Time moved like water. Days blurred into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into years. And in what felt like a single careless blink, Roxana was no longer small enough to fit perfectly on the window seat.
Nothing changed in the estate outwardly. The chandeliers still shone like captured stars. The marble remained spotless enough to reflect faces that never wanted to look at her for long. Fresh flowers still appeared in tall crystal vases every morning.
Guests still praised the estate's elegance. But inside that same 'perfect' estate, Roxana has learned many things.
She learned how quickly servants lowered their eyes when she entered a room. How hands trembled when they bathed her, dressed her, fed her.
At first, it hurt but then one day, it became as natural as breathing.
Because pain, repeated enough times, simply becomes numb.
And somewhere in that numbness, Roxana developed something strange. She became very good at reading emotions.
So good it is almost unnatural.
Maybe because emotions were always aimed at her like arrows. She learned to read them in people's eyes before their mouths opened. In the tiny tightening of shoulders, when their fingers curl too hard around trays. Or when their breath catches for half a second when she walked into a room, the flinch that came before the bow or the silence that came after it.
She learned all of it.
And one day, after enough whispered fragments had drifted into her ears from hallways, from servants' quarters, from mutterings through half-open doors, she understood something else too.
The woman with the bright pink hair in the cherished portraits. The one smiling in painted sunlight.
That woman was her mother. Her name was Rhea Soprano, the one she killed along with her three siblings who never made it out of the birthing suite or at least that's what she came to understand. And the more Roxana pieced together, the more everything began to make sense as to why everyone feared her.
She was after all the curse left behind.
The monster born from the lives of her own mother and siblings.
…
Roxana sat in the flower clearing often now. The same clearing where she had once cried at her reflection until even the last little light inside her had gone out.
It became her sanctuary after that. Or perhaps sanctuary was too beautiful of a word.
It was simply the only place where she could be truly alone, without those eyes following her. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest, chin resting upon them, her single visible eye fixed on the flowers swaying lazily in the warm air.
Summer had come again.
The scent of sun-warmed grass drifted over the clearing. Bees moved drunkenly from bloom to bloom. The stream babbled softly beside her, slipping over smooth stones as though whispering to itself.
Sometimes Roxana wondered whether it would be easier if she simply leaned forward and let herself sink into that sound. The thought of disappearing, even foolishly, had become comforting.
That day, the flowers swayed gently.
The air smelled of summer.
And then.
RUSTLE.
RUSTLE.
A sound of footsteps broke through the clearing.
Roxana lifted her head slowly.
At the edge of the flowers, between thin trees and sunlit shade, children appeared one after another. Their limbs less round, their faces narrower than the ones she remembered.
She recognized them at once.
They were the same ones who had once played in the field. Roxana looked at them quietly, her gaze drifting from face to face. And as always, her strange little skill worked before a single word was spoken.
Fear.
Disgust.
So much of it.
Even stronger than the maids. The servants of the estate hid theirs beneath training, manners, lowered eyes, and trembling discipline. These children however were quite honest.
Then her gaze lowered.
Their hands were full with wooden sticks and stones. A thick branch shaped almost like a crude bat.
'Oh…'
Then she looked back at their eyes.
And there it was.
Hatred.
The biggest boy stepped forward first. He held the wooden bat with both hands. His fingers shook so hard the wood trembled with them.
"S-see?!" he shouted, voice cracking despite all his effort. "I told you! I told you that monster really was living in the forest!"
The others tightened their grips on their weapons. Some looked as though they wanted to run.
Roxana could see it clearly. The quiver in their knees. The way one girl's breathing had turned ragged. The way another boy kept glancing back over his shoulder as if measuring the distance to safety.
But none of them ran.
For years, fear had lived with them.
A monster in nightmares.
A ruined face behind trees.
Something that had once stepped out holding a ball and had burned itself into memory as a horror too strange to forget. They had come here because fear had rotted into something else. Into the desperate wish to kill what frightened them before it could keep haunting them forever.
Roxana stared at them.
Her face did not change.
Inside her, a simple thought surfaced.
Almost relieved.
'So this is it.'
The boy raised his arm as he stepped closer cautiously.
The others followed.
Rocks and sticks came down.
Roxana did not move.
She did not dodge nor did she shield her head.
She simply looked at them.
And thought, without panic.
'Am I finally going to die…?'
SMACK.
Pain exploded across her face.
A rock struck the already ruined flesh of her left side, tearing open one of the swollen growths with a sick, wet sound. Warm blood splattered across petals.
Another blow struck her shoulder. A hard jolt shot through bone and muscle so violently her body tipped sideways into the flowers.
A stick slammed into her arm.
Stones bounced off her ribs. The pulsing growths on her cheek split further, black-purple flesh opening to leak warm red down her neck and collar.
For one second the children recoiled.
Several stumbled backward in renewed terror. One girl let out a sharp, strangled scream. A boy gagged, bent over, and vomited into the grass. The sight of her blood only made her more monstrous in their eyes.
And then the biggest boy shouted again, voice shrill with fear but dragged forward by something frantic and ugly.
"D-don't stop!" he yelled. "Do you want to stay scared forever?! This is our chance! Finish it! Finish this monster and it'll stop haunting us!" His words pulled the others back from the edge.
They advanced again.
Roxana lay on the ground amidst crushed flowers, blood soaking slowly into pale petals, her visible eye turned upward toward them. She could see the emotions in their eyes clearly. The fear, disgust and hatred.
But she felt… nothing.
She was tired.
Tired of the estate, the eyes…tired of living.
Her mind drifted through memory the way fingers drift through pages in a book.
Every memory played in her mind, from the way servants trembled to the drunken screams of her father's.
Then one memory caught and held.
It was a memory of a woman with silver hair, kneeling before her with shaky hands.
Blood ran down from her every corner, dripping from torn skin to polished marble.
The metallic smell of it.
The way that woman had pulled Roxana into a tight, awkward embrace, as if she was forcing herself to do something that scared her but refusing to stop halfway.
Her voice had broken over and over.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"
Roxana remembered day that clearly. Because it had been the first time anyone had touched her by choice. Not like maids and servants with pale faces and careful fingers trying not to touch more than necessary.
It had been warm.
But even then, even inside that embrace, Roxana had seen it. Because by then she could already read people too well. Deep beneath the emotion called guilt, like the one she had seen in her father's eyes. Beneath the sorrow and trembling pity.
There had still been something else. A trace of a small unconscious hatred and disgust. Still It was nothing like the others, compared to everyone else, she had been gentle.
But it still existed.
And even so, Roxana had been grateful. Because crumbs of warmth still mattered if one had been starving all their life. She wondered what happened to that woman after she got dragged away. She had wanted to experience that warmth one more time.
A shadow moved over her.
The children raised their sticks again.
Roxana blinked slowly.
Blood slipped into one brow and down the side of her nose.
Her vision blurred at the edges.
And inside that blur, a wish formed.
For the first time in her life, she prayed.
If the Goddess was real.
If like those in storybooks, there truly was such a thing as a next life.
Then just this once, Roxana wanted to be greedy.
She did not want to be a princess nor did she want everyone to love her. She did not even ask to be beautiful. What she wanted was smaller than that.
She wanted just one person.
One person who would not look at her with those eyes.
One person who would treat her like… a normal person.
The stick came down.
SMACK.
Blood splattered again painting the flowers around her in red.
But before the next blow could land, a cold voice cut through the clearing.
"…What do you think you're doing?"
Everything froze.
The children jerked around as one.
Roxana turned her head too, slow and dazed. At the edge of the flower field stood a boy.
His black hair caught the sunlight in glossy streaks. Golden eyes, bright and clear, held the kind of calm that did not belong on a child. On his back was a backpack at least three times too large for him, stuffed so full of gear it looked absurd against his narrow frame.
Yet somehow, with the way he stood there, it did not make him look ridiculous.
The boy's gaze moved over the group of children. His face remained calm. But the air around him seemed to grow colder.
The biggest boy's face drained of color as he recognized the boy in front of him.
The heir to the one of the world's four great families.
"Y-you're the Shakerspe-"
He never got to finish.
The boy shrugged the huge backpack off his shoulders and let it drop into the grass.
Then he moved.
Fast.
Too fast.
Like someone who has been trained his whole life.
THUD.
His fist smashed into the biggest boy's jaw with a clean, brutal sound. The boy flew sideways and hit the ground so hard his bat spun out of his hands. Before anyone could react, the black-haired boy pivoted. His second punch buried itself in another child's stomach.
Air burst from the victim in a miserable wheeze.
A third boy lifted a stick in both hands, trying to block. The newcomer twisted, kicked, and the stick went flying from numb fingers.
Chaos erupted.
"It hurts! Waaah!"
"Stop! Stop!"
"S-someone help!"
The black-haired boy did not stop.
He moved through them with frightening efficiency.
One girl stumbled backward and sat down hard, crying too hard to rise again. Another dropped her stones and ran before a sharp glare rooted her in place with fresh terror. Within moments, all of them were either sprawled in the grass, sobbing, or backing away in blind panic.
The boy stood among them breathing evenly, as if this had cost him almost nothing at all.
His golden eyes did not look angry.
That was the strange part.
They looked disappointed.
"Don't let me see your faces around here again," he said.
His voice was still cold, but quieter now.
Then he stepped toward the biggest boy, who had only just struggled up onto one elbow, and gave him one last punch.
Lighter than the first but the message landed harder than the blow.
That was all it took.
The children fled.
They cried as they limped.
They ran through the flowers and into the trees as though something far worse than Roxana had begun chasing them. The boy watched until the last of them vanished.
Only then did he turn toward her.
Roxana lay motionless among flattened flowers and blood-darkened grass.
The sunlight touched her hair.
Her ruined cheek.
The red soaking into the petals beneath her.
The boy's expression changed even if only slightly. He crouched beside her with visible caution, like someone approaching a wounded stray animal that might run from fear.
His gaze met her one visible eye.
Then, hesitantly, he reached out.
And poked her shoulder carefully, as if fearing he might accidentally hurt her.
"Are you alive?" he asked, voice lower now.
Roxana stared at him, at the broad little shoulders that had stepped in front of her without hesitation and at the hands that had struck others for her sake.
She met the eyes looking down at her. And what she saw in those eyes was…unfamiliar.
So unfamiliar her mind stumbled over it.
It was not fear or disgust.
Nor was it hatred or pity exactly.
It was not even guilt.
What was it? What was this unfamiliar emotion directed at her? Her thoughts moved slowly through pain and blood-loss. Her mind dug through every emotion she had read in the books and then she finally found a word.
'Concern…?'
THUMP THUMP THUMP
Her heart started beating harder than ever before as the image engraved itself into her mind in that instant with a violence deeper than any blow. The way he had stood between her and the others as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The way his voice, calm and cool, now sounded strangely gentle.
"Ah…"
Something inside her shuddered, something she had buried for years. A familiar yet unfamiliar sensation started welling up in her eyes. Tears welled without warning. They burst out of her as if a dam had shattered after holding too much for too long.
Her body began to shake, a sound escaped her throat.
"Wuuuu"
The boy's eyes widened in immediate alarm.
"Ah, hey, don't cry. I'm sorry," he said at once, panic overtaking whatever calm had carried him through the fight. He looked wildly around the clearing as if instructions for crying girls might be hidden somewhere in the flowers.
He fumbled for the device on his wrist, tapping it in a hurry. His eyes moved as if reading frantically. Then he looked back at her, swallowed once, and after a moment of visible hesitation wrapped his arms around her.
Awkwardly.
Stiff at first, like someone who had never done this before in his life.
Then one hand patted her back softly.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
He did not seem to notice the blood staining his clothes. Or perhaps he noticed and simply did not care.
"It's okay," he muttered, voice low and clumsy and earnest in a way that made something hurt inside her chest. "It's okay. You're okay."
Roxana grabbed him. Both hands clutching his shirt with a desperation so raw it almost frightened even her. She held on like he was the only solid thing left in the world.
Her tears soaked him.
So did her blood.
Still he did not pull away.
So she held tighter. As if letting go would wake her up and make him disappear. Fearing that this warmth might disappear. As if the moment she loosened her grip, those eyes would change into the same eyes everyone else wore.
And so for the first time in her life, Roxana cried her heart out in someone's arms.
The stream went on babbling beside them.
The flowers swayed.
Sunlight spilled over blood, petals, and the two small figures kneeling in the clearing. But somewhere, in a place no one could see, a little star that had once gone out flickered.
And began, however faintly, to shine.
Because at last, Roxana had found what she had always yearned for.