Page 43 of The Vespertine Treaty

Eliza.

She steadied me instantly, her hands warm and trembling. Her sapphire-blue aura flared in shock, then softened in instinctive comfort as my small body convulsed against her.

“Oh, my darling girl,” she breathed, cupping the back of my head. “What did you see?”

I couldn’t speak the words. I could only sob them—broken, breathless fragments about skirts and colours and hurt and silver drowning in orange-red.

She gathered me into her apron, cradling my head against her chest as if she could shield my mind the way she shielded my face. “Shhh, shh… I have you, I will always have you, Ophelia,” she whispered, rocking me. “The colours cannot hurt you. Not here. Not while I’m holding you.”

Eliza didn’t tell me I was mistaken. She didn’t say I imagined the colours. She never had.

She understood that my sight, this cursed gift that painted emotions in light, was also the only defence I had against the poison saturating the Ashworth estate like rot.

She guided me to sit on the cool stone path. She gently pried my shaking hands from my vest, where Poppy trembled, and pressed the smooth river-stone into my palms. Her thumb brushed over my knuckles as she drew the stone slowly across my skin.

“Feel it,” she murmured, voice low and warm. “Come back to yourself, my child. The colours cannot hurt you. Not while you name the ones that shine. Tell me the goodness. Find the blue. Find the calm in the garden, the beautiful one inside here,” she tapped my chest with her delicate, but worn fingers.

Sobbing, I obeyed. Her sapphire. Poppy’s gold. The willow’s pale green.

Each one a fragile thread, thrown across a chasm I had no words for, only a child’s terror and a child’s desperate grasp for safe light.

Eliza held me until my trembling eased, rocking me until the colours settled back into something soft, something survivable.

But even as she soothed me, even as she pressed the smooth stone into my palm and guided my shaking fingers over its cool surface—I knew the truth.

Some colours were born to hurt. And some moments stained you forever.

A tear slipped on my cheek before I could wipe it.

Philomena’s expression softened. “Ophelia?”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to drift like that.”

“You have no need to apologise.” Her voice was gentle but sure. “Trauma has its own passageways. If you’d like, we can talk more tomorrow. At the banquet, perhaps? Somewhere quieter, if we can find the time.”

I nodded, throat tight. “Yes. Tomorrow.”

Footsteps rang down the corridor, measured, resonant, unmistakably his.

Cain.

Approaching with the authority of someone who never had to question whether doors would open for him.

Poppy hissed,“Great. Here comes His Royal Assface.”

I stepped back instinctively. “I should go, Consul.”

Philomena gave me an encouraging nod. “We’ll speak again.”

I slipped past her just as Cain reached the threshold, my heartbeat a ragged flutter, the echo of sapphire and gold and willow-green clinging to me like fading light. His eyes narrowed as he turned his head to watch me go in the opposite direction.

Poppy gently nudged me, and when I turned to look at her, all she said was“I remember it too, Oph…”. We walked back toward the bedchambers, two survivors of a gold and silver past, trying to navigate a world that was fast turning to ash.

CHAPTER 17

OPHELIA

The conservatory confrontation with Cain from last night had left me raw and exposed, my defences shattered. I had won the psychological skirmish, but the victory felt hollow, a desperate, pyrrhic one. The air in the estate still tasted of petrichor and frost, a lingering reminder of the magic display he had unleashed upon her.