"…Juliet Montague!"
Princess Priscilla's voice cracked through the temple like a whip. Her face had turned a vivid, blotchy scarlet — the unmistakable color of humiliation.
"H-how *dare* you speak to me with such arrogance! Do you truly believe the Duke of Carlisle is so attached to you that he'll turn a blind eye to this — this *impudence*?"
"Yes."
"Wh— *what* did you say?"
"Yes, that's exactly right." Juliet's smile was charming — warm, even — but her eyes held nothing of the sort. "I believe the Duke will overlook this entirely. So I intend to act as I see fit."
Priscilla stared at her, stunned into momentary silence. In all her years of tormenting the Duke's mistresses, not a single one had ever answered her like this. Not once had she been humiliated so thoroughly — and so *publicly*.
"Juliet Montague!" The princess's voice climbed higher, trembling at its edges. "Even if you have no regard for anyone's favor, there are still lines you do not *cross* —"
Juliet regarded her with the same placid expression she had worn throughout. Not a single flicker of emotion disturbed her features — no anger, no triumph, no guilt.
"I'm afraid I don't understand, Princess. I simply responded to your kindness in kind."
"You — how *dare* —"
Priscilla's glare could have scorched stone. She knew her own trick had been turned against her, knew the crowd had witnessed every moment of it. But knowing and *accepting* were very different things.
"…You will pay for this," she hissed through clenched teeth.
It was not a threat born of confidence. It was the retreat of someone who understood, however reluctantly, that she had lost.
Priscilla turned on her heel and swept toward the exit, her retinue scrambling after her in a flurry of rustling skirts and panicked whispers.
"P-Princess! Please wait —"
Juliet watched their retreating backs with perfect composure, her hands folded loosely at her sides.
The reason for Priscilla's easy defeat was simple.
Every one of the Duke's previous mistresses had been low-born and ignorant of social warfare. Intimidated by the princess's status, they had only two options: run back to the Duke and beg for protection, or swallow the humiliation in silence for fear of losing his favor.
Neither applied to Juliet.
*I half expected her to grab me by the hair,* she mused. *If she had, I would have returned the courtesy. But it ended more peacefully than I anticipated.*
Juliet let her gaze drift across the remaining spectators. Every pair of eyes that met hers darted away immediately, as though caught doing something shameful.
She cleared her throat — a soft, deliberate sound.
*Ahem.*
The crowd dispersed like startled pigeons.
Juliet allowed herself a broad, private smile as she watched them scatter. The truth was straightforward: people could mock and ridicule the Duke's mistresses freely because Lennox Carlisle was utterly indifferent to whatever happened to them. But that indifference cut both ways. It also meant Juliet could behave however she pleased in public, and the Duke would not so much as blink.
And no one — absolutely *no one* — wanted to make an enemy of the Duke of Carlisle. Not unless they were profoundly stupid.
As it turned out, such a person was found almost immediately.
---
It happened as Juliet was leaving the temple.
A hand shot out from the corridor and seized her wrist — hard, sudden, bruising in its grip.
"I've heard that the Duke of Carlisle has vulgar taste." The voice was low and sneering, too close to her ear. "Looking at you now, I finally understand what people meant."
Juliet tried to pull free, but his fingers only tightened. She stopped struggling and fixed him with a cold, level stare.
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to, Count Kasper."
Princess Priscilla's fiancé stood before her, his expression twisted into something between contempt and amusement. He was taller than she'd realized — tall enough to loom — and he used the advantage shamelessly.
"Ha! Perhaps you'd like to invent some excuse?" He leaned closer, close enough that she could smell the pomade in his hair. "Don't bother. I've already heard *everything*."
*What is he talking about?*
The corridor was quieter than the main temple — fewer witnesses, more shadows. Kasper glanced at the handful of people nearby and lowered his voice to a whisper.
"Tell me — what secret little *trick* do you use?"
Juliet's surprise was genuine. She had heard vague whispers about accusations of heresy before, but never spoken so directly.
"There is no secret," she said quietly, exhaling through her composure.
She already knew where this was going. She had heard this particular breed of rumor before.
"You lured the Duke into some kind of trap, didn't you?" His eyes narrowed. "Dark magic. That's what they say."
*Black magic.* Juliet's jaw tightened. The feeling of his thumb tracing slow circles against the inside of her wrist made her skin crawl.
"Or perhaps it isn't sorcery at all." His gaze dropped, crawling over her body with undisguised appetite. "Perhaps it's something more… *physical*. A skillful use of another part of his anatomy?"
The desire clouding Count Kasper's eyes was as obvious as it was repulsive.
Juliet was not surprised. This had happened before — several times, in fact, during her years in the north. The earlier incidents had been far worse than this. There had been men who looked at her with the same naked hunger, emboldened by the assumption that a mistress was merely a possession anyone might try to claim.
*But what happened to those men in the end?*
The thought surfaced unbidden, and Juliet found herself studying the Count with renewed curiosity. Now that she considered it, she couldn't recall a single man who had dared approach her ever appearing again afterward.
*Strange.*
"You think you're a real duchess, don't you?"
While her mind wandered, Kasper seemed to mistake her silence for fear. He grew bolder, pressing closer, his grip shifting possessively on her wrist.
"You probably understand what I'm telling you. Lennox Carlisle isn't exactly a *decent* man. The moment he changes his mind, you're finished. You know that — *right?*"
"Ah." Juliet raised her chin. "So you've finally shown your true intentions."
Her voice was light, almost conversational — the tone of someone who had grown bored with a riddle and found the answer disappointingly obvious.
"Are you asking whether I ever believed I would become the Duke's wife?"
The very idea struck her as absurd. She could understand Priscilla's motivations more easily — the princess's desires, at least, were transparent. Simple. She wanted what she couldn't have, and she punished anyone who stood in her way.
But people like Priscilla — people who wanted to humiliate Juliet — were never driven by personal hatred. They didn't know her well enough for that. They feared and despised Lennox Carlisle but lacked the courage to confront him directly, so they turned their frustrations on an easier target.
*The Duke is terrifying. So torment the helpless woman beside him instead.*
*Cowards. Every last one of them.*
Juliet had laughed at them for years — silently, privately, with a bitterness she never let touch her face.
This count, it seemed, was no different. Merely louder.
"And what will you do?" Kasper's lip curled. "Run crying to the Duke? *Hm?*"
He said it with the smug confidence of someone who already knew the answer.
Juliet looked at him steadily for a long moment. Then she tilted her head.
"Tell me, Count — are you *jealous*?"
"…What are you talking about?"
"Oh, I am sorry." She pressed a hand to her chest in mock sympathy. "As far as I'm aware, His Highness the Duke has no interest in people of his own sex."
"What do you—"
"But if you're truly counting on something," Juliet let her eyes travel slowly from his shoes to the top of his head, her expression one of polite assessment, "you'll need to put in *considerably* more effort."
For a beat, Count Kasper simply blinked — his mouth half open, his mind visibly struggling to catch up with her words. Then comprehension struck, and the color flooded his face like a tide of crimson.
"You — you *insane* —"
His hand rose. Fast, vicious, aimed squarely at her cheek.
Those watching from a distance saw only this: Count Kasper raising his hand against Juliet Montague with unmistakable violence.
What they did *not* notice — what almost no one noticed — was the small blue butterfly drifting lazily through the corridor air, its wings catching the candlelight like scraps of sapphire silk.
It was such a delicate, unremarkable thing. Who would look at a butterfly when a man was about to strike a woman?
And then —
***CRACK.***
Count Kasper hit the floor.
The sound of his body striking marble echoed through the corridor. People froze mid-step, mid-breath, staring at the scene with uncomprehending eyes.
The first to approach was Juliet herself — the person standing closest to him.
"Oh — *Count?*" she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
In that moment, she looked like the most vulnerable, most innocent creature in the world. Everyone present could see clearly that she hadn't touched him. She hadn't moved at all.
Count Kasper had simply… *fallen*.
"My goodness — are you alright?" Juliet extended a gentle hand toward him, her brow creased with concern.
From the outside, it looked like an act of pure kindness.
It was not.
"*AAAGH—!*"
Kasper scrambled backward on his hands and knees, his face contorted in raw, animal terror. His eyes were wild — the whites showing, his pupils dilated to black coins. He looked at Juliet as though she were something that had crawled out of a nightmare.
Juliet followed him with calm, measured steps, maintaining the appearance of someone trying to help a fallen man to his feet. When she reached him, she crouched, seized him by the lapels of his coat, and leaned close.
"Count Kasper," her red lips murmured against his ear — so softly that the onlookers heard nothing at all. "Shut your mouth and *listen*. If I were you, I would be *very* careful about what I said next."
Her heel pressed down — slowly, precisely — onto the back of his right hand. He didn't even notice. He was shaking too violently.
Because the Count did not understand what had happened to him.
One moment, he had been about to teach this insolent woman a lesson. The next, a blue butterfly had appeared from nowhere and brushed its wings against his forehead — the lightest touch, gentle as a kiss.
And then he had *seen* it.
The most terrible, most enormous creature his mind could conjure had materialized inside his skull — not outside, not in the corridor, but *behind his eyes* — filling every corner of his consciousness with a horror so absolute that his legs had simply ceased to function.
He couldn't speak. Minutes had passed since she had ordered him to be silent, and his jaw still refused to obey him. His teeth chattered against each other like dice in a cup.
Juliet studied the trembling man beneath her and smiled — a cold, thin smile, stripped of every pretense of warmth.
"This time, I'll let it go. You understand that, don't you?"
She paused, letting the silence press down on him.
"But if you ever run into that *crazy bitch* again and decide to upset her…"
Juliet leaned closer still — close enough that her lips nearly brushed his ear.
"…you might find yourself becoming the sort of man who leaps from a rooftop in the middle of the night. Performing one last ***magic trick***."