As soon as the door clicked shut behind Ada, Arabella sprung off her chair and launched a scouting session throughout her room.
She ruffled the bed sheets and flapped them one more time before lifting the heavy mattress with much difficulty to see if something lay between it and the bed frame.
Every box, drawer and surface beneath furniture was passed through the teeth of a thin comb.
The bathroom was next in line. Arabella inspected every surface, and pot within that space, lingering on the bathtub for a little longer than the rest considering it was there that her locket was found only sometime before that moment.
The tap water ran and felt the same as it usually did. Nothing seemed out of place, no matter the number of times she went over everything searching for… Anything that would stand out.
What could Edna truly have been doing there the previous evening?
When nothing turned up, Arabella stood stiff, biting at her nail, while thinking back to her second trip to KasselMoon.
Memories of Edna rushing through the dimly lit streets with a witch flooded her mind then the words of the maid echoed within the bounds of her skull once more.
Words about how she'd make Arabella suffer and pay for… Taking what wasn't hers.
With that in the back of her mind, she resigned to sitting back down at the table and doing her best to put some food in her body which turned out to be a tedious task when the inner walls of her stomach burned incessantly.
After breakfast, she cleaned the table to the best of her ability and switched sides, taking the anthology in hand in order to read some poems.
Most pieces catalogued within its pages dated back at least three centuries from Arabella's days.
Those words sure were written in a language the young woman understood overall but were quite abstract in nature at times as some sounded straight from a bygone era.
Arabella picked up a quill, an ink box and a notebook to jot down any lines that would give her a tough time as well as the general concept that a specific poem would revolve around.
However, her own inner voice came to cause disturbance. Despite trying as hard as her might allowed it, there was no getting rid of the events that had taken place the previous days… Her time spent with Silas and what it meant, then Lady Persephone's words on the matter.
A mother's concern for her son was well founded, though Arabella thought the Lady was wasting her efforts.
Simply considering the way Silas treated her, she believed there was no reason to fret.
He merely wanted a warm body to converse with about the things that attracted him. The vampire dealt with enough humans to know that nothing could come of it.
But what of her? What did she think of him? What did she feel for him?
Arabella kept her head down among the lines on the pages, alternating between reading and contemplating the recent events surrounding her. Even when Ada had come to fetch the dirty dishes and then returned a second, third and fourth time, for lunch and dinner, Arabella's exchanges with the maid were curt.
And that pattern carried on until a fifth knock landed upon her door. The young woman believed it was again Ada, coming to take the dinner dishes, but the idea quickly withered when Katherine's voice blared through the door.
"Arabella, may I come in?"
Arabella stood up at once, "Yes, of course!"
Katherine made her entrance then marched towards Arabella, a gleeful smile on her face.
"Have you been reading this whole time?" the vampire questioned, her eyes on the open book resting upon the table.
"Yes, in fact…," Arabella trailed off, to look through the window, at the darkened sky, "It seems, time has slipped through my fingers,"
"You poor thing," said Katherine, grimacing a tad, "I am truly sorry,"
"For what?" Arabella brought her full attention onto the vampire, eyes widening.
"While I was not supposed to, I couldn't help but hear a portion of your conversation with the Lady," Katherine looked down for a moment, but then her eyes snapped back onto Arabella, "But you know, it is for your own good, right?"
"Everybody keeps telling me what I already know," a smile overtook Arabella's features as her gaze drifted away into nothingness. Though realizing she might have crossed the line, the young woman immediately straightened up, "I am sorry, I didn't mean to speak to you in such a manner,"
"It's alright," the vampire set a comforting hand on Arabella's shoulders, "There's no need for you to fret over that," she then took a deep breath, "I came to fetch you. You are expected downstairs,"
"Is it for training?" Arabella quizzed.
At those words, Katherine's features adopted a dubious look, "Well, something of that sort, you can say,"
Arabella's heart sank a little. She'd been told that she wouldn't be attending any practice until the ball, that was since her practice was to read the poems from what she'd understood.
Nevertheless, she bit her tongue and followed in Kathrine's tracks.
The clouded sky growled, shaking the ground beneath her feet a little, reminding her of the forecasting Ada had announced.
"Fear not, it is only thunder approaching,"
Katherine had noticed Arabella's little jolt the instant the roaring cracked the silence between them.
Though Arabella was more intrigued by the fact that they weren't heading to the lounge room and not to the music room either.
"Katherine," she managed to speak, "Where are we going?"
"You'll see," Katherine grinned, "It is a bit of a surprise,"