Eventually Noé's screaming stopped and he collapsed on his side, exhausted and feverish. Dominique shouted his name, shaking him to no avail. She leapt to her feet, meaning to rush for help, but paused upon glancing back to Noé's prone form, surrounded by a corona of stakes.
They were private, not meant for anyone besides Noé. Though perhaps she was supposed to see them as well. There was no way to know for sure. She couldn't ask. She suspected Louis hadn't intended for her to be present when Noé opened the box, having asked her to give it to him, rather than to open it alongside him.
Envy sparked through her, though she knew there was nothing enviable about Noé's position. She wished Louis had trusted her more. Except, he'd been right not to. Bitter tears welled up in her eyes. If it weren't for her he wouldn't have gone mad right there and then, protecting her and Noé from Mina.
There was at least one thing she could do for his sake. She crouched back down alongside Noé.
Her hands shook, picking up each one of Louis's stakes, placing them back into the chest. No one else had to see, not the maids or grandfather or anyone else. Not even Noé would have to bear witness to them again.
Once she had finished, Dominique pushed the chest to the corner of the room where no one would notice it for the time being. Then she finally called for help for Noé.
She followed at the heels of her grandfather and the maids as he was bustled away to his room. They assured her he'd be all right. Even so she could not bear to part from his side. Not as the day wore on or when the chair brought beside his bed grew stiff and painful beneath her. She would have stayed there through the entire sleepless night had her grandfather not come to send her to bed.
She would have argued, he usually understood. He was kinder than her father and her siblings. But something in the lilt of his voice or the curve of his smile left no room for argument. Dominique felt sure if she pushed too hard a side of him she didn't know would peek from behind the veil, something she didn't wish to see.
She took the long way back to her room, dragging her feet. Every stone in every hallway whispered of loss.
On the way she stopped to pick up the chest she'd left in the sitting room. It was heavier than last time, her shoulders shaking and breath gasping in deep, stuttered breaths as she picked it up.
Dominique reached her bedroom eventually, the clock on the mantel reading only fifteen past midnight though it surely felt as though more time should have passed. She heaved Louis's present onto an ottoman, collapsing against it as she composed herself.
Once the tremors in her body stopped, Dominique dragged herself up, moving to the fireplace. It took some patience, hands uncoordinated and numb, but in time she lit a fire. Sweat beaded along her brow being so close to it in the warm night.
She returned to the chest, unlatching it and closing her grip around the smooth handle of a wooden stake. It sent a chill running through her from fingers through the entire length of her body. Goosebumps raised across her arms. Dominique tossed it into the flames. It joined the wood already smouldering there. So naturally it seemed as though that had always been its purpose.
Domininque threw them into the fire one by one, watching them burn. Each uniquely refined in its own twisted way. Most were simple, sharpened to deadly points and left at that. Others Louis had taken more time with, carving patterns into the handle, as though making them beautiful would somehow lessen the horror of their existence rather than increase it.
There were so many. They didn't seem to be running out. All there was was the constant clatter, clatter, clatter as she tossed more into the fireplace, her brother's work turning dark and falling to pieces.
Time ticked by, slower than it usually moved, trapping her in each individual moment.
Dominique reached into the chest, hand finding nothing. She looked down, tearing her gaze from the blaze for the first time.
All but one, small and warped, lay in the corner of the box. Her fingers wrapped around it almost reverently as she pulled it from its place. It must have been one of Louis's first, so juvenile and poorly crafted. She could see why he'd been unsatisfied with it.
Dominique glanced to the fireplace and clutched the stake tighter in her hand. She couldn't do it. Not knowing it was the last one. The last thing she'd ever have of his.
What did she really know of Louis? He had been suffering for so long and she hadn't even noticed. Could she really be sure anything she used to think about him was still true? At least she knew the weapon in her hand, overflowing with agony, was really him.
She stepped away from the fire, turning her back on it. Just this one she would keep. As a memento and as a reminder.
It may have been meant for Noé but she would carry the burden. It was her responsibility for so completely destroying everything to begin with.
