Chapter 5: The Ghost in the Mirror

The heavy oak doors of the ballroom swung shut behind Scarlett, but the silence she left in her wake was deafening. It lasted only a heartbeat before the room erupted into a feverish hum of whispers.

"Did you see her eyes?" a Duchess whispered behind her fan. "Ramela Luna was always such a mouse. She couldn't even look a servant in the eye, let alone the Crown Prince!"

"She seemed... possessed," another noble added, shivering. "The way she moved, that cold elegance—it wasn't like a girl of seventeen. It was like a queen returning to her throne."

While the gossip swirled like a storm, Crown Princess Elizabeth Rose remained frozen on her gilded chair. Her hand, gloved in the finest white silk, gripped the armrest so hard her knuckles turned white.

To the public, she looked like a concerned, saintly princess, but internally, her heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.

That smile, Elizabeth thought, her breath hitching. That horrific, mocking curve of the lips.

Ten years ago, she had stood on a balcony and watched a woman die.

She had watched the "Wicked Woman" Scarlett O’Hara be executed, a plan Elizabeth herself had meticulously crafted. She remembered the way Scarlett had looked at her in those final seconds—not with fear, but with a promise of ruin.

"Edward," Elizabeth whispered, her voice trembling slightly.

The Crown Prince turned to her, his expression annoyed by the spectacle. "Do not worry yourself, my dear. The Luna girl has clearly lost her mind. Perhaps the pressure of the debut was too much for her weak constitution."

"No," Elizabeth murmured, barely hearing him. Her eyes were fixed on the closed doors. "Did you not see it? The way she stood... the way she dismissed Julian as if he were a speck of dust... and that bow."

Elizabeth’s mind flashed back to the execution square. She saw Scarlett’s blood-red dress, the defiance in her posture, and the way she had looked down at the world even as she stood on the scaffold.

It’s impossible, Elizabeth told herself, a cold sweat breaking out under her corset. Scarlett O'Hara is dead. I saw the blade fall. I saw the body buried in an unmarked grave.

Scarlett O'Hara the woman whose beauty is beyond compare, the empire's beauty and the former fiancee of crown prince Edward whose crown princess Elizabeth Rose current fiancee .

But the resemblance was haunting. The way Ramela had looked at Edward—not with the reverence of a subject, but with the cold calculation of an enemy—was a mirror image of the woman who had haunted Elizabeth’s nightmares for a decade.

"She is just a girl from the Luna family," Elizabeth whispered under her breath, trying to convince herself. "A minor noble. A nobody."

Yet, the image of Ramela’s parting smile burned in her mind. It wasn't the smile of a victim who had just lost her fiancé and her reputation. It was the smile of a predator who had just been set free.

Elizabeth looked at the spot where Ramela had stood, her throat dry. For the first time in ten years, the Crown Princess felt a cold, familiar dread.

The "Wicked Woman" was supposed to be a ghost of the past, but tonight, it felt as though the grave had opened wide.

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