[THIS STORY WILL BE TAKEN DOWN ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2024]
He had hunted me, captured me, and locked me in a tower.
Season 3 'Of Crows and Thorns'
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While in RISING, Tabitha discovers something peculiar that may assist Nelle in her plan to escape the...
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"Aunt Rosa?" Nelle gently urged, one hand fiddling with the long fringe of her shawl.
Rosa was married to Harding Lyon. The Lyons were a hunting family we sometimes worked with. A few years after Mom had been stolen, Aunt Rosa had barged her way into our lives to help Dad with raising us. He was struggling to be everything to everyone while still trying to hunt down the whereabouts of our abducted mother. My brother Kenton, a teenager at the time, had stepped in when my father was forced to leave us the first year for war with the rest of the Houses. Kenton was a fucking helicopter parent but I loved him for it.
Aunt Rosa refused to budge, despite my father's brusque insistence he had everything under control. "Like hells you do, VV," she replied. Aunt Rosa back in our lives relieved the pressure of my mother's absence and reminded us that we were children and we should, along with our dad, be allowed to have fun too. Be it that Aunt Rosa's kind of fun was often fucking crazy.
I set about chopping up one half of the dead chicken into smaller pieces. "Aunt Rosa isn't an aunt by blood. She's my Dad's best friend so we've always called her that. He doesn't like many people, but he likes her. They go back a long way."
And she's currently helping him hunt a beast we need for the Blacksmith.
Nelle unwound her shawl and tossed it haphazardly on the kitchen counter. A vexed sensation scratched at my mind. My fingers itched to pick up the shawl, fold it, and put it away, where it lived—inside a fucking drawer—when I noticed the sly smirk twitching on Nelle's lips as if she'd purposely done it to taunt me.
My gaze sharpened on her. I didn't have a fucking problem like she thought. I simply liked my domain tidy, just like anyone else would do too.
While I tried to ignore the scarf just fucking sitting there in a heaped mess, Nelle stretched up on her toes to get to the shelf holding the drinking glasses, coffee mugs, and china teacups. Her fingers wrapped around a tall glass as she pursed her lips, contemplating. "I remember her from the House Gatherings. She's really chatty."
"Yeah." Sometimes it was hard to get a word in edgewise.
"She likes party planning, huh?"
A huff of laughter escaped my throat. "She loves party planning too fucking much." A heartbeat later my eyebrows nudged together in bewilderment. "Jett told you that?"
She nodded and turned her attention to filling her glass with water. Turning off the tap, she leaned the dip in her lower back against the counter edge and watched me while I rapidly sliced and diced the chicken. It was a moment later when I realized that Nelle was staring at me with a weird look. I stilled and cocked a curious brow at her.
She took a sip of water and swallowed. Lowering the glass to her middle, her fingers rapped against the glass before she said, "It was strange hearing about your family and Aunt Rosa as if..."
