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Ev
Basic Information
Race: 3/4 Dhemlanese, 1/4 Dena Nehelian
Age: 845 (25)
Caste: Warlord Prince
Nicknames: Ev
Sexuality: Bisexual
Social Status: Aristocrat
Playby: Hayden Christensen
Creator: Nemaisare


Jewels & Craft
Birthright Jewel: Red (53)
Offering Jewel: Grey (65)
Strengths: Everett has a fairly one track knowledge of Craft, much of what he knows how to do well involves death or pain and then death. Just like his brother, he has a firm grasp of himself and his mind and psychic Craft. Seduction is as simple as breathing and compulsion spells are almost as easy for him to set. He is also rather practiced at gauging a person through their psychic scent and at using that scent to find them again by spreading his search out. He has learned how to shield himself and others, with both aural, psychic and sight shields quite well both in defense and to keep some things a secret.

Everett has also, out of necessity and because he wished to balance his knowledge, taught himself how to heal. He isn’t the greatest healer one could ever come across, but he can slow bleeding and brew a few tonics and knit bones or skin together. And he has a book about healing! He can also do basic Craft.

Weaknesses: Almost anything that is slightly more advanced than vanishing, calling in and lifting objects is something that Ev just might have trouble with. This is something that irritates him a great deal, but he has yet to find the courage to humiliate himself by asking for training. After all, someone his age surely shouldn’t need help with something so simple. He can’t air walk, can only just create tongues of witchfire and has horribly spotty success with his witchlights. He can’t pass through objects and can’t even pass other objects through each other. He never really had the chance to practice after his father and Isaiah left. And some of the things his father taught him, he can only remember in the vaguest, most irritating way.


Personality

Everett is a man who trusts only insofar as to expect that no one will ever behave as he expects them to. Whether he expects them to be nice or cruel, it doesn’t matter. They will behave differently than what he expects. Oh, he doesn’t always expect a nice person to suddenly become evil, but well, one never knows. And he won’t be surprised when it happens. Not anymore. He doesn’t trust anyone beyond that, and keeps his secrets secret and his guard up even when alone. He tries not to let his distrust show too obviously, but it is very nearly impossible to keep entirely hidden. And it stains every encounter he has with anyone.

He is not a kind person, and gives the impression of caring only just enough that his attention isn’t something most people want. It isn’t that he is needlessly cruel, or even really harmful, it is merely that once he notices someone, he watches them very closely. Not always to protect them, but sometimes to protect others from them, whether or not that protection is a needed, necessary or good thing. And that can be where the harm comes from, because that person could very well be trying to help in the grander scheme of things. Generally, Everett doesn’t do this any more, and when he does it is at someone else’s orders. He doesn’t enjoy being the one on the wrong side of things, but does them because he must and because he is serving the wrong Queen. Knowing this makes him defensive. And pushing him on the subject will snap the leash he has on his temper very quickly.

Over the years, he has come to realize that feeling anything except anger ends up leaving him, or someone he might like, hurt. So Everett tries not to feel too much and, though it doesn’t necessarily work that well, he has learned to push those emotions aside or even to pretend that they aren’t there. The more he likes someone the harder it becomes and the less he actually seems to like them. But if it means keeping them safe, or out of his secrets, then he will do so. This pushing away of emotion has made it harder for Everett to accept feeling regret or any sort of guilt and, once again, he tends to resort to anger to make it go away.

Truthfully, this resorting to being angry to make people drop a subject or decide not to even go there can seem an awful lot like a temper tantrum. There is, however, one major difference that should always be remembered. Everett is not a mere child who might flail his fists about and yell loudly when he gets upset, when he has a temper tantrum, people could start dying very quickly and mostly painfully. And he never flails his fists. Another truth is that Everett has referred to them as temper tantrums himself, and does recognize that they are a danger to people who don’t mean any harm. But he is not going to admit it to anyone except himself. Being angry makes him dangerous, and being dangerous kept him safe. While his mother was alive…

Right now, it is the only way he knows how to react and habit has become unexpectedly comforting. He is more than a little afraid to try feeling again and, of course, is too proud to admit that he wants to change, he’s just scared to. He also doesn’t really know how to react to the sudden fall of the old Territory Queen and so is merely continuing as he always has, trying to figure out where he might fit into everything.

Over the years, Everett has gained quite the cynical view of things and a rather sorry sense of humour. What makes him laugh is probably something that would depress or anger another. It isn’t that he is crazy, merely that he can’t react any other way. Giving in to despair would ruin him and he already gives in to anger far too often to do it even more. However, just because he is smiling or laughing doesn’t mean that he is pleased and he could very well be rising to the killing edge. Small, inconsequential things can set him off, sometimes they are natural, such as the approach of strange Warlord Prince, or a perceived threat that could be nothing actually important. At other times, they could be nothing but a joke, the wrong word used or a laugh that rubs him the wrong way. There isn’t really a lot of warning when he gets pushed too far.


History

Everett’s parents were not lovers before they came together as Queen and Consort. In fact, Everett has sometimes wondered if they ever were lovers, but then, of course, he and his brother would not exist and his father wouldn’t have been very good in his role. Still, it can seem rather amazing to him at times. His father must have known a different woman. That is the only reason he can see for why the man did what he did. There was no love, that he could ever tell, to be lost between his parents, even if they looked good together.

He never really noticed that lack when they were together, he was too young at the time. And it’s only looking back now that he sees what was missing. Still, it seemed a normal enough family when he and Isaiah were born. Their father looking after them and instilled in them from a very young age the knowledge of Protocol and service and all those responsibilities that came from being Blood. Their mother was a Queen who looked after the land and the people she governed and if she was often too busy or tired to play with them for long, well, that was because she was a Queen and they should support her and be proud of her.

Of course, the support didn’t always come in the form of a helping hand or an understanding smile. The twins were only boys after all, and boys will be boys. Sometimes, they helped her by being a bit too rambunctious for the calm of the Court and making her laugh. And she did laugh, his mother did. Everett remembers the sound as something that was beautiful and desirous. He liked hearing his mother laugh.

The changes that broke their family apart may have been there for longer than he realized, but they seemed small to him and he couldn’t understand why they occurred. Their mother may have struck them a time or two, but wasn’t it as their father had said? They were to help her, not cause her grief and maybe they’d chosen the wrong time to try to make her laugh again, or hadn’t listened when she’d said she was busy. True, he isn’t sure if he can remember her giving much warning before she hit them much of the time, but surely, he had only misread the signals. Those were the arguments in his mind after he and his brother emerged from their Birthright Ceremony each with a Red Jewel. Those were the arguments he couldn’t quite manage to put into words to make his father and brother understand why he felt he had to stay when Andrew decided to leave.

He had seen the small cruelties and the slightly larger ones, but he couldn’t reconcile that with the mother he believed was still there somewhere. The one who had once sung him and Isaiah to sleep. Everett, in his youth and stubborn beliefs, had thought that if he stayed, if he helped his mother with her duties, then maybe he could rid her of whatever stress was making her so harsh. Fool that he was, he believed that so strongly that when Isaiah and Andrew left without him, in the middle of the night, he felt that they had betrayed Aveline’s trust. Fool that he was, it took him several years to see that he’d been wrong. But by then, he had another reason to see that leaving as a sort of abandonment. They should have tried harder to take him with them. And they should have gone farther away…

That night, the first night he slept alone, his mother came in and soothed away his fears and worries and his anger. She said that he should not care if his father and brother had left, she didn’t. She was only proud of him for the dark Jewel he had earned and happy he had stayed, and for that, she would show him and teach him things that his brother would never get to learn. Oh, how that young Everett clung to high hopes and fantasies of showing Isaiah, of proving that they’d given up too soon. And oh how he lost those hopes and dreams in one, painful, never-ending night. His mother didn’t reveal herself to him immediately. She was too smart for that, she wanted him to stay too badly. She saw him as a way to gain more power for herself. And he gave it to her. Young as he was, loving her as he did, Everett didn’t question her when she asked him for help. At first it was just errands, something simple, something easy for a mother to entrust her son with. Letters to the families in her district, parcels picked up or delivered, words relayed and small spells made.

It wasn’t until he grew curious enough to read one of the letters she gave him that he learned why people had begun to dislike seeing him about. It was a letter written in his mother’s unmistakable handwriting, telling the woman he’d given it to that her debt was overdue and her son would be the interest if she didn’t pay by tomorrow, noon. And he only read it because the woman, someone he knew, threw it back in his face. Of course, Everett went straight to his mother to ask for an explanation, certain that she would give him an acceptable reason for threatening the woman’s son with slavery. She didn’t like that he’d read something he wasn’t supposed to, and she struck him harder than before across the face and told him to apologize. When he did, she took him in her arms and said that some things had to be, and it was unfortunate, but that was the way of things. But she didn’t apologize and she certainly didn’t stop. He saw that woman’s son in chains two days later.

That was when he started noticing that things weren’t going the way he had thought they would. She was still accepting the use of slaves, for one, in fact, she seemed to enjoy the profits more than she ought to, given that they had come from the very lives of other people. She treated those males of her Court with a contempt that he hadn’t seen before, though that was probably only because he hadn’t thought to look for it. And if anyone tried to voice an objection, she scorned them or, if the person persisted, then they vanished. And she began to show him, just as she had promised, exactly what it was she wanted of him.

The Craft she showed him was dangerous, but Everett was still child enough to want to please his mother. Even if what he was doing didn’t really make sense. So he learned and he practiced and when she asked him to, he stood at her side and used that Craft on more than a few of the people who came to see her. Compulsion spells and fear spells and even a ghostly touch that distracted far too many. That one was fun, and Everett did enjoy the little starts and twitches from the people he poked or prodded. But few of them ever suspected the still growing youth who stood at his mother’s side, looking perfectly uninterested in what his mother, or anyone else, had to say. The truth was that he was concentrating on the spells and keeping his focus on his mother, who would tell him, through different movements, what she needed from him next. And it wasn’t all fun and games, if he messed up, he would be punished for it. Though it made Aveline so sad when he had to be hurt, but her son must be capable, and he needed to learn these things well. The pain would help him remember next time. The fool believed her.

Until she came to him one day with a special gift. Something that she hoped he would like. Then, he was taken to a room where a girl was tied and told to do with her as he saw fit. Well, Everett wasn’t particularly interested in doing anything with the girl. She had a nice face and was certainly prettier than plain, but he didn’t know her and he was still fool enough to believe that he had a choice in the matter. So, after staring at her for awhile, he just walked away. He had other things to do. Aveline let him go and he assumed she let the girl go free since he didn’t want to play with her. But two days later, his mother, displeased with his lack of initiative, took him by the ear, he, who was almost as taller than she was, and dragged him through the hallways back to the room, where the girl was still tied up, and told him very clearly what she wanted him to do. He couldn’t avoid the obvious any longer.

And it was too late to leave…

Everett refused to do anything to the girl, though he understood what was being asked of him this time. And though he might have crumpled beneath his mother’s demands, his cheeks burned with the humiliation of being treated like a child, and he was angry that she expected him to ‘break the girl in’. That was the day he learned the real truth about his mother, the day every single last one of those tightly held hopes burned to ash in his mouth and left him numb. She didn’t take his refusals very well, and ordered him beaten and whipped, after which, she made him watch while her guards had their way with the girl. Then, wiping the tears gently from his cheeks, she told him about Isaiah and his father and she warned him that if he ever disappointed her so severely again, his brother would die. After what he had just seen, Everett believed her capable of anything.

He succumbed to her wishes and, though he tried more than once to save some small part of himself by refusing, she had only to say one name and he would give in. Those were the years when he began to learn about anger and how it could make his life easier. It shoved aside his shame and fear and disgust and gave him the strength he needed to make sure that his mother never went through with her threat. He also learned how to read the rhythms of a Court and how to remain alert and notice the small signs that would warn him of what might come next. And, because she was all he had, even though his love had become a strangely twisted sort of hate, he kept her alive and safe when others sought to be rid of her. He opened himself to her with a vicious, mad trust and proved again and again that he was her son and that blood is stronger than morality.

His last memories of Dhemlan are fragmented blurs of violence, blood, lust and a fearful soul tearing agony. He made the mistake of loving a young Healer, one who showed him a way to balance the destruction he could cause and who brought to the surface those feelings he had been trying to suppress. That was the absolutely last time he refused his mother. She ordered him to forget her, but he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, so, the next time he suffered from the rut, Aveline locked him in with the woman and he destroyed her because she was afraid and wouldn’t submit. Everett came close to killing his mother when he came back to himself, but the shock and the still-lingering threat of Isaiah’s death handicapped him enough to allow her guards to subdue him and then to give him the worst beating he had ever received.

When he came back to consciousness, he was no longer in Dhemlan. And he no longer belonged to himself. While his brother lived and his mother was capable of threatening anything he held dear, Everett was not going to fight back. Somehow, while he wasn’t paying attention, his mother had returned to the place of her birth at the request of the Dhemlan Territory Queen and had managed to raise her own station to that of a Province Queen. Which he thought was a rather foolish thing for anyone to do, until he met the Territory Queen. Well, she fit right in with who he supposed would willingly deal with his mother. She was the one who suggested a Ring of Obedience and who encouraged Aveline to make use of it. Luckily only after he earned his Grey Jewels.

He made his Offering to the Darkness very soon after the move to Paxton and so, had slightly less of a reputation there than he’d had back in Dhemlan, since he’d been known outside the Territory by his Red Jewel rather than by his connection with a woman who only ruled a District. In Dena Nehele he was Everett Devereaux, son of the Paxton ruler Aveline and he was Grey Jeweled. Only those members of the Court who had come with them really knew much about him and few others made the connection. But the Queens who came by to welcome their new sister and emphasize their connection to Sophia Kyran certainly approved of Aveline’s well trained son. It galled him that the Queens, and much of their Courts, seemed to think he was some sort of prized pet, but he wasn’t going to fight back.

For two hundred years, while news of the revolt in his homeland waxed and waned and his mother set him up as the Steward of her Court, Everett acted only on his mother’s whims and kept her pleased with him, only occasionally messing up severely enough to earn a taste from the Ring of Obedience. Generally when he became too violent or stepped on her toes by giving an order she hadn’t agreed to. Although she agreed with most of his decisions and rarely gave him a counter-order when he brought his work before her for approval. Still, being a little more patient was not so big a price to pay to keep his mother happy. But he couldn’t do anything about being angry and didn’t even bother trying.

Years later, as Aveline lay, weak and wrinkled on her bed, Everett sat beside her and tried to summon up some feeling for the sight before him. All he managed was relief. She would finally leave and he could search for his brother and father and he could forget all of this, he would leave it behind and never again go over the memories that threatened his peaceful acceptance of all this old hag had made of him. His mother was dying, and he was grateful…

So, because he never wanted to remember the time between, Everett became that young boy one more time and he held his mother’s hand gently while she struggled to breathe and slowly began to fade away. He sat quietly and waited, with the patience she had taught him to find. A few more moments would be of little import and while she could not stop him, he would remember her as he’d always wanted to remember her. A kind woman who had once laughed when he slid down the banister into her arms.

And so he did remember her, until a weak mental thread informed him that his brother was dead. That his brother had lost his usefulness the day he’d allowed her to put the Ring of Obedience on him. Then her wrist snapped and he held a broken hand, dripping red and screaming, though that must have been Aveline making the noise, but he can’t remember. All he remembers is rage and grief and screaming. He killed the Healer who tried to stop him and the man who tried to protect her and when he came back to himself, he’d locked the door and there was only himself and three corpses, and through the pain that twisted her expression, his mother was smiling. Even dying she had taken from him. Everett removed the command ring from the hand he’d pulled off her arm and removed the Ring of Obedience as well, then, he laid all three items on his mother’s chest and left the room.

He has been living quietly out of the way ever since, trying to bring his life into some semblance of order. But without anything to do, and the new Queen certainly has no wish to request his presence in her Court, he is finding that quite difficult.


Current Plot
Everett is Nikole D'Aubergine's Steward and is trying to settle into the Court as well as recover some equilibrium. He is also trying to reconcile with his brother.


Current Relationships
Isaiah Sullivan (Brother) - Red to Black Jeweled Warlord Prince

Nikole D'Aubergine (Queen) - Red to Black Jeweled Black Widow Healer Queen
FIRST & LAST NAME (RELATIONSHIP) - BR to OFF Jeweled CASTE

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