***Bolt!***
"Get the *hell* out of here! How dare you even suggest such a thing?!"
"…Well, to hell with it — I was already planning to leave anyway!"
The roar of Count Montagu's voice — a man who very rarely raised it — thundered down through the ceiling and rattled the chandelier crystals in the drawing room below.
Juliet set down her teacup and rose immediately, placing a gentle hand on her mother's arm before the Countess could stand.
"I'll go up and see what's happened," she said quickly, her tone light and reassuring.
She lifted the tray of freshly brewed tea and climbed the staircase, her steps unhurried despite the sharp edge of worry pressing against her ribs.
But before she could reach the top, she nearly collided with a middle-aged man storming out of the Count's study.
"Why are you yelling like that? It's just a stupid antique…" The man was muttering irritably, his brow furrowed and his gaze hot with resentment. However, the moment he noticed Juliet standing before him, his expression shifted. His eyes widened, then swept over her — slowly, deliberately — from the crown of her head to the hem of her dress.
"No — wait. Juliet, is that *you*?" A broad, appraising grin spread across his face. "I can't believe my eyes. The last time I saw you, you were so much smaller…"
The way he looked at her made something cold slither down her spine, but Juliet arranged her features into a pleasant smile without missing a beat.
"Hello, Uncle Gaspard."
---
Her father, the Earl of Montagu, was a gentle and good-natured man.
He lacked the cunning to build a fortune, but through careful stewardship and quiet frugality, he kept the family solvent — if only barely. More importantly, the Count valued his family above all else. Even when his wayward half-brother stumbled into yet another disaster, he would settle the debts and smooth over the scandal without a single word of reproach.
Gaspard had always envied him for it. Though the Count had generously granted his half-brother the title of baron — carving it from the Montagu holdings — Gaspard could never be satisfied with that alone. The title was never enough. The money was never enough. *Nothing* was ever enough.
Juliet remembered clearly what this man had done in her first life.
It was Gaspard who had orchestrated the deaths of both her parents. The world believed it was an accident — a carriage overturned on a rain-slicked road, a tragic twist of fate. But every detail of that "accident" had been carefully, deliberately arranged.
And so the very first thing Juliet did, the moment she understood she had returned to the past, was begin dismantling Baron Gaspard piece by piece.
When she awakened in her fifteen-year-old body three years ago, carrying the full weight of a dead woman's memories, her options had been painfully limited. A teenage aristocratic girl wielded no political power, commanded no resources, and drew no suspicion — which, as it turned out, was precisely the advantage she needed.
She started with what she had: information and patience.
First, she created a false identity — a paper ghost with no traceable face. Then she hired the Information Guild, feeding them enough coin to conduct a thorough investigation into Baron Gaspard's affairs, unearthing every buried crime and cataloguing every scrap of evidence.
She could not — *would not* — allow him to kill her family again.
When the dossier was sufficiently damning, Juliet arranged a "coincidence." She guided her father, gently and invisibly, toward one of Gaspard's illegal transactions. Just one thread — but it was enough. Count Montagu, honest to his marrow, tugged at it and unraveled everything.
A thorough review of his brother's dealings revealed a labyrinth of fraud: the unauthorized use of the Montagu name to secure loans, the secret sale of family properties, forged letters of credit, and a trail of swindled creditors stretching across half the empire. Witnesses surfaced — merchants, bankers, servants — each one eager to testify about the things Gaspard had done when he believed no one was watching.
The truth was devastatingly simple. When Gaspard squandered his own fortune, he survived only by parasitizing his half-brother's reputation. The aristocrats who lent him money believed they were dealing with Count Montagu — a man admired and trusted for his unwavering integrity. They never suspected the debt would vanish into Gaspard's gambling halls and pleasure houses.
At the beginning of last year, Count Montagu severed all ties with his brother and expelled him from the family.
*"I will never let you set foot in this house again!"*
Once the rumor spread that the Count had disowned his half-brother, the final lifeline snapped. No banker, no merchant, no aristocrat would extend so much as a copper coin to Baron Gaspard.
---
Juliet tilted her head and let her gaze drift pointedly over Gaspard's attire.
"Uncle, you're dressed so *handsomely* today."
"Hm? Oh — yes, well." He tugged at his lapel with a flicker of preening vanity, momentarily distracted.
*By now, every financial avenue should have been cut off. So where is the money coming from?*
His waistcoat gleamed with polished gold buttons. An ornate boutonniere bloomed at his chest — fresh hothouse flowers, not cheap silk imitations. His boots were newly oiled, his cravat pinned with what appeared to be a genuine ruby.
How could a man drowning in debt still afford to keep pace with the latest fashions? Despite everything, Gaspard seemed to believe he still had a future.
*Well then. We can proceed to the next step without the slightest remorse.*
The plan she had been cultivating called for Baron Gaspard's complete expulsion from the country. It had taken time — years of quiet, meticulous work — but her strategy had unfolded without a single misstep. Gaspard likely never once considered the possibility that someone was *behind* his cascade of misfortunes.
And he certainly would never suspect that the architect of his ruin was his own niece — the same girl who smiled sweetly at him in hallways, the same girl who had spent three patient years systematically severing every root that kept him anchored to wealth and power.
While Juliet stood there, briefly lost in calculation, Gaspard's attention drifted to the tray balanced in her hands. His eyes sharpened with a familiar, greedy glint.
"Thanks for the compliment, dear. Hmm — is that Quinn tea you're carrying?"
"Yes, that's right." Juliet shifted the tray slightly away from him. "Father is terribly fond of it."
Quinn tea was not easily obtained. Its price was so exorbitant that one might as well have been purchasing gold leaf by the ounce. Worse still, it was astonishingly rare — even with a full purse, one could not simply walk into a shop and buy it without being placed on an exclusive waiting list months in advance.
It was the single luxury permitted by the Earl of Montagu, a man who abstained from drink and had no taste for lavish entertainment. His friends, knowing how deeply he savored the tea's unusual, smoky-sweet flavor, sometimes gifted it to him on special occasions.
"Ah, I see, I see." Gaspard stretched his hand toward the tray, fingers already curling around the edge. "Well, I'm sure you won't mind if I just have a quick cup before I—"
Juliet sidestepped him with a dancer's grace, the tray gliding smoothly out of his reach.
"Oh, I wouldn't mind at all, Uncle — but I thought you were in a terrible rush? There are people from the bank waiting for you outside, aren't there?" She widened her eyes innocently. "Or was I mistaken?"
Gaspard's face drained of color. "*What?* Someone's — waiting for me?" He glanced toward the staircase, suddenly flustered. "Could you perhaps tell them that I—"
"Well then — *goodbye!*"
Juliet beamed at him, radiant and impenetrable, and swept past him as though he were nothing more than a piece of hallway furniture.
---
*Knock. Knock. Knock.*
Juliet rapped on the study door and poked her head through the gap.
"Daddy, it's me."
"Ah — Juliet!"
The Count's stormy expression dissolved the instant he saw her. The furrow between his brows smoothed, and his eyes softened with the particular warmth he reserved only for her.
"Do you mind if I come in?"
"Of course not, dear. Come, come."
Juliet set the tray on the desk between stacks of ledgers and correspondence. Count Montagu personally poured the tea — adding a careful measure of honey to each cup, the way they both preferred — and handed one to his daughter.
"So," he said, settling back into his chair. "Did you enjoy your time with the Glenfield girl?"
"Yes! We had a wonderful time."
*It was indeed a very productive visit.*
While Fatima had agonized over fabrics and hemlines, Juliet had quietly reviewed the latest dispatches from the Information Guild — reports she could never risk reading at home, where a parent's curious glance might fall upon them at any moment.
"But what happened between you and Uncle?" Juliet asked, letting just enough concern seep into her voice.
Her father's jaw tightened. "Don't trouble yourself with it, sweetheart. It's nothing for you to worry about."
Although Juliet was eighteen now — a woman grown by any legal measure — the Count remained stubbornly incapable of seeing her as anything other than his little girl. He wrapped his protectiveness around her like armor, even when she didn't need it.
Juliet recognized this and chose not to press. She was content with how things stood.
*Because all I need to do now is follow the plan.*
Gaspard might not have realized it yet, but he was already functionally bankrupt. Juliet had made certain of it, feeding carefully worded rumors through every financial channel in the country until his name was synonymous with ruin.
The lie she had told him moments ago — that bankers were waiting outside — was fiction. But it wouldn't remain fiction for long. Soon enough, the creditors would come for him in earnest, and they would not be so easy to dodge.
"The tea is wonderful," Juliet murmured, lifting the cup to her lips.
She hid her satisfied smile behind the porcelain rim.
For three years, she had worked without rest to rewrite the ending she had already lived through once. Three years of false identities, hired investigators, intercepted letters, planted evidence, and whispered rumors — an invisible war waged from a girl's writing desk.
And now she could say, with quiet confidence, that she had achieved considerable success. She was not finished — not yet — but the hardest stretch of road lay behind her.
In her first life, Juliet lost both parents at fifteen. In this life, they were alive. Healthy. *Safe.*
*All that remains is to force Baron Gaspard out of the country entirely. After that, I secure a comfortable future for my parents. I will make us wealthy — truly wealthy — so that Father never has to count coins again.*
She had several ventures already set in motion — quiet investments, carefully chosen, seeded with the knowledge only a woman who had lived an entire lifetime could possess. If even half of them bore fruit, the Count would be able to enjoy his beloved Quinn tea not once or twice a month, but *every single day*.
Count Montagu, sipping his tea with a serene expression, blissfully unaware of the vast machinery turning inside his daughter's mind, set down his cup and looked at her with sudden purpose.
"Darling, would you come here for a moment?"
Juliet placed her cup on the saucer and crossed to his side of the desk.
The Count reached for a hand-carved mahogany box that had occupied the same corner of his desk for as long as she could remember. He lifted the lid and held it out to her.
Inside, resting on a bed of faded velvet, lay a small silver key.
It was delicate — no longer than her index finger — with an antique design etched along its shaft in patterns too fine to read without a magnifying glass. A gemstone of deep, luminous blue was set into the bow, catching the lamplight and holding it like a captive star. The key was beautiful, undeniably so, but it did not look particularly *valuable* — at least, not in the way most people measured worth.
*So this is the "antique" Gaspard was talking about.*
Juliet understood immediately. This key was the family heirloom her uncle had tried to convince her father to sell.
"Juliet," the Count said, his voice taking on a weight she rarely heard from him. "You know what role our family has played in history?"
"Yes, Father. I know."
***Montagu — Guardian.***
The name had been bestowed upon their family three hundred years ago.
Ernst, the first Emperor — the man who forged the empire from a fractured continent — had given them not only the title but also the very mansion in which they lived to this day. A gift from the founder himself, preserved across centuries.
But Juliet had always found it strange.
When she traced her family tree — branch by branch, generation by generation — she discovered that none of her ancestors had ever been warriors. Not a single swordsman, knight, or soldier among them. They were scholars, diplomats, archivists. People of ink and parchment, not iron and blood.
*Guardian.* Wasn't that a name better suited to a family renowned for its blades? For protectors who stood between danger and the thing they shielded?
And then there was the heirloom itself.
Other noble families passed down rings engraved with house sigils, suits of ancestral armor, legendary swords with names older than the cities they defended. Grand things. *Powerful* things.
But the Montagu heirloom was a key.
*Just a key.*
*A key to what?*
It wasn't practical. It wasn't imposing. And yet it had been guarded — that word again — for three centuries without fail.
The Count gazed at the key for a long, quiet moment, then looked up at his daughter.
"I'm giving it to you."
Juliet's eyes widened. "Truly?"
"Yes. I originally intended to present it to you on your fourteenth birthday. However…"
His expression darkened, the lines of his face hardening with displeasure. He didn't finish the sentence, but Juliet understood. The memory of his half-brother's audacity — daring to suggest they *sell* a relic entrusted to their bloodline for three hundred years — still sat like a splinter beneath his skin.
"I hope you'll accept it now."
He placed the key gently into Juliet's open palm.
It was lighter than she expected — far too light for its size, as though it were made of something other than silver entirely. The blue gemstone pulsed faintly with trapped light, cool against her skin. A long leather cord was threaded through the bow, meant to be worn as a pendant, though even with the strap, it would hang awkwardly — too delicate for jewelry, too ornamental for a tool.
*What are you?* Juliet wondered, turning it slowly between her fingers.
She smiled — warm and genuine — and closed her hand around the key.
"Thank you, Father. I'll treasure it always."
The Count's face softened, and he reached out to pat her head the way he had when she was small.
Juliet looked down at the key once more, her mind already turning.
*And this is what Gaspard called an "antique"? What did he want with it? Sell it to some collector for a few coins to delay the inevitable?*
She almost pitied him.
*Almost.*