My older sister was named after our great aunt, Camille Conta.
Unlike Camille, I knew almost nothing about our aunt, or anything about the Moroi government at that. Ask me anything about the human government and I won't disappoint. It's not as though I'm completely clueless about the world I truly belong to, I know about the blatant inequality among the Moroi and the Dhampir, though, in my situation, I've never really felt it.
Protecting the weak and vulnerable runs in our people's blood, Gregory would tell me, but I always envisioned me defending from behind a desk; something like a lawyer. That had always been my greatest ambition.
Camille always laughed for some reason whenever I'd mentioned it. Dad seemed too enthusiastic about it that I had honestly lost a bit of my own enthusiasm. My father's two guardians, Gregory and Coral, on the other hand, had very contrasting opinions; Gregory amusedly would say that at any rate I would be protecting; Coral, well, she would say some wounding things under her breath, mostly though she would just purse her lips and fall silent.
I had never met any other guardian but Gregory and Coral. And by the small bits and pieces I gathered from Dad's frequent teasing comments, they weren't exactly what the Moroi would call 'orthodox'. But they were like family to us, and never once did dad think of having them replaced.
It was earlier this day; for the first time I saw Dhampirs other than our close-knit guardians.
They were waiting, waiting for me.
Four guardians stood rigidly in the entrance hall; two women possibly in their late twenties, a burly redhead and a wickedly tall man with dark, silky hair, they all were clothed in intimidating black and white uniforms. In between them, obviously attempting to lighten the grim mood was dad. His coaxing grin faltered at my unexpected appearance. "Rose, aren't you—" Dad cleared his throat, he was sweating bullets. "I thought you got out of school at 3, sweetheart."
My eyes wouldn't leave the sight of the man with dark hair; he was so unnaturally tall, even for a Dhampir. "They let us out early," I cautiously said as I placed my backpack on the hall table.
One of the women raised her eyebrow. "You attend a human school, Miss Conta?"
Before I could reply, Gregory's head popped in from the opened living room door. "Rose, would you come in here for a moment?" he said. "Would you excuse us, Rust—ah, Lord Conta?"
Dad gave a furtive nod.
"Who are they?" I demanded the instant I safely shut the door behind us. "What're those guardians doing in here? Don't tell me you and Coral are getting replaced or anything—" I choked on my words as I took notice of Gregory's expression. Something new, something I never recalled seeing on his normally good-natured face: grief and sorrow; he looked older, awfully older than his thirty-eight years. "Gregory?"
He turned away from me and looked out the great, tinted windows. Weak, golden light shone through, dancing in his vicinity, softly illuminating his brown hair. Coral would still be asleep by now, as dad ought to be. Only I and sometimes Gregory lived in human schedule. "Do you remember that talk your dad Rustin gave you a few years back? About the school Camille attends nearly the whole year, St. Vladimir's?"
When he'd asked me that, a hundreds scenes came zooming before my eyes; my father had spoken to me countless about St. Vladimir's, the reasons why I couldn't go there, how different my situation would be if I did, that I was confused as to which one he was referring to. "Er," I said awkwardly, scratching the back of my head. "I think I do."
He slowly turned his head to meet my eyes. Stricken by the sudden watery glint in his eyes, I made to reach him out, but I stopped just as he moved towards me with that guardian agility, clasping my hands into his own. He bent his head down, a whisper straight to my ear, "They're here to take you, Rose."
I pulled back from him immediately, staggering backwards, giving it all not to trip and, stunned, asked in my gentlest whisper, "What?"
And right there, in the midst of my shock, as if on cue, the doors swung open with a loud BANG!
"Now, now, there's no need for that, Seira. The doors weren't locked."
Golden-haired Seira shot the dark, silky-haired guardian behind her a dry look.
"Rosemarie Conta," Seira took a couple of steps in my direction. I meanwhile looked desperately at my father from the wide-open doors; his expression was torn between anxiety for me and fury for the guardians. Her cold tone making her intentions clear as crystal, "You need to come with us."
I glanced from her to dad and back again. "Why? What did I do?"
"It's not nothing something you did, Miss Conta, no," said Seira. "It's more of something your father never did."
"And what's that?" I, of course, realized what it was a millisecond after I asked the question.
Something my father, Lord Rustin Conta, a close, personal advisor to the Moroi Queen, never did for me. Something he openly deprived me of.
An opportunity to become a guardian, and I couldn't be more grateful.
Like I said, we had discussed this many times. The dangers and consequences we might encounter, the public's disgust and scandalized exclamations. It is a taboo more than ever, more so within the royals; who has, after all, heard of a high-ranking royal taking his Dhampir bastard into his own Moroi family? And raising her like one would a 'normal' Moroi child, equal with his own Moroi daughter? Now, all of that would raise enough scandals to last a lifetime, and yet compared to what was to come, that seemed all tame.
My father had two sides about him: the ever loyal companion to the Drozdoz Queen, and the passionately spoken man who disagreed with all of the Queen's judgments and prejudices—that was the man I knew.
His beliefs extended towards me: The unfair treatment of Dhampirs in the hands of the Moroi.
You could say that . . . that he didn't want me to go through that.