Adelaide

Chapter XXXV

Emerald Byron

Adelaide departed hours ago to help Matisse with Sapphire's body, so I occupy myself by idly cleaning the house and storing away the soup for whenever anyone hungers. I end up on the balcony, then, feeling undiluted aloneness seep into my skin as coolly as the wind passing through the crochet holes of my cardigan.

Propping a gauloises between my teeth, I light a match and hold it up to the rolled paper. The heady aroma of Turkish tobacco clouds in wisps around my shoulders, but within it I find none of the nostalgia upon which I've depended so heavily for reassurance. My father's ghost finally detached itself from my shoulders, cast aside to be replaced by whatever unwanted emotions Sapphire endows me in her wake.

When the floorboards suddenly creak from the balcony doorway, I spin around, innately hoping for Adelaide's return, but startle to glimpse Ruby standing there instead. Her eyes are swollen and bloodshot with the color of mourning, which starkly juxtaposes her summertime-green irises and prompts me to realize how little I myself have truly wept thus far.

"You don't smoke."

She breaks the foreign silence first, striding forward to lean against the railing beside me. Her platinum hair rests in disheveled waves around her face and her faded sweater hands despondently off her shoulders, but she's still my beloved Ruby. I've changed greatly in the past day, though, and I pray she does not seek my solace; I have nothing to give.

"You burn them, but you don't smoke," she repeats, her tone dry and unloving in a way I failed to realize the first time.

I release the breath I've been holding, smoke snaking out from between my lips and lingering like an ominous shadow in my lungs. Ruby reaches out and steals the cigarette from between my fingers.

"Neither do you," I wryly retort when she raises it to her own mouth.

"You never knew me before Soventi."

She refuses to match my humor, leaving me to struggle for an answer while my wits evade me. In exhausted silence, I watch her flick ashes idly over the railing, tiny embers drifting down to the ground like golden stars.

"I'm going back, you know."

Her words sound too nonchalant; Ruby is many things, but never indifferent. For a moment, I hardly comprehend her meaning.

"Rue —"

Abruptly, the front door slams shut downstairs, cutting me off. Adelaide just returned from aiding Matisse, but I restrain myself from seeking her out immediately. Ruby needs me to hear her.

The blonde turns away from me to snuff my cigarette in the crystal dish by the door, but before I can speak she continues, "I just wanted to tell you first."

Without awaiting my reply, she shoves a heavy book into my arms and steps back indoors, walking straight to her room or maybe Sapphire's — I can't tell. I scowl after her for leaving me so carelessly, but my heart can't quite underpin the expression. Instead, I look down to my hands. Ruby handed me 'Sic Cytisoventi — an Archive,'  silently requesting that I consider her words.

Vacantly, I stare at the embossed cover. Sapphire always loved the book and all its trivial mysteries, but the citadel feels so far away now. Its walls never shaped me as deeply as the others, I suppose, since I only schooled there for a year. With very little reaction altogether, I set the worn hardcover on the railing and stride back inside to reassure myself of Adelaide's safety.

I find her downstairs in the kitchen, her knuckles white from clasping the rim of the table against which she holds herself up, tears streaming across porcelain cheeks as she gasps for breaths that refuse to come. I go to her instinctively, then, without gentle alacrity or altruism; that kindness has been sapped from me. When I wrap my arms around her and pry her trembling figure from her grasp on the table, I do so in a wholly selfish way, informing the both of us that I need her to feel okay in order to be okay myself.