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Chapter 9
The dinner was over.
Katrina immediately handed a note she had prepared in advance to a servant.
“I need the ingredients to make a perfume. Get them for me.”
“Yes, my lady.”
The note listed some special ingredients.
Ingredients that could slightly ease the pain of the seizures Raymond suffered from.
The Duke of Abice was currently desperately clinging to the possibility of his daughter becoming the Crown Princess.
So until Katrina found another way out, she needed to maintain a connection with Raymond.
‘Once he receives the perfume, Raymond will change his mind.’
He seemed to have forgotten because he had grown accustomed to the pain, but an ordinary life without pain was something precious.
Once Raymond experienced that, he wouldn’t be able to stubbornly refuse anymore.
Katrina had deliberately chosen the day of a banquet for their next meeting because there was a high chance the Crown Prince wouldn’t agree to see her under normal circumstances.
So it would be better to give it to him directly at the banquet.
“My lady, His Grace the Duke has ordered that your room be changed.”
Katrina hadn’t expected this.
Ever since she woke up, the place she had been staying was the annex. It was essentially House Abice’s place of exile.
“Do you have any belongings you need to pack?”
Did she?
She had woken up in the annex and been forced to live there with nothing.
“I don’t have any belongings. But bring one maid with me.”
“Ah, I’ll assign one to you right away—”
“The girl who served me in the annex.”
“Understood.”
Katrina headed to her assigned room.
‘It’s clean.’
It wasn’t as nice as the room she had used before returning to the past, but it was certainly better than the room in the annex.
Knock, knock.
Just then, there was a knock at the door.
“My lady, I was told you summoned me.”
“Come in.”
The door soon opened.
The maid looked around the room curiously, as though she found it fascinating. But when their eyes met, she quickly lowered her head.
“You don’t need to be nervous.”
“I-I’m sorry.”
“No. I owe you a lot for helping me get this far.”
She had delivered Katrina’s letter to Raymond.
“I keep my promises. I’ll send you the money I promised you soon.”
“……Thank you, my lady.”
“No need to thank me. You did something very important for me.”
And she would probably need the maid’s help a lot more in the future.
For the time being, Katrina had to live here.
She needed someone who could assist her.
The maid looked deeply moved by Katrina’s words.
“What is your name?”
“L-Lina, my lady…….”
“Lina, then.”
Katrina smiled warmly at her.
“I’ll be counting on you from now on. I want you to assist me.”
Until the day I leave this place.
“Damn you, Katrina!”
Crash!
Everything on the table fell to the floor and shattered.
But Selena wasn’t satisfied even after that. She continued smashing things to vent her anger.
“Selena! Calm down!”
“Aaah!”
The Duchess grabbed Selena in an attempt to restrain her, but it was useless.
“Katrina is going to take everything away from me again! Again!”
“Selena, my dear…… Mother will take care of it.”
This had happened when Selena was entering adolescence.
At the time, Arabella, who was then the Duchess, had taken a young girl by the hand and brought her home.
Until then, everyone had assumed that Arabella had simply picked up a maid.
But everything changed when she adopted the girl and began doting on her more than her own son, Damian.
“Damian, are you just going to sit there and do nothing?”
The Duchess glared viciously at Damian.
“You hate Katrina too.”
“…….”
“We’re in the same situation, aren’t we?”
The same situation.
Damian quietly stared at the mother and daughter.
There was a clear reason why Damian hated Katrina.
She had taken everything that belonged to him.
But the same was true for those two.
“Is that why you called me? Because you think Selena’s position is being threatened and you want me to protect it?”
“Why are you talking like that? It would benefit you too if Katrina disappeared.”
“I wonder.”
Damian tilted his head.
“That would have been true when Katrina threatened my position. But that’s not the case anymore, is it?”
Katrina’s reputation had recovered somewhat, but her position within the family was still at the very bottom.
“Her existence poses no threat to me.”
“Pfft.”
Selena laughed mockingly at Damian.
“You’re funny. You were the one most eager to send Katrina to the temple.”
“…….”
“You’re the one who hates Katrina the most.”
Instead of reacting to the obvious mockery, Damian calmly replied.
“I’m deeply sorry that it appeared that way.”
“Isn’t it?”
“It is true that I don’t like Katrina. But the reason I agreed to send her away was because I was promised a proper compensation from the temple.”
Damian had always pursued practical benefits. No matter what happened, he never acted without reason.
“But it is also true that we can’t leave Katrina as she is.”
If they couldn’t send her to the temple, he would lose the compensation he had been promised.
The reason Damian was staying quiet for now was the Duke of Abice.
Foolishly, the Duke still saw a possibility that Katrina could become the Crown Princess.
“First, let’s stop her from attending the banquet.”
“How?”
“It’s simple.”
“We just have to tie her down.”
All the ingredients had been prepared.
The ingredients Katrina had obtained could cure Raymond’s curse.
‘All I have to do is combine these.’
In the game, the heroine had cured Raymond’s curse.
She had been able to do so because she had obtained a ‘rare material.’
A book containing the research of a great archmage on curses.
The archmage was Arabella.
She was the Duchess of Abice and Damian’s mother.
She was already dead and no longer existed in this world.
She had also been the only person who had ever been kind to the young Katrina.
Before her death, Arabella had left many things to Katrina.
One of them was her research materials.
In the game, these were materials that Katrina would acquire only after dying, allowing the heroine to obtain them instead.
“I’ll give these to Katrina, so she can use them however she wants.”
“She can even sell them if she needs the money.”
That had been Arabella’s final wish.
Katrina had been so dumbfounded when she heard it that she had almost forgotten to cry.
At the time, she never thought she would have any reason to open Arabella’s research.
Still, they had belonged to Arabella, so she had carefully preserved them.
‘I never dreamed they’d be useful like this.’
Katrina silently thanked Arabella.
As she remembered her and finished combining the ingredients, the perfume was complete.
Katrina sprayed some of the perfume on herself.
A citrus scent.
It was pleasant and unremarkable.
But for Raymond, it would be different.
The moment he wore the perfume, the curse would stop temporarily.
He wouldn’t feel any pain at all.
Today, there was a party at the Imperial Palace.
Katrina had secretly obtained permission from the Duke of Abice to attend.
She planned to visit without anyone knowing, give Raymond the perfume, and leave.
She covered her head with a pitch-black veil.
Since she was attending the banquet unofficially, she couldn’t afford to attract anyone’s attention.
Inside the rapidly moving carriage,
Katrina stared out the window at the pitch-black night.
The carriage continued down a dark road for quite some time.
Then—
Clatter!
The carriage suddenly shook violently.
Katrina grabbed the carriage wall to keep herself from falling.
The shaking lasted only a moment before the carriage came to a stop.
“What happened?”
