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Stella carefully and quietly opened the door to her daughter’s bedroom.
“Via, honey, I made you lunch,” she announced upon entering the dark room. With a flick of her palm, she lit the black candles arranged here by Octavia after Stella and her moved into Andre’s castle.
With the dancing flames illuminating the room, she could finally see her daughter. Octavia was just a curled lump under the bedsheets, just as she was when Stella left her here last night.
It hurt Stella to see Octavia like this. So much so that even Stolas’ fate after the trial wasn’t able to sweeten the sour taste on her tongue.
“You mean one of the imp servants made it,” Octavia mumbled from under the sheets, her voice weak and tired.
“I’ll have you know, I made it all by myself,” Stella informed her proudly and put the tray with food on the bedside table before sitting down on the edge of Octavia’s bed.
Her daughter peeked from under the sheets at the tray with some poorly looking food that wasn’t even possible to identify. Before Stella got her hands on it, those were ingredients for sandwiches.
“It looks awful,” Octavia said bluntly.
“Well at least you know I really made it,” Stella pointed out with a smirk and smoothed some of the messy feathers on Via’s head. “I know it doesn’t look too good but it was the first time I attempted to make something in the kitchen,” she explained further, feeling the sudden embarrassment settling in her stomach and painting her face red. Maybe she should’ve let the imps make the food after all, Octavia needed to eat but what was on the plate, Stella wouldn’t even want Stolas to consume.
To her surprise though, Octavia sat up with a small smile. “Thanks, mum,” she whispered and leaned against her mother, drawing her legs to her chest and hugging them. “Have you heard from dad?” she asked carefully, fearfully almost.
Another stab to Stella’s aching heart.
“No,” she answered, trying not to sound too happy about it. She put her arm around Octavia and tucked her closer against her side. “He’s probably with that imp of his.”
Stella felt Via nod against her collarbone where her head was resting. “He was really going to die to protect him, wasn’t he?”
“I’m afraid so,” Stella confirmed, unable to hide the coldness in her voice this time. “Ever since that imp dropped right in the middle of my tea party, Stolas wasn’t even trying to hide that he only cared about it.”
“Him,” Via corrected.
“Yes, him,” Stella agreed nonchalantly, rubbing Octavia’s arm soothingly. “I’m afraid I don’t know where that imp lives, so I can’t try to contact your father.”
“Couldn’t you ask around?” Octavia asked hopefully.
Stella sighed. “Darlin’, no imp would tell me where to find… him,” she corrected herself before she called that imp an ‘it’ again. “They won’t speak to Goetia. I’m sorry, Via.”
She could probably contact Striker and pay him to find the other imp, but that little snake made it obvious after the trial that he wasn’t going to work for her ever again.
Octavia made a sad hooting sound and curled closer against Stella, hiding her face in her chest. “It’s okay, mum,” her daughter assured her. “I know you probably don’t want to find him anyway.”
Stella opened her beak to protest but Octavia was faster. “Don’t lie,” she asked, so Stella shut her beak again. “I know you hate each other and you’re happy that he was stripped of his powers.”
“Octavia, it’s…” ‘Not like that’, she wanted to say, but she would be lying. She sighed heavily and with a gentle nod to her daughter’s chin, she made her look up at her. “You’re almost grown, so I guess there is no point in trying to pretend. Not that me and your father tried recently,” she admitted shamefully.
Octavia blinked away the beginning of tears from her eyes. “Yeah, it was not hard to hear you screaming at each other.”
Stella smiled sadly at her. “Believe it or not, but your father and I were… civil once,” she revealed to Via. “Our marriage was arranged but we tried to make it work. For our parents’ sake. We wanted to make them happy. But we made each other miserable in the process.”
Their marriage was never meant to be a happy one and full of love. But they were young and naive and thought it could somehow still work.
“We never loved each other,” Stella continued, looking away from her daughter. “Never liked each other even. But despite our growing misery, we loved you, so we tried our best to give you a loving home.”
“You did,” Octavia said, nuzzling into her mother. “At least when I was still a child. I have many fond memories of the three of us from back then.”
Stella smiled, brushing the loose feather off Via’s temple. “I’m glad we succeeded at least a little bit.”
“You shouldn’t have had tho,” Octavia pointed out. “Stay together for me, I mean. You could’ve gotten divorce years ago and try to be happy with someone else instead. I would’ve been fine if you got shared custody with me.”
“I think we both know that now,” Stella admitted, sad. “But that’s in the past now, and there is no going back, I’m afraid.”
“No,” Via agreed. “There isn’t.”
Stella looked down at her daughter and overwhelmed with love, she pulled her into her lap, hugging her tight. Via clung to her as if she was the tiny chick again. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, my little Via,” Stella whispered against the top of Octavia’s head. “I didn’t mean to, I swear.”
Octavia didn’t answer, she just hugged her tighter and cried. Stella didn’t even notice when she started to cry too.
She didn’t know how long they held each other like that, trying their best to bring comfort to one another, but with how hard it was for them to untangle from their embrace, it must’ve been a while.
They looked at each other through the remains of tears and smiled at each other. Stella cupped Via’s face in her hands and leaned down, leaving a tender kiss on her daughter’s forehead.
“How about we go out and eat some real food,” she offered Via, not wanting her daughter to eat that awful lunch she made. “We can go shopping after, it will make us feel better. Nothing like a little shopping trip to get into a better mood.”
Via chuckled, leaning into her mother’s touch as Stella wiped the tracks of tears from her cheeks. “Yeah, okay,” she agreed and hugged Stella again, but it wasn’t desperate this time. “Love you, mum.”
“And I love you, my little Via,” Stella returned, holding Octavia close to her heart, where her place always would be.