Nefal Estel was the physician I had seen the one time he'd visited when I awoke in Helena Katrine's body, a still young, thirty-odd year old looking man with a dimple on his chin and a slightly humped back. 

I almost couldn't recognise the man who was walked into the room by Hyle alongside Regica, however. Gone was the eagerness of a still-young physician and the open joy I'd seen in his eyes upon seeing me awake. As soon as he was walked into the room by Hyle, he sank down on his knees before Hanes, visibly shaking in terror.

As a physician residing in the palace, there was no way he was unaware of Hanes's reputation and rumours- and how only recently, he'd slain a messenger from Irennia.

"G-greetings to Your Majesty. I am N-Nefal Estel, the physician in charge of L-Lady H-Helena's-"

"I know," Hanes cut in curtly.

Standing behind Nefal completely still and rigid, was Regica. Her hands, folded in front of her, were calm and without any of the nervous wringing I'd seen before my tea time with Narcia. Her head was bowed, lips tight, and she wasn't meeting my eyes.

"Do you know why you were brought here, Nefal Estel?" Hanes asked in a measured, steady voice.

"N-no Y-Your Majesty." The physician shook his head violently, his eyes looking like they were about to fill with tears the next moment.

"Have you ever personally delivered medication to Lady Helena?"

"N-never, Your Majesty."

"Have you personally made the medication?"

"A-always, Your Majesty."

"What are the ingredients that go into the medication?"

"Goddel berries, echester leaves, hangeri berries, wester herbs and jerbale essence, Y-Your Majesty."

"What are the effects of the medication?"

"T-the m-medication acts strength to the l-lungs, h-heart and blood v-v-...vessels, w-which will help a-alleviate the symptoms of L-Lady Helena, Y-Your Majesty." Nefal Estel bowed his head, and I was certain he was crying.

This felt as uncomfortable as watching innocent people confessing crimes on behalf of their family members or friends.

"And the final color of the medication?"

"Deep orange, Your Majesty."

The last words rang in my head, ricocheting through my skull like they were unreal words spoken in a dream. I saw Hanes shout something, and Nefal Estel bow low, shaking his head, tears streaming down his face, but I heard nothing more.

I remembered the bitter liquid that I'd always swallowed, and then Hanes's words.

"The palace, is not the kind of a place you can simply dine and drink with anyone. You let down your guard and you risk two things: either being immediately or slowly poisoned, and being framed as trying to kill that someone else you're dining or drinking with." 

"This is not a good time to be so...naive."

Regica's voice snapped me out of my state, clearing the fog in my head. "Yes, Your Majesty. I have tried to kill Lady Helena." Then, without warning, she pulled out something shining and sharp from her sleeve. Hyle, from behind, lunged towards Regica, but it was too late.

Regica, with a dagger in her belly, sink onto her knees, her eyes half-open and staring into somewhere afar, and her mouth spurting and coughing out dark red blood.

As I saw Regica fall over, Hanes closed the distance between us, and blocked Regica's sight from me with his body. "Don't look," he said, his voice gentle.

I was a cop. I had seen plenty of dead bodies, and on autopsy reports, even worse than that, scenes that even made some of my veteran colleagues throw up their lunch. A dagger to the stomach was...

Not knowing what exactly I was feeling, I got up from bed, and stood, watching Nefel Estel and Hyle over the motionless Regica whose eyes were still open, trying to stop the blood flow that was pooling in the carpet, watching the dagger on the carpet.

Then, it all came, the emotions. The utter absurdity of the whole circumstance of being in the body of someone else, of being in a completely unfamiliar world, of being married to an emperor of a kingdom. Of having one person killed to threaten me and the other, after trying to poison me, killing herself. Two deaths on me. Of this nightmare being a reality that didn't seem to have an end.

I doubled over, putting my face into my hands, and sank down onto the floor, my knees giving way. 

I wasn't sure how long I was in the position for. When I raised my head, numb, I saw that Regica, Nefel Estel, Wregel and Hyle had gone. The carpet was soaked with her blood.

Hanes, one knee on the floor, was looking at me at eye-level. I saw his Adam's apple bob, as he swallowed, and then muttered, "My sincere apologies, Lady Helena. I would've saved her if I could have."

I know. My lips just couldn't form the words.

"You...must know this, but..." Hanes hesitated, "but...you know that her death wasn't your responsibility, don't you?"

I know. Just like how my colleagues and I knew that it wasn't our fault when a murderer and fugitive threw himself down a bridge when we cornered him, to protect innocent people in society. But just like in that situation, the knowing didn't help me feel any better.

My hands, lowered from my face, were clammy. The fugitive and I had locked eyes, before he threw himself down the bridge. I might've, with Regica, if Hanes hadn't come between us.

"...Gretor. He wasn't an innocent messenger. He wasn't Irennian either. He was an infamous pirate captain who'd crossed over from The Kingdom of Khodan. He set fire on fishing boats of truly innocent people, captured, robbed, tortured and killed more than a hundred men, women and children from all kingdoms, but for over a decade no kingdom could capture him. A month ago Khodan and Catrinsa worked together, and when Gretor crossed over to our seas, we finally caught him in ambush, an ambush that lost many of our men too."

Hanes paused. "That day he was killed... he was scheduled to be executed, according to the law. Khodan had given permission for us to execute him. But I made him suffer. I lied that if he pretended to be a messenger as I told him, in front of you, I might let him live."

At Hanes's words, I let out a shuddering sigh, and looked at Hanes, half resentful, half relieved. "Why?"

Up close, I heard his breath catch a little, his long fingers, adorned with long, white jagged scars, curl into a fist, infinitesimally shaking. "I..."

"I knew something was off. The way Gretor kept glancing at you like he was checking if he was doing all right. The way he had old scars on his neck, legs and arms. I heard you were in this castle almost every day during the two months I was out but didn't come into my room even once. Why?"

Hanes's eyes looked like they were about to tell me something. His lips parted, and a soft sigh came from it. "It's..."

Then, as if a door had been closed shut, his eyes turned icy again and his jaw set hard. He rose to his feet, and in that distant tone I had grown to hate, and with a sardonic smile on his lips, said, "Why? You think I have grown to really care for you, an Irennian gift?"

It was like I had seen that small ray of light at the end of the tunnel, and had sprinted towards it. But once my arm outstretched to touch that light, it had disappeared, mocking me for having been mistaken, for having chased a mirage. 

"You're really an asshole, you know that?"

"We're leaving for your country, tomorrow morning 9 o'clock. Look beautiful and speak pretty words, that is your job," he said, turning his back on me, heading to the door. Then, his hand on his doorknob, he turned back to me, and wrinkled his nose, mischievously. "You've heard the rumours, haven't you? I killed my biological brother and rose to the throne. You think I can't kill my concubine?"

Leaving those words and the stain of Regica's blood behind him, Hanes closed the door.