Shivers (I)

Seraphina stared at the man with her jaw hanging open and her eyes opened wide. She expected him to be able to move the wooden shelf, but nothing could have prepared her to see him picking it up as it was the lightest thing in existence.

She noticed the man arching one of his eyebrows high in question and she immediately returned to her senses. "Oh! This way please." Saying that, she quickly walked out of the room and headed toward the other side of the hallway. Once inside her room, she quickly looked around to decide where to put the shelf.

"There! Can you place the shelf against the wall next to the window? I think its size is perfect for there." She pointed toward the wall as she spoke and watched Arwan placing the shelf in its place and making sure that it was perfectly aligned.

He barely would have moved his hand to brush away the dust from them when Seraphina arrived next to him with a dirty cloth in her hand. "What are you doing?" He asked.

"Cleaning it." She answered as she turned her soft gaze toward him. "I need to clean it from the back too. Pull it away from the wall a little bit so that I can clean it from behind."

The man didn't move immediately and stared at her for a moment or two with an unreadable expression on his face. With a soft sigh, he finally moved forward and did as she had asked him to do. Mortimer finally arrived in the room and immediately joined Seraphina to clean the shelf. The duo made sure to get rid of every single grain of dust from the shelf only to dirty the floor in the process.

"So, what's next?" Arwan asked once Seraphina was done cleaning the shelf and he had once again placed it against the wall.

"Follow me." She told him before she quickly left the room and headed toward the room next to hers. She remembered seeing a few cabinets in that room the previous night. Just like she expected, there were four huge wooden cabinets sitting in that room.

She took her time to inspect them closely before she chose two among the four and signaled Mortimer to start cleaning one of them while she cleaned the other. Once they were done, Arwan picked up one of the cabinets and followed her to her room. She made him place one of the cabinets on the other side of the room, opposite to the shelf, and the other one inside the second room.

Next came couches, wooden tables, another big shelf and a small shelf, chairs, and then finally asome dirty curtains that were handed over to Mortimer so that the man could wash them and bring them back to life. In the meantime, Arwan was made to place the wooden beams in place so that Seraphina could hang the curtains later.

Mortimer and Seraphina quickly swept the floor before the latter started moping every corner of her room. Instead of leaving the room like he was told by her, Arwan stayed behind and watched her clean the room and bring it back to life to some level.

Despite feeling self-conscious under the intense gaze of the Third Shadow Lord, Seraphina continued with her work because she needed to finish it quickly. She was tired after spending the entire morning cleaning and setting up the room, she was feeling extremely dirty since she was covered in dirt from head to toe, and her stomach was protesting for some food.

Unfortunately, her new life as a dead person was somehow worse than her life as a mortal. Even as a dead person, she was feeling tired and hungry. It seemed like there was no perk of being a dead person.

A long sigh of relief escaped her lips when she finally finished the work and handed the mop to Mortimer who had been doing his best to help her. The room looked a hundred times better than what it looked the night before or even early in the morning.

"Mortimer, can you please bring us some tea or warm water?"

Arwan's voice suddenly filled the room and Seraphina was suddenly reminded of his presence. As she turned her attention toward the man, she found him standing against the window while looking straight at her.

"I will go and prepare some herbal tea for My Lord and My Lady." Mortimer quickly left the room to get busy with his new task, not even giving Seraphina enough time to tell him that she didn't want to drink the tea as she was planning to take a bath before she could eat a brunch.

"You did a really nice job." Arwan suddenly complemented her, but his face still carried an unreadable expression that made it hard for Seraphina to decide what he was really feeling. She just hoped that he wasn't mad at her for making him work.

"Well... you helped a lot too. Thank you so much." She tried to look anywhere but at him. Mortimer's absence had made her extra conscious about Arwan's presence in her room, and all of a sudden, her insides were doing that crazy fluttering thing.

"I... I will not be able to join you for the tea. I should better go and take a bath now." She quickly blurted out and started moving toward the trunk that was sitting next to the wall.

She sensed his presence shifting behind her even with her back turned to him, a tingle of awareness danced along her spine. But before she could react, he spun her around, pressing her firmly against the wall, his body trapping hers.

The shock of his sudden, overwhelming proximity left her breathless. Startled, she attempted to push him away, but he effortlessly caught her hand, pinning it against the wall above her head. Her heart raced wildly at his nearness and the intensity of his gaze sent shivers down her spine.