Chapter 9
She couldn’t remember how she escaped the garden and entered the queen’s palace.
Whether she ran, walked, or even called for help—she had no idea. Only after entering her private chambers with Fidelita and other maids’ assistance did her hazy mind gradually clear.
Anaide dismissed all the maids, took a deep breath, and leaned against the door of her private chambers. Then she headed to the separate room with a vanity and mirror.
‘I’m dizzy…’
Her swaying steps made her vision shake so much she felt like going crazy. She gripped the edge of the mahogany vanity as if to break it and stood straight facing the mirror.
She wanted to check the wound on her neck. But her fingers kept trembling so much that untying the ribbon wasn’t easy. She bit her lips hard and put as much strength into her muscles as possible.
When she fully untied the collar, the mark on her revealed skin was darker than expected.
“So he was going easy on me until now…”
Anaide muttered to herself while fumbling at the bite marks on her neck with her fingertip.
Fernir had sharper canine teeth than others. Though not natural but acquired, his already excellent physical condition meant even his bite force would surpass ordinary humans.
Though this wasn’t the first time being bitten, it was the first time being bitten this deeply, half in earnest.
Anaide’s lips curved up unsteadily. Empty air leaked between her lips.
She had experienced something absurd. The situation was so ridiculous that only hollow laughter came out.
‘I just… finally felt better physically so I put on clothes and came out.’
The reason she’d worn dresses that exposed her neck and shoulders for several days was just due to mild neurosis. When she wore clothes that covered her neck, she felt suffocated. She got motion sickness standing still without even riding in a carriage.
Sometimes her vision spun when she had the illusion that her surroundings and the palace’s white stone walls were all collapsing. Using her regenerative power on herself had no effect at all.
The only good news was that she slept so deeply she never had nightmares.
More precisely, the warmth of the person staying behind her back all night comforted Anaide’s unconscious mind.
By the time she woke up and regained her fear of Fernir, he had already left. So unexpectedly, her husband’s body heat had been helpful.
Moreover, today his warmth seemed to have accumulated in her body, so even covering her neck to block the cold didn’t make her feel suffocated.
‘So I thought it was fortunate, but what the hell is this?’
Anaide looked at herself in the mirror with eyes full of indignation.
She resented Fernir, who would commit outrageous acts without maintaining any courtesy when others couldn’t see.
What emotion had welled up when her neck came close to his mouth? That emotion was, dare she say, primal fear.
‘I thought he was going to tear my throat out…’
She knew. If he had really tried to kill her, he wouldn’t have played such games but would have drawn a sword and beheaded her.
Since he said he wanted a son from her, she knew he wouldn’t kill her as long as she didn’t cross the line. Still, it was bewildering all the same.
Anaide pressed her eyelids firmly and sighed shallowly.
Though she resolved to somehow live through today and steeled her will, at this rate her startled heart wouldn’t calm down until nightfall.
After standing before the mirror for a while, she went outside her private chambers.
She knew of something good for diverting her sharpened nerves and calming her complicated feelings.
“Hmm…”
Anaide scanned the dark reddish-brown mahogany bookshelf vertically.
The queen’s palace library. This place was used for the same purpose as the king’s office.
She had come here to look at the palace’s internal affairs while searching for necessary books. To calm the emotions that had risen like burrs because of Fernir.
She had asked Fidelita for stationery and perfume needed to write invitations to nobles.
Therefore, Anaide could freely search for the books she wanted in the quiet library with no one around, but there was one problem.
“…Where on earth is it?”
The book she was looking for was nowhere to be found.
She tapped the corners of the bookshelf with her fingers and rolled her eyes. A voice drained of energy naturally escaped.
The book Anaide was searching for was a technical manual personally written by her late mother.
Pharmacology. First aid methods. Even explanatory texts about ‘regeneration,’ the ability possessed by all temple priests.
Her mother’s technical manual contained methods for treating the injured. These were all knowledge the former queen had given young Anaide.
Unlike queens from other countries who left everything to wet nurses, her mother, a former priest from the temple, had personally held and raised her own daughter. So for Anaide, ‘mother’ included two people: both her wet nurse and the former queen.
Anaide closed her eyes. Her mother’s separate room that had been used as a classroom appeared in her dark vision.
“Ana, today we’re going to learn about monsters that live in water. Can you open to chapter 5 of the encyclopedia Mom gave you? …Why are you turning the pages so timidly?”
“…They look disgusting.”
“So that’s why you weren’t touching the pages?”
Anaide remembered her mother turning toward her and frowning. She also remembered the small laugh of resignation upon seeing her afraid to touch the pages because of water dragons and sea serpents.
“Hey, it’s okay. Mom has already killed hundreds of these guys. They’ve probably been reduced to half by now.”
The dust floating leisurely in the air, the sunlight dancing and scattering along with it.
And that moment when her warm hand touched the top of her head…
Because her mother had been a teacher to young Anaide, her belongings were more precious than anything. Precious enough to calm her heart just by finding them.
Even if her mother’s knowledge now had thick dust accumulated on it, those books would still contain intact traces of her endlessly kind yet upright mother.
‘This side seems to have only liberal arts books and novels. Did they move them somewhere else?’
The problem was not knowing where the belongings were now that she’d actually come to the library.
All of her mother’s belongings had been in the princess’s palace library, but according to Fidelita, everything there had been moved here even before marrying Fernir. So the belongings should still be in the queen’s palace library, but it was strange she couldn’t find them anywhere.
Could they have burned them? They weren’t her father’s things, and since they belonged to her mother who had died long before the rebellion, there would be no reason to incinerate them.
Her head, dejected from not finding the books, gently touched the bookshelf.
Though she could easily find them by calling nearby maids to search the bookshelves, she had the foolish desire to find her mother’s belongings herself.
She was considering whether to look again later when a calm voice came from the library entrance.
“Your Majesty. Here are the stationery and perfume you requested.”
“Ah, yes. You’ve come.”
Turning around, she saw Fidelita waiting with stationery and a perfume bottle on a silver tray. Anaide picked up the stationery and perfume bottle and placed them on a nearby desk where sunlight streamed in.
Looking carefully under the sunlight, the stationery’s color was overall subdued. The perfume was also the type that reproduced calm grass scents or moisture-laden water smells rather than fancy floral fragrances.
She liked it. Anaide, who had turned over the stationery, gave pure praise to Fidelita, who was bowing her head slightly.
“You brought good things. Thank you.”
“You’re too kind.”
A faint smile bloomed on Anaide’s face.
The invitations she would write from now on would be given to influential nobles likely to come to the capital after early palace opening.
Anaide recalled Fernir sitting slumped in the chair before the tea table. She also remembered the words he had shamelessly babbled, half-joking, half-serious.
“They’ll come if only to see what kind of fellow this Lakies Duke was to kill the so troublesome Wendel and sit on Rutilan’s throne.”
Fernir’s words didn’t feel like mere boasting. Anaide nodded slightly while carefully retracing what he had said.
Nobles would rush to the capital like moths to a flame just to obtain information. Perhaps some nobles had already sensed the signs and decided to head to the capital.
For Anaide to observe the nobles’ movements, whether she wanted to or not, she needed to enter society.
That didn’t mean she planned to hold a large banquet that could gather all nobles at once. If she spent excessively on budget so soon after the throne was usurped, not only Fernir but Anaide too would fall into ruin.
‘So when opening the palace this time, the first thing I need to host is a small salon led by me as queen. If I only get a small budget, I won’t be criticized. Fernir told me to return to society anyway.’
A salon hosted by the queen should properly invite only a select few noble ladies. That meant paying attention to even a single invitation.
In that sense, the stationery and perfume Fidelita had brought were perfect for the conditions.
Subdued colors with low saturation. A fragrance that could naturally spread the moment the invitation was opened.
Someone might ask if such things weren’t trivial, but for her, who had been a princess, even small details were important standards.
She asked Fidelita to bring a registry of the kingdom’s remaining nobles, then roughly estimated in her head how many had survived the purge.
‘I need to see what the ratio of capital to provincial nobles will be, and especially gauge whether nobles from the northern regions or border areas will come…’
While briefly contemplating, Fidelita had already approached and spread the noble registry before Anaide. Anaide turned through it page by page, carefully examining the names written in the registry.
‘…As expected, many died.’
It didn’t seem like only nobles who still had their heads attached were selected—even after killing so many, were there still more people to kill?—the registry had red lines neatly drawn through it.
Blood-colored ink showed through the thin paper that transmitted sunlight. It reminded her of the blood puddles she’d seen at the execution ground.
Like the blood below the guillotine where her father’s head was cut…
Blink.
Blink again.
And blink once more.
Her vision blurred like a breaking mirror.
Anaide, who suddenly gasped and inhaled sharply, hurriedly lowered her forehead.
