Chapter 112: Where Her Heart Sleeps
The grand estate had never felt so cavernous. Laughter still echoed down the halls, the garden still rang with the clash of foils and the sharp calls of young fencers. But in the quiet places — the study window, the linden tree, the chaise near the piano — something softer had gone missing.
She no longer filled the air with questions. No more humming between lessons or stray verses muttered into notebooks. Since the car had vanished down the gravel lane, she had become still — as if part of her had left with it.
Grief didn't come in wails or tantrums. It arrived as silence. As shadow. As a small girl curled in another's lap, trembling soundlessly into the fabric of her shirt. The arms that held her made no promises, only stayed — solid and certain and endlessly patient.
But the stillness wasn't surrender. It was transformation.
The girl who once giggled through footwork drills now bore bruises with calm, obedient resolve. She trained because she must — because some faraway voice might one day say "I'm proud of you." But her heart beat in different rhythms.
She watched the other girl fence — not for form or function, but for beauty. She moved like stormlight, and in that motion, something in the quiet girl awakened. A longing she didn't yet have words for. A kind of devotion deeper than understanding.
And so she wrote.
Latin verses, fragile and luminous, folded into worn leather notebooks. Words like spells, like lullabies. At night she read them aloud, nestled into warm arms and whispered promises. "You are mine." "You always are."
Days unfolded in their hidden rituals — whispered poems, humming in libraries, secret naps tangled in limbs and sketchbooks. Even finances became a game. She picked stocks like melodies, and someone quietly made them real.
She didn't ask for forever. She only asked for presence.
Don't leave, her verses pleaded.
Even if the sky falls. Even if light turns to night.
Because the heart she clung to was the only place she'd ever truly felt at home.
And where that warmth lived…
There, her heart would always sleep.