“I remember it but you're being rude.”
“Is hitting me with a snowball an answer to everything for you?” He drew several solid steps back to her.
“At least, I have an answer when you just give me shallow responses.” Her lips pouted, the hand with the snowball still frozen in the air.
Pulling his brows together, Dante's palm covered hers, slowly dragging it down, his gaze penetrating to the bones. After struggling for a few seconds Violette gave up and dropped the snow, though her eyes didn't stop flashing lightning at him.
“You're giving me a headache,” he grumbled, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Let's do it this way. You don't ask me about my past and I'll be nice to you. We'll finish our deal and split our roads like we hadn't even met. How about that?”
However she pretended to hesitate for a minute, she'd agree to these conditions.
“I accept your offer,” she affirmed, although the tingling curiosity still pulsated in her mind.
Chapter 24
DEAD END
Finally Violette was able to settle down in the inn. Her room was quite small but cozy and most important: it had a shower. Washing away the atmosphere that was still lingering on her skin after the visit to the Vampire Kingdom was ineffably releasing. She felt like rinsing all of the bad that happened this evening, even though it was far away from the truth. This little trip to the vampire's lair put only more weight on her shoulders and no water could sweep it away.
She let the water flow for some time, staying under, completely zoned out. These couple of hours taught her a few things for sure. First, Dante was a dangerous vampire, however this was to be expected, he couldn't be put in the mask for something like stealing the candies in the store. Still it was hard to gather her head over all of it. And Caidas…Caidas tried to warn her about the terrible outcome if she'd help him to take the mask off. He doesn't want him free so much that he's ready to kill him, if he could of course. Instead, he was askingher. The image of the dark blue hilt of the Vampire Slayer, still laying in the bag, flashed in the back of her mind.
All of those things and thoughts drained her, she felt her body was craving the soft material of the bedsheets. There was a lot to unpack and she wished to think about it more, to have more time but her eyelids felt heavy and her body sank into the soft mattress until all her thoughts turned into darkness.
It was alreadya late hour as Dante and Violette sat together in his room. She wasn't sure how much he had slept, if he even was in a bed: the blanket looked untouched, while she had a deep long sleep before.
His suite was slightly bigger than hers and had a simple chair where she decided to settle down as Dante passed the window, still covered with drapes.
“What exactly do you think I should look for?” she questioned, her fingers squeezed the delicate ruffled fabric of her skirt. She was wearing a grape-colored dress with a layered skirt, laced on the hems. A heart-shaped neckline with almost black frills along with the underbust corset elegantly emphasized her slender figure. And the thin lilac straps made of silk on her shoulders were covered by a short dark violet cape, folded on the back of the chair.
“If I knew, I wouldn't ask you to do this,” Dante said with ease.
Violette slid her eyes to the book cover and leaned in the back of the chair, opening it. She must dive in and be much more attentive than yesterday, any detail could be a breakpoint.
A few hourspassed by as Dante left her alone with the book. The ink on the pages started to intermingle in Violette's head, paper felt harsh between the fingers and she didn't count how many times she changed position while reading.
The pictures on the parchments resembled little doodles and quaint sketches, others looked like symbols or signs. Some of the words were underlined or highlightedwith little notes above. Howbeit, nothing of it seemed to Violette valuable or something she'd understand. Next to some recipes she'd found little sketches of flowers and some ingredients, and she counted ten lupin flowers in the last one hundred pages. The drawing of gnarled trees awakened flashes of the Forest of Somber Eyes in her mind, goosebumps dotted her skin.
A calendar with the moon phases and an eclipse calculation spread over the other page; another showed a foreign symbol made of twirls and waves. She flipped a few pages over, her eyes lazily running over the words she didn't understand until the image in the right corner moved from its place on its own.
Violette blinked. She couldn't be that tired, right? Her spine straightened up as her gaze fixed on the picture, waiting for it to move again. It didn't happen but she still examined the symbol. It looked like a coat of arms: big letter A centered between ribbons, surrounded by a garden. She flipped the page one more time, until her eyes came across a page with a big sketch of a stone arch that looked like an entrance to a cavern. Below a little doodle of hands, a crescent moon above. A bird cage next to the detailed drawing of the cavern, and a keyhole beside.
She tried to make out the words but as was expected, everything was written in the bizarre Heggas’ language.
The door opened, putting a tremble over Violette's shoulders. It was Dante, one of his hands clenched a little brownpaper bag.
“Any progress?” He made it across the room and put the bag on the writing desk.
Violette looked again at the pages and then got up from the chair.
“I found this symbol which looks like it was written much later than anything else on the page,” she declared, showing the book. “Do you recognize the sign?”
The vampire towered over her, sloping his head to the pages. “It looks familiar.” His eyes narrowed. “Seems like a coat of arms of one of the noble houses, a house of Adrogans, if I'm not wrong. And I'm rarely wrong.”
Violette wrinkled her nose at his last words.
“So what is so important about this house so the Queen decided to put it here?” she asked.
“This is good food for thinking.” He took the book from her hands and flipped the page, then back again. On the same spot but on the back of the page there was a symbol Violette saw before: two crossed swords with the blue chiffon flower in the center, as she assumed – the coat of arms of the Queen's house or her kingdom. After Dante examined the page, he skimmed through a few pages right to the one with the drawing of the cavern.
