From that moment on, Astrid had felt a sense of foreboding, and so she had her lady-in-waiting taste every one of her meals.

Then one day, she found that lady-in-waiting dead in her own room, having coughed up blood.

It was her lady-in-waiting’s final signal to flee, yet Astrid quietly made her way to the dining room.

Who could it be that was trying to cut off even the last breath of someone who had already fallen to the ground and been broken beyond repair?

Sitting lifelessly in the dining chair with her head bowed, her eyes slowly drifted toward her fiancé seated across from her.

Sensing her gaze, Lindenel Haimenwar looked back at her.

As always, he was dressed impeccably in formal attire, his cold eyes betraying nothing.

“What is it?”

Hearing his voice made her heart leap anew. Even in a situation like this, even after things had come to this point, her heart pounded and pounded.

Listening to that sound, a laugh slipped out of her. Hehe.

“…….”

A ridiculous laugh, laced with regret, despair, and rage.

Hearing it, Lindenel lost interest in her. He seemed to think she was having another episode of delirium.

Under normal circumstances, she would have been hurt by that, but it no longer mattered. Today, she was going to die.

Valdemar’s purpose was likely to eliminate the princess who served as the bridge preventing Lindenel from reaching for the crown.

Then would it be better not to eat this and instead spend the rest of her life as a mere tool for Lindenel’s ambitions?

‘He may be keeping himself in check for now since the succession has not yet begun, but he is the kind of man who could draw in any other woman he needed, whenever he needed her.’

‘Then what would be left in my hands, having lost both the throne and Lindenel?’

Astrid felt a sob rise up and choke her throat.

She had even harbored the pathetic thought of willingly letting herself be used by him, a man who had come solely to take revenge for his family, disregarding her father’s dying wish for her to become a wise ruler.

Simply because she wanted to be loved. Because she loved the way Lindenel’s warmth-less eyes would land on her face, her hands, her heart.

Whenever he treated her with kindness, even knowing it was a lie, she had only wanted to lose herself in that fleeting illusion.

Swallowing her tears, Astrid smiled with eyes red and bloodshot.

“Heuheuk, keuheuheu.”

Letting out a m*an that was neither clearly crying nor laughing, she lifted the bowl of poisoned soup without a shred of dignity and drank it straight down.

Lindenel merely raised one eyebrow, as if her behavior irritated him, and paid her not even a moment’s worth of attention.

Astrid paid him no mind and devoured the food ravenously. It was so that no one could tell which dish the poison had come from.

Now, nothing remained for Astrid.

Her heartless fiancé would at most lament that Astrid’s death meant he could no longer inherit the throne, and those led by Valdemar would feel relieved that Astrid’s noble death had preserved the honor of the empire.

‘Ah, set me free. Release me from these wretched feelings.’

Somewhere in the midst of frantically consuming the food, her hand went rigid.

A scorching heat surged up from within her throat, as though lava were rising.

So this is the end.

The plate, knocked aside by Astrid’s elbow, shattered with a sharp clang.

That was the last thing she remembered.

***

“I was certain I had died back then.”

Her thread of life was stubborn enough to keep her alive until now, but instinctively, she knew this life would not last much longer.

Before it ended, she wanted to see Lindenel Haimenwar one last time.

‘That cruel man who had locked a dying me away in a room as cold as a coffin and never once came to visit.’

‘O you who still makes this hollow chest of mine beat, I want to see you.’

‘I want to see you one last time, and then die.’

She had barely taken a few slow steps from the bed when she heard someone’s voice from the corridor.

It was a voice ringing out in the black and silent dead of night, so every word was unmistakably clear.

‘Who is that?’

She pressed her eye to the slightly open crack of the door and peered outside.

“It is our fault for finding out too late, which caused everything to go awry. I truly have no words.”

In the corridor, Caleb, Lindenel’s secretary, was bowing his head deeply.

In front of the flustered Caleb stood a man with his back to Astrid.

A broad back that stretched the formal uniform taut, a comparatively narrow waist, short-cropped black hair. A glimpse of thick, large hands.

She knew the man standing there well. Having watched him for over a decade, there was no way she could not.

It was Duke Lindenel Haimenwar, the man she had never been able to forget even in her dreams.

“What is it you want to say?”

“……The princess is already on the verge of death. There is no hope.”

“Who doesn’t know that?”

Astrid bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. His tone carried not even a trace of lingering attachment, and it tore her heart apart.

“However, the problem is that in the midst of all this, they have found the late Emperor’s illegitimate child.”

‘What?’

Astrid’s mind went blank in an instant.

Who did they find?

“She is two years younger than the princess. Thanks to the late Emperor hiding her well, she apparently grew up bright and wholesome in a commoner’s household.”

“Cut the nonsense. Where did you hear such a baseless rumor?”

“It is not a baseless rumor. You will remember a man named Valdemar among the remnants of the late Emperor’s faction.”

“And?”

The moment he heard that name, Lindenel’s expression twisted into a scowl.

“Evidence has been found that Valdemar approached the commoner woman. Princess Astrid was nothing more than a smokescreen.”

Lindenel’s shoulders gave a slight flinch.

At that small movement, Astrid’s heart plummeted.

“It appears they intend to put the illegitimate child forward as the next empress. We should have taken precautions and protected the princess beforehand. It was my oversight.”

“D*mn it……. From the moment the imperial family fell into my hands, the princess was nothing but a card they were willing to throw away.”

“We must abandon the princess before it is too late and bring the illegitimate child over to our side.”

Astrid’s blue eyes sank deep into the darkness.

The ground beneath her feet was giving way.

‘Father had another daughter, someone other than me?’

So the poison Valdemar had handed her was not a blade of liberation after all.

Now that a replacement had been found, Astrid’s existence had become useless. There was no one left who truly wanted her.

‘No, was there ever anyone, from the very beginning, who wanted me as a person in my own right?’

Even Lindenel wanted Astrid as a princess, which meant she only had worth and purpose when she was one.

Now, it was as though the crown and the dress had been stripped from her and she had been dressed in a burial shroud instead. She had become a being of no use, not to Lindenel, not to the imperial family.

“Haha…… ha…….”

At last, the strength drained from her trembling legs. As her knees buckled and she sank to the floor, she wept and laughed at the same time. Her shoulders began to tremble like aspen leaves in the wind.

The sound of conversation drifted through the crack in the door, but she no longer wished to hear any more.

If she listened any further, she feared she would be reminded that she had been nothing more than a useless doll all along.

Astrid pressed her lips together and rose to her feet on violently shaking legs.

It would have been better if she had died right away after swallowing the poison.

She wanted to die right now. She was ashamed and humiliated by her own abandoned state. She wanted to disappear from this world as quickly as possible.

So in the end, she would sever this stubborn thread of life with her own hands.

Leaning her head out through the window as a cold wind howled outside, Astrid looked down at the distant ground buried in pitch-black darkness.

Thinking of herself falling there and dying in an ugly, broken heap, a feeble laugh escaped her.

Then, belatedly, the door burst open with a bang and someone stepped into the room.

“You’ve finally woken up…… what are you doing right now?”

She had no presence of mind left to think about who owned that startled voice.

Driven only by the fear of being caught, she hastily threw herself out through the window.

“Wait, Astrid!”

That cry sounded quite desperate and anguished, but such worldly matters were no longer any concern of Astrid’s, she who had now become a stranger to life.