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༉‧₊˚. lorelei delacroix: log.
cogworks; the day of anna’s death.
she would never let anyone get the better of her again. lala’s hand didn’t even shake as she poured the poison.
༉‧₊˚. lorelei delacroix: log.
cogworks; the day of anna’s death.
lala stepped into the lecture theatre once again, books clutched in her hand, dark hair swaying. anna followed, eyes red from crying, but a new determination surrounding her. they sat down and began taking notes, until the clock struck one, in which anna quickly swept up her stuff and bolted out of the lecture theatre.
“where are you going?” lala shouted after her.
“don’t worry about me! i’ll be right back!” her best friend vowed.
ten minutes later, the bell rung again, but this time not to declare the time. “all teachers to the field; all students back to their homerooms,” a voice sounded. lala, being curious, peeked out of a window overlooking the field on her way back, and was shocked out of her wits. a student lay limp on the field, teachers surrounding her, and the window in the top tower was open. and… the student looked awfully like anna.
lala immediately switched direction and bolted down the stairs, dark hair spilling all over her face. she sprinted towards the student, pushing past a myriad of teachers screaming at her to go back inside. ignoring them, lala bent down over anna, shaking her best friend by the shoulders. “anna?” she said, crying. “anna! wake up!” when her friend wouldn’t stir, lala only shook harder. “anna! please, wake up!” she continued, even though she knew anna wouldn’t. a part of her stubborn brain seemed to think she would, and it wouldn’t give up. a tear dropped onto anna’s limp body.
a teacher walked away, claiming he would inform her family. but anna has no family. she has no last name, lala told herself, still holding her best friend. she was vaguely aware of two pairs of unfriendly eyes she hated staring at her, but she paid them no attention. as she held anna’s hand, she felt something crumpled up in her palm. a piece of paper. gingerly, lala removed it from anna and unravelled it.
dearest anna,
i am so sorry to have hurt you. i can explain everything. meet me on the tallest tower of cogworks, the one i took you to at the beginning.
— your devout lover.
anna had scribbled out the majority of the letter, writing ‘i hate you’s in all caps across the paper and ‘he never came’s. the paper had been wet from anna’s tears, and now lala’s joined hers. how dare he. all sorts of emotions coursed through her. melancholiness, anger, frustration, sorrow. but most of all, vengefulness. numerous hands tried to pull her away and remove her from the scene before anna’s alleged family arrived, but lala fought to stay there. she screamed; she yelled; she clawed; she literally fought.
lala knew she was getting borderline insane and she was definitely getting hysterical, but there was only one thing going through her mind. don’t leave her. you failed to protect her - you do not have the right to leave her alone. the teachers next to her were talking, but their voices sounded so distant to lala. you must stay by her. you must—
“—we have to get her away before the girl’s family arrives!”
suddenly, a new voice appeared from behind her. “the girl has a name. the next time you talk about my sister, you will refer to her by her name.” the way she spoke and the way she held herself together made lala immediately identify her as a noble - maybe even a head of house. her face seemed vaguely familiar, but lala’s brain was too tired and all over the place to pin it down properly.
“calm down, elissa,” said a new voice, and this time lala could pin it down. it belonged to the only cyborg she knew and anna’s only other friend - lysa leclaire. then she realised what lysa had called the woman standing in front of her - elissa. that was why she was so familiar. it was elissa leclaire, head of house leclaire and an aunt to the calico family. and elissa had referred to anna as—
lala stumbled back, shocked. of course. anna was lyanna leclaire, the youngest leclaire daughter. it all made sense now - her noble accent despite claiming to be an orphan, her ‘friendship’ with lysa, her absolute refusal to attend a delacroix ball lala had invited her to— lyanna leclaire hated balls, and the last thing she needed was for her identity to leak. but that begged the question, why do it in the first place?
lysa answered that for her. “i’m sorry lala. i wanted to tell you - i really did - but lyanna insisted. with her soft nature and being of a lesser house, she was sure to get bullied. she thought by being ‘normal’, she wouldn’t.” lysa’s voice was laced with sorrow and devastation, but there were no tears on her face. cry, you coward, lala wanted to yell at her, until she realised that lysa physically couldn’t cry.
that was when she heard lysa’s veiled accusation. if anna had truly been just ‘normal’, it was likely she wouldn’t have gotten picked on, as she would have had friends that sympathised with her. but anna was shy, and she had chosen to stick with lala. lala, who everyone was plotting against to bring her perfect grades down. lala, who was from house delacroix, just about one of the least popular houses amongst commoners. lala, who was so young, dumb and stupid that she didn’t even see through her best friend’s mask. she had been so naive. and lysa’s point was that if lala hadn’t been around, anna would not have died.
looking back, none of what lysa said was wrong. the bully had been trying to get at and manipulate lala, not anna. his friend had just wanted to join in on the fun and picked the closest person to her - anna. lala had told anna to join the newspaper club - which made her even more unpopular with the ‘popular’ kids. lala had told anna to accept her ‘boyfriend’’s offer of love. lala had told anna to go on those ‘dates’, saying it would be fun to be in love once in a while, even when anna had wanted to decline.
when phrased like that, it was indeed all lala’s fault.
“it’s my fault,” lysa continued. shut up. “i swore to protect her but—”
“it’s not your fault,” her sister said. “you had already graduated: what could you do about it?”
“told her, warned her, anything—” warned her away from me. yes thank you, lysa fucking leclaire.
“hush, lysa. you did all you possibly could. do you know who our guest is?”
“lala delacroix.”
“my name is lorelei.” she was not going to let any of the leclaire sisters call her lala.
“fine, lorelei. would you—”
“you’re scaring her, lysa,” said a new voice, from afar. both leclaire sisters turned their heads to face the last sister - elara calico.
“elara. late to the party, as usual,” snarled elissa.
elara paid no attention to her elder sister, instead tilting her head towards lala. “miss delacroix, come with me.”
when lala refused to move, her eerily silent teachers finally opened their mouths. “delacroix, you heard lady calico. go with her please.”
“no!” lala yelled.
“miss delacroix, staying with her won’t protect her anymore. come with me,” elara said, calm as a dove.
lala looked at anna one last time. “i’m sorry, anna. i love you.” she gave anna one last hug, before walking towards elara.
༉‧₊˚. lorelei delacroix: log.
a dark asterathi alley; the night before her twenty-fifth birthday.
lala kept her hood over her face. no one could know about her. a delacroix, more importantly, lorelei delacroix, a voxthain councillor, in an asterathi alley next to the potion night market? she couldn’t afford to let that get out. of course, the seaveys would never print it in their paper unless they wished to risk the wrath of the delacroixs, but they wouldn’t dare. she just didn’t need lucien wyver finding out. in fact, she didn’t need anyone finding out, her own family included. the fact that she was even undergoing these science experiments was bad enough. no one needed to know what was in these experiments of hers.
down here, she was no one. in the potion night market, she always pulled her hood over so much her entire face was shrouded in shadow. she had used illusion magic to disguise herself - just a basic disguise as she needed it to last: she changed her hair colour back to her natural colour, changed her eye colour to brown instead of her normal green and adjusted the shape of her features ever so slightly. her name? lyanna. lyanna stark. no one was going to know who she was, and through that, no one was going to know the secret ingredient in her science experiments: nightshade berries.
lala was so close. another street and she would ascend up to voxthain. she took another step softly, but she somehow managed to hear someone sneaking up behind her. she used the strongest enchantment magic she had to command the person behind her to freeze in place and she made a run for it. lala was not taking chances with this, not today at least. she was not going to get caught by any gang on the night before her birthday. she was not going to go to her birthday party the next morning and have everyone there ask her what she was doing in asterath. and she was also not going to just not turn up to her own party. so she sprinted.
however, lala hadn’t predicted that the person behind her could teleport. damn it. one heartbeat she was running, the next she was held still by firm hands, a blade caressing her throat. so much for ‘don’t get caught’, lala. “well, what do we have here? a runaway voxthain councillor?”
damn it, damn it, damn it. her captor’s voice was young and female - lala deduced she couldn’t be older than eighteen. sixteen, perhaps. she kept silent, trying to find a way out but it was all in vain.
“tell me.” the girl angled her blade, pushing it further. “by the way, did i forget to mention? you should stop dying your hair. this brown, i’m assuming your natural colour, complements you well.”
how does she know that i dye my hair? she kept her mouth shut. the girl’s voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t pin down where she had heard it before. if she even had. lala sure wasn’t thinking properly right then.
“well? feeling unsociable today, are we? that’s not very like you, delacroix.” don’t say that out loud!!! not here!!! but of course, the girl couldn’t hear lala’s thoughts, let alone do what she said. from the way the girl was interacting with her, she would have likely screamed the word ‘delacroix’ at the top of her lungs for no reason at all if she knew lala didn’t want her to.
“i would hate to use my enchantment magic on you.”
“you must be what, sixteen? seventeen at most?” she replied, diverting the topic.
“why do you care about how old i am? you should be caring about how old you are now and how much older you think you’re going to get before this knife slits your throat. now, tell me, delacroix, why are you here?”
lala felt the power of the other girl’s enchantment magic seeping into her very bones, forcing her to push out the answer. “i— i am here t-to purch-chase some th-things.” none of it was false, but it wasn’t the truth the girl wanted.
“you must be pretty strong to be able to resist my magic like that. tell me, delacroix, what is it you wanted to buy?”
“i-ingred-dients.” how she wished she could shut herself up.
“for your experiments?”
“yes.”
“what is it?”
“a secret.” not false, either.
the girl paused. then suddenly, in a blink, she had let go of the knife and lala herself was grasping it, pressing harder and harder into her own throat against her will, and she wasn’t able to stop it. suggestion.
“let’s play this the fun way. for every answer that isn’t what i’m looking for, that knife will press an extra millimetre into your skin. what did you buy?”
“i told you, an ingredient.”
the knife pushed further into her throat, at the point that anymore and blood would spill. lala gasped, and instantly regretted that action. she hated being helpless.
“i warned you, delacroix. what did you buy?”
“an ingredient.” lala’s teeth were gritted and she was fighting so hard not to say the real answer. as soon as this component was exposed, her entire science experiment would be exposed, and with that, all hopes of her actually achieving something would be crushed. her one chance to prove herself.
she instantly felt the blood trickle down her throat. “make. it. stop.”
“i’m quite afraid i simply cannot do that, delacroix. we had a deal.”
you had a deal. i said nothing.
“now, before you kill yourself, what did you buy?”
“nightshade berries. nightshade berries.” at least lala valued her life enough for this.
the knife dropped to the floor. lala made to run, but the girl grabbed hold of her. “not. so. fast, delacroix. i never said i’d let you go.”
“what now?”
“once you have finished making that poison, i would have you give me some to use.”
“and what will you do for me?”
“me? do for you?” the girl laughed hysterically. “not spoil your secret ingredient, of course.” she giggled.
lala really regretted not carrying on with learning enchantment further. it would have been really, really useful in this situation. thank the gods that they made seven hells: this girl was going to have to take up an entire one herself. maybe even two.
“do we have a deal, delacroix?”
“how do i find you?” the girl was using her enchantment magic again.
“at the potion night market, ask for romeo.” the girl made to leave.
“you never told me your name.”
“oh, i didn’t? how forgetful of me. it’s none of your business.”
“your name, or no deal.”
“romeo.”
“that’s your code name, snake.” this had to be a snake.
“i suppose it is, isn’t it?” the girl giggled again. “my name is j. rostova. and that’s the best you’re going to get. so do we have a deal?”
lala really wanted to punch the girl in the face. “yes. yes, we have a deal, miss rostova.”
