Chapter 1
“I’m busy right now, so be on your way….”
“Your Grace, I want a divorce.”
A light voice echoed through the room. The man, who had been waving his hand dismissively, paused.
Only then did his furrowed face turn to look at her directly.
Once, that scowling face had terrified her more than anything in the world, yet now, it stirred nothing in her.
“Do you even have anywhere to go?”
His voice struck at the sorest point of her situation, discarded and abandoned by the imperial palace, yet she didn’t so much as flinch.
That sneering tone in response to her words no longer brought her sorrow.
Perhaps it was because she’d finally shaken off her lingering regrets. No matter what she heard now, the heart that once raced in fear stayed unnervingly still.
— Bang!
“Karl…!”
Just as she was about to answer, the door to the office burst open, and a familiar woman’s voice spilled into the room.
Luxurious pink hair flew through the air. Rushing in, the woman clung to the Grand Duke’s arm and glanced back and forth between them, her gaze turning coy.
It was all too obvious. She must have heard that she had gone to find the Grand Duke alone in his office and had hurried straight over.
So brazen, it almost made one forget she had once tried to kill her.
Unbelievable.
“Karl, what’s going on?”
The woman, Sarsha, spoke with eyes sparkling like a rabbit’s, her voice breaking the quiet of the office.
The Grand Duke. And Karl.
Even in the way she addressed him, the distance between them was clear.
She barely held back a sigh. Before the Grand Duke could reply to his beloved mistress, she curved her lips into a smile.
“I came to give you a present, Sarsha.”
“……A present?”
“That’s right.”
She stepped toward the Grand Duke’s desk and laid down a document bearing her signature.
“As for the answer to what I mentioned earlier, I have one, Your Grace.”
So it would be nice if you gave me your reply now. After all, you hate me.
At those added words, the Grand Duke stared between her and the papers in dumbfounded silence.
What was he so surprised about? He was the one who’d thrown those documents at her in the first place.
“Wait, Asila……”
“Karl.”
She tilted her head slightly, watching as the two locked eyes and whispered softly to each other.
“…..Fine. I’ll take care of it.”
At last, with a clear answer, she turned and left the office without so much as a backward glance.
The office was on the fifth floor, at the very top of the mansion. Leaning against the railing, she took in the view of the estate below.
Servants busied themselves here and there. The countless rooms of the sprawling mansion.
A place others might long to step foot in, if only once, but to her, it had been nothing more, and nothing less, than a suffocating prison.
Three years. She had spent three years here. It might sound short to some, but for her, it had been the most excruciating time of her life.
And today, at last, she cast off every shackle that bound her.
A discarded princess, a Grand Duchess in name alone.
Words she would never again allow to precede her name.
The weight lifting from her chest, she let a faint smile spread across her lips.
The life of a puppet, living as someone else’s doll, it was over now.
***
“You will marry Grand Duke Ludwig.”
A one-sided decree, delivered without the slightest consideration for her wishes.
The Emperor’s gaze, fixed on her as he spoke, was cold and indifferent.
The eyes of a man looking upon something useless. No, beyond that, eyes filled with scorn.
It wasn’t surprising.
She was the Emperor’s illegitimate child.
Though she was granted the title of princess because the imperial family was always lacking in heirs, that was all it was, a hollow name.
She had been born to a maid, a fallen noblewoman, who had recklessly seduced the Emperor with drugs. It was said that even carefully planned pregnancies often failed, so how had she, born of a single night’s indiscretion, come to be?
She lowered her gaze.
For the Emperor, whose bond with the Empress was famously affectionate, her very existence was a hindrance, an object of contempt.
Whenever he saw her, he must have been reminded of the mother who no longer existed.
Not that he’d ever once come to see her.
The Empress would never have cared for the daughter of a woman who’d stolen a night with her husband through deceit. Naturally, the legitimate prince, her half-brother, also regarded her with undisguised disdain.
The derisive nickname the forsaken princess had been given to her without a second thought. Everyone in the palace dismissed and despised her.
Perhaps, when she was too young to remember clearly, she had longed for their affection.
Day after day, she would crouch before her father’s palace. Since only those with permission could pass its gates, she sat in a corner of the garden, where the servants’ eyes seldom reached.
When it rained, she waited under the downpour, hoping to catch a glimpse of her father. Even with a fever, she would stubbornly remain there, hunched by the palace gates.
Many had seen her in those days. Word must have reached him, yet the Emperor never once came to see her.
The clumsy letters she sent daily, written in a child’s unsteady hand, were always returned, torn to shreds.
Still, she hadn’t given up.
As a child, she desperately craved the attention, the love, of the one she called father.
Perhaps if she’d received her mother’s love, she wouldn’t have clung so desperately to him.
But her mother, ever violent and cruel, had made it clear early on that she would never be a source of warmth. And so, the distant figure of her father became her only hope.
It was only as she grew older that the exhaustion began to set in.
A mother who spat curses and screamed daily. A wet nurse who vanished without a trace.
The harsh surroundings forced the young girl to mature far too quickly.
She learned how to endure pain, how to remain silent even when sharp objects flew her way. She learned not to show when illness struck.
With no power to change her circumstances, she sought the attention of others. Craved her father’s love.
She sent endless letters to the inner palace, pleading. Telling him she was struggling. Begging him to help her. No, begging him to save her.
No matter how precocious she might have seemed, she was still only a child then.
A small, frail, insignificant girl.
And even a child has a breaking point.
The first time one of her letters wasn’t torn apart and returned, she’d dared to hope. Believed it might have been a mistake. That her father cared. That perhaps, soon, he would rescue her from this nightmare.
But no matter how long she waited, he never came.
She did everything she could to reach him. Foolishly thinking that if the Empress spoke on her behalf, he might listen, she sent a letter to the Empress’s palace.
What returned was the rough hand of her half-brother, striking her with the letter.
No one helped her.
She was sad.
She was angry.
She hadn’t asked to be born. She hadn’t chosen this life.
She had done nothing wrong. She had only been unbearably, desperately lonely, needing someone to cling to.
In the old fairy tale book she’d worn out from endless readings in the palace, there had been stories of ordinary families.
Parents who loved each other, little sisters and brothers, older siblings who bickered and laughed together. Peaceful, ordinary days.
What some took for granted as ordinary, she had wanted so desperately that she could never bring herself to let it go.
The Empress’s palace, visible in the distance. The Empress and Emperor, holding hands, with her smiling half-brother standing between them.
It always felt as though, if she just reached a little farther, she might touch it, and because of that, it was all the harder to give up.
— The daughter of a criminal who drugged His Majesty, making a nuisance of herself.
— A forsaken princess.
— Better off dead. An ill omen.
The servants whispered as they watched her from the gardens.
And those words lodged themselves, sharp and deep, in the heart of the young girl.
Then, one day.
Her mother died.
The grey, ashen world was stained even darker with a cloud of black smoke.
In her memory, her mother had always been the one to strike first.
Blaming her for everything. For the Emperor’s indifference. Screaming that it was all her fault. Telling her to disappear. Hurling old porcelain and vases at her until the room was covered in shattered fragments.
An endless nightmare that drove her to her limits.
And that person was dead.
When the palace staff came to collect the body, they cursed at the sight of the woman hanging lifelessly from the rafters.
She had been thrown into a corner of the room like a piece of discarded furniture.
None of them so much as spared her a glance, even if it was only to sneer.
Perfect, absolute neglect.
When they finally left, she examined her aching body.
Bruises and scars scattered across her skin, old marks from the objects her mother had thrown.
“Hah… hahahaha… hahah!”
The child let out a dry, hollow laugh.
Ordinary? What a ridiculous thought.
Attention, love, things that others received as a matter of course. Things she had longed for so desperately since she was little. Foolishly, it was only then she understood.
No, perhaps it was closer to resignation.
In this barren world, this ashen place, she was truly alone.
Love was a luxury. She would spend her life dragged down by the sin of her mother, a perpetual subject of gossip.
A thick wall was built around her heart. She forgot how to laugh. Forgot how to cry.
At some point, the gazes filled with hatred and contempt grew too much to bear.
Even after a lifetime of enduring them, the stares pierced her skin.
After turning fifteen, she never set foot beyond the palace walls.
It was suffocating, but she knew worse suffocation awaited her outside. And so she let the days pass.
And then, on that fateful day, the father whose face she could no longer even recall summoned her.
Before the murmuring crowd, he announced her marriage arrangement.
She silently met his gaze and gave a blank nod.
She wondered, did he know?
That day was her birthday.
But she found the answer quickly.
No.
She brushed aside the foolish hope that had briefly risen, and turned away.
In a way, there was a strange sense of relief. After all, it meant leaving the imperial palace.
Not knowing that the Grand Duke was about to drag her into a place even darker than this.
