Ines still could not read the emotion in her eyes. That was because Ines amounted to no more than that in the Empress’s eyes. Just as a person feels no particular sentiment looking at an object, she was someone the Empress had no need to feel anything visible toward.

After that, the Emperor and the Imperial Consort rose from their seats together.

“Your Majesty, The weather is lovely today. Won’t you walk with me?”

“Yes. That sounds pleasant.”

The Emperor did not refuse the request of his favorite consort, who remained alluring and beautiful even after bearing two children and well past forty.

The Imperial Consort disappeared arm in arm with the Emperor, a satisfied look on her face. She had always regarded Ines as a thorn in her side, so she must have been pleased to see her married off. Amusingly enough, Ines was also glad the Imperial Consort had taken the Emperor away. She knew he would not call for her separately before the day she left the palace, yet a cold unease had been knocking unpleasantly at her chest all the same. She was not confident she could get through a private meeting with him without letting even a sliver of her feelings show.

“Ines. Did you know? That you were going to marry Grand Duke Rupert?”

After some time had passed, Leila, who had been biting her lip tightly, asked in a sharp tone.

For a moment Ines found it almost funny. Both the Imperial Consort and Leila hated her equally, yet their reactions to this marriage were starkly different.

The Imperial Consort, satisfied that Ines would disappear from her sight no matter what the circumstances, versus Leila, for whom the satisfaction of no longer having to see her despised half-sister was outweighed by the fact that Ines would become Grand Duchess Rupert.

“I didn’t know either.”

Ines put on a suitably deflated voice.

Perhaps because she had already faced the Emperor, who held the full blaze of her hatred, it was easier to manage her emotions now than it had been when she had encountered Leila and Diosel before the luncheon.

“……Your own marriage, and you didn’t know. Ha. You expect me to believe that?”

“That’s enough.”

It was Herman who cut off Leila’s unreasonable accusations.

“Stay out of it, brother. I was talking to her!”

“I believe I’ve mentioned this before. Keep your petty emotional games away from me.”

“Are you taking that half-blood’s side?”

Leila’s irritation spilled over onto Herman as well. But her temper did not last long.

“Side?”

“……I’m sorry, brother. That came out wrong.”

Even Leila’s pride, which had never faltered thanks to a mother who had held the Emperor’s favor for over twenty years, could not hold its ground before Herman.

He was the legitimate firstborn son of the Empress, who came from a ducal family of even higher standing than the Imperial Consort’s, and the undisputed Crown Prince from the moment of his birth. On top of that, Herman was not the sort to be warm toward his half-siblings, so both Diosel and Leila found him difficult to deal with.

“I’ll be going.”

Leila shot Ines one last venomous glare, then spun around and left the dining hall.

“Honestly, brother really is no fun at all.”

Diosel muttered and followed after her. His slow gaze lingered on Ines for a moment, but she felt nothing at all, knowing he could not actually do anything.

Once the two of them were gone, Herman rose from his seat and spoke.

“Don’t think I took your side.”

His voice was as flat as ever, and the words themselves were just as cold.

If she had heard this at twenty-two, she would surely have been hurt. Back then she had still been starving for family warmth.

But not now.

“I know. You just cut it off because you find trouble bothersome.”

At Ines’s measured reply, Herman raised one eyebrow. It was a reaction to the fact that a half-sister he had always considered dim and tiresome had accurately read his intentions.

His surprise was slight, and he quickly returned to his usual expression.

“Yes.”

Herman gave a brief acknowledgment and moved past her.

Just before he stepped out the door,

“The North is far, but it suits you better. Consider yourself fortunate.”

He left those two quiet sentences behind.

There was no subject, no explanation, but Ines understood. That even though she was being sent away to a distant place, the North, far from the imperial palace, would be better for her.

The words were both right and wrong, but for the first time, Ines smiled faintly.

It was the one thing she had not needed to pretend.

* * *

Ines returned to the princess’s palace by the same long route she had come, shut herself in her bedroom, and sank into thought.

‘……Ten days.’

As the former Grand Duchess of Rupert, she had not visited the imperial palace even once after her marriage.

Partly because of the distance, but more because of the strained relationship between Rupert and the imperial house, and because the full autonomy of the North had been guaranteed through this marriage.

‘Is there anything I need to prepare before leaving?’

She did not mean luggage or trousseau. She meant what she, Ines, could do to protect Killian and Rupert.

Turning things over in her mind, Ines felt a faint despair.

If she had great cunning, she might have devised a brilliant plan to navigate this situation. If she had strength, she might have simply killed the Emperor, the root of it all.

Throughout the luncheon, Ines had been tormented by the urge to drive a blade into the Emperor’s heart, just as he had done to Killian.

The reason she had not acted on it was not that her hatred was shallow, nor that her self-control was exceptional. It was that she could not bear to lose this chance, which could only be called a miracle, to a single moment of passion. That was why she could not.

The Emperor, whose suspicion matched his greed, valued his own life above all else.

‘Two shadows always at his side, three ancient relics on his person.’

To end his life in one blow, before he could even be scratched, would require something powerful enough to overwhelm all of that. Naturally, Ines possessed no such thing.

After brooding for a moment, she pulled a sheet of paper and a pen toward her.

In place of any exceptional ability, she had her memories of the future.

For the first time, she felt grateful for the memory that had always felt like a curse, forcing her to remember things she wanted to forget.

She traced back through her memories and began writing down the events of the five years before her death.

Scandals that had set the gossip sheets ablaze, the discovery of a new gold mine and the flow of money that followed, a monster wave that had broken out in the East, newly enacted laws.

If it was an event she remembered, she recorded it without omission, from the smallest to the largest, until her wrist ached.

“……I should have read more newspapers.”

She felt the regret of not having known more.

After rubbing her wrist for a moment, Ines read back through the five pages of notes again and again.

By the time night fell, she had read through them dozens of times. Before going to bed, she burned every page. It was to prevent them from falling into anyone’s hands.

Half the servants were the Imperial Consort’s people, the other half were those who had been demoted and posted here.

In a place where she could not even throw away a scrap of paper freely, the safest record was the one inside her own head. No one could open it without her permission, so long as she did not speak the words aloud.

“Haah……”

Ines lay her exhausted body down on the bed.

Despite the fatigue that had risen to the top of her throat, sleep would not come easily. Now that her busy body and mind had found a moment of rest, the things she had been forcing herself not to think about since accepting her return began to creep back in.

The cold edge of the blade cutting into her flesh, the devastating sense of loss that surpassed even the pain, the ringing in her ears the moment she heard that the child’s breathing had stopped……

Ines curled her body into a ball and wrapped both hands around her stomach. Her abdomen was pitifully thin and nothing but flat.

“……My baby.”

The moment she called out, without meaning to, for the child she had never even given a name, an indescribable grief and loss came crashing over her.

“Ah……”

A silent sob broke from her.

She had been given the chance to undo her ignorance. But even so, there were things that were lost forever.

That night of belated mourning, a fierce rain fell.