Rosalie moved like a ghost beneath the moonless sky at the beginning of a fateful night. She crossed the grounds of the Count's manor with silent footsteps over the grass and was followed by her informants. They trailed after their master concealing themselves in the same shadows. The group moved with the grace and experience of street fighters, three phantoms in the night.
Her heart raced with anticipation as she climbed on the tree that reached Elara's opened window. But there was this lingering sense of dread inside of her, she dismissed it as only natural since she never had to personally kidnap anybody before.
There's no room for doubt now, my plan is perfect.
Kidnapping Elara was essential to Rosa's plan. Her twin was a precious collateral that the Count would never jeopardise. After all, their fates as twins were tangled together from the start, and Rosa had every right to take revenge of the family that left her in that cold orphanage while her twin lived a luxurious life in the Count's manor.
With a renewed resolve and a tight grip on the last branch that reached Elara's window, Rosa's eyes darted left and right for one final check that nobody was around. She was like a cat, smoothly flexing her body over the windowpane until she was able to place a foot inside of Elara's poorly lit room.
Even with the scarce light, the room was just as luxurious as it seemed from the outside. But the sound of coughing that came from the other side of the bed startled Rosa out of her resentful admiration. The muffled sound of gasping and coughing that suddenly turned into choking made her run as fast as she could to the other side of the bed.
Her breath caught in her throat witnessing what she could not have expected, it was like seeing herself in the mirror during the most wretched nightmare, her twin lay sprawled on the floor next to the large bed, her lips already blue while one of her hands clutched her neck and the other clawed on her thin white gown that came half undone.
"Elara!"
But her twin's eyes were already elsewhere, and by the time Rosa had held her in her arms, Elara had already breathed her last.
"Lock the door, hurry." Rosa commanded her informants.
Gently placing Elara's body on the floor, she first checked for any signs of blood. Finding none, her eyes scanned the room until they landed on a crystal glass not far from the bed. She picked it up with her shaky gloved hand and brought it closer to her nose. The few drops of transparent liquid left in the glass smelled sickly sweet.
"Gather the glass and take it to the guild. I want a poison expert to analyze it and report back to me as soon as they determine what it is."
As she knelt beside her sister and looked at her again, a strange sensation gripped her chest. Her hand trembled as she brushed aside a lock of sweat-dampened pink hair stuck to Elara's forehead.
"What kind of miserable ending is this for the Count's only heiress?"
There was no way of predicting what was in that glass or whether Elara had drunk it knowingly. But thinking of herself and her plan, Rosa knew that this event changed everything.
She had been so close to gaining the upper hand, ready to start a negotiation with the Count's family and finally understand why she was left in that orphanage. Anger, sorrow, and newfound sympathy for the sister she had once despised overwhelmed Rosalie.
"This will not go unpunished. Whoever did this to you will pay the price!" Rosa whispered.
Rising to her feet, Rosa suppressed her emotions focusing instead on formulating a new plan—finding the murderer was now a priority. Otherwise, her twin's death would be in vain.
Can I really do this?
One of her informants had already slipped out of the window with the glass, while Silver stood in the shadows by the curtain, awaiting her orders.
"...Whoever did this to my twin will come back to ensure she is dead. The only thing we can do is wait and let the culprit reveal themselves."
She had just finished her logical assessment when a tentative knock echoed through the room. She held her breath; this was the lead she had been waiting for.
"My lady, there is a guest requesting an audience with you." The maid's voice came through the closed door.
Rosa's brow furrowed in surprise. A guest at this hour of the night?
"My Lady, you must come out and meet your guest this time. I assure you it is not your fiancé, the Marquess, so you do not have to pretend to be sick! We can't dismiss a Duke from seeing you, after all, can we?" The maid giggled shamelessly on the other side of the door.
A fiancé her twin sister didn't want to meet, a maid who looked down on the Count's sole heiress, and the only Duke in the kingdom coming unannounced and seeking an audience with Elara while her parents were not present. Rosa was certain that one of them was the murderer, and just like that, the course that she had to take from now on was drawn clearly before her eyes with a moment of pure clarity.
"…Tell him that Elara Highmore will be right there to meet with him," she declared.
"He is waiting for you in the drawing room, my Lady."
Only when the footsteps of the maid disappeared did Rosa nod to her informant.
"Bury my sister somewhere peaceful."
Even with nerves of steel, she couldn't bring herself to watch as her informant carried her twin's lifeless body out of the window. But time was of the essence. Rosa not only had to steal her sister's identity, but she also had to face the only Duke in the kingdom as Lady Elara Highmore.
She could have changed into a formal gown, but wanting to make a statement, she chose a white nightgown similar to the one Elara wore, draped a shawl over her shoulders, and let her hair fall loose as her twin had styled it. Steeling herself for the encounter ahead, she walked out into the corridor connecting the bedrooms heading towards the stairs that would take her to the drawing room. She had memorized the manor's layout from all the surveillance her guild had conducted.
She wore the face of an angel as she walked, noting the understaffed manor and the maids who neither looked her way nor accompanied her. The neglect the supposed heiress of the Count suffered was becoming painfully clear. Focus, she reminded herself. You are meeting a possible murder suspect now.
The door to the drawing room was wide open, and unlike her room, it sparkled with light as if it were daytime. Kael Dragomir stood tall and commanding with his back to her, an aura of royal authority surrounded him like his dark cloak, but what caught Rosa's eye most was his black hair that had a purple tint.
He really is the bastard child of the King then.
While Elara stared at the Duke, he stood before a massive portrait of Lady Elara Highmore lost in his own thoughts.