Who: The Demos Family and anyone else who would want to be there with ties to them. When: After the wave a few weeks. Where: The Palace at Antul and then the DeLucos manor outside of Antul What: The wedding finally happens and it's got a neat little twist.
A Prince's wedding was meant to be grand. It was an affair of pomp and circumstance, so important that all wanted to be involved down to the lowest scullery maid at Antul. The dark halls were lit with the demon fire lights with a burnished gold hue, as if in homage to the bride. The bride who stood in the center of her floor, the splay of black silk around her looking like an oil slick. The silk itself was so fine that when it pressed against her skin, it was see through. So though she wore the dress with a high neck that cascaded down her form, the sleeves cut long down the backs of her arms until they dragged. It was a work of art, the tailor was to be commended. The black lace veil was wore hanging from a silver and ruby diadem. It would have been gold and diamonds, were she the Queen, but that was now Irena's to wear and she didn't begrudge her that one bit. After all, being Queen meant dealing with the King, Jesina wanted to stab the King to death at her earliest possible convenience. However, that might make relations with her husband rather strained if she attacked the King whenever he came near her. The remembered scent of him, which was something that vampires were very keen on, still made her flesh crawl. Really, she had already learned to prefer to the scent of Lucilius around her. Her nature found it calming. Of course, there was always the undertone of blood in his scent, like the percussion in an orchestra piece. It was sometimes very quiet, but still noticable, and then there were other times when it was loud and almost obnoxious in how aware she was of it. Still, she reveled in it. Reveled in it and wanted it.
He wasn't allowed to see her on this night, this sacred evening, not until the ceremony though she truly had few secrets from him at this point. If he asked, she told him the truth, which was often not necessarily what he wanted to hear, not since the Wave. Their wedding was supposed to be something happy, though it had been postponed a number of times since it was announced. It remained to be seen whether or not it actually would be the happy event that it was being billed as. Despite the cultivated toughness that Jesina had developed over the years, she wanted this to be a happy event. For just once, she wanted to be the center of attention and everything go off without a hitch. Karma practically owed her that after her being shot and the multitude of other things that had gone wrong.
Karma did not particularly like her.
Jesina didn't remember the ceremony. Just darkly shaded faces and words that ran through her ears like water. It was all very strange really when she thought about it. The words refused to become clear and the only truly clear image she had was of her veil being lifted for a moment and someone, who her mind refused to supply pressing something to her lips. Whatever that was, she had consumed without hesitation, but it still felt so very out of synch with reality. Such an odd thing, this awareness of the world as something swaddled in silk and lined in velvet.
The ceremony itself had been held in a 'chapel' created for exactly that kind of thing. After all, one couldn't marry in the normal church. Considering most of the guests would start to burn immediately, that made things rather hard to deal with. So it was there, under a vaulted ceiling and a stained glass depicted of someone beheading a human with their teeth, that Jesina married Lucilius and was officially accepted once more as a member of the Demos.
Married. Well, now things were going to get severely interesting. One could only guess. Her family was hosting the reception, as a way of making themselves look good. After all, Sanders DeLucos was the Father of the bride, even if the bride was marrying into a family substantially more well-off than her own. However, the reception was also going to be a much more intimate affair. Hopefully one that she would remember.
Oh, she would remember it all right. The first thing she laid eyes on when she entered the front hall of her family's mansion was that pale blonde angel who held the guest sign-in book. Part of her could have screamed, but she managed to simply swallow her upset and avert her eyes from what was in her estimation a monstrosity. Lucilius's reaction was not as neatly controlled, but it barely scratched the surface of how he felt about the woman who was now holding the guestbook as though she were an angel presenting the bible. They both refused to actually sign the book. Just the fact that she had touched it made them want to avoid it as though it were cursed. Perhaps it was. Considering the life of the young woman holding it, there was a distinct chance of this being the case.
It was easier just to put that damnable sight out of her mind. After all, who was she really? Well, now, she was nothing. There was nothing. It wouldn't matter. The little bird was dead and she lived on. That just made things easier really. After all, Lucilius's heart belonged to that little bird. With the owner now staring with glassy eyes toward her hands that were held in the position of supplication, it was rather clear that his heart currently had no owner. She was finished. Over and done. If only it were so simple. The memory of the heart being something with which she was intimately familiar, she could only guess as to how long the image of that particular stance would be burned into his eyes. How it would haunt his every waking moment and follow him into his dreams. It does the heart no good to be envious of the dead, but there was no helping that feeling as it ran through her veins, the two of them walking through the halls of her family's home.
Why was it that after that she begged for dawn to come and it simply ignored her? It seemed that there were toasts upon toasts and everyone was so busily carousing that she just wanted to leave them there and go to bed. Her mind hurt with the feeling of trying to keep herself pinned in so as not to give away her irritation.
It was the sound of someone screeching her name that made her look up from where she was chatting with some of her guests. The voice made her eyes immediately narrow. Valeria DeLucos was calling for her attention. Calling for it stridently, and sloshing a goblet of wine on the floor as she waved for her attention. The Mother of the bride was wearing white. Of all the colors to wear on this particular night, white. It offset her red-blonde hair and the strange pallor that she had which wasn't quite true.
"Jessssiiinna!" That was the kind of singsong madness that her Mother would do when she was drinking, something she did only rarely. Apparently, she was rather into her cups. The call came across the floor again and she couldn't ignore it. So she turned her head, softly whispered to her guests that she would come back in a moment, and crossed the floor towardher mother.
"Mother," her tone was cold and clipped. So barely contained that she seemed insane. The look in her eyes did not have anything to do with sanity. Yet she stood there, her head held high, in the face of the single greatest threat that there ever was to her existence.
"Well, you've done it now." The sparkle of the goblet kept her attention more than her mother's words did. "Catching yourself a prince. How very droll."
"If that's what you want to talk about, I have other guests who are less drunk with less attitude." Her thoughts were not the best, the nicest, or even the most charitable. Yet she voiced them with a strange abandon. After all, this was her wedding and she had ever right to think and say what she wanted. Then she turned to go. It was Valeria who grabbed her. All it took was a moment for Jesina to reach out and grab that same hand and dig her nails in hard. The skin broke and blood started to drip from the wounds. "Let me be."
"How dare you!" Was the inarticulate screech. Valeria was old, old blood, the kind of age that meant Jesina should have been her first victim. A victim, without even a second thought, but she hesitated. Taking the time to scream when she should have fought first. Jesina went for her throat to silence her. In the center of the ballroom floor, it was practically more a spray of wine than it was of blood, but when Jesina cut her mother's throat, it sprayed. Pearling and slipping down her dress like water.
Others could only look on as Valeria leapt at her daughter and the silk began to shred. The outright scuffle was quick and the sound of Valeria's neck snapping was unbelievably loud, over even the sound of the music. And that wasn't quite enough, cause the little girl then took her mother's body and ripped her head off. She was never going to come back as far as Jesina was concerned, she had heard the screech of that old bat for the last time.
She was staring at the head in her hands and when someone touched her, she dropped it. It rolled over to the body and stopped, while she stiffened as if she had been struck.
"Go change," was all her Father said. "I'll have someone see to this mess."
"Yes, Father." Her eyes were strange, distant seeming, as she looked at the body on the edge of her vision. It was all so strange to realize that her mother was dead and she was wearing her blood. Another hand touched her, running across her cheek. Lucilius was there and he'd obviously been close enough to catch some of the spray across the face. It dripped down his face. Reaching out, she ran her fingertips through it, watching it smear across that pallor. Brilliant red across white like chalk.