Her hands clenched together, fingers tightening until her knuckles paled.
"Then she told me healers were brought from distant lands. Priestesses… even mages were summoned," Aurelia said slowly, as though each word had to be pulled from somewhere deep within her. "She said they all tried to break the curse during that year I was supposedly in a coma… but they all failed."
Her voice faltered slightly.
"I believed her…" she added after a pause, her gaze lowering. "I had no reason not to believe her."
A hollow breath escaped her lips, one that seemed to carry years of quiet suffering within it.
"I was not thinking clearly," she continued, her tone growing softer, more fragile. "I was too distraught to question anything. I had just… lost everything."
Her fingers curled tighter in her lap.
"My life. My future. My place in the world…" she whispered. "Everything I had once been proud of… everything that defined me… it was all gone in a single moment."
