Chapter 64: The Weight of Little Hearts
The drawing room swelled with a kind of stillness that did not belong to peace. Afternoon light spilled across the polished floors in golden panes, brushing the edges of a child's world made from crayons, thick paper, and quiet hums. Eva sat cross-legged on the carpet, a tiny storm inside the shell of a gentle day, her fingers stained cerulean and lilac. She was coloring a garden that only she could enter—an impossible space with trees that bent to listen and stars that bloomed like roses.
But behind her, beyond the half-shut doors, the adult world was speaking again.
She could hear them. The murmurs that thickened the air. Words exchanged like arrows behind silk. She wasn't supposed to understand, and yet she always did—just enough to feel it settle into her chest like a stone she couldn't name.
"She's too indulgent," Reginald's voice said. "We've let her drift too far into fantasy. She'll need focus."
"She's four," Evelyn replied, the edge in her voice like velvet sharpened to glass.
"She's not ordinary."
Eva stopped coloring. Her crayon hovered over the page, uncertain.
Vivienne's voice didn't come. That absence said more than words might have. Something was wrong. Something grown-up and quiet and just outside her reach. The kind of something they never explained.
And then it came.
Reginald's voice—low, certain, irreversible. "No, not Eva. She cannot have it."
The words were a bell toll in her chest. She froze. Her fingers clenched. A lump surged in her throat before she understood what she was feeling. She hadn't asked for anything—at least not now. Was it the storybook she saw on the shelf that morning? The porcelain rabbit in the cabinet she only touched once? Or perhaps he was answering some earlier wish she hadn't known she'd spoken aloud.
It didn't matter.
He had said no. And he had said her name.
It struck like thunder across the small, sunlit world she had built for herself.
A breath broke in her chest.
She stood, fast and clumsy, sending her paper fluttering like a wounded bird. Her small fists curled. Her bottom lip trembled, traitor to the composure she usually wore like a second skin. Her eyes—always so wide with wonder—shimmered with hot confusion.
"I want it!" she shrieked.
The room answered in silence, as if stunned by the sound of her voice rising. Then her tantrum unspooled, wild and whole.
She kicked over her crayons. Stomped until the colors rolled across the floor like fleeing petals. "I want it, I want it, and I don't even know what it is but I want it and you said no!"
No one had come yet. Not Evelyn. Not Reginald. Not even Vivienne.
The injustice—the sheer incomprehensible weight of it—crushed her like a sky falling. Hot tears streaked down her cheeks, and she sobbed so hard it seemed her bones would rattle loose.
She didn't wait to be found.
She ran.
Her feet pounded the corridor, barefoot and reckless, her sobs echoing off the marble walls. Her curls bounced wildly. Voices called after her. A servant startled by her fury stepped aside, unsure whether to intervene.
But Eva only had one destination.
One person.
"Ina!" she cried as she flung open the garden doors.
The sunlight hit her all at once, flooding the courtyard with warmth, but she didn't pause. She spotted her at once beneath the sycamore tree—Seraphina, still and radiant in the way stone statues might envy, her book resting in her lap like it had always belonged there.
Seraphina looked up, sensing the child's approach before hearing her name. And then, she was already rising, her eyes wide, her limbs slow and deliberate—as though she knew Eva would fall apart in her arms and did not wish to make it worse.
Eva crashed into her with a sob that unspooled from her very ribs.
Seraphina caught her—arms wrapping around the smaller girl's trembling frame, grounding her instantly. Eva clung to her like ivy to stone, burying her face into Seraphina's chest, sobbing without shape or breath.
"I want it—I want everything—and they keep saying no," she gasped. "I didn't even do anything wrong!"
"Hush," Seraphina whispered into her hair. "You don't have to do anything right now. Just breathe."
"I am breathing, and it hurts!" Eva wailed.
Seraphina rocked her gently, the way one might calm a wild creature or a child with a bruised soul. Her fingers found the center of Eva's back and moved in slow circles, whispering warmth into every sob-shaken corner.
"Tell me what you need," she said softly.
Eva's voice trembled. "I need you. I need this. I don't want to grow up. I don't want to do what he says. I don't want to stop dreaming."
The confession stunned Seraphina in its clarity.
Eva buried her face deeper into Seraphina's chest. "I want to stay little. Here. With you."
For a long moment, Seraphina said nothing. The words echoed inside her like light inside a cathedral.
"Then stay," she said at last. "Stay with me. Be little as long as you want. You don't have to rush."
Eva's cries softened. Her fists unclenched. She slumped in Seraphina's lap as if her small body could no longer carry the weight of her heart.
And then, without waiting for invitation, Eva climbed more fully onto Seraphina's lap—tiny hands gripping her shoulders, her tear-streaked cheek pressed to Seraphina's chest.
"Please," Eva whispered between sobs, "please, Ina, make it stop." Her voice was soft, almost broken, as if she believed Seraphina had the power to fix everything. "I want it… I want it so much."
Seraphina's arms instinctively tightened, one hand cradling Eva's back while the other carded through tangled curls.
"Shh, shh," she murmured, resting her cheek gently against Eva's head. "It's okay, little one. You're safe here. You're okay."
Eva sniffled and sobbed harder, her body trembling like she might shatter. "No, no, I want it," she repeated, muffled against Seraphina's chest.
Seraphina knew. This wasn't about an object. This was about powerlessness. About being small in a world too large and unfair.
She leaned down, kissed the top of Eva's head, then her temple, then her flushed, tear-streaked cheek—gentle, reverent, as if her kisses might piece the child back together.
Eva gave a hiccup between sobs, then turned her damp face up, eyes wide, vulnerable, glittering like storm-wet jewels.
"Kiss me more," she whispered hoarsely, as if kisses were the only magic left in the world.
Seraphina's breath caught, but she didn't hesitate. She kissed the other cheek, the damp tip of Eva's nose, then her warm forehead. Each kiss was a promise: I'm here. You're not alone. I'll love you even when you cry.
Eva melted into her arms, sighing through the remnants of her sobs. Then, still trembling, she hugged Seraphina tightly, her small arms wrapping as far as they could. "You always fix me," she murmured. "Even when I'm too broken."
Seraphina whispered into her hair, "You're never too broken."
And then, at the edge of the path, Vivienne appeared—silent, unannounced, leaning against the stone archway that led to the garden.
Her gaze fell upon them without surprise, as if she had known exactly where Eva would run.
She approached slowly, steps soundless. Her eyes flicked over Eva's flushed face, her tear-wet lashes, the way she curled into Seraphina like a secret seeking refuge.
"She broke," Vivienne said softly.
"She needed to," Seraphina replied. "No one heard her until now."
"She's four," Vivienne murmured. "But sometimes I think she carries the weight of an empire in her chest."
"She does," Seraphina said.
Vivienne studied her carefully.
"You held her like she was made of glass."
"She is," Seraphina whispered. "She's glass and fire and a hundred things I don't have names for. But when she falls apart, she only wants to fall into me."
Vivienne's gaze softened. "She calls you Ina."
Seraphina nodded.
"She told me once you were her breath," Vivienne said after a pause. "That without you, she couldn't find it."
"I know," Seraphina said. Her voice caught. "And I'll hold it for her, if I have to. For as long as I can."
Vivienne stepped closer, but didn't reach for Eva. "She doesn't need to learn strength right now. She needs softness. You're the softness. Evelyn and I… we can't give it to her like this. Not without expectations."
"She expects nothing from me," Seraphina said. "And that's why she trusts me with everything."
A silence passed between them—soft and holy.
Then Vivienne leaned down, brushing Eva's curls from her flushed forehead. "I'll tell Reginald to keep his lectures to himself."
Eva stirred faintly, eyelids fluttering.
Seraphina adjusted her gently, and Eva mumbled something half-formed, almost poetic.
"Don't let the light leave me."
Vivienne stepped back. "She says things like that in her sleep. We write them down, Evelyn and I. We keep them like prayers."
"She is a prayer," Seraphina said. "One we're all trying not to break."
Vivienne lingered only a moment longer. Then she turned, her voice soft with something like awe.
"I don't know what she is to you," she said. "But I know what you are to her. And it matters more than anything Reginald could teach her."
She left them there—beneath the sycamore tree, the sun filtering down like quiet applause.
Seraphina held Eva until her breathing deepened, until her fists relaxed, until sleep stole the storm from her face.
And even then, she didn't let go.