Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

81 - Chapter LXXXI: The Eve of Speculation

Two weeks later.

The stress was getting to everyone. As a consequence, though Reinette was meant to be attending the third walk of the now infamous quadrille, she'd instead asked Rena to go in her stead...and then after fifteen minutes of searching unsuccessfully for cigarettes in her quarters, she'd managed to scrounge two off the cook, after which she'd gone behind the stables for a very quick smoke.

And at some point, though Lucian was meant to be working in his study, he'd inexplicably appeared behind the same section of the stables, literally in the act of unscrewing his hip flask. Clearly heading out to his forge to spend his evening with said flask after he'd just professed to them all during the previous week that he would have to bow out from further walks as he was too busy to be doing anything but working on Line missives.

Their mutual appearance warranting further questions, but as usual, receiving none given that they were both up to no good, therefore no good would come of acknowledging the deception...

...so he joined her.

And though neither of them was meant to be there, they were both now sitting on the back-step, hidden from the house but still giving enough of a view that they'd see the first walkers over the hillock. The previous walks having already given her a good sense of how precisely the evening's activity would go, enough that she could confidently wager on Rena making it back before the others.

Freyja usually front of the pack, but likely going at a slower pace for the sake of her ladies-in-waiting...who were waiting on Erling...who was by now at the bottom of the hillock, regaling everyone with a tale of one of his many deeds on the Northern front. All of which Erling had told them during the previous two weeks.

Like a dance, that first dinner of the quadrille proceeding exactly as they'd expected. The boy showcasing his manners for the first twenty minutes and then rapidly changing his tune when it became apparent that no one, let alone his dinner partner, was charmed. As though youth could make her forget the three years she spent staring at a dying fire, while this boy—a drunken lout—pointed at her through the bars. Always surrounded by his friends. The kind of creature who'd grown bored of watching the wind.

That had been the first course. The second had involved his sister occasionally trying to redirect his attentions whenever he veered too close to insolence, Sabine picking unenthusiastically at her cocktail...and Lucian simply watching the entire debacle from across the table, looking like a man whose meal had gone sour. Half of the conversation drowned out by a cellist who seemed confused by her earplugs and blindfold, yet by the volume, determined to earn every penny of whatever fortune they'd paid her. None of them truly listening until the evening reached its inevitable conclusion...

...dessert.

Otherwise known as an onslaught of questions. The boy directing his conversation to Lucian, but his words protected by diplomatic immunity and therefore designed to be disconcerting. Could she fight back if a lycan attacked her... Was she allowed to hold a gun... How did the visions work... If a drop of his blood fell in her glass, what would happen... His knowledge of her file finally settling on that part of her lineage, her Sámi mother who could almost be forgotten, if he'd not ventured towards the topic like a goat running off a cliff. Illuminating them all with his interest in eugenics. Going so far as to ask his host if he had the measurements for her cranium.

The slight a step too far, Lucian immediately glancing at Freyja, who swiftly cut in with a sharp rebuke for her brother, though the damage was already done. The rest of the night passing in silence, while her memories closed in on themselves. Guarding her emotions before she could think too long on why the circumference of her skull mattered to this boy. For years, recalling the looks she'd been getting from the lycans of Gottfrid's den. The side glances. The curious whispers of 'what is her background again...'