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Deep within the heart of Snezhnaya, there was but one simple truth in life: white was the color of the dead.
The logic behind this was simple, bearing a morbid candor that never failed to curl Arlecchino’s mouth with amusement. In Snezhnaya, where the ice was cruel and its Archon, crueler still, bodies didn’t bleed. They simply faded—swallowed by the mouth of a blizzard.
It came as a surprise, then, when Rosalyne visited her with hardly a trace of white.
Arlecchino recognized the room before she recognized the woman before her. They were in their bedroom—a poor imitation of it, if the soot-caked furniture was anything to go by. Books that normally flooded their desk, their bedside table, were now absent, replaced by scorched patches of wood. A chandelier—a foreign, unwelcome addition to their space—hung above them in its rust-red glory, scattering ash and embers.
Most peculiar yet were the flames. They licked the legs of the four-poster bed, but never climbed higher than an inch, unwilling to burn the woman perched on the smoldering mattress.
Rosalyne paid no mind to the fire and merely smoothed her burgundy dress. Her expectant smile was unperturbed by the heat when she greeted Arlecchino. “Hello again, my love.”
Arlecchino breathed deeply. No smoke.
“This is a dream.”
“Would it matter to you less if it was?”
A lone, cracked window hung to their right. Outside, hiding its face behind a paper fan of clouds, was a full moon, light dulled with the sickly-blue sheen of a man drowning in ice and snow.
Arlecchino waited for the clouds to pass, and kept waiting when they remained stubbornly in place. Strange.
Rosalyne patted the space beside her. "Come sit."
Arlecchino ignored her, eyes trained on the frozen night sky.
“When Rosalyne died,” said Arlecchino, “we buried an empty coffin. We would have taken any trace of her—a finger, an ear—but the Raiden Shogun left nothing, not even ashes. It devastated the Tsaritsa.”
She traced the cracks on the windowpane, the web of hairline fractures splintering the moonlight. “It destroyed me all the same.”
“Why?”
Arlecchino scowled.
Sensing her hostility, the flames at their feet roared to greater heights. Heat pinpricked Arlecchino’s arms as a flurry of embers danced around them, falling on their skin, their eyelashes.
Rosalyne merely cocked her head, waiting for her to continue. There was an openness—no, an innocence in her grey, expectant eyes that made Arlecchino clench her jaw. When did she ever see such brightness on Rosalyne’s face, such naked, sincere interest?
“Children of the Tsaritsa are meant to be encased in ice when they die. It’s said to immortalize them, or at least, preserve their memory. It chains the soul to Snezhnaya, to home, so that nothing can take it away from the Archon of Love ever again. But you need a body. No body, no soul. No soul, no hauntings.”
Arlecchino turned to face the ghost—or what was pretending to be one.
“So, what are you?"
“I’m Rosalyne,” it answered, its beautifully familiar face twisted in confusion.
"No." A flood of white-hot fury filled the hollowness in Arlecchino's chest. "You're not."
As if responding to her anger, the moon glared brighter, shifting in shape, in appearance, until—
"I'll ask you again," Arlecchino said, voice low. The moon was gone, plucked from the sky. In its stead was a Cryo Vision, her Cryo Vision, pulsing white in her palm.
"What are you?"
◆◆◆
Snezhnaya was a world without color, and Signora, when Arlecchino first met her, was but a stain on its white canvas. Everything about her hurt Arlecchino’s eyes: her lips, the color of rabbit innards; her eyes, the grey of cinder; her dress, the shade of blood seeping into snow.
Arlecchino hated her voice most of all. It was melodic, a reprieve from the howling of the winter storms that swept through the Tsaritsa’s freezing, barren valleys. Signora never sang—at least, not in front of her—but Arlecchino played a reluctant, private witness to her ballads on the rare occasions Signora thought there was no other spectator save for Columbina or Her Majesty.
Sound travels, Arlecchino wanted to remind her, if only to see the embarrassment color Signora's face, but Signora was easy to cross and had a stubborn, sensitive ego the size of Arlecchino’s, perhaps bigger, and well, Her Majesty did love her songbirds, didn't she? So, it was well within everyone's interests for Arlecchino to hold her tongue around Signora. The less they spoke, the better.
Unfortunately, this unspoken agreement failed to reach Columbina's ears.
"She likes roses."
"What?"
Quill paused, Arlecchino looked up from her letter to frown at the woman occupying the armchair by the fireplace. They were in the library of the Zapolyarny Palace, and there was a sweet, heavy fragrance in the air that unnerved Arlecchino.
Columbina smiled, pleased at having finally caught her attention. "She likes roses," she repeated, languid, half for dramatics and half to provoke Arlecchino’s ire. Do you not understand me? her tone teased.
"So what if she does?" snapped Arlecchino, returning to her correspondence. "You know you can't find roses in Snezhnaya."
"And if I say I managed to procure a bouquet?"
"Then I have half a mind to call you foolish for wasting Mora on such silly, short-lived nonsense."
To Arlecchino's irritation, Columbina only laughed.
Some time later, Columbina bid her goodbye, and Arlecchino, fingers ink-stained and bare, slid three rose stems in her coat as she left the library, humiliated beyond belief.
◆◆◆
Arlecchino remembered nothing, felt nothing.
In this dim, glacial space, all that existed was her grief, and a door that beckoned to it.
With nothing but shadows for its hinges to cling to, the door hovered a foot above the ground, shimmering blue like midday skies during summer solstice. There were no doorknobs or knockers, only three glass steps leading to its frame.
An entrance to a domain.
As she reached for the door, a series of snapshots flooded her mind's eye.
A sickly-blue moon. A burning bed. A rust-red chandelier, creaking as it swayed.
A woman.
Arlecchino blinked, left hand outstretched before her. All too quickly, the images faded from memory. Disoriented, she glanced down at her free hand to find that her Vision had disappeared. A trick of the domain, perhaps?
Shaking her head, Arlecchino opened the door.
A rust-red chandelier. A sickly-blue moon. A woman, perched on a burning four-poster bed. She smiled as Arlecchino stepped through.
"Hello again, my love."
◆◆◆
There was an unexpected audience, and that was all it took for Arlecchino to crumble.
Signora looked at her, expectant, curious, and Il Capitano, as always, stayed unreadable, eyes hollow beneath his mask. From inside her coat, Arlecchino presented three roses. A red stickiness began to drip from the stems, stark against the white of her knuckles, sharp against the numbness of her palms.
“One for Il Capitano,” said Arlecchino, smile not quite reaching her eyes. “Two for Lady Signora.”
There was silence.
The meaning was clear for the two Snezhnayans present: odd numbered presents for the living, even numbered for those one wished were not.
Then, from the captain, with more anger than she thought him capable of:
“You’ve grown quite insolent.”
“Now, now.” Still poised, still elegant, Signora took two of the stained roses. Her gloved hands suffered little from the thorns that so easily cut Arlecchino. There was a smile gracing her bane of a mouth, and Arlecchino noticed, with a realization as jarring as thunder, that her lips were the same red as the petals. Not rabbit viscera, Arlecchino thought, weakly. Roses. Roses.
“For you to give me one rose more than Il Capitano… You must cherish me more than I thought.”
You’re a fool. The thought flitted through her as Signora pressed a kiss to her cheek, butterfly light. You’re nothing but a fool.
That evening found twin daggers on Arlecchino’s bed, along with a letter signed in unmistakable, elegant script. Her bedroom was swathed in the scent of roses.
Dearest Knave,
The flowers were unexpected, but rest assured that your sincerity did not go unnoticed. I hope you find the attached gift a suitable present in return.
I selected these daggers in my possession with Snezhnayan traditions in mind. May the sharpness of these blades carry my intent well and find a home within you.
Yours,
La Signora
Arlecchino read the letter once. Then, she laughed, and laughed, and laughed, until there was nothing more to do but reread it.
Snezhnayan traditions in mind… “So you knew,” Arlecchino whispered, irritated and unbearably, guiltily, relieved.
In Snezhnaya, things that came in pairs were easier to divide, to break apart. Presents in two’s or four’s or eight’s were messengers of conflict and misfortune, even more so when they were in the form of weaponry. It was not uncommon for men in these snowy lands to come to blows at the sight of twin knives. Sometimes, blood is shed for even less.
Despite herself, despite the veiled insult in such presents, there was no ire brewing in Arlecchino. Her fingertip traced the curve of Signora’s signature, the “i” a harsh slash between the soft, practiced glide of the other letters.
Arlecchino brought a bloodied palm to the cheek that Signora kissed, rose-red wound meeting rose-red kiss.
◆◆◆
“How do you know this?” Arlecchino demanded.
The bedroom was a crematorium of ice, suspended in a state between frost and fire. The white gem in Arlecchino’s hand beat against her fingers angrily, like a trapped hummingbird. A trapped heart. She willed it quiet with a clench of her fist.
“I am Signora,” the apparition repeated, unmoved, unharmed. “Her last breath. Your every memory. I am your heart, laid bare in its longing.”
◆◆◆
House of the Hearth. A hospital-turned-orphanage for the abandoned, war-torn children of Tevyat. Signora had only visited it once, during the 24th Inauguration of the Children of the Snow, but that had been enough for Arlecchino to sear her image into memory.
Tall. Taller than Arlecchino by a thumb, maybe two. Hair the shade of winter’s dawn, styled into rosebuds. Elegant features cleaved into a sharper, haughtier visage by the dark mask obscuring her right eye. Elaborate red dress hidden beneath a white wintercoat—mandatory for the event, a mirror to Arlecchino’s.
During the ceremony, Arlecchino had forced her eyes not to stray to her, to her rose-red lips marred by an unexpected frown.
They had stood shoulder-to-shoulder, surveying lines upon lines of masked figures wrapped in fur-lined black coats. From their position on the stage, there was no distinguishing one cadet from the other. Men and women alike drowned beneath the sea of identical dark wool, until all that the Harbingers could glimpse were constellations of Delusions, strapped to belts and chests. Arlecchino scanned the front row, pinning a name to each glowing gem.
Buzuleac - Pyro Delusion - Sumeru.
Nikolay - Hydro Delusion - Liyue.
Lyudochka - Electro Delusion - Inazuma.
That year, her orphanage had opened its doors for 5,800 starving mouths. Only a slim percentage would accompany Signora for her diplomatic trips across Tevyat. Fewer would be assigned under Childe, the youngest of the Fatui Harbingers.
None would stay with Arlecchino.
It was only later in the warmth of Arlecchino’s office that Signora had broken her silence.
"I don't know why you bother with façades."
Arlecchino blinked.
Signora, hearing no response, continued, "Orphanage is just a formality, isn't it? These are training grounds, not a shelter."
"It can be both." From her spot by the window, Arlecchino watched the last of the newly inaugurated clamber into the back of a caravan. The gleam of a Delusion winked back at her. Lyudochka’s? Buzuleac’s? "Children of the Snow are both scions and soldiers. To the Tsaritsa, there is little difference."
Signora hummed. "And to you?”
A pause. Then, careful: “She and I share interests that align more than they conflict. As long as it remains beneficial for me to serve Her, I shall. I doubt that any of us are here out of pure devotion.”
She threw a sideways glance at Signora. “Do you think differently?”
“I do.”
Then you’re softer than I realized.
Arlecchino turned away from her departing children, the corner of her lips twitching into a light smile. A polite gesture, to the rare few who have never seen The Knave amused. A flash of contempt, to those who knew her better. “Pray tell.”
“I serve Her Majesty because she gave me purpose.”
“Because she shares your hatred—”
“Because we share an understanding,” said Signora, “of the many ways the heavens have failed us.”
A bark of laughter. “And that’s enough to devote yourself to Her?”
“What greater reason is there?”
“How touching,” cooed Arlecchino.
The temperature around them dropped several more degrees as Signora’s eyes darkened to storms. Arlecchino drew nearer, transfixed by the sight of such tempests, by the sharpness of her glare.
Had Signora looked like this when she wrote Arlecchino that letter, when she wrapped the daggers and signed her name? Had her scowl mirrored the slash of her signature—a thin, angry slit cutting through her poise, accentuating an ego that was all too easy to bruise?
Her mouth ghosted the shell of Signora’s ear, mocking. “Do you love her, then?”
“Are the two synonymous for you—love and loyalty?” Signora held her posture, even as telltale signs of frost snaked up Arlecchino’s wrists. Arlecchino made no move to melt them.
“They can be.”
“Pity.” Then, in an equally coy whisper: “Your children say otherwise.”
Arlecchino drew back, no longer smiling.
◆◆◆
A leyline disorder. Arlecchino snarled, “Signora is dead.”
“I am an echo. I am her, but not truly her. I am here, but not in the way you want. Never in the way you need.”
Signora is dead. “Who sent you? Who created you?”
Rosalyne. My Rosalyne.
It gestured to the space beside it. “Sit with me?”
◆◆◆
Several months had passed since Arlecchino’s ill-intended flowers. Despite the initial animosity, the uncertain, shaky foundations of… something had taken root between them. Perhaps mutual respect. Companionship, if Arlecchino wanted to feign diplomacy. If Childe was to be believed, it was bordering on “some sick form of courtship,” but neither of the two women were particularly concerned with definitions.
Nevertheless, a routine had established itself: Signora, bristling against Arlecchino’s words; Arlecchino, pleased that she’d elicited such a reaction, hungry to see more of it.
“I read about Mondstadt.”
“Really now.” Signora flipped a page in her book, tone betraying not a hint of interest. Rosalyne was most aloof in these precious hours of silent study, and Arlecchino, for odd reasons that remained unspoken, kept to her side, insistent on making her presence known.
“Do you miss it?” pressed Arlecchino.
“What is there to miss?”
“The people.”
A snort. “The people?”
“The food. The sights. The festivals.”
“There is food, and sights, and festivals everywhere, not just Mondstadt.”
“And what of the Archon?”
At this, Signora stiffened. Through gritted teeth, she forced out, "I am no longer a child of Mondstadt. Barbatos," —she said his name with a hiss, with a malice that fascinated Arlecchino in a way that it shouldn't have— "is dead to me. You know where my loyalties lie."
Arlecchino hummed. “With the Tsaritsa.”
“With Her Majesty,” corrected Signora. She set her book aside and shot Arlecchino a look. “You’ve been awfully talkative. Shouldn’t you give that sweet little tongue of yours a rest and find something better to do with your time?”
Sweet little tongue. “I fear nothing will be as entertaining.”
Signora scoffed. Arlecchino fought to keep her focus as Signora crossed her legs, the slit of her red dress riding higher up the pale expanse of her thigh. “Why are you really here, Knave?”
“Your name.”
“My name,” Signora repeated, deadpan.
“Your name before the Fatui. What is it?”
Signora regarded her, expression impassive. Then, with a sigh:
“Rosalyne.”
◆◆◆
Most domains were born from ambition. Whether by the hands of withered architects or by the guilt of eroding Archons, the distinction mattered little to travelers who stumbled upon them.
They were ruins. Nothing more, nothing less.
But there had been special cases.
Reports of doomed, liminal spaces on the fringes of Fontaine's sunken city. Another to the west of Mondstadt, tucked beneath the rubble of crumbling spires. Countless more in Inazuma, waiting to be found. Waiting to be remembered.
All domains were ruins but some—
Some domains were born from sorrow.
Arlecchino remembered this as she opened the door an nth time.
Everything was just as she had left it: candle wax sticking to the wool of the pine-green carpet, birch desk cracked and smoldering, moon dangling bright and beautiful in the window right above it.
And on the bed—just as bright, just as beautiful—was Rosalyne. “Hello again, my love.”
“Stop talking.”
A smile graced her mouth when Arlecchino sat beside her. “I’m sorry. Does it upset you?”
“I told you to stop talking.”
Still smiling, Rosalyne cupped her cheek.
Arlecchino, despite herself, leaned into her touch. Too gentle a palm. Too soft, too open. Rosalyne—The real Rosalyne had never been this warm. Arlecchino allowed her eyes to flutter closed, if only to keep the illusion from breaking.
This was wrong. All of it was wrong.
◆◆◆
With a slight cough, Rosalyne straightened. “If I were you, I’d learn to keep my curiosity on a leash. Keep this up and Childe’s speculations may earn themselves some credibility.” She reached for her abandoned book with a mutter. “Even I’m beginning to question your motives…”
Arlecchino sank into the sofa beside her. Awfully close, despite the vacant seats. “And what do you think my intentions are?”
“To infuriate me. To amuse yourself.” Rosalyne flipped a page. Tsked, snapped the book shut. Met Arlecchino’s stare, the hunger in her pupils. “My time is as limited as my patience, Knave. Say what you need to say, and say it quick.”
“I want you.”
Surprise flashed across Rosalyne’s face, quick as lightning, but it was enough for Arlecchino to inch closer, blood pounding in her ears. “I want to have you.”
“In what way?”
“With love,” —and before another sound could escape Rosalyne’s parted lips— “I love you.”
A heartbeat. Then two. Rosalyne regarded her, betraying nothing, even as her hand moved to wrap around Arlecchino’s throat, even as Arlecchino let her, gaze unwavering.
Her fingers were cold—unbearably, impossibly cold. Arlecchino suppressed the shiver that raced up her spine as Rosalyne’s nails bit into her skin. Hard enough to bruise. Not enough to silence her.
“Do you take me for a fool?” hissed Rosalyne.
“I wish you were,” Arlecchino said. “I wouldn’t yearn as often.”
Rosalyne scoffed. “Spare me.”
Her thumb traced the hollow of Arlecchino’s throat. “I know your heart. Your avarice. The things you want, you never treat with love. And the things you own…”
Her hand slid to the collar of Arlecchino’s shirt. Lower, to the flat of her chest. To Arlecchino’s heartstrings, tangled beneath her palm. “The things you own, you never truly cherish.”
“Not with you,” Arlecchino breathed. Her hand came to rest on Rosalyne’s. Caging her there, to a heart unmistakable in its insistence, in its greed.
“Never with you.”
◆◆◆
“Out of everywhere,” said Arlecchino, bone-tired, “why Inazuma? Why go where I can’t follow?”
It was a fruitless question. She knew the answer as soon as the words escaped her, but still, the ghost responded.
“Death has all but erased her from this world, but Rosalyne lives on in your memory. Cruel. Beautiful. Yours, and only yours.”
You’re wrong, Arlecchino thought. She was beautiful, but she was never mine.
◆◆◆
On the morning of her departure for Inazuma, Arlecchino sat in the silence of her bedroom, wishing that Rosalyne had died here, in the shadows of the canopy curtains.
It would have suited Rosalyne, that role of a temperamental house spirit. A fixed shadow by the fireplace; a chill down Arlecchino’s back as she brushed her teeth.
Dreams would prove to be no haven for Arlecchino either, consumed by the wildfire of Rosalyne’s postmortem wrath. “I’m dead,” Rosalyne would huff, “and this is the extent of what the afterlife has to offer me.”
And Arlecchino—
In these dreams, in the guiltiest of their iterations, Arlecchino would hold her, would fit her head on the crook of Rosalyne’s cold neck. “I said I’d have you. Death doesn’t change that.”
It was a welcome nightmare.
Out of habit, Arlecchino's fingers crept to the cloth bunched in her pocket.
She had shed no tears when news of Rosalyne’s death reached her ears, nor did she cry in the week of mourning that followed. Rosalyne’s subordinates—her remaining soldiers, her borrowed children—had bowed to Arlecchino upon their return, remorse spilling from their lips. Forgive us, Lord Arlecchino. We failed her.
Arlecchino had brushed past them without a word.
She was the last to approach Rosalyne’s coffin.
There had been no body to bury. No bone, no hair, not even a speck of blood to sully the Raiden Shogun’s tatami floors. Nothing.
Columbina’s elegy ringing in her ears, Arlecchino smoothed the creases of the funeral pall, and with a clawed hand, tore a corner free. A memento.
She slipped the fabric in her coat, letting Childe's shout of protest bear witness to her action.
Upon coming home, Arlecchino had pressed dry eyes against the wrinkled cloth, wishing the numbness to spread like miasma through her home. She did the same now.
If you had to die, Arlecchino thought, then die where you can haunt me.
◆◆◆
Moonlight flooded the bedroom as Arlecchino lowered her temple to Rosalyne’s lap. Fingers carded through her ivory hair, a sliver of tenderness that made Arlecchino’s stomach turn.
“This is sickening,” Arlecchino murmured, more to herself than to the ghost with her.
“All hauntings are.”
Rosalyne offered her a sad smile—the first and only sign of pity hell could give her.
“Of all the selfish ways you loved me, this one is the worst.”