The duchess eyed Aefia, in a shock thst explained she had already read and memorized the very line she had always wanted to keep her away from. "What is that supposed to mean? I never let you see till the end of the contract..." She softly spoke while stepping towards the girl's place.
"Get away from me! Don't act like you don't know!" She shouted back while sliding backwards on the sofa. "You were always precarious about the fact that I would ever find out about your contract and the things you had planned! You already knew everything about how I had been curious over the contract for a long time and why you never really gave me enough time to read it! You kept telling your close servants to make sure I didn't get my hands on the contract!"
George stared at her face which had turned into one with frustruation becoming a clear thing. "Then do you know what is fully written on it? Or do you know where it is hidden?" He asked while letting out a breathe, filled with confusion and worry. "Of course I do! I know everything that is written on it from memory!" She answered back.
The duchess finally lost her cool and looked towards George, while clenching her fist. "Leave the room. I think we have somethings to discuss about... About the contract that she is talking about. You should go cancel the request she had made to the hitman... If you don't want her dead, and she doesn't want to write the rejection letter, then undo the thing yourself." She commanded with shadowed eyes.
Without a single word, he took a last glance at Aefia who was seated with her eyes blown wide at his direction with shock and anger, almost like she was telling him not to, but to do it at the same time. It was a hint of hesitation and trying to be brave enough to face death, and it was something everyone would feel. Without a second thought, he bursted out of the door and locked it while leaving, trusting the rest of the situation to their mother's hand before moving away.
"I know you are in fear of actually killing yourself... You fear death when you know you can't get yourself back alive again. It is like reading a favourite story which ended with a cliffhanger, and the series has been dropped, and you just want to know what happens next." The duchess spoke while sitting across from her on the same sofa.
"It is true that I had taken you in as a pawn of mine which I could control, but because the thing I wanted you to do, it would only be completed if you had a high authority and could command over the situation under the Imperial family's name. I had to do it to keep our reputation and not get disgusted because I had chosen a stray person I suddenly met on the street to do the work for me without offering a huge public price for it."
"And when I am a burden to this family you were going to trash me out... Isn't it right?!" Aefia cornered herself further to the side of the sofa while diverting her eyes to look at the speaking woman. "You don't even know what my last name is! That direct eye contact that I have you for one second! It made you determine your mind into the fact that I am the one you would keep to do whatever work you want?!"
The duchess looked at the floor, with a guilty-looking face. "I may have been greedy and arrogant back then... But it took me time, about two weeks to truly realize that you weren't a different mentality then me. We practically grew up with the same situation, it is always our loved and close ones that gets taken away... And it happens when you can't even avoid it. I lost my entire family for my brother... And I didn't know anything about it until he wanted to end me to be able to take the throne... He was in fact, my only sibling who truly saw my mind when I struggled."
"It wasn't until I saw that you broke down that day, that I felt a different sort of respect for you, because you are in a world that you don't know and you lost the person who was taking care of you as a mother. If I were in your place, I would have honestly done the same." She lifted her eyes to turn her head and face the girl sitting at the end of the sofa, who had long since diverted her eyes to the book resting on the table. "I am sorry if I have stepped a little too far by abusing you into a discipline..."
She reached out to place a hand on top of her head, while slowly moving towards her place on the sofa and held her right hand out. "I am sorry... But I promise to–"
Aefia smacked it away, and looked at her with teary eyes. "Do you really think I care about your abuse?!" She shouted while her eyes were blown wide. Her eyes then glued to the book, hair closed on the table with the bookmark sticking out and indicating the page she was reading. Her owns hands reached out to cover her face, as she bent low with her forehead inches away from colliding with her knees.
"I don't care about anything that matters with me getting beaten and bloodied! It's just... I am alright if I have to sacrifice but if they take away the thing that I am sacrificing for! I sacrificed my element just so I can keep another person from the brink of death! And now that I have nothing left I have to give away my life so that the people around me can strive! None of you sees it truly for what I am trying to solve!" Her voice echoed against the room's walls, as her shoulders shook with every vibration of a breathe that she took.
"I try isolating myself from the rest of the people around me so that they get to live another second longer! But you all just misjudge me for removing myself from your lives just because I want to! I never wanted to! In fact... I still don't want to! But I am forced to if it means that you all don't have to sacrifice your own lives!"
Her hands, now covered in tears, finally slipped away from her face. Her eyes paranoid, but a smile carving onto her face. "But I guess... What matters more is how much trouble I truly am to the others..." She spoke with her voice lower then the previous high tone she had just used.
"My biological parents... They are probably in a frantic search for me... And that is all because I was accidentally summoned into this world that I never wanted to be in..." A small laugh escaped her mouth as she leaned back against her sofa, covering her face again. "I want an advice! But I am not brave enough to! I want someone to tell me what I am supposed to do! Something! ... Anything! Any kind of advice a mother would give a child who is hanging on the last threads of life... I want a mother's advice..."
Her voice cut through the atmosphere like a blade, the last two lines hitting hard against the obstacles inside the room. She had finally confessed about the sole thing that she had wanted to talk about, but always hesitated to. "Sorry... I didn't mean it... I will just shut up from here along." Aefia finally spoke while wiping her face using her sleeves. Then straightening herself on the sofa. "I didn't mean to shout like that. Sorry."
She stood up to look at the glass shards at her feet, and the dried blood that stuck to her feet. Then carefully trying to get up and all while keeping away from eye contact. "No wait..." The duchess broke the silence while yanking Aefia back down on the sofa, but this time directly in her embrace. Her head rested against the woman's shoulder, as she combed away the short hair from her forehead, and sending it back.
"You could have come to me when you wanted an advice. I may not seem like a mother to you, but I have three sons and I can try and give you an advice if you wanted." She spoke gently while sliding her fingers through her hair in continuous motion. "You can talk to me about it. I will see if I can help."
"I did want to get help from you... But I didn't want you to divert all of your attention to me while leaving Lewis to feel left out. And I definitely didn't want to be the reason that one day he would despise you again." Aefia answered back while leaning into her motherly hands, which helped her to feel at ease for once. "I was already thinking about asking for an advice from you, but decided that you might have a misunderstanding."
"But why would I misunderstand anything when an advice is all you wanted?"
"Because I didn't want you to think I want to reconcile, but I also didn't want to push you far." Aefia replied while her eyes stayed stuck in void. "I realized that if I keep you away from my perimeters far enough, I would be able to keep you out of my 'death curse'. I guess I was worried about George, Lewis and Henry losing their mother because of an adopted sister their mother decided to pick up at the streets."
"Well... They would have understood."
"But did you want to understand when your brother decided to kill your entire family and then you to just keep the throne?" She asked back, but it didn't cause the duchess to flinch at her words too. "They aren't dumb... They would understand at one point... They are boys and they won't understand you have suffered in an instant. Of course, everyone including you would get mad if something bad happened to your loved ones..."
"What if they try to take revenge? They might wrongly think I might have been greedy for the throne like your brother..."
"Then I would leave evidence before I disspear."
"It doesn't work like that... You won't understand unless you experience it yourself." She answered back, while the duchess rubbed a finger over the white plaster at the girl's forehead. "Like how you sacrificed your element, survived severe frostbites and obtained multiple injuries as prove? ... They would understand. Now... What was the advice you wanted?" The woman asked while leaning her own head on top of Aefia's.
"... What if... You were forced into a society of people who you don't know... And are expected to survive it... What would you do?" She finally asked while letting out a sigh. "What if... You were alone and for every move you take, you are charged with something expensive until you are left with nothing? What would you do or tell the person to do?"
"Then stop sacrificing for a bit..."
"But you need to sacrifice to survive and keep the other alive. Like how I had to sacrifice my sanity, but still lost the closest person to me. Then I had to sacrifice my health and blood... To keep the family safe... And sacrificed my element to barely be able to save my cousin." She answered back while mindlessly scrolling through her mind.
"What if you had broken your parents trust because you could do something, to lose almost everything and find no point of return to even check-in on your younger brother who is probably suffering the same fate that you had suffered? Being punished for mistakes as small as a missed grain of sugar. What if you made a huge decision in your life where you were forced to take up a path that you thought would save you... But ends up draining you completely. What if you were expected to be able to do a lot of things, but are successful in almost none?"
Finally, she looked up at the duchess's face. "What if I am secretly a disgrace to my parents? Being such a rebellious kid who does whatever she wants and falls into a huge trap that she fails to save herself from. What if I should finally free then from the curse of having a kid who isn't good enough to meet their expectations but rather ruined their lives by being born?"
The duchess looked directly into her eyes, soulless black and just void with multiple thoughts. "I don't think you are what you say you are... But you just have a lot on your plate, you are just trying to recover from the amount of things you have faced. You have to learn the fact that just because you think you are a disgrace to your family, doesn't mean you can't change it."
"But I can't change it!" Aefia buried her face at her shoulder, while her hands clenched into tight fist and covered her eyes. "I can't change anything if I can't get back! I am stuck between two worlds and not knowing what to do! To stay or to return!"
She felt a sudden surge of frustruation hit her, as she shouted in am almost quiet voice, while clinging to the duchess as if she had been doing it for a long time. "I want to stay! But I can't afford the sacrifice! I want to go! But I can't afford to see the faces of my parents when they find out that I have gone insane and hallucinating about this world! I want to see my own brother! But I feel like I have betrayed him by leaving absolutely no words of my departure! I don't even know... If I should stay alive anymore... It would be better to die and leave the others to complete what I have left undone..."
"My girl..." The duchess spoke into her hair while wrapping her hands around Aefia's shoulders. "Problems may have many solutions and many possible endings... But death isn't always the most suitable for all..." Her right hand stayed at her silver and black hair, combing through the tied strands.
"You are smarter than this... You will figure something out somehow. You know you have my courage and your brothers' too... Sometimes it's also better to ask for help then to handle it all by yourself." The woman whispered as she quietly stayed in the position Aefia had forced her into... A daughter crying at her mother's shoulders.