Content Warning: Mention of Child Abuse
Elizabeth was slumped on the pillows panting quietly and out of energy. The agony that had just decided to start in her head and go down her spine to throb through all her bones after the memories had settled drained her of what little energy she had after waking up.
This…this was…
She felt like this was impossible, but she had an entire second life in her head now. She was the youngest of three children, and the only daughter, of the first, in the story, Duke of Northsend. She had been leaving the day after her 18th birthday to the Barony of Silverrun she had been gifted in the far southwest of the Duchy. It was the stress of travel that had caught up with her and she succumbed to a fever and was now resting in her bedroom back at the Northsend Manor.
There were other things too, things…things that she couldn’t know, even after reading that novel till it fell apart.
The Prophetess of the Ethereal Dragon was a book she had helped fund, so she even got a special edition version of it as well. Odelina wasn’t a main character, she was the sister of the second Duke of Northsend, Thurston, in the book.
She died of an illness that swept through the capital about halfway through the book and in a way that wasn’t a ‘kill off the disabled’ character way, but a way that brought attention to the fact that the illness was a curse, not an illness. Because Odelina had already survived the illness in question when she was eight, before the carriage accident that had caused her disability.
Like the car accident that had caused Elizabeth's own.
It was why she had felt so…close to Odelina, out of all the characters. There was someone like her, in a book that was filled with magic and sword fighting, who had brothers who loved her and…she belonged. There was respectful etiquette regarding her wheelchair, for a start, and the only thing that made Elizabeth sigh sadly was that apparently because Mages needed to have a lot of physical ability to go with their magical power, Odelina was unable to become a mage herself.
Odelina probably could have managed one day, but it would take a lot of work, and Odelina, unlike Elizabeth, hadn’t wanted to delve into magic.
Elizabeth took a deep, shaky, breath and exhaled sharply.
Too sharply, as she began coughing, unable to voice her pain as each cough jarred her aching body in a way that made it throb. Throb more, since she was still throbbing from the hellish headache she had from getting information dumped in her head.
She groaned quietly and reached out with a shaking hand to grab the bell, then rang it, deciding she needed help.
It was okay to need help. They wouldn’t be Mother. She could ask for help and not worry about it being used against her or used to make Mother look like a saint. It was fine, she could ask.
And if she was having difficulty breathing, well…that was no one’s business but her own.
She clung to her head the entire time, unable to stop the tears from slipping out from how much it hurt. Her hair was twisting and tangling as she let out a tiny keen of pain.
She was barely still there when the door was opened.
By a mountain.
They were tall enough that the doors seemed to be built more for him to get through rather than her wheelchair, but even then he seemed to make them almost small. He was exceptionally tall and broad, from his shoulders to his thighs and he was across the room faster than a man his size should move.
He was exceptionally good at hiding her from the light, even as she let out a whine of pain when he jostled her. “Shut those curtains! What were you thinking, opening those? My sister has light-strike headaches!” he snapped and she groaned quietly.
He made an apologetic sound that seemed to rumble through him and oh, hell, he wasn’t wearing armor. He was just that huge, dressed in soft fabrics that weren’t irritating to her. She slumped against him, whining sharply in pain when that hurt her and he made a sound. “I don’t know how to move you, I’m sorry,” he said gently and she reached up weakly and then shifted his arm.
It took a bit, and a tiny nod that had her crying in pain again, before he just…shifted her. She let out a sharp gasp of relief as that got her out of the awful slump she had ended in, resettling her into a less painful position. “Shit, shit,” he said quietly and his hands hovered over her, and there was another form in her room, quietly berating the maids.
Well, mostly. She vaguely could hear the words, “don’t care” and “Griffing Priests”, but she didn’t know the context for any of it.
Had to be maids, there were wearing those dresses people usually saw in cliche European-centric cartoons, as they cowered under the tongue-lashing the other man was giving them as a fire was being built up, the thick curtains on the window cutting off all sunlight now.
It helped her head somewhat. “No, no, fine,” she slurred out and the mountain of man, her brother, this body’s brother, seemed to relax at that.
He even dwarfed the other figure and he was sitting on her bed.
“Odelina?” the other voice said and he was there, and…that was the Duke of Northsend, Thurston.
Which meant that the other one was Edmond.
She was in a story?
Why was she in a story?
Despite her confusion, she didn’t feel…upset? She felt like this was something she was expecting, but how could anyone expect to wake up in a story?
Her favorite story no less, in the body and life of her favorite character?
“S’fine, I’m fine,” she slurred and the Duke, well future Duke, reached over to get water.
It took a bit, but she managed to drink some water before the exhaustion started to pull her under. She slumped back further and Edmond carefully shifted her until she was lying at a slight recline on the pillows. “Go back to sleep. You need rest,” Thurston said quietly.
“M’kay,” Ode–Elizabeth, she was just in Odelina’s body, mumbled and let the darkness take her back.
Thurston carefully closed the door behind them once they exited.
The hallways of the Northsend Duke Manor, where they all lived, were white, but the accents were dark, in contrast to their sister’s room of white with a more pastel palette.
Northsend had nights that lasted for weeks in the winter and days that did the same in the summer.
Ergo, the manor had to reflect the extreme needs of the environment. The light base allowed light to reflect more easily while the dark accents absorbed both heat and light as needed. These were assisted with windows that were made of a magical crystal, made by Glass Spinners. Double-paned, they trapped in heat when it was cold and let heat escape when it was hot.
“Thurs?” Edmond asked and Thurston pulled his hand away from Odelina’s door handle.
The extreme difference in her room made it seem lonelier, now that he thought about it, instead of helping 'lighten her spirits' as their Mother had always insisted.
“She didn’t flinch from us,” Thurston said quietly because she hadn't, despite the numerous times she had before. “She cried in pain, but she didn’t flinch from us. The Ethereal Peryton Priests said as much, that her mind might change, but she still knew us. But she didn’t flinch from us like she usually did.”
Edmond made a small sound and looked at Thurston. “Do you think Mother…exaggerated?” he asked carefully.
A delicate question.
Mother…was not loving to them. She was as cruel and merciless as the Shattering Fields and the Ruby Seas combined. She had left them to be raised by nannies who she fired when the brothers were old enough for governesses, which was…not helpful.
The only one she showed any affection to was Odelina.
Though, even as he watched the hugs and touches, it had always made Thurston feel itchy after his jealousy subsided.
He looked down at his gloved hand, frowning slightly when he saw that he was clenching his fist again. He carefully uncurled it, sighing over the fact he hadn’t felt that on the outer part of his left hand. “I think…I think it is worse than that,” he said quietly. “I think Mother lied and Father let her.”
Edmond, a mountain of a man that could probably lift a draught horse if he thought about it, and as soft as the down of a cygnet at heart, looked both concerned and heartbroken at Odelina’s door.
Of course, he was twice as dangerous as the hissing beasts that were the cygnet’s parents.
There was a reason the Northsend family crest was a swan.
“Come on. There’s nothing we can do now. The Priests of the Triumvirate have all said she just needs rest. We’ll see how it all fares after. There’s no point in borrowing trouble,” Thurston said as he turned to leave their sister’s door.
Edmond made a quiet sound and looked at the door, with a pair of blue swans facing each other before he turned to follow Thurston away. “Alright,” he said quietly.
Thurston exhaled quietly, wondering how much their parents had kept from them.
And how much he would have to clean up before he even officially got the title after their whirlwind chase of Odelina meant that they got themselves killed in a carriage accident.
It felt like she was floating in the sensory deprivation tank again, cradled by warmth.
The only sound was was the soft echo of her own heart around her.
Opening her eyes found that she was staring out into the stars, so much brighter and more vivid than they were in her new home in the city.
Like her childhood, but they seemed wrong at the same time. And there seemed to be rivers of color, like the sunset, threading through the stars, only brighter, or deeper. Or both all at once. There was a flare of gold and she turned, feeling like she was swimming.
Like hydrotherapy, which she loved almost as much as hippotherapy, finding herself staring at familiar stars, before she turned back again, trying to follow a gleam of green-blue-silver, like a bejeweled silver ring, except it was all blended together as one color. Or maybe it was all those colors at once, but moving so quickly they seemed to blend.
What do you want?
The voice echoed and filled the starry expanse.
Freedom. She had fought for it, striving for it. Won it.
What do you want?
A family.
She had fought for it and still, she had lost it. Mother had made sure of that. Or maybe they had just never loved her.
What do you want?
To belong.
She had had that, once, but even then not fully.
A chuckle rumbled through the stars and lights, making the world ripple around her.
I can do that. Would you like that?
Nothing was for free.
No. It is not. Your soul would be entirely yours, though. You would be yourself at heart. It would not work otherwise.
What wouldn’t work?
Does it matter?
No, not really.
Would you like me to help you?
“Yes,” she said quietly and there was gold filling her vision, with darkness in the center.
“Then I will,” the voice answered, rumbling so close that she could feel it through her entire chest.
Gold, silver, green, and blue filled her vision and then there was light.
Elizabeth woke with a gasp, eyes snapping open, heart pounding a thousand miles a minute. She trembled as she looked around, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. “What was that?” she mumbled, the fire crackling and popping merrily in the fireplace.
The darkness did not answer her.
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