Prologue
“…You mustn’t fall in love, Valentina.”
She frowned slightly for a moment, then quickly blinked. She had nearly been caught dozing off.
Valentina I, the former Grand Duchess, bore the same name and violet eyes as her granddaughter. She stood silently, gazing down at Valentina. Though age had touched her, she remained strikingly beautiful and dignified, a figure many feared for her cold and austere nature.
She had ruled over Florida for nearly two decades before passing on her title to her son, Giovanni, and retreating to a secluded palace.
Valentina was in the midst of lessons on the fundamentals of ruling and etiquette under her grandmother’s tutelage. These lessons occasionally included topics that were either hard to grasp or awkward to inquire about directly.
“The daughters of the Grand Duchy of Florida must never, ever fall in love with a man before marriage.”
“Is there a specific reason for that?”
“The hearts of the Grand Duchy’s daughters have a very peculiar issue. It’s like a hereditary condition passed down through generations, unique only to the daughters.”
Valentina placed her hand over her chest, feeling the steady thumping, and tilted her head curiously.
“An issue…? I don’t understand. What kind of issue is it, Grandmother?”
“The daughters of the Grand Duchy can only ever hold one man in their hearts for their entire lives.”
“Only one man?”
“Yes. If you fall in love with someone and place him in your heart, no other man will ever have space there. Not for the rest of your life, forever.”
The resolute tone of her grandmother’s final words sent a shiver down her spine.
“That’s why the daughters of the Grand Duchy must never fall in love with a man before marriage. It becomes a lifelong shackle.”
Her grandmother’s voice, usually stern, seemed to carry a hint of sadness that day. So Valentina cautiously asked,
“Then… couldn’t I just marry the person I love?”
“Valentina, marriage is not something you can decide for yourself. What you can control is locking your heart firmly until the time comes.”
Indeed, marriage among royals and nobles was a matter of family arrangements, not personal choice.
Valentina nodded but asked again,
“But what if I happen to fall in love with someone anyway?”
“If you fall in love and then marry someone else, your heart will have no space left for your husband. To fulfill your duties as a wife, you’d have to crush your feelings for a lifetime and act like a clown in a play. It would be a barren, scorching desert you’d walk through alone forever.”
Wouldn’t that be crueler and more unjust to the husband than to herself? Valentina worried.
“Isn’t there a way to cure such a terrible condition?”
Her grandmother faintly smiled and shook her head.
“Still, it’s not entirely terrible. If you love your husband and confess to him, ‘Dominus cordis mei’—‘You are the master of my heart’—those words will become an unbreakable steel chain that binds your heart to his. The bond will last until death. That’s why some of the men who marry into our family, after losing their wives early, end up living in torment or even losing their sanity.”
The explanation was difficult and frightening to understand, but Valentina tried her best to grasp it, remember it, and think positively about it.
“So always remember. Unless he is your husband, the man you’ve spent the night with as a married couple, never fall in love with him, and never confess, ‘You are the master of my heart.’ Do you understand?”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
Far into the future, the grandmother, during her final confession, revealed the name of the man she had loved passionately her entire life.
It was not the name of Valentina’s grandfather.
Her barren and desolate desert only ended when she reached the shores of death.
Ten years later,
Valentina finally spoke the words she had long cherished for the one man she was now free to love—her husband.
“Dominus cordis mei…”
His bright blue eyes widened, and he pulled her into a tight embrace. But the cold was too bitter, and her entire body was frozen stiff, leaving her unable to feel anything. All she could sense was a shattering pain coursing through her being.
