For Every Letter

CHAPTER FIVE

Envelope #41: letters damien wrote but never sent

I had a dream yesternight. It was so vivid, so real, though that may have been because it was a rerun of memories. The house was not burning but you were there. Your father was, too. I didn't see him but I was sure he was there. You gave me your arm, showcasing the burns, delighted in the ruins of their expanse. You told me that you loved your father as much as you hated him. You told me that you did not want to love fire as much as he did.
You said it was inescapable, your kind of insanity.

I swore it was in your blood, trying to comfort you. You just smiled and asked if it were in mine. You told me he might've stolen you away from your mother's arms and your home's safety but he had gifted you passion and fixation and if bruises and distrust and terror were the price, you were willing to pay each of them on the daily basis of his temperament. You were willing to pay everything for fire.

He was an arsonist, I now know. One of the lower vassals told me. He had burned when it shouldn't have been possible with the brick and stone of our mansions. He had brought down a district. You and I were maliciously following him and his lighter, I now realize.

It was good that we were taken away, apart. Our psychopathy for fire seems so less, so little when I put it beside us for each other in my mind.

Still, despite, against reason, I wish we were together. I wish I was yours. I want to be your worshipper. I want you to be my worshipped.

#

The ride to the heirs' wing wasn't even a ridge, a crevice or a second better than the ride to the main mansion. The carriage rocked steadily, showing off consistency and regularity to my opposing heart. Its failure to mimic the suffocation and abrupt fullness exchanging ribs every few moments had my misery soon joined by unease and panic.

The darkness was looming, the stygian encompassing as I wandered the halls in search of Cilla. We had made plans to meet at the banquet based on my expectations of spending plenty of time with nanny but now I couldn't have even a moment with her, and Cilla was nowhere to be seen.

Feeling a little defeated and quite confused with my girlfriend's absence, I finally turned to Illyria, hesitant. She had contributed not a word nor an action to my search and clear discontent. It seemed I would have to prod her first.

Her robes were a velvet black, leaving her arms and the sides of her legs bare, the fabric eagerly drooping low in a triangle to brag about the smooth, unblemished expanses of its mistress' skin. Like a devoted servant, she had followed me from when I got to the wing as her duties dictated that she should but I knew she was the furthest thing from loyal.

"Illyria," I said, turning to her and closing the door of another room.

"Heir," she replied. I was quite assured that if she had addressed any of my brothers or sisters that way, she would no longer have a tongue to address with.

"Where is Priscilla?"

"Your girl, heir?"

"Yes," I sighed tiredly.

"In the indirect heirs' wing, heir."

I felt the shock work its way through my veins, tasted my body automatically keeping it at bay. "Why?"

Illyria smiled.

"Illyria," I pressed, "Why?"

"I don't know, heir," she shrugged coyly, "I thought you would. She is yours. You should know to keep her."

She said more, I was sure; Illyria tended to overlook the rightness to shutting her mouth at times. I didn't wait to hear it, didn't look back as I left the house but in the polished gold of the large petals of the door's magnolia-shaped handles, I saw her smile fall slowly.