When Bastien came over for the engagement negotiations, he found Yvette in the gardens, by the fountain where they first met.
There was something melancholy about the way she looked, and it made Bastien hesitant to approach her.
She turned around and saw him before he could retreat, though, and her eyes seemed light up for a moment before they dimmed again.
"You must be looking for Genevieve."
Bastien cringed. "I've just finished speaking with her."
Yvette smiled a bit sadly. "Are you... do you like her?"
He took a step towards her, his expression serious. "I didn't lie when I told you I wasn't interested in any of your sisters. Truthfully, she's not the one I would actually like to marry."
Yvette gasped. "Oh..."
He closed the distance between them and took hold of her hands, making her look up at him with wide eyes. He sighed and brought a hand to her cheek, seemingly cursing the fact that he hadn't been fast enough, that she got snatched away by the first prince before he could do anything.
"I'm sorry I was too late." He murmured.
Yvette smiled softly. "It's alright."
Yvette finished off their very dramatic scene by kissing him. It started out soft and light but ended with them flushed and out of breath, as if they had poured all their desperation and passion into the one kiss, knowing that it was their first and their last.
"If the prince doesn't treat you right, will you promise to tell me?" Bastien asked, once they separated.
Yvette nodded. "I promise."
She wasn't worried about it. Simon seemed scary but she had no doubt that he had a pure heart.
With those last ambiguous parting words, Bastien finally departed, leaving Yvette alone by the fountain.
She sat by the edge and thought about the start of her strange and complicated second life, wondering about how all of this might be finally coming to an end. After Claude dies and both the sisters were married off, the last thing left to handle would be Leon. Being Simon's wife put her in the perfect position to deal with him.
She sighed, thinking about the work that still needed to be done, before getting up and walking back towards the manor.
As time progressed, Claude got sicker and sicker, and the Decaux sisters got married one after another.
When the doctor had pronounced that Claude was on his death bed and was unlikely to live past the next two days, that's when Yvette finally decided to visit.
"Yvette? What are you doing here?" He asked in-between coughs.
"I'm here to see the fruits of my labor of course." Yvette replied, chipper. "The poison really did its job. You look horrible."
Claude had to stop coughing to gasp, and then once the meaning of her words sunk in he attempted to get up, looking the angriest she's ever seen him, only to fall helplessly back onto his pile of pillows when his arms were unable to support his weight.
"You did this to me? How could you?"
Yvette shrugged. "Yes. It was very easy, actually. As easy as sending Mother to Earl Marchand's house."
Another coughing fit attacked Claude, blood spraying from his lips, before he groaned. "So you had this all planned from the beginning?"
"Please, you make it sound like I'm some sort of evil mastermind. No, I just took advantage of every opportunity I saw. This would have all been prevented if you had just loved me like you were supposed to, you know."
"Ha!" Claude spat out more blood. "That would never have happened."
Yvette looked coldly down at his frail state, and then smiled. "Your loss."
Even though he was already on the brink of death, rather than let him die naturally, Yvette took a pillow and held it over his face until he suffocated.
When his thrashing stopped and he finally died, Yvette rearranged the pillows and then left the room, humming a tune to herself as she did so.
Now there were only the sisters left, but Yvette wasn't in a hurry. She would let them stew for a while, let them think that they were safe and let them enjoy the comforts of a marriage built on glass, before she would eventually shatter those illusions of happiness.
In the mean time she had her new husband and an annoying brother-in-law to worry about.
She had asked, the night they consummated their marriage, if there was anything Simon wanted. He had thought about it for a second, before eventually he said: the throne.
She was a bit surprised that he actually wanted to be king himself, as it seemed kind of out of character, but he clarified that he wanted it because he wanted to take it from Leon. It seemed that from a young age they had never gotten along well with each other, and he felt that Leon kept stealing things that were important from him, eventually leaving him with nothing. So Simon wanted the throne because it was something Leon had, and he wanted to be the one doing the snatching for once.
Yvette thought to herself that she couldn't have picked a better husband. His ambitions lined up with her plans perfectly.
"Should we do it, then?" She asked.
Simon blinked in confusion. "But we just did it."
"Not that... I meant, should we make you king?"
"... But how?"
Yvette grinned. "Just leave the work to me. I'll get you that throne."