“…Warm.”

His voice had grown even more languid than before. Unable to resist the weight of his heavy eyelids, he closed his eyes, arms wrapped securely around her.

Raylin, who had been planning to escape and regret everything, found herself unconsciously fulfilling her role as his hug pillow.

Like the wings of a butterfly caught in a storm, her eyelashes trembled rapidly—before she finally held her breath and went still.

How much time had passed?

“Your Highness? Your Highness, are you asleep?”

Raylin asked in a much quieter voice than before, listening to his even breaths and the slow, steady thumping of his heart against her pressed chest.

“Ai…ger, are you asleep?”

When no response came, she hesitated for a moment.

‘Should I slip away? If I replace myself with a pillow…’

But before she could act, as if he had read her thoughts, his arm tightened around her waist. Raylin gave up.

Fine. Well, this was my plan anyway.

Unlike tedious book reading or lullabies, it seemed like he had completely fallen asleep. That was a relief.

At least it worked.

But how long is he going to sleep like this? Surely not until morning? What am I supposed to say to the maid who comes in to wake me…?

Her heart pounded, her mind spun, and whether it was from overheating or simply because Aiger’s embrace felt too comfortable, Raylin’s eyelids slowly drooped.

‘No, I mustn’t sleep. I have to wake him at the right time and send him back…’

The heart that had been racing moments ago was now strangely calm.

Thump, then another thump. Without realizing it, her heartbeat had synced with his.

Raylin, who had planned to stay alert with her eyes wide open in case he woke up, eventually lost the battle against sleep and began nodding off.

Within minutes, the peaceful sound of two people breathing evenly filled the room.

That night, unaware that the safest and most comforting place in the world to him was by her side, Aiger drifted into slumber.

It was the first deep sleep he had had since he was a very young child, a time so distant he could no longer remember it.

***

Scratch. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

In the deathly quiet room, the only sound was that of fingernails being bitten.

The grating noise continued for some time, scraping at one’s nerves, until—

Screech.

A chilling sound of flesh being torn echoed, and all noise suddenly ceased.

Drip. Drip, drip.

Catherine glared venomously at the blood droplets trickling from the raw tear in her thumb, breathing heavily as she muttered to herself.

“So that’s how it is. So Theron Lucart wasn’t in the capital at all during that time.”

The reason that damnable heir of this wretched family had reacted as if he had never even heard the word ‘breakup’ was because he truly hadn’t.

Catherine flicked her throbbing thumb in irritation.

Drip, drip.

Blood splattered across the sofa and carpet, but she didn’t make the slightest effort to stop the bleeding. Instead, she stomped her foot furiously.

“Why on earth did he suddenly go there?! Why?! Why now, of all times?!”

Theron Lucart—the original novel’s male lead and her current fiancé.

And he had left the capital without so much as a word to her.

“No, he didn’t need to tell me. It’s not like we were ever on good terms. That part doesn’t matter. But if he was going to disappear like that, he should have taken care of the breakup first!”

Consumed by rage, Catherine kept stomping before collapsing onto the floor.

Frustrated, she grabbed the now-cold tea and gulped it down before bursting out in anger again.

“So now he doesn’t care at all? This is the same bastard who tried every trick in the book to break off the engagement after meeting Julia!”

After falling in love with Julia at first sight, Theron had done everything he could to shake off Catherine, who had clung to him obsessively.

As a result, Catherine, unable to give up her unrequited love, had fought back by harassing Julia, following the typical development of such a story.

“If I said I’d break off the engagement first, he should have been thanking me! He should be rushing to get it done! Is he doing this on purpose? Does he want to torture Catherine the obsessive woman with false hope?! That damn—”

Had Theron overheard her, he would have been so dumbfounded by the absurdity of it all that he might have leaped out of bed in protest.

The truth was, he had quite literally forgotten about the engagement.

He had far more pressing matters to deal with.

Of course, even if Catherine had known his reasons, her reaction wouldn’t have changed much.

To her, the most important thing was breaking off the engagement, not the corruption of a port estate or some immortal elixir.

After ranting about Theron for a long while, Catherine ran her fingers through her disheveled hair and instinctively bit her thumb—then froze.

“…Damn it.”

Only now, seeing the skin beneath her nail torn to the quick, did the pain register.

She cursed a few more times before pulling out a hidden box from under the bed to hastily treat the wound.

She could call the Sillion family doctor, and he would surely come—but he’d half-heartedly patch her up and then run off to her brother to tattle about everything she’d done.

She had treated countless nail-biting wounds in Korea, so this was nothing new.

After roughly bandaging her thumb, Catherine closed the box and sank into thought again.

She had messed up from the start. No, she had never even gotten started properly.

Her grand plan—to cleanly break off the engagement with the male lead, save up money, leave Sillion, and live her own life—hadn’t even begun.

She had handed Theron the metaphorical shovel, yet instead of using it, he had gotten distracted by something else.

“What went wrong? Where? When?”

Once again, she voiced the question that had been troubling her for some time.

But with everything going awry, tracing back to the exact moment things had derailed was no easy task.

Still, it wasn’t as if she was as clueless as before.

Unlike the past, when she had run around frantically without gaining anything, she had recently taken a more calculated approach, poking around in various places—and it had yielded some results.

First, the matter of the mine.

A grand ball had been held recently, one so extravagant that it had the entire social scene abuzz, celebrating the return of the Mifaro lady.

As the public face of the Sillion family, Catherine had been able to attend.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the foolish knight who had eloped with the Mifaro lady hadn’t gone so far as to mention her name.

Thus, the lady had greeted her without any noticeable reaction.

“Raylin, if not for you, Lady Greuga, I truly don’t know what would have become of me…”

Catherine could now understand why the mine that had been almost within her grasp had disappeared like an illusion.

Greuga. Raylin Greuga.

A lady born frail and sickly, with little influence in high society despite her family’s status.

That was all Catherine knew about Raylin.

If she were to add an insignificant detail, it would be that Raylin was engaged to the crown prince?

But since Raylin had no presence whatsoever in the original story, that engagement must have fallen apart before the crown prince’s downfall.

‘And yet, that woman took my mine?’

The second matter was Kertan and her younger sister.

In the end, she found neither of them.

If she had the money and the manpower, she could have tracked them down, but Catherine had no such resources.

She had sent her maid to the gladiator arena a few more times, but the answers she received were no better than what she had already heard.

The third matter was the engagement.

It was at this point that Catherine began to pay close attention to Greuga.

And with good reason…

“Th-they say he left for that territory after his conversation with Lord Roir, the heir of Greuga.”

The information had been purchased from a backstreet informant with the last of the money she scraped together by selling the dress and jewelry she had worn at Lady Mifaro’s return banquet. It was reliable.

The second time. It was the second time that something tied to Greuga had interfered with her plans.

Was it intentional? No, they had no reason to do so, did they?

In the original story, Greuga and Catherine had no interaction whatsoever. Greuga had no reason to hold any grudges against Sillion, which had no real impact on their lives.

Then, was it just coincidence?

“If that’s the case, then I can’t just ignore it.”

If they weren’t even doing it on purpose and yet kept getting in her way, then it was fate.

And for that very reason, she had to be wary and eliminate them.

Fate was unpredictable—no matter how much one prepared, there was no telling when and how it would strike from behind.

Catherine decided to be wary of Greuga.

And if possible, to deal with them.

Finally, the casino.

Recalling the previous night, Catherine gritted her teeth and shouted.

“Why the hell is that bastard suddenly doing this to me?”

It was truly ridiculous.

“I’m sorry, but you must leave.”