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*A few days earlier, at Count Dmitri's estate...*
*Crash!*
A sharp, violent sound rang through the Countess's drawing room — followed, inevitably, by screaming.
"I absolutely *cannot* stand this!"
For the past week, the servants of the Dmitri household had felt as though they were picking their way through a field of broken glass. Whether Camilla had resigned her position as the Grand Duchess's lady-in-waiting or been unceremoniously dismissed — she refused to say — what was certain was that since that day, she had been completely and spectacularly unhinged. She would be sitting perfectly still one moment, and then, without warning, fury would overtake her and she would tear through the room like a storm.
"After everything I did to help her find her footing in Northern society — and now she throws me away like *this?*"
The Twins Grand Duchy held the closest ties to the imperial family of any house in the North. In practical terms, that made it the single best source of intelligence regarding the imperial family's movements and the highly lucrative demon-material futures market. Camilla had exploited her position as the Grand Duchess's lady-in-waiting to quietly gather that intelligence — and had used it to devastating effect. While Rebecca hosted dinners and endured the cold, Camilla had toured the provincial futures exchanges with her lover, Henry, and turned a very comfortable profit.
*I was going to make my fortune, divorce my husband, and remarry Henry on my own terms...*
Every piece of that plan had collapsed because Rebecca had decided to grow a spine.
*And she had the audacity to humiliate me — me! — in front of a lowly half-blood servant!*
The rage crested again. Camilla seized the nearest vase and hurled it at the door.
*Crash!*
It shattered spectacularly. The elderly butler, who happened to be approaching from the other side at precisely that moment, stopped dead in his tracks.
"My lady..."
"What?! *What?!*"
He approached with the caution of a man navigating live artillery.
"The confirmed invitations for the banquet you are hosting — they have been prepared for your review."
A *confirmed invitation* was the second notice sent a week before a banquet — a formal reminder of the engagement to all confirmed guests.
Camilla snatched the bundle from him without ceremony. At the top of the stack, naturally, was the invitation addressed to Rebecca, Grand Duchess of the Twins.
"The Grand Duchess's confirmed invitation..." She paused. "Should we simply... not send it?"
Declining to send an invitation to the most powerful family in the North was, objectively speaking, an act of social self-destruction. The butler knew this. He had said it gently, and he would come to regret it.
"What an *idiotic* suggestion!" Camilla rounded on him. "Society is already buzzing about my departure from the Grand Duchess's service! Do you want to throw kindling on the fire?!"
The bundle of invitations went flying across the room. The butler bent to retrieve them with the quiet dignity of a man who had survived worse.
"Make absolutely certain the Grand Duchess receives her invitation. This banquet is my chance to put an end to every last one of those rumors — so don't you dare bungle it!"
She glared at him until he retreated, then collapsed into her chair with a long, shuddering exhale. She pressed her fingers against her throbbing temples and let the silence settle.
Gradually, as the anger thinned, something sharper and more useful rose to take its place.
*Right. I don't need to drag Rebecca through the mud myself. That's what her useless husband is for.*
Cedric Twins despised his wife — everyone knew it. And a man who despised his wife could be steered, with the right amount of finesse, toward any number of convenient destinations.
The corner of Camilla's mouth curved slowly upward.
"Just wait, Your Highness. I will collect every last drop of what you owe me at that banquet."
---
Camilla's invitation was, I had to admit, something of a surprise. After what had passed between us, I would not have predicted she'd have the nerve.
But aristocratic society runs on its own particular logic, and I could follow her reasoning well enough.
*If she didn't invite me, the gossip would swallow her whole. And somewhere underneath all of that spite, she genuinely wants to reset the board.*
I could respect the calculation, even if I had no intention of making it easy for her.
And before I had fully made up my mind about what to do with any of it, the day of the banquet arrived.
---
The Dark Mansion had been in a cheerful state of chaos since morning — because Bianca had decided, with great conviction, that she would be getting ready for the banquet at my side.
By early evening, I was dressed and waiting in the drawing room, and had been for approximately an hour.
When the dressing room door finally opened, out came Bianca.
"Your Highness!"
She smiled as brightly as a lamp being lit and ran straight into my arms. She wore a light green pannier dress with soft cascades of lace, her hair neatly braided and tied with a green ribbon. She looked precisely like a painting of Tinkerbell, and I told her so.
"Our Bianca — you're always lovely, but especially so today."
She buried her face against my shoulder, shy and pleased.
"Hehe — I could never compare to Your Highness!"
I was still looking at her with what I can only describe as an embarrassingly fond expression when I noticed one of her hairpins had come loose and was hanging precariously from her braid.
"Hm? I think one of your hairpins isn't fastened properly, Bianca."
The nanny at her side immediately leaned in to check.
"Oh, you're right! Princess, shall we pop back to the dressing room for just a moment?"
I watched Bianca trot cheerfully back through the door, her small hand in her nanny's, and felt something very soft and content settle in my chest.
"Your Highness." Mina's voice came from nearby, warm with admiration. "You truly look stunning today."
"Hm?"
Several of the other maids nodded with entirely unprompted enthusiasm.
"She's right! Absolutely stunning!"
"I thought so too the moment I saw you, Your Highness!"
I turned toward the large mirror set against the wall and looked at myself properly for the first time that evening. The subtle adjustments to the makeup — a slightly lifted tone, a warmer blush — had given my complexion a luminous, almost pearlescent quality. The Indian pink satin dress was rich and full, lifted by the pannier skirt beneath it. Flowers and feathers adorned my bouffant hair. White gloves, a folded fan. I looked, objectively speaking, like exactly the kind of woman who could walk into a banquet and own it.
"Ha." An embarrassed laugh escaped before I could stop it. "I suppose so."
"Indeed."
A warm, low voice from behind me.
I turned.
Adrian stood near the doorway, smiling gently at me as though he had been there for a moment already and had simply been waiting to be noticed. He was dressed in a pure white ballgown suit that complemented his honey-blond hair beautifully, with a soft cravat in pale blue-violet — formal, but with that particular artistic ease that was entirely, unmistakably *him.*
"Adrian — you're here already?"
Then I remembered. *He was invited to the banquet as a member of the Monter family, of course.*
He stood still for a beat, looking at me with an expression I couldn't quite name — something thoughtful and appreciative, like a painter regarding a finished work. Then he crossed the room, lowered himself smoothly to one knee before me, and looked up.
"The undisputed star of tonight's banquet..." He smiled. "Without question."
He pressed his lips gently to the back of my gloved hand.
A wave of soft exclamations rippled through the room. I glanced around to find every maid present — Mina very much included — staring at Adrian with the glazed expressions of people who had briefly left their bodies.
I found I could not blame them in the slightest.
*I've always known Adrian was handsome, but...*
*Was he always* this *much?*
I was still processing that thought, looking down at the curve of his smile, when —
*Knock. Knock.*
Two slow, unhurried knocks cut through the room.
I raised my head.
Someone was leaning in the doorway with his arms folded, watching.
Cedric.
*How long has he been standing there?*
He was dressed in a black ballgown suit — and somehow, impossibly, he managed to look more refined than he usually did. The sharp bridge of his nose, the faint color in his lips, the clean angle of his jaw. His long, half-lidded eyes carried that particular quality of his — the one that was hard to look away from without feeling as though you'd lost some small contest.
Everything was exactly as it always was. And yet something felt subtly, distinctly different.
He was looking at me.
I found myself withdrawing my hand from Adrian's before I had consciously decided to.
I crossed toward Cedric slowly.
"Cedric — what brings you here at this hour? Have you come to collect Bianca?"
We still had roughly thirty minutes before we were due to meet at the front of the mansion. I asked with a puzzled look. Cedric held my gaze for a moment without answering.
Then his lips parted.
"No." A pause. "I came to get you."
A quiet, low voice that seemed to settle into the air around it.
I looked up at him.
His expression was steady. Completely, unhurriedly steady — the kind that does not shift because it has no reason to.
Almost against my will, my eyes moved — the line of his nose, the faint color of his lips, the clean edge of his jaw. Down to the back of my gloved hand, where Adrian's lips had rested only a minute ago.
Cedric's gaze had landed there too. It stayed for a moment.
"Actually — take those off."
His large hand closed gently around mine, turning it over. My wrist, pale against his grip, blue veins faintly tracing beneath the skin. He looked at it with a quiet sort of attention.
"They don't suit you."
Then his fingers began to move — slowly, deliberately — tracing the inside of my wrist. The cool, careful pressure of it sent something subtle and electric up my arm.
I swallowed without meaning to.
His fingers slid along my wrist and, with a practiced ease that seemed almost offhand, worked the glove free.
The air against my newly bare skin felt cool. Cedric's gaze settled on it. My heartbeat, quite without my permission, began to climb.
*Why is it suddenly so warm in here...*
His hand was still holding my wrist — lightly, but warm. Far warmer than the sensation it was causing, which had nothing to do with temperature at all.
I turned my head away for reasons I chose not to examine.
"Your Highness!"
Bianca came flying back through the door, hairpin properly secured, smile enormous. She spotted Cedric immediately and launched herself at him. He caught her easily with one arm and lifted her up.
I stepped back.
"Did you come to walk Your Highness and me to the banquet?"
"That's right."
"Well? Isn't she beautiful?" Bianca demanded, turning to point at me with tremendous authority for someone her size. "Look at her, Your Highness the Grand Duke — isn't she *so* beautiful?"
"Bianca, you don't have to —"
But Cedric was already looking at me.
I glanced away and spoke before he could.
"You don't need to say anything just for Bianca's sake."
*He's been playing the devoted husband very convincingly lately, but I know better than to take it seriously.*
I braced for the predictably gracious, meaningless compliment.
A beat of silence.
"...No," Cedric said finally. "I suppose I don't."
Something tiny and irrational twinged in my chest at that.
And then, after a pause that lasted just long enough to make me uncertain, Cedric's mouth curved — slow and quiet, like something he hadn't quite planned.
"Because there's no point in saying what's already obvious."
He looked at me with the same unhurried steadiness as before.
"You are, without question, the most beautiful thing I've seen today."
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