Chapter 17
OPHELIA
The conservatory confrontation with Cain from last night had left me raw and exposed, my defences shattered.
I had won the psychological skirmish, but the victory felt hollow, a desperate, pyrrhic one.
The air in the estate still tasted of petrichor and frost, a lingering reminder of the magic display he had unleashed upon her.
After he had vanished, leaving the ghostly echo of a dying flower and the scent of decay in the air, I had retreated to the one place in the estate that didn’t feel like a gilded tomb: my room.
But even here, the silence was heavy, a physical weight that pressed against my eardrums. It was my only sanctuary, a small island of personal space in a vast, cold ocean, yet the luxury of it mocked me.
The velvet drapes were too heavy, blocking out the weak grey light; the carved mahogany was too dark, absorbing what little warmth I generated; the shadows in the corners were too eager to stretch across the floor, waiting for me to sleep.
I lay curled on the velvet chaise, my knees drawn to my chest, trying to rub warmth back into limbs that felt permanently chilled by Cain’s proximity.
“He’s not so soulless after all, is he?” Poppy’s voice was a quiet, contemplative whisper in my mind.
“He felt rage,” I replied internally, staring at a dust mote dancing in a singular beam of grey light. “And humiliation. Not humanity. There is a difference, Poppy. A beast feels rage when it is cornered. A male feels regret.”
“You hit a nerve, Ophelia. And in a world of voids, a nerve is everything.” Poppy’s chitter was soft, her small, furry body nestled in the crook of my neck, her presence a quiet, comforting weight against the desolate backdrop of the room.
I buried my nose in her fur, inhaling the scent of pine and wild earth—a smell that didn't belong in this mausoleum of stone and ice.
“You can’t stay here forever”, she added, her mental voice tinged with a restless anxiety. “It’s too quiet. The silence here... it eats things. I can feel it chewing on the edges of the bond.”
As if to punctuate her thought, a low, dry scrape drifted up from the nearest roof spire. It was the sound of stone grinding against stone, a tectonic shift that vibrated through the window glass. Friedrik was adjusting his position.
“Honestly, the silent conspiring is quite offensive to the atmosphere, my dear,” Friedrik’s voice boomed, clear and audible, though muffled by the distance.
“The acoustics in here are designed for declarations of war, not telepathic gossip.
You two are projecting enough judgment to rattle the obsidian.
I don't need to hear the fox to know she's being rude.”
I winced, realising that privacy was really a myth in this house. Even the stones had ears here. I felt a sudden, claustrophobic panic constricting my throat. I was drowning in isolation. I needed a voice that wasn't made of gravel or sarcasm. I needed a lifeline to the world of colour and life.
I stood up, the movement stiff, and walked to the mahogany desk.
My hands trembled as I reached for the hidden catch of the secret compartment.
I needed to hear Aemelia. I needed to tell her I had survived the night, that the carriage ride back from that cursed ball had been a silent, freezing hell, but that I was still whole.
The drawer clicked open.
I reached inside, my fingers brushing the cold, smooth surface of the Scry Stone. It was cracked from its previous overuse, a spiderweb of fractures marring the surface, but the core still hummed with a faint, dying pulse of light—a heartbeat of magic fading with every second.
I lifted it out, cradling it like a wounded bird.
The heavy oak door to my chamber hissed open.
I spun around, clutching the stone behind my back, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Silas stood in the doorway.
He did not knock. He did not announce himself. He simply manifested, a figure of impeccable Cenite tailoring and terrifying stillness. He stood motionless, his hands clasped behind his back, his dark eyes taking in the room, the tension in my shoulders, and the hand I kept hidden.
“My Lady,” Silas said, his voice quiet, perfectly neutral. It was a voice devoid of judgment or pity, simply a vessel for the estate’s absolute order. “The shadows in this wing are disturbed. There is a resonance here that does not belong.”
My breath hitched. He knew. Of course he knew. Nothing happened in this grey cage without the shadows reporting it to the master.
He stepped into the room, the door clicking shut behind him with the finality of a coffin lid. “It is dangerous to light fires in the dark, Lady Ophelia. The stone in your hand—it feels too out of place inside this House.”
He held out a gloved hand. He didn't need to say the words. Give it to me.
I knew this was my only chance. If I handed it over now, the gates would close on me forever. I would be sealed in with the monster and his silence.
I didn't retreat. I stepped closer, letting the full force of my Empathy touch his core—not aggressively, but with the quiet, desperate sorrow of a prisoner pleading for life. I didn't try to manipulate him with power; I tried to break him with truth.
“Silas,” I whispered, my voice raw. I brought the stone out from behind my back, holding the cracked object between us.
“I know why you allow me these small, dangerous liberties. You see what is happening in this house just as clearly as I do. You and Friedrik remember the boy Cain used to be, and you’re silent because you want me to try save him—because you’d do anything to ensure he doesn’t end up like his father. ”
Silas’s eyes, usually black pools of nothing, flickered. A microscopic crack in the armour.
“I need one last chance,” I pressed, stepping into his personal space, forcing him to see me not as the Life-Wielder or the enemy, but as a frightened woman.
“To tell Aemelia I made it back safely. Please, Silas.
She saw us leave the ball. She saw the violence in his eyes.
If I don't speak to her, she will think he has finally broken me.”
I held his gaze, searching for the male beneath the conditioning.
Silas didn't move for an agonising moment, a sentinel caught between the crushing weight of his duty and the fragile flicker of his conscience.
I tried to think about a young, kind Cain—the boy he knew existed inside the shell once upon a time, the boy Silas surely grieved.
I thought about the tragedy of what we were all becoming.
Silas didn't move for a long, agonising moment. The air between us grew heavy, charged with the silent battle of his will. His face remained perfectly blank, but I felt a wave of internal chaos crashing against my Empathy: Duty vs. Compassion. The fear of his Master vs. the desire for Justice.
Finally, his hand lowered. He did not take the stone.
He turned his back to me, facing the door as if guarding it.
“You have five minutes, My Lady,” Silas murmured, his voice barely audible, strained as if the words were being dragged out of him against his programming.
“Any active magical thread detected after that will be isolated by the estate's wards. And any prohibited object found during my sweep of this room will be confiscated.”
“Thank you, Silas,” I breathed.
I didn't waste another second. I placed the stone carefully on the cold marble of my vanity table. The light in the centre was sputtering, a dying ember in a pile of ash.
I closed my eyes and focused. Scrying was usually a matter of simple arithmetic—aligning the unique frequency of my core with the recipient’s to create a bridge through the ether. It was a universal principle, shared by Cenites and Aenites alike.
But here, the magic felt heavy. The Alistair estate wasn't Void of magic; it was drowning in the wrong kind. The ancient wards saturated the atmosphere with the heavy, static hum of Death-magic, a suffocating blanket that sought to reject any spark of Life energy.
However, the defences were built to crush sieges, not silence whispers.
It was a flaw born of pure Cenite arrogance—assuming that anything small enough to slip through the cracks wasn't worth stopping.
I had to thread the needle, keeping the vibration thin enough to slip between the heavy weave of his wards.
I reached out with my spirit, tuning the stone to search for Aemelia’s specific resonance—a brilliant magenta aura that always felt like summer strawberries and sunlight.
I poured my Empathy into the stone, feeding it the last of my energy to stabilise the connection.
Please, I begged the universe. Find her.
A moment passed, then another. The silence of the room mocked me. I was about to give up, to accept that the darkness had finally won, when a faint, familiar warmth brushed against my mind.
It was Aemelia.
“She’s still alive!” Poppy chirped in my head, jumping onto the vanity to stare at the stone. “I was beginning to think the big bad wolf got her, too.”
My heart ached with the absurdity of it all. I reached out along the magical thread. Aemelia.
“Ophelia? Finally! You promised to signal me the moment you reached your bedchambers!”
Aemelia’s mental voice hit me like a burst of sunlight.
It was vibrant, loud, and full of worried energy, flooding the link with a force that made me gasp.
Her emotions were a brilliant, chaotic tapestry of concern and love, a stark, beautiful contrast to the desolate wasteland of the Alistair estate.
It was jarring, like opening the door of a crypt and finding a garden.
I savored the feeling. If our connection truly worked both ways, let him feel the phantom sensation of my laughter.
Let him choke on the pure, uncomplicated joy of a life he cannot touch.
My Empathy went into overdrive, drinking in the genuine affection, starving for it.
But the sudden surge of emotion came with a cost.