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Chapter 2
While he was being dragged away, Amber curled up in the corner of the dungeon, clamped her mouth shut, and stifled her screams.
Half a day later, the Emperor’s knights returned.
Amber, her limbs bound, was made to kneel once again before the Emperor.
“It is true that the Duke, blinded by ambition, plotted treason. But it is also true that he rendered many merits for me.”
The Emperor looked down at Amber and smiled thinly.
It was a chilling, snake-like smile.
“So, I have decided to grant his final request.”
Did that mean he would spare Amber’s life?
“But before that, there is something I need to confirm.”
The Emperor continued.
“Is the child in your womb a daughter or a son?”
At the unexpected question, Amber’s expression turned puzzled.
“I cannot simply let a traitor’s bloodline live, can I? If it is a daughter, I will spare her. If it is a son, I will have to kill him.”
Amber could not answer immediately.
She did not know the child’s gender.
The physician had said it was possible to determine the gender using magic, but Amber had said she did not want to know.
It hadn’t mattered what gender the child was. Back then, she had not wanted to do anything, nor had she wanted to know anything.
But now was different.
*’I want to live. I want to… protect my child.’*
A single tear rolled down Amber’s cheek.
“It’s… it’s a daughter.”
At Amber’s answer, the Emperor smiled.
It was a more evil and horrible smile than before.
“Is that so? That’s a relief. But I’ve changed my mind. Just kill her.”
The Emperor gestured, and the knight beside him raised his sword.
No one was surprised.
Everyone gathered there, except for Amber, knew that the Emperor was toying with them.
Amber blankly watched the sword flying fiercely toward her own neck.
In her last moment, she seemed to have instinctively wrapped her arms around her belly.
She felt an immense pain.
And like that, Amber died futilely.
At the moment of death, she thought: This is absurd.
*’Was I born to live such a pitiful, worthless life?’*
She had been the daughter of the wealthiest family in the South, raised with every expectation.
If she had remained unmarried in her father’s territory, she could have become a mage, a knight, or a scholar.
Countless possibilities had surely been laid out before Amber.
Yet, caught in the Emperor’s scheme, she was forced into marriage, abandoning all those possibilities, only to die ridiculously at the Emperor’s whim.
*’If I could…’*
If I could live again.
Then, I would live pursuing everything I want without hesitation.
Without caring about others’ eyes, speaking my thoughts proudly, not doing things I hate, living happily.
A painful regret, like a burning fire, enveloped Amber.
*’But it’s already too late.’*
Just as Amber thought that amidst the flames.
*<Mother, come see me again.>*
It felt as though the child in her womb was speaking to her.
—
* * *
—
“Ugh.”
Amber opened her eyes on the bed.
She was wearing a pure white dress, and a long veil covered her head.
Her heart pounded wildly.
*’What on earth is happening?’*
It felt like she had dreamed a long, long dream. But what she had experienced was absolutely not a dream.
Amber took off the veil obscuring her vision and looked around.
The decoration hanging on the wall was the elk antler mount she had been sick of seeing for ten years.
The moment she saw it, Amber recognized this place as the lord and lady’s bedroom in Talesto Ducal Castle.
“That’s impossible.”
Amber muttered in confusion. She had definitely been taken to the capital and killed before the Emperor.
So how did she end up back in the Talesto territory? And dressed in a wedding gown with a veil?
“A veil?”
Amber looked at the veil she had taken off, then scrambled up, searched the bedside table, and found a mirror.
As she brought the mirror to her face, she gasped.
Reflected in the mirror was herself from ten years ago—the naive, twenty-year-old Amber.
Twenty years old, a wedding dress, a veil, and the marital bedroom.
All of this could only mean one thing.
“Did I come back… to the first night of my marriage with him?”
—
**1. Second Honeymoon**
—
“Ah, ugh, huk…”
As soon as she realized she had survived, that she had been given another chance, tears poured from Amber’s eyes.
She didn’t know why she had returned, or how something like this was possible. But those things didn’t matter.
The only thing that mattered now was that she was alive and well.
“Thank… you…”
Amber knelt on the floor and whispered her thanks to someone unknown.
The emotions that had swept over her right before her death resurfaced. The painful regret like a blazing fire, the intense desire to live once more…
Amber cried for a long time after that before finally stopping. Having cried her fill, her mind calmed and became clear.
Now that she was back, what she had to do was clear.
*’Not repeating the tragedy of the past.’*
All of Amber’s tragedies began with her marriage to the Duke of Talesto.
*’I’ll ask for a divorce right away.’*
A bride asking for a divorce on her wedding night—it would be difficult for anyone to accept, and even if it was accepted, there would be a lot of gossip, but she didn’t care.
With her resolve hardened, Amber sprang to her feet. But she soon flinched and stopped walking.
Because the memories of her past life quickly flashed by, bringing a very important fact to mind.
*’My baby…’*
If she divorced the Duke of Talesto now, her child would never see the light of day.
The child in her womb had been the only comfort in Amber’s grey life.
The only blood relative she met in the East, and the comrade who helped her endure her hellish existence…
Amber’s feelings toward her unborn child were very complex and deep.
One thing was certain: she absolutely could not divorce the Duke of Talesto until she saw her child be born.
Amber looked down at her hand gripping the doorknob.
It was a white, slender, exquisitely beautiful hand. In her past life, within three years of marriage, her fingertips had become blunt and her hands rough. It was because she had done too much menial work.
*’What should I do?’*
Amber returned to the bed, plopped down carelessly, and fell into thought.
Just then.
*Knock, knock.*
She heard someone knocking on the door. And before Amber could say to come in, the door opened.
The head maid, her white hair pinned up without a single strand out of place, entered the room.
*’Grace.’*
Amber could recall the head maid’s name immediately.
Because in her past life, she was the one who had tormented Amber to the point of exhaustion, alongside her mother-in-law, Bella.
“His Grace will not be coming tonight.”
Even as she looked at Amber, she didn’t bow, keeping her chin raised high as she spoke. Her eyes, glaring at Amber, were full of contempt.
Amber almost shrank back from that gaze.
*’Bella and her faction were quite resentful of me for stealing the position of the ducal castle’s lady.’*
When the Duke was unmarried, Bella, the late Duke of Talesto’s wife, had acted as the lady of the castle.
Bella, who had married the late Duke of Talesto, fifteen years her senior, at the age of thirty-two, was very vain.
As soon as she became the Duchess, she began abusing the authority of the lady to satisfy her vanity.
Squeezing the already small budget of the duchy to live lavishly, throwing parties to act haughty… It must have been a good time for her.
But after Amber came, her position became precarious.
Because no matter how much of a figurehead she might be, the position of Duchess could not simply be ignored.
So Bella began to torment Amber. She took her dowry, eroded her self-esteem, and made it difficult for her to even leave her room.
Even now, remembering the harassment she suffered back then made her heart pound and her body tremble.
*’But.’*
Amber looked at the head maid, Grace, before her.
*’Just because I’m scared, I can’t live the same situation as before.’*
Amber straightened her upper body, which had been trying to cower, and met Grace’s eyes.
Grace showed a flicker of confusion.
It was no wonder she was surprised; Amber, who had been so intimidated when she stamped the marriage documents earlier, was suddenly acting confident.
“What do you mean, His Grace cannot come tonight?”
Amber asked in a clear voice.
Originally, in her past life, Amber had not been able to ask Grace anything when she informed her of the Duke’s absence, and had spent the night fretting alone until morning.
And only in the morning, through Xenia, the young maid who pitied her, did she learn that her husband had gone on a campaign.
*’I can’t show that foolish side of myself again.’*
There was a time she thought yielding was the answer. But no matter how timidly she yielded, people only looked down on her and oppressed her more.
Now, she wanted to proudly ask what she needed to know and obtain the answers.
So, even though she already knew her husband was going on a campaign, she deliberately raised her voice to ask.
Grace was now visibly flustered.
“His Grace… will be leaving the castle at dawn.”
“For what reason? How can I know the detailed circumstances if you just tell me he’s leaving?”
Grace’s brow furrowed slightly. She was openly showing displeasure, but Amber didn’t care.
She had no intention of getting along with Bella’s faction anyway. Rather, if she got the chance, she wanted to weed them all out.
“Milady is new here, so you may not know, but every year in the East, there is a terrifying wave of monsters. His Grace is going on a campaign to subdue them.”
Grace thought that if she spoke firmly and irritably, Amber would cower again, so she deliberately came on strong.
But what Amber felt was different.
*’Experiencing it again, it’s even more absurd, isn’t it?’*
Being slighted by her husband on their wedding night had been a major trauma for Amber in her past life.
So later, she had spent a great deal of time investigating whether her husband truly had to go on that campaign on their first night.
The result was truly infuriating.
Because the monster wave in the year Amber got married was a small-scale wave that he didn’t necessarily need to go out for.
*’No, how can you go on a campaign like running away on your wedding day without even spending the first night?’*
Even giving him a hundred excuses for the campaign itself, she couldn’t understand why he couldn’t spare even the few hours to complete the wedding ceremony.
*’Truly, honestly, he must have really hated marrying me.’*
He must have disliked the marriage so much that he couldn’t even bear to see the bride’s face.
*’There’s no other explanation. They even skipped the ceremony, and he didn’t even show up for the stamping of the documents, right?’*
But that was her husband’s situation, and Amber no longer had any intention of being swayed by him.
