He looked ten years older overnight.

There were many emotions in the face that looked straight at her. Confusion, remorse, regret, guilt, and similar were clearly visible through his eyes.

But he never looked pitiful.

“Angroanne.”

“It must be very mortifying that I regained my memories. Because everything you’ve done has been revealed.”

He let out a sigh as if the ground was going to collapse, and lifted his chapped lips with no energy.

“I won’t ask for forgiveness. From now on, for you, I will give you whatever you want and devote my life to atonement.”

As he did, Anne brought a smirk to her lips.

“Ridiculous. Do you think such an apology would be accepted, wrapped in a sense of guilt and shallow regret? You will regret it for a while.”

—

Bang!

The door opened wildly with a bursting sound that tore the silence. The cold wind blew and the warmth of the heated room was mixed with the chill of the hallway.

Thump, thump.

The sound of the heel rubbing against the marble floor was getting closer and closer. As soon as the sound stopped, a low voice, unbelievably low in the human range, fell over Anne’s head.

“Is the cycle over?”

“…….”

Anne put the teacup she had brought to her mouth and set it down on the table. She doesn’t even like to drink cold tea, but even if she pretended to drink it casually, those bitter eyes would almost certainly catch the trembling of her hand.

‘It’s faster than usual.’

It has been three months since she has been here as the Grand Duchess. Considering the northern climate, where darkness comes first, it was no mistake.

Turning her head, she saw the face of Grand Duke Cromund, dressed in a neat robe. Even he, who has no patience, waits for her answer, especially at this time. He must’ve already checked with her handmaid, but he sure enjoyed letting her spit it out of her mouth.

Anne pressed her lips, which trembled with tension, and opened her mouth, trying to be calm.

“Yes, Your Grace. The moon… Is over.”

There was a slight change in his face, which had been as desolate as a frozen lake. He didn’t stretch his mouth or lower the corners of his eyes, but she saw his pupils dilate, bright red, like a beast that caught its prey.

The shoes, as black as darkness, moved again. Frightened by the wind, she added more words.

“But… not yet… I’m sensitive… huhk!”

Anne, who was suddenly pushed against the wall, let out a thin groan. The Grand Duke, who had shoved her into the corner, tilted his head and stared intently at her tight, pink lips, holding back the pain.

“I would ask just one question….”

Anne’s tender shoulder was gripped painfully in the large hand. Even though it was a thick dress that would protect her from the bitter northern cold, the deep pain that seemed to crush her bare skin made her delicate brow wrinkled pathetically.

“Today is really… huhh….”

Anne’s lips let out a faint groan at the strength of the grip that grew stronger. It felt like her shoulder was about to be crushed along with the pain. It was the Grand Duke who could break her as lightly as bare branches out of the window if he intended to.

“I already told you. That is not my business.”

The red eye, quieter than ever, looked arrogantly into the trembling blue eyes.

Instead of showing pity for her pathetic face, she could feel his lower back, which had already been filled with blood, gaining strength. The man’s neck shook violently as if he had eaten a large chunk of meat.

The large hand, which had viciously rolled up her skirt, slid violently between her thighs. Her heart sank as the hand gripped her dry vag!na inside her underwear, which was rolled back at once.

Soon after, the sensitive area was rubbed roughly by the palms covered in calluses. Chills rushed in and she shivered as if there was ice put on her.

In a sense of humiliation, Anne pushed the Grand Duke’s chest, but her hand was pushed helplessly against the body, as motionless as a boulder.

“Now that you are thinking of rejecting me…. How funny.”

The Grand Duke twisted his lip and shuddered. Anne’s eyes quickly became moist at the sound of his voice filled with a light disgust.

While shaking her gripped entrance to the fullest, he spoke calmly, with no change in his expression.

“Isn’t it a hole that men lose their minds to?”

In response to the vulgar remarks that would only be said by a bunch of city officials who were not high-ranking nobles, Anne bit her lip instead of answering him.

His hands, which did not ask for her consideration, carelessly traced the lab!@, and his hands rubbed against her sensitive skin. The squeaky noises from her twitching entrance lewdly heated the room each time the palms heavily rubbed on it.

“This place is begging for a man’s c0ck to come in.”

“Some… Something like that… not…. haah.”

“Or are you hiding your intentions to receive another man’s seed?”

His face changed to a hideous complexion in an instant. Anne realized that she had offended the Grand Duke’s heart. She picked her words, so she didn’t know where his anger came from.

The pain of the first night left a mark on her body like an imprint. Blue bruises and red marks all over her body. No matter how much the handmaids acted like wooden dolls, she couldn’t show an ugly body full of reddish marks.

Anne, biting her lips, answered helplessly at the coming pain.

“Please… be polite.”

“Well…. You were probably the first to suggest it.”

Anne flinched at the eerie low-pitched sound that landed in her ear. Suddenly, her one leg was lifted lightly in his hand, and the bulky pillar, which had been growing with no resistance, tucked inside her.

“Haaaahhk…!”

Her breath was choked by the large chunk of flesh inserted in one breath. As if there was no need to wait for her to catch her breath, the Grand Duke began to move his waist. Just by the act of the ferocious pillar churning through the narrow vag!na, the body that had become accustomed to it was pouring out obscene water at will.

“When you’re pouring liquid like this… Are you still pretending to be noble?”

“Huuk.”

When the Grand Duke, who mocked Anne, pulled her closer to him, the tight junction deepened. The arm that was holding the Grand Duke’s arm trembled. As his glans, which had dug deep into her, pressed against the soft flesh that he had been stabbing, Anne, startled, gasped for a heavy breath.

“Please… huuh, stop… Haa.”

“Do you want me to stop when you’re squeezing to sow the seeds?”

When he shoves it in, she tightens on him and chews it, and when he pulls it out, his thing comes out with the flesh sticking to it.

He sneered, holding Anne’s pelv!s tighter and thrusting his thing all the way to the root. Every time he slammed up, Anne’s body shook, and her golden hair fluttered to and fro. Every time his thick pillars came in and out of her like one’s own house, the sticky luscious liquid flowed down her buttocks with a slimy sound.

“Haah…. Hahgh… Ack….”

The frozen-eyed beast pressed his body close to Anne and pierced her tender flesh. It was pathetic to hear her moan, which broke out every time the hard flesh shoved into her sticky opening.

The Grand Duke did not turn his gaze away for a moment, fixed it on Anne’s eyes that had tears welled up. He tenaciously observed at which point she shed her moans, and if he crushed hard at any point, the tears would burst.

“Heukk….”

Suddenly, the water from Anne’s eyes ran down her slender chin. Despite her desperate pleas, the Grand Duke did not stop his actions. The more Anne bit her lip and groaned, the smile on the Grand Duke’s face only grew stronger.

The arrogant man’s face filled her blurred vision. The inside of his eyes, reminiscent of a ruby, was so beautiful that she couldn’t take her eyes off him, but it only felt like a cruel and cruel gaze to her.

Anne, who looked into the empty eyes like an abyss, swallowed her tears today. In the beginning, their relationship was always like this. A face filled with anger every time he holds her. It’s like holding a woman he doesn’t like forcibly, a relationship where no sympathy was felt. There was no heart in it.

She became unintentionally aware of it by mixing bodies too much, but she couldn’t feel that fact as desperately as she did today.

Daymond was a man like the snow.

The snow was like a precious symbol representing the North.

It exudes a cool energy, but one will be captivated by its beauty and inadvertently touch it…. A man who scatters and sprays cold air that seems to freeze her hands once she actually catches him.

And Anne’s night freezes under him today as well.

The sunset light that streamed through the window colored the desolate parlor with an ominous red.

With every move of his lips, thick cigarette smoke permeated from the middle-aged man with a long pipe in his mouth. In silence the man put down the pipe and drew a conclusion.

“So, prepare to leave for the North.”

It was the sound of someone handing his daughter to a seventy-year-old perverted man that was old enough to be her grandfather.

She suspected this to some extent from the time she was suddenly called to a family meeting, but they went too far this time. Anne forgot the etiquette drilled into her as a noble girl and revealed her true feelings.

“Father, I heard that he is over seventy years old.”

“Angroanne, you are being immature. This is the Grand Duke Cromund with authority comparable to that of the imperial family. When the old man dies, all the properties of his house will become yours. You should thank your brother for making you the Grand Duchess.”

A snide voice interrupted without the slightest trace of courtesy.

Robert Libelois, the immature successor of County Libelois.

It was her older brother who was the one responsible for this, and yet he was brazenly showing his face. If it had been her, she would have immediately been rebuked for intervening in a conversation, but her parents, who were soft to the successor, were silent this time as well.

Anne opened her mouth as she struggled to tamp down the resentment filling her throat.

“Was Brother so mature that he molested someone else’s woman?”

At the same time, Robert, whose eyes usually only came into focus at the sight of beautiful women, molested the Grand Duke’s lover during her visit to the capital and was arrested on the spot by the knights of the Grand Duchy’s family. It wasn’t the first time he had acted like an animal in heat, but this time he got it wrong.

She was a woman favored by the Grand Duke Cromund who oversaw the North. He was an immovable figure even to the imperial family.

The only thing that County Libelois could do was lie flat on their stomachs and beg. They pleaded for mercy, but a threat to detain Robert was the only reply. After all, it was just yesterday that the Grand Duchy’s family demanded a huge amount of compensation in the name of molesting the Grand Duke’s lover.

Naturally, the Libelois family did not have the ability to cover that amount. The incompetent Count and thoughtless heir had devoured the family’s coffers and the business they had made was losing money rather than making any sort of profit. When her father said that there was no way they could pay the compensation, the solution that was offered was that they had to send a woman from Libelois.

And only now was the news conveyed to her— her, the one to be sent— without even asking for her opinion.

Why do I have to take responsibility for my brother? Why should I marry such a person?

Whenever Robert had had a problem with obscene insults to noble ladies in the past, it was Anne who went to ask for their forgiveness. As a woman, she was forced to speak, but there was never a sense of friendship. Not when she had no choice but to cover up the flaws of her blood relatives.

But now, she was sold into a marriage because those blood relatives could not pay the compensation.

This time, Anne had no intention of being obedient. This was not something the person who had caused the incident in the first place could say to her in an angry tone.

“This is what Brother caused, so please leave me out of it.”

“Angroanne, what are you talking about! Your brother only made a small mistake because he was soft-hearted and naive . . .”

The countess intervened quickly, her face cold. She and Robert had been born from the same stomach. Only their gender was different, and yet her parents were particularly strict with her and lenient with her brother.

Robert opened his mouth again. “Angroanne, how can you be so cold-hearted during a family crisis? It must have been that the woman approached me with hidden intentions.”

“Don’t speak nonsense. What purpose would a woman who was the lover of the Grand Duke have to approach a mere County heir?”

Anne couldn’t control herself and all but snarled at Robert’s unreasonable protest.

If he had truly been caught on the spot, the woman would have had quite a few escorting knights around her. Naturally, she couldn’t have dared to cheat on the Grand Duke in the presence of the knights. Moreover, Robert was a man who possessed neither good looks nor the ability to speak well enough to win over a woman’s heart. That he was the County heir was nothing more than an empty title. Moreover, the entire family of County Libelois was a noble family that was a sinking ship.

“Stop! Does that mean that your brother, the heir to the family, should go to jail? Do you want this Libelois to be caught up in a scandal and rise and fall in people’s mouths?!”

Count Libelois, who was sitting on the chair for the head of the house, burst out in anger and his face became red.

At that moment, Anne’s breath choked her as if the water that had reached her waist had risen to her chin in an instant. They covered everything with the façade of being a family only when they needed something from her. A very convenient method, often used by nobility. It was as obvious as it was effective. It was a word that always made her shut her mouth.

However, Anne, who quietly whispered to herself every time the word was used, couldn’t keep her mouth shut this time.

“Are you telling me to live with my future husband’s mistress?”

It was publicly known that a noble family would often have one or two mistresses who were paraded before the common people, but it was unheard of that a noble woman would get married as a means of dispelling an official complaint after laying a hand on one’s lover.

It’s the same as being sold.

It was an unbearable insult to a noble Lady. The family raised and valued their family’s noble face, but paradoxically threw their daughter’s honor into the fire.

“Angroanne, if they insist on asking you, doesn’t it mean that they want to see a successor from someone with noble blood? Thanks to your brother, you have the opportunity to become a Grand Duchess.”

Anne’s eyes fell on Robert, who scratched his stomach and brazenly added to his mother’s words. He raised his chin, as though daring her to contradict him.

“Yes. It turned out that she’s a commoner. Marriage should of course be between nobles of the right class.”

She wanted to laugh at her mother’s words, defensive of Robert as they were. And at Robert’s illogical speech. Libelois had apparently been upgraded to the point where they could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Grand Duchy.

“I already have a fiance. If Marquisate Whitmore finds out about it, they’ll formally protest.”

“That is nothing to worry about. Thankfully, the Grand Duchy contacted the Marquisate directly. Just this morning, a letter of dissolution arrived from the Marquisate.”

“Disso . . . lution . . .?”

Her voice trembled. She had not expected such an answer and had held a trace of hope. Her hope that she might be able to escape from this situation if she raised the Marquisate’s name was completely shattered.

It was too fast. It had been less than an hour since she heard this story, and the dissolution had already arrived. Robert had caused the issue the night before, less than two days ago.

“So, leave tomorrow.”

“. . . Tomorrow?”

Before she could clear her muddled state of mind, Anne was speechless.

Nonsense. It’s too fast . . .

It usually took a year to prepare for marriage. But such rapid progress was now truly frightening.

Anne, who bit her lips in nervousness, swallowed a gulp, and firmly opened her mouth.

“No. I will never go.”

Slap!

Her head turned violently at the same time as the blow had sounded. Belatedly, a pain akin to a flash of flame spread across her left cheek.

Anne, with dazed eyes, fixed her eyes upon the Count’s hand which was still in the air.

“What are you! Do you have to throw your family’s prestige into the gutter like this before you listen to the Master? How the hell did you educate your daughter!”

The furious Count turned the arrow to the Countess who was stroking his son by her side. The woman who did not respond when her daughter was beaten, when the blame rested on her, she scrunched up her face as if resentful.

“Did I teach you that way? I spared you so much attention. You dare to ignore my grace . . .”

In the end, it was always toward Anne that the real sparks flew.

This woman, called her mother, had only raised her daughter to counter the declining profits by marrying her into a good family. Thoroughly educating her on all manners, piano, embroidery, and other necessary virtues was only to increase her value in the marriage market, not out of her love for her daughter.

As Anne’s eyes slowly reddened, the County couple secretly exchanged glances with each other, spitting out soft voices.

“Isn’t it just living together? The beginning might be a little unsatisfying, but it’s a Grand Duchy. There aren’t just one or two families who are eager to form a tie by any means, so doesn’t it make sense to grab onto the position of Grand Duchess?”

“Hmm . . . Angroanne, if you go and give birth to an heir, our family will enjoy great glory. As soon as you get there, give birth to a son.”

Not surprisingly, it was not an apology, but a word that had even her small expectations crumbling to dust.

Crying— the bitterness akin to gastric juice— felt as though it was about to spill over from her neck, so Anne bit the inside of her lip. In the midst of this, her parents became disillusioned as long as she was to give birth to a son.

I was abandoned for their precious heir . . .

Her heart sank at the reality that the knowledge, manners, and talents she had cultivated to elevate her family’s name would eventually be embraced in the arms of an old man. No matter how hard she tried, never had a place here.

Anne swallowed her growing resentment. It was useless to protest against those who would never listen. Anne, who had never refused, had no choice but to quietly nod her head. But she also had no intention of following through right away.

“Yes. I will go.”

Anne clasped her cheeks with her hands and replied in resignation.

Her parents’ faces bloomed into smiles at her doll-like response. For the first time in her life, their smiles were directed toward her alone. She knew that the affection her parents showed for the first time would also be the last, so Anne smiled faintly, shoving her feelings deep down.