Tatiana had tricked me a number of times, but I'd never wanted her dead. The other was my disapproval of her policies on how to fight off Strigoi-the evil, undead vampires who stalked us all. One was me dating her great-nephew, Adrian. Tatiana and I had had a rocky relationship for a number of reasons. She'd been the coolly calculating ruler of the Moroi-a race of living, magic-using vampires who didn't kill their victims for blood. It was true Queen Tatiana hadn't been a friend of mine. Cold-blooded murder, however, was not in my repertoire. I've also done my fair share of rule (and even law) breaking. Now, that isn't to say I haven't killed before. They'd had the audacity to accuse me of the highest crime a Moroi or dhampir could commit. The initial answer was obvious: someone had framed me for a crime I didn't commit. Instead, I looked down at my clasped hands and tried to figure out how I'd gotten into this mess. Don't stare at the walls and ceiling, Rose, I chastised myself. Like the sides of the cell would keep coming toward me until no space remained, pushing out all the air. I stared upward and immediately had the disorienting feeling I always did in here: that the ceiling and walls were closing in around me. Rats and cobwebs would have at least given me something to watch. I really was starting to wish I had a real dungeon. Like everything else in my new home, the cot was colorless and stark.
When the usual silence came, I sighed and slumped back on the cot in the cell's corner. I also knew none of them were going to answer me back, but that hadn't stopped me from constantly demanding answers from them for the last two days. I could see the shoulder of a man standing rigidly to the side of the cell's entrance and knew there were probably four more guardians in the hallway out of my sight. Fluorescent lighting made the metal gleam in a way that felt harsh and irritating to my eyes. The bars in the doorway felt cool against my skin, hard and unyielding. It was actually more depressing than any musty dungeon could have managed. I was inside a small cell with plain walls, a plain floor, and well. Okay, it wasn't exactly a dungeon, not in the dark, rusty-chain sense. "How long am I going to be here? When's my trial? You can't keep me in this dungeon forever!" "Hey!" I yelled, gripping the steel bars that isolated me from the world. I'd certainly never expected to spend my life in one.īut lately, life seemed to be throwing me a lot of things I'd never expected, because here I was, locked away. Sometimes I even felt a little bad for criminals, condemned to life in a cell.
I couldn't imagine any creature living that way. The first time I went to one, I almost had a claustrophobic attack looking at those poor animals.
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