The Broken Doll Returns（Nepheia's POV）

Leo eased the wheelchair to a stop behind an unassuming side door at the edge of the ballroom. Through the narrow gap, the crystal chandeliers cast their fractured, brilliant light, and Mina's voice drifted through — soft and honeyed, edged with deliberate flattery.

"Countess Eleonora, please don't be angry. Koujirius only brought me because he didn't want me to feel neglected—"

"My son's name is Koujirius Leneaux. He is not your brother." A cool, authoritative voice cut across hers, brooking no argument, carrying the unmistakable chill of someone accustomed to ending conversations. "There is only one person who may claim kinship with the Fatasleigh name, and that is my niece, Nepheia. Who are you to presume otherwise?"

Annette.

Eleonora de Fatasleigh — Duke Aethel's elder sister, my mother's only sibling, and the one person in the entire family who had ever held me close and fretted that I was too thin.

"Mother!" Koujirius's voice cracked with impatience and barely suppressed resentment. "Mina was only—"

"Be quiet." Annette's tone dropped to frost. "I have not lost my mind, Koujirius. Your fiancée has gone missing, and here you are at a formal event with a nanny's daughter on your arm. Do you intend to humiliate both the Leneaux and Fatasleigh families in a single evening?"

Mina's crying began on cue — a thin, trembling sound, like a cat caught in the rain.

"I'm so sorry... this is all my fault... Koujirius, please go apologize to the Countess. I never should have come..."

What a performance. I nearly laughed out loud.

Behind me, Leo leaned close and spoke in barely a breath against my ear. "The boss is in the private box upstairs. He says you may do whatever you like. He'll be watching."

My heart lurched. I tilted my gaze toward the stretch of second-floor railing lost in shadow, and though I could make out nothing clearly, I knew — Seriomel was there, still as a crouching panther, observing this farce with cold and patient eyes.

I drew a slow breath and gave Leo a single nod.

"Take me in."

The heavy carved door swung open without a sound. The rubber wheels met the polished marble and began to roll, producing a low, soft rhythm — quiet enough, yet sufficient to draw every eye in the room.

The waltz died as though someone had closed a hand around its throat.

Several hundred eyes swung toward me at once.

Surprise. Uncertainty. Scrutiny. And pity, barely concealed.

I sat in the wheelchair with one leg encased in a heavy plaster cast. The expensive black silk gown I wore only threw into sharper relief the gauze bandaging on my face and the dark bruising visible along my exposed wrists — a catalogue of damage that was impossible to look away from.

I was a broken doll, freshly dragged from the grave, rolled into this glittering theater of wealth and respectability.

"Nepheia?"

Annette's voice shook.

She turned, and every trace of color drained from that carefully maintained, perpetually composed face. She gathered her skirts and moved toward me at a near-run, all composure abandoned, her heels striking the floor in a frantic and uneven rhythm.

"My child... my Nepheia... how did you—"

She crouched before me and reached out, then stopped herself, afraid that touching me might shatter something. When her trembling fingertips finally made contact with the gauze on my cheek, the tears she had been holding back gave way completely.

"Who did this to you?" She gripped my knees, her body shaking, her voice stripped raw with grief and fury. "Tell your aunt. Who did this?"

Every guest in the room held their breath, watching this scene play out in live and unedited detail.

Koujirius stood rigid, his complexion cycling between pale and ashen. Behind him, through the carefully maintained stage of Mina's tears, a flicker of something else crossed her face — poorly hidden, and unmistakably close to panic.

I wrapped both hands around Annette's arm and held on as though she were the last solid thing in a collapsing world. Two lifetimes of pent-up grief finally found somewhere to break open. Tears streamed down my face.

"Aunt..."

My voice splintered the moment I spoke — hoarse with the rawness of someone who had barely survived.

"I was so frightened... I thought I would never see you again..."

I could barely get the words out between sobs, yet each one arrived perfectly distinct in the ears of everyone present.

"Jonson said he was taking me out to help clear my head. Then he left me alone on an island and never came back. Koujirius... Koujirius knew, too. But neither of them came for me..."

"On the island... there were five men... they wanted to... they tried to..."

I couldn't finish. I bit down hard on my lower lip and let out a sound like a trapped animal, my whole body convulsing at the memory of what I could not bring myself to say.

No further words were necessary.

Abandoned on an isolated island by her own brother and fiancé — nearly gang-raped by strangers. The information detonated in the silent ballroom like a bomb.

The room erupted.

The looks directed at Koujirius shifted in an instant from idle amusement to open contempt.

"Good God — the Fatasleigh heir did that to his own sister?"

"She's his blood. His own flesh and blood."

"And the Leneaux boy shows up parading a new woman when his fiancée was barely gone? I have never heard of anything so shameless."

"Mina." Annette rose and turned, her gaze sharpened to something lethal. It found Mina with the precision of a blade, and the woman had already gone completely white. "It was you, wasn't it? You put Jonson up to this."

"No — no, Countess, I swear I didn't—" Mina's hands moved frantically, her tears flowing faster now. "Jonson only told me Nepheia wanted some time alone. I had no idea what he intended. I truly knew nothing—"

"That's enough." Annette's voice came down like a verdict, and Mina fell instantly silent. There was nothing more to be said. Against the full force of bloodline and authority, the petty scheming Mina had staked everything on crumbled without resistance.

I leaned back in the wheelchair and watched it all with cool, steady eyes.

In my previous life, it had never occurred to me to seek out Annette. Jonson and Mina had made certain of that — telling me that Annette prized the family's reputation above all else, that she would be mortified by my disgrace and the first to disown me. Living through everything a second time, I finally understood: love that is real does not arm itself with "propriety." It simply fights for you.

I let my gaze travel across the crowd and up toward the shadowed second-floor balcony.

This time, I could almost make him out.

Seriomel stood behind the railing, not seated — a cigarette between his fingers, its tip burning crimson against the dark, flaring and fading.

He was watching me.

The expression in those unfathomable eyes had changed. The detached, half-bored appraisal from before was gone, replaced by something I hadn't seen there until now.

The look of a seasoned hunter who has just realized the creature he's been tracking is not the docile lamb he expected, but a young wolf — one that knows exactly how to bare its teeth and bite back.

It was surprise. And beneath that, something considerably more interested.

He seemed quite pleased with the performance I had staged.

That recognition sent a quiet warmth threading through the cold center of my chest — faint, and twisted, and entirely uninvited.