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The Dessendre manor is quiet when Clea returns.
She steps through the front door and shuts it harder than necessary, the echoing slam reverberating through the marble-floored vestibule like a thunderclap. Her coat is heavy with rain, her gloves still damp with ink and dust. She doesn’t take them off.
She’s tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes—the kind that coils into her bones, presses behind her eyes, and burns like static under her skin. The kind that eats at your jaw until your teeth ache. The kind that makes everything—everything—feel like a test of endurance.
The meeting with the Council ran hours longer than it should’ve. The Writers have been pushing harder—on the airwaves, in the papers, in the dreams of frightened citizens. She saw one of their manifestos stapled to a telephone pole this morning. “Reclaim the Narrative. Burn the Script.”
Burn.
Clea’s jaw tightens. The word tastes like smoke in her mouth.
The Writers have gained ground. Their propaganda is spreading. And worst of all—people are starting to believe them. Trust them.
Just like Alicia did.
She peels off her coat and throws it onto the hooks beside the front door. It slips and falls to the floor in a soggy puddle of fabric. She doesn’t bother picking it up. She just keeps moving, her boots clunking loudly as she moves down the hallway toward the parlor.
She just wants silence. And tea. Or wine. She hasn’t decided which one yet. Maybe she’ll mix them both together and drink down the poison, no matter how bad it tastes.
She’s been doing that recently with pretty much everything.
But instead, she gets Alicia.
The girl is waiting in the parlor, standing awkwardly in front of an easel with something draped in a white cloth. She’s dressed carefully today—an old turtleneck to cover the worst of the scars, long sleeves rolled to the elbow, her hair pinned up in a lopsided bun. She’s clearly been waiting.
Clea stops in the doorway. Exhales sharply. Takes a deep breath back in.
“What,” she says, flatly.
Alicia gestures toward the easel.
She wants to show Clea something.
A painting.
Alicia hasn’t painted much recently- not that she ever really liked it that much to begin with. Her hands don’t work the way they used to, not with the scars that make the skin tight and unwieldy. So this should be a fun surprise!
It should.
But it isn’t.
Clea pinches the bridge of her nose.
“Alicia,” she mutters. “Not today.”
But Alicia is already pulling the sheet down.
It slips off like fog, revealing a painting done in thick strokes and dusky colors. It’s a half-abstract portrait—somewhere between realism and dream. A woman standing in a field of ash, ink smeared across her coat, with firelight in her eyes. The colors are bold. The strokes are trembling but deliberate. There’s fury and sorrow and longing in every inch of it.
It’s beautiful.
It’s her.
Alicia turns to Clea, searching her face. Waiting for…something. Approval. Recognition. Anything.
Clea stares at the painting.
And something smolders in her.
“You want me to, what?” she says softly. “Clap for you?”
Alicia blinks, stepping back.
“You think a painting makes any of this okay?” Clea laughs, but there’s no warmth in it—just venom. Exhaustion. Rage without release. “You think this fixes it?”
Alicia freezes.
“You let them in, Alicia.”
Clea doesn’t know why this is all coming out now, on some uneventful Tuesday evening in early autumn . It’s been some time since the fire. The walls have been restored. A new layer of paint covers the scorched marks. Verso is buried.
And yet, the fire hasn’t died.
Alicia shakes her head quickly, hands flying up, miming a pleading gesture before scribbling desperately on the slate she uses to communicate.
I didn’t know.
“I don’t care that you didn’t know!” Clea snaps. “You opened the door! You let them waltz right into our home! You believed them, and now Verso’s dead, and every single day I have to walk into meetings and explain why our name doesn’t mean traitor.”
Alicia flinches like she’s been struck.
Her mouth opens. No sound comes out. Her free hand trembles as she lifts her stick of chalk, but Clea swats it away before she can write.
“No. No more silent apologies. I’m done pretending we’re okay. You’re the reason we lost him. And you just keep walking around this house like you deserve to be part of it. Like you still belong here.”
Clea steps closer, voice dropping into a bitter hush.
“Do you know what people say about us now? About me?” Her eyes are bright, furious. “That I’m the sister of the mute little girl who burned our family legacy down for a bedtime story.”
Alicia backs up until she’s pressed to the wall.
“You gave them the fire,” Clea says coldly. “You may as well have lit the match yourself!”
Alicia’s knees give out.
She slides to the floor slowly, her back against the wall, her arms limp at her sides. Her mouth is open in a silent gasp. Her chest heaves. But she doesn’t cry.
Not yet.
She just stares at Clea, eyes wide and stunned and shining with something worse than tears.
Shame.
“I’m tired,” Clea mutters. “I don’t have it in me to comfort you right now. I have to fix what’s left of this family, and you—”
She gestures vaguely. Disgusted.
“You’re a liability.”
Clea turns away. Runs a hand through her hair. She doesn’t feel sorry. Not now. Not when she’s still carrying the ashes of Verso’s flesh in her lungs, not when she’s still being burned by the embers of a war Alicia helped stoke the flames of.
She walks out of the parlor without looking back. She’s decided she’ll have some wine.
And Alicia is left alone on the floor with the painting, the silence, and a grief that no brush could ever cover.
Alicia never really liked Painting.
It wasn’t that she thought it was dumb or a waste of time- it just wasn’t for her. She would much rather immerse herself in books, where the world was much more fleshed out than a simple image on a canvas. Where the people had real emotions and words beyond a single captured scene smeared in paint. Where she could lose herself in the text and imagine living alongside them.
But Aline demanded all of her children to Paint, so she did. And it was fun, she could see the enjoyment that could be derived from it, but it still wasn’t for her. The high bar Aline had for all of their creations certainly didn’t make it easy, either.
She doesn’t know why she thought a painting would make Clea happy. It was a stupid idea. She is stupid.
That’s all she’s been recently.
Stupid and useless.
She thinks about the painting.
She thinks about Clea’s voice, sharp and furious: You may as well have lit the match yourself!
She thinks about Verso, screaming in the fire. She tries not to, but she does.
She’d just wanted to help.
They said they were friends. They said they wanted peace. They called her kind. Called her important. They said things Aline never did, things Clea never had. And she had believed them.
And because of that—Verso is gone. The war has worsened. Her name is cursed behind closed doors—or sometimes right to her face.
Her body aches constantly. Her throat can’t speak. Her hands barely paint. And worst of all—there’s no one left to say that any of it will be okay.
Because no one wants it to be okay. Not with her.
Her mistake is permanently branded upon her flesh for all to see, and when they do see it, they’re reminded of how much they hate her.
So, Alicia makes a decision.
She leaves.
The sun rises pale behind a veil of clouds. The air tastes of wetness and iron—storm-brewing weather. The house is still asleep. Renoir has long stopped rising early. Aline hasn’t returned from the Canvas. And Clea… Clea didn’t even glance at Alicia’s door the night before.
Alicia dresses slowly, hands trembling as she buttons the collar of her too-large coat. The fabric swallows her small frame. She slips her slate into the inner pocket. It’s cracked, one corner chipped. She hasn't written anything on it in days.
She doesn’t take much.
Just a small satchel with her favorite books, two broken pencils, a photograph of the family, her morphine, some money, and an old scarf Verso gave her years ago—one of the few things that wasn’t burned in the fire. The corners are frayed. It still smells faintly of lavender and smoke.
She doesn’t leave a note.
What would she say?
No one would read it.
She moves through the house like a ghost, her feet barely making a sound on the tile. She avoids the parlor room. Avoids the hearth where her painting still sits upon the easel. She doesn’t look at it.
At the front door, she pauses.
Monoco the Third and Noco come up to her, tails wagging. They’re the only ones still happy to see her anymore. They don’t feel the same hate as humans do.
She kneels down and hugs them. Whispers wordless goodbyes to them. Then, she stands up again.
She looks back once, just once. The house looms behind her like a mausoleum—filled with the bones of memories, of rage, of the person she used to be before the Writers, before the fire, before she learned that silence could be worse than screams.
Then, she slips out into the morning.
The doors creak shut behind her, then the gates to the estate.
It’s…easier than she expected. Down the road, she pauses again. Looks back. Prays that someone, anyone would be running over, yelling for her to stop, pleading for her to come home.
But there’s nobody.
No one hears.
No one stops her.
No one notices.
She turns around and keeps walking.
Paris is louder than she remembers.
The city presses in from all sides—horns, heels, voices shouting over each other in a dozen tones. The world here is alive in a way the estate never was. It should feel exciting. It doesn’t.
Alicia slips into the crowd and lets herself vanish.
She moves like a ghost.
Her scarf is damp. Her hands are freezing. She tucks them into her coat and starts walking, with no real plan—just away. Away from the manor. Away from Clea’s words. Away from the ashes of her mistake and the guilt she can’t peel off her ribs.
She ends up in Montmartre. It’s quieter there.
She finds a bench beneath the awning of a closed café and curls up on it, hugging her satchel close. It’s past noon now, and she hasn’t eaten. She pulls the photo of her family from her bag and stares at it, the edges soft, the ink smudged slightly where her thumb always rests.
Verso’s smile is crooked.
She clutches it to her chest and squeezes her eyes shut.
Her throat burns.
Her mind replays Cléa’s voice, over and over, like a cracked record.
“You let them in.”
“You gave them the fire.”
“You may as well have lit the match yourself.”
Alicia doesn’t realize she’s shaking until a stranger passes and gives her a worried glance.
She turns away.
She doesn’t want help.
She doesn’t deserve it.
She spends the night in an alley behind a bookstore.
It smells like wet pages and dust. She huddles behind a stack of old crates, wrapped in her coat. Her stomach groans with hunger. Her burns throb from the cold.
She doesn’t sleep.
She can’t.
Every time she closes her eyes, she sees flames.
The next morning, she trades a few coins for a stale croissant and half a cup of coffee that burns her mouth. She walks aimlessly, looking for a place that might take her in. But she’s mute, scarred, half-blind, and visibly alone. Every shopkeeper eyes her warily. One woman calls her pauvre fille, then shoos her away with pity, not kindness.
She ends up in a park near the Seine, sitting on a bench with her knees pulled to her chest.
A little boy stops in front of her. He points at her and asks her what’s wrong with her face. His mother yanks him along, spewing frantic apologies.
It’s not so different from home out here.
That night, she dreams of the fire again.
Of the Writers slipping through the front door with smiles and honeyed words. Of Aline screaming. Of Verso’s hand disappearing in the smoke.
She wakes up crying.
She doesn’t know where she is anymore.
It has been raining for three days straight.
A slow, miserable kind of rain that seeps into the bones, that turns every alley and cobblestone gutter into a sluggish grey river.
Alicia drags herself through it like a shadow, her coat hanging too loose on her shoulders, the hem tattered and soaked through. She’s been here for five days now—six?—it’s hard to tell anymore. The days bleed together. She sleeps in doorways when she can, curled beneath her coat. One night, she found a cellar entrance with a broken lock. She hasn’t been able to find it since.
She’s run out of money. It won’t be long until her morphine is gone, too.
Now, the pain is back with a vengeance.
It starts in her hands—the burned, tight skin flaring and itching like it’s still on fire. But it doesn’t stop there. Her throat pulses, raw and throbbing. Her lungs ache when she breathes too deeply, and her stomach knots with hunger until she vomits bile into the street. That makes her cough, which makes the pain worse.
Her thoughts spiral. They’re wet, murky, unstable. Like everything else, they’re slipping out from under her.
She shuffles along the side of a bridge, one hand on the cold stone to steady herself. The Seine glitters dark and wide beneath her. Her boots are cracked. Her legs are weak.
Paris is deaf to her.
People pass her without looking. A child stares too long. His mother pulls him away. A man tosses her a half cigarette and calls her petite chose before laughing with his friends. She doesn’t even flinch.
She’s forgotten what safety feels like.
Forgotten what her bed smelled like. Forgotten the wet bump of Monoco the Third and Noco’s noses. Forgotten Clea’s voice, even if it was cruel.
All she remembers is how cold she is.
She collapses near a bakery that night, in the alley behind it. The scent of bread makes her stomach turn from hunger, not pleasure. She tries to sit up, but her vision swims, and she lies back down on the wet stones instead.
She clutches her bag to her chest—books inside, wrapped in the scarf Verso gave her. She hasn’t read in days. Too dizzy to make out the words.
She’s crying. Again. For what feels like the hundredth time since she ran away.
But the tears don’t come from sadness. Not exactly.
They come from the certainty that she’s going to die here.
And no one is looking for her.
But someone is…
She’s been walking for hours. Again.
The city has long since ceased being beautiful to Clea. Paris, for all its history and grandeur, is a stranger’s face now—cold, massive, shifting with smoke and whispers. She’s searched every charity hospital, every church, every boarding house that might have taken in a waif with ruined hands and a single haunted eye. None of them had. Most had already stopped helping girls like Alicia.
She keeps looking.
She’s followed every dead-end lead across the city. She’s bribed street urchins for scraps of information. She’s gone into pubs filled with men that see her nothing as meat just to get an inkling of a lead. She’s torn down backstreets chasing ghosts.
Now she stalks the outer arrondissements like a ghost herself, moving quickly, eyes scanning every alley, every shadow.
The rain hasn’t stopped since Thursday. Her shoes are ruined. Her hair sticks to her face. Her hands are raw from gripping posters, railings, the edges of broken maps. Every corner of Paris feels like it could hold a small, ruined body.
A week.
A week.
She tells herself she’s furious. Furious that Alicia ran. Furious that she was too slow. Furious that she let her last words be so cruel.
But underneath the fury—there’s only fear.
The same kind she felt the day she saw the flames in the sky. The same kind she’d buried beneath duty and ironclad pride. It burns in her chest now.
She hadn’t noticed that Alicia was gone for a full day.
She was mad. She didn’t care about whatever she did. So the day after the fight (which, looking back, wasn’t so much a fight as it was actually a lioness ripping out the throat of a helpless gazelle), Clea didn’t bother checking in on her or anything. She left Alicia to her own devices. Besides, Alicia usually kept to herself anyway.
It wasn’t until the next day, in the afternoon, that Clea noticed.
She had rolled her eyes when she realized that Alicia probably hadn’t eaten anything and begrudgingly made her a small plate of food. She knocked on her bedroom door once, twice, three times, then huffed and shoved it open.
The curtains were still drawn, casting the room in shadow.
At first she thought Alicia was curled up beneath the blankets, like she used to do when she was small and scared. But when she called Alicia’s name and there was movement, Clea got worried. She crept closer, pulled back the covers, and…nothing.
The plate of food clattered to the ground noisily.
Clea had torn through the entire manor. She checked the bathroom, the offices, the kitchen, the library, their parents’ room, Verso’s old room, the garden, her own room, even the gallery where their parents stood petrified in front of the Canvas.
Nothing.
Alicia was gone.
And now, Clea is ripping apart Paris trying to find her.
Hours pass like grains of sand through an hourglass—quick and uncaring. The rain, a steady companion, continues its relentless fall, its cold fingers slaloming down her neck, slipping through her sodden hair.
Clea’s steps slow as she approaches a worn wooden bench, its slats creaking in protest. Collapsing onto it, she closes her eyes, exhaustion radiating from her as palpably as her soaked clothing. Exhaustion…and something harder to place.
Guilt.
She hates feeling like this. Helpless. Weak.
What if the Writers find Alicia?
The thought strikes her hard, a cold knife wedging itself between her ribs, and every time she tries to pull it out, her fingers slip in her own blood, and it presses deeper.
What if they get their ink-soaked hands on her?
Alicia can’t fight back. Can barely run. Can’t even really scream.
They already tried to kill her once. Who knows what they’ll do if they find her again…
Clea stands up. She hurries back into the rain, calling Alicia’s name.
Over.
And over.
And over.
And over.
And over again.
And then, completely by chance when she idly looks to the left, she sees her.
Crumbled in the crook between a crumbling brick wall and a rusted trash bin, Alicia is so small that Clea almost misses her. She’s lying on her side, legs pulled up, one arm wrapped around a satchel that’s soaked through. Her face is white as porcelain beneath the bruises and filth, mouth parted, breath so faint it barely fogs the air.
Clea goes completely still.
A scream builds in her throat but never escapes.
Instead, she staggers forward like something punched her in the gut.
“Alicia,” she chokes out, kneeling in the filth. “Alicia, Alicia, my god—”
She gathers the girl in her arms. Alicia doesn’t resist. Doesn’t even blink. Her body’s feverish, limp and trembling, her thin frame soaked and shaking against Clea’s chest.
Then—
Alicia stirs.
Slowly, weakly, her lashes flutter. Her eyes, dull with exhaustion and pain, rise to meet Clea face.
She blinks.
Clea speaks again, voice breaking this time. “It’s me. I’m here. You stupid, stupid girl—”
And then, without warning, she starts to cry.
Not a delicate, cinematic tear down the cheek—but a gut-deep, ugly, sobbing cry. The kind of weeping she never allows herself. The kind that splits her open after holding everything too tightly for too long.
“I thought—” Clea chokes out. “I thought you were dead. I thought I’d never find you. And you—you—you just left. You just—left.”
Alicia stares up at her.
Her eyes, wide and glassy, shimmer slightly.
Then, with a trembling hand, she lifts her fingers and gently, weakly presses her palm against Clea’s cheek.
She wipes at her tears. Not well. Her fingers are too stiff. But she tries. Her brows pull together, and a soft wheeze escapes her mouth—like the ghost of a sob, stuck somewhere in her ravaged throat.
Clea can’t breathe.
She stares at the girl she’d thought she lost, the girl she yelled at, the girl who should hate her—but who is here. Who is touching her like she’s worth comforting.
Clea breaks again.
She bends forward, pulling Alicia tighter against her, pressing her mouth to her damp hair. “You absolute idiot,” she whispers, voice cracking. “You’re mine, don’t you understand that? You’re mine. And I was horrible to you. I was… I was so cruel.”
Alicia clutches at the fabric of her coat, hand twisting it like she might vanish again if she lets go.
Clea lifts Alicia up, arms trembling under the girl’s weight, and holds her close like she’s ten again and curled up after another nightmare. Only now, her skin is hot with fever. Her body is brittle. Her pulse flutters like a moth in her neck.
Clea presses a kiss to her temple, damp with sweat and rain.
And for the first time in years, she lets Alicia see all of her—raw and weeping, and not angry, not this time.
Just terrified.
Just human.
Just here.
The carriage ride home is nearly silent.
Clea wraps her coat tightly around Alicia’s small frame, keeping her tucked close beside her. The girl is half-asleep, half-shivering, her forehead damp and pale. Every bump in the road makes her flinch. Her hands are curled against her stomach, stiff and shaking, her breath too shallow.
She’s not just exhausted. She’s unwell.
Clea realizes it as soon as the adrenaline fades—after the crying, after the frantic relief of finding her alive. Now she’s limp and quiet and wrong. Her eyes are glazed. Her skin feels fever-warm and clammy.
And the real panic sets in.
“You’re doing to be okay,” Clea murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
Alicia doesn’t move. Her face is pressed into Clea’s shoulder, too tired to lift.
Clea reaches down and takes one of her hands. It’s ice-cold. Scarred. She holds it tight in both of hers, rubbing small circles into the back with her thumb.
When they get to the manor, Clea helps Alicia up the steps to the bathroom. As the claw-footed bathtub is filling with warm water, she kneels to untie Alicia’s shoes, peels off her damp socks, carefully removes the thin coat and the stained dress and the soaked undergarments beneath. Tries not to look at the scars that mar pale flesh. Alicia doesn’t resist. Her limbs are too sluggish, her head lolling to the side as her eye flutters open and shut.
Her lips move once.
No sound.
But Clea knows what she’s trying to say.
Hurts.
She goes quickly to the medicine cabinet in the room and finds what she needs. Morphine, measured carefully. She returns and kneels beside the toilet Alicia is seated on, stroking Alicia’s arm gently as she administers the dose.
The effect is slow. But it comes.
Alicia’s body loosens by degrees, her breathing evening out. Her fingers uncurl. Her eyes, still wet, finally close.
“Hey,” Clea says softly. “No sleeping yet. You need a bath. You stink.”
Alicia’s eyes open, and she scrunches her nose at Clea.
Clea musters a small laugh. “I’m not going to stop being honest just because you’re sick. Now, in the water you go.”
With Clea’s help, Alicia is lowered into the warm bath water. Clea uses rose-scented soap and golden oils to wash her down, scrubbing away the grime and filth that has accumulated from her days spent on the street. She’s meticulous about the cleaning process, as she is with everything, but her hands are gentle so as to not agitate the tender scarring that paints Alicia’s body.
To be honest, she forgot she even had the capacity to be gentle.
But here she is, tending to Alicia as though she is a wounded baby bird. Moving slowly and carefully, doing everything in her power to not accidentally hurt her or make her uncomfortable.
It feels strange. But the warmth it brings to her chest is not unwelcome.
Alicia leans her head back when Clea scrubs her fingers through her hair.
“I think you’re enjoying this a little too much,” Clea says.
Alicia makes a soft, raspy hum. When she was little, she was always too shy to ask for affection, even though it was obvious that she wanted it. So, instead, she would stand close by and stare, hoping that someone would take the hint.
So many times Clea purposely ignored it.
She won’t tonight.
When the bath is over, Clea guides Alicia out and helps her get dressed in a simple, loose nightgown. She brushes her hair, then brings her to her room. Only once Alicia is settled does she slip out and return with a bowl of broth and some soft bread. Something light and simple for now.
Clea helps with eating, too. She spoon-feeds Alicia when she’s too weak to do it herself, and not once does she make a biting comment or an impatient remark. She goes slow, making sure Alicia has had her fill.
Later, when Alicia is warm and her belly is full, Alicia picks up her slate and writes something on it.
Did you mean it? What you said about me?
Clea stares at it for a long time.
Then, she wipes it clean.
And climbs into bed beside her.
Not to answer.
Just to hold her through the storm.
The storm had rolled in fast, sudden and loud, rattling the tall windows of the Dessendre manor like a caged animal trying to claw its way inside.
Clea had been reading in bed, propped up on too many pillows with her hair in two loose braids. That was when she heard it.
But then she heard it—
That soft, hiccupping wail down the hall.
Alicia.
Barely six months old and loud as ever when something frightened her.
Clea sighed. No maid was coming. Aline and Renoir had long gone to their respective studies, caught in the usual nightly orbit of silence and separate doors.
So Clea threw off her blankets and padded barefoot across the dark hall, candle in hand.
She found the nursery door slightly ajar, flashes of lightning cutting through the gloom like a blade. The wind howled against the glass panes. And Alicia lay there in her crib—red-faced, fists flailing, mouth wide open in a wordless cry of panic.
Clea set the candle down and crossed the room.
“Hey now,” she whispered, scooping her baby sister into her arms. “It’s just a storm.”
Alicia didn’t calm down—not at first. She was still sobbing, eyes squeezed shut, her little body rigid with fear. Her head pressed to Clea's collarbone, damp with tears and baby spit.
Clea rocked her gently, side to side, humming something low and aimless.
She was only thirteen. Still too thin. Still too bitter about having another sibling at all (“We should castrate Papa like a goat! Who has another kid when we're both so old already?!”). But right now, none of that mattered.
“You’re okay,” she murmured, forehead pressed to Alicia’s. “I’ve got you.”
Outside, lightning flashes again.
Alicia flinches and whines, clutching tighter.
Clea presses a kiss to her temple.
“You didn’t make the storm,” she whispers, brushing a curl back from Alicia’s damp forehead. “You didn’t bring the thunder, you little matchstick.”
The baby breathes softly against her chest.
“You couldn’t light the sky on fire if you tried.”
She smiles faintly.
“You’re much too small.”