In her previous life, Edna had stepped forward to become engaged to the Crown Prince in her sister’s place. The entire family had been against it, but Edna’s resolve was firm. It was finally her chance to fulfill her long-unrequited love. She had argued to her family that it would be an opportunity to expand the family’s business with the power of the Imperial House behind them.

The person who had most fiercely opposed Edna’s engagement was her stepmother Katrina. Edna had never seen Katrina that angry in all her life.

Yet Edna had gone ahead and become engaged to the Crown Prince. And after offering up the family’s business one piece at a time to the Imperial House, she had caused the deaths of everyone, starting with her stepmother, then her brother, her sister, and eventually her brother-in-law and young nieces and nephews.

And the final moment was always Edna’s rebellion.

Edna had turned eighteen again. But this time, she did not become a knight. She had no desire to die again with her head soaking in a pool of blood.

Edna still had dreams from time to time. The desolate land, where a faint metallic scent drifted through the air, was always winter. A dry wind slowly dried the blood caked on Edna’s armor, then vanished somewhere with a strange, eerie howl.

There had been no will to fight from the start. She was simply swinging her limbs reflexively.

‘I’m exhausted. I want it to end now.’

Beneath her feet, mountains of innocent corpses were piled atop rivers of red blood flowing across the ground, but there was no one alive around Edna to mourn those deaths. Because everyone knew they would soon share the same fate.

Edna wanted to stop this meaningless fighting. She raised her head and saw Ian far in the distance. His silver hair, so like winter itself, shone even from afar. Edna slowly walked toward him. Anyone who stood in her way was cut down without mercy. She had no particular will to kill, but her needlessly exceptional swordsmanship, honed over long years, needlessly shone through.

Like a wooden puppet being controlled by someone else, her soulless limbs moved on their own. As she advanced, the enemy surrounded Ian and formed a thick defensive wall.

“Protect His Excellency!”

‘Must be nice!’

Spitting out the blood pooled in her mouth, Edna frowned. She had wanted that kind of protection for herself at least once. What kind of life would it be, to have someone risk their life to stand in your defense? What kind of life did one have to live to deserve that? She was desperately envious.

“Stand aside!”

Ian’s voice rang out.

“But, Your Excellency!”

“Do you wish to die? Must I tell you who I am?”

The wall made of men split in two, and Ian appeared. Standing before this man with his solitary, composed expression on this brutal battlefield, Edna suddenly felt a wave of wretchedness wash over her. She could say with confidence that she had lived with all her might, giving her very best. And yet, in this moment, why did Edna have to beg this man for death? How could Ian be so beautiful even in this desolate place?

Edna squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then opened them. She slowly raised her sword and pointed it at Ian. The golden eyes revealed beneath his mysteriously silver-lashed gaze narrowed with displeasure.

Seeing that displeased expression, a satisfied smile played across Edna’s face. The fact that she could at least stir some unpleasant emotion in that man gave her a strange sense of triumph. She could not say the thought wasn’t pathetic, but given her current circumstances, she supposed she would have to be satisfied with that much. She would be dead soon anyway……

* * *

Edna smiled and threw herself onto Ian’s sword. Ian’s blade cut into her stomach. The chilling sensation of cold steel raking through her insides and the pain were vivid. Even after waking, she would be unable to move for quite some time.

It was a memory that hurt far too much. There had been a period when she had been deeply depressed. She had struggled desperately to forget it. She had secretly taken medicine and slept as though dead. But none of it was any use. The dream that returned just when she had nearly forgotten was relentless in tormenting Edna.

The cold rising from the earth soaked in her own blood, Ian’s desperate tears falling on her face, and the metallic smell of the battlefield were etched into her body as memories that refused to fade for days on end.

Edna tilted her head. It had always been a mystery to her. Why did Ian Lombardi hold her corpse and weep? Edna searched through her memories. In her previous life, and the life before that, and the one before that too, the two of them had not had much of a connection.

They knew each other’s faces and names, nothing more. The kind of relationship where you exchanged greetings and pleasantries when you crossed paths in social circles. Not quite friends. Not someone who was particularly bad, but never someone who had been particularly good either. The sort of information about the Imperial Family and the noble registry that one needed to know as a member of Saluga. Exactly that much, and no more.

So when had they ever been close enough for him to cry so bitterly? What was there to grieve so deeply? Thinking about it again, it was almost embarrassing, and Edna found herself glancing around the empty room and scratching her cheek for no reason.

It was not a question that thinking about would yield an answer to, and it was not a particularly pleasant thing to think about either, so Edna shook her head and walked over to the bookshelf. If she kept dwelling on it, she might have that nightmare again tonight.

“Miss.”

“Come in.”

It was Anna, Edna’s personal maid.

“The Madam is calling for you.”

Without any particular preparation, Edna rose from her seat and made her way to Katrina’s room. As bright sunlight poured over the gloomy, dark paintings hanging along the wide corridor, it created a strangely eerie atmosphere. Edna stopped walking and began to look at the paintings closely. The paintings currently in fashion tended to carry dark and melancholy themes.

Well, these were difficult times to live in. The Imperial House had begun raising taxes as the treasury grew depleted from the excessive extravagance of the Imperial Family.

Meetings continued day after day at the Imperial Palace. But they looked more like banquets than meetings. Despite being meetings held because there was no money, the Emperor, who loved outward appearances, decorated the meeting hall lavishly and adorned the tables with beautiful flowers and fruits. Attendants carried expensive champagne and wine instead of tea.

No one pointed out that strange contradiction. No one except their late father.

A carriage accident? Edna’s eyes grew cold and low. Why had she so easily believed that absurd excuse before?

Edna turned her gaze back to the paintings. Beneath a dark, overcast sky, ragged women and children with hollow eyes were picking up scattered grains in a harvested field. The sky looked as though rain could pour down at any moment, yet no one was looking up at it with worry. They were only groping along the ground in search of a single fallen grain.

To think that paintings like this were in fashion! Were they not shameless beyond measure? Perhaps they bought them regardless of the subject matter simply because they were works by a popular artist, but even so, if one had eyes, one could at least see what was in front of them.

It was commonplace for commoners who could not pay their taxes to become serfs. Many people even came forward willingly to become serfs, preferring to forgo paying taxes in exchange for at least not having to worry about putting food on the table.

In the end, the Imperial House’s finances would only grow more strained. What was the point of raising tax rates when the number of people paying taxes was shrinking? If you wanted to take something from someone, you were supposed to coax them gently first. Then again, if the Emperor had understood such things, he would not have so easily destroyed Saluga, the empire’s treasury, and the Whittegers.

A grinding sound came from Edna’s clenched teeth. A flame ignited in her blue eyes. Edna thought back again to what had happened that morning.

Among the reasons the Crown Prince had proposed to Marian would certainly be the Whitteger gold. Even in her previous life, when Edna had stepped forward in Marian’s place to become the Crown Princess, the reason he had readily accepted was that any Whitteger would do. Yet Edna had rejoiced, believing that her long-unrequited love had finally been returned.

Simply being accepted by someone who was less beautiful than Marian and less intelligent than Roderick was enough for Edna to feel that her very existence had been validated. At first, she had offered gold. She gave the Crown Prince every bit of the inheritance left in her name. When the gold ran out, he claimed her share of the inheritance had been insufficient and demanded the merchant ships, then the trading house, and in the end, even Saluga itself. Behind all of it was the Crown Prince.

Crown Prince Rubens Tuberin had behaved as though everything in Saluga belonged to him the moment he became engaged to Edna. The pretense of being quite refined did not last long before he cast it aside and began making one demand after another, until finally he tore open the very goose that had been laying Saluga’s golden eggs. By bringing the Whittegers to ruin.

Edna began walking again. Sunlight streaming through the long windows lit up the dim corridor. The dark paintings hanging along the corridor looked even darker when exposed to the sunlight, almost as though black canvases had been hung in their place.

“Announce her.”