Cœur À Cœur, Sang À Sang

Send one to…

😴  - Curl up next to my sleeping muse

🤐 - Come to my muse with a secret

🧥 - Wrap a coat around my muse

💉 - Help my muse take a shot

✂️ - Cut my muse’s hair

🎈 - Bring my muse something to cheer them up

🤗 - Sneak up behind my muse and hug them

🎸 - Teach my muse how to play the guitar

🍙 - Bring my muse something to eat

🥤 - Bring my muse a drink

🍻 - Bring my muse an alcoholic drink

🌺 - Put a flower in my muse’s hair

🛁 - Take a bath with my muse

🚿 - Take a shower with my muse

🎮 - Show my muse video game cheats

⚽️ - Teach my muse a sport

🌱 - Plant seedlings with my muse

🤛🏼 - Show my muse how to throw a proper punch

📕 - Read to my muse

It was something he was trying so hard to avoid. The thought of war terrified him. When the angels first arrived at the Council Meeting, when they blew the top off the facility and killed thousands of vampires, he had dismissed it. Reginald had been the one to push the matter, to realize that something more was happening. That this was a way to draw the both of them into the next Council Meeting. And he hadn't wanted to believe any of it. He had wanted to blame it on a "gas leak" as the Council had insisted it was as if the very CEILING wasn't taken off without any warning, without any reason. He knew as well as anyone else that it hadn't been a gas leak. But he had so WANTED to believe it.

The angel's ultimatum, the Ring of Fire, it had all passed so quickly and now they were faced with the threat of war and the worst part of it all was that he wasn't sure which side would win. He wasn't sure either side COULD win, only seeking to destroy each other. What winner could ever come from that?

He reaches out an arm to rest it along her back, stretching it along the side of the couch. He's furious at her, yes, but he knew that she was genuinely trying to form a solution, to stop the carnage before it became too much. Before either side caused too much harm to start a war.

Maurice is intelligent, by today's vampires metric, but he's not overly gifted like Reginald is. He can see Reginald working to find a solution, see the distance to his progeny's eyes. Turning Tamsin could work, but where would that leave them? She wouldn't be able to do her job, wouldn't be able to push for the violence to end.

"We hold off on turning until we absolutely have to." Maurice says after a moment. He doesn't like the idea, hasn't turned anyone who wasn't absolutely on the brink of death before and wouldn't do it. It was a last case option.

“It wouldn’t just be the Deacon’s box, though,” Celeste says. “You’d also have to account for how you’d get her in there.”

Vampire senses are strong, after all, and while enclosing the box in glass would help during the meeting, they would still have to get her through the escort and the hallways. Closed into a car, her scent would be stronger, and her only protectors would be blindfolded and handcuffed. Then who knew who they would run into on the way to the chamber itself?

But glass is a good start, and her mind does run with it for a moment. They could enclose the walkways in glass too but…no, those walkways are public. Unless they restricted them. But then there’s the transport problem. They’d have to convince the Council to allow them to come without an escort, or at least without the silver that would leave Tamsin defenseless. Technically, Reginald had already cracked the algorithm. They didn’t need an escort. But giving up that bit of information was too much of a risk right now. They could very well need that element of surprise somewhere down the line.

“What if…what if we held the meeting somewhere else?” Celeste’s gaze wanders and it’s clear she’s still turning it over in her mind even as she speaks. “Somewhere neutral. At night so the vampires won’t feel trapped and we can still move around with President Johnson if needed. I know the Council thinks it needs all those precautions Logan put in place but they don’t. That’s not the way things are even done anywhere else and it has never really been a problem. That takes the escorts and the algorithm out of play so we can get her there safely at least.”

She stands again, but not without briefly placing an hand on Maurice’s knee. An absentminded, almost instinctive gesture.

IT MAKES HIM SMILE, seeing celeste. he'd only left his hotel room to head to the townhouse, to grab roses from his garden for the vases he's placing around the restaurant tonight, so to see someone else arriving as he leaves the lobby makes alexei's heart soar. the vael adjusts the strap of his crossbody bag before heading over to her, smile still plastered on his face. ❝ is nice to see you, i was hoping you were getting my invitation. i did not exactly text message everyone to make sure they were getting them, i was simply assuming that everyone had. i am appreciating you coming. you do not have to be staying the entire time if you are uncomfortable doing so, is not an obligation to be staying past the party tonight. but i would like it if you were staying until saturday, so that you can be watching me skate. ❞

Celeste is so quick to smile in return. It is truly the most natural thing in the world to her, the millennium-old vampire always the kind to smile at stranger if she met their eye, but to see such joy on Alexei’s face brings it on even quicker and easier than usual.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she says, waving his explanation away with a single hand. “I plan on staying the whole time.”

It isn’t like she has anything better to do anyways, but even if she did, she would have cancelled it all to be here.