The Demon’s Bride

Her dream last night was frightening but due to the louder sound of her heartbeat and the image of Ian's sweet smile, Elise was able to take a fairly good nap for the rest of the night. The next morning when she woke up, Elise quickly wore her maid attire and tied the white apron over her waist to a ribbon. As she was assigned to the kitchen, Elise helped around to cut the vegetables when she heard a murmuring happen next to her.

"Did you hear? It's said that the Lord is meeting a woman." Tracey, the senior spoke to the other maid named Erlin.

"A woman? It must be not something new. The Lord is very charming and no woman could resist sharing a bed with him." Erlin replied crudely but Tracey shook her head. "You see, the rumor is even more surprising, because the only daughter of the Duke was the one who asked him for an engagement!"

Elise heart thudded. "Daughter of the Duke?" She inquired to see Tracey nodding. "Her name is Ella Hunn. The most beautiful woman in Warine. Remember the last party held lin Downbridge? I heard that someone saw the Lord and the Duke's daughter holding hands and even shared a kiss!"

"Oh my! How envious." Erlin replied. "Well the Lord has been unmarried for a long time, so it's expected for him to have an heir, don't you think?" Tracey asked to have the other maid nodding except for Elise. She looked down at the vegetables she cut. Just what did she expect? She's a human and a maid. And the person she fell for is the highest Lord, Ian White.

She felt her spirits downed but then tried to lightened herself before her jealousy walked up again. Exiting the kitchen, Elise passed by the shed with food that she brought for Curly inside a basket.

"Why do you look down?" John asked, in his hand he was holding the apple. He took a bite, pointing her face. "Lemme guess. Problems that girls have, there's only one answer, right? Love problem."

Due to how friendly John was, it doesn't take soon until he and Elise became friends. They began to converse of mythical beings and stuff involves the different beings and some times, he gave Elise a full of rumors what he heard from the town folks yesterday. Hearing John's statement of her face, Elise touched her face. "Does it shows on my face?" She had thought she was good at hiding her expression yet it seems to be easily see through by others.

Yet as though he could read her mind, John clicked his tongue thrice, "Not to others but me, I'm quite perceptive, you see." John praised himself, having his nose growing longer from proudness.

Elise chuckled, she passed the food to Curly while rubbing his head and asked. "Did you hear of the Lord's romantic news?"

"Romantic news, you mean gossips?" Elise nodded to hear him humming. "If I'm not wrong, it's about that woman, Ella Hunn, right? The townsfolk always said of how perfect they're for each other."

"Is that so." Elise murmured, unknowingly slowing down her brows.

John sensed Elise's expression changed and felt as though he noticed some secret of his new friend. But for her consideration, he didn't say anything involving that. "Well, the Lord is a charming man even if I have to say and it's a rumor, you know how whimsical the Lord is, right? A woman can't tie him down unless she had made him fall head over heels for her though it's something close to impossible." John intended to cheer his friend but one reason or another, he noticed that his words wasn't quite comforting either.

"You're right." Elise tittered. It was she who fell for the Lord even when she understood asking for his love wouldn't be easy. But she didn't want to give up.

"Anyway, Elise isn't it time for you go now?" John asked after pulling the golden watch he said to receive from his dead mother.

"You're right!" Elise stood up, dusting off her skirt. "Thank you for reminding me."

"No prob." Elise heard him replying and waved her hand to leave toward the Lord's room. Standing outside the door, she felt quite anxious to enter the study room. She had grown more conscious to her heart and to the man and worried whether her face would show what she's feeling for him.

Yet before she turned the doorknob, Maroon unlocked it before her. Elise snapped her eyes upward in surprise, looking back to the dull gaze and felt shivers running to her back. She thought back to last night when she saw the hallucinations of the man standing to dig graves for the people he perhaps killed. She dodged his gaze, not wanting to show her frightened look as it was rude for her to accuse him of her hallucination.

Maroon didn't say anything, he moved and left, letting Elise to enter. Subconsciously, Elise breathed out in relief.

"Can you lend me a hand for this matter, Ian?" Lewis pleaded, his silver strands of hair threaded his head and as a living doll he was beautiful than any woman Elise had ever seen. Elise looked at the man, using Elton's statements of mythical beings and after looking at the long pointy ears, she recounted the man who spoke to the Lord right now was an elf.

"What did the Church have to say in this matter?" Ian raised a question to have Lewis shaking his head with a forlorn expression.

Ian noticed Elise staring at them with questioning eyes and returned her gaze. Elise's heart thudded again loudly and quickly she avoided looking at his eyes directly. Ian's grin froze.

"Ian?" Lewis asked when he didn't receive the reply from the man. Ian upheld his head to his left arm humming before giving his word. "Alright."

"Thank you, I owe you one." Lewis expressed with a gentle smile. "I will be taking my leave first then."

"Maroon is outside, he will show you the way out." Elise wondered why didn't Ian asked for her to show the guests out but didn't ask and quickly went to brew a new cup of tea. Lewis cast a gaze on the red-headed maid, thinking a moment before tugging his coat to his shoulder and retired from the room.

"I see that you have made new friends." Ian started to have Elise tilting her head before breaking into a wide tinkering smile. "Yes. Back in the town, I don't have friends who are in the same age as me, they're usually younger or older." Elise set the cup to his left hand.

Ian saw he placing the tea cup on his left hand and grinned. "You know that my dominant hand is the left one?"

"Because-" Elise paused, she almost said aloud that she had been watching him for a very long time and thus knew his habits. "It's because, Master Ian often taking books and documents with your left hand, I also notice that you often use your left hand more than your right."

"Perceptive, aren't you. That's a good trait, it's rare for other people to have." Ian praised, he took a sip from the tea, quoting soothingly. "It's delicious."

"Thank you, master Ian." Elise held the tray to her chest, embracing it with her happiest smile. "That being said, do you know who that person is?"

Is it a riddle? Elise asked to herself and mulled. An elf, perhaps a high-ranking person after judging by the way his speech was and the way he behaved himself. She thought of some possibilities, one of it being that person is the Lord, the Lord of Marshfort who is well-known for his breathtaking appearance. As Ian himself was also a Lord a person lower than Duke would not speak informally to him other than the man was a Lord. "Lord of Marshfort?" She asked and gasped on her own words.

"Correct." Ian chuckled. "In Marshforth, there's a forest that's forbidden for anyone to enter. This forest in particular many dark sorcerers have always tried to use their magic to bring out the magical beasts inside the forest and teleportate them to the places they assigned. To make sure that the magical beasts would make sure to massacre their opponents, they used a dark magic to induce the magical beasts in their aggression state." He tapped his finger on the side of the desk and saw Elise's face turned dark.

The dark sorcerers, the people who killed her family. She had heard from the Lord that he had apprehended the dark sorcerers and killed him. How horrible, she said to her heart. She recalled Aryl's words when she was still a child about hating a person and finally she knew it in the worst way possible.

"One of the dark sorcerers as you know attacked your family. But they're a bunch of cowards, you see. So they don't work alone and never want to appear in the middle of massacre that they created."

"Do you mean, the person responsible for my family's death is still free outside?"

"Yes." Ian replied. "To do this dark magics, sacrifices are needed more preferably human's sacrifices for the soul to be savor and use as the base of the dark magic. It's called the taboos magics."

The clutch over the tray tightened, Elise despised the dark sorcerers for taking her family's life. Yet why is the Lord telling her this now? Elise wasn't a slow person and she was quick to fill in the puzzles that the Lord gave.

"Right at the moment, in Marshforth people are kidnapped without a trace in a certain town. As the timings of the people who went missing match perfectly with the massacres that took in Runalia, the Church suspected it to have a relation with the dark sorcerer. " Ian tilted his head staring at her with his claret gaze. "Do you want to come with me to Marshforth?"