CHAPTER THIRTY Elegy in Ivory
CHAPTER THIRTY
Elegy in Ivory
The sun had long since crawled up the sky when I stood again. Or rather, Elena made me.
Her hands were cold as they pressed against my spine, zipping the crimson gown up my back like sealing a wound. I stared into the vanity mirror, but the reflection wasn’t mine. It was hers. The girl with bloodless lips, haunted eyes, and a pulse that pulsed too loudly in her ears.
“Sit.” Elena pushed me down on the chair, guiding me to the edge of the chaise.
I sat.
She moved around me, quiet except for the occasional clink of a hairpin or snap of a compact case. Her face was blank, carved from stone, not an ounce of sympathy in her eyes. Just like always.
“You look like a ghost,” she muttered, tugging a comb through my hair with no gentleness. “Fitting, considering where you're going.”
I didn’t ask what she meant. I already knew. The dead. That’s what he said. He’d take me to see the dead.
My stomach twisted violently, for I lurched forward. My knees hit the floor, and bile burned up my throat and spilt into the porcelain bowl Elena held out just in time. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even give me comfort. Just stood there. Watching me unravel.
When I finished, she wiped my mouth with a cold cloth and said, flatly, “It’s not weakness to be afraid. It’s stupid to let it stop you.”
I clutched the edge of the vanity like it could hold me together. My vision spun, dark at the edges, my breath coming too fast. Too shallow. My hands trembled.
“I can’t—” I gasped.
“You can.” Elena's voice cut clean through the rising panic. “And you will. Because if you don’t, someone else will write your ending for you. He already is.”
I looked up, locking eyes with her in the mirror. Her gaze was sharp, not cruel but exact like a scalpel.
“Do you want to go?” she asked as something shimmered in her warm eyes. A yes or no.
My lips parted. I didn’t know what I was going to say.
The truth?
The lie?
“I’ll go,” I whispered, because fear didn’t excuse ignorance. And if the answers were buried with the dead, I had no choice but to walk among them.
She nodded. “Alright, you can freshen up. I’ll fetch your clothes.”
My body moved into mechanical mode, walking to the bathroom, and I turned on the shower. I didn’t know if I should be shocked that my mother was alive or disappointed that she hid from me all these years. Didn’t she miss me? Call for me?
Wouldn’t she comfort me, envelop me in her arms, and tell me she loved me to my face? No flowers bloom without sunlight to raise them; why couldn’t she show affection and be my sun amongst this cruel world?
I was wilting from the inside.
The water hit my skin, hot enough to sting, but I barely flinched.
Steam rose, curling around me like the ghosts I never buried—the memories, the questions, the versions of my mother I’d created in her absence. A kind one. A cruel one. A selfish one. A broken one. All of them stood beside me now, watching me fall apart piece by piece.
I pressed my palms against the cold tiles, letting the scalding heat run down my spine. Maybe it was punishment. Maybe it was a rebirth.
The sob crept up my throat, quiet at first. Then louder. Then ragged. I didn’t cry like girls in the movies, soft and beautiful and tragic. I cried like I was drowning—choking on grief I didn’t know I still carried.
How could she be alive and not come back for me?
I was a child when I stopped celebrating my birthday. Fourteen, when I stopped hoping. Seventeen, when I buried the last photograph of her in the back of my closet.
And now, twenty-three, I was scrubbing skin that would never feel clean enough—not for her, not for the world, not for the little girl inside me who still waited at the window.
I hated that I still wanted her to hold me.
I turned off the water, and the silence crashed on me.
The mirror fogged, hiding my reflection. I didn’t want to see myself. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. A daughter? A stranger? A mistake?
A knock came on the door, gentle. Her voice followed, muffled through the wood. “Your clothes are outside.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My throat was raw with questions I didn't know how to ask.
I wrapped the towel around me, stepping out into the cold hallway. And there they were—clean clothes folded neatly, like nothing had shattered between us.
But everything had. And I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to pick up the pieces.
Instead, I focused on getting dressed.
The dress was the colour of dried roses.
Not red—no, red was for lovers, for women who chose their fate with open eyes.
This was deeper. Darker. A muted, bruised crimson that bled elegance and mourning in equal parts.
Elena tugged the final seam into place. It fit too well. As if it had always belonged to me, waiting in some forgotten closet of fate. I wondered who shopped for these dresses, because they all fit me perfectly, as if taken from my measurements and then handmade from silk.
A part of me loathed Zagreus for shattering my illusion that my mother was dead. Maybe I preferred her dead if she didn’t love me.
But that would be selfish of me, wouldn’t it?
I hissed as Elena pulled the dress down, and I stared at the mirror.
The neckline dipped into a modest V, revealing the hollow of my collarbones like an invitation to be shattered.
Long sleeves of sheer lace clung to my arms, delicate and claustrophobically suffocating.
The bodice was cinched tight, boned and structured, sculpting a figure I didn’t recognise. A stranger’s silhouette.
“Stand, Mrs. Vitale,” Elena said.
I obeyed, legs trembling beneath the silk.
She knelt to the floor and slipped the heels on—black satin stilettos, cold as knives, with an ankle strap that fastened like shackles over the anklet that still burned my skin.
I hated how beautiful they looked on me.
Like something out of a dream that had long since turned sour.
Each step I took in them would be intended. Poised. And painful.
Elena stood again, grabbed the silver brush from the vanity, and started twisting my hair.
Her fingers were efficient, pinning the strands into an intricate, half-up braid that crowned the back of my head, while the rest spilt down in soft waves.
It was elegant, too elegant for someone on the verge of falling apart.
“Who taught you that?” I asked quietly.
Elena paused. “My mother.”
A ghost breath of memory fluttered against my ribs. Hands threading through my hair. A soft lullaby, in a voice I couldn’t recall. The smell of something sweet—jasmine? Vanilla? And then silence. Always silence.
I tried to hold onto it – the memory – but it slipped like sand through my fingers. I didn’t remember her face. Not really. Just the warmth. Just the absence.
“Elena,” I whispered. “Does she love you?”
She didn’t answer. Not right away. Her hands paused only for a second, then resumed.
“She did,” she said finally. “More than anything.”
I blinked, throat tightening. “Is she not here?”
Elena met my gaze in the mirror. Her eyes were steel. “No. But I remember how it felt when she was with me.”
I looked away. My fingers clenched around the armrest.
There was a knock at the door. Elena’s voice followed. “You don’t have to go, Mrs. Vitale, if you don’t feel like it.”
The kindness in her voice scraped against my raw insides.
“I’ll go,” I said again, louder this time, because I needed to see. Because some answers are written in things too ugly to look at unless you're dressed for the funeral.
And it wasn’t like Zagreus would let me stay anyway.