★ELOWEN★
I decided to spend the morning acquainting myself more properly with the servants, given that the wine tasting event had been cancelled and there was no longer any urgent need to procure a wardrobe in haste.
Though I still intended to. I wanted my own pieces — things I had chosen myself and not simply the gowns hanging prettily in the wardrobe. I had no certainty as to whom they had previously belonged, and the thought of it made my skin crawl in a way I did not care to examine too closely.
When I stepped into the kitchen, every head turned toward me. The room was large and well-lit, alive with the particular organised chaos of midday preparations. The smell of something rich and savoury already hung in the air.
Several of the servants regarded me with open curiosity. Jeane and Vanessa stepped forward together.
"Luna Queen," they greeted in unison, dipping into neat curtsies.
"Vanessa. Jeane."
The remaining servants paused their tasks and bowed. I waved for them to rise and carry on.
"Is there something we might do for you, Luna Queen?" Jeane asked, her brows drawn together, already gesturing for the others to resume their work.
"Not at all. I came to assist with the lunch preparations." Their eyes went wide, though none of them moved to stop me. "And to make the acquaintance of those I have not yet met."
Vanessa offered me a warm smile and guided me further into the room while Jeane assumed her customary post of surveying everything with the eye of a woman who trusted no one entirely.
"We are preparing lamb stew and rice," Vanessa told me. "One of the King's hunters brought in a lamb only yesterday."
"How very impressive." I settled my hip against the central counter and looked around. "I have noticed there are very few men among the household staff. Does the castle employ none?"
"Oh, it does," Vanessa said. "Though the men tend to work with the carriages, the pigsty, and the horse shed rather than inside."
My brows lifted. "The castle has an animal farm?"
Jeane and Vanessa both nodded. "Not within the castle grounds precisely," Jeane clarified. "The compound is considerable, but not quite so vast as that. The farm sits to the south of the SinBound Pack territory. Murray is the head farmer — he oversees the whole operation."
"I should very much like to visit it," I said.
Jeane opened her mouth, but Vanessa was quicker. "Should your husband not be able to take you, I am entirely at your disposal, Luna Queen."
I laughed. Jeane turned a withering look on Vanessa. "Back to work. You know perfectly well that is not how one addresses one's Queen."
"It was a perfectly respectful offer," Vanessa muttered, returning to the pile of cabbages before her. There were rather a lot of them for one pair of hands.
"Allow me," I said, moving to stand beside her at the island. "That is far too many for one person."
Vanessa did not argue. She handed me a knife without ceremony.
"You are, if I may say so," she murmured, keeping her voice low, "the first wife to set foot in this kitchen."
Jeane's head snapped up. "Vanessa. For the love of — "
"What?" Vanessa turned on her without missing a beat. "I am stating a fact. There is nothing remotely objectionable about a fact."
The tension between them crackled like a fire fed too much wood. I had assumed the two women were on cordial terms at the very least, but whatever this was ran considerably deeper than a professional disagreement.
"It is perfectly alright, Jeane," I said. "She is merely keeping me company."
"That is precisely right." Vanessa lifted her chin at Jeane. "Your Queen has said as much, so I suggest you attend to your own affairs."
I bit the inside of my cheek. Jeane stared at Vanessa with the expression of a woman counting to ten inside her head.
"I despise you sometimes," she said lowly, and removed herself to the far end of the kitchen.
"The sentiment is entirely mutual and then some," Vanessa said after her, and I exhaled quietly.
I returned my attention to the cabbage, which was precisely when — staring rather too long at the blade of the knife — a flash of a white-haired woman cut across my vision. Sharp and sudden, like a candle flame caught in a draught. It startled me badly enough that the knife slipped.
"Ouch!"
Both Jeane and Vanessa were at my side in an instant, their quarrel abandoned entirely. Together and without a word between them, they cleaned the cut and bound my finger with a neat strip of bandage. Whatever ill feeling existed between them, it vanished the moment it was needed.
"Thank you," I said softly.
As they stepped back, I felt a prickling heat at the base of my skull — the distinct and uncomfortable sensation of being watched with something other than curiosity. I turned quickly. One of the maidservants in the far corner met my gaze with an expression of undisguised contempt before her face smoothed itself over into careful neutrality.
Too late. I had already seen it plainly.
I said nothing. I simply turned back to the counter and resumed my work. It appeared my husband had not confined his previous company exclusively to women outside these walls.
---
My husband returned for lunch, as he invariably did. I found it quietly remarkable — the way he arranged his days so that he was home in the afternoon without fail, no matter how demanding the morning had been. It had, without my fully realising it, begun to dismantle something in me. Some stubborn, well-built wall that I had brought with me from the Stormrider household.
The maidservants laid the table while I took my place at his right. He looked more strained than the day before — the kind of tiredness that lived behind the eyes rather than in the posture.
I set my hand over his. He looked down at it, then up at me.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes," he said, offering a small smile. "Pack matters. Nothing that cannot be managed — I assure you I am quite well."
His gaze dropped then, settling on my bandaged finger. His brow furrowed. "What has happened here? Who has done this?"
"No one," I said quickly. "Truly — I cut myself whilst helping to prepare the cabbages. It is entirely my own fault."
The frown shifted into something more bewildered. "You were in the kitchen?"
"I was." I smiled. "Vanessa and Jeane attended to it promptly. It will mend quickly enough."
My healing was not, in truth, particularly swift — not with the human blood running quietly through me — but I had no intention of drawing further attention to that particular detail.
"Would you like me to read to you this evening?" The offer came out before I had properly deliberated over it, but I did not retract it.
He raised a brow, the corner of his mouth curving. "One of your romances, I presume?"
I laughed. "One of them, yes."
"I would like that very much indeed."
★
I read to him after dinner — a paranormal thriller laced with rather breathless romance — and my husband, in what I could only describe as a deeply endearing turn of events, fell asleep with his head upon my shoulder somewhere in the second chapter.
Noah assisted me in getting him to the bedroom. I removed Azrael's shoes and his suit jacket with considerable care. I considered the shirt, then thought better of it. The understanding between us regarding his bare skin had not yet been revisited, and I was not about to presume.
I laughed to myself—softly, so as not to wake him—and lay down beside him. I rested my gaze on his face for a while, tracing the sharp lines of it with my eyes until sleep came for me too.