Page 92 of Xantera
Long, bright fluorescent lights hang from the ceiling in rows. I have to squint against the reflections bouncing off all the stainless steel around me. More unnerving is the amount of people—hundreds if I had to guess—toiling away without so much as a whisper in the air.
Dragging me behind her, Eleni mazes through the workstations, where we pass others chopping up an assortment of vegetables and stirring pots of boiling stew. Without fail, each of their heads rise curiously as we pass, then their eyes go wide and their mouths gape, before they quickly cast their faces down and return to their task like they don’t want to know.
To my surprise, Eleni presses me into a corner. A young woman about my age turns her back to us and continues stirring vigorously, the slop in her pot squelching loud enough to drown out my next whispered words.
“I’m sorry, Eleni.”
Without the chatter of human voices, the sounds that follow already grate down my spine. Metal clinks against metal. Knives slice through meat. Food plops into bowls.
Finally, Eleni shakes her head like my apology isn’t good enough. Maybe it isn’t. Risking not just my life but hers without clueing her in might have been a little too reckless for me. I at least owe her the truth.
“I need to find something,” I start quietly, “in the palace.”
Her eyes stay trained on me intensely. She’s listening, albeit angrily. Even as the servants around us start to move as one, forming a line that winds itself through the kitchen like a multi-headed serpent, Eleni arches an eyebrow, waiting for me to continue.
“Do you know where the white drawing room is? In the north wing, exactly? There’s something I need there. Desperately. Something that could help all of us.”
Eleni shakes her head, pupils contracting in an emotion I can’t decipher. I don’t know if it’s fear or indifference or more hatred.
“Please,” I beg.
But Eleni shakes her head again, more insistent this time before she releases her hold on my elbow and points back to the servant door.
My shoulders fall. Like I’m right back in the Educational Institution getting scolded for not reciting the third Cardinal Rule word for word, I nod, defeated, and start to make my way to the door we came through.
Eleni follows closely on my heels, but I take my time observing the servants as I weave in and out of them.
At the front of the kitchen, each of them picks up a tray and files through what looks like an assembly line, where they scoop and deposit portions of food onto each section of the tray.
When it hits me, I trip over my own feet. Those areourtrays. The citizens’ trays. The same ones that are slid through the slat in our housing complex doors each morning and each evening. The same ones I’ve eaten off of my entire life, unknowingly delivered by the hundreds of servants of the Blood Moon Palace.
And somewhere in here, one of these servants delivers food tomyhousing complex.
To Malcolm.
Not even thirty seconds after Eleni drags me back through the corridor and deposits me back in my room with a huff, the door barges open.
Arad flows in with rage dripping off him. His eyes scour my room wildly before landing on me, and for a second, surprise widens them.
Like he didn’t think I’d be here.
“Saskia.” He slams my door behind him, causing the decorations on my shelves and side tables to wobble with the vibrations. “How very pleasant to see you still awake.”
I don’t say anything, so afraid that the tone of my voice will give something away. His gaze roves over to the tray on my bed—all the food untouched. His nostrils flare.
“Not feeling hungry, are we?”
I swallow the dryness in my throat. “No.”
“That’s funny.” He prowls closer. “Because I fed from you mere hours ago, and usually that makes you humans very hungry.”
The words are out before I can stop them. “Unfortunately, you just makemenauseous.”
Stupid Saskia. This is what Lucan meant by keeping my head down. It was an unnecessary comment that makes Arad halt, his hands quivering at his sides, as if he’s imagining wrapping them around my throat and squeezing tight.
But the moment passes. His hands calm, and a smile tilts up either side of his lips as something even more dangerous takes over his expression. I take a step back, and he takes one forward.
“Saskia,” he purrs. “That’s no way to talk to a male. Especially on Sunday.”
