The dagger pressed into Aeva’s hand had been Irynsis’s idea.

From experience—and from what Aeva had done in her past life—Irynsis knew full well the woman’s nature was anything but ordinary. She had easily predicted that if Aeva ever saw Bianca and Tod together in any way, she would cause an uproar.

The dagger was meant as a tool—something to set the madwoman dancing with blades. Irynsis had expected Aeva to slash at herself, to stage a scene of hysterical self-harm. What she had not foreseen was the depths of Tod’s character.

Irynsis’s design had been simple: Bianca would demand divorce, Tod would refuse, and Aeva, furious, would lash out.

But Tod Cambria was far baser than she had imagined. The moment Aeva realized that he could cast her aside—and even their son—her rage surged far beyond anything Irynsis had anticipated.

‘What did I just hear?’

Aeva trembled violently, forcing herself to recall Tod’s words.

‘If you wish, you may take a son from your lady’s household and let him be the heir. But it was you who refused.’

His voice echoed in her skull, sharpening with every repetition until it cut into her like a blade.

“Me, and my son!”

The thought of her boy—meeting her gaze, smiling sweetly, already learning to play at charm—drove her fury to the breaking point. Her vacant eyes fixed on the fork in the path where Tod and Bianca had parted.

“James… Mama will give you only the best…”

Her voice drifted, hollow, as her steps carried her toward the garden, the very way Bianca had gone.

“That bastard!”

Bianca ground her heel into the rosebushes, tearing them to shreds. Tod Cambria, his mistress, the son they claimed as theirs—she could not bear the sight of any of them.

All she wanted was to destroy them, every last one.

Tod Cambria was the stain on her life, and that stain dragged endless filth in its wake.

“All of you, leave!”

Her shrill voice struck the maids who stood frozen nearby. They had been some distance away, but no doubt they, too, had heard Tod’s vile words.

Her pride had been torn to pieces in front of servants. To be seen as nothing more than a forsaken wife—a pitiful woman cast aside by her husband—was unbearable.

“We’ll wait at the garden entrance, Your Highness.” 

The maids said cautiously, bowing away. Only once they were gone did Bianca collapse to the ground.

“Aaah! Father!”

Her rage boiled over, lashing toward the emperor himself. Sweet words, endless flattery—he had called her his treasure, the jewel of the empire. But when it mattered, he had never once stood at her side.

With a single word, he could have cut Tod Cambria out of her life entirely. But in his eyes, Bianca had always come second to the safety of the empire.

If he had truly cherished her as he claimed, he would have listened when she begged not to marry Tod Cambria.

‘No, he would never have married me to a bastard-born in the first place. How dare he!’

In the end, the emperor’s noble daughter had been nothing more than a commodity—to be sold at the highest price, for the sake of the Clayton Empire.

“No more.”

She would not allow her life and honor to be defiled any further. If her father would not act, then Bianca would do it with her own hands.

“First, I’ll kill them.”

The filthy refuse that man had spawned—Tod Cambria’s mistress and her son. Those would be the first to go.

As long as they bore the Cambria name, Tod himself was untouchable. But the mistress? The child? They were nothing.

‘I should have done this sooner.’

Bianca gave a cold laugh and rose to her feet. At that moment, footsteps approached from behind.

She assumed it was one of her maids. They had withdrawn, but surely they would not leave her alone for long.

But the face that appeared was nothing she had expected.

“Even if you’ve cast aside the Cambria name, you’re still a princess…”

The woman’s face loomed closer, twisted and strange, her voice a hollow mutter. Bianca felt a surge of danger, opening her mouth to cry out—

“Hhhk!”

Fire exploded in her abdomen.

Before the scream could leave her throat, it caught on the breath she had dragged in, choking off her voice.

“I’ve borne enough. From now on, Cambria belongs to me and my son. Don’t you agree?”

Blood dripped from the blade as it pierced her flesh. When it withdrew, it only thr*st in deeper again. Bianca’s body crumpled under the cold steel.

“Kyaaaa!”

One of her maids, rushing to check on her mistress, stumbled upon the garden now flooded with blood and shrieked in horror.

The light faded from Bianca’s eyes. And as though drinking in every last flicker, Aeva’s gaze blazed with a terrifying, icy gleam.

***

The palace corridors lay hushed, unlike the raucous banquet hall. The soft silver moonlight drenched everything in stillness, so quiet that the faint rustle of Irynsis’s nightdress brushing her legs could be heard with every step.

Moonlight spilled across the marble floor, trailing her as she walked. Her veil cast long, spectral shadows across the walls.

‘Is it going well?’

She moved calmly down paths she had walked countless times before, glancing out through the tall windows. Beyond stretched a deep blue sky. The leaves stirred in the night breeze, the sound of fountains masking all the distant clamor of the banquet.

It was the stillness before a storm—the first time she had ever thought of this place as peaceful.

‘Peace. To think such a word could ever belong here.’

Every other time she had walked this way, it had been to beg death for mercy as she was dragged to the Crown Prince’s chamber. Perhaps that was what made this moment the greatest difference between her past life and this one.

At the corridor’s end stood the massive doors.

Others marveled at the delicate, elegant carvings upon them. Irynsis had only ever trembled, wondering when they would open.

Even with so many servants pulled to the banquet, guards still stood at their post. She smoothed the folds of her nightdress and pulled her veil down over her lips.

The guards, disgruntled at having been left behind to watch this door rather than the hall, broke off their muttered complaints as the sound of footsteps echoed.

Irynsis did nothing to hide her approach, gliding forward with composure.

“His Highness said the banquet bored him. He commanded me to wait for him in his chambers.”

At the sight of her slender figure, veiled, draped in nothing but a robe over a nightdress, the guards dropped their eyes at once. In this palace, only one woman could walk so brazenly.

“Y-yes, Your Ladyship. Please, go in.”

Knowing well how vicious the Crown Prince’s mistress was rumored to be, they hastily stepped aside.

With unhurried grace, Irynsis slipped inside. The heavy doors closed behind her.

***

“She’s gone mad.” 

Declan muttered with a thin laugh as his eyes swept the chaos of the garden.

He had half thought it impossible, but his sister had truly been stabbed. And at the emperor’s own birthday banquet, no less.

Not that he felt much affection for her. But the humiliation to the imperial house grated him. The throne that would one day be his could not afford such stains.

“Let me go!”

The culprit had been caught far too easily. To learn it was Tod Cambria’s mistress made the disgrace all the greater.

Declan saw the Cambria family hurrying over in a panic. His eyes narrowed, and a different thought stirred.

“Why was she even here?”

“Y-your Highness. It was the servants, they accepted bribes to—”

Declan silenced him with a flick of his hand. He was not asking about Aeva. His mind was elsewhere.

“If she were tired, she would have gone back. She hates this palace—she wouldn’t linger here, not even for a moment.”

If there was anyone who loathed the palace enough to flee it at every chance, it was Irynsis. And yet she was here? Resting?

That small, nagging piece that had been pricking at him all night now drove itself sharply home.

“See to this yourselves.”

“Y-yes, Your Highness?”

But Declan had already turned from the bloody garden, retracing his steps toward the palace. Urgency pressed his stride, yet his lips curved in a smile of intrigue.