══✿══╡°˖✧ ✿ ✧˖°╞══✿══
When Lydia had walked in, her mother hadn’t even looked up from her desk, her eyes continuing to trail across her pages as she spoke. Overlooked, even in her rage. Though she should have expected it, the realisation still stung and she struggled to hide that. Her responses had been maddeningly dismissive and effortless, which only fuelled Lydia’s rage further. Why couldn’t her mother even look at her? Lydia’s words grew more forceful in attempt to crack her mother’s composure, willing her to pay her some attention. Demanding to be seen and her wishes to be acknowledged.
Then she did it. At some point, Lydia’s words stuck something in her mother and her demeanour completely transformed in a way that took Lydia aback, the face of nonchalance replaced with something more cold and unforgiving. But she hadn’t the chance the regain her composure, as her mother was towering over her with unrelenting words of disgust. Lydia’s space to protest uninterrupted were long gone, her mother leaving no space for her to get a word in as she spoke of the good she had done in arranging her marriage. Each word hit like a physical blow, leaving behind feelings of frustration as she knew they were the intended purpose.
“Salvaging my future?” Lydia blurted out at the first chance she could get, her shock overtaking her initial need to carefully choose her words. “By losing myself entirely to be bartered away as part of some grand scheme of yours?” She continued, shaking her head as if her words weren’t enough of a disagreement. “That is no future I will be a part of. If that fuels the ton’s futile tattles, then at least they speak of me as myself. Rather than some shadow molded according to your desires.”
Both their heads switched attention towards the faint noise that came from the doorway. Lydia gave her sister a pleading look, encouraging the slightest hint of protest that Aurelia was portraying. But she watched as her mother’s words shook any chance of that coming to the surface, her gaze shifting to one more stoic and lifeless, before she exited to her room, leaving Lydia to fend for herself.
Lydia’s continued words of protest ignited something poisonous in her mother, and as she tried to step back in her own defence her mother’s grasp pulled her in to meet her cold gaze. Though her breath quickened, Lydia could not give her mother the satisfaction of looking away.
Though when she pushed Lydia away, she left her standing with the weight of her mother’s revelation. She stumbled back, her ears ringing and head spinning slightly as she took in her words. Lydia had her suspicions regarding her mother on Aurelia’s mysterious transformance, but she could never fully accept that being the case. She had spent the season looking into other possibilities, searching the Wycliff stables and questioning her friends for another answer, when all this time it had been under her roof. Her mother had admitted it to her, and whatever it was she had done she was threatening Lydia with it now too.
“It was you,” She said under her breath, mainly to herself, before she looked up to find her mother returned behind her desk. Lydia’s surprise was soon replaced with anger as she pictured the unrecognisable look on Aurelia’s face every time she saw her, “What is it that you did? Is it that you have something over her?” She demanded, too blinded by her rage to process her mother’s prior threats, advancing across the office and slamming her hands on the desk. “What is it, you intent to turn me to a shell of who I once was as you have Aurelia? I won’t let that happen,” Lydia insisted, her heart pounding in her chest. “I am to undo whatever it is you’ve done to my sister, and I will not marry under your wishes.”
══✿══╡°˖✧ ✿ ✧˖°╞══✿══