He continued to study her sleeping form, adjusting his view of her to see if her features would alter, but she remained absolutely stunning at every angle. Her auburn hair shimmered in the dim light flickering from the wall sconces, shifting from the deepest red to a vibrant orange that cascaded in silken waves down her back.
Her breathing was soft, wisping out of full pink lips in a lulling flow. Her figure was petite yet offered gentle curves in all the right places. Garren shifted in his seat, his trousers becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
She had a rounded face with the most enticing dimples framed on either side of her mouth, which only amplified each time she bestowed him with even the slightest smile.
A small noise escaped her as she stirred, and Garren quickly looked back to the text in front of him so as not to be caught gazing at her while she slept.
She yawned, stretching as she slowly came out of her slumber, and it was the most charmingly delightful thing Garren had ever seen.
“I’m sorry, I must have fallen asleep,” she sighed, rubbing her eyes. “How long was I asleep for?”
“Not long. A few hours at most.” He didn’t look at her for too long, worried she would change again, her features melting from the stunning creature she was, back into the unremarkable woman that didn’t seem to suit her.
“What is the time of day?” she asked, looking around the room for what Garren assumed was a clock or window to the outside world, but there was no way to tell the time down in this dark dungeon of aging books.
Garren reached behind him to the jacket he had tossed over the back of his chair and pulled out a pocket watch from a small compartment inside his coat. “It’s well into the early hours of morning.”
“What is that?” She looked far more awake than she had a minute before, staring at the watch in his hand with wide eyes.
“This?” he said, unhooking the chain from his jacket and holding it out for her to take. “It’s a watch, just a smaller version of any ordinary clock.”
When her eyes still held a look of confusion and she continued to ogle at the brass watch in her hands, he questioned her, “How do you tell time?”
“There is a bell tower, which tolls from sunrise to sunset with each new hour, although it is often left forgotten, so we must rely on our candle clocks.”
Garren was stunned. Relying on bells and candles to tell the time of day? They were ancient tools. This poor village had been so cut off from the rest of humanity for so many years; it hadn’t the chance to develop along with the rest of Svakland. They were living in the past, completely unaware of how far behind the rest of the world they were. A sadness washed over Garren again for these people and the life that was stolen from them.
“Here, let me show you how it works.” He came up behind Oriana’s chair, leaning over her, his fingers brushing against the small part of exposed flesh at her nape as he placed a hand upon her chair, hovering over her shoulder.
“The numbers mark the twelve hours of each half day. This smaller hand here, shows the hour, while the longer hand here, marks the minute. It starts here at the twelve for midnight, once both hands get all the way back to the twelve, that would mark midday. Until they both continue all the way to midnight once more marking the start of a new day.”
Oriana brushed her thumb over the glass face of the watch. “This is truly remarkable. Did you make it yourself?”
She turned her head to look at him and nearly collided with his chin. Neither of them moved away. A whisper away from one another, Oriana’s eyes flicked to Garren’s lips for a fleeting moment, then to his eyes, and then to the scar that marred the right side of his face.
She lifted her small hand and he sucked in a breath as she trailed a delicate finger lightly along the puckered flesh.
Garren closed his eyes as her touch sent a sudden heat coursing through his veins, igniting something primal within him–something that had laid dormant for far too long.
That was until she whispered, “This scar is not a mark from birth.”
He pulled back. “What?”
Oriana’s hand hovered in the empty air a moment longer before it finally fell to rest in her lap. The heat that had been building within him began to freeze over from the loss of her touch.
“That kind of scar is created by force, from cutting into the flesh, rather crudely, if I might add.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” he said in a clipped tone. His mother would not have lied to him. She had no reason to. She never lied, not to anyone.
“We’ve been here too long. Daylight will soon break, and the monks will be waking,” he said, changing the course of the conversation. Garren closed the tomes he had left open on the table and began returning some to their shelves, leaving the few he had yet to look through on the table for his next visit. “The monk said not to take anything from this room, but we were welcome to browse the shelves as long as we wanted.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Oriana asked quietly, looking down toward her interlaced fingers.
“Not much.” He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I was able to find the Phantom Wood mentioned several more times, but there was nothing of note. The forest appeared sometime around the year two thousand. That is the best piece of information I found. Other than that there was mention of all trade and travel stopping as the forest was too unpredictable, too hard to maneuver through. So all the roads and trade routes that once led to the surrounding villages and cities were left forgotten, hidden by the Phantom Wood.”
Oriana simply nodded. “And what of the White Demon? Did you find any mention of her in the texts?”
Garren spun instantly to face Oriana. “Her?”
