parentshiftbook Chapter 616 - 615- The One who Adores
Chapter 616 - 615- The One who Adores
Miss Halga said nothing.She gathered her sons — the bruised, humiliated, silent boys — and left.
The training yard was quiet.
Evriana stood alone.
Her face was bloody, her cheek red, her eyes wet, her stick still in her hand. She looked at the young woman — the tall, armed, amber-eyed woman who had just defended her — and felt nothing but confusion.
In her experience, adults did not defend her. Adults looked at her pale eyes and her small frame and saw ’half-blood’. They saw ’commoner’s daughter’. They saw ’less’.
This woman had not.
Evriana clenched her teeth.
She turned away.
She would not look at this woman. Would not acknowledge her. Would not give her the satisfaction of gratitude, because gratitude meant debt, and debt meant obligation, and obligation meant that someone could take things away.
"Oy."
The voice was warm.
"Little sister."
Evriana stopped.
Her foot, mid-step, froze on the cobblestone. The word — ’sister’ — landed on her shoulders like a hand. No one called her that. No one in this household, no one in this compound, no one in this family had ever called her ’sister’.
She turned.
Slowly.
She lifted her head.
And looked up.
The young woman stood above her. The amber eyes were warm. The mouth was curved in a small, private, gentle smile. The hand that descended found Evriana’s hair — ruffling it, the gesture casual, affectionate, the gesture of a sister to a sibling.
"Don’t cry," the woman said.
Evriana hadn’t realized she was still crying.
"What is your name?" the woman asked.
Evriana bit her lip.
The instinct was to lie. To give a false name. To protect herself from the particular, devastating vulnerability of telling someone who she was and having them use it against her.
But the amber eyes were on her. The hand was on her hair. The word ’sister’ was still warm in her ears.
"Evriana," she said.
The young woman’s eyebrows rose.
Then her expression softened. The smile widened. The particular, knowing, familial warmth of a woman who had just heard a name she recognized.
"Evriana," she repeated. "I am Celestia. Celestia Ktorian."
The name hit.
Celestia Ktorian. The eldest daughter. The heir. The one whose name was spoken in the halls with reverence, whose sword was legendary, whose position in the family was second only to the matriarch herself.
She was not from this branch household. She was from the main line. The primary bloodline. The top of the hierarchy that Evriana existed at the bottom of.
Evriana’s eyes widened.
"Elder sister," she whispered.
Celestia smiled.
"Come," she said. "I will teach you how to hold that stick properly. If you are going to fight three boys, you should at least know where to aim."
She taught her.
For years. Every visit, every trip to the branch household, every moment Celestia could steal from her duties as the eldest daughter of the main line, she spent with Evriana.
She taught her the sword.
Not the gentle, introductory, children’s instruction that the household tutors delivered. Real swordsmanship. The Ktorian family style — the particular, powerful, bull-kin technique that relied on strength and momentum and the dense, heavy physiology that their bloodline produced.
Evriana was not strong. Not in the way the bull-kin were strong. Her half-blood body was lighter, faster, less dense. But Celestia adapted. She modified. She taught Evriana to use speed where strength was absent, to use precision where power failed, to turn her smallness into an advantage.
She taught her other things.
How to stand so that people noticed you. How to speak so that people listened. How to hold your chin so that the words ’half-blood’ and ’commoner’s daughter’ bounced off like rain on stone.
No one bullied her after that.
Not because Celestia had threatened them — though she had, in the particular, quiet, terrifying way that a woman with a sword and a name could threaten without raising her voice. But because Evriana had changed. She carried herself differently. She spoke differently. She fought differently.
She was no longer the small, pale-eyed girl who bled in the training yard.
She was Evriana Ktorian. Sister of Celestia. Student of the eldest daughter. A woman whose sword was fast and whose silence was dangerous.
She trusted her sister.
Completely.
Absolutely.
With the particular, desperate, total trust of a child who had been saved by someone and had decided that this someone was the only person in the world who would never let her fall.
The last time was different.
Evriana was twenty-two when she visited the Redwood territory. Celestia had married — the political, arranged, expected marriage to Count Redwood, the union of two bloodlines, the Ktorian and the Redwood, the bull and the blood.
She was pregnant.
Evriana arrived at the Redwood estate to find her sister in the garden, her belly round and heavy under a loose dress, her amber eyes warm, her hand resting on the swell of her stomach with the particular, unconscious, protective gesture of a woman whose body was no longer entirely her own.
"Sister!" Evriana said.
She ran to her. The particular, unguarded, youthful run of a woman who still, at twenty-two, became a girl in the presence of her elder sister. She knelt beside the garden bench, her hands finding Celestia’s, her eyes on the belly.
"It must hurt, right?" she said.
Celestia chuckled.
The sound was warm, easy, the sound of a woman who was not afraid.
"Sometimes," she said. "But that is what happens when you carry a Redwood. They are heavy. Even before they are born."
"We’re going to take care of this baby, right?" Evriana said, her eyes bright. "We are going to be an aunt."
The word ’aunt’ hit Evriana’s own ears and she trembled.
"What?" she said. "What aunt? I would never treat it like that."
She meant she would not be the kind of aunt who visited on holidays and sent gifts and forgot the child’s name. She meant she would be there. Always. Present. The way Celestia had been present for her.
Celestia looked at her.
The amber eyes — deeper now, warmer, carrying the particular, layered, complex weight of a woman who had lived more life than her years suggested — studied Evriana’s face.
"By the way," Celestia said. "Now that I think about it — when Viktor turns eighteen, you would be around forty or something."
Evriana blinked.
"What?" she said.
"That must be good," Celestia continued, her voice carrying the particular, teasing, older-sister tone that Evriana had never been able to resist. "You can give him some sex education."
The words landed.
Evriana’s face went red. The deep, burning, full-face crimson of a woman who had never — not once, not ever — had that kind of conversation and was being confronted with the concept in relation to a baby who was not yet born.
"What are you saying?" she sputtered. "How dare you? I am his aunt!"
Celestia laughed.
The full, genuine, head-tilted-back laugh of a woman who had spent too many years being serious and had married a man who made her laugh and was now laughing at her younger sister’s blush.
"I said it to you," she said. "So..."
She patted her belly.
"So think about it."