Episode 02
***
Strictly speaking, it was far more astonishing that Charlotte had ever come to love Alfonso at all.
For Charlotte, people—young or old, man or woman—had always been nothing more than tools to be used.
Some spat that she was ruthless, others that she was pitiless to the core. But what choice did she have?
In the House of Noah, even blood kin who failed to prove their worth were stripped of their name and cast out without hesitation. Born and raised in such a family, what else could she have learned?
Not exactly the sort of temperament to be loved, Charlotte admitted to herself with unflinching calm.
So even after she found herself irresistibly in love with Alfonso, she had never once expected to be loved in return.
Not when he furrowed his brows at the sight of her.
Not when he told her flatly that he despised her.
Not even when she learned that his heart already belonged to someone else.
Adeline Laveruse, wasn’t it?
That was the woman Alfonso loved.
Charlotte remembered her face with crystal clarity.
Short, honey-colored hair. Dimples that deepened charmingly whenever she smiled.
A woman who looked nothing like Charlotte, with her sharp features and long, flame-red hair.
The fourth woman proposed to Alfonso, wasn’t she?
Yes. Charlotte had sabotaged those negotiations, spread scandal, and maneuvered matters so that Alfonso had no choice but to marry her instead.
Afterward, thanks to the Laveruse family’s jewel trade, Alfonso began meeting Adeline frequently under the guise of business. Soon enough, the sight of the two of them together became all too common.
She never knew precisely why they met so often. What remained in her memory was only how natural, how fitting they had looked together—far more so than she herself, his wife.
Once, Charlotte confronted him in his study.
“You two seemed quite happy together, Alfonso.”
“…I don’t know what you mean.”
“That woman.”
At her unflinching words, Alfonso’s lips pressed into a thin, silent line.
“Do you love her?”
There was no need to clarify who that woman was.
His face, twisting at once with pain, gave her the answer.
As though the question itself wounded him.
“…What is the point of asking me this?”
“I simply wanted to know. If it’s love.”
“And if I say yes? Will you spread another scandal? As you once did to force this marriage?”
“I only asked a question. I don’t see why you’re so angry.”
“Because she has nothing to do with you. Leave her out of this.”
“‘Nothing to do with me’ isn’t quite right, is it? ‘The woman you love’ would be more accurate. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Charlotte.”
His voice was low and harsh, his face taut with suppressed fury, warning her to stop.
But even then—he never denied it.
Instead, he looked at her as though she were some loathsome thing, and at last said, in a voice ragged with misery:
“…Stop making me unhappy.”
What greater confession could there be?
If she could have, Charlotte would have asked him: Was it truly I who made you unhappy?
But she never let the words leave her lips.
Because she feared he would say yes. Because she feared the answer would force her to acknowledge the cruel paradox of her love: that she had brought him nothing but misery.
That very day, Charlotte resolved to divorce Alfonso.
Not out of anger, but in the desperate hope of setting things right, even belatedly.
And because, more than anything, she wanted him to be happy.
If I leave him, everything will return to how it should be.
He would no longer be wretched. He could wed the woman he loved.
The thought tore at her heart, but if that was what it took for Alfonso to find happiness, she would endure it.
It was Father who ordered this marriage, wasn’t it?
But Father—Dominic—was dead now. In the three years since, Quincy, her half-brother who adored her above all else, had become head of House Noah.
Divorce would not be difficult.
So Charlotte wrote a letter to Quincy, asking him to arrange it.
And once the letter was sent, she felt strangely at peace.
Yes, she was certain.
Until two weeks later, when Alfonso lay dead of an unknown poison.
***
“My lady… I am sorry. There is no hope for your husband.”
“The suspect took his own life before interrogation. We cannot trace who was behind it…”
An unknown toxin.
A suspect who conveniently killed himself.
A husband taken before she could even act.
Her hand trembled violently as she reached for the coffin lid.
Not from fear of seeing his corpse.
But because the method of his murder was all too familiar.
And the moment her eyes fell upon Alfonso’s peaceful face within the coffin, she could deny it no longer.
If anyone else might be ignorant, Charlotte could not be.
Not she, raised in Noah.
It was Noah that had killed Alfonso.
Realization struck her like a blow, and Charlotte ran at once to confront them.
Tears streaked her face as her lips parted.
“…Why did you kill him?”
Fury welled inside her like fire.
“Why? Was he such a threat? Did he defy our family? For what reason?”
She clung to Quincy, the only family she still cherished, desperately trying to believe.
Surely there had been some reason—some justification.
“I wrote it in my letter,” she whispered hoarsely. “I told you… I loved him. I told you that, Quincy…”
Why had they needed to kill him?
He was the man who, even when he rejected her, never once failed to offer his hand when she stepped down from a carriage.
The man who, while the world spat ‘villainess’ to her face, never once let the word cross his lips.
The man she had never dared smile at in earnest, for fear her heart would be exposed.
Why? Why?
“You said you wanted a divorce, Charlotte.”
“…What?”
“Divorce would bring endless disputes over settlements and dowries. But if he died? If we seized Eduard’s lands as well, everything would be simple.”
“…That’s all? That was the reason?”
“All? This is the Noah way. You know that as well as I.”
“I told you I loved him. I told you I loved him…”
“Think rationally, Charlotte. This was for your sake. I know you loved him, but—”
“If you knew, then you never should have done it.”
Her words tore out like venom.
Her eyes blazed with hatred, sharp as blades at the edge of a cliff.
“You knew. You knew—and you killed him anyway! And you dare say it was for me? No—it was for the family! Always the family!”
How could they?
How could the family she had given her life to destroy the man she loved?
Had she not written, over and over, that she loved him?
Her tears burned like acid as they coursed down her cheeks.
Every drop felt like blood wrung from her very heart.
Was grief always so agonizing?
Was death always this unbearable?
Better it had been her own blood spilled. At least then only she would suffer.
Better it had been her who died. At least then Alfonso would still be breathing in this world.
Better never to have met him, never to have married him.
Then he would still be alive.
Tears fell like rain against her skin as Charlotte bit her lip until it bled.
“Die, Quincy.”
For the first time in her life, she loathed her own blood.
For the first time, she despised the family name she had once borne with pride.
Love, she realized, could be nothing but tragedy.
Her love had killed him.
That night, Charlotte wept until her voice broke.
She preserved Alfonso’s body with ice, and set out across the continent in search of a way to bring him back.
Years passed. Her brilliant red hair faded to white. The delicate hands she had once tended so carefully became ruined. Still, she did not stop.
Every time she closed her eyes, her guilt crushed the air from her lungs.
Stop making me unhappy.
His voice, the voice of the first man to teach her love, was etched in her soul—
while the man himself lay dead.
She could not stop.
And at last—
“To restore a human life, my lady,” whispered the sage, “the price demanded is… very great.”
At last, she had found the answer.
