You must've known that another noblewoman had found herself pregnant with a child from Gache. You must've known about the truth somehow, and in your despair, decided to handle things of your own accord.
I could never forgive that man.
For countless nights afterwards, my dreams were haunted by ghastly images of your body, broken and lifeless, laying in a pool of your own blood. I felt a rage as I had never known before; a rage I never knew I was capable of feeling.
In what world was such an outcome righteous? Was the world truly such an unfair place, that it would tear you away from this life as soon as you had begun to live? Why would something so terrible be dealt to you, you who never did anything but follow your heart? I could not answer these questions myself, not during those nights, nor during your funeral and burial in the rose garden, nor during the weeks that followed, where I was reassigned to become Master Halvatt's personal attendant and stay at his side instead of yours.
For many a night, I found myself utterly restless, unable to grasp even a moment's respite from my turmoil. My service to Master Halvatt was largely unaffected, but I constantly found myself spending time in the garden late at night, surrounding my senses with the scent of the roses that still stayed in full bloom, as if they could somehow grow into more than a flower and replace a person like you.
It was during one of these nightly excursions that I happened upon a certain discovery. While pouring through a novel you used to love, my bookmark was picked up by the wind and flew out of reach. When I went to retrieve it among the spiny thorns of the rose bushes, I found it: in the farthest left corner of the garden's posterior, there was a cellar.The entrance was very discreet, the door to the room below barely discernible from the surrounding foliage. Even I would not have noticed the entrance, had I not been led to it by a turn of chance. And in all my time at the manor, I had never heard even whispers of such a room existing.
Upon lifting the trapdoor and descending the stairs, I quickly found that the room was not as it seemed. As soon as my feet touched the fifth step of the staircase, the cellar came to life, illuminated by arcane fires in strangely shaped lamps caked in dust. The brilliance of their glow easily outshone that of the moonlight trickling through the entrance. Afraid this spectacle would attract unwanted attention, I quickly shut the trapdoor and continued further into the cellar alone.
After spending the entire night exploring the room and skimming some of the journals scattered on the tables, I managed to understand what I was dealing with. Back in the early days of the Ravanel line, this was where the exorcists stayed when they were treating women of the family. Some seemed to have stayed here for months, even years, in an attempt to cure the deadly curse for the promise of untold riches.
It was here that I found many resources left behind by the previous inhabitants. The texts, which would've been priceless to any historian of magic or practitioner of the arts, detailed some of the most bizarre, otherworldly, and dangerous spells I had ever seen.
Among them, was a spell to recombine the spirit with the body of a recently deceased.
Weeks passed. I managed to read over everything detailed in the book during my nightly visits to the cellar, gaining a thorough comprehension on the spell's intricacies. I took it upon myself then to learn magic, to hone the skill I had been born with, so that I may one day master such a spell.
Yet time was running short. The spell called for it to be cast within three cycles of the moon after the day of death. I toiled every night, forgoing as much sleep as I possibly dared, to learn as much as I could before it was too late.
And then it came. The final night.
Unearthing your coffin from the shallow grave you had been buried in, I removed your decaying body, clothed in a blemished white gown, and took it with me into the cellar.
Before the night was halfway through, I was looking into your eyes once more. Even if they were filled with a hazy, sorrowful longing instead of the euphoric wonder I had come to cherish, I felt that a part of me had returned. That I was no longer without the one I had dedicated my life's service to.
The sun hadn't even risen when you helped me rebury your coffin and smooth the loosened dirt over your grave.