- Johanna's Interlude -
Alyssane had always been too fragile.
Her heart, her flesh, everything about her seemed to be made of glass. She would get tired easily, she would easily fall sick, and it would take days for her to heal from the smallest of things.
It was as if the very blood in her veins was cursed—and nothing ever changed.
But something changed from that fateful night.
There were several rumours, that Alyssane poisoned herself as well as a lord from a high noble house. Some said she only poisoned him and then smeared his blood on herself to make it appear something had also happened to her.
None of those things made sense.
The physician did confirm that Alyssane had taken the same poison as the deceased lord.
Alyssane had nearly died from fever once when she fell in cold water. She could not have survived a poison so vicious it made one bleed out until they died.
Maybe it was sheer luck.
Nonetheless, Alyssane was already as good as dead after being accused of such a severe crime. The fate of Pearl Manor was not secure either.
I have never seen Madame Juan more furious.
She did not care for what truly happened, but she sent Gavin to make sure Alyssane suffered until her last breath, to make sure she would beg to be put out of her misery.
Something about her pure unadulterated rage was unnerving. Madame Juan did not listen to me this time, and the punishment was carried out.
I remained outside the tower.
Not a single sound could be heard, and the silence suffocated me as I waited for Gavin to come out, to tell me he had changed his mind, perhaps Alyssane was already too sick and he had to do nothing.
But when he did leave, there were stains of crimson across his dark face.
'Has she died?' I asked and he only glanced at me once before leaving. Gavin had never been so silent, I could understand why he must feel disturbed.
I did too.
And I despised her deeply.
That night I could not sleep. Everything had gone so quiet around the manor as if the house itself held its breath for the storms to come.
'She would not make it,' my heart kept telling me.
I had to see her.
Alyssane was sitting on the floor when I went into her chamber, her head was resting on the bed while she remained in a peaceful slumber. But she was never at peace when she slept.
'You don't sleep in calm, Alys...' I murmured, not sure what would happen.
Her body would always be too stiff, too tense as if she had the worst of nightmares. Even though she didn't dream.
'You are not fond of cold either,' I said out loud.
But the floor was freezing and Alyssane slept without a single trace of discomfort evident on her. She should have heard me, woken up or at least opened her eyes at the slightest of unusual sounds.
Something about those subtle changes left an emptiness in my heart.
They say people act differently in dire times.
Maybe that was the case.
But then Alyssane escaped. Did she not realize how foolish it was? There was no way she was going to make it out of the woods alive and she didn't. A knight brought her back to the manor, her skin was ghostly pale.
She looked like a corpse.
He said she was breathing, and nothing more. But I heard what had happened later on, and it made absolutely no sense.
'You hate the knights.'
Alyssane was neither so selfless nor so scheming as to shove herself in the face of death and misery to gain the trust of the knights. There was no way she would be able to get out of the accusations so easily.
'…and you can hardly stand any pain.'
I spoke with Gavin about her punishment, a part of me suspected that he had been so heartless as to lash her while she was unconscious.
He looked uncomfortable at my question, "She was too silent, barely reacting to anything."
Gavin said she looked the same when she was found near the noble lord's dead body. There were no emotions, no remorse, no grief.
How could someone be so calm in the face of death?
Somehow, Alyssane was healing like never before. It was strange, and the timing was stranger. The knights had earlier closed the case of the noble lord's death since Alyssane was the most obvious culprit.
But they reponed the investigation ever she was brought from the woods.
Madame Juan was enraged when the knights took all control of Pearl Manor from her hands. They were cold and uncaring, doing whatever they pleased. She told me the only way to end this ordeal soon would be Alyssane's death.
It has to look like an accident.
'You can hardly stand pain.'
I did not wish for things to end too soon.
And so, I let her starve.
Not because of any vile intentions, I only wished to see how she would react. Alyssane's health had always been fragile, the only reason she was still standing on her feet was that she was not careless about her well-being even when she stopped caring about every other thing.
She was frightened of falling sick.
She was bound to beg sooner or later. She would be too restless to remain in her chamber, she would try to leave, she would try to do anything but stay still.
Eight days passed, and no word came from her chamber.
I would visit the tower every eve, asking the knight what was going on, "Is she dead?"
How could anyone be so quiet under those conditions?
The knight always said the same thing. She was silent. Alyssane never made a single sound. It was as if she had resigned herself to whatever the fates held—as if she had found a way to numb all sorts of pain.
'You never give up.'
That was the Alyssane I knew.
And I never stopped knowing her. Even when we separated, even when I realized I could never allow myself to be around someone like her, even when I started noticing how every little thing about her was so easy to hate.
How she was nothing but a pathetic soul, resorting to reckless means for superficial freedom… and how I was more pathetic because I could never stop my thoughts from wandering back to her.
I finally visited her on the eighth night.
She looked worse than how she had looked when they brought her half-dead from the woods. Her gaze was vacant but eerily calm. She casually lied to have me feed her… just like she would do when we were kids, but there was something too unsettling about her.
Alyssane was always easy to read.
And yet, nothing about her was easy to understand all of a sudden. She watched me with an unblinking distant gaze as if she had known me all her life and yet she was seeing me for the first time.
When she ate, Alyssane held the fork as if she was not used to holding it, her bites were bird-like, too small, and she used her left hand as if she had always used it.
Her gaze. Her words. Nothing about them seemed to belong to the Alyssane I knew. I have seen her change throughout four years, I have seen how she had been when she saw, when she as happy, or when she was at her lowest point.
I know her better than anyone else.
But now nothing about her felt the same anymore. It was not entirely different, but different enough in every way that mattered. As if someone had stolen the part of her soul that made her her.
That was when I realized, Alys was gone.
The person in front of me had the same skin as hers, maybe the same memories, but nothing else was as it should be.
It had all gone missing.
And it was time to honor Madame Juan's wishes.