Chương 73: Chapter 6: Family Reunion

A cold lucidity took hold of her. The image that formed in her mind was not that of a man, but of an institution made flesh: rigidity, expectation, the weight of a dynasty observing with critical eyes from the walls of countless portraits. No doubt, she thought with a hint of bitterness that tasted like gall, another pedantic noble, polished by centuries of privilege and armed with the certainty of his own right to rule even the smallest details of others' lives, including mine.

There was no room for questions, for hesitation. The disguise of the Hereditary Duchess, capricious and serene, had to be adjusted at that very instant, like silk armor hiding the cracks of her true identity. She raised her gaze, and her green eyes, now stripped of the reader's spark of curiosity, met Clara's. There was no surprise in them, only a cold and calculated acceptance, the recognition that the news had been received as it should be. She nodded with a slight tilt of her head.

—I understand —her voice was flat. It was a neutral echo that did not betray the maelstrom of apprehension and determination roaring in her chest like a caged animal. She did not try to inquire about her uncle or his personality. It was risky, something that now, trapped in the cage, she must not allow herself for even a second. Determination pushed her toward the safest place she had known since stepping into this world: the lie. The refuge of false words, the shield of a borrowed identity.

The two maidens, perhaps expecting more instructions or a show of the anxiety such news should provoke, remained motionless for a moment, their silhouettes outlined against the light filtering through the curtains. But receiving nothing more than that silence heavy with passive authority, they exchanged a brief glance, a lightning strike of silent communication, and withdrew.

The door closed again with a soft but definitive click, leaving her alone with the weight of the imminent meeting and the whisper of the compendium's pages, which now seemed to contain not just the secrets of a continent, but the prelude to her own personal trial. However, she dedicated herself to searching for clues within what she had at hand. Passing her eyes over each heraldic painting, she saw a calendar hanging in a corner she hadn't noticed until now.

The handwriting was clear, the eight days already known, but she turned the months with fascination. Each season was determined by a color starting with the current month; they were as follows: Solurn, Cindar, Calcar, Pyr. Then autumn with Mycath, Coryn, Sporex, Arach. Then winter with Frorn, Nival, Umbrar, Sangra. Finally, spring and its Savra, Lumen, Brothal, Vesper. She inhaled in amazement. It was a sixteen-month year of eight days each, a year of five hundred and twelve days.

The stillness broke again with the return of Anne and Clara, whose silhouettes seemed to drag with them the solemnity of the approaching event. Between the two of them, held with a mixture of reverence and efficiency, they brought the attire. It was a dress of exquisite craftsmanship, a piece of textile art that defied mundane description. A brilliant, intense red like the proudest ruby dominated the piece, a scarlet that seemed to absorb light and return it transformed into a warm and dangerous glow.

The design was intricate, worked with gold and silver threads forming floral patterns and butterflies, tiny, embroidered creatures that seemed about to take flight from the fabric. The heels accompanying the set were high, devilishly narrow, an architecture of luxury and potential torture made of leather in the same scarlet tone, with gold buckles that reflected light in tiny flashes.

The jewelry was a complete set that must have been worth more than the entire Sacred Rest hostel: a necklace of polished pearls as white as milk, with inlaid diamonds promising a permanent cold against her collarbone; garnet earrings that would catch the light with every minimal movement of her head, projecting glints upon her skin; and a bracelet that would rival, though with more ostentatious elegance, the simple stone and thread one she always wore on her left wrist.

Everything was of the highest quality gold, worked with a filigree so delicate and complex it could only be the work of a renowned goldsmith, whose creations adorned the bodies of kings and empresses. They were new pieces, exuding opulence from every pore, worthy of a princess of the grand duchy, the heiress of a fortune that could buy and sell entire cities.

Before that display of artisanal luxury, the consciousness of the man from Earth, the philologist he once was, raised a voice of visceral and absolutely mundane panic in his head. I don't know how to walk in heels. The thought resonated in her skull with the force of an incontrovertible truth, a trivial and yet monumental obstacle in the middle of the complex charade she was performing.

Of all the dangers lurking in this mansion, the Grand Duke's wrath, palace conspiracies, the secrets of House Solendra, what truly threatened to betray her was her inability to master footwear. Though the maidens were faster; without a word, the silk of the dress slid over her skin like a caress of water, fitting her back with a precision that spoke of measurements taken long before her arrival.

Anne attended to her face, applying powders and colors with soft brushes that accentuated her cheekbones and enlarged her green eyes, drawing a mask of impeccable and cold beauty, a work of art on the canvas of her skin. The scent of a complex, heavy perfume with notes of exotic flowers and amber enveloped her body, drowning the last trace of her natural scent.

Meanwhile, Clara untied her hair with quick but precise movements and began to braid it, roll it, and secure it with golden pins, creating an elaborate structure that weighed on her nape and pulled at her scalp, an elaborate coiffure that required as much skill as the construction of a bridge Selena let it happen, her body turned into a mannequin upon which the image of power she did not feel as her own was projected.

On the outside, the Hereditary Duchess, impeccable and radiant, a storybook figure ready for her presentation at court. On the inside, she was pure, earthly fear: I don't know how to walk in heels. The first step toward her uncle would be, literally, on the edge of a potential catastrophe. When the last pin was placed and the last fold of scarlet silk smoothed by expert hands, the maidens stepped back, and their silence was more eloquent than any compliment.

They then brought a full-length mirror, a large silver oval framed in ebony carved with motifs of trees and birds, and placed it in front of her. Selena raised her gaze. For an instant, the air was snatched from her lungs. There stood a woman of a sharp, almost wounding beauty. The blood-red dress, a second skin that imposed more than any word, hugged a slender torso and opened into a skirt of perfect pleats that fell like a scarlet waterfall, each fold a wave of silk licking the floor.

The gold and silver threads embroidered in the fabric sparkled in the dim light, creating a private constellation over her body. Her hair was now gathered in an intricate architecture of braids and curls that revealed the grace of her nape and the fine line of her jaw, a work of the art of her hairstyle that exposed her neck with a calculated vulnerability.

The makeup, subtle and masterful, had accentuated the porcelain paleness of her skin, highlighting her green eyes, now enormous, luminous, and deep as lakes in an ancient forest. They were the eyes of a stranger, of a sovereign looking from the distance of centuries. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. She was the perfect jewel Clara and Anne had described. A piece of incalculable value in the treasure of House Solendra.

Elegance was her armor, beauty, her banner, and cold dignity, carved in fire by generations of dominance, seemed to emanate from every pore. For the first time, she saw not someone else's body, but the image this body projected to the world: a serene and unreachable power. She was beautiful, yes, but with the terrible and distant beauty of a ceremonial sword, sharp and lethal beneath its silk sheath.

An hour later, after an endless whisper of silk and the anxious rattling of her own thoughts, Anne and Clara led her through a labyrinth of silent corridors to the mansion's great hall. If her room was opulent, the hall was the very embodiment of material power. The scale was staggering, designed to dwarf whoever inhabited it, to remind them of their place in the order of things.

The ceiling, soaring high, was covered in a clear and ceremonial painting narrating the history of the house: a god as bright as the sun illuminated merchants leading wagons guided by chelokran six-legged turtles pulling merchandise impassively through endless plains. Further on, the painting showed them traveling the world: snowy mountains, deep fjords, fertile valleys, humid tropics, scorching deserts.

In every scenario, the sun god illuminated them, giving an eternal blessing to House Solendra, a divine legitimacy that justified centuries of dominance. The animals varied from the powerful chelokran to six-legged insects that also pulled more luxurious carts, and everything converged at a center, a focal point where a white pyramid, with its shining tip, rose to the sun itself, which seemed to rest upon it as on a throne.

In the center of the room, on a black marble floor so polished it reflected figures like an imperfect mirror, lay immense, thick, and soft carpets that muffled footsteps in a padded silence. Their patterns, complex and hypnotic, repeated symbols like gold, flowers, or the sun, and even birds that Selena was beginning to recognize as the house seal: the golden hawk with red claws, always present, always vigilant.

The maidens guided her to sit in one of the most opulent armchairs, a piece carved in dark wood and upholstered in deep garnet velvet. There they left her, a solitary and dazzling figure in the middle of the hall's immensity, like a valuable offering placed before the altar of power, waiting for the arrival of divinity. It didn't take long for the silhouette to emerge at the far end of the empty hall, outlined against the deep red midday light filtering through the high windows.

The man was the very embodiment of authority, carved in flesh and bone with the precision of a blacksmith forging an anvil, with the patience of a sculptor working for decades on a single piece. His imposing height and broad shoulders, held with a military rigidity that defied age, preceded an angular and severe face.

The jaw, square and determined, rose over tanned skin lined by the wrinkles of command, each line a map of battles fought in war rooms and the twists of power, each scar an untold story of victories and betrayals. His hair, brown with distinguished gray at the temples like stripes of experience, was combed with an implacable precision that didn't allow a single hair out of place. And his eyes...

steel-gray eyes that, even at a distance, scrutinized the space with the penetrating coldness of a strategist who always thinks three wars ahead, who calculates every move as if the entire world were a chessboard and he the only player. Then, Selena thought with a terrifying clarity that dried her throat: Shit. Don't make me walk all the way over there. She sighed heavily.

At least she had been able to reach the armchair with the tacit support of Clara and Anne, their arms becoming elegant and discreet crutches, a life preserver in the middle of the marble sea. But now she was alone, completely alone before the titan of House Solendra, and the distance separating her from him was an abyss of uncertainty. Another sigh, silent this time, like the surrender of a fortress, escaped her painted lips.

With determination born from the depths of her survival instinct, from that iron core forged in the days of Terracanto, she stood up. The world tilted for an instant, a vertigo of silk and height that threatened to betray her, to bring her down before the gaze of her executioner. Her fingers, hidden in the folds of her dress, clenched until her nails dug into her palms. Then she began to walk.

Each step was a conquest, a small battle fought between balance and the abyss, a silent war against gravity and her own limits. Her mind, once a temple of complex thoughts and philological analysis, had been reduced to an obsessive tangle, a primitive mantra repeated endlessly, synchronized with the trembling of her muscles and the racing beat of her heart: Heel and toe. Heel and toe. Heel... and toe.

She didn't see her uncle's scrutinizing gaze, nor the opulence of the hall, nor the eyes of the painted beasts that seemed to observe her from the walls with their pigment pupils. She only saw the floor, the marble slab stretching before her like a battlefield, the distance closing at an exasperatingly slow pace, and the motionless shadow waiting for her at the end of the road.

The tiny creak of leather, the whisper of silk against silk, and the dull echo of her own heartbeat were the soundtrack of her ordeal, chamber music for the execution of her torture. But she didn't fall. She didn't visibly falter. It was a clumsy, rigid advance, lacking the fluid grace undoubtedly expected of the Hereditary Duchess, but it was an advance. A procession of pure will on the razor's edge. Until, at last, she stopped in front of him.

The Grand Duke's imposing height enveloped her, casting a cold shadow that covered her completely, an eclipse of authority. The tension broke in the most unexpected way. Just as she reached his side, when she thought she had passed the test, the dreaded stumble materialized in a misstep that twisted her ankle and tore a muffled gasp from her, the sound of a wounded animal that escaped her lips before she could contain it.

For an instant of pure panic, the world spun, and the prospect of collapsing onto the cold marble at her uncle's feet, of kissing the floor at the most crucial moment of her charade, was so vivid it cut her breath. But the fall did not come. Instead, a large, firm hand rested on her forearm, holding her with a strength that was both gentle and unbreakable, an anchor in the middle of the storm. Then, she heard his voice. —I have you.

It was a deep, kind voice, with a hint of warm laughter that reverberated in the hall's immensity like the first thunder of an approaching storm. Looking up, bewildered, her heart still galloping in her chest, she found the Grand Duke smiling. It was not the cold and calculating smile she had anticipated, but an expression of genuine amusement that reached his steel-gray eyes, softening his severity for an instant, transforming him from statue to man. —Little one —he said.

The familiarity of the nickname, the unexpected tenderness of that word, left her breathless, like a punch to the stomach. —You never did learn to walk in heels. You hated them since you were a child. He laughed, a robust sound without the slightest restraint that filled the oppressive space, completely disarming the solemnity of the moment, breaking the spell of fear that had paralyzed her.

It was a real laugh, the kind born in the belly that shakes the whole body, a laugh that didn't fit the image of the tyrant she had built in her mind. The laughter, contagious and liberating, pulled her out of shock. A nervous smile, almost a sob of relief, escaped her, appearing on her painted lips like a crack in the porcelain mask. —Yes —she admitted. Her voice a trembling thread, still recovering from the fright. —"Heel and toe," I tell myself, but I keep falling.

A deep sigh escaped her lips, loaded with the frustration accumulated in every uncertain step, in every moment of tension lived during that endless journey. —Problems of a high-nobility girl, right? —he commented. His expression continued to shine with absolute amusement, as if the spectacle of her clumsiness were the most delicious entertainment he had had in weeks, an oasis of lightness in the middle of a desert of responsibilities. Selena nodded, displaced, her mind struggling to process what was happening.

The fearsome figure vanished, replaced by a man of easy laughter and a warm gaze, an uncle who remembered his niece's quirks with affection. But the transformation was brief. As she looked at him, she saw how, little by little, the light in his eyes faded, how the smile blurred on his lips until it disappeared completely, like the sun behind a storm cloud.