Chapter 1
Green, snake-like vines weaved along the walls of the alabaster-colored mansion that stood before me in the near distance. The dark, foreboding silhouettes of the Weeping Willow trees crawled along the foreign mansion’s walls in the shallow moonlight like black panthers slowly stalking their prey in the night. The stars could hardly be seen behind the massive, white clouds that coated the midnight sky. The lack of moonlight on the mansion caused an aura of mystery to blanket over the property.
A cemented, gray pathway led to a set of small stairs, followed by an arched doorway. Golden rays of light illuminated from a few arched windows, exposing what appeared to be some kind of on-going formal ball on the interior. Several men in formal black-and-white tuxedos and women in ball-gowns of various colors and sizes walked past me toward the entrance of the mansion. A couple of the women gave me a curious glance as they passed.
Do I look funny? Is there something on my face?
Raking over my body with my eyes, a skirt the color of dark crimson layered with an intricate pattern of black lace flowed down the length of my legs, only to stop at my ankles. A black corset was fitted tightly against my chest, taking all the breath away from my lungs.
No wonder women stopped wearing these things!
A diamond-shaped, blood-red amulet was on a thin chain around my neck, and black high heels were on my feet.
Ahead of me, females nodded their heads in respect to the usher who stood beside the mansion’s doorway.
I didn’t know what I was doing or why I was here, but I decided to head inside, entirely curious. I strolled down the concrete pathway beside other males and females, holding the hem of my skirt with my hands while I climbed the set of small stairs. Bowing my head to the usher like the other guests, the other men and women headed into a grand ballroom adjoining the hall we entered.
From my swift view of the hall, the cream-colored walls of the mansion were pedestrian. A large, creamed-colored spiral-staircase with black railings stood to my right, leading into the upper levels of the house. Black-and-white marble tiles spotted the floor of the hall as well as the ballroom.
I walked through the entrance adjoining the hall to the ballroom to see some men and women waltzing together, while others stood and conversed near the walls. A quiet gasp escaped my lips when my eyes landed on two vibrant crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling above. The melody for the Viennese Waltz filled my ears from a live orchestra in a balcony overhead.
This place seems very...regal.
The people in fancy ball-gowns and tuxedos along with other luxuries in this mansion was not something I got to see everyday. My family wasn’t poor, but we weren’t rich either. I could only dream of actually being invited to a ball like this. So being in a room like the one I was in, I became awe-struck at the sight.
A bar had been set up in one corner with tall, black bar stools placed around a curved, obsidian counter. For some reason, the lighting around the bar was duller than the rest of the ballroom. Meanwhile, a young male waiter passed out drinks to a few men who sat across the countertop from him.
An unearthly beautiful young man, who stood in a corner near the bar, seemed to catch my eye. An unnerving feeling in the pit of my stomach told me he was up to something with the mysterious woman near his side.
My heart was a drum that didn’t beat to its normal rhythm, hammering in a fast-paced tempo. Sinful waves of thick, voluminous dark-chocolate hair covered the man’s head, while the man’s flawless pale skin glowed with a youthful aura. Like other men, he also wore a black-and-white tuxedo, which gave him a dapper look to his appearance.
Meanwhile, the woman with him appeared to be in her early-forties and had a mystical aura about her. I couldn’t place exactly what it was about her, but something about her was definitely...magical.
A black corset was pulled very tightly against her chest, so tight that it was as if the contents of her chest would spill out at any given moment. A silver-sequined, black, ball-gown skirt traveled down the length of her legs, only to stop millimeters from the floor. From the deep frown on her face, she was quite displeased about something.
A boulder of envy rolled across my heart. What if they were here, together?
Well, you never know...she could be his sister or something!
Curious to know whether or not they were together, I was about to walk over and join them when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I flinched at the sudden gesture.
“Hello, Miss. My apologies if I have startled you,” a smooth, masculine voice said. I turned to face a man I estimated to be in his ongoing forties. A gray business suit complemented the white undershirt he was wearing. He was the first man I’d seen who decided not to go with the popular black-and-white tuxedo theme all the other men seemed to follow.
I offered him a small smile. “Hello. It’s alright.”
“Allow me to introduce myself, I am Sir Alexander Drakis.” A friendly smile spread across the length of his face. “May I have this dance, my dear?”
His right hand was outstretched toward me in expectance.
I nodded my consent, and reached my hand toward him. But as soon as our hands touched, I snatched my hand back at the unexpected iciness of his skin. My eyebrows furrowed together in confusion.
His hand is so freaking cold! How is it even humanly possible for a person’s hand to be this cold?
“Why is your hand so cold?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
His eyebrows knitted together in confusion, and he shook his head. “Pardon me, but what is your name?”
Was I not supposed to ask something like that?
“Daniella Brochette.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Brochette.”
His cordial brown eyes gazed straight into my icy-blue ones. A thin, yellow orb surrounded the circle of black abyss that was his pupil.
I’m pretty sure humans don’t have yellow rings around their pupils...
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Sir Drakis.”
Both men and women settled into the proper ballroom starting position with their partners before the next melody began to play.
When Sir Drakis’ hand grabbed mine, the arctic feel of his fingers left an aching numbness against my skin as he brought me over to the middle of the ballroom floor.
Sir Drakis’ free hand moved to my lower back. Even with the protection of my corset between his hand and my bare skin, a layer of frigidness still seeped through against my flesh.
Ignore the coldness. Ignore the coldness.
My free hand was placed on his shoulder before the music began.
“I’m estimating that you are foreign to our world,” Sir Drakis said as we completed one square formation within the waltz.
My eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “Our world?”
“Yes, the world of Valona.”
“Valona? I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“Yes. Tell me, child, did your parents bring you here?”
“Uh, no? What is Valona, anyways?”
“Valona is where we vampires reside, away from the human realm.”
My eyes widened in shock and confusion.
V-vampires? Is he kidding me? Vampires aren’t real! I must be in a dream. Is that why he’s so cold? Because he’s a vampire?
My eyes widened even more when the realization came to me that a vampire stood before me, and I was acting as if it were nothing out of the normal.
What is wrong with me?
Then again, this is a dream after all...
While Sir Drakis spoke about all kinds of topics, of which I had no interest in, my main attention was kept on the inhumanly attractive man and the stunning woman. It was at one point while I was waltzing around with Sir Drakis that I caught the young man’s attention.
For a split second, just a split second, our eyes locked before he returned his gaze to the woman he was speaking to. A flurry of birds swirled in the pit of my stomach as Sir Drakis and I spun around, leaving my back to the young man.
“I take it my son has caught your eye,” Sir Drakis said. My eyes darted back to him at the sudden statement.
“He’s your son? I’m not−” A flood of blood and heat rushed into my cheeks, beyond embarrassed that his father had caught me staring.
“Do not lie to me. It is quite clear that you were admiring him.”
My eyes widened. Wait, does that mean his son is a vampire...too?
As he spoke, an unfathomable feeling arose within my heart. As if I was supposed to know his son, or needed to know him, for some unknown reason.
“Alright, fine...It’s just something about him makes me feel drawn to him. There’s something about him that I can’t quite put my finger on,” I said. “Is that woman with him?”
I knew I shouldn’t be envious; he wasn’t even mine in the first place. But for some reason, I was feeling a pinch of envy.
Sir Drakis shifted his gaze over toward his son, then at me, and an expression of surprise crossed his face. “I see, and she is not.”
Why did he seem so surprised? Was it something I said?
My gaze tore back to his son, curious as to what brought on Sir Drakis’ sudden change in expression. Did he realize something that he wasn’t planning on telling me? His eyes gazed into mine for a moment, before looking back at his son again.
“What?” I asked. Why did his gaze keep bouncing back and forth between his son and I?
The spot his son and the beautiful woman once occupied, was now just a vacant space. The mysterious couple had gone off somewhere.
“I’m sorry, but I must go,” I said to Sir Drakis.
In my fog of confusion, I had the compulsion to follow his son and that woman, to find out what they were up to; and maybe, they knew why I was here; maybe that’s why I noticed them before I noticed anyone else.
Before anything else could be said, I ran out of the ballroom and into the adjoining hallway, to see them just turn at the corner. Sir Drakis appeared from the crowd of people in the ballroom, and gently grabbed my arm.
“Do not tread any further.”
“Why not?”
“You should not be eavesdropping. Have you not learned any manners?”
Disregarding his advice, I ripped my arm from his grasp and ran further down the hall. I turned my head to the side to see no one behind me. Sir Drakis must have gone back to the ball.
The hallways were caramel-colored and pedestrian, with nothing to decorate the walls. When I reached a third hallway, that’s when I heard their voices. I knew it was them because most everyone else was in the ballroom, either dancing or chatting.
Mahogany doors stood on both sides of the corridor. As I tiptoed down the hallway, carefully, I pushed the door open a crack into a room where I anticipated the quarreling had come from, to see the man and woman quarreling in the middle of the room. The walls of the room were white and bare while the floors were black, but that was all I could see without jarring the door open further. My heart battered heavily against my chest.
I heard the woman say, “Tell me the location of the girl, or I’ll find her myself.”
“What do you want with her?”
“That is only for me to know.”
“I don’t know of your schemes, so I have no reason to tell you.”
“Tell me, or I’ll tell the rest of them what the two of you have done.” Her finger pointed toward my direction. The two of them? I wondered who she meant by the other person. Did she mean Sir Drakis?
“And, what exactly did I do?” The woman didn’t say anything. “See? I have done nothing wrong. You cannot accuse me if I have done nothing wrong.”
The woman extended her index finger toward the man. “I know you are hiding Daniel’s relationship with some human.” She spat the word as if disgusted.
Daniel? Was he the other person she was speaking about when she said the two of them?
“And, what evidence do you have to show for your accusation?”
“None so far.” Her eyes glued themselves to the floor as if she was ashamed.
“Exactly, you have no proof that we are hiding anything.”
“When I find my evidence, he and his precious human will be overthrown!”
“I told you that we are not hiding any human.”
“When I find her, I’ll destroy her.”
“I’ve had enough! Guards!” the man yelled. I stepped backwards while several guards rushed past me into the room.
“I will find my evidence soon enough. You will see!”
The woman was escorted out of the room and down the hallway with four guards, two on each side of her arms. Sir Drakis’ son came out of the room and looked over in my direction, then strode over to me. I wondered if the woman noticed me when she was escorted out. Fear gripped my chest, seeing as how I didn’t know what to say or do, or if I should explain why I was even there.
As he came up to me, my eyes locked with his brown ones. Heat and blood rushed into my cheeks, and I bet I was blushing really hard right now. I had never been this close to a man so attractive in my life before. I had never been this close to a man who wasn’t related to me, actually. My eyes ran down the length of his body, and I couldn’t help, but check him out. My eyes interlocked with his for a second time, and my blush deepened when a knowing smirk formed on his lips.
His brown eyes had a mystifying endlessness to them as if his soul went on forever beyond those eyes of his. I couldn’t seem to pull my eyes away from his. His eyes were also unusual. A golden ring surrounded each of his pupils, as if the sun were shining behind the moon during an eclipse.
“Hello.” A sensual smile crossed the man’s lips. My heart rate jumped just at that gesture.
“H-Hello.”
Melting inside, I couldn’t help, but crack a thin smile.
“What is your name, dear?”
“D-D-Dan-Daniella.”
“Would you like to have a dance, Daniella?” he asked, extending his hand as he waited for me to take it. Hearing my name come from his lips, it made my heart go wild, like an animal being released from its cage.
“Y-Yes.”
I placed my hand in his; my heart filled with air like a hot air balloon being blown up. Feeling his hand, his hand was incredibly cold, like his father’s. Having touched his freezing hand, as a normal reaction, I pulled my hand away. Why are their hands so cold?
“Is something the matter?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t want to annoy him about why his hand was so cold.
When we were back inside the ballroom, he pulled me so close that my face was a few inches from his face, and placed his right hand in my left and his left on my upper back. I shivered slightly from his freezing hand on my back. His breath brushed against my skin every time he exhaled, caressing my skin like a soft feather. We danced together for some time before he spoke again.
“Do you mind walking with me down to a more private place?”
“O-Of course not,” I said. I wondered what we were going to do.
His fingers interlocked with my own. We traveled down more caramel-colored corridors into what I assumed to be his bedroom. I scanned around me to see a black dresser to my left, standing hopelessly alone without a nice bed to complement it; an adjoining door that led to a bathroom on the right side of the wall; a desk across from me between two arched windows that were to my right and left; and a closet in the upper left corner. The walls were plain white, and the floor seemed to be made of porcelain.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“I think you know what,” he said. “We have some matters to discuss.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” My eyebrows knitted together since I had never met him before.
“Don’t pass me off as a fool.”
“I’m not.”
“I see you have the necklace with you.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why have you come, Veronica? Have you come to bargain the necklace?”
I frowned. Why did he just call me by my mother’s name?
