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Every morning, Misty comes back to Fey Manor with letters.
Morgan knows what’s in them. It’s not difficult for her to know. Insults, taunts, but mostly threats. The effect on Misty is obvious. With every letter received, she loses a little more life.
Misty hides the letters, of course. But Morgan can tell she opens them. Maybe not all of them because that would break her entirely, but she has let the venom spill out and reach her, Morgan is convinced.
Every morning, Misty comes back with a handful of letters. Morgan sees her pass by the Training Hall where she sets up the room for meditation every morning at the crack of dawn. Every morning, Misty’s head is a little more down, her gaze a little more lost, her frame a little more bent.
This ballet lasts for a few weeks. Misty’s older runt starts noticing something is wrong with her mother. Misty finds it harder to hide. She’s never been good at hiding anything anyway. It only takes one calculated push for her to fall apart. Morgan knows. But even then, it takes longer than foreseen.
The letters keep coming. Misty keeps hiding them.
One day, at last, Misty comes and finds Morgan. The burden is too big. The weight of those short but powerful letters crushed her until there was nothing left to do but to seek counsel. Misty tells her sister everything: the letters, what they contain, the threats directed at her family.
“Do you seek pity from me?” Morgan replies. “You brought this on yourself. On us, on the village.”
It’s her fault, it’s true, and Morgan sees in the way her sister flinches that Misty is aware. Good.
“This is getting out of hand,” Misty says. “I need to protect my daughters. Those letters mention them. It’s dangerous.”
Of course, Misty doesn’t think further than that. She thinks Kurain is secluded and safe, and nothing can reach the two little girls here. She’s terribly wrong.
“You must rectify this situation,” Morgan says. “You are the Master, aren’t you? Mental fortitude is what’s needed. Everything for the village.”
Misty doesn’t reply. Her eyes are cast down, and it is painful to see the supposed Master, the Usurper, be nothing more than a dry grape. No, not painful. It isn’t the right word. It’s unnerving. It angers Morgan to no end. But mostly, it irritates her because she saw it coming, but no one in the village cared. They still made Misty the Master, while Morgan was supposed to rot away in shame.
Who’s laughing now, uh? Now that Misty has brought the village unprecedented shame to Kurain village? Morgan isn’t.
Not openly, at least.
“You must simply do what is right,” Morgan says. “Unless there are villagers you’d put above all else? If that is the case, you cannot call yourself the Master any longer.”
Misty looks at her, and Morgan feels like she’s come through.
“You’re right,” Misty says. “I will… I will endure.”
It sounds as pale a resolve as Morgan expected from her pathetic little sister.
But it also means things are taking a turn for the better.
That night, like every night for weeks, Morgan comes out of Fey Manor with a handful of carefully crafted letters. She hopes they will be the last nail in her sister’s coffin.