Chapter 59

Odette seized Odelliana’s hair and yanked it with vicious force. The pain shot through her scalp like fire, drawing a choked groan from her lips. Her earlier slap had been weak, but there was nothing weak about the strength in her hands now.

“Young Lady, violence is not acceptable!” Malena barked, stepping in with sharp authority.

She grabbed Odette and pulled her away. With her broad frame and sturdy arms, Malena overpowered the flailing noblewoman with little effort, no matter how wildly she resisted.

“How dare a mere maid interfere!” Odette shrieked, twisting in Malena’s grip and throwing punches that landed on nothing.

This time, it was Odelliana who reached out and caught her sister’s flying fist.

“Don’t take your anger out on someone who has nothing to do with this,” she said coldly.

“Shut up!” Odette spat. “Do you even understand what you’ve done? Who do you think you are, showing your face before him?”

“Oh?” Odelliana’s voice dropped to a mocking murmur. “Is it suddenly shameful to you—that we were born on the same day, from the same womb, even though I was born broken?”

Odette’s face twisted with fury. “…Seems you’ve forgotten your place in this family. You filthy wretch.”

“And yet, here I am,” Odelliana replied softly. “Existing. Plainly. Undeniably.”

Something deep in her chest, long buried and tightly coiled, began to loosen. There Odette was—red-faced and thrashing like a beast in a trap—and for the first time, Odelliana felt a flicker of triumph.

“And let’s be clear,” she continued, her voice sharp. “You say I brought the prince here? No, Odette. Your fiancé came crawling in on his own. I can’t even walk. How could I have lured His Highness here?”

Odette froze. Her voice dropped to a whisper, thick with dread. “…Don’t tell me—”

Odelliana tilted her head, expression unreadable. “Don’t tell you what?”

“Did you sleep with him?” Odette demanded, eyes wide.

That, admittedly, stung a little.

Well, Odelliana thought dryly, I did sleep with him. More than once, actually.

She said nothing, simply watching her sister unravel. After all, in another life, he had been her husband. Before everything changed, before the bitterness set in, they had even shared a rather sweet honeymoon.

“He has a small scar on his lower back,” Odelliana said, her voice calm—too calm.

Odette screamed.

The graceful swan she always pretended to be vanished in an instant. Her composure shattered, she puffed up like a cornered bird, trembling from head to toe in a full-blown fit of hysteria. Every shred of dignity bled from her as she shrieked.

Meanwhile, Odelliana watched her unravel with eerie calm, like a theatergoer relishing a particularly scandalous melodrama. She tilted her head slightly, lips curling into a knowing smile.

“He said I looked just like you,” she mused. “Pretty.”

She didn’t care that he hadn’t said she was pretty. That wasn’t the point. The point was to stoke the flames.

“He said he’d come again,” she added with a shrug. “Probably to settle a debt. He hates owing people.”

Odette’s breath hitched. Her hands curled into trembling fists.

Odelliana leaned in slightly, her tone turning almost breezy.

“He said he had a great time. That it was… thrilling. Unlike anything he’d ever experienced.”

A beat of silence fell.

“He said he wouldn’t be able to forget me,” she said, letting each word fall with precision. “That he’d never met a woman like me.”

She didn’t bother to mention that she had insulted him more than once to his face—or that she might have been the first person to truly get under his skin.

Odette let out a strangled, feral scream and clapped her hands over her ears, as if she could physically block out the words. Then, like a woman possessed, she began clawing at her own hair, cursing in a stream of vicious obscenities. The language was vulgar—something more expected from a drunkard in a gutter than from a saintess groomed for courtly grace.

Odelliana raised an eyebrow, half in amusement, half in pity.

Then, just as suddenly as the tirade began, Odette fell silent. Her breathing slowed, her body eerily still. A manic grin spread across her face as she lowered herself to sit directly across from her sister, eyes locked on Odelliana’s with unsettling intensity.

“Sister,” she said softly. “This has always been your problem.”

Odelliana didn’t respond.

“You never knew your place,” Odette whispered, voice like silk hiding a blade.

“How childish,” Odelliana replied coolly. “Letting your emotions rot you from the inside out. This isn’t like you.”

Odette’s grin widened. “Not like me?” she echoed, eyes gleaming. “Sister, think back. This is who I really am. Have you forgotten? The feelings I once poured out to you?”

She reached forward suddenly, clasping both of Odelliana’s hands in hers—tight, unyielding.

“Remember what I told you?” she said, her voice now low and poisonous. “Don’t look me in the eye. Don’t talk back. Don’t struggle. Don’t scream.”

The words spilled from her lips like a curse—venomous, calculated, laced with malice.

Odelliana tried to pull away, her muscles tensing.

But then—pain.

Sharp, deep, and immediate. It struck without warning.

A searing headache struck—sharp and sudden—just like the day she first met Odette.

And with it came another flood of memories that didn’t feel like her own.

They came in fragments this time—disjointed flashes, violent and vivid, unraveling one after another like pieces of a nightmare she couldn’t escape.

“That’s right, Odelliana. You have to do as you’re told to be praised. Don’t you want to be loved?”

The voice echoed, cruel and sickeningly sweet.

A scene snapped into place.

A child, no older than seven, sat naked and shivering behind iron bars. Her small body was curled in on itself, eyes wide with fear. It was her. Little Odelliana.

Odette stood just beyond the cage, clutching a pair of metal tongs. With a smile too bright for the moment, she shoved a chunk of raw, blood-soaked meat through the bars—scraps meant for the guard dogs. Odelliana began to cry, but the sound only urged the maids—acting on Odette’s command—to seize and restrain her.

Odette shoved the dog’s scraps into Odelliana’s mouth, then clamped it shut with cruel determination. Blood-tinged saliva and tears dripped down the girl’s chin as she was forced to chew and swallow every last foul bite.

Just as the memory twisted her gut with nausea, another vision surged forth.

Once again, young Odelliana was pinned down by the servants. They held her small hands to the floor as Odette, adorned in a lavish gown and sharp-toed shoes, stepped with deliberate precision on each finger—crushing them one by one.

Odelliana’s scream rang out, high and piercing, but Odette didn’t stop her vicious game of Stomp the Hands.

Ten tiny fingers—nails torn away, tips bloodied and mangled—turned dark with bruising, then slowly scabbed over.

And Odette, just seven years old, looked down at her work with a bright, gleeful smile.

“That was fun! Let’s play again, Odelliana!”

And the memories kept coming—vivid, brutal fragments of a stolen childhood.

She remembered being forced to drink her dog’s urine.

Stripped naked, tied to a horse in the dead of winter, then made to run barefoot through the snow for an hour.

It was unthinkable that such cruelty had come from a child.

Fury ignited in Odelliana’s eyes as she glared up at Odette.

“How can filth like you even exist?” she spat, her voice sharp with contempt.

“Oh? Are the memories coming back now?” Odette’s voice dripped with mockery. “Hm? Didn’t we have fun? Shall we play like that again?”

In those fragmented memories, the broken little girl hadn’t even known how to cry aloud. She wept in silence, her heart torn by a love twisted beyond recognition. Her sister—who had shared the same womb until the moment of birth—had cloaked her cruelty in the guise of play. The one who had been chosen had ruled over all, while the one cast aside had been left to wither.

The abandoned girl, robbed of warmth, clung desperately to the only other child she had ever known. She laughed, begging to play again, even as she was tortured and torn apart. Even in the depths of her suffering, she smiled if it made her sister happy. She had convinced herself that it was enough simply to have someone to play with.

The forsaken child had been a fool. Desperate to escape loneliness, she had clung to the malice of the one who destroyed her.

“Don’t leave me alone…” she had begged. “Odette…”

More than the agony of crushed fingers or the filth of animals, she had feared the cold, empty loneliness of abandonment. She had begged her sister to play with her, even though that same sister had been the one to hurt her, to destroy her.

“Aren’t we playing today?” the younger Odelliana had whispered in trembling hope.

Odelliana let out a laugh, wild and hollow, pressing a hand to her forehead as the weight of the past suffocated her. How was she supposed to deal with this creature? This wretch who didn’t even deserve the title of human? Her mind hardened with icy clarity as the full extent of Odette’s depravity settled in.

“Odette,” Odelliana said, her voice cold and measured. “Listen closely… I will destroy you.”

Odette blinked, taken aback. “…What?”

“I will crush everything you have,” Odelliana continued, her voice gaining strength. “I’ll drag you to the edge of hell. You will pay for everything you’ve done. Every last sin.”

The image of her younger self flickered before her eyes—the girl who had held out her bloodied hand to her sister, begging, Let’s play. That pitiful child, desperate not to be abandoned.

Swallowing the rising tears, Odelliana whispered, her voice thick with sorrow, “I pity you.”

Odelliana von Grusevalt. Your life was so unbearably tragic, I can hardly stand it.

“Listen well, Odette,” Odelliana said, her tone fierce. “I will return.”

“What kind of lunatic nonsense is this?” Odette scoffed, clearly dismissing her words.

“When I do,” Odelliana replied with grim resolve, “be ready to lose everything. Everything you have. Everything you hold dear.”

“…You’re insane,” Odette said, her voice tinged with disbelief.

Odette must have truly believed that Odelliana had lost her mind. She stood abruptly, storming out without a single glance back.

“My lady…” a voice whispered, breaking the silence. “Did you mean what you said just now? That you’ll return?”

Odelliana’s gaze hardened. “Four years.”

“Pardon?” the voice asked, confusion lacing the words.

“I’ll return in four years. Triumphant,” she declared, her voice unwavering. “I’ll walk back into this cursed house with my head held high.”

She could no longer sit idly by and watch them live their twisted version of happiness. To even consider postponing her revenge, to think that survival mattered more for a moment—how foolish she had been. No. They would stand trial for everything they had done.

“My revenge begins then.”