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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 36
Chapter Title: The Monster's Diary
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Episode 36
The servant glanced between the sprawled forms of Imeline and Eric, then asked with an unconcerned expression.
“Where should I take them? But Young Lord Eric seems to be….”
Imeline, in her ruined wedding dress, was fast asleep and even snoring. Eric, a swordsman with a resistance to poisons, still had his eyes open.
He looked at Ella and said.
“What are you… do… ing….”
“Just sleep. Weren't you tired from the rushed wedding?”
Ella said with a gentle smile.
The servant held a bottle of liquid near Eric’s nose. Just like that, Eric, who had been fighting it, quickly lost consciousness and passed out.
“Take them to the top floor of the west tower.”
The servant flinched at Ella’s words.
“B-But that’s where you keep all of your cherished….”
It was true.
The west tower was where Ella kept her collection of all sorts of depraved and perverse and utterly unspeakable things she cherished. The top floor was, in essence, a space solely for Ella’s amusement.
It was a room from which even the servants who cleaned it would sometimes flee in terror.
Ella tilted her head at the servant’s surprised expression.
“Can’t I lend my cherished things to a passionate newlywed couple? Take them.”
Ella winked at the servant.
When the servant clapped, knights entered. They followed the order and carried the two out.
‘If a man and a woman spend the night together in the same room, a fraudulent marriage might just become a real one, right?’
Ella smiled with delight.
The servant, who seemed to find her smile chilling, spoke.
“Um… but… the Wedgwood family has been looking for Miss Imeline for a while now.”
“The Wedgwood family?”
Ella furrowed her brow as if to ask who that was.
“...Imeline’s maiden name is Wedgwood.”
“Ah, is that so? So the woman’s name was Wedgwood!”
‘She’s only just realized that….’
Then again, Ella wasn’t one to keep the names of lower nobles in her head for long.
“...Let them in for a moment.”
✵ ✵ ✵
“You’re saying I can’t see my sister?”
Ella glanced between Philip, who wore a bewildered expression, and Helena, who sat beside him looking as if she had expected this.
“Early-term expectant mothers are prone to fatigue, are they not? Your sister seemed quite exhausted, so I gave her my own room. You and your mother, being lower nobles, have probably never seen the palace and may not know, but it’s not so special for us to have a guest stay the night rather than simply sending them home.”
Philip’s expression soured at Ella’s casual remark that they wouldn’t have received such treatment as lower nobles.
‘What a royal bitch….’
Philip thought, smacking his lips, but Ella seemed completely oblivious to his mood. She wasn’t even trying to hurt his feelings; she simply didn’t care a whit about his reaction.
Young ladies with malice, like Vivian Cavendish, at least paid attention to their target’s reaction, but this was…
‘Princesses in fairy tales are supposed to be beautiful, kind, and self-sacrificing. Then again, it's not like I'm in a fairy tale. Where else would I ever see a princess?’
Philip looked at Helena with a troubled face. Helena showed no reaction.
“Then could we at least see Young Lord Eric for a moment….”
“Oh, my. I may be first in line for the throne, but I can hardly barge into a newlywed couple’s room and drag the husband out!”
Philip was growing more and more intimidated.
He had almost no information about Imeline’s sudden departure from home last night.
‘Go in and save Imeline! Hurry!’
Except for what his mother had whispered in his ear while pretending to have fainted in front of the temple.
‘I’m not going to marry the Duke… so you must make sure this wedding happens!’
‘What? Is Imeline really pregnant?’
‘As if!’
If that wasn’t it, then why on earth would she help them get married, even at the risk of getting on the Duke’s bad side?
But Philip, who had always been good at listening to his mother, had been as if possessed, entering the temple and rescuing Imeline.
‘Honestly, for us, it doesn’t really matter if Mom marries the Duke or if Imeline marries Eric….’
Since when did those two get so close?
Philip’s head was starting to ache. He hadn’t heard a single thing about when Imeline had started planning this, or what she intended to do from now on.
‘I told her so many times that family shouldn’t keep secrets from each other….’
But why was his mother so calm in this situation? Her own marriage had been broken… Imeline had deceived us!
In the end, they were ushered out of the princess’s office without being able to say another word.
As they walked down the corridor, Philip kept glancing at his silent mother.
“Ah, that girl, really… should I give her a piece of my mind? Huh?”
“…”
“I’ll call both Eric and Imeline over and knock their heads together….”
While Philip chattered on, watching his mother’s reaction, Helena said nothing. She only asked, out of the blue.
“What do you think of Eric?”
“Arrogant, blunt, and the complete opposite of Duke Orleans?”
Helena listened, deep in thought.
“...Ah, why do you ask? What is it? Anyway, Mom, do you really think it’s right to let them get married like this? Let’s be real. Imeline will be treated like a nuisance in the ducal house for a while….”
“That’s not bad.”
“Huh? The part about Imeline being treated like a nuisance?”
Philip asked with a puzzled look. But Helena didn’t answer his question, only telling him to go home.
“You go on ahead.”
“What about you?”
“I have things to take care of, don’t I? Like money, or things that look like money, or things that might be money. I have to go collect it.”
Philip nodded as if he finally understood.
“Oh, right. Marina Corleone, you said that woman was looking for us, didn’t you?”
Helena nodded.
Marina Corleone.
She was a loan shark in the south, known as the ‘Witch.’ She also held most of Viscount Wedgwood’s debt.
“Get caught by the Witch, and they won’t even find your bones. You should lay low for a while, too. Our names are all over the capital’s papers, so if her men were wandering around and saw… by now…”
Philip swallowed hard.
“Our house probably isn’t safe either.”
✵ ✵ ✵
“Ughhh….”
I pushed myself up, feeling like I’d just woken from a terrible nightmare.
Somehow, everything around me was dark. When I opened my eyes, the first things I registered were the rustling texture of the bedding and the strangely pleasant air in the room. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, I spotted a lamp in one corner emitting a reddish glow.
Then, an overwhelming thirst hit me.
I scratched the back of my neck and mumbled.
“Wa… water….”
I managed to sit up and grab the glass of water on the bedside table. A sip of the cool liquid helped clear my head.
Only then did my surroundings come into focus.
A room, completely dark with all the windows covered. A strange red light. A large bed. And on it…
Eric, lying next to me.
I shot out of bed. I brought my hand to the nose of the woodenly sleeping Eric.
To use a drug strong enough to knock someone out so quickly.
No matter how strong Eric’s constitution was, he could have died from an overdose.
“…”
He wasn’t dead.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
What would I have done if Eric had died? How could I fight that psycho Duke all by myself?
I left the unconscious Eric and walked toward what looked like a door.
But the door…
“...There’s no handle?!”
I clamped my hands over my mouth. A hollow laugh escaped through my fingers.
“...She locked us in. Wow… seriously….”
I tried to recall the last words I’d heard from Ella.
‘I’m going to be king… and for that, I’m willing to accept the unhappiness of others… so what’s the harm in connecting two young people who have feelings for each other….’
Connecting two young people who have feelings for each other? I finally understood the meaning of those words, and a chill ran down my spine.
No, not a chill, but more like…
Something hot, maybe.
I turned back to look at Eric, lying on the bed. I’d thought his posture seemed strange from the start.
“Did she feed us a love potion or something?”
Honestly. She didn’t have to go this far.
‘…Not that I need one. I have eyes. I can feel *something* when I look at this handsome man.’
I gazed down at the red lips that bloomed like a flower on his pale face.
Beads of sweat had formed along his temples. Did they give him the same thing?
I reached out my hand to his cheek to wipe away the sweat. Just then, his lips parted.
“...Crazy… crazy woman….”
Is he talking about me?
As I tilted my head, his lips moved once more.
“...Mother….”
The moment I heard that, I flinched back.
Ah. Right.
Eric’s mother was known to have died of madness. And Duke Orleans was said to have cared for his duchess with great devotion.
The reality was the opposite.
The mad one was Eric’s father, and his wife…
I sat on the edge of the bed with a bitter feeling. Then I fumbled for the ‘thing’ my mother had secretly passed to me earlier.
Fortunately, the princess’s servant hadn’t searched me, and ‘it’ was still securely fastened to the waistband of my petticoat.
Thud.
As I untied the petticoat string, a worn notebook fell out. I picked it up.
Turning over the cover, which was so old it was about to disintegrate, I saw it was filled with densely written transparent letters.
‘Secret ink….’
I frowned.
I had recognized it at a glance earlier.
This was the notebook from which my mother had torn out a few pages and put in the envelope with the documents.
Back then, I thought it was just one of the back pages of the documents…
‘Now I see it was just a diary.’
I opened the notebook to a page. It read:
Everyone says I’m mad.
Even Eric looked at me with contempt yesterday.
Now, I’m starting to doubt myself.
Am I mad?
The corpse I saw…
The ‘monster’ I saw…
Was it a creation of my madness?
No.
That can’t be.
Every time doubt eats away at me, I remember the ‘monster’s’ red eyes.
The eyes of a real ‘monster.’
I must protect Eric from that ‘monster.’
...‘Monster.’
I knew who Emily Orleans was writing about.
I felt my whole body turn cold.
My mother must have obtained this notebook yesterday. In my dream, too, my mother learned Baldeck’s secret the day before the wedding.
I closed the notebook.
‘Helena….’
A note was tucked inside the notebook. The note was in Helena’s handwriting.
Now my mother will understand why I went through with this fraudulent marriage. So now—
‘She told you to live a long and happy life together?’
Did she really write what Philip said? That since it’s come to this, I should hold on tight to Eric? Just like she did with her husbands?
But I can’t do that.
This is just…
Just a fraudulent marriage.
I have to pretend to live with him for a few months, then quickly make way for Eric’s second marriage…
With those thoughts, I began to read the note.
Finished reading?
The Duke is a psycho.
We just need to grab our share and escape the ducal house. As for Eric… I don’t know if he’s a psycho or not, what kind of man he is, but it doesn’t matter what he is.
Just squeeze the money out of them and leave.
This marriage, it’s not one you truly want. A marriage like that can never be happy. Never.
I crumpled the note and squeezed it tightly in my fist.
‘Fraud or fake, I’m your husband. I’ll protect you, and if anything happens to you, I’ll be there.’
It was then.
Eric’s voice came from behind me.
“What are you doing?”
