This chapter is dedicated to inalisancara Thank you for reading!
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"Oh my, if it isn't Lady Lovell."
I hadn't even stepped foot in the imperial garden when three girls suddenly blocked my path. They were all wearing fancy dresses and were daughters of high-ranking nobles.
The imperial garden is far from the palace's ballroom, where the royal ball is held. There wasn't a single soul where we were standing at the moment. Not even royal guards or royal servants.
It must be Alaric's orders not to allow anyone to disturb his rendezvous with Adelia.
The girl in the middle wearing a red dress opened her folding fan and brought it near her mouth. It covered half of her face, only revealing her dark blue eyes.
"How have you been?" she asked in a relatively unconcerned tone. It was as if she wasn't asking about a person's well-being.
Her eyes turned crescent as if she was grinning behind her fan.
Who is this?
A character with straight, honey, blonde hair draped up to her waist. A slender stature, taller than Henrietta. Fair skin that seemed to glow under the moonlight. Dark blue eyes that held expressions of mockery.
I don't remember such a character appearing in the novel. But if she knows Henrietta, she must be a part of her social circle. But people surrounding Henrietta never get to share a spotlight with her. They were always behind her, in the shadows.
I looked at the girl from head to toe.
This must be one of Henrietta's underlings.
"Lady Ambergard, it seems like Lady Lovell forgot how to talk." The girl wearing a lacy blue gown snickered.
"It must be the effect of her confinement. The Marquis must have had enough of her tantrums." The girl in a huge, yellow ball gown holding a wine glass said.
They might not be Henrietta's underlings. Or maybe they were. But after what happened to Henrietta last year at the Emperor's birth anniversary ball, they decided to stop following her, afraid of tainting their reputation. Understandable. I would do the same.
The one in the middle, Lady Ambergard, gracefully folded her fan revealing a beautifully structured nose and red, rosy lips.
I looked at her in awe. Under the moonlight, she was like a goddess who descended from the heavens. Everything behind her seemed to fade, and only the roses in the background remained. Beautiful beyond compare.
How did a beautiful woman become a character who didn't even have a single appearance in the novel?
But my initial image of her shattered when an expression of ridicule appeared on her face.
"What happened, Lady Lovell? When did you become so timid? Did your confinement change you?" she said in a high-pitched tone to the point that it was getting on my nerves. "You were once so fierce that you'd trample anyone coming your way. The empire even labeled you as a madwoman."
She took a step forward, slowly narrowing the distance between us.
"Why are you hiding your claws? Or did the Marquis cut them for you? He must have gotten tired of you."
The high society must have thought that after what happened last year, the Marquis wouldn't stay lenient on her daughter and thought he'd discipline her. Henrietta's confinement in Hutchrene must have sparked those rumors.
But little did these nobles know that the perfect Marquis Lovell had one flaw.
He adored his children too much and was an expert in spoiling them. How strict and stern he was as the Marquis was the complete opposite of how he was as a father.
When Lady Ambergard finally closed the distance between us, she gave me a condescending sneer, completely betraying the goddess-like impression I had of her.
"You were once so tactless you immediately attacked Lady Pennington the moment I told you Prince Alaric is interested in her." She raised a hand. My whole body shivered when she gently caressed my face. "Ah, you gave me a good show last year. How about you give me a much better one tonight?"
She leaned closer, the shape of her eyes turning even more crescent. She was like a snake who finally caught her prey, wrapping her entire body around it, suffocating it until it fell limp, then finally devoured it.
"I heard His highness and Lady Pennington has gotten much closer during your confinement. They have secret meetings during the prince's stay on the western border. Isn't it infuriating, Lady Lovell? To see your man chase after another girl? Don't you want to wring her neck until she could breathe no more?"
I slapped her hand. It wasn't strong, but it was enough to make her take a step back.
In my past life, my sister was a hopeless romantic. She would spend her leisure time reading romance novels. She noticed my daily life's dullness, so she shared her hobby with me.
She would lend me her novels every week, asking me to read one during my breaks. I rarely had breaks, so I didn't get to finish half of the books she lent me.
I wasn't able to return them because she had already died.
I heaved a sigh. In those few books I've read, I encountered characters like Lady Ambergard. There's no point trying to understand what kind of character she is. She already presented herself bare.
I raised a brow. "Ah, one-year confinement leads me to forget unimportant people in my life."
Ambergard's sneer vanished. So, Henrietta never acted like this in front of her. Considering how shocked she was, her eyeballs seemed like they were about to fall off from their sockets.
"You..." she trailed off.
"But how could I forget you, Lady Ambergard?" I returned the sneer she gave me. "You're the condescending and manipulative character who finds joy in injecting fear into others."
I took a step forward. It was my turn to close the distance between us. "But you see, people like you are the ones who tend to be ignorant of the fact that not everyone is affected by your fake superiority."
"Where are you getting all the guts to oppose me?" Ambergard asked.
She seemed to have recovered from the surprise and immediately composed herself.
As expected of an innate villainess. Henrietta should be like her.
But that didn't stop me, and I continued walking toward her. "Guts? I got it from countless people I trampled. And I want yours next."
This kind of Henrietta must've shocked her greatly. She was feigning composure, but I could already see the uneasiness in her eyes.
"So, you decided to point your claws at me?" she asked.
My grin grew even wider, "How does it feel? To have the claws you sharpened be pointed at you?"
I stopped in front of her. With a demeaning grin, I raised a hand, wanting to do what she did to me a while ago, but it stopped mid-air when suddenly...
Splash!
"Don't you dare lay a hand on Lady Ambergard!" the girl in a yellow ballgown bellowed. I looked at her and saw that her wine glass was empty.
I decided to be a wallflower tonight and not do anything to avoid this from happening, yet it still happened.
The only difference is that no one is around to witness it. Only me and these three 'mean girls incarnate.'
Whenever I was assigned to rural headquarters, the older officers would open the television to watch soap operas during work. I watched TV series with catfights; splashing liquids on their enemies was one of the popular tropes.
It was cliche and cringeworthy. But experiencing it in real life is not fun when you are at the receiving end.
"Pfft." Ambergard's ear-piercing laughter reverberated throughout the entire place.
"You are merely a daughter of a Marquis and are not even officially engaged with the second prince. And you do not have his favor. He might not even marry you. So, you do not have any right to touch Lady Ambergard, the daughter of a duke," the girl in the blue gown stepped in with the same expression of ridicule.
Duke? Ambergard is the daughter of a duke.
My eyes widened.
The Ambergard dukedom. The first prince's strongest supporter and... the one currently holds the empire's military power.
And this girl in front of me, waving her fan while sneering, is the daughter of the very same duke who wanted Henrietta and the entire Lovell Marquisate dead.
I clenched my fist.
This is great. The enemy had presented itself in front of me.
I chuckled. This is really great. The other reason for me attending this ball, aside from delivering a message to that person, was to find out who Duke Ambergard was. Yet his daughter walked and knocked at my door by herself.
"Was the wine not enough?" Ambergard threatened.
"Aren't I the empire's madwoman? Did you honestly think that a glass of wine is enough to falter my desire to step on you?" I chuckled. "Lady Ambergard, you are too transparent. I understand why you are doing this to me. You can't have the first prince, so you want my fiance."
Her face contorted, and she stopped waving her fan. "You..."
The first prince is already engaged to the daughter of Duke Coulson. The Coulson Dukedom is one of the two dukedoms in the empire, and just like the Lovell Marquisate, they're a neutral family.
They never sided with anyone whenever there was a conflict in power or a fight for the throne. But their influence is on an equal level with the Ambergard dukedom.
The reason for the first prince's engagement to the lady of the Coulson dukedom was to have this family on his side.
The same strategy does not apply to the Ambergard Dukedom since this family has always been loyal to the firstborns. They support the tradition of having the firstborn prince take the throne. They've been leading the aristocratic faction, having nobles side with the first prince.
This very same family eliminated the Coulson dukedom just before Alaric's ascension. And this family will also have a hand in the first prince's rebellion and Henrietta's... my death in the future.
I wiped the wine dripping from my forehead with my hand.
"You can marry the first prince, but you'll only be one of his concubines in the future, not his empress. But now that the second prince is gaining support from other nobles, you decided to go after him. But, first, you need to eliminate his annoying fiance and then eliminate the girl he's interested in. Am I right?"
"How dare you!" Ambergard hissed.
Bullseye. She didn't have any appearance in the novel, so maybe she's not a threat. She's easy to predict because she's the same as Henrietta. The difference is this Ambergard is hungry for power. But if this person is one of the novel's submerged parts of the iceberg. I shouldn't put my guard down around her.
"I may be a marquis's daughter, a rank below your family, but Lady Ambergard, I am not one of your pawns anymore."
Her guard was down, so when the hand I used to wipe the wine off my face touched her face, she yelped and took a few steps backward, her underlings coming to her rescue.
The two of them held her arms to help her from falling on her butt. Amusement flashed through my eyes. "Get near me again. I'll show you how the show you badly want to see. But this time, you're the star."
"L-let's go, Lady Ambergard. It's not good being around a madwoman," the girl in blue said, making it sound like an insult.
The two girls dragged Ambergard away, still in a state of shock.
I stared at their retreating backs. When their figures faded in the shadows, I lowered my head. Then suddenly, a gush of fear and annoyance enveloped me.
A deviant appeared. And it's something I failed to predict.
An utterly unknown character.
The novel really isn't what it is on the surface.
I clenched my fist. What's more annoying is how a completely unknown character insinuated Henrietta's behavior at last year's royal ball and how she plans to do it again tonight. So, if I didn't take over Henrietta's body, she'd likely succeed and have Henrietta humiliate herself in front of a huge crowd.
Henrietta rarely appeared in the first half of the novel. Whenever she appeared, she only did petty things out of jealousy, like verbally humiliating Adelia. Her trying to splash a glass of wine towards Adelia on tonight's ball was probably the worst she did in the novel's first half.
Henrietta's atrocities showed in the latter half of the novel. She started harming Adelia. Hiring assassins to kill her, framing her, putting poison on her food, basically anything that could get Adelia killed.
If we follow tonight's events, Ambergard may have insinuated Henrietta's villainous characteristics. She clearly said it, and her actions showed her intentions. And...
I clenched my chest. This body felt it.
I may have taken over Henrietta's body, but is it possible that I haven't taken complete control over it?
I wasn't intimidated by Lady Ambergard's actions. I still had that thinking. Even if I accepted that they're humans and not just novel characters, I still thought of them as characters written with words. So I wasn't affected.
But when her hand touched my face, I trembled, and suddenly, there was that looming fear in front of me, wanting to devour me at any given moment.
I have no past interaction with Ambergard. I was sure it wasn't mine. And I'm not one to get intimidated or scared easily. Not even a fast-approaching bullet scares me anymore.
But it's not the same for Henrietta.
Henrietta may fear Ambergard. That's why her body reacted.
The night's cool breeze blew. The upper part of my body was drenched in cold wine, so a gentle breeze made me shiver.
"She also said there's something strange with your mana core. She could not pinpoint what it was, so she suggested you visit the temple."
Suddenly I remembered what the Marquis said.
Henrietta's mana core.
Mana cores in this world are the same as a person's soul.
That's right.
The physician said there was something strange with my core. It must be related to me suddenly taking over Henrietta's body, and it must be why I felt fear the moment it made contact with Ambergard.
The temple...
It's a few hours away from the capital. I planned to go there tomorrow but for other purposes if my initial plan succeeded. But I still wouldn't call it wasting my time if it didn't. Now, I have another reason for going.
"Wherever you go, you always get people to fight you."
A deep, alluring voice of a male sounded behind me.
I stiffened. There was someone who saw what happened?
"Lady Lovell," he called. His tone was cold and commanding, yet it was so captivating that I was forced to slowly turn around, not giving a damn about how I looked right now.
When I faced him, I was immediately met with golden eyes that shone under the moonlit night.
It was said that the members of Sunniva's royal family were born with golden eyes that were the same color as their mana cores, the mana core bestowed by the God of the Sun, Helios, who protected Sunniva since time immemorial.
It was said that the purest of all golden eyes had pupils that were the very reflection of the Sun God's itself. Whoever held such eyes was blessed by Helios and was gifted with astonishing magical prowess. But among the royal family, who all had golden eyes, the purest ones also existed once every five generations.
So far, only three royals were born with God's eyes.
But, right now, there was one royalty who held such eyes.
The royal family was also born with golden blonde hair, so vibrant and beautiful that the Lovell Marquessate's hair seemed like a wheat field when placed beside a royal's.
The one who holds God's eyes right now was also the only royal in history who was born with ebony black hair.
The man with a tall and lean stature standing in front of me, basking under the moonlight, had the very same features.
I hitched my breath when those cold, piercing pair of golden orbs found mine. It was incredibly captivating, and I was at a loss for words.
It was as if I was staring at a melted pot of the finest, most decadent gold. Although melted, it was cold to touch.
The golden tassels, buttons, strips, and the epaulet on his shoulders that decorated his black tunic were no match to the color of his golden orbs.
The gentle night breeze blew past us, past those disheveled black hair that was as dark as the starless night. His black cloak fluttered in the wind, making him appear even more mysterious.
When he noticed that I was staring, he averted his gaze. His action made me realize that I was gawking too much.
I immediately removed my gaze from him and desperately tried to compose myself.
Alaric Epherius Soleil.
That's right, there's no doubt about it. The man standing before me was the male lead of the novel I got sucked into. The very man who will end my life.
To say I was surprised was an understatement. No words can describe how shocked I was at the moment.
The person I did not want to see at tonight's ball appeared in front of me.
Sweat enveloped my palms to the point that it soaked my black gloves. My heart was pounding fast inside my chest. It was ringing in my ear and was drowning my thoughts.
I know it was impossible to avoid Alaric. I have to face him whether I like it or not. But this... his sudden appearance... I wasn't prepared for it. And Henrietta's body reacted.
This overwhelming feeling in my chest... It was Henrietta's surging affection for this man in front of me.
I flinched when I heard his footsteps drawing closer. For some unknown reason, I had the urge to look up only to be met with the man's bewitching face.
Now that he was much closer, I noticed every detail of his face.
His strong jaws, tall nose, thin rosy lips, and even the beauty mark under his lip was the same color as cinnabar.
"It seems your confinement didn't change you one bit," the moment he opened his mouth, I was pulled from a state of trance. "So, the rumors were false. The Marquis is too lenient when it comes to his daughter."
Insults.
His words felt like insults.
While mesmerized by his captivating appearance, I forgot how this man viewed Henrietta.
He hated her.
In the novel, he didn't immediately kill Henrietta because she was still useful. He protected Henrietta from the noble faction who wanted the last of the Lovells to be eliminated for his selfish gains. And when it was time to dispose of her, he needed to find a reason.
No, he didn't even need one. But to make it more satisfying and to make sure this petty villainess gets her retribution, he pushed her into a trap he made and, without any hesitation, killed her.
Alaric may be the male lead, but he was not pure and righteous. He's righteous, yes, but he would resort to underhanded means to eliminate anything that blocks his path.
"Marquis Lovell is looking for you. You shouldn't make him worry," he said before walking past me.
Cold. Too cold.
"And, the spies you sent to the western border to watch my every move, I disposed of them. They're hindering my work."
A threat. His words... It's a warning.
My heart was racing faster and faster. It was deafening.
He wants Henrietta to get out of his way. I know Alaric didn't treat Henrietta nicely in the novel, but this... He's treating her as something insignificant, a small thorn in his path he needs to remove.
I should be scared. I should abandon my plan and run away.
My hand tapped the place where my inside pocket was situated.
But... I need him. Whether I like it or not.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I called him.
"Your highness!"
He stopped in his tracks, but he didn't spare me a glance.
I took a deep breath, and with a determined expression, I looked at his broad back facing me.
"My father was indeed too lenient. The confinement didn't change me one bit. But, there was something in me that changed."
Yes... I'm not Henrietta. I am not the same naive girl who kept chasing you and did everything for you. That same girl became a madwoman just to have you.
"Meet me at Helios' temple tomorrow afternoon. I have an important matter I want to discuss. I hope your highness entertains this request of mine."
That's right. This is where my plan to change my fate starts. This time, I'm going to chase you, not because I want to have your heart.
That's what Henrietta would do.
I will chase you because you, who will kill me in the end, is the only one who can save me.
Henrietta's Self-Saving plan...
Hug the male lead's thighs!
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Tune in to find out what she meant. Lol.