Marianne Lindenrosen.

Seraphina’s new stepmother—and the Visountess of Lindenrosen. The woman who, the moment Seraphina lost her father at the tender age of five, sold her to slave traders.

The woman who starved the child who barely managed to escape and return, denied her sleep, and worked her like an unpaid maid.

The woman who, as a result, prevented Seraphina’s traits from manifesting at the proper time. The beginning of Seraphina’s misery.

“But now…”

Seraphina’s voice trembled. Her pale lavender eyes wavered, unable to find a place to settle.

She had forgotten about Marianne.

If asked how she could forget such a person, the answer was simple: she had tried to forget. Otherwise, she could not have survived. So she erased Marianne from her mind entirely.

Even so, the wounds Marianne had left on Seraphina remained as deep scars.

Marianne’s son, Leoban, was currently held in the underground prison. It was Damian’s decision not to call him as a key witness in Seraphina’s case.

He said he wanted to decide Leoban’s punishment himself, rather than leave it to the Emperor.

Damian intended to keep Leoban imprisoned underground—a damp, lightless place where not even a sliver of sunlight reached.

A den crawling with murderers and all manner of violent criminals. The worst prison in the Empire, notorious for its inhumane conditions.

He said he would keep Leoban there until he grew old and died. He would ensure Leoban never grew bored—nor forgot the past—by administering punishment along the way.

Leoban, who had abused and beaten Seraphina, would spend the rest of his life being beaten in turn.
He would live alongside the fear that at any moment, someone might come for him.

But Damian said it was not over yet.

Because there was still the person who had raised the devil called Leoban, the one who had raised Seraphina as though she were a devil’s plaything.

“Even now, she must be made to pay.”

Damian spoke in a voice filled with resolve. He gently brushed her cheek with his hand. The look in his eyes as he gazed at Seraphina was indescribably tender.

“I’m sorry I found you so late.”

Seraphina blinked. She was about to ask what he meant when he continued.

“Marianne Lindenrosen will be imprisoned in the underground dungeon as well. She’ll grow old there, doing cleaning duty in the prison. It’s a place so filthy that no matter how much you clean, it never ends—so she’ll be doing it until the day she dies.”

Seraphina swallowed hard.

It felt as though Damian intended to punish those who had tormented her in the very same ways they once had.

Leoban, who had beaten Seraphina, would spend his life being beaten.
Marianne, who had worked Seraphina to the bone, would spend her life cleaning.

“Oh, right. Since it’s ‘volunteer’ cleaning it goes without pay, of course.”

When he finished speaking, Damian broke into a wide grin.

Seeing him smile so brightly made Seraphina’s throat tighten. A warm heat spread through her chest—because there was someone who took her pain as his own, who grew angry on her behalf, who stood firmly on her side.

It felt as though a heavy burden had been lifted from her body.

“Thank you, Damian.”

Seraphina smiled radiantly. She took his hand, clasping it with both of hers, and spoke.

“And it’s not late at all. I was waiting the whole time.”

Her eyes glistened with tears as she looked at him.

“We promised we’d meet again, didn’t we?”

“We’ll meet again for sure! I’ll come get you! Wait for me!”

Damian startled, his eyes widening in shock. His jaw trembled as he muttered,

“How do you…?”

At that moment—

A fresh, clean-scented pheromone surged from his body, spilling out in waves.

Pheromones steeped in longing gently wrapped around Seraphina.

Still smiling, she slowly closed her eyes and relaxed into his pheromones.

A memory Damian had kept carefully preserved in his heart for a very long time began to flow into her own.

***

From the moment Damian was born, his fate had already been decided.

The Empress was overjoyed when she gave birth to him.

First, because he was a son.
Second, because he was blond.

Damian’s golden hair—proof of his Eisenbart imperial blood—was striking enough to draw attention wherever he went. And that very fact made her uneasy.

The moment she lost her second son to kidnapping, she resolved to raise Damian in a way no imperial family member before her ever had. She raised Damian—who possessed the strongest claim to legitimacy—as anything but an imperial prince.

Damian lived alone with a wet nurse in a secluded room of the guest palace. A child of imperial blood should, by all rights, have been attended by at least three wet nurses and raised with meticulous care.

However, Damian could not be raised that way.

No one, at a glance, was allowed to realize that Damian was of imperial blood. That was the Empress’s directive.

And so Damian grew up in a shabby room that had never even been properly repaired.

The Empress’s peculiar method of child-rearing did not end there.

In Damian’s earliest memories, his hair was black. That was because the Empress had dyed her son’s hair herself.

If it were discovered that he was an imperial, he might be kidnapped. So it had to be dyed pitch-black.

That was her reasoning.

Because he must not be kidnapped.

The wet nurse repeated the words so often that Damian memorized the sentence without meaning to.

‘You must not be kidnapped. You must not be kidnapped.’

But all of the Empress’s efforts proved futile.

Damian only learned what the word kidnapping truly meant—after he was kidnapped himself.

Despite the Empress’s extreme precautions, Damian was abducted by slave traders.

He was seven years old.

It was before his special traits had manifested.

***

Kidnapping was not, in itself, a particularly terrible experience.

The adults tried hard to frighten him, but Damian was not scared at all. Truly.

“Don’t touch that one. He’s valuable.”

The slave trader who had abducted Damian warned his companion.

He had come to the imperial palace to sell maidservants, and the moment he spotted Damian, he smelled money.

A seven-year-old child ran through the palace grounds as if it were his own home, and no one stopped him. That meant the boy was, at the very least, a high-ranking noble—and at best, an imperial.

Kidnap him, and his parents would pay a handsome ransom.

The calculation was completed in an instant.

The slave trader stuffed the boy into a sack and joined up with his group. Upon hearing the story, the other traders’ eyes gleamed.

“Even if the parents don’t pay, we can sell him in the Gruber Duchy for a good price.”

“He’s in better condition than the girl we bought today. That one was so starved she didn’t look fit for work.”

“Still, they said she had noble blood. Paid five silver for her!”

“Five silver? That’s a lot. Then let’s just sell her to some rich old bastard.”

With his hands and feet bound in rope, Damian listened silently to the slave traders’ scheming.

Putting together what he had heard so far, they were headed for the Gruber Duchy.
Apparently, slavery was legal there.

People from the Empire fetched especially high prices in the duchy.

Still, Damian thought they would not sell him there.
They would contact his parents instead and demand ransom.

‘They don’t even know who my parents are. Aren’t they idiots?’

Damian thought blandly.

Perhaps because he had grown up without meeting many people, he was somewhat dull to emotion.
He did not really understand what it meant to be frightened, or happy, or sad.

Affection from parents, or fear at being separated from one’s family—those things were even more foreign to him.

After all, he had barely ever seen his parents to begin with.

“H-hic… ngh… waaah!”

That was why the young Damian found the girl fascinating.

A girl crying her eyes out, tears and snot streaming down her face—he observed her closely for that very reason.

“Idiot. Stop crying.”

It was the middle of the night, when all the slave traders had fallen asleep.

Damian spoke to the girl, who showed no sign of tiring no matter how much she cried.

It was the beginning of fate.