The Queen of the Night

Chapter 20

When we arrived back at the mansion Matthew had stopped crying and wouldn't let go of my upper arm until he escorted me to my room. He left me at the door, only muttering a command for me to say there and that Jillian would be in soon before he turned and left for the stairs. Jillian had just come up from the stairs by the time he was starting to go down. He stopped her to whisper something in her ear briefly before disappearing down the stairs.

Jillian's face brightened when she saw me, and she half ran to me, trying to act somewhat professional. "What happened?" She half whispered as she pushed me through the door with her.

"Things got a little out of hand. I just wanted to know more about Ky and Draco was close enough to him. We were attacked by some people and...and I passed out." I threw myself down on the bed and sighed. "I messed up again, didn't I?"

"Matthew will feel better soon. He was so worried and when we got the call he rushed over there. From what I got out in the hall Eden is wanting to plan marriage."

"Yeah, who does that in America now, anyway? Or even in Mexico, nobody arranges weddings anymore."

"Well now that's not completely true, there are some countries that still practice it." Jillian mindlessly folded laundry that sat in a laundry basket at the end of the bed. "Plus, there are many secret religions and societies even in North America where they arrange weddings. Eden is one of these families. Matthew grew up in an era where arranged marriages happened all the time. Even his marriage was arranged, but he was never really happy with her. I think this kind of experience made him decide that arranged marriages were an outdated thought. However, Eden is too conservative in this sense. He sees it as a political move, something to bind the families together. It would be good for both species, however...like everything else there are things that could go wrong with it. Vampires used to marry under the state and when they got tired of each other one would fake death, which isn't hard. Both parties got a new name and went off their separate ways."

I frowned. "They were never married in the first place..." I told her.

"Why do you say that? They had a certificate. That's all the states need."

"To love and to hold in sickness and in health till death do you part and vampires are already dead. In a way we cannot ever be married."

"That's a dark way to look at things. Anyways, you cannot do that with dragons and they take centuries to die of natural causes. Eden himself is about Matthew's age, if not a century or two younger." Jillian sighed, and she looked far away. "You shouldn't have done that, Amelia. You scared everybody."

"I'm sorry...I really am. I thought I'd be gone for a little while not two days." I watched her reaction. Her whole face seemed to scrunch up starting with her forehead, but her nose came up a bit more than everything else. I laughed, "You know when you scrunch up your nose like that you look like a pug."

She scrunched up her nose more and she hit me. "I do not!"

"Yes, you do. You look like this," I pushed up the tip of my nose.

"You're an idiot!" She was laughing, and she hit me again.

I laughed. "Okay no...you look like a crow."

"Yeah well you look like the guy from Phantom of the Opera." She laughed.

I pushed her playfully and laughed with her. "Yeah, I kind of do." I sat up as she handed me a sleeping gown. "I am sorry, Jillian, for making everyone worry. I was supposed to come right back...and I know I shouldn't have done it."

Jillian put a hand on my shoulder with a smile that my mother never gave me after Ky's disappearance. "We know, dear. You are a teenager, after all, so this type of rebellion is only natural. I remember hearing stories of Matthew's own little adventures like that. He's the reason Dracula came out as a book, you know." She chuckled. "Or so the story goes."