Royal Message

33: Royal Message

Lara couldn't sleep properly the next day. She woke up, still wearing her clothes last night. Her worries stacking up like blocks the longer she sat on the bed thinking about Cedric.

"Argh." She hissed when she moved her shoulders. It hurts... She must have slept in an awkward position last night thinking about what happened.

Curious about the time. Lara glimpsed at the wall clock.

Gosh...

The current time is 8:30 am. That means she only slept for 2 hours.

Throwing her legs out of the bed, Lara stood up and went directly to the bathroom to freshen up. Splashing water to her face, Lara stared at her face in the mirror. She called Cedric's phone last night. Again and again, but there was no response, which was alarming.

A bad feeling loomed her chest the entire night and it didn't disappear even after she woke up. Something big was going on and she had no knowledge what it was, and why.

The phone she left on the bed suddenly rang. Lara came out of the bathroom. Her face wet and a towel on her shoulders. She wiped her face before looking at the caller ID. She groaned. A pained expression spreading on her face.

Lara smacked herself a couple of times inside her head.

Shit! Shit!

She's calling her...

Rachel is calling her.

She totally forgot to call her and Chance last night. Noah told her to call them but his reminder was lost after what happened last night.

Taking in a breath, Lara answered with an awkward smile on her face. Rachel didn't see it. But she can definitely feel the grimace on her face the moment she answered, "Rach, ha-ha-hi!"

Rachel chuckled, "Hey, sleepyhead. You sound weird. Did you sleep last night?"

"Y-Yeah! I did sleep, a little bit."

"Ah-huh. I was waiting for your call, you know."

"Yeah, sorry, I forgot."

"You forgot." 

She can imagine Rachel giving her the raised eyebrow. The teasing in her tone is pretty obvious too.

"Yeah. I forgot an important friend was visiting. I wasn't here when he came so we didn't see each other, which was unfortunate."

"True..."

The teasing in Rachel's voice now disappeared and was replaced with curiosity and concern.

"Did you call last night and apologized to him?"

"I did. I'm sorry I forgot to call you, Rach. I knew you were worried about and I..."

"Psh, no biggie. I was only concern with your safety so I wanted you to call me. Your excuse was acceptable anyway, so it's fine."

"Thank you, Rach." Relief flooded her chest. "Will you tell Chance that I'm okay?"

"Of course." Rachel said her goodbyes then ended the call. Lara sat on her bed and sighed. Good thing that was over...

Now she's done putting her friends at ease, so what's next? Her stomach growled like it heard the question itself. Right, breakfast.

Lara already fed some blood so that means she can live off of human food for the next 30 days. And since she's too lazy to cook for her late morning meal, Lara just went to the kitchen and picked out ingredients from the ref to make a protein shake.

"Hmm." Looking over the food stock she had, Lara frowned noticing her food was already dwindling out. "That settles it then." She declared. She's going out shopping later on.

Humming to herself, Lara placed all the ingredients she needed on the island counter. She sliced the avocados. Afterwards, she threw them on the blender and reached out for the milk. The box was too far from her reach, so she leaned in to get it.

Suddenly, the air hummed around her and the milk box instantaneously came to her hand, sliding on the island counter like a magnet drawn to her.

Shocked, Lara blinked and stared at the milk box then towards its former spot on the island counter. What just happened?

Lara drummed her nails on the counter as she slowly lowered the milk, deep in thought.

She knew her telekinetic powers were weak. Amongst her kind, she had the shortest range and the weakest strength compared to the others.

However, the distance of the milk box was farther than what she's used to. And she unconsciously willed the object to come to her, even in that distance, which was shocking. Did her powers get stronger or something? Well, there's only one way to test that theory... 

Lara glanced around, looking for an object to use her powers with and she saw the remote control in the living room, which was far.

The remote was on her center table and she started making estimations of its distance in her head.

Between her and the remote control was 7 or 8 meters, which is a common range for any vampire to reach. Her last official record was half meter. While the milk box was over a meter away from her.

The question is... will she able to reach the remote control, which was farther than she have ever tried before.

"Okay..."

Lara rolled her shoulders and took a deep breath. Lifting her hands toward the remote, she summoned her power again. To her surprise; the remote shook, rose up, and levitated in the air.

"Oh my Gods."

Lara couldn't believe this. After 20 years, she can finally do what normal vampire can do with their powers.

Suddenly, a knock on the door disrupted Lara's focus, and the remote fell on the couch with a plop.

Lara wiped her hands and went to the door. She wasn't expecting any visitors today. Who could it be?

"Hiyah!" To her surprise, her ever-so-smiling-neighbour, Betty, stood outside her door.

"Hi."

Seeing her surprise, Betty giggled. "Good morning, by the way. Sorry for disturbing you..."

Lara willed herself to act welcoming. "It's okay. Is there something the matter?"

"Oh, it's nothing serious, really."

"Oh."

"Anyway, I went downstairs for a jog. When I came back you had this letter lying outside your door."

"A letter?" Lara frowned when Betty handed her the said letter, wrapped in a smooth black envelope.

"Yeah, I thought, I'd inform you about it since you never know. Some nosy neighbour might try to read it, am I right?"

Lara reluctantly accepted the letter and laughed. "Right. Thank you so much, Betty."

"You're welcome!"

Lara studied the black envelope. She ran her fingers on the roughness of the paper and felt it's familiarity. Flipping the envelope, she saw the insignia of the Vampirian Royal Family sealing the flap of the letter.

Dad? A bad feeling spread across her chest.

Feeling someone's eyes on her, Lara looked up and saw Betty watching her reaction like a hawk. She immediately cleared her throat and smiled to hide the emotions on her face

"Again, thanks for this. I'll see you later, Betty."

"Okay!"

Lara closed the door and gave out a shaky breath. Leaning on the door, she stared down at the letter again.

It's an emergency letter from her father and she knew it.

When she was young, he always sends her letters like this during her time away from the castle. It was their former way of communicating with each other when she was undergoing training with Agatha in the Academy. Now that she's older, he changed the purpose of the letter into emergency ones.

Cellphones started getting popular in Velhellah and letters seemed archaic now so the vampires adjusted to the change. The upside of these letters, which she used to exchange with her father, is that only members's of the royal family can open and read its contents. 

How? Well, because it's hard to open. Especially, the seal. Without using her powers in a certain way her father taught her, no one can open it. The other reason is that, other beings wouldn't be able to read the contents of the letter even if they passed the first step. Without the blood of the Dragomir family running in their veins they will never see the message written on it.

Curious with its contents, Lara broke the wax seal using her powers. The flap of the envelope loosened and she took out the letter inside.

Sitting on the couch, Lara unfolded the letter and stared at the smooth surface of the paper. It was blank. But she didn't panic and purposely cut her finger with her fangs and stamped it on the lower right corner of the paper. Like magic, her father's massage written with his own blood appeared on the paper.

Lara read the message carefully.

"My dearest daughter,

There's a rebellion happening in Velhellah at this moment and I'm sending you this letter to ease your worries of me. I am fine, daughter, and I'm taking care of the problem, so to speak.

In the mean time, don't come home. This is for your own safety.

Take care of yourself, Lara.

Love, Father."