Chapter 4
After his third release, he pulled out. Between the folds of her collapsed skirts, he caught a glimpse of her s*x, milky and wet. Brunhilde, her dress spread over her like soil over a grave, gasped raggedly and exhaled.
“Is that… enough now?”
“Well, who knows.”
“I kept my promise. So…”
Now stop humiliating me any further and leave. The words broke faintly as she tried to speak.
He looked down at Brunhilde in silence, her body still unsteady from the aftermath of their coupling. A moment ago, she had been gasping, her voice hoarse from her cries. But now her lips were pressed tightly shut in stubborn resolve.
Watching her like that, he let out a low, amused chuckle.
“Doesn’t sound like something someone who was whimpering in pleasure every time I pushed into you would say.”
“……”
“Even a w***e spreading her legs in front of a temple would be more modest than the princess.”
It was true, she had felt pleasure in his arms. Unable to deny it, Brunhilde bit her lip, humiliation burning through her. The man watched her expression with leisurely amusement before finally straightening up.
“Then I’ll take my leave, as ordered. May you return safely, Princess.”
The sound of him dressing faded as he walked away.
Only when she could no longer sense his presence did Brunhilde finally break, lying there on the dirt as quiet sobs overtook her.
Her fate. Her future. This situation.
Everything was a mess, like her body, stained with blood and seed.
She cried for a long while before finally managing to push herself upright. As she struggled to gather her torn and soiled clothes, her eyes fell upon the golden orb, resting neatly on the grass.
“……”
She glared at it resentfully, then picked it up with reluctant hands and rose to her feet.
When she lowered her gaze to the lake, her reflection stared back at her. She was disheveled, bearing the unmistakable traces of what had just transpired.
“……”
For a fleeting moment, a destructive urge surged within her—to throw herself into the lake and shatter that pristine, mirror-like surface.
But after staring at the water with hollow eyes, she took a step back.
It was time to return to the palace of disgrace.
Clinging to her mother’s last words as her final, fragile hope.
2. A Ruined First Night
In the end… was it nothing more than the ramblings of a dying woman?
The miracle she had hoped for never came. Brunhilde stared blankly at her reflection in the polished bronze mirror, dressed and adorned to perfection.
“Though it may not be the first wife, you would still become the lady of House Brant. And is not the Duke of Brant a great general who led the Valnus Sea campaign to victory?”
With the marriage proposal from Duke Brant laid before him, King Vant spoke in a solemn tone.
Brunhilde wanted to answer him like this:
But Father, that great Duke Brant is sixty-four years old this year. Of course, such words would never be accepted. Her father was well aware of the duke’s age.
Plagued by the powerful four noble houses, the king had been overjoyed when the aging war hero requested a royal marriage. He had written back immediately, and then summoned Brunhilde—his youngest daughter—to give her a quiet command.
“Bear Brant’s child. Even if you must use medicine.”
An order to become a broodmare for a sixty-four-year-old stallion.
She had always known that, as a princess, she would one day be handed off in marriage like a dowry. But she had never imagined it would be as the second wife of a man so old he could die at any moment—let alone one of the four great houses.
She would have rather married a farmer in the countryside than entangle herself with those families said to have received divine power.
Desperate, Brunhilde had begged for the order to be withdrawn, but the cold-hearted king had cut down her tearful pleas without hesitation.
“With your sacrifice, the royal house of Shelburg will stand even taller.”
That was when she realized, her inescapable fate had descended upon her like a prophecy. The only thing she had left to cling to was her mother’s final words.
And so she had gone to the Black Forest… and spread her legs for a man she had never met.
And yet, even after enduring that wretched humiliation, the day of her fate had arrived all the same.
If only her mother hadn’t been a foreigner… would things have been different? Staring at her violet eyes in the mirror, Brunhilde let out a bitter, self-mocking thought.
“The wedding will be held simply, Your Highness. What matters is that you are bound by a sacred vow before the great God.”
A princess with no powerful family backing her could not even have a proper wedding in her lifetime.
She would likely recite her vows before a priest, then be led into the bridal chamber—where she would be bred like an animal.
The thought of Duke Brant, who had looked her over with that sticky, lingering gaze, forcing himself on her sent a chill down her spine.
Though she had lived like an ornamented doll, without even a proper lady-in-waiting, she had still heard the unsavory rumors that circulated about House Brant.
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