261

"My lord, my lady, I regret to inform you-Lady Viviana has passed away early this morning," Alfonso's frantic words rang in the drawing room a mere second after the door closed behind him.

Cárcel and Inés spun around to regard the butler, stunned by the weight of the news. Shock froze them all to the spot, standing by the doorway.

Cárcel's face betrayed his dismay as he stammered, "V-Viviana has passed away? That cannot be. She has always been in perfect health..." His words faltered, disbelief etched into every syllable.

Alfonso's silence seemed to confirm the confusion they all shared. He simply pressed his lips together, offering no further explanation, as if he, too struggled to grasp the truth of the matter.

Viviana Castagnary, betrothed to Cárcel's younger brother, Miguel, had been barely eighteen-far too young for such a tragedy. Their marriage ceremony was still a year away, since Miguel had enrolled in the naval academy in El Ledequilla the past fall after making a sacred vow to marry Viviana once she turned nineteen. The future they had planned together now lay in ruins.

Although many lives were lost every single day, they were usually newborns who were too weak to make it through their first year of life. It was quite uncommon for a young woman to simply die one day without any obvious causes, especially among nobles.

Viviana had always brimmed with life. As a child, she had frequently tackled Miguel to the ground in playful bouts even though he was much bigger than her, and this liveliness had persisted as she grew older. Duke Escalante had once dismissed her as lacking the grace befitting her station, but even he had admitted that Viviana and Miguel would be a perfect pair when he saw them tussling in the grass.

Inés had also encountered Viviana's lively disposition through the letters she occasionally exchanged with Miguel. If she had lived in blissful ignorance, the sudden news might have shaken her to her core-truly, no one could imagine such tragedy would befall a spirited lady like Viviana.

After a moment, Cárcel found his voice again. "Was it an accident?"

Alfonso shook his head and finally opened his mouth. "Last night, word arrived from House Castagnary that Lady Viviana had taken ill. I do not know beyond that, my lord, since it all unfolded so suddenly..." He extended a sealed letter to Cárcel. "Here's a message from Duke Escalante concerning this matter."

Cárcel accepted the letter with a tentative hand, his face still ashen with shock.

A strange feeling enveloped Inés as she studied the grief in Alfonso's eyes. She felt the whirlwind of emotions in her mind settle as she brushed a hand over her forehead. In truth, she had allowed herself to live in blissful ignorance, relieved that Viviana's death had not come to pass when she had anticipated. Therefore, even for her, the news had come as a surprise.

Although she remembered Viviana's death, it lingered only as a distant memory. In one of her past lives, she had learned of the second daughter of Count Castagnary suddenly succumbing to consumption. And in this life, she had already heard a good deal about Viviana from Miguel while maintaining a mask of friendliness as Cárcel's betrothed. However, Viviana had been a mere acquaintance to her back then, little more than a name, and Inés had been quite jaded after her own repeated encounters with death. She had grown indifferent to the young lady's presence; Viviana had simply become another name on the list, a life already marked for its inevitable end. When Inés heard news of Viviana through letters, she had imagined her as a fragile soul waiting to perish, one more fleeting existence among the many she had outlived. She had never bothered to put any significance on Viviana's life, just as she long stopped placing value on her own.

But now, as her gaze lingered on Cárcel's pale face, a sudden understanding dawned on her. She had read Miguel's letters about Viviana with the same cold indifference she had felt toward everything else in her life-much like how she had been made painfully aware of her own heartlessness when she saw Isabella's concern for her son during his time in battle. Miguel's letters had been filled with hopeful visions of his future with Viviana. His feelings had been plain for her to see, buried beneath his feigned annoyance. And yet, Inés had glanced at the neat signature at the bottom of each letter as though it were nothing more than the final word in a story she had read many times before.

To her, they had been characters in a tale-one with an ending she already knew.

Even as she wrote her replies to Miguel, filling with hollow pleasantries, she had carelessly told herself that Viviana's impending death would soon sever their engagement. And Miguel, she had thought with a detached certainty, would be consumed by his grief, doomed to unravel beneath the weight of his loss.

Her mouth felt dry as her thoughts turned to Miguel Escalante. Six years younger than Cárcel, Miguel shared his older brother's handsome features but bore a gentler disposition. While Cárcel bore an air of authority and emotional restraint, Miguel appeared meek and mild in comparison.

Miguel, Cárcel's only brother... Viviana, who is so dear to Miguel, even though he only realized it after her loss... All of a sudden, they ceased to be abstract figures of her memory. They became real, tangible-human.

For the first time, Inés saw Miguel through Cárcel's eyes, and Viviana through the eyes of her betrothed. All these years, she had treated Viviana's death as if it were a predictable plot twist in a tale she had already read. However, now she began to grasp the cruel reality of what it meant to lose someone so suddenly and unexpectedly-the grief that followed the passing of a young soul, and the despair that would ripple through their family.

How blind she had been. She had convinced herself that nothing could hurt her, since she already knew everything that would happen. She had acted like she were immune to the trivialities of love and companionship. She had been so arrogant, even though she lacked the ability to change anything...

Anxiety began to blossom in her heart as she stared at Cárcel. Viviana's death had only been the beginning of a series of misfortunes that would befall House Escalante. Losing his betrothed had completely ruined Miguel, then Duke Escalante, and eventually... Cárcel.

Her train of thoughts came to a pause as Cárcel began to speak. "It appears that Count Castagnary was hiding Viviana's consumption for quite some time," he murmured as he read through the letter. "He did not wish to ruin his daughter's engagement... especially since the empress was not very fond of her. Apparently, Count Castagnary told my father that he thought the illness would pass... but it lasted much longer than he expected. Throughout the duration of the illness, the count never let Miguel see Viviana, even though he traveled to Mendoza and Almagro several times before and after the winter combat training of last year. In fact, he hid Viviana from Miguel even when spring came this year..."

Inés chewed on her lower lip anxiously and muttered, "So... about half a year."

"Indeed," Cárcel nodded shakily. "It says she refused to meet him a couple times, and sometimes she was simply not there... but my father thinks the count arranged it to be so."

"Yes... I would assume so."

His eyes continued to move down the page. "Viviana's family was quite shocked when her health worsened so rapidly... They chose to share the news of her death right before she passed, since it would be quite inappropriate to do so after her death. My father could not protest the delay in the information, since Count Castagnary was about to lose his daughter." He suppressed a light groan then said miserably, "But the count should have told us. None of us got to see her... We had no idea that she suffered for so long, and that she was on the brink of death..."

Viviana and Miguel had only been eight years old when they were betrothed to one another-both much younger than Cárcel, who was fourteen. Although Cárcel had found them quite irksome at times, he had begun to consider Viviana a close cousin of sorts after ten years of knowing her.

He cursed under his breath as he clenched his fingers around the letter, crumpling it. "But Miguel should have been... They should have been allowed to see each other. Viviana suffered for half a year, all alone... She loved him, Inés. I know that Miguel only saw her as a friend or sibling, but she truly..."

"I know, Cárcel," she said quietly.

His face twisted in grief. He ran a hand over his face a few times, then sighed deeply. "I do not know if Miguel will be able to accept the loss of a woman who loved him so much... After she died all alone on her deathbed as that illness ate away at her..."

Although his words trailed off, it was not too difficult for her to guess what he wished to say next. Even if Miguel never saw Viviana as a woman, her death will still cut deep. I know that he will suffer from it.

Inés quietly thought about how much Miguel had loved Viviana and recalled the grief that she had seen in his face when she encountered him in the court of Mendoza in the distant past. But she knew that she could never tell Cárcel-not only would it reveal too much, but she would end up subjecting him to even more suffering when he was already concerned about his little brother.

Finally, Cárcel shook his head and looked at her with a strange mixture of dismay and determination. "I must travel to Mendoza now, Inés. I am very sorry."

"I understand," she nodded easily.

"You can simply follow whenever it is most convenient-" he began, but she gently took his hand in her own and placed a kiss on his shoulder.

"No. We shall go together."

She could feel the inevitable current of time drawing near to sweep them away, and she was determined to hold on until the very end.