Chapter 01
The Crown Prince had been poisoned to death.
By the cruel revenge of a woman who could not have his love.
Isn’t that a frame-up story a little too obvious?
But the crime that led me to this bloody stage was not just one.
High treason.
Now sixteen years old, I was the one who had run an illegal gambling den to raise funds, gathered criminals to build a rebel army, assassinated the Crown Prince, and declared war of rebellion against the Emperor.
My uncle, Étienne, roughly grabbed me and dragged me along.
“Uncle, I didn’t do anything!”
I resisted with all my might, but was flung to the floor. My whole body throbbed with pain.
“Shut up! The evidence that you killed him is clear, so don’t play dumb!”
Étienne yelled, veins bulging in his neck.
Every word I said was dismissed as a lie, and my innocence became a nonexistent word.
“I’m really not the one who—”
*Smack—!*
A thick, heavy hand struck my cheek. My head rang, and it felt like all my teeth were rattling loose.
I had been beaten my entire life, but the misery of violence never became something I got used to. Tears spilled out.
“Junius’s army is coming to deal with you, the traitor. Don’t you move a single step from here.”
Lying on the floor, clutching my stinging cheek, I looked up at Étienne. The way he glared and muttered was pure madness.
Before I could say anything, Étienne rushed out and locked the door from the outside.
“Uncle, please!”
I pounded on the door until my hands hurt, sobbing. But as his footsteps faded away, I slowly gave up.
The strength drained from my legs.
—
“All the evidence was found in your room.”
—
My uncle shoved a bottle of wine at me. It was an unfamiliar object to me, someone who had been stripped of everything by my aunt and uncle my whole life. Something I could never afford.
—
“You dared to send poisoned wine to the Crown Prince?”
—
The poisoned wine the Crown Prince had drunk was made to look like my gift. All the evidence pointed to me, as if it had been meticulously orchestrated.
And on top of that, the charge of treason.
How did it come to this? Why on earth did I have to become the traitor who killed the Crown Prince?
Wiping away the endless tears, I crawled under the desk.
This desk, which I inherited from my mother, was so large it took up half of my tiny, cramped room.
Whenever I was sad, I would always crawl under this desk and cry until I felt better. It was the only thing I could do now, too. Crawling under the desk.
I hugged my knees and wiped my tears.
I had to find a way to prove my innocence before Junius’s army came to arrest me. Something that would prove my innocence… Wait, Junius?
I recalled the name Étienne had muttered.
‘He definitely said Junius.’
There was only one person in the Empire who was that famous, and the only Junius I knew was one.
Duke Junius Iscariot Rector.
The head of the Rector family, the most powerful and prestigious family of meritorious subjects in the Empire, and my uncle Étienne’s close friend.
‘The Crown Prince is dead, so why are Rector’s private soldiers coming, not the Emperor’s knights?’
No matter how powerful he was, he had no justification to intervene in this matter.
Something was wrong.
Everyone knew that the Duke of Rector was the Crown Prince’s spiritual father, but there were too many suspicious points.
My only family, my aunt Juliana, along with her husband Étienne, had been colluding with Rector in illegal activities. And for quite a long time.
If the frame-up against me was related to all the things they had been doing…
If Duke Rector had been planning a rebellion, and had joined hands with my aunt and uncle to build up their power for that purpose…
‘Something’s not right.’
Ultimately, their plan had gone awry, and when their carefully constructed power became precarious, they pinned it all on me.
On me, who was barely sixteen years old.
A chill ran down my entire body.
My aunt and uncle, who had taken everything I inherited from my late mother—the inheritance, the territory, the mansion, and even my rights to my title—always used to say this:
—
“You little wretch will certainly be useful someday.”
—
My aunt and uncle, who had given me a life filled with abuse, persecution, and violence, their sickening smiles coiled around me like a noose.
“…It must be them.”
I decided to leave evidence indicting Rector and my aunt and uncle, based on the circumstances I had pieced together.
There was no time. I had to act quickly, leaving behind as much as I possibly could. I hurriedly stood up to find a pen and paper.
*Thump!*
In my haste, I hit my forehead hard against the front of the desk.
*Click—*
“Ouch… Huh?”
I felt something press against the desk’s top panel, and a part that looked like decoration opened like a drawer.
I had spent countless hours under this desk, but this was the first time this drawer had ever opened.
Rubbing my sore head, I peered inside.
“…A diary?”
There, inside, lay an old, faded diary and various odds and ends rolling around.
I picked them up one by one and examined them.
An Ace of Spades playing card with ‘L&A’ crudely carved into it.
A bookmark made of high-quality parchment reading ‘Whenever you need me.’
And the hilt of a child’s wooden sword… why?
They were miscellaneous items with no common thread. I put the items down and picked up the diary. It was written almost to the end, like a full book.
As I turned the cover, the owner’s name was written on the first page.
[Adelaide Eugénie Tesarus]
My body stiffened as if struck by lightning when I saw my mother’s name.
I had hated my mother my entire life. I resented her for giving birth to me without a father and dying so young.
‘If you hadn’t given birth to me.’
I wouldn’t have been pointed at and called the daughter of a dishonorable woman. I wouldn’t have been abused by my aunt and uncle.
I wouldn’t have lived this unjust life either.
There was no reason to pass up the chance to see the secrets of the woman I had resented my whole life.
Forgetting what I had set out to do, I sat down right there and began to read the diary. I was curious what kind of thoughts a woman who bore a fatherless child would write in her diary.
And about halfway through the diary,
I was crying.
—
[I had been weak since childhood. So I had given up on having children. But then Daphne came to me.
My daughter, born at eight months, is healthy and plump. I feel infinitely happy just smelling her baby scent. For this child, I will do anything.
My daughter, my treasure, Daphne Paye.]
—
Every single page was filled with love for me.
I had built up nothing but resentment in a world where being your daughter was considered a weakness. I never knew I was loved this much.
The pages kept turning.
—
[Who is Daphne’s father? She looks so much like me that it’s hard to find traces of her father. It must surely be one of those three men.]
—
My father… what? Three of them?
Three?!
The items rolling around in the drawer were mementos of love left by three lovers my mother met during her travels.
My head spun from the shocking secret of my birth. But I wasn’t given time to process it.
*Crash—!*
The door burst open as Duke Rector’s private soldiers flooded in like a wave.
“Arrest the criminal!”
With rough force, the trained knights roughly seized and bound me.
The diary lay discarded and pitiful on the floor.
And so, unable even to scream, I was dragged away.
—
***
—
The execution ground was crowded with people like clouds.
“Kill the witch!”
“Judgment for the traitor Tesarus!”
What these shouting people wanted was the life of the Crown Prince’s assassin. My life.
The angry crowd defiled my name with unspeakable curses, each one.
“The criminal, Daphne Paye Tesarus, is sentenced to death.”
I was brought before the guillotine, tightly bound.
This is the end of my life.
A life ending so futilely.
I looked around despondently.
What was my life, anyway?
The indifferent sky was blue and beautiful. The flapping wings of the flying birds were so free, unlike mine. Tears welled up and spilled over.
What meaning was there in a life spent trapped in a noose, used my whole life, only to die framed for a crime I didn’t commit?
I lowered my gaze and scanned the angry mob one by one.
Strangers shouting furiously for my death, the contempt and rage in their eyes for a crime I didn’t commit—it was searing.
Among them, one person in a splendid cloak stood out vividly.
‘That person is Junius Rector…!’
The man, who had neatly swept back his prematurely graying brown hair, exuded a wealthy and composed charm.
He was looking at me with that contemptuous smile he always wore, the one I had always found distasteful, for everything in the world.
Duke Rector.
The one who had framed me for high treason. And beside him stood a couple.
Aunt Juliana Patelier and Uncle Étienne Patelier.
The people who tormented and used me in the name of family.
They were smiling gleefully at me, as if this was the most delightful thing in the world.
Those people who had driven me to my death were watching this as if it had nothing to do with them.
‘Goodbye.’
Duke Rector’s lips moved.
In that moment, everything faded into a distant haze. I couldn’t hear anything. Only the figures of Duke Rector and my aunt and uncle remained vivid.
Pure hatred boiled up from within.
“Say your final prayer.”
The executioner placed a crescent moon necklace in my mouth.
I thrashed my whole body, resisting, but eventually my head was forced onto the execution block. Under the rough hands of the strong men holding me down, all I could see was the rough grain of the wood.
Hot tears streamed down my face. I bit down on the crescent moon necklace so hard it drew blood.
If I were ever given another chance at life, I wouldn’t live like this again.
In that moment of firm resolve, the heavy blade came swinging down toward my neck.
