#*adonia

oh this is such a lovely thought-invoking question. let me map post-eris ascension out a little … i think amalia probably waits on helion to seek her out because—if after all this time he does not want her, if after all this time his affections have waned, if after all this time he has found another, for she has of course heard of his dalliances, if after all this time he turns her away, then what does that leave her? but of course it doesn’t take very long for him to seek her out. probably at eris’s ceremony. which is time enough for eris to spin it as a calculated move on both of their parts. to make him a shrewd heir to the throne rather than an abandoned son; to make her into a wily and cunning politician to have leveraged herself as lady of another court so readily, that way the betrayed hearts of the people won’t bring any lords to prompt eris to seek vengeance against her and helion.

there’s never any hope for her and emile, and she knows it. he is her biggest disappointment, biggest failure. he immediately ingratiates himself with the beron loyalists and begins an intense downward spiral; he died without his father’s acceptance, the one thing he wanted above all, and so he mythologizes beron—is the most potent threat to all of his family. emile, by necessity, has to die soon after beron dies. she and carmine have a cordial but distant relationship, the way you might have with a friend you once loved dearly but fell out with and things can now never be the same but neither of you can address the rift because that would be to acknowledge a problem at all. she would favor marius most of all the non-lucien sons she has left, if only because his grief is the most potent and least generally violent—but he makes it very clear that he would kill lucien in less than a heartbeat and she can’t countenance that. he’s also most loyal to eris, if only because of complacency, which strains them further. so left to her after emile dies are eris, carmine and kirsi, and marius and adonia.

i think carmine and kirsi would probably bring her the biggest sense of indignation; they have three children together and carmine, despite still being charming and silver-tongued, is unlike amalia has ever known him to be now that he’s married to kirsi. proof to her of how different her sons could have been if they ever even just got free of beron, which means proof to her of how she failed her sons in letting beron sire them at all. kirsi is very hypervigilant of her kids and doesn’t let any vanserra close knowing How They Are, so i could see a lot of strain between kirsi and amalia at social gatherings, especially because kirsi doesn’t have time for autumn pleasantries and that would offend amalia. they are kin of my kin; i have a right to know them, amalia might say if sufficiently offended. you know not even your own kin; you may claim no right to mine, kirsi might say back. and carmine who has never (and will never) acknowledge that his deep-rooted sense of unlovability comes from his mother feels a keen satisfaction at hearing kirsi do so, which strains everything even more.

i’d say marius and adonia are most gracious with her in the aftermath, once adonia heals enough from losing her mate to regain her sense of self and her sense of propriety. but i think amalia disdains adonia for all she sees of herself in adonia—adonia who was in love with a male who was not her husband yet stayed with her husband until his end at the expense of herself and those around her, then immediately found solace in the arms of her love once her husband died. the parallels are Very Much There. so if adonia eventually gives birth to any of marius’ children, i think amalia might try to overstep with them. maybe try to make amends for her own failings as a mother by criticizing adonia. gently, of course. they are both autumn ladies. but marius wouldn’t stand for it, not after so long of adonia doubting herself with emile. he’s a bit more of his old self now, which is to say he takes on the silas role in his relationship with adonia—happy to be bark and bite on both of their behalves because she is him as he is her. this fills in the loss of a mating bond well for adonia; she basks in it.

maronia + don't leave, hide

At some point, the sheets are pulled back. The fire in the hearth has long since burnt out, and the cold seeps in with a vengeance, as it always does. Never just a chill pebbling at his skin anymore, but the marrow-deep iciness known only in death.

Marius catches Adonia's wrist, and it is warm to the touch. “Don’t leave,” he rasps. “Not yet.”

Conflict writes itself across her face, tugging down at the corners of her mouth, flattening her brow. He knows it is an unfair thing he asks. Emile will kill him if they are found out, but his brother will do far, far worse to her.

Still, he cannot bring himself to retract the words.

Adonia glances to the balcony doors, where the light of false dawn is too bright behind their curtaining, then looks back to him.

“Alright,” she murmurs. Again, like she is reassuring herself, “Alright.” She tucks back in against his chest, and her heat presses into his flesh, far enough he can pretend it is all he knows. “But just for a little longer, hm?”

He might nod, but already drowsed by her comfort, sleep overtakes him before he can be sure.

Marius is jostled into waking with his heart already in his throat. It takes him a moment, first to realize that he is conscious, then to wince against the bright of late-morning, then to realize who is shoving at his chest.

"Adonia," he mumbles.

She gestures frantically at the door as he pushes up onto his palms.

Emile’s voice filters in through wood that seems suddenly insubstantial: “…ny my entry?”

Marius is on his feet before he makes the choice. He shakes his head, a paltry attempt to clear away the muzziness of sleep. He has no time to reckon with whether this buzzing in his body is fear or thrill.

His chamberlain, the blessed fool: “My sincerest apologies, Lord Emile. I would never—”

There is no hiding Adonia. Emile would sense another presence in the room and grow suspicious not to see it plainly. No doubt already does.

for Maximum Pain i would love for her to be extremely similar in bearing to adonia. well-bred autumn court lady, pristine etiquette, socially savvy, educated in court matters, strong with the flame, fiery and wily and raging quietly against the restrictions imposed on her. ambitious. a little bit spiteful. always dreamt of being picked by a vanserra son as do all the ladies. except where adonia had hers shattered by emile, silas was the real deal. charming, proper, aristocratic and regal, strong the way a lord ought be, just as ambitious as her—yet he could be roguish and playful, especially around his same-faced brother, and sometimes his smile quirked such that her belly leapt as though in freefall. maybe she even grew up friends with adonia and that’s how she caught silas’ eye as a suitable match—an in-autumn arrangement that strengthened beron’s ties to some dissenting faction of the nobility, thus an edge over unmarried eris. but then a romance actually kindles between them, too. basically just better-timeline adonia.

it is all going very well between them. marius gets jealous at first that his twin’s attentions are being taken from him, so silas sets up a threesome between the three of them to show marius that nothing has changed, that they can still share in all things, that it is the bond between them as wombmates that comes first, always. she sees this too—realizes that if she wants to ascend with silas, marius is a package deal. with marius placated, things go even better between silas and his betrothed. maybe they become a little dream team. two people in love and uhhhh his brother, for some reason. marius grows fond of her. not in a romantic sense but she gels well with their dynamic, and she never intrudes on matters that ate just between silas and himself. things are good.

then, of course, silas dies.

beron still wants the benefits of the marriage—and he wants to punish marius for failing, then for making an attempt on his life. so he swaps out silas for marius. she is devastated, but at least she’ll still have marius to lean on. someone to understand. someone so like her beloved. someone she could come to love. someone she knows could come to love her. except that marius can’t even stand to look at her because she serves the exact opposite for him: a remnant of silas and thus a reminder that silas is gone. like having yet another corpse of what was tied to his leg and drifting behind him. he would cut her free of him if he could, but beron would never allow it—and that’s another reason he cannot stand to he around her, because she is a punishment from his father, who he hates as much as he hates lucien for being the reason silas is dead. she is left completely unmoored and alone, even further because she alienated adonia by 1) having everything adonia wanted handed to her; and 2) making no effort to include adonia in it.

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.

nothing perfectly aesthetically curated but i do have pinterest boards for them! plus bonus adonia to even out the top row lmao

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:

after emile dies—regardless of what variation of death he meets—adonia takes it very, very hard. he was still her mate, no matter how awful he was to her, and the bond had atrophied between them but it was still very much there. a part of her has been shredded through, and where the roots of him had once been, there is now only a gaping wound. it is much like what marius went through with silas. there’s also the mourning of what could have been, if only, if only, if only.