Karl's expression at my revelation was truly spectacular.
I stood there smiling playfully at him, watching emotions flicker across his perpetually youthful face—surprise, confusion, something that might have been recognition.
My friend who looked like a young boy. The only person who had ever come to me from the heart, without ulterior motives or hidden agendas.
I knew full well that he would never grow beyond this appearance. I'd known it for years.
He didn't age while I grew from a child into a woman. And I know he'll still look exactly the same ten years from now.
Karl never told me why he stopped aging. Not once in all the years I'd known him. Not even on the day I died.
It was one of the mysteries that surrounded him—along with how he managed to slip in and out of the heavily guarded palace undetected, and why he chose to befriend a supposedly mad princess when he could have lived peacefully elsewhere.
I never pressed him for answers. Everyone deserves their secrets.
In my past life, I had often thought of Callius Rodrian.
I'd happened to see him from a distance on the day I married Viscount Pelsus. The wedding had been held at the palace—a mockery of ceremony orchestrated by Andrea to publicly bind me to my tormentor.
Callius had been there among the attending nobles, though he kept to the shadows and left early. But I'd caught sight of him.
When those golden eyes—the color of sunlight captured in amber—had briefly met mine across the crowded hall, I'd been startled.
I thought it was Karl for a moment.
The resemblance had been uncanny. If Karl were to grow up, wouldn't he look exactly like that man?
He'd caught my attention immediately because of his striking similarity to my dear friend, and the image had been seared into my memory.
That day had been the first and last time I'd seen Marquis Rodrian in my previous life.
After that, whenever Karl appeared beside me without anyone noticing, I would think of Callius. Wonder about him. Feel strangely curious about the grown man who wore my friend's face.
If I could go back in time, I would have liked to see Callius up close. To study the details of his features, to understand why the resemblance felt so significant.
The more precious Karl became to me, the more that strange curiosity about Callius had grown.
And then I really did go back to the past.
Funny enough, the very first thought that had crossed my mind upon realizing I'd returned was that I would be able to see Callius again. To meet him properly this time.
But beyond mere curiosity, there was something far more practical about choosing Callius Rodrian.
Through him, I could create the exact situation Andrea would most desperately want to prevent.
Marrying the man my brother feared and hated. Taking away Andrea's opportunity to destroy him. Turning what should have been Andrea's victory into his worst nightmare.
The thought made me smile with genuine satisfaction.
"Huh..."
Karl was staring up at me with wide eyes, clearly thrown off balance by whatever he'd seen in my expression.
"What?" I asked innocently.
"What?" he echoed, but his tone was uncertain.
"That smile. Something feels different than usual."
His face showed genuine confusion, as though he were looking at someone he didn't quite recognize.
I shrugged, letting my smile soften into something more familiar.
"Really?"
"It's strange. You've been acting like a different person these past few days."
There was no accusation in his voice, just observation tinged with concern.
"So... you don't like it?"
Karl's expression immediately shifted, his smile returning—bright and genuine.
"No. I like it very much."
Warmth bloomed in my chest at his words.
"Thank you."
At that moment, voices echoed from somewhere nearby—the sound of guards or servants making their rounds.
I glanced back at Karl, about to warn him to hide before anyone discovered him, but he'd already vanished like smoke dispersing in wind.
He's impossibly fast.
I trusted that Karl would reappear somewhere safe, as he always did. He'd been doing this for years without ever being caught.
With my friend safely gone, I headed toward my palace quarters.
As the familiar building came into view—filled only with Andrea's handpicked guards and spies—my steps grew heavier.
I walked down the corridor slowly, dragging my feet.
The hallways of my assigned palace were beautiful in an austere way—ornate carved roofs, decorative railings, elegant archways. But the corridors were open to the elements, sheltered only from direct rain and sunlight, with nothing to block the wind.
The late summer breeze cut through Callius's borrowed coat, making me shiver.
I pulled the collar tighter and grumbled to myself.
If it's this cold in late summer, what on earth am I going to do when winter comes?
In truth, the palace was located in the southernmost part of the empire where the climate was relatively mild. It wasn't actually cold by any objective measure.
It was just that my body had become too weak.
I let out a small sigh and stroked my thin arms beneath the coat sleeves.
My body was so bony that there was barely any difference in thickness between my wrists and forearms. I could feel every bone, every tendon, through skin that seemed paper-thin.
Can this body withstand any real hardship? Will it survive the journey to Ronheim's frozen north?
When I was seven—after my mother died—I'd been tossed around by Andrea's machinations, my sense of self-worth eroding day by day under his careful manipulation.
I couldn't take care of my own health because I barely remembered I had a body that needed care. And no one truly looked after me.
I thought Andrea was taking good care of me. But of course he wasn't.
After my mother's death, Empress Kavala had dismissed all of my attendants.
Among those sent away were my nursemaid and the maids who had cared for me since infancy—the only people who might have genuinely protected me.
Kavala's stated reason was that court ladies influenced by my mother might have a "bad influence" on me during such a vulnerable time.
She'd immediately announced that new maids would be recruited to look after me, along with noble ladies of appropriate age to serve as my companions.
Naturally, there were no applicants.
Who would volunteer to assist the daughter of a dead empress while under the watchful eye of Kavala, who had become the undisputed mistress of the palace?
I had been young and weak. A child with no allies and no understanding of court politics.
Even if there had been volunteers, Kavala and Andrea would have found fault with them and driven them away.
Because they were planning to fill my household with their own people. Watchers and jailers disguised as servants.
They wanted me to become weak. Isolated. Easier to control.
They probably hoped I would simply waste away and die on my own, saving them the trouble of direct murder.
Looking back now with clear eyes, I could see it all so obviously.
I was really, spectacularly stupid in my past life.
Why didn't I recognize what they were doing? Why did I cooperate so perfectly with my own destruction?
"Your Highness! Princess!"
The sharp voice cut through my dark thoughts.
One of my assigned maids had spotted me. She must have realized I was missing and been searching.
"Where were you? We finally found you!"
Her tone carried no respect, despite the formal address.
"Why?" I asked mildly.
"Well, you suddenly disappeared! Do you have any idea how much trouble Your Highness caused for everyone?"
The maid's eyes traveled over me, taking in Callius's coat draped around my shoulders.
"What are those clothes? Oh my—come to think of it, what are you wearing?"
Judging from her expression, it was clear the maid still had no idea what had actually happened tonight.
She doesn't know I went to the banquet hall. She probably assumed I just took an unauthorized walk somewhere.
I kept my explanation deliberately vague.
"I just picked these up off the ground. I spilled a drink on my nightclothes."
The maid's face contorted with disgust.
"If you go out like this without telling anyone, it causes problems for us! You make your clothes dirty like this—and why would you wear something that was thrown away? You look absolutely filthy."
She roughly grabbed my wrist and began dragging me back toward my quarters, her voice dripping with contempt thinly veiled as concern.
"Go back quickly. What would happen if someone saw you like this? You're clearly not in your right mind. You should be ashamed."
In my past life, I would have apologized profusely to the maid.
I would have begged her forgiveness for being a nuisance, for causing trouble, for existing.
But I was different now.
"Let go."
My voice came out harsh, cold—nothing like the timid princess these servants were accustomed to bullying.
The maid looked back in surprise, but recovered quickly.
She shook her head with a condescending snort and muttered just loud enough for me to hear: "What?"
It was clearly meant to sound like a private mutter, but spoken deliberately within my earshot.
She must have assumed that I—psychologically beaten down and desperate to avoid conflict—would be frightened into silence. That I would pretend not to hear and follow along meekly.
What a rude, ill-mannered, contemptuous attitude.
Andrea's maids never inflicted serious physical harm on me. They were too clever for that.
They just harassed me in ways so subtle that no one but the victim would notice.
Constant small cruelties. Verbal cuts disguised as concern. Humiliations delivered with plausible deniability.
Of course, that didn't make it any less terrible. Sometimes words cut deeper than any blade.
A cold flame of resentment kindled in my chest.
I called out to the maid who was still gripping my wrist with false solicitude.
"Wait."
"What now?"
The maid glanced back with barely concealed irritation.
I noticed one of her cheeks was slightly swollen.
"You took time off the day before yesterday because of a toothache, didn't you?"
The maids often treated me as though I were invisible, chattering about their personal lives right in front of me. So despite finding it unpleasant, I'd inadvertently learned quite a bit about their circumstances.
"So what?"
"Did the treatment go well? Did you have the tooth extracted?"
"Why do you ask?"
I leaned in closer, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as though I couldn't contain my concern for her wellbeing.
"I heard somewhere that you absolutely shouldn't eat undercooked seafood after having a tooth pulled—not until your gums heal completely."
The maid, who had been eyeing me with suspicion, showed a flicker of interest. She unconsciously rubbed her swollen cheek.
"Why not?"
"Well, there was this person who ate undercooked seafood, and when they started feeling pain and went to have it examined, they discovered that their gums had..."
I proceeded to tell the maid, in vivid and nauseating detail, every disgusting medical horror story I'd ever heard.
Tales of infections that turned gums black and gangrenous. Of maggots that somehow appeared in rotting tissue. Of teeth that fell out in chunks along with pieces of jawbone.
The maid's face grew progressively paler.
"That—that can't—!"
I continued relentlessly, my tone shifting from concerned to almost gleefully morbid.
"That's just one story. Some people develop such terrible toothaches that they go to the physician, but then—well..."
"Well? Well what?"
She was leaning in now despite herself, morbidly fascinated.
"The wisdom teeth had grown sideways, all the way from the roof of the mouth down into the throat..."
As I continued my grotesque narrative, the maid swallowed hard and turned her face away, looking faintly green.
"Stop it! Just stop and go to your chambers!"
"I'm sorry, truly. But isn't it better to know than not know? As a preventative measure, I mean. Oh, and I also heard about this case where..."
The maid couldn't shut me up.
Even though she'd been dropping hints and treating me with contempt, she couldn't outright silence me when I was ostensibly just sharing helpful medical advice out of concern for her health.
"Ugh! Stop it! That's disgusting!"
She finally released my wrist and covered her ears with both hands.
Sweet dreams tonight.
But I wasn't finished.
I walked right alongside her, continuing to describe every revolting symptom and gruesome complication I could invent.
And when we reached my quarters where the other maids were waiting, I helpfully began sharing stories about various painful and highly contagious diseases.
It didn't take long for the maid with the extracted tooth to become the target of frightened avoidance among her colleagues.
For commoners, illness is terrifying. Medical treatment costs money they don't have, so they often can't afford proper care.
I'd heard that among the lower classes, many people died from complications of simple dental problems because they couldn't afford treatment.
"Everyone should be careful. I heard it can be transmitted just through breathing the same air."
"Oh gods..."
The other maids immediately took several steps back, eyeing their colleague with poorly disguised alarm.
The maid with the dental work looked on the verge of tears.
"It's not true! I just had a simple cavity filled—!"
Another maid interjected cautiously.
"Um, could you maybe cover your mouth when you speak?"
"Yes. It can't hurt to be careful of each other."
I nodded with an expression of deep sympathy, as though I genuinely felt terrible about the situation.
"What can we do? It's unfortunate, but it's true that caution never hurts. You never know what might happen."
"This is—!"
I shrugged innocently at the terrified faces surrounding me.
The maid who'd had the tooth extracted glared at me with pure resentment, finally understanding that I'd deliberately orchestrated her ostracism.
Good. Let her understand.
It was so vastly different from my previous life.
Why hadn't I done this before?
What had I been so terrified of that I constantly monitored everyone's reactions, censored my own words and thoughts, made myself smaller and smaller?
All I received in return were these same resentful glares anyway. So why had I lived in fear of them? Why had I cowered?
It was quite liberating, actually.
Being able to do whatever I wanted without worrying about being hated.
They hated me already. They'd always hated me.
So why should I continue to make myself miserable trying to appease people who would never be appeased?
Freedom tastes sweeter than I ever imagined.
I retired to my bedchamber that night with a smile on my face.
Behind the closed door, I carefully removed Callius's coat and folded it with more care than I'd shown anything in years.
The fabric still held faint traces of his scent—pine and steel and distant winter winds.
I'll need to return this when he comes to accept my proposal.
Because he would come. I was certain of it.
I'd given him information he desperately needed. Warned him about dangers he couldn't avoid alone. Offered him an alliance that could save his territory and his life.
And I'd done it all while wearing pajamas and creating the biggest scandal the court had seen in years.
The thought made me laugh softly into the darkness of my room.
Tomorrow, Andrea would hear about tonight's escapade. About his supposedly mad sister appearing at the formal banquet in her nightclothes, causing a spectacle, speaking with the Marquis Rodrian.
I wonder what expression he'll make?
I fell asleep still smiling, dreams untroubled for the first time in what felt like lifetimes.
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