Free Web NovelChapter 57: Pleasantly Mistaken
Nina stared at his face, her lips parting. Then she blinked.
What was she doing?
He wasn’t the only one in the entire Vermont Pack with a grey wolf.
Why did she think it was him?
He didn’t even know where she was...
Her lashes fluttered and she looked away.
"I’m sorry, I must have been mistaken." She turned around quickly. "I’ll leave you to it." The door clicked shut behind her.
Rodrigo stood silently, staring at the space where she had been. His jaw ticked once.
Nina walked out and didn’t stop until she was inside her own quarters with the door shut behind her. She leaned against it, the wood solid and cool at her back.
Her eyes closed slowly. She drew a long breath.
What are you doing, Annalise?
Her hands clenched by her sides. She stood there until the noise in her chest quieted into something she could manage.
The knock came before she was ready.
She opened the door.
Lady Gina and Moreen stood on the other side. Gina’s gaze swept her once, head to toe, the way you check a room before entering it.
"Good morning, Luna. I hope you were not affected by the tussle of the previous night?"
Nina shook her head and shaped her mouth into a smile. "Not at all."
Gina nodded, turning to Moreen. "Good. Get her ready." Her eyes cut back to Nina. "Your training starts today." She was already moving before the sentence finished, her footsteps fading down the corridor.
Nina stared at the empty space she’d left. Then looked at Moreen.
"What training?"
Moreen stepped into the room and placed a box onto the table — one Nina hadn’t noticed until now — then turned back, smoothing the front of her apron.
"Etiquette training, my lady. If due procedure had been followed it would have been completed before the wedding, but given the circumstances—"
Nina had stopped listening. She exhaled through her nose and let her gaze drift to the ceiling.
At this rate, she would never find the Vothraki.
"Is it compulsory?"
"Yes, my lady." Moreen’s eyes darted sideways, then back. "The Matriarch enforced it herself. I overheard her telling Lady Gina it must be followed stringently."
Nina heaved a quiet sigh. "Alright." She needed a distraction anyway. Something to occupy her hands and her head — something that wasn’t the grey wolf, or the way her pulse had lurched the moment she’d looked up at his face.
She stepped forward.
Her legs stopped.
Her vision blurred at the edges and the floor tilted beneath her, sudden and wrong, and she reached for something that wasn’t there. Moreen caught her before she went down, both hands gripping her arms, her voice cutting sharp through the ringing in Nina’s ears.
"My lady!"
Nina held onto her and stayed very still. She blinked once, twice, until the room stopped moving and her eyes could focus again.
"My lady, what is wrong?" Moreen’s face was close to hers, pale and searching.
Nina straightened slowly and released her. "I’m fine."
Her gaze dropped to her hands.
They were trembling.
She pressed them together quickly and walked to the mirror. Her reflection stared back — composed, dressed, expression giving nothing away. But her heart was hammering loud enough that she half-expected Moreen to hear it, and behind her the girl was still speaking, her words sliding past Nina without landing.
Was this a side effect of the reincarnation?
She didn’t know. She didn’t know what Annalise’s body was making of her, what was still being rearranged beneath the surface. The thought sat cold in her stomach. free𝑤ebnovel.com
"My lady?" Moreen’s hand pressed her shoulder.
Nina arranged her face and glanced at her. "Let us begin."
"All set, my lady." Moreen smoothed the back of Nina’s dress with both palms.
Nina stood before the floor-to-ceiling mirror and blinked once, pulling herself into the present.
She drew a slow breath. freewebnovel.cσ๓
She was overthinking. Stress from the previous night, or the start of something her body was fighting. She would visit the infirmary when training was done.
She smiled at Moreen. "Let us go."
The east building was quieter than the main quarters. Fewer people, less sound — as though everyone here had, without discussion, agreed to keep their voices low. Footsteps didn’t echo in these corridors so much as fade, absorbed before they could reach the walls. The few people they passed moved with purpose and spoke in half-tones, and Nina got the sense that anything louder was considered a kind of failure.
Their steps climbed the staircase and carried along the corridor until Moreen stopped before a set of double doors and knocked — once, short and clean.
"Come in."
Nina recognised Lady Gina’s voice through the wood. She straightened her shoulders, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
She stopped.
There was another woman in the room.
She stood near the window with a flat stick held loosely at her side — short, somewhere in her late fifties, hair pulled back tight enough that it looked structural, dress pressed, posture so correct it seemed like it had never once considered being anything else. The moment Nina crossed the threshold the woman’s eyes came up, found her, and stayed.
Not the way people usually looked at her.
Most people glanced, sorted, moved on. This woman looked at her the way you look at something you’ve already made a decision about, just running the final check.
Nina’s brows creased slightly. She held the gaze a beat, then let her eyes drift away and crossed to one of the chairs and sat. She could still feel the woman watching her.
"This is Lady Emory." Lady Gina rose from her seat. "Your tutor for the etiquette training."
Lady Emory moved from the window in measured steps and inclined her head — barely, just enough to count. "It is an honor to finally meet you, your grace."
Her voice was warmer than her eyes. That was the part that made Nina’s shoulders tighten.
"The pleasure’s mine," Nina said evenly.
Gina folded her hands behind her back. "Lady Emory oversees etiquette, deportment, and marriage preparation for the noble daughters." A beat. "From tomorrow you will be joining the group sessions."
Nina’s brows lifted. "It won’t be a private session?"
"It should have been," Gina said — which wasn’t an answer. "But you are the Luna now. You’ll need to make alliances. The wives and daughters of this court do not give their loyalty to someone they haven’t had the chance to measure."
Nina swallowed and said nothing.
Gina glanced at Moreen. "Leave the box and take your leave."
Moreen dipped her head and slipped out. The door clicked shut.
"You may begin," Gina said.
Emory looked at Nina. She let a full second pass before she moved — eyes still running their slow, quiet inventory — and then she crossed the room toward her, steps unhurried, the stick tapping a soft rhythm against her palm.
Nina stiffened as she drew close.
The woman leaned in. Too close. Her eyes had sharpened, focused, like she was reading something written just beneath the surface of Nina’s skin. Nina leaned back instinctively.
Then Emory straightened and smiled — warm and practiced. "Luna." Her gaze moved across Nina’s face. "Your fame has traveled far beyond these walls. I have heard a great deal." A pause. "Your beauty does not disappoint."
Nina’s smile held. She glanced sideways at Lady Gina.
Gina’s face was a wall.
"I’m honored," Nina said, and adjusted in her chair.
Emory walked around her slowly. Nina stared straight ahead and tracked her by sound — the measured circle of her footsteps, the faint tap of the stick. She stopped behind Nina’s shoulder. A beat of stillness. Then the stick came down on her spine — not hard, just sharp, placed with precision — and Nina’s back pulled straight before she’d decided to move it.
"Upright," Emory said simply.
She came back around and tapped the backs of Nina’s hands where they’d rested tangled in her lap. "Cupped. On your thighs. Like this." She pressed Nina’s fingers into the correct shape herself, unhurried, then stepped back.
Nina kept them there.
Emory circled again. The stick trailed somewhere behind her right shoulder. Nina didn’t move. The room held its quiet.
The footsteps stopped in front of her. Emory’s head tilted the smallest degree to the right, studying her. Then she turned to Lady Gina.
"There is considerable work to be done."
Nina sat straighter — though she was already straight. What exactly was wrong with how she was sitting?
Lady Gina’s eyes moved to her briefly, then back. "The Hunt is a month away. What are we to do?"
They spoke between themselves for a few minutes. Nina kept her spine long and her hands cupped and her expression smooth, and she watched them without appearing to, and she thought about trembling hands and blurred vision and a grey wolf she had no business thinking about.
Eventually Emory turned back to her.
"What do you know how to do." Not quite a question — more like a ledger being opened. "The harp. Singing. Embroidery. Painting. Dancing. What do you have."
Nina blinked.
Marjorie had never given her the luxury of learning anything that didn’t serve the household. While Sabrina sat warm in the parlor with soft thread and patient instruction, Nina had been on cold stone floors, scrubbing and washing and folding until her hands cracked at the knuckles. There had been no afternoons set aside for her. No one who thought to ask.
And Annalise — whoever she had been before Nina arrived in her skin — whatever she had known, whatever quiet things she’d been good at — were sealed behind a wall with no door in it. Her memories were completely blank.
She looked at Emory. Then at Gina.
Both women stared back at her, wide-eyed, waiting to be pleasantly surprised.
Nina looked back at Emory.
"Nothing," she said.
