Chapter ten

Diana

 

I left the room with a mixture of anger and something else.

The something else was from the time he came close to me. I felt something that I couldn’t explain.

Oddly enough, I wanted to feel it again. It was a rush. Fear? Sweet fear? The feeling of hanging over a cliff, knowing that if you fall, there’s water to break it…or playing with a dangerous animal that is familiar to you, knowing that somehow, it can never harm you.

It was nice.

But I was still angry.

He said I had somewhere to be.

Yes. Free! That’s where I needed to be!

I opened the nearest door and snuck inside, hoping Muzan wouldn’t see me and load me with some more of those jobs he does that just…never end.

I entered the hall and planned to cry, but I couldn’t.

It was really dusty, so I knew that if Muzan saw me here, he’d wonder why I wasn’t cleaning.

And if he was a werewolf, he’d sniff me out with mid-level difficulty.

So, why not just clean, I guess?

I went back to the kitchen to retrieve a rag and came back to begin my work. The first thing I did was to open the windows.

As I did, I saw something whoosh by.

It was big, black, and intimidating.

I instinctively poked my head out of the window and saw a black wolf disappear into the forest.

I huffed. It was bigger than even my dad’s wolf.

The biggest I had ever seen in real life.

And the scent it left on its trail was unmistakable. Edric.

Edric was an alpha werewolf.

I mean, I knew he was a werewolf. But an Alpha? Where was his pack?

I stared long into the forest, hoping he would surface, but I heard a howl that was loud and chilling, but far enough that I knew he wouldn’t be back anytime soon.

I focused back on my cleaning, the anger of my predicament replacing the temporary awe.

“Stupid table,” I huffed as I beat the antique table in the center of the room with my rag, coughing when a spray of dust puffed back at me.

I beat it again, and again, cursing it with every beat.

That was until I saw something that stopped me from beating it.

I initially thought the table was just roughed up from being old, but it wasn’t.

The rough edge the table had wasn’t because it was chewed on by Edric, as I would have imagined, or used to butcher innocent virgin girls.

Nope.

It was inscribed upon.

I beat the table a little more, to reveal more of what I was seeing, and eventually, the table wasn’t so dusty anymore. After flapping the rag in the air to get rid of the dust residue, I began gently cleaning, and taking my take to rub across the surface, discovering that the wood was also glazed over.

Besides that, the writing intrigued me.

All of it, I couldn’t understand…which confused me more.

Who would write something like this? Another language? Where then, did he get it from?

Just as I tried looking deeper, the door creaked open, and I dropped the rag, stunned.

“It’s just me,” Muzan waved and entered, swatting in futility, the dust that covered the room away from his face. “How are you not sneezing in this condition?”

I shrugged. “It’s not that bad.”

“Uhuh…”

He stopped short to observe what I was cleaning, and from the look in his eyes, he knew more about this than I did.

I was tempted to ask him, and I gave in to the temptation. He wasn’t as intimidating as Edric.

“What language is this?” I started with, not trying to sound suspicious.

“Aramaic,” he said simply.

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what that was. He must have seen my face, because he let out an exhale and buttressed. “Ancient language that originated from the ancient civilization of Syria.”

“Oh…”

I still didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You didn’t do a lot of history,” he said, but it felt more like a question, so I shook my head.

“Hmm…it shows.” He smirked a little. “Everything in this room is antique like that.”

He walked up to the wall and used the rag that I had dropped to beat off the cobwebs from the walls, revealing a large painting, some of them having some of the symbols that the table inscription has.

“Your master is an old soul, huh?” I huffed.

Muzan turned, not to me, because he seemed to be lost in thought for a while, almost like he was trying to decide something. He ended up nodding.

“Yes. I guess we could put it like that.”

I huffed. This was a lot to take in. Edric didn’t look older than 35, so, it was a marvel how he must have been able to collect this much stuff. But then, family history and stuff like that died hard.

“What happened to the rest of the pack?” I asked Muzan.

He was thinking again…about what to say to me.

“They’re…not here anymore.”

I fought the urge to reply with something sarcastic. Of course, they weren’t here anymore. That’s why I was asking what happened to them.

But he didn’t seem like he wasn’t a smart person, so I took his hesitance as a cue to not prod in that direction.

“How many people has your master killed?”

He gave me a look.

Okay…not prodding in that direction either.

After a while of beating off cobwebs, I was greeted by a hall of ancient artifacts. Muzan did more cleaning in a few minutes than I would have done for thirty minutes. It made me feel stupid for complaining about the amount of work I had to do.

The beauty of the room was coming out even more.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Some 500 years ago, this was painted by someone who was loved by everyone. His art sold for thousands. That painter was disgraced out of his own home and forced to live a lonely life in the wilderness.” Muzan sighed.

“Now, it’s here…gathering dust…”

“Sad?”

He let out a sigh and nodded. “Yes, Diana. Sad.”