Chapter 289: Murder

Vetra Nivarre paced her chambers like a caged animal, her silver robes swirling with each sharp turn. The afternoon light streaming through her windows did nothing to warm the ice that had settled in her chest, rage, cold and crystalline, that she’d been nursing since the courtyard.

That bitch. That fire-wielding psychopath had humiliated Isolde in front of half the court, had revealed the girl’s crimes as though Vetra herself hadn’t carefully cultivated those same cruelties for years. And now Soren, her stepson, the boy she’d raised, the emperor she’d controlled, had stood beside the Fire Witch and essentially declared war.

Fine.

If they wanted war, she would give them war.

But not the kind they expected.

“Out,” she snapped at her remaining attendants. “All of you. Now.”

They fled like startled birds, the door clicking shut behind them with satisfying finality. Vetra stood alone in the sudden silence, her breathing harsh, her hands trembling with barely contained fury.

Then came the knock.

Soft. Deliberate. The one she’d been waiting for.

“Enter.”

The door opened just wide enough for a young maid to slip through, one of Vetra’s personal servants, loyal not through affection but through fear and generous payment. The girl kept her eyes downcast, her hands clutching a small bundle wrapped in plain cloth.

“You have it?” Vetra’s voice came sharp.

“Yes, Your Grace.” The maid extended the bundle with shaking hands. “From Duchess Maren’s chambers, just as you requested.”

Vetra snatched the cloth and unfolded it carefully. Inside, nestled against the fabric like precious treasure, lay several strands of dark hair. Duchess Maren’s hair, stolen from a brush, a pillow, anywhere the woman might have left traces of herself.

Perfect.

A smile curved across Vetra’s lips, cold, satisfied, utterly devoid of warmth.

“You’re dismissed.” She waved the maid away without looking up. “And if you speak of this to anyone, ”

“I won’t, Your Grace. I swear it.”

“Good. Now go.”

The girl fled.

Vetra waited until the footsteps faded completely, then moved toward her inner chamber, the room she kept locked at all times, the space where even her most trusted servants were forbidden to enter.

The room where she practiced her art.

The chamber was small, windowless, lit only by candles that burned with an unnatural blue-white flame. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with jars containing things that had no business existing, preserved organs, crystallized blood, the desiccated remains of creatures that should have stayed in nightmares.

And in the center, on a table scarred with burns and stains, sat the grimoire.

Aira’s grimoire. The fool witch had refused to leave it behind, and she’d paid for that stubbornness with her life. But Vetra had claimed the prize, and gods, what a prize it was.

The book contained spells that made her own experiments look like children’s games. Rituals of binding and breaking, curses that could twist minds and shatter wills, magic so dark it seemed to pulse with its own malevolent heartbeat.

She’d been studying it for weeks now. Practicing in secret, perfecting techniques that would have horrified even the most ruthless ice mage.

And tonight, she would use what she’d learned.

Vetra approached the table, laying the cloth with Maren’s hair beside the grimoire. The book fell open as though eager, pages settling on the spell she’d marked days ago.

Mentis Vinculum. The Chain of Mind.

Originally designed for fire mages, their volatile, passionate magic made them easier to manipulate, to bind. But Vetra had adapted it, twisted it, forced her ice magic to comply through sheer will and careful modification of the ritual components.

She’d tested it once before, on a servant who’d known too much. The poor fool had walked directly into the palace fountain and drowned himself, all while wearing a peaceful smile.

It worked.

And now, she would use it to eliminate her most immediate threat.

Duke Cassius had already broken. Already agreed to testify against her. The fool probably thought Eris would protect him, that his cooperation would buy him mercy.

He was wrong.

But Vetra couldn’t kill him herself, too obvious, too risky. The moment Cassius died under suspicious circumstances, Eris and Soren would know exactly who to blame.

So she would use a puppet instead. Someone whose connection to Vetra was distant enough to avoid immediate suspicion. Someone who had also met with Eris, who was also vulnerable, desperate, afraid.

Duchess Maren.

Perfect.

Vetra began her preparations with methodical precision.

First, the circle. She used chalk mixed with her own blood, old blood, drawn days ago and preserved in a vial, drawing the ritual boundary directly onto the stone floor. The symbols were complex, interlocking patterns that hurt to look at too long, geometric impossibilities that seemed to shift when viewed from the corner of one’s eye.

When the circle was complete, she placed Maren’s hair strands in its exact center, arranging them in a careful spiral.

Then came the grimoire, positioned at the northern point of the circle. Candles at each cardinal direction, their flames dancing despite the still air.

Vetra stood over the circle, her hands raised, and began to chant.

The words were old. Ancient. Not quite language, not quite sound, something that predated speech, that bypassed meaning and spoke directly to the fabric of reality itself.

The air grew heavy, thick, as though the room were filling with invisible water. The candle flames stretched and bent, reaching toward the circle like fingers.

Vetra’s voice rose, the chant intensifying, syllables tumbling over each other in discordant harmony. She produced an ornate knife from her robes, its blade etched with runes that seemed to writhe in the candlelight, and without hesitation, drew it across her palm.

Blood welled immediately, dark and viscous. She held her hand over the circle, letting it drip onto Maren’s hair, each drop landing with impossible weight.

The blood should have been red. Should have soaked into the hair and pooled on the stone.

Instead, it turned black.

Black as ink, black as void, spreading across the strands like corruption given form. The hair began to smoke, wisps of darkness curling upward, and the wind picked up, impossible wind in a sealed room, howling through the chamber like something alive and furious.

The grimoire’s pages flipped violently, slapping against each other, settling finally on a page covered entirely in symbols that glowed with sickly green light.

The circle blazed to life, its chalk lines burning with cold fire that cast no heat, only terrible illumination that made shadows dance and twist.

Vetra’s chant reached a crescendo, her voice no longer quite her own, layered, harmonized with something that spoke from the spaces between reality.

The hair strands lifted, suspended in the air, and then,

Dissipated.

Dissolved into black smoke that spiraled upward, carried by the impossible wind, seeking its target with the inevitability of a falling blade.

The spell was cast.

The puppet strings, invisible and unbreakable, now stretched across the palace, seeking Duchess Maren wherever she hid.

And when they found her…

Vetra smiled, watching the last of the smoke disappear through the ceiling as though the stone weren’t there at all.

“Kill him,” she whispered to the departing magic. “Kill Duke Cassius. Make it messy. Make it brutal. And make sure everyone knows it was you.”

The wind died. The candles guttered out. The circle’s glow faded to nothing, leaving only scorched stone and the lingering smell of burned hair.

It was done.

Duchess Maren sat in her chambers, staring at her hands without really seeing them.

She’d been doing that a lot lately. Staring at nothing. Thinking about Eris’s words, about the choice she’d made to cooperate, about what would happen when Vetra discovered her betrayal.

She should flee. Pack her things tonight and disappear into the countryside before,

The thought stopped mid-formation.

Something… shifted. Inside her mind. Like a door opening that had always been closed, like a voice whispering in a language she didn’t know but somehow understood perfectly.

Find Duke Cassius.

Maren stood. She didn’t remember deciding to stand. Didn’t remember her legs moving, her body rising from the chair.

Find Duke Cassius.

Yes. She needed to find him. It was urgent. Desperately urgent. The most important thing she’d ever needed to do.

Kill Duke Cassius.

Her hand reached for the letter opener on her desk, silver, sharp, decorative but functional. Her fingers closed around it with the comfortable familiarity of picking up a favored tool.

She walked toward the door. Down the corridor. Through the palace with measured, purposeful steps.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a tiny voice screamed. Begged her to stop, to think, to question why she was doing this.

But that voice was so small. So distant. Drowned beneath the overwhelming, absolute certainty that she needed to find Duke Cassius.

And kill him.

Cassius was in his study, surrounded by documents he’d been reviewing, evidence of Vetra’s corruption that he planned to present to Emperor Soren tomorrow.

His cooperation with Lady Eris had been terrifying, but also… liberating. For the first time in years, he felt like he might survive this political nightmare.

The door opened without knocking.

He looked up, irritation flickering across his face. “Duchess Maren? What are you, ”

She flew at him with inhuman speed, the letter opener raised, her face twisted into something beyond rage, beyond any human expression at all.

The blade plunged into his shoulder. Cassius screamed, stumbling backward, his chair toppling as he tried to escape.

“Maren! What are you, stop! STOP!”

But she didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. The compulsion drove her forward with mechanical precision, stabbing again and again, each strike accompanied by a sound somewhere between a sob and a snarl.

Cassius’s hands came up defensively, palms slashed open as he tried to grab the blade. Blood sprayed across his desk, his documents, the walls.

“GUARDS!” His voice cracked, desperate. “SOMEONE—”

The letter opener found his throat.

Blood fountained. Cassius made a wet, gurgling sound, his eyes wide with shock and betrayal and the horrible understanding that he was dying.

Maren stabbed him seven more times. Even after he’d stopped moving. Even after the light had faded from his eyes and he lay sprawled across his ruined study like a broken doll.

Then, as suddenly as it had seized her, the compulsion released.

Maren stood over the body, the bloody letter opener hanging loose in her hand. She blinked. Looked down.

At the blood. At the body. At her hands, drenched in red up to the wrists.

“What…” Her voice came out small, confused. “What did I…”

She didn’t remember. Didn’t remember walking here, raising the blade, killing him. One moment she’d been in her chambers, and the next,

This.

The door burst open. Guards poured in, drawn by the screams, and stopped dead at the scene before them.

Duchess Maren. Standing over Duke Cassius’s butchered corpse. Weapon in hand. Blood everywhere.

“I didn’t—” Maren looked at them with eyes that held nothing but honest, terrible confusion. “I don’t know how, I don’t remember—”

“Seize her!” The guard captain’s voice cracked like a whip.

They descended on her, wrenching the letter opener from her grip, forcing her arms behind her back. Maren didn’t resist. Couldn’t resist.

She just kept staring at Cassius’s body, at the blood, at the evidence of a murder she had no memory of committing.

And somewhere in her private chambers, Vetra Nivarre poured herself wine and smiled.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep