Of Dragons & Vampires

Chapter One

Hey guys! I've been out of the writing game for literal YEARS, so this is just a warm up. I really hope you like it, I'm open for feedback and criticism! Enjoy ;) x

EVANDER:

"Two days and counting."

Evander brushed his fingers across the red cross, marking the 27th of April on his calendar. His eighteenth birthday. 

He shared a birthday with another boy in his class, Ryan Mellark, was it? Evander could barely remember the boy's name. He tried not to mix with mortals, his father's obnoxious warning always crawling like a spider of dread at the back of his neck. A lion doesn't mix with the lambs, he devours them. 

Well, the lambs appeared to have a better time than the lions. He could picture Ryan drinking tonight, beer sloshing over his shirt as he bounced to whatever music one of London's clubs blasted out on a Saturday night, people dancing around him to celebrate his birthday.

Evander sighed, throwing himself back onto his bed and gazing at the canopy, his fingers toying with the amber threads. He wouldn't be tasting the bitterness of beer nor dancing to music, he'd be dragged into central London in a suit and tie and have his palm slashed, all in the name of match matching.

Yeah, tradition sucked. 

"It won't be so bad, you might end up with someone you like? Hm? Like Lord Ebben." Evander pouted as his oldest friend and fellow vampire, Charvi, lay next to him on her stomach, brushing his strands of light brown hair from his face. 

Her dark fingers drummed against his temple, her brown eyes swimming in pity. She knew. Evander never had the best of luck and the weight of his family's name weighed heavily on his shoulders. He had a lot to live up to, his family were all but royalty in their world, in the world of the dead and the obnoxiously longed lived. If a match were made it would have to be to one of power, of advantage. No matter how miserable his match would make him. 

Except Ebben. Ugh. Ebben. Now that's a vampire lord he wouldn't mind marrying.

"Easy for you to say Charvi, you pulled a lucky straw."

Evander remembered Charvi's ceremony like it was yesterday. The traditions of Indian vampires were a little different to the English. Charvi was promised to another when she turned sixteen. He remembered watching in the Great Hall in New Delhi's vampire bureaucracy, it being filled to the brim with vampiric Lords, Ladies, Dukes and Duchesses hailing from around the globe. Charvi hadn't been the only vampire coming of age, many had gathered. He remembered watching her wince as the High Lord of her city drew a knife across her palm, allowing the dark scarlet droplets of blood to drip onto the papyrus paper spread across the table. They formed the word of her match as dictated by the Gods: Ashwin Sethi.

Charvi was lucky, another high-status match with a gorgeous vampire and they had been joined at the hip ever since. The house of Sethi and Ramakrishnan would be joined by marriage for the first time in five centuries, and Evander was lucky enough to be best man. If only he could be so lucky.

"You still might!" Charvi nudged him playfully, extracting a snort from his throat. "Look at your brother and sister, they matched well!"

Brothers. Evander silently corrected her. He, much to his annoyance, was the youngest of four. Pericles, Damien and Danae. Pericles had married well, if not the best. A Duchess from Athens, Selena. Although Evander would bet his right arm and little toe that they didn't love each other, especially since his elder brother was a whore and would fuck anything that moved. Although that wasn't the biggest scandal in Britain this century. His other brother, Damien, had ran away the night before his coming of age ceremony, with a little help from Evander (but no one needed to know that). Damien had remained off the raider for months before returning with his 'inferior' in tow: a witch he had fell in love with, Savannah. Evander saw no problem with it, but his father had been incensed: not only did he marry a mortal with no family name, a witch at that, he had married his inferior.