Here.
In the vampire territories, instead of in the shifter territories. As if my half-baked rescue mission hadn’t already been complicated enough.
Hang on, Jordan. Just hang on.
The water sloshed around me in the tub as I lifted a hand to touch my face. The fat guard hadn’t hit me anywhere anyone could see at least. My stomach still ached and a large bruise had spread across my belly.
I let my heavy eyelids drift open and nodded to my maid. The frustration I'd managed to tamp down for a solid twenty minutes roared back to life. We’d been dropped off late the night before, each been given a room, a maid, and instructions to rest.
Other than that, I had no idea just what I was doing here. I was meant to be a maid and yet I’d been given one instead.
A bossy one at that.
"Yes. Of course. Just give me a minute? The bath is heaven after being filthy for so long."
The young woman who'd introduced herself as Bethany hesitated and then nodded. "I've got to get some bits and bobs for your hair, in any case. I'll be right back."
She scurried away and I watched her go, wishing I could go with her...wishing I could be her.
Bollocks, what a cock up this was.
How was I going to get to Jordan now? I put a hand to my head and settled back into the perfumed water.
Where to even start? I plucked at my bracelet, undid it and dropped another bead off. Three days gone. Fifty-seven to go.
The two of us were both going to die out in these territories if I didn’t figure out something fast. Maybe I could ask Bethany about becoming a maid? That would give me the ability to move around more freely.
I snorted to myself. Aspirations to be a maid now?
The last time I’d even thought about a profession of choice, I'd have been six years old. Clueless and happy, like the rest of the human population. Oh-so confident we were at the top of the food chain. Oh-so comfortable in our innate superiority, so much so that it wasn’t even a topic of conversation.
As a little girl I'd spent hours in front of the mirror, daydreaming of becoming a ballerina one day, with a crisp, white tutu and cotton candy-colored slippers. Spending my nights leaping through the air while the orchestra played, and the violins sang, and the audience cheered. I’d even taken some lessons here and there.
But that was before the Veil had come down.
And now, maid to a thicket of vampires was what I wanted more than anything else.
Not that things had been all that terrible for me so far, if I was being honest.
In fact, they'd been pretty okay given the whole watching-a-new-friend-commit-suicide-with-a-hair-pin-to-escape-our-shared-destiny-and-then-being-sold-to-a-vampire thing a couple days before. When we'd been loaded onto the massive, wooden ship that looked like it had belonged to Blackbeard in a previous life, I'd half-wondered if I'd die of scurvy or some equally archaic malady on the trip. But, aside from having to wash with a basin and a sponge, and the repeat meal of a rather uninspired chicken soup (please let it have been chicken and not some other white meat), I had to admit, I'd been treated decently. I mean, it wasn't the Princess Cruise line or anything, but I'd been given three squares a day, a decent cot to sleep in and a room of my own. More importantly, I'd gotten off the ship with the same number of holes in my body as when I'd gotten on, and the ones I did have had remained unmolested.
I was logging that as a win after the way the one who purchased me stared me down. The General, they’d called him. His gaze had been like a physical touch. I shivered in spite of myself, my hands drifting over my body before I realized what I was doing and snatched them away.
The truth was, the ride on that bloody pirate ship had been the calm before the storm. But the calm was almost over now and, all too soon, I'd be headed straight into the maelstrom.
The General’s face was etched into my mind. Nightmares, he’d haunted them for so long, to see him in the flesh . . .my breath came in little gasps thinking about how he’d looked at me. At the bulge in his pants. Would he fuck me before he killed me, or after?
I sucked in a breath and dipped my head beneath the water for a long moment before coming up for air, doing my damnedest not to imagine what my future held… Not to wonder if I was going to be able to get me and Jordan out of this mess.
And still, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dreams. More like premonitions, it now seemed. When I’d seen his face at the auction, it had been a total mindfuck. How? How could I have known him without ever having known him? Once the Veil had fallen and the truth of what was possible in this world came to light, nothing should have surprised me anymore, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
What did it all mean?
"Hurry, Miss!" Bethany called as she came bustling back into the bathroom, blue eyes wide. "She's running ahead of schedule and will be here in twenty minutes!"
I stood reluctantly, the chill in the air making my skin break out into goosebumps as the water sluiced off of me.
"I know you aren't supposed to divulge much," although that hadn't stopped me from asking so far, and I wasn't one to break a trend, "but can you just tell me who 'she' is, Bethany? I know you said the Duchess, but what is her role here? What is my role here? I just want to be a maid!"
She held out a fluffy, crimson towel and I stepped out of the massive, porcelain tub and allowed her to wrap me in it.
Amazing what being rounded up, kept in a pen, and treated like a pig that hadn't won a ribbon at the county fair could do for a girl's modesty. At some point, I'd apparently stopped giving a shit who saw me naked unless there was a chance they planned to eat me.
Thoughts of the General floated back into my consciousness again. How could it be that the very man I’d dreamed about so many times before had been there, standing before me?
Wisps of those dreams flashed through my mind even now…
Dark eyes as he hunted me down, chasing me through the forests of my imagination. His hands grabbing at me, pinning my arms. Bruising me as he manhandled me, as my clothes tore and . . .chills swept up and down my arms.
“Oh, you’re all goosebumpy again! Here, let’s use another towel. This one is warmed,” Bethany snatched the first towel off and threw the fresh one around me.
I barely felt the heat. Because seeing my nightmare in the flesh had been a kick to the gut that I’d not recovered from.
Then there was the man beside him, who had sent a different kind of tremor through me. Eyes the color of onyx that I hoped I'd never have to look into again. There had been a cruelty to them I couldn’t escape, no matter that I’d pushed my way to the back of the crowd to hide from him as the auction started.
Not that it helped me in the end.
Thank Christ he hadn't been the one to bid on me. It had been the other one...the man from my dreams, with the deep, mesmerizing baritone. Not silky, like his counterpart, but gruff.
Raspy.
I shivered and shoved the memory aside, turning my focus back to Bethany. My dreams had been a warning, and I was going to heed them. No matter how it might have seemed at the end, the General wasn’t there to help me—he was there to kill me.
To eat me.
What I needed to focus on now was gathering information. Even a little bit would help calm my nerves. This whole push/pull, from misery and filth to the palace and finery I'd been ushered into within a very few short hours was surely designed to make me dizzy with anxiety and fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what was coming.