Lady Death's Diary: Chapter 26.5

From the Rewritten Journal of Lady Vitrula Rhys: The Sixth Death

During my later deaths, I experienced the same sequence of emotions each time I realized that I was about to die. Anger, at Letty for constantly being instrumental to my demise, and at myself for still wanting to believe her innocent. Shame, that Loren cared so little for me despite my best efforts. Annoyance, that my tireless plotting to survive had failed once again. Fear, that this death might somehow be the last. And, very occasionally, relief.

After The Mad Princess’s War, I’d been relieved during my execution. Dying gave me a chance to go back in time to save Theo as well as the countless other lives lost in battle. In this case, my cursed cycle of death and life proved itself to be a blessing, allowing me to fix mistakes of a horrific past. I’d only felt a similar sense of acceptance when facing my demise during one other death, which was also, oddly enough, the one time that I almost made it to eighteen. It wasn’t the same emotion, of course. My sixth death wasn’t penance for starting a war, and no one else was saved by my dying. But on the day that I was poisoned, my final emotion was unmistakably one of relief.

My strategy during this life didn’t vary all that much from that of my fifth. I still hounded Letty and shadowed Loren, and did my best to ensure that two never had time alone. My acrophobia was new, of course. Being pushed from the observatory left me with an unshakeable terror of heights. But I avoided towers, never lingered at the top of stairwells, and everything went more or less according to plan.

It went so well, in fact, that I survived to see the day before my eighteenth birthday. Our parents had always intended that Loren and I should wed as soon as I reached my majority, and the nearing wedding meant that celebrations were in full swing. Balls, brunches, picnics—every prominent member of Court strove to host the most impressive nuptial celebration in our honor, each one more lavishly ostentatious than the last.

My life became a blur of parties and well-wishers. Yet despite the positive forecast that I might actually live to see eighteen, my mood darkened by the day. Each engagement gift, each droning speech was nothing more than a painful reminder that Loren was only agreeing to marry me because I had connived to keep him and Letty apart. Instead of being ecstatic that I might live, I found myself wondering if my life were worth living.

We were attending a brunch held by Lady Geneva. Loren and I each had our own individual bridal cakes, no bigger than a man’s fist, prepared personally by Lady Geneva’s own chef. His was chocolate, mine was lemon. Gold flecks mixed in with the icing drizzled on top, and crushed pearls had supposedly been mixed in with the flour. It was ridiculously extravagant, inarguably beautiful, and incredibly delicious.

As long as I kept myself occupied by eating that cake, the brunch was almost bearable. My smile remained frozen in place through an interminable series of overlong toasts, the lengthiest of course being given by Lady Geneva herself. She had just begun working her way through what looked to be the third page of her prepared oratory, when I began to have difficulty breathing.

Every inch of my body was on fire, Lady Geneva’s speech drowned own by a pounding in my ears. I choked on my bite of cake, suddenly unable to swallow. I felt hot, so hot.

As if in a dream, I could hear Loren’s voice besides me, calling my name.

“Are you ill?” he asked.

I couldn’t shake my head since my body no longer responded to my commands. No, not ill. I knew even then that I had been poisoned.

But as the searing pain turned to numbness, and my body toppled off my chair and crashed onto the floor, and nobles screamed around me, I didn’t feel scared or angry or any of those emotions to which I’d grown accustomed. Rather, I felt relief.

I was about to die.

But at least it delayed my wedding by another four years.