“Young lady.”

“…….”

“Young lady?”

“…….”

“Miss Adelheid!”

I gasped and opened my eyes. My whole body was sticky with cold sweat. The museum employee who had been trying to wake me stared with wide, rounded eyes, clearly surprised by my disheveled state.

“You mentioned being tired from all the work lately, so I suppose you dozed off.”

“I suppose so. I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep.”

I pressed a hand to my throbbing head and let out a long sigh.

‘Of all the dreams to have…….’

The curator watched me with a worried look as I struggled to collect myself, then got to the point.

“A new piece has come in. The donor said they absolutely wanted you to appraise it.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I sent the curator out first, then stood before the mirror and straightened myself up. I was smoothing out my slightly disheveled hair when the dream I’d just had suddenly came back to me.

It was a memory from my past life. I had been born with memories of my past life, but this was the first time those memories had come to me in a dream.

‘Why did it have to be that horrible end…….’

I pulled myself together with some effort and left the room.

The employees busy with their respective tasks stopped what they were doing and greeted me when they spotted me. I returned their greetings lightly and made my way to the museum’s common office.

The museum where I work is imperial property. My family, the Hilleian count’s house, has served as the head of the imperial museum for generations.

The children of the Hilleian family grow up studying art history, cultural studies, and archaeology from a young age. It was a family trade carried on by every member of the house, direct line and collateral branches alike.

I, too, finished my studies early and started working at the museum. Young as I was, I had more experience than most of the staff.

“Oh, you’re here?”

When I walked into the office, the curators who had been gathered around a painting examining it stepped back.

Spotting the newly arrived painting through the parting staff, I stopped in my tracks.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the painting. It depicted a man leading a group of soldiers across a field blanketed in dark clouds, crushing his enemies beneath him. The lightning striking down into enemy lines was vivid, and the man standing atop a heap of corpses radiated a fierce, imposing energy. It was a painting of the divine from the founding myths.

‘Maybe it’s because I just had that dream. Looking at a painting of the divine feels strange.’

In my past life, I was one of the divine. Among them, I was the most powerful existence of all.

But that was my past life, and nothing more.

The divine were beings who appeared only in myths, so in my current life, there was rarely anything to remind me of that time. I was quite content with the life I had now, which made me even less inclined to look back on those days.

And so I had made up my mind to live out this life in quiet, happy compliance, as the well-mannered young lady of a count’s house, and to grow old and die in peace.

“This is the seventh work in artist Aizek’s founding myth series. It depicts the divine striking down lightning to annihilate their enemies in the Battle of the Plains. The first emperor receiving the aid of the divine to found this empire is, of course, a very well-known story.”

The curator who had come to wake me launched into an explanation of the piece. A laugh nearly slipped past my lips.

‘Even the divine can’t call down lightning.’

The divine did, of course, possess physical bodies and strength incomparably superior to those of humans.

They were highly skilled in magic and sorcery, and the formless power known as “authority” could be applied in countless ways. Splitting mountains and parting seas was no difficult feat for the divine.

Authority could produce a wide range of powers depending on how it was used, but it could not move nature itself. Occasionally, when excessive force was exerted, the surrounding weather would shift in response, but that was different from deliberately summoning lightning or triggering a natural disaster.

‘Humans believe the divine are omnipotent, so I suppose that’s why they paint things like this.’

I, too, had possessed power close to omnipotence during my time as one of the divine. So when I first realized I had been reincarnated, I found it unbearably suffocating to have lost that transcendent authority and become a powerless, frail human.

The one saving grace was that, perhaps because my soul is divine at its core, I retained a heightened sensitivity.

Thanks to that, I can sense the auras of non-human races and forces like magical energy, things an ordinary human would never perceive.

It isn’t something I feel at all times, of course. I have to consciously focus to use it, but I’ve put the ability to good use. I caught swindlers who used sorcery to replicate artworks on several occasions, and the emperor rewarded me for it.

“Is there any record of it being appraised elsewhere?”

I examined the painting and asked, beginning the appraisal in earnest.

“The donor says they’ve already had it appraised at several places, but the opinions kept diverging. That’s why they specifically wanted your appraisal.”

“Well, Adel has never failed an appraisal, after all.”

“That’s right. There was that time no expert in the empire could appraise the Kaleb mother-and-child statue, and Adel managed it…….”

“In a way, the fact that this painting came to our museum at all is thanks to Adel’s reputation.”

I let the flood of compliments go in one ear and out the other as I pulled on thin gloves for the appraisal. Whether to avoid disturbing me or not, everyone fell quiet and held their silence.

That silence did not last long, however. The youngest employee could not contain their curiosity and threw out a question.

“Do you think the Duke of Obellian can use abilities like that? They say the eldest son of the Obellian house inherits the authority of the divine from generation to generation.”

The Duke of Obellian referred to Carlisle Euclant Obellian.

He was the current head of the Obellian house, and a descendant of the divine depicted in the painting I was appraising.

This nameless divine being had, after the founding, accepted the emperor’s earnest plea and taken the surname Obellian for themselves, accepting the rank of duke.

That lineage had continued for hundreds of years down to the present day, and the people of the empire still revered the Obellian family, because they believed the family inherited the authority of the divine from generation to generation.

But from the perspective of someone who had once been one of the divine, that was……

‘Utter nonsense.’

Among the divine, there were occasionally those who married humans. But I had never once heard of a child born from such a union inheriting authority. It was almost certainly a lie the Obellians had spread to maintain their family’s power.

“Do not entertain disrespectful doubts about the Duke of Obellian.”

“Ah……. Oh! I’m sorry.”

The curator scolded the employee, and after a brief pause, the employee seemed to realize something and apologized.

“I’m sorry, young lady. I’ll apologize on their behalf. The Duke of Obellian is your fiancé, and they were disrespectful.”

“It’s alright. I’m curious myself, actually, whether he possesses such an ability. If I happen to find out, I’ll send a letter to the museum.”

“Ha, young lady, really…….”

The employee who had made the blunder still wore an embarrassed expression despite my joke, but I truly did not mind at all. My engagement to the Duke of Obellian was not a long-standing arrangement, so it was understandable that someone might forget he was my fiancé.

It had been about a month ago from now.

[You know the Duke of Obellian has been collecting antiques from his domain lately, don’t you? Our family sent an expert to assist him.]

[Yes, wasn’t it Rinaldo who went? Sadly, he died in an accident……. I did hear that they’ve requested a new expert this time.]

[Yes. His Majesty wishes to send that expert, and along with that……. He would like you to marry the Duke of Obellian.]

It was a little sudden, but I was not greatly surprised. The reason my father was telling me this was obvious.

[His Majesty wishes for you to keep watch over the Duke of Obellian.]

The empire’s people worshipped the Obellian ducal house, and at times that devotion surpassed even the emperor’s authority. I myself had long thought that the Obellian family’s standing had grown so towering that it could pose a threat to the emperor’s reign.

The emperor had decided to plant someone loyal to him in order to keep watch over the Duke of Obellian. It was unfortunate that I happened to be that person.

[If you wish, I will ask His Majesty to reconsider.]

My father spoke with a worried expression, clearly not pleased about my marriage. It was only natural. No father would be glad to send his only daughter as the emperor’s spy.

On top of that, the Obellian house carried a grave flaw: every head of the family across every generation had died young. There was no guarantee the current head would follow the same fate, but given the pattern running through the family’s history, the likelihood was high.

Of course, the Obellian family’s wealth and power were immense, and most nobles wanted to marry into the family despite that flaw. But my father, a man with no appetite for power, would not be willing to send me into a position where I might be widowed at a young age.

For that reason, my father seemed to want me to refuse the marriage, but I shook my head.

It was the emperor’s command. Defying the emperor in any matter was dangerous.

There was no need to give the emperor reason to find fault with me over something avoidable, and I had no desire to put my family in danger on my account.

That was how the marriage had come to be arranged, and yet……

“I caught a glimpse of the Duke of Obellian from a distance when he visited the museum a few years ago. He was a remarkably tall and handsome man. I believe the two of you will make a wonderful pair.”