Chapter 16 #3
The garden had not yet fully surrendered to ruin.
The blight lingered only as a hesitant bruise along the Shadowblooms, a whisper of the rot that would one day devour everything.
I was ten, small, sun-kissed, and foolish enough to believe the world could still be gentle.
I sat beneath the weeping willow’s curtain of green, my laughter drifting like pollen as Poppy, an untidy puff of gold fur and oversized ears, bounced after the tail of my discarded ribbon.
Then the world cleaved in two.
A bellow, raw, jagged, violent, tore through the afternoon.
The double doors burst open as my father lurched into the garden, his silhouette staining the light around him.
Lord Ashworth’s aura blazed a monstrous violet-black at the edges, but the centre pulsed a vicious, blood-orange so bright it quivered.
My mother followed in his grasp, her feet scuffing helplessly against the stone threshold.
He held her by the throat, fingers digging in with a cruelty that felt older than mankind.
Her aura, normally a soft silver-grey that rarely calmed the storm inside me, flickered like a wounded moth.
She clawed at his wrist, small and desperate.
He shook her. Hard. Then came the slap, a crack so sharp it tore the moment open.
He shoved her inside the pavilion across the lawn; the doors slamming behind them with a finality that felt like a coffin lid. The garden fell into a horrified hush. Even the willow seemed to hold its breath.
Cold terror wrapped around me like a wet shroud. I stuffed Poppy beneath my velvet vest, feeling her frantic heartbeat against my ribs, then crawled toward the tall parlour window. Each step felt like a betrayal of the safety I had known only seconds before.
I edged toward the parlour window on shaking limbs, breath snagging in my throat. The glass was cold against my cheek, a thin, trembling barrier between me and the nightmare inside.
And then I saw them.
My mother was sprawled across the chaise, her ruffled skirt bunched around her hips in a violent, unnatural heap.
The delicate lace that once trimmed it hung in torn, pathetic threads.
Her bodice, stitched that morning by her own maid, was ripped open, one sleeve hanging by a single stubborn seam.
Her hair, usually pinned with pearls, tumbled wildly around her face, strands glued to her cheeks by kohl-stained tears.
She wasn’t crying so much as breaking. Silent sobs convulsed her shoulders, her silver-grey aura stuttering like a candle caught in a storm.
My father loomed over her, pinning her down with the horrible inevitability of an avalanche.
His trousers were shoved low on his hips, his shirt half-open, his entire body radiating that monstrous orange-red light.
It pulsed—slow, predatory, consuming—each flare slashing through her dimming silver like claws.
She struggled. Gods, she struggled. Her hands pressed against his chest, nails raking, pushing, pleading.
But his rage swallowed every motion, every shard of her resistance.
When she tried to twist away, he forced her back down with another slap, then one hand gripping her wrists above her head, the other—
I tore my gaze away, but the colours wouldn’t let me go.
The orange-red of him surged, flooding the room in a violent tide, drowning her fragile silver beneath its roar.
It was the first time I realized that some colors didn't just represent feelings; they represented the end of someone else's world.
It felt like watching a star be smothered, crushed until it collapsed in on itself.
Her aura flickered one final time, bright, desperate, terrified, before dimming to a thin, trembling thread.
Something inside me snapped.
The world tilted. My knees buckled. My breath turned to shards. I stumbled backward from the window, from the horror, from the sickening certainty that something sacred had been shattered right before my eyes.
I ran. I didn’t feel the stones under my shoes or the branches slicing my arms. I didn’t feel anything but the echo of that brutal, devouring orange-red. It chased me—burning, choking, until I collided with the safest person I had ever known.
Eliza.
She steadied me instantly, her hands warm and trembling. Her sapphire-blue aura flared in shock, then softened in instinctive comfort as my small body convulsed against her.
“Oh, my darling girl,” she breathed, cupping the back of my head. “What did you see?”
I couldn’t speak the words. I could only sob them—broken, breathless fragments about skirts and colours and hurt and silver drowning in orange-red.
She gathered me into her apron, cradling my head against her chest as if she could shield my mind the way she shielded my face. “Shhh, shh… I have you, I will always have you, Ophelia,” she whispered, rocking me. “The colours cannot hurt you. Not here. Not while I’m holding you.”
Eliza didn’t tell me I was mistaken. She didn’t say I imagined the colours. She never had.
She understood that my sight, this cursed gift that painted emotions in light, was also the only defence I had against the poison saturating the Ashworth estate like rot.
She guided me to sit on the cool stone path. She gently pried my shaking hands from my vest, where Poppy trembled, and pressed the smooth river-stone into my palms. Her thumb brushed over my knuckles as she drew the stone slowly across my skin.
“Feel it,” she murmured, voice low and warm.
“Come back to yourself, my child. The colours cannot hurt you. Not while you name the ones that shine. Tell me the goodness. Find the blue. Find the calm in the garden, the beautiful one inside here,” she tapped my chest with her delicate, but worn fingers.
Sobbing, I obeyed. Her sapphire. Poppy’s gold. The willow’s pale green.
Each one a fragile thread, thrown across a chasm I had no words for, only a child’s terror and a child’s desperate grasp for safe light.
Eliza held me until my trembling eased, rocking me until the colours settled back into something soft, something survivable.
But even as she soothed me, even as she pressed the smooth stone into my palm and guided my shaking fingers over its cool surface—I knew the truth.
Some colours were born to hurt. And some moments stained you forever.
A tear slipped on my cheek before I could wipe it.
Philomena’s expression softened. “Ophelia?”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to drift like that.”
“You have no need to apologise.” Her voice was gentle but sure. “Trauma has its own passageways. If you’d like, we can talk more tomorrow. At the banquet, perhaps? Somewhere quieter, if we can find the time.”
I nodded, throat tight. “Yes. Tomorrow.”
Footsteps rang down the corridor, measured, resonant, unmistakably his.
Cain.
Approaching with the authority of someone who never had to question whether doors would open for him.
Poppy hissed, “Great. Here comes His Royal Assface.”
I stepped back instinctively. “I should go, Consul.”
Philomena gave me an encouraging nod. “We’ll speak again.”
I slipped past her just as Cain reached the threshold, my heartbeat a ragged flutter, the echo of sapphire and gold and willow-green clinging to me like fading light. His eyes narrowed as he turned his head to watch me go in the opposite direction.
Poppy gently nudged me, and when I turned to look at her, all she said was “I remember it too, Oph…”. We walked back toward the bedchambers, two survivors of a gold and silver past, trying to navigate a world that was fast turning to ash.