Threads Of Fate (Being Revamped)

From Darkness to Light

Zenith's world seemed to tilt, the fury in her chest dissolving into a raw, aching hollowness. She felt her knees weaken, grief flooding through her veins like ice. The word "sister"—Zaya—echoed in her mind, unfamiliar yet painfully intimate, a shadow of the family she'd never known she'd lost.

"What happened to her?" Zenith whispered, voice trembling—too quiet to disguise the desperate longing beneath.

Madame Delphine's mask reformed instantly, all vulnerability swept away in favor of cold, practiced detachment. She smoothed the folds of her gown, her gaze flicking past Zenith as if recounting nothing more than a tedious business transaction.

"She jumped," Delphine replied flatly. "Off the sea cliffs at the town's end. It was late—no one there to stop her." Her tone held the finality of an old wound long since scabbed over. "The tide took her body. No one ever found it."

The words landed like stones in the silence. Zenith blinked hard, tears brimming and spilling freely, her breath hitching as the magnitude of her loss finally struck home—a half-sister, broken by the same cruel world that had nearly destroyed Zenith herself. The longing for comfort, for mourning together, rose up powerfully, only to meet the older woman's iron walls.

Madame Delphine just shrugged, eyeing Zenith with distant, almost clinical dismissal. "Such is the fate of girls who cannot endure. The world hardly notices when another is swept away." Her voice carried the exhaustion of a survivor who refuses to mourn—who has learned too well that softness invites ruin. "Same like that girl who you asked about."

Zenith's eyes snapped up. "You know, I knew it," she breathed.

"Of course I know," Madame Delphine replied, her gaze measured and cold. "Who do you think these quacks report to when they find a girl in trouble?"

A flicker of disappointment shivered through Zenith's spine. "You. You promise them a helping hand, but all you really do is draw them into your brothel. Just like what was done to you."

"Foolish child," Delphine scoffed, lips curling with disdain. "I provide food, a roof, sanctuary. What's wrong with requiring them to work for it? I save them from starvation, I give them purpose—something most of the world refuses them."

Zenith's anger flared, hot and sharp. "You prey on women with no choices! You wait until they're desperate, until 'no' isn't even an option. You break them until they believe this is the only value they have, when you could use your power to actually empower them!"

Madame Delphine's tone rose to meet her, indignant and scorching. "No, I can't."

"Yes, you can—" Zenith protested, only to be cut off.

"NO, Zenith!" Delphine's voice was hard as iron. For a moment, the elegant woman seemed larger than life, the years and scars of survival compacted into every syllable. "Would I have any standing, any power, if I had been a weak, sentimental wretch like you?"

Zenith stared, stunned into silence. The confrontation was everything she'd dreaded—her own boundaries splintered beneath the weight of a cause bigger than herself, yet all she felt was heartbreak and fury. "I'm here," she said quietly, voice cracking. "I'm defying every line I drew for myself—risking all this to save someone who feels like a little sister to me. I would do anything for her."

A shadow fell across Delphine's face—disdain tinged with sorrow. "And yet you had a real sister, whom you did nothing for."

"I didn't even know she existed!" Zenith's voice was hoarse now, her head throbbing with hurt and frustration. "If this is all you have to say about the Duke's victim, then our conversation is finished."