Queen in the Shadows

Chapter 3

“Now, please don’t be like that...”

“I told you to take these back.”

“I’m sorry, but since he instructed me to give them to you, I can’t.”

Frederick, who had barely been suppressing his anger toward Grace’s insistence, finally raised his voice. “Am I not speaking in discernable words? I won’t repeat myself. Take these away and go. Now!”

“Dear, what on earth are all these?”

Chesana was becoming anxious at her husband’s prolonged anger. He had always been someone who maintained his noble disposition no matter the circumstances.

Frederick clenched his hand, crumpling the parchment he held. “You don’t need to know. There’s no need to see this either.” He turned back to Grace. “What are you doing?! Take these and return!”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot do that. I will leave the lord’s heart here and just remove my body.”

“Grace!”

Despite Frederick’s shouting, Grace refused to follow his orders. While the baronet didn’t have a fiefdom, he was still a nobleman in name. He must’ve felt insulted by a mere butler’s disobedience since his face was purple with rage.

Amidst the tension, Elena pointed to the crumpled parchment and asked, “May I take a look?”

“I said you don’t need to!” yelled Frederick.

Despite his angry response, Elena reacted calmly. “It’s about me, correct?”

“What?”

“I asked whether it was about me.”

Frederick’s eyes widened. She’d hit the nail on the head. He hesitated, not knowing how to answer. This reaction proved to Elena that she was right.

“So it is,” she said simply, answering for him.

“Child—”

“I wish to know. It has to be this way.”

Elena carefully reached for the wrinkled parchment in her father’s hand. At first, the baronet hesitated to let her take it, but when she looked at him wordlessly, he relaxed his grip.

She unfolded the parchment and began to read. Then she smirked. As soon as she finished reading the last sentence, Elena burst out laughing.

Upon this parchment was a marriage proposal.

The stack of boxes were a type of wedding gift sent as collateral for the proposal. In other words, the lord was asking Elena to be his concubine.

How funny.

If this had been the old Elena, she would’ve cried and thrown a tantrum at this sudden turn of events.

A concubine. She would’ve felt the despair of having lost everything. But that wasn’t the case now.

While it’s unbelievable, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting something like this.

Riaveric—she was behind this.

She wanted Elena to despair. That way, Riaveric could swoop in to act comforting, and Elena would grab her hand of salvation. After coaxing Elena to trust and rely on her, Riaveric would rip out everything, from her liver to her gallbladder. And when Elena reached the end of her usefulness and served no further value, she’d be killed.

The old me would’ve held your hand. But not anymore. I’ll get you back—I’ll hurt you the same way you hurt me.

When Elena didn’t say anything, her father said, “Elena, don’t do anything. This is one-sided and truly unfair treatment. I’m going to go see the lord now.” As soon as he finished speaking, he went into his bedroom, put on his coat, and then came back out. “I’ll go now and refuse the lord’s proposal.”

“Dear, please convince him. This is really not what we want.”

When Elena heard her mother encouraging her father to negotiate, an alarm bell went off in her head.

You can’t let father go!

Riaveric’s noose was beginning to tighten around her family. In Elena’s past life, the lord had forced her to marry someone as a concubine under the pretext of patronage—hadn’t her father been imprisoned for protesting against that?

I have to be the one to put an end to this before Riaveric can even start.

Elena felt her determination solidify, strong as steel. “It’s all right, Father.”

“What?”

“E-Elena, what do you mean it’s all right?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Elena insisted. “Please wait a moment.”

After asking for her parents’ understanding, she quickly turned around. When Elena suddenly approached Grace, who had been hovering awkwardly, he flinched in surprise.

“Could you please give this message to the lord?”

Grace stared at her. “What would you like me to tell him?”

Elena’s eyes curved like crescent moons. It was that very eye smile that had captivated the empire’s social circles.

“Tell him that I graciously accept his gifts.”

“What?!”

“Elena!”

Baronet Frederick and Chesana shouted in shock, nearly simultaneously. In the customs of the grand duchy, accepting a marriage proposal gift meant that you would accept the proposal itself.

“What on earth are you saying?!” Frederick exclaimed, scolding Elena for her extremely reckless words. “Child, are you going to live your life as a concubine?!”

“It... can’t be helped.” Elena was still smiling, but now her smile looked sad for some reason. “If I refuse, you know something terrible will happen. I don’t want that.”

“You...”

The couple was quite shocked by their daughter’s honesty. Though Frederick was a fallen noble, their family had lived without losing their pride and self-respect. Elena’s blunt words pierced them to the core.

“Maybe this is all for the best,” Elena continued. “Didn’t you want me to find a good husband? I’ll accept this marriage proposal.”

Her parents didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry, Mama, Papa.”

The firmness of Elena’s words left no room for compromise. It was closer to a notice than a request.

“D-dear,” stammered her mother.

Her father bit his lip hard. “Elena, there’s no reason for you to become a concubine, is there?”

“It’s okay,” she murmured.

“You really...”

Elena bowed her head to ask for understanding. “I’m sorry.”

Her parents’ lips were so tightly closed that they couldn’t say anything. It was painful to think about their own helplessness—Elena had calmly made the choice to recognize her situation, to accept it as fate, simply because there were no other options.

Likewise, Elena felt pained—she knew her harsh words hadn’t brought peace to anyone.

I’m sorry for going against your wishes. It’ll only be for today. This is the only way for our family to continue living.

Grace read the situation and slowly turned to leave. “I will quickly deliver this good news to the lord.”

After he left, a heavy silence settled over the house. The mood was so gloomy that they all wondered whether the happy, peaceful breakfast had been a lie.

“Elena, no matter how much I think about it, I don’t think this is right. What do you even lack in this life—?”

Her mother couldn’t bear to continue speaking. Her eyes watered at the thought of how pitiable Elena’s existence would be as the concubine of an old lord.

“Don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry. Your mama is so sorry.”

“I’ll live happily, so don’t cry.”

Elena held her mother’s hand tightly. She knew that one warm touch would be more comforting than ten words.

“But this isn’t right. It really isn’t.” Meanwhile, her father was muttering, feeling overwhelmed with helplessness and despair. He seemed unable to accept reality. “I should go meet the lord right now. A concubine! How did we raise you?”

“It’s not your fault, Father. This is my choice.”

“It’s not too late yet,” Frederick countered. “As parents, we must step in and correct our child’s misguided choices.”

Elena shook her head. “Don’t do that. If you really love me, please trust me. Watch over me.”

“You...”

Elena’s request was like a nail hammered into Frederick’s heart. It felt like his world was collapsing. How unreliable were they as parents that she felt the need to take on all their karma?

“I’m going to... go get some fresh air,” Frederick mumbled.

“Dear.”

He no longer had the confidence to look at his daughter’s face, so he left the house. Elena’s heart was heavy—she watched through the window as her father walked away.

“I’m going to get some rest, Mama.”

“Okay.”

Chesana nodded, her expression glum. She knew that no words could comfort her daughter—she could only watch in pain as Elena went to her room.

Thud.

Elena locked the door and leaned her back against it.

“I ended up hurting both of you so much.”

She felt a great pang of regret. Did I really have to go this far?

“Let’s not look back. Only forward.”

She walked toward the wall with a determined expression, willing her weakening heart to become stronger. Then, she pulled back the curtains that had been installed to block drafts during the winter. The exposed wall before her was covered with notes the size of one’s palm.

The future for the next five years!

These notes were a chronological timeline of major events that would occur in the future. Elena had written and meticulously arranged them. She was bold enough to think that her future would proceed as she had arranged it. And at the center of it all would be a changed Elena.

She removed the note at the very top of the wall—the beginning of the timeline. It read, “Birthday banquet for Duke Lauzerte, the first head of the Friedrich family.”

This was the biggest reason why Riaveric was in a hurry to take Elena away. The birthday banquet was an important event, and it was only two months away.

“This was the first day I appeared in front of the world pretending to be Veronica.”

Bad rumors had spread throughout the capital following Veronica’s several-year absence from society. It was said that she’d fallen in love with a servant and had run away with him in the middle of the night—her father had apparently released knights to bring her back.

Since Grand Duke France was filled with the ambition to make Veronica the future empress, he couldn’t help but be sensitive about Veronica’s reputation. Therefore, he needed to put the rumors to rest as soon as possible, and the surest way to quash gossip was to show the aristocratic society that Lady Veronica was alive and well.

“I hope you look forward to my debut. Back then, I didn't know anything—I just blindly followed what you all told me to do. But there’s no reason to do that anymore.”

It was now Elena who held all the cards. She even held a joker that could, at any time, completely upend the game.

“Now it’s your turn.”