Dina has inherited her mother's gift and can make people feel shameful about their deepest secrets with just a single look. But with this gift also comes great responsibility and loneliness. Only very few people can look a Shamer in the eye and over...
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The ribbons in my hand waved as I walked, and I kept studying the patterns and colours. I definitely needed Adela's opinion on which to use for the duchess's present – she had always been much better at this sort than I. As I saw the captain guard when I turned the next corner, I smiled and gave him a polite 'good morning'. But he didn't reply and wouldn't let me pass.
"My lady. I'm afraid something happened last night." He said and looked me dead in the eyes. He was usually one of the type to bow deeply and not come anywhere near neither the royals nor me.
"What's wrong? What do you mean?" I said, my smile slowly fading.
"The lady Adela, your sister," he said as if I didn't know who she was and I got impatient and tried to step forward, "and the young prince Bian was found..." But I didn't hear him finish, because at once I saw the small crowd of guards at the end of the corridor. They were all staring through the open door into my sister and her son's chambers. I don't remember running. I don't remember pushing through the crowd or the tears starting to fall. I only remember their cold faces. I was sitting beside her, trying to shake her awake even though I knew it wouldn't work. Her cheeks were getting wet from what must have been my own tears because I knew she would never cry again. Her beautiful red lips now a faded pink and brown hair stained with the blood that had flooded the entire floor. The blood of both her and her unborn child. She had been stabbed right through the stomach and more than once. And then, I think I screamed. Out of the corner of my eye was more blood but this time staining the golden blonde hair so much resembling mine on the head of my nephew. My young nephew. How often had we teased him about his fair hair that looked nothing like his parents'? It felt wrong to touch him with my filthy and now red hands and I for some reason wiped them on my skirts before silently crawling to him. It was like tears weren't enough. I needed more to express myself but there were no means. I held his little head in my lap and rested my forehead against his. His eyes looked like his father's had done. Dark blue like the ocean after a storm only these waters would never move again. I closed them with my free hand and cried out in internal pain.
*
The guards tried to stop me, but I only had to give them one raging look before they gave up. I planned on confronting him. I planned on killing him for what he had done, but when I reached the cell I suddenly froze. His weak shadow moved towards me when he heard someone coming and I dared look at his face. He looked... broken. Like there was something inside him that wasn't as it should have been.
"Day? Is it you? Please, I'm so sorry. Bian... I..." But then he only looked at me, like he had given up on what he was trying to say. Might as well, there were no words that could heal the wound that was left in my heart. Nor in Bian's.
"Did you do it?" I asked, because suddenly it felt like the right thing to say.
"I... No, I..." But he kept stuttering and looked down, "I don't know. I mean I don't remember." And in only one second, I went from wanting him to die the most agonizing death, to believing him. And not just believing what he had said. I believed he hadn't done it.
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