Stressed Out
The aftermath of the incident in the gardens of Thousand Mirror Palace proved a considerable headache, particularly for Rosmayne. The capital of flower had been preparing to host a grand meeting for the rulers of several neighboring nations, an occasion intended to bring foreign dignitaries beneath its roof on a day of carefully arranged diplomacy. Unfortunately, that very same day had been marred by Syamrin's rampage, leaving the palace grounds in disarray and its inhabitants shaken. With the safety of the guests and the stability of the palace to consider, the royal court had little choice but to postpone the banquet for an entire week, allowing time for the situation to settle and the preparations to be restored to their intended order.
For the next seven days, the palace remained occupied with the business of recovery. Servants hurried between the gardens and the inner halls, the knights maintained a heightened watch, and the royal physicians and medevists attended to those who had suffered during the incident. Yet among all the matters demanding the court's attention, none proved quite so perplexing as the condition of Viena.
Court Mage Andersen visited the girl four times over the course of that week. His first visit had come immediately after he was summoned to provide emergency treatment, and he had arrived expecting to find some trace of the extraordinary magic described by the witnesses. Their accounts had been troubling enough: a monstrous entity attempting to seize a child's body, a Sage whose sorcery had transformed into thousands of silver butterflies, and a ritual that had left the garden soaked in blood. Such a collection of circumstances ought to have yielded something of interest to a mage of his standing.
Instead, Andersen found nothing.
He spent the entire night examining Viena, testing one diagnostic method after another in the hope of uncovering some lingering trace of the possession. He searched for abnormalities in her magical constitution, signs of spiritual contamination, and any indication that the entity had left something behind. Yet every attempt led him back to the same frustrating conclusion. There was nothing unusual to be found.
By dawn, Andersen had begun to question his own abilities. He had devoted years to the study of magic and its effects upon the human body, yet here lay a child whose condition defied every method at his disposal. The testimonies of those present left little room to dismiss the incident as a collective delusion, and the blood-soaked garden offered physical evidence enough that something terrible had indeed occurred. Nevertheless, Viena's body revealed no answer to the questions that troubled him.
His subsequent visits yielded little more. With each examination, Andersen grew increasingly reluctant to admit defeat, and his persistence soon began to test the patience of the girl who kept constant watch at Viena's bedside.
Lisabelle had been there from the beginning, and she was becoming thoroughly exasperated with the Court Mage.
Andersen's repeated attempts to uncover some hidden clue involved drawing Viena's blood on more than one occasion, subjecting the poor girl to yet another round of examinations despite her unconscious state. To him, each sample represented another opportunity to discover what his previous efforts had overlooked. To Lisabelle, however, it was becoming difficult to distinguish his scholarly determination from the needless torment of a helpless child.
Eventually, even Andersen had to concede that further investigation would accomplish little. He abandoned his attempts to find an explanation within Viena's body and instructed the medevists attending her to continue the treatment already underway. It was an unsatisfying conclusion for a man of his profession, but there was little else he could offer. Whatever had happened to Viena, its secrets clearly remained beyond the reach of his instruments and knowledge.
Lisabelle, meanwhile, had no intention of leaving her sister alone.
From the very first day, she refused to sleep in a separate room. At first, she had done little more than sit beside Viena's bed, watching in silence as the medevists carried out their duties. She would follow their movements with anxious eyes, memorizing the steps they took and the precautions they observed, though she had no expectation of being anything more than a helpless bystander.
But the longer she watched Viena lying motionless beneath the covers, the more difficult it became to remain idle. The sight of her little sister, so accustomed to moving and speaking and filling their days with life, reduced to a frail figure who could neither open her eyes nor answer when spoken to, stirred something in Lisabelle that no amount of reassurance could quiet. She wanted to do more than wait. If there was even the smallest thing she could do to help Viena recover, she would learn how to do it.
And so she began learning from the medevists.
At first, she asked questions and observed their work, careful not to interfere with the treatment. Before long, however, the attendants allowed her to take part in Viena's daily care. Lisabelle proved a diligent student, following their instructions with a discipline that surprised even those accustomed to tending the sick. She made certain that Viena received her nourishment at the appointed hours, helped wash her, and attended to the small necessities that might otherwise have been left to the servants.
She even took the initiative to move Viena's limbs at regular intervals, gently exercising her arms and legs to keep her body from remaining entirely still throughout her long unconsciousness. No one had taught her to do this or even thought about it, but Lisabelle had reminded herself of Eleanor to eventually realize and understand that a body left motionless for too long would suffer for it. Whenever she was uncertain, she sought guidance from the medevists, determined to learn whatever might prove useful.
Feeding time, in particular, demanded her full attention.
The feeding tube was fashioned from animal hide, softened and prepared so that it could be carefully passed directly into Viena's stomach. Lisabelle had initially found the procedure unsettling, but she soon learned to handle it with steady hands, guiding the tube into place before administering the mixture prepared for her sister. Milk, eggs, finely ground nuts, butter, and animal broth seasoned with salt and sugar all found their way into the queue, providing the nourishment Viena needed while she remained unable to eat for herself.
The preparation required considerable care. A mixture that was too thin might fail to provide sufficient nourishment, while one that was too thick could obstruct the tube and make feeding dangerous. Lisabelle learned this lesson in the most frightening way possible when, on one occasion, she prepared the mixture without supervision and made it far too dense. The moment she realized her mistake, panic seized her. For one dreadful instant, she feared she had done something that might harm Viena beyond repair.
Fortunately, the medevists intervened before matters could worsen. Working carefully, they diluted the mixture with hot water, adding it little by little until it reached a suitable consistency. Lisabelle watched every step with bated breath, her earlier confidence replaced by the sobering realization that even the smallest error could have serious consequences. Afterward, she was far more careful to seek their approval before preparing Viena's food, no matter how familiar the task had become.
Yet tending to her sister's physical needs was only one part of Lisabelle's vigil. She also read to Viena.
The palace library held a considerable collection of short stories, many of which Lisabelle had enjoyed long before the incident. She began bringing them to the bedside, choosing one tale after another to read aloud, hoping that the familiar sound of her voice might somehow reach her sister. Sometimes she read stories Viena already knew; at other times, she chose something new, pausing occasionally to explain a particularly confusing passage as though Viena were listening with her usual curiosity.
The hours slipped by unnoticed, and more than once Lisabelle found herself reading well into the night. The maids who attended her repeatedly offered to take over, reminding her that she needed sleep as much as anyone else. Lisabelle refused every time. She would not leave Viena, not even for a few hours of rest in her own bed.
"She can still hear me," she insisted whenever someone tried to persuade her otherwise. "Even with her eyes closed, she can hear me."
Whether she said it to reassure herself or because she truly believed it, Lisabelle never seemed inclined to examine the distinction. She simply continued reading, turning the pages long after her eyes had grown heavy, her voice sometimes faltering with exhaustion before she forced herself to continue. If Viena could hear even a single word, then Lisabelle would make certain there was always something for her to hear.
And if the stories could not reach her, then perhaps the sound of her sister's voice would.
The days passed in this manner, each one resembling the last. Morning brought the medevists and their duties, afternoon brought the careful preparation of Viena's meals, and evening brought Lisabelle's stories. Night after night, she remained beside the bed, watching for the smallest movement beneath the covers, the slightest change in her sister's breathing. She clung to the belief that Viena would recover, repeating it to herself whenever exhaustion threatened to overcome her.
On the sixth day, her faith was finally rewarded.
Lisabelle was preparing Viena's next meal when she heard a faint sound from the bed. At first, she paid it little attention, assuming it had come from one of the attendants moving about the room. Then the sound came again, so weak and indistinct that she nearly mistook it for the rustle of fabric.
"Lily...?"
The voice was barely more than a whisper.
Lisabelle's hand stopped stirring.
For a moment, she remained perfectly still, the spoon suspended above the mixture as she struggled to make sense of what she had heard. Her ears had grown accustomed to the silence of Viena's room, and after six days of listening for a voice that never came, she scarcely dared to trust her own hearing. Slowly, she turned toward the bed.
"Vivi?" she asked.
Her voice trembled, and she felt tears gathering in her eyes even before she had confirmed what was happening.
Viena lay beneath the covers, looking terribly weak. Her body seemed to have little strength left in it, and the simple act of waking had left her struggling to gather her senses. The room came to her in fragments: the muted colors of the curtains, the unfamiliar heaviness of her limbs, the faint sounds drifting in from beyond the door. Her senses were returning one by one, though even the effort of understanding her surroundings seemed to exhaust her.
Yet she could see her sister.
Lisabelle approached the bed slowly, almost afraid that any sudden movement might shatter the moment. She had endured too many sleepless nights, spent too many hours imagining what it would be like to hear Viena speak again, to accept the truth without first convincing herself that she was not dreaming. Her exhaustion had grown so profound that, for an instant, she wondered whether her mind had finally begun to betray her.
Then Viena blinked.
Her small hand shifted beneath the blanket, fingers moving uncertainly as they searched for something to hold. It was such an ordinary gesture, one Lisabelle had witnessed countless times before, yet now it seemed to contain the answer to every prayer she had been too frightened to voice.
All doubt vanished.
Lisabelle rushed forward and clasped Viena's hand, holding it as though she feared the girl might slip away if she loosened her grip. The tears she had restrained for six days came pouring out, and she began to sob with an abandon that would have been unthinkable under any other circumstance. There was no composure left to preserve, no dignity worth maintaining before the sister she had spent nearly a week begging, in silence, to return.
Viena stared at her in bewilderment.
She had seen Lisabelle smile, tease, scold, and even grow angry, but she had never seen her cry like this. Her big sister, who always seemed so certain of herself, was now trembling beside her bed, clutching her hand and weeping as though the world had nearly come to an end.
"You're crying," Viena murmured weakly, a faint trace of mischief in her voice. Even in her exhausted state, she had found the strength to tease her sister, as though she could not resist the opportunity to turn the tables on someone who so often scolded her.
Lisabelle, however, offered no retort. Still struggling to contain her sobs, she could only nod, her fingers wrapped tightly around Viena's hand.
"I am."
For a while, neither of them said anything. Lisabelle lowered her head, trying to steady her breathing, while Viena watched her through heavy eyelids. The sight of her usually composed elder sister in such a state was almost enough to make her smile again. Yet the exhaustion that had weighed upon her since awakening was already beginning to reclaim her, and even keeping her eyes open had become an effort.
"Don't you ever do that to me again," Lisabelle whispered at last.
There was no anger in her voice, only the ache of someone who had spent too many nights fearing the worst. Her words lingered between them, carrying all the things she had been unable to say while Viena lay unconscious.
"I'm sorry, Lily," Viena replied, her lips curling into a faint smile.
Her eyelids drooped, and the room began to blur once more. Before Lisabelle could answer, Viena's consciousness slipped away, her fingers loosening in her sister's grasp.
"Vivi?"
Lisabelle leaned closer, waiting for another response. When none came, she gently shook Viena's hand, then called her name again, a little louder this time. Her sister's eyes remained closed, and the faint smile upon her lips did nothing to ease the sudden dread rising in Lisabelle's chest.
"Viena? Vivi, wake up!"
She shook her sister's shoulder, her composure crumbling as the seconds passed without an answer. Only moments ago, Viena had been looking at her, speaking to her, even teasing her. Now she lay motionless once more, and Lisabelle could scarcely bear the thought of returning to those dreadful days of silence.
"No, no, no... Vivi, please!"
She stumbled away from the bedside, nearly knocking over the bowl she had been using to prepare Viena's meal. The spoon clattered to the floor, but Lisabelle barely heard it. She rushed to the door and flung it open, startling the maids in the adjoining corridor.
"Get the physician! Someone, fetch the physician and the medevists! Quickly! Please! I beg you!"
Her voice broke on the final word. Before anyone could ask what had happened, Lisabelle was already hurrying back to Viena's bedside, her heart pounding so violently that she could scarcely think. She took her sister's hand again, searching her face for some sign that might tell her what was happening, but the only thing she could do was wait.
The physician arrived with several medevists close behind, carrying their instruments and medicines. Lisabelle immediately stepped aside, though she remained close enough to watch every movement. Her hands trembled as she tried to explain what had happened, stumbling over her words as she described how Viena had awakened, spoken to her, and then suddenly fallen unconscious again.
The physician listened without interrupting before turning his attention to the girl. He examined Viena carefully, while the medevists checked her condition and made certain that everything was in order. To Lisabelle, their measured movements seemed agonizingly slow. She stood beside the bed, clutching her hands together, scarcely daring to breathe as she watched them work.
At last, the physician straightened.
Lisabelle immediately stepped forward. "How is she? What happened? Is she going to be alright?"
The physician regarded her with a reassuring expression. "Please, calm yourself, Lady Lisabelle. Your sister is alright."
"But she—she just—"
"She has only fallen asleep," he explained gently. "After remaining unconscious for so many days, waking would have placed considerable strain upon her body. She is still very weak, and she needs rest. There is no cause for alarm."
One of the medevists nodded in agreement. "Her condition is stable, my lady. We shall continue to look after her, but for now, the best thing she can do is sleep. Well, I think it's the best thing you can do also."
Lisabelle stared at them, struggling to absorb their words. "So... she's going to be alright?"
"Yes, my lady. Everything is alright now. Please take a rest."
Only then did the strength leave Lisabelle's knees. She sank into the chair beside Viena's bed, pressing a trembling hand against her mouth as tears welled in her eyes once more. This time, however, they came with a relief so overwhelming that she could scarcely keep herself from sobbing again.
Beyond the windows of Thousand Mirror Palace, the afternoon sun continued its unhurried descent, casting warm light across the quiet room. Viena slept peacefully beneath her blankets, while Lisabelle remained at her bedside, holding her hand and watching over her.
For the first time in six days, she could finally allow herself to believe that Viena would be alright.