𝗨𝗟𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗘 | 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐰 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝

𝐱𝐯𝐢. 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐎𝐑- 𝒊 𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉

♕

Dahlia settled herself against Matthew as he brushed her hair.

She was telling him about Caliburn and how it was her father's downfall, then she had started rambling about the strangest things like how she liked cream puffs with coffee and cranberry jam.

Matthew had laughed lowly and he gently braided her hair and spoke to her about how he used to cook.

"Matthew?" she asked quietly, her Matthew was washed over by the amber rays of the fireplace in their room. He looked etheral to her.

"Yes, my love?" he asked, setting his flask down. 

"Would you like to travel? We could go anywhere Math, we could go to Paris, or Spain or India-" she said excitedly. Matthew's eyes lit up like candles.

"I would love to go to Paris with you, we could spend hours dancing under the Eiffel Tower." he said, his voice almost dreamy.

His eyes were radiating innocence and vulnerability, the way he only looked around Dahlia. It warmed her heart.

Then Matthew was next to her kissing her, his mouth hot against hers. "God your so beautiful. I wish I could marry you harder." he muttered. Dahlia giggled.

"Is that even possible?" she inquired. Matthew shook his head somberly.

"No, and believe me I have tried." 

Dahlia stared at the empty tea cups, "One moment jaan, I'll go fetch us some more tea." she said, smiling and rushing over and away to the kitchen smiling widely, butterflies swarming her.

♕

Dahlia in all her giddiness had forgotten how to make tea and had messed up several times before she got it right, but it all seemed useless when she came into the Drawing Room.

Cordelia was there, looking glorious as usual and Matthew was next to her.

 "Hoping, I suppose," he was saying. "That you would see that I loved you."

Dahlia froze at the doorway. She could practically hear her heart shatter to a million pieces.

"I fully expected James to come to his senses," he said. "Good Lord, when I saw you two in the Whispering Room, I thought it would barely be seconds before he was hitting himself with a brick for ever having though the loved Grace while at the same time throwing himself at your feet and professing his adoration."

"I suppose I merely thought it would be enough for you to know," he said. "That you might—if anything were to happen to me, you would remember I loved you desperately. And if for some reason, at the end of a year, you and James divorced, I would—well, I would have waited."

"I remember," he continued. "At the ball, the first time I really met you, you told me I was beautiful. That held me for quite a longtime, you know. I am very vain. I didn't love you then, I don't think, though I recall thinking how fine you looked when your eyes blazed with anger. And then at the Hell Ruelle, when you danced, and proved yourself braver than all the rest of us combined, I knew it for sure. But love is not always a lightning bolt, is it? Sometimes it is a creeping vine. It grows slowly until suddenly it is all that there is in the world." 

"I don't know what to say," Cordelia murmured. "Only that I truly did not suspect ..."

Dahlia cleared her throat. Matthew and Cordelia jumped apart as if genuinely surprised she was in the house.

"Matthew, you could chosen a better time to profess your love to Daisy. Maybe next time when I'm not at home?" she suggested, her voice was cold as ice and sharp enough to cut glass. 

Inside, Dahlia was a mess, but she wouldn't cry. Dahlia Bridgestock did not cry in front of people.

She stared at Matthew with betrayal. "Go on, whisk her away to Paris and leave your wife here." she hissed.

Matthew looked as if he had been struck by an arrow.

Good, Dahlia thought. Be hurt.

"Dahlia-" he started. Dahlia held up a hand. "Go Matthew. Go." she whispered. Matthew seemed to be about to run to her, but she was already running to her their room. She sat in the darkness of their room and waited until she heard the door close. 

The moment she heard the thud of the door she sobbed.

She cried about everything she had seen and heard, over Matthew, over any chance to love any one else, over her ruined heart, she cried so hard she gagged.

She stared out the window of her room as Matthew's motor car disappeared in the moonlight.

Dahlia cried as if the world would end tomorrow, thinking about ever moment Matthew had told her he loved her. It was all a lie.

Everything was lie.

She had let herself believe it and now look at her. A mess.

She wiped her tears, the words of her mother echoing through her mind. Dahlia, you are a weapon. Weapons do not weep.

She spun around blindly in the darkness and packed everything in the room into a chest and hauled it downstairs. The house seemed bitter after what she ahd witnessed. She could not stay here any longer.

She would never return.

Matthew had shown her what it was like to be loved, and he had left her. 

She remembered the poem he had read during their carriage ride. To be loved is to be destroyed.

She was destroyed.

Tears, hot and wet, rolled down her face as she locked the door behind her and hailed a hansom cab to the Bridgestock house. Her father would have left by now and her mother would be asleep.

She just wanted her sister. She wanted to see Kamala.

♕

"He left, didi. He just left with Daisy as if everything-everything didn't matter." Dahlia cried. Ariadne was hugging her sister tightly, Evan had appeared after a urgent message sent along with Eugenia, which Dahlia blew off in her grief. Alastair was on his way here as well.

Evan swore. "That bastard. I knew-"

Eugenia held up her hand. "Evan, relax. We can't be mad at Matthew when Dahlia is obviously at the verge of murdering herself."

Dahlia sniffed, and glared at Eugenia. 

Evan sighed and held Dahlia's hand. "I'll kill him once they ret-"

"Where's my sister?" Alastair demanded as he entered the room. Dahlia looked at him with red eyes.

"On a train probably with my husband after his dramatic declaration of love to her." she muttered spitefully.

Alastair stared at her as if he couldn't decide what he was more shocked of. Dahlia crying or his sister on a train to Paris without telling him.

He knelt down next to her and kissed her hand. "I'll make sure to murder Matthew once he returns."

"I shall join you!" Evan said cheerfully. Dahlia sighed.

"You are hopeless." she said. Her voice was stuffy from crying or nearly an hour. She wasn't sure what hurt more but she was hurt, beyond belief.

Ariadne stroked her hair in the same fashion Matthew did when he was thinking. Dahlia wanted to cry again.

She had never mourned a boy. She didn't knw love hurt this much.

Why did love hurt so much?

She closed her eyes briefly.

I hate Matthew Fairchild. I hate you for showing my the stars knowing no one else could take me there. I hate you for ever waltzing into my life. I hate myself for ever loving you.

♕

aight, see y'all next year!!