The Vampire King’s Captive

MARIA

“Is someone there?” Maria called out after a few seconds of trying to convince herself that the voice was real.

If the voice wasn’t real, then that meant she’d started hearing things, which meant that she was going crazy and she didn’t believe that. At least not yet.

“Yes,” came the voice again.

It was soft and feminine with a lilting accent. Out of nowhere, Maria wondered if the girl could sing. It would be a wonderful thing to hear-and watch.

Speaking of…

“Where are you?” Maria asked the girl-it was definitely a girl-and she moved over to the gate, gripping the iron bars and craning her neck as she tried to look down the long dark corridor if the girl was standing out there. She wasn’t.

“In the cell next to yours,” she spoke again, that lilting accent sounding both strange and oddly welcome to Maria’s ears. “I saw them bring you in but held back from talking to you because, well, I didn’t want to spook you.” If she continued talking for an hour more, Maria was positive that she would fall asleep. Her voice was just that sweet. “Also, there’s been no noise from your cell, so I wondered if you were sleeping until he showed up.”All content © N/.ôvel/Dr/ama.Org.

Maria stared at the wall dividing their cells, wishing that it was like the cells back at the vampire’s castle that had iron bars instead of a wall dividing them. She would have been able to see the girl.

She laughed lightly, drily when when she remembered the girl’s words. “Oh, no, I wasn’t sleeping. I was just struggling to come to terms with the fact that I’ve just left one cell only to be placed in another.” she said without thinking, then paused when she realised that that information might have been too much.

But she had nothing to worry about, right?

The girl in the cell next to hers definitely had to be a prisoner as long as she was in there, so she had no reason to panic.

She was just successfully convincing herself that it was okay when a sudden thought hit her. What if the girl had been planted in the cell as a spy to act like they were in similar situations just to gather information from her?

That was possible, wasn’t it?

“Oh,” the girl said slowly. “That’s a bummer. I can imagine how hard it must be for you.”

But she sounded so honest. So pure in that lilting voice.

How could she be faking that?

She also sounded young. Like a teenager. Just how young was she?

“It is,” Maria admitted on a sigh, walking over to the bench and dropping her ass on it. She scooted in until her back was to the wall and laid her head on the cool stone. “I’m starting to believe that I’ll probably spend my entire life moving from one cell to another.”

“Hey, don’t say that,” the girl said quickly, sounding a bit sad. For someone she didn’t even know. “I’m sure you’ll be leaving soon, and then you can go home.”

Home.

Maria didn’t have a home.

It used to be this cursed palace, but now… Now that she’d left for a while into the outside world where she’d seen different creatures for the first time, where she’d stood by that window, overlooking the beauty of the vampire realm, where she’d slept in a cave, and spoken with a woman like herself after a long time without being forced to, now that she’d experienced all these, she knew that she didn’t have a home.

“I’m not so sure I have a home anymore,” she whispered brokenly, her voice so low that it was a miracle that the girl heard her.

The girl was quiet for a while before speaking again. “I’m sorry about that.”

Maria nodded, not that the girl could see her, but she was unable to speak past the huge lump in her throat.

Until the girl had asked her the question, she didn’t fully realise just how lost and alone she was in this world. She’d been captured and tortured by a vampire king because he believed that she deserved everything that he was doing to her, only to be captured-yes, she was going to use the word captured because she hadn’t gone with them willingly-back by her father so that she could resume her duty.

As his weapon.

Other than her mother, who wasn’t even conscious and therefore could count as nobody, she had no-one. Not even the man she called father, because she was positive that if it ever came down to it and she had to choose between her father and the vampire, she would choose the vampire in a heartbeat and it wasn’t just because she was attracted to him.

He might hurt her with his words and the even more hurtful looks he gave her, but he didn’t make her do things she didn’t want to. He might torture her in a lot of ways-some physical, some mental-but he would never ask her to torture others.

He could treat her in the cruelest way possible, but it wouldn’t hurt as much as anything her father did to her because he wasn’t family.

Families were supposed to have each other’s backs. Why was it different with her?