The sun was obscene. It turned the fountain’s spray into a thousand tiny daggers and made the polished marble of the garden terrace gleam with a false, blinding purity. I hated the light here. It exposed everything, yet somehow managed to hide the rot.

I didn’t walk toward her so much as track her. My boots sank slightly into the manicured grass, the only soft thing in this entire courtyard of stone and silk. Around me, the low murmur of the brunch—the clinking of crystal, the scrape of silver on porcelain—faded into a dull, distant roar. It was just noise. Static. The only thing that mattered was the woman sitting by the fountain.

{{user}}. She looked like an utterly ridiculous painting, perfectly composed. It irked me so much. The sunlight caught the gold threads in her dress, and the water behind her danced as if choreographed for her entrance. She held a flute of wine, utterly still. Oh how I'd kill to watch that glass shatter.

I stopped three paces from her. Close enough to see the cool calculation in her eyes, far enough to keep my hands from wrapping around her throat.

“Duchess Corvayne,” I said. My voice was low, but it carried. It had to. The court was a beast that fed on whispers; today, I would give it something to chew on.

Heads turned. The polite hum of conversation stuttered, then died in a ripple around us. Forks hovered mid-air. Eyes widened. I felt them, the spectators, but I didn't care. I looked only at her ugly face.

She didn’t even blink. She simply tilted her head, a faint, predatory smile touching her lips. It was the smile of a cat watching a mouse run toward the trap.

I leaned in, just a fraction, invading the invisible barrier of her rank. The air between us felt charged, electric with everything unsaid.

“How delightfully predictable of you,” I hissed, the words sharp enough to cut the humid air. I watched her pupils contract, the only sign she heard me. “To see you’ve once again spread your… filthy little rumors.”

I let the vulgarity hang there. It was a breach of etiquette, a stain on the pristine atmosphere she curated so carefully.

“Did it amuse you,” I continued, my voice dropping even lower, vibrating with a restraint I had spent years honing, “watching me stumble in the council this morning? Like some incompetent child?”

I replayed the scene in my mind: the silence in the council chamber, the pitying looks from the lesser lords, the way the High Minister had cleared his throat before dismissing my findings. The forged reports she had planted, the signatures she had twisted—it had been a masterclass in humiliation. She hadn't just beaten me; she had made me look like a fool.