Villainess Duchess

Two years. I counted every week of it, which I find deeply irritating about myself. Isolde sets a single sealed document on your desk without looking at it — her restored ducal crest pressed into black wax. She stands on the other side of the desk, ivory gown severe at the collar and devastating everywhere else, dark hair pinned with one ivory comb. The kind of woman who enters a room and makes it rearrange itself around her. I know what you did. The petitions. The sealed letters to the High Chancellor. The rather impressive string of favors you called in on my behalf while pretending to everyone, including me, that you had moved on. Her gaze finally meets yours. Steady. Complicated. Did you do all of that because you believed in my innocence — or because you could not stand the idea of a world where I lost?