Chapter 31

The envelope rustled in my hand. I was not holding despair. I was holding hope. My only hope. Destroy the Holy Grail of Eris. That was more than I could do. But I was buying time with my own death. I trusted that someone else would carry on from there. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Surely someone would search behind the painting, tear open the holy scripture, and risk their own life to save our kingdom. Someone with Scarlett Castiel’s haughty disdain for the sacred but also with the goodness to spare no effort for the common good— I burst out laughing. It would be a miracle if a person like that existed! Still, I thought. Still, nobody knows the future. I used my finger to trace the bottle of poison I had hidden in the bodice of my dress. It was the same poison I had tried to give Scarlett on the eve of her execution. I had never dreamed that one day I would need it for myself. Slowly, I raised my head. The sublime painting of the goddesses looked back at me. The three sisters who presided over human destiny. I met their gaze as I pulled the painting from the wall and attached the envelope to the back. The henchmen who had been trailing me did not appear. I had won my bet. I’ll have the last laugh, and then I’ll rub their noses in it. Once again, I heard that familiar voice. Haughty, insolent, but somehow magnetic. I remembered the way Scarlett smiled before the mob on the day of her execution. Just as she had promised, she kept her smile until the moment of her death, never losing hope. Why was she able to smile like that? I didn’t know, but it saved me. Because there was nothing Scarlett could do that I couldn’t. After all, Lily Orlamunde always hated to lose. I flashed a proud smile at the Fates gazing leisurely down at me, and I drank the poison.