Solitary Lady

Chapter 3

* * *

Once I left the garden and entered the mansion, I headed straight to my room. I met a few workers on the way, but they all hurried by and ignored me. They saw me, of course, but they were treating me like I wasn’t even there.

I walked up the stairs and across the corridor, and as I opened a familiar door, the view of my bedroom welcomed me. I glanced around the room and walked over to the window. I could see my reflection in the smooth glass.

Unlike Ricardo’s vivid red hair, my hair was more of a light pink, as if dyed with flower petals. The ends of my hair had become a bit redder with the sudden appearance of my power in the garden, but it was only a small difference.

The face I saw in the glass looked slightly younger than when I last saw it.

I was 19 years old, on the verge of coming of age.

My death in my previous life had been at the age of 24, so I had come back five years. In all seven of my previous lives, I had died for different reasons and at different times, but they had all been tragic.

“Please. Die for Gabrielle.”

I recalled Ricardo’s surprisingly desperate voice and face from the final moments of my previous life. The image overlapped with the face that I had just seen in the garden.

Whenever people saw me outside, they had always whispered and gossiped.

“The ugly duckling of the House of Inoaden.”

“The girl shunned by her family.”

“The useless weed growing in a garden of roses.”

Those were the phrases used to describe me, Hillis Inoaden. The former two were because of the Inoaden family’s history, and the last was because of the unique power in the Inoaden blood. Whatever the case, they were all negative.

I could hear the murmurs of people from outside my half-open window. When I stepped closer and looked down, I spotted the garden that I had just come from. Ricardo and Gabrielle were no longer there.

The servants and maids were cleaning up under the orders of our butler. They were bringing out trays to clear off the tea table and were taking away the monster’s cage and body. But when it came to dealing with the roses that had bloomed in the garden, they seemed lost. I was sure their confusion also stemmed from the fact that it was I, and not Ricardo, who had bloomed the roses.

It was only natural. No one had a single doubt that the eldest son, Ricardo, would become the heir of our house. Everyone had even affectionately called him the Prince of Roses. Unfortunately, I was given the power, and he would never have access to it as long as I was alive.

I looked down at where Ricardo had been sitting, coldly surveying the area. The staff was almost done cleaning up the garden. In the end, they decided to call a gardener to take care of the roses and headed back into the mansion. But the roses that I had made with my power crumbled as soon as others touched them, glittering like fragments of glass.

I watched the shining specs of light as they scattered in the air for a while and closed my window. Then I drew the curtains to block out the light completely.

* * *

“Please come this way, Mr. Madison. The young master and lady are waiting.”

The Inoaden family doctor, who arrived after the commotion at the garden, went off to examine Gabrielle first as if it was the most obvious thing to do.

Although I was the one who had almost been eaten by the monster, everyone only cared about Gabrielle, who had been protected by Ricardo and wasn’t the least bit injured.

Of course, it was so natural in this household that no one thought it strange. It was clear that Gabrielle was absolutely fine apart from being a little startled. However, I knew that she would be feigning an injury to gain back the attention that her father and Ricardo were giving me now.

Realistically, she didn’t even need to. They were ready to rush over to her as soon as she made so much as a whine. They cared about her a great deal, and they despised me just as much.

My father, Diego Inoaden, and my late mother, Rowena Evelyn, had married out of love rather than through an arrangement, unlike most royals. The two were so in love that everyone had envied them and wished them great fortune.

When they became pregnant with their second child only a few years after my brother Ricardo was born, it seemed like Inoaden’s spring would last forever. But their perfect happiness ended abruptly one day when my mother grew ill after giving birth and passed away soon after.

My father and brother, who had loved my mother deeply, could not forgive me for causing her death. It was a typical, cliché story that appeared often in novels.

Winter came to Inoaden, and it seemed like Diego Inoaden would never find love again. But five years later, he remarried. His new wife was a widow from the north, and she was the spitting image of my late mother. She arrived with her young daughter who closely resembled her.

Maybe it was because they had arrived at a moment he felt a deep longing for her, but the two of them had won my father’s and Ricardo’s hearts in an instant. Ricardo treated our stepmother like his own mother and her daughter like his own sister. I was the only one who was not included in this new family.

Even so, my father’s and my brother’s newfound happiness only lasted 10 years because my stepmother died a sudden death from a mysterious illness. People began whispering about how there was a curse on the lady of the House of Inoaden.

Whatever the case, her death led to my father and Ricardo showing even more affection toward Gabrielle, who was now left all alone. Naturally, I was pushed more and more away from the Inoaden family.

“Are you comforting me?”

A rose had blossomed underneath my bed and had twined up my arm to gently rub its petals on my cheek. It seemed to be trying to soothe me.

“Thank you.”

But I’m all right. There’s no sadness left inside me now. Still, I leaned slightly on the rose to show my appreciation.

My long hair brushed down over my chest. Just before I had opened my eyes in the garden, my hair had been cut to the nape of my neck, so it felt strange to have such long hair again. But that feeling only lasted a moment.

I had burned out everything inside me from my former lives. I wanted to be loved, and I had believed that they would one day open themselves up to me if I devoted myself to them. Since I was a fool who did not know how to let go of my feelings, I could not give up hope even as I died a pathetic, tragic death over and over again.

However, that ended with my former life. They had betrayed my trust in so many different ways that I decided I would not give them anything in my present life.

There was a knock on my door.

“My lady, Mr. Madison is here.”

I heard the voice of a maid calling from the other side. The family doctor had come after examining Gabrielle, but I just sent him away. And of course, no one else visited me until later that evening.