Selena

The older woman, Mandy, who introduced herself as the head housekeeper, led me up probably seven flights of stairs. She kept her pace brisk, not rushing but not slowing down either. I put my hand on the wall to help push myself farther up and wondered how a woman in her sixties could climb this monstrous castle every single day, likely multiple times a day, without pausing to catch her breath.

“Here we are,” she announced, having reached the floor.

I stumbled to catch my breath. Still four steps to go. “Oh, goodie,” I said. “I was just about to crawl.”

She chuckled and adjusted a black ribbon around her head that kept her gray hair away from her face. Blue eyes on me, she extended her hand. I took it and she practically dragged me up the rest of the way. Boy, this woman packed some serious muscle. Her grip was firm, her palms calloused; her smile seemed genuine.

We walked through a dimly lit hallway that seemed to have motion sensors. The lights blinked on as we moved toward the end to reach a door made of wood on the right. I ran my hand over it before she stuck an ancient key inside and turned the lock. “I’ve never seen a wooden door before. In real life, I mean. I’ve only read about them.”

Our architecture had changed ever since the Cy had come, and natural resources were protected. The Cy race had taught us how to produce alternative building material, namely plasmatic black doors, the same kind they used in the habitat but more solid. What good did it do us anyway? The volcanoes had erupted despite our efforts to conserve energy and protect nature. Global temperatures dipped to about twelve degrees Celsius or about fifty Fahrenheit. So where Los Angeles’s nighttime summer temperature used to run at about sixty-something Fahrenheit, now, during the Ice Age, we were always in the thirties or below.

Mandy didn’t respond about the wooden door, though I wished she had, because I wanted her to talk about the castle and maybe a little bit about its lord. “I feel like I’m in medieval times.”

“The Dark Ages, dear,” she mumbled under her breath and swept a hand to indicate the modern room. On our side, a desk and vanity shared the wall with the door. Black curtains partially hid a small window on the right. The bed, dressed in a gray thermal throw with white pillows, took up the biggest wall across from us. The bathroom was on the left. All in all, a modern, efficient, and cold interior not so different from my own bedroom.

“You no like?” she asked, a hand on her hip.

“I like. It’s just that I expected…well, not sure what I expected.”

“A French parlor with purple curtains and red velvet bedsheets? Maybe a naked man with chiseled abs sprawled across the bed, begging you to use him?”

My eyes widened. It felt awkward, as if my schoolteacher was talking about naked men. I giggled and nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

“We keep it simple around here. If you’re used to extra amenities, you won’t find them here. Please be sure to conserve electricity, hot water, and heat. As for men, virgins don’t last long around the castle. There are men available downstairs. With your looks, honey, you can take your pick.”

“I’m only staying the night.”

“Sure you are.”

Mandy gave me hope. I walked to the window. The room was so cold, I half expected icicles would form on the ceiling. “There’s heat?”

She grunted. “Heat and power are conserved and triggered by motion sensors. So if you’re walking around aimlessly, they’ll attempt to heat the entire room, including the bathroom.”

I gave her a blank stare. She pointed at the floor, then at the adjacent walls. “We use water to heat the castle. It runs through the walls and heats from down and around us.” She opened the bathroom door. “If you’re inside there, make sure to close the door. If you’re in your chamber, make sure you close the bathroom door.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Very good.” She nodded in approval. “The reason it’s so cold now is because this part of the castle isn’t used but for our lord down the hall, who doesn’t need heat.”

Their lord was hot enough. All mysterious, raspy man-voice drifting from under his cloak. I kept that to myself.

“I hadn’t the time to warm up the chambers for you,” she continued.

“Oh no, it’s fine. I’m used to it.”

“The cold?”

“I did sit on the iceberg out there. So this is warm enough.”

She smiled and pointed at the closet near the bathroom. “Towels are there. By the time you clean up, I’ll have some clothes for you. Do you wear dresses or pants?”

I had been wearing pants since Mom died. And black. Always black. I mourned her that way. The clothes I put on every day reminded me of my loss. And my grim future with Diego. I’d probably wear a black wedding dress. “Pants. Black if you have some.”

Mandy palmed the door.

“Can I ask you something?”

She nodded, hand on her hip again. I felt like she had shit to do, and I was taking up her time. Probably true since I’d sort of flown into her schedule unannounced just before dinnertime. “What can you tell me about your dragon lord?”

“Many things.”

“Okay, very helpful.”

She scrunched up her nose. “I’ll send Belle for you. Mm-hm. Annabelle will give you a tour. Dinner is at eleven.”

* * *

Showered but not dressed, I wrapped the brown towel around my body and took a deep breath, then opened the bathroom door. Cold air whooshed inside. I slammed it back closed. Forget the room. The bathroom heated up from the steam of the shower. Not seeing a hamper, I kicked my dirty clothes into the corner and sat on the floor.

Heat warmed my butt, making me want to curl up in here and sleep. If I slept, would the motion sensors keep the room warm or freeze me because I wasn’t moving? I wondered if Belle had brought my clothes. I didn’t even know what time it was. Was it dinnertime already? Should I hurry up and get dressed? Nah. Belle would announce herself to me. She probably hadn’t made it to my chamber yet.

Would Lord Lancelot—I’d secretly call him Lance—make it to my chamber tonight? I had offered him money, and, in a way, my virginity. He didn’t seem interested in money, but he seemed to consider my virginity, which was fine with me. I only held on to it because everyone in the habitat knew it belonged to Diego. Cyborgs didn’t court me.

For that reason alone, I wanted Lance to take it away. I wondered if that would be enough to derail Diego from marrying me. Probably not. He wanted the whiskey line, and upon my father’s death, he would inherit the entire business. I was a living, breathing investment for him, and Diego was a smart businessman.

As if my current one-night arrangement was any better, my logical brain told me. Essentially, I was a modern concubine for the modern medieval castle lord for the duration of the night. Still, a far better arrangement than a permanent marriage to Diego. Diego wasn’t a good man. Lance seemed distant, cold, but not evil. He could’ve sent me back. He could’ve left me on the iceberg.

“Hello?” a voice said, and someone knocked on the door.

I stood and held my towel, then opened the door. A tall, slender blonde with big blue eyes walked inside and kicked the door closed. I put her at about eighteen. She handed me a heap of black clothes. “I’m Belle. Your keeper.”

“My keeper?”

“Guardian. I’ll show you around.”

“You mean a guide.”

“I mean what Mandy told me, hon. She said keeper, so that’s what we call me.”

My lips turned up. “We should probably do what she said.”

“It’s for the best.” She smiled and looked around the bathroom. “We’re sort of scrambling on what to do with you. The pack is holding a meeting.”

The pack? I frowned. What a strange choice of words to describe…a committee, I supposed. “I didn’t know there was anything to be done with me.”

She giggled. “Our lord is considering your request. He needs some doing, if you know what I mean. Hasn’t taken a lover since I’ve known him. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“I won’t.”

“Are you interested?”

“I don’t even know him.” She was trying to fix me up with a cloak. How could I be interested in a cloak?

“Well, his name is Lancelot. Behind his back, we call him Lance. He stands at sixty feet, with a wingspan of about sixty-one feet. He weighs two tons. Like, just his neck is fourteen feet long you know? He’s huge.”

“Damn, we’re talking feet not inches.”

Belle wagged her eyebrows.

I’d hoped to hear about the man, not the dragon. For some reason, I no longer feared the dragon. I smiled. “How is the man of the castle?”

“Oh!” Her eyes widened. “Right. I don’t know. He keeps to himself. He likes order, I can tell you that.”

Hm. “Is it eleven yet?”

“Almost.”

Oh shit. I slapped a hand over my mouth. “My Nano!”

Belle mimicked my expression, her eyes wide. “What the fuck is Nano?”

“My robot.” I found a pair of pants and a warm T-shirt and pulled a world-class real-wool sweater over it, then slid my feet into boots a size smaller than my feet. Ouch. “Thank you,” I said and clicked my heels. All done.

“Wasn’t sure about the boots. Do they fit?”

“Yes.” I swung open the door and ran to the window. The first thing that caught my eye wasn’t Nano on the iceberg, but the glimpse of a corner of the habitat on the shore. Small blue lights, like stars, twinkled inside the plasma dome. The lights coming from cars in traffic appeared as colorful painted strokes on canvas. If I’d had binoculars, I could’ve tried to find my window from here.

Belle joined me. “Do you miss it already?”

“Nah.”

“I want to go there sometime,” she said.

My gaze lowered to Nano. It seemed nothing more than a scrap of white metal next to my bronze car. But Nano was an excellent robot, and I could use its company. “I’m sorry, what?” I asked Belle, thinking about how I could get the robot.

“I said I’d like to go there sometime. I hear there’s old movies playing on the big screens.”

“There are. But the place isn’t what it seems.”

“What do you mean?”

From here, the habitat looked like a little patch of utopian oasis amid the snow-covered ruins of a city. “On the inside, it’s rotten,” I said. “My mom used to say this new society is cold and ruthless. There’s no place for arts or for any creativity. It’s all about doing what you should do for the greater good of all.”

“Huh,” Belle said, and we left it at that.

I followed her down the stairs, noticing the vigor in her step. When we reached the bottom, I put my hand on the wall, needing some rest, but Belle happily walked on, her long blonde ponytail swinging between her shoulder blades.

I caught up with her. “This place is huge,” I said.

“It’s pretty easy to get around. You sleep in what we call the tower. This is the east hall.” She pointed left. “That’s the library. I think the lord received you there, no?”

“Yes, I remember the door.” A big wooden door with a dragon carved into it.

Chatter drifted from farther down the hall. “How many people live here?”

“Too many, if you ask everyone.” She chuckled. “But we make it work. And now we’re entering the sitting areas. Ex-cons around here call this Gen Pop.” We entered a well-lit large room occupied by about twenty bare-chested men in gray or black sweatpants. I nearly tripped over my feet. The room went silent. They stared at me, and I stared back at their bodies. All flesh, muscle, and bone, not a single cyborg among them. A strange sight for me.

“Hey, there,” one of them said. “You must be Selena from the habitat.”

Belle took my hand in hers and pulled. “That’s some of the pack. The rest of them are heading out for a supply run.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I stole a glance as we passed through the area. The men were attractive and young, sure, but I wondered about their state of mind. It was freezing outside, and here they socialized shirtless. When one of them winked at me, I turned my head away so I wouldn’t fall on my face.

Belle led me into a great hall, a room the size of a mini soccer field where oil paintings of nearly every major city in the United States before the Ice Age hung on the walls. I tugged Belle’s hand so I could stop and admire them. Art was so rare in the habitat. Creativity had been stifled by the focus on technology and the advancement of the society as a whole. If it didn’t serve the society, it wasn’t necessary, and the Cy had deemed the arts unnecessary. That was one of the reasons Mom couldn’t quite fit in, and likely one of the reasons I’d never felt like I belonged there. I didn’t have a talent, per se, but I loved accessorizing, adding trinkets to my purses, decorating my boots, pinning brooches to my shirts, and making my own jewelry.

Belle tugged my hand and picked up her pace just as, once again cloaked, Lord Lance stood from the twenty-foot table at the end of the hall. His friend joined him, wearing linen pants and a matching shirt, with polished boots. I realized he’d actually dressed up and I hadn’t. In fact, my hair was still wet from the shower.

Self-conscious, I joined them at the table and tried not to stare at the scaly indigo skin on Lance’s neck. I didn’t stare at his face, which was partially covered by his cloak. He could probably see through the top part obscuring most of his face. I could see his black mouth. Dios Mío, what hides under the cloak?

His friend introduced himself as Nentres, then he glanced behind me, and his gaze stayed there. Belle had quickly disappeared, it seemed, and so I turned around to see what he was looking at. A huge antique clock graced the wall.

“Ms. Salazar,” Lance said, “do you know how to read the old clocks? The ones with hands like this one?”

“It reads twenty-three twenty.” Shit. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.” I stared at my plate, feeling like a kid about to get chastised.

The lord grunted and uncovered a large oval plate. He wore black leather gloves over his hands. Under my bangs, steam rose from the huge baked fish on the plate. My mouth watered. I picked up my fork, ready to stab the thing. Nentres and Lance both leaned in to sniff. Weird, but when in Rome…I leaned in too and sniffed. Fresh-baked fish. “Mmm,” I said. Lance watched me, I believed. “What? Smells good to me.”

Nentres wiggled his nose. “I’m fine with it.”

“Mandy,” Lance bit out, and I nearly jumped out of my chair.

Light on her feet, Mandy came through the door on my right. She stood by the table, hands clasped behind her. “Yes, my lord.”

“This is salmon.” He pointed.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “I covered it with plenty of lemon like you asked and baked it myself.”

“I ordered halibut. The fresh catch of the day.”

“Oh.”

“Mm-hm.”

She stood there unsure what to do or perhaps waiting for further orders. Nentres leaned back, a smirk playing on his face. I could only see Lance’s mouth and a jaw covered in indigo dragon scales. His pinched lips and flexing jaw told me he was annoyed.

“Is there something wrong with salmon?” I asked him.

“I ordered halibut.”

“Is that all?”

He tilted his head. “That is all.”

I shrugged. “Can we eat salmon anyway?”

“No, we cannot. We eat halibut tonight.”

“But there’s no halibut. There is salmon on the table.”

“Exactly my point, Ms. Salazar. Today, I flew one hundred and fifty-seven miles to catch a halibut. I caught a big one, handed it over to the kitchens, and instructed the entire crew on how to prepare it and serve it at eight. My guests are eating at midnight. The wrong fish.”

“I don’t know about Nentres, but I eat protein bars, cloned chicken that tastes like plastic, and cucumbers grown in the laboratory. Fresh fish, salmon or otherwise, sounds good to me.”

Lance tapped his fingers on the table. “Mandy, bake the halibut for the pack. Make it happen.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Tomorrow, I will go out again and fetch something. We will eat the fresh catch at eight. I want only the best for my guest.”

“Of course.”

“Not yesterday’s fish.”

“Got it.”

Lance picked up the large knife and fork, carved the fish, and placed a nice juicy filet on my plate. Then he poured lemon juice on it. I noted how meticulous he was, how carefully he scooped rice so that when he added it next to the filet, it made a perfect hill. He sprinkled mint over the side of my plate, then twisted it so that the filet faced me. “Perfect,” he said. “Let’s hope it tastes as good as it looks.”

“You should’ve been a chef,” I said.

“I was a chef.”

I glanced at Nentres as if looking for confirmation, but he watched Lance arrange his plate, albeit with larger portions.

“You mean before the Ice Age?”

“Yes.”

“A dragon chef. How unusual.”

“I wasn’t always a dragon.”

That got Nentres’s attention. He snapped his head up, and I presumed they locked eyes. The corner of Lance’s lips dipped in a frown. I glanced between them. “What?”

Lance arranged his plate and forked some rice. He tasted it, moved it around his mouth, then pointed at my plate. “How is your meal?”

I wanted to know about the chef and the dragon. What did he mean he wasn’t always a dragon? How could he not always have been a dragon? Granted, the only dragon things I knew came from mythology and fiction. They weren’t supposed to exist anyhow, but then again, neither were the aliens. The Cy had made contact with us before I was born, so I accepted aliens as a regular occurrence, but it hadn’t always been so. Half a millennia ago, we didn’t know aliens existed. When the news of extraterrestrials making contact first leaked to the public, masses walked the streets with “Apocalypse Now” signs, and, according to our history books, the government barely managed to contain the mass fear. It took years for the world to accept that these life-forms indeed existed so that life on Earth could move past it. When the Cy helped in the volcanoes’ aftermath, we grew dependent on cyborg parts, and comfortable with the Cy.

Nobody had known anything about Creatures of Earth either. They had appeared after the Ice Age, but people were too busy trying to survive to make a big deal out of it. If aliens existed, why not magical creatures? And here I sat having dinner with two of the four living dragons. “Where are you from?” I asked. “Before the Ice Age, I mean.”

Lance picked up my fork and offered me a bite of rice. I opened my mouth, eyes locked on his mouth, and I swore I saw his lips tilt up in a smile. Swallowing, I said, “It tastes good to me. There’s a spice in it I don’t recognize.”

“Saffron.”

I realized he’d evaded my question. I opened my mouth to ask again, but he forked a piece of salmon and offered it to me. I ate from his hand like this while Lance took the liberty and occasionally shared my fork to feed himself too.