Free Web NovelChapter 7: Chapter 7: A Warm Welcome, A Hidden Truth
Lady Bailey outstretched her arms the moment Celestia came into view, and Celestia did not hesitate — she ran straight into them, the way she used to as a little girl, as though the years between them had never existed at all. As though no time had passed. As though she had simply stepped out of the room for a moment and finally came back.
The embrace was warm. It felt peaceful and lovely.
"Oh, my dear granddaughter," Lady Bailey murmured, pulling back just enough to hold Celestia’s face between her palms. She studied her the way people study paintings they have been waiting a long time to see — slowly, thoroughly, as though afraid of missing something. Her eyes glistened. "You have grown quite... beautiful."
Celestia felt heat rise to her cheeks. She had not blushed in some time. She had almost forgotten she still could. "I’ve missed you so much, Grandma." She tilted her head, eyes bright with warmth and something far more calculated hidden beneath it. "Where have you been all these years? I would love to hear everything."
It was clever, the way she phrased it — and she knew it.
She genuinely wanted to hear her Grandmother’s stories, Yes. But she also wanted information. She wanted to watch the old woman’s face as she spoke, to ask her questions carefully between the lines of her answers, and to notice what slipped through the cracks. Because something would slip through. It always did, with people who were hiding things. No matter how practiced the smile, the eyes always gave a little away.
"Yes, yes, of course I will," her Grandmother said warmly, patting the top of her head with a hand that was somehow both strong and fragile at once.
But before another word could follow, Lady Bailey turned sharply to the side, pressing a silk handkerchief to her mouth as a violent cough tore through her chest.
Her small frame shuddered with the force of it — once, twice, a third time that seemed to rattle something deep. When she finally turned back around, her smile was perfectly composed. The kind of smile that had been practiced a hundred times in a mirror, assembled piece by piece until it sat naturally. Until it looked like nothing at all had happened.
Celestia’s eyes went straight to the corner of her grandmother’s mouth. frёewebnoѵēl.com
"Grandmother," she said carefully, keeping her voice light. "Are you all right? You coughed up blood."
Lady Bailey waved the handkerchief and cleaned the corner of her lips in one swift, practiced motion — too swift, too practiced — and the cloth disappeared back into her sleeve before Celestia could look at it properly. "Oh, it is nothing. Do not fuss." Then, as if the matter had already been fully resolved and filed away, she turned her gaze past Celestia entirely.
"You," she said, her voice sharpening at the edges as her eyes landed on the coachman who was still bowing so low he was practically folded in half, even after Celestia had already told him to rise, even after time had continued to pass around him. He had not moved an inch. "What should I do to you for letting my Granddaughter fall to the ground?"
Celestia blinked at the redirect. It was smooth. She had to give her grandmother that. "It is all right, Grandmother. Truly, it is not a big deal. I have already decided to let it go."
Lady Bailey’s eyes cut to her, sharp and assessing. "Are you certain, dear?"
"Yes, Grandmother."
A brief silence. Then Lady Bailey exhaled — measured, deliberate — and nodded, in the way of someone accepting terms they did not entirely agree with but had chosen, for now, not to contest. "Very well."
She paused, then turned back to Celestia with a steadiness that felt intentional, like a woman gathering herself before saying something she had been turning over in her mind for a long time. "But keep this close to your heart, Celestia."
She folded her hands together and looked at her Granddaughter with the particular gravity of someone who had lived long enough to have learned every word of what she was about to say from experience rather than hearsay.
"Mercy is a beautiful thing: but give it too easily, and people will mistake your kindness for weakness. Not everyone who cries deserves saving, and not every apology deserves forgiveness. Learn the difference between a wounded heart and a wicked one. Be kind, but never at the cost of yourself."
Celestia blinked.
Then she blinked again.
"Wow", she thought. "That was quite the advice."
"Yes," she said aloud, smiling — and meaning it. "I will keep that in mind, Grandmother."
"Good." Lady Bailey straightened, the severity in her face dissolving back into warmth the way storm clouds sometimes part all at once to reveal blue sky beneath. "Now — let’s go inside. I have a great many things to tell you, and gifts."
Gifts. The word lit up something childlike and entirely shameless inside Celestia’s chest. I love gifts, she thought, pressing her lips together to contain a smile far too wide and far too delighted for a lady of her station. She managed it. Barely.
They moved toward the entrance of the mansion, the grand doors opening before them as though the house itself had been waiting.
"You are dismissed," Angelina said quietly to the coachman as she fell into step behind her Lady, her voice cool and precise as a blade being slid back into its sheath. "Do not make this mistake again. You are lucky my Lady is kind, you know very well what becomes of people who fail in even the smallest things around here."
"Yes, ma’am," the coachman murmured, and was gone.
Jake waited until the sound of footsteps ahead had faded before he leaned slightly toward Angelina, voice low. "Am I the only one noticing this — or has Lady Celestia... changed?"
Angelina did not answer immediately. She stood very still for a moment, the kind of still that meant she was choosing her words rather than not having them. Then she let out a slow breath. "I thought I was imagining it. But no. I have been noticing it too."
"When did it start?"
"Ever since we found her unconscious in the Rose Garden." A pause. Something careful moved behind her eyes. "Ever since she woke up."
Jake opened his mouth—
"Run along, you two."
Celestia’s voice drifted back to them without her even turning around, bright and unhurried and entirely unbothered, as though she had ears in the back of her head and simply chose when to use them. "What are you doing standing there instead of guarding me? Or have you finally decided to stop pretending and confess your feelings to each other?"
Angelina’s eyes went wide. Her mouth opened, closed, and curved into the most spectacularly awkward smile she had ever worn in her life.
Beside her, Jake said absolutely nothing. But he walked considerably faster.
Inside the mansion, the air was warm and golden and it smelled extraordinary.
Celestia’s stomach produced a sound the moment she crossed the threshold that she sincerely hoped no one else had heard. She pressed a hand to it with great dignity and said nothing.
"I see you have taken good care of that fan," her grandmother remarked, nodding at the elegant piece resting in Celestia’s other hand. "Not a single scratch."
Celestia looked down at it and felt something quiet and warm move through her chest. "I could never let anything happen to it, Grandmother. It is my most treasured possession."
The fan had been her Mother’s, a family relic, passed down through the women of their bloodline for generations beyond counting. A magical relic, ancient and finely made, its power folded into the lacquered wood and painted silk in ways Celestia had never fully understood. And because Celestia had been born without magic of her own, her mother had pressed it into her hands herself, deliberately, with a certainty that brooked no argument. As if to say: this power belongs to you too. Even if it does not look the same.
"Your mother made a good decision giving it to you," Lady Bailey said.
"Yes," Celestia agreed softly. "She did."
And then, without warning, a wave of sadness moved through her. Quiet. Sudden. Impossible to explain. She was not supposed to feel sad right now, she was home, she was warm, her grandmother was standing right beside her, and yet something in her chest ached with a weight she could not name.
Like grief reaching for something it was not quite ready to put into words.
Could it be—
"I imagine you are absolutely starving," her Grandmother said brightly, and the thought dissolved before it could take shape.
The food was extraordinary.
Celestia sat at the long dining table and stared at the spread before her — steaming rice, fish pepper soup rich with spice and fragrance, crabs, and beef piled with a generosity that made her breath catch — and she felt tears prick the corners of her eyes before she had even taken her second spoonful.
"Oh, darling," Lady Bailey said softly, setting down her cup. "Why are you crying?"
Angelina was already producing a handkerchief from somewhere about her person.
"Nothing," Celestia said quickly, blinking the tears away with the efficient determination of someone who refused to be caught weeping at a dining table over beef. "It is just — the food is so delicious." And that was true. That was entirely, completely, embarrassingly true.
She had not eaten beef in so long she had nearly forgotten the particular satisfaction of it, and now here it was — right in front of her, in abundance, on a plate — and she was not going to let pride or propriety get between her and a single bite of it.
She ate. Properly. Enthusiastically. Without a single apology.
It was only when she finally sat back in her chair — full, pleasantly breathless, and mildly ashamed of absolutely nothing — that she noticed her grandmother had not eaten at all.
Lady Bailey had taken only a bowl of pap. Hot pap, steaming quietly in a bowl, laced with something that was unmistakably not just flavoring.
The scent of it reached Celestia across the table — earthy, medicinal, the careful smell of herbal compounds blended for a specific purpose.
"That is Food for the unwell", Celestia thought, watching her grandmother lift the spoon with hands that were slightly too careful about it.
"Grandmother," she said pleasantly, as if merely curious. "Why are you not eating with the rest of us? There is so much here."
"Oh." Lady Bailey smiled and set the spoon down. "I am simply craving something warm and light today. You know how it is. Go on, enjoy."
"A lie", Celestia noted.
Celestia took the Moonbloom set in front of her, a privileged drink reserved for noble houses and those wealthy enough to afford its rarity. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
Brewed from flowers that bloomed only under full moonlight and harvested once a season, it was said that no two cups ever tasted exactly the same, the flower’s Magic shifting subtly with the mood of whoever drank it.
The liquid shimmered pale gold in the cup, glowing faintly like trapped starlight, and carried a scent so soft and sweet it felt like something that only existed at the edge of sleep.
Among its many qualities, it was known to aid digestion, which, given the truly unreasonable amount of food Celestia had just consumed, felt like something close to divine timing.
