5 minutes in, and Olive had already lost any ounce of interest in this tour. It wasn't like she exactly wanted to be there in the first place. She'd left the hotel room to look for maybe a takeaway or restaurant, so that she could buy dinner to bring back and share with her sister. However, the tour guide, Heidi, practically dragged her inside the clock tower in Volterra, insisting the tour would only take 20 minutes.

What really didn't help Olive's mood was that it was the middle of August, thus the temperature in the air was far from comfortable. She'd even tied up her jet black hair in a ponytail bun at the back of her head and made a knot at the front of her t-shirt to allow her skin to breathe, but nothing was helping the overall temperature.

Her phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans. She slid it out and opened her messages, now wandering along at the back of the tour group.

candy:
tf are you doing liv? you said you'd be a few minutes
if you're running off with a rich Italian boyfriend, lemme know so I don't wait up
also, mom called. she wants you to call her back tonight for some reason

Olive rolled her eyes and began typing back, which was a difficult task when she was also busy trying not to trip over her own two feet and fall flat on her face.

You:
I'm on some kind of tourist tour, idk
the tour guide lady pressured me into coming, but ngl she's kinda hot tho
just saying

"Please ensure you stick together," Heidi's voice called from the front. Speak of the devil. "These halls can become rather tricky to navigate. We wouldn't want any of you getting lost."

However, Olive wasn't listening, unsurprisingly. She'd momentarily halted in her tracks to tip her plastic water bottle upside down over her mouth. All that dripped onto the tip of her tongue was one pathetic lukewarm droplet, which did absolutely nothing to cool her down.

There must be a water fountain somewhere.

Going against any better judgement, she detached herself from the group and began to glance around the other seemingly unused and empty corridors. However, her efforts to find any water source, maybe a vending machine, or even a bathroom, were fruitless. Instead, all she found was enough dust particles to cause her to have a sneezing fit all the way back to the group.

But as soon as she lifted her head from the crook of her elbow where she'd sneezed into, no one was to be seen, or heard for that matter. Olive spun in a circle on the spot, trying to remember exactly where she'd come from. Maybe she'd taken a wrong turning? No, there was a left turn, and then a right turn, which she repeated to come back to the main junction.

She had three remaining routes; she could go back the way she came and leave, although she was told that the main doors were an entrance only while the exit was near the back of the building, she could continue down the confusing labyrinth that was the building, though she knew her dust allergy would never forgive her for that, or she could simply continue in the direction the tour must've gone in.

With a sigh, she picked herself up with her shoulders back, twirled her empty plastic water bottle in her hand, and started down the third corridor. As she continued, the daylight became increasingly sparse, and was mostly replaced by lamps and torches which decorated the walls. On the plus side, at least it was cooler. There was a lovely draft which really helped to bring some cool air to her warm skin.

The short walk eventually led to a heavy-looking pair of intricately carved wooden double doors. Olive hesitated for a moment. For all she knew, this could've been exactly the wrong room to enter, and then what?

She glanced over her shoulder. There was nowhere else the tour could've gotten to. This door must've been it.

Placing both hands on one of the door handles, she managed to push it down and shove the right door open with her shoulder. Her bottle slipped out of her hand in the process and rolled a short distance away further into the room.

"Shit," she muttered, dashing after it.

She crouched down to the ground and caught it only a few metres away from the door, just as said door closed with a distinct thud behind her. Maybe that thud wouldn't have startled her so much if it wasn't accompanied by a click as someone removed their grip of the door handle.

Her knees still bent, she reluctantly lifted her head. Her hair covered half of her face, but she still had enough eyesight to come to terms with what she'd just walked in on.

There were several people guarding the perimeter of the rather circular room, each with their backs to the walls. At the end of the room was a dais, with three thrones at the top, somehow sitting five people.

Olive dared to glance to her right, but instantly wished she hadn't. She'd been wondering where the tour group had gotten to, but the pile of corpses mere feet away from her answered her question.

She froze. Her breath caught in her lungs as she retrieved her bottle and slowly, cautiously, began to back up the way she came. "Er, um, uh . . ." She attempted to string together a coherent sentence, but even her thoughts weren't collected enough for that. "Are they . . . ? Oh, they . . . okay, um. I g-guess I'll just, er, go now . . . have a nice day, I guess . . ."

"Didyme?"

Olive almost jumped in fright as her startled eyes locked on the man on the throne in the centre. From the way he was staring at her, it was almost as if he was as shocked at their surroundings as she was. He had hair longer than most, and similar in appearance to hers, which was ruler straight and brushed against his shoulders, and he, like the other two men, wore a suit of all black.

But that wasn't what put her off, though. Instead, it was his eyes, a deep crimson red colour with an almost milky hue to them.

"S-sorry, who?" Olive asked. She'd now stopped moving, as if her feet were glued to the floor and her legs unmoveable.

He stood up from his throne and took careful and calculated, almost graceful, steps down the dais and across the room towards her. She instinctively took a single step back, and likely would've moved further if he hadn't offered her his hand.

"Please take my hand, my dear," he requested. His voice was smooth, comparable to chocolate if that was possible.

"Why?" Olive challenged. "So you can add me to your pile of . . .?" She nodded her head towards what remained of the tour group, although she couldn't bring herself to actually shift her gaze in that direction.

"I would never." He placed his hand in front of hers more insistently, but when she refused to take it, he caught her right hand before she could pull away and clasped it between both of his.

She almost let out a gasp when she felt the temperature in both of his hands. It was almost as if he'd gone out into the snow without wearing gloves, yet she wasn't entirely sure how that could be possible in the current climate. His eyes were still angled in her direction, yet there was a faraway look to them.

It took a minute or so, but he finally removed his hands from hers. She flexed her fingers in an attempt to bring some of the feeling back to her now numb right hand.

"Demetri, my dear . . ." There was a bizarre and unexplainable pause as his mouth moved at a speed Olive couldn't even comprehend. ". . . If you could please escort young Olive here upstairs?"

Olive's eyebrows furrowed. "Wha—how do you know my name?" Before she could ask any more questions, she felt a hand on her arm as she was rather forcefully dragged out of the room through a different door to that she'd entered through. "No, just—Jesus, let me go!"

But her efforts did nothing to free her. The man with short and sandy-blonde hair, a little less tall than the previous guy yet just as handsome, silently escorted her down another hall, this one being pitch black. And somehow there was absolutely nothing she could do.

Fuck me.

"You are dismissed. All of you. Get out of my sight!" Caius barked, which prompted any remaining guards in the room to quickly scramble away. No one wanted to get on the wrong side of Caius, not if they liked where their heads were placed on their shoulders.

Marcus felt like he couldn't react at all to what just happened. He stared dumbfounded at the spot the girl had just vacated. It must've been simply a figment of his imagination.

But no, that was his Didyme standing directly in front of him, he was sure of it. He knew her well enough to recognise her from a mile away, but it was the scent that truly tipped him off. This girl looked a little younger than she had been, her hair was shorter and her clothes were unacceptably revealing for any woman of any age in his humble opinion, but it was her.

"Fascinating," Aro whispered in wonder with his hands held together in front of his face as if he was in prayer. "Our sister has been returned to us."

"But how?" Athenodora mumbled, sat on Caius' armrest. She leaned back against her husband's shoulder while he kept an arm wrapped around her waist.

Marcus finally spoke. "Who is she?" he asked Aro, his voice marginally less apathetic than usual. For the first time in what had to have been centuries maybe, he was asking a question he genuinely wanted an answer to.

Aro seemed delighted at this, and he was doing a terrible job at hiding it. "Her name is Olive Reed," Aro began, with a giddy sense of enthusiasm, "and she is 19 years old. She has an adoptive family, with an older sister who currently resides with her in the hotel Villa Nencini in Volterra, a 'boyfriend'," he drew quote marks in the air for effect. Marcus still flinched at the thought of her with another man, although he couldn't exactly justify it. He hardly knew the girl, "and apparently she is something of a celebrity, of sorts, in the human world."

"A celebrity? How so?" Sulpicia queried.

Of all five—soon to be six—members of the coven, Sulpicia had the most interest in the human world, with her husband Aro in a close second. The thought of a human celebrity as a sister sounded more than appealing to her.

Aro laughed to himself. "She is something of a music artist, and what the humans call an 'influencer'. Close to 1 million fans globally, apparently."

"Humans," Caius muttered bitterly under his breath.

Athenodora rolled her eyes at him. "Thousands of young fans? How did we not see this before?" she questioned.

"Because you decided the internet was below you, Dora," Sulpicia taunted, knowing that the nickname really grated on her nerves. Athena scowled at her sister, although it is a difficult thing to do when you are the smallest and most innocent in appearance.

"This cannot be." Marcus' voice barely came out as a whisper.

"It is, dear brother. I have seen that all of her personality traits, her little human habits, the small birthmark on her chest, and even the way her nose twitches subtly when she is nervous. It is all exactly the same." Aro sounded astounded by his own words.

"What do you suggest we do with her?" Caius drawled in disinterest.

"Well," Aro sighed, "she stays here or we follow usual protocol after exposure to humans-"

Aro's sentence was cut short when Marcus fled the room so quickly that even they barely saw him leave, but not before punching a considerable crater into one of the marble pillars that had remained untouched for decades now.

Aro sighed heavily and was almost tempted to roll his eyes. It was a reaction very unlike their usually apathetic and quiet brother, a reaction that really should've had them more concerned for him, but they knew it best to leave him be. After all, they had much bigger problems to concern themselves over now.

Against all odds, Didyme was back.

The door locked behind Demetri, accompanied by the jingling of a set of keys on the other side. Throughout the entire distance Olive had been hauled across the clock tower, which actually happened to be only a section of what was one massive castle, the crazy man had refused to explain a thing. She'd questioned him repetitively on where he was taking her, who he was, why she was there, when they were going to kill her like the others—yet not a single reply was provided other than a shake of his head, an ambiguous one word answer, or a huff.

Olive was now alone . . . probably. It wouldn't be smart to simply judge by her own instincts, especially since it was that that had gotten her trapped in the first place with imminent death just around the corner.

She studied the room she'd been tossed into. It didn't look too different to any other 5 star hotel, although she knew that this wasn't exactly a hotel. The floors were polished, and even the walls were a spotless light grey colour.

A double bed was positioned against the right wall, a double bed that happened to look like the comfiest bed she could imagine. Just to test her theory, she stroked her hand along the silk sheets before taking a seat on the edge of the mattress. Yep, heaven.

Trying not to let the sheer comfort distract her, she continued to glance around the room. Maybe if she looked hard enough, she could find an escape, if she was lucky.

The end opposite the entrance was entirely glass, with a door that seemed to open out onto a balcony. However, currently any view was covered by sheer white curtains, though they did little to block out the light of day.

Other than that, there was a full length mirror in the corner of the room, and two doors across from the bed, both almost identical in appearance to the dark wood door she'd entered through.

Very hesitantly, she padded across the room and opened the door on the left. The moment the door was opened, a light flicked on above her head, illuminating what appeared to be a wardrobe. It was empty, though, in clear disuse going by the dust mites on the floor.

With a sigh, she closed that door and opened the other one, although she already had a suspicion of what could be on the other side. Unsurprisingly, her suspicion was exactly correct. It was a bathroom, a clean and modern bathroom, granted, but nothing different from what she'd expect in any 5 star hotel.

Olive, feeling defeated, gave up on her efforts and sat back on the bed again, the oh-so-comfy bed which felt too blissful to exist.

There was a knock on the door which managed to instantly send her heart racing. She crawled further away across the bed and continued to back up until she reached the glass window with her back pressed up against it. This is it, this is where I'm gonna die-

"Hello? Olive?" Olive recognised the smooth, rich voice from before. It was the same man that had ordered for her to be locked up here in the first place.

"Y-y-yeah?" she stammered nervously.

"May I come in?"

She hesitated for a moment. So murderers, serial killers, general psychopaths, now asked for permission before entering rooms? "Uh . . . sure?"

The man gently opened the door and walked in to find her stood with her back flattened against the far wall. He frowned and silently motioned for her to sit beside him on the edge of the bed.

Figuring she was more likely to survive if she did as she was told, she forced her shaky and unsure legs to walk towards him and sat down beside him. Suddenly, the bed felt considerably less comfortable than it had just moments prior.

"I believe I failed to introduce myself earlier. I am Aro." He extended his hand out in greeting.

To his surprise, she simply stared at it blankly for a moment, as if she didn't know what to do with it. "Is it now that you're going to add me to your corpse pile?" she asked sceptically.

He inwardly laughed to himself. His little sister had always had a spark within her, and she'd always been making snide comments and remarks. That was one of the reasons the nature of her ability had come as such a surprise to them. Some things would never change.

"No, my dear. I was simply being polite," he responded with his hand still extended. There was a trace of amusement in his tone.

Hesitantly, she reached over and shook it. Just as before, for some odd reason, his skin was absolutely freezing to the touch.

She allowed her hand to drop back into her lap again. "So, why am I here? What happened to that tour? You're a serial killer or maybe a murderer or some shit like that, aren't you? Why am I being held hostage? Why-"

Aro quickly put an end to her hysterical questions by holding a hand up at her. "Your reason for being here will be explained in due course. You cannot leave solely for that reason. And no, we are not 'serial killers' or 'murderers'."

"But, that was…" she trailed off with her eyebrows drawn together. Had they seen entirely different things downstairs? Was he just oblivious to the dead bodies that would forever traumatise her and haunt her dreams? "And why was your hand cold? Do you have bad circulation or something?"

He chucked lightly. "No, no, we are something else entirely."

"Okay…?" She gestured for him to continue.

"Piece together the puzzle and figure it out for yourself, young Olive, for you are a smart girl," he insisted. "Red eyes, ice cold skin, supernatural strength, the humans-"

She gasped. "This is like one of those supernatural-y films, isn't it? Like some kind of crazy episode of The Vampire Diaries? I don't know, I still need to watch that series. Anyway, are you a werewolf?"

"Goodness, no." His eyes widened at her ridiculous comment. "Not werewolves, try again."

She began to list every supernatural creature that came to mind. "Wizards? Goblins? Gods? Zombies? Demons-"

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You really do not understand, do you?"

"Angels? Actually, probably not angels, no offence or anything. You're just too weird and emo to be an angel. Vampires?"

"Now you've got it." He smiled at her.

For a moment, she wanted to smile back at him, pleased with herself for figuring it out without needing any help. But then the magnitude of the truth began to weigh down on her heavily.

She was surrounded by vampires.

"Vampires," she whispered. Even out loud, the thought of it sounded crazy. "Holy shit, I'm in a vampire castle."

"Please do watch your language, young Olive," he chided. The coven generally had little tolerance for foul language, and he figured it was better if she learned of that sooner rather than later. "It is quite rude."

Olive was confused. Why was he telling her off like her mother would? "…sorry, Mr. Vampire?"

"Apology accepted." Aro's expression returned to its positive self straight away. "Now, may I ask you something?"

"Sure," she answered after a moment. As subtly as she could, she edged towards the footboard of the bed, giving more distance between them. At least now he'd have to reach further to suck her blood.

He noticed her attempt at shuffling further away from him. It wasn't exactly difficult to, and he'd known his sister for long enough to recognise that expression on her face as fear. "There is no need to fear me, dear one," he reassured her. "I would never dream of harming you. As I was going to say, do you see any physical resemblance between the two of us?" he asked.

She snorted with laughter and covered her mouth but quickly recomposed herself when she realised how impolite she was being. "Sorry, no offence, but I don't look like you at all."

"Think about it for a moment," he added.

And so Olive did. Their hair was the same colour, although his had a glossier and overall healthier sheen to it than hers did. Their eye colours, however, were entirely opposites. While her irises were icy blue, his were that predatory blood red colour.

"Hair colour maybe, but there are more differences than anything else," she responded. "I'm confused, why did you ask that?"

Aro ignored her question. "That is all." He stood up and glided back over to the door gracefully.

She got up to her feet, her hands forming irritated fists by her sides. "That's it? Seriously, man? So now I sit here and rot? If you're not going to kill me, then when can I leave? Or die, alternatively?"

He paused in the doorway. "I would not concern yourself over leaving," he advised her. "This is your home now."

With that as the only answer provided, the door was closed firmly once more. She made a run for the door, hoping to catch it just in time, but the faint click of a lock answered her question. She was stuck . . . again.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Author's note: Oof, it's been too long since I've written anything, but after a long break where I prioritised my own mental health over anything, I'm back and with a new story.

I don't plan for this to be too long or to have any sequels or anything, but regardless I hope you do enjoy it. Marcus just needs more love, and someone's got to provide him with happiness. I actually had the idea for this fic a while ago but I've only just gotten to it recently.

As you can see, I'm basically going with a gen z kinda version of Didyme. If I'm honest, I'm just a little nervous to see how this goes, but I just hope it turns out okay hahah.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading, stay safe, and ily lots!