As soon as the hand from her mouth realeased to tighten her grasp against her bleeding throat, a smile surfaced onto Aefia's face with eyes that stood calm against the dire situation. "Why do you bother trying to cure a dying pawn? Was I not supposed to be dead by the time... I finished my assigned work?" She spoke with her last breathes as her eyelids turned heavy.
"I told you to be quiet!" The duchess shouted against her face as more tears left the corners of her eyes with a warm splatter against the girl's cheeks. "Why?... If you already wnted me dead then... Let me die right now? It would be less painful... To die like this..." She replied while her eyes looked down at where Brittany's dead body lie.
"My only understanding... Servant... Is gone." She spoke while shutting her eyes for a short moment. "Imagine... The happiness when I get to meet her at the opposite side." Her voice turned hoarse as the burning from the wisteria returned and a wet cough echoed at her throat as drops of blood rolled out from the side of her mouth.
Irritated, the woman pressed onto her vocal cords with intense pressure, as if ready to break it. Her cough came out almost breathless due to the earlier poisoning and resent neck injury, which was just at the skin and luckily didn't get too deep. "I said shut up! Stop talking nonsense!" She shouted as her eyes turned blurry due to the tears welling up.
With that, Aefia had to be silent, because her mind was already being pulled into the inner walls to a point she won't be reachable in the next few minutes. Her eyes stayed stuck to the direction of the woman's long hair, which danced with sobs that left her lungs. "I don't see you as a pawn anymore... At least I don't want to anymore! I am tired with this games just as much as you are... And even I want a new life at this!" She spoke while clenching her throat tightly to prevent further blood lose.
"I want to try... And be a loving mother again. To try and become a mother who is almost like a best friend to their daughter!" Her breathe turned jagged as the words left her mouth with difficulty. "I may have been harsh to you at the beginning... But I want that to change... And to actually be a mother to a child I happened to bring in... Thinking she would be a good and useful tool to this family... But I became weak when I saw your real struggles... That I was just adding more to your already drowning life..."
Her blood had started to roll down the mahogany desk as it splattered onto the carpet with a heavy and dense weight. Her white shirt collar was drenched and dyed a deep red, almost black. Her mind turned hazy and her ears started to signal out, so she was barely able to hear what the woman was saying. The only thing she knew was the woman was crying, and trying to reply to her questions.
"I have gotten so weak... That if death were to stand between you and me, I would fight it to just keep you back... Saying I would want my daughter back... Just for another day... Just at least for another moment..." Her voice dropped to a cold tone as her teeth started to shake against each other. "I have been trying to keep you towards me, but I am starting to feel like everything between you and this world, is pushing you away from me... And I was desperate to clear it from your way so I could spend time with you... Get to know you a little bit more."
The duchess lifted her bloody fingers to Aefia's forehead while placing a few stray hairs behind her ears and clearing any debris from her face. Her eyes stayed glued to the bandage at the side of her head, as she bent down to place a kiss onto the white gauge where the wound was.
"That day, Lewis ignored me and didn't call me a mother. That caused a sort of misunderstanding from my sight... So I had to take the most difficult step... And abuse you... To keep you weak and exhausted to the point that lifting a finger was going to become hard for you... And your pen would stay far from your reach... But I just sent you even further away... Not wanting to take in the hard truth you had told me that day... That I am not your biological mother...
"And the truth is... I want to try... And be one to your eyes... I want to try to be like your biological mother, like I gave birth to you... How is it so difficult?!" Her shout echoed against the room as the table shock under her grip. "I hate my own biological sons because they seem to know you more than I do! I hate that servant I killed because she was standing in that place... Combing your hair every morning where I was supposed to be! It should have been me that you would have woken up to every morning and ran to while saying 'Good Morning mother'... Not anyone else!"
Suddenly, her grip against Aefia's throat started to shake as she leaned down to place her forehead onto the Aefia's forehead. "I never wanted to poison you today. But my own twisted desires has gotten me into this situation."
The duchess moved her right hand to her head while combing through her bloodied and wet hair strands as she slowly started to calm down. "We share almost the same trauma... But only you seem to be suffering it at a younger age then me... And I thought maybe that would be able to make you get closer to me... But it looks like Lewis knows you better than me."
Aefia was physically and mentally shocked at the information. She eyes widened and her breathing stopped for a moment, restarting about a second later. A wave of nausea hit her tongue.
"You bought him a sapphire brooch for his birthday and he wears it everyday... Even if someone takes it away for cleaning... He would turn the palace upside down for it... You gave Henry a basket filled with only his favourite chocolate... And he still keeps one of them because he fears it might run out and his birthday present will be forever gone. But what about me? I never asked for anything or expected anything... I just wanted to feel like a real mother for once... Why won't you give me that?"
Her blood stained hands moved towards her cheeks while trying to brush off the dried blood stuck to her face, then lifting her head off her forehead, while still keeping the hand shielding her wound. "I know that the day I hit you... You earned a brain damage that made you go blind... And I wish you were permanently blind so I could force you to stay with me and speak to me... Despite not being able to see me... But I also know for a fact..." She paused for a moment. As if lost in words and drifting between consciousness herself. However, Aefia stared at her with utter disgust.
"I feel very guilty... That you are into self-harm at this age already..." Her eyes diverted towards the girl's searching for some sort of reaction on her expressionless face. "But please... Don't do that again! As a traitor I warn you to not do that! It hurt me to see you hurt yourself because it hurts my pride as being the mother who took in a genius girl... But failed to keep her on the brink of trying to kill herself!
"If you reach a point of cutting through your nerve you will lose your hand! And even I wouldn't be able to stop you from feeling useless! I want you to feel useful and lively! I don't want to see you drown in your own blood every night! Stop all these burning yourself and taking toxic sleeping pills! You don't even have much of a time left, I want you to at least live your last days with happiness!"
"Well why do you even have to care then?! If it hurts you then stop looking out for me!" Aefia spoke while trying to keep her eyes open for a few more moments as a cough interrupted her words. Just when, the duchess seemed enraged as her right hand slammed heavily at the table beside her head. Aefia instinctively picked up her right hand to stop the woman from actually interacting her face. However, it was a failed mission.
"What do you mean why would I care?! I care because I want to! Do you want me to explain it again?! From the start?" The duchess shouted at Aefia's face while pressing onto the open wound at her wrist more carefully, insuring to spare her a space to breathe. "You are bleeding out... More importantly, you lungs are failing... And you are here trying to use a lie to cover up the most visible thing in the world! You burn your tongue every hour! You hit your head injury to make it bleed! You think I don't know this as a mother?!"
Her voice turned less hoarse as her eyes started to turn more bloodshot with the passing time.
"Shut up! You are a pathetic liar! You don't even know about me and what I do at anytime of the day!"
"I have been your age!" She spoke while her own right hand picked up the girl's limb wrist and squeezed the seams of her white shirt, which was tucked to the very top of her palm. "Let's see how true your words were..." She spoke while going even deeper into the wound with her nails. Blood seeped through as the nail contacted her veins and started causing irrational pain.
Finally, a scream left her mouth as she shut her eyes and the sound left from the back of her throat. "Stop! That's painful!" She shouted while trying to grab her wrist back from the woman's grasp. The pain was as intense enough to jolt tears out of her eyes and force the words out of her mouth in one single breathe.
Pitiful, the duchess let go of her hand as it fell to the side with blood flowing down her fingers to collide with the red carpet, which was already drenched too much with her lifeblood.
At the end, Aefia was left breathless as she huffed heavily, gasping for air and fighting her throat. Panic settled onto her face as she tried to move her arms and legs, and her lungs started to fail at every time. Her eyes fell onto the woman's face as if searching for any ways to escape.
"It hurts! And it bleeds! How stupid of you!" She continued speaking while looking down with no awareness of the dying girl in front of her.
"What made you do that?! Was the problem me?! Do you not trust me that I would have helped you overcome it somehow?!" Her gaze dropped to the side where her blood was seeping out of Aefia's wrist and dyeing her white shirt in blood, turning her coat and pinafore a full dark brown.
"It hurts for me... The way it hurts for you... I never thought a girl like you would be the one who would send me into this weakness... And it hurts even more that you are hurting yourself despite being my child... Who I am constantly trying to get back with... In failed attempts... Everytime... I think I have a lot of ideas too..."
"Something exactly like how I had poisoned you and tried to bribe you."
Aefia let a smirk fall onto her face as she managed a last word with her dying breathe.
"Pathetic psycho!"
Just as she was about to lift her dark purplish gaze away from her hand, she realized that the girl's fingers were turning a bluish black at the tips. The blood around her wrist had come to a very astonishingly darker colour and her hands were starting to turn pale, despite the feverish hue she had been carrying the past four days. She glanced at Aefia's face, which was in turn looking to the ceiling in an attempt to roll back. Her breathes left in jagged, shallow type as she started to lose every type of strength, even from her organs.
What do I do... What have I done? The woman's mind raced as she continued staring at the girl's face, with the silver parts of her hair dyed red and starting to crust at the ends. Is this the price for the truth that I just spoke? I was so interested in convincing her that now, she is the one who is leaving... Was this my desperate attempt to finally achieve my dream? I wanted to have a cheerful girl after this not a corpse... What do I do?! ... Do I have the time... Should I give up? ...
I want to live the picture perfect life in the next life with her... I want to die with her...
She turned rigid, almost forgetting to breathe in the process when a knock came to the door and the heavy oaks swung open the next second. "Your highness... It's time for your check-up. I hope you remembered." The physician spoke while holding his bag. The duchess lifted her eyes to the windows, then turned around with a stern face. No... I have a last hope for this...
"The check-up can wait... Fix her!" She shouted with an angry face, narrowed eyes and almost a look that said she would rip his eyes out if he waited a next second. Just when, Aefia's eyes shut as her arms turned heavy. Using this as an opportunity, the woman slid her hand underneath her head and lifted it towards her shoulders while turning around, another hand keeping the girl from collapsing down to the ground.
"You have five seconds... Or I will end you..." She spoke with a death stare at the frightened man.