[Requiem] Heart of Ice

[autumn-skald.livejournal.com]

I have finally finished a story about the beginnings of Valentina, I thought that the incident which led to her coming to the attention of her Sire was the best choice for the Beginnings thing :)

There are still some ideas for other characters I am trying to get done as well so hopefully you may see those soon as well!



I do not know who might be reading this. Perhaps someone of my line has found my writings and decoded them, perhaps it is you, Michael, who are reading this. In many ways I expect it to be you, that brain of yours always has appreciated a good puzzle.

But anyway, all of that is somewhat irrelevant to the story I am trying to tell. I am writing about how I came to be what I am now, a story which starts before my actual Embrace as how I came to my Sire’s attention is as important as the event itself.

I was not born Valentina, my birth name was Sophia and it was by that name that I became one of the most pre-eminent Courtesans in Venice. I was beautiful, intelligent, knowledgeable and talented. There were few men in Venice I could not have if I wanted to and by the time I was 19 I had blackmail information over most of the influential figures in the city.

That was also when he caught my attention. He was young, handsome, rich and influential, not to mention devious and backhanded. I wanted him from the moment I first saw him and I was determined to have him. Getting him to chase me wasn’t difficult, I could get pretty much any man I wanted to lust after me, all it took was getting an idea of what they most wanted in a woman and becoming whatever that was. So it was no different with him and I did manage to get him into my bed. Of course I then proceeded to do the stupidest thing I ever did in my whole life, I fell in love.

I cannot really recall now what it was exactly that caused my fall, but I do vaguely remember considering the most important thing in the world to me. Slowly I found myself sharing secrets with him, telling him more than I should have and not even charging him for the nights he spent in my arms. I wanted to help him, to raise his status as high as I could and so I bent all my skills to doing so.

For a while I was the happiest I had ever been in my life. I was in love and I believed that he felt the same way. Whilst we would never be able to marry I didn’t care about that, whoever he married would be a trophy, someone to bear his children and be ignored whilst I walked by his side and whispered in his ear. I would not have changed places to be his wife for anything in the world.

But things are rarely what they seem and love… love is a vile drug that ruins lives, something that should be rooted out and destroyed before it infects your heart and utterly annihilates you. This was a lesson I would learn in the most painful way possible.

My state of bliss was short-lived though, for my own part I suspected nothing was amiss, my mind was full of plotting how I would help my lover to rise high and by doing so raise myself along with him. I would of course remain his lover and confident, the person who stood behind him and whispered advice in his ear. It was the sort of thing most of us dreamed of doing, those of us with political inclinations anyway. I never dreamed that the truth was far from what I imagined.

It was one of my former lovers who brought it to my attention, he had long been in love with me and when he found out he could not help but use the information to try and win back my affections. He came to me and told me that he had heard tell that I was being used, that my lover was only interested in using my knowledge and connections to improve his position and that when he was done he would simply have me killed to remove any loose ends and to prevent me from taking revenge on him for his actions.

I was shocked and at first I refused to believe it, I thought that he was doing this out of spite and petty revenge, trying to win me back by feeding me lies about the man I loved. He offered to prove it and being what I am I could hardly ignore his words if there was to be proof of them. He told me that he knew where he held his meetings and that he would take me there so I could listen in myself without anyone being any the wiser.

So I went and I listened to him plotting his rise to power, his eyes on the Doge’s throne no less. He bragged about the information he had received from me and that he had turned one of Venice’s best Courtesans into his personal information source. He was proud of the fact that he had managed to get my heart and utterly callous in regards to what he intended once he ran out of use for me.

My heart grew cold there. I do not tend to do wild rages, my anger burns slow and it burns long. I decided that I would beat him at his own game so I began to plant rumours about him around Venice, small things that in and of themselves would not bring about his ruin, but would certainly cause small amounts of doubt to creep into people’s minds about him.

I also went on an information gathering spree to get everything I could on him, without him ever realising for a moment that I was anything other than completely and totally in love with him. And so it was I found that he had another mistress, an unimportant woman in many respects but she was also married and the man she was married to had something of a reputation as being a ruthless duellist.

So I set about carefully seducing the duellist and then managed to arrange for him to find out about his wife’s illicit love affair. His temper knew no bounds and it took no time at all before a duel was announced. Now the thing about this particular duellist was that whilst he was an excellent duellist who had never lost a fight, it was also suspected that he had a tendency to cheat. Most of his opponents faced him feeling not quite at their best due to judicious application of poison ahead of the match.

I made sure to be at the match, which was not entirely unexpected of me since most of Venice knew that we were lovers. As such I managed to get a front row seat, as it were, for his demise. The duellist played with him nicely, dancing away from every hit whilst cutting him again and again until his body was covered in small cuts, all of which were trickling blood down his body and into his eyes. He made the whole thing some sort of exquisite torture before finally giving a blow which would take his life, though not immediately.

Most people expected me to be heartbroken I am sure, to throw myself weeping on him. But I did not, I watched for a moment and eventually wandered over to where he lay dying before bending down and whispering “No one uses me and lives” in his ear. It was satisfying to know that at the end he knew all too well who was responsible for bringing about his downfall.

Afterwards, when I was alone, I cried for a whole night. It felt as though my heart had been torn out of my body. But when the weeping was done with a calm descended over me and I swore to myself then that I would never allow anyone to ever wield such power over me again.

Not too long after that I was approached by Enrico Foscari, he had been very impressed with what I had done as well as the abilities I had displayed before that. He offered me eternal youth and beauty as well as power like I had never known before. I knew what he offered would damn me utterly, but I believed that I had already done that myself and what he would give me was more than worth the price of my mortal soul, something that was already ruined beyond repair.

In all the years that followed I have no regrets about either of those choices. Without this life I would have died in Venice, probably a broken and poor woman with little to recommend her when her beauty faded away. Instead I have watched centuries passed, held the power of Prince and can ruin emotions with words alone. This is the life I chose and if given the choice all over again I would make it willingly.