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For all that Augatha may have retired her sword, like every Crownguard, she had given her youth in the service to the Crown and the habits learned whilst campaigning have never faded from her memory. Much the same can be said for her husband, whose instincts remain sharper still owing to the fact he still oversees the border defences.
As such, the sudden lurch in both their hearts feed into each other when their daughter's piercing scream cuts through the calm of night at the Crownguard estate.
They both wake immediately, no trace of sleep left in their minds. They both grasp the swords laying wayside of their sides of the bed. They both need only a shared look to agree on a course of action - there's only one choice to make.
A guard meets them half-way to Luxanna's room.
"It's her soulmate, we think," he informs the pair following his assurance their daughter is in no danger.
The words settle the tightness in Augatha's chest, if only a little. That Luxanna is not hurt doesn't mean she's not hurting.
Once they arrive in her room, it's to the sight of their daughter curled up on the bed, holding her right arm tight to her chest, and a pained grimace twisting her face in the dim light cast by the bedside oil lamp.
"Luxanna," Augatha calls out as she sits at the bed's edge, but receives no answer. "Luxanna," she calls again, this time taking the girl's hand in her own, startling her out of the depths of her bond. "It's alright. We're here. It's alright."
Only it isn't.
Both Augatha and Pieter can tell. It's in the way their girl's skin slowly pales ashen. It's in the way her features grow vacant, not relaxed, as the pain fades. It's in the shivers violently wracking her body as the cold seeps into her bones which no amount of blankets can fight. It's in their daughter's shallow breaths. It's in the tears and snot running down her face. It's in the silence they receive for all their comforting lies.
Luxanna's soulmate is dying, and it's all Augatha can do to hold her little girl's hand as she's made acquaintance with death.
Only she isn't.
The worst comes once the tears stop. Once the silence of broken dreams and future dashed settles over the Crownguard manor. Once enough time has passed that all the staff not yet asleep or newly awoken start whispering between themselves; Young mistress' soulmate has died.
It's an unworthy thought, Augatha knows, but she finds herself wishing that were the case once the screaming starts.
The woman is no stranger to pain. To death and dying. To the curses and vulgarity of battle, and all the abhorrence that is the cost of glory.
Never has she heard screams like those from her daughter that night.
It starts without warning. Luxanna has long exhausted herself crying, and appears ready to soon drift off into sleep when a breath catches in her throat, alerting the Crownguard elders.
"Lux?" Augatha prods.
The girl looks at her with panic in her eyes, wide-awake once more, but whatever words she means to give are caught in her throat as a choked cry overtakes them. The hand in Augatha's own tightens its grab well beyond the point of pain, as Luxanna's whole body at once goes taut
"Hold her down!" Pieter, ever the quick thinker, shouts, himself already pinning their girl down with too-little success for being more than thrice her size.
It takes both of them, along with the two guards waiting at the door, to keep Luxanna's thrashing contained. It takes another two servants to force something in-between her teeth lest she bite her tongue off, and then a doctor to treat their almost bitten-through fingers. It takes yet more guards then, to change the exhausted group as minutes pass with no sign of Luxanna's frenzied struggle weakening.
The inhuman quality of her screams becomes only marginally less haunting with the gag muffling the sound, and no less animalistic at all. Augatha has heard similar before - the sounds men make as flames peel skin from their flesh - but never for so long, never beyond the point one can simply no longer scream.
What is happening now is very clearly designed to not let one escape the pain.
By what measures, Augatha makes every effort not to imagine so as not to picture her daughter strung out on the torturer's rack. It's no easy task, not with her daughter's wretched sobs searing themselves into her memory, never to be forgotten.
She restlessly paces the length of the room, unable, unlike her husband, to remain seated and simply watch four grown men tire themselves out just to hold Luxanna down, yet also unwilling to leave the room while her flesh and blood suffers. She's never known helplessness like this before, but what is there to be done but wait for the night to run its course?
Eventually, finally, their daughter's struggles die down. Some, at first, and eventually into nothing, leaving only Luxanna's labored breathing in the silence that follows. The guards warily let go of her bruised limbs, then retreat a few steps, ready to restrain their young mistress again should the need arise.
Augatha approaches the bed with heart stuck in her throat. Luxanna's peace can only mean one thing after… that. She rests on her knees, face level and inches apart from her girl's, brushing sweat-drenched hair from her brow, to no reaction.
"Luxanna? Dearest, can you hear me?" Augatha gently strokes her daughter's temple with her thumb, failing again to receive any response. She exchanges worried glances with Pieter.
"Get the doctor in here," her husband instructs one of the guards.
It's a short wait, the man had long finished dressing the servants' hands.
"She's just exhausted," the doctor announces following a few minutes of checking Luxanna over. "Her body went beyond its limits. It happens when… well," he trails off helplessly. "The pain is there, but the body is whole and won't shut down like it should."
None of the Crownguards leave their youngest's room that night.
Luxanna doesn't come to the following day, or the one after, and though neither Pieter nor Augatha can spend their every moment with her, they make sure at least one of them is always nearby so that when she wakes, her family will be there. They also send for Garen to come as soon as duty allows. It's one thing to stand defiant and proud in the face of adversity. It's another to lose one's soulmate in a fashion so horrible as what their girl was made to endure.
At least, that is what all of High Silvermere is led to believe until the third day, when the youngest Crownguard finally wakes.
"Mother?"
The pen drops from Augatha's fingers as she shoots up from the desk she's had brought into the room, and rushes to Luxanna's side.
"I'm here. Are you alright?"
Luxanna is not alright. It'll take a few days more until her body is completely recouped from exerting strength it did not have. Until every little movement ceases to hurt. Even then, her daughter remains subdued and prone to spacing out, as if listening for something only she can hear. Or rather, that only she can feel. All this only to lapse into melancholy as whatever she's hoping for fails to come.
She's not alright. But she's getting better. One day at a time.
As such, it's cause for alarm when one day, Augatha is approached by a rather panicked servant with news of her daughter having an episode in the gardens.
"She's alive." Luxanna laughs once her mother finds her, laughs through the snot and tears, laughs like there isn't a thing to worry about in the world. She laughs without a care.
It's unworthy, but Augatha's stomach twists on itself at the words.