“Dear Olesia,” Celestia replies, cheeks red, though the ghosts can’t really touch us. “That is unfortunately all I shall ever be. I assume you heard us talking.”
“Oh, we did,” Olesia reassures her. She has no idea that Alina, me, and Sibilia saw and heard her and her sister, too, and it’s better that way.
“You.” Irina turns sharply to Sibilia. “Can you really perform the ceremony?”
Sibilia shifts her weight, wipes her palms on her hem. “I…”
“Speak up,” Irina commands. “This is important.”
“Perhaps,” Sibilia replies. Irina glares up at the ceiling as if begging mercy from Papa. My sister draws her shoulders back and seems to grow in height. “Yes. Yes, I believe I can.”
“Good for you then,” Irina replies.
For a moment, I think this is it then. Everything. But then Celestia addresses the ghosts. “Irina, Olesia, you had a swan soul bead once. Will you tell us where you hid it?”
Indeed my sister knows many secrets. But even I realize that this one is dangerous. Swan soul beads are valuable, and stealing one… I’m happy to be distracted by the ghosts conferring.
“Shall we?” Olesia wraps her fingers around her sister’s thin arm. “I would very much like her to become the empress. I don’t like the looks of this gagargi at all. They should not need to consider siding with him to survive.”
Irina casts a pointed look at Elise. I know what she’s thinking. Elise can’t be trusted anymore. But Celestia can. “Fine.”
My sisters and I wait for her to continue, to give us hope. Anything.
“Look up,” Irina simply says. “Look up at the shimmering lights to find the sacred swan.”
Chapter 13: Sibilia
Dear Scribs,
This will be the last time I confide in you. Please don’t feel sad, not for yourself and not for me either. Remember me with the same fondness I feel toward you, and guard my memories well. After all, we’ve both known since the beginning that this day would eventually come. The fountain pen is about to go dry. There’s not that many pages left. The holy scriptures say that everything in this world will run its course regardless of what we do—but believe me, Scribs, when I say this, I’ve cherished and valued our friendship more than anything else in this house.
There’s one more tale I want to share with you. I’m writing this in the drawing room—yes, I know, how shocking, dangerous even—but it seems only fitting to scrawl my final account under my father’s gaze. And I couldn’t anyway write in the room I share with Celestia. We have no light there, as we replaced the beads we unscrewed from the chandeliers with those from our and Elise’s room. More about those beads later.
It’s a full Moon tonight, and you know what this means. Oh, Scribs, my skin gets goose bumps even when I only think about it! I, Sibilia, wed Celestia to the Moon.
I know, Scribs, I can’t believe it true either. But true it is! My sister is now the Crescent Empress, bless our celestial father!
Can’t waste the last pages in something as trivial as gloating. I’ll tell you about the ceremony, but not in too great detail. You understand, if I were to disclose everything, anyone who read my account might be able to figure out how to perform the rites, and that of course would be a really bad thing.
In any case, here goes.
After Captain Janlav had locked us into our rooms for the night, we waited till the house grew silent and then some more. While I reread the important bits of the scriptures, Celestia retrieved the key ring and the two swan soul beads from the secret locker at the back of the wardrobe. Dressed only in her nightgown, she looked strikingly bare. She has no more secrets from me, of which I’m glad. And I understand at last why she kept so many from me earlier—she was protecting me in the only way she knows.
I, on the other hand… Celestia doesn’t know about me being up. I left her sleeping, a content smile on her face, and I’m pretty sure she won’t stir before the morning. I’ve not yet decided if I’ll tell her of my outing or not.
When the clock in the drawing room struck twelve, I pressed the book of scriptures shut (not that I could make out more than the shapes of the words in the dark), clutched you under my arm, and claimed the key ring from the nightstand. Celestia already waited by the door, holding a soul bead on each palm, close against her chest. I must admit, my heart beat quite wild as I turned the key in the lock. There was no sign of the ghosts, which was annoying, since they could have helped us secure the room. Scribs, I dreaded that Captain Janlav or one of the guards would enter the drawing room all of a sudden or midway through the ceremony so much that I hurried to place a chair against the door leading out. The floor squeaked under me, and I was acutely embarrassed about that as I returned to Celestia. She merely studied me from under her raised brows. I resolved not to take a step more than absolute need be before the ceremony was over.
“I’ll let them out,” I whispered. That, at least, was part of the plan.
Celestia nodded.
I unlocked Elise’s door first. She waited behind it, the strangest expression on her face. Scribs, you know when a horse decides not to move and you can’t coax it to take a step forward, not with a whip, not with a lump of sugar? As you surely recall, since my sister confessed funding the insurgence, she’s been in turns very vocal and then withdrawn. Tonight, it felt to me as if she were set to stay in her room and not play her part in the ceremony, even though that would have ruined any chance we have for leaving this house together.
But before I could say a word, she glided past me directly to the curtains, there to immediately start unraveling the thread holding them together. Scribs, tell me that I just imagined it.
Thanks. I feel much better now. Onward with what happened.
I proceeded to let out Merile and Alina. I had it in my mind to caution them to stay silent and not move around the room, lest their steps wake up the guards. But as I pushed the door in, they were ready, the rats sitting beside them. And something about them made me hold my tongue. My sisters looked more mature than their years warrant, Merile thoughtful, Alina completely fearless. And the rats… they were beyond vigilant, blessed by Papa himself, not mine to command.
Once we were all in the drawing room, I sat down on the sofa and closed my eyes to focus on the sacred ceremony that I was about to perform so very soon. Since the ghosts revealed the location of the swan soul and we decided to go forth with this plan, I’d spent my every waking hour practicing the spell and the rites to the degree that it was possible to do so. Yet, my thoughts strayed, just as they’re straying now.
I don’t know what to think about Elise anymore. Celestia sided with the gagargi because she was under his spell. Though Elise claims she was initially unaware of the gagargi being behind the insurgence, she doesn’t regret supporting it. It’s as if she’s not at all sorry to see everything our family has worked toward for millennia crumbling before our eyes.
The ghosts call her a traitor. I really… Can we return to this topic a bit later?
Ghosts and the soul beads. I shall write about those first.
Who’d have guessed! Though Celestia had searched the house through for the swan soul bead she knew Irina and Olesia had brought with them, it had never occurred to her, or any of us, that they might have split it into two separate beads, that we’d basked in our heraldic charge’s sacred light all along! No wonder our mother grew so afraid of her sisters’ cunningness that she decided to send them here. And I do feel sorry for what they had to go through, live here so very alone for over a decade, and then meet their end at Captain Ansalov’s hands! The thing is, even if they did plot against our mother once upon a time, they feel like family now. I know they’ll do everything in their power to help us escape their fate.