Chapter 164
I’d have to check that later.
Her squeals filled the library and echoed up every level until it bounced against the ceiling and slammed back down on us like a heavenly sound, and not at all like a bird trapped in a net.
I winced and massaged the point under my ears whilst Nora joyfully watched as Mathilda ran up the stairs and brushed her hand over each and every spine on the books she could reach.
There she goes, this was her heaven, I could leave and be back in three hours and she wouldn’t even have noticed.
“Mathilda, no!” She was about to take the ladder that was attached to the big bookshelves and I could see her climbing to the top and then falling back down…not a pretty view.
“Please!”
“No!”
“Please!” Her tone became edgier.
Oh hell.
“No, let’s continue!”
“Pleeeeeease!” that had to be the longest ‘please’ I’d ever heard, it continued for like fifteen seconds.
“No.” Steady and clear, with no room for argument, I learned that from my mother.
She walked back down with a pout and crossed arms.
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4
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This was just the beginning, wasn’t it? It’d be years of attitude and pouting, a lot worse than this and I was the adult now.
Holy hell.
“We have a lot more left to explore, but I promise that one day you can climb that latter as high as you want and read every book in here,”
She looked at me with furrowed brows and a pouting lip.
This was new to me, I didn’t know if I should say ‘that’s that’ or offer her cake.
“How about we finish exploring and then we’ll get some cake and tea?” Nora winked.
That sure turned the frown upside down and Mathilda skipped out of the library and hurried down the hallway we hadn’t covered yet.
So cake works, good to know.
I gave Nora a grateful smile and we closed the doors to the library.
I had no clue what the time was but after a lot more exploring we still hadn’t covered everything- though our exhaustion was the final judge and we decided to head into the kitchen in the main building and grab some cake and tea. After we’d eaten, Mathilda was barely keeping her eyes open so we followed her to her room and I helped her get ready. My face lit up when I saw the stacks of books from home lined around her bed, perfectly organized by genre and title just like they had been.
Mathilda crawled into bed and I gave her a peck on her forehead before I turned off the light and closed the door.
Nora lifted her shoulders, “now what?” She asked.
A dumbfounded expression broke out on my tired face.
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Chapter 164
“Now sleep,” I said and saw her off before I headed into my room… Darian’s room…our room.
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,”
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The Alpha’s Hunt
