(20) The Third Dream, The Wedding
“Are you troubled because of the divorce? Well, I’ve received a lot from Duke Ventus, so a divorce would be quite inconvenient and complicated for me too.”
“From Duke Ventus? What did you receive?”
Asla caught Gloria’s casual mutter and pressed her. Gloria’s eyebrow twitched slightly and hesitated.
But seeing Asla’s serious demeanor, she sighed softly as if giving up and confessed.
“After declaring the fall of the Holy Kingdom, I was initially at the Grand Temple, but left due to various circumstances. Duke Ventus was the one who looked after me then.”
“He gave you this house? Why would he do that for you?!”
When Asla raised her voice in excitement, Gloria continued with slight displeasure.
“I didn’t accept the Duke’s offer right away. I wasn’t pleased about your marriage to him. But the Duke sent people to me every day.”
“Ha.”
Asla was dumbfounded.
There was a reason Gloria could live in this expensive house with such a luxurious lifestyle. Enoch had been providing financial support.
‘Just how much?’
Asla unconsciously looked around at the expensive furniture and silk curtains filling the reception room.
Why had Enoch spent so much money on Gloria without consulting her?
If she hadn’t visited Gloria, she would never have known.
Overwhelmed by various emotions, Asla staggered as the ceiling seemed to spin.
Gloria rose from her seat urgently.
Barely preventing herself from falling by gripping the armrest, Asla trembled at the familiar sensation.
‘God is calling me again.’
Drawing her into a dream.
She realized a similar pattern was repeating. When she met new people.
Especially people who seemed deeply connected to Enoch.
Asla pressed her forehead with her hand and quietly requested Gloria.
“Mother. I’m tired from taking the train at dawn, could you let me use a guest room? I’ll just sleep for a moment.”
“Go ahead. Your complexion looks poor.”
Asla nodded, thinking it strange that Gloria, who would never have allowed naps, was being so generous, and followed the maid Gloria had called.
Lying on the clean bed, Asla fell into a deep sleep without time for any other thoughts.
⁕⁕⁕
“My goodness. The princess’s beauty is finally shining properly.”
“Indeed. The princess, I mean, Duchess Ventus may be from a fallen royal family, but at least her appearance is useful.”
“Fallen royal family? That’s too harsh, my lady. She was still a princess of the Holy Kingdom. I’m surprised that a devout lady like yourself would say such things.”
“If she had remained a princess of the Holy Kingdom until the end, I would have pitied and helped her. And honestly…… isn’t she now abandoned by God anyway? But to have Duke Ventus His Grace as her husband! Getting the Empire’s top bachelor so easily makes me so envious.”
“In a way, she still seems to be receiving God’s love, hoho.”
“Your joke goes too far.”
First, a clear blue sky appeared, then the scent of summer flowers and grass filled the air, and finally the women’s voices pierced her ears sharply.
Asla looked down at the clothes she was wearing.
It was the Ventus family’s ceremonial attire that Enoch had worn at their wedding two years ago.
The splendid dark navy ceremonial attire, which perfectly suited Enoch’s tall, slender, and firm physique, had the family’s platinum medals and chains that shattered like sunlight.
On their wedding day, Enoch had looked so handsome that Asla’s heart had ached as she gazed at him in a daze.
‘So I’ve come to the wedding day.’
Asla’s prediction was correct.
God showing the past through dreams.
She resented God for sending her back to such a miserable and painful day.
Herself inside Enoch’s body. She shuddered as she vividly remembered the cold, indifferent gaze Enoch had cast at her on their wedding day.
Asla raised her head and stared at her past self, whom the women were secretly watching and gossiping about.
She felt like crying at how beautiful she looked, waiting for the wedding to be held in the outdoor garden of the Ventus mansion in early summer.
The new bride wearing a wedding tiara studded with clear, sparkling diamonds and dressed in an expensive, magnificent golden wedding dress.
The new bride Asla, with tension and anxiety clearly visible on her face, sat in the glass garden that served as the bridal waiting room.
The women watching and mocking Asla from outside the glass garden were ladies and wives from noble families of the Empire.
Women whose faces she recognized but whose family names and personal names she couldn’t remember exactly.
These women, who had looked at her with seeming respect when she stayed at the Grand Temple before marriage, immediately changed their attitude when her marriage to Enoch was decided.
‘Why was Enoch listening to all this?’
Asla checked her position and sighed lightly.
Since Enoch was standing where dense shrubs were planted, her past self wouldn’t have been able to spot him.
Was he secretly watching again because he felt sorry for the fragile, pitiful princess of the Holy Kingdom?
Yet again, he happened to be standing amid her humiliation and mockery.
What good is just watching, Enoch Ventus?
Even if what you felt for me was merely pity, my foolish past self would have gladly accepted and relied on anything you offered.
Since it was before the wedding ceremony began, she would have been delighted if he had come to the bridal waiting room and spoken even a single word to her.
Asla was wondering why Enoch didn’t enter despite coming so close to the bridal waiting room when someone addressed him.
“Duke Ventus, Your Grace.”
That distinctive, respectful yet cold baritone.
It was Ian Herta again.
He had been telling the truth about attending the wedding.
Ian’s green eyes, which had shed their boyish quality, were as beautiful as the fresh summer shrub leaves, but the atmosphere he exuded was as chilly as winter.
He was pouring out undisguised hatred toward her, who was possessing Enoch.
‘Come to think of it, he said I was his first love.’
Asla smiled bitterly, then quickly pulled down the corners of her mouth.
Hidden in Ian’s shadow and previously invisible, a woman slowly revealed herself behind him.
Though she covered more than half of her face with a wide-brimmed hat, Asla was shocked to immediately recognize who she was.
Gloria Sherita.
Her mother, whom she thought hadn’t attended the wedding, was here.
‘Mother came? Why didn’t I……’
Had she really not known at all?
Thanks to God intervening in her dream to show the past, she had narrowly avoided living her entire life without knowing.
How could she have been so oblivious?
In truth, when her cold and aloof mother Gloria didn’t even attend her wedding, Asla had given up and buried the last expectation she had held for Gloria.
Perhaps that’s why she remembered the wedding as an even worse day.
Even her nanny, who helped her change out of her dress after the wedding, had joined in calling Gloria “an absolutely impossible person.”
That’s right. Her nanny had told her that her mother never came.
So she hadn’t considered even the slightest possibility that her mother might be secretly watching.
‘Lisette Groase.’
Asla slowly repeated the name of her nanny who had followed her like a shadow and cared for her since childhood, which she couldn’t remember.
Just thinking about her had warmed Asla’s heart, and she had been a precious person Asla had felt attached to when they separated after her marriage.
But what if all those actions had been pretense? What if the smile directed at her had been a mask and everything had been a lie?
Who had sent the letter informing her that her nanny had died in an accident?
When Asla couldn’t recover from the shock and just stared intently at Gloria, Ian stepped forward.
“Why are you so surprised? Didn’t you receive prior notice that the Queen would attend?”
He seemed to find it strange when Asla, as Enoch, remained silent and stood stiffly.
Enoch had known that Gloria would attend the wedding.
“When…… did you send that notice?”
When Asla calmly asked after suppressing the complex emotions swirling inside her, Ian narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow.
“You didn’t receive it? I certainly sent a telegram a week ago, and your secretary replied confirming that you, Duke, had seen it.”
“Whether the telegram arrived or not isn’t important. We’ve met now anyway.”
Gloria stepped in to stop Ian, who was sharply questioning the facts.
Asla shifted her gaze to Gloria and felt pain as something near her heart seemed to tingle.
Gloria wore a pure white outdoor dress with a brooch firmly fixed near her right chest—a brooch worn only for important events of the Holy Kingdom’s royal family.
The royal family treasure passed down through generations to the queens of the Holy Kingdom, the brooch.
Though there was no one to pass it down to anymore, the queen’s brooch still shone elegantly and beautifully.
Asla felt a lump in her throat and slightly bowed her head, biting the inside of her lip firmly.
Since she couldn’t shed tears while in Enoch’s form, she squeezed all her strength to control her emotions.
“I’ve come to the wedding, but I have no intention of meeting Princess Asla. I’ll just secretly watch with High Priest Ian Herta and then leave.”
“Ah.”
So she hadn’t come wearing the queen’s brooch to bless her daughter’s wedding.
Asla realized her own disappointment and let out a hollow laugh.
She expected something from her mother again. Her mother had no interest in her whatsoever, so why would she?
Asla was surprised to find herself being cynically critical and mocking Gloria again, and clenched her fist tightly.
The truths she believed in and the truths she discovered through Enoch’s body weren’t aligning properly, causing her such confusion that she felt she might go mad.
It was too strange.
The Gloria Sherita in Asla’s mind was a heartless person with no interest in her daughter.
But the reality was different from her tangled thoughts.
Gloria Sherita, standing before Enoch Ventus who would become Asla’s husband, had deliberately traveled to the far northern Ventus territory of the Empire.
Since there were no trains at that time, she must have had quite a difficult journey.
Moreover, the strict Gloria had even worn the queen’s brooch that she rarely took out.
She had certainly acknowledged this as an important event.
‘Is Mother a cold person, or a caring one?’
Which was correct?
Asla became anxious as she realized that the ground she thought was solid was actually melting ice.
A precarious situation on the verge of breaking.
Asla, who had been looking down at the toe of Enoch’s black shoes, raised her head and looked into Gloria’s eyes.
“I heard that you opposed Princess Asla’s marriage to me, Lady Sherita.”
“……You are quite cruel. Though I personally declared the fall of the Holy Kingdom on behalf of His Majesty the King, for you to immediately address me as ‘Lady’—you are indeed a cold-hearted person, Duke.”
Asla, looking at Gloria’s face as she bit her thin lips in pain, was first confused, then overwhelmed with guilt.
