It was late. As she sat at her desk, Adeya slowly spun her golden wedding ring between her fingers. Normally she kept it safe on a chain around her neck, out of danger of ink and dirt and blood, but for now the cool metal was comforting as she thought.
Things had changed, but that bond, the one between her and Synn, still survived, even while others had not. And there was still a friendship between herself and Solenne, and perhaps even Michaux, if he ever gathered up the courage to come talk to her again.
The note Lebeaux Desrosiers had sent was
penned in a careful and precise block rather than a flowing script. As though
one was unfamiliar with the letters or perhaps working on practicing. That’s
what happened when you hired a Hingan scribe to pen a letter in Eorzean. At
least it was legible. It requested Lionnet’s presence at the Shirogane
Tradehouse at his earliest convenience. Lebeaux waited patiently, preparing tea
as he waited for his guest’s arrival.
Time passes, but eventually a
knock sounds at the door. One, two, three raps on the door, not obnoxiously
loud, nor too quiet.
Lebeaux called out cheerfully. “It’s open,
do come in.” He turned to face the door, a cup of tea in his left hand. If it
was his guest, all was well and he would find the medic smiling his standard
saintly smile in the opulent office. If it was a more unpleasant visitor. Well
a cup of hot tea to the face would be enough to buy a few seconds to finish the
spell he had begun pre-emptively weaving.
Lionnet Blodoint opens the door slowly and steps
inside, bowing stiffly. “Good evening, Mister Desrosiers. How are
you?”
Adeya growls in frustration as she stares down at the grimoire lying open upon her desk. It looked much the same as her old one, almost identical in fact, and that bothered her.
The color and shape of the book weren’t the issue; those were just surface details, distractions. The real issue was the spells. Every time that she had replaced a book, she had taken it as an opportunity to inscribe all of the little modifications that she had discovered to improve her spells. But these looked nearly identical to her old ones.
Idristan wakes with a start, heart racing and eyes wide as he stares out into the unfamiliar darkness around him. For a few moments he feels another pang of fear, until he remembers: Solenne had redecorated recently.
He lets out a long breath of relief as he reaches up to wipe cold sweat from his face. It had just been a nightmare, another confusing vision filled with voidsent with far too many eyes and lately a shadowy figure in Inquisition robes. Sometimes they were one and the same.
His eyes, now finally becoming used to the gloom, flick over to his right. He was surprised he had not waken her, but Solenne still seemed deep in slumber. He reaches out towards her, letting his fingers run gently through the very ends of her hair.
Here, at least, was someone who saw him as a person, not a voidtouched or heretic.
Roses And Grimoires 