Chapter 1

It was an unintended coincidence.

That day when Agatha brushed past Melli Moisa.

Even though the palace stairs weren’t narrow, the moment Melli Moisa brushed past Agatha, she tumbled dramatically down the stairs.

“Eek!”

“Melli!”

“……Are you alright?”

That delicate woman had missed two or three steps and slammed her knee onto the brilliantly gleaming marble floor. In front of the teary-eyed beauty, Agatha’s fiancé was glaring with flared nostrils.

That is, the fiancé of ‘Agatha’—not the woman who had fallen.

People gathered around them without hesitation at the sudden commotion.

“Lady Raphilus, what on earth are you doing?”

“……I don’t particularly remember doing anything.”

“What? Are you saying someone who was just standing there fell over when you did nothing?”

She tried hard to suppress her desire to claim exactly that.

To begin with, it was the other party who had suddenly appeared in front of Agatha as she descended the stairs first.

And they had fallen because they were flirting and joking with Agatha’s fiancé, Crown Prince Lloyd, and hadn’t seen her standing in front of them.

Why am I the one being scolded?

The man displaying a thick vein on his forehead as he raged was Crown Prince Lloyd Cullinan, who had been Agatha’s implicitly arranged fiancé since she was very young.

Agatha Raphilus was of incomparable noble status, second only to the imperial family. She was the only daughter of the Empire’s sole ducal family.

Because there were few suitable matches for someone of her status, it was naturally decided that she would marry the Second Imperial Prince, Lloyd Cullinan, when they came of age.

“Your Highness, please don’t be like that. Lady Raphilus surely didn’t block my path with any ill intentions. I felt like something pushed me, but……”

“Melli……! Is Lady Raphilus bullying you because you’re always so kind! Though I admire your good heart, wrongs must be corrected.”

And this woman with a voice as pitiful as it was beautiful like a nightingale.

Princess Melli Moisa was a hostage from the royal family of Moisa, a country so small that few even knew where it was located.

Though they called her a symbol of peace, everyone knew that the dying candle of the Moisa royal family had offered her to curry favor with the Empire.

When she was first introduced at court, people had sneered at her insignificant status, but soon lost their words when her face was revealed beneath her veil.

With radiant blonde hair and eyelashes that fluttered like fairy wings above lake-blue eyes, Melli Moisa was a woman so beautiful that merely looking at her was enough to be captivated.

She truly could have been a princess straight from a fairy tale.

People even whispered that she might be a lake fairy who had come to visit the human world out of curiosity.

‘This is just like……’

A beautiful princess with nowhere to turn, an imperial prince who had fallen for such a princess, and then the prince’s original fiancée appearing before them.

Am I perhaps the villain here?

As if to answer her question, Lloyd opened his mouth and sternly reprimanded her.

“I know. This beautiful woman received everyone’s admiration as soon as she debuted at court. You, who have always been worshipped, couldn’t stand this princess from a small country because she was like a thorn in your eye.”

The Crown Prince continued with certainty, as if his words were absolute truth.

“All praise, all acclaim, all goodwill should have been yours alone, right, Agatha! You showed no concession or mercy, never giving Melli even a smile, always pecking at her fiercely!”

A hollow laugh escaped her from the absurdity.

“I pecked at her? When and how exactly?”

“Everyone saw how you humiliated her when she first came to the Empire, yet you still lie?”

“When Princess Melli Moisa first entered court, I did explain imperial etiquette to her because she was unfamiliar with it, but that was actually an act of kindness……”

“Enough!”

If anything, she had been the one to offer welcoming courtesies to the peace envoy princess from Moisa.

But would that matter to Lloyd’s ears now, would that fact be important?

“I don’t need your worthless excuses. Apologize to this woman for your arrogance and rudeness. Only after she grants you forgiveness will I reconsider our relationship.”

Agatha looked once at Lloyd’s reddened face as he breathed heavily, then at Princess Melli Moisa who was hiding fearfully behind him, and finally at the courtiers who couldn’t tear their eyes away from this scene.

Everyone was watching.

Watching the fierce argument that had escalated to talk of breaking their engagement, with the Crown Prince and a foreign princess in the middle.

“……Are you serious?”

The words of imperial family members were sacred and irretrievable.

“This is a decision for the Empire’s sake. If the future Empress is this ferocious, it would be a great blemish on the Empire. Rather than that……!”

“Then cast me aside.”

It felt as if her thoughts had frozen. Though she had no romantic feelings for Lloyd, the situation was simply absurd.

Beyond absurd—her mind went blank as a sheet of paper.

So the words she blurted out were purely impulsive.

“What, what did you just……”

Once spoken, she felt even more certain.

Agatha looked directly at the Crown Prince and pronounced each syllable clearly and distinctly.

“Cast me aside.”

She briefly bent her knee before Lloyd and straightened up again.

It was a farewell gesture indicating the conversation was over.

“Would you please move aside? The path is narrow.”

“What? Ah, yes……”

By then, many people had gathered around them. When she gazed blankly at them, they moved aside one by one with bewildered expressions.

She could see exactly what busy thoughts were running through the minds of the people who had been murmuring around them.

But she moved forward without looking back even once, without losing her composure in the slightest.

Only the click-clack of her shoes echoed through the wide palace corridor.

※※※

“What on earth did you do at the palace today! Breaking off your engagement, what nonsense is that!”

“Stop yelling, my head hurts.”

After canceling all her appointments and returning to the ducal residence, her twin brother Cedric was already throwing a fit as soon as he saw her, having heard the news from somewhere.

Well, it would be stranger if he didn’t know.

She had caused quite a scene in the middle of the imperial palace.

“Cedric, where is Father?”

“In his study! But is Father’s whereabouts really important right now? What exactly are you planning to do about this situation?”

Cedric went on a lengthy tirade about how she had ruined an engagement that had been maintained for over ten years, how no one would take her now with her cold personality, and how the ducal family was in serious trouble.

Irritated by his endless nagging, Agatha didn’t give him a single word in response.

If Cedric had heard the rumors, the Duke would surely have heard about her broken engagement as well.

She had already caused the incident, but as his daughter, she needed to report to her father.

‘Sigh. I don’t want to go.’

Thinking about her father made her heart constrict slightly.

As the Duke of the Empire and head of the Raphilus family, he was strict with his daughter and difficult to approach.

At ten years old, Agatha had been selected as the future Crown Princess and entered the imperial palace to receive education.

During those years away from the ducal residence, her father became even more inscrutable, and it was around that time that Cedric began grumbling at her.

‘Will he be disappointed?’

Standing in front of the study, Agatha hesitated to open the door.

Since the marriage had been arranged by her father, he must be disappointed about the broken engagement.

‘But what’s done is done. The fact of the broken engagement won’t disappear just because I keep quiet.’

If she was going to be summoned anyway, she might as well speak up herself.

Having finally made up her mind, Agatha took a deep breath and knocked on the study door.

“Father, it’s Agatha. I’ve come to speak with you about an urgent matter.”

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