Marcus hadn’t been sure that his eldest cousin would visit at all, but oh man, he’d hoped. Going from holidays with a family as large as theirs, to a christmas alone with the little store bought tree on his kitchen table & his dog, Snickers, was jarring to say the least & depressing to say the most. But nonetheless, he swooped his cousin in a hug. “It’s so good to see you,” he said, a little choked up. He gestured to the other room with his hand, where a delicately wrapped mp3 player sat. “I have a present for you under the kitchen tree. It’s not much, but the not-magic world is pretty cool, man.”
asce was rebelling, but his mother had not noticed it yet. alex had laughed about this until her mascara had been running down her face, basil had chuckled. for someone as reserved as asce's little brother, a short chuckle represented as much amusement as his wife's laugh, but there were not many people who understood this.
and because asce was rebelling in his own way ( which read widely as pretending that his cellphone was out of range, sorry mum ), he had opted to skip the fancy dinner his mother was hosting and to stop by at his disowned cousin's place. strolling through the apartment and petting marcus' dog ( all while ignoring the urge to ask about what éloi had said about the dog ), he felt more at ease than he would have in his own childhood home today.
the manor was surely beautiful --- enchanted decorations and all --- but it was also a very cold place despite the roaring fireplaces. he had seen freya two days ago and she had mentioned that she was picking a long-sleeved dress for the occasion. he had only found it in him to nod because really, she should not even have considered to wear something else in winter. his sister was not impervious to the common cold and he, for one, did not feel particularly inclined to take care of her until she felt better.
“ i've never been too fond of the elitism myself, ” asce said as he reached for the gift. like basil, he had received quite a bit of their mother's attention when they had been younger. part of the attention had been that audierna had dragged them along whenever she had had tea with other magicians of questionable ethics. it had stopped, thankfully, when freya had been born --- a heiress had been what their mother had always wanted, even if freya had turned out to be a little too stubborn to be what audierna had wanted her to be.
( thankfully --- a version of freya their mother would be satisified with would be nothing short of horrific. )
sitting down and reaching for the gift, asce kept himself from snapping his fingers to make the water he felt in the kettle boil. no matter how natural magic came to him, especially when it was linked to heat, he had always refrained from unnecessary displays in front of marcus. it would have been cruel to remind him that the lacking skill marcus had been cast out for was something asce had in spades.
“ i would've brought along aalis, ” he continued cheerfully as he tugged on the ribbon, “ but alex said that mother dear might just commit murder if her perfect granddaughter was missing today ... not that aalis is gonna enjoy that stuffy banquet. tsh. ”
aalis would have preferred the adventure of leaving the secure yet boring bubble of magical high society to visit someone who lived in the non-magical world, but asce had not pushed. there would be other times when he could take aalis out for an adventure without risking that his mother would finally be so furious that she would combust. and maybe, it was better like this. he never really know if the banishment --- cruel and hardly justified --- was still hurting marcus, but ... it would be kinder not to risk upsetting him either way.
looking down at the gift, he grinned. “ this is fascinating, ” he said as he nudged it gently. to his great shame, he had never had the aptitude for non-magical appliances the twins had shown so many times, but he had typically been able to work out the easier things. as long as it was not as complicated as déodat's dishwasher, he would be fine. “ does it come with instructions? preferably something written for senior citizens? ”
name. asce rosen
occupation. his family's diplomat but also his family's soldier. it is complicated indeed and can be best summarised by saying that he goes where pain will be found
age. 718 years old
apparent age. late twenties, early thirties --- he looks younger than he really was when he was turned
current territory. none --- he travels too much, seeking out old allies of his father to remind them of said old alliances, occasionally taking down allies of his mother
outstanding skill. speed. even for the standards of his kind, asce is unusually fast. it makes him an absolute annoyance to anyone who tries to track him by old-fashioned means and it makes him a difficult target to hit. additionally, asce learnt how to fight other vampires from some of the best, making him an unattractive opponent despite his looks
unusual trait. like his sister, asce can be best identified by his tattoo --- a raven and a rose --- which can be found on his left shoulder
past. like his siblings, asce was born into the beginning stages of the conflict that would eventually end their parents' marriage. being the oldest, he had a front row seat to the arguments, to the anger. at the time, he did not have much of an opinion of it, nor did he resent his mother. the resentment came and his sister was first struck down by their mother, then saved by their father --- only to be compelled by their mother into staining her hands red.
asce had loved his mother, a long time ago, but this love had already begun to wither when she had started to be unreasonable in her demands and her jealousy alike, making the atmosphere in their home unpleasant to say the least. and his sister was an innocent victim, should not have a place on this battlefield. she needed to be rescued, but their mother had many allies whereas their father stood nearly alone.
as a human, asce was surely without many equals. he still was too weak to compete with vampires and survive. and so, he traded his mortality and his soul for the chance to rescue his sister, for making right what others had made so terribly, terribly wrong.
he did not regret it. not ever. not even when he nearly lost an arm to one of his mother's many assassins. not even when he held his brother basil back from tearing the vampire who had dared to lay hand on alexandra and cost her an eye. though honestly --- that was because asce knew that his sister-in-law would want to avenge herself.
I thank you for your kind wishes and return with my own congratulations to your impending marriage. May you and your bride to be live a happy life together. Indeed these next few months will be marked by many journeys as both me and my fiancee have received various invitations already. It cannot be any different for you.
Your siblings have indeed contacted me over the matter we discussed but you needn’t worry. They have not offended me in any way. I have taken their arguments into consideration and find myself agreeing with them for the most part. However, i would not go into more detail with them as this is a matter that needs to be resolved between the respective heads of our houses. It seems this task now falls on us. And perhaps it is for the best that it is us that have to confer on this. As it was my father that got us here with his careless political actions.
I thank you for your tactful concern and I assure you that this situation does not sit well with me in the slightest. I knew the Hollands personally so i have a personal interest in righting this situation in the most discreet manner. I also worry for my mother who has been under much stress these past months. The reputation of my house has taken a blow in recent years and after my father’s death the various misgivings against him have fallen in part on her, as undeserved as it it.
After your siblings have suggested rather permanent solutions, i am interested in your ideas on this situation.
Yours truly,
Lord Seth Hopkins, Marquess of Agharta
to the rightful marquess of agharta, lord hopkins,
my fiancée is from the south and i have to pay many visits to her numerous relatives, demonstrating my respect for their family. it appears that there is little love down south for my family, but i expect the situation to improve before long. my sanity may very well depend on it. this situation leaves me with too little time to attend to my other duties, thus i ask for forgiveness that this letter is late and still rushed.
regarding the matter at hand and the purpose of this correspondence --- i, too, would prefer for this matter to be settled, shall we say, in the most discreet manner possible. i did not know either holland sibling personally, but i do not have to know someone to recognise injustice when it is done to another. what happened to lord holland and his sister was nothing short of cruelty, especially if i am to believe the court gossip on the matter. it paints a terrible picture, but also one i cannot deem unrealistic with the knowledge that my lady mother was likely one of the painters.
i would not know my sister well, were i to assume that she meant her remark that 'this sort of thing' could be settled best by hiring an assassin as a tasteless joke; my sister has spent more time than me in capital and is possibly too accustomed to the way such things are solved in odalis. and as much as i would like an bloodless solution to our current problem, i had the misfortune of encountering the so-called baron. a most unpleasant meeting, i must say. this man does not strike me as someone who would see reason and quietly depart, allowing for a swift and clean cover up.
should claude return from onda with further bad news, i may have to recommend a solution that is far below both of us, if only to preserve the peace of the realm. you may think me a hypocrite, lord hopkins, but my family has always done what had to be done for the best of ianthe, even when it went against our beliefs. thus, there may be wisdom to my less moderate siblings' view. it does not sit well with me, and i would much prefer to at least attempt a more civilised solution for this problem, but i do not hold many hopes for it.
currently, i deem your esteemed lady mother and my lord father more deserving of protection from any scandal than i consider a horribly uncouth man deserving of a title, noble heritage be damned. house hopkins has been one of the most honourable houses in the past and it would not do for such a situation to besmirch such a long-lived reputation. i truly do not envy you for the complications your father left you with; they sound tiring indeed.
i send to you and lady eleanor my best wishes and kindest regards,
to the rightful marquess of agharta, lord hopkins,
i hope this letter finds you well despite the months that are behind us. ianthe has been in a state of disarray as of late, and i for one am glad to find it settling once more now that the royal throne is held by queen gabrielle, a woman who is greatly respected throughout this and other lands.
allow me to first offer you my most sincere and heartfelt well wishes regarding your upcoming marriage; i hope your union will be blessed with happiness and good fortune. it appears that the next year will leave few of our follow lords and ladies unwed; my father tells me that this was to be expected when so many of us travelled to the capital. my wife-to-be wishes for a summer wedding and who would i be to deny her such a wish? surely not the man my father raised me to be.
however, as you may already have guessed, i do not write this letter to merely send my best regards. as my younger brother would say: i am frank in the spirit of fairness. the situation we briefly discussed when you visited bellrose troubles me greatly. there is a chance that my siblings ( to name names, i suspect basil and freya to be the most likely culprits ) have sent you similar missives already. i would apologise, if i were not writing the self same letter today. should their letters offend you, i apologise --- they have never been the sort to not do as they please and compared to my lord father, i unable to stop them without being a hypocrite.
the matter is of the sort that may cause unrest among our fellow lords and ladies, and if i may be this bold: neither of us is currently in a position where we can afford the sort of talk that follows when such a ... scandalous situation is revealed. i think of my lord father and your lady mother when i write this: a solution is needed and it is needed quickly. onda is not a barony under my family's banner, of course, and thus the decision is yours. with my father's recent ascension to the queen's advisor, the responsibility for this falls to me, and unlike some, i rather ask for permission than forgiveness. i would never presume to have the right to ask you to agree with the sentiments my siblings and i hold in this, though i do ask you to carefully consider our situation and our options as this affects you as well.
i shall leave you with this and my kindest regards,
he needs to find freya, asce thinks as he pushes through the crowd. or basil, he needs to find someone who can give him the counsel he needs right now. he is not made for this side of court life, but they know how to play the game. asce had been taught to play and he had learnt out of necessity, but he has never taken to it the way his siblings have. basil is as sleek and as dangerous as a dagger in the darkest night --- and freya knows that she is beautiful and that people always get caught in her light. they look at her face and at her body, seeing a pretty little thing. they never look at her hands, never see how she pulls the strings. fools, the lot of them. they also make a grave mistake when they expect basil to be sneaky, for him to backstab them and they are blind to how he does not need to be treacherous, not when most are pawns in his game. and if asce wants to go against their mother and live to tell the tale, he needs a sibling who knows how to play games.
“ asce. ”
éloi appears, seemingly out of thin air, but there is a darkness in his eyes that tells asce what he needs to know: his brother has overheard what the foreign noblewoman has told him. under different circumstances, the heir might have been offended that his brother has listened to a private, confidential conversation, but being angry with éloi is like being angry at a tiny kitten: nearly impossible. “ she has taken it too far, this time, ” the fourth son says as he leans against the nearest wall, every inch their father's son in how he carries himself.
in this moment, éloi does not look like déodat at all. everything that is kind and soft about him has been wiped away and replaced by a colder gaze, a sharper posture. right now, éloi might pass for freya's twin if he were four summers younger. asce nearly balks at this, at the wrongness of éloi looking this much like freya, but then he nods slowly. he has to accept it, he reminds himself, he has to accept that his younger siblings have grown, that they have started to make their own decisions --- and that he does not like it because they are chipping away their innocence, little by little, while he desperately clings to his morals.
and asce has to agree with him: their mother has crossed a line too many this time. the daughter of astrina's duke is no guest of their family, but she is a guest of their liege, of the family they have sworn their loyalty to. their mother has no business even considering to harm the willowy blonde, especially not in the name of a ludicrous scheme such as with lady hunter out of the way, the woman's fiance will be eligible once more. it is particularly nonsensical when one considers that the chances that their father will only allow for freya to marry outside of the kingdom if she wants it --- and asce has seen how his sister looks at the younger hayden brother; they will lose their sister to the north if she gets things to go her way, but she will still remain in the country.
“ her actions could mean war, ” asce mutters grimly. he is no fool, he knows that lady hunter is high in her liege's favour. and while high prince noel has appeared to be calm and rational this far, there is no saying what a man does when a close confidant has fallen victim to a cowardly attack. asce only knows what crown prince johannes would have done, had freya been attacked on foreign soil while acting as an ambassador: a declaration of war would have been well within the realm of possibilities --- and johannes had never been the sort to wish for war, had always been too aware of the consequences of it.
next to him, éloi flinches as a dark expression crosses his face. “ if i may, brother, ” he starts slowly as he steps closer, his voice barely above a whisper. “ lady hunter told you what she did so the high prince does not have to know. i think the lady's words were i trust you to handle this. ”
“ yes, ” the heir mutters quietly as he raises an eyebrow. “ i think the lady is very generous. ”
it is such an odd notion, he thinks. they both know what lady hunter expects --- that there will be consequences for their mother's reckless and honourless actions, but there is no denying that the lady could have asked for their mother's head on a silver platter, could have made the incident public and called for a proper execution. that would have been the kind of scandal the family might never recover from, the kind of scandal that would break their neck and cost them their reputation and their standing within the country. and the latter would be quite awful, not just for them but for the country as a whole.
“ are you going to tell father? ” éloi asks, an odd expression lingering in his eyes. it is not the question that asce had expected as he had assumed that éloi would wonder about whether or not their other siblings would be informed of this new incident, but it is still a question he knows how to answer.
“ lady hunter rightfully wants blood for blood, ” he starts, his words slow and careful. because he is talking to éloi and he never knows how much of this his younger brother can bear. if he was talking to basil or freya or even déodat, he would not chose his words this carefully. he knows how much they can handle, how much blood they have grown accustomed to. he does not know this --- and many other things --- about éloi, about the brother who is so often overshadowed by his twin.
his brother shudders before he nods. “ our lady mother knew that she was challenging fate when she, uh, asked lady hunter to accompany her for a walk, ” he says quietly, and asce just knows that they are wondering about the same thing: why lady hunter has agreed to this walk. though this reasoning is bound to become an eternal secret as neither brother will ever ask about this. it does not really matter, either, as right now, fay hunter is more popular with the brothers than their mother ever was.
it is not like asce has waited for something like this, for the day when his mother would take her actions too far for them to just ignore. he does not have a scheme in place, ready to become reality. but he knows that the lady's demand does not allow for mercy --- she has asked for blood and blood she would receive. cruel as it had to sound, asce would ensure that justice would be dealt. their family's honour has been the backbone of the country for a long time and should it be questioned, the consequences would be unpredictable. asce does not like unpredictable, especially not in the game of high politics. at the end of the day, he is his father's son and jean luc rosen would never allow for his family to become a liability for the kingdom.
“ i'm certain that basil or freya will know what to do about this, ” he says quietly, squeezing his brother's tense shoulder before he sighs deeply. if a duel would be enough to fulfil lady hunter's demands, it would be easy for him. only déodat has ever rivalled and then surpassed his prowess during tournaments, fighting has always been easy for asce. but this requires a lighter touch, one that could not be traced back to anyone. and this, this is where basil's cunning and freya's poison-tipped smiles are direly needed.
( especially since her smiles are not the only poisonous thing about their sister. )
to his surprise, éloi is shaking his head. he is ghostly pale beneath his summer tan, but there is still the venomous expression in his eyes. “ everyone would look to them, were our lady mother to die under mysterious circumstances, ” he says quietly, but hardly gently. all that has ever been gentle about him has disappeared and right now, éloi is a frightful being. “ and they hate her even more than we do, you know this, asce. i suggest that you'll allow me to ... take care of this. the fewer people know what happened, the better. ”
what he says makes sense, but asce wishes he had not said it in the first place. this means that another sibling has fallen to the games odalis' court likes to play, that another sibling has traded morals for the sake of a greater good. it should not surprise him, not when he has carefully divorced himself from some of his morals as well. when he has done it, years ago, it has been in the name of the man asce has wanted to be king. he doubts that éloi cares much who is sitting on the throne as long as it is a good person, but for asce, it should have been johannes. the crown prince he would have died for, had it become necessary. the crown prince he still misses and who has left a wound that aches every day.
“ people would suspect them, and when there's suspicion, they might get caught, ” éloi continues, his voice near pleading now. “ me, on the other hand? no one would suspect me. especially with how mother tends to forget i even exist. ”
for a minute or two, asce remains quiet. he thinks about it, carefully weighs his options. but in the end, he sighs. éloi is right. basil and freya are the obvious choices, meaning that others would look at them and search for the truth. few --- if any --- would suspect éloi because it as as he has said himself: he is overlooked, he is forgotten.
“ very well, ” the heir finally says as he nods slowly, “ but don't get caught. ”
for a second, a grin splits éloi's serious face in two. “ fear not, asce, ” he says as he straightens his shoulders, “ i had many reasons to spend time in the library. ”
asce and his wife, mathilde, had five kids: four sons and one daughter. the oldest son was named eliyah and was followed by the only girl, angèle. afterwards, the three other sons were born: eric, félix and ives. however, mathilde did not recover after ives' birth and died shortly afterwards, leaving asce a widower.
I hope they sing songs about us,
that they scream
how I love you golden
because you are light,
because you are warmth,
and I orbit you endlessly.
I hope they write poems for us,
that they scrawl
how I hold your name in my bones
and they no longer creak,
they no longer know what it means
to be hollow.
I hope they understand
that if you asked for the stars,
I’d climb the sky for you.
I swear I would.
"If Laelia tries to fight any of the other children today," dimitri began, a heavy sigh on his lips as he watched his little sister. this morning had /not/ been a good morning."the best way to stop her without throwing her into another meltdown is to tell her if she behaves Marcus is going to take her to the aquarium this weekend." he felt guilty, in a weird way, leaving laelia here when she was so temperamental. both to her & to her teachers. "just, you know, a heads up?" ( kindergarten )
there had to be something in the water, asce mused as he nodded quietly. blair hailwood, usually a quiet and gentle child, had thrown a tantrum when her mother had dropped her off, had not wanted to let go. for some children, this might be normal behaviour but for blair? this was unusual. when cordelia severin had dropped off her toddler children, she had left them with promises that yes, theresia will come pick you up, no worries before she had hurried away, but not without telling éloi that she and her husband were leaving town for the week. predictably enough, klara and peter had behaved for a bit, but then they had started to sulk and especially karla could be very grumpy if she so choose to be.
running a hand through his hair, asce sighed. “ how are the odds that he'll agree to take freya, too? ” he asked as he looked at his younger sister who was particularly moody today, something that was a great difference from her usual behaviour where she was quiet and nearly timid. then, her friends were usually here by now, and freya had always liked it when everything followed a certain pattern.
( it was something the family collectively blamed basil for, given that he was just the same. )
“ and no worries, she isn't the only one who is a bit temperamental today and we are planning to take the ... overall mood into account, ” he assured at the other man, trying a smile. the last thing they wanted was to relive the great glitter incident --- it had taken over a week to get rid of all the glitter and sometimes, asce could swear that it was still not gone completely.
