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Chapter 5 – Gifted Memories

The remainder of the night after last, with my birthday party and all of the inadvertent events that followed, was unsettling. If I took a moment to reflect on my entire situation, which I didn't feel up to doing, I mis well have just jumped out of the window of my apartment and chosen my own death instead of succumbing to a fate decided by somebody else. Without denying anything, I was simply a runaway heir with an obsession with creatures that saw me as part of the food supply, and I had hired people to hang posters up around the city that basically said to those creatures "Hi, all you can eat blood bank here!"

With that thought bubbling on the top of my head I couldn't quite fall to sleep. I let out a long sigh as I lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Of course there was a foreshadowing feeling that once I did close my eyes, I would only awake with another nightmare about a certain vampire I couldn't figure out. I grabbed the magazine he was on the cover of and looked at it closely. The vampire called Lucas with enchanting blue eyes and a personality that demanded attention. From what I'd perceived of him so far, he was drop-dead gorgeous (pardon the pun) and one moment he was playing human, and the next he was a protector! Nothing added up with him, so I decided to excuse him from my thoughts altogether.

That's when a knock came from my front door.

I was slightly startled, and my mind contemplated who could be knocking at (when glancing at the clock) nearly 11pm.

Standing from my bed and moving to the poor excuse for a living room, I moved cautiously to the door and looked through the peep hole. Blonde hair from a familiar female caught my eye; Lucy was standing impatiently outside with a worried expression on her face. Quickly I opened the door, wondering what was so important she needed to come over at this hour, since I always implied coming over in person was never a good idea with anyone.

"Ally! Are you feeling better?" she asked, stepping inside once again without me inviting her. It was now I saw the purpose of her visit; several colorful bags were fisted in her hands, each filled with tissue paper or swirly ribbon. I almost rolled my eyes when I glanced outside in the hall and there were more.

"Lucy, what's all this?" I knew perfectly well they were my birthday gifts but the question should have been worded "Lucy, why are you here?"

"Well, I figured since you weren't feeling well, I thought I'd bring the birthday gifts over. Looks like you have a lot of secret admirers!" she exclaimed. I watched as she piled the bags next to the couch in the living room.

"Wonderful." I said with little enthusiasm, but enough to tell her I appreciated the thought.

"Quit being so modest, Alley!" She always told me that. "You're easily ten times more beautiful than most of the models we see everyday, and that's on a bad day for you! I still think you should be in front of the camera, not behind it." the blonde confessed to me with a sparkle in her aqua eyes.

I blushed; I never took compliments well. Which was probably why I was so modest and too stubborn to admit it. "I like my job, thank you. Catching perfection on film rather than wasting myself on it."

Lucy shook her head, unhappy with my denial. "It'd be so easy for you to get a boyfriend, and yet..." She meant to silently refer to my single status. I began to shoo her from my apartment after that comment. "If you have enough stamina to argue with me, then you're well enough to come into work tomorrow." she teased. "And I told you Luke was interested!"

I froze and stopped trying to push her out of my apartment. "Excuse me?"

Lucy pointed to the single rose (which was wilting slightly from being a day old) in a small hand-painted vase she'd carried in while I was 'being modest,' as she called it. "It's from him. The card doesn't lie!"

My gaze connected with the rose, blood red in color, and didn't show any signs of breaking away. Lucy snickered to herself and bid me goodnight before showing herself out. "Get well; I'll see you tomorrow!"

I blinked when I heard the door close; by instinct I quickly went to lock it behind her. "Goodnight!" I shouted back, sight still on the flower.

Moving closer, my sapphire eyes moved from the deep red petals to the vase where the card was attached. The card simply said "Love from Luke" but that meant little compared to what was painted on the tiny vase. A smaller, less complex version of the Lockett family emblem was carefully crafted to wrap around it. It was unmistakable considering who I was really.

My eyes sparkled as I looked at it and the wilting rose, admiring but at the same time appalling. I silently cursed the vampire Luke for knowing so much about me and reminding me ever so constantly about who and what I was trying to hide from.

I suppose it was expected; the past always seemed to catch up with a person; it was only a matter of time for me.

After a few fruitless minutes of staring, I glanced at the other gifts and was already planning on what to say in the thank you cards to each and every individual who gave me something, no matter how useless. (It was only polite, and the way I was raised). I turned my back to the rose and began to dig through the other things; mostly cards and gift cards to places I rarely ever shopped, maybe an accessory or two; nothing huge or personal from anyone (besides Luke) for the reason that no one knew anything personal of me. I appreciated them all none the less and guessed that Lucy had already looked through most of them before me.

As soon as I turned my body around, my sight was captured by the rose and my family emblem once again. I looked over the symbol carefully again, and it was then I gave in to my temptation to reminisce in my past. I walked into my room and pulled out a box from under my bed. The container was no bigger than a shoe box but it was filled with several small trinkets I'd collected after my mother died. My first dog's collar, a locket my parents had given me with pictures of our family inside, a tattered old fairytale book passed down to me in my family, a smaller version of my home country's flag, a small perfume-bottle filled with the aroma of a flower grown only back home, and a maroon leather-bound diary with my family's crest charred into the cover. I picked out the diary and unbinded the belt-like lock, opened the first page and glanced at my father's tribute written on the cover page. 'May the curse be lifted and our love last a lifetime.' read his scribble-like handwriting. The tribute was to my mother; he'd given this blank book to her when he was sick, hoping she'd write in it about her rule over the kingdom after he was gone.

See, he was the one with the Lockett blood, not my mother. The lack of the inherited Lockett leader traits were probably the reason she fled to America when I was only a girl. From the little I remember of him, I recall respecting his accepting nature towards death. He didn't believe in the Lockett curse, but humored it accordingly, even as he lay ill on his deathbed.

Turning the page, I read over the first entry my mother had written. It was horribly depressing and never lessened from any of the few times I'd forced myself to read her personal thoughts. Dated the day after my father died, she described how she knew she wouldn't be able to handle what duties he had left her with as time went on, but she would try her best for him. She described how, even thought she loved my father, had wished she'd married a different man so that I would not have to suffer the pain she did by losing the love of her life. (She believed in the curse every day after my father passed on).

In the later entries she'd written, when we still resided in our homeland, she described how her 'aching heart's supports were weakening with each passing day' as she looked upon me and how I was learning all of the skills the royal family was supposed to have. Side-saddling, archery, fencing, proper public display... She described how she took joy in my every accomplishment but was secretly saddened by my ambition since it was a trait both me and my father exhibited. 'She reminds me of him more everyday.'

Now sitting on the edge of the bed, I skipped ahead to the parts about how she began planning on alternatives to the life she held as Queen. 'I am trying hard to hold out until Allison is 21 and can inherit the throne, but a decade is too long for my fingers to stretch out without falling into the bleak ending my late husband has come to grasp.' She then wrote down her options; death from this life or running away from this life. Running away was the better alternative she decided, and the next entry comes in from America.

I stopped reading after that first entry from America, I always did.

I already knew most of what she thought once we came to the states. After leaving the country in plausible hands of a council, she managed to get us into witness protection and gain different identities and a new, simple life where I finished growing up and made a life for myself. Anything was possible with a large sum of money my father left for us; aside from the official 'Lockett Royal Riches' I was supposed to inherit when I turned 21. No one had an address to send the inheritance statement to, so the back account lies idle back in my homeland, waiting for any Lockett to claim the riches and the throne. (Too bad I was the only one left and had no intention just yet of going back).

Perhaps it was fates such as my mothers' and my fathers' why I didn't wish to return. What I saw when I thought of home was death and despair, demanding and decisions. And like my mother, after watching my father die to illness, I very well believed in the family curse. Until I figured out how to break it I wasn't going back. I doubt my kingdom would want me anyway; I'd been gone for so long, the next royal family in line to rule probably was waiting for a break like this to happen so they could claim the throne.

I sighed aggressively and binded the book closed again before putting it back in the box and setting the memories back under my bed. The clock read passed midnight... too exhausted to be troubled with the dangers I set upon myself, I glanced at the rose one last time, its the lovely red petals withering at the edges, before falling asleep.

I stood in a long white hallway with several doors along the walls. I went to each one of the doors in order, curious to what was on the other side of each one. The first few doors showed memories of myself when I was younger and in my homeland. I was learning archery in one, struggling with my persistent instructor. He yelled constantly and was always swatting my elbow up. In another, one of my kinder instructors was teaching me side-saddling. I watched myself trying to cheat several times through the lesson, and finally she promised we could race later if I did it right. I moved to the next door, where in this one I was practicing yoga with my mother and a couple of the servants. Further I walked, the older I was. The second-to-last door was my mother and I boarding the plane to America, but the last door was a blinding light mixed in with several abrupt images. I was overwhelmed, not processing what I was being shown before suddenly two strong hands came and pulled me out of the room by my wrists, closed the door and pushed me against it. The hands belonged to a man who's face had come very close to my own as their body pressed against me; I looked directly into the blue eyes of Luke before his lips meshed over mine.

I awoke from this dream at the same time my alarm went off in the morning. Flustered and bewildered, I stumbled for a third time to the bathroom and looked at myself, splashed water on my face and questioned my sanity. My mind raced; I held my head and walked into the living room.

My eye immediately caught sight of the small vase Lucy brought last night from Luke. The small detail that made me freeze and continue to question my sanity was the fresh new red rose that had replaced the old.