Elva Rackthorn and the Tears of Azrael

Entrusted, Part 3

Elva found her father and brother back in the butterfly atrium, tucked away in one of the nooks. There was a fair amount of people tucked away throughout the large space, but between the copious cushions everywhere for seating and the mess of plants around the mosaicked central pillar, the room had a hushed quiet to it. There was enough sun outside seeping through the light clouds that the butterfly-bedecked stained glass windows above each nook glowed with gentle color. Elva thought she must look so out of place, what with her black clothes and their white trimming chosen to pair with her stark white hair, all contrast and sharpness against the soft pastels the Institute preferred.

Across the room, her father waved, as if her standing stock-still in the entryway was a matter of not seeing them rather than seeing everything and analyzing it through and through. She wondered if everyone saw her quietness and thought there was an emptiness behind it rather than a feverish racing and gnashing of gears that jammed up her ability to speak.

Elva was careful to keep her steps steady as she approached her family. They were always subdued after one of Mother's more comprehensive attacks, and the slump in how they sat spoke to that, but there was tightness in Elva's father as he flipped through the pages of his newspaper that promised a lecture.

Elva's sketchbook was askew on a seat, a peace offering and also an implicit command that she stay with them now. She opened it, slotted a pencil between her fingers, and waited with its hungry pages gaping up at her. No point in starting a sketch before her lambasting.

Elva looked up when she felt her father readying for his attack: the crinkle of his paper being set aside, the soft sounds of his jacket rubbing against the cushion as he shifted in his seat.

"That ice bridge—"

"It's an old trick," Elva protested immediately, because it was and it wasn't fair that she be punished for breaking his ridiculous "no advanced sigilmancy" rule when it wasn't even any of her forbidden advanced sigilmancy study that she had displayed.

"It's dangerous. You shouldn't have done it."

"Mother managed it fine."

"You are not your mother."

Elva bit her lip and lowered her head to stare at her sketchbook. There was no point saying that it had been the right thing to do— there was no right thing to do when it came to Mother. For all the nurses had their protocol, Amelia's family still had to improvise every time they showed up, and there was always a better way they could have handled it. No matter what she did, Elva would always fall short.

"I won't do it again," Elva finally offered, because it was true. She wouldn't use that trick in front of Father again, not now that he was retroactively deciding that a piece of sigilmancy she had learned as a child was even too much. Next thing you know he'd be banning basic runes too, lest Elva's tracing of light on the floor led to her— what, blinding herself? Getting a sunburn?

"Good."

Henri was very carefully constructing a house out of cards, and Elva half-expected it to tumble in the wake of that conversation. She looked down at her hand, where her pencil was shaking. She loosened her grip. She wanted to sketch out the sigilry of all her conflicting emotions, but she couldn't, not where her father might see.

"I'm going to draw the plants I saw in the greenhouse," Elva announced, before her father could look over and decide her subject was too close to necromancy or alchemy. "I hope that's acceptable."

"Flowers are lovely subject for someone your age to draw."

Elva drew nightroot and its venom-streaked bloom in heavy strokes until a nurse came to collect them.