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The goblet wavered from the impact of his fists on the desk. Emhyr watched it dispassionately. The wine inside rippled, hitting the sides and sloshing out. He pursed his lips, personally disappointed by the wine’s failure to remain inside the goblet. A moment later, he knocked the entire goblet over, allowing it to roll off the desk, soaking the documents on his desk and the carpet below it with the deep red liquid.
He had been failed. Worse, betrayed before that. He’d not ordered an all out war on Cintra. He’d asked for intimidation. But his generals had gone ahead and razed the city. He had been expected to display pride at the success and initiative shown. As if that hadn’t been bad enough, the cavalry had seized Cirilla. Only to lose her in the burning city full of blood and death. Reports conflicted concerning her fate. She might be alive. She might be dead. Emhyr had no way of finding out, aside from making his spies keep their eyes and ears open.
He wanted to believe her alive until he’d seen her corpse.
It was what he kept telling himself regarding Pa- her mother as well. She couldn’t have survived. She had to have drowned, because of him, because of the storm. And yet, he couldn’t believe it to be true in his heart of hearts. It’d mean admitting the death of half his soul.
At least with his little girl, he wanted to be able to bury her. After he hadn’t been able to bury his parents. After he hadn’t been able to bury –his wife. After he couldn’t even attempt to give Calanthe and Eist the burials they deserved without raising eyebrows and undermining his own rule. He’d never seen eye to eye with Calanthe. But for years, she’d been a big part of his life. She’d loved Ciri as much as he had. Just hearing about her death had felt like a blow. She had been important, in the end.
All the family he had, killed by his own hand, his own ineptitude.
Cirilla had to be out there. She had to still be alive. He would find her. He had to. He would not rest until he could hold her in his arms again.
Sullenly, he got up to get himself a new drink. Not wine, this time, but preferably something stronger. Lost in thought, he wandered over to the cabinet. Not the liquor cabinet, he realized when he already had his hands on the handles, but his scriptorium. He opened the shutter with a small key. That lock was just for show, even as a child he had been able to pick it. Unwilling to follow yet another chain of morose thoughts, he focused on the complex series of switches and buttons he had to activate to open a particular hidden compartment. When the drawer finally popped open, he hesitated.
Inside the drawer, just as he’d left it, was a rolled up piece of canvas, a small stack of letters, a few dried flowers, a book, jewelry. Something normal people would simply keep in a jewelry box. Or a casket. That felt like an appropriate word for where Emhyr wished he could put the things and the memories linked to them half the time. He picked up his wedding band, contemplating sliding it back on for a long moment. Instead he raised it to his lips for a heartbeat before pressing it to his chest. He missed his wife so much, even more on hard days like this one.
When he replaced the ring, he picked up the canvas. Like it was something sacred, he unrolled it on the scriptorium’s lacquered desk. Three people smiled up at him from the painting: his own face, barely recognizable with how hidden it was by a full beard, the lack of sorrow ladden wrinkles, the spark of joy in his eyes; Cirilla, drawn from memory by the painter because she hadn’t been able to sit still at just three years old, her face slightly off; and Pavetta. His eyes locked with her painted ones, noticing every brush stroke in the oil paints, every single difference to her real face. A cold hand of fury gripped his heart. This painting was all wrong. It was all a lie. Neither Cirilla nor Pavetta had ever looked like that. He didn’t deserve to hold his wife’s hand, touch his daughter’s shoulder as his painted echo did. Even in a painted world of lies, he should not be allowed his happiness. Especially not in a painted world. If worst came to worst, if someone found this, the lies could be remembered longer than the truth. He had never been happy long. But in the future, if all that remained of him, of them, was the painting, what would those generations think? That he was the happiest man of his time, judging by his smile? That he had been blessed by fate?
He crumpled the canvas in his fist. The oil cracked at the spot where it had been laid on thicker. He was ruining the painting. But it was all the same. It was what he wanted.
In a trance, he walked over to the fire. The canvas hissed, sputtered when the flames licked over it. It was writhing, as if alive and in pain. He watched it impassively. Watched and watched as the flames consumed his happiness of days long gone. Watched until nothing but ash was left.
Then, he fell to his knees and started to weep.