The Night Court

First of all, dear reader, a word.

Can we agree on the fact that Marcus and Caius were very, VERY strangely cast in the movies? Marcus is supposed to be looking 19 in the books, yet he's portrayed by an older man, and Caius is portrayed by our national Adonis Jamie Campbell Bower, well in his early 20s, while his character is supposed to be looking 45...what happened there? Anyone?

So, I decided to keep Jamie, because of course he's staying. But I'm recasting Timothée Chalamet as Marcus. Yes, I went there. And yes, I know he's perfect for the part, I am aware. Brooding jaded teen mourning his long-lost love for millennia is just a part he was born to play.

I put Caius/ Bella and Marcus/Bella as pairing but those are not two romantic relationships (only one of them is…. You'll see.)

I rated the fic M for mention of blood, gore and violence, and explicit sexual content

As always, comments are most welcome. I can't wait to see what you think of this new fiction.

prologue

"WHERE IS SHE?"

Caius still had the young Russian man's blood on his lips as he rushed out of the throne room. It was sweet and tasted like lavender and sunshine. Caius had relished in every gulp he had sucked from the opened artery, his ancient venom paralyzing his prey into an overwhelming agony. The rush of bright euphoria had been so intense that he hadn't seen his mate, Athenodora, retreat alone when everyone was still feeding. He had noticed only long minutes later when finally satiated he had searched for her eyes to see the bright red reflect her primal satisfaction, her joy, something he rarely saw these days. He had wanted to see a glimpse of the woman he loved. Only she was gone.

As he ran through the corridors and flight of stairs, he replayed the last image he'd seen before the hunter in him had overwhelmed his senses. She had set her gaze on a short black-haired woman holding tightly in her arms a ball of plaids, cradling it with a pleading look on her face. Caius pushed back the ominous feeling that threatened to overpower him and increased his speed as in reached the Consorts' Tower.

The infant's screams confirmed his suspicions long before he busted the door open and entered his wife's private quarters.

There she was, beautiful and... heartbreaking. She was what a vampire suffering from anorexia would look like. Thin, so painfully thin and wasting away with her long blond hair adorning her beautiful face, like Hera, queen of the Gods of Olympus, only her eyes were pitch black as she hadn't fed in weeks. Heidi had brought in a feast of fresh, sweet scented preys, and there wasn't a drop of blood in her almond shaped eyes. Only despair and anguish.

And in her arm, a baby shrieking in pain.

The infant couldn't be more than a year old, but its screams were as loud as those of a newborn, and definitely triggered by some unbearable torture. One look at his mate, and revelation struck him.

"What have you done, my love?" he told her in Greek, her favorite language.

"Please," her eyes were those of a beggar in front of a church, seeking asylum. "Please let me have her"

A drop of venom was still shining at her lips. The screams of the infant intensified as the baby hands and feet trashed in all directions, trying to rid itself of the fire that was now slowly consuming it - her.

"We cannot make exceptions" Caius said softly, and his voice broke as he saw the effect his answered had on his mate, her face crumbling "We cannot violate the laws we forged ourselves. We must be exemplary, or else it would be chaos."

"No one would know!" Her tone rose in hysteric pikes as panic reached her throat "It would be our secret. Please, let me have this one child."

"Don't you remember what immortal children are like? They are incapable of restraint, or of reason…"

"She would stay in the Tower with us!" She cried, still clinging to the hope that she could change his mind "With me! She would be mine, and she would keep me company when you leave the castle, or when Sulpicia decides to ignore me for a full decade again!"

Caius stretched one hand toward his mate and walked up slowly to her, as if she was a frightened animal...a frightened human he'd try to calm down. His eyes were now pleading "Are you that unhappy here? Am I not enough for you?"

Asking that was like stabbing himself with a red-hot dagger, plunging it to his frozen heart as he could see the answer in Athenodora's eyes. Yes, she was unhappy. No, he was not enough. He hadn't been for a long time.

Ever since Didyme had died, Aro and Caius had been living in the fear of being as crushed and paralyzed by everlasting grief as their brother Marcus had been. So Aro and Caius had decided that it would be better to protect their own mates from a similar fate. For the love that they felt, yes, but also for the responsibility they had to keep the peace in their world. Cruel as it may be, they simply couldn't afford to crumble. And Corin had the convenient gift of dosing anyone with an addicting fix of contentment and satisfaction, so Sulpicia and Athenodora never suffered from their existence as forced housewives in their tower. Or so he had thought.

Because Corin was no Didyme. Corin couldn't actually make you happy by simply standing in the room. Corin was just a drug dealer, and Athenodora had been building a tolerance for the contentment dose over the centuries. The effect had worn off, and with it the illusion that she had been staying inside and heavily guarded willingly, that she was just shy and liked it better that way. The betrayal of having her free will taken away from her had turned into the guilt of being a source of stress to him, depression, feeling of worthlessness, and finally intense loneliness. She had accepted her fate and now simply wanted a companion.

Caius had tried to alleviate her life imprisonment sentence. As much as he feared for her safety, seeing her resent him and waste away was a far worse torture. But Aro didn't feel the same. He liked her guarded at all time, his prized possession, and he didn't want to take her companion away from her. His love for Sulpicia resembled more a sense of ownership to a true mating bond, Marcus had once told him. He had taken her in as an orphan girl and groomed her into accepting the life of a vampire wife and that was all she's ever been since then. Maybe it was because her mind had been molded like clay since she was a human girl, but she hadn't built any resistance to Corin's gift, even after centuries of prolonged exposure, and was perfectly happy to be Aro's prisoner. Aro had Chelsea wrapped around his finger, and Caius was dragged along by the fake loyalty she forced out of him and even made him feel grateful when Aro conceded to at least let the wives eat with the rest of them.

Only she'd used that opportunity to snatch a human baby from her mother's arm and run to her chambers to bite it. To commit one of the most sacred taboo of their kind. To create an Immortal Child. And now the infant's shrieks were about to alert the entire Court.

If she wasn't his mate, she'd be dead already. Destroyed and burnt that very hour. He tried not to think about that.

"Athena…" he said softly, his honeyed voice coaxing her lovingly "Athenodora, my sweetest, dearest sunshine of eternity." her yes trembled as his words seemed to tug at the invisible tether that bonded them together. "You know that I am yours already. You know that there isn't a treasure the Gods could demand me to exhume from the grave of civilization that I wouldn't dig up for them in exchange for your happiness. You know that you are constantly on my mind, no matter where my duties send me" she was shaking now, as he kept stepping closer and closer to her, his gaze locked on hers. "You also know there are lines. Sacred lines." She shook her head feverishly as he gracefully stretched both his arms toward her "Now, give me the child."

"Caius, I beg you" her voice was broken in a hopeless plea.

"You know it must be done, Athena…" his fingertips where merely inches from the child's little foot "Come, now. You're only hurting her."

That was the final blow, the one that pierced her resolve. With one last longing look at the infant, she let her mate pull the baby girl from her arm, and slid to the floor with her face in her hands, a sculpture of agony.

Caius looked deep into the little human girl's warm brown eyes, so soft, so fragile and small. And with the lightest of pressure of his fingertips, he broke her skull.

Here was the prologue of this fiction. The relationship between Caius and Athenodora is also going to be important in this fiction so I wanted to start with that.

Don't forget to comment and tell me what you think.

I've got the first 11 chapters planned out already, so you should have regular updates don't worry.