#byron imagine

[gatorbites-imagines]

Uhhh maybe something something with werewolf!mreader and count orlok?🥰

Count Byron Orlok x Werewolf male reader

Ficlet

I spent way too long reading about old werewolf mythos to write this. Reader’s kind of a mix of the different myths I found, and my own cooking. I took mild inspo from the Neuri people, and the myth of Lycaon, and what I could find about Mount Lykaion.

Lil bit of Thomas x reader, but its not really important.

Nosferatu 2024 spoilers ig?

For many years you have wandered and existed, whether you could claim to be alive or not was something you had dismissed many years ago. You remembered being born to a nomadic people who wandered from one place to another, passing their tales verbally and through song, never staying in one place for long. You remember the older men leaving for days at a time, only to return to your people, battered, bruised and exhausted, but the usual hunger in their eyes sated.

Memories of your first transformation were blurry at best, only weak memories of pain, blood, hunger, hopelessness. There wasn’t much need to remember your younger years, just that your father had been a beast amongst beasts, and so had you. When you came too after the first shift, you awoke naked and bloody, the camp of the people that were yours, destroyed.

Mixtures of flesh, fur and gore lay scattered, the tents and makeshift homes torn apart, from what looked like a wild animal trying to break in to devour whoever was inside. The taste of blood in your mouth and meat stuck between your teeth, was all you needed to know. You were that beast, and you had devoured them all. Man, woman, child and wolf, all torn apart by your hunger.

You remember stumbling away from what remained of your family, friends and near, naked as the day you were born. The cold feeling of falling into a stream, of all the blood washing off your body, washing away your sins. Memories of stumbling along, uncaring of your naked nature, so full of regret and horror of yourself and what you were.

Not much could be remembered from that time, only flashes of pain as you transformed once more, and devoured, be it human or animal. Everything only became clear in a mountain, where a cult worshipping wolves and those who could transform had found you. You learned that they were cursed by a god to be what they were, but you? You were born this way, gifted.

Their chants and magic taught you control of your inner beast. Where before there had been two beings inside you, wolf and man, there now was one. In the end you wandered from this group, leaving them to their whims of cannibalism and human sacrifice.

With control of your inner hunger, of your lack of humanity and beastly desires, you wandered. You slept when you needed to, and ate when you were hungry. You could even take part in humanity at times, joining celebrations, or sleeping in a real bed every now and then. Where raw flesh and blood tasted divine, their dishes and spices were enough to keep you sated for longer.

You never kept track of your age, but you watched as the old gods fell, and was replaced by another. A pantheon of gods, with so many duties and whims, replaced by one who became three, yet were still one. You watched as their influence grew, as their one god became the one most worshipped.

You watched as many were killed in cold blood for not worshipping their one god, or were tortured for going against the word of their holy book. It was during this holy period that you discovered your weakness to silver as well, but you being naturally born this way, let you survive it, unlike those cursed to be like you.

Your long wandering took you to somewhere in the Romanian mountains, where superstition and beliefs were as strong as ever, where a count ruled over the land, a count who yearned for immortality. Maybe it was the way you dressed when he saw you for the first time that caught his interest. He wore a cape of sheepskin, where yours was that of a wolf, the head thrown over your own almost like a mask or a hood.

Byron Orlok was his name. And he was handsome, as handsome as the men of this era could be, even if his eyes were dark and hungered for something beyond mortality, even as he buried himself in the occult to seek it. The tales of your own long life, what little you told him, only fueled him. If you could live from before the very creation of Christianity, then he too could become immortal. Unageing.

Your wolf form lingered around his home, a large building far beyond anything you could have ever seen in your youth. The sounds of his transformation, the reek of sulfur and acid, like the bile of a stomach, was so powerful that you felt that even the wandering natives would smell it. and yet as he screamed and wailed, you lay still, your massive wolf head resting on top of your paws. It was not your duty to save him or stop him, his demons and gods were not connected to you.

In his death, Byron Orlok did not cease moving. His corpse and body still moved and spoke during the night, before the sun rose and the first rooster’s crow. and you, you stayed. Over your many years of life you had met many beasts and monsters like yourself, or warlocks and alchemists who were bound to the otherworld, even priests and priestesses who could communicate with their gods of choice. But none intrigued you like Byron.

As something beyond human, the idea that only a man and a woman could bond was beyond you. It was a belief that had never existed in you, as the people you had been around in your youth never carried it, but for Byron it was new and strange. Even as his body changed and altered, looking more like a corpse than a man, his passion persisted.

The locals built temples or stands to keep him away, filling them with crosses and hunting others like him, Nosferatu. You, they feared, less than Byron, but feared, nonetheless. Where Byron devoured human flesh and blood to keep moving, you had persisted on nothing but will for many years, and only devoured when you needed too.

Byron was not the most physically affectionate, you had a feeling he simply couldn’t be. But his possessive nature and yearning for you, spoke of his innermost feelings. His kisses would have made any normal human vomit from the taste of blood, gore, and corpse, but you were no human. Anyone else would have died from being fed on by him, but you lived. Your heart beat and would beat on, for how long you did not know.

Your inhuman blood and flesh, which regenerated like the leaves of a tree, kept Byron fed when the human flesh could not. It wasn’t what he was meant to eat, that much was clear, as you were not human and that was what he needed, but it changed him. He still was death itself, but your wolflike insides made him at least a little more pleasant to look at.

What you two were, was not a married couple, but he was yours and you were his, though he yours more than you his. Being older, stronger, able to go where and when you pleased, made you the more dangerous of you two. The most powerful, but you had no need to use this against him.

Until he bonded with that human, one you would learn was named Ellen who begged for company from anything, anyone. You were tempted to tear Byrons head off his body when you learned of this, having only been gone for two years which was nothing in your shared centuries, and here he went, finding another.

After this betrayal, you left once more, after tearing apart the wolves you had given him as servants. He would not thrive off your gifts and flesh if he could not respect you. It was not that he had bonded with a human girl, but more the dismissal of you and disregard of what you wanted. What if you had wanted a little human plaything as well?

When you returned once more, years later, you observed a man on his way towards Byron Orloks home, which looked as decrepit as you were used too. He was almost adorable, in his modern clothing and satchel bag. So intriguing was he, that you followed him from the shadows in your wolf form, observed as he rested with the locals, saw their execution of a Nosferatu, and how the locals left him behind.

Byron must have felt your presence, as the carriage that picked the human man up had the motif of a wolf on the side. You could feel his magic reach for you, but yours was stronger, and still being mad at him, you turned it away.

Your lover, partner, other being, was enraged, you could tell, when he smelled your interest in this man, Thomas Hutter, but he could not say anything, as he was drawn to this Thomas Hutters wife. Thomas Hutter was tormented and haunted as he slept and was awake in the old castle, he almost passed out when he saw you in your wolf form for the first time.

Maybe it was more that you wanted to make Byron feel what you felt, when he bonded to that girl, and it didn’t hurt that Thomas Hutter was as adorable as a rabbit, with his frightened eyes and heady scent. The lack of sleep drove him mad enough to sleep curled up against your furry side, and your hairy chest when you transformed back into a man.

It was enough to make Byron gnash his teeth and growl, his magic attempting to squeeze the very life out of Thomas only to be blocked by your own. There was no reason for you to stop his plans, you were much too old to involve yourself in such things, but you did make sure Thomas survived long enough to be found by the nun and for him to return to Wisborg.

Your massive paws dragged groves in the first as you followed the scent of Thomas, as Byron you could sense was across the sea where you could not follow without spending unnecessary magic.

Your maw salivated at the sight of Ellen, not from the same desire that Thomas or Byron carried for her which was carnal in the way animals in spring desired, but from a long-forgotten hunger for human flesh. To rip and tear, to destroy and break. You wanted to kill her, for taking your Orlok’s attention, the same hate Byron felt for Thomas, even if your attention was nothing more than a mild interest.

Time would tell, as the first night fell and the rats invaded the city. When Byron would end up tricked by these mortals, you would step in and scold him. He was so young compared to you, centuries compared to your millennia. Punish him, you must, make him weep and beg for your forgiveness for betraying you so. But for now, you would gobble up the corpses of the citizens as they piled up, to satisfy your growing hunger for Ellen and her putrid flesh.

[burningvelvet]

Percy Shelley at the end of a letter to Lord Byron. London, 17 January 1817:

“I have no other news to tell you, my dear Lord Byron, unless you think this is news: that I often talk, and oftener think, of you; and that, though I have not seen you for six months, I still feel the burden of my own insignificance and impotence; as they must ever forbid my interest in your welfare from being put to the proof. Adieu.

Faithfully yours,

P. B. Shelley.”

[solradguy]

i support ohio sol. go with pop.

It's possible that "pop" is on the decline with how English is becoming homogenized via easier access to English language media/internet that uses that bland standardized English, which tends to call it "soda" more often or not. I think arguing that Sol still calls it pop because he's 200 years from the past before English started getting all blended together could be used as an interesting way to draw emphasis towards him being from a similar time period as Axl or Slayer—two of only a few from the entirety of Guilty Gear that also have accents, and are also from the distant past...

[elishkaacademia]

Oh to get wasted with the Romantic writers in Geneva… that’s it, that’s the post

[elegantwoes]

A parallel/anti parallel that just I realized between Jon and Dany is that they are both a result of non consensual sex during the war. In Dany's case, it was outright rape and in Jon's case, it was dubious consent. Dany's reaction to her father is not exactly condemning, it would be interesting to see how Jon reacts to his own father. I believe he won't be fantasizing about people loving him as they did his father, that is for sure.

Since Jon considered for a fleeting moment that Ned may have committed treason just because he has broken his marital vows, it’s more than fair to assume Jon would absolutely despise Rhaegar and feel responsible for so many deaths (including his half-siblings) even if it isn’t his fault.

[polysprachig]

11.04.2024 | outrage and (/at) punctuation and crass editing

Currently writing translator's notes

When it comes to using different editions of classic novels in language and literature classes I am usually quite flexible. One of the benefits of one-on-one is that we can simply read the divergent texts, pursue the topic within reason and move on.

But when a poetic treatise has been gutted of its original context and its typographical origins so altered as to mar the syntactic relations between the very concepts being proposed, the end result is not a mere question of slight discrepancies but a devolution of the highest philosophical and linguistic expressions into complete and utter drivel.

[msmoon-and-the-cyberdemon]

SIDE ORDER SPOILERS!

You know Smollusk would absolutely love the Toni Kensa brand

[dyns33]

Unknown love

Another Lord Byron x Reader. I had two versions of this story, I don’t know yet if I’ll post the second one. 

Lord Byron could have said no to his dear aunt.

He would often say no to his dear aunt when she asked him nonsense or boring things, mocking her only to be better forgiven with smiles and poems a few days later.

So when she told him about marriage, he laughed. He had scoffed.

But unfortunately, he also had to listen to her carefully when she explained to him that the family's finances were in a terrible state. They were spending way too much to keep up appearances and pay for the upkeep of the mansions, and soon they would be broke, up to their necks in debt, and unable to go on living as they wanted.

It was not suitable for a family like theirs.

Lord Byron did not care what other people thought, but he loved his daily life, he loved his comfort, his freedom, and even if his writings brought him a little money, the parties and other pleasures he offered himself made everything disappear even faster than it had happened.

A good arranged marriage was therefore the ideal solution.

He was very clear with his aunt. She might find a rich heiress, but in exchange he insisted that his loving future wife would not prevent him from continuing to follow his habits.

In short, he would offer his title and a mansion to the young girl, who could live on the estate, in another building, as a Lady, and he would stay in his house, as if he were absolutely unmarried.

His aunt thought that was a wonderful idea, since he could be extremely unpleasant when he wanted to.

After several months of searching, she found Y/N Y/L/N. 

According to her, the girl was perfect. Pretty, discreet, well brought up and educated. If he ever wanted to talk to her, he wouldn't be bored. He wasn't sure she shared his love of partying and debauchery, but after a quick chat with her father and the young girl, she had seemed smart enough to say that her husband would be free to do whatever he wanted, as long as he didn't force her to do things she didn't like.

Lord Byron signed the marriage contract, showed up at the church, read his vows and quickly kissed his new bride before returning to his business. The little time he spent with Y/N was not unpleasant, but he didn't really try to get to know her well.

It had no interest for her, really. A waste of time, and the risk of hearing a lot of criticism about the fact that he was neither a good husband nor a good man. Even if his new wife's opinion didn't matter, it was never pleasant to be insulted. His life therefore continued normally.

There were many times when he had to talk a bit with Y/N, at dinner parties they were invited to, or during important celebrations where she insisted on being by his side.

Again, Lord Byron had nothing against her. She really was as beautiful and intelligent as his aunt had said she was, and he sometimes found it sad that she ended up marrying him, but it was too late to have any regrets.

      "I have a favor to ask of you, but I'm afraid you will mock me."

      "If you want a new dress, jewelry, or another silly gift, that's fine with me."

      "No, none of that." she said shyly, lowering her eyes. "I... I had the pleasure of reading some of your writings and I... I was tempted to write myself. I would like you to read me."

This made him laugh. It was stronger than him, he couldn't help laughing, which seemed to upset his dear wife, who avoided him for the rest of the evening.

He didn't think about it afterwards, too busy preparing his new poems and having fun.

Until a new author appeared in the newspapers, then publishing some works. An anonymous author, whose identity no one knew, except perhaps the publisher who refused to give any information. An author whose writings were prodigious.

Lord Byron fell in love with these writings, and very logically, he considered that he could only love the mind that had produced them, even if he knew nothing about this person.

For months on end, he not only began to write for his unknown love, but he talked about their works to everyone and he harassed the publisher, who always refused to give him a name, even when he offered him many money, kneeling down on front of him.

One evening when he was talking about this with his friends, his wife came back.

      "I don't want to disturb you, but I was wondering if you would have some time to read this poem I wrote for you."

      "It's adorable my dear, but no. Not because I don't have time, but I'm afraid that nothing can touch me since I discovered the writings of this mysterious author. I'm afraid to be terribly critical of you in an unfair way."

      "But maybe you'll like it. Maybe... Maybe I write as well as this author."

This made him laugh again, and this time it made Y/N cry, who went back to her house.

Byron didn't think of it, like the last time.

Except that the day when the new writing of his love was to be published, there was nothing. 

Everyone thought there might have been a problem. The author could have had an accident, a family problem. They might have needed more time to finish writing. They might have had no idea, or been unhappy with what they had done.

But the days passed and there was no news. The publisher made no announcement, saying it was awaiting word on whether it could give a release date. Then he announced sadly that there would be no date, because there would be no more publication.

This was terrible news, which plunged Lord Byron into deep torment and endless depression.

Nothing had any flavor or importance anymore. He couldn't write and the few parties he organized didn't amuse him at all.

The truth came out during one of them though, as the drunken publisher that he had invited stared at him, slumped on the couch, too miserable to move.

      "You are pathetic."

      "Thank you, I know. You are no better yourself. Could you at least tell me why my love no longer writes ? If it is a personal reason, a death, an illness, I could understand. I think I I need to understand, to mourn. I really loved them."

      "You don't like her at all, otherwise she wouldn't have stopped writing !" growled the editor, emptying his glass. "She was wonderful, and you ruined everything. I'm sure her poem was perfect, but I didn't have the time to read it, she burned it ! She burned everything ! You can be proud of yourself. Men of your kind shouldn't marry such amazing women, they destroy them."

It may have been the alcohol that made the publisher say absurd things, but Lord Byron then had the terrible doubt that the author was Y/N, his dear wife, and he immediately visited her to find out for sure.

She didn't seem surprised to see him, when he never came. She was really very smart. She immediately guessed the reason for his presence.

      "I know that you know, so talk then leave. Or don't talk and leave, please."

      "I don't know what to tell you, to be honest. I didn't know... I'm an idiot. I apologize to you, I'm begging you to forgive me. Do you hate me ?"

      "If I hate anyone, it's myself. It was obvious that you weren't interested in me and I was stupid to think that would change. I never dreamed of being published, you know ? I don't care what other people think. I wanted... I just wanted your opinion. It made me so happy to hear that you liked my writings. They were for you, only for you. But when you laughed, when you refused to even imagine that I could be a good writer... It hurt me, and I couldn't do that anymore. I decided to keep myself to myself, I will not write anymore."

      "No !" he cried, falling in front of her. "I cannot live without your writings, knowing that it is my fault that the world is deprived of such wonders !"

      "All good things come to an end. But you're a writer yourself, so you can go on."

      "I don't have your talent, clearly not ! And why should good things come to an end ? It's absurd."

      "To savour them, and have beautiful memories."

      "No. No, I refuse."

      "And yet, Lord Byron, so it is. I loved you, I was happy to be your bride, I thought we would understand each other. I was wrong and now it's over. Goodbye."

Despite his tears, pleas and lamentations, Y/N went to her bedroom, leaving him alone on the living room carpet, from where he refused to move for three days. Then, tired and hungry, he finally agreed to go back to his own house, where he stayed in bed, not writing, not reading, and giving no party.

Everyone was very worried. This was not normal, for even when he was desperate or ill, Lord Byron threw at least one party a week.

To learn that his love, his divine love, was his wife, who had loved him, who had written for him, and who had lost the flame because of him, had been a real shock for the poor man.

He didn't think he could be himself again, after such a revelation. Once again, nothing was important anymore, absolutely nothing and he let himself waste away for days.

Then, as he brought her his meal, his butler placed a manuscript on his bed.

      "I don't feel like reading." muttered Lord Byron without moving.

      "Forgive me. Your wife insisted, but I can..."

      "Y/N ?! This is from Y/N ?!"

In an instant, Lord Byron was full of color, springing from his bed to pick up the manuscript and read it by the fireplace, careful not to burn the pages. In addition to the poem she had offered him to read, there were all of Y/N's writings, those she had published, and new ones, which she had never shown to anyone else.

Heart pounding, not caring about the night, the rain, his pyjamas, his bare feet, Lord Byron ran across the land that separated their two houses. Without thinking, he climbed the stairs, opened the door to his wife's bedroom, and sat down by the bed, taking her hands as she slept.

      "You have to publish all of this."

      "My god, George, what time is it ?" she asked turning her head in her pillow.

      "Too soon, or too late, I don't know. What I do know is that I love you, I love your writing and you need to publish it."

      "Right now, I have to sleep."

      "You don't understand."

      "I understand. I completely understand, I wrote all this." Y/N said looking him in the eyes. "Now, Lord Byron, go to sleep."

      "I can't ! Not after this. I need more ! The world needs more !"

      "Not now. Sleep. I know you can, for me."

Too exhausted to get up and go home, Lord Byron stared at his wife's bed for a long time, where he had never slept. Sighing, Y/N took his hand to help im up, laying him down next to her.

But he still couldn't sleep, watching her. This annoyed her a little, and when she asked him why he still wasn't sleeping, he replied that she really didn't understand.

      "Maybe not. What is wonderful for you is normal for me. And vice versa, I guess. Or almost. I cried while reading your writings, but they never prevented me from sleeping. Close your eyes."

This time he obeyed. That night was the start of something new, the couple finally settled under the same roof after a year of marriage, sharing the same bed, and starting to write together.

[noknowshame]

Robert Louis Stevenson was one of Oscar Wilde’s favorite authors and I was about to make a post about how when he was in prison (for sodomy) he requested copies of all his novels including Treasure Island – which is enough to unpack on its own – but then I remembered that last year Toby Stephens played Oscar Wilde in a movie specifically about his time in prison so everyone just remember that time is a flat circle and inevitably comes back around in absurd ways that we will never be able to fully predict

[starrysupercell]

https://youtu.be/ZvohXmvjA1A?feature=shared

i dont know if this is the song you asked for but here :3

💋

[reanimatedgh0ul]

honestly the idea of newton and lance both ending up w gfs is funny to me only bc ik the two of them would have COMPLETELY DIFFERENT reactions the moment they realize they're in love w the girl they're now dating

basically newton's reaction vs lance's reaction

[cassmouse]

Okay but... Comparing a person to some kind of historical art. A Lord Byron poem. A Chopin piece. A renaissance painting. It makes my heart absolutely flip it is one of the most beautiful expressions of love I could POSSIBLY imagine

[tomsturridgeconfession]

You!

Yes, you!

Scrolling right there, and looking cute! :-)

Welcome on this blog dedicated to Tom Sturridge Confessions!

Don't be shy! You can send anything, soft or naughty, fluffy or dirty... ;)

It can be about Tom Sturridge or any of his characters!

Please, do send content! You can also ask me questions if you'd like. Anything, really.

Let's make this a place for our Tom Sturridge needs.

The requests are now officially... Open!

[edge-oftheworld]

surely byron from joshua tree has a fandom. surely it’s not just me

[stesichoreanpalinode]

Tumblr timeline serendipity thanks to @hard-yearned-wisdom and @gluttons-for-punishment

[dyns33]

Hidden in plain sight

The second version of Lord Byron and his wife. So not real surprise, but I’m posting it anyway. 

For Lord Byron, there could be no love in marriage. 

Marriage was a prison, a decoy, the place where hearts suffocated. Sometimes noble young people decided to marry because they loved each other, and that could only end in tragedy.

Surprisingly, tragedy was a good engine for love. A way to make it last, to make it bigger, more incredible, worthy of being immortalized in writings. The greatest love stories were tragedies, and most lovers were certainly unmarried.

If the marriage was arranged, that was obviously even worse.

Lord Byron did not hate his wife, Y/N. He didn't like her either, for the simple reason that he didn't really know her. He had met her three times, once when his family had begged him to come say hi to his fiancee, once on their wedding day, and once by chance in the garden.

The rest of the time, they avoided each other like the plague.

Yet Lord Byron was not so keen on running away from his wife, and he had never felt hatred or reproach on her part, so it was possible that it was not voluntary, a mere chance, or the certainty that the other would not be happy if an encounter happened unexpectedly.

If he had to talk about love, the famous author would have immediately mentioned Skriven Ispred. A strange name, for a strange being, whom no one had ever seen, but who regularly published marvelous writings, which Lord Byron could no longer do without.

He knew nothing of his love, except their genius and their poetry, which gave him a glimpse of what their heart must be, and he could only be madly in love. Oh, he continued to savor the pleasures of life, collecting lovers, but if he had to choose only one human in all the earth, it would have been Skriven.

This impossible one-sided love lasted for months, during which Lord Byron wrote several letters and odes to the one he was calling his soulmate, without ever having the slightest answer. Then Skriven Ispred simply stopped writing, and Lord Byron was devastated.

His condition was so alarming that even his wife visited him to ask if he was feeling well and if he needed anything.

      "I only want Skriven, my dear Skriven."

      "I heard about your passion for this writer. I'm sorry they are not writing anymore, but life is full of other pleasures. Go out, laugh, have fun. Make one of those loud and immoral parties of yours."

      "No, I don't feel like doing anything anymore."

This period was complicated for everyone, as much him as the others, because his pain and his sadness made him very irritable, mean, criticizing everything and thinking that the whole world was responsible for his misfortune.

It was like a miracle that the writings resumed. Lord Byron was at first relieved, thinking that his prayers had been answered, despite the fact that he was not at all a religious being, or deserving of God's help.

His joy did not last long, because the quality of the writings had greatly declined. It wasn't bad, but something was missing. The passion was gone.

Thinking a deception, Lord Byron went to confront the publisher, harassing him for days, claiming that it was not possible that Skriven Ispred was the author of such pointless stories. He lost his temper when he saw an unfinished manuscript signed by him in the man's office.

His rage came from the fact that the work was neither finished nor published, but also from the fact that another had had the privilege of reading these lines before him, to keep them secret.

      "This is much better ! This was indeed written by my dear Skriven ! Why didn't they finish it, why don't you publish it, and why are these latest so-called writings of such deplorable quality ?"

      "I imagine the heart isn't there." sighed the editor, tired by all the intrusions of the Lord, who had been pushing him for more than a week. "Not enough desire to finish or publish, nor to write beautiful things."

      "So why publish at all ?"

      "I can not tell you."

      "It's an order !"

      "Fine. Even if joy and love are gone, a woman cannot let her husband waste away in bed. Now leave me."

Lord Byron at first refused to understand what this meant. He was certain that the editor had said that to confuse him and make him leave. Then he went home to talk with Y/N, a real talk, for the first time since their marriage.

      "I can't believe you are my Skriven Ispred, it seems impossible to me, but I have to know. Is this the truth ?"

      "You just said the thing to be impossible."

      "Do you find it amusing to torture me by ceasing to write, then writing badly ? Hiding your good novels and poems away from me ?"

      "A bit." she answered coldly, which made him shiver. "But that doesn't matter now, because I won't be writing anymore. I obviously don't have the talent for it anyway."

Lord Byron did his best to regain his composure, realizing that Y/N hadn't been publishing such bad writing on purpose. He had disturbed his wife by his indifference, his mockery, his rejection, his criticism.

Now he needed her and her stories, so he had to do everything to make her start again. If she had been driven by the love of writing, it wouldn't be so difficult. And if she could have been driven by a strange love for him, it would be even simpler.

He just had to seduce her, for her to love him again.

Paying no heed to the time and money it would take, Lord Byron courted his wife with all the ardor of a desperate lover, giving her gifts, visiting her daily and dedicating all his writings to her.

      "My husband wrote a poem in my name ? My husband is a fool." Y/N chuckled softly, returning the scented letter to the butler who was serving as a carrier pigeon between their two rooms.

When that didn't seem to work, Lord Byron asked his friends, especially the women around him, for help. Who better than a woman could talk to a woman ? Mary and Claire insisted that Y/N read at least one of the declarations of love she had inspired in him. 

She agreed, laughed, and said that all of this had been written in just a few minutes, after three glasses of wine, taking several poems he had already written for others, and a quote from an author he was fond of.

The answer vexed Lord Byron. And at the same time, he was fascinated, because she was absolutely right. His wife knew him very well.

Quickly, he realized that he was no longer writing to seduce her and force her to love him, but because he really loved her. What he confessed to her.

      "I do not believe you."

      "Because I am not capable of love ?"

      "Oh, I know you are capable of love, of all the forms of love the Greeks speak of, but not when it comes to me. That would be too good to be true. No, you love my writings, which is flattering, Georges, but you don't like me."

      "Of course I love you. I love everything about you."

      "As soon as I start writing again, you will leave."

Lord Byron then did something he had never done before. He fell to his knees in front of her, taking her hand and staring into her eyes. Well, that part he had already done, because he liked dramatic effects.

But then he apologized. 

He apologized, thinking what he was saying. He recognized that he had been wrong not to spend more time with her, his wife, to get to know her. He would then have seen how similar they were. He would have seen that she was a good wife, letting him do what he wanted, not judging his lifestyle, giving him his freedom, and writing the most beautiful writings of all creation.

He had been furious that his family forced him to marry. He had been afraid of losing what he was. He had thought she was indifferent, only happy to be married to a Lord who had money and a position. Not for a second had he wondered if she wanted to be here with him. If she was happy. He had been obnoxious, a poor husband, and he asked her forgiveness.

The scene made her laugh.

      "Even when you're serious, you can't stay serious for very long. Please get up."

      "I love your smile. I would like to see you smile more often. I'm sure I've written about your smile many times without even realizing it."

      "Are you talking about your Christmas serenade ?"

      "I love you."

      "Certainly."

His excuses seemed to soften Y/N, who agreed to see him more often, so that they could talk.

When he proposed that they share the same room, she opposed him a categorical refusal. And why not live in the same wing of the mansion ? She liked the quiet, while he enjoyed his parties. It was out of the question for things to change. He could stay free, and come and visit her when he had time.

      "Can you join me when I have guests too ?"

      "I'll think about it. On your side, if you come to see me after one of your parties, I'll ask you to take bath before. God knows what you do during your orgies."

      "Well, ever since I found out my dear Skriven Ispred was living under my roof, nothing but talking about love and drinking, thinking only of you. Why that name ?"

      "It's Croatian. You can translate it by 'hidden in plain sight'."

      "I love you."

      "For an imaginative author, you repeat yourself a lot."

Lord Byron kissed her then, and Y/N let him.