Chapter 12: Chapter 11 – My lady

Chapter 11 – My lady

The sound of the blade was still ringing in her ears.

Even though it had already fallen… even though Seraphina's head had bowed and her body had slumped like a puppet with its strings cut… the sound hadn’t stopped echoing.

It kept slicing through the air inside her chest.

Aurelia didn’t cry out.

She didn’t scream.

Her legs simply gave way.

She sank to her knees where she stood, eyes wide and hollow, her hands limp at her sides. Her small frame trembled, but not from cold. It was like something inside her had shattered—so thoroughly that her body had forgotten how to move, how to feel, how to breathe properly.

Her vision blurred.

Her heart… didn’t beat the way it used to.

The guards moved. Nobles whispered. The onlookers began to disperse.

But Aurelia stayed there, on the ground of the execution courtyard, as still as a broken doll.

Her eyes had stopped focusing. She was crying, yes—but her mind had gone somewhere else entirely. Somewhere quiet and dark, where even grief couldn’t reach. A dead place.

She didn’t know how much time passed.

Minutes?

Hours?

Her shadow didn’t move. The clouds above hung like stones.

Then, finally, a voice reached her.

Not warm. Not gentle. Just a voice, sharp as glass and just as cruel.

“Well, that was pitiful.”

Aurelia blinked slowly.

The figure in front of her wore a dress of deep rose-gold silk and carried herself like someone born to sneer at the world. Fourth Princess Thalia Veltria. One of the Emperor’s daughters from a different consort. Older. Beautiful. Poisonous.

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“I was sent to deliver a message,” Thalia said casually, fanning herself even though the air was cool. “From the Empress, of course. You’re free to go back to your little home now. But if you dare to step outside again, especially to another public spectacle…”

She leaned down, lips curling.

“…you’ll be the next to lose your head. That’s not a suggestion. It’s a promise.”

Aurelia didn’t respond.

She just kept staring at the dirt between her knees.

Thalia clicked her tongue. “Tch. And here I thought you were at least a little interesting. Crying over a maid? What a disgrace. Is that what passes for Imperial blood now?”

Still no reply.

Not even a flinch.

Just the quiet, brittle silence of a mind that had stopped working.

Thalia gave a half-hearted shrug and turned, heels clicking against the stone. “Whatever. Stay there and rot for all I care. I’ve delivered my message.”

She left without looking back.

So did the guards. Even the one assigned to watch over Aurelia gave a long, silent glance before walking away. Maybe he pitied her. Maybe he was just tired of the cruelty. But no one said anything more.

And still Aurelia remained—kneeling on the very place where Seraphina had died.

The last threads holding her together had finally snapped.

She sat there, frozen, for what felt like forever.

Until—

“My lady.”

A soft voice.

A voice that shouldn’t have existed anymore.

A voice that sounded like home.

Her head shot up.

She looked around wildly, eyes wide with disbelief. Her lips parted, a silent gasp forming.

That voice… Seraphina?

But no one was there.

Only the faint rustle of wind, and the silence left behind by too many goodbyes.

Yet the voice came again, gentle, like a whisper in her bones.

“My lady… are you all right?"

___

Aurelia’s POV

The silence after execution was heavy—dense like fog, thick like drowning.

Aurelia sat on her knees where she had fallen. Her body refused to move. Her arms hung limp, her fingers trembled faintly, and her face was cast downward, expression blank. Her eyes, still red from crying, had dulled completely—as if all light had drained from her very soul.

It was like a dream.

A horrible, endless dream she couldn’t wake up from.

Her mind had shut down.

She didn’t know how much time passed. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. The air around her remained cold, and the empty platform above still smelled faintly of iron and dust.

Then—

A voice.

“Are you alright, my lady?”

Soft. Familiar.

Her breath caught.

Her eyes widened slightly. Her head lifted, only a little. That voice—wasn’t possible. But it felt so real. Like the warmth of sun on her cheek after endless rain.

Then footsteps. Gentle, sure.

Someone knelt beside her.

She turned her head slowly, like her body was no longer her own.

And there—

There she was.

Seraphina.

But not quite.

Her tattered maid uniform was gone, replaced with a clean, elegant black-and-white one. Her once light-brown hair had turned jet black, flowing sleekly just below her chin. Her eyes, too, were different—dark as ink, deep as night—but they still carried something warm. Something that reached Aurelia and whispered: I'm still here.

A soft hand rested on her shoulder.

Warmth spread through her like wildfire.

And something inside her shattered. The wall her mind had built to protect itself from grief—the numbness, the detachment—it all cracked in an instant.

Color rushed back into Aurelia’s eyes.

Her mouth trembled.

But before she could say anything, her body swayed—and she collapsed forward into Seraphina’s arms, unconscious.

The woman—no, the being now occupying Seraphina’s body—caught her gently.

She stared down at Aurelia in mild confusion.

“She fainted? But… I thought she would be happy,” Seraphina murmured, her voice thoughtful, calm. Her head tilted ever so slightly. “Was it too much happiness?”

She blinked. Then sighed—something between human frustration and curious amusement.

“Humans are more fragile than I expected.”

Still cradling Aurelia’s small form, Seraphina shifted to a standing position and adjusted her hold, carrying the child in a princess carry with fluid grace.

“Sleeping in the cold air is bad for humans,” she muttered to herself, as if noting it down like a lesson. “I should take her to her room.”

The wind shifted gently around them, rustling the leaves.

Seraphina walked toward the castle with elegance, each step deliberate and serene.

She held the unconscious girl close, her voice soft—barely above a whisper.

Her gaze lifted toward the pale sky.

“How difficult could it be… to grant happiness to just one small human?”

She didn’t smile.

But her footsteps never faltered.