Chapter 2
I fled my house to escape the contract marriage. I ran far away, as far as I possibly could.
In a place where no one could find me, I forgot everything and began anew.
I cultivated a small field, embroidered whenever I had time and sold my work, and even married an ordinary man. My insides were still rotting away, but I lived while pretending I was fine, pretending that my life was fine.
But in the end, I was murdered by someone I didn’t know, a person who noticed my ability.
And so, I repeated several regressions.
No matter how many times I awakened again, I never so much as met Kallion’s eyes.
I tried living promiscuously, going from one man to another without caring who they were. I even met a man who claimed he loved me more than his own life.
But…
I could not meet my child, Denion.
A life without that child.
Yes…
It was worse than death.
It felt as though I were wandering through a lightless darkness.
At the end of countless regressions, nothing but a lonely death was ever waiting for me.
And so…
My eleventh regression.
I stood before you once again.
“The groom, Kallion de Baldomer. Do you vow, upon the destiny of House Baldomer, to love the woman standing before you?”
Kallion answered the priest’s question bluntly.
“I do.”
“And the bride, Juliana de Heister. Do you vow, upon the duty of House Heister, to love the man standing before you?”
I slowly raised my gaze from the floor.
There was no longer any hesitation or fear.
If it meant meeting that child.
If I could only find the enemy who had killed that child and me.
“I do.”
But. Kallion, remember this one thing.
There will be no more love between us.
I coldly met Kallion’s impassive gaze as he looked down at me.
And so, I married him for the second time.
* * *
The wedding ended, and our first night arrived.
Sitting at the bedside, I looked indifferently out the window.
Kallion did not appear in the bridal chamber.
I hadn’t expected much. After all, even before my regression, he hadn’t shown his face on our first night.
The servants had probably already begun gossiping about me waiting alone in the bridal chamber.
That didn’t particularly bother me either.
The time when I would conceive Denion was still a while away anyway.
I was neither impatient nor anxious. Nor was I as despairing or sorrowful as I had been then. I was simply… sick to death of this moment and bored by it.
Just then, the sound of knocking entered the room that had been filled with nothing but silence.
In the past, I would have run to the door barefoot, wondering whether it might be him.
But I merely looked at the door with an indifferent expression.
“Come in.”
Click—
As expected, that woman opened the door and entered.
“Hello, Madam.”
A woman wearing a graceful and pure smile.
She was my husband Kallion’s secretary and the daughter of House Sorento, a vassal house of Baldomer.
After looking at me with pity for a moment, she continued with a kind smile.
“Lord Kallion is busy with his backlog of work, so he asked me to tell you to go to sleep without him.”
Why had he made his secretary deliver that message?
In the past, I had been furious and deeply humiliated.
His secretary, Layla de Sorento.
There had been a time when I was jealous of her.
The woman closest to Kallion, who spent so much time by his side.
‘Kallion! Tell me! What is your relationship with that secretary?’
Whenever I asked him that, he would always look thoroughly fed up.
‘Don’t say such ridiculous things, Juliana. Every time you act like this, I feel like I can’t breathe.’
Looking back, I had been truly pathetic and foolish.
The person I had been back then…
What had made me so anxious, and what had made me so desperate?
What was so important about something as trivial as love? No, had it really been love at all?
I forced the memories rising within me out of my mind and answered calmly.
“Understood.”
At my compliant answer, Layla’s eyes widened in surprise.
Had she expected me to storm into Kallion’s office, huffing with rage?
“Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
“…No, Madam.”
Under my indifferent gaze, Layla bowed silently and closed the door.
Rather, I felt relieved that I didn’t have to see his face on our first night.
The man who had stood by and done nothing about Denion’s death…
The man who had locked me in a room like a bothersome piece of baggage when I had begged and clung to him like a madwoman, overwhelmed by the world-shattering despair of losing my child.
Had I been forced to consummate our marriage while looking at his face, I might have plunged a knife into his back.
I could not allow that.
If I did, choosing this hellish estate again at the end of those sickening regressions would become meaningless.
Kallion. I had hated and resented that man enough to drive myself mad.
But after countless lives and deaths, I had realized that even those emotions were meaningless.
Only one hope and desire remained within me.
To meet that child, Denion. To live quietly with my child in some secluded place.
For that, I could endure any humiliation or insult.
At the end of my gaze beyond the window, I saw the moon shining serenely in the darkness.
It was the same moon that had watched over me back then, when I had wept alone in the bridal chamber, overwhelmed by sorrow.
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