THE SNAKE.

When Claude and a pair of knights came down to the cellar to check what was happening, the moment they opened the door, Danielle's dead body fell out.

Claude all seemed so shocked by the turn of events that after seeing Yvette looking scared and shaken in the cellar, he didn't bother with locking her up there anymore. He allowed her to return to her room as he dealt with the issue of Danielle's death.

The fact that Danielle had killed herself seemed like an obvious conclusion to everyone. No one had even noticed her ankle, or the fact that it was shattered. If they had, they didn't pay it much heed. There was no way that Yvette could've killed her, after all. She was just a timid, cowardly little thing, how could she kill someone like that?

The kitchen staff, however, knew better. Yvette had only just threatened them, and the next day Danielle was locked in the cellar alone with Yvette only to end up dead. It wasn't hard to come to the conclusion that Yvette had something to do with her death.

Yvette, meanwhile, was happy to finally be able to rest in an actual bed again.

Unfortunately, that peace didn't last long.

In the middle of the night, Yvette heard the door opening. She was attuned to waking up at the slightest of sounds, so the slight creaking of the door was enough for her to wake up instantly. She feigned sleep, though, wondering who had entered her room and what they were going to do.

There was quiet, careful footsteps as someone crept up to her bed, before she felt something being placed onto the sheets.

As soon as whatever it was was dumped onto her bed, the person in her room quickly left and closed the door behind them.

By the time they were gone Yvette had figured out what they placed onto her bed. It was a snake.

It was slithering around on the bedsheets while Yvette laid completely still.

She figured it was probably Sabine that planned this, expecting her to get bitten by the snake in her sleep. She felt that the snake probably wasn't poisonous though, as thus far none of her sisters have actually actively tried to kill her just yet.

Right as the snake slithered over her one of her feet, Yvette quickly kicked it off the bed and across the room. The snake hissed and backed into a corner while Yvette sat up. It took her a moment to adjust her eyes in the dark but eventually she managed to make out the shape of the snake in the other end of the room.

Before it could decide to strike, Yvette picked up the lamp on her bedside table and flung it towards the snake. The snake had jumped, attempting to attack Yvette, and ended up smacking into the lamp. It wasn't enough to kill the snake let alone seriously injure it, but it gave Yvette enough time to open her balcony doors before pulling her bedsheet free.

This time, when the snake sped towards Yvette and leapt up to bite her, she didn't move. She waited until the snake was midair before covering it with her bedsheet, wrapping it up inside, and then tossing the whole thing out over her balcony railing.

The snake wrapped in her bedsheet landed on the ground below, and she watched as the snake struggled and then got free, and eventually slithering away into the nearby woodland.

Knowing that there would be trouble if she left the bedsheet laying there, Yvette quickly scaled down from her balcony and picked it up.

What she didn't expect was for someone to have caught her in the act. She turned her head and found herself locking eyes with one of the gardeners, Adam. She knew who he was because the original Yvette of this world had memories of him. Adam was a handsome young man with dark hair, dark eyes and tanned skin. He was the son of the previous head maid. She raised him in the Decaux manor, and growing up he had crossed paths with Yvette a couple times.

They weren't exactly friends, but if Adam ever came across Yvette crying he would always lend her his shoulder to cry on. In this entire manor, it was the closest to kindness as Yvette had ever experienced.

When Adam's mother died, he was just fifteen, but he had already proved himself adept and handling the gardens alongside the other gardeners, so Claude decided to officially hire him as a gardener. There was also the fact that Sabine had always had a slight crush on Adam, and that was another reason Claude eventually decided to keep him around.

Sabine had eventually moved on from Adam to Duke Olivier, the same man Genevieve liked, but there was always a part of her heart that stayed stuck on Adam.

Yvette was the one who broke the strange silence. "Who here can handle snakes?"

"...Edgar can. He's another gardener." Adam answered.

"Is he close to Sabine?"

Adam hesitated to answer that one. She wondered if it was because Adam was aware of Sabine's feelings for him, or if possibly that he even reciprocated them a little bit.

"Yes." He replied eventually. "He's the same age as her and I've seen them talking quite a lot."

Now Yvette felt she understood. Sabine probably got close to Edgar in an attempt to make Adam jealous, perhaps intending to spur him on into realising his feelings for her.

Having gotten her answer, Yvette then nodded at Adam before scaling back up to the second floor balcony and entering her room.

She spared one last look down at Adam, who was gazing up at her with an unreadable look in his eyes, before she shut the balcony doors and went to sleep.