RAMHM Chapter 148

Bliea's Story (3)

"Is it correct that there's a mana stone mine on Acacia territory?"

"Confirmed."

"The Count's condition?"

"The Count could die any day now. Which is why this marriage is necessary."

"Found someone fitting then. A vassal with his lord's woman for a bride—isn't that a stimulating enough truth that the other nobles attending the wedding would prick their ears up at it? Has she come around? I'd like to see her face."

"She claims to love me. Since I was bringing her to the capital for work anyway, it doesn't matter what she misunderstands."

"You're a cold one."

The cold voice of Novian and the low laugh of the Crown Prince shattered Bliea's heart to pieces.

'So he wasn't giving me his heart?'

It was true she'd come here because he promised wealth if she worked in the capital. She'd been handling the mana stone coffins and the external office work on that basis.

But separate from that—she had believed she was living as Novian's mistress, and that when Adrienne died, she would eventually have him entirely for herself.

She'd never once thought it was a misunderstanding.

Because the way Novian looked at her was unmistakably, to anyone's eyes, the intense desire of a man who wanted a woman!

"We'd want someone not too clever. If the woman meant to inherit the mine through the wife inheritance law were to spread word of it or sell it off……."

"Don't worry. She's a stupid woman."

Bliea's knees nearly buckled.

Light from the door's crack stabbed straight into her eyes. Beneath it, fat tears dropped. One. Then another.

'Novian Trovika, you son of a bitch! You wanted to use me? But then what was that faintly flushed, suddenly gentle demeanor whenever I said I loved you?'

Whatever Novian's feelings actually were. Even Bliea, however simple and rough she was, could see one thing with absolute clarity.

This whole wife inheritance law business—he'd gotten the Count lined up to die so that she would inherit the mine, installed her in advance as his mistress, and was gently coaxing her along to swallow the mine whole.

It wasn't that he wanted her near him for her own sake. The mine had been the objective from the very beginning.

'This was the kind of work I could do in the capital?'

He'd figured that someone who had spent her whole life as a commoner would have no knowledge of a law that applied only to nobility—and that if she could take the Grand Duchess's place, she'd hand over some mine without a second thought.

Just as darkness swallows a sunset, blackness swept through Bliea's heart in an instant.

No matter how simple she was, having overheard all of this, the future took shape before her eyes.

Trapped in a suffocating silence, Bliea stepped backward as though her throat were being squeezed.

But just as Bliea was about to turn around, more shocking words came one after another.

"This marriage. Isn't it rather similar to ours?"

"……Mind how you speak, wherever you are."

"You also have your lord's woman as your bride, Uncle."

Every hair on Bliea's body stood rigid at the Crown Prince's voice, whispering with the sweetness of an angel.

'Adrienne…… isn't Novian's wife?'

The Crown Prince's voice, swelling with excitement at the prospect of obtaining the mana stone mine, wound itself around every inch of her body.

"It's Uncle who needs to be careful not to let Lady Pirreta find out. It seems she's been visiting the estate frequently lately on the pretext that the Grand Duchess is ill. Surely you didn't come back to the capital because you heard the news that the Grand Duchess collapsed again?"

"……."

"I came to warn you. Don't stay by the Grand Duchess's side too long. On days like today when Doris says something foolish, I do find myself thinking—what if Adrienne Pirreta had been my wife instead of my mistress. Ah, well, she's as good as my wife anyway."

The Crown Prince, whose every warning came out as sweet as honey, plunged Bliea into chaos that day.

The rustling sound of the Crown Prince's fine clothes, and Bliea backed away until she was out of the building.

Rain was falling.

Like the cold night she'd run through when she first heard the secret of her birth.

Bliea ran through the rain to the house Novian had set up for her.

"Novian Trovika, Novian Trovika!"

Fury and betrayal didn't wash away in the rain even slightly—they clung to her and tormented her.

【 Novian Trovika, I hate you. 】

Grinding her overflowing bitterness between her teeth and swallowing it back down, Bliea pressed that single line into the wet page of her diary with a wet hand.

Bliea, who had shut herself in after the wave of betrayal, finally emerged from the house on the day of the wedding to Count Acacia.

She had spent a long time trying to sort out her feelings about Novian.

And then a strange thing happened.

The more she turned Novian over in her mind, the less it was the fact of not having his love that unsettled her—and the more it was Adrienne's fragile face glimpsed through the crack in the door that kept digging through her.

Even dressed in a white gown and going through a wedding that managed just enough ceremony to pass, Bliea felt nothing.

Only the sight of Novian watching from a distance made something twist inside her.

Bliea gave a dismissive snort.

'You're just secondhand goods Adrienne used and threw away, too.'

A half-vacant pale-green gaze gleamed toward the faintly smiling Novian.

'I like new things.'

She ground it between her teeth and murmured it to herself alone.

Thinking it that way, her heart eased with surprising speed.

'I won't let this go the way you want.'

After the wedding ended, she should have been going around greeting the guests who were enjoying the reception—but instead Bliea set off right then to track down Novian.

Because she'd heard, belatedly, that the Crown Prince would be stopping by this modest little wedding.

After barely shaking loose the Count Acacia, who was fretting anxiously about whether he should be present too, she was on her way—and in the space where the carriages were parked, two silhouettes stretched long in the light.

"……She's simply very ill."

"Is the Grand Duchess's being sick some new thing? Shouldn't I at least get to know how much time she has left?"

"That kind of talk is uncomfortable. It will depend on how much care is given."

The Crown Prince, always with that angelic face, threw his head back and laughed. From a distance, Bliea stared at that face, blank as a corpse.

"You pour so much care on a woman who belongs to me, Uncle—I'm truly grateful. But…… is there need to be so devoted to a daughter even her own father abandoned?"

"Please don't speak that way."

"Why. Does a truth cease to be true because that older brother of hers doesn't know it? Duke Pirreta must be growing anxious about now. His daughter who was supposed to bear his grandchild for him might be dying soon—the letters I've been getting from him lately have become quite respectful."

"……."

"Knowing the truth might, from the Grand Duchess's perspective, be worse than dying a day earlier without pain. Don't try too hard, Uncle."

"……."

"And as I always say—Adrienne Pirreta is mine even in death. Understood?"

'What the hell is that bastard saying?'

She knew from experience, rough and uneducated as she was, that guys who went around grinning all the time had the blackest insides.

But the things this Crown Prince was saying to his sickly aunt—or rather, his mistress—sounded almost as though……

'He looks like someone who wants her dead.'

Bliea ended up retreating to the Count's estate after the wedding was over, claiming illness. She suffered an oppressive, grinding depression that made her want to drive her head straight into the floor.

'This is cheating, Adrienne Pirreta.'

I thought you took my place and were nothing but happy.

So I thought that unlike me, suffering alone in somewhere cold and dark and lonely—you were sick, sure, but everyone around you took care of you.

'A daughter even her own father abandoned'—the Crown Prince's voice clawed through her chest without mercy.

'You were no different from me, were you.'

Her chest felt too tight to breathe.

It was the very thing she'd wanted. Whatever Novian was scheming. So what. Close both eyes. Pretend not to know.

She'd thought that once Adrienne—who had monopolized alone everything that should have been shared—died, there would be nothing left but for her to take it all.

The fury she couldn't drain off, the fury aimed at Adrienne—it turned into a boulder in her skull. It ground her down.

And strangely, that fragile face glimpsed through the hurriedly closing door just kept drifting through her thoughts, again and again, and wouldn't let her go.

Novian Trovika had left the capital again.

'You've lost your mind, Bliea.'

Her feet carried her back toward the Grand Ducal Estate without knowing enough to be afraid.

Bliea's fingers found the hidden dagger tucked inside her robes.

'Just confirm Adrienne once more.'

That fragile face she'd seen—she might have been wrong about it. The Crown Prince, who never left the palace, might have misspoken. What reason would the Crown Prince have to want Adrienne dead?

"…The medicinal herbs were delivered last time. And again today?"

"The Grand Duchess's condition is grave. His Grace is taking particular care."

Lucky—it was the same gatekeeper she'd fooled before. 

'It should be around here somewhere.' 

The Grand Duchess's bedroom, whose shutters had been firmly closed that day, should be visible from the window—from this part of the garden.

The Grand Ducal Estate had far fewer resident servants than its scale warranted, so Bliea wove herself through the garden trees without much difficulty and reached the space below the terrace without incident.

And there—as though it were something out of a dream—she found Adrienne at the window, looking out.

"Ah……." 

Adrienne hadn't spotted her yet. But Bliea stared up at her, held in place.

Those listless eyes were fixed on the estate's entrance, waiting for someone with a desperation so naked it bordered on grief.

Adrienne's gaze toward the gate. Bliea's gaze toward Adrienne.

How long did they stay like that?

Adrienne's unfocused eyes drifted slowly downward—and finally found her.

Their eyes met. Adrienne startled. Bliea stumbled back without deciding to.

"Wait. Wa—wait!"

'Ah, shi—' 

What had come over her.

Seeing her own blood, her own twin's face, that close, that clearly—for the first time ever—maybe that's what it was, some kind of spell.

Bliea punished herself for her own stupidity by smacking herself in the head a few times, smiled awkwardly, and turned away.

"Um—if the Grand Duke sends word, could you not go through the butler and just tell me directly? Tell me yourself." 

'Ah. So she's been waiting for word from that bastard Novian.'

For whatever reason, he had handed his own wife over to the Crown Prince and then brought home a Bliea lookalike to use as a mistress—that miserable son of a bitch, looking for comfort in the nearest available substitute—

'Why does this not bother me more?'

She had expected to feel betrayal, rage over a love that couldn't be. Her heart should have ached.

But it didn't. Not even a residue of attachment to Novian remained—she couldn't find any, no matter where she looked.

Bliea's confused gaze moved over Adrienne's thin, pale arms where they rested on the window frame.

'That girl just looks too wrung-out, too pitiful, that's all.'

The way she couldn't leave Yona behind at the border that one time, freezing, starving—couldn't just walk past her. Same thing. Just pity.

It was so absurd a laugh almost slipped out—she choked it back down. She had re-cast the confusion hex with the face of one of the estate maids, so she couldn't throw her head back and laugh where Adrienne could see. But the effort of suppressing even that sardonic exhale must have read as pain, because something in Adrienne's eyes shifted into a different light.

"Um… is something wrong? I—can I, can I help?"

Who's helping who here. With a face half dead already.

Adrienne spent a long moment reading her expression, then seemed to understand she wasn't wanted and stopped asking. Which was somehow worse to look at.

"Um… if the Grand Duke's message comes—could you not go through the butler, but bring it—bring it to me directly?"

That was all she said. Her small, thin hands fidgeting the whole time.

Three or four maids keeping watch over the bedchamber. A girl living so wretchedly she had to make 'requests' like this from a maid whose name she didn't even know. A girl living in enough degradation to have sunk this far.

"I'd be grateful if you kept it… kept it secret."

Was her voice fading because her self-respect had fallen so low, or because her throat was in the state it was in from coughing?

The cough that started at those words snapped Bliea back—and her eyes went wide at the sharp, overwhelming scent of herbs pouring out from inside the room.