Previously
The Grand Duke and Sienna exchange bitter words, with Sienna expressing deep regret over ever following him to the capital. Despite his cold demeanor, the Grand Duke touches her cheek tenderly and wishes they never meet in a next life. He leaves after a formal bow, ignoring her desperate cries that she will never forgive him.
How to Say Goodbye to You Completely Chapter 3
“You had better not try anything stupid. Just be grateful you get to die like royalty.”
He spat the threat viciously, then coughed up phlegm and spat at me. The thick spit landed not far from where I sat. Used to such treatment long ago, I showed no reaction.
Did they really think I would attempt an escape after coming this far? If so, it was utterly pointless worry.
They were nearly twice my size, and I, having barely had a decent meal since being locked away, was far more emaciated than usual. If they truly intended to swing their fists, I would never be able to resist.
Not wanting to cause pointless trouble now, I quietly drew back my gaze and simply waited for noon.
They said the execution would take place in the capital’s central plaza, so all kinds of people would surely flock to watch my death. From the nobles who always held contempt for my existence to the street merchants who had painted me as every kind of monster.
‘Quite a spectacle it will be.’
A bitter smile touched my lips. To go from a traitor’s daughter to a murderer climbing the gallows.
Looking back, perhaps my life had been destined to turn out this way from the very start.
Being born from the body of a woman who trampled the first wife to become empress was my first sin. Taking an undeserved man as my husband and stubbornly keeping him by my side was my second.
I was a thorn in the Emperor’s side, and he had always watched for a chance to eliminate me. To him, my daughter’s death must have been an opportunity he could not afford to miss. The circumstances before me back then were hardly optimistic.
The berry Soliet swallowed right before she died was a type of narcotic. Though strictly forbidden within the Empire, a few wealthy elites consumed it in secret because of its remarkable sedative properties. I had been one of them.
After my final childbirth, my body and mind deteriorated beyond repair. The aftermath of having my torn womb removed following a difficult labor was agonizing. Suffering through entire nights curled in abdominal pain like tearing flesh had become ordinary.
It was not just my body that was ruined. A child who died before crying properly, along with the physician's words that I could never bear another, lingered within me and slowly ate away at my sanity.
Even the sedatives prescribed by the physician had little effect. I needed something stronger. In the midst of searching, that was what I found.
I took it habitually. There was no miraculous cure, but taking it at least kept me from tossing and turning through the night.
Yet it remained an illegal poison in the Empire, and the vassals of the grand ducal residence were far from friendly toward me, meaning no good could come of it catching anyone’s eye.
For that reason, I kept it inside a chest where my mother's keepsakes were stored, well out of reach of the maidservants; my child, playing alone, had somehow managed to discover it.
As fatal poisons often were, the berry had an intensely vivid appearance, which might have caught the child's curiosity.
I was the first to find her collapsed. The familiar berries scattered across my bed, and my child lying among them as peacefully as though asleep.
What mother could behold such a sight and not lose her mind?
Before that sight, I was neither princess nor grand duchess. I was merely a mother on the brink of losing her child.
To Joseph, to whom I had never once reached out in my life, I wrote a letter pleading for him to send the imperial physician, but before the physician could reach the grand ducal residence, my child breathed her last.
From that day on, I could no longer live sane. And before I could even gather my wits, the Emperor, Joseph, pointed to me as the sole cause of it all.
‘We hereby arrest Princess Sienna for patricide. Given the atrocious nature of the crime, confine her to the dungeons and strictly forbid all contact with the outside.’
That the drug that brought about the child's death was mine, that I had long suffered from nervous breakdown and depression, and that my relationship with the child’s father was dreadful served as the evidence.
No sooner was I framed for murder than the powerful noble families cornered me as if they had been waiting all along.
The nobles unleashed fierce attacks against me, as though the depth of the blow they struck were a measure of their loyalty.
The entire sequence of events resembled a well-rehearsed play. The lead was the Emperor who overcame crisis to inherit the throne, while I was the pillar of evil threatening him.
The script they fashioned was remarkably plausible. In it, I had become an unhinged, deliriously jealous woman—a villainess who, burning with hatred toward her husband, even murdered her young daughter.
Rumors that the grand ducal couple’s marriage had collapsed had already spread far and wide, so the public swallowed the tale the Emperor cleverly wove without the slightest doubt.
“Perhaps the afterlife is better for me after all.”
I muttered to myself.
I was already worn past the point of exhaustion. Chasing the back of a man who held no love for me. Scrabbling desperately to survive amidst people bent on killing me.
In a world where drawing a single breath brought no peace, Soliet had been my only paradise. What meaning could a world without that child hold for me?
Huddling deep in the corner of the cramped cell, I waited only for the bell beyond the castle walls to ring. When that moment came, I would finally be free.
Yet even after the bell struck noon, the soldiers never appeared. At first, I thought it was merely a short delay, but when no one arrived even as the sun sank behind the ridges, I realized something was wrong.
How eagerly had my brother yearned to hang me by the neck?
My execution was an unmatched festival in his life. That was how much care Joseph had poured into this day.
Just yesterday afternoon, I watched with my own eyes through the iron bars as they rehearsed the execution among themselves.
Soldiers marching in rank dressed in iron plate armor fit for war, followed by three musicians blowing horns in their wake.
Watching it, the display felt flamboyant enough to wonder if it was excessive just to kill one person. It resembled a parade far more than an execution.
Yet now, when that parade should have reached its peak, outside the prison remained dead quiet.
I was not the only one who found it strange. The guard stationed outside the iron bars paced restlessly inside the cell block, seemingly sensing that things were amiss.
It was then. A guard suddenly burst inside, face white as a sheet, and shouted urgently toward his comrade.
“We’re in trouble! The city outside is in an absolute uproar!”
The guard who had been watching over me with an uneasy face flared in anger at his late-arriving colleague.
“Hey! You said they’d be here at noon, so why are you only getting here now? And where are the soldiers? Why are you alone?”
“Listen to me! That’s not what matters right now! The capital has been turned upside down, I tell you!”
As the guard who ran in shouted in exasperation, doubt finally crossed the face of the angry man.
“The capital turned upside down? What on earth happened?”
“Didn’t you read today’s paper? The Grand Duke’s last will and testament is plastered across the front page!”
At those words, my head snapped up from where it had been hanging low. The only man in the Empire bearing the title of Grand Duke was the one who had come here barely half a day ago, provoked my fury to the brim, and vanished.
Yet a last will out of nowhere? My brows furrowed at the bizarre news.
“His Grace visited here just yesterday, didn't he?”
“They say chaos erupted at the grand ducal residence at dawn. In the dead of night, a gunshot suddenly rang out, and even the patrolling watch heard the sound.”
At the word gunshot, I felt my facial muscles freeze stiff.
“More than a few witnessed the scene of recovering the body, and right on cue, a handwritten will by His Grace hit the front page of the morning paper in bold print. The world out there is in utter chaos!”
I blinked slowly. The words flowing into my ears refused to make sense.
“…Who did you say died?”
Belatedly noticing me, the guards closed their mouths in dismay, realizing their blunder.
* * *
The will was concise, its meaning plain.
It stated that the coin used to purchase the poison illegal under imperial law had come from the grand ducal estate, and since the child’s death occurred within the residence, the responsibility rightly fell to him alone.
Having committed a crime beyond forgiveness even in death, he surrendered all grand ducal property to the Empire. The Princess was innocent and unstable in mind and body following the child’s demise, so he pleaded only for His Majesty’s clemency.
In short, my husband had traded his life and his house for mine.
Everyone knew it was preposterous. Yet a will published for all the world to see amounted to a confession, and since he had already departed this life, the Emperor was placed in a remarkably awkward position. In attempting to eliminate me, he had lost the nation's greatest hero.
Of course, if the Emperor set his mind to it, disregarding the will and severing my life would be effortless, yet the cost of doing so was too high. Whatever hatred the populace held toward me, was the Grand Duke not a figure revered by all?
No matter how powerful an Emperor might be, it was hardly wise to touch the person whom the most honorable man on the continent had bought with his own life.