The morning was still young as she stumbled home, her body swaying with every slow step she took and a cigarette dangling from her lips. She was undeniably still out of her mind.
Her nose burned every time she breathed in and she could still taste the sweet mixture of blood and alcohol on her tongue. She had lost track of the time at the club, evident by the early rays of daylight that lit the city streets of Manchester, and she wasn’t the only one making the same walk home.
There had been plenty of others in attendance, including mortals and various Daemons. One of the attendees was walking a few steps in front of her and she knew he lived not too far from her, but they never walked together. That wasthe rule, everything that happened in the underground blood parties stayed down there. You did not disclose any personal information during the party, and you did not acknowledge anyone you met during the night if you saw them in the daytime.
The parties themselves weren’t illegal, albeit some of the activities that took place definitely were. Even if the government wanted to place laws against them, it was very likely they would carry on anyway, but they still maintained some elements of secrecy. It gave people a chance to lose themselves, to escape the pressures and responsibilities of the world and give in to their primal, Daemonium urges.
It was generally known that it was an ‘anything goes’ situation at blood parties, as long as everyone was willing to partake. And there were always multiple rooms for multiple purposes, something to fit everyone’s tastes, including everything from drugs to kinks to blood type.
As she walked along the canal, she tripped over her own feet and had to catch herself on a lamppost to avoid falling in. A passerby dressed in a formal suit gave her a judgemental look, likely on their way to work. She flipped them off as she followed the water to reach her apartment by the locks.
She had no idea how she managed to climb up the stairs and reach her front door, but her hands were shaking so badly that she struggled to even insert her key into the lock. She fumbled, taking several tries to turn it, before her door was wrenched open and she met the disapproving stare of her flatmate. Cassandra Romilly.
“Where the fuck have you been, Adriana?”
“Oh, shit,” Adriana murmured, as she stepped around Cass to make her way into the living room, crashing into the side table as she headed towards the sofa. “I was at work, we closed the bar a little late.”
“A little late? Your bar shuts at two. It's eight in the morning!”
“It was busy?” Adriana offered a playful smile, before sighing at Cass’ glare. She shrugged her jacket off, throwing it on the back of the sofa, before peeling off her blood-soaked shirt and black elbow-length gloves and throwing them to the floor.
“Addie,” Cass gasped from across the room, taking in her appearance. “You’recovered, look at the state of you! And I can see how fucked your pupils are from here. What the hell are you on this time?”
Adriana looked down at herself; her torso, chest and arms were littered with healing bite marks and bruises.
It was a usual request for her to ask to be hurt and marked in the most exquisitely painful ways, with a focus on her silver scars from her last moments as a mortal. It was horrible—to relive even a semblance of that pain—but it was the only way she could let herself feel anything real. Pain was the only thing she trusted.
She kept her brands covered whenever she left the flat, hiding her back, arms, and hands, with a long-sleeved shirt and gloves, fortunate that her Nocte markings did not extend to her chest like they did on her creator’s. She was always careful to hide them, but she had an agreement with the club owner, Mitchell. They would meet in one of the back rooms where he could feed from her, hurt her, use her in whatever way he needed to fulfil both of their desires, and he had vowed long ago to keep his knowledge of her brands to himself. But last night she had let her guard down, and had allowed Mitchell to bring in others to their private room.
Cass grabbed a cloth from the kitchen countertop as she continued to gawk at the marks on Adriana’s body. “Be honest with me, how many people did you party with tonight?”
“It was just Mitchell,” Adriana lied. She saw Cass' disbelief and looked down sheepishly as she slumped onto the sofa. “And three other Lamiae. Two men, one woman.”
“For fuck’s sake. I love you, I really do, but you are an absolute idiot sometimes.”
Cass shook her head in disbelief as she held the cloth under the tap before coming to kneel in front of Adriana, wiping at her bite marks and cleaning the blood that dripped down her chin from her recent feed. Adriana knew she deserved much less, but Cass had always been good to her. It was one of the reasons she had volunteered to go with Cass when she had stated her intentions to leave the Romilly way of life, to leave her entire family, and create her own life.
“You could have at least cleaned yourself up before you came back home, you know?” Cass gave her a small smile, clearly trying to lighten the mood. “I just worry about you at those things, with all those people. I understand why you go, why you need to escape your head. But if any of them were to see your markings and decide to tell anyone, you’d be screwed. We both would. They’d check our identity cards and do a proper search of our brands and know what we are.”
Adriana averted her eyes. She really had been an absolute idiot. Though she knew Mitchell would never tell anyone of her true identity, the same could not be said for the others who had joined them. They had all seen the brands across her body, they would know she was a Lamia Incantrix—the only one to exist. And they would know she washis.
If word got out to the right people, the government would send someone from the Courts to follow up their identification cards and search them properly. They’d see Adriana’s sun, her eclipse within the moon cycle, the thin dark swirls on her arms. And they’d see Cass’ star constellation on the back of her shoulder, they’d know she was a Romilly and the first Vanticini in over a century.
Adriana had stayed with Armida Romilly after her rebirth, and had continued to remain with her Incantrix descendents eversince. The Romillys had remained in hiding for decades. Ever since Divina’s death, they had hidden themselves away in the Scottish Highlands, keeping the family safe and protected from the outside world, from mortals and Daemons alike.
When Cass was a young girl, Adriana had bonded well with her upon finding she was struggling with managing her Vanticini control. The poor child had spent months in terror as she struggled to see what was going on in front of her, her vision always obscured by predictions of the future. Armida had been the last known Vanticini, with no other Romillys possessing such a gift, and so Cass’ family hadn’t known how to help her. So Adriana took it upon herself to train her.
She spent hours every day helping Cass learn to calm her mind, to find her balance within herself, and control her power. When Cass turned eleven, she told Adriana of her desire to go to school, and so Adriana had pleaded and begged with Cass’ parents to allow her to go. It took a few months, but they eventually gave in, allowing her to attend the local school in a small village in Scotland near the Romillys’ hidden homes, albeit under a fake name.
Adriana got on with Cass’ parents well enough. They were the only ones to offer Adriana a bed to sleep in when her previous Romilly carer, Cass’ great aunt, passed away. She had never been anything more than a nuisance to the Romillys, never fitting in their secret coven. That’s what her life had been, just a thing to pass over to whoever was willing to take her in, keep her fed, and keep her hidden.
Cass’ mother hated the idea of her daughter not being homeschooled within their coven like the rest of her family but fortunately, her husband, a mortal who had married into their lonely way of life, persuaded her. He wanted Cass to have as normal an upbringing as possible, and it was his human touchthat gave his daughter the freedom to see the world for what it really was, rather than perceive it behind locked windows.
Adriana’s efforts along with Cass’ father’s had allowed Cass to be the first Romilly to attend school, to experience a real childhood, and to become an exceptional Incantrix. And so, when Cass decided to part ways with her family shortly after turning eighteen, refusing to continue to spend her life hiding, Adriana had gladly accepted the invite to move with her.
The wider Romilly family were furious when they heard of Cass’ plans to leave and attend university in Manchester, but Adriana had supported her decision. She knew Cass needed more from life, needed more than a life spent running could give her. In truth, she was the first Romilly to ever really understand her, to ever see her as more than a nuisance handed down through generations.
Adriana gladly admitted her joining Cass was not all due to good intentions of supporting her. There were selfish reasons, too. She was sick of spending eternity moving from one safe house in the middle of nowhere to the next, sick of being known as a broken, fragile creature. Joining Cass in her new life meant she could be something else entirely.
