Duke Lev recalled that terrible day and faced Clard, then lowered his eyes again with a heavy heart.

Clard smiled at the gaze slowly falling to the floor.

“Thank you for your answer.”

“Who could understand Your Highness’s pain? Just don’t forget that there are still those like me who follow you.”

Clard turned away from Duke Lev’s earnest voice and staggered to the bed in the darkest corner, laying down his body.

Having been unable to sleep all night from writhing in pain, this was the only time Clard could even close his eyes.

“On your way out, tell my ninth wife. That returning now is her only way to survive. It’s my first and last advice as her husband.”

“Your Highness.”

“She’ll just end up dying or running away alone anyway. Why bother bringing an outsider into my house?”

Clard said irritably as he turned over.

His golden hair, shrouded in shadow, scattered softly on the white pillow.

“Why should I have to witness someone else’s death before my eyes again?”

A voice close to muttering flowed from the golden back of his head still facing the wall.

“…I’m sick and tired of it.”

***

Duke Mosan Lev left the mansion with heavy steps.

A lone carriage that had not been granted entry stood at the entrance.

And in front of it stood a small girl wearing furry earmuffs and a thin fur cloak.

Below her calmly falling black hair, a red, frozen face stared at him.

Though her posture and facial features were mature, her chubby cheeks and drooping eye corners beneath thickly arranged eyelashes still gave off a youthful air.

She looks much younger than I thought.

It was a situation that made him sigh involuntarily.

“May eternal glory be upon the great Yufris.”

Even as a deposed prince, Clard was the legitimate heir to the imperial family.

Duke Lev bent his knee and bowed his head before the deposed prince consort, then raised it.

“I am Mosan Lev. Please call me Duke Lev.”

Lev.

The surname of the late Empress Dowager.

Yuan traced in her mind the name she had seen in newspapers she had read.

Lev was one of the most respected families in this country.

A noble among nobles, righteous and incorruptible.

A founding contributor who helped the first emperor establish this country.

A prestigious family that had produced several empresses throughout the hundreds of years of Yufris history.

Duke Kompani, who had received a message from someone, had just hurriedly left after telling her that someone would come out if she waited a little.

And after quite a while, the person who came out was not a butler, but the deposed prince’s maternal uncle.

The head of the Lev family.

Yuan looked up again at the black mansion that took her breath away just by looking at it, with a tense face over Duke Lev’s shoulder.

Finally, she was seeing it.

The man who would have watched Louise’s final moments.

The person she wanted to ask about Louise’s death, which no one had answered.

And also the person who had now become her only family.

“Um… am I going in now?”

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, but it would be better if you returned to your parents’ home first.”

Yuan held her breath for a moment at the sudden rejection.

Sorry. Parents’ home. Return.

After rolling the three words around in her head and mouth, she finally exhaled.

“Why?”

Return? Where was she supposed to return to?

As her pitch-black eyes shook violently, Duke Lev quickly surveyed the surroundings.

Confirming that Peliesse had not sent any separate servants or maids, he was momentarily flustered but soon regained his composure.

In the first place, there were no parents who would send their precious daughter to this place.

The heavy feeling in his heart grew heavier.

“I know well how rumors about His Highness Clard circulate in the world. But His Highness is neither a monster nor a lecher, just a sick patient. As he is not in a normal state to receive a partner, it seems wiser to wait until there is separate word from the imperial family.”

The duke saw the woman’s complexion darken more and more with each word he spoke.

Usually it was the opposite.

There had been several similar situations, but they all returned to their parents’ homes with their entourages as if they had been waiting.

The woman looked sufficiently frightened and fragile, as if about to collapse, even though she had not yet seen Clard.

“…What if I say I don’t want to?”

But the voice that came out after trembling for a long time was quite firm.

Clasping her red, frozen hands together and shivering, the woman clearly expressed her intention.

“I’m not going back. I’m staying here.”

Faced with a reaction he had never seen before, Duke Lev was so taken aback for a moment that he could only gape.

As if not wanting to give him even a moment’s leeway, the woman hurriedly continued.

“Although we haven’t held the wedding ceremony, I heard that the imperial family has already designated me as the next bride. Then isn’t that black… that mansion a place I can enter? Isn’t it becoming my home now?”

The woman’s words were correct, but the most important fact was that the owner of this black mansion was Clard Yufris.

It meant that such common sense did not apply.

Duke Mosan Lev began to genuinely worry about this innocent and timid-looking young lady.

“I’ll wait until that person… that is, my husband, comes out himself.”

With those final words, Yuan firmly closed her mouth. The small jawbone below her ear bobbed and returned to its place.

She deliberately ignored Duke Lev’s worried gaze and stubbornly looked straight ahead.

In any case, if she returned, she would either be sick to death or sick enough to want to die.

Anywhere would be better than that hell.

Even if it was in front of an unfamiliar mansion, rejected by her husband.

Seeing Yuan looking deliberately desperate, Duke Mosan Lev gestured towards the mansion’s entrance with a troubled face.

A servant ran towards them from afar.

Duke Mosan Lev, without taking his eyes off Yuan, relayed a message to call Clard.

And he immediately ordered another servant to bring his carriage.

It was a pity for the new deposed prince consort, but he had no intention of accompanying the innocent young lady on her stubborn journey.

The ninth bride, Yuan Peliesse, would also run away in fear of Clard, and the imperial family would soon send Clard’s tenth bride.

If Clard came out and showed his face, she would run away in utter panic, as if her shoes had fallen off.

‘Just as it has always been.’

Duke Lev bowed his head, feeling a light sympathy for the seemingly fragile new bride.

Yuan continued to ignore him as he paid his respects and retreated.

She simply clasped her hands neatly and waited for someone else to come out of this mansion to take her.

***

“What are you standing and waiting for like that? It’s annoying, so sit down now.”

“How can the anger not subside even after a few days? Going out like that in front of so many people and not a single contact. What kind of family disgrace is this!”

“She’ll come back on her own soon enough. This time, I absolutely won’t let it slide. I should make her kneel in the snow and beat her until her joints freeze solid and she can’t walk on her own, so she’ll never think of running away again. Where does she think she’s going, following along like that.”

“Y-yes, right? That weak little girl might be turning the carriage around and rushing back, scared!”

“As if I’d forgive her so easily for that!”

Count Peliesse said this to the Countess, but he still sat on the reception room sofa, tapping his leg.

It had been like this for days now.

At first, the whole family was furious at Yuan’s escape, which had turned the household upside down and utterly disgraced them.

It was humiliating that Duke Kompani’s soldiers had ransacked the entire house, but they couldn’t properly protest.

Moreover, Yuan, who had always been obedient, had for the first time looked them straight in the eye, said everything she wanted to say, and left, leaving the Peliesse Count’s family dumbfounded for a while.

But unlike Regina, who laughed saying it felt refreshing as if a sore tooth had been pulled out, and Frederick, who got angry along with his parents at first but was not much different from Regina,

The Count and Countess Peliesse, who had been handling household affairs with Yuan’s help until now, began to grow increasingly anxious about their niece’s behavior, with not a single contact after four days.

“Ah, I did it all for her own good, didn’t I? Rocksenhart, what kind of place is that? That black mansion there! The winters are long there, and right next to it is a desert. How does she think she’ll live as the bride of that monster deposed prince in that poor, remote territory? Not only does she not consider it lucky that her sister went there, but what is she going on about?”

The more Count Peliesse dwelled on it, the more heated he became, and he began fanning his face.

Frederick, who had been indifferent, thinking it wasn’t worth getting so worked up over one unremarkable girl leaving, soon began to chatter tactlessly.

“The deposed prince is still royalty. If we become family with the imperial house, couldn’t we also advance our careers better? Anyway, that Rocksenhart or whatever territory will be the deposed prince’s share, so there might be something he could give us.”

Frederick gulped down the alcohol he had brought from the wine cellar straight from the bottle.

To him, Yuan was nothing more than an annoying cousin, no more, no less.

There was no reason not to accept her marriage if it would help his career advancement.

“What’s so different about Yuan and Louise? It’s good to marry her off, what’s the big deal? It worked out well, she was irritating anyway. If that girl is lucky, we might even get to stand in line. Right, Regina?”

Count Peliesse swallowed hard, unable to shout that it was nonsense since Yuan possessed the Peliesse ability, which was a secret known only to himself as the head of the family and Yuan, except for the deceased Louise.

He was at his wits’ end, unable to receive visitors coming to Peliesse with bags of gold due to Yuan’s absence.

For now, he was blocking visitors with the excuse of taking a brief rest, but what if, just maybe, Yuan didn’t return home?

Just thinking about how much protest there would be from the power brokers who had been waiting with investment funds scheduled to come in and “special” medical appointments booked years in advance made his spine tingle.