5. Vesper
Why? Why the fuck did it have to be her I had to bunk with?
I would’ve taken anyone. The stupid, beefy football team reject who laughed too loudly at jokes. The man with the psychopathic tendencies who stood at the back of the room, his eyes intently glaring at whoever even brushed past him.
Anyone.
Anyone who wouldn’t give a fuck about what I needed to do here. Someone too hung up on the excitement of working for the family that they wouldn’t even look twice at me.
And then they gave me a room with her.
My hands paused as I spread out the wrinkles on the thin sheets the family assigned me, trying desperately not to give in to the urge to turn and look at her. She had been silent since the assignment, not giving any indication of how she felt about bunking with me.
That’s what I hated about her type the most. You could never tell what they were truly thinking. Not unless they wanted you to. Everything else was just a carefully curated mask held in place with barbed wire instead of strings.
It wasn’t long until I gave into the urge to look. The tingling in the back of my head told me she might have been looking at me, but when I did finally turn, she was too busy looking at her own bed.
The room itself was small, with only enough space for two twin beds, each of us having a dresser and a nightstand. The bathroom was at the foot of my bed, but the inside was lackluster. The stone was water damaged, and there was moss growing in the corners of it. No doubt there was also a fair share of mold hidden in the cracked floors.
The family was well off—this was a fact based on how they showed off numerous times, even in the short span that I had been here. The floors on the upper stories were furnished with thick, expensive, and most likely imported rugs. Each surface shined, as if it had been polished for hours by some poor maid. And the vampires themselves were decked out in jewels the size of my fist. The family wanted to show the rest of the world what they did with all of the money they accumulated throughout the years. Even the floors smelled of roses.
Even the windows seemed to be made out of crystal and sent shimmering rainbow refractions across every surface.
But it all changed as soon as you reached the guards’ quarters. The shimmering windows were barred. If there were rugs, they were worn and frayed. Stone covered the floors, walls, and ceilings, many of which were cracked, and chunks had fallen out. Even walking down the hallway to this room, I had almost gotten hit with one of those stray chunks as it fell from the ceiling.
It became clear what the family truly cared about, and it wasn’t us.
The family cared about image.
And then, when you got down to the basement where the guards spent their time, everything looked as if it hadn’t been updated in the last century.
As if the conditions weren’t bad enough, the universe decided to play one last trick on me and assign her and me to the same room.
The person in question was still hunched over the bed, her sheets were already spread out across the small mattress, and she started to meticulously empty her backpack.
The bright red hair was hard to miss. She wore the same clothes that had been assigned to me, but she decided to embellish them with two leather weapon straps that crisscrossed on her back.
The weapons were missing, but they seemed to hold daggers.
As if sensing my stare, she turned slowly, her bright green eyes meeting mine. A small, feral-like smile spread across her lips.
It was one I’d seen many times over when we were training at the prince’s compound, and the exact reason why I didn’t want to get near her. It was the only slip of her mask I had ever seen.
She straightened up and turned before closing the space between us. She got way too close for me to think that her actions were anything but threatening.
And she is taller than me.
She looked down at me, her smile widening. I took note of her shaggy haircut, half up, half down, and showing her pierced ears, both of which had daggers in the holes. Her skin was littered with freckles, some seemingly arranged in a pattern I couldn’t recognize.
But what was dangerous about her were her eyes. They were sharp. They saw everything. Maybe even the thing I wanted to hide.
“I don’t think we had a chance to introduce ourselves,” she said, her eyes searching my face and then slowly narrowing in on part of my neck. The exact part where my tattoo was currently being hidden by magic.
A chill ran through me, and I took an involuntary step back.
She cocked her head at this.
“We will have to do something about that,” she added in a teasing tone.
And then, quicker than I could react, her lanky hand reached out and brushed across my neck. Heat hit me right where the tattoo was. Magic. Pure, powerful magic.
I had never felt anything like it before. Everything I had encountered up until that point had been a watered-down version of what she possessed.
But that alone wasn’t enough of a red flag to quell the anger her touch had ignited.
My hands snapped out, grabbing her shirt and pulling her to me.
“Don’t you fucking mess with me li?—”
“Or what?” she asked, cocking her head. “You’ll tell on me?”
Her blasé attitude caused my brain to short-circuit.
What could I do? I just entered the castle, I couldn’t kill her just yet.
A better question was, What would she do? Her eyes had a fucking twinkle in them. Like she was just daring me to do something to her.
I pushed her away, trying to put some space between us before I did something I’d regret.
“I didn’t know the family accepted witches in here,” I grumbled, my hand coming up to rub where the magic had hit me.
She let out a chuckle and placed her hands on her hips. My entire body was ready for attack, but hers seemed right at home. “And I didn’t know they let vampire hunters in here.”
Vampire hunters. We hadn’t been referred to by that name in decades, according to our history. Maybe that was once how my family’s organization started, but those days were long gone, and the meaning of the hunters had been sullied by some of the atrocities committed by the previous organization.
Another reason for the secrecy of the leaders and the families involved.
“My family handles contracts that are not limited to vampires.” The defensiveness in my tone was hard to mistake.
Shit. The smile on her face widened, and I knew I had fucked up.
“And is the Castle family a part of these…contracts?”
She brushed past me and went straight to my bed as if to find evidence to prove that I was here for that sole reason. Just as her hand reached out to touch my bag, I slapped it away, but instead of looking at me like she was offended…she looked amused.
“If I can sense magic, then you should be careful what you have hiding in there,” she said, moving away from my bag. “If you slip up, some rogue vampire may just…sniff it out.”
“Are you threatening me?” I asked, my spine straightening and my blood rushing through my veins.
Could I really get away with killing her now? My hands itched as the urge to reach for my magically forged knife I kept hidden in the bag shot through me. It would do some damage before her magic could get to me, but there was no guarantee that I would win.
Normally, in this scenario, I would have had weeks, if not months, to make a decision, but not here. I had just these few moments between us.
But she seemed not at all affected. She seemed…calm. Comfortable.
“I had us put together because I saw what you were hiding on your neck,” she admitted, her eyes trailing back to my tattoo. “If you’re hiding something, there’s less chance that you’ll rat me out for doing the same.”
The stiffness in my body was replaced with curiosity. So I’m not the only one who decided to take on a job in the family.
This job was the thing I had been created for. All my life led up to this moment. But instead of feeling like this was a threat, I couldn’t help but be curious about the type of people who came here with me.
Did they, too, have a prophecy that controlled their lives?
Then a semi-panicked yet relieved thought flashed through my mind: Would they get to the princess before me? No, she didn’t seem like she was after the same thing I was.
“Vesper,” I offered, but didn’t bother reaching out my hand for her to shake. If she was giving me this information, she was likely not my competition.
“Cedar,” she replied, and slapped her hand on my shoulder so hard I fell off balance. Hot magic shot through my shoulder, and a pained groan slipped from my lips.
“What the fuck?—”
“Use those herbs you have stashed in your bag. My magic is more discreet to prying eyes,” she said. “Come see me in a few days for a recharge, though.”
I looked up at her narrowed eyes.
“Prying different from yours?” I asked. “Should I be worried about a band of witches here?”
She gave me a sidelong look and went back to her bed.
“If someone like yourself made it in here, what makes you think there aren’t more?”