“Do you even realize who you’re saying such things to?”
Jeremy’s lips twisted.
The knights, unable to bear looking at his face, tightly shut their eyes.
“Starting tonight, I’ll hold you every single day—until you inevitably carry my child.”
“…….”
“Do you perhaps know? I might just elevate you, arrogant as you are, not to the rank of empress, but at least to that of a consort.”
Celia inwardly mocked the vulgar Jeremy.
How could those in power all be so utterly filthy?
Rather than caring for the people, they only sought to crush them with their authority. Abelón deserved to be destroyed.
Celia decided not to reveal that Ileon had drugged the Crown Prince.
Instead, she resolved to quietly watch them fight among themselves.
She would sow discord between the royal family and the Three Dukes, silently yet actively contributing to the downfall of Abelón.
“Father, mother. Please watch from the heavens. Witness the end of these beasts unworthy of the name.”
If one truly doesn’t know who their enemy is, then the solution is simple—kill every possible enemy.
At that moment, the knight who had gone to fetch the imperial physician arrived.
“Your Highness, I’ve brought the imperial physician…….”
The knight couldn’t bring himself to continue. The physician, who had just entered and was wiping sweat from his forehead, was as pale as death.
“Y-Your Highness’s face…….”
The physician reacted as if he had seen a monster.
Only then did Jeremy realize something was wrong. He reached up and felt his face.
Where smooth skin should have been, he felt something rough and uneven.
“What?”
Jeremy touched his cheek in disbelief. On his bumpy left cheek, where his cheek should have been, was instead his own lip.
Jeremy’s hands trembled violently. He screamed in horror.
“Bring me a mirror at once!”
The physician pulled from his medicine case a small round hand mirror, slightly larger than a palm.
Jeremy snatched it and held it up to his face.
His once-smooth skin had melted away, revealing bare white bone. His eyes, nose, and mouth were grotesquely distorted.
A monster.
The reflection in the mirror looked even more monstrous than any monster.
In shock, Jeremy dropped the hand mirror.
Crash!
The shattered fragments sparkled on the white marble floor.
“This can’t be my face! What are you all doing? Why haven’t you killed this physician yet?”
The knights hesitated. Jeremy, desperately denying reality, was clearly not in his right mind.
“Why are you all just standing there like fools!”
Enraged, Jeremy turned to find Celia. But Celia had already slipped out of sight during the chaos.
“If you won’t do it, then I will!”
Consumed by fury, Jeremy snatched the sword from the knight beside him.
The sharp blade pointed straight at the physician’s chest.
The physician, who had come at the summons and now suddenly faced death, knelt on the floor, tightly shutting his eyes.
“Your Highness, please spare me! I’ve done nothing!”
Terrified of death, the physician quickly made a diagnosis.
“If my guess is correct, someone has poisoned Your Highness. Might I ask what you’ve eaten recently?”
“…….”
Jeremy froze, the sword mid-motion.
Jeremy, suffering from a hangover since last night, had eaten only one thing today.
“His Majesty has been deeply troubled all day that he couldn’t attend Your Highness’s birthday celebration. Upon hearing that you drank much wine, he immediately ordered honey water and a letter be sent to you.”
The honey water from his mother.
Jeremy, feeling unwell, had eaten nothing else.
“That’s impossible.”
Jeremy muttered to himself. Mother? His mother couldn’t have done this.
The woman who had always cared for him above all—why would she poison her own son?
Soon, he would ascend the throne, and she would become empress dowager. What reason could she possibly have?
“…….”
Jeremy was struck by a shock far greater than the ruin of his face.
There was no doubt—the handwriting of the letter, the honey water—it was unmistakably identical to his mother’s.
Moreover, Ben, who had delivered them, was a knight who had served his mother for over twenty years.
“Mother would never do such a thing to me…….”
Could he truly say with certainty that she wouldn’t?
Jeremy, more than anyone, knew his mother’s intense hunger for power.
Even as he denied it, a seed of suspicion had taken root in the back of his mind.
Erpia and Jeremy had not been on good terms lately.
When Jeremy, who had shown no interest in women, began showing intense interest in Celia, Erpia had expressed deep disappointment.
Erpia, who had attended Jeremy’s birthday celebration every year without fail, hadn’t even set foot in this year’s event.
“No matter how strained our relationship, Mother wouldn’t ruin my face…….”
Jeremy covered his hideous face with trembling hands.
“What if… Mother intends to make me a puppet emperor and seize control of the palace?”
Once awakened, suspicion spread uncontrollably.
“I—I must see Mother immediately.”
Celia slipped out of the Crown Prince’s palace during the chaos.
She discovered a fountain located at the rear of the palace grounds. Celia sat down on the white bench beside it.
Her silver hair shimmered in the sunlight.
Seated on the bench, hands resting on her knees, Celia looked as if she had stepped straight out of a painting.
The knights watching her swallowed hard.
Blushing, they stole glances at her, yet no one dared approach—the woman branded as the Crown Prince’s concubine.
Celia sat on the bench, listening carefully to the voices drifting from all around.
Whispers were already spreading.
“I just heard—Prince’s face has turned into a monster.”
“What? Nah, you’re lying.”
“Not lying. It’s true. A friend of mine who works in the Prince’s palace saw it with his own eyes.”
The atmosphere in the palace was in utter disarray.
—More precisely, it’s a poison that destroys the victim’s face. Even a small dose causes the face to melt away horribly.
As Celia eavesdropped, she pondered why Ileon, the man who seemed more like an emperor than the emperor himself, would do such a thing.
Indeed, her judgment had been accurate. Beneath that endlessly gentle face, Ileon was a cruel serpent.
“Did he do this for the throne?”
Yet, there were too many strange things.
If he wanted the throne, he could have claimed it anytime—why resort to such schemes?
And why had he specifically revealed the poison to her?
“Could it be that he assumed I wouldn’t tell anyone about this?”
Celia narrowed her eyes.
Then again, even if Celia immediately accused Ileon of disfiguring the Crown Prince, who would believe her?
Even she, who knew Ileon was responsible, couldn’t understand what drove him to such actions. How much less would the people, who revered the Three Dukes like gods?
—You know nothing.
Dietrich’s words rang true. Celia knew nothing.
She had lived solely for revenge, unaware that her path was aimed entirely in the wrong direction.
—Your true enemy is the Three Dukes.
Dietrich’s voice echoed vividly in her mind.
She didn’t fully trust Dietrich’s words.
“And yet…….”
Celia touched her lips. Recalling the kiss, she felt strangely stirred.
That kiss with him, whom she had thought cold and distant, had been unexpectedly passionate, tender, yet fierce.
It was her first kiss ever—and she didn’t mind that it was with him.
“I was the one who started it.”
Though she had acted indifferent in front of Dietrich, she couldn’t possibly have been unaffected.
Every time she pulled away, gasping for breath, his lips would immediately claim hers again.
Though she had initiated it, Dietrich wouldn’t let her end it on her own.
Again and again, their lips met, their breaths entwined.
Though not lovers, he acted like one.
After kissing him, she felt a surge of vitality within—was it due to his ability?
If, as she suspected, Dietrich possessed a healing ability, then staying by his side was clearly the best choice for her.
“He’s not from Shan Kingdom—so he must be from Inata Duchy.”
As the former princess of Shan Kingdom, Celia knew all the royal families by heart.
No one among the Shan royals possessed such an extraordinary healing ability.
“Father did tell me that the upper class of Inata Duchy had abilities like ours. But if someone in Inata had such a powerful healing ability, I couldn’t possibly have missed it.”
She had thought his identity irrelevant to her revenge.
Yet now, Celia grew curious about Dietrich’s true identity.
A large shadow suddenly fell over Celia, who was lost in thought.
Snapped out of her reverie, Celia slowly opened her eyes.
A man with brown hair and copper-colored skin stood before her.
He was massive, resembling a bear.
Dressed in a black uniform, he wore a huge longsword at his waist.
Beneath his coarse eyebrows, his dark gray eyes gleamed with sharp, blade-like intensity.
“So you’re the famous Angel of Brillion.”
The man before her burst into hearty laughter.
As his booming laughter rang in their ears, people glanced his way, and the man looked around.
Celia watched curiously as those who met his gaze quickly looked away.
“Who are you?”
“……You don’t recognize me?”
The man wore a shocked expression.
“You really don’t know me? Are you insane?”
“…….”
“You know Ileon, but not me?”
Only someone of high status would dare speak the Three Dukes’ names so freely.
“Could it be… one of the Three Dukes?”
Celia narrowed her eyes, looking up at the man before her.
“You don’t recognize Lord Balt of the Portman family!”
Celia had spent nearly her entire life confined within the Brillion household. She had heard of the Three Dukes’ fame, but had never seen their portraits.
Moreover, she had been lost in thought the entire time at the banquet, so she hadn’t paid attention to Balt standing behind Ileon.
“……Hello.”
When Celia finally greeted him a beat late, Balt’s mouth dropped open.
When yandere male lead believes she loves him — but she never did
“How dare you!”
“How dare you make me love you, only to cast me aside as nothing more than a friend?!?
“I will never accept that.”
“I will never let you return to him.”
“Even if I have to burn myself to ashes.”
“Even if I must shatter my purity, my dignity, my very soul.”
“I will never let you escape me!”
This was the first novel that introduced me to the matriarchal genre. I’ve read it three times already!
At first, the male lead despised the female lead. Later, he misunderstood that she liked him, so he condescendingly and reluctantly reciprocated her feelings.
Then, he suddenly discovered that she was kind to everyone in the same way, and there was already someone she cherished in her heart, and that person was not him.
The male lead couldn’t believe it, he became angry and crazy. He was determined to capture her body and heart by any means necessary.
Synopsis:
Want to see how a green tea bitch male lead falls in love with the female lead?
Want to see how he flirtatiously pursues the female lead?
Want to see how he gets slapped in the face repeatedly?
The male lead is a green tea bitch, a poisonous lotus, jealous, ruthless, unscrupulous, with a venomous heart, and he’s also a delusional maniac.
The female lead is righteous, positive energy-filled, kind, a holy mother.
Let’s see how two people with extreme personalities come together~
_____
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