1.
In the Krania Empire, at the northeastern edge of Lyussenford—a region bordering the forbidden domain of the evil dragon—stood an abandoned tower where the cast-offs of the law were left to rot. Within its walls lay the Grand Duchess of Lyussenford. At only twenty-five, she was a skeletal husk, her hair thinning, her body nothing more than bone and leather, waiting for the end.
The cold was biting. The pain was exquisite.
When was the last time food had been brought to her? Her mind, sapped of energy by the starvation, struggled to form a single, coherent thought. She had melted snow to drink, but even that resource had long since run dry.
Kaella—the Grand Duchess, once branded with epithets like “Traitor of the North,” “Stooge of the Emperor,” and “Cunning Enchantress”—was to end her life starving in a tower where the wind whistled through the cracks, a prison from which there was no escape.
Since her husband, the Grand Duke of Lyussenford, had personally cast her into this tower, the cessation of her meager rations was undoubtedly his decree as well.
‘What did I do wrong?’
Hunger was a horrific, clawing agony. Her head and stomach ached so severely that simple thought became a labor, yet Kaella kept asking herself. She did not know her crime. If she was truly guilty, then perhaps her very existence was the error. She had tried so hard to endure the cold reception of the northerners, only to end up here, wasting away while staring at the back of a husband who loved another woman.
Her charge was that she had leaked classified information from the frontier to the Emperor and sown discord between the Grand Duke and the throne. Although the Emperor deeply loathed her husband, Kaella had no such memories of betrayal. It seemed she had been framed.
By whom?
‘…Who here would have loved me enough to do this?’
Kaella did not know. She had been so thoroughly isolated that she lacked the information to even guess at her conspirators.
Throughout her marriage, being from the South, she had been treated as an outsider. Even though her father—the Emperor’s half-brother—had died at the Emperor’s hands, Kaella was still his niece.
The people of Lyussenford fought against a harsh climate, rampant dragons, and frequent incursions by foreign tribes; they depended on supplies sent by the Emperor. And they hated him, for he held those supplies over their heads to exercise his whims. How they must have loathed Kaella, who had come in place of the woman originally intended for the position of Grand Duchess.
Hyperion Savrand Ferraro, the Grand Duke, had lived a miserable life as the illegitimate son of the Empress, loathed by the Emperor, chased to the border, and denied the woman he loved. He detested seeing the name Kaella De Chasseur engraved beside his own.
Hyperion Savrand Ferraro. Even now, as her consciousness faded from the agony, his name remained vivid. It is difficult to forget the man one has loved since childhood.
‘There will be a war.’
For the Emperor, who had spent years monitoring, suspecting, and pushing Peon, the death of Kaella—who wasn’t even treated as family—would be a convenient excuse. To kill the Emperor’s niece and break a marriage the Emperor had orchestrated! To think he had shown mercy by allowing the fatherless bastard to enter the Imperial family! With her death, he could add several more crimes to his list of grievances.
The relationship between Peon, the illegitimate son of the Empress, and the Emperor had been poisonous from the start. Even if only for the sake of his mother—whom the Emperor kept under lock and key—Peon would eventually wage a total war.
That she could still worry about the husband who would soon throw himself into conflict, even in this state—she was nothing but a fool. A powerless, spineless idiot who, despite her inability to achieve anything, had her ideals set too high and had fallen for a man who belonged to another.
‘…Ah. I did make one mistake.’
If there was one thing Kaella had done wrong, it was her inability to give up on a man who lived his whole life for only one woman. Ever since he was “Peon oppa,” whom she first met when she was very young—long before he was the cold, distant Hyperion—he had cherished and loved his childhood friend, the Duke of Monde’s daughter, Beatrice Lavalle.
Peon had loved Beatrice with such desperate, blind devotion that he kept Kaella at a distance. It was, though a poor comparison, similar to the blindness with which the Emperor obsessed over the Empress.
Peon had made it his faith never to betray Beatrice. Such a man naturally treated Kaella as if she didn’t exist, and eventually, he grew to loathe her. Was it a crime, then, to have presumptuously kept loving him?
She didn’t know. It was all useless now. Her mother had passed away when she was young, and her father had been pointlessly murdered. To have her father’s titles stripped and to be sold into a marriage only to end up branded a traitor—it had been a miserable, unhappy life.
In Lyussenford, Kaella had truly done her best, yet she had received no reward. In the end, only death returned to her, as if it were a natural conclusion, or perhaps a mercy.
Her vision turned to black. The cold and hunger were so harsh that they felt like a welcome release. She wanted to die quickly. She wanted this pain to end.
Then, a creaking sound broke the silence, and the heavy, iron-bound door swung open.
“Let’s check.”
She heard a voice. Kaella, lying in the foul-smelling filth, couldn’t even turn her head. Reduced to skin and bone, she no longer had the strength to move. Though she was of the Imperial family, her end was wretched. She heard the sharp, rhythmic click of women’s boots striking the stone floor.
“Oh my. This is problematic.”
The stench was swept away as the door fully opened. In Kaella’s blurred vision, she saw a woman leaning over her.
‘Beatrice?’
“You’re still alive, Kaella. I see you recognize me.”
Kaella watched the woman, who spoke with a sneer, her thoughts drifting aimlessly.
Why was she here? Had Peon called her? Well, his wife had become a criminal and was imprisoned, so the marriage was over. He must have thought it was finally time to reclaim the one true love he had longed for. They should be happy together.
But wasn’t Beatrice held hostage by the Emperor? How did she get here? Ah, it didn’t matter.
Teetering on the edge of death, Kaella no longer had the strength to process the contradiction.
“Poor thing. To have become so unsightly. Yet, you’re still alive.”
Beatrice muttered in an obviously mocking tone. As the daughter of the Duke of Monde, she had always felt bitter that Kaella, the daughter of Ostain, held a higher standing.
“Troublesome.”
It sounded as if she were annoyed that Kaella hadn’t yet expired.
“You know, Kaella. They say the last sense to go when you die is hearing, so shall I tell you a fun story? And then, you can die after eating this.”
Beatrice Lavalle laughed as she pulled a small vial from her robes. Kaella could not resist.
“Do you not want to die?”
Not want to? The pain was so severe that death was a relief. Kaella wanted it. She had wanted to die for a long time—perhaps even before she came to this tower.
“But it can’t be helped. The noble and righteous Grand Duke of Lyussenford can only be absolved of being a criminal if the innocent Kaella De Chasseur dies.”
Beatrice prattled on, clearly delighted.
‘I was deceived.’
Kaella realized it instantly. She had been played, and her husband had been played as well. They had all been puppets for Beatrice.
But it was too late. Kaella watched as Beatrice opened the vial and dripped the poison into her parched lips. Far from feeling indignant, she welcomed the liquid sliding down her esophagus. She was so starved that she would have consumed anything, even poison, just for the chance to end this pain. She would be able to meet her father and mother. She was already losing her mind.
“It will be over soon. I’ll tell you a fun story until it ends.”
As death flowed down an esophagus that had not held sustenance for days, Beatrice spoke as if she were singing.
“Poor, poor little Kaella. Granddaughter of the noble late Emperor and daughter of a bastard, the lady of Ostain. Do you know? The Duke of Ostain, your father.”
Had her pain been numbed by the cold? Why were the words of this woman, whom she could never hope to catch up to, so clear now?
“He died because of my love. The Emperor. Our Vincent shot a gun, ‘bang,’ and killed your father, didn’t he?”
The woman, whom her husband had pined for, called the Emperor—her husband’s stepfather—‘my love.’ Surely she had misheard? But Beatrice continued in a dreamlike voice.
“Do you know why Vincent happened to be cleaning his pistol when he was with your father that day?”
The official cause of death for the Duke of Ostain was a firearm accident. They claimed the Emperor had ‘accidentally’ killed him while cleaning his weapon.
Beatrice poured the poison into Kaella’s dying mouth and into her ears as well. In Kaella’s blurred vision, she looked overjoyed.
“That gun was brought to him by ‘your husband,’ Peon.”
Beatrice, who had specifically emphasized the words ‘your husband,’ was satisfied to see shock dawn in Kaella’s fading eyes. Seeing this annoying girl, who had always had a higher status than her, receive such a shock in such a miserable state was the most gratifying thing.
“Well, it might not suit your taste, but he has to play the role of the good stepson well so that Lyussenford stays peaceful, Her Majesty the Empress stays safe, and I, his love, am secure.”
Beatrice spoke as if mocking Peon.
“He gifted it to Vincent personally, knowing full well what your husband would use it for. Well, where else would a decent pistol come from? They all come from this cold place.”
Lyussenford was famous for its arms production.
“Since that was how it started, isn’t it fitting that it should end this way? You tried quite hard for four years, didn’t you? You were too stupid to realize that everyone hated you.”
Ah. As Kaella listened with a near-stilled brain, she at least knew who had framed her. Beatrice had been behind it all. It was because of this girl that she was dying.
“Well, Peon is on my side, so what can he do? He’s been my servant since he was a child. I brainwashed him that way. So he could never run away. You two are a pair of idiots. Well, I’m the one who made you idiots.”
Beatrice shrugged, looking down at Kaella.
“Poor Kaella. You married the man who killed your father, received no love at all, and now you’re dying in such an unjust way?”
Kaella could not refute those words. A welcome sleep descended upon her.
It was death.
She was happy that the exhaustion and the pain were finally coming to an end.
･ ｡ﾟ✧: *. ꕥ .* :✧ﾟ. ･
“…Miss, Miss!”
At the sound of a voice that was unusually piercing, Kaella flinched, gasping as she jolted her eyes open.
“Oh my, I’m sorry. I must have startled you. …Are you alright, Miss?”
Cecile, the maid who worked for the Ostain Ducal house, looked on with concern at her lady, who was breathing heavily and darting her eyes around the room. Her lady had her pretty eyes wide open, trembling as she looked around as if seeing a horrific landscape.
“Miss, are you ill? Did you have a bad nightmare?”
The sensations flooded back; she felt the surroundings with an unnerving, absolute clarity. The voice, the warm temperature, the touch of the velvet sofa and cushion she had been lying on, the soft, flowing dress wrapping her body, and her arms, which had a healthy, pleasant amount of flesh on them. Everything was so naturally vivid that it was chilling.
“Goodness, look how pale your face is. You must have had a terrible dream.”
Kaella gasped for air and grabbed the hand Cecile had extended toward her. A firm hand, rough, dry, and calloused. It was warm. So warm.
“Are you alright, Miss? Please, calm down. It was just a bad dream. Were you scared?”
Was she scared? She had been beyond terrified, suffering through agony. But now, she felt no pain, no cold, not even that horrific hunger.
Kaella looked around the room, which felt unfamiliar because it had been so long. This was clearly the bedroom of the Ostain Ducal townhouse that she had used before she was married. The four-poster bed with white curtains, the clean and thick duvet, the sturdy cabinet, and the cushions with subtle patterns. And on the wall across from the bed, a mirror hung.
Kaella jumped up and, still holding Cecile’s hand, went to the mirror.
“Miss?”
Cecile was aghast to see the only daughter of the Duke of Ostain glaring at the mirror, then suddenly slapping her own cheek with her free hand.
“Oh my, Miss! Miss!”
The daughter of Ostain, who had ferociously slapped her own fair cheek, which still held the softness of youth, shook her head and roughly tidied her disheveled hair. She then took a deep breath and turned to look at the frantic Cecile.
“Why did you wake me? What’s going on?”
Her cheek burned. The pain she had briefly felt was real. Was she awake? Her mind had always been sharp, razor-edged. She had always had to be that way in the North, where she walked on the edge of a blade. Yet she had died anyway, so what was this?
“The Duke, His Grace the Duke, asked for you—Miss, your cheek is red. You should at least apply a compress.”
“It’ll fade on its own if I leave it. You woke me well. Thank you!”
“Miss…!”
Her hand, which had mercilessly struck her own cheek, was trembling, but Kaella left the room regardless. She had to figure out if she had just had a long, terrible nightmare, or if this was real.
‘A dream? Don’t make me laugh. Where would such a long and detailed dream come from?’
How could the days of torture she spent in the North, in Lyussenford, be a dream? Either Kaella had gone mad, or it was some sort of wicked magic.
‘Or perhaps it’s an illusion.’
Tears welled up, and Kaella quickly rubbed her eyes. This situation might just be an illusion that she, now dead, was desperately clutching at. It was, at the very least, a time when she had been happy.
Ah. The corridors, filled with sunlight from the regularly spaced large windows, were familiar. Paths she had forgotten were coming back to her. Kaella searched for the way to her father’s study, stumbling slightly yet finding it with practiced ease. The massive staircase, the open terrace, and the corridors covered in warm, beige stone instead of carpet. It was all so very Ostain.
She knocked on the study door, feeling fearful. Was this a well-crafted dream? Or were the people of Lyussenford trying to toy with her?
“Come in.”
Her heart plummeted. The voice from within the door was one that had been gone for so long, yet was so clear. What on earth was happening? With a heart pounding in her chest, Kaella cautiously opened the study door.
“I have to go to the Imperial Palace today, so you’ll have to eat dinner alone. I might be late, so go to bed first.”
It was her father. It was her father. The man whose head had been so tragically smashed that he was barely recognizable stood before her now, properly dressed and whole. Kaella stared at him, stunned.
“G-going to the Imperial Palace?”
“His Majesty has summoned me.”
Was this déjà vu? The situation, repeating exactly as she remembered it, was ominous and bizarre. She knew the navy coat, the gray vest, and the light tan trousers her father—her living father—was currently wearing. And she knew exactly how much blood had been spilled over them. Yes. This was the exact attire her father had been wearing when he died.
“Why?”
Kaella hadn’t known why her father went to the palace that day. So she asked.
“Who knows? When have I ever known?”
The blunt answer betrayed his reluctance. Kaella clutched her confused head.
“But what’s wrong with your face? No, were you hit? Why is it like that?”
The man she remembered as dead approached her, his face full of concern, and cupped her reddened cheek.
“It’s nothing.”
She said that and began searching the study. There was no time to share reunions or reminisce. Even if this was a dream, if she didn’t act correctly, she would regret it deeply upon waking.
“It’s nothing? Your cheek is red! But why are you taking that out?”
Adeo De Chasseur, the Duke of Ostain, was startled to see his daughter, with her swollen cheek, open the study safe and pull out a protective magic tool—one of their heirlooms. The daughter who had brought the golden necklace spoke earnestly to her father.
“I don’t know why, but please, wear this before you go.”
“No, why all of a sudden…”
“It’s supposed to protect your body at least once. You never know what might happen, so please, wear it. Don’t take it off. Do you understand? I’m begging you, Father.”
The father, who was far taller than her, could not refuse his daughter as she stood on tiptoe to fasten the magic tool around his neck and tuck it inside his shirt. He was, after all, a normal father who was incredibly weak when it came to his only daughter.
“And…”
There was no time. Kaella pleaded, almost begging, before her father left.
“Do not trust His Majesty, Father. Absolutely not. Please.”
It was a fact everyone knew. The Emperor was a scoundrel and a psychopath hidden behind a refined mask. After seeing off her father, who could not refute her, Kaella bit her lip and finally jumped up.
If she intervened in a meeting between the Emperor and her father, both of them might be in danger. The Emperor was a terrifying man. Despite being the legitimate successor, his paranoia led him to slaughter his own siblings on the flimsiest of excuses, and he had kidnapped the current Empress, breaking off her betrothals with other nations to marry her, keeping her locked away ever since.
His cruelty reached its peak when he began tormenting Peon after his birth. The Emperor mentally abused Peon, who was in his early teens, and kept his mother, the Empress, hostage, forcing Peon to the desolate North to face evil dragons.
*Do you miss your mother? Then crawl and obey like a dog.*
He abused the boy, and he insulted the Empress, calling her a filthy whore one day and praising her as a noble lady the next. And yet, he himself had fathered several illegitimate children, pitting them against each other to see who would inherit the throne. He was a psychopath who wielded his immense imperial power at will.
But Kaella had to do something to protect her father against such a psychopath. That measly magic tool, the one that could block an attack just once, would stop one bullet. But would there be only one bullet?
Having reached that thought, Kaella jumped to her feet.
“Prepare the carriage!”
Truthfully, she was starving for food. There was so much she wanted to eat. Soft cake, melting lamb, boiled vegetables—anything would do. But instead of the impulse to grab whatever she could find without manners, not having tasted food for so long that she couldn’t remember, Kaella headed straight for the Imperial Palace. If she was to die, it was better to die with her father. Dying alone and unjustly in the North was something she was tired of, even in a dream.
“I’m going to the Imperial Palace.”
The Ostain carriage passed through the palace gates once again that evening. As soon as the carriage stopped, Kaella leaped out and ran toward the ‘Sacred Forest’ where her father had been murdered. Everyone except the Emperor called it the Monster’s Garden.
If she was to die, she would rather be struck down by the Emperor’s bullets alongside her father. Or, at the very least, she had to stop the Grand Duke of Lyussenford, her husband, who would be there.
Sure enough, in the distance, at the entrance to the garden, she saw a man who was incredibly tall with broad shoulders. In his hands, he held a box containing the gun that would kill her father.
“Grand Duke!”
She ran through this nightmare, stopping the man she had never dared to confront.
Kaella De Chasseur, the lady of Ostain, burst into the path of Hyperion Savrand Ferraro, the Grand Duke of Lyussenford.