Chapter 5: Soft Whispers Echo Through Marble and Velvet Halls II

Chapter 5: Soft Whispers Echo Through Marble and Velvet Halls II

Her Aunt’s door was slightly ajar, warm lamplight spilling onto the polished floor. Eva’s crawl was slow and uneven, her tiny palms making soft pats against the carpet.

When she reached the doorway, she paused, catching the scent of rosewater and faint ink. Vivienne was seated by the window, a silk robe tied loosely around her waist, a half - finished letter resting in her lap.

When she saw Eva, her brows lifted in surprise. “Eva?” she said, as though she doubted her own eyes.

Eva didn’t answer — couldn’t — but she reached out her hand.

Vivienne crossed the room quickly, scooping her up without hesitation. “Oh, darling,” she whispered. “Did no one come for you tonight?”

Eva tucked her face into her aunt’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of roses. She didn’t cling out of desperation — she clung because it felt right.

Vivienne carried her to the chaise, stroking her back with long, slow motions. “You’re always welcome here,” she murmured. “Always.”

That night, Eva slept without dreams.

Vivienne became her quiet refuge after that night.

When the house grew too still, when the ticking of the ornate grandfather clock in the hallway pressed against her ears like a slow drumbeat, she would find her way — sometimes carried, sometimes crawling — to her aunt’s room.

Vivienne never asked why she came. She never scolded her for wandering. She simply made space for her, shifting the pile of silk cushions or sweeping aside a folded cashmere throw so Eva could nestle in.

Vivienne’s quarters were softer than the rest of the Lioré estate. While the main rooms gleamed with cold polish and symmetrical arrangements, Vivienne’s space was deliberately imperfect.

Books leaned against one another without order. Fresh flowers in mismatched vases filled the air with subtle sweetness. A cup of tea might sit half - forgotten on the desk, its surface rippling faintly in the draft from the window.

Eva found herself memorizing the sound of Vivienne’s voice when she read aloud. It wasn’t high and airy like her mother’s, nor clipped and measured like her father’s — it was warm, threaded with the kind of humor that didn’t need to be spoken outright to be felt.

Sometimes she would read from letters sent by friends abroad, other times from novels she kept tucked between the cushions of the chaise. Eva understood almost none of the words, not yet, but the rhythm was its own comfort.

The outside world existed only in fragments. She would catch it in the faint buzz of Vivienne’s phone as new messages arrived, in the muffled drone of the television in the downstairs parlor, or in the occasional glimpse of the city skyline through the tall, narrow windows. The city lights always seemed impossibly far away, a glittering promise she couldn’t yet reach.

It was during one of these evenings in Vivienne’s room, with the city glowing faintly through the curtains, that Eva realized she could hear the rain. Not just hear it — measure it.

Each drop had a weight, a distance between impacts, a rhythm she could map in her mind. In her first life, she had once built weather sensors that could read the density of rainfall and predict shifts in storm patterns. The thought came unbidden, and with it, a strange ache for the tools she no longer had.

She closed her eyes and counted silently as the rain tapped against the glass.

“One, two, three…” The cadence was steady, soothing. It reminded her of the heartbeat she had felt against her cheek the day she first awoke in this life.

Vivienne’s voice broke the quiet. “Your father wants to take you into the city next week.”

Eva opened her eyes.

Vivienne continued, smoothing a hand over her hair. “He says it’s time you saw the foundation building. It’s where our family’s name does its work in public. You’ll like it, I think. All glass and steel. Very… precise.” She hesitated. “But don’t be afraid if it feels big. You’ll have me there.”

Eva didn’t know yet if she liked the idea. She remembered buildings like that — corporate headquarters with gleaming floors and perfectly silent elevators — but in her past life, she had entered them as someone who controlled the systems, not someone who had to be carried in someone’s arms.

When the day came, the city was restless with movement. The black town car that carried them glided through traffic like a shadow, its tinted windows turning the chaos outside into a muted blur. Eva sat on Vivienne’s lap in the back seat, watching skyscrapers slide past like silent sentinels.

The foundation building was exactly as Vivienne had described — glass walls reflecting the sky, steel beams slicing upward into the clouds.

Inside, the floors shone so brightly that Eva could see her own reflection in them, distorted by the curve of her small body. People in tailored suits moved with purpose, their shoes clicking in quick rhythms that echoed across the lobby.

Her father greeted them there, not with warmth but with a nod of acknowledgment. “Evangeline,” he said, as though testing the weight of her name.

She stared at him, wondering — not for the first time — what he saw when he looked at her. Did he see his daughter? Or did he see a puzzle, a question waiting to be solved?

He led them through the lobby, past a wall - sized digital display of charitable projects and donation figures. It wasn’t futuristic — no holograms, no augmented reality — but it was still sleek, the kind of understated technology that whispered money without shouting it.

Vivienne carried her into a glass - walled conference room. From her vantage point, Eva could see the city sprawling beyond the floor - to - ceiling windows. Cars moved like tiny beads of light far below. Somewhere in that maze of streets, ordinary people were living lives she couldn’t yet touch.

Her father spoke in low tones with a group of board members, pointing at charts and photographs laid out on the table. Every so often, one of them would glance at her, as though trying to reconcile her small presence with whatever her father was saying.

“She’ll be ready,” he said at one point.

Ready for what, no one explained.

After the meeting, they returned to the car. The city moved past again, the light shifting as clouds thickened overhead. Back at the estate, Evelyn waited in the parlor, her posture perfect, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She smiled when she saw them, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“How was it?” she asked Vivienne, though her gaze flicked briefly to Eva.

“Eventful,” Vivienne replied.

That night, Eva lay in her crib, eyes open to the faint light spilling in from the hallway. She thought of the glass walls of the foundation building, the reflection of her small face on the polished floors, and the way her father’s voice had sounded when he’d said, She’ll be ready.

The silence felt heavier than usual.

She began counting again — rain this time replaced by the measured tick of the grandfather clock downstairs.

One. Two. Three.

She counted until her breathing matched the rhythm of the clock.

The house made other noises at night, too. Not the mechanical hums of her past life’s hospitals and labs, but the faint human and structural sounds of a home that had been standing for decades.

Somewhere far below, the kitchen’s refrigerator compressor cycled on with a low purr. Floorboards whispered under slow, measured footsteps in the hallway. Pipes gave the occasional muted knock as if settling after a long day.

Eva filed them all away in her mind. Even if her body was too small to move freely, her mind could still map the environment. She began to learn the estate not by sight but by sound — the exact creak of the stair at the midpoint landing, the muffled whoosh of air when a heavy door opened on the east side, the faint change in echo when someone walked past the high windows in the foyer.

Days in the nursery followed a rhythm of their own. Morning light came not in blinding sheets, but in fractured gold through the tall curtains, scattering across the pale carpet.

Nannies came and went, never the same one for more than a few weeks at a time. Some spoke too loudly, their voices bouncing off the high ceiling as if they thought infants were hard of hearing. Others barely spoke at all, only adjusting her blankets and checking their watches.

Vivienne was different. She didn’t treat Eva like a fragile piece of glass or a chore on a checklist. She noticed the way Eva’s gaze lingered on small details — the way sunlight caught the dust in the air, the way water rippled when it poured from the silver pitcher into her bottle.

She never said out loud that she noticed, but she began to linger during feedings, talking about things Eva couldn’t yet respond to but understood in her own way.

Sometimes Vivienne brought in her phone and let Eva watch as she scrolled slowly through photos. There were family gatherings she didn’t remember, people whose names meant nothing to her, and snapshots of places far beyond the estate gates. A quiet beach at dawn.

A narrow European street lined with café tables. A library with carved wooden shelves so high they vanished into shadows. Vivienne would narrate in a low voice, almost as if she were telling a bedtime story.

Afternoons were often marked by Evelyn’s visits. They were always short, never unkind, but they carried a formality that set them apart from Vivienne’s presence.

Evelyn would touch Eva’s cheek lightly, as though the contact was more for show than connection, and speak in that controlled, careful tone she used with guests. There was affection there — Eva could feel it — but it was layered under something more rigid, something that kept it from spilling over.

Her father’s appearances were rarer still. He seemed always on his way somewhere else, his presence heavy but brief, his conversations more often directed at Vivienne or Evelyn than at Eva herself. And yet, each time, there was a flicker in his expression — a look of calculation, like he was fitting her into a plan only he understood.

The outside world touched her life mostly through screens. The television in the nursery corner played news broadcasts in the mornings, voices describing markets, storms, and political changes she only half - remembered from her first life. The smartphone in Vivienne’s hand lit up with constant notifications — emails, text messages, photos sent from far - off places.

Once, when Vivienne left it unlocked on the arm of the chair, Eva caught a glimpse of an open news article about the foundation — its latest funding initiative for urban clinics. The headline spoke of innovation, efficiency, and outreach. Words she had once used in her own work.

One evening, rain returned. Heavy this time, drumming against the glass so persistently that the city’s glow beyond the estate blurred into a watercolor haze.

The sound filled every corner of the nursery, each drop hitting the window like a metronome without pause. Vivienne sat by the window with her knitting, the needles clicking softly in counterpoint to the rain.

Eva lay in her crib, eyes fixed on the shadows shifting across the ceiling. She let her mind drift — not forward, because she didn’t yet know what future this life held for her, but backward, to the cold hum of her first life’s lab after hours.

She remembered watching rain streak down reinforced glass there, too, but the sound had been swallowed by the constant drone of climate control systems. Here, the rain was loud enough to drown out her own heartbeat.

When she finally fell asleep, it was to the sound of Vivienne’s chair creaking slightly as she shifted, and the occasional muted vibration of her phone on the table.

The next morning, sunlight broke through the clouds in fractured beams. Vivienne dressed her in a pale blue sweater and carried her into the kitchen, where the smell of fresh bread drifted from the oven. A stainless steel coffee machine hissed and clicked on the counter, its small screen glowing with a timer.

Everything gleamed under the recessed lighting, and for a moment Eva thought it could have been a photograph from one of Vivienne’s travel albums — too perfect, too curated to feel entirely lived in.

Breakfast was quiet except for the sound of the coffee machine finishing its cycle and the rhythmic tap of Vivienne’s spoon against her cup. Outside the wide kitchen windows, the garden still dripped from last night’s rain. Somewhere beyond the hedges, the city carried on, unseen but ever - present.

Eva understood then that her world — for now — was contained. Walls, gates, schedules, careful visits. But she also understood something else: she was learning the patterns. And patterns, in her experience, could always be used.

That afternoon, Vivienne carried her into the sunroom, where light pooled across the marble tiles in wide, warm squares. The glass walls looked out over the garden, and for the first time since the rain, the air shimmered with brightness.

A tablet rested on the low table beside Vivienne’s chair, its screen open to a news feed. She scrolled slowly, the muted headlines catching Eva’s eye — economic updates, tech launches, a photo of the foundation’s latest mobile clinic parked in a narrow city street.

The image stayed with her. Sleek, white, with tinted windows and a small solar array unfolding like wings from its roof. She could almost imagine being inside, charting patient data, monitoring air filtration systems, checking diagnostic readouts.

Vivienne noticed where she was looking and smiled faintly. “That’s one of ours,” she said, though she didn’t elaborate. Instead, she shifted the tablet so Eva could see the pictures more clearly.

With each swipe, the screen offered a new window — remote villages receiving shipments of medical equipment, urban community centers buzzing with activity, digital dashboards tracking vaccination drives in real time. The photos were taken from above, probably by drones. Eva could see the world moving in each one, purposeful and bright, like veins carrying life through a body.

A faint chime from the tablet drew Vivienne’s attention. A new message popped up: a calendar invite. “Board presentation — fiscal review, infrastructure expansion.” Vivienne tapped it away, but Eva stored the words, tucking them alongside all the others she had been collecting. She didn’t know yet how long it would be before she could act on them, but she knew she would.

The air in the sunroom shifted with the sound of the automatic irrigation system kicking on outside. A fine mist rose over the flowerbeds, sunlight breaking it into a million glittering fragments.

The rhythmic hiss and pause of the system merged with the quiet electronic hum of the tablet in sleep mode. In her past life, she had loved moments like this — when technology and the organic world overlapped, not competing, but syncing.

Vivienne leaned back in her chair, settling Eva against her shoulder. “You’ll see more of the city soon,” she said softly. “More of what your name can do.”

Eva didn’t answer, not with words. But she felt it — the same way she had felt the measured beat of rain against the glass, the steady tick of the clock, the subtle creaks of the house at night. Patterns forming. Waiting.

Somewhere far off, sirens rose and fell, the sound carried faintly on the wind. Traffic lights would be changing, pedestrians hurrying, office doors opening and closing. All of it was part of a system, and systems could be learned.

She rested her cheek against Vivienne’s shoulder, her gaze fixed on the shimmering garden beyond the glass, and thought — not for the first time — that even in a life this small, preparation had already begun.