Brant arrived at the mansion, stumbling into his office and grabbing the jeweled box containing his seal before heading to his room. Adown looked at Brant strangely.
“I don’t need anything… Make sure no one enters my room for the time being.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brant did not come out even the next day. Adown, worried, knocked and entered Brant’s room.
It was strangely quiet and gave him a creepy feeling. It felt as if something was slowly running down his back.
He had a bad feeling. And that feeling was exactly right.
“M-Master!”
Adown screamed. At his scream, the servants outside entered Brant’s room one by one. And they all screamed in unison.
“The master has passed away…”
Adown’s head turned deathly pale. His cute young master whom he had served since childhood. He couldn’t believe the end of the head of the Pol Heredian ducal family.
As soon as he entered the room, he saw Brant lying on the bed. And he approached to wake him up as usual, but something felt oddly wrong. And he saw the black blood flowing from the corner of his mouth.
“Master!”
Adown shook Brant in disbelief.
“No. It can’t be. Why would the master…?”
Die like this!
“Master. Please wake up.”
After carefully wiping the corner of Brant’s mouth, he continued shaking him, and one of his arms fell limply with a thud. Adown placed the fallen arm on his chest and brought his ear close to his heart. He couldn’t hear the sound of his heart beating at all.
“This can’t be.”
Adown’s body began to tremble. And he found a black glass bottle around the dead Brant. A sweet smell wafted from inside the bottle. Adown frowned.
“This… It can’t be.”
Adown yelled at the maid to bring a silver spoon. With the silver spoon brought by the maid, he inserted it into Brant’s mouth that kept spewing out black blood and pulled it out. The silver spoon had turned black.
What was in the black glass bottle was poison. After confirming that Brant had died from consuming poison, Adown took out a white handkerchief from his bosom and carefully covered it over his face.
“Master. You have suffered a lot.”
[This is the timeline separator]Illina was having a hard time in prison, imprisoned as the culprit who killed Lorirolls. Where did it go wrong? No matter how much she thought about it, only Lorencia came to mind. No, she knew it wasn’t Lorencia’s fault, but she didn’t want to admit it.
“Because she’s the daughter of that dirty duke. She’s a monster. A monster born from a dirty monster.”
She hated Lorencia, the seed of injustice, terribly. She tormented her relentlessly, hoping that Lorencia, who had saddened her mother Anne, would be ruined.
‘Since she’s the duke’s daughter, it won’t be a problem to bully her.’ That’s what she thought, and she believed it was right.
She also hated that the ugly and dirty girl, befitting the daughter of the dirty duke, was receiving Ruans’ favor.
What on earth did he see in Lorencia to officially adopt her as the daughter of Duke Pol Heredian? She couldn’t understand why they always spent time alone together in one room.
Every time, Ruans would say this.
Whenever she saw him spitting out words that chilled her heart as if it were nothing, she felt like she was going crazy.
For Ruans, she gave everything like a tree that was uprooted and burned fiercely like firewood.
“I’m such a fool.”
A shadow fell over Illina’s face. She slowly brought her two hands to her slender neck and strangled herself. But her hands trembled violently like a shaking aspen tree, so she let go.
She wasn’t cruel enough to end her own life.
Illina clenched her two hands tightly. She wailed, feeling the pain of her nails digging into her palms.
While she was crying for a long time, it happened.
“Lady Illina of the Pol Heredian family.”
The jailer opened the prison door, entered, and called for Illina. As her gaze met the jailer who had entered, Illina wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
“What is it? Is it already time for breakfast? On the table as usual…”
Illina looked at the jailer. She didn’t see a basket containing a meal in the jailer’s hands. What could it be? Could it be that she was being kicked out to a convent?
When all sorts of thoughts were running through Illina’s mind.
“Lady Illina of the Pol Heredian family. You are being released.”
“Released? What does that mean?”
Illina’s eyes grew wider and wider. Wasn’t it going to a convent?
“When you leave the prison, the Pol Heredian carriage and the head butler will be waiting for Lady Illina. You have suffered a lot in prison.”
Being told that she could leave the prison, did that mean Ruans hadn’t forgotten about her and had released her?
“I can’t believe it.”
She was so happy that no words came out. She was relieved that she hadn’t been abandoned by Ruans.
That’s right. She had foolishly doubted his love.
She had forgotten that they were close enough to call each other by nicknames.
Illina cried and laughed. The corners of her mouth rose and didn’t come down, thinking that her long love wasn’t in vain.
If she thought about it coldly, the reason he had framed her was because he had to become the emperor, so it was a situation where he couldn’t stir up trouble.
She walked out of the prison, reflecting on how she couldn’t understand his heart and was swept away by Lorencia’s nonsensical words.
Illina squinted and shielded her eyes from the intense sunlight with her hand.
“It’s dazzling.”
Still, just the fact that she was out made her so happy and glad.
“Miss Illina.”
“Adown.”
“You have suffered in prison, Miss Illina.”
Illina tilted her head. Adown, whom she hadn’t seen in a long time, looked a little strange. The carriage and the coachman were also strange.
“Why are you all wearing such black clothes? Even the carriage…”
The pitch-black carriage and the carriage wheels, and their attire reminded her of Anne’s funeral, making her feel strange.
“Please get on the carriage. I will explain on the way.”
Illina had a feeling that she shouldn’t get on the carriage, but she had to return to the ducal residence, so she boarded the carriage.
Illina, who had been imprisoned, had no choice but to return to the mansion. It was because of the death of her biological father, Brant. Unless it was a crime of treason, if there was only one child to inherit after the death of the head of the family, that one child had to become the head of the family, so it became a condition for release from prison.
It was never Ruans’ kindness. Illina was disappointed in herself for misunderstanding, and she couldn’t believe and didn’t want to believe Brant’s death.
“Could it have been murder? Adown.”
There was no way Brant would have ended his own life.
“I was also suspicious of that part. Because that day, the master was very happy, saying that he could get business help if he went to the Graykan ducal residence, so there was no reason for him to commit suicide.”
“If he died without a reason to die, it’s murder.”
Whether he drank the poison himself or was forced to drink it against his will.
“But there was something a little strange.”
“Tell me everything.”
“When he went to the Graykan ducal residence, he was happy, but after returning to the ducal residence, he looked exhausted.”
“What else?”
“When he went to the Graykan ducal residence, he changed into different clothes from the ones he was wearing. As soon as he entered the mansion, he stopped by the office, then went to Miss Illina’s room briefly before going straight to his room.”
Adown continued, wiping away his flowing tears with his hand.
“Yes. His expression was so bad that I thought he couldn’t get business help, but I don’t know what happened at the Graykan ducal residence.”
Brant’s funeral was held quietly. The coffin containing Brant slowly entered the cold ground. Illina blankly stared at the scene. She threw a single chrysanthemum flower.
She watched Brant being buried next to Anne’s grave.
After the funeral, Illina returned to her room quietly and forcefully lifted the corners of her lips. When a forced smile appeared, her chest began to ache. She clenched her fists so tightly that blood didn’t flow and started hitting her chest. She wailed in a voice filled with agony in the empty room.
As Lorencia had said, both her mother Anne and father Brant were dead.
“Even though I knew it would go wrong, I trusted him. Foolish Illina.”
Tears kept flowing down Illina’s cheeks every time she blinked. She cried for a long time, collapsing on the bed, and fell asleep.
When she opened her eyes again, a red sunset shone outside the terrace. She sat up. When she rang the bell, Adown, who was outside, came in and examined Illina here and there.
“You were sleeping soundly, so I didn’t wake you up.”
“You did well, Adown.”
“You need to eat.”
“Yeah.”
Illina ate the easily digestible foods on the trolley Adown had brought and looked outside the terrace, which was getting darker. In this vast mansion, she was the only one left. It felt like a more terrible fear was pressing down on her than when she was imprisoned.
She cried again in the sadness of being alone. Her eyes, cheeks, nose tip, and philtrum were sore and painful from crying too much. Still, the tears didn’t stop. No, she couldn’t. Illina spent the night with constantly flowing tears.
The next day. Illina was summoned to the imperial palace at Ruans’ call.
Adown used a scroll containing a healing spell on Illina, whose face had become swollen from tears.
The swelling around her eyes and face subsided, but her large blue eyes were brimming with tears.
She didn’t want to meet Ruans in her current mood, but she couldn’t defy him who had become the emperor of the Isuter Empire.
Male lead reborn without memories — but he still falls for her.
The person he finds displeasing in this life turns out to be his cherished wife-master in previous life…
Xie Zhi and Fang Xianxing who had known each other for less than three days through a blind date sat in the same car in front of the civil affairs bureau. They had a disagreement and failed to get married.
Xie Zhi immediately took out his phone, slid through his contacts, and randomly selected the next marriage candidate.
The woman snatched his phone and hung up. Looking at his phone wallpaper, she awkwardly changed the subject: “An ancient painting, eh? It looks pretty good, it’s just that the person in the painting looks a bit like me.”
When he heard this, he sarcastically mocked her for being so delusional, completely unaware that, the person in front of him was the reincarnation of Wen Ru, the famous prime minister of Yuan Shun whom he most admired…
The female CEO who doesn’t want to get married with a divorce agreement in hand × The male archaeological researcher who will only get married if he’s sure he can get divorced
