“Go on.”

Hybris pressed the teacup into Eve’s hands, nearly forcing it on her, urging her to drink.

Eve understood. This was almost certainly the last cup of tea she would ever be made to drink.

The time had finally come to pull out the stone that caught at Hybris’s heel.

Eve wanted to live.

She did not want to be trapped forever in that first stretch of twenty years, the years she had been pushed into this narrow world.

She had expected to be afraid. Expected her whole body to tremble.

But with the teacup in her hand, her heart sank into a deep stillness instead, and she felt no fear.

The resignation of someone who can do nothing. Of someone who must fade away without a fight. Of someone no one will remember.

That was all it was.

Eve slowly raised the cup to her lips. A warmth that was warm to the touch and yet chilling to the bone slid down her throat.

The sweet Merirose flower tea she had been made to drink every single day for ten years, without exception.

It occurred to her, just then, that her mother had loved this tea dearly.

Crash!

The cup slipped from Eve’s fingers and shattered on the floor. The tea she had not finished seeped into the worn carpet beneath.

Eve crumpled and sank to the wet floor, gasping without a sound.

She had thought, perhaps she could at least leave this room before the end, but it seemed that was not to be.

A stain that troubled the eye would have to disappear quietly, as though it had never existed at all.

“That took quite a long time.”

Hybris crouched before Eve as she struggled to draw breath, and smoothed back her dark brown hair. It was the same color as his own.

“Don’t you think so?”

He tilted her chin up as saliva began to spill from her lips, her throat no longer able to swallow.

Her unfocused gaze drifted toward empty air.

Her eyes had lost their light to blindness, yet the irises still scattered green in diffuse reflection, white pupils at their center. Proof of descent from the goddess, passed down from the founding ancestor Vesta.

If I had not been your daughter, would it have come to this?

Even through the pain, even as she gasped, Eve turned the thought over and over.

But Eve’s green eyes, reflecting nothing, were the very image of Hybris himself.

It meant nothing now, truly nothing, but if she could have spoken, Eve would have wanted to ask him.

Why me. Why go this far against your only daughter.

“Who can say.”

As though he had read her thoughts, Hybris spoke, then lifted his hand from her chin and stood.

He reached into the inner pocket of his ceremonial jacket, woven through with gold thread, drew out a handkerchief, wiped his hand clean of Eve’s bloodied saliva, and let it fall to the floor.

The soiled handkerchief fluttered down, and beneath it lay Eve, curled and collapsed, drawing her last ragged breaths.

“There is no other reason for reclaiming what was always mine to begin with.”

Those were the last words Eve heard in this world, just before her breath gave out.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Witnessing someone’s death, especially the death of someone beloved, was a deeply painful thing.

If the death of another was already that terrible, then the agony of one’s own death must be beyond all imagining. Eve had always thought so.

But the pain was shorter than she had expected.

In the darkness where nothing was visible, when even the shallow breaths she had barely managed finally faded, she felt something closer to release. At last, she thought, she was free of this h*ll.

It would have been better if it had simply ended there. Regrettably, for Eve, it did not.

“……”

Eve sat curled in a corner, staring in silence at what had long been her body, now nothing but an empty shell.

She had thought, this is how I die, and lost consciousness, but when she came back to herself, her eyes could see and her voice could sound.

Not that anyone could see Eve, or hear her voice.

“It’s the same.”

This was no different from when she had been blind and voiceless.

It had been a wretched life, a wretched death, but if it had at least been the end, she would have had nothing left to suffer.

“She’s finally dead.”

“I was getting tired of waiting.”

From time to time, people wandered in to peer at the room where Eve lay dead.

Most were strangers, but occasionally a familiar face appeared. People who, before she lost her sight and voice, had acted as though they would gladly lay down their lives at her word.

They were also people who had flipped entirely once Hybris became the power behind the palace.

As though the ab*se they had inflicted on Eve were simply the attitude their new master Hybris expected of them.

The memory surfaced without warning. The last sensation she had felt while alive.

Her face contorted in agony, and then the soft handkerchief of Hybris, fluttering down over her.

Her teeth ground together. Her fingers, clenched tight, scraped the floor.

“……Why?”

What did I ever do wrong.

[There is no other reason for reclaiming what was always mine to begin with.]

A throne. A crown. A scepter. What could any of it possibly be worth, to do this to me……!

“This way, please.”

Just then, a voice came from beyond the firmly shut door.

The door, which had remained locked whether Eve was alive or dead, swung open, and a man stepped inside.

“The schedule is tight. Please finish quickly.”

Someone who was likely one of Hybris’s close attendants spoke to the man who had entered alongside him.

“Of course.”

The man who answered wore a long black jacket and a hat of the same color pulled low over his face.

Thud. The door swung shut again.

The man dressed entirely in black slowly looked around the room.

“Hm.”

His gaze came to rest on Eve’s empty body, lying on the floor beneath a cloth.

Hybris’s attendants, who had come to confirm that her breathing had fully stopped, had laid her out flat.

“What a state she’s in.”

The man’s offhand remark darkened Eve’s already grim expression further.

Even while alive, she had never been able to keep herself properly groomed. Now that she was dead as well, it was only natural that the smell of a corpse would linger, but it was not a pleasant thing to hear as the person in question.

It was not so strange. She had spent ten years receiving treatment that could barely be called human, and now she was dead. What more could be expected.

But unlike in life, when she had never once managed to fight back no matter what was done to her, Eve found it harder to contain the fury that rose in her now that she was dead.

The violence that had rained down on her in the dark had at least felt unreal, like something from another world.

Eve crossed the room and struck the man across the face with all the force she had.

She had not actually expected to make contact, let alone land a proper blow. She simply needed to do something, anything, to feel even the smallest release.

That was all.

Smack!

But the man’s hand shot out as though he had known it was coming, and caught her wrist in a firm grip. The shock of it made Eve forget her trembling rage entirely.

“That’s a bit much.”

The man’s gaze slid toward her.

“I heard you never fought back once while you were alive.”

“……!”

Eve wrenched her wrist free from his grip.

The man let go without resistance, and Eve stepped back, fixing him with a sharp, wary stare.

“Instead of taking out your anger on someone easy like me, did you ever once think about slapping the people who did this to you?”

“What do you know about any of it!”

“Never did, then.”

A click of the tongue. Eve’s face flushed red. Half fury, half shame.

“I’m busy, so don’t get in the way. Stand back and watch.”

“What?”

The man waved a lazy hand at her, as though shooing away something bothersome, then sat down beside her dead body.

“Up we go.”

He began to remove the clothing from Eve’s corpse.

The limp body must have been heavy, yet he lifted it without any sign of effort, and his hands moved without hesitation as he worked loose the dress.

“What are you doing!”

She was already dead, but watching a strange man expose her body so plainly, Eve cried out in horror.

“Working.”

The man seemed to feel no need for a fuller explanation. He said only that and continued his work in silence.

His work, it turned out, was wiping away the bloodstains, the dried tears, and the grime from Eve’s dead face and body, using a clean cloth dampened with water.