The Devil's Duchess-Chapter 54: The Devil had always been him

A few hours ago...

The council chamber still buzzed with the barbed laughter of Lord Rythor, and somewhere across the long table, Lord Cassar’s voice flowed in honeyed threads of sarcasm. Yet Berith heard none of it. The vision..if it was a vision, it still clung to his senses like a second skin.

Berith gripped the edge of the carved ebony table so tightly the cold bit into his palms.

The scent of bergamot and burning wax. The swell of music from a string quartet. Light, warm and golden, pouring from chandeliers like honey over glass.

In the center of it all— Marcella.. in silver

And then the sound.

A tear..so vivid it felt like fabric had ripped across his skin. A flash of pale skin.

Gasps. Laughter like wolves in velvet. Marcella froze. The crowd swallowed her in a cruel tide.

And he had smiled and even smug.

The memory, or whatever it was, coiled in his chest like a hot, slick parasite. Wrong. Deep. Familiar.

"Your Grace?"

Berith blinked. The chamber snapped back into focus. Every face was turned to him now. Lord Cassar, his uncle, raised a brow with polite indifference..a subtle signal. Say something. Appear lucid.

Berith adjusted his stance, "Apologies, I was... distracted."

Lord Rythor chuckled, folding his liver-spotted hands atop his belly. ""Aye, and I’d wager your thoughts wandered to the Flame ball."

A round of sycophantic laughter circled the table.

Berith’s lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. But inwardly, his thoughts screamed. That wasn’t a dream. That wasn’t a memory either..was it?

He excused himself before the session adjourned, claiming the need to review border reports. In truth, he walked the halls of Ashenholt like a man half-possessed. The polished floors blurred beneath his boots.

What had that been?

The emotions in that vision were so vivid. The shame on Marcella’s face. Her tears. Her flight from the ballroom. His own... inhuman quieteness.

The thought sickened him. That wasn’t who he was, not now. But could it have been... once?

Berith didn’t stop to acknowledge the servants who vanished from sight at the first glimpse of him, nor did he speak when the guards at his chamber doors stepped aside.

He slammed the door shut behind him. Only then did he breathe.

His chambers were dark, velvet-curtained, still untouched by the hour’s chill. This was his sanctuary. The only place in Ashenholt that didn’t demand a mask.

And yet now even here, especially here, he felt exposed.

That heat inside him had grown. Yes, the Flame has been sealed, the Gate inside him has been stabilized. But doing so, didn’t lock the door completely. It settled the Gate, which means...

The devil inside him is awake more than ever. It’s fused deeper into Berith because the Rite empowered the Gate.

Berith stumbled toward the tall mirror in the far corner of the room. His reflection greeted him—pale skin kissed by cold sweat, the hollows beneath his cheekbones deepened, the stormy grey eyes not quite his own anymore.

Then they blinked. But he hadn’t.

A second pair of pupils shimmered from the mirror like shadows caught in glass. A presence.

"Finally."

The voice slid out from the mirror. Berith recoiled, his spine hitting the wardrobe with a jarring thud. The gate in his chest flared.

The reflection tilted its head. Not him.

"So long you kept me quiet with gilded chains and borrowed names. But I never left."

"Shut up," Berith snarled, through his gritted teeth.

"You buried me in your skin. You wore me like armor, then called me a curse. But I was always you."

"No.."

"You let her suffer. You watched her fall. Don’t lie to me..I am the part that enjoyed it."

Berith turned away, stumbling toward the desk but the vision slammed into him without warning.

He stood in a throne room scorched by ruin. Marble lay in broken veins beneath his feet. Banners of Cardania were charred and torn, drifting on ash-laden wind.

And before him, kneeling in the blood of her kingdom..

Marcella.

His pulse stopped.

Her crimson gown was drenched in blood.

It soaked the fabric in great swaths, clinging to her like the memory of war. Her hands were scraped. Her hair tangled and fell over her eyes. Yet when she lifted her head, Berith saw them..those same purple eyes.

Still Marcella.

But broken. Shattered. Hollowed by grief and hatred he couldn’t place.

Her lips parted begging for pleas.

Eyes red from crying, rimmed with fury and yet, somehow, still begging for mercy.

He had rebelled. He had torn Cardania down as a rebel.

Berith collapsed to his knees, the memory slamming into him with the force of a thousand forgotten sins. His lungs burned. His vision swam.

This isn’t the future. This has already happened.

He didn’t need a seer to tell him, he felt it in his bones in the spaces between every heartbeat. This wasn’t a dream.

The mirror flickered again and the devil was laughing.

"This is your reality, Berith."

"She’s supposed to be on your feet... not in your heart."

The devil’s voice was silk soaked in venom. It didn’t scream. It didn’t need to rage because the truth was enough.

"No," Berith staggered away from the mirror, bile rising in his throat. He grabbed the nearest thing, a silver vase and hurled it, smashing the mirror with a crash.

But the mirror didn’t shatter entirely. Instead, the devil’s laughter was colder now, pleased.

"You didn’t hesitate at that time."

"And you’ll do it again unless you accept what you are."

Berith choked on the word, horror and fury twisting through him. "That’s not me. That’s not who I am now."

"You can’t kill a shadow. Especially not your own."

Berith staggered back, the heat inside him surged to agony. The pain struck like fire through his veins. His chest seared as though the Gate itself had begun to bite. He let out a ragged cry, tearing at the front of his tunic, ripping fabric down to bare skin as fresh red welts began to bloom across his chest and shoulders as if remembering wounds that hadn’t happened yet.

He writhed, nails clawing at the stone floor. The air choked in his lungs, scars surfacing like ancient runes. "Get out of me!" He gasped, choking, falling sideways. "Get out."

But the devil did not leave because it had never been inside him.

It had always been him.

******

In the present.

Marcella stopped cold.

The gravel crunched under her boots, the sigh of ash leaves in the wind — but it was Berith’s voice that sounded loudest in her skull.

"I keep thinking about things that haven’t happened," he’d said. "Or maybe they have."

Marcella turned to him slowly, as though wary of what she might find. Her gaze had gone brittle and splintered.

Berith saw it instantly. Of course he did. He never missed anything when it came to her.

His metallic whiskey eyes locked onto hers, unflinching. He watched her closely as she searched his face like someone trying to decide whether a long-buried secret had just clawed its way to the surface.

Marcella didn’t answer, so he continued..casually, as if recounting a dream that barely mattered.

"I had a vision," Berith said, like a confession wrapped in silk. "Or maybe it was a memory. You were wearing a silver gown." He paused, watching her from the corner of his eye.

Her posture tensed barely. But he caught it.

"It tore," he added, almost gently. "In the back. Right down the spine." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Marcella’s spine stiffened, but her eyes betrayed her as though searching for some dark corner of her mind to shove the memory into.

Berith pressed forward. "People laughed. You ran."

Another pause. He studied her face like a map, charting every twitch of muscle, every flick of the eye. "I didn’t follow."

Her gaze snapped to his, and for a moment, just one.. the mask slipped.

And there it was. Recognition.

Wide, purple eyes, burning with something that tasted too much like fear.

That was all he needed. The final piece slid into place.

It had never been about sharing the vision. Berith had called her here to test her whether she remembered too. And now, he had his answer.

This wasn’t a coincidence. Marcella remembered, just like him.

She had come back from the end, walked through time, clawed her way back to the beginning with all her memories.

Berith only nodded, looking away. "I see."

Marcella blinked, her voice soft and suspicious. "See what?"

His lips curved, it was a tired, winter smile. The kind that came after too many years of war. "Just exhaustion," he murmured. "I should get more sleep."

And that was it. Berith let it die there. No further questions.

Because he didn’t need answers anymore. He already had them.

The girl in front of him was the woman he had loved, the betrayer who had betrayed him and the queen he had rebelled against, dying in his arms.

And this time?

Berith didn’t intend to let her get ahead of him again.