While Escaping Fate | ✗

IV. Scarlet Threads

After the activity it hosted just a few minutes earlier, Relie's manor house was eerily quiet. It had always been silent, but now that silence struck Daegan anew. His footsteps echoed on the creaking floorboards and he felt like the paneled walls stared at him. Though it was late afternoon, the house was already filled with dark shadows. He always wondered how Relie stood to live in such gloom. Sometimes when Daegan saw her from his peripheral vision he would start: Her paleness made her stand out against the darkness like a ghost.

It was too big a house for one lone girl, with too many doors that led to too many unused rooms. Sometimes they went through the old bedrooms of the previous sacrifices and sorted through the abandoned possessions of Relie's ancestors, reinforcing its emptiness.

Daegan supposed he could live with Relie in this overly large house, but the depressing aura of the old structure, haunted with the memories of girls now dead from the same fate that awaited Relie, made Daegan's heart chill. Relie didn't seem bothered by it, so he never mentioned it to her. She was just lonely.

He visited her once every day at least, but Daegan wasn't enough to satisfy her social needs, especially in these last days. Her father used to come, but Lex had stopped and Daegan never forgave the man for it. Devany too, used to take every opportunity to visit, but she had ceased as well. He wondered if Relie ever managed to forgive her. Daegan did not even know if he himself had quite forgiven his little sister for deserting her once best friend.

Relie's bedroom was on the second floor, just above the stairs.
He paused outside of her door, hearing no noises behind it. Maybe she was sleeping. When they were children, he would enter without any warning, but ever since Relie turned eleven, they had placed more restrictions on how free they were with each other. Neither acknowledged these rules, and to this day they remained unspoken. Daegan knocked sharply, but when no one answered, he let himself in. The dark wood door swung inward with a familiar, protesting squeal.

Her bedroom was a good size, and comfortably allowed for a bed, wardrobe, and washbasin. The mattress was of feathers, but it was somewhat old. Daegan had meant to change it out for a fresh one -- along with oiling the door hinges -- but when he proposed these plans, Relie had vetoed them. She had been thinking of the Day of Reckoning then, and did not consider either things worth the trouble.

It was empty, but her finely-made party dress had been thrown into the corner. He frowned at the crumpled heap. Relie knew she would wear that garment when she was sacrificed. Such a sacred article shouldn't be on the floor. He made to hang it in her wardrobe, but then stopped as a thought struck him.

He had not seen Relie since she had left the garden. She could easily have left through the unlocked door. Daegan glanced out Relie's window and at the street below. The houses around Relie's were also ancient and large, but they bore their age more visibly. He did not see Relie, but that did not mean she was not there.

He hastily exited the room and yelled,"Relie?"

After a brief silence where his deep voice reverberated throughout the house, hers called out, "I'm in here!"

He slumped in relief and then straightened his broad shoulders. This had been the second time within a few hours that he had feared her leaving. Daegan didn't know why the idea was so prominent in his mind. Was there a part of his subconscious that sensed something in her listlessness? Or was he being paranoid?

"Where?" Daegan called.

"The tapestry room!"

He followed her voice into the strange room. It was empty except for Relie and the woven depiction of Fiametta's Sacrifice, hanging in its perpetual state of forlornity upon the wall.