Her voice cracked, raw, and uneven, breaking under the weight of her own words.
“Come.Sit down with me.”
I guided her carefully, leading her to the corner chaise nestled beside the bookshelves.My grip was firm but gentle, as though she might collapse from the weight of what she’d seen—shatter like frostbitten glass.
The office, though designed for strategy and statecraft, suddenly felt too opulent for grief.The warm firelight flickered over war maps and antique daggers mounted along the walls—remnants of a past I once took pride in.Now, they bore silent witness to a different kind of battle unraveling before me.
But Elizabeth…
She did not belong in such a setting.
She sank into one of the plush velvet settees, yet the opulence did nothing to comfort her.Her hands gripped the armrests as if the solid wood might anchor her, her breath shallow, her eyes darting—searching, pleading for an escape from a prison that wasn’t made of stone but of memory.
“Tell me,” I urged again.
The room’s grandeur made the space between us feel vast, an abyss neither of us dared to cross.
“Talk to me, Elizabeth, darling.”The endearment slipped from my lips unbidden.“You’re safe here.”
A lie wrapped in silk, a promise spoken in a house built on shadow.
But when she looked at me—wide, trusting, searching for anything to hold onto—I felt something stir in my chest.
A flicker of warmth.
Unexpected.Unwanted.
Because in this world, warmth was a weakness.
And I could not afford to be weak.
Elizabeth swallowed hard, her hands still gripping the armrests as if she feared the room might collapse.When it came, her voice was fragile, her words stumbling like a child lost in the dark.
“I went to tea at L-L-Lord Winston’s house with my maid Mary,” she began, her syllables fractured, her breath coming in shallow gasps.“He was called away.I was told to wander… to familiarize myself with his—his despicable, dark home.His butler accompanied me.”
Her fingers clenched into fists, her knuckles whitening, the pearls strung around her neck trembling with her.
“But he… the butler…” Her breath hitched, her chest rising and falling too quickly.“He snatched Mary away.His eyes…”
She shuddered, her hand flying to her mouth, pressing so hard against her lips that I thought she might tear them open.
“His eyes glinted with malice.With… twisted pleasure.He said it was Lord Winston’s command.”
A muffled whimper slipped through her fingers, raw and involuntary—a sound torn from the depths of her breaking.
I leaned in, my voice a quiet anchor in the storm of her trembling.
“You’re safe here.”
Another lie.
It was a hollow reassurance—one monster offering comfort to the only soul he could never see as one.
But she needed something to cling to, even if it was only an illusion.
And so, I gave it to her.
Slowly, she uncurled from herself, but her voice remained a ghost, a whisper drifting on the edge of breaking.
