CHAPTER 65: CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE

Evening had befallen the house.

In Ashlyn’s bedchamber, the curtains were drawn, the room lit by only a single, low-burning lamp. The air was thick with the sharp, herbal scent of medicinal ointment.

Ashlyn was awake. She was lying face down on her bed, her back, from her shoulders to her knees, a raw, brutalized map of her sister’s fury. The thirty lashes had torn her silk nightgown to ribbons, and it had been cut away, leaving her bare and agonizingly exposed to the cool night air.

Carlos sat on the edge of the bed beside her. He was not looking at her with pity or concern. His expression was cold and detached. In his hand, he held a small, white porcelain pot. He dipped two fingers into the green, sticky ointment and, with a rough, indifferent motion, began to apply it to her wounds.

Ashlyn flinched, a sharp, hissing intake of breath as his fingers pressed down on a particularly raw welt. The pain was a bright fire, a constant, screaming agony. But his touch was not that of a healer. It was the uncaring gesture of a man polishing a piece of damaged property.

"All that happened today," he said, his voice as cold and flat as his expression, "you were the mastermind, weren’t you?"

Ashlyn froze, the pain from his touch vanishing, replaced by a new, colder, sharper dread. She tried to turn, to see his face, but the movement sent a fresh wave of agony across her back. "What... what are you saying?" she stammered.

"You were the one who had that maid, Nora, frame the Grand Duchess," he stated. It was not a question. He scooped more ointment, his fingers pressing down again, this time with a deliberate, firm pressure.

Ashlyn cried out, a small, choked sound. "Carlos, please... be gentle..."

"You used Lorena’s death," he continued, his voice a low, merciless monotone, his hand still pressing down, "the torn dress, the earring... it was all you. Wasn’t it?"

She was trapped. Her body was broken, her husband was a cold-eyed stranger, and her sister was a monster. She had no allies. She needed a weapon. "I... I haven’t even asked you yet," she countered, her voice trembling with a mixture of pain and desperate defiance. "Why did you come out of a pleasure house last night? I saw you."

His hand stopped. For a long, silent moment, he did not move. Then, very slowly, he dug his finger, hard, directly into the deepest, most agonizing cut on her back.

Ashlyn screamed. It was a raw, piercing sound of pure agony, a sound she couldn’t hold back. Tears burst from her eyes, soaking the pillow beneath her face.

"Is this the time," he whispered, his voice a low, dangerous growl, his face close to her ear, "for you to be asking me questions?"

"It hurts!" she sobbed, her body trembling uncontrollably. "Please, please, be gentle. I’m sorry."

He eased the pressure, his fingers returning to their cold smoothing. "Conspiring with others to frame the Grand Duchess," he said, as if she hadn’t just screamed. "Lying to the Dowager. Endangering the reputation of this family." He looked down at her, his eyes holding no trace of the kind, devoted man she had married. "You have violated the grounds of divorce, Ashlyn. If this becomes known, if my brother finds out the full truth of your little plot, a single divorce letter to throw you out would be a mild punishment. It may even implicate me as your husband."

Ashlyn’s mind, foggy with pain, tried to clear. Where is he going with this? she thought, her panic rising. He’s afraid. He’s afraid of being implicated. That’s my opening.

She took a ragged, painful breath. She slowly, agonizingly, pushed herself up onto her elbows and turned to face him, the bedsheets pooling around her waist, her tear-streaked face a mask of desperate sincerity.

"Carlos," she whispered, her voice breaking. "We are one flesh. We are husband and wife. I... I did all of this for you. For us." She was a good actress. She knew how to cry, how to look broken and pitiable. "I plotted like this for the both of us. So that we wouldn’t be looked down on. So that you... so that you would be respected, not just the second son, but a man of power. If Marissa was gone..."

Carlos chuckled. It was a cold, dry, humorless sound that made her blood run even colder than the whipping had. He leaned in, his face now covered in greed. "If it’s truly for me, Ashlyn," he said, his voice a soft murmur, "then there is a chance for you to prove it. Right now."

He paused, letting the silence hang. "I need money. A large amount. To grease connections with the court, to secure a new post, to build my own power base so I don’t have to live in my brother’s shadow."

He smiled, but it was a wolf’s smile. "Can you give me some of your dowry?"

She stared at him, her heart sinking like a stone. This. This is what it was all about. "You... you planned on using my dowry?" she whispered.

His smile vanished. "Oh," he sneered, his voice turning ugly. "So your dowry can go to a lowly maid, as you so kindly offered, to help her ’poor mistress’?" He grabbed the small porcelain pot of ointment, his knuckles white. "But it cannot go to your own husband? The man whose name you carry?"

He slammed the lid back on the pot. "Fine." He stood up, he was angry. "Since this matter is so serious, since my wife is a conspirator who plotted to frame the Grand Duchess, I will have to inform Grandmother in advance. I must protect my own name, after all."

He turned to leave.

"No!" she cried, a sound of panic. If he told Beatrice, she was finished. The divorce would be absolute. She would be thrown out, disgraced, with nothing and might even end up been interrogated in the palace. She would be worse off than she was in her last life.

She lunged, ignoring the fire in her back, and grabbed the leg of his trousers, her fingers clutching the fine wool. "Wait. I’ll give you," she said, her voice a dead, hollow whisper.

He stopped. He looked down at her, at his beautiful, proud wife, now a broken, sobbing wretch on the floor, clinging to his leg. A slow, deeply satisfied smile spread across his lips. "Good," he said.

He reached down and, with a look of mild disgust, he pried her fingers, one by one, from his trousers. He then took the pot of ointment from the bed and dropped it on the floor beside her, where it landed with a dull thud.

"Apply the rest yourself," he said.

He turned, and without another look, he left the room, closing the door softly behind him, leaving her alone in the dark.

Ashlyn remained on the bed for a long time, her body shaking, and pulled herself up. She grabbed the bedsheets, her hands clenching them into tight, white-knuckled fists, her teeth gritted so hard her jaw ached.

She was alone. She was trapped in a marriage with a man who was not just a fool, but a cruel, greedy, and deviant monster. And her sister, the weak, insipid, pathetic Marissa, had won. Again.

"I clearly seized the chance of rebirth first," she whispered to the empty, silent room, her voice a low, trembling growl of hatred. "I knew the future. I made the ’right’ choice. So why am I being suppressed by Marissa at every turn?"

She thought of Marissa. She thought of her cold, calm, untouchable face. She thought of the way she had out-maneuvered her with the Crown Princess, the way she had cleverly used Nora against her, the way she had stood in the courtyard, her arm steady, her gaze merciless, as she delivered the punishment.

"Her temperament," she whispered, her eyes widening. "Her nature. They are not as they were before. She... she clearly changed."

The stupid, weak, weeping stepsister she had remembered, the one who could be pushed into a fiery grave, was gone. In her place was a cold, calculating, ruthless woman. A woman who was always, inexplicably, one step ahead.

A new, cold, and utterly terrifying thought, an idea so impossible it had never once crossed her mind, slammed into her.

"Could it be?" her voice was a hoarse, choked sound. She stared, unseeing, at the dark, empty wall, her entire world tilting on its axis.

"Could it be... that she was reborn, too?"