Work Text:
Jasper knew of the wizard the Eminence had taken in, but he hadn’t yet encountered her in Drake Hall. Rumor had it she spent most of her time in the kitchen or helping the other servants during the day. It was no surprise then that their paths hadn’t crossed; Jasper had been a nobility before he turned and he was in the habit of letting servants go unseen. The closest he’d come was passing a hallway where the wizard must have been standing because he’d caught the rancid whiff of wizard blood.
There were rumors, of course—they were vampires, gossip was in their nature. Hardly anything else quite made their centuries of unlife as entertaining. As drama-loving as his race was, Jasper knew none of the rumors would dare even approach being critical of the Eminence…but that didn’t stop them from being baffled by his decision.
“Having free political influence over the wizards is never a bad move,” someone proclaimed during training. Jasper kept his expression impassive as he dodged around the razor-sharp blades swinging all around him.
What political influence? he questioned inwardly. The way he heard it, the wizard was a powerless runt, betrayed by her house and all its allies. It would be foolish for the Eminence to think she could be used for any political leverage. Jasper held his tongue.
His sparring partner had no such reservations. “Ha!” she laughed, swinging her sword so close to Jasper’s head, he could hear the whistle of it in his ears. “She’s hardly a pawn. It’s almost offensive you think the Eminence would consider using her as a political piece.”
The original vampire—Seamus—scowled. “Then what, pray tell, could he possibly want with her? Go on, I’d love to hear your theory, Astrid.”
Astrid grunted when Jasper landed a hit on her jaw. Not hard enough to wound—Jasper had no interest in moving up a rank. He was already right where he wanted to be. High enough to escape the ridicule of being on the bottom, but not high enough to have any expectations. He preferred to escape notice whenever possible—habits from his years as a rogue, before Killian found him.
“My theory?” Astrid grinned and Jasper was mildly surprised to see blood on her teeth. He must have hit her harder than he’d intended. He was gaining strength. If he wasn’t careful, he’d win. “My theory is that our dear Eminence was bored and wanted a pet.”
Seamus blinked. “He has the dogs already. What does he need with a wizard pet?”
“Now, that,” she said, tripping Jasper, “is something I couldn’t begin to guess.”
Jasper held his hands up in surrender when she placed her leather boot on his neck. Just as he planned, she won.
As he exited the gym, he caught a hint of the wizard’s scent again. The whole thing was curious. Jasper would not venture to assume or question the Eminence’s motives the way Seamus and Astrid readily did, but he did have to wonder…did Killian really have a plan?
It had to be a mistake. It must have been a mistake. As certain as Jasper’s nose was, there was no way that the Eminence smelled like the wizard. Why would he smell like the wizard?
He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he realized he was missing the briefing the First Knight was giving.
“—so we have to treat this as related to the murders. Anyone who hasn’t encountered a mantasp or similar threats should submit themselves for extra training.”
Inwardly, Jasper groaned. Training was integral to being part of the Drake family, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do more of it. The idea of being taken off-guard by a creature he didn’t know precisely how to fight was worse, so he made a note to suck it up and do the extra training.
“We don’t want the resident wizard to show us up in taking down monsters, after all,” the First Knight continued.
The wizard.
The wizard that the Eminence reeked of had apparently won against a mantasp.
Celestina looked like she was about to wrap up the briefing when the Eminence himself stepped forward. “The wizard will be joining normal training from here on out,” was all he said.
Jasper could feel the surprise rippling through the other Drakes at their leader’s words. He made no move to elaborate, simply turning on his heel and moving swiftly and gracefully back into the mansion.
Jasper had been confused about the Eminence’s choice to include the wizard before.
Now he was downright baffled.
The wizard’s name was Hazel, he learned. It would have been hard not to learn her name. She was the talk of the family. From her training, to her brash attitude, to the Eminence’s seeming fixation on her. Jasper was growing concerned that she’d somehow bespelled Killian, if he wasn’t so sure that the Eminence would never have let anything like that happen in the first place. And if somehow, a wizard managed to sink their magic into him, he would break it without batting an eye. A wizard of Hazel’s…caliber certainly would never succeed in overpowering the Eminence.
…Until she did.
Not physically, and of course not magically, but somehow several orders of magnitude worse, she overpowered him emotionally.
“She just asked him,” Astrid repeated in a squeaky voice. “She just said ‘don’t!’ and he listened!”
Jasper sucked on his blood pouch distractedly.
“If it was anyone besides you, Astrid, I would never believe that.” Seamus shook his head. “He listened?”
The straw made a slurping noise when Jasper reached the bottom of the pouch and he no longer had an excuse not to comment. “Not that the Eminence would ever need to worry about looking weak, but…bowing immediately to a dud wizard’s will seems unusually docile of him.”
“‘Docile’ is a good word for it, actually,” Astrid said, a haunted look in her crimson eyes. She spoke in such a hushed voice, Jasper had to rely on his supernatural hearing. “It was like when Leila calls the dogs off a squirrel.”
“Hey, now.” Seamus narrowed his eyes. “I’m as curious about this as the next vampire, but I draw the line at comparing the Eminence to a dog.”
Astrid lowered her eyes, cowed. Seamus outranked them both. “You’re right,” she said. “My apologies.”
Jasper was glad she’d been the one to make the comparison and not him, but he couldn’t help but agree.
What kind of leash did Hazel have on Killian?
The first time Jasper met Hazel in person, he was her assigned opponent. He frowned down at her. She was a diminutive young lady, the last traces of youth still lingering around in the softness of her cheeks and unshadowed determination in her eyes. She had a vibrant, living air about her that set her apart from every other being in the room. No vampire, no matter how freshly turned, shined that bright. It was the boldness of her expression, he thought, that surprised him the most. As he’d heard it, her own house and race betrayed her, leaving her powerless and alone without an ally. That was the only kind of desperation that would send a wizard crawling to the vampires for help.
He thought she looked a bit like a songbird with how small she was and with how she was poised, as if she was ready to take flight at any minute. As a vampire, Japer was used to having a sense of prey when he saw humans, even with the scent of wizard blood heavy in the air. Hazel looked the part. And yet behind the fear, there was a steady defiance.
If Hazel had been unafraid of facing down a deadly, trained vampire, Jasper would have simply suspected she was some form of insane. The fact that she was scared, clear from the shaking line of tension in her muscles and the scent under her blood, but stood strong? Jasper could only admire that. She was brave.
The beginning of their fight was called and Jasper immediately slipped out of her range of sight. She was a wizard, a human. Trained or not, there was no way she would be able to beat him. He couldn’t imagine the kind of attention and shame that would be brought down on him if he lost to the wizard.
The fight lasted only moments. Hazel was short and always on the defensive. Jasper only had to keep his distance long enough to find her weakness, dash in, and exploit it. With a swift kick to the back of Hazel’s knees, she crumpled to the ground and Jasper pinned her, securing his victory.
She made a face. “He was going easy on me,” she complained.
Jasper tilted his head, surprised. He had been. He normally went easy on his opponents during fights. He had no interest in the kind of attention his full power would bring him.
“That’s Jasper for you,” Celestina answered, giving Hazel a tight-lipped smile. Her gaze flicked up to Jasper disapprovingly before she reached down to help Hazel up. “One day,” she said, “you’ll make him need to use his full power. I believe in you.”
It would be shortsighted of Jasper to think that nobody knew he held back in his fights to maintain his position in the family, but hearing the First Knight say it so blatantly made him freeze up.
I’ll advance a few ranks, he decided. Just enough to get back under the radar.
Things were definitely changing. The Eminence took Hazel to Club Luminary as his date. Now that was an action that had room for little other explanation than the Eminence liked Hazel. Not in the way he cared for the Drake family or the good of vampirekind, but in a way that Jasper had never seen from Killian before. He hadn’t even thought he was capable, were Jasper being completely honest with himself. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. The more it became the only thing that made sense.
Killian had nearly killed Rupert, a powerful and well-respected, if surly, member of the family, all because he’d played a little too rough with the wizard. Jasper knew very well that the Eminence would kill someone for betraying him without hesitation. He worked so hard to avoid notice precisely for that reason. It seemed extreme for Killian to consider unnecessary force during training to be a personal betrayal. Unless, of course, he liked Hazel.
With a snort of amusement, Jasper realized his suspicions that the Eminence had been bespelled by the wizard were correct. But not bespelled by magic.
“So, we all agree the Eminence is harboring feelings for the wizard?” he asked, sidling up behind Astrid, who grinned sharply at him.
“Do we agree the sky is blue?” she snickered. “Do you see the way he lights up when he sees her? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“The Eminence,” Seamus said, “in love.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think I’d ever see the day.”
“I didn’t think he was capable!” Jasper admitted in a whisper. “But I was wrong. Do you think he knows?”
Seamus raised an eyebrow. “Knows what?”
“Do you think the Eminence realizes what his feelings are?” Jasper explained.
“What wouldn’t he?” Seamus asked. “He’s a smart man, and it’s clear as day.”
“Yes, to us,” Jasper said. “But think about it, Seamus. He’s probably never been in love before. Does he even know what to do?”
“He did throw her off the top of the building,” Astrid put in. “That’s pretty romantic.”
“To you.” Jasper smacked his forehead. “That’s romantic to you. To any human, that’s…that’s basically the opposite of romance. Do…do you think he meant that as a romantic gesture?” Please tell me he didn’t mean it as a romantic gesture.
Astrid looked thoughtful. “He did seem very pleased with himself about it. He was shockingly smiley.”
The Eminence… smiley.
Jasper pressed his hands to his temples. The Eminence was one of the most powerful vampires. He had political prowess rivaled by no other. His reputation alone could make seasoned warriors cower in fear. But, it seemed, he was hopeless at romance.
…Or maybe he wasn’t. Jasper managed to keep the shock off his face when Killian allowed Hazel to pull him into the pool. It wasn’t what romance movies were made of (n-not that Jasper would know anything about those) but somehow the gentle freedom Killian gave to the wizard was somehow the perfect gesture. He held her against him in his space and looked at her with all the attention of several human lifetimes. Jasper saw her gaze flit nervously over to where he stood with the rest of the guard, but Killian brought her back in, talking so low that Jasper couldn’t hear what he was saying.
He glanced towards the vampire next to him who looked like she was stifling a laugh. He had to look away before he had to hold back a laugh of his own.
Killian had always been a smooth operator. He’d convinced Jasper to join the family from his very successful life as a rogue, after all. Perhaps now that he’d figured out what he wanted from Hazel, romancing her wouldn’t be too far off from his political games.
Well done, your Eminence! Jasper mentally congratulated him.
Hazel launched herself to get away from Killian.
That laugh he’d held back earlier escaped him against his will.
If Jasper had thought things were different before, after Hazel saved Killian from the murderous rogue, it was like stepping into a different universe.
Even Seamus, for all his previous protests about comparing the Eminence to a dog, had to admit that ‘puppydogging’ was an apt term to describe what he was doing. If the Eminence was nowhere to be found, all one had to do was locate the wizard and he was often nearby. Sometimes very nearby. While it was true that Hazel’s blood had stopped reeking like week-old roadkill, it seemed like Killian had taken to…sniffing her. He probably thought he was being subtle. And frankly, with the Drake vampires, subtlety wasn’t necessary, no one would dare call him out on his behavior. To his face, that was.
“He’s smelling her!” Seamus said. “Does he think we don’t notice? Does he think Hazel doesn’t notice?”
“I don’t know!” Astrid despaired. “Are we supposed to act like we don’t know? I heard from Celestina that apparently he just thinks he’s amused by Hazel. He can’t be serious, right?”
Jasper slammed his palms on the table, uncharacteristically bringing attention to himself. “I said it before! He’s never been in love! He doesn’t know.”
“Do we…help him?” Astrid asked, cringing.
“I don’t fancy coming between the Eminence and his wizard,” Jasper said. “And to think…only a matter of months ago, he insisted he got her just to amuse himself. And now look at him! He’s gone and fallen head over heels! He doesn’t even know he’s acting like a fool.”
Seamus tensed. “You’re calling the Eminence—”
“A fool?” Jasper met his gaze challengingly. “Yes. Yes I am. Do you have a better word for this behavior? Look, look! He’s coming now!”
Together they watched Killian, walking side by side with Hazel. He was walking so close to her it was a surprise she wasn’t stumbling. His face was turned towards her and his expression was (at least to vampires who had lived with the man for many decades) nakedly adoring. He seemed to hang off her every word. Jasper knew that even when the wizard was out of the Eminence's sight, he brought her up and seemed to constantly think of her. Even Josh, who seemed as dense to the spectrum of emotions as a rock, recognized that Killian seemed to have misidentified his feelings.
“Does he look amused to you?” Jasper hissed.
Seamus cleared his throat. “You may have a point.”
There was not a good way to describe Killian besides heartbroken. Without Hazel’s presence in the hall, the smiles that had become a normal part of Killian’s repertoire of expressions were conspicuously absent. He had taken to pacing and muttering to himself. Though Jasper was never part of the Hazel surveillance team, he was well aware of the constant stream of vampires stationed outside House Medeis to monitor Hazel’s activities and wellbeing.
He may have thought that most of Killian’s worry stemmed from the growing conflict with the Night Court, had he not been approached by none other than Rupert.
Jasper froze. He did his very best to go unnoticed by high ranking vampires, a habit he’d never broken from his days as a rogue. When Rupert stood in front of him with a sour expression without speaking for a moment, Jasper considered slipping around him and finding Astrid to hide behind. Before he could, Rupert cleared his throat.
“You…like romcoms, don’t you?”
Jasper blinked rapidly. Of all things Rupert of all people could have said to him.
“Rom…coms…?” Jasper repeated as if the words were unfamiliar to him. (As if he didn’t have an embarrassingly large chick flick DVD collection hidden away in his room.)
“Romantic comedies,” Rupert elaborated. “Tropey vapid human movies.”
“Yes, I’m familiar,” Jasper said hotly, feeling somewhat defensive of his guilty pleasure. “Why?”
“I need…I need to research them. It’s very important.”
Jasper felt a grin slide over his lips. “Oh? Has Rupert found a special someone—”
“It’s for the Eminence,” he blurted out, before looking alarmed. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“My lips are sealed,” Jasper said faintly. “I…I may have a small collection of movies that will suit your needs.”
Rupert nodded as if he already knew that. Jasper cursed inwardly. It must have hit the Drake rumor mill at some point. He had been so sure his secret was safe.
Jasper was about 90% confident that Killian had realized the true nature of his own feelings for Hazel, if his actions were anything to go by. It’s not like he talked about girls with the Eminence. (Or anyone, really.) Someone as smart as the Eminence would know there was no other explanation for his fixation on the wizard. And while Jasper nearly cringed himself to death when Hazel met Killian’s romantic gestures of appeasement with a cold fury, the Eminence seemed undeterred. In fact, he seemed happier just to be in Hazel’s presence again. There he was again, pressing in close to her space and breathing deeply as if Hazel were a bouquet of flowers, and behaving as if he would do anything she asked if it would make her happy.
In an odd way, it warmed Jasper’s heart.
What a sight, he thought.
The Eminence, in puppy love.
Jasper stood with Astrid and Seamus watching the happy couple sway gently together on the dance floor. The difference in their height should have been awkward, but instead just made for a very sweet picture. Hazel looked radiant in her dress and Killian looked besotted. Around them, the wizards of House Medeis intermixed with Drake vampires, celebrating the historical union.
It was true that this wedding meant a lot for all supernaturals. It sealed a bond between vampires and wizards in an alliance that nobody could have possibly predicted a year ago. It meant that times were changing for the community. It meant a new era for how wizards used their powers and how vampires treated the supposedly weakest race of magical beings.
To Jasper, who intentionally removed himself from politics of all kinds whenever possible, this wedding meant that most importantly of all, the Eminence was happy. Truly happy in a way that vampires tended not to be. He’d found his one and trusted her with his entire being.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” Seamus said, voice on the waterier side.
“Makes me want to find my one,” Astrid sighed.
Jasper stepped back to allow a few wizard children to run by. They were holding sparklers and shrieking with delight. Looking up, Jasper saw that Hazel and Killian’s dance had finished and the Adept was now using her magic to give out tiny flames to bring the tiny fireworks to life. Her wizard mark bloomed across her face beautifully. She looked up at Killian with a beaming smile, the same mark stark on his pale skin.
The love shared between them was palpable. Killian had called Hazel his sunshine during their ceremony, and Jasper had an idea what he meant. Even seeing the two of them together was enough to make Jasper feel the warmth of their bond.
Jasper turned away, smiling to himself.
‘The wizard is just for amusement,’ the Eminence had once claimed. The very wizard that was now his wife.
It was lucky for everyone, most of all Killian, that he had been so wrong.