Taken by the Warrior King by Vanessa E. Silver Page B

to the Lord? What if he does not like the look or sound of me?’ I replied back in a panic feeling totally out of my depths.
    ‘I would not worry overly about my brother not liking the look of you, for he has seen you before, the sight of you bewitched him, to the extent that he ordered me to find you and bring you to him, I was the only one he trusted to do the task.’
    ‘Your brother?’ I was surprised by her disclosure.
    ‘Yes my Lord and my brother,’ Ingrid replied back in frustration to me, I knew she was annoyed with herself for slipping out the valuable piece of information to me.
    ‘And now that I have seen to it that you have been cleaned up and appropriately attired I have no doubt you will dazzle him even further, stirring the heat of desire within him.’
    I went through the memories in my mind, thinking hard about the many foreign invaders I had seen from a distance within the past weeks during my brave visits to the village centre, but there was no-one in my mind that I would have suspected of wanting to seek out my presence.
    Knowing that it would be pointless to speculate on the identity of my admirer any further, I quickly turned my thoughts to Ingrid’s mention of my cleaned up appearance pleasing the Lord. I knew that I had never looked better, especially after I happened to chance upon a mirror in one of the large tents they had taken me to, my reflection had shown a surprising image of myself that I could barely recognise. With my hair appearing as a mass of thick curls of a vibrant rich red that fell to my waist side. My eyes looked big, green and bright, which contrasted sharply with my pale white skin.
    And as I looked down to my body I saw the cinnamon brown gown they had made sure I dressed up in, it clung tightly to my every womanly curve and made my waist appear narrow to accentuate my full rounded breasts and pert bum. I found myself holding back my words to voice my uncertainty at wearing the slightly indecent garment and I resisted crossing my arms in front of my chest when Ingrid had finally looked at me over with approval and confirmed to me that my transformation was complete with a satisfied smile.
    ‘No, you need not worry about your appearance; it is your tongue you will need to be careful of. My brother is not always known for his patience or even temper at times, you must learn how to tame him.’
    ‘But how should I go about doing that?’ I became nervous wants again.
    ‘You will just have to figure that out for yourself, for now we have no more time to spare, he is expecting you, we better go in, or he will have my head, he has been waiting for you for too long already,’ I saw Ingrid speak with a small smile on her face.
    I swallowed hard as I turned away from Ingrid to face ahead. I walked into the large tent where the music played and I heard the loud noise of men and women in what seemed to be merriment.
    ***
    I t took me great effort to keep myself composed as I started to walk through to the other side of the large tent. It became very apparent once I had stepped into this new domain that a celebration was well underway, everywhere I looked there were men and women feasting, dancing or merely interchanging causal words, but all appeared at ease and happy as music from the harps and flute played in the background. But what was quite surprising to me was the fact that the tent was filled with foreign blonde haired male giants, and females who were a mix of their equally foreign and blonde counterparts but also some of my own native female villagers. I even recognised my oldest friends Sonya and Bridget from among the crowd, we had all played together in our childhood, and I still liked to think that we retained a bond of closeness right up to the present day. To the extent that I been deeply worried when just days before I had called upon their homes each separately, to find no sign of them and their families anxious as they told me of how they had been taken away by