Changeling

Chapter 6

It sent Sorrel's nerves through the roof. In the room with a lion or not, her body could have sworn she was, and after brief introductions, she immediately excused herself and promptly bolted. 

She just had to get back to the kitchen and she'd be safe, she thought. Her friends were there after all, supping in the kitchen.

"I came from the... the left, right?" Sorrel muttered to herself in a haze. It felt like she was being choked, stifled. The air was constricted from her lungs as if a phantom hand had reached out and cut off the circulation. She had been ambling around for a while, running on pure adrenaline and a touch of idiocy that accompanied this, when she stopped dead in her tracks.

She'd never stepped foot in this area of the castle. She was well and truly lost. 

It was a dungeon of a hallway. The only place in the castle that actually looked like a castle and not Disney World. Dark and dank with that signature smell of mold and the sensation of wetness on the skin. It felt like a dungeon as well in that she was trapped. She took a small breath inwards and was fit to bolt when an arm shot out from behind her field of vision and grabbed her.

She screamed as she was met with the sight of a knight in silver armor. 

"I didn't mean to!" She paled, trying her best to back up, and instead met a closed door.

"Quiet!" The man said glowering from inside his helmet. "I came from a jousting event and have been calling for hours. what took you so long? Get to it!" He roared, turning.

Sorrel stilled, panic gone and confusion anew. 

"Sir?" Her voice wavered, and she shifted uncomfortably in her buckled heels.

"Are you going to undress me, or am I to bathe in my armor?!" He gritted.

"Of course not, sir..." She stilled and began to unhook his helmet. He took this off, as Sorrel was too weak to handle the heavy thing. He had to have been 6'5", and Sorrel was dwarfed in comparison at 5'5". The coif was next, which she unhooked in kind. The smell of dirt and sweat came to her nose at this, and she stifled a gag, focusing on averting her eyes from his face as he leaned forward and allowed her to take off his chest and back plate. Once he was down to his chain mail beneath, it was an effort to tug the thing off of him, and when she nearly fell back from the effort of this action, she finally glanced up at the man who was now only in his breeches. Her eyes grew giant.

There was no mistaking it in the little dank dungeon of a room. Those black eyes that watched her, they were beautifully littered with cow-like lashes, and his dark thick brow rose as he studied her in turn. A slightly upturned nose and a full lower lip, and the face itself was framed by a wealth of long black hair that coiled about his face, caked in mud as well as goodness knows what. 

He was filthy but plainly the most beautiful man she'd ever seen.

"Ahem." The man cleared his throat and gestured that Sorrel feed the bath.

She jumped at this low reverberation which seemed to travel up her legs, and she snapped to it. At first, she struggled to pick up the giant pail, as it happens that humans were the small ones after all from what she'd seen insofar. 

"Little people my ass." Sorrel muttered under her breath, and gasped as the man took the water and poured it into the basin with a growl of impatience, tossing it to the side with a great "clang!".

Sorrel breathed a sigh of relief when he opted to keep his breeches on as he sank into the water, and her eyes sprang open wide to the sound of a "Slop!" as she heard them cast to his side, soaking wet. 

"Get to it! Are you simple?" The man snapped. 

Sorrel Immediately prayed that she wouldn't have to bathe anything other than his back.