Chapter 168: 168-The master’s proposal
I’ve come to you with a proposal."
Taratoya took a slow, deep breath before lowering her book onto the table. The interruption had already tested her patience as it came unexpected.
She lifted her lashes and looked toward the annoyance who had dared to walk over and disturb her peace.
"What do you want, Zazen?"
Zazen sat opposite her and met her gaze with a soft, almost innocent look in her eyes. "I have an interesting proposal to offer you."
"So you’ve said," Taratoya scratched her chin and said nothing. She didn’t ask what the proposal was or even appear particularly interested in Zazen’s presence.
Her silence stretched between them. Zazen waited and waited for Taratoya to ask her about it. She had expected at least a flicker of curiosity, perhaps a raised eyebrow or a question.
However, Taratoya continued scratching her chin as though Zazen were nothing more than an uninteresting interruption in the middle of her night.
Annoyance slowly tightened Zazen’s expression. Eventually, she stood and circled the table. She stopped directly in front of Taratoya, close enough that her legs nearly brushed against Taratoya’s knees.
"Won’t you ask what the proposal is?" she asked, her frustration evident.
Taratoya blinked. She continued scratching her chin, seemingly deep in thought. Their eyes remained locked, but she still said nothing.
Zazen’s frustration climbed another notch. "The whiteblood behind me is the one who sent me," she finally said, hoping the mention would stir something in Taratoya.
After all, her master was a powerful whiteblood and in as much as Taratoya knew about him, she couldn’t really know him.
To her surprise, Taratoya simply lowered her hands onto the arms of the chair. She stared at Zazen the way one might watch an uninteresting clown perform a trick that had already been seen a hundred times.
Zazen’s eye twitched. Fine, if Taratoya wouldn’t react from where she stood, perhaps she needed a closer approach. She lowered herself onto Taratoya’s lap.
For the first time, Taratoya’s composure cracked. Her eyes widened, and she stared at Zazen in genuine disbelief.
’How brazen had this girl become?’ she wondered, her mind already thinking up the many ways Zazen can rue the moment the idea manifested in her head let alone the courage to pull it off.
It had only been a year since Zazen had dropped out of school, yet apparently, that year had been enough to erase whatever shame she had once possessed.
Taratoya smirked. "I don’t know what your proposal is but..." her gaze sharpened. "... But I do know you’re going to be dead if you don’t get up."
Zazen feigned a shiver. Then, with a mischievous smile, she reached inside her dress and pulled out a tiny Rubix’s-sized box. She waved it directly in front of Taratoya’s eyes.
Taratoya’s expression changed from indifference to emotional. Her gaze locked onto the little box: the silver casing and the strange flower pattern engraved across its surface. She knew it instantly.
It was one of twenty-four set of boxes. They had belonged to her mother.
Her mother had owned the entire set before she passed away. For years, Taratoya had believed those boxes were among the few pieces of her mother’s legacy that had remained beyond her reach and now one was sitting in Zazen’s hand.
"I don’t know what this is," Zazen said, studying Taratoya’s reaction carefully, "but he said it would be of interest to you."
Even Zazen wasn’t entirely convinced. A silly little silver box with a funny flower pattern hardly seemed enough to convince someone like Taratoya to work for her master but she wasn’t foolish enough to question him.
Taratoya slowly reached out. Her fingers closed around the box. The instant her skin touched the silver, something inside it awakened.
A faint click sounded. The box sensed her blood. Its intricate seams shifted, and the lid began to open.
Taratoya immediately released it. The box snapped shut again as it dropped onto Zazen’s lap.
Her eyes darkened. She hadn’t wanted it opened in front of a stranger. Whatever was inside belonged to her. It was part of her legacy, part of her mother’s final memories. Those were not things she would allow another vampire to witness.
Zazen picked up the box. "He said he has the whole set."
Taratoya’s gaze sharpened.
"And for every task of his that you complete, you’ll receive one until the mission is finished." She held the box out slightly. "And if you’re in, you can keep this one as a sign of good faith."
Zazen shrugged. "But if you’re not interested, then you can..."
"Why me?"
The question came so abruptly that Zazen paused. Taratoya leaned back in her chair, and Zazen moved closer.
Taratoya immediately turned her head to the side. The scent of whiteblood clung to Zazen. It irritated her beyond reason.
"He says having you as an ally will be more profitable than having you as an enemy," Zazen stated. She tilted her head. "So, are you in or out?"
Taratoya didn’t answer. Her eyes remained fixed on the little silver box. The twenty-four of them, she wanted all of them.
The admission unsettled her because it was not a simple hunger for an object. The boxes were the last tangible pieces of her mother that had survived the grave.
Her mother’s voice had faded. Her touch had become something Taratoya could no longer trust herself to remember correctly. Even her face sometimes seemed to blur at the edges of sleep but the boxes remained.
Each one was proof that her mother had existed beyond a collection of dying memories. Each one promised another fragment of a life Taratoya had been forced to inherit without ever understanding any of it.
To gather them would be to reclaim something death had stolen from her, but it would also mean admitting how desperately she still wanted what could never truly be restored.
She did not know whether she was seeking her mother or merely trying to keep herself from losing her all over again. She couldn’t also deny that the offer carried the shape of a trap.
The master behind Zazen wanted to destroy vampirism. All vampire’s would die if he were to get his way and she had been set to oppose him.
Taratoya’s fingers tightened against the arms of her chair. Vampirism was not merely a curse she endured. It was the blood in her veins, the strength that had kept her alive, the weapon that had allowed her to survive long enough to pursue her mother’s legacy.
And there was no part of her that had ever spent even a moment imagining what it would mean to be free of it.
’What do I do?’