Vindice makes ready for an assignation.

(Written for forthegothicheroine's prompt: "Vindici if the Duke and his family were vampires.")

"It's Karen," she says hopelessly in the middle of his doorway like he wouldn't know her a thousand other ways. The whiff of perfume on her, Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb trapped underneath a thick smear of booze, or the sound of her shoes on the hard tile floor. She's drunk already; her breathing is faint and thready. Her face is too hot.

Commanding that a thing be done is a damn sight different from witnessing it in person. Sometimes one needs to be reminded of this.

but boys are made for love, and so are you.

“If there is anything else that can be said of Qinghe Nie,” Lan Xichen recites, helplessly faint, “it is that we take our weddings and our burials very seriously—”

“—For they are, to us, one and the same,” Nie Huaisang finishes for him. “You do remember.”

The world hasn't ended, and Raleigh's pretty sure he's glad. That doesn't mean he's happy about the PPDC wanting them back.

Young Feyd is accustomed to being wanted. Piter is profoundly uninterested.

On Giedi Prime, a captured Paul considers his enemies and his allies.

Meta on the flogging scene from 1x04.

Spóglia: a spoiling, a robbing, a stripping. Also a raiment, a clothing or weede. Also a mans mortall vaile or bodie. Also the skinne that any Serpent or Snake leaues off. Also a coffin of paste made for a Pie, a Tarte, or a Custard. Also any pillage, praie, bootie, prize, reprisall or spoile taken from an enemie. Also the outward skinne of any thing.