The Essential Bride

The Essential Bride (21)

It's been a few weeks since I've been here. It sounds terrible explaining it like that, but honestly the days are so similar they blend in to each other. There was nothing to distinguish them, I would get up in the sun and go to the kitchen for breakfast. For the first two weeks I was too scared to travel around this house, but it dissipated with my overwhelming boredom. I'd explore for awhile, but I found the TV room that has both Netflix and Hulu and settled. Then I'd wander back to the kitchen, each lunch, go back to the TV room, eat dinner and go to bed.

I definitely want to rip my own skin off with frustration, but there was nothing I could do. This was my life now.

Today was no different, I was watching the third season of Friends, when I decided to go grab the fruit bowl that was always sat full and pristine on the breakfast kitchen table. This whole place was decorated plain but modern. All the walls were either a soft white or gray, all the furniture was white. The entire house was decorated with white flowers, and cleaned immaculately. I would leave my bedroom for seven hours, come back and it wouldn't even look like I had slept in it the night before. So far, the only time that I had noticed one of the helpers around the house it was the same small servant girl from before, she squealed in fear when I started washing my own dish a few weeks back.

"I really don't mind cleaning it." I explained, as she wordlessly tried wrestling it out of my hands. "Seriously." I said, jerking the plate away from her, sloshing us both with the dish water I had started. Her face turned white, her blue eyes silently bulging out of her face in fear. Immediately I dropped the plate, mortified that I hurt her. "Oh. God. Oh I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to make you wet. I'm sorry." I didn't think vampires were like the witches in Wizard of OZ but her face would definitely prove other wise. She had taken a big step back away from me, bowed and walked away without a word. Leon still refused to let them talk to me, just in case of something I didn't understand. I honestly thought he just wanted me to suffer.

Maybe he thought if the only person I could talk to was him that I would grow more attached to him or something?

I had a conversation with him that afternoon about the servants not being able to talk to me, how scared that girl looked and how sorry I felt. Leon had laughed.

"Why are you laughing? Did I not scare her?" I asked.

"No. You probably petrified her, for sure." He explained still laughing, making my heart hurt. Leon noticed, but didn't stop laughing. "Could you imagine Margaret or I washing our own dish? She was probably horrified you thought you could do it better than her, and then jerking away from her and YOU got wet? If you were Margaret she'd..." He had trailed off, not laughing anymore. I just looked at him. "Well. Let's just say that servant had a reason to be scared."

His words had made my blood run cold, but that was weeks ago and I was trying to grow accustomed to having someone pick up for me everywhere I went.

I went to push open the swinging door to enter the kitchen to snag some grapes when I heard talking coming from the servants. They didn't speak in front of me, didn't speak to me, so their voices were low and unfamiliar.

"When do you think he will tell her?" A womanly voice asked.

"Shh Loretta, these things don't concern you. Your nose is going to get us in trouble." A male voice explained, and she huffed.

"You know what she's going to be! This concerns us all. We're serving her! Can you believe it? How many hundreds of years waiting for him to find his mate, for this moment!" She seemed so excited, her excitement wore off on me instantly but made my insides churn. What was special about me? What caused this kind of excitement. "It's been so long with her here, and they don't even share a bed Wayne." She whispered, and I believe it was Wayne that nearly hissed at her.

"Loretta." He hissed.

"Oh Wayne," she didn't seem affected at all but I was my heart was racing as I stood outside the door, "oh!" She sounded startled, and I had the overwhelming feeling it was because of me. I entered after a moment of silence and they both were silent scrubbing the base boards, on their knees.

"I don't understand." I said slowly, making them scrub harder. "You guys aren't allowed to speak to me, but can you at least acknowledge me." The man, Wayne, abruptly stopped and jumped up to stand directly in front of me and nodded. "I'm something to you guys? I'm going to be something?" I asked, using their words against them. Wayne looked startled but said nothing. "No! If I'm going to be something to you, I'm important now." I took a deep breath, "and if that's true, you will listen to me now." I said, trying to force out as much authority in my voice as possible.

It took a minute but it was Loretta that spoke, she slowly got up "I'm sorry for speaking about it so freely." She said, looking sorry and scared.

"About what?" I asked, keeping the same time in my voice.

She looked confused, "your relationship with our Master. It was inappropriate of me." She explained evenly, her voice not wavering.

"Loretta." Wayne said, looking at her, warning her.

"Please." I said quickly. "I don't know anything. Leon will tell me nothing." They looked surprised I called him that. "He took me here, he took me and he won't tell me why." Tears started prickling at my eyes, I'd really on and off cried my entire month here.

Loretta looked sorry for me, but Wayne's face didn't change. "What if she runs Loretta?" He said with a stone cold voice. "She's harmless now, but she won't be forever, and they aren't now."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, taking a step closer to them, and they look a step away. "I won't run, I can't." I tried to explain but was cut off by a looming presence behind me. Judging by the looks and the hairs that stood up on the back of my neck, that had become a new sensation I experience when he gets close to me.

"Enough." Leon said, standing so close to me I could feel his breath tickle the hair behind my ear. "Demetria, you can't scare the help into discussing things with you." He tried to laugh, to make the situation lighter but the air still felt like it was full of mud with the amount of tension in the air. "Leave." He said to Loretta and Wayne and they bolted so fast I hardly saw them.

I turned to glare at Leon. "You're being terrible." I pointed out to him.

"I'm not the one being terrible, you're the one scaring the help. You're asking them to directly disobey Margaret, someone they've served faithfully served for hundreds of years." I cringed at his words, I hated that he had to remind me that I was the only human here.

"Faithfully?!" I demanded, "no. Out of fear. They fear you!" I threw my hands up, "they're already afraid of me too. That isn't right."

"Just because it's different than what you're used to doesn't make it wrong." He said gently and I rolled my eyes.

"Why won't you tell me what's going to happen to me?" I tried ignoring my fear, but I couldn't. I was scared. For a week I stayed up late at night thinking about what I'd do if Leon needed me for a sacrifice or something. What would I do?

Leon looked me directly in the eye, "I've told you. You do not need to be afraid, I won't let anything bad happen to you. You are safe here Demetria."

"And I've told you, we have differences in opinion. Trapping me here is bad to me." Leon squinted his eyes at me.

"But I know that isn't why you're afraid now. You're afraid because you think something drastic is happening, that's what the help are talking about."

"They won't tell me what's going to happen to me, just like you won't."

"They were told not to talk about it, period." Leon said, clearly looking annoyed.

"Don't yell at them, I was eavesdropping. It wasn't their fault. All she said to me was she was sorry for openly talking about our relationship." I explained, truly hoping they wouldn't get punished. They had looked so scared. "Please." I added for good measure.

Leon waited a moment. "Fine."

"Why won't you tell me?" I asked, having a feeling the conversation was coming to an end. Leon didn't stay near me for long.

He just looked at me. "I'm sorry."

***

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