Annalise Monroe has lived alone most of her life, travelling between foster homes since the age of six, and she is willing to do what it takes to keep it that way. When she moves to Forks after she is emancipated at the age of 17, she truly doesn't...
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There was a deep hole inside my chest when I laid down to sleep that night. No light was outside when it happened, and I'd been drenched in sweat and alone by the time it had happened. Polite guards kept the area quiet for me, but the lack of noise only helped create the loneliness that plagued me. The image of Athenodora's head was haunting after the shock wore off. Anger seeped from me and I ran out of the room. It was beyond embarrassing, running away as I had.
Infuriated as I was, by the time the sun set I knew my rest would be sub–par. Waking up every two to three hours, uncomfortably vivid dreams of the day before, and a frightening nightmare about events laid to rest disgusted me. Memories resurfacing and tainting the sections of the night that beckoned me into simple comfort. The fact that it was over wasn't enough to calm the internal racing of thought.
Waking up for the last time and finding out that I had an actual schedule taunting me from the desk made me want to scream and throw everything into the small trash can and give up. I would be running off empty and I'd be lucky if I got a single hour of rest seeing how the schedule was laid out. My morning was the least flexible I'd had since graduating from High School back in Forks. Guard, breakfast, a morning lesson run by my mates... I had a lot to do. Usually I'd be thrilled to meet up with new people, but after the events of the day prior I'd rather curl up in Marcus' room and refuse to leave.
Being down in the dumps isn't an unusual occurrence for someone like myself but over the past year I'd had fewer bad days than good, which had to account for something. Really, it had to, which was the only reason I'd pulled myself up by the bootstraps and gotten out of bed. The schedule may have felt daunting, but the idea of disappointing the Guard was worse than my mood, so I chose the lesser of two evils.
During the morning I'd spend time with the Main and Elite Guard, who would be introducing themselves with less formality. Despite meeting a few of the Guards and having them present at the Cullen trial and my first formal introduction, I knew nothing deep about any of them. Names, faces, and general way of presenting themselves beside. I couldn't even tell who were the Elite Guard versus the Main Guard. They all blended together so skillfully that I'd easily be forget every few minutes, even if they told me after each of their names.
Demetri and Felix were waiting outside my door early that morning, both with gleaming smiles on their faces. They both must have noticed my sour and grim mood, as they waited for me to start walking in front of them before asking questions.
"Did you not sleep well, my Queen?" Demetri questioned innocently. "Does Marcus not have a soft enough mattress for you? He has not checked in on it for over a year, I'm afraid."
"The bed was fine," I denied quickly, speeding up my pace. Both of the Guards made haste with me. "My problems are my own mind's fault."
My answer seemed to keep them quiet. I didn't want to talk about the problems I'd been having last night. Frankly, I didn't like making myself vulnerable to much of anyone. People betray each other. Vampires can ruin your trust in others as well, clearly. I'd made the wrong choice in friends and allies before and I wasn't ready to get burned or over share with the vampires around me, even if they were meant to be my guards.
Too much of myself had been brought to light, by my own fault, the day prior. The reminder swirled around in my head as my cheeks burned with embarrassed blush. Two times I'd been left that way, terribly emotionally exposed in ways I didn't want to be. Whoever were in the room with me during the Cullen trial had seen people who were my friends turn on me like it was nothing, and I'd told secrets of my past in front of the entire Coven at my introduction. All because I was angered and couldn't keep my mouth shut for just a few minutes longer. My mates would have interfered. Hell, they did interfere.
Marcus did and for that I'll have to thank him later. Stopping that where it stood. And whoever ripped Athenodora's screaming head right off her shoulders. No matter how grisly that sight was to see, the thought was appreciated.
My feet clicked loudly as my shoes hit the stone floors. Around the half way mark Demetri and Felix moved in front of me as I had no clue where I was going. They didn't look at me, or at each other, the whole time. Whenever I felt the guilt of my mood rising up, I pushed it down with a carefully placed sigh.
Demetri put up a hand when he stopped at a large set of double doors.
"This can take as long as you want, Queen Annalise. The Guards understand that your time is precious and that meeting with them is a treat they may not be often allowed to have," Felix said as he opened up the door. "Demetri can take you in. I'll be the one to guard the door."
Despite my mood, I felt the awe of the group as I walked inside. Everyone was sitting down on whatever furniture they could find and their unblinking red eyes remained fixated on me. It was odd. If they were children I might have gotten their fascination, but these were mostly fully grown adults looking at me as if I were Jesus himself.
"Do you usually stare at the Queens of people like you're a part of a cult or is that just reserved for me?" I asked honestly and a fair bit awkwardly. "Maybe you don't look like a cult. Actually scratch that– it's the eyes. Not that red is the issue– you just don't blink and that's weird," I grabbed a chair of my own before continuing with, "Not that I hold that against any of you."
More of that dreaded silence that I hated. I wasn't in the mood to get embarrassed and run away again, so I supposed humor was the best way to get rid of the growing heat in my cheeks and in my chest cavity.
"You guys are Guards, right? Not statues. How about you guys speak and I try and not lose my shit over trying to speak to a group of statues." I smiled uselessly as nobody spoke up. "Please? I'm begging one of you to talk."
"Hi," one of the ones in the back said with a little smile on his face.
"Thank you. Thank you very much." I rose out of my chair and walked towards the vampire. "Who are you?"
"My name is Afton, your Majesty," he introduced himself. "It will be an honor to serve you."
They all felt so formal, as if their whole immortal life was on the line. Neither Demetri or Felix acted this... I couldn't explain it exactly. Everyone's eyes were on me, though only one had the courage to speak to me inside of the room. As if someone had told them they weren't allowed to speak with me. A gag order on the guard that was supposed to be guarding me for the rest of time was not only ridiculous but rude.
"Who told you that you're not allowed to speak with me?" Eyes darted down for the first time. "I'm not going to snitch on you. Which one of them was it? Aro? Caius?" Everyone in that room grimaced at the later. "Great. Ignore his orders. Silence makes me uncomfortable and if that man expects me to sit in it for the entire hour that is blocked out on the schedule I assume Aro made I will go crazy. So, what are we going to talk about today?"
Plenty of people would have been adverse to this method of getting people to talk. I'm sure I had less standing with the Guard as a human being who'd been inside of the castle for less than a day, but there's only a few ways of getting people's attention and shock is one of them. I was also worried that if my mates had made the Guards scared of talking that morale could be low. I may not know much about Covens, but if any government is to show for it, low morale means uprisings, which I didn't want to deal with anytime soon.
Besides, screw whatever rules Caius expected the Guard to follow. Not talking just seems like torture. People are bound to have questions, concerns, or things they'd just like to say. Whenever someone tells you you can't talk to someone or about something, they tend to talk behind that person's back or about whatever the banned topic is. It's human, and I expect, vampire nature.
The first person to get the memo or just get enough courage to obey my orders instead of the kings' was the young girl from the Cullen trial, Jane.
"Why didn't you order that Sulpicia and Athenodora be torn apart and thrown into the furnace?" She asked, her voice quiet and meek amongst the others in her group. "She said terrible things about you to your face and you never ordered her destruction. Why?"
It caught me off guard. Out of any question to be asked, that's one of the last one's I'd expect. I never thought about the why I hadn't ordered her dead. There were plenty of reasons why I should have, judging by Jane's question. The blatant disrespect of my mate bond to their former husbands, one of them trying to break my eardrums, and forcing me to slip personal information out that I wasn't ready to share to even my true mates yet. I should have, I could have, but I didn't.
"I didn't want them dead," I whispered, "I wanted them to leave me alone. Next question."
"Have you ever seen Caius or Marcus smile?" the original courageous one asked. Afton. "Nobody here has seen them smile. They just don't smile at all and some of us have been wondering, since they're your mates, if they've smiled around you."
An odd question to say the least, but from the stories I'd heard this wasn't far off from the truth. Even Carlisle said his old friends were tough as nails and didn't show much emotion. Though, I could clearly remember the anger in Caius' voice as he addressed the former Queens. I didn't get more than a hint of a smile from either of them. Aro, on the other hand, was beaming whenever he looked my way. The attention was not frowned upon by me, I was just not used to older people other than Carlisle finding my presence worthy of such happiness.
"I've seen small smiles from both of them. They're clearly capable of being happy," I answered the second question. I didn't get the chance to ask them if they had any more of them, as someone piped up from the back. She had a scowl on her face.
"Neither of them were happy with the display those wretched women gave yesterday. They were before, for the brief moment that all Hell broke loose. Aro was talking to me about it last night, about how if Demetri hadn't rushed over to rip the banshee's head off that he would have, treaty or potential political danger be damned. I trust that they'll be far happier inside the castle's walls once they spend some more time with you. They aren't all huffy and puffy. Well, for Caius, just a bit," she spoke candidly while coming closer to the crowd. "I'm Renata, Aro's personal guard. I mostly stay outside of his quarters or behind him during trials. Boring work, really, all he ever does is giggle and read."
"He'll get mad when he hears about that one," Afton chimes in.
"That's rich, coming from the man whose been on the receiving end of Caius' wrath and barely lived to tell the tale. Was the glitter bomb worth your wife having to drag you back into your room and kiss your boo–boos?" She snaps back.
"Worth every kiss from my precious mate."
Jane gives a fake cough. "They're always doing that. I think Renata's just mad that Chelsea would rather shove her face into Afton's than go shopping with her during free time. What a shame, really. I'd be happy to go with her if she gave me the chance."
Renata rolled her eyes and glanced at the boy who always stood near or next to Jane. "Alec goes with you and he's too slow. No offense."
"None taken."
"It's no fun when you've been shopping together for the past nine hundred years! Nobody else will go with me and it's sad. What a lonely world." Her voice lilted sarcastically as she sighed near the end. "Aro may spoil me but the only taste he has is for blood and diamonds. He got me that cat shirt three sizes too big and said it could be a night shirt."
Everyone in the room groaned.
Jane turned, rolled her eyes, and said, "He got everyone that shirt. Some dumb little thing about vampires being like cats. Needy, territorial. I think he made the things himself because there is no way a store sells something so ridiculous."
"Vampire cats is what he was getting at with the tiny fangs in the cats mouth," Afton reminds. "I don't remember cats drinking blood."
