Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

77 - Chapter LXXVII: A Pair of Squealing Tires

Meanwhile.

For the second time in her thirty-four years, Hannah Marie Louise Cavendish felt as though she had...yet again...arrived. She was seated in the passenger seat of a silver Rolls Royce, a thick scarf around her wispy curls and a frigid wind cruising across her face.

Erling had insisted upon putting the top down. Everyone hated it. But he was gorgeous, so instead of saying anything, they all pretended it was magnificent, racing along the Scottish coastline in late November. In the back, Adelaide and Marigold kept laughing hysterically every time the automobile slid through mud. They probably meant it to be endearing, but there was a shrill edge to the sound.

Like a pair of squealing tires. Or in the words of her grandfather, too much adrenaline and no grip. That was the problem with being born into the upper-class. None of them knew what it meant to be hungry. Or hunted. They knew it in theory. Keep to the shadows, survive the war and all that. Their parents talking about all the sacrifices they'd made and the ever-present danger of bloods. But they'd grown up in the green zone. They rarely saw vampires, they revelled in immortality and laughed away their cares in being rich.

They might as well be human.

And yet here they were again. Hannah, Marigold and Adelaide once again entering society after being so cruelly ripped from its door. Really, they ought to have been matched, married and living in their own households by now. But their lives had changed. Sixteen years ago, caught out of line, foolishly thinking they could walk away unscathed from their encounter with the Elder. The ever-present tinkle of laughter that controlled their movements now. The masked lady behind the peacock feathers.

Not just any Elder.

Morrigan.

A lady whose face was rarely shown, thanks to the axe that cleaved it in two pieces. Or at least that was the tale everyone told. None of them had ever seen her face.

She conscripted them shortly after that dreadful party where they'd whispered behind the parlour palm. Three girls from good families. Loyal to a fault. Their whispers leaving them with a choice. Work for her at the Line Rumour or she'd start by sharing their insults with the Baroness and end by ruining their lives.

Only Marigold had been foolish enough to refuse, thereby causing her family's status to fall so hard, they were still cleaning cellars by the end of the Great War, as the humans were calling it. Eventually the poor dear had come round. Her family reinstated and the three of them eager now to please a woman who was old enough to have seen the death of Charles II.

And really...

...all Morrigan wanted were the whispers. The delicious rumours percolating around the most interesting match ever to grace the Line Rumour: Freyja and the lycan-master.

Like all long engagements, it started with the usual things. A desire to make amends as the new century dawned. The North offering half their soldiers in exchange for access to the Line, while the South congratulated themselves on the unity that would come from it. The push for more ties as Gottfrid brought his daughter south to strengthen his bloodline. The man eventually offering the coveted Northern Pass, thinking to tempt the lycan-master into his household with a promise of unhindered access.

Unfortunately, nothing came of it.

Seven...years...of nothing until as luck would have it, the war happened. Otherwise known as a "cacophony of circumstances," as described by her father, the esteemed Lord Cavendish, whose sole talent lay in his ability to comment on matters outside his purview. After all, he had trained as a barrister in the 1860s, therefore according to her mother, Lady Cavendish, he ought to know what he was talking about, whether he kept up with the times or not.