Translator: Nox

Chapter 2

<The family title and estate shall be inherited by the eldest son. In the absence of a legitimate male heir, the title and all associated rights shall be extinguished.>

<The property rights of women are not recognized. All dowry of a married woman shall belong to her husband.>

Matila’s notorious inheritance and marriage laws had bred countless evils throughout their long history. Lottie’s case was one of them.

Crown Prince Padrick, who had successfully seduced the only daughter of the sonless Count Ix and married her, craftily exploited the law so that he, as the son-in-law, could inherit the house.

And once he achieved his goal?

‘I might have actually been grateful if he had just processed the inheritance and abandoned me right after the wedding.’

Inside a train bound for the capital, Ronvernon, as the social season began.

From a grand wedding to a ruinous divorce, being imprisoned in the old castle of Fulton after having every last bit of her home and possessions stripped away, and finally, death by a single bullet…

Reflecting on her wretched past, Lottie let out a sudden sigh.

In a day and a half, she would meet the ex-husband she wouldn’t mind grinding to dust.

Having returned to the time just before meeting him, Lottie’s first thought was, naturally, that she had to avoid the marriage that was the beginning of all her misfortunes.

To do that, she had to block any chance of meeting him from the start.

However, Lottie’s stubborn refusal to go to Ronvernon was met with a threat from her great-aunt Isabel—who swore to send her to a convent if she didn’t open her door immediately—and the tears of a father who loved his daughter dearly.

In her past life, the foolish daughter who had pushed not only herself but also her father into a pit of despair feared a single drop of her father’s tears far more than becoming a nun.

Lottie, who had kept her door firmly locked, had no choice but to wave the white flag after a few days.

Thus, Lottie was currently on a train to Ronvernon, the root of all evil, accompanied by her great-aunt as her guardian.

“A decorative ostrich feather for you to wear will be waiting at the hotel. It’s a special piece I paid extra to acquire.”

Sitting across from Lottie, her great-aunt spoke with an unsatisfied expression.

“I dislike having to deck oneself out like a frantic flower arrangement, but what can one do when young men these days only care for a plausible exterior? A lady should, by rights, have a beautiful inner self…”

Lottie couldn’t quite remember, but the feather ornament she had worn at age twenty was likely “specially tacky” at best.

‘Even if I can’t recall the exact shape of the feathers I wore that day… the situation where I first became entangled with that man is so vivid I can still smell it.’

It was a play disguised as a coincidence, but in reality, it was a performance staged by her ex-husband to perfectly capture her heart.

“Great-aunt, I…”

“If you’re about to say something absurd about wanting to go home again, say it to your diary.”

Her great-aunt replied in a brisk tone and turned her head sharply toward the carriage window. Then, as if reading Lottie’s stifled feelings, she added flatly:

“Lottie. A man might be different, but a woman cannot live in this world alone without a husband. It is a grueling, difficult world.”

‘But if I go to the Royal Ball like this, my great-niece’s life is going to be ruined…!’

Her desire to scream that was as high as a mountain peak, but it was useless. She herself still couldn’t quite believe the miracle that had happened to her.

And so, the day of the Royal Ball arrived, marking the first day of the social season.

‘It really is a specially tacky feather ornament…’

With three mysterious purple feather ornaments—the kind that seemed impossible to find anywhere outside the Dempis region—pinned to her hair, Lottie entered the castle’s massive ballroom with Isabel.

The marble floor, which felt as though she might slip if she didn’t put strength into her toes, was the first to greet her.

Then came the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the gold-leafed ceiling decorations, and the beautiful paintings hanging on the white walls…

If it weren’t for the excited heat of the young men and women floating through the Grand Banquet Hall, Lottie would have thought she had returned to the days when she was the Queen of Matila.

“Great-aunt, I…”

“No.”

“…”

“Oh, isn’t that young Mons? This is Charlotte, the only daughter of my nephew, Count Ix.”

Isabel, who had instantly deflected Lottie’s timid rebellion, smoothly introduced her to a man. He was a tall man with his brown hair neatly combed back.

“I am Philip, the eldest son of the House of Mons. I have met Viscountess Dunchest and Count Ix several times at charity gatherings, but this is my first time meeting the young lady.”

Ah, I see. I don’t think I’ve met you, though.

Lottie wondered why the name Philip Mons sounded familiar, then realized he was a man who had been on her remarriage list in her past life.

He was a man who had been on the blacklist for being a libertine, but she had desperately approached him at the very end out of necessity. And she had been flatly rejected, to boot!

“Would the beautiful young lady grant me the honor of asking for a dance?”

“No?”

She fired off a rejection fueled by the resentment of her past life, but because of Isabel, who was watching from the side with fire in her eyes, she ultimately had no choice but to accept Philip’s request.

The first song was a gentle waltz.

“I had an inkling, but I didn’t realize you would be this beautiful. Especially your hair, which resembles the light of a sunset…”

Lottie swallowed the urge to snap back that his hair was a boring, uninspired brown, and instead just peeked over Philip’s shoulder to scan her surroundings.

It seemed her ex-husband had not yet arrived at the Grand Banquet Hall, and Isabel, who was hell-bent on marrying off her great-niece, had already left to scout for other dance partners.

’Now’s the time!’

“If you would grant me the chance to have a more private conversation after the ball…”

“This way.”

“Eh? Uh, uh…!”

Lottie began to drag Philip along, moving against the flow of the dance formation heading left.

She nearly collided with several couples along the way, but she dodged them so skillfully like a flying squirrel that the bizarre behavior of the counter-flowing couple surprisingly went unnoticed.

Just as Lottie reached her target destination, the dance tune ended.

“One more song…”

“It was a pleasure. Goodbye then.”

Philip, who was dazed after being used as a shield to evade surveillance, bowed awkwardly at Lottie’s curt rejection.

‘It’s a bit petty… but rejecting the man who dumped me first doesn’t feel half bad.’

Subduing the twitch at the corners of her mouth, Lottie quickly hurried away before Isabel could spot her.

If there was one good thing about having been the Queen, it was that she knew the complex structure of the Royal Palace inside and out.

In the Grand Banquet Hall built for various royal events, there were secret spaces unknown to outsiders, just like in other castles.

The place Lottie intended to hide was a small temporary room hidden within the sub-hall of the Grand Banquet Hall.

Entering a corner hidden by a tapestry, she felt along a painting hanging on the wall until she found a handle that appeared to be part of the artwork.

She twisted it carefully, opened it, and slipped inside faster than the wind.

The temporary room, draped with thick curtains, was filled with pitch-black darkness once the door closed.

‘I’ll just stay hidden until the seventh dance ends.’

By the time the seventh dance ended, a rumor would spread that a pair of foolish young lovers had snuck into the forbidden outdoor garden to indulge in shameful pleasures.

When the guard shouted, both had fled in such a hurry that their faces couldn’t be seen, but the problem was that they had left evidence at the scene.

And that evidence was…

Lottie swallowed a sigh and looked up at the purple feather ornaments dangling from her head.

Three. All of them were there.

She didn’t know how the feathers she had pinned so securely ended up in an outdoor garden she had never even set foot in.

But Lottie had been branded as the female protagonist of the scandal without a chance to explain, and Lottie back then, believing that marriage was a woman’s only happiness, had despaired as if she had received a literal death sentence.

— If there is another man who went to that place, which no one but a member of the Royal Family can enter, who would it be?

At that moment, her ex-husband had appeared.

The beautiful prince from a fairy tale, coming to rescue the princess trapped in the high castle of scandal.

He was a Crown Prince rumored to never even spare a glance for most women.

The mere fact that she had been chosen by him changed the gazes that had been glaring at Lottie with contempt into looks of envy.

Lottie, who had become the protagonist of the romance of the century in the blink of an eye, had stared blankly at the Crown Prince.

Before the bewilderment that the Crown Prince, whom she didn’t even know, had stepped forward for her, her heart raced first.

— Why… did you step forward for me? Your Highness is so noble that I cannot even be compared to you, so what am I that you would…

While dancing with the prince immediately after the commotion settled, Lottie had asked in a trembling voice.

— Do not feel burdened. I would have done the same for anyone, not just you.

The Crown Prince had replied, looking down at her with an ambiguous smile.

Of course, she had thought self-deprecatingly. What am I?

The puppy love that had bloomed without her knowing ended without a trace. Or so she thought.

— My words that I would have done the same for anyone else were not sincere.

On a balcony drenched in moonlight.

— It was you. The only woman in the world who could turn the Crown Prince of Matila into a mere man blinded by a fever.

The kiss on the back of her hand that followed those particularly sweet words.

— Will you marry me, my lady?

If only he had been a little less beautiful.

If only the night air that day hadn’t been so exceptionally warm.

If only, for some reason, tears hadn’t suddenly welled up at those words.

Then that girl who knew nothing of the world would not have responded with a marriage vow, promising to give him everything.

— Lottie. Someone like you is what they call a thief. A low-life petty thief who was blinded by money and repaid love with betrayal.

She wouldn’t have spent years falling into hell, clutching a love that had been deception and lies from the start.

‘You think I’ll be fooled like that again?’

Lottie, returned from hell, decided to close her eyes to the mechanics of how this miracle could happen.

She was afraid that if she pried too deeply into how it occurred, this dreamlike time would vanish like a mirage.

But even with her eyes closed, the reason why such an impossible, magical thing had happened to her and no one else was clear.

It was God’s will for her to set right the life that had been distorted by her wrong choices.

It went without saying that the first step was not choosing her villainous ex-husband.

‘Then, what comes after not marrying my ex-husband?’

A thought she had never considered because she was so preoccupied with not getting involved with him suddenly struck her temple.

Startled, she stepped back as if the thought itself had physically shoved her.

Thump. Something dissolved in the darkness touched Lottie’s leg.

Something hard and cool. Probably furniture. Probably an unexhibited statue.

If not that, then bones abandoned for years.

It had to be. Even if the thing touching her body was as soft as human skin, and a steady rhythm of breath was flowing in and out.

“It would be best if you didn’t move.”

Lottie, who had been praying that the person who happened to find this secret space was just a stray animal, screamed silently at the low voice coming from behind her.

And once more at the words that followed.

“Because even now, you are touching a very… undesirable place.”