Chapter 111

For a war that she had thought would last several more years at the very least, the civil war’s tide turned with astonishing speed. The death of the man who had reigned over the barbarian army like a legend broke the soldiers’ morale completely. Beast or human, a pack without its leader was bound to scatter, and the death of their supreme commander was, for all intents and purposes, a declaration of defeat.

The barbarian soldiers who survived began deserting in droves, fleeing for their lives as they abandoned their formations and scattered in every direction. Those who stayed behind to fight until the very end met harsher fates. Some were captured by the allied forces and suffered as prisoners. Others were cut down where they stood.

The forces that had gathered throughout the Razagal Forest broke apart in a desperate struggle for individual survival, and sly as a fox, Jocelyn wasted no time seizing the opportunity. Marching out with the allied army, he launched an all-out assault. His troops pursued the retreating enemy with a savagery that made them look more like hounds on a hunt than soldiers in formation. The other soldiers were no different. All of them were desperate to snatch even the smallest scrap of military merit from a stage that might never present itself again for years to come.

Even Malena, who had hovered at death’s door, finally regained consciousness. The moment she woke, she asked for Odelliana, and when she learned that Odelliana was safe, tears spilled from her eyes. Though her own body was still in ruins, she wept with relief and joy, grateful simply that they had both survived.

Matthias had returned alive as well. Malena had survived. The damage inside Eisenwald had been severe, but many lives had still been spared. All the things Odelliana had wanted most had come to pass, and for that reason, she should have felt nothing but happiness.

“War’s over!”

When the end of the war was officially declared, every last citizen of the territory poured into Orldenta’s great square, cheering until their throats grew raw. Children darted between the broken ruins and heaps of rubble like birds released from cages, while the adults gathered in clusters, cooking food and passing around drink, celebrating with the fierce abandon of people who had long ago forgotten how.

At last, it’s over, Odelliana thought.

In her previous life, the civil war had been put down in a single year. In this life, it had dragged on for three. It had been a turbulent, exhausting stretch of time, full of disasters and reversals, but it had brought the first chapter of her long-awaited plans to the most perfect conclusion she could have hoped for.

Matthias had grown into exactly what she had wished for him to become and returned as the hero who had saved the nation. Eisenwald had been protected from the invading enemy. Blair, Malena, Martin, Liam, and all those close to her had survived. Every single thing she had wanted had been achieved.

Odelliana, too, let herself bask in the joy of the ceasefire.

But the day Jocelyn returned to Eisenwald after riding out to wipe out the remnants of the enemy, the ending she had believed so perfect twisted in a direction she had never anticipated.

“When I return to the capital, I intend to dissolve my engagement to Lady Odette and proceed with a formal marriage to you instead. So wait quietly for my proposal, and begin preparing to come up to the capital.”

The first words Jocelyn had spoken upon returning to Eisenwald were so absurd that Odelliana nearly wondered whether she had misheard him. He would break off his engagement to Odette and marry her instead? It was such a preposterous thing to say that she had briefly wondered whether he had sustained a head injury on campaign and gone mad. An engagement was not some childish promise that one could overturn as easily as flipping a hand over. It was a solemn arrangement maintained for years between the royal family and one of the great ducal houses. What possible means did he think he had to simply undo it?

Odelliana dismissed his ridiculous words as nonsense and did not even go out to see him off when he departed for the capital. If anything, she celebrated his absence with a small private gathering of her own. But two months later, Blair came to find her.

“The Second Prince has formally proposed an alliance with House Grüsewald.”

“What?”

The word tore out of her before she could stop it. She stared at him, disbelief blanching her face. “What do you mean, a formal proposal when he already has a fiancée?”

Blair looked uncomfortable, but his expression was grave.

“It seems His Highness intends to break his arrangement with Odette and enter a new engagement with you instead.”

For a moment Odelliana thought Blair had caught the same brain fever as Jocelyn. What else could explain his speaking such nonsense with a straight face? She could not even gather enough composure to refute him at once. She only blinked like a fool, frozen in place.

But Blair remained serious.

“To be truthful, he came to see me before he left,” Blair admitted quietly. “He said that he wished to make you his princess, and that if I cared for your future, I ought to cooperate. I wanted to hear your opinion first.”

“You came all the way here to discuss that utter nonsense with me seriously?”

“At the time, I thought it no more than an empty remark myself,” Blair said with a pained smile. “But now that he has formally proposed the match, it appears he meant every word.”

He looked awkward even as he repeated it, as though he himself could not quite understand the prince’s abrupt caprice. That his younger sister would be the one forced to bear the consequences clearly sat poorly with him as well.

“And there’s more,” Blair added.

Odelliana’s heart began to sink.

“What do you mean, more?”

“He released materials to the press.”

Her face went white.

Press materials. Of course he had. Jocelyn had always been a genius at managing public opinion.

Even in her previous life, that had been his gift. No matter how much blood he spilled during his purge, no matter how many enemies he crushed underfoot on his way to the throne, he had never truly lost the people. He curated his reputation with methodical patience, polished his image through the press, and made sure that every victory appeared to belong to him even when much of the labor had been done by others.

Now he had done the same thing again.

“He gave you credit for part of the campaign in Eisenwald,” Blair said. “He named you as a strategist, praised you for supporting him in battle despite being a woman, and linked that story to the proposal itself.”

Odelliana felt as if the floor had tilted beneath her.

“He publicly stated that there is a woman to whom he became deeply attached during the war,” Blair went on. “He did not name you directly, but everyone is meant to understand who he means.”

A scandal. No, not a scandal. Something subtler, something more dangerous. A romance.

Odelliana’s mind raced with cold, terrible clarity.

Of course. He was not merely courting her. He was constructing a narrative around her. A woman of hidden value. A noble daughter who had served brilliantly in war. A prince who had chosen her over another. The public would be intrigued, impressed, and eventually supportive. People would want to know who she was. And once they knew, House Grüsewald could no longer continue pretending she did not exist. Whether the family liked it or not, they would be forced to bring her into the light.

Jocelyn had, in a single move, dragged her existence onto the stage.

He had always been like that. In her previous life too, he had swallowed up Matthias’s achievements as though they were his own and fed them back to the public through the press until they gleamed in his hands. He had become a national hero in the eyes of the kingdom for putting down the civil war, then had used that fame the following year to justify an invasion of the Kingdom of Leroschel after revealing documents supposedly found among the barbarian forces. The resulting treaty had benefited Reveln enormously, and the people had adored him for it.

His public support had become so overwhelming that many openly lamented the fact that such a capable man was not the eldest son and therefore not the rightful heir. Later, when the First Prince’s illness worsened and he died, Jocelyn’s path to the throne had been left almost entirely unobstructed. Had it not come to light that Jocelyn himself had stood behind the prince’s death, he might well have become king without ever needing to stage a revolt.

A mad bastard, Odelliana thought savagely.

The more she thought about it, the clearer it became that his scheme was not impossible.

Officially, she did not exist, but the blood in this body was unmistakably that of Grüsewald. As far as lineage went, there was no obstacle to the royal family taking her as a bride. Her lame leg might have been a flaw in a queen consort, but for the wife of a spare prince, it would hardly matter. From the perspective of the royal family, the house they were marrying into would remain the same. Only the bride would change.

And because he had already praised her publicly and hinted at a romance, opinion would begin to turn in her favor. The public would naturally begin to imagine her as a suitable royal bride. Once that happened, the Grüsewald duke could no longer keep her hidden. Good or ill, Odelliana would be forced into formal recognition within the family.

If Jocelyn pushed the matter with both public opinion and royal pressure behind him, there would be little any ordinary individual could do to resist. And if the royal house and House Grüsewald both decided to proceed, Odelliana’s own wishes would count for almost nothing.

Yet even as that horror took shape in her mind, another thought intruded. Would the Duke of Grüsewald truly permit it so readily? There was still the matter of the Beast’s Curse, the fatal problem that hung over her existence. She had been raised to be offered as a sacrifice to the heart. She was meant to become its vessel. The duke, who knew all the hidden truths, could not possibly be indifferent.

Still, whatever he might privately think, the legal problem was immediate and dangerous.

“Odelliana,” Blair said carefully, “I do not think his offer is entirely without merit.”

She stared at him as if he had struck her.

“What?”

“If you became his princess,” Blair said, choosing each word with painful care, “the family would no longer be able to sacrifice you so easily.”

“Brother, do you even hear what you’re saying?” she demanded. “His fiancée is Odette.”

“I know. But His Highness wants to marry you, not Odette.”

“And that makes it acceptable?”

“I’m not saying that,” Blair replied. “But perhaps this would not be as terrible for Odette as it sounds. If she were spared a marriage to a man who did not love her…”

Odelliana struck a hand against her own chest in frustration.

“If anyone is going to be trapped in a marriage they do not want, it would be me! I hate him!”

Blair looked startled by the force of her anger.

“But he saved your life,” he said helplessly. “More than once. Why do you hate him so much?”

“So because he saved me, I’m meant to love him?” Odelliana snapped. “Is that what you’re saying? That I’m not allowed to despise him just because he once did something useful?”

“That isn’t what I meant…”

“I hate him,” she said flatly. “I hate that he exists. I disliked him the very first time I met him, and I decided then that I never wanted anything to do with him.”

The truth was that in practical terms, marrying Jocelyn offered her almost nothing worth having. At best, it might inconvenience Odette and bruise her pride. But Odette’s life would not be ruined by losing him. She would still marry another prince somewhere, or a proper nobleman, and live in luxury until the curse claimed her. Jocelyn was not the axis of her existence. He had only ever been central to Lelusha’s.

And even if Odette did love Jocelyn sincerely, that changed nothing. Odelliana knew exactly what sort of rotten man he was. To become his wife purely to spite another woman would cost far more than it could ever repay. The mere thought of sharing a bed with him made bile rise in her throat.

Of course, there was one twisted advantage. If she became his wife, she would stand close enough to stab him in the back at the perfect moment. Perhaps such proximity would make revenge easier.

But the role of a princess came with chains of its own. A royal bride was watched, constrained, and boxed in from every side. It was not freedom. It was a cage. And Jocelyn was too careful, too calculating, ever to let even his wife come too near his true core. If she misstepped, she might well end up discarded or eliminated just as she had in her previous life.

The court life itself was unbearable to imagine. Being used by him again was worse. And above all, she loathed him too much to contemplate being his wife in any real sense.

You miserable curse on my path, she thought bitterly.

Just as he had ruined Lelusha’s life, he had now reached out to seize Odelliana’s in both hands. She had known, in some distant and abstract way, that as long as this body was Odette’s twin, she would inevitably become entangled with Jocelyn at some point. But she had never imagined it would happen like this.

And the move he had made was so viciously clever that she could only marvel at it through clenched teeth. He had shown not the slightest regard for her position or her will. The entire scheme reeked of selfishness. There was no reason she should submit meekly and let him play with her life.

“Don’t say such things too, not even if you think you’re speaking for my sake,” she said to Blair, her voice shaking with disgust. “I hate it. It’s repulsive.”

Blair let out a long breath.

“I don’t want you trapped in a marriage you don’t want,” he said quietly. “But His Highness seems determined, and now that your existence is becoming known, once Father formally registers you in the family, I won’t be able to protect you anymore.”

That was the truest danger. Once she was entered formally into House Grüsewald, the duke would gain full legal authority over her as his daughter. And the moment he possessed that right, he would use it.

Jocelyn, with one brilliant, poisonous move, had shoved her to the edge of a cliff.

“Even so,” Blair said, “I still think you should consider it carefully. I want your safety above all else. I do not want to see you suffering and scraping by in a place like this any longer. You need someone who can protect you.”

From Blair’s point of view, his attitude made sense. Jocelyn had contributed enormously to Eisenwald’s defense and had saved Odelliana’s life. Blair had every reason to think well of him.

Odelliana understood that with her head, but emotionally, it cut deeper than she expected. She was angry, yes, but there was hurt tangled up in it too.

“And if you begin urging me to marry him too,” she said coldly, “then I’ll climb the tower this instant and throw myself off it.”

“Odelliana!”

Blair seized her shoulders in alarm.

“What else am I supposed to do?” he demanded, genuinely shaken. “He’s made up his mind about marrying you. He’s going to force this through. I can no longer shield you from Father.”

“You think marrying Jocelyn is my only path left?”

“At present,” Blair said after a pause, “I think it may be the best one.”

No, Odelliana thought. For me, it is the worst.

And in that same instant, another answer rose in her mind. Clear. Cold. Immediate.

If she wanted to avoid formal registration into House Grüsewald and avoid being sold off into marriage with Jocelyn, there was only one possible way.

“I’ll handle it,” she said. “So wait.”

Without another word, she left Blair’s room and immediately summoned the servants.

“Clean the bedchamber thoroughly,” she ordered. “And prepare bathwater.”