Chapter 3
Echoes Beneath the Water
Water.
Cold. Endless. Pulling her under.
Laurine couldn't breathe. Her lungs burned as icy darkness swallowed her, the current dragging her deeper, deeper into the black. A faint shimmer glowed far above, moonlight refracted through the surface, but the harder she reached, the farther it drifted away.
Not yet.I don't want to die again.
The thought screamed inside her as the cold crushed her chest. Then, through the blur, a hand broke the surface, pale, trembling, reaching toward her. She stretched her own upward… and froze.
The face above wasn't a stranger's.It was her own.
She gasped awake.
Her nightgown clung to her skin with sweat. Moonlight spilled through lace curtains, the air sharp and cold. The silk sheets tangled around her legs as her pulse thundered.
The same dream.The same lake.The same drowning that had killed one soul and revived another.
She pressed a hand to her chest. The heartbeat beneath was steady, but it wasn't hers. Not Laurine's... not entirely. It belonged to the girl who had died here.
Princess Amethyst Celestria Rosaire IV.
The name was foreign on her tongue — a title stitched to a ghost.
__________
The room was still. The faint scent of lavender oil hung in the air, calm but cloying.
In her old life, she would have checked her vitals, ordered an ECG, and maybe prescribed a sedative. But there were no monitors here. No wires, no beeping machines. Only candlelight, lace, and the distant sigh of wind through stone.
Her gaze lifted to the mirror across the room.
A girl stared back, fragile and beautiful in the moonlight, with hair like shadowed silk and eyes the color of violet fire. Eyes that didn't belong to this world.
"You were supposed to be dead," Laurine whispered.
The reflection did not answer.
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By day, the Rosaire Palace gleamed with chandeliers, gold-leafed ceilings, and marble that blinded in sunlight. But by night, it changed. The corridors breathed differently. The air thickened with quiet, a silence that knew too much.
Laurine slipped from her bed, pulling a shawl over her shoulders. Her body still trembled faintly from lingering weakness, but curiosity or perhaps survival drove her forward.
She needed to understand.
Who pushed Amethyst into that lake?Who poisoned her?And why did no one question her death?
Her steps were soundless against the marble floor. The guards changed shifts every third bell; she had timed it. The northern wing of the palace lay quiet, abandoned. It had once belonged to the woman the court called The Moon of Rosaire.
Lady Celestine Lysandra Valemont.
Her mother. The original owner of the northern wing. The forgotten wing for the forgotten daughter.
Laurine moved past portraits of ancestors, men in armor, women draped in velvet, all painted with eyes that watched but never saw.
At the end of the corridor, hidden behind a faded tapestry, stood a single door. Ana had mentioned it once:
"That was Lady Celestine's chamber, Your Highness. His Majesty sealed it after her passing."
Laurine hesitated, hand hovering over the latch.
Then she pushed.
The room smelled of roses, long gone dry. Dust clung to everything — a stillness preserved, as though the world had stopped the day its owner died.
Moonlight revealed a writing desk by the window, a small vanity, and a bed draped in pale silk. Laurine approached the desk. The quill beside the inkpot had split at the tip, abandoned mid-use.
Scratched faintly into the wood, beneath layers of dust, were two words:
Forgive me.
Laurine's throat tightened.
She traced the letters, her pulse steadying only through habit. Hypothesis: emotional distress. Psychological coercion. Event: likely forced confession or betrayal under duress.
Celestine Valemont — the King's beloved, the court's scandal, the woman who was never queen yet loved more deeply than any who bore the title. A healer, scholar, and mother — executed slowly through "treatment" blessed by the Church.
She was executed slowly, beneath the guise of healing. The same method is being used now.
Laurine sat in the chair, the silence pressing in around her. "Did they kill you, too?" she whispered. "Did you know they'd come for me next?"
No answer. Only the soft crackle of the candle.
Then — click.
Laurine froze.
A sound from the floor. A loose board. She knelt and pressed gently; the plank shifted under her hand, revealing a hollow space. Inside lay a small, velvet-wrapped object, a silver hairpin, shaped like a lily. Its edges were dulled from years of touch.
Inside the hollow stem, she found a tightly folded piece of parchment.
Unfolding it, she read the faded words:
To whoever finds this — trust no one in the palace.Even blood betrays when it tastes power.
Her pulse quickened. The handwriting, graceful, precise, was unmistakable. Celestine's.
Laurine exhaled slowly, forcing the tremor from her hands. The note wasn't a relic. It was a diagnosis — the warning of a dying woman who had seen the infection spreading through her house.
And now, her daughter carried that warning forward.
A knock startled her.
"Your Highness?" Ana's voice is soft, cautious.
Laurine hid the parchment in her sleeve. "Come in."
Ana stepped in, balancing a tray of tea. Her eyes flickered to the open door. "You shouldn't be here, Princess. This part of the palace is forbidden."
"I couldn't sleep," Laurine said smoothly. "I was… remembering."
Ana hesitated, then sighed. "Curiosity is dangerous in Rosaire, my lady."
Laurine studied her carefully. "Tell me something, Ana. The night before I… fell into the lake. Did anyone visit me?"
Ana blinked. "Visit you?"
"Yes."
She hesitated. "Only Lady Anaya. She brought flowers. Said they were from His Majesty."
Laurine's pulse stilled. "Anaya?"
Her half-sister. The King's golden child. The court's beloved. The one who smiled too easily and looked too much like Isadora.
The one who envied her violet eyes — and loved the Duke she was promised to.
"How kind of her," Laurine murmured.
"Did she say anything else?"
"No, Your Highness. She left soon after."
Laurine forced a smile. "Thank you, Ana. That's all."
When the maid left, she sat in silence for a long moment.
Flowers from the King.Or poison from the Queen.
Either way, Anaya had delivered them.
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Later, by the window, Laurine watched the Lake of Reflection gleam under the moonlight. Its surface was serene, deceptive, a mirror for the dead.
Memory flickered, the cold weight, the water closing over her, and… a voice.A woman's voice.Weeping.
"Mother…" she whispered. Felt a pang of pain in her chest, remembering the late mother of Princess Amethyst. It seems mine and her feeling is connected. I now embrace not only her memory, but her body and soul.
The candle flame wavered.
She closed her eyes, breathing through the ache. This world wasn't bound by science alone. The remnants of the dead lingered, in memory, in blood, in warning.
But sentiment wouldn't save her. Precision would.
Objective: Determine motive. Identify suspects. Gather data.
She opened her eyes. The reflection in the glass was calm, now focused.
If they wanted the frail, voiceless princess dead, they would have to deal with something far worse: a woman who understood how to diagnose power itself.
From the corridor came faint footsteps — guards on rotation. And beneath them, softer, a whisper sliding through the crack of the door:
"You should have stayed dead."
Laurine froze. Every muscle tensed.
The voice vanished as quickly as it came.
Her fingers tightened around the parchment hidden in her sleeve.
They don't know I've changed, she thought. Not yet.
She turned toward the lake one last time. Its silver surface reflected the moon and, faintly, her own gaze, sharper now, alive with quiet defiance.
"If they want the ghost of Amethyst," she murmured, "then I'll haunt them properly."
At dawn, Ana entered to find her already awake.
"You seem well-rested, Princess," she said, surprised.
Laurine smiled faintly. "Better than ever."
Ana curtsied, unaware of the folded paper hidden beneath the pillow — or the small silver hairpin tucked into Laurine's sleeve.
The investigation had begun.And when she found who pushed Amethyst into that lake, she wouldn't need divine judgment.