“Brother.”

Dolman’s sword suddenly stopped in mid-air.

“What did you just say?”

“Brother~”

While distracting Dolman’s attention, I frantically felt around with both hands for anything that could be used as a weapon.

“How dare you, you lowborn scum…!”

As expected, Dolman’s lips trembled with rage. He seemed quite offended at being called “brother” by me.

I continued feeling around the floor while blinking innocently up at Dolman with wide eyes.

“What! Why! What are you going to do glaring at me with those devilish red eyes!”

Dolman shuddered with an expression more disgusted than if he had stepped in dog poop on the street.

Well, it’s not unreasonable for Dolman to react so strongly to my eyes.

Red eyes are rare in the Empire. Bright red eyes like Yuriella’s, burning like flames, are almost impossible to find.

Apparently Yuriella didn’t originally have red eyes. According to my new father Thomas, she was a lovely child with clear sky-blue eyes that were the spitting image of her mother’s.

But when the sickly Yuriella was on the brink of death from high fever and dehydration, and then opened her eyes again after her breathing had stopped, they had changed to the vivid red they are now.

‘So it seems that happened the moment my soul took over this body.’

These red eyes. The same red as my original hair color. Is it a trace of my previous life? Or is there some deeper meaning?

Emperor Justin used to whine that my red hair looked just like a delicious red apple and he wanted to eat it every time he saw it. What a pervert. What did he mean, eat?

The face of that annoyingly handsome emperor flashed through my mind, making my stomach churn. At that moment, my searching hand grabbed a plate, and I threw it without thinking.

– Thwack!

“Ow!”

Oh dear. The plate hit Dolman’s forehead and eyebrow before shattering on the floor. That must have hurt.

“You! You!”

Dolman gritted his teeth with a “Grr” as he saw the blood on his hand, then raised his right foot high.

– Thwack!

“Ugh.”

Huh? The pain and agonized groan weren’t mine.

I looked up to see Dolman Grande slumped in the corner of the cell, glaring at the leather boot of Captain Leo who had kicked him. Blood trickled down from Dolman’s cracked head.

I’ve got to hand it to Captain Leo. Cracking Dolman Grande’s skull like that. That guy isn’t Dolman Grande, he’s Dolman Stone-head.

Just like his father, he’s stupidly strong but can’t even graduate from the 5-year Imperial Academy after 8 years, still hanging on with his juniors – I’ve heard all the maids whispering about it.

Dolman got to his feet, touching his bleeding head.

“How dare you!”

Right? Even for the captain of the Grand Duke’s knights, cracking a viscount’s head open like that.

Dolman stomped his bear-like feet, looking ready to charge at any moment.

“It would be troublesome if an important suspect got injured before the interrogation is finished.”

When Leo drew his sword and held it to Dolman’s throat, Dolman immediately tucked his tail between his legs and stood with his feet neatly together.

The sword tip was at Dolman’s adam’s apple, but why did the back of my neck tingle?

“Lady Grande. Would you come with me for a moment?”

Leo sheathed his sword and approached me.

“What about Frost, I mean, the Grand Duke…? He’s not… dead, is he…?”

Leo didn’t answer, just glared at me with a sullen expression.

As the silence stretched on, my heart clenched. Is this how it feels to have your heart ripped out by a troll? Is he really dead…?

“Hey, when someone asks you a question, you should answer!”

Duke Grande waved his cane-holding hand at Leo impatiently.

I glared at the Duke in disbelief. If he knew I was human, why did he beat me with that cane like I was some beast?

Leo seemed to be thinking the same thing, as he glanced at my disheveled hair and crumpled dress with a frown.

“He’s made it through the worst.”

“Oh, is that so? Thank goodness. Thank goodness.”

As Duke Grande hurriedly tried to leave, Leo stepped in front of him to block his way.

“He’s resting now. He needs to recuperate for a while, so please go back. The young lady will come with me.”

“Oh, of course. At times like this, you should stay by His Grace’s side, Yuriella.”

The Duke winked at me, signaling that I should definitely seduce the Grand Duke. While quickly making a hand signal that he’d chop my head clean off my body if I failed.

Sigh. A deep sigh rose up.

‘Listen, Yuriella’s dear father. Are you really saying this after seeing the Grand Duke’s mistress?’

Even I, a woman, find her captivating. Well, she may seem a bit ill-tempered, but her face looks kind. Her body is angelic. Because of that woman, Frost has rejected ten women and says he doesn’t want to marry. What do you expect me to do?

*

A woman’s sobbing voice rang out clearly in the Grand Duke’s bedchamber.

“Your Grace~ Grand Duke~”

Sitting by the bed, Shavell blinked her lush golden lashes, shedding clear teardrops from her large eyes.

Every time she lifted her lashes wet with dewdrop tears to reveal a pair of lavender eyes, not only the servants attending to the Grand Duke’s sickbed, but even the knights standing guard at a distance blushed and let out soft sighs.

The beauty who had seduced the Ice Sword of Ielro, Frost Ielheim, Guardian of the North, at first sight and secured the position of his mistress. The femme fatale that northerners pointed fingers at for clouding the wise and handsome Grand Duke’s eyes.

But anyone who had seen her beauty even once couldn’t help but nod in understanding that it was only natural for the icy Grand Duke to lose his senses.

“Your Grace~ *sob* Open your eyes. Open your eyes and call me ‘my Shavell’ again~”

Shavell gracefully raised her body and held Frost’s sleeping face in both hands, diligently pressing her pretty lips to his forehead, nose bridge, and both cheeks like a bird pecking at seeds.

Head butler Alexis turned his reddened cheeks to the side and made eye contact with head maid Rosalinne.

Rosalinne nodded and spoke softly to the maids and knights:

“We should withdraw to let the Grand Duke rest comfortably.”

When everyone had left except Captain Leo, Shavell roughly dropped Frost’s head back onto the pillow and shook his shoulders mercilessly.

“Your Grace! Can you not hear Shavell’s voice? Do you not want to see Shavell’s face? Oh, darling Your Grace. My beloved Your Grace~”

Her voice dropped an octave.

“Oh, how can I make my heart reach you? Your Grace~ Your Grace~”

The hands that had been shaking his shoulders were now grabbing his collar and shaking it.

When Frost still didn’t open his eyes, Shavell puckered her plump pink lips and brought them close to Frost’s, almost touching.

“You naughty thing. Shavell knows you’re awake. Ack-”

Frost’s large fingers grabbed Shavell’s rosy cheeks and stretched them sideways, pushing her body back.

“That’s quite enough.”

Frost sat up and pushed Shavell onto the chair beside the bed with a thump.

“How cold.”

Shavell pouted her glistening lips.

“Don’t you know the saying that if you earn a woman’s resentment, frost will fall even in midsummer?”

“You are not a woman, Shavell. You’re a freeloader living in my house. You should be repaying my kindness, not resenting me.”

Shavell spread her legs wide, leaned back in the chair, tilted her head back and stretched out both arms languidly.

“I’ll earn my keep and repay your kindness, so stop scaring people so much, brother. I thought I was about to become an orphan and freaked out.”

“An orphan refers to someone who has lost their parents. His Majesty the late Emperor and Her Majesty the late Empress, Your Grace’s parents, passed away many years ago.”

Frost suddenly placed his hand on the tightly wrapped bandages, a thoughtful expression on his face. The pain was gone and his breathing was comfortable.

“You said if I don’t have parents, my brother takes their place.”

“I’m not your brother, Shavell. Your brother is His Majesty the Emperor in the capital.”

“Oh how cruel. A cousin brother is still a brother! I’m hurt.”

As Shavell primly rested her chin on her hands and pouted her lips, Leo shuddered and grimaced as if he’d seen something he shouldn’t have.

“Shavell. Please just do one or the other. Either pretend to be a woman, or close those spread legs.”

“Oh, whatever. Can’t we just be comfortable when it’s just the three of us?”

Shavell waved her arms and started loosening the ribbons of her dress with her legs still spread wide. She was planning to take off the corset too, if only for a moment, but-

“If you take that off, you’re leaving my house?”

Startled by the cold voice, Shavell retied the ribbons she had loosened and whined.

“Brother, try living just one day with your waist squeezed by this ivory corset and keeping your legs primly together. You’ll be in tears wondering if this is any way for a human to live.”

“You seem to have a full belly these days. Three years ago when you came to me in rags begging to stay, you said you’d even be a stable hand.”

One of Frost’s eyebrows rose.

Taking this as a signal that he would no longer indulge her whims, Shavell straightened her carelessly slouching back and primly closed her spread legs.

“How long do I have to keep up this mistress act, brother? No, I’m not complaining. The very idea of a mistress is absurd to begin with. Isn’t a mistress a woman who has a secret relationship with someone’s spouse? But you don’t have a wife, so me being called your mistress doesn’t make sense.”

Shavell couldn’t help grumbling even though she was afraid of Frost.

She didn’t have the confidence to live as a stable hand, but it wasn’t easy spending three years pretending to be a woman and being glared at as the femme fatale ruining the Grand Duke and the North.

“Then I suppose I should get married.”

Frost said as he got up from the bed and put on a dressing gown.

“Surely not to that illegitimate daughter of Duke Grande…?”

When Frost silently affirmed, Shavell frowned in disbelief.

Captain Leo, who rarely ever contradicted his lord’s words, urgently tried to dissuade him.

“This is not a decision to be made hastily, Your Grace. That young lady is rather suspicious.”

“Suspicious? Why?”

“That bizarre treatment method, Your Grace.”

“Didn’t you say I survived thanks to that treatment?”

“That’s why it’s suspicious. How could a mere young lady know how to handle a magical poison that even the most renowned doctors and priests couldn’t? The medicine peddlers she was traveling with only dealt in nutritional tonics, fatigue recovery potions, and aphrodisiacs at best.”

Shavell chimed in:

“According to the doctor, that strange treatment method didn’t actually detoxify you, it just suppressed the symptoms.”

Frost recalled the woman who had snuck into his chambers.

Strawberry blonde hair flowing down to her waist, and a small white face barely the size of his fist. Ruby-like eyes that seemed to take up half of that small face.

The delicate woman scrunching up her nose covered in freckles looked so fragile that it seemed she might blow away if he so much as breathed on her.

And yet she hadn’t so much as blinked at the murderous aura he was emitting, staring right back at him. How fluently she had spoken informal speech and cursed.

Frost brushed back the silver hair that had fallen onto his forehead with his fingers and ordered Leo:

“Go bring the young lady here. Politely.”

“Your Grace!”

“We need Duke Grande.”

“That man will turn his back on us the moment it’s disadvantageous to him. How can we trust his daughter!”

Frost walked past Leo towards the portrait hanging on the opposite wall of the bedroom.

When he pressed the blue jewel on the cravat of the previous Grand Duke, the wall opened automatically with a rumbling sound.

Leo and Shavell’s eyes widened as a detailed map was revealed, showing the eastern, western, southern and northern regions of the Yustera Empire at a glance, centered on the capital.

They had started making this complete map of the Empire, permitted only to the Emperor and his direct line, right after news came that Captain Solas of the Imperial Knights had been executed.

“Your Highness. I intend to depose the Emperor and enthrone a new one.”

Frost’s icy blue eyes stared directly at Shavell, no, Prince Lewis Della Ponti.

“As my most beloved mistress, please be jealous of my marriage. Torment my wife who holds my life in her hands. Show such displays while hiding your true self, Your Highness. Until the day I reverently present the Empire to you.”

It was the first time Grand Duke Frost Ielheim had spoken of treason.

‘Finally…!’

However, the tense atmosphere between the three men was quickly broken.

The bedroom door burst open and the knight who had been guarding Yuriella rushed in.

“The young lady, Lady Grande has disappeared!”

Frost’s face froze coldly.

She dares to run away? From me?

Translation complete. 100% of original text translated.