The Crazy Prologue Never Ends

35. Kill her!

Amidst the struggle, Deon, who had been standing nearby with his arms crossed, approached the soldiers.

“What’s going on?”

“It seems Young Lady wants to see the construction site.”

“Why, why can’t I?”

“Just wait, Leonie. It’s dangerous to get closer.”

He blocked my way. He was acting just like the soldiers.

“Your Highness.”

A new voice emerged.

“Why are you carving the stones?”

“What?”

He clenched his jaw.

“It’s not something you should be concerned about.”

“So, why are you carving the stones? Why won’t you tell me? It’s nothing special!”

My voice, now on edge, cut sharply like a knife.

He grabbed my arm.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Just wait. Let go of my arm.”

“It’s dangerous because stone fragments might fly. If you’re curious, ask here. Don’t get any closer.”

“Why? Are you inscribing something I shouldn’t see?”

A bitter laugh escaped me. He furrowed his brow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I roughly shook off his hand and rushed toward the stone surrounded by soldiers.

The soldiers who had been carving the stone stepped back when they saw me.

Edan approached me again.

“Young Lady, it’s dangerous.”

Dangerous? Could there be anything more dangerous to me than the creation of that gravestone?

He had always been kind, but I didn’t want to hear it now.

I hastily approached and tried to flip the stone.

No, I tried to flip it.

The heavy stone didn’t budge with my frail arms. My wrists only turned red from the effort.

The rock, which several soldiers were holding, wouldn’t budge in my hand.

“Please flip it.”

I said, looking at Edan standing next to me.

“Let me do it.”

“…Young Lady.”

“Should I do it?”

He hesitated and glanced at Deon. Deon nodded. With permission granted, Deon flipped the stone with one hand.

With his touch, the stone easily turned over.

As the stone flipped, it made a heavy sound and split in half as it hit the ground.

A short snowstorm occurred.

Gradually, the snow cleared, revealing the stone. The stone had engravings that appeared to have been scratched on it.

Laurel leaves. And an unfinished wing on one side. Sporadically etched feather patterns within it.

It was the emblem of the Duke.

It wasn’t a gravestone.

I felt disappointed. They had blocked me because they were afraid the stone might fall.

Their words were entirely true.

I stared at the broken piece of stone, just as it was, thinking that simplicity might bring comfort. But simplifying things would only make death simpler.

I bit my lips tightly.

I was anxious without realizing it.

My mind was filled with Elizabeth and the threat posed by the soon-to-be-born baby.

“What on earth is going on?”

“…I’m sorry. I was too sensitive.”

“Leonie.”

He called my name and wiped under my eyes with his hand.

His eyes flickered. The skin he brushed against stung.

“The stone splintered when it flipped.”

Did it?

I turned my gaze away from the broken stone and stared blankly at him.

“You say you don’t like blood, but you always seem to inflict wounds on yourself.”

He looked at me with an unreadable expression.

“Do you still dislike blood now?”

“No. I still dislike it.”

I hurriedly made my excuses.

Here, all of it. I hate it all. It’s dreadful.

* * *

Due to an unexpected interference by the Duke, the construction ended anticlimactically. The soldiers returned to their positions.

The piled firewood burned, and ashes scattered.

“I’m sorry. I ruined the construction you prepared so hard for.”

I apologized again.

“It wasn’t that important.”

He replied indifferently.

“I see.”

Smoke wafted in the opposite direction.

As I blankly watched the rising ashes, I broke the silence and spoke again.

“When will the Count’s family arrive, Your Grace?”

I bit my fingernails. The thin, brittle nails easily snapped off, falling in small pieces to the floor. The white nails left no trace as they fell, hidden by the white snow.

He casually pushed the broken stone to the edge.

“They will arrive as scheduled.”

“…Is there any chance they might arrive earlier?”

He turned to look at me.

“Why? Isn’t it better for Lady Arien to stay here longer, for your sake?”

“She’s uncomfortable here. She must be eager to return to the Count’s… Can’t we send her back sooner, or should I accompany her?”

“You don’t need to worry about Lady Arien. She will be taken care of here, and she’ll be safely returned to the Marquisate. Don’t worry.”

“But still, wouldn’t it be better to send her back sooner? She won’t adapt well here. She has no family, and the Northern region is not a suitable environment for a pregnant woman to relax. Moreover, Lady Arienne was born and raised in a warm place. People from warm places are vulnerable in cold weather. It could also weaken the child. So, Your Grace, it’s not good, I mean, it’s not like that…”

I stuttered through my words, and even I was confused by the jumbled mess of my thoughts. My voice trembled miserably.

The person standing in front of me remained silent. He lifted his head subtly, and our blue eyes met.

The wind shifted direction again, and ash fluttered once more. He gently brushed my wind-tousled hair and held my hand tightly, as if to soothe my anxiety.

His concern was not welcome. The more he showed such concern, the more it stirred up fragile hope.

It’s annoying. She’s making my life difficult. She was rude to me. Please, kill her.

A few words like that, and it felt like I might turn the blade I had aimed at myself toward her.

Yeah, should I just get rid of it?

Ask her to be killed.

To think that I, who had rescued her and invited her to the Duke’s estate, would now be asking for her to be killed.

It was a strange situation that didn’t make sense even to me.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips.

It didn’t add up. Just a few minutes ago, he had asked me to send his wife away from the Duke’s estate, and now he was suddenly chuckling.

He stared at me intently.

“Leonie, do you think you’ll be fine once you leave here? If you find it difficult to adapt here.”

His lips twitched. I waited for the words to continue, hoping for warm words this time. I gazed at his face. Despite the cold weather, his lips were tinted red.

“Your Grace, there’s been an urgent message from the capital. You should go and see.”

A desperate voice broke the brief silence. Behind him, soldiers in uniform and Edan were waiting.

He seemed like he wanted to say something but closed his mouth when he saw them.

“No. We’ll discuss this later.”

Later. Do we even have a later?

I pondered his words.

He was anticipating a future that didn’t exist for us.

* * *

I lay on the bed. I was tired, and my nerves were on edge.

I couldn’t sleep properly because I was haunted by nightmares every night.

Running away, running away again. I had been frantically moving my feet in my dreams. I had thought that it was just a dream, that I was composed in reality, but after what happened at the construction site, it didn’t seem so.

I tried to reassure myself that it was okay, but it was futile. A perfectly fine stone looked like a gravestone, and sweet sugar seemed like poison. The fragments of anxiety were gradually consuming my sanity.

I needed to get away.

Without me realizing it, I didn’t know if I might suspect and harm the people around me.

Could I harm my wife and child?

I raised my head in question.

I can’t kill.

If I could kill someone, I would have started with myself. I wouldn’t have bothered trying to survive like this.

Furthermore, being a grandmother who prepared to harm herself before even being born. I didn’t want future generations, born into the same situation as me, to go through such a thing.

“Should I just die…?”

The words that I unintentionally harbored slipped out. If Suren heard, he would have scolded me.

But it wasn’t an entirely baseless thought. I just needed to hold on for four more months. Who knows, if I die like this and open my eyes again, maybe I can return to the original world.

Complicated thoughts swirled in my head.

Please don’t kill me.

That was something Leonie from my previous life must have shouted countless times.

But I had already seen the outcome. The woman by the bedside falling onto the blade.

I couldn’t persuade him to spare my life.

How did I end up in this situation? A sigh escaped me.

If I were the villainess I envied in my previous life, I could have changed my actions and at least begged for my life.

But there was nowhere to be found a reason for him to spare me. My death was intertwined with his survival.

Moreover, because my death was the beginning of the unfolding.

To finish the prologue and move on to the main story, I had to die without fail.

I am treated as a precious existence to him now, but that’s only for the sake of his status.

There was no reason for him to keep me alive, even at the cost of losses.

I shook my body and stood up. Even with a small movement, my head throbbed. My body was so frail that I had to grab onto the bed frame to stand up.

I walked to the cemetery holding a lantern. The surroundings were eerie.

The late evening cemetery felt so spooky, as if ghosts might pop out. I shivered, but soon I chuckled at the thought that they, too, had the same cold blood as I did. I wished a ghost would come out. They were the only ones who could understand me and listen to my worries.

I dug through the snow piled up on the graves. I had melted the frozen parts with ice before falling sick, so digging was relatively easy.

One by one, I retrieved the items I had prepared. A shovel, a stick, and dried meat.

I cleared the snow-covered areas. The color was darker now than when I first buried them, saturated with moisture.

As I brought out the supplies, the grave sank deeper. I had to fill it up with snow again. I gathered some snow from the neighboring graves.

As I tried to cover it with snow again, something caught my fingertip. The edge was hard and pointed.

Had I missed something while taking things out? I cautiously searched through the grave.

Soon, a wooden fragment with a deep black hue came out.

It was a frame with a man’s portrait, and a small box.

Red hair, a familiar face.

I lifted my head. The tombstone was right in front of me. I had unknowingly crossed the boundary while digging.

“I’m sorry. I ended up digging your grave too.”

I offered a sincere apology. I hadn’t noticed the boundary because of the snow. It seemed I had dug up his grave next to mine without realizing it.

Fortunately, I hadn’t touched his remains, but I had discovered the mementos buried alongside him.

I wiped off the frame. The man’s face was vividly reflected on the transparent panel.

The previous inhabitant of the grave beside mine was a man.

A child, an elderly person, a middle-aged man.

Among them, my previous inhabitant, who had firmly occupied the body for three years, was a man.

Willie Tatum. He was an ordinary adult male in his twenties.

In the portrait, he looked a bit leaner, but he appeared healthy like a young man. He had more flesh on him compared to the portrait I found in the guest room.

Although he was the youngest son who was leaning towards being on the shorter side, his performance as the youngest was not bad when he was young, so he was said to have grown as tall as an adult man. Unlike the others, he had not experienced hardships from a young age, so he had good physical strength. But still, this portrait only showed his upper body, so I couldn’t determine his overall physique.

I thought all the portraits were in the drawer.

It’s truly a macabre hobby in a way. Leaving behind the face of someone about to die, for what purpose?

In the end, the portraits could only be used as memorial photos.

The portraits in the empire were painted by somewhat verified artists, so their prices exceeded the cost of a whole house in the commoners’ neighborhood.

Moreover, it took several months to complete.

They even brought an artist all the way from the far north. Did they pour in a considerable amount of money just to give him some decent treatment?

Or was it merely an exhibition for spoils of war? Did they leave marks like trophies from hunting?

Either way, it felt like an exhibition disguised with consideration. They were just ordinary portraits, but they sent shivers down my spine.

The reason there were two portraits left was because he had survived for a long time. He didn’t die before the paintings were completed.

I picked up the box. It was a wooden box made of a material similar to the frame.

Click.

As I pressed the button, there was a sound of the latch releasing, and the lid of the box slowly opened.

“Ah.”

I almost screamed. I swallowed the scream that had risen to my throat.

I should have looked around to see if anyone had heard the small exclamation, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the box.

My hand was trembling.