Lady Death's Diary: Chapter 14.5 (Patreon)

From the Rewritten Journal of Lady Vitrula Rhys: The Fifth Death

Of all the things my deaths have stolen from me, I miss the stars the most.

After the duel between Loren and Theo resulted in my fourth death, I concluded that avoiding my engagement was no longer a viable path to survival. I needed to marry Loren to stay alive. My family would be content to see the betrothal honored, and Letty would give up when I became Crown Princess. Treason, after all, was a much more serious offence than mere murder.

Thus, all my energies in my fifth life went to keeping Loren and Letty apart. I rarely left Loren’s side, becoming a proficient enough horsewoman to join him on his hunts. Just as he chased after foxes, I was equally relentless in pursuing my quarry. His hobbies became my hobbies, his habits my own. Ironically, it was during this cycle that Loren seemed to like me most. He still stared after my stepsister like a hound at prime rib, but I ensured they rarely had time to talk.

Nor did I neglect Letty. Whenever I wasn’t with Loren, I was by her side. If I wanted to avoid a knife in my back, the best solution seemed to be never turning away. I even socially strong-armed a few of Court’s more handsome members into courting my stepsister in order to keep her further occupied.

Most every waking moment, I altered guard between the would-be lovers. There was only one place where I went to be alone, a refuge that neither had ever expressed interest in.

After the Northern Uprising and the abolishment of the Mages Guild, King Corbin had ordered the guild’s preexisting headquarters at Bellcrest Castle be converted to an observatory. The Southeast Tower’s domed glass ceiling, a marvel of magical architecture, was a cunning combination of spells and engineering. Overlapping convex and concave panels magnified the night sky, the arrangement of which could be adjusted to focus on different constellations using small metal knobs. In winter, when the Snow Moon made its annual appearance to join its more constant twin, the reflection from both moons caused the observatory to remain lit throughout the night.

Residences of the castle were granted full access to the tower, though few nobles ever bothered to visit. It also opened to the public once a week, when schoolchildren and their teachers swarmed the palace courtyard for lessons on history and the stars. After I received my nightly reports from Loren’s and Letty’s servants that their masters lay sleeping, I would go there to read books by starlight.

It was summer, barely a month before I turned eighteen. I hadn’t survived this long since my first death, and confidence caused me to grow careless. With the looming deadline of my birthday and our marriage imminent, I started slipping away from Loren more and more frequently. Such chances to escape would be hard to come by once we were wed. I stopped waiting for the servant’s reports before sneaking off to the observatory each night. This carelessness cost me everything.

The observatory’s metal paneling, which usually concealed the dome’s moving mechanisms, had been taken down earlier that summer. This allowed breezes to flow through the gaps in order to keep the area cool and prevented the gears from warping in the heat. Knowledge of how the devices worked had been lost with the Mages Guild—if they were damaged, no one would be able to repair them.

With the seasonal absence of the Snow Moon, there wasn’t enough light to read by so I stargazed instead. I stood close to the metal knobs in the corner, having just turned the ceiling to reflect my favorite constellation: Andrane the Warrior Queen. She’d famously refused to marry after inheriting the Crown, and it had been under her reign that Kothe had been conquered. Scholars never treated her well: every book I’d read blamed her lack of heir for Verdan’s subsequent period of instability—the Reign of the Eight, when a quick succession of monarchs from competing families had led to eight different rulers in as many years before the Tivalls seized power. But I thought Andrane had been fearless. Numerous attempts had been made on her life; she’d outlived all her detractors and died of old age. Unlike me, she hadn’t needed a prince to survive.

Her constellation admittedly didn’t much resemble a warrior queen or even a woman at all, given that the six aligned stars had originally been recognized as a mage’s staff. Another thing repurposed and renamed after the Northern Uprising, like observatory itself.

I’d never been particularly devout, and my prayers to the Triad Gods had only grown more infrequent with each death. Andrane was recognized as Ascended, however. If only she could offer me advice.

So, there I was, head tilted back and gazing at the stars, silently pleading with a long-dead queen for advice on how to stay an alive princess, when a shove came from behind.

I stumbled forward, arms cartwheeling and hands clutching at empty air before one grabbed ahold of something. Someone, I realized, before my assailant used their free hand to shove me once more. My fingers clawed down their arm, something hard and sharp coming loose from their sleeve in the struggle. A cufflink with a crescent-shaped stone, a fiery orange-red that burned with reflected starlight.

It skittered across the floor before falling off the tower’s edge and into the blackness below. Immediately after, I followed.