#adderblack

Adrenaline sees her through the dragon attack. Even without it, circumstances like these are when she truly shines.  She has always been blade-sharp under pressure, her focus without equal and her mind unimpaired by stress.

With the immediate danger now handled, thanks to Evita and her companions seeing the beast away, Teia is keen to meet Viago at their rendezvous point.  So, she delegates orders to one of her grandmasters and vanishes into the carnage.

The wreckage below is a blur as she moves from rooftop to rooftop.  She can hear the cries of her people in distress, see the long plumes of dark smoke rising to touch the pitch-black of the night sky, and smell the stench of what blight remains. 

But all she can think about is Viago.

( She is selfish in that way—and she always would be. )

Once she knows that he is alive and safe, the rest of the world will have her: body, mind, and spirit.  Until then, he is her only priority. 

It takes her longer than she would like to reach the place where they intended to regroup (a flower merchant they both favored, one that they would frequent when they were together to purchase arrangements for one another). Nostalgia, bittersweet and unsolicited, crashes over her with a brutal force only to disperse into dread as she crests the final building only to see that, not only is the flower stand splintered by shards of ice, Viago is not there.

Though she tries not to catastrophize, it is difficult; Viago is meticulous about his checkpoints by nature.  He has never been absent from one in all the years that they have known one another.

“Shit,” she growls in frustration and jumps from the roof.  There are corpses (Trevisans, Antaam, and darkspawn) everywhere she looks, some felled by the dragon, others by blades.  Her eyes sweep over them.  No Viago.  She minds her perimeter, eyeing the rooftops from which she had just descended from, and then sets off again, pushing farther past the Antaam’s frontline.

It is pathetic how easy it is to maneuver the ground the Antaam claimed to have seized control of.  Perhaps even more reassuring, however, is the sheer volume of bodies she finds along the way.  With palpable relief, she recognizes the bladework immediately.  Viago has been here.

Teia tucks into a side street off the main path and whistles—the sound being one note that slurs into a longer, higher note, and that ends with an even higher, staccato note.  This call is known by all Crow houses: What is your location? or Where are you?

She waits for an answer, but when she hears none after a reasonable period of time, she moves on, repeating the same whistle every few minutes. All the while, she relies on her steadily depleting arsenal of adrenaline to keep her mind intact and at ease.

this leads to viago and teia having to negotiate (and renegotiate) constantly where the lines are drawn and what the boundaries are. teia trends toward enmeshment where viago prefers definitive lines.

teia sees de riva fledglings as an extension of her fledglings. this means, after her own, she protects those of house de riva. losing de riva fledglings hurts almost as much as losing her own after a certain point.

de riva crows like teia overall, given how often she is in salle and working with viago. there are some who resent her and the alliance with house cantori, but viago doesn’t tolerate any action taken for these sentiments.

eventually, teia and viago start swapping fledglings, especially if they have fledglings that are better suited to the other’s house.

friendly rivalries are encouraged, as well as occasional cooperative sparring / training sessions.

i will never make assumptions with a de riva rook and will always discuss the dynamic first, but my default is teia being close to viago’s protégé because they are close to viago.

in his bedroom, there is the hiss of a dying fire, and there is silence. she enters much the same in a dark red, silk dressing gown and says nothing as she crosses the room to tend to the dwindling embers in the hearth. even though her back is to him, she can feel him seething at his desk, burning, while his fire starves. his quiet fury (which masks a more monstrous grief) swallows the oxygen from the room to feed itself, inviting biting cold. so, she feeds the fire that will keep him warm.

once the flames are strong enough to maintain themselves, she turns to look at him: a looming statue cut from black marble. teia moves to stand behind him, palms aching to reach out and touch the rigor out of him, but she hesitates. he so rarely welcomes the intrusion of her hands during moments like these.

but, sometimes, she must ask for forgiveness later.

her hands settle on his shoulders, draping over them, the pads of her thumbs rubbing soothing patterns on his upper back, while her lips gently caress the nape of his neck. she settles into high antivan as she says, in a warmth and softness (that belongs solely to him in the privacy of their chambers) to rival the thawing heat of a late winter's dawn, "amore mio," she kisses the shell of his ear. "vita mia," she presses her cheek to his, leaning over from behind.

coldplay, the scientist / shastra deo, the bering sea / fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am your mould, but the shape of you is true absence, leaving me purposeless.’ / azra t., fruit

@adderblack says, ‘it’s a shame you hate politics. you’d be a very good queen.’

teia makes a point to roll her eyes as she shifts, half-removing herself from being draped across his chest.  this is their version of pillow-talk, believe it or not.

“i do not hate politics,” she corrects him with a playfully reproachful look. “i do not like that the majority of politics cannot be resolved with a dagger to the throat.” they require more restraint than she cares for, particularly when a statesman’s head skewered on a dinner platter like a roasted hog’s head sends a much more ambitious message.

𝐒𝐄𝐗𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒 & 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 // inbox open!!

5. what are their most common turn-ons?

Answered here.

6. what are some more situational or contextual turn-ons?

The smell of sweat after a good sparring match with someone; the knowledge that exertion comes from tussling with them. A messy mouth with food, like dripping honey down the chin, or cream smeared around the corners of the mouth. Being held at knife point-- only with someone they know who is doing this for play.

8. what attire do they find others most attractive in?

Tight clothes of any variety. They like bodies of all kinds, so showing that off is an a++++ Also anything leather and strappy. Crow outfits tend to be-- distracting for Asha.

20. do they prefer to give or receive sexually?

Send me 🚩 for one of my muse's red flags, or 💚 for a green flag. // inbox open!!

black sails season 1 // @adderblack @weptduty // selectively accepting

   “You know just as well as I do, that is not true.” and perhaps the tone is too harsh, to forward, but it is impossible not to feel the way that the bitterness bites at the back of her mouth “It is just common cruelty.”

Her light eyes find his from across the space they both shared and Asharen does not hide the disappointment in the curve of her eyebrows, the sadness that one cannot help but feel upon hearing such words. How could they not understand that this world was theirs too; that by living it meant that they had a space in it too. That they needed not tear it apart at the seams in hopes that the fraying fabric could give them a sense of familiarity and warmth that the whole tapestry they refused could not.

   “The world lives on beyond just us. I don't... I don't understand how you just do not see it.” perhaps because he wishes not to. Whatever it was, it was a wave of sadness that lapped around her heels - she wished that the hand that she kept offered would be taken but she could not grab him by the shoulders and demand his face to feel the warmth of the sun. She could not show how the late summer wind made her feel. The shrill of laughter that poured so easily from her family. The time that she had lost with them to be Inquisitor and how the rift now felt at times too large to be able to mended.