A Woman Named 'Ellis'

Interlude - The Exception

The Assembly building had gone quiet. Only the scratch of Fausta's fountain pen marked the hours now, looping over fresh parchment in her crisp, deliberate script.

She paused, ink pooling slightly at the end of the word propriety.

Fausta leaned back in her chair and folded her hands behind her head, eyes tracing the ceiling's old plaster swirls. Somewhere above, a janitor's trolley squeaked faintly. Below, perhaps in the clerk archives or the chamber gallery, the Chancellor and her ever-present aide might still be working.

Or not working, she thought drily.

And yet ...

She blinked hard once, grounding herself. Then she reached for the familiar folder she'd read dozens of times. 'Impeachment Proceedings: Langlais vs Iohannes, 3rd Year of the Assembly.'

Her grandfather's downfall.

"Abuse of discretion," she murmured aloud, quoting the opening charge. "Deliberate expansion of Chancellor's authority without Assembly consensus."

She closed the folder slowly, pressing her palm flat against the cover.

"He loved the chamber," she whispered. "But he thought the laws were meant to follow him."

That was why she fought, why she checked every motion and challenged every overreach. Why she tested Maria so ruthlessly.

Maria Langlais-Somers had no respect for tradition. She barged through precedent like it was dust, called out loopholes with a grin and played the chamber like a song she composed herself. And yet, she did not cheat. She never pulled the trigger her grandfather had aimed. That disturbed Fausta most of all.

And then there was Mireille Cavanah.

A junior clerk at first, invisible to most, except to Maria. Now the aide of the Chancellor. The fiancée of the Chancellor. And still, still, she held to her oath. Impartial. Precise. No leaks. No favours. No speeches.

If Faustus had loved anyone like that, Fausta thought bitterly, he might have known when to stop.

Fausta rose, pacing her office in slow, careful circles.

"Maria doesn't crave power like he did," she murmured, testing the thought aloud. "She craves motion. Change. Victory, yes, but not control."

And Mireille? Mireille tempered her. Not by challenging her, but by being a mirror she couldn't look away from.

Fausta leaned against the windowsill, the night folding around her reflection.

They unsettled her. Shook something she'd built her entire political identity on. And yet, she couldn't help but admire them.

Not as politicians.

As proof.

Proof that love, real love, wasn't always weakness.

Sometimes it was what kept someone from going too far.