The estate felt different when Emily returned from the city club. Quieter, somehow like the house itself was holding its breath. The usual sounds were still there: servants moving through distant hallways, the faint hum of voices from the kitchen, the soft tick of the grandfather clock in the foyer. But underneath it all was a tension that made the air feel heavier.
She had gone there hoping to finally meet her future husband, but he never showed up.
Emily stepped through the front door, her heels clicking once against the marble before she slipped them off. She set her bag down carefully not dropped, never careless and the soft sound seemed to echo louder than it should have.
Patricia stood near the entrance to the sitting room, her practiced smile already starting to crack at the edges. Stephanie lingered behind her mother, arms crossed, eyes tracking Emily's every movement with barely disguised curiosity. There was something else there too. Anticipation, maybe. Or hope.
Emily ignored them both. She moved through the hallway like water, smooth and inevitable, her mind already cataloging everything she'd observed at the event. The alliances. The rivalries. The subtle shifts in power she'd witnessed in a single evening.
Her father's footsteps came from behind measured, deliberate, the kind of walk that announced authority before a word was even spoken. He stopped a few paces away, hands clasped behind his back, his expression unreadable in that way men practiced when they wanted to seem important.
Emily turned to face him. Her expression gave away nothing.
"Emily." His voice was low, controlled. "We've received instructions from the Blackwood household."
The words hung in the air between them. Emily waited.
"You are to go to their residence tomorrow. First thing."
Silence.
Patricia's hand flew to her chest, her eyes widening in what might have been genuine shock. Stephanie's mouth opened slightly, then closed. For just a second, pure relief flashed across her face before she caught herself and smoothed it away.
"To the Blackwood residence?" Patricia's voice came out higher than usual, trembling slightly. "But... they've actually... chosen her?"
Harold's gaze didn't waver from Emily. "Yes. You'll leave at dawn. That's final."
Stephanie couldn't quite hide her reaction this time. Her shoulders relaxed, and a smile small but unmistakably triumphant tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Finally," she breathed, barely loud enough to hear. "We'll finally be rid of her."
Her nodded quickly, almost frantically, as if afraid the opportunity might slip away. "Yes. Yes, this is... it's necessary. Long overdue, really."
Emily said nothing. She didn't need to. Their unguarded reactions told her everything confirmed what she'd already known but had been waiting to see proven.
They wanted her gone. Not just out of the house. Gone.
The people that killed her mother and eventually murdered her, wanted her out of her father's house.
Emily was quite for a while.
Harold's eyes narrowed slightly, studying her silence. When she still didn't respond, he added, "Pack your things tonight. You leave at first light. I expect you to follow their instructions precisely. The Blackwood's are not people you disappoint."
Emily inclined her head slightly. Still calm. Still unreadable. "Of course, Father."
Inside, her mind was already three steps ahead. The Blackwood's household wasn't just another cage it was an opportunity. A chessboard with new pieces, new rules, new possibilities. Everything she'd observed tonight, every micro-expression and subtle power play, would inform her strategy.
Stephanie leaned closer to her mom, whispering something Emily's ears just barely caught. "...won't know what hit her..."
Emily's lips curved into the faintest smile. Imperceptible unless you were looking for it.
They have no idea.
She climbed the stairs to her room, each step measured and precise. The polished wood reflected her silhouette a shadow moving through a house of shadows. She passed family portraits lining the walls: ancestors long dead, their painted eyes staring with permanent judgment, oblivious to the games the living played beneath them.
Emily paused at her door, her hand resting lightly against the wood. She let herself feel the coolness of it, the solidness. A moment of stillness before the storm.
Then she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
The quiet hit her immediately the kind of silence that felt like relief after hours of careful performance. She leaned against the door for just a moment, letting herself breathe properly for the first time since she'd arrived at the club.
The room was dim, lit only by the fading sunlight filtering through the curtains. Emily moved to the window and pushed the fabric aside, watching the sky bleed orange and gray as the sun sank below the horizon. The colors reminded her of something smoke, maybe, or the last light before a battlefield went dark.
She shook the thought away and pulled her laptop from her bag.
The screen glowed to life, casting pale light across her face. She navigated to her usual feeds news sites, social media, the carefully curated channels where power moved in whispers and coded language. Her "return" to society was already generating buzz. Speculation about her intentions. Questions about the marriage arrangement. Subtle political maneuvering from people who thought she was too damaged to notice.
They were wrong.
Every piece of information mattered. Every thread, no matter how small, could be pulled to weave the web she needed.
Her father's words. Stephanie's relief. Patricia's barely concealed joy. It all formed a pattern, and patterns could be predicted. Could be used.
The Blackwood's residence tomorrow wasn't just a house it was a stage. Observing Timothy Blackwood up close, understanding the power he wielded, maneuvering carefully within his household... that was the real game.
Emily allowed herself a small smile in the darkness of her room.
She was no longer the Emily who'd been betrayed on a battlefield in another life. She was someone else now. Someone shaped by two lifetimes of betrayal, two sets of memories, two reasons to never trust easily again.
The house settled around her the familiar creaks and sighs of old money and older secrets. Emily leaned back in her chair, her mind turning over the challenges waiting for her tomorrow.
"I have to become stronger," she murmured to the empty room.
She closed her eyes, but sleep felt distant. Instead, her mind drifted back not to this life, but to her last one. The battlefield. The smell of blood and burning banners. The weight of armor and the heavier weight of betrayal.
She replayed the scene slowly, frame by frame, searching for details she might have missed in the chaos. Who had been close enough? Who had moved at the wrong moment? Who had held a sword when they should have held a shield?
Who killed me?
The memory was fragmented, violent, confused. She'd been focused on the enemy ahead, not the traitor behind. That had been her mistake trusting the people at her back.
A mistake she would never make again.
Emily opened her eyes, the darkness of her room coming back into focus. Tomorrow, she would walk into the Timothy's residence. Tomorrow, she would meet Timothy Blackwood properly not as the desperate girl the world thought she was, but as someone new.
And maybe, if she played this right, she'd gain the resources she needed to reach back across worlds and dimensions to find the truth about her uncle. About her death. About everything.
But first, she needed to survive tomorrow.
Emily stood and moved to her closet, pulling out a small suitcase. She packed methodically clothes that were elegant but practical, a few personal items, nothing that would reveal too much about who she really was.
As she folded a black dress simple, clean lines, like the one she'd worn tonight she caught her reflection in the mirror across the room.
Same face. Same dark hair. Same eyes.
But the person looking back at her was different from the girl who'd lived in this body before. That Emily had been soft, desperate for love, willing to believe the best in people.
This Emily knew better.
She closed the suitcase and set it by the door. Then she returned to the window, watching the last light fade from the sky.
Tomorrow would change everything. She could feel it the way soldiers feel a coming storm.
And Emily had never been afraid of storms.
She'd been the storm before. She would be again.