Chapter 1

You’re Shy

I’m finally free!

Aristine could barely stifle her cry of joy. She was finally free from her loathsome home and her even more loathsome father.

He was such a monster.

Her father, the emperor, had once been obsessed with the idea of making Aristine a “masterpiece” and had abused her in every way imaginable in pursuit of his goal.

I thought I really would die when he lit my room on fire.

During the incident, Aristine had felt the heavy air before the burning flames. She woke to dry lungs and a sore throat. A minute later, she would have been dead.

Once her vision had focused, she had seen that her windows were locked and that flames were licking up from below. Aristine had barely been six.

Anyone else would have died, but Aristine survived—if the state she was left in could be called survival.

After her escape when she was still freshly singed from the fire, the emperor had leaned down and asked her:

“So? Has your power awakened?”

Aristine had stared at her father, her eyes hazy, before she reached a realization.

Oh. Father was the one who locked the windows and set my room ablaze.

This hurt her heart more than the swollen blisters on her limbs or her damaged lungs. At the time, she had wished her heart would burst into flames along with her room.

I thought it would stop hurting if my heart turned to ash.

Now, a decade later, Aristine’s heart was figuratively burnt to nothing. And, after her confinement and ten-year-long abandonment in a tower following the incident with her stepsister, it would have been stranger if her heart held any remaining warmth.

Still, I managed to remember my previous life during my incarceration, so I guess there’s that.

Aristine’s mind had awakened its potential in order to protect itself. She gained the ability to “see” the past, which kept her from descending into madness.

I’m glad I’m leaving, but things are going to be annoying later.

Aristine sighed as she recalled her brother, who wasn’t in the capital. For now, she had to focus on the path ahead of her rather than the one she’d left behind.

I wonder what it’ll be like to live in Ilugo.

The land of barbarians.

The state of fire and iron.

An isolated plain surrounded by monsters.

“Those barbarians bed monsters, so they’re nothing more than half-breeds.”

“Imagine what else the man you will sleep with has spent the night with.”

“As rigid as you are, he might prefer the monsters over you.”

Her father’s whispers rang in her head. Though his main aim had likely been to curse Aristine’s union, the emperor also hated the Ilugoans with a passion.

The discord between Silvanus and Ilugo had lasted for generations. Silvanus took great pride as conquerors, but they found themselves incapable of taking any of Ilugoan land.

Aristine’s father, the current emperor, had set up a grand plan to bring the Ilugoans to kneel before him. However, the scales of war tipped in Ilugo’s favor, and they chiseled away at Silvanus’ land instead.

In fact, the very person credited for directing the war in Ilugo’s favor...

...is my soon-to-be husband, Tarcan.

Aristine recalled what she knew about her future husband.

When the emperor judged that there would only be losses in a prolonged war, he offered a cease-fire to the Ilugoans. In addition to war reparations, the king of Ilugo had made one other demand.

A marriage alliance between a direct descendant of the emperor and Tarcan.

An offer of a marriage alliance that would end all the accrued hostility over centuries. The king of Ilugo truly wished to end the war. Continued warfare would only burden Ilugo while it simultaneously fought monsters surrounding their lands.

Had any other two countries been involved, the story should have ended there with everyone living in peace forevermore.

But my father has no intention of ceasing the war.

The emperor only offered the agreement to buy himself time. At that moment, they were preparing another invasion into Ilugo with the small window they had.

Which is why he’s marrying me off as a sacrifice to his cause.

The emperor needed justification to declare war on an allied state, and he could only guarantee one with the exact timing and circumstances he wanted through a single method.

Murdering me and blaming Ilugo for it.

Aristine snorted softly.

Would the emperor ever guess that his discarded pawn would come to bite him back?

But Aristine needed a certain person’s cooperation to foil her father’s plans.

“Tarcan...” Aristine whispered the name of her future husband.

* * *

What are they up to now?

Aristine stared at the simplistic tea table set up in front of her in silence.

She thought it was strange that they were moving her by carriage instead of by portal, and she had been right. Aristine hadn’t been allowed to leave the carriage for ten days.

My arms and legs feel numb.

She hadn’t been able to wash herself or change her clothes. Every time she tried to take off her uncomfortable dress, the knights would knock on her window and hamper her attempts altogether.

She had only stepped out because they’d told her they had prepared some refreshments for her out of the blue, but…

I find it difficult not to be suspicious.

“Please have a seat.”

The words were polite, but their tone indicated that this was nothing less than an order. Regardless, Aristine sat.

Not yet.

She was still pretending to be obedient like she had in the palace.

I need to wait.

Aristine’s eyes scanned the armed soldiers.

Whether they were guarding her, watching her, or after her life, she still did not know.

The empire needed time to recover from its losses. Aristine assumed it wasn’t her time to die yet.

Put another way, the soldiers and ladies-in-waiting could do anything else they wished to her as long as she was still breathing. Ironically, the princess of Silvanus would not be safe from her own subjects until she reached Ilugoan soil.

Although that, too, is not a guarantee.

The filled teacup reflected Aristine’s lifeless face on the liquid’s surface, which began to waver though she hadn’t touched it. Soon, Aristine’s face disappeared and another scene replaced it in the liquid.

Oh.

It showed her a moment in time.

Aristine saw the same lady-in-waiting who had ordered her to sit down.

She’s wearing the same dress as right now.

Unlike Aristine, the ladies-in-waiting were allowed to wash themselves and change into new clothes each day. Even they looked cleaner and neater than the princess.

The maid carried a boiling pot of water in the vision. She walked toward the tea table, approaching Aristine.

Next, the tea’s surface showed the lady-in-waiting pouring the scalding water on Aristine, whose face turned a blotchy red from the burn.

“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry, Your Highness.”

In spite of her words, the lady-in-waiting gave the Aristine of the vision a wide, mocking smile. She roughly swiped at Aristine’s face with a cold cloth, almost as though she wanted to aggravate the injury.

“She looks like a drowned rat.”

“How fitting for a barbarian’s bride.”

The distant whispers of the onlooking ladies-in-waiting were clear as a bell.

Aristine remained silent as the tea’s surface rippled, then calmed. The vision disappeared, and Aristine saw only her face in the liquid, as she had before.

This was Aristine’s power. The power the emperor coveted so desperately. The power he thought Aristine had failed to awaken. And the reason why she was a failure instead of a masterpiece.

This was the Emperor’s Eye, which could reflect moments of time through any reflective surface.

It was not limited to showing Aristine the future. She could also see glimpses of the past and present through reflections.

Aristine couldn’t activate it on command, nor could she stop it. It was uncontrollable.

Hmm.

She slowly tapped a rhythm on the table with her finger. She could see the lady-in-waiting approaching from the side with the scalding pot of water.

In that short moment, Aristine’s eyes narrowed. The moment the lady-in-waiting drew near, the princess abruptly stood from her seat.

“Aaah!”

The lady-in-waiting screamed. She’d only stepped back reflexively, but she lost her balance and splashed the scalding water over herself. Her face instantly turned blotchy and red.

“Oh my,” Aristine gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.

“M-my face!”

Shocked, the other ladies-in-waiting rushed to fetch a cold towel. This was nothing like the scene Aristine had seen with the Emperor’s Eye. After a small commotion, a lady-in-waiting stomped over to the princess.

“What are you going to do about this?!” she demanded.

“Why are you asking me?”

The lady-in-waiting, Rosaline, gaped at Aristine’s retort. It was as though she couldn’t fathom the disheveled and dirty princess talking back to her.

“I only stood up from my seat,” Aristine said.

“But...!”

“You’re interrogating me as though I threw the water on her when she spilled it on herself. Do I seem like her nanny to you?” Aristine tilted her head. “Oh, well, I suppose maybe you all would need one.”

Since you’re all so childish. She refrained from saying this out loud, but her slanting smile implied a hundred words.

“Wh-what did you just—?!”

“If she doesn’t need a nanny, then she should have been more careful.”

The princess sounded calm, as though she was giving advice.

Rosaline was utterly speechless. She was stunned, dumbfounded even. But most of all, she was annoyed with herself for failing to come up with a rebuttal.

But she’s nothing more than an idiot! the lady-in-waiting thought to herself.

Her face flushed in humiliation.

When Rosaline grew quiet, Aristine sat back down and sipped her black tea. Her straight posture, elegant neck, and thin wrists all gave her the image of a princess on a pleasant trip rather than someone who had been denied the right to wash or change.

The ladies-in-waiting breathed out in astonishment. They all doubted their eyes. Were they looking at the same princess they had left the palace with?

Not a single one of them knew the princess well. She was that princess, after all.

This was the idiot princess who was treated worse than a commoner’s child because she defied His Imperial Majesty’s wishes. An illiterate child with no education. An unhinged woman who had never recovered after her confinement.

But... is her mind truly as unsound as we’ve assumed?

That was impossible. Something was very wrong. Right, it had to be pure luck.

Unbeknownst to Rosaline, this was just the beginning.