TMWDS Chapter 3

Baron Modrov had died after Rihardt had ascended to the throne.

However much this was the afterlife, surely he wouldn't commit the insolence of demoting the Emperor's title back down.

It occurred to Ionna, then, that his face looked strangely young.

She'd written it off as the man simply having a devilish enough constitution that hell suited him—but looking again, he seemed nearly ten years younger.

Ionna tilted her head back to look up at the ceiling.

The chandelier she'd swapped in last spring, following the latest fashion, was nowhere to be seen. In its place hung the old model—the one that had been in use since back when Baron Modrov was still alive.

Ionna asked, her voice carrying a suspicion she could barely put into words.

"How old am I right now?"

Hayden, having lifted his head, scrambled backward on his hands and knees, keeping his distance, and shouted,

"Have you truly…… have you truly lost your mind? Or is it that talk of the engagement with the Duke has gone to your head, thinking you've achieved some great success? Some undeserved stroke of luck's driven you mad!"

The prospective Duchess.

Her time as the prospective Duchess had been remarkably brief. The Duke had decided on the marriage after seeing her only a handful of times.

If she put all this information together, then right now, she was……

She'd returned to the time before she'd been either head of the house or the Duke's wife—back when she was still just a twenty-year-old nobody.

"……That's not possible."

Ionna denied it, reflexively.

She ignored Hayden's noisy chattering and got to her feet.

She felt him flinch at her movement, but that wasn't her concern.

As though drawn by something, Ionna walked toward the wall and stopped in front of the large decorative mirror hung there.

Reflected in the mirror was her own young face.

Ionna slowly raised a hand and touched her own cheek. Every wound she'd taken in that final battle had vanished without a trace.

No—forget those; even the faint scar she'd gotten at her temple years ago wasn't there anymore.

Her chapped lips shone with healthy, red color, and the nose she'd thought was broken sat straight and unmarked.

Above all, she looked young. Just like Baron Modrov beside her, holding his breath—roughly ten years younger than she should have been.

'How did this happen?'

It wasn't a problem she could reason her way through.

If there was one thing certain in this impossible situation, it was that she wasn't in the afterlife—she was in the past.

But how, exactly?

At that moment, footsteps approached quickly from a distance.

Whenever he met with her alone, Hayden always sent the staff away, so it probably wasn't a servant.

At this hour, on this floor, the only people who could move freely without needing the Baron's permission were a select few.

Soon the study door opened, and two familiar faces—a man and a woman—rushed in. Their identities were exactly as expected.

"Father! What's all this commotion?"

"Is something wrong? Why are you on the——"

The startled man and woman looked around the room in confusion.

Finding their father collapsed and the insolent bastard standing beside him, hostility flickered in their eyes.

Yvonne Modrov and Nils Modrov.

The children of that degenerate scumbag—two little sons of bitches, come to make their entrance.

They glared sharply at Ionna, just for a moment, before quickly turning their attention to check on Hayden's safety.

Hayden, supported by them, struggled to his feet. Even as his children showered him with worried questions, he kept his silence.

When Hayden's mouth stubbornly refused to open, Nils finally showed his irritation.

"What on earth happened. Was there some kind of attack?"

Nils apparently hadn't considered, even for a moment, that his father might have been frightened by a worthless bastard.

Thanks to that, Ionna momentarily forgot even the disorienting circumstance of finding herself back in the past, and burst into loud laughter.

Hayden kept shooting Ionna uneasy glances. Sensing something, Nils turned to look at Ionna as well.

Nils lowered his voice and asked.

"Ionna, did you do this to Father?"

"'Did this'—what exactly are you asking?"

"What?"

"Are you asking how Father turned into the kind of vermin he is? Or are you asking why he's lying here in this ridiculous state?"

Nils couldn't hide his bewilderment at Ionna's sarcasm.

Ionna, at this particular point in time, was still somewhat naive, and knew far less about the world than her position might suggest. Her family had never cared about giving her any education beyond making her a useful sword.

If anything, they'd preferred that Ionna remain lacking in exactly this way. Only then could they keep exploiting her under the pretense of family.

So, for Ionna, twenty had been exactly that kind of age.

A time when she still had no idea what she was capable of, or what she ought to do—a time when she still treated those vermin like human beings.

"Ionna Modrov! Your conduct is insolent!"

Nils couldn't contain his anger at his usually obedient half-sister's defiance.

The explosive reprimand startled even his 'real' sister, Yvonne, into flinching.

Ionna, the actual target of his anger, met his gaze steadily, unshaken.

"Nils Modrov, the one being insolent is you—a mere young lord failing to show proper respect to the Imperial Guard Knight—and your father, right along with you."

Nils's expression, faced with someone entirely unafraid of him, went almost slack.

Ionna continued, unbothered.

"Asked why your father was lying there so shamefully? He fell over his own two feet. Trying to strike his daughter and getting stopped instead—isn't that entirely his own doing? A father who raised his children wrong. A daughter raised under him. Same result, either way."

A vein finally rose on Nils's forehead.

Leaving Hayden to Yvonne, he slowly rose to his feet. His throat worked with fury.

"You low-born wench, being accepted as part of this family despite your poor conduct only because you happen to have some talent with a sword—and you dare, ungrateful as you are, to raise a hand against Father?"

He closed the distance to Ionna in a few strides and raised his arm.

The moment he swung, Ionna finished her brief calculation. His thick hand struck Ionna's cheek hard.

Since the blow had been telegraphed, she managed to stay standing without falling, but her ear rang.

Running her tongue over her lower lip, she tasted blood.

Ionna glared at Nils with eyes like ice and said,

"Father and son, cut from the same cloth."

The reason Ionna hadn't cowered under the ducal household's cold treatment after her marriage was simple. Her own family had treated her in ways more degrading than anything the Duke's household could manage.

Strangers who ignored her outright were, in the end, easier to bear than blood relations who abused her with words and fists.

"So it seems we've been rather too kind to you, given how brazenly you're behaving without a shred of fear. I'll personally teach you your place today."

"That's right, that girl's been getting more insolent by the day, haven't you noticed? Last time I asked her to tell me the Crown Prince's schedule, she just ignored me completely!"

Buoyed by her brother's forceful stance, Yvonne found her own nerve again and poured out her complaints.

Nils soothed his sister with an affected, gentle manner, then turned back to Ionna with murder in his eyes.

"Don't worry, Yvonne. I'll make sure she's thoroughly educated so she never dares this kind of impudence again. Break her leg like last time, and she won't be holding her head up so stiffly anymore."

Come to think of it, about a year ago, Nils had shot her with a hunting rifle and broken her leg.

Ionna prodded the sore inside of her cheek with her tongue and thought, dryly,

'Shouldn't have let him hit her, then.'

"Nils Modrov."

"Don't you dare say my name so casually, you filthy——!"

"Bite down."

Ionna balled her fist and struck his jaw before he could block it.

Yvonne's scream rang out sharply through the room.

Nils, sent flying like a sheet of paper in a single blow, rolled across the floor.

She'd controlled her strength enough that he hadn't lost consciousness, and a low groan came out of him.

His face flushed dark red, pain, shock, and humiliation all mixed together.

Even fumbling at his throbbing jaw, Nils spat out an insult at Ionna, his speech already coming out garbled.

"You, thith wench…… h-how dare hid me?"