Chapter 181 - 180: It was Adena all along!

Barbra Fein. The name landed like a physical blow. Adena’s face crumpled, the last of her composure collapsing entirely, and for a long moment she simply sobbed into her knees before finally, haltingly, the words began to spill out.

"I killed her," she whispered. "Barbra. She wasn’t even— she wasn’t a threat, not really, she just liked Caelestis, the way half the girls in the capital did. It is I who love Caelestis the most, it made me furious, and I—" She swallowed hard. "I pushed her. Down the stairs at her own estate. It was made to look like an accident."

Eleanore’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing, letting the silence pull more out of her.

"There were others too," Adena continued, voice shaking. "Other women who got close to him over the years. I made sure they didn’t stay close for long. Nothing as far as Barbra, not always, but I made their lives difficult enough that they left on their own eventually." She pressed her palms against her eyes. "And Stella, at the banquet, the crown prince’s banquet, I pushed her over the balcony railing. I told myself it was an accident afterward, that I panicked, but I didn’t panic, I planned it. I poisoned her too, later, and I made sure the blame fell on Eleanore because I wanted her out of my love’s life."

Caelestis’s hands had curled into fists at his sides, something cold and furious settling behind his eyes, though he stayed silent, letting her finish.

"Why?" Eleanore asked finally, the single word carrying more weight than any accusation could have. "Why would you stoop so low, Lady Adena?"

"He’s mine," Adena said, and for just a moment, something dark flickered behind her eyes again, not the void-black of the possession, but something more human and somehow just as unsettling. "He’s supposed to be mine. I’ve loved him since we were children, before any of you, before Eleanore, before any of them, and I watched every single one of them get closer to him while I stayed exactly where I was, the family friend, the one who was never quite enough to be considered." Her voice cracked. "I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand watching him choose someone else, over and over."

The room went silent, heavy with everything that confession had finally laid bare. Eleanore felt something twist uncomfortably in her chest, not sympathy, not quite, but something adjacent to it, the recognition of a wound so deep it had curdled into something monstrous.

"The spy," Caelestis said finally, voice tight. "The man in the greenhouse. Was that you too?"

Adena’s head snapped up, genuine confusion breaking through her tears. "What spy?"

"Someone’s been sighted across the mansion," Eleanore said slowly, watching her carefully. "Tall, pale, unsettling. Connected, we believe, to Stella’s poisoning and possibly the attack at the border yesterday."

"I don’t—" Adena shook her head firmly, something like real fear surfacing now beneath the guilt. "That wasn’t me. I swear it, Eleanore, everything I just told you, all of it was me, but I don’t know anything about a man like that. I’ve never seen him. I don’t even know what you’re talking about."

Eleanore exchanged a slow, uneasy glance with Caelestis, the same question settling heavily between them.

If Adena hadn’t sent the spy, if the black magic possessing her had been something separate entirely from her own crimes then someone else, someone still unaccounted for, had been moving through the shadows of this entire story all along.

"Then who," Eleanore said quietly, more to herself than anyone else in the room, "does he belong to?"

The walk back up from the underground cells felt longer than it had gone down, neither of them speaking until they’d reached the privacy of their own room and the door had clicked shut behind them.

"I owe you an apology," Caelestis said, before she’d even had the chance to sit down. "A real one. Not the kind I’ve been fumbling through the past few weeks."

Eleanore turned to face him, exhaustion pulling at every line of her expression, but she waited, letting him find the words at his own pace.

"I let you carry the weight of things that were never yours to carry," he continued, voice rough. "The article. Barbra’s death. Every whispered accusation that landed on your name instead of the person who actually deserved it. And even when I wasn’t outright blaming you, I wasn’t exactly rushing to your defense either, was I? I let doubt sit there sometimes, quietly, because it was easier than confronting what was actually happening in my own household." He exhaled shakily. "I’m sorry, Eleanore. For all of it. For not seeing what was right in front of me, and for making you prove your innocence to a family that should have trusted you without question."

She was quiet for a moment, the weight of the day still sitting heavy in her chest, but something in his voice, raw, unguarded, nothing like the composed man she’d married—eased some of that weight regardless.

"I forgive you," she said finally, and meant it. "You didn’t create this mess. You just didn’t see it soon enough. Neither did I, honestly, and I lived in the same house as her for weeks."

"That doesn’t make it right."

"No," she agreed softly, stepping closer, "but it makes it human. And I’d rather have a husband who’s human and trying than one who pretends he never makes mistakes at all."

Something in his shoulders finally loosened at that, the tension of the entire night draining out of him all at once, and when he pulled her into his arms this time, it carried none of the careful restraint from before, only relief, and gratitude, and the quiet, aching need to simply hold onto her after nearly losing her twice in as many days. The rest of the night unfolded slowly between them, tender and unhurried, two people choosing each other again after everything that had tried to tear that choice apart.