A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 49: The Diary of Edouard Marchant

Chapter 49: The Diary of Edouard Marchant

August 17, 1681
Normandy, Voclain Estate

The sea is restless today. The waves crash against the cliffs with a force that rattles the panes of my chamber window, salt staining the glass, wind howling through the stone halls. I have always found storms invigorating, but here—here, they seem something else. Less an inconvenience, more an inevitability. As though the land itself remembers something the rest of us have long since forgotten.

I have been here three days, and still, I am no closer to understanding her.

Selene Voclain is an enigma wrapped in silk and silence. She speaks little, but when she does, her words cut with the precision of a blade, each one measured, considered, never wasted. There is something of a storm in her too, I think—something vast and ancient, something waiting beneath the surface. She seems wise beyond her years. She would not disclose her age to me, but she could not be older than 25, I suppose.

She does not trust me yet. That much is clear. But she allows me in her company, and for now, that will have to be enough.

I must be careful not to disturb whatever careful balance exists between us.

+

Anastasia traced her fingers over the ink, lingering on the shape of his words.

The way he wrote about Selene—beneath the scholarly observations, beneath the careful detachment. He was watching her, studying her, but not like a subject in an experiment.

Like a mystery he wanted to unravel.

She turned the page.

+

August 21, 1681
Normandy, Voclain Estate

She reads the way other people pray.

I found her in the library this morning, long before the sun had risen, seated in the great armchair by the window, a book balanced delicately in her hands. She did not acknowledge me at first. The waves below battered the cliffs, their spray visible even from here, but she did not turn her gaze from the pages.

It was only when I stepped closer that she spoke.

"You breathe quite loudly," she said, without looking up.

I did not know whether to be amused or embarrassed.

When she did lift her eyes from her reading, there was something sharp in them, something that made me feel as though she had already read me just as thoroughly as whatever text was in her hands.

I asked what she was reading.

"Something I doubt you would understand."

I do not know whether she meant it as an insult, but I suspect she did.

She has a way of looking at people that makes them feel small. Not intentionally, perhaps, but simply because she exists in a world most do not.

A world of knowledge, of secrets, of power that hums beneath her skin like a second heartbeat.

She fascinates me.

+

Anastasia swallowed.

She could see it—Selene, draped in candlelight, seated in a library that no longer existed, her gaze as piercing as a blade.

She turned another page.