Shadows Over Arcadia Chapter 72: 70. Briarhallow Part 2

Read chapter 72 of Shadows Over Arcadia by Zacheas on NovelPedia.

The list of inconsistencies keeps growing, and so do the burning questions. Now, with Willow’s sudden departure, all of it points in a bad direction. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m walking into an ambush. Or am I overthinking it? Maybe elves are just a secretive people. No. Willow taught me never to let my guard down. I can only trust myself. Envy and I step down from the wagon. The guards move aside without a word, allowing us through. As I round the horses at the front, I drag my fingers through Huckleberry’s mane, then Buttercup’s, as if I’m just taking a moment to pet them. What I’m really doing is laying a few choice enchantments, the kind I hope I won’t regret. A trick that worked out well for Shadow recently. “Kane, catch up!” Vaelis calls, looking past me. I turn to see Kane already dismounted, jogging toward us with his horse in tow by the reins. “I’m here,” he says, a little breathless, as he starts to hitch the horse to a fence post. Vaelis finishes tying off his own and looks back to me. “Should we hitch your horses too, m’lord?” “Not if you want that fence in one piece,” I mutter, mostly to myself. Then I add, louder, “No need. They’re… trained.” Yeah. Trained sounds better than ‘so stubborn they’ll do whatever they want, but it somehow works out anyway’. The four of us make our way up the path, the elven guards following from behind, Envy and I entering through the heavy double wooden doors first. They open for us, held by even more guards waiting inside. I hesitate at the sight of a small entry room with no less than six armored warriors lined along the walls. To the side is a split door, the top half propped open like a service counter, revealing a room packed with weapons. The guard beside it gestures for me to step forward. With a sigh, I thicken the barrier around myself and step inside. “Weapons,” the one who waved us in says. No greeting, just a cold stare and an open palm. “We were invited by Lady Opel,” I bristle. “You don’t trust us?” “We trusted a Drakemore once before,” he answers coldly. “Store your weapons to enter.” I return his stare with a glare of my own. What does that mean? Who in my family could possibly have wronged them? Certainly not me. But short of overpowering every guard in this place, I don’t see a peaceful way around the insult. And whatever is going on here, I need answers. If they’ve got some false notion of me, the only way to fix it is to disprove it. “Be careful with this, it was a birthday gift from a friend,” I say, begrudgingly drawing my sword and offering it hilt-first. The guard takes it and hands it over the open top half of the door to someone inside. My eye twitches and my teeth grit at the sound as my blade is tossed carelessly, clattering to the ground. Envy’s gaze shifts from the weapons room back to the guard, who impatiently repeats his order. “Weapons.” Envy draws her daggers slowly and places them in his hands, followed by her right gauntlet housing her crossbow. “You realize these are our least destructive weapons, right?” she says coldly. The elf smiles smugly as he tosses her equipment unceremoniously into the armory. “He’s going to regret that,” Envy mutters in my head as the next set of doors are opened for us and we’re waved to enter. “Stay calm,” I warn her. “ Don’t give them a reason to blame us if this goes sideways.” “Oh, I’m plenty calm,” Envy thinks back. “ I just noticed they’ve got quite the collection of dwarven-made weapons in there. Saw a nice pair of daggers.” Through the doors, we enter a grand banquet hall with a large, heavy wooden table running down the center. At the end of the room is a raised dais, with Lady Opel seated upon an ornate chair at its center. The room feels more like a king’s throne room than a place for entertaining guests. We’re directed to take seats at the center of the long table, an awkwardly long distance from where Lady Opel sits, looking down at us. She wears an elegant dress of white silk, an intricate pattern o