by Sara Thorn
The two women on either side of him were still there. One had left her seat to stand beside him and was running her hand down the inside of his shirt, pulling the shirt away from his skin just enough to reveal the cut of his muscular chest. The other woman was still seated in the chair beside him, but she had thrown a leg over the edge of it, and her foot was dangling in Cassius’s lap. However, Cassius seemed to be paying neither of them any attention. Instead, he was staring at me as though some hypnotizing spell had enchanted him.
I wasn’t dancing anymore. I was literally sitting on the floor in a heap of exhaustion and frustration. I had no idea why Cassius was staring at me or what his look meant. His face was contorted as if he were in some kind of pain, but considering he had two alluring vampires fawning over him, a full cup of wine, and every delicacy one could imaging at his fingertips, I failed to see what kind of pain he could possibly have been in.
Cassius pushed the woman’s leg off of him and swatted the other woman’s hand away from his chest. I didn’t know why it brought me satisfaction to see him do that, but it did. He stood up, teetering as if he were already half-drunk, and balancing his wine glass between two fingers as he stepped unsteadily down from his throne. He walked toward me in a semi-drunken swagger.
“Come,” he said as he extended his hand down toward me.
Once again, I reached up and took it. This was becoming our thing, me on the floor in front of Cassius and him acting like some sort of hubristic savior, and I didn’t like it.
I stood up to face him, and as soon as I did, he swung me around to his side and wrapped an arm around the back of my waist as we walked toward the doorway side by side. His hand felt like it was melting into me. I thought vampires are supposed to feel frigid, so why did his touch send ripples of heat throughout my body? I didn’t ask where we were going; there wasn’t any point in questioning him. I was tired, and I wanted to leave this nauseating festivity behind.
I walked alongside Cassius as his hand seemed to grip me even tighter. We passed by several of his servants, whom he waved off with a cavalier shake of his glass in the air toward their general direction. We passed by an entire wing of corridors, which I thought I caught a glimpse of Quinn inside. I wondered if the fae had their own designated space or wing in the castle. When we reached the door that he stopped in front of, I recognized it immediately since I had been here just this morning. It was Cassius’s room.
He pushed open the door and led me inside. There was a fire crackling in the hearth still, and the candles looked as if they hadn’t melted any farther down than when I had been in here last. There was definitely some sort of enchantment going on in this place, either that, or I truly was going crazy because none of it made any logical sense. Cassius flopped down on the bottom edge of his bed and swung his hand in the air toward me as he spoke.
“Dance,” he said.
I hadn’t really taken notice of the bed in the room earlier in the day. The room was so large that it was hard to keep track of the space in it all. But there was no mistaking the towering four-poster bed that he sat on now. I yearned to lay down on the top of those soft blankets and close my eyes to rest and stop thinking about everything else.
“Dance for me,” he repeated.
“I already did,” I said.
“Dance some more.”
“No.”
This was also becoming our thing. Cassius demanding that I do something, and me refusing to do it. Well, at least up until the point that I was forced to comply.
“Why not? Aren’t you supposed to be a dancer? Athan talked of what an amazing dancer you are.”
“You tell me,” I said stubbornly. “You just saw me dance in the main hall.”
“I was too busy with other women,” Cassius taunted as he took a long swig of his wine.
“No, you weren’t,” I said. I wasn’t even sure if I was telling the truth or not, since my eyes were closed, I had no idea if he had actually watched me dance or not. “You were watching me.”
The reflection of the flames from the fire seemed to roar in his black eyes. I had always been taught as a kid that red was a “warm color” on the color wheel. It was the color we all used as children to draw fire and sunrays with. But I could see now that we were taught wrong. The black heat that grew inside Cassius’s eyes was by far the hottest burning color that I had ever seen. Again, I found myself wondering whether rage or something else caused the fire in his eyes.
“You are an indelible annoyance,” Cassius said with obvious frustration.
“I’m hungry,” I answered, trying to think of a way to get out of putting on a private show for him. Also, I actually was hungry, and my stomach was gnawing at the bottom of my ribcage. I don’t think I’d eaten anything since I had gotten here, which was probably part of the reason why my head had been swimming earlier. I expected Cassius to throw another insult at me for being uncooperative, but instead, he simply got up from the bed and walked over to a table at the side of his room.
I was too tired to think about whether what I was doing was a good idea or not and walked over to the bed to sit down. The lack of sleep and food had suddenly caught up with me, and I found myself not wanting to do anything except sit on this mattress and stare into the fireplace flames. I wondered what it would feel like to have all of the blood drained out of me by a vampire bite. When Cassius came back to where I sat, he held a plate of meats and cheeses in front of my face.
“Eat,” he said.
“Do you always speak to people using commands instead of casual conversation?” I asked.
“I do when those people are my slaves or servants.”
He was infuriating. I may have been stuck here, but I didn’t need to play the part of a slave any more than what I was forced to do.
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“You just said you were,” Cassius said with increasing agitation.
“Well, I’m not anymore,” I said, more willing to starve to death than to take a ration of food from his hand.
The look in his eyes darkened as Cassius flung the plate across the room, spewing the pieces of meat and cheese onto the floor. He pushed his chest up against mine and held his jaw so close to my face that I could feel it tremble.
“Why are you so defiant?” he shouted into my face.
“Why do you care whether I eat or not?” I shouted back. “You have plenty of other slave girls for your entertainment. Surely you don’t care if a few of them starve to death.”
He didn’t move. He simply stayed pushed up against me with that look of fire in his eyes as I wondered why he was so hell-bent on making me suffer. Or maybe I am wrong…maybe he is the one who is suffering.
I lifted my hand from the bed and placed it against his chest. My breath caught in my throat as I felt the faintest heartbeat. I didn’t think vampires were supposed to have heartbeats at all, and I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked by how light it was, or by the fact that there even was one. For a split second, Cassius looked at me as though he were a cornered animal. Fear and uncertainty lingered on his face. But as soon as I spread my fingers out lightly across his chest, he immediately jumped up from the bed and regained the arrogance that he had shown me back in the main hall.
“Fine,” he scoffed. “Don’t eat.” With that, he turned and exited his own room, leaving me to sit on the bed in complete bewilderment.
After a few minutes, I got up and went to the door to leave and try to find my way back to my room through the maze of tunnels. Without Quinn’s help, I wasn’t sure I would be successful at not getting hopelessly lost, which probably didn’t matter at this point anyway. But when I tried the door handle, it became quickly apparent that I was locked in. Since I was alone at last, and there was a warm bed and food and drink, I couldn’t complain. I walked over to the table at the side of the room, where I had seen Cassius just before he had returned with a plate of food and was pleased to find that there was still a sizeable spread available.
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nbsp; After I had eaten my fill and finished off all that was left in his wine glass, I felt much better, and my head was feeling much duller than it had been. I went to the bed and curled up on top of it, pulling the soft blankets over me as I fell asleep.
Chapter Eight
I dreamed about Cassius that night. Maybe it was because his scent lingered in the blankets, a smell reminiscent of snuffed embers and sultry, dark corners. I dreamed that he had crept onto the bed beside me and that I laid my head against his chest as he rested. I dreamed that I strained to hear the faint beat of his heart and woke up in a cold sweat as I stared at his unmoving body. But moments after I thought I was awake, I realized that I was still in a dream and that not only was Cassius dead, but so was I.
When my eyes finally opened from a troubled sleep, I found that Cassius had never returned to his room. Curiously though, the door to the bedroom was wide open.
“I have to admit,” Quinn said as he walked out from one of the closets and toward the bed. “I was surprised that you spent the night here.”
I sat up in the bed to look at him. “Not half as surprised as I was, if I’m honest,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Cassius sent me to tend to you.”
“Tend to me?”
Quinn rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure he locked you in here last night to keep you from either running away or doing something foolish.”
“Or maybe it was to keep himself from doing something foolish,” I mumbled under my breath.
“What?” Quinn asked.
“Nothing. Where did Cassius sleep last night if he didn’t come back to his room?”
Quinn shrugged. “No idea. Does it matter?”
I shook my head, probably a bit too much. “Not at all. I’m just surprised he sent you to check on me. It’s not like anyone here cares if I live or die.”
“I do,” Quinn said with lowered eyes as he set down a fresh outfit on the bed next to me.
I didn’t say anything as I got changed. Quinn turned around to face the fireplace, which had now long-since died out.
“This outfit isn’t going to be at all conducive to dancing; I can tell you that right now,” I said as I hoisted the distressed jeans over my hips and pulled the gray, slouchy sweatshirt down over my head.
“You’re not dancing today,” Quinn said as he turned back around. The look in his jade eyes was no less wanton than it had been with the other, much more revealing outfit.
“Isn’t that the only reason I’m here?” I asked. “And still alive?”
“Entertaining is your duty to Cassius,” Quinn explained. “But when he doesn’t need your service, then you are free to do as you please.”
It only took Quinn a moment to retract his statement. “Okay, well, you’re not free, per se. But you can have time to yourself is what I meant.”
“What do you do with the time you have to yourself?” I asked, curious about what was appropriate for an imprisoned captive to use their free time for.
“I mostly stay within the fae quarters,” he answered.
“Is that where you were last night? I thought I saw you while I was walking back here with Cassius. I was worried that something might have happened to you after his goons escorted you from the main hall.”
Quinn seemed touched by my mention of worry over him. Then he chuckled a bit. “Those weren’t goons,” he said. “They were friends of mine.”
“Friends? They didn’t seem friendly with you at all when they were removing you.”
“We all have our parts to play, Mara.” Quinn’s voice seemed sad and distant. “I was fine. They just took me back to the fae quarters so I wouldn’t interfere with you.”
“What would you have done if you’d have interfered?” I asked.
“Probably anything that kept you from being led back to Cassius’s bedroom.”
We stood facing each other awkwardly for a few minutes before Quinn cleared his throat. “He didn’t, uh…”
“God, no!” I said as I made a face of disgust. I wasn’t sure how much that expression was genuine, though. “He asked me to dance for him, and I refused.”
“What did he do when you refused?”
“Umm, he tried to feed me.” That sounded much stranger coming out of my mouth than I had expected it to. “I refused that, too, so then he just got mad and left. And when he left, he locked me in here. I was tired and hungry, so I ate and went to sleep. That’s all that happened, I swear.”
Quinn exhaled and seemed notably relieved.
“So, what’s on the agenda today then, if I’m not the entertainment?” I asked.
“Cassius told me to help you get adjusted to your new world. So, I guess that means we can do whatever you’d like to do. I know you’re not familiar with things here yet, and you must have a million unanswered questions, so if you’d like, we can just stay here and—”
“I want to see the fae quarters,” I interrupted.
“What? Why?”
“I want to see where you live, and I want to learn about your people.” I definitely didn’t care to know about the vampires. I already knew that I despised them. But I found the fae fascinating. There was definitely some kind of magic going on here, and I guessed that it had something to do with the supernatural abilities of the fae. Besides, I liked Quinn, and I felt safe and unthreatened when I was with him. If I had a day to spend to myself, then I wanted to find out as much about him and the fae folks as I could.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yep. Positively,” I smiled. I already felt much more at ease just being in jeans and a sweatshirt.
“All right,” Quinn said as he took my hand and we left the room. “But it might not be as fascinating as you think.”
“Trust me,” I said. “This is all way more fascinating than anything I could have dreamed up.”
As we walked through the tunnels together, Quinn explained the hierarchy in Mystreuce and how the people of fae became a subservient race to the vampires as a result of a surprise nighttime attack on their land during a period they had thought was peaceful. It was very clear that the fae weren’t in agreement with the arrangement.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why didn’t the fae resist? And why don’t they try to overthrow the vampire’s rulership now? Is it because the vampires are more powerful than the fae?”
“No,” Quinn said sternly. “Fae have immense power, and if we all used it, we could easily overthrow Athan and his goons.”
I laughed at his attempt to steal my very-human terminology.
“It’s because my people are compassionate and afraid. They know that even if we are successful in our attempt to overthrow Athan, that some of the fae will be lost in the process. To us, unlike the vampires, each life is of the highest value, and most fae are not willing to sacrifice our people.”
“So, instead, your people would rather live life as indentured servants?” I asked in surprise.
“Essentially, if it means protecting our own kind from death at the hands of the vampires, then yes.”
That whole ideology didn’t sit well with me. There was no way I would ever give up fighting to get out from under someone else’s control.
“But,” Quinn added as if he had sensed my disapproval at the reluctance of the fae to put up a better fight, “there is change coming.”
“What kind of change?”
“The kind of change that will involve death on both sides, and hopefully, the liberation of my people. We’re here,” he said as he opened the door in front of us.
We stepped inside an open foyer with several corridors that converged onto it. Lining the sides of every hall were several rooms, enough to house a lot of fae.
“How many of you live here?” I asked.
“More than there should be,” Quinn answered.
“And Athan has just as many fae servants, too?”
Quinn nodded.
The fae had changed the look of the foyer and all of the open spa
ce within the corridors to resemble a forest. It was not unlike the main hall, with a glowing artificial moon that seemed to be backlit all on its own, and a ceiling full of glittering faux stars. A soft blanket of moss carpeted the cold, stone floor, and wildflowers sprouted up along the cracks and crevices where the walls met the floor. A smell hung in the air that was much different than the rest of Cassius’s dwelling. It reminded me of what the earth smelled like after a fresh rain, even in the city. There was something both worldly and otherworldly about it.
“Did your people do this with magic?” I asked.
“Yes, same as the main hall. But our moon changes into a sun and follows the rotation of the day and night.” Quinn smiled at the thought of having something superior about their dwelling than what they had given to Cassius for his party arena.
I looked around and walked toward one of the trees to touch it. The tree felt real; I actually thought it was real, even though that would have been impossible.
“Is it magic?”
Quinn nodded again. “One of the many abilities the fae possess.”
“Tell me about all of your abilities,” I said. “I want to know.”
Quinn took me to his room. Like the human slaves, the fae shared living quarters as well. He shared a room with three other male fae, all of whom were wildly handsome, with colorful eyes and rich shades of golden, sienna-brown colored hair. They eyed me suspiciously as I came into the space. But once Quinn introduced me as his friend, they smiled and welcomed me. It was a nice feeling to hear him refer to me as his friend. It was nice just to have a friend here.
Chapter Nine
