I pushed aside the sudden wave of familiar longing and took Roned’s hand, formally making peace with him.

“Thank you for accepting my apology.”

“Well, it wasn’t a mortal offense.”

I was still a little awkward about it and gave an embarrassed smile, and faint lines appeared at the corners of Roned’s eyes.

Seeing a glimmer of moisture at the edges of those familiar red eyes stirred something strange in my chest, and I quickly looked away.

And in that moment, whether by coincidence or because Heliones had already been watching me, I found myself meeting a pair of deep, sunken grey eyes.

The grey eyes visible through a strand of black hair that had fallen across his forehead held a ferocious look that brooked no approach, and even though I stood quite a distance from Heliones, I unconsciously took a small step back.

Surely it was a coincidence. He must have just been scanning the ballroom and our eyes happened to meet.

Or perhaps he had been keeping watch in case Roned tried to be rude again.

I forced the corners of my mouth up, trying to put Heliones’s gaze out of my mind, and turned to speak to Elise beside me.

“If there’s no one in particular you’d like to dance with, shall we go sit in the lounge for a bit?”

Elise brightened at my suggestion and nodded.

“Shall we? I don’t feel much like dancing tonight.”

Giselle had already accepted a dance invitation and gone out to the floor, so Elise, Nelia, and I moved to make our way to the ladies’ lounge set up beside the hall.

“You look just like the guest of honor tonight.”

“?”

I turned at a voice smooth enough to have honey spread on it, and there was Delmir, who had somehow drawn close without my noticing, greeting me with a sweet smile that gave no hint of any ulterior intent.

“Lord Roned really is something. After being humiliated like that, most people would keep their distance, but he must be quite taken with Lady Lucian.”

The two of us had just made up moments ago, and she was already bringing it up again. She was clearly looking to pass the trouble along and redirect everyone’s attention elsewhere.

“Lord Roned and I just cleared up the misunderstanding. He and I are nothing more than distant relatives.”

I tried to handle it calmly and give her as little to work with as possible, but the two young ladies at her side seemed to have other ideas.

“You really do have a remarkable gift. Two divorces, unable to bear children, nearly thirty, and you still have the charm to bewitch men. Do share your secret with me!”

Apparently convinced her line was quite clever, Whitney lifted her chin with a self-satisfied look and smiled her most triumphant smile. I noticed Roned approaching with a sharp expression, clearly displeased, but I shook my head and stopped him.

“Unlike me, Miss Whitney has no divorces to her name and is still in her early twenties, so I’m sure she’ll meet a fine gentleman someday without needing any secret from me.”

I had no desire to engage with such petty provocation and gave a vague answer before turning to leave, but Delmir’s group had no intention of letting me go so easily.

“How bold of you. You are a princess from an enemy nation that has already fallen, and yet here you are, gracing this event in person. I don’t think I could hold my head up in your position. I suppose I should learn from your courage in ignoring shame.”

Dylan was the one who spoke, but I could tell at a glance who had prepared the line. Delmir, wearing a smile on her lips while her eyes held none of it, was watching my reaction with relentless focus.

A person’s true depths can surface in many moments, but they tend to show themselves especially when someone is backed into a corner like this.

It was plain that few nobles in the ballroom had any fondness for me, a princess from an enemy nation, yet Dylan’s last remark had apparently crossed a line, because the gazes of the nobles around us began to turn noticeably colder.

Even a cutting remark is only acceptable when it stays within bounds. Shame. Using that word to the emperor’s former wife at an official event.

Delmir’s approach had departed from the noble way of maintaining appearances and keeping up decorum, whatever one might feel inside.

Anxious and on edge, Delmir had likely used that provocative word hoping I would show my worst self. She must have wanted to confirm, even at the cost of pushing too far, that the unwanted guest of the evening was me and not her.

But I had no intention of showing my worst self to someone like Delmir here.

You think this is enough to break me? If you really want to see my worst, go fetch a branding iron fresh from the fire.

The young ladies beside me were already balling their fists and about to step forward, and I held them back as I answered without so much as a change in color.

“You can only feel shame if you have honor to begin with. I stopped caring about shame a long time ago. It seems my presence here is making Miss Dylan uncomfortable. I’ll take my leave.”

At my composed answer, the gazes of the watching nobles cooled another degree. Delmir had used her friend and pushed hard, hoping those cold eyes would land on me rather than herself, but her struggling was far too clumsy for someone like me, who had spent a lifetime clawing to keep from going under.

Having no further desire to take part in this petty little farce, I turned and walked away. I glanced at Elise and she was shaking her head with a sigh, looking just as fed up.

Well, I came and I attended. That’s enough. I have no wish to get tangled up in pointless trouble, so it’s time to make my exit.

I have no idea who she’ll sink her teeth into next, but good luck.

I slipped over to Elise, looped my arm through hers, and turned toward the exit without a backward glance.

* * *

Duke Balthar, who had always indulged his beloved only daughter’s every request, put his foot down for the first time in a long while.

‘You’ll make a laughingstock of yourself. The trial will be over soon enough. Just wait until then.’

Stern as it was, every word came from a place of wanting to protect his daughter. The daughter he had raised in comfort and privilege had never had to overcome hardship. She had never needed to.

A child raised on unconditional praise and admiration had no way of imagining the contempt of others directed at herself.

In calmer times, Delmir was, without question, a sharp-minded girl, sharp enough that it was almost a shame she was the youngest and a daughter at that. She never crossed a line.

But this was a situation his daughter had never faced before.

Duke Balthar knew from experience that behaving as usual when confronted with unfriendly reactions, or worse, outright contempt, was no easy thing, and that many people had lost their standing in society and fallen because of exactly that.

Unluckily, to Delmir, now twenty-one, her father’s concern sounded like nothing more than an aging duke’s nagging. She had her maids alter one of her mother’s old dresses, arranged a carriage herself, and made her way to the imperial palace regardless.

‘The Fairy of the social season, skipping the Summer Night Ball? Does that even make sense?’

She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled her most triumphant smile. Who could possibly look at this beauty and not be struck with admiration?

They might hesitate a little at first, but before long everyone would warm up and approach her the way they always did. Who would turn away a woman this lovely and radiant?

But the goodwill people had shown Delmir had never been directed at her alone. The power of the family standing behind her had played a large part.

The air around her turned cold. The eyes of contempt were not on Lucian, who had been divorced and yet shamelessly hovered near His Majesty, but on her, the Fairy of the social season.

‘Why? How? Does no one find it strange that that vulgar woman is parading around this place with a bunch of foolish women hanging off her arm? Does no one find it strange that a leftover with nothing to her name dares to talk back to me, a duke’s daughter, word for word?’

In reality, Lucian had simply answered Dylan’s remark politely, but Delmir raged as though she herself had been insulted. And rage, meeting anxiety, tore away the veneer of etiquette she had kept tightly wrapped around her true self and laid it bare for everyone to see.

* * *

“How nice to see two ladies in similar circumstances keeping each other company.”

“?”

Delmir’s words caught at me like a hand grabbing the hem of my skirt, and I stopped walking.

“Having been divorced twice yourself, I’m sure you understand perfectly how it feels to have an engagement broken off.”

Ah, so that’s what she meant by similar circumstances. I glanced sideways at Elise beside me. Those green eyes of hers, so composed in almost every situation, were visibly shaking.

‘Oh my.’

‘Goodness. She’s bringing that up?’

The broken engagement that Elise had suffered, one-sidedly, at the hands of her fiancé had happened only three years ago. I could feel the nobles who still remembered the scandal pretending to look elsewhere while their attention fixed sharply on Elise and me.

If her goal was to make me angry, Delmir had finally succeeded.

That I had been divorced twice was no secret. But was Elise’s broken engagement not entirely her own fault? How dare she bring that up here?

I was finding it harder and harder to keep my mouth shut, and when I looked at Elise, she seemed to feel the same, her gaze slowly turning toward Delmir.

“I don’t think that’s something the party responsible for the broken engagement should be saying.”

Elise spoke in a voice of pure composure, with no trace of exaggeration or unease.