Winged

Chapter Seventeen

Annabelle

There doesn't appear to be anything wrong in the bare chamber, but my friend's white-grey face was clearly full of worry.

"I'll show you," She tells me, already moving.

"Come quickly now," She tells me as her explanation, and she runs across the room myself in tow, it being much easier to run with these legs instead of the stubbed, no-kneed sticks I had been granted before.

When she reaches the door farthest to the right- on the opposite end of the wall to my room, she pushes herself under the crack, and I shrink a bit to follow her smaller mouse form.

The carpet in this room is so plush it rises to my brown shoulders, each tendril of soft cotton rising to obscure my view. However, the plush carpet can't hide the grand dome coloured with navy blues and golds, nor the window facing the bow, the deep sky dotted with slowly disappearing stars creeping past, mourning bleeding into the world. Tasselled navy silk curtains are pulled out, and the deep wood creaks with those on it. Quina and Darrius, I assume. The worst place Rhem could have taken me. Their rooms.

"Rhem! What the hell are we doing, here, of all places!" I quietly fume at her. But Rhem just keeps walking, and I keep following.

She reaches a cupboard and climbs an open drawer, low to the floor. I follow her lead and heist myself upwards with a high-pitched mouse grunt. From sitting here, the carpet below, we can finally see the entire room and the majesty of it. The pressed metal bedhead, deep oak furnishings. Yet another impressive gold chandelier, but smaller, allowing the bed to be the masterpiece, surrounded by a freaking moat. A moat! A small platform allowed a crossing point to the bed, but a river twined its way under it, wide and deep enough to swim in.

But the moat was certainly not the most exciting thing this room beheld. By far, it was the tops lazily scattered on the floor, and the two men asleep, naked limb splayed over the sheets atop the bed. Darrius, and a man with curled blonde hair.

Not Quina.

Where on earth was she? Was she even aware of the scandal happening here, in this very room? In her very room?

So, Darrius fancied men, or at least both, and was cheating on his wife, me watching. That was what Rhem had wanted me to see. Great.

Either way, it didn't change the fact that we had to leave, now. I spin on my paws and climb out of the drawers. Where in all the worlds was the princess? Had she gone to find me, and was now searching the ship for my whereabouts?

Would she pop up out of the shadows and drag me back to the glamorous chains that were my room?

I hear Rhem behind me as I lead her out of the fluffy flooring and to the door, and we squeeze out, her behind me. I shift into a slick kitten, the scratchy fibres of my brown coat weaving into the silky black of a midnight cat. Rhem steps back and regards me carefully.

"You're not going to eat me, are you?" She asks, eyeing my pointed teeth precariously.

"I doubt you'd fit," I tell her, craning my neck to get a good look at my rounded belly, still full from the night's festivities. She wisely smothers a snort before returning her once again serious gaze to my yellow-and-black eyes.

"What we saw tonight..."

I shake my head. "It changes nothing. A good titbit of information to have, if we ever need it, but we still need to find them." I move closer to the mouse and wait for her to bow her head, so I can pick her up, feeling her muscles tighten as my mouth gently bites the scruff of her neck.