'ᴡᴇ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴇɴᴛɪᴍᴇɴᴛ. ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ʙᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ.'
Only one month has passed in Daliah Viper's life trying to reintegrate at court and follow the uneasy trails her eyes have caught.
One month filled with blood, tribulations, and l...
(I have a thing for symmetry in this series, so ch. 28 in PV was titled "Danse Macabre" why don't I give him the same courtesy of something vaguely related/some form of mirroring and we call it a day)
pas de deux
-a dance or figure for two performers
-an intricate relationship or activity involving two parties or things
French, literally, step for two
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Returning to this shabby, poor excuse of ramshackled villages and the abandoned residences of the silver nobles, all alone, could be considered a walk of shame.
I consider it a diversion. I need to blow off the steam from my system or I will not stop for anyone's standards and stances. I could see it as another arena fight, but neither an old woman nor a scared boy are a good opponent.
Deep in the guts of the night, the old mansion of the animosi looks unkempt.
Beyond the wall, a single light flickers in a window. As hastily as it appeared, it whists off as it gets extinguished.
The gate to the fallen yard stands wide open. Plants have started to catch up on the metal and walls even more. The downfall of a house and the silent perpetrators aren't even present to watch. A single high arching lantern on the yard is lit in silver light.
It seems about right that the old witch hides here, where her past days shine brighter than the rejection she has received.
No one expects my arrival, no one comes to stop or to greet me. I remember the last time I set foot in the blasted mansion. When Gideon Viper was still alive, throning with a short heaved breath and leaking poisoned sweat on his brow in his tall room with the heroic plastered flags of Norta and his house. Even then, his brother always stood in the third row, right behind their aunt Calpurnia, unassuming. He didn't need to act much for them to believe he was a hopeless minion. Doctors and healers always feasted on both brothers like tiny parasites in their bodies. They've defected. The fact that I walk into the door now and one is dead and the other is dying excruciatingly painful is making me smile.
The whole house of snakes could only produce one female person that has made it due to beauty and marriage and tries to put her daughter on the throne now to make up for her own defect too. I wouldn't call it a success.
Above a broken bench, high in a tree that has lost life, one big owl sits and watches me. The head twists around to keep the eyes on me.
They know I am there. But it is too late to run now.
Above the house, in its cracks, all between the stone and the rooms with their closed doors, thoughts don't need much to slip through. They can never stop thinking if they are alive. And so they can never hide from me.
