RAMHM Chapter 147

Bliea's Story (2)

From that exact day.

Novian Trovika.

That man began coming and going from the mine as though it were his own home.

The mine owner, who had always been searching for a powerful patron to watch his back, quickly noticed that Novian's attention was fixed on Bliea.

So whenever Novian came to the mine, the owner made sure that the beautiful Bliea was the one to attend him.

Every time Novian stopped by the mine and placed an order for a mana stone coffin—citing someone's instructions—Bliea would copy the order form in her own hand, letting her gaze drift sideways.

It wasn't as though Bliea had set out from the beginning to seduce a man carved from stone.

You size up the spot before you stretch your legs out, they say.

The ice-block of a man would get that same faraway look in his damn eyes, every time their gazes caught—like he was seeing someone who wasn't there.

Bliea pulled her gaze away, bit down, and pressed each stroke into the paper with deliberate force.

'That man. I need to take him for myself.'

She'd wanted to appear before her father—the one who had tried to have her killed—at least once.

She wanted to shove it in the face of the younger sister who had monopolized the position that should have been shared, living in luxury with a husband this handsome.

That was how it started.

From that day forward, Bliea made a point of sending him blatant eye-smiles every time she saw Novian. The expressions she'd practiced to survive had their uses in moments like these.

A man who couldn't rush to his sick wife even after hearing the news.

A man who stayed here carrying out someone's endless instructions, waiting for the mana stone coffin to be completed.

A man who, when asked whose coffin it was, only repeated that he was simply following orders.

Bliea congratulated herself for not having cut up every single one of Adrienne's dresses.

It was the day she'd come to work wearing the one dress of Adrienne's she'd kept—the single thread of lingering sentiment she'd left intact.

"Bliea, was it."

The man who had always just stared at her with that faraway look in his eyes finally spoke.

"Have you ever considered working in Ronteaux."

She gave him the most enticing smile she could manage.

"Is there work I could do?"

Bliea was utterly taken with this beautiful Grand Duke.

The Grand Duke Novian, perpetually buried under too much work, would send any rare medicine people managed to procure for him straight to his wife in the capital.

Every time Bliea accompanied him transporting mana stone coffins between Ellaconia and the capital, she would travel at his side.

"The Grand Duchess must be very ill."

In the carriage heading to the capital, Bliea probed him gently.

As she found herself being pulled toward him more and more, Bliea began to feel a restless urgency.

But every time she asked something like that, Novian would only stare at her without answering.

Love. Those deep blue eyes that saw another person in her face—that was unmistakably love.

It wasn't an emotion she knew well. That didn't mean she failed to recognize it.

'My sister's life is just perfect, isn't it.'

Bliea twisted her mouth and let out a dismissive snort.

'On top of being as beautiful as me. She'd have been called the princess of the East back in Pirreta. And on top of it all, breaking the heart of a husband this devoted, this gorgeous.'

The more Bliea coveted Novian, the more her feelings toward Adrienne twisted.

Then, by coincidence—complete coincidence—the day she learned the state of Adrienne's body, she thought: if there was a god, that god was giving her a chance.

'The Glass-Body Grand Duchess.'

Frail enough and dying enough that the whole country knew it.

The weaker the Grand Duchess grew, the worse Novian Trovika's complexion became.

Bliea saw hope in that.

Every time a drunk Novian pined for Adrienne, Bliea stayed beside him.

When he said he would set up a proper place for her to stay in Ronteaux, her heart lifted. Ronteaux, that city she'd found so impossibly out of reach—it felt as though this man's single gesture had thrown the gates wide open for her.

Bliea told herself she 'loved' Novian.

To put it more precisely, she had been going half-mad wanting that desperate, aching love and devotion Novian poured out on Adrienne for herself.

But Adrienne had somewhere to return to even without that man, didn't she.

Pirreta, or wherever. There would be people glad to receive the precious Lady Adrienne anywhere.

'Not like me.'

What planted an even greater hope in Bliea was Novian himself.

Nearly a year after Adrienne's marriage to Novian.

The moment she saw the face of Novian Trovika when the news reached him that Adrienne had only a few years left to live—Bliea became certain.

She could definitely take Adrienne's place.

Because she'd seen Novian tired so many times. But she'd never seen him collapse like that.

"I love you."

Bliea confessed impulsively.

It was a feeling she could barely tell was love or desire—but one thing was clear. She wanted this man.

She wanted him to abandon the sick Adrienne and bring her into the Grand Ducal Estate. Among the shameless nobles, there were those who installed their mistresses in their estates, after all.

And hearing those words, Novian said this—easily enough to feel like a letdown:

"……Will you become my mistress."

"!"

Mistress.

For a man who had given her not a single sweet word, not a single sweet gesture—it was a pretty brazen thing to say.

But Bliea saw enormous hope in those few words.

She imagined herself entering the Grand Ducal Estate where Adrienne lived, taking everything of hers—and the blood moved through her whole body.

"All right. If I can be by your side, even like that. I'll do it."

And she imagined the sight of Duke Pirreta, eyes red, raging at her with uncontrolled fury upon seeing that. She felt so exhilarated she couldn't remember the last time she'd been so alive.

"But. Once the Grand Duchess passes away—that's when I'll become 'fully' your mistress."

Bliea had been certain he would agree, but the moment she laid down the condition, Novian's expression turned terrifying. It lasted only a moment. For a woman who did nothing but smile freely, it must have looked audacious.

But for Bliea, who had nothing to her name, the only reliable way to secure her entry into the Grand Ducal Estate was to trade on the one thing she did have—her body. And that method worked properly on Novian, who sometimes looked at her with eyes full of desire.

Bliea worked at Novian's external office in the capital.

Receiving the mana stone coffins from Ellaconia and sending them where he directed—it was simple work.

Around that time, Bliea was quite pleased to have earned Novian's trust. On top of that, during his occasional visits to the capital, Novian slept in the side room next to the office rather than going to the estate, and met with Bliea.

She was curious why he didn't visit the estate more often—the place he supposedly yearned for so much—but she decided it was because he was starting to love her more than Adrienne.

Gorgeous new dresses that fit her body perfectly. A life where someone protected her without her having to draw a dagger and fight back.

While enjoying that comfortable, easy life and preparing for her marriage to Count Acacia to formally become his mistress, Bliea was quite satisfied.

She carried against her chest the front page of the newspaper that had upended her entire life. Whenever she had a spare moment, she would take it out and look at it—and now a mocking little sneer would slip out before the anger even had a chance.

She lost track of time imagining herself as the beautiful woman seated proudly at Novian Trovika's side—not Adrienne, but her. With their identical faces, she didn't even have to try very hard to picture it.

One day, after hearing that the Grand Duchess's condition was growing steadily worse.

The thought flashed through Bliea: she wanted to look that Adrienne in the eye and laugh at her—the Adrienne who didn't even know her own husband was having an affair.

'What if that girl dies before I get the chance? That would be infuriating.'

The most precious thing you have. The most radiant thing that lights up your side. The person you love most loves me, not you.

She wanted to lean in and whisper it to her.

Petty spite pooled at the corner of Bliea's sulking smile.

The next day.

Bliea placed a powerful confusion enchantment on her face.

If Rotsy had known, a few smacks on the back wouldn't have been the end of it—but she couldn't stand not seeing Adrienne.

She knew that the medicines Novian procured came to the Grand Ducal Estate in the capital once or twice a month.

Gathering the medicines and sending them to the Grand Ducal Estate was also work that was handled out of the external office where she worked.

Bliea disguised herself as the attendant who always led the medicine cart.

Without mana, it was an enchantment no one could detect. But it wasn't a long-lasting enchantment, so she had to go and come back quickly.

And so she entered the Grand Ducal Estate under the pretense of delivering medicine to the attending physician—and hid, and watched.

The wide-open bedchamber of the Grand Duchess.

Adrienne—wearing clothes she hadn't been able to change in days, biting the inside of her lip to preserve her self-respect while maids tittered around her.

The maids startled when they sensed an outsider and shut the bedroom door.

Through the narrowing gap as it closed, she thought her eyes met Adrienne's for a moment.

The door was already firmly shut and she couldn't see inside anymore—but Bliea couldn't look away.

As though lightning had struck her directly in the skull.

She couldn't move.

In the murmuring voices of the maids she'd heard while transporting the medicine—in their tone, in their manner of speaking —

There wasn't a speck of deference toward the Grand Duchess to be found.

"...What is this."

Somehow—she didn't know why—the strength just went out of her.

Not a single thing matched what she'd pictured of Adrienne.

Beautiful. But the hair, tangled. Undone.

Skin that should have gleamed like pearl. White past white now. The color of someone who hadn't seen the sun in weeks. Both cheeks, faintly sunken—like someone who hadn't had so much as a bowl of gruel in days.

The pale-green eyes that had lost all their life were so identically the same shade as her own that her heart surged like a wave for one unguarded moment.

'Who's pitying who, right now? Don't tell me—did I just think she was pitiable? Crazy b—!'

With a mind gone white from the shock, Bliea scrambled back to the carriage like someone fleeing.

That night, Bliea had terrible nightmares she couldn't remember upon waking.

The churning in her gut and the feeling of her heart being wrung out—those weren't lies.

Bliea, for whom a healthy body was just about all she owned, spent that entire day sick.

And she looked again and again at the portrait of the woman in the newspaper she always carried.

A stale, accumulated jealousy toward this vibrant, annoyingly beautiful girl had always pooled in the pit of her stomach—but strangely, it felt as though all of it had scattered and disappeared in a single moment.

Was her heart going soft because she was someone said to be dying soon, her face already shadowed by death?

'Why should I? Over a girl who's been living just fine? Maybe I saw wrong. Maybe it was only like that that day.'

Pressing down on her churning stomach and heading back to Novian's external office in the center of the capital that day—

She stretched out her hand toward the door handle, unusually tense for herself. Then she froze at the voices coming from inside.