Chapter 105: Alianelle’s choice

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

Paul had finally confessed the whole truth to his daughter, he had poured out all his repressed emotions and was expecting his daughter to do the same.

Unfortunately for him, ever since the end of his story, Alianelle had stayed completely silent without gracing her father with a single glance. The tears that had rolled down her cheeks as her hidden story was finally revealed had already dried. However, the sadness and pain in her eyes after realizing just how deep her father's lies ran hadn't gone away yet.

I stayed just as silent as her, burying any word of comfort I was tempted to offer deep within me, but Paul had obviously much more trouble respecting her need for quietness in this instant.

So, when she finally moved from the spot next to me, expectation couldn’t help but appear in his eyes.

“I need to get some fresh air,” she whispered calmly, apparently now devoid of all the emotions that had consumed her all along Paul’s tale.

Disappointment evident on his face, Paul still allowed her to prepare in a heavy silence. He watched unblinkingly as she slowly put her now-familiar robust bandages around her waist to help restrain her folded wings. The need to say something more to her was clear as day on his face, but he finally seemed to abandon the idea after she put on her loose dark fabric hiding at the same time what made her special to everyone’s eyes.

“Am I… Did I lose my daughter?” asked Paul in a trembling voice just a few seconds after Alianelle had closed the door to his rented room that had never appeared as gloomy as in this instant without her presence to make the yellowed walls and dirty floor appear a little bit more welcoming.

“I don’t know, Paul,” was all I could answer.

“It’s dangerous outside at night, especially for her. She…”

“She needs some time alone,” I interrupted. “You owe her that much and besides, she didn’t go out on the street,” I added while closing my eyes. “She’s on the roof, I think.”

I could easily follow the bright light of her existence inside the world of mana, so it wasn’t difficult for me to quickly realize that she chose to go upstairs and stopped with no one anywhere near her.

With this confirmation, Paul didn’t say anything else after that. We were left for what seemed like an eternity with just the two of us in an uncomfortable silence between us, waiting for Alianelle to be ready to confront her father.

I was trying to get some rest on one of the not-so-comfortable beds while Paul had been continuously pacing around the small room like an animal trapped in a cage. The constant rhythmic noise of his steps on the hard floor would have probably lulled me to sleep if I didn’t have to regularly check on Alianelle with my magic sense to see if she had moved from her spot or if she was still truly alone.

The hard and moldy piece of bread I had successfully negotiated at the reception, to not go to bed without having eaten anything, was also more difficult to digest than I first thought and stubbornly stayed like a brick on my stomach. Or maybe it was simply that I was more worried about Alianelle than I had admitted to Paul.

He was already nervous enough without me expressing my own concern, but I couldn’t deny that his story was a lot to digest even for me who wasn’t directly concerned.

The look Alianelle had cast him just before leaving the room was also so heavy with meaning and reproach that I could certainly understand why Paul was so nervous, even though his continuous pacing was starting to get on my nerves. Nothing would change what he did to her.

Not his regrets nor his nervousness.

He knew just as much as I did that by hiding the truth about her mother and by feeding her lies her entire life about her origins and about what she truly was, Paul had done more than simply lying to protect her.

He had also robbed her of her choice.

Even if their situation required it, even if it was the easiest way that had allowed him to protect her in her childhood, the truth remained that Paul had cut the root of her origins and power before feeding her poison for years to keep her in ignorance.

He had decided in her stead to let her live a life of submission and powerlessness where she would forever remain unable to change her future. Had she not been like her mother with the ability to regrow her wings, this choice would have been definitive, no matter if she later learned about the truth or not.

“Did I do the right thing by telling her the truth?”

Paul had asked me this question enough times during the past few hours to make me simply ignore him in the end. No matter how many times he asked me that, I didn’t have any comforting answer to give him.

For better or for worse, Paul had made his choice, it was now finally time for Alianelle to make hers.

When Paul asked me a similar question a few minutes later, I stood up from the bed and exited the room in a similar fashion as Alianelle did. Without truly knowing what I was doing, I surprised myself by climbing the dilapidated stairs of the inn before going through a small broken skylight to go outside on the roof.

With her lonely back turned toward me, she was sitting on the border of the flat wooden roof with her feet dangling over the edge and her gaze lost in the view of the city shrouded in relative darkness thanks to the bright round moon in the night sky, bathing our world with its gentle light. She was facing this moon appearing disproportionately big at this moment as if this celestial being was also concerned about her and wanted to appear more comforting.

In this instant, Alianelle appeared so fragile and so lonely that it made my heart sink in my chest and my mana unconsciously react as if my slumbering power wanted to manifest itself to right the wrongs done to this gentle soul.

Maybe, her training in sensing mana had finally borne some fruit after all as Alianelle seemed to have sensed this sudden disturbance in the surrounding mana, and turned her gaze toward me. Her long blond hair blown by the night’s wind and partially covering her face made it difficult for me to distinguish what kind of face she was making.

It didn’t matter.

Under her gaze hidden from my eyes, I slowly walked toward her, with slow but determined steps. I closed the distance separating us while expecting her to tell me to leave her alone at any moment. But her voice didn’t interrupt me.

She didn’t protest either when I sat down right next to her.

“Sorry if I worried you,” she mumbled with a barely audible voice despite the quietness of the night.

Across our journey, I had learned to like this kind of quietness, impossible to find during the day be it because of the rustling of the carriage or because of the roars of the beasts desperate to tear us apart. I didn’t think that I would also find it inside a town so imposing, but the soldiers patrolling the empty streets with torches held high in one hand did it in complete silence.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I whispered back, trying not to completely break her moment of contemplation.

How long we stayed like this, without exchanging another word between us, I had no idea.

“Thank you, Sillath.”

When Alianelle finally opened her mouth again, it was to say such words to me.

“You’ve already thanked me for protecting you while you were unconscious,” I gently remarked.

“I know. It wasn’t for that this time. While being lost in my thoughts, I realized that I had never truly thanked you for coming to save me after this Ryunno clan member took me away,” she slowly explained.

I was slightly taken aback that she would bring that back now of all times.

Certainly, at the time, the relief we both felt at seeing each other again and the following events that sparked the wrath of the wilderness and her long coma had made any kind of long conversation impossible.

“Why did you save me?” she suddenly asked, catching me off-guard.

“What?” I replied dumbly while her beautiful moistened eyes were glued on me with such intensity that I had trouble maintaining eye contact.

“At the time, why did you take all these insane risks to save me?” she added with a voice choked with her suppressed emotion. “Jazor told me when I tried to thank him that even he had given up at first when I was taken away and that he even tried to stop you from coming to my rescue.”

“Alianelle…” I muttered, unable to find my words in front of her quick questions dictated by her rampant emotions.

“Even my father gave up on me. So why...”

Her voice broke as her tears fell along her cheeks.

“Even I had given up, so why?” she continued to ask with the same voice broken by her emotions.

Her sobs finally took over and prevented her from talking anymore.

It wasn’t hard to understand that Paul’s story had finally shed some light on the events of that day. She finally knew why this Ryunno clan member had suddenly singled her out among all the others to take her away. He had recognized her true nature, had detected the poison that prevented her wings from growing back, and wanted her to share the same fate as her mother.

The realization of what she had escaped from, if the man in purple hadn’t killed her kidnapper and if I had given up on her, was a lot for her to bear.

I watched her crying for long seconds, unable to give her a satisfactory answer while replaying in my mind the various choices that led me to this moment.

How I ran away after my brother’s death.

The years spent away from my family.

My death.

My reincarnation.

Amanda’s and my grandfather’s murders.

My encounter with Alianelle and everything I had to do and risk to keep her safe.

Various complicated emotions washed over me, but one was stronger than all the others.

Regret.

I had made so many mistakes along the way, I took so many wrong paths and chose the easy solution so many times.

That’s why I was sure that risking everything to save her wasn’t one of them.

It wasn’t among my long list of regrets that I will never have the opportunity to correct.

So, I chose my words carefully to try to give her the answer she wanted.

“I’m not as brave or as generous as you think. I didn’t realize the kind of risk I was taking when I tried to save you from this Ryunno clan member. When I learned the truth about the consequences of my reckless actions, I was so scared that I almost gave up.”

My self-mocking words helped her calm down. Her sobs receded and allowed her to speak with a slightly hoarse voice.

“But you didn’t… Why?”

“I could tell that I tried to save you because it was the right thing to do, but I’m not such a good person,” I confessed with a wry smile. “The truth is that I simply didn’t want to have any regrets. I didn’t want to remember the time we spent together while knowing that I had done nothing to save you in the end. Maybe that’s not what you wanted to hear, but it’s the truth. I was simply tired of having regrets, tired of the lies I had to tell myself to cover them up and escape my guilt.”

“...”

“I just didn’t want the time we spent together to become a lie,” I concluded with the same wry smile on my face to hide my embarrassment.

These few words said clumsily were my true heartfelt feelings.

I wasn’t a hero and never will be. The time I spent hesitating over whether I should save Himara and Seth from slavery was good enough proof of that.

However, this second life was a chance.

A chance to do better than in my previous and to at least live a life without regret. This was an opportunity that was given to me when I reincarnated, something I couldn’t discard no matter the risks I had to take.

I didn’t save Alianelle because it was the right thing to do, I just followed my heart and hoped that with time, all these risks and sacrifices would make all this suffering, all these hardships, and trials worth it.

That it would give some sense to this second life that was so abruptly gifted to me.

‘Your sin is your own existence!’

Maybe those words that the Ancestor Tree in the Great forest of the west once said to me were the truth.

Maybe I really wasn’t supposed to have been born into this world.

However, this second life was still mine, with the paths I chose and the choices I made along the way, my own.

I didn’t know if my answer was enough for Alianelle or not, but she had stopped crying.

For the first time since Paul’s truth was revealed to her, she appeared at peace with herself.

The new resolve burning in her blue eyes was all I needed to understand that she had cleared her mind and made her choice.

“I’m the same as you, Sillath. I’m tired of lies,” she suddenly declared. “That’s why I won’t make the same mistake as my father. I won’t live my life in fear while lying to everyone around, me included. I will become as strong as my mother, no… stronger than her,” she continued with her little fist closed in front of her as if she was trying to grasp the full moon.

“Alianelle…”

“I know… After all this time in this kind of captivity, she’s most likely already dead,” she confessed without hiding the anguish that such a realization had created in her.

I shared her pessimism. Eleanor’s regeneration may have been as impressive as Paul had described, but under this repeated torture, even this kind of power would never have been enough to allow her to survive for so long. That’s why I was afraid that Alianelle’s sole motivation was born from the absolute desire of saving her mother from her fate one day. A noble and fair intention, but most likely already beyond her reach.

As if to assuage my worries, Alianelle continued with a voice much firmer than before, that finally completely broke the ambient silence of the cold night.

“As long as there is still some hope, as long as her death has not been confirmed to me, I won’t completely give up on the idea to save her one day. However, I’m not doing it just to rescue my mother. I simply want to be able to stand on my own two legs in this world with my own strength. I don’t want to be a victim, someone to be rescued or protected anymore.”

Alianelle knew just like I did in the past, the shame of being powerless.

In one of our recent lessons, she confessed her feelings and described to me this shame burning her insides when Jazor had to carry her on his shoulder as I left them behind to save her father inside the Advanced town destined to be destroyed by the catastrophe in the angry sky.

Apparently, this episode where she was even unable to walk on her own anymore had left an even more important scar than I initially thought.

“One day, I will be strong enough to protect you!”

With these words as a promise made between us, and more importantly to herself, Alianelle confidently declared her will.

Her choice was made.

Paul had stolen this choice from her when he decided to mutilate and lie to her, but she could still accept what he had once chosen for her. She could make the same decision, cut her wings off once more and retake the blue poison to prevent them from growing back ever again. It would be a life of lies, of submission, but she would be safe.

However, Alianelle wasn’t like Paul.

Behind the facade of shyness born after years spent as a discreet farmer’s daughter without any ability, her stubbornness lay just beneath the surface. I had previewed it when she had forcibly taken my hand to get me to accept her offer for shelter when we first met and was finally able to witness it once again.

Alianelle wasn’t shy and she will be weak no more.

She had refused to live in denial and fear as her father had done.

She will fight to have a better life, as we all should.

“I promise, Sillath. One day, I will be as strong as you.”

“Probably stronger,” I remarked, completely aware of the miraculous power her wings will offer her someday.

“Maybe,” she confessed. “Magically at least, because I don’t see myself being as strong as you even if I do my best.”

“As strong?”

“As brave,” she corrected. “And as kind-hearted. I’m not sure that if the situation had been reversed between us that I would have risked my life and future the way you did.”

I smiled weakly at her compliment while knowing perfectly that she underestimated herself.

“It’s only because you have never been confronted with this kind of situation,” I countered. “When the time comes for you to prove your worth, to make a choice, and to truly discover what kind of person you are, then I’m sure you will do the same,” I proclaimed without an ounce of doubt in my voice.

Even if she hadn’t realized it herself yet, I had already seen her heart and was certain that time would prove me right.

Alianelle didn’t answer or contradict me.

With a gentle motion of her left hand, she simply brushed a strand of my hair a little bit too long for me and touched my left cheek in the most natural way with the same softness.

“You’re a good person, Sillath. You should start to realize it yourself,” she whispered softly with the same firmness and absolute certainty I had just shown her.

Taken aback by her words, I stayed still with my eyes deeply plunged into hers as her warm hand stayed on my cheek under the serene gaze of the moon.

In this peaceful moment so different from the violence and despair of these past months, I was certain.

Bitter days awaited her.

Moments of doubts, pain, and conflicts.

Moments when her will and the resolutions she just announced will be tested, just like I was and will be.

But, not tonight.

Tonight wasn’t the time for doubts and worries.

This moment will come.

However, for now, all was well in the world as my friend had finally found her path under the silver rays of the moon to witness her choice.