CHAPTER 15 — “The Valdris Name” #2
“Who would believe me? He was the Hero-in-training. The chosen one. The future of the empire. I was just his sister. The spare. The one they were saving to marry off for political advantage.”
I don’t say anything. Just let her talk.
“I watched him for years after that. Collected stories. Noticed patterns. Every time someone crossed him, they disappeared. Every time someone had something he wanted, they gave it up. Not because they were generous. Because they were scared.”
“Persephone?”
She winces. “I knew about that. Before you did, probably. Saw the way she looked at him. Tried to tell myself it wasn’t my business. She was your wife. You were his best friend. I thought—” She laughs bitterly. “I thought if anyone could see through him, it would be you.”
“I was an idiot.”
“You were in love. That’s not the same thing. Love makes you blind to the stuff you don’t want to see. Trust me, I watched my mother do it for twenty years.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died. Officially, it was a fever. Unofficially—” Mariella’s jaw tightens. “She started asking questions about the servant girl. About other servants. About where some of Dario’s ‘problems’ kept disappearing to. A month later, fever.”
“You think he—”
“I don’t know. I’ll never know. But I know how convenient it was.
” She finally sits down. Not near me—across the barn, hay bales between us like a barrier.
“After she died, I was supposed to marry some eastern duke. Political alliance. Good for the empire. I was seventeen and my brother had just killed our mother and nobody cared because he was going to save the world.”
“So you ran.”
“So I ran. Took my mother’s maiden name. Changed my hair. Kept moving. I’ve been running for—god, almost ten years now? This village was supposed to be temporary. Three months, max. Just long enough to figure out where to go next.”
“What changed?”
She looks at me. Right at me. No walls, no defenses, just raw honesty.
“You.”
We sit in silence for a while.
It’s not comfortable, exactly. Too much hanging in the air for that. But it’s not hostile either. Just two people trying to figure out where they stand now that all the cards are on the table.
“I didn’t know,” she says eventually. “When I came here. I didn’t know you were—whoever you are. The man my brother killed. I just saw a farm that needed work and a village that didn’t ask questions.”
“When did you figure it out?”
“The night you screamed her name. Persephone.” She rubs her eyes. “You said your wife helped kill you. And I thought—I mean, there aren’t that many wives who could do that. Who would do that. And then you talked about being betrayed by your party, and I started putting pieces together.”
“And you stayed anyway.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because—” She stops. Laughs. Covers her face with her hands. “Because by then I already—I was already—god, this is so stupid. You were kind to Mira. You ate Granny Thorn’s terrible soup. You had this look, sometimes, like you were waiting for everything to hurt, and I just wanted to—”
She doesn’t finish the sentence.
She doesn’t have to.
“Mariella.”
“That’s not my real name.”
“It’s the name you chose. That’s the one that counts.”
She looks up. Hopeful. Terrified.
I stand up. Walk across the barn. She tenses like she’s expecting a blow, but I just sit down next to her. Close enough that our shoulders almost touch.
“I’m not going to pretend this doesn’t change things,” I say. “It does. Your brother murdered me. Stole everything I had. Built an empire on my corpse.”
“I know.”
“But you’re not him.” I’m looking at the barn wall, not at her. Easier that way. “You ran from what he was. You chose a different life. That matters.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah. It does.”
She’s crying again. Quiet tears, the kind that slip out even when you’re trying to hold them back. I don’t know what to do with that—I’m not good at comfort, never have been—so I just sit there. Present. Not leaving.
Eventually, she reaches into her shirt and pulls out a locket. Old, tarnished, the kind of thing that’s been held too many times.
“This was my mother’s,” she says. “It’s the only thing I took when I ran. The only thing I have left of her.”
She presses it into my hand.
“I want you to have it. So you know I’m not running again. So you know I’m—” She swallows. “I’m here. Whatever happens. Whatever you decide you feel about all this. I’m not going anywhere.”
The locket’s warm from her skin. There’s a picture inside—faded, old—of a woman who looks like Mariella but sadder. Softer. The mother who asked too many questions and died of a convenient fever.
I close my fingers around it.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
“Okay. You’re here. I’m here. We’ll figure out the rest.”
She laughs. Wet, broken, relieved. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say? I just told you I’m the sister of the man who murdered you and you’re like ‘okay, we’ll figure it out’?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know! Something! This is insane! You should be—angry, or—”
“I am angry. A little. Mostly I’m tired.
” I lean back against the hay bale. “Two hundred years, Mariella. I’ve been angry for two hundred years.
I spent my whole first life being angry and my whole second life planning revenge.
At some point you just—” I shrug. “You just want something that isn’t that. ”
“What do you want?”
Good question.
I look at her. Really look. The red eyes and the tangled hair and the desperate hope written all over her face.
“I want to plant tomatoes tomorrow,” I say. “And I want you to be there when I do.”
She laughs again. Still crying, but different now. Better.
“Tomatoes,” she says. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Probably.”
“I’m a terrible farmer.”
“I know. I’ve seen your work.”
“Rude.”
“True though.”
She shoves my shoulder. I let her. And somehow, without either of us deciding to, we end up sitting closer than before. Not touching. But close.
Johnson appears in the barn doorway, gives us both a deeply unimpressed look, and walks away.
“Your rabbit hates me,” Mariella says.
“He hates everyone. Don’t take it personally.”
“He likes you.”
“He tolerates me. There’s a difference.”
She laughs. Quiet. Real.
We sit in the barn until the sun goes down, not talking about anything important. Just… being. Two runaways from the same monster, trying to figure out what comes next.
It’s not forgiveness. Not yet.
But it’s a start.