RPOV
The room is still and I'm very careful drawing breath. The Guardians are like statues against the wall, looking as if they see and hear both everything and nothing at all.
Strigoi.
I'd heard the word before but I wasn't sure where. It wasn't in any of my two books, I was sure. My dictionary didn't have it or its meaning. I knew it was to do with the Guardians, it was a word they exchanged and it rolled together with the 'wards'.
Finally, the Young Master leans back in his chair. He looks between his parents and I get the idea that he's hiding something. "There is no bargaining with Strigoi. You can't even get close enough to propose bargaining because they'll snap your neck and drain you dry."
The plainness of how he spoke mixed with the violent words made the wine in my blood go cold. Meredith is stiff beside me. I don't know what a strigoi is but by the feeling of the room I know it isn't good. I also knew that a broken neck wasn't good either. I drop my gaze to the floor, wishing I could stop listening now, that I had followed the rules and never started.
"Things are changing." Mr. Ozera replies. "They are not as savage and unorganized as we're lead to believe."
"But they do prey on any living person with a few pints of blood in their system?"
Mrs. Ozera sets down her empty glass with a loud clink. "Wine!"
Meredith scurries over.
"What is…what's going on?"
"We're just discussing possible options for allies, Christian. We have to think of our family, we have to protect ourselves."
"Guardians-"
"Guardian numbers are dwindling." Mr. Ozera says flatly. I peek up from the floor to the black geared men at the wall, there were only two and yet their presence felt larger. "We cannot ask for more, they've been stretched too thin already. And with the other Royals unable to come to any decisions about what kind of government they want to live under we are all taking what we can for ourselves, while we can."
"Something is going to happen." Mrs. Ozera says. Her voice is quiet and lulls in a strange way. Like my mothers had been before she collapsed. "And we need to be prepared for when it does. We need to be on the winning side."
"Winning side?" Christian repeats bewildered. "What sides? Shouldn't we be trying to reach out to the other Royals? Maybe presenting Tasha's idea, I know it's controversial but there were times we learned to protect ourselves."
"And you think what Christian? We will all unite under Tasha's naïve dream? One family cannot even agree on it, twelve families will not."
"Eleven." He says softly and reaches for his wine glass.
"I will not have my son fighting for his life. I will not have it." Mistress Ozera says as Meredith refills her glass.
"No, you will just sacrifice as many Dhampirs as you can."
"That's what they are there for."
"How can you sound so glib about it? They are people, they have lives. They're not robots and no matter how much you try to tell yourself, mother, they are not your slaves."
"Christian." Master Ozera's voice is sharp and I ridiculously feel a pang of worry toward his son. He, however, doesn't seem worried under the master's glare. He looks livid.
"You have spent too much time with your aunt I fear." Mistress Ozera says quietly.
"Yes, it's refreshing to be around someone with morals."
"Enough!" Mr. Ozera thunders. I feel as if I will never be able to move again. My bones are lead, my entire body locked into place. "Apologise to your mother."
The Young Master bows his head and his jaw clenches. Shock runs through me and I feel as if I'm gazing at something familiar. But then he looks up at Mistress Ozera with something in his eyes that I never had and the moment is gone. I drop my eyes back to the floor.
"I'm sorry."
"It's perfectly alright." Mrs. Ozera replies calmly. "Perhaps this was not the right time to have this conversation but we are rather pressed. I just thought you would old enough to understand or at the very least hear us out, even if you didn't like what you heard."
Something in her voice needles me and I glance up to see the Young Master's hand clench in his lap. He takes a drink from his glass. "I am tired from travelling. Forgive me."
Master Ozera sighs. "No need, it is a touchy subject, we know. Strigoi are to be feared yes and it would be unwise to underestimate them. Perhaps we're not explaining very well…"
"What is it exactly you are trying to explain?" The Young Master says as if he is treading over fragile ground.
"We have a guest arriving tomorrow, they will be able to clarify everything and answer all your questions. Let us just enjoy the rest of our meal shall we?"
"Sounds good to me." The Young Master drains the rest of his glass and my chest constricts. Meredith is already pressing the bottle into my hands and I start forward.
I keep my eyes on the glass and the red liquid that pours from the bottle's mouth.
"Spending time with your Aunt may have given you a self-righteous outlook on your summer but that's over now." Mrs Ozera speaks smoothly with all the warmth of the cooler. "But you can't try and shame us for our lifestyle choices, especially as you benefit from such homely pleasures."
The Young Master springs up from his chair, knocking the bottle from my grip and a small scream escapes me.
"You stupid girl!" Mistress Ozera hisses.
"Sit down Christian." Master Ozera snaps.
"I'm sor – I'm so sorry- I…"
Meredith is already beside me mopping the wooden tabletop and I retrieve the bottle with numb fingers. Out of the corner of my eye, the Young Master's hand moves upward and instinctively I flinch back. The contact doesn't come and I look up before I can think better of it. His hand is paused in the air but not at an angle that threatens me. He looks at me as if he's been the one that has been punished.
Meredith pushes the soiled napkins she's used into my hands and jabs my side with her fingers, telling me to leave. I bolt out of the room with a strange rushing in my ears. I reach the kitchen and fall down the steps. I vaguely hear Mary exclaim something and rush to pull me up. A small slap to my face brings the room back into focus.
"What happened?" Marys asks in a strained voice.
"I spilt wine."
"Oh, God." Her round eyes dart past me and I turn as Meredith rushes down the steps.
"Bottle of red." She says. Mary runs to a cupboard and pulls it open.
"I'm so sorry."
Meredith holds up a hand to me and I shrink back. She takes the bottle from Mary and has left before I can blink.
Voices suddenly rise, angry voices. I look at Mary terrified and she stares back blankly, fear stationary in her eyes. I can't make out what is being said, no shouted, but it's raw and scolding. My back hits the centre counter. Just as suddenly as the voices flared up they disappear. The only noise is our breathing.
We both jump as Meredith appears in the doorway balancing all three plates. She looks pale. Mary rushes forward to help her.
"Do they want the next course?"
"No, just the whiskey."
Mary retrieves a bottle half-filled with amber liquid and gives it to her.
After Meredith leaves Mary says. "Let's just pray that your mother is well tomorrow."
Selfishly I can't help but hope the same thing.
I place the last plate on top of the others. The dishtowel in my hand is damp and I idly wonder if I should get another but I can't seem to muster up the energy. My eyes feel like there are bruises behind them and my body is weighed down in a way that made me think of my shoes - battered and nearly useless. I hear Mary draining out another sink full of dirty water.
"One more should do it." Her voice sounded how I felt.
I'm leaning against the counter next to her, staring at the opposite wall and imagining peeling off my shirt and baggy slacks and putting on the oversized shirt, then just falling onto my bedroll. I'll probably be asleep before I hit it. I'll probably not bother changing. The only thing that was giving me the energy to stay awake is the thought of my mother and that I had to make sure she was alright before I slept.
I hear Mary start scrubbing and I almost wished Meredith were still here to help but she'd left nearly an hour ago, after taking dishes along with the desserts to the Guardian quarters.
I was almost too tired to be resentful over Serena's cake and chocolate custard disappearing out the door. Almost.
Silently Mary passes me the oven dish and I start mopping the slick surface, not even looking away from the wall to make sure I was doing it right. I wonder what tomorrow will be like and if my mother would be well enough. A part of me wanted her to rest, to gather her strength because if I was this tired after one day then how did she cope with it all the time? On top of it she worried about me, she checked on me and when I was younger and less manageable it must have been terrible. A bigger, uglier part of me wants her to be well so I didn't have to do this again. Not at least, for a very long time.
Shame settles in my stomach and I wish I could lie down on the floor.
I put the dish next to the plates and as I turn back to take another soppy dish from Mary something draws my eyes to the door.
I go still, the dish held in the air to my left forgotten.
Mary makes an impatient sound at the same time he says, "Sorry to intrude."
She jumps and from the corner of my eye, I see her bow her head. I quickly do the same, mentally slapping myself for staring but I couldn't help it. The look he wore was tight and despite his height, he looked drawn into himself…like we all tried to be. But that was stupid.
"Is there something we can get you Young Master?" Mary asks.
"No, nothing at all." He says quickly. I hear his footfalls on the steps, louder than any noise we'd make or the Guardians would. "I just wanted to… well I just wanted to compliment the chef. Dinner was great."
I hear her breathe in and out. "My pleasure, sir."
It's quiet and I begin counting the white-veined parts of the dark tiled floor.
"Can I... would you like some help?"
I peek up to see Mary looking at him puzzled. He was even taller than I thought. His blue eyes look between us and then he gestures to the sink.
"Oh no! We can manage sir."
"Are you sure-" he says coming forward and I step back, hitting the cupboard behind me with a thump. He stops and looks at me like he had in the dining room. I drop my eyes and watch his feet take a step back. "I would never… you don't have to be afraid of me."
Anger flares up in my body, making my eyes sharper and I forget about the fear and glare up at him.
Mary is making noises as if she's trying to speak but her tongue has been cut out.
"I didn't mean to frighten you." He says and for a moment I think I can see past what I'm afraid of and just see a boy. A boy with messy black hair and cautious blue eyes, who was trying to muster up the courage to admit to something terrible he'd done.
The moment is interrupted by a gurgling noise.
I hate my body, I hate my body, I hate my body.
"Are you hungry?" He asks and I shake my head, the noise had to be just my insides twisting. "Yes, you are. I'll make you something, I'm not that good but I can make-"
"No I-" He was talking very fast and I was starting to feel as if I'm running downhill and unable to stop, even though a sheer drop waited for me at the bottom.
"Toast or oatmeal or a sandwich." He continues looking around the kitchen as if these things will just appear. "Or you could make whatever you wanted-" he steps toward the pantry.
"No, please." I say starting to panic, the drop was getting closer.
"We've already eaten, sir." Mary jumps in holding up her hands.
"It's not a problem. It's okay." He starts moving toward the pantry and the panic propels me forward so I've taken the sleeve of his white shirt in my fingertips.
"Please don't!"
He is so much taller than I am, I just reach his shoulder. He looks just as surprised as I am for me to be touching him and immediately I drop my hand. I expect his face to contort into a mask of anger and disgust. I should drop my eyes but I couldn't look away from the drop as my toes cling to the edge of the cliff.
His dark brows furrow. "What age are you?"
What did that matter?
"Christian."
I spring away from him as he twists around. The edge of the island bites into my ribs but I hardly feel the pain. Mistress Ozera stands on top of the steps, her face carved from marble. Her eyes are angry slits, watching her son.
"I was just-" He begins but she cuts him off.
"Go see your father in the living room. He wants to speak to you." When he doesn't move immediately her eyes narrow further. "Now."
I feel Mary's flinch as well as my own.
He moves past her, pressing himself against the door as if he couldn't bear touching her. Her icy gaze moves to Mary, whose face is just a shade lighter than her grey hair. "Take them another bottle of wine."
I hear a cupboard door open and close. Feet scurrying across the tiles before fading.
I stare down at the tiles, searching inside for the numbness, begging for it as my hands tremble at my sides.
"Ever since you stepped into my dining room, looking like the dirty little rat that you are, I have been trying to comprehend what right you think you have to be inside my home. " Her voice is soft, punctuated by the sound of each of her heels clicking on the steps. My heart is banging in my chest, a chaotic rhythm, screaming at me to run. The clicking gets closer and when the point of her shoes reaches my gaze my whole vision begins to shake. "Do you think my tolerance of you is omnipotent? That you could just waltz through my home thinking I am that generous just because I tolerate you and your whore of a mother? Do you?"
My tongue is dead in my mouth. I shake my head.
"And then I find you talking to my son." The smoothness of her voice collapses into a growl. "Again I cannot fathom what you think gives you the right."
My mind was shutting down, my chest pulling into itself and taking with it my ability to breathe.
"Say something." She hisses and her wine-tinted breath hits my face.
I'm not sure how but I drag my gaze to hers. "I'm sorry."
She stares at me and I wish I was dead. "I don't believe you."
Her hand is a blur as it strikes out and my head is yanked to the side. A scream tears out of my throat as she drags me behind her by my hair to the back door and out into the yard.
"You do not speak to my son, you don't look at my son, you do not touch my son, you vile little bitch." She snarls and releases my hair only to take me by the arm. I stumble under her grip and she wrenches impatiently until I'm standing upright. She leans down toward me her expression twisted. "You are beneath us. You live for us. You do what we tell you to do and in return we let you live. Do I make myself clear?"
I nod and a strange sound escapes my lips.
"Good." She says softly, her eyes shearing off my skin. "But just to be sure."
For a second nothing happens. The night is still around us as I'm locked in her gaze. Then a white-hot pain ignites under her hand and blazes through my body. My legs collapse beneath me and she lets me fall. I cannot breathe, I cannot think, all that I am is agony and it fills me so I am nothing else.
When the pain recedes back enough to let me think I know that I am alone. I am gasping and shaking on the ground with gravel on my lips. I'm not in control of my body, I can't think, I can't do anything but be this pain.
She burned me.
The agony overwhelms me and I'm dragged into the dark.
I don't know how long I lay there but when I open my eyes the sky seems lighter.
Above my head there is a small noise, a gritty sound. Someone is standing close. They tut.
"Oh dear." A voice says and black boots move in front of my face. My gaze travels up to see Guardian from yesterday, the same one who asked me my name. "Still having to learn the hard way are we?"
I shudder against the cool ground and he smiles. "I suggest you get back into the barn."
And he walks away whistling, leaving me lying on the ground as he had years ago and just like he had left my mother.
I don't know how I do it but I get up and stumble my way to the barn. I lurch to the back and fall past the sheet, pain reels up and if I make a sound I don't hear it. I crawl to my bedroll, darkness creeping into my body.
"Rosemarie?"
My mother's voice is a crack of relief. She's alright, she is awake, she isn't lying unaware to the world and I stop holding on and let the darkness takes me.
My head is a mess of images, sounds, and colours.
Sunlight spreads through my vision and opens up a place. I'm in the orchard and I am small again. The trees stand huge and sturdy, the only things I can rely on not to change. Their leaves shimmer bright green above me, always welcoming, always safe.
"Rose." Eddie comes toward me with an apple cupped in his two hands. "I won it."
I reach out and take it. In my palms I watch the red darken and the fruit shrivels up with rot. Confused I look back to him for answers but he isn't there.
Wetness tickles my toes. I look down to see blood spreading through the grass.
"Rosemarie, lift your head for me."
"Mom?"
Her hands brush my forehead and I peel back my eyes. The smell of wood and sweat swirl around me as my mother's face comes into focus. My heads is in her lap and the hand that isn't leaning against my cheek is on the back of my neck trying to coax me up.
"I need you to swallow these. Lean up."
I do what she says but as soon as I move pain flares through my right arm and I cry out.
"I know baby, I know it hurts but these will help." She urges me higher and tells me to open my mouth. Two small dry stones hit my tongue and she holds a bottle of water up to my lips. After I swallow them she lowers me back down and I'm panting.
"What were they?"
"Pain killers. Medicine, they'll help."
Memories start coming back to me, being in the kitchen, the Young Master, Mistress Ozera, and the pain. My mind reels back. "Mom, I'm sorry. I tried, I really tried, I-"
"I know. It's okay."
I realize her hair is loose as she pushes it over one shoulder. A long wavy curtain the colour of autumn leaves, thin strands of silver streaked here and there. She has a small white box in her hands that she's tearing open. The barn is quiet and I think every one must be asleep. I could feel the heat pressing against the wood and I knew it was past dawn.
"What's that?"
"I need to clean the burn so it doesn't get infected." She says softly. "How do you feel?"
The pain has dulled and I could only feel the heat of my arm. My head felt light. "Better."
I feel her move my arm, pushing my sleeve up, and the shaking of a bottle. I don't watch her tend to it. I don't want to see the wound because it would make everything seem more real. The venom that had been in the Mistress's eyes had been lethal and what she'd done seemed like only a small dose of it.
Pressure is applied and I move my eyes from the dark rafters to my mom's face. She looks paler than usual and there were shadows under her eyes. "You should be resting."
"I'm okay." There was a detached air about her and I guessed it was because she was concentrating on what she was doing.
Something niggles at the edges of my mind as my eyes take in her blank eyes and downturned mouth. It could be nothing. I could be imagining it because everything seems to have gone softer around the edges. She discards a wipe and a strong smell wafts past my nose reminding me of bleach and it sticks to the back of my throat.
"Does it sting?" I shake my head. There was a weird sensation in my arm, underneath the heat but it wasn't painful. "The medicine's strong. You'll only need one when you wake up."
"Where did you get medicine?" My voice floats above me and I realize my eyes have drifted shut.
"It doesn't matter."
I force my eyes open and look at her. She's unwinding a length of sheer-looking bandages, different from the stiffer dressing around my chest. She tears it off and I feel her working it around my arm.
"Where did you get that?"
She doesn't respond.
The niggling drives itself to the front of my mind and I open my mouth to ask her again when she leans down closer to the dressing. The neckline of her shirt slides over the rise of her collarbone and between the sharp bone and slope of her shoulder are two puncture marks.
"Tell me you didn't." Her hands are still but she doesn't look up. "Please, mom."
She swallows and meets my gaze. Her eyes blank but I could see the shadow of something behind them. A different kind of pain, one you felt even after the wound had healed and become a scar. "It doesn't matter."
Hot moisture blurs my eyes. "It does matter. You did that for me. You went to him for me, you let him …"
"Hush, Rosemarie."
Her hands are on my face trying to soothe me but there is no relief. The walls and barriers are crashing down, crippled under the guilt and horror, letting everything flood in. Memories were running through my mind in an unrelenting stream.
The Master a looming shadow over us to which we woke and then I had to pretend to be asleep. He'd started coming here, invading our space instead of making her come inside the house.
Wordlessly my mother would uncurl from against me and move away to the other side of our space, I knew not to look but I always heard the pants and the grunting that made me never want to move again. Once I dared to look and wished I hadn't, wished I'd stop doing the wrong thing so I wouldn't have seen her pressed to the floor under his weight. My mother's face had been empty with no life or trace of her there at all. I watched paralysed on the ground as he sank his teeth into her neck her eyes had closed. I shut mine and turned closer to the floor wanting it all to stop.
It never stopped. He always came and we never spoke about it. Until after my last birthday when she told me in whispers we'd have to start hiding parts of me. My chest had stopped being flat and showed I had left childhood behind. As a child, I had been mostly ignored by everyone as long as I didn't get in the way but now I was starting to be noticed. There would be nothing to protect me from happening to me what happened to my mother.
And now I couldn't breathe because the fear of it was everywhere and the crushing guilt knowing my mother had gone to him willingly this time. She'd done it for me, to provide me medicine.
I cried until the blackness came. The last time I cried like this, like something inside me was breaking, had been a long time ago. The last time I'd cried like this it had been for Eddie after they'd put his body in the ground.
The darkness came but peace does not.
My head is thick and heavy and I want to go crawl back to the depths of sleep but the pain in my arm would make it impossible. I roll onto my left side and use my good arm to push myself up, careful not to jostle the other too much. It was a fierce burning and it made me feel like the Mistress's hand was still there, gripping me.
I guess that was the point.
It's then I realise that's too bright inside the barn, the brightness of the late afternoon and not early. I'm alone. I shake my head trying to clear it and then wince as my arm protests. I look down at it, fearing I was going to see charred flesh or pink gaping meat. The source of the agony is tapped up in white bandages that I can't feel the weight of, unlike the one surrounding my chest that nips at my rips. The bandages look slightly moist but I don't dare to touch them.
I notice on my mother's bedroll is a small brown bottle, sitting boldly in the centre. Carefully I get to my knees and reach for it. A white label with small writing states something I don't understand, but underneath reads 'pain relief …drowsiness may occur'.
It takes me some time to get the cap off with the use of one hand but I manage it. Little white tablets spring out from the bottle that's fallen into my lap and spill onto my roll. I vaguely recall my mother saying last night about taking one. I lift the little stone to my lips, chasing it with lukewarm water left in my bottle. After putting the pills back in the bottle and wrestling the cap back on I lie down, exhausted, and trying to think around the hot pain throbbing in my arm.
I'd spent so long trying to do what my mother said, to not speak to anyone unless spoken to, to not get in the way, and to do my work and come inside straight after. Although it made something inside me ache I would rather do it than face whatever life I'd created for myself after last night. Because what I'd done made life now unknown and terrifying, more so than before.
The Mistress said she tolerated me and the hate in her face would follow me into nightmares.
I must have fallen between waking and dreaming because when a soft voice says my name it's darker in the barn. Shadows are creeping up the walls as the sun goes down and the night is reclaiming the world. Which meant they would be awake soon.
"I brought you something to eat."
"Thank you Janine." I say numbly and sit up.
I was not a child.
I did not look to anyone.
I was responsible for myself.
I feel like she wants to say something but when I raise my gaze to hers she only holds out a bread roll and a banana. I recognise the bread as being the same one served with the soup last night.
I wonder what Serena's cake tasted like.
"How do you feel?"
"Okay. I took a tablet a while ago."
"You should take another soon."
"We should save them."
"Take another."
"I will if I need it." Silence falls between us. The only noise is my chewing. "Why didn't you wake me?"
"You needed the rest."
"I could have taken another pill. I would have been fine." It comes out harder than I intended and her face pinches. But this is what needs to happen, this is what she needs me to do, what she had been telling me to do, to look after myself.
"Well." She says thickly. "There's not a lot to do now."
"What time is it?"
"The sunset an hour or two ago."
"I can help water the field."
She doesn't argue.
"I have to go back and make breakfast but there was one thing I wanted to ask you."
I swallow the last of the bread and meet her gaze. She's watching me in the way she did when she expected me to tell her what I'd done wrong. "Last night when you were…upset, you said something about a Guardian."
I return her gaze, the bread roll churning uneasily in my stomach. "Did I?"
"You said he wanted to know your name."
"I didn't tell him." I say quickly and she shuts her eyes like it's the wrong answer. "You told me not to speak to them."
"Now you've made an impression, Rosemarie." She snaps and I recoil. "It's probably going to be playing on his mind."
I bite my lip and she takes a deep breath.
"Is there anything else?" she says quietly, fixing her hazel eyes on me.
"It was the same one who talked to me that morning before you… and last night he saw me lying in the yard. He laughed at me." Her eyes drain of anger and despite what I'd just told myself I say. "Mom what is it? What have I done wrong?"
"He's noticed you." She whispers and her face pinches this time almost as if it may break but then she has it controlled. I have no control. I think I may throw up what little I have eaten. "We'll have to do something else."
"Go longer without washing? I can –"
"They can always make you or punish you for it." She says and her eyes are absent.
I push down the chilling thought trying to take over but it's too strong. The image of my mother is pressed to the ground but instead of the master it's the Guardian and under him it's me lying lifeless.
No no no no no
I jump as her hands slid around my face, more shocked by the contact than by the roughness of her touch. The sadness in my mother's dark eyes paralyses me. Her normally weathered face looks young and open, all the sternness and coldness gone.
"It isn't normal what I wish on you but we do not have the luxury of normalcy… when men notice something beautiful and untouched they want it. They'll want you and they'll take you. I won't be able to protect you from it."
A part of me was struck by her language, how different it became when she forgot about it and it reminded me that this place was not always her life. It was a small piece she'd brought with her to this one just like she'd brought her necklace.
"What do we do?" I say even though I know there is nothing to be done.
"We can... give them reason to not want to look at you." Her thumbs stroke my cheeks and she drops her hands.
"How?"
"I'll bring a knife back tonight." She says gently. "We'll give you a scar to hide behind."
My mother left me, caressing my cheek one last time, to go back to the kitchen. I eat dazedly and then I get up and walk out into the night. I had never thought much about my face and I could never remember having properly seen it, just some glances on metal surfaces that gave bizarre reflections.
I knew my hair was dark, like a deep wooden colour because it was long enough to take in my hands. I knew my eyes were brown because my mother told me but I didn't know what kind of brown. Were they a lighter colour like hers? The colour Eddie's had been? I didn't know.
It really didn't matter. I would have just liked to have seen it before it changed.
The moon is full tonight, a bright white orb hung in the sky. It looked lovely and lonely. I wondered did it feel alone or did it look down on the rest of us and feel lucky to be so far away. I would.
A yellowish light interrupts my gazing and I realize I've wandered under the view of the kitchen window. I look at the gravel trying to see if there were any signs of where I'd fallen, what Mistress Ozera had done but there are none. The only mark was the one I carried. I started walking backward away from the light and into the inky blue night. I should go into the fields and help them water the soil or check for any forgotten tools but instead, I found myself under the only tree in the yard. I can see the side of the large house from here and I watch a black shape emerge and cross with another, Guardians.
And then they start appearing everywhere, melting out of the dark. They come out of the field, hurrying the others and shouting for them to hurry up.
"Get back to the barn." A voice barks and I jump, my back hitting the tree.
A Guardian is standing by the gate that led to the orchards and staring right at me as others scurry past him. I do as he says and as I'm passing the kitchen Mary comes out of it followed by a Guardian who stands in the doorway.
"What's happening?" I ask
"I don't know." She replies, looking around bewildered. We move along with the others to the barn, everyone else looking just as confused. She doesn't say anything about last night and I don't expect her to, what would be the point?
I shuffle off to the back and when I get behind the sheet I realise my mothers not there. I duck out past it and scan the through the others who are settling down into their spaces as a Guardian stands at the door. I wait for her to come through but with one shout outside and the Guardian at the door answering, the door is shut.
Where is she?
I run back to Mary, dodging everyone and not looking at them. She looks up as I approach and says. "They came and got her before they told us to come back here."
"Who got her?"
"A Guardian."
"What did he want?"
Her eyes flash. "How would I know?" She turns her back to me.
I look back at the door. What could I do? I couldn't go out there. The last time...the last time I snuck out of here it had ended badly.
Unwillingly I trudge back to our space and sit down on my mat, trying not to think.
Not thinking was proving to be difficult so I reach under my mother's mat for the medicine. It takes time to get the cap off again and then to get it back on. After I've done that I start drawing patterns on the floor, letting my fingers drift through the dirt. I don't know how long I do that but my mind is getting hazier. I write my name and then my mothers, scoring them out afterward. It feels good to do something so obvious and forbidden and then wipe it out like it wasn't there.
A tiny commotion carries through the air and I score out what I'd been writing, just as my mother comes through the sheet.
"What-" I begin to say but she pulls me up with strength I didn't think she had and slides something into my slacks, it's cold and hard against my stomach. As she's doing this she's also talking quickly.
"They want to see you. I don't know why, someone was coming and then they got a call and now she wants to see you." She pulls me past our sheet. A Guardian is standing in the middle of the barn, and it's like an invisible boundary has been drawn as the others cringe away from him.
"Quickly." He snaps.
"Do what you have to." My mother whispers.
She pushes me toward him by my shoulders
Everything was moving too fast. One second she had me by my shoulders and the next the Guardians had seized my wrist and is pulling me outside. I don't look back. He pulls me out into the yard. I stumble behind him and regret taking another tablet. Suddenly he stops and I collide with his back. He makes a noise of disgust and when I right myself I see he's brought me to someone.
I go perfectly still.
Mistress Ozera stands next to another Guardian who has one hand to his ear as if he's listening to something.
"There you are." She says briskly and smiles. "I need you to deliver a message,, Rosemarie." She comes toward me and I flinch back. She grabs my shoulder and turns me around. I try to ignore the instinct to run away, to get away from her touch and the smell of lilies. "The forest's edge, right there, I need you to go in there and I need you to keep going until you meet someone. Do you understand? Just keep going forward."
"Why -"
She slaps me and I nearly fall over.
"You will do as I say, understood?" She hisses.
I nod so fast it makes me dizzy.
"Three minutes Lady Ozera." The Guardian, that had been holding his ear, says. She glances at him and the anger melts off her face and is replaced by something that seems entirely alien on her face, apprehension.
Her head snaps back to me. "You run as fast as you can and tell them things have changed. Go!"
I stumble and then start running. It takes a moment for my mind to catch up with what I'm doing and what she'd said.
I run toward the treeline, the field's fence running along with me until it cuts off and I'm running through the gap between the forest and the field. The gap I knew the wards occupied because the Guardians and Psi Hounds patrolled and we all knew we were not allowed near here. The tree line nears and I expect my body to connect with something, to feel some presence of the ward, to hear a snarl of the hounds but I don't.
I break through the treeline.
I'm panting and I'm not sure how much longer I can run. My mind feels foggy but I cling to Mistress Ozera's words. I didn't understand them. I just knew I had to keep running but toward what and to say what I didn't know.
Plans have changed
My lungs couldn't keep up and though I didn't want to slow I can't help it and then l I'm gripping a tree and trying to breathe. Sweat trickles over my temple and my legs want to crumble beneath me.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice was asking who I could be meeting out here? Why wouldn't they come up the long stretch of road in front of the manor like the Master's guests usually did, which wasn't often. Their kind didn't like the sun and hated the heat even more. My mother said the Ozera's were different although they never came out in the day they liked the warmth of the night. She said it had something to do with their magic.
I push away from the tree and look around. It's so much darker here and so very quiet. I begin to realize just how alone I am. No Guardians, not Others, no Masters… at least back there I knew what to fear. Out here my mind wanted to imagine the worst possible thing. But that was silly, what could be worse than what I'd already lived with?
I take a deep breath and plunge ahead.
Time seemed to stretch forwards and backward and then the ground began to slope up. I trip a lot, the forest floor getting caught in my ankles. My hands are stinging and my legs are screaming in protest as I clamber up the hill. It becomes too much and my legs buckle so I'm braced against another tree.
What if I'd gone the wrong way? The only sound was the wind rustling the leaves overhead. Maybe I'd not heard something she'd said, what if I'd forgotten? What if I couldn't get back? Panic threatens to cripple me completely.
I slide down the tree bit further and a sharp pain cuts into my stomach. I gasp and scrabble up. I pull my shirt up and between my slacks and my stomach is the knife. It's bitten into my skin leaving a thin line of pink, two beads of blood spotting it.
I slide it out.
Why had my mother given me it? Did she know I'd be out here and maybe it would help me feel better? I didn't know how to use a knife to protect myself. I'd probably end up doing more damage to my own body.
No, she said she didn't know what Mistress Ozera wanted but she did know that it was her who wanted to speak to me. Maybe she thought she was going to hurt me again… but then what could I do with a knife? I could hardly attack the Mistress, not when she was surrounded by Guardians.
I look around me, only able to see two trees ahead until it became a wall of menacing black.
What do I do?
I force myself upright and try to decide whether or not to put the knife back into my slacks. The hard, cold press of it in my hand made me feel better but what would the person I was supposed to meet think about it? What if they told Mistress Ozera? She'd kill me.
But what kind of person would I be meeting out here? I take a steadying breath and lower the knife to my side, just past my hip so it wouldn't look too threatening. I take a few more steps forward and the dark seems to want to close in on me like it was trying to swallow me. Shapes move in the black but I'm sure it's my imagination and I tell myself to stop being a child.
The ground evens out, making me stumble and this time I fall to my knees in a hard thud. There's no energy left to push myself, my body yelling at me that it needs to rest but I can't rest, I have to –
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a familiar cold sensation marches up my spine. The same feeling I got when I was being watched. I look around but the night reveals no secrets or threats but I know well enough that the worst things can be the ones you don't see coming.
I try and tell myself that my mind playing games with me again but the feeling doesn't shift. My fingers tighten around the knife, the only thing that's keeping me shutting down in fear.
I think I see a shape move in the shadows, a slight movement but I know it's my mind tricking me I know –
The shape gets an outline against the black, solid like a tree but not a tree, a person.
I stop breathing and my heart beats faster.
I stare at the shape and it doesn't make any more movement but it is clearly a person. It has to be whom the Mistress sent me to. It has to be, who else would be out in the forest? I try to clear my mind of the little voice telling me to run. I swallow and force myself to stand, knowing I should look down but I can't make myself.
It takes two attempts before my voice works. "Mistress Ozera says that things have changed." It was the only thing I can remember to repeat from her and it sounds so blunt. The shadow doesn't move or speak. I swallow and without thinking I say. "And, and I have to return to her as soon as possible."
I take a step backward and the shape moves. I freeze. They keep coming forward, seeming to glide rather than walk and my heart is beating so hard in my ears I think I might go deaf. The black seems to slip back as if unveiling them as she melts out of the shadows.
At first, the Mistress comes to mind but they couldn't be more different. This women's skin was made of opaque moonlight as if it had been captured and contained in a glass case. She almost glowed in the dim light. She wasn't tall like the mistress and her hair wasn't dark, it was a golden colour that made me think of the sun peeking up on the horizon. I would have thought she was what my mother and my dictionary had described as an angel if it weren't for her eyes.
They glinted scarlet.
I had to be dreaming. I'd fallen asleep after taking my medicine and now I was dreaming or slipping into a nightmare. I shake my head, not daring not to take my eyes from her.
She smirks and any conviction I had about dreaming is wiped away when she speaks. I couldn't imagine the sound of a voice so gentle and so terrible.
"So she sent you. Tiny little thing, there hardly seems enough room in you to amount to anything satisfying."
"I h-have to go." I whisper taking another step backward.
I don't see her move but suddenly she's closer and I can see she wears a white dress. It was pretty and there were purple flowers on it. She tilts her head to the side watching me closely and if it weren't for her eyes I'd believe she is an angel.
"No darling, you don't." She says softly. "You see unfortunately for you, you were the messenger and I do tend to kill those. And I can see too you are rather pretty underneath all that dirt." Her lips lift slowly in what I would guess was supposed to be a smile but all I could see are the pointed fangs.
She is exactly like the Mistress but yet she isn't. Her eyes are a different colour but they're also different in how they watched me, with hunger. The Mistress only looked at me with disgust and rage. But there's a coldness and threatening air radiating from her like it did the Mistress, who I always thought could be made from marble rather than bone. It made sense that this is her guest. They were equally beautiful and infinitely terrible.
I just always thought the Mistress would be the one to kill me.
Odd, how I wasn't as scared by this as I should be.
"What are you?" I whisper.
"Merciful." She says simply. Her lips curl back and she lunges at me.
There is no collision but I get the sensation of falling through air and then the forest floor is at my back and she's above me. Her hands pressed just under my shoulders. With the moonlight behind her, she doesn't look real at all and I could easily pretend I'm dreaming and I could wake.
"You'd be glorious awakened." She whispers.
One of her hands slides up my neck and the tips of the other slide down over my shirt, when they reach my bandages she frowns.
I'm too distracted thinking about death and if it will hurt to explain the bandages to her.
So many times I wanted to die but now I wasn't so sure. If I had kept walking could I have found more or something better? Something like where my mother came from. I knew the world was bigger than what I'd seen but I couldn't picture it and it made me sad. I wanted to picture it. But more than anything I wanted to picture it with the one person I knew who's seen it. My mother.
My mother.
I could not die and leave her.
The terrible angel says something but I don't hear it. I feel the hard shape of something in my hand and without thinking I drive the knife into her side. It doesn't go in like I imagine it would, not like cutting into butter but something tougher. She screeches like metal being torn and rolls off me.
I scramble backward.
She's sprung a good distance away and is sitting in a crouch like some sort of animal. She touches the spreading dark against the white of her dress. Then her eyes flick back to me, no mercy is promised this time. Her lips curl back and a growl slips between her teeth, more deadly and terrifying than a Psi Hound's growl.
A black shape collides with her and sends them both rolling across the ground. The darker shape separates and smoothly rolls into a crouch. The woman is less graceful in coming to a stop, her hands dig into the earth, scoring a line into it as dirty flies up around her. Her white dress is now torn and filthy with dirt and blood. Her red gaze is locked on the dark shape and without pause, she darts toward it. It dodges elegantly and they begin moving in bizarre dance, aggressively trying to reach their partner but jerking out of reach.
Paralysed I watch from the ground.
There's a silver flash between them and the women screeches, the sound making me hunch closer to the floor and wish I could burrow into it to hide. The dance gets faster and fiercer until the silver strikes out and makes contact, burying itself into the sheath that is her chest. She goes utterly still and I expect her to scream but her eyes go blank. The shadow yanks out the silver as the angel crumples to the ground.
It had all taken less than a minute.
My gaze moves from her body to her killer. It towered above me and now her, dressed in black like it wore the night the way she seemed to have worn the moon.
It begins to turn toward me and that's when I push myself off the ground and run downhill.
I run like I've never run before like there's electricity in my veins and hounds at my heels. The steep hill makes it easier as if it were pushing me. I know the thing is chasing me even though I can't hear it. I feel the ghost of its fingers reaching out and sharply turn right, narrowly missing colliding with a tree. It was harder for Eddie to catch me when I ran between the trees in the orchard, never in a straight line. I do that now. I tear through the undergrowth, twigs snapping and my breathing breaking up the quiet. I can't hear the thing chasing and I begin to wonder if it stopped or if I'd lost it.
Something crashes into my right arm and I scream. Pain flares and vibrates through my bones as we hit the ground with a horrible thud. The wind goes out of my lungs and I try to crawl away but two hands clamp down under my wrists and pin them to either side of my head.
"Stop." The word carries weight for being so alone.
With my eyes closed I beg that it'll be fast, that a pole driving into my chest through my heart won't hurt so much, and that I'll die quickly.
I'm sorry Mom, I tried.
"I am not going to hurt you."
The thing was a good liar or something in me just wanted to believe it because I consider looking up. The voice is not soft or gentle, but hard and steady, and I want, more than anything, to believe that it's sincerity that made it strong.
I wanted to believe it but it had murdered in front of my eyes, just like Eddie had been.
More pain doesn't come and I could only guess it wants to see me scared, wants me to beg and plead with it. I wouldn't give it the satisfaction. I force my eyes open ready to meet death's face.
Instead, my entire being stills. Stilled in a way that I stop being afraid, I forget the pain in my arm and my mind goes quiet. The trees could be burning all around me and I wouldn't notice.
Above me is poised a person. Their hair hangs between us in a short curtain, so I'm looking between the dark frame. I see skin a little lighter than my own, dark eyes that are unwavering above defined cheekbones in a composed face. A man's face and one that doesn't propel me into dread but keeps me anchored in this place where terror is paused.
"What are you?" I breathe.
"My name is Dimitri Belikov and I am not going to hurt you."
Updated 13/04/2022
This work is such a relic from my past self and so I don't want to edit the hell out of it to the point it is re-written. That energy is reserved for the book :)
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Sooooooooooo, he could have at least bought her dinner first before he wrestled her, am I right?
Haha sorry, it's 4am and I am delirious. I am also getting up in four hours to go on holiday… just give me coffee. ANYWAY, I wanted to post this chapter before I left because I don't know when the next update will be and also, I really wanted to write Comrades entrance :D
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SUCH LOVELY, SUPPORTIVE AND ENCOURAGING REVIEWS! AND AfTER ONLY Three CHAPTERS? AMAZING! Thank you guys so much, it makes me want to explode into glitter.
One more thing before I pass out, some asked I there are things you are not supposed to understand yet and the answer is YES. You have been dropped into Rose's world and she is not going to explain everything until there's call to, like when she has something to compare it to or she is thrown back into a memory. BUT if there's something that is unclear to you please ask away, I could hint at something and completely forget to explain later.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter guy and stick around for the next one. xo