MIRA

✨Chapter Four ✨

Her room was beautiful. As she lit the candles that were set on woven metal sconces around the room, light fell on a large canopy bed covered with silken blankets. There was a wardrobe, and she opened it to find that it was full of dresses.

A morbid feeling went through her body when she realized that these were the clothes of the women who had previously been Lord Tiernay's companions. She sighed. They were still beautiful clothes. The women who made them must have had a great deal of time and talent. There was a dressing table with a large mirror and silver hair combs and several different brushes. There was a jewelry box with a number of necklaces and bracelets and broaches.

There was a table with wine glasses and plates, forks, knives, and spoons. There was a pot near the fire and other cooking implements. She wondered if the elders knew that he did this and left it out of the lessons on purpose or if he kept this secret.

He had been right. It took her a couple weeks to explore the other rooms in her chambers. There was a small library. There was the store room that contained meats and vegetables. Now she knew where the items that the druids left went.

She realized a couple days into her stay that he was gathering the things that the others left and was placing them in the store room when she was unaware, maybe when she was sleeping. There was a room that was just a big open room with mirrors on some of the walls. Mirrors of that size would have been difficult to bring here. She wondered what the room was for. Dancing maybe, she thought. There were a number of musical instruments in the store room.

Finally there was a room with a bathing tub. There was space for a small fire or hot coals beneath the tub and a warmer for water. There were towels and a dressing gown in this room. There was also a tub for washing her clothes on the far wall, but it was the bathtub that kept her attention.

The water in the basin next to the tub appeared clear and clean as did the water in the tub itself. Mira lit the coals under the tub. Then she lit the coals under the warming basin for more water and waited for the water to warm before she got in. She enjoyed her bath.

It occurred to her that she was being pampered probably as well as any noble in the roman palaces to the south. Lord Tiernay certainly knows how to try and keep his women happy, she thought. But that thought led to the more morbid thoughts.

If he's so good at making sure his women have everything they could want that only leaves a couple alternatives. The women beg for death because he is so vicious in his feeding, or they die from the loneliness.

Mira had grown up with so many people always around. As she continued her explorations of her chambers she realized exactly how solitary this life was. He must keep us alone so that we won't run away. A person doesn't long for something as badly, if she's not being tempted by it.

After she was familiar with everything her chambers had to offer, she started reading the books in her small library. They were mostly history books or folklore. Some of them were in languages she didn't know. She set herself a routine. She found that her water was replaced regularly, and her store room was continually replenished. There were occasions that she felt as though she was being watched. But she was never able to catch him in her chambers even when she tried to wait up and see him.

It was several weeks worth of her solitary existence, in what she had come to see as a prison, before she was desperate enough for company that she ventured out the door at the farthest end of the hall. Carrying a lantern in one hand, wearing one of the simpler dresses, and walking cautiously down the hall, she listened for signs that Lord Tiernay was nearby. She managed to find her way to the room where she had originally met him, but he wasn't there.

The chandelier hanging from the ceiling was not lit and the room was dark and silent. Suddenly she was overwhelmed by the irrational fear that she would never see or hear or speak to another person ever again. "Hello," she whimpered into the darkness, but there was no answer. She walked around the room looking for another door or some clue as to where he may be. She hadn't really realized how lonely she was. Somewhere in her mind, she had always thought he was just down the hall. But now that she was standing here and the room was dark she felt as though her entire body was going numb. She continued her search for another door, hoping she'd find. As she came back to the door she had come in and had turned up nothing she fell to sitting on the ground in the middle of the doorway and began to cry.

She didn't care what he would do to her now. She only wanted some company. Any company.

As she sat sobbing, a gentle hand touched her shoulder. "Shh. I'm here." His voice seemed, at that moment, to be the most beautiful sound in the world. She turned to see him bending on one knee behind her and she flung her arms around his neck.

He held her and spoke softly. "I understand. Calm down." He stroked her hair and waited for her to stop crying.

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