The sunlight filtered through the tall, arched windows like it was trying too hard — too warm, too golden — as if the world outside cared enough to offer warmth to someone like me.
But inside this cold, echoing manor, warmth was rationed. Deliberately. Cruelly.
"Lady Aveline," the maid's voice clipped, not unkind but distant. "The physician will see you now."
She didn't meet my eyes. None of them did. Not anymore.
I rose from the velvet-cushioned chair in the drawing room — always so pristine, as though untouched by life — and walked slowly behind her, one step dragging slightly behind the other. I didn't limp. Not yet. But my legs had begun to tremble on their own, as if my body already knew what I refused to admit.
He didn't know I was ill.
No one had told him.
I was... a ghost within his estate, permitted to stay only because it would be inconvenient to throw me out.
The physician asked his questions quietly, took my pulse without small talk, and made a few unreadable notes. When he left, he bowed lower to the head maid than to me.
And I — his wife — said nothing. I never did.
Because what was the point?
At least, the thorn into his flesh will finally be gone.
Maybe then, he'll breathe easier.
---
It's been three years since the day I became his duchess.
Three winters of silence. Of eyes that never met mine.
Of rooms that grew colder when he entered —
even when the sun was warm and the shadows stretched long and sharp.
I couldn't feel its warmth.
The world calls me lucky.
They see silk dresses, the title of "Duchess," the grand halls of House Este.
They don't see the servants who flinch when they hand me tea.
Or the way the other nobles turn their backs at court, whispering "murderer's daughter" behind their gloves.
That doesn't make me sad.
I think that bothers people.
They want me to cry, scream, and fall to my knees.
I stay quiet.
It's not bravery. I just don't have it in me anymore.
I just sit here.
Like a painting no one likes anymore.
---
Later, I sat alone in the solarium, the afternoon sun painting fake gold on the floor. My tea was cold. No one had come to change it.
The door opened.
My fingers stilled on the porcelain handle.
Steps. Slow. Hesitant. Not the usual click of servants who had long grown used to my silence. This one was heavier. Familiar.
My heart thudded once.
And there he was — Duke Alan Este.
The man whose name I had taken three years ago.
The man who never once looked at me unless duty demanded it.
The man whose gaze now… trembled.
I rose automatically, fingers still curled around the teacup.
"Your Grace—?"
He looked at me like he'd seen a ghost. A real one. Pale, wide-eyed, as if something massive had just slammed into him.
He opened his mouth, closed it.
"…What is it?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. "Do you need something?"
His throat bobbed, and for a moment, I thought he would say nothing. That he would leave like always, too full of silent resentment to even offer a word.
But then he stepped forward.
One, two, three rushed strides, stopping only when we were an arm's reach apart.
His eyes — usually frozen steel — were wide with something raw.
"Aveline," he whispered.
He never said my name. Never.
"…What—?"
His gaze dropped to my hands. The pale wrist where the physician had pressed. The teacup shaking in my grasp.
He stared as though remembering something not from this life.
And then he staggered back a step. His face crumpled.
Not in disgust. Not in coldness. But in a sorrow so profound, it felt like there was something quietly crooked about it, like a picture frame just slightly tilted.
"…No," he murmured. "Not this time."
And I — who had been numb so long I had forgotten how to feel — could only blink as he turned away. One hand gripping the doorframe like he might fall.
Leaving me with cold tea, fading sun, and the terrifying thought that maybe… something had changed.