Two cold hands grabbed her shoulders and shook her with a force that immediately jolted her awake from her satisfactory slumber on the heavenly soft bed.
"What?!" she yelled instinctively as she jumped up from the bed and onto her own two feet, nearly tumbling as she did so. Luckily for her, a hand caught her elbow and steadied her before she could fall again and attain for herself another bruise on her other cheekbone.
Panting from her adrenaline spike and placing her hand over her pounding heart, she glared up at the person who had woken her and subsequently prevented her fall.
The vampire guard, the same one who was there in her room earlier, was standing before her with his free arm bent behind his back, a smug smirk growing on his lips. "Peter Rabbit hopped too soon?"
Lily jerked her arm away from him, glowering at him from beneath her dark blonde eyebrows. "Stop using fairy tale references like a child."
"Says the girl who looks like her only equal opposition in a brawl would be a chihuahua."
Rolling her eyes, Lily ignored the pang in her chest as she remembered the pet that she and her family had before the invasion. It was a little chihuahua, a blonde one that always had a goofy smile-like expression on its face. They had lost it during evacuation and had never seen it again. "Those things are vicious, I'll have you know."
"I'm sure," he disinterestedly mumbled, glancing at the silver watch sitting on his wrist. Lily knew that the silver was actually a steel alloy, or else it would have been burning him right through the bone. "Your little panic attack has caused us to be a minute late." He returned his charcoal black eyes to hers, reuniting his hands behind his back. "Come now." With that he turned, walking to the door in almost a march-like manner.
Lily did not budge; she only stood standing there between the bed and vanity, watching him swing open the two large doors. She couldn't help but feel anxiety prickling at the insides of her stomach at the thought of leaving the bedroom which had become a sort of safe haven from the dungeon and whatever else was waiting for her in the rest of the castle. "Where are we going?"
The guard turned, clasping his hands in front of him instead of behind. A sly look crossed his features, his eyes somehow darkening past their hue. "Dinner time."
The words mixed with his expression caused her to gulp, images of fangs sinking into flesh and blood running over punctured skin filling her mind and causing her feet to feel cemented into the wooden floor. "I-I'm not hungry."
He lowered his chin to give her an incredulous look. "You've been in a dungeon without food or water for four days. You actually shocked all of us when we learned you were still alive."
She shrugged, pushing a piece of her light blonde hair behind her ear. "I drank from the faucet. Water's all I need to survive."
"Blondie," the guard began, pausing to chuckle and turn his body so it was facing hers, "The Queen requests your presence—demands, actually. You have already disobeyed her orders enough by choosing to stay in those grimy rags you call clothes and causing us to be so rudely late, which does not look good on me, as I am her personal guard."
He took a step forward, his leather shoes clicking against the hard floor. Lily held her breath as he came even closer to her, suddenly standing merely inches from her.
He looked at her for a moment, his lips falling open to showcase his two blades of teeth. "I suggest you follow the commands I give you directly from the Queen before I, too, fall into disobedience." He rose his hand, causing the girl to flinch, and slowly stroked the side of his hand down her blonde locks. He chuckles deeply, whispering, "After all, she is right when she says you have the sweetest blood of all mortals."
Lily only stared at him with her baby blue eyes, her pink lips set into a scowl as she upheld her lionhearted demeanor. "Take me to the blasted dinner then, lest you fall into such disobedience and have your own neck snapped by the Queen like the worthless twig you are." With that, she slapped his hand away from her and quickly moved away from his proximity, crossing her arms over her chest and keeping her stare focused on the open door in signal that she was waiting for him to lead the way.
The guard looked at her in astonishment, as his expectations were that she would cower down before his threat to kill her shamelessly. His shock turned into a laugh, one that was excited for just how the Queen would take the girl's disrespect.
"Come then," he said, taking hold of her upper arm and leading her out of the bedroom, ignoring her attempts to pry his hand away from her shoulder.
Lily gave up trying to release his hold on her, huffing as she defeatedly turned her attention elsewhere. Suddenly realizing her surrounding, her mouth fell open at the glamour and galore of the castle hallway in which they walked. The walls were ornate with beige and brown patterns leading up to a long row of beautifully crafted windows right below the tall ceiling, the floor a beautiful wooden texture that caused the guard's shoes to click, although her tattered tennis shoes were silence against it.
"This castle is..." she drifted off as they began descending a golden spiral staircase. She realized that her bedroom was on the very top floor because the staircase started on that floor and spiraled down about five more. "There's six floors?" she asked, struggling to keep up with the guard's fast pace since it'd been years since she'd approached a staircase. "I thought there'd be hundreds."
The guard, without breaking his pace, turned his head to peer at the girl. "Perhaps it's you who is too invested in fairy tales."
Lily rolled her eyes and tried to focus on her steps on the stairs, inwardly congratulating herself when they finally reached the very end of the staircase. Her knees were wobbly and her legs shook uncontrollably; she was beginning to starve to death. And once she smelled the smell of food lingering in the air and invading her nostrils, she got a glimpse of what it felt like to be a vampire with an uncontrollable thirst for blood, except her thirst was for the smell of grilling chicken. Her stomach audibly growled as the smell grew stronger.
"'Not hungry' my ass," the guard mumbled as he led her through the large room which seemed to be some sort of an entrance hall, with a large wall of windows at the front and a gigantic chandelier glittering above.
Lily licked her lips and grew slightly nervous as the guard led her down the hall which her instincts told her would lead them to the dining hall where the Queen sat. This was it, she told herself. This was the beginning of her misery, and the end of her mortal joy. She would become nothing but food for who knew how long. And she had to admit that the Queen was a scary woman. She hadn't been fully conscious when she had visited her in the dungeon, so she hadn't been able to fully recognize the danger laced in her mere existence, but she could even feel it as they neared the dining hall. It was like some animalistic sense that she was near, which was a strange and unusual feeling for her. She tried to tell herself she was just starving to death and on the brink of hallucination.
Lily took a deep breath and tried to calm her nerves as the guard stopped in front of two large doors, taking the handle of one and pushing it open.
The room exposed to her was incredibly large with tall ceilings and a long wooden table in the center that was covered in golden platters of a variety of foods, and she understood why the bloodsuckers would prefer golden trays over silver ones. Of course, at the very head of the table sat the Queen herself, looking bored as she stared out the large windows on the other side of the room, holding a wine glass that was filled with a liquid too dark red to be wine.
The very instant that they appeared through the doors, her vivid green eyes snapped to the blonde's faster than lightning. Even from across the room, Lily could see the way her pupils dilated and nearly pushed out the color around them.
As the guard slowly walked her to the table, Lily couldn't bare to hold eye contact with the Queen, so she looked at the other figures sitting around her. To the Queen's left was the girl that Lily recognized from the dungeon, the one that the Queen had took that day she came to visit her. She seemed to be in an even worse state than she was in the dungeon—she was pale and going in and out of consciousness, her neck covered in bruises and a nasty bite mark that was encrusted in dried blood. Lily felt her heart stop as she realized that soon that would be her, constantly in a deathly daze, never fully awake and healthy. She swallowed hard and pushed those feelings down. She had to be strong.
Next to the girl was a vampire, a female one with medium-length light brown hair, wearing a tight black dress and plopping a grape into her mouth. She turned and looked straight at Lily, her eyes an unsettling red. Her mouth twisted into some sort of evil grin, one that was aware that the blonde was realizing what was going to happen to her.
Quickly looking away, Lily noticed that the human boy sitting next to the female vampire was Peter, the boy she had met in the dungeon. He looked at her with wide eyes, ones that were not privy to the haze of vampire venom. She felt gratitude to see a familiar face, especially one that had not been bitten yet.
On the Queen's right was a blonde, male vampire with a neatly trimmed, matching blonde beard, his golden eyes blazing like fire at the sight of the girl. It was obvious that he had caught a whiff of her blood and was urging to feed on it, but Lily didn't have time to be frightened, for she noticed a familiar person sitting next to the blonde vampire.
"Jasmine!" Lily yelled, realizing that the girl sitting next to him was, in fact, her beloved Jasmine; except it wasn't. Her head was hanging forward, her body limply tilted to the side. As she heard Lily's cry, she slowly raised her face that was paler than usual, and Lily noticed the glazed-over look in her eyes, a distant look showing that she was barely even alive. When she noticed a bite mark on her neck, her heart sunk down to her feet.
The blonde vampire noticed the look of despair in Lily's eyes, and he immediately gave a villainous laugh, signaling to the girl that it was him who had sucked the life out of Jasmine.
"You..." Lily whispered, her weakness leaving and being replaced with a fiery anger that ignited her insides and threw the vampire holding her off-guard as she struggled against his arms. She cried out, kicking at the air as the guard held her back. "You bastard!"
"Holden, control her!" the Queen barked stridently, her voice echoing in the hall and causing everyone, even the vampires, to jump in fright.
"Calm down, blondie," the guard, apparently named Holden, whispered in Lily's ear from behind. "Look at the Queen," he said as he forcefully pinned her arms behind her back.
Confused, Lily still struggled against him but slowly brought her eyes to the Queen's, and as soon as she did, she felt chills of fear run down her spine. Her pupils had shrunk to needles, her light green eyes turning into a more golden color, like the sun had melted with grass and turned into fire—a wildfire that was on the verge of killing.
"See that? In her eyes?" Holden continued, holding on tight to her as she still yanked against him.
Lily noticed the ardent look in her eyes, the flames of anger that reached a height her mortal eyes had never seen. It was like the Queen was telekinetically telling her that if she did not behave, her life would be taken out from under her like a rug. It only took a single look for her to snuff the girl's misbehavior.
"There you go," Holden soothed as Lily finally stopped resisting, moving her eyes back to the dazed Jasmine who had become a little more awake upon realizing Lily's presence. She knew that she had to control herself for Jasmine's sake, because if she got herself killed, Jasmine would be there in that castle of bloodsucking vampires all alone.
Holden carefully led her to the seat at the opposite side of the table from the Queen, making sure that the girl was completely seated before he scooted her up tightly under the table to ensure she wouldn't try to sprint off. He wouldn't admit it, but he felt pity for the girl and didn't want her to get herself killed so fast.
There were a few moments of silence, of Lily and Jasmine staring at each other and the Queen staring across the table at Lily with a hard expression. She was told exactly how the two girls were found in the woods, and she suddenly found herself growing uncontrollably furious at how the blonde was only looking at the other girl and not at her.
"Why are you not dressed in the dress I had laid out for you?" the Queen asked, her voice thick and tensed from all the feeling swirling within her—thirst for the girl, jealousy, and her awareness of her irrationality. She would not let herself be jealous over a human whose only purpose to her was blood.
Lily's eyes snapped to the Queen's, and there was a momentary flash of fear before it was replaced with an empty stare, causing the Queen's eyebrow to arch in curiosity.
"I tried, Your Majesty, but the little dumbass is unusually obstinate for a bloodbag," Holden spoke, standing a few feet behind Lily for precautionary measures. Lily picked up on how his tone of voice changed when talking to the Queen. She also noticed how both Jasmine, Peter, and the other human girl were all dressed in white clothes, and all the vampires dressed in black.
"And the mark on her cheek?" the Queen immediately asked, noticing that there was a deep purple bruise right on her cheekbone. "I thought I explicitly told all of you not to lay a hand on her!" Her eyes began to glow iridescently, her lips pursed and her neck tensed in pure, seething anger. All that was going through her fast-paced mind was images of her guards blatantly disobeying her highest command and hurting the girl she made extra effort to ensure went untouched.
"The little dumbass also was unaware of how to walk upon her arrival, but her bare minimum skills soon returned to her, " Holden again chirped in, smiling smugly at the Queen.
Lily turned around to eye him angrily, wishing to retort back to him but remembering that she needed to keep her mouth closed if she wanted to live. So she turned back around and looked at Jasmine one more time, wishing they were in private so she could tell her how much she missed her and loved her, before slowly shifting her eyes back to the Queen's. Lily noticed that the Queen was wearing a black blouse with a black blazer over it, her hair pinned into an elegant French twist. A thick, gold chain sat on her pale chest that was exposed by her blouse.
The Queen watched her, the way her light hair brought out the light in her blue eyes, the way her pink lips stayed in a scowl. She noticed the dark bruises and wounds on her wrists from her chains, something in her causing her to quickly return her gaze back upwards. "What is your name?"
Lily felt her ears tingle at the velvety timbre of her voice, her cheeks turning bright pink. The Queen was putting her power of persuasion into use. She blinked, trying to keep her fortitude in tact as she responded in a low whisper, "Lily."
The Queen tilted her head to the side, noticing how tensely Lily was sitting. "Lily..." she responded, her lips spreading into a haunting grin.
Lily couldn't help but notice the sharpness of her fangs and just how pearly white her teeth were. Her grin seemed to make her face glow and drew Lily's stare to it. It was like she couldn't tear her eyes away from that vampire's sickeningly beautiful appearance.
The Queen's yellow-green eyes shifted down to the table covered in food in front of her, then back up to the girl. "Are you not going to eat, Lily?"
"I'm not hungry," Lily stiffly responded, not daring to look at the food or else she would lose self-control.
"I sure am," the blonde vampire next to the Queen spoke, his golden eyes locked in on Lily like she was a piece of meat.
"Control yourself, William," the Queen said, shifting her glance over to him for a millisecond before returning to to the girl. "Forgive my cousin. He's an animal."
"That he is," spoke the other female vampire, giving William a provocative look.
"Forgive my cousin-in-law, Giana, as well," the Queen said with a bit more agitation, wishing they would stop interrupting. She already hated the fact that she let William's wife, Giana, come live in the castle with him, but her insolence was growing more everyday and she would not be tolerating it much longer.
Lily looked around and noticed that it seemed as if each vampire had their own human like some sort of possession; the Queen had the unnamed girl, William had Jasmine, and Giana had Peter. She eyed William with hatred, growing sick at the sight of the bite mark on Jasmine's neck.
"Lily," the Queen suddenly spoke, causing Lily to snap out of her daze. "Why exactly do you keep eyeing that girl?"
"Didn't they tell you?" William interrupted, giving a chuckle as he spoke, "The two were caught fucking in the woods!" Both him and Giana chuckled and looked at the two girls in amusement, which made Lily grow angry.
"But why do you think there's any use trying to talk to her now?" the Queen continued, more seriously than before. "One or both of you will probably be dead by the day after tomorrow, or taken to farms where you'll never see each other again," she spoke nonchalantly, as if her words weren't making both steam blow out Lily's ears and her heart break at the same time.
"You're wrong," Lily growled, her fists balling in her lap as she eyed the Queen with the most fury her human body could harbor. Everyone in the room, even the Queen, snapped their eyes to her in shock at her courage to say even those two small words. She ignored their stares, instead focusing her eyes directly at the Queen's. "We are going to escape from here, and we will be together again." She glanced over to Jasmine who looked at her in fear at her words. As admirable was the blonde's valiance, it was borderline stupidity.
"Is that so?" the Queen purred in amusement, bringing the glass of blood to her lips and taking a sip, then setting the glass down and letting her tongue tauntingly circle her lips to clear any remnant blood. "And how do you plan to do that?"
"Killing you."
All of the vampires at the table burst out into laughter, and so did the guards that lined the room. Lily snapped her head towards them, only then noticing her presence. She noticed that the guard closest to where the Queen sat had a pistol hanging on his belt. Lily resisted the urge to scrunch her eyebrows at why a vampire would need a pistol, but she assumed it was to shoot any of the humans if they acted up. She returned her stare to the Queen, noticing how her laughter had died down.
The Queen looked at her for a moment as if contemplating before she reached across the table in front of her and picked up a knife that laid against a loaf of bread, her eyes staying on Lily the entire time. The Queen then placed her free hand on the table, adjusting her grip on the knife before, without any warning, slamming the knife down and stabbing it right through the palm of her hand.
The humans in the room all collectively jumped, becoming even more horrified when the Queen pulled the knife out of her hand without even flinching, its blade covered in blood that was almost black and gooey. All vampires' blood was similar to tar, but it was known that the King or Queen's blood was always the darkest and richest.
Lily watched in disgust as the Queen raised her injured hand up, adjusting it so that the hole the knife had created was in line with her eye and she could stare right at the girl through her bloody palm. Then the blood began to fade and the hole slowly closed up, her pale palm becoming completely normal again within seconds. With the bloody hole gone, Lily noticed all the chunky golden rings on her fingers that reflected the lights in the room.
"See that?" the Queen said, eyeing her palm as if it was some wondrous machine newly invented. "How can you kill a creature who can do that?"
"Silver," Lily retorted, seemingly unfazed by what had just happened.
The vampires and guards in the room began to laugh again, but the Queen, her serious expression not at all having changed, rose her hand which somehow caused the entire room to immediately fall silent.
"It is shocking that you undermine the intelligence of my race," the Queen began, slowly lowering her hand. "There is no silver within the expanse of land that is constantly guarded by my royal staff, which is a range of about fifty miles in every direction."
Lily swallowed, raising her chin to keep her hard expression. She would not falter, no matter how much she wished to.
"Additionally," she continued, picking up a towel that rested beside her plate and using it to wipe the blood off the knife she held. "How can you kill me when I can persuade you to do anything?"
The edges of Lily's lips twitched as she restrained a smile. "You must undermine my ability to discredit such foolish ideologies."
The Queen paused her movements, thrown off at the fact that the girl could speak so eloquently and courageously. She certainly needed to learn her place, but the Queen had to admit it was refreshing to come across a human who was educated and fueled by wit. "You classify my power of persuasion as a mere ideology?" Her voice was laced with both amusement and threat, and she shifted her eyes down to the knife she resumed cleaning.
"Lily," Jasmine whispered in a dry voice, causing Lily to immediately turn her attention to her. She could not speak anymore, from both fear and weakness, so she shook her head to signify that Lily should not press any buttons. They were not at camp anymore; she could not just say whatever she wanted to say.
"Look at me," the Queen sharply spoke, causing Lily's head to immediately snap towards her.
Lily became a bit worried at how she had looked at her as soon as she told her to without question, but she decided it was only because she was the most powerful predator in the room so she naturally felt a little on-guard around her. What worried her more was the fact that she wanted to prove her resistance by looking away, but she simply couldn't. There was something in her flaming green eyes that held her prisoner, that made it impossible for her to look at anything else in the room besides her. Her stare was held captive for a few moments, and the more seconds that passed by, the more the room around her seemed to blur.
"Pick up the apple."
Lily's eyes seemed to draw themselves to the dark red apple sitting on top of the fruit basket in front of her. She did not obey immediately, but something in her bloodstream was tingling. The more she looked at the waxy apple and the way it shined in the light, the more her right hand began to buzz. The buzzing sensation grew stronger and stronger, until finally she couldn't stand it anymore and slapped her hand right onto the apple, immediately feeling relief as she took the fruit from its basket.
"Good girl," the Queen hummed, a wicked grin spreading across her deep pink lips which caused Lily's face to burn. "Now, take a bite," she drew her words out slowly, as if giving careful instructions.
Lily shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut so that maybe not looking at her would keep her from being persuaded. But the Queen's words lingered in her ears and bounced off the walls of her skull, repeating over and over and growing louder each time. Her teeth began to buzz in urge to take a bite of the apple, and it was like her entire body was beginning to grow warm from the buzz in her teeth. It was like she was being biologically drawn into following the command, and the blood in her veins began to grow hot. She clenched her jaw as the heat began to turn into pain, and the words in her head began to turn into screams. The physical pressure gripping her body began to grow unbearable, so she let out a cry of pain before reaching her arm back and hurling the apple forward to be released of the command attached to it.
At the sound of the apple hitting something, Lily quickly opened her eyes to see that the Queen had used a single hand to catch the apple mid-flight right beside her head. The entire room was silent as Lily panted, leaning forward as her head felt warm and dizzy. She could feel the power of the persuasion slowly fading away from her veins, and she returned to a normal physical state of being. She was no longer being liquified into a subservient robot. She blushed as she realized that everyone in the room was either looking at her in shock or at the Queen in fear.
"Holden," the Queen said stiffly, slowly lowering the apple down and setting it on the table. She had never seen someone resist her persuasion before, and the anger and confusion it made her feel was too much to bear. She needed the girl who brought her both uncontrollable thirst and turbulent anger to leave the room immediately. "Take her to her quarters."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Holden said with a bow of his head before taking Lily's arm and pulling her from her seat firmly but not too firm. Lily stared at Jasmine in despair as Holden led her out of the room.