VI.
The knock on Bella's door was unfamiliar, a staccato of pattering fingertips, somehow feminine and inquisitive. For a moment, she decided that Renata had finally learned the value of announcing her presence before simply entering, but she shoved that idea aside with a smile. Sweet as she was, human graces were beyond the little vampire's comprehension.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Athenodora. May I come in?" The voice was quiet and feathery, and Bella's thoughts twisted into a knot, hastily trying to reconcile the disparate notions of Caius' mate and gentleness.
"Yes, sure, um, go ahead," she said, her water-marked confidence fraying and fading before her eyes. These immortals meddled with her mind effortlessly, muddying her perception with graceful fingers and knife-sharp grins, until she could no longer strip appearance from intent.
The door creaked on its hinges and a pale, garnet-eyed creature slipped inside with a shy smile and a whispered apology for being a disturbance. Bella's pulse steadied when she looked at the vampire before her—this woman carried with her the same aura of airy loveliness that she had come to associate with Renata. It could be an ambitious assumption, but she found that vampires who looked like this generally made an attempt at kindness.
"Would you like to sit down?" she said, staring at her feet. Athenodora nodded and perched beside her, looping her fingers together neatly.
"Aro tells me that you are frightened of becoming one of us. Why?"
Bella nearly laughed. The undead did not understand the notion of small talk, it seemed, or questions too personal to be answered. While she grasped at tact and evasive answers, treacherously honest words clawed their way to the surface.
"It's just—I miss my family. I won't be able to see them again, and I can't even say goodbye to them. I don't want to spend the next fifty years thinking of them dying, one by one. I probably won't even find out when it happens." She paused, thinking of Charlie and Renee weeping over the implausible excuse for her absence the Cullens had likely concocted. "And—and Edward. He won't take me back, not like this. I don't want to lose him, not completely. It—it…"
"It hurts, I know. You think it will never pass, and you do not want to imagine a future of trying to swallow that pain."
"Yeah, exactly." Bella nodded frantically, then quickly caught herself, "Wait, do you have some kind of freaky emotion-reading gift?"
"I am entirely freaky gift-free." Athenodora was nearly laughing, a giggle stifled behind slender fingers.
"Then how do you know?"
"I was turned into an immortal without being offered a choice, and like you, I thought that I would spend eternity grieving for the life I had been denied. It isn't like that. Your memories turn to mist, and the love you find after your heart stops beating overshadows anything before it." Her clouded eyes were looking evenly into the middle distance, perhaps in reminiscence.
"Really?" The dismissal of humanity seemed so easy, tempting and attainable.
"Yes. I was very much in love with a human boy when Caius bit me. Now, the only thing I remember about him is his name. Transformation and time took away that hurt."
Bella paused for a moment, considering. The Cullens were always willing to provide her with details, vivid and intimate, about their mortal lives. The brevity of her companion's description was utterly alien to her. Biting back the prying, tugging questions, she fell back upon politeness.
"Thanks. You know, that's actually the most helpful thing I've heard in a while."
Athenodora smiled. "I am glad. Bella, tell me, do you know about Marcus' gift?"
"He sees relationships, right?" She remembered something Aro had said when she was being pried from Edward's arms.
"He does. If you are curious about the bonds you share with anyone in this coven, you may ask him." There was only innocence in Athenodora's voice, no insinuation of impropriety, and for that, Bella was grateful.
"He won't mind?"
"No. He is a remarkably patient man. If you wish, you can find him in the library this afternoon. He will be expecting you." The vampire stood, and quickly squeezed Bella's blue-veined hand in a frosty palm. There was enough affection in the gesture to make the difference in temperature bearable.
[-]
As Athenodora's quick steps took her away from the human's room, into the tangled passages of the palazzo's heart, a subtle shift danced over her features. No gawkiness remained, erased by feral elegance, and the gentleness fled her smile, leaving only a Cheshire cat's grin, all teeth and amusement at a joke well-played.
Only moments later, Aro found her.
"Did you speak with Bella?" he asked, muted light casting odd shadows upon his face. "Did she believe you?"
"Of course," she said, laughter punctuating her speech.
"You have a gift for inventing stories," he approved.
"Or perhaps I am merely blessed with a remarkably gullible audience." Athenodora raised herself onto her toes and pressed a cold kiss upon Aro's cheek, granting him her memory. "Your Bella thinks herself in love with you. Have patience for a few days, and she will beg for immortality."
"We will have a formidable guard then. A decision to join us out of free will alone… that is a novelty," he mused, then ruffled her hair affectionately. "Thank you, sister."
[-]
Marcus sat amidst the stacks, precariously-piled books teetering around him. This corner of the library was his own, a jumble of leather-bound, sentimental works that his brothers scorned and he treasured with the dusty-fingered passion of a collector. The serenity of gilded sunlight and spilling, incautious candles was the last soothing cadence left in the adagio of his wearisome existence.
He had received fair warning that he would be interrupted by the pet mortal, but the reluctant scuffle of her sandals and the sweep of her skirt were unwelcome distractions, rending the fabric of silence carelessly asunder. She lingered a few paces behind him, no doubt awaiting his acknowledgment, and he gave himself a few instants, fumbling for composure.
"Hi," she whispered when he turned to faced her. "Athenodora told me that you wouldn't mind if I talked to you?" The question was squeaky, sharp as an ill-tuned flute to his ears, and he wondered if it was nervousness that tautened her voice.
"She was correct. What do you want of me, child?" He knew quite well what it was she sought—insight of the same sort everyone desired of him, cruelly disregarding the agony every glimpse of love fulfilled offered him.
"I'm—I'm just confused. I don't know what Aro wants from me, or what I mean to him. He can't… love me, can he?" Bella did not meet his eyes.
Marcus nearly wrenched apart the book cradled between his fingers. Old wounds were torn open once more as he gazed at strands of lust and heat, nearly devoid of tenderness, threading their way through his vision's periphery. He pitied this girl, an innocent at a monster's ball, but she was a fool as well and he did not care enough to be her salvation.
"Aro certainly desires you greatly," he murmured instead, choosing fair words. "Your bond is covetous, if nothing else."
"And his…his mate? Sulpicia?" she said, and the name was a whisper marked by fear, threadbare and reluctant.
"You expect too much from me. That relationship changes with every passing hour." He neatly omitted any mention of the bond's polarity.
"He wants my gift, then," she said, small and sad. It puzzled him that she did not speak of the lust she felt for the ink-haired ancient, the greed and flame-edged desire that wracked her body in searing waves. Impure intentions, after all, were not Aro's realm alone.
"He will give you precisely what you want," Marcus said. That sort of equivocation would appease Athenodora, and Bella would not look at it twice. Feeling a glimmer of pride, he returned to his book and ignored the farewell he received from an eager girl. He knew himself to be a fool for love, a flaw he displayed openly alongside his shredded heart, but the few remaining shards of gentleness did not lend Marcus the will to tell her any sort of truth.
[-]
In the evening, Bella was curled in her room amidst old books and stately furniture that would never suit her. Though a translucent-paged literary masterpiece lay thrown open on her lap, she could not bring herself to absorb the peeling words. There was too much noise inside her head, too many thoughts vying for her attention. It was almost funny, she decided, and a little alarming that even the parchment beneath her fingers called to mind Aro's skin.
She felt as though her brain has been silenced, the nerves themselves rerouted until she was nothing more than her senses, strained and knotted around the idea of a night-haired ancient. She craved him; his absence pained her like a phantom limb while the possibility of his presence stole her breath and her mind in dark waves.
Suddenly, Bella remembered Edward, and his sentimental observation that she was his heroin. Comprehension dawned, before she realized how cruel it was that her narcotic of choice was someone far bleaker, a beautiful, bloody tyrant so removed from the gleaming Cullens that no comparison could be made.
Her heart blazed so brightly that she did not care.
There was a knock at her door then, followed by the cadence of a voice that she had longed to hear for hours.
"Bella, my sweet, may I come in?" Aro sang.
She must have murmured something in agreement, because moments later, he was beside her, the crisp propriety of his vest and the heavily wrought gold of the pendant at his throat serving as sharp reminders of status.
"You look worried, my dear," he said, and she noticed the snarls in her hair, the wrinkles in her dress where nails had worried at the fabric. "It is because of the overabundance of vampires parading through your room today?"
Bella sighed, fiddling with his shirt-cuff, too shy to let her fingers fall upon dusted skin. "No, not really. It's just been a really long day. Lots to think about, you know?"
"Smile for me," he whispered, closing the distance between them until the words were cool against her lower lip. "You look so very lovely when you are happy."
That coaxed a reluctant grin from Bella; his speech compelled action, and the heat he drew from her brought obedience with it.
"Now, tell me what is troubling you," Aro said softly, his fingers roaming over the blushing softness of her features.
"It's Edward. Marcus and Athenodora think that he didn't love me the way I thought he did, and they're probably right. I misread him, I guess." Her voice was small, fractured beyond recognition.
"There is no shame in losing oneself during the course of first love," he said, peacefully toying with her hair. Even the insinuation of touch was distracting, and she could hear the mad staccato of a heartbeat echoing in her ears.
"But that makes me wonder whether I belong here. I mean, if my feelings towards Edward were wrong, who's not to say that what I feel now is just as… misguided?" She did not want to hear anything but reassurance, a comfortable promise that she was desired and wanted. The ferocity of longing sparked hope in Bella's wide eyes.
"Oh, cara mia, do not say that. The thought of losing you is… unbearable to me. Trust that your place is in Volterra because I could not imagine you anywhere else." One by one, Aro pressed a moth-light kisses onto her fingertips, and Bella felt herself melting, dissolving into rivulets of wine-heavy want, unencumbered by thought or restraint.
"Now look at you," he whispered, hands forming chilly shackles around her wrists. "Your greatest beauty lies in surrender, in acceptance of what you can become." There seemed to be a second meaning coiling behind his words, but she did not know what it could be.
As silence settled between them, Aro curved his arms around Bella, holding her in an embrace that was possessive, stitched with ornate promise and silvered gentleness. Her breathing steadied into an even fall, and darkness, sleepy and sticky, crashed upon her in waves.
"Stay with me?" she said, and the words were desperate, clinging as river reeds.
"Of course."
Bella slept then, and her dreams were cold and still as the marble flesh pressed against her skin.
Author's Note:I'm trying to get some interaction between Bella and most of the Volturi into this story. Next chapter: Sulpicia and Jane! I'm very much look forward to writing that, I must admit.
I am grateful to everyone who read and favourited the previous chapter. Reviews, as always, are better than cupcakes with sprinkles.