Now he stood before me holding a porcelain bowl, dark brown broth steaming, his expression of concern rehearsed to perfection, the curve of his lips calibrated just right. He must have climbed in through the balcony - it was the only way he could have reached my room unnoticed, scaling the trellis like the snake he was.
I knew this bowl of soup.
Awareness crashed over me like ice water, drenching me in an instant - this was not a dream. I had been reborn. I was back at the very beginning of the nightmare. The memories of my past life exploded through my skull, shrieking into every pore: drinking this soup, being pinned beneath him, my grandfather dying of a sudden brain hemorrhage - he simply could not withstand the shock and fury of seeing his cherished granddaughter defiled before his eyes - my legs shattered, thirty years living in the filth of the rogue encampments. Thirty years of hell. And now, this gentle, smiling face before me was the ground zero of everything that broke.
Before I could fully come to my senses, voices drifted up from somewhere below, unconcerned with being overheard - distant, and growing fainter with each word.
"That child won't listen to reason, insisting on marrying Dudley Nixon come hell or high water. I don't think much of that young man - not one bit!"
It was Grandfather. Alistair's voice.
My heart clenched violently. I knew this voice too well. In my last life, it had been my final refuge. In my last life, it had been cut off before me, never to sound again.
The steward Jenson chimed in, his voice just as old but steadier. "I agree. That young man is far too eager. His wolfish ambition is plain as day. Master, you and I have lived long enough - we can see through a man's true colors at a glance."
The sound of Alistair's cane striking the stone path echoed up - a heavy, muffled thud - and then the voices faded further, moving away toward the far side of the garden. "And Candis, my daughter-in-law, has the nerve to tell me 'the young people are in love' - bah! I may be old, but I'm not senile yet!" The words came more faintly now, already half-consumed by distance.
Listening, my nose prickled sharply.
In my last life, Grandfather had been the same, pacing restlessly outside, afraid to barge in and push me further, yet refusing to leave. He had seen through everything. He had seen through Dudley's ambition, through Candis's gentle mask. But back then I was possessed, blinded, deaf to every word. And before he could protect me, they had conspired to push him into his grave. The sound of his dragon-headed cane hitting the floor, that dull thud, had become the death knell echoing through every nightmare of the thirty years that followed.
The voices from below came through the window with perfect clarity. Into my ears. And, of course, into Dudley's.
I lifted my eyes to look at him.
Dudley's hand, holding the bowl, paused for only a beat. Just one beat. Then his smile returned, untouched, as though my grandfather and butler's words were nothing but wind drifting past a window. He even tilted his head slightly, and in a volume perfectly calibrated to carry, said gently, "Clara, pay them no mind. I only care about you."
He said it so naturally. So earnestly.
I stared at his smiling face, stunned.
In my last life, hearing those words, I would have been moved to tears. The Clara of that life would have taken his indifference to others' judgment as true devotion, his "I only care about you" as a sacred vow. I would have believed I had found a man willing to endure any humiliation for my sake. Back then, hearing Grandfather cut him down like that from outside, I would have already been nursing grievances for him a thousand times over, aching to rush out and fight the world to protect this "devoted" man.
But now, looking at that smiling face again -
His lips curved gently, the corners of his eyes crinkling into pleasant arcs, concern oozing from every pore. But beneath that smile, I saw another face: the greedy, twisted sneer after the drug took hold; the leering grin as he shoved me onto the bed; the look in his eyes when he passed me in the rogue encampment later, his arm around his white moonlight, the way one glances at a crippled stray dog.
The two faces flickered before my eyes, overlapping, separating, overlapping again.
The tender smile. The twisted sneer. The doting gaze. The greedy leer.
A violent wave of nausea churned in my stomach, and I crushed it down with all my strength.
Three days of starvation had left my body alarmingly weak, my limbs heavy as lead. But my mind had never been sharper. I swept the room with my peripheral vision - the heavy oak door shut tight. The house was silent. Grandfather and Jenson were far away now, their voices long since swallowed by the garden walls. Candis would be making her move soon. She always waited for the perfect moment.
I remembered tonight's script perfectly, every scene, every line.
Dudley feeds me the soup. I drink. Candis bursts in with Grandfather, catching us in a compromising position. My reputation destroyed. Grandfather dead of rage. The family fortune seized.
That was how they had won last time.
Slowly, I let my head sink back into the pillow, my breathing growing shallow and weak. My blue eyes brimmed with tears - not feigned, but the real tears that had risen at the sound of Grandfather's voice, serving their purpose perfectly now.
"I can't," I whispered, my voice so hoarse it was barely audible. "I don't even have the strength to hold the spoon."
Dudley's smile stretched wider.
The light that flared in his eyes was the signal of greed being fed. He thought it was the prey surrendering. He didn't know it was the hunter drawing the snare.
"Don't worry, Clara." He set the bowl on the nightstand, turned, and sat on the edge of my bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. He dipped the spoon into the murky liquid and lifted it to my lips, his voice as soft as one coaxing a child. "Let me help you."
The bitter, herbal scent of the drug filled the air.
In my last life, that had been the smell of my destruction.
This time, it was his.
I met his gaze, my blue eyes brimming with deliberately summoned tears. I was a lamb awaiting slaughter. A fragile doll, ready to be shattered at any moment.
And he, the predator, was completely hooked.
The vow I made was silent, but it echoed through every cell of my being, a promise sealed with the agony of a life stolen from me.
In my last life, I poured all my heart into loving a man, and received hell in return.
In this life, I will deliver that hell back to them with my own hands.
You will all pay.
Every last one of you.
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