The woman often fell ill, just as the man had spitefully remarked. She was someone who would catch a cold at the slightest chill and be bedridden for days.

So the fact that Natasha had gone to Douglas Forest through a blizzard was enough to arouse the man’s concern.

‘……He’s relieved.’

But Sieghart’s expression seemed exactly like that of someone who was relieved.

Her feet, swollen like those of a beast unable to withstand the cold, were tightly wrapped in bandages. Sieghart, who had thoroughly examined Natasha, couldn’t have missed it.

Especially not after his sharp gaze had repeatedly swept over the woman’s legs.

Then why wasn’t he even glancing at her injured legs?

Why……

“……Natasha, I’m so glad you returned safely.”

Why did he seem pleased about her survival?

Logically thinking, no one would believe that Natasha would have met her death there. Hadn’t the knights and maids hastily chased after the fleeing duchess and brought her back safely?

Yet, why was Sieghart worried about her life rather than her well-being?

“Really……”

As if he knew the truth of that day.

Natasha vaguely looked the man over. The man touching his body with trembling hands certainly wore an unfamiliar face.

‘It is Sieghart.’

However, it was also clearly the Sieghart she had known for the past two years.

Then what was this uneasy sense of déjà vu piercing through her flesh? What was this strange situation where her instincts kept sounding alarm bells, as if asserting a justified suspicion?

His footsteps stopped at the door. Wait a moment, Your Grace! Meliana’s flustered voice trying to stop him came through. But it seemed ineffective as the doorknob was turned without fail.

A bright streak of light settled on Natasha’s face as she sat down. She blankly stared at the flickering candle in Sieghart’s hand, and finally turned her gaze towards him.

“……”

Their locked gazes seemed unwilling to part. Red eyes intently searched each other.

Drip, drip, candle wax fell to the floor. Sieghart’s shoe stepped onto the wax that had quickly solidified in the cold air.

“Ah……”

Well-polished shoes, blunt collarbones, straight legs and broad shoulders, passing over the prominently protruding Adam’s apple, brushing past the sharp jawline, and finally meeting the red eyes again.

‘Who is this man?’

The question arose in an instant.

This man is not the Sieghart Asthart she knows.

Although he wears the same face and expression as yesterday.

Although he speaks with the same voice and manner as yesterday.

Although he reveals the same emotions with the same gaze as yesterday.

The one before her eyes was a different person from the man she had known for the past 2 years. She could dare to assure this.

The truth she gradually realized finally struck her mind.

‘It was you.’

This man is that man.

The very one who dropped me into the abyss of misfortune.

He is ‘that’ Sieghart Asthart.

“You……”

Rarely, Natasha spoke first. When her desolate voice echoed inside, the other’s shoulders subtly shrank. It was an excessive reaction, like a fallen leaf swaying in a light breeze.

“……What are you?”

The typical reaction of the man she knew would have been to narrow his eyes, which were made of thick lines, and raise his eyebrows slightly. He would have implicitly given time for explanation, as if asking what that strange statement meant.

If it were the arrogant Sieghart Asthart that Natasha knew, that is.

The reaction the man was showing now put the final stamp on her certainty.

“No, I’ll change my question.”

“……”

“Who are you……?”

The questioning lips trembled. If the man was a fallen leaf, she was a quagmire. One that distorts its shape and makes large waves even when the tiniest pebble drops.

“Why…… Why do you…… make me so miserable?”

“……”

“Just, why……?”

Is this man a different person from that man?

No, he is completely the same person.

Then is he someone who can be fully trusted?

No, he can no longer be trusted.

Then why am I still implicitly relying on this man?

……It’s clear that even that reliance will now disappear.

Natasha clawed at the floor with her hands clenched. The thin skin hidden behind her nails burst open as it scraped against the rough floor.

Red blood trailed across the white floor. Like the blood that had been sprinkled over Douglas Forest that day.

“Was this the secret you were hiding, Sieghart?”

It was a cry that surged up from her throat. A metallic sound leaked out in a stream between the lips of the woman who had lost her natural voice.

There was no time to be conscious of Meliana and the other servants who might be listening through the door. In her despair-blinded state, she had no regard for future consequences.

Because the surrounding gazes, Sieghart’s feelings, such trivial things could not stop her blabbering mouth.

“Why…… Why did I suffer so much?”

Many emotions tormented her, but undoubtedly the largest and darkest among them was guilt.

She had found his kindness repulsive, yet at some point began to chase after it. Whenever she suddenly realized this, the voices of her parents and siblings trampled her.

The woman’s selfishness did not end there.

Natasha began to embrace Sieghart Asthart, to embrace her feelings for him. While attaching the flimsy excuse that this life’s Sieghart was different from the Sieghart of that time.

Ridiculously, she even felt guilty towards the man. She sometimes blamed herself, feeling as if she was passing on the karma of the man from her past life to an innocent person.

The more she pushed him away, the more Sieghart approached, and while finding his behavior suspicious, she craved his ambiguous actions.

Therefore, she tried to forgive him. The enemy of her parents.

Because this Sieghart seemed different.

Because he was a person who contributed to the changes in her life. Because it seemed that the man’s merits existed in her being able to seize happiness.

Perhaps, Natasha Asthart, towards that man, a little bit―.

“I-It was all deception……”

“……”

“You…… deceived me from beginning to end.”

The man remained silent as if he didn’t know how to speak. Judging by his blank expression, Sieghart seemed to be out of his mind just like Natasha.

She saw an illusion of his tightly closed lips about to open. A reminiscence in Sieghart’s voice swirled around.

‘It’s not just natural but expected for a married couple to share the same room.’

He was a man who had acted suspiciously from their first encounter. She had always found it strange that he casually showed consideration that he had never shown in her first life.

‘Are you saying you don’t dislike me?’

‘If only there was a way to prove it.’

Yet he boldly declared that he didn’t dislike her.

‘When my beloved wife’s honor has been damaged, it’s only right that I should do this.’

Even caring about the honor of the duchess that he had never cared about in her past life,

‘Then you must know how to refute.’

‘You’re wrong, Tisha.’

‘Because you will surely come to love me.’

The fact that he could assert that Natasha, who rebelled against and treated the man harshly, would come to love him, all of it.

It was because he had been the same person all along.

It seems Sieghart, who knew the woman’s weaknesses well, had used them in reverse.

‘I will never abandon you, I swear. There’s only one reason why I infinitely desire this marriage. Natasha Asthart, it’s to keep you by my side……’

It wasn’t even funny.

That he would never abandon me.

The one and only thing he infinitely desired, to keep her by his side.

“……Is this the secret you spoke of, Sieghart? The one that must never be revealed, the one you were confident I would never discover……”

“……”

“Was this that secret?”

A breath tinged with emptiness escaped through Natasha’s teeth. Her head tilted up to look at the man with strength. The trembling of her lips transferred to the corners of her eyes.

As the tender flesh rose up over her field of vision, narrowing it, Sieghart’s form soon crumpled like a sheet of paper.

The candle wax that had fallen onto the reddish-brown shoes had hardened. The flame that had been precariously flickering in the chilly breeze finally reached the end of its life. A dim darkness also invaded the room.

Sieghart remained silent.

Having experienced the man’s silence to the point of tedium, she easily understood what it indicated. Natasha, who briefly sneered, soon muttered.

“Then, you shouldn’t have been caught.”

“……”

“If you promised not to be discovered, you should have hidden it until the end. If you were going to be caught so easily, you shouldn’t have assured me then. You shouldn’t have comforted me. You shouldn’t have acted kind on your own……”

He added cumbersome conditions to a marriage that would have done no harm to Natasha. The man accepted clauses he had never even considered in her previous life as if they were only right.

On their wedding day, the man who had refused the vow kiss in her previous life casually pressed his lips against hers in this life.

‘All the actions you show while pretending to be kind to me are fake.’

Even when she called the man’s suspicious behavior fake, he calmly dismissed it as ‘groundless speculation’.

He even didn’t spare unsolicited advice to Natasha, who threw away the notes the man left on the table every morning. He had called it an act that would bring regret, discarding a gift filled with the heart and sincerity of a loved one.

Ah yes, despite taking down Natasha’s carefully drawn portrait of Sieghart from the hallway because he didn’t like the eye color, he had once drawn a portrait of Natasha with his eye color and gifted it to her.

“Haha……”

She never imagined that the man’s changes would be deception.

She had been troubled, unable to accept his changes, while Sieghart, knowing her feelings, steadfastly continued his deception.

From the beginning, until now, all along.