Chapter 98
The first snowfall came quietly, blanketing Ivoryspire in a hush that felt almost reverent.
I was now five months along, and yet my body bore scarcely any visible change. As with Vincent, my frame remained slight, my belly just beginning to suggest its hidden miracle. When clothed, one would never suspect. Even without, the curve was delicate, almost shy.
Meanwhile Millicent had buried herself in her duties. Our shared hours of intimacy had dwindled into brief but tender interludes. Once a week, perhaps. Sometimes even less. When they did come, they were quieter. Shorter. She stopped after one round.
"Millicent! Are you even listening?!"
In a fit of vexation, I struck the desk with my palm, the sharp sound echoing through the study where we sat. I had been attempting to converse with her earnestly, but she remained obstinately absorbed in her correspondence, as though the very fate of the realm hinged upon the speed of her signature.
Naturally, I became somewhat displeased.
At last, she ceased the elegant motion of her quill and placed it down with maddening delicacy, then turned her crimson gaze upon me.
"I am listening, Florence," she replied in that infuriatingly gentle voice of hers. "But the law does not bend simply because we wish it to. My mother has committed crimes."
"Millicent," I exclaimed, nearly combusting, "you are the law! Can you not bend, even a little, for your own mother?"
"Once," she said softly, "I upheld the same standard for you, Florence. I cannot play favorites. Not now. Not ever."
"We are not speaking of me, we are speaking of your mother!"
She lowered her gaze. "Florence… she harmed you. She imprisoned you. Why would you rise to her defense?"
"Defend her?" I barked. "By all that is sacred, I assure you I do not defend her! I hate that woman to the very marrow of my bones. If given the chance, I would hurl that timeworn matron into the sea, fish her out by her hair, and toss her back again just to appease my own righteous fury. Were it not for my desire to remain alive, I would petition the heavens to trade my soul for one lightning bolt aimed squarely at her scalp. When I first saw her here, I had half a mind to strike her! Yes, I often think of violence, I consider it a kind of mental exercise, but on that occasion, had you not been present, I would have acted!"
I leaned back into the chair, arms crossed, heart pounding.
There. Let that be known.
But to my utter confusion, Millicent chuckled. Chuckled, as though I had recited a rather amusing fable and not, in fact, confessed to harboring homicidal fantasies involving her mother.
Was she listening to me at all?
I had just detailed, with admirable specificity, my desire to throw her mother into the ocean. Twice. And she laughed?
Baffled, I pressed on. "What I want, Millicent, is for my beloved to be content. That withered monument to your childhood clearly holds some sentiment for you, and thus I am asking for you to bend the rules just this once."
Still smiling, she stood, rounded the desk with her usual unhurried grace, and gathered me into her arms. My head found its place against her lean abdomen, my arms wrapping instinctively around her waist.
"You love her," I mumbled, half into her gown. "And she loves you. That much is undeniable, regardless of how deeply I wish to strangle her with embroidery floss. She acted out of love, deranged as it may be. If someone threatened my children, I imagine I might do something equally catastrophic. So let her go. Bring her home. Hm?"
Millicent stroked my hair with maddening calm. "My father once told me that any law I choose to implement, I must first live by. A ruler who bends her own decrees for sentiment sets a precedent not of mercy, but of hypocrisy. And a hypocrite cannot command justice."
I squinted up at her. "Does anyone actually know she is in prison?"
"No. We have kept it carefully concealed."
"Precisely! Then just quietly undo it! If there is no evidence, there is no crime. It is practically mathematics. Just... stop investigating. There. Problem solved."
"I must remain fair, Florence. I did send you to prison before."
"That was entirely different," I protested. "Your captains held in their very hands the so-called evidence of my alleged crimes, evidence so meticulously concocted by none other than my ever-devoted father. You had no choice, Millicent! This time, you possess a choice."
She cupped my face then with both hands. "Florence, do you know that you are an exceedingly sweet person?"
Sweet? Had she swallowed the wrong draught this morning? Sweet?
I looked up at her, entirely scandalized and thoroughly perplexed. "Are you well?"
"When you look at me like that, you appear quite endearingly vexed. It is, dare I say, adorable."
"Thank you… I suppose," I replied. "Now, if we might return to the matter at hand."
She laughed softly. "Thank you for caring, Florence. Truly. You cannot begin to know how deeply it moves me. But I shall remain with the law. I must."
"Must you?" I groaned. "Must you be so infuriatingly noble? Just release your mother and be done with it. Why must you be so obstinate?"
"Florence," Millicent sighed. "had she harbored dislike for you, she might have sought a path that did not reek of cruelty. But what she chose, what she executed, was annihilation. She extinguished three lives. Now tell me, were it our children who had been so mercilessly taken from us, their small bodies lifeless in our arms, would you not rise in full fury to demand justice? Would you not feel the very marrow in your bones cry out for it?"
At once, I forgot how to breathe. The mere thought, the image of my children lying pale and lifeless assaulted my mind like a storm. And the one who did it, still alive. Still breathing. Still eating.
My hands began to tremble against her waist, and she felt it, for she gently uncurled my arms from around her and brought my hands into hers.
"We have recovered the bodies," she said.
Dr. Barly's face returned to me with aching clarity. Her kind smile. Her steady voice. The softness in her eyes when I was too weak to lift my head. My vision blurred, and a slow burn spread in my chest.
Millicent sank to her knees before me. She held my hands tighter.
"We will inform their families soon. And I will see justice done for each of them. I give you my word, Florence."
"Dr. Barly did nothing wrong," I whispered. "She was kind. She treated me as one might a daughter. She smuggled books, little trinkets, anything to remind me I still had a mind. A self. She planned to help me escape... but it was too late."
Millicent said nothing more. She only gathered me into her arms.