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Welcome to Charming, the year is now 1894. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.

Where will you fall?

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Queen Victoria was known for putting jackets and dresses on her pups, causing clothing for dogs to become so popular that fashion houses for just dog clothes started popping up all over Paris. — Fox
It would be easy to assume that Evangeline came to the Lady Morgana only to pick fights. That wasn't true at all. They also had very good biscuits.
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#17
It had never been very difficult for Dionisia to read people, and it was a trait she'd continued to cultivate as a mediwitch. She could hear the pain in Zelda's voice, the need. She could feel the desperation in the way she'd squeezed her hand, but she did not squeeze it back.

"I - I remember the day I found out," she whispered instead, still not daring to look her sister in the eye, "The day I found out I was with child. That day was one of the first ones I remembered."



#18
Dio still wasn't looking at her. Zelda chewed on her bottom lip when she waited for Dio to say something, and when she finally did it was not about their relationship, but about the pregnancy with Elliott. "Oh," Zelda said, feeling awful as well as off-balance, and — utterly unsure of what else to say. She loosened her grip on Dio's hand, but remained holding it.




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AMAZING set by MJ
#19
Dionisia tried to breathe steadily, contemplating whether or not it was something she ought to say—or even if it was something that Zelda already knew.

"I went to tell you that day," she continued, feeling Zelda's grip on her hand loosen although she made no more to release it. Yet. "But you weren't there. I found Ari instead." Had Ari told her the story? Zelda did know that Ari wasn't the father, right?

... Right. She'd told her that. She knew that much.

She... thought.



#20
"Yeah," Zelda said, still deflated. She needed Dio to look at her. She needed Dio to look at her, but she couldn't make her, and she felt — adrift, and as if she was going to inevitably say something wrong, just as she had with Alfred nearly a week ago. These things were too delicate for her to navigate — or, they were too delicate for her to navigate well. "You told me that. I'm sorry."




[Image: xXXD462.png]
AMAZING set by MJ
#21
So Zelda did know that. And—Did that mean she knew what it meant?

"I can only imagine what could have happened if I did find you." Would she had helped her get rid of Elliott? Asked one of her brothers—maybe Art, maybe not Ari—to marry her? Or something else entirely.

"Did Ari ever say anything to you?" she asked suddenly, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. She'd told Zelda some things—things that Ari did not even know—but she didn't know, or at least she didn't remember, if Ari had told her anything.



#22
Zelda knew exactly what would have happened: she would have suggested that they go to Ari, and she would have asked Ari to procure an abortion potion for them. If that hadn't happened, it was still possible that Ari would have decided to marry Dio — and they would still be here, except the weight of Zelda's mistakes wouldn't be hanging between them. Or maybe Dio would have aborted Elliott, and she wouldn't have her sweet little nephew she really did love, sitting on the floor with her now.

She rubbed at her eye with her hand.

"He eventually told me you'd been in trouble," Zelda said, "And that Elliott wasn't —" Zelda trailed off, not wanting to verbalize it with the baby here.

Her heart stuttered in her chest. Please, please don't ask me when he told me this.




[Image: xXXD462.png]
AMAZING set by MJ
#23
That she'd been in trouble. That Elliot wasn't—his, Dionisia finished in her head, her expression falling once again. So Zelda knew most things, and she was vaguely aware of times where she'd let things slip, but her memories were more about situations that had happened rather than what conversations took place during those conversations. She hadn't been aware, however, that Ari and Zelda had spoken. It seemed like something she should have assumed, given that the pair were siblings, but... Zelda was her friend, and the thought of them talking about her behind her back caused her chest to tighten with uncertainty and anxiety.

"When?" she asked, hoping to pin the moment to her mental timeline.



#24
Zelda pressed her hand over her lips, as if she could keep the truth from falling out of her mouth. She had no desire to say it. From behind her hand, she said, "Please, Dio." Please, please don't make me say this.




[Image: xXXD462.png]
AMAZING set by MJ
#25
Ari telling Zelda about Elliott's parentage was not ideal, but looking at it through the perspective of things she'd probably already been aware of it did not seem so bad. But Zelda was covering her mouth, and Zelda was begging her not to make her tell, leading to the realization that the conversation Ari and Zelda shared was not only one she hadn't been aware of prior to her memory loss, but was a conversation they'd never intended her to learn about.

Her brows knitted. She felt her chest tighten again. "Tell me," she said, with a bit more assertiveness in her voice.



#26
She didn't want to lie, but she certainly didn't want to tell the truth, either. But Dio was making her and Dio was never going to forgive her, and — there had to have been a better way to navigate this but Zelda hadn't found it. "A little before Elliott was born," Zelda said, still from behind her hand.




[Image: xXXD462.png]
AMAZING set by MJ
#27
Her breath caught in her throat. That... wasn't what she expected to hear, and if things had been different—if Zelda had not just revealed that she hadn't spent the first few months after Elliott's birth avoiding her—she might have simply accepted it.

"Wh... What did you say?" she asked, hoping she had misheard, but the hurt in her voice made it clear she'd understood Zelda well enough.



#28
Zelda finally pulled her hand away from her mouth. "I was wrong and I — I didn't know what to say, and I was wrong," she said, a little frantic, "Dio. Please." It had been so long ago and Zelda had had her own messed up love life to deal with, and she had still been carrying a grudge about this marriage happening at all. And they never would have been talking about it if it hadn't been for Dio's head injury, but now they were, and — maybe Dio would never forgive her, confronted once more with all the horrible facts of it.




[Image: xXXD462.png]
AMAZING set by MJ
#29
Zelda was explaining, and Zelda was begging, and Zelda might have been giving good reasons that she might have accepted had she been listening—but somewhere along the line she'd blanked out, blinking rapidly as she worked through her thoughts and through her memories. There were some things she remembered.

She remembered the little half-smiles Zelda would give her in the company of the Fisk family to appear friendly during the time they hadn't been speaking. She remembered returning them, trying to meet Zelda's eyes but having her efforts interrupted by another conversation or another family member.

She remembered he sitting alone in the rocking chair she'd been given as a gift shortly before giving birth, struggling to get Elliott to latch properly as she tried to breastfeed. She remembered refusing a nursemaid because, as a mediwitch, she thought she ought to know how to take care of an infant on her own. She remembered crying—because of the pain, but also because she hadn't known what she was doing despite feeling that she should. She remembered being afraid to ask anyone about it, and not having anyone to confide in about it. She remembered hiring a nursemaid anyways, because she'd felt like a failure.

She remembered being in the same room with Ari and Zelda and talking about Elliott in casual conversation, and not having any suspicions that Zelda knew. And yet she had, and she hadn't said anything, because Zelda was still ignoring her. Zelda had known the truth—that she'd been in trouble, that some other man had fathered her baby, and never had she asked.

"You knew. You knew and you hated me anyways," she said, tears watering up in her eyes.



#30
Zelda's heart seized in her chest, or that was what it felt like, and she knew then: she should have lied. It would have been better to lie and deal with it later than tell the truth and hear Dio say that, and she could not leave because she was — babysitting, more or less, and that meant that she was here to make sure Dio wasn't getting hurt.

(Physically, at least. Emotionally it was quite evidently too late.)

"I never hated you," she tried. She had felt angry and betrayed and upset, but she had never hated Dio, and that felt like the only thing she could safely say.




[Image: xXXD462.png]
AMAZING set by MJ
#31
The tears were still welling up, but the anger rose from her chest and twisted her expression, her brows furrowing and her jaw tensing up at Zelda's rebuttal. "You didn't hate me," he said, "and yet—you knew. You knew why I married Ari, and you were still, what? Angry? For what reason?" Zelda must have found something to blame her for, but she couldn't pinpoint the reason. Because she hadn't told her about the marriage? Zelda had more logic than most; she could have deduced that she hadn't told her out of fear or shame. Or was it because Zelda was mad that she had stolen away Ari's chance of having a truly loving and happy marriage, as Dionisia herself had once feared? Whatever, reason, it didn't feel right—because Zelda had known, and Dio hadn't known that she knew, and there was an imbalance there that she couldn't get over.



#32
Zelda wrapped her arms around her chest. "I —" she had been overwhelmed and she hadn't known what to say, she had let too much time pass, Dio hadn't reached out either and Zelda didn't think she would forgive her. "I —" she had been preoccupied because it felt like she would never get her own life together, she had her own thing going on, she hadn't known what to say. It was a cowardly thing to admit now. It was a cowardly thing to think.

They had quietly moved past this when they became friends again this winter, neither of them verbalizing it, but Zelda had never expected to be confronted with the flat facts of it and they stuck in her throat.

"I —"

She had wasted so much time being angry and she would never get it back now.




[Image: xXXD462.png]
AMAZING set by MJ

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