Chapter 12
For nobles, marriage was an unavoidable duty. Through marriage, they solidified alliances and produced heirs to continue the family line. Only then could the wealth and bloodlines connecting family to family be preserved.
Kaella, born into the imperial family, was well aware of this. However, she had simply thought that after safely getting past her father’s death, the best course would be to seek a husband better than Pheon.
The best choice she could make was a son-in-law who would join her family, but even suitable candidates for that were rare. Above all, Kaella had no desire to remarry. She just hoped she would collapse and never wake up.
Now that she had seen her father alive, couldn’t she just die peacefully? If she was going to be dragged half-forcibly to Lüsenford anyway, it would be better to die gracefully right now.
“Miss!”
The precious Duke’s Daughter of Ostein barely opened her eyes. The faces of her worried maid, the doctor, and her father, who had stayed by her side the whole time, all came into view at once.
She also noticed the excessively calm and serene morning light. She moved her parched lips. Her throat was too raw from the high fever for any voice to come out.
“Yes, Kaella. Yes.”
But her father, who had personally raised his only daughter, immediately understood what she was trying to say and hurriedly drew closer. He caught the faint puffing sound of her breath and responded.
“Three days have passed, three days.”
More than enough time for everything to be settled.
“I told His Imperial Majesty that you were overwhelmed by your first major responsibility and caught a cold from the tension. He was worried and sent medicine and a doctor.”
Adeo, who knew exactly what his daughter was worried about, spoke gently about the Emperor to reassure her.
“Prince Elcanan also left greetings and a gift for you. He was sorry he couldn’t say goodbye before leaving.”
“Marriage…….”
Adeo gestured to the doctor at the word his daughter squeezed out through her dry throat.
“Let’s have an examination first, and talk after you’ve eaten something.”
But for Kaella, it was already too late. Three days had passed, so there was no way to stop the marriage now.
*
Of course, that didn’t mean she could just give up without doing anything. Burning with rage upon rage, Kaella kicked off the bedcovers and stormed out.
“Miss, please! You’ve been suffering from a high fever for three whole days. If you go out like this, you’ll collapse again! You might even get pneumonia!”
Everyone in the ducal household tried to stop her, but she had no other options either. She knew the Lüsenford Duke, her husband-to-be, very well. He wasn’t the type to come just because she summoned him. She had no choice but to go to him.
This time, she had to stop this insane marriage. It never should have happened in the first place. It was a tragedy that would make everyone miserable and horrific.
“No! Absolutely not! Why not just send a message asking him to come here!”
The maids, butler, and knights, who had no idea whom their lady was going to meet, stamped their feet in frustration. But they couldn’t possibly stop the highborn lady, who was stubbornly leaving her bedchamber for the first time.
“Then at least wait just a little! A guest is coming for lunch today!”
“It’s Father’s guest, not mine.”
Oh dear, our miss can’t even speak properly, her voice is so hoarse, and she’s gasping with every word—where does she think she’s going? The butler was on the verge of tears.
“It’s your fiancé, miss! The Lüsenford Duke is coming!”
She wanted to shout, Who decided he’s my fiancé? but her throat felt like it would tear apart.
“Butler, we can see the Grand Duke’s men!”
“Oh, miss, please. I beg you. Just stay put, all right?”
To make matters worse, the Ostein Duke had gone to the imperial palace again to finalize negotiations with Keruzhan, so the butler would have to plead with the Lüsenford Duke to wait a moment.
The butler watched as his lady reluctantly perched on the edge of the bed, then hurried out. Unlike the Ostein household’s carriage, the Lüsenford Duke’s horse was incredibly fast; by the time the butler reached the entrance, the duke was already dismounting.
“Welcome, Your Grace. I’m sorry, but the master has gone urgently to the imperial palace for negotiations with Keruzhan. He asked you to wait a moment.”
“And the lady?”
He was the one who had swept up the lady when she collapsed in the audience chamber.
“She woke this morning, but she’s still in a condition that needs monitoring. She’s been very ill the whole time.”
The Lüsenford Duke didn’t look at the butler but up the stairs, where the butler had hurriedly come down from.
“She’s in a condition that needs monitoring, yet she’s walking around?”
“Pardon?”
The butler followed the duke’s silent gaze and nearly fainted in shock. There stood their lady on the staircase, dressed only in her nightgown with a shawl haphazardly thrown over her shoulders, breathing heavily.
“Please look at me, Your Grace.”
Kaella spoke in the loudest voice she could muster, then turned abruptly and staggered, clutching the wall. Dizziness hit her. Still, she had to pull herself together quickly and face Pheon, that impossible man.
She panted, waiting for the dizziness to subside. The maids fluttered anxiously, trying to support her, but she leaned against the wall and then stepped forward on her own.
“Excuse me a moment.”
With a deep, low voice from behind her, her body suddenly floated up. Kaella stared blankly around her before reacting a beat too late. Having just overcome her crisis and woken up, her reflexes were inevitably sluggish.
“Put me down. I’ll go on my own.”
“Where’s the bedroom?”
Pheon ignored her completely and asked a maid. The maid, head bowed, led the way. Kaella started to speak again but held back. For now, it was better to conserve her limited strength.
“Lie down for now, my lady.”
“Is now the time to lie down?”
“I’ll stay by your side until you tell me to leave, so get in bed.”
The maid quickly piled up pillows on the bed for Kaella to lean against.
She swiftly drew back the bed curtains and cleared away the basin of towels and medicine bottles. Pheon calmly tucked her back under the thick blankets, then dragged over a chair and sat down.
“All of you, out.”
Was it really all right to leave a grown lady alone with her fiancé? The maids and knights looked deeply uneasy, but since Kaella was so insistent, they had no choice but to close the door.
“A princess from Keruzhan is coming to marry?”
That was what Kaella had learned upon waking, while her father was away. Though her tone was still polite and formal, her blunt question was highly defensive. Pheon nodded quietly.
“Yes. The Crown Prince and the Keruzhan princess are engaged. Have you eaten anything?”
Crania was forming a marriage alliance with Keruzhan. A crown prince and a princess—fitting ranks.
It was a far grander match than a sidelined prince like Elcanan marrying a most sidelined figure like Kaella. And she was to marry the Lüsenford Duke. Why?
“What did Your Grace reply?”
Her father couldn’t defy the Emperor anyway. She knew that. Kaella was the same.
The Ostein Duchy, which the late Emperor had granted her father, was a golden egg. Even clutching it, her father wouldn’t dare pressure the cunning Emperor with money. If he did, the Emperor’s armies would crush the duchy in an instant.
So the only one Kaella could rely on was Pheon, who had fiercely resisted this forced marriage even on the brink of death. He had resisted greatly, only to be crushed even more and forced into it.
Hadn’t he considered that the Emperor actually enjoyed it? This stubborn blockhead didn’t realize the Emperor delighted in heaping greater humiliation on those who resisted most. But right now, she needed that resistance.
“My reply won’t influence His Imperial Majesty’s will.”
“So you’re going to abandon Lady Lavalle and marry me?”
Kaella was truly furious. Rage surged straight to the top of her head. Was this man mad? Why was he doing this?
Throughout their married life, the Lüsenford household had constantly sought out that man Beatrice, Beatrice, making Kaella feel as if Pheon had married Beatrice, not her.
If he treasured her so much, they should have loved each other until death! That love of his—she, the interloper, would disappear, so they should be happy forever!
“Do you think that’s even reasonable? Is that what you want? The entire empire knows who Your Grace loves! Why pursue a love you can’t even protect?”
It felt so refreshing to spit it out.
“You two should just run away!”
That’s what they should have done. Kaella de Shaser, who became Kaella Ferraro after marriage—treated as a nonexistent person, less than air—might as well have let the two who loved each other to death elope.
Of course, judging from what she’d heard before dying, Beatrice Lavalle probably never even considered it. So Pheon alone had been the fool. A pathetic idiot.
“Did you even tell Lady Lavalle?”
“Yes, I proposed to her.”
This was news to her. Kaella’s eyes widened as she stared at Pheon.
“The first day the Keruzhan envoys arrived, I told His Imperial Majesty as well, but he only said it was time for me to marry, and then this happened.”
He had told the Emperor he would marry Beatrice, only to be ordered to marry Kaella.
“And?”
Pheon watched Kaella, who was fuming with reddened eyes. She didn’t even have the strength to entertain guests. Worried she might collapse again, he anxiously observed her pallid face.
She was so gaunt and bloodless, and with her pale platinum hair and delicate white muslin nightgown, she looked like she might snap if he grabbed her.
But she burned with fierce anger in eyes that held the chill of the sky.
He couldn’t tell such a woman that he had run himself ragged trying to stop this marriage while she lay unconscious. If he still hadn’t stopped it, it would just be a cowardly excuse.
“So, are you going to obey His Imperial Majesty, abandon Lady Lavalle, and marry me? You’ll never forget Lady Lavalle for the rest of your life.”
Kaella spoke as if she had seen the future. Before her regression, when the Emperor had ordered the marriage just the same, she hadn’t said a word, hadn’t defied the order like this, yelling at Pheon.
Back then, the Emperor had deliberately excluded Ostein, attaching the rightful Ostein heir, Kaella, to Pheon. To the Emperor, Lüsenford was a garbage dump.
“I know full well that this marriage makes no sense for you, my lady.”
Whether Adeo or Pheon, both bastards, but their statuses were worlds apart. Adeo de Shaser was the late Emperor’s acknowledged bastard, granted a castle and title as ‘the Emperor’s.’
Pheon, the Empress’s bastard, was naturally despised to an extreme degree. And with a lover everyone assumed would one day be Lüsenford Duchess, he had no right to presume upon Kaella.
Yet he had to marry. After three days of desperately trying to block the marriage, the absurd result was this.
“His Imperial Majesty believes Ostein Duchy shouldn’t pass to Prince Elcanan’s eldest son.”
Noble marriages were all calculations. This time, with Ostein’s duke alive and well, and the Empress fallen ill, the Emperor—who craved tighter imperial unity—had recalculated.
“The Keruzhan princess marrying the Crown Prince solidifies the alliance.”
“Keeping Ostein Duchy within the empire instead of letting it go to Keruzhan is also to the empire’s benefit.”
Kaella immediately grasped his meaning and shot back; Pheon nodded.
“Then what’s my benefit? What’s yours, Your Grace?”
She wanted to push this man off a cliff together with Beatrice. It was the first time in her life that Kaella, raised as a refined duke’s daughter, felt such violent impulse.
Clenching her fists, she endured her weakened body and shoved him toward Beatrice, toward the woman who would ultimately ensnare him. This time, she was shoving for real—so why?
“You’ll be unhappy your whole life, Your Grace.”
Kaella would be the same. Still, Pheon was better off in many ways. At least when she was dying, he had been alive and well.
“Every time you see me, you’ll think of her. You love her so deeply, don’t you? So go to her. Even Her Imperial Majesty has fallen— what’s the point of this? Go. Make that love happen.”
Kaella’s rage was so scorching it turned cold and icy. Go to the woman you’re dying for, she urged with wide eyes gleaming with madness. Knowing it would end in ruin made her push even harder.
Beatrice wasn’t the issue. If Pheon ran off with Beatrice, the Emperor wouldn’t let him get away with it. The Emperor hated defying imperial orders and tarnishing his honor above all.
Even for Kaella, who had been a proud duke’s daughter and done her utmost as Lüsenford Duchess, shards of her shattered pride remained.
She had fulfilled her duties to the best of her ability and devoted herself to Lüsenford, yet she was always ignored by her husband, mocked by lower nobles, confined, starved to death—the humiliations were indescribable.
“Even if you keep this up, His Imperial Majesty won’t acknowledge your merits. See? You said you’d marry Lady Lavalle, and he immediately ordered you to marry me.”
A few words, and she was already out of breath. Kaella knew this rage was just a fleeting spark.
It would flare briefly and then fizzle out into resignation. But until that last ember died, Kaella vented her anger as she pleased. She wanted to lash out.
“If you go on like this, you’ll lose everything. Grab at least one sure thing.”
Go all the way with Beatrice, whom he’d loved so foolishly. Knowing exactly what Beatrice was like, Kaella might as well have been cursing them.
“I’ll help you. If not, elope in the name of love—what are you doing right now?”
She poured it all out until she was too breathless and collapsed against the pillows, gasping. Even so, her icy pale eyes fixed straight on Pheon.
If Beatrice was that precious—so much that he ignored and paid no attention to Kaella—then he should stake his life on her now!
Pheon, who had silently endured the torrent of accusations, finally spoke, his voice heavy.
“I clearly understand that you absolutely want to avoid marrying me, my lady. I get it. You more than deserve a better groom than me.”
“And?”
Her sharp retort sliced through the air toward Pheon. In the midst of having nothing to say, Pheon suddenly grew curious.
Had Kaella, pushed into marriage with him after losing her father, hated it this much back then too? Or this current her… Kaella… no way.
“You don’t plan to be with Lady Lavalle?”
Kaella, who had always been polite and proper, coming to him patiently trying to persuade and converse no matter what—shot back before he could even answer.
“Then I’ll show you.”
Kaella, accustomed to a husband who never responded no matter how much she spoke, ran away from home that night.
