Chapter 4: The Price of a Lie

“……”

What exactly was she saying? Selonia’s heart, which had been pounding so fiercely it felt ready to burst from her chest, suddenly plummeted as if weighted down.

Burning at the stake?

Her agitation must have been evident in her eyes, for Vanessa’s smile grew even brighter than before, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

“The day after is His Majesty’s and my engagement ceremony,” Vanessa stated, her tone light. “Perhaps he arranged it this way to signify a fresh start, shedding old, messy ties. Such a pity, really.”

Every word that spilled from Vanessa’s lips felt utterly devoid of reality, forcing Selonia to chew on them for an extended moment. Burning at the stake? An engagement? Could any of it be true?

Had Alix truly become engaged to Vanessa while Selonia languished here, enduring agonizing days of confinement? As Vanessa feigned covering her mouth, a large ruby ring gleamed conspicuously on the ring finger of her left hand.

Selonia found herself caught in a dilemma, unsure whether to believe Vanessa’s words.

Yet, what reason would Vanessa have to come all this way just to mock her with lies? If they were fabrications, the truth would eventually come to light anyway.

Selonia closed her eyes, letting out a derisive scoff. Was this place she stood truly reality? Even the sharp, cutting sensation of ice beneath her feet was no longer perceptible.

A witch trial, burning at the stake, and an engagement to Alix, announced by another woman — just a few months prior, she couldn’t have imagined being entangled with such words.

As her mind became uncontrollably tangled, her expression, paradoxically, grew colder and more rigid. The sheer unreality of it all made her feel as though she were hearing someone else’s fate, not her own.

Lacking any concrete proof that Vanessa’s words were true, they failed to truly resonate.

When Selonia simply stared back with a composed expression, Vanessa’s face twisted with venom, clearly not having received the reaction she desired.

Despite feeling as though she might faint, Selonia found a strange gratification in Vanessa’s fury, forcing a faint smile to her lips.

“……What a pity,” Selonia drawled. “I truly thought the Lady would attend.”

“Hah!”

Vanessa gritted her teeth, revealing a flash of white, and took another step closer. “Indeed, it’s such a shame I won’t get to see it. This beautiful body burning would surely be a spectacular sight.”

Her dark brown eyes were brimming with malice. ‘Perhaps I should have just stayed in my bedroom,’ Selonia thought. ‘Even an arrogant woman like Vanessa couldn’t have barged into my private chambers, could she?’

However, given that Vanessa had boldly entered this forbidden area, it seemed likely she would have disregarded the sanctity of the bedroom as well. Selonia sighed, offering a nonchalant reply.

“Oh dear, what a shame if your engagement ceremony doesn’t receive the attention it deserves because of me,” Selonia said, feigning apology.

“My deepest apologies.”

Vanessa reveled in being the center of attention wherever she went. Having been the object of envy as the Crown Prince’s prospective fiancée, she had grown unbearable once the spotlight had shifted to Selonia.

It stood to reason that she wouldn’t appreciate her engagement being overshadowed by Selonia’s predicament.

Selonia had offered the retort carelessly, but it seemed to have struck a deeper nerve than intended. Vanessa’s face flushed crimson, and she clenched her fists, raising her voice.

“You vulgar creature, with no talent beyond flaunting your body!” Vanessa spat.

“It was precisely that ‘talent’ which earned me His Majesty’s love,” Selonia countered smoothly, “unlike some others.”

Such accusations had been a constant refrain since she had fallen in love with the Emperor, so they held no sting for Selonia.

Her habitual reply sent Vanessa’s face blazing red, and she began to seethe. The innocent, ever-smiling girl had vanished, replaced by a venomous glint in her dark brown eyes.

“You’re awfully talkative for someone on the verge of death,” Vanessa sneered. “You don’t believe me, do you? To speak of His Majesty’s love even after being abandoned by him… it’s truly laughable.”

Enraged, she now seemed to have forgotten all pretense of decorum, screaming at Selonia.

“Do you truly believe His Majesty loves you? In the end, it’s me he chose as Empress! You’re nothing more than a pretty toy Alix played with and discarded. You wicked witch!”

Hearing Vanessa’s voice grow shrill, Selonia’s sigh deepened. The raw, unadulterated criticism, heard after so long, twisted her mood.

Even such a small war of nerves now drained her stamina completely, leaving her body feeling impossibly heavy.

She knew better than anyone that retreating to her bedroom for rest was preferable to this futile argument, yet she felt no inclination to leave.

She wanted to provoke Vanessa further, somehow. This was likely due to her inherently twisted nature, which demanded that if she was struck, she must strike back at least once to feel satisfied.

“Thank you for calling me pretty with every other word,” Selonia purred. “For a moment, I almost wondered if you might be fond of me, rather than His Majesty.”

‘I don’t even see myself as pretty anymore,’ Selonia thought, swallowing the rest of her words and curving her lips into an even more charming smile.

Her limbs were emaciated, her face pale with a sickly pallor, and her hair was brittle and split at the ends.

Though she had steadily weakened since arriving at the imperial palace, the imperial physicians had failed to even diagnose her condition.

They merely repeated that her body was frail and she shouldn’t overexert herself.

Selonia couldn’t fathom what “overexertion” she could possibly be doing, practically confined to this detached palace.

Suppressing her self-pity, she smiled, her eyes crinkling. Unable to find a retort, Vanessa, who had been grinding her teeth, abruptly whirled around and stomped away, her footsteps echoing on the floor.

“Hah…”

Selonia’s rigid posture finally crumbled once Vanessa was out of sight. She collapsed to the floor in an instant, clutching her chest and gasping for breath as if suffocating.

Merely exchanging a few words had utterly sapped all the energy from her body.

Though she managed to push herself up, the weakness in her legs caused her to constantly lose her balance. With every step, her shoulder bumped against the wall.

Vanessa’s words still echoed in her ears: an engagement ceremony and a burning at the stake. Despite their incredibility, those words relentlessly resurfaced, tormenting her.

Leaning against the wall, Selonia made her way back to her bedroom and collapsed onto the bed, unable to even wait for Alix.

Perhaps because she hadn’t closed the door upon leaving, the cold air from the hallway had permeated the room, leaving the bedding frigid.

As she buried her cheek into the cold pillow, the overwhelming fatigue soon pulled her eyelids shut.

Perhaps she had fallen asleep too early. Her eyes fluttered open at dawn, while darkness still clung to the world.

Through her half-closed lids, a faint, pale light seeped in, accompanied by a familiar warmth and scent.

‘He came to me again today; he didn’t abandon me.’ That single realization brought a wave of profound relief. For now, it was enough. She slowly lifted her eyelids, eager to confirm Alix’s presence with her own eyes.

At that very moment, a sudden, sharp pain pierced the inside of her arm. The stinging sensation, as if pricked by a fine needle, caused her eyes to snap open reflexively.

Selonia’s gaze naturally darted towards the source. As her blurry vision gradually sharpened, a disconcerting sight came into view.

A slender needle was inserted into her arm, and bright red blood was steadily filling a glass tube. The person meticulously drawing her blood, utterly devoid of expression, was none other than her lover, Alix.

“……Your Majesty?”

At the sound of her faint, trembling voice, Alix’s hand gave a startled twitch. He hastily pulled out the needle, quickly hid his hand behind his back, and turned to look at Selonia.

“What… what are you doing right now?”

What kind of situation was this? Her ice-clear, sky-blue eyes were clouded with confusion. To secretly insert a needle into a sleeping person’s arm and draw blood?

Unconsciously, she rubbed her arm, only to find the needle mark had mysteriously vanished.

Were it not for the lingering sting and the clear image she had witnessed, she might have mistaken the entire incident for a hallucination.

“It’s nothing,” Alix said, his previous look of dismay replaced by his usual smile. “You seemed to have grown quite thin, so I was merely preparing a sample for the imperial physician to examine.”

Following his gaze, which seemed to be checking something, Selonia saw her untouched dinner still sitting on the nearby tray, exactly as it had been when she had fallen asleep early.

Why would he be checking her dinner in this situation? Selonia bowed her head, deliberately trying to dismiss a vague, unsettling hypothesis that was forming in her mind. Could it truly be?

That he was drawing her blood to request an examination from the imperial physician? Even if so, was it truly logical to draw blood from a sleeping person without their knowledge?

She blankly rubbed her arm, smooth and utterly devoid of any needle mark. Amidst her confusion, Vanessa’s words from earlier that day suddenly sprang to mind.

“Is it true that you are engaged to Lady Bernac?” Selonia asked, raising her head.

“……”

Alix’s expression twisted into something terrifying, a look Selonia had never witnessed before. She instinctively recoiled, her shoulders hunching.

“She came here?” he asked, a sharp ‘Tsk’ of his tongue following immediately. “Nonsense.”

Selonia had expected an immediate denial, a whispered assurance that it was a baseless slander, that he had no one but her, just as before. Unable to conceal her shock, Selonia questioned again.

“……Is it truly so?”

No answer came. In that silence, Selonia read an affirmation, and her face turned stark white. She had been deceiving herself, believing Vanessa’s words were merely concocted to provoke and unsettle her.

Yet, Vanessa’s pronouncement of an engagement ceremony had been the truth.

A faint sob escaped her dry, cracked lips. Selonia gazed at Alix, her face etched with disbelief, a desperate plea in her eyes. There was more she needed to ask, for Vanessa had told her far more than just this.