The Sixth

The beautifully designed dining room was now a gruesome scene in which six corpses lay, and one woman silently partook of her dinner, despite not tasting anything. 

Countess Isabelle Rayne died clinging to Darlin's skirt, begging her to do something. 

Earl Howard Rayne spasmed out of his seat and lay pathetically on the floor like a puppet whose strings were cut. 

Duke and Duchess Fritz died similarly, the former appeared as if he'd at least tried to crawl towards the door. 

Darlin's dull, red eyes trailed from the ducal couple to the pair across her. Her half-sister, Flora, was slumped against the chest of Darlin's husband, Heinrich Fritz, who had his arms around her. They died in an embrace, leaving Darlin with the haunting scene of their final act of love. 

This was a family dinner in which servants were not allowed to wait on them unless called in, but Darlin knew if anyone were to behold this, she will immediately be deemed a murderess. 

She shrugged, acknowledging it would be a fair assessment as the poisoned bottles of wine were brought by none but her.  

No one will hesitate to drag her to the guillotine by the hair. Darlin is the villainess— a terrible, jealous, and abhorrent lady. It was only a matter of time before she harmed Flora, who is just too kind and innocent for her own good. 

The years of neglect Darlin experienced are swept under the rug. No one cares how she studied till her nose bled and her vision blurred. 

What does it matter that she took over the Rayne mansion's management at the age of thirteen? 

Or that she spent nights making sure Flora's spending did not drive them into deficit?

No one cares for the villainess' story. 

Whoever considers the villainess was once a child who wanted someone to praise her efforts, tell her she's done enough and deserves to rest?

How horrid is Darlin to deserve her husband and sister openly carrying out an affair and asking her to accept their child?

As her parents and in-laws enjoyed this dinner in celebration of Flora and Heinrich's child, why did no one think— for a single second— how terrible Darlin was feeling?

Picking up her mother's half finished wine, Darlin stared at her reflection in the glass. An indifferent face streaked with tears looked back at her, eyes stained with madness and despair. 

Then again, perhaps it would be weirder to remain stable after everything she's been through. 

In her first life, Darlin could not accept Heinrich's affections for Flora. She stupidly believed she could sway him, draw his love away from Flora and make it hers alone. Like a dog, she begged at his feet for the smallest scrap of affection.

The more he refused, the more incensed she became. He was her future, the one thing she refused to lose to Flora. 

Darlin was so blinded by what she dreamed of having with Heinrich, she did not know when her sneaky hand poured the aphrodisiac into his tea. 

They were already married at the time, and Darlin could accept him condemning her actions for it was a deplorable act she never expected of herself. 

However, Heinrich’s rage was towards the fact he felt bedding his own wife was an infidelity against Flora. 

On their nuptial bed he drove a knife through Darlin’s heart.

Darlin was surprised when she found herself alive and much younger than she knew she was, but more than that, she was furious. 

The jealousy she swallowed all through her first life spawned into an unforgiving fire. 

Darlin was always working, proving herself as both a daughter of the Rayne Earldom, and the fiancée of the Fritz Duchy, yet Flora effortlessly reaped the benefits?!

In a heated argument, Darlin struck Flora, and in a bid to protect her, Countess Isabelle shoved Darlin off the manor’s stairs. 

In her third life, Darlin was ready to give it all up— not that she could have it anyway. She made a deal with Heinrich; he would delay their marriage for as long as possible, while she would raise Flora as a worthy Duchess. 

Unfortunately, Duchess Fritz grew impatient. This time, it was her who planted the aphrodisiac.

Heinrich and Darlin were forced to marry, and under pressure from the Duchess, Darlin was soon pregnant.

…As was Flora. 

Flora could not stand the idea of her child being treated as a bastard, so to assuage her fears, Heinrich did away with Darlin's. 

The tonic he forced Darlin to swallow was more harmful than he realized. After a year in a coma, Darlin finally passed. 

To her abject horror, a fourth life began.

Darlin screamed and wailed against what could only be an unjust sentence to hell, and after weeks of confinement, and one drug after another, she submitted. 

She didn't care for anything anymore, for it is clearly beyond her means to change anything. People calling her looney, Heinrich falling in love with Flora, none of it mattered. 

Her bottles on bottles of funny tasting medicines made for fine company. They had her mind drifting to and fro, farther, and farther away from the mean people and their cruel words.

Darlin didn’t know how much time passed until she heard she was set to marry some Count much older than herself.

It sounded unpleasant, so she wondered if she could drift away as well. That fuzzy place her mind went to, her body will go as well and all will be fine. 

She imitated the dance the pills taught her— to and fro, farther and farther, but she did it wrong and fell out a window. 

…Oops.

This is the fifth life. "This time, I killed you.” A sardonic smile curved Darlin’s lips. Yes, something drastic finally happened, and she wasn't the one suffering. 

Darlin played her role well in this life and married Heinrich. They were yet to spend a night together, and just as she expected, he soon brought a pregnant Flora and announced she was swollen with his child. 

Pushing down the writhing darkness in her head, Darlin smiled as her parents and in-laws expected her to. 

She did not intend to harm anyone, but when she saw them celebrating Flora's pregnancy, she just... 

Did anyone grieve her baby when Heinrich killed it? 

Did Flora and Heinrich get so much as a scolding for their misdeeds?

In her coma, all she heard Heinrich apologize for was giving her a too potent drug, yet never for the death of their child.

Not only was Darlin inherently less special than Flora, but so was her child?

She took her hand off her stomach, not knowing when she started rubbing it. “How strange it is to miss someone I never got to meet…”

Darlin eyed her sister's corpse, realizing briefly how it isn’t six she killed this night, but seven.

She stared a little longer, awaiting a burst of guilt that never came. There was no joy in killing Flora's unborn child, still the absence of remorse was… disconcerting. 

Something in Darlin had taken a wrong, maybe irreversible turn on this day. Regardless of what is ahead, it kept going, and Darlin did not care enough to stop it. Rather, she brought the glass to her lips, bidding it farewell. "Cheers.”