swallowing his own blood.
Finally he said, “It never even occurred to you that you are my slave, did it? That I’m your master?”
“If you’re going to retreat into fantasy, that’s your affair,” Elena said. “Myself, I have to deal with the real world. And, by the way, soon after you ran away, Stefan was not only standing but laughing.”
“Elena”—on a quick rising note. “You found a way to give him blood?” He grasped her arm so hard it hurt.
“Not blood. A little Black Magic. With two of us there, it would have gone twice as fast.”
“There were three of you there.”
“Sage and Dr. Meggar had to distract the guards.”
Damon took his hand away. “I see,” he said, expressionlessly. “So I failed him yet again.”
Elena looked at him with sympathy. “You’re completely inside the stone ball now, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The stone ball you stick anything that might hurt you inside. You even draw yourself inside it, although it must be very cramped in there. Katherine must be in there, I suppose, walled off in her own little chamber.” She remembered the night at the hotel. “And your mother, of course. I should say, Stefan’s mother.
“Don’t…my mother…” Damon couldn’t even form a coherent sentence.
Elena knew what he wanted. He wanted to be held and soothed and told it was all right — just the two of them, under her cloak with her warm arms holding him. But he wasn’t going to get it. This time she was saying no.
She had promised Stefan that this was for him, alone. And, she thought, she would keep to the spirit of that promise, if she hadn’t kept to the letter, forever.
As the week progressed, Elena was able to recover from the pain of seeing Stefan. Although none of them could speak about it except in choked, brief exclamations, they listened when Elena said that there was still a job to be done, and that if they managed to complete it well they would be able to go home soon — while if they did not complete it, Elena didn’t care whether she went home or stayed here in the Dark Dimension.
Home! It had the sound of a haven, even though Bonnie and Meredith knew firsthand what kind of hell was lurking in Fell’s Church for them. But somehow anything would be preferable to this land of bloody light.
With hope kindling interest in their surroundings, they were once again able to feel pleasure at the dresses Lady Ulma was having made for them. Designing was the one pursuit that the lady could still enjoy during her official bed rest, and Lady Ulma had been hard at work with her sketchbook. Since Bloddeuwedd’s party would be an indoor/outdoor affair, all three dresses had to be carefully designed to be attractive both under candlelight and under the giant red sun’s crimson rays.
Meredith’s gown was deep metallic blue, violet in the sunlight, and it showed an entirely different side of the girl from the siren in the skin-tight mermaid dress who had attended Fazina’s gala. It reminded Elena somehow of something an Egyptian princess would wear. Once again, it left Meredith’s arms and shoulders bare, but the modest narrow skirt that fell in straight lines to her sandals, and the delicacy of the sapphire beads that adorned the shoulder straps served to give Meredith an unassuming look. That look was emphasized by Meredith’s hair, which Lady Ulma dictated be worn down, and her face, which was bare of makeup except kohl around the eyes. At her throat, a necklace made of the very largest oval-cut sapphires formed an elaborate collar. She also had matching blue gems on her wrists and slender fingers.
Bonnie’s dress was a little clever invention: it was made of a silvery material which took on a pastel tinge of the color of the ambient lighting. Moonlight-colored indoors, it shone a soft shimmering pink, almost exactly the color of Bonnie’s strawberry hair, when she was outside. It sported a belt, necklace, bracelets, earrings, and rings all of matching cabochon-cut white opals. Bonnie’s curls were to be carefully pinned up and away from her face, in a daringly mussed-up mass, leaving her translucent skin to shine softly rose in the sunlight, and ethereally pale inside.
Once again, Elena’s dress was the simplest and the most striking. Her gown was scarlet, the same color under blood-red sun or indoor gas lamp. It was rather low cut, giving her creamy skin a chance to shine golden in the sunlight. Clinging close to her figure, it was slashed up one side to give her room to walk or dance. On the afternoon of the party Lady Ulma had Elena’s hair carefully brushed into a tangled cloud that shimmered Titian outdoors, golden indoors. Her jewelry ranged from an inset of diamonds at the bottom of the neckline, to diamonds on her fingers, wrists and one upper arm, plus a diamond choker that fit over Stefan’s necklace. All these would blaze as red as rubies in the sunlight, but would occasionally glint another startling color, like a burst of mini- fireworks. Onlookers, Lady Ulma promised, would be dazzled.
“But I can’t wear these,” Elena had protested to Lady Ulma. “I might not get to see you again before we get Stefan — and from that moment we’re on the run!”
“It’s the same for all of us,” Meredith had added quietly, looking at each of the girls in their “indoor” colors of silvery-blue, scarlet, and opal. “We’re all wearing the most jewelry we’ve ever worn indoors or out — but you might lose it all!”
“And you might need it all,” Lucen had said quietly. “All the more reason for you each to have jewelry that you can trade for carriages, safety, food, whatever. It’s simply designed, too — you can wrench out a stone and use it as payment, and the jewels are not in an elaborate setting that might not be to some collector’s taste.”
“In addition to which, they are all of the highest quality,” Lady Ulma had added. “They are the most flawless examples of their kind we could get on such short notice.”
At that point, all three girls had reached their limit, and rushed the couple — Lady Ulma on her enormous bed, sketchbook always beside her, and Lucen standing nearby — and cried and kissed and generally undid the beautiful jobs that had been done on their faces.
“You’re like angels to us, do you know that?” Elena sobbed. “Just like fairy godparents or angels! I don’t know how I can say good-bye!”
“Like angels,” Lady Ulma had said then, wiping a tear from Elena’s cheek. Then she grasped Elena, saying “Look!” and gestured to herself comfortably in bed, with a couple of blooming, dewy-eyed young women ready to attend to her wishes. Lady Ulma had then nodded at the window, out of which a small mill stream could be seen, and some plum trees, with ripe fruit blazing like jewels on the branches, and then with a sweep of her hand indicated the gardens, orchards, fields, and forests on the estate.
Then she had taken Elena’s hand and smoothed it over her own softly curving abdomen. “You see?” she had spoken almost in a whisper. “Do you see all of this — and can you remember how you found me? Which of us is an angel now?”
At the words “how you found me” Elena’s hands had flown up to cover her face — as if she’d been unable to bear what memory showed her at that moment. Then she was hugging and kissing Lady Ulma again, and a whole new round of cosmetic-destroying embraces had begun.
“Master Damon was even kind enough to buy Lucen,” Lady Ulma had said, “and you may not be able to picture it, but”—here she had looked at the quiet, bearded jeweler with eyes full of tears—“I feel for him as you feel for your Stefan.” And then she had blushed and hidden her face in her hands.
“He’s freeing Lucen today,” Elena had said, dropping to her knees to rest her head against Lady Ulma’s pillow. “And giving the estate to you irrevocably. He’s had a lawyer — an advocate, you’d say — working on the papers all week with a Guardian. They’re done now, and even if that hideous general should come back, he couldn’t touch you. You have your home forever.”
More crying. More kissing. Sage, who had been innocently walking down the hallway, whistling, after a romp with his dog, Saber, had passed Lady Ulma’s room and had been drawn in. “We’ll all miss you, too!” Elena had wept. “Oh, thank you!”
Later that day, Damon had made good on all of Elena’s promises, besides giving a large bonus to each member of the staff. The air had been full of metallic confetti, rose petals, music, and cries of farewell as Damon, Elena, Bonnie, and Meredith had been carried to Bloddeuwedd’s party — and away forever.
“Come to think of it, why didn’t Damon free
“Bonnie, we’re honest girls already,” Meredith reminded her.
“And I think the point is that we were never
