"He's gone,"
Veyra's brown gaze dimmed again. Not grief. Something past grief. The specific quality of someone who had processed a loss long ago and arrived at the other side of it. "He told me he would go. He told me it wasn't — that he couldn't stay. That staying would cost something neither of us could afford." Her weary voice broke.
"He told me he was sorry but he would be back."
So Lady Veyra had an affair with an unknown man and he bailed on her. Real funny.
Men.
Zolani rolled her eyes. Irritation bubbling within her. And this woman still believes in him. Is she stupid or something? What could make her so foolish to cheat on her husband.
No. She stopped her train of thought and hugged Lady Veyra.
I don't know the whole story, judging her is basically stupid at this point.
She needed to find a way to save this woman from this foolishness and stop the Count from drugging her. Less she would be addicted worse die from overdose.
For now.. she looked at the woman in her arms. She needed to soothe this woman.
"He was right," she said.
Veyra's gaze held hers.
"You're not my daughter," she said. "I know that. My daughter is — she's gone. She was—" something crossed her face. The specific expression of a mother accounting for a child honestly. "She was difficult. She was angry. She was so angry all the time and I didn't — I let them make her invisible because I thought invisible was safe and I was wrong." The words coming faster now. The clarity sharper. The guilt rising so was the confession.
"I was wrong and she died in that dungeon... and she died!! And nobody—" she stopped.
Her jaw was working. Her eyes were wet.
"Nobody came," she said. "Nobody looked harder."
Zolani was reminded about Cael in the garden. I should have looked harder.
She remembered Elowen's charcoal drawing.
I will get us out. I promise. I'm sorry I'm not better at it yet.
It was right then that it dawned to Zolani how lonely Elowen felt, the body she inhabited of a girl who had been failed by every person who should have protected her. Someone she had never met but was now the only one who truly understood her. It was like Elowen was still alive because the heart that wasn't hers.. was bleeding. It became harder to breath.
"I'm here now," Her arms around Lady Veyra tighter. What was wrong with her? Even though the pain wasn't hers, she felt empty like the gap of her aching heart was a useless appendage that didn't belong to her and what was left, was simply a gaping dark hole.
Like if she let go of Veyra at that moment and looked at her chest it would be empty.
Even though Veyra was going through this pain deep inside her heart she didn't care.
She knew she was supposed to. Empathy. But all she could think of was how to fast forward this scene she was watching so she could leave. It was all so.. tiring and freaking.. annoying.
At that moment all she could think of is how irritated and disgusted she was of Veyra's presence and how much her fingers were itching to strangle her. Tightening the grip on her throat till her frail body stopped moving.
Fucking useless.
Veyra looked at her.
"You're not her," she said again. Fear clutched her chest. Zolani couldn't breathe at that moment. Like the mask she wore had fallen and the ugly depths of her soul has been exposed under Veyra's watchful gaze. She unwrapped herself from her, space forming in between them. Her thoughts racing, processing what next she was supposed to do.
The statement didn't seem like an accusation. It wasn't harsh.
"But you're in her face. And you came to her room. And you looked for her in the objects she left behind." She interrupted her racing thoughts. "I can feel her in the room when you're in it. Like — a warmth. Like she's near something warm." Her grip reached for her hands again. "I don't understand it. I don't need to understand it."
She was quiet. So was Zolani.
"She loved you," Zolani muttered.
It came out before she had decided to say it.
It was the truth. Regardless of her own undecided emotions.
Elowen had been trying to save both of them.
Veyra made a sound.
Small. The sound of something that had been held for a very long time finding a place to land.
"I know," she said. "I know she did. I should have—" she stopped. "I should have been louder. I should have been—"
"You were drugged and restrained," Those crimson eyes turned empty. Flat. Not unkind. She was so tired. She wanted to disappear...
Now.
"Before that you were navigating a household that was structured to make you powerless. Before that you were protecting her the only way you could see how." She gave excuses, the things she wanted to hear. Things people wanted her to say, reading lines from a careful crafted script for the audience approval.
"You were wrong about the method. You weren't wrong about the love."
Veyra looked at her.
"You sound like someone who knows something about that," she said.
Zolani thought about her own mother. The careful expression across the birthday table. The tired eyes and the single candle and the love that had been real and insufficient simultaneously.
"Yes," she answered her fingers twitching again.
They sat in the dark room together — the drugged woman in the chair and the girl in the dead girl's body — and the single candle burned between them and neither of them said anything for a while.
Then Veyra asked her "What are you going to do?"
She thought about the academy. She would soon be leaving this place. At that moment that was all that mattered. She put on a wide smile.
Stupid.
"Learn," she said. "Then come back."
Veyra's grip on her hand tightened.
"Come back," she said. Not a question. A request. The specific kind of request that contained please without saying it.
"Yes," she lied.
Lies. Lies. Lies. It wasn't a lie if that's what they wanted to hear.. right? Just read the script.
She stayed until she heard the maid's footsteps returning down the passage. Then she pressed Veyra's hands once — both of them, the bound wrists, for the confirmation of something real... and stood.
There was nothing.
"I'll find a way to get word to you from the academy," she said. "Through Cael."
Veyra nodded. The drug pulling at her again now that the effort of clarity wasn't holding it back. Her eyes going soft at the edges.
"The girl," she said. Barely audible. "Elowen. Tell her—"
She stopped.
The eyes closed.
She stood in the dark room and looked at the woman in the chair with the fabric restraints and the drugged breath.
She isn't the girl. She was your bloody daughter.
She sighed. What would she tell Elowen if there was actually a place where Elowen could hear?
Probably nothing too.
She was a bit envious now. Disappearing. It seemed like Death was sick of her whining so he punished her by putting her here. She could only move forward now.
Someone came, The thought drifted her mind as she walked, leaving through the passage the way she'd arrived.. Someone looked harder. It was late. I know it was late. But someone came.
She lied again.