The limousine was black, a deep, matte black that seemed to swallow the morning light rather than reflect it. The windows were tinted to near-opacity, revealing nothing of the interior to the sparse crowd gathered outside the crematorium.
"Mongrel, stop here."
She sat in the back seat, her small frame swallowed by leather upholstery that had been custom-ordered to match the exact shade of her family's crest.
She wore a white suit.
The driver opened her door. Cold air rushed in, carrying the faint, acrid scent of industrial cleaners and something else.
Ash.
The crematorium had been running all morning.
She stepped out.
Her heels clicked against the pavement, each step measured. The sound echoed off the blank concrete walls of the building, returning to her distorted, wrong. She didn't look at the others.
Servants from the Shaw estate.
A few Academy students who hadn't known Seraphina well but felt obligated to attend. Edward was somewhere in the back, probably being pushed in a wheelchair by a nurse he'd refused to speak to.
She didn't look at any of them.
The building itself was unremarkable. A squat, functional thing. Gray concrete, small windows, a single chimney rising from the back that released a thin, constant stream of white vapor into the overcast sky. It looked more like a factory than a place of final rest.
[Why did I even come here?]
The interior was worse.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in a sickly pallor that made even the living look dead. The walls were painted a shade of beige that looked sick instead of calming. Plastic chairs had been arranged in uneven rows, facing a simple podium and two closed caskets.
Two.
The crackling of fire filled the air.
Neila's face didn't change.
[I wonder why they're burning them instead of burying them, I guess they didn't really care much about them, did they?]
She walked down the center aisle, her heels sinking slightly into the thin carpet, and took a seat in the front row.
[I don't want the stink of these peasants in my face, I'd rather sit in the front, I also don't want to look at their backs]
The caskets were simple. Plain wood, unadorned, the kind used for paupers and unclaimed bodies and witches who'd embarrassed their families beyond forgiveness. No flowers. No photographs. No personal effects displayed on small tables with soft lighting.
Just two boxes.
Neila stared at them.
Her face was blank.
[I feel nothing]
The thought should have bothered her. It didn't.
[I hate how this reminds me of that puppet.]
A priest stepped up to the podium. Not a real priest but a functionary from the Academy's administrative department who'd drawn the short straw. He cleared his throat, shuffled his papers, and began to speak in a voice that was trying very hard to sound solemn.
"We are gathered here today to remember two young souls, taken from us too soon-"
Neila stopped listening.
[I don't want to feel anything]
Her eyes remained fixed on the caskets, but her mind had drifted somewhere else. Somewhere she didn't want to be.
The warmth of a small body pressed against her side during lessons, of fingers tugging at her sleeve to get her attention, of a voice that never stopped asking questions.
"Neila, how did you do that?"
"Neila, can you teach me?"
"Neila, you're so amazing!"
[She used to be an annoying brat]
A little shadow that followed her everywhere, watching her practice, trying to copy her movements, her gestures, the way she shaped sound with her mana. A puppy desperate for approval, for attention, for any scrap of acknowledgment Neila deigned to throw her way.
She'd been busy. Training. Studying.. There hadn't been time for a half-sister who wasn't even legitimate, who'd been born to a servant and granted the Shaw name only because their father couldn't be bothered to hide his indiscretions.
Seraphina had never seemed to mind.
And then, one day, she'd stopped.
Neila had been fourteen when Seraphina ran away. She'd heard about it from a servant, delivered in the same neutral tone they used for weather reports and dinner menus. "Young mistress Seraphina has left the estate. She took nothing with her. The patriarch has been informed."
That was all.
The priest was still talking.
"Their contributions to the Academy will not be forgotten-"
Contributions. What contributions? Dominic had been a weapon that malfunctioned. Seraphina had been a tool that broke. Neither of them had contributed anything except chaos and blood and a body count that the government was still trying to spin into something palatable for public consumption.
[Contributions my ass. Dominic was a weapon that fought back and Seraphina broke. They didn't do shit. I guess the government has to spin the story some way one way or another, the footage they got from the fight was barely enough to conclude anything except that puppet's reincarnation]
Neila crossed her arms.
The caskets hadn't moved. Of course they hadn't. They were just boxes. Just wood and nails and whatever remained of two people she'd known, one well, one barely at all.
Dominic.
[I barely knew his ass, we played together when we were younger, that's as much as I could remember.]
She felt nothing.
She tested the feeling, or absence of feeling, like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurt. Nothing. Just the same hollow emptiness that had lived in her chest for as long as she could remember.
[He had this stupid mask of arrogance that ticked me off. I'm glad he isn't around anymore so he can't annoy me]
The priest finished speaking. There was a moment of awkward silence, the kind that happened when no one knew what to do next. Then the functionary gestured, and two attendants in gray uniforms stepped forward to wheel the caskets toward the back of the room, toward the crematorium proper.
Neila stood.
She didn't follow. There was no point. The bodies would be burned, the ashes collected, scattered somewhere meaningless. The garden behind the main hall.
Neila walked back up the aisle, her heels clicking against the thin carpet, her face smooth and blank. She didn't look at Edward as she passed him, didn't acknowledge his existence at all. She didn't look at the servants or the Academy students or anyone else who'd come to perform grief they didn't feel for people they'd never known.
She stepped through the doors and into the gray morning light.
The limousine was waiting.
She slid into the back seat, and the door closed behind her with a soft, final thud. The driver didn't ask where she wanted to go. He already knew.
The engine purred to life.
The city slid past the tinted windows in smears of gray and brown and the occasional splash of neon that hadn't yet been turned off from the night before. Neila watched it without seeing it, her reflection a ghost in the glass, her face pale and perfect and utterly empty.
She pressed her palm against the cold glass. Her reflection stared back at her, twin-tails perfect, dress white and pristine, face smooth as porcelain. A doll's face. A mask that had become the thing it was meant to conceal.
Her face reflected in the glass. The city moved below her, cars and people and lives she'd never touch, never understand, never want to understand.
[She is dead]
She pressed her forehead against the cold glass. Closed her eyes.
[Nothing I can do about it]
"Take me home," she said.
The driver didn't ask.
The Shaw estate was freezing.
Every room was maintained at its perfect, constant temperature but it was the slightest bit too cold, her muscles felt like they were contracting a tiny bit too much.
Neila walked through the halls, her heels clicking against marble floors that had been polished to a mirror shine. The portraits of dead Shaws watched her pass, their painted eyes following her with expressions that might have been judgment or might have been indifference.
She stopped in front of one.
A woman with pink hair and amber eyes, her face soft, her smile gentle. The plaque beneath read "Elara Shaw, Founder of the Shaw Bloodline."
Neila had never really looked at this portrait before. Had passed it thousands of times without seeing it, without registering anything beyond its existence as another piece of family history she was supposed to revere.
Now she looked.
The resemblance wasn't strong, Seraphina had been softer, younger, her pink hair a shade lighter than Elara's. But the eyes. The eyes were the same. That warm amber, like honey held up to sunlight, like something precious and fragile and impossibly kind.
Neila stared at those eyes for a long time.
She held up her phone and dialed a number.
"Did you burn Seraphina's body already?"
"...."
"Good, I changed my mind. I don't want you to burn it. Hand it over to me."