006
“……”
Just before he turned to leave, our eyes met once more. Or at least, I thought they did. But I didn’t have the time or energy to dwell on him.
Now that the Marquess and Count Peaceon had both paid their final respects, the hesitant crowd began stepping forward one by one.
No one spoke.
A procession of silent farewells followed.
—
The Marchioness’s funeral stretched on for three long days.
The final guest to offer their respects was a baron and his wife—people I had never seen before, whose names I wouldn’t have remembered even if I’d heard them. With their exit, the official ceremonies finally came to a close.
All that remained now were the private rites.
Following imperial custom, her body was cremated in front of the Marquess and me. The flames devoured her quickly, burning bright and red. As I watched her form crumble to ash, a strange hollowness welled inside me.
There had been a time I longed for her affection.
I had tried to be a good child, faked a smile for her praise, even dressed like a boy in the hopes she might glance my way. But her eyes had only ever followed one person—the Marquess. She had been blindly, maddeningly devoted to him.
If I had looked a bit more like him… would she have loved me, even a little?
I could never ask her now. And even if she were still alive, I doubt I would have ever received an answer.
We were alike, she and I.
From our faces to our fates, too many things mirrored. People say daughters inherit their mother’s misfortunes, and in this, perhaps, the old adage rang true.
Just as she had lost herself in loving the Marquess, I too had destroyed myself for the sake of a man. I had given my everything, let the love eat me alive, unaware it was poison. I craved his gaze, his affection, and in the end, I died without either.
Maybe all women driven mad by love look the same.
Or maybe we resembled each other so perfectly because she really was my mother.
The fire that burned her felt like it was burning me. My mouth tasted bitter.
I turned my head to the Marquess beside me. His face, as always, betrayed no feeling.
His deep blue hair caught the flickering light of the flames and shimmered crimson. With shadows dancing across his expressionless features, I wondered—was that sorrow I glimpsed? Or was it only a trick of the fire?
He was only forty-one.
Handsome, dignified, with the physique of a knight and the poise of a nobleman. Women of every age had always flocked to him—even when his wife had still been alive.
And why wouldn’t they? He was the head of House Elient. Wealth. Power. Status. The only heir, his daughter, couldn’t carry on the family name. Now that the Marchioness’s seat stood vacant, countless women were vying for a chance to fill it—from freshly debuted young ladies to high-born widows.
Fathers paraded their daughters before him like fine merchandise, each hoping to win a place beside the Marquess.
But he had never entertained their advances. Not once. Not even during his wife’s lifetime. And even now, he allowed no one in the household to speak of remarriage.
He never took another wife. Not even when I died.
Perhaps… he hadn’t hated her after all.
Maybe I needed to believe that. If someone like her—who looked so much like me, who gave everything to love someone so completely—hadn’t been hated by the one she loved, then maybe I hadn’t been hated either.
The fire slowly died.
Ash replaced the body.
All that remained of her was gathered into a small wooden box, and the box was handed to the Marquess. He, in turn, held it out to me.
I accepted it with both hands. The box, no larger than two palms, felt far too light.
Then, the Marquess drew a small ceremonial blade—its edge gleamed under the firelight. He took a lock of his own hair, deep blue like the sea at dusk, and cut it cleanly with one smooth stroke.
He placed the strands into the urn.
It was the final rite before interment. A symbol that blood ties persisted beyond death—hair of the living, laid beside the remains of the dead.
He did the same with mine.
A lock of my gold-brown hair joined his in the box, mingling with ash and bone.
He closed the lid, took the box from my hands, and began walking toward the family mausoleum.
I followed.
—
“I suppose I’m not too late after all.”
A woman stood waiting at the mausoleum’s gate. She lowered her head in greeting as the Marquess approached.
“I wasn’t allowed at the cremation since I’m not immediate family,” she said with a light, regretful laugh, raising a hand to cover her lips. Her smile curved like a crescent moon, eyes crinkling with an almost flirtatious warmth.
“I was so afraid I’d miss this final moment,” she added softly, letting the smile fade as she stepped toward us.
Her face—though recently smiling—now looked wistful, melancholic. Her slightly downturned eyes gave her a mournful expression, as if sorrow clung to her skin like perfume. The small mole just beneath her left eye resembled a drop of black tear.
And yet—her body, wrapped in mourning black, was lush and sensual. Her generous chest, pale and full, peeked between the folds of her gown, impossible not to notice, even for a woman like me.
From her bodice, she produced a black silk pouch with slow, graceful movements. Every gesture felt rehearsed, deliberate, like a dancer’s.
When she opened it, a bundle of hair spilled out—white, with faint threads of red.
“I know I’ve overstepped, but I couldn’t help myself,” she said, voice trembling with emotion. “He’ll be devastated when he wakes, so I had to do something.”
Her eyes shimmered, damp and glassy. It was a look that invited protection, sympathy. She wore it like a veil.
She was Count Peaceon’s second wife.
My step-grandmother.
Of course, we shared no blood. She was five years younger than the late Marchioness. Thirty-two years younger than the Count.
My real maternal grandmother—the first Countess Peaceon—had died giving birth to her only child.
The Count had never remarried. Or at least, not until three years ago, when he shocked everyone by taking a much younger bride.
Among the nobility, such an age gap wasn’t especially scandalous. Men with power often married girls young enough to be their granddaughters.
No, what caused tongues to wag wasn’t the age difference. It was the fact that he had remarried at all.
A man believed to be too devoted to ever move on. A man who had spent decades alone.
Whispers said he had been bewitched. Others claimed he had finally gone senile. Theories abounded.
Looking at her now… I could understand why.
This was my first time seeing her up close.
During the funeral’s first day, I had stormed off and locked myself away in my chambers. I never came out again. Even after that, I had avoided any meeting with her.
And every time we could have met… I chose not to.
She had been born a commoner.
Very little was known about her past—nothing concrete, only a haze of rumors that shifted and grew depending on who was whispering them. No one knew the truth. And at the time, neither had I cared to. I hadn’t even considered commoners to be people, much less accepted her as my grandmother.
I pretended she didn’t exist at all.
Not long after the Marchioness’s funeral, Count Peaceon followed her into the grave. His death was sudden, jarring—especially for a man so vigorous and tirelessly engaged in the world. As one of the Empire’s wealthiest merchants, his passing raised immediate suspicion.
The Countess was swiftly named the prime suspect.
There was a lengthy dispute as to the truth. The sheer scale of the inheritance at stake was mind-boggling—enough to unmoor even the most composed noble family.
In the end, due to lack of evidence, the Countess inherited his entire estate.
I remembered my old nursemaid, her voice bitter and ragged with fury: “It should’ve gone to you. That viper robbed our young lady blind!”
Back then, I hadn’t paid much attention. I hadn’t understood the enormity of the fortune I’d forfeited. To me, a single glance, a scrap of affection from him had been worth more than all the gold in the Empire.
I never cared about money. Never even thought to count it.
As the Marchioness’s legitimate daughter, I had grown up in luxury. The Marquess never gave me love—but he never denied me anything material.
I was extravagant. No—by objective standards, I was ruinously wasteful. The kind of girl whose whims could rattle a city. It only worsened after I became Empress.
The more starved I became for affection, the more desperately I tried to fill the void with things.
Jewels. Dresses. Art.
As his coldness deepened, so did the black hole of my spending.
There was a fixed allowance for the Empress, of course, a personal fund drawn from the imperial treasury. But once I exhausted it, I didn’t stop. I spent from the Elient estate, and then from my own private wealth—especially the inheritance left by the Marchioness.
It had been a considerable sum. But no matter how vast, money is never infinite.
And though I’d never once felt the pinch, looking back now, I doubted my fortune could have survived me for long.
I needed to know exactly what I had left.
—
“These are his,” she said softly, offering the pouch to the Marquess.
Without a word, he opened the urn. She emptied the pouch, letting the hair inside fall gently into the box.
When she finished, the Marquess closed the lid. She bowed low once more.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I only did what needed to be done.”
And with that, he turned and stepped into the mausoleum.
I moved to follow, but the Countess reached out and caught my sleeve.
“Young Lady… would you visit him? Please?”
I looked up.
Her eyes still shimmered with tears—fragile and beautiful. There was a kind of tragic grace to her, a delicacy that was almost theatrical in its precision.
“He missed you dearly.”
Count Peaceon. A merchant prince. Though based in the Empire, his influence reached far beyond its borders. People often joked, “All money flows through the Peaceon Guild.”
His family had always been wealthy, but he had brought their fortune to its peak. He was rarely in the capital—perhaps only a few weeks each year.
After the Marchioness lost her mind, he’d stopped coming altogether.
So for her to say he had missed me… it didn’t ring true.
If he’d wanted to see me, he could have. He hadn’t. That was his choice.
“Why?”
Surprise flickered across her expression. Briefly, her pupils widened. But the emotion vanished in an instant. She smiled sweetly, gracefully brushing it away.
“Because you were his only family.”
Her voice was soft, tender. But something about it was sharp—like silk wrapping a blade.
She seemed genuinely kind to me. Not just polite, but warm, even fond.
And yet… her words unsettled me.
Because I’m his only family, she’d said.
But did that mean he loved me because of our bond, or that I had value precisely because of it? One implied affection. The other, utility.
I studied her for a long moment.
Her waist was slender beneath the swell of her breasts. Her whole appearance, poised and sorrowful, emphasized her fragility.
At the time, I had been too consumed by him to notice much else. But bits and pieces came back now. Especially my nursemaid’s rants—those I remembered clearly.
She had hated the Countess. Said the woman was a snake, a liar, a murderer.
When the Count died, the nursemaid was almost ecstatic.
She was convinced the Countess had poisoned him to steal the estate, and declared she ought to be dragged off and tortured until she confessed.
I hadn’t cared.
But I had grown tired of her endless tirades, and to shut her up, I’d gone so far as to give false testimony against the Countess.
It was likely part of the reason she remained under suspicion so long.
And because of that…
She had lost the baby.
It wasn’t torture—not exactly. She was, after all, the legitimate Countess, not some street urchin. No one would have dared touch her body.
But interrogation, even without violence, takes a toll.
Being treated as a murderer, questioned again and again, threatened with ruin—that would have been unbearable for anyone. Let alone a pregnant woman.
I remembered the way the nursemaid had cackled when she heard the Countess had miscarried.
“God’s punishment,” she’d called it.
My gaze dropped to the woman’s abdomen—flat and still, no sign of swelling.
“You’re not his only family anymore.”
Her expression froze.
I didn’t know if she had truly killed the Count. She could’ve been a gold-digging villain, or a woman scapegoated by cruel circumstances.
Truthfully, I still didn’t care.
But… I hoped the child inside her wouldn’t die.
Even if the rumors were true, even if the baby wasn’t his—still, I wanted it to live.
Strange of me, I know.
It wasn’t that I’d changed. I was still selfish, still concerned with nothing but my own survival. I’d never imagined sacrificing myself for another’s sake, and I didn’t intend to now.
Maybe it was just a passing whim. A flicker of mercy.
But in this moment, I didn’t want to see another unborn life snuffed out.
Maybe it’s guilt.
“You seem to be mistaken,” she said finally, her voice tight. “He had no other family. Only you.”
She tried to keep her face composed, but the darkness beneath her expression deepened.
There was pain there. Something she didn’t want to say.
I had no interest in her story.
So I asked directly.
“That child… is it not of Count Peaceon’s blood?”
“Young Lady—how dare you?”
Her voice cracked. Her lips trembled with fury.
The softness vanished. The woman before me—once languid, seductive—was now a storm barely contained.
If a look could kill, I’d have dropped dead where I stood.
Judging by her reaction… she didn’t know. Not yet.
The Count had died exactly two months after the Marchioness.
Whatever the rumors said, the official cause had been grief. A natural death.
