“Is there anywhere that needs more massaging?”

“No, I’m fine.”

I sank deeper into the bath and silently stroked my stomach. Thinking of the child who could no longer be there, tears rolled down my cheeks. I quickly splashed water over my face so the others wouldn’t see.

I had wanted to protect her. Even without a father’s love, I would have loved her with everything I had. I was truly certain of that. And the child, as though answering that feeling, had let me know she was alive.

At that moment, I felt such joy, like I held the whole world in my hands…….

But not long after the child told me she existed, she had to die alongside me. Without ever getting to be born.

And I, who had failed to protect her, had returned.

‘Only me. Only I am alive.’

I had thought all of this was a dream, but it was not. That was the conclusion I reached after pinching myself countless times. There was pain, and with every bite of food, I felt the vivid stirring of life.

‘I came back in such a pathetic way. I couldn’t even protect her, and here I am, alive on my own.’

Whether God heard my vow to take revenge as they killed me, I had lived. Returned to this very moment, perfectly placed to deliver that revenge.

“My lady. Are you uncomfortable anywhere?”

I gave a small nod to their careful question.

Evian, an orphan with no one in the world. That was who I was.

Dertosse was the one who had taken me in, not even knowing who I was, gone so far as to fabricate a false identity for me, and married me off.

‘Because that was the only way he could get what he wanted.’

His reasons for choosing me included the imperial law that required marriage to inherit a family, but he also had a purpose in using me to make the woman he loved want him for herself.

‘In the end, he achieved both.’

Having gotten what he wanted, Dertosse offered me no protection.

He doubted the paternity of the child I carried, stood by while his family tormented me over my fabricated status, and even appeared at a noble tribunal to make a scene, claiming I had “dishonored the nobility and taken up with another man.”

‘He joined in the torment himself. Together with his family. He was the one who wanted me dead as soon as possible. He was the one who smiled as he poured poison into my mouth in my final moments.’

Every word he had ever said about loving me was a lie told for his own gain, and to him, I had been nothing more than an outlet for his desires.

Even so, I had tried to hold on, believing that someday he would come back to me. Because I had believed his words of love, even if he only ever said them when satisfying his desires. Perhaps even my love for the child, my desperate need to protect her, had been rooted in that wretched hope that he might return.

But it had all been an illusion, and I had been a fool.

“Everything is ready.”

It was then.

The maids who had been washing me rose from their places one by one. I surfaced from my thoughts and looked ahead to find a mirror on one side of the bathroom.

Snow-white skin, black hair falling to the waist, dark as a night sky. And eyes that cast both blue and sky-colored light whenever they caught the light, giving them an air of mystery.

I had looked at this face for so long, but Evian on her wedding day truly shone.

“All right.”

“We’ll prepare your clothes.”

I took their hands and moved slowly. It was only as far as the dressing room right next door, but even in that short time, my mind kept turning without pause. Once I was dressed and all the preparations were done, I would soon face Dertosse. I could not spend the night with that man without a single thought, without a plan.

If I did, nothing would be different from before.

In the meantime, a thin, sheer garment was draped over my body. But the barely-there piece was pulled off the moment it touched me.

“I told you. This is what she should be dressed in.”

The head maid, Pertra, who had been standing quietly beside me without raising her voice, snatched the garment away. She was my mother-in-law’s maid and the oldest among the maids, and she had been one of the first to lead the charge in tormenting me.

And now that same woman was being sharp about my clothes.

‘You were the one who couldn’t wait to make my life miserable. Mixing sand into my food, hiding a blade in my bread…… you did all of that and earned my mother-in-law’s favor for it.’

Of course she was not someone I could look on kindly. In this household, the people who tormented “Evian” most cruelly were the very ones my mother-in-law rewarded.

The reason for the torment was one thing and one thing only.

The single fact that my background was lowly. And yet it was Dertosse who had fabricated my status in the first place, but the moment it came to light, I alone had to bear all the consequences.

“What is going on?”

With those memories fresh in my mind, there was no warmth left in my voice.

“It’s nothing, my lady.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing. Is there a problem with the clothes?”

“It seems a maid failed to distinguish a garment that came in by mistake.”

“A garment that came in by mistake?”

“Yes. The mistress personally took great care to have it prepared at Adsalong, and would you believe it! What arrived was a dress made by someone who shares only the ‘Ad’ name. How dreadful!”

Pertra, who had never needed much encouragement to run her mouth, added her gossip without hesitation. She even shook her head as she crumpled my dress.

“Shares only the name?”

“Yes. Pay it no mind and simply wear this one.”

Had something like this happened before? Then again, I had worn what they told me to and done what they told me to do, so it was no wonder my memory of it was unclear.

But the moment I heard her words, an interesting thought came to me.

I couldn’t hold back the laugh that burst out.

“Shares only the name, you say.”

I had vowed to take revenge, but as someone with no family to speak of, the revenge I could carry out on my own was far from certain.

But a single offhand remark from Pertra had given me a significant hint.

‘From the same family line, the same yet different. Like the maker of this dress, someone who shares only the name.’

Thanks to that, I put on the dress she handed me in good spirits.

‘Princess Rechel, who had an affair with my husband. She supposedly has an older brother who shares her family name but is, in every other way, different from her. Isen, I believe.’

The mind that had been grinding to a halt suddenly spun into motion.

Perhaps the starting point of my revenge had always been rooted in Princess Rechel, the woman who had taken up with my husband.

* * *

A month had passed since the wedding.

If anything had changed from before, it was that their mistreatment no longer weighed on me the way it once had.

To marry me, Dertosse had fabricated a false identity for me. Just as before, the false identity unraveled within a week, and the members of the marquis’s household wasted no time falling over each other to make my life miserable.

“Wretched people.”

Not only was there nothing fit to wash with, there was no one to change my bedsheets either, so when it got unbearable I had to wash them myself. Since they only gave me dresses for official occasions, I wore the same ones over and over, until I eventually resorted to wearing dresses the maids had thrown out.

Karla had been slipping me food and helping me in secret when she could, but I didn’t want her suffering on my account, so the moment the family started in on her, I sent her away from me.

“Well. It’s only been a month, so the dresses are still wearable.”

I looked over the dress, which was not bad compared to what I had worn later, and glanced around.

My mother-in-law, who had taken to treating me worse than the maids, had even ordered me to go out and retrieve her jewelry herself. So I had come outside in a carriage driven by a coachman who treated me worse than a dog.

‘It was all to give her grounds to punish me. She had already laid the groundwork last time, so this time she would make sure to put me in my place properly.’

Whether I found the jewelry or not, I was going to be hit either way. So I had decided not to run my mother-in-law’s errand. I hadn’t done it last time either, so this time would be no different.

Instead, I sat at a cafe at my leisure, waiting for the guest who would come to meet me. The last time I went out, I had sent a letter with a one-sided appointment, and today was the day I had set.

Before long, a man made his way to the innermost seat of the cafe.

He was a man with pink hair that drew the eye on its own. He had pulled a deep hood over his head, perhaps worried someone might recognize him, so I hadn’t noticed him until he was right in front of me.

A dark shadow fell over the table, and I looked up to meet a pair of deep green eyes. The man, having lowered his hood, tilted his head at me with a look of puzzlement.

“I half thought it was someone’s idea of a joke.”

“I knew you would come, my lord of misfortune.”

I glanced around to see if anyone had followed him, but as I had expected, there was no one behind him. The moment he received my letter, he must have moved with the intention of meeting me alone from the start.

“Please, have a seat.”

His name was Isen Ilterich. He was known as the heir to the Ilterich duchy. It was my first time meeting him face to face, having only heard of him through rumor, but I recognized him at once thanks to a resemblance to Rechel, Dertosse’s lover. Rather than sitting, he voiced his displeasure.

“Lord of misfortune. Is that meant for me?”

Instead of answering, I tipped the tea that had long gone cold into my mouth.

“Of course. You were born of a woman who was no noblewoman, and you stand to lose everything because of it. Quite pitiable, wouldn’t you say.”

The languid expression he had worn until a moment ago hardened in an instant. The one person I had found. The only way forward.

The brother of the woman who had taken up with my husband. Isen.

He was the one and only means by which I could take my revenge.