After my husband consolidated the dual-branch inheritance, he took his sister-in-law and her two children to the capital to build a new life.

My daughter and I survived on wild greens we foraged ourselves, waiting for him in that freezing hovel for five long years.

The only news that ever came was that he'd inherited the Eastholm marquess title.

I carried my daughter a thousand miles to find him, and the guards at the gate beat us with wooden clubs like we were vagrants.

"Showing up at the Marquess's estate claiming to be family? You must be tired of living. Don't you know how our Lady deals with hussies who come sniffing around?"

I lay in a heap of my own blood. "...Lady?"

When I lifted my head, I could just make out Edith Henson in the distance, dressed like a noblewoman, her two children raised as the young lord and lady of the house.

Edith greeted us with a warm smile and set out a plate of pastries. They were laced with poison.

My daughter was starving. She wolfed down a piece and dropped dead on the spot.

I choked up a mouthful of black blood. As the world dimmed, I heard Edith's vicious laugh cutting through the haze.

"Narelle Donaldson, you should never have come here to disrupt our household. Finn has treated me as his wife for years. If you showed up alive, how was I supposed to go on being the Lady of this house?!"

My daughter and I died like dogs. They rolled our bodies in reed mats and dumped us in a mass grave.

After I was gone, Finn wrapped his arms around a weeping Edith and murmured comfort against her hair.

"She's dead. Let it go. Even if she'd lived, I would've handed her divorce papers and told her to stay away from our family."

The meal I'd once given a starving stranger, the vows he'd sworn under open sky, all of it erased from his memory as though it had never existed.

I died with hatred lodged so deep it followed me into the dark. When my eyes opened again, it was the very day Finn inherited the title.

I threw the wild greens from my hands, sold the house for every coin it was worth, and carried my daughter to my father's ducal estate, where I fell to my knees.

"Father, I've decided to divorce my husband."

——

In my previous life, the moment I heard Finn had become the Marquess of Eastholm, I bundled up my daughter and traveled a thousand miles to find him. Edith killed us both with poisoned pastries.

My last thought before the darkness took me was regret. Not for dying, but for severing ties with my father, the Duke of Northwall, all for the sake of marrying Finn Acevedo.

This time, the moment I opened my eyes, I sold the house, packed what little money it brought, and set out for the capital.

But I was not going to the Eastholm estate.

I told the driver to take the long way around, and the carriage rolled to a stop before the gates of the Donaldson Ducal Estate.

The driver took one look at us, my daughter and me in our threadbare rags, shuffling toward the duke's gates like a pair of beggars, and let out a snort.

"Takes all kinds. Now even beggars have the nerve to show up at the Duke's door claiming to be family."

I ignored him. I took Hildegarde James's small hand in mine, walked to the gate, and knelt.

"Father. Your daughter knows she was wrong."

My father was the Duke of Northwall, the most powerful lord on the northern frontier. My mother had been a princess of the Kingdom of Valdoria.

I was born the Duchess of Ashford, raised in silk and silver. Then one spring, on a country outing near Greenshire, I stumbled upon Finn Acevedo, the discarded second son of the James family.

His brothers had been tearing each other apart over the family inheritance, and he'd nearly been killed in the crossfire. They broke his leg and left him in a ditch.

I felt sorry for him. So I saved his life.

Then, sharing those cramped country rooms day after day, I fell in love with him.

When I swore I would marry Finn and no one else, my father was furious. His voice went cold as iron.

"If you marry that man, I no longer have a daughter."

Finn swore to the heavens he would cherish me for the rest of his life.

I stripped off my silks and jewels, put on a plain cotton dress, and became his wife.

And over the years, lulled by his sweet words repeated day after day, I withered into a gaunt, hollow-eyed village woman.

I never imagined that within five or six years, every one of his elder brothers would die, and the Eastholm estate would offer Finn the title on a single condition: accept the dual-branch inheritance, and the marquessate was his.

Once he became the Marquess, he simply slotted Edith into the role of his wife and raised her children as his own.

By the time I dragged myself to his door, Finn had long since forgotten that my daughter and I existed.

So much so that when we died miserably in my past life, he didn't shed a single tear.

If anything, he was relieved he wouldn't have to write up divorce papers after all.

This time, no matter what it took, I would change my daughter's fate and my own.

Hildegarde and I knelt at the gates of the ducal estate. The servants couldn't bear the sight of us and reported our arrival five or six times. Two hours later, my father finally came out.

"Reduced to this sorry state, and NOW you remember you have a father?"

He held a riding crop in his hand and raised it as if to strike me. I didn't flinch, didn't move to dodge. Instead, I stepped closer.

"Your daughter knows she was wrong. Beat me, kill me, do whatever you see fit."

"I regret not listening to you back then. I put my trust in the wrong man."

Tears streamed down my father's weathered face. He didn't strike me. He threw the crop to the ground and pulled me to my feet with trembling hands.

"You were so heartless back then. You threw away your own father and your home for a man. But since you know you were wrong, cut those ties clean and come home where you belong!"

"As long as you sever that cursed bond completely, you are still the Duchess of Ashford, and this estate is still yours."

He told me to change out of my rags, but I shook my head.

His expression shifted. "Don't tell me you still intend to have dealings with that man?"

I smiled faintly. "He wronged me this deeply. You think I can just turn the page? I need to make him pay first."

That same day, I took Hildegarde to the Eastholm Marquess Manor and sent word inside.

"Tell Finn Acevedo his wife has come home."

The guards at the gate took one look at my tattered clothes, wrinkled their noses, and grabbed their sticks to shove us away.

"Where'd you beggars crawl out from? This is the Eastholm Marquess Manor!"

"The lady of the house is hosting a banquet for the most powerful nobles in the capital. If you disturb her guests, you and your little brat won't have enough lives to pay for it!"

"Go on, get! Get out of here!"

I'd expected exactly this. I deliberately stepped back, dropped to my knees, and raised my voice for the whole street to hear.

"Someone help me get justice! Finn Acevedo married me six years ago in a proper ceremony. I bore him a daughter! He promised to bring me back within three years and make me his lady. But now that he's the Marquess, he left me and my child in the countryside eating weeds! Is that something a human being does?!"

The manor sat on a busy street. The commotion drew neighbors from every direction, and whispers rippled through the growing crowd.

"They say the Marquess is famously devoted to his wife. He's got two children with her and won't even take a concubine. So where did THIS wife come from?"

"Probably a fraud. I mean, look at her. The Eastholm Marquess Manor is high society. She claims to be his wife, but she looks like a beggar off the road. Bet she's just some grifter trying to latch onto a noble house."

I listened without a flicker of emotion, then reached into the bundle I'd brought and pulled out a marriage certificate.

"Take a good look. This is Finn Acevedo's own handwriting. If he refuses to acknowledge me as his wife, I'll take this certificate straight to the courthouse and beat the drum for justice."

The head steward, lurking in the shadows, caught a glimpse of the handwriting on the certificate from a distance. His brow furrowed.

He leaned toward the gate guard. "Stay here and watch her. I'm going in to inform the Marquess and the lady of the house."

I saw every bit of it.

Sure enough, before a quarter hour had passed, Finn Acevedo came striding out of the manor, and right behind him, draped in gold and silver, was Edith Henson.

The steward pointed at me. "My lord, this woman claims to be your wife. If she's a fraud, I'll have her thrown out at once."

Finn looked down at me from the top of the steps. "Lift your head."

I tilted my chin up slowly, the ghost of a smile on my lips.

The moment he saw my face, every drop of color drained from his.

"Narelle, is it really you? What are you doing here?"

He strode over and lowered his voice to a hiss.

"If you wanted to see me, you could have sent word through the servants. Why make a scene in front of everyone?"

"Besides, I told you in my letters not to come back on your own. When the time was right, I would have sent someone to bring you."

I held my daughter tight and stared at him in cold silence.

Five years apart, and Finn looked even more handsome than before. Younger, somehow.

His robes were made of the finest fabric, the cuffs embroidered with gold thread.

My daughter and I, by contrast, were dressed in rags. Our rough-spun clothes had more holes than I could count.

"Husband, didn't you promise me yourself? You said within three years, you would send someone to bring me back to the capital. It's been five."

Finn's expression darkened, though a flicker of panic crossed his eyes.

"Narelle, I will bring you back. But not now. The manor is hosting a banquet for high-ranking officials and dignitaries. Take the child and leave. We'll talk later."

He slipped a heavy pouch of silver into my hands, expecting me to take the money, walk away, and pretend we had nothing to do with each other.

I smiled coldly, opened the pouch, and turned it upside down. Silver ingots clattered across the stone ground.

"The Marquess has done well for himself. And this is how you dismiss the wife who stood by you when you had nothing? A few coins?"

My voice carried just far enough for every servant and guard within earshot to hear every word. Finn's face went darker still.

He clenched his jaw and leaned in close. "What do you want from me? I said I'd bring you back. Can't you just take the child and wait a little longer? Just until tonight—"

I turned away with a cold smile, shifting my daughter in my arms as I walked toward the manor gates.

"Our daughter hasn't eaten in three days. I'm afraid she can't wait."

"Tell me, my lord, why are you so desperate to keep your own wife from stepping through the door? Is there something in there you'd rather I not see?"

I knew exactly why Finn didn't want me inside. The banquet hall was filled with the most powerful officials in the empire, and among them sat Imperial Consort Rosalind, the Emperor's most beloved consort.

Every guest seated comfortably at those tables believed that Edith Henson, his sister-in-law, was the rightful Lady of the Eastholm Marquessate.

A wife appearing out of nowhere was a problem Finn had no idea how to explain.

And that was precisely why I was here. To make sure he couldn't.

Finn stared at me, his face drained of color, scrambling for a way out.

Edith's eyes darted, and then she stepped forward with a warm smile, reaching for my arm.

"Sister-in-law, what are you saying? You're Finn's wife, which makes you family. You and the child arrived so suddenly that Finn was simply overwhelmed with joy and didn't know what to say. He would never hide anything from you!"

She tried to steer me toward a side chamber.

I pulled my arm free. "You must be the elder sister-in-law."

Edith's smile froze for a heartbeat before she forced it back into place with a nod.

In my previous life, I had pitied Edith for losing her husband so young. I never thought to guard myself against her. So when she led me to that side chamber and offered me pastries, I never once suspected her intentions.

I had no idea that the poison in those pastries was what killed my daughter and me. And the hand that placed it there was Edith's.

"I think I'll skip the side chamber. Didn't my husband just mention there's a banquet going on? My daughter and I are starving. We'll eat there. And while we're at it, my husband can introduce us to everyone."

"Narelle!"

Finn's voice dropped to a sharp growl. "You want to walk into that banquet dressed like that? You'd humiliate the entire marquessate on purpose?"

"At least change your clothes first. Edith, would you take her to—"