Cesare snorted.

“Isabella was from the beginning! The woman meant for me. The strongest male deserves the most beautiful woman. Do you know how humiliated I felt when your father pushed you instead of your sister?”

Ariadne stared blankly at Cesare with her mouth open.

“Your sister was the most beautiful lady in San Carlo. When I sent a proposal, they damn well offered you instead! How wronged I was! What was lacking in me!”

In front of Ariadne, Cesare was sharing his feelings of sadness from being rejected in great detail.

Ariadne was a ‘good girl’. She repeatedly put up with her man’s nonsensical behavior. It was the only way she had learned to be loved.

She could not possibly compete in appearance with her strikingly beautiful sister.

Although she liked to study, her irritable stepmother used the excuse that scholarship was not a virtue for girls and persistently interfered with her studies, so she couldn’t learn much.

Ariadne had to be ‘good’. She wasn’t naturally gentle or kind by nature.

But by giving up what was hers, yielding, bowing down, apologizing, and submitting, she created her own place in a world that wouldn’t make room for her. That’s what she thought. Until today.

“Was I just a substitute?”

An incredulous smile was etched on Cesare’s face, handsome as a marble statue. It was a laugh bordering on madness.

“A substitute?”

He strode over and reached out to lift Ariadne’s chin.

He spat out each word through gritted teeth.

“You’d have to be able to substitute to be a substitute. You’re not even that.”

Though trembling, Ariadne scrutinized every detail of Cesare’s expression.

The upper lip that lifted to show his canines when angry, the high nose bridge and the handsome reddish-brown eyebrows that followed from there, the movement of the forehead muscles throbbing with anger above the high forehead bone.

And those blue eyes. Those eyes clouded with incomprehensible anger.

She knew Cesare so well. He was a man she couldn’t understand intellectually, but she had internalized his patterns in her heart.

This would probably be the last day she’d see Cesare. She had that feeling.

He roughly flung away his right hand that had been holding her chin. Unable to withstand the man’s arm strength, Ariadne fell to the bedroom floor, almost scraping against it.

“Get out of my sight. Don’t ever show up again.”

She had had countless hints. It was she herself who had stubbornly sat there, foolishly ruminating on hope like a cow.

She knew it would end up like this.

*　*　*

Cardinal De Mare, though devoted to the clergy, had several children like many other clergymen of that era.

His mistress Lucrezia was of noble birth, bore three children with the Cardinal, and acted like a legal wife.

Those three children were raised like children of high nobility.

Among them, Isabella, the second child and eldest daughter, was only seventeen but was renowned in society for her beauty, and was Lucrezia’s treasure and Cardinal De Mare’s pride.

“Father. I don’t want to marry that man.”

She whined cutely to Cardinal De Mare, with her peach-like skin and flaxen hair. Her amethyst-like eyes twinkled pitifully.

“They say he’s as ferocious as a beast. And rumors are circulating that he’s illegitimate.”

Cardinal De Mare stroked the head of his angel-like beautiful daughter.

“Yes, yes, this father knows too. He’s proclaimed to be the prince’s cousin, but in fact, he’s the king’s illegitimate son. I have no intention of marrying my daughter to a bastard.”

It was as if the Cardinal’s children were legitimate.

Isabella smiled softly. When her face with its pure beauty smiled, she looked like a cute fairy for a moment.

“Father, you’ve always told me to bring glory to the De Mare family name. I’m going to be the most beautiful and noble lady in this country. I can’t end up as just a countess.”

Cardinal De Mare nodded his head.

“Let’s say our Isabella has fallen ill for a while. We can’t force marriage on a sick child.”

“But we can’t ignore Count De Como’s proposal, can we?”

A chilling voice interjected from behind.

It was Lucrezia, Cardinal De Mare’s mistress.

“He’s said to become a margrave soon, we shouldn’t offend him.”

A margrave was one who guarded the kingdom’s borders. He would be given military power but had to leave the capital. For Count De Como, it was a promotion that felt like a demotion.

One thing was certain: Margrave Cesare, Count De Como, was not a match to which he wanted to send his daughter. He couldn’t send his daughter to the countryside, to a man who might die in a local war at any time.

However, if they didn’t give a daughter to the margrave who had soldiers, and if the margrave harbored treasonous thoughts and marched on the capital, it would be a disaster. Even if they couldn’t give their most precious child, they had to maintain a connection. Because it was a card they might need to cut off at any time, the less precious that connection, the better.

“The illegitimate should match with the illegitimate. Send Ariadne, Your Eminence.”

“Ariadne… Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

Cardinal De Mare laughed whitely.

* * *

Ariadne’s mother was a maid of the mistress Lucrezia. On a very rainy day, Cardinal De Mare, quite drunk, took the maid instead of Lucrezia, and when Lucrezia found out, she was furious.

But the maid was already carrying the Cardinal’s seed in her womb. The child born was neither a son nor did it resemble the Cardinal at all.

The maid was locked in a room at the top of the tower immediately after giving birth and died within a few years. After being separated from her mother’s embrace, Ariadne grew up in the servants’ quarters.

Ariadne, who received no special education, couldn’t write, draw, or play an instrument. But suddenly, in the spring of her fifteenth year, Nicolo, Cardinal De Mare’s butler, notified that ‘Miss’ Ariadne should pack her belongings and move her quarters to the inner castle.

At that time, she thought her father had finally remembered her. She thought that now she would have a family, that the noble family beyond the castle had finally forgiven her mother’s lowly status and accepted her as family.

Family, nonsense.

If family means sucking the marrow out of your bones with a straw and then smacking you hard on the back of the head when they think you’ve lost your usefulness, then Cardinal De Mare’s three children and Ariadne were a perfect family.

* * *

“I accept your request. The daughter of the De Mare family will be engaged to Count De Como.”

When Cesare De Como received this reply, he was overjoyed. Isabella, the only daughter Cardinal De Mare had introduced to society, was every man’s dream lover and ultimate goal. Obtaining her was like a certification of being the best man in the capital.

With her porcelain-like white skin and rosy peach-colored cheeks, Isabella, with her flaxen hair cascading down, was as beautiful as an angel from a holy painting. When a smile graced those amethyst eyes, she was as playful as a fairy from ancient mythology.

But Isabella’s appearance was at its best when she had a solemn look. When sadness touched her noble and pure statuesque beauty, anyone would be at a loss, wanting to alleviate that sorrow.

And that was exactly how Isabella looked now, standing before Cesare De Como.

“Lady Isabella, why do you look so worried?”

“…”

“Am I not to your liking? Although I have a noble title instead of the right of succession to the throne, I am still the king’s cousin and Count De Como. The domain I will soon receive is rich and beautiful. There is no better match among the nobles in the capital now. I will stake everything I have to make you happy…!”

Isabella interrupted Cesare’s words.

“It’s not me.”

“Pardon?”

“The one who is to be engaged to Count Cesare is not me.”

Cesare was bewildered.

“But the reply to the proposal clearly…”

Isabella raised her amethyst-like eyes to gaze at him with a look of pity.

“The ‘daughter of De Mare’ written in that proposal is my younger sister Ariadne. A pitiful sister not well-known in society.”

Her delicate voice was like celestial music to Cesare’s ears.

“My sister threw a fit, asking Father if there was nothing in her life, begging to be married to the most excellent man in this Etruscan kingdom. She was so stubborn that no one could stop her.”

Isabella sighed deeply, lowering her golden eyelashes.

“I… Since I’ve lived with more than my sister. Father said I should yield to my sister this time, so…”

Her violet eyes filled with appealing tears. As if not wanting to show her tears, she deliberately lowered her head.

“I cannot go against my father, Count Cesare.”

Her delicately bowed head looked pitiful.

“I’ve always admired you from afar, watching you at the grand mass. But we’re to become family now, aren’t we? Love between family members is not allowed. Please bury this feeling deep in your heart and remember me only with affection and goodwill.”

This doesn’t make sense. Cesare, who had been listening in a daze, finally opened his mouth.

“But…!”

“Shh.”

Isabella raised her finger to stop Cesare’s lips. Isabella’s white, transparent finger lightly pressed against Cesare’s lips, touching the soft mucous membrane of his lips. Cesare inhaled sharply at the unexpected contact of body heat.

“Ariadne is a good girl too. Please treat her well. I only came to tell you this.”

Leaving those words, Isabella De Mare gracefully returned to her family’s seat in the church’s grand hall.

Cesare stood dumbfounded, staring at Isabella’s retreating figure, when he suddenly noticed Isabella’s gauze lace handkerchief fallen on the floor.

He picked it up and preciously tucked it into his breast. He wanted to smell its fragrance, but even that felt sacrilegious. He could faintly feel the warmth from the handkerchief in his chest. He placed his right hand over his heart where the handkerchief lay.

− Thump, thump.

His heartbeat pounded. He couldn’t tell if it was his heart racing from the excitement of seeing Isabella, or if it was the sound of his heart raging from having her snatched away right in front of him.

As he raised his head, his eyes immediately fell on Cardinal De Mare chatting with those around him in the distance, and next to him, a black-haired girl standing with her head bowed.

The girl was unnecessarily tall, her hunched back made her look more like a menial worker than a high noble’s precious daughter, and her sun-tanned skin looked unsophisticated.

He stared endlessly at the white-robed Cardinal and the black-haired girl standing hunched beside him. He had been just one step away from grasping the golden trophy. Those two had ruined his life.

* * *

“Giacomo!”

“Yes, Lord Regent!”

“Take Lady Ariadne to the top of the western tower for recuperation. She’s become mad and utterly unable to perform the duties of a queen. It’s unsightly, so handle it discreetly so others don’t see her coming and going.”

“Yes, Your Excellency!”

− Clank!