Chapter 49 – The Girl Who Came Back / The Official Story

Chapter 49

The Girl Who Came Back / The Official Story

            For one long, impossible moment, no one in the ballroom moves.  No one screams.  No one speaks.  No one so much as dares to breathe too loudly.

            I become aware of warmth and something firm beneath my head.  A hand at my shoulder and the steady rise and fall of someone breathing too carefully above me.  I look up and see Angus above me.  I am half in his lap, my head cradled against his thigh where he must have lifted me from the marble, one hand braced carefully at my shoulder as though afraid to jostle me too hard and undo something fragile.

            For one heartbeat, he only stares, and then his breath catches.  That is when I know something has changed, something visible.  I lift one trembling hand, or try to.  My fingers twitch weakly against his sleeve, slow to obey and Angus catches my wrist before I can do more than make the attempt.

            “Don’t,” he says, voice rough.  “Not yet.”

            “What…” My voice comes out thin, cracked. “What happened?”

            His expression rapidly shifts between relief, fear, and recognition.

            Before he can answer, a ripple moves through the ballroom.

            I turn my head just enough to look over the room. 

            We are still at the top of the grand staircase; the shattered landing littered with fractured stone and scorched black streaks where shadow and fire had torn through polished marble.  Below us, in the ballroom, faces stare up at us.  Rows of nobles, guards, servants, and survivors stand gathered below the ruined staircase, all eyes fixed on the landing. 

            There are several murmurs that are loud enough for me to make out.  One of them is “Light Affinity”, another is “What is she?”  They are talking about me and being none too subtle about it.

            Angus’s hand tightens around mine.

            King Malcolm is the first to move.  He steps forward from the center of the ballroom and climbs the grand staircase one deliberate step at a time.  No one speaks as he ascends.  He stops only when he reaches the ruined landing, close enough that I can see soot on the hem of his formal coat and blood dark against one cuff, his gaze settling on me, assessing.

            When he speaks, his voice carries without effort.

            “Who stands before us?”

            Behind him I see movement.  It is my mother and father, moving hesitantly forward toward the stairs.

            The answer to the king’s question rises on instinct.

            Nobody. We’re sprawled on the floor. 

            The thought flashes through me so quickly I nearly say it aloud.  My tongue catches hard against my teeth.

            Not now, Gods, not now.

            Somewhere in the wreckage of what I had been an hour ago, Michelle’s impulse recoils while the part of me that had once been Beira Braemar clamps down on it with all the force of social self-preservation.

            Later, I think wildly. You can have a crisis about that later.

            Then I answer the King.

            “Beira Braemar,” I say, my voice still rough but steady enough to carry. “Daughter of Duke Alastair Braemar and Duchess Ilsa Braemar.”

            The answer lands cleanly.  It is a declaration, as much as identification.

            A small sound leaves my mother as she steps forward onto the stairs with all the brittle control of someone holding herself together by force and habit alone.  My father catches her by the arm before she can climb too quickly, steadying them both, then after seeing her regain a little bit of composure, he lets go.

            Of the two, Ilsa reaches me first.

            She drops to her knees at Angus’s side without a thought for the dirt, blood, or even her own dignity, both hands reaching out to cradle my face with a care so immediate and desperate it hurts more than the lingering pain in my chest.

            Her breath catches and there is a look of tenderness on her face that she rarely displays in public.  I can see that she recognizes me for who I am, but that I have come back changed.  Then the look is gone, swallowed whole by something fiercer.

            “Beira,” she breathes, voice already breaking on the name. “Oh, thank the gods.”

            My father arrives a moment behind her and, to his credit, he does not fall apart.  Instead, he steps forward in the wake of my mother’s relief and looks at me with the kind of terrible, searching stillness I have only ever seen from him when someone he loved was hurt and he was forcing himself not to panic.

            He takes in everything, then lifts his gaze to Angus.  There is a question in his eyes, the need for a confirmation.

            Angus gives the barest nod.

            That is all my father gets, but it is enough.  He lowers himself beside my mother, one hand settling briefly against my shoulder, strong and steady.

            “You came back,” he says, his voice cracking.

            “I did,” I say, the words coming out softer than I intend.

            I am suddenly, painfully aware of how many people are touching me like I might disappear if they don’t and, embarrassingly, I understand the impulse.

            “I’m here,” I say, quieter now.

            My mother closes her eyes for one sharp, shaking breath.  When she opens them again, there are tears in them she has neither the time nor the dignity to care about right now.

            Angus is the first to move.  He lifts me slightly, shifting just enough to allow my father, who catches on to his intent, to take my weight, then he lets go completely.  My father holds me up me without effort while Angus rises to his feet beside us and steps back. He doesn’t move far away, just enough to give my parents room around me.

            My father makes the decision before I realize what he is doing.

            One moment I am still half on the floor, and half supported by him then he decides to take what little dignity I have left.  The next, one arm slides beneath my knees, the other braces at my back, and the world shifts as he decides I have been on the floor long enough.  The sudden movement pulls a startled sound out of me, but my father ignores it and lifts me anyway.  It is mortifying, but under the circumstances it is also deeply appreciated.

            From somewhere to our left, I hear Angus exhale through what sounds suspiciously like the beginning of a laugh.

            I would glare at him if I had the energy.

            Instead, I settle for the deeply undignified experience of being carried in full view of half the kingdom while looking, I assume, like I had recently lost a fight with death and then gotten into an argument with a god.  

            I admit, it is not my best entrance.

            With Angus on his feet, my father holding me, and my mother close, the rest of the room begins to exist again in pieces. 

            Izzy is crying.  I spot her first because she is halfway up the staircase despite two people trying to stop her.  Mari is one step behind her, one hand still gripping Izzy’s sleeve with the exhausted expression of someone who had failed to stop a small disaster and settled for escorting it instead.  Lena trails them both, pale and shaken but upright.

            Somewhere lower on the stairs, Queen Catriona stands with one hand braced hard against the banister, posture still immaculate even as the strain in it shows. Princess Margaret and Prince Albert remain near her, Margaret pale but composed, Albert looking like he has not yet recovered from the deeply unfortunate experience of meeting divinity in person.

            Below them, still on the remnants of the ballroom floor, Catalina Breegar is white as marble and staring at me with open disbelief… I can only imagine what she is thinking now.

            Izzy struggles free from Mari’s grip and reaches us first.

            “Beira!” she cries out, crashing first into my mother as she nearly takes herself out on the last broken step and recovers badly.  She stops just short of colliding with me and my father outright.  It is, by Izzy standards, remarkable restraint.  Her hands hover helplessly for one frantic second before settling on all available surfaces in no coherent order.

            “You absolute bitch,” she sobs, voice wrecked and furious and so overwhelmingly relieved I almost laugh.  “Do you have any idea how much paperwork this was going to make for me?”

            I laugh, unable to stop myself.  It comes out thin and breathless and far too close to tears, but it is clearly a laugh.

            Izzy makes a wounded sound and presses both hands to my face.

            “You are never allowed to do that again,” she says, still openly crying.  “Ever.  I am serious.  I will make father draft legislation.”

            “Noted,” I manage.

            Mari reaches us a second later and, unlike Izzy, does not throw herself bodily into the situation.  She stops just inside arm’s reach, takes one long look at me, and exhales.

            “Well,” she says, voice dry in the way only Mari can make sound like both judgment and affection, “you look terrible.”

            There is a level of normalcy in her words that manages to distract me in the moment.

            Lena arrives just after Mari and takes one look at me in my father’s arms, pale, slightly singed, and visibly altered.  Her expression hardens with immediate fury before shifting to something more composed.  Her mouth hangs open for a moment as if she isn’t sure what she wants to say.

            “You,” she says at last, in the tone of someone forcibly choosing not to start a second incident in the middle of a royal disaster, “are a menace… and I am going to be furious with you after I am done being relieved you are alive.”

            That lands harder than I expect.  Not because Lena is wrong, but because somewhere beneath the ache and smoke and soul-deep exhaustion I am feeling, another quiet realization settles into place…  there had been more of Beira’s... no, of my life still waiting for me than I had known, and there will likely be even more.

            “Enough.”

            Queen Catriona does not raise her voice.  She does not need to.  That single word cuts cleanly through the landing.  Whatever fragile approximation of normal had begun trying to reassert itself stills immediately.  She ascends the remaining stairs with composed, measured grace and takes in the landing in one sweep.  My father holding me, my mother at our side, and Angus standing just behind us.  The shattered stone, the blood, and the many eyes watching from below.  Then her gaze lands on me.

            Whatever she thinks, she tucks it away quickly and when she speaks again, her voice is cool, even, and leaves no room for misunderstanding.

            “This evening is over.”

            King Malcolm steps forward beside her and turns to face the ballroom below.

            “Attend,” he commands.

            Every voice below stills.

            “This gathering is concluded,” the King says.  “The injured will be tended.  The dead will be accounted for.  Those under my roof tonight will remain under my protection until order is restored.”

            He pauses for a moment.

            “What was witnessed here will not be discussed beyond those this crown deems necessary to hear it,” he says, knowing full well that rumors will spread.  That is not what the order is for.  It is meant to inform those present that the crown will decide who is permitted to tell the story without consequences.

            Malcolm’s gaze shifts past us at last to the crumpled figure still sprawled across the shattered landing.

            Brigid has not moved, but she is breathing.  She is alive.  If she had died things would be simpler.  Alive means she is evidence and there will have to be consequences.

            “Secure her,” he says.  “Alive.”

            My gaze catches on the torn cloth on Brigid’s back, on the rune of red I can still see there and no one else can.  It is no longer glowing and the thing that was watching through it has gone for the time being.  My breath catches.

            Not now. Don’t focus on that now.

            I tighten one hand weakly against my father’s coat and lean just enough to murmur, low enough that only he will hear it.

            “Her back.”

            His attention shifts immediately.

            “There’s a mark,” I whisper, throat still raw. “Like the Woodkin.”

            My father goes still.  He only inclines his head once in acknowledgement, then he steps forward just enough to draw the King’s attention.

            “Sire,” he says.

            Malcolm’s gaze shifts.

            “There is something my daughter has identified,” my father says, low and even, “that should be handled privately.”

            Malcolm’s expression does not change.  He only gives one short nod.  And just like that, the matter becomes no longer public.  Two guards move at once.  They approach Brigid carefully, not like a wounded girl, but more like an unexploded weapon.

            Good.  At least someone on this staircase has sense.

            The rest follows quickly after that.  Healers arrive with more guards and servants.  Motion returns to the ballroom in controlled lines, no longer chaos but triage.  By the time my father carries me down from the ruined landing, the ballroom has become something quieter and uglier than panic.  Aftermath is all around us.  No one stops us, but they look, because of course they do.  After all  the way my father is carrying me suggests that he is daring anyone present to suggest I should be anywhere else.

            Let them look.

            Behind us, I hear Angus call out to my father.  He suggests that our family be given apartments in the palace for the night.  Rightly pointing out that even now, my eyes are threatening to close on their own as complete exhaustion settles in.  I don’t even pay attention to my father’s reply, I’m simply too tired.

            By dawn, the kingdom will begin deciding what it thinks happened in that room, but I will not awake to hear the first version of it.

            That is my last thought as darkness claims me.

            The next thing I know, it is morning.

            I wake to sunlight.  Soft, filtered gold spills through heavy curtains and paints the room in the kind of quiet that only exists after catastrophe has exhausted itself.  For one disorienting second, I do not know where I am.

           Then memory returns in pieces.  The ballroom and the battle.  Brigid and the rune.  Damian and his void.  The mirror where I finally got to see Michelle for the first time.  I close my eyes again immediately which turns out to be a strategic error because now memory rushes in all at once.

           I lie there for one long moment and take inventory.

           I am sore.  Not catastrophically, but deeply and thoroughly in the way of someone whose body has been forced to survive something it has not yet decided how to complain about properly.  My chest aches deeper than flesh should.  My left side feels slightly heavier than my right due to the aching.  I raise one hand and find the pale gold strand at my temple.

           I need to get a mirror as soon as possible.

           I let it slide through my fingers, dropping my hand back to the sheets and staring up at the unfamiliar canopy before finally sitting up.  Taking stock of the room I find myself in, I see a dressing table with a large mirror across from the foot of the bed.  The girl looking back at me is still myself, but I can see now why I got some of the looks I had received before passing out in my father’s arms.  My right eye has now completely changed from blue to gold, and the entire right half of my hair has changed to match.  No longer do I have a solitary golden lock.  I am dressing in a nightgown that, based on the color and cut, I assume belongs to Izzy.  How I got out of my ball gown and into it, I don’t know.

           Well… This seems inconveniently permanent.  At least I’m still alive and still myself, if a bit on the sore side.

           And for the first time in what feels to be a long time, that does not feel conditional.  There is no fracture, no strange internal dissonance, only one mind answering when I think and only one self.  The silence in my own head is so complete it takes me a full three seconds to realize it is not silence.  It is peace.

           I am still deciding whether inner stability should be a medical concern when there is a soft knock at the door.

           “Are you awake?” my mother’s voice calls quiet through the door.

           “I’m awake, Mother,” I answer, my voice catching me off guard. Not because it sounds different, because it doesn’t really, other than being a bit scratchy due to thirst and possibly sleeping with my mouth open.  It is still mine, but the rough edge where nerves had once snagged words, especially when panic got its hands on them, is simply absent.

           That is going to be strange to unpack later.

           The door opens a heartbeat later and my mother steps in, followed closely by my father. My mother reaches the bed and sits down beside me, her hands reaching out to touch my face immediately, as if reassuring herself by touch that I am still here.  Apparently satisfied, she exhales once, long and quiet.  My father remains just beyond her, stopping and resting one hand on the carved bedpost with the rigid stillness of a man who hasn’t gotten any sleep and is still standing on willpower alone.  In the open doorway, Angus appears, looking rather haggard and he is still wearing the uniform he had on the night before.

           At least one of us, apparently, had the good sense to be unconscious for most of the night.

           For a moment, no one says anything.  My parents only look at me, and I start to feel deeply uncomfortable, though, I guess it is somewhat deserved.

           I clear my throat and immediately regret it but continue with what I was about to say anyway.

           “So,” I say, looking at them both, “I assume the ball was considered a failure?”

           My father closes his eyes, and a ghost of a smile dances at the corner of his mouth.  My mother makes a sound somewhere between scandalized disbelief and the beginning of a laugh, though she cuts it off.  From the doorway, Angus lowers his head into one hand and laughs… it is not graceful.  It is, in fact, the unmistakable sound of a man whose mind and body have both finally reached the same conclusion and decided hysteria was preferable to decorum.

           For one startled second, all three of us stare at him.

           Then, to my mother’s visible offense and my father’s profound resignation, I start laughing too.  It hurts immediately but is worth it as the room lightens just a bit.  Seeing that I’m alive and present, Angus dismisses himself with promises to check in on me later.

           My mother insists I sit still long enough to drink tea, eat something resembling breakfast, and endure a healer’s second opinion before I am permitted to do anything so reckless as stand upright and face the consequences of my own existence.  Once it becomes clear I am not about to collapse, dissolve, or begin glowing again, she allows me out of bed.

           Standing is unpleasant, but manageable, the soreness not going away even though the doctor that showed up attempted to heal me.  Apparently, life magic can’t heal spiritual damage and the trauma that my soul had endured with all that had happened would just have to heal on its own with time.  My mother helps dress me because my hands are still not entirely steady and because, at some point in the night, everyone I love appears to have collectively decided I am no longer allowed to do anything unaided for the foreseeable future.  Once I am upright, dressed, I am led into a conjoined room where my father awaits, then the real conversation begins.

           I tell them everything, what happened to me the night of the masquerade, as well as how Michael… or rather Michelle, ended up in my body.  How Damian had been the catalyst for everything.  I apologize for deceiving them as Michelle, but they seem to understand that I was just trying to survive in an impossible situation, and that I had a literal god telling me to keep things in check.  They even ask questions about my previous life, and seem to find it genuinely interesting, though I have to explain to them about the trans issue like I had to do with Maribelle.

           I tell my father about the rune on Brigid’s back and how for a brief moment, when it was exposed, I felt as if something much more terrifying than anything I have ever experienced was looking at me.  How it was like the one on the Woodkin, except that one didn’t glow like the one on Brigid. 

           I also tell them about how when Damian saw Brigid and saw the rune on her back, his face had gotten serious in a way I haven’t seen him show before.  That seems to land harder than anything else I have said so far.  Not the fact that I have seen and been communicating with a god, no... more the fact that I have seen something that has a god actually concerned.

           By the time I finish, no one in the room looks surprised, only tired in newer and more specific ways.

           “We are expected,” my father says after a period of silence and a royal summons comes not long after.

           King Malcolm and Queen Catriona receive us in a private sitting room, this time they wear their crowns, signifying that despite the unofficial setting, this is an official proceeding.  There is no court, no audience, and no performance… just the crown, my family, Angus who stepped in a moment after we did, and the unpleasant shape of what comes next.

           The meeting is brief and brutally practical.  Officially, Brigid survives, but she is now the most dangerous prisoner in the kingdom.  Not because of what she did, though that doesn’t help her case, rather, it is because of what may have touched her.  She is to be kept alive, isolated, watched, and spoken of as little as possible until the crown understands what exactly tried to walk into its capital wearing her skin.

           Publicly, the story will be simple. 

           There was an attack at the princess’s ball and the culprit, the disgraced Lady Brigid Thayne is in custody.  Those who died in the attack will be honored as heroes who fought in defense of the crown.

           Unofficially, the king acknowledges that the story will not hold, but it doesn’t need to.  It only needs to hold long enough for the crown to decide what to do with the truth.

           Then the conversation turns to me.  Not regarding the battle, instead it is about the release of my, Beira’s, soul and my ‘sudden’ manifestation of a light affinity.  There is no accusation in their questioning and, for a second time today, I go over all that has happened to both of me in the past.  There is some concern acknowledging that half the nobility in the capital watched my hair change color in real time and no amount of royal pressure will be able to hide that I was able to wield both light and ice magic simultaneously during the battle, not that my hair wouldn’t be a dead giveaway at this point.

           Which means that everyone at the Academy will know before I arrive.  Which means whatever planned anonymity that my mother had for me regarding it is now dead enough to be buried with the rest of the evening and that, unfortunately, is not the only problem.  Half the nobility in the capital watched Damian appear in the aftermath of a massacre and stand in the same room as a girl whose hair turned gold after calling forth light, which she had no known affinity for, in front of witnesses.

           While the political rumors will be irritating… the religious ones will be worse.

           By noon, someone in the capital will decide Damian appeared for me, by evening, someone else will decide he answered to me.  By tomorrow, the more devout corners of the city will have decided I am either blessed, chosen, or the opening argument in a theological dispute that no one in this room has time nor patience for.

           The crown, naturally, considers this salvageable, I, however, am less convinced.

           By the time the meeting ends, the shape of the next two months has already been decided for me.  First and foremost, will be my official recovery.  Second, I am to be under observation by official representatives for the crown while I receive lessons on learning control of my ‘new’ affinity, curtesy of one very grumpy future alchemy instructor who has barely had time to settle in.  Thirdly, there is to be silence, where possible, in regard to the events of that night.  My engagement is still official, that hasn’t changed, thankfully, and I suspect Angus had a hand in that.  Then, come the start of the new semester, my time at St. Astra’s Academy for Young Ladies will begin... or rather, continue.

           By the time we leave the palace, the capital is already whispering.  Brigid Thayne lives.  The crown is lying strategically.  The gods are directly involved in the events of that night.  And in two and a half months, I will be expected to smile politely and attend class as though none of that is a problem.