Sulpicia raised an eyebrow, as she looked over her wives. "Well, that was certainly an outburst," she said.
Didyme sighed. "I do wish you wouldn't be so glib," she said, looking to Athenodora.
"I believe," Athenodora began, weighing her words, "that while it was dramatic, it must have also been difficult for our guest."
Sulpicia looked at her, aghast. "Since when are you so diplomatic, beloved?"
Athenodora sighed. "I just think Isabella deserves a little more credit. At least she waited until she had permission before lambasting the man."
"I think it was very measured," Didyme said. "I would not have been so held back."
"Mm. We know your anger, my love," Sulpicia said, winding her way towards her wife, an arm wrapping around her waist. "And we also know we won't let anybody hurt you so that you have to be angry."
Didyme snuggled her head into Sulpicia's shoulder, with a wry grin on her face. "Seems I'm only ever angry at you two," she teased.
"We relish the position with pride," Athenodora said. "Though we really must get on with business."
"I don't know, I think Bella's a much more interesting topic," Sulpicia said. "You're inice/i to her."
Athenodora would have blushed if she were capable of it, as it was, she just avoided even looking in the direction her wives occupied. "I just… I feel she is like a breath of fresh air. She isn't irritating, unlike i some/i people."
"I think she likes us too," Didyme said, watching as Sulpicia unwound from her to go rest in Athenodora's lap, trying to get Athenodora to look in her direction. "Maybe more than she should."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Asked Sulpicia, giving up on Athenodora's gaze and instead settling for nuzzling her head into her neck, arms wrapped around her.
"Let's be… blatant," Didyme said. "I think it's all clear despite our best judgment we like her. She's… I don't know. Special for it, I suppose."
Athenodora raised an eyebrow, but made no disagreeing comment.
Sulpicia sighed. "I… suppose," she agreed, albeit reluctantly. "But that, my love, is a metaphorical minefield."
The three fell into silence as they heard an approaching heartbeat and a footfall too heavy. The door burst open, and Bella stood in the archway - anger written over her features; it was not a look they were accustomed to. They barely paid any mind to trailing Felix behind her, and the look of contrition on his face.
"You've got a lot of explaining to do," Bella said, careless of demands as they fell from her lips. If it were from anyone else, the trio would have bristled. They supposed it made sense, given. "I mean a real lot."
Didyme tried the gentle approach. "Isabella," she said, voice like a honey-coated butterfly wing, soft and sweet and ephemeral. "What has you so worked up?"
"Don't Isabella me," Bella said, her voice slightly too loud for civil conversation. Tears blurred at the edges of her vision, turning the world into an ink stain, a watercolour, a ruined painting. "You especially don't get to even ithink/i my name. Why would you… why would you do that? Just to play with me? I thought… I thought you were lovely. I thought…" she trailed off into hiccuping, angry sobs.
Athenodora shifted her attention to Felix, and with the brusque weight of someone used to being obeyed without falter. "Explain," she said briefly.
"Uh," Felix stalled, unnecessarily shifting on his feet. "I may have accidentally revealed Didyme's gift. I didn't know the little human didn't know."
Sulpicia sighed. "Ah. An oversight on our part," she said, already spiraling into damage control. The triumvirate were used to it being an open secret, not one needing admission with pretty words and silk spinners' talent.
"You're calling it an oversight?" Bella lashed, blind in her fury and something she didn't want to name. Some part of her had forgiven their rust, their sharp edges, even their human drinking (or at least had put it out of her mind). She was reminded then: there is no power without sacrifice. No power without manipulation. No power without seeing some people as pawns. Bella thought of Machiavelli, and Robert Greene, and cursed herself for ever letting her mind be blinded by nice words and kind gestures. "You're vampires. You don't forget things. Even I know that."
She looked over the three of them, and scoffed. Clearly Didyme had been the balm, soothing over her hurts, soothing over the rough edges until they didn't stab. Contempt flooded her body, and pain, and her heart ached. She was a damned fool. "I don't know why you did it," she said, her voice softer and hoarse, "but the only reason I could stand to be around any of you must have been you, Didyme. I won't make that mistake again."
Bella stormed from the room, all hurricaine and hurt, with Felix following dutifully after her after throwing an apologetic look full of regret to his Mistresses.
"I don't like being on the receiving end of the outburst, as it turns out," Sulpicia said mildly. It was, however, a useful tool - she did not care for the opinions of others unless useful or important, and Bella, still fragile and bird boned in her humanity, was not useful.
"No," Didyme agreed, looking more troubled than either of her wives would like.
Sulpicia slid from Athenodora and slinked to Didyme. The blonde pressed a light kiss against tanned forehead, and whispered into skin that smelt of sunlight: "we will amend this. It is not your fault, or some failing of your character. It is just a miscommunication."
Didyme heaved a sigh, inner world in turmoil - she felt something akin to grief, for lost opportunities, for the acute pain. Didyme knew, she had sunk into affection (she would not liken it to love, not with two wives she had known for millennia as comparator) as quickly as she sunk into anything, and as deeply.
"Perhaps," she said, grateful for the reassurance. She thought of brothers, and attempted murder - and forgiveness. "She is stubborn, though." It was said sardonically, laced through with more than a thread of tenderness.
"That she is," Athenodora said, also moving gracefully across the dias to offer her wife sweet comfort. She sounded a bit distracted; the trajectory of her life had changed in a way she could not have possibly accounted for. Her wives understood.
"It's not as if she were unaware of vampire gifts," Athenodora said, after a moment.
"Not with Edward, and the rest of the Cullens'," Didyme agreed.
"Wait. Edward?" Sulpicia said, and cast her mind back. "I'm sure he said something."
"He said a lot of things," Athendora said, kissed with scorn.
"I mean something pertinent, sweeting," Sulpicia said, a small laugh nestling in her voice. "Oh! His gift! It didn't work."
"On Isabella?" Didyme asked.
Sulpicia hummed in approval, and a plan was pulling itself, knitted like a jumper, created out of the base materials into something practical and elegant. "I do wonder, actually, if your gift would work on her at all, or whether Edward's is the sole aberrant."
"I don't know," Didyme mused, "and it's not like I can imagine her letting us get close enough to test this hypothesis."
"Think, beloved," Sulpicia urged, but with patience reserved for Didyme alone. Athenodora had no need of it. She stroked a hand against Didyme's dark curls, and smiled softly. "How did she act around you?"
"She opened up, more readily than I think would have been natural, but…" Didyme trailed off, forehead furrowing in concentration as she tried to line the pieces up so they made sense.
"But?" Athenodora broke the silence that had fell.
"You know, people around my gift for the first time tend to … be almost deliriously happy, like they don't know where to put it all. Do you remember?"
The two blondes - summer sun and winter ice - nodded their recollection.
"She wasn't like that, not really."
"But she still opened up to you?" Athenodora confirmed. "Perhaps your… natural charm?"
"I think most of my natural charm is my gift. I think… something just fell into place. But that doesn't make sense."
"Doesn't it?" Sulpicia mused, arranging the jigsaw pieces from different angles. "You don't… you don't suppose…"
"No," Athenodora said, guessing where Sulpicia's mind was heading. "Maybe," she altered.
Didyme just sighed. It would make sense, she thought, in an abstract way - the empty space seemed infinite now it had been momentarily filled.
"I think we give her time," Sulpicia said. "To calm down and ebb the pain a little. It will give us a respite to consider this, if nothing else. And if we're right…. that will show. In time."
"In time," Didyme agreed.
Athenodora nodded definitively.