Chapter 19.2

They rode the horse back in silence, and Dominic led her back all the way back to her chambers.

The maids rushed over, exclaiming at the sight of her soiled dress and disheveled state, but Livi didn’t have the strength to make up an excuse.

After dismissing the maids, the pounding in her chest faded into an eerie stillness. The quiet seemed to seep into her body, hollowing her out from the inside.

She sat on the edge of the bed, then suddenly shot back up. The silence was unbearable. Grabbing whatever she could reach, she hurled it across the room.

She felt like she was losing her mind.

Her vision swam. A strangled sound escaped her lips, and she quickly clamped her hand over her mouth, afraid someone outside might hear. By the time she had thrown the perfume bottle, the maids were already frantically pounding on the door, but Livi didn’t hear them.

She staggered, tripped over her skirt, and fell backward. Her head hit the floor with a sharp crack. For a moment, everything went black, then slowly came back into focus.

The world’s silence broke at last, replaced by the maids’ panicked cries.

“…adam! Madam! Are you all right?”

“Please, open the door! Madam!”

Livi shifted her gaze from the pounding door to the scattered objects on the floor. The shattered perfume bottle, the pillow, the jewelry box… and amid all those glittering things lay a plain wooden box.

She staggered to her feet and picked up the box. It seemed to be the one Hawthorne had left behind.

With a clunk, she undid the latch, and the rusty hinges creaked open with a grating noise. Inside lay a few withered flowers and a small marble figure of a goddess.

“A goddess figurine?”

The finely carved goddess wore a gentle expression, her hands pressed together in prayer. Livi turned the palm-sized figure in her trembling hands before setting it back inside the box. If someone had sent a figure of a deity, there had to be more than just this.

Her searching fingers brushed along the bottom until they felt a piece of folded paper.

Isaac Joseph, Adelaide Joseph, and Haier Joseph.

Three familiar names were written at the bottom.

Livi’s hands shook violently as she unfolded the paper. Signed by a priest and inscribed with verses from the scriptures, it was the eulogy she had once begged for, and been denied, even after all her humiliation.

『The Lord delivers those who reach out to Him; beneath His great hand none shall suffer, for the laws of earth and heaven are not the same, and the sorrows of the earth shall never reach the heavens.』

Her trembling fingertips traced the verse written across the page. It was her mother’s favorite passage, one she often read aloud. She mouthed the words silently, then whispered them, letting them roll off her tongue.

Time slipped by unnoticed, long enough for her lips to go dry, and long enough for creases to form in her skirt where she sat unmoving. She stared at the eulogy as if she might turn to stone with it in her hands.

‘Could it be a message from Mother?’

Is she watching me now? I hope not. If she saw what I’ve become, it would surely break her heart.

Even so, Livi couldn’t let go of the letter. Holding it made her feel as if, somehow, she could still hear her mother’s voice…

It was at that moment that sound came rushing back to her ears, as if breaking through a wall of water. BANG! From outside came a heavy crash, like someone was trying to force the door open.

“Madam, madam!”

Startled, Livi dropped the eulogy. Only then did her surroundings come back into focus. She was inside the Duke of Celsion’s castle. In the room next to a murderer.

What was I thinking, breaking down and making a scene like this? Here, of all places?

“…I’m fine. You may go.”

Livi carefully picked up the letter and called out through the door.

The maids asked again if she was truly all right, but Livi’s voice turned firm, insisting they leave. She could hardly believe how fragile she’d become in just a matter of days.

Her fingers fiddled with the goddess figurine before setting it on the table beside her bed. The same spot where it had stood in her old room at the Joseph mansion.

Seeing it there reminded her of the goddess figurine her mother had once given to her as a gift. It was a relic everyone had envied, said to have been blessed by the Cardinal himself on the day Livi was born.

It wasn’t something just anyone could possess, but the Cardinal, a devout believer and a close friend of her mother—who had been the late Emperor’s cherished daughter—had gladly gifted it to her.

Her mother had truly been a woman of faith. Even on days without mass, she rose before dawn to pray at the temple. She had several handwritten copies of the scriptures and even translated them into foreign languages.

Livi could still remember how beautiful her mother looked in a veil, with her hands folded in prayer. She had secretly imitated her mother countless times while her eyes were closed.

Whenever she would sneak away from the harsh lessons at the marquis’ mansion, she would always find her mother in the greenhouse, reading the scriptures.

Livi would tiptoe closer and wrap her arms around her mother’s knees, whispering,

— Mother, please hide me!

Her mother would scold her for being lazy but always sent the governess away. On those days, Livi would spend the whole afternoon in the greenhouse with her mother. Learning the names of flowers, weaving crowns, and basking in the warmth of the sun.

She missed the breeze that used to drift through the greenhouse. Now that goddess figurine was surely shattered, burned away with the mansion… but the memories it held refused to die, and it left an ache in her throat that made it hard to breathe.

Blinking slowly, Livi brushed away the lingering fragments of memory from her lashes. She placed the eulogy and the figurine back into the box, then slid it into the drawer beneath her vanity. When she shut the drawer tight, it felt as though she was burying those memories deep within herself.

At last, Livi’s gaze cleared.

When she had gone to the temple to beg for that eulogy, her heart had been filled with such desperation… how strange that it could now feel this calm.

The stone that weighed on her chest was still there, but it no longer drove her mad with pain.

Livi realized then, through the faint, lingering ache, what she had wanted all along had never been the letter itself.

What she longed for was something intangible. Something she could never hold in her hands.

It was the priest’s respectful tone when addressing her, the maids’ eager deference, the admiration in the eyes of those who passed her. Those things were the natural rewards that came with an honorable name. They were things you could never beg someone for.

And now, Livi was the only one who could restore that honor to the House of Marquis Joseph.