0.

Ines stared blankly down at the man cradled in her arms. The body that had once been stronger and more steadfast than anyone else’s now leaned against her without a trace of strength. Behind him, the snow piled high was spreading crimson.

“Ki… Killian……”

She called his name in a voice that trembled pitifully, but no answer came.

“Killian, come back to me. Open your eyes. Please……”

After calling his name again and again, Ines slowly raised her arm. Her fingertips, trembling so badly it was almost painful to watch, reached toward his cheek. But her movement stopped before it could reach its purpose.

Her grey-green pupils shook like leaves in a storm.

“……”

The hand she had lifted was soaked through with a vivid red liquid. Warm and viscous enough to make her shudder.

It was his blood.

The blood of Killian Rupert, who had taken a blade meant for her.

“Ah……”

A sound that never quite became words slipped through her teeth.

“N… no. This can’t be……”

Ines scrubbed her hands frantically against her skirt. She rubbed and rubbed at the blood that would not come clean, then carefully cupped the cheek of the man still resting against her shoulder.

The cheek she held in her stained hands was still warm.

But he no longer showed her those breathtakingly beautiful blue eyes. He no longer parted his well-shaped lips to call her name. He no longer cupped her cheek in his large, steady hands.

His heart had stopped.

Because of stupid Ines Rupert.

“Ah……”

Ines moved her lips soundlessly.

Her pupils lurched and her heart pounded furiously. A sharp pain rose in her abdomen. But none of those sensations could overcome her grief.

A scream tore out of her, raw and broken.

“No, no…… Killian, please…… Ah, aah……!”

She wept, clutching the man who had stopped breathing.

In the biting cold, his body grew gradually colder. She held him with all her strength, but as always, she could not wrap herself around him completely.

Then, through the relentless snowfall, a laugh rang out, wild and unhinged.

“Ha ha ha! At last, my lifelong wish has been fulfilled! At last!”

Ines lifted her gaze slowly.

She saw a figure in golden armor, sword in hand, the same man who had just moments ago cut her husband down again and again.

He was Ines’s father, the Emperor of the Cassian Empire, and the one responsible for all of this.

Ines let her emotions flow out with her tears until her eyes were hollow, and she looked at the Emperor.

The moment their eyes met, the corners of his lips stretched wide. A face that was utterly contemptible and horrifying.

“Why…… why did you do this to Killian……”

At her question, the Emperor spread his arms wide. His eyes gleamed with greed.

“Can you not see this snowfield before you? This vast treasury of nature! There is no land so blessed as this anywhere on the continent. And yet it belongs to a single family rather than the imperial house. That simply cannot stand.”

As Ines slowly grasped his meaning, her wet eyes widened and trembled.

She knew that more than half of the mana stones and natural resources circulating across the continent were produced in the North alone.

But for something so……

“For something so…… trivial, you did this to Killian……”

She murmured in disbelief, and the Emperor, his eyes gleaming, shouted.

“Trivial! What if the Ruperts harbored treason? What then? No, they already did. Did you not submit the evidence yourself and denounce him with your own hands?”

No. That was not true.

Ines had never denounced Rupert. They had never harbored treason to begin with.

“Ah, yes. You also told me directly of Rupert’s weaknesses. I thought that a good memory alone would be of little use…… but your father had no idea you would prove so useful.”

In that instant, Ines’s body went rigid. She had never denounced Rupert, yet she could not deny what the Emperor said.

At some point she had realized it was too much and fallen silent, but not long after the marriage, taken in by his act as a doting father, she had answered the Emperor’s questions.

Only now did Ines understand. How the imperial house had stripped Rupert of its interests. How it had dealt devastating blows to Rupert’s trading company.

All of it was because she, in her stupidity, had answered the Emperor without knowing a thing.

Ines despaired.

Her husband, Rupert, the North…… none of this should have happened to them. They should never have met this end because of that horrible man and because of her, equally pitiful and contemptible.

“……From the very beginning, you planned to marry me to Killian for this. Everything you said about family was a lie.”

Her murmur scattered into the blizzard. The Emperor, who somehow caught it, smiled with a cold edge.

“A lie? Ines, are you not my daughter?”

“You used me to bring Rupert down!”

“Used? What of it? It is only natural that you, who carries my blood, should live for my sake, Ines.”

At those disgracefully shameless words, flames of rage and hatred ignited in Ines’s eyes before she even realized it.

He was the first person she had ever truly held in her heart.

And she had become the fuse that burned him and everything he had to ash. Her. Because she had been ignorant and foolish enough to be manipulated by an Emperor who had treated her as though she did not exist her entire life.

“Vatruan, I hate you. Every last drop of your blood that runs in my veins!”

“Yes, my daughter who carries my blood. All you need do is offer your life for me at the very end.”

The Emperor whispered like a demon.

“……Including the child in your womb.”

You will have the glory of becoming the nourishment for my eternal life, so do not grieve too much.

The soft whisper was horrifying. He was truly a demon.

“Aah……!”

The scream of fury and anguish barely left her throat before her fading consciousness dragged it under.

Ines drew her last breath half a year later.

Together with the child she had never managed to tell Killian about.