Chapter 2
Before you read: (R)=Reinhardt, (J)=Johanna, (K)=Knight, (C)=Chancellor
***
The Crown Prince, Mikhail Allanquez, divorced Reinhardt Delphina Linke 15 years ago.
Mikhail had sent his father-in-law, Hu Linke, on a journey in his stead.
Why? Well, it was all because of the Princess of the Duchy of Canaria, a hostage of the Allanquez Empire.
Instead of focusing on his wife, Princess Reinhardt, the Crown Prince spent his time messing around with Princess Canaria.
But that wasn’t the main problem, it was the fact that Princess Canaria begged the Crown Prince to buy the salt of the Duchy.
Though the Duchy’s salt was pink and beautiful, it wasn’t preferred due to its low quality.
Amongst all the salts, it was undoubtedly Sarawak’s blue salt that was of the highest caliber.
But despite knowing that, the prince began to buy the pink salt that Canaria wanted.
It came as no surprise that there were protests from Sarawak, after all, they had signed a salt supply contract with the Empire.
These protests eventually led to a revolt occurring at the border between the Allanquez Empire and Sarawak.
The Emperor had felt unsettled so he ordered the prince to go and solve the problem himself.
But the prince didn’t want to go and instead called on his father-in-law, the retired General Hu Linke, to go in his place.
Hu Linke, who loved his daughter dearly, obeyed but asked the Crown Prince to clear up his relationship with Princess Canaria and stop causing problems with these women.
It wasn’t until Hu Linke left that Reinhardt found out about everything.
Reinhardt felt so sorry for her father but couldn’t think of anything that could help his situation.
Hu Linke was a veteran, a great war hero who had protected the empire for decades and had gotten out of each battle alive.
This time, however, Hu Linke never made it back.
He’d passed away in an accident, the horse he was riding got startled and ran wild. And he, who fell from the horse’s back, died in an instant.
The only comfort she had was that it was instantaneous death and her father didn’t have to die suffering.
The Crown Prince didn’t even console her, he demanded a divorce from the grieving Reinhardt at her father’s own funeral.
The reason? He was ashamed.
So just like that, Reinhardt was unilaterally divorced.
As a form of compensation, the Linke family was given the Helka estate.
Helka was a vast estate with fertile territory, its conditions offering a glimpse of the Emperor’s apologies.
The people of the capital complained about the Linke family’s inheritance and their abundant businesses and Reinhardt, who belatedly overcame her sadness, could not properly challenge their opposition.
On top of that, no one dared to propose to a woman who had been the Crown Princess. A woman who the future emperor had discarded.
All Reinhardt could do was cling to the estate.
The Linke family’s estate went completely to her, the one who’d been replaced, as an apology for her position as the Crown Princess being taken away.
Reinhardt could not forgive Mikhail, but imperial law prevented her from being able to do anything about it.
How could she forgive him for her father’s death? For divorcing her in her time of need? For taking away her position?
No estate could ever buy her pardon.
So Reinhardt focused on taking care of Helka and secretly raised soldiers, building her own army. Mikhail had a narrower view than the Great Emperor. Helka was a country-sized estate and well suited for revenge because it was far from the capital and rich in resources.
And so she slowly planned a rebellion.
Reinhardt would have led a revolt if she hadn’t gotten sick.
She wasn’t healthy because she didn’t eat properly. At first, it was because she just didn’t want to eat, but later, she couldn’t eat because her stomach would hurt if she did.
As she trained soldiers with her skinny and frail body, all she could think about was tearing out Mikhail’s guts.
When Mikhail became Emperor, she became even sharper and her thirst for revenge only grew.
But one day, she caught a bad cold and could hardly get out of bed.
And as she laid there looking at wrinkles on her hand, her thoughts turned to Mikhail again.
[Oh, if I could go back and meet Mikhail as a child again…]
[If I could face him, I would stab him in the neck in a heartbeat.]
Reinhardt is always hanging on her deathbed after the death of her father, whom she always misses.
She lowered the sword and hugged it with her trembling hands. And then she crouched.
[If I could just have one chance…]
[Father, please give me a chance to kill him.]
Reinhardt knew that her end was near when she became 40, and in the face of death she remained calm, succumbing to its lull.
But when she came to her senses, she found that she was kneeling in front of her father’s coffin and crying.
For some reason, she was 24 years old again and back to the day of her father’s funeral, right before Mikhail divorced her.
Of course, the situation ended quite differently this time around.
Unlike in the past, when she’d fallen apart and couldn’t cope with the divorce, today she’d stabbed the Crown Prince on his right leg.
Her father’s sword felt light as she did it, her mind only registering how the prince screamed and bled right in front of her.
***
It wasn’t a dream.
Reinhardt sat on the dirty floor as she stared up at the ceiling blankly.
Her dress was a mess, the shoes she’d worn were nowhere to be found, and her previously shiny blonde hair had gotten dirty a long time ago.
She was in the Imperial City’s prison right now.
(J) “Your Grace the Crown Princess, why did you do such a terrible thing? Just why?”
A woman was crying in front of her, she was a close friend of Reinhardt’s.
Her name was Johanna and she had been her personal maid when she was Crown Princess.
Reinhardt, who had been looking away, turned back to Johanna and tilted her head slightly.
(R) “Horrible thing?”
(J) “You stabbed the Crown Prince!”
Johanna was a tidy and gentle maiden, and yet here she was, crying for her in prison with her brown hair all messy and disorganized.
To meet Reinhardt, she’d taken all the accessories from her hair and given them to the knights. As soon as she’d seen Reinhardt, her red cheeks became distorted and she started to sob.
(J) “Do you know how worried I was?!”
(R) “So what happened?”
(J) “What happened?”
(R) “To Mikhail Allanquez, that son of a b*tch.”
(J) “Your Grace!”
Johana looked around apprehensively.
Fortunately, the knights who guarded her only glanced over but didn’t say anything.
Johanna whispered, “He passed out because he was bleeding a lot. His stab wounds must have been very bad.”
(R) “That’s great news.”
(J) “Your Highness!”
Johanna scolded her again, but Reinhardt only snorted in response.
(R) “Continue.”
(J) “…Well the Emperor called in all the skilled doctors, but His Majesty the Crown Prince was still struggling because of the stab wound and all the beatings you gave him…”
Johanna closed her eyes as if she were saying something terrible, and then continued.
(J) “The wound got so bad I thought they would have to cut off the leg. But even though they didn’t end up cutting it, he still can’t use his right leg anymore.”
The news she had just informed her of caused Reinhardt’s golden eyes to become dazed.
As soon as Johanna finished speaking, Reinhardt slapped the bars with her palm.
She shouted, feeling overjoyed.
(R) “Ahhhhhhhh! That’s so sweet to hear!”
(K) “This crazy woman.”
A knight I didn’t know let out a remark, as if to say my shout had been unpleasant, but I didn’t care.
Mikhail’s pain made her knees, which were covered with dirt and couldn’t walk properly, gain strength to jump around. She felt euphoric just at the thought of how much agony he was in right now.
(R) “I love it! I feel so good inside! Mikhail Allanquez, you two-legged, two-armed, half-ass. You’ll be crippled for life!”
(K) “You’re so noisy! Shut up!”
The knight beat the bars with his sword, but Reinhardt didn’t mind it, and just continued stamping her feet. She even did a fist pump in the air.
(R) “I’ve waited for my revenge for 15 years! I couldn’t even eat porridge because my guts had burned black, all I just wanted to chew his guts! Oh! My only regret is that I didn’t take his life!”
(J) “Your Highness!”
Johanna cried out in fear, it looked like Reinhardt had just gone crazy.
Oh, my faithful friend, my sweet Johanna.
Reinhardt wanted to pat her on the cheek and reassure her, but she couldn’t because she was so happy.
She continued jumping around and laughing, hitting the stone wall sometimes as she did.
Her cackling laughter resounded inside the prison, and the sound of the knight knocking on the bars grew louder.
In the end, Reinhardt’s joy didn’t stop even after Johanna was kicked out.
(R) “Hahaha! You idiot! You must be a fool! The Prince of Allanquez is a crippled soldier now! Ahahaha!”
***
The Emperor ordered Reinhardt to sit on the cold floor in front of the Imperial City.
Reinhardt Linke’s crime was extremely serious so, of course, her Crown Princess status was taken away.
She would also be deprived of any rights and inheritance of the Linke family.
Reinhardt could tell that the Emperor’s gaze on her was completely different from her previous life.
In her previous life, the Emperor had a sorry look on his face for what his stupid son had done.
(R) “Wow, it really isn’t a dream.”
It had been two months since she had stabbed the prince.
Those two full months in prison, she’d pinched her face more times than she could count.
She felt the pinches each time, but it still seemed like she was in a crazy but happy dream that she didn’t want to wake up from.
But then she’d cry out in regret, it was a pity that she didn’t take his life and had only made him a crippled man.
The pain in her knees was, above all, the most vivid thing she felt though.
Reinhardt had crawled on her knees in the prison because she couldn’t put strength on her knees.
You could see that at the tip of her damaged knee, there were scratches and dark blood trickled down on the dirty floor.
(C) “Unfortunately for the Fildon family, Reinhardt Linke’s mother died a month ago. Now Reinhardt Linke, their only remaining descendant, will hold all the authority of the Fildon family, it will not be forfeited.”
Reinhardt frowned weakly at this unexpected twist.
I remember that my maternal cousin had died at this time before as well and the title of the Fildon family was pending to be given to me.
But in her previous life, she was confined to Helka territory, she didn’t care about the title of the Fildon family so it had been left unsettled.
Where was the Fildon family located anyway?
As if he’d read her mind, the Chancellor continued,“So since Reinhardt Linke’s right to live in the capital has been revoked, she will be deported to the Fildon family estate in Luden.”
Luden? I’ve heard of it somewhere
(R) “Oh.”
She suddenly recalled that Luden was northeast of the Allanquez Empire.
Although the territory was vast, it was a terrible place where it snowed for six months out of each year.
Even her mother had never been back to Luden until she died, and she’d been born in the Fildon Mainland near the capital.
Freeze to death in Luden.
Go ahead and try to survive in the barren Fildon estate.
She smirked when she thought of the Emperor saying that.
The Emperor’s eyebrows wrinkled when he noticed it, but he didn’t bother trying to ask her anything.
This whole situation was strange for him too.
The story of the Crown Prince being distracted by Princess Canaria, and the fact that he demanded a divorce in front of Hu Linke’s coffin, has become famous and is spreading like wildfire.
Plus, because of the whole mess with the pink salt, the price of high-end blue Sarawak salt rose dramatically. All of the nobles were extremely unhappy with the Crown Prince.
Therefore, if they asked Reinhardt about her crime here, the Emperor would only be making his son’s scandal worse.
(C) “The sinner must thank the Emperor and repent of her sins until she dies, is born again, dies again, is born again, and until the legendary dragon rises above the Pram Mountains.”
When the Chancellor threw this expression at the end of his statement, Reinhardt couldn’t help but snort.
‘Till death, and then born again and again, until the legendary dragon rises above the Pram Mountains.’
Curse Allanquez.
***
E/N: The author switches between first and third points-of-view, so you may see it suddenly switch from one to the other as you read.
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