THESE CELESTIAL BODIES (Demetre)

Chapter eight

     "Get a fucking room," Rhazien whaled and then proceeded to make a gagging sound. Beside him, another Vampyr who went by the name Ekki, tossed back his wine and laughed. Dean, now hyperaware that he and Rose had just made an awkward scene, reached over Ekki's back and smacked Rhazien clean on his head.
The man choked.
     "That's no way to speak to your damn king, you useless bastard," Dean grinned.
Thalia leaned back in her seat. "So kingly."
     Again, as if he couldn't help it, Dean's gaze wandered over to Rose who was staring at the three of them with some kind of shock on her face.
"I hope they haven't scared the shit out of you yet," he said.

~

"I hope they haven't scared the shit out of you yet," he said.

     He had just smacked that Vampyr—Rhazien she recalls—clean over the head. Playfully, grinning as he did so. She thought when he returned the laughter would subside and be replaced with cool, deadly malice but it wasn't. The air was still warm, buzzing with electricity, with...happiness? If these monsters can even feel such a thing. When Thalia told her there were people she wanted her to meet, she didn't know what to expect. But when they walked into the dining room and found two unearthly looking Vampyrs seated on the couches by the fireplace, all the breath got knocked out of her lungs. Vampiric beauty was astonishing, Thalia served as a prime example, Dean too with all his...beauty. But every time she thinks she'll get used to their looks, she gets shocked again.

The Vampyr who introduced himself as Rhazien was tall...as tall as Dean and he was two feet taller than Rose. (Vampyrs were extraordinary tall as well as Rose had gathered) Rhazien had unruly brown hair, his curls messy and wild but somehow lovely to look at and feather light. He was broad, chiseled in the face with a clean-cut beard. The other Vampyr, Ekki, however, was a few inches shorter. Long limbed but toned, if Rhazien was the muscle, Ekki was swift and agile, quick to notice things. His eyes darted everywhere, lingered on things for a little longer. In the light, the copper undertones of his toffee skin stood out the most. And unlike Rhazien's wild hair, Ekki's was tight curled and short.
     Rhazien was Dean's advisor and army commander, Ekki a warrior, born and bred to kill from the slums of Attahelm as a bastard born. He was apparently a quarter Wite and the only reason he managed to claw his way from the gutter was because his mother begged Dean's father to send him to the army camps because she could not care for him herself.
     Father knows what became of her or where his father was.
     "Not yet," Rose said.
     Rhazien flashed her a fanged smile and winked. "Something tells me she will scare the shit out of us."
     "Throw her to the wolves and you will soon pity them," Thalia said.

You are the wolves, and you will receive no pity.

"Ekki offered to show me the library after my lesson tomorrow." Rose said, pulling the conversation to a different direction.
     "The library?"
"You know the one you practically shut off and locked," Ekki answered. Rose did not fail to notice the pang of hurt that strutted over Dean and Thalia's faces. Though momentarily, it was palpable, drawing the atmosphere into a stilled silence. One that made Ekki regret speaking.
     Rose put her wine glass down. "Why did you lock it up?"
     Even Rhazien looked between them all but said nothing, as if already knowing the answer and choosing to keep his mouth shut.
     "It serves no purpose. And it will serve little for you," Dean didn't look at her when he spoke, instead he looked past her. Straight past her head. "It's full of the old Vampyr tongue, only Vampyrs can understand."

"Aren't I half Vampyr?" she hadn't wrapped her head around it yet, what he had said a week ago at the Solstice ball. Half Vampyr but not half human, half something other and that was why she was here. But what was she? "Teach me." She wouldn't sit around and wait for her death, follow orders and obey their every command. And plus, she needed information. On their kind, on herself. She had been an outsider all her life and she needed to know why. Needed it so badly, it was almost painful.
     Rhazien grinned. Ekki following suit. But they all looked to their king because it was his word against theirs and his order above their own.
     Finally, Dean's steely gaze settled on her. Cold, icy. Full of hot fire. "And what, Rosalie, would you like to learn?"
     "The Vampyr tongue. Your history, my divine sight—"
     "Divine sight?"
     "She has the sight Dean!" Thalia beamed. Dean did not look at all impressed, nor did he share his sister's enthusiasm. If anything he looked horrified. "This means she could be—"
     "That's enough Thalia." The cold snap of Dean's voice sent a rumble of his ancient, festering power rolling through the entire castle. So violently Rose flinched, grabbed for Thalia's arm who in turn grabbed Rose's. The rumbling didn't stop, writhing shadows engulfed the entire dinning room as if it weren't dark enough already. It was the cold of the dark between the stars and a world forged before light or heat, a world that started and ended in a barren abyss. Rose's heart thundered, every instinct pushing to a new high.
     And something else burned within her.