Since Esmera was abandoned on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, the only person who has looked out for her is herself.
Until a lark starts visiting her, leaving behind exotic flowers and iridescent pebbles that the internet doesn't recognise.
Esmera...
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Esmera and Lady Varali strode after Ruagu while he forced Lady Yandriya down the stairs in front of him, his two yaoguai flanking them. Esmera's mother stepped around the fresh, scarlet, unmistakable smudge at the edge of one of the beige tiles. Esmera followed her lead even though the blood has probably long dried in her timeline.
They all stopped where the final step met the ground floor. Servants wandered about the entrance hall with none of the purpose they had possessed when Esmera first entered. Of course they had lost that. They didn't even possess their own souls but those of the demons that had murdered them. The portraits lining the hallway seemed to observe the scene with eyes more mournful than Esmera remembered.
Ruagu tightened his grip on Lady Yandriya's mass of curls as he swung her to face him. "Where is it?"
"Where's what?" Even as Ruagu tilted Yandriya's face up to make her look at him, she kept her eyes down.
Without seeing the look within them, Esmera couldn't tell whether Yandriya was ignorant or just playing dumb.
Esmera didn't know her mother, the inflexions in her voice, her body language, or any of the mannerisms and quirks that would've become familiar to her if she had been raised by her.
"The Finnaaz weapon." Ruagu narrowed his eyes, possibly as uncertain as Esmera was about Yandriya's true motives but choosing suspicion.
At that, Lady Yandriya raised her eyes, but not to Ruagu.
She tracked the forms of her servants milling about the entrance hall. None of them met her gaze or even raised the alarm as she might've expected them to if they saw her with an intruder who steered her through her own house by her hair.
The hope in her eyes faded with every maid and messenger who pushed past her as if they hadn't even noticed her.
"Don't bother," said Ruagu, following her gaze. "These are all my servants now, not yours."
The colour leached from Lady Yandriya's perfectly oval, olive-toned face. "What did you do to them?"
"What had to be done."
She shook her head, but no denial could change what was fact. Esmera realised that when Yandriya turned her beseeching eyes to her staff, and they continued to ignore her.
Ruagu shook her by her hair, and she fixed her wide, fearful eyes on him. "Now, tell me, where is the weapon?"
Lady Yandriya looked down again, her lips sealing closed around the secret Ruagu sought. His eyes flashed as he looked between his guards. Esmera dreaded the order he was about to issue, but he only leaned into Yandriya, whispering into her ear at a lover's closeness but with none of the warmth.
"How long do you think it takes a yao to crush a baby with his bare hands?" Ruagu's voice was soft. It would've been comforting if his words weren't so sinister. It was a down pillow before it suffocated its victim. "Your precious daughter will be dead in the moment it takes you to refuse me again."
