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Ophelia was seating cross-legged on her bed, in her room at the Opal Sands’ hotel. She was thinking. Thorn hadn’t contacted her since she left Citaceleste with Berenilde and Roseline three weeks ago. Not that she particularly wanted to deal with her fiancé. He actually gave up to her demands for a job and settled her reading practice, but she had been expelled from the court at the first sign of trouble and sent here.
She enjoyed to spend some time with her family, even if the months she spent at the Pole changed her a lot more that her loved ones could ever realize. She wasn’t the puny girl she saw in her mother’s eyes anymore and endured her orders with difficulty. Only her great-uncle perceived the inner evolution that the ordeals made her suffer. She would never dare to confess to her family all she had endure since she came to the Pole. Even her godmother, who lived with her, didn’t know half of it. But all of this had happened and she definitely wasn’t the shy reader who left Anima eight months earlier.
Without knowing why, her thoughts returned to Thorn, the cold and unattainable Dragon she was irremediably linked to. Ophelia was surprised to notice she was playing with the fob watch that he gave her during their last meeting in the Treasury. The object had never left her pocket since that day. She could see him tell her with his hard voice : « You’ll give it back to me when I’ve kept all my promises. And if you still doubt me in the future, read it. »
Thorn’s words were carved inside her. Since they met on Anima, Ophelia had always seen him with his watch that he consulted innumerable times each day. She knew that, if she ever read his watch, it would be an open door on the truth of the enigma that her fiancé was. He gave her permission to read it, even encouraged her to do so. So why hadn’t she done it a month later? She didn’t trust anyone anymore, including Thorn, but she felt like reading his watch would be reaching him through the wrong door, like a thief.
Doubt grew inside her, as it was every time she thought about reading the watch. The article she saw in the hotel’s newspaper came to her mind. After he told her again and again not to talk about her powers, he was bragging about his future reading of Farouk’s Book in the newspaper! She really didn’t understand him, he had the gift to always do things she didn't expect.
Maybe the watch could allow her to… No, she didn’t want to read it. She remembered too well both times she read, almost by accident, objects touched by Thorn. Her family’s telegram, that only passed through his hands, had stunned her with a flow of complex and fast thoughts. As for the dice, they left her a bitter taste of nostalgia after her unwilling reading and she’d rather not think about it.
Everyone hates the Treasurer and the Treasurer hates everyone. Ophelia knew how much it was true. And yet, she couldn’t help seeing the little blond boy playing with his half-brother and sister. He had changed a lot since childhood, and not in a good way. A life as cold as his nature.
She kept thinking while playing with the fob watch in one hand and nibbling the seams of her other glove. She was interrupted by Hector who knocked on her door. He wanted Ophelia to come for a walk on the beach with him. She happily welcomed the distraction and followed her brother outside.
She came back two hours later, heartened by the iodized wind and the walk on the sand. Luckily, no one seemed to have read the newspaper and Thorn’s comments.
Only four days to go before the wedding. Her imagination couldn’t take her past this fateful event. What would happen after the Ceremony of the gift? She had warned Thorn she would never act on their union and he appeared to accept her decision. But what would her family say if she didn’t stay by his side? After all this man would soon be her husband. What about Berenilde? And the diplomatic alliance between Artemis and Farouk?
She felt her stomach lurch with apprehension and a headache start. All would be so much easier if she only understood Thorn, his plan, his motives. She thought about the watch again. Her reluctance melted down as her anxiety climbed. How could she understand Thorn?
He had sent his grandmother away after her attempt to harm Ophelia by poisoning Mother Hildegarde’s oranges. He had drove Gustave to suicide, intentionally or not, after he threatened her. He had not been violent when she confessed to him that she would never share his bed. He offered her his watch to read…
She pulled herself together, thinking about everything else. He had manipulated her to obtain her reading abilities, he had treated her with coldness, he had taken her from her family on Anima to throw her into the tourments of the Citaceleste, he obviously thought poorly of her.
She couldn’t reconcile the various images she had built of her fiancé. And her thoughts came back to the watch which was heavily ticking in her palm. With an anxious slowness, she took her right glove off and froze, her fingers almost brushing the object. Would she dare? Just a few seconds, she promised herself, to try to grasp his state of mind.
When her fingers touched the watch, Ophelia was overwhelmed by a dizzying maelstrom of thoughts, so fast that she couldn’t stop any of them to understand them.
Then she perceived:
« An hesitation, a hint of fear.
What will she read of me through my watch?
Could I make her change her mind?
Will she be scared, disgusted?
I don’t have anything left to lose… »
Ophelia was surprised by the intensity of the feelings that took over her and had to admonish herself that it was only a reading, that none of those emotions were hers. The flood of thoughts was so fast she could only perceive a few brief flashes that followed each other in a matter of seconds.
« The perplexity of seeing his fiancée in his devastated office.
The pain of not being what she deserves.
The violence of an attack and the loathing of his Claws slashing his assailants.
An incomprehension in front of this fiancée who maltreats all statistics, like an equation he could never solve.
The visceral pain he feels when she’s in danger.
A never ending anxiety for Ophelia. His Ophelia. »
Then, an image.
« A beautiful young woman with dark messy curls, pretty hazelnut eyes hidden behind colored glasses, perfect curves buried under a long scarf. A woman with a flawless resolution, a moving clumsiness, a ferocious independence. »
Ophelia hardly recognized herself. Seeing yourself through someone else's eyes was an experience both new and strange.
Although she was about to withdraw her fingers from the watch, embarrassed by the vision she just had, she was struck right to the heart.
« Feelings that will never be mutual, she told him. What did he expect?
A painful awareness of rejection.
A love so unexpected but so strong and real, more real than any of the Citaceleste illusions.
A constant need to see her, to talk to her.
An incomprehension for these thoughts of his small fiancée that overcome his mind and interfere with his concentration. »
Shaking, Ophelia briskly took her hand of the watch. She never had a reading so brief and trying. Barely ten seconds passed on the clock face and yet she could have sworn an eternity went by. She stayed breathless on the bed, not knowing how to react. Her mind emptied and stopped after being filled with too much feelings and thoughts.
Slowly her brain tried to analyze what she just read. She could never have imagine the storm of emotions that flooded beneath Thorn’s icy surface. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it was going to explode. She compelled herself to breath slowly and put down the watch on the bed as if it was a burning coal. With her shaky fingers she rebuttoned her glove.
She felt like she had been hit in the gut and a headache started in the back of her neck. She never should have read this watch, but it was too late, there was no turning back. She couldn’t ignore anymore the truth that hit her. Thorn hadn't lied, she wasn’t just a pair of hands for him, he sincerely cared about her, about what she thought, about what happened to her. He loved her... It was so strange, she would never have thought him capable of such a thing, nor of all the attention he seemed to have for her.
Her first instinct was to rebel. No, he had no right! Their wedding was just a transaction, a way for him to obtain the powers of an Animist. Why did he have to involve feelings? And how could he pretend to love her after everything he put her through and the way he treated her?
Ophelia was so angry. There must have been so much more to read on this watch, an explanation, a reason for all this nonsense. But she didn’t want to do it again, as if the object could harm her.
With the decrease of her heart rhythm, Ophelia calmed down and thought more easily. She couldn’t help seeing again the image of herself she saw through Thorn’s eyes. He looked at her in a way so far from her own reality and in comparison of what he stated. Beautiful, strong, courageous, so why did he treated her like a child he had to protect and keep in ignorance? Why didn’t he trust her?
Ophelia realized that her reading didn’t help her understand Thorn but only made her dive more deeply into perplexity. It seemed that his mind would stay out of her reach.
The Treasurer was split in two: a Thorn full of emotions was hiding under the surface of another Thorn, cold as the Pole winter, harsh in his words and actions. Could she ever conciliate the two men that her fiancé seemed to be made of? Which one was real? She didn’t know what to think or feel anymore. Anger, exasperation, incredulity, a drop of sympathy and trust in an ocean of incomprehension.
She settled to momentarily abandon the resolution of the Thorn enigma, after several minutes of torturing her own mind. She needed to talk to him, to confront him, but he stayed desperately absent. Would she even see him before the wedding? Four days, only four days until she married the great polar mystery that was Thorn. A man who seemed to love her, Ophelia. At that thought, her pulse raced and pounded in her head and she felt her stomach roll over.
When she heard the voices of Agatha and her mother in the corridor, she welcomed the distraction and came out of her room to join them, even if the conversation was about the wedding organization.
Four days, only four days left.