Ophelia’s waking world was numbness broken by flashes of painful reality. Through the funeral proceedings, she had felt as cold and lifeless as the body that they’d sealed into its tomb. Ophelia had remained composed, poised as the royal that she’d been bred and reared to be. She’d held Lorelle’s hand tight, nearly crushing her little fingers as her father was laid to rest. Rest, would there be any rest for them now?

Mercifully, however, Lorelle was quiet and did not cause a scene. Ophelia knew her daughter enough to know that it was because she was overwhelmed, that the shock was too much for her little body to process. It was perhaps cruel to keep her in that state, but for now, it was convenient. And so Ophelia allowed it. They stayed in Arynn Frey only long enough to see their father laid to rest before being ferried back to Nevermere. Until she was satisfied that the palace was safe, that is where they would stay.

Not Ophelia. She would remain. She would not surrender.

It was in the privacy of her room that she would start to crumble. Once she changed into her dressing gown, she sat for some time in front of her vanity, unbraiding her hair from its intricate knot at the back of her head so that it fell to her waist and about her shoulders. It was then that she took a carved soapstone vial from her dresser and opened it.

A sweet scent of jasmine wafted from its contents. Ophelia tossed back just a thimble-full. However sweet the liquid smelled, the taste was exceedingly bitter. She washed it down with a touch of sherry that she’d poured into a small crystal glass she set beside her mirror. It didn’t take long for the potion to take effect. Her pupils dilated just a touch to eclipse part of the hazel that rimmed them. Ophelia became calm, the room shifting a little before her eyes. It was many nights that she’d been sleepless, but her deft hand at potions, it would seem, was good for something.

And so Ophelia sat there, gazing at her own reflection as if it were someone else entirely. It was in that state that she’d heard the knock at the knock at the door. Ordinarily, the queen would have startled, but not now with the aid of the sweet-smelling tonic. The guard opened the door at her bidding.

“Prince Llewelyn for you, Your Majesty,” The guard said hesitantly, clearly perplexed by both the hour and the visitor. Ophelia was not. Her mind had been stilled, her thoughts as slippery as silk.

“Let him in.” Ophelia stood, retrieving the dressing gown to go over the light ivory nightgown beneath. She would be tying it tight when Sylas entered. Her hazel eyes stared at him, hesitant, unsure of where to begin.

“Prince Llewelyn. What a…an unexpected pleasure.” Her voice was quiet, only loud enough to be heard over the crackling flames of the fire.

Sylas entered the room when bidden to do so. He cared very little for the guards opinion on the matter, in fact he didn't care at all. As he stepped in he looked upon Ophelia in a way he'd never seen her before. Her ever perfect hair had been loosened, now only a braid down her back, and her typical perfect attire was now a nightdress. His eyes followed her hands as she tied it upon his entering. He had expected this sort of appearance of course but it was still interesting to actually see her in this way.

Her voice was as soft and gentle as her features and Sylas knew he'd done himself a disservice but not getting to know her more before all of this. She had honestly been such an insignificant part of his life. His brother's wife and little else to him personally. His thought about a lot of things in those few seconds before he responded but pushed them all aside for the time being.

"I do apologize for not giving you a proper warning of my visit. I felt- Well, I felt compelled to come and check on you. I know the pain you must be going through to lose someone you loved so deeply. I was...concerned for you."

Clothed as she was, Ophelia had never felt so naked. Her eyes bounced around Sylas, taking in every detail of his appearance as if seeing him for the first time. When he spoke there was a otherworldly quality to his voice—not because of how it sounded in truth but because of the potion that now shifted her reality like the beautiful frames of a kaleidoscope. Turning, turning.

It was only after several long moments Ophelia realized he’d finished speaking. That she was simply staring at him with only the crackling fire to fill the silence.

“No, no need to apologize. I’m glad you’ve come—please….” She indicated to the sitting area in her bedroom that now felt more like a cavern. “Can I get you anything?”

It took her longer than he expected to answer him and for a moment he thought she'd probably either send him away or suddenly break down into tears. She did neither however. He had no idea of course that she was in an altered state though he thought he caught the smallest hint of a floral scent in the room. He assumed it was probably some sort of perfume. It was just the sort of scent you'd expect to find in a woman's room. Especially a Nevermeren Princess.

He moved to sit as she bid him, thanking her as he sat down on the soft cushion. His feet ached from standing and moving around all day and he only just noticed now that he was sitting. He normally would have denied her offer and got straight to business. Yet for once, Sylas didn't have a specific agenda. "Actually, a drink would be nice. Do you have anything strong?" he asked. What better time to numb oneself than after a significant death?

Ophelia smiled at him. “But of course,” She went over to the drink cabinet—one that she hadn’t touched, but Akagi would use on occasion.

Ophelia was trying to focus through her haze. This was ordinarily the moment where she would lay her head on her pillow and drift away into her potion-induced sleep, but not now. This waking dream was an entirely new phenomenon that unraveled before her in all its strange wonder. Every sensation felt softer, yet enhanced. She reached into the cabinet pulled a strong-smelling Arynnite liquor and poured it into two fluted glasses. The sound of the liquid hitting the glass seemed to shudder through her body as if she were the vessel.

She took up the glasses and arrived at the sitting area, handing one to Sylas and sitting on the cushion next to him, gazing into the fire.

“To Akagi…” Ophelia said softly, lifting her glass to clink it against Sylas’s.

Sylas gave her a small smile as she agreed, an expression he didn't share often but he felt like she deserved as much kindness and comfort as he could provide her on a night such as this. He watched her glide towards the cabinet with a kind of grace only found in the highest of nobility. Even in her sorrow she was perfection. He wondered for a moment if perhaps his visit was forcing her not to let go of her emotions that she was likely holding onto, waiting for a moment of privacy to truly grieve, but he tried not to overthink that.

His eyes never left her, his thoughts on many things but all revolving around this woman at the moment, and she soon returned with their drinks. He accepted his with always gloved hands, protecting him from the slightest brush of her fingers against his, and offered her thanks. When she sat beside him rather than across from him he imagined just how alone she might be feeling in this moment. "To Akagi," he repeated, the musical sound of crystal ringing together as their glasses tapped and he took a sip of his drink.

Akagi was really gone. How had this happened? It hardly felt real. "How are you holding up? Really? You could never have prepared fully for something like this, I know..."

Ophelia supposed at some point she must have seen Sylas’s gloved hands, but she’d never noticed them. Her eyes lingered on them in a way she might not have let herself had she been entirely in control of her faculties. As it was, when their glasses clinked her eyes flickered with a question before she directed them back to the fire.

“I suppose I have been preparing my whole life for something like this,” Ophelia mused quietly as she stared into the flames, “Us royals are hardened to weather such storms, are we not? To hold the ship steady no matter how the waves may toss us, for the crew’s sake?” She smiled a little, “A clumsy metaphor, but Akagi was always the poet. Not I.” Feeling tears start to surge, Ophelia buried herself in a long sip from her glass.

Sylas noticed her questioning gaze as she noted his gloves. He hadn't explained them to someone for quite a long time but realized that she might not understand. Perhaps Akagi had never mentioned it before either. "Oh, it's a long story..." he said, leaving room for her to ask for details if she wanted them but unsure if this was the time to dive into such matters.

He followed her gaze towards the fire and listened to her words. He felt the weight of them for them both. Both royals. Neither quite born to rule but still living under the weight of such pressure. He'd never felt that he understood more than he did right now. "Nor I," he admitted. Akagi had a way with words and had a lightness in his heart that was unmatched by anyone than he had ever met. It seemed the two brothers had quite opposite personalities. There was no way to fill the his shoes. New ones would have to be crafted instead.

"It is a heavy burden. No matter how much we may have been prepared for it," he tore his gaze from the flames to look at her as she took a sip of her drink. "I can only trust we've built enough strength to carry the weight."

A long story. Ophelia was not particularly keen on speaking about Akagi. His absence felt like an open wound that Sylas was applying pressure to—even if he did not intend it to be hurt, it did. She nodded slowly at the hope that they’d have enough strength to carry them through. Ophelia supposed they did; both had been brought up in different ways with a similar purpose. Both in the shadows of those who were intended to rule, but nevertheless meant to serve a purpose.

The gloves continued to catch Ophelia’s attention. Perhaps it was the meddling effects of the potion that had her so willing to pry. She directed her gaze at Sylas once again, glancing at the gloves.

“We have time enough for long stories,” Ophelia smiled softly in invitation. “The night is yet young.”

Sylas didn't realize how relieving it would feel to change the subject but as she moved on to the subject of his gloves rather than on his dead brother, he felt the rush of relief through his chest and he sank further into his seat as he took a sip of his drink.

"When I was young, maybe six or seven," he began the story, finding it surprisingly easy to talk about with her which was a little strange, "I was with an older cousin of mine. She had just gained enlightenment and was eager to try her hand at extracting a soul. She was also keen to show off to her younger cousin who was already eager to gain enlightenment for himself. So she took me along with her to visit one of the slave owners..."

For a moment his gaze grew distant as he replayed that day in his mind. He hadn't thought about it in this much detail in a while and felt the brief calm in his chest beginning to turn into anxiety. "I watched her do the first extraction, completely in awe of the process. The soul was orange, I remember that well. It glowed as warm as the sun and held so much potential for the kind of enchantment that could be created with it. It is beautiful magic, truly." He had never been bothered by the idea of taking a soul from someone but still treasured each piece of soul as something incredibly precious, rightfully so.

"Are you sure you want the whole story?" he paused his tale to ask. "It does not have a pleasant ending, I'm afraid."

The room swam a little before Ophelia’s eyes, though not in a way that was unpleasant. The surreality of it was somewhat reassuring, given the circumstances that felt equally surreal. It was good to have an environment to match. As she listened, Ophelia’s brow furrowed and her doe-eyes seemed to widen. There was a genuine openness, perhaps a girlish naivety to her expression as she cradled her glass between her hands.

Ophelia said nothing. She simply nodded, seemingly transfixed by the tale and the teller.

It felt easy to talk to her, not necessarily something he had expected, especially since it rarely felt easy to talk to anyone and given their current circumstances it might have been in his best interest to keep things close to the chest for now. Yet he wasn't. Not about this anyway.

He chewed his lip briefly as he thought of how best to proceed with the story. "I wandered off from my cousin and started to explore, curious to see what a slave owners home was like. It had everything a typical home does but there was more too. Extra rooms to house the slaves and perform various tasks. A floral scent caught my attention, like roses, and I started to follow the scent. I ended up at a door which was closed and opened it carefully. It was dark inside, I could hardly see anything, but my curiosity got the best of me. I have always been a person who needed answers to all my questions."

He rubbed at his jaw in a moment of hesitation before continuing with the story. "I wanted to find a light but when I couldn't find a switch on the wall near the door, I thought maybe there was a hanging chain in the middle of the room or something. It didn't take long before I felt something in the room. A person. I remember how much it startled me. What were they doing there in the dark? I stepped back only to bump into someone else. No one spoke or seemed to notice that I was there and I still couldn't see anything. I soon became disoriented. I couldn't find my way back to the door and there were more and more people in the room I kept bumping into. Then suddenly the light came on and I was a child standing in a room full of slaves, all naked as this was apparently a bath room. There was something different about these slaves and I didn't realize exactly what until much later. These slaves no longer had souls, pieces taken until they were nothing but a husk. Mindless. Empty shells. They didn't react to me because they simply didn't have the wherewithal to notice."

Sylas stared at the fire, his focus entirely on the memory and not really seeing anything in the room he was now in. His brows were pulled together in growing distress but he continued anyway. "I was too far back in the room to be seen by whoever had turned on the light. They had no idea I was there. Instead they started to guide all the slaves in the room, probably twenty or so, further into the center of the room and I was trapped between them, too frightened to be able to let out even the smallest noise. Their skin was pressed against me, tighter and tighter and they were pushed towards the middle of the room...then the water started to fall down from the ceiling. Wet and slippery and cold and...slimey. They were pressing so tight that I was struggling to breath, even moreso with the water running down my face. I was only found when the workers started to come through with soap. I didn't talk for weeks and even now I have a lot of anxiety around touching people skin to skin. Hence..." he lifted his hands to signify the gloves.