The exhaustion after what I did hit Celestine like a truck and she could barely stand. Warran decided to end the lesson for that day to let her rest. Celestine was sent to bed well before the sun was even close to setting. We spent most of her dream arguing. She tried to force me to tell her what I did and I refused to tell her. Nothing really interesting happened until she woke up in the middle of the night fully rested. With nothing to do, she decided to walk about the mansion to see if anyone else was awake.
The light at the end of her finger was barely brighter than a night light, but it was enough to illuminate the dark building enough for her to walk through the halls. Down the hall her room, the libraries, and her mother's room were in was decorated with many golden or brass fixtures on the wall like sconces with light crystals in them and wall panelling. There were a few huge paintings of people she didn't recognize, I'm thinking they might be her father's ancestors. She took a good while staring at them, admiring the detail and the colors. Many other paintings also existed like this on the other side of the mansion in the hall with her father's room, Sullivan's room, and Warran's room. Sylvianna didn't want her going down that hall at night though, for some reason. She had a weird distrust of Warran. The man didn't seem so bad, though. But she will still follow her mother's orders.
She walked downstairs and close to the front of the mansion, to the left of the stairs, she noticed her father's work room was lit up, the door half opened. She tip-toed to the door to peek in, but before she could see anything, the sound of crashing glass and the roar of an angry man echoed out, startling Celestine back. The sounds quieted down and she slowly approached again, inside she saw the figure of Daemon, laying against a table with his head in his arms. His hair was a sweaty mess, his clothes were in disarray. Something was wrong. This wasn't her father's normal demeanor. She was about to open the door when something caught her by the shoulder. She turned around to see her mother with her left hand finger over her lips, "shh." She pulled Celestine back away from the door, grabbed her non-lit hand, and brought her back upstairs.
Sylvianna guided Celestine into her room and entered behind her. Celestine hopped onto the edge of her bed and sat while her mother pulled a chair out from against the wall and sat in it. Celestine stopped lighting her finger and Sylvianna lit up a ball of light and set it up above and between them.
"Momma, what's wrong with Daemon?" Celestine asked, breaking the silence in a half-voice/half-whisper.
"Oh, there's a lot wrong with him. But right now he's just depressed." She sighed and waited for her daughter's next question.
"Is it because of me?" she asked, head turned down.
"Noo no. If anything, you being here has helped that man. Or it just delayed his inevitable breakdown. Brought it on himself."
"What do you mean?"
"Not a single drop of Tanett blood runs through his or your veins. He was born on Sirius. The idiot married into the family. One elderly mother, five adult daughters, biggest mistake of his life."
Celestine was confused by how she said what she said, adult me understood perfectly. He let his dick do the thinking and now...
"He promised the old woman that if he learned how to make the anti-venom, he could become the head of the house and take care of her daughters. The promise was a bit more than that, but that's all you need to know. As soon as he moved in and learned the secret, she died a few days later. And then her daughters, no longer bound to anything in the house and not knowing the recipe themselves, left on their own, leaving the city to go who-knows-where. With Sullivan's mother being the last. The trap was sprung. He thought he was getting a >harem?<. What he got was a city full of people who depended on him and an infant son. If he leaves, the lamias have no reason to allow Arture to continue existing. Could mean slavery or >genocide?<." She looked up as if realizing something, sighed, and looked back down at her daughter swinging her legs on the edge of the bed. "What am I doing telling my six year old daughter something like this..."
"So that's why he's so upset?" Celestine asked, tilting her head to the side a bit. She was still lost, but pieced together enough to get a brief summary with her child-like understanding.
"Yes. Just stress. You don't need to worry about him. It's been a long time coming. He's needed something in his life to plant his feet and make him sit still. Says a lot for his character that it took six women to do it, though."
"Why did he do it?"
"Ahh, well, uhm, well," I can see it in Sylvianna's eyes. She's skirting on the precipice. Is this 'the talk' about to happen? "Well, when boys and girls get older, they start to like each other a lot. In Daemon's case... it hurt him in the end. And poor Sullivan is the end result of that. As soon as Sullivan is old enough, Daemon is probably going to teach him the recipe for the anti-venom and finally take off." Nice job diverting the topic, woman. But you can't keep the secret of sex from your daughter forever. Fufufu~
Ahh, but she raised a good topic. I had suspicions about how into Sullivan's training Daemon seemed. He probably sees the boy as his only way out of this trap. His own father is condemning his son to his own mistake and the selfishness of his aunts and mother. Things are more complex than I could have imagined. The only down-to-erde adult in this entire mansion is probably Sylvianna. I want to get Sullivan out of this mess, he's only five and his future is decided. Two scenarios. One, Sullivan gets older and is taught the anti-venom recipe. Then his father leaves to who-the-hell-knows where. Now Sullivan is bound to the city until he has a child. Two, someone, or Celestine, takes Sullivan before that happens. In this case, Daemon could either break down and just take off anyway, condemning the city to ruin, or he tries for another child with another woman to try to have another way out. Actually, I don't know much about Daemon except his random outbursts of slapstick and this sudden depression stunt. So it's anyone's guess what could happen. Maybe he'll grow up more before the time comes for Sullivan to be taught the recipe and inherit the household. In any case, just taking Sullivan out of the house opens the door for the worst ending, so that's to be avoided at all costs.
"Is there any way to keep Daemon here? It's not fair to Sullivan... Maybe if I called him daddy and acted kinder?" Celestine asked.
Sylvianna just shook her head, leaned forward and patted her daughter's head. "Keep acting like I told you to. He might whine, but he secretly loves it. You don't need to change a thing. But if he starts acting any different, let me know, okay?" Daemon's got a thing for tsunderes huh?
"Okay, momma." She said, leaning her head into her mother's hand like a dog.
Sylvianna sat back and changed the topic, lifting her right leg over her left. "So, how goes your magic training?"
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
"Mr. Warran was teaching how to control air yesterday!" Her voice was louder than before with the topic change. No one was asleep in this part of the mansion anyway, so there was no need to whisper. "I was trying to knock over some bottles, then Novos asked to try, but he wouldn't let me see what he did and Mr. Warran wouldn't tell me!" She got frustrated real fast. I think... did Sylvianna's eyebrow just twitch? What's going on in her head, I wonder.
"Well, keep working hard! My beautiful blessed child, you." She patted her leg, then stood up, putting the chair back in its place by the wall. "You get back to sleep, okay?"
"Okay, momma!" Celestine jumped under the covers and planted her head on her pillow to satisfy her mother. When the door closed behind her, she sat back up.
She looked out of her window, one of the two moons was lit up bright in the sky in all its brown-red glory.
She turned to look at the fading light ball her mother had cast a little bit ago. Celestine felt she still had a long way to go and even the second soul inside of her was leagues ahead in terms of magic power. She scooted off the bed, sat cross-legged on the floor, straightened her back, and started to clear her mind for the meditation.
----
Today wasn't classes. It was a rest day. Sylvianna had taken Celestine and told her to get dressed in one of her old dresses. Old dresses as in a dress that she wore often when they lived at their old house. Celestine wore a simple blue sundress because of the heat. Spring was already in full force and both Sylvianna and Celestine already had healthy light tans on their bodies. Daemon and Sullivan were pale because they usually spent most of their time inside. Warran could change his appearance with magic, so I didn't think he even tanned.
Simple dress for what I guess is going to be a day of errands. We left the mansion with Celestine's hand in her mother's, trotting along beside her. The mansion wasn't far from the tower-like church building. It's hard to describe the distance in blocks because the infrastructure of this city is an absolute mess. It's like the mansion was the oldest building in the city, then the church was build a distance away, then some older buildings were build nearby, then everything just filled in the empty places and expanded out. The roads were narrow to the point where I can't imagine horses could travel easily through them with carts. Cobbled stone paved in some spots, tiled with brick in the more rich parts, then just straight up dirt in the poorer parts.
First Sylvianna visited the church. She and Celestine sat and did some silent praying. Well, Sylvianna did. Celestine was too distracted by the murals, like normal. Sylvianna would knock her knuckle into her head when she caught her not praying. Then she briefly visited the blue-robed acolytes in the main floor on cleaning duties. Charcoal-eyed man was nowhere to be seen.
After the church visit, they visited some shops further out from the center of the city. This was the furthest Sylvianna had ever taken Celestine. It was slums, to put it bluntly. Houses were barely standing and were made with mediocre materials. The shop she visited was just a stall that sold, what I guess are, magic stones for different uses that Celestine wasn't familiar with. Celestine did meet an old friend out here, but nothing really interesting happened. Bit of catching up, then they left back toward the interior of the city.
We passed a lamia on the way, but she looked like a resident of the town, due to her clothes, and not a soldier. If lamias age similar to how humans age, the female lamia was roughly 15 years old. Her snake half was a solid dull gray color over top and a dull yellow on front that was maybe ten meters long. Her human-half's skin was very brown, like she was heavily tanned. She wore a cheap, patchy dress that covered her from her shoulders to a foot below where the snake-half would have started. Unlike the male warrior she saw years ago, this girl had brown hair on her head to her shoulder blades, and green eyes. If she wasn't a lamia, she would be just as insignificant of a person here in this city as Celetine was before the thing with her having three conduits was discovered and being 'blessed by a god.'
After leaving the slums, I grew to appreciate the better looking buildings inside the city, even if they are just gray stone and dirty mortar. Those were probably the older buildings because I specifically remember Sylvianna and Celestine's old house being made of wood. If this city wasn't such a mess infrastructure-wise, I would have probably figured out more about it before now. But I was glad Sylvianna was bringing Celestine with her to do whatever she needed, even if it didn't seem like much.
Sylvianna took Celestine into an old-looking building that turned out to be a book store. She had her pick out a few books she wanted and paid the cashier in the city's domino-shaped currency. She picked out a book detailing the different races of humanoids in the world, good on you girl; a book on art and painting, that was snuck in sorta and Sylvianna didn't notice (or if she did, she didn't mind); and the last book was going to be about the world's religions, but Sylvianna didn't let her get it and instead picked out a random fictional book for her.
Next stop was a clothes store. Sylvianna picked out a few new styles of dress with different fabrics for both herself and Celestine. They didn't bring anything home, though, because the material would need to be imported and the clothes would need to be tailored to fit properly. So they just left afterwards. I think they'll just deliver the clothes when they're done and Daemon will foot the bill. Actually, scratch that, they did bring home something from that shop. Sylvianna bought a straw sunhat for both herself and her daughter because the sun was beating down hard and they were both covered in a thin layer of sweat.
There wasn't much in the way of errands to run. This was just a girls day out. Probably just trying to get Celestine to forget her father's outburst that night. A child shouldn't have to concern herself with the affairs of adults.