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Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow saw it as a bonding moment cx

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

“I could never get tired of hearing stories about you,” Crow teased Penelope with a grin. That, and he was still enjoying the blush that formed on her cheeks when he brought up anything to do with her childhood. He found her bashfulness endearing, but he supposed he could stop pestering her after this final question. She had been embarrassed enough for one day—and he had to save some stories for another time. It would ruin the trick he’d discovered if he used them all up in one afternoon.

However, as the knight confessed that the servant had been referring to an old toy she had played with as a little girl, he blinked in mild surprise. The story reminded him a lot of the children in the outer villages. Growing up with nothing, they had often used commonplace objects to make up games and entertain themselves while their parents worked in the fields. Even though he knew she hadn’t been given the same luxuries as other nobles’ kids, he hadn’t realized just how similar their upbringings were. The thought brought a smile to his lips.

“Alright, alright,” he sighed in mock disappointment when she said he wouldn’t be getting anything more out of her that day. “I suppose I can stop pestering you for now.” Brushing his hand against hers, he casted her a playful look. “But if it makes you feel any better, I did the same thing when I was a boy. I wasn’t as creative as you, but I used to play with a piece of tumbled quartz I’d found in the river.” He chuckled at the distant memory. “I even used to bring it into my bed with me every night because I thought it could protect me from evil spirits.

“Of course, it sounds ridiculous now,” Crow shrugged. “But kids believe a lot of ridiculous things.” Meeting Penelope’s gaze again, his expression turned eager again. “Anyway, where are we going now?”

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

She almost made it cx
Same lol she's a fun character

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow smiled as Penelope rested her head against him. Even though it hadn’t gone the way he’d expected, he found that he was enjoying their visit to her home quite a bit. He’d gotten to learn more about what she had been like as a child, and he’d even met a servant who had been an important part of her life. He was glad she had suggested the idea. Along with the fact that it was entertaining, finding out more about the knight made him feel closer to her.

It seemed they weren’t going to be sticking around for much longer though. When Penelope announced that they should keep moving, the viceroy let his arms fall from around her. As fun as it was to torment her with stories about her childhood, he knew there were other places she wanted to show him in Bellmare, so he didn’t complain. Instead, he stood aside as she said her goodbyes to Letitia, waiting so they could go to the marketplace.

As the servant turned to address him next, Crow grinned. “I don’t doubt it,” he chuckled as she patted his back. She certainly seemed protective enough to swat anyone she didn’t think was worthy of the knight’s affection. He was relieved she’d come around to see that he wasn’t the kind of man Edward had probably made him out to be. “Thank you,” he added with an appreciative nod when she offered to put in a good word for him with John. At this point, he was grateful for anything and anyone who might help him get on the stubborn knight’s good side. If she wanted to help with that, then he wouldn’t stop her.

Turning back to Penelope, he reached for her hand and gave it a gentle tug. “Come on, I’m ready to see the next thing you have planned for us,” he smiled eagerly, offering Letitia one more dip of his head in farewell before heading out of the house.

Once they were outside, he let go of her hand and drew his hood over his head again, just in case anyone else was around who might recognize him. “So,” he mused, casting the knight a sly smirk. “What’s a Scratch?”

~Bonsoir~

When Victoria argued with him about his injury, Vail rolled his eyes. Though it was a nuisance to get shot, the bullets were never fatal unless they touched the heart. He understood that to a human, it would have been shocking, but he had survived plenty worse than a hit to the shoulder. Besides that, he was already far along in the healing process from what he could tell. The constant ache in his shoulder had subsided, and it no longer pained him to move his arm. While a part of that was probably because he had just fed, he was certain he was recovering at a rapid pace. In a week, it would be as if he had never been shot to begin with.

As the Lady suggested that he should try to control his frenzy, he couldn’t stop the short laugh that escaped his lips. “It’s not that simple,” he expressed, folding his arms over his chest. “A frenzy is a loss of control. If I could prevent it, I would, but unfortunately, that’s not how it works.” He flashed her an amused smile. “You came across me when I hadn’t fed recently enough to stay in control. I’m sure Spencer is hunting regularly if he’s able to remain as calm as you say, otherwise he would be even more dangerous than I was.”

“Besides that,” his smile turned into a smirk. “You were the one who instigated it. I had no intention of coming after you until you waved your blood right under my nose. A move like that would have driven any vampire mad.” Until tonight, he had been trying to stay away from her, since he didn’t want to become a target of the Order by attacking the Crest heiress. Obviously, that plan had since been torn apart and thrown out the window. It was too late to take back what he’d done now. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Her blood had been like nothing he’d ever tasted before, and he would feed on it again in a heartbeat if he had the chance. After he’d experienced it for himself, it seemed worth risking the wrath of the Saints.

When Victoria said she was glad she could help him, Vail nodded. He wasn’t sure she’d had much of a choice in helping him, since he’d had her pinned to the ground at the time, but he certainly appreciated her compliance. It had been much easier than relying on overpowering her to land a bite. Usually when he went hunting, his prey was either too woozy to fight back after spending enough time exposed to his pheromones or he would have to wrestle them into submission. There had never been an in-between before. It had been a rather pleasant change of pace. He licked his lips at the thought.

As Victoria finally bade him goodnight, Vail returned her curtsey with an elegant bow. “Sleep well, My Lady,” he said, wishing her well. When he straightened again, the mischievous look he saw on her face took him by surprise. It was unexpectedly alluring, quite different from the sweet and gentle expressions most Ladies wore in that day and age. He found that he liked the spirit behind it.

“And I as well,” he agreed genuinely. Apart from her unique blood, there was something appealing about Victoria that made him feel drawn to seek her out again. Unfortunately, it would be quite a while before he would have the chance. Now that he had been sufficiently fed, he needed to return to the Hygrace manor, where the rest of his family was hidden away from the world and where he would be safe from the Order.

Somehow, it felt just a bit lonelier than before.

“Have a good night,” he said softly, turning to walk back to his own home now that Lady Crest had been returned to hers.

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Meanwhile Crow's eating it up xD

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow smirked when Penelope rolled her eyes at him. He found it amusing that she was so embarrassed about parts of her past. It was quite different compared to how he looked back on his own life. Though he was secretive, there wasn’t much he kept to himself just because he wasn’t proud of it. Everything he’d been through, good and bad, had made him who he was today. For that, there was little he felt ashamed about. Unless his past actions had hurt someone else, like when he had joined Jaxon’s group or hurt Hazel, there wasn’t anything he would change about the experiences he had endured.

As Letitia spoke up again, the viceroy turned to her with interest. “Really?” he laughed when the servant said Penelope had been feisty as a child. It was hard for him to imagine her acting that way. When they had first met, it had been like pulling teeth for him to get her to bend the rules with her comrades. Even though she’d always buckled to him eventually, her first inclination had never been to side with a thief. He wondered how she had gone from rebel to rule-follower when it seemed like such a stark change.

At the knight’s outburst, Crow pulled her closer to his side with a grin. Despite what she claimed, he could easily picture her fighting with the other children in Bellmare. It seemed to be true too, as she confessed after a bit more prompting from Letitia. It was no wonder she made such a talented knight. She was a warrior from the very start. Feeling a burst of affection for her, he leaned down to press another kiss to her cheek. “They just didn’t know who they were messing with,” he teased her fondly.

As the servant told him about Penelope’s father, he nodded in agreement. It certainly was lucky for him that John hadn’t arranged her marriage sooner. If she had been with someone else when they had met two years ago, they probably would have never fallen in love. It was strange to think that in another life, he might have known what it was like to walk without her by his side. He was glad that things had worked out this way instead, where they could look forward to a life together.

“I think I owe those boys a word of thanks then,” Crow chuckled. “Because of them, the rest of the men in this city missed out on marrying the most amazing woman in the kingdom.” He hugged her again, casting her a wry wink. “And now she’s all mine.”

Night and Day [LunasRose & Summer]

Chase glanced at Alix as she cursed, saying pretty much the exact same thing he was thinking. First day on the job and he was put on the case of a double homicide… maybe even a serial killer if this psychopath was still on the loose. It was a lot to take in. His dark eyes flicked back to the cadaver as a grimace made its way onto his face. Well, in a way, this was what he’d asked for. Even though this felt more like a nosedive than a splash in the shallow end, he was going to get the experience he needed to be a good detective.

He was definitely going to need a drink later.

As Alix evaluated that the killer might have tried to preserve the bodies, Chase felt nearly sick. Who the hell would poison someone and then salt them like fresh meat? It sounded like the plot of a horror flick. However, with the disgust also came a sense of determination. Whoever was doing this needed to be stopped, and it was now his job to help bring them down. He had to do everything he could to solve the case before they took any more lives.

“Yeah,” he murmured when Alix said they should go to the dockyard. Looking up from the body, he frowned. “I want to know more about the victims too… who they were; if they had any common connections to each other. There’s gotta be something here.”

With a sigh, he turned away from the cadaver to head back out of the lab with her. “I hope the rain cleared up,” he mused a bit absently, still chewing on the prospect that there was another serial killer in New York. “The way it was coming down earlier, it might be hard to find anything outside.”

Night and Day [LunasRose & Summer]

“Judge me all you want, but I saw what happened to the guys at the station who ate like that,” Chase rolled his eyes, resting his free hand on his washboard stomach. “I’d prefer not to turn into a walking heart attack if I can avoid it.” Despite the training the officers went through to get their jobs, plenty of them put on guts after just a few years in the field. The job really wasn’t as demanding as most people thought it was. They often spent most of their days doing paperwork or patrolling in cars, rarely exercising. He wouldn’t have been surprised if more than half of his old coworkers couldn’t pass the physical exam if they were asked to take it again tomorrow. The only reason he hadn’t become like them was because of his personal habits.

Having always participated in athletic sports or otherwise worked out in some form or fashion, Chase considered himself to have a pretty active lifestyle. Of course, he didn’t shy away from indulging in sweets and snacks once in a while, but he’d never ate them regularly enough to get a taste for the stuff. His biggest vice was alcohol. While he wasn’t an alcoholic by any means, he did like to go out to the bars in Manhattan with his roommate, Derek Morris, on a fairly regular basis. If there was ever a reason to hit the town—celebrations, holidays, breakups, you name it—the two of them would be there.

As Alix led the way to the morgue, Chase fell in step at her side, absently working on peeling the thick skin off the orange in his hands. He’d heard a bit about the body she was telling him about. It had been found recently enough that his old coworkers were still talking about it down at the station. They hadn’t thought it was strange though. Usually the bodies found on the coast belonged to drunken sailors who stumbled over the edge of their ships. He wondered why they were supposed to investigate this one now.

At her question, he shook his head. “Wet, yes, but not old. We never dealt with the bodies after they were taken to autopsy.” In fact, this was the first cadaver he was going to see. He wasn’t sure what to think about that.

Trailing slightly behind her, he took a moment to look around the lab they had walked into. It was clinical in appearance, like the surgery room at a hospital, with ominous steel tools on the surface of one of the tables near the back. He shivered at the cold air. It certainly wasn’t a place he hoped to find himself in very often.

His attention was drawn back to the matter at hand when the technician greeted them. As the man referred to him as Bronson, Chase stared at him, unsure if he was being serious or not. Luckily, Alix cleared it up as a joke.

“Nice to meet you too,” the new detective nodded, though privately he wasn’t sure what his opinion was of the scientist yet.

Moving on to the examination of the body, Chase edged a little closer to the table, morbidly curious as Karl pulled back the sheet that covered it. Right away, the pungent odor of partially rotted flesh made him wrinkle his nose. No dead body ever smelled good, but this one was particularly stomach-churning. It didn’t look any better either. He had to force himself not to avert his gaze as the technician described his findings.

When Karl handed over the tox reports, he accepted his eagerly, happy to look at anything beside the cadaver in front of him. He skimmed over the paper in his hand and glanced over Alix’s shoulder—an easy task, since he stood about a foot taller than her—to read hers as well.

“They both ingested cyanide,” he connected aloud, looking up at the technician with some alarm. “They were poisoned?”

Night and Day [LunasRose & Summer]

The grimace that appeared on Alix’s face didn’t slip past Chase for a second. He wondered what it was about the homicide department that would make her look like he’d just asked her to introduce him to her ex-husband. It couldn’t be that bad, could it? The office at the police station hadn’t been anything special either, just a bunch of old desks and chairs with no lumber support in a room lit only by dim yellow incandescents. It was a place meant for filing papers and virtually nothing else. He had a hard time believing the workspace here could be worse.

As Detective Andrews explained her history at the agency and as an officer, he raised a brow. Florida was quite the state to start out in. That was where most of the stories came from that he could only describe as the weirdest of the weird. His peers at the NYPD often joked that they would take the high crime rates of New York over nutjobs streaking with chainsaws any day. Of course, he knew outlandish situations like that were in the vast minority of cases, even in Florida, but he still wanted to ask if she had encountered any wild jobs worth telling.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance before they arrived at the office. “Well, damn. I wish they would have told me that before I took the exam for homicide,” he shook his head when she told him about Vice. Despite the joking, he didn’t actually care much about what his workspace was like. As long as there was room enough to get things done and lighting that wasn’t so white it would give him a headache, he would make it work. It was what he’d done at the station for five years before this.

Upon stepping inside the room, Chase’s first thought was that it was a step up from his last place of work—not a big step, but enough that it was noticeable. He followed Alix over to one of the desks that she claimed as her own. It was evident from the layer of dust on the tabletop that the cubicle hadn’t been used in a long time, but he didn’t need to ask about it as she explained that she did her work in a different suite.

“Oh, come on. The leftover wontons are part of the charm,” he said with a smirk as he set his briefcase down on the desk adjacent to hers. It was empty, and he guessed it had belonged to the man who’d retired—Bronson, if he correctly remembered what Chief Martinez had called him.

It didn’t take long for him to put his belongings away, since he’d only brought the bare minimum of things he would need. He would personalize the space after he felt more settled in. Once he was done, he turned back to Alix, whom he’d heard rummaging through the drawers of her own desk. She had a pleased look on her face and surprised him by offering a piece of candy.

“Sweet tooth, huh?” he asked amusedly. “Sure, I’ll have one.”

As she told him about Karl of the autopsy lab, he laughed. “I’m almost afraid to ask what kind of anecdotes a forensic technician has to talk about. Luckily, I did plan ahead though.” Opening the top drawer of his desk, he retrieved the orange he’d packed that morning and tossed it in his hand. “Eagle scouts pays off, huh?” he grinned. “Alright, I’m ready to go.”