Forest of Lies

Chapter 24-A True Monster

🔮Alrighty, as promised another chapter for Forest of Lies. Enjoy and comment down any theories or plot ideas if y'all wish.
Happy reading! 🔥
————————————————————————
The moment the seamstress falls, I step off the stool amidst the sounds of gasping females and rush to her side. Ezra appears on my left as I settle down in my knees behind the seamstress's head. Gently, I prop her head on my silk cover lap, brushing her hair away from her closed eyes.

"Send for a doctor!" I order, my friends heading over to place the sewing supplies to the side as my ladies-in-waiting take over gathering servants to clean up the tea and have a young guard rushing off to find perhaps a competent physician.

"What happened when you looked at her?" My gaze meets Ezra's as he lowers himself down to his knees on the floor. "She should have felt possessive as the others, and yet she faints?"

"Perhaps it is different for each wolf," Ezra suggests, his voice a low whisper, pale gaze falling down to the girl. "With her there was nothing but fear in her eyes. As if I were something out of a nightmare."

"A nightmare," I find myself muttering, looking down upon the seamstress. Her face pale, the muscles as rigid as her body. Hands fisted at her sides, notebook fallen to the floor near her slippered feet.

Tentatively, I go to stroke her forehead. The tips of my fingers touching down onto a cold and clammy brow. I expected to feel nothing but soft unblemished skin, not the sharp jolt of sparking pain to go up my hand, into my arm, and straight up to my own head. A vortex swirling dark inky fingers across my vision.

Dimly, so distantly, I'm aware of falling, of someone catching me, my limbs turning stiff as immovable tree branches. My ears fill with the sounds of a weeping woman, the cry of a newborn babe, the gruff tones of man in a rage, the snap of a whip rings out in time with a masculine screech of pain.

Darkness fizzles away, a room of polished marble, with wooden tables draped in bolts of cloth, melds its way into my mind. The sound of soft feminine weeping, the faint rustle of cloth being punctured by a sewing needle. Then I see her, the seamstress, hemming a dress of golden cloth. Her green eyes are red, dark circles beneath those same tear filled eyes.

The sound of a door, opening and the closing, causes her to jump. The needle in her hand stilling, not even halfway through the fabric, her body stiffening at the sound of heavy boots.
The seamstress does not look up, not even when the older male appears. Black hair fading into silver, body broad and tall. Beard finely cut, mixed with pepperings of gray hair.

His clothes are the finest make. Blue and green hues, trousers a silvery gray, jacket cuffs ringed with silver thread. A silver hawk embroidered over his heart upon the jacket's cloth. The hawk of the Gray Valley Pack, a minor one with a mere five hundred warriors to its name. Its Alpha, Count Herron, is a male with two sons and one wife, that if the gossip from what I and my friends have heard, went mad precisely twenty years ago. The cause, the Countess Indela finding her lady's maid giving birth to a baby girl. A girl with the same peridot hued eyes as Count Herron.

Here, in what only could be the girl's memory, the man stopping at her side, has that distinctive eye color. A color that darkens with a cruel vindictive loathing for the poor red haired girl trembling from his oppressive gaze.

"I have news for you Tanith," Count Herron begins, voice dark and sweetened by malice, devoid of all pity or empathy. "The High King has requested for the best seamstresses in the region to brought to the palace. He has found his mate and High Luna. He wants to outfit his human mate, and her feral lot of Tenabrae creatures."

The seamstress, this timid Tanith, forces herself to open her mouth. Lips that tremble and push out a whisper, a fluttering angelic voice more delicate than a thin crystal glass.