Chapter 119: Tea with Thorns and Moonlight
"You're Evangeline Claire Ainsley," Lady Odette said — not asked.
Eva inclined her head as she took the offered seat. Her manners, carved and polished by Vivienne's hand, were effortless.
"I am," she said. "But I answer to Eva."
Lady Odette examined her, as if parsing the truth from a whisper. Her gloved fingers curled delicately around a porcelain teacup.
"I was told you lack pedigree."
Eva smiled, polite and sharpened. "And yet I found the door open."
Odette lifted a brow, neither displeased nor impressed. "Doors open easily for charming children. They close more quickly when the charm wears off."
"Then I suppose I must find another way to stay in the room," Eva said mildly. "Charm fades. But I've heard a mind well - tempered does not."
A ripple passed through the air — delicate, almost musical. Lady Odette took a slow sip of her tea.
"Seraphina likes you."
"She loves me," Eva corrected gently, her voice like the shimmer of rain on slate. "And I love her."
"That may be. But love is fleeting. Dynasties, less so."
Eva blinked once, the only visible sign of heat beneath her composed surface.
"I imagine it would be tiring to believe that," she said. "To live a life where love is treated like vapor, and bloodline like stone."
Odette's eyes glinted with something unreadable.
"You speak boldly for someone so small."
Eva offered a smile sweet as blackcurrant jam and twice as tart. "I was born small. I speak the size I need to."
A pause. The clink of porcelain as Lady Odette set her cup down.
"You've no family name worth weighing. No crest. No claim. What makes you think you belong in our world?"
Eva didn't flinch. She tilted her head instead, studying the woman before her with careful grace.
"I don't think I belong to your world," she said, voice quiet, sure. "I belong to Seraphina's. And she is not a world. She's a sky. If you're asking whether I intend to rise with her, the answer is yes."
The silence that followed was velvet and dangerous.
Odette folded her hands. "You are careful. And clever. A dangerous combination for a girl who does not know her place."
"I know exactly where I stand," Eva said. "I'm standing where no one thought I could reach."
And then — because she was six, and brilliant, and perhaps too brave for her own good — she added:
"But I'll sit politely until you ask me to leave."
Odette studied her for a long moment.
Then, faintly — imperceptibly to anyone but Eva — she smiled.
But Eva wasn't done.
She glanced down at her teacup, took a sip, and added with cool innocence:
"I do wonder, though… If a place can be inherited but not earned, how can anyone be certain they deserve it?"
Lady Odette's mouth opened slightly — then closed.
Touché.
Eva continued, tilting her head just so:
"My maman says that power passed without scrutiny breeds ghosts, not heirs. But I think you already knew that."
Lady Odette's gloved fingers tightened slightly around her saucer.
Still, silence.
Eva added, perfectly calm:
"I don't mean to offend. But I've seen the way dynasties forget the warmth of their own hands while counting rings in their marble."
That stung. Odette didn't show it — but her next sip of tea was slower, more deliberate.
Eva folded her hands over her lap, waiting.
"You're dangerous," Odette murmured.
"I'm six," Eva replied. "That's what makes it so fun."
The drawing room doors clicked open minutes later. Seraphina her Ina was waiting in the hallway, her back straight, chin raised as though ready to march in and defend her moonbeam with sword, word, or wildfire.
When Eva stepped out unharmed and radiant, Seraphina's breath caught.
"Well?" she asked.
Eva looked up at her, a wicked glint in her gaze.
"She tried to pluck me," she said. "But I've thorns."
Seraphina laughed. Low, warm, unmistakably pleased.
"You didn't cry?"
"I nearly made her cry," Eva said, then paused, uncertain. "Is that bad?"
"No," Seraphina murmured, kneeling to adjust the bow at the back of Eva's dress. "That's poetry."
That evening, long after dinner, Eva stood barefoot in Seraphina's room, brushing her teeth in small, distracted circles. Her nightclothes were missing again — forgotten somewhere between the bath and her bedroom. She wore one of Seraphina's shirts instead, oversized and falling to her knees like a nightdress stitched from clouds. The collar drooped off one shoulder.
"You'll stretch it out," Seraphina said from the doorway, but her voice was indulgent.
Eva grinned around her toothbrush. "Then you shouldn't leave it lying around."
Seraphina leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. She didn't argue. Her phone slid silently from her pocket.
Click.
Another click.
Eva frowned. "Are you taking pictures?"
"No."
Eva narrowed her eyes. "Liar."
"Cute liar," Seraphina offered, showing her the screen. The photo captured Eva mid - pout, hair fluffed from toweling, foamy toothpaste on her lips, shirt slipping like a halo around her.
Eva groaned. "Delete it!"
Seraphina backed away, laughing. "Never. That's mine now."
Eva lunged forward, toothbrush still in hand, trying to reach. Seraphina held the phone above her head with practiced ease.
"Give it!" Eva demanded, standing on her tiptoes, trying to jump. "You're cheating!"
"You're short," Seraphina teased, sidestepping her tiny attacker.
Eva huffed. "You'll regret this. I charge interest."
"Oh?" Seraphina smirked. "What kind of interest?"
Eva crossed her arms. "Eleven kisses. Every part of me. Plus four on the lips."
"Four?"
"Minimum," Eva said solemnly. "And I pick where."
Seraphina surrendered instantly. "Deal."
Moments later, the two of them lay tangled in the bed. Eva collapsed onto the sheets, triumphant, laughing as Seraphina began her penance.
"One," she whispered, kissing Eva's palm.
"Two." A kiss to her wrist.
"Three, four." Knees. Elbows.
"Five." Forehead.
Eva giggled wildly as Seraphina counted up her owed affection, the last four delivered slow and reverent to her lips, each one soft and certain.
"That's only ten," Eva murmured.
Seraphina raised a brow. "Then I guess I'll have to start over."
Later, Eva curled under the sheets, still wearing the too - large shirt, damp hair splayed like dark seaweed across Seraphina's pillow. The rain had started again, a soft percussion against the windows.
Seraphina sat beside her, flipping through her camera roll until she reached the most recent photo and saved it in a secret album labeled Moonbeam.
Eva's breath had slowed. Her hand, still clutching Seraphina's sleeve, twitched in sleep.
Seraphina whispered, "You were brilliant today."
Eva didn't answer. But her lips curved.
Seraphina watched her for a while longer, then kissed her brow and turned off the light.
*****
Back in her room, Lady Odette Langford stood at the window of her private study. The night stretched wide, rain-stitched and restless. In one hand, she held a letter — the old kind, inked and sealed, addressed from Evelyn Margaret Claire de Mercière Maxwell — Lioré, alias Ainsley — and Arethusa "Arry" Celestine "Celeste" Artemis Rousseau – Parnassos.
"I cannot return yet," it read. "But if Eva is summoned… judge her with honesty. She is not bred like us, but she is born of something else. Something that doesn't break."
Odette folded the letter with care, then lit a match and dropped it into the hearth. The flames devoured it hungrily.
She said nothing, but her thoughts were sharp as old lace — and just as enduring.
"Not bred like us," she murmured. "But perhaps… a new breed."
She turned back to the rain.
Behind her, a flicker stirred — the candlelight seemed to bow. Odette did not turn. She didn't need to. The air had shifted, ever so slightly. A hum, inaudible to human ears.
She had once been whispered to by a woman who was not wholly woman.
Years ago. In G•••••. Or was it a dream?
Odette was not divine. But she was watching.
And someone wanted Eva tested — not destroyed.
All she knows is a family name: Rousseau – Parnassos.
Two nights later, Eva awoke with a start — no nightmare, only the gentle pull of moonlight across her cheek. She padded out of her room on quiet feet, the oversized shirt rustling softly, and found her way to Seraphina's bed like a moth drawn home.
Seraphina woke to the feel of small hands tucking beneath her arm. She didn't speak. She simply opened the blanket and let Eva in.
"Couldn't sleep," Eva whispered, curled like a question mark against her.
"You always can here."
Silence.
Then: "You're not going to marry Adrian, right?"
Seraphina blinked at the ceiling. "No."
"Because I'd still be here."
Seraphina turned and kissed the crown of her head. "Even if you weren't, the answer would still be no."
Eva relaxed, breathing slowing.
"I love you," she murmured. "Even if I forget my clothes."
Seraphina smiled, her heart strange and full.
"I know."
Outside, the rain kept its rhythm.
Inside, the future wrote itself in soft breaths, thorns, and shirts worn like gowns.
Moonlight crowned them both.
And somewhere in the shadows of lineage and legacy, a new kind of heir was blooming — not from blood, but from something fiercer.
Love.