Finale

The cottage at the edge of the Poisson cliffs was a masterpiece of solitude. To the rest of Fontaine, it was a quaint retirement home for a beloved, if retired, icon. To Furina, it was a velvet-lined coffin.

In the beginning, the silence had been a mercy. After five centuries of the spotlight’s burning glare, she had craved the dark. But the dark had not stayed outside her window; it had crawled into her eyes. It started as a shimmering veil, a migraine that felt like a guillotine blade pressing against the base of her skull. Then came the blurred edges of the world, and finally, the total eclipse. The doctors called it a psychosomatic manifestation of trauma. The Melusines called it a tragedy.

Furina knew the truth. It was the bill finally coming due. To fool the Heavenly Principles for five hundred years required a price that a mere mortal frame could not sustain. Her sight was the interest on a debt she could never fully repay.

She sat on the edge of her bed, her fingers tracing the cold, silver head of the cane Neuvillette had given her. It was a beautiful thing, crafted with the precision of the Palais Mermonia’s finest artisans, weighted perfectly for a woman who could no longer find her own feet.

"Lady Furina? It is time for your afternoon tea. Menthe has brought some fresh Madeleines from the city."

Clorinde’s voice was as steady as a heartbeat, yet Furina could hear the underlying tension—the sound of a professional bodyguard who was now guarding a woman from herself.

"I’m not hungry, Clorinde," Furina whispered. Her voice felt thin, like parchment left out in the rain. "And please, stop calling me 'Lady.' We both know that title died in the Opera House."

"You are still who you are," Clorinde replied. The floorboards creaked as she stepped closer. "Neuvillette sends his regards. He intends to visit this weekend, provided the legislative sessions conclude early."

Furina felt a bitter smile tug at the corners of her mouth. Neuvillette. The Iudex. The Dragon Sovereign who now held the heart of her nation in his palm. Every time he visited, the air in the cottage grew heavy and damp, the windows fogging with the sorrow he couldn't quite contain. He looked at her with such profound pity that she could feel it like a physical weight.

"Tell him not to bother," Furina said, her sightless eyes fixed on where she imagined the window to be. "The rain is depressing enough without him bringing more of it."

Clorinde didn't answer. She didn't need to. Furina heard the soft rustle of fabric and the clink of a porcelain cup being placed on the nightstand. Clorinde was staying. She was always staying. Even when Furina had tried to slip into the bathtub and stay under until the bubbles stopped. Even when Furina had hidden a kitchen knife under her pillow, only for the keen-eyed Melusines to find it while "fluffing the linens."

They weren't her companions. They were her jailers.

The Melusines—Menthe, Puca, and the others—were kind, heartbreakingly so. They spoke to her in chirping tones, describing the colors of the sunset or the way the sea foam looked against the rocks. They thought they were helping her live. They didn't understand that for Furina, every sunrise was an encore she had never asked for.

The second year since the trial arrived with an oppressive humidity. Furina felt the anniversary in her bones. Two years of pretending to be a person. Two years of failing at it.

She had become clever in her blindness. She had learned the layout of the house by touch, measuring distances in heartbeats and breaths. More importantly, she had learned where the Melusines kept the "emergency" supplies. Over the months, she had palmed a pill here, a sedative there, hiding them inside the hollowed-out handle of her old stage props that gathered dust in the corner.

She had also managed to convince Navia, during one of the blonde's rare, boisterous visits, to leave behind a bottle of spiked cider. Then another. Then a bottle of Fontainian wine, under the guise of wanting to "celebrate a small personal milestone." Navia, eager to see a spark of the old Furina, had complied with a tearful smile.

Tonight was the night. The final act.

Furina sat at her small writing desk, the nib of her pen scratching blindly against a piece of stationery. She couldn't see the lines. She couldn't see if the ink was blotting or if her letters were overlapping. She wrote from muscle memory and sheer, desperate will.

*I am tired of the costume,* she wrote, though to any observer, the words were a jagged, sloping mess of ink. *The play ended two years ago. Why won't you let the actor go home? Do not mourn a reflection. There was never anything behind the glass.*

She folded the paper with trembling hands and left it on the center of the desk.

"Lady Furina?" Menthe’s voice piped up from the doorway. "It is late. Would you like help getting into your nightgown?"

"In a moment, Menthe," Furina said, her voice surprisingly clear. "I just want to sit in the dark for a while. It’s all the same to me now, anyway."

The Melusine lingered, her small, empathetic heart sensing the shift in the air, but eventually, she bowed. "I will be right outside if you need me. Sleep well."

"Goodbye, Menthe," Furina whispered.

Once the door clicked shut, Furina moved with a terrifying efficiency. She reached into the hiding spot in her wardrobe, pulling out the two bottles of wine and the small pouch of assorted medicines.

She didn't pour a glass. She drank straight from the bottle, the sharp, acidic sting of the alcohol burning her throat. It was a clumsy, desperate sensation. She took the pills in handfuls, washing them down with great, gulping swallows of the wine.

The dizziness didn't take long to arrive. It started as a warmth in her chest, a softening of the sharp edges of her grief. For the first time in years, the pressure behind her eyes seemed to ease.

"Oh," she giggled, a ghostly echo of the girl who once stood on the stage of the Epiclese. "It’s... it’s actually quite nice."

She stumbled toward her bed, her limbs feeling like lead. She collapsed onto the duvet, the second bottle of wine slipping from her hand and staining the rug a deep, bloody crimson. The world began to spin, a carousel of memories—the smell of the ocean, the sound of applause, Focalors’ cold hand on her shoulder, Neuvillette’s face as he pronounced the verdict.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was soft, small.

"Lady Furina? You fell? Oh dear, let me help you."

It was Puca. The Melusine must have heard the bottle drop. Furina couldn't find her tongue; it felt thick and heavy in her mouth. She allowed the small creature to heave her legs onto the bed and pull the covers up to her chin.

"You’re very warm," Puca murmured, her voice sounding like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. "I’ll go fetch Clorinde. You just rest."

"No..." Furina tried to say, but it came out as a soft sigh.

She closed her eyes. For the first time in five hundred years, the darkness didn't feel like a prison. It felt like an invitation.

***

Clorinde entered the room five minutes later, her brow furrowed with a sense of unease that had been gnawing at her all evening. The scent hit her immediately—the cloying, sweet smell of spilled wine and something chemical, something sharp.

"Furina?"

She crossed the room in two strides. She saw the empty bottles. She saw the white dusting of pill residue on the nightstand.

"Menthe! Get the doctor! Now!" Clorinde shouted, her voice cracking the usual mask of stoicism.

She grabbed Furina’s shoulders, shaking her. The former Archon’s head lolled back, her skin a terrifying shade of ivory. Her breathing was shallow, ragged hitches that seemed to catch in her throat.

"Furina, wake up! Look at me!"

Clorinde’s eyes darted around the room, searching for anything—a reason, a hint—and they landed on the desk. The piece of paper.

She snatched it up, her eyes scanning the frantic, illegible scrawl. The ink was smeared where Furina’s hand had brushed against it. Most of it was a chaotic jumble of loops and lines, the product of a woman writing in a void.

But at the very bottom, written larger and clearer than the rest, were three words that made Clorinde’s blood run cold.

*Let me go.*

"No," Clorinde whispered, her fingers trembling as she dropped the note. She lunged back to the bed, pressing her fingers to Furina’s neck. The pulse was there, but it was a flickering candle in a gale. "You don't get to decide this. Not after everything."

Outside, the sky over Fontaine finally broke. A torrential downpour slammed against the cottage roof, the sound like a thousand drums. It wasn't just rain; it was a sob, a primal scream of grief that shook the very foundations of the earth.

Miles away, in the Palais Mermonia, Neuvillette dropped his pen. He stood up, his chair screeching against the floor, and looked toward the window. The water on the glass wasn't just falling; it was weeping. He felt a sudden, agonizing hollow in his chest, as if a thread that had been pulled taut for centuries had finally snapped.

Back in the cottage, Clorinde was on her knees, desperately trying to induce vomiting, her hands stained with wine and ink. The Melusines were wailing, a high-pitched, mournful sound that joined the storm outside.

Furina didn't hear them.

In the quiet theater of her mind, the curtains had finally drifted shut. The lights were out. The audience had gone home. And for the first time in an eternity, the actress was allowed to sleep in the dark.