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chapter one / dirty rotten scoundrels ❛never be so kind, you forget to be clever.❜ content warning: death by suicide and self harm.
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The dark waves rocked Rhiannon into her indefinite slumber. Eulalie almost didn't recognize her older sister in the casket filled with dainty, white clouds of yarrow framing Rhiannon's pale corpse. Her lacy, long-sleeved black funeral dress thinly veiled the marks on her arms. Finally, she could rest.
The candlelight reflected off of the silver anchor etched delicately into her sister's necklace. It was an ugly piece of jewelry—something Rhiannon would never have picked out for herself. She was more keen on golden pieces than complimented the lighter strands in her chestnut hair. Not... that.
The High Priest droned in their native Kaelish the funerary rites into the chilly, salt-filled air. "We, the People of the Salt, commit this body back to the sea—where we came, where we abide, and where we must return."
Eulalie and the seven other remaining Downing sisters could recite the funerary rites without a flaw now. It was eroded into their very beings. The sea had a habit of that.
Eulalie, the eldest now, tried not to pull her gaze away from her sister's casket floating away from the Isle. She tried not to think about Rhiannon—who was alive, warm, and laughing just days before—now being laid to rest. She tried to think of the hidden despair Rhiannon must have been in to take her own life without anyone having a clue.
Instead, Eulalie tried to cry.
She knew it was expected of her to mourn, but no tears came, just an emptiness that no amount of flooding could fill. The tears would likely come that evening when she would pass Rhainnon's bedroom that shared a wall with hers. Eulalie imagined the staff had already covered the multitude of mirrors lining Rhiannon's room.
Oh, Rhia.
She was the prettiest of the Downing sisters. Her rosy lips were forever turned into a smile. She loved a good joke, her warm brown eyes always ready for a quick wink that felt like an embrace. Scores of suitors vied for her attention, even before Rhiannon became the eldest Downing daughter, the one set to inherit all of the fortune.
