The Empress of Magic

Chapter 86 : Flesh, Blood, and Bone

When they were still children Violet and her cousin Zephyr loved hiding in the library of the Snapdragon Quarters, reading stories about Greek tragedies and the last remaining pieces of great philosophers like Socrates and Platon, while their teachers were desperately searching for them all across the castle and sometimes even beyond.......

They had been childish then, wanting to escape the boredom waiting for them once they had to return to their normal lifes and resume their roles of Heirs to their families' legacies....

Neither of them really liked it, always in search of a new adventure to go on, or off to discover something no one had ever even heard of, but were made to do as told by the adults surrounding them.

It was funny in a sense to watch those two interact with one another, Eliza going as far as to call them twins, not because of their similar appearance, but for the fact that they never went far without the other following close behind.

Zephyr's hair could be described as carrying the shade of the brightest silvers, always kept shoulder length per his older sisters' and cousins' request, his eyes having turned from a deep sage green to a gentle hue of molten gold that could be compared to the sunset over the course of time...

As they grew older they remained close, some even whispering that the two distant cousins were more than what was visible to the eye...

This, of course, was never proven, but the rumors stayed, even after Violet's engagement to Regulus Black was announced, and the young couple's untimely death a few months later...

Still, after receiving the news Zephyr all but broke.

His eyes which were once filled with life now showed nothing but a broken soul searching for its other half.......

And his smile which was once said to have been as bright as the sun, had disappeared, a permanent empty expression replacing it.

In the last months of his life, before he, his two older sisters Azalea and Flora, second youngest brother Lotem, and their parents Rosalie and William were found murdered in the streets, all of them having been shot at close range in the head, Zephyr had only ever continued talking with two people.

The first was his youngest brother, to whom he was the closest out of all of his siblings. The poor boy's body had never been found, and so a mere headstone marked his empty grave next to the rest of his family.

He was only thirteen when the main branch of the Snapdragons was massacred, not even out of school yet, and with an entire life ahead of him......

The second person Zephyr continued speaking to was none other than Eliza Grindelwald herself.

She had found the teen completely drunk out of his mind in a bar and had dragged him to her own Quarters, waiting and watching over him as he slowly sobered up, all the while comforting him as he cried into her lap over the death of the one person they both cared about more than themselves.

He was sure, had Eliza not found him that night, he would have drank himself to death.

,, ..Why did you save me..?.." he had asked her, observing as the older witch walked around her Chambers, a book in one hand while the other rested over the obvious swell of her stomach, tapping against it while letting out a hum.

,, Misery likes company as they say." replied the woman, not turning her attention away from the book in her hold. ,, .. And in our case, it can be said that if it wasn't for misery we would both have died a long time ago, even before our only reasons to live left us to bear the burden alone."