Work Text:
Remember you must die,
remember to live.
⏾ ⋆ ─── ⋆⋅ 𓉸 ⋅⋆ ─── ⋆ ☀︎
For a long while, you just wander the halls of the castle, moving seemingly without purpose, but not without direction. Every corner you take, you take with a quiet confidence, even as you stick firmly to the shadows. If you frighten off a guard, as may be expected, you don't notice it. You're simply a ghost haunting the halls of Whitestone Castle, no one the wiser to your presence. No one else, at least.
Is this place different than the grim hell you saw before? Have the walls been painted over to hide the blood that stained them back then? Have the floors been changed to rid them of the rot, or merely polished? Was it truly as haunting a place as it seems in your memories, or has the opulence of it always been here, only tarnished in recollection by the warping of your view of it? You have no answer.
It is becoming impossible to ignore that rumbling undercurrent of terror in your mind, growing louder with every step further into the depths of this place. The confidence in your steps has fallen to a shaky, yet persistent, shambling as your legs tremble.
It isn't an unfamiliar feeling, this terror. Its presence is as common as the inevitable raising of your cloak's hood with the appearance of every new town, lest the wandering eyes of curious townsfolk find themselves cast upon your ghoulish features.
But familiar it may be, rarely has it roared as strongly as it does now, ripping through you like a raging river with every glance over your shoulder, with every voice that echoes off these towering walls.
Still, you refuse to put your attention to any of it. You continue on, following this predetermined and obfuscated thread to nowhere at all.
Until—inevitably—you arrive at what one could call somewhere.
Though 'somewhere' looks remarkably like a simple, common door.
But nothing is simple in this place, is it? Not with the way that river bellows in a rushing clamor so all-consuming it sounds closer to the dangerous, violent buzzing of a swarm emerging from a kicked hornets' nest than that melodious, gentle stream you so often hide that terror beneath.
What lies on the other side of this simple-but-not slab of wood? You make no move to open it, but you know somehow, don't you? The briefest suggestion of a bookcase forms within your mind, but you shoo it away. Your hands begin to tousle the thin strands of your hair, tugging and bunching and snapping pieces away in tangled chunks. You ignore the way they shake with the motion.
Only, if not your hands, then what is there to focus on but the door, and the contents of the room within it?
"Wha—hey!" comes the surprised yelp of what you can only assume is a castle guard, though he must be quite young for the way his voice cracks on the exclamation. Was it that incessant buzzing in your ears that kept you from making out his approach? Still, you do not flinch at the voice's sudden appearance.
Gods are a sore subject for the not-dead, not-quite-alive, and so you do not speak of them often, but with the door and your hands both partially forgotten, half of a thank you crosses your mind for whichever of that damned pantheon might have been watching and cast you its pity.
"Th-that room is off-limits. Please, I mu-must ask you to step back."
Still caught up in your meandering thoughts of Gods and their watching, you do not register the guard's order, or its hesitant increase in proximity.
Laud?
You jolt, blinking.
Oh, Imogen—
Your face screws up in confusion at the door before you, as if unaware as to how you'd arrived at the sight of it, and the rest of whatever your response might have been, falls away.
The guard yelps again at your sudden movement. You finally turn in the stranger's direction, having already forgotten his presence. Perhaps it is this lapse in your awareness that brings that buzzing in your mind to a crescendo as your eyes fall upon the young man's face.
Or, more likely, perhaps it is the lightning-strike-like clarity that befalls you as you take in the visage of what is clearly not one of the castle's Pale Guard.
Judging by the starkly familiar resemblance of the young man's—boy's?—features staring back at you in that wide-eyed look; this is one of the Lord and Lady's sons.
One might find it humorous, the speed and ferocity at which your half 'thank you's sour into curses. That tentative hopefulness in the goodness of Gods turns its back and retreats like a downtrodden child into the recesses of your mind.
The young de Rolo stares up at you with a frightened squeak. You stare back.
Would you find it funny? The youth do love their ghost stories, don't they? Love to be frightened by monsters in the dark, coupled with the knowledge they are not in any real danger, while they chase the prickling feeling that they could be. I must seem a monster to you. A haunting. A dark, bloody stain on your family's history. Blot me out, I dare you. You will not forget me, still.
Your thoughts tumble together as you peer back at the boy. Flashes of half-buried memories blow by too quickly to decipher, yet each hits your psyche like a physical blow. The ichor in your veins begins to swell in your fingertips as your nails stretch into dagger-sharp points. If you aren't careful, you're going to do something you regret.
Briefly, you wonder if it would be worth it, so long as you might for once get the chance to push this venomous, sickly feeling of long-festering wrath within you off onto someone else for a change.
Laud—
Whether by willful ignorance or deafened ears, the tentative interjection is lost to the buzzing swarm, carried beneath the rush of that river as it feeds on your terror and your rage. Oh to hold you, to soothe you—
With a great gulp, the boy swallows his hesitation, doubling down despite the tremble in his voice. "Really, ma'a—uhm, miss?—uhm, y-you can't be here. This room is, uhm, off-limits. On the order of Fath—ah, Lord de Rolo. Yo-you must go."
You regard him with a tilt to your head, tar dripping from your eyes. It must be a frightening sight to the boy for the way his face pales and his puffed-up chest deflates in a whimper. Still, he remains standing mostly-firm, though he falters in meeting your gaze as it bores into him. He stares past you slightly, his eyes flickering back up to yours every few moments, as if to check if you are still watching him. You get the sense he wishes he could hide beneath his covers and pull them up over his head.
He notices them then, your bare, brutalized ears. The golden cuffs that normally adorn them—hide them—had been removed at some point in the journey between one hell and another. His gaze sticks to them in a way that is surely bad manners, particularly for a noble son of Whitestone.
You wonder if this is how you looked when you first met Delilah, all those years ago. If you had minded your manners better then, would your fate have been different? Or would you always have been nothing more than a peasant girl in a shabby shawl, worth only her face and its likeness?
"Would you like to see them?" you rasp.
The boy's face pales further, its color draining like his final bout of confidence. "Oh—uhm, n-no—no, thank you. I-uhm—"
He steps back, tripping over his feet and righting himself on the door.
That door.
That room.
So much blood. So much screaming. No mercy to be found in the eyes of a Lady. No pity in the eyes of the Gods who let you come back.
Metal meets cartilage. It's colder than you expect.
Its that coldness that seizes you again now.
"Why not? You seem quite interested in them," you continue, head tilting further to the side until your cheek passes your shoulder. Ichor bleeds from your lip as its sliced on the sharp points of your teeth. "Though, really, you need not be, little one. After all, they're just. Like. Yours."
That roaring river, a moaning, wrathful cry as the cacophony of your mind crests into a dissonant anthem for the victims of circumstance. The sound vibrates within your skull, echoing out from your mouth as your jaw unhinges.
Laudna, stop it!
Your terror is mirrored in the boy's expression. You feel no lighter.
A different face imposes itself over the boy's. Familiar. Feminine. Older, yet no less beautiful than it was in its youth.
The new Lady's face has yet to curdle in such a way during this visit to this second Hell. But it feels so viscerally real, as if the disappointment in it is a palpable force before you. A mistake. You've made a mistake, believing you would ever have deserved to be accepted in her presence.
That's not true, honey. You belong as much as anybody, okay? Hell, more than anybody. You're—you're the very best of us.
Your spine cracks as it curls in on itself, reeling from the words even as another, in a distant room, in a distant life, straightens to a painful point.
"To Matilda—!"
The voice, warm and fuzzy at the edges, sputters out painfully.
Silver platters line a long, elegant table, adorned with all manner of the over-indulgent spoils of conquest. A feast fit for royalty. Your stomach growls painfully. You try not to think about those that must have gone hungry so that you might gorge yourself before the Lord and Lady, before they realize their oversight.
At the table's center, one dish remains covered.
Every place is set with an array of polished cutlery, every seat full with equally ravenous guests, their arms extended in a toast. Each holds a glass full to the brim with a rich, red wine. Their features are cloaked in shadow, and yet you get the distinct impression they are all turned towards you in anxious waiting.
You raise your glass to match them. You ignore the shake in your hands.
Approval washes over you.
Relief does not.
You blink.
That once-beautiful table looks now as though it had been set upon by wolves. The silhouettes of its guests have fallen slumped over in their seats, their blotted-out faces smashed into their over-full plates. Each still holds their glasses aloft.
No longer does the liquid within them look like wine.
The Lady rises from the head of the table, her pretty face twisted in a threatening grin, so as to appear a predator emerging from the darkened forest. You play well the part of prey, struck frozen in her gaze as you are.
She reaches forward for the covered platter, which has thus far remained untouched at the center.
You must not lower your glass, no matter the way it wavers in your grip.
Perhaps you will make it out this time if you stay still. If your manners are minded and your shawl not so threadbare, perhaps the Lady will see you for the magical prodigy you could have been at her side. A protege, rather than a hedge witch.
Alive, rather than a dead, dangling doll.
Blood dribbles over the lip of your wine glass, the drop beading down the outside like condensation. Down your forefinger it flows, then down your wrist, following the the path of your racing heartbeat like an eager foxhound. You must run. You must.
The thunder of hooves is upon you.
You do not lower your glass.
You cannot ignore the shake in your hands.
With a haughty, wicked laugh, the Lady lifts the cloche—
To reveal your head.
Laud?
The image—memory or fabrication, you are not sure—dissipates.
You do not respond to the soft-spoken, sorrow-filled prompting that fills your mind, though you reach back out in its direction anyway. In what? Acknowledgement? Gratitude? Pleading? Whatever it might be, it is reciprocated in equal measure, and then more-so.
The young de Rolo pinches his face tightly, mouth pursing to hold fast against an impolite rebuttal to your claim of similarity. The monumental effort it takes for him to keep from falling into a petty squabble with you is clear. The ghost of the face you see in his now having vanished, you see the stark truth beneath his attempted bravado.
He is nothing more than a boy.
You feel suddenly sick.
Imogen? Did—did I—?
No, no honey. You didn't do anything. Just zoned out there for a second, maybe made him soil his pants a little.
Relief floods you then. Relief! If you were the monster you so believe yourself to be, would you honestly feel relief at not having lost total control of yourself? At not having harmed this boy? It is maddening, this harrowing way you see yourself. If only you could see yourself how—
"I am so sorry for frightening you," you whisper, eyes downcast as you begin to slink back into the darkness. "I suppose I am not quite in my right mind at the moment. This place…"
You shake your head, leaving the rest of the sentence unfinished. He is only a boy—what good is it to burden him with the sins of a dead woman?
Timidly, the boy begins, "It—it's alright—"
Both of you freeze at the rumbling of clanking and clattering footsteps reverberating through the halls as they steadily grow louder. Though the exact direction of the sound's source remains unclear, it is obvious enough that they are moving in your direction.
Dread overtakes you as your thoughts fall to the friends awaiting your return. Are they drunker on the Lady's guiltily gifted wine than when you left them? Have they remained enough of their faculties to find you if you were to be escorted from the castle grounds, or from Whitestone itself, even? And if they have not, does that mean you’ll be left all—
You cannot even bear to think the word, though it settles like a stone in the pit of your stomach.
Alone.
How long has it been since you were last alone in your own mind? As awful as Delilah was, are you more frightened by the absence of her than the woman herself?
It isn't a wondering meant to be shared, but it must dance its way across that tether anyhow for the way your terror snaps its teeth at the intrusion.
Sorry, sorry—it’s okay, honey. I'm right here. You don't have to be alone ever again. Don’t have to deal with her, either. Whenever it feels too empty in here, I’ll be there, okay? Promise.
You settle, only just.
The footsteps are quick to form into feet, weighed down by their shining armour and armaments. Then into hands, grabbing at your arms and pulling you back from the door, and the boy, by force.
Barrels are leveled at your chest for the second time in less than twelve hours.
A flood of panic, then white hot rage, swells within. You startle at the echo of it in your mind, spurring the guards beside and behind you to tense and tighten their grips. A shame-weighted guilt is quick to follow.
I'll—I'll be right there, Laud. Just hold on.
You do not respond, in words, but the tearful gratitude burning in your chest resonates just as loudly.
Your path here was not a straight-forward one, but your heart is a beacon in the evening dark of Whitestone Castle—for those that know how to look.
You do not need more fear, more anger, but there is little else left for anyone but you in these reserves. You deserve endless kindness. Endless goodness. Endless love—
But those against you will find there is only a wrath of my own to spare—and I have no such qualms of sharing it.
I'll be right there.
I run.
An accented voice—different than the one of the wicked woman laughing in your memories—calls out hotly through the wall of Pale Guards. "What is the meaning of all this?"
A chill runs down your back. You long to slip into the shadows and disappear, but the hands holding your arms tighten in warning.
Lady Vex'ahlia de Rolo steps into the circle of guards that have formed around you. You watch as her face furrows, then falls in shock as she spots her son, standing only a few paces away from you, still stricken pale as a ghost. She glances back once in your direction, but settles on the boy. Raising an eyebrow at him, she waits.
The boy casts his eyes to the floor and keeps them firmly there as he begins to stammer. "W-well, uhm, you see, uhm, she was, uhm—"
The Lady tuts, but its a gentler sound than you expect. "Eyes up, Freddy. Slow down."
Freddy nods. "Yes, Mother. Apologies." He takes a deep breath, and starts again. "Well, I was out looking for Gwen, as she'd barged into my room and taken—" Freddy pauses, his face flushing. He peeks at you from the corner of his eye before lowering his voice to a hush. "She'd taken Charlie and run off with him, and, I—I saw that, uhm, l-lady? Sneaking around and looking like she might go into the-the, uhm, locked room."
He points in the direction of the door, but hesitantly.
You watch the Lady's face, waiting for a flash of anger, the rescinding of all her goodwill. You wait for the circle of guards to close around you until there is no air to breathe that is not full with them.
You wait.
And yet.
"I see," the Lady says quietly, her face softening with sorrow as she looks, and seems to see you, for the first time. "I haven't been in there since—nevermind that. Release her. Oh, and have someone fetch Gwen so Charlie might be returned. She has been in rather mischievous form as of late.” She looks back down to her son. “Now, off to your room you go. You’re not meant to be out here this late, hm?"
His face falls in a pout. Gods, he truly is just a boy. "But, Mother—"
The Lady raises another eyebrow. "Vax'ildan."
Freddy—Vax'ildan?—turns sheepish at the warning. "Yes, Mother. Apologies."
"Lady Vex'ahlia, are you certain?" the guard nearest to you asks warily. "The Lord has already warned us of the dangers of this… situation. Are you sure it’s best to let her simply have leave of the castle?"
Then, and only then, does the Lady's face contort in anger. "Release her."
The hands do, with haste.
"Leave us," the Lady orders, then again when the guards freeze in hesitation. "By Pelor—what has gotten into you all? Stand around the corner within shouting distance if you must, but I would like to speak with her in private. Shoo."
"Yes, My Lady, of course," the guard assents, thoroughly chastised. "Come, let us leave them be."
The boy, Freddy or Vax'ildan or whatever it's meant to be, stalls in his leaving, his eyes lingering on your ears. When it seems he's going to leave without adding anything further, he pauses again—much to his mother's annoyance.
"They, uhm—I think they look, uhm, interesting." He grimaces. "Uhm, I mean, you seem, uhm, interesting. Or, uhm, I mean—"
"Vax'ildan Frederick de Rolo."
Freddy squeaks. "S-sorry! I'll, uhm, I'll be going now. It was… pleasant? I suppose, to meet you."
With his final word of farewell, the boy scampers down the hallway he'd appeared from and disappears around the corner as if he’d never been there at all.
A sort of warmth worms its way into your chest at his parting words. Pleasant. What an odd thing to say, given the encounter. You hope, in the deepest, quietest part of yourself, that he meant it.
With the guards and Freddy dispersed, leaving only you and the Lady left loitering in the hall, a long, uncomfortable silence grows to fit the new empty space between you.
The Lady watches you curiously, peering deep into your eyes. You cannot seem to break away from her gaze. Perhaps it is the remnants of your own mother’s teachings that have you standing straighter and unable to look away. Or, maybe, that is just the doing of the Lady’s presence.
You cannot help but notice all the differences between her and yourself. The gaunt sharpness to your face where hers holds soft curves. The beautiful fullness of her frame where your skin clings to your bones like wet, tattered cloth. The ears, yes, of course, are different—but her smile, her eyes, full of a confidence you have never dreamt to be within reach of, are what stands out to you most.
How, ever, did Lady Briarwood believe you this woman’s mirror image?
It must have been meant as another slight against the then not-yet-Lady. A laughable insinuation she could ever look so grotesque.
A rebuke of the very thought sits heavy on my tongue as I whip around a corner, only to smack haphazardly into a tiny frame. I feel myself tugged sharply out from your mind and curse under my breath. I do not have time for this.
The tiny frame lets out a quiet “oomph!” as it tumbles to the floor.
“Oh shit—y’alright?”
A little red-skinned tiefling girl glares up at me as she rubs her elbow. A stuffed bear has been tossed aside in the collision, and she scampers to scoop it up. It is fitted poorly in a doll’s dress and a tiara. Strapped to its hand is a small gun, which I desperately hope is a toy. I don’t have much faith in the notion.
“You ought to watch where you’re going! Mother says you aren’t supposed to run in the halls, and you were most certainly running. I’m going to tattle on you,” the little girl says with the most pleased of smirks.
I snicker quietly. “You’re gonna tattle on me, huh?” I take a long look at the child. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this must be a de Rolo. The nightdress she wears looks to be made of a finer silk than anything I’ve ever owned. You would swoon at the sight of it, and yet this kid is going to outgrow it in a year’s time at most, at which point it will be tossed into a closet, never to be seen again. So, a de Rolo most definitely—but which one? I glance at the bear and hazard a guess. “Well then maybe I ought to tell your mama that you’ve snuck off with your brother’s bear, hm Gwen?”
Her eyes widen in shock, before narrowing in suspicion. Definitely Gwen, then. So why do I feel as if I’ve just made a grave mistake?
“How do you know that?” Gwen asks, taking a far step back. “Are you a spy? Daddy says that all spies should expect to find the full wrath of Whitestone waiting for them if they’re stupid enough to spy on us. I think that you’re a spy. I’m telling!”
Oh fuck.
“No, no, no! I’m not a spy!”
“That’s just what a spy would say!”
“But I ain’t a spy!” Deep breath. Don’t lightning bolt a kid. Slower, gentler, I continue, “Cross my heart, I’m just tryin’ to find my friend, honest.”
Gwen harrumphs, crossing her arms over the bear’s stomach as she hides behind him like a stuffed shield. Poor Charlie. “Well then how’d you know my name and that I took Freddy’s bear? With permission!” She tacks on hastily. “You’d only know that if you were spying, and if you’re spying, that makes you a spy!”
I groan. Hurriedly, I hunt for the presence of the girl’s mind. I am not a damn spy.
Charlie falls to the floor as Gwen yelps, turning this way and that to try and determine the source of the voice, before looking back to me. “You can read minds?!” She squints her eyes.
“You’re thinking ‘if you can actually read minds, tell me my favorite food.’ except you aren’t thinking of your favorite food, you’re thinking of how to steal my circlet. You can’t, by the way.”
Gwen gasps. “So you are a spy! You’re spying on my mind! That’s the worst kind!”
Dropping my head in my hands, I stifle the urge to scream.
With a deep breath, I lower into a crouch so as to be on eye level with the tiefling girl, who stares back bravely. Her mind spikes with a sense of curiosity that would be endearing, if not for the risk that her father might have my head at her behest. I’m just trying to find my friend, a tall woman with dark hair? She’s real pretty, a little spooky, but she’s also real nice. And, she’s having a hard day. Have you seen her?
Gwen’s face softens. You swear you’re not a spy? Daddy really hates spies.
I promise, I’m not a spy.
She sighs, tension bleeding from her shoulders as she nods seriously. Okay, I believe you. You have purple hair, spies can’t have purple hair, it’s too pretty.
I try not to let my relief show on my face, even as I work not to laugh at her reasoning. So, you seen my friend?
Gwen shakes her head. No, but I remember Daddy was saying something about a lady earlier, maybe that was your friend? It didn’t sound very nice though, and you said your friend was nice…
What’d he say? I withhold several of the names I’d like to call that wrinkly fuck-face, only just.
Well, I don’t think he’d like me repeating it... I’m not supposed to say words like that. ‘They’re not fit for noble girls.’ The sound of her thoughts changes into a playfully mocking imitation of the Lord’s voice before continuing normally. Though, Mother does say them quite often… Does it count if I only think them? It’s not quite the same as talking is it? Or is it if you can hear me?
Focus, Gwen.
I remember he said something about not believing that Mother was willing to risk bringing back ‘that witch’—only he didn’t say ‘witch’—just to help that woman, and then Mother scolded him and told him it was their fault, and then Daddy said that it wasn’t their fault, it was ‘that bloody witch’s fault’ and then Mother kissed him and told him it was important and then they kept kissing and then I left because I know where kissing goes—!
“Alright, okay, thank you, Gwen,” I cut off her ramble, and the subsequent mental images brought with it, as my face flushes. An idea pops into my mind. “Hey, do you know anything about a locked room? Some place that no one ever goes, not even the Lord and Lady?”
Suspicion crosses the girl’s face again, and I can’t even blame her this time. Blessedly, it disperses as fast as it appears. Purple hair and all that. “I think so… why?”
“Could you show me where it is? I think my friend might be there and that she might need my help, but I’m having trouble finding my way.”
“You won’t tell that I brought you there?” She pauses, scooping the bear back up. “Or about Charlie?”
I draw an ‘x’ over my heart and hold out my pinky finger. “Our little secret.”
Gwen nods, wrapping her pinky around mine. “Alright then, this way pretty lady!”
The girl’s tail winds around my wrist as she leads the way to what I can only hope is the correct room. Praying that she doesn’t take me straight to the Lord for execution, or walk me into several pieces of furniture, I dive back for that familiar gossamer thread.
⏾ ⋆ ─── ⋆⋅ 𓉸 ⋅⋆ ─── ⋆ ☀︎
The scene I return to is much the same as the one I left. As is the chasm of silence that sits between you and the Lady.
I pray my presence was not missed, but that line of wishful thinking is immediately snapped in two as your voice dances its way into my mind, glossy with barely-disguised panic.
Imogen? Imogen is that you? Are you alright? Has something happened?
Slow down, Laud, breathe. It’s okay. Just had a little… run-in, but don’t worry about it. Everything’s just fine.
I’d felt you leave without saying anything, I suppose I just feared the worst. But you’re safe?
I’m safe.
I don’t add the ‘I hope.’
A slow breath leaves your lips, drawing the Lady’s attention. It seems the chasm, purposefully or not, has been bridged. She does not hesitate to cross it.
“So,” the Lady starts, drawing out the word. “Would you mind telling me what you were intending to do in there?” she motions towards the door, then tugs on its unmoving handle. “Not that you’d have been able to get inside, anyway. But say you had.”
That bookcase makes another appearance in your mind's eye, taunting you. It looms, towering taller than reasonable above your long, lanky limbs. Each of its cob-web-covered shelves laden with moldy and worm-gnawed books.
A dryness like grave dust coats your mouth. You almost rather she’d ask what you’d done to frighten her son instead. One glance at the Lady, though, and the thought is rebuked as fast as it’d come. No, you most certainly do not.
“I—I wasn’t—”
The room around the bookcase is dark, unreasonably so. It is silent but for the eerie settling of the castle and the slow, unsteady thumping of the heartbeat in your ears. It feels too tangible to be a falsehood, yet the picture melts between your fingers as you try to grab it. Not quite a memory—or perhaps, rather, just not one you can trust.
You laugh bitterly at that, which causes the Lady’s eyebrows to rise higher on her face. There are not many memories of yours that you can trust. Most, in fact, you know you cannot.
A flash of a field full to the brim with lavender—of eyes swallowed in the hue—breaks up the darkness like a crack of lightning, before receding into it once more. A warmth like the summer sun lingers, clinging spitefully to the chilled stone.
Most, yes. But not all.
Lady Vex’ahlia does not wait for you to wrangle your runaway thoughts and half-blubbered words into something more meaningful than hysterics. "I do so hope you have not betrayed my trust, or the well-being of my family, of my people, and lied to me about whether or not Delilah is still swimming around in your head?”
Your face falls and the moment’s reprieve of the memory’s warmth fades. You feel even colder than before in the aftermath of its loss. “No! I assure you, she has not made an appearance since my… return.”
The Lady nods. “Good.” She watches the door for a moment before splaying her hand across its surface. Silence stretches on long enough for your stomach to tie itself in intricate knots before she continues softly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in here. Not since… well, you know.”
She speaks the last part flippantly, as if whatever she insinuates is not exposing a crack in the very foundation of your cobbled together self-understanding.
The you within yourself reaches out a hand into the darkness, grazing a fingertip across a row of that bookshelf’s decrepit books.
Your head tilts in tandem with the axis of your world as you prepare for it to be upended. “Know… what exactly?”
The Lady turns to you, stares at you oddly.
Tak, tak, tak your nail clacks against the edge of each worn spine.
When the Lady speaks, it is with an uncharacteristic uncertainty. “The first time we met?”
Your finger stops atop a tome. It bears no title nor embellishment, nothing to differentiate it from the dozens of others on the shelf but it emptiness. Nothing to which your eye or curious finger might be drawn. It may as well be invisible in its perfect normalcy. Still, something about it calls to you, begs you to pull it free.
Helplessly, you answer it.
It does not let you pull far before you hear a dull click.
Painstakingly slow, the bookshelf crawls along the wall, the low grinding of wood and stone washing over the room until it settles heavily into place, revealing behind it a cavernous stairwell. You cannot see the bottom, as it is swallowed by an eerie, unnatural darkness that even your eyes cannot pierce. Your head begins to throb the longer you stare down into it, and yet you are powerless to look away.
A hand curls over your shoulder. A voice, cold and dangerous, croons in your ear. “Just what do you think you're doing?”
The roaring of a river. "I wasn't going to go in."
You aren't sure if you believe the words even as they leave your mouth, but they feel like the right thing to say nonetheless. Something in you tells you it is imperative you do not go down the stairs.
"Of course not," the voice hums. "You know those memories aren’t for you. Be good and back away. You are a good girl, aren't you?"
Gooseflesh ripples out from the back of your neck where the response dances across your skin on the breath that carries it, curling like painted lips thinning to reveal a flash of teeth.
As if bleeding from the stone itself, a chorus of whispers fills the room. “The very best of us.”
Those voices—
You try to run, to put as much distance between yourself and the one behind you as possible, even if it means ignoring the rising tide of your terror and descending into that horrible, endless darkness. You only make it down a step before roots stretch over the tops of your feet and descend from the ceiling to wrap around your wrists, forcing you to still before you might venture any deeper.
Your heart pounds, the sound echoing off the walls. You can see your breath on the air before you. It is so much colder in the stairwell.
That same slender hand parts through your oil-slick hair, tucking a strand of it behind your ear, glides a finger over the curve of its cartilage in appraisal. But it’s wrong. Skeletal rather than delicate.
"You believe you're something special, do you?"
A woman floats into view. For the briefest of moments, you fail to even recognize her.
Her fair complexion seems almost pallid, made worse so by the ashen white of her hair and the dark, necrotic burns that seem to weep from the black of her eyes, which are lit with specks of glowing purple in the center, to swallow the surrounding flesh that clings to her sunken cheeks.
But your wave of uncertainty passes swiftly, for even in this sickly, rotted form, purely concentrated power rolls off of her in waves.
It is impossible to mistake Delilah Briarwood for anyone else.
When she speaks again, her voice echoes more than it should. There is something else there, doubled, but you cannot make it out clearly. Can recognize only that it sounds overwhelmingly, unmistakably, angry. "That your small, insignificant life had any meaning."
The roots holding you steadfast crawl higher up your legs, wind around your neck. The frost from your breath appears more frequently.
"Perhaps it did," Delilah muses as a sharp blade appears in her hand, turning it over this way and that as she assesses it. "Just not in the way your parents had imagined."
The roots dig into your papery flesh, drawing ink as you thrash against them.
You tell yourself none of it is real even as your heart races.
Darling? You must go. I don’t want you to see this. Not so soon after—
No! No, I can help, just tell me what to do. Please, Laud, honey, tell me what to do. What can I do?
Look away, Imogen. Please. It will be over soon.
Blade outstretched, Delilah charges.
The thread snaps.
⏾ ⋆ ─── ⋆⋅ / / ⋅⋆ ─── ⋆ ☀︎
“No!”
Gwen whirls around in a panic. “What is it?”
I reach out wildly for that thread tying your mind to mine. It’s like grabbing smoke on the wind as it dissipates before me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Desperately, I tear the circlet off, keeling over at the wave of nausea brought on by the sudden barrage of thoughts it’d been keeping at bay. I rip through them all with reckless abandon, uncaring if my presence is noticed or causes pain as I cast them aside. Deeper I wade into the sea of static, even as I feel I start to drown.
I am back in the dirt, then. A newly-flattened city block all around me, and yet all I can see is the ruins of my heart as you lay caught in the rubble. Dust and debris catch in my throat, in my lungs, as I scream. I can’t find you. I can’t hear you. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe—
Small arms wrap around me with a surprising strength. “It’s going to be okay, we’ll find your friend! Then we can make her have some tea with us!”
I gasp, swallowing massive gulps of air as I try to pull myself out from the static and focus on the sound of little Gwen’s voice. “T-tea, huh?”
“Yes! Since you’re not a spy, that means we have to have tea,” Gwen continues as if this is the most natural thing in the world, her awareness exposed only by the way she clutches onto me tighter. “And you said your friend is pretty and nice, so she’ll have to come, too. What’s her name? I’ll have Vesper write her a fancy invitation!”
“L-Laudna, her name is Laudna.”
Gwen nods against my shoulder. “Alright then. One spot for Laudna, and one for Miss Purple.”
I laugh at that. It comes out thin, nearly strangled, but Gwen brightens at the sound. You and Fearne would love her. “Sure, yeah. Miss Purple.”
After a moment, when I can tell Gwen is getting antsy and my chest feels less like its going to cave in atop my heart, I pat her back in thanks and pull myself from her hold.
“Are you feeling better?” Gwen asks politely, even as her eyes flit anxiously around the hall. “You were doing that thing that happens to Freddy sometimes.”
My knees nearly buckle as I stand, but I manage to right myself instead of earning a concussion. I shut my eyes against the woozy feeling that follows, trying to breathe through it like Letters had said too—despite the fact they don’t even need air. I’m a little annoyed when it actually seems to work and my body begins to settle down, but I shove it aside. “Yeah, I’m… I’m alright.”
Something soft and furry is thrust into my arms. “Freddy says Charlie helps him feel calm. Maybe he can help you too?”
I take the bear with a chuckle, peeking one eye open to squint down at Gwen. "Maybe you outta keep from stealin’ Charlie from now on, huh? Wouldn’t want Freddy to get stuck in one of these without his buddy to help him.”
“Well then he wouldn’t be here to help you!” Gwen huffs, throwing her arms up in exasperation before folding them over her chest as she starts to sulk. “But fine. I suppose.”
“Good. Now keep a look out for a minute, will you? I need to see if I can find Laudna.”
“Is that not what we’ve been doing this whole time?”
“Shush, kid. I mean find her up here,” I say with a tap to my temple. It’s how I know where she is and can talk to her too, but I lost contact with her. I just need to make sure she’s alright.
Gwen’s face scrunches up as she shakes her head. “That feels so weird, like there’s an ant in my brain.”
I nod. “You get used to it.”
“Oh! Oh! We should have a code word! Uhm…” she pauses, grabbing the sides of her head like she can force a thought to appear, before yelling out with a smile, “Trinket!”
“Shh! Alright,” I hush her, glancing around to check if anyone heard. No one appears after a moment, but I speak the rest into her mind just to be safe. Trinket it is, then. Think it as loud as you can if we need to run, got it?
“Got it!” Gwen salutes with a smile, her barbed tail waggling excitedly behind her as she runs to peak around the nearest corner. Trinket… trinket… oh wait, I’m not supposed to think that yet. Trinket… agh! This is hard!
I sigh, trying to push the tiefling’s thoughts out to the edge of my mind as I lower the rest of my mental walls. It’s almost too much at once, even with the castle winding down for the evening hour. All the servants and staff that tend to go unnoticed during the day make a much louder clamor in their minds as they go about their evening duties. Work songs and paltry gossip, even an errant thought or two that make my face flush.
There’s a devilish laugh I recognize as Fearne’s. I don’t slip fully into her mind space, just enough to get passing images of the rest of the Hells. Ashton, drunk off their ass and laughing twice as hard as they try to shove a massive crystal centerpiece into the obviously closed surface of the hole. Fearne keeps shushing him loudly while adding more pilfered treasures to her marsupial pouch. Letters seems to be stress-eating fancy silverware, Orym is trying to act as a lookout while also trying to get them to put everything back, and Chetney is ignoring all of them to whittle away in the corner.
The longer I watch, the more Fearne’s mind scape pulls me in, and the more I find myself both awed and deeply afraid of what lives within it. A jungle of vibrant, unnatural colors and sounds surrounds me, the ground beneath my feet appearing solid even as it wobbles and rocks like the surface of the ocean. But every time I turn my head to take in more of it, the scenery shifts and changes entirely.
Jungle turns to a towering wooden interior, a ceiling that extends for forever. The walls are covered in a mess of seemingly random objects. A loose thread, a button, a bowl. A drawing or two or ten. Postcards and letters that all bear the same handwriting. A half-complete doll I recognize as one of the creations a tiny, spectral Matilda had made in her barn.
It would be easy to get lost in a place like this, but I must push on in search of you. I drag myself out from the utter trip of Fearne’s mind and gag as a sense of motion sickness overtakes me. A fluttering thought grazes my ears as I go. I can nearly hear the wink in it.
Byeee Imogen~
How Fearne could keep track of anything in there and still be aware of my presence coming through is utterly astounding—and yet, does not surprise me at all. Her laugh echoes in my ears as I forge onward, chasing the phantom pull of thread between my mind and yours.
Minutes or seconds or hours pass and I cannot find you still. Fear prickles at my throat as I scold myself for wasting time to look like this instead of letting the little de Rolo lead me to you directly. I’m nearly about to surrender to the idea when a different, though not wholly unfamiliar, mind commands my attention, pulling me in like a whirlpool.
It does so seemingly without its own notice, but does so nonetheless.
A blink and I am in a forest at dawn, blanketed by a quiet calm and morning dew which coats the grass beneath my feet, the tops of each tree, and the nearby bushes that shake with a soft rustle. I try to push deeper beneath the surface for information on whose mind this might be, but I feel no specific thoughts or feelings come through.
When I try to pull myself out of it and move on, determined to keep looking for you, I sense something begin to poke through. A hum beneath the illusion. It is not terror, not dread, not entirely. A sadness, rather, rooted so deep within that it can be nowhere but at the core of this mind, and yet hidden nearly in its entirety beneath a well-constructed facade of calm.
The rustling of the bushes grows louder, drawing my attention as it disturbs the gentle peace of this place.
My hands crackle in warning as I watch for whatever lies in waiting to emerge.
A small, furry creature slinks out from the bushes, the head of a black bird in its mouth as it drags the rest of its twitching feathered body along with it. It can’t be much longer than my forearm, its fuzzy tail roughly equal in length. It pauses when it notices me standing there in the clearing, a sparkle of curiosity in its beady eyes as it takes me in.
My shoulders dip as I feel some of the weight roll off them. It is only a pine marten.
FWOOSH!
I flail backwards as an arrow flies past my face, yelping as the fletching bumps just barely against the tip of my nose. The arrowhead sinks into the dirt beside the marten’s feet, having been knocked off course from where it surely would have pinned the creature to the ground.
The marten flees back towards the bushes, still dragging its dinner along by its head, only to be met with a low snort as the face of a massive, armored brown bear emerges to block its path. With a frightened squeak, the marten drops its catch and bolts.
Freed now from the clutches of certain death, the bird—a young raven, upon further inspection—limps back to its feet, cawing in a pitiful way. The bear lowers its snout to the ground, offering the injured raven a perch. It climbs on without hesitation and the bear carries the bird upwards so it can lay on its massive, furry back.
“Excellent work, Trinket,” a woman’s accented voice calls from the other direction, no doubt the one who fired the arrow. She pauses before continuing in amusement. “You know, darling, you ought not be sneaking around in other people’s minds. It’s unbecoming.”
I turn in the stranger’s direction, embarrassed, only to freeze at the sight of Lady Vex’ahlia dressed down in hunter’s garb. There is a fluid ease to her movements as she readies another arrow, aiming it in my direction.
“What do you think you’re doing in here?”
I raise my hands in a slow show of surrender. “Sorry, I was just lookin’ for Laudna. I didn’t mean to come pokin’ around.”
The Lady tsks. “First, she comes to the late Lord and Lady’s room and won’t tell me a straight-forward answer why, and then I find you sleuthing around in here? I’m starting to believe there might be a scheme afoot.” She shakes her head with a sigh, lowering her bow slightly. “But something is wrong with your friend, so I will trust you. Betray it, and next time I will not hesitate to bring you down with a real arrow.”
My chest tightens, and only barely from the threat. “Somethin’s wrong with Laudna?”
Lady Vex’ahlia nods dourly. “Yes. Your friend fainted suddenly while we were speaking earlier. I fear the post-revival exhaustion has gotten to her after over-exerting herself.”
“Shit. Okay. Okay.” I take a deep breath, grabbing at the bandana that feels suddenly too tight around my throat. “Where are y’all? I was tryin’ to find where she’d gone, but I think I got a little turned around. This place is a godsdamned labyrinth.”
“I’ve had her brought up to the guest’s quarters to rest, but…” the Lady’s voice trails off, a tense look crossing her face. The wind begins to pick up, shaking the tops of the trees with more force. That low, steady hum begins to rumble louder until I feel it in my chest.
“But what?”
“She is not resting well. She has been tossing and turning, wailing in her sleep,” Lady Vex’ahlia says softly, voice thick with sorrow. Her head raises so her eyes meet mine, and I feel as though I have seen into a raw wound. “She keeps calling out for you.”
The words bury themselves like a knife in my gut. I want to curse you out for pushing me away when you needed me, just so that you might spare me the heartache, but it is a hollow anger. I have spent long enough being angry with you for things you did not truly deserve. Never again do I want to waste my time on such a worthless feeling when I know now just how callous the world can be in its giving and taking of it.
If only I hadn’t been wasting more of yours jumping between minds like this rather than running straight for you. I might be by your side by now, able to pull you out of that pit you’ve fallen into.
An idea strikes me then.
I rush towards Lady Vex’ahlia, a foolish move for certain in the way she flinches backwards and grips tighter to her bow, but I can’t stop myself. Gripping her shoulders with urgency, another faux pass no doubt, I ask, “Are you with her now?”
The Lady blusters for a moment before answering, “Yes, I did not feel comfortable leaving her alone in such a state.”
“Wonderful—if you won’t have me charged with treason or nothin’ for it, I can sink into your consciousness, tell you what to say and all that to help her calm down until I can get there.”
“What? Treason? What do you mean ‘sink into my consciousness’?” The Lady asks before shaking her head with a huff. “Gods Percival would have a fit if he knew I was saying yes to this. If you tell him, then I’ll have you charged with treason.”
“Deal.”
Not wanting to give her the chance to second guess her approval, I forego any attempts at subtlety as I smash through the vision of the forest, settling into the eyes of the Lady. Part of me expects the hum to grow louder, but it stays much the same. A constant rumbling in my chest. Eventually, it fades into the background. I spare only a thought to wonder if that, too, is how it feels for the Lady.
No longer are we in the hall outside the door. The bedroom, lit only by a bedside candle and the light of the moon filtering in faintly through the impressive arch window on the far wall, is mostly plain. That is to say, wildly impressive compared to the shithole taverns that have become a frequent place of refuge for us in the last few weeks, and for our years on the road prior to that.
Oh my, what an… odd feeling. You’re like an ant crawling around in there. Are all of your thoughts going to mix with mine like that?
Probably, I laugh. Like mother, like daughter.
A bright beam shines into the room as the night’s cloud cover breaks, bathing the massive four post bed across from us in moonlight. It is then that I see you. Only your back is visible from where we are sat at a small writing desk, but even still I can see the way you’ve curled into a tight, terrified ball at the edge of the mattress, covers kicked aside. My heart aches at the spot you have left wide open behind you, folding yourself so you might fit into the arms of a figure who is not there to hold you.
This room, where is it? How can I get there?
It is in the east wing, overlooking the gardens. Second floor. There are no less than six guards stationed outside the door, as that was as far as they were willing to go once she collapsed. Impossible to miss them. I’ll let them know you’re coming so they don’t gut you on the spot, sound good, darling?
I pull back some, turning to find Gwen, who is still standing resolutely at her lookout post.
“Hey, Gwen—which wing of the castle are we in right now?” I ask aloud in a hushed whisper, not wanting to risk losing the Lady’s good favor by letting the words slip through and expose that I’ve swept up her youngest daughter in this mess.
Gwen thinks for a moment, before answering, “The west wing!”
I groan. Of course we are. “Change of plans—can you show me to the guest suites in the east wing? Second floor?”
“Aw, but those are so boring!” Gwen pouts.
“Or you can just point me the right way and go back to bed?”
“Let’s go!” she whisper-shouts, disappointment wiped away, grabbing me by the wrist and speeding back in the direction we’d come from.
On the way.
Good, the guards have been notified and shouldn’t give you any trouble.
Your whimper cuts through the otherwise silent room, followed by a louder, slurred cry as a twig sprouts from your shoulder, tearing the fabric of your blouse.
“Dear Gods,” the words are spoken in quiet awe as we rise from the chair. Is that normal? Or should I be concerned? I feel I should be concerned!
Another cry leaves your lips as you being to toss and turn. “Imogen..?” you call into the room, your voice pained, but you do not rouse from your tortured slumber.
Just go to her, please.
Despite the way it feels as though there are miles between here and the bed in which you lay, we cross the distance in only a few strides, and yet I feel no closer to you at all.
What am I meant to say?
All at once I am aware just how profoundly out of my depth I feel. I want nothing more than to help you, to call to you and pull you from that dark place with the sound of my voice—and yet, I can think of nothing adequate to say.
I don’t—I don’t know. I’m sorry, I know this was my idea, but—
Shh, shh. Calm down. Just focus on getting here, I will do my best in the meantime.
The Lady’s hand reaches out hesitantly to brush away the hair stuck to your sweat-slicked forehead. Your skin is cold and clammy to the touch. “Laudna, darling? Can you hear me in there?”
You don’t respond in words, but you reel back at the sound of the Lady’s voice. Another whimper leaves your lips.
“Alright, it’s alright, dear,” the Lady’s voice coos, much like one would when speaking to a small child. “You’re alright. You’re safe now—the Briarwoods aren’t here anymore. You don’t need to be afraid.”
Your lips part in a snarl at the name, revealing sharp teeth.
“Oh I understand,” the Lady laughs emptily. “They took much from me, too.”
That hum begins to build, rattling my ribs. I see it now, that untapped well of sorrow that sits at the center of her. A hole left behind where nothing could fill it, even as a sprawling scene built on love was constructed around it. Still, there remains an emptiness at the picture’s core.
“Perhaps, if Delilah never came to Whitestone, never gained as much power as she had, I would still have my brother.” A breath, slow and quivering. “Though, then perhaps I also would not have met my husband.”
There’s a sharp tapping at the window. You shift out of view as the Lady moves towards the sound. Perched on the ledge is an utterly massive raven, easily double the size of any I’ve ever seen. But the image that surfaces in her mind is not one of a bird, but of a man with a face nearly identical to her own.
The Lady turns skyward, blinking away the watery sheen that has begun to form.
Laughing wetly, “Fate. It’s a bit of a bitch, isn’t it?”
I hear it then, the musical thumbprint of your mind I have come to know as intricately as my own. It presses against the boundaries separating me from the Lady, and the Lady from you, crossing between the three spaces as if there were nothing to stop it.
Do you hear that? I am terrified to ask, for fear of finding out I’m only imagining things—or for Lady Vex’ahlia to feel suddenly as though it was a mistake to let me into this hallowed place that is her innermost self on account of me being crazy. But I must know.
I do—what is that?
A smile breaks out across my face unbidden.
There you are, honey.
The music crescendos in a joyful tune, and for a second, I am sure everything will be just fine.
Until it is followed by something dark and threatening. A low, foreboding sound that mixes with the Lady’s hum thrumming in my chest.
Laud? Can you hear me?
Another layer, brittle and piercing, melds with the rest. Beneath it runs the familiar sound of a rushing river.
A new plan takes hold of me. A stupid plan that probably won’t work. If it goes wrong, it might break the fragile connection between our three minds, and you will have to suffer even longer. It’s a stupid plan.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I’m too desperate to care.
I grab that tether between us tightly, then the one between me and the Lady.
You mind loaning me a bit more of your trust?
The raven still sat at the window croaks loudly.
Lady Vex’ahlia sighs. “Well I don’t have much of an option, do I?”
With a forceful yank on each, I bring them crashing together.
⏾ ⋆ ─── ⋆⋅ 𖣂︎ ⋅⋆ ─── ⋆ ☀︎
She cannot hurt me, you remind yourself even as you scream and flail and claw. Your nails find purchase in her cheek. You dig them in deeper. She cannot hurt me.
Delilah scowls as she hisses in your face, but her voice comes out again in that strange echo. "Why did you come back? Why couldn't you just die with the rest of them?"
She presses harder against your grip, her blade angled towards your heart. The roots creep further along your body. Bark grows out from where they’ve been. Your strength, already meager, is dwindling quickly. You will not be able to hold her back for much longer.
The root wrapped around your neck tightens painfully.
She cannot hurt me.
“All that magic within you, all that we could have amounted too, all for nothing.”
Your grip begins to slacken.
“What are you worth, that you could be granted reprieve from the clutches of death instead of them? If you had truly been what your parents believed, they never would have found themselves in that room at the Briarwoods invitation for you. If you were ever to amount to anything, it could have saved them. You could have saved them. But you didn’t. Couldn’t. Because you are, and will always be, nothing.”
Delilah sloughs off the figure's bones like hot wax, burning your skin as it drips into that endless dark around you. Ink flows from the eye sockets of the skull that remains in two tear-like trails, meeting and melding at the dip below its chin, where they slowly begins to wrap around its skeletal neck,
tighter and tighter
that rope of tar
winds,
open a mandible stretches
wide,
perfect teeth forming perfect
points,
in the direction of your throat it
lunges,
sinks,
tighter and tighter,
lipless gums suckle the life from cold,
then colder,
then only barely
veins,
from which it drinks, until,
you are a well run dry, until,
it is full on the feast of you,
insatiable—
—until,
it begins,
to scream.
That rope, black as pitch, tugs taunt around its throat.
It wails, "You never should have come back!"
It wails, "You should have stayed dead!"
It wails, "You are a worthless, unlovable thing!"
You whimper, like a kicked dog submitting to the unyielding presence of the rain.
No longer does its voice match the clipped pitch of the dead woman you carry within your mind.
I weep with the wrath of thunder.
The voice of the one wailing in your face,
is your own.
Laudna, please, none of that is true—
That river roars in a cacophony so loud it drowns out the sound of your music, drowns out the sound of your screaming, drowns and drowns and drowns.
But through it cuts a voice, unexpected.
Oh darling, if you were a worthless creature undeserving of love, your friends would not have gone all scorched earth on my family just so that they might get the chance to bring you back.
What responds is not the true you, but that broken piece within yourself, crying into the aether, “Once more death was thrust upon me gruesomely, unwillingly, and yet again, it could not have shown me the mercy of letting me stay in that emptiness. Instead, it dragged me back, but I did not come back the same. What am I now? What is there in this hideous husk to love? I will never be more than this undead, unalive thing death made me. That She made me.”
Softer, quieter, full of an ache that echoes tenfold within myself, that other part of you, the real you, speaks. “All of those I love, they will live long, wonderful lives that come to a graceful, beautiful end, and then they will be gone. But me? I will still be here, as I am. Not quite dead. Not quite not. What sort of future is there in that?”
You know, you remind me of someone. A dear friend. I love her with all I have—and yet, she, too, will long outlive me. It does not make me love her any less, knowing I will age and grow at a different rate than she, or that my children will grow old and she will still look much the same, like an ancient tree. I cannot say she is not afraid still of outlasting us all, but even then I know she will not be alone. I would never allow such a thing—and I doubt these friends of yours would either.
The haunting, monstrous creature stalls in its screaming.
I know what it feels like to lose that thing in which your heart beats for. To lose a piece of yourself so large you feel as though you will never be whole again. Will never live, again. But even then, you must continue to live. It is a dishonor to those who will always have a place carved out for them in our hearts, even after they’ve gone, to wilt in the absence of them.
“How am I meant to do that?”
You start by finding another thing to live for. Though, truthfully, I think you already have, darling.
“Imogen? Are you still here?”
Always, honey.
The face of the figure before you begins to change once more, taking on the form of—me. The roots wrapped around you loosen and fall away, the gouges left behind healing over anew.
“Will you stay?” it is barely a whisper.
Always.
The darkness in the room dissipates. You climb back out from the hidden stairwell and make your way towards the door, bidding farewell to the portrait you pass along the way.
⏾ ⋆ ─── ⋆⋅ 𖣂︎ ⋅⋆ ─── ⋆ ☀︎
Tears mar your face when you wake. I’m only glad I made it in time to wipe them away myself.
A soft bundle of fur worms its way into your lap via the sliver of space between us.
You look down and gasp, cooing as you scoop him up. “Oh my! What a delightful little bear! Oh I do hope Pâté doesn’t get jealous. He can be so sensitive.”
“His name is Charlie,” Gwen smiles proudly. “He belongs to my brother, but I think he’d be okay with letting you hold him for a little while.”
“Gwendolyn,” The Lady starts, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Why are you out of bed? And why have you stolen Freddy’s bear again? Nevermind that—I will deal with you later. Please, will someone escort her back to her room? I don’t trust her to make it back there herself.”
“Of course, My Lady,” one of the Pale Guard nods. “This way, Miss de Rolo.”
Gwen huffs but follows him out the door. As they start into the hallway, I hear her ask, “Can we stop by the kitchen first? I need Mr. Simon to prepare all the best treats for my tea party with Laudna and Miss Purple tomorrow.”
“A tea party?” You ask amusedly. “I don’t recall receiving an invitation to that.”
My face flushes. “Oh, you will. Y’think she’d be mad if we left first thing?”
“Undoubtedly,” Lady Vex’ahlia assures with a smile. “Consider it your repayment on my trust that you attend, else I will be hearing about it all month.”
“Laud?”
You squirm, fingers finding their place amongst your hair. “I… I suppose we’ll be there.”
I reach for that tether as I reach for your hand. We don’t have to stay here any longer than you want us too, honey.
I don’t want to be rude—the Lady has done a very kind thing helping me. And little Gwendolyn as well. I apologize for leaving dinner so suddenly, I know I must have made you worry. I am endlessly grateful that she was able to help you find me. I would not have enjoyed waking up here alone.
The Lady’s face falls slightly. “Perhaps, if you feel you really must go, I can handle the aftermath of your early departure. Another repayment towards the many I owe you for all that has happened to you because of us, Laudna.”
“Oh. That, won’t be necess—”
Laud.
“—thank you, yes. That would be… acceptable. More than! You have done so much already, I—”
“Darling,” The Lady starts sternly, but kindly. “What happened on that tree? I cannot begin to apologize enough. You’re right. A cruel, horrible thing happened to you, and you must live with those after effects, far more than I. I cannot make it right with anyone else. It is a mercy that I might make it right with you. I only hope that you will be willing to grant me the chance.”
“Yes, alright,” you assent. “Thank you. I—I cannot say that I forgive you, but that is only because I do not hold it against you. Well—maybe some, but it is Delilah that put me on that tree. Yes, she may have picked me to play the part of you, but it is only because you were working against her. So it is not you I blame, and therefore, I cannot forgive you. But I will accept, if it helps you.”
The Lady smiles in a coquettish way. “If you wish to help me, then perhaps we can start at teaching you some more positive self-talk? We do look alike you know, it won’t do to have you thinking so negatively of us, will it?”
You laugh, a purplish flush rising to your cheeks.
“Look at that! Beautiful, darling. Absolutely, beautiful! What do you think, Imogen?”
My eyes stick to you, and it hits me, though maybe not for the first time.
I think I might be screwed.
Well. At least you’re still here to watch me make a fool of myself in front of you.
“Yeah, absolutely beautiful.”