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Chapter 16
“Atul!”
Clutching the pendant to her chest, Freya cried out in despair. She hadn’t turned her back on him for this. If she had known it would end like this, she would have treated him better. She would have run away with him, no matter where.
No—she never should have spoken to him in the first place. If only they had remained strangers, Atul could have lived happily forever with his kind father…
Just as her father had said, it was all her fault. Because of her greed. Because she had dared to covet the happiness called freedom.
Lancelot forced the stunned Freya to her feet and shook her violently.
“Stop those tears! A noble lady like you must not waste her tears on a filthy worm like that! You are the daughter of House Swan, the child of Lancelot Swan, the Count himself!”
But even as his harsh voice thundered, Freya’s empty eyes kept spilling endless tears. The veins bulged on Lancelot’s forehead.
“If you cry another tear, I will burn this entire village to the ground. And that too will be your fault!”
In that instant, Freya came to her senses. She glared into her father’s demonic eyes and screamed.
“You devil! Bastard! Rot in hell!”
Kicking wildly, she spat in his face. Lancelot stared in shock at the outburst of the daughter who had always been so docile.
“It’s you who should die! Not Atul, you!”
She clawed at his hand and bit him. For a moment, Lancelot simply stared at her rebellion with a stony face—then hurled her hard onto the ground.
“Damn it. You’ve been far too tainted by those vermin. This is why I didn’t want to entrust you to Elena. You’ve inherited only your mother’s weakness. Aaron!”
“……”
Aaron stared blankly as Freya cursed Lancelot while crawling on the floor. This wasn’t the gentle, composed young lady he knew. Again, Lancelot barked.
“Aaron! Do you not hear me?”
“Yes, my lord!”
“You saw it too, didn’t you? That beast is no daughter of mine. Take her home at once. We will begin correction tonight. Prepare for it!”
“Y-yes, my lord. My lady, please rise.”
“No! Let me go!”
Freya struggled, gasping for breath, eyes burning with hatred fixed on Lancelot. In her fiery gaze burned a vow of revenge against her father.
That night, Freya died. The Freya who once laughed with Atul on the hilltop was gone. All that remained was a child, reduced to ashes, living only for the sake of atonement to Atul.
“Haah!”
Freya awoke clutching her chest. Her whole body was drenched in sweat. The dream had been too vivid—so much so that tears still streamed down her face. At any moment, she felt, her father might burst through the door, screaming.
‘No… Father is…’
Without even wiping her tears, she ran to the wardrobe. Opening the bottom drawer, she pushed aside neatly folded undergarments and lifted a wooden panel. Beneath it lay a small pink box.
She opened it, and a sweet scent drifted out. Inside were sugar cubes. Freya counted them one by one.
“One, two, three…”
Exactly ten. She sank down where she stood.
“It’s all right. Father is dead… He no longer exists in this world.”
As if casting a spell on herself, she wiped away her tears.
Lancelot Swan had possessed a stubborn grip on life. He had returned from a brutal battlefield without a single scratch. On the day of the May Revolution, he had survived by using his wife as a shield.
Even after several assassination attempts, he clung to life. His enemies mockingly called him “the Cockroach Count.”
Freya had hoped her father would live long—wracked by illness, suffering endlessly until he finally died. She opened his windows to the cold at night, and served him food said to harm one’s health.
But nothing touched him. His frailty came only from age and overwork, not sickness. Each night, she prayed for plague or pestilence to take him away.
Then one day, disaster struck: Lancelot discovered her secret.
He learned she had been secretly siphoning money. In a rage, he threatened to cut off her allowance and even destroy the places she supported.
Cornered, Freya decided to act as he had taught her: sacrifice the small to gain the great.
She abandoned her plan to let illness kill him—and resolved to kill him herself. To protect what mattered, there was no other way.
Once she made that choice, she began searching for a pliable husband. She whispered to Jacob about the things Lancelot favored, nudging him into her father’s good graces. If she married someone so naïve, he would be easy to manipulate financially.
Her plan worked. Jacob pleased Lancelot, and talk of marriage began. Lancelot even revised his will in Jacob’s favor.
All that remained was for Freya to marry Jacob and feed her father one of the sugar cubes laced with arsenic she had commissioned.
She had heard arsenic poisoning brought agonizing death. She wanted to give her father that short but searing torment.
But fate, as always, betrayed her. Count Lancelot Swan died suddenly—of a heart attack, peacefully in his sleep.
It was absurd. Freya screamed at his corpse to get up. He wasn’t supposed to die so easily.
Compared to his crimes, he had lived far too beautiful a life. He should have suffered alive.
And now, what tormented her was not only his quiet death. Jacob, whom she had intended merely as a tool, betrayed her with an affair.
She could have endured a mistress. So long as it did not interfere with her plans, she would have tolerated it. But he had deceived her, made a fool of her, and chosen silence.
Just like her father.
As with most nobles, Lancelot had a mistress. But he never hid it from his wife. Instead, he flaunted it, taunted her, tested her.
Elena had endured, pretended ignorance, and in the end won the chance for Freya to grow up in the Mirror Manor.
But the cost of her obedience had been a miserable death.
Freya would not follow her mother’s path. She could not abide a husband with even a trace of her father in him.
Jacob was valuable only while pliable. In this fatherless house, she had to seize control herself if she was to reach her goal.
‘Uncle Spencer will help me.’
He had always been on her side. Thinking of his kind face gave her courage. Firm in her resolve, she put the sugar cube box back into the drawer and wrote a short letter.
When she tugged the bell cord, a maid appeared within minutes. Freya handed her the note.
“I no longer need the necklace I ordered. Cancel it with the jeweler. And send another maid to help me change.”
The maid bowed and left. Freya watched her go in silence.
This way, Mr. Dylan would understand her situation. If only Nancy were here, it would be easier…
With a sigh, she undressed before the mirror. As expected, such things didn’t suit her. As she lowered her stockings, she heard a phantom voice—Atul’s.
‘Do you think this will earn you forgiveness?’
Her hands froze briefly, then she finished pulling off the stockings. She knew. Rebuilding that place could never absolve her sins.
But if she did nothing, she feared she would end her life before her atonement was complete. Death, that final rest, was too much of a luxury. She had to live, no matter what.
Her life had stopped long ago—on that day when her first love, the beautiful boy, screamed and burned in the flames.
Nine-year-old Freya, watching his house consumed, had vowed to live her whole life in penance. She swore never to seek happiness, but to aid those who reminded her of him.
For that, she had to become mistress of the Swan household. To atone to that boy, she needed power and money.
A polite knock came at the door.
“My lady, I was told you summoned me.”
“Come in.”
Freya tightened her corset, covered her ankles, and composed a serene smile as though nothing had happened. She dined with Jacob as usual and strolled the garden with him.
Though she longed to strangle him then and there, she did not. Instead, she silently counted numbers to endure the moment.
‘Up on the hill lies the spotted cow…’
She carried a memory: the beautiful manor reflected like a mirror on the lake.
As long as she remembered the boy carving wood there, she could breathe. As long as the Mirror Manor still stood in reality, she could go on living.
She could live as Lady Freya Swan—gentle, beautiful, and flawless—for as long as it took.
