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Chapter 1 – The Second Suicide
Drops of blood dripped from the tip of the sword.
Diana stared at it blankly.
The metallic scent of blood splattered on the floor. It had been a long time since she had seen blood. She simply gazed at that cruel color.
“Aaaargh!”
The bleeding man clutched his tattered arm and groaned. If the cut had been just a little deeper, his arm would surely have been severed.
No—perhaps that arm was already beyond saving.
Diana watched the injured man without any real sense of reality. She felt no sympathy for him. He had tried to harass her, after all.
The problem was the man who had saved her.
Giscard Lodbrok.
The man who had ruined her life.
The one who had thrown her into the pit of hell and stayed to watch until her last breath.
In her younger days, he had been dazzlingly beautiful—her beloved monster.
“What the…”
In her second life, she had thought he wouldn’t follow her.
She had resisted fate with all her might, certain he wouldn’t go this far to hold onto her.
But as the prophecy foretold, this monster had found her again in the end.
Those beautiful violet eyes turned toward her.
She averted her gaze from the eyes that scanned her body, and his brows drew together.
“What the hell are you doing! What are you—”
“That’s the price for harassing my wife.”
Wife?! Married?
Diana’s lips parted slightly in disbelief.
The man who had found her and cruelly invaded her world spoke those words as if they were nothing.
Her refined lips nearly spat out a curse.
Despair washed over her.
“Wife? You’re calling me your wife? What are you talking about!”
When she shouted, the monster replied,
“Exactly as I said, my lady.”
She shook her head. But he didn’t care. Of course he didn’t—he had been the same in her past life.
Back then, it had been marriage that had hurled her into the abyss.
Living at the side of this monster, tormented without end.
And now she was being sent to that hell again.
She shook her head in disbelief. No. This can’t be happening. I tried this time. Unlike my first life, I tried harder.
To avoid marrying him.
Diana shook her head like a madwoman.
Marriage?
Again?
She had been so miserably unhappy married to this bastard in her previous life, and now—marriage again?
Her eyes darted around. Knights of the Lodbrok Kingdom surrounded her. Escape was impossible.
In that case… there was only one thing to do.
Diana drew the dagger from her bosom.
“I’d rather die than marry you.”
Clenching her teeth, she turned the blade toward herself and drove it into her slender neck.
The dagger would soon tear open her throat.
The pain would be brief; death would come quickly.
So this is my second death.
Diana, in her arrogance, was certain of it.
Diana’s first death had been a little more dramatic than this.
She often wondered later why she had made such a spectacle of it.
Looking back, she could only scoff.
Her first death had been more emotional, more despairing, and far more painful.
“Your Majesty.”
On the white balcony railing sat a woman, precariously perched.
Her full, moonlight-golden hair fluttered beautifully in the night air.
She wore a fluttering white dress over her slender frame, her small white feet dangling into empty space.
She looked like a fairy about to vanish into the sky.
“What is it?”
Her silvery-gray eyes curved softly as she smiled faintly.
It was the first time she had felt such liberation.
And as she did, the monster’s expression stiffened.
He knew exactly what choice she was about to make.
Was this how he would look if the rabbit he held in his iron grip bit his hand?
Either way, she found it amusing. She was rebelling against him with all her might.
“Come down. Right now.”
For once, her face shone with the liveliness of the girl she had once been—
the face that had so often been mocked as lifeless.
Thinking of the end, Diana’s face was madly beautiful.
Perhaps he wanted to possess that beauty—or feared losing it.
The monster took a step toward her.
Her expression cracked like shattering glass.
“Don’t come any closer. If you do, I’ll jump immediately.”
She spat out the words.
Behind her was nothing but air.
If she let go and leaned forward, she would plummet to the ground.
He froze in place.
She looked at him with a satisfied smile.
“Your Majesty, what on earth are you doing?!”
The furious steward shouted.
It was only natural—what king’s wife stages a public suicide attempt?
The steward had always disliked her.
“Shut up,” the monster growled.
For an instant, a killing aura filled the air.
Killing aura—that crushing presence that had always smothered her, the fear she had lived under.
But now she was no longer afraid. She was going to end it.
“Your Majesty, we’ve known each other far too long, haven’t we? Over ten years, counting the marriage.”
“…”
“I’m utterly sick of it.”
Her calm tone made him stare at her.
“Revenge—yes, that obvious, disgusting revenge.”
“…”
“I don’t blame you. You trampled my country and my family, and though I wanted to kill you for it, the truth is… my country and my family did insult and abuse you when you were a prince.”
“…”
“Isn’t that right? Revenge is the law of nobles and royals.
So even if you dragged me—crying over the severed heads of my father and brother—like a dog and forced me to marry you, I have nothing to say.”
Her words dripped with sarcasm but were sincere.
She had never been able to say such things before.
If she did while in his grasp, it would look like pathetic groveling.
Her pride could never allow that.
“But… I can’t live like this anymore. You bastard.”
For the first time, foul words passed her elegant lips—
the vilest words ever spoken by the refined noblewoman and queen.
“What? What exactly?”
He sounded as if he truly couldn’t understand.
She gave a hollow laugh.
A queen in name only, not even a royal by birth but a noble from a fallen kingdom—
Revenge.
It was only for revenge that she had been dragged here, her pride crushed, her tears used as his song of triumph.
He had brought her into this hell, and now he had the gall to ask what?
Diana bit her lip and glared at the monster—her husband, her destroyer—with pure hatred.
When her abdomen twinged, she placed her hand on it.
She had endured much.
She had lived to disappoint those who wanted to see her broken and weeping.
But she had reached her limit.
“I hear Alexa, my dear little sister, is already dead.”
“…”
“I thought… if she were alive, maybe I could see her again.”
The monster flinched—a rare sight, seeing him unsettled.
Diana gently rubbed her belly, a faint satisfaction welling in her chest.
In truth, she had known of Alexa’s death long ago.
She had wept blood in her heart and let her poor sister go.
What she said now was only an excuse.
Because she refused to give this man her real reason for dying.
I’m sorry, Alexa, she thought, for using even her sister’s death as an excuse.
“Diana, let me explain—”
His violet eyes were suddenly urgent.
She looked into them calmly and smiled the gentlest smile she could muster.
“Explain? Why, dear… that’s not like us at all.”
“Diana!”
Why was he making that face?
Why was he looking at her like that?
Hadn’t he enjoyed her misery?
Hadn’t he let it fester?
Hadn’t he wanted her to beg at his feet?
“Please. Please come down, Diana.”
Her eyes stung.
The sorrow she had wanted to hide from him pressed to the surface.
She mustn’t be deceived by that face.
Her heart wavered just slightly at his pleading tone.
“Your Majesty… I have nothing left.”
No reason, no meaning to go on living.
A life that had been meant to end had been prolonged.
She had always known she was merely a trophy.
From the first day of their marriage, she had been dragged along with a leash around her neck—how could anyone not know?
A hollow title of queen, a fallen noble from a foreign land—always scorned for it.
And yet she had always chosen to live, because she believed dying was losing.
But she admitted defeat.
It was time to stop.
“I’m carrying your child.”
After she had fallen into despair upon hearing of her sister’s death,
Lady Le Bian had visited her—hand on her stomach, brimming with confidence—and had sweetly said:
“I’ll free you from that hollow title of queen.”
The woman who had killed Diana’s child came to her, smiling beautifully,
her cherry-blossom-pink hair fluttering, her teal eyes sparkling—
and announced she was pregnant.
