Authors Note: For being so patient, enjoy this longer-than-usual- chapter. Also, I will definitely, for sure, be posting tomorrow and Wednesday.
As Snow left the table and followed Navormal past the stairs and into what could only be an office, complete with a writing desk and potted plant, she noticed that Whitaran had followed them. He closed the door behind him and remained standing beside it as Navormal sat, not at the writing desk, but on one of the chairs beside the window. He gestured for Snow to sit beside him.
There was a moment of stillness as he gazed at her attentively. Finally, he asked, "what brings you into the woods Lady Snow?"
Treading cautiously, she replied, "I found it needful to obtain another place of residence. Due to a sudden series of events, I found I was unwelcome where I was."
He considered this for a moment, then asked, "Would this series of events pertain to your, condition?"
"Not directly," she paused, wondering how much she should tell him, "though it certainly was an important part."
"I see," He seemed to be weighing his words as carefully as Snow was, "and what, precisely, is your condition?"
Snow looked at him and tried to think rationally. He appeared to be afraid of her, which implied that not only did he see in her more power than she could, but that he saw it in the mere few hours she had been in his company. With his question, he clearly didn't know what she was, but his ability to so quickly see that something was different, and remembering her encounter with Grenarin on the stairs, led her to believe that he had the tools to help her understand her condition far better than she did. Which was attractive. All of her life everyone had pressured her to hide and fix her condition, yet these past few days in the wood had already shown how little she knew about it.
It seemed wise to tell him a little and see what he does with it. "My condition, is the result of a wish made by my mother before I was born."
His eyes lit up with interest, "And how was this curse worded?"
She noticed that he had re-labeled the wish as a curse. Curious, she told him how she had wished for, "A daughter, wise, graceful, and fair, with hair as dark as night, skin as pale as snow, and lips as red as blood." She also told him of the rose in the spring, and the winters midnight.
He listened avidly to her story without a single interruption. When she finished he said, "That sounds like a powerful curse indeed, with far reaching consequences. Are you aware of any?"
He seemed genuinely curious, and unlikely to react violently, so Snow decided to tell him. "The most concerning aspect is that I require others' blood to satiate my thirst." It was almost surreal, stating that which made her feared and hated so baldly and in such flowery language. Combined with the unusual reactions she had been subject to since waking up, she felt as if walking into the house had moved her into another, strange dimension which everything was almost the same but twisted just so. She realized that that would be an adequate description of the fey.
As Snow had predicted, Navormal gave no outward sign that what she had just said was anything other than a polite comment on the weather. Snow thought she might have seen his eyes widen, in what emotion she was not sure, but it may have merely been a trick of the light.
"I see." He nodded slowly, then leaned forward steepling his hands and gazing intently at Snow's face. "And what, do you plan to do to obtain that blood while you stay here?"