Chapter 1 #2
The memory flickered and died, replaced by the sharp, real-world scent of damp earth.
I forced the phantom weight of the water from my lungs, ignoring my mother’s satisfied humming as I pushed through the final rusted gate.
I didn't stop until I reached my happy place, or what was left of it…
The hidden garden was the only place on the estate where the blight hadn't withered everything, a space of stolen, still clinging, fragile life.
The air here was warm, scented with the rare perfume of blossoms, a perfect, jarring contrast to the deathly dust of the manor.
Caspian was already there. Valor, his falcon familiar already flying in circles around him, he too, unsettled by today’s events.
His aura, usually a beacon of brilliant, shimmering gold, was clouded with a desperate fury that made my skin crawl.
I looked at his face, etching the details into my memory for the long years of coldness ahead.
The soft, bewitching smile he always reserved for me was entirely gone, replaced by the taut anxiety that creased the corners of his amber-coloured eyes.
His honeyed, golden hair fell in small, lovely waves, shadowing his forehead like a discarded crown.
He was a Valerius, the heir to the House of Light, everything the Ashworths were not. He should have been my future.
He saw the anguish on my face and came to me, his hands on my cheeks, touching me as if checking that I was real.
"What is it, Lia?" Lia. His Lia. The girl, who was already a ghost, had her soul earmarked for consumption by the realm's great, demanding balance.
He saw a moment that could be mended, but I only saw the terrifying, silver thread of my fate—a thread that stretched directly into the cold, armoured hand of the monster waiting for me at the end of this cursed treaty.
I didn’t need to speak. My Empathy was a raw signal of pure despair. His aura immediately flared with a possessive, furious jealousy. A cold wave of his anger washed over me, making my teeth ache. The air crackled with his raw, uncontrolled Light Matter power. His beautiful power.
“Someone from the Consortium,” he ground out, the name a curse on his tongue.
“They sent an official letter to my father to inform him that the vote was concluded, and the Ashworth House was the Aenite choice for the Treaty.” His eyes were wide with a devastating, final comprehension.
“It's like they want to humiliate the Heir to the House of Light... They want to parade you in front of the Consortium... In front of me,” he jabbed his finger against his own chest with a sickening disregard for his body, the raw anguish of the gesture forcing a sharp wince that sliced through my Empathy.
His fear wasn't just losing me; it was the public, political affront to the Consortium supremacy.
He knew I was bound to a potentially powerful Cenite, but he didn't yet know to whom.
That knowledge— the cruelest detail— was a secret even his own father was keeping from him, since he was a prominent member of the Consortium.
He had to know. They were all behind this pairing.
I pushed down my grief, finding the voice for the final, heartbreaking lie.
"It won’t be him, Caspian," I said, the lie tasting like ash in my mouth. “Surely, it’s a matching House. Just a formality. It won’t change anything. It's not Alistair."
His aura softened slightly, but the fear remained, a low, desperate thrum beneath his surface calm. “How can you be so certain? Are you sure?”
I nod. “Such a good liar,” Poppy sighed low and mournful, her light judgement caressing the walls of my mind. “He’ll find out soon enough. And then what, Oph?”
"I’ll speak to my family," Caspian insisted, his hands gripping me tighter. "We will find a way."
"Caspian, please. Do not get in trouble for me," I pleaded, but I knew it was pointless.
He leaned in and kissed me then, no longer with a lover’s passion, but with the heartbreaking finality of a male desperate for having to say goodbye and not being ready to do so.
It was soft, sad, and filled with the unspoken promises of what could have been.
I ran my hands through his thick, gold-streaked hair, absorbing his fierce, unwavering love, knowing it was the last pure thing I would ever touch.
"I will be your escape plan," he whispered against my mouth, a desperate lie he clung to with all his might. "You will be my hope. Just… try to wait for me, my beautiful Lia." He was my perfect illusion, a final, necessary anchor before the impending storm.
I pulled away, the absence of his warmth leaving me cold and brittle.
I didn't look back. I didn't need to. I walked away, carrying the knowledge that my sacrifice was not just for my family’s core, or for Caspian’s safety.
It was my duty, the necessary, always altruistic price required by Aeternia itself to keep the cosmic balance from tearing the worlds apart.
It was the sole reason for our cursed existence as Dyads, the ultimate honour, especially for someone like me.
I stopped at the edge of the garden, the refuge of my pitiful life. It was a place of profound, desolate beauty. The blight, that creeping magical decay, had staked its claims here as well, but some blooms still endured. The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth and failing magic.
My eyes fell on a cluster of flowers near the crumbling fountain.
They were Ashblooms, a rare breed whose petals were the colour of bruised velvet, edged in ethereal silver.
Some were already sickly, their velvet curling black, struggling for the sunlight they desperately needed.
Others, though visibly marred by the creeping blight, still strained upward, stubbornly holding their flawed, painful beauty.
I reached out, my fingers brushing the cool, firm stem of a surviving bloom. I felt the faint, desperate pulse of its Life-Wielder magic, a tiny, valiant core fighting the inevitable corrosion. It was a mirror image of my own soul.
I was these flowers: flawed, partially consumed by the darkness that had haunted my lineage, yet still clinging to the desperate hope of light.
Like them, I knew I was destined to wither, alone.
I had no one to nurture my core, no shield against the encroaching cold.
I had to forget the promise of life for the cold honour of duty.
"That is a load of absolute misery, even for you, Oph, "Poppy’s voice, warm and sharp, pierced the thick wall of my despair. "And it's also a lie. You are not alone, and you haven't been in years."
“You don’t count, Poppy,” I whispered, the words heavy with hopelessness. “You are part of me. You are tethered to my core. You are supposed to care.”
A sharp, indignant huff resonated in my mind, a physical ripple of soundless fury.
"I am supposed to what? You ungrateful creature!
Twenty-nine years of your miserable existence, nineteen of them with me, hauling your sad little carcass through schoolyard beatings and pompous banquets, dragged by your horrible mother, and throughout your monster of a father's beatings, and you still take me for granted! "
Poppy’s anger was always clean, immediate, and fiercely protective. “Nineteen years is a long time, Ophelia Josephine Ashworth. A very long time to be the only thing holding your light together and still be dismissed as a footnote!"
The fury was a jolt. I looked at the fragile, blighted Ashblooms, and then felt the hot, insistent presence of Poppy’s loyalty—a fierce, unconditional love that transcended the magical contract.