I mixed and steamed and fried until I was sore and my joints ached, but it was just my luck. I was on cooking duty. Orla assigned each of us daily and for the past five days I had been on cooking duty while some of the other women rotated among serving, clean-up or assistance.
I headed for the workers' apartments after we closed for the day at midnight.
I had had a long day and I was very tired. I reached the designated wing and headed for the room that I did not share with eleven other women, but just three.
I had three roommates who did not care so much about me. We practically lived like strangers; living like clockwork: from bed to the kitchens and from there back to the bed at night. I did not know them very well, but I knew their names: Pepper, Blossom and Danica.
Pepper and Blossom were Fae and were on clean-up duty tonight. Danica was Elven, albeit the very lower class elf, else she would not be working with lowly humans and Fae like my other roommates and I.
I think she believes that too and I see it in her behavior towards the rest of us. Pepper and Blossom couldn't care less, the two having forged a friendship long before I came. And so I was the likely scapegoat. Danica had frustrations and she was going to let them on me. We had had two arguments in the last four days and on those days, the Fae girls had been there to intervene.
I knew as soon as I entered the room that Danica was ready for an altercation.
"I cannot find my gold bracelet," Danica said when I entered the room.
Exhausted and in no mood for exertion, I said: "Search harder."
"I have searched everywhere," Danica said. "You must have taken it, didn't you? "
"No." My response was short and monosyllabic.
I ignored the fact that the accusation was insulting.
"Find it, then," Danica snapped.
"I have no clue where to find it," I responded.
"You must have taken it," Danica said, her gaze poisonous. "Else you should not feel inhibited to search for it with me."
I gave a huge sigh and began to search the room for the bracelet.
I knew what the bracelet looked like because on my first day here, Danica had flaunted the bracelet, making such a show of extracting it from a small trinket box she owned. She had taken it upon herself to introduce me to my other roommates and give me a small tour of the workers' lodge and she had talked about how the bracelet was a family heirloom and worth a lot of money. She had links with a certain noble Elf family apparently. Her family had a noble name even though they did not have wealth anymore as a result of some terrible accident, hence why she worked as a cook.
Very sad, I admitted that day- the first time I set foot at the Imperial complex. But I didn't care. I hated all Elves equally.
And now, Danica's dear family heirloom was missing. And I had to find it. I searched behind the draperies and dressers and wardrobes. I found the bracelet, just under the inch of space between the wardrobe and the floor.
"Here you go," I said, handing the bracelet to her.
Danica looked at me suspiciously. "Where did you find it?"
"At the corner. Under the wardrobe," I said.
"Liar," Danica said. "You had this with you. You stole it."
"I did not!" I snapped.
"I searched this whole room three times and it was not here," Danica spat. "Where did you find it all of a sudden? Did you conjure it up, perhaps?"
"I won't pay for your incompetence," I said. "I am not to blame if you are not that good at finding your own things-"
The words were hardly out of my mouth when I felt a palm flatten across my cheek in a blur of spontaneity and pain. My cheek tingled where Danica had slapped me, the flesh raw and having red palm prints on it probably, because the pain that seeped through me had to be commensurate with the intensity of the assault.
I stood stockstill for only a few seconds when I pushed myself towards Danica, my arms outstretched, pain making all my thoughts fixed on mindless retaliation.
But Danica was physically stronger. She twisted my hand harshly and pushed me back.
"Low class human whore."
I crashed to the hard floor behind me and my arm hit against a small table, bouncing the glass off it and shattering it as I slid over it and crashed with the glass.
I heard the glass break and felt pain jolt through my lower arm. While Danica stepped over me and picked her discarded bracelet, I rolled on my side and groaned as I clutched my right arm. I felt something wet and sticky over it. Blood.
The glass must have cut me. I struggled to get on my feet and I felt my hairpin fall from my hair, unsettled from my fall earlier.
I reached down to pick it when I noticed the tiny sapphire blue stones glowing.
No, I whispered under my breath. No. Not here of all places.
The problem with not knowing how to control your powers was one: not having any control where it manifested itself.
I tapped on the hairpin repetitively to stop it from glowing, like it would actually stop it. I was panicked and I just wanted the ominous glow gone.
I heard a yelp from in front of me. I turned my gaze upward to face Danica and I took in a gulp as I watched her.
A dark medium-sized dragon-like phantom whose ghostly body solidified with each second grabbed her neck and began to squeeze the life out of her.
Danica's eyes pooled with tears as she tried to breathe. "Help!" She choked out. "Avril, help! Help me, please!"