I did not return to her that evening.
The decision settled in me sometime after midnight, while the capital slept and the locked room I had left her in stayed dark. She had said it was quiet. She had said it with that small, careful voice she used when she was trying not to ask for too much. I had nodded and left. The nod had cost me nothing. The silence that followed her words had cost more than I wanted to admit.
Loneliness was a crack. Cracks could be widened by other people. As long as the kingdom still searched for Elira Veyne, she remained something that could be taken back. That possibility was unacceptable.
By early morning I had changed into plain traveling clothes, bound my hair tightly, and left the estate without my usual escort. Incognito was simple enough when no one expected Lady Seraphine D’Arcourt on the north road before dawn.
The place where I had arranged the abduction was quiet when I reached it. The carriage marks had already been softened by wind and light rain. I spent nearly an hour moving through the trees, checking for anything that might still point toward me. There was nothing useful. No scrap of fabric. No dropped pin. The men I had paid were competent enough to clean up after themselves. That, at least, had been worth the coin.
I went deeper into the woods.
The cliff showed itself between the trees as a sudden pale edge. I had known it was there; most people who used these paths did. What I had not fully accounted for was how many bodies the rocks below had already claimed. When I picked my way down the safer slope and reached the base, I found them in various states of ruin. Some recent. Some older. Fallen travelers, drunks, the unlucky, the deliberate. The smell rose in the cool air, thick and wrong.
I searched with care.
Most of the faces were too damaged or too unlike hers. One, however, held enough. The height was close. The build, under the ruined clothes, could pass. The face itself was broken on one side, swollen and discolored on the other. No one would look at it and see a clear portrait. They would see a young woman of roughly the right size who had fallen a long way. That was all the resemblance I required.
Removing the remains from the rocks was slow work. I did not allow myself to hesitate once I had chosen. Hesitation was for people who still believed they might turn back. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Her original clothes were in the small bag I had brought with me. The ones she had worn the day she was taken. I dressed the body with methodical attention, smoothing the fabric, settling the sleeves, fastening the few accessories she had carried that day. A simple hairpin. The thin bracelet she never took off. Each item placed felt heavier than it should have. When I finished, the thing on the ground looked enough like a tragedy. Enough like Elira Veyne for people who already wanted an answer.
I stepped back and studied the result.
This was not mercy. I did not dress a corpse so that Elira would feel less lonely. I did it so that the world would stop reaching for her. As long as they hunted, she existed outside the room I had given her. That could not continue.
I had planned to leave and arrange for the guards to be guided here later. Fate saved me the effort.
Voices carried down from the upper path. Two, perhaps three men. The cadence of patrol. I moved at once, climbing the side route I had used to descend, keeping low among the rocks and brush. At a bend in the path I risked a look back.
One of them called out. Another answered. They began to make their way down toward the base of the cliff, their attention fixed on the clothed body below. No one looked up toward the trees where I stood.
I left them to their discovery.
By the time I reached the main road again, the morning had fully broken. I did not return to the capital by the direct route. I took the longer path, giving the guards time to raise the alarm, time to carry the news, time for the name Elira Veyne to begin shifting from “missing” to something final.
When I finally turned toward home, the decision no longer sat in my chest like a question. It had become a fact. The search would end. The questions would narrow and then close. And behind a locked door, in a blue dress and a necklace she still did not understand, Elira would remain exactly where I had put her.
Mine.
Unclaimed by anyone else.
I rode on, already arranging in my mind the next pieces that would need to fall into place. The family would have to be managed. The prince would need a careful version of the truth. None of it would be difficult. The hardest part was already done, lying at the base of a cliff in clothes that had once been hers.
I did not look back.