— What Happened to This Family?!
I never thought I would ask this question aloud... "What happened to my family?" It screams through my head every time I look at the faces that were once my world — faces that now barely remember who I am.
Everything had been perfect. Or at least, that's what I used to tell myself. We were a family others pointed to as an example — the Duchy of Verchi: ancient, grand, dignified... and loving.
Our men were noble, strangers to cowardice. Our women were wise, strong, intolerant of injustice, keepers of the House of Wisdom.
And in the middle of all that glory was I — the duke's daughter, the last scion of a line known only for honor and greatness. But I was more than an heir to a proud name. I was... beloved.
My father... ah, my father... He wasn't merely a duke whose councils trembled at his presence and whose provinces bowed before him. He was my hero. More than a nobleman, more than a parent. He was the steady light in my heart.
He loved me as no one else had ever loved me. He woke me with his singing voice, smoothed my hair with his large hands, and would whisper: "How will the sun smile if you do not smile first, Karina?"
He couldn't sleep without hearing my laughter. He refused to close his eyes unless I lay on his chest, hearing his heartbeat hymn me stories of safety.
My mother... she was a shadow from the past. She left early, in a hush of mystery no one could explain. They told me she died of illness, but I saw something different in the servants' eyes — fear? secrets? I couldn't say. What I knew for certain was this: my father tried to replace her. He loved me as if he were trying to erase the darkness of her death.
---
My grandmother... The stately lady, calm and composed, whom I had never seen flustered. She knew everything. She could tell when I felt sorrow, when I hesitated, when I was confused. That woman taught me that weakness isn't a shame; true strength is facing it.
She would seat me on her favorite chair by the hearth, taught me to read and write and to listen. She introduced me to the family chants, the names of my ancestors, the history behind every artwork in the palace. She was the guardian of our legacy... and I was her little mirror.
---
And my uncle... My father's younger brother was barely older than me when I was born. Twelve years my senior, he was closer to a brother and a friend than to an uncle.
He chased me through the marble corridors like an impish child. He played with me as if we were the same age, and when I cried he would offer me sweets while pretending not to be the cause. He denied me nothing. He was the only one to stand up to my father when I wept. I was his spoiled one, as were they all.
---
But the person who protected me from the nights that made my heart tremble... was my governess.
Not a maid, not a handmaiden — something more. She was... my second mother. From the moment I was born, she held me, nursed me, sang to me when I cried, and watched over me when I was ill. She knew me better than I knew myself.
If a nightmare found me, she would be in my room before I even screamed. If I scraped my knee, her voice reached the healer before his steps. She was refuge when fear seized me, warmth when I was cold, tenderness when everything else dried up.
---
Everything was beautiful. Everyone who looked at us envied us... they said, "How splendid the Duchy of Verchi! How united, how strong, how pure of heart!"
But... Nothing of that remained.
I don't know when everything began to break... Was it the day my widowed aunt knocked on our palace door? Or the day my merciful father agreed to open my mother's chambers to her? Or the day I laughed at her and she swallowed me with a cold glance?
After her arrival... everything changed.
---
Whenever I remember it, it feels like hell... an endless abyss.
She entered our lives like a storm... My widowed aunt. She had nowhere left to go after her husband's family shunned her — that hated family my father had always spoken of: spiteful, greedy, deceitful, as he'd always warned.
My father — the man who had spent a lifetime despising them — opened our doors to her.
He didn't love her... no, that was never the case. But she was my mother's appointed guardian.
He said that day:
> "If I wouldn't show mercy to my wife's guardian, then who am I?"
So he gave her rooms... without asking anyone.
With her came her children... two youngsters about my age, pale of face and unfamiliar with smiles.
From day one, things began to shift.
---
Before long, events spiraled out of control.
When trouble arose, my name was put forward. When someone exploded in rage, a finger pointed at me.
I didn't know how... or why... But suddenly I became "the troublesome girl," "the jealous girl," "the girl who resents her aunt's children."
I would cry at night, replaying my words and wondering—had I truly done something wrong? I found no answer.
Then the incident happened... the poisoning.
At a small reconciliation banquet my grandmother had arranged, my aunt collapsed. The cup she drank from was poisoned.
Within an hour... they said it was I who had done it. Me — the child who hardly left her room.
They claimed I had poisoned her out of hatred. They said I resented her presence and wanted her driven out. They said... so much.
I swore, I wept, I begged... but they wouldn't hear me. The evidence seemed against me: the teacup I had prepared, the angry words I had spoken a week earlier, the room I had entered and left for reasons no one knew.
Even my father remained silent for a long time, then said:
> "Even if you did it, I forgive you. I'll not lose you."
His words hurt me more than they comforted. I needed him to say, "I know you are innocent." Instead he said, "I forgive you"...
---
From that day, everything within me began to unravel.
I fell ill often. Fevers, weakness, dizziness, headaches, aches in odd places. At first, they feared for me, took me to doctors, summoned the best healers.
But after months, the whispers started.
"She's pretending." "She seeks attention." "She's trying to sway her father." "Playing sick to divert suspicion."
Even my grandmother, who raised me on honesty and wisdom, grew angry. She left the palace and returned to her mountain home. Before she left, she told my father:
> "When you sacrifice truth for pity, you lose both."
She didn't return for five years.
---
My uncle... who had been my friend, my brother, my shadow... became someone else.
He closed in on himself, withdrawing as if fleeing the home, the arguments, my gaze.
In a rare quiet moment, he married Arian — the fiancée he had long spoken of.
But the marriage carried no joy. No celebration, no music, no guests. A simple, secret contract, as if he wished to hide from the world.
Afterwards, things worsened. He and Arian argued. The servants heard their shouts. Plates shattered, doors slammed.
Then... a long silence. Arian became pregnant.
Suddenly, everything vanished. My uncle was no longer violent, but he was absent. He disappeared all day and returned late. Avoidance, silence, escape.
When I confronted him, he answered me coldly:
> "You're the cause... you're the curse of this house."
---
Even my father changed. He no longer watched over my laughter. He said:
> "Karina... try to be calm. Don't make trouble."
I screamed inside: "I did nothing!" But he stopped hearing me.
---
Every day a new problem. Every week a new shock. Every month, a fresh sorrow.
I began to flee the palace... to one person only.
Ron
My childhood friend. He saw me — not merely heard me. He understood my sorrow without words. He made me laugh... soothed me... sketched a world outside the palace walls.
After seeing him I felt as if I had emerged from a dark cave.
But he couldn't change what surrounded me.
Everything around me fell apart. And the worst part—I began to feel that I truly was to blame.
Even so... I knew the worst hadn't yet come.
---
Months passed. I wandered the palace like a living shadow.
Then, one day... my grandmother returned.
She came back like a tempest.
She didn't enter gently. She greeted no one. She ignored looks of perplexity, the guilty stares, the sham grief.
She strode in with her full authority, turquoise hair pinned tightly at the nape of her neck, her silver cane striking the floor as if to slap every conscience that had failed her.
She shouted, a voice that shook the palace walls:
> "Enough!!"
"You all... you all failed her!"
Everyone stared in silence, shame on their faces, their tongues tied.
No one spoke after that. Even the wind that had been rattling the windows fell still.
She defended me as no one else ever had. She embraced me before them, as if to proclaim:
> "This is my granddaughter... who harms her harms me."
For a time, the chaos stilled. A heavy silence settled — not peace, but a freezing of the pain.
But like a storm, calm didn't mean it was over.
---
It didn't take long for the walls to crack again.
My grandmother, despite her strength, couldn't hold back that blazing fury forever.
One day she shut herself away. Her voice trembled when she said:
> "I can no longer bear to see any of you... you have betrayed everything I built."
She rarely left after that, as if withdrawing from life itself.
---
Then the birth came.
Arian, my uncle's wife, gave birth to her first child. It should have been a day of joy — of tender tears, exhausted laughter.
But my uncle was not present.
He didn't ask, did not visit, didn't care.
Arian sat on the bed, exhausted, eyes rimmed with tears, waiting for a visitor who would not come.
One evening she cried out in the hall:
> "Where is he?! Why doesn't he come? Is this my punishment for giving him a child?!"
Finally, the reply arrived... a voice like ice, void of fatherhood:
> "You're divorced!! I don't want you... nor your child."
I froze. So did everyone.
Those words rang in my ears for days. They haunted my dreams.
My uncle — the man who had once been my friend — spoke them with no hesitation.
---
That night I tried to calm things, I ran to him, I begged, but his eyes would not stop on me.
He said in absolute coldness:
> "don't show yourself before me again."
Then he left... as if I had never existed.
I returned to the palace to find Arian in ruins. Her face swollen from crying, her eyes cut by sorrow.
She said to me, voice trembling:
> "All this is because of you... you... you brought the curse upon this family."
I had heard that phrase many times... but from Arian it cut particularly deep.
I left. I couldn't stay.
I fled, as always, to Ron... sat by the lake near the old stone amphitheater. I told him everything, cried in his arms, and he — as always — listened in silence, without judgment.
---
When I returned...
tragic news awaited me.
"Your friend... she has died."
The servant said it without preface.
I ran to her, gripped her shoulder, shook her:
> "What friend?! Who? What are you saying?!"
The servant named her. The one who laughed with me in the library. The one who watched me secretly when I practiced the piano. The one who once hid sweets for me when I was punished.
She had died... suddenly. They said illness. They said she was frail.
But I didn't believe it.
---
In that moment I felt something inside me break forever. I realized, finally, that I had lost something irretrievable.
This wasn't merely a misunderstanding... it was a true curse.
---
Is this all? No.
But what no one realized... is that that day... was the beginning of the end. Or perhaps... the beginning of the truth.