"Are you really Selen Ravenhurt?" Rose exclaimed, her eyes wide.
Selen nodded for the second time. After their discussion in the garden, Selen had decided to reveal her true identity to the brother and sister at the same time.
"Even in the North people say your family is the noblest in the empire after the imperial family. How did you manage to sneak into the North? Didn't your parents issue a search for you? And the prince, is it true that he is your fiancé, or almost fiancé I mean?"
She sighed at the mention of Light. The soup she was eating that evening suddenly tasted bland.
"Stop with your questions, Rose. We already agreed that the less you know, the better." said the duke.
Rose seemed annoyed by the obvious exclusion she was subjected to.
"In any case, Selen, you have all my respect. Staying so long in the company of such a bear without going crazy is something that deserves admiration."
Selen had to admit that it was true.
"And besides, that name suits you better than Annie. Your two-colored hair is really beautiful. I have never seen anything like it, I understand why you wanted to hide it." Rose said with a sigh. "Anyone who saw it would immediately fall under your charm."
She said this while looking at her brother with a smile that Selen could not interpret. What exactly was Rose imagining?
Just as their dinner was coming to an end, a servant appeared before them with a tray containing a letter. What was surprising was that the servant presented the letter directly to Selen instead of the master of the house, as was usually the custom.
"This letter is specifically addressed to you, milady." the servant said, holding out the tray to her.
The duke stopped eating to observe her and even Rose, who was enjoying her dessert, cast curious glances at the tray. She took the letter and placed it beside her before continuing her meal.
"You're not opening it?" the duke asked.
She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
"I already know what it is about."
"Who is it from?" the duke asked.
"From Noah."
"Who is Noah?" Rose asked.
"A snake of the worst kind." the duke replied. "Whatever that letter contains, I hope you will decline immediately."
"And why would I do that?" Selen asked. "As far as I know, we had a deal with him and I intend to honor it."
"Honor it, you say? Very well, in that case I will accompany you."
"You said it yourself that he is a man not to be taken lightly, so I would rather honor the terms of our deal exactly as they were set. A dinner alone with me and me only."
Selen could clearly see the duke boiling in place. He did not trust her regarding her meeting with Noah, but he could not make a whole scene because of their recent collaboration. Their understanding was as fragile as a house of cards, so every word had to be carefully weighed before being spoken.
"In that case, I expect a detailed report of this meeting." the duke said before standing up and leaving the dining room.
"Who exactly is this Noah?" Rose asked curiously. "Why must he dine with you and why does it irritate Jason so much?"
She seemed far too excited for a reason that escaped Selen.
"He helped us find a boat to rescue you and in exchange he wanted a dinner, it's that simple."
"Simple?" Rose shouted. "This man is courting you, Selen, and that irritates Jason."
Selen almost laughed. Noah courting her? What next? If there was one thing the duke was right about, it was that this man was a real snake and Selen hated those with all her heart.
"That's not what you think at all." Selen said as she started eating her dessert.
"Yet it's logical. A beautiful woman invited to dinner by a — I assume — handsome young man, and another man — Jason — who is terribly jealous and wants at all costs to separate you."
Selen sighed and resigned herself to no longer correcting Rose about the situation. After all, if her brother wanted to keep her away from their affairs, it was to protect the little innocence she still had left.
The following evening, she was ready for the dinner. Noah had sent a dress for her during the day and she wore it that evening without the slightest hesitation. Rose had helped her do her hair and she realized that the latter seemed far more excited about the dinner than she was.
"A carriage is waiting outside, milady." announced a servant who had just entered.
Selen felt a knot in her stomach. She had spent the entire day imagining several scenarios about what that dinner might be, and in more than half of them it ended in bloodshed.
"I'll accompany you to the carriage. Who knows, maybe Noah came to pick you up himself."
The carriage was indeed there and it was neither too luxurious nor cheap either. Selen examined it for a good minute in order to identify whether anything seemed suspicious before finally deciding to climb inside.
"Stay on your guard. It would be foolish to get tricked by a man like him." the duke said as she entered the carriage.
Selen did not reply. No answer could have calmed the situation anyway. When the carriage set off, she knew that the duke's and Rose's gazes had probably remained fixed on it until it disappeared from their sight.
If the carriage seemed modest, the restaurant he had chosen certainly was not. An employee dressed in gold livery approached her to lead her inside. There was no one inside except the staff, a sign that the restaurant had been entirely reserved.
She was led into a room where there was a table on which glasses and a bottle of wine were placed between two candles. For a moment it almost felt like a real romantic dinner, Selen thought as she took a seat on one of the chairs.
She had already noticed that Noah was standing on the balcony not far from the table, but she was the guest. It was his place to come to her, not the other way around.
"I see you have recovered well." Noah said as he finally decided to leave the balcony and sit across from her.
"Indeed."
"You're not very talkative, I see. Don't tell me you're upset because I didn't visit you during your recovery?"
"Could you stop talking nonsense and get to the point."
Noah smiled at her before pouring wine for her and then for himself. He swirled the wine in his glass before taking a sip.
"Impatience is a terrible flaw, but we will do as you wish, Selen. I will ask you a small question: do you know where cursed eyes come from?"
Selen looked at him with pure confusion. Had he really brought her here to talk about his eyes?
"No, I have no idea."
"As far back as I can remember, my entire life has always revolved around my eyes. From my birth until my adult life, there has only ever been that. I never dared ask this question out loud to my grandfather, but I always wondered why he decided to raise that child with cursed eyes he had found that night in the middle of the beach crying at the top of his lungs."
"I must admit I am starting to ask myself the same question."
Noah smiled as he drank his wine.
"Growing up in a town full of superstitious sailors was not easy because I had to endure the harassment not only of adults but also of children. My grandfather tried his best but I always ended up being beaten, sometimes until I bled."
He took another sip of wine.
"And yet one day all that harassment came to an end. Do you know how?"
"I give up."
"One day I woke up in the middle of the night, took a shovel that was lying around in the house and walked toward a dark alley not far from where we lived. One of the men who spent his time beating me up to entertain the crowd was lying there drunk."
Selen was starting to become interested in his story.
"He did not even recognize me, yet I knew it was him. I raised that shovel with the little strength I had at the time and it was the first time in my life that I finally felt like myself. In that dark alley, it was no longer about a child with cursed eyes who had killed a man but rather about a simple murderer, as the posters said the next day."
A waiter opened one of the doors and placed the main dish before them. Yet they both knew that neither of them would touch the meal in front of them.
"From that moment on, I understood one thing. Violence, when properly used, could in fact be the best solution to many things. I then hunted down all my detractors: adults, children, old men. All of them died. Yet no one suspected me, they were looking for a man of unimaginable brutality according to them. A simple man, that is what I had become."
He sighed.
"Do you know how a boy barely twelve years old managed in the span of a month to assassinate about twenty people?"
"I give up again."
"Strangely, I who had never dreamed of anything began to dream of many things and strangely my dreams were becoming reality. I could sometimes even glimpse the past of people by touching them. At first I did not believe it, but after succeeding every time, I had to accept the fact that I was capable not only of seeing the future but also the past."
Selen swallowed with difficulty. Her sister also had the power to see through time, yet she had not seemed strange the last time they had spoken.
"One does not choose what one sees with this power. The power chooses. Yet it has always shown me what I needed. Imagine my surprise when one day I woke up after having two visions, one of which showed me a past life where a certain young noblewoman with two-colored hair had been declared a saint before becoming empress."
He knew.
"And yet when I woke up that morning, we were back one year before all those events. Everything was happening exactly as it had one year ago. I was the only one who remembered that lost year. Imagine my surprise when, after investigating, I discovered that our future saint and empress had not only run away but that her family was doing everything to hide it. Very quickly I came to the conclusion that you could only be the one behind this return in time."
Selen materialized a magical sword and placed it against Noah's throat. She had already known it: this dinner could not possibly end well.