Chapter 131: Threads of Affection
At the tender age of seven, Eva had already carved traditions more binding than promises and more enduring than time. Morning sunlight became a chorus, the creak of the drawer a prelude. Her fingers, still plump with childhood, would open the silk-lined box with a reverence usually reserved for heirlooms. Inside: ribbons of every hue — gossamer silks, crushed brocades, faded satins — all curled and resting like quiet memories. And each morning, with the gravity of a monarch bestowing a crown, Eva would carry the box to Seraphina.
"Pick one," she'd say.
Seraphina, with her auburn waves cascading down her back and those uncanny dark - pale red eyes, would lift her gaze from whatever quiet thing she was doing — sketching a peony, reading a poem, rearranging violets in a cut - crystal vase.
"Are we dressing up today?" she'd ask, a touch amused.
Eva shook her head, as solemn as ever. "No. I just want you to match me."
A soft smile would rise on Seraphina's lips, and she would choose — sometimes a ribbon the shade of lavender tea, sometimes one like the dusk sky. And later, as Eva glimpsed the chosen ribbon tying back Seraphina's waves, something in her would settle. Like a flame remembering the shape of its candle. She'd whisper to herself, "She looks like me today," and beam.
The maids noticed, of course. They were always careful not to say too much in front of either girl, but hallways carried whispers the way silk carried perfume.
"Miss Eva's absolutely smitten with the Langford girl," one cook said to the other.
"No — Miss Langford absolutely adores Miss Eva."
"They look like sisters, the way she follows her."
"Sisters? Please. That child worships her."
Worship wasn't the word Eva would have chosen — worship was reserved for cathedrals and stained glass and languages older than bones. But there was a holiness to the way she saw Seraphina, to the way her heart paused when Seraphina looked at her, truly looked, as if she were something precious.
By now, Seraphina had stopped teasing Eva about the ribbons. The first few weeks, she'd laughed lightly each morning, brushing her hand through Eva's curls and saying, "What if I pick the ugly one?"
"You won't," Eva always replied, simply, with infuriating conviction.
Later, Seraphina would find that even the ribbons she'd once thought too faded, too childish, too pink — when tied by Eva's fingers — somehow looked just right. The girl had an eye for beauty. Or maybe, she just had eyes for her.
What no one saw — what not even Seraphina glimpsed — was what lay behind the ribbons and the tea - stained poems.
After the incident, after Reginald Ainsley's fury had nearly cost Eva her skin and her silence, her mothers intervened. Maman and Mère made sure it would never happen again — no more fire, no more breaking. Reginald promised as much. Outwardly, he honored it. But in private, he called Eva to his study, alone.
"You should have died," he said coldly. "You are a disgrace to the Lioré's name. A failure of an heir. Weak. Pathetic. A mistake."
Eva, six years old at that moment, did not cry.
She stood still — barefoot on the marble floor, hands at her sides, heart like a stone in a cold river.
"I'll do better papa," she whispered.
Reginald only scoffed. "You're nothing but empty promises. Prove yourself."
And she would.
From that moment, Eva began her secret regime. Outwardly, Reginald lightened her physical training — only three sessions a week, all monitored, all carefully sanitized for her mothers' peace of mind. But beneath the surface lay a hidden world.
Behind the mirrored door in the east wing was the true training room — its walls lined with maps, weapons, books in ancient tongues. There, instructors came and went in silence. Each day, Eva studied the intricacies of war strategy, political maneuvering, economic theory, world military formations, and diplomatic frameworks from empires past and present. Her mental training was ten times as brutal as her physical one. Every wrong answer was corrected with psychological drills designed to break lesser minds.
No one knew. Not even Seraphina.
She also attended her "normal" classes —poetry, music, art, language, history —charmingly delivered by genteel tutors. Maman was proud of her daughter's balanced education. Eva ensured it stayed that way. She performed joyfully, brightly, as though nothing lay beneath.
But inside, she burned. Not from her father's flames — but from hunger. For approval. For love. For the impossible: to be told she was enough.
The afternoons became their realm. Eva no longer needed prompting to finish her lessons; she raced through mathematics, flew through L•••• verbs, and could recite Homer in G•••• with a faint frown of disdain — because it wasn't hers. Poetry meant more when it spilled from her own pen, in that cramped, elegant handwriting, torn between cursive and print.
One such afternoon found them curled in the east salon. The windows were open. The scent of early roses — hybrid teas, Aunt Vivienne said — mingled with the hush of turning pages and the faint scratch of pencil on sketchpad.
Eva was working on a new L•••• poem, whispering each line aloud as if testing the syllables for sweetness:
Si umbra es, mane mecum,
In luce, in somnio, in corde —
manere audes?
(If you are a shadow, stay with me,
In light, in dream, in heart —
do you dare remain?)
Seraphina looked up from her drawing. "That one's sad."
"It's not sad," Eva said, not looking up. "It's about promise."
Seraphina paused. "What's the difference?"
Eva tilted her head. "A promise is sadness that hasn't happened."
Seraphina blinked, as if Eva had just opened a door to some forbidden library. She set her pencil down and reached over, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Eva's ear. "You say things people shouldn't say until they're old and broken."
Eva shrugged. "I listen better than them."
It was true. Eva absorbed the world like parchment soaks ink — without resistance, without complaint, and sometimes, tragically, without filter.
Evenings were when the ribbons mattered most.
Once, at sunset, Seraphina was about to pull her hair into a loose knot when Eva stopped her. "Wait."
She darted to the desk, fished out the ribbon she'd tucked behind a drawer: a deep rose silk, slightly worn, but edged with embroidery.
"I saved this one," she murmured.
Seraphina turned, letting Eva step close. She knelt so Eva could reach, and the little girl tied the ribbon with trembling fingers.
"There," Eva whispered. "Now we're both dusk - colored."
Seraphina stood and looked in the mirror. Something flickered across her face — a strange, tender sorrow.
"Do you think we'll still match when you're older?" she asked.
Eva's expression didn't falter. "I'm never changing. I'll grow, but I won't change."
"That's not how growing works."
"It is for me."
Seraphina almost laughed. But she didn't. Not with the way Eva was watching her — like she'd just asked a question no adult had dared answer.
In quiet hours, they shared more than ribbons. Eva would lie in bed with Seraphina, whispering stories into the dark. She told tales of clever girls who solved riddles in forgotten languages, or musicians who played so beautifully the stars came closer just to hear. In each story, there was always a girl with auburn hair and eyes like old wine.
"You always make me the beautiful one," Seraphina teased once.
"You are," Eva said. "But not just beautiful. You're what the moon would look like if it were warm."
Seraphina laughed into her pillow, then reached out and pulled Eva close. "You're absurd."
"You still wear my ribbons."
"I do."
Vivienne, for her part, had begun filming again.
Not overtly. She'd drift through the house like smoke, camera poised casually against her hip, catching fragments — the moment Eva untangled a knot in Seraphina's ribbon, or when the two girls danced barefoot across the balcony to the sound of Debussy, Eva humming with her arms raised like a conductor.
Each clip, Vivienne sent to Eva's mother with a short caption: She's fine. She's better than fine. She's in love.
And her pretend sister - in - law - wife always replied the same way: Don't let her fall too deep.
Vivienne never answered.
It was near midsummer when Eva began a new habit. She started naming the ribbons.
"This one is Hope," she'd say, holding up a sea - blue strip.
"And this?"
"Comfort."
"And this one?"
"Me."
Seraphina raised a brow. "That one's named Eva?"
"No," the girl said. "That one is what I give to you. That one is mine."
Seraphina sat in silence for a long moment, then reached out, cupped Eva's cheek, and said very quietly, "You give me more than you know."
Eva didn't speak. She didn't need to. The warmth in her eyes said everything.
One rainy afternoon, when thunder rolled low across the hills and the garden shivered with wind, Eva came running in barefoot, soaked, a ribbon clutched in her hand.
"It flew away!" she cried. "The wind took it."
Vivienne tried to stop her at the threshold, but Seraphina was already rising, already taking the soaked girl into her arms.
"What color was it?" she asked.
Eva, trembling, held up the damp scrap. "It was supposed to be Stay."
Seraphina smiled and kissed the top of her head. "You don't need a ribbon to tell me that."
That night, as they lay under the same blanket, Eva whispered, "What if you leave?"
"I won't," Seraphina replied.
"People say that, and then they do."
Seraphina turned to face her, their foreheads touching. "Then I'll promise it with more than words."
"How?"
Seraphina reached for the bedside table, opened the drawer, and pulled out the dusty rose ribbon — the very first one Eva had ever given her.
"I kept it," she said. "I always will."
Eva clutched the fabric like it was a relic.
"Now you," Seraphina said.
Eva hesitated, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded paper. It was a poem. Not in L•••• this time. Just four lines:
If I am a thread, then tie me to you,
not with knots, but with care,
not with force, but with truth,
so we'll unravel only together.
Seraphina read it three times. Then she tucked it into her pillow and pulled Eva close.
And neither of them said another word, because some promises were louder in silence.