I GET OFF IN VOLTERRA CONTEST

- TITLE: Traces of Flame

- PEN NAME: Kyilliki

- PAIRING: Aro/Sulpicia

- SUMMARY: After the battle-that-wasn't during Breaking Dawn, Aro and Sulpicia plan the future of their empire.

- DISCLAIMER: Any and all recognizable characters from Twilight belong to Stephenie Meyer.

"Would you care to explain to me what came over you?"

Sulpicia shouted so rarely that Aro could barely recall the pitch and rhythm of her raised voice. Usually, her tone was smooth and cautious as the gait of a feral cat, but in her anger, her words fell in jagged, brittle shards.

"There were a thousand and one reasons you could have used to begin battle with the Cullens. A child could have thought of them, and instead you turned and fled. Do you understand what the consequences could be?" Her shoulders shook and sun-bright hair escaped the elegant knot at the nape of her neck.

For a moment, pity flared in the region of Aro's heart. Sulpicia knew, as much as anyone ever could, about the nature of sacrifice, and she had given to the point of agony for his empire. She could not witness the Volturi endure near-defeat and remain complacent, if only because she saw what it had cost to govern the known world.

"I would not watch our guard be slaughtered," he said, attempting to soothe. "Can you imagine where we would be left without the twins, without Demetri, without Caius, for that matter?"

"We would be victorious, and then the histories of our kind could be rewritten to honour the deaths of those we lost," she replied coolly. "Instead, you flaunted our weakness before the world. Your affection for Carlisle has blinded you to your duties. Surely the loss of one old friend is nothing compared to the fall of an empire."

"Carlisle—Carlisle has never intended any harm. Had we fought, I likely would have spared him. Our victory was not assured," he said. "We would be perceived as tyrants, as despots to be overthrown"

"Perhaps we are," Sulpicia said briskly, before turning away from him. "Next time you choose to drag me across the Atlantic, my dear, please do it for a justifiable cause."

Aro sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with an absent-minded touch. He knew that Marcus was likewise upset, and that Athenodora was not speaking with Caius because he had killed meddlesome little Irina. Somehow, for a coven consisting of only five people, they shared a remarkable number of quarrels.

A sickle moon shed watery light, illuminating only the silence of the iron hours between midnight and dawn, casting shadow-shapes on the pale face of a thin man on a throne. There was nothing authoritative about him; all traces of the imperial had been flayed away in bloody, unwilling strips. Instead, his eyes, when they fluttered open with a sudden thought, were those of a drowning child.

For the first time in three thousand years, Aro's certainty wavered. Justice and mercy were foreign landscapes to him, unable to change his perception. Instead he lived in a world of convenience where only that which benefited him was encouraged. Tonight, he doubted the course of his action, and hesitation was a dangerous thing. An empire of monsters balanced upon his shoulders, the slightest shrug capable of sending it spinning into chaos and blood.

A patter of footfalls on glowing marble interrupted him, changing his posture and expression to those befitting a leader in instants. After so much time, the perfect, porcelain façade fit far better than revealed wounds marked by gnawing uncertainty.

Sulpicia entered the circular room from the furthest door, crossing the floor with a dancer's grace, though she wore faded jeans and her mate's shirt, far too large for her and rolled at the sleeves. Her hair fell about her shoulders in mad spirals, free of careful braids and pins. Aro casually wondered whether she knew how she looked: wary, round-eyed and terribly, terribly young.

Of course, she knew. This was her game, after all, and she was quite clever at playing parts.

He watched her graceful ascent, saying nothing as she perched on the arm of his throne, swinging long legs with a schoolgirl's charm. Taking her hand and seeing her mind would only anger her, he was certain of that, and breaking the silence would be shrouded surrender. Aro chose to do neither, sparing her a glance, and nothing more.

"I came to apologize," Sulpicia said, her voice tremulous and silvery as plunging chimes. "I should not have shouted."

Aro could not help but smile. Of course, she felt no guilt for questioning any and all of his abilities, but acknowledged that there was perhaps a more polite way of accomplishing that.

"That is appreciated," he said. "Your reasoning was, for the most part, correct. Conceivably, I am losing my touch in my pronounced old age."

"You cannot descend into senility just yet, love. That would leave the world at the mercy of the Cullens." Something in her tone and the sparkling laugh that followed brought to mind images of Carthage burned and Rome falling.

"What would you have me do?" he asked. The broken crystal of her mind had surely conjured some ideas, then refracted them beyond recognition.

"Wait," she said. "They will present their own downfall to you with open hands. Perhaps that blonde boy with the hungry eyes will break in the middle of a shopping center. Their little girl may look just a little too odd in sunlight, and the other children will notice. A bright graduate student at one college or another will open the yearbooks and notice that the same few faces make a reappearance too often for comfort. We will still be here." The last few words were a threat, a bared dagger biting at the throat.

He grinned, "I am hoping that dear Isabella finds her way here. It is ever so easy to grow bored of adoration."

"There are others," Sulpicia said. "Little girls with nothing but echo chambers in their hearts and silence in their heads."

Aro snaked an arm around her, nudging the small of her back and sending her tumbling into his embrace in a tangle of limbs and gilt curls. "Are you perhaps jealous, Sulpicia?"

"I leave that particular sentiment to little Jane. Besides, there is no need for it. I happen to be convinced of my superiority," she countered, with only a veneer of humour.

He found the curve of her lower lip with his teeth and nibbled gently, an imitation of a caress. "Priceless," he murmured against her mouth, before thin hands clasped his shoulders, forcing his spine against the throne and allowing her to entangle him in a kiss that tasted of pomegranate and dizzying heat.

"I take it that I am forgiven," he murmured as Sulpicia's tapered fingers wound carelessly, painfully in his hair, filling his mind with the crimson roar of her desire and providing the spark that lit his own lust.

"Not quite yet. I do invite you to try and earn it," she whispered, and he eagerly slipped his hands beneath the flimsy hem of the shirt she wore, seeking the comfort of her body.

One by one, he undid the row of black buttons, as though each was the lock guarding something sacred, quiet reverence in his touch, though his breath quickened as ghostly fingers brushed constellations against her bared skin. His mate grinned, seeing his distraction and began stroking the arcs of his cheekbones, the angles of his jaw, the hollows and ridges of his throat. The touches themselves were innocent, but her thoughts had strayed into darker waters, flooding his head with images of pale hands on paler skin, his mouth tracing shapes between her thighs, the echoed whispers and moans of shared passion.

"Sulpicia, how can you expect me to maintain any self-control with you doing that?" he demanded, his voice ragged at the edges.

"You've shown more than enough self-control recently, don't you think?" she purred, and this time, she thought of pleasing him with her tongue and mouth, searing pictures into his mind with a joyous laugh.

His eyes turning black and slow, familiar heat coiling in his belly, he ripped her shirt to ribbons, throwing the fabric aside.

"I hope you weren't particularly fond of that," she whispered, raising her head only slightly from Aro's neck, where she had found an old scar to teasingly trace with the venom-sharp tips of her teeth, making him shiver at the barbed touch.

Sulpicia's fingers were fumbling at the buttons of his shirt before her infamously absent patience wore thin and she tore the cloth, sending the buttons skittering, exposing his chest to her eager fingers. Meanwhile, Aro's hands had plucked away the gauzy lace over her breasts, leaving his mate naked to the waist.

One palm found the small of her spine and pressed lightly, forcing her to straighten, and allowing his tongue to catch the silver-shadowed underside of her breast while he traced patterns of his own devising over the insistent, bruise-blue bud of her other nipple with a free hand. She gasped, choking on jumbled syllables, fingers knotted in black hair and arching into his touch.

"Don't stop!" she snarled when he raised his head to meet her eyes. Though his desire was pressed between her hips and he shook every time an errant strand of her hair brushed his shoulder, he nonetheless managed to raise a sardonic eyebrow, as though mocking her for coming undone beneath his fingers so very easily.

"Very well, play your games," she huffed under her breath, a gleam of an idea lighting her eyes. With a vampire's lethal grace, she bowed her head and closed her teeth upon his neck, leaving a starburst impression, while her hand darted beneath his belt in a feathery caress.

Satisfied, she mirrored his victorious smirk as Aro gasped, his head colliding with the throne as involuntary passion flung it back.

The power-play of their seduction complete, Sulpicia and Aro busied their fingers with the remaining cloth, discarding it with something akin to gentleness because Volterra's lord and lady could not return to their rooms naked when the mad, rushed folly of their love was complete.

She perched on her mate lightly, a living statue of marble and snow, while he held her hips, older and wearier but alight, suddenly vivid in the cool darkness. Sulpicia set the rhythm of their coupling, slow and languorous as a cello's cadence until blind want burned away the bonds and pushed her mind to edges and ends. Aro did not let her fall, not yet, because seeing what she saw was half the pleasure for him.

Three times, he pushed her to the brink and held her back, allowing himself to watch her mind. Passion stained her vision a deep, bright crimson, and hints of something shimmering, perhaps love, or at least affection, wove their way through her thoughts. Most of all, power intoxicated her, the undisputed authority she had held beside him for two thousand years. Perhaps she was cold and clever, dangerous and mad.

Perhaps.

Regardless, she was beautiful. His.

Digging her nails into his skin, she snarled his name, a plea for release. Sulpicia's eyes shut, and she arched, sightless and silent against him, because restraint and secrecy were necessities as his hand stroked the seam between her thighs.

Aro's breath quickened to a frenzied staccato, and then there was light and heat and blissful nothing behind his irises.

Several gasping moment of silk-thick serenity passed before Aro tightened a heavy arm around Sulpicia's waist, and she raised her head from where she had let it rest on the cup of his shoulder.

He smiled, as always searching for something to say. Declarations of love were trite, and his mate had no patience for tenderness of any sort. Nonetheless, he ran a hand through the shimmering aureole of her curls and pressed two light kisses upon her eyelids. She rolled her eyes, half in jest, as though reminding him that she only reluctantly endured this sentimentality.

"Yes, yes, I love you as well," she said conversationally. "If you are looking for something to do, perhaps you could think of what I can wear to return to our rooms. My poor shirt died an agonizing death at your hands," she remarked casually, glancing down at her glorious, moon-pale body. "I do not wish to frighten the guards."

"You're not frightening. Just very, very lovely," Aro said as Sulpicia detached herself from his arms and unabashedly began looking for the remnants of her clothes.

"You can be giddy after we're in our chambers with a locked door, Aro. Now, will you help me dress? Please?" she asked, only slightly exasperated.

After a few minutes of confused searching and fiddling with scraps of fabric in the dark, Sulpicia stood up, sweeping disheveled strands away from her face. Once more, she wore Aro's shirt, leaving her mate partially undressed. She gave him a critical stare which dissolved into a grin.

"Let us hope that the corridors are miraculously deserted," she smirked.

"We could run," Aro suggested, and she took him by the hand. Instants later, two pairs of feet pounded on stone, their owners biting back laugher as they tore through halls and galleries with all the enthusiasm of children.

Curled in her mate's arms, beneath pristine sheets, Sulpicia pressed a shivering kiss against Aro's throat.

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"I was hoping for a continuation of what we were doing, if you must ask."

"That is not what I intended. You have a trip to the Amazon to plan, at very least, and we must watch the Cullens somehow, without their seer knowing of our presence. The Romanians will surely be plotting something and-" she paused for a moment, seemingly to listen, then continued, "and Athenodora and Caius are arguing, which means that the two of them will utterly ignore everything and anything we plan."

Despite the attempt at lightness, there was something ominous, crawling and insidious in those words, as though she could foresee an empire's foundations shaking as the balance of power shifted from its ancient foundations in Italy to a wooded peninsula in North America.

Aro was not listening. His mouth had found the delicate bones of her wrists, and that slightly decreased her attention.

With a sigh, Sulpicia slipped a hand onto her mate's shoulder.

"I suppose that can wait until morning."