"The Coven, you say?" the grey-eyed girl asked, doing her best to feign surprise. "Are you talking about that group of madwomen who love to torture and kill innocent people?"
"Exactly…" Tiara replied, her already scowled grimace deepening as she watched her drop her backpack on the floor and go straight to the nightstand to take that old, dusty photograph. "What are you doing with that?"
Tristessa showed her the photograph from a distance, and she felt the wind blowing through the window with delight, caressing her neck, accompanied by the pleasurable sensation of watching Tiara shift uncomfortably.
"Your daughter?" She pointed at the teenager with black hair tied back in a bun, smiling lifelessly at the camera. Just seeing her was enough to bring back the indescribable terror and the phantom pain in her leg briefly. So she wouldn't forget the kind of evil scum that she was. "I had the misfortune of meet her and suffer her madness. Today she has no hair, smiles creepily, and she is a Priestess of the Black Eye. An important figure in the Coven, serving her lord, Moebius… Daiana Mercer-Archeos."
The blow hit hard, where it hurt the most. It seemed Tiara hadn't expected such a rebuttal, judging by the way her confident and controlled gaze shattered, lost in dark memories of the past.
With all the pieces of the puzzle in hand, Tristessa could piece together a general picture of the event that led to the ruin of the Mercer-Archeos family.
"You raised a monster who enjoys making others suffer and splitting their heads open to eat their brains. That's why they banished you from that city, Entrana, am I correct? I mean, a daughter who worships the Dark Lady and her minions must have been a deep stain on your family's name… Especially if Daiana joined a group that kidnaps children to do who knows what horrible things to them."
"…I don't…I…"
Her voice was weak. Where was that strong woman determined to torture to protect her family? She was just like that woman who had lost her mind in the previous timeline… Her screams, crying out for her missing son; Tristessa could still hear them perfectly inside her ears.
"She took your son… I'm sure you wake up every day hoping he's out there, alive."
"Don't… Please, stop…"
"Stop?! You fucking…" Tristessa clenched her fists tightly, resisting the urge to accuse her for the lack of mercy she showed her when she locked her in the kitchen storage room and tortured her. Now it was her turn to break her spirit. "Your son is dead! Do you hear me?! MELLION IS DEAD! Daiana has his shrunken head on herself, hanging from her waist, did you know that?!"
Inhaling and exhaling, she pointed at the sleepily smiling boy in the photo.
"You didn't know that? Well… Now you know."
With that, Tristessa watched triumphantly as Tiara covered her mouth to muffle her sobs. She knew there were no lies in his words, and it was the icy, harsh truth that brought tears to her eyes.
"No, no, no, please, no! NO!"
Watching her cry was a pleasurable delight. It was what she deserved, for all the pain she caused her. Tiara would never remember it because it never happened from her point of view, but Tristessa's fingers remembered the torture, and her face and chest remembered the blows and kicks.
"M-mellion…! My Mellion, no!"
She deserved it. Tristessa was convinced that was the case, and that she shouldn't feel sorry for a horrible woman like her. Not even after everything she had said to her in the privacy of the warehouse… Excuses to justify her vicious cruelty, nothing more.
And yet… Just like in the tale of Endrel and Margules, where the angel was moved to pity for her future consort's sorrow, Tristessa's body moved on its own to catch Tiara in her arms before she fell as she stumbled for support on the bed, and held her, resisting part of her weight.
"…"
Silently, she helped her sit on the bed and distanced herself again, fearing it was all an act to get her to let her guard down. But time was ticking, and Tiara kept sobbing into her hands, covering her face so no one would see the pain of a mother whose dreams had just collapsed like a house of cards.
"Tch!"
Frustrated and annoyed with herself, Tristessa slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed straight for the door.
"Who… are you?" Tiara's question, still covering her face and sighing uselessly to calm her distress, stopped her in her tracks. "Tristessa Irandell... Are you a Stranger?"
"That's none of your business."
"Why are you doing this?" Question after question, the woman could do nothing else to avoid falling completely into despair. "What good did you come here? Just to torture me?"
Another forbidden word. Another word that flooded the girl's brain with so much anger that for a second she wanted to pull the hunting knife from her backpack and stab it into the back of her neck, now that it seemed so easy to do.
"…I hate you so much, Tiara. Seriously, I hate you so much that listening to you speak makes me sick," she hissed, causing the pregnant woman to raise her head and look at her in utter confusion amid all the suffering covering her reddened face, filled with tears and snot. "Looking into your eyes makes me so angry that I'd like to beat you blind."
Of course, Tiara didn't understand this hatred of hers, irrational from her point of view. There was no way she could understand it, and therefore Tristessa wasn't going to bother trying to justify herself.
"I hate you… but not enough to not try to save your life, bitch." Tristessa threw the photograph at her feet, forcing Tiara to stare at that image frozen in time that brought her only pain. "The Coven will arrive in the next few days, led by Daiana. They're coming for you. But I promise you, I'll do whatever it takes to save you. Jin, Lucahn… and you. I'll do whatever it takes to see the Coven defeated and your daughter die."
After demonstrating her resolve, Tristessa heard the housekeeper let out a heavy sigh, heavy with all her sorrows and suffering.
"That trench-coat… It belonged to Daiana, when she completed her military service. She was discharged with honors… And a year later, she took my son and ruined our lives."
"…"
There was nothing more to say.
Having already stepped out into the hallway, she heard Tiara say a few final words of farewell:
"I don't know what world you come from, Stranger, but I have no doubt that Nekrom will finish you off. I saw it in you from the very beginning… You have no chance of survival."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tiara caressing her stomach, seeking comfort in the warmth of life that was so close to wanting to be born and experience that dark world her future mother had mentioned.
"I-I just hope… I just hope someone finds your body, before it's eaten by beasts, or worse."
That comment managed, against all odds, to bring a broken smile to Tristessa's lips.
"Don't worry… Even if I'm devoured, even if my body is filled with holes, even if my head is ripped off, and even if my heart stops…" she thought, in the privacy of her mind, as she walked down the dark hallway with nothing to prevent her departure. "…I'll come back from Death. Such is my fate."