*"...Lennox, please stop."*
*A woman with long, disheveled hair lay crumpled on an icy stone floor, weeping.*
*The blue butterflies that had once surrounded her were crumbling — dissolving into fragments that drifted down like ash, settling on the cold ground as fine, glittering dust.*
*One butterfly remained. It flickered weakly in the shadows, its wings barely moving, as though fighting to exist for just a moment longer.*
*The woman with light brown hair lay at the man's feet and begged.*
*It was a pitiful scene. Wretched. Humiliating beyond measure.*
*And yet the man looked down at her with eyes as cold and empty as a winter sky.*
*No matter how much she had given — no matter how desperately she had tried to reach him — she had never touched his heart. Not once.*
*"...I'm sorry. I won't bother you anymore."*
*I wanted to stay with you. Even knowing you would never love me.*
*From the very beginning, you told me not to expect anything. You warned me. And still — still I became obsessed.*
*I couldn't stop myself.*
*Perhaps, deep down, I had convinced myself I was special. That I meant something to you. After all, you had never allowed anyone else to remain at your side for so long.*
*Only me.*
*I told myself that if I waited — if I was patient and devoted and asked for nothing — one day you would give me even the smallest piece of your heart.*
*I believed that. I endured because of it.*
*But all my foolish hopes shattered in an instant.*
*"...I will never speak of her again. I won't even say her name — I swear it—"*
*I had accepted everything. The silence. The coldness. The way you never smiled, never spoke a tender word.*
*Because you treated everyone that way. It wasn't cruelty — it was simply who you were.*
*But then she appeared.*
*And my world became unbearable.*
*She was the exception. The only one. For her — and her alone — this ruthless man softened. He smiled. He spoke gently. He looked at her as though she were the sun itself.*
*Only then did I understand.*
*The place beside you had never been mine. It had always been empty — held in reserve, waiting for the day she would return to fill it.*
*Everything I had believed was a lie.*
*But by the time I realized it, I had already lost myself completely.*
*"Lennox, please — our child—"*
*"Juliet Montagu."*
*His voice cut through her words like a blade, silencing her mid-sentence. He reached down and lifted her chin with cold fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze.*
*She looked up at him — desperate, tears streaming down her face, clinging to one final, fragile hope.*
*All she saw were red eyes. Empty. Unmoved.*
*"I warned you not to expect anything."*
*In the end, I would have given up everything — my pride, my dignity, my very self — if only he had let me keep the child. If only he had let me walk away with that one small mercy.*
*But all I received was a cold, contemptuous smirk.*
*"I don't believe I was difficult to understand. So tell me — when exactly did you decide there was a 'we'?"*
---
Juliet's eyes flew open.
Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes, soaking into the pillow beneath her head.
*Thud-thud. Thud-thud.*
The steady vibration of the train. The gentle sway of the carriage. Daylight streaming through the window, painting pale lines across the low ceiling of a small, unfamiliar room.
A single bed. A narrow compartment. The present — not the past.
*A dream.*
Juliet lay motionless, letting reality reassemble itself around her piece by piece.
*"I don't believe I was difficult to understand."*
His voice still echoed in her skull — cold and precise, each syllable a needle sliding beneath her skin.
"No," she whispered aloud, as though the sound of her own voice could banish the phantom. "That's not true."
She forced her lips to form the words.
"I escaped."
*Yes.* She was no longer with him. That scene — that humiliation — existed only in memory. A nightmare from another life, one that would never repeat itself in this reality.
"It was just a dream."
She had suffered this same nightmare many times before. By now, she had almost grown accustomed to it.
*Almost.*
"I'll be fine."
Her trembling fingers found the necklace at her throat — the familiar weight of small, cool pearls against her collarbone. She traced them slowly, one by one, letting the smooth, cold surface anchor her to the present.
It was not truly a necklace. It was a rosary — a string of tiny pearls meant for prayer, delicate and understated. But where a cross would normally hang, there was instead a small silver key.
The pearls themselves were not valuable. They were too small, too modest to attract attention or envy. But to Juliet, this simple strand was more precious than any jewel in the empire.
It had been her mother's.
Her fingertips found the clasp and lingered there. She didn't need to look at it — she had memorized every curve of the tiny letters engraved on the inner surface long ago.
*Lilian Seneca.*
Lilian had been her mother's name. But her mother had been Lilian *Mayfair* — that was the family name Juliet had always known.
So where had *Seneca* come from?
The question had haunted her for years, and she had never found an answer. The truth was, Juliet knew almost nothing about her mother's past.
*I should have asked her more.*
The fragments she possessed were few and scattered. Her mother had come from the East. She had been of low birth — a commoner, perhaps, or the daughter of some minor household. But she had been extraordinarily beautiful, and Juliet's father had fallen in love with her at first sight.
He had courted her with relentless devotion. Eventually, she had accepted his proposal.
That was the story Juliet had grown up hearing. A love story, simple and romantic.
But beyond that — nothing. No mention of family. No stories of childhood. No relatives who ever visited or wrote letters. Juliet had been told her mother's people were all dead, that she had been orphaned young.
Perhaps that was true. Or perhaps there was more — secrets buried so deep that even her father had not known them.
*This is why I'm going East.*
Her mother was buried in the imperial cemetery reserved for nobility, but Juliet had searched the empire's registry of noble families and found no record of anyone named Seneca.
Which meant one of two things: either her mother had never belonged to the aristocracy at all, or she had belonged to a family so obscure, so far removed from the capital's glittering society, that no one in the West had ever heard of them.
The latter possibility was more likely than it might seem. The capital was in the West, and Western nobles regarded everyone outside their circles with casual contempt. A minor noble family from the distant East might as well not exist.
And if her mother *had* been a commoner — well. It was not unheard of for people of low birth to purchase pedigrees from impoverished aristocratic families. A convenient fiction that smoothed the way for marriages that might otherwise be deemed unsuitable.
Juliet had questioned everyone she could think of. Her mother's friends — but they had only become close *after* Lilian became Countess Montagu, and knew nothing of her life before. The servants who had worked in the mansion for decades — but they claimed ignorance as well.
Every path led nowhere.
In the end, Juliet had been forced to accept that no one in the capital knew the name Lilian Seneca.
*But perhaps someone in the East will.*
With that thought, she finally pushed herself upright and swung her legs over the edge of the narrow bed.
The compartment came into focus around her — small and cozy, designed for a single traveler. Through the large window, the landscape rushed past in a blur of green and gold, fields and forests streaming by like watercolors left in the rain.
She watched for a moment, letting the motion soothe her.
Then she turned away and began to make the bed.
***Knock-knock.***
"Are you awake, ma'am? Good morning!"
Juliet opened the compartment door to find a young woman in a conductor's uniform, a fresh towel draped over her arm. She looked a few years younger than Juliet — bright-eyed and cheerful, practically bouncing on her heels.
"We have hot water ready if you'd like tea! And I can bring breakfast whenever you're hungry!"
Juliet offered a small nod.
"Thank you. Breakfast would be welcome."
While waiting for the meal to arrive, she retrieved her suitcase and began to dress.
As she changed, she deliberately turned her thoughts toward lighter things. She needed to shake off the residue of the nightmare — the cold dread that still clung to her skin like morning frost.
*Think of something good. Something new.*
This was her first time sleeping on a train. Her first time traveling like this at all — alone, anonymous, answerable to no one.
She glanced at the window again, watching the world blur past.
For an unmarried woman of her age to travel without even a maid was unusual — improper, by the standards of polite society. The kind of thing that invited whispered speculation.
To avoid such attention, Juliet had rented a private compartment and invented a simple story: she was traveling to visit her husband, who worked in the East.
On the train's passenger manifest, her name was listed as *Lilian Seneca*.
Her mother's name. Her mother's mystery.
The choice served two purposes. It concealed her true identity — and if fortune favored her, it might draw out someone in the East who recognized it.
According to the fiction Juliet had constructed, Mrs. Seneca was a respectable young wife in the third year of her marriage. Her husband's work kept them apart for long stretches, which was why they had not yet had children — but they loved each other dearly.
Mrs. Seneca had been raised in a conservative household and preferred modest, dark-colored dresses that covered her properly. Nothing ostentatious. Nothing that might attract unwanted attention.
Although — if one looked closely — the black dress she wore was actually quite fine. The lace was delicate and expensive, the tailoring impeccable.
For this, too, Juliet had prepared an explanation. Mrs. Seneca's family had owned a fabric shop for generations. It was only natural that she would have access to quality materials beyond what her station might otherwise suggest.
Juliet rather liked this invented woman. She felt comfortable wearing her.
She styled her hair simply — neat and unassuming — and secured a black veil over it. The effect was complete: a respectable merchant's wife, unremarkable in every way.
If anyone from her old life were to see her now, they would walk past without a second glance.
And if, by some misfortune, someone *did* recognize her — well. Mrs. Seneca would simply deny everything with polite confusion.
*I'm sorry, you must have me mistaken for someone else.*
Juliet adjusted the veil in the small mirror mounted on the wall, checking that it fell properly.
Her gaze drifted down — and caught on the small suitcase resting beside her bed.
She stilled.
*Oh.*
*I thought I left all of that behind.*
A slow sigh escaped her parted lips.