The rules were simple, too simply for Rosalynde's taste, that's probably why an unsettling feeling of dread had started climbing on her back. All she had to do was win once against him, just once, at a game of wherewolf.
Five tries, and all she had to do was win once and rub the perpetual smile he had with her from his face.
"I believe you know the rules of Wherewolf right?" Rosalynde nodded, noticing the other members of the poker games coming back to their seats, the break slowly coming to its end.
"For those who don't know, Wherewolf is a child's play that originated in the Detrian Republic, the game rules are fairly easy too," Grey was quick in explaining the few that still didn't know how to play.
The origins that led to the creation of the game still hadn't been confirmed, the locals had always told the same thing, the same little fable to every outsider that even to this very day passed though the village.
Over fifty years ago a wolf came into a village that had been strategically built between the ocean and the forest, first devouring the cattle, then passing on to the children of the village. After discovering the remains of the children that had been torn apart, the village mayor decided to start a hunt to find the wolf and kill him for revenge.
But he was even quick in discovering that the wolf had not come from the woods, but from the village within. It'd been one of them that at night crept from the windows and into the rooms where the children slept tight, sweeping them from their beds in a frightening howl, and leaving what was left of them on the threshold of their family home - leaving them there so that the family could mourn.
Chaos broke out, nights turning into days as the village was filled with burning torches at all hours of the day.
But that didn't stop the wolf from claiming new lives, all it did was make him more restless, more brazen, more thirsty for the young lives of the innocent children dozing off to sleep into the night.
In the end, a solution to corner the assailant was found. Each night the people would have burned on a stake one of their own.
If the wolf would have continued killing, then the village had chosen the wrong man. If the killings would have stopped, then justice had, at long last, been administered.
It worked, and after a month of hunting within the village walls, the wolf's identity came to life.
It had been the mayor's wife all along, it'd been her that with her claws had torn the hearts of the youth before leaving what remained of the children in front of their family homes.
But she wasn't the last death that the village had to take into account, for even her children had been marked as sons of wolves and deemed too dangerous to keep around.
"Everyone will receive a card that will tell you what you're going to play. Because we're in nine, there will be one wolf only, the rest will play the role of a normal villager," Grey said, the dealer behind him getting out an unpacked set of werewolf cards.
"The rules are simple: don't cheat, don't say what you are, don't bribe our dear narrator here to give you the role of the wolf." He gestured to the dealer who by now had mixed the cards, waiting only for Grey to give her the approval to start dealing the cards.
Rosalynde first shifted her legs, then overlapped them, clamming her hands together as her card was dealt backwards.
"We'll turn our cards together once everyone has theirs under the palm of the hand," Grey said.
Once everyone had their cards under their hand, Rosalynde took a peek at her card.
She was the wolf, and the last that she would have killed would have been without a doubt, Hector Grey for sure.
꧁꧂
"I say that Hellenia is the one that killed James, she smiled when the narrator said that he'd been killed by the wolf," a player - whose name Rosalynde had found out was Cherno said after James was escorted out of the room by his personal attendant.
Rosalynde had already killed twice by the time Grey started pointing his finger at her.
He'd started slow, testing the waters before passing to the offensive.
"Oh Loid, you know that's Hellenia's way of saying she's sorry that James got eliminated," Hector said, asking for a new glass of wine.
Wondering how he'd still hadn't gotten drunk after chugging down what she thought was at least two bottles of wine him alone, Rosalynde decided to do the same, swirling her chalice of wine that a waitress had left on her side.
"Now, who should we kill to uncover the truth?" Rosalynde stopped twirling her glass of wine, huffing in amusement to Hector's statement.
She'd learned after spending four hours in his company that he liked to do this, he liked dropping statements that could be considered grenades on a battlefield, a battlefield which tonight could have been considered the table where five remaining cards pointing to the floor were waiting to be turned.
She turned to look at him and was not surprised in meeting his inquisitive gaze.
That's all he'd done since the game had started, he didn't know she was the wolf, and taking into account the newly opened set of game cards, he couldn't have marked them in any sort of way. But even if she was well aware that all she thought was nothing but the truth, that dreadful feeling of not being in control of the situation did nothing but cut deep into the back of her mind.
That disgusting feeling of inferiority didn't go away even after she accused another villager of being the murderer - this time the unfortunate victim had been Lord Pontier, a poor unlucky man who Rosalynde had discovered did not hold himself together well when wine was involved.
"Seems like the wolf is excellent at bluffing,"
Rosalynde tugged the ends of her mouth higher, raising the glass close to her lips as she tasted the sweet wine wetting her throat.
"Don't you think the same Miss Lilian? Seems our wolf liked playing with us," Madame Hellenia smirked at the words of Grey.
"I believe our wolf has a plan," Rosalynde had indeed a plan, first she would have killed the small flies, easier to catch in her web of deception. Then she would have made the big ones turn on each other, killing Grey for last.
Her plan was working, the smaller fishes had already been taken off, the next would have been Loid.
"Are you from the capital Lillian?" Madame Hellenia then asked her.
"No, I was born in the countryside, but I've been living here because of work for a long time," it wasn't a complete lie.
She'd been taken to the capital after her village's massacre over nineteen years ago, and now that she's started indeed working as Pharah's lady-in-waiting she couldn't, even say that what she'd told them was a lie.
Because for her, omitting the truth didn't mean having to commit an act of folly.
Grey seemed to be taken aback by her words, brushing a lock of dark hair from his face, he poured in another glass.
"You work?" Madame Hellenia was the one that voiced what everyone had thought, but still had decided to remain silent.
"Indeed, I've began working at young age, couldn't let the adults do it all for me,"
Rosalynde replied with her usual smile.
"Then you aren't an aristocrat, aristocrats would never get their hands dirty for heavy work." Madame Hellenia stated with a smirk accompanying her words.
The Rowlian aristocrats never worked, perhaps it was because of their dignity, or perhaps because of their arrogance, but both ways had ended up in making them believe that their lands and titles that their ancestors had bought centuries ago was enough for them to not spare a single drop of sweat in their daily lives.
Rosalynde served the imperial family, but she was not of noble blood, a thorn for the rest of the workers was all she was. That however didn't matter, as she'd already taken care of the loose mouths of those that had tried undermining her authority during the past years.
"No, I'm not an aristocrat, but I do indeed serve one. The gown you're seeing on me is a gift my master presented me for my birthday. I tried saying no, but she left no room for me to argue," Rosalynde confirmed.
"Oh, I like you even more now. I wonder if you could be good for that though..." Madame Hellenia suddenly lowered her voice at the last part, covering her mouth with her hands, deep in thought.
"Your lady must care a lot for you if she took the effort in commissioning such an expensive dress for her servant," Grey said.
Rosalynde pulled a fist under the table, she did not like being called a servant, especially by someone who knew nothing about her.
It irked her, it made her want to plant a bullet between his eyes - but for the sake of the Empire, she kept all of her emotions in check. For the pleasure she would have felt after killing him for last would have made everything that had happened up until tonight worth it all.
"So villagers, who is the wolf?" The dealer passed behind every player, eyeing the unknown cards facing the floors as Rosalynde pointed her finger towards Loid, throwing on the table the first name that the villagers would have killed.
Only four cards remained, and only two people to kill before getting her hands on the prize.
"Then I vote for Lilian, you're accusing me without proof." Loid sneered at her, slamming his fists on the table.
"But I do? you've been sweating ever since James first accused you, and right after that he got killed by the wolf. Then we have your hands, unlike at the start you've been cleaning them a lot with the handkerchief you have in the inside pocket of your coat. Scared? Wetting your underpants maybe? Is the fear of getting found out terrorizing you perhaps?" Loid retracted his fists from the table, breath uneven as he asked for a new glass of wine, trying to play down the situation he'd gotten himself into.
"You're lying, you're just trying to make me lose my cool and get me eliminated," this was when he started raising his voice at her.
"If you know it then why are you reacting like this? Don't tell me I really got under your skin." Rosalynde casted a side glance at Grey before turning back to look at Loid.
After the villagers voted, and subsequently eliminated Loid from the game, something started deviating from the original plan that Rosalynde had come up with, completely overturning the cards present on the table.
When Loid got up from his seat Rosalynde thought he was going to personally get a new glass of alcohol, maybe changing from wine to whiskey would have made him good.
"You bitch, you little cunning bitch, this is all your doing!" He screamed at Rosalynde, who decided to remain seated, but with one hand on the grip of her belt gun.
He started running towards her, grabbing a chalice that a waitress was bringing back to the kitchen, shattering it against the table before taking the sharpest shard in his hand.
"Why do you keep smiling? Why do you always mock me with that perpetual smile of yours?" He continued, cold sweat crawling on her hands as Loid's erratic run seemed to come to an end.
He looked up towards the ceiling, raising the hand with the shard up toward the skies as he muttered something quietly under this breath.
"You think I hadn't noticed you with that vexing smile that seems to know everything," Rosalynde had expected him to lose his cool, but not this much.
She ducked down as the glass shard suddenly materialized over her head, chin slamming against the table as she dodged the shard that'd tried grazing her carotid artery.
Something was thrusted into the table, inches from her eyes, that something being that glass shard, now resplendent with red at its borders. Seemed that Loid had gripped the weapon with too much force, and in his unstable state of mind had not calculated that broken glass exactly like all other sharp things, was a double-edged weapon.
Rosalynde pushed the chair backwards as her hand went to grab the gun under the gown.
But as she went to point the gun at his head, a shot was heard getting released from its barrel.
The body of Loid collapsed on top of Rosalynde's back, making her grip the table to not fall to the ground.
Shaking off Loid's defenceless body now growing cold, she raised her head to watch the scene unfold around her, chao errupting as soon as the bullet had gone flying into the air.
Waitresses and waiters had let go of their plates, making the glasses shatter on the floor as they fled from the scene. But what made her bones turn to ashes was the rest of the scene.
She didn't know if to be marvelled or to feel threatened by what her eyes were witnessing right after.
Both Madame Hellenia and Hector Grey had not moved from their seats, unmoving and unfazed, as if they're reactions to the lowest form of death was something they saw every day.
Just like her.
"Seems like the drug worked, even if I have to admit I wasn't expecting for it to start making effect so soon," Madame Hellenia's voice sounded so clear to Rosalynde's ears, and at the same so disturbed, as if Rosalynde had just been brought underwater by a sudden wave which all it seemed to do was scream lies.
"Loid was the perfect test subject, we both know it, even if I still of the opinion that Hexford and Krinston would have been perfect too. Especially Krinston, he would have done anything to pay off his debt to me," Grey replied with a chuckling tone.
Rosalynde slowly tried assessing the situation, before a click for afar was heard.
"Now, it seems like I've won our little bet, Miss Lilian." Rosalynde looked down for half a second, her cards thanks to the chaos had been turned, revealing a wolf intent in tearing in two a child with its defence's hands raised. She then heard a second click cutting the room.
She knew where that sound had come from and didn't bother in explanations when she took the safe off her gun, pointing it towards the seated men on the other side of the table.
She huffed in amusement as her eyes settled on a shiny object loaded in his left hand.
"Well, it seems I have some explaining to do." Was all Rosalynde said as Grey took the safe of his gun too, smiling at her words.
"Quite indeed, Silver dear," he replied with nothing else but a smile.