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Chapter 11
At that moment, Benjamin called out to her.
“Helena.”
Helena glared at him with eyes that seemed to burn.
What do you want, you bastard.
She had never felt hatred this fierce in her entire life.
Benjamin Ispern.
He was nothing more than a flashy-looking pauper, and that was precisely why he was marrying her for her dowry. If that were the case, he should have been worshipping the ground she walked on like a queen. Instead, he believed nothing but baseless rumors floating around the capital and treated her as a promiscuous, thoroughly ruined woman.
When Benjamin met her gaze filled with seething hatred, what curved his lips was that twisted smile she had once thought beautiful.
“Thank you.”
Slowly, he raised his hand and touched Helena’s cheek.
“I, too, will love only you for the rest of my life.”
To Helena’s ears, that vow sounded less like a declaration of love and more like a proclamation of war—we will spend our lives locked in bitter conflict.
Get a grip, Helena.
She turned her gaze back to the marriage vows.
The wedding was irreversible anyway.
Benjamin Ispern, you think everything will go exactly the way you want right now, don’t you? But there’s one thing you don’t know. I am Helena Winston. Come on—let’s see how this plays out.
There was something he didn’t know.
She was not an unfortunate woman being forced into marriage, shoved along by scandal and sweetened with a dowry.
She was an empress’s agent, marrying him to uncover the secret he was hiding.
Until the day Benjamin finally opened his heart to her, she would endure and wait.
And the moment he trusted her completely, she would strip away his secrets without leaving a single speck of dust behind.
Helena began reading the marriage vows aloud, her voice fierce and resolute.
“Thus, as the master of the Ispern family, stewards of this great domain, and as a wise and discerning husband and wife, and as companions whose bodies and souls are one, we vow before God and our two honorable families to move forward together.”
As she spoke the words, she swore silently to herself.
You’re dead. I’ll uncover every secret you’re hiding and drag you straight into ruin. If that’s what it takes, I can tolerate someone like you easily. And when you come crying and begging later, don’t expect even a shred of mercy.
When her vow ended, the priest opened his mouth.
“By this, I proclaim before God that the two of you are now husband and wife.”
3. Burwood
The journey to Burwood was the worst.
Ah—.
Helena corrected herself.
No. Not every part of the journey was terrible.
The trip from Hodelin, the domain of Count Winston, to Dyras, where the gate was located, was a journey Helena knew well—comfortable and pleasant. She left Hodelin in a carriage prepared by Count Winston, seeing her off amid the tearful farewells of people who loved her.
The carriage Count Winston provided for his daughter glided smoothly along the well-paved road, as if cutting across ice. Whenever they reached a scenic spot, she enjoyed picnics with the maids traveling with her, and when night fell, they stayed at the estates of friendly nobles, treated as honored guests.
“I can’t believe this. A distance that would take just one day on horseback, and we’re crawling along for three whole days.”
Benjamin Ispern complained loudly enough for her to hear, but Helena paid him no mind.
You’re noisy. Please just be quiet.
That was all she thought.
The pleasant, comfortable journey lasted only as far as Dyras, the central city of the North.
Upon arriving in Dyras, Helena had to send the carriage and her maids back. To travel from north to south, she had to use the gate—the fastest and safest means of travel.
From the moment she set foot in the bizarre ruins she had never seen before, Helena’s hell began.
Gates were originally an important mode of transportation for imperial nobles. But Helena, who had never left the capital or nearby cities, had never used one in her life.
So she didn’t know—didn’t know that her gate sickness would be that severe.
It was a sensation she had never experienced before. Her entire body felt like a sugar cube dropped into water, melting away, then being forcibly compressed back together. It resembled a horrific hangover, but was at least three times worse.
In short, it was utterly nauseating.
The moment she stepped out at the gate of Larrings, a major southern city, Helena emptied everything in her stomach into the paper bag she was holding—and promptly fainted.
Her ordeal didn’t end there.
When Helena regained consciousness, she nearly fainted again at the sight of the ramshackle carriage waiting for her, shaped like a coffin.
A string of vicious curses nearly rose to the tip of her tongue at Count Ispern’s utter lack of preparation—but she swallowed them back down.
No. Don’t expect anything from that count.
As Helena climbed into the carriage with a deeply displeased expression, she heard the count muttering behind her.
“It may not be to your liking, but this was the only carriage we could procure on such short notice.”
Helena shot him a murderous glare, then slammed the door shut with a bang loud enough to echo.
The rusted hinges screeched in protest on her behalf.
And so Helena began her tour of hell, loaded into a coffin.
According to a man named Aaron, the count’s adjutant, the distance from Larrings to Burwood would take seven days if one rode without stopping, day and night. With a carriage, he added, it would take another day or two.
In reality, the journey through hell took ten days. And for those ten days, Helena suffered pain so intense she thought it might have been better to die.
Inside the cheap carriage hurtling along rough roads, Helena’s body was tossed up and down all day long. Her brain bounced around inside her skull, and every time the carriage shook, her lower jaw trembled violently, her teeth clattering together.
Naturally sensitive by disposition, Helena already lived with frequent headaches. In these conditions, the pain was unimaginable.
When she shut her eyes and endured the clattering of her teeth, a hideous headache—born of extreme stress and motion sickness—overwhelmed her, as though a rusted rake were slowly tearing through her brain.
Wrapped head to toe in furs, Helena curled up on the carriage seat, enduring the headache and nausea over and over again.
Whenever the wheels struck a large rock, her fragile body would be flung into the air before crashing back down onto the carriage floor.
Each time, tears of pure, burning frustration slid down her pale cheeks.
Meanwhile, the accursed Count Ispern, as though hoping she would die, pretended not to look—yet still checked on her several times a day.
Helena repaid his pathetic concern with a glare full of resentment.
Even swallowing anything was a struggle. The water tasted of metal, and the food tasted of dirt.
Eventually, Helena refused to eat altogether. Since she would only vomit anyway, she thought it better to eat nothing at all.
But the count, as if trying to kill her with food, kept bringing strange, unidentifiable dishes and tossing them in front of her as though feeding a dog.
She deliberately stirred them up and sent them back untouched.
The motion sickness was unbearable while the carriage was moving—but it didn’t stop even when it halted.
When she stepped down from the carriage, the ground squelched beneath her feet like mud, and the sky spun endlessly above her head.
She truly felt like she was going to die.
During those ten days of travel, Helena barely ate and never slept deeply. It was the worst suffering she had ever experienced in her life.
Amid that hellish torment, the only thing she could cling to was imagining the moment when Count Ispern would be judged.
When we return to the capital, I’ll ask Her Majesty the Empress to send a carriage. And I’ll tie that count to the back of it.
Imagining Count Ispern dangling from the rear of the carriage, bawling his eyes out, made her feel a little better.
Helena let out a weak, breathy laugh from her gaunt face.
Ten days later, when Sir Aaron, the count’s adjutant, knocked on the carriage window to announce that they were nearing Burwood, Helena nearly burst into tears of relief.
First, a hot bath. That will fix everything. Then I’ll bury myself in a soft feather quilt and not move for at least two days.
But as they drew closer to the Ispern family castle, Helena’s expectations shifted into unease.
Sinister gray clouds spread dimly across a blood-red sunset sky.
The hill on which the castle stood was covered in pampas grass grown taller than a man, and around the moat bloomed dense clusters of crimson spider lilies.
At the center of it all stood a ruin—half scorched, half rotted—looming ominously.
What… is that…?
So shocked that she even forgot her nausea, Helena straightened up inside the carriage.
The carriage slowly passed through the rusted main gate that barely closed properly. Helena glanced up at the ornament hanging from the archway and thought how grotesque the decoration was.
But the moment that thought crossed her mind, every ornament spread its wings and let out a hideous cry.
They weren’t decorations.
They were all crows.
The carriage passed through a garden overrun with weeds like a jungle and finally stopped before a blackened, charred castle.
Helena couldn’t control her expression.
She stepped down from the carriage, her face bleached white.
I have to… live here…?
As she stood there like a ghost, Benjamin Ispern approached her with a crooked, polite smile.
“Welcome to our home, my lady.”
