"Phine…!"
Wha-
"Josephine!"
Ugh. My head…
[Immersion ended!]
[Josephine von Konrow is highly confused!]
[WARNING! A piece of information that can greatly change the course of the story has been discovered!]
"No…!"
"Josephine!"
Angelica shook her granddaughter as if she was crazy.
"What is happening to you!?!"
"Why did you hide it…?"
"What?" Angelica was now confused.
"Why did you silently endure it!?!"
Angelica could not understand what she was saying but she had an idea. But how could her granddaughter know…?
"When he did all those things to you…! When he forced you to marry someone you didn't love…! When you basically have no free will of your own! How could you…"
Angelica in her old years did not expect much from her life. If anything, she knew that she would die in some secluded area, burying her secret along with her.
She believed that she no longer had any tears to shed as if they were dried up when her "bestfriend" did the most nefarious thing to her and destroyed her life.
But for some reason… seing her granddaughter cry for her… as if she knew her story.
It brought her to shed a tear. And then it broke like a dam.
She did not know why. Why her granddaughter could ever know. Just a few minutes ago, Josephine had a very blank expression as if she was in limbo.
At first, she payed no mind to it out of awkwardness because she didnt know how to approach her granddaugther.
But when she tried to ask her something, her granddaughter didnt reply and when she tried to touch her, she was cold.
She tried to try and snap her back to reality and when she did, her granddaughter started flailing and crying.
"Why… why didn't you tell me sooner!?"
Josephine's voice split the silence like a blade, too raw, too human to be ignored. Her face was blotched with tears, her chest rising and falling as though each breath cost her more than she had to give.
"All this time—I thought I was unloved," she cried, clutching at her dress with shaking hands. "I thought I was abandoned in this house. I thought… that no one cared if I lived or died!"
She pressed a fist against her heart as if to beat it still. "You were there. You saw everything. You saw how they mocked me, belittled me, broke me. And you—" her voice cracked, shattering into grief—"you said nothing! You sat in silence while I begged for someone to notice me!"
Angelica stared at her, the weight of decades pressing against her back. Her throat moved, but no words emerged. Chains unseen coiled still around her soul, though their power had dulled with years. She had no excuse left. Only the truth she had buried too deep to ever speak.
Josephine's fury swelled again, laced with grief. "I hated you. Do you understand? I hated you for watching me suffer as if I were nothing. I told myself you didn't care. That you were just another Konrow who despised me. And I believed it—because it was easier to think you hated me than to hope you loved me!"
Her knees struck the floor with a dull sound, her body trembling as though she could no longer contain the storm. Tears streamed unchecked down her face, her voice breaking with each word. "But you did care. Didn't you? You cared, and you said nothing. Do you know how cruel that is? To let me rot alone when you could have reached for me—even once? Even once…"
Angelica's aged lips parted, yet only a ragged breath escaped. Her eyes, once sharpened on battlefields, now glistened with weakness she had long denied. She wanted to reach forward, to cradle the girl whose cries echoed every injustice she herself had endured. Yet her hands shook. Hands that once wielded steel against empires trembled at the thought of being rejected by her own blood.
Josephine's gaze rose through blurred vision, her voice soft, trembling with both venom and yearning. "I wanted to hate you. I wanted to curse you. But all I feel now… is pity. Pity for the woman who was strong enough to be a warlord, but not free enough to be a grandmother."
The silence that followed was unbearable, heavier than any battlefield Angelica had ever stood upon. She felt Josephine's words pierce her deeper than spears, for they were true. She had been shackled, yes, but she had also been silent when silence became complicity.
Finally, Angelica whispered, her voice so frail it barely stirred the air:"I am sorry."
The words fell between them like stones into a still pond—too small to undo the tide, yet deep enough to ripple through a heart starved for them.
Josephine clenched her fists. "Sorry? Do you think that's enough?" Her voice rose again, sharp as broken glass. "Do you know how many nights I lay awake, praying that someone—anyone—would hold me and tell me I wasn't worthless? Do you know what it feels like to grow up thinking you are nothing more than a burden? That you exist only to be despised?"
Angelica closed her eyes. Every word from Josephine was a dagger that struck with perfect aim, but she did not flinch. She accepted them, for she knew she deserved them.
"I wanted to tell you," Angelica finally said, her voice trembling with age and regret. "Every day, I wanted to tell you. But the bond—" she stopped, breath catching as old memories burned her from within. "The Blood Bond is not a chain you see. It is in the marrow. In the soul. Every time I even thought of defying him, pain struck me silent. My tongue froze. My will shattered. I could not protect you."
Josephine's tears slowed, though her fury remained. "Then you should have found a way! You should have broken free!"
Angelica let out a bitter, broken laugh, one that sounded more like a sob. "I tried, child. God knows I tried. Do you think I wanted to be silent? Do you think I wanted to watch you suffer as I suffered? Every moment you wept alone, I wept too. But I could not reach you. I could not even reach myself."
The dam within her cracked further, tears spilling down her worn cheeks. For the first time in decades, Angelica von Konrow wept openly. "You were not unloved, Josephine. You were never unloved. I loved you more fiercely than I ever dared show. But love bound in silence is no love at all, and for that—I have wronged you."
Josephine's breath hitched. Anger warred with sorrow, her chest heaving as her grandmother's confession cut into the core of her loneliness. She wanted to scream again, to rail against the injustice of it all. Yet her body betrayed her, trembling with something more fragile—longing.
Her voice dropped to a whisper, hoarse from crying. "Then why now? Why tell me now, when it's already too late?"
Angelica leaned forward, her trembling hand finally reaching out. It hovered, uncertain, before gently resting against Josephine's cheek. "Because you looked at me… and saw me. Not the duchess. Not the warlord. Not the puppet. Me. And when you wept for me, I remembered what it was to be human. I could not stay silent any longer."
Josephine flinched at the touch, torn between recoiling and leaning into it. Her tears slid down into her grandmother's palm, warm against calloused skin. "I don't know if I can forgive you."
"You do not have to," Angelica whispered, her own tears falling freely now. "Your anger is deserved. Your loneliness is my sin. If you hate me, then hate me. If you pity me, then pity me. But know, even if you never forgive me, that I have always loved you. That will not change, even in death."
The words hung heavy, raw, unvarnished. Josephine's sobs softened into ragged breaths, her fury giving way to exhaustion. She pressed her forehead against Angelica's hand, not in forgiveness, not in reconciliation, but in a fragile, aching acknowledgment that love—late, broken, imperfect—was still love.
And for the first time in both their lives, grandmother and granddaughter wept together.