Rise of a Queen

Chapter 10

"Brandon, your room has been prepared." Erie stated once she had corralled us into the hallway. Even after the intensity of their altercations throughout our previous discussion, Brandon and Erie had returned to pleasantries and were conversing as if the last half hour never happened.

    "The same one as always?" He asked.

    She bowed before him, "Would I dare say otherwise?" From where her head was declined, I saw her smiling at the ground.

    Brandon nodded, barely glancing over his shoulder, "Good. It's far enough away from the strays."

    Lumiere plopped himself onto a bench with smug superiority dripping from every word he spoke, "Doesn't matter how far away you are buddy, you best believe you'll be hearing me tonight." He winked at Erie, "All night long."

    Brandon rolled his eyes but laced within his annoyance, I saw the way his expression lightened and the smallest flicker of complacency adorned his normally wretched view on affairs. Again it made me wonder if his bitterness was a facade; a way to keep everyone distant even though beneath his cold exterior, he actually cared about those around him and was desperate for that sense of belonging. Even now standing amongst the shadows where I assumed he took solace, I found him oddly out of place. As if he didn't belong with those shadows but he didn't belong with us either.

    Perhaps it is because he once was considered dead yet here he is alive, thus rendering him obsolete to both. He is in the doorway between life and death as much as I am in the doorway between the world I once knew and the world I was too scared to commit to.

    But if Brandon felt this way, never fitting into the puzzle the rest of us have constructed ... did that mean Dustin wouldn't either? Even with Lumiere and Corinth and Eli and myself ... would Dustin feel alone?

    Would he feel at all?

    "Please wait for me here while I escort Brandon to his chambers." Erie instructed, motioning towards a winding staircase at the back of the house. Brandon fell in step behind her and the two of them disappeared out of our sight, engaging in conversation if only to fend off the unbearable silence.

    I turned away from where their figures ascended the stairs but nearly tripped over a small cylindrical object. Another damn candle, like so many cluttered hazardously around this house. I picked it up and shook it at Lumiere and Corinth, speaking quietly incase my voice carried, "What's with candles? They're everywhere! Was there a sale somewhere, buy one get a million free?"

    Corinth laughed, gently taking the candle from my hands and carefully setting it down on a nearby table where several others had been grouped together, their wax pooling along the table's surface and dripping from the sides where they had dried in long drops dangling from the edge and stretching to the floor, "They are her list."

    I took inventory of how many candles surrounded us in this hallway alone, "Her list of what?"

    Corinth sat down beside Lumiere, "Her body count."

    My mouth dropped, "As in how many people she has hooked up with?"

    Lumiere chuckled and elbowed Corinth for her misguidance. He patted the seat of the bench on his other side, his voice still light with laugher when he said, "No, as in how many people she has killed."

    Whoa.

    The sheer number of how many candles were littered around was staggering, and I have only seen the first floor. If the rest of the house was even remotely similar to the first floor, there must be thousands of candles. Probably more.