Side Story — “The Weight of Ink”

 

The afternoon sun fell softly across the drawing room of the Valentine estate, dust motes swirling like slow-moving stars in the slant of gold light. Émilie sat by the window, legs curled beneath her, the pale silk of her skirts gathered in folds at her side. In her lap rested a letter, creased at the edges, the wax seal long broken, but the scent of candle smoke and ink still clinging to the parchment.

She read it again, her brother’s handwriting fluid, practiced, familiar.

---

 

 Dearest Émilie,

 

I trust this letter finds you well and mercifully distant from the strife through which I am obliged to tread. I envy your mornings in the garden and how you can drink tea without needing to bless the cup first.

As for me, the work continues. Our last assignment brought us to a city called Rosemead. Beautiful. Sorrowful. It sits on cliffs overlooking the sea. We purged something foul from beneath the orphanage, a creature that remembered being human, which I suppose is the worst kind.

Nasty work. But it's done.

Worry not, I’m whole. Or mostly so. Sister Charlotte, as always, was as keen as ever and swifter still upon the draw. She saved me once more. That makes four times, if memory and arithmetic still serve me.

We make a good team, though I doubt she would ever give voice to such a sentiment. Still, I find myself relying on her presence more than I intended. She has a steadiness that cuts through even the most wicked of places. Perhaps it’s faith. Perhaps it’s just stubbornness.

She also makes the most dreadful tea I’ve ever tasted, and refuses to admit it. I’ve decided to suffer in silence as an act of penance.

I’ll write again soon, if the Lord permits it. I hope your garden is thriving.

 

With affection, 

Nathaniel

 

---

 

 

Émilie let the letter fall gently into her lap, her fingers still resting on the edge of the page.

 

She smiled.

That peculiar brand of dry warmth—that was her brother through and through. He never said what he meant outright. Not when it came to things that mattered. But there was a softness tucked between his barbs, you simply had to read slowly enough to find it.

Her gaze wandered out the window, where ivy crawled along the sun-bleached stone of the courtyard. A dove cooed somewhere nearby, and a breeze stirred the linen curtains.

 “Charlotte,” she murmured aloud, as if tasting the name.

She’d heard the name before, mentioned sparingly, always with a kind of reverent irritation.

“Obstinate as an altar gate.”

“Too sharp ever to be sweet.”

And yet, here he was, writing of her not as a subordinate, but as... a friend. 

Émilie’s heart softened.

From the tone in his letter—careful but colored with a sort of fondness, that quiet reverence he tried to bury beneath wit—Émilie could tell. He admired her. Respected her, certainly. But there was something else, something he hadn’t yet realized himself.

She could picture it. The two of them: Nathaniel with his dry charm and barely-contained defiance, Charlotte with her straight spine and guarded soul. Opposites, perhaps, but only on the surface.

She looked down again, at the line: We make a good team.

It was trust.

And from Nathaniel... that meant more than most vows.

Émilie folded the letter carefully and tied it back with the silk ribbon she kept for his correspondence. She tucked it into the wooden box on her writing desk, beside others, some torn at the edges, some stained with weather, all of them marked with that distinct, sweeping script.

She sat in silence for a while longer, watching the wind stir the world outside.

 

“In another life,” she whispered to the empty room, “perhaps the Church wouldn’t have claimed them so young. I wonder if you might’ve met at a library instead,” she laughed softly to herself.  

She imagined it: Nathaniel, still too clever by half, quoting obscure poets. Charlotte, solemn but secretly curious, frowning at a book she wouldn’t admit she liked. No Church. No demons. No blood under the nails. Just two people, crossing paths without the weight of the world pressing down on their shoulders.

“Perhaps they might have loved each other with open hands instead of bloodied ones.”

 

But this was the life they’d been given.

 

And Émilie—gentle, observant Émilie—knew better than most that sometimes, love had to live in the quiet spaces between duty and obligation.