Revenge didn't begin with anger. Anger was a wildfire—spectacular, loud, but ultimately self-consuming.
True revenge began with clarity.
I sat by my bedroom window, a delicate porcelain cup of herbal tea cooling untouched in my hands. Below, the manor grounds were slowly waking beneath the golden touch of the morning sun. Servants moved along familiar stone paths like clockwork. Guards changed shifts with a rhythmic clank of armor. On the surface, everything was exactly as it should be.
That was the problem.
I had trusted this stillness once. I had believed that routine meant safety and that loyalty was a permanent fixture of my life, as solid as the foundation of this house.
I wouldn't make that mistake again.
"The trial won't happen for years," I murmured, my voice barely a breath against the rim of the cup. "But the lies… the lies already exist."
Lies were like weeds. They didn't appear overnight in full bloom; they were seeds planted in the dark, watered by whispers, and protected by those who stood to gain from the harvest.
I needed to find the gardeners.
I closed my eyes, letting my thoughts drift away from the heat of my resentment and toward the cold, hard facts. I sifted through the faces and voices of the courtroom—the one I hadn't yet stood in. I looked for the cracks.
My head throbbed faintly, a dull pressure building behind my temples.
Click.
I ignored it. I forced my mind back to the first witness.
Not my family. Not him. They were too large, too visible to strike at yet. To pull a tree down, you don't start with the trunk; you cut the roots.
The first root was small. Forgettable.
Necessary.
I remembered a man who had stood on the stand with sweat beading on his upper lip, swearing to the Sovereign Order that he had seen me passing encrypted documents to a foreign envoy in the dead of night. A lie so blatant it had made my head spin.
I knew exactly where he'd actually been that night. He had been at—
I frowned.
Where had he been? The certainty was there, a solid weight in my mind, but the image was… blurry. It was like looking at a painting through a curtain of rain. The harder I tried to focus, the more the details bled into the background.
It was annoying. More than annoying—it was a warning.
I set the tea aside and reached for a sheet of parchment and a quill. I had to write it down before the thief on my wrist stole the rest of it.
Harlan Kest.
I scratched the name into the paper.
Third Secretary to the Eastern Trade Office. Ambitious. Cowardly. Bought.
The pen hesitated, a drop of ink pooling on the page.
Bought by who?
The answer hovered just out of reach, a ghost in the corner of my eye that vanished when I turned to look at it. My fingers tightened around the quill until the wood groaned.
"Don't," I warned the watch quietly. "Not this one."
It ticked on, unbothered by my threats.
Fine. If my memory was going to betray me, I would simply have to move faster than it could erase me.
I stood and pulled on a dark, hooded cloak, carefully tucking the watch beneath the silk of my sleeve. Harlan Kest lived three streets away from the Palace District—close enough to taste the air of power, but far enough to never quite touch it.
I wouldn't confront him. Not yet. A cornered rat bites; a watched rat eventually leads you back to the nest.
The streets were crowded when I arrived.
Merchants called out prices for summer fruits, carriages rattled over the cobblestones, and the air was thick with the smell of roasting meat and street dust.
I blended in easily. In this year, Lady Elara Valen was still a symbol of grace and untouchable status.
For now.
I spotted him outside a local bookshop. He was nervously adjusting his high collar, his eyes darting back and forth as he spoke to another clerk. He looked exactly as I remembered. Small. Average. The kind of man who would sell a life just to upgrade his carriage.
Guilt lived comfortably in the slump of his shoulders.
"You won't even see me coming," I whispered into the wind.
"You always were remarkably impatient."
The voice brushed past my ear like a cold draft.
I stiffened, my heart leaping into my throat, but I didn't turn. I knew that tone. It was too calm, too amused to belong to anyone in this world.
"I told you not to sneak up on me," I said, my voice a low, dangerous silk.
A soft chuckle vibrated behind me. "You didn't tell me that, Elara. Not in this lifetime."
I glanced sideways.
He stood in the shadow of a nearby awning, dressed in plain, unremarkable clothes that allowed him to vanish into the crowd. To anyone else, he was just another passerby. To me, he was a predator masquerading as a man.
"You're not supposed to be here," I said, returning my gaze to Harlan.
"Neither are you," he replied pleasantly.
"And yet, here we are. Defying the natural order of things."
I narrowed my eyes as Harlan Kest tripped over his own feet while walking away.
"This one matters. He's the foundation of their 'truth'."
"They all matter," the man said, stepping a fraction closer. "But yes. He's a delicious choice for a first strike."
I frowned. "You sound pleased. I didn't realize you took sides."
"I don't. I'm simply entertained. It's been a long time since I've seen a ghost try to haunt the living."
"I'm not a ghost," I snapped.
"Give it time."
My jaw clenched. I watched Harlan Kest laugh at something his companion said, completely unaware that his name had been written down twice today—once on my parchment, and once in the Dealer's ledger.
"I won't kill him yet," I said, my mind already weaving the trap. "I want him to testify willingly. I want him to tell the truth because he's more afraid of me than he is of them."
The man hummed approvingly. "Cruel."
"Efficient," I corrected.
Click. Click.
A sudden, sharp flicker of unease passed through me. It felt like a physical skip in my heartbeat.
"What was I… what was I about to say?" I asked, turning to him suddenly.
He didn't answer. He just watched me with those ancient, swirling eyes.
I looked down at my hand. The hand that should have been holding the parchment with Harlan's name on it.
My hand was empty.
My breath caught in my throat. I looked at the ground, at my pockets—nothing. The parchment was gone. Not dropped. Not stolen.
It had never existed.
The memory of writing it was there, but the physical proof had been claimed by the watch. The cost was rising.
Slowly, deliberately, I let out a breath and forced a smile. It was a cold, jagged expression that made a passerby move away in fear.
"Then I'll just write it again," I said, my voice trembling with a newfound, sharpened rage. "I'll write it in his blood if I have to."
Somewhere behind me, the man laughed softly, the sound melting into the noise of the city.
And on my wrist, the watch kept its merciless time.