Chapter 300: To erase her memory or not?
Sienna turned away from Elias, laid down and continued to cry. No matter what he said, or did, something in her simply couldn’t let go of the shame. Elias didn’t dare to sleep. He sat by her side, with a hand on her back, reminding her that he was with her.
Come morning, Sienna woke with the weight of tears still clinging to her lashes, her body trembling as though the night had wrung her dry. Her skin burned with fever, yet her bones felt chilled, as if she had slept out in the snow. Elias noticed the difference in her temperature, her flushed face and dampness of the sheets where she had slept off after hours of crying.
He rushed out of their room, calling for the doctor and barking at a guard to run and call his grandmother. His voice echoed through the house like a desperate alarm.
Sienna drifted in and out of consciousness, her mind caught between fever dreams and fragments of reality. She could hear voices--her mother’s frantic cries, her daughter’s sobbing, Jess’s sharp accusations.
"You failed to look after her," the old woman scolded, her tone cutting through the haze. "What kind of husband lets his wife’s sickness get this bad when they share the same bed? You should have noticed that she was sick long before now."
Elias tried to defend himself and explain that he had spent the night with her, but when she slept off, he went to his office, to dig deeper into the Miller sisters. And to his surprise, he had discovered another secret. There was no official death certificate for their parents! He had spent a better part of the night working with Timothy to get to the bottom of this.
At the moment, he had no answers. And he was hoping they did resurrect and show up here to cause harm like Owena.
But, he could not explain this to his grandmother, and his words were drowned by the rising tide of blame.
"Bad papa, bad." Ali accused, clinging to Sienna’s bedside, tears streaking her cheeks. After blaming her father, she whispered pleas for Sienna to wake.
Eli was steadier, despite his age. The boy was holding a spoon carefully to Sienna’s lips, feeding her drops of water as though each one might anchor her to the world. Sienna’s feverish mind barely registered the sensation, but somewhere deep inside, she felt the warmth of their devotion.
Elias sighed as Mrs. Miller’s voice pierced the air again. It was frantic, trembling, filled with desperation as she begged Sienna to open her eyes. The woman carried no memory of the past. Her brain too had been tampered with, stripped of parts of her history, leaving only fragments. When it came to Owena, she remembered only that she had a sister who had recently suffered an accident and lost her memory.
The decision to wipe her memories and hypnotize her into believing false history had been his grandfather’s. It was because Liman found the woman with a suitcase and goodbye letter to her children.
She had been filled with guilt and shame, like Sienna. It was bizarre how they both thought running away was the best solution. Now that her memories were cleaned up, she was back to her old self.
"I am going to give her a warm bath like the doctor suggested." Mrs. Miller said to the three Veythar’s in the room.
Elias and his grandparents stepped out, but they didn’t go far. They went to the room next door and closed the door. It was Sienna’s home office, littered with pillows, books on the kingdom and articles in divorce laws. The Veythar’s didn’t touch her things, they stood near the table, speaking in hushed tones, careful not to be heard by anyone outside.
Elias’s voice was heavy with guilt. "The news of her less than admirable maternal roots has hit her harder than when she learned of her father’s rebel ties. She even asked me for a divorce," he confessed. "If she were a beast man, this fever would be a mental break."
Jesse shook his head. "I thought she was stronger than that. The girl needs to grow a hard backbone and stronger mind. It makes no sense that news on such a simple but complicated background would make her sick. The father’s rebel history is worse and she took it in a stride."
Jess frowned, her sharp eyes narrowing. "Indeed. One puts you under eternal suspicion of the crown, the other is ignorable, dismissed as personal crime. Why would she suffer more from the lesser stain?"
Jesse added gravely, "Perhaps it is not the crime itself, but the betrayal of trust. She already had one parent with a bad history, and she made peace with it. She firmly rejected her father, while embracing her mother who raised her through hardships and sacrifices. To her, the mother could probably do no wrong. Now, her mother is a liar. Her maternal roots are steeped in dishonor. It may have shattered her sense of self more than a rebellion ever could."
The whispers grew darker. "Should we wipe her memory too?" Jess asked, her tone cold, pragmatic. "If she is struggling to handle the truth, we can take it away so that she won’t have to suffer. My grandchildren are not going to become children of divorce just because their grandmother stole a few cars, hacked a few systems and did some bad things when she was young. Which noble family doesn’t have its share of ugly hidden history?"
Jesse smiled. "True. Grace Twindell was a pirate, your great grandfather was a royal assassin. I myself have done some things that could be frowned upon, depending on who you ask. Sienna is the right balance for you. She gave you an heir, she has ties to the royals, her uncle is Prime Envoy and she has helped the tribe with its developments.
The tribes wine business has improved because of her fruits and she has a new fruit that can help improve the fertility of women. Besides, I like this human wife of yours. The girl is not complicated, she says what is on her mind. She is brave, she is just in her decisions and she can run circles around the king and Lenard in ways Cadelaria never could.
Divorce cannot happen. Your grandmother is right, if she cannot bear her history, perhaps it is kinder to erase it. She lived well without knowing where her mother came from." He looked between Elias and his wife. "Let’s vote. Who supports the erasure of her memories from when she left work yesterday to this morning?"