I gasped and clasped a hand to my mouth.
The brightly lit room contained rows and rows of human infants spread out on wide, long wooden tables. Each lay in its own straw cot and was wrapped up in a blanket—many of them crying, while others slept.
Ogres ran in and out through another door at the other end of the chamber, grabbing several baskets of babies at a time and running back out into the room next door.
“It’s almost breakfast time for the royals,” she grumbled. She breathed in deeply, her face twisting into a scowl. “The rest of us are stuck with animal meat.”
For the royals.
“No,” I gasped, stumbling out of the room and leaning against the wall in the staircase outside. “Give me something other than this. Anything other than this.”
She rolled her eyes again and stomped her foot. “Listen to me, little girl. If you’re going to live here, you’re going to have to get used to how we live. How do you expect to stay here if you are so squeamish about everything?”
“Just… just give me something else,” I stammered, placing a palm over my forehead, trying to ease the queasiness bubbling in my stomach.
“One last duty I’ll offer you. If you reject that too, I give up. I’ll go to the king and explain that you’re too much trouble and are interfering with my own duties.”
“All right.” Nothing else she could offer me would be as horrific as what I’d just witnessed.
We climbed the stairs and returned to the dark hall. This time, she unlocked the door to the dungeon where all the women were kept. Several women looked up as we entered, scurrying to the back of their cells and whimpering. Many of them looked up at me with desperate eyes as we walked.
It’s a wonder any of them survive until childbirth in these conditions.
We reached a door at the other end of the cavernous chamber and entered though it. In this room were more humans—this time, all of them male. There were far fewer men than women in the room we’d just left.
She stopped once we reached the opposite wall of this chamber and entered a smaller connected room that contained a large metal container and other cleaning equipment.
“Your job is to clean this dungeon and also the one next door,” she said. “You don’t need to clean inside the cells—I don’t trust you enough to give you the keys to them yet—just clean everything else you can reach outside. These floors are so slippery, even I have slipped up a few times in here going about my way.”
“All right,” I breathed. “I can do this.”
She looked at me, unimpressed. “Good, because I’m not going to be indulging you in any more of your whims. Now get to work. I’ll come down and tell you when you can have a break. Don’t stop work until then.”
I nodded and the ogress walked away. I exited the small utility room and took a closer look at the cells surrounding me in the male dungeon.
Many of the men who had previously been dozing had woken up. Although they appeared to be fitter and healthier than the women, their faces betrayed what weary souls they had.
Feeling uncomfortable under their gaze, I walked back into the washing room, filled the basin with water and picked up a mop. I began to work in the furthest corner of the dungeon until I could no longer avoid walking close to the cells. I tried to avoid eye contact with the men as much as I could, but by the time I had reached the third cell, one of them spoke to me.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice hoarse.
I couldn’t help but look up at him: a man of no more than thirty years. Though his eyes looked like he had seen more than any hundred-year-old could have. From his features, he had once been handsome.
He reached his hand through the bars and stretched out his fingers to reveal a folded-up piece of yellowing parchment.
“I wrote this for my wife a year ago.” He unfolded the parchment to reveal a note etched with black charcoal he must have found near his cell. “I haven’t been allowed to see her since. The ogres who come in here to clean have always ignored my request. Please… you have kind eyes… if you could just give this to her. I need her to read this in case she or I… in case we don’t see each other again—”
The man choked up and fell to his knees. Tears spilled from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks onto the dusty floor.
“O-of course. I’ll take it to her right away.” I took the note from him with trembling hands. “What’s the name of your wife?”
“Cherie,” he choked.
I nodded and gripped his hand through the bars, hoping he could draw comfort from me even though I felt just as broken as he. I dropped the cleaning equipment and ran across the chamber to the hall next door.
The man is next door to his wife. He hasn’t laid eyes on her in a year. I couldn’t shake the thought away and it made me shake as I scanned the women’s cells.
“E-excuse me,” I called out, trying to steady my voice. “Which one of you is Cherie?”
They all looked around at me blankly, so much that I wondered if they had understood what I’d said.
“Please shout out if your name is Cherie!”
Silence followed again. Then a faint voice called out from the center of the chamber. “I can help.” A short blonde woman raised a feeble hand in the air.
I made my way toward her. “Cherie?”
She looked at me with hollow eyes.
“No. She died three months ago.”
I dropped the note and gripped the bars as my knees buckled beneath me.
Chapter 9: Kiev
After searching the island a second time and still having no luck, I decided that I had no other choice but to seek out the vampire. On entering the castle, however, I stopped in my tracks.
Sitting at the bottom of the wide staircase in the hall was a girl. She wore a long purple dress, her hands folded on her lap. She stood up abruptly as soon as she saw me enter and began to hurry away toward the other side of the room.
“Wait!” I caught up with her before she disappeared through the back door of the hall. I twisted her around to face me. She flinched but didn’t struggle. I stared down at her, taking in her appearance.
She was a plain girl. Light blue eyes, curly brown hair, and a soft, round face that indicated she was perhaps shy by nature. Now that I was closer, I realized that she was much younger than I had initially thought. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen.
“Who are you?” she asked, staring up at me.
“I’m a guest of honor here.”