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Charimone found comfort in the rain.
It tapped upon the ceiling’s glass, the day cast in a grey much softer than the crow lady’s eyes.
She spotted crows shake themselves under the lips of the roof. Their wings glistened with water in their feathers, an unshakable dampness tempered by time away from the rain.
In these branched halls she nestled in comfort and longing.
The library downstairs held more books than she could ever hope to read, their contents often in languages she hoped to read.
Secrets spread over exchanges during lessons and between moments. She arrived with Aricaulle to find his father plopped cups of hot chocolate into their laps, while he fretted over a note he spoke nothing of in answer.
“He’s the head of the house.” Aricaulle told her. “He’s always worried about something.”
Charimone tilted her head. “But I thought our lady was?”
“Dad looks after the boring stuff, while our lady gets the interesting parts.”
He got interrupted by his father ruffling his hair, Charimone smiling as he got the bits of chocolate rubbed from the sides of his lips. “I look after the important things. I may not be a paragon of legend, but the house only runs as well as the most ordinary crows within it. Remember that when you pass the servants.”
Aricaulle’s father patted him on the shoulder, before he shifted into a jackdaw and flew out the door.
In the warmth of the nest, and the gentle heat in her hands, Charimone remembered the storm outside. The rain. The wind. The Chalice. Scandals and uncertainty flurried here as they now did in Helinda, her fate in the balance of whoever got the Chalice.
Among those corridors, she caught sight of one with a familiar door at the end. Where it all started, and where it would end. She reached out, and ventured down, as she did once before.
And once again.
Charimone ventured down a corridor which went longer with every step. Light faded behind her, light faded before her.
She had this, she had this, she had this.
Beyond this rain she would decide her fate for herself.
Charimone opened the door to a gate guarded by its lock.