by A. L. Tyler
The consecration ceremony was straightforward. It was conducted in Latito, so Lena only understood about half of it, but it involved a lot of the same type vows and promises that most marriage ceremonies did—love, honor, fidelity, and so forth and so on for about forty-five minutes. Near the end of the ceremony he said something about the portal that she didn’t quite understand, but it made her uncomfortable nonetheless. Serafina and Martin kneeled at an altar-type table on the lawn outside the greenhouse and the ceremony was led by Martin’s father, Calvin Colburn, who was a chubby man in his mid-fifties. Serafina wore an elaborate golden dress that was very conservative given her normal standard, and the attendants were composed of various younger siblings and cousins of the two.
There was food and dancing afterward that lasted for about four hours and kept the kitchen staff on their feet. Hesper left during the dancing because she was sick, Alexis was absent as promised, and Bianca was still staying very close to Griffin. Howard was talking with a group of Council members about something that had happened at a meeting the previous evening, and Ava was talking with Serafina and Cecelia Perry. With nothing else to do, Lena wandered into the greenhouse where the younger children were playing. She wanted to sneak out early to get some sleep because the real party was starting at eight. She played some synchronized hand clapping games with Daisy and Rose for a while, and then looked over her shoulder and saw something that concerned her far more than she would have expected.
Griffin was off at the far corner of the house, almost hiding around the other side, and a young woman in a powder blue dress was with him. Lena turned around and stared through the clear glass wall at the two, squinting to get a clearer view. They appeared to be talking; Griffin was leaning casually against the side of the house, and then he straightened up. The girl turned her head to look back at the party, and Lena got a clear view of Bianca’s profile. What happened next, she wasn’t sure exactly…she replayed it over and over in her mind, and it never made any more sense. Griffin put a hand on her cheek and kissed her—and kept kissing her.
The next thing she knew, Lena was suddenly outside the greenhouse and floating across the lawn toward Griffin and Bianca. By the time she arrived, they had stopped kissing, but it seemed to have taken her an eternity to get there. Then she was standing in front of them. They were laughing—laughing, a thing that Lena wasn’t entirely sure she had ever heard Griffin do before.
With more force and volume than she intended, she’s said, “Great party, isn’t it!”
Bianca turned around, startled, red in the face, and looking so guilty that Lena wanted to scream it to the world. “Oh! Lena! Yes, it is a good party…I think…goodbye!”
And she scurried off back to the clusters of people nearer the greenhouse. Lena turned to face Griffin, who was looking more annoyed than she had ever seen him.
“Griffin.” She said uncertainly.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” He pushed past her and walked a few steps in Bianca’s direction. Then he stopped and turned on Lena. His eyes were almost glowing red and he was now standing between Lena and the party. She took a few steps backward, he followed her, and she suddenly found herself standing around the corner of the house. They were alone, and Lena was at a loss for words.
“What was that?!” He pointed back to where they had been standing a few moments earlier. He wasn’t yelling, but Lena wished he would—it might have attracted attention to their location. “Who do you think you are, to be interrupting me like that? I’m the heir. I’m the talent. I enforce the decisions made, and someday I will be the one making the decisions here, and you will not challenge my authority!”
Lena tried to fake that she wasn’t scared and rolled her eyes. Griffin shoved her hard enough that she fell backwards onto the ground, smearing dirt on both palms as she caught herself. She looked up, stunned.
“You’re beneath me.” He turned and walked away.
Lena sat on the ground for a few minutes, trying to figure out what had just happened, and not for the last time in her life, the weight of her situation came crashing down on her. After the shock wore off, the pain in her palms finally reached her brain. Embarrassed, and maybe a little hurt, a tear slid down her cheek and she pulled herself up. She walked around to the front door to avoid the crowd, slipped inside, and went upstairs and laid down on her bed. She cried a little less than she used to, and eventually fell asleep.
Around six, there was a knock on her bedroom door. It was Griffin, still dressed for the party and looking a little tired.
“I’ve got time tonight if you want to try to work through some of the older texts. Nothing late, though. The meeting that was supposed to happen tonight was rescheduled to early tomorrow morning.”
He was just going to ignore what had happened earlier? When she didn’t respond, he shook his head and laughed quietly.
“I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, and you’re not making it any easier.” His eyes were glassy, like he hadn’t been getting enough sleep, and his clothes were slightly more disorganized than Lena was used to seeing. His shirt wasn’t tucked evenly, the top button of his shirt was undone, and he was leaning in the doorframe; she supposed this was what Griffin looked like when he was under stress, but he didn’t look much different than usual.
Lena glanced at the clock and decided she had time. It wasn’t like she was able to say she already had plans…if she told Griffin about the party, she was sure he wouldn’t want her to go.
Finally, she sighed and let her guard down; at least he was talking to her again. “Fine. You’re forgiven.”
I wasn’t apologizing.
“Well, you should.” Lena said, crossing her arms again.
Griffin stared at her, hard, and Lena realized things hadn’t gone back to normal. He was still angry with her for some unspoken reason. “You pissed me off. I don’t apologize.”
“You shoved me.” Lena hissed with more bravery than she would have thought possible of herself. “I scraped my hands!” She held up one of her hands in front of him as proof.
Griffin’s eyes fixed on her palm, which wasn’t actually scraped, bruised, or even red; it did have some stains where the mud had really gotten into the creases. Lena suddenly felt ridiculous accusing him of anything, because the whole thing seemed so childish—she had caught him kissing a girl, and he had pushed her in the mud. It was something that seven-year-olds would do on the playground. But as Griffin’s eyes flicked from her hand to her face, Lena could see he took it much more seriously than she did.
Are you hurt? He asked.
Lena closed her hand and withdrew it back to her body. “No.”
Griffin nodded, looking down.
She agreed to meet him in the study in fifteen so that he could change.
Once in the study, Griffin pulled an archaic looking book out of the stacks and opened it on the table. He had dark circles under his eyes, and she really didn’t want to be around him anymore.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” She asked.
“It needs to get done.”
Lena gave Griffin a sidelong glance, and then looked down at the text. “This one isn’t in Latito, Griffin.”
“What?” Griffin looked at Lena. He didn’t make any effort to look at the text, so Lena guessed it was one that he couldn’t read.
“It’s just a bunch of pictures. Sketches, I guess.”
“What of?”
Lena flipped through the pages, and found that some of them did have some Latito written on them, but many of them were just sketches of places and things. “Let’s see…there’s a house, a dog, a chair, a bed…just stuff. This section says something about…something.”
“That’s very helpful, Lena.” Griffin sneered. “Do you see any names?”
“Initials. L. C.”
Griffin took the book, closed it, and put it back on a shelf. “That one was written by Lenore Cassius.”
“So then, why can’t you read it?
” Lena asked.
“Lenore was one of the royal blood.”
“Why isn’t it worth reading?”
Griffin gave up on finding another book and sat back down in the chair next to Lena’s. “Lenore wasn’t really involved with the portal. Dobry and his ancestors had had the portal for generations without ever realizing what it was. It wasn’t until the family brought it to a gathering in China and had a chance meeting with Silas Cassius in the mid-eighteen hundreds, and he identified it, that they realized their coffee table was a religious relic. That's when he designed the carvings for the exterior of the box to assure that it could be easily identified.”
“Why didn’t he open it?” Lena asked. Silas Cassius being one of the royal blood, it seemed obvious that he would have done the most obvious thing possible to test if an unknown object was the portal.
“He did.” Griffin retorted. “He opened it right when he found it, just to see if he could, and then he closed it again. There was just as much controversy back then as there is now, and they wanted to control it. Well, less than a week later, people started dying. A lot of people blamed the portal, but they couldn’t destroy it, so they entrusted it back to the Darays. The two families remained close, and years later Lenore Cassius and Dobry Daray were married. The only reason Lenore and their child survived the Nazi raid was because they happened to be visiting her mother at the time the Nazis took Dobry away. I meant to give you Silas’s account, not his granddaughter’s scribble book.”
Lena looked at Griffin, slouching in his chair and looking drained. She decided it might be best to just let him go to bed. “Maybe that’s enough for tonight…”
Griffin brought a hand to his forehead and sighed. “Maybe. I wouldn’t want you to be late for your party.”
Lena’s eyes went wide. “It’s…just a little party tonight, that’s all.”
“You’re an absolute disgrace to your family, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to make you otherwise. Not anymore.” Griffin, who had been sitting hunched over, leaned back in his chair. Worn out, his eyes fell on Lena, who was slightly surprised by what he had said.
“Why not?” She asked in a small voice.
Griffin’s gaze fell heavy on her. “You’re not worth it.”
Lena froze. She fixed her eyes on Griffin’s and tried to detect what he was up to. “Liar. He told you to say that, didn’t he? He told you to do all of this…”
But Griffin didn’t flinch. There was no reaction at all—he stared aimlessly into a corner. “Yes and no. In fact, he was very displeased with the situation at first. But the fact of the matter is that you’re not suited to be a Daray, and eventually he agreed with me.” Griffin sighed.
Lena gawked. “And Bianca is. You’re saying she’s a better Daray than I am? Is that supposed to make me jealous or something?”
“No. Why? Does it?” Griffin glanced back over at Lena, and then continued very matter-of-factly. “The bloodline is obviously still yours, and only your son—your Silenti son—will be able to open the portal. But if you don’t want my help and protection anymore, then I won’t force it on you. I’ve moved on—Bianca Channing has a strong family line and far more devotion to the concept of family than you do. It’s a good match, and as Master Daray said it would, having her around has helped me to understand what your place should be. You’ve been allowed too much liberty to ever become a respectable wife.”
Lena and Griffin locked stares. She wanted to believe that he was saying it to get a rise out of her, and possibly to get her to argue with him by saying that she could be a great wife—a better one than Bianca could. But as she looked at him, there was no hint of a smirk on his face, just as there was no humor in his tone.
The annoying ticking was still present in the room. After what seemed like an eternity, Griffin stood up to leave. Lena’s voice dislodged.
“So, that’s it then?” She said.
“That’s it.” Griffin walked to the stairs that led to the upper floors, then paused in the doorway. “The Council’s going to be doing the expositions toward the end of the meetings this year. As long as you keep at the translations, he’ll still help you get in.” And he was gone.
Lena looked at the empty doorway as if she expected Griffin to come back down any second with a message from her grandfather that she was forbidden to go to the party because it wasn’t befitting of a Daray. But he didn’t, and Lena continued to sit in the empty office. After a while she shook herself loose from the spell of Griffin’s leaving and looked around the room for the clock again, but she still couldn’t see it, so she went back down to her room. It was already eight by that point, and without thinking, she changed into some older jeans and a comfortable top, grabbed a pullover, and snuck down to wait by the greenhouse.
*****
CHAPTER 16
Autumn was in full force, and it was a windy night. Lena pulled her sweater around herself and crossed her arms tightly. It was funny how much things could change in such a short amount of time. She hadn’t even known Griffin a year, and she was already missing him. Well, not missing him…Griffin had been oppressive. He had stalked her around the house and told her how to act and what to do. It had been annoying, really. Lena didn’t know why she cared so much that he didn’t care anymore, but she knew she didn’t want to feel what she was feeling. He hadn’t been her friend, and she wasn’t going to let herself miss him. A party was just what she needed. Stupid Griffin—she was going to prove she could be happy without him. If only the image of him kissing that whore would get out of her brain.
“Hey…sorry I’m late.”
Lena looked over her shoulder and saw Devin walking toward her. A group of about twenty other kitchen staff members were walking out of the greenhouse entrance behind him.
Devin looked concerned. “…Are you okay? Did you break up with your boyfriend, or something?”
Lena stared at Devin, then cracked a smile and laughed it off. “I don’t have a boyfriend!”
“Well, not anymore, if you broke up with him…”
Lena frowned. “I never had a boyfriend to begin with. I mean, geez, where’d you get that from?”
Devin gave her a sidelong glance. “You can’t bullshit me. I spent months learning to recognize that look so that chicks would think I was sensitive. You just broke up.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Okay.” Devin put an arm around her shoulders and lowered his tone. “I won’t tell anyone, but really—did you just break up? I need to know if my skills are slipping.”
Devin’s eyes were impish in the moonlight, and even though his questions were starting to annoy her, Lena couldn’t help laughing. All the same, she was happy that Devin had never developed the ability to read minds. “No. I really didn’t. So where’s the party?”
“Sure.” He winked. “Well, we were going to go into town and find an all-night place to crash at. If anything looks interesting on the way we might stop off.”
“Into town?” Lena asked, biting her lip.
“Well, sure. We get a night off and we’re sure as hell not going to spend it here.” Devin laughed.
Lena couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it coming. It made perfect sense…she wasn’t supposed to leave the property. She would be in more trouble than it was worth if she got caught. Devin still had his arm around her shoulders, and she was happy for the comfort. Dinner at a restaurant sounded good. She’d had a rough day, she wanted to be with her friends; these people were her friends. Looking back up at Waldgrave, most of the lights were already out—people were tired from the activities of the ceremony. No one would notice, and no one knew except for Griffin…and he didn’t care anymore. She looked back at Devin and smiled gently.
“No. It’s not a problem at all, if you can keep a secret.”
“Oh…you wouldn’t believe the secrets we can keep.” Devin gave her a side hug, returned the smile, and the group set off across the lawn for the series of rented cars parked near the cov
ered garage on the side of the house. Apparently the cars for the Colburns were rented in the names of the older members of the kitchen staff because the Colburns themselves didn’t like to drive. Lena pulled her hood over her head to be sure no one in the tents would recognize her, and she slid into the rear passenger seat of a silver sedan.
“You don’t want to drive?” Devin asked.
Lena shot Devin an irritated look as he sat down in the seat next to her. “I don’t have a license.”
“You’re sixteen, aren’t you?” He pressed, with another lopsided smile.
“I don’t see the point in getting one.” Lena said miserably. “It’s not like I’ll ever be going anywhere without someone else who can drive.”
Tab took the front passenger seat and a woman in her mid-twenties with blond hair and pretty eyes sat down in the driver’s seat. She had an accent that Lena couldn’t quite figure out, but it sounded slightly English. “See, now that’s just not right. A girl your age should be excited about getting her license. At your age you need your freedom and your privacy, and it’s not right that they keep you locked up the way they do.”
Lena shrugged. Devin introduced the woman as Pepper, the daughter of the Colburn’s head of staff, and they rolled down the driveway. Lena sunk low in her seat and held her breath until she saw that they had passed the gate that marked the edge of the Waldgrave property. Her heart raced as she realized she was now in violation of so many Council laws. She looked over at Devin, who was staring anxiously out the car window—he was just as excited to be out and away from Waldgrave. Lena caught his eye, and they smiled.
“So what happened to the mashed potatoes?” She asked.
The car swerved slightly. Pepper was yelling and trying to reach around to the back seat to swat at Devin. “Dev, you swore on a month’s rations you wouldn’t tell anyone about that! You dog!”
