Chapter 704: A Helpful Guest
The room Isabell found herself in provided a few clues that brought a few memories from the previous evening back into focus. The stones of the walls were ancient and rounded over on the edges and corners, even if they had been freshly painted in tones of soft blues and subtle greens.
It was the proportions of the room, however, that drove home the point of where she currently found herself. The doorway was larger than it would have been in any human bedroom she’d ever seen, and the ceiling was taller as well. The whole place felt like it was sized for creatures that stood head and shoulders taller than even the largest knights and strongmen she’d ever known.
Dimly she remembered that, by the time they’d arrived at the ancient fortress in the Vale of Mists, Tiernan had succumbed to the strong drink and lay propped up in the corner of the carriage. His snores were deep and loud, resembling a lumberjack’s two-man saw struggling to tear its way through soft wood as his chest rose and fell with deep, steady breaths.
Isabell and Ashlynn weren’t far off, and the gray-haired guild master wanted to tear her hair out in frustration as she struggled to remember what had happened when they arrived. She remembered people waiting to receive the,m but she couldn’t remember a single person’s name or face. Only that Ashlynn had promised her they were safe and that they would help her to a room.
Clearly, that had happened, and whoever helped her into bed had also helped her to change into a soft, silk sleeping gown, but she had no memory of any of it. The thought sent a momentary shiver down her spine as she wondered who would have been responsible for helping her change. It couldn’t have been Ashlynn, she was clearly too intoxicated to be of any help, but then, who would it have been?
For a moment, she wondered if Lady Ashlynn’s vampire lover had been the one to help her into a fresh change of clothes before tucking her into bed. She discarded the notion almost immediately as ridiculous. A powerful vampire wouldn’t waste her time putting a drunken stranger to bed, even if she was a friend of Ashlynn’s.
More than that, after the way she’d heard Ashlynn speak last night, she doubted either woman wanted their partner gazing at other people in the nude. But no matter how much Isabell tried to remember, her mind found no answers as to who had helped her change.
"Does she even have any human women serving her?" Isabell wondered. "Maybe it was one of the other vampires... Zarya? She said that she was Lady Nyrielle’s handmaiden after all..."
It was a mystery without answer and everything she came up with would only be a guess. When she realized why her mind was so stuck on the question, however, a frown formed on her face as she confronted the reality of her discomfort.