minerva blonos, of house blonos / eighteen / blood healer
❝ i’m dreaming of strangers kissing me in the night, just so i can feel something.❞
Most girls don’t put much thought into how they will die, but when death can kiss you with its icy lips and still do no harm, one has a habit of lingering on the thought of the unknown. Minerva Blonos has never been a sad soul, not really. She’s had a good life, serving the Princess Helene of House Calore as a lady in waiting, and in her youth, she marvelled at her abilities. How a skinned knee could repair itself in seconds, or how blood dripping down her legs could slide back into closing wounds. When she was five, she pulled the wings off of a butterfly; it didn’t do what she could, and she watched it sputter and die, and maybe that’s when she realized that something was wrong with her. Dreamy and distracted with a deep and dangerous darkness in her eyes that no one really understood how to respond to, Minerva was always an odd influence and force in the Silver Elite, an influence that no one really knew how to deal with. No one, it seemed, except her sister. Due to such an intense age difference, Minerva and Vita were never really close as children, but Vita was ferociously protective of her younger sister. Where Vita had sharp and jagged edges, Minerva had missing parts, and the two sisters found something akin to solace in the fact that if one was anything less than perfect, so was the other. Vita’s violence, an innate and ingrained part of her, had always been directed outwards; Minerva, ever both Vita’s counterpart and opposite, turned her own violence inwards.
The concept of death fascinated her, but not just the idea of dying and wherever her soul would go. Religion, for all her sister’s preoccupation with gods of death and goddesses, had been long dead in the world of the Silvers, who believed themselves to be the gods of old come down to the earth. Minerva had no illusions about what death would bring. There would be no pearly gates, just like there would be no fire and brimstone. There would be no Valhalla, no Olympus or Hades. There would just be silence, blackness, and peace. She, Minerva Blonos, would cease to exist, and no matter what she accomplished in this life, she would not matter. Not in a few years, not in a few centuries. The world would spin on, and her body would disintegrate and dissolve, and she would no longer belong to the world, not even as a concept. It was such a fascinating idea to a girl who could not bleed for longer than a few seconds at a time, who could not even scar if she tried to slice open her body from sternum to navel. Not that she’d ever tried that –– there were some lines even she wouldn’t cross, few and far between though they might be. Any harm she did to her body, any temporary damage she inflicted, it never came from a place of self-hatred. Just curiosity; the way a scientist kills an animal just to try and shock it back to life. An experiment, that’s what her life was.
A study in death, more or less, and though the pages would cut her fingers, the blood never reached the parchment. When Lucretia once stained the snow silver with a bloodied fingertip, Minerva found herself jealous that she never had that option. It seems counterintuitive, perhaps, this Silver girl who all but rejects who she is, at times. Her sister believes herself to be biblical, to be some sort of a goddess, of healing, of death, of vengeance and justice. Minerva, on the other hand, wants to believe herself to be something both more and less, all at once; something both godlike and human. She wants to believe that death could touch her the same way it could touch any of those she cares about. She wants to believe in a world where pain lasts longer than the time it takes to gasp from the sensation. She wants to believe in a world where she relies on the Skin Healers the same way her people do. She wants a lot of things, in the darkness and the quiet of her room, where she can lay still and silent in her bed and wonder if this is what death will feel like one day, but when she returns to her life in the mornings, she knows these things will never come to pass. She will live a long, long life, longer than most Silvers, and far longer than any Red, and Minerva has struggled to make peace with that for the last few years of her life. She’s far too young to feel this old, this tired, this numb, and yet that remains where Minerva’s mind lingers. Caught somewhere between feeling nothing and wanting to feel everything; caught somewhere between wanting to die but not wanting to stay dead.
Sensations. Feelings. At her core, that’s all Minerva wants: to feel something. She wants to feel something that lasts longer than a moment, a heartbeat, a whisper. Her dreams rang in severity from a stranger who looks like a shadow of a ghost of the princess she serves, kissing her until she’s breathless, to the feeling of a sword slicing through her neck. Each time, she wakes with the same longing, and now the idea of pain and the idea of love are so inexorably tied together that Minerva isn’t sure if she’ll ever feel the two separately ever again. Maybe that’s why she’s latched onto Helene, in a lot of ways. The youngest of the Calore princesses burns so brightly and ferociously, with an anger that is so integral to who she is that it seems to be what her bones are built of. Minerva’s never felt that strongly of an emotion before, she’s never been furious and bitter and full of a righteous need for justice the way Helene is. The most Minerva’s ever felt is the occasional pull of warmth and love towards her sister, or an odd tug of sadness that’s often gone just as fast as it came. For most of her life, Minerva’s been so numb and detached that it’s no wonder that she’s chasing this idea of feeling her body ripped open, of reaching for death with both hands; as far as Minerva’s concerned, she’s half dead already.
But Helene, Helene is the most alive person that Minerva has ever met. Even Lucretia, Helene’s other lady in waiting, maintains a level of sadness and numbness that Minerva can identify with. Helene, meanwhile, shines like some sort of star come down from the heavens, intent on burning them all with holy fire, and Minerva wants nothing more than to be devoured by that. Though she never used to view serving Helene as anything but a job, in a lot of ways, Helene and her anger are finally teaching Minerva how to be a real person. Her gratitude for that fact has been difficult to express, and usually comes in the form of flowers resting on the tray that Helene takes her breakfast on. The first morning that Minerva returned from bringing breakfast to lay out a dress for Helene and found the princess wearing one of those flowers tucked behind her ear was the first time Minerva smiled in what felt like years. Moments like these, quiet and showing that tiny sliver of a softer side of both the Calore Princess and the Blonos lady, have finally allowed Minerva to come out of her shell. She still gets odd looks for her quiet dreaminess and the odd things she remarks upon, but now it’s not just Vita who is protective of her –– Helene and Lucretia are now in her corner as well.
HELENE CALORE & LUCRETIA OSANOS: Sovereign & friend. The three girls have always been oddities among their peers, so it only makes sense that fate would bring them together. They have, however, never really shared the relationship that Ladies in Waiting are meant to share with their princesses. Ladies are meant to be companions to them, and friends, above all. It was never meant to be a duty, but an honor, and a glory. Lucretia and Minerva never particularly saw it as such, never being able to find a deeper connection with the fiery princess. They found one of sorts in each other, though. The Nymph afraid of water and the Blood Healer with an affinity for death; they were a match made in heaven. Their friendship, like most things involving Minerva, is a bit of an oddity in the Silver world, with both women keeping one another at arm’s length. Though mostly silent with one another, it’s a comfortable silence, with an unspoken fondness between the two. Helene, on the other hand, remains miles apart from her ladies, and in recent years, Minerva has developed a rather blatant affection for her, or more aptly, a fascination, finding herself in awe of how brightly she burns, and how truly alive she seems to be.
VITA BLONOS: Older sister. Minerva has always been eccentric, a bit of a square peg in a round hole, and though Vita fails to understand the inner workings of Minerva’s mind, she’s never quite concerned herself with it. Maybe it was because she was far too self involved, or maybe it was because she saw it as her sisterly duty, Minerva has never been sure, but she accepts the love that her sister gives her regardless of the reasons behind it. Minerva is the only one who sees Vita’s love for what it is: sharp, imperfect, and hard to swallow, but at its core, incredibly human. Minerva has always been the only one able to see the vulnerability that Vita masks so carefully behind her vanity. Which is why she has forgiven Vita for countless sins, the latest of which is especially admonishable. She can’t quite follow the train of thought that led Vita to take such actions, to blind Kieran Skonos, and though she doesn’t agree with it, she knows her sister, and she knows that if she looks hard enough, she’ll be able to find some sort of humanity.
KIERAN SKONOS: Friend. Minerva has attempted to make a friend out of Kieran Skonos, the man who her sister blinded out of spite, out of vengeance. She feels a certain degree of guilt, and another degree of responsibility to attempt to clean up after the mess that her sister has made. It was never fair to Kieran, what happened to him, and though Minerva has yet to figure out just what sort of logic led her sister to do this, she’s found herself doing her best to reach out to him in the meantime. Understandably, neither Skonos brother trusts her, and Hector, especially, has been rather terrified with the idea of leaving her alone with Kieran. But the fact remains that both Kieran and Hector could have easily hurt her by now in an effort to try and repay Vita for what she did to them, and neither one has. It speaks volumes about the sort of men they are in comparison to the women she and her sister are, and Minerva has begun to wonder what sorts of traits she could learn from Kieran, and his incredible capacity for forgiveness.
MINERVA BLONOS is an eighteen year old SILVERBLOOD with the ability of a BLOOD HEALER. She is portrayed by Sophie Turner and is TAKEN by Cass.
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