Party

"I don't understand. It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but I don't understand. Who is this party for?"

Juri didn't look at Marino while she asked her silly question. She didn't trust herself to do so. The overwhelming enormity of what she was looking at was such that she doesn't trust herself to do much of anything but crane her neck and stare.

There was a lot to stare at, and it made her question the nature of their current living situation all over again. While wandering the halls of Marino's residence, she had wondered more than once how such a thing was possible. Not only the house, either, but how any of it was possible.

Magnificent homes, cobblestone streets, even gaslight street lamps, for God's sake. Marino had explained the basics of how the chain around her neck worked but nothing about how an entire society could exist below the sea.

One that didn't appear to be waterlogged in any sense of the word. She was aware that there was plenty about this new world that she didn't understand but never had it hit home as well as it did looking up at the site of the unexpected party.

The place was the size of three of Marino's mansions combined, one stacked up right up against the other. It was built out of what looked like massive bricks of stone, the faces of which were carved with patterns and pictures so intricate she longed to put her hands upon them and learn whatever secrets they were put there to keep.

After an attempted count that she quickly lost count of, Juri estimated that the palace had to have close to one hundred windows and that just in the front. Behind them, she saw dozens upon dozens of people, some of which she pegged as fellow toppers and some of which were creatures she couldn't have identified with a gun to her head.

She couldn't guess what the ones on the upper floors were doing and maybe didn't want to, but the activity on the ground floor was obvious even to a novice such as her; they were dancing. The courtyard flanking the front of the place was rich with tinkling music, and inside there were at least twenty couples dancing.

Juri's heart swelled, and she thought of all of the period pieces she had seen where dances just like this one had taken place. Never had it occurred to her that she might be a real-life witness to such a thing and seeing it before her made her heart soar. It was only the feeling of a hand on the back of her neck that broke the spell.

The fingers running along her exposed skin were just as cold as they had been before but this time it didn't bother her in the slightest. It was amazing how quickly a person could become used to a thing; even more amazing how quickly she could get well on her way to liking a thing she had always sworn to detest.

"Does a party have to be for something?" Marino asked quietly, his thumb still stroking along the line where her skin and her hair met. She shivered, and he lowered his suit jacket around her shoulders, mistaking the reason for her shiver entirely.

So then maybe he can't read minds, after all, she thought to herself. She smiled, and after a tenuous battle she was not at all sure she would win, kept from bursting into laughter. She turned to face him head on and had to crane her neck up to meet his face head-on.

It might have been her imagination or the dancing lamp post lights, but she was pretty sure that his eyes were actually twinkling.

"For most people, yes. For you guys? I have no idea."

"Us guys? In your mind, who falls under that umbrella?" He asked, his smile faltering ever so slightly.

"I don't know," she said honestly, "whoever it is that lives in this weirdo community at the bottom of the ocean. I don't pretend to understand. Where I'm from, the days of human auctions are long gone. It's sort of barbaric, don't you think?"

Juri was honestly surprised by the first few beats of silence. In a shockingly little time she had grown comfortable enough to forget for a little while that she and Marino had come together under those exact circumstances.

Then she remembered, and her heart soared about a thousand floors. Leave it to her to screw up the first good thing that had come her way since the sinking of her ship. After a short battle, she was destined to lose, she dropped her eyes from Marino's and waited for the inevitable.

His temper would flare up again with a vengeance, and this time she would deserve it, or at least in part. He would drag her back into his odd carriage just as soon as he had helped her out of it and she would never see the outside of his prison home again.

What he did instead was so surprising to her almost started crying right there in her pretty party dress.

"Yes, Juri, I do. I think that's the perfect word for it. Perhaps we'll discuss it again later on, once the party is done. For now, let's go to the party. I think you might find it more to your liking than expected," he said, finally letting his hand drop from the nape of her neck.

She was hit with an urge to grab his hand and put it back again. It was a battle she won, but just barely. Incredibly, her entire body was tingling now with the mere suggestion of his body touching hers. She thought of what she remembered of the Dracula stories and wondered if she and Marino were linked somehow.

They had fallen into bed together, unexpectedly but done it all the same. Maybe that was all it took to form a bond between them so that no matter what happened she would always want him, at least a little.

Walking up the extravagant front path to her first ever genuine ball, the idea wasn't so terribly difficult to believe. It was something she wanted to explore, and she was sure she wouldn't get it out of her head all night. She was sure, that was until Marino opened the door and she got her first look at the palatial homes inside.

"Oh! Oh my God, Marino, it's beautiful!"

"I suppose it is, and I'm glad you like it, but the decor isn't why I brought you," Marino answered.

He wasn't laughing, not yet, but Juri could hear the smile in his voice, and again she had to resist the urge to jump on him right then and there. It was the physical attraction, sure, but now it was more than that, too. There was no doubt in her mind that he meant for her to have a good time.

Despite everything, he wanted to please her. Come to think of it, he sounded almost desperate to please her, his own version of atonement for crimes the two of them were still on too shaky a ground to discuss.

She looked at his face closely and saw that he was looking pointedly at something across the room from where they stood. No, she corrected herself with swelling joy building in her chest and threatening to eat her alive, not something. Someone.

"She's okay! I can't believe it, Marino, she's okay!" Juri cried excitedly.