But even Vivian could not look away. Who in the empire could dare be compared to Renard Callen’s face? Who could have known that a face capable of turning the entire capital upside down, had it ever cast even a shadow over the social scene, sat behind a mask all this time?

The original plan, to expose the monster’s cursed mark and marry him boldly, vanished without a trace. There was no cursed mark to expose.

The entire premise of her scenario wiped out, her mind went blank. On that blank slate, her instincts began to work, cold and precise.

The imperial family’s scenario, foisting a troublesome bastard onto a monster bearing a cursed mark, was wrong from the very beginning. It wasn’t a curse they were passing back and forth. It was a rough gem, and no one recognized it.

A war hero. The ruler of the North. A presence burned into the minds of every soul in the empire. The cursed mark that obscured all of it was nothing but a shared delusion from the start.

Every thought Vivian had flashed through her in an instant. How many seconds passed since she lifted the mask? Vivian brought the mask back down over Renard’s face. The motion was gentle but swift. The hardwood settled back against his skin, and he returned to the form the world knew.

Throughout that brief span of time, Renard was frozen. From the moment the mask was fully lifted, he locked up completely, and even as Vivian replaced it, he could not so much as twitch. If not for the faint sound of his breathing, she could have believed he was a statue.

Only after Vivian’s hand left the mask entirely did a large, thick-knuckled hand rise to grip both sides of it. He pressed the mask firmly against his face, the way someone would who needed to confirm it was still in place. He looked like a man who wanted to insist it could never come off.

“I’m Vivian.”

This was not the first reaction she expected from Renard. She turned her mind quickly to find what to say next, but Renard’s voice came from behind the mask before she could.

“I’m truly sorry. Truly. How it will come to you, in what form…… I’m sorry, but I don’t know that either. So I don’t know how to stop it. Or rather, was there ever a way to begin with……”

It was close to rambling. Every trace of the dignity belonging to a commander who swept through battlefields or a grand duke who ruled the North was gone. His dry voice shook and trembled. The hand pressing down on the mask shuddered, and something surged up from within him.

“Why, then.”

His voice sounded wrung out.

“Why did you look? Who told you to take it off? If you only stayed still, I was trying to make sure at least this much wouldn’t reach you. And yet why……”

The last word tore through the cold air of the room like a cry. But Renard himself flinched at the sound before Vivian could react with surprise. As though the voice that came out of his own mouth belonged to some unfamiliar beast, he hastily lowered his tone.

“No, no.”

The movement of shaking his head was heavy.

“That’s not something to say to you. It isn’t your fault. If there is blame…… it’s mine, for accepting the imperial family’s proposal even in this state. If I refused the engagement with you from the start, if you weren’t in this room, if you never came close to me, it would have been fine. And I…… blamed you for it.”

The self-reproach seemed to be dragged up from somewhere deeper than the anger. Renard slowly took one step back.

Vivian thought he was acting exactly like a plague victim. Well, by common sense, it was similar enough to a plague. His face was the source of the curse. Or so everyone believed, until Vivian confirmed otherwise with her own eyes just now.

“Listen. I’ll do everything I can. Physicians, priests, anyone who can be summoned from the capital, no, from anywhere in this empire, I’ll summon them all. I’ll spare neither money nor people. But……”

Renard, who put distance between himself and Vivian, steadied his breathing. His broad shoulders trembled faintly. Speaking the next words aloud seemed to him like a terrible punishment in itself.

“I’ll be honest. As I said before, I don’t know when this curse will come, or what form it will take. I’ll search the family’s historical records, but as far as I know, no one brought this curse to light in nearly five hundred years. Not until you came. So be prepared. Something unimaginably dreadful will befall you.”

His voice trembled slightly on the last sentence. The man said to have never once felt fear on the battlefield stood shaking before a shapeless terror.

Vivian understood. This was sincere. He truly believed, perhaps as early as tonight, that Vivian’s body would begin to rot from the inside, or that her face would be crushed like mud, or that something even more dreadful, something beyond words, would descend upon her. Just as every soul in the empire believed.

The more Renard came apart, the calmer Vivian became. Her mind worked with an almost unsettling clarity. In her eyes, the image of Renard trembling in inconsolable anguish settled in.

There is no cursed mark beneath the mask.

She was certain of what she saw. What was under the mask was a face not merely fine but unreasonably handsome. It was not shrouded in any murky haze. In the light, at very close range, she already confirmed there was no cursed mark on him whatsoever.

Vivian lightly closed her hand into a fist. For a moment, without realizing it, she nearly let slip words meant to reassure him. Was it because the man before her seemed so small and fragile? Or was it because he was so handsome she was briefly under his spell? Trusting in someone’s outward appearance was not like her at all.

The social world was a frightening place. Vivian learned there that the sharpest blade was always hidden behind the warmest smile. Tears and trembling were cards anyone could play as they pleased, so she could never entirely rule out the possibility that all this trembling before her was an act.

What if the man who knew better than anyone that his own face was perfectly fine was, for some reason, keeping up the performance of a monster his entire life? What if he was testing her reaction, the reaction of the bride now standing before him?

Of course, even in the social world, she never saw anyone perform to this degree. But she could not say with certainty that it was impossible. Letting her guard down always crept up like a viper and bit at the heel.

Vivian quietly covered the card she confirmed and tucked it away in her mind. Instead, she opened her mouth. Her voice returned to its usual tone.

“Grand Duke.”

Renard’s shoulders flinched at the clear, ringing call. His fist visibly clenched, seemingly bracing himself to hear the reproach and resentment that would follow from Vivian.

If this was sincere, he was a man truly incapable of hiding what was inside him. If it was an act, there was no telling what malice lay concealed within.

She slowly lifted her gaze, which drifted to his fist, back up to Renard. If this was brilliant acting, she had no intention of playing along with his script.

“What is all this fuss about? Is it really such a grave matter that I looked at the face of the man who is to be my husband?”

Renard went still for a moment. Even with every expression hidden beneath the mask, she could feel that he was doubting his own ears. His reply came back long after the moment to respond passed.

“You…… you don’t know what you’ve just done……”

“I know perfectly well, so don’t worry.”

Vivian cut him off, gently but firmly. She had not the slightest intention of being drawn into a scenario where she played a grief-stricken, cursed heroine.

“From the moment I received the imperial decree, I made my peace with all of it. Do you truly believe there is a single soul in this empire who doesn’t know about the curse of the Northern Grand Ducal House? I came knowing full well about the cursed mark and the curse, so there’s no point trying to frighten me now.”

“But, but…… it must have been, truly dreadful……”

“That is for me to judge, Grand Duke. So please stop trembling like that. It’s painful to watch.”

Renard could not answer and went still.

Could someone who was just cursed truly be this composed? On Vivian’s face, visible beyond the mask, there was none of the disgust, fear, or contempt he braced himself for.

In all the warnings he heard from the moment he was born, no reaction like this existed. No, the very idea of someone lifting the mask in the first place should have been unthinkable.

Vivian had no intention of watching Renard’s silent confusion drag on. The longer it lasted, the more her true thoughts would show. She was not as shaken as Renard, but the discovery a moment ago left her in no small amount of turmoil herself.

She lightly gathered her skirts and turned. The jewels clinked softly against one another as she moved.

“I’m sorry for barging in like that. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

No reply came, but Vivian continued without missing a beat.