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Chapter 5—explanation

I sat in horror as the pretty name sunk into my head. Melody must be Nympori’s lover. Why else would he descend down here after I rejected him? He must be fighting with her. I was just a joke. I wanted to throw up as what I knew all along became a fact, and I hated myself for even beginning to hope that maybe I wasn’t as normal and drab as I thought I was. Then the fear sank in and I bit my lip, sliding away from the resting place of the unknown beauty that would more than likely desire my blood and show me no mercy if and when she stole it from me. The crypt became more and more real as my eyes adjusted to the failing light and I swallowed the lump in my throat. There were chains hanging and clanking from the ceiling that I couldn’t see, and water dripping softly from the stalagmite above me and each of the sounds echoed off the walls to create an eerie, haunting aria that only a crypt this size could produce. I stood up shakily and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself and think of a way to get out of this creepy and possibly deadly place. An icy touch slid down my bare arm and I screamed, adding to the echoing aria of the tomb.
“I’m sorry, Alice, I didn’t expect you down here.” Nympori’s warm voice was in my ear, his lips just above the hollow behind it. I jumped back and found that I couldn’t look him in the eye. My lips quivered and the blush burned my cheeks as I tried to explain what I was doing, besides invading on his tryst.
“I-I was just mad at you, and I said…I said I wasn’t done talking to you. That was rude how you just left…b-but I…I didn’t mean to…um…I’ll leave you and…and Melody alone.” I ducked my face and tried to jolt past him, but he caught me in his arms and held me fast.
“Alice, you weren’t interrupting anything. I was just telling her about you.” His voice was light and easy, like it wasn’t offensive in the least that I had just intruded a tomb. I pulled and yanked myself from his chest, but he held me fast.
“I don’t want to say hello. This…this was an accident! I thought…well…just…just let me go!” I fought as hard as I could, knowing that it was entirely futile. I’d have to meet his lover and face the fact that I was just not enough for him, and that I was more than likely just a plaything to him. A toy.
“Alice, please! She can’t say hello back…Alice, this is our queen.” He whispered, extending an arm out to the coffin. He pulled me by the waist—and I was shivering now in the satin nightgown—closer to the female vampire. He opened the tomb and I gasped, hiding my face into his marble chest. There was no icy flesh on her bones, but dark hair still billowed around her bones from her scalp. Her fangs were bleached and white in her grinning skull, and her bony fingers clasped something pearly white to her decayed breast. She had a long body—she must have been tall and nearly obscene in her beauty. I found myself jealous of this skeleton. But I looked away from her not in jealousy, but in fear that somehow she’d draw life from me. I hid my face in Nympori’s chest, my body safe in the shelter of his arms. The fragrance that came from him was so intoxicating that I thought I’d fall to my knees, so I tried to lean my face away from his body. He looked down and noticed that I refused to look at her and he sighed.
“So if you weren’t curious, why are you here?” he murmured, looking again to the skeletal remains of his queen. My mind flickered again to my mental accusation that she was his lover, hut I bit my tongue and shook my head.
“I told you, I was just gonna yell at you some more. Let me go and I’ll leave you two alone.” I pulled again, but he held me closer. I could feel him all around me now, and I was shivering from the cold. His large hands were on the small of my back, and one of them was slowly finding its way up my spine. He lowered his lips to my forehead and whispered to me, his voice burning with his own curiosity.
“Why do you want to leave so badly? Does this frighten you?”
“Of course it frightens me…” I whispered back, my hands against his chest. I could see my fingers shaking. I always thought I was pale, but I looked a gorgeous, healthy color in comparison to his alabaster flesh. He tilted his head to the side and his inky hair fell in his eyes as he tried to analyze my reaction. He frowned and his dark brows pulled together in frustration at whatever he saw on my frozen face. I noticed that he sucked in his lip and now one venom coated fang protruded from his sweet lips…
“She was never my lover, Alice.” He muttered, letting his arms drop to his sides and stepping away from me, his face twisted with disgust. I frantically tried to hide what he must have seen on my face, and I started to blush a violent red—I could feel the heat in my ears.
“I never said she was! I just figure that a vampire and his queen…or…what she is now…should talk privately without an outsider hanging around.” I babbled furiously, trying desperately to hide my pleasure from his denial. I tried again to pass him, but he again yanked me close.
“You could just say ‘Don’t go yet.’ And I’d probably listen to you.” I grumbled at him. He chuckled and stroked my hair with a shaky hand. He was trembling. I couldn’t imagine why, but I kind of hoped that it was something I said. I liked when he reacted to me.
“I just…I don’t want you to be jealous of something that never was. Or maybe I keep hoping that you will be.” He laughed nervously, keeping me close. My voice was muffled by his ancient vest as he pulled my ear close to his silenced heart. It tasted slightly of dust when I opened my mouth.
“I told you it’s not like that. It’s not that I like you, Travista. I was just coming to yell at you, really.”
“I keep hoping that you’ll change your mind…tell me that you love me…but it’s not going to happen, is it?” he wasn’t listening to me at all. He was looking wistfully into space, his features pulled into a look of intense desire. Something in the back of my mind told me that I should leap on this opportunity to make him mine, but I quickly silenced her and convinced myself that I was only attracted to his face. The rest of him, apparently the part that was supposed to matter, frightened and annoyed the hell out of me.
“No, Travista. I’m not going to love you. And I’d really appreciate if you let me go…I’m really cold and we’re late for school.” I insisted firmly. He let his hands drop again and he ran his fingers though his hair sadly. He wouldn’t look at me anymore. He just stared at Melody’s corpse, quiet and thoughtful and sighed heavily.
“Just follow the walls.” He murmured quietly, standing perfectly still. “I’ll be later than you—I want to talk to Lady Melody.” I turned on my heels and fled out of the dank tomb, letting my feet do all the thinking again, only this time they fled to safety, to home, to anywhere but here.
I tumbled out the door into the bright white room and covered my face with my hands at the pain of the sudden brightness. I almost wanted to crawl back into the darkness. Certa was waiting for me on the bed, her gown flowing and her bodice tight around her delicate frame, sitting as if she was untouched by time and was simply waiting centuries for me to find my way out of the crypt. I didn’t realize that I was panting until I began to speak.
“Y-your queen…! Why…why is she….?”
“She fell in love with a human boy. She changed him to keep him, but he denied her his love. His family found them and tried to kill them both…but the Queen Melody sacrificed herself to save him. She hoped he would love her in her dying moments…but it was for naught. He left her.” Certa recited it like it was from a story book, sad and serious, and ended it with a deeply felt sigh. I felt a pang of guilt as I remembered my initial hatred for her.
“How did they…?” I whispered.
“Silver stake to the heart. The only other way to kill a vampire besides burning them.” She stated simply, shrugging. I fell to the floor, feeling dizzy from the sudden change my day had taken. I had started my day being flirted and cuddled with by a ridiculously beautiful male vampire, to stumbling upon an ancient crypt in his basement, to finding out that this vampire queen was murdered for her love. Now the only thing I needed…
“Why is her body down there?” I asked, wiping the silly tears from my cheeks. The memory of her fleshless skull was still haunting me.
“Nympori felt that it was best, seeing as she died for him…I guess he felt obligated to honor her body.” Certa stood up and briskly picked me up off of the floor. I didn’t feel her marble arms support me at all as I let that sink into my skull. She was in love with him. He was changed into what he is—beautiful, strong, and immortal—all because she wanted him. It was totally unfair. If he didn’t love her after her ultimate sacrifice, then he really was just playing with my head. All that talk of wanting me to love him was nonsense. He wanted me to love him so he could manipulate me to do something…and still, I was stumped in what exactly that was. It wasn’t possible that I was royalty…for starters, I was only human. I mean, what else am I supposed to do? Certa laid me down on the bed and pressed two long fingers to my temple.
“Goodness me, you’re sick! Nympori is such an idiot sometimes, leaving the window open. I’ll have to scold him for that.” She fretted, but I was still lost in Melody’s story. He left her to die. What did that say for me? Well, I was going to die under his eyes too. I was different than Melody for certain—but to him we were just the same. Useless. And, as I was pulling the sheets back around my body, I began to wonder why he kept sparing me in the first place. Why he begged me not to die. Perhaps he regretted watching her die. Maybe he did love her. I was lost in my confusing thoughts, so I closed my eyes and hoped that my brain would stop bombarding me with these conflicting theories about someone I didn’t even like. He was just pretty. I shouldn’t fret over someone who’s just…

I awoke with a start, my heart yammering on in its surprised beat. My hand was to my chest as I looked around for what had woken me up. I was no longer in that vibrantly white room. Instead, the walls were a bloody crimson and everything was decorated in soft velvet or dark silks. I was still in that pretty nightgown and as I wiped the sleep from my eyes, I tried not to panic about exactly where this fantastically gothic room was. I inhaled deeply and was startled to discover that the entire room had the sweet smell that normally came off of the skin of both vampires I’d met, but this smell was more familiar than Certa’s…I deducted that I must have been put into Nympori’s room. The now constant blush on my cheek bones came back again, and I worked my tangled legs to get off of his bed. But I was held fast to the soft mattress by a thick, white bar. I looked down and moved away the silky red sheets with a shaky hand and found myself stroking the soft cheek of the raven-haired vampire I’d just spent a good few hours dreaming about. He was deep in sleep, not even a breath disturbed his perfect slumber, and I was again floored by how his long lashes gently brushed his white cheeks, how his smooth lips puckered as he dreamed and his brow slid down into an expression of thoughtfulness. He was gorgeous. I didn’t even want to leave his bed now, and I slid closer in his arms. Using me or not, for now he was mine and I was his. It didn’t even matter to me that he had a hideous past with a vampire queen; it was here and now, and all that mattered was this second that I was laying in his cool arms. And for this brief moment, I finally belonged and was happy. I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against his chest and allowed his scent to induce another sweet dream.