Chapter 19
OPHELIA
The raw, desperate relief from confronting my mother was a dizzying sensation, like having a decades-old cinder block removed from my lungs. I collapsed onto my velvet chaise, my entire body thrumming with the aftershocks of the rage and the dark liquor.
I had barely begun to steady my breathing when a soft, hesitant knock sounded at the heavy oak door.
It glided open to reveal the young maid—the one with the hair like wet sand who always looked as though she were trying to vanish into the masonry.
She didn't meet my eyes, but she carried a small silver plate. On it sat a single, perfectly glazed berry tart, the scent of summer fruit a jarring, sweet intrusion in the room’s gloom.
“Master Silas sent this, My Lady,” she murmured, her voice a mere ghost of a sound. “He noted you missed the final course at the banquet, and thought… you might require the sustenance.”
She placed the plate on the nightstand and made herself scarce before I could even offer a thank you.
I stared at the pastry. Cain might have been the one to drag me here, but it was Silas who was ensuring I didn't waste away.
I ate it in silence, the sweetness a sharp contrast to the bitterness still coating my tongue.
“That was truly magnificent,” Poppy’s voice was a low, conspiratorial hum in my mind, her usual sass now laced with satisfaction.
“I’ve been waiting nineteen years for you to tell that parasitic old harpy to choke on her entitlements.
May she spend the rest of her miserable life polishing silver for Malathor. ”
“It’s over, Poppy,” I whispered, staring blankly at the wall. My voice was thick with emotion. “I’m finally free of her poison. I thought that would feel like joy, but it just feels like... quiet.”
“Quiet is better than crushing,” Poppy countered, hopping onto my chest and pressing her warm weight against my sternum. “Focus on the quiet, Ophelia. And speaking of lowlifes, I see the stench of Rosette’s cheap cinnamon perfume is still clinging to your dress.”
I pulled the velvet fabric away from my neck, inhaling the faint, cloying scent of the Disillusionist's glamour. It smelled unnatural—like candy left to rot in the sun.
“That female is a vulture,” I murmured, closing my eyes. “She was practically vibrating with the need to crawl back into Cain’s shadow, even though she was clinging to Malathor. She just chases power because she’s terrified of being nothing without it. I know that fear.”
“Ah, the sophisticated fury of the High House wife,” Poppy drawled. “Much better than simple jealousy. And speaking of lowlifes, I need an immediate bath. Your mother's vicious little robin, Minervae, was entirely too quick. I had to threaten to eat her before she would give up the chase.”
I laughed, the sound genuine and rusty. I reached down, ruffling the gold fur of her long ears. "You silly cat. Robin stew, really?"
Poppy scrambled off my lap and playfully bit at my ankles in mock offence. “I am NOT a cat. I am a highly evolved magical construct with a refined palate. And the victory must be absolute, Ophelia. That creature needs to know who the real predator is.”
"That's my girl," I murmured, scratching her big plushy ears, my voice regaining its strength. I felt a fierce wave of pride for the defiant attitude we both shared.
The conversation sharpened my resolve. The chaos of the banquet had given me one priceless gift: liberation from the shackles of my blooded family. But liberation was not safety.
I had a purpose now beyond mere survival. I had to understand the monster I was bound to. My husband. And the first step to understanding was to look at the battlefield from the inside.
I left the quiet sanctuary of my room and stepped into the long, echoing halls of the Alistair estate. It was a mausoleum of wealth, a place of unnerving splendour where the shadows seemed to have mass. It was the home of a male who owned everything but felt nothing.
“This place is even quieter than your room, Ophelia,” Poppy chittered in my mind, her voice a low, melodic hum. “I don’t like it. There’s no warmth here. No ghosts to whisper to us.”
“That’s not true,” I whispered, my voice barely a sound. “The walls are thick with them. They just don't know how to speak.”
I closed my eyes, and my Empathy went to work, not on the present but on the past. I pushed my senses out, feeling for the impressions left behind on the objects, the emotions soaked into the very stone of the walls like old blood.
The first echoes were a jumble of cold, dispassionate authority. The feeling of being watched, of being judged. The faint hum of fear from unseen servants, moving like clockwork to avoid punishment.
I walked deeper into the estate, drawn to a set of heavy, carved oak doors that stood slightly ajar. I pushed them open and stepped into what had once been a child’s room.
It was a perfectly preserved tomb of a childhood. There were no splashes of colour, no scattered drawings, no mess. Just a single toy: a small, wooden horse carved with exquisite detail, sitting on a shelf too high for a small child to reach.
I reached out, my fingers hovering over the wooden horse.
I felt it immediately. The echo of a child's hand.
Warmth. A tiny, fragile burst of warmth in a world of ice. The sensation of small fingers tracing the wood, whispering stories to the horse because there was no one else to listen.
But the joy was quickly snuffed out by a cold, dispassionate emotion that slammed into the memory like a hammer. The feeling of being watched. The feeling of being graded.
I gasped, pulling my hand back. The residual emotion was suffocating—the heavy weight of expectations, the crushing pressure of a father’s disapproval. It tasted like ash and iron.
“This isn’t just a memory,” Poppy's voice was a low whisper now, her usual sass replaced with a quiet sense of foreboding. “This is a graveyard.”
I moved on, my heart heavy. I wandered through more of the estate, guided by the phantom pain in the air.
I found a study filled with ancient tomes on dark magic and Cenite law. I touched the spine of a book titled The Discipline of the Void and felt a sharp, sudden pang of pain.
The feeling of a child’s confusion. Why does it hurt?
Then, terror. The terror of a small boy forced to look at the world as a source of pain and nothing more. He was taught to shut it out, to build walls, to kill the part of himself that wanted to cry.
I found a music room with a grand black piano, sitting in a pool of moonlight.
I sat on the bench, the plush velvet cold beneath me. I ran my fingers over the keys without pressing them, and a ghostly echo of a single, haunting melody filled my mind.
The notes were sad and beautiful, resonating with a deep, profound yearning—the raw, isolated wish of a child who craved escape. It wasn't a complex symphony; it was a simple, repetitive tune, like a lullaby sung to oneself in the dark.
I closed my eyes, letting the phantom music wash over me. I felt a flicker of something I hadn't felt for Cain before—a profound sense of pity. Not for the Prince, but for the boy who had played this song to keep the silence at bay.
Just as I pulled my hand from the keys, a dry, echoing voice drifted down from a high, unseen ledge.
“Don’t stop the music, little Aenite. That’s the only decent thing that ever came out of this miserable wing,” Friedrik’s voice boomed, clear and sharp.
I spun around, searching the shadows. “Friedrik?”
“He hasn’t played that since his sister and mother died,” the gargoyle continued, his voice unusually soft, almost reverent.
“Utterly tragic. The poor child had talent, and that brute of a father crushed it, along with everything else.
Told him music was a 'leak' in the vessel. Can you imagine? Calling beauty a leak?”
I gasped. The raw confirmation of my deepest emotional find—the music, the sister’s death, the mother's death—was stunning.
My focus sharpened, drawing me inward, away from Cain's ghost and back toward my own. I thought of Aemelia, and the profound realisation hit me: everything I was—my resilience, my inclination to find goodness, and the deep, abiding need for connection—was built on the ashes of my own childhood.
The memory rushed up to meet me, visceral and sharp.
The familiar, cold feeling of the Aeternian schoolyard surfaced, the stone biting at my thin knees. I was twelve, two years past the familiar bond age, yet still the ghost of the Ashworth name.
The older girls from House Valerius—cousins of Caspian—had me cornered behind the training wards. Their cruel laughter tasted like bitter metal in my mind.
"The Blighted Ashworth," one hissed, shoving me against the freezing wall. "Your father was treasonous. Your mother is pathetic. Why do you even bother coming here? You smell like failure."
My cheek stung where she had struck me. I didn't dare use my Empathy; its uncontrolled surge of pain would only fuel their hatred. I stood rigid, tears burning, wishing the ground would open and swallow the Ashworth blight whole.
I felt the dissociative hum starting—the grey fog I used to survive my mother’s coldness. I am not here. I am a stone. Stones don't feel.
My father had died when I was eleven, and the last time I remembered him truly looking at me was to criticise my posture. “Stand straight, Ophelia. You look like a wilting weed. Do not embarrass me.” That was the eulogy of our relationship.
The only warmth I had ever known was the day I turned ten, the day Poppy materialised—a small, trembling gift of gold fur and unending devotion, finally giving me a reason to wake up in the morning, other than Eliza.
Just as the oldest Valerius girl raised her hand again, a flash of chaotic magenta light sliced through the corner.
Aemelia, a year younger and a complete stranger, stood with her blonde curls flying, her small body trembling not with fear, but with pure, righteous fury.
"Leave her alone, you bloody fools!” Aemelia screamed, her voice cracking.
The surprise made the older girls falter. Aemelia didn't have a weapon, or even a functional familiar yet, but she surged forward, throwing herself between us. She took the next blow, a loud, cracking sound as her head hit the stone.
She didn't cry. She just looked up at the bullies, blood trickling from her hairline, her stormy grey eyes blazing with defiance. "Go ahead. Hit me again. I'll just tell everyone what cowards you are. Hitting the Blighted girl and her friend? How brave."
They scattered, their victory spoiled by the sheer audacity of her intervention.
Aemelia didn't look at me for approval. She just grabbed my hand—her grip warm and sticky with adrenaline—and pulled me up, leading me away.
Later, sitting in the infirmary, stitching my ripped tunic with clumsy, shaking fingers, she didn't offer pity. She didn't ask what was wrong with me. She just offered a quiet, furious vow:
"We're not like them, Ophelia. We're better. They have power, but they're empty. We have scars, and that means we survived."
Every time I returned home to the chill of my mother's disapproval, Aemelia was there. She never judged my fragility; she just handed me the needle and thread and helped me mend. She was my sister, my fierce protector, the one pure light in a broken world.
I blinked, the memory fading but the warmth remaining.
I stood up from the piano bench, leaving the ghosts of the music behind.
The most powerful echo was in the dining hall, a cavernous space with a massive table that could seat a hundred. The room was heavy with the lingering scent of cruelty and authority.
I felt the sharp, punishing sting of Cain's father—the cold, dispassionate anger that filled the room like smoke. I felt the hollow emptiness of every meal, a silent ritual of pain and control where a boy sat alone at the end of a long table, learning to eat silence.
As the raw echo of that paternal cruelty washed over me, the bond around my core tightened—a faint, chilling squeeze that confirmed his attention had been drawn to my deep intrusion. A shudder ran through my body.
Perhaps, he wasn't born a monster, I thought, the truth settling in my gut like a stone. Perhaps he was a monster made.
The male I was now bonded to, who had effortlessly destroyed the thousand-year-old lilies, was nothing more than a broken boy who had been taught that emotions were a weakness to be punished.
Friedrik’s voice, now tinged with genuine sorrow, was a quiet echo from the shadows of the hall. “Monster made. Yes. It’s the Alistair legacy, isn’t it? Every one of them starts out decent, and then the cruelty gets bred in. Like training a dog to fight.” I must have said that out loud.
I had expected to find a villain. Instead, I had found a ghost.
And in that moment, in the cold of the Alistair estate, the naive, deeply-scarred girl inside me—the one Aemelia had sworn to protect—whispered a terrifying question.
Could I, with my Empathy, be the one to heal him?
The answers to that healing, the knowledge to dismantle the monster, had to be in the books he forbade me to touch. I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to my core, that the forbidden library was the only thing that mattered.
And I knew I had to get in one way or another.