by Sara Thorn
I danced and kept my own watch, too. I watched Athan and Dregon as they mingled and weaved between the pockets of vampires, whispering and glancing back and forth throughout the room. I took notice of the reactions of the other vampires in the room and how Athan’s followers seemed a little too friendly with Cassius servants and entertainers. I observed as Quinn and Sen kept an eye on things from a distance at the corners of the room. And I kept an eye on Cassius, who somehow seemed to never take his eyes off me the entire time, even as several of his beautiful guests trailed their hands over his shoulders and thigh and ran their fingers through his hair. After the night was over, Quinn walked me back to Cassius’s room.
The clothes I wore tonight were less comfortable, with buckles and sequins that formed a corset around my torso. I searched around the bedroom until I found a drawer full of Cassius’s soft shirts and pulled off the contraption I was wearing, in exchange for a soft, long-sleeved white T-shirt that fell just above my knees. Then I crawled under the blankets on the bed to wait for him.
But as my eyes eventually fell closed from the weight of sleep, I realized that Cassius still hadn’t returned to his room.
When Quinn came to get me in the morning, I woke with a nervous start as it occurred to me that Cassius had never come back from the party last night.
“Where is he?” I panicked as I jumped out of bed and started to run to the door with nothing but Cassius’s shirt dangling off my body.
“Calm down,” Quinn said. He seemed annoyed at my reaction to not seeing Cassius in the bed with me. “He’s fine. He just had some things to attend to last night. Honestly, Mara, you should be much more worried about yourself.”
Quinn wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much my life would suffer at the hands of Dregon. But still, I wasn’t just worried about myself.
“You’ll be spending the day with Sen and me in the fae quarters,” he said as he looked over the shirt I was wearing with a single raised eyebrow.
“Why?” I hadn’t meant to blurt it out so rudely. I just figured there would be another event or something to prepare for today. I also hadn’t expected to have a day off in the middle of a rising upset. “Sorry,” I said. “I do definitely want to spend the day with you. I just meant that I thought there might have been something else planned for today.”
“No,” Quinn answered flatly.
I really seemed to have a knack for getting under guys’ skin lately.
“There is nothing planned for today. Athan and his bunch have already left, and all is quiet around here since most everyone is still recovering from last night. The party went on well into the morning hours, and everyone is exhausted and nursing sore heads, I am sure.”
“Where is Cassius?” I asked, not ready to give up on my concern just quite yet.
“He is busy today.”
I pressed Quinn for a bit longer, but unlike his usual willingness to provide me with upfront answers to my questions, he wouldn’t budge on divulging anything further about where Cassius was today or what he was doing.
So, there wasn’t much for me to do other than get changed and follow Quinn to the fae quarters.
The morning was already late by the time we got there, and the sweet smells and colorful sights of the fae magic, which lined the corridor outside of Quinn’s room, was a welcome sensory treat. We sat with Sen for a while as she worked on making some sort of tincture that was the color of mud.
“Tell me more about how magical transactions work,” I said as Sen handed me a mortar and pestle to help grind something into a powdery dust that looked a lot like bumblebee wings.
“Every magical cast is a two-sided transaction, like I said,” Sen answered. “For every magic that we put out into the world, something must be taken as a balance.”
I was still confused.
“Take this, for example,” she continued. “My brother and his tendency to be fiercely overprotective of the people he cares for.”
Quinn rolled his eyes at her comment and continued to fold the edges of small slips of paper in his hands into tiny triangles. I needed to ask him what he was doing after Sen had finished explaining to me.
“Sometimes, he would like to fly off half-cocked and glamour stones to look like grapes and watch until his enemy had eaten his fill, enough to kill himself with a belly full of rocks.”
I cringed at that disturbing visual image.
“Or sometimes, one of the vampires might ask him to do something awful to an enemy or a scorned lover. A request like that cannot be made without something being given in exchange.”
“Like payment?” I asked.
“Payment is rendered by choice, but there is no choice given to the cost of a magical transaction. Perhaps the fingers of the vampire who wished the deed to be done would turn to blackened decay. Or perhaps my brother would be plagued by frequent stomach aches in return for the curse he cast.”
“Has that happened?” I asked Quinn with a look of horror.
“No,” he said. “My sister is just being dramatic.”
Sen laughed. “Well, there’s no drama in the facts of it. There is a debt to pay for each magical exchange. Sometimes it’s worth the counterbalance, and sometimes it’s not, but the caster doesn’t know until the deed is done what the price might be.”
“What about the shadow magic?”
Sen shot her brother a look of caution. “You told her about shadow magic?” she asked him with a disapproving grimace.
Instead of answering her, Quinn quickly turned to me and changed the subject. I was feeling more and more like the subject of shadow magic was a scary thing to everyone but Quinn. I probably needed to ask him more about that topic when the two of us were alone so I could get a real answer.
“What’s been going on with you and Cassius?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s been pulling you aside quite a bit lately. Is there any particular reason?”
“No,” I said half-convincingly. “We’ve just been talking a lot.”
“About what?” Quinn asked. His tone was too casual, as though he were trying to downplay his genuine level of concern.
“Well, Cassius did say that he was going to take me home,” I said.
“What?” Quinn looked shocked, and Sen looked up from what she was doing with her mouth agape. “Home to your world?”
“Yeah. But just to visit, not to stay. I was telling him about how it was my dream to dance on the stage of the Boston Opera House, and he said that he would take me there so I could do it. Granted, I’m sure he’ll still drag me back to this world as soon as I’m done, but at least I’d get to see Boston again, even if it’s just for a moment.”
“Wait a second,” Sen said as she put down the glass jar in her hand. “That could be your chance to escape!”
Quinn looked at his sister as if she had three heads. “You can’t be serious. There’s no way she can get away from Cassius on Earth without him noticing. He watches her like a hawk.”
“I know he does, my dear brother, and I also know how much it upsets you that he does so. Which is why I would think you’d want to help Mara get away. Cassius takes you with him everywhere; you could help create a distraction that could allow Mara to slip off, and as long as she had a place to disappear to quickly, it might buy her enough time to run and hide.”
“I just don’t know,” Quinn said. “Why would Cassius even be doing this? It seems too good for something that he would do. Why take a slave back to her home world? He’s never taken such a personal interest in any of the humans before.”
“Neither have you,” Sen winked at him. She gathered her reagents in her arms and stood up. “Just think about it,” she said to Quinn before she turned to walk away. “We may not be able to save all of them, but we might be able to help her.”
Once Sen had left, I set the mortar and pestle down and leaned back against the wall near Quinn’s side. “What did she mean?” I asked. “About savi
ng all of them. Are you guys planning something?”
“Yeah,” he said as he dumped the tiny paper triangles from his hands into a pile onto the ground. He had started piecing them together in a way that looked like strangely shaped stars.
I didn’t know much about origami, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t it. Quinn leaned back against the wall next to me, and it just seemed natural for me to rest my head on his broad shoulder as he did so. I worried that it might startle him or make him uneasy, but instead, he just leaned farther into me, which gave my head more space to rest and let me smell the wonderful aroma that seemed to waft off the skin at his neck.
“So, what do you think about what Sen said?” I asked. “Do you think I really could escape when we go to Boston?”
Quinn turned his face toward mine, and I could feel the breath behind his words against my forehead as he spoke. “Do you want to escape?”
I thought for a moment, and as I sat in the quiet stillness, I realized that my feelings were much more complicated, and my desires were much more uncertain than they had been before I had arrived here. I missed my home; I still wanted my dreams, but there was something that pulled on me here, too. Something that pulled me toward Quinn and toward Cassius and toward the magic and people of this world. But since I couldn’t really put how I felt into words, I decided that the best answer was to escape and give myself the time and choice to think about things free from captivity.
“Yes,” I answered. “I want to go home.”
I felt Quinn’s shoulder drop slightly. Maybe he was hoping that my answer would have been “no.” But then again, he was a captive himself, as were all his people; they didn’t want to be enslaved any more than I did.
“I’ll help you do it,” he said quietly.
I raised my head off his shoulder to look at him square in the eyes. “Really?” I asked. “You’ll help me get away while we’re in Boston?”
“Yes.”
I leaned forward and kissed Quinn on the cheek, then threw my arms around him in a big hug. I felt his arms wrap around me in return and felt him exhale on the side of my hair as small, loose strands blew into my face. The moment after my lips left his cheek, I had wished I had the courage to have kissed him on the lips instead.
“Quinn!” a small shout interrupted our embrace, which likely would have lingered for at least several more comfortable moments.
It was one of the guys who shared Quinn’s room. The one who had shown me how a glamour worked.
“I think you’ve had an uninvited guest,” he said to Quinn. “I was just walking back toward the room and saw Dregon slinking around the corner, heading away from you. I tried to chase him down, but he lost me in the tunnels.”
“How could Dregon have gotten into the fae quarters undetected?” Quinn asked.
“Not sure. But he sure had a big smile on his face as I saw him run off. Any idea what he could have seen or heard that would have given him a reason to look so pleased with himself?”
“What if he heard us?” I asked Quinn with a small hysteria brewing in my voice.
“He couldn’t have. Sen would have seen him when she left.”
He was probably right. Sen was here when we had first started talking about Cassius taking me back home, so surely she would have seen Dregon in the corridor if he had been there. I was certain I was just being overly paranoid, but I couldn’t help shake the feeling that if Dregon had heard us talking about plans to escape, and if he reported that information back to Athan, then Athan would definitely find a way to use it to his advantage somehow. I couldn’t tell Cassius, hell, I didn’t even know what I would do if Cassius found out. He would be furious and possibly heartbroken. I wasn’t quite sure which yet. Either way, it would not be a good scenario for anyone.
“I think I should go find Cassius now,” I said as Quinn and I sat facing each other on the floor. “Where did you say he went?”
“I didn’t,” Quinn answered. He sighed and mustered a weak smile for me. “He’s in the main hall.”
I stood up to start walking there, but Quinn reached up to touch my hand. “Just be careful, Mara.”
“I’m always careful,” I smiled. “Besides, you’re always watching out for me.”
Quinn bent his head down in a single nod, and I knew that he would probably be in the shadows not far behind me.
As I walked down the corridors alone, I wondered to myself why Cassius would be in the main hall when there was no festivity going on.
Chapter Fourteen
I thought that I would have more time to talk to Quinn about our plan before we left on the trip to my world that Cassius had promised me. I also thought that I would have time to talk to Cassius, who had barely spoken to me at all. He seemed troubled and preoccupied when I had found him in the main hall.
It was empty, and Cassius had been sitting on his throne within the empty room. His usual posture of having one leg swung over the side of his chair had been traded instead for a forward-facing seat with his chin resting in the palm of his hand.
I had gone to sit in one of the chairs next to him, hoping that he would talk to me about what was on his mind and why he hadn’t come back to the bedroom the night before. But instead, we sat in silence, with Cassius’s heavy sighs as the only intermittent noise in the room. He looked over at me several times, and although I wanted to ask him to tell me what was going on, I felt too bad about my plan to run away to question him. The result of our silence ended up with us both just staring into each other’s eyes until the rest of the room seemed to disappear. Finally, Cassius broke the silence.
“Let’s get ready to leave,” he said as he stood up and reached for my hand.
“Leave for where?” I asked.
“For your world. Boston, I believe, isn’t it?”
“Right now?”
“Yes, I don’t see why not. Unless you have something better to do today?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to turn down a chance to go home; what if he didn’t offer it again? But I also wanted to make sure that Quinn was coming with us.
“Will it just be you and me going?” I asked.
“No, unfortunately, Athan’s treachery makes traveling alone a bit too dangerous. We’ll bring a few of my men with us,” he said. He looked more than annoyed when he mentioned Athan now; he looked as though he had experienced a terrible grievance.
“Can Quinn come along?” I asked, knowing that Cassius and Quinn, even despite their long-term relationship with each other, seemed to lock horns when it came to me.
“If you wish,” he answered. “Would you care to handpick the rest of my guards who attend as well?” The sarcasm in his voice did not go unnoticed.
I normally would have shot back with a clever retort, but the guilt that gnawed at me about trying to run away just as Cassius was attempting to do something kind for me was starting to become a bit too overwhelming, so I just shook my head instead.
We went back to the bedroom together, where Cassius grabbed a few things from his chest of drawers, and I picked up the black ballet shoes that were resting atop the overstuffed chair. As soon as we were ready to walk out the door, Quinn and two of Cassius’s other men met us in the corridor.
“Ready?” Cassius asked me.
“Yeah,” I said.
When I answered Cassius, Quinn glanced at me with a curious look as if he were making sure that I was still buying into our plan. Although, we really didn’t have a plan per se, mostly just an idea to escape. There hadn’t been enough time for us to formulate an actual strategy to execute.
Cassius reached for my empty hand and then for Quinn’s hand as well. I had no idea what was going on as all of the men seemed to join hands and wait while Quinn muttered words beneath his breath.
This is magic, I thought. Before I had a chance to think anything else, I found the surrounding walls of the caverns melt away in exchange for the gilded and red velvet-lined walls of the Boston Opera House. I stood paralyzed for a
few minutes, unable to believe that we were actually here. Then I remembered what Sen had said; for every magical transaction, there was a cost. I wondered who had paid the price for this trip across worlds—Quinn or Cassius? They both looked fine as I glanced over at them.
The opera house was empty, and I assumed that Cassius had probably timed our journey here to be during the middle of the night in order to prevent any interaction with the humans. It was dark, with only the emergency lighting engaged, but Quinn soon remedied that with fae magic that illuminated the entire opera house as if it had its own moon laid into the domed ceiling. The other two men who had come along looked as if they had never visited this world before, and they stood in awe at the height of the building and all the layered rows of chairs that seemed to climb up into the sky. Cassius took my hand, and we walked toward the stage together with Quinn following closely behind. He held his hand up to me as I ascended the stairs at the side of the stage while he stayed standing on the floor below.
“Now,” Cassius said, smiling. “You can dance on the stage of your dreams for as long as you’d like tonight. And I will sit and watch you.”
I looked around the empty stage in awe. It was even more massive than I could have imagined. I also could have never imagined that this was how I would get to stand on the stage of my dreams, by being gifted a solo performance from a half-vampire from another world. I was too overwhelmed to think straight.
“There’s no music,” I said.
“Don’t worry about that,” Cassius answered. “Quinn will provide us with whatever music you need.”
Quinn lowered his head into a deep nod as if his compliance was not requested but required. I knew that meant he would be wielding more magic to bring about resounding music to fill the entire empty theatre.
“I will leave you two to it,” Cassius said as he turned to take a seat in the front and center section of the theatre.