Chapter 150: The Weight of Wings
The morning after her return, Eva refused to open her eyes.
Not because she was tired. Not because the room was still dark. But because she was afraid it had all been a dream — that Seraphina's arms had only existed in memory, that the kiss on her forehead last night had vanished with the moon.
But then she felt it.
Fingertips brushing through her silky chestnut curls — long, immaculate, threaded with the faintest hints of blue. The slow, patient rhythm of a lullaby hummed against her temple. And the steady warmth of Seraphina's lap beneath her cheek.
Lap pillow.
Of course.
Eva cracked one pale grey eye open and saw the faint curve of Seraphina's lips above her — serene and thoughtful as she gazed out the window. Her wavy auburn hair shimmered softly in the morning light, and her dark pale red eyes followed the rain as it slid down the glass like slow - moving tears. Outside, the world blurred into a watercolor wash. But inside, Eva's world was vivid.
"You're still here," she whispered.
Seraphina looked down, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "Always."
Eva let her eyes close again, her small hands tucked beneath her chin. She said nothing more for a long time, letting the silence fill her like water in a vase. Safe. Full. Blooming.
But later that morning, the calm broke.
It began with Mére — Aunt Vivienne's usual flutter of activity — emails, cappuccinos, a loud scarf with lemons on it — and then a knock on the door Eva didn't recognize.
A lady stood there.
She was tall — taller than Seraphina, easily. Maybe twenty - one, twenty - eight at most. Her long legs disappeared into sleek charcoal leggings, paired with ankle boots that looked both expensive and effortless. Her braid, a glossy auburn with hints of copper and caramel, fell over one shoulder like it had been styled on purpose but wasn't trying too hard.
Her eyes — sharp, pale green with hazel flecks — were calm and observant. The kind that didn't miss much. As she stepped into the entry hall, she took it all in with a quiet, focused ease, like she was already filing away the details for later.
Vivienne greeted her with a delighted laugh and an air - kiss on each cheek. "Ah, our little comet from the n••••! Eva, darling, come here and meet Miss Briony Ward —"
She paused, eyes gleaming with theatrical flair.
"Or should I say, Briony Isolde Marlowe Ward… Lady Briony of House Ward, straight from the wilds of N••••••• E••••••."
Eva didn't move.
Briony turned and smiled — a well-practiced, composed thing. "So this is the famous Eva," she said, her voice smooth like water in a glass cup. "I've heard about you."
Eva stared. She did not offer her hand.
Seraphina stepped in from the drawing room, towel in hand from watering the orchids. She blinked once at Briony, then glanced at Eva, already sensing the current shift in the air.
"She's here for the music scholarship," Vivienne explained, gesturing with her latte. "Just for a month or two. Briony's already a chamber soloist, quite the prodigy. But she needs grounding, and I thought — why not here?"
Eva said nothing.
Briony tilted her head. "You play too, don't you?"
"I compose," Eva replied softly.
"Oh. That's lovely."
It was the way she said lovely that made Eva's shoulders go tight.
Later, when Briony settled into the guest room next to Eva's, Eva crept to the piano and began to play — not the soft nocturnes Seraphina liked best, but something sharp, angular, full of sudden turns and tremors. Her fingers struck the keys like warnings. She could hear Briony's voice upstairs, laughing.
"Do you like her?" she asked Seraphina that evening, the question sudden, tight.
"She's polite," Seraphina said, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a poetry anthology. Her auburn hair was half - pinned, her dark pale red eyes flicking upward. "Talented."
"But do you like her?"
Seraphina looked up. Her expression softened as she studied Eva. "What's this about, little one?"
Eva's lips trembled. "I don't want her here."
Seraphina patted her lap, and Eva crawled immediately into it. "You're allowed not to like someone. But sometimes, the world brings people into our space for reasons we can't see yet."
"I don't want to share."
"Oh, Eva."
It wasn't a scolding. It was something else — wry, knowing, sorrowful.
Eva clutched Seraphina's sleeve, resting her head just beneath her collarbone. "You'll still love me the same?"
"I couldn't possibly love you any other way."
They sat like that for a long time. But Eva knew something had changed. Not in Seraphina — but in the air around them. There was a visitor in their sanctuary. A new scent in the hallway. A second set of shoes by the door.
She didn't like it.
Briony was, maddeningly, good at everything.
She played Vivaldi on sight. She spoke three languages. She even knew how to make her own herbal tea and offered some to Vivienne, who declared it divine.
Eva tried not to sulk. But she stopped composing for two days.
Seraphina noticed. Of course she did.
"I thought you were working on the piece about swallows," she said gently one evening, folding Eva's blanket on the bed.
"I stopped," Eva said. "It's not good anymore."
Seraphina sat beside her and drew Eva onto her lap. "Even swallows fall silent sometimes," she murmured, stroking her hair. "But they always return in spring."
"I'm not a swallow."
"No," Seraphina said, kissing her temple. "You're my nightingale."
Still, Eva remained quiet for the rest of the day.
Until Briony found her in the garden the next morning, sketching in the back pages of her Latin workbook.
"I'm sorry if I upset you," Briony said, kneeling in the grass beside her. "I didn't mean to come barging into your world."
Eva didn't look up. "It's not a world. It's a nest."
Briony blinked. "A nest?"
"Mine. And hers."
There was a pause.
"I won't break it," Briony said at last. "But maybe… maybe I can sit nearby. Just for a little."
Eva hesitated. Then offered her a single colored pencil — blue, her favorite.
Briony took it, quietly.
That afternoon, Seraphina returned from her errands to find the two of them side by side in the library, Eva humming under her breath as Briony read aloud a passage from Ovid in surprisingly fluid L••••.
"They're nesting," Vivienne teased in a whisper from the hallway.
Seraphina only smiled and pressed a kiss to Eva's hair later, when they were alone.
But Eva still crawled into her bed that night, tucked into her usual spot against Seraphina's side, and whispered, "You're still mine first."
Seraphina wrapped an arm around her waist and replied, "In this life and the next."
The new challenge wasn't Briony after all.
It was Eva herself.
That week, she began having dreams. Unsettling, vivid dreams — of Seraphina vanishing in mist, of arriving at the piano to find all the keys gone, of floating in a boat with no oars while Seraphina waved from a receding shore.
She woke up crying more than once, though she tried to hide it.
Seraphina always noticed.
"Dreams are just the mind's way of painting what it fears," she said softly one morning, wrapping Eva in her arms beneath the covers.
"But what if they're warnings?"
"Then we listen. But we don't let them rule us."
Eva frowned. "What if I lose you one day?"
"You won't."
"But what if the world takes you?"
Seraphina leaned close, whispering into her hair. "Then I'll find a way to return. Again and again."
And then she kissed her cheek and recited a line Eva had once written:
Te inveniam etiam si sidera cadant.
(I will find you even if the stars fall.)
Eva held her tightly. Her heart, for now, was steady.
That night, after another music session with Briony — who had softened with time, grown quieter, less performative — Eva brought Seraphina a new poem. Short, delicate, scribbled in her smallest script and folded three times.
Seraphina unfolded it on the edge of her bed and read aloud.
Ad Lucem (To the Light)
In tenebris, lucem peto,
Non solem, sed te.
Non flammas, sed manus,
Quae me ducit sine metu.
In darkness, I seek the light,
Not the sun, but you.
Not flames, but hands,
That lead me without fear.
Cum venti cor meum quatiunt,
Et silentium clamores obruit,
Vox tua, tenui tamen certa,
Me reducit domum.
When winds shake my heart,
And silence drowns the cries,
Your voice, faint yet sure,
Leads me home again.
Si alas crescere debeam,
Et caelum solam petam,
Meminero cuius amore,
Nidus factus est lux.
If wings must grow one day,
And I seek the sky alone,
I'll remember whose love
Made a nest into light.
Seraphina read it twice.
Then she held Eva's face between her hands — her red - tinged eyes misted, her auburn waves casting shadows across her cheeks — and said, "You are already light."
Eva smiled.
And later that evening, as Briony played quietly in the next room and Aunt Vivienne filmed a new video to send to her wife, Eva curled beside Seraphina on the couch, her hand resting in hers, and whispered:
"Even when I grow wings, I'll come back to the nest."
Seraphina nodded, eyes closing.
"You were never meant to be caged," she said.
"But I'll return."
"You always do."
And outside, the rain had stopped. The sky, though overcast, carried the hush of something beginning.