Chapter 27 #2
Then he turns and silently exits the greenhouse, leaving me to drown in my thoughts and relish in all my what-if possibilities.
Free.
Perhaps by the end of the night, I can finally be free.
A ripple of seafoam colors my vision, and for a moment, I close my eyes and allow myself to imagine the sensation of being held in arms that will never let go at last.
Neilina chatters about, seeming to be excited for my night out with Casimir. Listening to her enthusiasm and seeing the gleam in her eye almost makes me feel guilty.
I can’t tell her I don’t plan on coming back.
Yet that decision is accompanied by a tinge of melancholy.
I will miss Neilina. Through these passing months, she has become a friend.
Or perhaps it’s better to say she has become something like I imagine having a little sister to be like.
No…maybe I should say older sister, because despite our age differences—with me having nearly five years on her after my birthday quietly passed by—she still nags me, speaks to me, and encourages me in all the ways I imagine an older sister would.
She is stern, yet kind. Direct and truthful, though not unnecessarily so.
I am convinced watching her and Marcella together would be something to behold.
At the pointed clearing of Neilina’s throat, I snap my eyes up to her face using the mirror resting in front of us. “Are you even listening to me?” she asks pointedly, humor glittering in her gray-tinted eyes as her fingers are knotted in my hair.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “My head is running in a lot of directions right now.”
She offers me a sympathetic look. “Are you nervous to go back?”
My fingers twirl over themselves. “Why would I be nervous?”
“From what Master has told me, your home has not been very kind to you.”
I arch a brow. “And what else has Master told you about me?” I don’t hide the mocking emphasis on Casimir’s given title. Neilina just stares at me expectantly, not allowing me to dodge her question. I sigh. “All homes are not without their issues.”
She returns to styling my hair—a simple design, we decided, where the shoulder-length strands are curled into soft waves while one side is twisted back elegantly.
“Though true that may be, there is a difference between a place with grievances and fundamental classism. You are discarded by them because they deem your blood of little worth, but what gives their blood any more special properties than your own?” She pauses, despite the question being clearly rhetorical.
“An abundance of coin—that’s what. Which has nothing to do with blood whatsoever. ”
I watch her through the mirror, surprise and awe filling my features. “Are you sure you’re only seventeen?”
She shrugs, a smirk pulling at her lips.
“Our education is different here. We’re not spoonfed lies purporting the entitlement of one’s claim to power over another’s.
Instead, we’re taught to ask questions—to peel back the masks of the regime giving instructions.
To ponder: Why would someone really be doing this? ”
“I had no idea,” I murmur.
“What?” Neilina asks through a teasing snort. “That we are educated, or that those are the principles on which our education is built?”
“The latter,” I assure her through a weak laugh. My eyes study Neilina carefully. “You truly love it here, don’t you? Love serving Casimir and don’t mind in the slightest that you’re an Abd—” I cut myself off, wincing at the use of a term I’m not entirely sure she would find offensive or not.
But I do know it for certain now. I finally glimpsed her wielder’s mark while training—a large circle on her forearm encasing an upside down triangle, where inverted waves fill the inside.
She’s a water-wielder, yet when she wields, the water—though still fluid—is more like a solid than it is a liquid.
It was strange to witness, to say the least.
“An Abdite,” she finishes for me. “You can say it. It is the title your home has given to wielders like me, after all. Though, we call ourselves Lahtiuma here.” A long silence stretches as Neilina finishes with my hair and steps back, inspecting her work a final time.
Once satisfied, she sits down on the edge of the canopy bed, and I turn in my chair to look at her.
“I have left here once before, you know.”
Though I don’t think she is really asking, I shake my head all the same.
“It was two years ago. I was fifteen, and Master needed to visit your home. He’d been working on something—a cure of sorts, I guess you could say.
To erase the corruption from the lakt? of those who never wanted it there in the first place.
He took myself and three other personal guards with him.
” She stills, taking a breath as shadows awaken in her eyes.
“Some succumbed to the madness quicker than others. They say the stronger the magic, the stronger the resistance. I was the last to slip into it, and… Those voices, their commands…”
I move to sit next to her on the bed, taking her hand in mine. I remain silent, not entirely sure what to say. So, I simply sit there and give her space to remember. To speak freely.
“I’ll never forget the feeling—like my consciousness was trapped inside a tiny cage, and anger, hatred, and psychosis became the puppetmaster pulling all my strings. I was aware of myself, yet I simultaneously had no control over myself. I hated it.”
I squeeze her hand.
“My point in telling you this is because I want to answer your question—yes, I love it here. The old magic encasing our home keeps the madness away. I am cared for. I am seen and cherished and live without persecution for something I never asked to be. Sure, there are wielders who willingly corrupt themselves and give into the forbidden magics. But those of us here? We didn’t ask for our fates.
And Master? Master found us—cares for us.
Has worked hard to create a paradise we can live freely within. ”
My brows furrow as I think of the plan Casimir created.
If everyone is happy here, why bother going through all the trouble of resetting the corruption and classism happening within the Three Kingdoms?
Why does he worry about their freedom if they feel entirely uninhibited here?
If they can live without their madness, why leave?
It sounds like he loves them and they love him, so why not simply stay here, living in peace?
I say as much to Neilina.
A heavy sadness fills her gaze. “Because the magic protecting us here is dying. We can all feel it—random moments where our minds slip. That’s why Master was working even more diligently to find a cure for us.
Why he brought half our numbers to recover you from that academy, knowing the sacrifice they’d be forced to make. ”
I’m at a loss for words, my mind trying to process and make sense of what I’ve just learned. I’m in the middle of considering if the dying magic is a result of the cracking golden statue towering in that temple when Neilina speaks again.
“Is it really so bad to live amongst us in your eyes?”
The question catches me off guard, and I shake my head at the implications encasing it. “No,” I answer, surprised to realize just how much I mean it.
“So why are you so eager to leave us behind? To reject this place and all of us within it?” For the first time since I’ve known her, Neilina finally looks her age—like a young teenager, trying to understand the ways of this world.
“I’m not,” I rasp, an unexpected sadness piling in my chest. “It’s just…
” I sigh. “I have people I love back home. People who love me in return. And… I miss them. In more ways than you could imagine.” I chew on my next sentence, attempting to get the message right.
“It’s not the place I miss—it’s the people.
The way my life feels more saturated with them in it.
It’s hard to simply let that go because someone has told you to. ”
Neilina seems to sit with that thought. Eventually, she nods. “I think Master is beginning to feel that way about you. He’s different with you than he is with us. Not kinder or more attentive, but…more illuminated, perhaps?”
For whatever reason, the words bring the slightest flush to my cheeks. I stamp down the sensation immediately. “Why do you call him Master if all of you are free here?” It’s a question I’ve been wondering for some time now.
She laughs softly, a smile I’d almost identify as fond tugging at her lips.
“It’s our choice to do so. Truthfully, I heard from some of the other personal guards that he loathed the title when it was first given to him many years ago.
Yet it helps steady our minds when they slip.
By committing to calling him nothing but Master, we program ourselves—our brains—to believe that’s true.
Because of that, if we ever slip into madness, the fabrics of both our identity and magic take that as fact, and we answer to him instead of the voices. ”
“That’s a lot of trust you’ve put in him.”
She shrugs. “From what I’ve seen and heard, he’s earned it.
” She slaps her hands to her thighs and rises from the bed.
Oddly, she seems lighter. Like that conversation was one she had been sitting on for a while, and now that she’s said what she’s wanted, she can glide along more easily.
“You should consider giving this place a chance,” she muses, her cheery voice like a sweet drink to my senses.
“I think you might find it’ll grow on you—if you let it.
” Neilina stretches her hand out to me, and I take it with a small huff of laughter.
We’re both smiling when she pulls me up from the corner of the bed and escorts me to the wardrobe, where three elegant and incredibly lavish gowns await my attention.
Casimir certainly has a sense of style, I have to give him that.
Neilina glances at me, seeming giddy with anticipation. “Which will you choose? We’ll do your eye makeup to match the tones of whichever one you pick.”
I chuckle, shaking my head while staring at the dresses. “You do remember I’ll have a mask on, right?”
“All the more reason to make sure those pretty, mismatched eyes of yours pop.”
Mismatched eyes.
My heart aches, and I’m filled with the gnawing wonderment if going to Talderine is going to be harder than I expect. Will it hurt, being so close yet far from Draven with no way to reach him? No way to let him know how near I am? Will it make the hollow throbbing in my chest only intensify?
What if he’s somehow there? It is his home city, after all.
Just as quickly as the thought races through my head, though, I shove it away as wishful thinking.
Draven hates Talderine. Hates any sort of formal function.
He even told me how much he hates dancing.
No. Despite how much I wish it possible, the odds of Draven being at whatever event I’m attending tonight are marginal at best, and I shouldn’t waste my energy nor efforts on foolish fantasies that will only grind my heart into smaller broken bits.
I offer Neilina a half-hearted laugh as a reply and study the dresses.
Two of them are sleeveless while the other features nude, mesh sleeves, leaving the skin still visible, though blurred with a complimenting layer much like a nice powder to the face.
I shift on my feet, my eyes glancing down at the scars running along the length of my left arm before back up at all the glittering fabric.
“I think I’ll choose this one,” I say, gliding a finger along the gown with mesh sleeves.
Though the sleeves are not the isolated reason for why I pick it.
The other dresses are either sparkling with large jewels or overly colorful and attention-seeking.
The gown I’ve chosen feels soft and understated, maintaining an undeniable elegance.
It has a plunging v-neckline extending from its sheer, illusion-style bodice, stitched from the same mesh material composing the arms of the dress.
It is adorned with delicate, embroidered silver thread work which plunges down to meet the torso of the off-white gown in lavish spirals, spreading along the length of the tulle until it meets the hem, where a latticework of flowers and vines overlap in a remarkably beautiful design.
It will be the nicest article of clothing I’ve ever worn.
The sort of dress I used to notice women wearing during King Alastair’s events and envy, glancing down at my sheer pants and skimpy tops and always feeling horribly tawdry in comparison.
Now, as I consider slipping into such a dress, I’m filled with an unexpected giddiness—near excitement, even.
For the first time in my life, I will simply be a guest at one of these parties, made all the sweeter by knowing I will have the privilege of being hidden by a mask.
I will simply be a girl dressed in a beautiful ball gown dancing under the moonlight.
Though I highly doubt I’ll actually be doing any dancing this evening.
Neilina looks to the dress then back at me. She is beaming. “I think it’s perfect for you.”