TMWDS Chapter 2

The moment Ionna asked, half-wondering, his expression hardened.

Then, before she could explain herself, he wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. The motion was rough enough to feel almost clumsy.

Startled by the sudden move, Ionna blinked, dazed.

Instead of pressing her further, the man slowly lowered his head toward her.

His grey eyes, shadowed, looked closer than they ever had.

Just before their lips met, he hesitated a moment, then warned her:

"In case you're wondering—you're not going to die, and this isn't going to be the last time."

Before she could argue, something soft pressed against her skin. Ionna thought she felt his lips tremble slightly against hers.

That was all, though. She'd goaded him about his mental age, trying to provoke something—and still, his tongue never crossed the wall between them.

'He must have someone already.'

Even now, apparently, he meant to stay faithful to that someone. She thought this without much interest, one way or another.

If she were asked, in the afterlife, whether she'd ever had a first kiss, she genuinely wasn't sure whether to say yes or no. Not that she was even certain an afterlife existed in the first place.

She wasn't entirely without the urge to needle her husband for being so boring about it, but her time was running short.

Her tongue went stiff, her body rigid. Ionna could tell, without needing to be told, that the end was close now.

Was it because the death had come so suddenly? She tried to look back over her life to see what she might be sorry to leave behind, but nothing in particular came to mind.

Thinking of how exhausted her life had been, the drowsiness pulling at her now felt, if anything, almost like a sweet sleep.

If that was the case, then maybe this wasn't such a bad death, as deaths went.

At least Ionna had a husband who'd risked his own safety to come running for his wife. That wasn't a bad feeling at all.

Even among ladies famous for having married well, not many could say they'd had an experience quite like this.

Then again, ordinary ladies never ended up in a situation like this to begin with.

"……Ionna?"

The man's expression, as he said her name, blurred.

Sensing something wrong, he changed his face in an instant and shook her body.

"Ionna, Ionna Modrov!"

He laid her down flat and kept calling her name, over and over.

She wanted to answer him, but only a labored breath came out of her mouth. She didn't remember closing her eyes, but her vision had already gone black.

Listening to his voice, growing somehow more distant, Ionna smiled, faintly.

Thinking that if it hadn't been for everything around them, the two of them might have made a decent enough married couple after all.

"……na."

"……."

"Ionna!"

"……."

"Ionna Modrov! Are you daring to doze off in front of me right now!"

The sharp reprimand at her ear snapped Ionna's eyes open. She'd only just woken—and already a furious-faced man was glaring down at her.

The last time she'd come to her senses, right before dying, someone had definitely been angry at her too……

Reaching that thought, Ionna looked around, dazed.

It was strange.

She was certain she'd died protecting the Emperor, and yet here she was, sitting in the study of House Modrov. Her body carried no pain whatsoever, and she felt, if anything, unusually full of energy.

Stranger still—the man in front of her was, like her, someone who was supposed to already be dead.

Ionna's face filled with disappointment as she looked at the family degenerate her father had turned out to be—Hayden.

"So it seems I've made it to hell, after all."

"What?"

"Not that it's unexpected. I can hardly hope for heaven, having committed my own share of sins. As for Father—well—he was trash. No fixing that. So, expected."

Ionna had committed a great many sins under the Emperor's orders.

Even if those acts had been carried out at another's will, Ionna had no intention of denying what she'd done.

Having killed so many people, it would have been stranger if she'd ended up in heaven.

If there was a question, it was that this place looked far too comfortable to be hell.

That her father, even in death, was living in luxury at the House Modrov estate. If she'd known, she might as well have let him live a life closer to what he deserved.

"Though it seems this place suited your constitution quite well. Judging by how you've de-aged."

Ionna sneered, her lips twisting.

Hayden stared blankly at her for a moment before his face flushed, apparently realizing what mockery he'd just been on the receiving end of.

Getting worked up over a provocation this minor.

His hot temper hadn't changed a bit even after death, Ionna thought to herself, laughing inwardly.

Hayden's anger, as always, crossed the line easily. He shot to his feet and swung his hand at Ionna.

"You low-born thing, how dare you——!"

Ionna caught the coarse hand flying toward her without difficulty. Then she pressed his arm straight down onto the sofa table.

Hayden's face twisted in pain as his elbow slammed into the marble tabletop.

Ionna looked down at her father, struggling to free himself, and asked,

"Father, how exactly am I filthy?"

"Ngh, agh——"

"It was you who betrayed your marriage vows and rolled around with another woman. So why is it me—who did nothing wrong—who has to hear that word?"

"Y-you ungrateful wretch, forgetting the debt of raising you, spouting this kind of nonsense—you've finally lost your mind!"

Hayden's face flooded with confusion and shock.

Even reduced to this, he apparently hadn't managed to shed his old imperious attitude.

Ionna had endured his injustices, genuinely, for far too long.

It wouldn't have been an exaggeration to say her entire life had been steeped in her father's shadow.

Even her liege, the one she'd sworn loyalty to, hadn't been something she'd chosen for herself.

Ionna was illegitimate, and had the misfortune of having, as her birth father, a hopeless piece of garbage willing to sell even his own young daughter for his advancement.

Baron Modrov had wanted to get an early line to the future emperor, while also wanting to avoid a situation where that same line came back to bite him.

In that sense, an inconvenient bastard child had suited his purposes perfectly.

Having taken in his illegitimate daughter for showing talent with a sword, Baron Modrov had raised her hidden away, out of the public eye.

He'd forged her through training beyond what she could bear, and starved or beat her when she fell short. No—usually, he did both at once.

Even an ordinary person, pouring every waking hour into training, would naturally achieve remarkable results. Ionna, on top of that, was an unmatched talent.

The instructor assigned to teach her had clicked his tongue at her monstrous growth.

And yet he'd also, inwardly, felt a pang of pity—because he understood, all too well, exactly what her growth had cost.

In exchange for not growing up human, Ionna paid with her humanity.

Back then, she hadn't even been able to properly tell the difference between upbringing and exploitation, affection and hatred, or even happiness and pain.

And so, right up until the moment she'd been sold off to the Crown Prince, Ionna had never once pitied her own circumstances—but as time passed, she'd gradually come to understand what her father had actually done to her.

Ionna said, quietly,

"Didn't you know? Your sins grew up and became me."

"Agh——! Let go of this at once!"

Recovering from the pain, Hayden gritted his teeth and swung his other arm.

But thanks to her father's own teachings, even a clumsy attack like that had become harder to land than to dodge.

Ionna leaned back just enough to avoid the swinging fist, then shoved his head straight down against the floor.

The man let out a loud groan at the sudden, unexpected pain.

"Did you know I became head of this house after you? Your two poor children died without ever knowing why."

Ionna tilted her head—at that face, fallen and defeated, ugly in its disgrace.

Hayden was trying hard to stay composed, but fear he couldn't quite hide showed in his eyes.

Had he only now, belatedly, recalled the moment of his own death?

But what he said next was nothing like what Ionna had expected.

"W-what kind of insane talk is this! You think you're something just because the Crown Prince favors you! You're only sitting where you are at his side because I laid the groundwork for it!"

"……The Crown Prince?"

Ionna murmured, dazed, her grip on Hayden loosening.