The others around her had just finished switching dance partners and were preparing to step into the second song. People occasionally glanced at the prince and the princess.

“Let’s go in, princess.”

“I can’t move a step until you answer my feelings!”

Darling.

The orchestra accompaniment rang out.

While Larisa held on, the orchestra began the second dance. People began to turn in a clockwise direction, extending their held hands in sync with the accompaniment.

Among hundreds of people swirling like clock hands, Prince Alfonso and Princess Larisa stood alone like shipwrecked survivors.

The fleeting glances of the dancing couples fell on the prince and princess, as did the gazes of people from far away and, above all, those of Leo III and Duke Mireille, who were seated in the VIP seats provided on the upper floor, fell in the middle of the floor.

Alfonso sighed and reached out his hand. Princess Larisa instantly grasped his hand. He placed his hand on Princess Larisa’s waist and began to twirl and step in time with the others.

‘I promised Ari…’

He looked for traces of his Ariadne somewhere in the crowd. But with over a thousand guests at the ball, the crowd filled every place like waves, and it was a tall order to locate his lady, who would certainly be shining somewhere, from his position in the very center of the floor.

Larisa, who had noticed Alfonso’s lack of focus, spoke as they spun around.

“Prince, we are destined to marry. A destined love!”

“Destiny? Is destiny so easy? I don’t think so.”

“Our countries want our marriage and I felt the chills in my soul when I first saw you! Isn’t that enough?”

“What exactly is your love?”

They turned a large circle, only touching fingertips, and then fell apart. As Larisa, who had been clinging to him, fell away, Alfonso felt like he could breathe again.

Being with Larisa was always like that. Alfonso felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

“I…. I….”

Larisa had never thought about the definition of love. All she knew was that her heart trembled and her cheeks turned red when she saw Alfonso.

From some point on, she desperately, desperately wanted to have Alfonso.

She wanted to know his every move, she was angry even at his casual glances at other women. She even disliked the time Prince Alfonso spent with his secretary and knights.

She wished he would whisper love songs to her during that time and worship her alone.

“…I can give you everything.”

Princess Larisa, who couldn’t say ‘I want to have you’, chose her words.

“I look only at you, think only of you. Every moment of mine is all yours. I will bear your child. A child that looks like you, I will hold eight or nine in my arms and present to you.”

They turned sharply once more to the music.

“…So.”

Lariessa pleaded desperately.

“Please look at me too.”

Alfonso moved in time to the music without any response. Each time the beat split, he stepped accurately and bent his waist. At Alfonso’s unenthusiastic response, Lariessa hastily added.

“I know I overstepped my bounds in Taranto the other day. I was severely scolded by Count Revian.”

She was referring to the incident where she had told Alfonso in the corridor of the Taranto palace, “To protect the small country of Etruscan, you need to be nice to me, the Grand Princess of Gallico.”

“I won’t talk like that again. It’s wrong for a daughter to show her power to the father she should obey, it’s against the teachings of the ‘Meditations’.”

Lariessa was the type of person who originally couldn’t admit her mistakes. However, she was so desperate for Alfonso’s love that she swallowed her pride and did things she wouldn’t usually do.

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please look at me.”

Apology, and confession.

The first is something Lariessa never does, and the second is something an unmarried woman of the Central Continent never does.

Lariessa, who had done both in one day, looked up at Alfonso with a puppylike longing gaze.

‘Please…!’

She was in a pinch right now. First of all, the marriage negotiations led by Count Revian were being drawn out tediously.

Last week, the negotiation almost broke down. When Etruscan insisted on the formula for gunpowder to the end, the Kingdom of Gallico sent a message telling them to pack their bags and return home.

Count Marquez, who represents the intentions of Leo III, hastily took back the demand for the formula, and the Gallico delegation sat back at the negotiating table, but Lariessa was so surprised she thought she was going to faint.

Moreover, Prince Alfonso’s attitude was definitely getting colder day by day. The warmth when she first arrived in Etruscan was nowhere to be found.

Whenever Alfonso wouldn’t look into her eyes when speaking, wouldn’t arrange appointments outside of mandatory official schedules, or rather, when she saw his lips not smiling, it felt like her heart was breaking.

So she did everything she could.

But a person’s heart cannot be obtained by effort, and begging will never get it.

“Grand Princess. You are…”

Prince Alfonso opened his mouth.

Ariadne watched Prince Alfonso and Grand Princess Lariessa, who were holding hands and beginning their second dance, closely.

‘Alfonso…!’

You promised!

The resentment she had been enduring came rushing in. She had pretended to be composed in front of Raphael, but in truth, she disliked it to the point of nausea when Alfonso waltzed with Lariessa for the first time. She gritted her teeth and endured with her trained patience.

But a second waltz! In Ariadne’s opinion, that dance was unnecessary.

‘…If you’re going to do this, don’t make such a solid promise. Don’t whisper sweet words like ‘there’s no one but Ari’ if you’re not going to give it back.’

Her thoughts were leaping like a crazed horse. She was standing in a sea of roiling emotions, staring blankly at the dance floor where people were spinning quickly in the blinding light.

‘!’

Grand Princess Lariessa got too close to Alfonso, breaking out of the usual waltz movement. Even when the timing to keep distance came, she clung to Alfonso’s upper body and appealed something.

‘What could she be saying…’

Alfonso sighed and whispered something to Grand Princess Lariessa. Blood boiled up from her chest, threatening to explode. What could he have said?

‘My heart hurts…’

Exclusion taking place in the beautiful ballroom of Palazzo Carlo and the gorgeous reception rooms. Expectation and frustration. These were all feelings painfully familiar to Ariadne. It felt like her past was coming back, and she swallowed her dry saliva.

‘Think something else, think something else.’

In order to control the whirlwind of emotions, Ariadne desperately thought about something else.

The idea that Alfonso might have had an affair didn’t help much in breaking her downcast imagination, which was growing like a tail.

Instead, she recalled the weather she saw on the carriage ride, the food she had for lunch, and even the accounts she had to settle and the payments she had to make by tomorrow. As she thought about the accounts and money, her nerves finally shifted elsewhere.

‘Now that the accounts of the entire house are in my hands, I should start buying wheat in preparation for the plague this fall……’

“Miss de Mare.”

A pleasing tenor tone voice interrupted Ariadne’s meditation. She, who had been standing alone near one side of the ballroom wall, her arms folded, suddenly looked up. The voice was too familiar. Heard thousands and thousands of times.

“Cesare… Count.”

He was the man who had been the cause of all the ostracism that took place in Palazzo Carlo. If she hadn’t been engaged to Cesare, there would have been no reason for her, a young lady without legitimacy, a bastard’s pair, to enter Palazzo Carlo in the first place.

“Beautiful lady, why are you alone in this corner? Will you dance with me?”

That man, who had once caused her ostracism, now extended his left hand, offering to wash away that ostracism.