Chapter Ten: Corin

I listened, desperate for him to answer the girl, whoever she was. I clung, like a child to her mother's breast, to the hope that whoever had come, might not want to bring us harm as all others had.

"Corin?" He hissed. "What the Hell are you doing down here?"

Corin? The name was familiar, but only in the manner of names that one hears in passing. I could not put a face, nor a personality to it. Still, I held my breath.

She sighed, as though his words had truly saddened her. "There has been unrest in the castle. Aro is...suspicious of all of us. He's been lashing out. More often than Caius, actually."

"Why?" Alec snapped. I leaned my head back against the stone. "He's still got you lot, hasn't he? He's got Jane. What's got him so bothered?"

A short silence followed. I wondered, briefly, if Corin would honor him with an answer at all. "Chelsea was injured on a hunt a week ago. Her bonds have weakened as a result. Aro has realized how few of us actually claim loyalty to him. Loyalty that...isn't based on someone's gift."

"I see." He murmured. The tone of his voice changed. He didn't sound quite as angry anymore. "And, tell me, Corin...are your loyalties wavering?"

"I do not know. My job has always been to keep the ladies happy in the tower, to keep Marcus from offing himself. I don't often intermingle with the affairs of my fellow Guard members." She paused, but for a moment. "I do not agree with Aro, though. He's… Alec, I'm glad you haven't seen him. He's become unhinged. More so than he was before. He's not just a bit off...he's….violent. He nearly killed Felix last week for speaking out of turn."

Alec laughed. "I would have loved to see that."

"This is serious. He's letting Audrey and all of her lot run around like maniacs. I wonder, some of the time, if he has any control over her at all. I feel it is only a matter of time before we're all down here."

"What do you expect us to do about it?" He asked, dully. I could only assume that the 'us' he referred to was him and myself.

"I don't know." Corin whispered. "Just…try to stay alive, alright? Both of you. I…" She broke off. "What's her name?"

"Saoirse." I answered, just as he said my name.

"Saoirse, Alec. We'll see you soon." She said in parting. I let out a breath.

"Who in the bloody fuck was that?" I groaned. True, I was grateful that she hadn't tortured us, but her exposition about what had been going on upstairs hardly helped our situation.

"Corin. She makes you happy."

"I'm afraid to report, but I am the exact opposite of happy." I mumbled, scrapping a line, almost like a tally mark, into the stone.

"It's her power. She makes people content with whatever situation they're in. She and Chelsea sort of work off one another." He answered. I snorted.

"Do you believe her?" For all we knew, she could have been spoonfeeding us nonsense and lies. Perhaps Aro had gone absolutely bonkers, but that didn't mean the rest of the guard saw him as such. Even with Chelsea injured, I could not imagine that the majority were tied to him only through her.

He sighed. A familiar sound filled the air. He'd started to throw the rock at the wall again. I found some comfort in the noise. "Some of it. Jane and I've been around since the beginning- or close to it. Demetri and Chelsea came before us. Felix, too. There are a lot of people bonded to Aro through Chelsea's gift. Demetri and Felix, and Heidi… Corin, too. I think. Maybe if Chelsea has been injured...and the rest of them aren't loyal. We might have a chance."

"If Injuring her has caused the bonds to become weak," I mused, playing with a lock of my hair. "Imagine what killing her would do?"

"We can't just stage an assassination from underground, Sao."

"No, but if Corin comes back, or Jane, we cou-"

"Could what? Jane would be killed if the thought so much as reached her mind. Chelsea is the linchpin. The center of the whole operation. He will keep her protected, at all costs."

"Then we'll have to make sure they know about the idea without having to think of it." I answered. I knew the words did not make sense. They relayed a concept, an idea, a feeling, that could not be conveyed through words alone. It was the sort of thing that one felt in his or her soul. In my mind, there are ways to think things without truly allowing the thought to exist in your mind.

You felt it. You knew what you wanted even without the exact words forming inside of your head. It was...instinctive, a sensation buried deep in the mind, where no telepath could reach it.

"I don't know." He breathed out. "It is risky, and I don't feel as if I can take more of Audrey, or Tamsin or...any of them."

"Then I'll take it next time. I promise. I'll give her any reason I can to torture me, instead." I promised, pressing my forehead to the stone. He was just on the other side, so close…

A million miles away.

"We'll see." He replied a short moment later. A heard the fight in his tone start to fade away. Audrey had ripped him apart, little by little. But she wouldn't succeed. She would not turn him into a nothing.

I needed to stop thinking of her. Every time I did, there she was. It was as though our thoughts were a signal to her, lighting up in the night sky.

Come. Play with us, Audrey.

"We'll get out of here, Alec." I told him, firmly. I forced myself to believe the words that left my mouth. It was hard. Everything within me said to give up hope. But I couldn't. I had to fight.

"You really need to decide if you want to be a pessimist, a realist, or an optimist." He snipped, albeit playfully. I didn't mind. I imagined neither of us had much time for play and joking about anymore.

"I suppose I like to keep it interesting." I chuckled, "Beth yw bywyd heb amrywiaeth?"

"Did you just gargle on your own tongue?"

"No. That's Welsh, Cariad." I informed. "If you're going to learn it, you might want to be able to distinguish between the language and actual gibberish."

"What did you say?"

"What's life without some variety." I answered. I had little faith that we would get far in our lessons before we either died or escaped, but at least it would be something to pass the time. If we kept our thoughts away from She-Who-Must-Not-Cross-Our-Minds, then we might live, just a bit longer.

Just long enough to figure out how to get out of here.

"Interesting. However, it might be better to start with the basics." He said in a haughty sort of manner. I rolled my eyes. I wasn't much of a teacher. To be honest, I wondered if I had the patience to impart the knowledge of something as intricate and complicated a languish upon someone. For one who is not a native speaker, Welsh is quite difficult to pick up.

"Alright. Common greetings, then?" I suggested. "Repeat after me: Helo."

"Hello?" He repeated, uncertainty in the word. "I don't see…"

"No, close. It sounds very much like "hello" but it's not quite that. But...it means the same thing." I shrugged to myself. Perhaps it didn't matter all that much if he got the intonation of that particular word perfect. Most Welsh would be able to understand it just fine. Most did speak English, just as I did, as a second or third language.

"He...lo?" He said, questioning. "If this is where we're starting, Saoirse, I believe these lessons are going to be short lived."

"When we get out of here, we're going by Wales on the way to Iceland." I said, crossing my arms. "I won't let you embarrass me in front of the locals."

"If we get out of here, I'll be sure to bring a pocket-translation guide just to be safe."

"When we get out of here, I'll be your pocket translation guide." I countered. It was exhausting, but if we didn't hold onto hope, then we gave up the last thing that we could possess in any sense of the word.

"I'm going to need a big-ass pocket, then."

"Maybe so," I mused. My mind raced. There were so many places that I wanted to see. Some, I frequented so much they were almost like another home. Others, I'd only seen in travel magazines and internet blogs. Even for a vampire, it was hard to go everywhere we wanted. "We need to make an itinerary of all of the places we have to visit."

"Wherever we go, I want to be at least a thousand miles away from Audrey." He said.

"Don't mention her." I implored. "She always comes a few seconds after we've started to talk about her."

"She hasn't been around for a while." He admitted, a note of fear slipping into his voice. "I'll bet she's been thinking up more games to play."

"It's going to be fine." I promised, "I'll take it for a while and you can continue to rest. We'll get through it."

He snorted. "I hope you're right. Audrey seems to have a particular liking to… playing with me."

"Do you know why? I know she said that she doesn't have a personal vendetta against you, but based on everything she's done, I find that hard to believe."

"Before I fell from grace, I was her superior." He said after a few moments, "She might have been jealous of my status."

"That's petty." I snorted. Audrey was a bitch, but to torture someone merely because they had been of a higher status seemed...childish. Ridiculous.

"We barely interacted." Alec informed me after a few seconds of silence had passed. "The fact that I ranked higher on the guard didn't have any effect on her life."

I froze in my response. Dread washed over me as a familiar sound filled the air.

A second later, though, it changed. I knew Audrey's footsteps. Perfectly. These did not follow the same pattern as hers.

"Saoirse!"

Tamsin, actually in her true form, pressed her nose to the bars. At first glance, she did not look dangerous at all. A few inches taller than me, with strawberry blonde hair that she wore in a plait.

I hissed, drawing my lips back. "Go the fuck away."

She pouted. "Come on. Don't be like that. I've been away for so long."

"Good."

"Didn't you miss me?" She asked, her already high voice lilting to a childish level. I rolled my eyes. Tamsin, compared to Audrey, was a mouse. Still, she wasn't fun to deal with.

"Not at all."

Her eyes narrowed. Teeth bared, she no longer looked sweet and unassuming. For a second, I thought she had begun to change her appearance- but no, she was still herself. "Too bad."

With a click, the door swung open. "Audrey had to go on a business trip." She announced. Now, her voice was low- an ever present snarl. "She told me just what to do."

"That's adorable." I purred, crossing my arms over my chest. "It's almost like you're her apprentice. She's taken you by the hand and is leading you down the Hellish path to being a deranged monster."

"It's really fun." She grinned, as if she didn't catch my sarcasm at all. Bending down, she retrieved a black dagger from a pocket in her boots. Carefully, she balanced it in her palm. "She gave me this before she left. Its infused with children of the moon venom. Hmmm…"

In a single, swift motion, she dragged it across my forehead. The knife itself couldn't do anything on its own, but the venom caused the blade to melt through my skin.

I let out a whimper, and pressed my hand to the wound. It burned. Children of the Moon venom always burned horridly.

"You look pretty with all of those scars on your face, Saoirse." Tamsin hummed. I couldn't determine whether or not it was a joke, or, if in some kind of twisted way, she actually found them attractive. "I think they suit you."

"Get. Away." I panted. The venom was agonizing, but Audrey had used it on me before...why did it have such a bad effect this time?

"No," Tamsin cooed. She kneeled down, and if I had any sense about me, I'd have punched her so hard every cell in her brain got jumbled around. "I can't do that. See, Audrey told me to make sure you were broken down when she came back. Audrey always gets what she wants."

I forced myself to meet her eyes. If Audrey had tortured me as much as she had Alec, then I would be able to withstand the pain from the venom. Now, I was weak. Pathetic.

"She'll need to be gone for c-centuries." My breath came out hard, but I held her gaze. "You won't break me. You're just as pathetic as she is."

Tamsin smiled, and raised a hand. For a split second, I thought she meant to slap me, but she merely ruffled my hair. "You're cute, Saoirse. Don't worry. I'll do my absolute best to break you apart. You won't remember your name when we get done."

I laughed, loudly. "I know how your games work, Tamsin. There is no one that you can turn into that would bother me."

"I'm not turning into anyone, sweetheart." She hummed, slipping the dagger back into her boots as she rose to her feet. "I've found that it makes things much more enjoyable if you do them yourself."

I pushed myself to my feet with a free hand. Finally, the burning started to cease, but not to the point that I could keep my hand off the wound for more than a few seconds. Somehow, the pressure made the pain manageable. "Doesn't matter. If Audrey hadn't given you instructions, you wouldn't know where to begin. Your methods of torture are child's play compared to her."

She quirked a brow. "Have you seen children play, Saoirse? They rip the heads off of dolls and throw their toys about, fixing the parts of some to the main bodies of the others. If you want me to play with you like a child does, I think you'll break faster than Audrey might have hoped."

"Your Audrey's bitch now, too?" I wanted to laugh, but there was no humor in this situation. "What's so important that she couldn't be here to oversee her protege at work?"

"Aro sent her on an assignment. Bosnia."

A chill engulfed my heart. That'd been where…

"Aro told her to be swift with Jane, but we all know how Audrey is. She likes to have fun with her prey."