Chapter 10
The attic of the Grand Duke’s estate, where not even sunlight properly reached, lay thick with nothing but dust.
Asila sat huddled in a corner, not even bothering to brush away the cobwebs or grime, curling herself into a ball.
“We… we found it…!”
“…It’s confirmed.”
They claimed poison had been discovered in her room. The very same poison that had been in the child’s milk.
A small, transparent glass vial, one that did not exist in her memory, lay before her, filled with a colorless, odorless liquid that gently rippled within.
The Grand Duke himself had stormed into the attic where she was kept and hurled it at her feet, growling that she ought not even imagine leaving this place until the child recovered.
She told him it wasn’t true. She begged him. She pleaded for him to believe her. She grasped at his retreating sleeve as he turned to leave the attic.
Someone was framing her, hiding things in her room, poisoning the child, anyone but her.
At first, her voice was small, trembling, but it rose steadily.
She pleaded that he, of all people, knew better than anyone that a discarded princess like her had no means of obtaining poison.
She admitted that while his suspicion was understandable, it wasn’t her. She swore it wasn’t.
If anything, she had grown dangerously close to the child. He was so completely the Grand Duke’s image that she couldn’t bring herself to resent him.
And for all the hours she had spent with the child, mere brief snatches here and there, there were far more times when other servants had been alone with him.
For her to have consistently poisoned the boy would have been far more implausible than anyone else. Why couldn’t they see that?
But the coldness in his eyes, colder and more terrible than ever before, became unbearable.
Still, she clung to him, lowering herself, humiliating herself in a way she had never known.
And yet, all that was returned to her was one frigid sentence:
“How pitiful I am, to have ever pitied you. So it was jealousy over Sasha you couldn’t stand, so you tried to kill the child?”
His sleeve shook free from her hand. The attic door slammed shut.
Only after the Grand Duke’s footsteps had completely faded did her vision blur. It wasn’t until then that she realized tears were falling, pattering down one by one.
Why won’t you believe me?
Why won’t you believe me…
Asila stared blankly at the tightly closed attic door.
She could understand suspicion, after all, she had been the one holding the milk, and it had been while she was there that the child had vomited blood.
But no matter how panicked Sasha had been, no matter how many lies she wept into her sleeves, if anyone had thought for even a moment, just a moment, they would have realized.
Was she the only one to ever meet the child? Was she his personal nursemaid?
She had met the child six, maybe seven times at most. And even then, only for the briefest of moments when Sasha was away.
She hadn’t asked Sasha to let her see the child, and for her to have obtained poison and administered it to him in that tiny window, all without being caught, it was absurd.
It was laughable.
Even she, thinking on it now, could see how little sense it made.
And yet… why was everyone so convinced it had been her?
Hadn’t she said it wasn’t? Couldn’t they have hesitated for even an instant, a single heartbeat of doubt?
It didn’t matter if they believed she had the intent or desire, but at least acknowledge she lacked the means.
And yet no one did.
The contemptuous stares from the servants, the frigid glares from the physician who didn’t even know her, they crushed her.
But what truly terrified her was the look in the Grand Duke’s eyes. That gaze, colder than ice, pierced deeper than anything else.
Asila drew in her trembling limbs and tightly shut her eyes.
—You tried to kill the child because you couldn’t bear your inferiority to Sasha?!
—M…murderer…!
Sasha’s scream-laden voice still rang ceaselessly in her ears.
—Listen well, my beloved daughter. You killed me, you know that, don’t you?
“…!!”
A voice writhing up from the murky depths of her memory, clawing its way out from inside her, made Asila’s lips quiver.
The words her mother had whispered into her ear just before climbing onto the chair to end her own life overlapped with Sasha’s screams, twisting her mind into chaos.
She gasped for breath. She had overcome this, she was supposed to have erased these memories. Why now, of all times?
—Murderer… because of you… my child… because of you, I… the poison… Asila… His Majesty, because of you… poisoned… wretched thing, don’t even think of leaving that dreadful attic… tried to poison the child… a discarded princess like you…
Voices upon voices clawed at her mind. She clamped trembling hands tightly over her ears.
Her mother’s black eyes staring at her with bone-chilling coldness within the shadowy palace, and the figure that dangled before her eyes not long after.
In the bright, grand estate, countless contemptuous gazes bore into her, as if already convinced she had poisoned the child.
Sasha, shrieking louder and louder, weaving lies from nothing, adding flesh to them, pointing her finger and sobbing for others to hear.
And the Grand Duke’s gaze.
“No… please…”
She struggled to breathe.
She wanted to scream, to tear through those memories and the stifling stares with her bare hands, to cast them all away.
Everything around her seemed to bristle with sharp thorns, mercilessly stabbing at her.
The memories of her mother’s death coiled around her body, dragging terror in their wake.
She hated this place.
She didn’t want to be alone.
She pounded on the tightly sealed door.
Let me out. I don’t want this. I was wrong.
Anyone… please, open it.
She scratched at the door until blood seeped from beneath her broken nails.
It was wretched.
In that narrow, dark attic, only the faint sound of her sobbing filled the air.
One day, two days, three.
Time passed, sluggish and fleeting all at once.
The fear of being alone slowly dulled as the days dragged on. When her mind returned to her at last, a hollow laugh escaped her lips.
Afraid of the dark? How many years had she already spent living in darkness?
She stared at the ceiling with empty, unfocused eyes.
It had already been two weeks since the Grand Duke had coldly torn himself away and left her here.
She couldn’t think of anything anymore.
At first, the Grand Duke, the servants, Sasha, and the memories of her past all tangled together in her mind, tormenting her.
She wept. She felt wronged, over and over again.
She’d wanted just one person, anyone, to believe her.
And above all else, what crushed her most was that the Grand Duke hadn’t even tried.
Somewhere in the depths of her heart, she could feel something cracking.
Days passed like that. Slowly, she grew exhausted.
She no longer had the strength to lift a hand.
Through the small, dust-clouded window, she could barely make out rain pouring down outside. The attic, already dim, seemed to grow even darker.
As though everyone had entirely forgotten her existence, no one appeared inside the attic.
The servant who brought her food only cast a single glance of scorn before quickly leaving.
It was dark.
Dark and cold.
A place empty of all warmth, filled with wretchedness and despair.
A place she knew well.
It wasn’t unfamiliar to her. It resembled the place where she had lived since childhood.
When she lowered her head, her disheveled black hair fell across her vision.
From the shattered mirror across the room, her own gold eyes flickered between the tangled strands.
Her gaze drifted toward the hard lump of bread left by the door.
Beyond that door, Sasha and the Grand Duke were surely laughing, chatting, basking in comfort. The servants would be living warm, peaceful days.
Just like the imperial palace.
Outside the cold palace walls where she had once lived, the emperor, empress, and crown prince had formed the picture of a perfect, harmonious family, embracing one another.
The warmth of human touch, something she alone had never felt, nor ever possessed.
That thing so many took for granted, she had never once held in her hands.
She could feel herself emptying inside.
All that she had slowly, painstakingly built up since coming here was, in these past few days, draining away as though it had never existed.
Time passed again, swiftly. Two weeks, then three.
When at last a month had passed, she looked down at her thin, wasted body, flesh clinging to bone like paper to brittle wood.
Why was I locked up here again?
—M…murderer…!
Ah, that’s right. Sasha and the Grand Duke’s child had been poisoned. And thanks to Sasha’s relentless accusations, she had been branded the culprit without any room to defend herself.
It was unjust. No, it had been unjust.
But what meaning did that hold now?
The vow she had made to herself, that she would prove her innocence no matter what once she escaped this place, had long since faded into something distant and faint.
Those people… they were never going to believe her, no matter what she did, no matter how she tried.
If even their master, the Grand Duke himself, refused to listen to her, then who possibly would?
The Grand Duke.
Her thoughts, drifting along the slow waves of her consciousness, halted abruptly at the name of that one person.
The man she loved. The one and only person whose gaze she had so desperately yearned for.
Even now, in this hollow, emptied state, the ache pressing against her chest refused to ease.
One wound layered atop another, scars barely starting to heal before fresh pain arrived again and again.
How much longer would this go on?
Her gaze sank to the floor.
And then—
“I’m telling you, I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Quiet! What if someone hears you…?”
“There’s no one here. I swear I saw Lady Sasha put something into the milk bottle.”
She had thought she no longer had the strength to move. Yet the moment those words, spoken by the maids in hushed, uneasy voices, reached her ears, her body stirred.
“No way. You mean the young lady put something in the young master’s milk? It was probably a supplement or something.”
“I’m telling you, it looked exactly like that poison bottle… the one from before…”
“Marie, seriously. You must’ve been mistaken. Let’s go. Stop saying strange things.”
The maids’ voices grew fainter, their footsteps receding until they vanished completely.
When at last the sound of them was gone, she reached out for the doorknob.
