Her eyes widened as the two words she hadn't heard be directed at her in centuries left the lips of the stranger in front of her. She forced herself to gulp the strange knot that had taken over her throat as her eyes studied the man from head to toe; his long hair, his ruby hues, his old clothes; but her next words came only a note higher than a whisper. "How did you...?" Her eyes remained fixed on his respectful form at all times.

Aro ignored her question as his head shook only a little before he threw a smiling glance in the direction of a completely transfixed Alec. "Our plans have changed." He informed him before returning his gaze to the queen in front of him. "You have, regretfully, still broken many laws of the Volturi, your Majesty." He announced to the equally transfixed femme. "But I have something to offer you." An odd smile twisted his lips, much to the woman's lack of understanding, yet clear to become for the realisation upon the true value of the historical jewel he could ward under his arm. "You are a royal exception, dear one. Thus, I am willing to grant you death..." The eyes of the girl and the Master's met in a communicative level, one in which Aro could easily see the amount of fear that had so easily grown into her being, regardless of the continuation of a poised posture that easily would be able to fool any human; so to end the queen's torture, he continued. "...or a place among us."

Alec's frozen state only allowed him to stare between both people; yes, he could be very aware of the many realisations upon her attitude and posture that had perhaps given her a regal air before, but he still couldn't, for the existence of him, understand what exactly seemed to be happening in front of him. The only thing that he was sure of, if anything, was that the girl he once thought of as his prisoner now had to make a choice: to become a Volturi, to train and master the art of becoming a member of their guard... or to die; and he was rather sure he already knew which option the young queen would choose. As if the revelation of such thought importance of her stature wasn't enough, the veil of the physical image that Alec had so rightfully guessed to be fake a couple of weeks ago, slowly started shattering in front of him; the round features of the girl from the island started slowly fading into longer and finer ones, and the hair that had once been shoulder short and coal black, seemed to suddenly cascade into a curly dark brown fall against her back. Was that her real self? Alec wondered as he stared at the young queen's back.

An event that only left Alec the more transfixed, resulted in a wave of excited clapping coming from the old Master who was also watching her. "I do not wish to die, my lord." Her voice, that now chimed in a soft soprano note, and, to Alec, felt more natural coming from a vampire, finally echoed around the room in a gentle interruption to the Master's excitement.

Aro's head shook as the smile that had lifted his features remained, impossible to disappear upon the events in front of him making him realise just how high of an addition he had just made into his guard. "And so, you shall not." He voiced, tone chirping with joy, before an arm lifted to gesture toward the guard that had just managed to move from his frozen state. "Alec shall take care of you, and teach you the ways of the Volturi." He announced, not even noticing the way in which the boy's jaw locked when he realised that not only he still had no idea what was going on, but he had just been put on mentor duty to the new recruit. He didn't dare think much as he moved to open the door of the long room, having taken such utterance as an invitation to a finished meeting. "I have it on good authority that he has told you what can happen if you make an escape plan or attempt one." Aro continued, smiling a grin that the young guard thought would crack his features in half if he wasn't careful, before he saw the girl's (no, queen's) head bob in an affirmative nod. Alec's eyes rolled in slight annoyance as his master made such an incredible show of taking her hand to press his cold and dead lips against its back. "Welcome to Volterra, your Majesty."

Simply nothing made sense.

"Thank you, my lord." Alec's once-prisoner simply responded as she allowed her body to lower in a small curtsy, rather weird-looking in the jeans she wore, before she turned around to face what looked to her like a very annoyed Alec. A small smile was forced to remain on her lips, calm bleeding through every movement she made regardless of her continued fear that she was, as they say, still in the line of fire.

Alec's eyes fell on her once again, and this time, being the first time his eyes fell on what he thought to be her real facial features, they widened slightly; the soft paleness of her flesh still looked human, yet at the same time, to him, her skin looked like porcelain. Her thin lips seemed rosy and warm, though Alec knew they couldn't be; and her long dark waves of hair only highlighted the fairness of her skin, looking naturally like what he knew a vampire's features to look like. She was beautiful, Alec realised, not that such a thought was the most important in his mind; it was simply the most polite. "It looks like you have a lot to learn." He voiced, forcing himself to look away from her as he closed the doors of the big workroom.

"Learn?" She asked, without daring much of a pause whilst looking directly at Alec. "What do you mean?"

As he walked, with her tagging along and hurrying to walk by his side, he decided to look at her again. It was odd, he realised, to see this face on her, the hair, the brand new everything; though, it was clear that it wasn't new. Is this really you? He thought; he realised, only now, that her features before had looked too human, too fragile. Though, when he looked into her eyes, he realised that her shinning merlot hues were the only thing that hadn't changed in her features; at least, not the way they could have. They were only shades darker due to her thirst. He didn't know why he felt thankful for the fact. "Master Aro gave you a choice." He finally said, forcing himself, once again and with a shrug, to look in front of him as if he didn't know from memory where he was going. "Die or become one of us; you chose the latter, which means you have to train, learn how we operate, etcetera." He began walking towards the hall that housed the entire guard. Alec, of course, lived in the upper level (lower guard got the lower level), but he had not been instructed to let the queen out of his sight. He had to do everything in his power not to just question her privacy at that moment.

All she could do was think of what she'd chosen; the minute decision that, in her eyes, simply held no option. Of course she'd chosen not to die, she'd lived entirely too long to let all of it go to waste; in her eyes, she had been given a second chance, perhaps now a third, and she simply had to make the best out of it. Yet, part of her didn't understand; sure, she was glad she was not going to die anytime soon, but her eyes remained on her guardian as she dared question him. "But what did I just join?" The confusion that drowned her insides so easily echoed in her natural soprano voice. "Who are you?"

Alec's whole body paused as he slowly turned to look wide eyed at her. "The Volturi." He said, merely pausing to see if she reacted in any way to the name. To be honest, he'd been thinking she had been pretending not to know who they were at the beginning purely to seem tough, fearless, like she seemed to pretend to be, but when this time again she didn't react, pure anger resonated in his next words. "Are you telling me you don't even know that!?" He barked, watching her, observing her for any change; yet, her eminent silence was enough confirmation to his words. He took a step closer to her. "We're the government of all vampire kind. We're fucking royalty in this day and age." As he paused, he swallowed absently to take the step back and mock a bow toward the other. "But it seems you are as well... your Majesty." Not even if he'd attempt it would his anger become able to be hidden, willing a feigned roll of his eyes before rising his frame to walk toward the few steps that lead toward his apartment in the big castle. He'd share it with her, for now, not that he wanted to see much of her at that moment. Perhaps he'd simply give it to her, hide somewhere else during the counted times in his future in which he didn't have to be with her. He needed a space, for he felt betrayed, and, other than his room, he didn't exactly know where else to put her.

Regardless of the hostility, she followed along; her brow had suddenly furrowed at Alec's words, which reminded her a little too much of her past, of the mocking tone she had had thrown at her centuries ago. Which, of course, made anger cloud her own mind as well, though more poised, even nearly calm; even her tone wasn't exactly loud. The next time she spoke, it simply sounded cold and entirely full of confidence. "I've been hiding for centuries, Alec. From everyone; if I ever crossed paths with another one like me, I ran or killed them before I could learn anything at all about this world. I've been living like an unimportant human all these years, centuries, only truly accepting and facing what I was when I got to that bloody bit of island that you so kindly took me away from. I'm sorry for wounding your ego and not knowing who you are. I was too miserably busy trying to hide who I really was!" By the time she stopped speaking, Alec and herself were a step away from her guard's door; not one of them had noticed when they had stopped walking, and she felt suddenly thankful that she didn't need to breathe, for she had actually been able to say all that, harshly, without a single pause.

Alec, though, turned slowly, cold hues cast upon his prisoner. He was not her caretaker, her babysitter, and he didn't care that she was or was not some sort of royal in the past; he knew she was no such thing now. That this girl was, for all intents and purposes, lower that he was; she was untrained, uneducated in the art of being a Volturi guard, and most definitely wasn't a threat; which was really the only reason behind his anger. But if she turned out to be, then, not only would he be thankful for the excuse to fight her, but a threat would be exactly how he would treat her. Because of this, he took a step forward, and another, and another until her back was completely pressed against the nearest wall; Alec wanted to tell her she could quit acting all high and mighty, to tell her that right at that moment, he truly was her only friend, if she could even call him that with the short pang of distrust he felt toward her, but instead, he fixated his eyes on hers and spoke lowly in a question; so calmly, that he was sure he had seen her shiver shortly. "And who exactly are you, Mariana?" His tone shifted, because, at that moment, he wasn't even sure if that was her even real name.

The eyes that had been so suddenly clouded with anger softened slowly into a worried shadow as soon as she found herself stuck between the one she thought of as her guard, and the wall behind her. Alec's eyes nearly drilled a hole inside her as he awaited for her answer, but she continued, even now, to refuse to show him just how much he was scaring her. A feat that had once impressed him, only annoyed him at that moment. She knew, though, that if such had been any other situation, Alec's petty attempts at intimidation wouldn't have even phased her, but that day; that day she'd just escaped death's veil by a blink.

Automatically, though, as many centuries of hiding would have it, she started considering not telling Alec a thing; it was Master Aro, as the guard had addressed him, that made her reconsider. For he seemed to already know just who she was, and since he was the leader (something that had not at all taken her long to realise), she figured everyone in the castle would eventually find out. So, for the first time in nearly five hundred years, she decided to speak the truth at last; without daring to look away from the deep crimson eyes of the curly haired boy, she spoke: "My name is not Mariana." She admitted, with a small pause that made Alec's brows rise in pretend surprise. "It's Anne." It was as if she wanted to savour the very last moments of her hidden identity, as if that last name was the only thing covering her from the mask she'd worn for years; but, finally, with a defeated, yet completely firm voice, she confessed. "Anne Boleyn." The name left her lips as if the last time she'd spoken it had only been yesterday; familiar, full of meaning for her, completely true. To which Alec could only blink, leaning back slightly in surprise that even he couldn't pretend wasn't there; and though she could see that he knew exactly who she was, she decided to continue speaking the words she wished she'd been able to tell someone centuries ago. "I was King Henry VIII of England's second wife. Mother of Elizabeth I. Executed in front of people who once chanted witch behind my back because I couldn't father a child after my beloved girl; executed in front of people who betrayed me. Executed for unjust reasons, for lies that named me a whore. That... is who I am. " And at that exact moment, as a long exhalation of breath left her lips, Anne felt as if the greatest weight had suddenly been lifted of her shoulders.

Alec's stare continued to bore into her even when she stopped speaking; it made sense, he realised, how his Master had reacted to her. And even how she had acted since the moment they'd captured her; that poise and composure he thought he'd been witness to... it simply made sense. She had been born into her lifestyle, not into his, or subsequently those that were in his ranks. Anne, Alec realised, had been born, bred and died completely in her own rank. He was almost left without a means to prove otherwise. Almost. "You were a queen." He finally said, taking that step forward again, and towering slightly above her, but with a tone slightly gentler than the one he'd used to address her before. "But no longer. You are a member of the Volturi guard now, of very little significance as of this moment. You do not hold any presence over me, or others, and you will not act as it." A muscle that tended to twitch in the heat of the moment did, not the place, but nevertheless it did. "You are simply Anne, and I am simply Alec. Nothing more, nothing less, and it would do you well never to lie to me again." Alec lingered for a moment to look into her eyes before he backed away to walk toward his apartment's door; he quickly opened it, and motioned for Anne to make her way inside with a nod of his head. "We begin tomorrow." He said, and without further ado he turned around and walked down toward the long stairwell that they'd just climbed up, leaving Anne staring after him, and realising that she didn't know where she was, nor truly what had just happened, but that Alec had made it more than impossibly clear: she had better enjoyed the small show of highness that had been given to her by the so called Master Aro, a Master that seemed to be now hers as well, because it would probably be the last.

To Be Continued.