"A-ha-ha-ha-ha! You truly are a delight, Lady Isolde."
"Oh, how have I gone this long without speaking to you, Lady Penelope?"
They laughed like noblewomen in a drama written by someone who'd only ever imagined what nobility sounded like—airy, exaggerated, and expensive, as if their very chuckles were taxed by the syllable.
Verena watched them from the corner of the room with dead eyes.
Was this... progress?
Was this what all her meddling had amounted to?
A cursed alliance forged in giggles, opulence, and the looming threat of death flags?
As for their question, she almost answered that maybe the two of them hadn't met in the original timeline because they'd both reached their doom routes too early.
And now, thanks to her brilliant, desperation-fueled effort to not die like some tragic villainess cliché, these two were getting along like schoolgirls at a tea party. All because Verena decided to bend the plotline in a direction no dignified author would dare.
