30 minutes before meeting Arsen—

Lydia woke up trembling in her room at the marquis’s residence.

She had dreamed a long dream.

Tangled memories flashed through her mind one by one. Now everything became clear.

The eastern manastone mine labor camp.

That accursed place with long winters and endless summer rains.

Life was horrific, sleeping pressed against others in rat-infested quarters.

For Lydia, who had never lifted anything heavier than a teacup in her life, the labor was deadly.

Yet Lydia endured that labor camp for five long years.

It was thanks to those who stayed by her side.

In the midst of grueling labor, those who consistently reached out to Lydia, who was nothing but a burden despite being a marquis’s daughter—

Those who helped with her work and took beatings alongside her.

They were Lydia’s family.

Not her father who died unable to prevent his daughter from being dragged to a labor camp, nor her brother who never once visited Lydia in five years.

“Ugh……”

Lydia tried to raise her body.

Though she had returned to the past and they wouldn’t remember her, it didn’t matter. This time, it was Lydia’s turn to reach out to them first.

For that, she needed to regain her strength first. There was nothing she could do lying in bed.

“Ugh.”

Just turning to her side made her nauseous.

She had consumed poison that day due to bad timing, but it was only a few drops.

It would be more accurate to say she had merely tasted it rather than consumed it.

If that man, Arsen, hadn’t entered at the exact moment she was about to drink the poison, she wouldn’t have swallowed even a single drop, but he couldn’t have known that.

And Arsen was quite important in Lydia’s current life. If she could persuade him…

“Ugh.”

Persuasion aside, Lydia felt like she would die from the cold.

Her entire body trembled like an aspen tree.

Why was it so cold?

Lydia gritted her chattering teeth and raised herself up slightly.

She didn’t know when she had been moved from the palace, but the room was freezing.

A glance at the fireplace showed no embers. It was still cold in the mornings and evenings, and they usually lit the fireplace at night.

That would leave the room warm until morning.

But now, far from being warm, the room was like ice.

It meant the fireplace hadn’t been lit the previous night.

‘Why is no one here?’

It was incomprehensible that no maid was by her side while Lydia was bedridden.

Normally, one of the many maids of the marquis’s residence would keep vigil by Lydia’s bedside through the night.

It was truly strange. But the extreme thirst and headache that hit Lydia along with the cold numbed her thinking.

Lydia barely managed to reach out and pull the bell cord beside the bed.

After pulling it several times, she finally heard movement outside the door.

Click. The doorknob turned.

She was debating whether to ask for water first or to have the fire lit.

“Anna! What are you doing there!”

The butler’s startled shout was heard.

“Ah, the young miss, seems to have woken up.”

Anna’s cowering voice filtered through the slightly opened door.

“Have you forgotten that the young master absolutely, absolutely forbade anyone from entering the young miss’s room? He said not to even come near this floor. Go downstairs now.”

“B-but, the young miss has woken up……”

“Hmph, do you want to get kicked out? Go downstairs now, quickly. Before the young master sees you.”

Ah, Devon Evansi, that cursed bastard.

Lydia let out a pained groan as anger surged within her.

She had overlooked the fact that her father was not in the capital during this time.

In her previous life, Marquis Evansi was bedridden and hovering between life and death around the time Lydia’s engagement was broken off, and he died before Lydia was sent to the labor camp.

So currently, the marquis would be in a state where he barely regained consciousness once every two or three days, and all family affairs were handled by her brother, Devon.

‘You are the shame of the Evansi family. You should have been the one to die by poison.’

He had stabbed his sister with those words as she was being dragged to the labor camp. Going even further, he held a funeral claiming Lydia had died.

When Lydia heard about this later in the labor camp, she cursed him again and again.

Her brother, who had erased his sister who tarnished Devon Evansi’s ‘reputation’ by hammering nails into a coffin without a corpse and sprinkling dirt over it.

If her brother had done that in her previous life, why would this life be any different?

He probably ordered everyone to leave her alone because he was displeased with the commotion she caused at the imperial palace.

And if she died, all the better, was that it?

But Lydia had no intention of dying for him.

She would definitely survive and shatter that honor and reputation that Devon Evansi cherished so much into pieces.

Of course, she needed to survive first.

“Ah……”

Lydia bit her lip and swung her feet out of bed. When she stood up firmly, pain swept through her from head to toe.

What kind of poison did I buy? I didn’t just ask for anything strong.

It was remarkable how difficult it was after swallowing just a few drops. One fortunate thing was that she was accustomed to pain.

In the labor camp, even with a broken leg from a beating, she still had to go out and work.

Compared to that, this level of pain was nothing.

Though the taste of blood came from her tightly bitten lips, Lydia moved forward one step at a time.

She grasped the doorknob and staggered, then held onto the corridor railing and took each painful step. Her bloodshot eyes were wide open.

She felt like vomiting even though she hadn’t eaten anything. Lydia descended the stairs one by one, slowly. Had she come halfway down?

“Haah……”

It became too difficult to stand any longer.

Lydia collapsed while still holding onto the stair railing.

If she didn’t want to tumble down the stairs, she would have to crawl down.

Crawling like a rat hurt her pride, but that was momentary.

Lydia lay flat against the stairs.

And as she reached her arm downward, she froze at the intense gaze directed at her from the bottom of the stairs.

“…Sir Arsen?”

Blood-tinged red eyes looked up at Lydia, filled with bewilderment and questions.

“What are you doing there, my lady.”

Arsen climbed the stairs two at a time with his long legs. His cool gaze swept over Lydia’s appearance.

Pale face, hair matted with cold sweat, lips bleeding from being bitten too much.

Anyone could see she had just come from a sickbed.

“You don’t seem to have recovered yet, where are you trying to go?”

His emotionless voice resonated softly.

“Ki-kitchen, water……”

As if to prove her words, a metallic sound came from her parched throat.

Lydia abandoned her pride and dignity, stretching her arms toward him to be carried.

She had no energy for lengthy explanations.

Lydia desperately needed a sip of water to quench her maddening thirst.

After briefly wondering why Lydia was acting this way, Arsen soon realized her gesture meant she wanted him to carry her to the kitchen.

He sighed faintly but didn’t leave Lydia behind.

Just like in her previous life.

* * *

Richard, who was the third prince born of a commoner, left for the Evansi marquisate after getting engaged to Lydia when his half-brother, the crown prince, ascended to the throne.

When the crowned crown prince began his tyrannical rule, Richard staged a coup.

Powerful families including the Evansi marquisate supported Richard, but it wasn’t easy to depose an emperor who had already taken the throne.

They needed troops to break through the emperor’s multiple layers of siege and reach the capital. That’s why they called for Arsen and his knights.

Known as the “Black Wolf Knights,” they were more like mercenaries than knights.

What mattered was that each of them fought like a hundred men. Additionally, Arsen, their commander and the young head of the Edis family, was a knight who could rightfully be called the Empire’s finest swordsman, surpassing even a hundred warriors.

He had saved Richard’s life several times and was the greatest contributor to the coup’s success.

A young, handsome, and capable knight from a humble family.

Until she was dragged to the labor camp, that was all Lydia thought of Arsen.

“Drink slowly.”

Lydia looked at Arsen as he held her in his arms and let lukewarm water flow to her lips from his own.

The position of being in Arsen’s arms and looking up at his face felt familiar.

At the end of her previous life, Arsen had come to the labor camp where Lydia was.

He hadn’t come looking for Lydia but to take away the colleagues who had become like family to her.

However, by the time he arrived, a terrible plague had already passed through. Those he was looking for, Lydia’s colleagues, were all dead.

Only Lydia remained alive.

Arsen had no reason to take Lydia out of the labor camp.

Yet he did so anyway.

Although she didn’t live long afterward, thanks to him, Lydia was able to end her life outside the labor camp, and in the process, she learned one of Arsen’s secrets.

The secret of his birth that he had to hide.

Arsen was not of Edis blood.

He was the sole heir and survivor of the Bayern ducal family, which had been executed for treason.

That was why Arsen, despite his abilities, had to hide in the borderlands of the marquisate, at the edge of the land.

‘I know Sir Arsen is the heir to the Bayern family, I can help you.’

Lydia’s lips moved slightly.

But due to her extreme weakness, the only word Lydia managed to say was,

“……Bayern.”

That was all. Having exhausted her strength coming down the stairs, Lydia fell back into an unconscious-like sleep once her thirst was quenched.

“……”

Left behind, Arsen was speechless at the situation.

Guilty for being unable to ignore Lydia, he had planned to help her moisten her throat and then leave her to the servants while he went to meet Devon.

Afterward, whether Lydia was neglected or not—though it seemed likely she would be—was not his concern.

But now Lydia, nestled in his arms, had touched upon his secret.

Lydia Evansi was no longer a woman he could dismiss.