remarkable. The all-powerful devil-witch has been feeling a very human yearning for her cohort, with the exigencies of her longing made explicit by recourse to romantic convention: the confession of temporal anxiety both in terms of duration (waiting) and emotion (longing). Reading Zipes’s and Hutschek’s translations together yields the triumvirate of desire’s expression: wanting, waiting, longing

Witches live in both real (human) and supernatural (magical) time. In her womanly aspect, Frau Trude does not—or cannot—use her otherworldly powers to force the girl to her. As Roland Barthes claimed, “Waiting is an enchantment: I have received orders not to move” (1978, 38; emphasis in original).21 The witch endures such enchantment. She waits, as she must, for the fulfillment of a seduction she no doubt has plotted but cannot complete without the girl’s autonomous desire to seek her out. Seduction’s game depends on waiting and requires both parties to spend some time getting worked up. The girl’s willfulness and Frau Trude’s yearning are dynamic emotional forces in this tale, exerting a mutual pull that resolves in their meeting. The story’s heightened play of attractions is contingent on Frau Trude and the girl knowing about each other. More than suggesting, the story demonstrates explicitly that they’ve been circling each others’ wagons for awhile. Their proximity lends itself to a relational reading of their encounter. The girl’s sense of intrigue concerns her desire to engage Frau Trude, a specific, named woman, while the witch admits her yen not for any girl but for this particular girl.

From the normative outside, predation haunts homosexual relations in literature, theater, and film as well as in life. Sapphic novels hyperbolize the older woman as a ruthless hunter after young flesh. The witch has fared no better; her predatory compulsions are assumed. From the lesbian inside, however, predation’s unidirectional aim is blunted by attention paid to how desires and feelings actually play out. The girl’s attraction to the witch negates any presumption of one-sided sexual greed. And Frau Trude, no hunter, stays at home, saddled with yearning and its attendant anticipatory joys and frustrations.

FIRE UP THE FLAMES OF DESIRE AND PASSION

Having waited too long, Frau Trude wastes no time making her move. Immediately following her declaration of need, the witch changes the girl into fire. The converted girl then blazes for the pyro-prone witch, who sits down to warm herself next to this flame she has so long desired. Both protagonists are highly flammable and fire operates as the tale’s core symbol. Modernity ended our forebears’ need to live daily with open flame as the major humanly controlled source of heat and light. But fire fills the realm of fairy tales, like it did the world of their earlier telling—from hearth to oven, candle to coals, and torch to stake. An essential element, it acted as a force, a tool, and a potent, if ambiguous, symbol representing both creative and destructive forces. Bottigheimer notes that fire in the Grimms’ tales ranges in meaning, “as an image of Promethean progress or domestic comfort, as well as a Satanic symbol.” In a nod to “Frau Trude,” she says “the hearth is where the witch sits” (1987, 25).2

Associated in Christian tradition with martyrdom, purification, and transformation as well as evil and damnation, fire, the tale’s central motif, grounds “Frau Trude” in familiar religious binaries. The Grimms mark the putatively innocent, if willful, girl’s self-martyrdom as well as Frau Trude’s satanic manifestation. Attempting to prevent their unblemished child from seeking Frau Trude, the parents indict her and threaten disinheritance, setting the girl on her Grimm highway to hell. At this point the tale burns zealously, fueled by defensiveness, because as the Grimms were only too well aware, protection of a young girl’s innocence—of her unknowingness—services the perpetuation of family bloodlines, property rights, and economies. Religion stands with the family as a bulwark preventing the realization of young women’s wishes and desires

The Grimms note both the standard sacred/profane and pure/impure binaries, yet the story does not ultimately support the moral divide these oppositions conventionally create. Even if chaste, the girl is not pure. Her willfulness interrupts her trip down the straight path of protected innocence, which is the course of parental, religious, and state authority. The Grimms burn her as punishment for her failure to remain exemplary, her refusal to obey. The girl goes to hell. Stained by her perversity, she dies in flames—becoming the fires of hell—and Frau Trude, the satanic force, lives on to revel in the glow. The Grimms’ warning at the tale’s end provides this equation: play with the fiery devil and you may become the devil’s flame. For the brothers, the story concludes with a teleological clunk. The girl gets what she deserves, and the witch, satisfied with capturing her prey, sits at the hearth blazing with her winnings.2

A queer approach reads “Frau Trude”’s fires differently, drawing on secular and sexual rather than religious connotations. Associations of fire with passion and love include the fourteenth-century “to inflame with passion” (L. inflammare) and “ardor” (L. ardere, to burn), referring to the heat of sexual desire (Harper 2001–10). The girl’s sense of intrigue and Frau Trude’s sense of longing meet in the flames of passion, not damnation. Fire signifies their appetite and its means of satisfaction. Frau Trude, the tale’s fire marshal, manipulates the meaning and use of fire in service of seduction. Though the girl looks through the window expecting to spy Frau Trude, she says she sees instead “the devil with a fiery head.” The woman’s retort simultaneously verifies the blazing manifestation as an identity of hers but quashes any direct equation with the satanic. She immediately reroutes the girl’s claim; she has instead “seen the witch in her proper dress” or “in all her finery” (Tatar 2004a, 368).

Frau Trude’s sartorial metaphor alludes to the red raiment of fire: to see her as she truly is, is to see her “dressed” in her elemental form. Outside the house peeping in, the girl observes only the devil; once inside, she is offered a different interpretation. Frau Trude defines herself as a witch, a kind of magnificently burning woman, whose reference to feminine finery lends a seductive shine to her self-identification. The girl will discover what her compulsion to see Frau Trude suggested: someone quite extraordinary; not a wretched hag, or a slimy ogre, but a woman dressed in finery, queen of her realm, confident in this moment of revealing her truth

What particular truth does she impart in this dramatic instance of encounter? Frau Trude’s associations with fire, witchery, the satanic, the profane, and the godless are suggestive. They point to something the text both conceals and reveals: this witch also can be read as a sodomite, harboring a lesbian desire. Research in related European materials shows the infamous sin against nature bearing a long historical relationship to fire, diabolism, and witchery.25 But according to Mackensen (1934/1940, 225), Frau Trude’s dual nomination as both witch and devil is rare.26 Yet if it codes her as sodomite (lesbian), Frau Trude’s ready substitution of herself from devil and fire to woman and witch makes perfect sense. She exercises a range of sodomitical symbols to announce her intentions. When the girl sees her as fiery devil, she sees Frau Trude as the sodomite symbol she truly represents. Then her declaration as fire-dressed witch doubles the sodomitical symbolism while indexing its humanity. Transferring sign to reality, she becomes the lusty lesbian, the woman who will have what she’s waited for, while the girl finds what she’s wanted, too.

Momentarily they stand face to face conversing. Their discursive foray concerns the actual, but this is also the moment of their truth, revealed by Frau Trude and immediately recognized by the girl. The queer utopian crux of the tale witnesses what Maria Tatar names the “magic [that] happens on the threshold of the forbidden” (2004b, 1). Their truth, to use a worn but worthy cliché, will set them both free. In this singular instant of encounter, they are present and open to each other, their agreement sealed; they enter their own time.

The girl makes no attempt to escape, nor does the witch kill her by throwing her bodily into the fire. Instead, a transformation occurs. Having demonstrated that status change—symbolic and real—can be willfully achieved, Frau Trude touches the girl for the first time, turning her into a block of wood, adequate fuel for the witch’s ardor. By first being made into a neutral source of fuel and thence into flame, the girl is not annihilated but, rather, given the elemental condition that makes it possible for her to meet the fiery Frau on mutual, powerfully erotic terms. The girl, too, dons her “proper dress.” Yearning for her for too long to simply destroy her, Frau Trude instead gives her a new and highly compatible form. The story’s dual flames, which in a conservative reading overdetermine the hellish, queerly provide a point of sexual contact and consummation. Now the girl also lives by burning, for Frau Trude and for herself. Yet she need not only burn. Frau Trude easily could convert the wood block back into girlish form; the Grimms’ “The Drummer” (Zipes 1992, 610–11) features just such reverse transformation of a burning log into a maiden at a witch’s command. Or perhaps Frau Trude may grant the girl her own capability to change at will.

Putting such speculation aside, in the end, the two effect a merger through an elemental medium. The witch, who plays with and can manifest as fire, transforms the object of her desire into a proper partner. Fire plus fire makes for greater heat and passion, with two desires burning together in the harmony and unity symbolized at the tale’s conclusion by the hearth. Erasing differences in human age, station, and history, their passion cannot be acknowledged in the language of human social life, but it can be spoken in flames.

This reading of fire finds consonance with German scholar Elke Liebs’s (1993, 128) suggestion that the burning wood, left at the finale “in voller Glut” (“full blaze” or “gleaming”), refers to the widely understood nineteenth[1]century German symbolism for sexual ripening and first experiences in love. While she does not move to a lesbian interpretation, Liebs, like Stone, leaves the question open as to why the girl blazes exuberantly in the end. Perhaps this gap can be retroactively referred to the contemporary gay colloquialism “flaming” or “to flame,” which refers to flamboyant, often excessive transgression of gender, sexuality, and other norms of behavior.27 Frau Trude’s transformation “flames” the girl, ignites her, releasing her own transgressive lesbian desire. Moreover, by remaking the girl in her fiery likeness, the Frau recruits her as protégé. No longer daughter, the girl celebrates her natal disownership by “flaming” for, and with, Frau Trude. Now, as undying homoerotic flame, she carries Frau Trude’s line forward into a future we discover here. Judgment on relations between witches and maidens too often damns them as fueled by rapaciousness, resentment, or jealousy, resulting in deceptions and negative transformations.28 Frau Trude, however, conceives a positive solution to meet her need. Using her powers to free the girl, she perpetuates their passion by ensuring their likeness as fire, not their opposition as ogre/human. The binary that might separate them goes up in flames. The fiery ending is actually a beginning for these two, whose future of transformations lies ahead for them

THE ONTOLOGY OF “FRAU TRUDE”

Finding Frau Trude’s earliest incarnations in the realm of devouring and death synchronizes her story with a greater complex of patriarchally devised narratives inspiring categorical fear and loathing of woman. They include tales of the biblical Eve and Lilith, the apocryphal Mary Magdalene, figures found in pagan antiquity—including those associated with descendents of major Greek goddesses Hecate and Artemis and mythical monsters such as the fire-breathing Chimera—and early European man-eaters and hags.29 Frau Trude’s Freudian counterpart is the phallic mother, fantasmically endowed with both the mother’s “breast” and the father’s “penis.”30 The complex problematizes the female body, appetite, sex, desire, childbirth, knowledge, and agency and is underwritten in the structural relations its female figures bear to each other, especially in terms of the life/death binary. “Frau Trude”’s early variants fit this narrative model with its reviled protagonist. A strange and estranging female character, living in a house filled with vats of gore and entrails strewn about for decorative effect, her association with misplaced blood; dismembered, disordered flesh; decomposition; and death makes her just one more in a long line of female inverts, perverts, women impossible to convert: witches

Despite its concision, “Frau Trude” provides a more detailed record than most of the multiple associations to be gleaned from witches in fairy tales. Among the most “undisciplined” of female characters (Greenhill and Tye 1997), she is unclassifiable. Largely due to their age and unmarried, nonreproductive status, witches bespeak the anomalous. They are woman/not woman, a biological and social contradiction arousing fears of pollution and requiring severe castigation, even death. Anomalous women pose a danger to the common rule of what Adrienne Rich ([1980] 1993) termed “compulsory heterosexuality”; thus their association with deviant sexualities comes as no surprise

However, witches like Frau Trude are not just out of order; amorphous shape-shifters, they are also out of form. The very qualities that marginal[1]ize them as subhuman can also lend them superhuman transformative potency. Frau Trude manifests four different personas—woman, witch, devil, and elemental fire—and she can choose to become any one of these momentarily, at will. Theatrical by nature, she plays the drama queen: a masculine devil one moment, a feminine witch the next, but always the “showgirl.” She flaunts a transvestite’s gift for rendering gender as a form of artifice (see, e.g., Garber 1992). The girl’s parents accuse “the wicked old woman” of “performing godless deeds,” and certainly, she is a performer par excellence, skilled in questioning the opposition between construction and essence. An icon of “gender trouble,” Frau Trude’s performances fully execute the witch’s anomalous/amorphous status in its ability to destabilize and denaturalize imposed categories of gender completion. As she herself suggests, it’s all a matter of “dressing” the part

Remarkably, her anomalous/amorphous status on the sex/gender/power continuum presents as patriarchy’s problem—not hers. Being impossible, she attains her power of doing the impossible and quickly brings her partner up to speed. The girl’s transformation into neutered wood, then elemental fire queers her into a powerfully amorphous state, too. Structurally, she moves from determinate gender and social categories to becoming, like Frau Trude, an unclassifiable shape-shifter, a flickering flame

In interpreting witches, exploring the relationship between normativity, anomaly, and power is critical.31 But the oppositional power politics of witchery tends to overshadow its less obvious “structures of feeling,” Raymond Williams’s (1977, 128–35) designation for the affective social content in art and literature that cannot be reduced to other systems. Queer scholars take Williams’s lead, modeling affect-centered approaches to non-normative desires, heterogeneous sexualities, and abjection.32 In their keeping, Frau Trude’s story and others like it beg new questions of a queerer, more intimate kind, exposing suppressed, ignored, or coded links between witchery and lesbianism. How do fairy-tale witches feel? Can we read their emotions as well as their powers? How do they change over time? They seem to take pleasure in being alone, but do they also suffer from loneliness? Are they capable of love as well as desire? Are they a special case of the subject whose evolving consciousness has been obscured by structural bias?

In beginning to answer these complex questions, we see certain emotional intricacies and contradictions of lesbian sexuality and subjectivity writ in the mysteries of Frau Trude’s tale. Witches do have feelings, and complex ones at that. The Frau’s uncertain future recalls that of the protagonist in novelist Irène Némirovsky’s Fire in the Blood: “It might be impossible to predict the future, but I believe that certain powerful emotions make themselves felt months, even years, in advance, through a strange quiver in the heart” (2008, 134–35). Having felt that quiver, Frau Trude’s desire for the girl provokes new, if uncertain, affective urgencies. She craves, but not the old yearning for flesh to be devoured or for lips to be smacked at the taste of blood. Now she wants the warmth of an overheated girl. Her cravings have altered into longings for sexual relationship and union with another. And along with them have come emotional vulnerabilities and ontological quandaries as well.

Traditionally, ATU 334 resolves in formulaic murder or escape. “Frau Trude” finishes differently, not in determinant action, but in an unresolved mood of contemplation. The flaming frenzy of anticipation and desire modulates, literally and figuratively, to enlightenment, thereby marking the crucial ontological, as different from gendered or sexual, outcomes of our story. Certainly they are wrapped together, but Frau Trude’s tale is striking in the degree to which it ultimately resonates with Sue-Ellen Case’s proposition that queer theory does its real work “not at the site of gender, but at the site of ontology, to shift the ground of being itself, thus challenging the Platonic parameters of being—the borders of life and death” (1991, 3).

The ontological concerns of “Frau Trude” underscore its profound interest in discovering the truth: who knows it, who doesn’t, who wants to know it, who represents it, who can claim it, and, finally, who is absolved by it. Characters pronounce the truth, argue its status, and make its case. The parents think they know the truth about Frau Trude and her godless ways; they defend the “normal” and “natural.” The girl seeks to discover the truth of Frau Trude on her own terms. She wants to “see” the naked truth of this “other” and when she does, she tells Frau Trude the truth of her observation. Their subsequent mutual interrogation tests the truth of the visible until Frau Trude proclaims her truth, dressed in metaphor. Her long-awaited encounter with the girl results in the witch’s moment of truth; she “comes out,” entrusting the girl with the knowledge of who she really is and what she truly wants. All this stress about the nature of truth finally dissolves at the hearth, that ancient symbol of domestic peace and harmony, and the story finishes with the Frau’s distinct pleasure in gaining more light.

Having cried out to the girl right before changing her, “now you shall give me light,” she afterward sits next to the blazing essence to warm herself and also to enjoy a pure moment—perhaps the one she has waited for most—of receiving the fire/girl’s full gleam. Her delight evident, she philosophizes, with satisfaction, in the final line, “For once it burns brightly!” Having touched, transformed, and set the girl burning, the initial passion[1]ate meeting subsides in meditative afterglow. In an observed moment of domestic quietude and contentment, we picture a woman at last brightened by the light of her life. Notably, the Grimms’ prototype for “Frau Trude,” Meier Teddy’s 1823 poem, does not end in the witch’s cry for light, only in her desire for warmth. But by partnering with light in Wilhelm Grimm’s version, Frau Trude gains a new eminence

Light, like fire, is old in symbolic meaning, variously associated with soul, spirit, higher mind, new knowledge, and with life itself.33 This witch, whose long history in the tale world has been defined by darkness, menace, and death, at last sees a glimmer of freedom from her sullied past. As fire, the girl stokes the old woman’s passion, but as light she brings what feels like relief. A queer liveliness pervades the story’s end. Frau Trude no longer kills what she craves. Instead she keeps it near, treasures it, marries it. Gone are the entrails and blood-filled vats that crammed her home in earlier variants of the tale. Now her house of marvels produces visions and transformations, not corpses, and her distinct yet fluid manifestations as fire, devil, woman, and witch mark her own ambivalent state of becoming. The man-eating sociopath of old is changing her one-dimensional, monstrous, murdering ways. Done with those centuries-old defensive, ogreish shenanigans, she is no longer interested in finality; her teleological darkness has morphed into a desire for ontological brightness, a shift from the determinate, death, to the possible, life. She cries out her need for light eagerly as much as gleefully. The witch herself is transforming, undergoing a process of self-shattering that would free her

Frau Trude’s emotional longing for the girl is critical to this move. Long[1]ing and waiting pose different temporal meanings in this story. Waiting tropes seduction and desire, but longing associates with a deeper need for companionship and kinship. Animals, ogres, humans all engage in mating games and stratagems to satisfy base instincts for food and sex. For certain, the witch retains a good bit of all that sordidness. Yet her longing for the girl seems to demonstrate a desire to be better than who she is—or was: not just hungry, not just hormonal. Frau Trude tentatively experiences the warmth of the heartfelt, poised to reap the benefits of light.

As for the girl, her transformation from human to elemental form guar[1]antees a change from gendered mortality to immortal status. Her youthful energy, sexual curiosity, and willfulness converted into fire and bright light, she blazes; she gleams; she is passion and hope all at once. Now she is the symbol of life. The Frau remarks, almost surprised, how brightly the girl’s light shines. She implies that it’s giving her more than she knew to expect, not only passion and light, but the illumination of life itself. Not a figure of innocence betrayed or moral martyrdom, the gleaming girl ends the story as Frau Trude’s redeemer and, by implication, rescuer of a whole class of witches heretofore stranded in the realm of death. She becomes an exemplar of what gay beat poet Harold Norse calls “the fiery force”: “Nothing more than the life force as we know it. It is the flame of desire and love, of sex and beauty, of pleasure and joy as we consume and are consumed, as we burn with pleasure and burn out in time” (2003, xix). Of course, neither the girl nor the witch “burn[s] out in time.” Living outside mortal constraints in the fiery force of their tale, they perpetuate, for our understanding, their queer ontology of pure flame, pure eroticism, and pure light.

The truth at the core of “Frau Trude” dissolves the potency of prejudices stemming from the “inclusion/exclusion,” “who fits/who doesn’t” binary. In this tale, truth and transgression walk together to undo any determinate calculation of the fixed or proper meanings of sex, gender, age, feeling, or being, all finally summarized in the meaning of home. The parents work the inclusion/exclusion binary as the calling card of their authority; they want the girl under their roof and they have the right to disown her. Initially, the girl possesses all the trappings of heteronormative familial inclusion, but she chooses to relinquish them. Accepting exclusion from her family to come to Frau Trude, she initiates the possibility of her inclusion in a new relationship.34 Frau Trude personifies exclusion, as all witches do, and she exploits the fearful power it inspires. But she also endures its loneliness. She chooses the girl to belong to her, so as no longer to feel essentially excluded and alone. Coupled, the two seal a transgressive—and innovative—bond of kinship in their house in the woods. Frau Trude and the girl have, in the end, been absorbed into their own self-created “fit” unopposed, consummated but not consumed.

[balkanradfem]

Favourite Fictional Women poll: FINAL LIST nominations + RULES (nominations closed)

Books:

Elphaba (Wicked)

Hermione (Harry Potter)

Minerva McGonagall (Harry Potter)

Luna (Harry Potter)

Bellatrix Lestrange (Harry Potter)

Sophie (Howl's Moving Castle)

Bella Swan (Twilight)

Lucy (The Chronicles of Narnia)

Susan (The Chronicles of Narnia)

Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)

Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice)

Jo (Little Women)

Alanna (The Song of the Lioness)

Ichigo (Kamikaze Girls)

Momoko (Kamikaze Girls)

Phryne Fisher (Phryne Fisher Detective Novels)

Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs)

Robin Ellacott (Cormoran Strike)

Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade Series)

Gideon (The Locked Tomb)

Harrowhark Nonagesimus (The Locked Tomb)

Tattersail (Malazan Book of the Fallen)

Lyra (His Dark Materials)

Lisbeth Salander (The Millenium Trilogy)

Daja Kisubo (Circle of Magic)

Éowyn (Lord of the Rings)

Honor Harrington (Honor Harrington)

Zahrah (Zahrah the Windseeker)

Clair (Outlander)

Margo (The Magicians)

Camille Preaker (Sharp Objects)

Brienne of Tarth (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Cersei (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Daenerys Targaryen (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Arya (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Sansa ( A Song of Ice and Fire)

Rhaenyra Targaryen (Fire and Blood)

Eileen Dunlop (Eileen)

Romy Silvers (The Loneliest Girl in the Universe)

Lúthien (Sillmarilion)

Lady Sotofa (Echo series)

Esme Weatherwax (Discworld)

Angua von Überwald (Discworld)

Susan Sto Helit (Discworld)

Tiffany Aching (Discworld)

Nina Hill (The Bookish Life of Nina Hill)

Keladry (Protector of the Small series)

Shay (Uglies)

Cassie (Animorphs)

The Groke (the Moomins)

Tooticky (the Moomins)

Maximum Ride (Maximum Ride)

Auri (Kingkiller Chronicles)

Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables)

Emily Starr (Emily of New Moon)

Penelope (Circe by Madeline Miller)

Rose Hathaway (Vampire Academy)

Katsa (Graceling)

Yennefer of Vengerberg (Witchier)

Dr. Scarlet Clarke (They Never Learn)

Inej Ghafa (Six of Crows)

Ronja (Ronja)

Violet (Asoue)

Medea (Greek Mythology)

Medusa (Greek Mythology)

Jude (Folk of the Air)

Agatha (Girl Genius)

Annabeth Chase (Percy Jackson)

Carrie (Carrie)

Movies

Miss Honey (Matilda)

Matilda (Matilda)

Barbie (Barbie's universe)

Ellen Louise Ripley (Alien)

Evelyn O'Connell (The Mummy)

Peggy Carter (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Sarah Conner (Terminator)

Cruella de Vil (Cruella)

Yzma (Emperor's New Groove)

Dr. Ellie Sattler (Jurrasic Park)

Harley Quinn (DC universe)

Amy Dunne (Gone Girl)

Jennifer (Jennifer's Body)

Maude Lebowski (Big Lebowski)

Eurodia Holmes (Enola)

Amy Adam (Arrival)

Ginger Fitzgerald (Ginger Snaps)

Mary Mason (American Mary)

Elsa (Frozen)

Mulan (Mulan 1998)

Beatrix Kiddo (Kill Bill)

O-Ren Ishii (Kill Bill)

Trinity (Matrix)

Sidney Prescott (Scream movies)

Dani Ardor (Midsommar)

M3gan (M3gan)

Aila (Rhymes for Young Ghouls)

Princess Kida (Atlantis: The Lost Empire)

Mother Aughra (Dark crystal)

Elizabeth Swan (Pirates of the Carribean)

Marla Grayson (I care a lot)

Heloise (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)

Diana (Wonder Woman)

San (Princess Mononoke)

Zeniba (Spirited Away)

Chihiro (Spirited Away)

Wlle Woods (Legally Blonde)

Rey (Star Wars)

Princess Leia (Star Wars)

Haley Graham (Stick it)

Cruella (101 Dalmatian)

Kiki (Kiki's Delivery Service)

TV Shows

Xena (Xena the Warrior Princess)

Gabrielle (Xena the Warrior Princess)

Callisto (Xena the Warrior Princess)

Buffy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Faith Lehane (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Willow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Sabrina (Sabrina the Teenage Witch)

Morgana Pendragon (Merlin)

Catharine Cawood (Happy Valley)

Donna Noble (Doctor Who)

Martha Jones (Doctor Who)

Female Doctor Who (Doctor Who)

Kaya (Supernatural)

Charlie Bradbury (Supernatural)

Claire (Supernatural)

Veronica Mars (Veronica Mars)

Anna Clare (Being Human)

Poussey Washington (Orange is the New Black)

Sister Michael (Derry Girls)

Orla (Derry Girls)

Hayley (Hard Candy)

Vilanelle (Killing Eve)

Eve (Killing Eve)

Anne Lister (Gentleman Jack)

Ann Walker (Gentleman Jack)

Kim (Kim Possible)

Daria Morgendorffer (Daria)

Temperance Brennan (Bones)

Kim Wexler (Better Call Saul)

Katara (Avatar The Last Airbender)

Azula (Avatar The Last Airbender)

Toph (Avatar The Last Airbender)

Krosh (Kid Cosmic)

Guinan (Star Trek New Generations)

Bo-Katan Kryze (Star Wars)

Dong Eun (The Glory)

Leslie Knope (Parks and Recreation)

April Ludgate (Parks and Recreation)

Rosa Diaz (Brooklyn 99)

Dana Scully (X Files)

Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager)

Calamity Jane (Deadwood)

Flea (Fleabag)

Michonne (The Walking Dead)

Trixie (Call the Midwife)

Sister Monica Joan (Call the Midwife)

Regina Mills (Once Upon a Time)

Emma Swan (Once Upon a Time)

Ruby Lucas (Once Upon a Time)

Mulan (Once Upon a Time)

Samatha/Sam Carter (Stargate SG-1)

Kira Nerys (Star Trek: Deep Space 9)

Jadzia Dax(Star Trek: Deep Space 9)

Eleanor (The Good Place)

Annalise Keating (How to Get Away with Murder)

Cheryl Blossom (Riverdale)

Miranda Bailey (Grey’s Anatomy)

Lizzie McGuire (Lizzie McGuire)

Catherine the Great (The Great)

Dolores Abernathy (Westworld)

Maeve Millay (Westworld)

Lorelai (Gilmore Girls)

Paris (Gilmore Girls)

Morticia Addams (Addams Family)

Elisa Maza (Gargoyles)

Vera Bennett (Wentworth (2013)

Joan Ferguson (Wentworth (2013)

Constance Hardbroom (The Worst Witch (1998)

Princess Bubblegum (Adventure Time)

Marceline the Vampire Queen (Adventure Time)

Monica (Friends)

Phoebe (Friends)

Maisel (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

Shiv Roy (Succession)

Hannah (Please Like Me)

Lupe (A League of Their Own)

Jess (A League of Their Own)

Shahrzad (One Thousand and One Nights)

Michael Burnham (Star Trek Discovery)

 Emperor Phillipa Georgiou (Star Trek Discovery)

Dee Reynold (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia)

Kara Thrace (Battlestar Galactica)

Donna (Twin Peaks)

Laura palmer (Twin Peaks)

Audrey(Twin Peaks)

Marwa (What we do in the Shadows)

Nadja (What we do in the Shadows)

Love Quinn (You)

Allison (Orphan Black)

Cosima (Orphan Black)

Nyota Uhura (Star Trek: The Original Series)

Lisa Cuddy (House MD)

Leela (Futurama)

Bean (Disenchantment)

Pam (Archer)

Grace (Grace and Frankie)

Frankie (Grace and Frankie)

Helga Pataki (Hey Arnold)

Anime/Manga

Sophie (Howl's Moving Castle)

Usagi Tsukino (Sailor Moon)

Hotaru - Sailor Saturn (Sailor Moon)

Michiru – Sailor Neptune (Sailor Moon)

Haruka – Sailor Uranus (Sailor Moon)

Rei – Sailor Mars (Sailor Moon)

Homura (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

Sakura Kinomoto (CardCaptor Sakura)

Tomoyo Daidouji (CardCaptor Sakura)

Onpu (Ojamajo Doremi)

Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell)

Striga (Castlevania)

Carmilla (Castlevania)

Misa Amane (Death Note)

Asuka Langley Soryu (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

Riza Hawkeye (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Shinobu Kocho (Demon Slayer)

Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena)

Nana Osaki (Nana)

Hachi (Nana)

Jean (Claymore)

Clare (Claymore)

Theresa (Claymore)

Helen (Claymore)

Deneve (Claymore)

Casca (Berserk)

Haruno Sakura (Naruto)

Yosano (Bungo Stray Dogs)

Tome Kurata (Mob Psycho 100)

Nikaido (Dorohedoro)

Nia (Dorohedoro)

Maki Zen'in (Jujutsu Kaisen 0)

Yuno Gasai (Mirai Nikki)

Ichigo Momomiya (Tokyo Mew Mew)

Zakuro Fujiwara (Tokyo Mew Mew)

Historia Reiss (Attack on Titan)

Mikasa Ackermann (Attack on Titan)

Games

Nancy Drew (Nancy Drew)

April Ryan (The Longest Journey)

Kate Walker (Syberia)

Zelda (Legend of Zelda)

Impa (Legend of Zelda)

Urdosa (Legend of Zelda)

Evie Frye (Assassin's Creed)

Senua (Senua's Sacrifice)

Aloy (Horizon Zero Dawn)

Elisabet Sobeck (Horizon Zero Dawn)

Serena (Skyrim)

Frea (Skyrim)

Morrigan (Dragon Age Origins)

Kreia (Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II)

Kassandra of Sparta (Assassin's Creed Odyssey)

Heather Mason (Silent Hill 3)

Reika (Fatal Frame)

Rei (Fatal Frame:The Tormented)

An Shiraishi (Project SEKAI)

Nene Kusanagi (Project SEKAI)

Ena Shinonome (Project SEKAI)

Jesse Faden (Control)

Almalexia (The Elder Scrolls)

Billie Lurk (Dishonored)

Emily Kaldwin (Dishonored)

Cecelia (Dishonored)

Lizzy Stride (Dishonored)

Delilah Copperspoon (Dishonored)

Lohse (Divinity: Original Sin II)

Sebille Kaleran (Divinity: Original Sin II)

Siva (Divinity: Original Sin II)

Malady (Divinity: Original Sin II)

Dallis the Hammer (Divinity: Original Sin II)

Toriel (Undertale)

Undyne (Undertale)

Alphys (Undertale)

Commander Shepard (Mass Effect)

Tali'Zorah nar Rayya (Mass Effect)

Liara T'Soni (Mass Effect)

Aria T'Loak (Mass Effect)

Nyreen Kandros (Mass Effect)

Shala'Raan vas Tonba (Mass Effect)

Matriarch Aethyta (Mass Effect)

Yuna (Final Fantasy X)

Abby (The Last of Us)

Ellie (The Last of Us)

GLaDOS (Portal)

Chell (Portal)

Dr. Suvi Anwar (Mass Effect Andromeda)

Leliana (Dragon Age)

Parvati Holcomb (The Outer Worlds)

Chloe Price (Life is Strange)

2B (Nier Automata)

Comics

Stephanie Brown (DC comics)

Cassandra Cain (DC comics)

Zatanna Zatara (DC comics)

Elektra Natchios (Marvel comics)

Fanfiction

Ebony Dark'ness Raven Dementia Way

Web comics

Vriska Serket (Homestuck)

Jaden (Leasebound)

Antimony Carver (Gunnerkrigg Court)

Fictional Movies

Katya (Goncharov)

Podcasts

The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home from (Welcome to Nightvale)

Plays

Lady Mabeth (Macbeth)

Clytemnestra (Oresteia)

Miscellanous

Hatsune Miku (Vocaloid)

RULES:

All fictional women from a category will be randomized, and put into polls

Whoever gets 50 votes automatically proceeds into the next round. There won't be only one winner for each poll!

We will do one category at the time. We'll start with books.

We'll decide on a winner of each category, and then whoever had the most votes, will proceed into the Final 10.

I'll calculate how many votes each woman got, so that at the end of the voting, you can see how many other women also adored your favourite ones :)

This also means that once you vote, if there's someone else you also want to see in the finals, you can reblog and let your followers know who already has enough votes, and who needs more in order to proceed. I'll also sometimes reblog polls announcing that a certain character has made the cut, and now others need your attention. We're trying to see which ones are loved and adored enough to actually get a lot of votes, even with competition. The voting starts at the end of nominations!

(POLLS ARE COMING SHORTLY)

[in-the-shadow-of-the-blog]

As soon as I saw this screenshot from @phinik-nonw, it reminded me of my headcanon that Aesop often reads to my OC Edith when she has a headache. So I made a gif and wrote a quick little thing, complete with crappy original poem and a single pass of proofreading.

[Edited to add another, longer gif at the bottom because I just couldn't let this go.]

—

"Skipping dinner again?"

Edith turned when she heard Aesop behind her. She stood by the railing overlooking the courtyard, holding a book. "It's so noisy, I cannot bear it tonight."

He came to stand beside her, putting an arm around her shoulder. "Another headache."

"All day. I wanted to read, but I can't focus."

"So you were thinking of taking a walk."

Edith leaned her head against his shoulder. "You know me so well."

He turned, steering her down the stone steps toward the courtyard. A little smile played on his lips. "And I know you like for me to accompany you."

"Careful, dearest, you'll spoil me." Being playful wasn't easy with the throbbing in her temples, but she would make an effort not to be miserable.

They did not walk far; down to the grounds where the castle gave way to grass and trees. The moon was bright, a breeze rustling the shrubbery and trees. Chirping crickets were their only company, all the students busy with their meal.

"It's so peaceful out here tonight." Edith looked wistfully out at the horizon. "I could stay out here all night."

"All night? That might be a bit much."

Edith ignored his teasing.

Aesop took off his coat and spread it out on the grass. He gestured for her to sit, and Edith was happy to oblige. Frowning at the little grunt of discomfort he uttered as Aesop sat beside her, Edith leaned against him. It was a position they took often, simply enjoying each other's closeness.

"Let me see this book of yours."

It was a small book of verse, covered in plum colored cloth. He opened it to the page she had marked, and cleared his throat.

With that soft smile she always seemed to have for him, Edith kissed Aesop on the cheek. She lay back, nestling against his coat as Aesop read from the pages. The warmth of his voice sank into her, and Edith felt the tension her muscles loosen.

Nature shares in grief with me

A quiet in the air

Gone are days that dawn of roses

To twilight's dismal stare

Absence felt intently through

Repeated days of grey

Wilted flowers upon the fields

In sun no longer sway

Each night reminds with breezes sweet

An ardor lost to death

No more upon my cheek to feel

The warmth of lover's breath

Aesop looked down at Edith, and he thought for a moment she had fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed, dappled moonlight making patterns ove her peaceful features. He reached down to stroke her hair, brushing a stray lock out of her face.

"I'm awake." Her voice was soft, a tone Aesop recognized as a sign of contentment. "Read me another?"

Aesop chuckled, turning to the next poem. "As many as you like."

[clavissionary-position]

CYRAN x READER

More Questions Than Bodies Have Answers For

ONESHOT . SMUT . ANGST

minors/ageless blogs please do not read/like/reblog any of my works where this warning appears (you will be blocked)

x o x o x o

"Cyran... Rose... You are... the..." Your voice sounds strange to your ears.

That last moan from you, that hideously lewd mewling that no bookstore employee has ever made, echoes fresh in your memory, and fresh onto the slender, freckled hand between your quivering legs.

Has he done this before? You're certain now that Cyran is pressing shapes into you that very much do not exist in reality. And the way his low panting, at once dreamy and bestial, matches his strokes is nothing short of hypnotic.

But you can't let yourself runaway with it.

Cyran's not on break, exactly. What are the chances Clavis even remembers whatever errand he sent him on this time? The castle grounds are vast, and there are avenues galore to a particular destination. Detours are completely natural. Probably.

You happened to be in the wine cellar running an errand for Jin, and Cyran happened to... happen by... and...

The exact sequence of events has been lost to heady mouth-plundering, and most of it rattled from your train of thought when your back hit the side of some shelf in the damp dark.

"You're nervous." Cyran ends his sibilant consonants the way an Obsidianite does, but his terse half-lilt is through-and-through the mark of a Rhodolitian knight. And his voice--something you can no longer divorce from the tongue of an amorous kisser--is so terribly warm and balmy.

So why don't your nerves settle into its safety?

Cyran seems unsure of what to do for a moment. His gaze is drawn to your lips but he pulls it back to read your eyes every time he strays. With each flicker his irises catch the hanging lantern's rippling firelight, somehow making him even more bewitching to look at. And that does the complete opposite of putting your breathing into order.

Finally Cyran slides the hand he has over your breast under your arm to wrap around your back. His calloused fingertips run reassuring lines up and down between your shoulder-blades. His other hand pulls away from your center and begins massaging your leg in a similar rhythm. The feel is still hot and sensuous around the edges, but his intent is clear. He's even put some distance between you two, as you can no longer feel his ardor against your inner thigh. And of course that's upsetting too.

"I don't know why I'm being like this," you answer honestly. You pull him closer and rest your forehead against his disheveled collar. He'll be able to hide that love-bite easy enough.

Your eyelids feel heavy all of a sudden, with a false drowsiness that comes from overstimulation. It's Cyran's scent. It truly drives you mad.

Cyran's scent becomes more and more familiar to you with every encounter. Soldier's musk, sweat, but those are mere windfalls against the full-bodied bouquet of sunshine and summer that imbues his skin. Yet it's not wild like unchecked garden growth. Everything about Cyran feels ordered and disciplined. Like he's shopped through time and placed every new vial of himself into a gorgeous display for anyone to appreciate.

At their leisure. Even when princes linger in the same room.

Cyran is a wonder.

But that order and discipline seem shaken now. You don't know if you're projecting or if Cyran is every bit as nervous as you are. This is what, though, your third time doing this together? There is nothing forbidding you from having any sort of affair with...

Wait, is this just an affair? Is that what's bothering you?

...Is this the best time to have that conversation?

Should that conversation have been had three trysts ago?

You don't like that word, you think. You and Cyran are not that word.

Cyran is staring at you wide-eyed. "Why are you making that face?"

You bite your lip and tuck your head against his shoulder again. "What face? Don't read too much into it, please. ...What face?"

"I don't know!" Cyran panics, dropping both hands and surrendering you to the cold cellar. "I'm sorry, I should just-"

"No, please!" You wrap your arms around him. Your heartbeat seeks his out where your chests connect. "You feel so good." It's true but also not what you mean at all.

Cyran falls silent for a moment too long. You count three drops of water from a loose tap somewhere in the shadows. Then he sighs and gently unlatches your arms. "We should-"

"Talk?" Your voice is pulled taut. "Can we?"

"I really have to go soon."

"Cyran..." But hope springs to life when you notice his expression twist at his own words. Maybe he's saying the wrong words too, just like you are?

Still, he walks backward from you, boots strangely silent over the stone floor, until he hits the shelf opposite. "What happens when your month here ends?"

"I go back to town." No. No, you want to say so much more but the words are getting lost somewhere, because Cyran Rose is a knight, and Cyran Rose is kind and beautiful, and maybe you and Cyran Rose never should have happened and-

"And would you think of me?" A voice that vulnerable has no business being this far away from your listening ears. "Do you think of me?"

"Cyran, I wouldn't touch you like this if you weren't on my mind literally all the time."

"All the time?" You can hear the embers of a smile. "Even when... you're, um... alone?"

Your cheeks are a furnace. Certainly it's only natural for Cyran to ask this, and you'd be lying if you weren't immediately, presently, thoroughly occupied with what his answer would be to the same question. You wonder what his bedchambers look like, or if he has to stop himself and duck into some alcove between training, ashamed and cheeks burning, or even...

You blow out a mouthful of air and scuffle your toes against the ground. You were thinking of Cyran very intimately just this morning before Rio brought you your tea. "Would the truth make you uncomfortable?"

"If the truth is what I want it to be then I think it would make me incredibly..." He suddenly turns around and faces the shelf. "I'm sorry. This conversation has gotten so weird, and it's entirely my doing. I'm so sorry."

The sight of this usually so placid knight cowering from you in a cellar draws and quarters you between disbelief, adoration, confusion and a sudden desire to tease.

"Are you still in a rush to leave?"

"Honestly? I'd love to just evaporate away right now."

You wait. You wait an entire minute, not saying anything. And at no point does Cyran make any move to leave. In fact, he even looks over his shoulder, and the look in his eye...

Emboldened, you take several steps toward him and hug him from behind. Emboldened, you slide your hand over the front of his pants, hoping...

Cyran's unfiltered groan fills the entire cellar. Then he bonks his head against the shelf in front of him. "Fuck. Excuse me. Wow. That was loud."

"It was." You press your chest against his back and writhe upwards, finding it strangely easy to be coquettish. "It was really hot too."

Cyran clears his throat. "Shouldn't we be talking?"

"Shouldn't you be leaving?"

"I'm rather, uncomfortably comfortable right where I am, thanks."

Another two drops of water fill the silence. Then the tension bursts into mutual laughter.

If Cyran's voice is lovely with hellos and small-talk, it is pearls on a necklace with laughter. As rich as any prince.

And the way his laugh seems to dance perfectly around yours? How many couples can say that?

Couple. Now that's a word you like. But it's up to Cyran to pull that into his vocabulary for you two.

And there's still a chance that he...

You drop your hand but Cyran catches your wrist and guides you back.

"Cyran...?" You turn your head and rest your cheek against his back.

"Please. I like it when you think of me."

Your heart surges. "Can I take that to mean what I hope you mean?"

He cups your palm around him, rubbing slow, languorous strokes along the hardened length. "I wouldn't want to be touched like this unless you were the one touching me." His breathing is hypnotic with how controlled it is, how it compliments the movements of his and your hand.

You do, you really truly do. Want to runaway with him.

Again, and again, and again.

Lost in the moment, in Cyran, in his quiet beauty, you press a light kiss into his back. "Then maybe... you could show me your bedroom sometime?"

--

credit as always to thewitchofbooks for cyran info and inspiration

[queenaryastark]

Margaery, Alysanne, and Arya: The People's Queens 👸

I know where you were, the queen thought. Her informers were very good about keeping her apprised of Margaery’s movements. Such a restless girl, our little queen. She seldom let more than three days pass without going off for a ride. Some days they would ride along the Rosby road to hunt for shells and eat beside the sea. Other times she would take her entourage across the river for an afternoon of hawking. The little queen was fond of going out on boats as well, sailing up and down the Blackwater Rush to no particular purpose. When she was feeling pious she would leave the castle to pray at Baelor’s Sept. She gave her custom to a dozen different seamstresses, was well-known amongst the city’s goldsmiths, and had even been known to visit the fish market by the Mud Gate for a look at the day’s catch. Wherever she went, the smallfolk fawned on her, and Lady Margaery did all she could to fan their ardor. She was forever giving alms to beggars, buying hot pies off bakers’ carts, and reining up to speak to common tradesmen.

---

But the king was deaf to sense, thanks to his little queen. “If we mingle with the commons, they will love us better.” -- Cersei VI, AFFC

*****

It is written that the young king and queen were seldom apart during that time, sharing every meal, talking late into the night of the green days of their childhood and the challenges ahead, fishing and hawking together, mingling with the island’s smallfolk in dockside inns, reading to one another from dusty leatherbound tomes they found in the castle library, taking lessons together from Dragonstone’s maesters (“for we still have much to learn,” Alysanne is said to have reminded her husband), praying beside Septon Oswyck.

______

The last years of Alysanne Targaryen were sad and lonely ones. In her youth, Good Queen Alysanne had loved her subjects, lords and commons alike. She had loved her women’s courts, listening, learning, and doing what she could to make the realm a kinder place. -- F&B

*****

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. This Mycah was the worst; a butcher’s boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers.

----

Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half the time. Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.” At Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The next time it would be Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories.

Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father’s table and listen to them talk. She had loved listening to the men on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights and bold young squires, grizzled old men-at-arms. She used to throw snowballs at them and help them steal pies from the kitchen. Their wives gave her scones and she invented names for their babies and played monsters-and-maidens and hide-the-treasure and come-into-my-castle with their children. Fat Tom used to call her “Arya Underfoot,” because he said that was where she always was. She’d liked that a lot better than “Arya Horserace.” -- AGOT

[draqo-pctter]

nostalgia // a dramione drabble

words: 562 / tags: angst, memories are liars, but love lasts forever

Hogsmeade sat mostly empty as Draco made his way down the cobblestone street with his hands in his pockets. Rain fell from the gray clouds above in a soft but persistent sheet, clinging to his clothes and filling his dragonhide boots. With each step he took toward the castle, memories of her jumped at him from behind buildings and beneath trees with faded red and orange leaves.

If asked, he would never admit that he’d only gone to France for a Potions Mastery to get as far away from their memory as possible. And he would lie for days about why he’d accepted a position teaching Potions at Hogwarts, refusing to acknowledge the way memories of late nights in the dungeons still clung to him like the rain.

Draco often managed to push thoughts of pressing Hermione against the side of the Three Broomsticks when they’d been little more than children to the back of his mind. But, sometimes, he couldn’t help but stare at the old stone wall and remember the way her back had arched against his touch and the way her curls got stuck on chips in the wall.

Or the time they’d stopped halfway across the bridge, forearms resting on the railing and shoulders pressed together. They’d spent hours like that – leaning, laughing, falling in love. Planning a future that would never come to fruition with all the ardor that came with being young.

Wet leaves and downtrodden weeds gave way beneath Draco’s feet as he approached the castle, and the courtyard where he’d first considered proposing. He’d been eighteen and smitten beyond belief, thinking that if he didn’t have Hermione, he didn’t want anyone else. Even the Quidditch pitch in the distance was haunted by the memory of her cheering him on during games their Eighth Year, his emerald green scarf woven with her burgundy one around her neck.

Inside the castle, the halls were quiet enough for him to hear the ghost of her laughter bouncing off the bricks and getting stuck behind tapestries. Whispered words and promises that burnt up in the torches on the walls, never to see the light of day. Hope that fizzled out and dissipated slowly, bit by bit, until it crept up on them with a certainty that ripped down any doubt that might have lingered.

Because, of course, Hogsmeade and the bridge and the courtyard didn’t want to remember the jealousy that rippled beneath both of their skins. The Quidditch pitch had forgotten the way Hermione grew frustrated with his return to everyone’s good graces, being stopped by witches and wizards alike on his way out of the locker room.

And the halls and their ever changing portraits had neglected to echo the sounds of their whispered arguments and the times Draco wondered if that would be the rest of his life – arguing with her over a comment someone made that she should have ignored, or fighting the urge to say things he knew would cut too deep to heal.

Nostalgia was a dirty liar that insisted things were better than they seemed. It was also the stuff his bones were made of, and the wind that ruffled his hair. It rested in his desk drawer, waited in the ingredients cabinet, and reared its ugly head every time Hermione’s carefully crafted smile graced the cover of the Daily Prophet.