#realm.cd

Leanne lay in a chair near the window as she watched the last of the migrating birds soar through the air. She involuntarily shook from the sudden chill that seeped through the doors. “Ivy, would you please fetch me the fur blanket on my bed?” The handmaiden nodded as she placed the steaming cup of tea on the small table beside Leanne. 

Ivy placed the blanket over her, and Leanne picked up where she left off in her book. The words momentarily blurred, and sleep found her.

Leto moaned as sweat rained down her forehead. The sweet kisses on her hips were replaced by a fiery pain ripping her apart from within. The pain blinded her, but she held on to the tethered ends of her consciousness. She would finally hold the life, that she had held in her womb, in her arms. 

The Titan could hear the soothing song from her mother, but the melodies and words were muffled by her own wails. She gripped her mother’s hand with incredible strength, while Phoebe’s other arm held a sleeping princess, Artemis. The girl slept soundly despite her mother’s wails, and she cooed and smiled when she did not sleep. Her smiles brought Leto strength. The strength to endure the relenting pain that crushed her as she watched Helios ride his remarkable chariot across the skies eight times.

Dione, Rhea, Ichnaea, Themis, and Amphitrite joined in on Phoebe’s song, as they appeared to witness the birth of another God. Their hymns rose to the heavens as flocks of beautiful swans circled above and finally dove into the waters surrounding Delos. Leto let out a final cry as the sun streaked the heavens with bright oranges and pinks, and another cry could be heard. A cry as pure and bright as the sun. 

The Goddesses all gathered around Leto, who now held both Apollo and Artemis in her arms. And she joined their voices as they all sang in unison.

      On this day Artemis and Apollo are born.

              Artemis shall roam free

              She shall dwell with the animals

              dwell within the trees

              She shall be the moon

                            Apollo shall be light

              His truth shall spread by music

              and keep hope bright

              He shall be the sun

Leanne cried out as the hot tea splashed onto her stomach. The pain eerily similar to the pains of childbirth that she had just witnessed. “My lady!” Ivy rushed to her side. She attempted to assist her, but Leanne insisted on the handmaid to keep her distance.

dear brothers,

it appears as if i’m the last one left alive, and i often wonder if either you expected this outcome. quiet holden; cold holden; unfeeling holden -- how could it be that i am still here when two passionate men, once so full of anger and promise, are not? it is for the same reason i now realize that the vitello name shall not last much longer.

in our blood, we carry something old and primal; we believe ourselves to be immortal, but we are just men. and what is one man compared to the wrath of our kingdom? for so long, zion placed his people behind himself. he acted as a cruel god, far more focused on desire ( of money, of power, of body ) than he ever was on the good of the realm. phillipe cared, oh he cared, but never about the greater picture. what both of you failed to realize is that we do not live for ourselves; we live so that the world may be a brighter flame in the dark.

yet, even now, i feel as if i am falling prey to the same affliction that resulted in both of your deaths -- for i have the same blood within me, do i not? i have fallen prey to the desire to be of one soul with another, with one whom i am not betrothed to. can i still pretend that i am better than either of you when to even look at another feels like the highest form of betrayal? it troubles me, and it haunts me, but i cannot apologize for feeling such a thing.

both of you cared so much about family, yet i feel something close to relief in my chest to realize you are both gone. does that make me evil? perhaps. perhaps i survived because i no longer see individuals as people, as if they are merely tools to ensure that better tomorrow. perhaps i survived because i am quiet and cold and unfeeling. or perhaps i shall follow behind in death soon enough. all i know is that you shall not stain the keep any longer. zion, you left behind so many broken people -- you gripped them so tightly that they had no choice but to shatter. philipe, you left behind a woman i consider more of my sibling than either of you.

but they will move on, because neither of you were a solution. you were a symptom.

i regret how these things unfolded. zion should have been killed as a warrior ( he always did long to be a bright flame, did he not? ), and phillipe should have died in the arms of beautiful women in the same fashion he lived. i regret the pain, the torment, and the betrayal you both must have felt. i regret the fact that we were never brothers, but merely three boys thrown together by our parents.

i regret what we could have been.

i also regret that i am more like both of you than i previously realized.

forgive me,

ISIAH BALOR:

Before participating, please ensure you have read the event.

With the death of the Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms, Antony and Alycia Vitello have vowed that they shall not rest until they find the culprits. They see their enemies everywhere – even among their oldest friends. They plan to question all, throwing those in the cells of the deepest dungeons for the night if they feel they do not gain a satisfactory answer. They intend to drag all those to trial who may hold a connection to the monster, and if a swift justice cannot be doled out there, they intend to do it themselves.

Even in his state, Antony would not be so mad to take on the head of the Balors directly. Instead, he went to the Lady and Lord Balor with a proposition: instead of marrying their son to the adopted daughter of a dead king, marrying him to the most sought after prize in the Realm – Halle Ogden. Allowing them to think they have all control, he hopes to keep the bond between Balor and Vitello while simultaneously eating away at their happiness.

“When you know what a man wants, you know who he is, and how to move him.”

THE RESPONSE: { UNTIL MY BLOOD BOILS ———— }

      He sat as still as a statue, firelight flickering over his face and casting shadows in the hollows of his cheeks and the cut of his jaw. His cut-from-ice eyes glowed in the light, sharp and attentive and—so, so very cold.

      They faced the King together, the fireplace roaring behind them and bathing them in golds and reds and blacks; his love, she glittered like a jewel in the warm light. Between their high-backed chairs was a table where their hands were clasped, her slender fingers held in his grasp with the ring he’d given her more than two decades ago casting reflections of light over the walls.

      They were forbidding. They were stately. {They were barely holding themselves together.}

      And with every candied word the mad boy-king spoke, Iapetus’ gaze only grew darker. He saw the red-rimmed eyes, the half-crazed twitches of his movements, the curl of his lips; this was a man in grief, but no matter how deep he reached within himself, the Titan could find no sympathy for the former god of war—Zeus’s pale, pitiful reflection of the Titans’ own Menoetius. 

      Menoetius, who was rotting in the dungeons under their feet, T A R T A R U S all over again, except this time Iapetus wasn’t there to P R O T E C T his boy——

➛    They had awoken in the night to hear shouts and the clank of armor and the hisses of drawn swords as their quarters were stormed and their boys were dragged from their beds, three-four-five armed men barely enough to hold Is Iapetus back as he strained towards his sons, roaring his rage as they yelled for him to stand down and dragged his arms back and forced him back into Charlene’s hands with her nails digging into his shoulders as he was ordered to stay in their room because this was just routine and everyone was being summoned and his sons weren’t special if you don’t stay calm My Lord we’ll have to take you with them—

      Her nails pierced into his skin and he bared his teeth. He didn’t move towards the door again as they departed, locking the Lord and Lady inside their gilded chambers.

      A THREAT dressed as a BLESSING: the King giving them the Realm’s prettiest little prize in place of the dead King’s bastard daughter ( the woman Menoetius would surely die for traded for bread ). An end to the hunger clawing at their people in the Ironmoor as the Ogden family opened their coffers for their powerful in-laws, a fixed position of honor with a girl of proper lineage in their son’s bed. 

      They were not giving them this girl out of kindness. They were trying to tear them apart, forcing their hand and backing them into a corner like trapped animals. ‘Take the offer,’ the Vitello boy’s dark eyes said, ‘Take our generosity and take your son’s hatred, watch him turn against you as you take away the one thing that is his in this world to feed your people. Aren’t I clever?’ 

      No, he was not. He would rue his mistakes. He had cut Iapetus away from his children, had buried them deep underground where no warmth or human touch could reach them. Powerful Menoetius, clever Prometheus, foolish Epimetheus, enduring Atlas—suffering again, suffering as they had never been meant to in this life ( not again, not again, not again— ) and Isiah had been fraying at the edges, unraveling from the moment he caught Atlas’s terrified blue eyes in the moonlight framed by the glint of sharpened metal. Isiah was patient, Isiah could wait out years, Isiah could spin webs and drop pretty words and smile charmingly and whisper allegiances; but what had Isiah achieved in his slow, clever plotting? 

                                                             N O T H I N G.                                He had done nothing. And his sons were paying the price.

      Isiah was too clever for his own good, too patient and too calculating and much too cool-headed. He would not do. He was not enough. He needed to be — m o r e . And so he closed his eyes and breathed a quiet breath in the stillness of the night, and among distant screams as others were dragged down deep and with the scuff of soldiers’ boots still on the marble floors of their broken family’s rooms, IAPETUS AWOKE.

        FOOLISH CHILD, YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU HAVE WROUGHT.

      The fire crackled merrily, and they were in the King’s company. It was the next day. All would be well, they were assured. 

      Iapetus smiled.

Before participating, please ensure you have read the event.

With the death of the Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms, Antony and Alycia Vitello have vowed that they shall not rest until they find the culprits. They see their enemies everywhere – even among their oldest friends. They plan to question all, throwing those in the cells of the deepest dungeons for the night if they feel they do not gain a satisfactory answer. They intend to drag all those to trial who may hold a connection to the monster, and if a swift justice cannot be doled out there, they intend to do it themselves.

As Amelia is the Ward of the Odells, Antony and Alycia want to ensure her safety by whatever means necessary. Unfortunately for Amelia, this means that she is being kept in the high tower under lock and key with guards posted at her door around the clock. She is allowed few visitors, and although she is given every comfort, that does not erase the fact it feels more like a prison.

“Her body was a prison. Her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved – she couldn’t get away from the hurt of them. Tonight, even the sky felt like a prison.”

THE VERDICT: IT’S SAFER IN CAGES, SINGING WHEN YOU’RE TOLD

PROTECTION. She had been told this was for her PROTECTION. In all honesty, Amelia did not TRUST the guards who led her up to the tower, did not trust them to keep her any safer than Tibalt or Hector or Astrid or her family would have. She asked about her betrothed & her family almost INCESSANTLY on the way up to the tower, a huge basket of half-finished dresses for her wedding party on her hip as they went. A few pretty smiles & indulgent eyebrow quirks had meant the guards let her keep that, at least, but they said little else to her. After what had happened to Tibalt, she hadn’t expected them to. She hadn’t stopped SHAKING, since.

Before participating, please ensure you have read the event.

With the death of the Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms, Antony and Alycia Vitello have vowed that they shall not rest until they find the culprits. They see their enemies everywhere – even among their oldest friends. They plan to question all, throwing those in the cells of the deepest dungeons for the night if they feel they do not gain a satisfactory answer. They intend to drag all those to trial who may hold a connection to the monster, and if a swift justice cannot be doled out there, they intend to do it themselves.

After their brawl, Antony promptly threw Marcellus into the cells beneath the Keep. Knowing he could not kill the Balor but wanting him to pay, Antony took away the one thing he knew brought Marcellus happiness: his betrothal to Astrid. Under the guise of strengthening their allegiance with a better match, Marcellus was informed he was now set to marry Halle Ogden, the ward of the Vitellos.

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.”

THE VERDICT: A SHIPWRECK IN MY CHEST (AND I DON’T WANT TO DROWN)

The first thought Marcellus had in the dungeons was that he finally had a bit of relief from the ever present fucking HEAT of the south. It was cold, it was dank, and though the smell of water reeked of mold, at first, he did not care. All he cared about was Astrid; all he cared about was trying to get back to the woman he LOVED. No one told him anything when he was DRAGGED down to his cell and thrown into the pit that would be his new home. The Balor prince, blood dripping from his lips and his nose, his fine clothing ripped, DISPLACED and DISGRACED in the dungeons of the Lion’s Keep. When he had imagined his end as a mortal man, he had not imagined it like this. 

Something about the DARKNESS of the dungeon, something about the BETRAYAL from a man he called brother, something about it all began to undo him,  S L O W L Y. Hours ticked by with no word from his family, from Astrid, from Antony, and slowly,  s l o w l y, the threads that held Marcellus Balor together began to unravel. By the third sunrise in his cell, he was less man than Titan. By the fourth sunrise, MENOETIUS had reared his head. More FERAL than human, he stalked around his cell regularly, beating his hands BLOODY in an effort to get back to the woman he loved. LOVE. Such a simple word, such a simple concept, and yet it had UNDONE him. He had fallen in love with a goddess; he had sunk into a sin that was even worse than the one Zeus had struck him down for. And now ––––

                                         Now he was in Tartarus all over again.

Only now, he didn’t have his father to share the BURDEN of imprisonment with him. Now, he did not have a Titan’s body. Now he was just a MORTAL man, with no word from his family or the woman he loved, ROTTING in a jail cell at the behest of a man he had been STUPID to love like a brother. Ares was his REPLACEMENT, after all –– a foolish god that Zeus had constructed to fill the VOID in Olympus that had been left by Menoetius, just like Zeus himself filled a space that Cronus had left void. He tried to COMFORT himself in the knowledge that Cronus was occupying Olympus now, tried to find SOLACE in the reminder that this life was only TEMPORARY, and when the mission was fulfilled, he would join his FAMILY back in their hallowed home. He would be the PRODIGAL SON; he would receive the honors he had once been denied. But then he remembered the alliances they had made to get him here. He remembered that Medusa was still STALKING the Keep above him. He remembered that Athena would not be welcomed by Cronus without Menoetius at her side.

He remembered that Athena would not love him the way Astrid did, if he did not find a way to explain this all to her before it was too late.

MADNESS nearly took hold of him too many times in the DARKNESS of his cell, in the close, CONFINED quarters, and there were moments, dark moments, when the MEMORIES of his father’s face and the feel of Astrid in his arms were all that kept him alive. He woke SCREAMING his throat raw, nightmares of Tartarus overtaking him. One night, he could have sworn he heard his mother sing a LULLABY; another, he all but WEPT over the sound of Aethan’s laugh, only half remembered. He longed for another good day with Paxton, like when they were CHILDREN, before Prometheus had made himself known in Paxton’s mind, and they had still been as close as brothers should be. He even missed Everett’s well intentioned stupidity. The next day, MENOETIUS took hold of himself, returned MARCELLUS BALOR to his mind, and began to PLAN. He would have blood for this.

dearest mother, 

i remember the first advice you ever gave me: make them love you. father believed it was fear that motivated people, but you and i always understood there was something far more valuable -- love. love could drive the most honorable men to murder their brother; it could destroy a kingdom or ensnare a king. love is what led you to give me the name of royalty, and it’s what damned me on this path of madness i feel myself slipping on.

but you forgot to tell me, mother -- you forgot to warn me. to get others to fall in love with you, you must give a part of yourself to them. and if this thing in my chest is love, then i do not want it.

please, mother. please take it from me.

i thought i knew love when i first saw my handmaiden. portia, you introduced her as, and her name was a secret on my lips that i never wanted to share. did you ever guess the nature of our friendship? did you know that when i brushed the hair from her forehead, it was with an intimate touch? i earned her loyalty the only way i knew how, and i thought myself happy. 

father shipped me off to the keep to wed a second son, but i saw from the look in your gaze what you intended me to do. if i thought i knew love when i saw portia, i finally had begun to understand it when i met the brother of my betrothed. he was fire, and oh, he burned me, but i was ensnared just as quickly as he was. could you have known that i would kiss his lips upon our third meeting, brushing the curls from his forehead with the same intimate touch? could you have believed i whispered words into his ears to ensure him he was mine, and i was his when i had yet to even hold hands with my betrothed? if you had known that, could you have known that he cast the same spell over me -- that i would have killed to remain by his side? i earned this kingdom the only way i knew how, and i thought myself happy.   

when my belly began to grow with child, i hated it. i never told a soul the despair i felt. i had never considered myself an ugly thing, but i wanted to be locked away. antony, my darling husband, pressed a kiss upon my swollen belly and promised we would be a family. portia, my closest friend, brushed my hair and promised she would not leave me. yet the love i felt for them was small when i saw the babies -- my babies.

demitri: the healer said it meant the reason for winter peyton: the healer said it meant noble

tell me this now. do i still call myself a mother although i have lost one of my children? do i still call my daughter a twin now that her other half has been stolen from her? 

why did you ever give me that fucking advice in the first place? 

i could have kept my heart to myself. i could have been a good wife to hamish and taught him to be a fearful man, just as father would have wanted. 

i would not have been happy, but i would not be living this slow death as i am now. 

please, mother. tell me what to do. tell me what good is love if it leaves such crudely cut holes in your chest when it is ripped from you? 

gods, i want to die. 

is this how you felt when i took your eldest boy from you? is this punishment for the sins i have committed?

Illias spent the afternoon in the forest, traveling among familiar paths and breathing in the silence as if it was the only thing that mattered -- for out here, it was the only important thing. When he reached the crooked tree that had a small x carved into it ( the agreed upon site ), he finally paused, pulling out the sheet of parchment he had managed to take from the Keep. He could not write, and his ability to read was limited to only a handful of words, but he had drawn a shaky, childlike image of a crescent moon on it. They would understand what it meant: to march come the next crescent moon, to move ever closer to the looming threat of war, and that Illias’s loyalty was with them until the end.

He stared at the note ( the sloppy lines were clearly made by a shaking hand ) and immediately crumbled the letter in his hands. 

Not yet. 

He would give himself some more time; the inevitable fight could be postponed just a while longer. There were too many variables, too many things they did not know, and Illias was not quite ready to smell the heaviness of blood in the air nor hear the cries of pain as their world crumbled around them. One spark could start a revolution, but this spark would not take flame.

                                           I won't say a word, but I think he knows...                                     That I've hardly  s l e p t  since the night he  l e f t ;                                             His body always kept mine inside of it.

Dear  Dearest Zio  Zion,  Your Maje  

   𝓩ion,        I attended your seeing-off today. It’s been a very long day, full of some of the most peculiar moments I’ve experienced in my life. Your wife glared at me with wet eyes as your body was carried to the tombs, and I felt like scum. None of your children so much as looked at me, which was completely understandable. If I were them, I wouldn’t want to look at me either. I hope you would not take offense to know that I actually didn’t want to be there, what with our relationship history; I figured your family might take it as an insult, and had hoped to spend the day in my rooms. However, I was gently told by the cooks that it would have looked far worse to not attend, so there I was.        I rather regret going, to tell you the truth. I suppose there’s no harm in telling you the truth now, so I can do it as much as I like. What a strange feeling, to know I can speak my innermost thoughts to you after a decade by your side.       Not to be self-involved, especially now that you’re de gone, but I’ve just now discovered my new truth-telling ability and want to take advantage of it, so: this has been an absolutely horrible week. I feel all your lords’ and ladies’ eyes boring into me wherever I go, their faces twisted just so as if they’re asking me “what are you still doing here?” It’s as though without your bed to warm, I’ve lost all usefulness. Or, well, I still have some usefulness, but I’m not taking advantage of it—so, ultimately, useless. Do all these years keeping your home running smoothly mean nothing? Your last Chamberlain was all but useless (I don’t feel ungracious saying so, do you remember how much of your coin he was slipping into his own pocket?), and if I have to be honest (ha) I actually take quite a bit of pride in my work. It’s the one thing I’m proud of, really. It rankles a bit that none of your friends seem willing at all to recognize that I’m anything more than a whore, but I suppose that’s to be expected—what do your kind know of caring for servants or watching their expenditures?       I’m sorry, that was sharp of me. It’s just been a difficult time for everyone, what with you gone.        I didn’t anticipate it, you know. The difficulty of living without you. I had often thought that my life would be incomparably easier if you weren’t in it or if I had never met you, but the moment you were gone I realized just how much of my life revolved around you. You were in every day, in so many little things I did, interwoven in my schedule so much so that I can barely rewrite my hours now to not include you. You still color my thoughts as though you are alive, heart pounding and hands reaching for me. I still need to remind myself to walk to my chambers every night, and have stopped halfway towards yours more than once.        You have tamed me so thoroughly.       Half the Keep thinks I was (am) desperately in love with you; why else would I be rejecting all the offers I began getting before your body was even cold? The other half thinks you were unspeakably cruel to me and look at me as though I’m a broken toy. Can’t say I like that very much. This may not have been the life I wanted for myself—another truth, despite what I said to you so many times—but I was not miserable. Not always, at least. Others have been forced to do worse things under less forgiving circumstances, so I figure I have no right to complain about the life of luxury you afforded me. No one is quite correct.        I will tell you what I know, because it isn’t much but it’s certain. Firstly, I was not spending every day wallowing in misery. I feel terribly guilty about this, because there were times with you when you made me smile, when you almost made me happy. Sometimes truly I thought I was happy. There were worse days, even worse months, but I came to terms with my life after the first couple of years, perhaps like a bird who learns to accept its wings being clipped and stops trying to fly from its gilded cage. Secondly, the secret I was never able to tell you all these years, the only thing I ever could have said that would have cut you to the core:       I do not love you. I never loved you.        I know you loved me, in your own way. You have never shown such favor to anyone as you have to me, and I recognize that was your way of telling me that I meant something to you. The care you took of me, the ways you tried to make me smile, the pleasure you gave me despite my every intention of laying back and remaining passive—these were all your ways of showing your love. And I gave you all the affection you craved so desperately (despite having a beautiful wife more than willing to give it to you). I gave you the feeling of being loved, though all it ever left was a sick feeling in my stomach.         But I miss you. I do. It seems that despite everything, I still feel like I can’t quite live without you. Not in some dramatic, romantic sense, but rather in the sense of “what am I doing here?” I feel like a lost child. I haven’t felt this way since you first whisked me away and held me to your side in the Keep, where everything was golden and glittering and beautiful (as you said I was). I am hoping that as the days unfold, I will make more sense of my life and learn to find things for myself, things I do not need to share with another the way I had to share every facet of my life with you. I only fear that whatever it was that you pulled from my soul to make me so obedient, you took with it the ability to be alone. I am not broken, I am NOT—so why am I mourning the man who took me from my home and made me a whore?       I know what you would say: “You are not a whore, beautiful boy, you were never a whore. You are my lover, the light of my life,” and whatever other pretty words you liked to tack onto that sentiment. The thing is, my lord Zion, to be a lover you must love. I did not come to you; you did not rescue me. You bought me off a desperate woman whose mind had been twisted with hunger. And I never loved you.        This is the one thing you were never able to take from me. You have owned my body and twisted my mind, tailored my personality to your liking and bent my back to your desires, but you have never touched my heart. If this is the only victory I will ever hold in my life, it is enough. It is enough to content me and steel my resolve as I make a new place for myself here, assuming your son doesn’t throw me to the wolves.        Lastly, since I am being honest, I hope you rest peacefully. I wanted you gone, I admit that I did, but I never wanted you dead. Too many decent people cared about you for me to ever wish them such pain. But they will mourn you and the pain will eventually scab over, and perhaps they will meet you in their next lives. I know that I will not. Your soul will spend an eternity waiting to meet mine, which will never be touched by your hands again.       I will learn to live without you. And, perhaps, one day I also learn to live free again.