Previously
Dolores binges on the chocolate cake to break free from her past conditioning, and despite vomiting from lingering trauma, she hardens her resolve to strike back against her abusers.
Madame Rouare’s official title was Baroness Agnes Rouare.
Yet no one addressed her as Baroness Rouare, nor did anyone call her Agnes, a name meant for a virtuous woman.
She was the woman who had firmly held her place as the Emperor's royal mistress even after the first and second empresses had both perished.
She lacked only an empress's crown; otherwise, she was an ageless witch clutching the keys to the imperial vaults.
And to Dolores, she was a mother-in-law who possessed no right to be one.
Dolores wore a faint smile amid Madame Rouare’s banquet.
‘To return and have to look upon her again is sickening.’
People had clustered around tenaciously to court the mistress’s favor.
‘She opens Swan Hall with utter brazenness, though it is reserved strictly for the imperial family.’
The diamond necklace adorning Madame Rouare’s upper chest had indisputably belonged to the Empress as well.
Then Madame Rouare caught sight of Dolores, her lips curving into a twisted smile.
“My goodness, look who it is.”
“Happy birthday, Madame Rouare.”
“Ho-ho. Receiving greetings from the daughter of the Marquis of Rochester makes the honor all mine.”
Dolores kept silent, offering only an elegant smile.
‘Looking at it now, she was already trying to break my spirit back then.’
Had she truly considered it an honor, she ought to have said she was delighted to receive greetings from the future Crown Princess.
After all, this was an hour when Dolores’s ascension to Crown Princess was already an established certainty.
Madame Rouare sneered sweet venom as she regarded Dolores.
“To look so exquisite even while smiling vacantly is truly a marvelous talent. I do pray that beauty shines long in the imperial palace.”
“Thank you for your generous praise.”
“Fufu. I look forward to the day we live together in the palace as soon as possible.”
Madame Rouare arched her eyes into a graceful smile over her fan.
Dolores, however, was not so naive as to mistake those words for a genuine blessing.
She remembered it vividly.
Because that woman had refused to surrender the Empress’s jewels, how Dolores’s nerves had frayed until the final moments of her wedding.
‘Madame Rouare, please, do not do this! The ceremony begins in just two hours…!’
A noble marquis’s daughter had been forced to stamp her feet in despair, pounding on the mistress's door.
How had such insolence been tolerated?
‘Because she was a woman who held the Emperor’s favor for over thirty years.’
Thanks to that, everyone had witnessed Dolores begging on her knees in her wedding dress.
Even Adrian, her husband-to-be, had been reluctant to protest against Madame Rouare.
It was because the Madame had looked after him ever since his mother died.
‘Won’t she open the door soon if we just wait, Dolores?’
‘But Your Highness! The ceremony, it will start shortly…!’
‘This is merely a battle of wills. Ahem.’
Adrian, looking embarrassed himself, had averted his gaze. Then he had muttered quietly.
‘If you kneel and beg her, she will… surely help. Certainly.’
There was no need to dwell on who the loser had been that day.
Foolish Dolores, who had missed every warning chime the chapel bells rang to signal that this marriage was doomed.
“Haa.”
Dolores blinked and surveyed the banquet hall once more.
All around her stood people casting gazes stained with longing and lust.
‘If only I could dance just once with the Empire's Diamond.’
‘Just once before the Crown Prince lays hands on her…’
‘Could she need a paramour after her marriage?’
Sickened by their blatant desires, Dolores let slip a soft scoff.
“Pfft.”
Where she had once preened under men's gazes, her insides were now parched as dry kindling.
Just then, a clear, ringing voice called out to her.
“Sister!”
“…!”
The corner of Dolores’s mouth, armed with a steady smile until now, wavered for the first time.
Her heart began hammering against her ribs.
‘Even though I thought I had steeled myself.’
To think the cousin she had once cherished so deeply—her husband’s future mistress—was walking toward her.
Had a demon descended, she could have stabbed it to death with a fork. Regrettably, her cousin was a fragile noble lady.
Even so, Dolores blossomed into a dazzling smile.
“Oh, my. Angelica.”
“Sister, how could you do this?”
The moment they met, Angelica pouted with a wounded look.
“Whatever do you mean, Angelica?”
“You took the marquisate carriage and left ahead without me!”
Angelica chirped like a bird, putting on a show of sorrow.
Her delicate beauty was perfectly crafted to awaken protective instincts.
“I was waiting so we could go together! When I heard you had left all by yourself, I was so terribly hurt.”
“Angelica.”
“It makes it look like you don't cherish me anymore, doesn't it?”
Speak plainly. It was because you wanted to ride in the carriage bearing the Rochester seal.
Because you belong to a cadet branch, and on your own, you must take an ordinary carriage.
Dolores's lips twitched with the urge to say it aloud.
How could someone possess such an angelic face while being so slavishly bound to greed?
‘Is that how she boldly went on to sleep with another woman’s husband and bear his child?’
Yet when tears welled in Angelica's eyes, the surrounding gazes began to drift in their direction.
This was not good.
She needed to meet with the Grand Duke; drawing undue attention was the last thing she wanted.
Still, she had to wipe that deceitful, sniffling expression off that face.
“Angelica.”
“Sniff, yes, Sister?”
“How could I not cherish you? Do you know how much of my allowance I have spent on you?”
“…Pardon?”
“The gown you are wearing right now, your shoes, and even your accessories.”
Dolores spoke softly, yet her voice carried clearly enough for everyone nearby to hear.
Lifting her fan, Dolores began tapping Angelica's body, looking her over from top to bottom.
Head, shoulder, collarbone, and then arm.
“I bought all of it out of my personal allowance. Since you have no budget of your own, after all.”
“Sis—!”
“When I gave so much to my beloved sister, could you not show some understanding for my circumstances, having to enter the palace early to attend to His Highness the Crown Prince?”
Angelica’s pale face flushed crimson in an instant.
Had she been the seasoned royal mistress she would later become, perhaps she could have countered.
Because she was still young, however, she could not mount a swift response to Dolores’s sudden strike.
Dolores had no desire to deal with Angelica any further right now, either.
‘I feel rather sick.’
Because she remembered Angelica just before she mounted the scaffold—crying with her eyes while smiling with her lips.
More than anything, finding Grand Duke Resurreccion was paramount.
Though the banquet was in full swing, this Beast of Albion was nowhere to be seen.
‘Whew. He definitely seemed intrigued when I mentioned Howard Street.’
And where was her husband—no, her fiancé, Adrian?
Even in a crowded banquet hall, the presence of the two imperial princes was always unmistakable.
For neither to be seen meant both men were holed up in separate rooms.
“How are both men equally useless?”
Dolores muttered under her breath and slipped out of the banquet hall.
Deterred by her demeanor, which lacked its usual gentle warmth, the approaching men refrained from detaining her.
She had a rough guess where Adrian might be.
‘He must have started womanizing by now. He's likely in his bedroom or the Ruby Room.’
With its opulent interior, the Ruby Room was Adrian’s favored haunt whenever he brought a woman along.
‘It's obvious what a piece of trash to be discarded would do. I should focus on finding the Grand Duke.’
Despite everything, she had known the man as imperial family for some twenty years.
She knew a few places he slipped off to whenever he fled a banquet.
A quiet corner of the garden where the Brillant Roses bloomed.
The study where cigars were permitted.
The Picture Room where the imperial portraits were kept.
Yet no matter how diligently Dolores searched the palace, the man did not show himself.
She could not even ask the attendants, which made her frustration all the greater.
Before long, Dolores came to a halt before the final door, a troubled smile on her lips.
“Hmm. I hope… it isn't here.”
This Emerald Room had belonged to Resurreccion’s late mother, and…
It lay directly adjacent to the Ruby Room.
‘Still, I have no choice.’
Even behind her beaming mask, it was Dolores whose heart was burning with urgency.
Fortunately, the ivory door was unlocked.
The Emerald Room was decorated in the same subdued tones she remembered.
Yet the hulking man was nowhere to be found.
‘Where on earth is he?’
Had they crossed paths, or had he boldly skipped the banquet altogether?
‘I won't have another chance to storm Lancaster Mansion. What am I to do?’
While she furrowed her brow in thought, a faint noise drifted through the gap in the balcony door.
There was no one on this balcony. In that case…
—Ah, my angel.
Dolores let out an empty scoff the moment she stepped onto the balcony.
“Ha.”
Of course.
Having suffered it for two decades, it was hardly a surprise.
It seemed Crown Prince Adrian, her husband-to-be, was in the neighboring room with a woman again.
‘I'll have to wash my ears when I return.’
Before Dolores could turn around, however, a familiar sigh caught her ear.
—Haah, Your Highness…
“…!”
It was Angelica’s voice—the girl who was supposed to be in the banquet hall.
Goosebumps broke out over Dolores’s entire body in an instant.
Her toes turned cold. Her throat burned with disgust, as if acrid vomit were rising to the surface.
“Ugh…”
Dolores clamped a hand over her mouth to suppress the nausea.
She understood it in her mind.
Angelica and Adrian had betrayed her later on anyway.
It was foolish to be shocked that their affair had begun before the wedding rather than after.
Wasting time on heartache was pointless.
“Gag!”
Even so, Dolores was shaken.
She had wanted to believe that Angelica had been brought in merely as a replacement after she was deemed infertile.
That Angelica had stepped forward only under pressure from her greedy father.
That alone had been the final remnant of Dolores’s pride.
Yet the conversation between the two shredded what little pride she had left.
—Why do you look so sad today, my Angelica?
—Sniff, Your Highness. Sister is strange today.
—…Dolly? Why?
—She is so cold to me, and she speaks so cruelly of my circumstances…
—Dolly is only a woman, after all. She behaves that way because she's jealous of you, naturally.
—That cannot be! Sister is the Empire's Diamond, isn't she? While I am merely—
—Angelica, you are an angel. You are the most perfect thing in the world.
A sickening sound of kissing followed.
The wet smacking of lips rubbed together carried on for an agonizingly long time.