In my previous life, my mother’s and my life started to fall when my father returned to the empire.

Now I know that Uncle Bruno had such dark intentions, but at the time, I didn’t pay much attention to him shamelessly committing rude acts.

Uncle Bruno was never very polite to begin with, and as everyone knew, he was a half-noble with Cortisan blood.

I thought that no matter how much they pointed fingers at me, it couldn’t shake my position as a princess.

But it did shake.

No, it was utterly shattered.

“Princess, for now it’s best to eat plenty, get enough sleep, and rest to stabilize.”

The physician who was holding my wrist and examining me said that there was nothing seriously wrong with me.

The servants nodded in relief, and I asked them.

“I want to rest.”

As I closed my eyes, the physician and servants quietly withdrew from their places.

Fatigue that I hadn’t felt until just now suddenly struck my whole body.

It felt as if my resting head was sinking into deep water. Soon my mind fell into a deep quagmire.

I wish it were just pitch-black darkness where nothing could be seen, but my head busily dredged up memories from the past.

I recalled the day when my mother’s and my life became the absolute worst in my previous life.

“The Duke… has passed away.”

A concise statement from a knight.

My mother, who was near the end of her pregnancy, clutched her belly and frowned slightly.

At that time, I didn’t fully comprehend what that meant.

I couldn’t believe that my father had died, and at the same time, it felt a bit unfamiliar.

After all, I had only spoken with my father a handful of times.

To me, it was news that felt more distant than if one of the servants in the duke’s mansion had died.

“We don’t know if the child in her womb is the Duke’s or not.”

Around the time my father’s funeral was concluding, my mother gave birth.

Unfortunately, the moment of my younger brother Louis’s birth wasn’t such a pleasant memory.

It was because I heard my aunt, Jessica, frowning and whispering behind us after confirming it was a boy.

I had heard that if the child in my mother’s womb was a boy, we wouldn’t be driven out, but for some reason, despite it being a boy, my mother’s childbirth didn’t flow in a good direction for us.

I didn’t know then.

That the social circles looked unfavorably upon my mother for not hiring a tutor.

Moreover, I had no idea that the strange rumors about me raised by Derek and Lady Jessica at my father’s victory banquet had already spread quite extensively in social circles.

“You don’t know because your mother didn’t hire a tutor, right?”

I didn’t bother to answer the stupid Derek’s question.

You don’t avoid excrement because you’re afraid of it, but because it’s dirty.

However, I should have made sure there were no misunderstandings. I was secretly rumored to be a princess with intellectual problems within social circles.

They say a butterfly’s wings can create a storm somewhere, but I never dreamed that storm would come to me. That was the problem.

In the end, Louis was never recognized as my father’s child.

The social circles, ready to bite at anything, didn’t even think to find out the truth about the rumors that arose with my mother’s childbirth.

Everything my aunt said became fact, and all of my mother’s belated attempts to remedy the situation became excuses.

It happened to be right after giving birth when she wasn’t feeling well, so there was almost nothing my mother could do.

“Louis’s hair is brown, and… that Count Shannon, who was once close to the Duchess, also has brown hair, doesn’t he?”

It was a rumor that arose because the hair of Count Shannon, who had been close to my mother, was brown.

While I had been told from a young age that I resembled my father, Louis ended up looking too much like our mother.

Dark brown hair and green eyes.

Count Shannon desperately tried to prove that nothing had happened between him and my mother, but what was discovered was a phrase in the diary and will left by Count Shannon’s wife, hoping that her husband would find true love.

If you looked closely at that diary, you could see that Count Shannon had feelings for my mother for quite a long time.

Things that shouldn’t have been revealed were revealed one after another, and my mother stepped down from her position as duchess with a tremendous stigma.

Count Shannon tried his best to protect my mother, but unable to accept Count Shannon’s kindness while bearing an indelible stigma, my mother moved to the countryside with me and young Louis.

It truly was a life like a storm.

Nevertheless, my mother smiled at us. She said everything would be alright and apologized for being sorry.

The fairy tales she read to me decreased a lot, but I could still say now that life in the countryside wasn’t so bad as long as I had my mother.

So.

“Don’t go, Mom.”

Tears flowed down.

I couldn’t distinguish whether the crying me was the real me or the me in the dream.

*

When I opened my eyes, it was pitch black night.

Judging by the very heavy weight I felt lying on the bed, this seemed to be reality.

Mother hasn’t woken up yet. If she had woken up, she would surely be by my side.

I could sufficiently infer my mother’s condition from the emptiness beside me.

“Are you awake?”

It was then. A hand came up over my forehead from beside the bed. It covered my eyes, but I could tell from the voice.

“…U-Uncle.”

The smell of blood wafted strongly.

“I came to check if you were sleeping for a moment, but I didn’t know you’d wake up. If I had known, I would have changed clothes before coming.”

“It’s okay.”

I didn’t ask. Whether the smell of blood was from a beast or not… Whose blood was on uncle didn’t matter.

If uncle had given me the teddy bear, it was certain that he had taken care of all the bears we had seen at Count Scala’s that day.

But there were other bears waiting for us at the hunting festival. Plus the arrow aimed at mom.

Then all of that wasn’t Count Scala’s doing.

Someone who knew Count Scala had failed had already made their move.

“…Uncle.”

“Yes.”

“Who on earth shot the arrow at mother?”

I asked, gritting my teeth.

My hand gripping the blanket trembled with anger.

The shadow of death that should have only been directed at father had extended to mother as well, probably because too many things that hadn’t happened before had occurred.

In my previous life, I thought it was Uncle Bruno and those behind him, but there was someone behind Count Scala as well.

Perhaps the true arrow aimed at our family was from someone at the very end.

I grabbed uncle’s hand covering my eyes and slowly lowered it.

Uncle’s face was completely invisible with his back to the moonlight, but his swamp-like eyes shining in the darkness were gleaming as if they would devour everything.

“Before that, I want to ask you something too.”

Uncle’s fingertips holding my hand tightly trembled.

“In your life, has your sister been consumed by the shadow of death before?”

I closed my eyes tightly and then opened them.

What was reflected on uncle’s face was not doubt, but certainty.

“…Yes.”

With the answer, a choking sob burst forth.

“Mom, mom… hic…”

I couldn’t finish my words, and uncle bent his knees.

Mom died. She died blocking the sword in front of me. That’s how mom and I died.

“But hic, I again…”

“Shh… my niece. You’d better sleep more now.”

Uncle’s hand covered my eyes once more.

Under uncle’s warm hand, I burst into sobbing cries, then lost consciousness just like that.

*

When Blake heard the child’s wheezing breaths, he finally got up from his seat.

By the time news that his sister was fighting for her life spread throughout the empire, his brother-in-law’s state was no longer what could be called human.

Blood continuously touched the ground from his brother-in-law’s blade.

The longer his sister’s eyes remained closed, everything that blade touched would soon be made of blood.

At least he had permission to enter the child’s room, so he came to check on Lucy’s condition.

And he had been listening to the words the child spoke in her dreams. They were not about the present.

At first, he thought she was dreaming, but when he encountered the child spitting out words in anger as if repeating someone else’s words, he realized that Lucy had lived a life different from ordinary people.

“The sword was discarded, and the remaining scabbard was buried with it. …Three dots. A hood with three dots.”

The moment he heard those words, doubt became certainty.

Three dots.

What he had heard from the glovemaker Jarvis’s mouth was that Count Scala had three dots on the back of his hand.

However, when the Count was identified as the culprit who shot the arrow into Eriel’s back at the hunting festival, there were no three dots on his hand.

There were only burn marks.

But how did Lucy know that Count Scala had three dots on the back of his hand?

“That bastard dared… dared.”

To try to kill my sister and child twice.

I should have killed him without thinking when I went to the imperial palace last time.

Blake’s nails dug into his palm as he clenched his fist tightly.