Chapter 37
It’s not over yet. Just as I reach for my clothes, humiliated and angry, Eleni appears out of nowhere on the other side of my bed.
My anger reflects back at me, her eyes so dark they scare me. She heard what happened from the other side of the door, and she’s not going to let it go.
“I’m alright,” I insist, turning away and hurrying over to my armoire to find a new dress, one that isn’t torn to shreds.
Tears sting behind my eyelids, but I blink them back. Eleni doesn’t need anything more to worry about, and the last thing I want to do is burden her.
“You can go,” I tell her.
But she doesn’t listen. Instead, she waits patiently for me to redress, and even without the ability to speak, I know she wants to throw my own words back at me: what the Third Guardian did to you, it isn’t right. Fuck being a Chosen One.
When I’m clothed, I expect her to give a satisfied nod and leave me be. Instead, she nods over her shoulder toward the servant door behind her, and I raise my eyebrows, the tears in my throat swallowed with surprise.
“You want me to go back through?”
She nods.
“You’ll take me to the white drawing room?”
She nods again, this time with her fists curled at her side, and whips around.
I don’t hesitate before following her into the servant corridor. I’ll take help where I can get it, because I don’t think any of this will be possible without it. Not to mention, Lucan is too busy to even keep me company.
It isn’t until we round the second corner that I become brave enough to speak.
“Thank you, Eleni,” I say.
For everything, I don’t say. For not judging me. For not turning me in. For bringing me food and drawing my baths. For standing in solidarity with me, even the tiniest bit.
She waves a hand through the darkness like she’s dismissing what she’s doing for me, as if it’s trivial. But the weight that falls on both of us is crushing.
“Whatever happens, it won’t be for nothing,” I tell her. “I know a secret, one the Guardians think they’ve protected. And as soon as I find it, I’m going to—”
Eleni whips around and smothers my mouth with her palm. Eyes wide, searching my face, she shakes her head rapidly.
She doesn’t want to know.
I nod against her hand until she slowly pulls back.
Like all the kitchen staff I encountered, ignorance is bliss. Or maybe safety, actually. What the servants don’t know they can’t be tortured over.
We continue meandering the narrow passageway. Down those same spiral stairs, past the same light bulbs and doors, I trudge after her for what seems like longer than the first time. Until finally, we come to a door that looks exactly like all the rest, except it has a white outline.
The white drawing room.
Watching carefully, I try to get as close as I can so I don’t miss a single twitch of Eleni and this mysterious door. Of course, she glowers at me when I step on her foot, before a long slim key materializes out of her sleeve.
It looks nothing like Diggory’s key. This one is needle-like, long, sharp, and silver.
I quickly find out that’s by design when Eleni presses it into the wood, not a keyhole, just the wood right where I imagine the latch would be.
Her movements are purposeful as she lets me observe exactly what she’s doing.
The key slides in like butter, and then to my horror, she sinks her thumb into the razor sharp edge still slightly sticking out from the frame. And the door pops open.
Blood. She offered her blood to the door.
Swallowing down my stomach, my eyes cut back to Eleni. My mouth gapes, but I struggle to get any words out.
“Thank you,” I say again, stilted.
She retrieves the little silver key, presses it horizontally into my palm, and pushes me through the doorway.
I blink against the brutal change of light.
The white drawing room is everything the corridor isn’t.
And yes, it’s definitely white. White sofas, a marble white fireplace, a white wooden coffee table, white flowers in white vases.
Bright sunlight streaks across the room, illuminating the room in an angelic way. My eyes bounce to and from every surface.
Books on the side tables. Busts of faces I don’t recognize sitting on each side of the mantle. Lamps on the two desks that sit on opposite sides of the room. A tufted circular ottoman with a tray sitting atop it with what looks like a quill and ink.
But no paper, I notice, when I make my way toward it out of curiosity. I weave the sharp servant key through the hem of my sleeve as I take in the room.
Glass cloche. Glass cloche. Where is the glass cloche?
My heart burns. My hands tremble in anticipation, at how near I am to the very thing I need to bring the Wall of my nightmares down once and for all.
I close my eyes and channel Lucan’s voice, trying to remember his words. They feel like forever ago, when I was in those catacombs. The same ones below my feet. The same ones I’ll need to escape back through to find the nearest door.
Smack in the middle of the old white drawing room in the north wing, on a table, under a glass cloche.
My eyes fly back to the table sitting in the middle of three sofas arranged in a square around the fireplace.
I take a cautious step toward it, as if I could set off some type of trip wire, and there.
My hesitant steps become leaps, my heart ticking like a bomb. There’s a glass cloche there, sitting on the coffee table, previously hidden behind a tall porcelain vase.
I blink when I reach it, confused. Lightheaded. This can’t be right. Right? Is it a trick of the light?
My hands fly down so quickly, I almost knock the glass over, but I’m able to lift it in my sweaty palms.
And still, it’s empty. There’s nothing under it. No key. No anything.
Not even a speck of dust.
I’d diagnose myself with catatonia.
Cognitive: slow.
Mood: melancholy.
Muscular: stiff.
Behavioral: reckless.
But what I thought I knew no longer applies in this situation.
In all of my schooling, I’ve never learned about the effects of vampire venom or humans turning into stone. I’ve been living in the dark, but in reality, that is what’s happening to me.
And now, it’s officially over. No key. No hope. No change.
I’m back to the beginning, except this time I have the knowledge, the truth that’s been concealed from me my entire life.
My laugh echoes around my bedroom, high-pitched, somewhat scary.
The necklace is nestled back in between my legs, but unfortunately, Lucan’s voice doesn’t rumble out of it to satisfy me the way I want.
What does one do when there’s nothing left to do?
Swiveling my head around this disgustingly ornate bedroom, my eyes land on the rose-engraved door that leads out to the hallway
I march straight out of it without even bothering to close it behind me.
My legs lead me randomly through the hallways. I stare out windows. I sweep up and down staircases. Without a destination, I wander aimlessly, but this is my life now.
No Lucan, who must be regretting what transpired between us in the bathtub. Who is removing himself from this helpless situation.
No mother, who must be a stone by now. Dead.
No partner. No friends.
No telling how many minutes—or hours—later, I finally come across a random servant dusting the banisters.
She glances up at my footsteps as I approach her, space closing between us, uneasiness swelling.
As soon as I reach her, the words spew from my mouth without forethought. “Hello.” I smile, though my teeth feel like chips of ice. “Could you please show me where the billiard room is?”
She nods, her body visibly loosening.
I traipse after her. Poker could be fun, and Tristan seems fun enough—unburdened and likely purposely oblivious to what’s going on around him.
I can be like that.
After weaving through the hallways for a few minutes, the servant brings me to a pair of pretty double doors and gestures to them before turning on a heel and scurrying away.
“Thank you,” I call after her, throwing the heavy doors open with a clunk.
While it’s nothing as grand as the white drawing room, I’d say the musty yellowness of the wallpaper is still several, several steps above a housing complex.
Five heads snap toward me, but only one face changes from confusion to excitement.
“You finally came!” Tristan exclaims, smile wide enough to crinkle his eyes.
I walk around the entryway table, examining the art on the walls that depict faces I don’t recognize.
When I reach them sprawled over the leather sofas, I shrug. “Betting seemed like a good time, suddenly.”
One man eyes me up and down skeptically. “You look new. You didn’t bring anything to bet with.”
“Ah,” I laugh, fluttering my eyelashes toward Tristan. “I thought it was my clothes you wanted me to bet with… or myself rather.”
Tristan’s smirk unfolds slowly, along with the other three men’s.
“Saskia, this is Andreas, Geo, Victor, and Claudia,” Tristan says, introducing me with a gesture toward each of them.
The men’s names go in and out of my ears like vapor. Claudia, the woman across from me, studies me with a tilted head as I sit. She has thick, dark brown hair and full eyebrows that she raises at me skeptically.
Rolling my eyes playfully at her, I try to convey, There’s more than enough to go around, don’t you think?
And I’m not interested in them anyway. The one male I am interested in isn’t anywhere to be found.
Be good, echoes in my skull, but I push it out. There’s no reason to be good anymore. Arad can kill me. He can turn me into stone faster than ‘normal.’
Whatever.
“How long have all of you been Chosen Ones?” I ask conversationally.
Victor, I think, speaks first. “Three short years.”
I assess his body movements as he leans back on the sofa, crossing his ankle over his knee.
“Geo and I were Chosen with Tristan,” Andreas says.
I do the math in my head again based on what Tristan told me. “So, a year ago then.” Claudia just stares at me when I smile. “What about you?”
A beat passes where I think she won’t answer. “Last blood moon.”
A laugh almost bubbles out of me. The blood moon where I wished so hard to be Chosen.
“What’s so funny?” she asks, catching the dark humor in my expression.
Shaking my head, I press two fingers to my lips. “Nothing. Just thinking about how much things change in such a short amount of time. What did you all do back in the city before you became palace prisoners?”
Everyone’s narrow eyes cut to me, but Claudia’s are the first to soften.
“Repair Crew,” she says. “I was assigned to the screens and cameras for Complexes 500 to 600. What about you?”
“Healer,” I say before a pause. “I miss it already.”
“Not me,” Tristan drawls. “This beats farming any day.”
“I bet it does,” Geo laughs.
“Now,” I cut in, already eager for the next distraction, “who’s going to teach me how to play?”
Tristan’s face ticks up in delight, as a man’s often does when he has the pleasure of teaching a woman something. Just like backgammon all over again. Hopefully this game is a little more exciting.
He explains the object of the game and how to make combinations with the cards that I’ll hold and the cards he’ll eventually put down on the table.
I’m half-listening as my mind wanders to my future, wondering if this is what it’ll look like everyday… that is, until I’m confined to a bed.
“I’ll deal everyone two cards,” he says, slinging the red cards face down around the table until each of us has two.
“The little blind…” Tristan points to Claudia on his left, who taps an index finger down on the table.
“And the big blind…” Which must be Geo to my right because he throws down two fingers instead.
“…they put up a bet before even seeing their cards. Now, all of us can look to see what we were dealt and decide if we want to call or raise.”
“Call or raise?” I repeat, bemused.
“Call, you bet two,” Andreas explains. “Raise and you’re upping the bet to three or more.”
I throw up two fingers, mimicking Geo the best I can.
He laughs. “Do you even have two to bet with?”
Looking down at myself, I can count at least three articles of clothing, so he must mean something else. “What are you betting with?” I ask.
All of them chuckle before Claudia whispers ominously, “Secrets. It’s not like out there in the city, where we’re not allowed to keep them. In here, secrets are our gold.”
“Oh.” As I check my cards, it takes a minute to register. I smile wide, arching an eyebrow. “I think I like poker already. And yes, I have two.”
Around the circle, everyone watches me closely, and everyone, except Victor, who folds, matches the two-secret bet.
“Then I’ll burn one,” Tristan says.
I raise my eyebrows in fascination, waiting for him to physically light something on fire, but Tristan only takes one card off the top of the deck and places it off to the side.
Weirdly, disappointment flutters through me. A real fire would have been more interesting.
“Then the flop,” Victor adds.
Tristan turns three cards over in the middle of the table. The first is an eight with what looks like a bunch of clovers, and the other two have faces on them.
“Eight of clubs,” Tristan says for my benefit, I’m sure, “Jack of hearts, and Queen of hearts.”
I check my cards against the three ‘community’ cards. I have a two with diamonds and a four with what looks like a pointy clover. I’m fairly certain these are shit cards when I recall the best combinations that Tristan told me, but I don’t care.
Hard to care about anything when we’re just playing silly little games in our graves.
They all look to Claudia, who takes her time calling before we all do the same. They sure must value their secrets here. Maybe because they’re the only thing we truly own.
It all repeats again when Tristan places the “turn,” a nine of spades—as I’m told the pointy clover is called. But when he places the “river,” a three of hearts, down, I catch Claudia’s almost imperceptible tilt of her lip, a tell that she has something good.
When she raises her bet with another secret, I fold with a shrug. I already owe the winner two secrets, and if I want to keep playing, I need to ration them wisely.
Everyone else folds as well, but Tristan raises her another secret.
“You’re bluffing,” he teases Claudia, then winks at me.
To my shock, that wink ignites me where it shouldn’t, and I clamp my thighs together, trying to douse the heat creeping up my belly.
“Maybe you’re bluffing,” I say playfully, nudging his arm.
A rough vibration replaces the heat, confusing me more as it rumbles like thunder between my legs. Why is this man turning me on? He’s an oaf.
I shift… until a low voice in my head makes me jolt in my seat.
What exactly are you doing, little nightmare?