The room had gone still again.
Moonlight slipped through the high windows, casting soft light across the stone floor and flickering over the girl asleep on the bed.
Virelle had cried without sound, again. Tears that never quite spilled, pain that never quite reached her voice. But her body trembled, and when exhaustion overtook her, she crumpled gently into her pillow—back turned to the door, as always. Guarded, even in dreams.
Lia lay beside her, curled up tightly, her tiny paws folded under her. She didn't sleep. She just watched her.
You shouldn't have to be like this, Lia thought, eyes narrowed. You shouldn't have had to become this version of yourself just to survive.
She felt something aching in her chest—deeper than guilt, older than regret.
A memory.
No. Not hers.
Da-eun's.
It was from the side story—a bonus arc the author posted after the main novel's tragedy. The one readers cried over. The one Da-eun had read through clenched teeth at 3 a.m., then sobbed into her sheets for hours after.
"Chains of Crimson Roses: Epilogue - The Duke's Regret"
It had started with silence.
After the villainess was executed—coldly, publicly, without trial—the world moved on. The heroine wept prettily. The prince mourned her "tragic descent into darkness". And the nobles erased her name like spilled ink on their ledgers.
But the Duke… changed.
It began when he returned to the estate and found her room untouched.
Her books, unopened. Her cloak still hanging by the door. Her pillow dented where her cat used to sleep—though the cat had vanished by then.
He had never come home after her arrest. He hadn't visited during her trial. He hadn't asked questions.
But once he stood there, alone in her room, something snapped.
He summoned Mirane.
The second wife, ever serene, explained that "the girl had always been cold." That she'd "refused her lessons." That she was "jealous of the heroine's light."
He listened. And said nothing.
But his eyes drifted to a small box in the corner.
Inside were sketches.
Hundreds of them.
Some old. Some recent.
And all of them… of him.
Not the cold, imposing figure he saw in mirrors, but a smiling man, holding her hand. Picking her up. Reading to her. A father who never existed.
And on one, scribbled at the bottom in a child's trembling hand: "If I draw it enough, maybe he'll become real."
The Duke didn't speak for two full hours.
When he emerged, he summoned every servant in the mansion.
Every. Single. One.
He interrogated them for two days. Unblinking. Unflinching.
And the truth came out like rotted water from a shattered jug.
They had locked her in cellars.
Mocked her in the hallways.
Fed her scraps when Mirane ordered it. Watched her bleed and said nothing.
And the cat—the silver kitten she had loved so fiercely—had died in her place by poison that Marine plant for Virelle to disappear.
That was when the Duke snapped.
He had every servant executed. Publicly. Their bodies hung outside the estate gates for three days as a warning.
Then, he returned to Mirane.
And question her why she did it, why? He had believed in her that she would take better care of her because he couldn't.
And slit her throat himself.
No trial. No record.
Only blood and silence.
He buried Virelle alone.
No royal ceremony. No nobility.
Just a stone that read: "My Daughter, My Curse, My Last Mercy."
And then, he vanished.
Until one final letter surfaced, found by the next Duke in line.
"I let her die without knowing I loved her. I couldn't bear to look at her because she looked exactly like my wife. I thought I hated her. But I was the one who deserved hatred."
"She was never a villainess. I was the villain. I left a child to wolves and expected her not to bite."
They found him three days later, by the cliffs where his wife once painted the sky.
He'd jumped.
Lia blinked slowly in the moonlight.
So that's what really happened.
He loved her. Just… not enough to face her while she was alive.
He'd looked at her and seen his dead wife's eyes, her smile, her grief. And it had paralyzed him.
He hadn't beaten her.
He hadn't mocked her.
But he had done the worst thing of all.
He'd left her alone in a house that hated her—and pretended she was fine.
Because facing her meant facing his failure.
And by the time he looked—really looked—his daughter was already gone.
Virelle stirred softly in her sleep.
Lia nuzzled against her hand, heart twisting.
You were never evil, she thought. You were never cruel.
You were a child pretending to be a queen in a world that wanted your crown broken.
And now?
Now Lia had a second chance. They both did.
The story hadn't reached the midpoint yet. The heroine hadn't appeared. The betrayal hadn't begun.
And this time, Lia was here.
She wouldn't let Virelle become a side story.
She wouldn't let her be erased.
The moonlight shifted across the bed.
Outside, the wind howled softly through the trees.
And inside, a kitten pressed her head to a girl's palm—heart full of fury, love, and the weight of a rewritten fate.