title: Lithium
rating: T
pairing: Corin/Chelsea (or Quirina/Charmion, using their ancient names)
Their secret starts as politics made flesh.
Aro finds Quirina difficult, a surly, solitary thing whose loyalty cannot be bought with baubles and promises. In desperation, he goes to Charmion and gazes at her as though she was the most precious creature imaginable, his eyes suggesting any reward she could name, if only—
And, in the name of power, the dark-haired woman with the binding gift seeks Quirina's chambers at night. Something terribly clumsy—I want you or perhaps You are lovely—falls from her lips; she has never needed seduction before. Her carrot-haired listener raises her brows and smiles a little.
"Aro put you up to this," she says, before stepping very, very close and kissing her lightly. Impersonally. "I will forgive you if you disobey him."
"Oh, my dear, surely you can guess the consequences of that," she replies. It is a game, after all, and she will play it well, talents be damned.
"I see," she purrs. Quirina's mouth, open this time, tastes of nothing at all, but it crawls beneath Charmion's skin, leaving her gasping and writhing and—more.
[-]
Later, when they are Chelsea and Corin, hands and legs and bonds intertwined, they will not speak of gifts, of who keeps whom bound behind Volterra's walls. It's a common courtesy, they agree.
And Aro is so very certain that he's won.