Chapter Thirty

Coercion

Lena stood to Aro's left, at the base of the steps leading to the three kings. Back straight, feet together, perfectly still. She held her left hand in her right, hiding her disfigurement from view. Stared at the shiny black shoes peeking up at her from beneath the hem of her grey dress, catching the light, winking at her.

Even her shoes mocked her.

She caught the glares, the hard looks from the rest of the guard. A muttered remark in another language. A chorus of laughter rippled across the hall before it abruptly stopped, cut in half by a pair of sharp red eyes, unimpressed. She felt those same eyes scorching her back every so often, ancient and impatient.

As far as Aro knew, she was useless. He kept her because he saw something in her past. Diluted in the haze of a memory, a power he wished to possess.

And, Lena understood that it was this desire which kept her alive.

So she stood beside him and kept her mouth shut. Watched with disinterest as her creator went about his business: performing interrogations, granting favours, enacting exemptions. A string of old words rattled around in her skull all day - dusty words, words that hadn't seen sunlight in some time. The type of words the Cullens would use. Lena's face itched with the urge to screw up her nose. She kept her expression bland.

And so time passed, and Lena waited for an opportunity.

It presented itself soon enough. Walked into the throne room, dressed in a charcoal cloak and an easy smile. A short woman with reddish-brown skin and a hooked nose. Thin black hair fell limply over her narrow shoulders. A member of the guard, though not one Lena remembered seeing before.

A strange sense of peace washed over Lena as she examined the woman. A warm feeling in her chest that reminded her, somehow, of Jasper.

"Corin," Aro greeted. "We weren't expecting you."

The woman - Corin - smiled politely. "There is a problem in the tower, Master Caius. Athenodora refuses to settle."

"Are you not here to deal with such episodes?" Caius asked.

She pressed her lips together. "There are some things, master, with which I believe you have more experience. I could not cope without my superiors."

"Marcus and I will do fine in your absence," Aro said. "We will save any punishments for when you return. I know you enjoy them."

A long moment passed in which nobody moved or spoke. Then, Caius stood. Corin smiled as he approached her, droopy eyes flickering over the group of vampires gathered in the room. Her gaze settled on Lena for a beat longer than the others. Cherry red. Lena didn't have time to contemplate what it meant, or if it meant anything at all, before the woman turned and left.

Distrust, she decided later. All of them looked at her like that.

Lena fell into line. Or at least, fell into a sort of quiet obedience that closely mimicked loyalty. She looked to Aro for approval to do anything - to eat when there was a feast, to leave the rooms he occupied, to speak when she wished to comment.

Aro liked this.

He would not, she thought, like the thoughts which accompanied these actions quite as much. She was careful to avoid touching him.

Still, Aro seemed convinced. He smiled at her more, though it was an awful and patronising little smile. He had gifts delivered to her chambers: colourful dresses she had no reason to wear, expensive jewels plucked from the fingers of the deceased, and the best crops from the reaping.

He saw her as a commodity to be purchased.

Lena bit back a growl and wiped the blood from her chin. Her shoes clicked along the stone floor as she stormed down the hallway, towards her room. While her meal had been enjoyable, hand-picked by her sire, she wished to sulk.

Her thoughts turned to Alistair. She pictured him brooding in the rafters of the Cullen house once more - long limbs folded inwards, hawkish eyes swooping over her - and she ached. His name was a wound she undressed and stared at every night in the dark, raw and festering. He was not something Aro could replace, not someone he could make her forget with generous gifts or his harsh hand.

She looked down at her left hand, then glanced around. Perfectly alone, she granted herself permission to acknowledge her loss. She ran her fingertip over the bumps where her fingers should have attached. Scar tissue, all smooth like rubber.

She would not leave without her pride. She refused.

"Mourning your loss?"

Lena snapped her head up.

The woman standing at the end of the hall was a ghost. Quiet, pale, with hollow eyes. Her long brown hair was braided and tossed over her shoulder like a length of rope, frayed at the end.

But then, Lena thought, she was no ghost. Not at all. There were no ghosts in a place like this. She, like everyone else in the castle, was something much more terrible. This woman reeked of the old, the same way the kings did. She was a predator, a monster far better attuned to the animalistic ways of destroying a person than Lena. And she had centuries to perfect what Lena had learnt in a measly year.

She hid her mangled hand behind her other. Lifted her chin. Said nothing. Continued forwards, towards her. She would not give her back to this woman.

Like a demon rising from the darkness, she darted forwards. A hand emerged from her cloak, and she snatched her wrist.

Lena refused to flinch. Stiffened, instead. Her eyes dilated as they fixated on the stranger's face. A shard of ice tucked itself in her stomach, sharp and cold, something like dread.

"Did it hurt?" she asked, and dragged her eyes from her face to her hands. She pulled on Lena's left arm and turned it over, studying her palm and the waxy nubs Aro had reduced her phalanges to.

Lena frowned.

"Well, did it?"

She hesitated. "Yes."

"Wonderful." The woman smiled, and dropped her arm. "Come, or I'll take your thumb, too."

She swallowed. "Fine."

And the woman, nameless still, turned on her heel and started back down the corridor.

The library was as she remembered it - a large room overfilled with books and scrolls. A heaviness hung in the air, something stiff. Unbreathable. Unsavoury, even to the dead.

Corin sat in an armchair in the back corner, hidden behind a maze of shelves, head tipped back and eyes closed. Beneath her neatly folded hands, a pile of books rested on her lap. As the two women approached, her eyes snapped open and that cherry red stare was set upon Lena once more. A smile lit her face, cementing itself a second too quickly.

Lena tensed.

Once she was a few feet away, it hit her, as if she had walked into a cloud of perfume.

Suddenly, she was in Thessaly again, standing barefoot in the middle of the wheat fields. Gentle beams of sunlight touched her cheekbones with the tenderness of a lover. The wind brushed over her skin, fingertips ghosting over flesh. The air smelt of fresh bread and fruit juice, and somewhere in the distance she could hear her brothers roughhousing, her mother begging them to settle…

"We must be quick, Chelsea," Corin said. "I'm expected back in the tower soon. They'll send someone if I'm gone too long."

Lena frowned. Quick? Quick about what? She looked from Corin to the woman standing beside her, the woman with the hair like rope - Chelsea - but she wouldn't meet her gaze or speak. Frustration nipped at Lena's fingertips. She wanted to grab her by the hair, turn her head towards her, and demand that she tell her what was happening.

"Chelsea," Corin said, "don't tell me you just snatched her without any sort of explanation?"

Chelsea pressed her lips together. "He has ears everywhere. We would have been reported. Even meeting here is incredibly dangerous. I don't know why you insisted on-"

"You know I can't leave the castle. We just have to make do."

Chelsea looked away, up towards the ceiling.

"Hey." Corin leaned forwards and touched her hand. "We'll be careful."

"We need someone to watch the door. We need more people."

"Then recruit them."

Chelsea glared and snatched her arm away. "You know I despise it."

"Then stop complaining," she said. "You are the safest among us. And, unlike our newest friend, you even have all of your fingers."

Lena hissed, and narrowed her eyes at Corin.

The woman turned her head lazily and looked at her. She expected her to flinch when she met her glare, but Corin kept her composure. Held her chin up, kept her face expressionless, regarding Lena like one might someone else's misbehaving child. She looked down her nose at her, and scanned her from head to toe.

How small she felt then.

"Do you know where he put them?" she asked.

Lena blinked. "No."

Corin stared at Lena's hands for a moment. "Well. You could make do without them, if it came to it."

"Does someone like her really need them?" Chelsea asked.

Lena frowned. "Someone like me?"

"Yes. Someone… feral," she said, words crisp, carved out with the precision of a knife.

She growled and bared her teeth.

Chelsea huffed a laugh and looked at Corin. "Look at her, snarling like a dog," she said. "A bitch, just like they all say." She looked back at Lena, and tilted her head. "But I wonder, what kind of mutt are you?"

"Chelsea-"

"A loyal one? Faithful? Protective?" She stepped in front of Lena and peered up at her face. She was close enough that Lena could smell the blood on her breath. Tapping her finger against her bottom lip, Chelsea slowly tipped her head the other way. "I can see why Aro chose you to be his lapdog."

Lena's right hand flashed forwards and she seized the woman by the neck. Her fingernails sunk into the hard flesh of her throat, and tiny cracks ran through her skin.

Amazingly, Chelsea smiled.

Eager to exterminate the joy in her expression, Lena squeezed harder.

Corin stood and reached for her. "Lena-"

She whipped her head around and snarled at the other woman. She held her hands up, palms out towards her, and took a half a step back.

"Put her down. Aro will not be happy if you kill her. You will find yourself to be missing more than just your fingers."

Lena did not move. She stood very still for a moment. Stared at Chelsea. Looked at her face, her eyes, the ghost of a smile haunting her lips. She wanted very much to kill her. To dig her fingers deep in her neck and tear open her throat. To keep her from speaking again. But, like all things, it would cost her.

Aro would not take more fingers. He would think it a waste. Pointless.

Slowly, she relaxed her grip on the other woman, before releasing her completely. Her hand fell back to her side.

Corin sat. She kept her eyes trained on Lena. Something in her expression had changed.

She was afraid of her.

Chelsea moved away, rubbing at her neck. The cracks in her flesh healed over beneath her hand.

"Not a lapdog after all," she said to Corin.

"Poke a stray, anticipate the bite."

Chelsea nodded, smiling secretly.

Lena did not like it.

Something was happening. They were treating her not as a person, and not as an equal. They were plotting. She could sense it, could feel it in the air, pricking her skin. The world around her was brewing with something she did not like at all.

"What is this?" she hissed.

The two women exchanged a look.

"Lena, how do you feel about murder?"

Her gaze darted between the two women, flicking quickly back and forth. She anticipated movement, but neither of them shifted their weight or lifted a hand.

"Well, it's more like assassination, really."

"A good old fashioned rebellion."

"A feminist movement," Chelsea said.

The two women giggled.

Corin stood and stepped in front of Lena. "You're unhappy here."

She bit back a scoff. It was rather obvious, she thought. What other conclusion could she have come to? As if she could be happy, missing four of her fingers.

"You want to leave. It's clear as day on your face."

Silence.

"We are not fools," Corin said. She reached forwards, fingernails dragging over Lena's upper arms, down to the backs of her hands. She seized them in hers, and lifted them up and held before Lena's eyes. "These are not the hands of an underling."

She moved to pull away from her grasp, but Corin's grip tightened.

"Look at them," she said. "Look at them! Hardened with labour. Calloused. You have seen the real world, Lena. Why do you let a man like Aro define it for you? Tell you the bounds of your existence?"

Lena narrowed her eyes. "You are no different."

"Oh, we are very different, believe you me." She moved closer. "The difference between you and I is this: I do not settle. It is rather ironic. I can make everyone around me content, but not myself."

"Is that your gift?"

"In many ways, it is a curse." She dropped her hands. "Aro would not have imprisoned us if we were normal."

"A gift gives you power. Anything that gives you power is not a curse," Lena said. "And this is not a prison."

"No, prison is better. I have been to the dungeons before." Chelsea drifted closer to Lena, ghost-like. Her voice lowered to a sharp hiss. "There, you are not offered the illusion of freedom as reward for your talents. They do not lie to you."

Lena's gaze snapped from Corin's face to Chelsea's. "And what is your gift then?"

"I alter relationships, loyalties. Aro keeps me because I keep everyone else hostage," she said. "I've been commanded to keep Corin here, and to entrap you. Corin and I have developed an understanding, and you…" Her eyes darted between Lena's. "I pity you."

Her temper flared, some dark thing she tried to keep contained in a tiny box. It bumped against the lid, rattled around, restless.

Pity.

The last person to pity her was Carlisle, and she was certain she ruined a part of him. Haunted him. Lurked still in his house, at the edges of his mind - there, in the corner of a dimly lit room, only to vanish when he turned on the light.

Chelsea and Corin were playing a dangerous game with her.

"Are you offended?" Chelsea tilted her head and looked at her for a moment. "Would you like me to lie to you instead, Lena? Do you find comfort in manipulation? I can tell you any number of pretty things, just like Aro does. It is not difficult. Do you think he feels guilty when he looks you in the eye? I can promise you he doesn't."

She stared at her.

The corners of her mouth tipped up. "Why do you waste your life fulfilling another man's wishes, doing what you are told?"

"I have time," Lena said.

"You seem to think you have a lot of things."

Like birds of prey, the two women circled her. Grey coats fanned out behind them like tails, swirling and swirling and swirling around her.

"Women like us were not born to serve men," Corin said.

"Things could be different for us," Chelsea said. "For you."

"You are not a servant girl, Lena. You are not a peasant."

"Who says Aro should rule? Who says any of them deserve it?"

Corin darted forwards, snatching her ruined hand. "Look at what he does to you. This is not a hand meant to execute another man's orders." She dropped her hold on her, and continued to sweep around her.

Chelsea moved into view in front of her, crimson eyes shifting over her face, sorting through her features. "You are not a lapdog. You are meant for much greater things than that."

Corin circled around her again. "You were not born to belong to someone else."

Chelsea bobbed into her line of sight. "We will not force your hand," she said. "If I wanted, I could bend your will to me with ease, but it's just the thing I despise."

"We are offering you a choice," Corin said. "It is more than your creator has ever given you."

Lena glanced between them. It was clear that they meant to overthrow the kings. And it was just as clear to Lena that she was in danger now no matter what she said or did. Was she being offered a choice, or merely the illusion of a choice? She knew enough to expose them, to ruin them, to have them killed or punished severely.

They would not let her walk away. They were not stupid.

They had watched her for weeks, preying upon her. For how long? Long enough to sense her hesitation at the very least. Her failure to comply. Her quiet rebellion, even after what Aro did.

They thought her involvement was certain, that her agreement was guaranteed. And, if it wasn't, it didn't matter. If she were killed, he would not execute another two in mourning. They were important to Aro, two of his most useful and most beloved.

"No, you have given me no choice," Lena said. "You are lying."

"Just because the alternative is less than desirable does not mean it is not a choice."

She glared. "You-"

Chelsea clamped a hand over her mouth. The library door opened. With wide eyes, she looked pointedly at Lena.

Be quiet. Act natural.

In that moment, Lena truly resented those women. She hated them for the position they had put her in: pretending they weren't talking about treason, pretending the threat of murder did not hang in the air around them. She was now caught up in something she had not consented to, and was not sure she wanted a part in.

Her fate no longer depended entirely on her. Her success, her survival, was no longer up to only her. Now, her life was shared with these women. Distributed among them like food shared at a picnic, like spare change among siblings. Each of them held a part of another's future. In just one breath she could condemn them, and in just one breath she could be condemned.

They had power over her, and she did not like it one bit.

Chelsea pulled her hand away, slowly. Her gaze remained fixed on her, a warning flashing in her crimson eyes.

Lena kept her mouth shut.

Corin stood just as someone rounded the corner. The three turned to face the newcomer.

Demetri stepped into sight. Lena recognised him immediately. She didn't understand why Alistair was so frightened of him. He wasn't much, in all honesty. She had seen vampires far more physically imposing in her time here. It wasn't much of a consolation. It was his mind, then, which made him lethal. Ruthless.

His eyes swept over the three of them, gaze shifting. His body was rigid with apprehension. His gaze settled on Lena, and his lips drew into a firm line. It was her addition to this gathering, she realised, which unnerved him.

"Sorry to interrupt your book club," he said, "but Corin needs to return to her duties."

She smiled at him. "Of course. I was just picking up some new books for the wives."

He did not so much as look at the stack of books in her hands. "I'm sure they'll be delighted."

She moved past him and left. Demetri lingered a moment longer, eyes fixed on Lena. She had the peculiar sense that he was looking through her, or rather looking into her. That he was staring right through her pupils and into the dark confines of her skull.

"Did you need something from me?" she asked.

He smiled, a tiny insignificant curve of his mouth. "No, Lena. I'll leave you two to it."

He bobbed his head and took a step back. Turned. Left.

Watching his retreating back, an awful feeling bubbled away in Lena's gut. Chelsea brushed past her without a word. Lena said nothing. And all the while, the terrifying thought that she might never see Alistair again bounced around in her head.

She could be here forever.

That night, she sat at her dressing table and stared at the necklace Alistair gave her, eyes burning with tears. With the fingers of her good hand, she touched the metal chin and the little gemstone suspended from it, as if she could reach him through it.

She didn't doubt he was angry with her. She left without a word. But how long would his anger last, unprovoked by the sight of her?

Alistair had been right all along. She was too rash, too angry, too stupid to sit down and think things through for just a minute. She could spend centuries trying to earn her fingers back, one by one. She could spend millenia under the thumb of Corin and Chelsea, mindlessly doing as she was told out of fear of being exposed. Was it really so different, serving them instead of Aro? She wanted to believe so. It gave her something to hope for, a reason to try.

She was so stupid. Still stupid, just as she was the day she met Aro. Thinking things would work out pleasantly for her in spite of all the red flags, never even considering something terrible was lurking around the corner, watching, salivating, waiting to close in on her.

Stupid, stupid girl.

What had she done?

it's been a while, but hi again. i've edited the third act like a hundred times and finally convinced myself to just finish uploading the story. anyway, i hope you're all doing okay! and thank you so much for all of your reviews. i really enjoy hearing your thoughts x