Chapter 76: Love
The woman’s eyes flickered erratically, her tone nearly unhinged as she stammered, "He was fighting a giant spider? Why? He was supposed to be the kind of man who’d spend his entire life brooding in his chambers! Why was he moving? Why was he out there?"
Her voice became a series of jumbled, incoherent murmurs. Her form began to waver, flickering like a candle’s flame in a gust of wind, as if she might vanish altogether.
Tauriel furrowed her brows in confusion. The woman had appeared bound to her fate, as though they were intrinsically linked. Yet her concern, her panic—it was all centered around Einar Sanguis.
"Why do you care so much about him?" Tauriel asked quietly. "Are you... connected to him somehow? Do you know him?"
The woman froze mid-flicker. Her wild mutterings halted, and she exhaled a long breath as if the question had grounded her. "Don’t worry," she mumbled, half to herself. "He’s fine. He’s okay. That’s all that matters."
She then looked directly at Tauriel, her expression a strange mix of sheepishness and melancholy. "Yeah, you could say I know him. Very deeply."
Tauriel gave her a slow nod, she wholeheartedly ignored the ’deeply’ emphasis. "If you say so..." she replied, then added, "By the way, the maids said he was an imposter. The one who invited me."
The woman immediately snapped to attention. Her floating form leaned in, eyes narrowed. "Imposter? How so?"
"I don’t know the details," Tauriel admitted with a shrug. "But they said the Einar I met had replaced the real one. Then, when he left for some emergency mission in Duskholm, the original returned."
A storm cloud passed over the woman’s expression. Her brows knit tighter with each word. "He was replaced that easily? That doesn’t make sense. The Sanguis line never leaves its children unguarded. There are always safeguards. Always."
Tauriel’s patience was thinning. Her voice sharpened. "Then how do you explain his memory loss? He didn’t remember me—he didn’t even remember inviting me to the castle."