Previously
The Emperor places Sienna under strict house arrest, leading to scandalous rumors that further isolate her. After a month, he lifts the confinement and requests a meeting, but a weary Sienna refuses to go, missing her final chance to speak with him before he dies that night.
How to Break Up with You Completely Episode 19
After shooting back in that flat tone, I let out a dry chuckle of disbelief.
“Ignorant wretch…. How dare the likes of you bring up my mother?”
“Show some courtesy! This person is now the Emperor of an entire realm!”
Marianne flared up and shouted, but I did not bat an eyelash.
“I was never taught to show courtesy to those beneath me.”
Leaving my words trailing, I turned toward Joseph. As I slowly closed the distance between us, his eyebrow twitched upward.
Looking down at him, my lips curved into a cold sneer.
“Though I know perfectly well how one ought to treat a thief.”
The instant the words left my mouth, I spat right at him. A dead silence fell over the chamber, as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water.
While everyone froze in shock, even Marianne, who had just been lecturing me on decorum, gaped in sheer horror, utterly struck dumb.
Setting aside that this was behavior fit for back-alley thugs rather than an imperial princess, the man before me was the new Emperor of this land.
In an empire where the penal code explicitly decreed that an insult to the Emperor was an insult to the state itself, no one could have done such a thing without having lost their mind.
The one to break the suffocating silence was Joseph.
“As you say, my situation right now isn’t entirely rosy.”
Despite having suffered such a profound indignity, there was not a trace of agitation in his voice. Wiping his face clean, the only difference was that his insidious smile from moments ago had vanished without a trace.
“Which makes this a rather fitting opportunity to set an example for people like you.”
He murmured in a low voice and summoned the soldiers stationed outside. Armed guards poured into the room in a heartbeat.
“Exile Princess Sienna to the monastery in Lopawell. Ensure she never sets foot outside its walls for the rest of her life.”
A solemn occasion was reduced to complete pandemonium in an instant. Through it all, the princess who had started the entire firestorm never lost her rigid composure.
Every person gathered in that chamber thought my actions sheer folly, but I did not feel an ounce of regret for what I had done.
“If it were up to me, I’d string you up by the neck in the middle of the plaza just like your mother, but that would hardly be respectful to my late father.”
His feigned magnanimity drew a soundless laugh from me.
Even if not today, Joseph was bound to cast me aside sooner or later. Perhaps it was precisely because it happened today that my life was spared.
Had it not been during the official period of mourning for the Emperor, he might truly have taken my head. In that sense, I felt almost relieved.
“Why don't you speak the truth? Your position is already precarious enough; the last thing you need is the stain of murdering your own blood.”
“Clever, as expected.”
Joseph remarked in a dry, indifferent tone.
“Don't get too arrogant, though. The day will come when you think dying would have been the kinder fate.”
It was a grim warning, yet I let it slide past my ears.
Better than anyone, I knew how the dead were twisted and tarnished in the memories of the living. Because of that, his threat did not strike the slightest chord of fear in me.
I believed that a moment where dying would be better would never come.
At least, that was what I believed back then.
* * *
Lopawell, perched at the empire's northernmost fringe, was a bleak, desolate expanse. Former emperors, fearful of foreign invasion, had forced people to build settlements and reside there, but no living creature could truly survive its grasp.
Livestock died, crops perished before they could even sprout, and humanity fared no better.
If it were merely hunger, it might have been bearable. But Lopawell's true blight was far deeper than simple scarcity.
That winter, I witnessed a person gnawing on a corpse for the first time. It was not a dead beast, but human remains.
Lopawell reeked of rot with every breath taken. Stepping onto the streets was enough to fill one's lungs to bursting with the stench of decaying flesh and the broth of boiled remains that had once been human.
The monastery dwellers, despite their holy vestments, turned a blind eye to it all.
Relief rations arrived from the capital from time to time, but they served only to line the bellies of the priesthood.
Although Theodore made sure to regularly fetch food for me from their hoard, I could not stomach a single morsel for days after witnessing the cannibalism.
Everything about Lopawell was thoroughly sickening.
The groans of the dying drifted into my ears day and night, and the shrieks of those on the verge of death crying out to God shook the rafters.
These horrors gnawed relentlessly at my sanity, which had never been robust to begin with.
Having first set foot in this wasteland in spring, I endured winter watching an endless parade of corpses. That hellish ordeal was only the first of the many years I was destined to spend in Lopawell.
It was around that time that the man came.
* * *
Around the time my monastery life entered its first full year, news of victory rang out from the nearby border.
A sluggish war that had dragged on for years had finally concluded in a resounding triumph. In a land where people dropped dead of starvation by the day, it was hardly something that commanded attention.
Yet when word broke that the army would stop by Lopawell on its march back to the capital, the atmosphere shifted completely.
Rather than the return of an army, all eyes were drawn to the fact that their commander-in-chief, Declan Monferrato, would set foot on their soil. He was an acclaimed hero of the empire, venerated as a living god of war.
The rumor of his arrival stirred Lopawell to life. Whispers of hope began to take root in a land devoid of vitality.
“Perhaps the army will share their rations.”
“The hero will surely show us mercy as well.”
The day the army marched into Lopawell brought the most commotion I had seen since arriving there. From early morning, crowds gathered atop the ramparts to catch a glimpse of the returning soldiers.
“Here they come!”
At someone’s shout, I, standing at a distance from the crowd, cast my gaze down. Below the walls, the imperial banner fluttered proudly in the wind.
Watching the procession vacantly, my eyes fell upon the man riding at the very front.
His features, carved as if a master sculptor had hewn them with a finely sharpened blade, belonged to someone I knew all too well.
The crowds greeted him with deafening cheers, yet the man did not spare them so much as a glance. Not only that, but his unrealistically handsome face was utterly devoid of emotion. Far from excitement or fervor, there was not even a sliver of joy.
“He could at least look their way once. How hopelessly callous.”
I murmured under my breath. Riding at the vanguard of that sprawling column, he looked nothing like a warrior returning from a triumph destined for the history books.
Or perhaps he was simply far too accustomed to it all.
A sudden thought crossed my mind. What could Joseph possibly offer a man who already possessed boundless wealth and renown?
Perhaps this time, Marianne might finally win the man she had pined over her entire life. For the Grand Duke, such a match would be a boon, never a loss.
From a height that left no higher peak to climb, taking an imperial princess to wife would elevate his standing beyond imagination. Whatever the outcome, he was bound to hold power that none would dare contest.
Compared to my own wretched lot—forgotten by the world, shoved away in this filthy corner merely waiting to die—my mood took an unnecessary plunge.
“What an enviable life.”
A short while ago, word came from the palace that Joseph had elevated his full sister to the rank of imperial princess. Naturally, my own standing was pushed down in the line.
From the empire's one and only princess, down to the second. Everything I once enjoyed had fallen into the hands of the half-sister I despised so bitterly.
Did anyone in the capital even remember me now? As I stared down at the man, my gaze darkened.
Just then, the man tilted his head upward. Our eyes met unexpectedly, but I did not look away. Neither did he. After gazing up at me for several heartbeats, he gave a faint nod.
That was the exact moment my lifeless gaze suddenly shifted.
Why hadn't I thought of this sooner?
A way to trample Joseph's pride while shattering Marianne's self-esteem to pieces.
With this man, it might just be possible. No, there was no better piece on the board.
I stepped back slowly from the wall. The man's gaze remained fixed on me, but I turned completely around and descended from the ramparts.
Turning away, my lips curved into a wicked grin. An uncontrollable surge of thrill flooded my chest the moment the unexpected path opened before me.
I was not hoping for grand miracles. Least of all did I harbor any brazen ambition to win his heart. My only intention was to use him as a stepping stone back to the capital.
Back then, all I wanted was to claw my way out of that hell on earth. And beyond that, I desperately wanted to get even, in any shape or form, with the ones who had dumped me there.
So, when my feelings took an unexpected turn, it could only ever lead to tragedy.
* * *
I found myself unconsciously rubbing the back of my hand. It was a habit that had formed without my realizing it after Declan departed for the capital.
Once the army left Lopawell, nothing changed dramatically. With Declan gone, relief washed over me, tinged with a delicate sense of loss—though the latter weighed far heavier.
Holed up in my room all day, I did nothing but dwell on lost time and replay the brief moments spent with the man who had departed. Declan had gone to the capital while I remained behind, so my objective was already met.
He would return to the capital to rise even higher, but the problem was what became of me, left behind in Lopawell.