VICTORIA LEANS ON the table, frustration and worry painted on her face. She still hasn't properly been able to sleep, and it's clear on her face. No amount of makeup could hide what she was going through.
All she wanted to do was sit beside her sister and make sure she was okay. At this point, Victoria knows that Leo is fine, and having him in the hospital was just precautionary, making sure his sprains and bruises would heal and there's enough blood inside of him. But Vera... her episodes were becoming more frequent.
"Vic," Lysander said. She looked over to her brother in his wheelchair. She felt bad for dragging him out of bed again, but she wanted to talk. She needed to know what happened in Fox Grove. She needed to know what happened to Vera in the last decade.
"Vic, I know you're terrified. I know you want to know what's happening to her, but you have to think about yourself, too. You're tired, and you won't be any use to Vera if you get sick, too."
She tried to blink away tears. "I can't stop thinking about what she said last night." Victoria turns around. "I can't stop thinking about what the doctors said, about all the drugs in her bloodstream. Hell, Mom was here last night. How do I get that out of my head?"
Lysander bit his nails, nerves getting the best of him. "Trust me, Victoria. I can't stop thinking about that either."
Victoria got back up on her feet and started pacing the room. She couldn't sit still. She couldn't stop shaking. "Be honest with me, Lys. What do you think he did to her, all these years?"
Lysander knew the "he" was Ansen Grey. He bit his lip, not sure if Victoria wanted to hear his theory. But she wanted to know what happened. "Based on what I saw, Vic, I think... " He closed his eyes. "I think Vera's been assaulted. Sexually and physically. I think that's why she freaked out so much when she found herself tied to the bed."
Victoria stayed silent. "No," she whispered to herself. "Impossible. That couldn't have happened to my little sister. There has to be another reason-"
"Victoria, you out of all people should know what she's probably feeling," Lysander stated. He tried to make eye contact with his sister, but Victoria moves away. "It would make sense with what she said, about... him coming back. She's traumatised. And you should've seen her with Att this morning."
Her ears perked up to that. "What do you mean? She closer to him than anyone else, she knows that he wouldn't hurt her."
"It was more like a reflex," Lysander explained. "She probably didn't even know what she was doing, but she was flinching when he got kind of close. She moved her hand away when he reached for her. Atticus picked it up, too, and tried to keep his distance. It was like her body and subconscious thought he was going to hurt her. She was afraid to get anyone close to her."
"I thought you said that she kissed her?" Victoria also saw the giddy look on Atticus' face when he walked out of the hospital building.
"Well, yeah. But Vera initiated the kiss. She wanted to be close to him." Lysander played with the ring on his finger. "But there's still something that's guarding her off. There's also how she reacts when the doctors check on her. Again, she's flinching. She's reserved."
Victoria gives her brother an odd look. "I... I don't notice that. She doesn't let the doctors touch her."
Lysander nods. "Well, yeah. Even when she had her last episode, Vera was hesitating to let people touch her. She tries to move away and avoid people, even when they wanted to help her. And there's that look on her face... like she'd rather push the world away. She'd rather hide somewhere, alone. Vera's constantly... scared."
She wanted to keep herself away. She didn't want to be touched. She's scared, she didn't trust people. And Victoria couldn't force this out of her sister, not until she's ready to talk. There was still a gap, despite the relationship they built over the last couple weeks.
"I also think Ansen Grey got her addicted to whatever was in her bloodstream," Lysander adds. Victoria looks at him like he was crazy.
She shook her head. "She's seventeen. There's no way."
"Vic, we know that her group was involved with a lot of drug heists," Lysander tried to reason. "Bad guys don't care about laws, they probably gave her whatever they wanted." Lysander fiddled with his ring again. "I saw him inject Vera with something. He offered her water and Vera knew that there was something in it - probably rohypnol, now that I think of it."
"She's not addicted."
"She said she relapsed, Vic."
"She was just saying things. She's sick and her head was sick. Vera is not an addict."
"Victoria, we can't just assume her words were a lie."
"She showed no signs of withdrawl," Victoria claimed. "She got sick, sure, but they weren't withdrawl symptoms, were they?" She couldn't remember what her high school health teacher had told her, and never thought she's need the information. "We almost always knew where she was. I don't think she'd be able to get her hands on-"
"Victoria, what was she always prescribed?" Lysander interrupted her tangent. She looked at him blankly. "When she was sick, Vic. When she was hurt. What did we put her on?"
"Painkillers," she whispered. No, that wouldn't make sense. She wouldn't take more than what was needed, right? Where would she even get more from, if she needed them. "I don't believe you, Lysander."
"Vera also looked uneasy when Atticus and I were talking about underaged drinking."
"Why would you even bring that up?" Victoria wiped the tears from her eyes. She wanted to rage. "Why would you talk about that to her in a hospital setting, if you could tell that Vera wasn't comfortable with that topic."
"Here I thought you didn't believe me-"
"I don't," the queen said firmly. "I don't." She couldn't.
Lysander hesitates before talking. Has he seen his sister like this before? Was this even worse than when Victoria found out her parents were dead? "I don't think that's what's happening here, Victoria. You... you do think she's been through this. You believe what I'm saying. You just can't believe that the worst things we experienced were thrust upon Vera when she was younger than what we were."
Victoria didn't like that her brother was right.
She sat down and stared at the floor in front of her. "I should have been there, Lysander. And I'm not talking about Vera, I'm talking about you." She paused and gulped. "I should've been there for you, especially then. I should've been the one to find you - to stop you in the first place."
Lysander rolled his chair closer to her. "Victoria it's okay-"
"I could've lost you. I could've lost another sibling. And I was so caught up with what was happening to me that I almost lost you. And I know that I can't lose Vera physically, she won't die, but I don't want to lose her again. Not in any way." She sniffed. "I just want to know how I can help her."
"Victoria, she'll be okay, okay?"
"She showed me where she did it." Victoria turned to her brother slowly. "She showed me where she stabbed herself. During the dress fitting. I never felt more broken in my life, knowing that she did that to herself. I should've been the one there for her, she shouldn't have had to be with that monster. But we never even looked for her hard enough. We couldn't find her body but we thought she was dead anyway."
Lysander didn't know what to say. He tried to reach for her hand, but she pulled away. "Victoria, we won't let her face that monster again. Not alone, at least. We'll keep her safe. She won't hurt anymore."
"But she is hurting. Her episodes are getting worse, Lysander." Victoria got up again and walked towards the window. The row of buildings closest to the hospital were still smoking. "You know she started the fires. And you saw her pain. She's not even trying and she's hurting herself and others."
There was a soft knock from the doorway. Victoria turns around, seeing Sophia in the doorway. Lysander asked her to watch Vera, if anything happened to her-
"She had another episode," Sophia said simply. Victoria's eyes widened as she turned back and looked out the window. The roads were icing slowly, cars breaking hard before driving into the ice patches.
No... no... "Is she okay?" She began to rush towards the door, needing to check on Vera. But Sophia moves out of the way revealling Vera behind her. She's barefoot, a hospital gown covering her up until her knees. She wore polka dot pajama pants, too. Her eyes were red, hair a mess.
"What are you doing?" Victoria asked her sister. "You need to be in bed, this probably isn't good for you."
Vera took a couple steps towards her before she stumbled into her arms, like a baby taking her first steps. She wrapped her arms around Victoria, squeezing her tightly. She could feel Vera shake.
"Doctors said she might feel better out of the room. She wanted to see you," Sophia explained. "I'm going to go back and check on Leo, he got kind of spooked." She waved Lysander goodbye before leaving the siblings behind.
Vera broke into tears. "What's happening to me?" she asked, sobbing into Victoria's chest. "Why does the universe want to hurt me like this? Why can't I fall asleep and not wake up to what feels like a heart attack? Why does everything hurt, Victoria?"
"I don't know," she whispers into her sister's hair. "I don't know, but we'll figure it out."
Vera pulls away from Victoria and wiped the tears from her eyes. She takes a moment to look around the room, which was mostly empty except for a couple couches and tables and-
"What's the point in having a piano in a hospital?" Vera asked, croaking, as she walked towards the instrument. It was mounted against the wall and well taken care of, though the pain was getting chipped off.
"This place used to be this huge music school fifty years ago but the owners, for some reason, wanted it to be converted into a hospital," Lysander explained as he rolled over to his sister. The wheels of his chair squeaked against the floor. "Actually, I think it was because their daughter, uh, lost her life to cancer. They kept this one here, I think it was the girl's favourite place to play. The doctors use this place as a rec room, sometimes for music therapy."
"Doesn't it interrupt the patients or something?" Vera's fingers ran over the grooves of the old piano. Lysander could tell she was itching to play.
Victoria inched closer, sitting beside Vera on the piano bench. "The room's soundproof."
"So it makes it the perfect room to talk about someone behind their back, right?"
Lysander and Victoria looked at each other, guilt on their faces. "How did you-"
"I'm sick, not stupid," she said as she lifted the cover of the keys, sliding it into it's hold place. Her fingers ran over the ivory keys, looking at them in astonishment. "I know you have about a million questions, and I know some of the things I said probably - no, definitely worried you, and I can try answering some. I think I'm ready. But first..."
Victoria watches as her sister looks down and finds the damper pedal. She positions her fingers on the white keys and takes a deep breath before she begins to to play.
Her fingers glided along the keys as she played. Victoria watched, mesmerised by how smoothly her sister played. It didn't look like she stopped playing for ten years - unless she somehow had opportunity to play. Their mother really drilled the sequences in her mind, as she played effortlessly. A small smile appeared on Vera's face as she played, as if the world around her was okay.
She stopped, but kept her hands on the keys. "Lysander said that you stopped playing after I left," Vera said.
Victoria nodded. "It wasn't the same."
Vera pursed her lips. "Okay. Questions. Can you please start with something... simple?"
Her eyes met Lysander's. "I'm not sure if anything about your life could be considered simple, but I guess there's something I want to know. You can tell me if you'd rather talk about something else." Vera nodded. He bit his nail before he asked. "Ansen Grey... he kept on telling you that... that Mom and Dad abandoned you. You said they didn't. But last night... when Mom was there... you still asked. Why, Vera?"
She hesitates. Lysander gets ready to say that she didn't have to talk yet, but Vera opens her mouth to talk. "You saw her hesitating, right? It wasn't just me? I wasn't just angry when I made the accusation?" Victoria and Lysander nodded. "Truth is, I told myself all the time that Mom and Dad never did that to me. They'd rather have me in their lives than fulfil some prophecy from centuries ago. But... I don't really remember that night."
"Mom and Dad just said you wandered off in the night," Lysander said, picturing that night. Victoria couldn't help to remember, too. It was the beginning of September and Victoria woke up to twelve missed calls from Lysander at one in the morning. He kept calling.
When she picked up, she learned that Vera was missing. She wasn't in bed, wasn't in the house. Victoria rushed over to her home and comforted a worried Lysander as their father started a search party.
"I don't think it was Dad's fault, I think it was Mom's, but-" Vera closed her eyes. "I remember her tucking me into bed. I wanted Lysander to come tell me a bedtime story, but she insisted he was busy." She turned to him, looking for some truth.
Lysander shook his head. "I remember that night as if it was yesterday. I was in the den, reading. Mom and Dad were arguing in the kitchen before Mom went up to your room to tuck you in for the night. I was going to come up, but she told me not to."
Tears filled Vera's eyes, but she didn't let them fall. "She told me the stupid Queen of Noatra story, as if I constantly wanted to hear that story. She taught me what the story meant, that it was about me. Every time she tucked me into bed, she told me that stupid story."
"How did it go again?" Lysander asked. Victoria gave her brother a dirty look. "What? Mom never told us that story. I couldn't find it anywhere, but you always complained how you didn't like the story, Vera."
Vera played with his her fingers. "Long story short, it's just my life. A girl is born in a society ruled by the wrong people. Her eighteenth birthday falls on the day the stars align again. She's born into a loving family that cares about her a lot, and then she loses them. She's separated from family, she loses her parents - the order of those events didn't matter. She comes back a decade later with a plan to infiltrate the palace and take back her throne."
"Does she succeed?" Victoria asks.
Vera shrugged. "There's no ending, that's for me to finish." She bit her bottom lip. "But before I could finish the story, I had to start it. And Mom was so desperate in fulfilling it. And..." Vera closed her eyes to remember again. "I remember her giving me a glass of water and then falling asleep. Next thing I know, I'm in the woods."
"So you wandered away but in your sleep?" Lysander asked, trying to make sense of it.
Victoria shook her head. "No... you're holding something back, Vera."
This time she couldn't hold the tears back, the tears rolling down her cheeks. "I was tied up, Tori. She tied me up. There were ropes around my wrists and ankles and-" she gulped before continuing. "-Ansen was the one who found me. Ansen was the one to untie me. He helped treat the rope burns and he made sure I wouldn't get hypothermia and..." her voice trailed off.
Victoria felt as though someone hand their hands around her throat as she struggled to breathe. No, no that couldn't be it. Her mother wouldn't do that to Vera, not when she cared about her so much. There was no way she'd do that to her child.
"How would she get past Dad? Hell, Lysander was there, too." Victoria tried to find logic in what happened. "It was one in the morning when they realised you were missing. Dad never slept until two, at least."
"Not if she drugged him. Drugged me, too."
The sisters turn to Lysander, confused looks on their faces. Lysander stares in front of him, a blank look on his face. "I thought... I thought I remembered that day really clearly. But I remember... I remember hearing a loud crash after Mom went upstairs. I thought Hemingworth was going to deal with it. Something didn't feel right, so I looked over the couch and saw Dad's leg, and I knew he was on the ground. I called him and he didn't get up. And when I was about to... I think I blacked out, too. I woke up on the couch when Mom and Dad were talking with some guards and I found out."
Victoria was left speechless. "She did that to you." She could hardly breath. "She did that to us. And then you said that they committed suicide, you didn't kill them." Victoria could hardly comprehend what was going on. "The last decade of our lives were caused because Mom wanted you to fill in a prophecy more than she wanted us to be a family."
Vera entwined her fingers with her sister's. "But we're family now, Victoria." She grabbed Lysander's hand, too. "Isn't that all that matters?"
Victoria spent five years mourning her parents. She spent ten years wondering where her sister went. She spent the last month wondering what happened to her sister, and slowly, she was getting her answers.
She wrapped her arms around her little sister. "You're right, that's in the past. We're family now."
But she knows that as much as Vera wants to abandon her past and get off the path to her future, it's always going to haunt her.
Fate was not a fan of the Carmicheal family.