With the sort of nearly perfect stillness that could only come from one who had left breathing behind long ago, Murial du Sang sat nearly motionless in the shadowy expanse of her bedroom, perched on a decadently soft chair lined in velvet as she stared unblinkingly into the mirror of her vanity, green eyes flashing like emeralds in the half light as she carefully outlined them with a cosmetic pencil. More than one person over the decades had told her that she had no need to paint her face, pointing out with a sort of disbelieving awe that her marble pale skin was absolutely perfect and free from blemishes, but she persisted regardless. While it was true that there was a perfection to her body that was almost unnatural, precisely because it was unnatural, old habits died hard and besides that she had found that a bit of deftly applied makeup could transform her beauty into something truly striking. Becoming a vampire had done far more than simply kill her and freeze her age at that exact moment. As the Blood had overtaken her, remade her, it had changed her in ways both gross and subtle. The redhead could admit that she had always been proud of her appearance, but the Embrace had taken it to all new levels. Evened out imperfections, smoothed away scars and amplified the lithe grace she had long cultivated as a dancer into a sort of predatory allure that was both enticing and frightening, a siren song that drew people to her and melted hearts with a smile. More than one of her kind had compared the effect to the colorful scales of a venomous snake, a display that lured the eye even if you knew it was dangerous. Perhaps because you knew it was dangerous. Even more than the strength to rip a door off its hinges, or the speed to cross a room in the blink of an eye, Murial considered that predatory charisma to be the greatest of her bloodline’s gifts and by far her most dangerous weapon. Other lines might possess far more fantastical powers, and indeed she had met vampires capable of some truly astonishing feats such as transforming into animals or vanishing from sight or even clouding the senses with illusions, but as impressive as those demonstrations had been she would not trade her own subtle gifts for anything in the world. Twisting your flesh into alien forms or solidifying your blood into blades of incomparable sharpness were certainly interesting tricks, but not nearly so useful, especially if you did not wish to advertise your nature to the world.
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