She could not miss this opportunity. So that her star could return to her…….

“Ugh!”

Lani became Meliciel, so there was no reason the child who left could not return.

“What are you all doing! Bring something to strangle her with!”

Meliciel swallowed a groan. She reached up to her neck and searched for the necklace hidden beneath her clothes.

She had to fight back before they could strangle her.

She grabbed the small paper knife she kept folded in half. It was something she used to cut paper for her paintings, and she never dreamed she would use it like this.

Meliciel drew a sharp breath and slashed a wide arc through the air with her arm.

“Aaah!”

Yulina screamed and released Meliciel’s hair. The knife Meliciel swung cut straight across her arm.

“You, you little!”

“Don’t, don’t touch me anymore.”

Meliciel held the knife forward like a threat and gave a firm warning.

“I can do a lot more of this.”

For the child’s sake, for the chance to secure a position where she could protect her, Meliciel felt she could do anything.

If she could only meet her lost star again, whether this was fate or a gift or hell. Even if her body burned to nothing, she could throw herself into it.

***

Long after the commotion passed, Duke Dexter came to Meliciel’s quarters.

Duke Dexter threw open the bedroom door, where the smell of medicinal herbs hung thick in the air, and clicked his tongue at the sight of Meliciel sitting sideways on the bed.

“It seems Chloe blood does run through you after all.”

“……I did nothing wrong.”

“You sit there looking like that and say you did nothing wrong?”

Duke Dexter looked with displeasure at his youngest daughter, bandaged at the neck and wrists, with wounds still marking her face. The Meliciel who would soon become his stepping stone.

Yulina, Shalon’s mother. He never expected her to go this far. He knew she was a greedy woman, but she had no idea of her place.

Duke Dexter rarely involved himself in the dancers’ quarrels, but this was a different matter. The marriage to Grand Duke Kahar was a question of the ducal house’s future.

“Now that the Grand Duke himself named you, this marriage cannot be undone. It must not be undone!”

“That woman tried to kill me first.”

“Even so, what do you think happens if word gets out that the Grand Duchess killed someone!”

Duke Dexter slammed the table with a bang, but Meliciel showed no sign of surprise.

“So I was supposed to just let myself be killed?”

Meliciel was a strangely unpleasant child.

If she had trembled a little more or cried, he would not feel this irritated.

The account of the fight that Yulina’s maid relayed to Duke Dexter was quite a sight.

Apparently, Yulina, driven by rage, knocked Meliciel down first and strangled her.

When the maids all rushed in and tried to grab Meliciel’s wrists, Meliciel swung the paper knife.

Whether fortunately or not, the paper knife slashed deep across Yulina’s face, and the fight came to an end. Yulina was now asleep, drugged after surgery.

Yulina carried considerable influence in the dancers’ castle. He would need to appease her properly later.

Duke Dexter’s head throbbed.

“I saw your paintings.”

Duke Dexter changed the subject, trying to clear his head.

“Valt brought them. They seem quite useful. Train a little more and you should be able to paint divine power paintings. So after the marriage, keep painting in secret, without the Grand Duke knowing.”

Duke Dexter continued speaking one-sidedly, without waiting for her answer.

“I will send someone from my side to collect the paintings. And never tell the Grand Duke that you have the talent of a divine painter. That is the condition under which the Grand Duke agreed to marry you.”

“……A condition?”

Meliciel’s green eyes turned toward him with interest.

“That’s right. The Grand Duke seems to want a wife with no magic power, no divine power, no divine energy whatsoever. Well, I can’t say I don’t understand his position. Either way, watch yourself. Understood?”

Meliciel thought for a moment and nodded. A condition like that was not difficult.

Since there was no one in the Grand Ducal house who dealt with divine power paintings, hiding her divine energy would not be hard.

Meliciel grew desperate for this marriage, and carrying Kahar’s child became her goal.

Even if this was a twisted purpose, she needed at least this kind of wish as an ideal to live for. Something to give her the strength to keep going.

The truth was, she wanted to live. It would be a lie to say she felt no regret over a life that ended the way it did.

“Wouldn’t it be safer to simply not paint at all, if that’s the case?”

Duke Dexter snorted at her question.

“You have no idea how much a proper divine power painting is worth. Stop overthinking and keep practicing your painting steadily. At some point, divine energy will enter the painting and a divine power painting will be born.”

Meliciel nodded, seemingly in agreement. Rather than needlessly irritating Duke Dexter and creating friction over the marriage, it was better to pretend to go along with his wishes for now.

Besides, she already understood that the more power one held, the more advantageous it was.

“In return, once my paintings gain value, please acknowledge me as a member of the Chloe family. That is my condition.”

Her deep green eyes gleaming, Meliciel made the bold demand.

***

Her entire body ached, and the smell of medicinal herbs seeped into her skin in a way that made her feel unclean. Meliciel’s condition plummeted to its worst.

She felt no pain while fighting Yulina. She was so fed up with being made a fool of that she summoned every last bit of strength in a burst of desperation.

Even if it was a Grand Duchess title in name only, Meliciel fought with everything she had to keep from losing the chance she obtained like a stroke of heaven-sent luck.

And the result was…….

“I did it.”

She got through it. She was alive.

If she had fought back like this in her past life, would she have survived?

Tears slid silently down her cheeks. With pale, dry hands, she cradled her lower abdomen beneath the sheets.

“My child, can you come back to me?”

She whispered the question, and as if in answer, divine energy flowed from deep in her belly out to her fingertips.

She felt far more divine energy than before, growing with every passing second.

“Ugh…….”

A sharp, stinging pain flashed through her in an instant. Her body was not in good enough shape to handle the rapidly swelling divine energy.

At times like this, it was better to let the energy flow out of the body. There were many ways to release it, but in this body, still clumsy with divine energy, painting was the only option.

Meliciel called out to the maid waiting by the door, still as a mouse.

“Are you there?”

“Yes, yes. Miss.”

The maid came scurrying over as though she had been waiting, but her expression was somehow troubled.

She could not clearly decide what would be most advantageous for her going forward.

Whether to follow Meliciel, who might become Grand Duchess. Or to go on ignoring the half-wit, as she always had.

Still looking confused, the maid stood before Meliciel and chewed her lip.

“Is there something you need?”

“Bring me paper and charcoal.”

“Paper and charcoal, you mean……?”

“Something soft to grip. Any paper will do, just hurry.”

“Yes.”

The maid looked puzzled, but having witnessed the fight the night before, she followed Meliciel’s words for now.

In the maid’s eyes, the Meliciel who woke as though returned from the dead was vastly different from before. Meliciel’s gaze and manner of speaking carried the unmistakable quality of a true noble, something that could not be defied.

***

By afternoon, Meliciel’s condition worsened further. Strangely, she could not paint, and the divine energy inside her body churned in an unstable frenzy.

“Why…….”

Meliciel sighed through cracked lips, burning with fever. Suddenly, it was as though her hands were glued, and she could not draw on the paper.

She was still painting just that morning the day before, and she could not understand why.

She could only vaguely guess that the fight with Yulina set her divine energy off.

“Haah…….”

At this rate, there was nothing to do but suffer through it until her body recovered its strength.

“I’m coming in.”

Just then, after a knock at the door, the maids flooded into the bedroom all at once.

Meliciel set aside the paper and leaned against the headboard, breathing in labored, feverish gasps. She asked with some difficulty.

“What is it?”

“You must go out.”

“……What?”

“The Grand Duke, who was away briefly, has returned. Duke Dexter’s orders are to go and pay your respects at once.”

She knew she would have to see Kahar, but she never expected the moment to come this quickly.

“But I can’t get up right now.”

“I’m sorry. But it is the Duke’s orders, so you must go somehow.”

The maids came over and lifted Meliciel to her feet. Her whole body was like a furnace, and though they flinched in surprise, they did not stop undressing her and wiping her down.

Even the castle’s mage was called in to use his power to conceal the blue bruises covering Meliciel’s pale skin and the marks left by strangulation on her neck.

In just under an hour, all preparations were complete, and Meliciel made her way to the garden with the steward’s help.

The lavish dress she wore for the first time in her life weighed heavily on her body and hindered her with every step.

The jewelry at her neck and arms jingled with each movement, grating on her nerves.

“Phew…….”

Meliciel let out a low groan and looked toward the entrance to the garden.

“You may go in, miss.”