Could you forgive

Hers was not a story of love. 

It could have been. Some years ago, when the pure marble walls of her home were not yet stained with the echoes of her muffled cries, when the clear glass of the windows were not yet dulled by dust and scratches left behind from the storm that tore her family apart.

She had dared to believe the time for such storms had passed, that the winds had taken the lies and secrets to a distant place, that there was no further torment awaiting her after everything she had to endure. 

When Cindred stood before her, bearing the news with cold eyes, she had thought it was the hard, merciless monster his work had turned him into that spoke, though now she knew, it had been secrecy. Terrible, sharp lies that spilled from his lips, cutting her open like a knife, wretched and ugly, and never stopped twisting. That day she had lost them both. Her brother, the traitor, the murderer, and her husband, the ghost.  

It had broken her. 

The storm had howled with its return. It tore through the fragile calm she had pieced together, shattered the world around her until all that remained were ruins. Where once there had been walls, only silence, where once there had been warmth, only smoke.

She could only bear to cower in its wake, hiding from what remained, as memories clung to the walls like shadows and pressed cold into her bones with each morning she found herself breathing. There were days she could do nothing but survive the next hour, days when sunlight that warmed her felt like cruelty, when laughter echoed like a language she no longer spoke. 

Grief lingered. Memories still felt so close, while she had to learn to live with only the echo of him and the certainty that she would never again feel the weight of his arms around her, never again hear his voice, never again lay her eyes on his. She alone bore the burden of keeping him alive for their children, so they might retain some fragments before those faded as well. 

With time, real time, the kind that passes in deep breaths through broken lungs, the kind that measures the silence between heartbeats, that allows grief to settle like a broken bone, crooked and aching, she became better. She did. Though normal was gone, buried with the man she had loved more than she could ever bear to name aloud, she picked up the needle and thread and worked without instruction, threading strength into places where it didn’t need to exist before. There were seams that never quite held, stitches that pulled when no one was looking. But slowly, she put herself back together and began to stand again. Not healed, not whole, just upright.

Saphira stood in the ruins of everything she had ever loved and became what was needed. Lady Gariel, matriarch of a fractured legacy. She learned to lead with a voice that didn’t tremble, raise children without falling to pieces when they smiled too much like him, carried the dynasty on her back and still made time, found warmth to tuck a blanket around a sleeping child, kiss a fevered brow, hold a fragile sketchbook like it was something sacred, because it was. In her own way, in the only way that was left for her, she moved on. 

Sunlight spilled into the courtyard of the Gariel estate, warmed the cobblestones and glinted off of the marble fountain at its center.

Lillian had taken a seat on its edge, pencil in hand, humming quietly to herself as she drew careful lines into her sketchbook. A small paper boat circled in the water, flowers stirred open in bloom as the sunlight continued its path over the scene, and a bird threaded its song into the sky. Peace surrounded the girl, a strand of black hair falling out of her carefully assembled braid.

On the balcony above, Lady Gariel stood in silence. Her gaze lingered while the droning voice of an advisor delivered some news of minor importance. Reports, figures, an invitation to a ball from another noble family for her and her husband. A muscle clenched in her jaw. 

Eventually, she raised a hand to stop him, and asked for him to leave the documents on her desk for later review before dismissing him. He left with a bow, dutiful and silent.  

Lady Gariel’s eyes drifted back to her daughter, still hunched in focus, utterly absorbed in her drawings. Fondness bled warmth into her expression as a smile softened her eyes. Lady Gariel cherished these small, quiet moments more and more with time as these glimpses of her children growing into distinct selves became rarer. She had watched them grow, and had nurtured them. Still young, unfinished but she was proud already.  A miracle truly, for the woman that raised them kept walking on broken bones.

Below in the courtyard, her daughter suddenly lifted her head. Her back straightened as a hesitant smile turned warmer, her eyes glittering with joy. From the shadows of the archway leading around the courtyard a figure emerged. His black hair tousled, streaked with grey, a soft white blouse underneath a tailored purple vest and black trousers tucked into worn riding boots. 

Emile’s steps were easy and sure as he found his way to his daughter’s side. He tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear with a gentle hand before resting it atop of her head. She laughed, giggled, the smile on his face grew and together they sat with the drawings between them and the sun warming their backs.

Lady Gariel was sure he had noticed her on the balcony, even if his eyes had not found hers. He always seemed to know where she was, even back then, when she thought it to be something precious, something that proved the love he had for her, instead of a habit seared into his bones because of the life he had lived. In hindsight it had been so clear, the pinched brows at the mention of her brother and his work, the tension in his shoulders whenever the vigilante was brought up in conversation, the scars and new bruises on his skin he couldn’t ever convincingly explain away. 

There had always been a far bigger ambition in her husband, the father of her children who bore the weight of a responsibility beyond the walls of their home. She had told herself that she understood, even if the insecurity that his presence had always been conditional, only temporary, had slowly eaten away at her. That with a call, Emile would leave, melt back into the darkness that had always been his companion. More so that she had been. 

And then he did. 

Six years. Grief had six years to linger and turn her into something else, and when she saw him again, standing beside the traitor, the man who tore the world from beneath her feet and handed her only silence in return, she did not faint, scream or weep. Her hands didn’t shake, her breath didn’t catch. She became a blade, deadly, precise. Sheathed still, but ready to cut.

He had walked to her like no years have passed, wearing a face, a smile she had carved from memory until it had lost its sharpness, no longer an echo, not a grief-born mirage, he lived and dared to look at her with the same eyes that once undid her with a glance. Her beloved and her betrayer, now the same thing by secrets too dangerous to name. 

Lady Gariel’s mouth had opened, her lips parted slightly as if she was trying to remember how to breathe, for the scream she had never let out in the dark, for the broken promises she recited in silence, like forbidden prayers. What was supposed to feel like salvation felt like betrayal. The ache never left, so she drew the blade. 

To survive them she had to become judgment, had to hear their justifications so she could tear them apart with steel in her voice and iron in her composure. She had broken right there in front of them, but in ways they would never see.

Lady Gariel did not fall into the arms of her lover, did not embrace her brother. She had walked away. She would let them learn the weight of waiting for she had carried it long enough.