“Didn’t you say they showed pictures, Avery? I think it’s beginning to show one now.” Megan leaned forward excitedly. In fact, we all did, wondering what would come next.
But as the shimmering, rainbow surface of the happy-gram soap bubble cleared, what I saw made my stomach clench and my cheeks heat with shame.
Oh, no, I thought, feeling sick. Oh please, no!
53
Kaitlyn
Drifting on the soap bubble’s surface wasn’t a rainbow or a unicorn or a happy little meme to brighten anyone’s day. What I saw was an image of me—well, me and Ari. I was curled in the big Drake’s lap and he was baring his throat for me.
“Drink from me, L’lorna,” he said and the sound of his voice coming from the bubble was faint but audible. “I don’t care that you’re a Nocturne and I am a Drake. The Edict is dead to me—you are the one that I want. The only one, forever.”
I tried to remember if Ari had really said those exact words. I was usually so dizzy with the feelings I got when I took blood from him, it was hard to think clearly. Still, though I couldn’t be sure, I thought this didn’t seem quite right.
“But your people will never accept me,” I protested—or my imagine in the soap bubble did. “And I’m a Made Vampire—no one will want me—not even the Nocturnes.”
“Mierda! I don’t fucking care what my people say!” Ari exclaimed in the bubble. “The Drakes and the Nocturnes can all go fuck themselves, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care if the whole world burns to ashes as long as I can have you, my sweet L’lorna.”
And then the bubble Ari kissed the bubble me passionately, taking my mouth in a way that was much more aggressive than the butterfly-sweet kisses he’d actually given me in the Drake’s Den.
But it got worse.
To my acute chagrin, I saw that the bubble me was giving as good as she was getting. She was climbing all over Ari and rubbing against him shamelessly in a way that made me blush just to watch it.
“Oh my Goddess, Kaitlyn,” Avery murmured to me. “Is that really what you two have been getting up to in the Drake’s Den?”
“No, it’s not!” I exclaimed. “Ari never said all those things to me! Well, he said some of them but not that way, exactly. And we never, uh, crawled all over each other like that!”
But in the happy-gram soap bubble, we were still going for it. I couldn’t help thinking that with all the making out and melodrama, this soap bubble reminded me of the telenovelas one of my childhood friend’s grandma liked to watch. This was before The Fire, of course. I would go over to my friend’s house and her grandma would always shoo us out of the room if there was what we called a “kissing scene” going on, but I still remembered the over-the-top theatrics involved.
Unfortunately, there was nobody to shoo me—or anyone else watching the happy-gram bubbles—from the room now. Every eye in the Dining Hall was glued to the shiny rainbow surfaces floating above our heads.
Just as I thought I was going to sink down into the ground from pure mortification, the bubble Ari broke the kiss long enough to announce,
“You will always be my L’lorna, Kaitlyn Fellows, and no one will tear us apart. Not the Headmistress, or my parents, or any of my people. You will rule by my side as my queen when I take the throne of the Sky Lands and no one can stop me from having you!”
After this dramatic statement, the scene froze on a picture of me staring adoringly up at Ari. I was hoping the shimmering bubble would pop, but the “happy-gram” wasn’t done yet.
As the scene of Ari with me in his lap remained frozen in place, a familiar female voice that seemed to be coming from off camera (off-bubble?) announced, “So many questions and so few answers! How did the horribly scarred human girl, Kaitlyn Fellows, become a Made Nocturne? And why did the prince of the Drakes, Ari Reyes agree to feed her with his own blood? Will his people hate him now that he has announced his decision to make this little freak their queen? And will the Nocturnes turn against her too, knowing what a disgusting mutant she is? Only time will tell…”
And then the voice faded and the scene froze again, this time on an especially mortifying shot of Ari kissing me. Only kissing is perhaps too weak a word—in this case, it looked like he was trying to perform a tonsillectomy on me with his tongue.
Gross.
Not to mention utterly humiliating.
For a moment, I couldn’t say anything. Then, seeing my Coven-mates eyeing me from around the table, I finally found my voice.