Chapter 198: The House of Iron
Clearly, Jacques had no plans to fail in his desire to share a meal with Ashlynn or if not her, then her closest attendant. The carriage ride, once everyone was in place, lasted only a few minutes before they arrived at a large building that occupied almost an entire city block.
Marble statues of heroic warriors adorned the exterior of the blocky four-story building and well-dressed men and women from a number of Eldritch clans queued up at the front entrance to the building. The sign emblazoned over the door read ’House of Iron’ in an elaborate script that looked like it had actually been formed of carefully shaped wrought iron.
When the carriage bearing the glyph of the High Lady Erna’s palace rolled up, however, people quickly got out of the way while several onlookers craned their necks for a better look at who was arriving from the palace.
"Hop on down now, ma petite," Jacques said after stepping out of the carriage and placing his wide-brimmed hat on his head. He held out a four-fingered hand to Heila and bowed as deeply as any footman would despite his extraordinary status.
When Heila moved to step out of the carriage, she hesitated for a moment, uncertain about accepting his hand. His prickly aura had been so completely withdrawn that she didn’t sense the slightest threat from him and yet she couldn’t shake off the memory of how painful it had been to approach him the night before when he took Ashlynn to the dance floor.
In the end, the presence of so many watching eyes left Heila feeling like she couldn’t be blatantly rude and reject his hand. At the same time, she barely put any weight on his hand as she hopped out of the carriage, giving him only the briefest touch to maintain appearances.
"That, that’s the Sandbox Witch! If he’s helping someone out of a carriage, it must be Seneschal Ashlynn," someone in the crowd gasped. "The next Mother of Trees has come to the House of Iron!"
"I thought the Seneschal of Lady Nyrielle was human?" another person countered, doubting the first man’s claim. "This woman is from the Horned Clan."
"You weren’t there last night," an elegantly dressed serpentine woman said. She held a lace fan in one hand and hid her smile behind it as she watched Heila exit the carriage with none of the grace one would expect of a person of high status. In fact, given the scale of the carriage and her own diminutive stature, she seemed almost childish even though she was clearly a full-grown woman.