Chapter Text
Ever since you’ve been a child, the nature has offered you solace unlike any other, pristinity in the vastness of colors and scents that could have cradled you just like home should have. Even as the years had started to strain on your growing frame far too early with something sinister, the wonder of foliage was a constant you could rely on. Away from the rush of cities and towns and even the villages you had tried to forcefully fit against your heart, the woods never hurt you. The serenity of wildly running rivers not even once judged you for struggling with your steps, the meadows caressed your pained legs unlike any hands you’d been offered, and when you asked the lichen spirits to keep your cane safe next to your side, they did just that.
There had always been a connection between the magic in your veins and the very earth that you kept finding yourself drawn to.
So, you didn’t blame the forest back then when pain was an uninvited visitor accompanying your faltering steps, and you don’t blame it now either.
“Lydia..?” Your voice is as calm and collected, as soft and warm as it usually is as you call for your partner while eyeing the folded cane carabined onto her hiking backpack. She’s trekking up a small, slippery path up the cliff you’ve walked up to, and when she stops, you feel the pang of guilt hit you against the pain you’re already in. Her azure eyes of deep, ruthless oceans meet with yours and you know she’s not happy to be disrupted. She doesn’t say anything and those seconds of nothing give you more than enough of an answer, yet you still try. You always do.
“My cane..?” You smile, your chapped lips cracking a bit after hours of not drinking. “Maybe we could slow down a little? There’s a trail that doesn’t go over these rocks and I could ease my pain a bit with my ca—”
“You’re too dependent on this thing,” Lydia interrupts you with a groan and the all too familiar eye roll you’ve grown accustomed to ever since your own family started the tradition. Her hand goes for your cane, before it stops. You tilt your head, and you wait. She’s not done talking.
“Listen, if you want to be a wee child about it and not take this hike seriously, why not meet me at the inn later? You can… well, do your Romanian tranquility retreat thing as slow as you want and I don’t have to stop every five minutes to listen to you whine about your legs or your chest or your—” she licks her lips, thinking, her tenseness turning into a smile that isn’t genuine in anything but her desire for obedience. Even her tone melts, and you keep smiling despite the storm brewing within your ill-patient heart.
“You get my point, baby, you always do, don’t you? You know I love you so much but c’mon, let me have this one thing.”
The forest never hurts you, and you don’t blame it for making space for this. You’re merely a visitor. This too, shall pass.
Inhale. Exhale. No pain is too much for you to bear, you’ve willed this into existence far before Lydia came to your life. If you accept the nature of humans with a smile, you’ll never get truly hurt, right? Your shell is impenetrable.
“Yeah,” you whisper, your eyes dwelling with emotions you have learnt to never speak into shapes, because why would anyone have the time, space or the capacity to take your baggage too? And why would you ever desire for things that are far beyond your reach? “Yeah, you… you’re right, love. I’ll meet you at the inn?”
You take a faltering step forward, your hand reaching to softly caress Lydia’s, to get your cane and to get that one, miniscule, tiny amount of contact you dare to allow yourself to yearn for.
You don’t get that. In fact, Lydia lets out a delighted, self centered hum of a job well done and she’s out of your reach, just like that. What seems like the most effortless leap from your partner feels like it might have very well been miles between the two of you. Your hand remains there, reaching , your eyes staring at the moss covered rock — your constant. Your smile falters.
Maybe years ago you would have tried to run after her, to get your cane and your rations, but by now you have learnt. This is not the first time you’ve been left on a trek without anything but you and your own solitude and the embrace of your senses striking brimstone against your nerves. She’s fixing you, in her mind that is, she’s fixing you and your shortcomings by trialing you, by pitting you against your very beloved; the nature.
A few years back she had fixed you so well that in your attempt at catching her, she’d proven how well you fell from a very similar cliff barely breaking a bone. Barely . Lydia loved taking care of you from the aftermath, but hated you when you healed back to exactly how you were, if not worse.
Of course, just like the forest around you, you remained smiling and laughing through all that and more, because that was what everyone expected of you. You were mended from the softness and warmth of the sun, the rot in your bones only a mere pest to swat away whenever its’ ugly head reared in harbor.
Sighing, you inhale the brisk evening air, the scent of the spruces and pines filling your senses as you close your eyes and steer your pain away for a fleeting second. There is beauty around you, maybe even in you, and you are not going to let anyone take that away from you today. Not when you have just arrived in the wonders Romania has to offer to you.
Even the magic in your veins feels more at home than in any other place you have been prior. So, you do what you do best. You find your own peace and you flourish for that fleeting evening, just you, the forest, and your pain.
As your father had laid upon you multiple times in your childhood; you must be happy with what you get and never desire for anything more.
You’re surprised how gentle the woods around you are that evening. The air lingers with the remnants of dew and life, mana speckling against the abundant beds of heather you found after merely an hour of gently guiding your body forward, the flat stone serving as your chair far more stable than anything in your life currently presents as. The spruces surround you, yet they’ve made a clearing just for this pond and its heather friends, and the magic tied to the roots of it all, bathing in the last rays of the sun's glamor.
Hours have no meaning to you, they never really do when you truly fall into your daydreaming, and you know that without your cane you are more than reluctant to try and get back to the inn anyway. Despite the warnings.
The keeper had told you and Lydia that the nights were treacherous, that the forest was owned by someone named Lady Dimitrescu, a Lord of the area, but you’d not quite caught the rest of his words once your lip reading failed you from your exhaustion and the words kind of blurred into a mush. Something about vampires and beasts with fangs, accompanied by romanian words you had even more difficulty understanding.
He had also told you, after you’d specifically asked for clarification once Lydia went to get the key to your room, that the night was going to be warm enough to stay out.
While Lydia might have enjoyed abandoning you for her own wicked trials, she usually insisted on keeping you close to her for the nights, as your talents were so much more flourished in bed you two shared; those were the words that she always presented to you as if they were the grandest gift.
Well, tonight, you’re not planning on that. You’re not quite sure why, but ever since you took your first step into this small village and the forest, you felt like there was a tug in your heart, a soft, sweet pull that whispered promises of never hurting you. Despite your shell of smiles, for some odd, unexplainable whim, you let yourself have this one desire. So, you wait, and you rest.
You never expected that wait to bring you where you find yourself and the heather ocean once the escapade of sun has laid its rest.
Maybe you had closed your eyes for a fleeting second, or maybe the warmth of the stone under you had lulled you to your thoughts, either way, that tranquility gets crashed by a sudden shift in the air, followed by the buzz of flies that suddenly scrape against your shoulder and almost knock you to the very heathers you’ve been admiring. You open your eyes in haste, the breath you’d been holding now a gasp as you try to orient yourself, dizziness from the movement making you take a second take at what you’re witnessing.
Instead of flies, there’s a trail of blood and squished shrubs, the lifeline staining your cheek in its warmth, the source of it laying on the bed of heathers. A dark cloaked woman, the moon's gentle lull revealing the crimson stained locks of blonde hair, and in your frozen shock you notice the deep wound riddling her side, like something had torn into flesh with sharp claws.
You don’t stay still for long, because the second you hear a strained groan you’re stumbling from your seat despite the angry jolts your legs send against your spine, and you rush closer, kneeling - or collapsing - next to the injured woman.
“A-are you alright?” It feels like a silly question in that moment, but your hands are already reaching for the wound, your less than adequate flow of mana pooling against your ever warm palms, ready to heal, ready to help, ready to—
“I’ve killed for less, maiden!”
The hand that grasps your wrist isn’t violent by any means, and thus, it doesn’t shake you nearly as much as the others prior to it, and you blink at the yellow eyes that glare back at you, pain prominent in you both in a way that almost brings you an ache for a home.
“I know some healing, not that good but still, some.” Your explanation is calm, and while your heart is beating wildly against your chest, you still tilt your head to offer this stranger a smile, while making a mental note that you’re not talking to a human, based on the bared fangs and the fact that she is still alive and well.
Her touch doesn’t falter, nor does it grow painful. She hisses and throws back her head a bit, swearwords abundant on her next exhale.
“Not how you reply to a threat!” She writhes from pain and you glance at the wound again, then around you, and the only threat you feel is the possibility of finding out who hurt the one holding your wrist now.
You’re not one to trust, but for some reason, you don’t feel unsafe. Quite the opposite.
“Is the threat around us still, then?”
Maybe your words are enough to make her think you’ve lost it, because she takes a moment to push away the pain and to open her mouth more than once in an attempt at starting a sentence. Eventually, she lets go of your hand and groans against the heathers, and you can’t help but to smile — genuinely..?
“No! Well— shouldn’t fucking be if my sisters know how to HUNT— ow—” Her fist hits the ground and you let her cry out a few more curses, your eyes trailing her movements like a hawk, and then, you calmly but swiftly press your magic charged palms on the wound.
The volume of the shriek of vulgarities surprises you just a bit, enough for you to close your eyes and wait for pain, and you feel bad for the woman for your poor healing skills. You feel the gnarl of blood and viscera against your palms, you feel the crude scabbing done by your magic, but you don’t feel hands on you.
The pain doesn’t come.
Instead, you hear her breathing go from erratic to less so, and then, you feel eyes on you. When you finally open yours to check if you’re met with hostility or disappointment, you just see dumbfoundedness. The furrowed brows and the slightly ajar mouth illustrated by black stained lips soon turn into an amused giggle and sudden relaxation as she turns onto her back, like she’s giving up on understanding, and lets her hand rest on her face. You remain where you are, your legs not allowing you to move positions even if you would have wanted to.
Your mind is filled with so many questions, so many emotions that you can’t risk surfacing, but for the first time in a long time, you let yourself unmask for the fleeting moment for your smile to mirror the confused amuse of your newly acquired company.
“... I can regenerate. Can’t even suffer in peace in the middle of my own territory huh?” When she speaks, there isn’t an ounce of ire in her jest, and when she flashes her bloodied fangs at you, you falter ever so slightly.
“Am I… intruding, then?”
“Again with the weird questions. You should be asking me stuff like… like…” She puckers her lips to think for a moment, her hand swishing the air as she snorts, “Oh my god, who did you killll? Why are you covered in blooooood? Why are you so freakishly tall? Are you gonna kill me? Please don’t kill me I’m but a mere maiden with no good blood for any of the Dimitrescu familyyyyyy—”
“I don’t think my blood would be very pleasant, that you are right about,” you interrupt, chuckling softly as you move your other leg with your hand, trying to regain some of the feeling on it. You’re met with another chuckle and a ‘see? see??’ gesture, as if you’re the weird one, and maybe you truly are.
You can’t even lie to yourself that you’d be scared, so why pretend?
“Regeneration or not, I’m sorry to intrude with my assumptions, but you can’t possibly enjoy a great chunk of your side torn to smithereens, yeah? Be it only for a moment or not.” You rest your head on your knee and offer the woman another smile, and she seems to ponder your question as much as you are questioning the entirety of this situation.
Something in your heart is wishing for this moment to last, or take you with its own life of things unknown to you.
Finally, she huffs a sigh and nods. “I mean, you’re not wrong. That’s more Cassandra, my younger sister, or Daniela, the youngest. Anyway—” she stretches, her side crawling with millipedes and flies in unison, creating more flesh on top of the scabbing you created— it’s mesmerizing, the world not granted to your kind.
As she prods herself to sit up, she looks down at you. Down, because this is the moment you realize she wasn’t joking about her height. She’s leaning her stained cheek against her palm, her arm resting against her knee, and slowly, she studies you.
You remain.
Her gaze doesn’t feel intruding, no, not at all in fact. While she is going through whatever you have on your short frame, she seems more intrigued than nosey, and the more she seems to notice about you, the more flies buzz around her. You notice things too; the dried flowers of lavender and mint on her dark belt, the only pop of color aside from her blonde hair and piercing eyes, and the bloodied sickle hanging from a chain on the very same harmony, and still… you’re not afraid.
Strange.
“My name’s—”
“Bela! We got the feral fuck!”
As suddenly as everything started, more things unravel as you hear the familiar buzz grow so much stronger, echo of it surrounding you, and then, you see them .
Two other women, cloaked very similarly to the one you’d helped, one with flaming red hair, crimson staining the locks almost gracefully, and one with dark brown strands illustrated the very same way. They’re both peering over Bela— you make the quick assumption of the name based on what you heard — and for a fleeting moment, they don’t notice you.
“Took you a while, didn't it?” Bela mutters against her palm and rolls her eyes at you, as if you’d already be part of this little conversation. “Only took half of my ribs as a snack, that mutt. And say hi to this maiden here, Cass,” she nods at the brunette, continuing as she nods at the redhead, “Dani. Don’t be rude. Forest gods forbid we make this occasion a normal one.”
You’ve barely had time to react, but you do manage to find the quick time to flinch when the redhead, Daniela, turns to you and presses her cold hands against your cheeks. When she squeezes a little, you whine from the surprise alone. She, however, looks like the sun itself with her dawn of realization.
“Ohhh! This is the human I scented! Can I drink? Bela please, look at her, she is adorable! Look at her pretty smile and her pretty skin and her pretty neck and— oh her skin is really soft actually—”
You freeze, but only for a heartbeat, because Bela is quick to slap Daniela’s head in a sisterly ire, her hand swiftly tugging the girl so that she lets go of your face.
“No. This one’s… different. Not sure why, but she has a scent that’s not quite normal, and Mother always says not to drink from unknown sources.” Bela somehow sees the ever so slight shift in your usually soft facial expressions, and she is quick to continue with a surprisingly gentle hum, “... she also healed me and apparently acted as a lycan repellent for a moment. So, be fucking nice and normal for a bit, okay?”
Daniela slouches to the ground to sit with her sister, confused yet still smiling at you, and Cassandra joins the three of you by promptly taking a seat on the heathers right next to you. She’s quick to grab your wrist, and while you’re still not scared, you do flinch once more.
You hate when you flinch. You hate it when that pristine shell of yours cracks.
Cassandra, whose touch is slightly more brash than Bela’s one, doesn’t pay heed to your little gestures, and before her sister can stop her, she sniffs your wrist. Bela closes her eyes.
“Oh,” Cassandra mumbles and looks at you, and you look back with slight stiffness that you have acquired alongside your blooming migraine and the aches that had almost halted for a moment earlier. “No kidding, huh?”
“When am I kidding?” Bela growls under her breath.
Cassandra snickers and promptly pulls your wrist towards Daniela, finally prodding words to slip out from your chapped lips.
“H-hey—”
“Cass!” Bela snarls, and Cassandra puckers her lips dryly, not letting you go before Daniela has had her sniff at your wrist too. She too, seems to have another revelation of some sorts.
“This is why none of the maids love you two…”
“What… what exactly are you all scenting off me?” Your words are stumbling only a little, your tone still as soft as you have trained it to be, yet a pesky linger of curiosity coats over it in a way that makes your heart ache.
This is not what you allow for yourself. Why are you still here?
There are so many things you want to know and find out, things that you feel drawn to, and this tug is stronger than the bleed of your heart.
“Well, we’re not as knowledgeable as our mother is but…” Bela starts, cracking her neck as she starts to get up, brushing her cloak clean from twigs and bugs. She offers a hand to you as she smiles, eyeing at Cassandra to finally let your poor hand free. As you reach for the offered help and get pulled up with minimal pain, confusion playing you for a fool, Bela continues her words with slight jest.
“To a lycan, you probably stink like hell.”
Your shell has a crack. That must be it, because you once again stumble in your serenity and let out your mixed emotions from between your parted lips and the whine of confusion. It’s followed almost immediately with your legs giving out, betrayal in its purest form.
Yet, you don’t fall. Within this forest, pain has been unfathomably kind to you tonight. No, instead of your usual solitude of survival, Bela has lifted you up on her arms, slight surprise in her own eyes as she looks at her sisters accusingly, and then back to you.
“Lycans scare you that much, maiden? That’s adorable!” Daniela prods, no malice in the question or exclaim, and you manage to shake your head in speechlessness. You don't even know what a lycan is.
“Her legs don’t work properly, Dani, don’t be fucking rude!” Bela huffs, stops, and then, furrows her brows as she licks her blood coated lips and shoots a confused smile towards you, “actually… do you even know a damn thing about anything that’s happening right now?”
“N-No?”
“Gotcha. Dani, Cass, let’s go home. It’s getting colder so hurry the fuck up.”
You don’t try to stop them as they practically start walking what you assume is the way to their home, with you. You don’t try to argue that you need to be at the inn, nor do you try to fight the odd pull you feel the closer you get to whatever destination you’re being taken to. And once again, you feel… safe?
Seen? Is that what you’re feeling? You’re not even sure yourself, but what you do know is that you’re not about to fight or disagree with your new plans for the night.
During the travel to their home, the large castle you’d been admiring from the inn, you learn a lot more than you thought you’d be granted rights to. You learn more of the Lords; how their mother, Alcina Dimitrescu, is in charge of the areas surrounding the castle and the wine industry of the village, as well as the protection of whatever magical creatures - not Lycans though, the sisters make that very clear - that reside within her reign.
You learn of Karl Heisenberg and Donna Beneviento, and the matriarch of all Lords, Mother Miranda, and when you gain this knowledge, you learn about Lycans and Cadous, the canine-like mutants and the abandoned projects of magic and science.
“Uncle Karl tries to keep the bitches on his turf, but damn those rapid little fuckers are fast sometimes,” Cassandra had explained when you’d barely opened your mouth to ask more about the beings that made you think of werewolves. “Mother Miranda and him had a big fight years ago about experimenting with them and now things are all fine and dandy, but lately there’s been an awful lot of strays that he has no accounting of. So eh, mom told us to just dispose of every lycan we find in the forest.”
“And my scent..?” You manage to mutter with a slight smile, exhaustion catching up to you and you try your hardest to not think of the fact that you’re being carried, a thing Lydia would have never allowed for you to resort to.
“Don’t get us wrong!” Daniela chimes in with a bloodied smirk as she hops in front of Bela and starts walking backwards as they trail towards the large gates, “you smell absolutely divine to us, like, I would bite you if it weren’t for Bela here! But the Lycans…”
Cassandra sneers and you can feel the buzz of flies land on your head like she’d be praising you for your weird attribute.
“You reek.” Cassandra cackles, “I bet no lycan would even want to try and take a bite. Never met a human with that kind of thing. So, I guesssssss that’s why we kidnapped you for tea? Bela?”
Bela just shrugs her shoulders as she warns Daniela with her eyes, and she almost doesn’t smack right against the castle gate with a metallic thunk.
“She was friendly to me. Daniela— nevermind. You two think mother would be happy to know we left a maiden in the forest in the middle of the night without any means to get back to the village?”
When Cassandra thinks about it for longer than a few inhales, Bela glares at her and you can’t help but smile at the sisterly quarrel despite the overflow of information you’re processing. The safety of the hands that hold you offer you that solace to take your time.
“Aside from the ones you eat before asking for their business in the area, Cass.”
“Fine, fine, mother would most likely prefer if we brought this one to at least get checked up before sending her back on a carriage or something… or maybe uncle Karl can take her back to the inn. You’ll like Karl, you weird little maiden from the forest who I’m not allowed to even bite once,” Cassandra sighs melodramatically and offers you a teasing smirk that you’re not quite sure how to mirror, but you can’t help the chuckle dancing on your lips. She seems headstrong, in a brash but caring way, and somehow you feel appreciated in her unapologizing way of addressing you just the way you are.
“I’ll try to not make too much work for anyone,” you hum, your gaze trailing to the grandness of the tall castle rising in its gothic grandness, the tug around your rotten heart warming you in ways that you don’t quite recognize. You swallow, wordless for that moment of tranquility that hits you, as if your magic would have softened into a full calm against your veins the very moment you find yourself on the perimeters of this place.
“Why’d you get that deep into this forest if your legs are in this condition anyway?”
Daniela’s chipper question yanks you out of your wonder, and you feel the harshness of reality pang against your being as you look at the redhead with a remnant of a smile.
“Uh…” You start, and you stumble. Your shell — you need it. The hand you’ve been resting on your lap while getting carried slowly trails to your knee and you try to figure out which story you want to go with, and for some reason, the truth slips out.
“My partner took my cane with her when she went ahead on the hike.”
You feel Bela’s grasp on you tighten ever so slightly and you tense up, slight panic shredding down against your spine with your inhale when you notice the cold look back the woman gives to the forest. It's not just her. Cassandra looks disgusted, and Daniela, who so far has not had much of a filter, falls quiet with a concerned look on her pale, scarlet stained face.
“And you wish to return?” Bela’s question lingers in the air, her steps now a bit more hasted than before as if she’d be worried for your safety the longer you remain outside, and Daniela is quick to take the hint as she swiftly transforms into a swarm of flies to go push open the main doors to the castle, not too far from where you are.
There is no judgement in her tone, and you know that Lydia would have already called these three monsters for their way of life. You know that your family would have mercilessly judged the family of Dimitrescu, not only for what they stood for, but for how they acted, and you’re sure your heart bleeds from the ache of care you’re granted in that moment.
You hesitate, but your father and Lydia had made sure that your time before the curtain call never completely falters until you’re by yourself.
So, you smile.
“Y-yes, I do. It’s alright, don’t worry about me. It’s just… just a thing between us two. I promise, I’ll be fine to get back on my own after a bit of rest and something to drink.” Maybe, or rather, surely, you don’t sell your story as well as you would have wanted to, judging by the looks you get and the secure hold Bela ensures of you when she gets up the stairs leading inside, to the grand hall of dark, warm colors of red, black and marble.
As the door softly slams close behind you all, you wait for the sisters to say anything, anything at all to tell you that they heard you. You’re an actress, you need to know you didn’t fail this one thing you were taught to do.
In your mind, you push away the fact that you failed the performance the second you started to yearn for things.
“...If that is so, let’s at least introduce you to mother and ensure that you have the least painful travel back to the inn,” Bela mutters, quiet, her yellow eyes piercing your soul with the odd mixture of worry and care that you don’t understand when given to you. She sounds angry, but she isn’t ?
“Thank you.” That’s all you manage to say back. Bela smiles fleetingly, nodding at her sisters who glance at each other, unspoken words exchanged in ways that you have no business in, and you let it all settle against your heart, the knowledge that you might have failed at your one task.
Your smile remains, no matter how faltering or rugged, because that’s its sole purpose.
Bela carries you from the entrance hall illustrated with gorgeous paintings of nature and of goddesses you’re not familiar with, the upholstery of furniture and the woodwork of everything so breathtaking you’re taken aback by the sheer volume of things to admire. The silence shrouds you, only Bela’s footsteps keeping you somewhat grounded in the moment as you let your eyes wander, pain at the back of your mind almost bearable, as if the forest would be with you right now, giving you home within these walls despite the impossibility of such a thing. You don’t notice the two sisters disappearing into swarms of flies again, nor do you notice that you’ve arrived at a grand library at first, but you do notice her.
Alcina Dimitrescu.
You swear you have never met someone as breathtakingly divine as she is, standing near the bookshelves in her white, long dress, decorated with a black flower. There is something regal and soft in her, monstrous in all but the word’s negative connotation, and your heart beats faster at the sight alone. For some reason the magic within you that had just settled feels like white waters crashing combers against your very being. Her hands shift through pages in the most delicate, calm manner, her eyes moving with the words, until that golden gaze suddenly shifts and finds you.
Your breath hitches against the roof of your mouth at her surprised, yet inviting smile. When she speaks, the tug is searing in a way that again, doesn’t bode pain.
“Oh ? And who might this maiden be?”
She is like the morning sun in the radiance of warmth, and you’re not quite sure what to do with yourself. You’re not sure if this is the start or the end of you, but there is a linger of home nestled in the cage of your ribs.