AFYD 04

 Chapter 04

The Emperor wore that characteristic face of his, savoring his achievement with satisfaction.

Ines, thinking she had shown a suitably surprised look, lowered her gaze again. She felt his gaze linger briefly on the right side of her face, but she did not react.

“So I would like the Empress to see to the dowry—may I ask that of you?”

“……I shall.”

After a brief silence, the Empress accepted slowly.

Everything was no different from before.

This situation where it was only natural not to ask the parties involved—Leila glaring at her as if she could kill her, for the sole reason that she would bear the name Grand Duchess Rupert regardless of the process—and the Emperor scanning Ines with eyes where satisfaction and chill coexisted.

She had experienced it all once before.

“Ines. Did you understand your father’s words well?”

“……Yes, Father.”

That was why Ines fashioned the same answer as before to the question she was hearing for the second time.

The answer of a frail, foolish daughter who had never once in her life defied her father’s words.

* * *

The first to leave was the Empress.

“Then I shall take my leave first. The preparations seem rather tight.”

“Please do. I trust you will prepare everything without shortfall, Empress.”

The Empress briefly rested her gaze on Ines before leaving.

Ines still could not read the emotion in her eyes. That was because, to the Empress, Ines was merely that much of an existence. Just as a person looks at an object without particular sentiment, she was a counterpart for whom there was no need to harbor emotions that would show on the outside.

Afterward, the Emperor and the First Empress Consort rose together.

“Your Majesty. The day is fine today—would you not walk with me?”

“Yes. That would be good as well.”

The Emperor did not refuse the request of his concubine, who was still seductive and beautiful despite having borne two children and being well past forty.

The First Empress Consort disappeared with a satisfied face, arm in arm with the Emperor. She had always regarded Ines as a thorn in her side, so she must have been pleased that Ines was being married off.

Funnily enough, Ines too was pleased that the First Empress Consort had taken the Emperor away. Even knowing that the Emperor would not summon her separately until the day she left the imperial palace, a chilling unease had been uncomfortably knocking at her chest. Because she was not confident she could avoid spilling even a speck of emotion if she were to face him alone.

“Ines. Did you know? That you’re going to marry Grand Duke Rupert?”

When some time had passed, Leila, who had been biting her lip tightly, asked in a sharp tone.

For a moment, Ines found it slightly amusing. Both the First Empress Consort and Leila hated her equally, yet their reactions to this marriage were starkly divided.

Whatever the case, the First Empress Consort was satisfied that Ines would disappear from her sight, while Leila found it more unpleasant that Ines would become Grand Duchess Rupert than the satisfaction of no longer having to see the half-sister she so loathed.

“I didn’t know either.”

Ines feigned a suitably dispirited voice.

Perhaps because she had faced the Emperor, who held all her burning hatred, it was easier to control her emotions than when she had faced Leila and Diosel before the luncheon.

“……It’s your marriage and you didn’t know. Ha. You expect me to believe that now?”

“Leave it at that.”

It was Herman who cut off Leila’s sheer stubbornness.

“Brother Herman, stay out of this. I was asking her!”

“I believe I said this before. Don’t do that petty emotional play of yours in front of me.”

“You’re taking that half-wit’s side now?”

Leila’s anger splashed onto Herman as well. But Leila’s irritation did not last long.

“Side?”

“……Sorry, Brother. That came out wrong.”

Thanks to having as her mother the First Empress Consort, who had not lost the Emperor’s favor for over twenty years, Leila’s high nose could not straighten before Herman.

He was the legitimate eldest son born of the Empress from a ducal house of even higher rank than the First Empress Consort’s maiden home, and a firm next emperor who had been crowned Crown Prince from the moment of birth. Moreover, Herman was not the affectionate type toward his half-siblings, so both Diosel and Leila found him difficult.

“I’ll go first.”

Leila glared at Ines with venomous eyes, then sharply turned and left the luncheon hall.

“Honestly, Brother is so boring.”

Diosel, muttering, followed after her. His slow gaze rested briefly on Ines, but since she knew he could do nothing anyway, she felt nothing.

Soon, when only the two of them remained, Herman rose and opened his mouth.

“Don’t think I took your side.”

His content was as cold as his dry voice.

If she had heard this at twenty-two, she would surely have been hurt. Back then she had still been starving for family affection.

But not now.

“I know. You cut it off appropriately because you dislike troublesome things.”

At Ines’s monotonous reply, Herman raised one eyebrow. It was a sentiment about his half-sister—whom he had merely found pathetic and annoying—properly grasping his intentions.

His agitation was faint, and he soon returned to his original expression.

“Yes.”

Having briefly affirmed, Herman brushed past her.

And just before leaving through the door.

“The north is far, but it is better for you. So count yourself fortunate.”

He left two quiet words.

There was no subject and no explanation, but Ines understood. Though she was being sent off to a distant place like a sale, the north—far from the imperial palace—was better for her.

Those words were both right and wrong, but Ines smiled faintly for the first time.

It was a genuine smile she had not fabricated.

* * *

Having returned to the princess’s palace by the long road as when she came, Ines shut herself in her bedroom and sank into thought.

‘……Ten days.’

She, who had once been Grand Duchess Rupert, had never once visited the imperial palace after her marriage.

There was the distance, but more than that, it was largely because the Ruperts and the imperial family were not on such friendly terms, and because this marriage had guaranteed the Ruperts complete autonomy.

‘Is there anything I need to prepare before leaving?’

It was not simply a matter of luggage or dowry. It was a matter of naming what Ines could do to protect Killian and the Ruperts.

As she brought various things to mind, Ines felt a faint frustration.

If only she had outstanding strategic brilliance, she would have thought of a clever plan to navigate this situation, and if only she had strong martial power, she might have killed the Emperor—the root of all this.

Throughout the luncheon, Ines had been tormented by the impulse to drive a knife into the Emperor’s heart, just as he had done to Killian.

The reason she had not acted was neither because her grudge was shallow nor because her self-control was excellent. It was because she feared losing this chance—which could only be called a miracle—to a brief moment of passion. So she could not.

The Emperor, as full of suspicion as he was of greed, valued his own life above all else.

‘Two shadows that always attend him, three ancient relics in his possession.’

To inflict even a small wound on the Emperor before cutting off his breath in one stroke, she would need something with firepower overwhelming enough to surpass all of that. Naturally, Ines did not possess such a thing.

After a brief melancholy, Ines eventually pulled a sheet of paper and a pen toward her.

Instead of something outstanding, Ines had the memories of the future.

Ines gave thanks for the first time to her memory—which had been like a curse that prevented her from forgetting what she wanted to forget.

Tracing her memories, she wrote down the events of the five years before her death.

Scandals that had heated up the gossip columns, flows of money such as the discovery of new gold mines, monster waves that occurred in the east, newly enacted laws.

Recording every event in her memory—from small to great—without missing a single one made her wrist ache.

“……I should have read a few more newspapers.”

She felt regret for not having known more.

Rubbing her wrist for a moment, Ines continued reading the record that spanned five pages.

The document, which she read down dozens of times until night fell, was burned entirely before she went to bed. It was to prevent it from falling into anyone’s hands.

Half the people were the First Empress Consort’s, half had been demoted.

In a situation where she could not freely throw away even a single piece of trash in what was supposed to be her own sanctuary, the safest record keeper was her own mind. Because unless she spoke it aloud, no one could open and read it at will.

“Haah…….”

Ines laid her tired body on the bed.

Even with fatigue rising to her throat, she could not easily fall asleep. As her busy body and mind found leisure, the things she had deliberately turned away from since the moment she accepted her return came creeping in.

The chill of the blade that had dug into her flesh, the terrible sense of loss surpassing pain, the ringing in her ears that had rushed in the moment she heard the child’s breath had stopped…….

Ines curled her body round and wrapped both hands around her belly. The pitifully thin, merely flat abdomen.

“……My baby.”

The moment she unconsciously called aloud for the child to whom she had not even been able to give the simplest of fetal names, an unnameable sense of loss and sorrow rushed over her.

“Ah…….”

A soundless wail burst forth.

She had been given the chance to undo her ignorance, and yet there were things forever lost.

A belated night of mourning, and a fierce downpour fell.