After parting with Hayden, Clea headed to her room.

Along the way to her room, there were quite a few gazes directed at her.

Each one was filled with wariness and unease.

Clea found those gazes ridiculous.

‘How much better it would be if they just came up and spoke to me openly like before.’

When Admund wasn’t around, they would talk as if intending for her to hear.

But now that her position had suddenly changed, their attitudes changed as well.

Though it wasn’t incomprehensible why they acted this way, perhaps because the contrast was too stark, it felt rather odd.

She ignored the gazes and calmly arrived at her room.

“Hah.”

Even the doorknob was already thickly covered in dust.

How long had it been since she left for dust to accumulate like this?

No matter how poorly it was maintained, it was surprising that not a single person had entered or left.

‘Well, why would anyone bother entering a room with nothing worth taking?’

The Odoi ducal family never bought her anything of value.

However, after her engagement to Lloyd, items would occasionally come in.

The grand ducal couple were rather fond of Clea.

As much as Odoi didn’t provide, the Percy grand ducal family would get her anything.

However, Clea had no way to keep those things.

If she left them in her room, she never knew when someone might take them.

Even if she wanted to protect them, she couldn’t, and even if she complained, no one would listen.

Knowing that reaching out for help would only make her look pathetic, she sold off everything as soon as she received it.

That was the only way Clea could keep anything truly her own.

“How did I endure in this place?”

That was her first impression upon opening the door and entering.

Though she had fully expected it just before opening it, the inside was completely covered in dust.

The bed and old furniture.

The mansion that had been so bright until she entered was now completely shrouded in darkness once the door closed.

A completely isolated space where no light entered at all, despite the existence of windows.

She had lived in such a space for over a decade.

“I wonder what would have happened if I had run away earlier.”

It’s not that she never thought about running away.

But she wasn’t confident she could shake off Grit’s pursuit.

After all, the Odoi family was still a proper ducal house.

If they set their minds to chasing her, they could easily find someone like her.

And until then, she had been afraid of dying.

She thought if they found her, they might try to kill her out of spite for her pitiful attempt to escape.

So it was only after the curse was placed on her that Clea was able to resign herself, thinking she was going to die anyway.

Only then was she able to leave the Odoi family.

‘Though my meeting with Admund afterwards was entirely unintended.’

Clea turned her gaze.

She looked around for what Aria might be searching for.

She guessed it might be something related to her and Aria’s memories.

Of course, it was just a guess, but at this point, that was all she could think of.

She surveyed her surroundings.

Among the dust-covered items, there didn’t seem to be anything related to Aria.

“What could it be? Something connected to you and me.”

Something so intimately linked to both of them that it was like a curse, unbearably so.

Just as she was thinking that if such a thing existed, she would have gotten rid of it long ago, Clea recalled one item.

Clea headed to the dressing table.

Though there weren’t many items, a small box was still there.

Opening the box revealed a necklace with a pendant split in half.

‘I couldn’t even sell it because it was broken.’

She had thought about throwing it away since it was useless, but just left it as it was.

As she couldn’t remember its origin, she wondered what memories it held that made her keep it so preciously.

Clea had very few personal belongings.

The only things normally given to her were items necessary for going out.

Since they were mainly things to ensure she wouldn’t look out of place next to her fiancé Lloyd, to avoid tarnishing the family’s honor, it felt odd to have kept such an old and broken item.

As this was the only thing that came to mind, she took just this necklace.

Then she intended to open the door and go outside.

“Y-you, why are you here?”

But as soon as she opened the door, Aria Hersher, whom she so desperately didn’t want to see, appeared before her.

She had run so quickly that she was catching her breath, and for a moment Clea almost furrowed her brow, but instead she smiled.

Seeing Clea’s smile, Aria seemed to become even more upset.

“And what business might our busy young lady have here?”

“Answer my question first!”

Before, she wouldn’t have shown such an agitated appearance.

She used to provoke people with gentle words as much as possible, but now she had completely lost her composure.

Her gentle demeanor had disappeared as if it were a lie.

With an irritated expression glaring at her, Aria looked every bit the villain.

Clea looked down at Aria like this and said.

“This isn’t the academy or a nobles’ banquet hall, Aria.”

It was a place with only the two of them.

Of course, servants of the Odoi family were watching from afar through the open doorway, but they were unlikely to help Aria.

Clea moved even closer to her and placed her hand on Aria’s shoulder.

For a moment, the startled Aria tried to back away, but thinking she shouldn’t give an inch to Clea, she immediately looked up at her straight on.

Meeting Aria’s gaze, Clea felt like laughing.

It was always Aria who smiled, but this time it was her.

“Do you think you can treat me like this now that you’re not even a noble anymore?”

Aria shouted, seemingly displeased with all of this.

A fellow noble.

It meant that since she had left the Odoi family, she was no longer a noble.

But Clea didn’t care. She had never cared about such matters.

Rather, she used that point to provoke her.

“That may be the case now.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Perhaps because of the unexpected response.

Aria asked in confusion what she meant.

Clea leaned in close to her ear and explained.

“I said it might be the case now. But as time passes, won’t you be the one who has to greet me first? At best, you’ll become a grand duchess, but I’ll become the crown princess, higher than you.”

“No!”

That was the reality.

There was no one left who could prevent Clea from becoming the crown princess.

No matter how much the nobles tried to block it, the imperial family had already acknowledged her existence.

Moreover, her problematic past had been completely erased through her atonement.

Especially considering Admund’s actions towards Clea, who could possibly recommend someone else?

But Aria denied it to the end.

Was it because she had always thought of Clea as beneath her until now?

Perhaps because of the reality that such a person might suddenly be above her, Aria became even more agitated.

“You can never become the crown princess, Clea. Because you’ll die before you reach that position.”

When Aria mentioned death, Clea couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity.

“Why are you laughing?”

Unable to understand why Clea would laugh in this situation, Aria asked with a cold gaze.

Looking down at Aria like this, Clea spoke quietly.

“I just thought that if it were exactly in the past, I might have gone along with your wishes.”

“What?”

Perhaps if it had been her in the past, she wouldn’t have cared what Aria said here now.

After all, Clea too had been full of thoughts of wanting to leave this place.

She had no lingering attachment to this world.

At that time, she had to spend lonely days alone, and the more she lived, the more painful it became.

But now it was different.

“What you want to have, I’ve come to want as well.”

Her first meeting with Admund was just a simple whim.

She was curious about the man Aria wanted so badly, and wanted to experience a brief moment of joy through him as a final indulgence.

As the curse mark appeared and she lived a life with an unknown expiration date, she wanted to leave behind at least one good memory.

But that chance encounter ended up continuing until now.

In the end, the relationship between the two had changed a lot.

Even Clea thought it was a pairing that seemed unlikely to ever come together.

Among the names of various ladies associated with Admund that were on people’s lips, Clea’s was never one of them.

The purpose of provoking Aria disappeared, and sincerity grew in her heart.

“So why don’t you give up now and go back to living lovey-dovey with Lloyd like before? If you do that, I’ll overlook everything that happened in the past.”

Those words telling her to give up on Admund and spend happy days with Lloyd seemed very unpleasant to hear, as she glared fiercely at Clea.

The more Aria looked at her like that, the more Clea liked it.

She could see that the more she revealed her inner thoughts, the more her composure disappeared.

‘I never intended to forgive her in the first place.’

Though she said she would forgive her, Clea had no intention of keeping her word.

Logically speaking, how could one easily forgive someone who tried to kill them by placing a curse?

“You should return to your original place. Lloyd was your fiancé!”

Yet the reason she deliberately mentioned forgiveness was because she knew well that Aria would not accept her proposal.

Aria only thought of using Lloyd, not truly loving him.

Friends? There wasn’t a single person around her that she sincerely thought of as a friend.

Steve said that in the past, she and Clea were close friends.

“You’re so selfish.”

“What are you doing!”

Later, she learned that it seemed more like a kind of hierarchical relationship than friendship.

Clea pushed Aria straight towards the door and strangled her slender neck.