She escapes from the Rosfield Summer Estate, away from the judging sapphire eyes of her older brothers, away from her lady mother shaming her for not being able to recite the history of their nation word for word, away from her sire who did not even spare a glance at her.
You have been neglecting your duties, Anabella.
Her short legs lead her away from Eastpool, the dirt and grime staining her skin, staining her gown.
There is no doubt that you are going to grow up a failure.
She desperately tries to yank off the purple ribbons in her hair, wrenches the pearls choking her neck, and watches the tiny beads sink one by one.
You will never earn the chance for me to call you by your name, child.
She howls infinitely for a better life.
She cries her eyes out; the bitter tears she sheds yearn for more and more compassion and compassion.
The lashes on her palms, her aching legs, her braids spilling - nothing is ever in the right place.
All of seven summers, Anabella Rosfield washes her hands in a small river, and what comes off is blood.
She feels terribly alone.
She is born the youngest and the only daughter of the second son of her grandsire.
The whispers start when they all learn she is to be born on the second moon of the year. Mocking voices demean when a child is born on that particular elusive moon of the year, its shortest rise and fall. They will be lacking. Perhaps in their fingers, perhaps in their voice, perhaps in the way they think, or perhaps in the way they act or move.
What does it matter? As long as she will make this family proud, her eldest brother said.
What does it matter? As long as she will do her duty, her father said.
What does it matter? As long as all is in its right place, her mother said.
She is a Rosfield; the highest of all high nobles - the might of the dominant flows through her. She is divinity itself. Someone who can eat an apple and bring the world to its feet. A woman capable of bearing the most noblest of blood.
The whole court falls into dead silence when her eyes open, a dull color of mocha drowning in a sea of azure eyes that you lose yourself in. The nobles silently glare at each other when her locks grow to be a light shade of aurum.
As a young girl, she is drilled to be perfect, to do everything for duty, blood, and purity.
She grows up in the company of tutors - learning arithmetic, history, politics, and music. Her mother gauges her knowledge by the end of each moon, each mistake earning her the biting coldness of a wooden cane to her palms or legs. In the future, she will be ashamed to show her scarring legs, hiding the tops of her hands with gloves meant to cover the red lashes that never healed quite right from the men she lain with.
She grows up in the company of books - that paint the most exquisite landscapes of the duchy and describe the shine of moonlight on the blooming snow daisies on Mann's hill. When she's discovered trying to run away on her father's Chocobo to see its magnificent heights, to feel the wind against her hair, they do not let her eat for two days. In the future, no citizen in Rosaria will ever see them again. She will have them all ruined, destroyed into ash and smoke.
She grows up in the company of dolls - her caretaker tells her once that it was lonely to watch her talking to herself: brushing her doll's hair, whispering to them the encouragements and praises that no one will ever tell to her. She fills her childhood room with her laughter to mask the emptiness. In the future, she will do the same to her youngest son, brushing his hair, whispering that he will rule the world, and filling throne rooms with her bubbling laughter to mask the desperation.
Everyone around her feels like an eagle surveying its prey, from the bearers that braided her hair every morning, the young fellow girls that would curtsy to her or embroider with her, to the adults that note her growing beauty. She is hoisted upon a pedestal, observing how she will grow up: accomplished in whatever mold they place her to be. Ready to praise her the moment she finishes playing a complicated piece on the harpsichord, prepared to devour her the moment she forgets even just a single note as she plays for her mother and her aunt, the grand duchess.
As a young girl, she is drilled to be perfect, to do everything for duty, blood, and purity.
She is drilled to be left equally to be alone in the process.
A little dove sitting in her birdcage promised a golden age.
No one dares to set her free. No one has keys to a cage without a lock to open it in the first place.
In that, Anabella adjusts to the fact the only time she sees her lady mother and sire is during the cracks of dawn or when twilight nears. When she bows to them, their stares are hauntingly devoid of affection.
She adjusts to the fact that the only thing she knows of her brothers are their textbooks, tunics, or training swords. When she tries to break bread with them, their stares are terrifyingly cold.
She adjusts to the fact that the only people who talk to her are the bearers in their estate. When she asks them for help, their stares are filled with pity.
All of eleven summers, she finds a tiny place, her own little hideaway, far from the pedestal. Back to a small flowing river just by the edge of Eastpool, she bathes herself clean there and drinks herself clean from there.
She can imagine a small wooden palace built upon its rookery. Where she isn't the perfect girl from an ideal breeding with a perfect smile and perfect skillful fingers.
She follows the river to the ends of the world, and it leads her to the ocean. Her brown eyes make out the Holy Empire of Sanbreque as the horizon stretches along the magnificent purple-blue skies.
Her hands clasped in prayer, and she begs and pleads and reaches out to Metia, that if she is given a chance to be an ordinary girl - all she hopes is to have just been happy and never alone, given more and more, compassion and compassion.
Her heart twists momentarily when the red gleam from the coveted star dims by a fraction.
The sound of the floss going through cloth is the only thing she focuses on, the thread going in and out as it forms delicate red roses. Anabella leans on the wall outside her father's office. Hopefully, she is hidden as she expects either of them to go out to study in case another fight among them happens at this late hour. Anabella's eyebrows scrunch and glare as she listens to her mother discuss options: when she will debut, what she will wear, and who she is going to dance with first. The closed door cannot hide or contain the scoffs in irritation of her mother as her sire rejects each date, each dress, each potential suitor.
She stabs the blunt needle through her work with so much force that it shoots through the flesh of her pointer finger.
She gave her dear parents too much credit. They would not give anything more, much less any compassion.
It does not come as a surprise to her that they do not ask when she is ready, they do not ask her what color she would wear, and they do not ask her if she has her eyes set on someone. Neither does it come as a surprise that her father has so much to say about her marriage prospects when he barely even knows where she might be.
Anabella's fingers grip her work a little tighter when she hears that the voices inside are growing louder and angrier with each passing moment. Each word yelled like claws to fangs like beasts ever belonging with beasts.
"The high houses voted in her favor!" A roar comes from her father: "She is to be wed to Elwin in order to produce the next dominant, and that is final!"
The Duty, The Blood, and The Purity they have relentlessly drilled into her culminates in this.
In her fury, her anger, her confusion, each time the needle stabs through the cloth, it stabs her into fingers in return. Her maroon fingers soak through the cloth that she is clinging in comfort.
To be sold off to Rosalith.
To be wed to a man she does not love.
To be used as a breeding mare.
She has had enough of grotesque misalliances. She does not want to listen to this anymore.
The door swings open.
The sounds of thrown goblets and shattered glass resonate through the hallways at the same time she hurls the ruined embroidery to the floor.
She looks up to her father's eyes for the first time in years.
He does not see how terrified she is at the turn of events. He does not see how terribly alone she is.
"You cannot wear blue today, my lady. Your mother requested you wear something else."
"You cannot have your hair braided like this, my lady. Your eldest brother specifically told us to put these in your hair,"
"You cannot meet Lord Alberich, you know that, my lady, your father forbids you to do so,"
A hairbrush flies in the direction of the harmless dove that sits between the window to her room. She stands up from the cushioned seat that she has been sitting still and perfectly for the past fifteen minutes. Her hands find themselves struggling to make their way to the laces of her stays, tugging and pulling and tugging and pulling, as quick as she can, as fast she can, to loosen them, to free them, to free herself.
She has never been under this much pressure, never been so lost and so alone, never struggled to breathe so hard in her life.
This should not be happening. Her mother promised her she would not have to wed to a high noble until she was of age, allowed her the liberty to seek out suitors worthy of her attention, and promised her that she could experience one trip outside Rosaria. Anabella claws her nails to her neck, desperately trying to get rid of the pearl necklace that feels like it is trying to choke her petite neck, as if it is out to behead her.
Why did the high nobles want her? Her older cousin already had someone else in mind to be Duchess! She has nothing in common with him! How could her mother have agreed to this and sold her off?
Have they not taken so much of her girlhood already?
Have they not taken so much that it feels like she never had one?
Anabella sinks to the floor, laces untied, hair unraveling, the pearls scattering.
But if she never had one, then... what have they taken from her?
The nobility becomes even more cantankerous and ruthless with their tongues as time goes on, like venomous vipers sniping at her ankles. The last time she was under their scrutiny, scorn, and ire was when she was all of twelve summers. She had frozen in place when talking to an esteemed delegate of Kanver. She practiced everything she wanted to say for almost a full moon; when she was made to share her views, the pearls were back again at her neck.
She remembers that day quite well. In fact, too well. She can never forget how angry her mother was - her lady mother, in all her glory, greeted and graced her with silence. It was the worst pain she had experienced so far, never mind the sight of her father grabbing her shoulders, shaking her roughly, and almost choking her for the failed performance.
The burgundy gown is edged with gold thread that fits perfectly to her height and size and weighs heavier than anything she has ever worn. The jewels painstakingly weaved into her blonde curls, making it difficult for her to lift her head up properly. Her mother checks and rechecks her posture is upright, her hands just so, her smile small and delicate. Whatever grand silks and gems she is wearing, they do not hide the fact that she looks too pale, too confused, nor can they hide her loneliness, how frail she feels.
The noblewomen she passes by flutter their fans near their faces, as they lightly curtsy at her. One of them, Lady Krista, who Anabella knows to be the wife of one of the high houses, looks at her from head to toe, already passing judgment.
She would be a fool to expect anything more, would be a fool to think of them capable of imparting compassion.
"Do make sure you never let your hair down, child," the countess says, and Anabella instinctively touches her well-coiffed hair, "Lest you and Lady Hanna be impossible to differentiate."
As Anabella prepares to meet the Dowager Duchess, a part of her secretly delights that Lady Hanna of Eastpool was not chosen, for it means the older woman lacked in her duty, does not have the same blood running through her veins, does not have the purity that Anabella still has intact, untainted.
And yet, as her hand is given to Elwin's, a part of her secretly grieves that the reason why Lady Hanna was not chosen is that she was a happy child, known to be loved fiercely by her lady mother and her sire, that except in this one damning event, she was not terribly alone. A woman who has been given more and more, compassion and compassion.
The fragrance of flowers and the first blooms of spring can devour and swallow anyone who is humbled enough to be granted permission to enter the gardens that rest in the heart of Rosalith Castle. A scent as strong as the matriarch handling it, washing their senses, a part that any guest can never get used to.
A pavilion of gold stands in the middle of a garden filled with every bloom imaginable. White roses wrap around the pillars, ivy wrapping itself over the ornate dome. Delicious bite-sized pastries are prepared on the tea table, an impressive spread for the lone goddess who sits across an empty chair, delicately sipping tea.
To anyone else, she would seem the embodiment of sophistication, magnificently lustrous. An ethereal beauty, seemingly content in having a tea party for one, were it not for the presence of an extra seat at her side, which always stands achingly empty.
To Anabella, she understands that the Dowager Duchess must feel terribly alone after the death of her husband.
Wordlessly, the child takes the knife that has been laid before her and cuts a slice of cake, placing it carefully on the older woman's plate.
"I think you should let your hair down, my child," The Queen Mother softly says to her with an impossibly kind smile, the first one she has seen in court, "You are a lovely girl. You are favored by grace, Anabella." At least in this small moment, she is given more. She is given compassion.
She has one whole summer to get ready, to get used to the feeling of not being alone.
It would have been easier had the man she is soon to be sharing vows of matrimony with her during the process, not been in his room. Elwin is still in mourning and is still locked in his study. Anabella was taught arithmetic, history, politics, and music, but she was not taught by anyone how to approach a man who needed someone other than duty, other than perfection.
How can she give more and more, compassion and compassion when she has barely gotten it herself?
She learns quickly, in the span of six moons, the dishes that her lord husband-to-be likes and memorizes the path he takes on his morning rides with his Chocobo. Even in her sleep, she knows the first few pages of Saint and the Sectary. She reads the plays he mentions when he does get a chance to dine with her - she thinks about the carrots he had pushed to the side of his plate and how he laughed, a genuine laugh when she absentmindedly ate it from his plate.
This also means she has to let go of the things she loves in the process. The soft, moist angel cake she indulges in when no one is looking is replaced by a chocolate one. The romance novels she hides behind the bookshelves are replaced by more readings about the Northern Territories. She has to save the plays she would like to seek out for another time.
All of fifteen summers, she practices standing next to the marbled seat of alabaster. The throne room does not have space for another; only one person gets to rule Rosaria, and only one of them gets to decide and vote.
Her back is straight, pinpointing a spot on the door to focus on. She practices this for hours on end, and it feels no different from the caning she received when she was a little girl.
Even though she is about to be married, the creeping coldness of this room dictates that she will still be terribly alone.
She has read about this a handful of times in some of the books of her tutors and has heard it spilling from the rooms of the estate when they thought she was not listening. She had tried caressing her thighs, pressing her thumbs on her pebbling buds through her chemise, trying to think of black silken hair and blue eyes.
This is your duty, Anabella.
He is gentle; he really is. Cautious with the way he inches up her nightgown, respectful in how he leads her to their bed, gentle with the way he firmly traps her hands in his because no matter what she does, no matter how much she convinces herself that she is ready, they could not stop shaking.
Soft sparks happen when his calluses start to wander around her stomach. Her face starts to flush the moment his thumbs are pressed firmly into the skin at the bottom of her ribcage - he bends down and buries his face along her neck, making her shiver and anticipate.
With a small moan from her, his thumbs swept up the swell of her breasts.
She does not think of what is actually happening or what it means. She is only focusing on the pleasure building up in her so that she does not go mad with the desire to run away.
She momentarily forgets herself when she latches her nails on Elwin's wrist and brings his fingers to the top of her thighs.
She just wants this to be over on her own terms, on her own wants.
Do this, and you will make us all proud.
Without any more pretense, one of his free hands reached down, and Anabella whimpered sharply around his fingers. In discomfort, in shock, and in awe.
He makes sure she is alright. He makes sure she is comfortable. He whispers fumbling apologies that if it were up to him, she would still be free to run, dream, and hope.
His fingers dip between her thighs and find her center, earning a satisfied exhale in response. He continues rubbing hard circles into her clit with a focused softness. She moves eagerly against his fingers as her sighs become louder.
She is aware that he is blisteringly quiet.
This is her duty, and this is his duty, too.
It does not take long for her to become lost in ecstasy and reach a shattering climax. He graciously allows her to ride out the final waves of desire before removing his hand from her.
You will please him, Bella; he is captivated by your beauty and the same fire that runs through your blood.
All is in its right place.
In this haze, she tries to catch his lips. A tiny part of her dies when he refuses to meet them, so she also tries to remove his clothes, and a small piece of her aches when he shrugs it off himself, so she tries to be a woman, and a tiny part of her withers when all of his actions echo that she is but a child.
He chose you for your beauty, for your blonde hair, and for your pale skin.
She was told that usually, your first time with your husband, a lover, a patron, a common whore would be quick, easy. Lying on your back, you can look up at the ceiling; you can ignore his grunts, his touches. You can bury your face sideways into a pillow.
He will want you.
But she finds herself turned over, knees pressing onto the mattress, eyes on the headboard.
He will want to kiss you,
But he does not kiss her lips that night.
He will want to know you.
But he does not want to know her that night.
All of sixteen summers, the young duchess - a woman now not a girl anymore, wakes up at the next sunrise, almost well into high noon. The other side of her marital bed is empty and she feels terribly alone.
Anabella exhausts herself with the idea of trying to make it work with her older cousin: to want him, to kiss him, to know him.
This is not part of her duty, she has it etched in her soul a long time ago.
But she wants the chocolate cake she ate every day for him to mean anything; the chapters of reading the Saint and the Sectary would amount to something, so the favorite things she had to let go of in favor of his loved things would be anything.
She is so used to having her naked back against Elwin's bare chest that when she turns to face him, his scarred body feels so foreign in her eyes. He is beyond her comprehension, and the study of him is her rapture.
If she does this, no one will be proud of her - she has it etched in her heart a long time ago.
There is nothing about him that she could ever understand. She cannot understand how he walks, nor whenever he writes; he connects his letter "t" with the next.
But she wills herself not to look away. She does not want to look away.
The selfish young woman that she is with her hair down wants more and more; the selfish little hurt child in braided pigtails inside her wants compassion and compassion.
Elwin Rosfield is known throughout the nation to be very strong, bold, and daring. In their short married life, Anabella can always feel it emanating from every ilm of him. Parts of it make her heart soar to feel that strength and power over her. The other part of her cowers in fear because it is possible for him to do anything and everything with her. Fuck her, hurt her, leave her, kill her.
But she knows that her cousin is the most honorable man. A part of her savors that he won't. He honestly won't.
She has seen him laugh at her a little, smile at her a little, and maybe, just maybe, love her for being his dear Ana, a little. So when he finally lets her fingers draw stars around his scars, she thinks that maybe, finally, all is in its right place.
Her fingertips stop at the puckering and angrily raised skin near his shoulder, and she dares to want more and more from him: compassion and maybe something more profound.
His stories. His words. More than duty, more than perfection.
She hopes she will find magic reflected in his eyes, but all she finds is a man.
He does not tell her how he got this scar. He does not tell her anything. He does not want to let her in.
Lady Goditha spoke of the story instead the following day. The scar she had yearned to kiss, yearned to heal, yearned to mend, was already kissed by Lady Hanna, was already healed by Lady Hanna, and was already mended by Lady Hanna.
After they had done their marital duty, in defeat, she shamefully turns her naked back against him, letting herself become smaller because of him.
If he does not want to let her in, then so be it; she will not give him the same luxury either.
All of eighteen summers, she is supposed to be playing a perfect wife, someone who could support her husband and embody his truths and his ideals, but she feels terribly alone.
The first time she thinks she is with child, it is met with a cruel, gruesome end. Nearing her seventeenth summer, the life in her body could not hang on, and Anabella does not forget how truly the world turned slowly as she screamed, howled, and faded. Everyone hastily barged into her room, removing the bloodied sheets and trying vainly to calm her down.
The second time is not easier to handle; it is not easier to swallow or accept as Lady Katherine tells her of another dead cherub. Nor is the third time any better at all.
Three miscarriages in two years. The court whispers grow louder, more unruly.
Lady Katherine attempts to soothe her, that this experience is typical for all the noblewomen she had attended to.
She cannot fathom why; was it her fault? Was she indeed that frail? Was it her young age? Was there something wrong with her? Was she really a failure of a woman like what her brothers and father said she was? Was she really just a replacement for another, her womb just as barren?
Anabella mourns three little darlings who could have seen rivers, played with the sand, and could have been the saviors of this land.
When choosing the brooches that would be placed on into her curls, three barrettes that resembled phoenix tails adorned her soft, flaxen hair. She never takes them off, not even in her death.
House Rosfield owns its particular, some might even say peculiar, set of traditions. The same blood, the same ichor, flows through her veins, therefore:
She will kneel before the roaring fire, hoping the flames will bless the child she is carrying.
She will bathe in the scorching water so that the scalds can protect the child she is carrying.
She will walk on hot coals every morning, so each painful step she makes will righteously lead the child she is carrying.
In hopes that every single god and goddess up there, the Founder, Metia, Great Greagor, and even the Phoenix itself that slumbers in the hope of its resurrection will take pity on her.
This little one held on to her womb for five moons already. An achievement for her indeed. Lady Katherine was sure that she would be able to carry this one to its full term, just as long as she did not overexert herself and she made sure to eat well.
Her mother is ecstatic, her brothers finally beam at her with pride, and her father finally nods at her.
She feels the bubbling excitement that she has done her duty. She is not a failure. She has secured the bloodline.
At this moment, there is no more asking for more and more, compassion and compassion.
One of her maids remarks that her blonde locks feel thicker as they are being brushed.
Lady Krista notices her cheeks are more ruddy this time and tells her she is glowing.
Elwin presses a kiss on her forehead; her heart swells a little when he calls her "My dear," and their fingers brush as they place it upon her growing bump.
She is the happiest she has ever been, as much as this life allows her to.
She is determined to keep it this way. Hopefully, the prayers she offers to Metia will always keep them together this way.
That all will forever be in its right place.
Once, her darling boy, with blue eyes and black hair, is finally born during the last weeks of Winter, with a firm grip, an even stronger cry, and a hungry mouth. This beautiful baby's starting strength is all Elwin's.
Anabella searches for any hint of her. She falls in love with Clive's nose, his tiny lips, the shape of his eyelids, and his cheeks; this beautiful baby's entire face is all hers.
"Once, when she was just twelve years, she froze when talking to the diplomat of Kanver. There is no hope for her to rule alongside our Grace." One of the patriarchs of the Seven High Houses sneered.
"How long did his Grace stay in Eastpool this time?" A noblewoman gossips to another, hiding her laughter behind a fluttering fan.
"Why do you think it took them three years to sire a child?" A drunk shield boldly asserted as he downed another mug of ale.
The nobility bites into her soft, silky flesh, and they will tear into her tendons and muscles and skin and corrupt her: the rust will only begin to spread, untended.
As if to proclaim to the whole of Rosaria that she is indeed his mother, Clive fusses - his small, chubby hands trying to grasp her face. Her darling boy, her own Shield.
She held Clive tighter, desperate to bless, protect, and lead her baby, the one she had carried for nine full moons, closer to her.
When her husband finds her dress wet from tears, she realizes it is not from her darling boy but from herself.
Anabella comforts herself with thoughts. Soon, they will all be quiet. Soon, they will all be hushed. Soon they will all see that Elwin's firstborn son was not from a concubine, not from a common whore, and certainly not from a former flame that could not carry a child herself; womb barren unlike hers.
She has knelt in front of fires, bathed in the most scalding of waters, and walked on blistering coals.
What does it matter? Soon, the Phoenix will be reborn in her darling boy.
She storms into the room where she knelt by the fireplace every single day for seven moons, and her hands find and sweep anything that can be destroyed: vials of medicine broken into thousands of shards, sheets from the bed pulled, wrinkled at the feet of the room, goblets spilling out water and wine, tables flipped and in disarray.
It should have been him. The Phoenix should have chosen him!
Anabella's legs fail to support her frailness. A bitter wailing explodes from her pearl-choked throat as she realizes she is kneeling once more in this very room.
The shame of it, the shame of it all.
This is supposed to be perfection. This is supposed to be a home. She is beginning to receive less and less, betrayal after betrayal.
She opens all the drawers in the room, scrambling to remember where she keeps a misericorde; Anabella is no fighter, but she is not timid in nature.
It is a longstanding Rosarian tradition to bestow a gift to scions of the ducal line upon their coming of age. Her father did not bother to have one commissioned for her, not that she would have expected anything. It was up to her mother again to fill in the gaps.
Instead of her coming of age, it was given on her wedding day when she turned sixteen.
The narrow dagger was said to have been forged in the flames of Mt. Drustanus. Encrusted with heartstones and rubies, the phoenix wraps around its handle.
She understands the message quite well.
If it's not all in its right place, if you have failed in your duty, you do not come back to our family with stains for our noble blood.
You kill yourself.
She tries to test its sharpness along the palm and is surprised it remained this sharp for all its years never being used. Her hands lead the steel to her neck.
In the end, she weeps herself to sleep because this time, this one time, this one thing finally tears her apart, along with the perfect image of a perfect woman, a perfect family, and a perfect child that she carefully cradles in her head.
All of twenty-two summers, Anabella watches in horror as the Phoenix rejects her firstborn son. She leaves the man they say is her husband and leaves the boy they say is her child. She shrieks at them not to follow. Her stubbornness and her desire to run and hide overrides Lady Katherine's orders of bed rest.
In the dead of night, she seeks out her husband's white Chocobo, and she rides it all the way to her forgotten hideaway in Eastpool.
Nothing ever truly belonged to her and hers alone - like it has been for all these years.
When will it all end? When will she not feel terribly alone?
Everything is now becoming her undoing.
The threads of being put together, her sanity, start to snap.
Her actions start small: methodical, calculated to increase in severity. She gets increasingly irritated with the bearers in the castle, giving them severe looks instead of the soft and gentle ones she has perfected for years. When she used to pick apples for them, she now squashes them with her feet. She does not thank her maids, and she paces faster.
It begins with not allowing her father to enter Rosalith anymore to be by her side during celebrations. She is the duchess, so his name is now crossed out of every occasion, every dance, and every ball. Her older brothers demand an audience with her, but she refuses each time. Her mother is not allowed to travel outside Rosaria.
She no longer holds Elwin's hand when they stroll in the gardens in the morning. There is no point anymore. When they do their marital duty, it is her turn not to kiss him, not to know him; she starts getting on top of him, even when he's exhausted from war plans and strategies. They still do not have the Phoenix in her womb, so they do this every night, his protests and placations be damned.
She does not call Clive by his name anymore. He is not her pride, her joy, her heart. The lines of him not being a worthy child and her not being worthy of birthing a Phoenix blur as she calls him a failure.
She even thinks it's a mercy that she does not choke his neck with pearls, does not cane him, does not starve him when he runs off.
When she feels another child growing in her womb, she pressures Lady Katherine that she does not want her, the Montgomery matriarch, to be her midwife. Anabella demands for her daughter, her damned ghost, Lady Hanna, to take care of her instead. She and Elwin are punished for the rumors that have plagued her ever since.
Her tortured screams ricochet throughout the whole castle. She is out of breath, and yet the child in her demands her to push and push and push. Searing pain consumes her entire being, sending shivers of anguish through her throbbing veins.
This child is not supposed to come out yet. She supposedly had two more moons. That's why her husband is not here with her.
This is not supposed to be happening.
She throws her head back, and the guttural pain climbs out of her throat. She keeps bleeding and shouting.
Her hands crush the sheets, Lady Hanna encourages her firmly that she can do this, that she can see the crown of her child's head. The thoughts of malice, revenge, and hate disappear for a while as her blurring vision asks for help, more and more again, for compassion and compassion. She cannot endure a fourth heartbreak, terribly alone. A seeping numbness spreads from her head down to her legs, and she cannot breathe, move, or feel anything at all.
The last thing she registers is her baby shrieking and crying into this world and the blinding light that consumes him as every maiden in the room realizes that this is the Phoenix.
She has finally done her duty.
She has finally made herself proud.
All is finally, finally, in its right place.
The exhaustion tires her out, and the only thing that rouses her up is Lady Hanna's gentle hands wiping the sweat from her forehead, telling her that she did well, that she's been so strong to have done this. Anabella cannot bring herself to say a thank you, but Hanna knows it well enough.
"He has your lovely hair, Your Grace," Hanna beams like the sun, and Anabella can understand it all now. "He has El-" the older blonde stops herself at her lord husband's name. Her midwife who has been known, who has been wanted, and who has been kissed by him. "I forget myself, he has His Grace…"
In the tiniest act of compassion she has left in her weary state, Anabella bestows Lady Hanna this small mercy. "Elwin."
"He has Elwin's eyes," Hanna repeats softly, reverently.
In another life, Anabella thinks she could have been fast friends with this woman.
When Joshua is given to her that night, Anabella's heart sinks as she realizes that he is tiny, not even filling her entire arm. He is fragile and delicate, and he sleeps more than he is awake. Her finger, which used to be pierced with needles, gently grazes his soft cheek. Her soft lips press a kiss to his forehead, gently pulling him into her, letting her baby boy listen to her heartbeat.
A child that looks entirely hers, a child blessed by the Phoenix itself.
The failure of a first son does not matter anymore.
The husband who does not wholly love her does not matter anymore.
Joshua weakly grips her finger, and she thinks she doesn't mind much at all because right now, she is with him, her darling boy, her pride, her heart, and joy. For the first time in what feels like forever, she is not terribly alone and that makes up for the past twenty-four summers.
Joshua coughs blood in his first few moons. As Lady Hanna looks at them so painfully, Anabella understands that her boy is ill and it is only a matter of time when something greater than life consumes him.
Everything falls apart once more.
In Anabella's anxiety, she keeps Joshua to herself, keeps him swaddled, always indoors, panics immensely whenever he falls down, and begs Elwin to at least be here during his fourth nameday and not spend another year fighting another war that he cannot win as just a man like any other.
Joshua grows up in the company of tutors, books, and dolls.
Like her.
In the end, she still has nothing because, achingly, this boy is not long for this world. Had he had a tenth of the strength as her firstborn, who never amounted to anything, then her precious Joshua would have been the one being adored and celebrated.
For the nobles, they say the Phoenix rejected Clive, but for Joshua, they say the Phoenix is pitying him.
To the world, it means that she is also rejected. It also means she is being pitied.
Loneliness finally eats her out alive.
Anabella remembers precisely the reasons why she wakes up in Sylvestre Lesage's arms in a hidden room of Rosalith castle, a few nights before the remembrance ceremony; the desire of wanting to be known, wanted and kissed, resurfacing as he nipped at her neck, touched her roughly the way she always yearned, lifted her away from the bed and fucked her against the wall.
He persuades her that if she becomes his next empress, she can do her duty again; imagine a child, a bloodline capable of birthing Bahamut and the Phoenix. If she becomes his next empress, she has a seat on his counsel, and he shall listen to her wise words and perfection. If she becomes his next empress, no inferior will ever dare strike her feet.
Sylvestre promises her and provides her with what Elwin cannot: desires, emotions, and dreams Elwin already had given and surrendered to another woman a lifetime ago.
In her lust, gluttony, pride, envy, sloth, greed, and wrath she does not want to turn back.
For in Sanbreque, at least there is a throne for her to sit on, that the angel cake she so desires is served on her table, that Sylvestre buys her hardbound copy of the second volume of Heart's Desire as an offering.
If she is not given more and more; compassion and compassion, then she will conquer and devour it herself.
This time, she is the one that gives Rosaria, less and less, betrayal after betrayal.
They plot out the death of her husband and his firstborn son.
Sylvestre, silent in his approach, suggests poison, suggests subtlety.
Anabella has thoughts of using the dagger she almost killed herself with to murder Elwin but her dear husband will hurt and bleed more from the Shields he calls his friends and comrades than from her, a woman he was forced to marry.
With her knack for dramatics and spectacle, Anabella plans for an ambush, a disaster at Phoenix Gate.
Sylvestre kisses her fully on the lips once more after, and they tangle themselves in the bed of the room where she knelt in front of the fire for moons on end; this time a man kneels for her instead.
She will find another kingdom. She will bear another child.
She only hopes that the world His Radiance seeks to create has them together and that she is not by herself at the end of it.
She strides calmly away from the chaos, away from the burning towers of Rosalith Castle, away from the savages raping and pillaging her once home, her once prison.
Do your duty, Anabella.
Her legs carry her away from the gallows, away from the dirt and grime that can stain her skin or her gown.
Do this, and you will make us all proud.
She yanks off the purple hood, wrenches the pearls still choking her petite neck for the entirety of her damned life, and stares past the tiny beads that sink one by one.
She does not howl for a better life this time.
She does not cry her eyes out, wanting more and more; compassion and compassion.
That freedom, that hope, that dreams she was robbed of having had been buried along the woman, the Duchess, the mother Anabella Rosfield used to be.
All of thirty-four summers, Anabella, soon to be Lesage, washes her hands in the sea that contains the horizon where the majesty of Sanbreque lies. What comes off is blood.
All is in its right place.
And yet, she still feels terribly alone.