Chapter Text
I slowly approached Antoine, who was kneeling before the dais. His bright crimson-red eyes pleaded with me—not for mercy, but for death. He had freely admitted to making a spectacle of himself in front of humans, feasting on those visiting Marseille’s Friday fish market to prove his determination to die. I was willing to grant his wish to prevent any repeat of his flagrant breach of our law—the only law that mattered: secrecy.
Antoine’s garments, a silk vest the color of summer wheat over a delicate white linen blouse with opulent quillings, were in the current baroque fashion. Both Antoine and his fine clothes had seen better days, stained with filth.
“So it is decided,” I said, keeping my voice smooth and soft to calm those before me who faced my authority.
As I readied myself to free this man’s soul from its body, Felix looked on with a mix of disdain and satisfaction. Many of our coven mates shared this sentiment, though most watched with more detached interest than Felix. Such occurrences were, after all, too common.
Demetri and Felix moved into position, flanking Antoine and holding his arms to subdue him. I looked down at the Frenchman and prepared myself for the flood of memories that would come when I took his head between my hands. As soon as my fingers grazed his scalp, I saw his life passing before me.
Despite my best efforts to maintain a neutral countenance, the corners of my lips quirked up into a cruel grimace when I felt the bittersweetness of the love and loss of Antoine’s one true mate, killed in a territorial dispute. I absorbed his misery; death couldn’t come fast enough for him. All purpose of living had abandoned him; there was only anguish and longing for a mate who had ceased to exist.
I grasped his skull tightly and pulled. To be completely honest, I do delight in the power of taking a life and controlling a destiny. This is probably one of my less charming traits. I snarled due to the effort, but eventually, his head broke off. Felix and Demetri pulled his arms off and tossed them aside. Felix disposed of the body parts on a pyre, where they caught fire and evaporated into a sweet purple fume.
Feeling gratified, I turned back to the dais where I caught a glimpse of our new guest, Carlisle, a traveling Englishman. He had averted his gaze to the ground in disapproval, which immediately soured my mood. While Santiago helped me out of my long black robe, I decided I was not in the proper frame of mind to address another of Carlisle’s self-righteous condemnations of our way of life. He had arrived only a few weeks ago, and although I was enamored with his stunning looks and intrigued by his keen intellect and curiosity, his constant displays of what he thought to be moral superiority had started to grate on me.
With a faux smile, I curtly nodded at the guards remaining in the throne room and exited through the heavy wooden double doors, which I slammed closed behind me. Seething, I hurried along the dark, musty corridors to find Sulpicia in what had become known as the wives’ tower.
“My sweet darling,” I crooned when I entered the room where Sulpicia and Athenodora rested on red velvet chaises longues, drowsy under the influence of Corin’s gift. Always the meek vampire, dainty Corin seemed to shrink into her armchair when my gaze met hers.
When Sulpicia’s eyes focused on me, blinking in stupor, I rewarded her with a dazzling smile. It was a façade, though, as I loathed seeing her drugged out of her mind.
“Would you give me the honor?” I asked her, extending my hand.
She reluctantly rose and glided towards me, her cream chiton flowing around her bare legs. She looped her arm in mine, and we silently walked to our rooms where we had privacy. I hadn’t been here in a while, as I usually spent my time in the library or my study whenever the court did not require my presence. Sulpicia rarely left the tower unless I requested it.
I took my jacket and shoes off, and together we reclined on the bed, where she leaned against a pile of soft pillows. I placed my head on her lap, contented to hug her legs, inhale her sweet jasmine scent, and feel her hands tenderly carding through my long hair. Within minutes, Corin’s influence waned, and her thoughts became more coherent.
From the corner of my eye, I could see her looking at me, questioning, but I did not desire to speak just yet; I simply wished to bask in her presence for now, to feel the familiar presence of my wife, which gave me comfort. It was so unlike me to be angered; I dare say I am usually of a rather upbeat disposition. The fact that our visitor could move me to anger angered me in and of itself—people don’t usually have such an effect on me.
“Golden-eyed Carlisle again?” she finally asked.
“Yes.”
“You have lost your heart to him if he bothers you that much.”
“Quite.”
“Tsk. You should look for an easier conquest, my dear,” she chuckled.
“What would be the fun of that?” I scoffed in self-deprecation.
Truth be told, I was not used to being rejected; I usually get what I want. More often than not, the objects of my courtship were quite willing when I pursued them—and, of course, I would never take them unwillingly.
“At least I have the most understanding wife a man could ever want,” I mumbled into the fabric of her chiton. She was still and always my most ardent supporter, even when I didn’t deserve it.
“Always, my heart. Always.”
I could feel her starting to braid my hair. Her fingernails lightly grazed my scalp every time she parted another lock. It was so very calming that I almost hummed.
Eventually, I elaborated, “Today, we had a situation in the courtroom where I could sense his disappointment with me.”
“Since when have you ever cared what people think about you?”
I usually didn’t, given how intimately I knew everyone’s exact thoughts about me—flattering and, equally often, unflattering. Therefore, I ignored how people judged me in the privacy of their minds. But I could not ignore it when they demonstrated their opinions like Carlisle had after today’s execution. After almost three millennia by my side, my wife understood this very well.
“For one, he showed a lack of decorum by openly displaying his disapproval. But I don’t even understand why he would object to the beheading of someone who turned to me with the clear intent of committing suicide by my hands. He always defends life, regardless of the circumstances; always judgmental without knowing all the details.”
“Tsk. So you feel that he undermined you; he challenged your authority,” she said with a teasing undertone to convey how little weight she gave to my complaint.
“Well, we are not in a democracy, after all,” I replied, pretending to be scandalized. “But I think he overestimates my penchant for liberalism. He is so very eager to disparage everything we do that he didn’t even realize his disdain wasn’t justified at all.”
I paused for a while, still hesitant to reveal the depth of my hurt.
“In truth, though, I felt it on a much more personal level, as if I had failed one of his great moral tests and he found me to be unworthy.”
“I see. You were the misunderstood tyrant—and the worst is, you would like to bed him, but that’s unlikely given his opinions.”
“About right, agape,” I sighed.
“Oh, Aro, did you bring me to your rooms because you want your ego caressed or for a strategy talk about how to gain Carlisle’s favor?”
“They are your rooms, too,” I evaded, not knowing the answer myself, and edged up to heto nuzzle the crook of her neck.
“I would only be in the way of your conquests if I stayed here with you.”
“You know that’s not true,” I interrupted. Although I had never been a man for only one woman, I had enough tact to keep my occasional affairs out of our quarters and not to sully our bed with my paramours. “I assure you, I would be overjoyed if you were to reside here with me again.”
She gave me that crooked smile that I had learned to expect when I asked her to leave the tower.
“You do realize that you desire Carlisle because his strong values intrigue you, but those very values are also why he rejects you?”
Unsurprisingly, she changed the topic again, preferring to discuss anything, even my desire for Carlisle, over her unwillingness to leave Corin and the tower. There was no solution. There hasn’t been any for two millennia, ever since Didyme—.
Ever since Sulpicia had chosen to stay hidden inside the safety of these walls. Then, when Corin had joined the guard, Sulpicia had decided to escape from reality altogether in the tower under the influence of Corin’s gift. Sometimes I felt like I had lost Sulpicia.
“You are, as always, my brilliant wife. That’s why I chose you.” I gave her a chaste kiss on her lips and then supported my head with my left hand while my right traced little circles on her stomach.
“How old is he, did you say?”
“Born in 1640, vampire since 1663.”
“A very young one then, both in terms of human years and immortal years.”
“To make things worse, he’s spent all 37 of his immortal years away from both humans and vampires.”
“He’s an innocent who knows nothing!” she laughed good-naturedly.
Thinking again about how he had spent those years excited me. It was probably the reason I had put up with his opinions and kept him as a valued guest. I sat up and shifted into a cross-legged position next to her.
“After he woke up for the last time, all alone and abandoned by his sire at birth...”
“Oh, the poor boy!”
“…he scrupulously avoided all humans. He’s not had a single drop of human blood. Ever.”
“How insane!”
“It is, isn’t it? Now, listen to this: he spent his first seven years hiding in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Not only did he keep the place free from rats,” we both giggled merrily, “he read every single book and every single scroll that was there.”
“No wonder you are infatuated with him! He is more than just a pretty face with a disgusting diet, it seems?”
Oh, he was comely indeed, even for a vampire. Moreover, I envied Carlisle for having been at those sanctuaries of human knowledge with all their history at his fingertips. What I would give to have seen the Codex Laudianus with my own eyes!
To meet a man who shared my interest in the world’s history, science, and arts was the most thrilling event to have happened in the palace since Jane and Alec became my children.
He had an educated mind with an intellect that had yet to be challenged. His mind had all the hallmarks of a great thinker, but he hadn’t yet learned how to utilize the building blocks of his vampire brain. I anticipated mesmerizing days discussing with him the works of Zoroaster, Laozi, and Aristotle and how they all related to our world.
“Then he moved to Paris and into the Bibliothèque Mazarine, where he lived in hiding again while devouring scripts and vermin. Eventually, he arrived at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, where Demetri found him.”
“He will love being here with our libraries available to him.”
“Yes, he will. And he doesn’t even know about my collection of Mesopotamian cuneiforms yet. He truly has made the best out of his immortality, even though it’s a horror to him.”
I hoped he would spend decades in my libraries discovering everything I had accumulated over the millennia. The thought of this gave me comfort as it would give us plenty of time to become better acquainted with each other.
“A life without responsibilities; what a lucky man.”
I ignored the bait. That our life—my life—was overly full of responsibilities had become a sore spot in our relationship every bit as much as her reliance on Corin had.
“His dedication to garnering knowledge is commendable,” I said instead.
“But is he also wise?”
“Hah! This is the crux of the matter! Like all young ones, he thinks he knows it all.” For a young man educated with the contents of several libraries but with very little immortal life experience, he was infuriatingly opinionated. “He was born into a world of relative peace. He hasn’t seen how the ancients ruled and how they treated his beloved humans.”
“Here, however, he will learn from us, from the very ones who conquered them,” Sulpicia beamed.
I was glad that she still felt pride about what we had achieved, despite herself.
Glee overcame me. In time, I was sure that Carlisle would come to appreciate everything we had done to facilitate our relatively peaceful coexistence in the world with the humans he loved so much. We have been gifted with immortality and could spend an eternity at it if necessary—time was our friend.
I was about to indulge in the glorious memories of defeating Amun and then the Dacians when Sulpicia pushed me on my back and wrapped herself around my side.
“Do you think it was worth it?”
I kissed the crown of her head and was rewarded with the sweet jasmine scent her hair dispersed. Her cheerfulness had made space for a more contemplative mood.
Corin’s effect did Sulpicia’s memory no favors, and we hadn’t had this conversation for a while. I patiently reminded her of the past. “Of course it was, Sulpicia. The world was not worth living in, neither for humans nor for vampires, as long as they ruled. Nebuchadnezzar and his fiery furnace was a development we could have avoided if we had never allowed the humans to suffer under Sennacherib’s Assyrian vampires.”
We ended up secretly supporting the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar. With the help of Marcus and me, he was able to forge alliances with Persia, Medes, and Scythia, and together we fought at the Battle of Carchemish against the Egyptians and Assyrians.
With an orgy of violence, fire, and blood, we were able to render Amun insignificant and destroy Sennacherib and his acolytes. Unfortunately, the many pyres that had burned the remnants of the defeated vampires became infamously renowned as ‘fiery furnaces,’ and our erstwhile ally Nebuchadnezzar learned to value fire as a weapon.
Afterwards, it had been a century-long cover-up effort to change the account of the successful destruction of hundreds of vampires in Sennacherib’s newborn army with fire. For our own safety, humans had to forget how they successfully fought against their immortal enemies.
In the end, our disinformation campaign thrived, and the abundant use of fire in the Battle of Carchemish was forgotten. Today these events are remembered as a biblical story in the Book of Daniel, where three men emerged from the fire unscathed. Caius still laughs that we get a mention in the Bible.
“And yet…”
“And remember,” I interrupted her, enjoying basking in the memories of glorious times past, “the Babylonians were not the only ones who discovered the use of fire to destroy the vampires who subjugated them. The Zoroastrian religion, which considers fire sacred, was the last thing we needed.”
We had ended up supporting the Macedonian Alexander the Great with his expansion into Asia. When he conquered the Achaemenid Empire, it weakened their Zoroastrian fire religion, and once more, a potential threat was subdued.
“I remember. Athenodora on the battlefield was a Greek goddess to behold,” she sighed. “But I never thought about what our existence would be like once we won.”
I hummed in agreement. We had a vision, but we never anticipated that we would end up enforcing it for millennia to come. Currently, we had to contend with a centuries-long witch hunt hysteria, which again used fire… it never ended.
“Aro, I was an easily impressed young woman when you turned me. You were this vampirically beautiful, vivacious young man with aspirations. How could I have resisted you?” she whispered.
I knew that these days she sometimes wished I had not brought her to join me in immortality.
“And you were an ambitious, tantalizing young woman who strived to be no less than a queen,” I cooed to reassure her.
“Aren’t we all, when we are young?”
“But you were special, agape. You were willing to go further to claim your prize when you forged alliances and plotted with me against the ancients.” I pulled her closer to me to feel her soft body against mine, her breasts pressed against my chest.
Unlike most of my Mycenaean contemporaries, I had not wished my wife to be a prisoner in her home. I was so proud to have found my match. A woman who was my equal in intellect and determination, a partner who did whatever it took to transform a vision into reality. Her appetite for domination had been superseded only by her thirst for blood. Then. Now, however…
“I was naive.”
“Did you really think we would overthrow the tyrannical covens and then go our merry way holding symposia?” I asked.
How things had changed… to my chagrin. Death had been inconceivable for Sulpicia until Didyme’s demise. Whenever we had warred against a coven, we had a strategy, we had the numbers, and we went from victory to victory. After Didyme perished, Sulpicia realized our vulnerability and that even for us, the end of immortality was possible.
Sulpicia grew increasingly cautious; initially, she went on hunts with ever-larger contingents of guards. Then, paralyzed by anxiety, she ceased leaving the palazzo altogether, and we had to provide her with humans to feed on.
Once we discovered Corin, she drowned herself in the bliss of Corin’s gift to alleviate both her anxiety and her boredom. I do regret the day we found Corin.
My beautiful Sulpicia, whose ferocity had once defined her, was no longer the woman I had married. Now I often felt as if I was alone, like Marcus.
“I certainly hoped that we would eventually find peace,” she interrupted my gloomy thoughts.
I couldn’t resist saying something crueller than she realized, because she didn’t know—
“You almost sound like Didyme.”
She swallowed and contemplated this comparison, as she had once scorned Didyme for her wish to leave the coven for an unburdened life. “I suppose I empathize with her. We had achieved what we set out to do. It is fair that she wanted to leave and enjoy her existence peacefully.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, the moment we stop enforcing the secrecy law, the moment we stop covens from trying to reintroduce the old ways, it all falls apart and all of our work and sacrifices become undone,” I huffed.
Too many vampires had enjoyed their existence with lavish blood baths and human sacrifices with a side of rape and torture before we intervened. Once we had destroyed the most egregious, we soon realized that dismantling the existing power structures and then walking away would never suffice. We had to either fill the power vacuum and establish a new order to maintain peace with humans or watch as everything we had accomplished crumbled and reverted to what it had been.
“I understand all of this.” She clenched her fist in my shirt, tearing the fabric.
“But it still bothers you.”
“I never imagined that my world would become so small. I admire you, Aro, how you can live locked up here in the castle. It’s dreadfully boring. We are prisoners in our own castle. We don’t even hunt anymore. The guard has more fun than we do.”
“We live in relatively peaceful times, agape. Let us take the guard and spend a night in Florence and visit the Teatro della Pergola. Afterwards, we will hunt in the safety of the narrow alleys,” I whispered into her ear, sounding hopeful, although I knew these were futile words. I had tried tempting her like this before many, many times. To no avail each and every time; her fear always conquered her boredom.
All my reassurances that she would be safely protected by the guards were in vain. I had told her about the many occasions I had visited nobility all over Europe in attempts to lure her back into the world. I had taught her the new dances, hoping she would change her mind. Still, she was steadfast in her refusal to leave the palazzo, while I wished her to experience life!
“But Didyme—”
“Was on a hunt by herself two thousand years ago. She was careless to have run off by herself; she should have taken guards. And now that we have Jane and Alec, none of our enemies dares to challenge us.”
Confining herself to the tower because of a potential external threat had become ludicrous and nothing more than an excuse for her to bask in Corin’s gift. I was certain of this.
Sometimes I wondered whether I should tell her the entire truth about Didyme’s death; how she had died at my hands. However, deep down I knew that confiding in her now would not resolve her anxiety but irrevocably alienate her from me; therefore, I remained silent. In the meantime, all I could do was remind her of what good there was in our palazzo.
“Agape, there is much to discover in here as well. There is the library…”
“How often do you want me to read the same books, Aro?”
“… and also the occasional guest—with more and more minds coming through our doors, we can travel the world without going outside our walls. We can live vicariously through the lives of others…”
“Yes, husband. You are right.”
Through her fingers on my bare chest, I was well aware that she was tired of being challenged in this conversation. Then she signaled the end of our discussion with her hand stroking along the length of my loin and by pushing her pelvis suggestively against me.
I closed my eyes and tried to empty my head of my morose mood. With a hum, I flipped her on her back and glided down to her crotch. I was willing to oblige and serve her well because it was the least I could do for her, now that our marriage had arrived at the point where we copulated to bridge the growing cleft in our relationship. This was how we reassured each other that we still belonged to each other, and I would always do what was necessary on my part.
Frankly, I was surprised that she still prioritized me over Corin—for now—and wished to bestow her presence on me. I shall savor it while it lasts.
I would love to hear your thoughts. I never found it believable that Aro would lock up his wife.
1. He knew that Didyme was not killed by enemies.
2. Sulpicia isn’t his true mate, and her death would not debilitate him.
Claiming she is effectively his prisoner was just a way of vilifying Aro. Writing Sulpicia with an anxiety disorder, self-medicated with Corin, seemed a much better explanation to me. (I am still worried about their marriage, though.)
Similarly, Carlisle’s reaction to the beheading in New Moon irritated me, given that he stayed for about 20 years in Volterra and called Aro his friend.
agape: Ancient Greek word for love (more in the sense of unconditional love without sexual connotation), a term of endearment.
Any deviations from the historical records are due to the Volturi’s interference in world events and their success in rewriting history to disguise the fact that vampires exist.