Hildegarde Serle

Ophelia didn’t hear her. She’d just noticed the presence of another man on the rostrum who was absorbing all her attention. He stood in the background, so dark and still that he might almost have gone unnoticed had he not suddenly snapped his watch cover shut. At the sight of him, Ophelia felt a burning flash surge up from deep within her until even her ears were red-hot.
Thorn.
His black uniform, with its mandarin collar and heavy epaulettes, wasn’t suited to the stifling heat—an illusion, certainly, but a very realistic one—beneath the glass canopy. Stiff as a poker, starchy from head to toe, silent as a shadow, he seemed out of place in the flamboyant world of the court.

With not a word, not a curtsey, Berenilde went forward to stroke his cheek with the tenderness of a real wife. This time, Farouk seemed to recognize her immediately. He gazed at her, uttering not a word himself, but Ophelia sensed there was much more in their silence than in all the conversations in the world.

Ophelia was aware that they were acting together on a theatrical stage, before an audience waiting for just one slip to boo them. Every word, every inflection, every movement mattered. But on this stage, Thorn remained her greatest adversary. Because of him, the only image retained of her would be that of a woman cowering in her husband’s shadow.
Sullenly, Farouk reread the terms of the contract Thorn had given him, and then put the Book away inside his coat and straightened up, muscle after muscle, joint after joint, until standing fully upright. Thorn was big; Farouk was gigantic.
“If all she’s good for is reading, and I can’t ask her to read,” he said, slowly, “what am I going to use her for? I only accept, within my entourage, people who can entertain me.”
It was now or never. Ophelia stepped out of Thorn’s shadow, obliging him to let go of her arm, and then raised her eyes up to Farouk to look squarely at him, and never mind the pain involved.
“I’m not entertaining, but I can make myself useful. I ran a museum on Anima; I could open one up here. A museum, it’s like a memory,” she stressed, choosing her words carefully. “It’s like your memorandum.”
Ophelia couldn’t see Thorn’s expression, as he was behind her, but she could see that of Berenilde, who was smiling no more. This was definitely not what she’d had in mind when asking her to make a good impression. Ophelia tried to ignore the shocked murmurs rising from the audience surrounding the rostrum. With this request, she’d probably broken half the rules of etiquette.