Emilie of the Royal Heart

Chapter 44: The Countess was on a Secret Mission This Whole Time

 "My mother?" Emilie squeaked. That hadn't been the topic she was anticipating. Analeigh nodded, aggressively shaking her ribbons.

"I've had correspondence with her. She's been looking for you!"

"She's alive?"

Analeigh leaned back with her features pinched together in puzzlement, but then she quickly rushed forward with, "yes! She's very much alive! We've been exchanging letters."

Her world was spinning off its axis. Emilie brought a hand to her forehead. She thought her mother had been killed along with her father and her two brothers. All this time, she thought she was alone. She thought everything and everyone was gone. But her mother was alive! This changed everything! She wouldn't visit Zuhia just for the Sapphire Bloom, she would visit to see her mother. She would cook a meal with her again and sit down and eat at the table like they used to. She could tell her everything that had happened in Fellen.

Oh, she could tell her everything. About Aurora and Analeigh and Elias and Cedric and Tiago. And about her lovely, sometimes ridiculous dresses and her attendants and how no one in Fellen knew about whistling songs.

Maybe one day, Elias could make an arrangement with the Zuhian government and they might allow her mother to cross over the border. She could come stay with her. Emilie would make sure that she was well taken care of and they could be the best of Zuhian allies in a Fellen society. The memories of her father and her brothers no longer solely rested on her shoulders to remember, now it would be the two of them.

Her eyes stung as tears wavered over her eyelid like a heat wave over the air. She buried her face in her hands and let out laughing sob of happiness. Though the next minute was filled with her emotions running amok in her body, the one after that, Emilie started wiping the tears from her cheeks and she studied Analeigh sitting across from her.

"How did you f-find her? How did she find y-you?" she asked, then her smile faded as she continued, "are you certain it's her?"

Analeigh scooted to the edge of her seat and took Emilie's hands in hers. The fabric of her gloves felt silky against Emilie's skin.

"Sometime ago when you were still living with me, you told me you thought your family had perished. I wanted to make sure it was true. I thought it would be terrible for you to be separated from your family only because you hadn't been informed they had escaped whatever death it was you thought they suffered. If my..." her pale turquoise eyes dropped off to the side as if she was ashamed to bring up what she wanted to say.

"Yes?" Emilie said, trying to give Analeigh whatever permission she seemed to need.

Analeigh smiled sadly and sighed, like she was tossing a fish she caught back into the ocean, "I only wanted to say that when my darling Quinn passed away, I was consumed with the thought that she hadn't truly died. If she... if she had somehow survived... it would have changed my life. I wished someone could have come to me with the news that Quinn was alive, living somewhere in the village and I had simply been mistaken about her fate. When you told me about your family, I wanted to be able to come to you with such incredible news because I know... I know what it is like to lose those closest to you. And look now!" she swallowed back her own emotions to beam at Emilie, "I have secured the good news!"

Emilie took in Analeigh's words with shock and sincerity. The Countess rarely talked about her late wife, but even so, Emilie could always tell that they were deeply in love and that the loss lingered in Analeigh's house. It was a quiet presence now, but the pain and the sadness must have once been loud enough to rattle the walls.

"Anyways," Analeigh pushed their conversation on, "your mother knew that you had escaped and she knew you fled to Fellen, so she sent letters to many townships accepting refugees, asking the knights and the lords if you had numbered among the Zuhians they granted sanctuary. At the same time, I sent letters into the remaining structures in Zuhia to ask after members of your family. A knight of Tilzen who had spoken with you received a letter from your mother and I received a letter back from your hometown that two of your family had not been counted among the dead -one of them being you and the other being your mother,

"In any case, I found out what your mother was doing and I put in a query to the lord of the Tilzen knights if any of our knights had gotten a letter from her. It was then that our knight, Sir Zuli told me about the letter she received. She put me and your mother in touch and we have exchanged a few correspondences to make sure that she was your Emberly Edmunska and you were her Emilie Edmunska. And I have just gotten her latest letter and it is confirmed!"

"So... you have really found my mother then..." Emilie realized. It was true, it must be. Analeigh didn't know her mother's name -why would Emilie ever tell her?

"Yes, yes! And you will be able to see her, no doubt, since the Emperor and you seem... close," Analeigh finished, not saying aloud the thing about Emilie and the Emperor that didn't need to be said aloud, "you will be securing exception to the border rule, won't you?"

"Yes, Rory said I might be able to appeal the rule to the Emperor and the chances are good that he will grant me the exception."

"Then you will reunite with your mother!" Analeigh laughed, "Emilie, I am so happy for you! I hope you tell me all about it once you come back from your trip to Zuhia."

"I will," Emilie said, her whole person in a haze of her dreams and reality blending into the same fog about her brain. For one moment, she caught Analeigh's gaze clearly through the mist and she nodded, heart full of thanks she couldn't express, "I'll tell you everything about her, I promise."