Outside the Study
Eledy stood in the corridor outside her father's study. Her body ached from the morning's training—muscles she didn't know existed screaming with every small movement. Sweat had dried on her skin hours ago, leaving her feeling grimy despite changing clothes.
Her hand lifted toward the door. Hesitated. Dropped.
She pressed her palm against her stomach, trying to calm the churning there.
Just knock. You need to be there. You need to see the ledgers, understand the accounts. You have to understand what's happening around him that we missed before. You have to be closer to him if you want to find the evidence against Duke Castor.
She took a breath and steadied herself. The churning in her stomach was fear, yes, but also anticipation. This was the moment where observation became investigation, where suspicion could transform into proof.
Her hand rose toward the door.
This time it connected with the wood—sharp, confident.
Then her courage faltered halfway through the second knock. The sound came out softer, lighter.
She winced at her own weakness.
The Study Door Opens.
"Come in."
Her father's voice. Steady. Authoritative.
Eledy pushed the door open slowly, her movements careful, controlled.
The study opened before her—afternoon sunlight streaming through tall windows, making dust motes dance in the golden air. The smell hit her immediately: old leather, ink, paper, and something else. Wood polish. The faint mustiness of stored documents.
Her father sat at his desk, hunched over ledgers. Lloyd stood beside him, mid-report.
Both men turned to look at her.
And then she saw it.
On the wall to the left, above a small side table—a portrait.
A woman in formal noble dress, seated in a high-backed chair. Red hair arranged in an elegant style, the color of autumn flames caught in sunlight. Blue eyes that seemed to pierce through the canvas—sharp, intelligent, assessing. Posture perfect—back straight, shoulders level, hands folded precisely in her lap. Her chin tilted slightly upward, not with arrogance, but with quiet confidence. Her expression was serene yet sharp, the look of someone who saw everything and revealed nothing.
Eleanor Rovaan.
Eledy's feet stopped moving. Her breath caught.
She is... Eledy's mom.
The mom I never knew.
The mom I would never have.
The thought wasn't conscious—it was a gut punch, immediate and visceral. The orphan in her chest—the one who'd spent eighteen years without a mother, who'd written mothers into stories because she couldn't have one—reached out toward that painted face with desperate, aching need.
This is what a mother looks like.
Her eyes traced every detail. The way Eleanor held herself. The precise fold of her hands. The angle of her spine. The subtle lift of her chin. Those blue eyes—the same shade as her own—staring out from the canvas with quiet authority.
She didn't realize she was memorizing it. Didn't realize her body was already responding, shifting, preparing to mirror what it saw.
"Eledy?"
Her father's voice broke through the moment.
She tore her gaze away from the painting, face flushing. How long had she been staring?
"You promised to teach me politics," she said, forcing her voice steady. "In the afternoons."
Her father set down his pen immediately, his eyes scanning her face with sharp concern.
"But can you—" He stopped himself. "Are you alright? This morning's training wasn't too much, I hope—"
"I'm... I'm fine." The words came too fast. She caught herself, softened her tone. "I'll just observe quietly."
Lloyd looked at her with that calculating expression she'd seen on knights' faces—the look of someone measuring a new recruit.
"It's good for the young lady to learn, my lord," Lloyd said, his voice gentler than usual. "She should understand how the territory operates. And... she's waited long enough. You did promise her."
Her father studied her. Really studied her. She could feel the weight of his gaze, measuring her exhaustion against her determination.
Finally: "...Alright. But just listening. This is military discussion—budgets, troop numbers, security concerns. It might be boring."
"I understand, Father."
He gestured to a chair positioned near the desk—angled so she could see and hear without being in the working space.
Eledy moved toward it, her body heavy with fatigue. Every step reminded her of the morning's drills—sword forms repeated until her arms shook, footwork practiced until her legs burned.
She reached the chair and sat.
And without thinking—without any conscious decision—her body moved.
Her back straightened. Not the forced rigidity of someone trying to look proper, but a natural alignment. Shoulders level. Spine vertical.
Her hands folded in her lap. Not clasped nervously, but placed with precise deliberation. Right hand over left, fingers interlaced in a specific pattern.
Her chin lifted. Just slightly. Not proud, not arrogant. Quiet confidence.
The exact posture from the painting.
She didn't realize what she'd done. Her exhausted body had simply absorbed the image—the mother she never knew—and replicated it instinctively. The way a child mirrors a parent without thinking. The way the orphan in her chest had been yearning to do for twenty-seven years across two lifetimes.
Count Rovaan went very still.
His eyes locked on his daughter, something shifting in his expression. Shock. Recognition. Pain.
He stared at the way she sat—the precise angle of her spine, the placement of her hands, the tilt of her chin.
Eleanor.
That's Eleanor's posture. Exactly.
The thought hit him like a physical blow. He'd seen his wife sit that exact way hundreds of times during council meetings, political negotiations, formal gatherings. That specific arrangement of hands, that particular angle of the shoulders—it was Eleanor's signature composure, the physical embodiment of her political acumen.
And now it appeared in his daughter.
Naturally. Unconsciously. As if Eledy had simply remembered her mother and let Eleanor's presence flow through her.
Eledy felt her father's stare. The intensity of it made her skin prickle with awareness.
She looked up at him, confused.
Why is he looking at me like that?
His expression was strange—shock mixed with something that looked almost like grief. Or wonder. Or both.
Had she done something wrong? Was she not supposed to be here after all?
Her hands tightened slightly in her lap—the only break in the perfect posture she didn't know she'd adopted.
Lloyd noticed the exchange. His eyes flicked between the Count and his daughter, then toward the portrait on the wall.
Understanding dawned on his face. His expression softened with something that might have been sympathy.
He cleared his throat gently, drawing attention back to the business at hand.
"Shall we continue, my lord?"
The Truth
What none of them fully understood:
Rovaan thought he was seeing his daughter naturally embodying her mother's mannerisms—grief and love manifesting as unconscious mimicry born from years of memory.
Eledy didn't realize she'd copied anything at all—her body had simply responded to the desperate need to connect with the mother she'd never known, absorbing and replicating the painted image with the instinctive hunger of an orphan.
The painting hung on the wall between them, silent witness to a moment of connection built on parallel misunderstandings.
Eleanor's posture lived on in her daughter.
Just not in the way anyone thought.
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