Chapter 3
OPHELIA
The following days passed in a blur, and the morning of the Vespertine Treaty was a grey, anaemic horror.
It was the fifth day of the solar cycle already.
Much to my mother's despair, I felt a very unladylike urge to break everything left in our cursed house, groan, and throw punches at everyone standing in my way.
I remained in the parlour, my modest robes, one heavy, tarnished green silk, clutched in my hands.
Like in the rest of the manor, the air here was thick and cold, scented with the dust of ages and the faint, coppery tang of magical decay.
I had just finished mending a tear in the sleeve— a quiet, furious act of defiance against the decay of my house.
I was the Life Touch Heir; even if the family's magic was a scar, I could still mend.
But the mending was a lie; the silk would hold, but the wound beneath remained.
Almost, since I had to rely entirely on my sewing kit.
"He’s going to be useless, you know," Poppy’s mental voice was a dry, unsparing truth. "All that charming talk of protection. We’re on our own, Ophelia."
I didn't argue. Caspian’s promise was a beautiful, fragile glass that would shatter at the first sign of real danger. “I know,” I whispered back, the words hanging in the cold, thick air.
The rustle of silk and firm footsteps announced the presence I had hoped to avoid.
My mother, flawless in her own celebration robes, her posture rigid with performed elegance, descended upon me, her robin familiar flying around her, chirping.
My dear mother’s aura, usually a shimmering veneer of shallow composure, pulsed today with a sickening, triumphant greed.
It was almost eerily how much we looked alike.
I had the same long crimson hair that curled almost the exact same way.
We shared the same deep, demanding green eyes and the same delicate, soft features.
We both possessed pale skin scattered with soft freckles across the bridge of the nose, culminating in pouty lips the colour of crushed strawberries, early in the summer.
She was tall, and I was quite tall as well, but the similarity was a source of constant, quiet torment.
Yet, her breasts were significantly, offensively larger than mine—a symbol of the overt femininity she so often weaponised.
I, in turn, carried the shame of an ample, unwelcome curve to my hips and the small of my back, a shape that felt perpetually too visible, and too available.
I always felt intensely uncomfortable in the company of males, who invariably reduced me to a warm body to lure into their beds—a fate my mother had embraced, but one I fought with every shred of my resolve. That is until Caspian.
Watching her was like looking in a mirror two decades from now, staring at the ruin I was determined never to become.
“My darling girl,” she said, her voice honeyed but sharp-edged, sounding like glass rubbing against silk.
“Alistair! I still can't believe you snatched the most powerful house. Our name will surely be restored now! You must be absolutely thrilled!” She grabbed my hands with a suffocating enthusiasm.
I could hear Poppy scoff and mumble something like, "Read the chamber, you crazy lady.
" I pulled my hands back instinctively, the overwhelming, sticky emotion of her victory making my skin crawl.
I swallowed, the freshly mended robe slipping from my fingers. “Not really. I… didn't ask for this. I do not want this, and you know it, Mother,” I whispered.
The words cut through the air like a blade. My mother’s sweet veneer cracked, replaced by a rigid, furious pride. Her performance was over.
“Don’t want this?” my mother spat, stepping back, her hand recoiling as if my words had physically burned her.
“‘Silly old me, for a second there, I forgot this was all about what Ophelia wants.” She seethed, mocking me; her words assaulting my entire being.
“Want' is a luxury for girls who aren't blighted.
“Want” is something a lady worthy of something might aspire to.
You are a tool, Ophelia Josephine, the only one this family has left.
Do you think Caspian Valerius ever saw you?
He saw another pathetic, fallen bird he thought he could 'save.
' Your pretty, useless Empathy is weak, and you are lucky the Alistair heir is willing to take you at all. He must be buying our name, and you are the pathetic, blighted creature included in the sale!” She turned on her heel and left the room, the silence finally taking over her rage. I ran to my room.
My chest tightened, a raw, screaming, yet familiar, ache. I had promised myself many times over; I had sworn it, staring into the cracked mirror in my room, that I would not let her break me again. And yet, here I stood, rigid and silent, my body trembling as I let her poison seep in. Again.
My rational mind, the cold, calculating observer, saw the truth: the female I shared my blood with was vile, her words a carefully constructed toxin aimed at the marrow.
But the logical assessment was a shield, and shields were useless against the enemy within.
Deep inside, the small, desperate core of little Ophelia, the child who had been denied the solace of a mother's hand still clawed for recognition.
That child believed that if she just cried softer, tried harder, or simply ceased to be the blight upon the Ashworth line, she would finally be loved.
She would finally be worthy of that love.
I knew the history she refused to speak of, the poisonous root of her hatred.
Lady Cecilia had not walked into House Ashworth; she had been sold into it—a pristine, high-value mare traded to clear a debt her parents had accrued.
My father, a male whose blood was already souring with the blight, had taken what he paid for with brutal, entitled efficiency.
I was not born of love. I was born of a scream in the dark.
To her, I was never a child. I was a living, breathing monument to her violation.
She could not punish the male who broke her—he was too powerful, too volatile—so she punished the result.
In her twisted, fractured logic, I was her own personal blight.
I was the parasite that had fed on her light and left her in the shadows.
She had taken the horror of her own victimhood and sharpened it into a weapon, becoming the abuser she despised.
That child had endured far worse than words.
She carried the phantom memory of her father's rage, a sudden, blinding storm of violence that she learned to meet with rigid silence.
The blows were not just physical; they were a cruel, cold discipline, and the child convinced herself they were justly administered, a necessary penance for the crime of being born.
The cold marble of the drawing-room floor still seemed to press against her cheek whenever she heard a shout, a devastating reminder that even pain was a ritual she was unworthy to escape.
The pain of that denial was still colossal, the clear conclusion that time does not heal everything.
I was the convenient repository for every crime of my ancestors, every failure of my father, every instance of my mother's lack of luck, and the creeping magical decay itself. I was the living epitaph of our house’s collapse, blamed for sins committed decades before my birth.
The tears came anyway, hot and burning, and I hated myself for them.
I loathed the magnificent, pathetic weakness of that yearning.
I detested that after all these years, her voice was still the only one in the universe that could strip away my power, my resolve, and make me feel utterly, exquisitely worthless. Once again, I was nothing.
But as the torrent of her maternal cruelty washed over me, my Empathy flared, cutting through the venom.
I didn’t just feel her fury; I felt the absolute, crushing shame of a fallen High House, a despair so vast it made her heart a shrivelled thing, and I could not utter a single word back.
Somehow, she always won in these vicious commentaries.
The door to my bedchamber opened and I knew the reprieve I was granted had only been temporary.
“You think this is about what you want?” my mother continued, pacing.
“No. This is about survival, Ophelia. You’re too weak, too soft, too…
fragile! You should have the Life Touch, and you can’t even heal a plant!
And Caspian? Get it through that thick skull of yours that he’s a dream you’ll never get to live.
He’ll be everything you can’t have, and you, everything he can’t protect. ”
I didn’t sink. I stood rigid, my body trembling from clarity more than cold. I pushed through the torrent of ancestral shame and maternal cruelty, finally finding the hard, defiant edge I sought.
“I’m not weak,” I finally said, my voice breaking, but steady. “I’m not giving up. Not like this. Not ever. I will do what must be done, but simply because the balance of the realm demands it, not because you so desperately want it.”
My mother’s laugh was sharp, cruel. “Pathetic. You’ll learn soon enough what it means to serve the greater good.
” The chill in the air thickened with magic and fury, and I knew I couldn't stand there a second longer.
Luckily, with a knock on my door, three younger females entered, as my mother made her way out.
I retreated to my bath chamber. The small group of common Aenites was sent to our house to attend to me. They wore the simple, rough-spun linen of service, a stark reminder of the class divide I was about to exploit for their survival.
One of the females, a tall, slender Aenite with kind, weary eyes, stepped forward. “Forgive me, Lady Ashworth. I am Bess Travere. I will draw you your bath.”