Only After I Gave Up on Being Loved

“Let’s meet in hell. I’ll be waiting.”
Though I was born an imperial princess, I became a sinner deemed worthy of lifelong contempt simply because my maternal family had allegedly plotted treason.
For my half-sister Joanna, the only person who ever reached out a hand to me in the suffocating imperial palace, I gave everything I had. My knowledge, my strategies, even the only man I had ever loved.
If marrying the enemy nation’s monstrous Grand Duke could end the war in Joanna’s place, I did not care.
“Isn’t she ridiculous? No matter how hard she tries, there’s no one who will ever love her.”
“That foolish girl will never know, even until the day she dies, that the late emperor and I framed her family for treason.”
But after learning the whole truth, I thought of the greatest revenge I could possibly take.
If I was the condition for the peace treaty, then I would gladly disappear.
The moment I threw myself from the spire, the conqueror from the enemy nation who had trampled the empire beneath his feet, Seyrn von Devlin, screamed.
“Princess, please, please, don’t die!”
‘Why would you care? To you, I’m nothing more than a spoil of war.’
________________________________________
Then, as if by a miracle, I returned to seven years in the past.
This time, I decided to abandon the kind of life in which I begged to be loved.
Instead, I dreamed of avenging my maternal family.
There was only one person I needed to accomplish it.
The man who would destroy the empire that had cast me aside—and the only person who would grieve my death.
Seyrn von Devlin.
“I would never dare hope to be loved. I will simply fulfill my duties as the Grand Duchess.”
This marriage was the perfect contract.
Or so I thought.
“Protecting you is more important than that damned contract.”
Until Seyrn began to yearn for me.
“There is a limit to merely holding hands with you. We need more intimate contact.”
I could not understand it.
Why you desired me.
And only after I had finally given up on being loved.