Veridian Shores

Chapter 04 - Melding

With all the frustrated jealous strength she could muster, Brooke hurled her training gear into the corner of her room. It sailed twenty feet, smashed into the wall and spilled its contents over the rich burgundy carpet. She'd hoped that a session down in the training pits would get her mind off of Capper and that ragged stray he'd dragged into the Glaive estate, but back in her chambers she found her mind wandering back to the encounter in the atrium. Even beating that oaf, Finbarr, had only given her a moment's satisfaction.

Impotent anger roiled through her and she trembled, staring at herself in the mirror. She was everything a Glaive should be, the perfect match, but nothing and no-one seemed to be able to predict the proverbial thorn in the Elders' side. What, by the First, he could see in that leather-skinned, hollow-cheeked scruff she didn't know, but Capper shouldn't have been dragging any Clanless, Ostracised criminal back to their home.

Jealous.

The word rolled around her mind like a pinball. No. She was suspicious. The tensions between the Clans in Veridian Shores were reaching boiling point and showed no signs of dying down any time soon. In such a fragile situation they couldn't afford to take risks on outsiders, but that's exactly what Capper was doing.

And so much for his promise of coming to see her. She pouted at the mirror and shook her hair free of the ponytail it had been tied in for her training. Rearranging her signature single braid to hang down next to her right cheek, she set about changing out of her fighting gear.

She tossed the sleeveless leather tunic onto her enormous bed and unstrapped the padded gloves, hurling them carelessly across the room. Then she strode over to the daunting door of her wardrobe and flung it open, revealing a chamber larger than a servant's bedroom. Two walls were packed with clothes; dresses, jackets, trousers, skirts and everything in between forming a blaze of colour.

Brooke walked slowly through it, hands outstretched, fingers brushing expensive fabrics of the clothes as she moved: a tactile kaleidoscope of soft, coarse, sharp and smooth. Her sharp eyes flickered left and right, examining her options. It was always good to make an impression, but she didn't want to overdo it. In the end she settled on a simple but flattering dress of deep maroon that reached down to just below her knees. She slipped it effortlessly down over her head and picked out a set of jet black wedges to go with it.

Her hair came next. With savage strokes she dug a brush through the matted locks until her straw-coloured hair regained its natural smoothness.

Then it was on to her arsenal of jewellery.

She slid two heavy silver bracelets around her slender wrists, feeling their expensive, reassuring heft. If she needed to slap someone there would be plenty of extra momentum behind it. Sliding two golden hoop earrings into place she gave herself one last examination in the mirror. She gave an experimental twirl, watching as the base of the dress billowed out like a fan. Coming to a halt she placed her hands on her hips and gave a small hmm of approval. Brooke didn't need an occasion to look good – you never knew who you might run into.

She strode imperiously from her room and out into the upper corridors of the estate. The brightly lit gas-lamps blazed gold through the dark wood passages and her footfalls were muffled by the plush burgundy carpeting. Gold-framed portraits filled lined the walls and a handful of other extravagantly clad vampires glided back and forth in the upper reaches. Up here the highest echelons of the Glaive Clan aristocracy made their home. Capper should have been on this floor somewhere – after all, his chambers were – but she knew better.

He didn't spend much time in the space that was rightfully his. She only half-understood why. Capper seemed to have trouble wrapping his head around the fact that his blood, his Elder Blood, afforded him certain privileges. Brooke had embraced it wholeheartedly, along with the responsibility that came with being an Elder-Blood.