I'm sure I looked ridiculous, lugging a huge book around a ballroom, but Zephan wasn't letting me go anywhere and I don't think I would have trusted anyone enough to keep the book for me.

"Have you read it?" I asked Zephan.

"Yes," he said, "and I'm sure Kieran has."

"Eolande said she knew a necromancer," I said, remembering the woman's apparent nostalgia. "Who was he?"

"That," he said, smiling as though I'd asked something amusing, "is a question you'll have to ask my cousin."

Something told me that would be an awkward conversation. Kieran didn't seem like the type to reminisce about his mother. And I doubted he'd want to talk about her much to me, given that my neck still held the bruises from her earlier assault. I raised a hand, self-consciously to my throat. The shirt Jack had given me had a high collar, but this dress seemed to only skim the edge of the bruised area.

"Are you okay?" Zephan asked, his eyes clinging to where my fingertips brushed against my bruised flesh. He reached his hand out to me throat, skimming his fingertips against mine to stroke the side of my neck. "Does it hurt?"

"Only when I swallow," I said. His fingers lingered against me. "Or when I touch it." I looked at him pointedly. He withdrew his hand slowly, turning the gesture into a hovering caress.

I'm ashamed to admit that the gesture endeared him to me. I'd been living my entire life as a social outcast. Even during peak hour, when the train was packed so tightly you could scarcely breathe for lack of room, people still flinched away from me. Perfect strangers knew that there was something wrong with me, something unnatural, and they moved around me as though even the most fleeting of contact was abhorrent to them. I'd grown used to being treated like that.

So, when Zephan touched me, not just a passing contact, unavoidable because of forced proximity, but an actual caress, I couldn't treat it as though it were nothing. It was contact. If not human contact, at least it was some form of physical touch, a touch which had been sadly lacking in my life.

People talk about love and affection, about intimacy and friendship, as though it's something that takes place entirely in the mind; or if they're of a slightly more romantic disposition, they talk about the heart and soul. I don't think that's so. I'd certainly felt the lack of all those things and, while my heart ached for understanding and my mind felt keenly the absence of companionship, it was my skin that let me know I was truly alone. Like Rogue, from the X-men, I was alone from the skin all the way down, rather than the other way around.

The fact that Zephan not only actively reached out to touch me, but seemed reluctant to stop, was more important to me than he'll ever know. Even Kieran had only touched me through fabric. I wondered how he'd react to the soft press of my body, skin against skin.

I blushed, glancing up at Zephan. I had that awful, gut wrenching moment you get when you realize that your thoughts might be entirely too apparent in your expression. Thankfully, he wasn't looking at me.

"Would you like a drink?" he asked, raising his hand at a passing waiter. I use the term waiter, loosely, of course. The passing servant was wearing a deeply hooded black cloak, over their black suit, and I wondered if it was compulsory for servants to wear the hood.

"Non-alcoholic," I said, quickly.

"I'll have uiske beatha," Zephan said to the man in the cloak. The man was only slightly shorter than me and I began to see why the Fae had had a hard time accepting that I was a necromancer. My body bore a closer resemblance to a brownie, it seemed. "And a..." Zephan raised a questioning brow at me.

"What do you have?" I asked the brownie.

"We can provide whatever you wish," he said, hesitantly.

"Well, that narrows it down," I said. I'd meant my words to be light and joking with the brownie, but he cringed away from me, as though he was expecting me to hit him. I felt my shoulders sag in disappointment. It would be too much to hope for to be accepted by everyone. "A lemonade would be nice," I said, trying to keep the sadness out of my voice.

The brownie left, to get our drinks, and we fell into an uneasy silence, punctuated by a lazy violin. I shifted the book in front of me and folded my arms over it. I leant my weight on my right leg. Then I shifted my weight to my left. Adolescent teenager to the extreme. I pushed my fringe out of my face and tried to look like I was having a good time at the ball.

"What's with this music?" I asked, watching the Fae walk around each other in complex circles. That's all their dancing was, apparently. Just as poncey and formulaic as expected.

"This is Spiral," Zephan frowned. "They're huge."

"Ahuh," I looked over at the string quartet, breakin' it down in the corner. "Very cool."

"I suppose you think the human world does better."

"Yeah, actually. At least our songs have meaning."

"What, like 'I've been missing your strawberry kisses?'" Zephan asked, critically. "Because that's really deep."

"How do you know Nikki Webster?" I asked, staring at him in shock.

"Research," he said, cryptically.

"You researched Nikki Webster?"

"Drinks," he said, as the brownie appeared in front of us. He took the glasses off the brownie's tray and handed me my lemonade. It had a twist of actual lemon in it, and the bubbles clung to it like its dying breath.

"I'm not letting this go," I said. I took a gulp of my drink and felt the bubbles explode across my tongue.

"When Kieran announced he was bringing a necromancer over," Zephan said, scowling down at me, "I had one of my aides put together a package on your world."

"And they felt Nikki Webster was an important part of our cultural history?"

"Didn't she sing at your world sporting contest?" he frowned.

"Yes," I said slowly, "but that was more because she was cute and could sing. It wasn't, you know, because it was meaningful or anything. The whole point of her music was that it was just fun."

"And 'fun' counts as meaningful, now?"

"Kind of, yeah." I tried to think of a way to explain it properly and realized I needed an analogy. "It's like food," I said.

"Food?"

I nodded. "Sometimes you eat for nutritional value, right? That's where the deep stuff comes in, but sometimes you just need candy."

"And Webster is candy?"

"She was, yeah. But you're a bit behind the times on that one."

"Oh?"

"Actually," I said, "massively behind the times."

"Really?" He knocked back the rest of his drink and handed it off to someone in the crowd. "I'll have to have words with Greer."

I sipped at my lemonade and tried to ignore the fact that I'd gotten someone in trouble. It was their own fault for not doing their research properly. Zephan ran a hand over his hair and smiled. His smile was a little tight at the edges, as though he was forcing himself to smile for my benefit.

"Zephan," Kieran said, angrily. I turned to see him standing behind me. The gold buttons gleamed on his shirt, shining light into my eyes. "Laurel," he said, curtly.

"Hi," I said, smiling up at Kieran. He blinked down at me, clearly surprised. I felt my smile slip at the edges.

"You can't just go walking around the court," Kieran said.

"It was a scheduled tour," Zephan said.

"It wasn't scheduled with me." Kieran took a step closer to Zephan, and I was sandwiched between them.

"I wasn't aware," Zephan hissed, "that I answered to you."

"No, you don't answer to anybody, do you?" Kieran snapped.

"It's better than answering to everyone for everything."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think you know what I mean," Zephan said.

"Well, I don't," I pointed out from between their chests. The two men looked down at me. "Yeah, I've been here the whole time," I reminded them.

"I didn't forget," Kieran said, taking a step back. I looked pointedly at the buttons on his shirt, since that was the only part of him that I'd seen during their little discussion.

"I apologize for putting you in the middle of this situation," Zephan said. I wasn't sure if he'd intended it to be a reference to my physical location between the arguing men or the fact that they were arguing over my tour of the castle.

"He just showed me around," I told Kieran. "It's not really that big of a deal."

"Sure it wasn't," Kieran said, glaring at Zephan.

"I wanted to show her my court," Zephan said, obviously baiting Kieran with his obnoxious assumption of his right to the throne.

"Fine," Kieran said, not taking the bait. "I'll show her my court tomorrow." He smiled acidly at the other man before turning to glare at me. "Since you're so fond of books," he said, eyeing the volume in my arms, "I'll meet you in the library at nine."

"Wait," I called as he spun on his heel. He glanced over his shoulder at me. "In the morning?"

I should have gone straight to sleep, since Kieran was taking me on a tour in the morning. Mornings, I have to admit, have never been a particularly strong point of mine. I was one of those people who'd spend the first few hours of the day glaring at the sun around a pair of dark shades and drinking cup after cup of tea. It was my wakey, wakey morning ritual, and I stuck to it religiously.

If I expected to be anything resembling alert when I saw Kieran in the morning, I'd need to be up hours in advance preparing. I'd set the alarm on my phone and rested it on the dressing table across the room. I'd have to get up to turn it off, so there was less chance that I'd just roll over and go back to sleep.

Instead of going to sleep though, I was reading the book which Zephan had given me. I read it, curled up in the too-soft bed, wrapped in blankets against the cold night air. But the blankets couldn't protect me from the chill that wound itself through my spine as I read about the Deadly Aristocracy.

Even the introduction to the volume showed plainly the hatred that the rest of the Fae held for my people. People like me. It was like necromancers were these worlds Nazi's - I smiled bitterly as I read the introduction - or the Jews in Nazi Germany.

To call these books merely diaries is an oversimplification that history demands. In order to gather these three volumes together, the common denominator has been factored, and indeed, they are all, in some small way, diaries of the dead, but they are not diaries only.

The first of these volumes, the diary of Kimmo Aho, is, of course, the most historically significant document to come to light since the drawing of the veil. Aho's actions, as the king's own secretary, prove the waspish cunning that lurks behind even the most innocent of appearances.

The second of these volumes, the diary of Declan Hayward, focuses almost exclusively on the art of death magic itself, with only personal reflections on the rituals' practice to make it any more than a guide book. Indeed, it is this historian's opinion that Hayward was attempting to create a book to guide future generations at the time of his exile. The fact that he was not able to carry these poisonous teachings into the new world should be comfort to those of us unable to cross beyond the veil.

The last of these volumes, the diary of Petra Tylsova, is a diary truly, written by a very young girl, almost exclusively concerned with boys, rather than politics. This diary has been provided to show what some Deadly Sympathisers argue is the world of an innocent. However, it is plain to see that, while she does seem to deal with problems similar to those of our younger brethren, her every action is clouded be the fact that she communes with the dead. This poisons not only her young mind, but her actions and even, as you will see, her relationships.

Each of these diaries has been meticulously annotated, so that even the novice to this area of history may walk away with a sound knowledge of the abomination that was the Deadly Aristocracy.

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Sorry I didn't update yesterday. I just needed a break to lay in bed all day and watch Black Sails and Outlander. But updates will be regular, Wednesday and Saturday.

What did you think of this chapter? Should Laurel be getting involved with Zephan?

Don't forget to vote if you enjoyed it :)

Til next time,

x zuz