The warmth rising to her forehead roused her from unconsciousness.

But Olga did not open her eyes.

Everything was too familiar.

The warm damp cloth on her forehead. The soft blanket draped over her body. The plushness of the pillow. The faint scent of freesia drifting through the air.

‘This is my room.’

Tears slid down from the corners of her tightly shut eyes.

The feel of the mattress beneath her fingertips was vivid and real. A breeze tickled the tip of her nose, as though a window had been left slightly ajar.

It was neither a dream nor a nightmare. She couldn’t begin to understand what had happened.

She pressed her lips together and slowly opened her eyes.

As her vision gradually sharpened, she caught sight of Leod leaving the room. A moment later, the door closed behind him — without a sound, in perfect stillness.

Olga sat up abruptly. Her gaze swept the room in every direction.

“This can’t be……!”

A hollow laugh escaped from between her lips.

Faced with a reality too absurd to accept, she pressed her fingers to her temples.

‘What in the world is going on?’

Her head throbbed. The furrow in her brow showed no sign of easing.

She had chosen death by her own hand — she was certain of it. The agony of the moment she swallowed the poison, the feeling of her insides dissolving — it was so vivid it made her shudder just to think of it. These were not things she could simply dismiss as a dream.

After a long moment lost in thought, Olga slowly turned her gaze.

The door, shut tight.

At the thought of Leod’s retreating figure disappearing through that door, her chest — already as dry and cracked as earth in a drought — split open along deep, jagged lines.

She had vowed never to be hurt by him again.

Had some small measure of love for Leod still remained, even after all that hatred?

Tears welled quickly in her raw, hollow eyes. She covered her face with both palms. The wetness spread slowly to the tips of her fingers.

Olga slapped her own cheeks twice, trying to pull herself together.

“Right. This is absurd.”

A loving husband, a cherished child — hadn’t that been her dream? A warm, happy family of her own.

Surely God had arranged this ridiculous little play to mourn her pitiful death. That had to be it.

She was shaking her head, refusing to accept what was in front of her, when —

“My lady, it’s Serina.”

“……Serina?”

A knock, and the door opened. A pair of trembling eyes gazed at her for a long moment.

It was Serina — her personal lady’s maid.

Around the time before she had Liet, Olga had gone on holiday to the southern region, and there had been an accident.

‘How is Serina alive? She was supposed to have died in that accident — sometime before I was pregnant with Liet……’

She immediately checked the calendar.

The enchanted calendar read, with perfect precision: the 36th day of the 145th year of the Garnet Imperial Calendar.

‘The 145th year, the 26th day……’

Olga’s eyes went wide.

She remembered the day her little angel had come to her with perfect clarity.

The 56th day of the 145th year. Exactly one month before she had died.

She threw the large window open wide, her expression one of pure disbelief.

In that instant, her eyes trembled — like something caught in a gust of wind.

“This can’t be…….”

“Is something wrong, my lady?”

Serina had set down the wash basin and was now drawing closer.

Olga still couldn’t tear her gaze from the view beyond the window.

“When did…….”

She barely managed to part her lips.

“When did spring begin to come to the Duchy of Morvant?”

The Duchy of Morvant, in the empire’s north.

As was common for most of the northern territories, the Duchy of Morvant was a land of cold in every season. Spring had come, once — in the distant past, rarely — but at some point, winter had become its only visitor.

There was an old tale that traced this back to a quarrel between the goddess Rainis and her husband, the god Hous — though no one truly knew the truth of it.

And yet before Olga’s eyes, cherry blossom petals were drifting down like snow beneath trees in full, riotous bloom.

“It’s the first time this year, my lady.”

Serina answered, her eyes wide and round.

“Spring came so suddenly this year. Everyone took it as a sign — for you, my lady…….”

Olga clapped a hand over her mouth, struck as though by a blow.

‘The past I knew is different……?’

Nothing like this had ever happened in her previous life.

The hand gripping the windowsill trembled without her meaning it to.

She slowly turned her gaze to take in the spring flowers blooming in all their beauty.

‘Goddess, please — do not play games with me.’

Even as she gazed upon a landscape beautiful enough to make her eyes ache, Olga squeezed them shut in anguish.

‘All I wanted was to rest…….’

She spun around. Then she snatched up the wash basin Serina had brought and flung the water straight into her own face.

“Oh — my lady!”

Serina moved to stop her, startled, but Olga’s face was already soaked through.

“I thought washing my face might help me think more clearly.”

She kept her eyes closed and drew in a long breath, then let it out.

Then she sorted through her thoughts, slowly. The time she had lived through — which she absolutely could not bring herself to call a dream — and the reality now before her.

At last, after a long moment, Olga had no choice but to accept it. She had returned to the past — a past that had somehow been twisted into something different.

“Haah…….”

A sigh slipped through her lips. Having been brought back like this, she had no desire to live through the same grief all over again.

In that manor filled with nothing but the biting cold of winter, she had quietly withered away.

It didn’t seem cold now, nor quite so bleak — and yet the urge to flee was burning just as fiercely inside her.

But she had a reason — a clear, undeniable reason — why she could not run from this place.

‘Mama!’

Her daughter’s voice rang in her ears.

‘Liet.’

Liet was the one who had made life bearable in a place like this. The only person who had ever given her love.

She only had to close her eyes and there Liet was, flickering before her. She couldn’t give up her daughter over something as small as hatred for a husband.

‘……Right. I can’t run.’

She clenched both fists tight.

If she could only see Liet smile and call her mama again — if she could only protect her beloved daughter — she would sell her soul to the devil without a second thought.

What did it matter whether this place was heaven or h*ll?

All that mattered to her was whether or not she could save Liet. Only that. Nothing else.

Her emerald eyes, darkened to something dim and shadowed, stirred with a quiet, trembling light.

At that same moment, she caught sight of someone in the garden picking azaleas.

‘The Duke of Morvant.’

It was none other than Leod.

Their gazes turned toward each other, slowly. The moment he saw her, he moved closer to the window.

Olga’s eyes narrowed as she watched him draw nearer.

The turbulence in her gaze — wild as crashing waves — gradually settled into stillness.

If she spent that same night with him again, she would be able to see her daughter once more — the daughter she still held in memory.

‘If this regression is a chance the goddess has given me — to save my daughter…….’

“You’re awake.”

Their eyes met, and he smiled — eyes curving into soft crescents, a beautiful smile. The very same smile he had once turned on her on a night when starlight fell all around them.

Leod, from the days when he had still been tender.

But unlike that smile in the past, which had once stirred something breathless inside her, the sight of him now didn’t feel real to her at all.

‘I will spend our wedding night with you once more — you, whom I have come to despise.’

Leod was nothing to her now but a means of getting Liet back.

‘Gladly.’

Her hollow eyes blinked once, slowly — and Olga simply drew the faintest curve at the corner of her lips.