Chapter 177 - 176: The True Villain, Who Did It all!

The note itself was brief, hastily written, addressed to no one by name. Only a set of instructions, vague enough to seem deniable at a glance, but unmistakably clear once laid beside everything else Eleanore already knew. The murder was conducted by Eleanore Sinclair. Make sure the name sticks before anyone starts asking real questions.

There was no signature. There didn’t need to be. The handwriting matched, precisely, the scrawled notes on Adena’s tea party planning lists scattered across the desk behind her.

Eleanore stood there for a long moment, the paper trembling faintly in her hand, the full weight of it settling in slow, cold layers. Before she could fully process it, the familiar shimmer of a notification panel bloomed into the air in front of her.

|| Task 1: Who killed Lady Barbra?

Reward: You Have Earned Coins: +100,000

Total Reputation: 0

Total Coins: +90,100||

The confirmation landed like a physical blow, worse somehow than the note itself — the system itself validating what she already suspected, closing the loop with clinical, indifferent certainty.

Adena.

It wasn’t just Barbra Fein anymore. The moment the name settled into place, everything else came rushing in behind it, pieces she’d dismissed or excused or simply failed to connect, finally slotting together with sickening clarity. The uncanny knowledge of things Adena shouldn’t have known. The leaked article about the poison event, dismissed at the time as careless gossip rather than something more deliberate. The way she’d always managed to be nearby whenever something went wrong, always innocent, always easily forgiven because she was family, because she was just Adena, chaotic and harmless and endlessly, exhaustingly present.

Stella’s poisoning. The attack that had left Eleanore shaken for weeks after. The strange man in the greenhouse, appearing and disappearing with unsettling ease, had that even been a stranger at all, or someone working closer to home than any of them had considered?

The spy.

Eleanore’s grip tightened around the note, her mind racing back through months of carefully constructed chaos she’d mistaken for simple recklessness. Every single incident, every close call, every convenient misfortune that had circled around her and the people she cared about had never been scattered by bad luck. It had been Adena, threaded quietly through all of it, hidden behind a mask of clumsy charm so effective that even Eleanore, wary as she’d been these past weeks, had nearly let her guard down completely.

How long, she thought, staring down at the note with something cold settling permanently into her chest, have you been doing this? And how much of what I thought I knew about you was ever even real?

Voices drifted faintly from down the hallway. Adena’s laugh, bright and careless, drawing closer, her sudden strange behaviour. Eleanore folded the note quickly, tucking it away, and forced her expression into something calm, something unreadable, even as everything underneath it screamed for answers.

She would need to be careful now. Whatever Adena was. However deep this went, confronting her carelessly would only give her the chance to disappear, to cover her tracks the same way she’d buried Barbra Fein’s death months ago.

Not this time, Eleanore thought, slipping quietly out of the room just before the door on the other end creaked open. I see you now, Adena. And I’m not looking away again.

---

"The market," Caelestis repeated, glancing up from the papers on his desk, something faintly curious in his expression. "You never go to the market yourself. That’s what staff are for."

"I need to pick a few things out personally," Eleanore said, keeping her tone light, unbothered. "Fabric for the winter drapes. I don’t trust anyone else’s eye for it."

"Since when do you care about drapes?"

"Since always. You’ve simply never noticed, because you don’t look up from your desk long enough to see the ones already hanging in this house."

That earned a small, amused huff from him, though his gaze lingered a moment longer than she would have liked. "Take a maid with you, at least. I don’t love the idea of you wandering the market alone, not with everything that’s been happening lately."

"Mary is coming with me," Eleanore said.

Of course, Mary had to accompany her. It was for Mary that she was going right up to the border. She wanted to see her off, herself.

Caelestis studied her for a moment longer, something faintly searching in his expression, but whatever suspicion had briefly surfaced seemed to settle, and he simply nodded. "Be careful. And take one of the guards with the carriage, at minimum."

"I will." She lied; she took no guards with her.

Quickly, she

The border region, when they finally reached it hours later, felt like stepping into an entirely different world. The usual quiet order of the capital gave way to something tense and frayed at the edges, makeshift checkpoints, hurried conversations between officials, the distant, unmistakable rumble of something that might have been artillery carried faintly on the wind from across the Zhipherian line.

Refugees moved in slow, exhausted clusters along the roadside, carrying what little they’d managed to salvage, and the air itself seemed to carry a low hum of anxiety that hadn’t reached the capital yet, though Eleanore suspected it wouldn’t be long before it did.

"This is closer than I expected," Mary said quietly, glancing around with visible unease as their carriage came to a stop near the edge of a small trading post that had, until recently, done steady business with travelers crossing both directions. Now it stood half-shuttered, its owner nowhere in sight.

"I had to come here," Eleanore said, stepping down from the carriage. "I wanted to see you off Mary. You have helped me a lot."

Mary hesitates, she gets down the carriage and starts up to the border along with Eleanore. They made their way toward the edge of the trading post, exchanging a brief, quiet word with a contact she’d arranged to me, someone with connections to the households neighboring Sinclair’s, someone who might be able to help Mary cross borders back to her country.

|| Task 1: Who killed Lady Barbra?

Reward: You Have Earned Coins: +100,000

Total Reputation: 0

Total Coins: +90,100||