Illusion Report

Chapter 330: Chapter 286: Brianna’s Road Home

Brianna stepped out of the sitting room, drew the silenced pistol from her hip holster, and called out to the butler.

He was standing in the foyer corridor, looking a little anxious, craning his neck up at the workers dismantling the chandelier. When he heard her call, he turned around at once and said, "What can I—"

A bullet sank into his forehead.

The renovation workers in the foyer heard the sound and broke into a panic. "What happened?" "Did you hear that?" The murmurs rippled beneath the ceiling like the uneasy hymn of an anthill.

When the butler’s body hit the floor with a thud — his head landing just inside the foyer — someone was so startled they fell off the scaffolding and cried out in pain. But the cry didn’t last long before a gunshot cut it short, ceding the stage to his coworkers.

Some tried to run. Some tried to hide. One lunged at her. But this wasn’t an action movie, and the human body, faced with a bullet, was laughably, absurdly slow.

Four people. Four bullets. It would have saved a lot of trouble.

The butler turned around and said, "What do you need?"

Brianna let out a quiet breath and wiped away every vivid little fantasy that had flickered through her mind.

So there was still something left inside her. Something human.

She didn’t know what to call it — a conscience? Mercy? Or simply a fear of consequences?

"The lady needs you to fetch something from the estate."

When she handed the car keys to the butler, her fingers trembled so badly she nearly dropped them. He looked at her with suspicion and lingered, glancing past her toward the sitting room. "Where is the lady?"

After taking the Path, the last thread holding this body together seemed to have vanished with it.

Brianna felt that if she simply let go — closed her eyes and let herself drift — she would open them again back in the Nest.

Whatever had tethered her to Green no longer existed inside Green. Even if she forced the connection to hold, the time she had left could be counted on one hand.

"She’s in the sitting room," Brianna said with effort, pushing back the image of the gun that kept surfacing in her mind. "She already told me what she needs — why do you need to go find her yourself?"

The butler was quiet for a few seconds, then dropped his gaze, turning away from Brianna’s eyes — the pupils already beginning to lose focus, already starting to drift.

"I... I’ll just pop in to say goodbye before I go."

Brianna watched him push open the sitting room door. A brief, murmured exchange drifted out. Half a minute later, the butler slipped silently past her, gave her a nod, and finally headed for the front door.

Something she had planned over and over in her mind — how could she let you find a crack in it, let you slow it down?

Even if it wasn’t for Morando. Even setting Morando aside entirely. Even if it was only for — for —

Getting rid of the renovation workers was a single sentence. As long as their wages were still paid, giving them an unscheduled day off was all it took — they filed out cheerfully enough.

"Lady Jacqueline, would you come here for a moment?"

Brianna stood in the now-empty foyer and called out in a voice that was almost sweet. "Mr. Westley asked me to walk you through the demonstration..."

Jacqueline appeared at the foyer entrance, one shoulder propped against the wall, regarding her with cold eyes.

"Don’t you feel the slightest bit of guilt?"

Brianna blinked.

"How good was my husband to you? You just happened to know a bit about Hunter World — retired Hunters like you, I imagine there are plenty of them in Blackmoor City. Yet he gave you a generous salary, gave you status, made you his personal secretary, had you manage all the Illusion-related affairs... And in return you fed him one harebrained idea after another. Not only did you fail to keep him alive, you couldn’t even let him rest in peace after he died."

Brianna continued to stare at her, blankly.

Wait. No. That look on her face, that expression — no. Surely not.

"It was your decision to have the Vulture buried with him," Brianna said quietly.

"And what else was I supposed to do?"

Jacqueline’s voice shot up, sharp enough to make even a dead man’s ears ring. "God only knows what kind of thing you dragged in here. I still can’t make sense of why he ever agreed to your nonsense in the first place. Vulture this, Vulture that — I didn’t even know what it was. And just because it could take on Silei’s face, did you really expect me to pretend it was my husband?"

"Wait. Hold on."

Brianna raised a hand, caught herself, and only barely kept from laughing.

"Let me work through this from the beginning. After he died, you insisted loudly that the Vulture be sent back to the Nest. I told you I had no idea how to do that — it’s easier to invite a spirit in than to see it out. It was you who said: then seal the Vulture in the coffin and let it be buried with Mr. — with Mr. Westley."

"What does it matter? It was my decision. Do you think I need you to remind me of my own words?"

Brianna tilted her head back, told herself it wasn’t time yet, she couldn’t just say whatever she wanted — but then she reconsidered. If she didn’t say it now, she never would.

She wanted to hear Jacqueline say it out loud.

"I assumed you wanted him dead. That was why you refused to let the Vulture go on wearing his face, pretending he was still alive. Even with the prenuptial agreement cutting you to a fraction of his estate, you’d rather walk away as a free woman with less."

Or perhaps she simply didn’t trust the resident — that, too, Brianna could understand.

Jacqueline’s eyes went wide, her blue irises floating in the whites, no longer touching the edges of her lids.

"And now you’re telling me there were real feelings between you two?"

Brianna couldn’t hold it back anymore. She grabbed a scaffolding pole for support and laughed — proper, helpless laughter, each heave pulling at her diaphragm, pushing out waves of stale, faintly rotten air.

"You’re telling me that two people, no longer young, selfish, cold, forever calculating their own advantage — oh my God — is it because you recognized yourselves in each other, two of a kind? You’re telling me you two actually had a real marriage, a deep and tender bond?"

She had never heard anything so absurd in her life. The human world really was endlessly, bewilderingly strange — you could never imagine it all, nothing was truly impossible, and yet this kind of strangeness was nothing like the Nest, nothing clean or direct; it had a cloying, nauseating quality that turned the stomach. The Nest had far more charm. The Nest was so much simpler. The Nest had none of this ugly, saccharine rot —

"What is this? Am I living inside the romantic fantasy of a middle-aged woman?"

Brianna laughed until her eyes were almost wet — but Green, it seemed, had no tears left to shed.

"She meets a recently widowed man, discovers he’s the richest man around, marries him fast. And never mind that this man can’t even love his own biological daughter — somehow he had a genuine heart to give to you. Oh my God. Are you trying to kill me with this?"

She was laughing too hard to notice when Jacqueline crossed the distance between them — and then, without any warning, a slap cracked across her face.

The force of it spun her head clean around.

But there was no pain. None at all. Not a single sensation. The sound was impressive, though — it rang out like it could echo in that foyer forever and ever and ever.

Jacqueline’s face had gone red with fury. She spat out a few sharp, angry words — and then her eyes dropped, and her voice slowly went quiet.

"What is this?" Jacqueline looked down at her fingers. "This is... is this powder? Are you wearing foundation?"

She looked at her own hand, then back at Brianna’s cheek.

Would lividity rise to the surface in the shape of five fingers?

Brianna thought, with something close to delight.

"What... what are you?" Jacqueline stepped back half a pace. As if it had only just occurred to her that there were only two people in this house — she and Brianna — her eyes darted around the room.

"Tell me, Lady Jacqueline," Brianna said gently. "With such a genuine, deep love between you — did you never once ask him what became of the daughter his first wife left behind?"

All Jacqueline seemed capable of was a blank: "...What?"

"You had a daughter too, didn’t you? Weren’t you worried? Didn’t it ever occur to you as a warning? Or did you simply not care, never ask, never think about it? That’s fine — it wasn’t your responsibility as the second wife. You didn’t have to ask. What I’m curious about is whether he ever said anything at all."

"Why are you... why are you asking about her?" Jacqueline swallowed. "Silei did mention it once... He said it was a good thing she died."

Brianna made a quiet sound of acknowledgment.

The foyer fell suddenly silent.

"Why?" Brianna asked.

Jacqueline was quiet for a long moment. As if she, too, could feel it — that she shouldn’t say.

She had glimpsed, at most, a faint shadow of Hunter World cast on a wall, never even seen the threshold. The dead not truly dying, rising again in a different shape to stand before you — ordinary people didn’t expect to encounter such things in their lives.

"Why?" Brianna asked again.

"He... he was worried that Brianna would be difficult later — disputes with the children over the inheritance. And besides, the way she was... sometimes getting cozy with women, and if a journalist ever photographed it... it would be... very embarrassing."

"Ah." Brianna nodded.

A Westley indifferent to everyone compared to a Westley who had, against all expectation, a trace of genuine warmth for his wife — the first was far more bearable. The complexity of people, their many-faceted nature — even Westley possessed it — truly turned her stomach.

"I need to go,"

Jacqueline’s rage had cooled just enough to sharpen into wariness. She backed up another step, turned, and started walking briskly toward the front door. "You don’t need to come back. I’ll have someone else contact you for the remaining arrangements—"

Brianna watched her retreating back and said nothing.

In her hand she had been holding a few screws she’d removed earlier. Now she walked to the back of the scaffolding and lifted one foot.

The scaffolding came down with a roar, and somewhere inside the rush of wind, she heard half a cry from Jacqueline.

The other half was probably already in the Nest.

She didn’t know where in the Nest Jacqueline would end up — but that was fine. She had already worked out a way to have the Nest’s residents help her find out.

The human obstacle that had arrested the scaffolding’s fall vanished in an instant, and the whole structure crashed to the floor with a deafening clang.

Brianna closed her eyes.

After a stretch of time so long she had lost count of it, she could finally close her eyes. For the first time, she let herself go slack.

Let go of her grip. Let go of her strength. Let go of everything she had been holding onto. She let the darkness fall, and slid down into its depths.

She was home.

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