“Your Highness, please. It’s been a week. You haven't eaten, and you haven't slept. You have to stop this.”
Chester’s voice was thick with a grief he was trying to hide, but Eric didn't even acknowledge his presence. He continued to wade through the waist-deep water, his hands raking through the silt at the base of the rocks.
“Your Highness!” Chester shouted, stepping into the water to grab Eric’s shoulder. “There’s no chance! No one survives a fall like that! She’s gone!”
In a blur of motion that defied the resistance of the water, Eric turned and pinned Chester by the throat against a jagged granite wall. His eyes were bloodshot, his face a hollow mask of madness.
“Silent,” Eric hissed.
The other knights instinctively reached for their swords, but the crushing, suffocating weight of Eric’s Transcendent aura froze them in place. The pressure was so intense that the river itself seemed to still around them.
“She can't be dead,” Eric whispered, his voice cracking. “She *can't*.”
As he looked down at Chester, the knight’s face began to distort. The armored man dissolved into a vision of Cornelia—not the vibrant woman in green, but the pale, broken corpse from his nightmares. She lay on the riverbed, a jagged hole in her temple, her purple eyes staring up at him with a silent, accusing void.
Eric blinked, the hallucination shattering. Chester was staring at him with a look of pure, terrified pity. Eric released his grip and turned back to the river, his heart a cold, heavy stone in his chest.
*She has to be alive,* he told himself, his fingers digging into the wet sand. *I am a proxy. I am a shadow. I swore to keep her safe until my brother returns. If she is gone, I have failed the only duty that gives my life a purpose.*
***
In a mid-tier salon in the heart of the capital, the air was thick with the scent of expensive tobacco and even more expensive gossip. This wasn't the gathering place of the High Nobility, but rather the haunt of wealthy merchants and minor lords—the people who truly moved the city's rumors.
“Have you heard? The Dowager and the Arguin girl are practically under house arrest,” a baroness whispered behind her fan. “They say the evidence is irrefutable. Attempted murder of an Imperial Princess!”
“And the Duke?” another asked. “I heard he’s still at the river, searching for the body like a man possessed.”
“Regret is a powerful poison,” a merchant replied with a dry laugh. “He ignored her for five years, and now he’s acting as if she were the center of his universe. He’s probably just trying to look devoted so the Emperor doesn't strip him of his title.”
A woman sitting near the window, her hair a nondescript brown and her face partially hidden by a lace veil, felt a sharp, cynical amusement.
*Regret?* Cornelia thought, her hand resting on her stomach. *He doesn't regret me. He regrets his failed mission. He regrets the stain on his perfect record.*
She stood up, her movements graceful and quiet. She was currently disguised as a "frontier widow"—a common cover for women of means who wished to travel without scrutiny. She’d used a drop of alchemical dye to turn her hair a dull chestnut and her eyes a muddy brown.
As she moved toward the exit, she bumped into a lady’s silk handbag.
“Oh, my apologies,” the lady said, bending to pick it up. “I was lost in thought.”
“It was my fault, Baroness Carden,” Cornelia said, her voice smooth and devoid of its usual royal cadence. “I should have looked where I was going.”
The Baroness looked up and froze. Even through the veil and the dye, Cornelia’s beauty was undeniable. She had a presence that commanded the room, a regal stillness that didn't belong in a mid-tier salon.
“Are you... the one they call the Frontier Widow?” the Baroness asked, her voice hushed. “The one who received the lands in the North?”
Cornelia offered a shallow, haughty nod and stepped out into the afternoon sun.
Sardin was waiting by a plain, unmarked carriage. He looked at her with a skeptical, searching gaze. “Are you alright, my lady? The gossip in those places is never kind.”
“I’m perfectly fine, Sardin,” Cornelia said, stepping into the carriage. “I orchestrated the tragedy. Why would I be upset when the audience applauds?”
She looked at her reflection in the carriage mirror—the blonde wig she’d donned for the next phase of the move was sitting in a box on the seat. She’d assumed a dozen identities in the last week, each one a brick in the wall she was building between herself and House Brant.
“The Dowager and Madeleine are in their cages,” she continued. “And Eric is chasing a ghost. Everything is proceeding exactly as planned.”
“Except for the 'tail',” Sardin reminded her, glancing toward the shadows of the carriage.
Janet was sitting in the corner, her arms crossed and a bag of spiced nuts in her lap. The knight had been the one variable Cornelia hadn't predicted. Janet had overheard a conversation between Sardin and Randon and had confronted Cornelia with the truth before the "accident" at the boutique.
Cornelia had considered eliminating her, but the memory of Janet’s kindness in her first life had stayed her hand. Instead, she’d made her a partner.
Janet had been the "Duchess" in the green dress who had jumped from the carriage. As an Aura-user, the fall into the river had been nothing more than a minor inconvenience. She’d swum to a predetermined spot where Sardin was waiting with dry clothes and a new identity.
“You’re late with the snacks, Janet,” Cornelia said.
“The baker was slow,” Janet replied, popping a nut into her mouth. “Besides, I’m the one who jumped off a cliff for you. I think I’ve earned a little tardiness.”
Cornelia looked at the knight. She still didn't fully trust her. She knew Janet’s loyalty was to the *person* of the Duchess, but she wasn't sure if that loyalty would hold if Eric truly began to break.
“We’re going to the One Flower Workshop,” Cornelia commanded. “It’s time to pick up the final shipments from Barakiel. After that, we leave the capital for good.”