#*adile

adile / maronia + bauble

When Adonia was a youngling, her mother had a statuette on display in their sitting room. Not a single guest came to visit without heaping compliments on her.

Every strand of her mid-night hair had been lovingly carved, then painted over with so fine a brush that none clumped together. Her dress, a rich, royal crimson, fluttered down her body as though caught on perpetual breeze. Always, she was laughing, the beautiful, tinkling noise that males preferred. Her dewdrop face was bright with it.

The detail was so fine, it seemed impossible to Adonia that she was not alive and simply faking. A pixie seeking safe harbor, perhaps. Such pests were known for their trickery.

Adonia would often leave the room — with intention, mind you, so that the pixie would not sense the lie — then exercise her newfound ability to step through the world and appear before the statuette to catch the pixie, finally, in motion. Devious herself, she never fell for such a ruse. Adonia was still not convinced.

Frustrated one afternoon after her etiquette lesson, and not yet tall enough to reach for the pixie to shake her into truth, Adonia flicked her fingers at the statuette and set her on fire. She did not want to hurt the pixie, of course. Just startle the little thing into action. Her flame never hurt her, you see, so she did not think much of it at all.

But her mother, who had been walking by, was at once aghast.

She is alive, was all Adonia first said by way of explanation.

She is not, her mother said. Why would you want to hurt her, if you thought she was?

I did not want to hurt her. Angry, suddenly, and uncertain why, Adonia asked, What is she for, if she does not do anything at all? If she only stands there, laughing, day in and day out?

Her mother looked at her quite sadly, then. It would be many years before Adonia understood why, and when she did, she would make a very similar face. She brings people joy, little love. Just by being. She does not need to do anything but that.

After that, Adonia came to live like the statuette.

She brushed through her hair, until it shone, until every strand was separate and fine.

She donned the latest fashions, in royal colors, in eminent cuts.

She laughed, beautiful and tinkling, in the way that males preferred.

Not a single suitor came by without heaping compliments on her.

When she attended court for the first time and the mating bond snapped between her and Emile — when she felt it, before he had even looked her way — when she could not keep from blurting it out and earning his sneer — she was glad that even for her indignity in the moment, all she needed to do was be, and she would soon bring him joy.

Sitting at his side now, Adonia stares into the flickering centerpiece of the banquet table and thinks to the statuette, as she has not done for some time. In her memory, it is alive. In her memory, it is still a pixie, tricky, devious, aflame.

The fire before her goes out. It is such a trivial use of her ability that she waves her hand before she can think better of it, and the flame roars back to life.

In her periphery, Emile’s grip on his fork tightens. He interrupts his conversation to snap, “That is servants’ work, Adonia.”

One of his brothers snorts from across the table, just as she murmurs out, “Apologies, my lord.”

Emile cuts a look to him. “Something amusing, Marius?”

But it is the same-faced one beside who leans forth and says, “It’s such low-hanging fruit. Must we even give it voice?”

Marius laughs, then incites the fire into a dance between them.

Silas waves a hand, and a centerpiece down the table flares up. “Come now, Emile,” he says, tipping his head to the other end of the table, where a third candle burns tame. “Your turn.”

In her lap, Adonia feels her fingers twitch. She does not mean for them to. It is much like setting the statuette on fire: frustration set free.

The flame soars towards the ceiling.

Down the table, the eldest brother issues command, cutting and final: “Enough.”

All of the centerpieces die down, abruptly.

Emile, staring daggers at his brothers across, thankfully does not seem to realize it was her who lit the third. But the twins do.

Marius slides his eyes to meet hers and smirks, a clandestine curve to the corner of his mouth.

Adonia drops her gaze to her plate.

If nothing else, Adonia is a comely female. There are moments when this fact strikes Emile so intensely that, for some time after, it colors all else about her, blush-pink, petal-soft. The flaws in her canvas fill in with delicate pigment, and she tricks him into forgetting that they exist at all.

Earlier in the eve, she turned her face away from him while he was speaking to her, as she tends to whenever she cannot keep it pleasant. The dark feathering of her lashes swept down, and the shadow they cast settled against the high of her cheeks. Her lower lip, full and plush, set to a wobble. A lovely red suffused her skin, then atop it, a tear wound its glittering path all the way down to the point of her chin.

Emile lost track of what he was saying at once.

In something of a trance, he reached for her. She went very still as he tipped her face up to his, and this made the second tear that fell all the more captivating. He had the urge to bend forth and press his mouth to her cheek, to brush the wet away on his lips, then his tongue. Finally discover how she might taste, if he were to follow its intended path down her throat, between her breasts, along her navel, into her cunt.

He imagined her salty, like her tears; he imagined her sweet, like the way she looked up at him.

Her eyes were big and round and silvery. There was a desperation in them. She wanted him the same way he wanted her in that moment—but then, Emile had always known that. He would have given it to her then, had their tardiness for the banquet not posed problem in the first place. His thoughts still painted over with her guile, he decided to do so once they retired to their chambers.

But the issue is that no matter how pretty a thing Adonia is, her flaws can never stay concealed beneath this veneer for very long.

Because she is a comely female, and she knows this.

Other males know this, too.

Emile watches her from over his cup, dinner near its end, the spice of the wine burning down into his filled belly.

That blush is back on her face as she talks to the male at her other side — the son of some merchant father has taken interest in doing business with. Where it had seemed a thing of beauty, it now looks a stain, smeared along by the wide of her smile. Her long, dark lashes bat and flutter, like he is not sitting here, beside her, watching on as she makes him into a cuckold for all in attendance to see.

Emile places his goblet down with a dull thud, wine sloshing over its rim, spilling from his hand and bleeding into the table covering below.

The batting and fluttering ceases at once. That garish smile falls away from her face as she deigns to look over at him, to remember he is still here.

Emile leans in, and Adonia shrinks down into herself.

Almost, her beauty overcomes him again. He does not let it this time, not even with her eyes big, round, desperate.

“Why stop at seeming the whore, Adonia?” he asks, his syllables soft and runny but his words sharp enough that he can delight in how they wound. “Why not bend over for him, too? You could do it right here. Spare us all the guesswork.”

Adonia keeps her mouth shut.

But at her back, on a nervous, pathetic laugh: “My lord, you misunderstand. The lady and I were o—”

Whatever more the fool thought to say is trapped behind the smoke now suffocating him.

“I do not recall inviting you to speak to me.”

Practically inaudible below the clamor being made, Adonia says, “Forgive me, my lord. It will not happen again.”

Emile knows she is only saying this to spare the cock she could have ensnared with her blush-pink, petal-soft ways. He waits until the room finally quiets to speak. It takes a good while, with the way he lets air slip into the male’s lungs here and there. But eventually, there is silence.

Every time you post something about your oc's it literally makes my whole day 🥹❤️

YOU 🫵🏻 make my whole day what the hell i’ll cry thank you💘

lmfaooo i fear with emile there are always at the very least undercurrents of Bad:( his daughter would be completely under his control in a largely abusive way but compared to the way he treats everyone else—physical violence and scathing derision—the attention and quasi-affection would make her feel exceptionally special. i could see it getting pretty rough between her and adonia because it would foster awful resentment and weird rivalrous sentiments. adonia would be sick to her stomach seeing that emile has a stayed hand when he chooses to, as well as the capacity for protectiveness. between emile and his daughter, it’s very much this:

emile — emile has a mate, adonia, and they are married, as i hc is custom in autumn regardless of mate status. in classic emile fashion, he views her as a slight to him. she is from a weaker bloodline in autumn, which confirms to him that he is unworthy and weak, which makes him angrier and more vindictive. she can also wield flame where he cannot, which feels like a cosmic sort of fuck you to emile, that she has weak blood but strong power and he has strong blood but weak power. he is an absolute piece of shit to her. if she hadn't felt the bond between them snap into place and announced it in her shock, he never would have married her. at least ... he doesn't? cheat? unless you consider bed slaves and servants cheating, which none of the vanserra boys really do when they're the ones to use them.

carmine — carmine, who rules the province along the border of winter, is betrothed to kirsi, first-born daughter of the winter court family that owns most of the land bordering autumn. this is an entirely strategic alliance, and the exception to marrying within autumn is made by beron because this is a means to expand his rule without violating the treaty. kallias very much wants to contest this betrothal, especially once freed from utm, but he does not have the political strength to. carmine runs her absolutely ragged, especially at first. he is not at all subtle about the fact that he's fucking around on her. i don't think she much cares, except when he does it while in winter, where rumors spread that she must contend with directly. but then she doesn’t care about him so much that he becomes desperate for her attentions and affections->genuinely comes to have feelings for her->finally wins her over.

silas — there were talks of betrothal for silas (and marius) before his death. ladies of fine birth in their respective provinces were brought forth for them (beron) to choose from. this was also done as a way to see if any mating bonds would snap into place. he died just after one was chosen for him. beron conidered just marrying her off to marius, since marius assumed rule of silas's neighboring province after his death for being 1) bold enough to go after lucien and 2) bold enough to attack beron — but amalia intervened. she managed to convince beron to put marrying marius off. not sure how. she is much smarter than me and knows how to handle beron, so she knows what to say to guide his hand without overstepping and earning the back of it. also probably sex. anyway.

what a spectacular thing to rotisserie style rotate ! i think adonia hopes having emile’s children will warm him to her—that the kindness he shows her in pregnancy will extend beyond into motherhood. it, of course, doesn’t. i think at first she has a lot of displaced resentment for her baby over this. i could see her being a pretty hands-off mom to the firstborn. i could also see eris experiencing some intense emotions about this (weird! wonder what that could be about?) and having some sort of fraught half-spoken conversation with her about it. or more likely arrange a situation where, some way or another, she comes out of it spooked into taking a more active role in her baby’s life. probably by arranging for the temple she frequents to speak on motherhood or by psyop implanting the idea to marius to talk about his upbringing, how little he ever saw of his mother, how he was fortunate, for beron had such intense focus on silas and eris. emile, once, he heard, but certainly not by the time he had been born. by then beron had tossed emile aside, and emile hadn’t even had their mother to land in the arms of.

golly i just think they’re so lavish when it comes to the vanserras. they’re political spectacles. they’re events commonfolk line the streets for and celebrate weeks in advance and pray for blessings during and weep and kneel and treat as holy. there are processions; there are invocations and rites and bindings; everything gleams, everything reflects the firelight, the trees sing, the leaves dance, the court itself celebrates. they are literally fairytale imaginings. even living in the autumn court, even having witnessed one before, even being a faerie, a vanserra wedding is beyond comprehension. (seven sons is a feat, but there are only seven of them to market!)

so the wedding itself for adonia and emile was otherworldly. she sparked years’ worth of envy—her dress informed the dresses of brides for decades to come. the way she styled her hair, the cut of gem she wore, the length of train. she was so excited. she knew emile’s disappointment in her and still she was so excited. things were still so new between them. she thought: he just doesn’t know me yet. let him see me tonight. let me have time to show him how well-suited i am. emile, of course, was disaffected at best. he grew up around this. he grew up around beauty such as hers. if his body reacts, that’s only because there isn’t a male who wouldn’t react to her. he endures the proceedings, and he endures her moonstruck gaze.

their wedding night is adonia’s first true measure of understanding what emile will be like. oh, she thinks after. what else can she think? he is her lord and her husband and her mate. she was born and raised to be a lady, to be a bride—and she was mated to a vanserra. tall and dark and cuttingly handsome. like all the girls dream of being mated to. she is living a dream. so she again thinks: oh. he took her and used her and left her in the sheets. oh. the meat had been served rare, and her tongue had tasted of a like. oh. her reflection is black, and it is blue. oh. she is crying, and she doesn’t know why, but she already knows she shouldn’t be very loud about it. oh.

no surprise here i’m sure but carmine Loves pda. he’s very graceful with it as well. like even when it’s a clear breach of etiquette, it seems so perfectly in-place that no one really questions it. to the point where he has probably been The Reason a banquet has devolved into an orgy, just by making others feel comfortable enough to be sensual. kirsi enjoys pda for how it flaunts to others that carmine wants her and her alone but doesn’t ever reciprocate or initiate so she seems a little standoffish—just a cultural difference there.

i think marius and adonia aren’t naturally overly pda inclined but they crave it specifically because they can’t have it. marius is an idle hand on back/hand on leg/hand on chair kinda lover. just likes a small bit of contact. adonia gets a perverse thrill from pda because as A Lady it isn’t really encouraged except at events like samhain, their calanmai equivalent. i could see them sometimes chancing a really stiff dance at a formal event or positioning themselves to be partnered in group dances.