Chapter 163
There were doors to rooms that were made, as though people still lived there and each room had a plaque outside stating who they had belonged to; Kings and Queens, previous rulers of Valeria as well as Elders who had permanent stay at the palace.
I couldn’t believe how much history this palace held and how much of it was preserved. Offices and playrooms from earlier rulers and their children were also fully intact. There was a thick silver plaque under a portrait in the hallway.
“The first royal palace, built for King Lewi’
This was the very first thing they built, this stood before anything else so every other building was an addition to this one.
The main building hadn’t even been built yet when they lived here.
It was eerie to think about, what if their ghosts still lingered in these hallways, watching their rooms and drinking tea with the other ghosts.
A shiver passed through me and I froze. Could that have been a ghost?
“Hazel,” Nora’s hand on my shoulder made me scream and I fell against the wall. My poor heart was slowly weltering away in my chest.
When I turned around she was holding her hands up beside her head and her eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them.
“I’m sorry,” she squealed, “I found something I think you’ll want to see,”
Nora took me to a corner of the hallway where a lamp shone, the only lamp above a portrait as far as I could tell. A regal woman sat on top of a throne, it was a humongous throne, the back reached up a good meter above her head, yet she sat there as though she and it were the same size with her arms resting on the sides and in one hand she held a spear with a round golden ball the top and red emeralds that surrounded it like a crown in itself.
On her back hung a cape, thick and large and it fell down the throne and around her feet.
Sitting heavily on her head was the biggest crown I ever saw, as regal as the woman it sat on.
And what was that on her face? Was she smiling?
Nora scanned the portrait, every corner, and brushstroke. I had to run back down the hallway and I looked at every portrait on the walls, scanning them and seeing if it could be right and what do you know; I made it back to Nora and gazed in awe at the woman’s beauty.
“She’s the only one smiling,” I said.
“Maybe she had something to smile for,”
“A few somethings actually,”
Nora looked at me and cocked her brows.
“How do you know?”
I looked into the woman’s eyes and I knew everything I needed to. Whoever painted her was beyond talented, he captured everything about her with a series of colors and brushed on a canvas that used to be nothing but a blank sheet.
“Because I see those eyes every day,”
The moss green, dark and questioning but with a warmth and kindness that at least one of her sons inherited.
“This is Gabe and Darian’s mother?”
I nodded my head and skimmed my eyes over the tiny text under the frame.
‘Queen Eleanor Hayes’
1/2
Chapter 163
“She’s beautiful,” Nora cooed.
She really was and you could almost feel the warmth coming from the frame. I wondered what she as like, all I knew about her was what Gabe had told me. Did Darian ever think about her?
I’d have to ask him someday. Judging from the painting she was truly something special, smiling even though I’m sure somebody told her not to.
We continued down the hallways and poked our curious heads through every door. There was storage, doors leading to staircases and we explored every inch
of it.
Some rooms had large windows with beautiful panoramic views and others were darker, and gloomier but with every ounce of prestige as the rest of the
palace.
There was a humongous library with three floors, books lining each shelf as far as the eye could see and Mathilda spun around, tilted her head back, and danced under the high ceiling while she looked at all of the spines that to her were like magic.
The number of books we read together when she was little, the stories she would come up with hoping to one day write a book of her own, and the stacks of perfectly placed and organized titles by her bed were unfathomable. I hope she brought them with her, they were her most priced possessions.
Chapter Comments
61
POST COMMENT NOW
SHARE
212
The Alpha’s Hunt
