The Lost Empress

My jaw dropped at the question. What the hell kind of question was that anyway? Did he mean unicorns or something?! I kept trying to say something, anything, but only air would escape from my lips.
Kye was staring at me, his eyes trained on my face, watching my expression change from shock, to confusion to bewilderment. Although I was mostly frustrated that neither Kye nor Mari would explain anything else to me. My head whipped from Kye’s blank expression to Mari’s satisfied smirk.
I looked over at the wall as I considered the question I was asked. They both seemed serious, so I wasn’t going to make a joke. If I had been asked that question yesterday; before I’d seen a wolf transform into a beautiful woman, I would have laughed and said no way. But after tonight, I wasn’t sure what I believed. But I knew that mythical beings, as Kye had put it, were real. That was the only thing that explained what had happened. That, or I was going insane.
I kept looking at Kye for some guidance, a hint as to what was going on, but he just kept looking at the floor. I began to feel really pissed off. Why wasn’t anyone saying anything! I deserved an explanation about what I had seen and they weren’t doing anything! I balled my hands up into fists and began my rant. “Well, considering I just saw your sister transform from a wolf! I would say, yeah, I do believe in mythical beings,” I didn’t even pause as Kye started to talk. “And I’m guessing that because your mother just tasted my blood! She’s a mythical being too!” I threw my hands in the air to try and show them how fed up I was with this whole situation. But after saying that, I began to realise something I had ignored.
If Kye’s mother and sister were both mythical beings, and even though it wasn’t confirmed I knew it was true, that would have to mean that Kye wouldn’t be human either.
I immediately rose from the bed and crossed the room, my eyes growing wider as I tried to hide in the corner. As soon as I moved, Kye’s head whipped up and his deep green eyes were full of pain. It took all my strength to tear my gaze from him to where Mari was standing, still smirking. I looked at the ground and waited for what felt like an eternity for someone to say something. But he silence in the room continued, slowly suffocating me. I found myself struggling to breathe and beginning to hyperventilate.
All kinds of thoughts were bombarding me. All screaming at me and demanding things I had no answer to. What if Kye wasn’t what he appeared to be? What if he was a monster? What if he wanted to hurt me? But the question I found continually being asked was what if the kiss meant nothing to him? All these ‘what if’s were swimming around my head, making me dizzy. My vision tilted as the ground came closer to my face. Kye came to help me back up, but the mere touch of his hand on my arm made my stomach churn.
The hurt in Kye’s eyes was palpable as I slapped his hand away from me. “No!” I yelled. How could he think that he could touch me? He wasn’t even saying anything to me; he was just standing there, doing nothing. Tears were forming in my eyes, but I refused to let them surface. Kye turned away from me, walked back to the bed and lay down. Mari was still looking at me, though her eyes were full of pity. How could he act like this! He asked me a question and couldn’t even be bothered to explain any of it to me.
I started pulling at my hair in anger. “For God’s sake! Will one of you please say something! I’m going out of my mind here!” My crazed voiced echoed against the walls. Still, no one spoke. I pointed my hand in the direction of Morrigan, “What the hell happened in there!” More silence. “Jesus Christ guys! Say something!” I stumbled towards where he was laying and dropped to my knees. “Anything!” He looked down at me, kneeling before him, his liquid green eyes absorbing all my fear and leaving me feeling safe and warm.
“Well, you’re right about me Hayley.” I distantly heard the elegant sing-song voice that belonged to Mari. I tore my eyes from Kye and turned to face Mari. She took a deep breath and glanced over at Kye, who merely returned her gaze, then lay back down.
“I’m a Shifter,” Before I could even ask what that meant, Mari transformed into a sleek tiger glaring at me with Mari’s cloudless blue eyes, then a fluttering butterfly with sapphire wings, and in the next instant a tweeting blue bird, which looked strikingly similar to the one that I’d seen outside my window for months. My eyes bulged as the blue bird grew and moulded into and exact replica of myself. “I change my appearance into anything or anyone I want,” I heard myself say. Before I could recover from the shock, Mari was standing before me in her human form.
“All my kind was murdered by the vampyres a few millennia ago, but my family sent me away when I was really young and I they never found me.” My eyes bulged as I realised that Mari was over 1000 years old. She read my expression and smiled at me. Her eyes sparkled at me, they were full of understanding. “I was on my own for a few centuries, running from the Red Night, it came in handy that I could turn into an ant or rat if they came close.” She smiled and looked out the window; I’m guessing she was going through memories of her years on the run. The Red Night though; it kept appearing, first from Morrigan, now Mari. I was going to have to ask Kye about them later.
“Then I was caught by The Guardians, I was terrified at first, I thought the Red Night had finally caught me, and that it was the end. But then I met Kye and he explained everything, that they were the good guys, and that they could offer me protection.” She looked down at Kye, with nothing but tenderness in her eyes; she looked at him with the protectiveness that a mother dedicates to her child. Kye looked back at her, the tenderness mirrored in his eyes. I felt something stir inside me; seeing them look at each other that way, but I pushed it aside.
Mari let out a long breath, “We’ve been together ever since.” She looked down at me, smiled and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder, before walking out the door and gently closing it.

I noticed I was still on my knees and the hardwood timber floor was starting to hurt. Ignoring the stiffness in my legs, I got up and looked down at Kye who was staring at the roof. I sighed, accepting the fact that he didn’t want to talk. I turned on my heels and I had just placed my hand on the gold painted door handle, when Kye was standing in front of me, blocking me form the door. I stepped back and tried to think of how Kye could have gotten there so fast. But there were no explanations except for the fact that he was hiding something about him that was important.
He just kept standing there, barely breathing. I let out a frustrated sigh and stalked back to his bed, where I continued to collapse on it. I had had it with this whole silent treatment thing.

“Hayley,” He sighed my name as he ran a hand through his hand. As much as I wanted to run over there; hold him against me and never let go, I didn’t move a muscle.
“What’s this? H-he speaks!” I placed a hand over my mouth as I gasped, in mock surprise. I rolled my eyes and looked the ceiling, trying to burn a hole in it with my eyes like daggers. I was paralysed with shock when the point I had fixed my gaze on began to smoulder. My eyebrows furrowed in fascination as I watched ash fall towards me. As soon as my eyes left the blackened mark on the ceiling, it stopped burning. I looked over at Kye, who was watching me with pure curiosity.
“I realise I haven’t been completely honest with you,” I was about to make a sarcastic remark, but he placed a hand in the air, telling me not to, “but this isn’t usually how we go about things.” The slightest hint of a smile played across his lips, but he remained serious. I was only half-listening; I was too caught up in my own little world where I was trying to burn things with my eyes.
Kye sighed and laid down on the bed next to me, instantly grabbing my attention. “Would you please stop trying to burn my room.” He grinned at me, and I found myself smiling back. It was comforting to know that I in fact could burn things, and that I wasn’t going insane. I opened my mouth to ask him all about this burning thing, but then I remembered that he was telling me something about him not being completely honest with me, so I shut it again.
Kye let out a shaky laugh as his eyes darted from mine, “You’ll never believe me,” he muttered. I found his hand and held it tightly in mine, a silent promise that I would stay no matter what he said. Being this close to Kye, him lying next to me, his breath, like peppermint, swirled around me; I couldn’t think of a better place to be.
“I think the best way to do this is to just come out and say it.” He emerald eyes poured into me and I couldn’t even remember my own name, let alone what we were talking about. “Hayley, you’re a vampyre.” His eyes were still looking at me when I was shocked into reality. Part of me was screaming, telling me that what Kye said was a lie. Another, equally loud voice was sighing in relief; there was finally something that I fit into.
At school I had a big circle of friends, but I never really felt like I belonged there. We hung out on weekends, and when my mother ‘died’ they were all there for me, but nothing ever felt right. Kye telling me I was a vampyre; it was like something inside me clicked in recognition of the word. But all of this made no sense; I should be shocked, scared, repulsed; anything but relieved.
I nodded my head, absorbing what Kye had told me, “Anything else I should know?” That wasn’t the real question I wanted to ask, I want to know if Kye too, was a vampyre.
Kye must have known what I really wanted to know because he only replied with a small, “Yes, I’m one too.” I looked down at our hands, earlier it meant that I wouldn’t leave, I linked my fingers with his; it now meant I was here to stay.