❛❛ i was wrong, entirely wrong about him.
a moment of unequivocal realization, like those lucie has read of in all the stories she loves most: the part when the heroine gives herself pause to recognize the feelings she has long repressed over her dashingly complex lover. it is a time for the pen to endow romantic fantasy and dismay in simultaneous grandeur, with a hint of future resolution that shall only come once all is explained as it ought; as two people equally confused that have stored all their hopes in one another must feel, for in feeling they are justified of bitterness and betrayal. in stories there is hope, in poems there is resolution: but in reality these events are difficult to parse, an inextricable mire of loyalties and disappointments.
this is what lucie discovers as cordelia tucks into herself in a chair by the fire, its upholstery comforting in the orange glow, a familiar damas pattern lucie’s eyes traced in childhood, retired into her mother’s old room and now befitting her intended parabatai to reside in. ( daisy will always have a home among them, as her father has said the carstairs shall have always with the herondales. ) cordelia clutches a handkerchief with the initials c.h. which lucie herself embroidered in a dainty and delicate script; a wedding present that seemed morbid at the time, which regrettably has served her friend well tonight. i ought not to have prophesied such a thing, she thinks, guilt-tinged and grieving. as though i wove tears into the tapestry of her fate and its sorrows.
❛❛ oh, daisy, ❜❜ lucie sighs, brows furrowing in sympathy, while a coldness in her chest wars with the tenderness she holds for her brother and his longsuffering plight, always tangled with the blackthorns: and perhaps it is her fate too, for had james seen the same fascination in grace that lucie cannot help but recognize, and was cordelia simply something in grace’s way, a soul to deceive so thoughtlessly ? her hand fists in her dressing gown, the lemon tea flavorless on her tongue. ❛❛ you are never wrong to see more in a person than they are. ❜❜ rising on slippered feet, lucie moves to her beautiful cordelia, catching her shoulders in an embrace. ❛❛ james sees much in you too … i know not what he can that is not pure and brave. he is too fortunate with you, and i am certain he knows it. ❜❜
