Zolani had her suspicions but she never knew it was to this extent.
She stood in front of her mother and looked at her.
Oh my God. What have they done to you?
Veyra's face in the low candlelight — the warm brown eyes half-open, the specific unfocused quality of pupils that had been chemically adjusted, the face of a woman who was somewhere between her own mind and wherever the drug had put her. The lines at the corners of her eyes. The three days of not sleeping that had been there at the funeral, still there now but differently — not the exhaustion of grief but the exhaustion of something being applied to her regularly and her body fighting it at whatever level her body had left to fight.
She had been beautiful.
She was still beautiful. Under the drug and the restraints and the dark room and whatever this was — still the face that Elowen had drawn from memory in charcoal on rough paper over and over until the creases went soft. Still the face of someone who had stood at the left wall of a funeral hall and shaken and not moved back.
She crouched down in front of her.
"Veyra," she said. Low. Just her name.
Nothing.
"Veyra." She put her hand over the bound ones in her lap. Carefully.
The eyes moved.
Not immediately... the quality of movement that happened when someone was fighting through several layers of resistance to get to a surface they could respond from. Slow. The specific slowness of someone whose mind was working harder than it should have to work for this.
The eyes found her face.
Stayed there.
She watched Veyra try to process what she was seeing. The confusion of the drug fighting with the recognition of the face... Elowen's face, the face she knew — and something underneath both of those that was working separately. Something that had been working separately for five days.
"You came," Veyra said
Her voice was wrong. The drug in it, the specific texture of words produced by a mind that was fighting for clarity. But present.
"I came," she said.
Veyra looked at her for a long time. Zolani swallowed under her gaze.
She didn't rush it, instead she let it happen at whatever speed it needed to happen.
"You're not her," Veyra said.
Flat. Not accusing. The statement of someone who had been sitting with this information for five days and had processed it in whatever clarity the drug allowed between doses and had arrived at the end of that processing.
"No," she said.
Veyra's bound hands turned under hers. The fingers finding her hand. Gripping it with the specific grip she remembered from the casket — desperate, checking, confirming something real.
"My daughter is dead," Veyra said.
Fuck. Should she lie? The desperation in her gaze made Zolani heave a sigh.
"Yes."
"I know she's dead." The eyes unfocused briefly. Fighting back. "I felt it. When they — I felt it. Three days before the funeral I woke up and I knew." Her jaw worked.
Probably when they killed Elowen in the dungeon. Dorian.
"They told me she was ill. They told me she was resting. But I knew." She stopped. The drug pulling at her, the effort of this much clarity visible on her face. "I went to her room and they had locked it. Cedric had locked it."
She was very still. For a second Zolani was afraid she had died.
"Who told them to lock it?" she asked hoping her fears were unnecessary.
"The Count," Veyra replied after a minute much to Zolani's approval. Then — smaller, the word costing something — "Dorian."
She filed this. The confirmation of what the letter fragment had shown her. The name said in Veyra's voice, with the weight of a woman who had known and had been contained before she could act on the knowing.
"They gave me something," Veyra said. "For the grief. They said." Her free hand — the one not gripping Zolani's — moved toward her own face and stopped at the restraint. The automatic gesture of someone trying to touch their own face and finding they couldn't. "It wasn't for the grief."
She muttered to herself like an abrupt realization.
"No," Tears welled up in her eyes "It wasn't."
Veyra looked at her.
At the crimson eyes in Elowen's face.
"But you're here," she said. The logic of someone working with whatever tools the drug had left her. Denial.
"You're in her face. You're in her hands." The grip tightened. "I don't know what you are. I don't know how this works. I have theories." A pause the grip she had on Zolani's hand became more painful. "I have one theory."
She waited, bearing the pain.
"Her father," Veyra said. "Her real father."
The words coming carefully, the way words came when someone had been keeping them for a long time and was finally saying them.
Her real father?? Did Elowen's mother cheated on the Count? Was that why did Count lacked affection for her? Did the Count know?
Zolani pondered. If it was true. She couldn't hate the Count as she did before for his actions. Though they were unforgivable.
"He was... he wasn't from here, I think. He wasn't like other people. He was..." she stopped. The drug making the sentence harder.
Speak please, you can't stop now.
"Old. He was so old. And he was something the church would call a heresy and the guild would call an anomaly and I called—" she stopped again like she was reminiscing.
"What did you call him?" she said.
Veyra looked at her with those warm drugged brown eyes.
"Mine," she said. Simply. "For a little while."
For a moment, Zolani felt her eyes deceived her. The dim light on Lady Veyra's cheekbones was misleading. Because the sudden color seemed like a blush.
What the actually fuck. Was she remembering something she wasn't supposed to?
This was ball shit crazy.
She almost dropped her hand in disbelief.