Divine Ascension (Wattys 2024)

Chapter 17 - Friction

In no time, Melinda returned to her room. She seemed to have a ton of luck that day. No one was around to hear her running like her feet were on fire as she dashed back upstairs, panting heavily as she opened the door, causing Jeffrey and Ingrid to look at her dumbfoundedly. However, it wasn't as if she cared about what other people thought that much. She stood at the doorway in silence for several minutes, trying to calm herself down, her mind burdened by many unpleasant thoughts. 

The image that had seared itself into her brain was a most horrifying one. There were no words to describe it. It was the utter harrowing of a soul consumed by rot and nothingness that saw power as an end in and of itself, not as a means to improve society. Blinding her, it tore out her eyes and left nothing but two little voids in its place, two voids that saw and worshipped nothing but power.

Power... It is the beginning and the end, life and death, bloom and wither, wind and flame. All covet it and all curse it when it ruins them. It isn't inevitable, of course, unless one hungers for it. She hungered for it then, and she saw exactly where it would lead her. To her doom.

"Melinda..." Jeffrey stammered, noticing the worried look on her face. "What happened?"

"It's nothing," she responded, trying to sound calm, but her voice wavered ever so slightly, giving her away. "It's just that I found the book and touched it, and it scared me a lot. I mean, everyone said it was scary, but I had no idea how scary it actually was. Nevermind that, though. Let's just get some rest for a while. I suspect it won't be an uneventful day."

Ingrid laughed darkly. "Oh, of course you touched the book! I expected better from you, and now I'm disappointed. It's true that I can't blame you for wanting to know what's in there, but I can blame you for not setting a better example. It was such a reckless thing of you to do. You could have been caught. Imagine if you had been caught. He could have killed you, for Achten's sake! But whatever. At least it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience."

"Yes," she said, smiling brightly, sitting on the floor between them, looking innocently at the front door as she tried to think of a normal conversational topic.

A chill went down Ingrid's spine. She knew in an instant that she'd said the wrong thing, not that there was much of a right thing to say, anyway. Melinda was hiding something again, something treacherously dark and sinister that lurked beneath the surface of every supposedly mundane activity. 

An innocent smile was often the most dangerous thing to see on her face, far more often than a normal person might think. A normal person would never calculate conversations and encounters to achieve the best outcome as obsessively as Melinda, but then again, that was completely obvious. After all, when someone has a reputation to uphold, everything needs to be calculated perfectly, leaning hard into artifice, not seldom to the detriment of their loved ones and even themselves. 

With a heavy sigh, Ingrid joined the conversation that mostly involved rumours about the nobility. The rich were an easy target to make fun of to people who weren't personal witnesses to their antics, Susanne in particular. Susanne was hardly ever mentioned as anything other than a frivolous fool to laugh at, especially outside the royal court. Almost the entire kingdom knew her due to the prominence of her family line and their famous perfume brand, but it probably would've been better if they didn't know her at all. Everyone mocked her behind her back like she couldn't hear it, but she could, and it hurt her. At the end of the day, she was still human.

"Poor Susanne," Ingrid jested. "We hurt her feelings. She acts like she doesn't sneer at everyone beneath her and whip slaves when they order her coffee wrong. Or maybe she thinks she deserves sympathy despite it all. Her pompous parents and sycophant friends taught her to act this way, and so she thinks it's normal. It's not her fault that she, as a grown woman, can't learn to become her own person. In our nonsensical court of gaudy masks and power plays, only ignorance can breed itself. I mean, look at the royal ball! What a disaster that was! We know that Douglas is deeply enamoured with Melinda and only wants to marry her, and so-"