Originally published on January 13, 2024. Unbeta'd.

I own nothing of the Black Jewels Trilogy or any of the following novels. All rights go to Anne Bishop. Thanks for Reading!

BJT:ANW

Chapter 21: Virgin Night

March 17th, 19 years old, The Hall

Arina walked down the path to the Hall from the village of Halloway, humming slightly as she strolled, keeping an eye on Challa and Janos as they darted around her and through the trees.

She was somewhat surprised at herself by how very not-nervous she was about her plans for the evening. For all that the people here made a huge deal about Virgin Nights, they also weren't even remotely shy about sex in general (and hadn't that been interesting, when she finally was in a healthy mental state and could recognize it and such things. Given how sex on Earth was somehow both publicly reviled and also considered to be an important part of everything…she was getting off topic) it was a totally different atmosphere and dichotomy here in the Realms. What she was gathering from the whole of everything was that it didn't actually matter if she was from Earth or from here in the Realms, sex was still strange and complicated.

She had also taken the past six months or so to corner various Ladies about their Virgin Nights in preparation for her own. It was apparently a novel concept—a number of her contemporaries had, and a surprising amount of the older Ladies, been alarmingly flustered at her pointed questions.

Privately, Arina thought a good number of the problems could be solved with proper application of toys, but if the actual problem was the first time a girl was penetrated by another person combined with her first orgasm to send her mental state careening, then maybe not. Of course, she could acknowledge that it was the Jeweled power that had something to do with it, and the way that the Blood could communicate mind to mind, but still, it was odd. But then, most girls wouldn't get off if they were raped, and that was apparently one of the big risks…well, she had concluded that it was just a very strange system. Magic was bizarre, at the end of the day, even if it's called Craft and Blood and not magic, and didn't even seem to have the common curtesy to make life in general better, just more complicated. Not that one could consider that to be a surprise. With great power, yada yada and all that jazz, after all.

Also, there didn't seem to be much of a market for sex toys in this world, and she had gone looking for something to make things easier in preparation. Likely because of the apparent policy of having unattached men working in the courts who were just…available to women who wanted partners when they were without. And the fact that a woman's pleasure was actually important in this world, as opposed to Earth, where from all accounts it was more of an afterthought on the part of men for the most part, instead of a priority. Not that she could say from any kind of experience.

Regardless, none of that musing changed the fact that the Virgin Night was some kind of huge important thing that she was going to have to deal with, no matter how hard she tried and failed to wrap her head around it. In the end, it didn't matter so much as that it was going to happen.

So tonight, she would be having her much anticipated Night with Lucien, who seemed even more anxious than she was about it, in a role reversal which Arina found deeply amusing for all that she would never let it slip to him. She would be having dinner with Jaenelle first, which Arina suspected was supposed to be something that would relax her from her expected nerves, despite having the nagging feeling that she was missing some kind of undercurrents there.

It didn't seem like a bad plan, never mind the somewhat ingrained awkwardness that Arina was still shaking off with the whole 'I'm planning to have sex with your child tonight and we all know it thing' being such a more normal thing here, so on finally reaching the Hall and wandering inside after waving the Kindred off into the woods, Arina headed straight for Jaenelle's suite.

The feeling that she was missing something was strengthened the second she walked inside to find Jaenelle…nervous. There was no other word for the way that she was pacing the room in a decidedly twitchy way. It was not what she had expected from Lucien's mother, who had been supporting everything so far.

"Hello?" Arina asked, hesitating in the door. It wasn't supposed to be a question, but that's what it ended up coming out as. Unfortunately. As she had been trying to avoid awkwardness, she couldn't say that she was terribly pleased with her opening line.

"Arina! Hello." Jaenelle stopped and turned to smile at Arina, and if she hadn't seen the older woman pacing, she might be convinced that nothing was wrong. However, the fact that Jaenelle hadn't noticed her approach did not fill her with confidence.

"Is something…wrong?" She did not want anything to be wrong—she was currently prepared for the Virgin Night ceremony, and if Lucien was having second thoughts than that changed…everything and not in a good kind of way.

Please, do not have something be wrong, Arina couldn't help thinking. I'm ready, willing, and happy for it. Do not make me do this with someone else, they might not find it awkward but I really definitely will.

"No, no, nothing is wrong, it's nothing like that," Jaenelle reassured, or tried to reassure. Clearly seeing that her tactic was not working, the woman sighed at sat down on her bed and motioned for Arina to join her. "It's personal."

"Alright…" Arina sat next to her and firmly folded her hands in her lap.

"You could say that my Virgin Night went…poorly." Jaenelle hedged.

"Ahh." Was all Arina could say to that. While no one had been specific about it, there had been enough details slipped about Jaenelle's birth family, and Lady Wilhelmina had been open enough about how she and Jaenelle had been children together…though very quiet about what made Jaenelle start living with her Papa. And there were all those whispers about the first years that Jaenelle spent with him, that no one ever actually talked about and where Jaenelle was never seen.

Poorly was probably the kindest possible way to put that kind of statement, in all likely hood. And Arina had no idea what to say about it.

"Rose didn't tell me until her Virgin Night was already over." Jaenelle said, looking at the wall with blank eyes. "And she just said that we didn't have to worry about it. It was both good and bad."

"Should we have done this elsewhere?" Arina said, after a longer pause than normal.

"No," Jaenelle said, shortly, then tried a laugh. "No, that wouldn't be any better. And obviously I know that it is going to be fine and go well. It's my son, after all. It is not the same." There was another pause, though this one was marginally less awkward. "I did not mean to invite you to dinner and then not actually give you dinner," Jaenelle finally said, standing up. "I'm sorry you had to see that."

Arina followed her out the door, and took the moment that the woman glanced at her to shrug. "I'm no stranger to sudden and unexpected breakdowns and freakouts," she pointed out. "The first several years here were full of them, and I still run into them these days every once in a while. Less often, thank the Darkness, but I still get tripped up. We might be Witch but we are still only people."

Jaenelle had to laugh a little bit at how bland Arina sounded. "You aren't scared off because of my fit of nerves, are you?" And it was somehow less of a question than she expected would happen.

"No," Arina said bluntly. "Unless Lucien changed his mind, I am fine. I know what I am doing, and what I am getting into, and I'm not worried at all."

"That's right," Jaenelle hummed, relaxing under Arina's confidence, equilibrium somehow restored. "I did hear about some of your ambushes." She smiled.

Arina smirked a little. "Everyone seemed very surprised when i asked about it. Do younger people not try to find out what to expect normally?"

"I wouldn't know, but I very much doubt that anyone else has been quite so…shall we say, aggressive about that particular search."

"That seems reasonable and not untrue, from what I learned."

Jaenelle was still laughing when they walked into the dining room and found Saetan sitting at the table alone, rubbing his head a little in obvious exasperation. He looked up in greeting when the two females entered, but on seeing his daughter laughing and Arina with a tiny but smug smile on her face, only felt his headache increase.

"Do I want to know?" he asked, wary.

"Not if you are going to react like everyone else," was Arina's cryptic reply, and Jaenelle smiled at her father and shook her head.

"Ah. Any concerns about tonight?"

"No, not unless Lucien is backing out." Arina studied Saetan's face. "He isn't backing out, is he?"

"Not backing out, no," Saetan admitted, picking up his wineglass and looking at it instead of either woman. "But he is having something of a bout of nerves. Lucivar is getting him through it."

Arina's face said a number of things about how she felt about that particular declaration, but she clearly couldn't decide what she wanted to say first, so Saetan tried to head her off.

"Dinner?"

"Please."

BJT:ANW

After escaping the table and the rest of what was absolutely turning into the most awkward conversation that Arina had ever been a part of, she seriously considered fleeing the building and just flying up to Lucien's window, but decided that that was likely to be a little bit too obvious. Instead, she put a sight shield up and slunk her way through the halls to Lucien's room, feeling ridiculous. Once she reached it, having managed to avoid any possible inhabitants of the Hall that might have noticed her shield and gotten suspicious, Arina made sure that Lucien was the only one in there before stalking in.

"This is getting ridiculous," she complained. "I know everyone says that the first time you have sex is supposed to be awkward, but this is really a lot. Please don't tell me you are freaking out about this now?"

"I've been, as you say, freaking out about this, the whole time," Lucien told his Lady, but despite his words was actually fighting a smile for the first time all day. It was just like Arina to be completely careless about the one thing that most young females were terrified of, while busy being wildly anxious about normal things that other people didn't even notice. Sure enough, she frowned at him.

"Why?" she waved an impatient hand when he opened his mouth, quickly continuing. "No, I get the whole concept of why it matters, but why are you so nervous? Nothing is going to go wrong. It's not like this is a situation where we have to be concerned, everything is as perfect as it can be."

"But if something does go wrong—"

Arina crossed the room, much faster than Lucien had expected her to move, and was up in his face before he could even finish the sentence, clamping a hand over his mouth to cut him off.

"Nothing is going to go wrong. For the love of all things holy," She said, letting him go in exasperation to throw her hands up and slipping into phrasing that she had stopped using in favor of the more typical Mother Night epithet, "I have more faith in you than that. Have some faith in yourself." She stormed over to the dresser and started pacing in small circles, grumbling under her breath.

Lucien couldn't stop the smile. While there was still a background hum in his mind of the advice that his Uncle had given him, he couldn't deny that Arina's annoyed confidence in him was more meaningful than any of the advice—not that he was going to be discounting or ignoring the actual instructions on what to do.

Also, she was even more attractive when she was frustrated. Which maybe spurred a few more bad thoughts for the future than it maybe should, but he was as confident in his ability to get himself out of trouble with Arina as he was with his ability to get himself into trouble.

"Alright, alright. Shall we go then?"

Arina paused and turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. "Go where?"

"Somewhere that isn't here, where everyone can sense everything. I made arrangements for us to visit the townhouse in Amdarh, which is still a family property but no one is currently there, so it's private."

"That sounds great," Arina said, with feeling. "No offence, but I do not want to face your parents right after this…event. It's not happening."

Lucien smirked at her, but didn't say anything, because he didn't exactly disagree. While he knew that Arina wasn't ashamed, that wasn't to say that they would want space after—and he would rather make sure that he was completely composed before facing his male family members while Arina would be no doubt coddled by everyone else—he knew exactly how many people the Hall was expecting to be hosting tomorrow, and had made sure that the staff was aware of his plans to not actually be there, but also that they wouldn't tell anyone until far too late.

BJT:ANW

Following the plan, Lucien laid a number of Black shields over his suite, both general shields to keep others out and also aural shields and a cleverly designed one that was going to mimic his and Arina's signatures and help convince people that they were still there. Not that it was expected to work for long—and it didn't have to. It just needed to work for long enough for the two of them to get away.

Then he closed his eyes and wrapped a tight sight shield around the two of them as Arina unfurled her wings in the open window and wrapped her arms around him tightly before topping backwards and twisting to catch the air under her wings. She let them glide for a bit, until they were further away from the walls, at which point she gained a bit of height while worrying less about the wingbeats catching attention. Her flying, after all, was not so much quiet as the leathery wings of the Eryians. But they managed to get far enough away that Lucien was able to catch the Black Wind, this time being the one to wrap around her to carry her with him.

It felt like no time at all, and also forever before they reached the SaDiablio townhouse in Amdarh. The door was opened for them moments after they landed on the doorstep, having had to walk a distance from the nearest landing web point, by a butler that Arina had never met before and hoped that she wouldn't meet again for some time. But thankfully the male kept a perfectly straight face as he showed them in and murmured that the room was prepared for them before quickly making himself scarce.

"Shall we?" Arina asked, holding out her hand for Lucien to decide if he wanted to take it or not. Shaking his head a little at her, he took it and started towards the stairs, tugging slightly until she was walking next to him.

"We shall, I suppose. It wouldn't do to fail at this point, after all," he teased. Her relaxed attitude was unexpected, but very helpful.

This might be his first time helping with a Virgin Night, but he knew enough to be sure that most females were very anxious and nervous before the act, and no one had disputed that. Which was fair, given how much their lives and Power depended on it going well.

Arina didn't seem to care. After a moment, and gauging her attitude, Lucien decided to ask as they reached the room. He wanted to make sure.

"I think it's remnants of my life on Earth," Arina told him, twisting her hair in one of her fingers thoughtfully. "Rape is much more common there, and it is also very common for girls to lose their virginity in unfortunate ways, but…the Blood aren't a thing. Jewels aren't a thing. And because of that, I have very different ingrained feelings and instincts about how this is going to go, and what may or may not happen as a result of it. But I'm not as nervous as maybe everyone thinks that I should be, no, because my first instinct is still that the worst thing that could come out of this is pregnancy."

"I thought it was something like that," Lucien murmured. He watched her eye the bed and then settle neatly onto it, curling her legs up and turning to look at him, this time with less thought and more mischief. He raised an eyebrow in response, not moving from his position leaned against the wall by the door. "I thought you said that you didn't have an interest in sex?" It was absolutely a challenge, and Arina smiled sweetly at him in response.

"I have no personal, physical interest when I am on my own," she agreed. "I also recall that I told you that I don't have anything against sex in theory. We also proved that I do very much enjoy kissing."

"True," Lucien admitted, starting forward. He watched Arina's eyes gleam as he approached, moving slow and deliberately. "So, what you mean is that we should just see what happens?" By that point he had reached Arina's spot on the bed and reached out to run his fingers slowly up her arm from where he started the touch at her wrist.

"Yes," she managed, her attention flickering between his fingers on her arm and his face.

Lucien suppressed a smile, keeping his face smooth. Step one was apparently to get her comfortable, which he didn't feel that he needed to be concerned about at all, but step two (strip) was where the comfort usually fled, which is where step three came in—distract from the looming event despite being exposed and vulnerable. "Well, in that case…I think you are overdressed."

When her breath hitched at the way that his voice dipped low, a fierce rush of satisfaction flowed through him. Despite everything, he had doubted that everything he knew was going to work on Arina, from her stated earlier disinterest.

(Anyone who had witnessed his father flirting with his wife would be able to tell that Lucien and Daemon were related, even blind and unable to see the resemblance in that way—the way that Daemon Sadi would seduce Jaenelle Angelline in corners of events was being unconsciously mirrored by his son, now seducing his Lady for the first time.)

One hand tracing patterns on Arina's upper arm, Lucien slipped the other one under her shirt and laid it on her stomach, slow and light. This time there was nothing subtle about his triumph when her eyes went black and her hand shot out to wrap around his wrist with a hiss. Her pupils had gone enormous and slitted, and she had dropped her eyes to focus on his and on her stomach with a feline intensity.

"Let's fix that, shall we?" he murmured, bending over her on the bed and gently laying her down, vanishing her shirt at the same moment, smirking at her disoriented little hiss as it disappeared.

Knowing from experience that Arina did tend to get very focused on the physical very quickly from when they had laid in the bed and kissed for a while, with a lot of extra touching. Still, it did usually take her a bit longer to have her pupils get that large.

He Vanished all of her clothes without any other warning, immediately dropping to nip at her inner thighs, and the sound that she made was so intensely satisfying that if he hadn't already been fully aroused he would have gotten there from nothing in that moment alone.

He crooned praises to her as he went, lavishing her entire body with his mouth, until she was fully thrashing under him, and whining. He did keep a very sharp eye on her mouth, seeing glimpses of her fangs peeking out and knowing that he would need to be careful—he had managed to get her completely out of her head and focused only on the feeling of her body, which was almost definitely a first for her—Arina was always thinking, overthinking, and rethinking things, and was always careful to never lose control in bed.

Given that she had unconsciously sprouted fangs when she wasn't in control, Lucien realistically knew that it was a good thing, but he didn't have to admit it out loud. He could work around the teeth.

Or Hell, he could just let her bite him, he could heal just fine with a little bit of work and time and healing webs.

With his first biting kiss, Lucien had started stroking Arina's inner barriers, laying gentle caresses on her mind even as he worked on her body, all the while slowly slipping into the Abyss and sliding around her mental self.

Lucivar had warned him that none of them, not even Daemon, could give him a true idea of what that inner-self would show as, not when Arina was as much Witch as she was Arina. Daemon had told him that her barriers might be more dangerous than he anticipated, even though she theoretically only wore the Red to his Black, and to be extra cautious.

So in light of that, he went all the way down to the Black and carefully gathered a bit extra, more than he could imagine that he would need, before sliding sideways toward Arina's mind and under her barriers before rising back up through the Ebon-Gray, and the Gray…at which point there was a twist in the Abyss that very nearly hurled him right back out of the Abyss entirely. But as he grappled with the Darkness, there was a moment where he managed to catch a tiny strand of Arina's personal Web, and as soon as he touched it, the twisting stopped, and the Darkness that had been about to crush him faded away.

Arina hissed and shuddered under his physical body, and her Self felt like it was wrapping around him just as tightly as he was wrapped around her body. Everything amplified, and the next kiss that he laid on Arina's breast sent sensation sweeping up both her and his spine.

The whine that slipped out from her teeth then was bordering on overwhelmed, and he hadn't even gotten inside her yet.

There was something in the back of his mind about how it felt to be so trusted that even his touch at her innermost Self did not alarm Arina, but he set it aside to consider later. Because there was always the possibility that despite the fact that she wore the Red to his Black…it wasn't trust that let him slide into her Inner Self so easily, but rather the certainty that she could defend herself if it did go wrong. Given how the Abyss had twisted around him…it was possible, but not something he could afford to think about right now.

Instead, Lucien turned back to what he had been doing, teasing Arina's body into a tight and begging mess of need. Of course, that sent his own body into just as much need, but. Well. It was more than worth it to pull those sounds out of his wild Lady.

It was worth it to give him the time to create the safety net around her Self before he started to slide inside her wetness, achingly slowly, pulling them both to the very edge of what they could handle. He reached the point where he couldn't quite move anymore, and Arina's hands slowly released him when he paused, both of them panting. Very deliberately, slowly, and in what was clearly a moment of sanity in the middle of this mass of chaotic need, gripped her clawed hands around the head board's rails, which Lucien took the briefest moment to appreciate. Having her claws tear into him accidentally would probably not be fun.

"If you do not move," Arina snarled at him, her fangs very much on display, "I am going to skin you."

"I don't think so, darling," Lucien purred in her ear, and thrust in.

A moment later, he regretted very much letting her mouth get that close to his neck when she bit him in the meat of his shoulder to hold back her scream. The two sources of pain were confusing enough, and with the pleasure still running through them everything was falling into the overwhelming point of no return.

"Move," Arina demanded after an endless moment of them both laying still and frozen. "Mother Night, move already."

So he did.

BJT:ANW

Lucien woke up the next morning to a sore neck that took him several seconds or minutes to place, and a warm body curled into his side with a strange weight laid over his body. He opened his eyes to stare up at the ceiling, counting the boards and breathing in the soft smell of Arina's hair. Slowly he reached up to brush his fingers against the bite mark that she had left on his shoulder, finding sore but healed skin while he knew for a fact that last night her fangs had sunk in deeply. the witch in question grumbled a little bit in her sleep and curled in tighter to his side.

Tucking his head down closer to hers, Lucien nibbled on her ear and got a jab to the side from her pointy elbow in response.

"Stop it, what are you doing," she grumbled, opening one eye blearily for him to see the still cat slitted pupil gleam at him.

"Waking you up, my Lady," he teased. "I think this is has to be a record, me waking up before you."

Huffing, she pushed herself upright, mercilessly using his ribcage as a brace for her weight, getting a grunt out of him. "I woke up," she grumbled. "I activated the healing web for your shoulder. I just went back to sleep after a little while. I'm sore, I didn't want to go exercise, I just wanted to cuddle."

Lucien jerked up a bit and sent a thread toward her, only for her to sigh loudly at him.

"I said sore, not hurt. I'm fine, Lucien. Everything went as planned. Well, mostly." looking mildly guilty, she looked at his shoulder and nibbled lightly at her lip. She had gotten better about not slicing her own mouth open when her fangs were out, but there were no guarantees. Not that she ever stopped biting her lips anyway, even knowing that it wasn't a good idea.

It was cute though, and until the next time she sliced her face open Lucien had resolved to keep his mouth shut. Some fights were not worth fighting, and he had decided that this was one of them.

"So…"

Arina sighed again, even harder this time, and rolled her eyes. "Congratulations, Prince Lucien, you have successfully seen me through my Virgin Night. If there is anything specific that is supposed to happen at this point, no one told me. So in light of that, I'm hungry and going to go get food now that you are finally up. You can come with me or go back to bed."

"What time is it?" Lucien rolled out of bed after Arina had gotten up in something of a huff, checking the clock even as he reached for his shirt. It was apparently almost 11 in the morning, which was very late, even for him. In light of that, he was a little surprised that Arina had hung around him for so long. She was always up and moving by dawn, and maybe only just a tiny bit later at best.

She clicked her tongue at him in amusement before strolling out the door wearing only one of her loose flowing gowns and with her Dream fully exposed for the first time outside of the Hall. Lucien hurried after her, deep amusement rolling in his own mind at it. She had, after all stayed with him the whole time, even much later than she might have needed to. For all that she excused her actions with the point of being sore in ways that she wasn't accustomed to, that wouldn't normally stop her from getting up and starting to get things done. Arina was nothing if not a busy, busy soul who always was up to something, and he knew for a fact that she tended to feel that every moment that she spent not working on things that mattered was a moment fully wasted. Lazing about was not something she was good at.

They reached the dining hall fairly quickly, and found a number of dishes set out with two places set for eating.

In the dining room, they found two place sets, and a number of dishes available for them to take from, but not the buffet that was typical at the Hall. Given that it was only the two of them, it wasn't practical to have a buffet type of serving, but it somehow still surprised Arina to not see it. She was far to used to Queen's residences, where there were so many people in residence that they didn't have much of a choice in the matter for serving.

It seemed that the Hall had let the staff here know about Arina's morning preferences, because while there was a chunk of steak available, it was only enough for one, and set directly in the place that Arina could recognize as where Lucien was supposed to sit at the head of the table, as the child of the bloodline. There were a number of plates of bacon and sausage and other such meats for Arina to get in the heavy protein that she needed to fuel her body, as well as a large number of fruits and eggs and muffins among other foods.

She decimated the food at the table. Lucien had taken to picking up his coffee and leaning back with slightly wide eyes as she devoured everything in sight. He did get the food he wanted, but Arina just kept going. It was truly impressive, if not a little frightening.

"I always have to eat so much more when the wings are actually out," the female complained after she had cleared the table. "Still, this is a new low for how much I needed before I felt full."

"Hmm. Well, ready to head back to the Hall and face the music?" Lucien asked, much more relaxed now that he had a good reason for Arina's unexpected hunger. It wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't growled at him a few times for accidentally getting too close to her plate, but that wasn't a wonderful feeling when she had fangs and claws out on display.

"Not particularly, no," Arina grumbled, "But we probably should, yes."

"Agreed, but we should go anyway, or if we wait too long, they will almost certainly come to us instead."

"Absolutely not, that is not something I want to have happen," Arina said fervently, getting to her feet after accepting Lucien's hand up. "Time to go then."

They didn't have anything else with them so they were able to thank the staff and head out immediately, Lucien wrapping Arina up and sending them out on the Black Wind back towards the Hall.

Despite her initial reluctance, Arina was still looking forward to going back to the Hall and seeing the rest of her Coterie and even Jaenelle. It wasn't like she had done anything wrong, and everyone had been making noises about how important this whole ceremony was, so it was certainly going to be celebrated, not anything else.

It was just…slightly awkward. Talking about the first time you have sex was never the easiest thing, always just a little bit off, foreign world or not.

At least she wasn't going to be expected to share everything. Given how the females that she had questioned had clammed up about their Nights, Arina felt confident that she wouldn't have to share more than she was comfortable with.

It was a very good thing that she had already determined that and was comfortable, because immediately on landing back at the Hall, Lucien and Arina were separated and hustled away by their respective genders to separate drawing rooms, and she had to remind herself of that when every tried proving her wrong by demanding details, only to get a dismissive tetchy response from Arina herself.

"You asked everyone about theirs," Rose protested.

"Yes, and no one wanted to answer me either. Besides, none of you need the information, you just want it."

"Yes, we do need it," was the responding whine.

"Well, I can tell you that I did bite him," Arina said, and around her everyone lost their minds. "It's probably going to scar, which I feel bad about."

"You bit my son?" Jaenelle asked, somewhat incredulously.

"Only once," she protested. "I was startled! At least I remembered to keep my claws away from him."

"Mother Night," Rose wheezed out between giggles. "You are ridiculous."

Arina shrugged, then smiled. "It was fun though. Next time will be interesting, won't it?"

"Oh dear," Jaenelle said, and decided to have mercy on Arina—or possibly herself—by changing the subject to how all the various Courts were doing at the end of summer.

BJT:ANW

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