“I love you. Please, look at me. I’m your wife.”

In Callian’s dream last night, she appeared.

Wearing a red dress, she was chasing after him.

Her beautiful silver hair and blue eyes sparkled like a dream, swaying in the wind.

And she burrowed into his arms as he turned to her. The scent of wildflowers tickled his nose.

“I can do anything for you.”

Callian wanted to hold Esika again. It was something he had longed for a long time.

But his hands moved opposite to his will.

Callian pushed her shoulders away with an unkind gesture and said in a cold voice.

“You can do anything?”

“Yes. For you…”

“Then please go back to the damn Brigitte. No one in Klaus wants you, including me.”

As the unintended words flowed out, Callian wanted to bite his own tongue.

But the sharp vitriol continued to pour out at her.

Esika looked at Callian with a pale face and began to cry.

With a deeply hurt look in her eyes, she still tried to hold onto him somehow.

“Why do you hate me so much? Tell me. Whatever you say, I’ll fix it…”

“I just…”

Callian’s hands gripped Esika’s shoulders tightly. There was strength in his hands.

Esika frowned in pain.

Callian looked at her and spat out word by word, as if nailing them into her ears.

“Your very existence is tiresome.”

Esika’s blue eyes wavered sadly.

Perhaps realizing that her husband would never love her no matter what.

Callian gripped Esika’s shoulders even tighter, then pushed her back.

“Ugh…!”

Esika stumbled backwards as if about to fall.

And barely regaining her balance, she stood up to face Callian.

They were more than five steps apart.

And then, Callian regained control of his body.

But the ground they were standing on began to split.

With a rumbling sound, a violent earthquake began.

Callian reached out his hand towards her.

But the ground was splitting and the distance between them was growing, and that hand no longer reached Esika.

“Esika!”

Callian called out to Esika.

But Esika standing on the opposite side of the split ground was only getting further away.

She looked at Callian with a sad expression, then lowered her gaze.

“No… No! Esika! Esika! No!!”

Callian began to shout, reaching his hands into the air.

As if his frantic cries weren’t reaching her, she slowly turned her body.

Callian cried out desperately.

But soon her back was visible.

“Please, Esika… Please don’t leave me! Esika!!”

Callian shouted in a wailing voice and struck the ground with his fist.

Esika who had turned away was getting further and further.

Callian clenched his fist at the edge of a cliff with no visible end.

And without hesitation, he leapt into that darkness.

Even death was not frightening in order to get Esika back.

“Huff… Huff… Huff…”

After a moment, Callian woke up shuddering and looked at the ceiling of his room.

Unlike the high ceilings of Klaus mansion with expensive chandeliers, it was an old ceiling where the sound of mice could be heard from the morning.

The bitter reality seeps into his heart.

“Esika…”

Callian raised his hand to cover his forehead. Her image from the dream was still vivid in his mind.

Yes… The earthquake was from the dream, but that conversation definitely happened.

It was probably on Callian’s birthday. He had said those words to Esika who approached and embraced him in the garden.

If he could go back to that time, he would never let go of her hand, but back then he foolishly pushed Esika away and hurt her.

The continued regret ate away at his soul every day.

Especially on days when he heard stories about Esika and the Crown Prince, or saw them directly like yesterday, he had such terrible nightmares.

It felt like living in an inescapable hell.

“…”

Callian left the house again today.

Riona grabbed his collar asking why he wasn’t having breakfast, but he shook her off.

Yuri was nowhere to be seen. They say she didn’t come home last night.

Whether she came in or not, Callian no longer cared about Yuri.

As Riona said, Yuri was just an uneducated woman who came between him and Esika.

They only lived together because she bore his bloodline.

Her and the child’s existence was the very sin he committed against Esika.

“Um… My Lord!”

As he was entering the office, someone called out to Callian.

Turning around, there stood a middle-aged man wearing the clothes of an inspector.

His hair was unsightly, almost completely bald, and there was a large mole on the bridge of his nose.

“We received a request for an investigation regarding procurement, ah, not you My Lord, but the supplier. We need a testimony, do you have a moment?”

Seeing his face, Callian’s hand twitched with a strange sense of déjà vu.

**

“…Hmm.”

Eril Fuse flipped through a few pages of the scripture written in blood, then returned it to Esika, seeming disgusted.

His brows were furrowed and he looked at Esika as if viewing a witch.

Esika’s expression remained calm as if nothing had happened.

No ordinary task would be able to subdue her.

Eril reported to the Empress that Esika was not intimidated in the slightest.

“Well done. Tameron must have been pleased with the Crown Princess’s devotion.”

“…”

“Now then…”

The Empress gave Eril another order.

Eril flinched at the order and tried to dissuade the Empress, but her attitude was firm.

She seemed unwilling to let go of the advantage she had gained.

“It’s time to experience Tameron’s miracle.”

Standing before Esika, Eril continued speaking with a solemn expression.

“In the 25th verse of Tameron’s Fourth Book, it says that Tameron blesses the faithful, causing arrowheads and sword blades to pass them by. Tameron’s will protects them so that evil never reaches their hearts…! It’s a very famous passage.”

He leaned slightly towards Esika to meet her gaze.

“The Imperial Hunting Competition will be held in ten days. The hunting competition is held to celebrate the prosperity of the Empire and is also a very important event under Tameron’s protection.”

“…”

“With the Crown Princess’s devotion in transcribing Tameron’s scripture in blood, surely… I have no doubt that Tameron’s protection will be your armor and sword.”

At his words, Esika’s lips twisted.

“Are you telling me to go to the hunting competition without any protection?”

Then Eril Fuse frowned and said.

“Without protection? Didn’t I just say that Tameron’s will would protect the Crown Princess? If the Crown Princess demonstrates her firm faith in Tameron at this competition, Her Majesty the Empress will no longer worry about the Crown Princess.”

It was an absurd insistence, but their purpose was obvious.

“Very well.”

When Esika agreed easily, Eril’s eyes flashed with joy. But Esika continued.

“But I have a condition. The priest who is telling me about Tameron’s will must also participate in the hunting competition unarmed like me.”

“Wh-What did you say?”

“Didn’t you just say that Tameron’s will protects the faithful? If even I, who only transcribed the scripture twice, am qualified to receive protection, surely you, as a priest, would be even more so.”

Eril flinched at Esika’s words.

There were no beasts at the hunting competition, but arrows from animal hunters flew around, and it was easy to get injured by fierce animals like wild boars.

Going around unarmed in such a place was dangerous.

“…Crown Princess.”

“Are you afraid that Tameron won’t protect you, priest?”

“How could that be? It’s just that there’s no particular reason for me to participate…”

“Unfortunately, that’s the only condition for my acceptance according to the priest’s wishes. If you refuse, I’ll tell Her Majesty the Empress.”

At Esika’s words, Eril Fuse’s clenched fist trembled.

Esika was looking at Fuse with a cold smile.

‘Damn it, trying to drag me in too…’

If Esika said she wouldn’t participate in the hunting competition because Eril didn’t accept her condition, the Empress would surely scold Eril harshly.

To the Empress, Eril was just one of the tools to torment Esika.

And Esika seemed to have cunningly grasped and was using that fact.

“…I understand.”

It was all or nothing anyway. Eril replied in an angry voice, his face pale and stiff.

**

“Make sure no one enters for the next four days. Say that I’m ill…”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

After Eril left, Esika sat cross-legged with a comfortable expression.

Finally, the week-long purification period was over.

During that time, she hadn’t consumed even a crumb of bread besides water.

The confinement order she received for incurring the Emperor’s wrath was for this moment.

Vital energy began to flow and circulate in her body.

All anguish and obsession did not amount to even the tiniest speck in the universe.

She was getting closer to her previous enlightenment.

Esika gathered her energy through breathing exercises for a moment, then stood up and picked up a bottle placed on the side table.

And when she opened its lid, a black pearl-shaped pill submerged in preservative liquid was visible.

Esika looked at it for a long time with wavering eyes, then put it in her mouth.

And gulp, she swallowed it.

She sat cross-legged again in the same place as before.

She was approaching a state where she could use a twig as a sword without a real sword, where she could firmly wrap her body with a single drop of dew without armor.