OFGBL 07

Chapter 7

A short while later, inside the grand banquet hall where Joanna’s engagement party was in full swing. The moment the massive doors swung open and Erenia and Seirn stepped in side by side, the noise filling the hall instantly subsided.

Seirn, who had always maintained an ice-cold expression, was wearing a gentler, more affectionate look than ever as he escorted Erenia. It was a sight so unfamiliar that even the adjutant of the Devlin Grand Duchy, who had served Seirn for many years, was seeing it for the first time.

“Good grief…”

The warmth in Seirn’s gaze was palpable. Not only the young ladies watching, but even the faces of several noble matrons flushed with heat.

Moreover, the way he carefully guided Erenia with an arm defined by solid muscles that not even his uniform could entirely conceal—that gesture alone made it abundantly clear how dearly Seirn cherished her.

His acting is nothing short of flawless.

Erenia admired him inwardly. Not a trace remained of the vicious, wary hostility they had shared when they collided alone in the garden. It was a perfect mask, one that might have easily fooled even Erenia herself.

“…Could the Grand Duke of Devlin possibly have feelings for the First Princess?”

“I can hardly believe it, but… look at his eyes. Anyone can tell…”

“And to think he said he was looking for the Grand Duchess…”

The nobles whispered among themselves, trading various speculations.

Meanwhile, Lucius—who had heard Seirn’s outrageous declaration firsthand in the garden—remained deeply shaken, entirely unable to breathe a word of what he had heard to anyone. In truth, it was a declaration he spent his whole life unwilling to accept, so he preferred to keep it hidden.

Throughout the rest of the reception, neither Erenia nor Seirn made any mention of their relationship, nor was there any blatant physical affection. Yet, simply watching Seirn stand guard by Erenia’s side the entire evening was enough for the observant nobles to begin whispering and spreading rumors.

How dare that little wretch!

On the other side of the room, Joanna—having been stripped of the spotlight that rightfully belonged to her as the guest of honor—glared at Erenia with a venomous, murderous gaze.

After the banquet concluded, the western detached palace of the Haiyen Imperial Palace.

It was the quarters reserved for foreign dignitaries attending the engagement celebration. Among those rooms, the largest and most lavish belonged to Seirn.

Even after the reception had drawn to a close, Seirn remained awake, sorting through documents. The papers had been delivered by his adjutant immediately upon the banquet’s end, acting on Seirn’s orders to compile an investigative report on Erenia.

A princess of Haiyen possessing sacred blood.

Seirn turned the pages with a gaze clouded by rare confusion.

Buried secretly within the forbidden archives of the Devlin Grand Duchy lay records of the sacred bloodline—a lineage whose traces had been entirely lost to time for centuries. And the one presumed to be its heir was none of all people the princess of an enemy nation, proposing a deal where she would offer magic suppression in exchange for his power.

To call it a mere coincidence felt far too contrived, as though meticulously orchestrated by an unseen hand.

Yet even now, the soothing tranquility he had felt at the moment Erenia extinguished his rampaging magical power refused to leave his mind.

「Erenia de Haiyen. The budget allocated to the Princess’s Palace is the lowest among all members of the Haiyen imperial family in history. Even that meager sum tends to be poorly utilized.」

「As the daughter of the deposed empress who led a rebellion, there are zero factions or supporters within the imperial palace—or even throughout the wider Haiyen Empire—who follow or advocate for Princess Erenia.」

The few sentences describing Erenia’s wretched circumstances held Seirn’s gaze for a long time.

So absolute was her isolation that the distinction between friend and foe was meaningless; the entire world surrounding her was hostile.

A complete mess, far worse than I imagined. Is that why she was so desperate?

Suddenly, the events in the garden flashed back to him.

Erenia, who hadn’t even blinked an eye, ready to throw away her own life at a moment’s notice. That irritatingly daring attitude was, quite literally, the fearlessness of someone who had nothing left to lose.

The detached, serene gaze of someone who had possessed nothing their entire life.

Those turquoise eyes, ill-fitting for her age and status, refused to fade from his memory.

A strange tightness gripped his chest, driven by an unexplainable emotion. It was far too cold to be called sympathy or pity, yet too warm to be dismissed as hostility. Seirn needed to shake off this unidentified sensation.

She is a princess of an enemy nation. That is the only fact that matters. With that thought, he reined in his scattered reason.

He understood the desire to escape a life where she was treated with contempt by everyone.

And yet, that very desperation troubled him.

She is a woman who has spent her entire life isolated within Haiyen and its imperial palace.

If someone starving for validation were offered that as bait…

Seirn could not be certain whether Erenia had genuinely abandoned any lingering hope of winning approval from her own country.

The power of human yearning for validation was never to be underestimated. Perhaps this princess was merely plotting to slip away to the side of an enemy grand duke and leak various secrets, all for the sake of earning validation from an empire that had scorned her for a lifetime.

At that moment—

“Ugh.”

Right in the middle of his chaotic thoughts, a crimson aura began to leak from Seirn’s fingertips.

It was the precursor to a rampage, which had been growing noticeably more frequent of late.

Along with it, a searing pain swept through his chest as if his heart were burning away.

Damn it.

Day by day, the flow of magic felt increasingly violent and unruly, serving as a cruel reminder of a conditional fate that granted him, at best, until the age of thirty-five.

Clenching his teeth, Seirn used every ounce of his strength to suppress the surging magic.

Yet no matter how hard he tried—to the point where cold sweat soaked his brow and hair—it failed to bring him the profound, peaceful calm he had experienced when Erenia’s touch had brushed against him.

Ignorance would have been bliss. Having already tasted the salvation of a cure, his thirst for Erenia only grew all the more intense.

The agony that had wracked his body all night long finally began to subside only as the pale light of dawn broke the horizon.

“Ha.”

Soaking in sweat and gasping for breath, he looked around his room, which had been left in disarray by the torment.

The intervals between rampages are growing shorter. This is driving me insane.

Thirty-five. The absolute deadline he could never cross as the head of the Devlin family, leaving him with barely a decade left.

And yet, the sole key capable of harvesting that horrific curse was within arm’s reach.

He could finally understand why Seirn’s ancestors, who had experienced the purification firsthand, had been so desperate to reclaim the heir of the sacred bloodline, willing to sell their very souls to do so.

Given that she could suppress this curse, the fact that the person he needed to bring by his side happened to be a princess of an enemy nation might not be such a major problem after all.

When morning arrived, the entire continent was thrown into a frenzy by Seirn’s actions the previous night.

The Haiyen nobles who had witnessed Seirn treating Erenia with such affection at the banquet spent the entire night discussing the shocking incident, while foreign envoys scrambled to dispatch the news back to their respective homelands.

The original purpose of the banquet—to celebrate Joanna’s engagement—had long since been forgotten by the public.

“How dare they! How dare they!”

Having stayed awake all night with bloodshot eyes, Joanna raged as she tore up every newsletter the maids brought to her. The items in her bedroom were already scattered, broken, and ruined by her violent tantrums.

“Erenia! That wicked bitch did it again! She stole my spotlight again! It was my banquet! How dare she!”

She had begged her father and gone to great lengths to arrange a magnificent engagement party. Yet not a single newsletter or newspaper mentioned her news, compounded by the humiliation of having her reception hijacked the night before. The more she thought about it, the more her blood boiled.

“Why on earth would the Grand Duke of Devlin do such a thing?! Why that kind of woman! Just what cheap tricks did she use to seduce him?! I’ll kill her! I, I will—!”

While Joanna was venting her dark, murderous intent, Erenia stepped into the emperor’s office. She had been summoned by the emperor since early morning.

During her first life, whenever she had a private audience with the emperor, she had been gripped by fear while desperately trying to win his approval. But now, it was different. She no longer desired his love; he was merely a target for her revenge.

Even at the sound of Erenia entering, Emperor Maximilian kept his gaze fixed on the documents spread across his desk.

He likely intended to provoke her anxiety through deliberate indifference, but such a strategy no longer had any effect on Erenia.

After several minutes passed in silence—

“Princess.”

Finally, the emperor spoke.

His choice of address remained unchanged. She was only too familiar with the unmistakable hostility underlying the dry tone of a biological father who had never once bothered to call her by her proper name.

However.

“I hear you have grown close to the Grand Duke of Devlin.”

The tone of the words that followed was different from usual. Rather than contempt and hatred, the voice was stained with greed.

“If our Haiyen forms a bond with the Grand Duke of Devlin, it will serve as a stepping stone to ease our long-standing tensions with Troca.”

“Keep a tight grip on the Grand Duke’s interest. Taking the Grand Duke of Troca as a son-in-law of Haiyen will bring immense strength to our empire, so you must become his grand duchess at all costs.”

He never once bothered to ask for Erenia’s thoughts on the matter.

“Fulfill the duties of an imperial princess, something you have failed to do until now.”

I already knew he was shameless, but to treat me as if I wasn’t even a princess until now, and suddenly demand I fulfill my imperial duties?

Faced with such a drastically changed attitude in a single night, Erenia recalled her past life. No matter how low she bowed, how obedient she was, or how hard she struggled and did her absolute best, she had never been recognized as a princess.

And then—

“This is your chance to atone for what your mother and her family did to the empire.”

At those words, Erenia’s heart turned ice cold.