Sanguine - Aro Volturi

Chapter twenty eight

It was the day of my oral exams in front of the administrators of Sant'Anna. Since Christmas I had been on the Volturi crash course in Italian and Latin languages. It had been an intense few months.

Yesterday Caius had stared at me with such distain I had thought I would never arrive today, his eyes were very dark, Heidi was a few days late returning with 'food'. So mate or no mate of Aro I had fully anticipated becoming his dinner.

"Again," he'd snap and although it was the same response he'd given me the last six times I'd still jump at the harshness of his tone.

I'd launch back into the Latin scripture I had recited to memory and start from the top. Practicing in front of Caius was on par with learning Latin with Caius, hideous. Caius (my doting Latin tutor, kindly assigned to me by Aro) had actually volunteered to practice listening to me before my oral exams. Everyone, including myself, I think, was surprised I had remained alive for so long considering the grief I managed to make him feel every time I opened my mouth or put pen to paper. "A disgrace to the English language, I am ashamed to even allow your tongue to taint such a language as Latin." He had said after just a week of time spent together in painful learning.

I was due to be at Sant'Anna in Pisa this morning at 0900, Demetri was my chaperone, so far we were still en-route in the car, Felix behind the wheel. Once there I would partake in two oral exams and a formal interview. The exams were in Latin and Italian, but thankfully the interview was in English, although I was competent enough to get through it in both Italian and Latin if they decided go throw some curve ball questions.The University administration team wanted to hear a recited piece, between 800-1000 words on a subject I was interested in, a different subject for each language of course.

Caius had been less than patient with his teaching, he'd started off with an optimistic hour a day, which after the first two days was increased to four. Four hours a day with Caius, if only the administrators knew what that was like, then they wouldn't need to listen to me justify if I was fully committed to wanting the opportunity to study with them.

Didyme had helped me most with Italian, she'd upped the online courses she had signed me up to and after a break from 'Latin Hell' with Caius in the mornings she would play good-cop and be the ultra kind and supportive teacher one would assume she would be. Dora, Marcus and Aro all spoke to me in Italian, they never let a word slip out in English, so I was immersed in the language, and despite my initial frustration I had picked it up incredibly fast.

I only spoke English with Aro in the evenings. Most of the time I ate in my little apartment, I cooked for myself and allowed the busy days to disappear to the back of my mind until I had to repeat them again and again every morning. Aro always made time in the evenings for me, he helped me prepare food if I ran out of hands, he sat with me and entertained me with conversation while I ate, and now he spent almost every evening sat with me in bed while I fell asleep.

The first couple of times it had happened because I'd been exhausted and had fallen asleep mid-conversation and when I'd woken up in the mornings Aro had still been there, sat with his back against the headboard and his hand gently caressing my hair.

Of course over the months my subconscious ability to uphold the many promises I'd made myself not to give too much physical affection away, crumbled. When February was coming to an end I would fall asleep facing away from him and in the morning wake up curled close to his side. Now I fell asleep in his arms and awoke in them too. Just this morning my hands were so firmly gripping his t-shirt my fingers ached as I pried them off, it was like I was afraid he would disappear in the night and this was my attempt at making sure he didn't.

"Ready?" Demetri asks as the car slows to a patient crawl as we make our way into the car park.

"Pronta," I reply affirmatively in Italian and my personal guard grins.