Vampires Don't Drink

2 Daphne's point of view

Dearly Beloved. We are gathered here today because my father finds it humorous to watch you make fools of yourself, for the sake of his royal affection — and mine. You invite yourselves to the castle, because you want your children to meet me. You want your children to love me, because marrying me brings you closer to my father. You want my father, because despite holding royal titles of your own, the Lancaster name holds power over all, all the Seven Families, all the Lords and Ladies, and all the world's tribes. You go to the throne room, to drink and be merry with my father, hoping to slip him all your big ideas should you get the chance. You disguise it as small talk; as if giving you reign of the Eastern region, is a party conversation. And we the children sit in the southern tea room of this gaudy castle, as it is your hope something will become of it. Little do you know, we only tolerate the Annual Tea, to determine which of you will make the best story at Christmas, this year. You may now kiss the bride.

"If it doesn't drag the floor, then it's going in the trash," Aldrich whispers in a pretend deep voice, an octave so low it could curl the Devil's brain, as his natural voice could already scrape the mulch garden grounds, mocking him. Our eyes fall to the edge of my gown.

Father makes me wear long ballgowns to the Annual Tea, as it is his fear that the boys who dare to look up my skirt in a mini dress, aren't strong enough to break my hands from around their throats. By the way the gold laced tule scrapes against my ankles in the gown he'd laid out for me this morning, anyone could tell he's still holding last Tea against me — as if he weren't the one who went on to put the detached head in our freezer, as a keepsake.

"Black is definitely your color, Princess Lancaster."

"Is that a race joke, Mr. Aldrich?" I ask, raising my brow. I laugh when he glares at me, and I lay my head on his shoulder, curling my smile against his body so the outsiders don't see. I'm notoriously stoic at these things. In the beginning, anyway, until there is Kamille.

"Blech!" she goes, and so does the tea from her mouth, almost most of it back into the cup she'd sipped from, while the rest splattered onto Princess Lilith, and into the lap of Lord Blake, and the tabletop.

"Americans," Kamille mutters, glaring her eyes at me with a smile, and I offer her the same.

Father sent me to school in England, when I'd turned nine. I'd already known Kamille from the parties, but we'd never done more than play the games strange children play, when forced into contact by their parents. We had our own rooms at the boarding school, but Kamille and I shared a bed every night, staying up until the first fell asleep, telling stories of people who never lived, and ghosts who roamed the halls. Kamille Everblake is the keeper of my heart, in a way that is different than Hannah. Kamille Everblake, is my best friend.

"Grandmother looks ravishing as always," Aldrich says, staring ahead at her picture.

The tea room is coated in gold trimmings, while the walls themselves are painted black, and the ceiling holds a black and gold, brassy chandelier, and the furniture is black with gold fleur-de-lis embellishments, and gold rope trimmings on the arms of the couches and the bottoms, and Aldrich and I slouch in our black and gold thrones sat side by side at the head of a glass table, where most of the Seven's kids sit, while the others wander about, and most importantly of all, the walls are coated in portraits of Elizabet Lancaster, and her offspring.

There are two ways to pass on the crown, when you are people like us. You either die, like Elizabet, and her daughter, more often wounds self inflicted or at least so we've assumed. Or you grow tired and give it away, like my father. . . Elizabet married her younger cousin because he was the only other one of us, she personally knew. Her daughter married a slave, who died, and woke to discover his bloodline — and drain his former master. My father married my mother, a common full-blood, born of freed slaves. No one's ever loved a half-blood before. Not a Lancaster, at least. It's because no one respects them. Especially not the Crown.