V.
The mortal girl seemed windswept, her coarse hair winding itself into elf-locks though Aro's fingers smoothed it into an even fall. A foreign note, heavy with cedar and musk, had insinuated itself into the floral tangle of her scent and it took him a few moments to recognize arousal. Humans, he decided, were wonderfully easy to decipher, treacherous chemicals polluting their blood and misbalancing their smell with every passing desire.
Though his hands maintained a languorous pattern of caresses, his mind whirled ahead. He was accustomed to comfortable quiet accompanying kisses but pretty speech was a necessity now. This Bella, flushed and foolish in her surety, would be easily swayed by words, he was certain of it. Stray thoughts considered praising her beauty, her cleverness and charm, but the notions were quickly discarded. She believed herself inimitable enough to capture an immortal's fancy—that was a useful flaw.
"My dear," he purred, sensual as a stretching panther, "I have never met such an intoxicating creature. What would I not give to see what rests behind those lovely eyes..." Gentle knuckles brushed the tip of her nose and skittered across the arch of her mouth.
In the silken silence, crushed at the corners and smudged by touches, she smiled at him tentatively, lacing her fingers through his. A tell-tale stammer and hitch in her breathing signal led that she was biting back speech.
"What is that you wish to say to me, cara mia?"
"You have a mate," Bella whispered, as though she was confessing a blood-soiled misdeed rather than stating a fact. Her lower lip was plucked by incautious nails until raw crescents appeared, edging plum bruises with wounded crimson.
There was insinuation in that assertion, a hidden wish to hear him denounce his wife, to dismiss her out of hand and mind. This arrogant child placed herself upon equal footing with his Sulpicia in supreme, uncaring flippancy, and it rankled. The Cullens, it seemed, had taught her nothing about the gulf that distanced vampires and mortals, gods and flies. The snarl of pride affronted threatened to tear from between his teeth, but he swallowed it with difficulty.
"It is not your place to concern yourself with Sulpicia," he said, and allowed her to interpret that as she wished. She grinned then, and he understood how simple she must be, and how young, to search for only one meaning in his words. If only she lacked warmth and that strange, silent mind—the consequences ran crimson.
"Now, sweetheart, you must return to your chambers. You have had a trying day, and I am certain that Renata is more than eager to brush your hair or make you tea, however clumsily."
He kissed her once more, nipping at her chafed mouth to mingle pleasure and pain within her memory, then locked the door to the patter of her retreating footfalls.
[-]
The long amble to her chambers seemed unsteady, as though Bella was walking on the salt-stained prow of a ship in stormy seas. The whirl of bees within her stomach alternately stung and buzzed, leaving her shivering, her thoughts a colourless blur. There was nothing she wanted more than to slam her door and bury her face in the pillows like a child, cooling her flaming cheeks against pristine silk. That wish was not granted.
As though he had been waiting, Caius disentangled himself from the shadows, his stride matching her own. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the uncomfortable jitter that accompanied his motions; he was unaccustomed to walking at a mortal's pace and had no interest in hiding it.
Her cheeks were marked with scarlet guilt, she was sure of it, and she said nothing, locking her secrets behind clenched lips.
"You are acquainted with Gianna, are you not?" Caius said, not bothering to preface his demand with a greeting.
Bella nodded, remembering the pretty young woman diligently typing upon a sleek keyboard.
"In a few months, we will tear her throat apart while she prays to her god for mercy. Her blood—" he paused for a moment, contemplating, "is rather tasteless. We most certainly will not kill her to slake our thirst. Now, do you know why I am telling you this?"
Appalled and shivering at the images her mind's eye was painting in garnet strokes, Bella shook her head.
"Gianna has served her purpose, and her impending death is merely the reward for uselessness. You, Miss Swan, are much like her with the exception that you have never had a function. Tell me, under what circumstances do you think your heart will stop beating?" His tone was almost friendly, airy and conversational.
She said nothing at all, her mouth pinching as fear spurred her pulse to an unimaginable tempo. Crimson dotted Caius' cuffs, and she was certain that it was not an oversight.
"You are meaningless here. It would behoove you to remember it. Good night, Miss Swan." A pale palm twitched in the direction of her room, and she nearly sprinted inside, shutting the door behind her and fiddling with the lock, her fingers slicked with sweat. Caius' final words whipped themselves into a maelstrom, but the meaning was lost when she grasped the difference between a threat and a promise.
[-]
Aro's grace, his divine majesty, dimmed to dull copper without an audience. Alone in the rust-tinted parlour that carried a mortal's scent, he knit his fingers together pensively. This throwaway plan of his, a whimsical, colourful scrap of an idea, was tangling and blossoming into perfection; a craftsman's pride glowed upon his features.
It was extinguished with a hiss as he recalled Sulpicia, glorious and feral, a paradox melded into the shape of a woman. Feigning love for bony, pool-eyed Bella came with ease only because he imagined sunlit hair in the place of brown, and speech eccentrically touched by the ghostly fingerprints of Italian and Latin before it.
With a sigh, he rose, straightening and fidgeting until traces of hesitant human hands no longer marked his appearance. A minute of rapid steps through dusty corridors brought him to the chamber he shared with his mate, an ornate, decadent disaster of a room undeniably theirs.
Sulpicia was curled amongst cushions stacked precariously upon a low couch. Her hair was unpinned, falling in sodden ringlets while damp streaks slashed her silken robe, and to Aro's mind, she was perfectly lovely.
"Good evening," he murmured. She did not glance up.
"What excuse will you offer me?" she said, and he knew that Bella's unmistakable scent, floral and deceptively innocent, clung to him.
"My love, you know that the course of my actions is necessary," he soothed, though he was certain that his words would be cast aside.
"You seek yet another novelty," Sulpicia said. Her meaning was writ large in silence. I was never sufficient, her thoughts told him, tinged with the bitterness of ancient wine.
"She is not you, and she never will be," he offered, because honeyed declarations of love were intended only for those whom he intended to deceive. To bridge the emptiness with touch, Aro kissed her, a lonely, one-sided gesture that echoed like a whisper within a tomb. Eager hands slipped along the lattice of her spine, stroking and coaxing until she turned to silk beneath his hands. A thousand years of familiarity turned intimacy into ballet, but he was clever enough to see the sure mark of a reluctant partner.
He sat beside her instead, a hand poised tentatively near her throat, a mere sliver separating porcelain flesh. Suddenly, grimly, Aro recalled mortal maps and carefully penned legends, where an inch of distance symbolized a thousand leagues.
[-]
In the stifled stillness of her room, Bella pieced through her thoughts, clumsily placing them in a semblance of unity before the slightest puff of uncertainty scattered them once more. The impatient thrum of her heart and the heat between her hips clouded her reason, but something sharper lingered in the careless swirl of her muddled mind.
This was anger, vicious and so foreign that she did not recognize the sentiment at first. She was tired of threats and the hollow, pendulous shadow of awaiting doom. Wanting what she could not have was beginning to chafe at the arbitrary lines she had drawn, separating herself from the monsters that surrounded her and making her wonder how much longer she would recognize the face in the looking-glass.
The sweetness of spilled temptation fresh upon her tongue, Bella longed for the certainty that she could steal and twist, bending her future into a shape she found pleasing. Before she hastily turned her thoughts to other things, enjoyable notions of books unread and rooms unexplored, the very warp and weft of her being unraveled, desperate for blood and lust and surrender.
Author's Note: A few people were curious about the relationship between Aro and Sulpicia, and her response to the Bella situation. I know that it's a bit of a trope in Aro/Bella stories to state that his relationship with Sulpicia is corroded beyond repair, or that their bond was never that of a truly mated couple. I personally like the idea of vampires mating for eternity, but I'm certain that their marriages are just as rocky as those of their human counterparts. For the purpose of this story, I've decided to work with that idea and write the relationship between Aro and his mate as a mostly-loving one, albeit fraught with conflict and misunderstanding. Feel free to let me know if you disagree.
The reviews for the previous chapter were lovely and very helpful. (It seems that some of you like my interpretation of Bella, while the rest are polarized- you either think she's too sure of herself, or not enough.) Please keep up the feedback, and I will love you very much and be forever grateful.