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Chapter 2
“Rudy, Rudy… Ludiana!”
“Gasp—!”
“Oh dear, child, are you alright?”
The languid afternoon sunlight filtered through the curtains. Ludiana opened her eyes to the voice she had yearned for so deeply.
“M… Mother?”
A pair of eyes resembling her own was gazing down at her with a gentle smile. At that sight, tears began to stream down Ludiana’s cheeks.
“Rudy, it’s alright. It was all just a dream. Mother is right here.”
“Hic, sob…”
I must be in heaven. That’s why I’m seeing Mother again.
If that were true, dying had been worth it. Ludiana buried her face deep into her mother’s embrace.
“Eek!”
“Young Master! Are you alright?!”
Just then, a sound far too vivid and sharp for heaven echoed from outside the door. At the commotion, accompanied by a strange sense of déjà vu that crept over her, Ludiana stopped crying and rushed outside.
“How… dare you!!”
There, a young Nartas and Irene were on the ground.
As people gathered, Nartas’s face turned flush with anger. He raised his hand and brought it down hard on Irene’s left cheek, though she was a head shorter than him.
Slap!
A sound far too loud and violent for a child’s hand echoed through the air.
“Irene!”
Roselyne, their mother who had followed right behind Ludiana, rushed forward frantically. Wrapping her arms around the trembling Irene, Roselyne’s voice laced with pain.
“Nartas, Irene is your younger sister.”
Roselyne’s voice trembled faintly with suppressed anger.
“Ha, sister? I don’t have a sister like her, Lady Roselyne.”
Emphasizing the last words, Nartas crossed his arms with an arrogant expression.
It was a familiar scene—a moment from the past that she could never forget. Unlike the three women who had been banished to the detached annex, Nartas, the heir of the Nurnbern family, lived in the main house. Normally, they would not have crossed paths, but today was the day Nartas had wandered over here out of curiosity.
“Nartas.”
Roselyne lowered her voice as she pulled Irene up to stand.
I remember. Back then, I lost my temper and pounced on him.
Because of the injury she had inflicted on him, Ludiana had been dragged to the main house and subjected to severe punishment.
“How dare a mere girl leave a scar on the body of Nurnbern’s heir?”
At the time, Rhea—Nartas’s birth mother and Ludiana’s stepmother—had whipped Ludiana until her calves were black-and-blue and swollen.
Their father, Jonas, had done nothing to stop it either. After that day, Ludiana never dared to defy Nartas again.
“But why?”
Back then, it was simply because she couldn’t bear to watch Nartas hit Irene and treat her mother with such disrespect.
“Mother, I-I’m fine…”
Irene’s trembling hand tightly gripped the hem of Roselyne’s skirt.
Roselyne’s dress was worn out, thin, and frayed. Irene’s clothes, far too small for her growing body, had sleeves pulled up like a pickpocket’s. In contrast, Nartas’s attire gleamed with flawless, luxurious silk and shimmering ornaments.
“Irene…”
Roselyne’s heart ached at the sight of her daughter’s trembling little hands.
Knowing full well that even Roselyne, the legal wife, could do nothing to him, Nartas raised his chin even higher.
“Ha, what a truly pathetic annex. Let’s go!”
“Yes, our Irene was impolite. I apologize, Young Master Nartas Werther.”
At that moment, Ludiana stepped forward. She bowed her head, putting deliberate emphasis on the final words.
“What?”
Nartas, who was about to turn around with his servants in tow, felt his face flush bright red at her words. As if she had struck a raw nerve that should never be touched, the veins on his young forehead bulged.
“I offered my apologies, Young Master Nartas.”
Ludiana bowed her head once more, as if she had merely made a mistake while trying to show proper etiquette. However, she had thoroughly omitted the surname ‘Nurnbern’.
“You—you lowly bitch!!”
Werther was the surname of Nartas’s mother, Rhea. After giving birth to him, Rhea had wanted to become Jonas’s official wife, but because Jonas had not yet granted it, she remained ‘Rhea Werther.’
Although Nartas bore the name Nurnbern, he had always harbored an inferiority complex over the fact that his mother did not.
Eventually, Rhea will become a Nurnbern.
But for now, she was still a Werther.
“Why are you so angry, Young Master Nartas?”
Ludiana offered him a bright, innocent smile.
Breathing heavily, Nartas glared at her. Yet in the end, huffing and puffing, he turned around and stomped away down the hallway.
The moment he turned his back, Ludiana’s smile hardened into a cold, piercing glare.
Useless piece of trash.
And this was only the beginning. In a few months, her mother’s health would begin to deteriorate for unknown reasons, and she would pass away before the year was out. Despite more than a few suspicious circumstances, Jonas never bothered to investigate.
It must have been Rhea—or Jonas’s doing.
Her mother’s funeral was fleetingly and miserably short. Immediately afterward, Rhea became the official wife of Nurnbern. Even so, she always carried the label of ‘second wife,’ and Nartas’s complex only deepened as time went on.
“Rudy.”
Behind her, Roselyne’s trembling voice called out to her.
Ludiana hurriedly changed her expression back to an innocent one and turned around.
“Yes, Mother?”
Her poor mother, pushed aside for a concubine and banished to this annex.
“Why did you…”
Roselyne trailed off, noticing that Ludiana had intentionally humiliated Nartas.
“Pardon? Why what?”
Ludiana played dumb, puffing out her cheeks—still soft with baby fat—with a smile. Anyone looking at that smile would never believe she had deliberately provoked Nartas.
“…It’s nothing.”
Roselyne convinced herself that her child could not possibly be capable of such calculation, and said no more.
“Anyway, Mother, Irene’s cheek looks very sore. I’ll go fetch something to bring the swelling down.”
“Alright, thank you.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
Offering a smile to her still-sniffling younger sister, Ludiana headed toward the kitchen.
Unlike the main house, which bustled with servants, the annex was virtually abandoned. Crumbling without anyone to tend to it, there was not a single servant here. Ludiana, her mother, and her sister had to handle everything on their own.
Entering the kitchen, she hurriedly filled a bucket with water.
“Did I really come back?”
Her amethyst-colored eyes trembled in shock as she looked at her reflection in the water.
Her long black hair was coarse from hunger, and her thin cheeks, though still bearing the soft traits of youth, were hollow. Her lips were pale and blue, chilled by the freezing temperature of the annex even though it was spring.
It was her exact appearance from her memories at thirteen years old.
“Ha!”
After standing dazed for a moment, Ludiana burst into a dry laugh. It was a laugh mixed with futility, relief, and a swell of overwhelming emotions.
Above all, what surged from within her chest was pure joy.
I can save Mother. I can save Irene, too!
In her past life, she had lost both of them. Roselyne’s body had broken down through frequent childbirth and neglect, and Irene, sold off in marriage like a piece of merchandise, had ended her own life in despair.
They were the most tragic fates a woman of the empire could meet.
If I really have come back…
This time, she would save them no matter what. A firm resolve blazed within her violet eyes.
However, Ludiana soon let out a sigh as she looked at her reflection once more.
First, we need to get out of here.
But how?
Even if they fled the family, they would only die on the streets. They needed someone’s help…
Ah.
The face of a man crossed her mind. The man who had defended her with genuine fury on the day of her execution. The man who had shed sincere tears at her mother’s funeral.
Allen Pianus. She had to find him.
After bringing the bucket of water and a clean cloth to Irene’s room, Ludiana returned to her own room.
There’s no time.
Allen Pianus would later become the heart of the East and the only man capable of keeping Nurnbern’s power in check. But at this point in time, there was only one occasion where he would travel to the West.
“His Majesty the Emperor’s coronation!”
The coronation of Casimir de Kalatos, the Crown Prince and son of Leopold de Kalatos—the hero who had transformed the Western Kingdom of Kalatos into an Empire.
On the day of the Emperor’s coronation, all the nobles of the Empire would gather. In particular, the Eastern nobles would attend in large numbers to swear their allegiance.
The coronation was a mere three days away. On that day, she had to find Duke Pianus no matter what.
Though the wind was still cold, the tip of her nose flushed red, and her breath turned white in the air, Ludiana looked out the window with a face flushed hot with anticipation.
