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[03]
OFFICIAL: ACCEPTANCE
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G6 strode down the polished hallway of the West Villa, putting as much distance as possible between herself and the garden.

Her perfect act was over.

Or so she thought.

Halfway down the corridor, she slowed when the gilded hallway ahead became completely unfamiliar.

Crap. I went the wrong way.

She glanced at Tina, who trailed several steps behind in shell-shocked silence, her face still noticeably pale.

She looks like my brother when I totaled his Bugatti.

Technically, the truth had been worse.

G6 had rammed it into a target’s car during a chase.

On purpose.

She cleared her throat and summoned what she considered an appropriately unbothered noblewoman’s expression.

“I ain’t no fault. They wanted me to lose my temper.”

The look she gave Tina clearly added, I am being bullied here.

Tina answered with a long, heavy sigh.

Before the maid could point out that G6 had apparently forgotten the way back to her own room, G6 spotted an archway opening into a secluded courtyard and immediately veered toward it.

The courtyard was small compared with the sprawling gardens surrounding the West Villa.

A weathered marble fountain stood at its center, carved in the likeness of a weeping goddess, while ivy crept along the stone walls and partially concealed a bench near the far corner.

The steady plink of falling water softened everything beyond the courtyard into distant noise.

G6 leaned against the cold edge of the fountain.

Tina stopped several paces away.

She said nothing.

She did not need to.

“Out with it,” G6 said without turning. “I can hear you cursing me in your head.”

“My lady…” Tina caught herself. “I mean, Lady Reise.”

The corner of G6’s mouth twitched at the correction.

“That was…”

“Perfect?” G6 offered.

“Yes—No!” Tina straightened. “You disrespected Prince Dio. You left a gathering arranged by Her Majesty unfinished.”

G6 laughed, short and sharp.

“You just agreed with me.”

Tina’s lips tightened.

“Would you rather I stayed and flipped the table?” G6 asked. “Grabbed that woman’s hair?”

“No!”

“Then we’re improving.”

Tina stepped closer. The frustration in her face had already begun to fade, replaced by something quieter.

“What is happening to you, Lady Reise?”

There was no reprimand behind the question this time.

Only worry.

G6 finally looked at her.

For a moment, she said nothing. Her gaze drifted past Tina toward the strip of blue sky visible above the courtyard walls.

“I don’t know either.”

For once, there was nothing sarcastic behind it.

Tina stared at her.

Then she did something G6 had not anticipated.

She hugged her.

G6 went completely still.

Her body processed the contact before her mind did. There was no weapon, no attempt to restrain her, and no threat concealed in the movement.

Just Tina.

G6 stared over her shoulder at the greenery.

What am I supposed to do with this?

Several awkward seconds passed before her hands rose and rested lightly against Tina’s back. The gesture was careful and uncertain, less an embrace than an attempt to imitate one without doing it incorrectly.

Tina’s arms tightened.

“I know you are not the person they think you are.”

G6’s gaze sharpened slightly.

That makes the two of us.

When Tina finally released her, G6 stepped back almost immediately.

“I should rest.”

Tina studied her for a moment before nodding.

“Of course, Lady Reise. I will ensure you are not disturbed.”

G6 turned toward the corridor.

She took two steps, stopped, and looked one way.

Then the other.

Tina sighed.

“This way, Lady Reise.”

G6 followed without comment.

❈.❈.❈

The bedroom door clicked shut behind her.

G6 locked it and remained still for a moment, allowing the quiet to settle around her.

Then her eyes swept across the room.

The dream from the previous night surfaced again: Reise standing beneath the moonlight, the small glass vial in her hand, and that strange smile before everything snapped apart.

It had not felt random.

“Fine.”

G6 rolled her sleeves.

“Let’s search.”

The bedroom stopped being a noblewoman’s private chamber and became an area of operation.

She began with the obvious places, moving quietly through the room as she checked the doorframe, beneath the bed, behind the curtains, and along the wallpaper seams. There were no loose panels or hidden compartments where she expected them, nothing that immediately explained what Reise had done before her death.

Her attention eventually settled on the ornate writing desk.

Unlike most of the room, it looked used. The chair showed faint wear, a small ink stain marked one corner of the desk, and tiny scratches marred the polished wood where something had repeatedly struck it.

G6 opened the drawers.

Stationery, sealing wax, parchment.

Useless.

She crouched and ran her fingers beneath the desk.

Her hand stopped when she felt a slight discrepancy in the grain.

There.

G6 traced it carefully until she found the edge of a concealed panel.

Locked.

“At least this is familiar.”

She took a hairpin and the thin letter opener lying nearby and worked them into the mechanism, adjusting the pressure until a faint click answered her efforts.

Then another.

A dull thud followed, and the hidden drawer slid open.

Inside lay a single book bound in soft, worn leather.

G6 pulled it free.

The Diary of Reise Worthon.

“Of course.”

She lowered herself to the floor beside the balcony doors and opened it.

The earliest pages were filled with elegant handwriting: poems, observations, complaints, private hopes, and thoughts Reise had apparently trusted to no one else.

And Prince Dio.

A great deal of Prince Dio.

G6 began skimming faster.

“Ten years?”

She turned another page.

“You seriously spent ten years on him?”

The entries continued until she reached the final pages.

There, the handwriting changed.

The neat script deteriorated into frantic strokes pressed deeply enough into the paper to scar several pages beneath it.

G6 slowed.

“He is here.

Three years. Three winters bled into spring, and Prince Dio is finally back in Eiston.

From my balcony, I steal one last look. A hunger I have fed for ten years, and still it starves.

And I saw him with her. Eliza.

On his face… a light I have never worn. Not once. Not in all the years I stood in his shadow, waiting for him to turn around.

I am the painting on his wall. She is the sun that makes the painting forget itself.”

G6 turned the page.

“I am so tired of being looked at. Of being framed and hung and never touched. This gilded cage has no door—only walls I painted myself.

I would rather be no one. A blank page.

Oh, right. I am no one. A blank page.

So.

I have prepared the mixture. White droplet flowers. They say it quiets a heart that beats too loud in a room that never listens.”

G6’s eyes narrowed.

White droplet flowers.

The vial from the dream.

She continued reading.

“For my parents—so they do not mistake silence for their failure. Their love was enough. But love cannot teach lungs how to breathe in a place that was always meant to be a grave.

I leave a final letter hiding like it does not want to be read.

I cast this wish upon the stars:

Let no one mourn the leaving. Let a soul untouched by this sorrow find its way into what I leave behind. Let them take what I was too weak to hold.”

G6 turned the page.

Live what I was forced to leave.

The room seemed quieter after that.

G6 stared at the sentence before returning to the previous page and reading the last several lines again.

“So, you did kill yourself.”

Not merely the dramatic ending assigned to a villainess in a novel or a scene written for someone else to read.

Reise had prepared the vial herself.

She had made the decision deliberately.

G6 leaned her head against the glass balcony door.

Her own conclusion from that morning returned with irritating clarity.

Morphine and alcohol.

One careless mistake.

A pathetic way to die, perhaps, but dead was dead.

She closed her eyes briefly and exhaled through her nose.

“Well.”

Her eyes opened again.

“So much for waking up.”

Whatever had happened to her original body had already happened. Sitting here regretting the stupidity of it would accomplish nothing.

Her gaze dropped back to the diary.

I leave a final letter hiding like it does not want to be read.

G6’s expression sharpened.

“A letter.”

Now that was useful.

The diary had been hidden.

The letter probably was too.

She stood.

❈.❈.❈

The door of Annex-Uno’s common room shut with a firm slam.

Lord Keith dropped into an armchair and released a low whistle.

“Well. I don’t even have a word for what happened earlier.”

Prince Dio stood beside the cold fireplace, one hand braced against the mantle.

“A performance,” he said. “A new tactic. Indifference.”

Lord Earl cleaned his glasses without looking up.

“Your thesis is flawed.”

Prince Dio’s gaze shifted toward him.

“Explain.”

“If it were for you, she would have glanced back to gauge your reaction.”

Lord Earl replaced his glasses.

“She didn’t.”

Lord Keith barked out a laugh.

“He has you there, Dio. She didn’t look back once.”

Prince Dio’s jaw tightened.

“Her opinion is irrelevant.”

“Is it?” Lord Keith leaned forward. “The Reise we knew would swallow live embers before implying you were anything less than the sun. That woman looked at you like inconvenient furniture.”

Lord Earl smirked.

“Accurate.”

Prince Dio shot him a look.

“Three years is a long time,” Lord Earl continued. “Prolonged psychological strain can cause drastic behavioral changes. At some point, survival begins overriding obsession.”

“So I bored her into sanity?” Prince Dio asked dryly.

Lord Keith laughed again.

Lord Earl ignored him.

“I’m saying she appears to be operating according to an entirely different set of priorities.”

Lord Keith crossed his arms, some of the amusement leaving his expression.

“Her eyes when I mentioned Miss Eliza were strange.”

Prince Dio looked toward him.

“There was nothing,” Lord Keith continued. “No anger. No jealousy. Nothing.”

Prince Dio turned back toward the fireplace.

“She is unwell. The pressure has unhinged her.”

His voice hardened slightly.

“She’ll return to normal eventually.”

Neither Lord Earl nor Lord Keith answered.

Prince Dio stared into the cold grate, yet one image remained irritatingly clear in his mind.

Reise walking away without once looking back.

Despite himself, he found himself wondering what she would do next.