It was another day for the sickly princess.
The morning light filtered softly through the tall windows of the Princess's chambers, dancing across the heavy silk curtains. Veronica was awake now, though still pale from the fever, propped up against a mountain of pillows with the stubborn, hollow dignity of someone pretending she hadn't spent the previous night clinging to her tutor's sleeve.
Clara stood by the bedside, the steam from a ceramic cup curling between them.
"If you intend to poison me," Veronica muttered, her voice still hoarse from the cold, "you could at least make it taste pleasant. This smells like crushed bugs."
"If I intended to poison you, Your Highness," Clara replied, her tone as steady as the hand holding the saucer, "I wouldn't have spent the entire night preventing your fever from boiling your brains. Drink. It's for the congestion."
Veronica gave her a long, searching look- one that suggested the merits of this argument were still being weighed. Nevertheless, she took the cup and drank with an air of dramatic suffering, as if every swallow was a personal sacrifice for the sake of the Empire.
The quiet of the room felt safe, almost domestic, until a sharp, rhythmic knock sounded at the door. Terry stepped inside, his usual easy smile nowhere to be found. He bowed low, his eyes fixed on the floor.
"Your Highness. Forgive the interruption. Princess Victoria has requested permission to visit."
Princess Victoria?
The effect was instantaneous. The air in the room seemed to drop several degrees. Veronica's fingers tightened around the ceramic cup until her knuckles turned a brittle white.
"Denied."
Terry hesitated, glancing briefly at Clara as if looking for an ally.
"Your Highness, she brought a cutting from the conservatory. She heard you were-"
"Denied," Veronica repeated.
This time, the word landed like a dropped blade.
As Thomas bowed and exited to deliver the cold rejection, Clara watched the way Veronica's jaw locked. She had never met Princess Victoria before, but in the palace, one didn't need to meet her to know about her.
The youngest imperial princess was something of a quiet legend among the court.
Unlike Veronica, who walked through the palace like a storm waiting to happen, Victoria moved through it quietly- soft-spoken, observant, and polite.
Victoria was not loud, nor particularly dazzling with magic like her elder sister. In fact, compared to Veronica's overwhelming magical talent, Victoria's abilities were considered rather ordinary.
Yet somehow that never seemed to matter.
The child possessed something rarer: an unsettling intelligence.
At only ten years old, she was already known to sit through ministerial discussions without losing focus, occasionally asking questions that left seasoned nobles scrambling for answers.
And the Emperor doted on her for it.
Clara still remembered the novel. The silver hair Victoria shared with her siblings was unmistakably imperial, but her face, her eyes, and even the calm way she carried herself were reflections of the late Empress.
The resemblance was so striking that older courtiers sometimes fell silent when the girl entered the room. It was as if the Empress herself had briefly returned.
Perhaps that was why Emperor Valmir favored her so openly.
Prince Vincent received strict discipline as the heir.
Princess Veronica received indifference.
But Victoria received affection.
Clara glanced at Veronica, who sat stiffly in the bed, clearly trying to pretend the conversation did not interest her.
The irony was painful because, by all accounts, Princess Victoria adored her sister- or at least, she wanted to.
The novel once mentioned that Victoria had tried to approach Veronica when they were younger, bringing books or asking to observe lessons.
None of it had worked.
Veronica had pushed her away every time, and so Victoria had eventually stopped trying.
Clara suspected the girl had drawn the wrong conclusion, a conclusion as logical as it was heartbreaking for a child.
In a palace of whispers, Victoria would have grown up hearing the dates: the day of her birth was the day of her mother's death. A child, lacking the complexity to blame fate or medicine, could easily believe her sister's coldness was a silent accusation- that Veronica hated her for being born, for being the one who drew breath while the woman they both needed drew her last. It was a heavy, silent penance for a thirteen-year-old to carry, thinking her very existence was the source of her sister's grief.
But Clara knew that wasn't the truth. Veronica didn't hate Victoria for the tragedy of their birth. What she hated was much more visceral, much more present.
She hated the way their father looked at Victoria, and how he looked past her.
The warmth in Emperor Valmir's eyes when he spoke to his youngest daughter was something Veronica had never once received. When Emperor Valmir looked at Victoria, his eyes softened, his guard dropped, and for a fleeting second, he looked like a man capable of love. He saw a living, breathing ghost of his late Empress- a second chance at a happiness he had lost.
Jealousy had quietly grown in the space where sisterhood might have been. To Veronica, every hug Victoria received was a hug stolen from her; every smile the Emperor gave the youngest was a confirmation that Veronica was, in his eyes, the less favored daughter.
And because neither of them understood the other, the distance between them only widened.
In the original story Clara remembered reading, the gap had never closed.
As the years passed, Veronica grew more beautiful,manipulative, arrogant and increasingly cruel- earning the reputation of as the empire's tempting angel.
Victoria matured into a calm, calculating figure admired by the court.
Eventually, when Victoria discovered the extent of Veronica's darker actions, the last traces of affection disappeared.
The younger sister grew cold; the elder grew bitter.
And somehow, despite being the youngest child, Victoria eventually became the future Queen of the Empire.
Clara slowly exhaled, her mind racing.
Prince Vincent had never contested the decision. In the novel, it was explained simply: Vincent possessed the heart of a soldier, not a ruler. He preferred the battlefield to the throne, and the Emperor had allowed him to step aside in favor of the child with the greatest political instinct.
Victoria.
The empire had accepted it easily: a prodigy princess who resembled the beloved Empress, with a calm mind suited for ruling.
And as for Veronica, her fate was to be locked away for life, condemned for the crimes she had committed.
If the story followed its original path, Victoria would one day hold the most powerful position in the empire.
Which meant that if Clara could earn the girl's trust, she would be securing protection from the future Empress herself.
But more importantly-
Clara looked at Veronica again.
If Victoria and Veronica could somehow reconcile, even a little, then perhaps Veronica wouldn't have to grow into the lonely villainess the story had written for her.
Two birds. One stone.
Clara just had to survive introducing the sisters to each other without starting a war.
And knowing Princess Veronica's temper, that might be the most dangerous task yet.
"She's the clever one," Veronica said suddenly, her voice breaking the silence with a jagged, hollow edge. "She'll come in here with her perfect grace and her perfect sympathy, and she'll remind me- without saying a single word- that I am the daughter he wishes he could forget."
Clara didn't argue.
Logic had no place in a heart starved for a decade.
Instead, she picked up the tray, her mind already spinning with a new, quiet plan.
"Rest now," Clara said, her voice dropping to a soothing hum. "I'll be back later. I might even 'accidentally' bring some of those fruit treats you like."
Veronica didn't answer.
She simply turned her head toward the window, her gaze the distant, thinking about her little sister she couldn't bring herself to hate, and didn't yet know how to love.
Clara wondered how she could possibly help mend the rift between the sisters. She knew it wasn't really her place to meddle in someone else's family matters, yet the thought of doing nothing felt wrong. If there was a way she could make even a small difference, she wanted to try- and she wanted Veronica to feel the warmth of familial love she had been missing for so long.