“I’m sorry, my lady, but the marquisate’s borderlands have already been promised to me by young marquis Devon and His Majesty.”

“I’m sorry, Sir, but if you act so naively, you’ll never receive those borderlands.”

Arsen never did receive those lands, right up until Lydia’s death five years later.

“Naive? Did you just call me naive?”

First weak, and now naive.

Arsen had never heard such words even as a child.

“Listen carefully to me. Devon wants to keep you under his thumb. So he’ll make excuses and never give you that land.”

Arsen was particularly fixated on those borderlands. Even Lydia, who had barely exchanged proper words with him, knew this fact, so Devon certainly knew it too.

“If you marry me and join the Evansi family, they might give up that land. As a dowry.”

“Ha.”

Arsen let out a short sigh, as he had a strong feeling her words might be true.

“But His Majesty promised.”

“Ah, Richard. Ourdear  Emperor.”

Lydia pointed at herself and said,

“The very embodiment of what promises mean to His Majesty is standing right before you.”

It was around the time when the previous emperor was on his deathbed and the crown prince was about to ascend to the throne.

Despite being born of a commoner, he was a thorn in the crown prince’s side precisely because he resembled the previous emperor the most.

To make matters worse, his mother had been a maid in the empress’s palace, making Richard a thorn in the empress’s side as well.

When the crown prince ascended, Richard’s life would be forfeit.

When no one would extend a hand to him, Lydia confessed her love to him.

She proposed they get engaged and go live in the marquisate. If they lived there like they were dead to the world, eventually both the emperor and empress would forget about Richard.

Lydia staked her family name on her proposal to Richard.

The marquis grabbed the back of his neck in shock and Devon threw a fit, but since Lydia had already announced their engagement publicly, there was no way to revoke it.

In the end, the marquis chose to leave his life in the capital and return to his territory.

On that journey, Richard promised,

‘Though I may not share your feelings now, nor can I promise that I will come to share them, I swear to remember this day and keep my loyalty.’

But what did he do?

He fell for Lydia’s cousin Giselle and tossed Lydia aside like an old shoe.

“Richard will make you different offers. The position of Commander of the First Knight Order, or perhaps some other fertile territory.”

But Arsen didn’t need such lands.

It had to be specifically those barren lands on the border of the marquisate.

“His Majesty could order the marquis to transfer that land to me.”

“Even His Majesty can’t freely interfere with nobles’ territories. Why do you think the previous emperor was deposed? Not for tyranny, but for arbitrarily confiscating territories.”

Richard would never make such a mistake.

Lydia was certain of that.

“Besides, Richard isn’t in a position to make demands of Devon right now. He already has to bow to Devon to formally adopt Giselle into our family.”

Giselle was a distant relative of the Evansi marquis family.

Having lost her parents at an early age, the Marquis Evansi, feeling sorry for her, put her in charge of managing the lord’s castle within the marquisate.

That’s how she ended up catching Richard’s eye while he was staying at the lord’s castle, but anyway.

Currently, the emperor wanted to have Giselle adopted as a daughter of the Evansi marquis family before she ascended as empress.

“Richard has always had an inferiority complex about being born of a commoner.”

“I believe the empress-to-be is not a commoner.”

“She might as well be from an obscure family. Who would consider a family with no territory and not even a single mansion to be nobility?”

He had fallen in love, and wanted to marry Giselle and make her empress, but at the same time, her background continued to trouble him.

“He wouldn’t want his son to be born to an empress from an obscure family.”

“Son?”

“Oh, the baby in Giselle’s womb right now is a boy.”

Lydia continued as if that wasn’t the important point.

“If Richard offers Devon something tempting enough to trade, who knows what might happen. But would he give up something precious enough to replace you?”

The Evansi marquis family was the primary contributor to making Richard emperor.

This fact was famous enough for even passing children to know.

Which meant the Evansi family’s power was growing by the minute even now.

“Would Richard really want our family to grow even more powerful?”

Lydia added,

“Richard is that man’s bloodline, after all.”

By “that man,” she meant the previous emperor who had branded the Bayern ducal family as traitors and cut off their bloodline in one stroke.

Lydia was saying that Richard was the son of the kind of man who would call the duke “my loyal subject” to his face while stabbing him in the back.

“Do you know about the Bayern family?”

“I heard that when the Bayern family’s power grew too great, the previous emperor cut off their heads. Ah, this isn’t something I learned from my past life—everyone thinks this way.”

They just don’t speak of it. This was completely new information to Arsen.

So that was the reason. His grandfather and father had always been loyal to the emperor, but what they got in return was betrayal.

Though he tried to maintain an expressionless face, he couldn’t hide the vein that bulged above his clenched jaw.

Seeing Arsen like this, Lydia almost offered to help clear the Bayern family’s false charges but stopped herself.

It was uncertain whether she could help or not, but Lydia had no intention of staying long in this empire.

Once she settled her grudges and debts from her past life, Lydia would leave for the warm south, to a place where winter didn’t exist.

“Then what do you want? Do you wish to dethrone the emperor again? I understand your feelings, but that would be difficult.”

“I know. Richard will be a good emperor.”

She had heard stories of Richard becoming quite a decent emperor from newly arriving convicts and the guards who passed on news to the labor camp.

Lydia had expected as much.

When no one else properly recognized Richard’s worth, Lydia was the only one who saw his value and fell in love with him.

“But he won’t live as a happy emperor.”

Though she lacked the power to bring him down, she intended to create plenty of irritations, like splinters under his fingernails.

She might not be able to make Richard collapse clutching the back of his neck, but she was confident she could make him lose sleep with worry.

Lydia’s revenge would be thin and long-lasting.

“If you still find it hard to believe that I know the future, I can show you proof. You know my father has contracted the White Ghost disease, right?”

Named for the hallucinations of white-robed ghosts that afflicted its victims, the White Ghost disease was currently incurable.

It was a disease with a hundred percent mortality rate, and Devon considered his father as good as dead.

But around Lydia’s third year of forced labor, a cure would be developed.

Lydia had heard about the treatment from a doctor who was imprisoned for selling drugs to Count Brastelma.

Lydia planned to use this to save her father. She needed her father’s existence to get revenge on Devon.

“I’m going to cure my father’s disease.”

“How?”

“That’s a secret, of course. The method to make the marquisate your land is also a secret, so don’t try to find out.”

Lydia cut off Arsen’s question entirely.

“Now take me to the temple.”

“Are you planning to make a confession at the temple before taking your revenge?”

“Confession? Do I look like someone who would do something like that?”

Arsen almost answered “you don’t look like that kind of person” but opened his lips and immediately closed them.

Lydia’s eyes narrowed.

“You thought I don’t look like that kind of person, right?”

“I refuse to answer.”

“That is an answer, you know?”

Lydia, momentarily irritated, cleared her throat with a “hmm, hmm” to calm herself down.

“I’m going to become a priestess.”

Arsen’s pupils trembled, despite his otherwise well-maintained composure.

He looked at Lydia as if he’d just heard that the sun rises in the west.

“If I become a priestess, people won’t misunderstand when I follow you. And if I belong to the temple, even Devon can’t imprison me arbitrarily.”

The temple’s power wasn’t overwhelming, but it wasn’t entirely powerless either.

“If I take a vow of chastity, even the emperor can’t order me to marry Count Monde.”

“Count Monde is—”

“Yes, that old man with two children!”

“I was going to say he’s known for his good character.”

What? Unsure whether Arsen was taking Count Monde’s side or Richard’s side with this comment, Lydia rose up in indignation, trembling.

Or rather, she tried to rise but fell back onto the bed because of the blanket wrapped tightly around her.

Lydia roughly tore away the blanket with heated hands.

“Calm down, my lady. It was a joke.”

“Liar! You were serious. Your expression was completely serious!”

Arsen took the blanket Lydia had thrown aside and wrapped it tightly around her body again.

“If you don’t trust me that much, just tie me up with rope. What’s with this blanket?”

“I told you this isn’t restraint. It’s because of your careless attire. I’ll bring you something suitable to wear soon, so please stay like that for a moment.”

“What’s wrong with my attire?”

Is she really asking because she doesn’t know?