Ariel thought she looked so small and miserable, sitting before the arrogant Taran.

‘If you were going to give me this ending, you shouldn’t have let me cross the line. You shouldn’t have accepted me!’

Her chest ached. It felt like a small cloud she cherished softly for a long time was crushed in an instant. Ariel never doubted that she herself would be Taran’s bride.

She never doubted it, yet….

“Taran.”

A gaze so bewitching it stole breath clung to Taran’s lips. Gazing out the window with a stiff face, he turned his head and met her eyes.

A strange atmosphere flowed between them.

“Mm.”

The angry whirlpool grew by a handful.

“You will definitely regret this.”

Taran’s brows furrowed slightly at her words, whose intent he couldn’t read.

It was a very small reaction, but it still thrilled her.

She decided to leave the reception room without regret. To carry out the plan she thought up a moment ago, she needed to move diligently. Every moment counted.

When she rose from her seat, Taran asked, “You’re leaving already?”

The sweet voice caught the ankle of the departing woman. Sadly, all of her was in Taran’s hand.

“Yes. I got my answer, so I should go. Why, do you want me not to?”

She walked behind Taran and hugged his small head. A fragrant yet strong scent pricked her nose. Her mind, about to go hazy, snapped alert.

“If you’re bored, come play. In my bedroom.”

She smiled brightly and kissed his cheek. She could not lose him forever by trying to possess him for a moment. Ariel left the reception room without looking back, without regret.

Returning home quickly, Ariel began writing a letter. She couldn’t even think of neatening her handwriting. The letter, scrawled like lightning, was put in an envelope and stamped with a thick wax seal, so that no one but the addressee could open it.

A loud bell rang and her servant entered the room, tucking the letter she handed him into his coat.

“Go straight there and deliver that letter. Its contents must not be discovered by anyone, so on the way, be careful to meet as few people as possible. The sooner the better. Here’s the map. When you arrive, find the room with a star pattern drawn on it.”

Nodding at his master’s order, the servant vanished with nimble movements.

Her shoulders, raised in tension, finally dropped back into place. Her heart, pounding like a seizure since morning, also found a proper pace.

Setting down the quill and slumping over the desk, she closed her eyes and recalled the dizzying scent she smelled a moment ago. She desperately wanted his scent, which made even her fingertips tingle.

“You’re mine, Taran. The day I saved your life, we became fate.”

Her golden eyes, gazing at the portrait of Taran and herself hanging on the opposite wall, flashed dangerously.

Perhaps because he knew his master’s heart, the servant who took the letter rode diligently for days without sleep and reached his destination in comparatively short time.

He might have dismounted and caught his breath for a moment, yet he entered the old, shabby, ruin-like house without the slightest delay. He was a loyal and commendable servant.

Swallowing hard, the servant passed through a dark space full of dust.

It was an eerie mansion that seemed abandoned for a long time.

He couldn’t tell why his master sent him to such a place. He only wanted to deliver this letter quickly, return, and see his beautiful master’s smile.

At last he stood before the worn-out door with the star pattern his master mentioned, and he turned the creaking knob.

The chilling sound was so unpleasant that he squeezed his eyes shut without meaning to. Soon he realized the air around him was completely different.

Swallowing hard and opening his eyes to narrow slits, he could not help being greatly startled.

What entered his eyes was a space painted entirely white, clean without a single speck of dust.

Stiffened by the strange sight, the servant barely managed to move his eyes to look at the shelves lined along both sides.

“Hup!”

Inside the transparent glass jars on the shelves were red things of unknown identity. Looking closely, he was greatly startled once more.

“H-Heart…!”

“Bingo! That’s right, those are hearts. That one’s a human’s, that one’s a deer’s. Oh! Here’s a fresh liver too! Want to see?”

A woman with completely white hair stood next to him, having appeared from nowhere. The poor servant broke into a cold sweat, seemingly about to faint, but the white-haired woman only grinned broadly, seemingly amused by him.

When the servant, trembling, raised his hand to the pocket inside his chest, the woman eagerly grabbed his hand with an interested expression. The servant shook with terror so great his breath nearly stopped, but soon he noticed that the woman’s hand was quite soft.

“I’ve brought a letter from Lady Ariel.”

Speaking with a much calmer expression, the servant took out the neatly folded letter with his free hand and held it up before her eyes. But she was interested only in the servant’s right hand she was gripping.

“Are you listening? I said it’s a letter sent by the young lady of Duke Stefan’s household.”

When the servant spoke in an irritated voice, the white-haired woman finally responded. She made a strange expression and took the letter.

“Feisty, so feisty.”

Still grinning broadly, the woman muttered to herself and skimmed the letter quickly. Then she walked to the desk in the center of the room, picked up one of the many transparent glass jars lined up there, and crammed the paper inside.

The servant’s eyes widened when he saw what she did. The paper that touched the clear liquid in the jar dissolved without a trace.

“Hee~ Amazing, right?”

The white-haired woman turned to him and shook the bottle. The servant thought he must get out of here quickly and grabbed the knob behind his back, but in the end he could not turn it.

‘Slash.’

“Where are you going? When you have such pretty hands?”

“Aaaagh!”

The woman raised her hand and drew a diagonal line in the air, and the wrist of the hand gripping the knob was cut clean off.

“W-Why are you doing this! Why!!”

Screaming like a madman, the servant pressed his left hand to his spurting right wrist to stop the bleeding, but

‘Slash.’

His left wrist was cut off too.

“Aaagh! Aagh! Aaaagh!”

The man lost both hands in the blink of an eye and rolled across the floor in tremendous pain.

“Why, you ask~ You bring something like this and you didn’t know? So naive, so naive. I’m telling you this specially because your hands are just so pretty, you know….”

The white-haired woman walked over lightly and crouched before the servant.

Then her chilling voice struck softly against his flushed ear, and it turned the pupils of the man, overwhelmed by distant terror, murky in an instant.

“Normally, a letter like this must be known by no one but the sender and the receiver. No. Bo. Dy. Hehehe!”

Giving up on everything, the servant looked at his own red blood soaking the floor.

She casually picked up the man’s fallen hands and began to hum.

“Curse, curse, curse, it is a fun and beautiful magic. Sacrifices are enough, rewards are enough, bingo, bingo, bingo!”

* * *

As the engagement ceremony of Blair and Taran drew nearer by the moment.

Lia lived in a secluded house at the foot of the mountain, and she was learning court etiquette from her father. To her, it was one of her father’s lessons that she could never understand.

“Father, you said you worked in the palace long ago, didn’t you?”

Lia asked, straightening her slouched posture, pretending to be casual.

“I did.”

Noah, unable to know what was in Lia’s mind, answered casually as well. He was absorbed in watching his daughter’s elegant gait.

“Is that why you teach me this?”

His inscrutable education, which began when Lia was a gap-toothed child, was full of things she could not understand no matter how she tried.

She immediately set down the plate on her head and demanded an answer.

“Why must I learn the posture of high-ranking people, Father? Why must I know international affairs and study how the country is run? I’m just an ordinary poet’s daughter. I’ve always wondered.”