Time loses its meaning as she accepts the inevitable. She can’t save Amari. She won’t live. Not without the empress.
She wishes she still had tears left to shed, but either the tears died with Salim, or the curse has changed her too much already for such a human gesture. She doesn’t know, nor does she care. Her chests heaves as she sets Amari down in her cradle and skulks back so that she doesn’t have to watch the empress approach her daughter.
She tastes iron on her tongue as she runs out of the room and to anywhere, anywhere at all.
It all goes dark as she forgets herself.
Herself, yes. But the images of the empress and Amari refuse to fade away.
How often she crawls back to the nursery, Tasi cannot say. There are flashes of clarity in-between like calms between the gusts of a hurricane, and they’re over just as suddenly, as though there had never been anything but the storm. The darkness becomes everything she knows - or rather, everything she doesn’t know. When she’s aware, the empress is always there with Amari. Nothing else materialises from the darkness that is her, that is the shell called Tasi.
She doesn’t want to see them. She could claw her eyes out to avoid watching them, for her very flesh stretches and morphs when she loses focus. She could, were it not for the tangible, itching command that echoes around her head whenever she tries. Don’t. The voice is not hers; it’s the one voice her subconscious can still recognise, the one voice she cannot disobey. A single word forces the darkness to retract its touch, if only momentarily.
Perhaps the empress pities her. Perhaps she torments her and wants her to watch her daughter grow in the care of another.
Yet sometimes it’s all her, all Tasi. Her eyes are drawn to the two of them on her own accord.
It's obvious from the empress's unsteady motions that she doesn't know what to do. She hovers beside the cradle and feeds Amari with a bottle, or with a spoon and a bowl, comforting her with her voice when the child cries. But never, never once does the empress attempt to take her in her arms.
Tasi collects herself, pushes against the curse, and focuses her attention, her heart on Amari. The weight inside her settles and finally, withdraws.
“Here,” she says. She's surprised to hear how steady, how normal her voice sounds, when she’s sure she hasn’t used it in days, weeks. “I'll show you how to hold her.”
If the empress is surprised by any of this, she doesn't let it show. She nods and lets her approach the cradle. She watches intently as Tasi reaches out and lifts Amari up, her movements intentionally slow and careful. She supports her fragile head against her palm, letting her weight rest fully against her arms. Amari’s weight feels familiar, her warmth a comfort, and Tasi’s vision clears.
“Her neck is still frail. One hand should always support her head when you lift her, like so,” Tasi says, softly to not wake up the sleeping child.
“May I?” the empress asks. There is obvious longing in the look she fixes on Amari, then Tasi, and Tasi feels how it closes around her throat. And though it tears her open from the inside and makes her eyes water, she nods and lowers Amari in the empress's waiting arms.
The empress – Tihana, Tihana is her name, Tasi recalls – says nothing for many long minutes as she stares at Amari as though afraid she'll shatter at any given moment. Then, Amari sighs in her sleep, a tiny hand clutching at Tihana's gown, and she lets out a single, quivering sob.
And Tasi hates how the last dregs of resistance die inside her at the sight of Tihana's mute joy.
“Hush, now, lullaby, mother's here, so don't you cry,” Tasi all but murmurs to herself, listening to how Amari's crying slowly eases and fades away. She feels sand and gravel underneath her as she curls into a ball somewhere, cradled by the darkness as Amari is cradled by Tihana.
Tihana's voice weaves in and out of her dreams, if they are dreams. The word feels obscene for the images that plague her consciousness in this half-stupour she's learning to accept as rest.
Salim's cold hand in hers, glazed, unfocused eyes. Hank's wounds healing, his eyes growing dark. Yasmin, her face twisted and hopeless. Tasi folds into herself in fear, in shame. Anger comes pulsating and white-hot. How could she. How could she.
Tihana's voice crawls through the fabric of anger and fear and settles between the fibers of every ugly, torn emotion Tasi has left, knitting them together. Hush, now, lullaby. The empress is singing, her voice rich, strong. Close your eyes, for sleep is coming. The tremours stop as Tasi listens to her. With her mind's eye Tasi pictures Tihana in a long, flowing gown of gray, younger, wholer; stepping out of the tower to the midst of her people who grasp her hands and kiss the trail of her gown in greeting. She has the presence of a leader, even now, as her empire lies in ruins. Her voice carries the cadence of one who commands, orders, who is obeyed. Tasi wonders if she enjoyed it, wonders if her role was more a burden or a blessing to the empress that she once was.
“Mama's here, so don't you cry,” Tihana sings, and Tasi hums the words with her. The empress never uses her own language when singing, she realises, and feels something she hasn't felt in ages.
Tasi straightens and lets her eyes adjust to the brightness before crawling out of her hiding. Tihana is treading around her throne, Amari in her arms, her dress billowing around her as she moves. She's so bright that it hurts. Her form is deceptively human, her limbs long and her profile almost regal, and Tasi wonders what she looks like without the veil hiding her eyes.
She sits down to watch the empress and Amari. Tihana starts the lullaby once more as soon as she reaches the end, her voice echoing endlessly. Amari giggles.
“You always sing in French,” Tasi comments when the song finally ends. “Surely she should learn your language.”
Tihana fixes her a long look. “Surely there's no harm in her learning yours as well.”
“She's your daughter now.”
“Our daughter, Tasi Trianon. You are still here with her.”
There's a strange feeling inside Tasi, one she brushes off instantly. “Just Tasi, please. Don't you remember any lullabies from your childhood? Do your people have any?”
“It's been a long time. I cannot remember my childhood any more.”
“What of your parents?”
Tihana shakes her head. “I became the empress after my mother's death. I can no longer recall her face nor her voice. All I have left of her are the recollections of others – records of her achievements as empress, her legacy, all that she built and restored. Nothing of who she truly was beyond the title.”
Tasi swallows down the lump in her throat. “I cannot remember mine, either. Not because of… you know. I was raised by my father. He was all the family I had.”
Amari yawns in Tihana's arms, and the empress tucks the wrap more snuggly around the child. There is an almost tender look on her face when she strokes Amari's cheek. “They called me blessed Tihana upon my ascencion, but I have never agreed with the name. She is blessed. She grows knowing not one mother but two.”
Tasi wants to say something, but words fail her, so she sits in silence until Amari falls asleep. Tihana resumes her humming as Tasi leaves to hunt.
Our daughter.
She is made of hunger, and her hunger eats her from the inside with hope.
Our daughter.
Amari grows, her little limbs learning precision and strength. Tasi gives Makka to Tihana and watches with amusement how the empress tries to teach the child how to play, her own uncertainty slowly making way for joy that is almost as apparent as Amari's. She is muted happiness and subdued smiles as Amari laughs and hugs the stuffed monkey in her soft arms. Her motherhood is so different from Tasi's, more distant, less physical, and it takes her months to learn to read what the empress doesn't reveal herself.
How carefully Tihana gives love, Tasi wonders. Lonely, eternal, forlorn Tihana. How deep within herself she keeps it contained until it begins brimming over. She shows it little yet love she does, intensely, vicariously. It breathes life back into her.
Tasi likes watching her during those moments; how they transform Tihana into something softer, as though Amari's touch could melt away centuries of solitude.
Strangely enough, Tihana doesn't seem to mind. When she slumbers, Tasi stays in Amari's chamber and watches her sleep. She caresses her cheek and whispers to her, tells her stories, sings. More than once she falls asleep besides the cradle and wakes up to find Tihana in the room, with Amari already fed and napping.
Tihana dims the light in the chamber and partially closes the door contraption around the cradle. Her hand lingers on the glass for many long seconds until she turns around and leaves. Tasi follows her.
“You could pick her up and hold her even while she's sleeping,” she says. “I know you want to be close to her.”
“Let her rest. She needs her sleep.”
“Is it difficult for you in your current… state?” She hesitates on the last word, but Tihana doesn't react to it. “I mean, this form of you that you are now is just an apparition. Your real body is connected to those machines.”
“My current form is as corporeal as I want it to be. It's no less real than my other body.”
“Can you feel things in this form?”
Tihana sits down on the steps below her throne. She looks at Tasi quizzically. “You ask strange things. What is this all about?”
“It's just… you so rarely hold Amari. I've wondered why. You wanted a child so badly.”
“Perhaps my people's shows of affection are not as physical as yours.”
There is something else in Tihana's tone, and suddenly Tasi understands. If Tihana has held a child, or anyone else, before, it hasn't been in living memory. “I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking.”
“No matter. I wouldn't expect your kind to understand.”
“But I want to learn. I want to learn to know you better.”
“Why would you want that? After all I've put you through—“
“You are raising my daughter. Our daughter,” she corrects herself, and Tihana's expression turns openly baffled. “I think I should have the right to learn to know the person that takes care of her with me.”
There is a long pause. Just when she thinks the empress isn't going to grace her with an answer, Tihana nods. “You are correct. And I admit to the same curiousity; I'd like to get to learn you, too, Tasi Trianon.”
“Just call me Tasi. My people generally don't call each other by their full name.”
Tihana inclines her head, gestures towards the space next to her, and Tasi sits down, so close that their legs are almost touching.
“Well, Tasi, let us talk. May I ask you something first?”
“Of course.”
“How do your people show affection?”
Tasi hasn't smiled in what feels like an eternity. She's not sure her muscles even remember how to any more. But reflexively, she feels the corners of her mouth quirk up. Looking at Tihana pushes back the clutches of the curse and forces it to relinquish its hold as it always does. With her, there is clarity, peace.
She clears her throat. “Well, there are many ways. Sometimes, it's in every look you share with the other person. Sometimes you take the other's hand and hold it, like this.”
She holds out her hand, and is not terribly surprised when Tihana extends her own and places it on Tasi's. She laces their fingers together. Tihana's fingers are longer, more slender than hers, but her hand could be a human hand for how well it fits Tasi's.
“What else?” Tihana asks. Even through the veil she wears Tasi can tell that she's looking into her eyes.
“We hug each other, just like you and I hug Amari. We hold each other close when the other needs comfort. Not just our children, but our loved ones as well. Friends, spouses, family.” Tasi pauses, her thumb rubbing in circles against Tihana's warmer hand. “You seem to know so little about humans, even though your people were in contact with us for centuries.”
“My people, yes,” Tihana says tersely. “Not I personally. I had very little personal contact with anyone, apart from my alchemists and personal staff, after they managed to stabilise my illness.”
“But it wasn't always so, was it?” Tasi still remembers her fumbling steps through the ruins of Tihana's civilisation, the countless idols of the mother empress, the words of praise and adoration devoted to her. “You were once close to your people. They loved you, as they had loved your mother before you.”
“Once,” the empress repeats in a colourless voice. “And it was not to last. By making me eternal they cemented our own ruin. You know what it is that tethers me to life, and it is not the love of my people.”
Tasi feels her hand twitch, but she doesn't pull away. She should hate this woman for every crime her people committed against hers, for all the suffering that was carried out in her damned name, but Tasi cannot bring herself to it. There has been too much anger, too much fear already. Whatever remains of her heart has withered from it.
Whenever she looks upon Tihana and sees her cradling Amari, or listens to the empress singing her goodnight, all she feels is pity, crushing, dreadful pity. She knows it's the last thing Tihana wants or deserves, but it's all she has left of her anger. Tihana should have had everything; an entire world, no, several worlds at her feet to do with as she decreed, and yet they couldn't find the means to fulfil her one wish. In this, they are one and the same, Tasi realises. Where it once pained her, she now feels comforted by it.
She lifts Tihana's hand to her mouth and kisses it gently, and the empress shudders as if hit. “It's just a kiss. Another means of showing affection,” Tasi explains.
“A kiss.” Tihana sounds almost hesitant when she pronounces the word, as if tasting it in her mouth. “A kiss. I don't think my people had such a word or custom.”
“It's a common sign of affection among us. Mothers kiss their children when they're happy, when they're sad or upset. I used to kiss Alys on her brow whenever she woke up with nightmares.“ Tasi smiles softly at the memory, its pain dulled by the passage of time, and Tihana returns the smile tentatively. “Friends kiss each other on the cheek in greeting. Lovers kiss to, well, show they love each other.”
Tihana is quiet for a long time. She takes Tasi's hand between both of hers, but doesn't seem to know what to do with it. “I had lovers, long ago,” she finally says, and her tone is subdued. “None after they found out what was wrong with me. There seemed to be little point since they couldn't give me what I wanted.”
“You must have been very lonely.”
“I am the empress. I don't need companionship.”
It sounds so defensive that Tasi can't help but stare at her. Tasi scoots closer, carefully, and squeezes Tihana's hand.
“When was the last time anyone touched you?” Tasi asks quietly.
When Tihana doesn't answer, she reaches out and touches her cheek lightly. More than that, she wonders when she last had anyone who listened to her, or when someone last looked at her as a person, not the empress. Ages, centuries perhaps; the answer is evident in how Tihana withdraws into herself under her very touch. Despite the aura of power that she radiates, she looks very small in Tasi's eyes. It tugs at something within her stubbornly, and before she knows she's leaning in. The kiss she places on Tihana's brow, on the veil covering her eyes, is so soft that she doubts the other can scarcely feel it, but Tihana draws in a shuddering breath that shakes them both.
They look at each other for a second, another, though it feels like an eternity. Tihana's lips move with a question she can't seem to voice, and for a heartbeat Tasi fears. She feels its tendrils enveloping her consciousness, until Tihana places a steadying hand on her shoulder and pushes it back.
“Don't fear me,” she manages in hushed tones, gentle but firm. The clenching feeling around Tasi's heart relents, then lets go entirely. Tihana is gazing at her intently, her eyes a piercing blue haze beneath the veil, and Tasi is not sure which one of them leans in first, for when she catches herself, Tihana's lips are already moving against hers. It's the most clumsy, tentative kiss she's ever had, but it warms her to the tips of her ears and leaves a curious feeling in her chest. She cups Tihana's face with her hands, then kisses her again once, twice.
“Stay with me, Tasi Trianon,” Tihana says against her lips. It's not a command, the words tender, pleading, and Tasi knows her mind is her own in the moment. The choice is hers; in this, the choice is entirely hers.
“You'd let me go if I asked?”
Tihana's voice shudders. “I can't undo the curse on you. No one can. But you can walk away from this, if you do not want it.”
The fear in her voice rattles Tasi's very core. Moments pass in silence without neither of them breaking it. Tasi looks straight into the empress's eyes behind the gauze-like veil, and though her eyes are sharper than human eyes, their shape longer, strangely elongated, the undimming glow in them cannot mask the question Tihana does not want to voice.
Tasi places a finger on the empress's lips and finally, says, “you said I'd be with you forever. I'll hold you to your word on that.”
And Tasi hears Tihana's answer in her mind as their lips meet and the empress's arms pull her into a breathless embrace, melting away the angles and distance between them.
Forever.