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He first notices the strange trail on the beach when he's going for his nightly jog. It's an unnaturally bright lavender, and he wouldn't know what it was if he hadn't knelt down and scooped some sticky sand onto his fingers, bringing it to his nostrils. A deep inhale confirms – blood. Blood from an injured mutant.
He follows the trail.
It's well past midnight and the green moon is starting to set before he finds her. She's tiny, not much bigger than an adolescent, but the way her ear fins flare out from her skull indicate a seadweller adult. Usually, he doesn't like seadwellers, and he hates mutants even more, but she looks so helpless, curled up in the foliage bordering the beach, leaking that bright lavender blood, small heftsacks rising and falling shallowly with each unconscious breath. From the multitude of wounds, it looks like Her Imperious Condescension ordered the hit on this little mutant personally. It's a righteous miracle that she survived such an order from the Empress, and the idea that her survival would be even the smallest of 'fuck you' to the fishbitch makes him pick her up with surprising gentleness. He's careful to cradle her head as it lolls back across his arm and he raises his eyebrows in surprise at how cold she is – she's definitely off spectrum, with a body temperature even colder than fuchsiabloods, but somehow the heresy of her existence makes him even more determined to nurse her back to health.
He barely gets back to his hive in time before sunrise.
He lays her down in a pile of his softest blankets and pillows (he hasn't been able to fit in the largest recuperacoon available for sweeps and sweeps and so does not have one, he regrets not keeping the one he had in his wigglerhood) and finds grubpaste in the back of a cupboard in the nutriblock. He waters it down with salt water so she won't dry out and slowly spoonfeeds it to her unconscious form, massaging her throat to help her swallow.
He can't get over how small she is, with soft eyelashes and a petite frame that's obviously missed too many meals and modest horns that extend straight up, regal and deadly but somehow adding to the overall look of vulnerability. Her straight black hair is cut in a neat bob, and her clothes are ripped and torn but obviously just a plain seadweller wetsuit, with holes cut on either side for the lavender gills lining her ribs, delicate fronds on the edges still in the open air, and her symbol in hemoanonymous grey (XIII), and it stirs strange emotions in his bloodpusher, emotions that want to track down those who bright that gorgeous miracle coloured blood to the surface
Is this what pale feels like?
Soon enough, his schedule revolves around the small precious seadwelling miracle that won't wake up. He feeds her first thing in the evening, has a meeting with the Subjuglators that he's only half there for, thinking about the girl upstairs in his respiteblock, dismissing his cronies early to return to her and feed her again in the aftermidnight. Then he sits and he talks to her, about Altnerian politics and how he hates answering to Her Imperious Condescension and how he wants her to wake up.
Night five, and she's still asleep. He kills two Subjugulators out of frustration.
Night six, and she's awake when he comes back from his nightly meeting with the Subjugglators. Her eyes are wide and filled in with lavender, and she's still too weak to get up and abscond, although it's obvious she wants to.
“Are you going to cull me now?” she asks steadily, and her voice is melodic and woven from the messiahs' most precious miracles.
“No,” he replies, and he holds out the tin of grubpaste to her. “Eat.”
She attempts to take the food, but her fingers are too stiff and clumsy and she cannot hold it, so he ends up feeding her instead.
“I'm the Grand Highblood,” he tells her when she's finished. “You're safe with me.”
“Thank you,” says his miracle. “I am Rhozse Lalond.”
No being has ever been more perfect.
Slowly, with his help, Rhozse begins to regain her strength. Her lacerations heal into thin lavender lines, and she takes unsteady steps from her pile, holding his hands for balance like a newly pupated wiggler. His bloodpusher swells every time she brushes cold skin against his, and her smile is wide and full of razor sharp needles carefully wrapped in translucent enamel and it makes him feel warm and perfectly utterly safe.
One night he turns away all of his Subjugulators and instead spends the entire night with Rhozse, who is still too weak to walk long distances, so he picks her up and cradles her in his arms as he shows her his entrance room, still set up for the nightly Subjugulator meeting, with its walls painted with the hemospectrum and his throne made of bone.
She digs her fangs into her palm and leaves a handprint of bright lavender on the right handrest of his throne, and the next night his Subjugulators cannot help but wonder what it is on his throne that his fingers keep tracing so delicately.
“Rhozse, I have a surprise,” he calls up one night after the last mindless underling has left.
She descends the stairs and again he is taken away with how lovely she is, deadly and delicate wrapped up into one miraculous existence.
“Yes?” she asks, and he leads her to the basement, where he can only go three steps before the sea water he's flooded it with laps at his ankles.
The way her face lights up is worth the work it took.
She leans towards him and wraps her arms around his waist, her face pressed to his stomach and her horns brushing his ribs as she hugs him tight, wordless in ecstatic gratitude.
“This is perfect,” she says, and his face glows purple underneath his white greasepaint.
“It was nothing,” he counters, and she pull back to look at him, arms still locked around him.
“Are you pale for me?” she asks, and instead of answering, he scoops her up and presses the palest of kisses to her forehead, nuzzling her hair between her horns. She laughs that musical miracle laugh, not minding the streaks of white his nose leaves on the orange keratin of her horns, and strokes his cheek in a gentle pap. Nothing has ever felt better.
“Pale for you as well, Highblood,” she returns, nuzzling against his collarbone.
He will protect her from the Condesce's armies, and she will protect him from his own murderous rages.
He found serendipity at the end of a mutant blood trail.