Chapter 1 - Chapter 1

Translator: Nox

The Villainess Enjoys Her Married Life - Chapter 1The Villainess Enjoys Her Married LifeChapter 1

Chapter 1

Episode 1. Awakening through Betrayal

“Your husband doesn’t love you.”

In the lush garden of the ducal estate, two women stood facing each other.

The pale-faced woman dressed in a magnificent red gown was Duchess Eshika Klaus.

Having grown up in luxury from birth, she possessed beautiful silver hair and blue eyes.

And standing upright before her was a woman named Yuri Anesis.

The daughter of the wet nurse who had raised Eshika, and her one and only childhood friend.

Yuri’s lips parted slowly.

“The one he loves is…”

Yuri’s composed face was reflected in Eshika’s blue eyes.

Possessing radiant blonde hair and red eyes, Yuri spoke in a comforting tone tinged with a subtle pity.

“…me.”

The rustle of leaves stirred in the breeze.

Eshika’s blue eyes shook violently with shock.

“I think he has another woman. What should I do?”

It had been barely three months since she had confided that to Yuri.

As the wet nurse’s daughter, Yuri had followed Eshika to the Klaus Duchy after her marriage to assist her.

Even when her mother-in-law, Riona Klaus, nitpicked her as ‘the daughter of a family that bought their title with money,’ and even when her husband, Duke Kalian Klaus, gave her the cold shoulder with unyielding detachment…

The only person Eshika could trust within this hellish ducal estate had been Yuri.

‘And yet, Yuri… betrayed me?’

She had first noticed Kalian’s suspicious behavior after discovering he had purchased an ‘Allet Ring’ from a jewelry boutique.

The very token given when lovers swear eternal love to one another.

Her heart had fluttered at the thought that it might be for her, but even after a month passed, Kalian did not speak a single word to her.

And now, sparkling on the ring finger of Yuri’s left hand… was an Allet Ring of the exact same design Kalian had reportedly bought.

“…!”

The shock refused to subside, and Eshika barely managed to raise her trembling hand.

And with all her might, she struck Yuri across the cheek.

Slap—!

The sound of the slap resonated so loud it was almost crisp.

“Yuri! How dare you…!”

Just as Eshika clutched her tearing chest with her other hand, on the verge of pouring out curses—

“It seems you have no intention of mending that vicious habit of yours.”

Kalian’s voice sounded as he appeared, catching the staggering Yuri.

Possessing vivid brown hair and cold violet eyes, an icy chill hung about him.

“…Kalian…”

Eshika’s eyes wavered.

Duke Kalian Klaus—one of only three dukes in the empire—was Eshika’s husband.

An imposing height and solid physique that exerted sheer pressure, along with an outstanding appearance ranked among the top five in the empire.

When she first married him, she had thought the entire world was hers.

“Maids who devoted their entire lives to this duchy are quitting every other day because of your tyranny. And now you lay hands even on a friend who serves you.”

Having stepped in, Kalian supported Yuri by the waist so she would not fall.

With the very hand that had never once held Eshika’s since their wedding.

“Just how much longer must I overlook this insolence?”

Eshika could feel it clearly from his frosty gaze.

The fact that Kalian despised her.

Kalian, heir to a ducal house founded by founding contributors to the empire, and Eshika, the daughter of the nouveau-riche Baron Brigitte who had struck it rich in the jewelry trade, had been worlds apart from birth.

Everything from minor interests to daily habits differed, and just as Kalian could not understand Eshika, it had been difficult for her to understand him, but…

Eshika had believed they could become a good husband and wife.

In any case, the prestigious and handsome Duke of Klaus was the ideal man she had always dreamed of.

Even through three years of relentless indifference, Eshika believed that Kalian would look at her one day, and she had striven ceaselessly in her own way.

Yet the price she received in return was this betrayal.

“…Kalian! You have no right to say such things to me—”

“Do not say it again. My name.”

Eshika’s eyes shook at Kalian’s cold voice cutting off her desperate cry.

The corners of Yuri’s red lips curled into an arc.

As if mocking all of Eshika’s countless efforts as nothing more than foolish, vain dreams.

“Let us go, Yuri.”

Kalian placed a hand on Yuri’s shoulder and spoke in a near-whisper.

Eshika could endure it no longer.

She lunged forward, resolved to tear out Yuri’s hair by the roots.

For that was the only vengeance she could exact upon Kalian and Yuri right now.

But blocked by Kalian’s firm arm, her hands could not reach.

“Let go! Let go of me! I’ll kill you!”

Eshika shrieked in frenzy, her brows raised high, as Kalian’s chilling voice drifted into her ear.

“You are truly… venomous, and tiresome.”

With that, Kalian forcefully shoved Eshika away as she lunged with all her strength.

“Ahhh!”

Eshika fell backward and tumbled hard onto the ground.

A tremendous impact struck her head, and the blood flowing from Eshika seeped into the grass.

She only wished to die like this.

**

She suffered for ten days and nights.

At first, Eshika thought she was seeing hallucinations.

But it was neither a dream nor an illusion; it was the memories of her past life.

Everything she had lost was flowing vividly into her eyes, ears, and skin.

Her name in her past life was ‘Cheon Yeong-ryeong,’ and the place she lived was the Jungwon Murim.

The unruly daughter of the Heavenly Demon Cult Leader, she had met the Emperor of the empire and fallen in love.

Abandoning her free life in the Murim, she chose a new life in the Imperial Palace as one man’s woman.

“Dok-yeong oppa, I… have a man I love.”

“An eagle can never find happiness in a cage, Yeong-ryeong.”

Though everyone who had protected her like family tried to dissuade her, the world of women she plunged into for the sake of love was just as cruel as the Murim, requiring meticulous cunning.

Yeong-ryeong stained her hands with blood countless times and survived the war of flowers.

Before long, the imperial concubines feared her, whispering behind her back:

‘The Supreme Poisonous Villainess, Cheon Yeong-ryeong.’

What she had sought to obtain, giving up everything, was solely the love of one man.

Yet other women entered the imperial harem endlessly, and the Emperor—who once swore he would offer up his very heart for her—grew sick of her jealousy and no longer sought her out.

Ultimately trapped by the concubines’ schemes and confined to the Cold Palace, Yeong-ryeong withered away like a dried flower.

And her final memory was a burning agony that consumed her entire body, and a man’s scream laced with bitter grief.

She could not remember the cause of her death.

“Yeong-ryeong. I… you…”

“…Gasp… gasp…”

Waking in bed after ten days drenched in cold sweat, the blurred scenery of the room gradually sharpened in Eshika’s vision.

“…Ugh…”

Eshika clamped a hand over her mouth, her body heaving violently.

Her wide-eyed expression held deep shock.

Her frail body felt nauseated, but the vivid memories of her past life remained clear and intact.

‘This place… is identical to the book I read in my past life.’

The fact that the withering Yeong-ryeong used to kill time reading Western novels was something no one knew, except for her page boy from the Demonic Cult.

<Flower of Thuresian> was a novel depicting the events taking place in a fictional empire called the ‘Thuresian Empire.’

The protagonist was Lesvan Deon Lusane, Crown Prince of the Thuresian Empire, while the Ducal House of Klaus was a faction supporting the 2nd Prince and keeping the Crown Prince in check.

In the book, Eshika Klaus was the wife of Kalian Klaus and the only daughter of the nouveau-riche Baron Brigitte; condemned for her excessive extravagance and vicious temper, she committed suicide the moment she was divorced in their fifth year of marriage.

And the woman Kalian took as his second wife immediately after divorcing Eshika was…

‘Yuri Anesis.’

Eshika Klaus’s childhood friend and the woman who worked as a maid in the Klaus Duchy.

Yeong-ryeong murmured as she recalled the part where Eshika cursed the Ducal House of Klaus until her dying breath.

“This woman… is just like me… How strange, she feels like a sister.”

A woman raised without envy of anyone, losing everything for love.

There could be no destiny more full of regret and cruelty than this.

Yeong-ryeong had found empathy and solace seeing Eshika in that book.

She was neither cleverer nor more wicked than herself, nor did she possess the ability to dominate her enemies, but in the end, her conclusion was identical to her own.

Yet now, she had become that very Eshika from the book.

A woman fated to have her husband stolen by her childhood friend, and after divorce, to curse them and take her own life.

And Kalian… His face and aura resembled the man Yeong-ryeong had loved.

To the point where she wondered if the Emperor, just as she had become Eshika, had reincarnated as Kalian.

Perhaps that was why she had clung to him even more desperately.

‘In the past, I was Yeong-ryeong, and in the present, I am Eshika. If both are me…’

Her former slightly hunched posture transformed, straightening with razor-sharp precision.

‘In this second life, I will have no regrets.’

Above all, Eshika’s gaze was no longer the dull, fearful one of the past.

Inside the dim room, only her blue eyes burned with piercing brilliance.

**

Sella, one of Eshika’s maids, entered her room carrying dry bread and a cup of water.

Because the Dowager Duchess had issued an order after word spread that the Duchess had awakened.

“Hold her accountable for stirring up discord in this household. Bring her only dried crusts of bread and cold water.”

The inside of the room was exceedingly dark.

The Dowager Duchess had always despised Eshika as the daughter of a rootless nouveau-riche noble, refusing her even luminescent magic stones, forcing her to rely on candlelight.

“What time do you think it is, still sleeping like this?”

Sella grumbled in a sharp voice, looking at the raised blanket on the bed.

“How lazy can one get.”

The Duchess of Klaus was an easy target who could do nothing but cry and complain.

Whenever the maids mocked her, she would tremble in fury, but doing so only worked against her.

All foodstuffs and supplies in the ducal mansion were under the Dowager Duchess’s control.

Turning the maids into enemies only made life miserable for the Duchess.

Under the Dowager Duchess’s orders, whenever maids submitted resignations, they cited the Duchess’s name, so her reputation within the Klaus Duchy had long since plummeted to the ground.

When she woke from the bed and saw this bread and water, tears would surely well up in the Duchess’s bright blue eyes once again.

‘Sella… the dry bread is so hard… Could you please bring me some warm food?’ she might even plead.

‘Should I tell her to get on her knees and beg? When else would a noble beg before me? Pfft.’

Smirking, Sella bent over, grabbed Eshika’s blanket, and yanked it open in one swift motion.

Expecting to see Eshika lying curled up underneath.

“…?”

But there was nothing inside the bed. Only a bunched-up bundle of quilts.

And the next moment, feeling something freezing touch her neck, Sella was so struck with terror that she could not even scream.