#with roxana having been reborn as sylvia pedelian instead of roxana agriche
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I’m currently obsessed with the manhwa The Way To Protect The Female Lead’s Older Brother. Naturally, I wrote fic for it. A twisted romance, to be precise.
Now, we all love Roxana. But what if she hadn't been reborn into the story as Roxana Agriche? What if she took the place of a different character?
What if she took the place of Sylvia Pedelian?
(She still can’t escape Dion’s obsession)
Pairing: Dion x Sylvia
Warnings: kidnapping, very dubious consent, canon-typical violence, Dion Agriche (because Dion deserves his own warning. Seriously, do not expect any healthy behavior from him)
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CHAPTER 1
Kneeling on the floor with a racing heart, she looks up at the one who just spoke.
Eyes of blood look back. There’s no emotion in them, or not one she can read at least. As always, he looks like a finely crafted doll. It’s unsettling even at the best of times.
This is one of the worst times possible.
She doesn’t know if what he just said will make things better or worse.
The silence is broken by laughter, making her shift her gaze to the source.
Lante Agriche is cackling like the third rate villain he is. Her hands, bound behind her back, itch even more for a blade.
“You want a toy?” the mad bastard says like it’s the most entertaining thing he’s ever heard. What she wouldn’t give for even a kitchen knife. Still, his reaction does give her more information, something she’s in desperate need of.
What Dion Agriche just said was out of character. That’s further supported by the response from the rest of this crazy family. Not counting the servants, she has an audience of three, and she recognizes all but one. Lante's favored children.
Jeremy Agriche is missing. She’d be more preoccupied by that if her life wasn’t already hanging by a silk thread.
The Agriche heirs had various reactions to her dramatic introduction, ranging from shock to vague interest to glee. But all of them had the same response when Dion said what he did. Surprise.
Dion doesn’t have a habit of claiming prisoners for his own. Not like this.
“I do,” Dion says to the maniac that is his father. His voice is low, pleasant to the ear, and as empty as those serpent eyes are. It makes her glare, aggravated by the utter lack of humanity he’s showing.
She realizes that she made a mistake right before Lante kicks her in the face hard enough to see stars. It’s instinct to try and heal herself.
Her power refuses to heed her call. It terrifies her more than anything else does.
She’s still regaining her bearings when something pushes down her head with brutal force. She manages to turn her face enough to keep her nose from being crushed on the floor, but her cheekbone isn’t so lucky. It hurts like hell, and she knows it would only take a little more pressure for it to fracture. Once again, she reflexively draws on her power.
Once again, it refuses to heed her call. Damn suppression chains.
Lante, his foot still crushing her face to the floor, is talking again. Asking Dion why he wants her, when he’s never shown any interest in their  toys before. This family is so messed up. As she was well aware of already of course, but it’s one thing to know, another thing entirely to experience it like this.
“The others weren’t the Blue Princess,” Dion says, and Sylvia resists the urge to glare. As her current kissing of the floor proves, the Agriche don’t appreciate shows of spirit.
They do seem to love the sound of their own voice, though. Lante is agreeing with Dion, calling her all sorts of names as he does. The blue bitch seems to be his favorite. How original.
The assessment she made long ago was correct. Lante Agriche is arrogant, petty, and oh so resentful of the Pedelian family.
He’s about to take out all that resentment on her.
Sylvia fights back the desperation that threatens to inspire. All that work to escape the fate of the original, and here she is. Newly an adult and kidnapped by the Black Agriche. Just like in the novel.
No, that’s not true. She managed to keep her brother alive. Cassis is safe. The reminder helps her calm down a little. Just in time too, because Lante seems to be wrapping up his villainous monologue.
“Very well. The bitch is yours.”
And just like that, her fear is back in full. Funny, really. This is another divergence from the original. That should bring her comfort.
There’s no comfort to be found in the way Dion Agriche is looking at her. He shows no pleasure or satisfaction, no desire or anticipation. He got what he wanted, and it inspired no reaction at all.
One of the Agriche heirs, Fontaine, the oldest son, tries to protest, but Lante shuts it down fast. Fontaine isn't pleased, but he doesn't argue further.
Dion doesn't even bother to look at his brother. Instead he addresses his father, accepting the 'gift' given to him.
Even that response, a respectful bow of his head and a soft declaration that he'll enjoy  playing with her, is utterly devoid of emotion. Then her chains are handed to him and she gets kicked into his custody. Literally so.
“Make sure to teach it its rightful place,” Lante says with infuriating pleasure. This time a glare escapes her before she can help it. The way it makes Lante scowl is quite satisfying, though. They might look alike, but unlike Dion, Lante has always been easy to read.
Right now, he's pissed off at how defiant she's being. Sylvia reluctantly looks down and lowers her head. Doing otherwise wouldn't be conducive to her survival. Damn if it wouldn’t feel good, though.
“Don’t disappoint me, Dion,” Lante says. If she wasn’t gagged, she would have been tempted to spit on his shoes, consequences be damned.
Dion acknowledges the warning before walking out of the room with no regard for the fact that her feet are shackled together. Sylvia is forced to scramble after him in a humiliating fashion just to keep herself from being dragged across the floor.
Naturally, Lante cackles like the madman he is. And his cursed offspring waste no time in joining in. Sylvia likes to think that she isn't a particularly violent person, but right now she wants nothing more than to rip out those black tongues.
The laughter is left behind as Dion pulls her through various hallways. He keeps his back to her, something she dearly wishes she could make him regret.
Seeing as that isn’t an option right now, Sylvia takes the opportunity to study her surroundings instead. She's too tired to pay attention to the servants, but she does her best to memorize all the twists and turns they take.
She fails. This place is a maze. It won’t be easy to make her escape.
This place is also gaudy as hell. Seems the Agriche have as refined a taste in interior design as they do in ethics.
Sylvia focuses on her distaste to keep control over her fear. Every hallway they pass is ostentatious.
Every hallway is lined with drains. The only spot of subtlety to be found. All the floors are tiled as well, no rug in sight. Wall carpets, but no rugs. Sylvia can only think of one reason for that.
It’s to make it easier to clean up any spilled blood.
Dion leads her to a door more opulent than most. The dark wood is imposing and lavishly decorated.
Which is why it's so surprising when the room itself has minimal decoration. There's a few weapons displayed on the walls, all blades she notes with what she knows to be vain hope. But other than that, there's nothing aside from some relatively simple furniture, a large mirror above the fireplace, and one admittedly impressive bookcase. As for the architecture of the room itself, it's simple but beautiful, showing high craftsmanship.
This is a private sitting room. One that has a door leading to another area.
These are Dion's personal rooms. Oh no.
Sylvia can't help but tense up. Even more so when Dion silently closes the door and steps closer to her.
He comes to a stop right in front of her, watching her with those inhuman eyes. With those pools of blood. She might not be able to read the emotion in them, but their unwavering focus is clear. It's creepy. And far more terrifying than she'd like to admit.
Sylvia forces herself to seem calm when he lifts a hand to her face. She's hoping that he'll take off her gag, but she wouldn't be surprised if he hits her instead. Wouldn't be surprised if he does something worse either.
He takes off her gag. Thank god.
Sylvia rubs her tongue across the inside of her mouth, to get rid of the stuffy feeling left by the cloth. And to check for any loose teeth. Lante and his pack of sycophants weren't exactly gentle when they captured her.
Her teeth are fine. Small mercies.
Dion lets the gag fall around her throat without looking away from her. He lifts a hand to her face again, and Sylvia curses the way it makes her breath hitch. She can’t afford to show any weakness here.
That knowledge doesn’t prevent her traitorous body from shivering when his fingers trail over her still throbbing cheek. A gentle caress. A touch that’s far too human to have come from the likes of him.
Sylvia deeply regrets the lack of attention she’s given this particular Agriche over the years. Oh, she studied him, more intently than most because of his family and position. But Dion Agriche wasn’t her main target. That was reserved for the male leads of the novel.
How ironic that she managed to avoid their clutches only to be caught by an extra instead.
Dion is still stroking her cheek, the sensation incredibly distracting. She’s excruciatingly aware of every point of contact between them. As she’s aware of how near he is. The warmth of his body is as great a touch as the one from his hand.
Both sensations are horribly pleasant.
Sylvia suspects that her new jailer has no intention of breaking the silence. Dion Agriche might not have been her main target, but she did learn about him. And a conversationalist he is not.
Screw it.
“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
Her question is calm and polite. No different from how she’d speak to him at the Yggdrasil Gathering.
Dion tilts his head, black strands of hair following the movement. He keeps stroking her cheek.
She still has no idea what he’s thinking. It’s even more frustrating than usual.
She’s glad when he answers. It gives her something to work with.
“I was wondering what angle you’d go for first.”
His tone reveals nothing. But just the fact that he spoke means that she needs to give him a response.
Sylvia, with the expertise of a lifetime of etiquette lessons, puts on a friendly smile.
“Is there anything wrong with asking for refreshments?”
It’s not what she wants to say at all. But that doesn’t matter. Her survival is at stake here.
Survival seems a lot more unlikely when Dion pushes down her injured cheekbone with agonizing force. It makes her let out a hissed breath and jerk her head away, glaring at the sadistic bastard.
Those pools of blood get a spark of life. It’s so unexpected that it makes what she was about to say die in her throat. A good thing, really. Insulting her captor won’t end well for her.
Sylvia puts on another friendly smile.
“That was rather rude, Lord Dion.” Not that she expected anything different. But people have a tendency to fall into familiar patterns when confronted with familiar behavior. If she keeps acting like she normally does when she sees him, he might do the same.
It sounds so unbelievable even inside her own head. But right now, it’s the best plan she has.
Her plan is apparently even worse than she thought it was, because Dion takes hold of her chin with a deliberately painful grip. Sylvia grimaces before she can help it, but then she composes herself. She needs more information.
“Is this any way to treat a lady?” she asks like she isn’t held shackled like a beast.
Dion’s eyes have lost that unexpected spark, but he’s examining her even more intently than before. Sylvia hates how that makes her body react. As the female lead of an erotic novel, her body is ridiculously sensitive. Even at a time like this, injured, exhausted and scared as never before, she's getting aroused.
She’s glad when Dion speaks.
“Even now, you cling to that mask of yours.”
The statement holds no trace of either satisfaction or displeasure. The black bastard is apparently determined to make this as hard as possible on her.
It becomes clear what he meant soon enough.
“I wonder,” he says while letting go of her chin and trailing his fingers back up her injured cheek. “What would it take to break it for good?”
The threat is underlined by him dragging a nail right beneath her eye. The burn hits a moment later, and Sylvia feels something wet slide down her skin. Blood.
He cut open her cheek like it was nothing. Like it took no magic to do so. Judging from the way the burn keeps growing worse, the cut is a deep one.
She can't heal herself.
It’s instinct to hide her fear, but Sylvia makes herself show it instead. Dion seems to be looking for a reaction. Better to give him one of her own choice than to have one forced out of her.
Her gamble pays off. Dion’s eyes regain that stunning spark. Sylvia ignores the part of her that notices how it transforms his looks from unsettling into breathtaking, more preoccupied with what this means instead. Dion is definitely looking for some kind of emotional response. And he has no problem hurting her to get it.
Will he be satisfied if he gets one without causing her pain first?
“That sounds like a threat,” she says, and it takes so much effort to allow her voice to break. She might at times let her temper get the best of her, but she’s never had any trouble hiding her fear. Quite the opposite.
“You must not have been threatened a lot then,” Dion says, voice still unreadable. But his eyes retain that alluring light. That sense of life she's never witnessed from him before.
Most important of all, he doesn’t hurt her again. Instead he resumes his gentle caressing from before. The care he takes is all the more noticeable for the callouses that deliver it. He’s used to wielding weapons. Used to killing.
Sylvia catches herself when she starts taking on a formal posture, quickly shifting her weight instead. Expressing her nerves. She lets her hands, chained behind her back, ball into fists like they want to as well.
Her plan works. Dion glances down when she shifts her weight, and his eyes linger on the arm bared by her ruined shirt. Reading the tension in it. Or she thinks that's what he's doing at least.
He doesn’t hurt her.
All right. She can work with this.
"No, I haven't been," she says, mostly truthful. As the beloved youngest child of the Head of Blue, she’s led a life of privilege. That includes people watching what they say around her.
The threats she faces are usually worded far more subtle than this.
Dion doesn't respond in a verbal manner, but the position of his fingers changes and Sylvia realizes with some panic that he's about to hurt her again.
She has to act. Now.
Sylvia quickly pushes her cheek into his hand. The move makes her injuries flare up, but that's a small price to pay to avoid true torture.
Dion pauses, eyes still bright with actual life. With humanity. Sylvia forces herself to close her own and focuses on the throbbing of her cheek and the pounding of her head. On the pain infusing every one of her limbs. The endless ache that seems to have settled into her very bones. She takes it all in, all the while resisting the urge to look at Dion again.
It’s easier to show weakness when she doesn’t have to see any witnesses.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
It’s one of the most humiliating things she’s ever said. Ever since she realized what story she’d been reborn into, she worked so hard to avoid this exact situation. She swore that she’d never be the victim that the original Sylvia was.
What a joke that turned out to be.
Sylvia feels her cheeks burn with shame. Normally she’d be able to use her power to get rid of the blush.
Normally she isn’t chained up like a magical beast.
For a time that seems to last forever, Dion doesn’t react. With every moment that passes, she becomes more sensitive to the touch of his hand and the heat radiating from him. Becomes more aware of all the ways this could go horribly wrong. Then he finally responds.
He shifts his hand to better cup her cheek. His thumb gently strokes the skin still burning up with that humiliating blush. Sylvia takes that as her cue to open her eyes.
She almost jerks back as she sees just how close Dion has gotten. Those red eyes are right in front of her, otherworldly and bewitching and oh, his face is so near that she should be feeling his breath. Except there’s no trace of it. Really, holding his breath just for the scare effect? The Agriche are as dramatic as ever. This does explain why his body heat seemed to be getting stronger, though.
She’s still recovering her wits when Dion speaks.
“Sylvia, I like hurting you.”
It’s so unfair that he has a pleasant smelling breath. And it’s annoying as hell that this is what her mind decides to focus on. What he said is far more important than what he’s making her feel.
She needs to take control of the situation. And she needs to do it fast.
“No, you don’t,” she says boldly. It’s all or nothing here. “You like the way it makes me drop all pretense. You like seeing the real me.”
Dion watches her with those captivating eyes. With that sense of life so unlike anything he's ever shown before.
He doesn’t hurt her.
“It’s easy to make me angry, Dion,” she says, soft and tempting. “Making me feel anything else? That’s a far greater challenge.”
Sylvia focuses on the breath caressing her lips and the warmth stroking her skin. The touch of his hand, every nerve beneath it set alight. The scent that’s making her head swim and the eyes she could so easily become lost in. She embraces the pleasure part of her can’t help but feel. Turning her act as real as is possible.
And for a single moment, she wonders if she’s making the right choice. Is using her body like this not the same as admitting defeat?
No, it isn’t. She might have desperately wanted to avoid this exact situation, but now that she’s in it, she’s going to use every tool at her disposal to get out of it. If that means embracing the erotic setting of the original, so be it.
With hooded eyes and a voice filled with real desire, she tempts him further.
“Don’t you want to see if you can draw out all of me?”
He does. Oh, he does. Those red eyes are more gorgeous than ever. As though someone took the most precious of rubies and illuminated them from within.
She has him right where she wants him.
When Dion speaks, the increased touch of his breath makes goosebumps erupt all over. Not all of it is caused by how sensitive she is.
“This will be more interesting than I expected.”
Sylvia resolutely stamps down the fear threatening to take over. She refuses to become a victim here.
She refuses to follow the fate of the original.
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And that’s it for the first chapter! For more, you can go to the ao3 version. I’ll be updating there bi-weekly until my inspiration runs out.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/42082539/chapters/105652329
Warning: in later chapters, there will be explicit porn. That was the initial inspiration for this story after all. I’ve added more tags on ao3 as well, and you should definitely heed them.
Now join me in thirsting after the hot trash that is Dion Agriche...
#fanfic#the way to protect the female lead's older brother#dion agriche#sylvia pedelian#dion x sylvia#sort of#it's also sort of dion x roxana#with roxana having been reborn as sylvia pedelian instead of roxana agriche
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so so so hyped for the next chapters!!
I’m currently obsessed with the manhwa The Way To Protect The Female Lead’s Older Brother. Naturally, I wrote fic for it. A twisted romance, to be precise.
Now, we all love Roxana. But what if she hadn’t been reborn into the story as Roxana Agriche? What if she took the place of a different character?
What if she took the place of Sylvia Pedelian?
(She still can’t escape Dion’s obsession)
Keep reading
#the way to protect the female lead's older brother#dion agriche#sylvia pedelian#dion x sylvia#it's also sort of dion x roxana#with roxana having been reborn as sylvia pedelian instead of roxana agriche
70 notes
·
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