"I could take a look at her," Nikolai Mikhail fucking Novak suggest, as if that was ever going to happen after how this bastard traumatized me as Eleanor.
"I would rather not stay anywhere close to a man with a fame of forcing himself on woman, married and unmarried ones, Your Highness," I exclaimed coldly, still behind them, but I saw his eyes darkening. "Definitely not a men who might have caused this horrible trauma of abuse in someone I held feelings for, such as Eleanor. My family is not aligned with you, but with His Imperial Highness, the Crown Prince, I don't see a reason for you to stay near me at all, you make me even more uncomfortable than your fiancee."
"He never did such thing!" Sofiya yelled angry.
"The words of a woman who puts a men, who doesn't even fully loves them, above other woman, even knowing what he does, as you've seen with your eyes, I'm sure, doesn't mean anything to me, Countess Vasilache. And yelling at a wounded person, aggressively, during a funeral, is extremely bothersome. You might anger the dead in here, and when the age of darkness come, they might come to you and make you pay for this moment," I made sure to sound eerie, because I meant it.
"What are you talking about?" She gasped. "Have you gone mad after hitting your head, Diana?"
"I would say I've grown enlightened, Countess Vasilache. Once again, refrain from calling me by my first name, we have no relationship, it is unbefitting and uncomfortable. Furthermore, I feel like I see far beyond what you do, what any of you do, there's a darkness lurking around, an ancient vicious power right under us, the dead are dangerous, lands buried with countless of them exhale a bloodlust for the living," I stared at nothing, shaking. "Everything is coming to an end, an angel's death that triggers the doomsday, nobody can run, we're all... we... we're all going to die to the one who controls... the dead."
Then, to make it even more believable, I pretended to fall and convulse on the ground, like an Oscar actress would. So believable that even my family fell for it and began panicking, just as many other people present also did. They will all think I went mad now, but I don't see the downside.
"Diana!" I heard them crying for me.
After a minute convulsing, I just faked fainting, letting my consciousness actually wave away, more like sleeping still than anything. It was a last minute plan, but it worked, nothing scares people more than a madwoman with no memories who talks about things that haven't happened yet, disastrous things, in a funeral, and I even managed to hit both the leads and Rosalie. If I play my cards right, I'll make people wary of the graveyards enough for the mages to look into it, and if I'm lucky, it'll be before them 100 days.
I cannot let my Eleanor body be buried.
✵ ✵ ✵
"...ya? Liya?" I heard mother's voice from afar, growing closer, then I felt her fingers on my hair. "Liya, darling, please," she cried.
Slowly, I opened my eyes, blinking lazily, "Mom?"
"Liya!" She gasped and hugged me. "You nearly killed me with worry, child."
"You scared the shit out of us," Andrey groaned, and only then did I felt him, Kirill, father, and Arwel in the room.
"Why did you even bullshit them with that creepy death thing?" Kirill gasped, "It gave me the creeps. How did you even come up with that?"
And the stage is ready!
Struggling to sit down, I stared at them, "What? But I only bullshitted them about being into Eleanor. I... the... the rest wasn't... it wasn't a lie. I... I didn't know I had actually spoken that out loud," I stared at my hands, making them shake, "it... that was a feeling of dread taking over me, I could feel the bloodlust from under me, like the people buried there were... were begging to crawl out of the ground, to... to spill blood and kill everyone there. I... I felt darkness... something... something dangerous lurking around us."
"My Lady, are you talking about necromancy?" Arwel asked, haunted, and somehow I could smell his fear.
"I think so? I don't... I don't know," I swallowed. "It was vile... a vile magic... corrupted, dark, deadly, from death itself. It made me feel like I was about to die, like the end was near."
"The end?" Mom whispered.
"The end of what?" Dad added, voice lowered too.
I looked from my hands to them, eyes wavering softly, conjuring all the fear I genuinely felt from the idea of what could happen, "Everything. The end of life, of freedom, of everything. Doom. It felt real, I swear it did, I felt the vices of it grabbing onto me and bringing me down, like it wanted me to die as well. Please," I held onto mom's hands shaking softly, "you have to believe me, I'm not insane, I... I know what I felt, and it's nearing us, it's close."
They stayed frozen a long moment, all scared, just as they should be, and Kirill was the one to talk.
"You believe there's something dark and dooming happening with the graveyards?" He asked, haunted, as if he was horrified by it.
I turned my attention to him and nodded firmly, "I don't know what to do... but someone has to do something, someone has to look into it, or we are all going to die," I made sure to looks and sound terrified. "I don't... I don't think it's a good a idea to bury more bodies into the lands at all."
"Fuck," Andrey cursed, both my siblings and my parents shared a worried look. "We have to contact the Tower, Priestess-Mage Lorenzini was right, we should have listened to her."
Who? "Who is that?" I asked.
"Aurora-Camilla Lorenzini," father sighed, stressed and fearful, "she specialized in finding signs of necromancy, to try locating them before bad things happened."