Even If You Despise Me

“There can be no love in this marriage.”

With her heart feeling as though it were on the verge of collapse, Selena stared towards the ceremonial hall.
Everyone called her the Marquis’s ‘treasured jewel’, adoring her beyond measure.
But the truth was entirely different.
She had spent her childhood imprisoned on a remote island, existing as if she were already dead — nothing more than a burdensome secret.
She must never let this truth come to light.
Like someone crossing thin ice, Selena took cautious steps forward.
At the end of the path stood the man who would soon become her husband.

“You might as well plead that you’re only here because the Marquis forced your hand.”

Calix Silas was the Empire’s enemy, known as the ‘Sun of Thalia’.

“Perhaps my hatred for your father alone would compel me to choose you.”

He neither desired this marriage nor felt anything but loathing towards Selena, the Marquis’s daughter.
Yet she vividly remembered his words from long ago.

“I will surely return for you.”

The man who now regarded her with cold indifference was the same boy she had saved years before, who had remained in her heart ever since.
Desperately, she wished for this hatred to transform into love.
But when Selena received the Marquis’s command,
“Find Calix’s weakness and kill him,”
, she felt an overwhelming desire to end her own life instead.