A few days passed with little incident. Elijah and Sariyah watched Lucia on shifts, she was the only one he trusted to not be her attacker. Well, she and Dr Farris and his staff. And on that front he had yet to uncover a culprit or any real leads besides what the shifty little servant man had confessed to him by Lucia’s bedside. It was incredibly depressing, not that he let Lucia see how he felt.
His family had all shown suitable dismay at her ‘accident’, all enquired after the state of her health and every single one had offered some form of comforting words to him.
The only strangeness he had taken note of since the day of the accident was the miraculous change in personality from the Lucia he had met when she was first bundled into his home to the Lucia who clung to his hand and who slept in the bed in his room. She was soft and affectionate and almost timid. If anyone had ever used those words to describe his bride-to-be a week earlier he would never have believed them, in fact he probably would have sent them to Dr Farris for a check-up.
He brought this up with Sariyah as they sat at her bedside, watching her snooze in the early hours of the morning.
“Well, she was pretty furious when they brought her here. This is probably her neutral mode.” She offered without dragging her eyes from the book balancing in her lap as she teetered on her chair.
“You think this is what she was like before she was dragged here?”
“I’m, like, ninety-nine percent sure that everything she was throwing at you from the moment she arrived was a tough act.”
“Why did she need to be tough?”
Sariyah finally looked up at him, “Strange place, strange people,” she said with a shrug, “I guess it was just her natural instincts, like an animal baring its fangs when it’s cornered.”
“I didn’t mean to make her feel cornered.” Elijah mumbled.
And with that he had lost her attention again, she turned back to her book.
“You were just a cog in the machine, kid.” She said simply.
“I still feel guilty.”
“Good, feelings are good.”
She stood, tossed her well-worn book to one side and announced she was leaving to feed. Elijah nodded his understanding and watched her leave.
She wouldn’t be gone long, they always had a supply of blood bags in the cellar. His family offered a very generous reward for blood donation, although the do-gooders who donated were often under the misguided impression that their pints of plasma and platelets was being used to aid the sick and injured. It’s not that they explicitly lied to the humans, they just weren’t very forthcoming with the truth.
Elijah would be in need of a feed by the end of the day too, often feeding was the only way he truly noticed time passing. When you are awake all the time you tend to forget to count how many times you see the sun rise and fall.
He could nap, although it wasn’t like true sleep and he didn’t gain anything from it. It was more like an induced coma or a trance, he would simply lie very still and shut his body off for a bit, taking a break from the outside world. He had heard that vampires who had been human first often found this quite therapeutic as they adjusted to life as a vampire and some would nap regularly as a way to stay connected to their human selves. Elijah was born a vampire but those who hadn’t been fascinated him.
Maybe when he had found the thug lurking in the mansion, when he knew Lucia was undoubtedly safe, he could nap beside her as she slept. That sounded nice. Maybe he would hold her hand…
~
Lucia had a habit of blinking herself awake with her long, dark, camel-like lashes, then pouting with a confused expression until she was fully conscious. It had become the highlight of Elijah’s mornings to watch over the last week.
This morning Sariyah was with him again and she pulled an ‘aaaaw’ face with round lips and brows pulled together to which Elijah nodded in agreement.
“Mornin’.” Lucia mumbled.
“How are you feeling, baby girl?” Sariyah asked with a kind smile.
“A little sore, a little sleepy, the usual.” Lucia replied with her own smile, albeit weaker and sleepier.
She had been resting up for nine days and although her personality was chipper and sweet, her physical condition had taken an agonisingly long time to improve.
She was diligently doing her stretches assigned to her by Dr Farris every day to keep her muscles moving although she often winced throughout. She was also very brave as she was weaned off the pain medication she had been sedated with for the first few days and had obediently eaten and drank when she was ordered to by Sariyah. At first Elijah had thought Sariyah was being a tad overbearing with the amount of food and drink she seemed to be trying to stuff into his fiancée but when he voiced these concerns to Nurse Julie she quietly informed him that humans are supposed to eat multiple times a day and drink even more often than that. Now he let the professionals make the decisions and he attempted to be the provider of companionship.
Once Lucia was dressed for the day, had completed her morning physio exercises and taken some tablets she was plopped back into bed, Elijah tucking her in tightly.
“I think it’s time for your first after-accident tour of the house!” Sariyah announced cheerfully, “Elijah?” she looked to him with an excited smile.
Elijah froze for a moment, unsure if that was the safest idea for his betrothed at the moment, but the two smiling women quickly weakened his resolve.
“I would be honoured… if you feel up to it, Lucia?”
“I’m suddenly feeling hunky-dory!” Lucia laughed and began to feebly fight off the covers that Elijah had just finished securing.
“You say that but let’s still take things slow, little lady.” Sariyah advised with a motherly smile and helped her out.
As she stepped out of his bedroom, Sariyah pulled Elijah back a step and muttered into his ear, “Take her to the library first, it was her favourite place before and she might run out of energy if you start somewhere else.”
He nodded with a smile and gave her a grateful thumbs up. She patted him on the shoulder and receded back inside, probably grateful to get some peace and quiet without Elijah pestering her for advice, he figured.
Having learned to always take his wise cousin’s advice when it came to Lucia, he led her directly to what he felt was the mansion’s main attraction.
“This is the library…” He said in his best tour guide voice and pushed the door open, standing aside for her to enter.
Her eyes flicked up to him tentatively, round and dark and nervous. There was a sweetness and vulnerability in her expression, with it came a wave of urges to smack him in the face, he just wanted to squish her face and hold her close and feel her soft body in his arms and run his teeth along her neck-
Elijah froze, his body creaking to a standstill but his mind racing. What on Earth was that? He had never wanted to do any of those things to anyone. He didn’t want to. He wasn’t a creep. Only creepy men had weird thoughts like that. Was it as weird if they were engaged though? He pressed his lips together and inhaled through his nose, attempting to push this discussion with himself away for when he was actually alone. Right now, Lucia was waiting for him.
She had walked to the centre of the library, slowly, hesitantly, and was turning on the spot, her eyes roaming over every shelf that was near enough to see.
“It’s incredible… I can’t believe this is part of your home.”
“It’s my favourite place in the house.” Elijah offered quietly.
“Can we move your bed in here and I’ll just live among the shelves?”
“If I could have, I would have.” He said with a resigned head bob.
“May I..” She said slowly, turning on the spot again to gaze around the large room.
“Please, go ahead.”
She wandered off, seemingly at random to peruse the shelves. He let her entertain herself at first but soon his curiosity got the better of him and he followed her to hover a few feet away and observe.
Many books were pulled out, flicked through and placed back, her soft lips mouthing the titles as she slid them into place as though making a mental list of all the books she planned to read. Knowing Lucia the small amount that he did, she probably was.
A thick tome with gold inlay caught her attention from the top of one of the shelves and he watched her eyes flicker to the rolling ladder for that section. She approached hesitantly but he didn’t move to stop her, Dr Farris said she needed to be allowed to push herself physically… although at the time Elijah had wondered if the good doctor was actually making a sexual innuendo.
She took the ladder with both hands and walked it to the line of books she wished to reach, it creaked a little but didn’t give her any trouble in its smooth movement, no bumps or jerks to jostle her.
With the ladder in place she paused again, her brow furrowed and lips pinched as she gave it another once-over with her eyes before making her decision and placing her foot on the first rung.
Elijah moved a little closer but still did not make a noise or halt her as she climbed, slowly and carefully, to the highest step she could stand upon without bumping her head on the ceiling. Unfortunately, the highest step was still not close enough.
“Can you help me, please?” She called with a finger pointing at the book just out of reach despite the ladder having been pushed right up to the end of its rail.
“Of course.”
She didn’t move to climb back down, her right hand was still poised and pointing at the volume of her choice, so he climbed up. With every step he was monitoring her reaction closely, ensuring for his own peace of mind that she wasn’t suddenly going to flinch when he was pressed against her back. His feet reached the rung below hers and he rested his hand on the one above her head, his body curving around hers like a cocoon.
He pried the book from its tight vice between the many tightly-packed tomes and plucked it out with two fingers round the spine. He handed it to her and she removed both hands from the ladder to accept it and open the hard-back covers to the first page. With an almost worrying ease she let her weight rock back to lean against his chest, trusting him to hold her up.
Of course, he did. Elijah planted his second hand back on the ladder and rested his chin on her shoulder softly. Her laid-back body language filling him with a boldness he couldn’t normally find within himself. He tried to read the lines of the old tome along with her but his concentration was frequently broken by her shifting movements as she made herself comfortable against him, her sweet scent blossoming from her throat, the steady thrum of her heartbeat… really he had no choice but to focus on her every breath and obsess over her soft skin.
He definitely wasn’t a creep. Probably. At the very least he didn’t want to be.
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