“Welcome to our newest guests!” Athan said as he walked toward us and threw an arm around my shoulder. I don’t know why, but I was surprised to see him here. Since this was Cassius’s party and at his home, I just assumed he wouldn’t have Athan in attendance.
“Don’t you mean captives?” I said in as hostile voice as I could muster. It still turned my stomach thinking about how Athan had betrayed me, how he kept up this guise for years, pretending to be something he wasn’t just to ensnare me, and how he wasn’t even a living creature.
He smacked me on the back, a little too hard to come across as joking. “You never were good with following the rules, Mara, were you?” Athan laughed, and a crowd of nearby vampires chuckled right along with him as if on cue.
I looked up to see Cassius; he wasn’t laughing. In fact, he looked almost as if he were getting ready to launch off his throne.
“Why are you here?” I asked as I shrugged my shoulder out from his reach.
“I’ve come to check on the new recruits, of course,” Athan smiled. He was starting to look more and more like a vile snake. His dark eyes were slightly lighter than Cassius’s black irises, but they seemed to hold far more darkness than they should be capable of.
“Don’t you have your own recruits ?” I asked, remembering how Athan got the humans who were deemed fit for being trained as warriors. Which reminded me, Why does he need warriors if he is already the ruler in this world?
“My recruits are all well and settled in. They've already begun their training, and I expect them to be exceedingly fit for the task,” he answered smugly.
“What task?”
Athan glared at me, and when his mouth formed a cruel smile. I thought I could see the tips of his fangs breach the top of his lips. As tough as I was trying to be, I was scared. I turned my head from him and looked at Cassius instead and began walking on a straight path toward his throne in the middle of the room. But instead of moving forward, I fell backward onto my butt on the floor when Athan pulled my arm behind me. I looked up at him with shock as he stood over me. I could feel Quinn standing at my side, and I could see his clenched fists that lay against his thighs at my eye level. I hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid that would end up getting us both killed.
“I think maybe I’ll trade you for this one,” Athan called to Cassius. “She was my student for several years after all, and I think she might have enough spunk in her to prove to be a good warrior after all. Perhaps even a better fighter than a dancer.”
I looked over at Cassius and watched him rise from his throne with such slowness and restraint that it commanded every eye in the room to watch.
“I don’t think so,” Cassius answered as he strolled toward us. He had been holding a glass of wine in his hand, which was now empty as he tossed it into the air beside him. A fae servant caught it before it hit the ground. They must be highly trained , I thought. Or highly tortured.
“Oh come now, brother. Surely you don’t care if this one stays or goes. I’ll trade you whichever of my recruits that you would like,” Athan said with a domineering grin at Cassius.
“We aren’t brothers,” Cassius growled. “And, since you seem to have such an interest in this girl, that makes me want to keep her even more.”
Athan pushed his chest forward as if he were getting to posture for command, which, since he was the ruler here, I would imagine he could.
“Easy, Athan,” Cassius said coolly. “Everyone here was at the sorting. Every vampire in this room saw you get your fair choice of recruits. You wouldn’t want your followers to think you favor yourself to be above our laws now, would you?”
Athan’s dark pupils glanced at the crowd around him. Then, he burst out into a laugh that seemed too loud and too forced to be genuine. “See brother, this is why Father always favored me. You don’t have the clear-headedness to rule.”
Cassius walked closer to Athan until their faces were nearly touching. He whispered to his half-brother, loud enough that I could barely make out what he said.
“Father never favored you, Athan. If he had, then he wouldn’t have left the rulership to me. You are the one who favored him. And to this day, I will never understand why. Our father was a cruel and power-hungry demon, who let his lust for control and abuse of power destroy his marriage and the woman he loved.”
Athan was even more pale than usual. He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like an amusing choke as his voice shook when he answered Cassius. “Your mother was our father’s weakness. Had it not been for my presence to counterbalance her twisted influence over our father, the fae would still be free to rise against us. It was her human frailty and disgusting compassion that held him back. I will not ever make that mistake; I will never let the distraction of insignificant emotions or loyalties get in the way of my vision as king.”
“King?” Cassius laughed so loud that the trees lining the walls seemed to echo it. “You may rule the vampire clan, and you may have been successful at enslaving the fae, but you will never be king, brother . You don’t have the constitution for it.”
For a moment, I thought the two of them were going to burst into a fight. I felt Quinn’s fingers touch my shoulder as if to let me know that he was there and ready to run with me at a moment’s notice. But surprisingly, both men backed down. Athan took a step back as if he had only been pretending to be the alpha this entire time, and Cassius turned to look at me with his hand extended.
I reached up to take it, expecting it to be cold or smooth, or one of the many characteristics I’d read about in all the countless YA books I used to devour in high school. But instead of anything that I had expected, his touch sent a wave of heat throughout my entire body, which lingered in places that made me blush. Once I was on my feet again, Cassius moved his hand to the small of my back and turned to walk with me back toward the elevated pedestal that his throne sat upon. Both seats next to his were still empty, and I wondered if maybe he planned to put me in one of them. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Dance,” Cassius commanded as he let go of my back and climbed up onto his chair. He waved his hand around in the air, and immediately, two beautiful immortal females sat beside him, one of which brought him a freshly filled wine glass. He threw one leg over the arm of the chair again and looked at me in amusement as if he were awaiting my reaction. I stood there, on the floor in front of him, completely frozen.
“I said, dance !” he bellowed a second time.
I couldn’t move. I wanted to cry but fought not to let myself show weakness. I heard Quinn’s voice as he ran up to stand next to me and launched into some futile explanation to Cassius about how we needed more time to adjust to this new world or something. Everything seemed blurry and slow to me, and all of the voices started to melt into a sea of incomprehensible sound.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Quinn be ushered away by two more of Cassius’s fae servants. And I was left alone, in front of an ocean of vampires, commanded to dance to the sound of nothing.
I closed my eyes and envisioned the opera house again. In the recesses of my mind, I could hear soft music start to swell. It was the orchestral composition that I would use for my audition when I was ready to apply to some of Boston’s most prominent dance companies. I had already chosen the song. I’d even started working on my choreography, although I hadn’t told Athan that yet. I was keeping it a surprise until my graduation date got closer. Softly, and without needing to be forced, my legs start to move beneath me. I let myself be carried by my thoughts and by the music I heard in my head. I danced and didn’t care if anyone was watching, or if anyone was in my way. I danced my entire choreography, and when it ran out, I simply started over and danced it again.
Perhaps this is what going completely mad feels like. , not that it matters now.
Finally, when the muscles in my legs were too fatigued to move anymore, I stopped and sat down on the floor. I opened my eyes, breathing heavily from what must have been at least a solid hour of exertion, and strained to adjust my vision to the twinkling lights illuminating the room.
The other girls had started dancing, too, and the center of the hall had filled with both men and women dancing in every style one could imagine as if an undulating sea of bodies had overtaken the entire room in movement. The immortal vampires seemed pleased as they watched and frolicked and munched on foods I had never seen before that were handed to them on bone-white plates. Athan was engaged in deep conversation with his sidekick, Dregon, who occasionally looked over at me and sneered. Quinn was still missing from sight, and it was difficult to make out what else was happening at the lavish event since my line of sight met with most everyone’s knees. But when the dancers in front of me moved out of the way, I was able to look up at Cassius’s throne.
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.
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.