Two maids gripped her arms from either side, but Vivian’s stride did not slow in the slightest.

“My lady, you must not. His Grace the Grand Duke has ordered that no one be admitted.”

“I heard.”

Vivian did not even pretend to turn her head. Her gaze was fixed on the oak door at the end of the corridor. With each step she took, the long skirt of her wedding dress swept and dragged across the stone floor.

It was a heavy dress. It was also a gift from the imperial family. The moment Vivian first opened the box, she swallowed a scoff.

Across an excessively ornate lace fabric, large gemstones were packed in dense clusters. Amethysts the size of walnuts set along the neckline, deep red garnets fitted tightly around the sash at the waist, and sapphires arranged in swirling patterns along the hem of the dress.

Each stone was extraordinary in quality and value alike, but when every last one of them was poured into a single gown, the matter was rather different. This was not a wedding dress. It was a jeweler’s display case. The weight was considerable enough to bow the shoulders. Wearing it and walking was practically exercise.

This was the form of grace the imperial family bestowed upon Vivian. Outwardly expensive beyond reproach, yet without a single thought given to making the wearer beautiful. It was a gift from people who did not know, or rather, pretended not to know, that no amount of money could purchase dignity.

The fortunate thing was that Vivian herself could be relied upon. Only when she put on the dress and stood before the mirror could she breathe easy.

The gemstones that seemed excessive enough to draw a frown when lying against the fabric were now flowing down from Vivian’s collarbones, wrapping around her waist, and quietly erasing their own presence.

Her bright golden hair spilled between the stones, subduing what was nothing but gaudy glitter, and her green eyes shone more clearly than any gem.

Contrary to the intentions of whoever sent the gift, the dress could not overwhelm Vivian. If anything, beneath her beauty, even that vulgar display seemed neutralized into something of refined elegance. Of course, what achieved that neutralization was not only her natural appearance but also the skill she honed in high society.

“My lady!”

The maid’s voice cracked against the corridor walls. Vivian finally stopped and turned her head.

The expressions on both maids’ faces carried something closer to fear than confusion. Vivian knew that emotion was not directed at her. Both women’s gazes were aimed past her, toward that oak door.

“He is my husband,” Vivian said. Her clear voice rang out through the corridor.

“He is about to be my husband. Is wanting to meet him once before the wedding ceremony really something worth stopping me over?”

The maids looked at each other. Their lips trembled faintly, but pressed down by Vivian’s quiet composure, not a word came out.

Yet Vivian read the answer in their eyes with sharp precision. It seemed Her Grace did not yet know, but what she was doing was truly, terribly reckless…

Vivian ignored their looks. She turned back around and walked toward the closed door. Her resolve was firm enough that the maids could no longer bring themselves to stop her.

This marriage was the punishment the imperial family handed down to Vivian.

The day the imperial decree arrived, Vivian unrolled the parchment in her manor on the outskirts of Petrasia. The title of Grand Duchess is hereby conferred. Be grateful for the imperial family’s deep benevolence. Every stroke of the elegant script was smooth as silk, and for that very reason it felt all the more revolting.

The emperor’s bastard child. Vivian’s origins were quietly becoming an open secret in high society.

It was unavoidable. Vivian was so captivating that she could not help drawing people’s attention, and people always grew curious about someone like that.

No matter how desperately the imperial family tried to cover the sky with their palms, the truth slipped through their fingers like sunlight. But the emperor’s bastard becoming famous was not what the imperial family wanted. To them, it was a crack in their legitimacy, an accusation that shattered the illusion of moral purity.

Vivian read the parchment to the very last line and looked out the window. The afternoon sunlight of Petrasia settled lazily over the garden. It was a beautiful day. Vivian pushed the parchment into the fireplace.

Vivian’s intended was someone she knew only by name. The Grand Duke of the North, Renard Callen.

Was there anyone in all of Petrasia who did not know his name? With every distinguished achievement on the battlefield, his reputation rose a little more among the people. He had a fatal flaw that prevented him from appearing publicly, so things remained quiet until now, but the imperial family did not want to leave even the slightest risk unaddressed.

What if he, with his popular support and military force, were to marry into the capital’s nobility and gain political power as well?

It was not a likely scenario given his flaw, but it was not impossible either. And so the imperial family decided to eliminate that possibility. Through Vivian.

The marriage of Renard Callen and Vivian was meant to bind two thorns in the imperial family’s side at once and bury them in the borderlands.

Seen in this light, which of the two drew more pity? Every subject in the empire pitied Vivian. That a bastard with nothing to her name but beauty was paired with a war hero and still received sympathy spoke to how deeply the hero’s flaw was branded into people’s minds.

Cursed blood.

It was the phrase that always followed whenever anyone spoke of Renard Callen, Grand Duke of the North.

The corridor felt long. Half the candelabras along both walls were out, and the remaining flames swayed in the draft, casting uneven light. Cold air seeped down through the cracks in the stone ceiling. It was nothing like the warm winds of the capital, Petrasia. It was the dry, bone-deep chill of the North.

Vivian drew that coldness deep into her lungs. This was the air she would breathe for the rest of her life, whether she liked it or not.

At last she stood at the end of the corridor, before the oak door. Despite being the room where the Grand Duke resided, there was not a guard or servant in sight. A stillness like death filled the space.

Cold air seeped through the gap in the door. It was the same northern air she breathed throughout the walk down the corridor, but something else was woven into it.

Leather and iron, and beneath those, a faint acrid smell, the particular scent that clung to someone who handled weapons for a long time. She caught it often when passing near the palace guards in Petrasia.

But the scent drifting through the gap in the door now was slightly different. The rough, unmasked smell of exhaustion, unfiltered by any perfume or balm, let her imagine something of its owner’s life.

Vivian placed her hand on the door handle. Cold metal met her palm.

The man she never once met, her future husband, was inside. She knew nothing of his face, his voice, or his build. All the imperial family told her was the name and title: Renard Callen, Grand Duke of the North.

The people of the world actually told her far more about him. The cursed heir of the North. The bearer of a dreadful mark said to curse anyone who laid eyes on it.

It was said that the founding ancestor of the Northern Ducal House was born with a mark on his face. This mark passed down through his bloodline and came to rule the Northern Ducal House. His lineage was all cursed, born as monsters bearing that same mark. It was one of the empire’s oldest and most deeply rooted legends, one that survived for a very long time.

As though to prove that legend true, the legitimate heirs of the Northern Ducal House could not show their faces before others. The duke and his wife delivered their children alone, without a midwife, and the child born that way was masked before it could even draw breath to cry.

Only a mask could shield the world from the symbol of their hideous curse. The mark was a curse that brought misfortune not only to the one who bore it but to anyone who saw it. And so, from the moment of their birth to the moment they were laid in a coffin, they could never remove the mask from their face.

In the social circles of Petrasia, which was Vivian’s main stage, rumors about Renard Callen were produced and spread without end.

Beneath the mask, nothing of a human form remains. He performs a ritual of drinking enemy blood on the battlefield. All who have seen his face lose themselves and become his obedient playthings…

The unverified rumors returned whenever they were nearly forgotten, refreshed with new details each time, and in that sense, Vivian knew quite a lot about Renard Callen.

But Vivian smiled. It was a beautiful smile, the corners of her lips rising slowly, with venom hidden behind it.

The imperial family decided to dump their bastard on a monster. In doing so, they must have thought the bastard would spend her whole life trembling under the monster’s shadow, and the monster, unable to grow his power, would remain a monster, stagnant and confined to the North.