Chapter 5

It was the awkward hour between breakfast and lunch, meaning the dining room was quiet. I had expected to eat alone, but a man was already sitting at the table when I arrived.

I watched him for a moment. Even while spooning stew into his mouth, the man was effortlessly picturesque, with short black hair descending over his forehead. His striking violet eyes met mine as I entered.

I hastily adjusted my wrinkled black dress and the veil over my face. His gaze briefly swept over me before he glanced away, likely noting how tired and worn I looked. Choosing not to engage, I selected the seat furthest from his and sat down.

After I requested a bowl of light soup, hoping to avoid upsetting my stomach, his voice broke the silence.

“It’s been a while.” His face was expressionless, leaving me hesitant.

“It has.” My response felt awkward.

Laertes, as vice-captain of the Glamis Order, had been away on a mission to suppress bandits at the border when news of Ophelia’s passing prompted his immediate return. He had arrived only in time to comfort the fainting marchioness, missing most of the funeral. He had not even had the chance to see Ophelia’s body.

I was uncomfortable in his presence. When we were younger, I had treated him like a close friend, nudged to do so by others due to our distant familial ties. That familiarity hadn’t withstood the test of time, though. The kinder and more thoughtful he acted toward me, the more distant I felt.

“I heard the marchioness has been feeling better thanks to you, Sir Laertes.”

He paused his fork, his piercing gaze briefly flickering over to me. “She loved Ophelia deeply,” he remarked.

His tone implied he held no such feelings himself, but that was simply not true. I clearly recalled the tender smiles he reserved for Ophelia, smiles as warm as the early spring sunshine or a flock of chicks basking in the sunlight. Despite knowing those smiles weren’t meant for me, they had occasionally ensnared me as well.

“I’m relieved you are here, L— Sir Laertes. She thinks of you as a son.” I found myself stumbling over his formal title as I spoke.

When Ophelia, Laertes, and I were younger, there were fleeting moments in which we had felt like siblings. We all shared Windrose blood and we were similar in age. The camaraderie of our childhood, where Laertes was the composed one, Ophelia often irritable, and I invariably awkward, allowed us to interact in harmony almost like siblings would. However, as Ophelia matured into her beauty and the marchioness envisioned Laertes as a potential son-in-law, our dynamic shifted and became more complex.

His inscrutable violet eyes met mine, stirring a feeling of discomfort within me. “She cherishes you as a daughter as well.”

His gaze momentarily dropped to my lips as I responded with a noncommittal smile. Such an idea only held water as long as Ophelia had been alive. When the baron’s daughter showed up in the game, the marchioness instantly became attached to the girl who looked so much like her daughter. This storyline only drove home the point that Ophelia was the only one the marchioness could acknowledge.

To be considered akin to a daughter was one thing. To be seen as a legitimate daughter was another. A substitute could mimic the original, but the two would always be different in essence. The kind baron’s daughter, who was just as much of a goddess as Ophelia, could fill the void she had left behind—but someone as ordinary as me could never replace her. It was more apparent to me than anyone else.

“Seeing me would only remind her of Ophelia and bring her more pain,” I said. My statement hovered somewhere between truth and fiction. The marchioness’s love for her daughter was indeed deep, and she had borne the weight of Ophelia’s illness as though it were her own failing.

Laertes paused, mulling over my words as a servant brought my soup. I welcomed the warmth of the broth that soothed my dry throat. “Besides, you are a closer relation,” I finally added.

“Degrees of relation don’t matter.” His words carried some hidden meaning. I had to act as if I hadn’t noticed.

Before Ophelia died I had always found interacting with Laertes uncomfortable, and it had only become more so after her death. The idea that he might soon reside permanently at the estate as the future heir made me realize that I needed to depart as soon as possible.

I hurried to finish my soup, planning to excuse myself quickly. He put a halt to my efforts with a question. “What about you?”

“Pardon?”

“How does it affect you?”

Perhaps he was asking whether the marchioness’s presence stirred painful memories of Ophelia, or perhaps there was some other underlying meaning to his question.

Struggling to form a response, I swirled my spoon around in the soup. “I don’t know.”

It was the most honest answer I could muster. I was not entirely at peace, nor was I completely shattered. My emotions failed to live up to the profound sense of loss I had anticipated. It wasn’t so bad that I wanted to tie a noose around my neck, either.

I had long since accepted the inevitability of Ophelia’s death. Experiencing her decline day by agonizing day, I had prepared myself to feel insurmountable pain. But the reality proved less harrowing than I anticipated. I was not in pain, and tears would not come. I felt only emptiness, as though a void had punched its way clean through my chest and each of my breaths drew a chill through it.

We fell into silence for a moment.

Like me, he paused stirring the soup in front of him. “Don’t push yourself too hard,” he said finally.

I offered him a faint smile. His kindness certainly made him a challenging person to interact with.

* * *

Upon finishing my food, I was informed that the marquess had requested my presence.

The butler, who seemed to have visibly aged overnight, led me to the marquess’s study. Despite living in the manor for a decade, this was my first one-on-one meeting with the man in his office.

Wearing a somber expression, he motioned for me to sit, and I did. The butler served us tea, then the marquess got down to business.

His eyes lingered on my mourning attire for a long time. “I’m not sure how to begin,” he started slowly.

“I can wait, Marquess Windrose.”

“Thank you for everything, Emilia. Because of you, my daughter was never lonely.”

I absentmindedly played with the teacup in my hands.

The man covered his face, heaving the heavy sigh of a father mourning his recently buried child. “I summoned you to offer my thanks. I have no other motive. How could I overlook the person my daughter valued above all others? After enduring such a horrible thing, I felt it was important to speak with you as Ophelia’s father.”

“How is the marchioness?”

“She has fainted several times, but the doctors have assured me that she will recover. She just needs to rest.”

“That’s reassuring to hear.”

As I took a sip of my tea, I sensed the butler’s curious gaze on me. Perhaps he intended it to question why I hadn’t personally visited the marchioness to offer my condolences. I ignored him. My past visits to the marchioness had always been awkward, and I had no interest in explaining myself.

“During my time here, my role was not anything extraordinary,” I continued. “You welcomed me, a child with nowhere else to turn, and showed me immeasurable kindness. I can never fully repay my debt to you. And it was impossible not to love Ophelia.”

“Who are you trying to fool? Everyone in the manor knows you alone could endure her challenging moods,” the marquess remarked with a fleeting smile. He remembered how his daughter’s tempestuous storms of emotion could not be soothed by anyone else. Thinking of this seemed to bring him a mixture of joy and sorrow.

Ophelia favored me so uniquely because I was the only one who accepted her death as inevitable. She had instinctively known what I had learned from the game—her death was a foregone conclusion and she could not fight it. She was destined to die young, remaining beautiful and vibrant in our memories.

Everyone else around her had pretended she still had a future filled with promise. They wielded hope like a shield made of lies, assuring her that things would improve if she just held on a bit longer. She loathed this sugar-coated deception, dangled in front of her as though she were a naive child.

Particularly her parents, in their immense love, refused to face the reality of her looming end. I disdained the biological parents who sold me, while she resented the parents who shielded her under the pretext of caring. We were different, yet so similar.

“It’s all in the past now,” I said.

“You are right,” the marquess replied with a sigh. Unlike the marchioness, he viewed the world through a more pragmatic lens.

I weighed my next words carefully, unsure if another opportunity to speak so openly would present itself. “I, too, am thankful for the care and affection you and Lady Windrose have extended. You have made me feel as welcome as if this were my own home. Your kindness has always been a comfort to me, even during the naive days of my youth.”

Something in the marquess’s demeanor shifted, suggesting that he was beginning to grasp I meant more than my words.

“It has brought me immense joy to live in this manor and be Ophelia’s friend,” I continued. “But it seems the time has come for me to take those joyful memories and depart.”