Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Slam.

The door closed behind the last guard.

Lady Vera stood in the center of her chambers, the hysterical woman who had clawed at her own face, who had screamed accusations at the crown prince, who had been slapped into silence and carried away like luggage... stopped.

She stood, and something in her spine straightened that had been bent for years, something in her shoulders settled that had been held in the posture of supplication, of concubinage.

Her eyes were cold. The warmth that had attracted the Emperor, that had produced three children and secured her position against the dead Empress’s ghost, had been extinguished like a candle in a draft, leaving only the wick.

She reached into the bodice of her dress.

The blade emerged, the weight of it familiar in her palm, the balance adjusted for her grip through long practice in private.

She examined the blood on the dress. If one looked closely from the pattern, it was not merely the arterial spray from her son’s neck, the unpredictable fountain that had caught her sleeve, her collar, and the result of her panic.

It was also the deliberate wiping, the careful cleaning of the blade’s edge against fabric before storage.

She put the blade under her pillow. The weapon tucked where she might reach for it in sleep, where it might serve as comfort against the nightmares that did not come, that had never come, because she did not dream.

Then she changed.

The bloodied dress fell to the floor with a sound that was not heavy enough for what it contained, the silk that had been cream-colored now mapping her evening in stains. Her husband’s, her son’s, her own careful wiping.

She stepped out of it, stood in her undergarments before the mirror, and examined herself. After all, she always knew her body was an instrument rather than self. And an instrument needed to be maintained.

The bruise on her cheek was developing nicely, the violet already emerging at the edges where Damon’s hand had connected. She touched it, pressed it, felt the pain that was also information, also evidence, also the foundation of narrative she would construct in the hours ahead.

The crown prince struck the grieving concubine. The crown prince silenced the truth-teller. The crown prince, violent, ruthless, already performing his guilt.

The cut on her lips from the same impact, from the tooth that had caught against the inside of her mouth, she examined with her tongue. Small, precise, visible.

She would not heal it. She would not conceal it. She would display it, offer it, allow it to speak for her when words might be questioned.

Hatred was present in her eyes.

That bastard. He had survived her assassins and turned her own violence into his reputation. But just because she sent assassins his way these days, he dared to kill his own father and was trying to put the blame on her and her kids?!

That vicious—vicious bastard!

She swore to her own soul she would bring him down. She would sit Reginald on the throne and make sure Damon was branded the murderer.

She reached for the black dress.

Mourning was its own performance. The widow, the mother, the concubine who had outlived her usefulness to the living and must now construct usefulness to the dead.

The fabric settled over her shoulders, the color that absorbed light, that refused reflection, that announced her status as bereaved, as wronged, as deserving of the sympathy that was also a leverage.

In the mirror, the woman who looked back was not the hysteric who had been carried from the chamber. She was also not the ambitious girl who had caught an emperor’s eye.

She was something else and new.

Lady Vera adjusted. She had a role to play. She practiced in the mirror, watching her face transform through iterations of sorrow until she found the one that read as authentic.

She was ready.

The corridors of the Iondora palace were quieter than she had expected. Her footsteps on stone were the only sound, the black dress whispering against itself, the blade under her pillow left behind because this performance required different weapons.

She knew where they would be. Damon’s men would have consolidated his half-siblings, would have transformed their quarters into a fortress, a display and proof of his concern. The strategic deployment of protection that was also control.

The guards were two, positioned before doors that had never before required such defense. Young men, she noted, faces she did not recognize from her own networks, from the Leclerc family’s embedded servants.

Damon’s people, then.

"Lady Vera." The one on the left spoke, his hand not on his weapon but near it. "Prince Reginald, Princess Gertrude, and Prince Jove are under the Crown Prince’s protection. No visitors permitted."

"I am their mother." She stopped, arranged her face into the expression she had practiced, let the bruise catch the corridor’s torchlight. "I have just lost my husband. My son was wounded. I wish to see that they are well."

"The Crown Prince’s orders, my Lady."

"The Crown Prince." She hissed. "The Crown Prince who murdered my husband? Who struck me when I spoke truth? You would take his orders over a mother’s right to comfort her children?"

The guards exchanged glances.

"My Lady," the right guard tried, his voice younger, "the Crown Prince is concerned for their safety. The assassin has not been caught. Until—"

"Until he can arrange another attack?" Vera stepped closer, close enough that they could smell her. Blood, grief, the musk of someone who had not changed properly, who had rushed from catastrophe to this confrontation without the intermission of hygiene. "Until he can finish what he started with my Jove?"

She saw them waver, the uncertainty that was her opening, the gap in their training where personal tragedy intersected with political instruction.

Green. So that bastard could still make mistakes like placing green men as his defense.

"I will see my children." she rasped. "I will see them, or I will scream this corridor awake. I will scream that Damon Iondora keeps me from my wounded son. I will scream until the servants hear, until the ministers hear, until your own mothers hear what kind of men you have become."

The left guard’s hand moved as he sighed, his hand reaching the door, "We understand, my Lady..."

"Quickly. The Crown Prince—"

She moved past them, through the door they opened. "The Crown Prince is not here."