My fingers were leaving crescent-shaped dents in the cool marble of my windowsill. The morning sun felt like an accusation.
Three days.
Three days of trying to be the "right" kind of villainess—aloof, observant, subtle. Three days of failing so spectacularly I'd somehow made the Crown Prince call me a tropical fruit.
And now, after all that, Cassian had asked for Valeria.
I let my forehead thunk against the glass. A soft groan escaped me.
"He got the wrong cousin," I mumbled to my reflection. "He saw a Noctyra crest and black hair and his brain just went click—villainess, must be Valeria. Even though I was the one spilling tea and knocking over furniture like a one-woman catastrophe parade."
Mira slipped in with my morning tea, setting it down with a practiced quiet that still held a thread of wariness.
"My lady," she said softly, "there's… a note."
I didn't turn. "From who? The Pineapple Prince? A formal complaint about my fruit-based slander?"
"From… Viscount Veldt's aide."
I spun so fast my sleeve caught the teacup. It wobbled, sloshing amber liquid onto the saucer. Mira lunged to steady it.
The note was on simple, high-quality parchment, sealed with the Veldt crest—a stylized mountain hawk. My hands, for once, did not shake as I broke the seal.
It was not an invitation. Not a summons. Just four lines, written in a neat, efficient hand.
—
Lady Noctyra,
My apologies for the confusion last night. I wished to inquire about the disturbances near the fountain, but addressed the wrong party.
There is no further inquiry required.
Viscount Cassian Veldt
—
I read it three times.
Addressed the wrong party.
He knew. He'd realized his mistake. He was correcting it. Politely. Formally. Distantly.
The relief was a physical wave, so strong my knees went weak. He wasn't intrigued by Valeria. He was just… tidying up an administrative error.
Then the second wave hit: There is no further inquiry required.
He was closing the matter. I was a resolved incident. A paperwork error. Case closed.
"Well," I said aloud, my voice strangely flat. "That's that."
Mira peeked at the note. "Is it… bad news, my lady?"
"No," I said, folding the parchment carefully. "It's just… final."
But it wasn't, was it? Because the real problem wasn't the note. The real problem was the wall I'd built in my head. Cassian was my "bias," my "doomed side character," my "project."
I'd been so focused on saving him from a script that I hadn't let myself see the man who wrote polite, distancing notes to clean up his own social missteps. The man who was, right now, probably feeling mildly embarrassed and very determined to avoid further awkwardness.
I was a complication. And Cassian Veldt, as a minor noble in a precarious house, did not need complications.
—
Valeria found me in the music room later, listlessly plinking at a harpsichord with one finger.
"Moping?" she asked, leaning against the doorframe.
"Contemplating the fragility of human connection," I replied, hitting a discordant note.
"You mean you're upset your knight realized you're not me and decided you weren't worth the trouble."
I glared at her. "You're too perceptive for your own good."
She glided into the room, her morning gown a waterfall of silver-gray silk. "He's a strategist, Liriel. Part of the Ash Council. His entire life is assessing risk and minimizing exposure. You, my dear cousin, are a walking risk assessment nightmare."
"I'm not that bad."
"You called the Crown Prince a pineapple to his face."
"…He started it."
Valeria's lips twitched. "The point is, you got his attention. Both of their attentions. The Prince's is dangerous. Cassian's… is cautious. You can work with cautious. You can't work with a man who sees you as a character in his tragic backstory."
I stopped plinking. "What do you mean?"
"You look at him like he's a wounded bird you need to nurse," she said bluntly. "Your eyes get all soft and sad. It's nauseating. And obvious. He's not a bird. He's a man who sits on a council that quietly ruins people's lives for the stability of the empire. He doesn't want your pity. He probably doesn't even know what to do with it."
The truth of it settled cold in my stomach. She was right. My entire mission was built on pity. On foreknowledge of his pain. It was the opposite of seeing him.
"So what do I do?" The question was barely a whisper.
"Be a person," Valeria said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "Not a savior. Not a fan. Not a villainess. Just… a person he might find interesting. Or at least, not a liability." She examined her perfect nails. "Start by not hiding. The garden party at the Luminere estate is tomorrow. Everyone will be there. Be there. Not skulking. Not scheming. Just… present."
"And if he ignores me?"
"Then he ignores you," she shrugged. "And you stop this embarrassing campaign and find a new hobby. Perhaps needlepoint. It's hard to cause international incidents with needlepoint."
—
The Luminere estate garden party was a symphony in pastels and polite chatter. It was Seraphina's first hosted event since her debut, and she floated through the crowd like the personification of grace, a pale pink vision surrounded by admirers.
I wore deep emerald green. Not hiding, but not screaming for attention. Valeria, in lethal scarlet, was already holding court with a group of older nobles, her laughter like shards of ice.
And there he was.
Cassian stood near a rose arbor, speaking with an older member of the Ash Council. He looked… tired. A faint tension around his eyes the game sprites never captured. He nodded at something the older man said, his expression one of respectful attention, but his gaze was elsewhere, scanning the crowd with a strategist's detached assessment.
My old instinct kicked in: Watch him. Protect him. Make sure he doesn't go near the heroine.
I crushed it.
Instead, I walked toward the refreshment table. Not toward him. Just… parallel.
I accepted a glass of lemon wine. I listened to the inane conversation of two ladies next to me about embroidery thread. I did not look at Cassian.
I felt his gaze pass over me. A flicker. A pause. Then it moved on.
Okay. Present. I could do present.
Fate, of course, had other plans.
A group of younger nobles, emboldened by wine and the absence of stricter elders, had begun a game. It involved tossing a gilded wooden ring onto the horn of a stone unicorn statue. Laughter was getting louder, movements clumsier.
One young lord, aiming with exaggerated flourish, missed entirely. The ring flew sideways—a shiny, spinning projectile—directly toward the path where Seraphina was walking with Crown Prince Adrian.
It happened fast.
Seraphina gasped, flinching back. Adrian's hand shot out to pull her aside, his face darkening with ire.
But the ring never reached her.
Cassian moved. Not the flashy, heroic dash of a knight in a story, but a quick, efficient step forward, his hand snapping out. He caught the ring mid-air, his fingers closing around it with a soft thwack.
Silence fell over the immediate group.
The young lord who threw it paled. "V-Viscount Veldt! My apologies, I didn't—"
"Your aim requires practice, Lord Perth," Cassian said, his voice calm but carrying. He didn't sound angry. He sounded… definitive. He held the ring up. "Games are best enjoyed when they endanger only pride."
He turned and bowed slightly to Adrian and Seraphina. "My apologies for the disturbance, Your Highness, Lady Lumiere."
Adrian's anger smoothed into a mask of royal displeasure. "See that it doesn't happen again, Viscount." He guided Seraphina away, shooting a warning look at the chastised group.
The moment broke. The group dispersed, muttering apologies. Cassian stood for a second, looking at the ring in his hand. That tiredness was back around his eyes, deeper now. The weight of constantly policing, constantly smoothing over, constantly being the responsible one in a room full of spoiled children.
He didn't put the ring down. He just held it, his thumb rubbing over the gilded wood.
And I was moving before I could think.
I walked up to the stone unicorn. I picked up one of the discarded rings from the grass.
I looked at him, and for the first time, I didn't see my bias. I saw a man who was tired of catching other people's mistakes.
"The horn's crooked," I said, my voice clear in the quiet space between us.
He looked up, startled. Amber eyes met mine, no nod this time, just confusion.
"The unicorn," I clarified, nodding at the statue. "The stonemason got lazy. The horn leans to the left. No wonder their aim was off. They were compensating for bad art."
A beat of silence. Then, something flickered in his eyes. Not amusement, not yet. But the sheer, unexpected mundanity of my observation seemed to pierce through his professional fog.
"You believe poor craftsmanship is to blame," he said slowly.
"I believe if you're going to make a target, you should make it straight," I said, shrugging. I hefted the ring in my hand. "It's a matter of respect. For the game, and for the people forced to watch it."
I turned and tossed my ring. It sailed in a clean arc and landed with a satisfying clack right at the base of the statue's plinth, nowhere near the horn.
"See?" I said, turning back to him. "Even with a defective unicorn, you can still miss with dignity."
He stared at me. Then, he looked down at the ring in his hand. He looked back at the unicorn's crooked horn. And then, Cassian Veldt did something I had never seen in any CG, any description, any fan translation.
He laughed.
It was soft. Brief. More an exhale of genuine surprise than a real laugh. But it was real. It crinkled the corners of his eyes and softened the tense line of his mouth.
"A defective unicorn," he repeated, the words tasting strange, as if he'd never said anything so ridiculous aloud.
He walked over and placed his captured ring next to mine on the plinth. "A fair point, Lady… Noctyra." He hesitated on the name, his eyes searching mine—not for the villainess, not for the shadow, but for the girl who complained about stonework.
"Liriel," I said. "The one who isn't Valeria."
He nodded, the ghost of that laugh still in his eyes. "I am aware now." He paused, then added, quietly, "Your solution is more practical than my intervention."
"Your intervention saved a diplomatic incident. Mine just saves face for bad sculptors. Yours is probably more important."
"Perhaps," he said. "But yours is… quieter."
We stood there for a moment, in the space between the party's noise and the silent, crooked unicorn. No grand drama. No flags raised. Just two people who had both, for different reasons, found the same absurd corner of the garden.
"Cassian!"
The call came from across the lawn. Another council member waved him over.
The moment snapped. The calm, curious man retreated, and Viscount Veldt returned. He gave me one last, brief nod—different from all the others. This one held a sliver of recognition. Not of a character, but of a person.
"Lady Liriel," he said, and then he was gone, walking back into the web of duty and politics.
I looked down at the two wooden rings sitting together at the foot of the plinth.
He'd laughed.
He'd said my name.
And for the first time, I hadn't been trying to save him.
I'd just been talking to him.
Valeria materialized beside me, following my gaze. "Defective unicorn?" she murmured, one eyebrow arched.
"It's a metaphor," I said.
"It's deranged." But she was smiling, a real one, small and secret. "But it worked. He saw you."
He did. And I had finally seen him. Not as a tragic ending to be prevented, but as a man who was tired, competent, and momentarily amused by a crooked stone horn.
The wall was still there. But I'd just found a crack in it. And on the other side, the air felt real.
~🫶