Moonbreeze

  “No one gets privacy, princess.”

  I swallowed hard as she said it.

  “Things work different here than up North. So if I were you, I would start getting afraid.”

  “Enough Gabs, she won’t break. For all we know she is hiding a mark underneath her clothes. You can smell them miles away.”

  “Mark or no mark, this one is going to break the hard way.”

  The girls laughed and left. It was only the one that brought us here that stayed.

  “Thank you,” I said and she flinched a bit. It was weird, as if nobody had thanked her before.

  “You…are…welcome.”

  She went to sit on a couch as Annie and I walked to the bathtubs. I undressed myself and lowered my body into the water. It smelled sweet.

  “Seriously, Elle, Who are you?” Annie suddenly asked.

  I looked at her.

  “Nobody,” I answered and left it there.

  WHEN WE GOT out, new fancy underwear and the beautiful dresses waited for us.

  The girls came back when our undergarments were on to help us with our corsets.

  Annie had small breasts so she looked gorgeous, but mine, mine showed cleavage and I looked so cheap.

  Our hair and makeup was done afterward and when I looked into the mirror, I almost didn’t recognize myself.

  I looked cheap, I smelled cheap. If Blake was still alive, Eikenborough would’ve not been standing here anymore and not by his doing, he never did shit for me, except saving my life twice. My abilities died the night he did.

  It was still a hard pill to swallow.

  We were taken back to the carriage. Madam Mesousa, who I assumed was the European woman, looked different. She looked elegant and smart.

  She huffed as she saw Annie. “Guess Amelia is still good for something. Never thought in a million years she would make you look anything like this.”

  Annie sat next to me. Why she said these things, well, I could think of a few reasons. This entire city was evil.

  The horses pulled forward with a jolt and my dress pressed hard into my ribs. I could hardly breathe.

  I didn’t know what was waiting for me tonight, or rather whom, but I knew that I didn’t want this at all.

  I should’ve just taken my punishment with whatever our Council was going to do to me, not run away and get myself into further trouble. Still, my mother’s journals stayed with me. The stories that she’d told of how she’d lift up her chin and find ways to survive. That was embedded into my mind and it would be something that I would hold on to for dear life. I would use her bravery and make it my own.

  The carriage stopped in the courtyard of a beautiful building. I didn’t know if it was a hotel or a house, it had so many rooms.

  We climbed out and walked up the steps. My heart was beating like mad. I didn’t want to become one of these women.

  “Whatever he says is final. If he doesn’t want her, she comes back with me,” she told me.

  “Oh, he will take her,” I said again and the woman ground on her teeth but she held her tongue as she just stared at me.

  I lifted up my chin and walked the last couple of steps right next to Annie.

  The door opened and we entered.

  The foyer was marble and crystal. Madam Mesousa was right behind us.

  “You can tell Lord Creptone that Madam Mesousa is here with his new order.” She spoke as if we were some delicacy.

  The lady bowed and disappeared.

  Right then another woman wearing a black dress appeared from another hallway. She had a bottle of alcohol in her hands and looked like she was crying. She was a mess.

  “Why you and your filth always show up here, is beyond me,” she said to Madame Mesousa. “It’s because of them my husband is dead, and my brother and father are going to land in their footsteps.”

  “It’s not my fault your husband couldn’t keep his hands off your father’s property.”

  “My father’s property?” The woman looked at us. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she spat and walked the other way.

  I just stared after her as she disappeared again. I felt bad for her and felt exactly like her.

  “They have no idea where you get these girls from, do they?”

  Madame Mesousa just looked at me. “If I were you, now is the perfect time to hold that tongue of yours.”

  “Eva,” a male voice said coming from the stairs. I turned my head and found a salt-and-pepper-haired man in his late fifties wearing some sort of animal skin over his shoulders. He looked friendly but I doubted that he was.

  Annie took a deep breath and I could see her hands were trembling softly.

  I wanted to go over to her and give her a hug but she shook her head.

  “Lord Creptone. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

  “Not in the least. What do we have here?” he said as he looked at me and then at Annie. “This one.” He pointed at Annie. “I don’t need, but this one.” He looked at me.

  “Only comes when you take her.” I nodded toward Annie and swallowed hard. The old man looked at me for a few seconds and then at Madam Mesousa, who looked as if she’d had enough of my mouth.

  “She is well spoken,” he simply said.

  “I would do anything if you would find it in your heart to take her in as well.” I stood my ground.

  He squinted. “Anything?”

  I swallowed hard again and nodded with a hint of a fake smile. I wasn’t so sure about that anything anymore but we weren’t going to be split up.

  “Okay, the half breed can stay.”

  I hated that word. Annie was gorgeous, racially mixed just like Cheng. She was anything but half breed..

  “Anastasia.” His voiced echoed through the walls.

  “Yes, my Lord.” A small tiny housemaid ran toward him.

  “Take…” He looked at me again and had his arm stretched out toward Annie.

  “Annie,” I said.

  “Take Annie and show her to her room. I’m sure there is some space for another housemaid around.”

  “Yes, my Lord. Thank you, my Lord.” She bowed and grabbed Annie’s arm and led her out.

  Lord Creptone handed Madam Mesousa an envelope, which she took with open hands. “You impressed me this time. Well done.”

  “Thank you, my Lord.” She bowed too. “Goodnight.”

  She turned around and disappeared.

  “Now, let’s go to my room and see just what exactly I paid for.”

  MY HEART WAS pounding, as I stood naked in Lord Creptone’s room. I tried my best to not shed one tear tonight but I didn’t know if I was going to manage it. He kept staring at my mark that was showing between my thighs close to my knee.

  He huffed. “I wanted to say that you, my dear, have a fighting spirit.” He smiled.

  He fiddled with his pants and my heart beat like crazy. He stopped. “Relax,” he said and only let part of his pants fall open to show me his mark. I frowned.

  “I was part of the Dragonian race too, a very, very long time ago.” He buckled up his pants again, turned around and walked to his liquor trolley. “What is your name?”

  “Elle.” It was so easy now.

  “Elle?” he asked again and I nodded. “Let me guess, you are from up North.”

  I nodded again. “Yes.” I remembered my mother’s journal said you must always speak up when you talk to men and women of status. Not that he was.

  “Can I pour you something?”

  “Sure, that would be nice.” If I could get drunk then maybe I wouldn’t remember any of this.

  He chuckled. “You have impeccable manners too, I see. I wasn’t lying when I told Madam Mesousa that she delivered this time. I’m sick and tired of the women doing everything I say, and then using my secrets as leverage. You are like a breath of fresh air.”

  I smiled a fake smile, but I was glad that I’d opened my mouth a couple of minutes ago.

  “Are you cold?”

&nbsp
; “A little.”

  “Here.” He picked up his fur coat and wrapped it around me. It was warm and I was thankful that I wasn’t naked anymore.

  “Now,” he said, still standing in front of me.

  Please don’t ask me to sleep with you, please.

  “I have a confession to make, one, that if it gets out, they will kill me for.”

  I looked at him.

  “I’m not interested in women. My affections, well they lay more in the other direction.”

  I swallowed hard again. Okay, I wasn’t quite expecting that.

  “Then what am I doing here?”

  “To play a role. Pretend that you are my mistress, and in return I will keep you safe from all the men here, and your friend can stay on as a cleaning lady.”

  That sounded way too good to be true. “Do I have your word?”

  “If I have yours.”

  “I promise, I won’t tell a soul.”

  He reached out his hand. “Then we have a deal. But I have to tell you, you really need to play your role convincingly, especially in front of the public and other court members.”

  I nodded again. As long as I didn’t have to sleep with him, he could do whatever he wanted. I’d even kiss him if I had to.

  He smiled. “Your room is through there. I keep my mistresses close, so that I can keep a really good eye on them. I promise you nobody in my household will ever harm you.”

  “Thank you, you are very kind.” I didn’t know why I said that, but he was kind this very moment, sort of.

  His lips curved and hope, something I hadn’t seen recently, sparkled in his eyes. “It’s something one hardly hears around here anymore. Gratitude is just as rare as compassion.”

  I followed him to my room. It was huge, suited for a princess rather than a mistress. The bed was so big that five to ten people could sleep in it. The bed’s linen was pure gold in color. It had so many pillows on it. There was a Victorian chair by the biggest window I’d ever seen, draped with a darker gold color. There was a fireplace in one corner and Lord Creptone seemed to have a fondness for fur. It was evident in the carpets. The room was simply gorgeous.

  Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. The silver lining around my dark grey cloud….

  “I’M BROKEN!” I yelled at her and kicked the dustbin that was against her table. Papers scattered everywhere.

  “Blake.” Constance tried to calm me down. “You are not broken.”

  “Then why can’t I find her, Constance? Why!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s either that…” I didn’t want to think about it and I shut my eyes tight. “Or it means that she is…”

  “Don’t say it. You of all people should know that she is much stronger than that, Blake. She is not dead, you hear.”

  “I don’t know Constance,” I said. My full body’s weight rested on both arms, leaning on her table. I’d never felt this way before, so useless. “Ever since I woke up I have this nauseated feeling in the pit of my stomach, I can’t reach her anymore. It’s like there is this huge wall surrounding her mind and my mind can’t pick her up, nothing. I need her here!”

  She just stared at me with big grey eyes with little brown spots dancing in her irises. They were different from Mom’s, that I know now, but when I was little, I couldn’t tell the difference between them.

  “You will find her Blake,” she said softly.

  “When?” I hit the table hard with both my fists, making her jump. “You need to do more tests.”

  “There is nothing wrong with you.”

  “Yes, there is because I can’t sense her, know where she is. My tracking ability doesn’t pick her up anywhere. She was right. This bond is all fucked up.”

  “Blake, please. The two of you are so complicated; I just don’t have all the answers. Have you spoken to Irene yet? Maybe she can help.”

  I started to laugh. “Irene can’t see shit from me anymore. Ever since….” I couldn’t say it, but since she’d became closer to me, breaking down some of my own walls, subduing some of my anger and dark side, Irene’s sight was blocked from me totally. It was as if Elena’s affections for me had started to protect me from the Moon-Bolt’s sight. I’d hated it then, but I loved it now, because of what it stood for. She was protecting me from evil, and I couldn’t even find her.

  “You’re looking at this the wrong way,” Constance said. “She is still alive.”

  I looked up from the table back to her.

  “If she wasn’t, Irene would’ve seen your future.”

  SHOULD’VE SLEPT like a log, but I didn’t. I tossed around. It was as if the bed was too lumpy. My mind didn’t want to shut down, it was filled with too many worries – worries about the farmers, about Cassy, Nicky and Max. They didn’t have a hiding place anymore and I didn’t know if there was enough time for Charles and the others to build a new one.

  Then there was Annie. Sure she was with me, but she was also a Sun-Blast dragon. She told me what they do to dragons. They try to turn them evil; it was one of the reasons she’d just refused to transform. She’d done it so many times that now she didn’t know how to transform.

  August was next. What if the Council found out that he was a Dragonian? They would kill him.

  The other person I kept thinking of was the one on the Wyvern – the one that was the spitting image of Blake. He had the same beauty, the same hard jaw line, and the same smile. The only difference was his eyes and his voice.

  It could’ve been Blake’s twin.

  Annie called him Billy when she’d begged him to not take her. Could he have been the one she knew in the Council?

  Who was he and why was he Blake’s doppelganger?

  Then there was this new arrangement with Lord Creptone. Was I going to be able to pull this entire mistress thing off? I’d never been someone’s mistress before, and if I could, well there was the other problem that hung over my head: Paul.

  I was on his turf now. If what Blake had told me was the truth and that Paul had gotten another human form, then I would never know what he looked like. He could be anyone.

  Lastly was Blake. I couldn’t push that image of blood pouring out of every hole in his face out of my mind. It had soaked my carpet.

  It was still a hard pill to swallow that he was gone. I felt broken, like a huge part of me had died with him. And it wasn’t a mental part, this time it was physical. I was normal, well semi-normal as I still had my enhanced hearing, but something told me that in the next couple of years, that would leave me too.

  A soft knock on my door made me lift my head from the softest pillow I’d ever slept on.

  The door opened and Annie entered with a tray of food.

  I got out of bed and ran toward her, flung my arms around her and just hugged her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Elle. I told you not to worry about me.” She looked at me with concerned eyes. “How are you?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “He didn’t…”

  “Shhh, don’t worry about that, okay. I’ll be fine, just as long as you are safe.”

  “Thanks Elle, for this. I shudder to think where I could’ve ended up.”

  “I take it not all the places are as posh as this one,” I said, and from the look on her face, I immediately knew that I should’ve kept my mouth shut. All thanks to the lack of sleep.

  “Where the hell did you come from?”

  I giggled. “Nowhere.”

  “So you keep saying. All I know is if it wasn’t for you Elle, those girls would’ve been discovered.”

  “Shhh.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They are safe.”

  Silence filled the room.

  “It’s like you are some kind of a god. A ray of hope.” Annie had tears welling up in her eyes and she wiped them away quickly.

  “There is nothing wrong with hope,” I said.

  She gave a sad sigh.
. “No there is. Hope doesn’t exist here.”

  “Don’t say that. You are way too young to say that.”

  “Everyone that had stood up to the Council has died, Elle. My father was one of them. I was only eight. The night he died, they took me. I worked in a huge house as help. Then when I turned fifteen, well, goodbye innocence.”

  I shut my eyes at her words, as I knew what she was implying. “It got worse over the years and one day, I just couldn’t do it anymore. So they beat me, and beat me, until they left me for dead. Charles found me and nurtured me back to health and I’ve lived on the farm until now. Now I’m back where I started.”

  “He promised that you would just be the help.”

  “They don’t have a say in that, Elle.” She wiped off another tear. “When the King of Wyverns comes, if he wants me, they can’t tell him no.”

  I felt her fear, her pain.

  “He won’t even be able to protect you.”

  I looked at her. “You are not a Moon-Bolt, so stop fearing something that might never happen.”

  She smiled. “I don’t have to be a Moon-Bolt, Elle. It is what it is.”

  “Can we just change the subject for now, please. Have you eaten?”

  “Early this morning.”

  I got up to see what was underneath the silver lid and found bagels with cream cheese, a bowl of porridge and some fruit. The fresh fruit was probably from the farms.

  I held out some grapes to her and she took them with a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

  I grabbed the other bunch and we both sat on the bed and ate it.

  Annie wiped off another tear. “They were like my family. The only family I’ve ever really had.”

  I wrapped one arm around her.

  “What happened to your mom?”

  She just shook her head. She was an orphan.

  “Well if it is of any condolence I didn’t have a mother either.”

  She sniffed and looked at me.

  “Or a sister.”

  She started to giggle and I smiled with her.

  “So the way I see it, it’s you and me now. We’ll take care of each other.”

  She smiled once more and stared at the carpet. “They are going to give you the barcode soon.”