The moment the door shut behind her, Bettina sank into the corner of her bedchamber, curling her knees to her chest. Her hands trembled as they hovered just above her lap, unsure whether to clutch the skirts of her dress or hide her face in shame. The whisper of Lady Margella's voice lingered in her mind.
" Anthony will just grow tired of carrying someone he must always protect from the world rather than build it with."
She hadn't said it cruelly. No, that's what made it worse. Lady Margella's voice had been calm, almost kind, like she genuinely believed she was doing Bettina a favor by speaking the truth.
But why had it hurt so much?
Bettina leaned her head back against the wall, eyes staring blankly at the floral trim along the ceiling.
She remembered the way Anthony had smiled at her the other night, before the accident. How he had murmured, "You make this house warmer," after she'd organized breakfast for the staff. The way his voice softened when he called her name. The way he winced through pain but still teased her gently when she scolded him for not resting. The way his eyes darkened with concern when she'd flinched in her sleep, comforting her after she woke up from a nightmare.
And the way he reached for her hand afterward. Like he wanted her to know he was there.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Was that truly love?
Or was that just... kindness?
It was difficult to tell. After all, she had never known real affection—not until she died and came here. Back on Earth, no adult had ever protected her. Not her stepfather, not the teachers who ignored the bruises, not the neighbors who averted their eyes.
Anthony had. But maybe... only because she was Jason's mother now. Maybe he was just grateful of her.
And Lady Margella—elegant, capable, admired—made it sound so obvious. She and Anthony matched in ways Bettina couldn't compete with. Business, status, clout, confidence. They even looked like they belonged in the same world.
Her heart throbbed painfully in her chest.
"I should stop this," she whispered to herself. "Before I fall any deeper and humiliate myself."
Just then, a knock came at her door.
"Lady Whitman?" came the wavering voice of Anthony's valet through the closed door. "I—I apologize for the intrusion, but... my lord has refused to let me near him with bandages. He says I have gorilla hands, my lady. Gorilla hands! After eight years of loyal service!"
She covered her mouth with her hands, unwilling to respond.
The valet actually sniffled. "Please my lady, he's sulking, and he's impossible when he sulks. I can't take it anymore. He won't eat, he won't let me touch his back—he says only you can do it properly! He hurt my feelings, my lady! Please, I beg you—before he insults my ancestors, too!"
Bettina blinked, the smallest laugh escaping her lips despite the ache in her chest.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," she murmured, rising to her feet. "Fine. I'll help."
When she entered the Earl's bedchamber, Anthony looked up from his pillow pile, eyes brightening in boyish delight.
"Oh, thank the stars," he sighed. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd decided to abandon me to his clutches."
Bettina arched a brow as she moved to pick up the tray of salve and bandages. "You mean the clutches of a man who cried outside my door like an abandoned duckling?"
Anthony chuckled, then winced at the motion. "You wound me, my lady. Not as deeply as my valet's claws might have, but still."
She couldn't help it—she smiled. But she didn't meet his gaze.
Anthony noticed. He shifted slightly, careful not to strain his injured side.
"You're avoiding my eyes," he said quietly.
She busied herself with the salve. "You're imagining things."
"No," he said. "Something happened. What is it?"
Bettina hesitated.
"Did Margella say something to you?" He prompted gently once more.
Then: "She gave me advice. She said I should think carefully about my recklessness. That I should work harder to become someone worthy of your household... of your name."
Anthony's jaw clenched.
"She said you were reckless?"
Bettina kept her head down as she applied the salve with careful fingers.
"N-not in so many words. But I think she's right," she whispered. "I am reckless. I've relied on you too much. I've made things harder for you."
"Bettina," he said, reaching up to gently stop her hand. "Look at me."
It was evident that she was finding it hard to look up at him, but after a moment of patient waiting, she finally did.
His gaze held hers with a quiet intensity, gentle yet unwavering.
"You are already perfect to me," he said. "You don't need to change. I don't want you to. You don't burden me. If anything, you've carried me through these last few months. And... I love every part of you. Even the ones you try to hide."
Bettina froze.
Her breath caught, heart hammering wildly in her chest.
She hadn't expected him to say that. It was so direct.
Slowly, her hand in his, her gaze flickered down to his lips—then back up to his eyes, searching, questioning.
"Do you mean it?" she whispered.
"I do."
"When…when you say 'love' every part of me… was it actually just because you like me because I was being a good stepmother to Jason?" She just had to clarify.
"I like you being good to Jason, yes." He agreed. But then, he laid a hand on her cheek before continuing. "But I love every part of you. The way a man loves a woman."
Her breath caught in that clear, plain declaration. Her heart fluttered, wanted to fly out of her chest at the joy that suddenly bloomed inside her. And whatever joy she was feeling was clearly reflected in his sapphire eyes that was looking straight into hers.
The next moment happened with breathless silence. There was no dramatic music, no swelling orchestration—just the quiet awareness of two souls leaning closer.
Their lips met in a kiss that was tender, hesitant at first.
But then—her hand cupped his cheek, and he tilted his face into her touch.
Their kiss deepened, slow and warm, like sunlight melting away the chill of doubt. There was no rush, no fear. Only two hearts meeting, trembling with the joy and triumph of being known.
When they finally broke apart, Bettina's eyes were glassy with tears she didn't know she'd shed.
"It's my first kiss," she whispered. "My first real one."
Anthony leaned back into hers and kissed her tear-stained cheeks.
"Then I'm honored," he said.
She smiled—shy, soft, but real.
Unable to help herself, wanting to feel that this moment was truly real, she leaned back into him, and he was only too happy to oblige her silent plea for another kiss.
And for the first time since Lady Margella's visit, the weight pressing down on her chest lifted. Just a little bit more.
She closed the door to her bedroom with a quiet click, then leaned back against it, her fingers rising instinctively to touch her lips. It was still tingling with joy. She didn't even know how she got back to her bedroom.
Did that just… happen?
Her heart was pounding so hard it almost hurt, thudding in her chest like it didn't know what to do with itself. Anthony had kissed her—no, they had kissed, together, like they both meant it. Like he wanted it just as much as her. Like… he wanted her.
A shaky laugh bubbled up from her chest. She pressed a hand over her mouth, smiling like a fool, her cheeks flushed with warmth.
Was Anthony her boyfriend now? Wait—did people even say that here? Was that what he meant? She'd never had one. Never. Not in her old life, not even close. Boys back then were either bullies or too scared to look at her after one glance at her stepfather. She was also too busy trying to make ends meet rather than meet other people her own age. And yet here she was—kissing a man who looked at her like she was the most precious thing in the world.
How was that real?
He said he loved her. And… oh stars, she loved him too! She loved the way he said her name, the quiet way he listened when she spoke, how he always—always—stood up for her even when she didn't realize she needed it. He made her feel like she mattered. That she was safe.
She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging tightly as if to keep the memory from slipping away.
"You're in love, aren't you?" she whispered to herself, smiling at the ceiling like a giddy fool. "And he loves you back."
She laughed again, half-bewildered, half-ecstatic. For the first time in her two lives… she wasn't just surviving.
She was living. And someone loved her for it.
That night, she slept with a smile on her face that refused to leave.
*****Two souls clash, yet share one fire*****
Morning sunlight filtered through the lace curtains of the Whitman Manor's master bedroom, casting a golden glow across the floor. Earl Anthony Whitman lay propped up in bed, one arm in a sling and his back braced against pillows. A warm tray of breakfast sat untouched on the table beside him while his gorilla valet stood at attention by the door.
"Are you sure I cannot come? I feel much, much better already," Anthony grumbled like a sulky boy who was denied dessert, watching Bettina pull on her gloves near the hearth.
Bettina, dressed in a deep green traveling coat embroidered with golden thread, glanced at him over her shoulder with a mixture of fondness and exasperation. "The doctor said no exertion, no stress, and absolutely no riding. That includes bumpy carriages and courtly nonsense."
Anthony huffed, dramatically settling deeper into the pillows. "Tyrant."
"Bedridden tyrant, you mean," Bettina teased. She crossed the room to check the dressing on his shoulder. "Stay. Rest. I'll be back before lunch."
"Then give me something to live for until then," he murmured, his hand slipping around her wrist.
Her cheeks flared with color, glancing at the valet who was studiously looking at the far wall. "You're impossible."
He leaned forward, puckering his lips comically. "Just a secret kiss, Lady Whitman. A cure for my wounded soul."
Rolling her eyes but clearly smiling, Bettina bent to press a gentle kiss to his lips.
He caught her chin before she pulled away and deepened the kiss, slow and reverent, until she melted slightly against him. With her hand on his chest, she could feel that his heart beat the same tempo as hers. It was gratifying. As his hand snaked to the back of her neck to gently stroke her skin, she found herself melting into him even more.
He was such a great kisser, and a great teacher too to a novice like her. Their lips parted only when Jason cleared his throat loudly from the doorway.
"Mama, if you're done kissing Papa, can you tell me what I should do while you're away?"
Flustered, Bettina straightened, smoothing her skirts. "Jason, you cheeky boy—watch your father. Make sure he doesn't sneak out of bed."
Jason saluted dramatically. "Understood. I will guard him like a hawk! And Grand Duke, you better bring my mama back safe and sound."
Behind him, Grand Duke Edward Chambers, leaning against the doorframe with amused ease, raised a hand in salute. "With my life, young master." He looked straight at the earl then, "Anthony, we will also meet with you as soon as possible."
By the time their carriage rolled up the long drive of the imperial palace, Bettina and the Grand Duke were chatting comfortably about mundane trade logistics of their joint business. But their conversation faltered when two noblewomen—visibly overdressed for the morning—strolled past them under the portico, whispering loud enough to be heard.
"She's always with the Grand Duke now. Business partners, they say," said one.
"But, should a business partner blush like that to a man you're not married to?"
"I heard she stayed at his estate once. Overnight."
"Perhaps she thinks to climb higher than the Earl of Whitman."
Bettina stiffened. Surreptitiously, she glanced at the two gossiping women and saw them eying her and the grand duke with avid eyes and smirks that were evident even though they were hidden with fans.
The Grand Duke raised a brow but kept walking, guiding her to follow along with a polite hand on her elbow, a faint smirk on his lips.
"Does it ever get tiresome?" Bettina muttered, eyes forward.
"Only if you listen to the clucking hens, darling," Edward said cheerfully. "Let them chatter. You'll be rewriting history while they ruin their complexions with envy."
They turned right and walked over the bridge that allowed them to enter the prince's palace. The guards by the side doors stepped aside with respectful nods, and they were quickly ushered into the Crown Prince's study.
The Crown Prince rose from his desk, smiling as Mage Henry stood from a chair near the bookshelves.
"Lady Whitman. Cousin. Please, sit. You're both early."
"We didn't want to keep Your Highness waiting," Bettina said with a polite curtsy.
Mage Henry nodded to her. "You look well, Lady Whitman. I trust the Earl is recovering?"
"Stubbornly so."
A brief round of laughter passed, but the Crown Prince's expression quickly shifted into seriousness.
"Thanks to the Imperial Trade Sigil that you and Mage Henry proposed, we've made such a significant progress. Several port officials were arrested just last week. And two smuggling rings were uncovered—one involving arms, the other rare magical minerals."
"That's encouraging," Bettina said, then frowned. "But I suspect you didn't call this meeting only to share good news."
"Correct. The remaining smugglers are adapting fast," the Crown Prince said. "They've begun forging documents quite cleverly, bribing officials in new ways, even staging fake cargo losses."
Henry folded his arms. "Their methods are evolving. So must ours."
"We were hoping you could, once again, give us some advice or idea that could inspire us to move much better against our veiled enemies."
Yes, Edward already briefed her of this meeting's agenda earlier today. On their way to the palace, she'd had some time to think of what she could suggest in this meeting. Bettina hesitated, a little unsure, but then shared her thoughts, "Have you considered additional, maybe more transparent, procedures?"
All three men looked at her.
She continued, "Back in my homeland—well, I mean, back at my family's estate when my father was still alive—I remember him often complaining about how flawed the trading system was. He used to say it was far too easy for thieves and smugglers to operate in the shadows while ordinary people were left to suffer the consequences through inflated prices. He believed that if there was a system where merchants and distributors were required to publish their transaction logs publicly—on a rotating schedule—and if buyers could also view those logs and even contribute their own purchase feedback, then it would create a more transparent market. More eyes on every trade would make it harder for corruption to thrive."
Alaric leaned back slightly, his brow furrowed—not in disapproval, but in careful contemplation.
"A rotating public ledger…" he repeated slowly, as if tasting the weight of the idea. "You propose something akin to a public accounting system that anyone can access and even contribute to. It would certainly force transparency into the marketplace. But implementing such a measure would require oversight, infrastructure, and a means to verify that those logs aren't tampered with."
He paused, eyes sharp with interest. "Still, if structured properly, with regional scribes or certified trade officials, it could work. We'd need a seal system, something difficult to forge—" He glanced at the Grand Duke, "—and a network of inspectors with enough authority to enforce it."
Then, turning back to Bettina, his tone softened, "It's ambitious, Countess. But it might be the very disruption we need."
"Well, with that system, we could also implement verified, time-stamped entries with open peer reviews. Traders could earn something like a rating, publicly displayed, based on reliability and compliance. The more positive the peer reviews were, the more reliable they would be considered by the public, and the more consumers they would gain as well," she added eagerly.
"A reputation-based accountability system," Henry said, intrigued.
"Exactly. Cross-referenced by independent verifiers. It will encourage honest merchants to compete in transparency. Corrupt actors will then stand out like a sore thumb."
The Crown Prince leaned forward. "Could we apply this here?"
"We'd need to modify it for the Empire's legal framework," Edward said. "And make sure it's not burdensome enough to discourage trade altogether."
"We could," Henry slowly spoke up, as if voicing his thoughts as they come along, "probably use mithril sheets to show that public ledger to the citizens and have those sheets be posted on strategic areas in the empire. The mithril sheets could feature a merchant or two per day."
"Oh yes! And then, maybe one or two people per week could come up and input their review of a merchant. Perhaps we can simplify the process and make it easy for each independent party to participate in," offered Bettina.
"If we involve the merchant guilds in designing the framework," Edward offered, "they'd be more likely to comply."
Henry nodded. "And we can link the Trade Sigil to the public reputation system through magical verification, like a truth-seal at every major checkpoint."
"Well, before we work on the logistics of this public merchant review system," Bettina piped up. "We should probably first work on making the process of using the Imperial Trade Sigil easier at the ports."
The room buzzed with discussions on the current procedure of using the Imperial Trade Sigil on incoming and outgoing cargos while suggestions fly across the room on the pros and cons of constructing additional infrastructure that may increase the trade sigil's ease of usage. One even said that the additional structure may help integrate the trade sigil with the suggested public trade review system. Possibilities abound as they discussed next steps: implementation trials, legal adjustments, and partnership with the merchant guilds. But beneath the energy, a darker current ran—acknowledgement of a hidden enemy that was growing more aggressive by the day.
When the meeting finally ended, the Crown Prince said gravely, "Your idea may very well reshape the future of trade in the empire, Lady Whitman. But it will also make you a larger target."
Edward clapped Bettina's shoulder gently. "Don't worry. That's why you've got me."
Bettina smiled—but the warmth in her eyes dimmed slightly, shadowed by the weight of what lay ahead.
A few days later and the four of them moved to a room, once used only for war councils. It had been temporarily converted into the empire's command center for trade reform.
Documents were scattered across the long oak table. Maps of the empire's ports and inland trade routes crisscrossed the walls. A chalkboard Mage Henry conjured hovered midair, glowing softly with magical diagrams and schematics that adjusted with a flick of his hand.
Bettina leaned over a stack of scrolls, cross-referencing port official records with handwritten merchant testimonies that Mage Henry had gathered with the help of truth-detecting spells.
"Here," she said, circling a port name with a charcoal pen, "Port Arandale. Every month, it records twelve ships docking. But based on the logs from the merchants and the coastal tower, there should be at least fifteen."
"Three ghost ships," the Crown Prince muttered, eyes narrowing. "Smugglers or bribe-runners. Possibly both."
Bettina nodded. "Which means their manifests were either falsified or never entered into the system at all. That's where the Transparent Trade Revelation comes in."
She stepped forward, tapping the chalkboard.
"Think of it like a loop," she said, her voice clear and firm. "Every legitimate trade begins with a registration request. The merchant—whether land or sea-based—requests a shipping permit through the local Trade Authority office. Once approved, a magical trade stamp is affixed to their manifest, sealed with both the empire's sigil and a tracking glyph co-developed by Mage Henry."
Mage Henry gave a sheepish shrug. "It glows if tampered with and a red mark will appear in the main books kept within the palace. And yes, it took four sleepless nights and a minor explosion to perfect."
The Grand Duke chuckled and pointed with a stylus. "Now, when the shipment arrives at any port, the local inspectors use mage-scrying devices to verify the stamp's authenticity. If anything doesn't match the original registration—weight, contents, route, or even timing—it flags an alert straight to the Crown's new Trade Monitoring Bureau," he gestured to the new members of their team.
Three new men, personally handpicked by Prince Alaric, nodded in agreement as they looked up from their own corners of the room.
Bettina added, "We've also mandated that all trade logs—departure, transit, and arrival—be copied to three neutral review bodies: the Crown Archives, the Mage Tower, and the Royal Treasury. That way, no one department can bury or alter suspicious records on their own."
The Crown Prince stood with his arms crossed, pride flickering in his eyes. "It's cross-referenced accountability. No more hiding behind jurisdiction."
"And it's visible," Bettina continued. "That's the heart of it. We're posting public ledgers once a month. Town criers will announce shipping discrepancies and merchant permits revoked for smuggling. People will know. We're turning secrecy into exposure. And corruption doesn't thrive under sunlight."
The Grand Duke let out a low whistle. "Gods, Betty, you're dangerous when you're determined."
She grinned. "Thank you. I learned from the best manipulators—corporate-related telenovelas and angry internet mobs."
"Tele…huh?" Mage Henry blinked. "I don't know what those words mean, and I'm both afraid and intrigued."
The Crown Prince let out a laugh but then turned serious again. "We launch the pilot system at the Arandale Port next week. If it succeeds—and it must—we'll scale it across the empire within two months."
Bettina inhaled deeply and nodded. The responsibility weighed on her chest, but not uncomfortably. It was purposeful. Anchoring.
Then, as if sensing the need to lift the mood, the Grand Duke clapped his hands once. "Alright, team. Let's reconvene at dawn tomorrow for the dry run."
"And perhaps tonight," Mage Henry added, "I could finally sleep without dreaming about rotating glyph matrices and trade permits haunting me."
"You deserve it," Bettina said with a small laugh.
As the others packed up, Bettina lingered for a moment, watching the glowing chalkboard redraw the loops of the Transparent Trade Revelation system—like the gears of a clockwork engine clicking into place.
They had done something real. Something big.
And the empire would never go back to the way it was before.