Marianne couldn’t stand any more and flopped down on the floor helplessly. She made a feigned laugh unconsciously. She felt dizzy. She couldn’t grab anything as her hands were trembling. Her heartbeat was pounding at an abnormal cycle. She felt even buzzing in her ears.

“Your Majesty, it’s not too late. Marie won’t be able to beat Mrs. Chester or Ober forever. As things stand now, she will be the first to get hurt in this fight. I can’t allow that to happen. Please grant my request to exclude her from the fighting.”

Her father’s pleading made her stand up finally.

The heart of her sadness was not her resignation to the given situation, but her anger. She no longer wanted to be alienated from any truth. She wouldn’t allow not only her father, but also the emperor, Ober, and Mrs. Chester, and even the gods of Aslan to ruin her life any more.

She staggered to her feet, though her legs were wobbly. As she moved one step, her body ached as if she were rolling on pieces of broken glass on the floor. But she did not stop. She was overly impulsive, but at the same time calm enough. She was tormented by all kinds of emotions that she could never explain with words.

Strut, strut.

The noise of her walking on the floor, which she didn’t try to muffle at all, was heard loudly through the hallway of the study. Ominous silence filled the hallway.

Snap!

Right then, there was the sound of somebody snapping his fingers. At the same time, something fell from the high bookshelves. The huge shadow that crouched on the floor slowly stood up.

“.. Sir Curtis?”

Duke Kling identified someone who blocked her way.

Marianne walked straight after noticing the white knight’s uniform. She didn’t go back or retreat. “..Marianne!”

In the end, Eckart recognized the unwelcome intruder. He called her with a sigh from a distance.

Instead of answering, she reached out and pushed Curtis to the side. Curtis did not resist and stepped back silently. While Eckart, Kling and Curtis were looking at her nervously, she was fixing her gaze only on one person.

She could see them downstairs clearly, with Eckart and Kling looking up at her. In particular, her father was stunned to find her there.

She began to approach her father without any hesitation. Her excessive tension at the moment stiffened her body. As if she tightened her legs, she staggered while walking down the stairs.

“Marianne!”

“Marie!”

They shouted at her urgently from downstairs.

Eckart and Duke Kling unconsciously moved a few steps towards the stairs unconsciously, and stopped at her glowing eyes.

Her green eyes, which were always warm and sweet, were as hardened as the emerald stones before processing. Neither of them had ever seen her face turn so chilly. It was the first time they saw her bloodshot eyes, angry look, and distressed heart. It looked like she was trying to put up with something as best she could.

Eventually, Curtis, following Eckart’s order, reached out to help her.

“Get out of my way.” But Marianne coldly shook off his hands.

She stood up by herself and stepped down the stairs again.

Strut, strut, strut.

Her loud footsteps were scary.

Eckart quietly signaled to Curtis with his eyes. Curtis soon disappeared into the entrance on the second floor. If Curtis did his job faithfully, it would be to make sure that the only four people here knew what happened in the study today.

Meanwhile, Marianne came down the stairs and slowly stopped in front of her father, whose eyes were trembling.

“Marie. Why are you here..” Kling said feebly with a pale look.

“Daddy.”

Although he was very embarrassed, he habitually reached out and tried to wipe the moistened tears on her cheeks.

But she pushed his hand from her wet face. She did so slowly, but she clearly rejected it.

“You don’t have to plead with His Majesty.”

Kling became more embarrassed by her unprecedented coldness. He had never been rejected by her when he comforted or did a favor to her for the past 20 years. He also had never seen her face and voice so cold and dry.

“I will not run away because this is a deal I’ve proposed to him.”

“Marie..”

Kling’s face crumpled as if he was distressed. He clenched his teeth, which made his smiling lips stiffen.

Just a little while ago, he vowed that he would honestly tell her about the secrets of the palace and Lennox. He still remained wedded to the idea that one day he would tell her the truth because he knew that eternal secrets were nothing but illusions. Besides, he broke the secret to the emperor, which he had been hiding from her for the past 20 years.

Today, when he finally broke the promise that had been concealed for over twenty years, he had more than the evidence to support it.

But this was not what he expected from her. He didn’t want her to know about her mother’s tragedy in a frivolous way because he thought it would deepen her anger much further. She had never learned how to calm down her anger properly. Accordingly, she didn’t know how to control her overwhelming hostility. Above all, he raised her in a way that she could not live in such an environment in Lennox.

“But it’s too dangerous. It may take more time and much more effort, but there are many ways we can exclude you from..”

“Please stop it, Daddy.”

“Marie. I can’t lose you like your mother.”

“Daddy, please..”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. But this is the only way I can protect you. Maybe you might think my request to the emperor is selfish, but please trust me just once!”

So, Duke Kling wanted to isolate Marianne from the upcoming misfortune, believing that his goodwill would be the best for his daughter, as always.

“Way to protect me?” she asked back.

Marianne did not promise to do so like she did before. One of the main factors that ruined her previous life was her father’s ill-advised affection for her.

She asked back, with a perplexed look, shaking her head hard, “No, Daddy. This is not the way to protect me. Do you want me to run away cowardly and hide while you are risking your life and fighting them? Do you think I can value my life when I survive like that?”

“Marie.”

“Do you believe that once you survive like that, I can be really happy? In the process, someone might get hurt and die for my peace. What if that ‘someone’ is you or the emperor? Well, the current situation shows you and the emperor are already at risk. That’s how I’ve come as far as here. Do you really think this is the right way of life for me?”

“..”

“You should have told me much earlier that Mrs. Chester killed my mother, and that Ober is the child of that woman who killed his mother!”

Marianne cried yelling at her father.

“Why did you let me live like this until now? I led a stupid life without knowing anything about it, as if nothing had happened. Even if those terrible things happened, I didn’t take them seriously at all..”

Duke Kling did not know that Marianne was living her second life. So, he misunderstood what she meant by the “terrible things” was her brief love affair with Ober and her failure to realize Mrs. Chester’s malice early on.

“.. Marie, my daughter. That’s not your fault. It’s my fault.”

“No. It’s my fault. You don’t know anything about what I did or what I suffered!”

Marianne squeezed the hem of her dress. She couldn’t keep standing without grabbing something.

In the past, perhaps in her dream or a different world, she was Ober’s lover and wife. She tried to understand the cold-hearted Mrs. Chester, and resented her father who opposed her dating Ober. She stuck it out even without drinking water to overcome her father’s opposition. In order to have the son of her mother’s killer, she wanted her father to understand and love Ober and his mother like her.

Besides, she cooperated in Ober’s scheme to change her father’s inspection tour, coaxed by his sweet talk. And she lost her father on that journey. Giving everything she inherited to Ober, she sought comfort in his sweet talk. Wrapped in his arms, she said she missed her parents. After all, she was also murdered by him, who was not content with killing her father.

Was her father now imposing her to lead a miserable and foolish life again at the sacrifice of somebody? She couldn’t do so. She didn’t want to.

“Marianne, calm down.”

On behalf of Kling who stiffened before her icy attitude, Eckart spoke anxiously.

Marianne was shivering as if she had just been rescued from icy water.

“Your Majesty.” Marianne turned and looked at his blue eyes.

She wanted to see his eyes. Even at his moment when she was facing him, she missed his eyes. But even his handsome blue eyes did not comfort her.