Ruans gritted his teeth audibly. He felt like he was going crazy with how dizzy his mind was. Whether he closed his eyes or opened them, Lorencia’s smooth smile kept lingering in his head.

Irritation welled up at Lorencia’s face that kept popping up several times a day.

Before going to sleep and even in his dreams, only Lorencia appeared. Together with Teishar, whom he wanted to kill…

“Lorencia. This won’t do. You should only think of me even in your dreams. How dare you flirt with another man?”

Stick with Teishar? Right in front of my eyes?

“I’ll kill you. I’ll tear your limbs apart and throw them to the pigs.”

Ruans desperately shook his throbbing head. Just watching the two people gazing at each other affectionately in his dream made his stomach churn and retch.

Even as he screamed at them to separate, they only got closer, gazing at each other with love. He thought he would go insane just from watching Lorencia and Teishar. His heart felt suffocated and painful.

“They say she’s a monster born for me. That she’s mine! Teishar Spencer, the Duke!”

Something impulsive and violent boiled in his green eyes. He was filled with thoughts of bringing Lorencia to his palace right away. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to bring Lorencia somehow.

“No. Ruans von Isuter, that monster wants to be by my side. What are you thinking? Dreams are just dreams. Calm down.”

Imagining Lorencia looking at him with flushed cheeks, the suffocating and nauseating feeling in his stomach subsided. Ruans closed his eyes.

He recalled the round, large eyes that had asked who he was in fear when they first met. The small, distinct red lips that had always only called his name.

The moment he thought of Lorencia calling Teishar’s nickname, Ruans frowned with all his might.

“I need to become emperor quickly.”

Ruans’ face, distorted with anguish, was tinged with an anxious and impatient light. Then he soon lifted the corners of his mouth wide. A good way for him to quickly become emperor had come to mind.

Ruans let out a long sigh and calmed his heart. But his heart twinged again as he thought of Lorencia. Like someone with arrhythmia, his heart flinched greatly and then pounded loudly.

“My monster. Lorencia.”

From some point on, only Lorencia’s name was constantly repeated from Ruans’ mouth. He kept feeling like his heart was collapsing. Unable to understand why he felt this way, he stared endlessly at his sharp sword before lifting it and stabbing it hard into the floor. The sword was stuck crookedly in the floor.

“It’s the carriage of the wicked woman who made Prince Adrian die!”

“Don’t ever come back! The witch of Poloid!”

Charlotte looked out the window of the carriage speeding away from the Isuter Imperial Palace. Jeers could be heard from here and there.

“Don’t listen to them, Princess.”

At Susanna’s words, Charlotte turned her gaze away from the window. Daniel, Ruans, and even Felina had all begun to push the blame for Adrian’s death onto the Poloid Empire.

At least the emperor and empress who had been on her side didn’t come out of their room after Adrian’s death. Even if she said it wasn’t true, no one took her side. It was the expected result.

The imperial palace, which had lost its big house in Adrian, was quickly stabilizing due to Ruans and Daniel.

When Charlotte came to the Isuter Empire, she was warmly welcomed. But the way back was filled with only curses and jeers directed at her.

“It’s upsetting.”

Susanna was also upset by the jeers.

“Susanna.”

“Yes.”

“Having people trample on your pride a bit for a big cause doesn’t mean you lose your dignity as royalty.”

Charlotte’s hand caressing her lower abdomen was careful.

“As long as I can protect my child, I can endure having my pride trampled on countless times. Susanna.”

The carriage left the Isuter Empire and entered the trade route. But feeling something slightly strange, Charlotte tilted her head.

The carriage carrying Charlotte and the escorting knights finally fully entered the Poloid Empire after leaving Isuter. The knights guarding the empire’s outskirts saluted upon seeing the carriage Charlotte was riding in.

After passing the outskirts and driving for a while, the carriage slowly began to reduce speed.

“He should be coming soon, right?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

Charlotte said to stop the carriage for a moment, and the carriage halted briefly. The carriage door was carefully opened. A burly man with his face half-hidden by black hair swiftly entered the carriage.

Seeing the person sitting next to Charlotte, Susanna exited the carriage and moved to another one. The carriages began moving again.

“Charlotte.”

At the familiar, calm yet low voice, Charlotte’s eyes quickly became moist. There was only one person who had such a resounding and powerful voice.

“I missed you.”

Charlotte slowly turned her head to the side. The moment she faced Adrian sitting next to her, tears fell.

It was Adrian with his golden hair dyed black. He looked terrible, probably from hiding in the forest.

But it didn’t matter. In this moment of meeting the person she longed for, she needed nothing else.

All she needed was a single word.

“I missed you too.”

As Adrian opened his arms, Charlotte fell into his embrace.

“I must smell a lot.”

“It’s alright.”

Pouting her lips, Charlotte smiled through tears.

“Thank you for coming back healthy.”

“With Charlotte and my child here, there’s no way I could die.”

“You suffered for a long time in the forest.”

Adrian opened his mouth like a fool and stared at Charlotte’s lower abdomen. Overjoyed to meet Adrian again, Charlotte embraced him once more. Unstoppable tears soaked his chest.

Charlotte bit her lip. Seeing such a precious person die and enter a coffin, she had cried all day. Even though she knew he was alive, it was painful to directly witness him entering the coffin.

Daniel suspected that the Poloid Empire had shot an arrow and killed Adrian, and Ruans confirmed that suspicion. The concubine Felina incited high society.

Honestly, it was mentally taxing. But thinking of the child in her womb, she secluded herself in her room as much as possible, closed her eyes, blocked her ears, and kept her mouth shut.

“Thank you. For coming back alive.”

Upon meeting Adrian again, the emotions she had been holding back overflowed. Adrian smiled affectionately, took Charlotte’s hand, interlocked their fingers, and kissed the back of her hand.

“From now on, there will be no reason for me to be apart from Charlotte.”

The reunited couple quietly shed tears of joy. The carriage quickly headed towards the Poloid Imperial Palace.

Elua began packing her bags at her elder brother Carlien’s sudden words that they had to leave the Isuter Empire. And the next day, they set off for the Poloid Empire.

Carlien graduated from the academy with excellent grades and became Ruans’ aide. At first she congratulated him, but whenever she saw her brother apologizing to noble young ladies on Ruans’ behalf and cleaning up the messes Ruans made all night, she felt sorry for him. She told him to quit, but he said he couldn’t.

And the day they arrived in the Poloid Empire.

She didn’t think she would be chosen by a great ducal family, but she was hired right away.

Elua herself was the daughter of a viscount. A viscount was an honorary position lower than a count. So she couldn’t work as a lady’s maid, but she could work as a housemaid.

Fortunately, Elua liked cleaning and dishwashing, so she was grateful just to be able to earn money working as a housemaid.

She was interviewed to be a housemaid, but,

They hired her as a lady’s maid, not a housemaid. She was dumbfounded. She couldn’t understand at all what they saw in her to hire her. She couldn’t believe it even after being hired. And what Carlien had said was true. She was hired as a lady’s maid.

House Spencer even provided a large room for her ailing mother to live together with her.

Elua was happy to be able to serve her sick mother and work as a lady’s maid, but she couldn’t believe it was real that she had been hired as one.

Elua took her mother and immediately entered the Spencer ducal residence.

Lorencia was the illegitimate daughter of Count Pol Heredian. She was now the most famous illegitimate daughter of a count in the Isuter Empire, who had caused the honorary duel between Lorirolls, known for his womanizing ways, and Ruans, before she died cruelly.

But why was she in the Poloid Empire, not Isuter? Why was she at the Spencer ducal residence, not the Pol Heredian count estate? Could she have been kidnapped?

Could Carlien have come to rescue a kidnapped illegitimate child? There was still a lot she didn’t know, but she followed the head maid Mary, recalling Carlien’s words that she shouldn’t have excessive curiosity.

Following the butler Holio, she stood in front of an elegant white and gold decorated door. Elua was nervous at the thought of meeting Lorencia.

When she knocked, a voice told her to enter. She bowed her head and went into the room.

“Miss Lorencia. This is the maid who will attend to you from now on.”

“My name is Elua of House Mioland.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Lorencia.”

Elua straightened from her bow and looked at Lorencia before her eyes.

Could there be another being this beautiful in this world? Elua momentarily held her breath with a gasp at the mystical beauty that seemed believable even if called the devotion of the goddess Ella from mythology.