37. Vacuus
vacuus ~a ~um, a.
1. empty, vacant
Not one body in the sitting room dares to breathe. The gold lace curtains waft delicately in the breeze, but the Hauteclare manse of Dawn Imperator is otherwise deathly silent. Every eye in the family is riveted to the vis, to the silver-blue humanoid steed floating motionless in space.
Olric von Westriani’s dark lance impales Heavenbreaker straight and true. Mirelle’s eyes burn into the hologram. Is that it? Is that all it takes to end the nuisance who’s been killing her family with each of her wins—the lance of a blustering fool like Westriani? After the impressive distance recovery the traitor pulled off, she simply dies to his lance?
Little seven-year-old Maria, gold ribbon bouncing in her hair as she swings her polished shoes against the couch, is the first to speak up. “Wow, that was so cool. Is she dead?”
Grandmother pats the girl’s head with a murmur. “Let us hope.”
Mother leans back into the couch cushions, downing the rest of her drink and motioning for the footman to bring more. Disappointment creeps cold through Mirelle’s veins, and it surprises her. She should be happy Synali’s dead. The murdering impostor killed Aunt Palissa and Uncle Balmoran. Mirelle held no love for them—weak-willed Palissa always simpering to Father and honorless Balmoran beating his wife behind closed doors—but their loss rippled grief into the family as a whole.
Father smiles at her from across the room with the other men, and Mirelle smiles wanly back. She’s sure Father’s happy the girl is dead—he’s been exhausting late nights in his office to recover the king’s trust and the clients they lost in the Gentech explosion. He didn’t speak of it to her, but she understood when they had to let go of the holiday manse by the artificial ocean at Basement level: something was wrong with their money. Something was wrong with Uncle Farris’s death.
“Charlez!” Cousin Raoulle calls to the butler, a bright smile on his winsome face. “We must celebrate! A round of the good wine is in order, I think.”
The sitting room lights in cheery conversation, yet something deep in Mirelle thinks of the way the traitor moved on the field—uneducated, inexperienced, but full of raw potential. Deceiving Mirelle and stealing Ghostwinder out from under her nose and riding it against Rax…evil and wrong things, but requiring the steel will of a knight. Most every rider who decants from the steed falters and has to be drone-rescued—their connection to the steed too faint to recover—and riders decanting past ten parses are considered definite lost causes. But the traitor rallied.
Mirelle would’ve liked very much to test herself against this echo of a knight.
That is the feeling that consumes her now: regret.
From the corner of her eye, Mirelle sees Aunt Gizelle get up—Uncle Balmoran’s widow, pregnant by him again, just beginning to show. At first Mirelle thinks she’s getting up to see to the twins in the nursery; born weak, they have to be locked in oxygen chambers during the day to help them breathe. But Gizelle doesn’t leave right, toward the nursery. She leaves left.
Mirelle slips out during the wine pouring and follows her aunt through the marble halls at a distance. The woman turns into the family chapel. God? Why? Mirelle lingers at the doorframe of the redwood room glowing with stained glass and fresh flowers, then tentatively joins a clasped-handed Gizelle in the pew. Her aunt looks up.
“Ah, Mirelle. I was just praying.”
“For whom?”
“The girl.” Gizelle smiles up at the cross. “She was braver than I. I couldn’t save the twins from Balmoran, and now they’re suffering for my cowardice.”
Mirelle’s heart aches. “Aunt—”
Gizelle touches her belly, tears in her lavender eyes. “That girl… I know she killed Palissa, but she saved this baby from Balmoran. And I want Him to know that.”
Mirelle holds her sobbing aunt close. God knows all hearts, the priests say, and in that sunlit moment, Mirelle feels something terrifying blossom in hers.
Doubt.