Dalia rose to her feet as she watched the carriage, with the Duke’s crest in clear relief, pass through the front gates of the manor.

Though she had just returned from the brink of death, the world remained eerily still, not a breath of wind stirring – and so she too had her duties to perform.

Had she not learnt long before the age of ten that sitting idly by would never get someone else to take over her responsibilities for her?

If she was to escape his grasp unscathed, she would need a plan. Yes, a plan. An elaborate and cunning plan – one that could fool Curtis Fraser.

Out of habit, Dalia made her way to the office within the Duke’s estate and quickly processed the documents. However, a sudden wave of pain swept through her head, causing her to clench her temples.

“Ugh.”

A small groan escaped her lips, prompting the maid who always brought her tea at the same hour to ask in a low voice.

“Shall I bring your medicine?”

“Yes.”

Not long after becoming the Duchess of Fraser, she had begun to suffer from headaches so severe that they felt like a blade slicing through the inside of her skull. As a result, medicine was always kept on hand for her.

Dalia swallowed the pill the maid handed her in one gulp, running her tongue over her mouth to wash away the lingering bitterness before she spoke.

“Leave me. I want to be alone. Let no one enter until I call for you.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The moment the maid stepped out, Dalia let go of the quill she had grasped tenaciously, as if throwing it aside.

“Haa…”

As the effects of the medicine began to kick in, a drowsiness crept over her and her gaze slowly lost focus.

Anyway, she wouldn’t be able to do any real work until the effects of the medicine wore off…

“In a year, huh?”

It was a year before Irvelyn appeared before Curtis, and with her a love so consuming that it set fire to everything around him, leaving nothing untouched by its blaze.

Only one year…

She had to get away from him in that time.

Dalia pressed her thumb to her lower lip out of habit, letting her mind wander.

She had to leave the position of Duchess before Curtis Fraser killed her.

After all, he had no interest in her as a person – only the position of ‘Duchess’ had to be vacated.

Grabbing the pen again, Dalia hastily scribbled the first option on the blank piece of paper: Divorce.

The most conventional and safest way for her to resign as Duchess of Fraser.

But noble divorces took time. Far too much time.

So Curtis had decided to bypass the long and tedious process altogether – by simply killing her.

“…So divorce isn’t an option. And it’s not like I can kill the Duke of Fraser myself.”

With a rough stroke of her pen, she angrily crossed out the word “divorce”.

That left the second option – the very method he had chosen to get rid of her.

“Then I must die.”

Of course, she didn’t mean to die for him again.

She just needed to escape into death before he could kill her.

But to carry out this plan, she would have to overcome several obstacles.

The biggest of all was the fact that the person she needed to deceive was none other than Curtis Fraser himself.

Dalia let out an involuntary sigh and pressed her thumb to her lower lip once more.

Her fingertips, drained of blood, turned pale and her lower lip, now bruised, bore the marks of her habit.

Between another sigh and the dull pain in her lip, a barely audible murmur escaped her lips – so faint that even she couldn’t hear it.

“The most moderate way to die would be to succumb to illness, but…”

If the Duchess had died of an illness, Curtis would undoubtedly dig into every detail surrounding her death.

A duchess with no previous health problems suddenly dying of an unexplained illness?

Everyone would find it suspicious.

For the sake of the Fraser family’s reputation, Curtis would meticulously unearth every aspect of her past.

Dalia’s mind worked relentlessly, her thoughts spilling from her lips in fragmented murmurs.

But her voice was so faint that not a single word reached anyone’s ears before it faded into nothingness.

“He might even order an autopsy before he buries me.”

In this realm, touching the body of a deceased person was considered taboo.

It wasn’t a question of whether the gods would punish such an act.

It was the minimum respect the living owed the dead – to let them rest in peace.

But Curtis would ignore such taboos without hesitation.

He had the power to do so, and he never hesitated to use it.

“If illness is out of the question, then assassination… No, that won’t work either. Too many people would have to be involved.”

From hiring an assassin to securing their cooperation and dealing with the aftermath, there would be too many hands in the pot.

And isn’t secrecy something only the dead can really keep?

By that logic, faking an accident wouldn’t work either.

Besides, if an assassination or staged accident went wrong, the consequences could be far worse than death itself.

“No disease, no murder, no accident. That just leaves…”

Dalia wrote the last option on the almost blackened sheet of paper.

“Poison. That’s the only way.”

It was the method with the highest chance of success.

Obtaining the poison and planning the means of ingestion would be difficult, but at least it was something she could do on her own.

“Hmm… I have to make sure they can’t touch my body.”

That meant creating circumstances so final that an autopsy wouldn’t even be considered.

She had to stage a death so perfect, so unquestionable, that no one would think to investigate further.

“Poison. A killer. The setting. Witnesses. A body to take my place.”

Dalia carefully wrote down each element required for the act.

The first thing she had to do, of course, was to secure the poison.

She had to drink the poison in front of Curtis Fraser to ensure that the cause of death was unmistakably poison.

“Hmm…”

Dalia ran her tongue over the rough dryness in her mouth before letting out a soft chuckle.

The poison she drank in her previous life hadn’t worked.

It must have been something Curtis had obtained himself.

The man would never entrust something so important – something tied to Irvelyn’s safety – into the hands of another.

And since it was something he had acquired, the chances of her getting it were slim to none.

Colourless, odourless, tasteless.

A poison that seeped into her bones without her noticing – until it killed her.

“I hear you like tea.”

“Huh? Oh, y-yes!”

“I have acquired a rare tea. Would you care to drink it with me?”

The word ‘drink with me’ that had fallen from his lips had sounded more beautiful than the most divine melody.

During their tea, she hadn’t realised that she was slowly dying. But even if she had known, she might not have been able to refuse.

For a woman who could only be at his side when necessary, the first time her husband – the man she secretly loved – asked her to be with him was something she could never have refused.

A pathetic, one-sided love – a love so desperate that it defied even death.

“How foolish.”

A bitter sneer escaped her lips and Dalia absentmindedly brushed her fingertips over the corner of her mouth.

She knew better than to let her mutterings escape out loud where someone might hear them, but they kept escaping on their own.

Love had long since shattered, crumbling to dust like bleached bones, scattered and forgotten.

But death… death was not so easily erased.

When asked if she hated him, she wasn’t sure what answer she could give.

Sweeping back the strands of hair that had fallen across her forehead, Dalia picked up the paper covered with her chaotic plans.

She couldn’t leave it lying around.

She had to burn it.

If a piece of paper with words like ‘poison’ and ‘corpse’ in the Duchess’s own handwriting were found outside her office, it would surely cause a scandal.

Now it was time for her to fulfil her duties as Duchess and work tirelessly for the great Fraser Ducal House.

Until the day she finally escaped, she had to behave towards Curtis exactly as she had in her previous life – nothing could be different.

Even if her heart no longer beat for him.

***

“Welcome back.”

Curtis responded to the familiar greeting from Sebastian, the mansion’s head butler, with nothing more than a slight nod.

As Curtis walked forward with long, purposeful steps, he spoke suddenly, as if something had just occurred to him.

“Where is the Duchess?”

“She wasn’t feeling well and decided to turn in early,” came the butler’s gentle, unhesitating reply.

Once again Curtis simply nodded.

That was all Dalia meant to him – someone whose presence or absence made no difference.

Even after returning to the ducal estate, his daily life remained unchanged.

Instead of dealing with the affairs of the realm, he focused on the affairs of his own house – mediating conflicts between vassal families to maintain order, prioritising the needs of the territory as it welcomed the arrival of spring, and more.

Beside him, his advisers worked tirelessly, barely stopping to breathe, their pens moving swiftly across the pages. Meanwhile, he himself processed the endless stream of documents with unwavering precision, as smooth and effortless as water flowing downstream.

“Your Grace, what would you like for dinner?”

At the butler’s calm question, Curtis, who had been undoing his cuffs, suddenly stopped.

Dinner… he should be having it with his wife.

“Shouldn’t we share at least one meal a day? We’re a family now.”

It was the first time Dalia had ever made a request – though she had never asked for anything in their marriage, not even protesting that they had never consummated it.

“Is this really necessary?”

The thought had crossed his mind, but Curtis had simply nodded.

A single meal together – surely that was no big deal.