{"id":2676,"date":"2013-11-07T17:38:30","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T21:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.childrenofdarkness.com\/?p=2676"},"modified":"2016-04-09T01:38:54","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T01:38:54","slug":"finally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/finally\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally… a love that inspires, that stimulates, that lasts."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Click<\/a>Something happened to me.\u00a0 Something I did not expect, but I knew the moment I\u00a0saw her.\u00a0 She walked into the bar and took a seat at table behind us.\u00a0 Her hair, red as fire, her beauty as deep as the ocean, eyes as black as my own.\u00a0 Her name… Merida.<\/p>\n

I have loved this instantly, this deeply before… but in over 500 years, it has happened only twice.\u00a0 Once, my dear Marius… my maker, my teacher, my most poignant heart break.\u00a0 I had fallen in love with him as a young mortal boy.\u00a0 He had taken me under his tutelage, showing me how to master my art.\u00a0 As I got older, the\u00a0love I felt was finally returned and we\u00a0became lovers. Together we ruled Venice, but he denied me the right to the\u00a0Dark Gift that he only possessed. As much as I begged him to turn me into a vampire, he’d refuse.\u00a0 My longing to be with him forever\u00a0only served to\u00a0draw a rift between us.\u00a0 He kept his promise to himself, never turning me… until tragedy struck.\u00a0 Our Venetian home raided, I was\u00a0poisoned and left to die a slow agonizing death.\u00a0 These vampires wanted Marius to suffer deeply and watch me die or be forced to turn me.\u00a0 As expected, at the brink of death, Marius had no other choice.\u00a0 He made me vampire. I was finally the vampire I had always wanted to be. The attacks kept coming, and at one point they took me hostage ripping me away from Marius and setting the entire place on fire, hoping he’d burn.\u00a0 But he did not.\u00a0\u00a0It was then that he sought out Bianca Solderini,\u00a0secretly the\u00a0Madame\u00a0of a brothel and publically a Contessa in Venice, turning her in order to heal and regroup.\u00a0 But, instead of looking for me… Marius went off looking for Pandora. It was then I realized,\u00a0 it wasn’t me he wanted to spend forever with.<\/p>\n

Then, Louis…\u00a0Louis de Point du\u00a0Lac.\u00a0 He happened upon the Theatre de Vampyres that I was somewhat in charge of in Paris, with the young child vampire Claudia.\u00a0 I knew immediately the clan would want to destroy her.\u00a0 And in doing so,\u00a0it too would destroy Louis.\u00a0 I couldn’t save her, but him I could request to be spared.\u00a0 The coven agreed but told me they would imprison him in a box for all his days for not only the murder of Lestat de Lioncourt, but creating a child vampire, both of which were against our laws.\u00a0 It was then that Lestat came… begging to have Louis set free.\u00a0 But I knew if we set him free, Lestat would reclaim him.\u00a0 I wanted him for myself and would stop at nothing to do so. So I denied him.\u00a0 Because one of the sins against Louis was proven to be false,\u00a0 I was able to convince the coven to set him free.\u00a0 Finally they let me dig him out. They said, only I could do it. I knew once free, he’d seek revenge against the coven for the loss of his daughter and the new vampire Madeline.\u00a0 But I urged him to breathe, to save it for another day.\u00a0 I had thought that since he had created a replacement for himself in Madeline for Claudia, that he had every intention to stay with me.\u00a0 That he loved me.\u00a0 But that was not case and he blamed me for their loss, just the same.\u00a0 The rejection I felt was the single most devastating time of my life, of which sent me spiraling, lost, abandoned.\u00a0 It made me realize the errors of my ways; it made look for Marius. It brought me home, but I remained broken. Unwhole if that’s a word.<\/p>\n

Bianca, late in life became my adoring wife.\u00a0\u00a0She was the one to help me out of the deepest despair for my unrequited love for Louis.\u00a0 It is why I married her, because I knew… I just knew… she would always have my back.\u00a0 She is someone that I count on, can depend on, but while she occupies a small piece of my heart, it is a love between best friends.\u00a0She feels the same way.\u00a0 Perhaps it is because of the union that we share as progeny of Marius. Marius too broke her heart, we shared that as well. Because of this I sought to tie myself to her, and did so, both us willing to do so.\u00a0 But we share an understanding,\u00a0 an openness to one day experiencing the love that has eluded us both.\u00a0 I knew she would be happy for me if I should ever find it, and she would not deny me.<\/p>\n

\"meridas-ring-set\"So today, I went with her to Earth, back to our home town of Venice.\u00a0\u00a0 There we sought the finest jewelers to design her a custom ring for our engagement.\u00a0 With a hope in my heart that Merida would join us; \u00a0join our house as a Romanus. Bianca is overjoyed at the prospect\u00a0of having a sister wife; it\u00a0will certainly help to heal her own despairs and loneliness. She encouraged me to wear a ring myself.\u00a0 Something I had not done since the first few decades of our marriage.\u00a0 She too no longer wears hers.\u00a0But officially I had to file a petition for a plural marriage with Marius and Pandora. Bianca happily signed in agreement. \u00a0Now the hard part will be doing the right thing with her maker, Va’lis and asking for her hand in marriage. Other than that, everything is set now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All I need is a YES!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

– Armand<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Something happened to me.\u00a0 Something I did not expect, but I knew the moment I\u00a0saw her.\u00a0 She walked into the bar and took a seat at table behind us.\u00a0 Her hair, red as fire, her beauty as deep as the ocean, eyes as black as my own.\u00a0 Her name… Merida.","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,4],"tags":[82,138,176],"class_list":["post-2676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armand-de-romanus","category-character-journals","tag-armands-story","tag-merida-douglas","tag-vamps-lair","infinite-scroll-item","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6034,"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions\/6034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlp-guild.com\/uo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}