2.

A sky impossibly clear and blue.

Ines stood with her hand on the windowsill and took in the scene of a bright spring day. It was not simple appreciation, nor reluctance at leaving.

On this day in the past, the sky had been overcast from dawn, threatening rain at any moment. She remembered clearly how a raindrop had fallen on her cheek just as the transit gate was activated.

But now there was not a cloud to be found, let alone rain.

‘……Even the weather changes?’

Had the unbelievable force of her return affected even the weather? If so, she hoped the days ahead would be just as clear as that sky.

A neat knock came at the door.

“Come in.”

“Your Highness, I’ve been told everything is ready.”

The maid who stepped inside announced it was time to go.

“……All right.”

Ines answered briefly and turned slowly.

Barring anything unexpected, this palace would burn down in about two years. It had in the past. But it did not matter if it did not burn. As long as Ines remembered the future, things would not unfold the same way as before.

Ines took one last look around the room, then left the palace.

In front of the princess’s palace, a magnificent carriage bearing the imperial family’s crest had been prepared. As she approached it, a knight bowed sharply and extended his hand.

“Please board, Your Highness.”

Over the past ten days, Ines had been treated with great care. All the servants in the princess’s palace had been replaced, and she had been given precious jewels and beautiful dresses.

The Ines of her past, foolish as she was, had been pleased by all of it. Now it only struck her as absurd. Because she now knew that at the end of all this, the deaths of the people she loved and her own death had been waiting.

“We will depart.”

The carriage began to roll.

There were three transit gates in the capital.

One was located in the heart of the capital and could be used by anyone who paid the fee. Another was a military gate situated on the outskirts of the capital. The last was near the north gate of the imperial palace, a transit gate that existed solely for the imperial family.

“Oh, Ines. You’ve come.”

The Emperor was there to greet her as she stepped out of the carriage.

It was unusual for the Emperor to wait for anyone. And so, in her past life, Ines had been deeply moved by something as small as this. Not knowing that it was all groundwork laid to use her.

Ines swallowed the surge of hatred with practiced ease and arranged her face into that of a docile daughter, glad for her father’s rare show of affection.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Father. I didn’t expect you to come out……”

“Not at all. You haven’t kept me waiting.”

The Emperor laughed with the air of a magnanimous man.

“Now then, you have a long journey ahead. Are you feeling all right?”

“……Thanks to your care, I’m perfectly well, Father.”

“Ha ha. So you can say things like that after all, Ines.”

Ines received the Emperor’s escort up the steps and performed flawlessly the role he wanted, a meek and dim-witted daughter easy to manipulate.

It required no effort at all. That was exactly what she had been in her past life.

Fortunately, by the time they entered the chamber, all preparations for activating the transit gate were complete.

As the Emperor and Ines approached the platform inscribed with the magic circle, a knight with navy hair and armor stepped forward.

“Your Majesty.”

“Yes. Is everything ready?”

“Yes. I’m told we may activate as soon as Her Highness boards the carriage.”

Having finished his explanation to the Emperor, the knight turned and bowed to Ines.

Ines knew who he was.

This hastily arranged journey North had required a great many people: imperial guards assigned as escorts, maids to attend her, a senior priest to officiate the wedding ceremony, and his attendants.

And that knight was the vice-commander of the Imperial Guard’s Second Knight Order, the man overseeing all security for the journey North.

“Randol, see that the princess is escorted safely. If anything should happen, I will hold you personally responsible.”

“I, Randol Acoph, receive Your Majesty’s command.”

At the Emperor’s stern words, Randol dropped to one knee, then rose again.

He stepped back, and the Emperor turned his gaze to Ines.

“Now that the moment has come to send you off, I find myself reluctant. It would have been better to hold the wedding here.”

“……I feel the same, Father.”

“Write to me from time to time. No matter how far apart we are, you are still my daughter, Ines.”

The Emperor touched Ines’s cheek with an expression of genuine regret. At that revolting, nauseating touch, her fingertips flinched for just an instant, but fortunately her expression held.

“I will keep that in mind, Father.”

‘Every time I think of how helplessly happy those words made me in my past life, I want to kill myself.’

Ines kept her raging thoughts buried deep, forced the corners of her stiff mouth into a slight smile, and boarded the carriage.

The carriage door closed, and Ines exhaled quietly as the noise outside faded.

The news that the imperial house and Rupert, who had been quietly at odds for generations, were to be joined in marriage had set the world abuzz.

The imperial palace was no exception. If anything, the news that Ines, who had been openly referred to by the derogatory title of half-princess, was to become Grand Duchess Rupert had caused even more of an uproar inside the palace than out.

In truth, public sentiment had been more favorable toward Rupert than toward the imperial house.

The imperial house’s past seizure of the mana stone monopoly was only one of many grievances against it, and the greater part of the people’s goodwill toward Rupert came from the duty Rupert had willingly shouldered.

Unlike the imperial family, who were slow to stir, Rupert had established itself across the vast North and guarded the continent from the Kendal Mountains. In a way, it was only natural.

‘……It would have been good if public opinion had stayed that way.’

But in her past life, sentiment had gradually reversed from the time of their marriage onward. All of it was the Emperor’s doing.

He had returned rights that had originally belonged to Rupert while cunningly appealing to the public about the losses the Empire would suffer as a result, and wave suppressions that had been manipulated to fail were pinned on Rupert as blunders.

The Emperor’s schemes succeeded.

After several such attempts, people were gradually swept along. At some point, they began to pour all the resentment of their difficult lives onto Rupert.

The higher taxes the imperial house had raised after losing the North’s resources as a source of income, which drove up the cost of living. The casualties from suppressing a wave that had broken out in the West. Even the accidents caused by illegally distributed mana rifles were blamed on Rupert.

All of it was the power of the press, wielded by the Emperor and the noble families who had joined him.

‘They laid the groundwork with public opinion.’

When the people’s mood, inflamed by relentless propaganda, had reached its peak, the Emperor used a denunciation written in Ines’s name as his justification and declared Rupert traitors.

People who had regarded Rupert as the Empire’s protector until just five years prior had their eyes turned by the word treason and spewed fierce condemnation.

After that, a massive military force was mobilized, and an astronomical sum of money was poured in. Not to subjugate the Kendal Mountains or unify the continent, but simply to erase Rupert from the world.

Ines remembered the crimson flames surging over Rupert’s estate. The screams that had filled her ears. The number of knights dwindling. The faces of those who had fallen before her eyes. She remembered all of it.

‘……This time, I will never let it come to that.’

Through the vision blurring as the magic circle activated, Ines fixed her gaze on the Emperor’s face. Even through the haze, the satisfied curl of his lips was seared into her mind.

Ines stared at him through the carriage window and gripped the folds of her dress.

‘I will never let you win.’

The bones rose under the skin of her thin hand. Then, a flash of white.

* * *

To travel from the capital to Grand Duke Rupert’s territory required passing through a total of seven transit gates.

Taking one day of rest after each gate, it was fifteen days after leaving the imperial palace when Ines finally set eyes on Rupert’s grand ducal castle.

And at the end of that gaze, one person caught her eye.

“……Killian.”

A man with black hair she had missed so terribly, standing tall before the castle gate she had just passed through.

“Your Highness, We have arrived.”

Immediately after the carriage stopped, a knight announced their arrival.

Ines drew one last steadying breath, then extended her foot through the open door. Her shoes, made of high-quality leather treated with magic, touched the carriage steps.

The moment she fully stepped out, a biting wind swept in. At the same time, a snowscape unfolded before her that could never be seen in the temperate capital, no matter the season. A place still blanketed entirely in white even in the heart of spring. The North.