Riccardo had brought her unconscious form onto the castle grounds. And not long after that, Master Lorenzo had sent the maid into the cellar she was being kept in.
Fiona Belli was laid there beneath the sheet like a corpse.
The acrid stench of blood hung in the air, but the maid hardly even noticed it. It saturated and dripped off of the wooden table, off of the hanging joints of meat.
The chains dangling from the ceiling rattled ever so slightly with the wind that came in from the small windows.
Debilitas had gone.
And the maid broke the lock on Fiona's cage, just like she had been ordered to.
Then Fiona had stood before her in the guest room, that same sheet clutched to her body.
The maid attempted to smile, but it was more difficult to do than usual. She gestured to the bed beside her, informing Fiona of the clothes she had brought for her, and attempted to leave.
Fiona backed away as she grew closer, but then abruptly reached out for her right before she could grab the doorknob. The maid had stopped without actually wanting to, turning to face her. Fiona stumbled on her words for a moment, trying and failing to form sentences.
She wanted to know where she was, how she ended up in the castle. Understandable questions. Expected questions, but ones that the maid did not answer because she had not been given permission to.
As she attended to her usual duties, the maid silently watched Fiona run around the castle, trying to avoid Debilitas, attempting to solve the puzzles Riccardo had been resetting, freeing the animal that he had been exploiting for its Azoth.
The maid had listened to Master Lorenzo and Riccardo fight over Fiona, something they had started doing long before she actually arrived.
Fiona had taken notice of her a few times. She approached, fidgeting and full of nervous energy, trying to speak to her. Like earlier, the maid did not entertain her questions. The only words that left her mouth were those that informed Fiona it was cleaning time.
But truthfully, it was tempting for the maid to actually respond to her. It hadn't been long after she had first heard Fiona's name that she noticed a seemingly heterogeneous mixture of emotions was beginning to brew within her.
It was something both foreign and overwhelming to the maid. Fiona was supposedly everything that the maid could not be despite her best efforts.
There was much that the maid was now curious about; much she wanted to ask, to know.
"Where is the old man?"
Slap!
Riccardo struck her across the face.
Slap!
"Where's he hiding?"
Slap!
He hit her again and again and again.
"I won't let him touch her!" Riccardo turned away from the maid, looking at the walls around him and raising his voice a bit. "Do you hear me, old man? The Azoth is mine."
She raised her head back up, as it had been knocked to the side with each hit. She looked past him at a random spot on the wall near his shoulder, not wanting to look him in the face.
Slap!
Much like the other blows, the maid did not feel any pain. But, by the sound, she could gather that that last slap had been much harder than the others.
None of this was unusual for Riccardo. When his anger and hatred boiled over, the maid was usually the one that got scalded. It had started to become a routine long ago.
She always got dragged to the same room, had the same insults spat in her face as he tried to hurt her. Riccardo wanted a reaction from her, but she never gave one. In the end, the flames always died down and he left.
As the door was slammed shut and Riccardo went off to undoubtedly mess up more things around the castle, the maid continued to sit in the decrepit room's lone chair, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock that stood in the corner. She slowly raised her hand to her lips, not that surprised to see fresh blood glistening upon that which had already dried and cracked on her damaged fingertips.
She was growing sick and tired of this. Actually, she had grown sick and tired of this long ago. And the endless chores, the misery, the monotony. Perhaps it was her punishment for being so broken.
Beneath the layer of dust that covered the clock face, the maid could manage to make out the time. This was when she was supposed to deliver dinner for Master Lorenzo, Riccardo, and Debilitas.
She got up and stepped out into the hallway, heading for the kitchen.
Perhaps it would not be out of line for her to prepare dinner for Fiona as well. After all, Master Lorenzo had told her to keep Fiona comfortable. She would probably be hungry after all of the running around she had been doing…
The maid resolved to find her after dropping off everybody else's meals.
Eventually, she heard an almighty crash from within the chapel. She assumed that either Debilitas had accidentally created an almighty mess for her to clean, or she had finally found Fiona.
When Debilitas hobbled out of the chapel's entrance, the maid was… disappointed.
But eventually, Fiona came out too, more bruised, shaken, and haggard-looking than the last time she had seen her.
Fiona hastily went up the first spiral staircase, newly acquired key clutched tightly in her fist. Then she went up the second one. There was a third set of stairs right above it. Her legs ached, but she did not slow down.
The door that the key belonged to stood before her. Fiona went to put it in the old fashioned lock.
A hand as cold as that of a corpse came in contact with hers, an extremely pale hand with knuckles bruised sickly shades of purple and barely scabbed over cuts everywhere. The blood-stained fingers slowly closed around Fiona's.
All of the air in her lungs left in an instant.
She let the key slip from her grasp without meaning to, and it fell to the wooden floor with a clatter.
There had been no warning barks from Hewie. He wasn't even at Fiona's feet. He must have trailed behind again.
From the sleeve of the jacket, Fiona could tell it was the maid who was behind her.
Slowly, hesitantly, Fiona turned her head to face her.
There was a minute pause before the maid tonelessly told her, "Dinner is served, Miss."
When Fiona did not immediately move, not even a little bit, the maid leaned down, getting closer to her face. "Dinner is served, Miss." Her bloody, busted lips pulled back into a smile that seemed entirely forced.
Fiona silently wondered what had happened to her, and if her hands had already looked like that and she just hadn't noticed. She could not stop the pang of concern that shot through her chest.
The maid had not yet filled her with terror the way that both Debilitas and Riccardo had. Fiona had even happened upon her cleaning in different parts of the castle, unthreatening and borderline unwilling to interact with her.
But… Fiona would be lying if she said that there wasn't something a little unsettling there. Something… off. It was unlikely that the maid was completely unaware of the things going on within the castle walls, after all.
She was wary of following her, but also wary of what would happen if she refused.
After an extended period of time being on the receiving end of a nearly unblinking gaze, Fiona mumbled out, "Oh, um, o-okay."