Owe You My Sins [GxG]

Chapter 2

Her footsteps echoed on the wooden floorboards as she restlessly prowled among the rows of books, parchment, and scrolls her family had accumulated over the generations. The candles shed warm light over the shelves, casting long and obscure shadows which passed over her form intermittently. This room was one of her favourites in the keep, large enough to take time to explore it to its fullest but quaint enough to give off a cosy and welcoming atmosphere. Her mother had always loved reading to her when she was small, and Maeven's passion had only grown as she got older. Though her tastes had evolved into factual manuscripts and detailed recounts of history, on occasion she still found guilty pleasure in tales of heroics, romance, and adventure.

In that moment however, though her eyes were skimming over the aged spines of books and her fingertips occasionally brushed the shelves, her thoughts were elsewhere. She'd come in search of information, but as she pictured the Church arriving at their gates any day from now, her apprehension had consumed her and instead led her to wander aimlessly, much to the concern of the librarian, Rupert.

Rupert was a scrawny man, thin and sinewy, with a boyish face and shaggy hair that sat on his shoulders. He had rather dark skin, golden and rich like the soils of his homeland in the Southeast, a little village on the outskirts of Strathmore. He'd told her stories of his home, built in the shadows of the mountain range which sat on the border between Glauchester and the trading kingdom. She found great amusement in his recollections of spending his youth frolicking in the wheat fields and taking the long trek to the shore just to feel his feet sink into the sand. The northern beaches were nothing like those of which he'd described, but she still found the idea of both endlessly beautiful. Regardless, as he walked towards her now, she knew it wasn't beaches on the tip of his tongue.

"Maeven, you know I love your company, but your nerves are getting to me woman!" He threw his hands up in exasperation, stopping her before she could continue towards the next row of shelves, "speak to me, what's going on with you?"

She let out a troubled breath, crossing her arms over her chest and gazing irritably at her long-time friend, "it's all this Church fuckery. They could be here any day now, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. They could arrive and decide to cut our throats the second we open the gates, for fuck's sake!"

"No need to use such language, my Lady, come now," Rupert hushed, favouring himself a right and proper gentleman in that moment despite them both knowing otherwise. "Your father wouldn't be allowing it if we were in any real danger. If there's anything I've learnt while living with you two, it's that you bloody Constantines won't be pressured into anything you aren't willing to do."

She scoffed and took a seat at one of the few tables sprinkled around the room, "not if the old laws tell him he must. No one has even met this new immortal, and he's already slaughtered an entire civilisation. A shit one, for sure, but still. Who even knows what to expect when they get here?"

The candle on the table was reaching the end of its lifespan, but still burnt strongly enough for Rupert to see the despair creeping across his friend's striking features. He let out a sigh at the sight and slowly sat down next to her, playing with his fingers as he always did when something made him nervous.

"I know without a doubt that I've seen histories buried in here somewhere that speak of the Church, but I've never read them myself," he started. "Would you like me to fetch them and get a new candle while I'm at it? Maybe you can find something to ease your mind, since pacing around like you're froze-silly isn't doing anyone any good."

She scoffed at the term, but nodded her head at his proposition. Sometimes the weather got so cold that it affected the minds of those who lived there. The term froze-silly being made to refer to someone who'd gone insane from the extreme temperatures. It was mostly visitors she'd seen it happen to, since those with Windermere blood seemed to have grown numb to the cold over the many generations they'd stubbornly refused to leave.