Akasha
Akasha primly set at her vanity watching Anya, her maid, finish pinning her carefully constructed curls into an updo of delicate perfection.
“Which gown are you wearing tonight?” Anya asked her as she swept a shimmery gold bronzer across her strikingly high cheekbones. It made her rich, cinnamon complexion shine with radiance while bringing out the deep, almost unnaturally beautiful ocher color of her eyes.
Her choice of gowns was an important one. She’d been considering, deciding, then changing her mind and contemplating the matter all over again for the past month. She could wear green. The main color in the family crest that sat on the ring finger of every important and esteemed member of the Viteri bloodline. To do so would shout her unwavering loyalty and commitment to the Viteri bloodline to the world. However, it would tell it nothing about who Akasha Viteri, the eldest child of Nicholas Viteri and his soon to be officially proclaimed heir, was as an individual. Normally she wore black for formal functions. The color spoke to who she was perfectly. Bold yet subtle, harsh yet polished, and unapologetically menacing whenever the situation called for her to be. But she chose to wear red when she felt like making a statement and being noticed as she made it. Red was the color of flames. Dangerous, mesmerizing, beautiful and destructive. Even the fiercest of individuals shied away from flames for fear of getting burned.
“Red,” Akasha told her maid definitively. She’d made up her mind once and for all. Tonight she needed to make a statement and be noticed making it. Especially since the Ambroses and her unofficial, but soon to be official, betrothed would be in attendance.
The Viteris were the most powerful Sidra bloodline next to the Ambroses. They were the only family that could even consider opposing the Ambroses without it being a failsafe suicide mission. Everyone was aware of the fact, including the man who sat at the helm of Sidra society, Johnathan Ambrose, and the man who coveted his position, Nicholas Viteri. It was the reason why she and Aihron Ambrose had been unofficially betrothed since they were still developing in their mothers’ wombs. She and Aihron were pawns in a lethal game of chess that their fathers had been playing with one another for a long time.
Her father was playing the part of Kingmaker, or rather Queenmaker. She didn’t know what he had up his sleeve. Nicholas Viteri didn’t deem anyone important or competent enough to share his schemes with. Akasha wouldn’t know until the dust had settled around everyone’s feet and the deed was either a spectacular win or an epic fail. And as for Johnathan Ambrose, everyone knew what his endgame was. Everyone also knew that he would be one hundred percent successful in weaving whatever web he was building around the Viteri family to devour them whole just as he’d done to the Bello bloodline.
But there was a wild card in play that neither Nicholas Viteri or Johnathan Ambrose had thought important enough to consider. Both had undoubtedly dismissed her as a silly, young girl, easily manipulated and controlled. It was how most powerful, egotistical men saw any woman, of stature or not. She would be made into her father’s puppet no more than she would allow Johnathan to play king takes queen with she and his son.
Anya disappeared into the closet that was nearly the size of Akasha’s bedroom. She reappeared with a red silk dress boasting a sweetheart neckline and a skirt that was cut to fit Akasha like a glove before giving away to sweeping layers just below her knees.
Once dressed, Akasha looked at the finished product in the body-length mirror resting beside her vanity on silver legs raised four inches off the floor. She smiled at her reflection then began yanking the pins out of her hair that held her curls in place.
“Miss! What are you doing?! There is no time to style your hair differently!” Anya shrieked in a shocked but respectfully hushed tone.
Ignoring her maid, Akasha continued pulling out pins and flinging them to the floor until her hand touched and removed the last of them.
“Better.” Akasha smiled a real smile into the mirror. Her thick mane of midnight curls flowing wild and free down her back and around her heart shaped face completed the statement her flame red dress was meant to make.
“Bring me the rest of my accessories,” Akasha instructed her maid.
Once again Anya disappeared into her closet. She emerged carrying a short, but lethal blade in a jeweled holster as well as a pair of serrated-edged throwing starts. Akasha did not need the weapons, but they made for necessary additions to her attire. In the world of the Sidra, you always had back-up for the back-up that was your back-up.
Like the rest of the thirteen, now twelve, High Bloodlines, the Viteri’s mutated DNA conferred upon them unique abilities that were as deadly as they were powerful. Telekinesis was prominent among Sidra of Viteri blood. The degree and strength of the telekinesis varied from individual to individual. Like her father, his father, and his father before him, Akasha could move things with her mind as well as cause a person to think they were experiencing debilitating, all-consuming physical pain with a thought. If she expended enough energy for enough time she could make the psychological pain manifest into severe physical pain that ended with the rupturing of the person’s internal organs and resulted in their death.
Akasha strapped the jeweled holster to her inner right thigh, then tucked a throwing star into each of her knee-high leather boots. High heeled strappy sandals would have complimented the dress better, but they weren’t the practical choice. They provided no cover to hide her back-up weapons.
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The party held in her honor was in full swing when Akasha descended the grand staircase that led from the second landing of the Viteri mansion to the wide open foyer that had been transformed into a ballroom from times of old for the night. Women in formal gowns of every color imaginable and men in black and white tuxedos mingled with one another. Their forced laughter and pretend well wishes for one another floated towards her. It made Akasha have to work hard to fight the scowl that wanted to mar her beautifully painted face. There were very few true friends among the Sidra. Her people took the age old expression keep your friends close and your enemies closer to the edge of extremity and beyond. Every last person smiling at each and tossing their heads back in casual laughter would just as soon as bury a knife in the back of the person they conversed with if the opportunity to rise in stature or power presented itself. Akasha despised people like that. Which meant she despised just about every warm body present in her home. She had never taken a liking to being sneaky and underhanded. If she did not care for someone they knew it, and when she got ready to strike her blow she aimed for their chests where they could see the fatal blow coming plain as day, not their backs like a coward would.
From the base of the staircase her father signaled to the hired musicians and the melodious music wafting through the room immediately ceased. She stilled on the stairs, standing halfway from the bottom and high above every one else. It was the part she was born to play. Cedric, her eldest brother by a year, and Sienna, her younger sister by two years, moved to stand on her father’s left while Kira, her faux-darling mother, moved to stand on her father’s right. All of them, including her mother, were also playing the parts they were born to play.
The same could be said for every individual crowding the room. The non-Sidra servants moved quietly and unnoticed through the crowd, taking away empty champagne glasses and replacing them with full ones. The lesser Sidra played their role with their intentional absence. They were not born of enough importance to be in attendance. Only kin of the immediate Viteri family and the remaining eleven High Bloodlines boasted a high enough status to warrant an invite to the Viteri home tonight. The Llewelyns, Jacoboses, Limoses, Silvas, Brymers, Devis, Mensahs, Ikedas, Dimkas, and Ashmores were all present in the crowd standing not too far away from a member or members of their respective bloodlines should they need back-up. The Ambroses were of course present as well, but Johnathan Ambrose along with his wife Genevieve, and precious twins, Aihron and Aihrieal, stood off to the side. They made it a point to always position themselves separate and a part from not only the whole of Sidra society and the twelve High Bloodlines, but their own Ambrose kin as well. Johnathan Ambrose reveled in the exalted position that a single act of conniving treachery had allowed him to occupy.
Akasha would have thought her father a fool for thinking that he could snatch that from the Master of the Ambrose bloodline without a fight so catastrophic and destructive that it may very well destroy everything else around him, but Akasha knew her father and a fool he would never be. Nicholas Viteri was quite possibly the most intelligent man alive. There was no doubt in Akasha’s mind that he knew what his lust for power would cost him. There was also no doubt in Akasha’s mind that he didn’t care. For Nicholas Viteri, no price was too high to achieve the things he desired. By whatever means necessary, was the personal mantra that he had drilled into all three of his children since before they could speak. Akasha remembered her father insisting it being the first phrase she or Sienna ever spoke. Cedric confirmed that it was the same way with him as well. For their father, the end always justified the means. Cedric disagreed with their father on the point, but it was the one ideology that she and their father had always seen eye to eye on. Sometimes you had to do things you didn’t necessarily want to do, to get the necessary results.
“Ladies and Gents, I welcome you into my home,” her father addressed the gathered vainglorious Sidra. He nodded in deference towards the immediate Ambrose family. “Johnathan and Genevieve, I thank you for accepting my and Kira’s invitation. It is an honor.” Nicholas paused, waiting until Johnathan tipped his head in gracious acknowledgement, as was protocol. No one except Akasha, and perhaps her mother, picked up on the almost unnoticeable tensing of his broad shoulders.
Akasha momentarily held her breath, then let it out. She squared her shoulders and raised her chin a little higher at what was to come next.
“Tonight I formally name and acknowledge the heir to the Viteri bloodline with the twelve High Bloodlines gathered to bear witness. After much thought and deliberation, I have decided that Mastership of the Viteri bloodline will not pass to my eldest and only son, Nicholas Viteri the Fifth. It will pass to my eldest and esteemed daughter who is unparalleled in her beauty, Akasha Viteri.”
As Akasha knew would happen, the gathered Sidra erupted in muttered gasps and hushed whispers. Her father’s announcement broke with Sidra tradition. Mastership of the High Bloodlines was passed to the eldest child. According to the norms of their society, Nicholas should have been the one standing on the grand staircase, dressed in an immaculate tuxedo and staring down his nose at the highborn Sidra in their foyer. Instead, it was her.
She caught Johnathan Ambrose’s jaw tick out of the corner of her eye. It was the only outward sign that her father’s announcement had effected him at all. But it was the only sign Akasha needed to confirm what she had already suspected. Her father breaking tradition and naming her his heir instead of Cedric was a move in his lethal game with the Master of the Ambrose bloodline. From the tick in Johnathan’s jaw, a man of absolute control that never showed any outward signs of being affected by anything, Akasha concluded it was an unexpected play that threw a wrench in whatever pieces on the board Johnathan had in motion.
Nicholas took an offered champagne flute from a non-Sidra servant who’d dutifully moved to his side without needing to be called over. “To Akasha Viteri, the future of the Viteri bloodline,” he decreed to the crowd. He raised his glass and the gathered Sidra raised their glasses back.
Johnathan Ambrose did not raise his flute. He took a small sip from it then placed it on the black tray a nearby servant held.