Chapter 570: Mother & Daughter
Loh sat anxiously in the parlor room, trying her best to stay calm. It was hard enough being in a room full of people who shared her surname, but it was Stryg and Tauri sitting across from her that rattled her insides. They were right there. Two of the three people she held closest in her heart were sitting only a few paces away. She wanted to rush over and hug them tightly. She wanted to tell them she was so relieved to see them alive and safe.
It had been only a couple of days since she had seen Stryg at the council meeting and she hadn’t been able to talk to him about anything. Not about her grandfather, not about their hasty departure at Undergrowth, or about the emptiness that lay between them.
Then there was Tauri, her best friend. A woman whose fiancé she had let die, a fiancé who also happened to be Loh’s own brother. The last conversation they had really had involved Tauri wanting to kill her.
And now those two people were sitting next to each other, hands clasped. There was a strange discomfort seeing Tauri and Stryg together, but it was different than it had been with Aizel. Loh examined the feeling, understood the envy for what it was, and let it go. If Tauri and Stryg were happy, then that was all that mattered.
Nonetheless, though Loh didn’t want to admit it, she was dying to know more about how the relationship had transpired. The rumors of the scandal at the Katag’s dinner party were all any of the nobles were talking about. The first Ebon Aspirant in centuries, somehow turned out to be the heir of House Veres, and was now engaged to a daughter of House Katag, only to reveal in front of the nobility that he was sleeping with the elder daughter?
Loh smiled wryly to herself. Stryg’s notorious surprises seemed to never end.
Then again, Stryg had always surprised her, ever since the first day she had met him. She wouldn’t be surprised if he still had a few more secrets up his sleeve.
As Loh glanced around the room she noticed her mother staring at her. Dolores quickly looked away as soon as their eyes made contact. It felt like opening the stitches of another festering wound. Guilt filled Loh’s heart. This woman was a failure of a mother, but it was Loh who had taken her son away and left her a broken husk. She didn’t deserve the way Dolores watched her, eyes full of worry.
Another pair of eyes came to mind, one Loh dreaded to see, yet yeared to every day. The woman she had wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Loh was glad Louise was out at the bakery today. Lily had informed her that the young woman was baking bread for the refugees of the city who had lost their homes in the siege. Louise was a genuinely good person, one of the few in this messed up world.