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As far as she’s concerned, last night was a haze.
One too many drinks to have had. Thin flutes of champagne, tall glasses of Nectarwine, honeyed tones downed in one swirl, one sip and one swill. A handshake here, a titter over there, a gaze unamused at the antics of the others attempting to befool themselves, and a glare received.
Black gloves she’d slipped her hands into. Caught those hands right where they were. Taunting about her choice to not have brought with her an umbrella to fend from the rain, invited her opponent into a dance neither of them would first relent, their interest vested beyond what they could later wrest away. At which point had she led the dance, she’d had no idea at all. At which point had she struggled to rescind her invitation, she barely remembered, the touch of soft silk rustling across the thin organza covering her torso. Barely enough, impossible to neglect.
She remembers, at least, some details worth committing to memory. A shower of shards had exploded across the room at some point, and shrapnel had caught her in her momentary loss, digging deep into her body. The classic, a signature explosion of nothing but brilliance in crystalline, the recoil of a shotgun sending her shoulder harshly ramming against a pillar. A glorious revolt, but there’d been no further celebration. Her fingers dug into the Montelli’s own wrist — noting that the signature shot fired within close range had been a reckless decision, ushered by the moment’s tempo of their spinning waltz — and clung deep. Carlotta Montelli had not been able to escape the rushing of her own shot, and when the fragment caught in leather gloves nicked her fingertip, too, Cantarella had made a decision.
With the blood of her body, the poison of her blood, she’d activated her Forte through all of her. Unecessary for taking down one, unecessary for taking down any of the other incapable men in the room, unecessary for nothing but assurance of victory, when blood sprayed on the side of her shoulder, and the music played on with no one left to dance on, save for the two of them alone.
“If you had just said,“ Her breaths were laborious. She remembers panting for air while she smiled, and the taste in her mouth had been of metallic Nectarwine, heavy alcohol and blood. “That you had an evening of vacancy and not a plan at all for later, I might have proposed you one.“
“A tour in Hell?“ Carlotta Montelli’s sneer was yet incredibly as beautiful as the smiles she’d had under composure. “Dance until death do us apart, Matriarch, but your gait has ceased, and your steps have faltered. Why do you not kill me?“
“Why do you ascertain that my poison will not kill you?“
“For the reason I still remain the breaths to speak to you.“ Those eyes were iridescent. “As in your own words — the Fisalia Matriarch does not easily forgive those who attempt to touch her ‘children’. What motive have you in keeping my alive? Enslaving me to the whims and joys of the Fisalias, celebrating my demise in your power-hungry clutches for power? The Montellis will be able to rise to greater glory even without me; this, I am certain.“
Then, she’d said something else. Then, perhaps addled by the influence of her own poison, or the fact that Carlotta Montelli’s lips, when stained red by her own blood, grew only more tantalising, when she’d traced her own bleeding finger over the bloodied lip of the Montelli Daughter.
Her thumb on the corner of Carlotta’s lips, marking it crimson with her bloodied fingerprint, it had been as though she were signing a pact, a whispered promise.
Why would I remove one who offers this world a vibrant mural for what little colour remains in stained glass of olden days? You intrigue me, Carlotta Montelli. I have long been your admirer.
And now she awakes, with her head in her shaking hands and the sharp pinch of wounds unhealed from the shrapnel buried all over her in her flesh.
“Sebastian? Summon Rosemary.“
They were but thorns of roses to be removed from the admirer’s thumb, she thought, and thought no more.
And yet life often seemed to parody the tragedies of others. The question of origin that burdened the Fisalias since times of old. The ambiguous magnanimity of the Montellis to overlook the age old concern of legitimacy. First it had seemed a passing cold, then a stomach bug. But when her inoculation against poisons failed to keep her upright while she knelt by a toilet and retched, there’d been a notion within her that haunted every moment gone by thereafter.
What happens when two Resonator’s Fortes, when exerted together, result in a unique resonance between the two? A Resonator specific…resonance?
Huaxu Academy had answers for her. Shifang Pharmacy had answers for her. The counter staff Koko had been so sweet as to interpret the results for her, as though she had not the knowledge, experience, nor expertise in understanding the breakdown of pharmaceutical solutions.
I did not know that you had an opposite half, Canta, nor anyone of such strong attraction. Were you…were you consenting?
Was it that Porto Veno Castle had, for too long, been what her body had learnt to accustom to? The lack of warmth in physicality and in thought, the monotonous lives of the repressed and the suppressed, the oppressed and the depressed. Nothing but a frigidity that polished emotion from the marrow, cleansed them of handles for leverage by the shifty Divine that chased among and between them. Nothing to call of kinship beyond a shared name of endless burden, a mission too noble to forsake nor to reveal.
Had she, in the moment of the waltz, been too absorbed in the role-play, in the words that came from her lips — her “children“? Had she believed them as such? She could not have, else it would not feel so different, in this land so foreign to escape the “children“ she was meant to emulate for. To escape the burden and the unforgiving bitterness, the place that she subconsciously remembered was no place for a true child to grow.
But where else could be a better place? Where else could a child thrive till they reached the safety of maturity, the danger of adulthood? Where else could a child thrive in bliss if not by the side of their parent, but how could a child thrive as long as they bore the name of Fisalia, etched in their bone and blood?
In the arms of her old friend, she remembers the story of a child who grew up without the warmth of their parents, a child who’d burnt her life short to grow to become one who guided herself with the light borne of her own heart and flames. In the arms of her old friend, Cantarella hears once more, again of another child, with no parents to nurture her, to teach her to feel the emotions that should belong to her and selfishly to her. A child who knows nothing but a cause, sighs her old friend, but were they not all, when they were wrenched from their parents, orphaned by fate?
In the arms of her old friend, Changli’s warmth reminds of her of an incubator, of the warm blankets she’d piled as a child, hoping to bring to life again the little broken fledgling she’d found on the steps of the estate. Praying, begging, for company and for hope, from the little soul she’d meant to salvage. Forgetting that the Fisalia thresholds would smother all that sought freedom. Forgetting that Thessaleo Fells was only home to those who’d already lost all of their days in the sun, dead or barely alive by a thread.
I cannot go back to Ragunna.
Yet it cannot be homesickness that dredges up her chest with a nauseating stir. Yet it cannot be longing, to see the streets and the lights, and the medicinal tang of her study full of poisons and fumes.
It is fear. It is cowardice. It is the dastardly thought that beats alive with her — tiny, unseen, and flighty, but alive and begging to taste the freedom she could not have, can never have.
“I must return to Ragunna.“ says she, with such a guarded resolve for a moment that Changli releases her, staring at her in muted wonder, her pallor controlled after a minute’s reprieve from purging impulses. “There are things I must do, knots I must tie, words I must say and an act I must stage, before anything can proceed for the schemes of the greater picture at all.“
But then she’d lost even before she could progress any further, throwing up heavily into the prepared bin, held tight in the clutching embrace of her old friend, wrapping her in warmth akin a blanket of summer.
You have run yourself worn, Canta, and you will run yourself awry. Rest, will you please, for even just a breath and a thought?
Yet there is no room for error in a timer already ticking.
And one must first run to the cliff’s end, before winds can lift wings, and freedom takes its flight.
———
Lingering on her return journey back to Ragunna was a question — on her return journey back to Ragunna was a question:
Ought she spare the truth to Carlotta, the hardest pill to swallow?
What would she tell her? How would she tell her? Should she tell her at all, should she even say a word more to the woman who saw her not as a friend nor an ally, but a foe in the landscape of Ragunna’s future?
Sometimes, Cantarella thought to herself that she had never begrudged the Montelli Executioner for acting the way she did. Carlotta had no reason to believe that there was any noble cause driving the eccentricities in which the Fisalias operate, at times in dysfunction. Carlotta was not to know the burden they bore as their name and their crest, their sole purpose for existing — Carlotta was not to know that the Fisalia and the Montelli sought a shared vision for Ragunna’s future, without first knowing what the Fisalias truly stood for.
She did not blame, nor lament, the hostility in which Carlotta often took up arms against her. Perhaps often she amused herself with the folly of the Montelli suspicion that landed themselves in certain circumstances of asphyxiating shame, to pick themselves off the floor and haul their broken Vitreum Dancers in tow. Perhaps too often she manufactured her smile of perfunctory amusement that painted the Montelli Daughter’s eyebrows in the way they formed. Full of ire, full of disdain, for what a shallow woman Cantarella was to her in her eyes.
A beautiful liar. A heinously scheming foe. One whose mouth was tainted only with nothing but untruths.
Would Carlotta even believe her, with what she had to say?
Would Carlotta even care? Would Carlotta find it farsical? Would Carlotta hold her there and then again at gunpoint, time and again, barrel to her chest and scorn unfolding into a noble scowl? Righteousness, blinded by the lies between them. Beguiled by falsities. No handles for truth to guide them while the False Divitiy croons its laughter in mutterings, fondling minds of the weak.
Carlotta Montelli was not among them. Carlotta Montelli was not one among the weak. Mayhaps for that reason alone, time and again, Cantarella could feel the shivers of thrill dipping down her spine, in her body long worn by poisons and trials, feelings lost along with her taste. Shed for the better good, that all which remained was the human basal need for arousal, lust, and desire.
She remembers now, leaning forward to kiss those bloodied lips, reviving if only for a moment the forgotten taste on her tongue, soft on her lips, and the traitorous moan that she had triumphantly elicited from the Executioner’s reluctant struggling. For all that her body was good for in its seductive ways, the charm was not lost on Carlotta Montelli. The shrapnel had hurt in the way that the kiss had numbed, anesthetic poison, flowing between their lips. Belated, but no less intense as it had been.
Warning her not to touch the Fisalia children.
How apt.
How ironical.
The quiet sound of a hammer clicks into place. A trigger held down halfway, a hammer cocked once, preceding the bitter chafe that bites through the thin of her gown and onto her skin, over her ribcage and over some vague spot between her ribs.
Not almost low enough to put the pin on the picture, but perhaps once again her laugh irks the Executioner in the wrong way. The barrel presses harder, jutting between her ribs, and the black glove holds steady with the trigger finger well coiled behind the guard. “Do not underestimate the lethality of a close shot to the spleen, Matriarch. While I am certain you may be able to receive swift medical aid, I suggest you do not attempt anything else remotely unflattering to our circumstances.“
She’s seen Montelli bullet wounds before. In times of the worst feuds, and the worst crossfires, she’d had to attend to some personally, too. Bullets engineered to shatter upon impact, in mimicry of the Executioner’s control over her Forte, and her remotely controllable bullets. Deaths were never uncommon to Thessaleo Fells, have never been for years prior to her takeover, but there is no immunity to the witnessing of falling carcasses before one’s very eyes. There is no immunity to the mortal trepidation of taking the sights of a dying body, a corpse bled dry — her lips are too tight when she attempts to make a smile, attempts to moisten them before they crack. “The ten weeks of peace and ceasefire have yet to end. I assume the Montellis do not intend to double back on their words?“
“Any offer can be rescinded if they are unwelcomingly received, by the ill-intentioned.“ In her eyes there is a world, a world of a future opulent as opalescent eyes. “Why have you come to me again, today? I’m afraid I have not the time for another fatal tango. If you intended and intend to abide by the ceasefire and the peace order, you never should have come, on your own, with your Echoes, to the Montelli Quarters.“
“You are a brilliant businesswoman, Carlotta Montelli.“ A force to be reckoned with, if she must so confess. What skills of trade and negotiation she possess, on par with Carlotta, she had learnt from her own scrimping for scraps of knowledge. Enlightenment from her friend in high places, and old diaries of the establishing Fisalia ancestors. And yet, younger than her, Carlotta had caught up perhaps almost as much, if not more. “And as the Fisalia and the Montelli keep their peace, I come as Cantarella, today, for matters involving a personal business.“
“Personal business?“ Yet the revolver hasn’t stopped digging into her torso. “I know you, Cantarella Fisalia. Even if I do not know all of the Fisalias, at the very least I know you, Cantarella the Bane. There is no business of yours that comes as private business. For that matter alone, you as their Matriarch are not any better equipped than the family you govern, full of rats with their personal business ruining the markets. Am I not correct, Matriarch?“
The bite was only natural. It was only as much as she had expected, on her return journey. The hostility she knew she could not so much as fault Carlotta for having, the animosity that was only rightfully befitting of such an abrupt tête-à-tête. Yet, just as undeniably, much of her willpower has been devoted, redirected, to keeping thick coils of nausea at bay. Sweeping arcs of nothing but utter sickness, the need to cling onto something for dear support, her mouth running drier and drier and her throat parching up with the desperate need for water.
Carlotta’s quiet utterance does not go unnoticed, when she leans against the revolver pressed against her chest. To hide the sway of her stance, to hide the discomfort she increasingly struggles to mask. If anything, the only comfort is the mocking taunt that shoots sharp from the lips of the Montelli Daughter. “Aren’t you always such a interesting person, Matriarch. You never fail to surprise me.“
“But on the contrary,“ Blue eyes level, gazing down into the confines of opalescent judgement. “Your constancy always leaves me in deep admiration, Miss Carlotta. For the fact that you have not fired your judgement, I know you will hear me out for my woes before the gavel hits the block. Will you truly not lend a ear to my blights, will you not spare sympathy for the reasons in which I have come, so sincerely of my own accord and rationale, undefended to the enemy territory of your Montelli Quarters?“
“The Montelli do not work with those whose ambitions outweigh their abilities.“
“And what is your judgement upon that?“
For the fact she receives no answer nor no shot, there is only so little a window of opportunity she has, in the Montelli’s silence.
“I ask that you — and the Montellis — do not lay harm upon the children of Ragunna.“
Stunned. The gaze that crosses the beautiful eyes of the Executioner is one of disbelief, for being caught off her guard, for hearing the unforeseen and the unpredictable.
“Children of Ragunna?“ The revolver she clasps between her hands falters slightly, Carlotta’s gaze now truly upon her. “Or Children of Fisalia?“
“Children of Ragunna.“
Because a child of half Montelli, half Fisalia, is only more a child of Ragunna than all else.
“Why?“
The question she’d been expecting, asked at long last.
“Because of the place they hold, belong, and deserve, within the future only they bring.“ The revolver slackens even more. “Because the future is much closer than we anticipated. Our future in Ragunna, is to arrive upon us sooner than ever could have been imagined.“
Maybe, peering into Carlotta Montelli’s eyes, Cantarella had intended to seek the point of brittleness within crystalline depths. Maybe she had intended to appeal to whatever fragility remained in iridiscent eyes so defensively guarded. Maybe, somewhere in there, there was a sense to which she could plead her truest blights, there was a heart for empathy even towards one she saw as her sworn enemy. Maybe somewhere there was a heart who would set down its defenses to house a child with no shelter, a child with only debt and duty sworn to its name.
A whisper left her lips before she could hold herself back.
The fired round of a revolver rings in the courtyard. The birds sing no longer, the Echoes have frozen stiff in place. The gossiping members have evaporated from sight, and the revolver is only colder in her touch, callous. Cruel. Mocking.
“Five rounds left.“ Carlotta Montelli says, coolly, the revolver inhumanly steady. “The Montelli will not fall for more of your Fisalia schemes. We will not tolerate nor play your little games, we will not gamble on the stakes of Ragunna the Fisalia so lay claim to care but forsake. Every game comes with a price and a consequence, Lady Cantarella, and not every round of a revolver will fire a blank.“
So she had been lucky. A key scraping the lock of her control, the fuse for the detonation lost. Her hands fold on the flat of her stomach, the revolver tossed from her grip, and her breaths only come short of her needs.
She had been lucky, or else.
There was no shelter nor solace she could yet seek in the Montellis. No security nor sympathy, not until the truth can ever see the light, and their damnation, their condemning, their shackles be freed. There was not a word more she could say, not any single more defense for her case, nothing to pardon her from the judgement called at last, by the fired blank, an attitude set and a decision made.
“Then I bid you farewell, Miss Carlotta.“ She walks decisively out of Montelli Quarters, or so Cantarella had tried, if she had not been stumbling with the greater urgency to find a deserted alleyway to relieve her morning sickness. To flee. “And when our paths should cross again the future, I hope we may see to each other on terms greatly more amiable.“
“When the Fisalias no longer make light of Ragunna’s peace and future,“ Carlotta had spared her only a single glance backwards. “Only then shall the Montellis meet you in the middle ground as equals.“
A future no doubt beyond a future she can wait for. A future out of the grasp of her plans, gasping for desperate breaths amidst the lacing stitches in the cavity of her chest, the reflex tears forced down the same paths descending her cheeks while she attempts to send two coherent messages.
To Sebastian: I will be leaving the estate for a year to your care. There is more information I require from beyond Rinascita that may help in our dissection of our Divinity’s blight. Do keep the family running in good order, and inform me as always of any changes that may crop up while I am away.
To Changli: What are the implications of a non-native who births a child within Jinzhou territory?
———
“You have forsaken the paths of an easy way out.“
When she’d returned to Jinzhou, that had been all Changli had said to her. Not a word more, not a word less. Not a passing judgement, merely an observation of her raggedness, worn from exhaustion. Not a surrender, not a white flag raised and not a ship abandoned. Her friend had said nothing more on the topic, had taken her in for the night, and another. A week, and another. A month, then another.
Her friend had been there when she laid awake in sleepness nights. Her friend had been there while her diets became composed of more than panini, though she couldn’t taste at all the thoughtfulness that had gone into the culinary creations. Changli had been there to quip at the swelling of her stomach’s protrusion, had been there to convince her of her sanity when the child had first moved, had been there to comfort her when all seemed much more bleak in uncertainty.
“You’ve read all the books that Jinzhou has about Sentinels.“
“And you would only know that because you, too, have done so.“
“A little earlier than when you finished them, yes.“ Changli toyed with a feather of flames by her ear. “Jinhsi would like you to know that she has managed to work around the Jinzhou Registry.“
“Oh?“
“Little Cara,“ The feather landed on the curve of her stomach, playfully in sync with the kicks from within. “Will be allowed to stay in Jinzhou. Legally, under my guardianship, but with her parentage registered as it rightfully should be. It’ll be prepared in the best way that you can port it over to Ragunna’s systems whenever you are up to it.“
“It could be never.“ But Changli already knew that, right from the start. Knew what she was getting into, when she allowed Cantarella to seek asylum. “I may never want her to know of the true heritage she bears — it would condemn her.“
“And yet you’ve strangely given her a name of a fragment of that heritage.“ Changli states, stroking her shoulder. “Not all hope has been lost, Canta. Optimism can go a long way.“
“But as a Fisalia,“ She sighs quietly, valiantly attempting to ignore the knot of intense pain creeping up her back. “We call that false hope.“
“False hope or not, I wouldn’t know.“ Amber eyes were soft. Were soft, until the feather burns away and the flame-gloved hand reaches to cup her abdomen. “This, however, is no false alarm, is it, Canta?“
But the night was young, and maybe it was obstinence, or maybe it was tenacity, Perhaps it even was the undying faith that only sought to refresh itself in the waters that seeped at dawn, accompanying a life, a future of Ragunna.
Yet all she can think of is Montelli Quarters, and the Montelli Daughter who stood stark still, crippled with conflicting confusion while she hurried away. Her whisper right then,of pure unbridled sincerity.
I wonder what a child of yours would look like, Miss Carlotta. Would she have your temper or your mannerisms, the essence of which all empower your elegance? Would a child of yours be a menace, Miss Carlotta, or is my imagination only full of deceitful lies, again?
Listen while you drift to sleep, Cara, for there is a story I will tell you, over and over again. A tale that I hope you may never forget, of the distant land across the sea. It is a land with cerulean skies, the most beautiful I've ever seen, with the tang of the fresh sea breeze, and the laughter of its lively people.
For there is a land far, far away, called the Land of Echoes. In this land, the people are just as unique as the people here in Jinzhou. Unique in their own ways, guarded by their own Sentinel. The people in the Land of Echoes speak with an accent just as mine, not quite as yours or Auntie Changli's — the people of the Land of Echoes live just as the people in Jinzhou, blessed by their Sentinel, protected by their Sentinel's Resonator.
In this Land of Echoes, there isn't a government quite like Jinzhou's. You see, while Jinzhou is ruled by the wisdom of its Magistrate, or whom you would better know as Sister Jinhsi, the Land of Echoes is split into many. One of it is ruled by those who do not believe in the Sentinel more than they believe in effort; one of it is ruled by those who believe the Sentinel has granted them all that they came to bear. Of these two, the latter is ruled by the most sincere devottees of the Sentinel, and of the folk there are two families most prominent of them all.
One family focuses on the future of its land. This family appreciates all that is the potential of the past, present, and future combined in the moment, and landscapes its vision for the power in the future. This family believes in a better future for the land where it returns to the hidden truth of the past, and this family believes that an overtaking of the land will be better for the people they so wish to protect.
The other family focuses on the past of its land. The past that has gone forgotten, neglected, intentionally amiss by those in leading of guidance, and this family stands bookmarking all that has passed, the richest of history entrenched in the land they so fend. They are misunderstood for the facades they cannot explain, but so are their hearts buried in hopes for a brighter future to be freed of their burdens — and they believe that someday, with the truth, so shall they be free.
And this Land of the Echoes, Cara, is my homeland, and so is it yours.
———
"You've been coming back quite frequently, haven't you?"
Flask of wine in hand, she plucks the small porcelain cup from Changli's tea table, and holds it out expectantly between her fingers. "Do you have a problem with that, my dear Changli? Am I intruding too much on your personal time; do you need me to vacate the premises of your humble abode?"
"Ever humorous, Canta." With a casual bend of her wrist, wine flows from the mouth of the bottle, poured into her cup, spilling over its side in excess when Changli pulls it back to her own lips, taking a long sip while eyeing her from the side. "But your humour does not fool me; I have heard, at least in my own ways, that there are increasing dangers that Rinascita is encountering at the moment. Last I heard, at least, the Great Agon and the Hunt of Septimont have seen to concerning rates of casualties and injuries — is your Threnodian not stirring restless?"
"Be as it may, as it has always," She sighs into her own cup, downing it in one swill and gazing at the glossy depths of its shallow volume. Catching herself in the reflection of the black glaze in the porcelain, catching her own eyes in the reflection like the ones she's only just put to bed. Her eyes she may have given her daughter, but there are parts of her that her daughter inevitably did not inherit, with her tresses pale as Jinhsi's, whenever the Magistrate came by to visit. "Dare I voice my fears that this will be the last I see of you, dear friend, and the last I see of my own daughter, whom I have hidden so faraway from her homelands, in a land distant and foreign to her own?"
"The Montellis have been off your back for a while, haven't they?" Changli studies her, nevertheless, pretending as though the Counsellor had never heard what she'd implied. "I'm certain after all this while, the news from Mingting's Ministry of Sentinel Affairs ought to have already reached them. I'm certain after all the running about you've been doing, the Montellis at least ought to know that so have you been devoting yourself to the cause of your Sentinel."
"The Montellis have not been my problem for a long while running, Changli." This sigh comes heavier, too much to bear in the tiny glass she sets down, reaching instead for the other flask of wine Changli had already prepared for her. "Almost coincidental, but I'm still largely certain she does not know. Is this osmanthus?"
"Hawthorn, though I doubt you can tell apart the differences," The clink that emits is soft, bright, knocked between their wine flasks. "A little more tart and fruity, for a flavour profile. I thought you might like it, even if you can barely taste it."
"A subtle difference can often be much more impactful than we think." Cantarella muses. "Perhaps I think I might be able to taste it. For one, at least, it is a little sour. My sense of taste seems to be returning ever since Cartethyia was freed from the tower, but what would I know for certain? Mayhaps my taste will only begin to return when all has changed upon the new dawn. Mayhaps all will be different, when we resolve to revolt against the Divine which made such mock of us so."
"It's not yet the time to lose hope." Changli reminds her softly, to which she only downs more alcohol to numb the intrusion of thoughts flooding into her brain. Something to loosen it all, loosen her tongue and her mind and her tightly bound emotions, leaning into the embrace of her old friend. "Just imagine, that when the day comes you could finally reunite with Cara in the proper lands of your home."
"I dare not imagine." The utterance comes in pieces, whilst she drinks more and more of the wine, unflinching at its sour sting. "I dare not release these wants and desires into my head where Leviathan may abuse them at its will; I dare not think of the possibilities for more when even victory is uncertain despite all our might."
"Then let me imagine it for you." Changli holds her tight, as she'd done so long ago, and still does, embrace her in nothing but a shield of overpowering warmth. "Let me imagine it for you, a future in your victorious success, a future where there is no longer secrets to hide nor truths to bury."
And imagine, would it be a sweetest reunion, to gaze upon her eyes and realise that for once at last it holds warmth, for our daughter at least, if not for me.
———
"Lady Cantarella!"
It had not been her plan to be even half this frail nor fragile upon the end of the battle. A fight, a war, for everlasting peace in this lifetime, though it had truthfully taken more out of her than she had anticipated it would, when she'd had not sufficient ingredients to make the "antidote" against the Dark Tide, and had deigned to substitute it fresh with her blood and Forte.
"What is this?" Carlotta demands. Always so forceful, so authoritative and sharp. Always so domineering, clutching her hand tight, when the makeshift bandage fades into sight, stained scarlet and worn loose in her grip without her parasol, still oozing as Carlotta frees her wound from its wraps. "Why won't it stop?"
"I needed a few more ingredients for the antidote." The vessel meant to return them to Ragunna rocks, sailing slowly in its careful voyage. The seas are littered with mangled bodies, half formed TDs and many more dismembered, some human and some more discordant. They won't be reaching Ragunna any faster than this, not as quickly as their anxious hastiness desires, but she didn't think that Carlotta would have tailed her to her bunk, anyway, or she'd have been a little more careful to upkeep the facade before she hit the hammock. "And, I suppose as you would know, the Fisalias don't always have the best immune system responses. It will take time to heal."
"And it will scar, because of how sloppily it's been treated." The hands on hers are so soft that it takes a blink and another, before she realises that black gloves lay flat on her parasol, the gloves of a Montelli Executioner. Never to be removed, never to be abandoned, but Carlotta Montelli's hands are softer than the touch of feathers, like a phantom touch of fingers that ghost her palm, making quick work of her injury with fresh bandages she didn't think the Montelli Daughter would have. "For a noblewoman like you, shouldn't that be gravely concerning?"
For a noblewoman like me?
If she'd had more strength in that moment, it would have been, perhaps, a little more intimidating than it resulted, when she leaned forward as the ship lurched, and found herself teetering on the edge of her bunk, grabbing onto Carlotta's collar with her uninjured hand for the desperate need for composure. "I'm afraid I will need you to elaborate on what is such a virtue of necessity, for a noblewoman like me, Lady Carlotta."
With the initial answer in mind, Carlotta seems to struggle, between the half opened mouth quickly shut back tight, and the gaze averted to her bandaging at hand, tucking away the loose end. But swift as always, Carlotta's eyes catch her unawares — before her hand on Carlotta's collar can even begin to falter, a new hand keeps it imprisoned in place. "A noblewoman like you, who would care about your appearances. About that Fisalia facade, 'The Bane of the Fisalias' camouflage, disguising your efforts in this fight, alone and unsupported. Just like how you've hidden your injury from the rest of us. Seems about the type of noblewoman you are, Cantarella Fisalia, and I find that there is not a flaw with my judgement of you, to date, or at least in the most recent of times."
A finger digs into her bandage; under the fresh, thick layers Carlotta has wrapped, there isn't much to see beyond the new whiteness, but seeping onto the gauze in its innermost is her blood, her emotions, everything that she has so sought to suppress, but can afford no longer to compress it within the confines of herself.
And so she wills herself to believe, that maybe she's delirious with the blood loss, or maybe her confidence comes from knowing the rest of their entourage is out there, manning the deck and enjoying the new dawn, when she leans into the collar in her grip, anyway, and seeks out the lips of Carlotta Montelli.
Only to not kiss her, but to trace her lips over them, syllable by syllable, word by word, without a sound, the whisper that leaves her as secretively as her blood from her wound.
Will you not blame me?
Carlotta's lips move on hers in return; not quite a kiss, and not quite as silent, the unadjusted hum of a mutter pressed silent, muffled, but audible between them.
What for should I not blame you?
Her fingers adjust on the collar; slipping, they are, with new moisture of hesitation, of knowing the chances that Carlotta would act on rationale, and the memory of the revolver to her rib plays in her head.
But the hand over hers holds firm and holds tight, clutching her near, supporting her upright — Tell me?
Do not blame me for that I tried to tell you the truth with what I could; through my lips sewn tight and my wrists bound in shackles. Please do not blame me for that I allowed the truth to be mistaken amidst our grievances. And, please, do not hate me, for that I only dare to impart with you the truth now, when peace has been promised, hatred cast aside, and Ragunna for certain has a future now at last.
All that, I promise. Will you spare me the agony of the wait, and grant me this truth that you speak of?
The laugh that comes from the depths of her chest and her throat, is one of utmost bitterness. Not resentment, not hatred, but profound and perhaps akin to despair, or desperation.
I bore us a daughter.
The pressure that had been building up on her wrist, from Carlotta's grip, falters so suddenly it feels as though it had snapped. Granted, even if it had snapped, it would have been a reasonable reaction, considering how Carlotta's eyes are set with such a deadly doubt that, had it been back then, it would have warranted another sharp tug on the trigger, one shot of the revolver.
"You're lying." But it's such an oddity, to see that heavy weight of doubt shift into instant, unwavering belief — that Carlotta herself should innately understand that her words are no more fictitious than they have ever been. "I would have known."
"You wouldn't have." With both her hands back in her own custody, she pulls herself back into the boundary of the bed; and with her newly bandaged hand, gently kneads the strain in her back from having been so awkwardly displaced. A soft ache, a souvenir from her daughter, an ailment left behind that could testify — at least to her own sanity after the torrents of false thoughts Leviathan had implanted — that there could be no wrong, about the existence of their daughter. "I knew you wouldn't have, when you couldn't understand, when I'd brought you the truth so blatantly but you couldn't see it, past our feuds and rivalrous ties."
Cantarella can see it, plain as day now that Carlotta doesn't bother to hide from her, the wheels turning in her head like the little clockwork gears the Montellis are all so skilled at attuning. Every thought that forms like a force on the gear, pushing forward into another, and another, and then finally Carlotta seems to notice, between her hands on the back of her waist, or whatever else has come to mind in her head.
"When you brought me the truth…"
"And you pulled out your revolver?"
"And you asked me to promise you the safety of the children in Ragunna." As though to hide, once more, the Montelli slips her hands back into her gloves. As though ready to pull yet another gun on her, accuse her of playing ridiculous games, wasting their time, making mock of everyone out of sheer determination to amuse herself of others' confusion and blight, befitting as The Bane. "I did not notice any variance to you, at all. Certainly your demeanour had felt deliberately misleading, but there was nothing else amiss, or so I'd tried my best to source them out."
"Nothing about my disappearance the following months after, nor my occasional escaping to foreign lands. Nothing was meant to arouse your suspicions. I was meticulous enough, at least in that aspect, but there'd been nothing meticulous about how it'd all happened." Carlotta's gaze is no longer upon her, when she chuckles quietly and folds her hands back in her lap. "And there is no point further distressing you with the details of how it had happened, distressing you in the same way that I stumbled through the turmoil of reality myself, back then, and even till now, leaving my only daughter a ward to my dearest old friend."
She reaches forward, a hand on Carlotta's shoulder — patronising, perhaps, seeing that she's certainly older than Carlotta, though it's not often that their age comes between them. Yet experience makes a subtle difference, when Carlotta doesn't stop her cupping of the Montelli's nape, too tender and vulnerable, and yet at peace.
"Forgive me that I could not have told you this earlier, could not have told you this sober. Forgive me for not having told you in times when even a word that could make you believe it was true, could have meant that her life of freedom would be over, drawn between our feuds and Leviathan's stirring awakening. Forgive me that I was selfish in my worry that you would not love her, nor care, that absorbed me in the decision to raise her away from you — forgive me for the decision I made, that knowing if we were both to die, her salience of losing would only be for one, and she would not grow up the way we did, unsheltered from the merciless realities of the world."
But sometimes, maybe she so has forgotten, as well, that the youth she used to poke fun at, the youth who became the youngest Executioner of the Montellis, was long no longer a youth but an adult of her own wisdom.
The adult Carlotta who lowers her eyelids, lowers her gaze, takes a deep breath and sighs, before pulling her in tightly.
"You made the best choice there was to make." The gloves are surprisingly warm, gliding down her back in what seeks to be comforting, but there's still the awkward stiffness of an amateur in being tender. "How can I fault you for that at all?"
There was a time where Carlotta would have. There was a time when hearing each other speak more than thrice in succession was more than enough to warrant an attack to ensue.
Except those times have finally passed, and she buries her face in the narrow width of Carlotta's shoulder, and laughs. Meaningless, but laughs that exonerate her from her years of burden, laughs of the other words she can't quite say but can laugh, with every deep breath and tears that come more of reflex than anything else, wetting the ends of the hair that feel ever familiar, to the ones that she's brushed through while singing old lullabies.
"When all of this is over, when all the administrative matters have been settled and our responsibilities can be temporarily adjourned and cast aside," Carlotta mutters into her collar, too, fingers digging lightly around her arm, as though seeking security. "May I please, at least, get to see her? The child of ours. Our…our daughter?"
"Cara." says she, in reciprocation. "When all of this is over, I would like to have her properly registered into the Ragunnesi registry, with a proper last name or two — what do you think?"
A Fisalia, or a Montelli, or both?
Maybe it doesn't matter, when the little girl comes running to them, one after another, yelping delightfully for her mother and her addition of another mother, while Changli smiles in the background on the vessel, twirling her parasol and following in their daughter's eager steps.
Thus along with Leviathan's downfall, so have they their happiness at last, surfaced from whispered secrets.