447 A.R. – Night (Future Timeline)
The cold hospital air greeted Rei like an old friend as his eyes opened to the flickering light and distant hum of mechanical birds.
His broken body lay motionless as always, but his mind was racing with the weight of what was coming, in less than six hours in the past, Mira would awaken. Everything would change.
"You're agitated," Darius observed from his corner. "More than usual."
"Big day tomorrow," Rei said quietly. "In the past. The Awakening Ceremony. My sister..."
He trailed off, not sure how much to reveal.
Darius stood, moving closer. "The sister you're trying to save?"
Rei nodded.
"Then tonight's not the night for sword theory," Darius said, pulling his chair beside the bed. "Tonight you need to talk. Get your head straight before whatever's coming."
Rei was quiet for a moment, then: "I saw them today. In the park. Lucien and Elise Varen."
Darius went very still. "The Count's children."
"You never told me about them," Rei said, studying Darius' face. "About what they were like. Before everything fell apart."
The former bodyguard was silent for a long moment, his scarred hands clasping together, a gesture Rei had learned meant he was deciding how much truth to share.
"What do you want to know?" Darius finally asked.
"Everything. Lucien I know about, the gambling, the destruction. But Elise..." Rei paused. "I don't remember hearing her name in my timeline. What happened to her?"
Darius' expression darkened into something like old grief. "That's because by the time you were paying attention to Varen politics, Elise was already dead."
The word hit like a physical blow.
"Dead?"
"Sold first. Then dead." Darius' voice carried the weight of a story he'd never wanted to tell. "When Lucien gambled away the county, Marlen Crest didn't just take the land. He took everything of value. Including the Count's daughter."
Rei's blood went cold. "What do you mean, sold?"
"Married her off. Same thing, really, when the woman has no choice in the matter." Darius leaned back, his jaw tight with old anger. "There was a minor king in the northern territories, King Aldric Thorne of Frostmere. Ambitious bastard looking to expand his influence south. Crest brokered the deal as part of consolidating control over Varen lands. Elise was seventeen. Became Queen of Frostmere whether she wanted to or not."
"And then?"
Darius was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper.
"She lasted eight months. Eight months in that frozen hell, playing the role of dutiful queen, smiling for court functions, pretending she chose this." His hands clenched. "Then one winter morning, they found her in her chambers. Wrists slit in the bath. Clean, deliberate. She'd left a note."
Rei couldn't breathe. "What did it say?"
"I never saw it. But the rumors said it was short. Something like: 'I will not be property. I will not be a thing to be traded. My pride is all I have left, and I choose to die with it intact.'" Darius' voice cracked slightly. "The official story was illness. Weak constitution. Northern cold. All the polite lies nobility tells itself to avoid uncomfortable truths."
"But everyone knew."
"Everyone knew. They just didn't care. One more noble daughter ground up by politics. One more casualty of the games powerful people play." Darius looked out the window at the mechanical birds. "King Thorne remarried within six months. Life went on. House Varen was already destroyed. Elise became a footnote in someone else's story."
Rei felt something cold and terrible settling in his chest. "You said she was kind."
"She was. That's what made it worse." Darius turned back to him. "Elise wasn't just smart, she was good. Actually, genuinely tried to help people. Ran literacy programs for miners' children out of her own allowance. Studied medicine because she wanted to understand healing. Collected books on philosophy and governance like other girls collected jewelry."
"She sounds like someone who should have lived."
"She sounds like someone who wanted to live. But only on her own terms." Darius' expression was complicated, respect mixed with grief. "That was Elise. Brilliant, kind, passionate about making things better. But also proud. Stubborn as hell. And crazy enough to choose death over subjugation."
"You respected that," Rei observed quietly.
"I did. I do." Darius leaned forward. "Most people, when they're trapped, they bend. They break. They survive by becoming smaller versions of themselves. Elise refused. She'd rather burn out than fade away. There's something... I don't know. Noble? In the real sense of the word, not the inherited-title sense."
"What was she like?" Rei asked. "Before. When she was just herself."
Darius' expression softened slightly, touched by memory. "Passionate. She cared about things most nobles dismissed as beneath them. Every morning she'd wake at dawn to manage house affairs because her father was too drunk and her brother too useless. She'd argue with Aldric about opening the family libraries to commoners. She'd sneak into the kitchens to make sure the staff was being treated fairly."
"She tried to save the family."
"She tried to save everyone. That was her fatal flaw, thinking she could fix what was fundamentally broken." Darius' voice turned harder. "She covered Lucien's debts. Made excuses for her father's drinking. Maintained appearances when everything was crumbling. Held that house together through sheer force of will for years."
"And when it collapsed anyway?"
"She paid the price. Became the asset to be liquidated." Darius stood, pacing. "The worst part? She knew it was coming. Months before Lucien made that final bet, she knew the family was doomed. She'd tried everything, negotiating with creditors, selling her own jewelry, even attempting to take over financial management completely."
"But they wouldn't let her."
"Because she was a woman. Because she was 'just' a daughter. Because nobles would rather die than admit a seventeen-year-old girl was smarter than all of them combined." Darius' hands clenched into fists. "So she watched. Helpless. As Lucien gambled. As Aldric drank. As everything she'd tried to build came apart."
"Did she awaken?" Rei asked. "Before the marriage?"
"Yes, On the ceremony the collapse. Manifested something related to emotional perception and influence, could read what people were feeling, could subtly affect emotional states. Incredibly powerful for politics, for negotiation, for understanding what people really wanted beneath the words they spoke."
"The Order must have wanted her."
"Desperately. But Aldric refused on her behalf. Saw her as a future marriage asset, not an Order operative. Kept her close, kept her controlled, kept her valuable for exactly the kind of trade that eventually happened." Darius sat back down heavily. "If he'd let her join the Order, she might have escaped. Might have built her own power base. Might have lived."
"But he didn't."
"But he didn't. So when everything fell apart, she had no protection. No allies. No way out except the one King Thorne offered, which wasn't an offer at all, just a transaction."
Rei stared at the ceiling, processing. In the park today, Elise had looked at him with curiosity. Had smiled. Had seemed so alive, so present.
In two and a half years, she'll be dead. Sold to a king. Trapped in a role she never wanted. Choosing death over being someone's property.