Chương 69: Chapter 2: The Tangible Proof

She sighed deeply, almost as if releasing centuries of tacit recognition of being what she was. She remembered what had happened with Nyssa, the scarlet pool expanding across the courtyard's dirt, the head separated from the body making those obscene turns upon the dust. She remembered Kaela's suffering face, her fingers stained with the blood of a martyr, that sob so deep and heart-wrenching that it still vibrated in her chest like an endless echo.

But none of the faces of the women she had shared her life with would be there for her anymore. She knew it with a certainty that required no confirmation. Anya, with her maternal warmth and her smiles, would look at her now as one looks at a disguised poison. Lyra, the scarred one, would see in her the same kind of people who had destroyed her life with a lie. And Kaela... her Kaela... The thought broke before it could complete itself, too sharp to hold. She was alone.

It was an inescapable reality, a fact as solid as the wooden walls imprisoning her. Loneliness was not a possibility, it was not a future fear; it was an absolute present, a void expanding in her chest where once there had been shared laughter, embraces under coral trees, complicit silences in the darkness of the communal dormitory. Only one memory gave her the strength to keep from collapsing.

"Drowning in your own complacency won't solve things." Kaela's words, spoken that afternoon by the stream when she was allowing herself the luxury of self-pity, resonated in her mind with a clarity that hurt. The tanner, with her pragmatism carved by the blows of survival, had thrown her that lifebuoy without knowing it. And now, in the most absolute of solitude, those words were the only anchor she had left. She stood up.

The movement was slow, laborious, as if her body weighed twice as much, as if every muscle protested against the order to rise. Something in her, that core of forged iron from the days of survival in Terracanto, held her up. She headed toward the fireplace with the firm intent of locating herself within these unknown walls. She needed a mental map of this luxury prison; she needed to understand the territory, even if only to know from where she would fall when the next blow arrived.

Her bare feet felt the softness of the carpets. It was a strange sensation, almost obscene after weeks of packed earth and cold stone beneath her soles. The pile sank under her like she was walking on sleeping clouds, a luxury that should have been pleasant and yet felt profoundly uncomfortable, like an unwanted caress. As she passed the threshold separating the bed from the bedroom's sitting area, she noticed it. It was a desk made of black stone, carved from a single piece.

The rock had been polished to a matte, almost velvety sheen. In front of it sat a padded chair of garnet velvet, so plush it had to be a trap for a tired body, an invitation to sink in and never rise again. But what truly caught her breath were the walls. Enormous paintings hung from them, framed in dark, rich woods with gold leaf that shimmered faintly.

They were knights, clad in shining armor, mounted upon massive six-legged insects with segmented shells that reflected the light like imperfect mirrors and compound eyes that seemed to watch her from every angle at once. They wielded long, sharp lances, their faces hidden beneath closed helms, condemned to an eternal and silent charge that never ended, that would never reach any enemy.

The heraldry repeated in every painting, on every banner, in every detail: the golden hawk with red talons, the silver lance, the three waves against a blue background. Symbols of a power that spanned generations, of a history of blood and conquest that now, unwillingly, stained her hands as well. Beyond, hanging with a solemnity that was almost a threat, was the house shield. A blazon of burnished metal, as large as a man, with shapes that from a distance she couldn't quite distinguish.

Crossing it, in a ritual fashion, were two longswords. Their blades, even from where she stood, appeared razor-sharp. Her gaze, eager to find something more than the mere epidermis of this luxury, something that could give her a clue, a foothold, a minimal understanding of where she had fallen, settled on a massive shelf of light wood next to the fireplace. Books were piled there. Dozens. Perhaps hundreds.

Luxuriously bound with embossed leather spines and titles in golden letters that promised entire worlds within their pages. She approached with the caution of one nearing a treasure after searching for ages. Her fingertips traced the spines, feeling the texture of the leather, the relief of the letters, that promise of knowledge that had always sustained her. It was a bitter disappointment.

Their titles, engraved in fine golden script, spoke of a superficial and self-absorbed world: Sighs of the Lady of the Moon, The Betrayal of the Scarlet Chancellor, The Gallant of the Silver Lazjin. Sappy romance novels, sterile courtly intrigues that led nowhere. Pedestrian plays, the kind nobles applauded to feel cultured without the effort of being so. Manuals of manners, of etiquette, of how to bow one's head to whom and with what degree of submission.

She sighed, and her mind protested with a bitterness that burned her chest: The luxury of the idle, the prosaic banality of literary clichés. This is what the nobility considers culture: entertainment so they don't have to think, pretty words so they don't have to question themselves. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

She immediately turned away from the shelves, repelled more than anything by the boredom of finding only books that provided no information regarding her greatest problem. Not even her curiosity would be sated here. There were no answers about anything she wished to know. She moved toward a window facing the desk. It was made of transparent crystal, genuine, pure glass that allowed her to see outside with clarity. She finally looked out at the gardens.

It was completely green, a sea of controlled vegetation stretching as far as the eye could see. Lush trees with leaves that shimmered very faintly with blue glints, as if they carried tiny stars trapped in their veins. The familiar coral trees, with their crimson leaves that seemed to burn under the sunlight. Others that resembled white pines, their silver needles moving with the breeze like diminutive bells.

Shrubs of copper and green hues, and thousands of flowers in distinct tones: red, yellow, blue, violet, black. It was a rainbow made into a garden, a riot of color and life that contrasted violently with the dryness and misery of the West Ward. Until she saw a tree that defied everything she knew. A translucent one. Its wood, pale and almost ethereal, revealed its green sap running through it like actual veins everywhere, a plant circulatory system exposed to view.

It was just one, thick and powerful, rising in the center of a small clearing like a solitary king. Silicariel. The name came to her mind effortlessly, rescued from the pages of the technology book and Theron's mentions. The tree of antiseptic sap, of translucent wood, one of the pillars of medicine in this world. And it was there, in the private garden of a grand duke, as just another ornament.

In the center of all this controlled splendor, like the focal point of a dream of opulence, a large white stone basin decorated the garden. At its center, a fountain threw a jet of clear water that fell back into the pool with a constant murmur, a sound of luxury and artificial peace filtering through the windowpanes. The water sang its monotonous song, indifferent to the human tragedies brewing around it.

Though she saw no people, no gardeners, no guards, no servants, her heart could only ask one question aloud, the words escaping her lips like a torn whisper: —How far away will I be from Kaela? The images of what had happened hit her mind just as forcefully. The pool of blood and the rolling head. Kaela's sob when Nyssa's blood touched her fingers. Lyra's expression, her fingers over her scar. Anya's paleness. The smell of urine and fear.

Her pulse quickened, galloping in her chest with an urgency she couldn't control. Her breathing accelerated, turning into short, shallow gasps that failed to fill her lungs. The walls of the room seemed to narrow, too close in, as if the luxury itself wanted to crush her. But then she felt it. A heat. Slight at first, there was barely a faint whisper of warmth on her left wrist. But it grew, spreading from the bracelet of thread and stone that Corren had given her.

Feeling the comforting warmth in her body, like the sun on stone at the end of the afternoon, when the rays no longer burn but still caress. The heat continued to rise up her arm, slow but inexorable. It reached her shoulder, spread across her chest, and wherever it passed, the anguish dissolved, the panic subsided, her breathing found its rhythm. Until tranquility invaded her completely, a mantle of serenity that was not hers but enveloped her like an embrace.

A word remained brooding in her mind, one clearer and harder than the others. Crimson Duchess. It was a martyr's curse, a madwoman's truth; it was the rage of one who has already lost everything. Nyssa, with her mind broken by years of silent poisoning, had spat that name like a dagger. And now, that dagger was plunged into Selena's chest. The understanding was an internal collapse, a freefall toward a monstrous truth. —So the owner of this body... —she whispered to herself, her voice cracking at the revelation.

—Isabella... was the Duchess. The one who killed the men in the market just for a few looks of disapproval. A deep sigh, laden with the weight of both alien and personal guilt, escaped her chest. She felt stained, contaminated. The blood of those anonymous vendors, the blood of Nyssa, the blood that stained the name of Solendra... all of that was now, somehow, her responsibility. Her body, her hands, her face belonged to the woman who had ordered those deaths.

—The corrupt nobility that corrupted my heart with rage upon hearing the story... —she continued, and now her voice trembled. —It is this body that brought about those inhuman acts. The one whose fault it is that Nyssa also died. She walked, brooding, her bare feet tracing invisible paths over the carpet, and she slumped onto one of the luxurious stools by the fireplace. The carved wood felt cold and hostile to touch, a brutal contrast to the warmth of the bracelet.

—The girls must hate me by now —she murmured, and the certainty of it was a dagger in her side. The image of Lyra, with her calloused hand resting on the scar crossing her cheek, came to her mind with painful clarity. The scarred one, the one who had been destroyed by a lie, the one who would now see in her the same kind of people who had condemned her. Kaela's face, her scream, her shriek when the blood touched her skin. The paleness in Anya, her broken silence, her faith wavering before the unleashed violence.

The collective fear, the crouched bodies, the foreheads against the dirt. —I... the traitor or the noble playing at being poor —she concluded, her voice reduced to a thread of bitterness. —That is what they must think now. Her gaze fell upon the bracelet of intertwined threads and dark stones adorning her left wrist.

That slight warmth, constant and serene, continued to flow from it, a tangible reminder of the bond that tied her to a kinder reality, to a world where she had been just Selena, the merchant's daughter, Kaela's friend, the seeker of answers. She remembered the moment when, with trembling hands but filled with instinctive certainty, she had given her own bracelet, the one with cold, metallic tones, the one that had caused her that icy shiver and that taste of phantom blood, to Kaela.

—It was true after all —she thought, and a slight smile, laden with wonder and bitter comfort, formed on her lips. —Corren did protect us. He kept his bargain. It was magic. There was no room for doubt now. Not a fairy tale fantasy, not a legend of slaves, but a tangible and silent force operating at the edges of this world, in the gaps that the Church and the Crown could not control. Her bracelet, the one on her wrist, was an object created with that power, or at least imbued with it.

An artifact of connection, of protection. He surely knew the answers about the magic of this world she thought with a hint of frustrated complicity. But he couldn't answer me. He was as trapped as I am, just as I thought from the very beginning.