Light in the Darkness

Chapter Three

"Well, he's not a child anymore --"

"So? I know you, Daph. If he showed any interest in a courtship, which, he did, you'd bite at the offer, and I'm sorry but it's just not --"

Daphne let out a strangled huff that caused Astoria to recoil. "You say you know me but you don't! You think I want this? You think I want to be pawned off like this, and I'm just so ecstatic to be objectified and mistreated for the rest of my life? No! The only reason I'm doing this is for you!"

She said it all in a furious, harsh whisper, and the words cut through Astoria like a knife. She felt her heart jump into her throat, but Daphne continued, "I'm the one who has to take care of you! I'm the one who has to find you a shield from the Dark Lord! The one that has to carry on our bloodline! You think I want to be married to someone I don't even love at twenty years old?

"Because I don't -- but I don't have a choice -- I never had a choice! My whole life I've protected you -- because someone has to protect you -- someone has to take care of you, and that responsibility lands on me time and time again --" She was staring wildly into her sister's eyes, a frantic vexation present in her every fiber, finally coming out after years of suppression.

She exhaled, taking a step back.

"So," she said, her voice calmer, lower now, "please refrain from screwing this up, because unlike you, I have actual things I need to worry about. I don't have the luxury of only being responsible for myself." Despite the even tone she said the words in, they held a bite.

Astoria's whole body was hollow, throbbing echos of tears pushing up in her throat, curling her stomach. Her lips were parted and her head jerked backwards. Tears glistened at her lower lash line.

Leaning forwards, her words clear and hissed, she said, "Sorry my dying is such a burden for you."

She pushed out of the alcove, down the hallway, passing the light of the party splashing from the doorways to the ballroom. She heard her sister sigh and say, "Astoria," like a mother scolding a child.

But she wasn't a child. She wasn't a child and was so sick and tired of everyone treating her as such.

She. Needed. To. Get. Out.

The words were filling her up, suppressing all the emotions on the cusp of exploding from her. She took a few turns, like a mouse trapped in a maze, and stumbled upon, to her utter delight, black french doors leading to a rounded stone balcony.

She wretched the doors open, slamming them behind her, the cold night air rushing flat over her in a gust of chilled wind. The pale, luminescent moon and thousands of stars surrounded her, as though she'd entered a new realm, a new galaxy.

Walking to the railing, supported by lavishly carved balusters, she planted her palms firmly to the cool stone.

She inhaled a shaky breath.

So that was what her sister truly thought of her.

Finally, finally, Daphne says something that isn't phony, isn't force, isn't fake, and that's it.

She saw Astoria as a burden. She saw Astoria as a cumbersome responsibility. A chore. An unfair task. An unwanted nuisance.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to walk right back in there and scream and yell and say how she didn't ask for this.

She didn't ask to be a burden. To be a responsibility. To be sick.

Astoria had a blood malediction. An ancestor was cursed generations ago, and in a cruel stitch of fate, it resurfaced in Astoria. She was sick, and she was weakening, and she was dying, and her sister somehow thought this was her choice.