Ahhh 4+11 for Manon x Aelin please and thank you ❤️
I'm SO glad you asked for this !!! baby's first tog below for @sjmsapphic
pulse + confess | Manon x Aelin for arrangement + mutual pining (here be nsfw angst + a leetle bit of blood)
They've been meeting like this for centuries now—two neighboring queens with no one left of their pasts but each other. There's a comfort to be sought in the arms of the familiar. A release they can find with each other alone.
"Careful, witchling," Aelin says, her pulse quickening as Manon traces down the veins of her neck with iron nails.
Manon smirks above her, the red slash of her mouth curving as she presses her nails in deeper. Aelin gasps as they graze across her clavicle—one, with just enough pressure to draw a thin line of blood. It hurts, just enough to make her feel alive again.
Slowly, Manon licks it from her nail, not once looking away.
Aelin bites her lip. The aching need within her builds like wildfire. As always, Manon alone knows what it is she needs.
"Never give an order to a queen," Manon says.
Then Manon's mouth is on her, neck to ribcage to the small of her stomach. Aelin's back arches off of the bed as Manon's lips brush the skin of her thighs. Thought begins to melt away.
"Manon, I—"
Manon stops. Gold eyes meet hers, intense and knowing. “What is it?”
Aelin wants. She wants the muscled arms wrapped around her while she sleeps, the slow and gentle breathing, the curtain of sleek moon-white hair tangled on the pillow beside her when she wakes in the morning.
It feels right, with Manon. And she knows if she asks the witch queen to stay, she will.
“Nothing,” Aelin says. “It was nothing.” A slip, a momentary lapse. She knows better than to ask for such things.
There are feelings she cannot confess. There are lines they cannot cross. For their kingdoms, for themselves.
Manon looks at her like she knows it’s a lie. But she doesn’t ask. As she refocuses her attention to drawing pleasure from Aelin’s body, she doesn’t say anything at all.
For fans of the Belladonna series and newcomers alike: Uncover the shocking truth behind Maelin’s death through the eyes of a young Blimmery, long before his time as Nightshade Academy’s beloved boarding school instructor.
“My name is Blimmery Owding, and I dug Maelin's grave.”
To salvage his family’s reputation, sixteen-year-old Blimmery joins the Empire’s military boarding school. There, he meets Maelin, a principled orphan, and Taig, her insufferable childhood friend.
Their fates entangle post-graduation, when Blimmery faces a problem—Maelin’s imminent demise. He teams up with Taig to save her, and the odd pair launches a mission that spirals into a night of total devastation.
Lost in the aftermath, Blimmery puts his life on the line to write a book. He titles it Maelin. And these are his words…
Review:
The prequel story to the Nightshade Academy series about the death of Maelin, a girl who was part of the series beloved boarding school instructor's past. The story follows Blimmery Owding's past at the Empire's military boarding school. Blimmery finds himself wanting to save Maelin, yet it might be impossible with the way she is determined to do what she wants. The events that spiral will lead to devastation. I went into this book without any context of the other series and was hoping that I would like the stories and characters enough to maybe start reading the series. The note in the book is that you could read this as a standalone without having to read the series, yet I found myself kind of lost with the book. I just didn't find myself all that connected to the story and despite it being a short read, it still felt a bit lacking. Overall, it just felt like a bit of a miss to me, however, I do think those who have read the series will definitely enjoy this one.
*Thanks Netgalley and Lost Island Press for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*
I got very obsessed with maelin and went on a tumbles binge. While the content is INCREDIBLE there just wasn't enough so I'm adding to the pile with *gestures to whatever this is*. Please enjoy! Let's not pretend this was edited lmaooo
to Jana (@flamingveritas): for the compliments and falling down the maelin rabbit hole with me
i highly recommend listening to rosier/punk2 by brakence while reading this. if i could i would have just copy pasted the song and made that the fic.
I left home now I'm fucked up
Realized how much I loved you
Whole goddamn life, been a suck-up
Now I'm just tryna get my luck up
All the pain went when you kissed me
—rosier/punk2, brakence
Manon has indulged, feverently and with vicious delight, in all manner of debauchery and sin over her many years. She has sipped the blood of men like fine whiskey, and kissed women like morning dew clinging to rosy petals. Most especially, she has never denied herself a pleasure.
Once her gold eyes lock on a target it's as good as hers, already weaving into her present and past. It is no longer a thing of the future to her. No because that would imply she still needed to get it, that it was not hers yet. It is something she simply refuses to accept.
Which is why, blood boiling, iron nails glinting viciously in the midday sun, she snarls at the blonde haired, blue eyed queen. The most beautiful being she has ever seen and by far the most infuriating. Manon has never wanted to lick someone's lips while simultaneously driving a dagger through their heart so godsdamn much in her life.
"Get your ass back here, Queen." She can barely keep the growl out of her voice. She feels half beast.
"Fuck you Witch," Aelin sneers, "You don't get to tell me what to do. Not anymore."
Manon is in front of her before the wind can catch in her snow white hair. With another grumble clawing through her throat, she plants her feet in front of the blonde. It takes everything in her not to melt at the fierce beauty she is met with. Gold spun hair, rivaling her own eyes, and sun smattered freckles and arched eyebrows. There's a look in the queen's eye that makes Manon want to pull them too close for decency and see how much of the pretty gold ring swallows that blue gaze.
"You owe me." She says instead. There is no gentleness in her voice. They have never been gentle with each other.
"I owe you nothing." Aelin spits. "I stopped having anything to do with you the day you left me."
"I didn't leave you." She explodes. She cannot go on like this. She can't bear it.
"Oh," The queen's voice takes on that high pitched tone, as if she's attempting to be snappy but her emotion is betraying her. She carries on despite it all. "Well, sorry for thinking that coming home to a note that says 'I'll be gone for a some time' and then not having a wife for ten years doesn't count to you."
There are tears running down that beautiful face and it makes every part of Manon wither away. She is made of iron but it takes one look at Aelin's crumpling composure to reduce her to rust and ruin.
"If I was gone for three hundred years I would still be your wife. No matter how long, or how far." Her voice is disturbed dust on a locked chest.
"Please leave." The queen shakes her head, stumbling backwards, away from her, from them. "I can't do this. I won't."
"I'm not going anywhere Aelin." Her voice cracks and she wants to curse herself for sounding so weak. But this is not a matter of blood and teeth and enemy. This is a matter of heart and she would always be weak when it came to the person who owned hers.
"That's what you said every day before you left for a decade." It is so quiet, so unbelievably quiet it feels almost as if the world hushed to hear that statement.
Her chest feels like it's been struck by lightning. She cannot imagine anything else would make her heart beat so fast while killing her so slowly.
"I didn't have a choice." She shakes her head. The words are coming out wrong. Will they ever be right?
"You had the choice to tell me."
At this her mouth curls into a snarl, gold eyes flashing with rage. "I would never have put your life in danger like that."
"We could have faced it together." Aelin bites her quivering lower lip. "Like we always have."
"I will never risk you, I will never put you in harms way if I can handle it myself."
"Maybe you could have handled it Manon," Her wife sighs, tears still rippling down her golden cheeks. They carve rivers over her freckles, making them stones on the riverbed. "Or maybe we could have done it together and it would have taken five years instead of ten. Or maybe you could have gone alone and I would have kissed you goodbye and said come back soon."
"That is—"
"Instead," The blonde interrupts, sadness, true grief, covering her face like a veil. "Instead I woke up to an empty bed one morning and it just never ended. Everyday I wondered if you had left because you no longer loved me, or if you had been dragged away, or if you went on a mission and had not survived it. Every day I thought of your white hair and your gold eyes and the smile you have when the wind dances across your skin and I didn't understand why I could no longer see it, see you."
Tears, hot and salty, stream down Manon's face. It is violent and full of agony. She isn't going to survive this. How could she?
"But I'm back now." She gutters.
"For how long?" The question is laced with exhaustion as if it had been asked to the point of meaningless.
How long will she be gone? How long can I live like this? How long should I wait before I try to find her? How long before I realize she doesn't want to be found? How long has she stopped loving me? She sees the questions reflected in those blue-jeweled eyes. It snaps the chords of her heart, like broken piano strings.
"Forever."
"That tells me nothing."
She doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to make this right. She would do anything. She would suffer through hell if it meant making this okay again. If it meant standing by her wife's side once more, instead of loving her from so far away.
"Please Aelin," She breaks, cracks so hard her jaw snaps. "How do I make this better? How do I fix us?"
"I don't know," Blonde hair glitters in the sun as she shakes her head. It catches like a halo. "I don't know and it hurts so much and I can't—" She is hyperventilating.
Manon wants to go to her, wants to wrap her arms around the queen and hold her until they've both stitched themselves back together. But she knows she will be shoved away, so far and so fast she will not be able to recover.
"I love you Aelin." She says. Her voice is quiet but her words are clear as Terassen waters. "And I will love you through every season to come, and every sunset we witness while on the back of abraxos, and every morning I catch you with chocolate cake before breakfast, and every evening that you read a book to me, and every moment I find your lips perfectly slanted over mine. I will love you through this life."
They had never placed their love in the past. Manon had never said "I have loved you since", she always says, "I will love you through..."
"And I will love you through the next."
The sobs that wrack the queen's body make the witch's hands shake. She cannot believe she has hurt her love so much, so carelessly, so destructively.
"I don't need you to love me through the next. I needed you to love me through this one."
"I do!" She cries. "I do, I do, I do. How could I not?" There is distance between them that no bridge can cross, but she can reach out a hand and brush her fingers across a tear-streaked cheek. So close in body, so far in heart.
"I will not survive if you leave me again." Her queen sobs. Manon sobs with her.
"I cannot survive leaving you."
Hands, smaller than hers, infinitely more warm, find her own. "I love you through the darkness."
"Until it claims us." She finishes softly.
And ever so gently, intertwined only by their fingers, they begin to stitch together. The future is theirs, and it is the only guarantee.
