"He's gone," Veyra continued. Her brown gaze dimmed again. Not fresh grief — something past it. The specific quality of someone who had processed a loss long ago and reached the other side. "He told me he would go. He told me it wasn't — that he couldn't stay. That staying would cost something neither of us could afford." Her weary voice broke. "He told me he was sorry but he would be back."
So Lady Veyra had an affair with an unknown man and he bailed on her. Real funny.
Men.
Zolani rolled her eyes internally. Irritation bubbled up. This woman still believed in him? Was she stupid? What could make her so foolish as to cheat on her husband?
No. She stopped the train of thought and pulled Veyra into a careful hug instead.
I don't know the whole story. Judging her now is stupid.
She needed to find a way to save this woman from the drugs before addiction or overdose claimed her. For now, she focused on soothing her.
"He was right," Zolani said quietly.
Veyra's gaze held hers.
"You're not my daughter," she said. "I know that. My daughter is — she's gone. She was—" something crossed her face. The honest expression of a mother accounting for her child. "She was difficult. She was angry. So angry all the time and I didn't — I let them make her invisible because I thought invisible was safe and I was wrong." The words came faster now. Clarity sharpened. Guilt rose with the confession. "I was wrong and she died in that dungeon… and she died!! And nobody—" she stopped.
Her jaw worked. Her eyes were wet.
"Nobody came," she said. "Nobody looked harder."
Zolani was reminded of Cael in the garden. I should have looked harder.
She remembered Elowen's charcoal drawings.
I will get us out. I promise. I'm sorry I'm not better at it yet.
It dawned on her then how profoundly lonely Elowen must have felt. The body she now inhabited belonged to a girl failed by nearly everyone who should have protected her. Someone Zolani had never met, yet was now the only one who truly understood her pain. It felt as if Elowen was still alive because the heart that wasn't hers was bleeding. Breathing became harder.
"I'm here now," Zolani said, tightening her arms around Veyra. What was wrong with her? Even though the pain wasn't hers, she felt an emptiness — as if the gap in her aching heart was a useless appendage that didn't belong, leaving only a gaping dark hole.
Even though Veyra was enduring this pain, Zolani found herself detached. She knew she was supposed to feel empathy. But all she could think about was how to fast-forward this scene so she could leave. It was tiring. Annoying.
At that moment, irritation and disgust toward Veyra's presence surged. Her fingers itched to strangle her — to tighten her grip on the frail throat until the body stopped moving.
Fucking useless.
Veyra looked at her.
"You're not her," she said again.
Fear clutched Zolani's chest. She couldn't breathe. It felt like her mask had slipped and the ugly depths of her soul had been exposed under Veyra's watchful gaze. She unwrapped herself, creating space between them. Her thoughts raced, processing what to do next.
The statement didn't sound like an accusation. It wasn't harsh.
"But you're in her face. And you came to her room. And you looked for her in the objects she left behind." Veyra interrupted Zolani's racing thoughts. "I can feel her in the room when you're in it. Like — a warmth. Like she's near something warm." Her grip reached for Zolani's hands again. "I don't understand it. I don't need to understand it."
They sat in silence for a while — the drugged woman in the chair and the girl wearing her dead daughter's body — with the single candle burning between them.
"She loved you," Zolani muttered.
It came out before she had fully decided to say it.
It was the truth, regardless of her own conflicted emotions. Elowen had been trying to save both of them.
Veyra made a small sound. The sound of something long held finally finding a place to land.
"I know," she said. "I know she did. I should have—" she stopped. "I should have been louder. I should have been—"
"You were drugged and restrained," Zolani said. Her crimson eyes turned empty. Flat. Not unkind. She was so tired. She wanted to disappear. Now. "Before that you were navigating a household structured to make you powerless. Before that you were protecting her the only way you could see how." She offered the excuses the woman needed to hear, reading lines from a carefully crafted script for approval. "You were wrong about the method. You weren't wrong about the love."
Veyra looked at her.
"You sound like someone who knows something about that," she said.
Zolani thought about her own mother. The careful expression across the birthday table. The tired eyes, the single candle, and love that had been real yet insufficient.
"Yes," she answered, her fingers twitching again.
They sat together in the dark room. The single candle burned low between them.
Then Veyra asked, "What are you going to do?"
Zolani thought about the academy. She would soon leave this place. At that moment, that was all that mattered. She put on a wide smile.
"Learn," she said. "Then come back."
Veyra's grip tightened.
"Come back," she said. Not a question. A request. The specific kind that contained please without saying it.
"Yes," she lied.
Lies. Lies. Lies. It wasn't a lie if that was what they wanted to hear… right? Just read the script.
She stayed until she heard the maid's footsteps returning down the passage. Then she pressed Veyra's hands once — both of them, bound wrists and all — for confirmation of something real, and stood.
There was nothing more.
"I'll find a way to get word to you from the academy," she said. "Through Cael."
Veyra nodded. The drug was pulling at her again now that the effort of clarity had faded. Her eyes softened at the edges.
"The girl," she said, barely audible. "Elowen. Tell her—"
She stopped.
The eyes closed.
Zolani stood in the dark room and looked at the woman in the chair with her fabric restraints and drugged breathing.
She isn't the girl. She was your bloody daughter.
She sighed. What would she tell Elowen if there was a place where Elowen could hear?
Probably nothing.
She felt a bit envious. Disappearing seemed peaceful. It was as if Death had grown sick of her whining and punished her by forcing her here. She could only move forward now.
Someone came, the thought drifted through her mind as she left through the passage the way she had arrived. Someone looked harder. It was late. I know it was late. But someone came.
She lied again.