A murky wriggling entity, its color balefully inky and odor gut-twistingly foul, nearly devoured the woman whole. It wrung and sealed the kneeling woman’s body as if desperately wishing to penetrate and sink into her flesh. Like a pit of knotted snakes, a lair of worms and wyrms, and maggot-packed lively rotten meat, it constantly writhed and crawled on her body and hair, forming a nasty wretched mound.
If not for an eye, arresting with a faint sage green aura emitting from its emerald iris, visible from the damp slithery entity, one would not recognize it as a person, but only a monster. At a glance, it was perceivable that the nearly dying out sage aura was futilely fighting and clashing against the squirming black thing, desperate to not get swallowed entirely.
At once, Seraphina recognized that eye. After all, it was uncannily identical to her youngest elder brother’s.
“Finally, we meet. Lilianne, the rarest of all aura wielders, a spiritual warrior,” the little girl heaved as her throat and nostrils ached sorely in frustration, heartache, as well as outrage.
You have come, child. Finally, you have found me… An esteemed ancient divine beast, a nine-tailed fox, the voice which often haunted Seraphina in her restless nights, spoke defeated.
“Closer to the north, the stronger the pull became. When I’m with my brothers, it overwhelmed me… so much so that, against all odds and reason, my thoughts and suspicions revolved around you… In the dead of the night, I would sneak into the eastern chambers, sitting on your bed, staring at your portrait, sniffing and breathing the malodorous stench left behind by a curse like a madman,” the child took a step forward, seemingly unbothered by the squirming black liquid drenching and drowning the woman.
Seraphina’s heart was breaking, aching, and thumping in anguish as splitting bitterness stung her nose and eyes. After the incident with Aklis, it was impossible for her to not recognize the twisting thick dark liquid as a curse. The realization that her elder brothers were refused and robbed of the chance to fight for their mother and lost her in the cruelest and the most torturous battle crushed her heart like an iron boulder.
I see you are a clever and loving child. I am grateful that my sons were blessed to have you as a family, Lilianne spoke.
“No, the blessed one is me… it has always been me,” Seraphina wished to smile, but the grand duchess’s weary voice and slowly burning-out aura did nothing but moisten the roots of her long curly lashes.
Child, forgive me. Forgive me for leaving this heavy burden to you… Amaris has never lost the hope to find the cure to this curse, the same for my brother, Lysias. However, fate is what it is. The day this curse befell me, I separated and sealed my consciousness inside my body using my aura. I was afraid and disgusted with the monster I had become and could not accept the fact that the people who had died in these hands were the people who had always respected and adored me. But now, my time has run short. I am tired and weakened. As you might have realized, by the time my consciousness is completely devoured by the curse, I will no longer be a human. Even if a miracle happens and the curse is broken, it would only be the lifeless body of a monster that would remain. Therefore, child, before my aura is exhausted, find my body and kill me so that I die as a human. Please, end this madness for us all.
Seraphina took a deep breath to calm her jumbled emotions and toiled nerves. If a tear could lessen the woman’s pain or loosen the strangling curse, she would have cried a sea and sniffled an ocean. However, she knew it could not, and the glistening moisture clinging onto the roots of the crimson curly lashes never fell.
“You are wrong. Fate is what it is until destiny intervenes… Lilianne, I am here, right here, standing before you, because destiny brought me to you,” the child trod closer to the turbid mound, raised an arm, and reached her hand into the wriggling heap of contortion before sinking it deeply into its flesh determinedly. As she pushed further and further despite the resistance of clamping and slashing liquid that slithered on from her arm to shoulder and neck, soon her tiny palm landed on a warm surface. She rested her small hand on the grand duchess’s cheek, feeling the warmth of the other and letting the other feel hers, and said,
“So, fight. Fight until the last speck of your soul wears out because I will do so. Believe in me, as I will break this curse of yours. And, I promise that you will die as a human, but not here, and certainly not this way,” Seraphina’s chest heaved breathily as a stomach-hurling rotten flesh of wyrm tightened around her neck and jaw.
Astonishing as it is, defying the pain and revulsion, her ethereal golden irises burnt with flames of unyielding stubbornness and unbending bravery. They shone like raging fire and igniting daybreak, displaying the predator she was.
As the little girl’s oath sunk to the despairing woman, a lone tear fell from the emerald eye and was soon swallowed by the hungry writhing entity. The sage aura emitting from the only part left untainted by the curse, after nine years of struggle, finally ignited a bit of life and luster as a tender glimmer of hope sprouted within it.
Child, you – the words halted mid-sentence, and her screech erupted instantaneously.
No, it’s here! Go! Leave, child! Lilianne shrieked.
Seraphina broke free from the curse with sheer force, growling and tearing, and turned around the instant a demonic presence revealed itself. As the grand duchess’s shout echoed, the little girl retracted her wandering consciousness back to her physical body, albeit a second late.
Asymmetrical bones, rotten and tattered muscle, black acidy dripping blood, bent spine, overgrown spidery limbs, protruding shoulder blades, mutated canines and claws, bolding head with bent skull and fishy eyes, a sunk belly, skin tearing wide sharp ribs, a smell of the dead. A hungry, soulless monster.
The moment Seraphina turned around, a death-reeking bloody creature lashed at her, its pointy claw bones slashing open her back and chest from her shoulder blades all the way around her torso.
.
.
.
The little girl sat on the terrace handle, her flaring locks swaying and dancing to the breeze and bare feet dangling in the air. Her eyes fell on the horizon that blushed faintly in amber hues following the rise of dawn.
“Where are my elder brothers?” Asked the girl without looking back.
“The young masters have not left the library since yesterday’s incident in his grace’s study. They skipped dinner altogether and did not rest at all,” Julia reported.
A sigh left Seraphina’s tender lips as she jumped down from the rail, took off her nightgown in a swing, threw it on the bed, and started unfurling the bandages wrapped snuggly around her upper body.
“My lady!” Julia’s panicky concern instantly followed.
“No need. It’s already healed,” the child’s nonchalant voice responded.
After throwing the bloodied bandages on the floor, she ran her tiny hands through her dense crimson waves and left to take a bath to wash away the fatigue, along with the bitter smell of medicine and the putrid stench of the curse that only she herself could discern. As the door to the bathroom opened, her eerily calm yet melodic voice ordered monotone, causing the dame to shiver in response.
“Prepare breakfast in the dining hall of Eastern Wing.”
“My lady, but that’s-” the dame’s utter was cut off.
“Julia.”
“I understand, m’lady,” bowed the older woman before taking her leave, and the bathroom door closed.
.
.
.
“Do you believe you have the capability to stop me?” The little girl’s milky voice was neither overbearing nor subservient as she raised her head and locked eyes with the young man, who was dressed neatly and stood upright.
Age-wise, the youngster seemed yet to be in his twenties, but oddly enough, he stood his ground under Seraphina’s scorching golden pupils.
“Forgive me, my lady. Young master Ihan forbade anyone from entering,” Rans, the heir’s young aide, bowed impeccably.
“Rans, listen, if you don’t want to be beaten black and blue by your mother, step aside, as even your father would refrain from crossing me in my current mood,” said the child before pushing the door open, leaving behind a stunned man.
Rans Ravens, a love child born from one night’s blessed drunken stupor between Dame Julia and Knights Commander Lysias Ravens. Unlike everyone’s expectation, instead of following his parents' steps in knighthood, became my eldest brother’s young aide. Rans, a loyal man with crafty intelligence and courage, and my brothers’ one and only cousin, Seraphina amused.
The library floor was flooded with haphazardly thrown open scrolls, books, and journals, which were all, one way or another, related to curses, ancient spells, and demonic magic.
Ihan stood behind a desk with a thick dusty book with several burnt candles and empty inkwells loitering in front of him, his hands and shirt stained here and there, and the long silver strands pulled up in a ponytail. Aegaeon was on the sofa next to the window, glasses shattered around, the chilly morning breeze blowing his ruffled clothes from time to time, and his unbent spine, for the first time, hunched as he hid his face in his palms, knuckles all bloody. The youngest, Deimos, sat on the floor with stacks of books surrounding him like tiny towers, his face slightly paler than usual and his lips torn and cut open from biting.
“Seraphina, why are you not resting? Your injury-” Ihan was the only one to raise his head and acknowledge the child.
“It’s morning, elder brothers. You know I can give the answers that you are searching from this moldy piles of rubbish, but none of you came to me. So, I came here myself,” the little girl interrupted the heir.
“Little sister,” called Aegaeon as he lowered his hands, palms no longer shielding his eyes, and fingers releasing the tightly clutched honey-brown curls. The rims of his eyes and the tip of his nose were red and slightly swollen.
“It’s because you were afraid that I would refuse to help. You thought I might be reluctant to save her grace.”
“No. That’s not how we see you. We just did not wish to drag you into-” Deimos raised his head abruptly from his book like a startled, wounded beast.
“Am I not your family? Am I not a Callenso?!” Burst the little girl before taking deep, forced breaths.
“Let me ask you. If, if it was my mother… would you not help her?” Her words silenced the brothers.
“Elder brothers, it takes lots of courage for me to hold onto someone. So… please don’t hurt me,” Seraphina turned to leave as both Aegaeon and Deimos sprung to their feet in panic.
“Stop right there. You guys stink. Freshen up and come to the dining hall of the eastern wing,” left the little girl.
As she bypassed the young aide of the heir, a whisper grazed the man’s ears.
“Bring Leah to Eastern Wing,” she ordered, her short legs never halting.
The dining hall was as silent as the chambers of the dead. Besides the occasional clinks of cutleries, neither the young masters nor the tiny lady spoke a word. The three young lads, from time to time, would steal glances at their abnormally quiet little sister, hoping to decipher whether this stillness before the storm was presumably their over-sensitivity and imagination or the little girl was, indeed, warming up for bloodshed.
“Little sister,” the fieriest of the three, Aegaeon, gently probed the sombre young lady after a huge round fruit tart was demolished into crumbs by her little mouth.
Seraphina was, in fact, neither upset nor fuming like her elder brothers feared her to be. She was already an adult in mind and, as a child who had already lost a mother, understood and accepted their current feelings, emotions, behaviors, and actions. She could tell these young men were shaken and agitated from the truth regarding the grand duchess, which could either be considered as deceptive concealment or betrayal from their respected and dearest father. Moreover, the sudden terror of losing their mother while watching her despair and the bursting longing to save her must have suffocated the trio. However, understanding and accepting were different from welcoming.
It was an unassailable truth that her brothers had tender affection for her. However, their actions of choosing isolation over consultation proved that the trust that should exist between the family was still, like it has always been, absent. And this realization hurt Seraphina and gave birth to a sense of loss that was hard to brush away with a breath.
The little girl did not answer the cautious call of her brother, and the tall magnificent doors to the hall opened with a creek, and frighteningly well-measured and paced steps of a man and clicking of a slightly trotting woman’s heels pressed on the carpeted floor.
“Good. Since the related party has arrived, shall we start?” Seraphina chuckled, but the light of mischief never graced her lovely upturned doe eyes, which landed squarely on Leah, whose face donned terrifying deep shades of blues, purples, and reds with inflated bruising covering her face.
Sensing the child’s scorn-drenched blatant desire to kill, the woman’s stomach tightened, and her breath hitched subconsciously.
“My lady,” Leah’s weak whisper fell, which the heir cut off brutally.
“Shut up,” his command was ruthlessly cold and authoritative.
Leah shivered as her eyes enlarged to the point of bulging as such treatment from the young masters, the children whom she raised as if her own, were like a dream, a horrifying nightmare, and her scalp tingled with trepidation and fright as tears of heartbreak and unjust suffering fell drop by drop, pitiful yet masterfully elegant.
“Do you wish him to stay, eldest brother?” Seraphina nodded at Rans.
“Let him stay, Seraphina. It is a late introduction, but he is our cousin,” Ihan responded gently, which did not come as a start to either the child or the young aide.
“Elder brothers, daddy handed over the materials and investigation results of the last decade to you and assented to your request to handle her grace’s matter yourselves. However, what he failed to accomplish for years, do you have the confidence to achieve?” The little girl jumped down from the cushioned seat with feathery light movement and walked towards the trembling woman before stopping right in front of her.
“Little sister, does Leah have something to do with mother’s curse?” Deimos asked with near certainty after witnessing the child’s unconcealed hostility and abhorrence towards the woman.
As soon as the boy’s calm question reverberated through the marble columns of the hall, the weeping woman dropped to the ground as if the world was collapsing and wailed in anguish and sorrow.
“How can you say such words, young master? Her grace was a friend I grew up from infancy together. She was my sister! How, just, how can you?” Leah whimpered, her tears cascading down and hands clutching at her chest.
A loud thump erupted, and the dining table was severed in half with a brute force. Much like a provoked beast, the rogue of the Callensos rose from his seat in raw aggression, causing his chair to fall to the ground from the momentum, and looked down at his younger brother with a clear warning.
“Talk human before spitting dog shit. She was our nursemaid before becoming headmaid, and she was the one who fed and cleaned you in our mother’s instead,” Aegaeon rumbled lowly.
“Young masters! You must not quarrel for me,” the woman shouted distressedly, her wet face displaying concern and heartache.
Very well, Seraphina lowered her eyelids after witnessing the clash of her brothers, the long fanning lashes shielding the sarcastic blades and the cruelty of a bloodthirsty beast.
“Enough,” the heir also left his seat, approached his little sister, and gently patted the overly adorable red curls on her crown endearingly.
“You’re scaring the child,” he stated, causing the second young master to flinch.
“Little sister,” Aegaeon called, but the child turned a blind eye to his yet another cautious call.
“Elder brother Deimos, I have felt it strange ever since the incident in daddy’s study,” Seraphina looked towards the quiet boy sitting unperturbed by the smashed table and dishes.
“She has mother’s lost engagement ring,” Deimos explained to his sister.
“No! I, I… it is a keepsake. A keepsake to remember Lilianne,” Leah cried.
“And she puts it on when she is alone… with a smile of victory,” Deimos concluded.
Leah’s face glared maroon as if blood would seep out with a poke, yet instantly turned ghastly pale like a pile of ashes in a breath.
That explains his silent repulsion, Seraphina’s drooping lashes concealed her thoughts.
As well as his cruelty towards her in my previous life.
“Elder brothers, it is not that Leah has something to do with the curse, but she has everything to do with it,” Seraphina declared after getting a satisfactory answer to her curiosity.
“Shut up!” Leah snarled as if the last bit of sanity left her.
“Oh, it is too early to show your claws, dear,” the little girl tutted in mockery.
“Eldest young master, she’s lying. She’s deceiving you to kill me! She wants to destroy her grace’s place in the grand duchy!” Her hysterics fell as she clung to the heir’s trousers like a deranged woman.
Instantaneously, a forest green aura struck the woman’s chest viciously, sending her flying. Aegaeon’s chest heaved in unreconciled fury as his fists tightened with each passing second, causing prickling cracks to drum the listeners’ ears. His eyes staring at the unconscious woman were poisonous and lethal.
“Calm down,” Deimos clasped his brother’s wrist.
“Elder brothers, I will leave the rest to you. I believe making her open her mouth would not be complicated now that things have become clear… Daddy and Sir Lysias failed to unveil the mystery because their starting point was wrong. Leah is our starting point, the right one. She cursed her grace in her chambers. Her grace’s bedroom is full of a stench left behind by the curse, and so is Leah’s body. Please remember that time is running out. The first priority is the method and the sacrifice of the curse. As for from where and whom she got the curse and under whose order she committed it, those can be dealt with slowly after we save her grace… For now, let her keep her life,” Seraphina serenely explained and directed her brothers, her comically childish voice tickling, fresh like a spring water.
In all sense, making someone speak, especially Leah’s kind, was something Seraphina did not need help with. However, she did not wish this incident to remain a scar to her brothers and instead become a lesson. Therefore, if there was anything that her brothers could solve by themselves, she would withdraw a step. After all, it was their fight, a battle which their father, the grand duke, lost in her previous life.
Seraphina threw her brothers a brilliant toothy grin, turned on her heels, and left the hall.
As the enormous doors of the hall closed, her head bobbed cheekily, the bells on her buns and braids jingling lively, and she dropped a sentence, leaving behind dazed young men.
“Ah, almost forgot, second brother Aegaeon, your aura is very beautiful… comparable to Lilianne’s,” Seraphina chirped before storming off to find her dearest father.
A murky wriggling entity, its color balefully inky and odor gut-twistingly foul, nearly devoured the woman whole. It wrung and sealed the kneeling woman’s body as if desperately wishing to penetrate and sink into her flesh. Like a pit of knotted snakes, a lair of worms and wyrms, and maggot-packed lively rotten meat, it constantly writhed and crawled on her body and hair, forming a nasty wretched mound.
If not for an eye, arresting with a faint sage green aura emitting from its emerald iris, visible from the damp slithery entity, one would not recognize it as a person, but only a monster. At a glance, it was perceivable that the nearly dying out sage aura was futilely fighting and clashing against the squirming black thing, desperate to not get swallowed entirely.
At once, Seraphina recognized that eye. After all, it was uncannily identical to her youngest elder brother’s.
“Finally, we meet. Lilianne, the rarest of all aura wielders, a spiritual warrior,” the little girl heaved as her throat and nostrils ached sorely in frustration, heartache, as well as outrage.
You have come, child. Finally, you have found me… An esteemed ancient divine beast, a nine-tailed fox, the voice which often haunted Seraphina in her restless nights, spoke defeated.
“Closer to the north, the stronger the pull became. When I’m with my brothers, it overwhelmed me… so much so that, against all odds and reason, my thoughts and suspicions revolved around you… In the dead of the night, I would sneak into the eastern chambers, sitting on your bed, staring at your portrait, sniffing and breathing the malodorous stench left behind by a curse like a madman,” the child took a step forward, seemingly unbothered by the squirming black liquid drenching and drowning the woman.
Seraphina’s heart was breaking, aching, and thumping in anguish as splitting bitterness stung her nose and eyes. After the incident with Aklis, it was impossible for her to not recognize the twisting thick dark liquid as a curse. The realization that her elder brothers were refused and robbed of the chance to fight for their mother and lost her in the cruelest and the most torturous battle crushed her heart like an iron boulder.
I see you are a clever and loving child. I am grateful that my sons were blessed to have you as a family, Lilianne spoke.
“No, the blessed one is me… it has always been me,” Seraphina wished to smile, but the grand duchess’s weary voice and slowly burning-out aura did nothing but moisten the roots of her long curly lashes.
Child, forgive me. Forgive me for leaving this heavy burden to you… Amaris has never lost the hope to find the cure to this curse, the same for my brother, Lysias. However, fate is what it is. The day this curse befell me, I separated and sealed my consciousness inside my body using my aura. I was afraid and disgusted with the monster I had become and could not accept the fact that the people who had died in these hands were the people who had always respected and adored me. But now, my time has run short. I am tired and weakened. As you might have realized, by the time my consciousness is completely devoured by the curse, I will no longer be a human. Even if a miracle happens and the curse is broken, it would only be the lifeless body of a monster that would remain. Therefore, child, before my aura is exhausted, find my body and kill me so that I die as a human. Please, end this madness for us all.
Seraphina took a deep breath to calm her jumbled emotions and toiled nerves. If a tear could lessen the woman’s pain or loosen the strangling curse, she would have cried a sea and sniffled an ocean. However, she knew it could not, and the glistening moisture clinging onto the roots of the crimson curly lashes never fell.
“You are wrong. Fate is what it is until destiny intervenes… Lilianne, I am here, right here, standing before you, because destiny brought me to you,” the child trod closer to the turbid mound, raised an arm, and reached her hand into the wriggling heap of contortion before sinking it deeply into its flesh determinedly. As she pushed further and further despite the resistance of clamping and slashing liquid that slithered on from her arm to shoulder and neck, soon her tiny palm landed on a warm surface. She rested her small hand on the grand duchess’s cheek, feeling the warmth of the other and letting the other feel hers, and said,
“So, fight. Fight until the last speck of your soul wears out because I will do so. Believe in me, as I will break this curse of yours. And, I promise that you will die as a human, but not here, and certainly not this way,” Seraphina’s chest heaved breathily as a stomach-hurling rotten flesh of wyrm tightened around her neck and jaw.
Astonishing as it is, defying the pain and revulsion, her ethereal golden irises burnt with flames of unyielding stubbornness and unbending bravery. They shone like raging fire and igniting daybreak, displaying the predator she was.
As the little girl’s oath sunk to the despairing woman, a lone tear fell from the emerald eye and was soon swallowed by the hungry writhing entity. The sage aura emitting from the only part left untainted by the curse, after nine years of struggle, finally ignited a bit of life and luster as a tender glimmer of hope sprouted within it.
Child, you – the words halted mid-sentence, and her screech erupted instantaneously.
No, it’s here! Go! Leave, child! Lilianne shrieked.
Seraphina broke free from the curse with sheer force, growling and tearing, and turned around the instant a demonic presence revealed itself. As the grand duchess’s shout echoed, the little girl retracted her wandering consciousness back to her physical body, albeit a second late.
Asymmetrical bones, rotten and tattered muscle, black acidy dripping blood, bent spine, overgrown spidery limbs, protruding shoulder blades, mutated canines and claws, bolding head with bent skull and fishy eyes, a sunk belly, skin tearing wide sharp ribs, a smell of the dead. A hungry, soulless monster.
The moment Seraphina turned around, a death-reeking bloody creature lashed at her, its pointy claw bones slashing open her back and chest from her shoulder blades all the way around her torso.
.
.
.
The little girl sat on the terrace handle, her flaring locks swaying and dancing to the breeze and bare feet dangling in the air. Her eyes fell on the horizon that blushed faintly in amber hues following the rise of dawn.
“Where are my elder brothers?” Asked the girl without looking back.
“The young masters have not left the library since yesterday’s incident in his grace’s study. They skipped dinner altogether and did not rest at all,” Julia reported.
A sigh left Seraphina’s tender lips as she jumped down from the rail, took off her nightgown in a swing, threw it on the bed, and started unfurling the bandages wrapped snuggly around her upper body.
“My lady!” Julia’s panicky concern instantly followed.
“No need. It’s already healed,” the child’s nonchalant voice responded.
After throwing the bloodied bandages on the floor, she ran her tiny hands through her dense crimson waves and left to take a bath to wash away the fatigue, along with the bitter smell of medicine and the putrid stench of the curse that only she herself could discern. As the door to the bathroom opened, her eerily calm yet melodic voice ordered monotone, causing the dame to shiver in response.
“Prepare breakfast in the dining hall of Eastern Wing.”
“My lady, but that’s-” the dame’s utter was cut off.
“Julia.”
“I understand, m’lady,” bowed the older woman before taking her leave, and the bathroom door closed.
.
.
.
“Do you believe you have the capability to stop me?” The little girl’s milky voice was neither overbearing nor subservient as she raised her head and locked eyes with the young man, who was dressed neatly and stood upright.
Age-wise, the youngster seemed yet to be in his twenties, but oddly enough, he stood his ground under Seraphina’s scorching golden pupils.
“Forgive me, my lady. Young master Ihan forbade anyone from entering,” Rans, the heir’s young aide, bowed impeccably.
“Rans, listen, if you don’t want to be beaten black and blue by your mother, step aside, as even your father would refrain from crossing me in my current mood,” said the child before pushing the door open, leaving behind a stunned man.
Rans Ravens, a love child born from one night’s blessed drunken stupor between Dame Julia and Knights Commander Lysias Ravens. Unlike everyone’s expectation, instead of following his parents' steps in knighthood, became my eldest brother’s young aide. Rans, a loyal man with crafty intelligence and courage, and my brothers’ one and only cousin, Seraphina amused.
The library floor was flooded with haphazardly thrown open scrolls, books, and journals, which were all, one way or another, related to curses, ancient spells, and demonic magic.
Ihan stood behind a desk with a thick dusty book with several burnt candles and empty inkwells loitering in front of him, his hands and shirt stained here and there, and the long silver strands pulled up in a ponytail. Aegaeon was on the sofa next to the window, glasses shattered around, the chilly morning breeze blowing his ruffled clothes from time to time, and his unbent spine, for the first time, hunched as he hid his face in his palms, knuckles all bloody. The youngest, Deimos, sat on the floor with stacks of books surrounding him like tiny towers, his face slightly paler than usual and his lips torn and cut open from biting.
“Seraphina, why are you not resting? Your injury-” Ihan was the only one to raise his head and acknowledge the child.
“It’s morning, elder brothers. You know I can give the answers that you are searching from this moldy piles of rubbish, but none of you came to me. So, I came here myself,” the little girl interrupted the heir.
“Little sister,” called Aegaeon as he lowered his hands, palms no longer shielding his eyes, and fingers releasing the tightly clutched honey-brown curls. The rims of his eyes and the tip of his nose were red and slightly swollen.
“It’s because you were afraid that I would refuse to help. You thought I might be reluctant to save her grace.”
“No. That’s not how we see you. We just did not wish to drag you into-” Deimos raised his head abruptly from his book like a startled, wounded beast.
“Am I not your family? Am I not a Callenso?!” Burst the little girl before taking deep, forced breaths.
“Let me ask you. If, if it was my mother… would you not help her?” Her words silenced the brothers.
“Elder brothers, it takes lots of courage for me to hold onto someone. So… please don’t hurt me,” Seraphina turned to leave as both Aegaeon and Deimos sprung to their feet in panic.
“Stop right there. You guys stink. Freshen up and come to the dining hall of the eastern wing,” left the little girl.
As she bypassed the young aide of the heir, a whisper grazed the man’s ears.
“Bring Leah to Eastern Wing,” she ordered, her short legs never halting.
The dining hall was as silent as the chambers of the dead. Besides the occasional clinks of cutleries, neither the young masters nor the tiny lady spoke a word. The three young lads, from time to time, would steal glances at their abnormally quiet little sister, hoping to decipher whether this stillness before the storm was presumably their over-sensitivity and imagination or the little girl was, indeed, warming up for bloodshed.
“Little sister,” the fieriest of the three, Aegaeon, gently probed the sombre young lady after a huge round fruit tart was demolished into crumbs by her little mouth.
Seraphina was, in fact, neither upset nor fuming like her elder brothers feared her to be. She was already an adult in mind and, as a child who had already lost a mother, understood and accepted their current feelings, emotions, behaviors, and actions. She could tell these young men were shaken and agitated from the truth regarding the grand duchess, which could either be considered as deceptive concealment or betrayal from their respected and dearest father. Moreover, the sudden terror of losing their mother while watching her despair and the bursting longing to save her must have suffocated the trio. However, understanding and accepting were different from welcoming.
It was an unassailable truth that her brothers had tender affection for her. However, their actions of choosing isolation over consultation proved that the trust that should exist between the family was still, like it has always been, absent. And this realization hurt Seraphina and gave birth to a sense of loss that was hard to brush away with a breath.
The little girl did not answer the cautious call of her brother, and the tall magnificent doors to the hall opened with a creek, and frighteningly well-measured and paced steps of a man and clicking of a slightly trotting woman’s heels pressed on the carpeted floor.
“Good. Since the related party has arrived, shall we start?” Seraphina chuckled, but the light of mischief never graced her lovely upturned doe eyes, which landed squarely on Leah, whose face donned terrifying deep shades of blues, purples, and reds with inflated bruising covering her face.
Sensing the child’s scorn-drenched blatant desire to kill, the woman’s stomach tightened, and her breath hitched subconsciously.
“My lady,” Leah’s weak whisper fell, which the heir cut off brutally.
“Shut up,” his command was ruthlessly cold and authoritative.
Leah shivered as her eyes enlarged to the point of bulging as such treatment from the young masters, the children whom she raised as if her own, were like a dream, a horrifying nightmare, and her scalp tingled with trepidation and fright as tears of heartbreak and unjust suffering fell drop by drop, pitiful yet masterfully elegant.
“Do you wish him to stay, eldest brother?” Seraphina nodded at Rans.
“Let him stay, Seraphina. It is a late introduction, but he is our cousin,” Ihan responded gently, which did not come as a start to either the child or the young aide.
“Elder brothers, daddy handed over the materials and investigation results of the last decade to you and assented to your request to handle her grace’s matter yourselves. However, what he failed to accomplish for years, do you have the confidence to achieve?” The little girl jumped down from the cushioned seat with feathery light movement and walked towards the trembling woman before stopping right in front of her.
“Little sister, does Leah have something to do with mother’s curse?” Deimos asked with near certainty after witnessing the child’s unconcealed hostility and abhorrence towards the woman.
As soon as the boy’s calm question reverberated through the marble columns of the hall, the weeping woman dropped to the ground as if the world was collapsing and wailed in anguish and sorrow.
“How can you say such words, young master? Her grace was a friend I grew up from infancy together. She was my sister! How, just, how can you?” Leah whimpered, her tears cascading down and hands clutching at her chest.
A loud thump erupted, and the dining table was severed in half with a brute force. Much like a provoked beast, the rogue of the Callensos rose from his seat in raw aggression, causing his chair to fall to the ground from the momentum, and looked down at his younger brother with a clear warning.
“Talk human before spitting dog shit. She was our nursemaid before becoming headmaid, and she was the one who fed and cleaned you in our mother’s instead,” Aegaeon rumbled lowly.
“Young masters! You must not quarrel for me,” the woman shouted distressedly, her wet face displaying concern and heartache.
Very well, Seraphina lowered her eyelids after witnessing the clash of her brothers, the long fanning lashes shielding the sarcastic blades and the cruelty of a bloodthirsty beast.
“Enough,” the heir also left his seat, approached his little sister, and gently patted the overly adorable red curls on her crown endearingly.
“You’re scaring the child,” he stated, causing the second young master to flinch.
“Little sister,” Aegaeon called, but the child turned a blind eye to his yet another cautious call.
“Elder brother Deimos, I have felt it strange ever since the incident in daddy’s study,” Seraphina looked towards the quiet boy sitting unperturbed by the smashed table and dishes.
“She has mother’s lost engagement ring,” Deimos explained to his sister.
“No! I, I… it is a keepsake. A keepsake to remember Lilianne,” Leah cried.
“And she puts it on when she is alone… with a smile of victory,” Deimos concluded.
Leah’s face glared maroon as if blood would seep out with a poke, yet instantly turned ghastly pale like a pile of ashes in a breath.
That explains his silent repulsion, Seraphina’s drooping lashes concealed her thoughts.
As well as his cruelty towards her in my previous life.
“Elder brothers, it is not that Leah has something to do with the curse, but she has everything to do with it,” Seraphina declared after getting a satisfactory answer to her curiosity.
“Shut up!” Leah snarled as if the last bit of sanity left her.
“Oh, it is too early to show your claws, dear,” the little girl tutted in mockery.
“Eldest young master, she’s lying. She’s deceiving you to kill me! She wants to destroy her grace’s place in the grand duchy!” Her hysterics fell as she clung to the heir’s trousers like a deranged woman.
Instantaneously, a forest green aura struck the woman’s chest viciously, sending her flying. Aegaeon’s chest heaved in unreconciled fury as his fists tightened with each passing second, causing prickling cracks to drum the listeners’ ears. His eyes staring at the unconscious woman were poisonous and lethal.
“Calm down,” Deimos clasped his brother’s wrist.
“Elder brothers, I will leave the rest to you. I believe making her open her mouth would not be complicated now that things have become clear… Daddy and Sir Lysias failed to unveil the mystery because their starting point was wrong. Leah is our starting point, the right one. She cursed her grace in her chambers. Her grace’s bedroom is full of a stench left behind by the curse, and so is Leah’s body. Please remember that time is running out. The first priority is the method and the sacrifice of the curse. As for from where and whom she got the curse and under whose order she committed it, those can be dealt with slowly after we save her grace… For now, let her keep her life,” Seraphina serenely explained and directed her brothers, her comically childish voice tickling, fresh like a spring water.
In all sense, making someone speak, especially Leah’s kind, was something Seraphina did not need help with. However, she did not wish this incident to remain a scar to her brothers and instead become a lesson. Therefore, if there was anything that her brothers could solve by themselves, she would withdraw a step. After all, it was their fight, a battle which their father, the grand duke, lost in her previous life.
Seraphina threw her brothers a brilliant toothy grin, turned on her heels, and left the hall.
As the enormous doors of the hall closed, her head bobbed cheekily, the bells on her buns and braids jingling lively, and she dropped a sentence, leaving behind dazed young men.
“Ah, almost forgot, second brother Aegaeon, your aura is very beautiful… comparable to Lilianne’s,” Seraphina chirped before storming off to find her dearest father.
