Chapter 7 Let the Tour Begin
Let the Tour Begin
Raewyn
The next morning when the healer arrived, she actually spoke to me.
“I heard you managed to charm everyone out of their vows of silence last night,” she said with a wry smile. “I might as well join the ‘traitors.’ I’m Elanor. It’s nice to officially meet you, Raewyn.”
I gave the woman a big smile. “It’s nice to officially meet you too. Thank you for all you’ve done for me, Elanor. I owe you my life.”
“You owe Prince Pharis your life,” she said. “But you’re welcome. How are you feeling today?”
“Good. Stronger. I walked to and from the washroom this morning with hardly any trouble, and the pain is completely gone.”
“Excellent. Before long you’ll be ready for the stairs. Keep walking around your room, and I’ll give you some exercises to help rebuild the strength in your legs.”
“I feel as if I could handle some stairs already,” I told her. “Though I guess it depends on how many there are. Do you think I could leave the room and practice walking down the hall? I’m going a bit stir-crazy in here.”
Elanor gave me a sympathetic expression. “Poor thing. I told him—”
She stopped herself from finishing the sentence. As she started a new thought, there was a twinkle in her eyes that looked a bit naughty.
“Why don’t we take a tour of the castle today?” she suggested. “I think it’s high time you got to know your new home.”
“My temporary home,” I corrected.
The healer’s brows lifted before she looked away and busied herself with gathering my shoes and stockings and bringing them to me.
“I’m excited to take a tour,” I told her, putting them on. “But I’m not sure how far I’ll be able to walk.”
Elanor went to the door and opened it. “You won’t have to.”
She stepped out of the room and came back moments later, pushing a chair in front of her. It glided smoothly and noiselessly, not dragging on the rug.
Leaning over, I looked at the chair legs for an explanation. They hadn’t dragged across the floor because they weren’t touching the floor.
The chair was floating.
“How did you do that?” I asked in awe.
“I didn’t. One of the chambermaids has Levitation glamour,” Elanor explained. “It comes in handy when moving furniture and supplies around the castle. She imparted some to this chair for the day.”
Gesturing to the floating piece of furniture, she said, “Shall we?”
When Elanor pushed the chair legs into contact with the floor, I took a seat in it then felt it rise again with a little bounce.
“Oh. This feels strange.”
“Hold on to the arms,” Elanor instructed. “And let the tour begin.”
My belly was filled with flutter-by wings as I left my chambers by the doorway for the first time.
Just outside it was a wide hallway. About halfway down it, the wall on the right side ended, and the hallway became a gallery, overlooking a huge open area on the first floor below.
From here, I could see not only the first floor but all the way across to the other side of the palace’s second floor. The gallery ran around all four sides of this level in a succession of marble columns joined by waist-high railings of elaborate bronze scrollwork.
Looking over the closest railing, I gasped at the grandeur below.
What I could see was a wide open space that looked like a square courtyard, at least fifty feet by fifty feet, but it was completely enclosed within the home and appointed with such opulent detail and luxurious materials my eyes hardly knew where to land first.
The gleaming floor was decorated in mosaics and beautiful rugs.
The buff limestone walls were adorned with panels of rare colored marble and elaborately carved pilasters bearing depictions of starfish and seadragons and various water gods.
They stretched all the way from the floor to the ceiling high above, which was painted with a huge mural of a stormy sky. Just as in the dining room, the spectacular painting was framed by a massive gilded cornice carved with oceanic motifs.
The handcrafted details must have taken decades if not centuries to complete. At least that would be the case for human artisans—perhaps Elves worked faster.
“That’s the Great Hall,” Elanor told me, overlooking the railing as well.
“It’s the center of the castle. The six doors leading from the Great Hall go to the Dining Hall, which you’ve seen, the Music Room, the Morning Room, the Breakfast Room, the Gameroom, and the Receiving Room. We can explore them all, if you like.”
“Where is Pharis’ room?” I asked the healer in as casual a tone as I could manage.
Elanor answered in just as casual a tone, but it was decidedly non-specific.
“On one of the upper floors. The Prince enjoys a view from high up.”
I’ll bet he does.
Like Seaspire, Stormcrest Castle was enormous. After an hour of touring, we hadn’t seen nearly all of it, but Elanor stopped and suggested a detour when we reached a set of large exterior doors with inset glass.
The windowed doors revealed a bright day and a large lawn sloping down to the ocean.
“Ready for some fresh air, Raewyn?” the woman asked.
“More than ready,” I told her. “I haven’t seen the water in so long.”
Elanor opened one of the doors, and the freshness of crisp Autumn air reached my nose and skin, raising gooseflesh on my arms and making me sigh in pleasure.
We traversed a wide stone terrace and took a shallow set of stairs down to the lawn, heading toward the ocean.
Off to either side of us were large flower gardens, surrounded by high, manicured hedges. I could get only a glimpse of the gorgeous flowering plants within them before we passed the openings and my view of them was blocked by the hedge walls.
Up ahead, I spotted several large beautiful trees with low-dipping limbs. Between them, at the end of the lawn, a decorative marble wall underpinned the expanse of endless blue sea. I assumed that viewing point was our destination.
“It’s so beautiful,” I said as we emerged from between the high hedge walls on either side to an unobstructed view of the ocean. “It almost takes my breath away.”
“Mine too, in every season. I never get tired of it,” Elanor said.
As we reached the marble wall, I did lose my breath.
But it wasn’t the ocean vista that stole it.
At Seaspire the land beyond the low decorative wall had dropped off into a cliff. Here, there was a lower terrace, impossible to see from a distance.
And on it, Pharis was sparring with another man, practicing hand-to-hand combat.
Shirtless.
For a moment, I was back in the King’s palace, watching surreptitiously from Stellon’s suite as Pharis practiced his battle skills in the courtyard below. It was the first time I’d glimpsed his Gleaner tattoo—the larger one, on his chest.
Now, just as then, I found it impossible to look away.
Unaware of our presence up above, the Prince lunged and parried and kicked, his movements as graceful as they were powerful.
Pharis had once told me that following his mother’s tragic death, he’d avoided battle, fearful that others would realize he’d permanently Gleaned her glamour of fighting prowess when she’d died.
Watching him now, I had no doubt that if he was ever forced to fight, no man or creature of any sort could stand against him.
But it wasn’t just awe at his skill that had me staring.
Pharis’ impressive muscles gleamed under the midday sun as he moved. His long, dark hair whipped in the wind like shiny black ribbons.
Even the sounds he made as he exerted himself were appealing in a way that had my toes curling and sweat popping out along my hairline.
Stop it Raewyn. This is not the Pharis you thought you loved. That man never existed.
Across the duration of our long road trip, I’d found myself growing more and more attracted to Pharis. Not just his admittedly alluring appearance but what I had thought was the man inside.
On the last day we’d spent together, that attraction had culminated in mind-altering kisses and touching unlike any I’d shared with his brother—or anyone else.
Even now just thinking about it, those old feelings reawakened in me, causing my skin to warm and sparks to dance through my midsection. I squirmed in my floating chair, unable to sit still.
Suddenly, Pharis stopped sparring and looked up, directly at me. And grinned.
Shaded stars.
I hoped that among the many gleaned glamours he’d bragged about, Pharis had not acquired the skill of mind-reading.