Chapter 7

Elena's POV

The night before the wedding, Ryan came again.

Vicky had intended to stay close to him all evening, but Stepmother called her away to try on tomorrow's jewelry.

Ryan and I were alone in the sitting room.

He looked at me quietly.

“Elena. Walk with me in the garden.”

My fingers tightened.

The night before my last wedding, he had done exactly this.

Back then, I had no defenses at all. The chance to be alone with him had kept me awake with happiness all night.

This time, I knew I shouldn't go.

But I also wanted to know if he would use exactly the same approach.

So I lowered my head and kept the compliant expression.

“All right.”

Ryan took me deep into the back garden, to a glass greenhouse.

White roses grew thickly inside, and no one ever came there at night.

When the door closed behind us, the scent of roses mingled with damp earth.

Moonlight fell across Ryan.

He was still devastatingly handsome.

This was the man I had loved so far past reason in my last life.

And the man who had watched me die.

Ryan looked down at me, his voice soft.

“It's almost our wedding day.”

“Tonight, I only wanted a little time alone with you.”

He lifted his hand toward my face, his lips beginning to close the distance.

In two years, he had touched me like this countless times.

My body moved on instinct to pull back.

Ryan's fingers found nothing.

The warmth in his eyes went out.

“Elena. What's the matter with you?”

I raised my face, the same calm look.

“I'm only tired, Mr. Valemont.”

The formal address cracked something in his expression.

“You never used to call me that. You never used to pull away.”

He looked anxious as he reached to wrap his arm around my waist, and for a moment his eyes held something that looked almost like confusion, almost like real distress.

I held his gaze and said nothing. The love I had once felt for him had nearly burned itself out, and what was left was exhaustion.

I had died once. I knew full well he was deceiving to me still.

Ryan held my gaze for a long time, then reached into the inside pocket of his coat and produced a small silver case.

Inside, resting on velvet, were several deep red pills. A faint sweet-metallic smell drifted from them.

My fingertips went cold.

He had given me these before.

He called them a tonic, something the royal family had developed, good for my constitution.

I had taken them without question.

That night, I became feverish and disoriented, and I ended up spending the whole night with him until dawn on the eve of our wedding.

After we were married, he had continued to give them to me.

Every time I took one, I was left dizzy and weak.

During the pregnancy, the effects were worse. I grew weaker by the day while the child developed with unnatural speed.

In the end, I nearly bled to death in labor.

Looking at that case now, I finally understood.

It was never a tonic.

Ryan held the pills out to me, his smile easing back into something persuasive.

“You've lost weight lately.”

“Take one. It'll help.”

I looked at them lying in his palm, and the wound that no longer existed began its quiet ache again.

I looked up at him.

“Do I have to?”

Ryan's hand stilled.

I said it gently, meeting his eyes.

“I'm not feeling well tonight.”

“Could I skip it?”

He looked at the hesitation and hope in my expression, and something flickered across his face, almost like reluctance.

If he was deceiving me now, I wasn't sure I could tell.

Ryan lowered his head and stroked the curve of my waist in a gesture meant to soothe.

The air went quiet.

I watched him, and despite everything, despite knowing every word of this script by heart, something small and foolish in me still stirred.

It was gone in the next moment.

After a beat of silence, he arranged his expression back into that perfectly calibrated warmth and smiled again.

“Still, take one. For your health.”

That small thing inside me ached, just for an instant.

In my last life, I had loved him so carefully.

The inheritance I wanted, I couldn't get back. The scrap of his attention I wanted never came. A single word of sincerity never existed.

But whatever Ryan wanted from me, he took with no effort at all.

Because I was exactly what he had needed: a fool two sweet words could turn in circles.

I didn't reach for the pill.

I simply watched him.

His patience was wearing thin, but my distance these past days had made him less certain, less able to manage me the way he always had.

At that moment, quick footsteps crossed the path outside the greenhouse.

“Ryan!”

Vicky had found them.

She pushed open the door and caught sight of how close we were standing. Her face changed at once.

“What are you two doing?”

Ryan's expression flickered with something close to annoyance.

It disappeared quickly. But I had already seen it.

Vicky's gaze dropped to the silver case in his hand.

“What's that?”

Ryan closed his fingers over it.

But Vicky was already stepping forward, plucking one of the pills before he could stop her.

“These are for her?”

She looked at me, eyes full of jealousy.

“Ryan, you brought her a tonic?”

I glanced away.

“I'm not feeling well. I don't want it.”

“You can have it if you'd like.”

Vicky, afraid I might take it back, immediately put the pill in her mouth.

Ryan's face went pale. “Vicky!”

She flinched at his tone.

“Why are you snapping at me?”

“You just said it was a health supplement.”

Ryan's grip on the case tightened.

I stood nearby and kept my mild smile in place.

He wanted to stop her.

But I was right here.

If he admitted the pill wasn't safe for Vicky, he would be admitting something was wrong with it.

So in the end, he forced the reaction down.

“Nothing. It's nothing.”

“It was prepared specifically for Elena. It shouldn't be taken casually.”

Vicky assumed she had won, and wound her arm through his triumphantly.

His eyes crossed the room to settle on me.

He looked for a long time.

He couldn't understand why I wasn't jealous, wasn't hurt. I had watched him be close to Vicky and stayed completely calm.

Then he extended his hand toward me.

“Elena.”

I stepped back. His hand found nothing.

I gave him a slight nod, my voice as even as it had been all evening.

“Mr. Valemont, it's getting late.”

“I should get to bed. There's an early start tomorrow.”

I spared him no further glance, nor did I look at Vicky’s triumphant face.

I turned and left the greenhouse.

The night air was cold against my face. It cleared my head.

I could feel his gaze against my back as I walked.

So that was all there was to it. No matter how I had loved him, no matter how I'd made myself small, Ryan had made up his mind from the start.

He had always planned, no matter what happened, to make me take those pills, to let my body be depleted bearing his child.

And in the end, I was destined to be killed by Vicky to make way for her beside him.

I should have understood that long ago.

And I shouldn't have wasted any energy testing him.

This time, I didn't look back.

I knew that when tomorrow's wedding was over, Ryan and I would have nothing left to do with each other, not in this life.