A villainess who has regressed.
With that in mind, May Averil moved fast, and went straight to the undisputed queen of the villainesses: Marchioness Olivia Cruz.
She opened politely, because polite was safest.
"The tea has a really lovely aroma."
Olivia set down her cup with a calm smile and an entirely uncalm voice.
"Compared with the leaves supplied to the Imperial Palace, this is barely good enough to keep up appearances."
She was smiling. She went on smiling. It was the sort of smile that exists to keep a person at arm's length, and it worked exactly as designed.
So May decided there was no point dancing around it any further, and told her why she had really come.
She had spent almost her whole life in Averil territory, she said. It had not been long since she arrived in the capital. High society here was a battlefield, and she knew perfectly well that she could not stand on it alone.
What she needed were people who would stand firmly at her side. And she wanted to build that kind of support together with the Jasmine Club.
The Jasmine Club was Olivia's tea circle, and every woman in it shared a version of the same fate. Women cast aside by their own families. Women discussed behind closed doors. Women flattened by rumours that had nothing to do with anything they had actually done.
After turning back time, Olivia had worked without rest to gather women who had lived through the same darkness she had.
What Olivia did not know was that half of the Jasmine Club were like her in another way as well. They had returned too. Every one of them had played the villainess in her own story and come back to do it differently.
Which was precisely why May was sitting in this drawing room.
She needed to bring the villainesses together and put her weight behind them. And to do that, she had to win Olivia first.
Olivia listened to the whole speech without interrupting. Then she said she would give her answer, but only after asking a question of her own.
She began by listing names.
"Lady Maria, one of our key members, was taken by the city guard half a year ago for attempting to kill her younger sister."
"Lady Dorothy set fire to her family estate and was thrown out of her house."
"Our spiritual anchor, Countess Bole, is followed everywhere by the rumour that she bathes in the blood of young maids to preserve her beauty."
Then she turned the light on herself.
"I was born while severing my mother's lifeline. I grew up watching my half-sisters drop dead, one after another. And after I married, I lost my husband as well." Her voice did not change at all. "Because of that, people call me the tragic Marchioness. Or the witch of death. Not behind my back. To my face."
She let that sit.
"A great many members of the Jasmine Club carry reputations of this kind," she said. "Not exactly the company one would expect the Emperor's fiancée to keep."
And then the real question.
"So what is your true reason for wanting to join us?"
At this point May looked like a small dog that had wandered into the wrong garden — trapped, outmatched, and aware of it.
Honestly, she had expected this. Olivia Cruz was known as one of the sharpest minds in the entire romance fantasy world, and that was exactly what made her so difficult to handle.
But it was fine. May remembered her master's lessons.
Never face a villainess head-on. Their schemes will always fly out past anything you were prepared for. Take the gentler route instead. Go for the weak spot. You have to become their spring.
So May began to act.
She said that their reputations did not trouble her in the slightest. She said she could see it perfectly clearly — the gentle hearts underneath all that cruelty and rumour.
Sparkles gathered at the edges of the scene. Tears welled up in her eyes on command.
This was the moment she had been saving, the moment she unleashed lines so sweet they ought to have made Olivia curl up in her chair.
"Inside each of you rests a heart more tender and more lovely than anyone else's in this empire," May declared. "And no amount of envy, no slander from foolish, greedy people, could ever shake your resolve."
May was fully committed to the performance. She would have given it to a packed theatre.
Unfortunately, it backfired.
Olivia's expression only grew grimmer as the speech went on. When it ended, she did not raise her voice or issue a rebuke. She simply rose, said smoothly that something urgent required her attention, and left.
Just like that. Abandoning her guest in the middle of the room.
May stood there stunned, holding a cooling cup of barely adequate tea. She could not understand it. Her master's tried and tested cringe persuasion had never failed before — never once — and in the end all she could do was stand there on the edge of tears, like a puppy left out in the rain, thoroughly and completely rejected.
Back at the Imperial Palace, all she could manage was a very long sigh.
It was the first time one of her master's strategies had failed outright. And to make it worse, she could not even ask for help right now.
Still, she made herself look at the bright side. Six full days remained. It was not over yet.
That was when she saw April, standing in the palace corridor late at night, talking quietly with another lady.
Why was April here?
May walked over and asked what had brought her to the Imperial Palace.
April did not answer the question. "Relax your face," she said instead. "Greet your beloved sister with a smile."
May took her by the shoulder and said, coldly, "Thank you for the early advice. But that's something the real April can manage perfectly well on her own. And once my real sister comes back, the fake standing in front of me won't need to worry about anything ever again."
April only smiled. Then she casually knocked May's hand off her shoulder.
"I thought that by now you might feel guilty about something," she said. "Because I finally understand why you insisted the two of us debut together."
She tilted her head.
"It wasn't to sabotage my debut. I didn't realise it at the time. You were aiming for the first meeting with the tyrant — an event that was originally meant for me."
"Stop—"
"You wanted my man." April's smile widened. "Greedy. That's what makes you such a truly wicked older sister."
"Stop playing word games," May said. "I have never once hidden what I want. I want the possessor's soul driven out of my sister's body. That's all. That has always been all."
That only made the fake April laugh.
"How touching. Such a moving sisterly bond." She smoothed her glove. "And yet, after everything you've struggled through, it's all gone right back where it belongs."
She explained why she was at the palace that night, and she explained it kindly.
She was now the Emperor's dance practice partner. Which meant the two of them would be seeing a great deal more of each other from now on.
Then she said the rest of it in a calm, chilling tone, as if reading out a weather report.
"It's as though the world itself is whispering to me. Telling Seol Yun to take back the male lead who was stolen from her." She looked at May without blinking. "He was mine from the beginning. And the world agrees."