We were led down a staircase carved out of stone, into yet another floor of rooms. Ahead was a long table with enough seats to entertain a group four times our size. The tablecloth was, like most other things, white and bordered in gold, and felt to be made of pure silk. Candelabras adorned the table in three places, and arrangements of fresh flowers sat in pots between them.
“Please, sit,” our guide urged, motioning toward the table. “Do you wish to sit with your servants?”
“My...servants?” I glanced toward the guide, confused. He simply motioned toward the others. “They are not my servants. They are my friends, and they are to go wherever I do.”
“Forgive me, Miss Sera. Sometimes the differences between Whispermere and the rest of the world escape me.”
We sat at the table, and the man left us with promises that a feast was being prepared for us. Nyx sat to my left, with Cerin to my right. Silas and Theron sat across from us. To my right, the rest of the table stretched out, empty.
“I wonder if your mother will meet us here,” Nyx pondered, breaking the silence when no one else would.
“I don't know,” I replied. “Whoever runs this place seems to be calling all the shots; hopefully she knows I am even here.”
“If it is true Whispermere was built for your mother, perhaps she is the one who set this up,” Theron suggested.
I was uncertain whether I wanted to entertain that possibility. If my mother was the leader here, I wasn't sure that was a good thing. That would mean I had left one royal family just to become entangled with another. By the looks of Whispermere, it was a beautiful place, but I had issues with the way it was run.
If we hadn't believed them when they'd told us a feast was being prepared, we believed them once it started to be carried out. Ten men, each carrying a tray stuffed with food, filed out of the nearby doorway. My stomach grumbled as my eyes feasted upon the food before it could. Meats, vegetables, fruits, and cheeses were served, prepared exorbitantly with fresh herbs that I was sure did not grow within a reasonable traveling distance from here.
One of the men left the room, returning with a bottle of wine, which he promptly poured for each of us. Another set plates and silverware before us, all made of solid gold.
“Excuse me,” I spoke to the worker nearest me, as he laid Nyx's plate on the table.
“Yes, Miss Sera?”
“Will my mother be joining us?”
“Not for dinner, no. We will take you to her after your meal.”
I tried not to be too disappointed by that. I was overeager to finally meet her. I had to imagine she felt the same about me. We had come so far and it had taken so much time to get here, that I knew she was probably simply getting prepared. She'd had so little time since we'd first arrived at the gates.
“How do they get such varieties of food all the way up here?” Theron pondered, examining his forkful of roast beef.
“I don't care how they do it,” Nyx replied, continuing to stuff her face and gulp down her wine. I knew she wasn't one to drink wine, but she'd been without alcohol since Thornwell, so she was drinking it like fresh water in the desert. “It's delicious.”
The food was delicious. I sampled a little bit of everything. Pork chops marinated in a maple glaze, cooked with bright green, roasted brussels sprouts. Some type of grilled fish in lemon, spruced up with bright green herbs. Roasted asparagus with a sweet balsamic vinegar glaze. Pies made with berries I'd never seen before, juices of various colors spilling out onto the plate.
We ate until we were gluttonous embarrassments, and even when we were finished, the table was plentiful with food. Nyx and I leaned back in our chairs, fatigued with eating. My Alderi friend glanced past me to Cerin, whose wine glass was still full.
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“You going to drink that?” She asked.
“No, go ahead,” he replied, passing it to her.
“Thanks, bud.” Nyx downed the drink within a breath. When she still looked thirsty, I offered her the rest of mine, since I'd only drank half. She took it gratefully.
All of the men who had served us earlier filed into the room again, beginning to clean up after us.
“Who made all that food?” Nyx asked, bluntly. I could tell the wine had made her more boisterous.
“We did, Miss,” the closest man replied, bowing slightly toward her. “Was it to your—”
“It was fucking delicious,” my friend replied, before a pleasured sigh.
The man looked shocked at her response, but he bowed again anyway. “Thank you, Miss.”
One of the workers walked over to me, bowing down beside my ear. “Your mother will see you now, Miss Sera,” he said.
My heart picked up its pace. “My friends are coming with me,” I informed him, remembering the exchange earlier at the gate.
“Yes, she allows this.” Allows. His word usage was interesting.
The five of us stood up, and we began to follow the man back through the doorway we'd entered earlier, and back up the steps. When we reached the floor even with the outside, he continued to lead us upward, past more floors, until finally, he stopped. Before us, at the top of the stairs, was a thick wooden door. White with gold trim, like everything else.
I glanced around the wall of the stairwell, finding even more steps. “There are many floors here,” I commented, as if to get my mind off of meeting my mother for the first time.
“Yes,” the man replied, before knocking on the door twice. Footsteps padded toward us from the other side. “Floors continue to the top of the mountain. Whispermere has fifty in all. Fifteen above the bridge, thirty-five below.”
“...wow.” That new information made me realize that everything outdoors was not the actual village of Whispermere, but just a ridiculously large patio.
I heard the sound of a lock sliding out of place, and I focused on the door, my heart raging in my ears. The door opened before us, and a young woman, her skin gold like the rest of them, answered the door. She nodded toward me.
“Come,” she said, simply. The man who had led us here had already disappeared down the steps from where we'd come. I hadn't seen him leave.
I followed the woman through the door. This was a large room, with higher ceilings than the other floors, and a carpet made of deep red that stretched through to the other side across from the door. Unlike the other floors, this floor had no hallways, no extra rooms. The floor was the room.
My eyes caught on what appeared to be a throne, sitting all of the way against the other wall. Upon it was a woman. My heart started beating even harder, feeling as if it was tripping over itself.
The walk toward her was impossibly slow. The closer we got, the more I saw of her, the more I realized this could not possibly be my mother.
She was dressed in an immaculate golden gown, the V-neck of it barely containing her large breasts, which were clearly a source of pride for her as she puffed her chest outward like the only rooster of a coop. The fabric was cut diagonally across her legs, showing more of her right leg than her left, which she had crossed. A golden band with a rainbow of gemstones across the front covered a strip of her hair, which was as black as the night, like Cerin's; her eyes were impossibly gold, unlike anyone else I'd ever seen—save for myself. Her skin was the same almond cream as my own, but was free from imperfection, unlike mine, which was dotted with freckles across my forearms. Her toenails were painted gold, and showed themselves from beneath the golden strap of a pair of heels that defied the laws of physics with their height.
The woman and I had our similarities, but she was so far removed from how I viewed myself that I refused to believe she was my mother. I knew for a fact, however, that this woman had to be the ruler of Whispermere. She was sitting on a throne, after all, and she was the only one whose skin was not painted. But she could not be my mother. After all, she appeared to only be in her early thirties.
Our guide left us just a few meters from the woman in the throne. If I were to prove to this woman that I came from royalty, the time was now.
“I am Kai Sera,” I greeted her, my voice clear and confident. “I am looking for my mother.”
The woman smiled, her eyes moving from me to each of my companions, before coming back to me. The smile was not one of happiness, but amusement. “And you have found her.”
There was an ache in my gut. “Have I?”
“Why yes,” the woman replied, before chuckling. The gold-painted fingernails of her right hand drummed along the arm rest of her throne. “My dear.”
I was overwhelmed with questions and confusion, and what made it worse is that this woman seemed to delight in it. “You are too young to be my mother,” I protested, desperate for answers.
“Am I?” She laughed heartily, as if this was the most amusement she'd had in a long while.
“You are not elven,” I said, staring at her human ears.
“No, I am not. But you, daughter, are a half-breed.”
This information only served to further confuse me. I stood there for awhile, silent, my mind sorting through possibilities at impossible rates. The woman before me looked human. She had admitted she wasn't elven. She was too tall and thin to be dwarven. She was not some creature-esque race that I had only heard stories of.
“I will tell you my name, child, so that we may hurry this along,” she offered, uncrossing her legs, just to switch to her other hip and recross them. “I am Nanya.”
I heard Nyx gasp softly behind me. It made me realize just where I'd heard the name before.
“You are named after the goddess of lust,” I said, my words nothing but desperate rambles. “I do not understand—”
“Oh, dear child,” Nanya replied, rolling her eyes with impatience. “I did not expect you to be so daft.” She sighed, and sat up straighter, the eyes that perfectly matched mine looking over me. “Kai, you are a god.”
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