I Became The Monster Duke’s Second Wife

Prologue

Sunlight streamed in through ornate windows decorated with colorful stained glass.

Inside a huge ballroom that could easily seat hundreds of people, the Duke and Duchess of Alverton and their two daughters, Marianne and Grace, dined at a table so long they couldn’t see the person across from them.

“……Grace, I have a message for you.”

The Duke of Alverton, who had been eating without a word of conversation, suddenly turned to his second daughter, Grace.

Grace, who was eating quietly at the far end of the table, unlike her older sister Marianne, who was seated close to the Duke and Duchess of Alverton at the head table, turned at the sound of the duke.

“Yes. Speak, father.”

“I have news for you, and it comes from the Emperor himself.”

Grace stared at her father, the Duke of Alverton, who spoke to her in the kindest voice she had ever heard.

She was twenty years old, and this was her first marriage, and it was arranged by the Emperor. The situation should have surprised her, but she didn’t seem the least bit surprised.

“Is that so? Who is the person?”

The Duke of Alverton frowned slightly at Grace’s nonchalant response but then smiled warmly and replied.

“Arthur Felix, the cousin younger brother of His Imperial Majesty.”

“……Oh my!”

“My goodness. You mean Duke Felix, the greatest knight in the Empire, and owner of the largest Felix estate in the Empire?”

“Grace, other than this could not be better for you!”

As if waiting for the Duke of Alverton’s words, the Duchess of Alverton and Marianne responded with excitement.

Grace inwardly smirked at their excited voices and faces looking at her as if there could be no better man than this.

Even if a curse is attached to the duke with impeccable conditions, saying ‘every woman involved with him will either die or go insane’, can we really call it a consultation with him, who is known as the ‘cursed monster duke’?

Grace stared numbly at the faces of her family as they waited expectantly for her response.

They were smiling sweetly at her, smiling like she had never seen them smile before, asking her to accept the arranged marriage.

‘I didn’t know then. I thought I could be foolish and refuse.

Yes, at the time, she still thought they considered her family.

Right up until the moment she drank the poison they sent her in her first life and died, just two days after she refused the marriage.

But now that she’s been returned, she knows everything. The reason the Alvertons kept her in the family, rather than abandoning her ‘normal’ self, was because she had the potential to give birth to a child with magical abilities in the future.

They hadn’t abandoned her because they wanted to use her as a way to marry into the nobility and royalty who wanted to pass on magical abilities to their heirs.

But now that she had rejected the ‘arranged marriage’, they would have no reason to keep her alive any longer, since she was worth only that much.

Besides, if she died, she would not have to face the wrath of the emperor for daring to refuse to arrange a marriage for him.

Marriage or death.

After her miraculous turnaround, and faced with the choice once again, Grace smiled calmly and replied.

“Really? That makes me really happy.”

“I suppose I may interpret that to mean that you accept the marriage?”

The Duke of Alverton asked, amused by her words. Grace smiled lightly, turning to face him.

“Yes. I will marry him.”

Grace smiled broadly, pushing her flushed cheeks up to the corners of her mouth.

The girlish smile, which had always been a doll-like expression on a face that had been crushed by her family’s disdain, was filled with nothing but joy.

It was a smile that could only be worn by one who had finally freed themselves from the fate of death and begun a second life.