The Butterfly Effect: I Refuse This Ending Chapter 25: Sadistic

The morning after the banquet the estate had not fully recovered yet.

Staff were still moving through the corridors clearing what remained of the previous night. Flowers that had stood perfectly arranged twelve hours ago were beginning to lose their edges. The household had perford everything that was asked of it and was now quietly paying for the effort.

The announcent ca before noon.

Crown Princess Sylvaine Valtier of the Valtier Empire would be arriving to extend her personal congratulations to Lady Aria Ardyn on the occasion of her eighteenth birthday.

The timing was not accidental. With Sylvaine Valtier, nothing was.

***

She arrived in a carriage that made the prince look like sothing assembled in a hurry.

Black lacquered wood with silver detailing that caught the light in ways that seed to have been thought about in advance. No house crest anywhere on the door, just a single dark rose pressed into the panel, stem facing downward.

The gate opened.

The carriage rolled to a stop.

Sylvaine Valtier stepped out as though she had decided, at so point earlier in the day, that this particular mont deserved to be unhurried.

Fox ears silver grey, the tips darker than the rest sat without moving against hair that fell long and loose in.

Her dress was the kind of dark that seed to pull the surrounding light toward it rather than reflect it. Her eyes moved across the estate entrance the way her notes in the novel said they always moved, taking inventory, making calculations, arriving at conclusions, all of it happening behind an expression of warm and genuine delight.

"What a lovely estate," she said, to the air in front of her.

She smiled.

The two staff mbers nearest the gate found reasons to look at sothing else.

Aria was in the receiving room when the announcent reached her.

She set down what she was holding with more care than the object required.

"Sylvaine Valtier," she said.

"Yes, my lady. She requests the honor of..."

"I heard you."

The servant waited.

"Tell her I will receive her shortly."

The servant left. Aria stood where she was for a mont and looked at the wall in front of her.

She knew Sylvaine Valtier the way most people in noble circles knew her from a distance, through the accounts of people who had t her and co away from the experience feeling that sothing had been taken from them without being able to identify what.

The warmth was real enough. That was the part that made it complicated. It was genuine warmth directed at you for reasons that had nothing to do with your comfort.

Aria smoothed her dress and went to receive her guest.

Kael had seen the carriage from the training room window.

He had taken his ti changing into sothing presentable. Not out of respect for the visit exactly more because arriving in training clothes twice in two days.

He knew who Sylvaine Valtier was. Had known since reading the novel. Had read every Chapter she appeared in with the growing understanding that she was among the three most genuinely dangerous characters in the entire story not because of the magic, though that was considerable, but because of the architecture of how her mind operated.

She collected people.

Found the thing that lived underneath the surface of a person and applied the right amount of attention to it until they handed it over without noticing they had done so.

Several characters in the novel had described her smile as the last thing that felt pleasant before everything beca very complicated.

He had no intention of becoming sothing she found worth collecting.

She saw him at the end of the corridor and her expression moved into sothing that looked exactly like the warmth of recognizing soone she had been hoping to encounter.

"You must be the new heir," she said, crossing the distance between them at a pace that suggested she had already mapped out how the conversation would proceed. "I heard about the duel. The elents you demonstrated wind, earth, space that combination is not sothing this house has produced before."

"Your Highness." The correct amount of deference for a duke’s heir addressing a crown princess. "Welco to the Ardyn estate. I hope the journey from the capital was not too demanding."

She tilted her head a degree to the left.

"Not at all. The northern roads are sothing to look at this ti of year."

Her eyes moved across his face the way soone moved across a page they were reading for the second ti.

"You are not what I was expecting."

"I have been hearing that more often recently."

"I imagine you have." The warmth of her expression remained exactly where it was. "I would very much like to hear more about what the last few months looked like for you. The transformation from what people described to what walked into that arena that is not sothing that happens without a story behind it."

"It has been a productive period," Kael said.

"Evidently ... .And the young woman who arrived with you. I understand there was a brief exchange with the prince last night."

"A misunderstanding. It did not go anywhere."

"Of course not." The sound of soone making a note without moving their hands. "She is interesting. Where did she co from."

"She is a guest of the household."

"And her na?"

"Lina."

"Only Lina."

"For the ti being," Kael said.

Sylvaine looked at him.

"You are careful," she said.

"I try to be."

"Most people are not. When they are speaking with ." She said it the way soone said sothing they had observed so many tis it had stopped being interesting to them. "It is worth noting."

"I appreciate that," Kael said. "I will have soone show you to the guest receiving room. Lady Aria will be with you shortly."

He inclined his head at the angle the situation required and moved past her down the corridor.

Her gaze followed him for the full length of it.

He did not turn around.

Aria was already standing when Sylvaine entered the receiving room.

Not sitting. Standing a choice that required no explanation to anyone who understood how these conversations worked.

Sylvaine ca in.

"Lady Ardyn. "..."A belated happy birthday. I am sorry I could not be here for the banquet itself. The obligations that kept away were not ones I could move."

"Of course," Aria said. "Thank you for making the journey, Your Highness."

They sat.

Tea arrived.

Sylvaine was an exceptional company. She asked the right questions and listened to the answers in the way of soone who found the person in front of them genuinely worth their attention. She expressed admiration for the duel outco that was asured and plausible rather than excessive. She asked about the academy entrance in a way that demonstrated she had done research beforehand.

Aria answered everything correctly.

And said nothing that she had not already decided to say before she sat down.

They smiled at each other across the tea service the way two people smiled when they were conducting a conversation that was entirely different from the one happening on the surface.

"Your brother is fascinating," Sylvaine said, at a mont that had been left open just long enough to make the observation feel natural. "I spoke with him briefly in the corridor."

"He has his monts," Aria said.

"He was very asured with . Most people are not asured with on a first eting."

"He has been asured about most things recently."

"Do you trust it," Sylvaine said.

Aria looked at her across the tea service.

"He is my brother," she said.

Which was not an answer to the question that had been asked, and both of them understood that, and neither of them said so.

Sylvaine smiled.

"Of course," she said, in the warst possible way.

Aria stood in the corridor outside the receiving room for a mont after Sylvaine had been shown to her guest quarters.

She had known what was coming before it arrived. Had sat down in that room with a clear understanding of what the conversation was going to attempt and where she intended to remain throughout it. She had not moved from where she intended to remain.

She was still tired in a way that had nothing to do with how much she had slept.

She stood in the corridor and thought about the fact that a princess who collected people as a matter of habit had spent a significant portion of a birthday visit asking about her brother.

She was still thinking about it when Kael appeared at the far end of the corridor.

They looked at each other across the length of it.

"How did it go," he said.

"She asked about you," Aria said.

"I expected that," he said.

Aria looked at him for a mont longer than the exchange required.

"She is going to keep being interested in you," Aria said. "That is not sothing that goes away once it starts."

"I know."

"Do not give her anything to work with," Aria said. Not loudly.

Kael looked at her.

His expression shifted into sothing that was almost a smile but stopped just before it arrived.

"I am working on it," he said.

Aria held his gaze for one more mont.

Then she turned and walked away down the corridor without another word.

She did not look back either.

But for the first ti since the duel, she did not feel like she was walking away from sothing.

She felt like she was walking alongside sothing.

Even if it was at a distance.

Even if she had not decided yet what to do with that.