Palace

I don’t want to cry in front of Grip--that’s his name, I found out when we got to the car and the driver greeted him, and me. I sit staring out the window as the city slowly crawls by. We are going so slowly, I think I could just get out and run away, and they would never find me, especially not here, in this mass of people crowding the sidewalks and walking shoulder to shoulder.

I know that Grip’s nose has to be highly sensitive, though, and eventually, he’d track me down. Even if I stayed in a crowd or went into a building, the thing about running away from a wolf is that it’s almost impossible, unless you run through water, and I wasn’t going to make it to the river before he caught up to me. 

Besides, where would I go? How would I be any better off on the streets than I would be at Kurts Palace? I wouldn’t be, and then, whatever agreement my parents came up with this powerful man would be broken. They’d be left to suffer the consequences.

Grip is sitting in the back of the car with me, which makes me unbelievably uncomfortable, but I’m not abou to say anything to him about it. I’m not about to say anything to him at all. He smells like expensive cologne and aftershave, like a rich man who has lathered himself in power this morning before he left the fortress to go out into the world and do a bit of business. I am tempted to turn my head and look at him, but I don’t do it because I don’t want to look into his steely eyes. I think he is on his phone, texting someone, maybe Mr. Kurts himself. Maybe he is telling his boss, “I have the girl. She is not as pretty as you think. She’s pretty useless, in fact. I will drop her off on the corner somewhere and let some homeless people take her in.” My eyes start to flicker in his direction, but I stop them and refocus out the window.

As we get out of the downtown area, we are able to drive a little faster. There are less cars, less people in general, and eventually we are out of town. There are houses here, but they are far apart and large. Most of them are hidden behind walls or trees. Then, I can hardly see any buildings at all and we are away from the city, driving through the forest, deep into Kurts territory.

I don’t have to have ever visited here before to know that all of this belongs to the powerful family that has just taken over my life.

We wind our way down narrow roads through tall trees, gnarled with age and dressed in brown leaves, crinkly and dead from the winter. We turn again, and up ahead I see a large gate. This must be the entrance to the palace. I wonder how many other houses might be behind the gate. Is their entire pack housed back here? In dormitories, like most other packs? Or do they have their own individual homes? Our pack was a mixture of dorms and homes, and my father let each wolf decide where he or she was more comfortable. Mostly, married couples with children stayed in homes. Singles or those who had lost their mate were in the dorm houses. Not all of them were within the gated wall. I wish they had been now. Those on the exterior were the first to die when the attack came. In the end, the gate hadn’t mattered too much, but it might’ve saved more of our friends, our family, our pack.

The large iron gates open automatically as we approach. I assume the driver has pushed a button to get them to do so. We wind up a path, and a huge house comes into view on the hill in front of us. It’s so massive, I can’t see all of it from this angle out the window. It’s made of dark brown brick mostly, with white wooden trip and a large front porch with pillars. In the back, there are other buildings I can see as we wind around. I imagine there are garages and places to store all sorts of man toys. If there are other houses behind the gate, they must be down other roads. I see a few winding off through the trees like snakes as we close in on the main house.

The driver does not pull up to the front door. Instead, he pulls around back and stops near another large porch, though it is nothing compared to the front. I get it now. I’m not a guest in this house; I am the help. Why would I enter through the front door?

A woman in black and white maid’s uniform stands outside on the porch, her hands folded in front of her white apron. She has dark hair, pulled up in a bun with her white cap on top. She is older than me, probably by ten or fifteen years, but not old enough to be my mother. She doesn’t smile at all, and her face wears a worried expression as the car stops and Grip gets out.

“Get your things,” he says to me over his shoulder.

My mom has packed everything I own into my school backpack, so it isn’t difficult at all for me to carry everything I own as I slide out of the car. I have been trying not to think about Mom and Dad as we drove, but it’s been hard. Our tearfilled goodbye has left my heart heavy. I can’t think of them now because I don’t want to walk into the Kurts Palace for the first time with tears in my eyes.

My feet crunch over gravel as I follow behind Grip. The driver moves the car away, probably to park in one of the garages I can see from here, or maybe to take back around to the front of the house in case Mr. Kurts or someone important needs a ride somewhere. I don’t turn to watch him go. Instead, I keep my eyes focused on the ground directly in front of my feet so that I don’t trip. I can imagine making my grand entrance with a giant bruise on my face after face planting in the yard.

When we reach the steps, Grip says, “Elvira, this is Aria.” He half turns to gesture at me but keeps his hands folded behind him. “Take her up to her quarters, get her a uniform, and explain her duties to her, please.”

Elvira bows her head deeply, as if Grip is her master. “Yes, sir,” she says, not looking him in the face.

Grip walks on ahead of us, and Elvira waits for me to catch up with her head still pointed at the ground. I wonder how hard it will be for me to remember not to look anyone in the eye. I’m used to being the one the servants have to bow to, not that I ever insisted on that from anyone, but it has always been custom for servants to be subservient to the pack leaders. Even the other members of the pack are supposed to take such a stance with the pack leaders--the Alpha and Luna, the Beta and his wife, and all of their children. It will be hard for me to remember these rules since I have always been on the other side of them.

“Come with me,” Elvira says, as soon as Grip is inside of the house. I follow along behind her, my backpack slung over my shoulder. We enter through a different door, not the one he used. We are not even good enough to use the same doors as the guy who does the dirty work for Mr. Kurts.

I follow Elvira into the kitchen. She doesn’t say anything to the women working here, and they say nothing to her. Their uniforms are different, all white with thin blue stripes on their shirts, and I get the impression kitchen help and maids don’t mix. We go out a side door and up a narrow staircase.

We go up two flights and then down a narrow hallway where there is a door that I imagine opens to the third story. I noticed a door about halfway up, which I imagine was to the second floor. We don’t go through this third story door, though. Instead, we go up an even more narrow flight and through a small door.

Here, there is an even more narrow hallway with two doors on either side. Elvira goes to the second one on the left and pushes it open. “These are your quarters,” she says. She gestures for me to step inside, and I do.

The room is bigger than my room in the apartment but still tiny, and there are two twin beds on either side of a window that looks out on the woods. From here, all I can see is the tops of trees. There’s a dresser near the door and a closet on the other side of the room. I can’t see inside the cracked door, but I can picture a dozen uniforms the same as Elvira’s hung there.

“Your uniform is on your bed,” Elvira says, gesturing at one of the twin beds. They have matching golden-yellow blankets and are made perfectly… like an expert has tucked in the blankets and sheets. I have no idea how to do that. I hope there is some allowance for a learning curve here because I am going to need it. 

“Your roommate, Mim, is downstairs in the library working. Once you get dressed, you can head down to join her. She will give you directions today. The library is on the bottom floor. Go through the kitchen. Go out the middle door, take the third hallway to your left, and the library is the fifth door on your right.”

I hadn’t been listening when she first started giving directions, so I wasn’t sure I’d caught all of that, but I had to do my best to commit it all to memory because Elvira was gone, closing the door behind her, leaving me all alone, holding a backpack with all of my belongings, standing in a strange house, having absolutely no idea where I was or what I was doing.

There’s no way I can keep the tears back now.