Read Online The Legend of Juliet: Part One (A Vampire Dystopia) (Finding Freedom Novellas) by Alexandra Lanc - Free Book Online

before, and that someone had been standing in front of me.
    Looking back, it’s quite obvious that I hadn’t known anything at all; I had been naïve. But we all are, in the beginning.
    “Master Delouge, I know that I shouldn't speak, but I’m asking you...please, take care of our daughter,” my father had surprised everyone by stepping forward as my mother, allowed a kindness, enveloped me in an all-too-familiar hug, one that I had quickly realized would be ripped from me soon enough. I had heard my mother gasp as I’d looked up from her worn, threadbare coat, and turned my gaze to my father, who was breaking the rules just as much as I would come to as he regarded Sibold with his head held high – though to his credit, Sibold’s back was turned.
    “Boy!” Miss Mercy had hissed, and I had flinched, not understanding where her venom had come from, though I’d known by looking at her that she was worried for my father even though she’d been angry. She had been a kind vampire, but a bit old-fashioned, seeing Sibold as her Prince; vampires were very attached to their monarchs, as humans had once been, I would later discover.
    I had heard Sibold chuckle, the sound carrying over the wind and the snow, reaching my waiting ears as he had turned and offered Miss Mercy a slight smile, causing her to bow her head; the sound had set my heart to beating even then, though in a different way – it had caused me to hate him even more, this vampire who would take me away. “There is no need for hostility, Miss Mercy. I’m not so young or childish that I would be offended,” he had turned his gaze to me then, the small smile becoming a bit fuller, his hazel eyes warm though calculating. I had glared at him, still clutching to my mother, though she had tried to push me away, ducking her head in reverence. “Your fire seems to have been passed onto your daughter. You should be proud,” these words had been directed at my father, though Sibold’s gaze hadn’t passed onto him until the words had left his mouth, his slight smile turning my father’s way.
    My father had the decency to bow his head then, though he hadn’t bowed nearly as lowly as my mother had – showing respect, but not servitude. “Thank you, Master Delouge, I am,” he had said, sounding truly thankful, and that had upset me.
    Because in that moment, I had understood finally, fully—
    They were giving me up.
    Before I had said yes to leaving in order to protect my parents, but with my father’s words I had understood that they were happy to give me up, to send me along with this stranger, to send me to a new life where I would never see them again. The concept of never seeing my parents again had been hard on my six-year-old mind, but I had understood it well enough, seeing the proof in my parent’s faces, in the way that my mother had hugged me so tightly before she’d pulled away, as if relinquishing me; she had never hugged me that intensely before, so that must have meant that she would never hug me that intensely again.
    But my anger had quickly drained away, only to be replaced by another, somewhat more intense emotion: grief.
    Grief had been a new emotion to me then, because I had never really had a reason to feel it before that point in time, wrapped as I was in my parent’s and Miss Mercy’s proverbial blanket, kept safe from the outside world and all of its troubles, its rules, its horrors. I had known what vampires were, because Miss Mercy was one, but I hadn’t understood the fact that things were still being rebuilt to suit the vampires, and not the humans. I had understood very little about the vampires being Masters, because my parents and Miss Mercy had never let me understand; they had wanted to protect me, but that protection had ended up being cruel, giving me view of a world that didn’t exist.
    The truth had started to become apparent the moment that the dragon-man had stepped into the Bright, and the moment that Sibold had