PER AMORE

I don’t want to be a piece of art. Nobody touches artwork. They just look from afar and move on.

[principessacapulet-blog]

rafaellacapulet‌:

    “Do we, principessa?” It’s a question that she finds lilting off of her tongue, brow raised and glance weary as it hangs in the air between them. There’s a shift, like a knife balancing on the edge of the table before falling, falling, falling – landing into the floor with its edge slicing into whatever had the misfortune of laying beneath it. She gently nudges her cousin with her elbow, head canting to the side in consideration as she assesses her profile. Whenever she does, it is difficult to see the woman the city demanded she be; hands buried in blood, mechanisms of money and power shifting and turning in her head.  When one looked at Juliana they saw this: a daughter of the moon, gentle and gilded, smile shining with stars at the edges of her lips. The sun looked at her and was jealous. Rafaella looked at her and felt the unfamiliar tug of love. Adoration. She could almost hate her for inciting such a thing in her heart, were it not eclipsed by the adamant affection. “Cosa vuoi? Come ti senti?” Before Juliana can answer, il consigliere pulls the document towards her, twisting the ring on her finger thoughtfully, skimming over it thoughtfully. Her eyes flicker from the picture of Brodeur to Juliana, nodding once before running her fingers along the papers piled before them, sifting through the pictures and payment information before prizing a manila envelope from the chaos, maroon fingerprints evident in the light. “Payment is right here, given to us…according to the records, three days ago.”

The question is so simple, Rafaella’s voice soft and yet--not. Juliana’s eyes flick up towards her, and she sees her cousin turned sisters arched brow, the slant to her gaze that says a million more things. Raf nudges Jules a bit, and it’s almost enough to make gooseflesh rise across her skin. It makes her nervous still, talking about her ideas, talking about the future that she wants to build for her people, knowing full well that it is different from her father’s. Her hands have butterflies fluttering through them, little trembles and quivers making them shake with Rafaella looking her like that. It’s so quiet, so intent, so knowing. You really want to know? she asks almost asks in return, hesitation and self doubt thick in her bones, but Raf is already looking down at the documents that Juliana handed her and she knows that her moment has passed. Perhaps, one day, maybe soon, they will be ready for this moment again. When Raf pulls the envelope out from the stack, Juliana arches her eyebrows at her delicately, an expression that says you just kept it out here in the open? She doesn’t say it aloud though, lets her expression do the talking before her mouth quirks up in a smile. She plucks it from Raf’s grasp all the same and empties the few stacks of euros out onto the table. “Three days ago, you said?” Juliana says, mostly just to fill the silence, not really needing or wanting an answer. She's picked up one of the stacks and is examining the bills carefully. “And we vetted all their guys, or just the higher ups? Do we trust their money handler?” She’s thumbing through the stack, running her thumb and forefinger over the individual bills. She narrows her eyes at the feeling of one of them, pursing her lips. She doesn’t want to say anything, not until Raf answers her question, but she’s almost sure she’s found the issue. 

[principessacapulet-blog]

juliana capulet + name meanings

[principessacapulet-blog]

maeve-petre‌:

There is no better place in the world, Maeve is convinced, than in Juliana’s arms. The world rights itself and she forgets that she has volunteered herself as a lamb for slaughter in a world that cannot be saved. There is enough warmth, here, in the embrace of the girl she loves most in the world, to know that some things remain the same. Some lights are too pure to be stamped out, and there is no blood that can stain their history.

No matter their last names, Maeve and Juliana have always been just Maeve and Juliana. Maeve is nevre more herself than when she’s with the Capulet heiress.

– She still can’t believe Juliana is the heiress to more than just wealth. She still doesn’t understand how Juliana became the princess to an entire underworld. But Maeve doesn’t need to understand to accept Juliana, to love Juliana for all that she is, mob princess included.

Maeve loops her arms around Juliana’s waist and buries her face into her shoulder. “It was a last-minute decision,” she mumbles against Juliana’s shirt. Laughing, she pulls back in tandem with the other and shakes her head, curls flying wildly. “I just wanted to see you.” And tell you that I’ve just enlisted to be your soldier and am about to be fully immersed in the mob.

“Am I distracting you?” Maeve gently touches the pad of her index finger to the paint mark on Juliana’s cheek. “I can always come back at another time.”

There has always been something about Maeve.

When they were children, Juliana had never been able to put it into words, and after Siena had died it had even then taken Juliana years to find the right words to describe how much she loved Maeve Petre. Sister. She had thought it one morning when they were lying in bed together after a sleep over, the morning light filtering in through Juliana’s white curtains and turning the light milky and soft. You’re like a sister to me. These past months, trying to hide from her the truths of how she was living her life, trying to hide from all of her friends the fact that she had willingly signed on to be a lieutenant in her father’s army.

The city knew who her father was.

That didn’t mean Maeve needed to know Juliana had signed on to become him.

“Well, three cheers to last minute decisions then,” she says, smiling when the other girl presses her face into Juliana’s neck. I missed you, the gesture says. I missed you, too, she says, tightening her arms around Maeve’s shoulders before stepping back slightly.

“Even if you were, it’d be a good distraction,” she says when Maeve reaches out and brushes her finger along one of the many streaks of paint. “Stop, you’re here and I’m not letting you leave,” she says with a smile, stepping backwards, looping her fingers through Maeve’s and pulling her deeper into the house. “Come, I’ll make some espresso.” She walks through the light-soaked house, dancing lightly over the tiled floors. When they get to the kitchen, she picks up the Moka pot and starts to fill it with water. “How are you, Maevina? It feels like it’s been decades too long. How’s your papá doing?”

[principessacapulet-blog]

machiavillains‌:

Juliana leans into him, mistaking the bitterness for something else entirely. The realization grounds him like an anchor until he thinks that perhaps she is not so mistaken after all. Perhaps there has always been something hidden beneath the floorboards of indifference, lodged halfway between the shadow and the soul; the kind of twisted tenderness he once so desperately sought, when he had been foolish enough to believe it would placate him.

A waxing crescent of a smile smeared in rouge; tinged with cynicism.

Haven’t you wondered why you were always able to find me here?

Juliana smiles like the sun, her laughter threaded through with rays of light, and for the first time in a long while, Easton wonders what it might be like to have an open heart. How many had given theirs to her willingly? What might it be like, he muses, to be capable of loving someone like her? They must make a strange picture, together: the boy denied everything and the girl denied nothing, standing together in the street on a paint-splattered afternoon. (If only that were the whole of it, he thinks that maybe he could.)

The pastel crumbles to dust in his fingers.

Easton rises to his feet and pretends to reconsider. “I might be convinced into making an exception,” he replies. He shrugs off his coat, shedding yet another skin, and shows her the pieces of fractured aquamarine in his outstretched palm. “Hopefully these weren’t too important.” He glances over her shoulder, then back at her again, taking note of her lack of hired company as he folds the coat over his other arm. Juliana smiles like the sun, and he offers her back its shadow. “Traveling light today, principessa?”

She’s glad she came alone. 

Not that it’s unusual, exactly, for her to go places on her own; her father prefers it when one of Matteo’s soldiers followers her and makes sure that she gets to and fro in one piece, especially with the way the violence has been slowly escalating over the past months. She understands, truly, why she needs protection, why she needs someone to follow her into the heart of the city and make sure that no one there would try and do her harm--she understands. Sometimes she even likes the company, likes having someone to talk to, but other times she hates it, wants nothing more than to just walk down the street alone and not feel quite so... incompetent. It makes Juliana feel small, makes her feel incomplete.

It makes her feel caged. 

A golden cage is still just a cage. 

She listens carefully as he teases her, pretends to have to consider her question. It’s almost as playful as she’s being, and it makes her heart soar, makes her feel like the smile on her cheeks is never going to fall. “Only to my sanity,” she replies, tongue in cheek. He doesn’t know her well enough, but the fact of the matter is that the cerulean blue staining his palms and clothes was a single peg in the ladder that keeps her sane, that keeps her whole, that has kept her from crumbling her entire life. 

She can buy more later though. 

Her heart trembles when he calls her principessa, that nickname the media and the whole world had given her before she had any say in the matter. He knows who you are, she thinks to herself, and she looks down at her feet to hide the tiniest of falters in her smile. “Yes,” she replies at first, nothing more and nothing less. She steps towards him once, closing the space between them, but then steps past him, and starts to walk towards home before turning on her heels, calling back out to him. “Would you like to walk home with me? I have a special cleaner that will get those colors out--a regular wash likely won’t do it.”

[principessacapulet-blog]

Juliana Capulet + movie posters

[principessacapulet-blog]

REMEMBER ME UNDER THE SUN. 

Juliana Capulet, yes of that Capulet family. Born to Cosimo and Chiara Capulet, a Hollywood mogul and a former model, Juliana’s childhood was not exactly what everyone expects it to have been. She had two parents who loved each other deeply, and eventually a little sister who was her entire world, and everyone expected her to be extremely spoiled (and that’s not to say she wasn’t), but her mother didn’t come from a wealthy family, so despite her own wealth, she understood hard work and dedication and did her best to instill that mentality in her daughters. 

Juliana got into acting at a somewhat young age. Her parents hadn’t initially really planned on putting her into the business at such an early point in her life, and at first Juliana had no interest in the business whatsoever. She liked her life as it was. She had a (somewhat) normal childhood, attended regular school and tried to play on the soccer team (she was terrible, but she tried in spite of the bruised knees) and what have you.

Siena, on the other hand, was a small drama queen in the making, and wanted nothing more in her little life than to make it onto the TV screen in their living room. She would put on shows for the family, make up stories and force Juliana to help her put them on, drag her elder sister behind her and Juliana faked annoyance. Secretly, she loved it, and when casting calls for a new shows came up, she was happy to tag along behind Siena as she went to the audition. 

It’s not the first audition that Juliana goes along with, but the last one that really means anything. It’s a casting call for some show about Wizards growing up in LA, and Siena wants the part of the youngest sister more than anything, so Juliana ran lines with her for hours, over and over and over again until they both felt like Siena had it nailed down. The surprise came when the casting director came out and saw the pair of them and asked both of them to read.

They get into a car accident on the drive home, and Chiara and Siena both die in the next day from the injuries. Juliana gets the call that she got the part a month later, and when she hears the news she breaks down sobbing, sure that this is some sick joke the universe is playing on her. She doesn’t give them an answer right away, and they say she can have a week to decide if she wants to take it. 

At first, everything in her shouts no, shouts I can’t. This was Si’s dream, not mine.

But then–This was Si’s dream, she thinks. I have to do this. 

She ends up saying yes to the show, and it stays on the air from the time she’s 12 to the time she is 16, and they film the final episode of the show a couple weeks before her 17th birthday. At this point, she is something of a household name among families, known for both her role on the television show and somewhat less-so for her singing abilities, though she really only partakes in putting out music because the studio thinks it would be good for publicity. She eventually gives this up, but does some small-time shows every so often still. 

The first year and a bit after leaving the television show she had been on, which was targeted for child audiences, she kept most of her portfolio quite PG, but upon hitting her 18th birthday she decided she was ready to move on. She loves her work for younger audiences very much, and to this day defends herself against people who try and put down that work she did when she was younger, but she was just ready to start telling more adult stories, stories about coming of age and about harder topics that she hopes will still speak to the same number of people. 

Since venturing beyond the show, she’s tried to balance her time between bigger budget, commercial films that pay her a great deal with smaller, independent films. She much prefers the films that aren’t beholden to studio executives that just want to make the largest profit, but she wants to be able to continue helping fund those sorts of films so she continues to act in the big budget films. Her most recent project is titled The Red Princess, and it a coming-of-age story about a girl growing up in a low-income greater LA neighborhood. It deals primarily with themes of addiction and was selected for a number of film festivals. 

Connections ideas to come later. 

[principessacapulet-blog]

oftybalts‌:

I’m gonna fucking kill him. “Good.” Anger was good. Anger got results. It’s why he let such a red-tinted emotion drive his thoughts, make weapons of his limbs and create a tunnel vision of his mind. If there was one thing to be said about Tiberius Capulet, it’s that his focus never wavered when there was a target in place, when there was vengeance to be had, blood to be spilled, eyes keen on the prize like the scope of a rifle. This was all he ever wanted – to file the softened edges of Juliana, sharpen them to a lethal point. His efforts has always seemed futile – but far be it from Capulet’s nephew to walk away from that which challenged him. He wanted fury to be her master just as it was his own, because maybe, just maybe, she would forsake such ideals of mercy, would grind the thought of peace into an ashen powder. The Montagues didn’t deserve it and Tiberius would be damned if he allowed her to extend it to them.

“We’ll make sure it’s slow,” Tiberius snarls, all sharp teeth and wickedness, mouth near-foaming. Even as he lies there, face pallid and body war-torn, he can always be counted on to conjure the energy to be hateful. He wouldn’t be il Tigre if he didn’t. “They shot zio. They killed Oberon. They stole Measure by Measure.” All in one night alone, tragedy after tragedy in one fell swoop.

I want him dead. And darkly, Tiberius smiles.

The moment of consideration he once awarded her tears has come and gone, passing like a ship in the night, here one moment and disappearing in the next. The thick droplets that fall from her eyes, the sobs that shake her shoulders don’t soften his features this time, only hardens them, a new vigor crackling beneath his skin. Use this, he implores her silently, use this grief, wield it like a weapon against those who have wronged you, wronged us. “To not make them suffer would be doing it wrong.” He reaches, hand slow as it curled around her wrist atop the thin sheets, squeezing so she’d hush and listen to him. “Don’t do it ‘til I’m well. Promise me.”

Juliana feels herself coming apart at the seams. 

It feels like everything she has ever taught herself is being put to a match, made tinder and cannon fodder for the girl that her people needs her to be now. Good, Tiberius says, and nearly every part of Juliana protests, nearly every part of her wants to turn her back on her cousin’s anger and his thirst for vengeance; this is not what she wants, not what she has been trying to work towards for months. Ever since the night on the rooftop, ever since she first step foot in Capulet headquarters, Juliana has wanted nothing more than peace, has wanted nothing more than to end the war that her family has been fighting for decades, for centuries, for eternity. Her body shakes while she cries, and it’s like earthquakes in her bones, ripping her apart as Tiberius’s gaze puts her back together, jagged edged and ready for blood. 

They shot zio, he says, and she digs her nails into her palms so sharply that she thinks she might have drawn blood, feels the sting of it like holding her hand over an open flame and wills it to be a distraction. 

This pain will not ruin me. 

When she had been a girl, Juliana thought that the grief of losing Siena and Chiara had ruined her father, had drawn him away from Juliana and into the darkness, that it had made him weak and callous. For all that he loved the daughter he had left, he had drawn into the mob and let the power go to his head--that’s what Juliana had thought, but she didn’t think that anymore. Not in this moment, not bearing this pain. My people died, she thinks, blinking away the remaining tears, her chest heaving broken-hearted breaths. To not make them suffer would be doing it wrong, Tiberius says just as Juliana feels her last tear escape and roll down her cheek. When he reaches out and puts her hand over her wrist, she stills finally, immediately, completely. Don’t do it ‘til I’m well. Promise me. She lifts her left hand to push the tear away and sees the crescent moons where she broke her own skin. 

This will be a rebirth. 

“It’s you and me against the world,” she says, an easy answer for an easier promise. She thinks about standing in the rain with Cat, remembers seeing her sister in the youngest Daly’s place and wonders how she can protect her new family; she thinks about pressing to the tips of her toes and catching Priam’s mouth with her own, desperate to make him hers; she thinks about Grace Daly spitting cruelties at her as she searched for her father’s shooter, the girl Juliana had thought was loyal until the day she was plunging a metaphorical knife in her back. She has spent the last two years trying to build her family, trying to expand it and make it her own, but Tiberius has always been there, and she’d burn down the world to get back at those who had hurt him. “I promise this is no different.” 

She almost doesn’t add it on, almost leaves it there, but something in her needs to remember her other family, the other cousin who had been there before the world taught her darkness. 

“You, me, and Raf--we’ll win. Together.”

[principessacapulet-blog]

heirmontagues‌:

He’s nervous. 

He told her twelve-thirty, but Roman arrived just after eleven, wishing to have the time to sneak in a little liquid courage before climbing—yes, climbing—all the way to the top of Hotel Emelia. The elevator was easy, quick and painless, but he wanted time. Time to think, to go over what he was going to say, to try and convince himself of what a bad idea this meeting was. 

You can’t be trusted around her. You know this. What are you doing? Go home. No. 

He spends so much time arguing with himself in the stairwell, a security guard even stops him. Asks him what he’s doing, hanging around here this late, and he can see the urge in his eyes. That leftover anger from a purge left unfulfilled, a man looking for a fight. It backs him into a corner, forces him to use his name—I’m Roman. Roman Montague. And you are?—his father’s name to quell the tension. To get him out of a bad situation before it gets worse. And then he’s on his way, up three more flights until he reaches the top, but questions start to scratch at the edges of his mind upon approach. 

If he can find such a war raging inside just one man, what can he expect from an entire city? Are they even worth the fight for peace? Is she? 

He shakes his head and pushes away the uncertainty as he exits out onto the roof. There was only one way to find out for sure. Maybe she wouldn’t even show up, not after what he did. And Roman wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. 

“Juliana…” he breathes, and something washes over him as his eyes settle onto her. A calm, a sense of belonging. Understanding in the flesh. “You came.” 

The first thing she does in clench her fists. 

She can’t look at him, just keeps staring out over the rooftop and out over the city skyline. She can feel the humanity leaking out from the ground, the thousands of souls that walk those streets below her and the Montague princeling, and it makes her bones tremble to feel how far away from them the pair of them are. The hand holding his letter tightens, and the paper crinkles, crumples at the side and draws in on itself the way that Juliana almost wishes that she could. The right fist curls, and she can feel her nails digging into the skin there, the weight of her balisong pressed against her thrumming radical vein, metal warmed by her blood.  

There are no tears in her eyes this time, but she can still feel where they’ve dried on skin, the places on her face made tight by salt and water; can feel the salt still clinging to her lashes, making them heavy. When he speaks, she looks down at the paper one more time, trains her gaze hard on his words. And when your people attack, I will not hesitate. I did not hesitate are the words her eyes trace first, the one’s that ignite in her both, grief and anger, until she settles on the small Yours. 

She wonders how that can be true. 

When she finally looks at him, there is no kind smile this time. She remembers the last time they sat on a roof together, how he had come up from behind her that time as well, remembers Mera kauntar and how his voice had sounded wrapped around her mother’s tongue. 

Shatter me, she remembers. Shatter me and I’ll shatter you right back.

She stands up slowly, puts his letter down on the bench beside her, and rises to her full height. He’s not much taller than her, and when she steps closer and closer, she barely has to look up to keep her eyes on him. She tilts her head to the side slightly, considering, before gritting her teeth and swallowing thickly, lifting her left hand to touch his cheekbone lightly. “We owe each other answers,” she replies, trailing her finger down the hollow of his cheek until her pointer finger is right under his chin. “We owe each other lives.” She puts light pressure on his skin, lifting his face slightly higher--haughtier. It doesn’t suit him. “How could I not?” 

She drops her hand, still feeling the weight of her balisong along her bloodstream of the other. 

[heirmontagues-blog]

Dear Juliet,

It pains me to be writing this, hurts me even more knowing who this letter must be given to and the reasons why it must be sent. War is calling. Demanding, really, and because of who you are I know you know what that means. Hesitation is a death sentence, and when your people attack, I will not hesitate. I did not hesitate. And I would do it again tomorrow if faced with the same decision. 

But because of who you are I also know you do not want this any more than I do. This war. Nor the carnage and loss it will evoke within the streets of our city—of our home. 

At least I think you don’t. Do you?

Meet me. Please, Juliana. I need to see you. I need to talk to you.

Come to the place where you kissed me.  I’ll be there at half-past midnight.

                                                                                                                          Yours,                                                                                                                                          Romeo

[principessacapulet-blog]

lucreziafalco‌:

Oh, no. The thought hits her and she nearly drops her class. It clatters loudly against the polished wood of her desk, but she doesn’t pay the noise any mind. Simply narrows her gaze a bit onto the princess and waits for more. There’s a tickle, though, at the edges of her mind. A name that stands out among the rest she keeps there, never really regarded as anything more than just a name, but she knows the plans Cosimo has for his daughter, the life he wants her to lead and the sacrifices he expects her to make without knowing any better. And there’s a part of her that wishes she had someone like herself when she was that age. Someone to tell her that the price is far higher than the reward, that sometimes what you trade for power is your soul. And Lucrezia knows Juliana won’t survive such a killing of her own. 

It was Priam. 

“The boy you’re supposed to marry?” She sighs, picks her drink back up, takes another big gulp. It takes all her will to not roll her eyes so blatantly in Juliana’s face, but she’s not so successful at biting her tongue. “Didn’t we talk about this already? Why you’re so insistent on doing exactly what your father wants is beyond me.” Leaning back, she relaxes back into the chair, suddenly far more interested in her own nails than the presence across from her. If she wasn’t going to take her advice, then why was Lucrezia wasting her breath?

The clatter of Lucrezia’s glass on the desk isn’t enough to jar Juliana out of her thoughts, isn’t enough to make her think about anything other than the way that her best friend tastes. She can’t bring herself to look at her after she’s first spoken, but she feels it when Lucrezia’s attention turns elsewhere, feels it when the other woman leans back in her chair and says Didn’t we talk about this already? She’s right of course, knows that Lucrezia probably always is. 

Why you’re so insistent on doing exactly what your father wants is beyond me. 

That’s when Juliana knows exactly why she did it, why it was Priam that she went to tonight instead of pressing up on her toes and kissing her enemy again the way she’d really wanted to. It’s those words that make Juliana look up, that make her see Lucrezia’s near-boredom and understand that it’s fair, understand that it’s justified. Since she agreed to the engagement, to the union to organized for her by her father, she’s prayed that she would feel for Priam that way she has been dreaming about for so long, that he would make her feel alive more than any other before him had. She doesn’t take her eyes off of Lucrezia when she replies, doesn’t waver from the truth, just speaks her heart the way her father had tried to teach her not to. “I think I wanted something to finally feel real,” she says. “I wanted him to be mine.” Her jaw doesn’t quiver, and her gaze doesn’t waver. “I wanted to make him my choice.” She takes another sip from her glass, small this time, as if she’s learning. “But he’s always going to be my father’s, isn’t he? Even if I marry him and fall in love, he’s always going to be who my father picked first.”

[principessacapulet-blog]

date: november 8th time: 12:30am location: hotel emilia availability: @heirmontagues

As a leader, she knows.

She knows that Orpheus was his blood to take, his anger to enact; she knows, and she understands why it was his hand that laid out justice, his hand that laid out the punishment for the crime that the other man had committed. She understands, and maybe even respects it, but she is so blind with anger that nothing in her accepts it. Every part of her knows that she shouldn’t be here, that when he sent that letter to her asking to meet she should have turned it over to her father and had a battalion of soldiers stationed on the neighboring roofs around the hotel, or at the very least she should have put flame to it and watch it burn. 

But she hadn’t. 

Instead she’d clutched at it every night, stared down at the words and let tears of anger and grief spill onto the page, panicking every time the ink started to run. She’d considered it every moment since, convinced herself that she would stay in her suite, but it had been too close, too easy to just slip out her door and take the single flight of stairs to the roof. It was like she hadn’t been able to help herself, like her soul was calling her to that rooftop and she was helpless to deny it. 

( She knows that’s a lie, knows she wants to be here as much as she wants to be anywhere else, but it’s a lie she needs to believe. )

There are tears drying on her lashes this time as she stares down at the page clutched too tightly in her hands. Her jaw doesn’t quiver this time, her anger a quiet simmer in her bones, and she closes her eyes the moment she hears him walking up behind where she sits on the bench overlooking the edge of the roof, overlooking the city below. With a flash, she remembers the last time they were on a roof together, her lips pressed against his, and she wills her rage to stay quiet. She doesn’t say anything, can’t bring herself to look at him right away--this is his meeting, his call she’s answered, and he will set the terms. 

She won’t reveal her cards so easily. 

[orchideves]

“He doesn’t matter,” she repeats to herself. “He doesn’t matter. He can’t matter.” Her face crumbles. “I don’t want him to matter.”

|| orchideves

[principessacapulet-blog]

oftybalts‌:

Tiberius bites the tip of his tongue, almost enough to draw blood. He hates that he can’t move without the room spinning like a top, him at it’s center. He hates that he can’t storm from the bed, clamp a hand around Juliana’s wrist and drag her to the nearest medical professional to be examined, he hates that he’s been rendered helpless by his injuries, unable to fight with anything but the cut of his razor-blade gaze and lashings of his furious tongue.

Relenting is all he can do, pressing his lips thin and shaking his head, a tiger forced to retreat. 

“Come on,” he implores her, wearily. The dampness of her dark lashes and the glassiness of her eyes is too much to bear the first time. He couldn’t bring himself to endure a second round of waterworks. This was all too much for her, too much death, too much despair, too much destruction than she probably knew what to do with. At least, he was a creature that thrived in such thing, a creature with sharp edges and deadly intentions – this, he could take, willing to brandish his teeth at the dark. But never has Tiberius wanted for any of this darkness to touch her. Is it true? What they said? And he raises a brow, a silent inquiry into what she means. Was it really Roman? “Yes.” The answer is simple and clipped, brutal and honest. “Jules, I know,” he begins, a slow rasp, chewing the inside of his cheek to attempt at making the words sensitive, but they only seem to come out more barbed as he has more time to string them together, “I know you better than I know anyone. And I know you wish to see goodness, I know you wish to think the Montague heir isn’t capable of hurting our own, that Roman and Romeo are two different men – but he’s just that, a Montague, and Romeo should hate the mere thought of us. It was Romeo that gunned Orpheus down in the street, there is no separation.” He lets it sink in for a moment, only to add, “And he would have done the same to me next.”  

Juliana can’t breathe. 

She can’t have this, not now, not when Tib is sitting on a bed in front of her with a concussion fragmenting his thoughts, not when her father is lying in a hospital bed just a few doors down with a bullet wound fresh in his shoulder, not when her people have bled and suffered and hurt more than she would ever have been able to handle but when her cousin replies she can’t help it. Yes he says, and already her breathing starts to pick up. I know you wish to think that Roman and Romeo are two different men, he says and it gets shallower, terror-ridden and terror-broken. She doesn’t know how to handle this feeling, doesn’t have any idea what she’s supposed to do with the way her heart is shattering in between her ribs. Is this love? Is this what love feels like? Is this what it feels like when a heart breaks because of it? She can’t help but wonder, can’t help but ask herself these horrible, traitorous questions with every new word that comes out of her cousins mouth. 

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” she says, and as soon as the words are out of her mouth a heavy sob echoes through her whole body. The ears well in her eyes before she can even think to try and push them back, to deny them their path across her freckled skin, but then they’re rolling over her cheeks and more sobs are hollowing out her chest. It’s what he ends on that finally ruins her, what spends her spiraling over the edge of a cliff she’d been teetering on since Tib had ended up here. And he would have done the same to me next. She doesn’t know what she feels, doesn’t know what to do with all this sheer want. She wants to ruin him, wants his head on a silver platter, but more than anything she wants some explanation--but even this she knows is flimsy, knows that she doesn’t deserve one. Her people had burned to the ground the thing she had seen with her own eyes he held most dear. “I want him dead,” she says through a sob, her eyes closed so tightly that she wonders if blood vessels will pop around her eyes. She doesn’t know how else to say it, doesn’t know what emotion is stronger--her want or her hate, her want of some hatred or some hatred of her want. “I want him dead for that.”

[principessacapulet-blog]

lucreziafalco‌:

Lucrezia’s eyes go wide, impressed by just how thirsty the little Capulet seemed to be and the ease with which she’d just downed fifteen year old whiskey like it was apple juice. 

Not what. Who. 

That nearly makes her choke, liquid getting caught in the back of her throat at the sudden vulgarity from such an assumed innocent little thing. “Juliana,” she hisses playfully, leaning forward, hand batting excitedly across the table to tap her on the forearm. “This makes me like you so much more.” She scoots her chair in closer and refills the girl’s cup along with her own, picking it up and taking a sip before she inquires further. “Who knew we had such a similar la purga,” she teases, a smirk spreading across her ruby lips, brow quirked as her interest sails beyond merely piqued. “Tell me everything.”

The whiskey burns.

It sits in her chest, slips through her and warms her until she feels like maybe she is on fire. She’d hoped that it would cool her nerves, dull and confuse them until she couldn’t think about what she’d done for a moment more, but it had done the opposite. The burn of whiskey hot on her tongue, all she can think about is the smooth kiss of amaretto she’d had earlier, the way Priam had tasted of almonds and safety all in the same breath and it made her want to scream. “Careful,” she says, Lucrezia’s reaction almost enough to pull a smile across her cheeks. “Don’t rush to judgement before I tell you who it was,” She bites the inside of her cheek as Lu refills her glass, of which Juliana takes another sip. Too big, not the right way to drink whiskey at all, but she needs the fire to go away and she doesn’t know what else to use to put it out. She can’t look at Lu when she says it, just looks into the bottom of her glass. “It was Priam.”

[principessacapulet-blog]

reginadalys‌:

WHEN: November 26th, 11:09AM WHERE: The Cathedral; Juliana’s new office WHO: Closed @principessacapulet

It was no secret that Regina was not at her best. Just looking at her, the thick cast about her arm could tell you that much, though she was fortunate it was not her dominant arm that was so badly injured. Weeks ago, there would have been burns and cuts and bruises to accompany the right side of her, and she was sure there were at least a few burn scars on her hand she may never be rid of, but all that she suffered from the Purge was not necessarily visible to the naked eye. Beyond what one could see, still-healing tympanic membranes and cochlear cells did not swiftly fix the hearing which had been damaged in the explosion, leaving Regina in a world of muffled voices, as if she were trying to hear a television program in another room with her ear against the wall. Some syllables were present but unable to combine with others she could not completely hear. It was frustrating, admittedly, to feel like you were so close to something yet just out of its reach, when Regina never had to reach so hard for something before. Perhaps she was slipping from the universe’s favor, but at least, it seemed she was not slipping from that of the Capulets.

She was not sure what the Capulet heiress wanted from her, considering the state she was in. Regina was not negative, but rather realistic, knowing the areas she currently lacked strength in and how she appeared compared to her usual performance ability. Still, shoulders did not sag as she crossed the threshold of the door, despite them having to lift an uneven amount of weight. Regina lightly rapped against the open door frame as she entered, the smell of everything so new wafting towards her. Something had been freshly painted. Some wood had been freshly drilled into. Some air freshener had been freshly sprayed or some candle freshly lit. Perhaps she wanted something so new to herself for a fleeting moment, but such a thing was lost to the black hole that lived within her as she spoke softly. “You asked to see me, Juliana?”

Her new office feels... well, new. 

There’s something unsettling about it, a kind of newfound power that she’s not exactly sure what to do with. Even weeks later, nearly a month now since the room was fully emptied of its previous furnishings and she first moved into it--it still doesn’t quite feel hers. It doesn’t quite feel like this is where she belongs, but in another way it feels like she is the new thing here, not that this is something new in her life that she needs to just get used to. It’s something bigger than that, like this is a step into a new world where she is the one that needs to change in order to belong, not that it’s a world that needs changing to suit her. 

That scares her. 

Takes her breath away. 

She standing in front of one of the side walls in her office; while the other has a huge bookshelf against it and a large mirror leaning against it, the other had felt blank, empty. She has three pieces leaning against the wall, all beautiful in their own right, but she can’t choose between them. She’s staring at them with her arms crossed against her chest when she light knock sounds at her door. “Come in,” she calls as the other opens the door, but Juliana spares Regina only a glance when she walks through the door. She was glad, happy right down to her bones that the middle Daly child was doing better, but she’d already known she was healing well when she asked after her for this mission. After throwing her a small smile, Juliana turns back to the empty space on her wall and stares hard at the paintings leaned against it. “I’m having trouble choosing which to hang,” she says, mouth twisting. 

[wulfhalls]

these violent delights have violent ends

[principessacapulet-blog]

oftybalts‌:

His eyelids feel heavier just looking at her, sleep threatening to seize him as she speaks. But the sandman didn’t know Tiberius Capulet, didn’t know what he’d fight until his breaths slowed and his body succumbed to the darkness – he’d fight until he was ready to stop. He had questions, so many inquiries into the well beings of those he cared about. Letting out a breath, it rests somewhere between a scoff and a mildly-humored chuckle. “Of course he has,” Tiberius rasps, nodding slowly, instantly regretting the action. And of course, Vivianne could be counted on to be at Cosimo’s side – she always seemed to be. But the most important thing was that his uncle was alive and recovering and in the best of hands – no assassin had taken him from them. 

Juliana lets no moments dawdle on, rattling off names and conditions as if ticking them off of a list. For that, he is most grateful, unable to bear the not knowing. His uncle and cousin accounted for, Tiberius’ brows knit together as she finally finds pause: at the mention of herself, her own injuries. “Juliana–” he scolds, eyes flickering in feral rage, “–Go. Go make them look at you now.” It wasn’t even remotely a request, but a stern command that dared to be defied by her steadily strengthening will. Fury curled hotly within his chest – enraged with who had dared to hurt her, wanting a name and a face and someone to string up for this, irritated with her for fretting after them all instead of tending to herself. There’s a lot of people hurt, Tib. “I expected that,” he says, his musings dark but honest. Tiberius knew no one would come away unscathed from La Purga. Eyes narrowing at the mention of Katarina, he tilts his head towards her, “Is she alright?” But his cousin skips from Kat to Orpheus and it nearly makes his head spin, the changes in topic a little too swift for his mind to catch up with. “I saw him,” he tells her, quietly, “I saw them shoot him dead.” But there was no time for sentiment or sorrow – this was war, and Oberon was simply another casualty of it.

“No,” she replies to his own demand, voice sharp and unsettled. She can’t leave him, doesn’t ever want to leave his side again, wants to spend the rest of her life using her own body as a shield for his if she needs to. “I’m fine,” she goes on. “The doctor’s already bandaged me up.” She can feel the bandage wrapped tight around her torso now, so foreign and uncomfortable all she wants to do is rip it off. Her voice is frustrated, tired—God, she is so tired. She can’t think straight, can’t see straight, can’t keep any of her thoughts in order no matter what she does. There’s a heartbroken anger in the pit of her stomach that she doesn’t know what to do with and an elation that Tib is awake for the first time, two emotions battling for dominance and she doesn’t have time or energy to let either of them win. Instead she’s just caught in the middle of the chaos, her heart unable to beat in the process. 

I saw him, he says, and her eyes well with fresh tears. There is so much anger, so much pain, and no where for her to put it, nowhere for her to direct it. Everything in her feels shattered and jagged. I saw them shoot him dead. Her bottom lip is quivering when she asks the question that she doesn’t want to ask, lifts her eyes to his and through her watery gaze tries to keep her eyes on his own. “Is it true?” she starts, not sure exactly that she wants the real answer. “What they said?” Her chest hurts. Her heart feels like it’s in her throat and she feels like she’s drowning. “Was it really Roman?” She can’t bring herself to use his codename, can’t bring herself to use anything but the name that she’s called him every time that they met.