After Oscar and Lady Margaret withdrew from the inner chambers, Ella finally spoke.
“As expected, the red-haired young mistress is the best. Ever since Eric encountered you, he’s become far more dependable. You two are truly my trusted allies.”
She smiled gently as she gazed at the signed contract. I recoiled, aghast.
“I—I’m not one of Your Highness’s people!”
What a dangerous thing to say.
My true goal is to eradicate that lunatic duke—not to play matchmaker or assist in power struggles.
“You really don’t want to marry me?”
Ella winked as she mouthed the words:
‘I’ll treat you
very
well.’
“Please don’t go kidnapping me now!”
I shouted, face turning crimson.
Ella burst out laughing again, holding her stomach as she set down the contract.
‘Hooligan Princess…’
I cursed inwardly.
Anyway, the contract signed by Oscar now existed in duplicate—one copy held by Oscar, the other by Ella. Oscar had fled the palace the moment the ink dried. Clearly, he feared the idea of this reaching the ears of Duke Valdeck far more than remaining in Ella’s grasp.
“To think someone like him borrowed a million gold using Blueoak as collateral…”
Utterly incomprehensible.
Meanwhile, after carefully verifying the documents, Lady Margaret departed with a satisfied smile, leaving me with a few parting words:
“Just as Emelline said, I’ve decided to stop using people as muses for my creations without their consent. I even hope to apologize to Eric someday, if the opportunity arises.”
“...Are you planning to burn the photos too?”
“Oh come now, didn’t Emelline take a copy and enjoy it as well?”
“Well, that’s true, but…”
“Still, I think I deserve some compensation, don’t you think? My memoir's release was delayed because of this.”
“...Come again?”
“I’ll take your silence as permission. It’ll benefit you too, I’m sure.”
I didn’t quite understand what she meant, but I didn’t feel like digging deeper either.
With a sigh, I turned to Ella. She offered her wine glass to me, saying:
“Would the red-haired young mistress care for a drink too?”
No thanks. I’ve already done enough
under the influence
, thank you very much.
‘Slave to your desires…’
Eric’s resentful gaze still echoed in my memory. Sure, most of that fiasco was due to the love potion, but lately we’d been sharing the same chamber, and if I drank again… well, who knows what I'd end up doing.
But actually, more importantly—
“You keep calling me ‘red-haired young mistress’ over and over… is that because you don’t remember my name?”
I narrowed my eyes, staring straight at her.
Ella peeked at me over the contract, raising her brows.
“...Evelyn?”
...Seriously? She really didn’t remember it.
Should I at least give her credit for trying?
Ella squinted her eyes, then suddenly snapped her fingers.
“Ah! Olga.”
“That’s even further off! It’s
Emelline
. E. Mel. Line.”
“Right, Emelline. Did I mention? It’s a lovely name.”
With a melodramatic smile, she reached over and caressed my cheek with the back of her hand.
‘...Why are you flirting?’
I smacked her hand away with a crisp
slap
. Ella blinked at me in surprise.
“You’re the first woman to treat me so rudely…”
“Don’t say that! That’s the same line you use on
everyone
! I’ve heard that old trick before!”
The princess clicked her tongue and stepped back, as if caught off guard.
“You’re the first to talk to me like this!” “You’re the first to treat me this way!”
Philip once told me that emphasizing
“You’re the first”
works wonders on the opposite sex.
“Do philanderers share their own cultivation technique manuals or something?”
But I’m not even the opposite sex in this case!
Wait—does that even matter? No, but still!
“Anyway… with this, I basically gave you a birthday gift, right?”
I pointed at the contract Ella had set down. She frowned slightly.
“A birthday gift, huh.”
She gestured at the clock on the table.
“In an hour, it won’t even be my birthday anymore. Are you someone who puts meaning in the day you were born? Doesn’t seem like it.”
“Of course not. My birthday also happens to be the death anniversary of my birth mother…”
At the mention of
“birth mother’s death anniversary,”
Ella’s brow twitched slightly.
Violod once casually mentioned it—
That my birth mother died giving birth to me.
“Too frail for cultivation,”
he added.
Violod cycled through wives in pursuit of a male heir.
He pressured them relentlessly, but never had another child besides me.
He always blamed their bodies—
But if five different wives failed to bear him another child, maybe the root of the problem was in his own meridians.
Blaming others—
That’s Violod’s signature technique.
“Do you want to see him again?”
Earlier on the balcony, Erik had asked me that.
Whether I wanted to meet Violod one last time before handing him over to the witch.
My answer had been simple:
“No. I hope he dies somewhere painful, in a way I’ll never know, in a place I’ll never see.”
I’d added:
“Sounds cruel, doesn’t it?”
Erik’s crimson eyes had stared at me for a long while before his brows furrowed.
“So what? If you don’t want to see him, then don’t. Hate is hate. Forgiveness is a virtue, sure—but withholding it isn’t a sin.”
Yeah.
I’ve chosen not to forgive Violod.
It may not be the choice of a righteous hero out of a cultivation scroll, but I haven’t killed him—
That’s already more mercy than he deserved.
That’s my justice.
I told Erik:
“I finally get it now. Living kindly isn’t about being naïve—it’s about being strong. Only the strong can afford to be kind. So a strong person like you…”
“…I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Right about now, Erik is probably handing Violod over to the witch.
Just because Violod gave me life doesn’t mean I owe him anything.
I don’t even feel grateful or guilty toward my mother, either.
Did she love me? Did she not?
Who could possibly know?
It’s far more likely she spent her final breath cursing Violod.
…Maybe there’s something wrong with me, thinking like this.
But so what?
“We live just because we’re born. Isn’t it stranger to assign meaning to that?”
Ella let out a short laugh.
She leaned back into the sofa, tilted her head all the way back, and closed her eyes.
Her voice was low, heavy with fatigue.
“…You’re right. We live because we’re born. That’s all.”
I looked at her with her eyes closed—
And scowled.
"You know, for someone who was born into the golden cradle of royalty, Your Highness sure works hard at life—drafting contracts and all just to ascend the throne.”
I shook my head as I gestured at the contract.
If it were me in her shoes, I wouldn’t even dream of becoming sovereign. I’d just laze around, spend my gold, and lounge in silk robes all day.
Ella turned her head slightly and looked at me.
“There are lives that sink the moment they stop struggling, Red-Haired Maiden.”
There she goes again, calling me that. She really forgot my name again, huh?
“I feel like you could afford to sink a little and still be just fine…”
I mumbled under my breath.
If I sink any further, I hit rock bottom. But her? She’s royalty. This is exactly why I avoid nobles and cultivators of high status alike—they don’t know what it means to fall.
Then Ella brushed her hair back with a sigh, her tone weary.
“Do you remember what I asked you before? What becomes of a princess who fails to claim the throne?”
For some reason, she kept glancing toward the doorway.
I replied,
“Yeah, I remember. I said she'd probably end up married off to some foreign prince and live happily ever after. Just sitting still and becoming a queen—seems like a perfectly nice ending to me. Feels like a fairytale.”
I answered bluntly.
Ella let out a faint laugh.
“A fairytale, huh…? Being exiled from one’s own land only to marry into another, where you're nothing but a political token. If your husband fails to usurp the throne, you and your children die together. Even if he succeeds, you’ll never again speak your native tongue, never voice your thoughts, always silent, always watching…
”
Her expression darkened. The depth of her blue eyes seemed to reach the bottom of a cold abyss.
She looked directly at me.
“...Sounds just like a fairytale, doesn’t it?”
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
A thought suddenly struck me. I remembered hearing that the late queen—Eric’s mother—had once been a princess from a distant land. Could Ella be talking about her own mother? Or... herself?
But before I could ask, the bitter smile on Ella’s lips disappeared completely, replaced by a weariness, and maybe... just a sliver of loneliness.
I stared at her face, momentarily dazed by the change. Snapping out of it, I cleared my throat and rose from my seat.
“...?”
Ella looked up at me.
“What are you doing? I didn’t dismiss you. Or is this another one of your—”
So arrogant.
Before she could finish, I cut in first.
“I’m not polite enough to wait around for that sort of thing, remember?”
She nodded firmly, looking thoroughly satisfied.
‘Tch…’
“Anyway! If I sit here any longer, we’re going to start talking about our deepest traumas and childhood wounds and whatever else. I should leave before it turns into a tragic soul-bonding session!”
And that would be disastrous. Catastrophic.
Someone like me getting too entangled with someone like
her
would be fatal. I’d end up pledging my loyalty, throwing my life away for her, or—ugh. No way.
With big, determined strides, I walked toward the inner chamber doors and reached for the handle. But before I opened it, I turned my head slightly and said:
“…Truth is, Your Highness
will
become Queen, right? Eric’s suffering all this hardship for that exact reason. So go be Queen. I’ll cheer you on—from far, far away, as a loyal commoner.”
Ella’s deep blue eyes shimmered with ambition.
“…You can cheer for me up close, you know.”
She smiled gently.
“Emelline.”
My lips parted slightly.
She… remembered my name?
Wait—no! That’s not the point here!
That smile!
That was
definitely
a seductive smile!
First Eric, and now me too?! Is she trying to charm
everyone
around her?!
Shuddering, I practically ran from the princess’s chambers. The banquet at the Princess’s palace came to a most satisfying end—for everyone involved.
All thanks to a dramatic scandal that erupted during the gathering.
Word spread like wildfire in the middle of the ballroom: a young noble heir had been having a secret affair with a titled lady who had only recently become a widow. And both of them had the audacity to attend the banquet together under the princess’s very invitation.
Apparently, a young noblewoman—who had secretly harbored feelings for the heir—approached the widow, perhaps to test the waters. But when she saw the embroidered handkerchief she had personally gifted the heir now in the widow’s possession…
“T-That old fox!”
“What did you just say?!”
“Kyaaa! Let go!”
“You let go first, you little brat!”
“Old people should know when to back off!”
It was utter chaos.
And that chaos was the highlight of the entire party.
The same nobles who had been whispering about the Princess being a “cursed child” suddenly acted like it had never happened, their tongues now fully occupied dissecting the juicy scandal between those three.
The Princess watched it all unfold, her expression utterly pleased.
The gossip-hungry nobles, now satisfied with enough material to chew on for weeks, finally began to trickle out past midnight, all bidding farewell with:
“Let’s talk in more detail at the next book club.”
From what I could tell, the heir and the widow must’ve done something to offend the Princess. What exactly, I couldn’t say—but it had clearly earned them her ire.
Still, the scandal didn’t matter much to me.
What mattered was that in the chaos of the banquet, my family quietly returned home, the witch took Violod and headed south…
And the Duke was absolutely livid.
Valdek d’Orléans glared at me with burning crimson eyes the entire way back to the estate. But I didn’t have the strength to argue.
Too much had happened.
And then—
“You’ve definitely come down with heat-flame qi sickness!”
The moment we returned to the manor, I started burning up—like my core furnace had gone unstable. I collapsed straight into bed.
Nina looked at Erik with concern and asked,
“Shouldn’t you sleep in another room tonight, young master? You might catch her cold.”
Erik looked at me. I gave him a pleading hand gesture like,
Please, yes.
He nodded.
“Alright. But first, let’s get Emelline some medicine—”
He tried to open the medicine bottle he’d picked up from the apothecary on the way back, but—
Nina snatched it out of his hand.
“Oh heavens! Medicine? No, young master! She’s pregnant—she can’t just take anything!”
“…?”
I groaned and buried my face into the pillow.
Right…
I’m pregnant…
Erik let out a helpless sound. Still buried under the covers, I muttered:
“Okay… okay, I get it. Just… can everyone please get out for now…”
My qi was in total disarray, the world spinning before my eyes.
I hadn’t been this bad when we were dealing with Oscar…
Now I couldn’t even take a pill—what kind of hell realm trial was this?
I held my burning forehead and pulled the blanket up to my nose.
In just a couple of hours, my whole body had gone completely haywire.
“…Just… let me sleep…”
Erik checked my forehead, then spoke in a serious voice to Nina.
“Nina… get the—”
“I told you no medicine! Y-Young master—!”
“She looks like she’s already ascended to the next realm…”
“She’s not dead! She’s asleep! Get a grip, young ma—”
What are you all even saying? Ugh, so noisy.
I shut my eyes.
Sleep crashed over me like a wave.
Mom used to say if you sleep when you have a fever, it just gets worse…
‘Ugh, whatever. I don’t care anymore!’
Chapter 91