Blood.

It drips onto the cracked tiled floor of the New Aberdeen hospital floor. The soap on my fingers strips my skin, cracking them around the joints like shattered glass.

I look up, hoping that Madame Newmister's back remains turned to me and that she doesn't catch the blood.

Blood doesn't clean floors. Soap does.

"Bloody hell," I mutter, scrubbing the tiles harder to clean the crimson stains. Blood continues to stain into the rag, mixing with the soap. The soft-red liquid seeps against the once-off white tiles.

"Maureen."

Madame Newmister hovers over me, her back hunched, her face twisted in disgust. I've grown accustomed to that look, as it seems to be the look everyone has on their face when they see me.

Everyone in the metropolis of New Aberdeen knows of my parents—or at least my mother since she was a well known whore within the streets. When they look at me, they see her: this beautiful young girl with a dimmed light for the future.

They wish there was no light in me at all.

My mother was said to be unforgettably beautiful, and even caught the eye of some of the most handsome elitists in the American Federation. Rumours say that her hair was so golden that it blinded men as if it were the sun. Her eyes were the colour of oceans, and if you watched closely, you could see them lap against her pupils like waves. As for my father? Some speak of him as a ravishing desperate young sailor, falling captive to my mother.

Madame Newmister crosses her arms over her plump chest. "We're trying to clean the floors, not make them more horrendous than they already are."

I mumble a quick apology and scrub faster, knuckles white from tension and red from the cuts.

"Damn you, you've wasted enough time already," she spits. "Now finish up and scurry home. I've had enough of this from you."

I'll have to find something to wrap my knuckles in. Many of the other scrub maids at the hospital wrap their knuckles, but the grimy soap water mixes in with the bandages and traps itself against the cut. Either way, I leave with broken skin and a potential infection.

I rush out of the hospital as if I were breaking free from prison. The crisp air in New Aberdeen feels like a godsend, clearing my lungs from the moist blood-scented air within the dimlit hospital corridors. The hospital might be my home during the daylight hours, but at night, I've thankfully found myself performing maid's duties at the Leveque estate.

The Leveque's are one of the most esteemed families residing in New Aberdeen. Perhaps, one of the most well off within the American Federation. Audwin Leveque, the man of the house, runs an enterprise controlling satellites orbiting around Earth, a whole network that communicators can be connected to, while Evelyn operates the estate like her own business. Audwin hardly lifts a finger at the idea of housing a prostitute's daughter in his house, but it's Evelyn that saw the potential within me. It's her that protects me from the dangers of the night that my mother fell captive too.

Evelyn took me from my mother's custody when I was two. God knows how she found me—but she did, and welcomed me into her house as a servant. She paid me with a separate room and food, and it was her that encouraged me to find employment off the estate to start earning an income. She could never adopt me as her own, although at times I felt the pang in her heart that she longed too. Evelyn never bore a daughter, only a son.

Her son, however, is another heartache that throbs inside me.

Evelyn hears me come into the manor, running up to me in a whirlwind fury. As much as this woman loves me as her own child, she could never let those feelings slip. It would be a disgrace for Evelyn Leveque to adopt a child whose mother held one of the most scandalous and abhorrent reputations in New Aberdeen.

"Maureen, my god, look at you!" she hisses, but her eyes reveal the overwhelming pity towards me. "You look like a stray dog I picked up off the street."

I keep my lips shut from the lady of the house. Although Evelyn views me with such a motherly fondness, she can never let that side of her be known to the other servants, not even Audwin. Her favouritism is our little secret.

She clears her throat. "I'm sorry for being so uptight, but get yourself cleaned up. And do it quickly. We have guests arriving tomorrow evening, and we need to make sure the estate is in order before then." She gestures up the stairs. "Find me when you're finished, hmm?"

Unlike most servants, my bedroom resides upstairs. It's smaller than the others, but most of the Leveque servants occupy the servant's quarters in the basement. I grew up in the corners of this room—these floral patterned walls with rough quilts across my bed, with notches on the bedpost that marked the amount of times Cato Leveque fell asleep in my bed with me.

I press my index finger against the tally's. Perhaps there's more than fifty? Sixty? Then I gave up. I giggle at the memories of him sneaking in at one in the morning, forcing me to pinky promise that I wouldn't tell his parents.

Back then, we were bound. Inseparable. Two stars colliding night after night.

Cato Leveque, the son of Audwin and Evelyn, retains the most brilliant and clever mind in all of the American Federation.

I saw his potential before the world ever could.

The age difference between Cato and I is only three years, but it felt like there was never that gap at all. Whatever he learned at the academy, he'd teach me as we laid on the floors of my room encapsulated by moonlight. He was the reason I could read basic books and count to a hundred. In our teens, I fell asleep to his heartbeat and body heat as we embraced each other on my quilts.

But Cato's brilliance didn't go unnoticed. He became successful, following closely in his father's footsteps. Instead of just reaching for the stars, he became one of them. The Beaulieu Space Academy accepted him into their program as an astronaut, sending an acceptance package that outlined his future training. He always loved the sky more than anything in the world, and accepted without a second thought.

Cato began spending his nights in his own study rather than my room. I stopped putting notches on my bedpost. Within months, that blossoming relationship we had snapped like broken cord. At eighteen, he left the estate, leaving me, a fifteen-year-old servant girl, behind.

It's been six years since Cato left, and not once had he visited Audwin and Evelyn in the flesh. I hear flashes of his voice often enough: on broadcasts, interviews, on video calls with Evelyn. How had Cato Leveque, the boy who taught me to count, become the American Federation's most renowned astronaut?

I was fifteen and naïve. If only I knew that the world doesn't operate that way for us at the bottom tiers of society.

I snap out of my trance. Those months after his departure hurt like a knife to the stomach. It was hard to admit that the warm swells in my heart were love. When he left, there was no longer that warmth in my blood, and I vowed to never let another man taint my heart the way he did.

I redress myself in a clean maid's dress and make my way down the stairs. Evelyn told me to find her, and for a moment, I hope she's in her private study.

I nearly bash into her at the bottom of the stairs. "Oh my!" Here it comes.

Her face lights up as if someone flicked on a light switch. "My goodness! This is unexpected!"

I frown, not daring to say anything more to her. It's then I catch her communicator in her hand—a rare sight in itself, despite her husband owning a successful communications company. For a woman who's surrounded by technology, she's quite terrible at using it.

"We must prepare the house! Oh goodness, there's dust everywhere," she paces into the large parlour space, nearly tripping over furniture as she marches into another corridor. She pushes the doors open into a large gathering hall. Unlike most residences in New Aberdeen, the Leveque estate is large, almost mimicking a castle.

I follow closely behind, still awaiting my orders. "Maureen! Do you think this will fit everyone?"

Evelyn's aging green eyes flash at me, reading the evident confusion across my face.

"This should be enough room, hmm? I'll have to check with Audwin about the guest list, and remind me to make sure none of those damn paparazzi step foot onto our property," she rambles. I give her an empty stare, so lost onto why she decided to hold such a last-minute extravagant party. "Have I not told you who?"

I shake my head.

She opens her mouth to speak when Audwin barrels into the room. That smile that once beamed Evelyn's lips fades a little, mostly due to her ever straining relationship with her husband. Yet, Audwin approaches her with a large grin, one infectious enough to make his wife smile.

"I've alerted the chef for the feast. I think this will be big enough for the festivities, yes?"

Evelyn took his arm. "Ah yes! Although I will give that boy a scolding for making me wait six years to kiss his forehead."

My insides heat up, and I'm sure the heat is evident on my cheeks.

Cato.

"Maureen," I avoid gazing at her for fear she'll see right through me. "There's a lot of work to be done. Perhaps you can find a mop and start cleaning these floors? It's been awhile since we've had a party."

I nod my head and scurry away from Audwin and Evelyn. My thoughts dance in circles as that silly naive childhood fantasy comes crashing down on me. Six years ago, I convinced myself to put my attraction for him to the side, and now he's returning? Here?

Cato Leveque owns an estate across New Aberdeen, but even I know he never visits. He's too busy up in the sky, lost in the stars, exploring planets and nebulas untouched by humankind.

We were young and naive, and now he's a man basking in delicious attraction. Yet, I doubt he'd remember me. I doubt he'd even give me a glance.

To him, I'm nothing but a servant clinging to the fringes of society.

Yet, I can't stop the warmth returning to my cold heart.

━ ◦ ❖ ◦━

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Updated August 5, 2022.