“Are you Helena Owen?”
Perhaps that was when it started.
When God completely abandoned her.
That’s what Helena thought, having gone from a witch wandering the streets to becoming the noble Grand Duchess.
“Strangely, whenever I’m near you, my heart feels at peace. The more I think of you, the more I miss you. I wish… you felt the same way about me.”
Eugene Hyde von Evergale.
The owner of the land that all the villagers who cursed her stood upon.
From the moment she encountered the Grand Duke of Evergale, all her blessings and tragedies were born.
‘It’s all ancient history now.’
But it was a realization that no longer mattered.
Helena should have understood time sooner. Before its power that fades everything, both blessings and tragedies gradually became distant like marshlands swallowed by fog.
Memories grew hazier and distant as a magnificent drumbeat approached. Like announcing the end of the world, it pounded in her ears: boom, boom, boom.
“The execution of Helena Evergale will now commence.”
At last, once again. The executioner’s proclamation had fallen.
It was as concise and straightforward as her downfall. Not many words were needed to fall from noble Grand Duchess to a falsely accused, hideous death row prisoner.
Helena crawled like an empty can, kicked along by the executioner. With her eyelids swollen, it was difficult to see clearly.
She could barely feel the painful chafing of her two wrists against the rough rope. Her leg, broken and neglected for days, had lost all sensation.
Extreme cold gripped and twisted her to the bone. Helena tried to ruminate on the past but soon abandoned the thought.
As she bowed her head low, a dark shadow fell over her.
“Helena.”
Like when she first met him, her name carried on a pleasant deep resonance.
The voice with its breaking intonation always exuded a somewhat sensual atmosphere.
Even if someone might describe it as cold and chilling, to Helena, it was just one of the many reasons she fell in love with him.
However.
Had she known his voice would become poison strangling her breath, would she not have loved him?
‘No, I couldn’t have helped it.’
So this is how it ended up again. Helena struggled to lift her head and look up at Eugene.
“You’re the worst.”
She forced herself to meet those eyes, now devoid of even a trace of warmth.
“If you were going to abandon me like this, you should never have approached me in the first place.”
She wanted to remain cold until the end, but her lips trembled. It was an effort to hold back tears.
Sorrowful and grieving, her resentful anguish gradually welled up.
“You should never have given me affection. Never embraced me warmly. Never said you loved me. If you couldn’t follow through to the end!”
Finally, an outcry of passion erupted. It rose and rose until it collapsed ungracefully.
“To me, to me…… you should never have reached out your hand.”
Her voice, now thoroughly hoarse, subsided like embers after a fire.
More painful than the jeers and condemnation of the crowd was his single cold gaze. Especially since those eyes had not always been that way.
“Then I would have resigned myself to thinking my life was meant to be this gutter, and lived with that acceptance. Why did you make me hope, only to thrust me to the bottom, making me even more miserable? Did you enjoy watching me being swayed by your every word?”
“Do you think you have the right to be angry with me now?”
“You said you loved me. You said you would stay with me forever. After promising that… am I, am I… still worth only this much to you?”
“You brought this upon yourself, Helen. No matter how resentful you were, you shouldn’t have killed Natasha.”
“I didn’t kill her. Really. Please believe me.”
“…Hah, Helena.”
Eugene let out a rough sigh, suppressing his anger as he rubbed his face.
Helena wished her ears would go deaf, unable to bear hearing what would come next.
But even her bound hands weren’t allowed to cover her ears.
“Atone for taking Natasha from me with that wretched life of yours.”
A click of the tongue cruelly pierced her heart.
The gaze falling upon her stung as if slicing through her entire body.
“Eugene, Eugene…! Don’t go! Eugene!”
Despite Helena’s desperate cries, he turned away with a disgusted expression, as if looking at filthy waste.
The muffled sound of footsteps grew distant. It was overtaken by the cheers of the crowd that had gathered to witness the execution.
Amidst the commotion, the executioner grabbed Helena’s hair and dragged her onto the guillotine.
Ah, ah, ah…
Only sighs that couldn’t form sentences circled her throat.
To her, whose entire world was his love, if that love had been withdrawn, if there was no path of return.
‘How am I supposed to go on living now?’
The thoughts were brief. Under the dawn’s first light, the thick blade gleamed.
Soon it struck her nape with a squelching sound.
Slash!
And so her first life rolled away.
“Huck, huh…!”
After two more lives crumbled, when she opened her eyes for the fourth time.
Helena finally realized.
It was truly time to end this love with him.
****
Once, Helena was smart enough to know her place. The tough witch of the destitute Owen family, willing to throw away a noble name and dignity for money. That’s who she was.
Without a protective dress, her natural face and body were not blessings but sins. She instinctively understood that if she sold her only assets, it would only bring greater misfortune.
So, because she knew too well. She had committed acts beyond her station.
“Please go back now. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come looking for me anymore.”
However, Eugene was not a man docile enough to accept her presumptuous rejection.
Despite wary glances and numerous discouragements from those around him, he promised eternity every day, offering flowers and jewels.
No matter how much she tried to ignore and push him away, he would appear the next day with an even larger bouquet. He would persistently visit, even while coughing continuously due to his flower pollen allergy.
Contrary to her expectation that he would soon give up, his courtship continued beyond a week, a month, and even past half a year.
Seeing his persistence, Helena helplessly gave him her heart. Knowing that she shouldn’t go deeper, the dripping water that fell drop by drop eventually broke through the wall.
The powerful Grand Duke of the North and the fallen Viscount’s daughter.
A pair that didn’t match, like puzzle pieces wrongly fitted together.
So the marriage announcement finally made by the Grand Duke of Evergale was truly groundbreaking. To those who enjoyed gossip, Helena was the perfect appetizer to stimulate their appetite.
[She certainly knows how to use that pretty face of hers.]
[Shameless, isn’t she? I heard she made clearing all her family’s debts a condition for marriage. Why is the Grand Duke so desperate to have such a brazen woman by his side?]
[She’s been quite notorious for being promiscuous. This time, I bet she got herself pregnant.]
Whether commoners or nobles, the weight of their tongues was no different. Though they whispered in her presence, the moment they turned their backs, low-quality speculations and gossip pushed her into an abyss.
But Helena endured all the persecution.
“Forget them all. No matter what anyone says, you will be my wife.”
Solely because of the fact that Eugene loved her.
That one fact, which should be natural between lovers, kept her alive. He was her reason for living and her savior.
She believed it was a fateful meeting like those of fairy tale protagonists. It was the first stroke of luck in her otherwise miserable life.
It was like that until that beautiful blonde woman, Natasha, appeared.
“I don’t want to take your place as the lady of the house. Let’s be friends, shall we?”
Sadly, behind every fairy tale always lurked a snake dressed in cruelty. Those who coveted positions they shouldn’t dare approach had to be punished.
The snake opened its maw, and Helena realized. She was not the protagonist.
When had it started? When Eugene’s lips began to speak Natasha’s name instead of hers.
Foolishly, by the time she knew him, she had already come too far. So this time couldn’t end the same way.
‘Even if I die again, I won’t die by your hand.’
Her life was nothing compared to the pain of being discarded by him.
It was the most peaceful ending Helena could have at that moment.
****
In a sun-filled indoor garden. The Grand Duke and Duchess of Evergale sat at an elegantly set tea table.
The steam rising from the teacup dampened Helena’s cheek, awakening her dazed mind.
Helena scratched the gold-decorated edge of the teacup with her fingertip before looking up. Through the large window, she could see her dedicated lady-in-waiting, Madam Tara, waiting outside. She was the only one in the mansion who knew about her relationship with Eugene.
They say life is a comedy when seen from afar and a tragedy when seen up close. Even from afar, the scene inside the greenhouse looked quite miserable.
Madam Tara, perhaps maintaining minimum courtesy, kept her head lowered, desperately avoiding looking at her. Her behavior made Helena even more aware of her situation.
‘It seems nothing has changed this time either.’
The fourth life she encountered after going through three regressions was slightly different. She had always returned to the moment of her third year of marriage, when she was spending the night with him. This time, she woke up in the fifth year.
At first, she was a bit excited, wondering if there had been a turning point. But it was a vain hope.
In fact, from the moment she woke up in her own separate room instead of Eugene’s bed, she had vaguely suspected it. Since there was only one outcome anyway, it was easier on her heart to consider it God’s arrangement, telling her not to waste any more effort.
Helena had doubled down on trying to maintain a comfortable heart throughout the night. That’s why she was sitting here now.
To finally put an end to this relationship where they exchanged neither conversation nor glances.
‘The word “couple” was quite wasted on us, wasn’t it?’
Swallowing a faint emptiness, Helena brought the teacup to her lips.
Eugene possessed vast territories in the northern part of the Empire of Instantia. The former Grand Duke was a great man who had ended the long territorial war, and Eugene too had inherited his reputation as an invincible national hero.
Additionally, Evergale had several huge businesses that had been running for decades since the time of the previous generation. The shipbuilding industry in the Senova Archipelago and the magic stone mines in the Hecate region boasted the largest scale in the empire. Eugene maintained them firmly, proving himself a capable businessman who extracted enormous wealth.
But as is often the case with figures of his stature. He was always busy.
Just this month alone, not only had she barely heard his voice, but she could count on one hand the number of times she had seen his face.
So, with him being so occupied with public and private affairs.
‘That’s why he never speaks first even when we’re face to face.’
But whether he was a hero of the empire, the Grand Duke Evergale that everyone admired, or secretly having an affair.
It was all irrelevant now.
Because soon, she and he would become strangers.
very exciting 😻😻