The drawing room was quiet, too quiet—the kind of quiet that does not belong in grand manors or among velvet drapes, but in courtrooms and crypts. The sun had not fully breached the lace curtains, and yet there sat Lady Katherine, poised like a judgment carved in marble.
She did not move.
She did not need to.
Her presence alone summoned gravity into the room, thick as honey and twice as suffocating. Reclined delicately on a pale rose chaise, her gown falling in folds like liquid moonlight, Lady Katherine had become less woman, more verdict.
Before her, the servants had gathered. Maids with linen bonnets trembling on their heads. Footmen too afraid to lift their eyes. Cooks, scullery girls, even the butler himself—drawn from every corridor by the unmistakable tone of her summons.
No one dared speak.
Not yet.
Katherine inhaled once, slowly, and set aside the porcelain teacup she had not touched.
"There has been a transgression," she said, voice cool as snowmelt. "One of consequence."
The air stiffened.
No one moved.
Katherine's gaze drifted over them—those wide-eyed, trembling creatures who served this house with hands and heads bowed. But she was not looking for remorse. She was looking for precision.
"You are here," she continued, folding you hands like the petals of a shut flower, "because the boy who lies upstairs, unconscious, fevered, and in pain, has been poisoned."
There it was.
The word cracked like lightning through the air.
Poisoned.
A murmur almost rose—a ripple of shock—but no sound escaped. Only the frantic glances passed between the rows of servants, each searching the next for guilt, for panic, for the telltale twitch of a lie.
Her voice, when it came, was low but commanding—its sharpness softened only by exhaustion.
"I ask again," she said, eyes sweeping over them like twin blades of frost, "Who was responsible for the milk that delivered to August's study yesterday morning?"
Silence.
It stretched long. Long enough to press into every ribcage in the room.
Eyes darted.
Shoes shifted.
One of the maids—a young girl with her apron twisted nervously in her fingers—let out the smallest sound. Not quite a word. A breath. A tremble.
Katherine's gaze fixed upon her instantly.
"You," she said, rising at last with the unhurried grace of a woman who did not need to raise her voice but to raise the dead.
"Step forward."
The girl did.
Not from bravery, but because fear carried her feet.
Her name was Ellyn. Barely seventeen. Her hair was pinned too tightly, and her eyes glistened with panic—not guilt, but dread.
"M-My Lady,"
she began, curtseying so deeply her knees nearly gave way. "I—I did fetch the milk. Yesterday morning. For lord august in the study room."
Katherine said nothing.
Ellyn swallowed, glancing sideways at the others, but no one moved to defend her.
"I My Lady—" she faltered, voice brittle. "Lord August rarely eats, my lady. Not in the mornings. Sometimes a piece of toast. But more often just… milk. So I prepared it as usual. I fetched it from the kitchen myself."
Katherine's brows arched with the precision of a blade being drawn.
You prepared it?"
Ellyn nodded quickly. "Yes, my Lady. I poured it myself. From the fresh bottle. I—I didn't see anyone near the pitcher. It was chilled, sealed. No scent. No sign of—of tampering."
"But you did not taste it."
The girl paled.
"I… I didn't think I needed to. I never—"
"Clearly," Katherine interrupted coldly, "none of us thought enough."
Ellyn's breath caught, her eyes wide now. "I swear, my lady—I would never—"
"I know you would not," Katherine said, and the sharpness in her tone faltered just slightly—cracking along the edge. "That is not the question."
She turned slowly, facing the others once more.
"But someone else did."
Another silence.
This one heavier.
Ellyn's voice came again, quieter. Almost as if she didn't wish to be heard.
"I didn't notice anything, my Lady. It was just a glass of milk. I poured it in and fetch directly in the study room while he sat at his desk… He didn't even look at me. He only said…
'Leave it.'"
Katherine's breath left her slowly, visibly.
She sat again.
This time without poise. Only weight.
The knowledge settled into her bones: August had not eating. He'd been weakening day by day and said nothing. And now, the only thing he had let pass to his lips had tried to
kill him.
The milk.
Such a simple thing.
Such a cruel betrayal.
She folded her hands together, not to still them—but to keep them from shaking.
"Dismissed," she murmured at last. "All of you."
The staff bowed and backed away—grateful for the breath they were allowed to keep.
Only Ellyn remained for a moment longer, trembling, her voice a bare whisper.
"My lady… if I did something wrong—"
"You didn't," Katherine said, her voice like porcelain about to break.
And as the girl fled, Katherine turned to the fire. But she did not warm her hands.
No.
She simply stared into the flames and whispered beneath her breath:
"Who dares to poison my boy?"
The flames did not answer.
But her resolve burned brighter than all of them combined.
Katherine remained still.
The hush of the room thickened around her like layers of tulle and sorrow. The hearth crackled, yet even the fire dared not speak. Shadows moved gently across the the mask walls—draped in melancholy, wrapped in all that was unsaid.
She did not weep.
No—grief in her kind was never loud. It festered quietly behind bone and silk, threading itself through posture, through silence, through the way she now sat: unmoving, statuesque, except for the tremble of her lashes.
Her gaze lingered not on the door the servants had vanished through, but on the floor before it. Still. Cold. Empty.
Just like August's eyes had been.
That boy. That bitter, brilliant boy.
The last of them.
Her sister in-law child. Her blood. Her only living echo in a world that seemed intent on wiping out all that remained sacred.
And he turned from her now.
Not with hate—no, that would've been kinder. He turned with distance. With the icy, wordless dignity of one who no longer wished to be seen. As though her presence had grown too loud. As though her love had curdled into trespass.
He would not even look her in the eye.
Not when she touched his cheek with trembling gloved fingers. Not when she had crossed the threshold to find him fevered, pale, and breaking.
Not even when she called him my child.
Her chest rose with a breath far too fragile to be called resolve.
He was suffering.
And not just from the poison in his blood. Not just from the weight in his skull or the rage in his bones. He was suffering from something older. Something lonelier.
A lifetime of learning not to need anyone.
And she—foolish woman that she was—had tried to stand at his side with outstretched arms, as though he had not long ago decided to walk alone.
It hurt.
It hurt in the way winter winds it hurt—when they found the places where old wounds had healed wrong.
Her fingers curled slightly in her lap. Not in anger.
In restraint.
She longed to go to him again. To storm the room, to tear away the silk sheets, to cradle his pride-wounded body and say enough of this nonsense, child, let someone bear this weight with you.
But he wouldn't let her.
He never had.
And if she forced her care upon him now, he would turn farther still.
So Katherine, noble mistress of her own manor but what's the point when all it is just sorrow—and it is the only thing she loathed the most.
She sat back.
And let silence win.
A long sigh passed from her lips, quiet as confession. It lingered in the air like perfume and regret.
He is my only boy left in this world, she thought bitterly. And he would rather suffer alone than suffer near me.
The fire crackled again, tossing its embers against the grate like protest.
But Katherine said nothing more.
She folded herself into stillness, into poise, into that armor of womanhood carved from centuries of silence—and waited.
Waited for him to return to her.
If he ever would.
The manor had begun to stir.
Though it was still early, the halls whispered with motion—the soft swish of skirts, the muted clatter of boots polished to gleam, the distant chime of silverware being laid in rooms untouched by appetite.
Lady Katherine stood before the tall glass, her silhouette dark against the morning haze. Pale light spilled across her shoulders, catching on the brooch at her throat—a piece wrought of jet and pearl, fashioned in mourning, but worn always.
Her reflection did not smile.
It had not in years.
Behind her, Seraphim fumbled with the last clasp of her cloak. Dutiful, as ever. A little clumsy, yes—his fingers too large for delicate broochwork, his touch far more suited to sword hilts and formal letters—but loyal. Steady. Her husband not by romance, but by contract and care. He'd been beside her through storm and scandal alike, and though she had never quite learned to love him, she had long since learned to trust him.
"Are you certain you wish to attend court today?" he asked, voice soft, gaze flicking briefly toward her gloved hands. "After all that's—"
"I must," Katherine said, her tone clipped and composed. "The Duchy expects my presence. If I fail to appear now, they'll sniff scandal. Or weakness. Or both."
She turned from the mirror.
Her mourning skirts moved like thunderclouds, the weight of their embroidery trailing across the polished floors in quiet defiance. With every step she took, the weight of nobility returned to her spine.
Down the grand staircase they went, arm in arm, past portraits of ancestors who had not known poison, betrayal, or the unbearable ache of watching a boy suffer alone.
At the front entrance, the staff waited in disciplined rows, eyes lowered, postures reverent.
The carriage stood ready.
A gleaming construct of lacquered black and silver filigree, drawn by two matching greys with manes plaited in velvet ribbon. Its windows were draped with lace, the crest of House Everhart's carved deep into its door like a seal upon parchment.
Giles stood beside it.
Tall. Weathered. His posture was straight, but his expression bore the quiet fatigue of a man who had known this house far too long—and had watched too many times the child suffer in silence.
Lady Katherine descended the final stair, her gloved hand never trembling, her gaze sweeping the assembled servants with practiced poise.
Then she stopped before Giles.
He straightened, shoulders braced, awaiting instruction.
Katherine tilted her chin—slightly, but enough to command silence.
"If anything changes," she said slowly, "if he doesn't feel much fine,"
She stepped closer, voice dropping to a hush laced with steel.
"—you are to inform me immediately."
Giles bowed his head.
"My lady."
"I will not tolerate delay," she continued, her eyes narrowing with cold flame. "No missteps. No forgetfulness. I am to be told at once. Do you understand me, Giles?"
"I do, my lady."
She leaned forward just enough to make the next words feel less like a command and more like a vow spoken through clenched teeth.
He is my angel," she whispered, "and I will not have him fall further into suffering without my knowledge."
Giles swallowed thickly. "Understood."
Seraphim opened the carriage door, ever the quiet knight beside her.
Without another glance, Katherine climbed inside.
The door shut behind her with a finality that rang through the courtyard like a sealed fate.
And the wheels began to turn.
As the carriage rolled away from Blackwood Manor, the scent of lavender lingered behind—soft, floral, but beneath it: something sharper.
The scent of a woman who would return.
And woe to those who harmed her blood.