Chapter 55. Strange Silence
On return, breakfast was warm and rich with the smell of smoked boar and sizzling bacon, the air hazy with the fragrance of roasted herbs Donivan had worked into the eggs. They had been really good before and with some fresh boar meat just in and recently butchered, it was an option on the menu today.
One that Sephora wouldn't be turning down for second breakfast, and Donivan was more than happy to agree. Between the walk in the garden with Maven and then her mother wanting to chat about... that. Looking at her plate, she made a disgusted scowling face.
The royal table gleamed in the morning light, set with polished silver and delicate porcelain that only emphasised the very ordinary comfort of food, but the scent wafted sweetly through the house and room - no one would say anything.
Still a little sore in her muscles from yesterday's training and sparring session with Kaelen, Seraphina entered. Her arm was bandaged with linen that smelled faintly of pine salve. She was half-ready to simply collapse into a chair and drown herself in tea when she noticed her sister already seated with that sweet, sweet fragrance coming from her plate and the kitchen. Protein like that? That's just what she needed after yesterday's training.
Sitting quietly, Sephora's hands were odd... too folded, too neatly in her lap. Too... controlled. A plate of bacon omelets cooled before her, partially touched. She was clearly thinking, away in her own little bubble, but she hadn't touched her food? Not finishing those omelets? The sight alone was unusual for Seraphina — knowing her twin Sephora never waited for anyone when finishing her food. Especially not when Donivan put her favorite dish in front of her.
Seraphina paused, unsettled.
The silence stretched.
Only the faint crackle from the kitchen fire, and clanks, wooshes and noises from the kitchen, seemed to intrude, and for a moment, Seraphina thought she heard her own heart louder than anything else.
"Sephora?" she asked gently, sliding into the seat across from her. "You're… too quiet this morning."
Her sister blinked as if pulled back from somewhere far away. She reached for her fork but pushed the eggs around rather than eating them.
"I went walking earlier today, way earlier," Sephora said softly. Her voice carried no lilt, no sweetened charm, only a strange flatness. "Mother joined me, eventually."
Seraphina frowned. "Oh?" She tried to keep her tone light, but there was a weight in her sister's words that was downright weird. "What did she want with you?" It's not that she didn't think her sister was important; it's that she knew her mother didn't think the same way. If Queen Nox had wanted to talk to her, she was worried that this reaction that it had been something awful. That's all that made sense with how she was watching her sister act.
As Sephora's pale eyes flicked up, sharp as glass, then slid away. "Nothing you need to know."
The finality in her tone cut deeper than the words themselves. Seraphina's chest tightened, but she forced herself not to push further. Not yet. She had to get her sister back, get her sister to hold on again, and not let go...
Then, something seemed to dawn on her, and Sephora exhaled slowly, as though bracing herself. "It was the forest back when we had dinner," she said after a long pause. "The Ancient One that we are supposed to guard and watch over? The stretch near the cliffs to the east, where we go to think when we need to?"
Waiting patiently, Seraphina began to eat her own food now placed in front of her.
"It was silent."
The word echoed strangely between them.
At this, Sephora set down her fork, fingers trembling slightly before she clasped her hands once again. Now, clearly it was a tactic to still them. "Not quiet. Silent. No birds. No bugs. No wind. Nothing. Even the leaves seemed to hang heavy, as if… as if they'd been waiting for something that never came. I've walked those woods before, and flown over them how many hundreds of times? You have too. They hum, they breathe. But this—" She shook her head, biting her lip hard enough to pale the skin of her usual naturally plump red. "This... was wrong."
Trying to imagine it. "Perhaps a storm passed through. The woods are often unsettled afterward." Seraphina frowned. It did sound odd, and it did seem wrong. No noise at all?
When Sephora laughed at that, it came out as though it were hollow. "No storm does that, sister. Not to that forest. No storm tears up the roots of trees as if something bigger than a bear clawed through the earth. I saw a clearing... the clearing wide and raw, as if a hand had reached down from the heavens and scooped it clean. And yet… no prints, no signs of fire, nothing. Just destruction... And that silence."
A chill prickled Seraphina's arms despite the warmth of the hall. She studied her sister, noting the slight tremor in her hands, the faint pallor beneath her porcelain skin. For the first time in years, Sephora looked genuinely afraid.
While she had already reconsidered this... she was once again reassured, that Sephora did not frighten easily.
Grown up together had Seraphina knowing her twin's games, as well as she knew herself — the sweet cooing voice, the feigned innocence that made servants sigh and soldiers laugh, the way she lilted her head to play harmless. What she was seeing in front of her? This... this was no act.
Whatever it had been.
The silence had seemed followed her back.
In a way, this gave Seraphina cause for relief. Her sister hadn't been avoiding talking to her because she hated her and never wanted to talk to her again, or was still hurt from the horrid words that had been spoken. She had been afraid of something she had seen that she didn't know how to deal with.
Trying to be the bigger sister that she should have been long before now, Seraphina reached across the table and laid her hand gently over her sister's.
The reaction was immediate. Sephora stiffened, almost flinched, but did not pull away.
"Whatever it was," Seraphina's voice was soft as cotton and a tone that was twice as comforting, quietly, "you don't have to carry it... Whatever this is, all alone."
For a moment, pale eyes met dark ones, twin mirrors caught in fractured light.
Something unreadable, and again that unknowable thing to Seraphina, passed across Sephora's face — grief, fear, anger? Seraphina could not name it, and it frustrated her. Not at her sister, but at whatever was causing this much harm and pain.
Then the mask slid back into place, a small, bright but brittle smile tugging at her lips.
"You know. I'm probably just imagining it," Sephora said, her tone airy now, dismissive. "It was just a walk. The forest is strange sometimes."
Now that she had said all that she had? Seraphina wasn't convinced.
The silence that had settled between them over the past weeks felt heavier than ever now, thick with things both unknown and unsaid.
Yet, watching her twin push her plate away uneaten, Seraphina felt an unfamiliar ache stir in her chest. What could she do to be the big sister that Sephora needed right now? How could she be there for her?
Maybe it was time she stopped assuming Sephora could weather her shadows alone.
Maybe — for once — she needed to look out for her baby sister... but right now, it didn't seem like her baby sister was going to let her.