CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Faedra opened her eyes and stretched. She couldn’t remember sleeping that well for a very long time. She turned her head to see Faen looking at her. He was lying on his side, propping his head up on his arm.
“Good morning, Ms. Faedra,” he greeted her with a warm smile, “I trust you slept well.”
“Morning, Faen, yes I did thank you,” she answered, returning his smile with one of her own.
“Well we better get moving, we have another long day ahead of us today,” he pushed his covers back and gracefully slid off the bed.
Faedra was still lying on top of the covers. She looked down at the excess piece of comforter that she had been cocooned in, and peeled it back. She smiled, he had allowed her to fall asleep next to him and had made sure she didn’t get cold. The sound of water running from the bathroom caught her attention. She better get a move on and go back to her room to wash her face and get dressed.
“I’m going back to my room to get changed,” she called as she slid off the bed.
Faen poked his head around the bathroom door, he was brushing his teeth. Faedra couldn’t help herself, she laughed. He frowned, he couldn’t speak his mouth was full of toothbrush.
“I’m sorry,” she chuckled. “I had just never pictured that fairies brushed their teeth, or needed to do any of the mundane personal grooming that us humans have to, for that matter.”
He smiled around his toothbrush and shrugged his shoulders.
“Meet you out in the corridor in a few minutes?”
He nodded and disappeared back into the bathroom.
When she arrived back in her room she noticed that the bed had been made and her clothes were neatly laid out on it. They had been cleaned and pressed, and her boots polished and set beside the bed. She quickly changed then went into the bathroom to do the mundane personal grooming that humans do. Several minutes later she headed out the door. Faen and Jocelyn were already waiting there for her.
“Morning, Jocelyn, did you sleep well?” she asked.
“Yes thank you, Faedra, and you?”
Faedra glanced at Faen who was watching her intently. They exchanged a subtle smile. “Yes, thank you, I did,” she responded.
“Come,” Faen said with a sweeping motion of his arm in the direction of the kitchen. “We must eat first, and then begin our journey to the pine forest.”
Luckily Faen seemed to know where he was going because without a doubt Faedra would have gotten herself hopelessly lost in the maze of corridors in this seemingly endless castle. After a while they made it to the kitchen, and Faedra was ravenous again. She had noticed her appetite had increased substantially since she acquired her power, but she hadn’t used it for more than a day now and was wondering if it was normal for her to be eating as much as she was. Maybe it was still residual energy conservation from when she had had to use her power to fight off a Redcap.
