Chapter 12
C assia
Before I left Katarina, I told her I’d like to go shopping tomorrow. Tomorrow was now here, and I was wearing a path in the rug trying to figure out how I could go.
I hadn’t said a word to Lukas, but then again, he hadn’t said a word to me. He escorted me back to the room and turned and walked away.
He’d seemed a bit distracted but after everything that’d happened, I expected a little more. Maybe a little, “Hey great job not getting decapitated” or “Nice going not instigating blood lust in a crowded room full of vampires” but he barely glanced at me before he slowly strolled away.
Once again, I was invisible.
Being the mildly social creature that I was, I needed company sometimes, so I was going whether he knew about it or not.
Katarina knocked on the door and opened it. I knew it was her. Lukas never knocked, and Kiam had a much heavier hand than the light tapping I heard.
“Are you ready?" She asked.
“Yep.” I peered around the room for a purse before I remembered mine in my leather duffle bag.
She joined me in the closet, looking past my shoulder as I rifled through the contents. Out of curiosity, I tried to turn my cellphone on.
“That won’t work here. Only the elites use cellphones and electronics, but it’s patchy for them, too.”
I tossed the device down. “I had a couple friends back home. I wonder what they think happened to me?” I let out a sardonic laugh. “Not like I can tell them what happened.”
She snickered. “No. I mean, you could, but nobody would ever believe you. You’d just look crazy.”
“Do I even need this? I doubt my cards work anymore.”
“They might but not here. Just tell them to charge Lukas. Nobody’s gonna question that.”
A strange feeling crawled over my skin. If I used his money, I’d be signaling that I accepted his interference in my life. I’d be acting like we were a couple with an understanding.
But also, he owed me for tearing apart my life. I wouldn’t need his money if he’d just left me alone and in peace in my apartment. The giant red bump wouldn’t even be on my chin if he’d left me to my own devices.
Standing up, I said, “I’ll bring my purse just to hold stuff.” And to help me feel a little more normal.
This was going to be good. I’d get away from my spacious room where the walls felt like they were slowly closing in on me, and I’d have human company.
“While we’re out, you can look for something to wear to your lunch.” Her eyes tracked the contents of my walk-in closet. “Or maybe you don’t need anything.”
“It doesn’t hurt to look; I just want to get outside of this building.”
Leaving the palace was easy. What was much harder was navigating the incredibly steep road down the side of the mountain.
Loose dirt and small pebbles made my feet slip every few steps and my arms kept flailing as I tried to stay balanced.
One of the rocks I kicked, I could have sworn I heard it tumbling through the canyon beside us.
“Ya know, some advanced warning about footwear would have been incredibly helpful.” I glanced at Katarina, who had her head tilted toward the sun and her eyes closed like she did this every day. Maybe she did?
Blinking, she turned her head. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t think of that. I’m just so used to it.”
“You’d think, living in a palace and all that, we’d have some transportation.”
“We could have gotten a ride, I just thought with you being stuck in there for so long, you’d want to stretch your legs a bit.”
My thighs were screaming at me. Before all this, I used to work out regularly, and I walked a lot around New York City.
But that was all flat. No hills other than an incline on the treadmill, no climbing other than false stairs on a stepper machine.
This whole hiking thing used very different muscle groups.
I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t fault her and she wasn’t wrong. I wanted the fresh air and to walk around outside. Just, maybe, not at a ninety-degree angle. “Can you carry me home after?”
Katarina giggled. “I’ll get someone to bring us back. Plus, look, we’re almost at the bottom.”
* * *
The city was magnificent. All towering marble and cobblestones, jutting spires and sweeping arches.
Gas lamps dotted the sidewalks and flowering bushes graced doorways.
Scrolling black iron fencing cordoned lawns and parks and small, colorful songbirds flitted about, sharing the airspace with oversized jewel-blue butterflies.
One hundred percent, I stood out like a black eye, acting like a tourist with my swiveling head and gaping mouth. But I’d never seen anything like the city. It felt like I’d stepped onto the set of a fantasy television show; only the landscape was mindbogglingly real.
“There’s no cars,” I muttered to myself. “I don’t know why I thought there would be cars.” A gilded carriage pulled by four massive horses went by us, along with some smaller single horse driven carts.
Katarina grabbed my hand, tugging me back to continue walking. “Some Realms, not this one. We’ll go in here.” She pointed to a storefront just a few feet away.
“Hi Matilda,” my friend said to the woman standing behind the counter.
The woman greeted her in return as I looked around the shop.
The place was set up similarly to stores I knew, with aisles and shelving, stands with hooks displaying trinkets.
But the packaging was different. Thicker and sturdier, higher quality materials compared to crinkly plastic or soft cardboard.
A lot of the items were glass jars with metal toppers or caps, full of sparkly or otherwise fascinating liquids and powders.
I wouldn’t have had any idea what was what if it wasn’t for the flowing, elegantly scripted labels.
I found one that said, “skin ailments” and walked over to my friend.
“This?” I held the small bottle up in front of her.
She eyed it. “Yeah, that’s it. I mean, it will help with any skin conditions but that honker on your chin definitely qualifies.”
I leveled a gaze at her. “Thanks, friend.”
“I’m teasing, relax. It’ll be gone by tomorrow as soon as you put some of that on there.”
“Thank God,” I grumbled and strolled up to the counter.
“Just this?”
“Yeah,” I replied. She turned the item over in her hand and wrapped it in tissue paper before putting it in a small bag with stiff twine handles. “Can you, um, charge Lukas? For this.”
Her eyes flicked up. “Lukas?”
I suddenly realized I didn’t know his last name. There could be a million Lukas's here. “The one with the long white blond hair?” Her eyes narrowed. “He lives in the palace?” Sweat was beading on my brow.
Katarina stepped up to the counter. “Lord Lukas. This is Cassia, his bride. I’m her maid.”
My shoulders dropped down to a normal position as relief filled my veins. What kind of wife to be didn’t know her fiancé’s last name? There was no way I’d step foot inside this store again.
My skin felt clammy and my stomach turned over. I don’t know what I was thinking but with the way gossip spread around this place, it was a matter of seconds before everyone heard about my fumble downtown while shopping. I hadn’t thought this whole excursion out very well at all.
“Oh, well why didn’t you say so? He’s Lord Mortensen to us down here.” The lady gave me a tight smile and handed over my purchase. Or Lukas Mortensens’s purchase, rather. If I wanted to be technical about it.
“Thank you Matilda,” Katarina called out as she steered me through the door.
I glanced back at the storefront. “Well, that was awkward.”
“Just call him Lord Lukas. When someone asks. There is no other, they’ll know who you mean.”
I nodded. “Maybe I should head back.” My gaze tracked to the left; in the direction we had come from. “Can you get someone to bring us back? How do you do that?”
We started heading farther from the way I wanted to go, putting distance between us and my stable, secure room where I at least had a vague idea of what to expect.
“We can ask at one of the taverns or the city hall. Let’s go to the tavern and get some food. Or did you want to look at dresses? You look kinda like you just want to go home.”
“Home” was a loaded and multifaceted word. “I probably look tired. The other day took a lot out of me. I wanted to do this with you, I want to do this with you. I dunno what’s wrong with me...”
We rounded a corner, the street narrowing slightly. “How did you end up here?” It may have been rude to ask, but I couldn’t help it.
She looked at me quickly. “I was born here. My mother was taken by one of the vamps when she was twenty and brought here. He got bored with her and then she met another human and they had me.”
“Like, he got tired of her?” Horror filled me. If Lukas got bored of me, I was fucked.
“Yeah. He was an asshole, left her to fend for herself. He’s dead now, and so are my parents.” She didn’t sound nearly as upset about any of it as I would have expected. I came to a screeching halt.
“Okay. But are you okay? Why are they all dead?”
She gave me a sheepish look. “It was a long time ago. My mother died long before I could ever remember. The guy was a nightmare, I remember that. And I never met my dad.”
“Did these people drink all their blood or something?”
Katarina let out a low laugh. “It doesn’t...” She shook her head. “It's not what you’re thinking, they don’t just attack people.”
I shook my head. “But they do. Lukas and Kiam ripped my boyfriend and a couple girls to fucking shreds. In my living room. They painted my walls with their blood and guts.” Just the memory caused me to heave, and I squeezed my eyes shut before reopening them. “They’re monsters.”
“Huh.” Her jaw ticked to the side. “What was happening before that? They always have a reason.”
“My boyfriend was having a threesome. I was going to break up with him, but Lukas took care of that—literally.”
“You’re funny,” she grinned at me. “See? They had a reason.”
We stepped aside for a couple to pass us. Katarina gave them a little wave. “It’s not normal to rip people apart though.”
“They’re vampires, Cassia. They do things a bit differently.”
A door opened several feet ahead of us and soft music filled the air as a man in a long jacket and top hat stepped out.
He walked ahead where a carriage waited and a uniformed man opened the half-door and stepped back out of the way.
I caught a glimpse of his ride’s interior and saw a pearlescent gray coating the walls.
It was beautiful. I made a mental note to try and recreate the color on canvas.
“Let’s eat here. We’ll get some good food and organize transportation back.” I followed her through the entrance. “You know what,” she whispered, “if you name drop Lukas you can get us a really fancy carriage.”
That honestly was a great idea. “Is that super expensive though?”
She canted her head. “I don’t think you’ll ever have to worry about money ever again.”
I’d always dreamed of a day like this, but I sure as hell hadn’t imagined the way it came about. “All right, we’ll do that.”
Rather than a tavern, it seemed we’d found a nice restaurant.
Back home, a place like this would have practically required a ballgown, but the dresses we were wearing fit in just fine.
I was all in black, with a fur collared cloak, and Katarina had a dark green A-line dress that suited her small form.
The interior of the building was decorated in shades of gold with mirrors framed against mirror-tiled walls. Columns rose to the ceiling, infused with veins of what looked like copper. It would have been gaudy anywhere else, but it worked with the opulence of everything else I’d seen.
We were seated quickly and placed our orders. I took a deep breath, tried to relax, and tucked my bag beside the chair. When I looked back up, Kiam was standing beside our table.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He tilted his head. “You should be asking yourself that question.”