"What are we fixing, father?"
"Everything," he had said, with tears in his eyes and that same persisting desperation that left her feeling sick to the bones.
He assured her she did not have to fear, she did not need to worry, but in her mind, there was only the echo of 'everything'.
"Why?"
"You're brave," he held her hand with a warm smile.
She nodded.
"Good." He said.
And so, with a hollow heaviness in her heart, five-year-old Alyssane drank the cup of poison for the first time. She fainted and woke up after several days.
Her father had not stopped while she was unconscious.
Marks of needles were littered throughout her pale skin. And the scent of rotting plants and stranger herbs was even stronger.
"Most would have died," he told her.
"You are strong."
"You always heal."
It made her feel proud.
The burning in her veins was like fire, it was always there, always suffocating. But somewhere, the pain and the pride got all mixed up until she could not imagine one without the other.
If her father was slowly breaking her, she soon allowed herself to be broken. The pain was too addictive, as were her scars, the wounds, everything rotten about her.
He never told her what was wrong. It was better not remembering, he would say.
And she could not remember it either no matter how hard she tried. Her mind was shattered, her thoughts always in a daze, and her nights of sleep always devoid of dreams―hollow and empty just like her.
.
.
The nightmare stirred something forgotten. Something she could not quite place and something she could not ignore.
Alyssane woke in the familiar scent of weary plants, oleanders, and something rotting somewhere. There was also the rampant battering of rain loud enough to give migraine.
Her thoughts were scattered everywhere, from those memories of her past to the faint glimpses of the nightmare she could not fully remember… and to him.
'He really saved me…'
It was a gamble, and she had nothing more to lose.
Most venom would not kill Alyssane, not when her blood had become poison itself. And so, she lured out the creature that always starved for fresh blood.
Her heartbeats were supposed to stop for some moments. She should have seemed dead, and she expected the knight to abandon her.
What was her use dead?
Alyssane rested her hand against her racing heart and tried to piece together the fragmented memories.
His touch, so harsh yet laced with a cruel tenderness, lingered in her mind, conflicting with the haunting visions from her nightmares.
'What do you really want?'
He kept her close, sewing threads through her limbs, controlling her in whatever way he pleased.
She felt as if she was seeing into a future, that seemed detached yet deeply tangled with her fate.
'I misunderstood his obsession for something else.'
It was a sensation she had never felt before.
And she was not sure how much faith she should have in the nightmare. It seemed as if it was starting to become true, but there were also slight variations, too small like seeing the charred tower from a different place or meeting the knight when he was not wearing armor.
Small as they were, Alyssane simply could not ignore them no matter how confusing it all became. 'It feels as if I lived an entire life in that nightmare...'
'But that's impossible.'
With a soft sigh, Alyssane brushed away those confusing thoughts and got down from the bed. It was her chamber in the tower with walls draped under corpses of dense plants and flowers withering from neglect.
'How many days have passed?'
She paused and hesitantly raised her hand.
There was a fresh and clean gown on her, and through folds of lacey sleeves, Alyssane caught a glimpse of bandages carefully bound.
She could smell the subtle scent of herbs and ointment, and feel the light touch of salve and bandages throughout her body.
It left her feeling uneasy.
Medicines were far too few and expensive in Moonshire, 'Who would care to cover even the scratches on my skin?'
But they were there and she could not ignore the sudden soothing feeling of the medicines covering all her wounds.
With mixed feelings, Alyssane walked towards the door. It was locked, but she could hear someone talking outside when she pressed her ear against the wood.
She knocked.
The sounds stopped, but no one answered.
'So, I am still a prisoner…'
Roaring sounds of thunders cleaved through the deafening rain as the storm grew cruel and colder. Alyssane hesitated briefly and then glanced around the room, silently trying to think of a way out.
But the plants were distracting.
'How many days…?' She absentmindedly wondered.
The rain continued with the same fervor as the day waned and even the night walked by, and all this while, the door of her room remained shut. No one came for her.
She was starving and thirsty.
But worst of all was the feeling of dread slowly eating her up from inside. She could not stop thinking, she could not stop questioning everything.
'Why would he save me?'
'Why keep me here?'
She was not cleared of her crimes.
And the mysterious stranger who found her seemed to embody raw cruelty in his icy blue gaze. Her heart shuddered at his memory.
'What does that nightmare even mean…?'
She was too afraid to accept what seemed easier to believe.
Her fingers tightly curled against the bedsheets.
The tremor of the rains dimmed by the evening and faint distant screams could be heard throughout the night, keeping Alyssane wide awake. The knights must be interrogating several people.
'It feels too much though.'
She sat by the window until the moon faded.
There were only armored knights walking around, not a single person of the manor was in sight. She tried to recall her missing memories.
But nothing happened.
'Lord Chancellor was killed…' She thought, 'But why was such a man visiting one of the shadiest brothels of the city?'
Why was he visiting anywhere at all?
Alyssane had heard how nobles of his rank would not leave the pious grounds of Higher Valeria―a part of the empire only reserved for the noble blood and their servants. The Pleasure City was frequented by the lower-ranked nobles instead.
No matter how she tried to see things, the case of the Lord Chancellor made no sense. He was in a place he was never supposed to be, and it was the same for her.
Alyssane was strictly confined to her tower.
It did not always stop her from going wherever she wanted.
But the main building of the Pearl Manor was entirely off-limits. There were too many guards in that place, and behind those bewitching sensual smiles of the courtesans and whores, Alyssane knew too many were viciously hostile.
She always despised that place.
Moreover, nothing happened in Pearl Manor without Madame Juan's knowledge, yet she was not a woman foolish enough to go against the crown by scheming in Lord Chancellor's murder.
'And the poison…'
Her gaze was distant as the last remnants of the cold rain ceased as well. Why would someone specifically pick poison? Moreover, why would they use it on both the Lord Chancellor and her?
'It would have been even easier to frame me if I wasn't poisoned.'
Alyssane closed her eyes and leaned against the glass window. Her mind was weary from all the confusing thoughts. It made no sense for anyone to want her dead, she was neither a threat nor a big enough thorn in anyone's heart.
Or so Alyssane believed.
But then a lost voice asked,'Do you even know yourself?'