Good things come to those who suffer long enough. That had been the family motto.

But she — Judith Griene, now Judith Belheim — no longer believed it.

All those years of rolling through fields of hardship, and what had finally come to her was nothing more than a fleeting illusion of happiness.

‘And even that has landed me here, face-down in the gutter.’

A sardonic smile tugged at the corner of Judith’s lips.

She shifted her grip on the wooden sword and changed her stance.

She cut through the air, pivoting her body and redirecting her path in a single fl*id motion — yet the blade of the wooden sword didn’t waver so much as a hair’s breadth. Her breathing, too, was remarkably steady.

Hardly befitting the Duchess of Belheim, Judith slipped out of the manor in secret on every night she could spare, retreating to a corner of the garden to train her body and practice her swordwork.

She had been doing it ever since the wedding. Without exception.

She had once been a Royal Guard officer, and she could not bring herself to let the habits carved into her bones simply fade away. That was reason enough.

“Ha……”

Judith exhaled a short breath and wiped the sweat trailing down her neck with the back of her hand. Only then did she feel something close to alive.

She was from Altmere.

Altmere — the empire’s greatest port city.

A place where foreign merchants, craftsmen, and navigators flowed in and out without end; where the streets overflowed with the languages and currencies of every nation, with spices and curious novelties from distant lands. An open, free city, untethered and alive.

Judith’s father, Baron Griene, had served as a trade inspector at the port authority there.

Judith herself had spent her childhood in Altmere, absorbing everything the city had to offer — its sights, its sounds, its endless flow of the world passing through.

And then, one day, it all changed.

The vessel Baron Griene had boarded on official business capsized in a storm. When the news reached the Baroness, she spent days upon days at the docks, waiting for word of the search — until one rain-lashed night, a structure gave way and the sea took her with it.

In a single moment, young Judith lost everything.

That was where it began.

She was at an age when emotions run wild and the soul is still growing — and yet she could not even afford to grieve her parents. There was no time. No room to breathe. Nothing left to lean on.

What remained to her was a title without a single plot of land to its name, a little brother six years her junior named Theodor, and a mountain of debt left in the family’s name.

Every day was a battle.

Judith entered the imperial military academy and clawed her way through on a full scholarship earned through sheer relentless effort. She pushed further still, and upon graduation she was commissioned as an officer in the Imperial Royal Guard.

She had known there would be more days ahead that demanded she prove herself — but she had believed the worst of it was finally behind her.

She had been gravely mistaken.

The happiness that came at the end of all that suffering had flickered out almost before she could grasp it.

Judith’s dark green eyes grew dim.

‘……The gutter, indeed.’

Judith turned the word over in her mind and let out a quiet, dry laugh.

If anyone could read her thoughts, they would probably say she had lost her mind — that she had grown so comfortable she had finally gone mad.

‘They might even write to my husband and suggest having me committed to a closed ward.’

And with good reason. Because Judith’s husband was, without any exaggeration, the most coveted bachelor the empire had ever produced.

Rustle —

“My lady.”

Speak of the devil. A voice reached her from a few steps away.

She had sensed his gaze on her for some moments already, but Judith turned her head now as though only just noticing.

“You’ve worked hard again tonight.”

There he stood — Judith’s husband, and the empire’s most perfect specimen of a man: Duke Lorentz Belheim, waiting for her.

As always, his posture was immaculate, and on his lips rested that gentle, unhurried smile.

He had inherited the dukedom immediately upon coming of age. Though he had never received proper heir’s training — being a bastard-born son — he had proven sharp enough that not even for a moment had he needed to cede the title to a collateral relative.

And beyond that, he possessed both a remarkable character and a striking appearance. He was, on top of everything else, a Belheim.

The Belheim duchy was one of the rare territories on the continent situated directly adjacent to the capital. In former times it had served as a buffer zone defending the capital against enemy forces advancing by sea — but in this era of infrequent wars, the growth of its port city had made it the very foundation of the capital’s economy.

For all these reasons combined, House Belheim had long commanded the attention of both the political world and high society. Parliament and the Emperor alike regarded the Belheims with nothing but favor, and though it was only rumor, whispers in certain private circles suggested he ought to be brought into the Privy Council and given real power to wield.

The man himself, however, had little interest in lingering in the capital, and preferred to remain in his estate as much as he possibly could.

……And there was only one reason for that.

“My lady?”

He was a man utterly devoted to his wife.

“……”

The cool early-summer breeze swept through her sweat-damp hair. The soft rustle of leaves against leaves murmured low at the edge of her hearing.

Judith blinked slowly.

His eyes caught the thin moonlight hanging in the pitch-black sky.

A deep violet, like the color of a violet in bloom. And within them — warmth, directed entirely at her.

Always. Unchanging.

“You need not love me in return. I only wish that you are not suffering. Right now, you look…… far too fragile.”

Back then, too.

“Would you permit me to remain by your side? I dare not ask for anything more than that. Only — please, let me stay with you.”

And now, still. Always.

“……”

Judith looked away.

Her throat was a little dry, and there was a heaviness pressing at her chest. She exhaled slowly and pressed her eyes shut. An emotion she couldn’t quite name rose up from somewhere inside her.

With her eyes closed, the sound of footsteps that had hesitated for a moment began to draw steadily closer.

Yes — as has been said, Lorentz was a devoted husband, and everyone who knew him knew it. The great ladies of high society, who had long declared him the most eligible bachelor in the empire, considered this quality the greatest mark in his favor.

But no matter how devoted Lorentz was, no matter how sincerely he loved her — Judith felt not the slightest pull of attraction toward him.

None of it mattered.

The moment her surname changed from Griene to Belheim — the moment she had taken pains not to let a single flicker of joy show on her face — Judith had, in the eyes of the world, become a woman so comfortable she had gone mad.

“……My lady.”

His voice was close now, without her having noticed.

Judith opened her eyes and looked up at Lorentz.

He was studying her from a short distance, his expression creased with concern.

“Are you feeling faint?”

He must have taken it for anemia.

Judith suppressed whatever she was feeling and smiled — low and quiet.

“Nothing like that.”

Lorentz pulled back the hand he had instinctively reached toward her and smiled, a little awkwardly. He turned and said:

“It’s still quite cold out. You’ll catch a chill — let’s head inside.”

All at once, an impulse rose in her — to wrap her arms around that back.

Judith reflexively knit her brows.

‘Just now——’

A sharp sense of wrongness, and with it a throb of pain behind her eyes. Lorentz’s retreating figure blurred, then sharpened again.

Judith rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and fell quickly into step behind him.

“You don’t need to come and fetch me anymore, you know. Has it been about a month now?”

“About that, I’d say. I was genuinely startled the first time I happened upon you. The way you were dressed — you looked like a stranger who had broken into the estate.”

“……Surely not that bad.”

She rolled her eyes, a little embarrassed.

Admittedly, it was rather different from how she normally presented herself. But one could hardly train in a long gown.

“……Even so, it is late. The estate may be just outside, but still.”

“……”

“I can’t help but worry about you, my lady.”

The heaviness in her chest pressed harder. It felt as though something pitch-black were smoldering somewhere inside her. Was this jealousy without an object — or was it something else entirely?

‘Am I jealous…… of myself?’

Judith shook her head slowly.

The emotion that stirred within her was one she could neither explain nor trace to its source — and with it, the throbbing behind her eyes grew worse.

These strange episodes had been with her for about three months now. They came so infrequently and at such irregular intervals that she had nearly forgotten they existed at all.

‘Until the past month, when they started coming more often.’

There was one other symptom, besides. Something more troubling.

‘Time…… disappears.’

She could find no more precise word for it than that. She would open her eyes to find that morning had arrived, or that several days had passed — with nothing in between.

At first, it was only the hours of the night that went missing. She had assumed it was simply sleepwalking. It had happened only twice, no one had been affected, and she had woken in her own bed perfectly unharmed, so she had not given it much thought.

Then she lost an entire day. But Lorentz and the household staff, whose faces she saw every day, said nothing out of the ordinary.

And then it was several days gone at once.

Still, no one — not a single person — had noticed anything amiss.

“……To think something like that has been happening to you, my lady.”

It had reached a point where she could no longer brush it aside lightly. As they walked back toward the manor, Judith brought it up with Lorentz. She had mentioned it to the family physician, Norman, not long ago, and had assumed Lorentz would already know.

But he looked at her as though hearing it for the first time, his expression shifting into something carefully grave.

“Since when has this been happening?”

“I can’t remember exactly, but I think it started sometime earlier this year. It happened only very occasionally at first — and then it began coming more frequently, within the past month……”

Her voice trailed off.

Several gears turned rapidly in some corner of her mind, catching and interlocking. Something was beginning to fall into place.

The process was hazy — but the conclusion it was drawing toward was enough to make her skin crawl.

Judith glanced up at Lorentz as they walked. He felt her eyes on him and turned to meet her gaze.

The kind lines framing his deep violet eyes creased softly.

“Within the past month — and then?”

Her heart lurched into a sudden, heavy rhythm. Judith quickly looked away. She swallowed.

She put a little distance between herself and her husband, choosing her words carefully.

“More and more, within the past month……”

But the words never came.

A savage wave of pain crashed through her skull, and her heart slammed against her ribs — she drew a sharp breath, and then —

“……My lady?”

Judith’s consciousness went dark.