#*kirsi

[eatsbooks]

I have a question: as soon as Eris becomes High Lord, Amalia will go straight to Helion, and we know she doesn't have a good relationship with her children, except for lucien. If her children move on without her in their current lives, especially if they marry and have children, and she never meets her grandchildren or becomes close to them, what would she think? Seeing her children being "happy" and "normal" from a distance, and her never being able to be a part of it.

oh this is such a lovely thought-invoking question. let me map post-eris ascension out a little … i think amalia probably waits on helion to seek her out because—if after all this time he does not want her, if after all this time his affections have waned, if after all this time he has found another, for she has of course heard of his dalliances, if after all this time he turns her away, then what does that leave her? but of course it doesn’t take very long for him to seek her out. probably at eris’s ceremony. which is time enough for eris to spin it as a calculated move on both of their parts. to make him a shrewd heir to the throne rather than an abandoned son; to make her into a wily and cunning politician to have leveraged herself as lady of another court so readily, that way the betrayed hearts of the people won’t bring any lords to prompt eris to seek vengeance against her and helion.

there’s never any hope for her and emile, and she knows it. he is her biggest disappointment, biggest failure. he immediately ingratiates himself with the beron loyalists and begins an intense downward spiral; he died without his father’s acceptance, the one thing he wanted above all, and so he mythologizes beron—is the most potent threat to all of his family. emile, by necessity, has to die soon after beron dies. she and carmine have a cordial but distant relationship, the way you might have with a friend you once loved dearly but fell out with and things can now never be the same but neither of you can address the rift because that would be to acknowledge a problem at all. she would favor marius most of all the non-lucien sons she has left, if only because his grief is the most potent and least generally violent—but he makes it very clear that he would kill lucien in less than a heartbeat and she can’t countenance that. he’s also most loyal to eris, if only because of complacency, which strains them further. so left to her after emile dies are eris, carmine and kirsi, and marius and adonia.

i think carmine and kirsi would probably bring her the biggest sense of indignation; they have three children together and carmine, despite still being charming and silver-tongued, is unlike amalia has ever known him to be now that he’s married to kirsi. proof to her of how different her sons could have been if they ever even just got free of beron, which means proof to her of how she failed her sons in letting beron sire them at all. kirsi is very hypervigilant of her kids and doesn’t let any vanserra close knowing How They Are, so i could see a lot of strain between kirsi and amalia at social gatherings, especially because kirsi doesn’t have time for autumn pleasantries and that would offend amalia. they are kin of my kin; i have a right to know them, amalia might say if sufficiently offended. you know not even your own kin; you may claim no right to mine, kirsi might say back. and carmine who has never (and will never) acknowledge that his deep-rooted sense of unlovability comes from his mother feels a keen satisfaction at hearing kirsi do so, which strains everything even more.

i’d say marius and adonia are most gracious with her in the aftermath, once adonia heals enough from losing her mate to regain her sense of self and her sense of propriety. but i think amalia disdains adonia for all she sees of herself in adonia—adonia who was in love with a male who was not her husband yet stayed with her husband until his end at the expense of herself and those around her, then immediately found solace in the arms of her love once her husband died. the parallels are Very Much There. so if adonia eventually gives birth to any of marius’ children, i think amalia might try to overstep with them. maybe try to make amends for her own failings as a mother by criticizing adonia. gently, of course. they are both autumn ladies. but marius wouldn’t stand for it, not after so long of adonia doubting herself with emile. he’s a bit more of his old self now, which is to say he takes on the silas role in his relationship with adonia—happy to be bark and bite on both of their behalves because she is him as he is her. this fills in the loss of a mating bond well for adonia; she basks in it.

and of course uhhhh things with eris and amalia are uhhhh. well. irreparably damaged just like i like em<3 so i guess allat to say—amalia Does Not Take Any Of This Well. it’s just like. such invariable, glaring proof of her failings as a mother, but she also can’t really ever accept her role in how her sons and their females behave because the weight of it would crush her. she really blames beron for all of it to protect herself from the truth of her being just as detrimental to their lives, just like eris does :•) so i think she probably just gets really resentful, probably unfairly more so of kirsi and adonia for Encouraging Their Behavior. even more avoidant of her sons, to the point helion (who feels immense guilt about all of this i think & probably a fair share of cognitive dissonance, once he sees the vanserra boys as not just like evil beron clones but real people who have been impacted by analia) has to encourage her to make time for them.

[eatsbooks]

HELLO???? Kirsi's parents have names? And they're dead? I am begging for more information

they do !!! tytti virtanen and urho virtanen. they ruled the sulatta province of winter, which spans the border of the autumn court. both were hardened and wise to beron’s testing of the borderland, and they were trusted counsel of the high lord who preceded kallias because of it. kirsi, kallias, and viviane were friends because of how frequently their parents gathered together. because of how close her parents were to the high lord of winter, they were part of the thorough culling of winter fae utm after the plot against amarantha was exposed. i still go back and forth on whether kirsi was utm—i think she probably would have been killed if she had been, and i think if she actually saw what carmine was up to utm, there’d never be a chance in hell for her to fall for him. so i think she probably was hiding out with viv in whatever the winter equivalent to velaris was when her parents were killed. i doubt word was traveling out of utm and to winter after the quashed rebellion, so i think she probably didn’t find out her parents were dead and that by birthright she was the new lady of the sulatta province until amarantha was felled.

bonus: post-utm, kirsi fucking Hates kallias for compromising her parents/his predecessor’s anti-capitulation-to-autumn stance and betrothing her to carmine. she considers it a moral failing of kallias and a personal slight on her own capabilities as a ruler. but ultimately kallias needs the support from autumn (even if it means beron has claim to the borderlands through carmine) more than he can risk beron taking a more hostile approach while winter is so weakened. because of this, she outright doesn’t speak to viv anymore, and she only speaks to kallias as her high lord—only with enough deference that kallias won’t be tempted to put someone else in her place, someone who will be of as weak spirit as he is. (cue her falling in torrid love with fucking carmine vanserra.)

[eatsbooks]

whenever you have time could you please drop a little snippet of the scene where kirsi accidentally gives off that she gets off to carmine and is very attracted to him? if not it's fully okay just anything you can say about it is food for my brain and soul and pus- (I get shot with ash arrows)

need you to know that i did Not have time to write this today but i couldn't think of anything else after this ask came in so now i have ~1400 words of kirmine on my hands and love in my heart also you literally made me laugh out loud i adore u

Muscles loose and limber, Carmine extricates himself from the down mattress and its overwhelming pile of furs. The perpetual chill of these lands threatens to seep in the moment his feet meet the icebound stone, to unwrite the fire from his body as though its mere existence is an offense. He casts a blister of heat about him to stave it off, pulling on first his trousers, then his silken tunic, both without wrinkle despite how long they have lain on the floor.

"Must you go?" a voice asks as he toes into his boots, high and tuneless and wrong to the ear. He knows from the rustling of fabric at his back that the female in the bed has pushed herself up on an elbow to watch him. "I could arrange for a thrall to bring us our repast. We could make an eve of it."

Carmine turns to her. Indeed, she is propped up amongst the pelts, fair as ivory, except where he marked her pleasure in pinks and reds along the expanse of her breasts. Though she arches her back to entice him with their surfeit, he feels unfulfilled to see them, just as he felt to lay with her at all.

It had not always been so.

Not so long ago, he could have lost himself between her thighs and come up feeling as satiated as if he had eaten a meal course to course. He would have partaken in this offered confection, then stayed for a spot of wine, then to break his fast come the morning, if he felt so inclined. He would have been well-pleased by his efforts and glutted on her adulations of them.

But there is a hollowness to them now.

Leaning forth to take her hand, Carmine presses his lips to the back of her knuckles. "Next time."

She pushes up further as he straightens to his full height, chasing after the lick of his flame. "Then there is to be one?"

"Surely," Carmine lies, smiling back at her in his egress. "Is there a male who could know you the once without wishing to know you all of his days?"

His footsteps echo crisply in the cavernous corridors of this wintry keep, as unlike the Forest House as two places can be: stolid where his home woos, unyielding where his home bends, glacial where his home smolders. If only he could melt this place through until it was malleable to his touch, until it came away wet and dripping on his fingers, until it sighed his name on the wind. Then, perhaps, he might feel full again.

"Lord Carmine," he hears from ahead.

This voice—velvety and smooth, like the slow draw of a bow along string—echoes out richly from its source, reverberating back to him from the small alcoves carved along his chosen path so that, for a moment, it seems she is all around him.

"Lady Kirsi," he greets, inclining his head.

A crystalline beauty, Kirsi holds herself tall and regal in her approach, her skirts tinkling along the floor, her hands tucked away in an ermine muff. She looks him over placidly: the untucked hem of his shirt, the undone ties at his wrists, the unkempt tousle of his hair. Then she glances down the corridor beyond him.

Her affect is that of still waters, of a lake surface frozen over. If anything has stirred in her at the sight of him, he cannot peer deep enough to tell, though he knows there is a current flowing in her—has glimpsed it before, in moments of quiet discussion, in knowing glances and subtle quirks of her lips.

"An afternoon well-spent?" she queries.

A shrug, lopsided and noncommittal. "It left something to be desired."

Kirsi hums out her response.

"I had hoped to spend it with you," Carmine adds, "but your ladies informed me that you had matters to attend."

At this, Kirsi laughs. "Yes," she says, slipping into the alcove beside them and lowering her voice, "and then you saw fit to take one to bed. Elena? Or—no, that was the last. Lumi, then, or perhaps Minja." Her gelid gaze tracks him as he follows after. "If you keep this up, there will be no ladies left to my employ."

Had he not suffered weeks and months of her disinterest, he might think her words born of envy. Certainly he has heard similar sentiments from other mouths, their eyes narrowed, their words sharp and their chests heaving with indignation. Yet here Kirsi stands before him as though they talk of nothing more pressing than the menu for the night.

Carmine closes the scant distance between them, enough that she must lift her eyes to hold to his. "You have never before concerned yourself with how I spend my time, lady. Nor with whom."

"You make me look the fool," Kirsi replies, quiet but no less certain for it. "I think it the very least you could do to keep your cock tucked away."

Hearing such words from her tongue, that cavern in him feels less a lack and more a hunger. "You must know that I would," he says, voice pitched low, "if only you would give me leave."

Kirsi looks aside, out into the corridor and away from him. Even so, the shifting of her hands in the trappings of her furs is the only true sign of her discontent. Were it not for this, it might seem only that she heard a noise and sought its source, or else wished to offer him better sight of the angles to her profile.

She says, "You say such things to me as though you do not carry the stench of another female on your skin."

Carmine places his hand over her fur muff, stilling the fingers wringing within. When she looks back to him, he murmurs, "It was you who I pictured. Your lips on mine. Your hands on my body. Your thighs around my head." He watches her pulse jump at her throat, and he knows with terrible certainty the only thing that will sate him now. "It is you who I wish to please."

Pale and lovely, her lashes flutter. Then, just as quickly, her expression steals over. "Yet you bedded her," she replies, shifting her arms that his hand must fall away. "Is it a matter of fickle desire, do you suppose? Or merely an insufficient hand?"

Head atilt, gaze dropping to the hands she has hidden away, Carmine says, "Ah—I hadn't realized I was contending with one so nonpareil."

Like a lone bloom amongst a field of frost, a blush rises to the high of Kirsi's cheeks.

Carmine feels the heat of it throughout the whole of his body. His need of her is made ravenous with so simple a sight, to know that she pleasures herself in the dark of the night—to see in this betrayal of her coloring that his sentiments are returned.

"What is it you think to when you let that hand drift low, Lady Kirsi?" he asks, noting the quick flicker of her eyes to his mouth. He leans in closer, close enough to hear the beat of her heart, fast and telling. "Is it the same as I? My head between your legs, my tongue in your—"

Kirsi makes a noise like a startled bird and clamps her bared hands over his mouth, her fur muff falling to the floor with a dull thump.

Carmine looks down to her long, slender fingers, and he wonders, if he breathed in deeply enough, if he flicked out his tongue now, whether he might find out what she tastes like in truth.

"Enough," she hisses, snatching her hands away as though she can read his thoughts off of his expression. "So I have thought of you. Your mockery is u—"

"I do not mock you, Kirsi," Carmine rasps.

She falls silent, then looks down to the proof of his gnawing hunger swelled against his trousers. Her eyes flare, and it is no longer another female's arousal which blossoms on the air.

"When I pleasure myself tonight, know that it is you—not my insufficient hand—that I will be picturing around me."

[eatsbooks]

the Eris/Kirsi potential with a young adult Kirsi asked to manipulate Eris, Eris playing along to get something out of her instead

i literally just inked!!! kirsi who really isn't very manipulative and honestly disdains such underhanded tactics but who has that deep sense of duty that draws her to do whatever it is she needs to in order to best steward her people. that same sense of duty that has her accepting her betrothal to carmine in canon verse. she thinks long about it. she already knows so much about the vanserras, about eris. she learns how best to ingratiate herself based on what he likes—a submissive female, of course, and a virgin; a female who will not challenge him in any way, not intellectually, not politically, not socially; a female who will do as he says how he says when he says it. that is what eris vanserra is said to prefer.

so the next banquet they attend together, that is what she is. demure. palatable. submissive. she lowers her eyes. she smiles soft. she laughs when she ought. yes, lord vanserra. of course, lord vanserra. if you think it so, lord vanserra. like eris has never seen her before. like eris doesn't know how much she hates him and his family. (males never pay kirsi any mind; why would she think he knew her?) he's amused! not mad. why would he be mad? this is what he wants, after all. she isn't wrong. it's what his father would want. it's what his father taught him to want. so it doesn't bother him. it doesn't annoy him. it doesn't enrage him, her feigned servility. he's amused.

kirsi is just so obviously out of her depth with it all. eris pushes her as far as he can for his own amusement, but she doesn't act without dignity even though it's such a thin artifice, and she doesn't ever break. she takes him in stride. she's SO wary of him, too. all he wants is for her to get her father to move his forces up closer to the summer border with winter so eris can have excuse to rearrange his own troops and get more males loyal to his father away from him without his father being suspicious. but oh my god she literally fucking won't. she feigns this submission, but beneath it, she's one of the most stubborn females he's ever met.

which he should hate. but he doesn't. it makes her interesting. it makes her fun to play against. it makes him HORNY. the next game he initiates is one surrounding her virginity. whether she will give it to him. because he 1) doesn't think she's a virgin 2) doesn't think she'll have sex with him besides. but kirsi's been clocking eris, too. kirsi's been monitoring the way he operates and with whom. she thinks: what is my virginity for the preservation of my people? and my god being this close to him feels like an entire bottle of wine is in her belly. his flame is like no other. it muddles her, dizzies her, blurs her and melts her. so hard to think about anything but his pretty face and his hand on her thigh and she wants him but she's so dizzy—

when she wakes up, she finds her virtue intact. eris vanserra has not touched her. eris vanserra has acted nobly. eris vanserra is everything she thought yet nothing she thought. and now she will figure him out.

[eatsbooks]

if carmine and kirsi had kids, what kind of parents would they be?

they're both such products of their environments and upbringings. kirsi is very involved with every single part of their lives and probably coddles them to an extreme. their safety, their longevity, their continuing lives are her utmost priority. she knows well how fortunate she is to bear three children to term with no complications—and she would treat them like the miracles they are to her. always in her lap or at her side, and if they aren't, they're in the same room as her almost always. any threats to them—any even potential threats to them—are handled swiftly and exactingly. the first time one of them falls ill/suffers injury sends her into a genuine hand-shaking, hyperventilating spiral that carmine has to try to calm her down from, which does in fact have the potential to make things worse.

because by comparison, carmine is pretty hands-off with his kids. he literally just. never had it modeled for him? he only ever really saw his mom dote on lucien, and by then, he mentally detached himself almost completely from his family and the emotions they elicited in him, so he was probably too busy distracting himself with sex to file any of that in his brain. plus if he thinks to himself that he wants to be unlike his own parents and treat his children more lovingly, then he has to accept that he has been affected by beron and amalia's parenting/lack of attention—and he just is not that emotionally mature, nor is he prepared to reckon with something like that. he's like his eldest brother that way! so carmine really let's his kids do kinda whatever. he plays with them and gives them attention enough, but he'd be just as willing to let a wet nurse/governess care for them—if kirsi would ever part from them.

which leads to a primary point of contention for my darlings once the children are born: kirsi pays much more attention to the children than she does to carmine—and that does not sit well with him. when the first is a baby, he's able to be like, okay, an infant needs to be cared for. but once the first has grown enough to be what he considers "self-sufficient" and kirsi is still all about their child all the time, he definitely gets resentful and snappish. that shitty petulance of like—you love our child more than me; you don't make time for me; you can't separate long enough from them to even have sex with me. which, of course, sex remains a huge thing for carmine, especially now that he's only having it with one person. that old unloved/unlovable wound crops up in a terrible way because this is exactly what he feared in coming to love someone: that they would eventually abandon him/withhold their love the way his parents did.

this blatant resentment hits kirsi hard as well. she understands how he feels, but she can't understand how he doesn't see that the children are the most important thing to her and that they should be to him as well. they should both be united on this, but he seems so disinterested in them. typical autumn court male—he doesn't understand how sacred this life they created is because he's used to such plenty. so she's pretty unforgiving of his attitude and doesn't offer him the reassurance he's after. she also really only sees the sex component of all this since he's never opened up about beron and amalia, so anything she knows of their relationship has been gleaned but never confirmed—which means that to her, this is all because they aren't having as much sex. she gets very paranoid that he's fucking around on her. that makes her more hostile towards him, which makes him more panicked and resentful and seeking of her comfort because it's proof that she doesn't love him.

so! all that to say! if he tries to calm her down when their child is ill/hurt for the first time, she's probably going to snap on him. all of those pent-up frustrations and fears and—do not touch me. you don't care. you don't care about them like i do. you don't love them like i do. don't tell me to calm down when you don't care at all. go—go to whatever whores warm our bed in my stead. and he's not going to take uhhhhh any of that well. because uh oh! suddenly he's his father! suddenly he's his mother! suddenly he's confronting everything that he never wanted to! and he hasn't been fucking around! but if she thinks that lowly of him, fine! maybe he will! he doesn't—but he definitely lets her think he does, at least until he comes back with his tail tucked and lays his head in her lap and they have their first genuine conversation in ages.

[eatsbooks]

What does Carmine's betrothed look like? I beg I need to have a visual of that diva I loooove her

god i wish i had like face claims for any of my characters or a better visuospatial sketchpad in my head. i picture her and carmine together as very quintessentially ice and fire. she’s slender and a lot of her height is in her legs—long neck, more subtle curves, regal bearing. white hair and blue eyes like kallias. truly an icicle of a fae. here’s a quick little moodboard i compiled because i’m bad at physical descriptions lmao

[eatsbooks]

Kirsi Carmine with the they went as kids once before and it was a memorable meeting trope

every single one of my synapses sparked at one time over this. every single one!!! rare era of hostile truce between beron and the high lord of winter. winter!hl invites the vanserras to a banquet. beron leaves eris in autumn but brings emile and carmine. around this time, carmine is so desperate for love that he's actively being groomed by female courtiers + kirsi is so devoted to her purpose even at such a young age that she's isolated herself from everyone but her family. complete opposite ends of the spectrum.

carmine tries to engage in conversation with kirsi at dinner. she wrinkles up her nose at him—ew! a vanserra!—and angles herself away, trying instead to hear what her father is speaking to the high lords about. he's still young enough to get angry and defensive instead of adapting to a new tactic of getting her to pay attention to him. he scoffs—makes some comment about how she might as well talk to him to pass the time since no one else is paying her any mind. kirsi, who clocked the way one of the females in their entourage touched his elbow in passing earlier, makes some cool cutting remark—looks to that female way down the table and comments something about the impropriety of his autumn ways. (yeah she's victim blaming. he's a vanserra! he can't be a victim. he's a perpetrator, else he will be soon.) they sit across from each other just mutually fuming and irritable.

but those comments stick in their little formative brains.

for the first time, carmine wonders what's improper about His Autumn Ways. it doesn't get him very far, of course. vanserra ways are inherently the right ways. but he thinks about it from time to time as he gets older. when they meet again as adults, he eventually gets enough wine in him to ask. what did you mean? she tells him, then asks, you remember that? kirsi thinks him a fool. what does he know about her life? about her reception? about her relationships? she doesn't care about connecting with others. she cares about her duty and her stewardship. stupid vanserra. stupid stupid stupid. he only said it to get under her skin, and she's letting him—she's thinking about it in social settings. people are ignoring her. yet too young to politic. too noble for play with her peers. it will change once she's older. but now she's aware of it. aware enough to make a snarky reference about it to carmine when they meet again as adults. you are not the only person to pay me mind; i have others to attend. carmine's grinning ear to ear because, you remember that?

[eatsbooks]

i've become very into kirsi x eris since you posted about it. how do you picture their chemistry being different than kirsi and carmine's?

let me seeeee i think kirsi has more respect for eris than carmine but in a really weird and convoluted way?? like once she gets past them being Vanserras™ she respects that eris puts on airs as being less sexually promiscuous—but she gets far more gratification in bed with carmine than eris because eris simply is not going to grovel or give her the control in the way carmine does. she respects eris’s ambition and competence—but he excludes her from political decisions that carmine would give her full agency over so with him she has to play into autumn politics more or else accept that she’ll never be a part of them. she respects eris’s diplomacy with the winter court compared to beron—but he is the heir to autumn. with him, there’s no remaining in winter. there’s no ruling sulatta. she has to become autumn, at least enough to be accepted by the populace so that eris’s image is maintained—but any amount of becoming autumn is too much autumn for her. carmine never pushes that even a little. he has no care to change anything about kirsi at all.

SO i think basically on paper eris is who kirsi would choose every single time if she had to pick a vanserra but it is carmine who she personally shines and prospers the most with. kirsi and eris have immense political savvy together (if kirsi will autumn herself enough for eris, if eris will cede control enough for her to have the control she did in sulatta) and they would get along really well interpersonally because of their similar goals/ambitions/mentalities towards duty, but their bond wouldn’t be as deep as kirmine’s and eris wouldn’t quite exalt kirsi in the ways she needs to address some of her deeper mortal wounds. both of them together are just far too stoic/private and unwilling to address their emotions without someone to push them to.

BUT i do think they would have interesting effects on each other’s sense of duty. kirsi who does it for the love of the game and accepts the limitations to her person because her parents were everything to her versus eris who is basically a chained and neglected and festering dog snarling in front of the throne because of his parents. he kind of gets her a little indignant about what she’s missed out on and introduces those things to her hornily; she kind of gets him to look past himself and towards the good he does for his people through his duty. so in these ways they are very good for each other.

primarily it’s just a difference in emotional depth between the pairings i think. both have their conflicts >:) but both also have different positive aspects to them