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Chapter : 01
There are memories that cannot be forgotten, no matter how hard one tries.
It took an enormous amount of effort to try to shake them off.
Jenaida sneered at Kaiden, who was foolishly gasping for breath.
“Looks like you deliberately cut shallow,” she mocked. “Why? Do you still have feelings left for me?”
As if to prove that a bloody battle had taken place between them, his body was in tatters.
Instead of answering, Kaiden threw away the sword he had been gripping and, with empty hands, pulled Jenaida into an embrace. Startled by the unexpected action, she stiffened—but then froze at his sorrowful voice.
“Just for a moment….”
His cracked voice struggled to continue.
“Can’t we stay like this, just for a moment?”
A husband embracing his wife while she radiated killing intent. Jenaida’s lips twitched, then she stopped herself from responding.
He was dying anyway. She was confident she could fend off a surprise attack.
As a knight, she never let her guard down in front of an enemy.
When Jenaida gave no reply, Kaiden seemed to take it as acceptance and tightened his arms around her.
Their fur cloaks, matted with each other’s blood, pressed together, and beyond them, a heart pounded loudly as if asserting its presence. It was neither his nor hers alone, but the sound of both their hearts together.
Soon, his low, rough voice called her name.
“Jenaida.”
It was unbearably tragic—so much so that she never wanted to hear it again.
Grinding her teeth, she tried to step back, but he grabbed her waist and refused to let go.
She reached for his arm to push him away, but clenched her fist uselessly in midair.
It was an utterly powerless movement.
“As your husband, I ask you this.”
Through the gaps between his fingers, the icy northern wind seeped in.
“Did you ever love me?”
It was such an abrupt question that she doubted whether it was really the words of someone facing death.
With that question, the hands holding Jenaida slipped away and fell limp.
Only then did she step back and look up at him.
Was he smiling, or crying?
His violet eyes wavered as if tears might spill at any moment, yet the corners of his lips curved gently upward.
Strangely—
As if entranced, she answered.
“…Yes. I loved you.”
At her lie-filled answer, Kaiden smiled even more brightly than before.
Seeing that smile, Jenaida was certain he was acting. The behavior he was showing now was exactly how he had been throughout their marriage.
A warm smile.
A gentle, concerned expression.
‘Is he really acting until his very last moment?’
But—yet—
Her heart ached.
Biting down on her lower lip, Jenaida felt as though someone were forcibly wringing out her emotions.
She faltered.
Suddenly seized by the fear that he might counterattack, she reflexively thrust her sword into his abdomen.
Kaiden smiled faintly as he saw it.
“That’s enough.”
With those words, he coughed up blood and collapsed.
With trembling hands, Jenaida caught him unsteadily. His body slackened weakly in her arms.
As time passed, snowstorms blew in, and his warmth rapidly faded. The colder he became, the faster her heart pounded, her entire body radiating an inexplicable heat.
‘He’s really dead.’
The man who had always preferred perfect posture and neat attire lay ruined and ugly. When his lips turned blue, Jenaida finally felt the reality of Kaiden’s death.
Slowly, she lowered herself and laid his body down in the snow.
His eyes were closed as if he were merely asleep. If not for the blood around him, she might have believed that he was.
As turmoil slowly seeped into her gaze while she stared at him—
Kill the traitor, Kaiden.
The imperial decree flickered before her eyes.
Jenaida steadied herself and repeated the words in her mind, as if brainwashing herself.
‘I can return to His Majesty the Emperor.’
A family guilty of treason deserved execution for three generations—but Jenaida was an exception. Her marriage to Kaiden had been entirely the Emperor’s scheme.
A scheme to kill the purple beast that would massacre the imperial family.
Jenaida looked down quietly at the blood staining her hands.
This is the blood of a beast that betrayed the gods.
I didn’t kill a person—I killed a beast.
Her eyes trembled in confusion.
When her gaze accidentally fell upon his corpse again, she hastily washed her hands in the snow, like someone being chased.
To erase every filthy memory and trace left in her heart.
Several days later, the imperial army and the Pope arrived in the north and arrested everyone in the Grand Duke’s castle.
Jenaida was not taken prisoner. She was the one who had killed Kaiden, the subject of the ominous prophecy.
Stepping into the empty castle, Jenaida looked around the central hall, devoid of any human presence.
Unlike the central nobles who had accused her of wielding ominous spirit power, the people here had regarded her as a pitiful Grand Duchess married to a cold and frightening Grand Duke.
“Grand Duchess, would you like to eat this?”
“You prefer this one, don’t you?”
“No! It’s this one!”
The servants’ voices faintly surfaced in her mind, and warmth lingered briefly in the icy space.
Jenaida smiled unconsciously, then straightened her expression.
It was she who had offered those who treated her kindly to the Emperor. Did she even have the right to remember them?
She bit the inside of her cheek.
‘I wasn’t wrong.’
She was merely a knight who faithfully served the Emperor. The Emperor’s joy was the Pope’s joy. She lived for the sake of those two.
Steeling her wavering convictions, she walked wherever her feet carried her.
She stopped before a room that was immaculately arranged. Jenaida immediately recognized it as Kaiden’s bedroom.
A room where its owner had spent much time always retained their scent.
Overwhelmed by the familiar fragrance, she turned to leave—then stopped herself.
She slowly scanned the room, and her gaze eventually drifted to the bed. It was the only place in the room that held memories of him.
Their first night.
The moments when they were meant to love each other as husband and wife.
Her head spun.
She regretted coming here.
As she turned to leave, her eyes caught on a mana stone atop the bedside table.
Beside the softly glowing stone lay a small notebook, neatly placed.
As if possessed, Jenaida reached out.
She opened the notebook and began to read.
Imperial Year 543, April 10
I arrived in the capital to meet my wife.
It was arranged by my older brother.
Jenaida Harmon.
No—since she’s now my wife, Jenaida Arser.
Looking into her empty blue eyes makes it hard to breathe.
Imperial Year 543, May 3
I had my first meal together with my wife.
I wondered why she never ate with me—apparently, she didn’t know proper table manners.
I taught her as gently as I could.
The way she looked embarrassed yet grateful was lovely.
Imperial Year 543, June 24
I returned after apologizing to the Elven King and establishing diplomatic ties.
But what does my wife like?
Her birthday is coming up soon. Why does even the head maid know, but I don’t?
I’m her husband.
Imperial Year 543, October 12
I told my wife that I like her for the first time.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the first time—but does she remember?
That it was actually the second time I confessed to her?
Imperial Year 543, December 15
She still doesn’t remember me.
No—perhaps it’s better that she doesn’t.
There’s nothing good about being close to someone as ominous as me.
The diary ended on December 15.
Jenaida had killed her husband on December 16.
The moment she read the final sentence, large teardrops fell heavily onto the page.
She brushed her hand over the diary and murmured softly.
“No.”
The emotions she had long suppressed spilled out.
“…I remember. Everything.”
She remembered everything.
Before their marriage—the fireworks festival they’d watched together as children.
The confession he’d made to her.
But beneath the endlessly falling snow, she had tried to abandon it all.
The useless feelings that kept growing inside her.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m… Kaiden. What about you?”
All of their childhood memories together, now faded.
Because I am the Emperor’s knight.
The Emperor’s sword.
Emotions are a luxury I cannot afford.
But the traces left behind in the Grand Duke’s castle clung to Jenaida like ghosts, refusing to let go.
She pounded her chest with her fist. No one was strangling her, yet she couldn’t breathe properly.
She barely managed to exhale with a harsh metallic sound, but the relief was brief before the pain surged again.
“…I… was wrong….”
She tried to repeat her beliefs out of habit to escape the pain, but her sobs swallowed the words.
At that moment, someone entered through the open door.
If the Emperor was the one who gave her wings, then the Pope was the one who had saved her when she was on the brink of death.
A figure like a parent.
With tear-streaked cheeks, Jenaida looked up at the Pope.
Wearing a worried expression, he cupped her cheeks in his hands. Unlike Kaiden’s cold body, the Pope’s hands were warm.
Bathed in warmth that seemed capable of melting everything, Jenaida poured out the emotions she had held back.
“It hurts so much.”
She slowly collapsed into the Pope’s embrace.
“It hurts… so much.”
Jenaida knew the cause of her pain. But she could not reveal the reason to the Pope—it contradicted her beliefs.
She cried for a long time.
After who knows how much time had passed, the Pope’s expression gradually hardened. The hands that had been patting her shoulders were gone.
“……!”
Instead, a blade pierced through her abdomen.
Using her split-second judgment, Jenaida managed to break free from the Pope. She looked down at the blood spreading across her clothes, then back at him.
But the Pope recited calmly, as if he felt no guilt at all.
“There was an imperial decree to kill you.”
Staring blankly at him, Jenaida listened as he added—with a sorrowful expression, despite being the one who stabbed her—
“And I, too, agreed with that command.”
