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handling scandal

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some days before punching aiden the morning with his parents[break][break]


milo walks into the kitchen, hoping for a quiet morning, hoping to find his breakfast laid out in front of him and the manor empty, as it often is. but his parents have a wonderful knack for knowing when he's hit a low (and, he supposes, a broken nose makes the papers, bloody news and bloody tissue, what's new?)[break][break]
"so, you let the son of a wh*re hit you?" killian summarizes.[break][break]
milo winces. the kitchen is empty save for his meal - extra lavish, almost like someone had tipped off the kitchen staff. mother, no doubt. killian's voice comes from the family parlour -- but what surprises him isn't this. it's helena's.[break][break]
"killian," she says, stressing his name like it's a reprimand. [break][break]
but milo is quick to spin around, quick to defend himself before he can bear the embarrassment of his mom rescuing him.[break][break]
"i don't think it would've been good for my standing to retaliate against a debute at his own party, lord father," he says, a deadpan. but he is clearly wounded -- his eyes do not meet killians. they wander to helena instead, who is merciless with her empathetic smile, who can do nothing but dote on him, even even if it kills him. killian laughs, but milo knows it's not really at his joke, is it?[break][break]
"you know what else isn't good for your 'standing'?--"[break][break]
"killian.".[break][break]
milo stiffens. he meets his father's gaze, two pairs of yellow irises that never see eye to eye.
[break][break]
"--a broken nose, and a literal bastard that thinks he's better than you."[break][break]
milo says nothing. he does nothing. helena sinks her nails into his father's palm and launches into a verbal objection, killian defends himself. they grow lourder. more animated. the unending sound of their arguments fades into noise, an all too familiar chorus that has been stuck in his head too long to hold any melody or meaning.
[break][break]
killian's damning criticism --- the one thing that's clear and sharp as ever --- plays on loop and keeps him company as milo takes a plate and sits at the dining table.[break][break] he eats his breakfast alone.

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a throne in the highlands

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history the before ravenna tremerie[break][break]



They were worshippers of the sun -- a clan (or a group of clans, really) belonging to the mountains and the storm clouds. The "Tremerie" name first appears among the early nomadic tribes of the Vulcan Highlands, and is written in the blood they spilled in search of glory.
[break][break]
Aer magic for them began as a neccessity: the treacherous highlands were impossible to navigate without it. And the spells they sung were just as important: the cold winters demanded soft lullabies for children that would taste only famine, and be blanketed by nothing but the snow.
[break][break]
Their land was not arable, so the Tremeries learned first to hunt, and then to put their blades against the throats of others and make them hunt in turn.
[break][break]
Hunt turned quickly to conquest, and then to kingship. The Tremeries put windblade against stone and learned, fairly quickly, they could carve their name in immortal letters against the mountainside. A stone grows around the wounds that light carves into it. And so, too, would they.
[break][break]
The throne they built then was the sun drawn as a spiral, it was half wind, half star, and it was the center of the universe -- theirs, the only one that mattered.[break]
[break]
Eventually, the Tremeries learned civilization.[break][break]

The tides of it cannot really be avoided, though not for want of trying. They hid in their hills; darting from one ridge to the next peak, seeking the shadows, withering at the dawn.[break][break]

It took many generations for their fangs to dull, for fur cloaks and handaxes to be replaced by pressed suits and rapiers. [break][break]
Eventually, they knelt before a human king. So much for Gods. So much for the sun. [break]
[break]

The things that ruined them were mundane: the promise of riches sung a sweet spell onto ears that did not know the worth of their land. Some early deaths. Some lacks of heirs. Some untimely deals and terrible relationships—too much trust, these wild things had, for traps hidden in plain sight, for sharp-edged teeth wrapped up in pink-white smiles. [break][break]

So the story is told: they gave it away. [break][break]

And "it" was everything—their knowledge, their spells, their sons. The Tremeries gave away the mountains themselves. [break][break] In turn they received the opposite of all their teachings. What is more permanent than sun carved into stone? What is more transient than love, than freedom, than riches and an easy life? [break][break]

It is difficult to turn the lens of the present toward history, it is difficult to hold ruin in your hands and ask it to unwind itself, to become whole again. The pieces have already broken apart—it is senseless to ask why an expect an answer. [break]
[break]
So, Ravenna does not try.
[break][break]
She has accepted her lot: youngest daughter to a dying house, an estate in disarray, bickering, worthless parents, the jagged passes of the highland all around her, a stone for a heart, and a voice in her head telling her: [break][break]
You are not the storm. You are the end of it.

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sins come in threes

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the before history ravenna[break][break]


you have to understand: no trinity is holy, in the land of godless men.[break][break]

and to sin is just err with purpose—so ravenna tremerie made three mistakes, all with her eyes wide open. trysten would give her heirs, that was why she chose him. that was why she bothered with it, him, family.[break][break]
(trysten padwell dies months after her last child is born. he is mourned as a hero, a father, a man of the people.[break][break]

ravenna stands unweeping at his casket.
[break][break]
a state of shock, they say.)[break][break]