The Visad Palace lay deep within the Inner Palace, renowned for its vast rear gardens and breathtaking scenery. According to legend, the Empire's third emperor had gathered flowers from every corner of the world so that his flower-loving empress could admire blossoms in every season of the year. Because of that, Visad Palace came to be known as the Crown Princess's Palace, the residence traditionally reserved for generations of crown princesses.
It had stood empty for many years.
The current emperor had never experienced life as a crown prince himself, and the present crown prince had yet to marry. Until the day I became his wife and the empire's crown princess, Visad Palace had remained without a master.
The crown prince led me into the rear garden.
I simply followed where he guided me.
Just as the head steward had said, the garden was overflowing with blooming Leysha flowers. Their sweet fragrance saturated every corner of the grounds.
A breeze swept through the garden, sending white Leysha petals dancing through the air like swirling snowflakes. It looked as though a gentle snowfall had begun in the middle of spring.
He turned to face me.
His silver hair blended with the fluttering white petals, creating a scene so beautiful it resembled a painting.
Back then...
I could only stare at him, utterly spellbound.
And then...
He slowly approached me.
Reaching out, he lifted a hand toward my face.
Long, pale fingers brushed lightly against my cheek.
Then he smiled.
His golden eyes reflected nothing but my image.
He withdrew his hand.
A single flower petal that had been clinging to my cheek rested between his fingers.
He brought it to his lips in a gentle kiss before releasing it into the wind.
That...
That was the moment I fell hopelessly, irrevocably in love.
Sirius Aisan Row Priston.
The Crown Prince of the Priston Empire.
The man who would one day become emperor.
The man I had loved so desperately it had driven me mad.
Looking back now, I realized he hadn't hated me from the beginning.
He had never been openly affectionate, but neither had he been as indifferent as the marquis.
He had been raised from birth to become crown prince.
No one understood better than he did how one should treat others.
He always treated me with impeccable courtesy.
Thinking about it now, that politeness had almost been an occupational habit.
Ever since childhood, he had spent his life dealing with countless nobles and officials. It was simply the survival skill he had cultivated as the empire's heir.
I had mistaken that courtesy for affection.
At the time, I had never experienced genuine love.
I didn't know the difference between someone treating me with proper etiquette and someone loving me.
Perhaps it was only natural that I confused one for the other.
I only came to understand the difference...
...when he fell in love.
The way he treated her was unmistakably different from how he treated everyone else.
Whenever he looked at her, his golden eyes softened with a sweetness like honey.
Even the practiced smile permanently carved onto his face bloomed into something dazzling whenever it was directed at her.
If I had let him go after witnessing what true love looked like...
Perhaps everything would have changed.
But I refused to accept reality.
Instead, I poured all of my resentment onto the woman he loved.
When had he begun looking at me with contempt instead of respect?
Back then, I blamed her.
I convinced myself that she had changed him.
I still refused to admit it then.
But now I knew better.
Long before he ever met her...
He had already been looking at me with contempt.
Even now, I still didn't know exactly when that change had begun.
Because I had been so consumed by my own feelings that I never noticed his.
I claimed to love him...
Yet I had never truly tried to understand him.
Everything was measured by my own standards.
Everything was judged through my own desires.
I never once considered his circumstances.
His thoughts.
His feelings.
It had been a selfish love.
A one-sided love.
"Miss! More flowers arrived from the Imperial Palace!"
My nanny entered carrying another armful of Leysha flowers.
Their sweet fragrance instantly filled my room.
Beaming from ear to ear, she looked around for another empty spot to place them.
My room was already overflowing with flowers that arrived every other day from the palace.
"It seems His Highness the Crown Prince has truly taken a liking to you!"
After somehow finding a small empty space among the sea of bouquets, she arranged the Leysha flowers in another vase.
Pride and satisfaction shone across her face.
"It isn't like that."
I rubbed my throbbing temple with my fingers.
The headache had started ever since returning from the Imperial Palace.
Simply because flowers kept arriving from the palace, my nanny believed the crown prince was sending them to me.
Back then...
I had believed the exact same thing.
I thought they were gifts from a prince who had fallen in love with me.
But the matter wasn't nearly as simple as two naïve women imagined.
The Leysha flower was the very symbol of Visad Palace.
More importantly...
It was the emblem of the Crown Princess.
The palace's intentions in sending me Leysha flowers were obvious.
This wasn't the crown prince's doing.
It was the emperor issuing a warning to the nobility.
The crown prince probably doesn't even know flowers are being sent to me.
Since our engagement hadn't yet been formally announced, other noble families were still free to propose marriage to House Elyant.
In fact, I knew that several houses had already made discreet approaches.
Regardless of what kind of person I was...
"The daughter of Marquis Elyant" was an extraordinarily desirable bride.
Imperial law prohibited women from inheriting noble titles.
Their husbands, however, could inherit in their place.
I was the marquis's only child.
Unless he remarried and had another heir, whoever married me would most likely inherit House Elyant.
Even if the marquis later had another child...
I still had the House of Count Pision.
Count Pision had only one daughter.
And I was that daughter's only surviving child.
The elderly count had never had children with his current wife.
Even inheriting only a fraction of his astronomical fortune would allow someone to live comfortably for the rest of their life.
People coveted me...
Like ants swarming toward sugar.
The emperor was merely one of those ants.
The difference was that he happened to be the largest and strongest of them all.
By sending me Leysha flowers—the symbol of the Crown Princess—the emperor was revealing his intentions to every noble house.
No matter how attractive a marriage prospect I was...
No family foolish enough to make an enemy of the emperor would dare send a proposal.
Everyone...
Was mistaken about me.
Countess Pision was currently pregnant.
If she gave birth to a son, he would naturally inherit the count's title.
Even if she had a daughter, that child would still take precedence over me.
When the count died, I might inherit part of his fortune...
But his title...
His merchant guilds...
The true symbols of the Pision family's wealth...
None of them would ever come to me.
At least... provided I didn't exploit the value of my own name.
Even if the count never had another child...
The outcome would remain the same.
He already had a designated successor.
Just as the marchioness had passed away...
Count Pision eventually died as well, and his will was carried out.
He left portions of his wealth to both his wife and me.
Jewelry.
Gold.
A modest amount of land.
Even that inheritance alone was enough for an ordinary person to live comfortably for life.
But compared to the count family's total fortune...
It was nothing more than a drop in the ocean.
The merchant guilds that formed the foundation of the family...
Its territories...
Its noble title...
All of it passed to his chosen successor.
The entire empire was stunned by the sudden appearance of an heir no one had ever heard of.
He inherited nearly everything Count Pision had possessed.
The collateral branches of the family protested the loudest.
They refused to acknowledge the existence of a successor they hadn't even known existed.
But their objections accomplished nothing.
The heir possessed legally binding inheritance documents bearing the late count's own handwritten signature.
Moreover...
The countess herself—one of the two people who had the most to lose from his appearance—publicly supported him.
With that, the collateral relatives could no longer accuse him of being an imposter.
They tried to exploit what they thought would be chaos during the transfer of the merchant guilds.
That failed as well.
The heir had already been managing the guilds long before the count's death.
There had never been a single opening for anyone else to seize control.
Nothing was known about Count Pision's successor.
He had never appeared at an imperial banquet.
Even I had never seen his face.
My nanny had exploded in anger, calling him some nobody who had crawled out from who knew where.
But back then...
I had been completely consumed by the crown prince.
I hadn't cared in the slightest who Count Pision's heir was.
I wasn't interested.
The inheritance meant nothing to me, either.
I had no interest whatsoever in the count family's wealth.
Only one person occupied my thoughts.
The crown prince.
Neglected by an indifferent marquis and all but abandoned by a marchioness who had lost her mind...
I had always been starving for affection.
I tried to satisfy that hunger through him.
I wanted him to look only at me.
Speak only to me.
Exist only for my sake.
It was only natural...
That he eventually grew sick of me.
He despised me.
He loathed me.
The more desperately I begged for his love...
The stronger his disgust became.
After he found the woman he truly loved...
My obsession only worsened.
Until eventually...
I committed an unforgivable act.
When he learned what I had done...
He didn't even become angry.
He merely looked at me with eyes colder than ice...
And ordered me confined.
I struggled wildly against the knights trying to drag me away.
"What did I do wrong?!"
"It's all because of her!"
I screamed.
I cursed.
I spat venom and hatred.
Then...
He left me with a single sentence.
"The day I first met you..."
"...was the worst day of my life."
He walked away.
My legs gave out beneath me.
I collapsed onto the floor.
The knights dragged me away without mercy.
But by then...
I no longer had the strength to resist.
The happiest...
The brightest moment of my life...
Had been the worst moment of his.
Tears streamed endlessly down my face.
I could endure his coldness.
I could endure his accusations.
But I could never endure those words.
The memory that meant everything to me...
Had been rejected by the person who shared it.
Remembering that day made my entire body tremble.
Oddly enough, my mind remained calm.
Only my body betrayed me.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I tried to steady my shaking.
Before meeting him again, I had been terrified.
Yet the reunion itself had been surprisingly uneventful.
Just as he had in the past, he treated me with flawless courtesy.
And I managed to respond just as calmly.
I had loved him with all my heart.
I had believed he was my entire world.
There was no way our first meeting again could leave me unaffected.
Vionne's heart pounded as if it were about to burst from her chest.
But Lee Jia's consciousness cooled my thoughts like ice.
Two completely opposing emotions fought for control.
My heart still insisted that it loved him.
My mind rejected that love completely.
It was...
A strangely unsettling feeling.
I was myself.
And yet...
I wasn't.
"Miss?"
I rose to my feet.
Startled by my sudden movement, my nanny looked away from the flowers she was arranging.
"I'm going out for a short walk."
There was no point trying to understand my feelings for him now.
Instead...
I decided to be grateful that meeting him hadn't turned me back into the woman I used to be.
At the very least...
I was no longer insane with love.
For now...
That was enough.
