The ball Hanna mentioned was an event held from late June to early July to celebrate the wheat harvest.

In the past, it had been a small village festival where people prayed for a bountiful year across all their crops, but over time the nobility absorbed it, and by early July it had become an event where evening balls were held every night for an entire week.

Even so, reflecting the spirit of its origins, there was a custom of wearing golden attire to pray for a good harvest, and outside the imperial palace where the balls were held, the people received a feast made from that year’s harvested crops and fruits.

Throughout the week of dancing, the talk of the town centered on who wore the most dazzling jewels and who donated the largest sum, and so the nobility began preparing for the event well before the social season even started.

“Well. It’s still a matter under trial, so who knows. No verdict has been handed down yet. And even if one is, Delmir has no connection to the matter.”

During my time as Duchess Gertil, the Summer Night Ball had been shortened from a week to a single evening and held simply at the ducal estate.

Through both events, I endured hostile stares and cutting remarks, my insides rotting away while I kept up the outward appearance of a dignified duchess. Every noble in the country gathered in one place. What happened at the first event, when I was still a newlywed, remains vivid in my memory.

‘My goodness, you still haven’t shared a wedding night?’

‘Well, I suppose even I wouldn’t lay a finger on the body of the empire’s greatest enemy.’

The insults that rained down on me in Heliones’s absence began with a single remark Delmir let fall with an innocent face.

‘To think you’re already fulfilling your duties without even having shared a wedding night. How truly diligent of you, Duchess Gertil.’

Behind words that seemed, on the surface, to praise me, Delmir concealed her intent and used the mouths of others to mock my situation.

‘Please, don’t be too hard on her. She came out to this event and is presiding over it, after all. Is that not the very model of a great lady?’

At Delmir’s words, which carried not a trace of malice, the ladies’ hearts shifted before long, and they began to pity me instead.

‘You’re right. It couldn’t have been easy for a bride sleeping alone to show up to something like this.’

‘I suppose it’s because she’s a princess. She has a real backbone. To prepare so thoroughly for an event where everyone resents her.’

Words I couldn’t tell were pity or mockery, I swallowed them all in silence, and throughout that night I kept a hollow smile on my face, pretending nothing was wrong, pretending I wasn’t hurt.

To be honest, I wasn’t even angry at Delmir back then. Deep down, I believed I deserved to be treated that way.

A princess from the kingdom that had destroyed Frianc, presiding over a Frianc tradition. I thought that level of treatment was something I had to endure.

Even now, I hold no great resentment over how I was treated then. I understand that even the most generous person would find it difficult to feel goodwill toward a princess from an enemy nation.

And yet, how fickle the human heart is. To Hanna and Lucinda, I had spoken of Delmir’s attendance as though it were nothing, but inwardly I found myself hoping she would come to the ball.

I had grown curious, all of a sudden, about how a young lady who had drawn everyone’s anger would be treated at the ball, and how she would get through that night.

Ah, I’d like to see it for myself, if possible.

But when it came to actually attending, I hesitated. Right now, the Duke Balthar trial had buried the story, but who was I? The former wife who had kept the gossip columns burning day after day with talk of whether a princess from an enemy nation was becoming the emperor’s mistress.

I wanted very much to see Delmir in a difficult position, but I decided attending was still too much to ask of myself, and resolved to send a refusal in reply to the invitation that had arrived from the imperial palace.

“Well, I’ll find out how it all unfolds from the next day’s paper.”

“You’re not going to attend? It’s a huge event! The boutique sent over so many golden gowns, too.”

Along with the invitation, the imperial palace had also sent golden gowns. A designer who had carefully recorded my measurements arrived with an armful of elaborate golden garments and made a great show of saying they had been designed to suit His Majesty the Emperor’s former wife.

It was likely a consideration to prevent me from appearing shabby and ending up in the gossip columns again, but I had no intention of wearing any of them.

The gowns were gorgeous and beautiful, and it was a shame to let them go to waste, but the fabric could be taken apart and reused.

I called for Elren, intending to return the gowns to the boutique and send my reply to the imperial palace. But just before the reply went out, something happened that changed my mind.

Nelia, Elise, and Giselle, who had not visited for several days, came to my lodgings.

Elise was calmer than I expected. Delmir, the one who had ruined her marriage, was now in trouble, so she had every reason to feel a sharp satisfaction, yet she wore a composed expression.

“I never imagined Duke Balthar had been using the donations for personal gain. He has so much wealth already. Why would he do something like that?”

Giselle responded to Nelia’s question, which she raised first, with a bitter smile.

“The educational institution my father had been trying to establish with a scholarship fund from his sponsorship money fell through because of Duke Balthar. My father only wanted to create a system where students with talent but limited means could take out loans for tuition at low interest with generous repayment terms, with the school acting as guarantor.”

“I know. The Balthar family’s educational foundation runs elite institutions with extremely high tuition fees, so there was no real need for him to interfere.”

“Exactly. The student populations don’t even overlap. He simply couldn’t stand the idea of someone else owning a large educational foundation. People who already have so much always want more. It wasn’t as though he embezzled the donations out of poverty. He just begrudged spending his own money on a theater actress and an illegitimate child.”

Judging by her rather cynical tone, Giselle had her own long-standing grievances against House Balthar. All those times she had spoken with such heat about Delmir and the rumors surrounding the Balthar family, there had been a reason behind it.

“Either way, it’s a serious blow to Delmir. I heard the boutique refused to deliver her completed gowns.”

“Of course. With public sentiment this bad, who would want their designs worn by Delmir, who draws so much attention whenever she appears in society?”

While Giselle and Nelia traded remarks, Elise still held her silence, not joining the conversation.

“Will you be attending the ball, Lady Lucian?”

“?”

The first thing she asked was whether I would attend the ball. I was about to say of course I wouldn’t, but Elise spoke before I could.

“I hope you’ll come. I’m very curious to see what expression Delmir will be wearing in a situation like this.”

It seemed she had been thinking exactly what I had.

“After our conversation that day, it stayed with me. So I looked into it here and there, and it turns out House Balthar was the one who first brought up the marriage proposal to Marquis Dulcon. He received a small land grant afterward as well.”

“Oh.”

Nelia and Giselle, apparently hearing this for the first time, stared at Elise with stunned faces but said nothing.

“I truly thought I was going to die back then. I couldn’t keep anything down but water for over two weeks, and my weight dropped to nearly half. I was afraid to go outside. Every person I passed seemed to be pointing at me, calling me a woman with some flaw, abandoned by her fiancé.”

Elise spoke with a relatively composed face, but something inside me began to twist into a strange, contorted shape.

“I want Delmir to suffer. I want those red lips to crack and that flawless skin to go dull and that sunshine smile to disappear from her face. That makes me a terrible person, doesn’t it?”

The sight of Elise laughing, hollow and detached, bored straight into my heart.

I had found my own life unbearable. I thought about dying dozens of times every single day. If not for my mother’s dying wish, I would have ended that wretched life long ago.

In my mind, I was the most miserable woman in the world. A woman her own family despised was not welcome by her new family either. Wherever I went, whoever I met, I was always unhappy. I could barely even imagine what it felt like to be happy.

Then, at some point, I began to feel ashamed of my broken soul, as broken as the body covered in scars.

I struggled to perform the role of an elegant princess, a dignified wife, trying somehow to mask the stench rising from a soul that had rotted from a lack of love.

And so I had little room to care about the suffering of others.

When the papers reported on the countries destroyed by Rodencia’s invasions, when an old woman looked at me and cursed me as the devil’s daughter, I never tried to reckon with their pain.

Ah, I hate war. I wish no more people had to die. Of course, it wasn’t that I never had thoughts like these.

When I overheard Delmir’s petty scheming beneath the rose trellis, I thought what a pitiful woman Elise was. I imagined how much pain she must have been in and felt my heart ache for her.

But that was where it ended. I was a princess from an enemy nation, surrounded by people who hated me.

It never even occurred to me that someone like me, ignored even by my own husband, could step forward and do anything.

Back then, every person around me frightened me, and I was afraid, so I only prayed that her heart would heal quickly. If I had truly cared about Elise’s pain, I would have at least tried to speak to her first.