Claudius Provos’ jaw fell on the floor when he saw none other but Dom Calore – star of the football team – standing in front of his door. Bleeding from the forehead. Dom was a few years older than him, but somehow, over the past few weeks, the two had become friends. Claud wasn’t known for having many friends; he tried to keep to himself and his textbooks when he wasn’t with his sister Juliana, but after attending a frat party earlier that month (much to his sister’s nagging about it), Claudius found himself enjoying the company of Dom and few of his closest friends – Graham and Augustus.
Despite their new friendship, Claud was still completely at a loss as to why Dom would be standing in front of his dorm room this late in the night, bleeding and looking completely disheveled. By the looks of it, he had gotten in a fight with someone, but Claudius wasn’t going to make that assumption out loud. Instead, he opened the door wider, letting the older boy come in.
“Thank you.” Dom said, standing awkwardly in the small dorm. He looked even taller in such a small place. “I didn’t know who else to go to.”
“I suppose this is what I get for sleeping with someone other than my girlfriend.”
“What?” Claud narrowed his eyes at him. He recalled that Alessa Samos, a friend of Juliana’s who was in the same sorority as her, was dating Dom, but that was all he knew about it.
‘It’s…a long story.” Dom replied, suddenly feeling like he was being judged. “Can I wash up before I leave?”
“No, sit.” Claud told him, nodding towards the chair near the desk. Quickly, he produced a first-aid kit from underneath his bed. When he got a look from Dom, he shrugged. “You can never be too prepared.”
With a sigh, Dom obeyed and sat down on the chair, fidgeting with his fingers. The adrenaline was still probably pumping through his veins, and when when Claud dragged a chair to sit down on the opposite of him, he could no longer keep his questions to himself. “Who was it?”
“Alessa’s brother.”
“Augustus?” Claud frowned. The two of them were like brothers. “Well, I guess it makes sense if you cheated on his sister.”
Dom glared at him.
“Wait, am I supposed to choose sides?”
“No.” Dom said. “Just don’t tell me what I already know.”
“Just trying to make sense of it.” Claud shrugged, analyzing the wound above his brow that was still oozing with blood. “I think this might need stitches.”
“Can you do it?”
Claud shrugged. “I can try. But I’ve only done it once before.”
Dom only nodded in return, bracing himself.
Claud started to clean the wound first with some alcohol, patting the cotton pad gently over the wound. “So who was the other girl?”
Dom winced, partially from the pain, and partially because of the question. “Laelia. You know her?”
“The new girl from the UK, I’ve heard of her, yeah.” Claud nodded, meeting Dom’s gaze for a moment. “Why’d you do it?”
“We were drunk and stupid, why else?”
“I don’t know.” Claud said. “Maybe you have feelings for her.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m with–”
“Alessa, I know. But if you sought affection elsewhere, it has to mean something’s wrong between you two.”
“I told you I was drunk.” Dom repeated.
“Yeah,” Claud threw away the bloodied cotton pad and took out the medical needle and stitches from the kit. “But usually when we’re drunk, the feelings that we’ve buried down tend to come out.”
“You know,” Dom began, his tone on dry, “I came to you because I thought you’d be the last to judge, not because I needed a shrink to evaluate me.”
“I’m not judging.” Claud said simply. “I’m just saying how I see things from my perspective–and experience.”
“You ever been in my situation?”
“Not really,” Claudius said, concentrating on the wound as he pushed the needle through the skin, ignoring the deep brown eyes that made their way into his thoughts. “I just know a thing or two about hidden feelings.”
“Spill, Provos.” Dom said. “Who is it?”
“We’re not done with you yet.” Claud replied, repeating the motion with the needle through skin, making slow progress with closing the wound. “I wonder if maybe you slept with Laelia because she’s new and foreign and only here for, what, a year? If no one found you out, she’d be gone soon enough, taking the affair with her back to Europe.”
“It’s not like that.” Dom snapped, cursing when Claud went a little harder with the needle on purpose. “I actually like her. A lot.”
“Okay, so why are you still with Alessa?”
“it’s not that simple.”
Claud snorted. “Why not? Does she have you wrapped around her finger or something?”
“We have…an arrangement.” Dom struggled to explain. “Look, you wouldn’t understand. We both hold certain power, me with being the head of my frat, and she of her sorority. We understand each other, we work well as partners. It’s a good relationship.”
“Partners, really?” Claud stopped stitching to stare at his new friend. “You’re right, I guess I don’t understand how you can be with someone for the sake of your reputation or whatever.”
“Didn’t think you would.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, you are not a part of that world. Your life is more simple in a way that you can choose whoever you want to be. I don’t have that luxury.”
“You sound like a future King who has to choose a wife he doesn’t love or some shit.” Claudius laughed, finally finished stitching up his friend’s wound. “All done.”
Dom touched the spot above his left brow, the skin tender and painful. ““I might as well be with all the shit I’ve got on my plate.”he said, somewhat surprised that Claud didn’t take offense to his previous words. Somehow, he never took offense to anything Dom said.”Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Claud said. “Just…try not to make this a habit, will you?”
“Which part? Cheating, getting beaten up, or coming to you to stitch me up?”
“All of it.” Claud smiled, handing Dom a cotton pad to clean his split lip. “You’ll never be happy if you don’t go after what you want.” Perhaps Claudius was the last person to give advice on love and life, but he didn’t care. He wanted Dom to be happy, because underneath all that hard exterior of a football star and frat president and whatnot, Domitius Calore was actually goodhearted, and Claud recognized that from the moment they had met. “You are your own person, Dom. No one should be able to control you. Not parents, or friends or girlfriends. Do whatever makes you happy.”
Dom smiled and nodded, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Easier said than done, bro, but I’ll try. My new shrink is counting on me.” he grinned.
Claudius rolled his eyes, punching him in the shoulder. “Shut up. I’m giving you some solid life advice here. Use it wisely.”
Standing up from the chair, Dom nodded again. “I will. I promise.”
With that, he was out the door, just as quickly as he had come. The following week, when Claud met with Juliana for lunch, he was pleasantly surprised to find out that Dom had broken up with Alessa and patched up his relationship with Augustus.
Smiling to himself, Claud sent Dom a text later that night.
“Your shrink is pleased with you progress. Drinks, tomorrow night?”
The voyage had dragged on for three weeks, and it would be longer still until Genevieve sighted her new home in America. After the death of their father, it had been decided that the Macanthos family would relocate; Genevieve, occupied until summer at her military school for girls, hadn’t been able to journey with the rest of them. Lavina had assured her that her journey would not be solitary: the Eagrie family were also coming, and Genevieve was eager to reconnect with Diana.
It was not to be, however. She boarded the ship, and was greeted by the captain: Captain Hunter, though he insisted she call him Greyson. The first thing he told her was that the Eagries would not be joining them, for reasons of their own. Genevieve had insisted that they wait until the Eagries could join them, but Greyson was firm. They could not miss the tide.
In the intervening weeks, Genevieve had grown close to him. Neither he nor any of his sailors were of the social standing to which she was accustomed, but Greyson proved himself a gentleman of sorts. Though his voice was as rough as the overworked knuckles of his hands, he addressed her with grace, and spoke to her as an adult though he was thirteen years her senior. For her part, Genevieve was a little impressed (privately) by his lifestyle. Always, she had been a rough young girl, but here was a man whose hair smelled of saltwater and whose hands bore the touch of a thousand ropes, as though roughness was a life that had chosen him without asking his permission.
In the early days of their voyage, she had respected him because she acknowledge that, class divide or no, he was still a captain. But over time she had heard whispers, and was appalled to hear the other sailors (the first mate, no less) speaking ill of their captain. As she distanced herself from them, so she grew closer to Grey. She told him what she heard, and he asked that any solid proof of mutiny come straight to him. They envied him, he told her. He was transporting goods, he told her, and they were furious that he wouldn’t let them have any of the goods he had promised to his customers.
She believed him, of course, and was quick to view the rest of the crew as villains.
One night, she awoke to the sound of quiet murmurs. The daughter of soldiers, Genevieve had been raised into the life of a light sleeper and stirred at any noise. She slipped the pistol from beneath her pillow, and peered out from her cabin door. She saw a foot disappear around the corner, and was filled with the knowledge that the crew were heading for Greyson’s cabin.
Quiet as they were, she was quieter still. By the time she caught up to them, unnoticed, they had already gathered in Greyson’s room; he lay asleep, hidden beneath his blankets but for a shock of black hair ruffled against the pillow. He looked younger like that. Vulnerable. Genevieve waited; she would not act until she was certain.
The crew breathed quietly, looking at one another, until the first officer raised a hand. In it, Genevieve saw the dull glint of a gun. The man was dead before he touched the trigger. The resounding crack of the shot deafened them all in the enclosed space, and Greyson sat up as though a shock had gone clean through him. He witnessed his first officer crumple forward, and the rest of his ragtag crew agape, and his gaze fell then upon Genevieve, gun held straight in her steady hand, with smoke still trailing up in wisps from it.
“We’ll make a sailor of you yet, girl,” he grinned, hands dancing beneath his pillow for the gun that he kept there. Genevieve smiled, a cold, spreading thing, as she turned to the next mutineer.
Few dared to venture through the blackened branches of the ancient forest, not when they knew that lay at its heart lay Swindler’s Hollow. Deep within, where the roots of bitter, dead oak trees tangled above to form a cavern’s roof, and where droplets of stagnant dew threaded every surface, Genevieve pored over a crystalline pool. In it, she saw things that were; things that could be; things that once had passed.
Once, she had been a beautiful girl at court. But that was many years ago, now. She had been cast out for rejecting a princess’ hospitality, and the glistening roots of magic thrust their way through her stone skin as she was slowly, surely, pressed out of decent society. She had not known her own flesh in many years. They came to her, still, when they needed favours. When they wanted a dying child saved, she would take their heart as payment, and when they wanted their dead husband brought back from the grave she brought them a sad, silvery spectre incapable of joy, but still they came to her because a cruel gift is better than none at all.
Her walls were lit from within, blinking in sleepy jewel tones, and in the half light her marble cheeks twisted up into a smile. Deep in the waters of her seeing-pool, the crown prince Domitius was fighting back brambles to find her. The time of Queenstrial was near; the witch Genevieve knew this, because girls had come to her with requests for beauty and cleverness and strength.
“Your Highness,” she croaked, with a voice that sounded like the shifting of tectonic plates. In her mouth she held the wisdom of the crone, still with the ripe body of the mother and the enchanting thoughts of the maiden. She had become so much more after they had shunned her.
She did not turn to acknowledge her visitor. He would not wed her, and so good impressions mattered little. They hadn’t glimpsed one another in years, but she knew what she would find. Handsome like his father, with a wolf’s gaze and the soft touch of a lamb. His voice was the voice she had known before he even opened his mouth: satin against marble, the personification of temptation. “I’ve come to ask a favour, Witch,” he said. No Lady Macanthos, no Genevieve; but then, that girl had died long before. Perhaps they had forgotten who she once had been.
“Name it,” she said, pulling the cork from a dusty glass vial with the quietest pop. The black liquid inside glinted lazily up at her. His hand touched the back of her neck then, and she recoiled. Nobody had touched her in years, and she had forgotten what it meant. Was he commanding her to turn and face her ruler? Was he trying to seduce her?
“Make it so that Victoria wins Queenstrial. I will pay you any price you choose,” he implored, staring down at her with melting eyes. The Laris girl. A dull choice, but she was not there to judge. “No price,” she grinned, her marble skin glowing in the dimness. “It is done. Now leave me,”
The floor rippled beneath Dom’s feet. In the years since Genevieve had made her home here, the forest had come to understand her; it knew how to remove visitors before they could overstay their welcome. And on the earthy current of her floor, she watched as Dom was carried away, back up to the surface where the sun still lived. And in his absence, a creaking noise rent the air. It was like bough bowing in the wind; but it was only Genevieve cackling.
She dipped a hollow reed into the bottle she had uncorked earlier, and in it drew a drop of the liquid. It held a little of Dom’s voice, now, and she let it fall into a beaten gold bowl filled near to the brim with a thick, red viscousness. Pig’s blood and the sap of a holly tree; a potent mixture. The droplet sparked bright and silver, and sunk down, down, down.
It would sit for two weeks before she could use it. She could be patient; she had been patient for years. When it was ready, she would see to it that it found Dom’s heart. There it would sit, and spread, until his bloodstream was tinted the colour of a witch’s thoughts. Through him, she would regain control. She would have her bloody kingdom, and if that meant giving him his fool wife in the meantime, Genevieve was happy to oblige.
It was just that, deep in Genevieve’s heart ran a vein of determination that wouldn’t let her do poorly at anything. She had assumed that her patent lack of interest would assure victory to one of the other girls, particularly as Stoneskin was such a passive ability; it was difficult to show off too much.
Yet here she was, on the night of her GODFORSAKEN wedding to the GODFORSAKEN Domitius. She had been appallingly uncomfortable all day in a dress that she hated, and had heard nothing but how beautiful she looked, and what a fine queen she would be. Her mind was already made up that she would run away, perhaps cut off all her hair and join the army. But planning required time, and she hadn’t been able to avoid coming to bed. She had waited as long as possible, skulking in her hot, lavender scented bath as long as possible in the hopes that he would be asleep by the time she emerged.
No such luck. Wrapped in a long, Calore coloured silk slip, she almost thought she had made it as she slid silently into bed. Then he rolled over, propped up on one elbow, and she realised he had never been asleep. “So,” he said, eyebrow raised lasciviously in a manner she could only imagine was supposed to be seductive.
“No,” she said tersely, lying flat on her back and staring up at the ceiling as though it had done her a personal wrong. There was an unpleasant voice in her head telling her that he would take this as her playing hard to get. And sure enough, not a moment had passed when -
“You know, Genevieve, there’s a certain tradition. On the night of the wedding, the newlyweds usually--”
“Really. No,” she said, still familiarising herself with the ceiling. If she had to punch him unconscious on their wedding night and call that a new tradition, she would. He tried again: “But what if--”
“Absolutely, unequivocally, really, emphatically, NO. If you want to keep your hands, I strongly recommend keeping them to your side of the bed tonight.”
“Ah,” he purred, “I see. Nervous. It happens to the best of us. We’ve got years ahead of us, don’t worry. I’m sure tomorrow will be different,”
Genevieve rolled her eyes so far back, she thought she could see the back of her skull. This was exactly why she had really not wanted to win Queenstrial. Now, her life would be reduced to constant lewd comments from a spoiled prince. What fun.
Graveyard: My character will visit your characters grave
It was his fault. There was no denying it, there was no way around it.
The death of the Prince of Norta was Claudius’ fault.
He had chosen love over duty, and now, his best friend, his Prince, his future King, was gone.
In this very moment, as he was standing over Dom’s grave, Claud remembered his father’s words: Feelings are a weakness. Emotions are nothing but a distraction from your true purpose. Learn to become immune to love, and you will be free.
His father had been right all along, Claudius had just been too stupid, too foolish, to listen to him, and now he wished he were dead, too.
“I’m sorry.” he whispered, staring at the headstone instead of those blue electric eyes that used to pulse with fire. “I’m sorry for betraying you.” Claud’s eyes filled with tears, blurring his vision to the point that he couldn’t distinguish Dom’s name on the gravestone.
“I will never forgive myself for it.” Claud shook his head, swallowing harshly. “And you shouldn’t either. Because I know what you would say. You’d say I can’t blame myself for saving the woman I love. That this is how it was supposed to be. But it’s not true.” he said through tears, wiping furiously at his eyes. “I let you die. I made a deliberate choice to trade your life for hers.” And what good had that brought Rachel? The bomb still turned her into a cripple. She was still miles away from him, in Naercey with her own people. Claud didn’t belong there. “I’m sorry.” Claud repeated it over and over again, apologizing not only to Dom, but to Rachel, too. He couldn’t do anything right. He couldn’t save anyone, all he ever did was make things worse. And now he needed to accept the consequences.
“It doesn’t matter how much I replay it in my head now, does it? What’s done is done.” Claudius said, his voice taking on a colder tone. “I just wanted to say goodbye. I’m going away.” he said. “I can’t be here anymore. Everyone at the palace they…well, they either look at me with pity or anger. Your sisters can’t even look at me at all. Sera hasn’t said a single word to me and I’m pretty sure Helene is plotting a way to kill me in her sleep, so I suppose she doesn’t really hate you, after all. I expected your father to banish me, or better yet, kill me, but Graham and Augustus both made sure to convince him I did everything I can to save you. I don’t now why they bothered.” Claud sighed, shaking his head slightly.
“I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m not welcome here anymore.” Claud didn’t even want to be here anymore. Every single part of the palace reminded him of Dom. “But this isn’t our final goodbye. If I have it my way, we will meet again soon. And then I will never leave your side again.”
❥ probably ending something along the lines of 'gerard get thef CUK OFF ME'
It’s ironic, really, that it happens as he’s reading Henry IV- ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’- when the head of the crown itself falls onto his shoulder.
Dom’s mouth falls open slightly, the smallest bit of drool making its way slowly down his chin and onto Gerard’s shoulder.
There’s nothing he can do but watch in muted horror as Domitius leaves a part of himself on Gerard’s shirt.
“Griffin,” Gerard says with some urgency. “Griffin what do I do?”
His brother just shrugs. “Let him sleep.”
“What do you mean let him sleep? He’s drooling on me. The prince is drooling on me.”
“It’s all part of the job, Gerard,” Griffin explains, the growing smirk betraying his calm demeanor. “Now you just have to sit there until he wakes up.”
That doesn’t happen for another three hours-
( what Dom is even doing to end up that tired in the middle of the afternoon is beyond him )
- but when it does, Gerard wastes no time in taking his leave. “Good, you’re up,” he says to Dom when he wakes up, as he slowly blinks away his grogginess. “I’m glad I’ve served as a pillow for you, but I need to go be…anywhere but here right now.”
