With every slow and agonizing tick of the grandmother clock, Celeste's resentment was rotting away her mental strongholds of delusion. In the hours that had passed since leaving Sirius, her body had become distant and foreign. Her fervent ache of pain had swelled like a festering wound and subdued into a cold, unnatural force.
She stood alone in the ballroom, at the foot of the grand staircase. It reminded her of her seventeenth birthday when Evan had proposed to her. The final match that had set her life aflame.
Celeste's life had always been encircled by villains and manipulators. Her mother, Dumbledore, and then Evan. She was a product shaped by those people.
Her mother was the first to splinter her spirit. And then Dumbledore had seen that crumbling heart and swept her onto his chessboard of control. But Evan had always been the driving force; the tool for inflicting agony.
What little self-worth Celeste had left was not worth fighting for. Her meticulously crafted reputation ⎯ the facade of ruthless strength and elegance ⎯ What did it even matter? It held no worth to her when it could not protect her from those villains.
Celeste's eyes, ringed with red, lowered and fell onto the dagger she'd used to kill Hargrave. She tightly gripped the hilt and stared, transfixed by the cold gleam of the blade.
Beautiful.
A chilling calm had settled over her mind like white-hot, molten rage as the first bronze slashes of dawn streaked the sky.
"Celeste," Evan's voice echoed from the doorway. He was here, just like she'd counted on.
She didn't roll her eyes or tremble like she used to. Staying in the same spot, Celeste glanced over her shoulder. "Evan," she said shortly.
He shifted his weight, as though a chill had gone up his spine. "They're all going into hiding. The Goyles, Carrows, Notts. And I hear Lestrange got herself thrown into Azkaban." He began to move down the staircase.
It wasn't too surprising. "How did she manage that?" Celeste asked flatly.
Evan didn't answer.
He was at the foot of the stairs when he stopped walking. His eyes were suddenly trained on the cursed dagger in her white-knuckled hand.
