The palace she-wolf maid led her to the King's Presence Chamber and offered her one of the silver chairs. She sat down slowly and began to admire the vast, sparsely furnished chamber, which bore sixteenth-century carvings and relics. The ancient decorations and sculpted ancestors gave the chamber a haunting presence.
She looked at the pack-kins tree painted in watercolor across the walls, and her fear deepened, as though the ancestors themselves stood watch within the chamber.
She shuddered and slipped off the silver chair when one of the figures she had mistaken for a molded ancestor set down a glass cup onto a small table beside him. His attire blended seamlessly with the sculpted figures.
