Chapter 1

“AAAAAAAH! Chris! Chris! What is this? What in the world happened! What were all of you doing!”

Scarlet frowned at the scream that rang out as if it would tear through the ears. The man who had gone deathly pale and lost consciousness was her husband, Chris. His limp, lifelessly hanging arm and grotesquely twisted leg showed how serious the accident he had suffered was.

Was that why? Gloria, who never lost her dignity under any circumstances, threw herself at the feet of the son being carried in on the stretcher and let out a grief-stricken wail.

At one time, Scarlet had thought she was the kind of woman who would not even blink if she were burned alive, but it seemed she was different when it came to her own child. After causing a loud scene and blocking the way for quite some time, she turned a vicious glare.

The hatred and contempt filling those bloodshot red eyes. That gaze was directed at Scarlet.

“What are you standing there for? Look at that calm expression of yours when your husband has ended up like this. Shouldn’t you have thrown yourself in his place and stopped it!”

When she had first married, there had been many nights when she cried all night, startled by that icy scolding. There had also been nights when that glare appeared in her dreams as a nightmare.

But now Scarlet was no longer a nineteen-year-old girl. With a dry expression, she ignored the rage of Gloria Galloway, the former Duchess.

“This happened while Chris was shaking off his guards together with Lady Gagnon. No matter how shameless I may be, following my husband to the very scene of his affair and throwing myself in his place would be difficult. I hear that Lady Gagnon, who was at the scene, ran away instead of saving Chris after he fell from his horse, so perhaps you should contact her instead?”

At Scarlet’s words, a suffocating silence fell among the people crowding the central corridor. Gloria looked back and forth between Scarlet and several of the escort knights as if she truly could not believe it, but what all their faces said was the same. She brushed a trembling hand over her son’s face and then turned sharply away.

“Tch. It must have been hard enough for this child to live with defective goods that can’t even bear a child. What are you so proud of, always holding your head high and snapping back? If this were twenty years ago, it would have been fine to have you whipped and driven out.”

Even knowing it was meant to wound her somehow, a tiny crack passed over Scarlet’s face. But instead of collapsing, Scarlet gave the necessary orders to the people who were too flustered to act.

“Hurry and move Chris to his room, and prepare what the physician will need. First, have hot water and towels brought at once. He is also a member of the Imperial Family, so you are to send word to the palace immediately. Write first that he fell from his horse and is unconscious, and after that continue sending reports every two hours even without my instructions.”

“Yes. Understood.”

At her orders, the corridor that had been trapped within Gloria’s screaming grew busy again. Gloria’s steps as she followed Chris’s stretcher were more frantic than ever before, and for a moment Scarlet wondered if that was a mother’s heart. Mother. Perhaps it was a place Scarlet could never occupy.

* * *

Unfortunately, it was on her wedding night that she realized her special ability. Since it was a union between two families, everyone downstairs was drinking while waiting to confirm proof of the consummation, and upstairs they were waiting to take away the cloth stained with her blood. Now that the moment had truly come, Scarlet thought the whole situation was horribly barbaric.

With dozens, perhaps hundreds of people waiting only for the loss of her virginity, Scarlet had felt nauseated for a while already. Would I really be able to do this well? While she struggled to settle her complicated feelings, Chris entered the bedroom thoroughly drunk after taking and drinking the wine handed to him by his relatives.

On his flushed face and in his swaggering movements could be seen the arrogance of a man who believed that at last he, and no one else, had claimed Scarlet.

“So the day has finally come, eh? Scarlet. Now, take it off.”

“You smell strongly of alcohol. Why don’t you wash first. It might help you sober up too.”

“Why should I? You belong to me now. You’re no different from a well-bred broodmare. Do you know that from now on, until you bear an heir, you’ll have to spread your legs every time I tell you to?”

“Chris……?”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha. It would’ve been nice if Edward had come too. That bastard must know by now as well. That a future Duke is better than some half-baked third Prince.”

It was the moment when Chris’s inferiority complex, which had always made him jealous of Edward at every turn, exploded. Until now, she had not realized that the baseness that had shown itself from time to time was in fact the enormous core of what made Chris who he was.

Her stomach, which had been churning for a while already, felt as though it was turning over even more, and she moved toward the table. But before her hand could even touch the glass of water, Chris caught her midway and shoved her onto the bed.

Without controlling his strength at all, he roughly seized Scarlet by the wrist and dragged her along. Scarlet’s eyes reddened in an instant, but she held back her tears. As he had said, it would be over once she bore an heir.

“Now. Get on all fours. Everyone’s waiting, so let’s make this quick. Today, only whether the union is complete matters, so I suppose I only need to pull down your backside.”

“Chris? Chris. Wait a moment. I’ll undress myself.”

“I said it’s fine. Stay still.”

When she could barely breathe, panting in extreme fear and humiliation, the supernatural power that would change her life began to manifest. The moment Chris grabbed her by the hair and ground her face into the bed, a strange sensation flowed in through the cheek touching the sheet.

It felt as if her soul was slipping out of her body and drifting somewhere. A point of view as though she were secretly stealing a look at someone else’s experience.

Still pinned beneath Chris, Scarlet suddenly saw in her mind Chris and Lady Gagnon from some point in the past, laughing and playing chase in this room.

– Ahahaha. Are you sure it’s really all right to do this here, Chris?

– Don’t worry. Mother doesn’t care anyway. About now, she’s probably too busy examining the jewels sent by the other family.

– Tch. Honestly, what is this? Even though you always talked like that, I thought you’d marry me in the end.

– What are you talking about? I always said I’d marry Scarlet and date you, didn’t I? I need that woman. She’s the only woman even Edward can’t easily have, and a well-bred broodmare worthy of my position.

– Oh my, if Scarlet is a broodmare, then what am I? Your lovely lover?

– No. You’re the b*tch I cherish most.

– Hah!

The man and woman, who had gone on with their meaningless little game of chase around the bed, soon lay down on it and let out beastlike m*ans. The way they clung together like dogs in heat and left traces of themselves all around made it seem like they were marking their territory.

Unable to bear the wave of nausea, Scarlet hurriedly raised her upper body, but in that moment her lower half was left fully exposed. Her thin, fluttery undergarment had not withstood Chris’s savage hands and had been mercilessly torn apart.

“Hoo. This is exciting. I should divide the cloth stained with blood into two and send one piece to Edward as well.”

At those words, Scarlet closed her eyes and clenched her teeth tightly. She did not want to give him any more tears or screams. It was obvious that at this moment, her misery would be a great delight to him.

Ptui-

Soon there came a filthy sound she did not even want to imagine, and something thick touched her private flesh. It was Chris’s spit, from where he had propped only Scarlet’s upper body against the bed and spat.

But while Scarlet suppressed her urge to vomit and imagined the worst, Chris, who had seemed ready to pounce at any moment, was oddly quiet. It was plain that something was not working and that he was struggling with it.

“Ha. What’s wrong with this? Did I drink too much?”

Chris gripped the thing hanging limp and tried, but it would not work at all. In truth, this was not even the first time, but with his pride badly wounded, he glared at Scarlet, whose body lay sprawled like a corpse. She was the perfect and beautiful trophy he had long desired.

Scarlet, who among the debutantes of that period had often been compared to a beautiful flower as the greatest beauty among them, had always been for him an object of conquest—difficult and hard-won. Even now, when she lay in a compliant pose beneath him, that nobility that never once held him in its eyes did not bend in the slightest, and it made Chris anxious.

“You’re so stiff, and the way it looks is d*mn ugly too, so I don’t feel like doing it. You brought what was prepared, didn’t you? Just splash that around.”

As if even that absurd humiliation was not enough to satisfy him, Chris’s rough hands continued tormenting Scarlet. His fingers forced their way into a place dry and tightened by fear and humiliation, and she writhed in pain.

Even without making a sound, her trembling fingertips and her lips bitten so tightly that they drew blood showed the pain she was feeling now. Chris cruelly butchered both her body and heart, as though splitting open the belly of an animal he had hunted and taking its blood and flesh, all while indulging in a petty sense of victory.

He left the room after violating and abandoning Scarlet, wearing an expression almost innocently delighted, like an excited child leaving the very first footprints on a field of pure white snow. At the sound of the heavy door closing, hot tears flowed from the eyes of the woman who had been lying face down, holding her breath.