Once again, we’re all herded forward, and I get the unpleasant sensation that I’m part of a flock of sheep being led to the slaughter.
This place is a maze. I’m trying to keep track of all the twists and turns, flights up and down, long hallways and random doors, but I can’t honestly be sure I’ll know how to get back to that entrance even if I do figure out a way to get up the stairs without dying.
The vampire matron moves at a vampire pace, which is just slightly faster than comfortable for the average human. It doesn’t bother me, but I need it to look and sound like it does. I put on a show, moving at the same rate as the two girls nearest me. Jog for a bit. Get a little winded. Fall back, catch up.
The first thing she does is bring us to a large room that looks sort of like a massive study or a library. There are contracts laid out on the cherry wood table in the middle of the room, and she leads us over to them.
“You’ll just need to sign these, my dears.”
I step forward, willing my hand not to shake as I reach for the elaborate ink pen next to my contract. These fuckers could get simple ball point pens if they wanted. They’re living in the twenty-first century along with the rest of us, but they clearly like to go for the effect of making us sign with these ancient and intimidating looking things.
The contract is long and full of a million lines of fine print. I see a few girls try to scan theirs quickly, glancing at the matron as if expecting to have their heads bitten off by her for dawdling, but most of them just pick up the pens and scrawl their names.
I do the same, only pausing long enough to check that the bid amount is accurate. Honestly, the words of the contract don’t matter to me. I don’t plan on staying for the full term of the contract anyway, and if the vamps find out why I’m really here, they’ll kill me in a heartbeat, contract or no.
Another little piece of my soul seems to shrivel up and die as I scrawl Darcy Claymore at the bottom of the page. Even though the signature doesn’t say Mikka Dawson, the act of signing a blood tribute contract still gives me the fucking creeps.
Once everybody’s finished with their contracts, two silent vampires come to collect them, and the female vamp ushers us out of the library.
She leads us down a few more long hallways before we finally reach the wing of the palace where the blood tributes are kept. We’re each deposited in our own rooms with a promise that the matron will come back to collect us again soon and instructions to get changed into something “suitable.”
With that alarming pronouncement, the female vampire disappears.
I close my door, thanking whatever gods might be listening for small favors. I expected to be bunking with other tributes, or at the very least, sharing a room. Keeping my façade up interminably would have exhausted me, probably to the point of making a mistake. I can never afford mistakes, but especially not now.
After waiting a few moments to make sure that no one is going to burst in, I strip out of my dress and stretch. Being out of that constricting thing makes me feel like myself again, and I revel in it—especially since I know the feeling isn’t going to last.
Kicking off my shoes, I work out the kinks in my toes and the arches of my feet, still stretching out my back and shoulders too. My muscles are used to all kinds of punishment, but stiletto heels and corsets are pure torture. I know I don’t have a lot of time before the matron will return, but it feels so good to be in my own skin that I push the limits a little bit. They can’t very well bring me to a feast naked, after all.
Well… maybe they can.
I shudder at that thought and decide I’d better get dressed quick and not risk it. After glancing around quickly, I move toward the old-fashioned wardrobe in one corner of the room and fling it open.
It’s full of clothes in my size, and my brows knit as I pull a few items out to examine them. What the hell? How did they do this? There must’ve been some kind of communication between the auction master and the vampires who work in the palace. Once the tributes were on their way down, they probably started preparing our rooms for us, based on information provided by the auctioneer.
The clothes are all tight, revealing, and verging on gaudy. Frosting for the dessert, I guess. Useless and eye-catching.
I grimace, rifling through several outfits quickly. There has to be something in here which will let me disappear into the crowd.
The most conservative thing in the entire wardrobe is a long, black, form-fitting dress with transparent lace cut-outs all over it. It’ll have to do. I wriggle into it and make a face at myself in the full-length mirror set along one wall. The fucking thing is so low cut that my cleavage is on full display. The vee dips down to my belly button, and the sleeves are three-quarter length, leaving my neck and wrists on display. The lace cut-outs are strategically placed to give peek-a-boo shots of my legs and the underside of my ass.
For fuck’s sake.
At least it isn’t pink.
Once I’m dressed, I quickly gather up my discarded gown from the floor, scanning the room again. There aren’t a lot of hiding places in here, but I find an empty drawer in the bottom of the wardrobe. After messing with it for a minute, I manage to pull the bottom out of it.
