“My lady… please don’t move too much,” the maid murmured gently, her hands steady as she ran a fine-toothed comb through Aeliana’s hair.
Aeliana exhaled through her nose, forcing herself to still. She hadn’t even realized she had been fidgeting.
Things had already changed.
She had barely been back in the mansion for a full day, and yet everything felt… different.
The halls were no longer suffocating. The air no longer carried that heavy weight of stagnation, that sense of slow decay that had clung to her room for years. Servants no longer looked at her with pity or whispered behind her back about whether she would make it through another winter.
And most obviously—
She didn’t wear a veil.
She had always kept her face hidden, avoiding the stares, the looks of barely-concealed disgust, the reminder of what she had lost. But now… now she didn’t.
The maids had noticed.
Even if they tried to act reserved, their stolen glances, their barely-contained curiosity betrayed them. Some looked in awe, others in disbelief.
But this one—
“Matilde,” Aeliana murmured, recognizing the maid’s familiar touch.
Matilde had been one of the few who had tended to her even when she was sick, one of the few who had never recoiled, never hesitated to be near her even when her illness had been at its worst.
Now, as Matilde carefully brushed through her hair, her movements were the same. Steady. Careful. Familiar.
Aeliana sighed. “You don’t have to be so cautious.”
“My lady,” Matilde chided softly, “your hair is softer now, but it still tangles easily. If I rush, it will pull.”
Aeliana hummed in acknowledgment, glancing at her reflection in the mirror.
‘So, this is me now.’
Healthy. Whole.
It still felt strange.
She had spent so long wasting away in that dark, suffocating room, too weak to even think about walking through the halls of her own home. But now, she was getting ready to venture out once more.
Though, before anything else—
She would have to meet with her father.
‘Madeleina.’
Aeliana’s fingers curled slightly against the armrest of her chair.
The memory was still there. Sharp. Unyielding.
Madeleina.
The one who had smiled so sweetly over the years, who had pretended so perfectly.
And then—
‘My lady… please die, so he can move on.’
Aeliana’s breath remained steady, but the echo of those words burned through her mind. The memory of cold hands pressing against her back. Of the ground vanishing beneath her feet. Of the abyss swallowing her whole.
She hadn’t forgotten.
She would never forget.
And now—
Now, she had returned.
It was time to take care of this.
“My Lady?”
Her thoughts snapped back into focus at the sound of Matilde’s voice.
She blinked, shifting slightly in her seat. “Hmm?”
That was when she saw it.
The faintest flicker of hesitation in Matilde’s face.
Not alarm. Not outright fear.
But unease.
Aeliana frowned. “What is it?”
Matilde hesitated, then shook her head quickly. “It’s nothing, my lady… I only…”
Aeliana’s gaze sharpened.
And then she felt it.
Something.
Something emanating from her.
A strange aura.
Not rage. Not hatred.
Something deeper, something colder—like the whisper of something awakened, something that had been dormant for far too long.
Matilde’s hands had paused mid-motion, still gripping the comb. She wasn’t shaking. But she had noticed.
Aeliana exhaled slowly.
‘Control yourself.’
She wasn’t weak anymore.
And soon—
Madeleina would understand that.
******
Love.
It is a strange emotion.
Perhaps the strangest of them all.
It builds kingdoms and burns them to the ground. It drives men to war, to madness, to ruin. It has toppled emperors, unraveled legacies, and left nothing but ashes where once stood greatness.
And yet, for all its destruction, love is what people chase, what they worship, what they carve into the fabric of history with blood and devotion.
I have read about it—countless stories of emperors ordering massacres, of kings waging war for the sake of a woman’s favor. Men who have stolen, killed, betrayed, all in the name of love.
Fathers who have slaughtered cities to avenge their daughters. Lovers who have burned temples to reclaim what was taken from them.
And in the telling of these stories, one truth remains constant—
It is always men.
Or, at least, that is how history chooses to remember it.
Men are reckless, loud in their madness, making spectacles of their grief. They are the ones who plunge swords into enemies and carve names into history with the weight of their fury. They are the ones who are remembered, whose love is measured by the bodies they leave in their wake.
But does that mean women do not do the same?
Ah.
No.
They do.
Just not in the ways one might expect.
They may not set the cities ablaze… but at the same time, perhaps that is only because they often lacked the power to do so to be frequently recorded in the history.
After all, power—true, unshackled power—has nearly always been a privilege of men. Given to them freely, placed in their hands by the structure of the world itself. A man scorned can raise an army. A man betrayed can carve his vengeance into history with fire and steel.
But a woman?
It is a slight difference.
When a woman chooses cruelty, when she decides to act, her methods can be far uglier.
Because where men break, women unravel.
They poison reputations, twist truths into daggers sharp enough to cut deeper than any sword. They do not strike with brute force; they peel their enemies apart, layer by careful layer, until nothing remains but ruin and regret.
And in those moments, when the mask of gentleness slips, when the cruelty is laid bare—one thing becomes clear.
They do not think they are cruel.
No.
Most of the time, they believe they are justified.
It is oftentimes shared by men with extreme leanings over the crime.
A woman will weave her own reasoning into something airtight, untouchable—a justification so deep, so sacred to her mind, that she will never see herself as the villain.
Even if she shatters someone’s life.
Even if she is the cause of another’s suffering.
Even if she destroys.
She will tell herself she had no choice. That she was pushed into it. That it was necessary. That the world itself forced her hand.
And the most terrifying part?
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Most of them truly believe it.
It is what I call inner justification.
A quiet, relentless force that allows them to sleep at night, to look at their own reflection without flinching. Where a man may wrestle with his conscience, torn between guilt and desire, a woman will forge her truth into something so unshakable that she may not even recognize it as a lie.
It borders on delusion.
And yet—within her mind, it is nothing but logic.
A queen poisoning a rival princess? It was necessary for the stability of the kingdom.
A noblewoman destroying a common girl’s reputation? It was for the good of the family, to preserve what was rightfully theirs.
A mother raising a blade against her own daughter? Ah, but it was love, wasn’t it? A twisted, bitter love that told her it was better this way.
Men, for all their recklessness, for all their destruction, often know they are monsters.
But a woman?
Enough rambling for now though, is it not?
Because I see it.
That same delusion flickering behind her eyes.
The quiet, unshakable certainty.
Not regret. Never regret.
No, what shines in Madeleina’s gaze is something far more dangerous.
Conviction.
She is not a woman burdened by guilt. She is not someone haunted by the weight of her choices. If there is hesitation in her, it is not because she wonders whether she was wrong—it is because she wonders why I am questioning it at all.
She believes, with the same ruthless certainty that has guided her this far, that she did what needed to be done.
That Aeliana’s fall was justified.
That the world itself had forced her hand.
Ah.
So that’s how it is.
That’s how she sleeps at night.
I exhale lightly, shaking my head. “Do you love the Duke?”
Her expression remains still.
Not a flinch, not a twitch, not a single shift in the carefully constructed mask she wears.
Just silence.
And then—
A glare.
Sharp. Unyielding. The kind of look meant to cut a man down without the need for words.
That alone is my answer.
I smirk.
Of course.
Of course.
The silence is not hesitation. It is offense.
She does not wish to dignify such a question with an answer. Because, to her, the answer should be obvious.
The answer is in everything she has done.
She pushed Aeliana.
She chose the Dukedom over herself.
She burned away whatever weaknesses might have held her back.
If that is not love, then what is?
And yet, in all that cold, unwavering certainty, I can see it—the one thing she will not acknowledge.
“Answer?”
It is the fact that, she can’t stand seeing the man she loved still not moving over the past.
And the fact that she holds no place in his heart.