Slap.
A strange, numbing tingle surged through my hand before my body moved completely against my will. My arm jerked upward with terrifying force, and that uncanny, unnatural rhythm repeated itself.
Slap.
Warm liquid splattered across my skin, carrying a sharp, metallic tang of blood as a muffled groan tore from a man’s clenched teeth. The sheer sensory overload dragged me under, pulling me back into unconsciousness just as an urgent voice pierced the haze.
“Lady Claire!”
No. Stop calling me that.
“Lady Claire. Oh my! Did she faint? She’s the one who struck him, and yet she’s the one who passed out?”
That… that’s not true…
It felt like a horrific nightmare—a vivid dream where I was brutally whipping someone.
Strangely enough, it mirrored the exact scene from the romance novel I had been reading right before my mother-in-law summoned me in my past life.
No way. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
“Milady, Lady Claire, wake up. It’s almost time for breakfast with the Count.”
Ugh, will someone please shut that girl up with the weird archaic language?
“Goodness, sleeping soundly while that poor boy spent the night tied up hand and foot? You’ll be struck down by heaven. And you didn’t faint yesterday, you were just sleeping! Come on, wake up.”
Still dreaming, huh. Must be a bad case of sleep paralysis.
“Milady, if you don’t wake up, you’ll just scold me later for not waking you. Please, wake up, milady! Lady Claire!”
“Aaaargh!”
I couldn’t ignore the surreal reality any longer. The horrifying truth crashed down on me all at once, and I bolted upright, screaming.
“How—how old am I?”
“Milady, what on earth do you mean?”
“I said, how old am I?”
“Sixteen, of course.”
“Him—where is he?”
“Who?”
“Him… what’s his name… the sub-male lead.”
“The sub-male-lead?”
“No! The one with the silver hair.”
“Oh. You tied him up in the training yard yesterday, remember? Don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“What? Take me to him, now!”
“All right. But, pardon me for saying, don’t you feel the least bit sorry for him? And milady! You can’t go outside dressed like that—”
No way, no way. If I’m sixteen, then he’s seventeen. Surely, I haven’t branded his face yet? If I have, then… then I am entirely dead.
The cheeky maid chased after me, throwing a heavy cloak over my shoulders as I slammed to a halt at a fork in the path.
“Huff, huff, what’s so urgent? Do you really need to torment a grown man right this second?”
“Shut up! Just lead the way!”
“Fine, fine.”
I shoved the impertinent girl ahead of me until the training yard finally came into view. The half-stripped knights drilling in the sun abruptly stopped and stepped back the moment they laid eyes on me, their expressions radiating undisguised contempt.
I didn’t have a single second to care about their scorn.
What I saw next was a nightmare straight out of the novel’s worst pages. In the original story, the villainess brands that boy—the silver-haired sub-male lead—with a searing iron bearing her initials, binding him hand and foot to a wooden post.
I’m completely doomed.
I stepped forward on shaking legs. If that irreversible horror had already happened before I woke up here, I was going to run to the absolute ends of the earth.
The closer I drew, the heavier the oppressive atmosphere became. The knight captain approached me warily.
“Raise… raise his face,” I choked out, my voice trembling out of my control.
“Yes, milady.”
He reached out, grabbed the boy’s hair, and yanked upward.
“No! Gently! I said gently!” I hissed through gritted teeth, correcting him fiercely. That’s not just hair you’re holding—that’s my entire lifeline.
“…Yes, milady.”
This time, he carefully tilted the boy’s chin up.
When I looked down, my breath caught entirely. That face…
It was maddeningly, devastatingly my exact type. The silver-gray hair, which I had only ever admired in flat novel illustrations, shimmered brilliantly under the blazing sun. His striking ocean-blue eyes blazed with a fierce, burning contempt so intense it temporarily made me forget my own impending doom.
With delicate, flawless features, vivid red lips, and impossibly long lashes, he looked less like a human and more like something sculpted purely out of light.
And, thank the heavens above, there was no brand on his face.
Three years into my marriage to Hyuntaek, there were still no children.
Then came the day that completely shattered my world. Who was this woman sitting right in front of me now?
“Seyoung, you know as well as I do that Hyuntaek has done his part.”
Done what, exactly?
“His secretary—this girl here, Hyerim—she’s given birth to Hyuntaek’s child. What else can we possibly do?”
Done what, exactly?
“You need to know when it’s time to step aside.”
Excuse me… what?
Meanwhile, my mother-in-law was smiling fondly down at an infant. Without realizing it, my gaze followed hers, my brain entirely stalled. Does the baby even look like Hyuntaek?
When you are hit with something so profoundly absurd, your cognitive functions simply shut down. I stared blankly at the child while my mother-in-law slid a clean white envelope across the table.
“I’ll handle Hyuntaek’s signature myself. You just need to sign here. The alimony will be generous—no need to worry about your future.”
The woman sitting beside her was none other than Hyerim, someone who had once happily shared dinner at our family table. I should have sensed the betrayal coming from miles away but even if I had, what could I have possibly changed?
As my hand reached out for the envelope, I caught it—the cruel, triumphant curl of her lip.
By the time my scrambled senses finally returned, my so-called mother-in-law and the woman who had stolen my husband were long gone. All that remained on the table was the baby’s pacifier, rolling around in circles as if openly mocking me.
A few days later, I went straight to Hyuntaek’s office. I only wanted to toss the signed divorce papers at the cheating bastard who had fathered a child with another woman. But as I stepped off the curb to cross the street.
A sudden screech of tires. A violent, shattering crash. My entire body was violently flung into the air.
Through my blurring, flickering vision, I caught sight of Hyuntaek’s pale, terrified face looking down at me.
Tsk. What absolute nonsense…
I knew instinctively in that final fraction of a second—I was dying.
What a wretched woman I am.
With my absolute last ounce of strength, I reached up, seized his tie, and yanked him down toward me. I whispered my final, venomous words straight into his ear:
“You…”
“What? What is it?!”
“You need to get a fertility test.”
Because hidden inside the envelope clutched in my other hand wasn’t just the signed divorce papers. Inside were the verified paternity test results comparing that secretary’s child to Hyuntaek.
The probability of him actually being the father? Practically zero.