Marcus waited for Mel downstairs at the restaurant to the inn. He stood by the door in John’s uniform, looking like a guard from Windbrook. The bar had been filling up with guests and even though it was in the afternoon, there was definitely a party vibe going on in here. People were drinking, singing, and cheering around the room.
Mel had on her brown trousers and shirt, looking just as she had when they had been shopping during the day. Only now she had a washed face and her hair was pulled back in a messy bun. Marcus regarded her from the entrance, his eyes glittering in the candlelight and his lips forming a smile.
“Are you ready to leave?” Marcus asked.
“Are you really going to wear John’s uniform tonight?” Mel asked.
“Yes,” Marcus said. “My other clothes are still dirty from the trip here. We won’t have time to wash them and we are leaving tomorrow, anyway. This is fine.”
“But everyone will see we’re from the dragon cult,” Mel said.
“Why do you care so much about what everyone else thinks?” Marcus asked.
“I don’t,” Mel said. “I just want my new classmates to give me a chance before they cast me off as another crazy person from the cult. You heard what the merchant said about Windbrook and how people have acted since we came here. I just want to be me, not the girl from the cult.”
“Well, you are a girl from the cult,” Marcus said. “A wonderful cult. You are the ones the dragons chose to carry out this special mission. You are amazing, Melissa. Why can’t you see that?”
Mel shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her eyes flickered around the room., feeling eyes drawn to Marcus and their conversation. She wanted to run away from here. Pretend like she was someone else and lose Marcus’ company. Lately, he seemed to only make her feel annoyed. Like he was a representation of her shame that always followed her around and announced who she was to everyone.
Mel knew that was unfair. Marcus had risked his life to come here and traveling to Aldrion would surely be dangerous. She knew she should be grateful for him protecting her. But it was hard to shake the feeling of him just being her wet blanket.
“Let’s get going,” Mel said. “We need to make it all the way across town, anyway.”
“Sure,” Marcus said, and held up the door for Mel to walk past.
Mel took a deep breath and pushed down her emotions of irritation at Marcus. She gave him a forced smile and exited the inn. Together they walked through the westside, down smelly alleys and day-old garbage lying in piles next to the street. After walking for a while, Mel could feel a shift in the atmosphere. Like the air felt easier to breathe, and she didn’t have the feeling of wanting to keep her hands close to her body anymore.
She swung her arm out to one side and felt nothing sticky or disgusting grab her as she traced the wall of a stone building. They continued down the street and ended up in a marketplace just like the one on the westside next to the town gate. But this one was much nicer.
No one was screaming at them to buy their fish or to feel the fabric of a rug. No one seemed to hold a lighter underneath the leather to show off the authenticity and no one was carefully building small pyramids of apples to hide the brown ones underneath.
A wide smile formed on Mel’s lips and she walked up to a merchant selling fruits and vegetables. She picked up a pear and rolled it around in the palm of her hand, amazed by the freshness of the fruit. It felt just like home.
“Hey, put that down,” the merchant said and Mel looked up. “We don’t need any beggars here.”
“What?” Mel said, putting down the pear where she’d found it.
Marcus walked up in his uniform and put a hand over his sword. Mel swallowed the lump in her throat.
“Is there a problem here?” Marcus asked.
The merchant put up his hands in front of him.
“No, no,” he said. “Just this beggar who’s trying to steal my fruit.”
“She’s no beggar,” Marcus said. “She’s my mistress.”
Mel’s eyes flashed over to Marcus, regarding him with a furrowed brow. Mistress?
“Oh,” the merchant said. “I’m so sorry, sir. She just looked… I’m sorry. Please, here, have a pear?”
He took up the pear Mel had held in her palm just a moment ago and held it out toward her. Mel hesitated, putting up her hand to grab it and then releasing her hand, empty, to her side. She shook her head at the merchant and took a step back from him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really didn’t mean to offend you. Your fruit just looks like the ones at home. But we should get going.”
Mel backed out of the market, with Marcus trailing after her.
“Hey, are you alright?” Marcus asked.
“Yeah,” Mel said. “It’s okay. People here are just so different, you know, and I don’t think I get how to act around them. It feels like sometimes people are really nice to me, but seem to think I’m working for someone else. Then at other times, like now, they assume I’m going to steal from them. I just don’t get it.”
Marcus nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean. But don’t worry about it. We’re leaving tomorrow, anyway. Let’s try to figure out Aldrion when we get there instead.”
Mel gave Marcus a smile. This time she actually felt lucky he was here protecting her. It felt nice to not be irritated with him or his constant presence in her life for once. And he was right about this place, too. There was no point in trying to figure out how to act around here. They weren’t staying for long.
It was more important for Mel to make a good impression tonight at the party with the people she was going to study with at Aldrion. The people she was going to see all the time.
#
A short while later, Marcus and Mel arrived at a huge mansion in eastside. It had a stone wall surrounding the grounds with tall vines growing along the side. The gate was made of iron bars with pointed ends at the top, like they were trying to keep someone out.
Mel looked down at the invitation in her hands and studied the address. She checked it against the sign down the street and the number on the house several times before she dared to ring the doorbell by the gate. There was a click and then a thin man in dark clothing with a white buttoned shirt, stepped up to open the door. He looked Mel up and down before he pushed open the gate an inch.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“We’ve been invited to a party here,” Mel said.
“The service entrance is at the back,” he said.
“What?” Mel asked. “No, we’re guests.”
Marcus walked up beside her, and the setting sun flooded him in color. The red of his uniform gleamed in the light and the dragon glittered on his chest.
“Who are you?” the thin man asked.
“I’m Marcus,” he said. “I’ve also been invited.”
He took the invitation scroll from Mel’s hands and gave it to the man at the door. The man furrowed his brows and scanned over the scroll with uninterested eyes.
“This was only meant to be sent out to people attending the school in Aldrion next semester,” the man said, and handed back the scroll to Marcus.
“Yes,” Mel said, annoyance creeping into her voice. “Look, I don’t get what I have to do around here to convince you I belong. Where I come from, this is not how one treats guests. I’m Melissa Temper from the dragon cult in Windbrook and I’m attending Falden School of Magic next semester. If you need to see our booking with the travel agency, you can, or if you need to see our invitation again. But it was you who invited us to come here tonight so that I could meet my fellow students. Now either you let us in or I will just have to wait until tomorrow to meet them on the road to Aldrion.”
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The thin man looked at Mel with startled eyes. Then his gaze wandered over to Marcus and the silver dragon embroidered on his chest. The man seemed to form an oooh with his mouth and Mel saw something click inside his brain.
“I do apologize, Miss Temper,” he said and gave her a curt bow. “I’ve never met anyone from the dragon cult before. I didn’t know what to expect. But of course you are welcomed inside with your companion. Please don’t mention this to the hostess. She will be upset with me if she hears about my small mistake.”
“Oh,” Mel said. “That’s okay… I won’t.”
The thin man opened the door wider and stepped aside to let Mel and Marcus enter behind the stone wall. They walked inside a courtyard and there was a long winding road paved in gravel leading up to a massive double door entrance. One of the doors stood wide open and a lady stood looking at them from the top of the stairs.
“If it’s okay with you,” the thin man said, following them toward the mansion. “I will handle the conversation with the staff. They might make the same mistake as me otherwise.”
Mel and Marcus shared a glance, but followed the man in silence.
The woman by the door looked shocked when she regarded Mel’s clothing. She hissed at the thin man and seemed to be whisper-yelling at him. Mel couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it seemed like the man was apologizing and trying to explain while the woman was chewing him out.
After a moment of convincing, the woman calmed down and gave Mel a hesitant smile. The man waved them over to the door, and the woman looked down at a paper in her hands.
“Melissa Temper and Marcus Bruse?” she said.
“Yes,” Mel and Marcus answered in unison.
“Welcome,” the woman said. “The hostess has been expecting you. Just walk inside the door here and the ballroom is at the end of the corridor.”
Mel and Marcus stepped inside the mansion, and Mel immediately started gawking. The walls were painted white, and the ceiling was high in the air. The floor was made of some luxurious-looking stone and shaped into an intricate pattern. From the high ceiling, golden chandeliers hung above them, lit with candles inside.
Marcus spun around in front of her, a huge smile on his lips, and chuckled. He turned back to Mel and looked at her with amazement in his eyes.
“This is insane,” he said.
Mel nodded, feeling like words couldn’t describe her overwhelming thoughts.
They were alone in the corridor, but there were doors everywhere and they heard music playing at the end of the hall. They walked past a massive staircase leading up to a top floor and everywhere around them hung paintings of people and landscapes.
Mel and Marcus entered the ballroom at the end of the corridor and Mel looked around the room at the people standing on a well polished wooden floor. The people inside the room wore even fancier clothes than the thin man who had opened the door. Here they had embroidered silks in all kinds of color and puffy big dresses trailing down to the floor.
They seemed a bit hard to move in, especially with the hardened chest plates the women all seemed to wear. But the men’s clothing wasn’t really any better. They had long tight socks over their calves and puffed up shorts with pockets that seemed to stretch for miles. You could probably fit like a dozen apples in those pants.
Up on a stage close to the end of the ballroom, a few musicians were playing string instruments and a piano. Mel had never heard this kind of music before and she felt her heart soar among the clear notes. This was something completely different from the music that was sometimes played in chapel, where she could hear all the misplayed notes and false singing of the Windbrook choir.
The thin man ran past Mel and Marcus, running up to a woman in a dark blue dress standing by a group of people. He interrupted her conversation, and the woman gave him a pleasant smile. He whispered something in her ear and then pointed to Mel and Marcus, still standing in the doorway to the ballroom.
The woman looked up from her conversation and regarded Mel and Marcus with a hesitant gaze. She nodded to the thin man, and he bowed to her before leaving the room by another door to the left. The woman excused herself from her friends and strode over the ballroom floor toward Mel and Marcus.
Mel sucked in a deep breath, and suddenly a flash of recognition flooded her mind. The woman had long blond hair tied up in a bun with pearls attached around her hair. She had a silver pendant trailing down her neck and her chest was stuffed into one of those chest plates Mel had seen everyone here wear. She was beautiful, and she was definitely the same woman Mel had seen riding in the carriage between Auburn Hills and Stonehearth.
The woman reached them and gave Mel and Marcus a bow while holding up the fabric of her dress and putting one leg behind the other. Mel shared a quick glance with Marcus and then they both bowed, much like the thin man had done by the gate. More simple and with no legs behind the other.
A smile spread on the woman’s lips and Mel could feel a warmth emanate from her.
“Welcome to my home,” she said. “I’m Gabriella Vedere, tonight's hostess.”
“Hi, I’m Melissa Temper and this is Marcus Bruse. Thank you for the invitation and sorry for not dressing more appropriately. We didn’t know it was expected of us.”
Mel flashed her a guilty smile and gestured at Gabriella’s blue dress.
“That’s alright,” Gabriella said. “I’m just glad you decided to come so we could get to meet you before we leave for Aldrion tomorrow. This will get us a chance to meet people from the dragon cult for the first time.”
“Oh, right,” Mel said. “Yeah, that seems to be all anybody can think about when they meet us here in Stonehearth. But really, we’re just normal people. Nothing special here.”
Marcus looked at her with a strange expression on his face and Mel smiled even more to compensate for her weird choice of words.
“Great,” Gabriella said. “Let me introduce you to the other accepted students of Falden.”
Marcus and Mel followed Gabriella to the group of people she had been in a conversation with before they’d arrived. Gabriella grabbed their attention right away. It seemed like the people in the group had waited for her to walk up with Mel and Marcus.
“This is Melissa Temper and Marcus Bruse from the dragon cult,” Gabriella said and gestured at them.
“Nice to meet you,” Mel said, and bowed to the group.
It was quiet for a while, and most of the people seemed to stare at them. It took a while for Mel to notice that the music had stopped and that the entire ballroom had gone quiet. She wished then that she could crawl into a hole and hide from them all. Their stares made her feel uncomfortable and never before had she felt like her brown pants and shirt didn’t quite fit her.
“I’m Flavio Von Barren,” a man said with brown hair and blue eyes, breaking the silence of the room. “It’s really nice to meet someone from such a humble origin. It’s not often we get the pleasure to mingle with the truly poor.”
Mel winced at Flavio’s comment, and she heard giggles from all around the room.
“My name is Clara Bonterre and I will also study at Aldrion,” a black-haired woman said in a pink dress. “This is Brandon Lex, another future student at Falden. And that’s it. This is the entire party that will travel tomorrow to Aldrion and we look forward to sharing the road with you.”
Brandon Lex was a young man with black hair just like Clara, but he had beautiful green eyes and dimples formed on his cheeks when he gave Mel and Marcus a thin smile.
“So, do you dance? Or is that something they don’t do in the cult?” Brandon asked.
Mel shook her head.
“I don’t dance,” she said. “But people do dance in Windbrook.”
“Oh, okay,” Brandon said. “Then it’s just you then.”
He flashed a wicked smile that was softened by his dimples. and Mel felt fury rising in her stomach. They were treating her and Marcus like trash and Mel couldn’t seem to figure out the people of Stonehearth.
“Who are you again?” Clara asked, looking at Marcus. “You're like her dog or something?”
Giggles spread across the room, and Mel felt tension radiating off from Marcus. He put his hand on the hilt of his sword and Mel grabbed his arm. She shook her head slowly at him and he released his grip on the sword.
“I think we should leave,” Mel said. “Thank you for inviting us to your party. But we clearly don’t belong here. See you tomorrow on the road.”
Gabriella gave Mel an apologetic smile, but didn’t move to escort them out or to excuse her friend's behavior. Mel let out her breath in a sigh and turned away from the group of her future classmates. She grabbed Marcus’ hand and together they walked to the door.
Outside on the street, Mel let out a tense laughter that seemed to grow the more she gave it room to. Marcus looked at her with a confused expression on his lips.
“What are you laughing at?” Marcus asked.
“I don’t know,” Mel said between her giggles. “It was all just so stupid, you know. Did you see their pants, or the chest plates? It looked ridiculous. And the golden chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, they were ridiculous too. Like who would hang money from their ceiling. Isn’t that kind of insane? They could probably melt those things down and create plenty of gold coins for the whole town to never have to go hungry.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “They probably don’t need to.”
Mel kept laughing, feeling the tension release with every giggle and the mean comments just rolling off her back like it had been nothing. Marcus stared at her fits of laughter until he started laughing as well.
“Oh my god,” Marcus said. “That snobby guy actually asked if people could dance in Windbrook. What an idiot.”
Mel threw her arm around Marcus and they stood laughing like maniacs outside the huge mansion on eastside. If anyone would have seen them, they’d probably send them back to westside where they came from.
Marcus leaned in toward Mel and suddenly Mel felt his lips brush against hers. She jerked back, feeling the laughter vanishing from her body. She looked at him with wide eyes and her lips were drawn into a thin line.
“I’m sorry,” Marcus said. “It just felt right, you know.”
Mel averted his gaze and looked down at her shoes, feeling guilt surge from her stomach.
“I’m just not ready,” she said. “I mean, this isn’t the time. We need to focus on getting to Aldrion first.”
“Yeah, I know,” Marcus said. “I’m sorry. I’ll wait until we get to Aldrion. Then we can start dating.”
“Yeah,” Mel said.
Her heart pounded in her chest and for the first time in her life, she wasn’t looking forward to arriving in Aldrion. In fact, now it seemed like a perfectly good idea to delay the trip. But she knew she had to get there, and that they were leaving tomorrow. She knew she wanted to attend Falden, she just wasn’t so sure she wanted to date Marcus.