The maids practically dragged Merdi to a small, windowless room where not even the faintest starlight could penetrate the gloom.
Her first step sent clouds of dust billowing up from the floorboards, catching in her throat and forcing a dry cough.
Even so, her expression held no fear, no displeasure.
Margaret called this place the Room of Repentance.
From the moment Merdi had left the royal palace for the Greenfield estate, her bridal lessons had begun.
If she ever talked back or made a mistake, Margaret would lock her in here—sometimes for days, other times for merely half a day.
At fifteen, when the lessons began, she had cried over the harsh punishments, but there was no one she could complain to.
No one would listen.
She had not been permitted to bring anyone from her own palace, and Margaret had strictly forbidden the Greenfield servants from getting too close, lest the young future duchess be spoiled.
Nor could she whine to the fiancé she saw only a couple of times a year.
She could not burden Clifton, home for a brief respite from a battlefield still ringing with gunfire, with such trivial matters.
Besides, she was terrified of how he might react.
And so, bit by bit, Merdi adapted.
She adapted to being locked in this dark, lonely room.
She adapted to the maids’ ridicule and the way people looked at her, the foreigner.
The door slammed shut, and through the crack, she could hear the maids’ thin, mocking laughter.
“Why’d she have to go and do something so out of character?”
“Did she really think something would change just because the master is back?”
Merdi stared at the sliver of light from the corridor.
The maids were right.
The fiancé she had waited for had returned, but nothing had changed.
It was not that he was unaware of her plight.
Even if they shared a bedroom, even if he knew everything, he was a man who would remain indifferent to her suffering.
She was calmly accepting the fact she had denied for so long.
Whether he was on a distant battlefield or here at Greenfield, the chasm between their hearts remained impassable.
It was a truth she had once tried to ignore, but now, having decided on the annulment, it felt trivial.
Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she found her way to a corner of the room.
Though she was locked in here often, she never grew used to the pitch-black darkness, but this spot in the right-hand corner felt as familiar as her own chair.
Whenever she was scared, she would scoot into the corner until she ended up here.
How many tears had she shed in this very spot?
If she lowered her head, she imagined she could smell them soaked into the worn wooden floor.
But instead of dwelling on the past, Merdi hugged her knees and quietly replayed the day’s events.
It was better to organize her thoughts than to drown in self-pity.
After her conversation with Clifton, her mind was a jumbled mess, and she needed the quiet.
As the breathless day drew to a close, the question she had been pushing aside slowly resurfaced.
‘Why is he so obstinate about this marriage?’
She still could not understand why their conversation had become so heated.
A sudden demand for an annulment would be bewildering, of course, but in the long run, it was undoubtedly the better choice for him.
Had she not witnessed firsthand how revered the Greenfield name was?
Envious and jealous gazes followed them everywhere.
Young ladies, knowing full well he had a fiancée, still looked at him with longing, their eyes full of ‘what ifs’.
If she were gone, even the most proper young ladies would not hesitate to pursue him.
Merdi buried her face in her knees, a pout forming on her lips.
‘After he even called me a half-breed…’
Even if the engagement was an imperial decree, he would have all the justification he needed if her Kingdom withdrew first.
The knot of confusion in her mind refused to loosen.
Eventually, Merdi concluded that for a man like Clifton, having a deficient fiancée be the one to demand an annulment was simply an unacceptable blow to his pride.
For someone who valued honor above all else, it must be a disgrace.
Marrying a shameful fiancée versus being dumped by one.
She held her chin in consideration.
Still, was a moment of shame not better than a lifetime of it?
Only that arrogant man would know which he considered more dishonorable.
Merdi winced, the memory of what she had done to his pristine shirt still vivid.
The sound replayed in her mind, a wretched noise that had escaped her own lips but still made her skin crawl.
She remembered the thin, acidic liquid she had brought up.
She had not eaten anything, but she knew better than anyone the severity of her transgression against a man as fastidious as Clifton.
“I…I told you,” she had babbled incoherently then, panic seizing her.
“Just imagining holding hands makes me want to retch… When you were suddenly so close…I couldn’t hold it back… It’s a natural reaction, isn’t it?
Who could stop themselves from gagging at the sight of foul, maggot-infested garbage?
Even you would have thrown up at such a sight, Your Grace…!
Oh, I don’t mean that you are like garbage…”
Her mind had gone blank, and the exact words she’d spewed afterward were a blur.
All she had wanted was to make him understand the truth: she had vomited because he was suddenly so close.
She knew he had only been trying to catch her, but the moment she registered his body against hers, the nausea had surged.
Of course, that did not excuse her actions.
It was a clear offense, a horrifying mistake.
She had wished in that moment that she could melt into the sunlight and simply disappear.
After what felt like an eternity of frozen silence, a deep sigh had cut through the air.
“Wipe it.”
A black handkerchief had been thrust before her eyes.
As she took it and wiped her mouth, she looked up at her fiancé’s stiffened expression.
It was better than the worst-case scenario.
She had expected contempt, but his blue eyes were merely glacial.
The thorny conversation they had shared had vanished, replaced by a suffocating guilt.
Unable to bear the silence, she heard herself offer, the words clumsy and desperate, “Shall I wash it for you?
The shirt…”
She knew he would never entrust his laundry to her.
Greenfield employed dozens of maids, all of whom were far more skilled than she.
More importantly, he would never wear that shirt again.
She was lucky he had not ripped it off and thrown it on the floor right then and there.
But she felt she had to offer something, anything, to atone for having vomited on a man so fastidious.
Otherwise, the shame would keep her awake for days.
Naturally, he had not answered her ridiculous offer.
He had just stood there silently for a long time, and she wanted to believe he was deep in thought.
She had been willing to bargain with the devil himself to escape that moment.
And then he had finally spoken, his voice cutting through the suffocating silence.
“The reason.”
At the deep, sunken voice, Merdi lifted her gaze.
“I’m sorry…?”
“I asked why I make you nauseous.”
He had clearly been mulling over her symptoms.
Since he had witnessed her retching without any apparent cause, there was no way to deny it.
“I don’t know… It’s just… a symptom that started one day.”
Unlike her innocent green eyes, Clifton’s irises grew increasingly dark.
He remained silent for a long moment, as if holding something back, before speaking in a low voice.
“I must be away for about a month.”
She remained silent.
“In the meantime, you ‘will’ find a solution to this condition.”
The atmosphere was calm, but a fierce glint swirled within Clifton’s eyes.
His gaze alone conveyed the clear message that she had no choice in the matter.
Merdi’s lips parted, but only a small voice escaped.
“And if I can’t…”
“There is no ‘if.”
At his firm answer, Merdi’s shoulders slumped.
This was an order.
If she didn’t find an answer, he might just cover her mouth himself the next time she tried to vomit.
But it wasn’t a problem with an easy solution.
She had already agonized over it herself—this nausea that surged at the mere thought of his touch.
She had certainly liked Clifton once, even admired him.
The thought of him used to make her heart tremble with a fresh excitement, her fingertips tingle.
But at some point, the emotion she called love had faded.
The feelings, now burned to ash, had left her hollow.
‘Why?’
The question conjured a series of nightmare-like incidents in her mind.
Still, Merdi couldn’t pinpoint the primary cause among them.
Like a tree hollowed out after being gnawed away bit by bit by tiny insects, this symptom was the result of countless wounds, both large and small.
Trying to measure which wound was deepest was meaningless, and untangling the root cause from the scarred mass of her memory felt impossible.
However, one thing was certain: her fiancé had been a thorough bystander through it all.
He had never tried to know, nor had he ever wanted to know, what had happened to her.
If she hadn’t brought up the annulment, if she hadn’t shown him the sight of her vomiting, he would have remained exactly as he was.
Like a man standing at a great distance.
The hurt he’d caused spread through her like an allergy, tormenting her.
‘I don’t know if it’s possible to have an allergic reaction to a person, but…’
If she disliked him this much, she was the one who suffered in the end.
She had only vomited once, yet she was completely drained.
‘Hah…’
Having reached a dead end, Merdi let out a low breath and buried her face in her knees, closing her eyes.
It felt as if she were the only one left in a black, empty world.
In moments like these, a sudden ache for her family bloomed in her chest—for the bright smiles she could never find here.
Since coming to the Empire, she had only seen her family once.
Margaret had forbidden anything related to the Kingdom, claiming it would weaken her resolve.
The only things that retained the warmth of her home were the sheep that produced high-quality wool.
Margaret, who wouldn’t allow even a single maid from the Kingdom, had accepted the royal sheep under the guise of a gift.
So Merdi always missed the Kingdom.
If she closed her eyes, she could vividly picture the wheat fields swaying in gold and the maple trees settled in the garden.
“You will need to get permission from your father first, not the Emperor.
He is the one who will oppose this annulment the most.”
But why had he said that?
His tone implied her father would oppose the annulment more than anyone.
Merdi couldn’t understand it.
Although her father wasn’t a brilliant or strict leader, he was, at the very least, a warm-hearted man who would understand her and take pity on her.
She felt her brow furrow at the memory of Clifton’s voice criticizing her father, but she considered it a small price to pay for what she had gained from that conversation.
“…While you’re in the capital, Your Grace, may I go and see my father?”
In truth, if her father allowed the annulment, the whole matter would become much simpler.
There would be no need to suppress the nausea rising in her throat, and the historic Greenfield Grand Ducal family would no longer be at risk of becoming mixed-blood.
At that moment, Clifton had twisted his lips into a cold smirk, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Do as you please.”
His “try it if you dare” attitude still weighed on her, but Merdi tried to push it aside.
She trusted her gentle father.
‘CLICK.’
The maid, who had been checking the annex before bed, turned off the hallway light.
The faint sliver seeping through the door crack vanished, plunging the narrow space into total darkness.
Merdi hugged her knees tightly and closed her eyes, looking forward to her long-awaited return to the Kingdom.
As if the dark hours she’d spent trapped alone were nothing, Merdi was released from the Room of Repentance as soon as the sun rose the next day.
She immediately wrote a letter to her father, informing him she would visit Belloc soon.
Although the reply arrived later than expected, the timing, thankfully, worked out.
She would be able to travel to the Kingdom while Clifton was away.
On the boat to Belloc, Merdi’s eyes sparkled like the clear seawater.
Tomorrow, she would finally see her father after so long.
And she would finally put an end to this agonizing life at Greenfield.
Clinging to that belief, Merdi tried to contain her soaring excitement.