Chapter Text
Stella dislikes Stolas. It is personal, of course. Stolas is a pathetic little nestling schooled and bred to play a single role—a role of privilege, of renown, yet a single role nonetheless—for the family with no other expectations. Stella would be just a wife, a princess by marriage, and she would have to create all the connections, do all the networking and upkeeping the family name. Stolas has the privilege of being a scion of the Goetia, a son of Paimon instead of just a descendant from the king; he is a prince, an heir to a powerful throne.
Stella has heard all about Stolas since she was old enough to leave the nursery. He was a ghostly constant that haunted her life; her father boasted about the power the marriage would bring them—him, just him, and Andre after him—and her mother sweetened her ear with honeyed words about how pleasant a boy Stolas was and how well he would take care of her. Stella hadn’t needed a keeper then, she doesn’t need one now, and if she did it wouldn’t be Stolas. Andrealphus called Stolas the embodiment of celestial knowledge and earthly might, the last true child of the fallen.
There was a point in life, when she actually believed those words. She is no longer young, naïve, or a sentimental fool who entertains the plebeian notions of romance. She was promised a powerful prince of hell, a master of ancient magic, someone who was described as almost ethereal in looks and whose power could scorch the soil even in the bowels of the Wrathian volcanoes. The reality of Stolas was disappointing. He was sweet in the way syrup gets sickly cloying and sticky after a while, unpleasant in his naiveté and the softness inside him makes her want to hurt him, to crush him, to cleanse everything that made him less of what she was promised.
For all that Stolas is, for all the power he possesses…he is pathetic, complacent, and unfit to rule. The potential is wasted on him. He doesn’t live up to the expectations she had. He can’t even touch her without flinching. He averts his eyes when the lay together, keeps to his aggravating silence, still like a puppet whose strings were cut—entirely useless, eternally damned for hurting her ego. No woman would wish to lay with a man who acts as if sex was a chore required of him. It’s a chore for her as well, the difference is that this will reflect worse on her than on him.
She hurts him. She lashes out at him with vitriol and cruelty, committed to shatter that glacial mask, that complacency, that infuriating softness that has no place to be when she was promised power and something so unholy that her father offered a quarter of his estate as a dowry, Andrealphus’ inheritance, to secure her marriage to Stolas.
Stella runs hot. There is gurgling lava inside her, waiting to burst free in a great explosion and burn everything and everyone in her way. And yet Stolas doesn’t burn—his feathers are singed, his face saddened, but his bones don’t melt in the face of Stella’s rage. He stands unmovable, detached, as if her words and turmoil were beneath him. Only then she fully understands why the call him the link between heaven and earth; Stolas is frigid, unfeeling, and she hates him more than she has ever hated anyone.
She wanted him to rage with her. She wanted to see that unholy power, to light the spark of that roaring hellfire that surely burns inside him. There is no fire inside Stolas. Only coldness. Only the aloofness of magic that leaves her bereft.
-.-.-.-.-.-
She lays the egg. Finally. It takes them a year for her o become gravid, to subject herself to that pathetic fool, that frigid doll she married. The egg is viable; her duty is done, her purpose fulfilled, and she can now reap the benefits of marrying Paimon’s son.
She expects Stolas to leave her alone, to scamper away like the mouse he is. Stolas’ mushy interior resurfaces with greater strength; he seeks her out, voice plaint and a tentative smile on his beak. She hates that for all her might, for all her will, she hasn’t broken him. He bends, he begs, he refuses to learn.
Stolas is waiting for her at the garden. He had given orders for her to join him, too. She lashes out at him—a red mark with her fingerprints on his cheek that will bruise—and tells him to never order her around again. He is no one to command her. The apology he gives her tastes almost too sweetly; it’s the look of fear in his eyes what soothes her like a cool balm. It reminds her that he is a pathetic mouse, a scared little nestling, while she is a powerful princess. She is free and he will be forever trapped.
“We should give her a name.” Stolas says with his eyes fixed on his teacup. He doesn’t dare to touch his cheek—she believes he can learn but he simply refuses.
“It’s an egg. It doesn’t need a name until it hatches.”
“She,” Stolas corrects softly.
“It doesn’t matter. Your father can choose the name. It’s tradition, isn’t it? He chose his other grandchildren's names.”
Paimon is controlling. Stella fears him. She respects him, of course. He is the king. He is powerful and their lives are in his hand one way or another. She fears him too. She remembers him from the negotiations with her parents: the smile never reached his eyes, and he stared at her as if he was choosing a hellpup to gift over. She remembers his words, too: “As long as she pleases Stolas.” She doesn’t please Stolas. She doesn’t think anyone would, but Stolas fears her, and she is safe.
"Only the spares. Precautionary or not, she will be my only heir. I get to name her.”
Stella searches in his eyes for deceit. They agreed—she decreed it, and he complied—to never lay with each other again. This egg will be their only one. She feels no attachment to the egg. She may bond with it when it hatches, but a child is ultimately a trading pawn. Except this girl will never be sold as a bride. The way Stolas speaks, the way he stares at her with factuality seals the egg’s fate. This child, this girl, will sit in Stolas’ throne.
Where was that spark before? Where was that fire, that resolve? Where was that absoluteness when she wanted it, when she craved it so much that it made her sick with rage and sorrow?
“I don’t care.” The lie burns her tongue. She hates the unhatched egg. She hates that it managed to do what she couldn’t in a year. It thawed Stolas’ icy mask, it made him flesh and blood. If that egg didn’t hold her life, if she weren’t so sure that Paimon would fly her alive if anything happened to that egg at her hands, she would destroy it only to see Stolas’ despair. She wants his flame so badly. “Name it whatever you want.”
“You are her mother,” Stolas says weakly, a last effort to persuade her of participating in this debasing of herself. “Don’t you wish to name her with me?”
“The only thing I care about is not to lay with you ever again. As long as you don’t break the damned egg, do whatever you want with it,” she spats angrily. She wants no part in this. “Don’t talk to me about the egg unless it hatches or whatever. I have a life, Stolas, and you and your childish notions of family are not my problem.”
“I see.”
-.-.-.-.-.-
He doesn’t call her again. His icy mask is back in place, carefully done with expertise. She hates it and oh how she rages.
It doesn’t fall. No matter what she does, what she says, how much she screams and demands and hurts him, she doesn’t even see a hint of that spark again.
-.-.-.-.-.-
The egg hatches. Stolas was right, it was a she. An ugly, bald thing with swollen eyes that Stella can’t bear to touch, much less hold.
“Octavia.” Stolas decree with a smile that is as warm as a summer day in Wrath. He looks at her—the owlet, the little traitor—as if she was the centre of the universe, like he only looks at the night sky and his stars and constellations. “Do you want to hold her?”
“No.” I will drop her, Stella thinks but keeps quiet. “It’s ugly.”
Stolas’ eyes are hard when they stare at her, finally acknowledging. Pools of molten lava. They are ferocious, soul-seeing, and Stella feels a spark of excitement and fear crawling on her spine, feeding her fire. Oh, he sees her for the first time and it’s with such intensity, with so many emotions—looking into his eyes, her husband’s crimson eyes, is like staring at one of those eldritch horrors that only the fallen house inside them. She can feel her blood sing in tune to his anger, his passion, the living power breathing within his veins.
She doesn’t love him, but right then and there, she believes she could. She could love him. She could give him another child, a better child, a child that will scorch the earth.
The moment passes, Stolas returns his eyes to their daughter, and he is a sunny day once more.
“Her name is Octavia. Learn it, memorise it, use it. You will never call her ‘it’ ever again.”
—his voice is anything but. The roaring inferno is there, and with it a threat of annihilation. No, not a threat. A promise. His fire, his spark, his passion, his power is not for Stella—not for her rage, not for her sorrow—but for Octavia.
She leaves the room. He doesn’t look away from the being in his arms.
-.-.-.-.-.-
Paimon was pleased when Stella and Stolas informed him about the egg. Stella informed her parents and brother the following day as protocol dictated. He was pleased when the egg was laid, so pleased, in fact, that he personally came to keep Stolas’ company. Stella had been surrounded by doctors and one of her personal maids, too exhausted to pay attention to the world outside. Her other maid had been her eyes and ears, and she had later told her of the conversation between Paimon and Stolas:
“Finally, a child! Your firstborn is extremely important, little one. She will be your one true heir, the holder of all your possessions and title. Your line will live in her and her descendants; she will carry your legacy, Stolos.”
“Yes. We are proud of her; I named her Octavia.”
“Octavia. What a quirky name.”
“I feel she will have a connection with all that is born and grown from the earth, but no more can I say.”
“Mmhm. Fine, then. I leave this matter to you and your visions, little one.”
Stella still ponders on that conversation and its meaning. She can’t view Paimon as an involved parent, yet her maid insisted the king had ruffled Stolas’ feathers, and when her husband chittered like a stupid owlet, the king had smiled. Apparent care aside, the king’s speech was curious at best. Stolas was the youngest of Paimon’s line, his words contradictory with their circumstances, and yet Paimon had only arranged Stolas’ marriage.
The ceremony where Paimon presents Octavia to court is lavish and exclusive. All members of the Ars Goetia are in attendance, but not every member of the Goetia. Lucifer is there with his daughter. Octavia passes from Stolas’ ferocious embrace to Paimon’s lighter one, and then Lucifer himself picks the ugly chick and laughs, rubbing his nose against Octavia’s downy fluff in delight.
“Princess Octavia of the Ars Goetia.”
Paimon intones solemnly, in a regal voice that carries power and intent throughout the hall. There is no outward command, yet the expectation is clear and every Ars Goetia in attendance bows their head, acknowledging their king’s granddaughter. Her daughter. The Goetia kneel, watching the little bundle of fluff with envy and greed. Stella understands that feeling; she is nobility by birth, but her title comes from her marriage, and yet she still isn’t Ars Goetia, she isn’t a being of magic and otherworldly power. Octavia is all but a little, fragile thing, yet she is already part of the elite, already so above many demons her seniors. Already so above her own mother.
“What does her future hold, my son? Surely you have seen the extension of her life and line.”
Stolas writes prophecies. He has written prophecies for his nephews and nieces, for the children’s of other kings’ children. What those prophecies say nobody knows. Stella never cared about his job, but it being addressed in front of the court, even if Lucifer and his daughter have already left, catches her attention.
“Prophecies aren’t free, Your Majesty. This child’s father already knows the future.”
“Shall I command you to obey, Stolos?”
“I am yours to command, father, but my prophecies are not. I will have my payment; you may choose to give it freely, or I can choose to take it by force. This is my right, to which we both are bound to by Lucifer’s law.”
Stella stares in awe as prince and king speak calmly to each other, just another spectator as every other demon in that hall. For once protocol is forgotten, briefly overruled by the daring words of the prince. Paimon is not someone to antagonise or defy. His word is law and Ars Goetia and Goetia alike are bound to his will. When the king asks something of you, the only possible answer is yes. But here is Stolas, molten lava bubbling like a living volcano about to burst, fire ready to explode and consume everything in its path, holding Octavia in the safety and warmth of his brood, challenging the king with an impassive face and his spine straight, every bit the Great Prince of Hell that he is.
Paimon laughs. It’s an amused, indulgent laughter. A few courtiers dare to mimic him, unsure of what role they should play, before being brutally brought to their knees with a wave of the king’s talons.
“So be it then, my little one. Choose your price,” Paimon acquiesces and leans back on his throne.
Stolas is taut as a bow. His hold on Octavia protective, challenging anyone to try and pry her from his talons—no one approaches him, not on the dais of honour, not when black tendrils of magic glow in his hands like a promise of damnation. Stella can’t take her eyes off him and the power he exudes. Her mouse of a husband has grown fangs and claws, and she is as taken as she is mystified and furious. It is, as usual, all about Octavia.
When Stolas speaks, the entire hall is watching his every move, and the palpable tension in the room is almost alive, a terrifying being that sucks the air out of their lungs, asphyxiating them.
“I want full veto power of decision over my daughter.” His words are clear, unflinching, and his eyes look far ahead, as if he was leagues away from everyone in the room. “She will not be married off. She will not be fostered by other Goetia or raised on a palace alone; as a matter of fact, she will not leave my sight nor any place I call home until she is of age and can fend for herself. She won’t be forced to do anything without my knowledge nor given duties without my say so. Octavia is my heir. She was born of my bones, of my blood and my magic. I will punish whoever dares to harm her, to claim her, to take her from me. These are my terms, Your Majesty.”
They aren’t terms. They are a declaration of something no other Goetia or Ars Goetia has dared to demand. They expect the king to laugh at him, to fly him alive. Stella expects it as well, but she is no less enthralled by the dark undertones in her husband’s speech, the promise of an excruciating death to anyone that challenges his word, to anyone that dares disrespect him. She is so captivated that she doesn’t pay attention to his words, only his voice, and the threatening lull of the eldritch horror in his veins. The magic saturating the halls.
“Your demands exceed your station,” Paimon states factually and the tension grows. “Very well. For such demands, I expect a great destiny. In a week’s time you will have my written agreement, and I will have my prophecy.”
“My king is gracious.”
Paimon waves his hand again, pulling Stolas’ to his side with a swirl of magic. He looks at the nestling sleeping within Stolas’ brood and pats Stolas’ head.
“Your father is gracious, Stolos,” Paimon says. “Eat, little one. This is your celebration, after all.”
Nothing else is said. The Goetia are good at pretending nothing happens when something big blows in their faces.
-.-.-.-.-.-
Octavia grows. She is a curious, annoying little nestling and Stolas worries himself sick over her. Stella struggles to bond with her; she has no patience for Octavia’s games, her acute chittering whenever she is alone or out of Stolas’ brood, her unblinking eyes that is the only trait she inherited from her. Staring at Octavia is like watching a blank canvas that she isn’t skilled in painting, so she ushers the nestling to her father’s waiting arms or any imp that looks capable enough to keep the ugly owlet alive.
Although she comes out as ungrateful—in Andre’s words—she is relieved the nestling is alive. She is relieved the egg was viable and hatched without complications. She doesn’t hate Octavia as much as she is indifferent to her; Stella's job was to deliver an egg, and she did it. The girl is Stolas’ heir, Stolas’ responsibility. She parades the nestling like one does a particularly interesting artwork that other claims to be valuable and she only saw as lines and paint blobs. Octavia is much the same. Whatever Stolas sees in his daughter, Stella can’t even dream to understand.
Octavia continues growing. She learns to call Stolas’ first. She learns to call Stolas for most anything—if she is cold, if she is hungry, if she is distressed. Stella learns to tolerate the curious owlet. She takes the girl to her parents’ estate once, as an obligation, and the owlet cried for her father until she exhausted herself and fell asleep. She didn’t eat, didn’t speak, and when she cried herself sick the second day of their five day stay, Stella gave up and called Stolas—her stupid, stupid husband who had been just as distressed as his ugly daughter—to come and calm the owlet down.
Stella doesn’t take Octavia to her parents again. She won’t tolerate the judgment in their eyes.
Octavia is nearly a year old when Stella’s paradise shatters to dust. She is out of luck, too. Stolas’ fire has never been for her.
-.-.-.-.-.-
Paimon doesn’t rage. He stares at them—at Stolas, and Stella, and her parents and brother—as a disappointed teacher expecting a confession. Stolas touches her knee with his own, a gesture of something that doesn’t belong in their relationship, but she is too terrified—has been too terrified since the summons—of Paimon to do anything but cling to that little contact between her and Stolas.
“One of you, or all of you, have lied to me in some degree, and all of you, with the only exception of my son, are disposable,” Paimon states cheerfully, another contradiction with his disappointed face. “However, I am a generous king and an indulgent parent. This is the only chance you’ll get to explain yourselves and fix this…inconvenience.”
There is a tense, terrified silence following those words. Andrealphus is an Ars Goetia. He has the magic, he has the talent, he has the title. He should have the protection granted to him by rank, a protection Stella believed so absolute she had counted on his support to do as she pleased. He wasn’t supposed to be disposable. She isn’t supposed to be disposable. She is the wife of the king’s son, the mother of that long-awaited heir. Before she voices any of that—if she her voice doesn’t fail her, betray her like her trembling body—the king speaks again, his voice softer this time, indulgent as he addresses his son.
“I am divided between complimenting you and giving you a reminder of what happens to lying owlets, Stolos. You are the youngest of my children and I have been more lenient on you, but do not take me for a fool, little one. They,” and Paimon points at Stella and her family, “may be guilty of ignorance or your accomplices, but you, my owlet, know well what you have done and what I expect of you.”
Stella shivers at the power exuded in Paimon’s voice, in the threat that hides in plain sight. They all could hear it. Stolas says nothing. Why isn’t he saying anything? She wants to dig her talons on his arms. To make him bleed until the pain is so intense he has no other choice but to act—to defend her as fiercely as he does Octavia. But Stolas remain silent.
“Your Majesty, I assure you my daughter would never dare to lie to you. None of us would! You are our king! Your word is law. We are but your humble subjects.”
Implicitly, her father is placing the blame for the unknown offense at Stolas’ talons. Stella knows that is unwise. It’s desperate. She shivers when the king fixes his steady gaze on her, when he pulls her from her seat next to Stolas and makes her stand at attendance in front of him.
“I can see into that heart of yours. You are a greedy, insignificant little creature, not so different from that father of yours,” Paimon states, then turns to her father and says, colder than she had ever heard him, and a shiver runs down her spine. “I bought your useless daughter to carry on Stolas’ legacy. She failed, so you either lied to me with your promises of her skills, or she has passed someone else’s child for Stolas’.”
The accusation stings. She is impulsive and she was—still is—angry at Stolas for his softness and misplaced tenderness, but she isn’t stupid enough to cheat on him when so much depended on that one egg. She did her duty. She laid the egg, it hatched, it has Stolas’ face.
“Your Majesty, my daughter would…”
“Your Majesty, I did my duty!” she yells, the fire inside her pushing her to scream. “I laid the egg. Stolas’ egg. Stolas,” she says his name like thunder, her face turning to her silent, frozen husband. “Tell him.”
“Whose egg? That child has not a drop of magic in her veins.”
It can’t be. It can’t be.
“Father, stop, please.” Stolas stands. No, he marches and with a wave of his hand Stella is safely pulled away from Paimon. They don’t touch, don’t comfort each other, but she breathes heavily as he stands at her side. “I didn’t lie. They didn’t lie. The prophecy was whispered to me, and it shall come to pass, the hows and whens evade me, they are too far into the future for me to know.”
“She isn’t the heir I wanted.” It’s factual again, emotionless. Paimon sighs, pinching the space above his beak, and gives Stolas an exasperated look. “You will try again. You two will have another child, a child with magic.”
“No. I will not. I refuse. I may not be able to see my own future, but I know this path will lead to my destruction. I won’t stay with Stella.”
“If not with her, you will have one with someone else.”
“You can’t dissolve their marriage!” her father sputters. He has lost all his dignity, and his fear has been replaced by indignation. She stares at him, numbly; he doesn’t even look at her, doesn’t comfort her. “You said she would be a princess! My family’s prestige is on the line!”
“If only she hadn’t failed at the only thing that was expected of her.”
“My daughter isn’t at fault that your son is so terrible in bed that she had to resort to other means to conceive! Your brat was negligent in his duties! Don’t think the court doesn’t know of your son’s proclivities. It is well-known that he spent an indecent amount of time with King Asmodeus in Lust while he was still underage, and no matter how you wanted to cover it by saying he was being prepared for his wedding, there are witnesses who saw his lack of decorum with Prince Vassago. Accept it, Your Majesty, if someone is at fault here is your son.”
Prince Vassago?
Stella has spread rumours about what a terrible bed partner Stolas is. She has complained to her mother, giggled behind his back with her friends, and in those two years of marriage no one told her anything about Stolas’ proclivities. She only knew Vassago in passing. He was another Ars Goetia a decade older than her, and he hardly ever visited court.
Was it so simple? Was all her hurt for nothing? Her parents knew she was marrying someone who would remain forever frozen to her touch, indifferent to her flame, and they had sold her out regardless for a chance to be elevated through her. She had tormented, and be tormented by Stolas and his icy mask, his aloofness, his otherworldly magic while they all knew she was doomed from the start? She turns around to Stolas, stupid, pathetic, tender in flesh and soul Stolas with a world of vitriol willing to break free, but all her rage simmers to embers at Stolas’ eyes. Oh, what a pathetic, pathetic man. He didn’t even know.
If she had any grace left, anything that wasn’t the anger and hurt, she would pity him.
“There will be no other child of my blood.” Stolas’ voice breaks through the fog.
Her father is on his knees, a look of muted horror etched in his face. Her mother is at her side, trembling, kneeling and refusing to look up. Andrealphus is frozen. Stella has never seen him like this, so small, so…diminished.
“No one can re-write the stars, father. I can only listen to their voice, to the drumming song of the universe and pass down their messages, their warnings. I don’t rule over them more than any of us rule over creation itself. There will be no other child.”
“Get out, all of you. I will deal with your insubordination and slander after dealing with my son.”
-.-.-.-.-.-
Stella didn’t know then what she knows now: that was the last time she would see Stolas.
She moves out of the palace and back into her parents’ estate. Her father loses his voice; his life is pardoned despite his great insult, but his voice is taken away as punishment. Deep into the night, he sobs and whimper, driven mad by the horrors in his dreams. Stella pities him not. She has nightmares of her own.
-.-.-.-.-.-
A month into her stay with her parents, she understands she will never see the palace again. Her things are brought back, her jewels returned to the royal estate, and a sizable part of her dowry is deposited to a personal vault whose only key is given to her by an imp with a monocle. Her marriage gets dissolved, her husband and daughter taken from her as easily as her purpose.
If Stella were a good person, she would mourn her loss. She isn’t a good person. She takes what is hers and takes up on Andrealphus’ offer to move into his estate.
-.-.-.-.-.-
Six months after her annulment, Andrealphus shows her a document that glows red and white. His face is unreadable.
“What is this supposed to mean?” she asks hoarsely. The family three of the king has lost a branch.
“Nothing.” Andrealphus answers stiffly. He holds her in his arms, the embracing frightened and so cold it burns her skin beneath her feathers. “Nothing,” and it sounds wet, small, and she remembers his face back in the king’s throne room.
“Do you think he kill him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care,” his arms tighten around her frame. She doesn’t complain even when small shards of ice dig painfully into her body. “You are alive, Stella. You are alive and that is all that matters.”