Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

τηλόθεν ἐξ ἀπίης γαίης; καλέσαντο γὰρ αὐτοί;

καὶ μαχόμην κατ᾽ ἔμ᾽ αὐτὸν ἐγώ: κείνοισι δ᾽ ἂν οὔ τις

τῶν οἳ νῦν βροτοί εἰσιν ἐπιχθόνιοι μαχέοιτο;

καὶ μέν μευ βουλέων ξύνιεν πείθοντό τε μύθῳ;

ἀλλὰ πίθεσθε καὶ ὔμμες, ἐπεὶ πείθεσθαι ἄμεινον;

μήτε σὺ τόνδ᾽ ἀγαθός περ ἐὼν ἀποαίρεο κούρην.

And I fought on my own; with those men could no one fight of the mortals now upon the earth;

Yes, and they listened to my counsel, and obeyed my words. So also should you obey, since to obey is better.

Neither do you, mighty though you are, take away the girl,

But let her be, as the sons of the Achaeans first gave her to him as a prize.

Iliad, Book 1, Lines 70-75

“But,” She added pointedly, indulging her friend’s passion, “All of them are Slavs now.”

“What a fucking shitshow that is, huh?” He summoned the familiar passion with which he spoke about the disparate Slavic peoples. “To be the only people in the world actually named after their slavery. Miserable fucks.”

As a Chechen, he took it as his inborn right – no – his duty to continue the war against the Slavs, even if he was now far from the Caucasus, and had not visited there since the tender age of four.

“And their history is boring too, unless you count those times we pushed their shit in. Every single time the Slavs get even a second of glory, it’s attached to someone else’s glory. I mean, what has Russia, or any of those Slav retards in the Balkans done-”

“Well, they have cultivated Marxist notions, and nowadays, the Bulgarians extend that scrap heap’s lifespan with National Bolshevism-”

His light brown eyes alighted in excitement, tantalized by her observance, further stirring the pot that she had accidentally set to boil. Only a minute ago, they were discussing recent news of the Greeks, and like any other time she brings up that part of the world, he gets incensed by the smallest hint of Slavic blood in the Balkans. According to him, it is their blood, not their proximity to the Caucasus, that earns his ire. It’s one of those superstitious beliefs that he hasn’t let go of, even in his Westernization, an unshakable quality that both of them, even Althea, admits can be dubiously attributed to ‘blood memory’.

“Seriously,” He began with contempt, “Ever seen an actual Nazbol outside of those fucking Bulgaroid mongrels?”

Biting her lip to keep from laughing, she swept a long, coppery piece of hair behind her ear, and fastened the stocky Chechen with a glare, mostly because they were in a silent Italian library, saying loud, racial epithets in English. Here in Italy, racial epithets were thrown around by everyone against everyone, but they were mostly thrown at Sicilians.

To try and halt Khizir during a heated rant about Slavs was, however, pointless. What a shame, she thinks to herself, getting kicked out of the only library in Volterra within the first few hours of being here. Regardless of however small this village was, she had liked it at first glance, had felt compelled to it somehow.

Althea barely understood the gist of Khiz’ rant about Nazbols, socialists, or even worse, Slavic Nazbols, for she was instead translating every word into Italian, a translation project she’s been constantly laboring to complete since her fateful move to Italy six months before. The move was less dramatic than her mother would have liked, for her mother is one of those self-proclaimed connoisseurs of the ‘exotic’, and as Althea is entirely desensitized to that notion, Italy is rather prosaic compared to all of the other places her mother dragged her along to as a child.

Those other, less prosaic places, is how she’d met Khiz to begin with. During her fourteen-month stay in New England between the awkward ages of fourteen and fifteen, she had made fast friends with the only other foreigner in their small town of five-hundred. He was a Chechen, and she was a half-Persian with a Greek name. They made a very odd pair. That superficial observation doesn’t even cut into the actual onion.

While Khiz was pragmatic and worldly, Althea was bookish and, dare she even use that wretched moniker, cerebral. It wasn’t on account of hubris that she referred to herself as that, it was just true. When Khiz was fighting other boys, and beating them to the curb for making fun of her nose, she was teaching herself Latin. Althea would be the first to admit that knowing how to fight is more important than knowing how to decline nouns, but she wouldn’t always have admitted so. Those years feel like a lifetime ago. In reality, only seven years had passed.

One thing they had in common, was a fierce loathing for their personal past, but an equally fierce love for the past. Regardless of how worldly Khiz was, he was something of an antiquarian. But again, they divided on what they were interested in. He was most interested in military, weapons, and technological history, whereas Althea focused primarily on language, culture, and most pertinently, philosophy.

A running joke between them is that they were more willing, and able, to recite the Sumerian kings list than to do the same of their shared high school yearbook from those years that were equally wretched for the both of them.

Wisely, she supplies a quip related to the Greek part of the Balkans, “ We let the Greeks off the hook, because it’s better to have Mesopotamian blood than Slavic, or, God forbid, Uralic.” Khiz lets out a muffled guffaw from behind his hand, and the polished, dark wood of their corner table shakes with the force of his shapely, muscular legs.

“On that note, think I’ll go have a smoke. You coming?” He arches one persuasive, bushy brow, and pats his khaki shorts’ pocket, filled to the brim with a billfold, a pack of smokes, and various other miscellaneous items. Out of all the men she knows, he fulfills the masculine archetype better than any of them.

However, it’s Khiz’ hair that sets him apart from other men. While his wardrobe is rather careless and practical, his hair is another story, and an accessory of his that he treats like the most uncommon jewel. And she couldn’t blame him, it is luscious. Either of them, oddly enough, have a strikingly similar color to their hair. Khiz’ is browner than hers is blonde , but either of them can boast of the unique copper . Hers may have been spun from gold, but his may have been spun from bronze. What unites either of them is the brassy red that weaves throughout their long hair, his being wavy while hers was perfectly straight, a tell of her Iranic ancestry. Either of them wore it long, for Khiz, it was as long as socially acceptable for a man – about to his mid-back, while hers was a few inches longer.

Despite their many, many differences, there were idiosyncratic and downright strange similarities between both of them. Although Khiz rejected the philosophical, especially the notion of fate , even he had said that it was as near to fate that they met as opposed to anything else in their lives. Althea would disagree, for she does believe in some facet of elusive fate.

“How could I say no? You’re so persuasive and deeply charismatic.” She teased. It couldn’t be farther from the truth, for her Chechen friend was the most terse and abrasive person she’d ever had the fortune to meet. In spite of these qualities, she felt herself moving out of the chair, eyeing her broad stack of literature and papers, as well as the wretched ink stain on her notebook, which had bled through from holding her fountain pen for too long.

Around them was total silence. Not a whisper, nor a gust of wind. If light had a noise, it would be blaring through the antiquated library, as it had before poured from every window, onto every polished aisle of books, and exposed every particle of dust that was falling from the dilapidated ceiling.

Instinctively, she collected her materials into a neat stack, safely depositing her own notes into her leather messenger bag, as well as the fountain pen she’d had for nearly three years. It was unlikely that, in a tiny Italian village like this, anyone would come and steal her Greek translations, let alone know what they were. But having had a turbulent childhood, and an even more turbulent adolescence, Althea had learned that staying on the safe side was its own reward, as it gave her peace of mind, and that alone was a rarity.

After toting her bag on her shoulder, she swiped a hand over the compartment where her cigarettes lay. Again, she liked the rare feeling of peace of mind. Khiz waited there, in uncharacteristic patience of her hypervigilant quirks. He had a few of his own, and it was possibly the only circumstance he was consistently diplomatic and tactful. Otherwise, he was a self-aware brute.

“Ready?” Out of the two, it was hard to guess who was more of a nicotine fiend.

Either of their heads turned at the scuffle of books up front. After hours of silence, it shocked both of them. What followed the scuffle was a muffled conversation in Italian, which neither she nor Khiz thought to be worth their attention. Only, she caught the hint of an accent in what sounded like a man, a strange accent that she couldn’t place. Although not a native, her command of Italian came easily, owing to her early mastery of classical Latin.

His voice was beautiful, and the just slight foreign cadence with which he spoke would caress the last vowel of every Italian word he spoke. While Italian was commonly associated with a musical quality, she didn’t doubt that this speaker would sing any language he spoke. Together they walked through the old, dusty aisles of Volterra’s library, until they reached the sparse front, which was decorated by recreations of Renaissance masterpieces, gaudy if they were anywhere else but in Italy. So antiquated was this library that the walls hadn’t been renovated since at least the late sixties or early seventies, given the warm brown paneling on the walls, and the kitschy brass embellishments at the top, lining the entire span of the walls.

It was then that she saw the man who was speaking with what seemed to be the sole employee of the library. An older Tuscan woman, who spoke bitterly with the tall man, who could be better characterized as a Grecian figure carved from the whitest marble. While she couldn’t guess where he was from with utmost accuracy, she knew he was Greek, from the straightness of his long nose, and the thickness of his long black hair, whose curls shone like a gem underneath the dim chandelier, making even those crystals dull in comparison.

Perhaps what was most striking about him, but had no specific tell, was the perfection of him. Only a moment ago, she’d remarked that he looked like a Grecian sculpture, and she would remark again, that indeed, he must have been cut from the sharpest, most beautiful slab of marble.

Khiz seemed to disappear, in fact, everything seemed to disappear when he looked over at her. When their eyes locked, everything else, even the pleasantly kitschy décor, fades from her line of sight, and the peripheral that she is always so vigilant about, becomes irrelevant. Althea blinks, and turns her head back to the doors, which are far too grand for a tiny Italian village like this one. Criticizing architecture is a wonderful distraction from the unbidden stream of thoughts rushing through her head about the enigmatic stranger, who, so enchanting, must have cast a spell on her.

But that could not be so , she reminds herself. Just because her studies often take her to classical antiquity, does not mean she has to follow suit in their explanations for human attraction. Even still, she feels a pair of black eyes on her every move as she walks through the door that her friend is holding open. He is also looking at the man, but his observation turns into a glare, a vestige of the burly guard he’d always been to her when they were teenagers, and apparently, into adulthood.

“You’ve got an admirer.” Khiz says tactlessly when they’re outside, pulling out an unfiltered Camel and straightening it before placing it between his full lips. “Fucking wop thinks he can dilute your Aryan blood.” He then presses, wheezing, smoky laughter coming out of his chest as he lights the Camel.

“A nice thought, if this Aryan blood wasn’t already diluted by an Anglo. Funny thing, in fact, for I manage to have the most shapely nose and monobrow among the English, and have the palest skin of any Persian, all while representing Greece.” Not exactly. Her Deadhead mother had named her after the Grateful Dead’s hit, Althea.

“You’re not Anglo. Seen your mother more than I’d like to, she’s obviously Norman. How’s she doing, do you know?” It wasn’t what she wanted to talk about, but it was preferred to talk of blood purity. While she lit her Benson & Hedges, she tossed a longing glance toward the overcast, wintry sky, and checked her watch for the time.

Her mother had been an artistic type, a free thinker whose free thinking was questionable given that it was also self-professed . Given she had so few intimate points of reference, she couldn’t well say that she was a bad mother. Throughout her life, Althea had never needed for anything, but she had certainly wanted for much, and since they never stayed anywhere for very long, and in those places they did stay, her mother never gave her the security or stability that’s expected from a parent.

Those years of active parenthood had only been an extension of Delilah’s youth, artificially stretched because she had not wanted to settle down, or cease pursuing rich, foreign men, like her father, Reza, the handsome Persian she’d given her love to, then taken her love away from at the slightest mention of marriage. Delilah was now living a stable life with a dry accountant in the East Midlands, whose name was Timothy, a far cry from her endlessly intriguing father, who’d never ceased trying to communicate with his Western daughter, his only daughter.

Trying to discern the whims of her mother was a short toss from impossible, but most of it could be excused by her own dry, strict childhood in the Church of England. That’s the only reason Althea is not bitterer about her circumstances.

“Mum is stable.” She reverts back to that dark, surly mood that’s more common for her, outside of her only friend’s influence. He’ll not be here long, as he’s going to Georgia to stay with his friends for as long as is legal. For years now, in between odd jobs, he’s studied the Georgian language, a language that Althea has no mastery of, and even less of an interest in. As of now, he’s on a twenty-four hour layover.

Althea doesn’t dare to talk small about his own mother, who’d disowned him as soon as he quit openly practicing Islam. Besides, they never talked small anyways.

“And you like it here?” He’d asked that before, but he was obviously making a concentrated effort to be personable. It was very unlike him. Perhaps, he was asking it through the clarity of a cigarette, unconsciously reasoning that she’d be more truthful in a haze of perfumed smoke, like an oriental despot.

She takes a long, deep smoke from her filtered cigarette, looking bizarre next to a big, burly man smoking an unfiltered. Her long, coppery hair blows around her face, and she searches the long, winding street for any indication of the handsome stranger’s vehicle, one that hadn’t been there when she’d first come. In rural Italy, cars were a touch more common than in Lucca, the small city that she was currently living in.

With no luck, she narrowed her eyes, fixing them at an object that was many thousands of miles away, but ended up glaring at the empty street, abandoned in the wintry early evening. The lonely street’s weathered stone reminded her of the color of that man’s skin, whose image she couldn’t get out of her head. Althea was a lover of beauty, as was anyone who had any affinity for Plato and his aesthetics. Quietly, she could admit to herself that beauty was her utmost weakness.

“After spending most of my life in trap houses, improvement never has too high of an asking price.” She replies, vague in that way she often does when she’s growing less and less conversational. “To answer your question more straightforwardly, I am liking this country. It’s a good climate for my.. head, and it’s easier to study in a land where the life source of many a great man has been born, and has died.”

And speaking of great men, who had that man been? Not that it matters anyway, for even if she knew, she’d likely do nothing. Even when faced with her ultimate weakness – beauty – she is still more content to be alone with her thoughts, free to think and criticize without scandal.

Khiz’ expression grows more serious then. Although he desperately wants to be a meathead, through and through, he is, much to his misfortune, a thinker, no matter how worldly he is. He can philosophize better than most other students she knows, and he can do it with respect for the profane, the simple, the mundane. It’s a wonderful quality of his, undervalued by himself.

“True. Ever thought of visiting Iran again?” Her wince is hidden behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.

At any other time, she would’ve sneered, but with the buzz of nicotine, she felt herself opening up to the line of questioning. She used to visit her father during the summer hols, when her mother insisted, at the incessant suggestion of her father no doubt, that she go. Her half-brothers always tried to grope her, and one cousin had even sought her hand, at the mere age of twelve . H er ‘stepmother’ loathed her existence, and paddled her out of jealousy, but she had said it was out of disrespect. And indeed, Althea had disrespected the jealous woman, who would try, at any given opportunity, to interrupt conversations between she and her father.

“If I do, my father’s family won’t be made aware of it.” She did like her father, she even went so far as to respect him, but he was a man whose love was closer to that of a cult leader, whose brand could be likened to Jim Jones’. He was a flatterer, a charmer, and still very much in love with the idea of her mother, if not the woman herself. It could be bias that shaped her poor opinions, after all, her Persian family left a very unfavorable impression. All they were good for, was having a place to stay in the event she goes back across the Zagros.

Even then, she’d rather stay with some random goat herder. At least she’d have wool for knitting.

Khiz opts for a more familiar, terse approach, “Don’t blame you there.” He blows his last out of his nose, sending a regretful glance toward the little nub of ash. Nonchalant, he plucks another cigarette out of his pocket and lights it off the last. Something he’s done since she met him as a teenager.

She knows he asks after her parents often, because, while neither were exceptional parents, they did love her, and he couldn’t say the same about his own. Almost as if, he enjoyed family vicariously through her own, albeit, broken one. It’s why she doesn’t reply caustically as she otherwise might have with literally anyone else. With anyone else, she’d have glanced away, with a dark, imperious arch of her brow, her hooked nose scrunched, and her shapely lips carved into a nasty sneer.

“Where can I take a piss?” He asks then, cigarette dangling between a pair of full lips, the object of affection for many unfortunate ladies. Khiz was very picky with women, even if half of them fell in love at first glance.

“How should I know? I’ve not been here before.” She shrugs her shoulders, arching a brow at him.

He scoffs, “Pretending like you haven’t researched every part of this city. Be surprised if you didn’t know who founded it. Their name in Italian, English, and Latin.”

“Hmm. You know, it wouldn’t be a vulgar, uncultured Latin. This is Etruscan territory, and I can’t say that I know their language. Anyways, you’re a man, fuck off and find a dark alleyway.” Just then, the street lamps, tall and wrought from a dark iron, switched on, eerie if the backdrop hadn’t been a quaint Italian village.

“There you go, always making good points, reminding me how to tie my own shoes. Be right back.”

In the meantime, she leaned her back on the cool stone, and crossed her arms, looking inhospitable to any person who might happen by. Althea has a carefully cultivated image, which unfortunately attracts as much as it repels. Truly, as soon as anyone learns she studies Classical Greek, she is no longer an attractive, if not odd-looking girl, but an intimidating and pretentious force. Therefore, she prefers to keep her interactions on anonymous internet forums and other sites.

She watches Khiz’ back until he disappears behind a nameless alley, whose name she actually did not know, contrary to his assumption. His long hair, just as hers, glows a bright red underneath the lamps, and moves across his shoulders and down his back like a bronze-spun blanket.

Before it even happens, she knows it’s going to. It’s that faultless (mostly) intuition of hers, or perhaps it isn’t. Either way, she feels before she hears the library’s door open. Firstly, a waft of heady, perfumed air hits her, it’s an alluring smell of the same peonies she passed while holidaying in Greece years ago. But it is fresher somehow, and it carries none of the suffocating, sharp smell of cologne. A layer of thyme and sage is the greenery where the peonies bed and bloom, and bounding throughout all of it, like the wind that tugs at her hair, is the light scent of the sea.

“Hello.” That he knew to speak in English was strange enough, but there was a chance that he was a local, and could easily recognize a foreigner in this village.

Critical, and totally unwilling to show her cards to this man who had captured her fascination at only one glance, she trails her eyes over him, and settles her lips into a frown that somehow flatters her. He is even more breathtaking up close, and she could swear that her heart skips beat at the intense stare he settles onto her, as if in reverent awe. It would be unsettling, if she were easy to unsettle. As it were, she was poor at judging the eccentricities of others, partly due to anywhere she went, she quickly filled the role of ‘resident eccentric’.

“And you are?” It isn’t meant to sound assessing, nor suspicious. On the contrary, she is compelled by this stranger, but she’s wary of openly showing any interest.

At the corners of his deep, red lips, is a quirk that disappears as quickly as it appears. His eyes, darker even than hers – black , she notes – are peering at her own as if he they could tell the secrets of her soul, and , as if he was interested in finding them. He licks his lips, it strikes her that it might be a nervous habit, but it could equally be one of those habits of a predatory man trying to instill a sense of the chase in a woman. However, she doesn’t think that’s it either. Like the marble he is cut from, he is stiff and his posture is unnaturally perfect. At that moment, she notices that he’s not even blinking. But she refuses to drop her eyes from his, refuses to surrender. Althea can and often does win staring contests.

Far be it from her to be a critic of someone’s wardrobe, her own is always comprised of vintage pieces – Khiz has quipped that she looks like a seventies’ librarian, with her sweater vests and rolled up Oxford sleeves, and the wool skirts she’s so fond of wearing. Her ‘admirer’ is wearing a black suit jacket, underneath which is another dark shirt, and underneath that is the hint of fine gold jewelry. Out of place among it all, is the way in which he wears his hair, long and curly, hitting a couple inches below his shoulder blades. Juxtaposed against his dark business casual, he looks as out of place as she might.

“Aro, and, what is the name of this creature that I have the pleasure of meeting?” She feels heat soar to the skin of her cheeks, and in the midst of her stupor, he offers her one pale hand.

He is taller than her by a head and a half, but she is not intimidated by it. Anyways, Khiz is just a few minutes away, and he could, and probably has, killed men. But the thought of ‘Aro’ dying, bothers her, and she’s not entirely sure why. It isn’t as though she has any attachment to him. Perhaps, it is the threat of the loss of beauty that bothers her? What a terrible grievance it would be for the world.

“Althea.” She neglects to tell him her surname.

As is custom, she takes his hand, and watches as a perplexed expression crosses his face. His dark brows quirk, like they’re trying to meet each other, and he whispers to himself something that sounds like ‘nothing ’, and that reverent look returns, covering up whatever shortcoming he was muttering about a moment before. When she tries to pry her hand out of his with a subtle, almost unnoticeable flex of her muscles, he quickly turns it toward him, leaning down, and pressing an antiquated kiss to the skin. That is when her attention is drawn to how cold he is. Well, not cold exactly, but a distinct absence of heat.

His thick curls draw a curtain around his head, and he watches her reaction even with his cool lips on the skin of her hand. Now, Althea is beginning to grow suspicious, wondering if she has been drugged somehow, even if that is impossible. She’s heard, however, of people getting dusted with the powder of Datura stramonium, or scopolamine, and deliriously losing all sense of self and boundaries with others.

This time, she forcefully draws her hand back, but his grip is tight.

“A thousand apologies.” He lets go, and straightens back up, running a giddy glance over her, accompanied by a wide smile that may have looked ludicrous on anyone who was even a quarter less beautiful than he. At her lack of response, he seems to be even more encouraged. So, he is that kind of person. “What a strange name, cara mia, and yet, you are not Greek, are you?”

Scandalized by the uncommon observation of her name, she looks away, and glances down at her heels, before returning to his curious, probing stare. At once, she feels like she is a patient, and he, a lobotomist.

“Would it be a problem if I were?” She asks, evading the question. She surprises herself by wanting to play the social game with him.

“Not at all..” His smile is secretive, like it is an inside joke.

“Because you are Greek.” She declares, smirking to herself, and watching a group of three teenagers walking the streets a ways ahead.

He doesn’t deny the cheeky observation, but, rather awkwardly, flits between staring into her eyes, and her neck, exposed from the collar of her Oxford.

“And, would it be a problem if I were?” No, in fact, it was quite alluring to her poetic sensibilities.

Neither the pale expanse of his high cheeks, nor the sharp cut of his jaw, nor the hint of his slender neck showed any sign of blemish. Neither a scar, nor a sign that he had ever experienced the pain of adolescent acne. Interestingly, he didn’t even have a mole, nor did he have any indication of the monobrow common to the Eastern Mediterranean. She found herself instead looking for unflattering traits, but she couldn’t find any of those either.

“Only if you care what my ancestors would think.” In retrospect, it was a strange thing to say, one that would evoke a very dry or ignorant response from most. But he only smiles wider, gleefully, and on his darkly good looks, it fits. He is not a brooder.

But she, rather heedlessly, admitted to interest in him just now. But, that’s assuming he will notice it at all. Reason dictates that most men wouldn’t notice such a small slip in language, a reveal of interest, unless they’re that desperate.

Around them, the wind picks up, and blows a few black curls into her direction, and she remarks that perfumers could try, and fail for centuries to recreate so sweet a scent. It holds her captive even now, and supersedes the pleasant vanilla she had rubbed onto her pulse points earlier in the afternoon.

“Is that an invitation?” He leans in, and she pulls back somewhat, careful to keep him at a safe distance. There is something uniquely off about this man, Aro.

Why is she considering entertaining this flirtation? She has known him all of five minutes, in fact, not even that . Normally, she’d have no issue at all asserting control, and scaring a man away by eviscerating him with word alone. She’s proud enough to say that she could probably verbally spar and possibly win with Aro, but she doesn’t want to chase him off. How odd.

His brows knit together, and he looks offended at her withdrawal.

Althea sends him a smile that could freeze hell, but only seems to excite him further. “Absolutely not. I’ve a friend I’m expecting to return any moment now, so I’ll have to cut this meeting short.”

As if he was summoned in a puff of smoke, she saw the silhouette of Khiz appear from a quaint alleyway about a hundred paces away.

Just then, Aro’s smile vanishes, it almost stirs her sympathy, but a pitiful frown is just as beautiful on those lips of his. Even still, she decides that she likes how he wears happiness, or at least excitement, on his flawless face.

She’s interested to see how the two interact. Her terse childhood friend’s mores are farther from approachable than even Althea’s sneering silences. To sneer always has a few points of prerequisites, typically wealth, but in her case, perhaps it’s her knowledge. Some might think that, in those sneering silences, she is contemplating just how clever she is compared to them, but the truth of it, is that she is more often nervous about talking at all. Her ‘brooding silences’, are better likened to a flattering veneer over social ineptitude.

“Ah, you must be the friend of Althea?” He offers one gregarious hand to the Chechen, along with a dazzling smile that, Althea notes, does meet his eyes. How strange! “A pleasure to make two acquaintances in such short time! So uncommonly rare!”

The Greek, or, more respectfully, Aro, offers his hand, which Khiz, distrusting as he is, neglects to take, instead eyeing the hand like a disease. Things get more interesting when, in the minuscule split of a second, Aro’s face darkens into a petulant frown, only to melt back into the smile of a man who lives in eternal springtime.

If he were anyone else, a remark that should raise her eyebrows, his exuberance would be cited in her walking away. As it were, she is fascinated by the stranger, and remarkably attracted to him, a feat that few men could boast of. Unlike with other beauties she admires from afar, there is not one quality of his that she can confidently coin as his foremost redeeming quality. It is something in his air, as if all of his parts, which are admittedly redeeming, are eclipsed by the entirety.

Crudely and bullish, Khiz grunts in greeting, blushing at the praise despite himself, for not even chaste Lucretia could deny the pleasure of having the man’s eyes on them. Even still, he refuses to take the offered hand, and this is not a disprivilege that only Aro receives. Her friend is tactless, while Althea is tactful but neglectful despite.

“Who are you?” She bites her lip, wishing she had a cigarette to hide behind, so she could humor herself behind the smoke.

“No one important, I’m afraid, simply a local.” He says with the sort of humor that was borne out of making people guess.

But it wasn’t true, for he spoke with inflected Italian and English both, and apparently, he had no qualms, nor self-preservative reservations against lying to him, but telling her the truth. He must have put the utmost fidelity in her, and he was right to do so, because she would never talk to Khiz about anything as trivial or ‘girlish’ as attractive men.

Whereas most would take a rejected handshake with supreme awkwardness, the slow withdrawal of Aro’s hand is nothing short of graceful, as if he were used to it, or, perhaps, he is just that confident in winning people over. Thereafter, in that spirit, he offers her a winning smile. Their entire exchange is beyond surreal, for reasons that might occur to her later. Under the glow of evening lamps, forming a semi-circle around each other, they could’ve been conducting a highly lucrative drug or arms deal. All of them certainly looked the part, with their uncommonly long hair lending them a ludicrous image of a Mater Magna cult.

Khiz looks at her in question, then she looks to him, then looks back at Aro, who has abandoned the other man to stare at her, in that way a man stares at his winning lottery ticket.

Both of them are too introverted to break the silence, as pregnant as a woman expecting. Her lips purse, and she imagines just how criminal all of this looks, how out of place it is in a small Tuscan village. Her fingers itch for a consolatory cigarette, if only to be doing something underneath the discomforting scrutiny of two men.

“How long will Volterra be enjoying the company of you and your friend?” He then addresses her, unabashed despite the air around them being thick enough to cut with a knife.

She arches a brow, it gives her the appearance of a fox, a creature she’s been likened to several times throughout her life.

“For as long as I need to be.” She picks an imaginary piece of lint off of her brown sweater vest.

The esoteric answer doesn’t deter him, if anything, it seems to stir his interest even more. “Oh, there’s no need to be shy. In a village this small, news will surely spread of your haunts, just as smoke creeps from a fire, or rain falls through the cracks of a ceiling. I, for one, will have my lips sealed, and in the event of any slander, I will know the truth.”

Her first instinct is to retort that she doesn’t care if he knows the truth, but she is instead more concerned with his use of Homeric simile, in jected into a normal sentence. Her jaw flexes, trying to piece together if this was a coincidence, but all she could conclude was that there was something off about him. Had he somehow seen the stack of books she’d had opened at her isolated library desk? Had he stumbled upon the opened lexicon and seen her university edition of the Iliad ? That would’ve required him to finish whatever exchange he’d been having with the librarian, then, in fatalistic fashion, happen to find her books, and quickly come out here as soon as her friend had left to relieve himself.

Now paranoid, she keeps her mouth shut about the Homeric simile, and answers him, “Volterra’s library is the only one of its kind within a reasonable distance, that has a Greek lexicon. That’s all.” But it wasn’t. Strangely enough, it had cuneiform lexicons, both Akkadian and Assyrian, two finds that otherwise would be prize treasures outside of a niche Mesopotamian archaeology course.

Why a small Tuscan village would have cuneiform lexicons is anyone’s guess, but she expects that their security is due to the lack of cunning, desperate students in the area. Another quick sweep of their catalog had also shown a bizarre, but rather more fitting, Etruscan-Latin print.

His expression shifted from interest, to engrossment. Watching his beautiful face shift through a thousand different unpredictable emotions would be nauseating, if she weren’t pacified by whatever strange hold he had on her. His lips, like two thin petals of a rose, slackened to reveal the hint of a flawless set of perfectly white teeth. If she was any less paranoid, she might give him the benefit of looking like he was lost for words for a moment. But he had proved himself to be willing to engage – or possibly he was ignorant of it – and carry a conversation with two people who were, at least to him, obviously uninterested.

“Sophos! Koine, I assume?” Unable to resist, Althea flushed underneath his attention, and further at his use of Greek, a sure way to hold her captive these days.

Later, she might regret leaving Khiz to his own devices as a third wheel in the classical Greek circle jerk, and she’ll also think about the sheer rarity of finding a handsome stranger who knows Koine, let alone knows what it is . Of course, he had admitted, dubiously, that he was Greek, and a classical education wasn’t exceptionally rare over there.

Spurred by her now obvious interest, he smiles even wider down at her, and licks his lips in anticipation. She assumes, in anticipation for her feedback. Or maybe her approval? She tends to have that effect on people, unintentionally. His eyes are two glittering black jewels, and she feels herself getting lost in them, even with brooding Khiz in her peripheral. Everything ceases to exist, or to be of any consequence at all, as a matter of fact. She is lost for words, and for once, it is not because she is not interested.

Mindful of looking like a dullard, she finally swallows, and finds the words she’d intended, “Yes.. you’re well-versed, then?”

As soon as she asks, he answers, like his life force depends on answering her questions. “Indeed! Ei linguas animae meae sunt.” She smiles then, and he goes on to say, “You’ll allow me to offer my help, then? There are none here with a finer education in the classics than myself, of that I can assure you..”

Her instincts are at war with the myriad feelings he has thus far inspired, in the matter of minutes . That primate part of her begs her to deny him, knowing something is just not right about him – the flawless expanse of pale skin, the blackness of his eyes, the searching glance with which he fastens on every part of her. Somehow, she feels like he is not making a sexual pass at her, and this really gets her suspicious.

She doesn’t even bat an eye at the random insertion of Latin, because she is guilty of doing this herself. Perhaps she should pay it more attention.

“If you’re so intent on that, then you’ll find me here tomorrow.” Is all she offers, before fastening him with a meaningful glance. Meaningful, because.. it just is. “Time to return home, I should think. Goodbye, Aro.” She doesn’t ask him for his cell.

He offers his hand again, and she takes it, and once more, he looks down at it with confusion, or perhaps frustration, before gently prying her from the wall where she’d been uncomfortably leaning for ten or more minutes.

“Yes, of course, it is frightfully cold, isn’t it? Best either of you be off, to find somewhere warm for the night.” Then as an ill-fitting afterthought, he adds, “I think I’ll do the same. Look for me, Althea.” The inflection is perfectly Hellenic, and she notices Khiz glaring at the gesture from the corner of her eye.

She promises that she’ll only look at him one more time, and over her shoulder she does just that, only to find him standing in the same place, staring at her with his head cocked to the side. Calculation suits him just as well.

Her friend follows dutifully at her side, and underneath the glow of lamps and the thick darkness of the village’s tiny streets, she can finally release the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. There are two pairs of eyes on her – his, and her friend’s. A hundred paces away, and she can still feel it on her back.

A million and more stars twinkle down at them, glowing brighter in the desolate winter night. They pass by closing shops, and soon, they pass terracotta flats and homes, which are lit invitingly behind thin curtains by dim table lamps. Their walk back to her car leaves her to think about just how strange her meeting had been, but she can feel, if not hear, Khiz’ questions just waiting to be prompted.

“If you hold it in any longer, you’ll look like a fat, blushing Irishman. I can feel you brimming with uncouth epithets, including the ‘w’ word. So, don’t keep me waiting..” Her quiet voice is doubly amplified by the uniform, Tuscan buildings on either side of them on the narrow pathway.

Too chilly for children to play, or teenagers to sneak out for a stale cigarette with their friends, they were thankfully alone, although Althea couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. Having been stalked before, she decides that it could just be bias. She’s known to catastrophize at the smallest whim.

“That was fucking weird, and-” He pulls out a cigarette then, and she follows suit, never able to turn down a smoke when someone else was doing it in her vicinity. “I really, really hope you’re not actually going to come back and meet that wop fucker.”

She scoffs a laugh at that, but it sounded more brooding than in good humor. Blocking her lighter from the wind, she took one long, smooth inhale, and idly watched the cigarette light while she thought about how to answer him. Only they could manage to convert an easy Tuscan street into a display of film noir doom-and-gloom. If the world were righter, Duke Ellington’s Brown Penny would follow every step they took. But instead, the only sound was their footsteps, and the occasional clatter of silverware in the various compact houses they passed.

“Tell me how many people you know with a knowledge of Koine. It would be unwise to pass up an auspicious opportunity like that. Besides,” They finally reach her car, a ramshackle thing that could only be trusted with short distances. Carefully, she unlocks it, distrusting the darkness. Beforehand, she flicks the ash from her cigarette. “I have this.” She points to her bag, toward the unregistered Smith & Wesson she’d acquired.

“Doesn’t mean much.” He says stubbornly, climbing into the passenger seat to her side.

Years of knowing him, mostly over text nowadays, has taught her that he wants to say something, but he just won’t. He thinks it’s silly to discuss other men with her, and doesn’t want to be associated with something so effeminate. It’s already crossing a line to keep her as a friend, despite her being a woman. It’s ingrained in him from birth, that men cannot simply be friends with women.

“Sure you want to drive to Lucca this late?” So he settles for that instead. It’s his way of showing concern.

“This is Italy, not America. The only people driving this late are drunk priests.” And because neither of them concern themselves with filling grim silences with chatter, she turns the radio on, a local talk show that she follows and translates for practice. “What time does your plane leave tomorrow?”

And.. she’d left those books out at the library. She can only hope that the librarian won’t be too cross with her tomorrow.

“6:30 in the morning.” At her look, he huffs around his cigarette, “Yeah.”

However stoic he might be, the gestures of it all aren’t lost on her. While it may have been cheaper to take a plane to Rome, he had taken a plane with an unfavorable layover in Florence, just to see her, if only for a few hours. For years they’ve been growing more distant, at first glance. But that’s not how it worked for them. They didn’t register the passing of time like others. A year could pass with no contact, and there would be no chiding about how long it had been.

Just out of the bounds of the village, she watched him observe the rolling fertile valleys, now dry and jaundiced from the recurring nightly frosts. The glow of the car radio cast them in an even paler light, and the backdrop of their stilted conversation was the faint sound of spoken Italian.

Within the hypnosis of driving, she only just banished the stranger from the forefront of her mind, but he still lingered there, like an imprint on clay.

Chapter Text

Stirring her awake is the belligerent sound of her alarm, and rolling out of bed, she looks to see that the time is four in the morning. Althea tugs her robe around her, and breathes hot air into her balled fists, trying to find some warmth in her freezing bedroom. Her landlady, Mrs. Conti, was something of an old-fashioned woman, and renovations, if there had been any, hadn’t been undertaken on the townhouse since the late 1960s.

Biscotto, the cat that was almost as old as her, meowed from the windowsill. Part of the reason that the rent was so low, was him, and the insistence that he remain in the townhouse, and be taken care of – in other words, he came with the property. Apparently, he had belonged to widowed Mrs. Conti’s husband, and she had no room for him in her own home. The orange tabby was just one reason that nice property, in Tuscany, was so low. Chief among those reasons was the lack of good ventilation. Although Althea has a space heater on in the parlor, she can feel none of that heat up here, in her own room.

At least Khiz got to enjoy the heat from the loveseat he’d chosen to sleep on.

Quietly, she pads down the staircase, but it is an impossible feat, for the steps creak with over a century of use. Biscotto follows closely behind, used to the familiar routine of being fed as soon as she makes coffee in the morning.

While she waits for the coffee to brew, she slides the kitchen window open, shivering at the chill that escapes into the lukewarm kitchen, warmed only by the grace of the space heater in the connecting parlor. Already anticipating that first early morning smoke, she slides the cigarette between her lips, and as the carafe fills, and the coffeemaker makes its last gurgling sounds, she lights her cigarette and takes a cup of black with a sugar cube – one of those things she picked up while visiting her family in Iran.

The tabby jumps onto the weathered counter, and paws at her arm for food, but she swats it away. Waking up this early has her in a grim mood. It’s still dark outside, and she is reminded of another dark color – an attentive gaze, and an organized mess of the most luscious curls she’s had the pleasure of seeing.

“Just as smoke creeps from a fire, or rain falls through the cracks of a ceiling…” Because they had spoken for so short a time, she is forced to recount those few words they did exchange.

She finishes her cigarette before she finishes her coffee, and instead of leaving that be, she lights another, content to think in the lonely hours of the morning, when no one is awake except electricians and truck drivers.

In her years of flitting about antiquarian circles, despite not specializing in any of them aside from the languages, she has never heard someone speak in Homeric verse outside of recital of the poet himself. In the moment, it had dazzled her, and then his use of Greek practically blinded her, but now removed from that, she can conclude that it was dissonant, like almost everything else about the man, Aro, had been.

Smoke escapes out of the old, dilapidated window, its paint having chipped off decades ago. Only the ambient hum of the refrigerator, and the occasional meow of Biscotto, fill the silence of the chilly kitchen, no longer warm from the space heater.

No, it hadn’t been his sudden show of erudition that dazzled her, it hadn’t been anything specific at all. From the moment she heard his voice, she had been intrigued. But, all that meant, was that he was an attractive older man who happened to know both Koine and Latin. This is fast becoming an intrusive thought, she warns herself, and with a flick of her cigarette, she shuts the window, and prepares food for Biscotto, and two boiled eggs, for herself and Khiz.

While they’re chilling, she goes and showers, under blessedly hot water, the only real amenity that Mrs. Conti offered, aside from letting her smoke in the house – if she raised a window. Mrs. Conti was old-fashioned, which was a double-edged sword, for she refused to modernize and was herself a chainsmoker who had no problem with it on her property.

By the time she’s done showering, and drying her curtain bangs with the round brush, Khiz has stumbled off of the love seat, and poured himself a cup of black coffee. The same outfit he wore to bed is the same outfit that he wore on the plane here, and likely the same one that he’ll wear on the next.

A morning this early calls for the bare minimum, which is all they’re willing to give. Althea prides herself on looking immaculately feminine on nine out of ten occasions, but she is looking distinctively Postmodern in her dark brown corduroys and cream-colored cardigan, contrasting with her long coppery hair. It’s a look without an essence, or rather, a collection of disparate symbols that are forced together and therefore rendered meaningless. There is nothing she is more disdainful of than the Postmodernists, that group of brainless intellectualists who are responsible for untold amounts of misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

No matter. That essay is to be finished by the end of this month. Her analyses can wait.

“Salve.” She greets, taking her boiled egg on a plate with an overripe banana.

Mornings are kinder to her than to others. They are her favorite time of the day – just before the sun begins to rise. The only light in the room is a dim lamp on the fossilized dining table, round, and, just large enough to seat three adults, or three adults and one child (if they sat in an adult’s lap).

Khiz grunts a greeting, but otherwise ignores her for his cup of coffee, and for scratching Biscotto’s chin. There are no impassioned rants about Slavs, or the glory of the Chechen people, this morning. That switch hasn’t been turned on yet. The atmosphere would be unmistakably solemn to most outsiders, but both of them are solemn, and more often to themselves than not.

“Have to be at the airport soon.” He breaks the lengthy silence by stating the obvious.

“I know I haven’t said it yet, but I’m glad you came. It’s… indescribably lonely here, and I wouldn’t normally complain about it, but now, knowing what I’ve been missing for months, I’m aware.” They stare at each other for a few moments, either of them too aware that one wrong word might ruin the moment.

“Never a good idea to spend too much time alone, Ali. Fucked me up pretty good for years.. screws with your head, you start picking faces out of the shadows and hearing whispers in the wind, ‘cause you’re so desperate to be around other people. Not to mention you start bumbling like a drooling fucking retard as soon as you’re around someone.” He takes one loud, last sip of his coffee, and then adds, “Been there, done that, and you had to listen to me ramble about the history of incendiary weapons everytime we were able to talk.”

Despite herself, she laughs, and he soon joins her, holding Biscotto in his lap and sharing the last few dregs of coffee with him. He always had been a softie with critters, especially dogs, but the occasional cat found its way in his good graces, a place within that very few humans could share the privilege.

“While that may be true, I can’t complain, now that I know the mechanics of Greek fire. In retrospect, it was probably more useful to me than it was for you.” His rasping laughter fills the room, and he puts Biscotto down to finish the boiled egg in less than a minute.

Thereafter, she collects her leather bag, checking that her pen and notes are where they should be, as well as her wallet, while Khiz gets his luggage ready – a Spartan bag with all the essentials he needs.

They leave the townhouse without fare, and Althea is unfortunately reminded that she’ll be driving a lot today. Not only does she need to submit translations to pay her rent, but she also has to go to Volterra to finish copying from the lexicon there. That find was worth an hour’s drive. Then, at some point, she has to log onto her online uni, just to ensure that she hasn’t abandoned the course. She has one year left until she receives her Master’s, and so, so, many things to do in the meantime.

She feels her jaw tensing under the titanic weight of having to support herself, retain fluency in various languages, and receive her Master’s. Maybe she should start slinging cocaine and molly again. That’ll be so much easier than doing honest translations for the local private schools. Admittedly, they do pay her well enough, considering her talent with language – those Italian-English translations are like child’s play. No drug dealing, then.

All of these things she juggles, while driving through the lonely Tuscan countryside, the only other cars out at this time are commuters and truck drivers. When dawn begins to break, she yawns, and connects her phone to the aux, and plays Death in June, evoking a predictable response in Khiz.

Drunk with the nectar of submission, of submission..

She lights a cigarette, and so too does Khiz, likely his last before he lands in Athens for a two-hour layover. They smoke in silence, punctured only by the jarring voice of David Pearce.

I feel nothing more, I feel nothing more, than existence.

Florence is filled to the brim with tight, stifling traffic, and she is reminded once more of why she chose to live on the outskirts of Lucca instead. While nothing short of beautiful, this city was crawling with activity at most hours, and its dated zoning, or lack thereof, made it almost as much of a pain to navigate as Rome.

“So, what do you think of Italy?” She finally asks, periodically checking Google Maps for a tell of how close they were to the airport.

“Shitaly?” She chews her lip at that, unsure of whether she should be offended on behalf of the Italians, or laugh at it, which would be the Italian thing to do. “Not bad. Pretty quiet. Expected these wops to fit the stereotype of generally loud and obnoxious.”

“Well, maybe next time you visit, we’ll take a trip to Sicily, and you can have those expectations met. Satisfaction guaranteed.” She winked at him in that way American businessmen wink at their customers when they strike an unfavorable deal.

“Damn, already there?” She parks outside of the airport, and checks the clock to see 6:15.

Either of them get out of the car, which she leaves running, since she doesn’t intend on going inside. If he misses that plane on her account, she might just feel compelled to buy him another ticket, and she’s too astute to let that happen. So he collects his bag, and she waits for him at the front of her car.

In front of him now, she sees how much he’s changed since they last saw each other. The last time was two years ago, when they’d gone to Turkey together, to tour the ancient city of Lycia. He looks happier now, like he has a purpose, where before he’d gone after his heroin withdrawal, freshly sober with an even grimmer disposition.

Somehow, somehow, she just knows they won’t be seeing each other for a long time. With his friends in Georgia, he’ll likely apply for citizenship, marry a beautiful Orthodox girl, and find a job making coffins or something unrepentantly gothic like that, and while he wouldn’t forget her – she hopes – he’ll have better things to do than spend time updating her on his life. She, who likely reminds him of his most miserable years.

Both of them need family, but she knows that he needs it more. He needs people more than she does, so she’s willing to let him go.

“Remember, you’re welcome to stay here anytime. Anytime, Khiz.” He offers her a small smile, and approaches her, still nursing a lit cigarette, and embraces her in a tight bear hug.

She tries not to let her tears fall, and manages to succeed if only because she is quietly vain. While her feet dangle in the air, she wraps her arms around his neck, and he squeezes her around the midsection with the strength of a man who’s been doing fitness training for years, to avoid opiate cravings. That’s a sobriety hug, for sure.

Regardless that her hair is going to smell like an unfiltered Camel for the rest of the day, she sighs into the embrace, answering that vague intuition that this might be the last time they see each other, at least for a long time.

“Thanks for keeping me company all these years, Ali. Couldn’t have made it here without you.” True. She had bullied him into giving up the opiates, and had instead offered him long therapeutic sessions over the phone. Without her intervention, it’s possible he would’ve died years ago.

“Don’t get soft on me, or you’ll never be a Khevsur.” He laughs into her neck, his auburn beard scratching at her skin.

Not without hesitation, he sets her back on the ground, and grinds his cigarette beneath his heel. He runs a hand through his hair, shiny and beautiful despite not having showered at her townhouse. Awkwardly, he scratches at the back of his head, and says his last words to her before turning.

“Text me, Ali. Don’t be a fucking stranger. You make a breakthrough in your Greek, I wanna know about it. And when you write that paper about Fascism’s homoeroticism, I wanna see it. Ok?” She nods, and waves at him when he begins to turn around.

“Goodbye, Khiz.”

She looks down at her feet then, and lights another cigarette while leaning against the hood of her car. Alone once more. During her five-minute pity session, she wonders if Aro will actually show up at the library, wonders whether he was talking big as older men are known to, to sate that short-lived whim of charming pretty young girls.

Truly, she doubts that his Greek is better than hers. But, she’d never heard a man use Koine as a flex, ever. On the same vein, she’s never heard someone use Greek, then classical Latin, in the short span of five minutes outside of a classroom.

Perplexing.

Unlikely that she’d ever see him again, but perplexing nonetheless.

The Tuscan sky is overcast, interspersed with occasional rays of sunlight pouring through the clouds. On the modestly long drive to Volterra, she entertains herself with a lecture on the Sumerian language, that enigmatic language isolate that was behind the first cities of men in the Copper Age.

To her deepest misfortune, the lecturer is incredibly dull, and, it’s hard to tell if he’s passionate about the subject at all. It’s likely that it’s a linguist who’s lecturing on it because it has to be mentioned, as the first written language. This prompts her to wonder why anyone would talk about such a niche corner of history yet have no interest in it whatsoever. What a waste, she thinks to herself.

With Khiz on his way to Georgia, and with him gone for who-knows-how-long, she can now admit to feeling extraordinarily lonely. It had been months since she’d carried an extensive conversation until he got here yesterday. Althea is not depressed, she is just intent on her studies, to the detriment of every other part of her life. So it’s always been.

Her mother had nagged her about it when she was a teenager, which made the angsty teen want to retort, “Well, you’re a whore, mom, and if you’d married my father, maybe I wouldn’t be like this.” And she’s almost sure that she was right, back then, when she made that observation that was astoundingly sharp for a hormonal teen. If her mother had stayed with him, they would’ve had a life in a relatively stable country and home, and consistent exposure to family, both close and extended, would have given her other, more interesting things to do than study. She wouldn’t have taken to knowledge as a sanctuary otherwise.

Predictably, she grinds her teeth, irate at the memory of her broken childhood, which wasn’t a childhood at all. Between living at actual trap houses, festivals tents, and hostels, she had to grow up very quickly. She remembers when those heads at the hostel in San Francisco spiked her smoothie with liquid psilocybin, at the age of thirteen. Her mother had berated them, and even gave one of them a shiner, but the cut that struck the deepest, was that her mother had let it happen at all.

That’s not giving her mother the understanding she deserves, though. Her own childhood had fluctuated between dull and legitimately abusive. She gave Althea the childhood that she wished she’d had, and that’s the only thing that stays her from having a complete meltdown.

“What the fuck…” She whispers to herself, wondering how exactly she’d arrived at this tangent.

Considering it’s never far from her mind, she supposes she shouldn’t be surprised, actually.

When she nearly hits a cyclist – who bicycles in the middle of late November? – she slams her breaks, and glares at the elderly cyclist in question, who meanders past her seemingly without any cares in the world. And why would he? He’s old, and he’s probably experienced a crisis like hers before, and lived through it, enough that he knows things are going to be okay.

Suddenly, she’s overcome with envy toward the man. The man who, on a chilly Tuscan morning on the cusp of December, has the brass to cycle on the road ten minutes from Volterra.

Petulantly, she cuts in front of him, and revs the engine, irritated but still averse to hitting him.

For a small village, Volterra is bustling for an early morning that’s shy of eight o’clock. Everyone knows each other here, she suspects, just like the village her mother lives in, in the East Midlands. Children’s parents trust their neighbors, and even the shopkeepers, to leave their children unharmed, and they mill about in the streets, whispering among each other, some of them even looking at her, the newcomer whom, it couldn’t be more obvious is a newcomer.

It’s always her long, hooked nose, with the nostrils too thin to belong to a Jew, and the point too hooked to be a Roman’s, that captures people’s attention. Her skin also is pale, but has a light golden hue to it that gives her away as an easterner. In England, she is too Persian-looking, and in Iran, she is too Western, both in looks and mores. These things have fundamentally shaped Althea’s life, and have cast her as an immediate outsider, no matter where she goes.

Schoolchildren of all ages pass her on the way down the street, gaping at her long hair in fascination. It is one of her points of pride – as golden as gold itself, as red as copper, and as brown as caramel. The sparse sunlight, spotty as it is in the overcast sky, plays tricks in the strands, makes them look gold one way, and red another.

She meets none of their eyes. Performance anxiety is eating away at her from within, and she tucks one nervous strand of hair behind her ear, which by luck manages not to disturb the thick curtain bangs in front.

The thick walls of the library silence any chatter from the schoolchildren, and after acknowledging the librarian with a nod, retreats to the back of the library. Painstakingly, or determinedly, she climbs the ladder to find again the lexicon she’d had open yesterday, only to realize that it was still on the desk she and Khiz had used yesterday, still opened on the page she’d left it.

She rests her forehead on the dark wood of the bookshelf, and lets out a miserable groan. Today is not her day, for she’d stayed up hours catching up with Khiz, then woke up only four hours later to tell him goodbye. There, her forehead rests for a minute, or maybe even longer, she’s not counting.

“Do you need any help?” It’s his voice. Although she’s only heard it on one other occasion, she remembers the exact sibilance of it, memorizes it instantly.

Her heartbeat quickens, but she’s content with sending him a glare. How had he managed to sneak up on her without the sound of a single footstep?

Oh, but her glare is missing the other half of its heart, because she couldn’t be angry at such beauty for too terribly long. She surprises herself with that fact, for anger is a recurrent vice of hers.

He’s dressed in a similar wardrobe to yesterday’s, in a finely tailored suit that looked far too prestigious to be strolling around the village in. His hair, just as it was yesterday, is an organized mess of thick black curls, as Grecian and inviting as smooth retsina. His eyes follow her every movement as she climbs down, they’re dark, and unavoidable, assuming that anyone would want to avoid them. She couldn’t comprehend why, in that case.

Regardless of his pulchritude (a matter-of-fact thing that even a blind man couldn’t deny, for his force of presence equaled everything else), he stood in the middle of the aisle with his hands at his side, as still and unmoving as the statue he must have been made from. It was like, he had learned how to socialize in one of those metaphorical airport manuals titled How to Act Human and Mean It.

“You came.” Is all she says when she slides down, neglecting to look over her shoulder as she leads him to the desk, which she reclaims by placing her bag.

“Did you fear that I wouldn’t?” And he has no concept of personal space, for she can feel his suit brush against her shoulder from behind, evoking a shiver down her spine. “What a shameful fool I’d make of myself if I turned down so fortuitous a chance.” He tsks then, causing her heart to skip a beat. ‘‘’Shame’, is the moniker they would lash me with down the streets. ‘Shame, Aro’..” She turned her head at him, her brow arched dubiously at his melodramatic flattery, only to find him watching closely for a reaction. “And to coin a phrase I so often hear, I would never live it down, Arista.”

She lets her eyes wander down from his eyes to his high cheekbones – he is a vintage beauty, one that would not be considered conventionally attractive by modern Western standards, for his nose too is prominent like her own, and his brows are too thick to have been manicured at one of the fashionable Italian stylists’. But, she concludes, that he is the most beautiful man she has seen in a long time, perhaps ever.

It takes a few moments for her to find the right kind of snide remark that would distract from her obvious appraisal.

“Maybe the shame will teach you to respect people’s space.” She lands a hand on his shoulder, and is surprised by the flood of affection and regret she feels for having caused the hurt confusion on his dark features. Nonetheless, she pushes him away, and he lets her. A moment later, and he has returned to the same exuberance he displayed only a few moments ago. “Well? Let’s get to work, shall we? Sbrigati.”

Beside her he lets out a chime of delighted laughter, and it would be infectious if she weren’t exhausted and frazzled. Despite herself, she smiles a small smile.

“Ah, yes, agapiti. You’ll forgive me for stalling time, then? I am not.. used to being told what to do.” He shrugs, a semblance of good nature in it, but it looks unnatural on him.

The arch of her brow prompted a further stream of elegant words – so he is one of those people, who feels compelled to fill silences.

“Refreshing, I should think! Tell me what we are doing, and I shall obey to the smallest, the littlest detail, just as a dutiful spider fashions a wholly new web at the most minor disturbance to a fiber, like when a butterfly, in the metamorphosis, flees his cocoon at the slightest touch.” He gestures around him, weaving his fingers up and down, as the mentioned creatures might have, if they had them. “So too will I do the same for you, Althea.”

Again, he spins Homeric similes, and inserts them into his lengthy monologues. Other people would think he is a nutter, but Althea is impressed by his poetic senses, and equally flattered that he would use them on her, even if he is only doing so to impress her, which is possible, based on the way his eyes map her features, looking for any indication of how she feels.

She licks her lips, and grants him a secretive smirk, “Like the snow that collects at the foot of a mountain and its tallest heights, when a storm sweeps through the land and therewith usurps the sun its tyranny, as it comes at the behest of the clouds or some powerful god, so too will you follow at my behest, Aro.”

If she didn’t know any better, she’d call his resulting emotion adoration , awe, perhaps even reverence. His dark eyes glaze over with something , she wants to say one of those three thing, but that is only because she wants that, right?

“Speaking of Homer, he is who I’m studying, and as you might know,” She leaves that in the air between them, because he may not know, even if his repeated use of the classical poet’s meter refuted that. “The Iliad is rife with word salad, like any archaic Greek is. While this is likely because there exists no available translation of these words, we have to assume he just.. made them up. However, there were some terms I was copying from this lexicon, terms that were defined in no other lexicon I’ve encountered. I have a list of words I’m having trouble with.”

A few brief moments pass, and she pulls out the journal in question. She could simply take pictures of the lexicon with her phone, but ever since she learned Latin in her teens, she found it more instructive to painstakingly write down the nominative, and the genitive, and the gender, of the word, sealing it [mostly] permanently in her memory.

As she takes a seat, so does he, directly across from her, and she can feel his legs cross beneath the table.

Althea is struck then by the same feeling she was last night, a distinctly surreal feeling, as though she were dissociating, but instead of detaching herself from her body, everything except the table she sits at, and the man she sits with, conveniently disappears. Even the vestiges of melancholy, from telling Khiz goodbye, sizzle out and take a backseat.

Like a subject of the highest importance, with the same attention a mathematician might give a problem that’s as difficult as it is rewarding, he watches her, never moving an inch, unless she also moves. Then, he mimics it. Why? When she puts her hand on the table, he moves forward to put his elbow on the table.

She slides the journal forward, and he peers at the pages, sliding over the lines of words with a speed and comprehension she has never seen in another antiquarian. She’s not yet ready to take back her earlier assumption that his Greek isn’t as good, but she’s preparing.

Shortly afterward, their eyes reconnect over the table, and he gifts her with a smile, and afterward, a deep breath of hesitation, like he’s debating something in his mind. What is there to debate? Either he can assign the words to pages and help her compose their synopses, or.. well, that’s all there is to do.

He gets that look about him, the same kind that a student might when he wants to tell the teacher his answer, but out of some secret, inner protest, decides against it. She’s immediately suspicious. Now, she knows he couldn’t possibly be withholding information, because what is there to withhold? Why would he know a word that no linguist has ever deciphered for certain?

“Even with years of experience, I couldn’t say.” And that is precisely what she would say. His voice has a musical quality to it, and if he sang, she knew he’d be in the tenor range.

“Exactly. So, let’s find them. The ones marked out are the two I managed to find and copy from the book.” She reaches for the journal then, and he acquiesces easily, but she is distracted by the cold touch of his fingers on her own, and the same perplexed knit of his brow that he had last night. Normally, she wouldn’t comment on something so.. personal. “Your hands are freezing.”

“Would you like to warm them?” He flirtatiously retorts, and she flushes before snatching the book back to her side of the desk. “They’re always cold, I fear, but something tells me that they’ll stir at your touch, agapiti.”

“Oh? How do you reason that?” She asks, skeptical of his sincerity.

He gestures around him, and at her, as he speaks, he is uncommonly animated. “Why, without any reason whatsoever! A feeling, if you’ll believe it. But you are too clever to believe a strange man’s hunches, so I shall prove to you my sincerity.”

When he takes her hand, forcefully at first, and then noticing her sharp intake of breath – gently, he cradles it between either of his freezing, cold hands, the temperature reminding her of her occasional bouts of anemia, and once again, she suspects they have another thing in common.

“So riveting, impossible to read..” He pets the skin there, and she is so lost in his gestures, his appraisal, that she couldn’t dare pull her hand back now. Such is the spell she is under. Why is she so enchanted by him? Is it because of his interest in her work, or because his every feature corresponds to what she finds beautiful? Or, perhaps it’s because he’s shown himself, so far, to be pleasantly annoying, in that way a lovely songbird might be in the early morning hours? “Indeed, my hypothesis, admittedly drawn up from conjecture, has proven to be right.” She laughs, actually laughs, at his verbose joke, a play on the unsociable language that scientists use.

“What?” He grasps her hands tighter, and shoots her a teasing grin. One would’ve thought he’d won a large sum of cash, or a swathes of valued Tuscan land, by the pride he showed in provoking her laughter.

“Your hands, mea puella, they’ve banished the cold.” She blinks, and irate that she fell for it, yanks her hand back, which he only lets go with regret. “Don’t mind me, but, forgive me if I cannot offer you the same indifference.”

And then, silence. For once, she’s not sure how to respond. Normally, Althea is cool, collected, and armed with a slew of either vague intrigue or caustic responses.

That simply doesn’t suffice for Aro, who’s quickly proving himself to be a gregarious chatterbox, whose disposition is cheerier than it should be. Maybe , she thinks to herself, this is why he’s got nothing else to do, because he aggravates everyone else.

As soon as she flips the pages of the lexicon, he is seguing into another tangent. “Is Koine your primary study? Are you a linguist-”

Over the book, she eyes him coolly, but it instead looks more brooding than anything else, and that only seems to spark whatever interest he has in her. Is he the sort that enjoys anger directed at him? Maybe, he finds it attractive? Or, perhaps, he thinks it’s a veneer she’s hiding behind, a wall she’s erected, that he thinks he’ll have the pleasure of tearing down, to see what is inside. That’s assuming he cares, but from the way he’s staring at her now, she knows that he believes that he cares.

“No, and no.” She searches for the first word on her list, and sensing that he’s waiting for her to explain herself, she continues, “Currently, I’m studying for my Master’s in philosophy, with an emphasis on classical philosophy. But I’m also interested in political philosophy, and I’m writing my Master’s thesis on totalizing, or, totalitarian, political philosophies. I study Koine because meanings are lost in translation, and I have wanted to learn it since childhood, but I’ve never had the opportunity until now.”

“Have you always been an antiquarian?” She wants to say ‘why do you want to know?’, but he asks it so earnestly.

“For as long as I can remember.” Is all she supplies, knowing that no one wants, or cares, to hear how she was consumed with interest in the Bronze Age, in Mycenae, Assyria, Akkad, and Babylon, even going so far as to teach herself how to write in cuneiform, knowledge she’s lost since she was a twelve year-old girl.

“And, how did that take you to wanting to write dissertations on political philosophy?” It’s a question she doesn’t mind answering.

“Because, I noticed recurring patterns in history, in the collapse of empires, and in the formation of big men – first lughals, then kings, then emperors. Civilization, like any human creation, a creation which comprises and is supported by humans, enjoys a lifespan that follows a trajectory not unlike our own. It is living and breathing, and anything that lives and breathes must eventually decline, and die. It happens that there is a framework that attempts to explain historical events, especially in regards to civilization, this way. But it is attached to another framework that I dislike, like Hegel’s, or – more palatable by a smidge – Oswald Spengler.”

“You are a historicist then?” He wisely asks, surprising her by yet again knowing something obscure.

“Do you disapprove?” She pries.

“Not at all. I’ve read both of the philosophers you mentioned, and while I agree with you, that neither of them are.. adequate, I am quite fond of historicism. No lens through which we study history has ever managed to approach it with humanity, quite like historicism has. That the likes of Pythagoras enjoyed a life of rich complexity, rather than a static life whose importance is realized only in that his like have led to this time, is remarkable. That the ancients do not serve the modernist as simply ‘ancients’, but as persons of agency, and importance, whose lives were not unlike your own, relative to their time.” He finishes passionately, proving that it was something he had given thought to.

That’s a sure way to earn her zeal. But now that he agrees with her, she is somewhat tempted to be a contrarian, and criticize it.

“Even referring to the ‘middle ages’ as the ‘middle’ between the classical and the modern is insensitive, and inaccurate. Because the Hellene surely thought that he too lived in the cradle of high culture and that he, and he alone, had a nuanced vision of the liberal arts and humanities. Such is the human condition! To think that all who came before you are barbaros, regressive and uncultured. Terribile vergogna!” He gestures with his hands, his eyes wide as though he were telling an unbelievable story, and everything relied on the praise of his one-person audience. Then he sobered drastically – the mood in which he spoke was unpredictable. “But you know, the Greeks were horribly guilty of this. It is not just the moderns.”

“Who would expect any different? Any step toward progress begets one step backward, nature cannot contend with a gain that has no loss – the tolerance of what Victorians would call sexual deviancy was rife in the classical world, but with the acceptance of this, comes the acceptance of degeneracy like pederasts. And with the modern step toward tolerance, comes the same backward step that the Greeks would have experienced. That’s the myth of progress. Society has fundamentally changed since the classical world, however I wonder if the change isn’t parallel to the same cycles experienced before. A Greek would find it very backward to see a woman politicking, and he is right in doing so, relative to his time.” She rotates her pen between her fingers, handing it like she might a cigarette. “They were humans, wonderfully biased, as all humans should be. It is only natural that a man should be of his time.”

The lift of his chin is just shy of imperious, a close cousin of judgmental, but his smile never falls. Was it pride that shone in his eyes? Was he thinking along the same tangent as she – was he counting his fortunes that he happened upon someone who shared his passion?

“And are you..” He pauses, and in another context she might’ve coined it as melodramatic. “A woman of your time?”

How is she supposed to answer a question like that? She studies Koine , but she doesn’t delude herself, unlike other antiquarians, that she has a special connection to those past men of great renown. And she does not regret that she was born at this time, not anymore in any case. While God’s motives were unknown, and unknowable, He had intended for her to live in this time.

Yesterday, she had sat with Khiz next to the tall, arched window, whose glass she’d remembered to be stained with age, host to a collection of dust and mold that had gathered at its corners, where they might’ve been open had this still been in the middle of a hot, dry, Tuscan summer. Now, however, the thick, draping curtains were drawn over it, and so too had every other window gotten the same treatment, now that she cared to look.

Aro followed the objects of her attention, and offered her a smile, behind which was an endearing sort of guilt. She half-expected him to shrug his shoulders at her, as an indulgent friend might have done, when accused of a trivial prank towards another friend. But he didn’t.

Finally, she answered, and it felt like an hour had passed since he had asked that question. In reality, it had only been a few seconds.

“Yes.” She attributes that slight pout to her unwillingness to say more.

As if she would explain her autobiography to a man she just met the night before. A man, who is watching her with a fixation that would’ve been creepy if he weren’t so pretty, or earnest. And considering how much he talks, she’s sure he is just bored, or her earlier theory is correct, that he’s annoyed the hell out of everyone else and he has limited choices.

“And what does being a ‘woman of your time’ mean to you?” He asks smartly, rather inconveniently, because it’s a loaded question, whose answer is easily answered with common sense at first glance, but upon further inspection, requires a lot of thought.

Now they’re really getting derailed. Althea wants to summon the power to tell him to shut up , but she can’t quite find the words. She wants to talk to him, and answer his questions. But that question he asked, it’s a door to her soul, and the answer will be too revealing. She’d show him too many cards. If she gave him a list of qualities and habits, he’d be able to connect them back to her, and she jealously guards herself from others.

It must have shown by the defensive posture she took, in how she straightened her back and how her eyes sharpened.

“A woman of her time doesn’t delude herself into thinking she is an exceptional outlier in not belonging to this time. She respects the men and women of renown who precede her, but she doesn’t convince herself that their lives were somehow more romantic. Instead, she finds the romantic in the living world around her, and in the world before, that gave it that will to live.” He’s frustrated then, she can tell, because.. she just knows, somehow. It almost rouses a victorious snort from her, because she thinks he was trying to fish, and got outwitted.

“Spoken like the most enigmatic pedigree of philosopher.” She feels her lip curling up in displeasure, unsure if he’s trying to be nice or if he’s making fun of her.

“I am not a philosopher.” She argues, and believes it. It’s unacceptable to call oneself a philosopher, and to accept the moniker from others.

His brows raise at her tone, and he holds his hands up in mock offense, like he is at a trial being judged.

“Pacite. I meant you no offense, only that you are sagacious for one so young. Your refusal to accept so lofty a title is commendable, there are many who would go to war to be heralded with it.” She doesn’t show that she registers what he says, she simply blinks, but she is beginning to understand, and so quickly, how he receives such silences. “You are infuriating.”

That gets her attention. Maybe that’s what he intended.

“Excuse me?” She snaps her journal shut, unsure of just how their pleasant conversation before, had turned sour at the drop of a hat.

As a child, when she spent her summers in the East, where a curtain as thick as the ones covering Volterra’s library’s windows separated it from the West and its liberal attitudes, she would constantly be criticized by the other half of her family about her Western habits, her hesitancy to veil herself, and the inflections she had in her Farsi. This amounted to being under constant attack and criticism, to which she responded with equally virulent defenses. Her childhood was spent in constant hypervigilance, for when she wasn’t being secretly dosed by hippies, she was being derided and paddled by others.

It would’ve been wiser to just sit with what he’d said, and say nothing in return. Obviously, his tongue was loose and he was overly expressive, even for Italy, where displays like that are more welcome than among the English.

His eyes are wide and innocent, but she’s no fool – this man is clever, and she remembers the calculating stare with which he watched her last night.

“Have I said something?” He lightly asks, and then rambles. Even his rambling is sophisticated. “Ah, if so, I only did so with the express intention of making you smile, but I see that I’ve failed.. I do have a liberal habit of saying what’s on my mind, like Juvenal. And that, my dear, is why I am delightfully infuriated by you.” And he just kept going. “What a mind you must have! Tell me, what do you think of that poor degenerate, Juvenal?”

Ugh , she can’t help but laugh at the way he framed that.

“Juvenal’s witty, but it probably wasn’t that impressive to be a popular satirist in a declining Rome.” He arches a brow at that. And now, she realizes that she’s been baited into talking more, instead of studying. What’s he playing at?

“’Declining’? By the heavens, what could you possibly mean by that? Rome was enjoying its Imperial Age, by all accounts, its golden age.” He’s just stating a fact. To her, it sounds like he himself is skeptical of that claim.

So odd, when she sets a comfortable elbow on the desk, and he follows suit, but it’s stiff and disproportionate with the otherwise perfect posture he keeps. At least he’s blinking now.

“Please, any civilization that succumbs to the ease of a dictatorship has given up. When a dictatorship takes power, whether it’s the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ – a favorite of Marxists, or a dictatorship of an elite family, then you know it’s only because the state can no longer support itself through its spirit, the people.” She shrugs, like it’s common knowledge. She has that problem, and hates that it makes her look arrogant. Truthfully, she’s very critical of her reasoning, and is always trying to back it up with a thousand different proofs.

He claps his hands together then, in delight or humor she can’t tell, but it’s infectious, and she flushes under the praise. He looks away from her only to whisper something to himself, something incomprehensible, either a mumble or a colloquialism she’s unfamiliar with.

“True! Though why is it a bad thing? Surely, it is virtuous to succeed through dictatorship, what cannot be done through more democratic means! The people must be sustained and protected at all costs, even if certain privileges are withheld in the meantime. Certainly, you know that the people of Rome were not terribly bothered by the ascent of dictators, in fact, they cried out for Caesar, and thereafter mourned him, throwing themselves onto the pyre, to the stunned shock,” He tried to convey that shock with his hands, and she followed them with singular interest. “Of the patricians, the senatorial families. An observer might wonder..” He tapped his chin with a single, long finger. “Why do only the elite mourn the loss of libertas?”

“Because they got their land requisitioned by the Caesars, because it’s the wealthy, who through clever means, know how to exploit a democratic government, and in doing so, hold the door open for other homini novi-”

“So you support a plutocratic republic, then?” He asks.

“Yes, because mob rule is a fundamentally bad idea, and most dictators are populists who blame everything on the wealthy elite. Elevation of the mob, through the means I just told you, is bad, because their interests are often more immediate and ninety-nine percent of them are incapable of planning beyond them. This isn’t because of some inborn deficiency – I don’t believe in a caste system.”

“I don’t disagree with you. You are right, but there are other, more harmonious means to maintain stability than either plutocratic republics or populist dictatorships.” She leaned in, then, and it wasn’t of her own accord.

“Like?”

“A monarchy.” It’s her turn to laugh then, and she does, skeptical of his sincerity until she checks to see him patiently waiting, offering her the smile, the smile that never goes away.

“A monarchy? I suppose it’s the lesser of two evils next to totalitarian regimes. Since you’re a monarchist, I’ll tell you that I wrote one of my first papers in defense of it, just to piss off my former professor.” Those deep, dark depths of his eyes make room for a sparkle of humor and pleasure, and she gets the impulse to reach out and grasp one of those black curls, to watch it fall and spring back upwards.

“Where is this paper? I must read it immediately. As the world’s premier monarchist,” He smirks at her, and she’s none the wiser to whatever joke he’s telling, “You’ll understand if I’d like to have the proper citations when I need to defend my honor. That aside, I’d not dare turn down the opportunity to read an essay written by you, that opportunity is as golden as the Fleece itself.”

He leans into her then, and she watches, mesmerized by his graceful movements, and frozen at his proximity. His breath, cold and as fragrant as a field of lavender in the winter, falls onto either of her cheeks, and she is ashamed that she can’t find the will to push him away, or at least move herself away.

Those languid black curls are even shinier up close, and again they beckon her to tug and wrap her finger around it, like she is Lesbia, and those strands, the sparrow.

When she thinks he’s about to kiss her, she feels emboldened, both by distrust and her own power, to instead bury her nose into the side of his head, in the space between his ear and the luscious strands of hair. He freezes, and she suspects he’s waiting for something amorous, or imminently gratifying.

Instead, she whispers, “Back to Koine, hm?”

After pulling away, he releases a series of giggles that would be ill-fitting on anyone else.

“As you say.” He looks her over, licking his lips, but nonetheless, acquiesces, and lets her open the lexicon once more.

She suspects that neither of them forget that almost-kiss, a puzzling hypothetical if there were any. Not even through the long hours of looking through a dry, Greek lexicon, is she able to banish it from her thoughts, always sitting right there on the edge of her consciousness, just waiting to remind her of it at one tangential word or idea.

By 10 ‘til 11 in the morning, she had finished most of what she’d set out to do. Her stomach groaned in hunger – that single boiled egg and small banana could only carry her over for so long. Exhaustion crept in also, and she could finally feel those meager four, or less, hours of sleep she’d gotten the night before.

“What is it that they say? Ah, did you ‘wake up on the wrong side of the bed’ today?” She cringes at the imaginary quotations he uses for the popular colloquialism.

It would’ve been less incongruent if his English wasn’t perfect, if not lightly affected by an unfamiliar inflection. He could’ve been one of those rare breeds of ‘Italians’ (truly she does not know if he is Italian or a foreigner) that became fluent in English for no reason at all. And that makes no sense to her. He is utterly confusing. In Volterra, she has encountered not one Italian who is fluent in English. Fluency in French and German are somewhat common in this area, something she knows from working with the private schools. So why, or more pressingly, how, does he know English, yet clearly struggles with common colloquialisms?

No one is that good at a foreign language unless they consume hundreds, or thousands, of hours of media, and even then, there would be serious struggle with actually forming coherent sentences unless they had sustained contact with native speakers.

She’s beginning to wonder if her earlier theory is correct, that he might just be a complete nutter, and she’s too much of an eccentric herself to identify it. That must be what it is – nutter’s bias. She is so lost in her own sauce that she’s actually analyzing why he does the things that he does, without considering that he might just be a loon.

“I did, in fact.” She answers him, shifting in her seat to close the lexicon and return her journal to the old leather bag.

“Why?” So many questions.

Lying is always an option, and she often does it on account of not wanting to mention the details of her personal life.

“My bedroom was freezing last night.” His eyes narrow at that, but only for a split second.

“No, that’s not why.” He says, so pleasantly that it couldn’t possibly be something as malign as ‘dismissive’. “Does it have something to do with your brutish friend? What was his name?”

“Why do you care? You just met me.” It’s a sound micro-argument, built on common sense and mutually irrefutable.

Determent would’ve surely snapped anyone else’s mouth shut, especially when confronted with a tongue-in-cheek complaint about being nosy. But Aro is no friend of privacy, or privacy is no friend of Aro’s, clearly, because it only serves to encourage him further. He clicks his tongue, and his perfect, white teeth gleam behind his red lips.

“Is it now a crime to show interest in a beautiful woman? Or, mayhaps, is it horribly unkind to ask on behalf of her health, her life?”

Althea scoffs at that, now desperate for the cigarette she’s denied herself for hours. Funnily enough, she’d forgone one in favor of talking to Aro, and listening to him melodiously pronounce the Greek terms they sought.

“When you frame it that way, I can’t possibly shift the blame onto you. If you start querying me with personal questions, then ask another personal question about my ‘brutish friend’, I have no choice but to think you’re just being nosy, and judgmental, for no reason. For all you know, he could be a fucking rocket scientist. How we say things matters.” She’s had to give the exact same lecture to Khiz, ironically enough.

“Is he?” He snarks, gesturing with his hand to the side of them.

“You didn’t just miss the point, you missed the entire line. Whether he is or isn’t is immaterial. If you want to get information from people, typically you-” But she pauses, interrupted by a group of older schoolchildren being ushered into the library by their teacher.

Two of the schoolgirls notice she and Aro sitting at the desk in the farthest corner. Well, mostly, they seem to notice Aro, and giggle among themselves, and it’s not hard to figure out why.

He defends himself, unfettered by the attention from the blushing schoolgirls, “Typically, I don’t need to glean information this way.”

What an odd statement, and most definitely untrue, because she’s met a lot of talkative people in her life, and he eclipses them all in his determination to incessantly chat.

“And how else do you ‘glean information’?” She asks, cross, and mostly because she needs a cigarette break and a bite of food.

“I am an exceptional reader of people’s character.” Their eyes meet once more, and she is frozen by the sincerity in his voice, and the lips that now sport a neutrality she hasn’t seen on him before.

She almost wants to believe him, but he is so flattering and loquacious that she couldn’t possibly trust that his intentions were honest. At best, he is genuinely interested in being her ‘friend’, and at worst, he is only interested in getting laid. Greek is usually a wonderful deterrent for that, however. It’s on the same level, for men and to a lesser extent women, as knowing who the Scythians were. Usually, a man has reached the point of no return with women when he knows about the Scythians.

“So, you are at liberty to ask me questions, but I don’t have the same privilege?”

“Ask me anything you want, and I shall answer it, always. Doubtlessly,” He looks her over again then, and decrees, “You outshine me in intrigue, just as gold tries to shine brighter than the sun, and is always put in its proper place.”

“When did you learn Greek?” He smiles at her, and a few curly strands of his hair stir at the movement.

“It has been so long, forgive me if I can’t recall the exact date. For as long as I can remember, I have spoken some dialect of Greek. As it is my native language, learning one dialect or another is trivial, but, it is rewarding beyond words that there are those like yourself who labor to learn it. Such labor is one of love. Armed with a thorough knowledge of its grammar, and the grammar of this language we speak right now, I understand why most students of it give up within a month of starting.” Her silence rewards her with yet another line of questioning. “English is your native language, if I’m not mistaken?”

Althea shrugs ambiguously at that, unsure if she really wants to discuss her strange background with him. But it’s not as if she’s not proud of the rich history and accomplishments of both peoples that she claims.

“Sort of. It’s a long story.” She doesn’t intend to end it there, because even Althea could admit that was extremely impolite and awkward. “Half of my family is Persian, and I spent a sizable portion of my childhood with them. So, a few months out of a year, I had to speak Farsi, and that’s for as long as I can remember. It’s hard to say which language flows off the tongue easier, I have never found either of them to be a challenge.”

“Then you must truly be a prodigy with language, I have never met a person who’s thought of Farsi as anything but a challenge.” He leans forward then, like he had earlier when the almost-kiss occurred between them.

“Allow me to be the first. The only challenging part about it is switching between writing scripts. Greek is more merciful, as you can imagine, since it’s closer to its more familiar, western counterpart.” She checks her watch then, and determines that it’s time to go home, and maybe nap , before her tongue starts getting loose from exhaustion. “I really need to be going.”

“So soon?” He pouts, and she looks away from him, certain that he could probably dissuade her with one of his riveting questions.

“..Yes.” She wasn’t sure how to answer his question, wasn’t sure if it called for tact or not.

Instinctively, she flips her hair behind her back, because she’s not entirely sure what to do with her hands right now. Unsurprisingly, he maps the motion of her hands, and follows the strands that flow down her back, and rest just above her hips.

She’s midway between sitting and standing when he abruptly stands, mirroring her actions as he has been doing since this morning.

“Allow me to escort you out, then.” Then it’s her turn to return his own habit, to look him over, and assess him like he’s something to eat. “ And shoulder your burden, of course.” Charmingly, he offers her one hand, and she nearly takes it, rather than handing him her bag.

It’s not rare for men in Italy to make chivalrous gestures like this, it’s quite ingrained in the culture, of the older .

She doesn’t even know why she accepts, perhaps it’s his open expression, perhaps it’s the reassurance that in a small village, theft wasn’t easy to get away with as it might have in Florence. Or, it could be that quiet intuition she has, that knows he will not steal anything.

Just to be safe, she walks half a pace ahead of him, unwilling to be parted from her dearest possessions because of possibly misplaced trust. Every time she eyes him to check that her bag is safe, he’s grinning at her, and she imagines that he’s daring her to question his trustworthiness, so that he can once more frame an argument about how innocent he is.

Even her leather bag, obviously made for a woman, befits him. Although weighted by books and journals, and a laptop, he doesn’t once show any sign of struggle to carry it on one shoulder. Generally, she has to draw the strap over her head and across her chest, or support the bag with either of her hands.

Although she can’t imagine what’s beneath his suit jacket, she can’t imagine that he is grotesquely muscular or bulky.

The sky is overcast, and in the distance, she swears that she hears the telltale sound of thunder rumbling. Dark clouds were gathering just outside of the village, looming near and threatening to spill over, like wispy balloons filled to the brim with water.

“Zeus is angry.” Aro comments from beside her, as light and airy as the clouds, and cheerier than the ones gathering. He deftly maneuvers himself around the cars, which are parked haphazardly, a thing that’s respected in quaint Volterra. People here just swerve out of the way, rather than throw tantrums.

She’s reminded of that old cyclist from this morning, and feels a trickle of shame fall down her spine for reacting so vitriolically.

“Maybe it’s with you.” She teases, and it almost feels too easy.

He places his free hand over his heart, and his frown would look broken, defeated, from afar. Up close, she can see his eyes sparkling with humor, and no small amount of felicity, which could’ve been from him being the center of attention for once.

“Why, in all the good heavens, would he be angry with me? Especially since I’m helping to teach his language to you .” Later, she’ll have to analyze that, and the other peculiarities in his speaking patterns.

“’His’ language? I wasn’t aware that Greek belonged to anyone.” She says, nearing her car, that rickety, aged ‘97 model. She’d like to buy a new one soon, because this one’s days are numbered. “Unless, you think like they did. The classical mind tended to assign the gods to the lands associated with their creation myths, thereby their language. That’s why Christianity was met with hostility, probably, because it had no language, and no land.”

“Remarkably insightful.” He comments, and she flushes under the praise, turning her head away. “I confess that I have never thought of it that way, but more’s the pity, I do spend most of my days with those who are profoundly un philosophical. Do you think hostility toward Christianity can be solely found in its universality? I recall the psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, remarking that worship of the One is virtuous, but ill-advised for the psychically insecure human. I very much would like to know what you think.”

Althea grins, excited to discuss Jung, but intent on being in her car, getting home, and then.. and then? Then, she has so much work to catch up on. In effect, today and yesterday were breaks .

“I-” She almost answers, but stops herself, before this gets out of hand. “I really do need to go, I.. we’ll talk about it, another day.” They reach her car then, but her keys are in the bag that he’s holding.

“So should I take that to mean that you’ll be returning?” Came his sly question. He really was beautiful, too beautiful to be focusing his attention on her. When she wasn’t distracted by it, she was suspicious about it.

Althea is a good-looking woman, and she is confident about this, but there is no one sensible who would call her an equal of Aro’s. Not with his infallible gracefulness, nor his talents of engaging, even when it was unwelcome. His charm is boundless, and she wonders just how she can come to these resolutions so very quickly, and with so little sustained contact with him.

“Yes, most likely. There was an Etruscan-Latin dictionary that I wanted to see.” The corner of his lips quirk at that.

“Am I doomed to be a close second to the Etruscans?” He tsked playfully, and as he was handing her the leather bag, he also slipped a piece of fine paper into her hand.

Upon closer inspection, it was a number. Not wanting to look too excited, she tucked it in the front pocket of her bag, and looked up to find him watching – always watching .

“Goodbye, Aro. Thank you, for your help, truly.” The first sprinkle of rain began to fall then, onto her cheek then onto her shoulder.

“I’ll see you soon.” His remark is at first unsettling, more assertive than suggestive, sending shivers down her spine, simultaneously thrilled and nervous.

Chapter Text

Two days later had her deep in an essay, her Greek largely forgotten for the time being. But her handsome acquaintance, the one who had shared his own knowledge of the language with her, was never far from her mind. His pale face, smooth and sharp like the finest glass, was always behind her lids, and it had only worsened over the two days she spent away.

Thinking about him was ultimately a detriment, and it was only safe to indulge at nighttime, when she could safely tuck away her computer and study material.

Two days have passed since she last spoke with someone. Still, she took her coffee twice daily – once in the early morning, and again in the late morning, and she wished that she could share it with someone. She had someone in mind, but she is getting so desperate for company, for someone to bounce ideas off of, that she’d take anyone.

Softly, her speaker croons throughout the parlor, filling the space with the gentle sound of some ambient track on her playlist, something she can find reprieve in. Finally, she can stop thinking, and she does. She stops thinking of Derrida and Foucault, stops thinking of her essay on critiquing the Postmodernists, which is probably rife with grammatical and syntax errors. She’s writing it too quickly. It’s intended to be ten-thousand words, a length she can succeed in less than a week, and not due until later this month.

The 1^st of December is a morose affair, but then, Christmas has always been a solemn holiday in her life. Her mother had dragged her all across the world, and any Christmas was a short trip out to the restaurant, or a brief exchange of meager gifts around a miniature Christmas tree. Her father, on the other hand didn’t even celebrate it, but he always called her to say the two words, and usually sent her a gift, of either perfume or expensive, tailored clothing.

Althea watches Biscotto’s tail swish back and forth, and finds herself enthralled by the simple movement, so incredibly simple compared to her own life. Even when she does write her critiques, even if she becomes a distinguished member of her fields, she will still be left with a miserable past, absolutely no supportive family, nor any help at all.

Oh well , she thinks to herself, I will do it anyway . What else could she do other than what she dreamed of? Nothing else especially strikes her fancy, and she approaches her dreams with a singular tunnel vision. She knows exactly what she wants, with rare exception, but she doesn’t have what she needs.

That night, she goes out to the market, and solemnly buys Christmas decorations – a small tree, and a few sets of string lights, despite Immaculate Conception being a week away. Even if it fails, she wants to at least try and experience Christmas, the way her turbulent childhood never allowed.

Perhaps that’s why she’s an antiquarian. She is doomed to feel nostalgia for those fond occurrences that she never experienced, the ones that are so far removed from her own. The Iliad, the fall of Mycenae and the Bronze Age Collapse, evoke as much sweetness as it does bitterness, emblematic of her troubled relationship with the past. She imagines that she feels as much sentiment toward it as a normal person feels toward their own childhood.

She often falls in love with the idea, rather than the thing itself.

At eight in the evening, she returns to her freezing townhouse, to a frazzled Biscotto, who’s cowering beneath the love seat in the parlor. Her brows knit at the sight of a fearful Biscotto, who’s only ever had a calm temperament since she moved in months ago.

Setting her boxes down by the front door, she listens for any footsteps, or any signs of life whatsoever in the small building. It was silent, completely and utterly silent save for the aggressive swishing of Biscotto’s tail. Her heartbeat is racing when she checks the small kitchen, then the bathroom, where the only sound is the steady drip of water from the antiquated shower faucet.

Just as she reaches the foot of the stairs, out of the corner of her eye, she swears that she sees a flash of movement outside through the window, and this time, Biscotto hisses, then lets loose a low, menacing growl that she’s only ever heard cats do in movies, but never Biscotto.

“Is someone here?” She calls upstairs, in her accented Italian.

No one answers, and it takes her every nerve to pull out her unregistered, and frankly illegal, handheld out of her bag, and slowly creep up the stairs. Her footsteps are soft, but every creak resounds throughout the tiny townhouse, and she winces with each stress of the old wood.

Her bedroom is as dark as the night outside, with no lamp on, exactly as she had left it. Reaching for the light switch, a heavy dial that requires an unreasonable amount of labor to flick upward, she freezes, and expects to see someone on the other side of the room, but is met with nothing but emptiness. Not a single thing is disturbed, not her extensive bookshelf, nor her tall, tarnished wardrobe, one of the antiques that had come with the property.

Curiously, the window is ajar, and then she realizes that she had opened it earlier this morning to have a smoke before her coffee, and hadn’t bothered to close it. Consequentially, it’s freezing in her bedroom, and she wonders if perhaps a bird had flown inside of the house, and was the culprit behind the blur of movement outside her window, and the disturbance of Biscotto. Only, that makes sense only if there had been sound in the house. A bird doesn’t fly into a window then calmly ‘cease and desists’, as it were. But it’s the only thing that makes sense.

With so little crime in the area, and Mrs. Conti living only next door – albeit a good distance away, with her disabled son, it’s highly unlikely that anyone would chance to burglarize the townhouse. Especially since Mrs. Conti is always watching for gossip, and if she saw anything suspicious, she would report it to Althea, if only so she could be the bearer of news.

Althea releases a heavy sigh, and shuts the stubborn window, and then draws the curtains for good measure. Only after her heart rate slows, and the infamous, and admittedly familiar, symptoms of an adrenaline hangover begin to kick in, does she remove her clothes, and put on her velveteen nightgown, a deep emerald, long-sleeved, knee-length piece of clothing that she’d bought on her first night in Italy all those months ago.

Now, she is afraid to open the window to smoke. Although there’s no way someone got in – this she repeats to herself – she’s still not buying what the bird story is selling.

Finally, she resolves to call Mrs. Conti, whom, despite being stubbornly old-fashioned, is attentive to her telephone calls. Still maintaining a landline in the present year, it takes her nearly thirty seconds to answer, but she does, with a raspy ‘ciao!’, to the clatter of silverware in the background.

“Ciao, I’m deeply sorry to bother you this late-"

“Oh, don’t be a goose, love! You’ve been the most respectful tenant I’ve had in years, taking care of my late husband’s Biscotto as you do! No, no apologies, Ms. Haveshti.” She always butchers the pronunciation. “Has the house been treating you well? Is everything okay?”

Her eyes fall to the immaculate, royal blue sheets of her bed, clean and Biscotto-free for once, who she assumes is still hiding under furniture.

“Yes, Mrs. Conti.” She answers evenly, now more annoyed than scared. “It’s actually about Biscotto that I’m calling you-”

An unmistakable gasp sounds from the other line, undoubtedly she’s holding her hand over her mouth in scandal, and for once, Althea has no room to roll her eyes. Her first day here, her landlady explained why she was so intent on having Biscotto here, the story of him being one of the last kittens her late husband raised, had earned her the rare sympathy of Althea, and her quiet vow to take care of the aging cat.

“Is he dying? Has his leg broken? Maria! That is what happened to his brother a month before he died from bone cancer!”

This time, she grinds her teeth, and manages to refrain from asking her to quiet down and stop interrupting.

“No, he- he’s not dying from bone cancer.” She wanders down the stairs to find the cat, still huddled beneath the love seat, but his fur considerably less bristled. “He’s not dying, or near death, but something spooked him earlier.” She debates whether she should be honest about leaving a window open in the winter, and ultimately decides that she wants to keep good rapport with her landlady. “There might have been someone outside, it could’ve been anything. Did you see anyone? Or anything.. out of the ordinary?”

“Well, I did see Lenora's Borzoi get loose earlier.” She curses under her breath. The woman is close friends with her, but anytime she does something unsavory, or indeed anything at all, Mrs. Conti is the first to report it. Besides, Lenora’s Borzoi was well-behaved, and lived half a mile up the road, where she was the nearest neighbor aside from her landlady. “And you know how dogs can be when they get a whiff of a kitty. She may have been sniffing around over there, and scared poor Biscotto. Please, make sure he doesn’t get outside. The poor dear couldn’t fend for himself.”

“I will.” Then, she got the distinct, hair-raising feeling that she was being watched, in her own home. Right, she had left the curtains in the kitchen window open. Stowing her phone in the crook between her ear and shoulder, she made quick work of the curtains, pulling them to and then checking the parlor’s, but she always left that one closed.

“Oh, and before I forget! I’m hosting a small dinner tomorrow, Pietro is baking sweets for the occasion.” She says, voice brimming with pride even over the phone. Apparently, she had two sons – Pietro, and the other one she couldn’t remember, and Pietro was the one who lived with her. “I want you to come, Ms. Haveshti. Please, say that you’ll come. It would delight my son, you know he has a small crush on you, and he’d never forget that you showed up to try his food.”

How could she say no to that? She should’ve never called, because Mrs. Conti is always doing this, and only now, Althea is desolate enough to debate actually showing up.

“I’ll be there.”

As soon as she hangs up, she regrets making that promise. Like a burdensome link of chains, tomorrow’s dinner sat on her shoulders, and further weighed them down. While lonely, desolate even, she could still afford to inwardly complain about having to sit and listen to Mrs. Conti get drunk on red wine and talk about the gossip of her circle in Lucca ad nauseam.

There were worse fates, though. Far worse.

Neither her studies nor her Greek could prepare her for the long, lonely walk to dinner the next night. She couldn’t decide what was more intimidating – where she was walking, or actually walking there. Since yesterday evening, she has felt the unnerving sensation of being watched, and she’s beginning to seriously fear for her sanity.

If she lost her rationale, what did she have left? Her intuition? What is intuition without rationale to sift through it, to render it coherent? A snide inner voice reminds her that the answer to that question is schizophrenia, and that in turn brings to mind one of her aunts in Iran, a spinster by all accounts, whom, despite having been one of her favorite relatives from across the Zagros, was accepted to be schizophrenic. Could that be the direction that Althea is going toward? She read once that it had a strong genetic component.

Still, Biscotto had also experienced whatever had happened last night. Whether it had been the village Borzoi, or a very silent bird, she’s almost reassured that there was no one inside of the townhouse. But ‘almost’ doesn’t satisfy her, because her foremost concern is certainty. And unless she puts up cameras, there will be no way of knowing with certainty. And, she absolutely refuses to put cameras up around her house. That would be a point of no return.

At 6 in the evening, the skyline was already bleak, abandoned by the sun and superseded by the half-moon. She remembers, as a child, reading about how the Egyptians believed that Nut, the metaphorical embodiment of the sky, swallowed Ra, similarly the embodiment of the sun, every night, and then gave birth to him in the morning. She watches that celestial body now, surrounded by a million and million stars, all brightly twinkling upon the sparse outskirts of the small city of Lucca.

Mrs. Conti’s home was sizable compared to her own townhouse, at least three times larger, but it, like her rental property, showed signs of disrepair and age. Althea wonders if it’s laziness, nostalgia, or a commendable refusal to alter the work her late husband had done. Even in the dark, the cheery terracotta roof, supported on all sides by clearly inexpensive but sturdy columns, shone like a refuge for her paranoia to be set aside.

Althea lingers on the portico for what feels like an eternity, hesitating before she knocks on the door. Supported on her arm is her bag, considerably lighter without her books, laptop, and notes, and in the other, she holds a bowl of bread that she left out to rise this morning. Through the curtained windows, she can see the orange glow of chandeliers, and it strikes her just then that she’s never actually been inside of Mrs. Conti’s home.

After a minute of deliberation, she knocks on the door, and not even ten seconds pass before her hostess opens it, immediately offering a hand to take the bowl of bread out of her arms.

“I feared that you might not come!” Then, scandalously, she looks out at the road, and back to Althea, and Althea already knows what she’s going to say before she even says it. “Please say that you didn’t walk here, dear!”

Rather than admit it aloud, Althea offers an ambiguous shrug of her shoulders. She’s actually not sure why she walked. Maybe it was to prove to herself that she’s not in danger, to quell her paranoia and prove that no one was out here. Asinine, but she’s prone to risky behavior when she’s stressed out.

“Well, come in, come in!” Mrs. Conti urges, pulling the door open wider, and Althea is assaulted by the inviting scent of baked goods and the pungent smell of garlic and other assorted herbs.

Inside, the parlor is well-lit and filled to the brim with a collection of antiques and knickknacks. Compared to her own dreary townhouse, which is decorated entirely by books and eerie candles, Mrs. Conti’s is glowing with warmth and other things that Althea associates with a healthy social life.

The home even has a fireplace in the parlor, and though a stack of firewood lays in a neat pile next to it, it remains unlit. A portrait of the Holy Virgin is the first piece of art that she sees on the walls, which are covered by a thick layer of burgundy and gold paneling, two colors which are supposed to create a hunger response in humans.

Her landlady leads her around the corner, and out of the parlor, where the smell of food is strongest. A silhouette of a man hovers around the doorway to the kitchen, unburdened by any actual door. It’s Pietro, she’s sure. He is the disabled son of Mrs. Conti, and while his disability isn’t intellectual, he is severely autistic. One couldn’t infer it simply by looking at him. Pudgier than most Italian men his age, he looks the vision of his mother, except where her hair is mostly faded to gray, his is a warm brown, no doubt cut in a short style by his mother.

She swallows, suddenly uncomfortable being on the other end of his shy, adoring stare.

“Ms. Haveshti is here! Say hello, my baby!” Althea musters a smile at Pietro, who’s now blushing, and shooting a glare at his mother.

“Not a baby, mama.” It’s a normal response, but as soon as he begins to repeat himself, she wonders just what she’s walked into. The last thing she wants to do is trigger a meltdown, and get on the wrong side of her landlady. “Not a baby, mama. Not a baby, mama. Not a baby, mama. Not a baby, mama.” He says it a total of five times, before he apparently regains control.

“Ciao, Mr. Conti.” She searches for an acceptable compliment, but she is having trouble thinking clearly in Italian right now. In the grips of stress, she often returns to thinking in her native English. “I could swear that I walked through the gates of heaven when I came in and smelled what you’ve been baking. Do I detect cinnamon?”

Blushing, he nods, ignoring his mother, who’s preparing the dishes for the long dining table, which once might’ve sat the family of five, then two, and now three. A large chandelier, built in the Art Noveau style, hangs overhead, and swings perilously every time Mrs. Conti steps over the wrong floorboard.

“He made sweet cinnamon rolls, a German recipe that we found in our monthly magazine.” Her son looked offended at his mother answering on his behalf, but Althea hadn’t come here to pick sides between a mother and her son. “I hope you’re not allergic to walnuts. He sprinkled chopped walnuts on the tops, so you mustn’t eat it if you are allergic. But if you are, and you don’t know it, Pietro has epinephrine, because he’s horribly allergic to bee stings.”

Shockingly, she’s reminded of Aro, and his ability to incessantly chatter, however, he had compensated by having interesting things to say. Something within her aches at the thought of him, something utterly inexplicable and even untraceable. She’s not thought of Khiz half as much as she’s thought of Aro these past few days. To search for a good reason for it is useless, she’s afraid. There are no good reasons, especially because, while she’s an admirer of beauty, she is by no means moved by it to this extent.

Every time she sees mention of Hermes in her Greek parsing, the unpredictable embodiment of trickery, she is stricken with the image of Aro’s cunning beauty, his witticisms every time they had succeeded in finding one of those enigmatic words, and his apparently unadulterated passion for the language.

Both his name and his vision have become untenable intrusive thoughts, among a sea of others. It just so happens that this one stands out, and like a resolute sandbank, refuses to be washed away by the tide.

“There’s no need to worry about that, I can assure you. I’ve eaten walnuts all my life.” Quite literally. When she and Khiz went to the city of Lycia in Turkey, they spent those days eating nothing but dried fruit and mixed nuts, walking the Turkish countryside on [mostly] empty stomachs.

Pietro then says, “Walnuts originally came from Iran, did you know that?”

In fact, she did know that, because most of the savory nuts originated in Central Asia.

But she pretends that she doesn’t know that, because people like to be the bearers of secret knowledge, and it lets her get away with less talking.

She shakes her head, and answers, “No. Where did you learn that?”

Mrs. Conti brims with pride at her son, whose temperament is notoriously unpredictable, but whose wits are impressive, if going by her landlady’s word of mouth. They seat themselves at the table, with Pietro at the head, and she and Mrs. Conti sitting opposite of each other. The spread is full, and would feed far too many people for it to be served to just three. Now on a wooden board, her fresh, round bread is surrounded by small wedges of soft cheese.

In the center of the spread is a heaping bowl of gnocchi with spinach and ricotta, and positively crawling with garlic. Her mouth immediately waters, as a connoisseur of the pungent flavor. Next to it is a platter of roasted lamb, with a blanket of earthy herbs like sage, bay, and rosemary.

Either of their heads are bowed, and their eyes are silently beckoning Althea to do the same, Althea had almost forgotten – that is how long it has been since she’s done a dinner like this. Her landlady is a devout Roman Catholic.

When she follows their lead, Pietro says the Lord’s Prayer, and blesses the meal. Her long, coppery hair forms a curtain around her, and hides her eyes, which remain open and vigilant. It is not that she is irreligious, on the contrary, she considers her faith in the divine to be unquestionable, but her exposure to Roman Catholics had been scant before she moved to Italy.

After the food was blessed, Mrs. Conti offered her a glass of wine, which she graciously declined. To walk home in the cold was one thing, but to walk home drunk in the cold was another.

“How have your studies been? What is it that you study.. philosophy, right?” Mrs. Conti politely asked around a glass of red, over the maneuvering of everyone’s cutlery.

Althea forked a chunk of gnocchi and spinach, and answered, “As fine as I could ask, I suppose. I have a year left before I’ll be writing my Master’s thesis. And in the meantime, I’m studying Ancient Greek.”

Mrs. Conti’s eyes widened comically at that, and she held a dramatic palm to her chest, and exclaimed, “Good Lord! Why would you ever undertake that? Years ago, there was a man in Lucca who I was schooled with, his name was Marco, Pietro, do you remember Marco? ” Her son didn’t nod, but methodically ate his food, ignoring everything else. “ Oh, anyways that Marco, he went on to study Greek, not the ancient kind though. The letters confuse me, there’s no sense in them. Where are you studying it? At school, or..”

“No, not at school. I’m tutoring myself. Just the other day I found some research material in Volterra’s library.” Using her knife, she slices a generous portion of cheese from one of the wedges.

Both of their expressions change at the mention of the small, Tuscan village, which was only an hour away by car, lesser if someone sped. She often did. Even Pietro, who was before unceasingly paying his attention to his plate, is looking at her, in that way all devout folk do at the mention of a wicked spirit.

“Volterra is a bad place.” Pietro states, simple and matter-of-fact. Shortly afterward, he returns to slicing off a hunk of her bread. “Pretty bread. I can tell that you used semolina flour to make it, how long did it take to rise? If you don’t leave it out to proof long enough, its flavor becomes especially dull.”

“I doubt Ms. Haveshti would make a beginner’s mistake like that. She’s a smart girl! Just look at her, studying Ancient Greek!” Althea blushes, but it passes quickly, in favor of going back to that strange off-handed comment about Volterra.

“You said that Volterra is a bad place. What did you mean by that?” She asks, her curiosity piqued, even if it’s just regular, country superstition. Rather than being patriotic about their nation, Italians tended to be cliquish about their cities, just as they had in the days gone by.

Her landlady waves a hand at her, but Althea knows better – the woman is antsy to gossip and swap ill-favored stories about the people she knows.

“Laugh at us if you like, but there have been stories told about that village since I was a girl. They are a strange sort, very to themselves, if you understand. As a girl, my papa would tell me that the village was ruled by Etruscan ghosts, waiting to kidnap us if we got too close. Of course, that isn’t true. I’ve been there myself, to celebrate St. Marcus’ Day with my sisters.” Across from her, she filled another glass of wine.

“St. Marcus’ Day?” She ventures to ask, unaware that such a saint existed, and if he did, she surely would’ve learned about it from living in a country full of Roman Catholics.

Above the brim of her glass, Mrs. Conti uttered the laugh of a shameless gossip, “Of course, you aren’t from Tuscany, so you’ve never heard of these customs! St. Marcus was a great and holy man who vanquished the vampires from Volterra, and now, the Volterrans are protected by observing him as a saint.”

Unlike some other Western-raised women, Althea does not laugh, because she came from a people who did believe in these mythical creatures, such as the Peri, a trickster deity in pre-Islamic Persia. Even still, the folk legend is interesting, even though she’s dubious that he was actually given sainthood by the Church. Either way, Althea doesn’t make light of it, because she respects mythologized stories, which often have a parable within or are reiterations of a fundamental truth.

Nonetheless, she considers the cautionary tale to be related to Italian small nationalism. The folktale about the Etruscan king does, however, capture her attention, and she’s reminded again of that odd Etruscan-Latin dictionary in the library, which she’s certain had been just a few books down from the Greek lexicon. It would be a bizarre sight anywhere, but marginally lesser so in Tuscany.

In between bites of food, they talk small, with Mrs. Conti doing most of the legwork. Althea has no skill with it, but she tries to keep up, and is feeling somewhat saner now, now that she’s had a normal dinner with exceptionally normal people, whose worries are less metaphysical, and entwined completely with the world around them.

Unlike some in her field, she doesn’t look down on the mundane and easy. Indeed, she envies those who are skilled with it. To her, it is a rich, complex world from which she has always been restricted access to. Even if Mrs. Conti is irredeemably gossipy and talkative, she is most importantly down-to-earth, and this assuages many of Althea’s worries – the ones that she carried all the way over here, as heavy as a ball and chain.

“Time for dessert! You should serve our guest, my baby.” She squeezes Pietro’s cheek affectionately, to his chagrin. Unbeknownst to him, she is not judging.

“Yes, mama.”

With Pietro gone to the kitchen to retrieve the dessert dishes, Mrs. Conti watches her with a far more sober expression than she had earlier. The two and a half glasses of wine have brought a deep flush to her plump cheeks, and an even looser tongue.

“I can’t thank you enough for coming, Ms. Haveshti.” Comes her quiet voice, and Althea has to strain to hear it clearly. Bending forwards, Mrs. Conti says, “I love my boy more than the world, but you have no idea how lonely it can get. You must come over again sometime, please.”

A hushed silence falls over the table when Pietro returns, with a dish in either hand, and an expression of deep focus scrawled into his kind face. Having gotten her dosage of normalcy, Althea is now longing to go home, but only if she’s lucky, she won’t be able to escape for another hour.

“German cinnamon buns, and Black Forest cake. Both are traditional German recipes.” She notices that he likes to state trivia, and politely, she musters up a smile at him.

It has the desired effect – he beams under the praise, and nearly stumbles trying to set the dishes down on the table. Immediately, Mrs. Conti begins to clear the gnocchi and lamb, to make room for the sweets.

Pietro watches closely as she takes her first bite of the cinnamon bun, and she lifts a reassuring gaze to his, if only so that she can get his eyes off of her. If someone cared to look closer, they would see that her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, or that her fingers were fidgeting nervously at her side. She is now indescribably uncomfortable.

Somehow, she gets dragged into a chainsmoking session with Mrs. Conti, and then, she does actually start drinking, because her nerves are being abused by being in an unfamiliar place, doing intimate, homey things that require trust, which is most assuredly a rare privilege for Althea.

At 10 in the evening, she walks home, only slightly tipsy, freezing, exhausted, and a number of other feelings that she can’t place. ‘Desperate’ might be one of them. She’s yearning for something, but what she yearns for is nameless, as open to interpretation as the starry night sky.

Chapter Text

Desperation, longing, and unplaceable melancholy. They are the perfect storm, and the three feelings she has contended with for almost a week now.

When she can no longer contend with those forces, she finds herself in her car, freshly showered and clothed in a woolen skirt and sweater. She’d like to say that it’s reason that guides her onto the road to Volterra, but even reason would calmly accept the loss to instinct. Certainly, she reassures herself, this is not the superstitious sort. She has full control over her actions, surely.

Some of the villagers have put their Christmas decorations up, even before Immaculate Conception. As it’s her first Christmas in Italy, she’s not sure what to expect. On the way into Volterra, she spots two nativity scenes.

An hour into the afternoon, she parks on the side of the street leading to the library, and in the middle of unplugging her aux cord, her phone begins to vibrate. Upon closer inspection, she finds that it’s not Khiz, nor is it her mother, but it’s her father. A close relative of panic creeps down her neck, across her spine, and then shoots down her legs. She looks through her car window, and eyes the occasional passerby, before accepting the call.

“Darling.” He calls out to her through the phone, in a pleasant accent that reminded her of her other, slightly more stable childhood home. Among his family, he is the only one whose English is perfectly fluent. “Do you have time to talk to me? Am I interrupting something?”

She is indifferent towards him, even critical of him, until she speaks with him, and for a few short minutes, she’s able to forget the nightmares his wife inflicted upon her every time she stayed there. Instead, she thinks about the rare pleasures she got to experience when finally, they were left alone to talk, and he would share his knowledge of theology, his openness toward Mazdayasna, when he would tell her about his grandfather’s conversion to Islam. It was in those moments when she would wonder why her mother had left him, then he would let his family ridicule her, and she would then remember why – he cared more about people’s opinions of him than his own values.

She glares at nothing in particular, and thinks longingly of the library, and the possible appearance of Aro.

“Well...” While usually assertive in her dealings with people, it’s especially hard with her father, the intelligent man she once idolized, and it’s hard to admit that a small part of her still does.

A bird lands on the roof of her car, chirping a melody that feels somewhat disharmonious with the inner conflict she’s entertaining. On the other end of the phone, she can hear papers shuffling around – he must be in his office. Even over the phone, she can imagine his aristocratic features handsomely twinged with focus, with either sculpted brows positioned in a ghost of disappointment, just enough to sow guilt in their recipient. He is not the sort to express frustration openly except in the rarest occasion, his interpersonal tact is a double-edged sword. One end is consumed by virtuously maintaining social harmony, while the other allows said social harmony to override defending unpopular people.

“Darling, it’s been months since we last spoke. We have never gone this long, and I worry for you.” The translation of that is precisely that he doesn’t accept her monosyllabic implication that she was busy, and she knows how this will go. “However.. if you are occupied right now, I can wait.” With a few words, he can instill guilt in her like no one else. She sneers at herself, at her inability to be impervious to her father’s tactics. Only after he establishes that foundation of guilt, can he then begin to construct the rest of the proverbial house, “I will call you later, hm? Look for my call, and know that I count the hours.”

“Okay.” That’s all she has to say about that.

He has this exceptional ability to softly assert himself over others, and it is the chief reason that she distrusts he and his sincerity. Worst of all, he takes himself entirely seriously in doing so, and sometimes, it seems like he is unaware that he is doing it. The extent of his manipulations are boundless, and he himself is completely lost in them. When she is long removed from him, she can admire his tact from afar, and imagine that if they had lived in another time, he might’ve been an orator or Mithraic cult leader, capable of luring even the most stoic Roman to his hosticus mystery cult.

Without ceremony, she ends the call, and stows her phone away in the deep pocket of her skirt. Perhaps if she didn’t look so like him, with her brassy, golden-brown hair, or her high cheekbones and slender, hooked nose – all vestiges of old world, aristocratic beauty, she might not feel so sympathetic to him. As is, he has given her nearly all of her most identifiable characteristics, the ones that stand out from the rest of society. Every time she looks at herself, she is looking at him, and to her childhood self, this had been a source of eminent pride.

Before she gets out of her car, she has a consolatory cigarette, the kind that lets her forget that she’s in dire straits. Rolling her window down to a small crack, she lights the cigarette, watching in anticipation as she inhales, letting it catch the flame from the flip lighter. That first intake of smoke soothes her nerves somewhat, but it’s still not enough.

Why is she even here? Hadn’t she gotten what she wanted last time? She remembers making a trivial suggestion that she would return for the bizarre Etruscan-Latin dictionary, but now she’s sure she really meant that she would return for him. The slim chance that she would catch sight of him was enough to bring her back, an hour’s drive to and from.

It came to her attention then that what she has been longing for was him, someone who was a complete and utter stranger to her. Indeed she knew almost nothing about him, not his surname, nor where he lived, nor his occupation. The only other time she has been this charmed by a man had been by her former, and only boyfriend, Baptiste, that she felt only half the passion for as she does now, for this stranger.

When finally she finishes her cigarette, she gets out of her car, and is greeted by the lukewarm sun on the few bare slips of skin that her winter clothes display. Her hair is parted into a long French braid today, neatly swept behind her back, and with every step she takes on the cobbled street, it sways back and forth over the dip of her back, just above her hips.

So silent and desolate is the library, that even the librarian must have decided that now is the time to do whatever librarians do when they have time to themselves. Althea’s footsteps echo throughout the spacious aisles of books like a lonely phantom’s.

Many of the curtains have been parted to display their respective windows, which were slightly less ancient than the library itself. Aside from the low lanterns on the wall, the sun is the only guiding light, and it determinedly beams through, imperiously drawing attention to every stray particle of dust.

By now she is familiar with that shelf of antiquarian languages, the most puzzling shelf in the entire library, which is otherwise innocuous. Or, perhaps it isn’t – she’s not ventured outside of this aisle. She reasons that the library’s benefactor must be an antiquarian himself, otherwise this impressive collection wouldn’t make any sense at all. Even among the rare antiquarian, however, there was generally a narrow field of focus on one or two periods.

It confuses her to no end, that a rural Italian library would have a Babylonian Akkadian and an Assyrian Akkadian lexicon, and she debates whether she should contact one of her linguist acquaintances, to see if her suspicions are well-founded.

Cautious not to overburden her slender arms, she carefully stacks the three dictionaries against her chest, and slowly crawls down and off the ladder, and finds again the desk she’s been frequenting. While she hopes that he will show up, she doesn’t want to waste her time, and definitely doesn’t want to show how much she would appreciate his company.

As the Mesopotamian lexicons are doubtlessly the most suspicious books in her pile, she begins with those, and finds inside that the introductions are in clerical Latin, and assumes therefore that all the translations are also in Latin, which is soon affirmed by sifting through the thick parchment to find the encoded entries – Semitic words that are completely alien to her. Armed with only a rudimentary knowledge of Arabic by virtue of its script, she’s not equipped to recognize any nascently ‘Arab’ words.

Searching for a publishing house is fruitless, and she’s unable to find anything beyond the year, 1875 , which is enough to tell her that the Akkadian is likely not a scam or a fake. Printed in the years of the Mesopotamian renaissance, it should quell her unease, but it simply doesn’t. Like paleontology, it had been a highly competitive field, and surely, the book’s printing house, and especially its author, would’ve immortalized their name in the pages. However, no such name or printing house is listed.

Ensuring that she is alone, she takes her phone out, and snaps pictures of the pages, with the intent on sending them to a linguist acquaintance in London, who specialized in Semitic languages. Then, when she snaps the book closed again, she efficiently snaps a few more pictures of its spine, which is in surprisingly good condition given its age. She doubts that many of the village’s residents are too concerned with Akkadian, of all languages.

Her habits are at war with her confusion, however, and she can’t resist painstakingly copying down the cuneiform characters and their subsequent meanings. It is, as the saying goes, a gold-karat opportunity, and she’s too fascinated not to succumb to the temptation. Flicking her braid back over her shoulder and tucking her bangs behind her ear, she gets to work, and turns on a pacifying ambient playlist.

Copying down the characters reminds her of her unending fascination with the Mesopotamians as a child. Back then, it had singled her out as a burgeoning antiquarian, in contrast to the other children whom, if they were even interested in the histories, were more taken with modern history, or were fickle purveyors of the medieval, picking and choosing what they loved about it, and setting aside what they found revolting.

It would be a lie to say that she didn’t sneer at this behavior in people. If a historian couldn’t set aside their modern biases, they were exceptionally poor at studying history. She recalls the women she knew in London, who felt the need to constantly interject about the horrible conditions of women in the classical world. They were accustomed to using antiquity to virtue signal about their own values. Worse still were the students who would impose their own values onto the ancients, and could convince themselves that they, unlike the moderns, bore a singularly liberal attitude unheard of before now.

An hour passed, and still, there was no sign of Aro, but then, how could she expect him to know that she was here? She hadn’t called nor texted the number he’d given her, afraid to show the vulnerability of seeking him out. Another hour passes, and she finds herself outside, eating an apple and a handful of pistachios, before taking her post-meal cigarette.

With both Akkadian and Assyrian characters copied in her journal, she moves on to assessing the Etruscan-Latin, which before was only a passing interest. While she does appreciate Rome for what it was – something like the bridge between the classical and modern – she has never been too terribly taken with it. Of course, she had read the most poignant Latin titles, and had laughed at Cicero’s self-congratulatory orations and letters, as well as Caesar’s dry commentaries, and perhaps most pleasantly, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which she considers the single greatest piece of Latin literature.

What she finds in this dictionary is nothing short of extensive. On the first two pages, are rather lengthy tables of the Etruscan alphabet, only tangentially similar to Greek’s, and far more similar to Latin’s. As with the Assyrian and Akkadian lexicons, both its publisher and its author was notably absent, featuring only the date it was printed in – 1912. Unmistakable signs of misuse afflicted this book, and she assumes that it’s because this topic would be more popular with schoolchildren. In the heart of Tuscany, there would be assignments on the Romans, and their first true triumphal conquests – the other Italian tribes.

For good measure, she took pictures of this dictionary, too, and the setting of the sun in the early evening did not deter her from lingering at her desk, copying important entries with the same fervor with which the wind blows the autumn leaves off of their branches.

Only when the sun has finally set does she turn on the desk’s single lamp, a veritable beacon in the silent, lonely library. In fact, she can’t recall hearing anyone in here, not even the librarian, although she did see the older lady walking down to the basement earlier when she went outside for a smoke.

“I see that you’ve graced us with your presence once more, and I see also that your primary concern is with the Etruscans.” A voice, more melodious than the loveliest songbird, chirps lightly, carelessly, from behind her. The initial shock seizes her shoulders, and causes her heart to race. “What a pity, that I am only half as interesting as those incorrigible savages.”

Althea peers over her shoulder at him, not meaning to gape, but unable to hide her surprise, or further, her pleasure. If he notices, he says nothing, for he is already fixing her with a ‘guileless’ expression of glee, riveted, perhaps as much as she is, but he is far more expressive than she could ever be. His anima is distinctively feminine, and yet he wears it well, without a single trace of the shame that a man as remarkably androgynous as him would normally have.

At her stunned silence, he continues, inching closer and gesturing around himself, “And frankly, they were quite the little savages, dissimilis urbanitati perpetuae Romae !” He lifts a triumphal hand, the kind she might’ve imagined an impassioned orator would’ve held to his chest when giving an impassioned speech about the Italian barbarians. “ If we conveniently forget that the urbane Romans struggled to set aside their rustic, and.. violent past.”

Although inwardly, she is strangely excited by his appearance, she is also confused as to how he knew that she was here in the first place. But, that is the onion, isn’t it? She would never admit this out loud, but she’d been seeking him by coming here, somehow cognizant of the chance that he would find her. Perhaps she is being far too self-centered, and he actually frequents the library quite often. That would explain his proficiency, and admittedly, many other things.

What had he been doing on the first day that she was here? Her memory is awful, unreliable for participatory experiences, only reliable for narratives and language, and she finds that she can’t recall what he had been doing, too enchanted with his appearance as she had been.

“Khaire, Aro.” Her tongue rolls the ‘r’ smoothly, and something dangerous sparks in his eyes at the sound.

“Khaire, you speak like a natural, like you have been favored by Calliope herself.” He comes to a standstill next to her seat. He is closer than would be deemed proper. “Why had you abandoned me thus? So lonely was I, surrounded by my unphilosophical peers, without you, I felt peerless. Why, I could say as I liked, without anyone deigning to challenge me. Boring, boring, boring, I’m afraid.”

“Or, perhaps you were talking so much that they had no chance to object?” She snarks, dropping her pen and crossing her arms at him.

He claps two joyous hands together, further proving himself to be an endearing species of self-deprecating. It is endlessly appealing to her, because she doesn’t have the stuff for it.

“Impossible.” Before she can question it, he is bending down to bring himself closer to her ear. His fragrant curls spill over her shoulder, and she turns her head, to hide her lidded eyes from his perusal. “Every word I could spare, I saved for you, and like a drop of rain trusts a canopy of trees to catch it, so too did I trust that you were worthier of my words.” Her throat is suddenly dry, and not because she is thirsty for water.

“Careful, Aro.” A corner of her lips quirks, a vision of the fox she resembles. “Flattery will get you everywhere with me.”

And she can feel when he smiles, in that way one just knows, without any evidence whatsoever. In the junction between her neck and shoulder, she senses the air shift, and it is only because of the heady space that her mind occupies, that she allows him to breathe her in, without any consequence. Only after a few hazy seconds, does she pull away from his eccentric perusal of her skin, and turn to eye him with something in that liminal between interest and suspicion.

“And what if that’s where I’d like to go?” His eyes fall on her lips, either of which are parted to reveal the tiniest hint of her tongue.

She leans her arm on the desk, and arches a skeptical brow at his forwardness, his abject daring. Her tongue slides over her teeth, a motion that doesn’t go unnoticed by her visitor, who is leagues more flirtatious tonight than he had been the other two times she’d seen him.

“Has no one ever told you that it’s rude to caress a stranger’s neck?” Despite this, she doesn’t complain, nor does she show any displeasure at all. To do so feels impossible, like she is being guided entirely by one of the immovable hands of Eros. That must be why she feels like she is under a spell, why she can’t seem to stop thinking of him.

“Ah, if only you had told me before, I may have not done it.” But his impish grin tells her otherwise, that he is used to taking what he wants. So is she, but she never makes grand gestures like these, to people she barely knows. “A stranger, though? Intriguing that you say so, for the felicitous voice in my head tells me that I have pined for you for what feels like thousands of years.”

Her heartbeat races at the notion, but she reminds herself that it must be flattery. Reason demands that she snaps back with snark rather than poetry, “Is it customary for you to have a voice or two in your head?” This time, it is she who grins at him, with the same sort of triumph as a successful Roman conqueror when he soared through the streets, chariot-bound and fashioned as Jupiter.

“Only in regards to you.” Why is he now saying these amorous nothings? Granted, before, he had been flirtatious in a tongue-in-cheek sense, using any opportunity he could to touch her hand. “Is that so criminal?” He pouts, a veneer of innocence if she didn’t look too long.

Althea blinks, considering that there really must be something wrong with him if he is going out of his way to come and talk with her here. Besides, it is fast turning into the late evening by now, and the glow of the desk’s lamp is the only light in the entire library. It takes her hair, and captures it in a myriad of red, brown, and golden hues, though serves only to make Aro’s darker. His is a fascinating shade of black, without any brown shades to speak of.

It reminds her of how the Greeks captured themselves on amphorae, sporting long, flowing locks of curly, dark hair that was fastened by a thread at the back of their head. His hair is as long, if not longer, than any of theirs, and she doubts that any of them could have equaled to him.

“Let’s see what you’ve managed today. Without my guidance, tsk tsk, without even inviting me!” Before she can protest, he sits in the available seat beside her, and nosily pilfers through her journal. “Bona Dea! You have been busy today, I might even venture to say that you don’t need me, but I’d like to keep my usefulness to you!” Too scandalized to berate him, she instead watches as his eyes swiftly flit over the pages, “Ah, cuneiform. How quaint! Please tell me that you’re not abandoning Greek so soon. Not for this other species of savages.”

A full laugh escapes her at the casual remark about the Mesopotamians, and his apparent distaste for them.

“Savages? Why ever so? Aren’t you a monarchist? Do you not respect the first kings of men?” But she can tell that he is only half-serious.

He scoffs, an eminently graceful sound that afforded his features a youthfulness that he certainly could not have possessed. “Not with a language like theirs! Have you heard it spoken?”

“Actually, I have. I know someone who studies the Semitic languages, and I find Assyrian in particular to become the ears when it’s spoken. To have heard it from its fluent speakers would be a gift like none other.”

“Mm.” His reply is ultimately ambiguous, but he predictably follows it with another segue, “The Assyrians were loathed by all, theirs was a language of curses and malintent. Yet the scorn directed at them by the disparate peoples of Mesopotamia only drove them to further devastation, and when they sacked the holy city of Babylon, and gave tribute to their wicked gods on the foundations of the sacrosanct land, they gained even the ire of faraway peoples, peoples who would ultimately be their end. The Medes, your ancestors, did what was right when they laid siege to Nineveh.”

“I had no idea that you could be so sincerely loathsome toward a historical population that flourished over two millennia ago.” It reminds her of what Khiz does, when he goes on long rants about the ill use of Caucasian peoples thousands of years ago. Except, the scorn in Aro’s voice is unmistakable. “I like the Assyrians. They portrayed themselves with the utmost masculine vigor, in fact I doubt any succeeding civilization even came close to their masculine self-importance – ‘I am strong, I am virile, I am a lion, I am important, I am king of all the earth and its four corners’.” She then says, taking the position of contrarian.

The result was less of a laugh, and more of a crazed string of fanciful giggles. “And you judge this as archetypal of the masculine virtues?” It appears that he’s willing to set aside a disagreement in favor of asking these opportunistic questions, “Before, you spoke about Rome showing the symptoms of societal decline. Does not Assyria also display the same? Like the Romans, were they not unphilosophical, irreligious..? Did they not sack the holy cities and plunder knowledge from older civilizations for guidance, just as the Romans? Just as the Romans plundered Greece of its art and sciences, scarcely engineering their own, the Assyrians did much the same to the prestigious Babylonians.”

Her eyes flit over his face, and her lips form into a challenging smirk, “All true, but I never made a value judgment on the Romans. I do not care that they were painfully unoriginal in most of their art, all that matters, in their case, is that they achieved more than the Greeks ever did, in terms of politics. The Assyrians, like their Roman counterparts, were political men, not men of soul and-”

“Transcendence.” They said this in unison. Her eyes widen, and her heart begins to race, unsure if it wants her to have a panic attack over the coincidence, or if it wants to soar in baffled affection for the man beside her. He looks less frightened than her, in fact, his shapely lips are twitching into a smile.

Of their own volition, her lips part, and hurriedly, she looks away from him, finding solace instead in the perfectly copied cuneiform in her journal. Those alien glyphs are somehow less intimidating than whatever is between this new.. acquaintance and herself. Is he even an acquaintance? She’s pretty sure even the most distant acquaintances she has, she’s seen more than three times. But would she let any of them get close to her, nuzzle her neck, or distract her from her studies?

The answer to that is a resounding no – so what is he? Aro is strange, perhaps with even more eccentric habits than her. All the three times she has seen him, he has looked like he has severe anemia, the hallmarks of which are the persistent dark circles beneath his eyes, and the frigid chill of his skin. Allegedly, he knows several Greek dialects both modern and classical, Latin, perfectly fluent English, and apparently, some Assyrian. It isn’t abnormal for one or two of these quirks to be found in a disciple of the humanities, but it is abnormal for all of them to be present.

“I see that you’re thinking very, very hard about something. How I wish I could know what it was..” He’s sobered, as neutral as could be someone so performative. “Unless, you would do me the favor of talking about it.”

And he would say exceedingly odd things like that, however, that is nothing odd on a curious and loquacious mind.

Her eyes narrow at him, at the slender, dark scarf around his neck. At first she had ignored it, because such a fashion statement was normal in the colder months among Italians, but now that she pays attention, she sees the oddities in the fabric. As she’d spent so much of her childhood in Iran, she knew what true silk looked like, as opposed to modern Crepe de Chines. Nearly all of the clothes her father gifted her were spun out of the luxurious textile, but this one looked vintage, the crude kind that existed before industrialization. She only knows this, because her mother was a hippie who tried to be as contrary, and ‘organic’, as possible. Just as velvet was once heavier, less comfortable, and less lustrous due to the inconsistencies of pre-industrial textiles, so too was silk.

But she doesn’t comment on it, because her pattern recognition is alarming her to anything ‘off’, and this time it could be mistaken and misinformed.

“Or, you can keep me in suspense.” He purrs at her then, “You enigmatic creature.”

Althea blinks dumbly at him, and looks away from the vintage silk, “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

He flashes her a vulpine grin and chuckles lowly, “I can see that. Are you thinking about me?”

It’s such an offhand question that she can only respond in the affirmative, “Yes.”

And it was unwise to do it – she is beginning to recognize some of his tells from their short time together. He is incredibly expressive for a man, and all the vim and passion he speaks with can first be identified before he even opens his shapely mouth. They first meet atop his brow, then expand or narrow his dark eyes, before settling on his charismatic lips, waiting to be realized by them.

“Nothing untoward, I hope? Nothing unflattering?” He poses it as a jest, as he does many things, but underneath all of them is an opportunist’s cunning.

So she says something that has not been on her mind, but would certainly be at some point or other, “You look like how I would imagine Achilles to have really looked.”

Such devotions almost never leave her lips, and she is sincere in this one. He really is gorgeous. If she had to describe to what extent, she would say that if every quality she ever found beautiful was synthesized into one person, then it would be in him. If he were not excruciatingly Greek in appearance, she’d not have compared him to the mythical hero.

“What blasphemy, for Homer clearly embellished him with yellow hair – xanthos – and, as you can clearly see, I am deficient in xanthos and leukos.”

“And yet..” She begins, but lapses into silence. And yet, you are still more beautiful than he could’ve ever been, she wants to say.

“And yet?” He presses curiously, and when she doesn’t answer, he enfolds her hand with his, looking the picture of frustration. “And yet? What were you going to say, agapiti?” Her eyes fall to her hand, enclosed in his, and he gently lets go.

“Absolutely nothing, in fact.” It’s vague, and suffices, but it does not suffice in sating his desperate curiosity. Rather stiffly, she stands from her chair, until she is looking down at him. “I’m going to walk over to the cafe, do you want to join me?”

A promise of food, however scant, sets a low growl to her concave stomach. In the past month, she has lost some weight. Although she’s quick to blame her studies, it is more likely that stress has done a number on her appetite, and her metabolism, and with no one to cook for or with, she tends to buy less groceries, and make even smaller meals.

“Certainly.” But it sounds insincere, in that way a distracted man would only pretend to be paying attention to whatever is presented to him. “Couldn’t you just tell me?” His voice is behind her then, and the sweet, fragrant smell of him is almost enough to assuage her irritation.

“We don’t always get what we want, Aro.” And she’s definitely not going to relate what she was thinking earlier, she doesn’t want to be relentlessly teased by him over it.

“I did, until you.” He whispers, leaning over her shoulder as they walk to the front of the library. “Funny how the Fates have subjected me thus. I languish in.. naught but ignorance, you keep your tongue in your cheek, and I am left to guess how you would like to use me.”

Annoyed by his rhetorical game, which she believes is a veiled attempt to fish for an argument, if only to be given the attention that comes with it, she rolls her eyes, and flips her braid behind her back, accidentally hitting him in the face. Then, she feels pressure on the long braid, and in the forefront of the aisles, just a few paces away from the doorway to the service desk, she turns her head to eye him from the side.

An agile pair of hands has caught it, and an equally cunning pair of eyes is leering down at her. She wants to say that it’s hateful, but it might be hateful’s opposite – adoring, if she was so inclined to say so. For a myriad of reasons, she doubts his sincerity. Someone that loud, someone that charming, and someone that aesthetically perfect, has no business being honest.

“Let go of my hair, if you would.” When he doesn’t comply – as guilty and playful as a child – she wraps her hand around his wrist, but his grip is too strong. His smile is as suave as a trickster spirit’s, displaying too much levity to be truly angry with.

His skin is like marble to the touch, now that she’s trying to apply pressure. In response, he finds the end of the braid that’s tied by a clear band, and brushes it across his lips, taunting her. It is peculiarly sensual, when the coppery strands pass over his lips, and their suppleness is many shades darker.

“What would I possibly get out of that?” He asks, clearly struggling to keep a straight face.

“My gratitude.” She snaps, then, and grips his wrist harder, trying to dig her nails into the skin, to no avail. “Let go of me. Now.” Then, he does, letting go of the braid like a guilty child caught in the cookie jar.

There is this endearing childish innocence about him, but she doubts that it is as it seems. More pressing is the strength of him, incongruent with his disposition. His skin had been as hard as the marble he must have been cut out of, and colder still. More questions are directed to the rest of the pile, and even still, she longs to spend time with him. The way he behaves is creepy, eerie, and the intensity with which he pursues her is even more questionable, suspicious. Even still, she longs to spend time with him.

Suddenly feeling vulnerable, she clutches her bag closer, and walks at a brisk pace out of the library, and to her misfortune, he has no problem keeping up. In short time, if indeed any, he right beside her, hovering just over her shoulder, like a fly that refuses to buzz away. But a fly would be blessed to be as enchantingly annoying as he is.

A long-suffering sigh leaves her, but otherwise she resists the temptation to air her frustration, because he keeps asking her to talk about what she thinks, and she wants to annoy him as much as he is annoying her. However, when she risks one glance up at him, she realizes that this task is implausible, because she doubts she’s ever seen anyone look more positively riveted. In awe.

At what?

In her periphery, she notices the librarian watching them closely, perhaps even scandalously. Althea can only imagine what the woman is constructing about the image of them.

Blessedly, he is silent, on the walk to the cafe, until they walk past an older couple.

“Ciao!” He greets, and just when she laments that he will stop and chat with them, he looks away, back to her, to their dissatisfaction.

Meanwhile, she checks her phone for any messages or calls, but only finds an email from her professor, which she ignores for the time being, with a swipe of her fingers. Otherwise there is nothing – her social circle has dwindled into the absolute minimum. Although Althea has never been particularly social, she once could’ve boasted of a few rather close friends, but now, she can only list Khiz as meeting the criteria.

Like any Generation Z worth their stock, she can easily navigate the streets while navigating a screen. She angles it away from Aro, knowing that he would look if given the opportunity.

“Hiding something from me?” He notices, too, because, of course, he notices.

And she can’t not take that bait, “What could I possibly be hiding from you ?” Her contempt is only half-baked, she couldn’t actually speak to him with unfettered scorn.

“Another Greek suitor, perhaps. And I warn you, if you did, I’d be left with no choice but to destroy, and disassemble the poor degenerate.” She spared a dubious glance beside her, and tucked her phone away into the pocket of her skirt. “Since I am, as you say, Achilles’ likeness, perhaps I shall also drag his mangled corpse behind my chariot.”

Althea blushes at his gruesome compliment, and laughs at his half-teasing posturing. “How unfair, for I was just wondering whether I should invite Nikolos or Nikalos to dinner one night. I’ll have to be more subtle, I should think.”

Whether it is a trick of the wind, or a malfunctioning of the night lamps that line the cobbled streets, she can’t deny what she hears – a hiss, so soft that it could’ve been either of those things, but actually, sounded like nothing she’s ever heard before. But just as any other unfamiliar, menacing sound, it sets a shiver to her spine, and causes her heart to skip a beat. It’s utterly primitive, the kind of sound that a human is engineered to flee from.

“Did you hear that?” She asks, checking that she has not become a complete nutter in the short span of walking to the cafe from the library.

“Was I supposed to have heard something?” Could it have been him? No, she reminds herself, that sound did not belong to a human.

Instinct tugs at her to keep moving, to walk until she’s in a lighter environment, not contending with shadows and eerie, Tuscan street lamps. The air is bitterer than she remembered, colder, and it takes no pity on her cheeks, letting the brutal winds whip the loose strands of her hair across her flushed cheeks.

“I never knew how cold it could get in Italy, south of the Alps.” Weather is a safe topic, one that she can use to ground herself. Still shaken by that low, jarring hiss she heard not a minute ago, she is desperately searching for a way to rationalize it, to make it surrender to reason so she can move on.

“Indeed? When did you come here? What date should I celebrate?” He is watching her for any sort of reaction, but she only supplies him with a subdued twitch at her mouth.

“Earlier in the spring, a couple of weeks before May. When did you come here, since you’re so virulently, painfully, Greek, and obviously not a whit Italian.” She preens at her nails, eyeing the streets for the cafe, only a hundred paces ahead.

In the densely designed Volterra, everything a villager would need was within easy walking distance. She knew this was because it was old, zoned in antiquity, at a time when the wealthy and the poor, and the shopkeeper in between, lived on top of each other. Subsequently, there was no terminus of activity, aside from the village’s cathedral, and most notably, the grand Palazzo that lay at the center of the town, the building she’s not visited once.

“Obviously, you say? How is it obvious?” He doesn’t answer her question, instead probing at one of its details.

“Because your skin feels like it could be made of the marble they cut their idols from.” Why had she not noticed it before? How? How is that possible? Had she just.. not touched anyone in so long, that she forgot how a forearm should feel to the touch?

“Our fitness regimes haven’t changed much from those distant days, granted.” She glares at the obvious deflection, but wonders if perhaps this is something private, and in that case, she refuses to pry – openly. Could it be that his muscles were just tense?

“The Greeks do love their gymnasium.” She quotes, it’s one of those snide remarks that Trajan had made about the Greeks.

A man like him should be a cad, but her expectations are being challenged by his unpredictable gestures, such as when he opens the door for her, grinning like he has done an exceptionally good deed that must be praised. Althea says nothing, for she is as vexed with him as she is charmed. She’s never met someone who is so skilled at making her simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable.

Naturally, she had walked past the cafe on her first visit to the isolated village. It is the only of its kind, and she’s gotten the impression that the natives are a traditional sort who usually cook from home.

A red and brown palette of Art Noveau furniture and light fixtures decorate the cafe, and the aging walls are barely visible for the Tuscan art the proprietors boast. One is what she assumes is meant to be an Etruscan ruler, with a memorable, pointed face, framed by a long curtain of flaxen blond hair, the front of which is coiffed back in the traditional style that the old Italian tribe had worn.

Staying in small villages like these were similar to that deep breath one takes after having been long denied. It is like walking into another time, away from the busy, metropolitan worlds that people like to hide within, pretending that they are neither social, nor with the simple human need to just look , and experience.

“What happened to Etruscan genes?” She asks, admiring the comely Etruscan king on the wall.

Aro answers her with astounding speed, reminding her that he is only ever a hair’s width away from hovering over her shoulder, “Like the other Italian peoples, they were subsumed by Rome, never to be a distinct people again, but nonetheless, a not unsubstantial drop in modern Italian blood, especially here, in their former lands. This king,” He licks his lips at her, and points with one, long finger at the mosaic, “Cailu Arcumenna, called.. fondly? Zamtik, for his golden hair.”

“How is it that Pre-Indo-Europeans thrived among their distant cousins? I have always wondered how these people who spoke language isolates are related to us. How, even, were they able to form? And.. in such a terminus of human activity as the Mediterranean, too.”

She notices a group of older women seated at their respective table, speaking in hushed, Italian tones, obviously about the two of them. Mistakenly, they assume she knows no Italian. But she is not the same defensive adolescent she once was, and decides to let them continue to conjecture among themselves. Old women have lived and struggled enough that they deserve the privilege.

“Such language isolates were likely commonplace in the Bronze Age, finally sizzling out by the middle of the Iron Age, when it became clear that these languages are so foreign that they could never be used for administering the sorts of disparate peoples that came under control of empires in those days.” There is no line for the cafe, and yet, they walk so slowly, like they are waiting for some non-existent line to move.

In the absence of a space heater was a small brick fireplace, warming the entire space more efficiently than the device she uses in her parlor.

Her keen gaze settles on another piece, doubtlessly popular with any tourists who visit the village. Like the mosaic, it is a replica of a much older piece – an Etruscan death mask, unquestionably intended for the commemoration of an opulent man of means.

“Actually,” She nods, knitting her brows in that way any confounded student might, “That makes a lot of sense. The dictionary I used at the library explains in the grammatical section, that Etruscan was agglutinating, like so many other language isolates. It’s probably the case that most scarcely documented antiquarian languages were agglutinating too, and that trait was incompatible with the ease of the Indo-European and Semitic languages, which allow abstract concepts to be communicated with less morphemes.”

Before he gets the chance to say something clever, she slides closer to the counter, where an elderly woman is waiting to service them. Deciding what she wants is easy – she usually knows exactly what she wants before she even looks.

“Chai and focaccia with a side of soft cheese and olive oil, please.” Then, without dropping her accented Italian, she glances to Aro, who is watching the older women of the cafe like he has never seen such a phenomenon before. “Would you like something, lush?” It isn’t supposed to be an invitation for him to be flattered, however, the term of endearment just slips.

“No, no, I am not hungry.” His grin has about a thousand, or more, inside jokes behind it, which pluck at almost every instinct to interrogate, and seek certainty in the knowledge. “For bread.”

Not knowing whether he is flirting or following up his unknown, inside joke, she turns back to the elderly woman, who is already preparing her small meal. It should carry her over until the morning, when she has her equally meager breakfast.

After paying, she chooses a seat nearest to the window, and farthest from the occupied table, the one with the older women, whose attention has predictably been diverted to Aro, instead of her. Small mercies. Maybe it is from being raised in England, or perhaps it’s some character deficiency of hers, but she feels the need to sneer imperiously at people who stare at her for too long.

Suddenly, she is hit with this profoundly surreal sensation, just the same as she has experienced with Aro before, during their first and second meeting. If she was forced to describe the not-unpleasant feeling, she would again describe it as though everything aside from the two of them have disappeared, and the imprints left by others, on every piece of ground around her, have become immaterial. As though if the world suddenly ended – whatever that should mean – at least they are together. Then, she is deeply discomforted by the notion, and takes a long sip of the stifling hot tea to clear her mind of the absurdity.

Her wince doesn’t go unnoticed by Aro, who is perennially scanning every minute detail of her face. For what? She hasn’t the foggiest, she has only educated guesses.

“Do be careful, Althea.” He purrs her name, pronouncing it with an efficacy even her own mother had never acquired. “Your mind is far away, isn’t it? How fascinating – you must tell me what’s on it.”

She glares at him, the object of her veritable infatuation. She doesn’t mean for it to be so critical, but her features simply don’t leave room for charity.

An hour of conversation passes, anywhere from the Etruscans, to the history of their stronghold – the now quaint village of Volterra – to questions about her childhood that she deflects almost every time, much to his disappointment, that same disappointment that a pupil has when a teacher declines questions about their life outside of teaching.

It is the first time they’ve spoken in what would qualify as a normal, even domestic, setting. There are no dark alleyways, nor is there long-forgotten glyphs of past languages, nor are they even speaking about them. He’s an excellent conversationalist, talented in engaging on any topic she glides toward. His mode is unpredictable, disorganized, and chaotic, and her own couldn’t be farther from the opposite. Althea knows exactly what she wants to talk about, and he follows her lead, with supporting critiques, addendums, witticisms, and the like.

“-no, I have not lived here all of my life. I was born in Crete, and remained in Greece until my early adulthood.” He tells her, with significantly less confidence than all that he’d said before. “Afterward, I lived in a small village in Macedonia, and it was not immediately apparent that I should relocate to Italy, though eventually, it was. ‘Wise men say it is the wisest choice’, so they say.”

“And in that time, you became proficient in a swathe of languages, both extant and extinct?” His eyes narrow at her, but it isn’t of the hostile variety. It is something wholly unidentifiable.

“I am gifted, Althea.” There is no ego behind it, it is simply stated as an irrefutable fact. “Like you, I suspect. What? I heard you speaking to a local earlier, and your inflection is like a natural’s. Just the same for me!”

Although she wants to believe him, she can’t. There is something off about him, he is like no one she has ever met, and it is no single quality that guarantees this. Instead, it is an entire synthesis of qualities, that all somehow coalesce to sow trust and distrust in her, both in equal measure.

It’s almost like… no, she reassures herself, but she can’t deny it. It’s almost like he wants her to distrust him, and deliberately tries to sell unbelievable deeds and stories, not with the intention of boasting, but.. drawing out a reaction of disbelief in her.

No one is left in the cafe except the two of them, and the elderly proprietor, who is calmly reading a knitting magazine in a plush chair, occasionally looking upward to ask if either of them needed something.

Before she can vocalize her doubt, her phone rings, and she shuts her eyes closed in the deep grief that only her father can inspire. She swallows, and cringes at the inconvenient interruption of her father, who liked to reappear in her life during the worst times.

“I’ll be right back.” She promises.

“And I shall be right here.” Even as she turns to leave the cafe, she can feel him watching her – and it reassures her. If she and her father row, at least she’ll be able to come back to that thing that is quickly forming itself into a kind of reprieve from all else.

Outside, in the bitter, whipping wind of Volterra’s weathered street, Althea answers her phone, and instinctively, her fingers find the compartment of her bag where her cigarettes lay.

“I had thought you might not answer. Thank you, for giving me the time.” It is all too formal – the way he speaks to her. Yet the lulling accent reminds her of another home she’s known, it comforts her, and she arduously resists it. “And I would not blame you,” She rolls her eyes, but that pricking sensation around her lids is unmistakable. “You are a grown woman now, independent from your mother and I, and we were not the greatest parents a child could have-”

“Your English has gotten worse.” She cuts in, aiming for critical, but instead, it only injects levity. He laughs on the other line, to her annoyance.

“Yes, I suppose it has. Without you in my life, I have no one to keep it sharp – as sharp as it used to be.” While he talks, she lights a therapeutic cigarette, and listens as he incessantly prevaricates and self-flagellates. “And, I’m growing old. I recall when we used to speak about theology, language, pre-Islamic philosophy, and since we have not spoken in a long time, I notice that I am no longer able to.. contemplate these things with the same, uh, ease. Most fathers do not want their children to be smarter than them, out of jealousy or some other misplaced instinct, but I have always wanted my children to be smarter than me.”

From a passerby’s perspective, it must look like she is burning a hole through the buildings opposite of her on the street, but in fact, she is looking somewhere very far from this street. While she thinks of something to say, she looks at the Palazzo, closer now than she’s ever been. Its stonework is ancient, older still than the rest of the village, that much is clear. Younger forts are more embellished, with finer detail and accuracy in their curvature, but the Palazzo is more beautiful.

Unfortunately, her father keeps talking, ignorant or careless of the fact that she doesn’t want to talk. “Enough about me.” Yes, she snarks to herself, please. “I’m more interested in what’s caught your fancy, to the extent that you have neither called nor texted me since you first arrived in Italy. Where are you now?”

“Tuscany.” Her answer is brisk. She’s aware that she sounds incorrigibly terse and pitiless, but he is used to it. There’s no need to hide from him.

His laugh on the other end is a close cousin to derision, or perhaps it is just anger with her refusal to give in to him, despite his earlier self-flagellating and flattery. Few people can deny him, except her mother, and apparently, her. Women had trouble denying a handsome, wealthy, older man, while men had trouble denying a wiser, more respectable man than they.

“I know that, darling, but where?”

“Lucca.”

The chilling wind catches a few loose strands of her hair. Volterra’s lanterns capture the lonely scene in a variety of different warm hues, contrasting with the otherwise darkness of the winter night. Her father only ever calls her at the most inopportune times, so consistent is this pattern that she’s almost convinced that he has a sixth sense for it. Like her, he also relies on hunches and intuitive ‘callings’ for his decision making. They are very alike, in all the right ways, and very different, in all the wrong ones.

“Oh, I remember Lucca from the days I traveled over there. I met your mother in the Alps, you know, only just after leaving my tour of Italy behind. So you are getting a proper Western education now, like I always wanted for you.” Althea takes another inhale from her cigarette, and blows the smoke away from her, always trying to make sure the smell didn’t mask her perfume. “And is Lucca agreeable to you? I can’t remember much about the city, aside from that bread they’re known for.”

She knows exactly what bread he’s talking about, but she can’t recall it either – she so rarely drives into the city from her self-imposed isolation.

“Yes, yes, it is. I enjoy the Italian spirit-”

“Not as a fascist might, I hope. You are not sympathizing with Mussolini’s ‘virulently Italian’ speech, are you?” Her laughter is unbidden, and she can’t help the twitch at her lips, owing to his appeal to her chosen specialty in philosophy. “God willing, you are not. A Westerner should never surrender the liberalism they are privileged to have, unlike us over here. Another man was sentenced to death for converting to Christianity, a Zartoshti woman was sent to life in prison for refusing the veil.”

It was easy to forget about her other home, even when it was the convenient culprit for Western media. Each time, she didn’t read the articles, content to forget about her father and her family for as long as she could. Briefly, she checks to see if Aro was still in the cafe, and heaves a sigh when she sees his head of black curls, enthusiastically nodding at the elderly woman who seemed beyond charmed to have his conversation.

“Don’t worry, father, I’ll not become a fascist nor an Islamic fascist anytime soon. You know my stance on Islam-” She wouldn’t expand on that, not now. He did know, and still let his wife force her to participate. “Italians have a worldly spirit. There’s a humility in them that I’ve only ever found elsewhere in the English. Unlike our people, they don’t languish in the glory of past laurels. Life is enjoyed here, short moment by moment, and their history, if ever mentioned, is mentioned in subdued respect, not misplaced nostalgia.”

“Refreshing. I too liked them, but they are small, yes? Every Italian man, without exception, was shorter than me.”

“Every man, without exception, is shorter than you.” She retorts, with the dryness of a germ of wheat.

Aro is tall, and yet her father has half a head or more on him.

“But yes, I have noticed, compared to England at least, they are a smaller sort. Can you imagine the short Romans administering law to the northern barbarians who had a head and a half over them?” Either of them laugh, but one longing look at the cafe bids her to try and end the call, and talk another time. “Father, I have someone waiting for me.”

“Is it a man?” His question is too easy for him to be accepting of the prospect.

“Yes, it is.” A moment later, she revises her earlier statement. “It is not as you think, though.”

Again, she checks to see that he is still in there, and briefly, they make eye contact. And just as quickly, she looks away.

“Is he Italian?”

“No.”

“Then what is he?”

“Greek.”

“Bi gheirat. A Greek? You mock our ancestors.” But she knows he is joking, knows that he doesn’t hold to those old world notions. “I will let you go and speak to your Greek friend, but I want to tell you first that I’ll be coming there to visit you soon, in two weeks, in fact. Just in time for Christmas hols.” With a flair of the dramatic, her cigarette falls onto the pavement.

Althea rushes to say, “I don’t have the room-”

“I do not care about the room. I miss you, and I would not care to share a tent with you if it meant spending a few days together. If you cannot accommodate me, I have no.. objection, to staying at a resort in Lucca.”

For once, he has completely stunned her into silence. She’s unsure whether she should throw the phone against the wall, or rejoice for time alone with him, without the rest of her family. Hovering dangerously in the middle between those two extremes, she can do nothing, and she can say nothing.

“Alone.” He adds, to her ebbing suspicion. Why now, has he chosen to rekindle their connection? Why has he let her bitterness fester?

“I see.” The sharp tang of copper settles on her tongue, and only too late does she realize how deeply she’s bitten her lip. “I suppose I’ll see you then.”

“Yes, you will. Please, keep in touch with me until then.”

She loathes him as much as she loves him. Mostly, she loathes how much power he has over her, regardless of how assertive she has grown to be. What she has learned, is that it is nearly impossible for a child to handle their parents with a heavy hand.

Within, relief over finishing the call quarrels with worry over his stay. Perhaps she should try and learn to live in the moment as the Italians do, but that is a dilemma she has been in eternal struggle with for as long as she can remember.

A warm draft of air greets her as she opens the cafe’s door, to find Aro engaged with the owner, clutching at her hand – a gesture that draws her confusion, and dare she say.. jealousy? Not a second later, it becomes clear that he is telling her goodbye, and turns his flattering gaze to Althea’s. A long black curl bounces over his shoulder, a splitting image of his easy, almost boyish charm, but even that word doesn’t suffice for his mysterious power.

“Ah, Althea, I swear I have counted the seconds. Mrs. Landi will be closing shortly, so I suggest we take ourselves outside.” The closer she approaches, the longer his sight lingers on her lips, bruised from the ill-use a few moments ago. His jaw tightens, sharper even than it was before, but the moment passes, and he is back to his perennial smile.

“Actually, I should be on my way.” She thinks she sees his smile falter.

“And when, pray tell, shall I have the privilege of seeing you again?” Inwardly, she swears that it would be soon.

“I’m not sure – I’ll keep in touch. Do you receive texts?”

His giggle is infectious, a song without words. “Do you think I’m that old, agapiti? This is the twenty-first century, you know! I will be delighted to receive texts from you, or a call, whichever gets you back here, and soon, or I may perish from boredom. Do not be my cause of death, così tragico. If you ignore me for too long, I may just find you on my own.”

She flushes, doubtful in any case that he actually could. Her internet footprint is effortlessly untraceable, and her landlady is too old-fashioned to have created any online advertisements for the property.

Chapter Text

Soft jazz drifts into her ears at a low volume, drowning the busy activity of the streets in Lucca. Even still, she can hear the faint chatter of locals, the occasional ringing of someone’s bicycle, and the jingling bells of Christmas decorations. And while it is not as cold a winter as she’s used to, it is frightfully cold for Tuscany.

Weaving between locals and their children – those same children who inconveniently stop in front of her and point at Christmas décor – Althea finds her way to the city’s prestigious library, rather lesser so than Volterra’s, whose aisles boasted of rare and illustrious antiquarian lexicons, and from what she had gleaned from a few moments’ glance, rare editions of early modern philosophy texts.

All the same. She didn’t come to this library to read, but to use the internet, because what she had at her townhouse was only quick enough to log into her uni’s website, and upload essays in compressed documents. It truly was like going back a few years in time, in this case, it was like using the internet in the early 2000s from her home.

With the express and determined purpose of avoiding other students, she chose a desk that was in one of ‘her corners’ – the name she coins to the isolated corners in any space she occupies. The young, Italian men eye her as she walks past, some appear to want to say something infinitely suave, but are swiftly dissuaded by the permanent, disapproving scowl on her face. All in good measure. She wouldn’t succumb to their charm in any case, the Italian language has no effect on her as it does other foreign women, because she knows it.

She checks the VPN on her laptop, first needing the reassurance before she does anything other than log into her uni. While she could do most of her research from her phone, she loathes most websites’ mobile formats, and besides, her WiFi is utterly abysmal.

If she wasn’t too proud, or too secretive, to express her interest in other people, none of this cloak-and-dagger would be necessary. But she is, and she’s not willing to alter that for anyone, even him. Just after she uploads her essay with a connection speed that’s now becoming a luxury, she opens a new tab, and types in the following phrase:

Aro Volterra Italy

Funnily enough, she had given him the same treatment, in completely ignoring the exchange of surnames. Neither of them knew each other’s, yet another detail in returning to another time.

Absolutely nothing substantial is indexed. Results are instead suggestions of, ‘did you mean art volterra italy’, or they are instead crude websites offering immersion tours of Tuscany, one of them was designed in the late 90s, and hadn’t been updated since. There were many. So many, in fact, and yet no sign whatsoever of Aro.

No social media profiles, no LinkedIn, no internet footprint. That’s not entirely unusual in Mediterranean Europe, because stretching from Portugal to the Balkans were countries of people with a weaker online presence than Germanic Europe. She recalls in her days of online gaming, that an Italian or Greek was an uncommonly rare sight. They also tended to have more traditional social networks and family dynamics, however, and their social media profiles were usually private and dedicated with attention to these values.

Leaving that tab open, she goes to a new one, and types in his name, without any other phrases. Obviously, Volterra is prioritized by the search engine.

All she finds are varying etymologies of the single-syllable name, more linguistically ambiguous than any name she’s ever heard. Her first guess was that it might be an Italian name with Greek etymology, but checking Wiktionary gives her a long list of languages that it might belong to. Obviously, he is not Finnish , and she doubts he’d name himself after swamp lands and bogs. And it could not be arare, which was the infinitive form in both Italian and Latin for the word ‘to plow’, both in the field and in the bed. Concerning his amorous touch, that could certainly be his alias, but that would be awkwardly received in Italy.

The only entry that made any whit of sense, was archaic German’s aro, which had meant ‘eagle’.

Her fingers twitch for a cigarette, but instead of giving into the temptation to smoke (she’d only gone twenty minutes, after all), she grasped her phone in her skirt pocket, and brought up the number he had given her. Still, she’d not texted him. Two days had passed since she last saw him, and though her pride would say otherwise, she was already wishing to see him again.

For a long minute, she debates over whether she should send the text. What if he is just trying to play with her? What if he only wants to find a way to woo her, then drop her as soon as the deed is done? But, was he willing to go as far as discussing antiquarian languages to simply woo a woman? That is when reason appears, and defends his intentions, despite them remaining an enigma.

‘Hello, Aro.’

Finally, she sends the message, and quickly adds, ‘This is Althea.’

She could swear that not even five seconds passes before she spies the bubble that indicated he was typing back. It alarms her, in every possible way. A lengthy string of catastropizing what-ifs race through her thoughts and overpower every other. Not once had she seen him on his mobile, not a single time. Although, perhaps, it was because he’s older, and instilled in him are older values of what was polite and impolite in the presence of other people. No one in her own generation could say the same.

‘I’ve been holding my breath in suspense, you know.’ His response is remarkably fast, faster than her, and she is the quickest typer she’s ever seen. ‘I had half a mind to scour the countryside for you. In fact, I was only now preparing my car and entourage.’

She can add a good, if not discomforting, sense of humor to his growing list of redeemable qualities. Privately, she can admit to some doubt over whether any irredeemable qualities of his were actually that. Even if he spoke with a lisp, or a stutter, or had poor fashion taste, she can’t imagine that it would diminish him in anyway.

‘That’s oddly specific. An entourage, you say? What are you, a fifteenth century gonfaloniere?’

Stowing her phone away, content that she would open it again later to find a slew of witty rebuttals, she returns to her research.

Althea is scarcely interested in other people, so she’s unaccustomed to doing this sort of work. However, she does know how to use the Wayback Machine for other kinds of research, especially in language.

To her astonishment, there are no mentions of anyone named Aro, but there is a wide index of websites mentioning it, coincidentally, or attached to another word or name – Rosicrucians, pawn websites, and hundreds of tiny blogs that have nothing to do with the name itself.

Next she types the broader search term, Volterra, and this time, there is no mistaking the Tuscan village with anything else. What she sees is beyond confusing, and dissonant with everything she knows about the village – hundreds of websites that advertise ‘Etruscan palatial tours’, and every single one of them is signed by a different woman’s name. Nearly all of them use the same website template, hardly ever changing from the first of its kind in the late 90s, except for some polishing and updating of the interface.

Had Mrs. Conti not mentioned that the village was strange, that it wasn’t known to tourists, or had she merely implied that? What she’s seeing are clever tourist scams, however immaculate they are, popping up every month, and being deleted shortly afterward, traceable to its first kind two decades ago.

Abandoning the search for Aro, she feels drawn instead to these scam websites, every single one of which includes a different email, and a different phone number. Some of them offer asylum from the third world, others offer to buy plane tickets in return for listening to seminars – always in Italy – but most of them offer tours of the ‘notoriously exclusive Palazzo dei Priori’ in Volterra.

Something pricks to attention, just beneath her conscious awareness. It remains there, unable to be plucked for her perusal, that sweet aha moment she often gets afterward.

None of the websites have any available comments, or reviews. No one on the rest of the clearnet seems to have noticed this, either. No forums mention it, no Italian news mediums mention it, as though the websites were made, then deleted as soon as a few people fell for the gimmick.

Any other websites that are indexed mention St. Marcus’ Day, that mysterious holiday she had never heard of before Mrs. Conti mentioned it. Most websites, however, only mention its role in Etruscan history. It’s strange, that someone is making the effort to design scam websites, using Volterra as a keyword, then deleting them and restarting, with almost no mention of it anywhere else on the internet.

The most probable explanation is that someone is simply using Volterra because it’s a lesser known village, making it less accessible to research for foreigners. This in turn would be fortuitous for the scammer, that no one could attest to it being a scam.

Just before she closes out the Wayback Machine, she clicks on one of the random archived scam sites, and finds an advertisement for a paranormal tour, featuring the ‘Etruscan ghosts’ that Mrs. Conti had mentioned. Althea’s pattern recognition, before as calm as sand in a still desert, is now as uncontrollable as the wind relentlessly whipping the walls outside.

No fucking way , she curses to herself. A quick search of the term in Italian - fantasmi etruschi, displays an extremely bizarre news article, written by a native of Volterra, who had relocated to the city of Pisa. Althea is an efficient reader, capable of skimming an entire paragraph for notable words in mere seconds.

Anytime something goes wrong there, and I tell you, things go wrong all the time, anywhere. Anytime something goes wrong in Volterra, if you see a really fast shadow fly past the corner of your eye, or someone in a neighboring village goes missing, we always say that it’s the Etruscan ghosts! Your left sock goes missing? The Etruscans did it.

Then, the interviewer asks, Why?

Peasant superstition. They also blame everything on vampires, some of them actually believe this too. Me? I believe that there are evil forces, that can meddle with us, the forces of the devil, but I believe in neither Etruscan ghosts nor vampires.

Do you think that St. Marcus’ Day is a dying tradition?

Yes. So many young people are moving to the cities, to Florence or Lucca or another country entirely, to study abroad or to see the world. Villages like Volterra are experiencing this the most, I think. Kids nowadays have the opportunity to know what’s outside of their native villages and cities, and I think that’s very exciting.

Disregarding the new age, progressive babbling that the woman gave, Althea found the obscure myth-turned-joke of the fantasmi etruschi extremely interesting. Just as stories of the peri had always captivated her as a child. She suspects that the ‘Etruscan ghost phenomenon’ probably dates back to the dark ages when the Roman world collapsed, and distinctive markers for Etruscan traditions and ancestry gradually disappeared after generations of intermarrying with other Italians, but old prejudices remained in the form of folklore, designed for convenient superstitious scapegoating.

That could be all it was, but that doesn’t change the very true oddities surrounding the village – being used by online scammers, keeping antiquated superstitions like vampires and phantoms, and finally, being the home of Aro, who himself could’ve been the oddest part of it.

Her phone vibrates then, and she rolls her eyes at the thought of having a phone call. Her texts are on silent, but she keeps her calls on ring. Ensuring that she’s alone, she picks up the phone, finding there Aro’s number.

“Yes?” She keeps her voice down for the sake of the other students.

Just hearing his voice is enough to quell some of the nerves that have been brewing for a couple of days now. “You weren’t answering me for the longest time! What’s captured your fancy?” Now she attributes that strange lilt to the accent of some Greek dialect that she’s unfamiliar with.

“The more pertinent question is, ‘what hasn’t’.” Her answer is sufficiently vague.

“How you taunt me with your enigma.” She could say the exact same. “What are you doing, agapiti?”

“The Etruscans.” She scoffs at herself behind her hand, that misspeak is a sure sign of her exhaustion. “And by that, I mean reading about them.”

“Small mercies. Otherwise I may have to go and deface Arcumenna, and who in all the world would want that?” She says nothing, on account of having nothing to say, and having her mind on about a thousand other things at once. “Where are you? I would very much like to come and join you. I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.” He adds the last part as an afterthought, charmingly enough that she can’t deny him.

Her glare is toward nothing in particular, and everything. How is he able to do this to her?

“Lucca. In the easternmost library, I think it’s called-”

On the other line, he releases a shower of melodious laughter. “I’ll be there shortly.”

Abruptly, the line falls silent with a small beep, and Althea is left feeling confused, an emotion she’s never coped with very well. Not only is she feeling confused, but.. nervous. In regards to her nerves, she saves the screenshots she had taken during her research, and closes out every tab she had open, as well as wiping her search history.

Just how was he planning to be here ‘shortly’? Did he not live in Volterra, and like her, was just a visitor from one of the other surrounding villages, come to use its library at the most convenient times? There are so many questions – she resolves to make a spreadsheet, and attempt to answer every single one of them, to alleviate the uncertainty that’s plaguing her at nearly the same impressive rate as her studies.

Over the past six months, she has been experiencing a serious burnout in philosophy. Having studied it since she first left secondary, it’s been a long five years of digesting logical frameworks, deconstructing them, and then getting reprimanded by biased professors. Althea has learned how to present ideological inconsistencies in a more palatable format, for the sensitive professor who veers on the side of what she is deconstructing. It is unimaginably tedious, and while she wouldn’t be a philosophy major if she didn’t think that debating on behalf of an idea is what solidifies its value, she also doesn’t think she should be received as controversial by nearly every professor she has encountered, on the very simple premise of following a different framework – in a supposedly liberal institution.

It’s beyond maddening – it’s excruciating. And because she has to play the long game of appealing to her professors’ ideologies, her chosen major no longer inspires feelings of warm fuzzies and excitement for the future. Instead, language has taken the role that her primary studies once occupied. Languages are a never-ending problem that have exactly no solution, and as much as they aggravate her on occasion, they’ve done wonders to ground her to reality, especially Greek and Italian, and she has a habit of dreaming her way out of reality.

For months now, she’s debated dropping her course, having already received a commendable degree, and the knowledge that she sought out to find. If she wanted, she could take an anthropology course, or a linguistics course, and she would likely confound the professors enough that it defeated the purpose of studying at all.

If she drops the course, she can then focus on building a more comfortable life here. With that free time, she can fully invest in translations, and in equal measure, she can write dissertations on political and ideological dilemmas that she feels particularly convicted about.

Interrupting her contemplation is a power surge, a flicker of fluorescent bulbs and desk lamps that last a minute, to the bewilderment of every brazen Italian student on this floor. Unlike in New England, or England proper, or her other native, Iran, Tuscany’s infrastructure is poorly equipped for strong, sustained gusts of wind, or torrential winter storms.

Althea therefore is unfazed when the jarring patter of hail and fat droplets of rain begin pelting the building. She is even comforted by it, reminded of the few, relatively stable times she spent time in Cornwall. Unlike the other students, who are dramatically crowding around the windows and swearing the rosary, Althea peeks out of the window next to her desk, and watches the people on the streets clamoring and rushing indoors.

“What does it remind you of?” Her shoulders startle at the sound of the soft voice behind her.

How much time has passed since he invited himself to the library?

If she could boast that she ever had a home longer than the one in New England, she would say ‘home’, but Althea isn’t one to boast of herself in any case. It does remind her of England proper, wherein it sometimes rained like this for weeks on end, seemingly without stopping. She recalls the floods in Cornwall, but that isn’t enough to summon any nostalgia – the rarest form in Althea.

“How do you figure it reminds me of anything?” Her snap is unnecessarily cross.

“Do I need to figure anything to see the look in your eyes, like Odysseus’ when he thought of far home?”

It’s then that she notices her own reflection, clear in the library that is darkened by the doom-and-gloom outside. He stands behind her, amorphous until she strains her eyes, and can attach the outline of lush, dark curls to a face that even Adonis would envy. They look at each other in the window’s reflection for a long moment, the histrionic voices of ill-prepared Italian youth fading into the background, now nothing more than an ambient hum.

She should add excellent vision and timing to his growing list of unexplained attributes.

“How did you get here in such excellent time?” Her question comes off, intentionally, as acidic.

Without turning to him, she absentmindedly preens her nails, wanting a cigarette but having no means in weather like this. If she were home, she would’ve gone through half a pack in the past six hours, so breaks like these were probably good for her.

“Would you believe me if I told you that I was already nearby?” She probably would have, if he hadn’t introduced it that way.

Another detail – he almost seems to want to evoke her disbelief. Granted, he had admitted to liking a challenge to his convictions. The other day, in the cafe, he had shared deliberate contrarian stances that he almost certainly didn’t subscribe to, just to get an argument out of her.

“Possibly, but it’s rather convenient for you, isn’t it? And if you hadn’t said ‘would you believe me…’, I probably would. Usually, people open with that when they’re introducing an unbelievable statement, like ‘would you believe me if I told you that I saw Bigfoot on the Appalachian Trail?’” He laughs at her exaggeration, a tinkling sound that’s just low enough to be appropriate in the library. “As an exceptional reader of people, you should know how it would be taken.”

“Yes, of course, but have I not told you that you obfuscate this talent of mine, that you render it useless? How alarming, hmm, then it is exhilarating, thrilling, thereafter I’m compelled to admit that I cannot have enough of you.. or your obfuscation.” Why she lets him trail his fingers through her hair, is something she will consider later. Why she lets him get so close at all, is something she can’t consider, not when it’s happening.

He smells like rosemary, peonies, and some other brilliant scent that only the sea can manage. Whatever cologne he uses – if it is cologne – is as thick and fragrant on the tips of his fingers as it is in his gorgeous mess of shiny black curls, the front half of which is tied at the back of his head. If her willpower wasn’t so impressive, she would never have refrained from running her fingers through it.

Althea should be more wary of him, wary of all the inconsistencies and details that don’t make any sense. Yet.

Though instead of stepping away, or doing some other perfectly reasonable thing, she lets him grasp her chin between his long, pianist fingers. She waits for him to do it, but he doesn’t, and she doesn’t know whether she should be thankful, or disappointed.

When finally she can summon the willpower – though his smell and his touch makes it remarkably difficult – she lands a hand on his chest, and gasps at what she feels there. Or rather, what she doesn’t feel there. Beneath her fingertips is nothing but solid skin, doubtlessly as pale as the finest slab of marble, and just as miraculously still. There is no beat beneath her fingers, but she ignores this in favor of gently pushing him away, to which he acquiesces.

Perhaps , she is already rationalizing, I hadn’t neared the heart at all. But that is no good, because she knows she touched him in the center of his chest.

Turning fully, she finds him watching her closely, too closely for her heart to beat at a regular pace. In the dim light of the lonely corridor, she sees that his eyes are not actually dark, they are black, a detail she failed to notice before. Indeed she cannot even find a pupil. Even in the darkest browns, the pupil is clearly noticeable.

Some pleasant emotion, akin to expectancy, twists his lips into a comely smile. She suspects that he wants her to ask questions, because she’s sure that he gets them often. As secretive as she is, she refuses to ask them, to show any of her cards outright.

Theirs is not a normal friendship, or relationship, or whatever this is. She’s certain that she wouldn’t let anyone else get that close to her, save for Khiz, or her parents, but she’s equally certain that he is not her friend, nor does she have any filial affection for him.

This time, it’s Althea who breaks the silence, “What’s your surname?”

His smile bothers her, it has to be a close relation to proud, and when he tosses his head back to laugh, she is even more incensed by the apparent mockery.

“I haven’t gotten one, I’m afraid.” He must be taking the piss out of her now, but it doesn’t sound like a lie. There’s no change of pitch, nor is he looking away, nor are there any of the other normal tells one might find in a pathological liar. “Have I disappointed you?” His eyes widen, sparkling with some unknown emotion that, to her disappointment, completely steals her breath away. “Ask, Althea. Ask me, I know you want to, agapiti.”

With a singular stripe of daring, he steps closer to her, and she steps back if only on instinct. Somehow, she knows that he won’t harm her. He leans into her space enough that either of their noses are nearly touching, her own, hooked and Persian and his, straight and Grecian.

She wants to berate him for making these displays in plain sight of other people. Althea loathes nothing more than having her private life on display, for others to peruse to their liking. The two days spent away from him are enough to have made her tolerant of this invasion, and his presence is so welcomed as to wipe away her earlier disturbances, with the same efficiency that a tsunami washes away everything in its path.

And she knows what he’s referring to – his eyes, his heartbeat, the skin that is as hard as marble. Everything that comes to the tip of her tongue is abruptly disregarded, because it sounds so outrageous in her mind.

“No.” Then it’s her turn to smirk at the confused twinge in his brow, the slight faltering of his smile. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind?”

“Where’s the amusement in that?” His breath is cool and fragrant on her skin.

“Truth is its own amusement.” She snidely replies, taking another step away from him, only to find that once again, he is mirroring her.

“Like Socrates himself, if he had been half as enchanting as you! The whole of Athens would have immortalized that likeness in every canvas and stone they had.” He inches nearer again, invading her space, and she allows it, to her shock. “Not one stone unturned. Not a single one of them left in their respective mountain face.”

Like an unwilling flower in the spring, she blushes and blooms at the eminent praise, ashamed that he can effect her to such a degree. Each time she has met him, he has grown even more amorous, even more bold in whatever pursuit he’s aiming for. That is the onion – what does he want? It’s likely that he would ask the same, because there’s been no formal exchange of motives between them. He’s not once told her what he wants, and nor has she.

He doesn’t blink, not once. Either he doesn’t get out much, or he is deliberately acting abnormal. As for the former, well, she’d be a poor judge, she’s barely spoken with anyone in months. That reminds her of her father’s upcoming visit, but with Aro in front of her, that foreboding thought is easily banished.

“Do you really think the Athenians would debase themselves by sculpting a woman from the despotic East?” He cocks a thick, dark brow.

“Enough would try that it would shortly become a trend.” The lights flicker again, but Aro doesn’t bat an eye at the disruption.

Footsteps start to fill the ambience that the speculative, dramatic chatter had filled before. People were leaving, and perhaps the library was closing due to the weather.

“How rude of them!” He leans back and gestures at the people walking past, “We must go, but to where?” His grin is cheeky.

Reason is screaming at her, but some mysterious force is dragging it away, kicking and throwing a tantrum. It’s unwise. More than unwise – it’s something she’s never done before.

“We can go to my townhouse.” She offers, lacking the confidence she normally has.

“An excellent notion!” He claps his hands together, and she immediately regrets the offer, now sure that he was anticipating it. “I take it that you’ll be driving, then?”

Her glare has about a hundred wry questions behind it, such as, did you think that I would let you drive my car?

He waits while she collects her belongings, ensuring that her laptop, her wallet, and her notes are secure in her leather bag. For her computer’s sake, she tucks the bag under her arm, for the rain is falling harder than it had been before, and on the off-chance that her computer was damaged, some of her dearest possessions would be lost.

While they leave the closing building, he chatters about the weather, informing her that the winters aren’t usually so wet, and she wonders how she’s dug herself this deep in the proverbial hole, that she’s invited a man over to her home only after four entire meetings.

But she knows why. The same feeling she had before, that familiar pricking below her conscious, just esoteric enough that it had no words assigned to it yet, knows why. Althea knows that it’s going to make her search for the words. Infatuation doesn’t suffice. She is more than infatuated with Aro, because infatuation is intense and sudden, but passes just as suddenly. This too was intense and sudden, but it is like an ocean, and she finds herself falling further and further into its unfathomable depths.

“In Greece it never rains like this. If it does, it is dealt with by Sol Celer, who jealously guards its serene skies. Have you ever been to Greece, agapiti?” He asks her, finally closing his ramblings with a question that demands attention.

She answers just before she steps out into the rain, “Yes, I have, to Crete, to the Palace of Knossos and Mykonos.”

“Knossos!” He exclaims from beside her, enduring the soaking of the rain just to continue conversing. It is endearing, and touches something buried and dismissed, deep inside of her – her inner child’s need for attention. Thunder roars above them, and still, he is by her side, unstirred and unmoved by that thing that is moving everyone else on the streets. “Patria gentisque populi meus est! Exciting! You must tell me about your visit immediately! It has been so long since my feet touched its shores.”

Soaked, he still did not give up engaging her. The rain didn’t move him at all, but it did her. She wasn’t trying to ignore him, in fact, she did feel some regret to have darted to her car, leaving him behind – or so she thought. Aro was unpredictable, and indeed she couldn’t have predicted that he would remain just behind her, even with the treacherous, slippery pavement, and the small balls of ice that would fall just in front of their feet.

In the distant horizon, a long stroke of lightning comes crashing onto some far field, causing her entire vision to shift to blinding white for the split of a second. She digs into the pocket of her skirt, and procures her car keys, and immediately rushes to the driver’s side, checking to make sure Aro is still behind her, and without fail, he is gracefully trailing behind, not once impeded by the storm.

To call it anything other than a glide would be deceiving. Althea would not be surprised, if suddenly, she was to find that the pavement had turned to clouds, and that is how he strode so gracefully across it.

She wonders if this is regular for him, to climb into other people’s vehicles in some surreal stroke of juvenile play. Neither of them are juveniles, but it is painfully obvious that, despite his supramundane beauty, he is at least fifteen years her senior. Though no wrinkles nor laugh lines mar the supple bow of his lips, or the pale skin of his brow, there is a maturity in his face that Althea has yet to acquire with age.

Yet even factoring those details of age and maturity, he takes to this chaotic change of plans without letting his perennial smile falter. He soaks her passenger seat in rainwater and sludge, and all he has to offer in apology is an inconsequential shrug of his shoulders. Althea doesn’t mean to scowl so darkly, but sitting in her seat, chilled to the bone, with her long hair clinging to her neck, is a turning point in her otherwise normal-ish day.

When things don’t go to her perfectly, rigidly, structured plans, there are few things in the world that could unwind the predictable tenseness in her shoulders, or the tension headache between her brows. But frankly, between the lack of fucks he’s currently giving, and the peaceable silence of simply looking at one another, is something she didn’t know that she needed.

Lightning strikes again, and this time, she startles, and twists her keys into the ignition. As old as the model is, it takes a couple of tries before it starts with a stuttering hum. She eyes the clutter in the backseat, insecure about how disorganized it’s become. Everything back there is what she can’t fit in her bookshelf, books that vary in subject matter between Italian grammar all the way to far-flung, dense and obscure psychopharmacology texts.

“You must be used to weather like this, you’re not running up and down the streets like a maniac-”

“Shall I run up and down the streets like a maniac, Althea? Is that what you want? If so, I would so hate to disappoint you…” Miraculously, his curls are already beginning to dry. “Or garner any disfavor whatsoever.” She eyes him, only to find him waiting with a calculating glint in his eyes, and a crooked grin on his lips. For those reasons and others, she doubts the sincerity of that figure of speech.

“Are you quite done politicking? What in the world do you stand to gain from gerrymandering me?” She must have read too many political science books this past week. That’s probably why she’s scrambling for rent money.

“Perhaps if I were in the United States, I would stand to gain.” She bites her lip so that she doesn’t betray herself by laughing.

“That’s insane.” She quips, turning her eyes back onto the rainy street. Insane that you know something about everything I’m talking about, she wants to say, but doesn’t. “Are you very interested in American politics?”

“Heavens, no!” He exclaims, resting his elbow on the compartment that’s separating their two seats. “I have never even been to that part of the world, it’s quite alarming, I confess, that there is a continent I have yet to see with my own eyes. So many things to learn, so many things to do and explore, if I had those liberties.”

Her instinct is to fix him with a skeptical brow, but she doesn’t dare to take her eyes off of the road, not with how the hail is coming down, limiting the visibility of her headlights. She is, however, aware of his penetrating stare, the one thing that’s incongruous with his otherwise sunny disposition. It tells her so much, and yet, all of it is in a language she hasn’t yet deciphered.

“Do you mean to say that traveling abroad isn’t an option for you?” She asks, politer now that she’s driving out of the cramped city, and away from the Italian drivers who didn’t know how to drive in hazardous weather.

“Not anymore, to my.. eminent dismay. I’m shackled to this country as Chronos is shackled to his mountain in hell. Quite frankly, I am tired of Italians, and Italy, I have spent too much of my life here to find either of them stimulating.”

Whatever prompts her to ask her next question is of the same pedigree that invited him to her home, “I’ll probably be going on holiday to Greece sometime in the spring. If you were-”

“From the seat of my very soul, I would love to, though I can make no such promises right now.” Now, she is wondering if she should’ve asked him at all. His regret, however dramatic it may sound, seems to her to be genuine. She is fast learning that everything that leaves his lips, leaves from a dramatic and performative filter. “Where to, in Greece?”

“Knossos, again.” That the radio is not on doesn’t change the fact that it is music when his delighted laughter fills the air.

“Te amat ut id amas, I promise you. Mycenae and Minos, then, that is your sordid love affair? Do not tell one about the other..” He holds one long, sensuous finger to his lips, and her heart stutters before she once more looks back at the road. “Greece suits you well. I find it amusing when young scholars pursue it, and yet are ignorant of the Greek spirit.”

“There’s no crime in being interested in Greece, yet criticizing its flaws.” She says, pulling onto the long stretch of road that led to Mrs. Conti’s home, and her home a little ways down.

“Surely you must know that there are no flaws in any people, only in the atomized individuals, and there are certainly never flaws in a spirit, as divine as they are.” Against all odds – the wet drape of her hair, the freezing air in her car – she smiles.

“So, you believe that the soul is fixed and remains as it is from the point of conception – whatever that implies?”

“Do you not?” But she wants to know what he thinks, however, he is usually the one who asks these questions, listens to what she says, then counters it, and then states what he thinks.

“Well, we’re running into that often ambiguous divide between the soul and the spirit. I believe the soul is sovereign to us, while the spirit is the force that animates our bodies, the power of our creator, therefore it is not ours. But our souls, they are perfect, and while they may also experience the process of becoming, of changing form, they are ultimately flawless, as flawless as they always were, even before our creator animated our body with spirit.”

They pass Mrs. Conti’s home, where behind every curtain are the warm, orange glows of antique lamps. She knows that her own home will not be so warm nor inviting. Biscotto is probably huddled in her bed, nestled among the pillows.

“What if the virtuous soul does not correspond with the sins of the body?”

“Such as?”

“Murder.” She swallows, discomforted by the mention of the word, on the way home with a man she’s known for less than three weeks.

“On the cosmological scale, how is murder judged? What if it is the soul’s providence to inhabit a body that feels so inclined? In that case, murder is an earthly sin, but an inevitability of the competitive spirit, which is ultimately transcendental.”

Finally they pull into the small clearing where she usually parks, and she takes the keys out of the ignition, until no sound remains save for her breath, and the pattering of rain on her car roof. Slowly, her headlights fade off, leaving them in almost complete darkness.

“This time, I can’t summon the challenge to disagree with you. You are right, of course, all that happens is fated to happen, the prime mover does not err, therefore, I would say that the sinful choices we might make while here, are sins insofar as they are impediments. In a world where murder can be a transcendental act, then we can be assured that the soul is never in conflict with the body. Oh, how Plato would loathe us for so much as suggesting it..” The tips of his teeth gleam in the darkness of her car, and she watches, mesmerized by the motions of his lips. “Even to breathe is a virtue, to participate in any and all creation, is a virtue. I so adore this life..”

That she cannot say the same, leaves her breathless for one, long, long moment. So rarely does Althea actually consider details like comfort, happiness. She pursues her callings, and overlooks the rest, until she no longer can.

“I don’t.” She confesses, so low that she doubts that he hears it at all.

But he does.

“Why wouldn’t you?” She thinks then of her miserable upbringing, split between two neglectful parents, friendless and strange, regardless of where she went. And nowadays, she is completely alone, without neglectful parents or family forming a background ambience to her life.

Her brows crease – she hesitates, then decides not to answer him at all. She would loathe to be in that position, wherein anything that she says would sound melodramatic. Everyone suffers, everyone has their own struggle, and voicing hers makes her feel like it would be doing what everyone else does – prioritizing their own struggle, forging themselves into a perfect victim, and taking away everyone else’s right to be the same.

“Let’s get inside.” That’s all she supplies him, and she can tell that his unresolved question will resurface again, and probably as soon as they get behind the door.

To minimize that possibility, she darts out of the car without so much as locking it behind her, avoiding the treacherous mix of hail and rain. If it freezes overnight, the roads out here will be slick for a week. He is right behind her, of course, ruining every plan she has to avoid he and his intrusive questions. He intrudes, she evades. She was hoping that she could rush inside and busy herself with the space heater, giving her time to prepare for an onslaught of curious, personal queries that bordered on nosy.

Their clothes are sopping wet. She slams the door behind them, and is met with a tall, solid form that’s emanating a temperature not unlike the chill outside. His eyes glow in the darkness, regardless of how bottomless they are.

Rain beats on the door behind her, and thunder fills the silence that she’s sure he had already jealously claimed. Trapped between his body and the front door, her only choice is to watch him, to wait for what he might do. Her teeth chatter for the freezing cold of her clothing, though her guest shows none of the same weaknesses.

His hand is colder than the elements outside, as it grasps her chin, and he leans down, further entrapping her between and around him. For a long few seconds, he is as content to stare as she is, and when he chooses then to take her lips, her mind is at once liberated from everything that had wracked it only moments ago. His taste is as inviting as his smell, as inviting as every other prepossessing respect.

Althea gasps into the bruising kiss, now certain that he is used to taking what he wants from people, never mind the consequences. Would there be consequences to this? Was she making a mistake, by sighing, swooning, and allowing him to take what he has doubtless taken from countless other women? His tongue is cold – it shouldn’t be, it’s unnatural, and yet, she lets it plunder her own, heedless to reason, that force that’s telling her that none of this is normal or quantifiable.

But how could she obey reason without first landing her hand in his hair, and splaying her fingers throughout his curls? She promises that she will touch them once, then push him away immediately. His curls are as soft and pliable as she suspected, flawless. Some keening noise of his is half-lost behind her lips, and she answers by firmly grasping his hair, and yanking him back and away from her. Her breaths are labored, his are immeasurable.

The look in his eye is unmistakable. He wants her. She should not have pulled his hair, for he tries her lips once more, only to be spurned by the turn of her head. Heat pools in her lower belly, dispersing itself equally among either thigh, but she resists that too.

“I will have you adore this life as much as I.” This again? She should have predicted he wouldn’t let that go. Thus far, he’s clung to any stray detail about her inner world.

This time, it’s by the force of his hand, still grasping her chin, that he tries to take another kiss. But when he does, she tries to resist by pushing at his chest and sinking her teeth into his lower lip, and is met with a world of pain, as her teeth collide with solid marble, but it seems of no use, for his sensuous hum is her only response.

Althea shrieks in pain, and he immediately desists, pulling away from her with something akin to panic in his widened eyes. And finally, he lets go of her chin when she swats his arm away, now suspiciously pliant to her will. Her own hand grasps her jaw, and runs a finger across her teeth to make sure none of them have been broken. Broken. To her amazement, none of them feel loose.

Her glare is crazed, accusatory, when she looks up at him again. He remains as still and immovable, completely unaffected by the harsh bite that her teeth should have inflicted.

“You tried to bite me.” He remarks, amazed. “Unwise. Are you okay, agapiti?”

There is no right answer. Silence is usually the better choice, but not with him, because when she says nothing, puzzled by the events many moments ago, he takes it upon himself to inspect her for injury, coming close until her stunned hand keeps him at bay.

“Do not be angry with me, puella mea, please, how could I have known you would dare to do what no one else has done?” He then begins anew, “However, with the manner you are watching me now-”

“Can you shut up for even a minute?” As soon as she says it, she regrets the hurt look, unable to be suppressed on so expressive a man.

In the meantime, she massages her jaw, and he lets her pass him to enter the parlor, where she sets to turning on the space heater to maximum, and sets her bag down beside her on the floor. She is cold, wet, and now her teeth ache. The object of her ire is hovering near the door, but she can see that he’s already debating how to approach her – the wounded animal that bites when it’s in pain.

Although she feels… regretful for what she said a moment ago, she refuses to apologize. He had forced himself into her space, he gets to pay for that, and she gets to pay for doing something reasonable, but simultaneously not, apparently.

Fuck Mrs. Conti’s rule. She takes a cigarette out, and promptly lights it – maybe that’s why she’s so irate.

The carpet rustles beside her, she’s not even sure whether to throw a tantrum, or rejoice that he is one of the rare few people who will tolerate her occasional bouts of fury. The space heater, sitting just behind her on the coffee table, blows her hair around her shoulders, inefficiently drying only half of it. With her cigarette nesting between her lips, she tugs her cardigan off, and her skirt, leaving her only in tights and a sweater. She’s studied the Greeks enough to not be ashamed.

All the while, Aro patiently watches, and perhaps it’s because he’s not gotten what he wants yet, or it’s because he might be, dare she say, understanding.

“Why?” How did she get here? Soaked, in a dimly lit room with a peculiar Greek, half-naked on the floor. Taking a long, smooth inhale, she clarifies herself, cognizant of his acute gaze. He is calculating something right now, she knows, because she often gets that look in her eye. “More importantly, how? How did my teeth almost break biting you? How is that even possible?”

“That is the cost of resisting happiness.” He can be just as evasive as her, and just as infuriating. “Do you really want to know?”

“Are you just going to tell me that it’s part of your testosterone regimen? Because I will not have roid rage in my home.” She quips, mood lifting somewhat for the familiar motion of smoking. “And I’ve known enough men with roid rage to know that while test can definitely give you seemingly superhuman strength, it can’t give you what you have.”

He laughs, probably reassured by her teasing, it makes her bitter and relieved in equal measure.

In the short span of a second, however, he sobers, and speaks then in a grave echo of his usual cheer. “If I tell you,” He takes her hand then, and lifts it to his chest, where he pets it with his long, cool fingers. “There would be no returning to what you are doing now, living here as you do. So you must make a decision, agapiti, ask me, and I promise that I will tell you everything, or remain ignorant, and keep what you have, as it were.”

Where a derisive sneer, or a skeptical, jeering laugh would usually take its place, there is hesitancy, because his gravitas, she knows, is now undoubtedly genuine.

In response, Althea can only venture to ask a single question. “Why would I lose everything?”

He then presses a feather-light kiss over knuckles, and cryptically responds, “Everything? Oh no, you would gain me, but it would come at a price. In the process of losing everything, you would then in turn, gain everything. Funny, isn’t it, how nature never allows us to go without for very long? The spider lost its sight, but gained the ability to fashion webs like Arachne. As it stands, I cannot, in any conscience, let you go, so I will tell you anyways, when the time is right.”

If she were normal, she would fear that he was alluding to a malignancy like gang initiation , or some modern murder-suicide cult. Unfortunately for simplicity’s sake, she knows, intuitively, that it is neither of those things.

And what could he possibly mean by ‘letting her go’? Does that mean he feels the same pull as she does, or is he just employing charm?

“What if I figure it out before then?” She asks, opening her phone to connect it to the speakers in her parlor.

“Are you confident that you could?” If he didn’t use as much levity as he does, she would’ve thought he was attacking her problem-solving capabilities.

“Fairly confident.” Tossing her damp hair over her shoulder and leaning further into the coffee table, Althea sighs into her cigarette, and is further rewarded by soft jazz filling the empty spaces of the room that aren’t otherwise occupied by books. “Well…” She then hesitates, running a few fingers through her curtain bangs.

“What?” He shuffles closer to her, a picture of poise in what should’ve been a more compromising position. “Ask me.”

“I think it’s pertinent to.. eliminate a few possibilities, the first being that this is an initiation into a cult. Is it?” The way he had promised everything at the loss of everything, was within that framework of language that a cult leader would use.

Aro grins at her, perhaps it is supposed to be secretive, but he is far too expressive for it to cross the line from sensual into the territory of the reticent and gloomy. Still, she feels slightly insecure in her questioning – she finds it silly somehow, because it would be implying that she wanted to join the hypothetical cult, and that’s revealing too much about her feelings toward him.

“No, not a cult, not a cult at all, but that is all I can say in the meantime.” The cogs already begin spinning, and she doesn’t even realize she’s spent her cigarette to ash in so short a span, until it threatens to fall in her lap.

Hurriedly, she stows the cigarette into a ceramic she’d put on the coffee table for she and Khiz. Out of convenience, or carelessness, she had left it there.

In the absence of a cigarette to occupy her fingers, she twirls a drying strand of hair around her finger – it dries as straight and thick as with a drier, just as her father’s does. She is the only one of his children – her half-brothers, who inherited his noble coloring and texture, as the rest of them take after their mother, with her dark and curly hair.

“New Year’s.” She proposes, turning to face him better. “Give me until New Year’s, then you can divulge this secret of yours that will allegedly change my life forever. If I figure it out before then-”

“Then the fruits stay the same, lovely Althea. I offer you a pomegranate, and if you yourself find a pomegranate beforehand, it does not change anything, does it? As a student of philosophy, you should understand this principle.” He takes her hand again, and busies himself with the slender fingers that easily bend to his will.

“Some pomegranates have more seeds than others.” She argues, enthralled by his reverent circling of her palm.

He meets her gaze, his eyes are alight with amusement for the uncharacteristic nitpicking. “Don’t become a pedant now, of all times. Or, shall we define what a pomegranate is? Let’s listen to your definition.”

“A pomegranate is a fruit native to the eastern reaches of the Mediterranean, a culturally significant motif in Hellenic mythos especially. But there are several distinct varieties, Aro. Some are bitterer than others, some are larger, and then some are sweeter. Imagine if you told me you were giving me a grape instead. There are so many varieties.” Against her own volition, she finds herself leaning into him, just a breath away from his lips. “Some of them make white wine, and others, a sweet red. Now, based on that, we can reasonably assume that neither of our pomegranates may not be the same. They will be pomegranates insofar as two varieties of grapes are grapes, that doesn’t help much, does it? Be more specific.”

“Exceptionally said, but, we are in Tuscany, and I doubt, unlike Greece, we will have many to choose from.” He doesn’t blink once in his appraisal, in fact, the only minute change is the motion of his Adam’s apple when he swallows. The motion shouldn’t be half as erotic as it is.

“I am right on principle.” She wraps her arms around his shoulders, forgetting about the earlier incident in the presence of the dumbest argument she’s ever had with someone. His arms latch to her waist, they are strong and secure, and hold her as tightly as marble holds its shape. “Tell me I am right.”

She grants him one small kiss on his lips, two beautiful petals that are in perpetual blooming red, to her intrigue. None of his body is pliable to her touch, though it responds to her with masculine fervor all the same. His skin is hard like stone, whether it be his lips, or his shoulders, or the sharp line of his jaw.

A thought occurs to her then, and she pulls back to give it voice, mostly for herself.

“Knowing this is somehow dangerous to me, isn’t it?” Then, appalled that she’s throwing herself onto him, she drops her arms, and withdraws. “Who are you?”

Not like any Greek she’s ever known, not like anyone she’s ever known.

Biscotto chooses that moment to make his debut in the parlor, climbing down the stairs with the creaking, insecure step of an old feline with arthritis. This is usually the time in the evening when she feeds him.

He parts his lips, and begins to answer her question, but is swiftly interrupted by a sharp hiss from behind them. It is her landlady’s orange tabby, Biscotto, whose gentle nature made him singular among most other male cats. He never hissed before, not until that night when she saw something fly past her window.

The feline’s hackles are raised, the slope of his spine is curved upward, and he lets loose the most jarring noise she’s ever heard from a cat. It is low and unsettling, the growl of a cat that one only ever sees in media. The earthy green of his gentle eyes are gone for the startling dilation of his pupils. He hisses, growls, and stares at Aro.

Althea turns to him, but there is no evidence of any misdeed, but clearly the cat senses something that she doesn’t. It’s not unheard of, for animals to sense malintent, or otherness.

“He doesn’t like me.” Aro quips, the sound of his voice, while music to her own ears, is like the beat of a war drum to Biscotto, who races back up the stairs in a frenzy.

She would be lying if she said she wasn’t disturbed.

Rather than supply a dumb, stupefied answer, Althea is left transfixed with the empty space where Biscotto had fled, with Aro sitting beside her, possibly wise to the thoughts racing through her mind, but tactful enough to say nothing – whatever it is, she would not believe it anyways.

Chapter Text

Chief among the reasons she had not quizzed Aro about her possible theories, was pride. She didn’t want to betray her interest, and if she let slip of even one thing, it would expose her. A couple of days have passed since his visit to her home, their night together had been a surprisingly normal one, after her hair had dried and she was no longer irate with him, but she did not forget Biscotto’s reaction to the mysterious visitor in her parlor.

Since then, any exchange between them has been through the phone, and though she can prevaricate and hide her interest from him, she cannot hide it from herself. She is falling in the rabbit hole of Alice’s, with only the city of Volterra as her white rabbit.

They had agreed that she should have the liberty to use the rest of this month to solve it, but she had almost nothing to go on. His skin was as cold as the ambient temperature of winter, and only a couple of shades darker than the snow that prospers and multiplies within these months. He knew Greek, and several dialects of it. He knew of Mycenae and Minos, unexceptional details on an antiquarian . He knew Farsi, and he knew Latin, English, Italian, and Etruscan. How many more did he know, and more importantly, how did he know them?

Althea is talented with language, particularly with the theory of language, and expanding the boundaries of what language can do in relation to communicating human thought. And although she can quietly boast of this talent, she knows that she still occasionally struggles with Italian, of all the languages she knows. A Greek would have an even harder time than she does with English or Italian, but he displays none of those normal weaknesses.

She has considered the possibility that he is a genius, but that does not suffice either. To be a genius is not suspect in any case, but she suspects his genius cannot be atomized and separated from whatever nameless ‘condition’ he is living with, if ‘condition’ is what she should call it.

Although Biscotto had forgiven her, and forgotten about her visitor as soon as he had left that night (not without the aid of a few scraps of tuna), Althea had not. Three months ago, her hand had been forced to call a plumber to repair the townhouse’s dilapidated pipes, and Biscotto had taken to him easily, sitting on the bathroom sink and peering down at him for the extent of the day. Then, Khiz had visited, and Biscotto similarly showed no aggression whatsoever. When Aro had visited however, Biscotto’s reaction had been unfamiliar – the sort of reaction one might expect for a small mammal to have for a bear, or a roaring lion.

She did not miss the indulgence in Aro’s reply when he promised her until New Years’, a becoming crook at the corner of his supple lips. What could it possibly be? Was he playing with her?

If he was, it wouldn’t change anything, quite like their metaphorical pomegranate. The tangible details of his strength, the inconsistencies of his impressive base of knowledge, and the unfathomable darkness of his eyes, were the metaphorical pomegranate. None of these were normal, indeed there was a lengthy list of other things that were not normal. Her attraction to him certainly wasn’t. Regardless of how beautiful he was. Regardless of how he seemed to have been tailored with her every taste in mind.

He was… so beautiful, that it almost hurt to look at him. Althea has spent a sizable portion of her life in Iran, a land that was renowned for its strikingly picturesque men, a reputation that could be traced back into classical antiquity. In respect to them, they could never find a candle that could be held to the incandescent flame that was Aro. His beauty could conveniently distract her from how distinctively unnatural it was – not of this world.

All of this was how she ended up in Volterra’s impressive library, once more. It was becoming a habit of hers. Despite the looming, material threat of her dwindling finances, she had come anyway. Worse still, she repeated to herself that she wasn’t doing this for something as mundane as another person, but for the sake of a mystery she has to solve – as if Aro was as quotidian to merit that obstinate excuse.

However, obstinate, poorly-formed excuses became a mainstay when she needed a reason to ignore everything else for the sake of alluring, forbidden knowledge.

“Gnosis.” She whispers to the spacious, empty library.

Indeed, she was so nescient about where to begin, that she had contemplated whether he was a Gnostic, or a member of a similarly dastard and contrarian mystery cult, as if those orders still existed in such a tasteless, irreligious age.

He had kissed her, too, and she had allowed him. Her tolerance of it was the most perplexing part. While he, thus far, has made no secret of his attraction, Althea is accustomed to being secretive and uncharitable in regards to other people. But she could not deny the pull he had on her, and equally so, she could not explain why she could not push back with the same force.

The sun shone through every aisle, illuminating the spines of thousands of books, some of which she wryly noted, were so antiquated as to still have their arsenic-green covers. She also collected arsenic-green books, out of a sick fascination with the Victorians’ swan songs for the next generation.

Where before she had known exactly where to start, she now found herself without any sort of lead. Using her laptop to search ‘cold skin’, ‘black eyes’, and ‘unnaturally hard skin’ had been fruitless, and invariably led her to articles on anemia, the legendary ‘black-eyed children’, and the inevitable skin infections of syphilis.

Volterra’s history sections clearly went without curating, and to Althea’s surprise, there were over four aisles, filled with thick books stacked narrowly to the ceiling, all of which were ‘historical’. An unexceptional copy of Caesar’s Commentaries in Latin was the first book her eyes fell upon. In fact, only a tiny fraction of these books were devoted to early modern history, or the ‘ Middle Ages’, the greatest bulk was on the Classical world, and to her surprise, the Bronze Age. Considering the language aisle and its esoteric lexicons, she shouldn’t be surprised about the equally obscure subject matter in this part.

If she contained her focus solely on this , she could pretend that her father wasn’t going to be here in a week. Only when she walked into her parlor, saw within the plush cushions she had bought for her lovesea t and the various spiced teas she stocked further inside, did she allow herself to think about his visit.

He has never visited her before, and has only ever waited for her at the airport in Tehran. Once, he’d had his brother – loathsome man that he was – pick her up, and make the terribly long and awkward d rive to Isfahan. So this unexpected and frankly unprecedented visit serves only to stoke her suspicion toward her father, who was as ambiguous in his motives as she could be. It is part of the broader problem between them, these repeated occurrences of either no communication, or miscommunication. An outsider might say that they ‘just get’ each other, her mother would say, with a glaringly obvious hesitant smile, that they’re ‘so alike’.

Growing up, the frequent comparison made by her mum between she and her father, was a point of silent, angsty contention for Althea, not only because his part in her life was a once-yearly affair, but also because her mother never made her poor opinions about him a secret. In fact, she made none of her opinions a secret. This is why Althea now believes that sometimes, silence is the best answer.

Althea watches the children riding their bicycles on the pavement, finding rare serenity in the simple activity. In doing so, she hopes that none of them ever have to lead a childhood anywhere near to her own. A couple of boys chase after a cluster of girls with the unrivaled confidence of children. The girls giggle at them, and from her vantage, she can’t tell whether it’s derisive or flirtatious.

Shaking the distraction off of her shoulders, Althea refocuses her attention on the aisle she’s in. Having quickly grown accustomed to the phenomenal amount of untitled spines in Volterra’s library, she chooses the first arsenic-green that she can find. Since this is Italy, not America, she doesn’t try to pocket it and add it to the rest of her Victorian collection. Besides, in so small a village, everyone would know the culprit.

It’s nothing special – a misplaced phrenology text in a history section. The next is a history of the Napoleonic Wars, which is about as far from both her specialty or interest as to be immediately closed and returned as soon as she reads the title in its archaic Italian. Khiz would’ve loved it.

Three or four elderly locals pass her aisle and find their respective books before she can find her own, whichever it might be. Minutes of efficiently scouring the aisle fly before she finally finds something useful , a book by neither the hopelessly dry Thucydides nor biased Greek propaganda about Epicurus. It is something far drier, but far more relevant to what she’s looking for, which is a dense book on the village’s history, in an archaic Italian that she knows she’ll be struggling with.

Not for the first time, Althea is baffled by the absence of a printing house or author. There is not one in the entirety of the thickly-bound book, not a single indication of who wrote it, or who sponsored it. In Lucca’s libraries, there was nothing of this book’s kind, but here, there wasn’t even a reference number or note attached to it, as though it hadn’t been cataloged at all.

She takes her phone out, and searches for the library again, and tries to find its owner, only to find the innocuous Italian name of Diogini Mussili , apparently a village local, for whom there is absolutely no record of.

On the walk to her secluded corner, all she can think about was what Pietro had said about Volterra, about it being ‘a bad place’. Mrs. Conti’s son had been too busy eating to answer her own follow-up question, but she was sure that her landlady would’ve just discouraged him anyway, as dismissive as she was toward him in her drunken haze.

With Pietro’s guileless statement in mind, she wonders what she’s entered into. She wonders whether all of this is just a total sum of all her past paranoia finally synthesizing into a rural village conspiracy theory, or whether she is actually in the process of discovering something profound. Again, Aro’s eccentricities are the pomegranate that never changes, no matter who or what it’s given to and by whom. She has this deep-seated inner conflict about what, or rather whom, she is obsessed with. He has utterly captivated her, and she is suspended in a dark room trying to find the light – the how’s and why’s.

In the second paragraph of her book, she is already having to parse the difficult, archaic Italian. Whoever wrote this was being extremely flexible with the word order, which is how Romance languages should work, but they just don’t, anymore. Indeed she can imagine this author translating the text from one of the older ‘SOV’ languages into Italian, without repairing the word order.

Althea hates when she has to parse Italian , of all languages, a language that she’s supposed t o understand, not think about. She understands the gist of the book and that is all that matters, otherwise the parsing is a minor inconvenience.

Since the age of bronze weaponry, Volterra has been settled by humans, whether it be as Vlathri – as it was to the Etruscans, or as Volaterrae, as it was called by the Romans, the ubiquitous fathers of the modern Italian. Its importance has waxed and waned over the millennia that humans have given it the appellation of ‘home’. One of the first mentions of Volterra are by its conquerors, the Romans, as a city belonging to the Etruscan League.

Actually, as she continues to read, she changes her mind on the density of the book, and decides that the author is rather engaging, even good-humored. When plucking up a local history book, she usually expects dry and underwhelming commentary, so boring that its contents would be forgotten by the next day.

‘Since the age of bronze weaponry’, why couldn’t they just say the Bronze Age? Normally, things just make sense to Althea, who has the admittedly praiseworthy talent of being able to integrate largely contradictory facts and ideas with each other.

She reads it anyways, and finds in the first chapter a lengthy few pages about the Etruscan king, Cailu Arcumenna Zamtik, which tugs at the strings of her preconscious for a few seconds, until she remembers Aro mentioning him in reference to the cafe’s replica of the Etruscan mosaic. Cailu, even considering the inaccuracies of mosaic tiles, had been startlingly beautiful, with his pointed face and long, uncommon blond hair, coiffed back into a traditional style. The art had obviously been a result of Greek influence, probably from the Greek colonies at the time.

It wasn’t Hellenization that confused her, because that was the inevitability of simply being alive during the Classical period. What confused her, was the name that didn’t exist in any other record. Granted, most search engines weren’t reliable for antiquarian subjects, but for Wiktionary to have no results save for the clan name, Arcumenna, was unheard of.

So, should she take it to mean that this author was a total charlatan? Likely not, because a quick search of the back of the book aligned well with what she knew of Italian history. So, should she take it to mean that this author was a heretofore unknown, and unambitious archaeologist who kept their findings a secret? If so, why? The circle of thought goes around, and around, and around – ad nauseam, until she returns back to the author being a charlatan.

However, Aro had mentioned the Etruscan king, and had even known his nickname, Zamtik, and if memory serves her correctly, it was because of his blond hair. A rudimentary search of Wiktionary tells her that this is correct. It’s too elaborate for it to be a scam. Or, perhaps it isn’t, and Aro himself had discovered the recordless Etruscan king in this very book.

None of it makes any sense. If this book is a scam, then so too should the lexicons in the foreign languages aisle be. But they hadn’t been, she reminds herself. That this book was a scam, while the Greek lexicon was not, would be a complete discrepancy.

Hours pass with her eyes glued to the pages, taken by the riveting and engaging author, who’s most assuredly not a historian, or else she wouldn’t be able to focus for longer than an hour.

By the time she checks her watch, it’s half-past eleven, and she decides then to take her smoke break. It’s an unseasonably warm day for early winter, as even the victorious sun is without competition from the miserable clouds that have been hiding it away.

Around a slow, ponderous inhale of her cigarette, she wonders if Aro will find her today, as he has done so during every visit to the library, both in Lucca and in Volterra, in the past two weeks. No sign of him has reared its graceful, impossibly beautiful head, however. When she closes her eyes, she can imagine his curls bouncing with every gracile sweep of his long legs, or the unfathomable depths of his dark eyes, sparkling at something she said.

And the touching, a privilege she gave to so few people, that she’d almost forgotten what it was like to be touched. Every time she has encountered him, he has searched for opportunities to caress her hand, or touch her long hair. She knows why she lets him, but she’s not ready to fully commit to it.

Back to Arcumenna , she tells herself, lashing the proverbial whip across her back. She thinks of the recordless Etruscan king and his exploits, while she weaves through a small crowd of schoolchildren riding their bicycles and lightheartedly teasing one another. How tragic , she thinks, to be forgotten thus . That is, if the author is not spinning a story from the ass-pulling database.

To be forgotten as one of the last Etruscan kings, trodden over by the thunderous, stomping boot that was Rome and its record keeping. It was doubtless the fate of many Italian tribes, and what’s more, the conquered Minoans of Crete, of whom the Mycenaeans likely left no record of, or the Indus civilization that was closer to her own people. Completely forgotten, and washed away by time.

Men were supposed to be savage like this, though. It was the human condition – to devastate not only a land, but the knowledge it contained.

She crosses the narrow street that leads to the cafe, and enters to find a larger crowd than she had the other night. It must be some sort of congregation for old men, because they sit, drinking their coffees, gossiping as fiercely as any roost of hens.

Silence falls over their table while she passes, midway to the counter where the owner is in conversation with what appears to be her granddaughter. She spares one glance to the old men, whose skin is weathered by time, and whose ears and noses have been enlarged by the same measure. One of them, a man in suspenders, is even smoking a cigarette, either entirely careless of the law, or having been given permission by the women in the back.

“Buongiorno.” He greets, and she feels herself unwind, having expected to be chided for interrupting the group of men. “You are new, sweetie?”

“Ciao. Yes, uh, I am.” She responds, meeting the curious eyes of the other gossiping old men.

“Alberto saw you at the library earlier this morning! Where are you from?” He asked, and not unkindly, as she expected. The man whom she thought was Alberto gave himself away by turning his head to the man speaking.

“England, I moved here a few months ago.” Over the years, she has found people more agreeable when she simply says ‘England’, instead of the more complicated one.

Technically, she hadn’t been born in England or Iran, but in the Netherlands, a favorite place of her mother and father. How could she make this interaction go by quicker without drawing the ire of locals? The last thing she needed were people denying her service over the gossip that could flow through small villages faster than rain through a mound of pebbles.

“England? You’re very far from home! What brings you to Volterra?” The beady eyes of all the old men are on her. Althea swallows a non-existent lump down her throat.

“I’m a student in Florence, and I’m using Volterra’s library.” She answers, then, making use of the surprisingly auspicious opportunity, asks, “I’ve never seen anything quite like it, would you by chance know why it’s filled with so many… rare books?” For a moment, she stumbled, owing to her recent exposure to archaic Italian and the author’s devil-may-care word order.

“Etruscan ghosts!” One of the men teases, the man she’d guessed earlier was Alberto. He’s got this jeer around his lips that every old man carries around for the joyous occasion of mocking the young and ignorant.

Althea freezes at the mention of the urban legend. Or myth, or joke, or whatever it is. The old men must think that she’s spooked by the jeer, because they erupt in laughter at the misinterpreted expression on her face, much to her growing aggravation.

“What-” She corrects herself then, slipping easily into Italian, “What do you mean by ‘Etruscan ghosts’?”

“Nothing, sweetie. Alberto is trying to scare you! It only works on foreigners, no harm in it!”

“The village is filled with spirits that watch over us, girl. Don’t listen to Mario here, he is a shameless liar and hasn’t been to mass in three years.” Alberto points at Mario, with a note of the sort of accusation one only directs toward friends. The man in question raises a guilty pair of hands, “St. Marcus is one of them, he purged the city of its worst menace – vampires.” He then raises two bushy, scandalous brows.

Althea herself arches a skeptical brow.

So the Etruscan ghosts were a sort of trickster spirit for the village, then? She decides, preemptively, that it’s very odd that a myth surrounding benevolent Etruscans was highly unlikely in a land that would eventually be dominated by the Latin. It reminds her somewhat of how older people in rural England still have superstitions about Irish trickery, but Volterra’s is the inverse.

“Don’t let them fill your ears with lies, sweetie. They are all lying old men.” The kindly owner mentions from behind her counter. Nervously, Althea offers a smile to the old men, glad that she now had an exit scheme.

This turns into a lighthearted argument between the woman and her customers, and Althea couldn’t be more grateful. She loathes being under the scrutiny of a crowd. Fortunately, the other woman working is too young to have the kind of seniority required to argue with customers, and takes her order of tea and finger sandwiches.

She heaves a sigh when she once again gets dragged into the conversation, as an unwilling bystander.

“Leave our poor customers alone, I saw her just the other night! The joke is on you, Alberto!”

Instead of entertaining the group, she takes an unsociable seat at a table near the window, directly below a pleasantly dim chandelier, in an equally pleasing style as the rest of the cafe, conforming to the warm Art Noveau movement that seems to have lost traction in every place except Italy. It’s really a pity, because that was the last tasteful era of design.

“Where is your boyfriend? The one who was here with you last time?” Her jaw goes slack, and the taste of the chicken could’ve been ash for all it became at the mention of Aro – the acknowledgment of his existence from other people, reassuring her that he does, indeed, exist, that he’s not a figment of her keen imagination.

She swallows the small portion, and answers the woman, who’s hovering nosily around her table. “Him? He is.. well, he is not my boyfriend, I don’t know where he is.”

But the glint in the elderly woman’s eyes told her otherwise – that she didn’t believe a word. These things seem to only happen to Althea. Her reticence and withdrawal is always received as intrigue, drawing certain personalities like a flame draws a moth. This is almost always to her annoyance, and to their obliviousness.

“Well, he told me that you were a very special person to him.” Althea blinks slowly, disbelievingly. “He told me this when you were out there, you know. I swear.”

That really didn’t sound too terribly far from her gauging of him. He strikes her as opportunistically gossipy, intrigued by the entire spider’s web, both the small threads and the substantial threads, the details and the big picture. He doesn’t seem the type to sneer at talking small with other locals. Indeed he’d proven himself to be impossibly nosy, and curious about any mention, regardless of how immaterial it was, about her private life.

“I didn’t know.” Althea says, indulging the other woman as she might to Khiz, when he was raging about the ‘Slavic menace’.

Through the pocket of her skirt, she felt her phone vibrate, and already, her unwelcome intruder was distracted by the other table. Out of a desire to be polite, Althea only took her phone out when she was alone once more.

It was like water was being poured down the length of her back, then freezing and encasing her spine in ice. He texts her, mere seconds after the other woman mentioned him, and it’s the first time she’s heard from him since the night before, when they’d texted been trading ideas about Pythagoreanism, an area he seemed to have outstanding insight into.

‘Lovely day for it, Althea?’ It’s doubly confusing when he successfully uses colloquialisms like that, and fails with others. Neither Italian nor English colloquialisms fall from his lips naturally.

Surely, it’s just a coincidence. It has to be.

Even still, she debates whether she should text him back, and washes down a tiny finger sandwich with a sip of chai, before returning her attention back to her phone – not that it had ever left.

‘No’, she texts back.

It’s one of her few creature comforts, to answer honestly to questions that expect a dishonest answer.

From his mosaic on the wall, Arcumenna’s eyes follow her every movement. They have that effect, no matter where her impeccable posture leaves her.

According to the paragraph devoted to him, he had been a fearsome war chief, a rallying point for the Etruscans against the rising tide of Greece and Rome from the south. This had sounded to her like one of those partially true Homeric myths.

Outside of the window, the sun climbs higher in the sky, settling in a place that shines directly on her shoulders, casting her hair in a kaleidoscope of colors ranging from red, to gold, to light brown. She basks in the warmth, for already, she longs for the promising spring and dry summer. This rain reminds her too much of dreaded England, the place she’s sworn never to return.

A coffeemaker thunders across the cafe, rousing her out of the temporary peace she’d found.

Briskly, but not rudely, she thanks the owner, ignoring the probing, nosy stares on her back as she leaves. It is nothing new to Althea. She dresses strangely, she walks strangely, and she talks strangely.

She takes the longer, winding way to the library, opting to enjoy the warmth of the sun, for as long as it might last. In an antiquated village like Volterra, there is no ‘right’ road to get anywhere, as there is little to no rhyme or reason in the layout, excepting for the Palazzo, which towers above every other building, as though the village were built around it as a focal point.

As preoccupied as she has suddenly become with obscure Italian history, she’s spared precious few minutes to her Greek. In fact, she had forgone her practices entirely this morning.

It’s not that she’s lost her interest or proficiency in Greek – her self-teaching has proven that she has a unique talent for the language. However, she has been allotted a period of time to solve a problem, which may or may not be a game imposed by Aro. Normally, she wouldn’t allow anyone to tell her what she can or cannot do, for she likes to make sure the odds are in her favor before she plays any sort of game, but he is already proving himself an exception to many of her established orthodoxies.

‘Tell me why.’

‘Where have you gone to now?’

‘I am not as patient as you might have been led to believe.’

In spite of her ebbing frustration, she laughs to herself at the last text. Actually, she had intuited that he was impatient, perhaps used to being the center of attention. She pauses on the pavement, letting the gentle breeze pull her hair across and around her shoulders.

‘How do you reason I believed that?’

He is incredibly fast in his replies, even in the late evenings.

‘That is why I said might. Did you really think I would make such semantic errors with a philosophy student? No, I should be on alert constantly, lest I be taken unaware by you.’

She shouldn’t blush. It’s just flattery, she tries to tell herself, but the flutter of her heart doesn’t care about reason. He must be appealing to her acumen, maybe he’d deemed other avenues for her attention as futile.

As a result, she ignores his text, and continues her walk down the pavement, trying to experience instead of think, but it’s proving to be an impossible task. She tries to focus on the inviting smell of bread wafting her way from the bakery, or the gaudy smell of perfume from the prepubescent girls that pass her.

Because of his incessant texting, she was half-expecting him to be waiting for her at her chosen desk, the one that has her book, still opened on the same page that she left it. To say she didn’t feel a small pang of disappointment, would be an understatement.

The words of the woman at the cafe are winding and rewinding through her head. He told me that you were a very special person to him. What could that possibly mean? Either the lady was a shameless gossip, or Aro was a shameless gossip and a liar. Granted, she might say (to herself) that he was a special person to her, in spite of having known him for the meager span of two weeks, if even that.

None of this makes any sense. She’s used to things making sense, and if they don’t, she makes them sensible, it’s how she’s been at the top of all her classes since secondary school, and how now, she’s capable of contending with professors twenty or more years her senior. She can find a way to make sense of this.

What did Etruscan ghosts have to do with this, if anything? Everything, if she thinks about it long enough – nothing, if she looks for the sense in it. It’s so prevalent a story that it’s been published in news pieces, albeit local ones, and old men apparently use it to tease ignorant newcomers.

One of the overarching questions, is how an alleged Etruscan king, unmentioned in any records, appears in a replicated mosaic, is then spoken about by Aro, and then appears in an unauthorized local history text. It could easily be that it’s an elaborate hoax, that the Etruscan mosaic is real, but the man in question is ‘nameless’, and has been imbued by local legend. She remembers Oswald Spengler calling this ‘primitive name-calling’, or something like that.

Secondly, why is this so important to her? So important, that she’s willing to part from Greek for the moment, and her translations, her only stable source of income. Why?

But she knows why. It’s because it relates to him – his impossible beauty, his annoyingly effective charm, his willingness to listen, and his broad knowledge of everything she is interested in and more. It is not one trait, capable of being atomized, but the total sum of him…

What an abhorrent intrusive thought. When he’s not around, he’s buzzing around in her head, and when he is, he’s buzzing around her. There’s no balance.

She finds refuge in the book instead, now onto the more reliable iteration of Volterra during the imperial period of Rome. It’s not because she’s particularly fond of the Romans that she names them trustworthy, rather, it’s because they were excellent administrators, and pedantically wrote everything down or etched it into stone.

Too bad Cicero didn’t fancy the Etruscans, or else there’d be a couple-hundred letters that could reinforce claims made in the earlier sections. Oh well, she’s just as, if not more comfortable, dwelling within the world of abstraction and myth.

The legend of the ‘Etruscan ghost’ is a common superstition held by natives in this region, so pervasive that it deserves a short thread of attention dedicated to it.

Assuming those reading have recalled how very important the Etruscans are to Tuscany (it’s quite literally in the name!), it is therefore reasonable that natives will think on their vestiges with fondness and their fondness will thereupon become inoffensive superstition. Just as the French erect statues in dedication to that old hero of theirs, Vercingetorix, from whom only one out of a hundred Frenchmen are related to, so too does the small Tuscan village of ‘Vlathri’, offer their own statue to the Etruscans.

To this modern age, no one has ever detailed what exactly the Etruscan ghosts are, what is more, their purpose. Some say that they are malign apparitions who stalk the meandering cobblestone streets, while others maintain that they are of the benign, helpful sort. I withhold my opinion, though to myself, I must admit that I think they simply ‘are’!

The book read like Herodotus, and it still sheds no light on what she’s looking for. She takes a picture of it with her phone anyways, and carefully stores it in an album dedicated to book pages.

Because it’s a private library, she can’t rightly borrow it, but she does debate ‘borrowing’ it to her bag, and returning it when she’s done.

Or she could come back tomorrow.

Deciding to remain on the safer side – the best of either world, really – she takes the book in her arms, and finds the foreign language section, and places it between the Akkadian and Assyrian lexicons, secure in the not-unfounded conviction that absolutely no one would pay attention to either of those.

Just as the sun has set, she plucks up her belongings from the desk, and is turning to leave, when she senses a pair of eyes watching her.

“This happens far too often.” To her secret satisfaction, the unwelcome pair of eyes belongs to the man with the most melodious voice to ever cross her ears. Aro’s. “I am in no position to complain, so why should I even mention it?” Her heart stutters.

He is there, tall and immaculate in his dark suit jacket with the same vintage silken scarf, but it is his unmistakable face that she assigns most of her attention to.

“You didn’t answer me. Tsk, tsk. Doubtlessly you thought to spurn me, or, could it be that you found something more fascinating?” He purrs, tilting his head curiously, stalking her with sensuously slow steps. “I blame these books, they themselves must have found a truly exceptional course to vie for your attention. Am I to be in competition with this? These dead, decrepit, dry pieces of paper? Shall I also glue myself to the spine of a book? Will you then turn your gaze to me?”

She assesses him, looking over his slim figure and stopping at the crown of his head, closer now than he was before. So close, that she can feel the coolness of his body. He cuts a menacing vision, his beauty is as eerie as it is divine.

“Dear Althea.” He caresses the high peak of her cheekbone with the back of his cool hand, her long lashes flutter in a ghost of coy. “Carissima, she who heals.”

That is what ‘Althea’ means, and she often prefers this etymology, over the reason of her mother’s. Consequentially, Althea has extremely mixed feelings on the Grateful Dead, despite liking their music.

When Althea manages to find her voice, it is miraculously deprived of snark. “Hello, Aro.”

Whether it is with adoration, or some emotion that is distinctly his, his twinkling eyes fall over the skin he still hasn’t withdrawn from, looking between his hand and her own steadfast gaze. It should be harder to hold the eye of someone so gorgeous, but she remarks that he is skilled at making her simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable. On one hand, she feels like she is a creature that he is dissecting, and on the other, she feels secure in the intensity with which he pursues her.

“An hour is too long, agapiti.” He withdraws from her, but the coldness of his touch lingers on her skin. “Tell me what’s kept you occupied.”

“Not even a ‘please’?” She licks her lips, and turns her head slightly, until one of her long curtain bangs shadows her face.

He seems to debate over it for a short moment. His eyes widen, surprised then fascinated. His smile is almost unsure of itself, but she doubts that he could be insecure, as talkative and shameless as he’s proven to be.

“Fine, if I must.. please, tell me, Althea.” He offers her a hand, and against better or worse judgment, she takes it.

She lets him lead her through the walkway that comprised the middle between all the aisles. The floorboards creaked under their weight, betraying their age. A sweet, fragrant scent of every Greek flower masked the stagnant smell of old parchment, and the ocean that lay beneath those notes washed the foul smell of others away.

“Really, it was nothing terribly interesting, it surely didn’t merit a ‘please’.” She looked up at him pointedly. He licks his lips, and offers her an utterly unashamed grin, as if to say ‘the things we do…’. “Today I chanced upon an interesting book that covers the history of this village.”

“And.. which once was that?”

“It doesn’t have one, and I haven’t the foggiest who wrote it. That reminds me – why are there so many books here without an author?” His smile deepens, like she is on the outside of an inside joke. She loathes the feeling.

“Groundless!” He exclaims, gesturing around him with his free hand. “Because there is no book in existence that has not an author. What was their writing like? Did it read well? Did you like them?”

So many questions.

“Interesting, for a historian. Yes, and yes. They read like a romantic who was rebelling against the Victorian empiricism at the time. It reminded me of reading Herodotus for the first time, actually.” He was leading her outside by the grasp of his cool hand. Behind his long mess of curls, she spied a large smile. “A collection of fanciful stories, mythologized histories that can stand the test of time, because they’re memorable.”

“Those are the mores of the Greeks, Althea. It is not so much an emphasis on accuracy, as it is on the perseverance of the memory, the immortality of that man behind the myth. To the Greek, it is sufficient that his name should survive.”

The wind is blowing their hair around and behind them, it is rather less cold than it had been the past couple of weeks, but with the sun gone, her teeth begin chattering, and she yearns for a comforting cigarette.

“And do you share the sentiment?” She asks.

It’s when she tries to crane her head that she realizes her hair has been captured by his curls, caught in the midst of a few thick coils, held within a redolent prison. I shouldn’t, but oh, she does, reaching up between them, and threading her fingers through their long hair. His attention, ever fixed on her, is immediately drawn. They’ve slowed to a complete stop on the empty pavement.

Against her better judgment, she is enticed into running her fingers up a curl, following it upward into his scalp until she remembers herself – she is not the one who crosses the boundaries of others. His eyes are hooded, cajoling her into running through the extent of his hair, pulling at the curls to her pleasure.

She drops her hand like it has been burnt, but he catches it. Color floods her pale golden cheeks.

Beneath the glow of the street lamps, his beauty, which at anytime is captivating, is suddenly preternatural, too unreal to be real. Across the spectral paleness of his cheeks, his jaws, and his nose, there are no scars, no freckles, no flaws that she can see.

Alone in the streets of the quiet village, illuminated only by the lamplight and the distant décor of the festive holidays, she is caught in a standstill, a silent staring contest with him, of which neither of them seem to be winning. She thinks he might kiss her, but he doesn’t.

“So…” She begins. “Do you share the sentiment?”

His smile is ambiguous. For someone so expressive, he is surprisingly difficult to analyze. She wonders if he feels as frustrated by her.

“I do. If the idea of the man endures, then his legacy shall be secure, even if his loins failed to produce little heirs and heiresses. That is how the likes of Bellerophon and Icaros remained relevant, for millennia and onward, and a thousand years from now, their names will still be known to children and adults alike. Such is the ingenuity of the Greek and his storytelling.”

“That’s very biased of you.” She wants to dispute it by fueling the ancient fire between their ancestors. “Persians remembered them all, without having to write them down.”

He smiles wickedly, “Only because Greeks reminded them by writing about it.”

“Please, you’re just upset that a Persian founded the oldest surviving religious doctrine, and touched every Abrahamic faith in doing so.” She is leading him now, tugging at his wrist, tickled by the long, dark curls underneath his suit jacket.

“Ah, Zoroaster! You must mention him, mustn’t you? The pride of Persia, what a shame that his doctrine is universally spoken about under its Hellenized name.”

“My father would like you.” She mentions it so casually. It just slips, before she can even think it through.

She never mentions her father to anyone, in fact she hasn’t spoken about him with anyone but Khiz since Baptiste, which was two years ago.

Of course, he seizes the slip like it is military glory and he is Pompey Magnus. “Your father? What sort of man is he?”

Her jaw tightens and flexes, the humor has dried up completely, where only a few moments ago, it had blanketed her in a dubious sense of security.

“He is Persian. Painfully Persian.” It feels so strange to actually talk about him. When she remains silent about her more influential father, she can pretend that they are nothing alike – that he has not influenced her as much as he has. “But he’s fond of the West, so perhaps not as painfully Persian as you’re imagining.”

“Do you take after him?” She wants to say that she’s annoyed by his intrusive questions, but she can’t possibly be, not when he sounds so sincere.

Althea scoffs, “I am the spitting image of him, if he were female. We look.. just alike.” Torn between two worlds, the West and the East, both of them. “I should probably get home, my car-”

“So soon? I only just arrived! No, no, you should stay here tonight, Althea. The night is young still, like yourself.” She parts her lips, already rehearsing an excuse to turn in early – her mood has tanked since the mention of her father. “There is a place I know you would like to see.”

Her brow arches, skeptical.

“You do not trust me?” His offense has to be a pretense. “I cannot promise you that I would not steal away all of your time if given the precious chance, and you may go at any time you please, but this is something you really must see, an altar from the Republican age of Rome.”

Does she trust him? After all, she did invite him to her townhouse, and his short visit resulted in no betrayal. She tosses the idea around, entertaining all the improbable scenarios that could play out, the unlikely what-ifs. And he is waiting so eagerly for her to agree, and, she has been anticipating seeing him again.

Her glare is halfhearted. She does want this. Discarding her perpetual distrust in everyone, she nods, and is rewarded with his brilliant smile.

Chapter Text

It is like she is standing on a cliff, under which is a vibrant, fecund valley. The fall might be excruciating, but the fruits appear to be so innumerable that it’s worth the jump.

Naturally, Althea hesitates to follow him outside of the village. Her stride was confident only a minute ago, and now, it is faltering, unsure. She maintains control by giving an impression of control, even when she doesn’t have it.

Worse still, he is unarguably keen on this – whatever it might be. Every time she fixes her attention back to Aro, invariably, he is watching, more vigilant than his apparent carelessness would suggest. She even lags behind him once, to check if he will still look, and he did. Althea has never been more unsettled, or gratified. How these two incongruous feelings can share the same space, begs later analysis.

She can’t believe she let him convince her to follow him out to the rolling, rustic hills, void of any sign of life, save for the occasional passing car. It is not exactly that she feels endangered, rather, she is surprised that he has achieved the heretofore unachievable feat of earning a sliver of her trust. There hasn’t even been an exchange of surnames, yet she knows he won’t do anything untoward. Somehow, she just knows.

“Do you ever think about how every passing car is a narration of a life?” She begins, clutching tightly to her arms to chase away the bitter, dry wind. “Every single car has within it a driver, or a passenger, and every one of them has a story unique to them, a tale of grief and suffering, as significant as ours.”

“Are they?” His answer is a challenge for challenge’s sake, she assumes, and his devilish grin supports that. “As significant as ours?”

“Yes.” The headlights of another car pass on the road to Volterra, a couple-hundred paces away from them. They are hidden rather well in the high grasses of Tuscany’s foothills, and their walk is a furtive one. “Often people have an empathy problem, they think that they are the sun of our universe, forgetting that it is precisely our universe. Everyone is in pain – somehow – everyone is experiencing their own personal nightmare catered entirely for them, and we too easily forget that.”

It’s exceptionally easy for Althea, whom, though ill-advised, can go an inordinate amount of time without talking to other people. In doing so, it takes only one slip for her to fall into the dreadful habit of waving away others’ trials. Selfish people like her have to be mindful, and if she can’t extend sincere empathy to other people, she can at least acknowledge how much they suffer, relative to their experience.

“So, you see no value in prioritizing one person’s pain over another’s?” Their arms brush, and Althea shivers. She is at war, torn between experiencing with him, and solving it.

“I didn’t say that. I think it’s rather clear that someone mortally wounded is a higher priority.”

“Oh? Why should that be? Do you think it merits more respect?” She scoffs a low, breathy laugh at the suggestion.

Winding stalks of dry grass brush her legs, and although the wind offers her less mercy than Aro’s touch, she finds herself more thoughtless of the cold than she should be. As is, the pale gold of her cheeks is tinged with a light blush, and her hair has tousled itself into flattering waves, as opposed to its natural, ramrod rigidity and refusal to be curled.

One look at him gives her a thousand answers, to questions she otherwise doesn’t know to ask. He is obviously not cold, his sharp cheeks retain their edge and their color, in other words, he shows none of the typical weaknesses of walking in a dark, gloomy field at night, with little to warm him. Something is ‘not right’ about him, but she doesn’t think it’s ‘wrong’ either.

“And yes, I do often consider the narratives of everyone that might pass, why, one could even say that it defines my very life, as queer a notion as it may seem.” She arches a brow, correctly guessing that he’ll elaborate – she thinks it’s an urge of his that he can’t contain. “Their lives are so rich that a few meager words could never service. Imagine, my heart, a spider’s web..

“Pull one thread, and you will witness the rest of the web unfurl shortly after. But the complexities do not end there! While we pull at the thread, the mind waits, and like patient, dutiful Arachne, it is spooling its thread, to repair and rebuild in such an event. Pick one slender thread, and it always leads you to a few-hundred others, if you know to look. Fascinating, endlessly so. Ah, but your mind is the impenetrable web, you are like Arachne, swearing yourself to secrecy and intrigue.” She eyes him over – he is a pale silhouette that glides across the uneven ground.

“What made you so interested in others’ stories?” Like I have to ask, she wants to tease, you are insufferably nosy.

He grins, displaying a set of perfectly white teeth behind his red lips, “I had no choice on the matter, but this has been a chance blessing from the gods. Every corner I turn, I am at the mercy of these webs, forced to contemplate their intricacies!”

“You mean to say that you can think of nothing else, or..” Maybe, if she had his skill, she wouldn’t be so terribly lonely all of the time.

“This way, dear Althea. That thicket there,” He grabs her hand, and she is too slow to respond with instinct. If he intends to do something malicious, she is armed. “Is where I am taking you. You shall love it like a flower loves the sun after a spell of rain. Or perhaps not, you are more beautiful than any of their sort. Pulchrior quam naturam ipsam es, summa nitoris, praeclarissima astarum, qui digiti osculor, ut passer Lesbiae.”

The wind serves to cover her flushing cheeks, but she doesn’t doubt that he has covertly spied them. He is always watching, but she chances to look up anyway, and indulge in the suave tilt of his head, or how one thick curl rests just under his cheek, a splash of darkness in an otherwise unimaginably pale face, like the darkest ink spilled over the lightest parchment.

“Tacebo, audire possim, vocem tuum perpetuum.” His eyes widen, perhaps on account of her natural command of this country’s father language, or perhaps, it was because of what she said. “As if I have a choice, you will talk anyways. I suppose I can just ignore it when it gets too annoying.” But she smirks at the thought, for his incessant questioning and exchange of ideas is already pulling her, like the force of a magnet. “Your Latin is impressive. When did you find the time to study it, in between every Greek dialect, Italian, and English?”

He does not deny the subtle accusation, once more furthering her theory that he wants her to ask questions. Instead, he ushers her with his other hand, until her hand is engulfed in either of his, until she forgets what warmth is.

“Sophos. But Althea, could I not ask you the same question? As it were, Latin is trivial, far from a fitting rival to my native Greek, but I do so love it, I always have, it was nothing to learn.” Cool fingers pet the skin of her hand, like it were a precious gem and he, a prospecting jeweler. “It still amazes me.” Her brow arches, confused by the comment. “To see and hear silence, nil. Remarkable! Have you made any progress yet?”

That, she does know of. He is wisely using euphemism to ask the awkward question about whether she has figured out what lay behind his otherness, his discrepancies.

“I think so.” She doesn’t want to admit that she’s not sure where her findings lead, if ‘findings’ is what they are.

“Do tell me about it..” He says, in that sort of quizzical segue that is particular to him.

Before them lay a dell, dotted lightly by wood, divided on either side by a rushing brook, within which she can hear the chirp of crickets unfortunate enough to be thrust into unkind winter. While the trees are bare of leaves, she can surmise that in the springtime, they are nothing short of a marvel, so close to the highly developed Po Valley.

Across the brook was an ancient wall, covered in sprawling wreaths of ivy and other vines that flowered in the warmer months. Behind it was an opening of some kind, carved out of cement so sturdy that discerning its age was impossible.

“Why are there countless phishing websites advertising Volterra?” The dell is colder than the rest of the valley, turning her warm breath into thick, dispersing clouds. She notes that Aro’s does not do the same.

Out of all the questions she should’ve asked, it’s that one, for some indiscernible reason. It was one of the first oddities she’d come across in her search, and besides Arcumenna, it stood out to her as something important, though she’d waved it away as the work of scammers at first, and is still tempted to.

This catches his attention, but what doesn’t? Scarce few things escape it.

She will figure this out. Certainty can never flee from her for very long.

One corner of his supple lips quirks at her question, and in the darkness of the dell, she has to strain her eyes to see it.

“Do you want me to tell you?” He stands before her now, like the serpent uncoiling from the branches in Eden.

Out here, he is even paler, if such a thing were possible, if it wasn’t a trick of the sparse light provided by the faint sliver of the moon. He glows under the faint sheen of moonlight, it is singularly unnatural, and it reminds her that she should be suspicious of him, rather than indulging herself in his company.

“No, we had an agreement.” She stubbornly replies, crossing her arms and rubbing warming circles into her cashmere sweater. “So, what have we come out here for? To gain knowledge of agriculture from Saturn?”

Predictably, he giggles, she hates how lovely it is, how distracting it is – like the chimes of the most illustrious chapel, cut from the whitest, sharpest marble. Huffing a humored breath, she bites her lip to further stifle any reaction that would encourage him, as if he even needs that.

He clucks his tongue, a recurring habit of his, “I think you will agree that tonight’s patron is more forthcoming than the Devourer.” She offers nothing, just a skeptical arch of her brow, apparently enough to earn her one of his dazzling smiles. “Bacchus, a remnant of one of the ritual sites that managed to evade senatorial persecution.”

At the mention of such a novel site devoted to a mystery cult, Althea’s heart begins to race, just as it had when she’d seen the ancient remnants of Knossos, desperate to touch the stone that they had touched. Her pupils expand and dilate in excitement, but reason is suggesting against this.

“Romans, utterly urbana and refined as they were, could not tolerate the Bacchic mysteries, so they issued edicts disallowing free citizens from participating in his worship. Graeci periculosi,” He quotes, gliding across the dead grass and addressing her animatedly, “Dummodo humanitates non requiramus! Sly Romans, only using us when they should like to appear genteel.”

“The parallels between Rome and America are very real. Perhaps that is why most antiquarians loathe them, their novelty is.. nil, too familiar to most to be especially interesting, beyond appreciation for their architecture.” She crosses the brook, joined by Aro not even a second later.

“I have always liked them, firstly because my dearest friends did not, thereupon I saw how ingenious their rule truly was. They taught us how best might a land and its people be subdued, without even being cognizant that they have lost. A useful talent of the Romans, at the cost of their virility.” He is proving her earlier remark, that he has no concept of personal space. “A worthy loss for the wisdom of future generations of humans.”

“Was it?” She blithely asks, leaning back into the trunk of the barren, wild olive tree. “Especially since they faced countless slave revolts and uprisings due to this ‘ingenuity’, some might even call it apathy.”

“Granted, they were no great philosophers, Althea, but there is so much more wisdom than can be found in the likes of sapientes, would you disagree?” Ah, there it is, she inwardly remarks. He is baiting her into disagreeing, to some mysterious end that does please her, because she likes nothing more than to argue with someone competent.

“Certainly wisdom is found across all walks of life, but should we really apply elusive wisdom to administration that’s effective because it has to be? Isn’t that like saying a police force is wise, because crime exists and it needs to be stopped?” She retorts, shivering for the strong gust of wind shaking the bare limbs of the tree they shelter beneath.

“What is wisdom, Althea?” He leans closer, resting a firm hand on a branch above her head.

A silent moment of recognition passes between them, though she cannot even begin to know what he is thinking. He illuminates much of his thought process by externalizing it, but she is not so arrogant to assume that she’s yet intimate with it. But there is cunning in his excitable posture, in the way his dark eyes seem to catalog and collect every reaction of hers, every minute expression that crosses her face.

Although Althea looks the part of a fox, he acts much like one.

Unlike some of her peers, she’s very careful in how she handles tricky definitions like these. “If knowledge is the sum of learned knowings, and experience is the sum of experienced knowings, then wisdom is the total sum of either of these things. If one is notably absent, then it stays in its respective class. A sage cannot be wise if he cannot look upon a shepherd and his flock and see grace in the mundane, and just the same if he cannot observe a great man subjecting an inferior and see harmony in the natural order. That, to me, is wise, to know one thing, and experience another, and have them converge into a greater understanding.”

“So, by your definition, how cannot the Romans be wise? Had they not the privilege of centuries of dead Greeks advising them? The experience of transforming from an agrarian society to the premier imperial power? What measure of experience and knowing passes your criteria? Or, do you make no such distinction?” His head tilts curiously to the side, it flatters him, and brings about an avalanche of fragrant, lustrous black curls to fall down his shoulder and lay on her chest.

She almost loses herself in his smell, until another forceful gust blows their hair and leaves her huddling into her sweater for warmth, away from him.

In between her teeth chattering, she says, “If anything, I think this shrine is evidence enough to prove that the Romans were perhaps not as wise as some romantics like to think. But I think you misunderstand me, I make no such value judgments on the unwise. And..” She burrows further into the tree, and lets him block the wind for her. “Yes, I do make distinctions, because if I didn’t, even the most heinous sort of person could be called ‘wise’ if he had both knowledge and experience.”

“And who is the most heinous sort of person?” Her eyes snap back to his, at the uncharacteristic seriousness of his query.

“My own ethics are typically rooted in classical liberalism, veering perhaps a bit more toward libertarianism.. so, the most heinous sort of person to me, is one who takes away the will of another, especially by coercion.” A myriad of emotions flash over his face before finally schooling into a kind of sobriety she has recognized as ‘rare’ for him. “A pedophile, or a rapist, they are the scum of the earth.” Is that relief that quirks his lips just then?

But it too quickly fades into that meddlesome inquisitiveness, and she prepares for a litany of questions.

“Why do they contend more for your disapproval than, shall we say.. a standard murderer?” No one else she knew would dare to ask that kind of question, thereby putting themselves in a precarious situation where they could be implicated.

Admittedly, it was a good question, because it weighed the right to bodily autonomy against the right to live. He’s clever, and Althea knows that she has to be doubly careful with her answer, lest he catch a weakness.

“Because men tend to voluntarily enter into violent contracts with other men, that should be – within reason, mind you – a protected right of theirs, otherwise you unman them. Let’s assume most murderers are men, and that’s true, let’s assume also that most of their victims are other men, which is also true. Killing other men, as a man, is one of those rites into manhood-”

“Robbing him of his very essence, subsuming it into yourself, those rites of manhood precede either of us – animum alium meum. Would you see it returned?” His smile is.. well, it is wonderful, how could it not be? Althea is loathe to coin it ‘adoring’, in the event that he is as untrustworthy as she should believe.

“A semblance of it, yes, I would have men go unpunished for committing voluntary acts of violence against each other. As it is now, it’s like, a crime, to be a man.” His smile widens, as sparkling as Greek retsina, and just as decadent, but she refuses to entertain kissing him.

“You are right, of course.” He purrs into her skin, rustling a few stray hairs, and sending a thrilling shiver down her spine. “Shall we go and treat lonely Bacchus to our visit?”

Althea briefly wonders if he sees this as a date , but then admonishes herself, for it feels.. wrong, to put his name and ‘date’ in the same string of thought, as though the two simply don’t coexist. However, if it were a ‘date’, it might just be the most interesting one she’s ever had.

Some might stick their noses up at the notion of wandering through an Etruscan sewer to visit a shrine to Bacchus, but Althea could only thrum in anticipation at the promise of a rare treat like this. Granted, wading through ancient sewage was unsavory.

And, shouldn’t she be more worried about a potential ambush? Yes , she thinks, I should.

Shrouding the tunnel were sprawling, overgrown vines, evidence of its abandonment. Was there another side within that others could use? Likely, but that would be a lot of effort, and by the look of the vines, this place doesn’t get much, if any, traffic. That’s even stranger, for an Etruscan ruin to avoid becoming a tourist spot.

She peeks inside, only to find complete darkness staring back at her. She backs away, to find Aro watching her with his usual fixation, as far as she can tell in this lighting.

“After you, lush.” Her characteristic sneer returns, masking her nervousness.

“As you say, domina.” She rolls her eyes, but infuriatingly, he offers her bright, charming laughter, and only when he turns his head, does she smile at his antics.

One graceful hand peels back the overgrown ivy, leaving enough space for either of them without disturbing its roots on the ground above. With the swiftness of any vulpine creature, he steps inside, and holds the ivy up for her. She clutches her bag closer, and finds herself pushed tightly against his marble-like chest.

She thinks he’s going to use this proximity as leverage, and just when she senses some movement – his hair, she surmises – he withdraws, and ventures further into the cavernous sewer. Reluctantly, she follows, occasionally looking behind her toward the sparse light offered at the mouth of the tunnel.

“You may wonder why a shrine to Bacchus was commissioned here, of all places, and I’ll tell you, my heart. This.. welcoming establishment,” He cackles to himself, “Was originally built by the Etruscans, but due to a few design flaws, was repurposed into a common tomb, a sacred place that was beyond the reach of the law, a place where even a servus, a slave, could flee his masters. And, when those old men in Rome began persecuting Bacchic cults, naturally, clever devotees, in secret, built a shrine here!” His low voice echoes off of the cement walls, having exactly nowhere to escape in the claustrophobic space.

“How extensive is the network of tunnels exactly?” She quizzes from behind her phone, using it as a source of light.

However long they might be, they haven’t been entirely bereft of life, as illegible graffiti covers much of the sturdy cement walls. One she does just barely catch – ‘ Mar Cinaedum ’, the Latin equivalent of calling someone a faggot.

“Lovely.” She comments, nonchalant and desensitized toward Roman vulgarity.

“A jolly bunch, were the Romans! Were they not?” She hears the smile in his voice, even in the pitch darkness of the tunnel. “These are smaller than your commonplace sewer, whose length are not to be trifled with.. veritable labyrinths – Daedalos himself could not fly out of them, not that it worked the first time…” It is then that she begins really questioning her decision to follow him down here, and consequently, her heart begins that familiar stampeding rhythm. “Do not fear, Althea, our destination is not long now.”

Although he cannot see it – nor can she, for that matter – her lashes flutter at the words that pour from his lips, like fine wine from a decanter. Had he.. sensed her trepidation?

W hat have I done? she asks herself. There are no good reasons for placing this much trust in a man she hardly knows. She is now sure that he sensed her fear somehow, but how? That is the golden question, isn’t it? And she doubts that it’s so simple that it can be reduced to ‘Etruscan ghosts’, something she’s now sure is a superstitious pretense for something else.

So why does she trust him? What has he done to earn her trust? Khizir had fought other boys who bothered her, and after weeks of skirting around awkward, terse conversations, did she begin to trust him enough to spend most of her time with him. Effectively, Khiz did more to earn her trust than Aro, who himself seemed to be actively challenging her standards of fidelity.

The musky smell of stone, weathered by the passage of time, and dilapidated by the perpetual flow of water, fills her senses and momentarily distracts her from Aro, and his head of thick curls. This place is old, and obscured from the public by its inaccessibility and former purpose. If she were still a touchy adolescent, she might fear that an eldritch creature would be waiting around the corner to pluck her up, but she now treasures these deep, dank locales for what they are – untapped potential.

“I would reckon that this is still more welcoming than Paris’ catacombs.” She’d gone down there once, and swore to never return again.

Whether it is with bemusement or scandal, he asks, “The Paris catacombs? Unnecessary risk,” He tsks once, then twice, “Should you ever return, you shall have to take me with you, to frighten away the monsters.” She flushes at the notion. She doesn’t doubt it would be more tempting to go there with him. “What did you see down there, perchance?”

What a curious question, because she hadn’t admitted to seeing anything at all.

“A homeless man tried to steal my torch, that’s all, actually.” She admits, her breath audible in the enclosed space. “But.. the air was eerie. I could swear that I was being watched by a thousand pairs of eyes, such is the consequence of lingering in a desecrated tomb of over a million plague victims. The locals say that there is a monster that dwells beneath Paris, but I have yet to see a monster more fearsome than a man desperate for heroin.” That’s not to say that her imagination isn’t active, but she has had enough worldly experience to temper it with more realistic expectations. “He is a force to be reckoned with.” She finishes, with a touch of that sort of bitterness that comes from firsthand experience.

While long, her legs cannot keep up with his pace, so she remains behind for a moment to rest, and awe at the crudely sculpted nooks in the tunnel, where unexceptional urns and the hint of threadbare burial shrouds indicate the resting place of commoners.

“What an unpleasant fate, to be buried in a sewer.” She whispers, but this too carries in the narrow walkway. “Some cultures believe that the soul migrates upon death, as in Mazdayasna, thus the body is treated as merely a disposable vessel on the journey to heaven – discarded and left for cthonic creatures.”

“Were you raised Zoroastrian?” She jumps at his sudden proximity, glaring at the blameless urns that are tucked far into the wall.

“Sort of..” She nearly stops there, but she so rarely gets to discuss her ancestral history with someone cultured enough to comprehend. No matter how valiantly she tries, she cannot ignore the pleasant sensation of his chin, hovering just above her shoulder. “My grandfather was, converting to Islam in name only. My father was similar, and he has no.. great love for Islam, and always favored a Zartoshti framework for understanding the mysteries of our world, but he is not conventionally religious in any capacity.”

“And are you?” He asks. The coolness of his breath sends a fresh peppering of goose flesh across the bare skin of her neck.

“When it makes sense to be.” Is all she supplies, doubtlessly to his frustration.

Said values are why she refuses to snap pictures of these burials, it is beyond repugnant, and blasphemous to boot. Although she favors her father’s convoluted framework, she does believe that the body is sacrosanct, a profane temple to the good and beautiful.

Before he can pop another nosy line of interrogation, she asks, “How much longer until we find Eleutherios?”

Another detail she notices is his utter silence, for which his only competition is the dead that surround them. With the ease of a panther, he glided through the tunnel without making a single noise, compared to the occasional shuffle of her steady feet.

“Oh, he is only ahead, to our left – sinister, scandalous for the ‘pious’ Romans.” He loops a discreet arm through hers, and worst of all, she lets him.

She wonders if he has any boundaries at all, in stark contrast to her own, apparent every time she pushes him away or snipes one of his ‘innocent’ suggestions down. Annoyingly, he keeps pushing, in the most palatable way that someone could – simply by trying.

To call him ‘innocent’ would be a miscalculation, though. Sometimes, when she looks at him, she swears that she catches the indisputable glint of greed in his delectably intense stares, discomforting if she wasn’t also given to sending resolute and unbreakable stares towards anyone unlucky enough to earn them. Furthermore, the reason behind his avarice is a mystery to her, a question mark that she struggles to find a place to put.

“Left.” He announces this as though he were singing, while steering them into a wider cavern.

By touch alone, she navigates the blackness of the crypt, managing to keep her nerves in check, although she is already wanting for a cigarette.

A draft of chilly air swishes her long hair back, and she watches, amazed, as the neglected sepulcher transforms into a spacious chamber lit by the moon shining through a metal grate in the ceiling. Where before silence had permeated the long, winding passages, she hears now the occasional hum of a vehicle.

In the center of the chamber is a deep cistern filled with stagnant water, adorned on all sides by ornate Tuscan columns, overlooked by the eroded, yet splendorous likeness of Bacchus, who commands his thrysus with a possessive hand, and offers his racemus with his other, more liberal one.

Breath, and indeed even speech, escape her. Heedless to the pair of inquisitive eyes on her back, she wanders through the ritual chamber, and places two reverential hands on the columns, surveying her reflection in the still waters below, where once, wine might’ve flowed in its place.

“Like Narcissus in spring.” He appears behind her, watching her as closely as she watched herself. “Preceding the bakkheia, the toga is removed, and from the woman, her stola-

“To cleanse the soul of adornment and artifice.” She finished for him, her lips moving in tandem with her words.

Her gaze roved over his own, fixed on some point between her cheek and nose.

“Exactly so.” Surrealism thickens the air between them, and seats itself somewhere in one of the obscured corners of the chamber. If someone told her that they were the only two people on earth, she might be gladdened that it was with him she was deprived, and only afterward would she ask after the absence of everyone else. “Then a procession of music, as loud as any modern ensemble, and surpassing them all was the kithara, so enchanting that it would steal your breath away, Althea.” His sibillance is at once loving and artful, as he brings his nose, that straight and Grecian affair, to the strands of hair that hide the shell of her ear.

She says nothing, opting for silence while she ponders why he might be pursuing her thus. What draws him to her? Perhaps more importantly, what drew her to him? Under the liberating scrutiny of Bacchus, a spirit that she feels is right now admonishing her for her outstanding restraint, she desires to pry open the lips of Aro, and explore the tantalizing knowledge behind them.

The ghost of a smile creeps onto her shapely lips, yet another inheritance from her prepossessing father. They are neither thin nor full, but sharp, featuring a prominent upper lip like the curve of a bow, a mark of aristocratic ancestry.

“What followed was the ultimate surrender, a relinquishing of rank, and the total dissolution of self. Like Bacchus, the partaker, my heart, is to die and be reborn again.” Yes, but the way in which he says it is too sensual for it to be a lesson.

Involuntarily, she finds herself leaning into his touch, her eyes fluttering shut, to hide herself from his probing watch. A slow, steady drop of water, is the only music that is still heard among these sanctified walls. It drips, and drips, and fills the space with the sort of solemnity that’s unique to abandoned cultural cornerstones.

“Baptized by wine, which is water transmuted, emblematic of the transformation of the soul, its-”

“Metamorphosis.” They utter in unison, and not for the first time.

A ravishing string of ecstatic giggles leaves him, and flatters her ears, holding them captive. She cuts her eyes to his in their reflection, then to Bacchus, who offers her no advice save for a devilish smile.

“Moira.” He coos, and buries his nose deeper in her hair.

“So amusing, how the archetypes emanated through to Christ and his disciples.” She chooses not to comment on the strange occurrence, which Aro has already attributed to fate.

Reluctantly, she pulls away from him, and wanders closer to Bacchus’ shrine with renewed determination. His visage is one of eternal spring, of rabbits and blooming hyacinths, heralding the first unripe olive buds, and hanging pungent, mature laurel leaves to dry, with which he gorges the sharpest of the human senses.

Ignoring Aro for more than five seconds is impossible, however, because it seems to be his pleasure to reappear and hover behind her like the most striking shadow. Her breath hitches, a reaction she covers with a well-placed glare in his general direction, before returning her split attention to Bacchus.

The years have been kinder to him than other stone idols on the surface. He is not made of marble, such expenses couldn’t have been afforded by a furtive mystery cult. Rather, he is cut from a lighter, smoother stone, the same which was used to construct the Tuscan columns that encircle the deep cistern.

“What are you thinking?” He asks from just beside her. She can feel the unyielding touch of his arm against her shoulder, impossibly cold beneath his fine suit jacket.

For once, she answers without restraint – perhaps it’s a result of convivial Bacchus, or some other enigmatic force that she’ll consider later.

Her voice is forlorn when she responds, “How sad it must be to be forgotten like this, to be relegated to a lonely sewer for eternity.” Feeling more standoffish, she reaches into her bag for a cigarette.

In another world, the lightness and ease with which he moves and speaks could’ve been enough to light her cigarette.

“Recall what I told you, Althea, about the Greeks and their legacy. Bacchus was Greek, he doesn’t care that his shrines have been forgotten, nor even defaced! His name has survived, he is immortal, and that is all a virtuous Greek concerns himself with.” She sucks in a breath, letting the flame catch her cigarette, and immediately feeling relief wash over her.

Suddenly, she feels the desire to apologize for her surly glares, but upon glancing at him, she decides that he deserves most of them, and completely rids herself of the idea. Instead, she offers her hand, and subsequently, the cigarette it holds.

That look he gives her is one of wide-eyed dismay, he looks at her in that way a European settler might’ve looked at a native offering his foreign tobacco.

Althea bites her lip, and quirks a brow at him, “Do you want a smoke?”

A bout of disbelieving laughter leaves him then, he is looking at the cigarette like he’s never seen one before, like an invasive species of interesting insects. “Hah! I admit.. I have never done this before.”

Her only response is to shrug and take another draw, expecting him to ignore her offer, which is acceptable for her. What she doesn’t expect, is for him to grasp her hand, and steal it away from her, holding the lit cigarette between his long, pianist fingers.

Giving her the look of a giddy schoolboy – more befitting on him than even they – he sighs, and takes on an air of triviality that is not befitting of this place. “Supposing it is only natural, in this case, to see what has drawn your attention away from me. What magic does it have, to elicit your sweet lips to wrap around it.”

A deep flush suffuses her cheeks, and stubbornly, she looks away from his cunning gaze, to his graceful hands. They are less distracting, even as they move, to inevitably entice her back to watching his lips. His eyes, she is tacitly avoiding, for they are hooded, and tempt her to take from him what she wanted, but refused herself, earlier.

For someone who has never smoked before, his movements are that of a natural’s. He even inhales, and exhales slowly, sensually, just as she might in her evenings. He doesn’t cut eye contact throughout, but he couldn’t possibly maintain neutrality long enough to be brooding, evident in the gleeful smile that comes after, or the jovial, chiming laughter that escapes afterward. At what? She hasn’t the foggiest.

But she thinks she might know. A cigarette just doesn’t belong in his hands.

A second later, she joins him, laughing at the eccentric performer who’s risking it all to evoke her amusement. It is… beyond flattering.

“Like the smoke that left Vesuvius after its eruption, goaded by Vulcan or some other vengeful god.” He’s not even coughing. He should be coughing, if that’s his first time. Or, maybe he is a liar, and he’ll chainsmoke as soon as he returns home – wherever that is. “See what lengths I will go to for your affections? There are none too long.”

She rolls her eyes, retaking the cigarette while he’s distracted, and smiling behind a cloud of smoke, secure that it can keep her secret.

“Give it to Bacchus afterward, agapiti, he is longing for excitement after these millennia, like a dried riverbed, when a cloud decides to anoint another with its attention.” She sits on one of the raised slabs beneath his shrine, and nurses her cigarette, mindful of his tall body hovering behind her. Not long after, she is joined by him.

He is tactful enough to allow her a minute or two of silence, and it is more peaceful than the ones she might have had otherwise, alone. She lets herself explore the chamber from the uncomfortable, cold stone of the shrine, taking in every angle, every jagged and miscalculated stone in the sturdy walls.

When she is done with her cigarette, she does what Aro had earlier suggested. Standing up from her ‘seat’, she grasps the hard stone of Bacchus’ hand, the one that possessively grips his thrysus, and sneaks a cigarette between his middle and forefinger.

From Aro comes full, encouraging laughter, too infectious for her to resist indulging in it herself.

“My kin would be aggrieved. ‘Aro, you are a fickle and blasphemous patron’, they might say, ‘shame’, would follow! But the gods live as we do, are they not also entitled to reaping the rewards? Plebs understood this,” He holds up one expressive finger, like a lecturing professor might, if any professor wielded as much knowledge as him. “Equestrians and senators alike would stare down their aquiline noses at the jolly plebeian man who shares his porridge with Janus, ignorant that he is a god who favors change and variety of form.” His marked pronunciation of the silent ‘J’ thrills her to no end.

Such forms of worship fell out of practice with the rise of Abraham and those religions, but Althea does not mind, she is ostensibly a woman of her time.

“You are lovelier than Aphrodite herself.” Sure enough, that does get her attention, but that is likely what he wanted.

Althea knows that her quiet vanity keens in pleasure to be endowed with so lofty a position, above Aphrodite herself, even. And although he seems sincere in his various eccentric aphorisms, she is not quick to trust, and considers instead that all of his apparent ‘sincerity’ has to be a veneer, for some deficiency or other.

Upon inspection, however, she finds no such deficiency. Doubtless there are flaws, but they are not on his perfect skin, and even in the very real chance that he is flawed, she doubts that they are insufferable enough to make her turn away from him.

How quickly she has become lost in this, as if she is bewitched, or under a spell.

The slow drip of water is not enough to distract her from he and his attentive gaze. Who is he? What is he? she asks herself, but soon realizes that it doesn’t change the tumult of what she is feeling.

She lifts her chin imperiously – he sits just below her, passive and still, stiller than what is normal. In fact, he doesn’t even blink.

What happens next she blames on Bacchus, on his temptations forcing her to succumb to taking what she wants, and what she knows she probably shouldn’t. She deigns to entangle either of her hands in his long hair, combing through the curls with more purpose than the wind itself.

A low utterance escapes him, somewhere in that pleasing liminal between a sigh and a purr.

Then, she spares either of her thumbs to softly cup his sharp cheeks, at an angle now that she can determine that his beauty is not worldly. Althea rarely does anything for one reason alone. Her fingers brush along the smooth, hard skin, and she drops her other hand to lock around his jaw, and arch his head up to a better vantage.

He is acquiescent to her request, even entertaining a small smile – a clever man like him knows what she is about to do.

The silhouette of perennially fecund Bacchus, revealed by the glow of moonlight, burns into her eyelids, as she leans down to take his lips between hers, wise enough now against biting. His arms, firmer than the stone he rests upon, wind around her thighs, and pull her closer for deeper perusal.

An inevitability , she decides, but she does not know why or even how. But in that moment, she finds that she doesn’t care about those presently inconvenient questions, deciding to shove them away to a further compartment in her mind, to be elucidated later.

Chapter Text

The metallic pop of a flip lighter resounds throughout her bedroom. Beside her, Biscotto slumbers peacefully, in that careless way that all elderly felines are known for.

Althea inhales, exhales, over and over, sending rivulets of smoke out of her bedroom window, into the still air outside, where it lingers for several seconds, before traveling to some point beyond the view that the glass allows. Everything is still and silent, and yet there’s this air about her that is anything but.

Restless.

Stolen away completely by this enigma, this unresolved mystery, she has found herself in deep, riveting contemplation for the past couple days, isolating herself to her townhouse, finishing essays and finally sending in a translation to one of Lucca’s private institutions. It was enough to cover this month’s rent for Mrs. Conti, but it failed to give her the purpose that it usually did.

Because two nights ago, she had kissed Aro, and for two nights now, she has resolutely ignored him, to her immense and unquenchable longing, and to his apparent torment, a thing she’d like to say is contrived, but the state of his texts and calls tells her otherwise. It’s not out of loathing that she avoids him, but perplexity. Surely, a couple of days away from him would clear her head.

But it only furthers the proof that he is an exception to many of her orthodoxies. The proverbial pile is stacking up against her favor, an unwinnable argument – with herself. It is beyond difficult to resist answering his incessant messaging.

Eventually, she had to mute him, or else she would’ve spent all day checking, but not replying, to his messages. Right now, she’s nursing a cigarette, and one of the worst migraines she’s ever had. And..

In less than four days, her father will be here, yet another source of agony, but this one’s interspersed with brief feelings of dubious filial affection. Dubious, because he is less of her father, and more of her peer. That’s how it has always been. Any order, any duty he ever gave, had been tinged with impotency, because he was always more concerned with being her friend.

Worse still, she doubts that she’ll be able to set this aside to spend time with him. Maybe she’ll take advantage of his guilt to help her research. After all, she only has until New Year’s, and she intends to resolve this, if only so she can put her mind to rest. It’s not like she and her father don’t routinely manipulate each other.

Where to even begin?

She takes a deep, penetrating smoke before grinding her cigarette out on the windowsill, and tossing it out. One of Biscotto’s lids lazily crack open to reveal the hint of a gentle green eye, fascinated by the squeak of the aged window as she works to shut it, trapping the cold air inside with them.

That familiar tug just beneath her conscious makes itself known. Frantically, Althea sizes up the senior cat, lifting herself from the musty bay window to approach her comfortable bedside, where he lounges with enviable serenity.

Despite spending most of her life around cats, she has never been particularly fond of them as she is of dogs or horses. Her father’s wife, her stepmother, had adored them, on account of them being taahir – able to be kept indoors as household pets, while running off sweet dogs who would beg on the streets, for being najis. And despite her usual distaste for the animal, she did like Biscotto, the orange tabby that was responsible for her ability to live in the Tuscan countryside at a reasonable price.

The tabby was notable among his kind for being approachable, gentle, and undramatic. That made it doubly surprising that his reaction to Aro had been the opposite. And then, a few days before, he had been cowering in much the same way, just before she had seen something fly past her window.

For sanity’s sake, she takes out her phone, and types into her search engine, ‘why does a cat hiss and growl at nothing?’, and rolling her eyes at the connection – a snail can get across a log faster – she waits, drumming her fingers along the back of Biscotto, who purrs in response to the attention.

Now thoroughly frustrated by the inconvenience of the internet speed, she lies back onto her bedspread, splaying her hair across the sheets, stark copper against the soft, light fabric. She’s tempted to just throw it at the wall, or perhaps more wisely, to light another cigarette, to stave the comfortably familiar white-hot anger with nicotine. Finally, she inwardly exclaims, pleased that the web page finally loaded.

None of the results are very illuminating. Althea knows what would garner a jarring reaction like that in a cat, but she wants to eliminate every other unlikely, but possible, reason. Having shown no signs of cognitive decline, she eliminates that one immediately, and all that remains is fear.

He reacted to him like he would react to a predator. Had his keen senses picked up on the discrepancies? The impossibly cold skin, the unfathomably dark eyes, like ink pooling on a white piece of parchment in two vibrant dark stains. Or, perhaps his still chest, or the firmness of his flawless skin, or perhaps the inscrutable air with which he walked, like the air of a dashing Classical Greek sculpture come to life, summoned by some unknowable force.

Her phone vibrates then, and she’s once more tempted to throw it, infuriated and overjoyed by another call from him. She makes the unwise mistake of ending it early, showing him that she was indeed active.

What could it possibly be? What could he possibly be? Why did Biscotto react to him the way a diminutive cat might react to a larger feline? Cats don’t react to humans like that. Althea’s eyes shoot open, and a cold sweat begins to break over her skin. No, that is insane , she tries to argue against herself, you complete nutter.

She is, for some inexplicable reason, reminded of the biblical nephilim, immortal children of the unholy matrimony between heavenly angels and human women. Althea tries to be a slave to reason, but she has little to no control of the hunches, or their tangents, that determinedly soar through her mind and demand her attention.

The slow, steady hand that was petting Biscotto a moment ago, stills. A gentle nip on her finger causes her to resume petting him in lazy, inattentive circles.

Aro is not a human , she considers, watching the ceiling with a gaze as intense the man’s in question. Usually, if she thinks long about something, it starts to make more sense, leading her to understanding complex and convoluted frameworks in the matter of mere minutes . That is how she blew her colleagues away, every single time. But this , the longer she thinks about it, the less it makes sense, and disrupts the delicate mode of thinking with which she navigates the world.

She stares so long at the ceiling that the textures begin to roam, a side effect of her HPPD, from the days of using psychedelics. She blinks, and instead stares at the less intimidating Biscotto, who is kneading her legs with his sharp claws.

If he is not human, then what could he be? This leads her back to that shaky conclusion she’d come to the other day, that whatever the Etruscan ghost story has to do with it, it is a euphemism for something else. What’s more is she hadn’t finished that book, having only gotten to a mere half of it, and if she wanted to read it, she couldn’t avoid Volterra forever.

But, assuming he is inhuman (a distinct possibility now), she will have to go to places that she left behind as a philosophy student – to myths and fables and unbelievable stories of the supernatural.

Before Biscotto can adjust, Althea is on her feet and collecting her car keys, and positioning a cigarette between her lips for good measure. Collecting her brown cashmere cardigan, she sets out from the front door and locks it behind her. Once she’s safely in her car, she turns on its headlights, and drives down the lonely road, past Mrs. Conti’s home which is at this time hosting a small family gathering.

It’s barely six in the evening when she pulls into the quiet block of Lucca, abandoned for the holidays sending most students and their families to the Alps, where she should’ve hosted her father. Instead, he’s coming here. She takes one brooding last smoke from her cigarette, and tosses it out of the window before pulling into the library’s parking area.

Like the librarian in Volterra, Lucca’s is used to seeing her, and makes no great ceremony out of her arrival, not that Althea would respond kindly anyways. Presently, nothing would perturb her more than having her concentration disturbed by talking.

By their own accord, her feet take her to the second story, to the dreary and empty corridor filled only by middle-aged mothers searching for romance novels. A quick scan of the aisles leads her away from the terminus of activity, toward the section labeled ‘il soprannaturale’, filled with everything from Aesop, to Phaedrus, to modern paranormal investigation.

She ignores both of the fable-writers, opting instead for a book about the ‘Mythical Creatures of the Mediterranean’. Before she finds a desk, she wonders if she is going loony, pursuing a lead like this, a lead that is contingent on assuming he is not human . It suffices to say that she is insecure about her burgeoning theory , and this is exceedingly rare form for Althea, who is almost never uncertain, and when she is, it terrifies her.

The book reads like an encyclopedia, underwhelming in that way they all are, its authors listed on the front page, but it may as well be authorless. Nonetheless, she takes it under her arm, and takes advantage of the library’s internet to unload all the searches that she’s been anticipating.

Most of the results redirect her to books, the majority of which have authors whose names she doesn’t recognize. One of the web pages is in fact a PDF in Bulgarian, displaying supposedly notable books that she’s never heard of, as well as their respective links.

She clicks on one of them, an article discussing Montague Summers, a name that is actually familiar to her. Upon closer inspection, she remembers how. He had been a clergyman whose treatise on werewolves was one of the minor sources she had used, in her dissertation on Jungian psychology. In that paper, she had argued for the significance of the wolf motif in human psychology, and had asserted that the werewolf could be used as proof of this significance.

Even now, she can recall that one quote of hers, ‘For what draws two species closer than the amalgamation of both, and the acceptance of this as folklore orthodoxy? No animal is closer to man than the wolf and its descendants, and yet no creature is more savage. The myth of the werewolf is the natural conclusion to this special relationship, the wolf reminds man of his primordial savagery, and man reminds the wolf that he has a place in the civilized world. In this paper, I will explain the totemic importance of the wolf, and the psychic significance of the werewolf myth.’

But reading Montague Summers to answer a question that could very well be misguided? That could be a point of no return. Though she’d read his book on werewolves – long enough now that she can scarce remember the finer details – she wasn’t sure if she was willing to suffer through another droning book of his at this time.

The bright light of her phone screen fades, her attention caught on some distant streetlamp outside. She watches her reflection in the window, another inopportune reminder of her time with Aro.

‘Narcissus in spring’, he had cooed.

Unflattering fluorescence shook her away from that mesmerizing recollection. Was this… reasonable? It is in that uncertainty that she finds most of her insecurity. Could she have misread his strange habits, his patterns of speech? Those poetical similes he spun out of nothing, he spun with the same elegance and celerity as Arachne with her thread, but those similes had fallen out of use in the past millennia.

Like her, he could be an insufferable antiquarian, and she is sure that he is, but years of studying the Classical world has not made her speak in Homeric simile.

No , she reasserts to herself, it is utterly abnormal. And from there, she succumbs to adding Montague Summers to her shopping cart on the online bookstore, thereon adding an author writing under an obvious pseudonym, ‘S. Voicu’. While her father is visiting, she can make quick work of a couple of books, surely.

Hadn’t that Volterran local, the elderly man in the cafe, mentioned something about vampires? Even simply entertaining that tangent makes her feel like an imbecile. One of her pleasures is to extrapolate the meaning in myth – the underlying lesson beneath the parable, not this.

Her teeth had nearly broken for the hardness of his lips. There before the window she stood, searching the dimly lit street below, scraping her own teeth over her lips, finding there softness, pliability, and leaving behind a sheen of moisture as evidence of her short experiment.

For the countless time today, her phone vibrates in her pocket. This time, however, she seriously debates answering it, longing for even an iota of his company, a secretive feeling that she’ll be keeping to herself. She eyes the window, then her pocket, a sequence that becomes habitual in the following seconds, before she slides the phone out, and answers it.

“Yeah?” She answers gloomily, twirling a few strands of her hair in the absence of a cigarette.

“Althea, my heart, what’s caught your attention, and why is it not me?” She bites her lip in an effort to contain her laughter, but it bubbles up all the same. Blast it all. “And do not tell me it is the Etruscans again, a student of Greek ought to be zealous in their studies and scrupulous with their time.”

Every time he speaks, her ears are graced with the lightness of springtime, of meandering sprints through peony meadows in temperate Greece. From the other end, she can imagine how his lips caress each word with the most delighted sibilance, the subtle implication that he finds pleasure in the simple act of speaking with her, such that he could not find the same with others.

“Is your health well?” The use of Koine startles her, gaining the attention he had sought by his own earlier admission.

A few moments pass before she answers, having declined the nouns in her head, “As well as can be. I am sorry… that I have not been here. Truthfully, I have been busy.”

Conversational Koine is nothing short of difficult, but hers has become honed in the short time she has known him. Many of his texts are in Koine, a treat she can’t help but savor and hold closely, jealously, to her heart. Before, she had never guessed she would’ve been able to feasibly form sentences in Koine, as she had accepted that knowing it would have limited, literary usefulness.

“Truthfully? Not with Greek, I should hope! No, of course not, what am I saying? You are a natural.” Then, he switches back to English, and she is thankful that she doesn’t have to parse under the strain of fatigue. “Like Calliope herself, whose high office it is to assign eloquence to her favored mortals. For a pupil of only a year, it astounds that you have grasped it thus! Mytikas reduces itself to a pitiable boulder, to do you honor.” Some frantic note belies all that he is saying, she hasn’t the foggiest whether he has little time, or if… if he misses her as much as she misses him.

Whichever way it goes, he babbles onward, giving grace to that otherwise graceless habit. “Fluency aside, you do need to use the medium voice more. Barbaros struggled with it, and this, to their deepest misfortune, led them to using it sparingly. Let me hear you use it?”

What is he playing at? Is she so removed from human company that she is failing to differentiate between need and useless babbling? She has never heard him talk like this before. Among the most loquacious she knows, he is somewhere vying for the top, for a crown fit for his beautiful head. But he almost never rambles.

To her eminent bafflement, he goes on, “Do you recall the medium voice?” Althea blinks.

“Aro talked into the machine to himself, to the point of sickness and nausea.” From the other end sounds a lovely, tenor symphony of giggles.

“Sophos! Very good, agapiti. See how I must guess my use to you? Do you see now the agony I carry in my heart, just as a dolphin, fiercest of all the creatures in the sea, who dives to the sheerest depths to marvel at the fathomless sea floor, only to be spurned by the blinding ink of an octopus.. just as that dolphin returns to quench his taste, in spite of knowing what awaits him, so too do I return to you, for you to strum and play with my heart like a lyre.”

She is struck dumb by the sentiment, bewitched in that way that causes her to wonder whether he has been created with her every taste in mind.

“If it pains you so much, I should wonder why you keep doing it. The sea is pitiless, boundless, wide, and unfriendly to mankind. A man of your years-” She hesitates then, mindful of the revelation she had come to earlier. “Should know that his only weapon is to learn how to swim.”

“And whatever can you mean by a man ‘of my years’..?” Of course he seizes that, because, of course he does. He is onto her as much as she is onto him.

He wants me to distrust him, she finally accepts this as fact.

“Clearly, you are older, if I had to guess, thirty-five, or forty. Or perhaps older, if that’s the case…” She leaves that open, a habit she has nursed for most of her life. If she says nothing, then she can preemptively avoid an attack, even though Aro has proven to have a rather soft touch.

“If that’s the case?” She says nothing to that, preening her nails and keeping a careful eye on potential passerby from her peripheral. “If that’s the case, then what, agapiti?” She knows his eyes have a becoming twinkle to them right now, evoked by her ‘obfuscation’. “You confound and infuriate me.” After apparently accepting that she will keep this to herself, he asks, “What has occupied you?”

“Family.” She lies, but it is not entirely untrue. Preparing for her father’s stay has robbed her of a few precious hours that she could’ve otherwise been spending on study. “My father is coming to visit this week.” Is all she supplies.

“Really? Your ‘painfully Persian’ father? How exciting! I shall have to meet him, as surely as the rain falls on Tuscany in the winter.”

But that makes her suspicious, a feeling she doesn’t bother to hide in her contralto voice, “Why?”

“A chance to see you is fortuitous regardless of whether I have to share you. Althea, come here, come and visit me, alia anima. Do not make me go without for much longer.”

“No.” She asserts, stowing her book further into the crook of her arm. “You can come visit me instead.”

Then, she ends the call, and runs an exhausted hand over her face. Why can she not stay away from him? Why can she go years without seeing Khiz, or her parents, but barely withstand two days deprived of him?

While one hand steers her outdated car, the other broodily lifts a cigarette to her lips, over and over, in pursuit of the tranquility she’s never had before. Still she searches for it, without truly knowing what she’s searching for. Comfort and tranquility are strangers to Althea, and she’s never had a deft hand with strangers, not ever.

But those archetypes exist somewhere.

She wonders if he will really come, and she’s conflicted over whether she wants him to, or not.

Who does she need to lie to? Of course she wants him over.

As she nears the back roads, she slows down at the sight of a tractor being driven by one of the rural landowners. Its headlights glare enough to blind her, to make her look to the dry, sloping hills and mumble a curse under her breath.

Before she had left the library, she downloaded Montague Summers’ PDF, but the other, more elusive title she wanted, only came as a physical copy, to her mounting impatience. That website had wanted thirty euros for Montague Summers, and though she preferred books over mediocre, pirated PDF’s that she’d have to painstakingly open with Adobe, she had settled for it nonetheless.

After the farmer passes her, she speeds down the road, secure in the absence of law out here. That absence was reassuring to Althea, the habit of the daughter of a hippie, the habit that had bled into her own days spent slinging illicit drugs for cash.

In one of the upstairs windows of Mrs. Conti’s, she spies the outline of a grooming kitten, and the busy shadow of her landlady.

Heedless of her speed, she pulls into the desolate drive of her townhouse, lifting herself out of the car and securing her weighted bag around her shoulder and across her midsection.

Sensing a discreet pair of eyes on her, she tenses, scowling purposely over the rolling fields behind her home, searching for any indication that someone is here. Nothing answers her, save for the ceaseless song of an evening cricket, and the soft coo of a dove pair. Her footsteps, usually tactful and silent, sound like a marching beat in the lonely drive.

It is… unimaginably cold tonight, for Tuscany. Althea has experienced worse in Iran, and worse still in New England, but this is an arid, pitiless chill that makes her sniffle her nose, and sets a couple of wet tears in her eyes.

Out here, a million stars reveal themselves for her perusal, constellations that she had memorized as a child, and if she focused hard enough, could still recite as an adult. Their light bounds onto her face, turning it just a shade darker than the palest gold, and extracting all the red in her hair, until it is left with only brass.

Unbidden, she stares at a spot in the field, sensing a pair of eyes in that direction. Although her sight fails her in this lighting, or lack thereof, she somehow knows he is out there.

“Aro.” She whispers to herself, unsurprised by the sudden blur of movement that follows after.

A horizon of possibilities have extended itself into her hand, after the acceptance of inhumanity. All she needs to do now, is grasp the right one, and bend it to her liking, make it surrender to reason.

He reappears beside her, wearing his usual wardrobe of a finely-tailored dark suit, and a scarlet silken scarf around his pale neck.

He heard me, she thinks to herself, blinking up at the dark set of eyes roving over her face, her neck, her body, like it is the first time he has ever seen her. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her, perhaps he is just a stalker, and she has become less discerning in her choice of company.

“Althea.” She shivers, but is quick to blame it on the cold, a not-unfounded excuse.

Wind whips either of their long hair, but hers is longer, and unlike his, it can barely hold a curl. Khiz would say it is her ‘pure Aryan blood’, an odd thing for a Chechen to say, whose people aren’t even Indo-European. Of course, she has always indulged Khiz more than anyone else, Khiz, the broken boy from a broken home – her only friend.

“Counting calories, are we?” She snarks, folding her hands into the warm crooks of her arms.

For a short moment, the blithe question brings confusion to his fair face, but it passes like a short bout of rain on a tropical coast.

“Whyever would I need to do that?” He retorts, so gently that she wonders if the fight has left him in the span of two days.

“You walked.” A humorless scoff escapes her lips, and she turns to her townhouse, more than ready to escape the bitter cold. He too laughs at this, a sound that comes from over her shoulder, a favorite haunt of his. “Yet I see no sign of exertion on you.” Once she reaches her front door, she lands a sly, accusatory glance on him, “But the Greeks do love their gymnasium.”

“I will love it more when you join me.” Is his cryptic answer. She glances backward, before unlocking her door and letting them both in.

She hears before she sees Biscotto – a deep, fearful howl, followed by fearsome hissing, more befitting of a sound from the furthest throes of hell than a pleasant tabby cat. Despite having anticipated it, it is still jarring, enough to snap her out of the reverie that comes from occupying the same space as him, to plug her space heater, and set her bag down.

A wide and fuzzy orange tail flails back and forth, but it isn’t that kind of movement that cats do when they’re complacently satisfied. Biscotto’s eyes are wide and black, clinging to Aro in that way a gazelle stares at a lion, staggered into stillness by its daring and predatory cunning.

What had happened, in the span of three weeks, that she can barely resist this pull to him? Althea is.. disappointed, in herself. It is unfamiliar territory for her, to hesitate before saying ‘no’, and to end up saying ‘yes’ anyways.

Instead of going to him, she admires him from this safe distance, wondering what the answer is, warring with the temptation to give in to the moment. All that she can find safety in, is the intuitive knowing that he won’t harm her.

“I can see that you’re trying to turn me to stone, domina..” In spite of herself, she flushes, but doesn’t break her focus. Beside her, Biscotto cowers at the sound of his voice, the only one to find it completely charmless. Aro’s approach draws another hiss from Biscotto. To her amazement, he hisses back, reminding her of that night walk they’d had, the second time she met him.

The sibilance is one of a serpent’s – she can imagine it between the branches of the tree in paradisaical Eden. To say that it did not intimidate her, would be an understatement. But now that she knows who that sound belonged to, she can reason that it is almost as beautiful as it is terrifying. Thereby, another question of hers has been answered. He is not a human at all, but then, what could he be?

“A thousand apologies, agapiti, he had to learn his lesson.” A corner of his supple lips quirks at Biscotto, who is hiding between her legs, peering between the gaps that her stockings allow. His playful gaze returns to hers, guileless, if she squints.

A rare bout of empathy blooms in her chest for the old cat cowering behind her legs. He is amusing, but Althea is not amused.

What if she just asked him? What if ? That would amount to surrender, and she’s not about to do that. Althea is a prideful creature, and she refuses to play any game without having established the upper hand – her upper hand. She will have answers. She will. And she will find them on her own.

“Right, well, sit down.” For the time being, she ignores him (or attempts to), and tends to Biscotto, who falls limply in her arms when she collects him off of the floor. “It’s okay, don’t pay him any mind. He annoys me too.” She whispers in Italian to the cat, tossing Aro a sidelong glare that only serves to widen his smile.

Upstairs, she stows away Biscotto, leaving him with a can of tuna and a bowl of water, before checking the window and shutting the door behind her. Before she crosses the threshold once more, she eyes the window, then eyes the door, behind which, Aro is sitting in her parlor.

No aha moment has ever been so.. bitter. The epiphany of having had her townhouse broken into. That night, when Biscotto had hissed at the flash of movement by the kitchen window, it was a nearly identical reaction that he had communicated tonight. Althea had left her window open, a foolish mistake, obviously. And…

And? He was fast. How quickly had he made it from the field to her side, just a few minutes ago? Had he been here that night?

Gone was the flush from the cold, that blooming, dusky pink over her cheeks. Replacing it was a color akin to marble. Her pupils dilated, a primate reaction of fear.

A violet in the youth of primy nature, forward not permanent, sweet not lasting, the perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more. The best safety lies in fear.

At least Biscotto could have some peace, but to her he shared none.

Her bedroom door closes with a soft click, and her steps down the aged stairwell creak and moan with her every movement. She loathes not being able to keep secrets to herself. People being able to hear her, see her, or observe her, has always discomforted her more than anything else. Loathsome. She likes her privacy.

Hesitantly, she steps off of the final stair, meeting the waiting eye of Aro, who is staring a fawning hole into her. She schools her features away from the realm of accusation, it’s not a conversation she’s willing to have. She will let him think that she doesn’t know, and continue silently building a case against him.

“What was so essential, that you had to come tonight? Why couldn’t you have waited until the morning?” She snaps, although sincerely, she can’t find the stuff in herself to complain. His absence is something she feels, vividly.

“I simply couldn’t wait!” He holds a ‘guilty’ pair of hands up, and sinks further into her loveseat. It will smell like peonies and rosemary for a month, surely. Languidly, he shrugs his shoulders, as if to express ‘could you blame me?’, followed by the habitual analysis of her face, for a reaction, she supposes. “As soon as I caught onto your struggle with the medium voice, I thought to myself,” One long, pale finger taps his chin dramatically, “This is a matter that really cannot wait.”

And Althea wants so badly to shrug that off, but he’s just – he’s too funny. She supplies him with a scratchy laugh from deep in her throat, and sits beside him, less than half of an arm’s length away.

Having gotten the desired reaction, he scoots closer to her, leaning into a personal space that is normally off-limits for everyone else.

“And do you know what the crowd asked?” He plucks a few long strands of her hair off her shoulder, “They asked me, ‘Aro, where are you off to now?’ And would you like to know what I told them?” Then, he lifts the ends to his face, and brushes her hair against his lips. “I told them that I have an illustrious pupil waiting for me, that they need not even bother their unphilosophical heads trying to understand her. ‘She is a brilliant student of Greek, of philosophy’, their Philistine minds simply can’t comprehend. Italians, the lot of them.”

Althea bites her lip, only to find him mimicking the motion. The sensuality of it almost makes her forget that he broke into her home. Almost. She should be asking why he did that, but she is far more concerned with the how’s.

Warmth pools in her chest, right at the seat of her heart, before making that long journey down her spine, and settling around her loins, where it remains. Her jaw tightens, she wants him. And how couldn’t she? He is lavishing her with his time, entertaining her against her will, deprecating himself just to see the hint of a laugh.

A knowing smirk tugs at his lips, a tight bow carved out of the reddest wood.

“Your hair smells like darchin.” It is the first time she’s ever heard him utter a Persian word. “Bane of Alexandros, you would have been. He so loved Persian women. I would be like to murder him for you, Althea, despoil his corpse and take his honored spear, so that you might see that the deed has been done. Your hand would have been mine.” Her lips part to reveal a slow, doubtful smile. “No one is better at killing Macedonians than me.”

That’s it. She can’t help but laugh at the eccentric boast, and is joined a moment later by a crazed bout of melodious giggles. She grasps his hand between her fingers, and lets her curtain bangs hide her humor.

“I tell you that it is an acquired taste!” His hand lifts to gently hold her chin. She lets her eyes wander up to his, in better humor than she can recall him being, and that is a miracle. In between his piping laughter, he tells her then, his nose nearly touching her own. “Gouge out their eyes,” For effect, he widens his own, eliciting another breathless snicker from her, “The most malign of punishments for a vain Macedonian. Gouge out their eyes, and they can no longer see the crowd when they are praised! Hah! Certainly they might still waddle about, searching aimlessly for yet another crowd, they can never overlook a chance to be a spectacle, their hubris is boundless.”

“Beforehand, you must shave his wife’s monobrow, to deepen the blow. More’s the pity,” She shrugs, drawing from Aro more song-like laughter. The adoration in his eyes speaks plainly for itself, they focus on the spot between her own brows.

“That may be going too far, my heart. Shaving a monobrow is no small misdeed.” He drops her chin, only to let his cool fingers roam her jaw, until they pause between her brows. “How often must you shave your own?”

Ah, he catches that too, she is almost caught unprepared for the offhanded question. If she were in another time, and in another place, she might let her monobrow grow. Of all of her siblings, she is the only one to have inherited the classical monobrow from her father’s family. In the West, it is considered atrocious and ugly, but in Classical antiquity, it was considered a staple of feminine beauty, especially among Greeks and Persians. She had written an essay once on the redeemable beauty of the monobrow, a thing she used to be ashamed of whenever she would return to her mother after summer hols.

Entranced by the sweeping motion of his fingers as she is, she takes a long few moments before she answers him.

“Every two days.” She says, covering her hand with his, and pushing it away from her face.

“I find them.. arresting.” He purrs. And she can’t discern whether this opinion is contrarian or genuine. Finally, he relents to her will, and lets his hand fall reluctantly to his side, like even gravity itself hesitates to keep them apart. “And yours can take me as a prisoner anytime it pleases.”

“Really?” She snarks, disentangling herself from his invasive touch, a habit of his that becomes only more endearing. “Et servum graecum mihi servio volo.” Really, she should stop there, but given the way he’s watching her, and the openness of his expression, she simply can’t resist dangling this in front of him. “Servus graecus meus, puto se voluturus osculare.”

Unlike those awkward middle years in her adolescence, she speaks Latin with a natural cadence these days, like it were a second language of hers, and she supposes that it is. Although in recent years she has distanced herself from Rome, its language will forever hold a unique place in her heart, a chest of its own that she keeps away from other disparaging antiquarians who sneer at it.

It is then her turn to shift the game in her favor, where she is reassuringly in control of it. She lets her hand wander his shoulder, and entangle itself in the thick, lustrous black curls that never fail to take her attention hostage. He is too beautiful to be real, fitting every standard she has ever had.

Moira , he had said, but she doesn’t know if she is willing to attribute everything to fate. Destiny is another force attested to by her, and much more frequently.

For once he is patient, though she can see that he prefers movement to stillness. He is practically vibrating with the need to return her touch, an urge that is only evident in the frantic searching of her face, the parting of his delectable lips. And when she swats away his entitled hand for the second time, he offers her a chastised grin.

“When I first saw your hair, I thought that I should check some Cretan amphorae.” His brow quirks. She pulls on one curl, watching its length undulate and stretch, then spring upwards. “Because surely, one of those idols’ hair had to have been stolen, to have imbued your hair thus. So beautiful.”

“But a sad facsimile next to your own.” Then she tugs the curl roughly, in response to the flagellant self-deprecation. He acquiesces, his head shifting to the side with her hand, a sparkle of mirth dancing in his unfathomably dark eyes. “Like darling Aphrodite, the sea would have given birth to you, and all beautiful things within joined together to color your hair.” He switches away from Greek then, and back to English, “When the sun was setting, the gods took its amber reflection, just as we might desire to reach for a mirror, and then, wove it into your hair, arranging other gems and precious metals like gold and bronze, in a particular order, that only I can follow.”

Her heart soars with contentment for the lofty praise, conflicting with her innate desire to distrust, to push away and hide. But she can’t find the heart to deny him, he has dampened the power of that remarkable ability of hers.

But she refuses to say it outright, that she is just as beholden to him as he apparently is to her. Just in case he is a good actor, she will remain silent on the matter, and amuse herself by making him guess.

“And by whom have you been given this power?” She asks slowly, letting her lips languish and caress the Greek inflections. Unblinkingly, Aro follows the movements, more attentive than a sinner in mass trying to mimic the rehearsals of other, more scrupulous churchgoers.

“You will know soon, Althea.”

As taken by him as she is, she does not forget that it is likely he who broke into her townhouse. And yet, this takes a backseat when she reminds herself, he has never hurt me , and further, he will never hurt me . Like many other things, it is unclear to her how she knows, but nonetheless, she does.

Chapter Text

A few weeks ago from now, she had sat and waited in the same spacious parking area for Khizir, the only constant element she’s ever known, in an otherwise inconstant life.

Now it is even colder, and the wind is so fierce that she is forced to blow warm air into her balled fists, and rub them together for comforting friction. The question of why she is showing so much dedication has occurred to her several times, many of them in the course of the past twenty minutes she has spent waiting for the arrival of her father.

Years have gone by since she last saw him. Althea would like to say that they have been the most peaceful she has known, when finally she could assert herself as an adult, and draw a line between herself and her parents, forever. But their absence necessitates yet another demon of hers, to rise and fill the vacuum that’s accustomed to being full.

In their absence, loneliness, true loneliness, has taken their place, and while Althea can spend more time alone than anyone she knows, she is not infallible. Nowadays, more than three days spent alone causes her to question her sanity. It doesn’t aid her case that Aro spoils her with his time, one of those things of his that he gives too freely, such that she can’t help that her alarm is raised. Several times, she’s been right on that precipice of asking him what he does in his ‘spare’ time, if he even makes those distinctions.

Another ten minutes pass without any sign of her father. She rolls her eyes, and an inner voice that sounds suspiciously like her mother’s is telling her, ‘he’s probably flirting with every woman inside’. Ironic, that she had only criticisms of him, and he had only pleasantries for her. That would be implying he is a pleasant person, and outwardly he is, but privately, he is intensely cynical and judgmental of other people.

When she was an adolescent, she had felt special to hear his private thoughts on everyone else, the ones he kept to himself. Her mother would say, with a dismissive wave of her hand, that they are ‘so alike’, so talented at ‘making other people feel like they’re part of an exclusive clique’. She always hesitated before making comparisons between them, but because she had not one tactful bone in her body, this hesitancy never lasted for very long before she let it slip.

She passes her time smoking a cigarette, and observing the families reuniting with their estranged loved ones. Among themselves they exchange tight hugs and convivial laughter that reminds her of her own miserable family gatherings. If she was younger, she would’ve been eminently embittered by this open display, on behalf of her own deficits. Settling into adulthood has allowed her to rejoice for those people rather than rebuke them.

The depth of that pain is unsurpassed even by the aggressive roots of the an invasive willow tree.

Taking a long, soothing drag from her cigarette, she returns to surveying the families rushing to quell the cold inside of their cars. Althea wishes much the same, but she has always had a high tolerance for pain and discomfort, and by extension, the cold.

A flash of long, coppery hair in her peripheral steals her attention away from the cars, and to the long, busy street, where she sees him making his way over to her. Her breath catches in her throat, a vestige of the childlike wonder she always had for her father.

Around her neck is the only scarf she has in her wardrobe, the one he had given to her two Christmases ago. The black silk obscures her neck and the lower, flushed half of her face, a sanctuary within which she finds the tiniest bit of comfort. For a long few moments, she can pretend that she doesn’t see him, he, the only person in the world who understands her, who has a powerful way of making her feel bare and conspicuous.

Still he is a lurch, dwarfing every man that he passes, gaining the attention of every woman in his way, thereafter gracing them with the smile that enticed stoic Romans into following strange Persians into deep, underground caverns and observing their hosticus god Mithras.

Age has only become him. Like his father – her grandfather – he is still slender and willowy in his fifties, a privilege few men his age ever have. His neck is as long as it is golden, like a pale crane who drank from one of Midas’ cursed rivers. Long lashes sweep over two high cheekbones, fastidiously dusting any imperfection away, save for the deep circles beneath his eyes, an inevitability of their shared heritage.

Even from here she can feel him watching her. She’d rather be on the receiving end of Aro’s stare, for he is expressive enough to make her feel ‘safe’. Both her father and herself are too quiet and ambiguous for there to be trust between them.

Behind him he pulls two suitcases, and on his shoulder an expensive bag that would’ve been swiped in Rome.

It is like she blinks, and suddenly he is there in front of her.

“My daughter.” He exclaims in his low voice, the soothing one that used to lull her to sleep as a child. So, he really is here, and boarding with her. “How beautiful you have become, growing into your own skin.”

Up close, she can see the silver that peppers his hair, and the long beard he’s been growing in her years away.

She speaks in their shared language, it lends a musical quality to those who don’t otherwise have it. “And you don’t seem to have aged at all. Care to give your secrets, or will you keep those to yourself too?” She straightens her back at his approach, correctly assuming what he would want to do.

A long and sinuous pair of arms wraps around her and pulls her into a warm enclave of finery and perfume. Rich myrrh wafts through her nose, followed by amber and jasmine and some unnameable oriental musk that she associates with her father. Getting hugs from her father has always been an awkward affair, given his immense height, but as a child, she recalled how safe it made her feel to have him hunched over her like a tower shield, and the betrayal afterward when she realized that she wasn’t safe.

Fine gold jewelry jingles in her ears, it too smells of myrrh. Gold is forbidden to men, but her father never cared.

“But last time you visited, my hair was still as pristine as yours.” Of course. She doesn’t need to look, to feel the curious stares of onlookers. He tousles her hair and smooths it down between his long fingers.

Though he easily could have held her there, he instead lets her withdraw. His power is more esoteric than that.

Her father presses a chaste kiss to her lips, a filial gesture she’s not experienced in years, long enough that it gives her a vulnerable pause, wherein she assesses him with the same quiet fervor as he assesses her.

“Your cheeks are cold,” He says, touching either of them with the back of his hand, “We should get out of this, darling, we can talk in the car.”

Most would rush to do his bidding – he tends to have that effect on people. It could’ve been out of spite or practicality that she bent to collect his things, dragging them behind her to stow in the backseat of her car, which she’d cleared of misfit books yesterday.

Behind her, his voice disturbs her from the systematic task she’s busying herself with, a rush to outdo him so that she can take credit for doing the bulk of the labor. Tallying points away from his habitual self-flagellation is an art form, and as good of a distraction as any to take her mind off of the conflict she’s entertaining.

“You did not have to do that.” When she turns, he’s looking down his thin, hooked nose, a gesture of his that’s easy to misinterpret as disappointment, but he’s far too subtle for that. No, it’s his height that lends him these little privileges.

Althea offers him an equivocal shrug, and closes the back door. “Right. As you’re getting older, it’s probably wise to get used to it.”

Does she want him here? No, not really. She’d prefer meeting him somewhere, across the Alps perhaps, if she had to meet him at all.

But he too has an eclectic sense of humor, and they share a bout of subdued laughter over the veiled insult. He can’t garner guilt to be used at his pleasure if she does everything for him, and especially not when she takes shots at him before he can turn the gun to himself.

He lingers behind her for a long moment, probably wanting to say something, but too wise to express it without something between them. From her driver’s seat, she watches his long legs stride around her car, taking in the finicky wardrobe that he wears – finely-tailored dress pants, and a long ornate tunic, colored a dark emerald with ornate gray stitching along the sleeves and hem. That color, a close relative to English ivy, has always complimented their hair.

Tense doesn’t even begin to describe what overhangs them in the car, it’s the last thing she needs right now, but Althea has learned not to complain about things she doesn’t intend on fixing. Even still it is refreshing to see someone dress with taste, her exposure to young students in Lucca and their atrocious Postmodern fashion has made her question living in the West.

Will she ever get to write that thesis? Will she make it there, to that finis that she’s worked for, to the neglect of everything else?

She connects her phone to the aux, and turns on a neutral ambient playlist for her nerves, which are completely shot. Last night, she had barely slept, and when she did, it was broken and restless, plagued by abhorrent nightmares, the likes of which she hasn’t had in months, not since first moving into her townhouse.

In her dream, she had stood between a priest and a mobed, blindfolded but mobile. In that way dreams often are, when the dreamer simply knows without experiencing, she knew what was taking place. Some unknown force was plaguing their nameless village, to which both the priest and the mobed, despite the latter’s reverence for its sanctity, agreed that fire was their only weapon. She had tried to caution the mobed against that heresy, but when she opened her mouth, she found herself voiceless and impotent. When her blindfold was lifted, she was met with the sight of either holy men lying dead at her feet, greeted by an Etruscan, another one of those innate knowings unique to the dream state.

While the dream was tame in comparison to others that she’s had before, it had shaken her enough that by the time four o’clock had chimed, she gave up on sleeping entirely, and loaded Montague Summers’ PDF, reading it until it was Biscotto’s feeding time at seven.

“How are your studies?” Her father asks beside her. It is a surreal feeling, to be sitting next to him in an enclosed space after all these years. Suffocating and comforting in equal measure, as all cathartic things are.

Sunlight bleeds through her windshield, but it’s a cold, wintry light that’s a far-flung toss from the warmth she prefers.

“Oh, those?” She scoffs under her breath, a faint smile ghosting over her lips. “This semester’s over.” She neglects to mention that she’s unsure if she’ll continue the next semester. “These days, I occupy myself with Greek.”

“Can I bother you for a cigarette?” Without taking her eyes off of the road, she pulls two out, and offers him one. If they weren’t universally banned by airlines, she would’ve teased him for bumming off his daughter, it’s something he’d never live down. “So, Greek?” He inquires, surrounded by a cloud of thick tobacco smoke. “Does this have anything to do with that Greek boy you mentioned?”

Greek boy. It’s so absurd and patronizing that she can’t stifle the scoff that arises as a natural consequence.

The question is so magisterial that she almost refuses to answer it, but he would find creative ways to insert it until he got what he wanted. And, well, despite her innate distrust of him, he is wise.

Impatiently, he scratches his neck, and eyes her from his periphery.

“He is not a boy, father.” She tells him, the cigarette smoke thickening her contralto. “And, besides, I was studying Koine Greek before I met him. Unarguably, I gained fluency months ago.”

He nods at that, but it is a dangerous gesture of his – it means that he is withholding his opinion out of a desire to gain social favor. Only when that proverbial house of cards is built, will he wash it away and reveal what he is truly thinking. That is why she has always equated him with cult leaders, who are skilled at drawing people in with honeyed words, and only revealing their intentions when they have subsumed entirely into the collective, powerless and obligated.

It isn’t an evil thing. It’s just who he is, and although she could’ve gone her entire life without seeing him again, a significant part of her will always love him.

Having always had a keen sense for tension, he drops it, but he will bring it up later, naturally. She is just glad he’s disinterested in talking small, something he knows not to do with her.

“Your twice great-uncle could read Greek-”

“Behzaad?” She cuts in, quirking her brow at the snippet of information of the uncle she had only ever heard about.

“Just the same- am I using that correctly?” She shrugs equivocally, and he takes another draw from his cigarette. “That is the life of a father whose daughter is smarter than him. Oh well – just the same. Behzaad could read Greek, yes, and Pahlavi. I myself have began to learn it, though as you probably know, Persian is a conservative language, and has changed very little. I might even.. suggest, that it is not a hard thing to learn at all.”

“I have heard otherwise.” She employs that same indulgent tone that she might’ve used for Khiz, but this time, she is interested in hearing her father’s insight on the language. After all, it is he who passed on this interest to her.

“That is because you have been spoiled by phonetic languages for too long. Abjads are rather primitive in comparison.”

Faced once more with the rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside, she can breathe easier, outside of the stifling traffic of businessmen, families, and tourists. But with the way he’s smoking that cigarette, like a fiend who hasn’t smoked in a day, her eyes will begin watering soon, and that vanilla perfume she applies to her pulse points will die a quick death beneath the penetrating smell of tobacco.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? Going from a highly complex analytical language like English, to a rather primitive language like Greek or Middle Persian is more complicated. A linguist I knew once explained to me that in some ways, Classical Greek is simpler, and in others, it’s more difficult. I’ve found that both the ease and the difficulty is in how simple its rules are – it lends it this kind of abstract quality that modern languages don’t have, and in many contexts, you’re simply left to interpretation.” Like those words that had been in Volterra’s lexicon, untranslatable according to the bulk of resources she’d checked since.

Althea loathes how easy it is for him to say the right things. He has a sixth sense about learning which buttons to push to get his desired outcome, without even needing to poke around. She admires it from afar, that quiet social craft of his, but it rarely ever works on her, and he knows this.

She takes a contemplative draw from her cigarette, and blows it away from either of them.

Tuscany is lifeless in the winter – neither tropical nor particularly wintry, it decays into a lifeless, hollow facsimile of itself. It attempts to be as rainy as England, but England is made for that stuff. England is most beautiful when it’s gray and monotonous, as it was made to be.

Its fields are as barren as a tundra, but there’s no snow to give it that sort of appeal. It reminds her of an unfinished painting, like its artist forgot to add some integral detail.

“Can Pahlavi and Greek be compared? I suppose so,” He shrugs easily, rolling down the stubborn window to toss his spent cigarette. “Both of them were undiluted by Arab mongrels.”

A thoughtful tongue pokes out to wet her lips, “All of them were touched by Semites, you know. Phoenician colonies in the West, and Elamites and Babylonians marrying into the Persian aristocracy.”

But he waves this away, and softly retorts, “There is a difference between the Semite and the Arab dog, aziz-am. I have nothing but respect for the prestige of Syrians and Levantines, it is the Arab who has no noble heritage, whose language is a mongrel of every other Semitic’s, and you know that it is foul and ugly.” The gentle sound of ambient is a droll contrast to the vitriol of his rhetoric, “I thank God everyday that you don’t have a drop of Arab blood in you.”

“That’s quite devout of you, to supplicate on behalf of my ethnicity.” But even still, she smiles at the image. “You know, I have always wondered why sometimes, I felt an arcane charge trickling down my spine in the mornings.” He laughs, a deep and hearty sound. “No, I have no great love of their language either, it’s ghastly, and it reminds me of someone who needs to clear their throat. It’s like every Arab has postnasal drip.”

“I will not be able to see it any other way from now.”

For the next hour, they talk about everything from Arabs to Iran’s tyrannical regime, all of which are acceptable subjects in the often awkward atmosphere of an enclosed car. It is painfully natural, a subversion of her every expectation, something she couldn’t have foreseen, not after years of going without seeing him.

It isn’t until they find themselves on the long and desolate road outside Lucca, that a familiar silence falls between them, a delicate thing that neither wish to break. Comfortable silences are fragile.

Playing on the radio is the talk show she often listens to, and it’s the program that’s almost solely responsible for her fluency. In excellent time – a week, in fact – she had learned the Lucchese dialect. The bulk of her time in the car is spent listening to the two women discussing affairs from local to national, for the sake of her fluency.

The spindly, evergreen cypress trees lend the long gray road a splash of verdancy, but unlike the ones closer to the city, these have no festivities decorating them. It’s a depressing drive, even when she’s not alone.

And by the time she pulls into her long drive, both of them are yawning, she suspects it’s out of boredom for him, but for her? It is bone-deep exhaustion, the kind she had when she first started school a few years ago. Summers is not an easy read, and the clergyman has been occupying her mind, and like Aro, he gets to do it rent-free.

“So this is where you’ve been staying?” Comes her father’s voice beside her.

Obviously, she wants to snap, but she’s too tired to put up much of a fight.

Compared to the opulence of his villa, this is better likened to a flimsy shack. And while it is flimsy, she does rather like it – its kitschy wallpaper and antiquated layout has grown on her in the past few months. However, its most redeeming quality is that her landlady lets her smoke inside, and rarely ever checks to see if she’s obeying the window rule.

“Yeah.” She whispers, more to herself than him.

She’s always wanted her own place, and had pondered saving up enough money to buy this land, but she already determined that it would cost more to invest in fixing it than it was worth. Once, she had elaborate plans on how to improve and update it, but her work, her schooling, and.. Aro, had interrupted this determination to make it more beautiful.

Pulling the key from its ignition leaves them suspended in the darkness of a winter’s late afternoon.

She drags a neutral and unreadable eye over him, and asks, “Why have you come here?” With him, she doesn’t have to put up any tactful pretense.

He eyes her with the same neutrality and answers, “Because I wanted to see you.” She glares, and slams the car door behind her, only now struggling with the realness of his being here.

Faint meows cry from her kitchen, where Biscotto nests and waits for another can of his favorite tuna. Holiday lights burn into the back of her fatigued eyelids, and she stomps across the parlor to occupy herself with the space heater, having left her father to fend for himself – a poor choice, because she’ll have to contend with him anyways.

Where an hour ago she was shocked and ameliorated by his conversation, she is now faced with the reality of hosting him, of spending hours of her day by his side, a prospect she once would’ve prayed for as a child. Now, she can admit that she has better things to do than be reminded that he exists.

Ignoring reality is something of a hobby of hers. Her childhood had been spent in a miasma of hopeful dreams and ambitions, and when she would lay on an empty mattress at a decrepit hostel in places like Denver, it was the only thing she had to look forward to. But getting kicked out of those dreams – learning that, after all, she is not parentless – is a waking nightmare. It’s a highly developed equal to that same dread she felt whenever she would wake up to one of her mother’s roommates smoking weed beside her, after a long night of dreaming of a world away from that world, drenching her hair in the foul, acrid smell of weed smoke, only for her school teachers to inspect her for intoxication.

At some time or other, her every dream is shattered by the actuality of things.

The warm air of the heater blows through her hair, sending it flying around her shoulders. Even that pleasant sensation is quickly interrupted by her father closing the door behind him, heaving the weighted sigh of the burdened.

Althea turns a vindictive glare onto him, lifting her hooked nose and sending a sneer, a fixture that has always oddly suited her.

“Do not look at me that way, Althea, do not look at me like I am not your father.” Her eyes narrow at him, then to the suitcases taking up space in her diminutive parlor. “But I suppose I do deserve it, I have not been a good father to you.”

Her jaw ticks at the way he easily skirts around the proverbial elephant in the room by blaming everything on himself, thereby granting him this veneer of regret.

“Do you regret that?” She already knows the answer, she knows it’s a resounding ‘yes’, and that’s more than what her mother would give.

His pale golden hand reaches upward to stroke his beard, and all the while, he inches closer to her, fixing her with the indecisive look of an architect when he debates whether he should demolish or renovate a dilapidated building.

“How could I not? Each time I try to contact you, and you ignore it, I am reminded of my sins as a father!” Anger forces his tongue away from cold and clinical English, to the musical cadence of Persian. He points one convicted finger to his chest, and exclaims, “Do ignore me, Althea, for the rest of your life if you would like, but I will not ignore you.”

The hot air blowing onto her cooks the pale skin of her hand, turning it flush and dry, but she doesn’t care a whit.

“I cannot fucking believe you are here. After all this time, you have decided to.. what? Reconcile with me? Repent for your sins?” She bares her teeth, the stewing exhaustion and frustration boiling over into a stream of fury. “Have you ever wondered whether it’s too late for that? Years ago, I would’ve cried in joy, to know that my father was finally acknowledging me to the rest of his family by visiting his daughter, his only daughter, at her home.” Tears brim at her lids, threatening to spill over like a sea rushing past a levy. “Now, all I can do is look at you, and think about what an idiot I was.”

A fluffy orange tail whips her legs, two paws dig into the sheer fabric of her stockings, both careless and ignorant of the conflict happening above him. If only her life was so simple that a can of tuna could solve her every unresolved problem.

Pain dances across his handsome face, starting with the twinge of his dark brows, and settling on the shaky bow of his shapely lips. She had wanted to cover her own hurt by shoving it onto him, but it just doesn’t help.

It doesn’t stop her from trying to drive the knife in deeper, “Whenever other children asked about my father, I was so proud to tell them about you, it didn’t matter that they couldn’t even point to Iran on a map. I thought I had a father to be proud of – but what a ridiculous notion, to be proud of a family that you did not choose.”

Telling Khizir that her father’s given name was Dariush , like the great Achaemenid King of Kings , had been a source of illustrious pride for a young and dreamy Althea.

One cross brow arches at his touch, a soft brush on the point of her elbow that is like the blade of a guillotine, swinging down over her and bewitching her brimming tears into finally falling down her cheeks and leaving long, permeating tracks in their stead. She does not want to be touched, but she does .

He reminds her of the utter powerlessness of her youth. Childhood should be a fond thing to remember, and its powerlessness should be a quaint reminder of few responsibilities, of letting adults choose instead.

“I am sorry.” It is simple, and watery enough, that she at least can assume it is sincere. “I can’t take back those years, aziz-am, I know that.” And then, when he pulls her into the warm net of his chest, she lets herself sob as she has wanted to do for weeks now. “But let me be here now, let me know you again before you justly push me away.”

Three days. Can she survive it?

Althea can’t help but think that this is more for him than it is for her.

Chapter Text

Throughout the shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both .

Although she is in no position to be the arbiter, and say what can or cannot be real – that is the province of the creator, after all – it has always been customary for her to judge what can or cannot exist in accordance with logical frameworks. A student of philosophy has to know to what extent their judgment can effect reality.

A long time ago, she had concluded that reality simply cannot be changed by thought alone, it exists in its own unalterable continuum, and although the esoteric and supramundane leave doors open for the philosopher to muse over, the fundamentals, such as the earth, the sky, and the force that both binds and separates them, can be thought about, but not changed.

In other words, why such forces exist can be questioned, but their forms can’t.

That the earth is nourished by the sun, for instance, begets an unchanging sequence of logic. All things rely on one or another, and are essentially in an ongoing dialogue – even the meek prey animal, the gazelle, relies upon its predators to cull its population for less competitive food sources. Thereon, gazelle fawns get diseases and perish, the disease spreads itself for its own benefit, and the gazelle population’s gene pool is corrected by nature allowing only the robust to survive.

On and on it goes, until the most enigmatic motifs are brought into question, that being the sun, and its distant cousin, the moon. Mystery cults and primitive Sumerian priest-kings alike have tried to fathom the unfathomable, to erase the mark that denotes a question, and consider it answered, shoving the insecurity away by practicing compulsive rituals to cleanse themselves from the stain of unanswered questions.

What benefit does the sun get from its dutiful nourishment? Worship, perhaps. Perhaps that is why the sun is the god of every faith, even those that deny solar worship as peasant superstition. Christ is a solar entity, just as Ahuramazda was, and Zeus, and Mithras.

But, vampires? Is that… even possible?

Instead, she should ask if it’s possible that her admirer exists. Is his beauty possible? Is the inflexibility of his skin possible? Is the mythical luster of his hair, as black as sin and just as decadent, possible? That he can hiss and posture like a rabid animal, that he can hear more keenly than any of them.. if that is possible, then surely..

She folds her head between her arms, stretching over the kitchen table, and wiping at her tired eyes. Reza – Dariush – her father, had offered to sleep on the love seat, but both of them knew that his long legs would dangle uncomfortably over the sides, and sleep would be, if not impossible, then elusive.

So it had been with supreme hesitancy, and no small amount of resentment, that she had offered her bed to him, and had subsequently turned in early. Above her head, in her bedroom upstairs, he is still sleeping, giving her a couple more hours of peace until sunrise. She hopes that he still follows a predictable morning routine and lets her brood in the solace of her own company.

Last night, she had only managed five hours of meager, uncomfortable sleep on the love seat, but nevertheless, she was grateful for that small mercy. A long record of rubbish sleep on bare mattresses has taught her to not fuss over slightly more convenient alternatives.

The coffeemaker noisily brews on her dingy counter, drawing the fickle attention of Biscotto, who’s learned to associate this sound with feeding time. But it’s too early for that. Behind the curtains, the skyline is still dark and jealously leaves no room for the gentle warmth that often pours through its sheer white fabric.

Althea lights another dreary cigarette, and checks the time to find that it’s thirty past four in the morning, and sends a text to Aro, who is always awake, regardless of the hour.

Of course, because, of course, he has already sent a slew of early texts, and she wonders if her earlier hypothesis was actually correct, that he has annoyed everyone to the extent that he has no one else to bounce ideas off of. At one in the morning, he had sent a gallery of various Art Noveau pieces, including one of her favorites, Robert Auer’s The Allegory of Medical Science.

The other day, she had mentioned it as her favorite, and apparently, he either had the same taste, or he had remembered.

In response, she sends a few Neo-Assyrian reliefs that she has saved in one of her albums. His text bubble is immediate, but she wastes no time waiting for it, and soon returns to her efficient scanning of Summers’ book, wondering when Voicu’s would arrive, as its bookstore had offered her no tracking number.

Summers mentions neither beauty nor incomparable strength in his criteria, but so far, the only lead she has is the mythical ‘vampire’, mentioned by Volterran residents themselves.

Her phone screen lights up with another text, and she snickers quietly to herself at what it is – a relief of Persian Medes symbolically dethroning the Assyrians of Nineveh.

‘Greeks should stay out of this. They wouldn’t understand the nuances of the Siege at Nineveh’, she texts, followed by, ‘Only we can hate each other. Go hate Italians or Turks or something’. Really, his hatred of the Assyrians is strange, to put it lightly. Indeed she can’t fathom the virulence of his hatred for that bygone Iron Age civilization, it makes no sense to her, and she is used to things making sense.

‘Everyone is at liberty to condemn the detestable Assyrians. Even over 2600 years later! Come Althea, it has always been fashionable!’

How distracting he is. She could sit and pass the time with him all day, and she suspects they’d never run out of things to talk about. And that is the crux of the problem, the thing that doesn’t make sense, and those things discomfort her.

Before taking her coffee from the slow brew, she sets two eggs to boil on the tiny stove. Her kitchen had floor space for only two people, and only on a day it was feeling particularly generous.

A couple of minutes pass until she’s satisfied with the temperature of the stove. The stove itself is an ancient gas stove that is desperately in need of being repaired, but her landlady knows nothing about that, waving away these things by mentioning, with pitiable nostalgia, how her husband was handier than she could ever be. If Althea had remembered to mention it, she knew Khiz could’ve fixed it. As it were, however, she can only twist the knob, and pray that today will not be the day of a gas explosion.

Lighting a candle with her flip lighter, she hopes to purge the atrocious smell of boiled egg, and avoid flicking the light switch over her cramped table.

She blows the billowing steam of her coffee away, but it washes over her even still, bathing her skin in a thick sheen of lukewarm moisture.

When she was a girl, her favorite time was the late hours of the night, but with age came certain responsibilities that kept her away from enjoying them, and so now, her favorite time of day is the early morning, in that short, ephemeral hour between total darkness and sunrise, wherein most people are too cozy to be awake, too lost in sleep to disturb her with their boorish stomping and chattering.

That’s one of the more redeeming qualities of her father. He, unlike many people, who are locked away in their own self-centered bubble, is mindful of how he might disturb people, not only in the cerebral, but in the mundane too. Despite his long legs and sheer size, he’s quiet, and stealthy enough, to sneak around a hushed and silent home in the small hours.

With a preemptive wince, Althea takes a slow, careful sip of her steaming coffee, which she takes as black and cheerless as a desolate winter night. It leaves a pleasant aftertaste behind, nicely drying her throat for the next cigarette she lights.

Using the paltry candlelight, she returns to her marked page, taking a steady drink of coffee every few seconds. Every few paragraphs, Summers will write a column of text in French, which she translates first with her Latin fluency, rendering fifty-percent of it legible, then translating the rest using her app.

As has been remarked, ancient traditions still persevere, and among these customs not the least obstinate is the Vendetta. A man who has been murdered is unable to rest in his grave until he has been avenged. Accordingly he issues forth as a vampire, thirsting for the blood of his enemy.

Then, Summers continues onward to elaborate on the Choephoroi – the story of Orestes, a tragedy familiar to Althea – and compare Orestes’ unquenchable vengeance for his father, as a prototypical vampire myth.

Henceforth are fanciful stories only tangentially connected to the vampire myth she’s more familiar with. He makes references to the Sumerian wandering spirit, the muttaliku, and the Assyrian utukku. The latter, however, he describes as having been a benevolent, necromantic spirit, who heeded the request of Gilgamesh to raise his friend, Enkidu, from the dead.

The ekimmu, Summers explains, is a restless soul who wanders the earth, preying upon lost and vulnerable humans, lurking especially in dank or poorly-lit locales. However, she notes that the ekimmu is likely meant to be a parable for the obligations that living relatives have to their ancestors, as in the Assyrian afterlife, ancestor spirits will starve and scorn their families for the dust they have to eat to sustain themselves, if the proper offerings of bread and beer are not given.

Mention of Assyrian cthonic lore gives her pause to wonder why their name has been thrown about so liberally, by Aro, and by Summers. In the span of a month, she has heard or seen them mentioned more than she has in her collective five years of study. Granted, she had nursed a vested interest in Mesopotamia as a girl, and that passion had followed her into adulthood in a more subdued reverence, but she can’t help but think that this civilization is also important for the question. Why does Aro sincerely hate them so much, in contrast to his irreverent, but satirical banter against Italians, Turks, and Ilyrians? Maybe it is for inconsequential reasons – the same reason her father scorns the Arab, a thing that she can dubiously attribute to blood memory.

She shuts the laptop and turns her focus toward the boiling eggs on the stove, removing them for a deep bowl of ice water.

Above her, the soft patter of footsteps alerts her to him. She dashes her cigarette against the ceramic ashtray on her counter, and decides that she’s in a more forgiving humor this morning, compared to the more choleric tendencies that usually define her. Perhaps it’s from accepting that, in fact, he is here, and there’s nothing she can do about it.

She hugs her arms to her chest to chase away the cold draft from the cracked window, and flutters her eyes shut, listening closely to the fluid sound of her father’s stride down the rickety staircase. A strong gust of wind rushes through the kitchen, pulling with it her long and coppery hair, leaving it to fall aimlessly across her shoulders and down her back. She shivers, and slams the window shut.

“Good morning.” He rasps from a low and guttural point in his throat. “God willing, it is not cold like this all the time?”

Oh, that. There’s a draft in every single room, and she’s suspicious that the insulation is so outdated that there are chunks of asbestos still lying around the innards of the ceilings. But she can’t complain too much this morning, as she’d gotten to lie beside the space heater all night.

Smug, Althea surveys him huddling deeper into his night robe, and rubbing his sizable hands together to create warming friction. Blowing smoke out of her nose, she snuffs the cigarette out, and turns fully to her father, who’s leaning against the counter and eyeing her so closely that her delicate shoulders nearly startle.

“Buongiorno.” She raises her second cup of coffee to him in greeting – they had spoken very little since their short but gruesome spat last night, an inevitability of their long estrangement. She still hasn’t decided whether his visit is inopportune, or just unexpected due to such short notice. “I’m afraid so. This place is so old-”

“The cockroaches must be holding hands.” She laughs at the dry shrug of his shoulders, noting his relief at her amusement. “Was your sleep okay?” He asks, skirting past her to pour himself a cup of coffee, which he eyes with no small amount of disdain, preferring tea, but too diplomatic to complain about it.

This kitchen is too fucking small for this, she muses, while peeling the shells off their eggs, filling the space with the putrid odor of boiled eggs, hoping that the candle will neutralize it.

“Well enough.” But then, she realizes how rude she’s coming across, and returns the favor, “Yours?”

“That feline of yours likes to sleep on this one spot above my head, he woke me up three our four times by flicking his tail across my nose. Every time, I woke up sneezing.” Over the brim of his cup, she feels his attentive glance on her hands. “Do you need any help with that?” He offers, but she shakes her head, mussing her long curtain bangs. “Mm. I thought we might go to Pisa today, to visit a few museums like we used to.”

Right, because she was the only child of his that displayed any of his shared interest in the past. One summer – she thinks it was her thirteenth – he took her, and his completely uninterested son, Arvand (whom she doesn’t consider her brother at all), to Baku’s fire temple in Azerbaijan. The entire time, Arvand was disrespecting the ancient site of countless Zartoshti pilgrims, and tugging at her skirt to get a rise out of her. They hadn’t been close enough for her to disregard it as familial banter.

“We can, you really can’t come to Tuscany without seeing the gipsoteca gallery in Pisa.” Filling her plate with a boiled egg and a hunk of buttered bread, she says, “They’ve a sculpture of Apollo that you simply can’t miss.”

“Roman Apollo or Greek Apollo?”

Althea chews her bread thoughtfully, and finally answers him with the confidence of an experienced student of both cultures. “Roman, or else he wouldn’t be half as immaculate as he is, though his arms have seen better days.”

“I always trust your judgment on these matters.” She wants to roll her eyes and huff in that petulant way that only a child can get away with. “The nuances of Greeks and Romans escape me.”

Pensively, she nods. “That’s exactly what the populus romanus sought when they coveted Hellenic motifs and prestige. No doubt, Sulla said something similar when he raided Athens and plundered its precious art.” And Americans behave similarly in regards to the English. “I have been in Italy long enough to convey to you the subtle differences between Hellenic and Italic styles. Italians tended to portray themselves as older and beardless, while Greeks generally desired the opposite. Beauty was prioritized by the Greeks, but, for the rugged Italians, a veneer of wisdom and age – two forms that only the rare few possessed – was emphasized. Of course, Hadrian liked to fashion himself in the style of the Greeks, from there it gets more complicated.”

“Such as how the Arabs emulated Persian art after their conquest.” He wonders aloud, stroking his full beard, and like so many men his age, it serves to make him look more dignified. “The conqueror expends all his life force on war that there is rarely any left for culture.”

“True.” She nods her ascent, “But I wonder if it isn’t the expenditure of his culture that drove him to conquest. Uninspired men externalize the dregs of their creative force when it no longer produces things of beauty and value.”

“Perhaps.” But she knows that he disagrees with that take, but he is too concerned with keeping harmony that he refuses to argue. “Theft is always a symptom of surrender, the kind of surrender that the Romans.. acted on, when they used Greek instead of Latin. Fitting, that the Greek surrenders to Roman law, and the Roman surrenders to Greek culture.”

“Yes, it is a rather brilliant stroke of poetry.” She sets her dish in the sink.

“The will of God does have that power that poets envy.” The corners of her lips twinge with some bittersweet emotion, the kind that a traveler acquires when they watch their fatherland ebb and fade on the sunlit horizon, for the voyage on an open and fathomless sea.

History and language were but two creature comforts of her learned father, but theology, both Pre-Islamic and Islamic, were his passion. The former he learned both from his own father, and from studying in Western institutions in his young adulthood. That had marked the beginning of the shaky and often tumultuous love affair he had with the West, a phenomenon that had produced her, and shaped the entirety of her young life.

On a slightly better note than she’d left him with last night, she turns away from the kitchen, and takes a brisk, lukewarm shower in her bathroom, which she’s tediously labored to keep clean, despite every force being against her. Mold flourished in the upper reaches of the tub, and each time she fumigated it, it would determinedly return within a fortnight, like the gift that keeps on giving.

Upon exiting the shower, she wraps her long hair into a thick and fragrant towel, and applies powder to the pale golden skin of her cheeks. Thanks to the man taking up space in her kitchen, she has been endowed with a set of long, thick lashes that make mascara pointless. For her quiet vanity, it’s nothing short of a blessing.

She makes that loud trek up the stairwell, and grabs a pair of sheer black stockings and a matching sweater dress, and once that’s out of the way, she efficiently dries her hair with the round brush, letting the longest strands of her hair swoop upward at the ends, and causing her long bangs to swoosh opposite of either side of her sharp jaw.

Pleased, she returns to the parlor to find her phone buzzing with activity. Her father is eyeing it , and her, in that punitive way only a father can manage.

Biscotto is lounging smugly against him, kneading into the silk of his ornate night robe. One pale, bejeweled hand strokes the orange fur of his head. It couldn’t be farther from the terrorized reaction to Aro, which she now suspects to be an instinctual response to his otherness , a quality she’s only just managing to grapple with, now that she’s hosting her own father.

They stare at each other. He, from the love seat, and she, from the foot of the stairwell. Her eyes rake over the phone, and back to him – she hasn’t the foggiest why this feels inappropriate. Maybe it’s because Dariush has always preoccupied himself with knowing every tiny iota of information about her, and usually remembers them, to whatever end that she doesn’t trust.

“Are you going to answer that?” His question makes her feel like a prat. She doesn’t want to answer Aro while her father is snooping. He arches one dark brow, so passive-aggressive that she swears that she might clench her teeth into fine dust.

Impatiently, he taps his foot on the floor, and gently pushes Biscotto aside to stretch his legs out and rise from the plush seat. She cranes her neck to look up at him, but his features are so impressively schooled as to be unreadable. She loathes it when people try to pry into her things, her private life, which she jealously guards with the same fervor as a dragon with its hoard.

Only when she hears the squeaky sound of her shower faucet turning , does she check her phone and return his call. Within two rings, he answers.

“Althea!” He sings her name like Orpheus sang of his nymph.

Water strikes the floor of her bathtub, an audible permission for her to safely talk.

“Khaire.” She responds, absentmindedly stroking Biscotto’s fur.

“Khaire,” He lovingly caresses the last syllable with the tongue of a natural. “Agapiti. Every second you spend away from me is like the death knell of my joy, just as when a blossoming spring meadow, languishing in the warm sun on a temperate April morning, knows its finality has come when boys adjourn to pluck its treasures, beholden to their puellae. Will you also leave me as barren and lonesome as a spring meadow next to a den of young lovers?”

A nascent smile, waiting to be encouraged by him, slowly spreads across her face, setting a wondrous dazzle to her dark eyes.

“That depends on how pleasing I find your desolation.” He supplies her with the musical laughter of the self-deprecating. “Thus far I’ve found that hope lies in the truly barren things, within which there is always a promise of growth, but in the filled things, there is always a threat of emptiness.”

“Sophos. What then would you make of two empty things entwining around the other, to be full forever?” She flushes under his talent for flustering her even from a great distance.

Or, what she assumes to be a great distance. For all she knew, he could be out in the field behind she and Mrs. Conti’s homes, watching her silhouette pace her parlor from behind the kitchen curtain.

Althea wets her lips, “I have never heard of such a thing. Even water, contained in an aqueduct, loses its taste from sitting in a cavern for a hundred years.”

“Yes! But it remains full, doesn’t it, my heart? Of course, it has to be treated on occasion, but it never loses its shape, nor its form, nor its fullness.” She can hear the smile on his supple lips. “You remind me of water. Like the deepest ocean, I am simultaneously transfixed and confounded by you! I long to dive and explore the depths of you, Althea, and your mind, I have never seen a profundity quite like it.”

The silence that follows such a revelation predictably allots him yet more openings, but she’s quickly finding herself not minding it, even excited to hear him chatter on, allowing her precious time to think and evaluate.

“Like precious anemone, at the farthest reaches of the seafloor, unfurling their venomous limbs to ensnare their prey.. so too have you ensnared me.” As an afterthought he adds, “But unlike those poor captive fish, I don’t want to be released!”

From behind her chest, her heart thrums with longing. He is so… flippant and jocund , blessed with a child ish intensity that she wants . How had she gone from suspecting him of being a n incorrigible flatterer, to implicitly desiring him? It had happened so quickly, and yet, she couldn’t identify one single thing that had led to this attachment to him.

“I think I will spend an eternity imprisoned, like pitiful Chronos.” He says, as light and captivating as the rays of the morning sun pouring in through a window.

“If you behave, I may come visit you in your cell.”

“Do they allow conjugal visits in hell?” She bites her lip to stifle a bout of sultry laughter. “Probably not. Ah, well, seeing you should be enough. On that matter – Althea, I must see you!”

Whoosh. Her shower turns off, signaling the death of her privacy.

“I have to go.” She ends the call, and throws her phone onto the love seat, eminently regretful, and once more itching with the desire to see him.

“It looks warmer than it actually is.” Her father proclaims, shutting the car door behind him.

In fact, it does. If it weren’t for the bare deciduous trees lining the cobbled streets in their respective plots, or the chill flushing her cheeks, she could be persuaded that it was spring.

Just before she’d driven to the approximate of gipsoteca museum, she’d stopped at a filling station for her father, who refused to smoke yet another cigarette of his daughter’s. Fifty euros or more were exchanged for a couple of packs of a luxurious Turkish blend, the kind that Althea prefers, but can never afford on her budget, stretched as thin as sinew over bone.

Few things ever drove her to Pisa, especially in the warmer months, when the ancient city was thrumming with tourist traffic and incessant flashes of their phone cameras, found on nearly every stretch of weathered road. Even still, it was a charming city, its towers and chapels were well-kept, and like Lucca, it had a rugged Tuscan charm that hearkened to mind the image of Etruscan tribes convening at the Fanum Voltumnae to choose a representative of their confederation. She imagines that they had pretended to be civilized, like their spiritual successors – the Romans, practicing the novel customs of their Hellenic neighbors.

As eye-catching a man as her father was, on the streets of fair Pisa, the pair became no stranger to female attention. Every woman, with few exception, could not help but look at the striking figure that Dariush Haveshti cut with his impossibly tall, willowy body, draped in a rich, earthy sweater made of a cashmere and mohair blend. It drew attention to the slenderness of his stomach and the ease with which he moved his wiry arms, something she’s sure he’s pleased with.

He looks so old these days, but it becomes him better than youth ever did.

“So tell me about Aro.” He starts from beside her, taking her by surprise, which is doubtlessly what he wanted.

It’s useless to ask how he knew his name. He’d seen it on her phone screen this morning while she was showering and dressing.

“What is there to say? He’s a Greek I met here-” Stepping out of the path of a group of tourists brings her, to her deepest misfortune, closer to him.

“And you like him. What sort of man is he? He does not sound Greek to me, his namesake is certainly not part of their traditional schemes.” Now that does give her pause. It’s something she’d looked into quite early on – his mysterious, monosyllabic name, which she’s sure is an alias, or otherwise short for something else.

“I thought you said that the nuances of the Greeks was lost on you.” She argues, searching for some sort of exit scheme.

“What is his family name?” Ah, there it is. With the exception being the perennial love of his life – her mother – family names were important to him, whose own name brought to mind the prestige of the old world, before Western imperialism.

Regardless, it’s a question that Althea can’t answer, because she doesn’t know. He had claimed that he had none, a right impossibility for a modern. But…

Was he even a modern? Althea isn’t sure anymore. In spite of her pilfering through Summers’ thesis on vampirism, she can’t imagine that the concept of human-like creatures subsisting on blood is a sound one, but it’s all she has to go on, and every lead is unsound until it produces something valuable.

“I don’t know.” She answers truthfully, her brows knitting together thoughtfully, baffled by the simple question of her father’s that had no answer.

In front of the gallery, they linger for a few minutes, either of them instinctively reaching to light a cigarette. Their hair transforms into the same vibrant, kaleidoscopic color under the sunlight, although she notes a few silver strands in his.

“So, you don’t know the name of your theoretically Greek boyfriend?” If anyone else had said that, it would’ve immediately raised her defenses, but.. he seems genuinely concerned about it. Before she can school her manners, she shakes her head, and takes a preliminary inhale of her cigarette, watching the end glow in response. “That is very strange, Althea, I won’t lie to you. Are you sure that his intentions are honest?”

Is she sure that his intentions are honest? Funny, that he says that very thing, while visiting his daughter under the pursuit of unspoken, ulterior motives. Like her, he rarely ever does anything for one reason. But he is right, you know , she thinks to herself, it is strange and unprecedented . Questioning the sincerity of Aro is like questioning which shade of blue that the sky is, understanding only that it is blue. All she can be sure of is the intensity of his affections, and trust that they are ‘honest’.

“I believe so.” She responds, without truly believing it. Although, she doesn’t know if she disbelieves it.

Conclusively, she just doesn’t know, and that terrifies her like nothing else.

“I would very much like to meet this Aro. Who was that other boy you were with? The French one? Your mother told me about him, but we never spoke long about it.”

“Baptiste.” She supplies, now supremely uncomfortable upon mentioning the name. On occasion, she still gets calls from the bastard, begging her to come back and live with him in London.

Naturally, he senses her discomfort, and offers something more discreet. “I would like to have known these men, but you never introduced any of them to me.” She cuts her eyes at him, but he holds them, confident in his innocence to the extreme. “What is Aro like?”

“Aro..” She begins, trying to adopt an intonation that wouldn’t expose her abject infatuation with the man. “Supposing it suffices to say, that he is like no one I have ever known. He has a superior mastery of language, the likes of which neither of us have ever seen. Of his surname I haven’t the slightest, but he has been good to me.” Unlike Baptiste, but she fails to mention him again.

She also fails to mention their talks about the virtuous ethics of murder, or his assertions of murdering other men for her approval, fashioning himself as a Classical hero vying for the hand of Helen. No, she couldn’t mention these things, especially not the eccentric and violent humor he takes on when he jokes about gouging out the eyes of brash Macedonians, or pulling out the entrails of live Thracians for haruspicy, all with the dubious punch-line being ‘for her heart’.

All of which had served only to ingratiate him further into her good graces.

“I see.” He takes a smooth inhale from his cigarette, and snuffs it out on the pavement before tossing it in the bin. “He must be a truly unique specimen to have captured you, Althea. You have never made it easy.”

Out of rare concern for his feelings, she decides to say nothing to that, since there is no right answer. At least, unlike Delilah, she is reassured that he does carry some guilt, fully aware of his ‘sins as a father’, as he’d said, but guilt is rarely enough for repentance. Among the Catholics, forgiveness is offered only to those who supplicate and beg for it – acknowledging the sin should always be followed by reforming the habits that led to sin to begin with.

Habit bids her to grind out her cigarette also, which she does, but only reluctantly. Regardless of where she goes, she feels like an insect on a petri dish, constantly being inspected for faults or intrigue, and being around her father is no exception.

Brightly-lit chandeliers hang from the expansive ceiling, their lights stringing low, dangling dangerously close just above her father’s head. Decorating the walls of the entry are originals and replicas, primarily of Italy’s bohemian period, works of Segantini, Borrani, and Signorini. Pastoral scenes of rolling Tuscan valleys, of women swaddling their babies, and brawny men herding their sheep, all of which evoke some inexplicably warm emotion in Althea, who has always wanted a piece of those simple joys for herself.

While she is lost in thought, staring into the quaint work of Segantini with the same fervor as a resolute mountain climber to a jagged cliff, her father slips away, an absence she doesn’t notice until his blurry outline reappears from her periphery.

He offers her a ticket, which she takes and stows away in her leather bag. If he wants to pay for everything, who is she to complain? He has more than enough money to throw away, and still have money left for a shiny gold rubbish bin.

Few of the gallery’s sculptures are originals, rather they’re casts intended for study of the human form in art. However, some of them do display the unmistakable luster of prestigious and immodus marble.

The first that they pause to admire is one of the several commissioned busts of Antinous, the comely boy-love of Hadrian, who had him immortalized in the preeminent form of Bacchus, fitted with the springs eternal garland of grapevines atop his head, above a come-hither smile.

“You must tell me who this is.” He points a scrutinizing finger at the bust.

Althea smiles, and regales the tragic romance of the Roman emperor, “It is Antinous, the lover of Hadrian. So in love with him as he was, upon the boy’s death, he commissioned a thousand busts – according to the accounts.” Once, like her father, she would’ve been scandalized by affairs between men, but studying the ancients has taught her otherwise, that love takes an indistinct form.

But Dariush is not an Islamist, and although he carries the same distaste that many conservative men and women have towards these things, he has spent enough time with bohemians (like her mother) in his youth to hold his tongue, and the deep bow of his head is emblematic of this tactful respect, something she wishes she didn’t admire half as much as she does.

It is hard to hate him, and pretend he doesn’t exist, when he is here next to her, smartly engaging the disciplines she’s devoted her life to.

A cast of Cicero’s bust inspires from her a quiet bout of laughter, reminded of those years in her girlhood of reading, parsing, and translating his Catilinian court cases into English.

“Now I do know who this one is.” He grins, stroking his full beard in front of the beardless and pudgy Cicero. “This must be that ridiculous senator.. Cicero?”

They erupt in laughter, it almost makes Althea forget who she is laughing with.

“My thoughts exact!” Cicero is like an old friend of hers, someone whose inner world she was deeply intimate with, enough so that she was comfortable discussing him in the same vein as someone with whom she regularly had tea. “How do you even know Cicero?”

He gives her an incredulous look and scoffs, “I am old, Althea, and I have been studying antiquity since before you were born. True, I am not fluent in Latin like you, but I read his treatises in my university years – in French, I should add.” Right, she had forgotten his fluency in that language. “The personalities of these men could never be replicated, though I do often wonder if.. they are only exceptional because they are all that has survived.”

“Ah, but a true antiquarian would never question the greatness of the ancients.” She says, turning away from Cicero to another bust. What she said is in that same species of bait that Aro uses to garner some kind of personal admission or defensiveness.

“Then.. I guess that I am not a true antiquarian.”

How wildly the tension grows and steadies between them, taking a backseat at random. No one in her life is capable of eliciting such emotional flux in her with quite the same finesse as him.

They pass a few busts of statesmen and generals that she can’t give names to, there are Renaissance and Rococo pieces too, which they stop to admire and postulate upon the identities of, given that some of them are without their respective plaques entirely.

An unremarkable bust – at first glance – beckons her forth. It is a jovial man with a sharp jaw and a straight, prominent Grecian nose. Dusting his incomplete shoulders is a head of disorganized curls, colorless but shining with the cold, inflexible hint of marble. An original then , she remarks to herself. Underneath him there is no plaque, for all the world he is nameless, but she thinks she knows his name. The face is captivating even in stone, but she believes that his skin is more impenetrable, more flawless than the unnicked stone itself.

It is him. She knows, because she has recognized his miraculously beautiful features and saved them to her incredibly fallible memory, into a tiny compartment where nothing can be forgotten. Careful of the curators haunting the foyers, she runs her fingers lightly across the expanse of marble, stroking the cool skin of his high cheekbones, and dragging her fingertips down the indention between his nose and lips, recalling what that stretch of skin felt like under her own ministrations.

Althea knows something then, something fundamental. He is ageless, as ageless as the pristine marble he was captured from, both in life and in still. It’s not easy to digest, indeed it still makes no sense to her, but she will sort that out later. It’s common for her to know what before she knows how.

Like a phantom, an Etruscan phantom , she thinks to herself wryly, her golden skin pales to the lightest shade that its drop of gold allows. She forces down a heavy but non-existent lump down her throat. Her pupils dilate, turning her eyes nearly as black as Aro’s, but not quite that dark.

The click of heels snaps her out of her daze, forcing her hand to drop from the bust. A faint residue clings to her fingers, coating them like a glove. She takes her phone out to snap a picture of the bust, and hurriedly stows it back in her bag.

She can feel her father’s presence approaching from behind her, he had been taken with a cast of the first Julio-Claudian emperor’s sister, Octavia. He brushes a hand through her hair, a familiar gesture of his, but she can’t chase away the image of Aro , not even when her father steers her away, toward the cast of Apollo Belvedere.

All she can think of, is how dull Apollo stands in comparison to Aro. Beside her, Dariush is commenting on the obscure symbolism of Apollo, inquiring about his footwear, which the plaque mentions as a tell of his maker’s Roman heritage. Althea answers him, but inside of her mind, she is trying to solve an insurmountable riddle, and she can’t shake the belief that she just found a principal fragment of its answer, from within the otherwise innocuous gallery in Pisa.

It is an Etruscan city , she tries to argue, but it doesn’t matter that it’s an Etruscan city. She concludes, in near total confidence, that this isn’t about the Etruscans, or the Assyrians.

At thirty ‘til one in the afternoon, they left the gallery hunching over their consolatory cigarettes. Althea had nearly forgotten how much her father could smoke, and upon remembering, reasoned that he could even put Khiz to shame. Khiz, who’d smoked three packs of cigarettes in one single day during their stay in Turkey.

She recalls how he’d coughed up black tar for almost a week after they left, and that had been the last time she’d seen him before a few weeks ago.

“I never got to see Pisa when I toured Italy.” Her father rasps from around a cigarette. His hair rests lazily around his shoulders, tousled by the bitter wind. “It was during the summer before my last year of university in Zurich when I came here. That was the summer I met Delilah, and we.. went everywhere on the coast of the Tyrrhenean Sea, but we never visited this place. A charming locale, to be sure.”

How he could remember it was anyone’s guess – he had also been taken with psychedelics, almost as much as he was with her mother.

They find themselves in a nook, blessedly free of tourists and locals, who gather together in packs across the cobbled street. Leaning on the aged, faded stone of a small restaurant, Althea smokes her cigarette in silence, content to think to herself, and wonder about that bust she’d seen in the gallery an hour ago. Slightly damper was her adoration of Apollo, whose beauty had captivated her for the span of a few minutes, but it hadn’t lasted as long as it normally would.

Their elbows brush against each other’s in the cramped, almost-comfortable ‘seat’.

“Father, do you-” Then, she seems to lose her voice.

“You can ask me anything, Althea.” She glances up at him, only to find him watching her expectantly.

“Do you.. believe in the supernatural?” She asks, her mind utterly consumed by it.

He stretches his long neck and pops his shoulders, his long lashes fluttering as he closes his eyes and seems to debate how to answer her loaded question. It’s too vague, she knows that. And she also knows that he doesn’t know about her inner conflict, and therefore couldn’t possibly know how important his answer might be. In spite of their embittered history, she does still respect his remarkable insight on these matters.

As a studied theologian in a variety of different faiths, this would’ve been something he had some knowledge of, and if he didn’t, he’d have references, regardless of how reliable they could feasibly be.

“By supernatural, you mean spirits, God..” He trails off, and clears his throat before continuing, “Enshrining our world is a league of spirits, which the Christian and Zartoshti name ‘angels’ or ‘demons’, while the pagans named them ‘gods’, but a scientist would name them the forces of gravity, or the pleasurable hormones we release when we see the ones we love, to name a few. In every worldly affair they intervene, there is no thing untouched by the workings of God, and no evil untouched by the trappings of the devil.” Naturally he switches to his father language, to speak about matters that require detail and accuracy. “Is that what you meant, Althea? I know you are not a Muslim, but I know you have always believed in God in your own way.”

She follows suit in their language, earning the attention of an Italian passerby as she does so, “Actually that is not what I meant. ” His brow twinges at tha t. “ What about.. oh, how do you say it in Farsi, I forgot.. that creature that drinks blood – vampire. Do you believe in the existence of this sphere of the supernatural?”

Apparently surprised by the line of questioning, he blinks, in that way a professor might when he’s expecting an extremely elaborate question, but is asked a dumb or simple one.

“Not at all.” But he doesn’t scoff or deride her, and just takes another inhale from his fine cigarette. “If such a creature existed, it would be deduced by theologians. If not known or seen or experienced, then it would be logically deduced as a manifestation of devilry.. and it has been, but only in folklore and peasant superstition.” Then, he seems to decide against leaving it there. “You know, I saw that you were reading Montague Summers, who I never read, only heard of from a Catholic friend in university. Are you doing some research for a paper?”

No, but that does make more sense than the actual reason, so she nods her head noncommittally. He points a long finger in her direction, employing his lecturing talent, pursing his lips and taking on this sharpness in his dark eyes.

“Montague Summers is a fool, and most Catholics would tell you the same. His research on oral history is highly regarded, but..” He shrugs his shoulders indecisively, “His conclusions are laughable. But I will be the first to admit that I have never personally read him, so your insight might be greater.”

“What, then, do you think would be the special circumstances within which they could, theoretically, exist?” She wets her lips, and takes a long swig of her bottled water, tossing her cigarette to the side.

On this question, Althea herself has trouble answering. It would have to be logically consistent with the laws of the universe.

“Assuming that God’s will is overt, and not subtle, that devilry and evil spirits await us in the dark corners of terrible places rather than guiding our hand in the name of wickedness, then vampires are certainly possible. But Althea, this is not how the universe works.”

Then in what universe would Aro be possible?

That’s when she drops the subject entirely, after realizing that he wouldn’t entertain the possibility even a little bit, as set in his ideas as he was.

“Are you hungry?” She asks, sure that her stomach will growl at any moment now.

“Starved. Do you believe in vampires?” She looks away, but manages a disbelieving scoff and a shake of her head. He nods, too confident in his own lecture to detect her lie. “Let the simple believe in these things. Also, where’s the closest market? I need wrapping paper for your presents.”

Chapter Text

On the eve of her father’s last day in Italy, and three days before Christmas, they decided to wrap their presents and place them under her modest tree, which took up nearly half of her parlor’s small floor space. Even still, she couldn’t complain over the oddly quaint turn of events that came from her father’s spontaneous visit.

Granted, she still did not know why he was here, and adamantly refused to believe he was only here to see his daughter. That’s just not how his mind worked, that complex thing that was too convoluted and hidden for even those closest to him to understand, to the ire of almost everyone in his life, including and especially her mother.

Earlier this morning, swaddled in a squat, tweed coat, Mrs. Conti and her son, Pietro, had visited her townhouse, bearing two decadent desserts with them, and wishing them a good holiday before they left to stay with their family in Bologna. But Althea did not miss the starved look of Mrs. Conti, eyeing her father with that fervent scandal of a hopeless gossip, leading her to believe that her landlady, like her father, had come for more than just a friendly visit.

Oh well, Mrs. Conti is leagues behind her father in cunning and secrecy, and Althea finds her landlady’s nosiness endearing, rather than intrusive. She has always been fair to Althea and respectful of her solitary nature, which Althea attributes to her son’s disability, leading him to live a simple life in the quiet of his mother’s home. Both mother and son had come in at her invitation, either of them doting on the elderly Biscotto, while Mrs. Conti had nosily spoken with her father, asking him questions about his profession and residence. At the mention of Iran, Pietro had shared all the trivia he knew of about their isolated fatherland, which Dariush had indulgently considered.

Just a couple hours before, as the sun was setting in the cold, wintry sky, a package had arrived with her name on it, eliciting a subdued revel from Althea, who’s already given up on Montague Summers. The zealous clergyman had made her question her lead with his histrionic conclusions, so she’d stowed him away, along with the other scrap heaps of books she considered ‘worthless’.

Carrying a tray of tea and biscuits – the ones that Pietro had baked – she allowed herself once more to think of Aro, whose absence she feels more poignantly than ever. She knows how strange this is, how strange it is to have fond feelings for her stalker – her inhuman stalker. Last night she had stared at his bust for what had felt like ages , trying to reason how it had gotten to that gallery in Pisa, and who could’ve possibly worked it.

Soft, instrumental festive music sounds on the bluetooth speaker in her parlor, bringing a small, barely noticeable quirk to her lips. This might turn out to be the only true family holiday she’s had, a fitting conclusion to that broken, angsty girl who pined for her negligent father during the December she spent with her wild and uncoordinated bohemian mother in whichever incense-filled hostel they were staying.

Her presents were seven in count, all jealously straddling the little circular mat underneath her tree. On short notice, she had purchased a small gift for him, too, something he certainly didn’t need – more perfume for his extravagant collection back home.

She sets their tea tray down on the low vintage table in front of her love seat, watching him take his and dissolve a sugar cube, a small luxury of his home. Althea was fond of the compressed sugar, which was hard to find in the West for a reasonable price.

Before he takes a sip, he offers her a smile that could almost be called genial, but he soon returns to the distance that she’s so used to from him.

“Will you tell me now why you’re here?” She asks, stirring her own sugar cube into the steaming, spiced tea, observing the way the crystals dissolve and disperse at the bottom of the teacup.

Languidly, he stretches his sinuous legs out, before crossing them at the ankles and nervously adjusting his silken robe to wrap closer around his chest, obscuring the night shirt underneath. His fingers twitch, which she takes as a sign that he would prefer a cigarette for this revealing conversation. She is immediately suspicious, and takes a seat at the foot of the tree so she can keep a close eye on him.

“..Principally because I wanted to see you, and I mean that, aziz-am. That I have been a poor father to you is without.. question, and that is one of the most evil sins in the eyes of God, even worse when we don’t seek forgiveness for it.” And? she wants to say, but he is being surprisingly honest tonight. “Farah and I are divorcing.”

Althea blinks, dumbfounded and speechless at the weighted declaration, unsure of what to say. For the sake of his sons – filthy little bastards though they are – she doesn’t overtly applaud that wise decision, but instead juggles it around in her mind like a deranged acrobat.

“Why..?” But inside she’s already fitting the pieces together, and reasoning that this trip might’ve been a vacation away from the overbearing harpy that was his wife. What he saw in her was anyone’s guess, but Althea knows that it was a convenient marriage arranged by their fathers.

And despite her approval, she remains neutral about the silent admission, which she knows is sitting uncomfortably in the air between them, that this visit was a twist of the proverbial knife, meant to invoke jealousy in Farah, but Althea scorns her enough that she only finds this slightly amusing. As it were, she wouldn’t bat an eye if that evil harpy choked on her own spit and was left for the crows on an antiquated Tower of Silence. In fact, she thinks that would be a poetical end for her father’s wife, to be given the blasphemous funeral rite of the ‘kafir’.

Apparently debating whether he should speak plainly, he takes another slow sip of his tea, and finally answers, “In my older age, I have become less tolerant of even.. the smallest pains, so the bigger ones?” He shrugs his shoulders then, and makes a dismissive, sweeping notion with his hand, “They must go. Now that Arvand and Ramin are adults, I no longer care to labor to maintain the image of happiness between she and I. I’m sending both of them to university anyways, and that will make this easier on all of us.” She grinds her teeth, wondering why he could never have shown the same concern with her as he did for them, and it takes every ounce of her will not to say what she wants to, because all that she could’ve said has already been said.

“The divorce will be finalized by February, I am told, just in time for Nowruz, which I will invite you to come and celebrate. You’ve not come for it since you were a teenager.” She glances away, to stare at her less persuasive presents. “Do consider it, Althea. Your aunt will be there, the one you always liked.”

“Anahita? How’s she doing these days?” She asks, hoping to deflect the invitation.

“I will tell her you asked, she will be happy to know..” Idly, she stirs her tea, and sifts through the undisolved sugar at the bottom, bringing it to her mouth. “Anahita has come very far from the last time you saw her. She has busied herself with gardening, she is trying to grow a small indoor saffron garden – she believes that they keep the djinn at bay, so in that regard, not much has changed, but it has been good for her.”

“Well, saffron is an antidepressant, pharmacologically speaking,” Althea shrugs, “So she does have a point, using saffron might actually help her with the delusions.”

“You have always been good to her, Althea. I know that she would love to see you again, but it is up to you.” That is his power – suggestion, making other people think it is their idea, thereby removing him as a guilty party. “But in the meantime, let us do this Christian tradition of gift-giving, hm? Few of their traditions are as gracious.”

Swallowing her biscuit, and the last dregs of her spiced tea, she nods, and starts removing the presents from their respective places. She takes his, the gift she hurriedly threw in a bag, and sets it on the table in front of him, which he inspects cautiously before lifting into his lap and carefully untying the strings of.

The perfume bottle, a rather expensive line of Egyptian musk, gets removed from its bag, and held aloft in his large hand.

“I know this brand.” He smiles, scenting the musk from the bottle with the same finesse as an actual perfumer. “Musk and.. a note of clementines. Very smart of you, aziz-am, and I do think that lying at the bottom of the scent is a low note of frankincense? Oh, yes, that one can’t be missed.” She offers him a deep bow of her head.

Just as he gestures toward her presents with his head, a firm but low knock sounds on her front door. The color swiftly drains from her cheeks, as if excised by some invisible priest. It’s him. She knows, because he’s been badgering her all day, not that it bothers her as much as it once did. Just a couple of weeks ago, she remarks.

Frozen in place, like the rigidity of marble, she stares, transfixed by some distant point far, far away from her parlor. He knocks once more, leading her to realize that it truly is him. His attention, while chaotic and disorganized as the delectable curls on his head, is obsessive.

“Are you going to get that?” Her father questions from the love seat, drawing her attention away from whatever it was that she was looking at.

Swallowing yet another lump down her throat, she finally glances at her father, panicked at the thought of these two meeting. She likes to keep her people separate from one another, systematically keeping them confined in atomized little corners so that she can keep her private life private.

Before she can answer with a resounding ‘no’, Dariush is already climbing off of the love seat, leaving behind his gifted perfume on the cushion beside him. These social obligations he takes very seriously, like it is his occupation, in the place of the career he never had a need for with his inherited wealth.

He pulls his night robe tighter around him to stave off the chill that comes with opening the door at night, and straightens to his full, impressive height, twisting the knob to reveal Aro. Aro, whom despite his ability to traverse the countryside in excellent time, doesn’t drive. Aro, whom despite being fit and healthy, never eats or drinks anything.

The two men stare at each other, it is impossible to know what sort of silent conversation they’re having. She imagines that her father is dragging his eyes over, and under, and around, in that way he does when he wants to convey his subtle disappointment, rendering even the hardest men a bumbling mess.

Although Aro is quite tall, her father is, unsurprisingly, taller than him by a little more than half a head, true to her expectation. The man in question, his eyes can be felt even with her father blocking the door.

“You are Althea’s friend?” Her father asks, so warmly that one could almost miss the unspoken threat.

“That I am! Aro.” And then her father leans away from the door, so that Althea can see the surreal exchange between them. Aro looks over in her direction, offering her a wide, dazzling smile, before holding his hand out to her father. “A pleasure to meet you..?”

“Dariush Haveshti.”

It’s then that Dariush takes his hand, the long, pale fingers that are better suited to a paintbrush or a piano than holding another’s. A variety of emotions, too innumerable to count, wash over Aro’s beautiful features, beginning with his thick, dark brows, settling on the bow of his tasteful lips.

Gradually, he lets the hand drop from his grasp, and glances over to her, sending a small, enigmatic smile whose purpose she can only guess at. It’s a close relative of smug , if that emotion belonged on the expressive.. man. He is wearing something different today, she notices – a sweater, fine and dark gray but otherwise unremarkable. Wrapped around his neck was his favored silk scarf, which his tantalizing Grecian curls spilled over on their journey down his back and across his shoulders.

“Do come in. We were just opening presents.” Comes the thickly accented voice of her father, who is standing aside for Aro, but the wariness had not left him. Althea can tell, as attuned to his nuances as she is. “Would you like something to eat?”

He steps inside, and without taking his eyes off of her, says, “No, no thank you, I have already eaten.” But she detects a lie, she doesn’t know how, though.

Closer now, she can identify some differences in him that she hadn’t noticed last time. The circles underneath his eyes are darker, and the lines of his jaw, his high cheeks, his forehead, are sharper somehow, exposing his age more than ever before. She had always suspected that he was in his mid-thirties, likely no older, nor much younger, and now she can confirm that this is probably true.

“As you say.” Her father shuts the door, and the sound startles her shoulders, returning her to the moment.

The tension was so thick that it could be sliced with a knife.

Aro looks at her, she looks at her father, and her father looks at him. They simply observe for a few terribly awkward moments, until Aro breaks the tension by clapping his hands together, before her father can fit the role.

“Ah, dear Althea, I apologize for showing up without any warning! But I was so very worried, you see.” He crosses the small parlor until he stands over her. She glares up at him, and his smile, bright and wide, falters for a second, but secures itself within the second it takes to notice. “And your father, I have wanted to meet him too! You described him as extremely Persian, and I can now see why.” She sneers, glancing over to her father, who’s grinning to himself over some secret amusement. “Agha, I can imagine you crossing your chariot over the Indian subcontinent!”

She grinds her teeth together, neutralizing her expression until it is virtually unreadable.

“And she looks so like you! It is like looking at Janus’ second face. Uncanny.” He goes on, taking a seat on the floor beside her, filling her senses with the sweet fragrance of peonies and the sea.

“Yes. She is the only one of my three children who has taken after me, and my father, and his father before him. I have always told her how beautiful she is, but children rarely listen to their father until they have to.” He finishes genially, and Althea flushes under the scrutiny of either man.

“She is like the breath one takes after drowning, more beautiful even than the sun that reflects on the foam of the sea, when it transforms into a prism of a thousand and thousand colors. If beauty itself had a primordial form, waiting to be manifested, it would be our Althea.” And with that said, her lips part, her frown melts into an even line, and her glare loses half its heart.

Though she still can’t get over the fact that he told her father that he looked like a conquering steppe horselord. He does , but that’s beside the point. It’s exactly something that her father would want to hear, given how proud he is of his noble lineage.

He is so close now, only just managing to remain along the boundary of what’s appropriate. If she weren’t, at the moment, furious with him, she might say that he was watching her with overt reverence, but as it were she can only attribute it to trickery and [try] to sweep it under the proverbial rug, ignoring it entirely.

An impossible task.

“You seem to think very highly of her. How is it that the two of you met?” Dariush asks from the love seat.

“At the local library!” Aro answers for her, and disregarding her silent fury, she’s grateful. “She was studying Koine Greek, and I, in awe of her talent with the language – she really is a natural – asked to join her. I thank the heavens that she let me..”

Her father arches one sculpted dark brow, and nods, pleased with something that Aro had said. All of it, perhaps, given the natural charm with which he spoke. Indeed she had never truly seen him speak at length with someone else, but he had a gift with people, not unlike Dariush.

“Really? Very touching, that both of you met out of a shared love of the language. You must have an easier time with it than most, I assume. Althea has come to it armed with fluency in Latin, English, and our language, Farsi, and even coming from those languages, to Greek, she has excelled.” Why is he doting on her? He never displays his affection like this, not ever, for as long as she can remember.

It confuses her beyond measure.

“Impressive, isn’t it? Most students of the language give up within a month of starting their lessons.” He comments, with the airy voice of someone who’s talking about the weather. “A veritable shame! Greek has so much to offer the youth of today.”

She hadn’t noticed it before, but he looked.. tired? His cheeks are sunken, and though they are normally sharp as glass, they usually glow. What could’ve brought so profound a change in him? While his beauty is impossible to dampen, she can’t help but follow the dark circles of his eyes, tinged purple from what she can only assume to be fatigue.

Because of course , he notices her mapping his face, and sends her a captivating smile, revealing his perfectly straight teeth, but now, she can see the exhaustion behind it, or what she believes is exhaustion. Strangely, she finds herself wanting to stroke the skin of his cheek, in an effort to comfort him for whatever his ailment is.

Even his hair looks brittler, duller, contrasting with its usual immaculate luster. All these things she only notices upon close inspection, but decides to say nothing.

“Presents. Yes, presents. Let’s open your presents, Althea, for I must regrettably return early tonight.” Thus far he has not said one thing about what he does outside of them, not one hint of an occupation. “With.. deepest regret.”

What is wrong with him? He’s acting odder than usual.

“Yes, let us open them, I too am growing tired.” Her father announces, reminding her that he was still in the room.

How surreal, Althea thinks, dragging her eyes over either men, debating over whether this was real at all, or instead a dream. These two should not be in a room together. Both of them correspond to totally different parts of her life, two parts that she’s loathe to associate with one another.

Searching between them one more time, for some sort of discrepancy or form of unreality, she only turns to her presents when she finds none.

Beneath the scrutiny of either man, she quickly chooses the biggest and closest box to her. Allegedly, that second suitcase of her father’s had been filled with gifts. It had puzzled her initially to find more than one, for a three-day visit. Her fingers dig underneath the wrapping, removing it efficiently, without dropping hundreds of tiny pieces of paper on her carpet.

“You must shake it!” Aro exclaims, making a ‘shaking’ gesture close to his ear. They exchange a minuscule, private moment between each other, and within that short span, she forgives him.

Althea reluctantly complies, and shakes the package, to her father’s quiet amusement, and Aro’s ecstasy.

“I haven’t the foggiest.” She shrugs, and opens the box, to reveal a dress.

Spun from the deepest red silk, fitted with long, draping sleeves, embroidered with fine, gold zardozi, a couple of shades darker than her skin, it is nothing short of a marvel. And it is vintage , she can tell from the tiny errors in its handmade stitchery. It steals her very breath away, and if Aro had not stolen it already, her heart.

“It was your great-grandmother’s, you will find.. no finer dress in this day. If you wash it, I suggest you take it to someone who specializes in washing antiques. My uncle thinks she only wore it once, so its condition is-”

“Remarkably pristine!” Aro interjects, also taken with the gown. “Your family belongs to the old aristocracy, doesn’t it?” At her father’s proud incline, he continues, “Lovely.. it must have cost a fortune. Rich as Croesus!” All of them laugh at the expression, the only antiquated one that is still in use. “You must wear it soon, you will look like a rose, in bloom.”

Her cheeks take on a similar color to the gown, and she hands it to Aro, who carefully closes it and sets it atop the low table, just in case the sleeping Biscotto comes snooping. From an outsider’s perspective, from her father’s perspective, it probably looked like a terribly domestic scene. But it couldn’t be farther from it – not with those eyes.

“Do you know who tailored it, agha?” Aro begins conversationally, quirking his head at her father. The gesture is characteristically youthful, imbuing him with the stuff that he certainly does not have.

“No, I regret that I couldn’t find any such.. note, about its maker, only that she was Pashtun.” He then adds, “From Afghanistan.” But Aro undoubtedly knows that.

The two are getting along better than Althea could’ve guessed, though that still doesn’t quell her nerves. Of course, Aro could likely make pleasant conversation with a wall, and with luck, it may just talk back.

Sensing an impending conversation between the two, she hopes to divert it by opening her next present, a tiny box that she knows contains jewelry. Her scheme works as intended, bringing both of their attention back to her, but this time she prefers it. The soft croon of a clarinet on the speaker breaks the pregnant silence after her box is opened, to her eminent relief.

This year, Dariush really did try, at least. It was customary for him to send a couple articles of clothing, but this was extravagant, even for him.

Inside of the small box is a necklace and a matching pair of earrings, either of which are pure gold, and encrusted with hundreds of diamonds than sparkle beneath the combined glow the dim lamplight and the tree.

“It has been a long time since I have seen you smile like that, aziz-am.” Unshed tears brim at her lids, but she blinks once, and they are gone.

A glance beside her tells her everything she doesn’t, but would like, to know. Watching her intensely is the black eyes of Aro, they have a hungrier edge than what is normal. Though, what is ‘normal’ with him, is open to interpretation.

“Thank you..” She returns her attention to the jewelry, which is long, dangling, and made in the lavaliere style of necklace.

But she couldn’t possibly wear it right now, not when she could so easily nick it, or lose it among the dingy furniture. It is too important to wear in this place.

Her father’s smile is small and ‘modest’, but she knows that he is secretly very pleased with himself. For once, this doesn’t make her teeth itch. As with the gown, she gives it to Aro, who admires it for a few seconds, before storing it next to the other box.

Next is another gown, this one too is vintage, colored a dark emerald with the same sleeves and embroidery as the first. She intuits that it was also her great-grandmother’s. After that one, is a bottle of rich perfume with heavy notes of vanilla and light notes of cinnamon directly underneath. Another scarf is added to her collection – an intricate white shawl knit from mohair, allegedly handmade by Anahita, her aunt.

All of these are fawned over first by Aro, then procedurally returned to their boxes and set aside. Another pair of earrings and one cashmere sweater later, and she has finally come to the last unassuming wrapped gift. Her father leans forward in his seat, taking a draw from his cigarette.

From beside her, Aro supplies her with an expectant look, which is.. indescribable, unknowable, but she thinks she would like to know .

Nervously, she opens the box, and finds herself holding a tightly-bound leather journal.

“That is..” Her father hesitates then, a rare occurrence for him. His eyes find the side of Aro’s head, which is forever turned in her direction. “That is the journal I kept in the year before you were born, until your birth.”

No, she will not show weakness in front of him, or Aro. Especially not both of them. Stubbornly, she blinks back her tears, and busies herself by touching the tempered leather, which smells like his office, like cigarettes, incense, and the old parchment of priceless books.

They dissolve into a discussion about theology, with Aro doing most of the asking, and her father doing the bulk of the answering. She watches the two from her itchy seat on the floor, only adding input when Aro is not incessantly talking. Every now and then, he will include her in the ir conversation, as if he was afraid that she was feeling ‘left out’, without realizing that Althea almost never feels that sort of social alienation. Even still, it never fails to endear her further to him, and she is almost sure that everything he does would be to that effect.

And when he leaves, at just thirty after nine in the evening, a part of herself also leaves, something she struggles to understand, but feels nonetheless.

To my brother, whom I fondly call ‘Zalmoxis’, in whose memory I write this essay. May you not drink from the black river, but cross the treacherous waters to the other side, so that you might remember me.

So marks the beginning of S. Voicu’s short book, which totals just under fifty pages, an immediate disappointment to Althea, who’s fast becoming exhausted with this research. The author is Romanian – probably – and she reasons this by having earlier inquired from her father on the name ‘Zalmoxis’, according to whom the name was that of a Dacian god’s.

Althea lights yet another cigarette, checking the clock to find that it is almost eleven in the evening. Promising to herself that she will sleep by midnight, she burrows further into the cushion of her love seat, and uses the light of the Christmas tree to read.

So you have found my book. It is not the first of its kind, nor will it be the last. It is the first of its kind in English, a language that has become more accessible than I ever imagined. I intend for this to be short, but in order for that to be , I must first inform you of something fundamental. L urking in the shadows, and sometimes, living in the most mundane places, are creatures that are often vindicated as myths. This is done without the assumption that myths can and do often lead us to the truth. And this is no base assumption, reader, myths are usually true.

Undeniably. She agrees with this assessment, and wonders if perhaps this isn’t a dead end, after all.

The vampire is one such myth. But who among mortality believes in us in this modern age? The answer is those who have seen us, and these mortals are embarrassingly rare compared to our days of glory, when we were known to most religious cults. We are not the celebrated fiends of fantasy, we have no fangs, nor is sunlight our true weakness. Our godhood is more succinct than that. Our beauty is unmatched even by the most beautiful mortal . Our speed, our strength, and our senses, are sharper than the strongest Olympian athlete. If you have known us, then I do not need to explain further, but I will, because I am feeling charitable .

But that could mean many things, couldn’t it? Her gut wrenches with something unidentifiable, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. In fact, she is unsure of what to make of this feeling. Already, Voicu is more palatable than Summers. And within two paragraphs, he has already managed to grab her avid and unfettered attention.

The unknown author writes so haughtily of humans, for which he gives the disdainful appellation of ‘mortals’, she can imagine him curling his upper lip in distaste, if indeed he is neither delusional nor writing a fantasy novella.

Nestled between her middle and forefinger, her cigarette goes unattended, fast turning into a pillar of ash that she anxiously dashes against an ashtray before it stains her quilt. The warm air of the heater blows pleasurably onto her feet and legs, which had earlier become akin to the temperature of ice.

Without even bothering to light another cigarette, she continues reading Voicu’s disdainful introduction. He explains, with a high hand, how in the Iron Age and before, immortal kind had legions of mortal disciples and cults dedicated to currying favor from them, in return for a share of their godhood. Althea nearly abandons the book when Voicu explains their physiology, due to it not aligning with Aro:

In our healthiest state, our eyes are a brilliant red, which mortals once likened to brilliant rubies that in our time were mined in the wealthy kingdoms of fair Nubia.

Until he follows this by something more pertinent.

However, as we abstain from hunting mortals, our eyes grow darker, beginning first with our distinctive red, then onto a burgundy, until they finally turn black. It is during this time that we can ‘blend’ in with the mortals, although they will always be duller than us, even in this pitiful state we regress to. Although we often use this for transactions with mortals, it is incredibly difficult for us to resist the call to their blood, as thirsty as we are. You see, reader, a fascinating trait of ours is that our venom, while potent, works in synchrony with the blood that sustains us. Our vision sharpens when we consume blood, and as a result, does the opposite when we don’t. This is because blood is no longer available for our ichor, our venom…

Venom , he had mentioned, only offering a short explanation of how it worked thereafter. The short book read like the author was in a rush, perhaps he had been translating it into other languages for more printing, something he had alluded to in the introduction. But why? If this is true, and she decides to entertain that possibility, why would he be exposing it? Like everything related to this mystery, she accumulates more questions than answers, the veritable opposite of what she’s used to.

The townhouse’s walls creak under the pressure of the winds outside, and she checks the clock once more to find that thirty minutes have passed since opening the book. Above her, her father sleeps soundly in the bed upstairs, unaware of his daughter’s inner crisis, which is for once, nothing to do with him.

You might rightly ask what our venom is, and many of our greatest scholars have tried valiantly to find a sound explanation, but there is none. Those among us who are cultured however, call it the ichor, because it is the seed of our godhood.

Then begins the self-righteous diatribe on the supremacy of his ‘kind’, which she ignores in favor of efficiently cutting to what she thinks are the more important segments.

As I explained earlier, we once ruled our kingdoms openly, for the mortals to see and worship at our feet. These were our golden days, stretching from the years of pre-recorded history, to the years of the Iron Age. The lands of Egypt, Nubia, and Romania were the seats of our power, and if we did not rule all of the known world, we had the privilege of intervening in mortal affairs to our benefit.

She scoffs, but does consider those years of the Bronze Age, within which most of the ancient myths were contained – the Trojan War, the tragedy of Daedalus and Icarus, and the legendary king, Gilgamesh.

However, her skepticism tapers off very soon, as ten pages in to his rewriting of the Bronze Age, he mentions it. Her heart races, picking up a speed and force that she can hear pounding in her ears like the beat of a war drum. Her vision narrows until it encompasses the scope of a tunnel, with the book at the end of the passage.

Since those days, we have been called so many names that it would be wasteful to count them all in this libellum. To name a few, reader: the biblical nephilim, the Assyrian annunaki, the Persian peri, the sailor’s siren, the sorcerer, the medieval ghoul, and finally, the Etruscan ghost.

Of the biblical nephilim, most moderns are familiar with. The Assyrian annunaki, owing to their cooperation with our kind, had a slightly better reception of us. The peri of Persian lore is a slightly more ambiguous one, but no less of the former two. The sailor’s siren finds its roots both in pre-vampiric religious lore and in our exposure. The sorcerer and the ghoul are self-explanatory, for these still dwell in the modern mind. The Etruscan ghost is the most obscure of these shameful euphemisms, but I will tell you, if you are a resident of that backwater country, Italy, your only mercy will be in knowing the truth of our existence.

These ghosts are not Etruscan in the slightest, but are in actuality Greek vampires who have taken foul Latin names. ‘Nam saepe sanguinis imbibunt!’ It is true that one of their ilk is of impure Etruscan make, further sullied by his filthy Greek composition.

If such a thing were possible, the blood in her veins would’ve frozen just now, seized by dread, but spurred onward by frantic resolve.

Even her father had noticed that ‘Aro’ was no true name for a Hellene, despite him being idyllically Hellenic in almost every imaginable way, like his image had been stolen from Classical amphorae, and shipped away to faraway Italy, where even comely Mars envied him his beauty.

Skimming over the next few sections, which delve into explanations about a few other folk legends that he elucidates as more diluted and ‘shameful’ stories of vampires, she finds herself already nearing the end of the libellum, the moniker that he had given it earlier. The pieces have begun to fit together in this metaphorical puzzle, and though she desperately doesn’t want to believe that any of this is true – that the universal laws she’s operated on for her entire adult life are false – she can’t ignore the last few paragraphs, for it is those that change everything.

It is with those Greco-Roman scum in mind that I have written this enlightening libellum. May they never have even a year of peace among them. As I mentioned in the beginning, reader, this is not the first time, and it certainly is not the last time that I will have a book like this printed for circulation. Mortality deserves to know of their true gods, the ones that are closest to them and can offer the guidance they are always questing for.

Astyages, son of a thousand Persian bastards, I curse you to the black river, where I know you someday shall dwell for eternity, untouchable by the fire you have always worshiped. On that day I shall rejoice and will not rest until the deed is done.

Cailu, mongrel of Etruria that you are, I shall pull out every blond hair on your head and offer it to some mortal farmer’s stack of hay to be lit on fire. I curse you also to the black river. One day I shall let you find me, only to trap the hunter against himself.

Abilsin, wretched son of some engorged whore in Babylon, your time shall come. You are a traitor and a worm, and your principal crime is suckling at the tit of Astyages. I curse you to the black river.

Finally, Arandros, of all the Greek scum in the world, you are the lowest sort. I will have your coven watch as I pull every hair off of your curly Greek head. I shall kill you last, so that you can see that the fruits of your ‘labor’ have been in vain. May the pieces of you be thrown into the black river and devoured by vicious dogs.

All of you like to think that you are the new aristocracy of our kind, but our kind have a flawless memory, and they have not forgotten us. By the time you have gotten your filthy hands on this edition, I will have already relocated, but we will soon meet again.

-S. Voicu

The book falls from her hands, onto the floor, where it is better accommodated than by her shaking fingers. Struck by ineluctable panic, she freezes, and feels a trickle of bile roiling her gut and threatening to send her stooped over to relieve itself.

This is ridiculous , she tries to argue with herself, no, remember what you have experienced. Truly she has always been combative when personal experience contradicts theory, she is more likely to accept the validity of the latter, but now, the circumstances are undeniable. Aro is a vampire.

Entranced, she repeats the phrase over and over in her head, until it doesn’t sound so impossible anymore. She has solved it.

A crazed laugh slips past her lips, a close relative to Aro’s, but this is a short-lived triumph for what is ultimately a Pyrrhic victory. Now, she understands why he said her life would never be the same, that she could not return to her dubious normality after learning of this.

Already, she is trying to synthesize this truth with the many others she has digested throughout her short life. Too frenzied to still her shaking limbs – this time it has nothing to do with the cold – she manages no sleep over the course of the next several hours, debating over whether she should text him, call him, or keep it to herself for the meantime. Ultimately, she chooses the last, and broods over it for the entirety of her quiet and lonely night.

“What is wrong with you, Althea?” Her father asks from beside her in the car.

Ten or more minutes away from fair Florence, she finally succumbs to the dread, which follows as a hangover for her earlier streak of victory. For the second time in the course of a few days, she has been denied a restful night.

The evergreen Tuscan cypresses rock and sway, a symptom of her HPPD, especially prominent when she’s gone without sleep. Deep circles mark her abject exhaustion, mostly for her father to take note and inquire after, to her ebbing irritation, that thing that usually has one or two traceable blames, but now has about a hundred.

“I, uh, didn’t sleep at all last night.” It is only half-true. Even on no sleep, she is usually good at keeping a level head.

As a balm for her nerves, she has gone through almost an entire pack of cigarettes in the long span of eight hours. Usually, they would serve to soothe whatever ails her, but this, this is resistant even to the lulling draw of nicotine.

How had she been fortuitous enough to find Voicu’s book? It must be one of those miracles that comes once in a lifetime.

“Is there something wrong?” Dariush asks, leaning on the console between them.

Out of her periphery she eyes him, and shakes her head, trying to look the part of bored instead of exhilarated by her discovery – exhilarated and terrified. Her father was partly right when he said that the world was enshrined by a league of entities, but they are not as invisible as he would like to think.

Arandros . Was that his real name? An Ancient Greek. She has been passing her time with an Ancient Greek. She is being courted by an Ancient Greek. She is being stalked by an Ancient Greek. Suddenly, so many things make sense, so many things she will have to consider on a clearer conscience. But…

“Perhaps it was that tea you drank before bed. I remember you being more sensitive to caffeine than most.”

Surprisingly, she is glad that her father is here to keep her composed. Scrutiny is an unfailing tool for a solid performance. And though he tries to make worthwhile conversation, she is only able to supply him with terse answers that assuredly do not quench his thirst for divining what is actually wrong with her.

No, he is smart enough to know that there is something else going on, but wisely leaves it alone, and this satisfies her until they arrive at the packed airport in Florence. After this, she will be alone again, left completely to her thoughts and her esoteric findings. She will be left to confronting Aro, a prospect that is more intimidating than she would’ve thought it to be.

Because, she hadn’t known what she’d make of him when she resolved to solve it, but it certainly wasn’t this.

Unable to focus on anything else, she mutely closes the car door behind her, and follows her father to the front, where he waits for her, standing tall and dignified as per usual. So lost is she, that it almost serves to comfort her.

Then, her fear fully dawns on her, and she finds herself latching onto the sinuous, slender chest of her father, wrapping her arms around him like a lost child who found their parent. It is a significant moment for both of them, she suspects, to entirely different ends. He holds her securely, like he always did before letting her go back into constant danger and ridicule.

“I love you.” He whispers into her ear, squeezing her tighter, until she finds it difficult to breathe, but this too is a safer alternative than being left to think.

“Father.. tell me that it’s going to be okay.” She vaguely supplies.

“I promise you that it is going to be okay, whatever it might be. You are the cleverest young woman I have known, and the kind of daughter that any father would be proud of. If you cannot figure something out, then all the scholars in the world couldn’t either.” He pulls back from her, to give her a kiss, and then says, “And you always have a home in my household. If your studies are becoming too much for you, or anything else, my home is always yours too. I expect you at Nowruz.”

That snaps her out of her daze. Of course he would take advantage of this. It is just in his nature.

“I love you.” It is the first time she’s uttered those words to him since she was an adolescent.

Disregarding all of his sins and her embitterment toward him, a rather significant part of her will always love him for the lessons, both troublesome and bookish, that he taught her.

He stoops low once more to plant a kiss on her forehead, rustling some of the coppery hair when he withdraws. As with Khiz, she doubted she’d see him again, not for a long time, at least. Now, she understands why that inner knowing, accompanied by serene resignation, had taken place those weeks ago.

Had Aro effected her thus since the very beginning?

She watches him turn with his bag in hand, and his suitcases behind him, until the fragrance of musk and frankincense disappears entirely, now relegated to a faint scent in her car. He disappears into the airport, leaving Althea standing listlessly on the pavement, blinking dumbly at the spot where he’d gone inside.

Chapter Text

αἰδοίην, χρυσοστέφανον, καλὴν Ἀφροδίτην

ᾁσομαι, ἣ πάσης Κύπρου κρήδεμνα λέλογχεν

εἰναλίης, ὅθι μιν Ζεφύρου μένος ὑγρὸν ἀέντος

ἤνεικεν κατὰ κῦμα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης

ἀφρῷ ἔνι μαλακῷ: τὴν δὲ χρυσάμπυκες Ὧραι

δέξαντ᾽ ἀσπασίως, περὶ δ᾽ ἄμβροτα εἵματα ἕσσαν:

κρατὶ δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀθανάτῳ στεφάνην εὔτυκτον ἔθηκαν

καλήν, χρυσείην: ἐν δὲ τρητοῖσι λοβοῖσιν

ἄνθεμ᾽ ὀρειχάλκου χρυσοῖό τε τιμήεντος:

δειρῇ δ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ ἁπαλῇ καὶ στήθεσιν ἀργυφέοισιν

ὅρμοισι χρυσέοισιν ἐκόσμεον, οἷσί περ αὐταὶ

Ὧραι κοσμείσθην χρυσάμπυκες, ὁππότ᾽ ἴοιεν

ἐς χορὸν ἱμερόεντα θεῶν καὶ δώματα πατρός.

αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ πάντα περὶ χροῒ κόσμον ἔθηκαν,

I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful,

whose dominion is the walled cities of all sea-set Cyprus.

There the moist breath of the western wind wafted her

over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam

and there the gold-filleted hours welcomed her joyously.

They clothed her with heavenly garments:

on her head they put a fine, well-wrought crown of gold,

and in her pierced ears they hung ornaments of orichalc and precious gold,

and adorned her with golden necklaces

over her soft neck and snow-white breasts,

jewels which the gold-filleted hours wear themselves

whenever they go to their father's house to join the lovely dances of the gods.

Homer, HH6, To Aphrodite

Cathedral bells chimed through the village and its weathered streets, marking the beginning of Christmas Eve night, and for this, she stood alone and undisturbed, with every Catholic villager attending mass.

Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis…

A choir of boys and girls sang inside, in that secure way that let her know she was completely alone in her findings. Just outside, she stood, listening to the youthful chorus and the supplications, none of which carried the same mystique they might once have, on account of her fluency in the Latin language. It is like second nature to her now, and she doesn’t even need to parse it.

Why did she have to know everything? Even that stray thought can’t exactly be disregarded as hubris. Althea knows Greek, Farsi, English, Latin, she knows how to pitilessly deconstruct arguments and inconsistent philosophical frameworks, she knows how to cook, clean, manage a household, and she even knows who the Scythians were. That last thought elicits a humorless grin from her, it has been a joke between she and Khiz for many years.

Khiz seems farther away than ever before. Like a distant star in the cosmos, his indistinct form twinkles enough just for her to speculate, but in every way, they are thousands, millions, billions of lightyears away from each other.

Althea is exhausted, but at least she knows.

Yesterday, she had passed most of her time submerged in self-doubt, then anger, and then finally, acceptance, though at least she had finally slept.

And now she is back where she first met him, because she has hesitantly settled with the idea that she can’t stay away from him for very long. This makes her feel profoundly foolish, further, to be a fool.. infatuated with a monster. What in all the heavens did he want with her? Was he as she suspected – an Ancient Greek, who was intrigued by her studying his language? Was that all this was?

An orange glow illuminates the darkness of the cathedral’s niche, but only for the split of a second, as her cigarette struggles to hold the flame in the wind, as wild as she can remember on this evening. Every nook, angle, and stone in the village has acquired this eerier edge, like the village itself is watching her like a schoolmistress waiting for her to raise her hand, and knows that she knows.

Her woolen skirt dances around her ankles, and she huddles further into the softness of her cardigan to stave away the cold. Holding a protective hand in front of her, she struggles to keep her cigarette lit. Nothing she’s doing seems to work, however, so she turns her body into the direction of the wind.

What she finds shouldn’t surprise her, but instinct is a fickle thing that often wars with higher reasoning. Two black shoes, shining with the sort of wealth uncommon in these parts, leads to the equally immaculate dress pants and suit jacket which is permanently burned in to her psyche. He didn’t bother with the scarf tonight, perhaps, like the inanimate village, he also knew . If possible, he looked even more exhausted than he had the other night, his dark circles are a touch purpler, and his hair a shade or two duller, contrasting with the black luster of before.

They share a long look, behind which are about a hundred unplaceable emotions. Nonetheless, either corner of his lips quirk upward, revealing a reverent smile that she does not return. This too is not unusual, and she takes a smug sort of pride in having come to the conclusion that no one else could’ve possibly come to.

Most likely, Voicu’s book will be dismissed as fiction by its rare few readers.

“Sator nitoris. Althea…” He approaches her then, his footsteps silent on the pavement.

She swallows, and shoots him a distrustful glare through her lashes, her fingers growing numb around her cigarette.

“Hello, Arandros.” All she can do is hope that the card she is pulling is the right one. It could be yet another fake name, or otherwise totally unrelated to Aro, but she knew it wasn’t.

Frustratingly, his smile only grows in brilliance, like it was a fixture given to him by the very stars above their heads. In less than a second, he is in her space, siphoning what little warmth she had managed to gather. She drops her cigarette, abandoning it on the hard ground below them, and the permeating smell of tobacco is overrode by the fragrance of sweet peonies and something distinctly Aegean.

Quicker than an Olympian athlete.

Boldly, she holds his impossibly dark gaze, captivated by the predatory glint in it. Finding these changes is like trying to find nicks in the sharpest obsidian, but while he has been imposing himself into her life and asking her invasive questions, she hasn’t wasted this precious time either, and has skillfully deduced what sort of moods the expressive man entertains.

He swallows and licks his lips, it should not be half as erotic as it is. The coldness of his hand shocks her as it trails down her face, and lifts her chin for his perusal.

“No one has called me this in a very long time, agapiti. Can you imagine how long that is? Do you really know, Althea?” He asks, and she detects genuine curiosity inside of it. “Amans ingeniosa.. vere mirabilem es, tu recognovisse.”

“Greeks have not given themselves those names since classical antiquity.” His lips have lost most of their rich color, she recalls reading that this means he hasn’t.. ‘eaten’ in a long time, perhaps to obscure his nature from her. Then why was he so adamant that she know?

“Is that your final guess?” She glares, finding comfort in the familiar action of chiding him. For once, she is the one who has to interrogate.

“Since you bring it up that way… then no. Around the age of Alexander then?” At the shake of his head, she realizes that she is actually guessing his age. “Homer’s?” He offers another shake of his head, causing more curls to spill down in the narrow space between them and fall onto her shoulders. “Mycenae..”

How she loathes the potent effect of his delight. It is utterly contagious, inviting itself in unbidden.

Mycenae… what a treasure he is, then. And then she knows that he did not really lie to her, when he told her that he was from Crete, when he referred to Knossos as the fatherland of his people. Before, it would’ve been unbelievable, and even now, she tries to deny its fidelity, but her attempt falls impotently to the side, like her cigarette.

He then speaks to her in a language that sounds tangentially like Classical Greek, but the disparity of the vowels and inflections are too great for it to belong to that language. It is beautiful, and sounds more natural rolling off of his tongue than even Koine, and she can imagine these words being spoken by the likes of Ajax, Achilles, and the other great names of that bygone and forgotten age.

Finally, he finishes whatever he had wanted to say, of which she had caught only a few familiar words, such as ‘love’ and what she believes was an archaic form of ‘soul’.

“Are you going to kill me?” She inquires of him, immediately regretting the hurt that results from it.

“No, not ever, my heart, not ever. True, I have been a wretch and a fool for you, but I am not that wretched or foolish.” His voice, while enchanting as any of the most beautiful music she’s heard, is hoarse, reminiscent of someone who’s gone without water for months.

“I think you are still very foolish.” Despite herself, she finds herself responding to his fond petting of her hair by seizing his hand and enclosing it between both of hers. “I don’t think I have ever seen you look so drained..”

A string of crazed giggles leave his lips, more harmonious than the choir inside. His nose brushes against hers, and he she senses him smelling her. “ A consequence of my foolishness, as you have wisely noted. Sophos , always so wise! I have abstained from,” He looks at her pointedly then, she supposes he is gauging whether she knows that. When he finds whatever it is he’s looking for, he continues, “Feeding, so that I might be able to languish with you, dear Althea, as a snake dries his skin just for the simple pleasure of basking in the sun.”

Silence hangs over them then, and she knows it’s not to last long, for it never does with him, not that she has any room to complain anymore. Stroking the skin of his hand, she lifts it to place a soft kiss there, cognizant of his weighted stare.

Although the concept of vampires being real is a new one to her, she is overwhelmed by the devotion that he has shown. If she had known the lengths he was going to just to spend time with her, she may have been more forgiving. Likely not, however, he was still an noying, regardless of how she felt about him. And what was it that she felt for him? Everything had happened so quickly, in retrospect.

“I am so thirsty, agapiti.” He laughs self-deprecatingly, shaking his head and the curls with it. “Admittedly, it is almost all that I can think about! Tragoedia magna, ut malo cogitare de te, id vere credas? Stultus desine et, Arandros, pro vide! Ah, but now that you know, thank the heavens, I no longer have to skulk around like a common predator. Althea, you must tell me everything you know, and I must tell you this before you do.” The rare gravitas steals her attention. She drops his hand, but like a petulant child, he retakes her own. “You cannot return home.”

Right. He had told her she would lose everything, and thereafter, she would gain everything, like the spider that lost its sight. In spite of recalling that metaphor, she had not thought it would be so.. well, real, but like Aro, she too believed that God, and by extension nature, gives and takes in equal measure.

That did not mean she was pleased with the revelation.

“Not ever?” She begins, feeling the beginnings of panic seize her chest.

“One day, of course, when you have joined me in this life.” He says that like she has always known that this is the grand conclusion, the last dotted line on a thesis. “Not before, Althea, it is our law, and I promise that you will learn about these things in due time. Do not fight me, Althea, you will only hurt yourself.” But she still tries to pull her hand away, bruising herself in the process. “Molle! You knew what the stakes were, mm?”

She stills, loathing that she couldn’t defend herself from the elegant creature before her. Of course, she had known that ever since her first visit with him in the library, when she had found herself moodily entertaining his witticisms and tangents. Even then, it was difficult to deny him anything.

“Biscotto. I can’t just leave him, Aro, he has to be taken care of until my landlady returns from her visit.” But that is not the only reason. Really, what does she stand to lose if she leaves this life behind, the promise that she had quietly accepted weeks ago?

All of her life has been spent in misery, interspersed with brief periods of the happiness that came from learning.

I would have you enjoy this life as much as I.

Though her father had visited, and had showered her with gifts and his unique sort of questionable affection, this was not enough to redeem himself in her eyes. Furthermore, she knows almost nothing about Aro’s lifestyle aside from what Voicu had mentioned, which had been scant, only enough to confirm the primy mark of their diet.

“Naturally! That little daemon will be taken care of, on that you have my word, Althea! Please, come with me of your own accord, I.. cannot bear the thought of your anger. I will have all of your belongings moved to the Palazzo immediately-”

“Palazzo dei Priori?” She cuts in, interrupting his excited monologue.

The smile he gives her is winning. She looks away, to the less persuasive cathedral walls. Indeed, she would probably go to outrageous lengths to keep him in her life, and that she will secretly admit to herself. What’s more, a real Mycenaean who could impart lost knowledge onto her.

“Those phishing websites.” Comes her educated voice. All the breath leaves her, like dust blowing off the ground and encircling the air.

“Yes, for which I have not enjoyed in over a month! For the sake of you, Althea, I would have gone years, if that is what it took. Heu! The Erotes have seen fit to bless me with a lover cleverer than the weaver herself.” He graces her with a cheeky kiss on her hooked nose. “You are not as scandalized as I feared you might be, your obfuscation renders my every talent useless..”

If he lives inside of the Palazzo, then that must mean..

“But, sicut ioucundus sum, quomodo invenisne nominem meum?” In his question she finds more suspicion than curiosity, another unpredictable mood of his that should make her more nervous, especially now.

Lost in thought, weighing every option she has, she doesn’t deign to answer him, content to make him guess. This is the only punishment she is willing or able to dole out on him, because she can no longer deny that he has captured her heart, by whatever mysterious means he has.

How is this possible? How is she willing to leave her life behind for his sake?

Khizir, Dariush, her miserable childhood, her [somewhat] stable profession and study.. is she really prepared to abandon that for a different sort of life, to be a vampire, a creature whose existence has only been known to her for two days? Admitting the answer to herself is not accompanied by denial, but by resignation and no small amount of shame, since the answer is unequivocally ‘yes’.

It is then that she suspects that she might be in love with him. Out of all his quirks and little devotions, there isn’t a single one that she can atomize and blame for winning her affections, but it is the total sum of him. There is something magical in the pull he has on her, which she determined quite early was unable to be pushed away.

Yet she knows that he is growing impatient, another quirk of his that they share. What would he do in the unlikely event that she denied him, turned away, and tried to forget any of this? Would he give chase? Would he follow in the steps of his mythologized likeness, Achilles, and desperately seek her hand through other means? He is older than Homer’s Achilles, however, a fact she has yet to fully digest. Over her he has at minimum three-thousand years..

How much knowledge could he impart onto her?

“Answer my questions first, and I promise that I’ll tell you.” She will keep the upper hand here, by any means possible.

Now, her only hand is the strange pull she has over him, otherwise, he has seniority in almost every feasible way. If he wished, he could snap her neck, or drain her of her life’s blood in the matter of seconds. This too is something she loathes – the powerlessness she feels now.

“Very well!” She shivers under his touch, when he pulls her flush to his side, leading them away from the warm glow of the cathedral. “Sorry, puella mea, I cannot be helping your discomfort, I would blame it on not having felt cold in over three millennia, however sound that might be. It’s not very sound, but who could blame me for wanting to hold you close? If you are cold, I will of course oblige..” But that look he tosses down at her tells her otherwise. “Never mind that. You must be brimming with questions! I understand the feeling now.”

Their footsteps are quiet down the cobbled road, and soon the devotional choir grows more distant, a hum of human voices in the emptied village. Aro’s chin hovers over her shoulder, a favorite haunt of his that she can no longer find in herself to admonish.

“How do you.. change people?” Is her first question, and she thinks she knows the answer to it due to Voicu’s libellum, even though he had only alluded to it, preferring to call it a ‘transfer of godly power’.

Volterra’s cafe, which she has taken to associating with one of her first leads, is dim and lifeless, its proprietor likely in mass with the other villagers. Even still she can spy the hint of Cailu’s mosaic fixed on the wall, surrounded by strangely complimentary Art Noveau décor, of which he must be more valuable than all. The possibility that it is an original piece is now considered by Althea.

Beside her, Aro notices where her gaze has fallen, and she watches the small quirk of his lips transform into another smile.

“Our venom is exceptionally potent, one drop in a human’s veins is enough for the change to take place, but it must be transferred into the bloodstream, my heart, or it will become inert. Meaning that we must.. bite.” He tells her, and she pauses to observe his flawless lips, as if she is looking at them for the first time. “Touch them, I’d love nothing more than to have you in my mouth.” He encourages, parting his lips to offer the eccentric invitation. She flushes at the amorous suggestion, quietly admitting to herself that there also weren’t many other things she would want more.

What must they look like to the rare passerby?

Nervous, but too curious to refuse the chance, she lets her thumb caress the firm bow of his lips, before slipping it inside to settle on the bottom row of his impossibly sharp teeth, none of which are fanged. A peculiar sort of arousal washes over her, choosing to dwell just above her thighs, offering her a warmth that the weather has repeatedly denied her tonight.

His tongue, the muscle that spins Homeric simile as much as it does flattery, is colder than the intolerant temperature of this winter night. When she tries to withdraw, satisfied with what she’s found, he wraps his lips around her thumb, gently holding her wrist, coating the digit with his cold venom. Her lips part, and her pupils dilate until the dark iris is forced away by the blackness. With a final, crooked smile, he releases her thumb with a pop, and cradles her hand between his.

“Only a cultured man can fully appreciate these tastes, Althea.” He hesitates before continuing his chatter, and she supposes that there is a first time for everything. “We have eternity for that, but so little time before we must turn in, so ask away!”

Eternity – another new concept she must contend with in regards to herself.

To stifle her lust, she forces her gaze away, back to the mosaic of Cailu, before tugging at his hand to move them, a touch he acquiesces to.

“When will I be changed?” It feels strange on her lips, like she is betraying herself by revealing her willingness.

“Within the week, or less, if you should decide that, I do believe it is enough time to introduce you to this vita occulta, and it will absolutely become you, agapiti. The change is painful, but it is the price we must all pay for this gift, as the universe has arranged all things thus.” He explains, hearkening back to their shared outlook on those matters.

“What sort of pain is it?” She leads them to a bench where usually a group of gossiping old men can be found, now abandoned for the village’s festivities – the old world privileges of a small community with high trust.

Ignoring the cold is possible only on account of her discomfort being swept aside, as it always is for her impassioned interests. Once they sit down, leaving only a breadth between them, she lets go of his hand, to clutch onto the warmer clothing of his arm. He eyes the motion intently, before mapping her face for those minute tells he is always searching for.

“Just as searing magma escapes its vent, at the urging of an enraged Vulcan, and seeps into the veins of the sloping mountainside, dispensing a thousand molten rivers in a thousand directions, so too does the venom take to a human, erupting at the bite, and coursing through the veins, scorching the organs, capturing them in their most ideal state, before vouchsafing their eternity.” He gestures around him, forcing her to drop her hand at the forcefulness of his vim. “The pain is exquisite, as excruciating as letting Vulcan’s magma become your veins. There is no human equivalent to the pain.” Only Homeric simile would suffice, is the blasé thought that drifts through her mind.

“Why do I have to become.. like you?” Comes another of her questions, and she doesn’t miss the hurt that passes over him. “Not that I am entirely opposed.” Whatever compelled her to add that is a force to be wary of.

But it suffices in resolving its mysterious intention, chasing away the offense he had expressed. So expressive, as she would imagine from a man of that romantic era. Althea is still struggling to accept his age, even though it is rather obvious now, given his proficiency in antiquarian languages and concepts.

“It is the foremost of our laws. Exposure to humans must conclude in their death, or their transformation-”

“Who has ratified those laws?” She rebuts, as she might to her dogmatic professors.

A devilish grin graces those beautiful lips, “Me.”

She blinks, and assesses him critically, saying, “You are a lawgiver among your kind?”

Surprising, if so. He doesn’t have the stuff of a despot, but looks are frequently deceiving. Perhaps he is the sort of tyrant who keeps his power by offering a facade of powerlessness. Yes, he does have that rare breed of cunning, complementing her likeness to the fox by sharing its mannerisms.

“Primus ex regibus tribus, primus inter pares sum.” He’s watching her so closely that she’s almost tempted to divert her gaze, if it weren’t for her talent for ‘obfuscation’, as he has noted many times.

And that is when yet another piece is united with the rest of its respective puzzle. “Aliumne Cailu est?”

Like a wondrous child on Christmas morning, he beams, and in stark contrast with his very nature, seems to illuminate their dark and dreary alley.

“Yes, yes, agapiti! Endlessly clever as you are, like Ariadne edifying the labyrinth – we are three – myself, Caius, and Marcus, though no one ever does seem to count Marcus.” He leaves on a note whose sorrow is indiscernible from levity. “These are not our true names, for none of us are truly Latin. Before our rule, our kind was constantly endangered by their liberal exposure to man, and for those reasons, among many others, our existence must remain a secret.” One long, pianist finger gestures to his mouth.

“How could you be threatened by humans?” Voicu had avoided naming the weaknesses of his kind, leading her to believe that he had an agenda against those four names he proscribed at the end of his book, and now it is making more sense to her. But if that is the case, who were those other two? What were their relations to Aro and Caius?

Suddenly he displays a very human action, which doesn’t at all fit him, an observation that had once been unplaceable for Althea. He shrugs in that way a professor might when they’re preparing to pedantically correct a student of theirs.

“Granted our fatal weakness is not in the sun, but.. it is in the elements that contain it.” Right, he had never appeared in the mornings, nor had he appeared in the day unless the weather was reliably treacherous. How had she not noticed that? “Just as our venom sets a fire in your mortal veins, we are most vulnerable to fire itself. Funny, isn’t it? How a creature’s constitution is often its undoing! Even humans, as comparatively weak as they are, can destroy us with fire. Though this is a rare form for us, and is usually only possible when we have forgone feeding for long enough. Our senses dull, our reflexes are slower. Yes, Althea, we do have weaknesses. Do not let Stefan fill your head with short-sighted lies.”

“Stefan?” Who was that?

“You could not have reasoned my true name elsewhere. What was the pseudonym of the author you read?” She had expected him to be more hostile, given most would be in such a weighted circumstance, but he only sounded curious, and impressed.

“S. Voicu. So he is an antagonist of yours? He had some very choice words to say about you.”

Aro scoffs, adopting this baleful curl to his lips that she’s never seen before.

“That you are the lowest of all Greeks, I knew it was you when he spoke of you as the curly-headed ‘Greek scum’ who took a ‘foul Latin name’.. I promise the ‘scum’ part had nothing to do with my certainty.” She smirks, leaning back on the bench rest and desperately wishing for a cigarette.

He hisses, more perilously than a hooded cobra, though she somehow knows it is directed elsewhere, to some other man he has a unique rivalry with. Even still, it unnerves her, elicits this primitive response in her to move away from him, much to her chagrin.

“Erravi.” He coos, moving closer to her despite her obvious reluctance. “Sorry, I don’t often find myself in the company of humans, and you are so perplexing that I can forget your humanity. The remaining Dacians, and there are two of them, issue exposes on our kind unceasingly, why, they are like the Lutheran Reformers, stamping papers on cathedral walls to the annoyance of everyone else! How did you manage to find Stefan’s newest print?”

Should she tell him? She mulls over that for a short moment, preening her nails to refocus her attention on anything but the captivating Aro. Hadn’t their agreement been that she would ask, and he would answer, until finally she had to fulfill her side of the agreement? Likely he had known since the beginning, but whatever enigmatic force drove him to spending his time with her has also driven him to letting her have these small victories.

By every reckoning imaginable, he is perfect, but Althea will only be admitting that to herself.

“If I tell you, I want you to answer more of my questions. I won’t be leaving this spot until you do.” Stubbornly, she crosses her legs, and imperiously lifts her chin.

This only appeals to Aro, however, which pleases her and infuriates her in equal measure. He mimics her movements as he so often does, another ambiguous habit of his that’s left to too innumerable interpretations.

“You drive me mad.” He admits, chancing to run a hand down her arm where it stops to curl over her fingers, eliciting cold shivers down her spine. “As you say, bambina.”

“Don’t call me anything in Italian either. It’s ghastly.” He laughs, as brightly as his hoarseness will allow. That he has suffered to pass his time with her doesn’t go unnoticed by Althea.

“No Italian, then. Anything else, agapiti?” She shakes her head. “Would you like me to kneel at your feet, or wash them with my hair, or perhaps you would like me to write an ode to every god expressing my devotion to you? Heu! It seems that I have already done that one, so you must tell me…” With every space he fills as he inches near her, her smirk grows.

Whoever took the opportunity to close the last empty space between their lips is a mystery, though she strongly suspects it was her. Just as a purveyor of fine bouquets might, she traps his fragrant curls with her fingertips, and by accident manages to coil and rearrange them. Her tongue runs along his firm lip, and she is rewarded by a low purr and the delectable taste of peony.

Wisely, she does not bite , even though she would like to. Instead, she captures his upper lip, and runs her tongue along the roof of his mouth, as an indulgen t animal might procure honey from a hive. A discreet hand clasps her jaw to provide him with better leverage, but she mirrors the action by pulling him by his lapels, evoking a soft growl from him that shoots down her spine and rests in her belly.

Breathless, she withdraws, and bites her lip, moved by him doing the same. His eyes, blacker than obsidian itself, appear to have darkened even more so in that short time.

“Dominatrix..” He purrs, stroking the skin of her neck, but she swats it away, loath to be further distracted. “Et dominatrix quem feciturum. Consider me undone.”

She glares, but it’s lacking that crucial thing that it would have for anyone else. “How do humans smell? Voi- Stefan said that it is nearly impossible to befriend them for the allure of their blood.”

A long moment passes while he appears to weigh his words, scaling them like the dog-headed god Anubis, based on how palatable they might be. What he doesn’t know is that she would take no offense either way. Her insatiability to learn and know far surpasses many of her sensitivities.

“Succulent. Your blood appeals to me, but it is not out of any base desire to drink it, I assure you.” He explains, adding to her confusion. At the puzzled quirk of her brow, he goes on, loath to let any silence fester for very long. “I will soon tell you why, and don’t think I enjoy holding my tongue on the matter! All humans smell a varying degree of succulence, each with their own unique appeal. The blood smells differently depending on so many variables, like where they come from, what they like to eat and drink, or their unique biochemistry. Vampires carry their scent over into immortality too, and it is usually the smell of their clan, or fatherland, or however you would like to call it. Moderns have so many names for these places.”

“That is why you smell like the sea.” It isn’t customary for her to voice her observations like this. “And other vampires can.. sense that, too. They can sense where a vampire or a human comes from depending on where the smell of their blood corresponds to.”

“Exactly!”

“Why?”

“In regards to our nature there are unfortunately very few definitive answers, a prime chance for a philosophy student.. I have always theorized that it is, in part, due to our territorial nature. We are crueler to each other than we are to humans, and so our rare friendships can be more meaningful! Covens can be atrociously prejudiced against nomadic vampires who are not from their territory.” He clicks his tongue then, and giggles at something he had thought of, waving a casual hand at nothing before curling it around her slender wrist. “This is ultimately for the benefit of our kind, we would surely petrify if we weren’t so vicious. Is your curiosity sated, Althea? Am I permitted to leave with you now and quench my thirst?”

“No. I have one more question.” She begins, then adds, “Two more.”

If he’s bothered by this, he doesn’t vocalize it. It’s only right that she know the details before willingly signing her demise, her second death in regards to that one time she overdid the oxycodone. The more he talks about that other kind of life, the harder she is looking for its flaws, only to conclude that they are too few for her to refuse it. Even if she did refuse it, he would probably do it anyways, for he’s proven to have the disposition of someone used to getting his way.

“What will I do in the meantime?” Usually she’s hesitant to ask questions like these, ones that defer to other people, but he has an exceptional way of making her feel both comfortable and uncomfortable. That he is a leader, a king, of vampires, is incongruous with how she’s known him.

“You will return with me to the Palazzo, and in the meantime I will have your belongings returned to you-”

“What about my laptop?” His stare grows more calculating, like he is trying to gauge something, perhaps her trustworthiness. In that he has very little room to accuse her.

Finally, he cracks a delightful, self-deprecating grin, and says, “Of course, but you must promise me no contact with other humans until your change. If you can promise me that, then you can have whatever you please.” As an afterthought, he apologetically adds, “Althea, it is not that I don’t trust you, but I cannot make a concession for you on this matter. Other matters, well, they are other matters entirely. You can spend time with me, in court or in my chambers – they are not made to accommodate a human, but they’re close enough to a bathhouse that it’s only a minor inconvenience. Doubtless, you will want to use my library, half of which are filled by my own writings! They are all yours, agapiti.”

“You wrote those lexicons, didn’t you?” It’s not even a question, but a confirmation. At his ‘guiltless’ expression, she scoffs, “I hate you.” No, she doesn’t, and apparently he knows this, because his perennial smile is only growing. In fact, she admires him for his dedication to preserving history. “Why me?” She asks, and it is a loaded question, her final question, per her lucrative promise.

His expression softens, his smile melting into its rare, sober line. Surely his insecurity must be a pretense for something else, musn’t it? An icy hand, firmer than marble and more flawless still, winds its way around her thick hair before at last settling on the sharp pane of her cheek.

And yes, Althea is treacherously cold, so cold that her fingers began going numb minutes ago, but she is too entranced with him to pay those little details any mind. He strokes her skin with his dexterous fingertips, like a devotee might adoringly stroke their idol.

“Because I have loved you since I first saw you.” He tells her in Greek, then returns back to English saying, “You will better understand when you are an immortal.”

To that she says nothing, but tries to enjoy the last moments of her freedom with him, before she has to pay the price for what she has agreed to. And why has she agreed to it? If someone else had asked, she might tell them it is immortality, and that is integral to her decision, but far more pressing, is a life spent with him, the one who has met and exceeded her every pleasure.

Chapter Text

One of the several doors at the entrance of the central building of the Palazzo opened for them, revealing a pallid man who was about as tall as her father, if not somewhat taller than him. His eyes are a brilliant red, and the shock works to break her trance, instilled in her by the surrealism of this night. At her perusal, he defers to the granite flooring, and she understands why he would like to see it, if indeed he’s not looking away from Aro out of deference.

The flooring is an early modern rendition of what she assumes to have been mosaic tiles at one point, as the older Italians favored. As opposed to the unremarkable Tuscan stonework outside, expansive archways of marble hinted at the age and taste of the palace’s people, every wall with few exception was decorated with artwork whose quality she had no way to measure, given that she had never before seen them. Sprawling across the otherwise decorated walls were vines of the same sort that obscured the Bacchic sewers, except these bloomed with eternal spring, displaying lively white buds.

Nervously, she hovers close to Aro, and behind them follows the unbelievably tall figure of the man she had seen earlier. Her heartbeat races, and Aro spares her a grin, which fails to comfort her – he can hear her every bodily process, so too can the man behind her.

“It is just Felix, he is rather familiar with you! Are you not, Felix? Familiar with our Althea?” Puzzled, she cuts her eyes behind her, toward the imposing man, just enough that she catches a glimpse of his face.

“I am familiar with you, domina.” His voice is low and stoic, she reasons that he is an Italian, based off of what she knows of the standard Italic phenotype.

Straddling his thin lips was a prominent, aquiline nose, the sort that the Julio-Claudian line coveted in their stone likenesses. Like Aro’s, his hair was dark, but whereas Aro’s is unfathomably dark, Felix’s contemplates warm browns, and is cut in the same style as a young Roman’s during the time between the Late Republic and the Early Imperial period, evenly cut above his ears as their virility would have had it no longer.

“And, how are you familiar with me? I don’t believe we’ve ever met.” They pass a desk that is attended to by a human woman, the tells are already becoming more obvious to her.

Aro erupts in a series of delighted giggles, over what she hasn’t the foggiest – he laughs at everything. Perhaps it was the frankness with which she had spoken, he does tend to like that.

“Do tell her, Felix, it was you, after all, who volunteered! Let us not be shy! We are all family here!” Aro exclaims, tightening his arm around her waist and loosening it when she winces in discomfort. “True Roman that he is, Felix ponders more than he talks. Once I thought he was very, very secretive, counterpart to Dea Muta, but he just.. takes his duties very seriously! And what sort of man am I to complain about the manly virtutes that a member of my coven has?” A short paradise of silence intrudes, but it’s not to last. “Felix?” There is a threat there, she can tell, despite having never had it directed towards her. His musical voice raises a pitch, akin to upspeak but far from demure.

“I stood as your guard, domina.” Her questioning glare prompts another stoic and concise reveal from the Roman, Felix. “Outside of your home, and when you left to get supplies.”

Her resulting nod is silent, belong to that dangerous interval that’s followed by outrage, fury, and indignation, mostly due to having her privacy infringed upon. Her shapely lips purse until they finally rest on a snarl, and she pauses to turn to him fully, heedless to his size in her outrage.

Ever stoic, it seems. His expression betrays nothing, and he is careful to put distance between them, for after all, hitting him would only hurt herself. Why was he calling her ‘domina’, the Latin title for an esteemed mistress?

“You watched me? You listened to me?” She asks quietly, reminding herself to heed his strength and size.

“Yes, domina.”

To Althea’s ebbing chagrin, Aro seems very engrossed in this display between them, looking to the sneering Althea with the sort of fascination that a child might have with an adult acting out in ways they couldn’t comprehend. A bewitching smile is twitching his supple lips, revealing his perfectly straight teeth, the ones that have taken the lives of probably thousands of people.

Above them the lights are low, and with each step they had taken through the long and labyrinthine marble foyer, it grew darker, and the artwork grew more archaic. In the low light, her hair has lost its gold, and has taken entirely to the bronze that it was partially spun from.

“Why?” It’s a straightforward question, with a straightforward answer. She crosses her arms to gain some small sense of security.

Before answering, he defers to Aro, and the two exchange in an extremely bizarre way – Aro’s hand, dexterous and agile, takes Felix’s, and for a short moment, he mulls over something, a few different expressions flashing across his face and leaving as quickly as they had come.

“Agapiti, you needed protection in the event that a rogue vampire crossed your path. One look at Felix and most give chase immediately! Sic et tibi aestimatio eius nasciverat, sed.. non admittebit.” Aro drops his hand, but not before patting the back of it in a close relative to genial. Then, he wraps his arm around her slender waist, doing on the minimum to calm her. “Forgive him, Althea, remember that he is a stoic Roman, and he keeps his thoughts to himself..” The way he says it makes her feel like she is on the outside of an inside joke, and she does not like it right now, not when she is nervous as is, and definitely not when she is walking in front of a man who knows her more intimately than.. anyone, maybe.

Althea will not forget this, and the only reason she does not challenge Aro is in her unfamiliarity with the ancient complex, and the denizens within. For once, Aro is her only connection, and obviously his boundaries are nil next to hers, but this is something she’s known for awhile now.

“Onto the lift now! My, you must feel like Helen of Troy! You have had a long, long day, so I think we will keep these introductions short. What do you think, Felix?” Aro asks, then immediately follows up his own question without giving him the time to answer, no doubt for his eccentric amusement. Despite herself, Althea laughs under her breath. “I also think this is a sound idea!” He pecks her cheek, leaving it flush with anything but warmth, steering her forward with a gentle push on the small of her back, where he traces chaotic circles. “We will meet my brothers, Caius and Marcus, and tomorrow, I was thinking you could meet the others. Caius, if he does not love you at first glance as I did, he will find it in his cold, dead heart to love you eventually.”

Out of her periphery she notices Felix pulling a face at that, carefully neutralizing it, as he especially must know that nothing gets past Aro, the lovely, curly-headed Greek who has captured her heart thus that she has willingly followed him here.

Just barely, she can make out the one original she recognizes, one of Botticelli’s, a girl whose eyes follow her eerily, managing to spook her more than what should be spooking her more, the two predators – one behind her, and one holding her flush to his side. But of Aro, she has never felt endangered by, though he has managed to unnerve her.

That is purely out of instinct, she hypothesizes, out of the differences in their forms, owing to one of them being a natural predator of the other.

When they reach the lift, an unassuming station in the middle of the long foyer which proceeds in three directions beside and behind, Aro eagerly presses the ‘down’ button, and she notices that, strangely, it is the only functioning button on the machine. If he wasn’t holding her, she could easily see him bouncing on the balls of his feet. She rolls her eyes, trying desperately to avoid his charming, childish habits.

As it were, however, his hovering just over her shoulder, that favorite haunt of his, might be the only thing that’s keeping her level-headed. His touch is the distraction she needs, until she is alone and can finally contemplate in peace.

Their ride in the lift is.. tense, but blessedly quiet. Aro must be too busy thinking about what to talk about.

“How far underground are we?” She asks, filling the silence, and counting down from one-hundred in Greek to keep from panicking. Greek is always reliable for these purposes.

“Not far at all, puella mea. The throne room resembles Nero’s Domus Aurea, and is exposed to the sun.. many errant vampires have gone the path of Icaros, it is wondrous to behold, to watch an immortal go down the Icarian. Plenty of them find it on their own, and like Daedalos, we, the Volturi, caution them against it. To use your own father’s words, children rarely listen to their fathers unless they have to.” She stiffens, transfixed by something far, far ahead of her, past the lift’s open doors. “Vae! I wanted to show you it tonight, but my brothers are in the study. They do not know you are here, let us surprise them, Althea. Felix, watch your brutish feet – he has a habit of marching, ask him why and he will tell you the riveting tale of his time in Sulla’s auxiliary forces.”

Momentarily, she abandons her ire for the stolid immortal, wondering instead about the incredible things he must have seen while serving under Sulla during his short-lived tyranny.

“Sulla? What was he like?” Aro shushes her playfully, prompting from her a deep, insulted scowl.

Facing her now is a dimly-lit corridor, and not for the first time, she wonders if any of this is real at all. Surely, it must be, and surely, she simply needs to process it for her to accept it as true. Unlike the lobby, there were few, if any, noises down here, and on the chance that there were, she imagines they would echo throughout and bounce off of the walls of the long and dark corridor.

Wrought-iron chandeliers hang from the tall ceiling, and beneath them a long, Persian rug, the sort that she grew up taking for granted, lay flat and extended beyond what her eye could see, donating a splash of vibrant colors to the lonely corridor. She knows it would have cost a fortune, at least fifty-thousand euros, for its fine make and its intricate weave of gold, deep red, and black.

Hanging on the walls now are fixtures that would expose their age if they were not hidden away from the public. She spies ancestral death masks, the same that she had seen being displayed next to Cailu, Caius’ , mosaic. What captures her the most are the Mesopotamian reliefs, processions of kings with too complicated names for her to remember with certainty. Her eyes must be saucers – her nerves are forgotten for the one lone Achaemenid relief of a figure she knows to be Cyrus, flanked by advisors, beneath which are his illustrious code of laws etched in Old Persian or Elamite, she cannot discern different cuneiforms.

From beside her, Aro gives her a knowing look, there is something proud in its form.

Before she can even stop to touch Cyrus, Felix opens a set of wide, double doors, revealing a spacious chamber of lecterns and desks, yet it smells of death and the dying. Her nose crinkles at the faint smell, its only saving grace is the musty scent of parchment, and the sweet fragrance of Aro.

They are just above the sewers. She reasons this by the cavities in the floor – drains, for what purpose, she has also swiftly reasoned.

Althea swallows a non-existent lump down her throat, and at the incessant urging of Aro, follows him into the ‘study’, where two figures are as still and frozen as marble, but leagues more beautiful. One of them, a man she assumes is the same age as Aro at first glance, has hair that is long and somewhere between flaxen and wheat, and the other’s is only a touch shorter than Aro’s, and is the warm shade of ground chestnut.

Jarringly, the blond, Caius she assumes, jerks his head in their direction, first glancing at Aro, then to her, where he sees something he scorns. He is the first to approach them, something he does with the gusto of a tawny feline, if a feline could reach that elusive blur that becomes him. One second, he is across the room, and the next, he is standing in front of her, scrutinizing her for some deficiency. Out of instinct, she backs away a step.

This one looks like no one she has ever seen before. His jaw is thin and delicate, his nose is straight and Grecian, but, his eyes, bright and red as they are, are mono-lidded, a bizarre quirk of his that she can’t help but determine is a staple of the Pre-Indo-European Etruscans.

“This is the baby Persian you have caught and cornered?” The dialect of Greek he speaks is one she labors to parse. “Why have you neglected to turn her, Aro? So excitable are you that you would risk your beloved be attacked here?”

“Careful what you say, brother. She understands Greek. Say hello to her!” But the look on the blond vampire’s face tells her that this is the last thing he’d like to do.

Regardless of his scorn, his beauty is the kind that would inspire millions of devotees and inconveniently lengthy pilgrimage. A country in central Africa must surely be wondering where all its gold and silver have gone, only to find that it has all been used to weave Caius’ flaxen hair, which is thin and fine, a possible mark of his unique heritage.

“I don’t believe I have anything to say to her until she is one of us.” He snarls, looking down at her over his nose. It’s not that long of a way down, since he has barely a head over her, if even that.

She and Caius engage in a silent staring contest, of which it seems neither are winning. Althea has the amazing ability to stare into someone’s eyes for a very long time, but apparently, Caius isn’t one to play fair, for he hisses lowly at her, forcing her to look away and admit a reluctant defeat. Anoth er hiss, more familiar to her as Aro’s, sounds beside her and moves her to take refuge with the silent figure of Felix behind her, where she can safely observe the two vampires posturing at each other.

“You are never any fun, brother. Why must you be so dismissive of the good and beautiful?” Aro abruptly pulls back, sheathing his teeth behind either supple lip. Then, he gestures at the bewildered Althea, and says, “As requested, I have introduced my beloved to you, you charmless Italian half-breed. Voltumna take you for your coarse and uncivil company. You should return to your mate, lest we all have the misfortune of catching your foul temper like it’s the morbus.” He waves a light, dismissive hand, to Caius’ ire, and her eminent confusion which is frankly stacking up like a frail house of cards.

“I have no need to say anything in any case. I am practically acquainted with her already, since you have not stopped talking about her. I almost pity you, human, for completing the other half that is my insolvent brother.”

When he glides past her, like he is walking on air itself, she catches the sharp, sickly-sweet smell of deadly belladonna and spring wildflowers, the species she’s smelt before in a flowering meadow in early June, just along the fair outskirts of Lucca.

“And don’t forget to slam the door behind you, brother.” Aro chants in his pleasant leggero tenor.

Wise to Aro’s mischief, Caius does everything but slam the door, instead letting it click quietly and leaving them only four in the study, with the one brother whom she believes is Marcus, the one she has heard little, if nothing, about. Indeed he’d been completely absent from Stefan’s condemnation, leaving her to wonder how he fit into this hierarchy.

It is easy to ignore him, she notes, given that he says nothing, taking after a statue in the way he sits completely still and listless. While technically ageless, she can deduce that he was turned younger than either of the other two, but this doesn’t matter a whit, for he is so gaunt and colorless that she might’ve mistaken him for a sickly human at first glance.

“Marcus..?” Aro eagerly retakes her waist, and pushes her toward the statuesque vampire, whose enervated stare is intense only on account of him seeming so bored that he could look nowhere else without being prompted. “Agapiti, Marcus does not understand English, so you must be creative in how you introduce yourself! He responds well to various Greek languages, but if that is too laborious, Latin will suffice.”

Nervously, she looks up at Aro, who is inspecting every minute tell on her face. His smile is a guilty pleasure when he notices her penetrating stare. Althea can’t help but notice that Aro speaks of this king like he is an insect whose qualities, wants, and needs are to be described rather than inquired of. She wonders about the crucial question – why, but it is ultimately insignificant compared to her other myriad troubles, and her eminent shock at where the night’s events have brought her.

“Salve, Marcus.” She murmurs quietly, neglecting to offer her hand, cursing Aro for making her talk to other people. I want to lay down, she miserably remarks to herself.

Could it have been the first time he’s seen her? Surely not, since he’s been sitting, staring blankly at an equally blank desk ever since they arrived. But she could’ve sworn that an emotion akin to recognition passes over his stark features as he finally stops staring at where he was prompted, and looks at her with milky red eyes, hazed over by some form of neglect. When she cares more about other people, she’ll ask about Marcus.

“Salve..” He was once beautiful, she decides, and if his voice wasn’t strained by whatever sort of neglect it’s been under, it would’ve been pleasantly deep.

Really, Althea is unsure about what she should be doing. Should she be offering her hand? No, she doesn’t really want to even if that’s the proper form. Is Aro the only animate vampire in the Volturi?

She looks to Aro once more, but he is wrapped up in a soundless conversation with Marcus, who has finally looked away from her, to some other fixed point that he’s been called to. The other vampire, the one she suspects is from a different part of Greece than Aro, bows his head deeply, like he is affirming a question, despite there having been nothing said.

“Like myself, Marcus is also from venerable Mycenae, and we have known each other for over three millennia. His true name roughly translates to ‘Midyos’, like Midas, only he has no rivers of gold. Do you, Midyos?” Then he switches to Greek, smiling indulgently at the other vampire, but it does not reach his eyes this time. “Althea and I said that your name reminds us of King Midas.”

A ghost of a smile haunts Marcus’ colorless lips, particularly when Aro sees fit to dote her cheek with another lingering peck.

“If only I were so favored by the Lord of the Grapevine.” Marcus supplies, as a joke she imagines, but it’s too short of vigor for it to be anything other than unnerving.

Aro looks him up and down quizzically, like he is trying to solve a complicated mathematical equation – Althea is no stranger to this common expression of his. Like a child, he seems to navigate everything with a singular fascination that she would imagine someone of his great years to have lost a long time ago.

Before he says anything else, he reemploys his indulgent smile, like a parent to a child, and beams down at Marcus, who is either uninterested, or indeed unable, to return it.

“This is Althea, if you couldn’t tell by the bronze veil of her head, imbued and woven unto her by Aphrodite herself, as divine as the foam on the Sea of Crete, when the sun is setting low on the sky just before it falls for the huntress’ moon and it turns gold-adorned once more.” Adoringly, he entangles a hand through her hair, and strokes the rigidly straight strands with chaotic fervor.

“Very pretty.” Is all Marcus offers, to Aro’s apparent surprise, forming a little ‘o’ with his mouth.

“Marcus thinks you are ‘very beautiful’-”

“I know. I can understand him, Aro.” His smile only widens at her correction. She surmises that he’s used to talking on behalf others, something that truly doesn’t surprise her.

“Sophos! Marcus prefers Dorismos, but you have practiced with the less standard classical language, while I was born in paradisaical Crete, he was born in rugged Doric Epirus. Do not bother asking him where, he does not remember, nor does he care.” Switching over to Greek then, he tells Marcus, “Please make that copy of Pythagoras’ manuscripts, I simply must have it by tomorrow.”

But there were no surviving copies of Pythagoras in his own words, they were lost to history, between prejudiced Greeks and philistine Romans who had besieged Athens and by regrettable accident, destroyed its literature, made worse by how they hadn’t the slightest about its value.

So that must mean the Volturi has preserved such knowledge lost to mankind, guarded jealously in meandering archives of scrolls, clay, and inscribed stone, their contents copied into more accessible books.

“That is my Christmas gift to you, puella mea, courtesy of King Midas here, who used to be a great admirer of those mysteries. And there is more, so much more, but I do need to sate my thirst! So I will have Felix take you to my wing, afterward I will join you, and I will show you what else I have procured for you.” He plants a kiss on either of her cheeks so quickly that she barely has time to process it, leaving her in stunned silence with only Felix and Marcus for company, the latter is already mechanically following the bidding of Aro.

“Me sequi, domina.” Felix breaks the silence with his baritone, fitting for his sheer size.

As if she had the will to refuse. With Aro gone – why he would leave her behind is beyond her – the cavernous corridor outside of the study seems so much more imposing, and she keeps a safe distance from Felix, while simultaneously clinging to the only other face that has been [relatively] unthreatening to her.

In hindsight she determines that she doesn’t like Caius, maintaining only a bare scholarly interest in his novel heritage. Of Marcus she has no opinion, and of Aro, she feels decidedly abandoned, betrayed by his sudden disappearance.

Catching no sight of any other vampire, she asks Felix what she had intended earlier. “Quis vir qui Sulla fuit?”

She catches the twitch at the corner of his lips, but it is gone too quick for her to call it anything but a miscalculation.

“Est mirimodis Latinam tuam bona. De Sulla, fuit mihi aequus – loquor ac eocum semel tantum, fuit ac non iucundissimus.” If she wasn’t so tired, she might be more nervous, and if she wasn’t more nervous, she might’ve been nursing more anger with Aro for his disappearing, and if none of that were so, she would probably have laughed at Felix’s terse answer, also if she wasn’t unnerved by his earlier stalking.

He leads her to the end of the corridor, where on either side are two ornate, spiraling stairwells, and in the middle are two exceptionally wide doors, where she notices the Persian rug stops, again wondering how expensive that fixture must be. As Aro had implied earlier, Felix did have a habit of marching, but it was as silent as Aro’s elegant glide.

That imposing, marching Roman takes the right stairwell, impervious to her suspicious gaze, beginning at his head and ending somewhere around his thickly muscled calves, which she can see even underneath the layers of his dark heather gray peacoat and dress pants, absolutely disharmonious with the rest of him.

But even the stoic Roman is liable to express his frustration, because mimicking the Greeks’ prestige is only rewarding insofar as he’s in public. Impressively, he betrays no impatience for her distrustfully remaining at the foot of the stairs.

“I haven’t attacked you yet, have I? Would be very unwise to start now, even if I wanted to.” She glares, clutching her bag tighter around her shoulder. As soon as she’d gotten the answer she wanted about Sulla, she could admit to having completely lost any semblance of amicability toward the vampire, even if what he said did make sense. “Would you prefer to wait for Aro?”

That was a good reminder of her growing irritation with said man, she can’t decide which stalker to be more perturbed with, but she’ll settle with Aro, because that’s always more fruitful, and she suspects that he likes to be handled roughly.

“No.” Without betraying any of her anger, she follows Felix up the seemingly endless stair, which begins in total darkness, forcing her to feel around the light stonework of the walls so that she doesn’t slip.

Althea shifts her attention to the top of the stair, where there is a tiny glimpse of light, growing larger, and thus closer, with every step she climbs. It is the moon, and she deduces that they’re in one of the high towers of the Palazzo, visible from the grounds of the village. Covered by a large, circular pane of tempered glass, it is breathtaking to behold, if she had any breath to spare from the steep climb.

The complex is a veritable maze that she wouldn’t be able to familiarize herself with in weeks, if not longer. In the long spiraling passage of the stair, she had several times felt openings where archways had been carved into the stone – likely foyers that led to other unknown ends of the underground, and upper, network of antiquated chambers.

A deep chill took her then, sending shivers down her spine and raising the flesh on her arms. She hugs her arms close to stave away the coolness of the draft, itching for a comforting cigarette, knowing that it would temporarily ameliorate the cross mood she has found herself in.

And therein lies the reason for the chill, the next small passage is a covered balcony, prone to the air, but the view is almost enough to give her pause, and admire the picturesque view of the village from this height. The wind stirs her hair around, leaving it to cascade across her slender shoulders and down her back.

“Wait.” She says in a raspy voice, hopelessly crushed with fatigue and overstimulation.

To smoke in someone else’s living area is a ghastly thing to do, even for the brooding and self-assertive Althea. Although Aro deserves it for bringing her here and then promptly leaving her, she does have some decorum that she absolutely refuses to break.

Careless of Felix’s thoughts on the matter, he will get over it, she reassures herself, Althea takes out a cigarette, and swiftly lights it while she has the open air. As she had experienced earlier in the evening, it took a frustratingly long time for the flame to take, as harsh as the bitter winter winds blew.

What have I done?, she at last asks herself, as soon as she takes her first smooth inhale. All she can do now is hope that she hadn’t made the ‘wrong’ decision – whatever that might be, her life has been miserable for as long as she can recall. All of her life has been spent as a social pariah, both in the West and in the East.

In England and America, she had been too Persian, and in Iran, she had been too western. Few had ever accepted her, and there were even fewer that she cared to be accepted by . She has never truly yearned for a collective, and remains critical of those who do. But what is the fine line between being a stubborn individualist, and accepting someone she actually does care about, or.. love , into her life? Was it a wise decision to follow him?

Ultimately, she has to wonder if her life would’ve otherwise eventually ended in her premature death. Even Althea has to admit that she can get lonely, and has been – for years. It is then that, at least to herself, she can admit that she has fallen in love with Aro-

“What does that feel like?” She cuts her eyes over to Felix, skulking just before yet another set of doors.

She sneers, aggravated by his interrupting her thoughts. “So nice that I can pretend that you’re not even here.”

Almost, but not quite, for he laughs at her remark only a moment later, leading a strange reassuring mist that had nothing to do with the cool air, to wash over and blanket her with a sense of security. Anyone who can take her sharp tongue is to be commended, and she feels her wariness of the vampire lessening, but not leaving her entirely. She refuses to overlook how he watched her, listened to her, followed her, even if he was only following orders by doing so. He has gotten an uninvited glimpse into her private life.

Leaning on the balcony, which is cut from the same material as the rest of the stonework on the exterior of the complex, she takes a few long, therapeutic draws, and exhales, transfixed by the path of the smoke as it’s lifted up and away by the wind. She envies its simplicity, how its only purpose is to be carried and blown away by a force greater than it, but that is not the sort of life that Althea has ever wanted, it is only something she has admired from very far away.

Unceremoniously, she tosses the spent cigarette over the balcony, and flips her hair down her back, letting her curtain bangs obscure her flushed cheeks. She would like very much to sleep, but she doubts she would be able to until Aro returns, so that she can recommence her interrogation of him.

The heavy doors open under Felix’s immense strength, in that way a bird’s feather is easily pushed by a tiny gust of wind.

A few minutes ago, she had remarked that the stained glass window in the stair was breathtaking , but Aro’s wing is another thing entirely. The Palazzo has been thus far resolutely Tuscan, perhaps to camouflage it from the public, but this wing is light, airy, and aligned with heavy Corinthian columns, decorated in a disorganized theme without a pattern, but that’s only for the admirer who doesn’t look long enough.

In the middle of the wing is yet another long stairwell, painstakingly cut into the fine white marble of its flooring. Its décor speaks volumes about its eccentric occupant, its walls are crawling with greenery, and like the balcony, its windows are open, but covered by frolicking sheer curtains, all of which are the same shade of white as the floor. Those columns, they must have been designed by someone a very long time ago, for they have all the character of authentic Corinthian make.

His bed too is antiquated, a high, canopied mattress with elaborate carvings in its light wooden frame, some of which spell unknown words in a script that she correctly assumes to be Mycenaean ’s Linear B. At the foot of the bed is decorative ivory, and supporting it is wrought bronze.

“I’ll be at the door, domina.” She barely even takes notice, not when surrounded by the remarkable taste of this room.

While the vines have long grown dormant from their exposure to the pitiless cold, they are the same blooming species as those in the warmer lobby downstairs, and she knows they will be breathtaking come spring. One cheeky vine has crawled up the length of a column and in a few months, it will have reached the ceiling. She follows the path of the dormant vine, until finally she sees it, and reasons why the greenery has been trying to clasp onto it.

A fresco, spanning the breadth of the imposing ceiling, is what they’ve been climbing toward. Its artist displays a mastery that mortal men take a lifetime to develop, but then, Aro has had several lifetimes to practice, hasn’t he? That is assuming this is his creation, and not the work of God.

Below figures that she assumes belong to the Hellenic pantheon are more letters in the incoherent Mycenaean script, corresponding to each god in their celestial sea kingdom. Weaving around and between them were unmistakable motifs of Mycenaean culture, but incomprehensible to Althea, who knows as much as any antiquarian about the enigmatic Bronze Age civilization. Only one she can intuit, and those are the sleek dolphins that swim in the golden sea swirling around the feet of the gods.

At Knossos, there wasn’t a single palatial wall without a faded dolphin delicately painted onto it. She has read that the Minoans may have worshiped them, and this tradition was passed down to the invading Mycenaeans, whom, desiring to emulate that illustrious civilization, passed it to their later, Iron Age incarnation, who associated the gregarious creature with Apollo’s oracular shrine – Delphi. Althea too had been fond of the creatures when she visited Greece, constantly tempted to jump into the temperate blue waters with them.

If only she could touch these dolphins.

“I can teach you to read it.” She is growing too familiar with him for it to frighten her anymore. “Lovely, clever Althea, you search for rhyme in the letters like Odysseus searched for far home, those were the days before Phoenicians gave us their alphabet. We did with it what we liked of course, ours was lovelier than those savages’.” He reveals himself in front of her then, and the fathomless darkness has left his eyes, for glittering, excitable rubies that she finds as lovely as the rest of him. “Phoenician savages! Levantine bastards! Who needs royal purple anyhow? A Hellene thinks that he is the sator civitatis, but not long ago he was raiding Cyprus for copper like everyone else.”

Reinvigorated by his hunt, he is more animated than he has been in the past week, when he was steadily becoming more gaunt, but no less captivating. She clings desperately to her earlier fury with him, but it’s an impossible feat when he’s fawning over her as he is, waiting for her to say something, shrewdly watching her for any indication of her thoughts, which he claims are ‘impossible to read’.

“What do you make of my fresco? An old Athenian friend of mine, Idaos, taught me how to paint fresco. Though in those years, fresco painting was rather primitive for modern standards, his own belonged to a nascent form of excellence, I think Plato would approve of that turn of phrase-”

“Nascent form of excellence?” She jibes, biting her lip to stifle laughter. “That’s quite a verbose way of saying ‘mediocre’.”

But heavens, he is more breathtaking still than the fresco, and the Corinthian columns, and every single priceless original housed in the network of this occult palace. His organized mess of curls shine even in the dimness of this wing, unable to be misused by the wind blowing through the windows, because wherever the thick curls fall, they manage to find somewhere perfect to settle around his face, whose youthfulness has been renewed.

“Once, I would’ve called myself a Platonist.” She confesses, blaming it on exhaustion.

“And why don’t you now?” He pries, discreetly inching nearer to her, stopping when the tips of their feet touch. She notices then that he is barefoot, the graceful digits that are his toes lead her to the thick black curls of his ankles which entice her to the long legs beneath his clothes.

“I do still believe in the archetypes, but I resent Plato’s Gnosticism, the notion that the universe is cut in a fabric of warring dualities that can never be reconciled. By far it’s more palatable than Abrahamic Gnosticism, but the taste of any strain is revolting to me.”

He keeps his thoughts on the matter very quiet, choosing instead to ask her another question before he states his opinion. “Do you not believe that the point of this dualism is to reconcile?” While he talks, he paces – he is always moving with excited energy.

“It could very well be, but Plato’s wasn’t, Plato’s was an excuse for his cult to terrorize Epicureans and judge themselves as the sole bearers of wisdom and secret knowledge, as all Gnostics do, like the Marxists and the Protestants.” Aro’s perennial smile widens.

“What if the world is cut from these warring dualities? Where is it that you would stand, agapiti?” He stops pacing to redirect his close watch back down to her.

“I’m sure I’d stand on one side or other, likely not in the middle, because I, like everyone else, answer to the laws of the universe. Even vampires.. I am.. trying to figure out where they stand. On whatever side that works the will of God, whatever nature needs to remain concordant, as man, like everything else, must have a stabilizing factor besides disease.” She would rather be wrong than unsure, if she’s wrong, she can always revise it later. Her desire for certainty is so pervasive that not even five years of philosophy have managed to quash it.

On the other hand, Aro seems like a close friend of uncertainty, able to dwell in it without any measure of fear. Anytime he addresses an open-ended question, he does so without any sense of authority or closure.

“So, you believe that our existence is virtuous, by virtue of stabilizing mankind’s numbers? What if a vampire is not virtuous, and kills needlessly, indiscriminately?” He asks, taking a seat on the settee by the nearest open window.

Speaking of that.. “Can you close these windows? It’s terribly cold in here, you know.”

“Of course.. do you really think I’d let my collection be pelted with rain? Never, unless they were Picasso’s wretched paintings, or worse, Warhol’s.” A blur of lustrous black curls follows his words, along with the closure of every window in the airy tower. “Do tell me the answer to my earlier question, Althea. I’m just.. dying to know.” Sometimes, she can’t tell if he’s being insincere or sarcastic, or his language is meant to appear untrustworthy for other mysterious ends, perhaps to test people, or perhaps for his own amusement.

“Are you? Well I would hate for you to die, then I would never know Mycenaean.” She shrugs, smirking at him from the corner of her eye.

“Bona Dea, see how I must guess how my beloved would like to use me? One can only hope, pray, and supplicate that she uses me for more than just teaching her Greek! All the same, for she doesn’t know it only works to my benefit.” Most of her earlier frustration is melting away now, she loathes this awesome power of his. He stops his pacing to face her fully, sending her a crooked smile that is as cunning as it is lovely. “Do you, puella mea? You cannot even begin to conceive of how many years I have longed for you, and still you abuse me..”

Althea rolls her eyes, and crosses the room, away from him and his insincere melodrama. Setting her bag at the bronze claw of the canopied bed, she soon after sets herself down, sighing upon finally resting her aching legs. Not a moment later, he rushes to crouch in front of her, and it takes her a long second to realize that her hand is already enclosed between his – so impossibly fast and stealthy is he.

Then she realizes that his attention span isn’t as short as he likes to portray it, for he’s staring up at her expectantly, waiting for her to answer his question.

Clicking her tongue, she answers, “I can’t imagine a vampire being so unlike their human counterparts, in that they have a will, therefore choice, and can be torn between virtue and evil.”

“Evil?” She shivers when his cool fingers begin to draw circles on her slender wrist.

“Disrupting the natural order, I should think. Among humans that evil creature would surely be a cannibal or a pedophile, acting without any sort of benefit either to himself or the universe as a whole. Both of those vile creatures have no benefit whatsoever to anyone or anything, a cannibal hurts only himself by eating the inedible, and breaks every law of nature in doing so. A pedophile does the same thing, and for a vampire to be evil, he must surely transcend his prerogative to kill, for killing is only sustaining himself. No.. he must be completely subverting his instincts, like the pedophile or cannibal, that makes him evil. It is not enough for any man to kill for him to be evil, killing is virtuous for men.” She finishes passionately, with a flourish of her free hand.

“Is the Good always natural? Is it not the case that a pedophile’s condition is natural? Studies do suggest that in many cases, it is an organic malady.” That does give her pause to think.

“I’d have to consider that.” She admits, her brow askew in thought.

“Or you can consider that there are exceptions, exceptions are also natural, and yet they never define the natural.”

“Sophos.” She says, employing one of his favorite phrases. He smiles brightly at her use of it, squeezing her hand tighter. “What were you, before you were changed?”

If at all possible, his smile grows more brilliant, she longs to trace her thumb along his newly rouged lips. “A bard, like Homer. My trade was in the written word, and the recitation of epic poetry – then, we sang it.. although I scarcely remember those years.”

All of this is so.. overwhelming. Unbelievable.

“You will make an exceptional immortal, agapiti. That you consider the nature of us so charitably, as a human no less, I confess I have never seen this before. Sophos! Wiser than any unphilosopher.” He teases, “Our memories are perfectly eidetic, from the moment the venom enters our veins, to indefinite years, but we struggle to remember our human lives with the same precision. Even with the account of Didyme, my sister, I can’t personally recall my trade. Maybe, because my memory is egregious next to the rest of my kin! On account of my talent, yet another thing we have to discuss, Althea.”

And there are so many of those, aren’t there? Her back straightens at the grave tone he employs.

“Your talent?” She eyes him distrustfully, up and down.

“Indeed!” He begins brightly, “Some vampires, and some humans, like yourself, my heart, are gifted. Out of some special trait of theirs as a human, no doubt! Most are unexceptional, a gift of self-control around blood, but a few are truly exceptional. Truly, I wanted to wait before I told you this, but you are clever enough to make sense of everything in so short a time, a precious commodity that your mortality has little of.”

Her expression schools itself into something neutral, unreadable.

“Ah, but you are doing it right now. Mirabile! Mine is very different, but no less a miracle than your own.” He’s searching her face now, as he so often does. He licks his lips, a sultry movement that she can’t help but visibly trace. “Do you recall that chat we had outside of Volterra, when we were frolicking to the sewers? So lovely, that night, charming, enigmatic creature that you are. We talked about sonder, the complexity of others’ stories in relation to ours?”

Althea nods, remembering her remark about the passing cars on the sparse road near the abandoned field they walked through. That night had solidified her dubious trust in him, considering he had so many opportunities to hurt her, or otherwise take liberties, and he hadn’t.

A brief twitch at the corner of his supple red lips tells her a thousand things about what he is feeling, if she knew which question to ask. Expressive though he is, he is highly ambiguous.

“Moira, that you mentioned it. A design of fate’s, you have known my soul because it is the other half of yours. I said to you that it defines my very existence, you did not understand why, but I suspect you believed me regardless. My trade as a human was in composing oral histories and the stories of my people, for which I wandered far and wide. As a vampire I have retained and surpassed this talent. At the touch of a hand,” He lifts hers, his lips hovering over the skin. “I can see every thought, every memory, every feeling that a human or a vampire has ever had.”

Upon this admission – and she detects no lie, but he has proven to be as charming as a black-haired fox – her heart sinks down into some uncomfortable cavity in her tingling feet, and she tries to snatch her hand away, to no avail. His grip is too strong. Althea has never truly feared Aro more than in this moment.

“But not yours, lovely, clever Althea! The irony! I am but a plaything of fate!” He cackles, but she’s too shocked, and too skeptical, to join him. The irony is lost on her.

“You.. prove it, then.” No, she will not accuse him of anything until she has some proof.

“Your father’s favorite dish is qotab, he has always had a liking for sweets, so did you, because you often sneaked into his pantry for sugar cubes, for which you were caught three times, until you wizened to it, and he could never rightly accuse you because all he had for evidence were missing cubes.” The tiny drop of gold in her skin is all that keeps it from turning a ghostly pale. “Your family was Zoroastrian, but converted to Islam for better opportunity. Pity, that, such an old and dignified faith.”

She scoffs, “Anyone who knows Persian family names would know that mine is Zoroastrian. That means nothing, many Zoroastrians converted for the same reason.”

“And you left your father’s family one night to sneak away to Tehran. He didn’t catch you until three days later. By then it was already time for you to return to your mother, Delilah. Your father was upset with you, but even more upset that you would want to leave.”

There’s no logical rhyme for how he would know that story, unless the talent he claims is a true one. Hadn’t he taken her father’s hand? And.. she had never told him her mother’s name. In fact, she had never talked about the bohemian woman once in Aro’s presence, loath as she was to talk about her at all, at any time.

“You took my father’s hand.” She says, looking away from him, to the canopy hanging over the bed posts.

“Yes, I did, Althea. To no great use, secretive patriarch that he is. Nearly half of it was incomprehensible to me, a powerful gift that he gave to you. For I see nothing when I touch you, I’ve taken to calling it obfuscation-”

“You came that night to take his hand.” She states, accusatory. What else does she not know? What else is there to learn in the course of tonight?

“No, no, of course not, I came to see you, agapiti. Two days are too long, and the longer they become, I might as well be lying prone on a bed of searing coals for the tortured longing it brings me.” Compared to everything else she has learned in the past three days, this should be minor, and yet it isn’t.

And for some inexplicable reason, she can’t seem to fault him over it. This should be the deficiency she’s been searching him for, but it isn’t. All those times she has remarked about how he must have been supremely annoying to other people, now make sense. Could it not be that no one wants to be around him?

Some rare form of empathy unfurls itself then, beginning at her chest, and radiating through her limbs.

“Say something, Althea, your long silences always worry me.” She trails her exhausted eyes over his hand, firmly holding her own, upward and over his sharp jaw, then to his red eyes, stopping somewhere in between them.

“I am struggling to believe any of this is real, despite knowing that it couldn’t be anything but. Naturally.”

“Naturally.” He parrots, standing to look down at her, even chancing to tuck a thick strand of her hair behind her ear. After all, he is a chancer.

“What is it like, to see everything, and hear everything?” The mattress dips beside her as he fills the empty space by lounging next to her, supporting himself with his lean arm, an unnecessary detail, for she doubts he ever feels any discomfort.

“Come and join me, and I might just tell you.”

And so she does, kicking off her flats, letting them land wherever they may – she has more pressing concerns, and said concerns are numbering in the hundreds. Chiefly she must know how he can be so lively, so curious, even though most secrets can be known to him with the bare touch of his hand.

Beauty is not his only novelty.

Lying back on the feather mattress, a truly antiquated affair, she bares herself to him, letting her hair fan around her head and spread across the white sheet. She wonders what he uses this bed for, since he doesn’t sleep, only to feel herself flushing at the probable answer, and thereafter feeling no trivial amount of jealousy.

Their noses nearly touch, it is the first time she’s ever lain beside him. His smell is stronger now, in fact, the entire chamber smells sweetly of him, it’s a fragrance that behooves her to do and say things she has never before done for anyone else. She should be angry with him, she should be distrustful of him, but being an exception to his talent.. it only makes her feel more secure.

“It amazes me, three millennia later, to see and experience the thoughts and memories of others. Like sipping golden ambrosia at a high table in far Mytikas, it stays my youth. My heart, you will soon find what I mean by calling my peers unphilosophical. Many are so old that they have lost their spice of life, if they ever had any to begin with. Most didn’t. A tasteless human is an even more tasteless vampire, and so on. Every year of my eternity that passes brings me only more joy, but this existence is like swimming against the tide in a storm, when one of the gods of the sea is enraged.. others who are caught in it, let themselves be moved, yet I move against it always, and finally have managed to find the sun.” She takes his adoring perusal of her body to mean that he refers to her. “So the storm breaks, but I still tread through unfamiliar waters. Exciting.”

“Do people not fear you for this power?” She finds herself asking, but she thinks she knows the answer.

Glancing back at her eyes, he makes a face that’s meant to convey ‘what do you think? ’. A curl falls boyishly across his shoulder at the movement, brushing the pale, flawless skin of his face. The picture is something she can’t help but touch, and she does when she chances to wind the curl around her finger, and let it bounce upward, over and over, to his apparent pleasure.

“Would you expect anything less? No one wants to be around someone who understands their soul better than them. Those who do are truly remarkable, their humility is second to none! Of those rare vampires I have known only a few, the rest avoid me like Apollo’s wretched morbus. And not one vampire is ignorant of me, this makes meeting new people very difficult, unless they are criminals, brought to court by other law-abiding vampires. In which case they are already poor company – a pity, for I do so love to share ideas with new faces. Yet again this is also rare, by the time we have met, they have, by unfortunate accident, brushed against me in some small way, and asking them questions is only a matter of knowing what they certainly want to hear, their responses always being predictable.

“Everyone is so boring, Althea.. except you. I could know you for a millennium, and still wonder what your finest pleasures are, or what makes you tick. All of this, thanks to some god with a strange sense of humor, has to be guessed and learned.” Even with her hand on his skin, he continues to talk, and she continues to think, and marvel at the craftsmanship of that god with a strange sense of humor.

“Poor Aro, he has to solve things the hard way.” She coos, as one might to a child.

“Do you want me to solve things the hard way?” Before she can blink, he is slotting himself against her, eliciting a sharp intake of breath from her. “There are so many of them, you will have to be more specific, agapiti, but I have a few in mind.”

Somewhere between scandalized and aroused, her jaw drops. Pressed against her stomach is the virile fruit of his loins, and he watches, like the ambiguous trickster spirit that he is, for a reaction from her. Why he is always trying to garner reactions from her is no longer as obscure a mystery to her, indeed she feels more flattered by it than ever before.

She bends slightly to whisper in his ear, tantalizingly shifting herself against his thighs, to either of their sweet torment.

“You are feral.” She whispers, running her tongue across the shell of his ear. The sound it elicits is somewhere in that thrilling liminal between a purr and a low, tortured groan. “Someone as feral as you needs a strong hand.”

“Are you going to be that strong hand, Althea?” He purrs, and it is the most sensual music, almost making her forget how completely tired she is.

When he moves to kiss her, she raises a hand to cover his lips, but he kisses it too.

“Someone has to be.” She teases, smiling at his attempts to remove her hand without hurting her. “Now stop. I have had a long day, as you already mentioned. I am a human, I need rest.. and food. Where’s the food around here?”

Those words seem to have broken him from his trance, and he pulls away to give her the bewildered stare of someone who had not considered that question.

“There isn’t any. As much as I would like to stay, you are right!” His eyes widen at the remembrance of those tiny details. What a unique, whimsical leader he must make. “You will have breakfast, in Hades if need be and I have to venture down there like Orpheus for some olives and pistachios. Those are your favorites, aren’t they?”

She shrugs, her mood turning sour at the mention of tastes he must have gleaned from taking her father’s hand.

“How very Greco-Persian of you!” He glides off of the luxuriously soft bed, but not before kissing her cheek, her forehead, and then her lips, all in that order. “Sleep then, Althea. I am late for court, Caius will have choice words, ‘shame, Aro’, and he’ll be too dense to understand that I have impeccable excuses.” As tricky as he is, she’s sure he has quite a few of those.

“Where do I go if I should have to use the loo?” Ah, yet another detail he’s ‘forgotten’. “You have never hosted a human before?”

“Never, not for any significant time. There are privies in the Etruscan bathhouses, frightfully old-fashioned for modern standards. No one here is particularly fond of new innovations. As I mentioned, tastelessness is even more so in an immortal. I have tried to have it renovated, and I’ve succeeded in some areas – we do have WiFi and internet, for instance, but Caius so hates tubs and showers – he calls them ‘crude modern inventions’, and this is his ancestral home, ergo he must approve. Now I really must go, and Althea, do not go down to the bathhouses without Felix! Not every vampire here knows who you are, that’s the joy of tomorrow’s introductions.” And what a Christmas gift that will be, she thinks wryly to herself.

Another hour passes before she forces herself to sleep, using the same method as she had in Turkey, only the stakes now are so much higher, and she is leagues more exhausted than she ever was back then. With luck, when she wakes, these details will make more sense to her.

Chapter Text

Like the wings of a developing butterfly in its metamorphosis, Althea’s lashes flutter open, then abruptly shut for the bright sunlight shining through her lids. The bed beneath her is too comfortable to be hers, and every now and then, she feels a pliable lump that feels suspiciously like goose feather, a material she hasn’t seen in a mattress since she was a girl, staying with one of her very old and stubborn relatives.

Confusingly, she wonders how she got there, before she remembers that she’s not there. An onslaught of last night’s memories assail her mind, groggy from her sleep, the rare form of it that was akin to the dead’s. She isn’t in Lucca, nor is she in Isfahan, but in Volterra, in the tower belonging to Aro’s wing, who is an ‘excellent reader of people’, this being in actuality, quite literal, rather than a figure of speech for his loquaciousness and childlike charm.

And she, who followed him willingly into the symbolical end of this chapter of her life, the one she has countless times thought about ending. Even if she hadn’t followed through with it, she had never imagined that it would end this way. Being no stranger to the eccentric and preternatural, she is not exactly opposed to living a life defined by it, and especially not living a life beside a man that she has grown to.. love, as difficult as it is for her to conceive. It takes longer for these things to be accepted by a selfish person. And Althea is notoriously self-serving. She doubts she could’ve survived her chaotic childhood without those principles.

Slowly, she blinks her eyes open, and is met with the glare of the late morning sun, unconstrained by the long, sheer curtains draped over the windows. A dormant vine climbs the slender Corinthian column closest to the bed, it is the first pleasing thing that she spies, next is the hint of color on the ceiling, the masterful fresco of the Hellenic gods, as the Mycenaeans might have imagined them.

Each god and goddess has their own respective dolphin, she remembers. That, she considers, is supposed to be symbolic of their potesta, the seat of their power, something she intuits from readings of Jung, and applies to obscure Mycenaean motifs.

A pricking sensation rushes down her head, and settles on the back of her neck, raising the fine hairs there. She is being watched.

Instinct moves her gaze away from the part of the fresco that she can see, over to the settee by the nearest window, where Aro sits, observing her keenly with his sharp red eyes. Althea, too tired, and too fond of him by now, is charmed rather than affronted, though she wonders how long he’s been sitting there, if he’s been watching her sleep since he returned.

Whereas he usually can be found wearing a sleek suit, he is now wearing a more antiquated fashion – fitting for his eclectic tastes in art. It is a chiton that extends just below his knee, which he wears around only one shoulder, leaving an arm and half of his chest exposed. It suits him more than anything she has seen him wear, it compliments his old world beauty, unconventional by modern Western standards, and displays the thick, curly hairs covering his skin, as black as the inviting hair on his head. Breathtaking.

“Is that a real chiton?” Comes her question, wonderment parting her lips at the illustrious vision before her.

“Good morning to you too, kali.” In the blink of an eye, or maybe less, he is in her space, blocking her view of everything but him – surely, how he would like it to be. “What sort of chiton isn’t real?” He beams the cunning grin of a fox. “I so rarely get to wear them these days! But I thought you would like it, amans graeci. I will certainly slay any other Greek who dares to vie for your favor, or gouge out their eyes, so that I am the only Greek who can see you.”

The cloth itself looks so easy to unravel. She wonders where it fastens, and wonders further if she would like to unfasten it, ending on a silent, but resounding ‘yes’.

“Did anyone feed Biscotto?” Precious few things bother Althea’s cryptic moral agency quite as much as leaving that old cat to starve to death.

“Of course! I promised you the daemon would be taken care of, didn’t I? Felix has never done anything so clement as nurturing a cat, I assure you, though it is far from the strangest order I’ve ever given him. Imagine Ajax the Greater cleaning out a litter box, if you will..”

“Don’t tell me he formed a phalanx around his bowl.” She adds, joining him in his chiming laughter, lighter even than the lightest church bell.

“Next time I take his hand, I’ll tell you, dear Althea.”

“Does it have to be the hand?” She asks, leaning back on the plush pillow and stretching her legs out. Having had nothing to sleep in, she had chosen her dark knickers and sweater, finding heavy clothing distasteful for bedtime.

He shakes his head ‘no’, leaning down to be at level with her, fixing himself between her spread thighs. A stray curl wanders down the skin of her neck, sending a thrill down her spine, and pleasantly tickling her.

“It can be anything – a touch of their hand, a brush of their shoulder, as long as it is their skin. So novel, to talk about it with someone who is immune to it.” That earlier, rarer glint of greed gleams at her, bleeding through even the blood-red of his eyes – they are wondrous to behold. “I want to see if you are immune to the rest of my coven. Are you willing to be the test subject of my finest experiment?”

“What’s in it for me?” She licks her lips, surprised by her heady desire for the man.

“My gratitude!” Is his sly answer.

“Gratitude doesn’t get me my belongings. Consider my answer a ‘no’ until you can offer me something tangible.” To her eminent relief, he laughs.

“But your belongings are already here, Althea! Is there nothing else I can do to win you over?”

Then he captures her lips in a mouthwatering kiss, and like a strong wind blows inconveniences away without straining itself, so too does Aro pull the sheets back to expose her skin to the cool air, and bare her legs, only so that they can wrap around his waist and grip him closer to her body, eliciting a sound from him that is lost in the depths of her throat.

On his cold, agile tongue she tastes spring itself, and she falls further into the kiss to take it, wrapping her arms around his neck and entangling her fingers in his mess of curls.

Beneath the chiton, she feels him ensconced amid her thighs, giving her a taste of the fruitful path she’s chosen. Though she’d like to bite his lip, she instead suckles it between her own, followed by her hips rising off the mattress of their own accord, to slot against his virile loins, hardened by the same desire she has nursed for him.. for weeks, ever since he roughly stole a kiss from her at her door, before she bit him, and began to ask the important questions – the questions that had led to her being here.

Around one hip he wraps his hand, gripping it harshly, to the point of bruising she knows, but she has a high tolerance for pain, and she can’t bring herself to care right now. It has been too long since she’s given much thought to her own pleasure, taking pleasure elsewhere in her achievements in her studies, and especially in her Greek. Now, I take pleasure in a different sort of Greek , she remarks to herself, as she spreads her thighs wider, enraptured by the steady, practiced movements of his hips.

“This is dangerous, agapiti.” His whisper is husky when he withdraws to nip at her jugular. “One misjudgment and I could snap your body in half, and could I ever forgive myself for that? No. So desirable, like an erote springing forth from the water foaming around the eviscerated Uranos.. Eros,” He presses further into her thighs, “Pothos,” When she thinks she is nearly quenched, he pulls back once more, only to return again, “Anteros,” A pleasured sigh escapes past her lips, filling the tiny space their slotted bodies allow. “Himeros.”

As quickly as his nimble fingers slip beneath her knickers, she is undone, further so by the enticing brush over the mound of her sex, tangling in the golden-brown curls. Though instinct would have it, she bites her lip to quiet the wanton noise begging to cry out, listening instead to the noises of the expressive man who is effectively seducing her.

He pushes a long finger inside, and graces her lips with another balletic kiss. One jerk of his hand rips the flimsy cloth of her knickers, she can tell by the curve of his lips that he is wearing the most guiltless ‘guilty’ smile.

“Doleam.” He whispers into her mouth. But he is not, and neither is she.

She tenses around his finger, and is then truly undone, relinquishing his lips to relish in her finish with a silent scream. Tightly, she clutches at the curls on his chest, the ones that the chiton indulge her with, combing through them with the carelessness of a woman who has just given herself to passion.

And then he does that – withdraws from her lips, to plunder her thighs with his smooth, experienced tongue, ridding the evidence with his.. venom, she realizes. It is starkly co ld and pleasurable on the lips of her thighs, sore from the intensity of her climax. The feeling is unlike anything she’s ever experienced – she could be convinced that she had just died, and after all, she was accepted into the heavens for her mostly virtuous behavior. Her eyes flutter shut, her back arches off the mattress, and she’s not ashamed to admit that, if he asked her for something right now, she would be too paralyzed to deny him.

With that in mind, she tucks a hand in his hair, and he’s pliable to her will, lifting his head at her pull , and pecking a kiss on her inner thigh.

“I don’t know if I want to be your test subject today.” She breathlessly announces, tightening her thighs around his head, but it only serves to hurt her . Ah, well, it’s worth it to get her point across.

The blood-red irises of his eyes have been almost entirely overtaken with the blackness of his pupils, they narrow at her words, but it’s the insincere kind of disappointment, the way a predatory animal looks at prey when it turns and runs, giving chase. Only then does she realize what’s been exchanged between them, thereon the pale gold of her cheeks is gone for the exasperated flush that comes upon this realization.

“Why not?” He pouts, nipping at the flesh of her inner thigh. She gasps at the prick of her skin, and raises her foot to shove him backwards, but not before indulging her toes in the softness of his curls. To her ebbing frustration, all he does is smirk, even while laboring under the threat of his plan being foiled.

If he thinks seduction will work on her, then she will prove him dreadfully wrong.

“Is my tongue not enough of a bargaining chip?” Is his bawdy question. “Think hard about this, puella mea! None have ever been so eager as mine is for you!”

This time, the flush over her cheeks and neck is confused over whether its likeness should be a pink or a red rose, as her arousal is tempered by aggravation with this bewitching specimen. Whatever, she thinks, while determinedly climbing off the bed and away from him. It’s futile, however, since he just follows behind her as usual, like the most annoying fly that refuses to be swatted away.

Studying the Greeks does have its advantages, because she is completely shameless when she crosses the room wearing only her sweater. Smartly, she whips her long hair behind her, hoping to smack him in his annoying, beautiful face, but as he had in the library, he catches it with his lithe fingers, and slots himself against her, using her waist as leverage.

“Sweeter than a Thracian prole’s blood, and of those I would slay another thousand just to taste you again, as I have wanted to for long weeks now, Althea.” He whispers by her ear, rustling the golden baby hairs there. She shivers. “And I will, again and again, a hundred times, then two-hundred more, and when that is over, a hundred-times and two-hundred times after, long into the night after Helios’ chariot has retired from the sky, and nocturnal creatures come out to hunt, and even after they have left, a thousand times more, until one of us loses count.” Leaving his sensuous lips is a revision of one of her favorite poems by Catullus, but Aro’s iteration is just as, if not more, pleasing to listen to.

“You should be careful, chariots often crash and break . I would hate for it to fall on your head.” Even still, she leans into his nose, nuzzling into her neck.

His giggles are as mirthful and bright as the morning sun, “An acceptable compromise.”

She scoffs, “ Ugh . You are so annoying! Let me go to the bathhouse, and I’ll go with you to meet the rest of your..”

“Coven.” He supplies, withdrawing from her to cheekily clap his hands together. “I had all of your belongings moved to the floor just below this one, you are in a tower, my dear, like Rapunzel with her long flowing hair. Come with me, I will show you to it!”

Leaving behind her bag, and perhaps most pertinently her phone, she follows him down the stair in the center of the chamber, in nothing but her sweater to keep her warm from the coolness of the Tuscan stone.

Had he once always looked like this, in his urbane chiton, his hair undone across his back and shoulders, as free and liberating as the Aegean itself? It suits him, and while she maintains that she is, indeed, a woman of her time, she can’t help but fawn over the statuesque beauty of the immortal in front of her, whose skin is even more timeless than even the most resilient marble.

“I saw your sculpture in Pisa.” She begins aloud, probably halfway down the stairs to the next floor.

“A work of Idaos’, another of his – Caius’ – is sitting somewhere in a gallery in Florence. Idaos, great visionary that he was, excelled at working stone over colors. It was he who gifted me my beloved columns, which he imported, on his back , from Greece. Mirabile dictu ! A most humble man, he did not mind my talent, and we would have long discussions about his mortal family, whom he left to their fate, cruel as it may seem.”

“Where is he now?” She asks, right on the threshold of the next chamber.

The look on Aro’s face is mournful then, “Drinking from Lethe, the river that helps men forget. The remaining Dacians killed his mate, so he gave himself to fire.”

“A mate? How do you mean?” His lips straighten themselves into a meaningful line at her questioning.

They pause at the foot of the stairs. Just around another meandering corner in her periphery, are more stairs that lead down, these are not the same that she climbed last night, and she wonders if they lead to the same corridor where she had been taken then, when she ‘met’ Caius and Marcus.

“My people held that when the gods created us in their image, they did so with a divine hermaphrodite in mind, a synthesis of all their heavenly endowments. Two arms on each side for weaving, two on each side for running and climbing, and so on, my heart, until a great schism happened among mankind, and this displeased the king of the heavens, as he was always so quick to offend over his creations, for he loved them more than his primordial fathers loved the earth and the heavens. Even so, he punished these divine hermaphrodites, casting them apart and leaving them with only half the qualities they were created with.

“And thereafter, heartbroken and reeling from their loss, they searched for their other half, so they might return to their primordial form and regain that completion they once knew.” He runs his eyes over her body, shamelessly bare to the open air. Yes, Althea knows that romantic creation myth of the archaic Greeks. “For no one else is this truer than for the immortals.” He finishes, almost… shy?

“And have you had a mate?” Equally shyly, she asks.

It is almost surreal, but not quite, for this world that she has discovered is fast becoming realer than the world that she left behind only yesterday.

A secretive smile slowly curls the corners of his lips upward. “Yes, and I have waited a long time for her.”

Could that be true? Is that why she couldn’t stop thinking about him, even on the first night when they briefly spoke?

Althea looks away, to the room full of gadgets and other artifacts that he seems to stow away in here. Standing in the middle of the room is a brass mechanism, shaped like a globe, which every other collectible is organized around.

It’s easier to be marvel at these artifacts than it is address what he had said a few moments ago, because while Althea considers herself headstrong and quietly confident, she is painfully unsure of love, having been a total stranger to it for most of her life. As sure as rain falls in England, her English mother had loved her in her own way, but the concept of unconditional love between souls is one which she’s never thought of with herself in mind. These matters, to Althea, had always been safely acknowledged as philosophical arrangements, begotten from different frameworks that all labored to answer the same question – the nature of the soul, and what it means to love one.

Further still is that old complication of fleeting joy , that thing that Aro had promised her.

Thank God, however, that her sweater was long enough to cover her upper thighs, or she would be even more cold. Without blood in their veins, or a beating heart, or any of that mortal stuff, they don’t have any need to keep themselves warm.

“Does warmth feel good to your kind?” She inquires, still avoiding those earlier words of his on mates by approaching the brass globe.

Too fearful to touch it (for its age shows), she settles for inspecting its purpose, finding in it the shapes of antiquated imaginings of Eurasia and Africa. Chests of various make, mostly ornate wood and bronze, gleam alluringly behind and beside the curious mechanism.

“Many think that it does, but this is a matter of taste, and how well a vampire can trick himself into trusting the impossible. A dull mortal is an even duller immortal, and unlike his mortal self, he can’t convince himself out of these sentiments! I like warmth because I come from fair Greece, but truly neither warmth nor cold has any effect on us! How novel that must seem to a human..” He explains from over her shoulder, and flourishes a hand over the mechanism, causing the continents to shift and move . Amazing . “ A little toy of Ptolemy’s. See how they always come back together?” Indeed she sees it just then, when the mechanism slows down, and all the continents mold themselves back into their respective places. “ Funny, how this marvel of engineering was a toy .”

“That was enough for the Greeks, though, they didn’t need engines and clocks as the moderns do. What they had was enough for them.” She comments absentmindedly, taken with the spinning globe. Although she betrays none of her excitement, she now nurses that same exquisite inspiration that she had in Lycia, for the obscure tomb of Bellerophon. “Beautiful.” She copies what he had done a few moments ago, and watches the globe spin anew. “So where does the myth about burning in the sunlight come from?”

“Us, of course. We are the premier myth-makers in the world! As our existence is too pervasive in the histories – thanks to those degenerates Stefan et al , no less,” He reappears on the other side of the globe, carrying something behind his back. “ We must be creative , dear Althea, like Arachne with her loom. She always managed to perfect an imperfectly drawn weave, never mind those imprecise worms who tried to outfox her before. As if a worm can outfox a spider.”

“Both are blind, though.” She says, cutting around the globe to see what he’s hiding.

“Tsk, tsk. This is your gift, would you really want to spoil the surprise?” Her brow arches. “ Of course you would. Philosophy students , they grow more confident by the century!”

Sunlight glitters through the windows then, illuminating the dimly-lit space and the dust falling from shelves of assorted books and artifacts, before landing perfectly on Aro. Something happens, then, to his pale skin, something akin to the miracles of legend, those things only gifted men can perform.

Diamonds sparkle with less brilliance than his sunlit skin, certainly none of the ones in her father’s gifted necklace could compare. Her eyes transform into saucers, brimming with the tears of someone who has witnessed the impossibly beautiful. Knowingly, he offers his cheek to her, smiling when she takes it to feel if the skin has changed somehow, but it hasn’t, it is like a bewitching mirage, the same fantastic power that a revelation has over a prophet. It is impossible to look away.

“And yet.. you are more beautiful than Achilles could ever have been.” She finally admits aloud, these are the words she has thought several times over, the ones he tried unsuccessfully to pry from her stubborn lips. At last they surface.

His perennial smile grows wider, and when the sun passes, so too does the glittering of his skin, lingering only a second before they disappear completely, into some place she would like to become familiar with.

“ Akilewos, that is his Mycenaean name.” He says, leaning into her touch like a nuzzling, black-haired feline. “ And your gift, agapiti ..”

Too lost in his vision, she barely acknowledges the necklace that falls into her hand, grasped and unfolded by him. A light, folded linen falls there also, a chiton that matches his.

“Pythagoras waits for you too, though he’s more patient than I could ever be.”

Althea inspects the necklace, finding there a finely-crafted gold chain inlaid with rubies, a color pattern she has noticed throughout the Palazzo. Pattern recognition leads her to his own chiton, the middle of which is fastened together by a similar chain to the one he has given her. It must be the chain that she has sworn to have seen around his neck before, covered by his favorite silk scarf.

“This is the same make that Athenadora, Caius’ beloved, wears on her neck, but you may wear it wherever – wrap it around your wrist if you want, or your gracile ankle. Or maybe you would like to wear it as a crown? As long as it can be seen , you must wear it always while you are still mortal.” Predictably, her silence only elicits more words from the gregarious man. “ Actually, you should plait it throughout your hair, that would be absolutely marvel ous , no one is ever so creative. The medieval had good taste on these statements.”

Some frantic emotion takes hold of her then, squeezing her chest and especially her lungs , it’s that familiar urge for a cigarette, the wretched kind she gets when she’s too absorbed in something to answer it. These are rare in the mornings, when it’s usually the first thing she gets out of the way, along with a cup of steaming black coffee.

“What’s wrong? Have I said something, Althea? You’ve grown as pale as a lily-of-the-valley.” She looks at her gifts, lying in her hands innocently, then back up to Aro, who is markedly less innocent.

“Nothing, I just.. I need to go to the loo.” It is half-true, and she’s so incredibly thirsty. She licks her lips.

“I had nearly forgotten! How silly of me!” He takes her chiton from her, and clasps the necklace around her wrist before she even realizes that it’s gone. “Let’s go and visit the Etruscans, shall we? Uncultivated provincials that they are, vere dissimilis Romani urbani, who speak a rhyming language of farmers and herdsmen. Etruscan isn’t nearly so pleasant, but don’t let Caius hear you say that.”

Learning the complicated maze of corridors and stairs is like learning a new language, less complicated than Greek, and even less predictable than Latin. Silently, while he leads her down to the bathhouse, Althea wonders if the complex began as an elite Etruscan’s villa (possibly Caius’, as Aro had alluded), and was renovated countless times over the centuries to accommodate for the space that the coven needed.

Words don’t suffice for the architectural marvel that it is – what it miraculously transforms into despite the ruggedly-hewed Tuscan stone of its exterior, considered unsurprisingly by the Hellenophilic Romans to have been less ideal than urbane Greek building materials.

After passing two or three chambers – and she realizes that he has grossly underestimated how ‘close’ his bedroom was to it – they arrive at the bathhouse, with Althea’s resulting breaths labored and ragged, despite often going for long walks in the warmer months. Not for the first time today, or even the second, her golden cheeks are tinged with two little red spots. At least it keeps the cold away , she inwardly snipes, at herself .

But the walk is worth it, loath as she is to grant Aro any favors right now.

“Next time I will carry you, agapiti ..” He tells her over her shoulder, but she’s not listening a whit.

Crowding the walls are mosaics of familiar Italic origin, the sort she has seen so much of during her seven months in Tuscany. On this level, the columns too are only tangentially Greek, since even the far-flung Etruscans couldn’t avoid them for very long. Otherwise, the scene is remarkably, authentically Italian, preferring darker, more practical stone, and wider columns with less curvature as the more rugged spirit of its makers demanded.

“Once it was heated entirely by hypocaust, are you familiar with this method?” She nods, giving the full breadth of her attention instead to the various idyllic Etruscan scenes, captured more pristinely than in any other site in Tuscany. “Understandably that is.. hazardous for us? So we heat it through modern means, you’re the philosophy student here, I think its proper name is now a ‘pool’ without chlorine.” She scoffs humorously under her breath, and inches near to one of the several baths that the cavernous room offers.

Lit only by the faint glow of wrought-iron lamps on the wall, it manages to recreate a scene that she’s almost certain is familiar to most of the coven here.

The water is delightfully warm, indeed it’s like a pool, and its water flow is mild and languid, more sanitary than she had first imagined when ‘Etruscan bathhouse’ was mentioned. On the antiquated tile floor of every bath are yet more mosaics, either of couples, of friends, or of the gods themselves, so starkly imagined next to Aro’s imagining of the gods in his own fresco.

“Who are those people?” She asks, dipping her toe in one of the hot pools.

“Some are mortals of great deeds, some are even more prestigious – Caius’ family,” He laughs, “And others are gods that had no equivalent to any others, now nameless, but not without a legacy of their own, dear Althea, always worrying about forgotten savages.”

But he doesn’t truly believe in their savagery, he couldn’t, otherwise why would he have chosen Italy to rule from? There are so many questions waiting to be answered, and finally, the tide has turned from having answers without questions.

Offering him no further words, she strips from her sweater, raising it over her head and folding it softly on the hard ground. Nudity has never been something she chides herself, or anyone else, over. Having a weakness for beauty means finding these things becoming rather than revolting. Her mother had often walked around nude for as long as she could remember, and so did many of her other bohemian friends, making it the only habit that Althea has kept from those years.

Despite his age, it’s not as nonchalant for Aro, who watches her strip from her clothes as any voracious lover might. Her breasts, in accordance with the slenderness of her body, are neither large nor small, but somewhere in the comfortable in-between while remaining firm and round, they are beautiful she knows, and so does Aro, who like Mercury with his blinding speed, rushes over to the side of the pool where her body submerges under the clear water.

Much to her quiet disappointment, he refuses to join her, citing his already common aptitude for lateness, a tongue-in-cheek threat over what he would do to her if he ate the proverbial fruit of bathing. So instead they talk, passing the late morning away with conversation, and her first cigarette, one of only a few that are left that she resolves to use sparingly.

Compared to all the years that she had lived before this moment, she could swear that she’s never felt happier than now.

Like always, however, her happiness is fleeting, like every other blasted thing in her life prior to this. After she finished bathing in the Etruscan bathhouse, she had been delivered a platter of olives and nuts by a human woman, whom Aro had referred to as a ‘secretary’, without elaborating further, evoking no small amount of suspicion in Althea. But Althea resolved a very long time ago, as a child in fact, that she should be strategic about those things she complains about, on account of there being only a few of them that she will actually try to resolve.

This continues to be her strategy when she dresses herself in her typical wardrobe, which Khiz had always referred to as a ‘seventies librarian’ in reference to her thick woolen skirts and sweater vests. Matched with an imperious arch of her brow and a disinterested sneer on her lips, she would argue that she looked even less amicable than those tight-lipped women who smacked loud people with rulers in their otherwise peaceful libraries. Supposing that suffices, because all of these things are a veneer over her more poignant social ineptitude and distance.

Her father had given her a few worthy talents of his besides the alleged ‘obfuscation’ Aro has mentioned in relation to his gift, the stuff of legends that she is still struggling to wrap her head around. Just as her withdrawn father expectantly looks people up and down like some perfumed eastern despot, eliciting admissions and apologies from even the hardest men, Althea does the same to the human secretary, if only to snipe the developing question on the other woman’s lips and delegate it to some drain in the lowest level of the palace.

Soon she intends to read that journal of his, which she has kept tucked away in its own little compartment in her trusted leather bag, at some point when she can be alone with her thoughts, when she’s no longer reeling with shock and wrought with questions.

Having had no time to check her phone, nonetheless she uses the outlet Aro had shown her in his personal study to charge it, so that she can look at it later, and check the messages that she’s certainly not supposed to respond to. Already she had seen a few messages from her parents and Khiz, wishing her a Happy Christmas, in Khiz’ case, that Americanism of ‘Merry Christmas’.

The stoic Roman, Felix, follows behind them, as does a slight female that she’s never seen before.

“Say hello to Althea, Renata.” Althea spares the vampire a glance from the side, as an immortal, the woman’s beauty is unexceptional, yet still more striking than most humans she had known.

“Wonderful to finally meet you, domina. Master Aro has spoken only kind words about you.” She says timidly, Althea wonders if this is due to her relationship with her master, or if it’s some sort of character deficiency.

All she offers the woman is a frank nod, hesitant to speak on account of her souring mood, which she blames on having had no caffeine earlier this morning. Usually, Althea would rather say nothing at all than be impolite to someone who’s not asking for it.

“Althea is awfully economical with her words, not unlike those American salesmen who try to sell life insurance to the elderly,” Quizzically, she glimpses at Aro, to try and figure out what the fuck he is talking about, “to our deepest and most regrettable misfortune. Not quite Deus Mutus as Felix, but I will say ‘hello’ to you on her behalf, dear Renata.” Aro announces in the corridor, his pleasant tenor echoing off the stone walls, charming even the cold, inanimate relief of Cyrus and his code of laws. “Renata is familiar with your tempting silences, kali. As my noble protector, she is never far from my side!”

Something akin to the taste of under-ripe, sour grapes then fills her mouth, and like anyone who had just bitten into a bitter fruit, Althea’s lips purse, although it’s nowhere near as potent as the disturbance of learning about Felix’s vigil over her for the past month. She doesn’t even need to ask to know that it was he whom she had seen flying past her window on that night weeks ago, when she had to phone her landlady and pacify Biscotto with a can of tuna.

Wryly, she wonders if privacy is an enemy of vampires, or if vampires are an enemy of privacy. Once she understands something, it is hard for her to sincerely loathe it, and upon understanding that their senses are so sharp that, if they focused hard enough, they could hear a pin drop in the village above, she finds her frustration melting into the resignation that comes with learning the unfortunate truth.

Two vampires, either as towering and menacing as Trajan’s Column, guard an equally broad and imposing set of thick doors, the same that on either side led to the stair she had climbed to reach Aro’s wing. At their approach, both men open the doors, and for the countless time today, Althea’s breath is pitilessly stolen away by the architectural marvel of the Palazzo dei Priori.

For greeting her is the heretofore unverifiable splendor of elite Etruscan craftsmanship, which eventually had enjoyed the fate of every other taste subsumed under the stampeding foot of Rome. As Aro had cheekily informed her, as he was wont to do, the throne room did enjoy the spaciousness and curvature of Nero’s notoriously splendorous Domus Aurea, but its innards, from the tall, elaborate columns, to its immaculate marble floor, was unmistakably a style she would coin as ‘Greco-Etruscan’, deliberately reflecting the identities of its three rulers.

Elegantly inscribed on the upper echelons of the impossibly tall chamber were idioms and phrases both in the familiar Hellenic script and the less familiar Etruscan, which she tries vainly to make sense of through her short-lived venture into the dictionary she had copied from Volterra’s library. A human’s memory is not nearly as reliable as an immortal’s, however, and she resolves to learn that esoteric language as soon as she has the means to.

Any earlier irritation with Aro’s eagerness to introduce her to his coven is temporarily forgotten, this time for the sake of beauty, but her faulty human memory is not so unreliable that she doesn’t remember to school herself for the group of vampires awaiting them in the center of the room.

With few exceptions, every eye is on her , as red as the blood they drink. Though many, like Renata, are unexceptional, there are none that anyone could confidently call ‘unattractive’. In fact one, then two, she notes, are exceptionally beautiful.

One of whom is a woman whose figure even the scrupulous Victorians could not achieve with their whalebone corsets and illicit beauty regimens, and of her gorgeous face, she determines there maybe no equal either in the heavens or on the earth.

Another is a man with tawny hair, as curly as Aro’s, but unlike Aro, his curls don’t have the privilege of touching the undoubtedly comely dip below his shoulders, instead resting just around those two agile fixtures. He is Grecian, she knows, endowed with the easy beauty of those people. But , she decisively remarks, even his amphora would be unremarkable next to Aro’s .

Fittingly, those beauties stand close to each other, but his eyes are drawn to the imposing Felix behind her, and then Althea understands, when she sees the adoring flame of a lover’s spark in his red eyes. It’s a close relative of the way Aro himself watches her, only Aro is leagues bolder and more expressive than the quiet flame she’s seeing now.

Said immortal is holding her loosely by her waist, walking them through the procession of the still, statuesque figures until they near the dais of thrones, and he withdraws, turning her around for the enraptured attention of the rest of his coven. No amount of black coffee or nicotine could prepare her for the fright of meeting their every gaze. Even though she downed an impressive amount of water just an hour ago, her throat feels scratchy, and thereafter she feels the urge to preen at her fingernails, glare at nothing in particular, or sneer away the mounting panic – her usual haunts when she feels this way, if indeed she’s ever felt this exact way.

Delivering presentations and eviscerating the ghastly arguments of university students has never been this intimidating before. Letting Aro between her legs this morning was even less a commitment, and that had been a significant enough turning point in her undeniable feelings for the man, enough so that she felt intimidated by their eventual logical conclusion. Remembering the cool sensation of his tongue sets a blush on her cheeks, but stubbornly, she neutralizes her expression, and waits for whatever signal he’s going to give. She’d much rather let him talk, since he’s so eager to do it anyway.

As expected, he introduces her, “Althea ..” Begins the sibilant music of his voice, caressing the vowels in her name with the particular intonation that only a Greek can manage. “Greet your newest coven mate, fratres sororitesque, as you would any immortal among our family.”

“Domina.” Sounds their melodic chant, followed by the solemn bow of each of their heads, but their pronunciation eclipses most Catholic masses that try to achieve the same effect.

She correctly deduces, then, that her relationship with Aro, as confusing as it may be, has in fact granted her a privileged place in the hierarchy. As someone who is already a hierarchical thinker, she would like to know the details of how this hierarchy operates. In that way a horse might brush the shoulder of a human, testing him for the weakness that would reveal his rank, Althea also asserts herself over other people, constantly searching for the hierarchical dynamic between she and them, only feeling [relatively] secure when she’s gotten her beloved certainty. It’s something she especially places an emphasis on with her father, the man who finely, and unfortunately, honed this instinct of hers.

Above them, on the dais, Caius watches on, looking like he’d rather be just about anywhere else. Even through this unflattering emotion he manages to look the stuff of myth. Marcus too is there, staring limply at the top of the magnificent dome, which offers a glimpse of the overcast sky outside through a broad glass window, though that detail is too far and blurry for her to properly discern.

At the sun’s height in noon, she imagines all of them gleam with the brilliance of diamonds in this room.

“Our newest addition, as you’ve probably all guessed,” The black-haired devil congenially announces, but his calculation is unmistakable up close. “Is not to be harmed! But I doubt I need to tell any of you that, after all, it’s highly irregular to harm our family, isn’t it? A bit of fratricide and matricide, these things are too philistine for the stately coil we find ourselves in, nay?” Every vampire, with little exception, laughs heartily at the whimsical meanderings of Aro, who’s fastened a brilliant grin on his supple lips. He claps his hands together then, giggles, and continues warmly, “Who would like to be the first to introduce themselves?”

The cogs roll in her mind, as they constantly do, working even when she is trying to relax, to solve endless slews of problems, synthesizing the answers with the rest of what she’s determined.

Aro belongs to that rare species of cunning that rules other people by the force of his altogether novel charm, the likes of which is drastically different from her father’s. Loud and frequently obnoxious, she intuits that despite these things, it is impossible to be bothered by him for longer than it takes for him to say something infinitely clever and witty, all while managing to insult everyone else at the same time, as if he were the more bewitching twin of Socrates’.

That beauty that she had spied earlier, the woman who she supposed had no earthly equal, steps forward from the circle the rest of the coven has managed to form. Her hair is the first thing Althea notices – its color is like the darkest wheat, if wheat could ever manage to shine with the same rare form as hers. Her smile is as sultry as it is deadly, and Althea feels something at the edge of her consciousness, threatening her with the feeling that’s akin to disclosing her private life to a stranger.

“A pleasure, domina. I am called Heidi, but you may call me whatever is your pleasure.” Even her voice is compelling, smoother than the most decadent confection, but it only manages to alarm Althea.

With sharp immediacy, Althea pushes it away, resulting in the faltering of Heidi’s sultry grin, causing her hips to sway with less confidence. Her brows twinge in lovely confusion, but Althea ignores that too, in favor of blockading herself from whatever bewitching power this immortal has.

Beside her, Aro erupts in laughter, clapping his hands together, and rewarding her with a jovial smile.

“Few can ever boast of resisting Heidi, can they, my dear?” He asks, addressing both women, invoking a nasty trickle of jealousy down her spine.

“I imagine Astyages’ gift would succeed where Heidi’s doesn’t, then.” Comes the voice of Caius behind them, now appearing more engaged in the encircling coven below him.

That is a name she recognizes, and deliberating it on it for a few short moments reminds her of where she remembers it from. Stefan had mentioned an ‘Astyages’, a name she knows to be of Hellenized Persian origin.

Interrupting her thoughts, unsurprisingly, is the postulating voice of Aro, “Possibly. My dear friend Astyages’ talent, Althea, is much like Heidi’s, except more potent . Theirs work fundamentally the same, in that they must be resisted rather than avoided.” Then, he waves an inconsequential hand, “ Bona Dea, but it is a tragedy that he’s not here to confirm our most pressing suspicions!”

“None can withstand Astyages’ spell. Do not be ridiculous, brother.” Caius remarks, thick with bull-headed certainty.

“Do not be so sure, brother, in our world, we know best that the possibilities are infinite! I do believe that will give us an excuse to summon Astyages to court very soon. For now what exceptional immortals we have will suffice,” But she detects that it simply doesn’t suffice for Aro’s unquenchable curiosity. “I tell all of you now – my amazement boundless – Althea resists my own gift.” A graceful series of gasps echo through the spacious room. “Who among us is modest enough that they will volunteer their own talent to be rendered impotent by beloved Althea?” He addresses the room, pacing beside her with a bright smile.

Earlier this morning, he had dropped the subject with her entirely – his desire to experiment on her supposed ‘gift’, apparently now disguising it under the innocuous-sounding ‘introduction’ to the Volturi coven. She’s unsure whether she should be indignant over his trickery, or in awe of the lengths he’ll go to sate his curiosity, which she’s bound by principle to respect as a student.

Another steps forward, while Heidi steps away. Althea further realizes that ‘introductions’ are over, shoved aside to suit Aro’s whimsy. Disbelieving what she sees, Althea blinks once, then twice, confirming that indeed the slight vampire is a boy rather than a lovely cherub. The boy couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen when he was turned, and despite her general distaste for the company of children, he is lovely, with his full, pouting lower lip and his starkly brown hair, beautifully contrasting with his snowy white skin.

“Althea, this is Alec. Alec, say hello to your newest covenmate.” Aro smiles at him pointedly, as a father might to a son, but he is far too assessing to possess the sincere warmth of that stuff.

Alec bows his head, jostling the silky dark hair cut just above his shoulders, in the style common to the old Saxons of England.

“I welcome you, domina.” His voice is demure as every boy’s is before it breaks and deepens with pubescence.

Inclining a nod that is almost imperceptible, Aro steps away from her, to rush to Alec’s side, leaving her painfully aware of how alone and exposed she is at the foot of the dais, with only the cynical Caius for company just above and beside her, closely watching the display, as a scientist to a skin graft on the pietri dish.

Resolutely she ignores the probing eyes of the coven, focusing only on the boy, whose gift has not yet been explained to her, and remains a mystery even as he lifts his hands like a deranged conductor, plucking some invisible string whose resonance never manages to make itself known to her ears. Like Heidi, his brows twinge with frustration, in that boyish way she has not seen since she herself was a student of twelve. Unlike Heidi, she feels nothing at the edge of her consciousness, not even a nudge , that strange and threatening sensation she’d been preparing for ever since Aro introduced him only a minute before.

Instinctively, Althea glares at the intensity of his stare, as if she could make him turn away with that alone. But that alone is not enough for the less pliable immortals, because she is, after all, human , and unthreatening to them. She loathes it. She has never loathed her mortality more than she does this very second.

Impossibly, Aro’s smile broadens even further, and he tosses a glance upward at Caius, before staying Alec’s hand.

“ Satis est, Alec.” He says, sending Alec away. “ Alec’s gift is extraordinary..” He begins, returning again to her side, to her confused relief and betrayal. “In a few short moments, he can blind the senses completely,” With an animated flutter of his lashes, he turns again to their audience, who have become increasingly more interested after that display. “Your sight, your smell, your hearing, everything! Just as a mortal sleeps in their bed, oblivious to the world around them, under some spell of Hypnos’ making, the restless immortal can only ever rely on our dear Alec for the same.. inspired requiem.”

Then Aro was right, she is gifted? It has always been the case that Althea has been for the most part, unreadable. Her own father struggled to know what was on her mind, this had only grown to frustrate him more as she got older, and therefore got better at hiding. It had kept her oppressive half-brothers away, when they realized they could never recreate the initial reaction she’d had to their groping, their teasing, and their increasingly malicious jibes toward her, product of their mother’s hatred of her husband’s only daughter, the only child of his that inherited his aristocratic good looks.

In this room, the air is more still than she can recall elsewhere in the massive complex. There is no draft of wind to distract her with her long hair, no excuse to comfortably play with the coppery strands tickling her inner wrists so that she can look away from Aro, who is fixing her with a newly reverent stare, in that way liberal Romans must have watched Mater Magna shrines be commissioned in their ancient districts, like she was utterly foreign, but he was utterly absorbed.

“Before I can determine that you are immune to all our powers-”

Marcus cuts in, some mysterious scandal coercing him to do so. Whatever it is, it’s unknown to her.

“Aro…” He drones, in those doldrums she recognizes from last night. Perhaps that’s all he’s able to manage.

Her eyes cut to Aro, beyond confused by whatever is unfolding, even landing on Caius, who is even less elucidating than the other two, not to mention abjectly scornful, like the universe had cut him only after it had run out of kindness to spare for fabric. Down his straight Grecian nose, he stares at her, with the strange, mono-lidded eyes of the enigmatic Etruscans.

But Aro ignores whatever point Marcus was trying, and failing, to make.

“Jane?” The name isn’t known to her, and like Alec’s and Heidi’s, it is far from Greco-Roman.

An enchanting cherub, like Alec, surfaces out of the taller figures that had obscured her before. Dutifully, she approaches, sparing nothing for Althea, instead looking at Aro , completed by the adoration of a daughter towards her father. Jane shares many of the same looks with Alec, including age – Althea reasons that they must have been blood relations, only Jane’s hair is a mousy color, whereas Alec’s is darker, but no less lovely does it make her.

“Dominus?” She asks, in a small, demure voice that is completely at odds with how confidently she carries herself. This one carries nothing but love for Aro, so much so that she disregards everything else.

The way that Jane gazes up at him could almost convince her that Aro had turned into a sacred monument, so worshipful is she toward him. In the same vein, he studies her as a scientist would to his favorite test subject – warmth itself, for as long as it retains its amusement for him.

What sort of man has she committed herself to?

“Go on, Jane.” He inclines his head to her, letting the fragrant curls spill over his shoulder.

“This may hurt, domina.” Sounds her demure voice once more.

For the first time since she was summoned, Jane finally looks at her, but it is less of a look, and more that she is trying to peer into her soul , yet obviously failing, the only tell being the girlish frustration that she has had on her own brow when she was that age. Unlike Alec, however, Althea can sense some indignation too, where the boy had seemed committed more to doing Aro’s bidding than to flaunting his talent.

Again Althea feels nothing , not even a pinch on the edge of her consciousness, a sensation she’s sure to be wary of from now on.

“Mirabile!” Aro exclaims to everyone and no one in particular, and offers his hand to Jane, who, snapping out of whatever trance she had found herself in, assesses Althea, before taking the hand. “Sophos! Remarkable!” He lets go of her hand then, apparently having gained whatever it is that he had sought.

“I still maintain that Astyages could break her.” Caius interjects with the bitter venom of an uncommon cobra.

“If Althea could withstand Jane, then brother, I believe we can say – my amazement more boundless than the boundless sea itself – she is no common shield, nor is it simple obfuscation, agapiti,” He turns his attention back to her then, looking like a child on Christmas morning, “Astyages’ helpless bewitchment would likely have no greater effect than Heidi’s own, loathe as I am to conclude without hi m being here. Fratres sororitesque, I hope you have seen it with your own eyes, because even I find it hard to believe. I may need someone to confirm it for me! I am sure Jane, Alec, and Heidi will be able to stand as witness?” They erupt in laughter then, except for Jane, who shares none of the same humor as the rest of her coven.

“Lovely Althea, Jane is one of our most talented,”At the mention of her name, Jane beams again, but lesser still when she had first risen to flaunt her mysterious gift. “Even from the other side of this great Domus Aurea, she is able to inflict the most unimaginable pain, equaled only by the potency of our venom. Like Vulcan’s magma, you will recall my mentioning.”

Something like ice shoots down her spine, followed by betrayal and horror. Horror, that he would risk inflicting that gift onto her, even if it is to slake his curiosity. She says nothing, swallowing a lump down her throat, feeling suddenly trapped even in the impossibly spacious room.

Of the eyes currently watching her, none of whom look friendly to her anymore, neither still does Aro’s, though he seems completely unaware of the inner war commencing in her inner world, not that he’s ever had access to that place anyways.

Her breathing quickens. He is talking, she knows, but she can’t seem to focus on that.

That earlier question she had proposed to herself, of what sort of man has she committed herself to, is snarling its head once more, compulsive and inescapable, and neither can she escape. Althea is beyond angry, passing into the territory of embarrassment – embarrassment at having been played. Behind her lids, tears are threatening to escape and leak down the pale gold of her cheeks.

How could she not have seen it sooner? She feels like she is only seeing him for the first time, a consequence of their heretofore isolated meetings, only between them, and never within a sizable group. Before a crowd, he behaves rather similarly to how he does with her, only now, she can see just how ruthless and unscrupulous she had originally suspected him to be. Having her suspicions confirmed about that is not as rewarding as it usually is, but it serves only to remind her of just how important trusting her initial intuitions are instead of letting her heart rule.

Quietly, she whispers, “I need to go.” Because nothing here is private anyways.

He stops talking about whatever it was, she thinks it had something to do with Jane’s gift, and properly looks at her. What he just did reminds her too much of her father to have any remaining sympathy for the confusion playing on his annoyingly beautiful face.

“Where are you going? You can’t just leave us now, everyone is dying to make your acquaintance, if we were still counted among the living.” He jokes, deepening the blow of her comparison with Dariush.

Her eyes widen, and it isn’t out of any feeling of superiority that she sneers, but out of being betrayed for the sake of a crowd, or for the sake of his own whimsical curiosity.

“I want to go to the library.” She says, resolute, without betraying a hair’s breadth of her pain.

His thick, dark brows skew at that, even his confusion is heavenly. She hates him right now.

Acquiescently, he nods, but she can see that he is trying to solve a problem right now – he has never seen her truly upset before, and since he can’t banish his curiosity away with a touch of her hand, he couldn’t possibly know what she’s thinking right now.

“If you insist. Felix?” The stoic man appears amid his chattering covenmates. “Althea would like to see our common library. Accompany her there, do as she asks, help her with archaic Latin if she will have it so.. I will join the both of you shortly.”

She doesn’t look back at him when she leaves to follow behind, even in her fury, she would like to , but all the same, she resists.

Chapter Text

A couple hundred paces away from the common library was the lobby, from which twenty or more footsteps could be heard even from here, followed by exclamations and proclamations of how very medieval the innards of the palace truly were, comments of how they had never seen anything like it before.

Althea listens to their commentary while it passes near the off-limits foyer that leads to the library, growing fainter with each passing beat of her heart – she knows why they’re here, she had seen those advertisements, and had quickly connected the proverbial dots upon realizing the occult nature of Aro, who had then, only a few days ago from now, been simply an admirer, someone whom she believed she had a simple, albeit very intense, infatuation with. As if whatever ties them together could be so easily severed as one of those fixations she had kept for a few other men in her life.

If things were as simple as that, she would’ve surely climbed out of one of the high stained windows in the library and left him behind, but regardless of how betrayed by him she feels, just the thought of it is even more painful.

Perhaps if she were the sort of woman to ask questions instead of stubbornly come to her own conclusions, she would ask Felix what this meant. What could it possibly mean if she is more afraid of losing him than she is of his unscrupulous whims? Never mind that though, she will not be asking the hulking Roman who kindly fed Biscotto, her landlady’s elderly cat, about anything . And she surely won’t let herself laugh at the image of him feeding said cat, because Aro had arranged it in her head earlier, and she refuses to imagine him as pleasant, jocund, or indeed anything else in a positive light, until she has properly licked her wounds and punished him for his indiscretions, in whatever small way she can feasibly achieve.

Here the air is light and still, a mirage of what the sun might do if it too could fall into the same intemperate moods that she often entertains. Every time she flips a page, a vortex of ancient dust can be seen swirling in the air slightly above her desk, and without a draft, in the air it remains, until she takes a breath, and the bare force carries it away like a sunlit chariot.

Early afternoon is the most gorgeous time in Tuscany, she’s found, not that it replaces her beloved mornings in the slightest. In the cold and unforgiving winter, however, when the lovely, rolling hills of wheat and grapes dry up and become husks of themselves, the warm glow of the sun in the afternoon is all that remains of its legendary beauty. These observations, she notes, must have been made by the Etruscans too.

What she reads now is about them, in Latin, of course. It is the lost treatise by Claudius, the ones that classical historians would give an arm and a leg, probably more, to have and study. She was careful not to show her excitement, which had belonged to that same vein of urban children seeing farm animals for the first time, because if she did, then Felix would certainly see, and then he could relate her excitement to Aro, who might be persuaded that giving her classical literature would ameliorate her disappointment in him. As it were, he hasn’t even joined her yet, and barely even an hour has passed since he made that promise. Maybe he’ll break that one too, and she almost hopes that he does, so that she can hurt him as much as he hurt her.

Ink bleeds through the paper she’s using for notes, dripping onto and staining her forefinger. She imagines making Aro get on his knees in front of her, begging for her forgiveness, and thereon her rebuking him for his indiscretions. Her sharp jaw tightens, and she grips her fountain pen tighter, further drenching her finger in black ink. A few precious moments of her vengeful ambitions pass, before her quiet vanity retakes control – ink stains, on her clothes? She never lets it happen.

So she spreads the ink on her fingers, letting it cling to her skin and dry so that it doesn’t spread elsewhere. Regardless of how she’d like to break every possession of Aro’s, she knows that thereafter she’d want to rearrange it all back together, so she restrains from tearing pages out of the priceless book, which someone – probably him, she thinks to herself bitterly – had laboriously copied from scroll to book.

Back to the Etruscans then, she desperately tries to recalibrate, allowing one last infuriated balling of her fists, before returning to the pages with a renewed serenity.

Felix himself is surveying the impossibly tall shelves, hewed from an antiquated dark oak and polished to inscrutable perfection. She glares in his direction, at the flipping of books pages disturbing her hard-earned peace. With stark immediacy, he closes the book, sending her a short-lived apologetic look out of the corner of his eye, and perhaps most curiously, joining her at the desk. His mannerisms almost remind her of Khizir’s, and with a painful throb of her heart, she determines that, actually, he really reminds her of the terse Chechen.

For a few short moments, she watches him from her periphery, arching a quizzical brow at his strange choice of seat, before deciding to ignore him entirely and return to her book.

“Most of them were gone by my time.” He admits aloud. Such is her focus that seconds pass before she realizes what, or rather whom, he’s talking about.

Annoyed, though slightly less with him than with the other him, she grinds her teeth, but responds, albeit scornfully, all the same, “Where could they have possibly gone? Italy’s not that big.”

Instead of shutting his mouth, as most people would do when they get sniped by her foul moods, he smiles the stoic, uncertain smile of a soldier, “Italy was bigger then, before the founding of nation states and borders. But you’re right, they didn’t really go away. At some point, it was hard to tell who was really etrusci and who wasn’t. First it was imprudens to claim familia etrusca, then it became fashionable. That was my time.” Those may have been the longest string of words she’s heard in his monotonous voice. He, like the other ancients here, spoke in an odd and heretofore unplaceable intonation, which in actuality, belonged to an accent that no longer existed.

Althea would place Felix’s somewhere between a faint Italian accent, and oddly enough, a Catalan one, but there is something else there, that she can only explain as being ‘Latin’.

Then she remembers how Aro had explained that he was in the auxiliary force of Sulla’s, during his civil war, she assumes. How amazing that truly is, that he crossed the proverbial Rubicon with Sulla, one of the first Romans who had dared to do this. For a very short length of time, she hangs up her fury with Aro in that way an old woman hangs her night robe onto a hook for the twenty minutes it takes to do her chores, and marvels at the immortal boldly sitting next to her.

“Your time,” She begins, with a single-minded interest in getting what she wants out of him, “You were in Sulla’s auxiliary, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” He nods, abandoning his book for whatever small and hidden pleasure he gets out of this conversation. Maybe, he somehow knows that she’s upset, perhaps it’s the rhythm of her heart, or the way she’s been holding her pen like it’s Excalibur and she’s Arthur.

“Why were you not in the legions?” She asks, inquisitive about the nuances that may not have been described in her Latin volumes.

A sliver of the afternoon sun shines through the library then, parting the spotty overcast that had lingered since dawn. When it lands on Felix, encrusting his pale skin with stones finer than any diamond, she looks away, reminded painfully of Aro.

But she can see the indefinite shrug of his broad shoulder, a casual gesture that again reminds her of Khiz. Though it’s usual form for them to go weeks, months, or even a year without speaking, she does miss him right now. She wishes that she could talk to him on the phone, that she could tell him about Aro, so that he could call him a ‘Greek pederast bastard’ diluted with ‘filthy Slavic and Turkish blood’. Of course neither of those epithets would, strictly speaking, be true, since he belongs to that era of Greece that had relatively pure, untapped Hellenic blood. And he’s not an Athenian pederast either, or else she would’ve surely cottoned onto that defect sooner. But he is a bastard. She grips her pen tighter again.

“Son of a Roman freedman and a Samnite slave.” Now she understands better. “At sixteen or seventeen I approached the office and asked in local Oscan if I could join the legions. They sent me to the auxiliary instead.” He says, with a large heaping of dry humor.

Despite herself, she scoffs humorously under her breath, mostly at the xenophobic recruitment officer in his story.

“People back then had a very different sense of humor.” He injects, blasé.

“Well, people do tend to joke about the bricks underlain in the foundation of society. At the heart of Rome was its military spirit, that was their most potent tool for dominance over the Italian peninsula. Naturally, they too knew this, as moderns know the stock market is the only thing keeping theirs together.” She explains, having explained something to that effect before, to another student in London years ago.

“Very insightful for a modern.” The way he sits in the elegant chair is kind of funny – he’s far too big to be sitting in it.

“Is it though? In the Roman decadence, military jokes stopped being funny, because it was no longer war keeping it together at home.” She says, as though she were talking about the weather. Normally she would confidently accept praise, but right now, she wants to be a contrarian.

“How do you figure that?”

“Because of how important learning food vocabulary becomes once you get to satires written in the Imperial period. Preeminent intellectuals, those Romans.” He laughs heartily at that, it wasn’t really her intention, but she too bites her lip to restrain from joining him.

“True. Always strange to listen to people today describe us as premier intellectuals. Gives me a lot of cognitive dissonance.” She shrugs.

“Romans were excellent at politicking, beyond that though, they were quite irreligious and unphilosophical. That too has its boons, obviously it gave them outrageous daring, to gain the territories that Alexander lost immediately, whereas the Romans kept them for.. centuries.”

Something in the air shifts then, the fine hairs on the back of her neck raise , and she knows that she’s being watched. And further, she knows who she’s being watched by. No further words are exchanged between she and Felix – the Roman has become stoic once more, taking after the durable gray stone that his elders were shaped from in their respective sepulchers.

Somewhere in the far distance, countless leagues away from the library or indeed the palace itself, she glares at something. She’s sure, from an outsider’s perspective, it looks like she is trying to burn a hole in the wide shelf of books in front of her desk.

“Domina.” Then, Felix departs, to somewhere her mortal eyes can’t follow.

“Tsk, tsk. Acquainting yourself with uncouth Romans, so unlike the urbane Greeks! My, I think more eyes will have to be gouged, and all the more waggling tongues for Dea Muta.” She freezes, straightening her back and grasping her pen. “Of course we already have a Deus Mutus with us, but you’ve broken his solemn oath of silence! This is how a Persian unmans a Roman, by displaying minimal interest in Bellona, before inducting him into the service of Mithras, relegating him to some cave.”

Stubbornly, she says nothing, but this tactic never works on Aro, who is lured, in that rather eccentric fashion of his, to her silences. She suspects that he finds them challenging . It only serves to cauterize the wound he’d cut earlier, turning it into not only a laceration, but a burn.

In that unnerving way of his, he approaches her from behind, and bends down to the juncture of her shoulder, that favorite haunt of his. Why, she hasn’t the foggiest. Usually it’s endearing to have him fastened against her neck, but right now, it’s only unnerving.

“No Roman’s fit to serve in the cult of Mithras. Funny! That his worship took like a flame, that spreads and multiplies itself in a patchy field of drying crops, at the absence of fecund Demeter and at the behest of despotic Chronos who ate his own children, corrupting the elite circles of Rome. Naughty Persians.” That last chide is a sensual purr in her ear, which he ghosts his cool lips over and across.

The kind of willpower it takes to resist shivering, and leaning in, even responding to him, is the stuff of legends. So she remains entirely still, as she might have when her half-brother Arvand pulled at her skirt or undid her beautiful, elaborate braids that took hours to perfect. Even still, some force inside of her is screaming for him, and that force is certainly one to be wary of.

But Aro is adaptive, clearly.

“Like fair-headed Alexandros, I too have a passionate longing for naughty Persians. My tastes are sharper than his, and they are as literal as they are poetical.” Her eyes narrow into slits when he captures her long, coppery hair, which the sparse sunlight has managed to capture and transform into brilliant reds and golds. “How jealous he would be, if he knew that the gods had vouchsafed the loveliest Persian to complement my soul. I should like to kill that filthy Macedonian a thousand times over, but not before letting him see you. A glimpse of the heavens before he drinks from Lethe, hmm?”

And then by her hair, he draws himself into her neck, where he plants soft kisses and running his tongue along its pale golden length, coating the skin in his deliciously fragrant venom. Its smell brings to mind visions of slow, languishing days spent on the shores of fair Crete, of the bounding and dipping of agile dolphins, and the sweet uncommon peony.

Against her every instinct – to give in – she resolutely scans the Latin text in front of her, and begins the slow count to a thousand in that language, a most sufficient distraction if she does it with its respective ordinals in mind.

Sex, sextus, septem, septimus… and on and on she goes, pushing herself quicker to vicensimus primus , especially when he decides to extend his arm around and grasp her waist. That’s when she jerks away from him with enough force to give her a bruise. Rather than reel from the pain, she inches further into her white-hot anger.

“Take your hands off me.” She says lowly, just enough for him to hear.

Hesitantly, he acquiesces to her demand, and she looks away from the spot he had just been, only to find him crouching by the desk. Looking at him is painful. His beauty is painful, and he looks so.. contrite. Althea sneers. His eyes widen at the nasty curl on her upper lip, nonetheless he follows it with the fervor of a painter who is studying color theory.

In one of his rare, grave moods, he begins, “You are angry with me, agapiti.” He nods, as if in some silent conversation with himself, “This is about Jane’s gift, yes? You are angry with me about that, Althea?”

Maybe making him guess will torment him. She wonders if he’s ever had to guess before.

“I had her use it on me once, just out of curiosity-”

“I don’t care about that.” She dismisses, hoping it will crush him, since his creature comfort seems to be in talk.

A man who can laugh as the self-deprecating do, however, is made of harder stuff that’s not so easily crushed.

“Do you really believe I would let you be harmed by Jane, my heart? Did you actually think, that if I had no confidence in your gift, that I would let you into her line of sight?” He coos, and again, she wonders what sort of man she has committed herself to – what sort of man that fate, esoteric force that it is, has carved into her path. What he is saying makes sense, or rather, she would like for it to make sense. “No, of course not, kali. What manner of fool would I then be.. I am too comfortable being your fool, as is, and I would not betray those humors that made me thus. ‘Tsk, tsk, foolish Aro’, they might say, then I would say, ‘You must be speaking about another Aro, yet another son of Mycenae, such foolishness only came after the great war, that must be the degenerate you call foolish’.” His blood-red eyes sparkle for the tale, spun so lovingly, by the purest, whitest thread. She almost bends, then and there.

“And he’s a liar too. Make sure to include that, next time you betray the humors.” Despite that, he would certainly be a good lawyer for a defendant in court. He had almost convinced her of his fidelity.

For once, and probably only this once, she is glad her father had the cunning that he did – when he would let his family ridicule and terrorize her over the misfortune of her birth, for being the beautiful half-Western bastard of Dariush from whom she inherited all the fine looks of aristocracy that they hadn’t, then when they were alone, he would pull her into his arms, and whisper about how proud he was of her Latin fluency, her cleverness, her insight.. she is glad of that now, because she knows to immediately distrust and rebuke it. Her father may have loved her, and she has it on good authority that he did even then, but his love came with conditions that she couldn’t always meet.

To add to the eminent tragedy, the sparing sunlight falls over his skin, casting it into lovely, dazzling gems, more beautiful by far than Felix’s. The organized mess of curls, black, lustrous, and so, so delectable, fall every which way over his shoulders, his chest, some stray curls even rest boyishly on the exposed diamonds that become his skin, those shine through even the unfathomable darkness of his hair, winking at her, begging her to give up.

Now she is seeing that so much of his amorous wordsmithing is laced with sweet-smelling, yet bitter venom. How had she not seen it before? How had she determined that it was simply a quirk of his? Was it simply that she had seen him out of his element, where he was not a renowned leader, but an anonymous local?

“I have never lied to you, Althea, not once, not ever.” Her heart picks up its pace at those words, he must think they’re a great success. Inside, she is panicking, reminded of the trauma of her father saying words to the same effect.

‘I have never stopped loving you, a father, head of the family though he is, does not have supreme power over everyone else. Those are antiquated notions, aziz-am.’

Abruptly, she stands from her seat, her pupils are blown in panic. Up , and then down , she looks at him, still crouched by the desk, surveying every minute detail that crosses her face, now ghostly, with only a drop of gold to keep it in the same world as the living. Her breathing quickens, her heart stampedes like a herd of wild horses, and her vision narrows until it includes just him.

He too stands, his dark brow quirked in some special breed of worry. It occurs to her then that he could probably smell the cortisol and adrenaline coursing through her veins, yet another infringement on her privacy.

Gently, he captures her wrist when she makes to turn away, spinning her around to face him. In vain she tries to push him away from her, and he allows it, because apparently he is not that kind of wicked. Her fear mounts, and merges with her anger , her hurt, a potent cocktail of emotions that even cold, distant Althea is unable to school away. Neither Greek nor Latin numbers offer her any refuge now. She finds herself backing into the stained glass window, with him following, like a human trying to approach a wounded animal.

“Althea..” He starts, in his perfect pronunciation of the name.

She grasps her pen on the desk, and throws it at him, watching it impotently fall apart from the force of the blow – which hits him on the neck, splattering black ink onto his skin, a color that’s almost as dark as his hair. Screw her new journal, she throws that at him too, and when it manages to bounce off of him unscathed, she picks it back up and starts toward him, with those earlier words of his in mind.

True, she had never been able to properly punish her father for his neglect and his sweet, deceptive condolences, save with her silences. Parents have a different kind of sway over their children than Aro does over her. But maybe he can pay for those years.

“Since you want to act like my father, maybe I’ll treat you the same way I always wanted to treat him.” She switches to Farsi in her anger, it gives her the feeling of privacy, as it always has in the West. “You took his hand, yeah? Then you saw what he did to me. Are you sure that’s the same method you want to employ? You Greek bastard?” But he only looks confused at her mention of Dariush, like he doesn’t know what he’s said. It only serves to feed the roaring fire, “I cannot believe I have followed you here. Honestly, I would rather die than spend an eternity on earth, only because I would have to share it with you.”

Then she hits him with the book, and kicks the chair at him, sending her leg into a world of pain , but she can’t find it in herself to care at this moment.

Though she doesn’t betray herself, her vengeful glee, she inwardly applauds herself at the abject hurt on his painfully beautiful face, caused by her frankly nasty words. It hurt her to say that, but it’s worth every string that she just abused in her heart. His hurt begins with the watering on his bottom eye lids, the shock that parts his supple lips, the rare stillness with which he carries himself. Not once has he blinked since coming here, but now, he does blink. Can vampires cry?

She glares at the audacity with which he then opens his lips, “ You didn’t mean that, Althea. ” He takes after a statue, the seriousness of his words is foreign to her, so too is the pain staining them. Of course he knows Farsi, she hates him right now, and simultaneously, she’s glad that he knows that other native language of hers. He shakes his head in th at way someone would deny unbelievable news, “ You can’t mean that. And no, you enigmatic creature, I saw only trivial things in your father’s mind. Enigmas, both of you! Will you not even consider giving me a chance to defend my case? ”

Then he didn’t know what he was doing?

Beyond furious, she settles with not caring despite. As she’d once postulated, Aro is probably a liar. And it’s with that in mind that she kicks the chair again, setting every nerve-ending in her leg on fire. She needs a cigarette. Badly. There’s only twelve left in her pack, and she means to get the most out of them. Already she’s determined that two a day will suffice until her change, whose date is dubiously set at the end of this week.

“You have betrayed me, Aro. Thus I will not speak to you again until you’ve learned.” She hopes that will be enough of an incentive. Based on the effect her earlier words had, it should be. “You may speak to me if you wish, it’s your home, after all. But know that every time you do, you’re only making things worse for yourself. For all intents and purposes, I loathe you. I trusted you, and now I don’t.” You’ve done what every single person before you has done, she wants to say, but she doesn’t. What use is bearing her soul to him?

“Then what would you have me do?” She hates that she even considers him, she hates that she lets him wrap his cool fingers around her slender wrist. Especially, she hates that the splattered ink makes him look like a charming, absentminded scholar.

She snatches her hand back, and crosses her arms against her chest, feeling secure in the brooding habit. Calculatingly, she looks him over, and when she’s found what she’s looking for, her long lashes flutter shut for the smallest moment, before she opens them again, her anger cooling off into a more palatable resentment toward the man who is as devilish and convincing as Mephistopheles himself, but apparently, she too has some mysterious power over him.

“I want a kilo of saffron, the real kind. I’ll know if it’s Spanish.” But that’s not enough, because her request elicits a tiny curve at the corner of his lips. He likely finds it very endearing. “And I want a 6-carat diamond, delivered to me on your knees, you smirking Greek bastard. And I won’t be talking to you at all until I receive both of those things.”

Really, it’s a bad deal for both of them. Within a few hours, she will likely be longing for his company again, but if there’s one thing Althea has in great supply, it’s willpower. Given he’s so expressive – now she knows this is probably because he can get away with it – she can tell that the gears are already spinning, he’s already solving some equation.

“As you say, dominatrix.” He purrs, looking like he wants to consume her then and there. “Caius will never forget this. I hope you are ready to be his friend, Althea, and all the little things that come with the rare privilege. You will have your diamonds and saffron, I will search for them in Hades if I have to. Is that what you want, Althea? To turn me into your Orpheus, and punish me with the hell of your absence?” She says nothing, per her promise. “Infuriating. I love you more for it.”

Keeping with expectations, when night falls, she is already longing to be near him. This urge is as mysterious as it is horrifying, but she knows better than to give into it, even if she’d like to broaden her understanding of it – whatever it may be. Aro had alluded to it as something akin to a soulmate bond, using the hermaphroditic creation myth as his metaphor.

How does a soul love another soul? It fundamentally reaffirms her established notion of the soul being far from fixed, but a force that can transfigure and alter itself in accordance with… what, exactly? Whatever is the answer to that question is the one she’d like to know.

Rather than return to Aro’s wing (she refuses to even look at him for fear of showing weakness), she resolves to remain in the library, and that is where she stays. She has even changed into her coziest sweater to soften the feeling of sleeping with her head on her desk, a juvenile thing that she hasn’t done since she was.. a juvenile. Sleeping in her mother’s crust punk friends’ basements had its advantages, clearly.

She checks the time, to find it thirty past nine in the evening, and instinctively yawns, covering her mouth despite having no one around for whom she should practice such manners. Idly, she flicks through the pages of the book she had long finished earlier – Claudius’ account on the Etruscans. Unsurprisingly, the book had been drenched with Roman superiority, but that didn’t matter to Althea, who has learned how to extract knowledge from biased sources. How else could she have made it through philosophy courses?

Conclusively, she had learned a lot from the dense, two-hundred paged text, including some of the more common clan names of the Etruscans, pre-Roman and nearly impossible to pronounce. Indeed she wonders how the language was actually spoken, except the only person she can ask is the one she completely refuses to ask, and the other is one who’s refused to talk to her . He’d looked at her like she was an insect today, that blond king who had the blood of Etruria in him. Althea can only recall a couple instances in her life when she’d felt more powerless.

It makes her want to break another pen, or throw yet another journal. Conveniently, Felix had brought her a new, pristine one with which she’d made her notes.

Although she’d like to be angry with Caius too, she just knows that the wiser choice is with Aro, and Aro alone. That is how Althea solves her problems – by finding the overarching themes and using that as a means to get to the root, by ignoring every distracting tangent that gets between her and the truth. Ultimately this makes finer details a weakness of hers, but every weakness belongs to the strength that’s made it so.

Whatever. She loathes all of them right now. Further, she loathes how to them, she is likely a ‘weak human’, who has absolutely no power, and no ability whatsoever to make good on her threats. This field plays totally different, and before now, she had never viewed her mortality as a profound vulnerability to be corrected, for she hadn’t known that it could be corrected.

After hours of reading, and then going over what she had learned, she finally shuts the book with a thump , and returns it to its respective place on its shelf. Claudius’ priceless account shouldn’t suffer for the sins of Aro, even though she’s almost certain this is the work of him. Ugh , she hates how clever he is, how he seems to have been created with her every taste in mind, body and mind.

With the furtive hand of an escape artist, she cracks the stained window, which at first is stubborn to open, but after a few cramps of her fingers, it at last opens. Initially, the draft of cool wind blows the strands of her hair back, tousling it across her shoulders and setting a flush to her cheeks. Despite the chill, it feels incredible, pleasant enough that she instinctively pulls a cigarette out of her leather bag, leaving her one short of twelve. Shaking her flip lighter also tells her that it too is almost out of fluid, a fact that brings a brooding frown to her shapely lips.

This will have to be the last cigarette of the night. If she was still in Lucca, it probably would’ve been the second to last, or if she was there in this mood, it would be the fifth to last, or some other number a little farther up the line. She thinks of Biscotto, of Mrs. Conti, of Pietro, and of.. who else? Her tentative ‘circle’ had dwindled until it included an elderly cat and said cat’s owner, her gossipy landlady, a woman she had grown to admire in spite of this. The woman had brought she and her father sweets, a kind gesture that feels like it had occurred a lifetime ago, when in fact, just a few days had passed.

Those biscuits had been rich and buttery, it reminds her bitterly of her spartan meals of olives and pistachios, served to her by a human secretary, and planned for her by a vampire who hadn’t eaten since the age of Mycenaean Greece.

When the flame catches, she takes a long, indulgent inhale. The relief of the nicotine is so great that her head starts spinning, and she flutters her eyes shut , to give herself entirely to the sensation. Carefully, she blows the smoke out of the window, feeling her unease melt off of her shoulders and into a copper-colored puddle on the floor, a mess she’ll certainly be slipping in when the moment has passed.

What would have happened if she’d not asked questions? What if she hadn’t purchased Stefan’s expose?

He would still have told me anyways, she thinks, with no small amount of resignation.

But what if she hadn’t invited him over to her townhouse that one rainy night in Lucca?

I already knew there was something preternatural about him, even then, she realizes.

But what if she hadn’t met him at all?

Something would’ve felt like it was missing , she concludes.

Thinking about a life without him is more painful than thinking about what he’d pulled earlier today. What if there’s always been an Aro-shaped indention in her life, just waiting for him to fill it?

Tears shine through her closed lashes, wetting the long, dark fluttering fixtures, yet another constant reminder of her father.

What had he said? Something about being a plaything of fate, she recalls, only he had said it about their opposing gifts.

Like honorable Lucretia preparing for her noble suicide, she smokes the cigarette slowly, trying to get the most out of it, stowing her tears away so that she can keep her sinuses clear, regardless of how much she’d like to give in. But as soon as that cigarette is gone and she tosses it out of the window, withdrawing back inside with her hand sprinkled with light rain, she lets the first tear fall.

Shocked by the rare sight, she flicks the tear off of her cheek, and surveys it like some newly discovered element, watching the way it slides down her ink-stained hand and disappears somewhere up her sleeve. There is something of a masochist in her after all, making itself clearer when she reaches for her father’s journal, safely tucked away in her bag.

Even if it’s just an illusion of privacy, she checks that the thick wooden door is closed, and with a deep breath, she undoes the straps keeping the journal closed, and is assaulted with the familiar smell of his office, of cigarettes and old books and the faint scent of myrrh. Unbidden, her fingers shake in the ghost of a Parkinsonism, hovering just above the thick, fine parchment like a nun inspecting an apostate’s book.

Althea swallows, an audible sound in the otherwise deathly silence of the library. The journal begins with a predictable introduction in English, ringing with the same flair for the dramatic that she often uses in the writing of her own essays.

In the beginning, it is said that God’s commandment to man was that he be fruitful and multiply. My own findings on this matter is that it is rooted in the bearings of this supreme instinct to reproduce, so strongly that we apply divine implications to it. But now a father myself, I must surrender to God on this matter, since I can no longer question this calling to fatherhood as anything but divine.

What follows is a rehearsal of the events of that day, of the news he had received from her mother, down to the tiniest iota of how he had taken his tea – with a shaky hand and a pale complexion.

My own father would be disappointed that I have gotten a child with a Westerner, but I don’t care. There’s no woman worthier of our heritage than my Delilah, and though I’d like to one day bring her back home with me, I’m content raising our child here. She says that if it’s a son, I will name him, and if it’s a girl, she will name her. I’ll admit to some nervousness about what that name might be. If it’s a son, I will name him something old and noble, like Aryameher, sun of the Aryans and sun of my heart. If it were up to me, and it’s a daughter, I would name her Shahrinaz…

That instead had ended up being her second name, as ‘Reza’ was for her father, a commonplace practice in Iran, though completely bizarre here.

Many of the pages aren’t even about her , in fact, many of them read like a normal journal, including mention of his theological studies, his readings and interpretations of Jung – something Althea finds unsurprisingly and supremely insightful – and his commentary on the various places he visited with her mother during her pregnancy.

She didn’t want to stop smoking weed, but eventually she relented today.

Althea almost closes the journal there. Stubbornly, she continues, her eyes clouding with yet more tears.

I will love this child more than life itself, and I will have my child be healthy. If a hundred festivals is what it takes to convince Delilah, then a hundred festivals I will reluctantly attend. I wonder if it will look like me.

Ironic. She scoffs, and continues onward until she reaches the middle of the journal.

My disappointment is great, not because my daughter is a daughter, but because Delilah will be naming her ‘Althea’, after that fucking song by the Grateful Dead. Admittedly a good one, but I will admit to some disappointment in this decision. I’m uncertain if I’ll let our agreement stay in place, it’s a joke that my Persian daughter should have a Greek name, the kind of joke I would expect from my Delilah, who thinks the ancient feud is all very funny. At least it is a beautiful name, I will pretend it isn’t a reference to the Dead but a reference to some Greek goddess .

Already she is seeing the strain that was placed on their relationship, midway into her mother’s pregnancy. Listening to her mum complain about it would have anyone think that it was all a one-sided affair, that it was her father who was responsible for the strain, and since her father was so secretive, it had always been impossible to know his thoughts on the matter. Otherwise, he would speak highly of Delilah, a concession that had never been returned by her mother.

By the time she was an angsty teenager, she was tired of hearing her mother complain about Dariush, constantly tempted to tell her to ‘shut her whore mouth’. Apparently this scorn towards her father wasn’t so severe that she wouldn’t send Althea to him every year, so that Delilah could relive her youth without the responsibility of motherhood.

Why did either of them ever decide to become parents? It’s a question she’s asked herself for years. Dariush tried harder with his sons, perhaps because he saw what sort of prideful and secretive creature he had made out of his only daughter and was hesitant to make the same mistake twice. Neither of them, however, were inborn caregivers, especially not her mother. It would’ve done him no good to have three children embittered with him. One was apparently enough.

In one month I will be able to look at her. These things a man struggles to understand. God has not blessed us with the intuition of women, instead God has left us alone to figure out fatherhood. Now on the precipice of fatherhood, I am sincerely afraid, afraid that I willn’t

Through her tears, Althea laughs at his English mistake, and checks the time, to find that a full hour and a half has passed.

Won’t be suitable for the role, arguably the most important prerogative for a man. Loving her more than my own life won’t be enough. I fear that Delilah will continue festival-going with her hundreds of friends, or that I will continue my affair with hallucinogens, and that Althea will grow up in places no child should ever grow up. No matter how I look at it, I can only say that my daughter deserves better than both of us.

A few more pages go on to describe yet more places he’d just seen, or things he’d just done. She sniffles her nose, and wipes her eyes, finally coming to the entry in Antwerp, so close to Amsterdam, where she’d been born.

The slow, steady rhythm of the rain picks up outside, pattering roughly on the stained glass window beside her. One small moment passes, within which Althea lets her eyes close, lets her tears fall onto the desk, heedless that every vampire will surely smell it next time they come in here to read.

Will she labor in the shadow of her parents, particularly her father, forever? Will she always be reminded of him, every time she looks in a mirror, or reads the Classical literature of the Greeks, his memory evoked just by the mere mention of the Orient? Perhaps one day she will be able to associate herself with those things, rather than him. They are part of her, after all, and despite her perpetual conflict with it, she is proud.

Lightning flashes at some fixed point outside of Volterra, illuminating the spacious library with blinding light. Startled out of her brooding, she returns to the journal, which has only a few pages left of it. The next entry is written in poorer penmanship than the others, and with an altogether different pen, some cheap make that was far from the ornate ones he customarily used.

I’m writing this in hospital. Neither Delilah or I speak Dutch, but thankfully everyone here knows English. Every time she screams, I fear that this is a sure sign that my daughter has somehow been harmed. Misunderstandings of a father. The nurse tells me that this is perfectly normal. I had wanted to stay in the room with Delilah, but she had remembered our earlier argument from today, and had promptly sent me out of the room, cursing at me in English and French. God willing, I would like to be the first to see her before these nurses who behave like clucking hens.

And she understands her father’s frustration, and experiences it vicariously through him. Hesitant though she is to pick sides between the two, as one or the other is only a Pyrrhic victory, she is closer in temperament to her father, by every account.

Althea was born last night, just before the Western New Year’s. While Amsterdam was partying and counting down to the new year, Delilah was having Althea on hospital bed. I have a daughter born on their New Year’s Eve. A few hours ago, I was able to hold her for the first time, and was surprised by how easy it was to keep her in my arms, because I worried constantly about dropping her. It’s easy to hold your own child. Looking into her eyes was like realizing God’s existence twice over. It was like that realization you get when you understand that God is in everything, even in the mundane, like the rain, the wind, the sway of grass. I’ve never felt something more inspired by God, than looking into my daughter’s eyes. She is so small and helpless.

And she was born with a monobrow! She will look like me and all my fathers, I’ve never been more certain of anything. I love her more than anything, more than every creation of God’s combined, including myself. God willing, I will be worthy of her. Actually, nothing will be worthy of her. But if God has let me worship H im with these filthy hands, then maybe He will let me do the same for her.

Some small, pathetic noise rises from her throat, momentarily stealing the breath from her, and watering her sore eyelids anew. This time, the levy breaks, and her tears flood over, falling down and leaving streaks over the pale gold of her cheeks. Shyly, she shields her eyes with her ink-stained hands, and quietly pants, trying valiantly to stifle the banshee that longs to wail for the injustice.

She hates him. She has hated her father so much that she has also loved him more than anyone. She will never see him again. And even if she did, she’d have nothing to say that she hasn’t already said. Even if she could speak with him one last time , it’s guaranteed that the words wouldn’t form. Every time she would open her mouth, nothing would come out, leaving her with ash and only long, vengeful silences to wash it away.

Why did he give her this? Did he think it would change anything? Did he think it would change anything, that he had loved her so much, and yet had treated her thus? It invokes indescribable sadness in her, that he thought this would ‘fix’ them, because he never answered the fundamental question of ‘what changed your mind?’.

Thoroughly exhausted and spent, and shamefully puffy around the eyes, she collapses into a heap on the desk, laying her head down between her crossed arms, careless as to where her hair might rest – and it rests everywhere. Before she falls asleep, the last thought she has is of the impact these two infuriating men have had on her. The first, for her entire life. The second? He has had less time than the first, and yet has unarguably impacted it just as much, if not more.

Chapter Text

Around four hours into the night, Althea awakens, the fine hairs on her neck standing to attention, at whatever had furtively disturbed her rest and elicited the sensation of being watched. She blinks, and wipes at her eyes, stirring herself sluggishly out of the uncomfortable position in which she’d fallen asleep.

To this position she’s never been a stranger, though age has broadened the distance. In fact, Althea can vaguely recall the last time she fell asleep with her head on a desk, and concludes, dubiously, that she must have been somewhere around seventeen or eighteen.

Sparing an unfocused glance beside her, she catches a glimpse of a few scrolls of paper, and yawning, she inspects the paper, which is entirely written in a dialect of Classical Greek known to her to be Ionic. It takes a few seconds of parsing for her to conclude this, analyzing the inflections common to the dialect.

A few moments of further analysis of its contents leads her to setting it aside, and snarling imperiously at whom the author was – Pythagoras. Regardless of how excited she is to read Pythagoras in his own words, the gift stokes the embers of her fury, having been snuffed out by sleep, now reigniting itself and finding again its purpose, snapping her out of any delusion that she’ll be falling back to sleep soon. No, she is entirely awake now.

And she senses that he’s here, however such a thing is possible. Turning her head around, she catches the hint of black hair in her periphery, and immediately glares. There’s no way he would have what she asked yet, especially not the saffron. Why she had asked for the saffron remains mostly a mystery even now, perhaps it’s because having it shipped is impractical, forcing someone to make the long journey to the Orient to find the luxurious spice – a demeaning task for anyone here.

Unwilling to damage the manuscript, she handles it carefully, like a crusader might handle the Grail, but nonetheless, she sets it aside, hoping to convey that she will not be reading anything he gives her in the meantime. Pythagoras won’t suffer the sins of Aro, just as Claudius hadn’t.

Like the chancer that he is, he approaches her desk, the organized mess that it is, in that same irresistible fashion as the black, Grecian curls on his head, dancing along his shoulders with the same brilliant shine as surely as the stars in the night sky. Only unlike them, his brilliance can be grasped and gently touched with a hand, specifically her hand. Even now, in the thick of his betrayal, she would like to wind her finger around one of the strands, and watch it undulate an d then bounce.

“Won’t you read it, agapiti? Pythagoras is not so foolish as I, native of Samos though he may be. Too close to the Lydians.” He whispers playfully in Greek, in that way he often does, and he is considerate enough to speak slowly, so that she can comprehend the words without having to parse.

If only he weren’t so horribly, irrevocably perfect, and clearly desperate for her attention, a strange effect that she has on people, but perhaps most potently on Aro. Perhaps it’s because of the intensity of her stare, the single-mindedness of her attention, is a flattering thing to the right sort of person, and it’s surely a rare privilege, because her eyes rarely bounce onto someone for longer than it takes to determine them a ‘waste of time’. Except Aro. He has managed to capture her incredibly long attention span with the efficacy of black ink bleeding through blank parchment.

The saffron is meant to be emblematic of his devotion, which she requires in the meantime, if she is ever to trust him again. And the diamonds? Well, she has no elaborate excuse for that – she just wants to see him on his knees, and she is quietly vain enough to want an expensive diamond.

“Mere hours have passed, and I find myself in treacherous waters, swimming as I always do against the tide, and just as Odysseus, I wonder, if I should make it to the shore, will I then be welcomed? Just as he had, I have acquainted myself with enigma, but no creature as enigmatic as the one in front of me, fairer than aphros, the foam that licks at her feet and envies their quality.” Wisely, he neglects to touch her, instead lovingly caressing the wood of her ornate chair, as though through primitive essence transference, a part of her was inside of it. How very Bronze Age of him. “Althea, my enigma, you don’t have to sleep here. You are always welcome in my bed, I swear that if you come, I will be as silent as Deus Mutus, for as long as it takes to meet your demands!”

A tempting offer, it had been a luxuriously comfortable bed, practically criminal for someone who has no need for it. But, of course, he probably does, and this never fails to invoke within her a terrible envy as green as jade and as verdant as a rolling valley.

His gaze, as intense as any predator’s, is fixed onto the side of her face, watching vigilantly for any sign of her pleasure or displeasure, either of which she is scrupulous in hiding from him. But she knows that being near him will break her oath of silence, because there are so many questions that occur to her while reading, or contemplating, or merely observing that she knows he always has a reliably fascinating addendum for.

Besides, she has slept in worse conditions. Althea’s will is legendary. She dropped an opiate addiction and endured the withdrawal on nothing but spite alone. Therefore, she knows how to say ‘no’, even when the prize is practically screaming for her to take.

The aroma of peonies and aphros spills over her shoulder then when he leans in, allowing the fragrant curls to titillate her clothed skin, beckoning her to give into the annoying persistence of his attention. Such enticement belongs to the province of the erotes, the alluring cherubs that were birthed from the gentle waves of the sea.

“Akeu.” She looks away – the word torments her, so reminiscent of Greek that she knows it must be Mycenaean. Afterward he utters a few more words in the esoteric language of Mycenae, leaving her to try and guess what the words must mean, using only her knowledge of its descendant language, to no real use. “We will together speak it soon. I long to share all that I have with you.” He finishes, in more familiar Koine.

Whether he is being sincere or not, she hasn’t the foggiest. Regardless of his alluring promise, she keeps her mouth shut, hoping that it will crush him enough that he learns her vital lesson.

Rather than jerk her shoulder away and risk betraying where her attention has gone (but of course it’s on him), she refolds her arms, and lays her head back down between them, slender and uncomfortable as they are, sleeping between them is worth her every ounce of pride, which is the last remaining weapon that her proverbial armory has been reduced to. Among these immortals, there are only so many cards that can be played, for they can sense the number even when it is faced away from them. Never before has she felt more exposed, and thus, more compelled to hide and shield herself from their keen senses.

“As you wish, my heart. I will obey you, for to obey you is best.” Are his last, roguish words, the ghost of Homer’s own.

And when he retreats once more, it takes another hour for her to stop considering those words, or the melodious voice that spoke them, before finally, she can fall back into a restless, broken sleep.

The pitter-patter of rain wakes her only two hours later, joined by the deafening roar of thunder and jarringly, a jolt of lightning. Over the last month of winter in Tuscany, she has grown used to the endless slew of rain and overcast, a stark contrast from the fair months between May and early November.

Miserably, she stows her phone away, though not before eyeing her unanswered texts, tempted to reply, but wise to the consequence. Surely, Felix would hear the pad of her fingertips on the keyboard, and Aro needed only to take his hand, and recognize the pattern of those noises to know what she had been doing.

So she doesn’t reply, nor does she open the pictures that Khiz had sent her, doubtlessly of some animal he had poached with his Khevsur friends in Georgia. Even still she checks her messages with Aro, scanning the art he had earlier this morning sent, Impressionist pieces that had caught his fancy, which he had felt the need to share with her, a rather characteristic habit of his.

This library is her self-imposed prison, her own personal, escapable Alcatraz, and she swears to herself that she’ll scarcely be leaving it for the foreseeable future. Just as the clock strikes five in the morning, she cracks the window only slightly, and lights a cigarette, cautious of the rainstorm brewing outside and pelting the Tuscan stone exterior of the palace.

It’s an experience she won’t be able to have again until nightfall, to her eminent regret, such is the regret of a chronic smoker completely immersed in a foul mood for which they judge only nicotine to be a suitable balm. Althea should be wizened to this unique species of naivete, the same sort experienced by a fat, spoiled child who thinks another biscuit will solve most of his problems, and it just doesn’t, because he’s used to indulging himself all the time.

Still she lets her mind wander – as if she could stop it like it were Florentine traffic! – to Aro, to her circumstances, and onward until she lands on the bittersweet words of her father, which she had unwisely chosen last night to finally read. One night later, and she is still tormented by those words, said with the unmistakable conviction of a father who hadn’t yet truly met his daughter, nor built her into the secretive and prideful creature he had forced her to become, like she was his own personal golem.

Between then and now, many things had happened to him – he had lost her mother Delilah, and his own father, who had pressured him into marrying and begetting more children, who themselves had become increasingly more wretched with each birth. He was a horrible father, chiefly because he was a chronic enabler, but he was not a bad person . There are differences, she reminds herself. Whenever her lifelong bitterness with him arises, as surely as the sun rises every morning, it takes all she can muster to try and understand why he had become the man that he was, much like she must do with her mother and her abusive upbringing in the Church of England.

Either of them had wanted to give her a life that they hadn’t had as children, begetting hers from the very beginning as a strange one, wherein she was never really allowed to be a child at all. Althea wonders if she will journey through immortality still nursing an inner broken and neglected child.

A cool blast of wind captures her hair and moves it behind her until it rests comfortably on her back. She traces the sill with an idle hand, entranced both by the cruelly ephemeral relief of nicotine and the spray of rainwater on her skin. It’s hard to treasure these early hours of the morning without coffee, and she even finds herself missing the soft meows of Biscotto, who would paw her arm until she finally relented to cracking open a can of tuna. All these things she only misses because she is embittered with the him’s of her life. Otherwise, she is cognizant that her life has been incorrigibly miserable for years, and the opportunity she has now is one with more carats than the diamond she demanded of Aro.

Scoffing humorlessly to herself at the memory, she arches a brow, and finishes her cigarette, dropping it unceremoniously on the pavement outside, before closing the window with a thunk.

A blur of movement interrupts her early morning reverie, the rarest of its kind which Althea possessively guards, as she does all those things she considers ‘hers’. She takes a small sip of her bottled water, and assesses the visitor, of which this morning, is not Felix, the immortal who stalked her for a month, but an altogether unknown variable.

He is the same vampire she had remarked as uncommonly beautiful, the one of whose tawny hair could never be accurately captured on an amphora, but even still would be dull next to Aro’s. Any of the gold leftover from Caius’ fine, silvery hair was spared for this vampire’s, but within is an even warmer shade of brown – he is gorgeously endowed with xanthos, a mirror image of her own hair if it were blonder than it is copper.

Of this vampire, she also notes that he is only slightly taller than herself, as spry and agile, and as slender as a tawny lynx. Like a few others of this coven, she wonders if he too is Greek, because he has all the likeness of a statue made with those ideal Grecian qualities in mind.

“Khaire.” He says in greeting, “Felix tells me you’re fluent in Alexander’s Greek. Demetri.” He bows his head toward her.

It’s too early for this, she inwardly snarks, but nonetheless answers him, “Yes, I am.”

He smiles the grin of court, polite and quietly interested, though there is a ghost of the same frustration that many of the ‘gifted’ immortals bore for her yesterday. On him it invokes a more exquisite sense of pride than she had felt yesterday, less exposed as she feels now. Indeed she feels something akin to safety in her supposed obfuscation of these people.

“I cannot feel you, domina.” Instead of replying, she remains silent, hoping that he will explain himself so that she herself doesn’t have to pry. Predictably, he does. “I’ve a keen tracking sense, strong enough that I could tell you where any vampire known to me is at, right at this very moment. But I cannot sense you, it is very strange to instead rely on my other senses.”

“Prove it.” Is all she supplies, arching a brow at the immortal who reminds her of a sprite.

A slow smirk quirks either corner of his lips, more indulgent by far than Felix’s, whose never seem to last very long.

“Felix is now feeding your cat. Very funny, that he is doing something so genteel-”

“I could’ve guessed that. It’s been his duty since yesterday morning.” She challenges, supporting herself on the desk with her closed palm.

“As you say, domina.. Pekki the Gutian is in Siberia, Amun is in Sudan, Jane and Alec are likely playing backgammon in a room near the Masters’ study. And Felix, great Roman oaf that he is,” Nonetheless, he caresses those words with unmistakable endearment, “Is somewhere near Lucca, in your home, I imagine, domina.”

Similarly to Aro’s, his foreign intontation is so faint that it could be mistaken for singing, but she is learning the patterns, and determines that the Aegean is jealous enough that it can never completely relinquish its hold over its people. This accent is one of an archaic Greek’s, an altogether novel one that she never thought she would hear, not that she hadn’t dreamed of it before.

And of the mention of Pekki the Gutian, she is filled with nothing less than awe at the thought of someone so unbelievably ancient as one of those people. In fact she can scarcely believe it, on account of how it plays on her girlhood dreams of the Mesopotamians.

“Who is Pekki the Gutian?” She finds herself asking, completely ignoring the amazement of his gift, by far more interested in the alleged Gutian.

Many people feel privileged to be the first to share hidden knowledge, and Demetri is no exception. This benefits Althea, who has always been as greedy for knowledge as King Croesus was for gold and glory over his enemies.

“Exactly as it sounds, domina.” He replies smartly, likely proud of the authority he has in this exchange. It unnerves her, because it is unfortunately justified. “Pekki is the last remaining member of his coven, decimated by Abi-sin, or Abilsin, however it is your pleasure to pronounce his name. He is sworn enemy of Shulgi-ekku, or Ekku-mekku, the last Sumerian, whose own coven Pekki and his kin destroyed. It’s all very sordid, domina, and it is my duty to keep track of where each of these miscreants are, including even Ekku-mekku, who is a friend of the Masters.”

Sumerians, Gutians.. she cannot believe the age of these immortals, and she cannot believe she has accessed a world whose richness she thought had remained a secret to those ancient years, rediscovered by the fervent excavations of later Europeans. And this being only mere days ago, before she had realized that Aro was no common Greek, but son of illustrious Mycenae.

“A Sumerian..” She comments under her breath, in that way the ancients must have spoken when they looked upon the stars.

“I am counted among the oldest in our coven, but even I revere Ekku-mekku, and many of us remain in awe of him. It’s hotly debated over who is older, between he and Pekki, both claim to be the oldest immortal in the world.” Proudly, he continues, “And I have met both of them, Pekki is unpleasant, but Ekku-mekku is renowned for his humility and wisdom. If you’re interested, there are a few volumes here written by the Sumerian. Felix romanus inhumanus enim est, scientiam quaesit non solet, at nec facio. But I will show you to them, domina.”

Perhaps he is trying to impress her, or perhaps he is bored if his only company is Felix, her often monosyllabic shadow. Or further, he is interested, in the same vein as Aro, in his inability to use his gift on her. Althea wonders if every vampire is gifted, given that she seems to be surrounded by them.

Despite her unfamiliarity with Demetri, she does leave her desk to follow him deeper into the spacious library, illuminated by the sparse light of the gloomy, overcast morning, and filled by the occasional strike of lightning and treacherous roar of thunder.

“Most of us have read him, domina. It’s considered a cultured habit to read his poetry, though I find it unspeakably dull.” He tells her, leading them through an aisle in the farthest and darkest portion of the library, where she lingers a bit behind him, for her own protection, if need be.

Here there are no windows, nor any light fixtures, and she can, even with her human eyesight, reason why that is. Some of the books whose titles she can see, are titled in archaic Greek or Latin, a couple are dubiously Pahlavi, a script her father can read, but she cannot. One, she suspects to be in Manichean, a script she knows solely from having studied the Gnostic cult for a couple of weeks early on in her studies.

He carefully plucks a slender book from the tall shelf, and cautiously inspects its fragile, antiquated binding before offering it to her. As a monk might’ve held holy scripture, she holds the supposed account of Ekku-mekku the Sumerian, a treasure that she can barely school her childlike excitement over. It smells like no other book she has ever held, and a once-over of the binding tells her that it was loosely bound before the printing press, leading her to determine that its contents were written by hand.

“I thought you might want to acquaint yourself with our world, domina. Some believe it is a rite of passage to read this,” Then he shakes his head, and offers her an impish smile, “And Felix tells me you are rather insightful, but he would call a fly avoiding a spiderweb insightful, so I simply had to see for myself, and I can’t say that I’m disappointed.”

Laced with disbelief as his words are, she would like to glare at him, but she does have principles, and she suspects that nothing he said was meant to be threatening. Still she doesn’t entirely understand why he felt the urge to approach her, and is suspicious that he and Felix have exchanged words about her, meaning that he likely knows about parts of her private life that she would prefer to remain hidden.

“Thank you for the book,” She begins in Greek, securing said treasure against her chest. “Have you satisfied your curiosity now?”

The impish smile he then offers her is a close relative to guilt, but she finds herself unconcerned given the prospect of reading Sumerian literature has been fitted tantalizingly into her morning routine, something she is failing to come to terms with, even while holding it and touching it.

“Most especially, mistress.” Then, he bows, before swiftly retreating out of the library at a speed her eyes cannot follow.

By inspecting the old, musty parchment, she feels her pain melt off of her shoulders and into the hard and weathered oaken floor, where she forgets to pick it up for the time being, her attention instead stolen by the writer, who pens his name in esoteric cuneiform, with several different translations beneath.

Shulgi-ekku

Shigageshu

Sugexes

Ekku-mekku

Blessedly alone again, she returns to the little space she has carved for herself, within which is the eternal battle of penetrating tobacco smoke and her vanilla perfume, perennial rivals for the smell of her skin and clothing. She positions her heavy chair closer to the sparse light emanating from the stained glass window, and continues onward through the book, handling the pages with the prudence of any antiquarian fortunate enough to have so prestigious a prize as this one.

Ekku-mekku’s book is thankfully written in Greek.

When I close my eyes

I can still smell the bushels of barley

Cut and taken from the golden fields of Uruk

Behooved by the gods and told by them to the sanctified lughal

Again of holy, precious Uruk

Locked away in a chest

Farthest in my mind

A place I cannot gaze upon but

Only think about.

The son whose name I cannot remember

Whose soul still waits for his father in Ereshkigal’s sacred river

Drinking from its water as

He would have from the Euphrates.

He writes in an incredibly difficult format, one she has never before witnessed, one that she theorizes may have been a habit of a Sumerian trying to contend with a language so unlike his own.

But then, she recalls Aro’s words about how many immortals become duller in their unlife, and recalls how a few minutes ago, Demetri had waved away Ekku-mekku’s poetry as ‘unspeakably dull’. If many immortals find it dull, then she wonders if Aro didn’t often seek her out for her supposedly novel interests, a peculiarity that he shares with her. How she’d like to ask him about the Sumerian, about the Gutian, or any other vampire who belongs to an extinct civilization with an equally extinct language, leaving nothing behind but a legacy of city-states and epic poetry.

And if she did seek him out, she knows she would preemptively surrender the challenge she’d posed to him, and so she stubbornly returns to her reading, trying to banish the intrusive thought of him, as she’d futilely attempted after their first few meetings. But his name is like the first word of a curse on her lips, and it always, naturally, follows that she must speak the rest of it.

To my lover and second soul Parvana,

When the gods of Uruk made me

They signed a treaty with the everlasting light of Ahuramazda,

And I wandered four-thousand years

Waiting and wading through war and grief over the loss

Of my own kin,

Until the everlasting light of your land

Delivered you to me,

For you I live, and I write these verses

And every verse I will ever write after this

Will be in your honor.

It’s then that Althea has a revelation, as pressing as that of an Oriental prophet’s.

Although her foremost concern with this occult world is in Aro, she concludes, however, that she would like to be a part of it for her own selfish ends. To be a part of a world where these antiquated notions are commonplace is something she can’t rightly refuse herself, for these things she would like to learn, and know, and do.

In awe of what she reads, she considers this revelation, and it manages to renew her hope in her prospective change, with which she hopes to leave behind her otherwise miserable life, for a world brimming with obscurities she has dedicated her life to. Studying the works of philosophers she has only dreamed of reading, such as Pythagoras and Epicurus, no longer seem so incredibly removed from her ambitions, but instead are synthesized with those secretive details.

Secured behind her long curtain bangs, she allows a hopeful smile to capture her shapely lips.

That morning when the mortals

Were harvesting barley from the precious plains

Gutium and its hordes attacked

Our peaceful lands.

Mortal and immortal alike seiged our holy city,

And tore my kin apart into tiny pieces,

Burning those pieces in the precious barley plains,

Where no barley would grow again for a century,

And I wept with the mortals who

I rescued from Uruk.

These Gutians were barbaric,

Even the immortals among them raped

And pillaged the city’s women like

They were common cattle,

And not of the holy city of Uruk.

He speaks then of the Gutian conquest of broad Mesopotamia, which she remembers can be dubiously dated from around the third millennium BC to centuries afterward, on account of discrepancies between their recording of time and the moderns’.

Even when breakfast is brought to her, she continues to thumb through the pages with one hand, filled with an inspired purpose she hasn’t known in years, or perhaps ever. The poetry of Ekku-mekku reminds her of the girl who would survive the filthy conditions of trap houses by pilfering through the pages of dry history books, dreaming of those distant days while trying fiercely to ignore the smell of cannabis and Nag Champa.

Chapter Text

The next morning, after taking breakfast, she finds herself in the bathhouse, far beneath the labyrinthine complex, such that the treacherous thunderstorm raging outside could be discounted as little more than a delusion of her restless, feverish imaginings.

Beneath the watchful eyes of the nameless Etruscan figures on the wall, she strips from her clothing, leaving it in a pile near one of the hot baths, the one she favors for its colorful mosaic tiles, which shimmer from the surface, and seem to shift and glow in burnt oranges, reds, and golds when she submerges to admire it, before having to inconveniently resurface for breath.

They are arranged in the same pattern as Caius’ in Volterra, the first glimpse of this world that she had experienced. Having excused it as a replica then, she is almost certain that it was an original like these, shaped and ordered by the hands of a pedantic Etruscan artist. Althea wonders what his name could’ve been, if anyone remembers the man, and suddenly, she remembers that there is a wondrous possibility that this man could still be living.

She glances down at the Etruscan, crowned in a wreath of what she believes to be bay laurel, the only verdant touch on the otherwise vibrant mosaic of golds and reds. If she had any breath to spare underwater, the lovely, aristocratic man would surely have stolen it from her. Even still, Althea resurfaces, and languidly swims to the other side of the bath, to where she left a bottle of oily lavender soap. If her hair were not as thick and rigid as the bronze and gold it was wrought from, then it wouldn’t be able to contend with the aromatic oils, and would hang lankly around her face once dried.

In movements that would’ve been called sensuous if she had an audience, she rubs the oil into her skin, washing away the ink clinging to her slender fingers, and banishing the smell of musty parchment and her own perfume. While she does so, she considers the books she had scrupulously read yesterday, and the book she had opened this morning, another volume of Ekku-mekku’s that she had discovered in the spacious library. Despite her longing, and indeed her longing for Aro is at the forefront of her heart and mind, she is fast becoming taken with not only him, but the world he has promised her.

Again she dips below the water, working the oil off of her skin, leaving both she and the water smelling of the sweet lavender fields in Provence, mere hours away from the Italian Alps. Years ago, she had visited there with Baptiste and had been shocked by the thousands of rows of lavender from the scenic, meandering roads they watched from.

The long, moistened strands of her hair cling to her neck, her shoulders, and her hips, stubbornly refusing to let go unless she dips her head back, coating the strands in the soothing aroma of her soap, whose age she is left only to speculate about.

But the next time she resurfaces for a deep breath, she hesitates for the vague silhouette above the water, whose curls are surrounded by the shimmering halo only water can provide. As still and immovable as the most exquisitely-shaped marble he stands, doubtlessly waiting for her. Soon she has no choice but to come up for air, already fixing him with a distrustful glare, until..

Beside him, lying on the floor is a fine sack, the antiquated kind that used to store herbs and aromatic spices, and she knows then that at least one of her demands has been met. In his hands, held between the long fingers of a pianist, is a velveteen box without any signature indicating its maker or indeed its make. He is so beautiful standing there, inspecting her neutralized face with something akin to reverence, occasionally shifting to her firm breasts, bobbing above and below the surface of the water with every breath she takes.

Expectantly, she waits, she waits for that other demand she’d given him, the one which she’d nearly forgotten until just now. Althea smirks, biting her lip and arching a brow, which he mirrors with his own sensual red lips, before inclining his head toward her, and slowly, lowering himself onto his knees, just on the edge of the hot bath, offering her the velveteen box, which she takes from his hands and opens with a pop.

Inside is a circlet, whose purpose she reasons is to be wound throughout the hair of a woman. Aro watches her from the edge of the bath, even his submission is graceful, and judging by the awe moving his lips into a smile, she doubts that he is at war with himself over it, despite his being primus inter pares . The circlet is outrageously ornate, and she determines quickly that it’s comprised of diamonds whose weight would fall much higher than six carats. Weaving around these diamonds are chains of gold that shine beneath the scant light of the bathhouse. This piece is exceptionally beautiful, and when she’s done looking at it, she moves her gaze upward, facing Aro for the first time in nearly two days.

“Let me see the saffron.” She says, but not without some undercurrent of humor.

His smile broadens, and he places the sack in front of her, forcing her to return the circlet to its respective box.

Wiping the water from her fingers with her dirty clothes, she then opens the sack for her perusal, assaulted by the aromatic smell of genuine saffron, and the sight of at least a kilo, or more, of the brilliantly red stamens.

“I have never liked saffron, you know.” Althea begins, closing the sack and swimming away from him, content in keeping him guessing over her pleasure. “Most people like it because of its novelty, and the unique color it gives rice.” She shrugs, swimming to the other side of the bath behind her. “Hardly is its taste worth fifteen-thousand euros.”

As expected, because he is a unique and superior form of man, he takes these criticisms with nothing less than the most delectable self-deprecating grin, his blood-red eyes twinkling with some emotion that succeeds in setting a fire in her lower belly.

Will this change anything? Will this submission of his make him trustworthy? As it were, she can’t imagine yet another long day spent away from him, trustworthy or not, and the force behind this makes her wary both of him and herself. Can she be trusted to keep her word when it regards him?

“May I rise, agapiti?” He finally asks in his melodious tenor, smoother than the kithara he spoke lovingly of.

Althea surveys him, from the curls spilling over his shoulders, to his pale neck and the hint of black curls that lay underneath, all the way to his hands, gripping the moist stone edges of the bath. He has betrayed me , she reminds herself, but he has done what I asked , and in fact, that is all he could do. After all, he’s that rare sort of man who has suffered her brooding humors, and continued courting her despite. And there’s no chance that she could turn away from him now, knowing now that there is undeniably some force that binds her to him, the same one that kept her returning to Volterra, when she would make excuses as to why she had come, hesitant to admit the truth to herself – that she had come looking for him.

“Yes.” She answers in a low voice, but in the large, empty space filled by baths brimming with deep water, it’s both loud and echoing. “And you may join me.”

Disregarding her conflict, she has missed him terribly, and thinks on the poetry of Ekku-mekku, who had written about what it was like to spend a week away from his lover Parvana, whom he had referred to as his mate, as Aro had to her.

Like how the Alluvial Plains must have felt when they dried up.

In a matter of moments he does join her, although she is barely able to look at his body as he has hers. She wonders if they forget their speed, but her curiosity is stolen away by the cool touch of his skin, and the strong, agile arms that wrap around her waist, or the feel of his chest slotted against hers.

Before she can even think of a suitable, snarky response, he captures her lips in a kiss, behind which is the tension she herself has been nursing since the other day. Instinctively, she laces a hand in his curls, sighing at the texture and forcing her to conclude that if ever she sends him away again, it will have been for a reason so severe that even the brooding Althea could not comprehend its hypothetical ends.

With a sigh, she slots herself just above his loins, and wraps her slender legs around him, gripping at his hair with a force that would’ve otherwise ripped another man’s hair out. Aro only purrs, smiling through the kiss and allowing her to plunder his sweet lips with her tongue.

She withdraws, catching her breath, and tells him gravely, “Don’t ever again do what you did, Aro. Don’t make me regret coming here, with you.”

Floating above the water are his curls, wet and undulated, longer than they are when dry. His eyes trace her lips, the hook of her nose, and the spot between her brows, where she hadn’t shaved for a few days. At this he supplies her with a brilliant smile, which takes all of her willpower to not reflect like a mirror.

“Never again, Althea, I swear to you, my curiosity is not worth your wrath. I have learned my lesson! Excellent work..” He says, in that way a schoolboy might boast to an expectant teacher, “And I saw Demetos, Dorian bastard that he is – born after the great war, as it happens – has told you about Ekku-mekku. My heart grieves that I could not be the one to tell you about him! So I live in penance now, now that I must again reconsider my uses to you.”

“You have many uses besides telling me about the Sumerian.” She reassures him, even though she suspects that his outburst is in line with his charming flair for the dramatic. Pulling herself closer to him, she titillates herself between his thighs, eliciting a low noise that reminds her of a growl, delighting and instilling terror in her in equal measure. His arms tighten around her waist, and his eyes, a more tantalizing red than even the novel saffron’s, is blown by the blackness of his pupils. “Demetri says he found his poetry ‘unspeakably dull’, but I could swear to you that I have never read anything more charming. Aro, I want to know more about these people.” The sorts of people I have only ever dreamed of, she neglects to say out loud.

“You should keep your monobrow, kali. Not one single maiden of the Aegean has ever managed to entice me thus with her eyes alone. Pedes tuus usque digites et usque supercilium tuum lambere volo, et postea.. te consumebo.” He whispers, nipping at her neck and lapping her skin, its gold flush with her arousal. “Anything at all you would like to ask me, ask me. I would like to share all that I know with you, just as a book opens at your command, privileged to be touched by these gracile fingers,” He lifts them to his lips, and coats them with his venom, thereafter releasing them, and splaying the digits onto his chest, where they remain to coil through the thick black curls there, “Even so I am open to you, however you would use me.”

Gently, she pushes him away, onto the rest where she had sat and lathered soap over her skin, joining him not a second later by entwining her legs around his hips, and unable to resist, taking his lips, which taste of all the sweet things she smelt in Knossos, a place that has never been more sacred than it is now.

Feeling him below her would’ve been surreal, if it didn’t feel more explicable than anything that had come before it. The solidity of his loins, harder than the whitest marble, twitches between her thighs, and determinedly, she brings herself down, having wanted this for longer than she cares to admit to anyone but herself. A breathy, wanton moan escapes her lips, disappearing into some decadent part of his mouth, as she hovers around the tip of him, and he, who has stiffened beneath her, pauses his ministrations.

“Althea,” He breathes, “Be careful, you are more easily broken than I.”

“Quiet.” She says crossly, “Put your arms back around me.”

And so he does, holding her so close to him that she might’ve thought he feared she would go away – and after what she had made him do, she’s sure that it’ll haunt him for sometime, as intended. She will not be made a fool of. Her father will never again make a fool out of her, and nor will Aro. If he had felt her absence as potently as she felt his, it should be enough of an incentive.

Nothing has ever felt more delightful than sliding down the length of him, a tantalizingly cold thing tucked away within the heat between her thighs. But he remains still, perhaps fearful of hurting her, and despite this, he showers her neck in sultry, open-mouthed kisses, leaving behind a trail of impossibly cold venom. She snaps her eyes shut, and grasps his hair for leverage, before slamming herself down, flushing their bodies close in every possible way. Her long lashes flutter against the tops of her sharp cheeks, and finally, he moves, thrilling her with a hiss, one whose sibilance is void of the hostility that’s capable of shifting her gaze away and invoking the instinct within to run. This time, she doesn’t feel the need to run, and instead rocks her hips against his.

“Turn us around..” Comes her breathless command, eliciting a slow, sultry smile on the bow of his lips.

He obeys, so quickly that she can only determine that he is as desperate as she is. He does so without disentangling himself from between her legs, depositing her in the space he had just occupied, on the hard, warm stone of the bath. The cavernous room is silent save for the sounds of their bodies moving together, the splash of water with each thrusting motion he makes, or the soft growls and thrilling hisses that are as expressive as the one inside of her, finally.

Their audience is comprised of the libertine Etruscans, many of whom are as nude as them, none of whom, though, are nearly as flawless as Aro. Threading her fingers through his hair, which is already drying – a trait of his that she noticed weeks ago – she hesitantly shifts her gaze up to his face, meeting his eyes, blown wide with lust, and watching every small tell on her face, like he is mapping every reaction to every movement of his, storing it in some base of his to be used later.

Something changes then, when she looks into his eyes. Something fundamental. The entire world seems to shift around and transform itself, until it is only them who exist, and if that is true, she does not care, because if she were to be alone in this world, at least she would be alone with him. She lifts a hand to his jaw, letting it trail upward until she grasps his cheek. He nuzzles it like a spoiled feline might, never ceasing the slow, steady motion of his hips – he is clearly practiced, and although she has never lain with him before, he seems to fit perfectly against her, and even if he were not a skilled lover (which he certainly is), to be joined with him so intimately would suffice.

Even as her breaths grow more ragged, deeper and exhausted, regardless that she had slept only an hour ago, she does not look away from him, entranced by some spell whose magic she doubts either of them could break. I forgive him, she resolves, and how could she not, when he looks at her like he is now, like he too had felt the shift, and though loquacious and chatty he might be, he did not care if she were the only one left to share the world with.

What other man would have met her demands? What other man would have given her a kilo of saffron that she’ll never be able to use, and a circlet of diamonds worth more than the economy of Liechtenstein? It is then that she has the bizarre thought of, there are no other men, and though she knows it couldn’t possibly be true, she is helpless to anything but surrendering to that feeling.

“Se philo..” Comes the breathless, startling admission, the first of its kind, from her lips, to Aro’s keen ears.

“Se agapo.” He answers her in an intonation darkened by lust – she has never heard Greek spoken so erotically before.

And so it goes, no one else could ever satisfy her, and her beloved certainty agrees with this sentiment.

She clenches tighter around him, her legs, having become boneless long minutes ago, now spasm around the lean, hard muscles of his stomach, silently inviting him to tighten his hold on her waist – there will be bruises, but she doesn’t care. He bends down, until their noses are flush, leaving her no choice but to look at him. Likely to his pleasure, she thinks, her lips parting for the silent, wanton scream caught in her throat, summoned forth by the vexing persuasion of her climax.

But the sounds that leave his lips, when moments later, he finds his own end, there is no symphony in the heavens or the earth that could rival him. It is strange, the sensation of his seed, which is as cold as the rest of his body, but no less pleasurable inside of her.

Althea knows, then, that she is hopelessly enamored with him, and whereas that might have disturbed her before, she is helpless to its pull on her now. He captures her lips then, silencing any self-imposed queries she was about to entertain, refocusing her attention back to him, where, like a child trying to grab a schoolmistress’ attention, is exactly where he would like it to be. The grip on her waist loosens, only now calling attention to how much it had hurt to be held for leverage by him.

“Do you forgive me, agapiti?” He then asks, wearing a grin that she would readily call ‘shit-eating’. She glares at him, but it lacks any substance whatsoever.

“If I must. You’ve proven yourself very useful, Aro.” She responds, flexing her cramping legs from behind his back, to trail her feet across his chest, pushing him away from her, which he acquiesces to, with a playful glint in his eyes, more visible now that the red has mostly returned.

“So, Greek,” By her ankle, he lifts the foot, and presses a soft kiss against the skin there, “Sex, and.. saffron! All the makings of a trader of spices. See how you have reduced me, Althea? No longer a king am I, but a spice merchant whose services belong to a wicked mistress who is at complete and total liberty to use me how she wishes!”

She’d like to scowl at him. What she’d really like to do is learn where that indomitable anger she’d had for him a mere thirty minutes ago had gone to, but upon searching for it, she finds that it’s completely escaped from her grasp, like fine grains of sand sifting through the spaces between fingers before they blend with the rest of the shore.

“Ah, sed artem dominae potenti habes. You will be formidable, I can tell by how you have masterfully seduced me into being your slave.” A devilish smirk curls at his supple lips, exposing his perfectly white teeth, which shine beneath the dim glow of the lamps. “You must feel like Helen of Troy, torn between these Greek degenerates.. but that is assuming I would let any other Greek degenerate look upon you longer than it takes to pluck out his eyes.” Playfully, he widens his own, and she laughs underneath his breath, at the lengths he will go to make her laugh, something she has missed in the short span of two days – they felt like a lifetime.

“Tell me about Ekku-mekku now.” She pulls him closer to her, like decadent Lesbia to her sparrow.

“Oh, him..” He says, sliding close to her on the ledge and nipping at her toe. In response she splashes him with water, but it doesn’t matter a whit – the sun’s radiance is dimmer than the satisfaction he wears now, it’s contagious, and manages to infect Althea. “What do you wish to know about him, anima mea?”

The dim glow of the lights cast him in a warm blanket of gold, but even they can’t soften the sharp slope of his jaw, nor can they summon any color to his unfathomably dark hair. But in hers they have their fun, sliding across the damp strands and turning them golder than they are red.

“He claims to have witnessed the Gutians sacking Uruk, but that must place him at the least, five-thousand years-”

“No, he is older than that, we have always estimated him to be around six-thousand years of age, though there are some naysayers who contest that and name him a liar. But he is not, I have taken his hand, and seen for myself..” He smiles then, closing his eyes indulgently as he speaks of his gift, “How he pressed the stylus into the clay, so lovingly, just as a jeweler cuts his gem into a pleasing shape, so too did Ekku-mekku leave his clay to bake and dry in the hot plains of the Euphrates. I have seen every tablet that ever passed his notice. It is because of him that I labored to learn Sumerian..”

She unwinds her arms, aching with fatigue, and this time it isn’t from sleep. Spent from their lovemaking, she relaxes in the soothing heat of the bath, in that way a reptile basks in the sun. Something has changed between them – it’s unplaceable but not unpleasant, and begs later analysis. Her eyes wander over him, hooded and ambiguous as they often are.

“I hope you find something pleasing, domina.” Comes his saucy words. She flushes, and returns her assessment to his face. “Yes, I learned Sumerian so that I could understand those tablets! A labor of love, I assure you!”

“You mean to say that you can’t read a given person’s thoughts without knowing their language?”

“Sophos. No, I cannot. Their memories I can see, their experiences too, but their thoughts on the matters remain an infuriating enigma to me until I learn their language.”

Then, she cuts in, with renewed determination, “That is why you study language.”

Sensuously, he licks his lips, in response to the path of her own tongue, a habit of his whose effect can’t be underestimated. “Apparently I do not need to bare my soul, these things are naturally already known to you. Mirabile dictu, putavi id numquam loqui posuturus. My gift, when I was still a newborn, it was agonizing. Every time that I touched someone,” He gestures with his hand, “A flood of images and foreign tongues would torment me, my sire, a Cypriot named Ajatewos – the sire of Marcus also – was one of the first of our kind to see the value in these gifts, and he thought my renowned status as a bard would surely mean that I was blessed. He was a superstitious man.”

“Where is he now?” She asks.

“Drinking from Lethe, where I put him!” He answers, with a charming string of giggles, a song without words. “We are territorial creatures, Althea, and though our lives have no natural end as a human’s do, it is rare for us to live past our first few centuries. Demetri explained some to you, but let’s admit,” He waves the dismissive hand of a jealous man then, “He did not tell you everything, because while we are old, most of us are not historians. Among our kind, it is considered the highest commendable honor to be counted among the ancients.”

“Are you counted among the ancients?”

“If I wasn’t then, I certainly am now! There are only a few extant vampires – one of them really is extant like a fossil – older than me. Ekku-mekku, Pekki, Amun, Duha, and Fuad. Duha and Fuad, they are a duet and can never be separated, like a melody needs its harmony, so too does Duha need Fuad.” She bites her lip to refrain from laughing, but it slips from her anyway, to the eminent satisfaction of Aro. “Nubian bastards. One of them, Duha, has a quirk that makes him hard to trace for Demetri, and the other has a sense for discerning truth from untruth. These quirks were more common in those times, I have a theory, my heart, that exceptional gifts have become more common over time, but as to why, I remain uncertain...” He finishes with a light flourish of his hand.

“Perhaps there are just more people.” She argues.

“It could certainly be that.. almost every ‘ancient’ has one of these quirks. My contemporaries, including Marcus and Astyages, were the first to have truly praiseworthy gifts-”

“What are their gifts exactly?” She cuts in, curious about the other king who had seemed disinterested in every matter that passed in front of him, wondering if he was simply an impotent ruler, or if there was something more to him.

Aro debates something for a moment, she had noticed the same discomfort when he had introduced her to Marcus the other night. But as expected, he occludes it, in that way a thief cloaks himself to rob people of their valuables, with a dazzling smile of eternal spring.

“Marcus, my brother in everything but blood, he has an interesting gift that allows him to perceive the bonds between others from a distance. If you were to harbor any hostility toward Caius – this is an easy example for my half-bred brother is an acquired taste, Marcus would sense this, but he could not tell you why it had happened. Our gifts are very complimentary, Althea.” He coos the last part into her neck, reminding her, if indeed she could forget, of what had just transpired between them. “And Astyages, he has a king’s gift, fitting for a vampire who in his mortal life was a king! It is very dangerous, to those who are unacquainted with him, and Althea, most are not unacquainted with him, so its uses are limited primarily to mortals and newborns who can be taken unawares by him. His gift is in spellbinding, like the gods command snow to fall down a mountain side in the winter, to slake their anger with an errant mortal, Astyages can bewitch mortal and immortal alike into doing his bidding, and unlike Heidi’s, it isn’t based on his beauty..

“Which many would say is as legendary as Adonis’. When he wants something, he can compel it onto others, and I have experienced secondhand how this feels. Imagine, my heart, that there is a little devilish erotes who whispers into your ear, that if you do this immortal’s bidding, you will be granted eternal happiness, the likes of which only we can know through our other halves. Heidi’s power has to be resisted, and it is easily resisted if you are already taken with another.” He whispers into her ear, clasping its shell between his teeth, eliciting shivers down her spine, and causing her eyes to further hood themselves until they flutter shut completely. “But Astyages’ isn’t based on lust, but instead a desire to please, rather like how I desire to please you, perhaps you are his more tempting incarnation!”

“Is everyone gifted?” She questions, trying desperately to ignore his pleasurable succor on the firm mounds of her breasts.

“No, agapiti. Most are unremarkable.” Then, he traces chaotic circles into the warm skin of her navel, “Some however are not gifted but are remarkable, like Felix or my brother, Caius. Felix is our executioner, a fittingly terrible and staunch protector of my dearest. And Caius, well, need I explain him? He is so foul-tempered that he could persuade anyone that this is his gift.” In slow, lapping strokes, he swims in front of her – she notices he doesn’t float, but instead sinks, and thus plants either lean, snowy pale arm on either side of her head on the ledge behind her. “Speaking of the remarkable and dearest, how are you feeling about your change?”

For a long moment, she simply stares at him. She’s noticed that he no longer takes her hand as he might’ve when they’d first met, a habit whose purpose she is now acquainted with, but perhaps less then everyone else, if she is gifted as Aro claims. Why, if most immortals are not gifted, is she surrounded by them? Does he collect them in that way a spider collects prey on its web, patiently tracking every coordinate, and which prey is attracted to which point? Again she gives pause to wonder about what sort of man she has committed herself to, though she is beginning to learn what secret cunning lies behind the elation that perpetually scintillates in his eyes, a sort of craft she had suspected from their very first meeting.

However, she finds that she truly does not care that he treats others with the unscrupulous disregard of a scientist who had found the rather prosaic conclusion to his riveting experiment, as long as he doesn’t infringe on herself. For as long as she has studied ethics, she has concluded that other people willingly sign these contracts, and it’s their responsibility if they are displeased with the consequences.

At last she answers, mirroring the calculation swimming in his blood-red eyes, as unpredictable as the water they lounge within.

“How very touching for you to ask,” She begins, thick with blithe snark, “My birthday is New Year’s Eve, and it’s always been miserable, so why not make it more miserable with Vulcan’s excruciating magma? That is the efficient thing to do.”

“Miserable, you say? Why miserable, my heart?” It’s filled with the inquiry that always arises at the tiniest mention of her feelings, her inner world, that tightly-sealed place that she guards like a dragon to its precious spoils.

She seriously debates saying nothing at all, thinking of his earlier betrayal, but if there is anyone she would like to tell her long and treacherous tale of woe, it’s undeniably Aro. Althea has always disliked the inclination to judging her own past as eminently troublesome, since she believes that everyone has their own inalienable nightmare that haunts them just as much as hers do, relative to their own experience.

“My mother celebrated it like any other holiday, like it was a distraction from what she’d prefer to be doing, and my father just sent gifts, as if that was enough.”

“Enough for..?” He fishes, and this time, she takes the bait, blaming it on the freshly-cut wound of reading Dariush’s journal.

“Enough for the way he let me be treated by his family in Iran. My father never abused me, his liking is too subtle for that. Instead he favored the opinions of other people over mine, a collectivist leader if there ever was one as skillful as him. And when their opinions were at odds with.. me, he let them do as they wanted, never mind the consequences of your own daughter’s ridicule. And when my half-brothers would pull at my hair, grope me even, he would do nothing, and his wife – great slut and terror of my every summer holiday – she would beat me for any small disrespect. She was jealous of my mother, and jealous of the small gifts that my father would give me, as if those meant anything. I should like to see her on a Tower of Silence, even the vultures would turn up their noses at her.” She finishes, fuming, and crossing her arms protectively over her chest.

“When you mentioned that I acted like your father, I was not sure what you meant, Althea. Now that I know..” The melody of his voice grows darker, graver, and more serious, “I would not have treated him with respect. Althea, I had no idea, I swear.” With her chin held gently between his fingers, she thinks he might kiss her, but he continues talking, “Recall what I told you, I would have you adore this life as much as I. Even if I have to move mountains, and assume the likeness of some powerful force of nature, I will fulfill my promise to you. We forget much of our past when we are changed, just as a butterfly cannot comprehend the inferiority of the body he once occupied in the cocoon, so too do the defects of mortality become unmappable, incomprehensible. These mortal wounds will never touch you again, and if they do, I will snatch them away with my jaws.” She scoffs humorously, looking away for the tears brimming along her lower eyelids.

He continues, petting her skin with a singular adoration, “I am a cold-blooded murderous reptile, would you like me to kill your parents?” Shaking her head as if to say ‘no’, he responds with a cheeky quirk of his head, “More’s the pity! I suppose I will have to kill Thracians to slake my blood lust instead, as my manhood will have me prove my haruspicy skills to you. Killing them is excellent sport, why, it is the great Greek pastime! A thousand Thracians and filthy Dacian swine will have to suffice as effigies for those who hurt you. Second best.” That rare throb of her heart gives, when he licks the tears that had escaped and bathed her cheeks. “What would you like to do before your New Year’s change?”

Unsure how to answer that, she fixes instead on the curly hairs of his chest, floating alluringly with the whim of the bath’s sluggish current. And down, and down she looks, until she finds the virility that had earlier given her the greatest pleasure she can remember, even summoning her extraordinarily rare mood that entailed wanting to share the barest hint of her agony, that thing that has managed to permeate her life like the intrusive roots of a willow tree, for which she coult cut the trunk, though underneath it would still find a way to prosper like a parasite.

Aro notices the object of her attention and like a curly-haired Mephistopheles, he smirks and purrs, “Should I take it to mean that you want me? I cannot read your mind, kali. But I can give you what you want, again and again, we do not grow tired, as it so happens. Say the word, and I will be your slave. ‘Oh, my exquisite lover, how she uses me for her own delights’, I would say, and then, it would follow, ‘Your complaints are a farce, it is your overt enjoyment to be used by her, Master Aro’, ‘You have caught me, my subject, for when I taste both of her succulent lips, those of her navel and those that belong to her legendary persona, I can scarcely recall why I thirst for blood’.”

The pale gold of her face admits a rosy, dark flush in response to his words. She swallows, before lifting her chin at him imperiously, offering the image of self-control where there is none. Thereafter he tries to slide between her hips, but she pushes him back with her foot, yet another thing he catches, like it were not an obstacle, but something to be persuaded.

“You are insufferable.” Despite this, she is terribly flattered by the intensity of his attention, and thrilled by the bawdy nature of his words, which he continuously weaves like Arachne and her thread. “I think I would like one last cup of coffee before I am changed, perhaps something to eat, besides olives and nuts. I am reliving my time in Lycia with Khizir.”

“I wish he would have taken my hand..” Comes his dreamy words, floating through the air as her legs float in the water around him. “Chechen or Circassian?”

Her resulting stare is bewildered, but she reasons that his proficiency with language would lead him to guess his ethnicity, “Chechen, naturally. What other sort of people could be so painfully masculine and ape-like?”

He shrugs, as if to silently convey ‘are you sure about that?’, “Circassians are fearsome specimens also, there are some among us who speculate that the Caucasus region is where the first vampire was created. Our creation remains a mystery, but you wisely guessed that our purpose is to preserve the harmony of the mortal populations. Sophos, always so wise. Come to court with me tonight, say wise things so I won’t be bored to death. Cosi tragico, if your lover died, who would be left to serve you?” At her silence, he continues onward, “There is someone coming tonight, I will let you and Caius decide their fate, while I watch and observe.”

“Won’t that bother Caius?”

Mulling over that for a moment, he shrugs the shoulder of the careless, “Everything bothers Caius, my heart. Something is terribly amiss when it doesn’t. His cold, dead heart belongs solely to his mate, Athenadora, with only a few strings to spare for the rest of us! But he will grow to love you.. the unfamiliar brings him discomfort, and so he behaves like the uncivil Etruscan half-breed that he is! If I tell you our most principal laws, will you rule in my stead?”

Althea can’t help but think this is but another experiment of his, however, her quest for certainty, friend to her resentment toward surprises, ensures that her answer will be a firm ‘yes’, if only to familiarize herself with the world that she is fast yearning to be a part of.

Slowly, she nods, earning her a brilliant smile that quietly, she can admit, makes her decision leagues more justified.

A mellifluous voice wakes her in the early hours of the night, accompanied by the soft rehearsal of an unknown melody. Of the mellifluous voice, she knows, though the words, if indeed they’re words and not the serene meanderings of idioglossia, are incoherent to her. Being strummed was the unmistakable kithara, whose harmony seems to glide and cascade with the ease of an Alpine river.

“La, la, la…” These are the only words she catches, sung between the lyrics of an unknown language.

“What is that song?” Is her first question of the night, and it’s husky with sleep – the first sleep she’s had on a real bed in two days.

Though he ceases to sing, he continues to strum away with the excellence of a skilled musician, “Ode to the Dolphin, a song of Minos, its preservation passed to me.”

Yes, it did have a germ of the Aegean, and some of the words tease the edge of her consciousness with their [relative] similarity to Greek, thereafter prompting her to speculate their etymology, to see whether some of them were lent to later Hellenic.

“Was Minoan a Hellenic language?” Althea lifts herself from the bed, and spies him sitting on the floor with either of his legs supporting the elaborately hewed kithara.

“No, Alateja, nor was it Indo-European. Like Etruscan, it had no relation to any other language, but it was the language of prestige, and anyone who wanted to write about more than the exchange of olive oil had to learn it! Before you abused me, the Minoan language abused me.” Despite this, he offers her a smile, dazzling in that way lovers’ often are.

Such a sight should be relegated to her more unlikely imaginings and dreams, those whimsical ones of a girl who dreamed of one day, after gaining fluency in Latin, studying Greek, and touring the illustrious ruins of Crete, witnessing the places where renowned oracles, lyricists, and philosophers walked on the same, albeit weathered, cobbled roads.

But these imaginings are no longer so unlikely, and she finds herself faced with the heretofore impossible opportunity of knowing and learning from those who had experienced an age as golden as Midas’ cursed rivers. Fortuitous.

And although she should be upset with him for waking her up (rudely, if it were any other way), she can only awe at the mastery he has over this art. The very front of his hair is pulled into a knot at the back of his head, spilling down his shoulders and arms in lustrous black curls.

“What are you thinking about?” His agile fingers pause, and the totality of his attention is on her.

“About you.” She vaguely replies.

Like a serpent licks the air for a scent, and thereupon finds its prey, Aro’s eyes lock onto her and refuse to let go, a passionate and almost childlike intensity which becomes only more endearing as the days pass. Indeed she is finding it increasingly difficult to hark back to those early days of dubious annoyance with him, almost like they belong to an anamnesis that she’s meant to lock away and forget.

“About how much fun you will have with me in court tonight?” This again? She does respect his determination.

It must show on her brow – the displeasure of revisiting the throne room, and standing among a crowd of immortals who had experimented on her like she was an insect for study.

He softens at that, he is tactful, when his inquisitiveness isn’t judged as more important. “Do forgive me, puella mea, I have repented for my naughty behavior, haven’t I? Or.. perhaps you would like to punish me further? As long as it is not depriving me of you.. as a plaything of fate, these things I can only go along with.” Her eyes wander over him doubtfully, “What is my letter?”

“Excuse me?”

“You are clearly grading me on something.” She rolls her eyes, and lifts her scantily-clad body out of the sheets.

Just as she is crossing the room for her bag and phone, he seizes her by the hips, pulling her down until she rests between his thighs. To resist is futile, his hold is too strong, and his laughter is too infectious for her to be cross for very long.

“Quit handling me like a toy, or I will ‘punish you further’.” She weakly protests, clawing vainly at his chest, clothed in the dark sweater he wears underneath his suit jacket.

No , she can’t believe his shamelessness, because firstly she can’t believe that he’s tickling her , even if he is daringly impish enough to try. Stifling her l aughter is altogether pointless, for he swiftly manages to find the sensitive point in the dip of her thighs, having always been her most ticklish spot since she can remember. Had he been inspecting her earlier for these things, when he’d been studying her while she let him between her legs?

Both erupt in a series of giggles, it’s hard to tell whose is more crazed, hers or Aro’s , who is after her like a child to a present on Christmas morning. Her slender legs kick , but he expertly evades their blows, which would more than likely only hurt herself.

Above them, the ebullient, glistening bodies of dolphins lick and bound around the feet of the Achaean gods, overlooking a similar display below.

“You should laugh more, Althea, you are like the comely muse that was summoned to sing of Achilles’ wrath!” He exclaims, clamping his legs tighter around her, sure to leave bruises which will be kindred to the motley of bruises already formed across the expanse of her hips.

“Stop.” But he makes like he isn’t listening a whit, and finally, she raises her voice, breathless from the struggle, “Aro, stop! You’re hurting me.”

With stark immediacy, he loosens his hold on her, and withdraws to inspect her face, resting ambiguously on the bruises staining her lower half. Gently, he runs his fingers across the inflamed skin, mottled with purples and faint yellows, some more painful than others, but she is hesitant to show weakness, and resists the urge to wince.

“All the makings of an Amazonian,” He begins, teasing the cloth of her knickers as he does so, “These are your battle scars from the ‘Artful Seduction of a Monster’, I must admit to some confusion over whether I should be flattered by the lengths you will go to be my amator, or whether I should be worried.”

“Did you have other lovers in mind?” She snipes, crawling out of his loose grasp and making to stand.

When he laughs, she turns a nasty scowl down to where he sits prone on the floor, leaning against one of four ornate Corinthian columns, his thick hair mingling with the wandering dormant vines.

“What madman would I be if I sought them, if I sought winter for vibrant blooms, the sea for drinking water, a jungle for snow, or a wretch for gold, then I might search, but even still, it would be as inconclusive as any one of those.” Is his grave response, “You will understand why when you join me in this life.”

It’s spoken in that way a prophet often speaks in parables, trying to convey a supramundane meaning by using the simplest words. Frowning, she looks away from him, and out of the windows, curtained by sleek light fabrics that sway at the slightest draft of air. Falling onto the windows in barely audible thunks is a rainstorm more lenient than this morning’s, landing placidly on the glass where each drop clings before streaking down and joining the others in a pool at the sill.