by Rachel Jonas
I stared, not because I hadn’t seen flashes here and there on our makeshift television. I stared because I was struck with a feeling as I tilted my head back to take in the breadth of it—it’s brick façade and towers stories high, a castle on a stretch of land set apart from the Capitol’s urban hustle and bustle.
A wave of panic crept up my spine and I would have torn at the door to escape if I thought there was somewhere to go, but … there wasn’t. I was, literally, right in the depths of the lion’s den. Inside the giant of brick and mortar, tyrants dwelled, the real-life monsters.
How in the world did I let this happen?
We continued to creep along the road past the main estate; those sets of headlights behind us never letting too much distance grow between them and us. Eventually, our drive ended in front of a sprawling manor. This one beautiful and foreboding, but paling in comparison to the size of the first. That one was nothing short of a castle.
The car locks disengaged, and my heart raced.
A guard approached from the right to open Julian’s door and he stepped out instantly. I watched him, how despite tonight being a disaster, he still maintained a sense of regality. A few words passed between he and the guard, and I assumed they discussed what was to be done with me for the night. I’d now seen the towers for myself, and could only imagine how terrifying the cells inside them would be.
I guessed I’d find out soon enough.
But then, something strange happened. I wasn’t sealed inside the vehicle again while Julian disappeared inside his home. No, to my surprise, one of the tall, thin men came around to my side, and the next second, the door swung open. A wiry hand extended my way as I peered up into chilled, red eyes. There was no feeling there, only the trained, emotionless face of a Dynasty Guardsmen—the crème de la crème of the Capitols sentinels, who’d been handpicked by the emperor himself to guard his home, his family.
“Corina, please. It’s late,” Julian grumbled from the opposite side of the car. I knew he was weary when he didn’t flinch at calling me by what he assumed to be a fake name. He was irritated from the night’s events, irritated with me. My failure to trust his guard seemed to only make it worse.
“It’s perfectly fine. According to data I’ve collected, it appears Guardsman Colin fed roughly one hour ago. Meaning, you’re in no danger, Corina,” the A.I. eagerly offered.
Great, now it knows my name.
But I also knew the guard’s name—Colin.
Against my better judgment, I slipped my hand into his, cold and firm—like that of a corpse. My bare feet touched down on the uneven stones of Julian’s driveway, and at the sound of the car door slamming behind me, my heart skipped a beat. We followed the prince and my eyes never left him, waiting for the moment he’d command one of his men to usher me to his dungeon for the night. It wasn’t ideal, but I’d definitely slept in worse places.
We began our ascent on what I estimated to be roughly ten steps. Halfway up them, the large wooden door at the top swung open and light from inside flooded into the night. In the center of this light, the silhouette of a woman appeared. Stepping closer, her shadowy details became clearer.
She was young, roughly twenty or so. Her skin was as flawless as any Ianite, pale against the dark-brown of a short pixielike haircut. Her eyes were the usual crimson, and a fashionable, white pantsuit cloaked her svelte figure. We approached the doorway and she stepped aside, but her gaze never left me as we entered. All the while, a smile ghosted on her lips, as if she might have recognized me.
Only, I was positive that if she or anyone else on this side of the tracks did recognize me, they wouldn’t be smiling.
The girl was undoubtedly strange and worth keeping an eye on, based on her shiftiness alone, but the moment I was inside I lost focus. I’d never seen anything like it. We’d only made it to the vestibule and already this place had taken my breath away. Glistening white pillars stretched high, towering two stories above, while beneath my feet, smooth marble that reflected the light of three grand chandeliers. The steps of the others echoed in the large space.
Straight ahead, a central staircase wide enough to drive a fleet of cars seemed to spill down from above. Its banister matched the pillars and the detail carved into both was nothing short of magnificent. I wanted to step forward, wanted to touch, but … I knew better. I wasn’t a guest here. I wasn’t even welcomed here.
“Colin, Winston, that’ll be all.”
With a simple nod, Julian dismissed his guards.
The two stayed silent, their dark trench coats moving like capes behind them as they exited through the front door. To say that I was confused was an understatement. I didn’t imagine a monarch escorting a prisoner to the towers himself, but apparently I knew less about the way things worked around here than I realized.
“Your coat, Miss?”
My head swiveled toward the girl when she spoke, her voice sounding so familiar.
Sounding so … polite, she clearly hadn’t gotten the memo that I’d singlehandedly turned tonight’s gala into a media circus.
“She’s fine, Ellenore, just … give her a minute,” Julian replied, his reference confusing me more than I already was.
“Wait … Ellenore?”
I hadn’t meant to ask. I told myself to stay silent, but it slipped out without thinking.
The young girl’s smile grew while Julian shoved both hands in his pockets.
“…Yes. Her consciousness transfers from my vehicles to this body,” he proceeded to explain. “She does more than drive me. She’s my assistant, she runs the house, she … pretty much does it all.”
“And remember, it’s Elle now, Your Highness,” the girl … er … A.I. piped.
I was stunned. Had no one said anything, I wouldn’t have known she wasn’t real. A lot of thought and time had gone into creating her. Not even her movements had given her away. They were smooth and seamless like anyone else, not the jerky, awkwardness I would have expected.
As I looked her over, her gaze followed, and that smile never left her.
The Ianites and their bizarre way of living only got more and more strange.
“Ellenore,” Julian began, pausing to roll his eyes. “Elle,” he corrected himself, “would you mind preparing Corina something to eat, please?”
“Right away, sir,” she piped, but before she could leave, I stopped her.
“I’m not hungry.”
Both their gazes landed on me when I spoke, Elle’s making it clear she didn’t understand.
“But … according to my last read on your vitals, you’re way past due for a meal,” she reasoned, her voice actually making it seem as if she was concerned, as if she was capable of feeling anything at all.
“In fact,” she went on, “you’re quite malnourished, Corina. Already, I’ve detected a vitamin D deficiency, a vitamin B deficiency, and you’re iron is alarmingly low,” she rambled.
Julian passed a look my way that nearly mirrored Elle’s—that false sense of concern.
“I’m not … hungry,” I repeated, this time raising my voice a bit when I became defensive. The last thing I needed was a robot and a monster pitying me.
Frustration replaced my other emotions.
“Look … tonight was a mess, and I’m … I’m exhausted. So, if you would please just take me to my cell …”
More confusion marked Julian’s expression, and after staring at me for what felt like an eternity, his gaze shifted to Elle.
“Would you mind giving us a moment?” he asked.
Without questioning him, Elle obeyed, leaving Julian and me. The soles of his shoes echoed against the marble when he took a few steps closer, keeping his eyes trained on me. As the space between us disappeared, my breaths became shallow, uneven.
So close now, I had to tilt my chin to meet his gaze as he towered over me, his presence causing my confidence to wane.
“Corina, or … whatever your name is,” he corrected, “I think you’ve misund
erstood.”
My brow quirked with his statement. I didn’t understand, and my expression surely reflected that.
“No one’s taking you to a cell,” he added. A sigh passed between his lips as he organized his thoughts. “You’re not my prisoner.”
I blinked, startled, but said nothing.
How could I not be his prisoner?
“I’m not completely sure what to do from here, but I do know I put a huge lie out in the open tonight, and people will be watching my next move.”
After explaining, he began to pace, leaving me to stand in the center of the vestibule while he thought to himself.
“My father’s team will, no doubt, call an emergency meeting at the consulate tomorrow morning, so I suppose they’ll advise me, but … there’s no cell,” he reiterated.
I didn’t know what to say to that. “So, what are you going to do with me?”
My voice sounded hard, indifferent, but it was only a defense mechanism. Inside, my senses were going haywire, unsure what to expect next because everything up to this point had been completely unexpected.
Julian didn’t answer right away, but when he did, I only had more questions.
“If you’re dead-set against eating first … I suppose Elle will just … escort you to your room.”
My room. He said my room.
“Did I hear my name?” Returning with that same smile, Elle stopped beside Julian and clasped her fingers in front of her.
Julian’s large hand gestured toward the steps. “Would you please escort our guest to the Blue Suite? And before you leave her, please see to it that her wrist gets bandaged properly.”
“As you wish,” Elle replied, gently taking my arm the next second. However, our steps halted when I turned to make one last plea, albeit one lacking the humility that may have gotten a favorable response.
“Wait.” At the sound of my voice, Julian stopped in his tracks and I had to admit to losing a bit of my nerve. “May I have my purse now?” The question flowed through my gritted teeth, staring him down without blinking.
He stood still as a statue, but didn’t turn to face me.
“I meant what I said, Corina; you’re not a prisoner here,” he reiterated. “But I don’t trust you either.”
Heat crept up my spine when my request was denied, feeling the cold fingers of his authority cinching around my throat. His steps resumed as he made his conditions abundantly clear.
“You’ll get your things,” he called out, “as soon as I get answers.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Roman
The guard gave a nod as we passed through the gate, entering the grounds of the Westower palace. The entire ride over, our discussion revolved around one thing.
How disastrous the evening had been.
Although, that felt like a bit of an understatement, considering how drastically Julian’s life was about to change if he stuck to his guns, if he kept up the lie that made this strange girl his.
None of us ever really considered taking Dolls. Yeah, we’d tossed around a joke or two about it, but wouldn’t have risked our reputations just to satisfy some primitive curiosity.
Human women were not made for Ianite men. Even considering it made me sick to my stomach. Their kind, as a whole, were pests I like to think we would have eradicated centuries ago if they weren’t our food source. Had it not been for that, I would have led a movement to kill them off myself.
They hadn’t known their place for some time now. The evidence of this was in the brazen way they stormed into our facilities and stole property that didn’t belong to them. They were savages who couldn’t be controlled, couldn’t be trusted.
Several Ianite lives had been lost trying to protect what was rightfully ours. Many of them blamed greed and elitism for our rise, but if you ask me, it was a simple matter of evolution.
Survival of the fittest.
At the thought of what they’d cost us, my fist tightened. I was among those who’d been forced to bury a loved one due to the human’s aversion to order, and that loss had been so deep I only narrowly survived it. Their insubordination had been the cause of the one person with whom I happily shared the Fairchild name being taken far too soon—my sister.
Contrary to popular belief, being the child of a monarch didn’t guarantee an easy life, or even a pleasant one. Regina had been the only person on this planet who knew that as well as I did.
When the time came for each Quadrant to produce an heir, our father’s thirst for political gain had convinced him to make several impulsive decisions. Among them, was the choice to step outside his marriage to the empress when she could only bear him daughters. Instead of allowing the next generation of Fairchild royalty to be a woman, he chose to take matters into his own hands, devising a plan with the empress’ handmaid to conceive a son. The plan worked, but it not only garnered him a son, he also fathered another daughter.
My sister, my twin.
She, unlike our half-sisters, never had a desire to wear the crown. Her one and only ambition was to join the Royal Militia to defend our hard-won governing system. And, in the end, it was this love of peace and order that cost her her life.
At the hand of a human.
These were not things I wanted to think about tonight, but they were impossible to avoid with how the evening played out in the end. I couldn’t comprehend the balls this girl had to waltz into such a highly esteemed gala. She must have known there would be extreme security measures, sentinels trained in the art of spotting an imposter.
The risk she’d taken was too great, which left me to wonder why she deemed being present important enough to have nearly died tonight.
I was still unsure why Julian stuck his neck out for her, but he had. He’d always been so levelheaded, keenly aware of social order due to his father’s staunch position on the subject. The Westowers, unlike my own family, steered clear of scandal for fear of muddying their name. But tonight, Julian had thrown that idea right out the window. And why, you ask?
For a girl.
A human girl.
It was hard not to think I should’ve gone with my initial plan—one that involved me staying in my hotel room for the night, nursing a decanter of expensive bourbon, but here I was.
Disappointing my brothers had never been easy. They’d seen me at my lowest and it wasn’t lost on me that they, perhaps, needed me to be okay more than I needed me to be okay. On more than one occasion they spoke of how they were hopeful I’d get back to my old self, and I wanted that, too. I wanted to laugh again without the expression fading within seconds. I wanted to feel joy again. Hell, if I could feel anything other than the sting of loss and separation, I would have been pleased.
This past year had been the hardest of my twenty-one on this planet, but these three had been with me even when my own family wasn’t.
My father’s wife despised Regina and I because of what we represented to her—the crown that had been stolen from her oldest daughter, being made to feel as if she wasn’t enough, and the disrespect my father had shown by being unfaithful. While, no, we were not responsible for those things, we were definitely the cause of them.
My twin and I were always regarded as the illegitimate children of a wayward king—by the empress and her daughters, by the media. Being seen in this light never bothered my father. All that ever mattered to him was that he be regarded as a great ruler, one willing to go to extremes to produce a male heir who would one day take the throne in a system that focused heavily on masculine leadership.
His drive, his unrelenting ambition, made him cold when it came to parenting. With his feelings toward my birth mother never reaching deeper than her being a means to an end, he had her put to death to appease the empress shortly after Regina and I were born. She, like my sister and I, were pawns in his political game. This made for a cold, detached upbringing. One in which Regina and I were often one another’s only means of comfort.
So, when I lost her … I lost so muc
h of myself, too.
The highly charged conversation going on around me slowly bled into my thoughts, and soon, Silas and Levi’s voices replaced the sound of my own internal one.
“This got way out of control,” Silas commented. “I didn’t … I had no clue he’d take things so far.”
“We have to be rational,” Levi chimed in. “It’ll all work out, we just have to find a way to—”
“Find a way to what?” I scoffed, feeling the scowl set on my face. “There’s no way he’ll get out of this. He’s dug himself into a hole no one, not even the Presiding Emperor himself, can pull him out of. He’s clearly thinking with the wrong head,” I added. “And now, because he couldn’t see past a pretty face and nice tits, we’re involved in his mess, too. We were seen with the two of them, proceeded to return to the gala where we also lied for the two of them,” I huffed.
I kept to myself that I wasn’t totally blind to how Julian had gotten sidetracked. There was no denying the heavy sense of attraction that plagued me when I first laid eyes on her, but it was nothing I saw fit to speak about then or now.
Then—because one of my closest friends had his sights set on her and it went against an unspoken code.
Now—because I’d come into knowledge of her being human.
Not to mention, she was trouble.
Bile rose in my throat and tension spread to my limbs as I allowed myself to think back on that first meeting. I remembered the instant Julian reached his destination and our steps halted at the feet of one of the most mesmerizing women I’d ever met. She stood out from all the others, including those we claimed as dates for the evening. It was as if she’d been dropped into our world.
Ours.
Not only Julian’s.
Shaking off the discomfort that came with letting my thoughts venture to that moment, I turned toward Levi. He cursed to himself, violently loosening the bowtie around his neck until it hung at his collarbone.
“It’s a royal mess,” he concluded. “Literally.”
No sooner than Levi declared it verbally, my father declared it in text.
‘How on Earth did you manage to get yourself involved in Julian’s media circus? Call me immediately.’
