Chapter V : A Broken Vial and a Vanishing Girl

Rebecca's POV 

I stayed on the bed long after Gideon left. 

The fire had burned low. The velvet curtains fluttered faintly as if the walls were breathing. I didn’t move—just sat there clutching the edge of the blanket, heart spinning in a thousand directions. 

A knock on the door broke my thoughts. 

One knock. Then two. 

I tensed. “Gideon?” 

No answer. 

The guards were posted just outside, weren’t they? 

I rose slowly, padded to the door, and pressed my ear to the thick wood. I could hear something—a shuffling sound, like heavy fabric dragging across stone. Then… a soft thud. Like a body collapsing. 

“Hello?” I called through the door. 

No response. 

That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t normal at all. 

I turned back toward the fireplace and grabbed the dull iron poker. My fingers trembled around the handle. I didn’t know how to fight. I knew how to brew fever balm and unclog tea strainers and stitch up split seams—not fend off whatever-the-hell this was. 

The lock clicked. 

My heart lurched. 

I backed away as the door creaked open… and a figure stepped through. 

Not Gideon. 

A woman, tall and graceful, wrapped in a dark velvet cloak. Her face was mostly shadowed beneath the hood, but I would’ve known her posture anywhere. 

Lady Kalali. 

“I knew I’d find you alone,” She said calmly, her voice smooth as honey. “He’s always so precise with his schedule. Morning drills, afternoon reports… I couldn’t have asked for better timing.” 

I raised the poker shakily. “How did you get in here?” 

Lady Kalali tilted her head. “Really, Rebecca. You think a few guards can stop me?” She stepped further inside and shut the door behind her with a soft click. 

“How did you get past them?” 

“Oh, they were there. Loyal, vigilant… but tragically untrained in alchemy.” Lady Kalali held up a small vial and shook it. The pale liquid inside shimmered faintly, catching the firelight. “A touch of charm-root, a breath of marwood resin. Harmless on their own. Together? They make the mind wonderfully... pliable.” 

“Potion,” I whispered. 

Lady Kalali smiled wider. “You really think you're the only one who understands potions?” She tilted her head. “I studied advanced theory at the Royal Academy, little shop rat. You just inherited your mother’s mess.” 

My hands tightened around the poker. 

“I don’t want trouble,” I said carefully. “I just want you to leave.” 

Lady Kalali laughed, light and airy. “Oh, sweet girl. I am trouble.” She crossed the room slowly. “You never belonged here. The palace, the title, him. None of it fits you. But it fits me.” 

I kept backing away. “Why do you care so much? Gideon doesn’t love you.” 

Her expression snapped—wounded first, then cold. “He was supposed to,” Lady Kalali said quietly. Then her voice sharpened. “This was never just about love. It was about legacy. My family has served the crown for generations. I was meant to stand beside him.” 

“No one promised him to you,” I said. “He chose. And it wasn’t you.” 

Lady Kalali’s eyes narrowed. “No. He chose to throw everything away—for you. Some potion-making nobody.”

I flinched. 

Lady Kalali stepped forward. 

I swung the poker—wild and clumsy. 

Lady Kalali caught it mid-air. 

Too fast. 

Her grip was steel. “You don’t know what you’ve stepped into,” Lady Kalali hissed. “But I’ll show you. I’ll show everyone.” 

Then she yanked the poker out of my hand and dropped it with a loud clatter. My pulse screamed in my ears as I lunged for the door— 

But Lady Kalali was faster. She pulled another vial from her cloak—tiny, barely a thumb’s length—and smashed it on the ground. 

A fine white mist exploded in my face. 

I gasped, stumbled backward, coughing violently as the air thickened with sharp, bitter spice. My eyes burned. My legs went weak. 

“What… what did you do…?” My voice slurred. The world tilted sideways. 

Lady Kalali knelt beside me, brushing hair from my face like she was tucking in a child. “Just a sleeping draft, my dear. Custom formula. You’ll wake up… eventually.” 

My limbs wouldn’t respond. My vision was going gray at the edges. I tried to scream, but it came out like a whisper. 

Gideon. I needed— 

Darkness swallowed me before I could finish the thought. 

When I came to, the world was swaying. 

Something coarse scratched at my cheek. My wrists were bound in front of me, tight with something that bit into the skin—rope, or twine, or— 

A wagon. 

I was in a wagon. 

The inside was dim, lit only by thin shafts of moonlight through the wooden slats. A slow ache bloomed behind my eyes, like someone had driven a spike through my skull. 

I tried to sit up, but nausea hit me like a wave. 

“Oh, good. You’re awake.” 

Lady Kalali’s voice floated from the far end of the cart, cool and bright like nothing was wrong. 

She was perched on a crate, legs crossed, cloak draped elegantly around her like she was holding court instead of committing treason. Her golden hair had come loose in one place, curling softly down her shoulder. A pity. She looked like a queen in a fairy tale. 

And I probably looked like the villain now. 

“You drugged me,” I croaked. “You kidnapped me.” 

Lady Kalali smiled faintly. “You make it sound so dramatic. I relocated you. Temporarily.” 

My head throbbed. “Where are we going?” 

Lady Kalali sighed and looked out through the slats. “Far enough that Gideon won’t find you. Eventually I’ll dump your body somewhere believably tragic. A cliff, maybe. Or a burned carriage.” 

My stomach turned to ice. 

Lady Kalali met my stare. “Relax. I haven’t decided yet. And anyway, I’ve changed my mind about killing you—for now. It would break him. He’d search the bones, the dirt, every inch of the realm until he found you. I know Gideon. I’ve known him since he was four.” 

My hands curled into fists. “Then how could you do this to him?” 

Something flickered in her face. 

Lady Kalali leaned forward, voice low and bitter. “You don’t get it, do you? I loved him. I loved him when we were children, when he used to carry my satchel after sword practice, even though it made the older knights laugh. I loved him when his father died and he stopped speaking for weeks. I stayed. I waited. I watched him become the man the whole realm reveres. And you—you stumbled in with your stained fingers and wild red waves, brewed a love potion like some tavern witch, and poured it straight into his goblet. And just like that, you stole everything I spent my life building—in a single night.” 

“I didn’t mean to,” I said hoarsely. “I never meant for him to drink the potion. It was for someone else—” 

Lady Kalali laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “Oh, that’s rich. What next? It brewed itself?” 

“I swear,” I said. “It was for Rhys Ashford!" 

“Enough!” Lady Kalali’s voice cracked like a whip. The horses pulling the cart flinched. 

“I don’t care who it was meant for,” She hissed. “The fact remains: he drank it. And now, the wedding is in two weeks. You’re wearing the ring I should have had. You sleep under the roof I was promised. And he looks at you like you’re gravity itself.” 

I didn’t know what to say to that. 

Lady Kalali looked at me like she hated me and pitied me at the same time. 

“Do you know what people say about you?” She went on. “That you bewitched him. That you must have slipped him a love potion. A potion-maker’s daughter, and suddenly the Commander of the Realm is offering you his name? It’s laughable. Or… it was.” 

Lady Kalali’s eyes gleamed in the low light. 

“I used your own legacy against you,” She said. “Slipped a potion past the guards—one that mimicked your mother’s signature blend. And then I left just enough behind. A broken charm vial. When the Queen sees it, when Gideon finds the scene, they’ll believe exactly what I wanted them to. That you ran.” 

My blood went cold. 

“No one will believe that,” I whispered. “Gideon knows me.” 

Lady Kalali tilted her head. “Does he? He’s known me since he had milk teeth and nightmares. He trusts me. Loved me once, in his way. I was his family. And you… you’re just a stranger who slipped into his life on accident.” 

I stared at her. “He’ll come for me.” 

Lady Kalali shrugged. “Let him. He won’t know where to look.” 

“You think you’ve won,” I said, voice trembling. “But you haven’t. Because he chose me. Potion or not, he made a choice. And when he finds out what you’ve done—” 

Lady Kalali’s face hardened. “I gave him years of my life,” She said. “You gave him a vial of lies. Don’t act like some innocent. You tried to steal his heart with tricks. If anyone’s the villain here, it’s you.” 

I swallowed the burn of tears. 

“You can tell yourself that,” I said. “But it won’t change the truth.” 

Lady Kalali stood and crossed the small space between us. She knelt, her voice soft but twisted with poison. “Truth is what people believe, Rebecca. And when I tell the Queen that you fled—scared of the crown, scared of commitment, of Gideon, of your own magic—she’ll nod and say she expected as much. That girls like you never last.” 

My voice shook. “What happens then? You swoop in and comfort him? Let him cry on your shoulder?” 

Lady Kalali smiled. “No. I wait. I let him bleed. I let the world see who you really are. And when the dust settles… I help him heal.” 

She rose with the grace of a woman who thought herself untouchable. I didn’t care that my limbs were weak or that my face was dirty or that I had nothing left but my voice. 

“You’re wrong,” I said quietly. “He doesn’t need healing. He needs the truth. And he’ll find it. He always does.” 

Lady Kalali turned her back. “We’ll see.” She rapped her knuckles twice against the wall of the wagon, and the cart rolled forward again, bumping over the stones. 

I stared at the slats in the ceiling, breathing hard through the ache in my ribs. 

Two weeks. We were supposed to marry in two weeks. 

And now I was being erased. 

Not killed. Not yet. 

But rewritten.