The Broken Ring: This Marriage Will Fail Anyway Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Tw: S*xual content, su*cide

What was the result of living a prosperous life according to the life set by the imperial family and family? What was the reward given to the woman who submitted to an honorable marriage contract and remained faithful to marriage? She should never waste her life like before again. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] This time must be different. It has to be something completely different….

However, in addition to this suspicious return to time, there was one more thing that Ines overlooked.

“Senorita Valeztena, I am told that the artist who will paint the portrait for the weekly magazine in fifteen days has arrived with Her Majesty's messenger. They say we have to start work as soon as possible because time is running out, so please come down just as you prepared.”

It was the fact that she was now ‘really’ a young girl of sixteen.

A very peculiar hybrid, thinking like a sixteen-year-old but with the memories of twenty-six years……

“Senorita?”

“…….”

The sixteen-year-old girl fell in love with the beautiful young man who was bowing his head next to the portrait artist at first sight.

And the memories of twenty-six years urgently reminded her that there would be no chance of turning her life back once she left for Mendoza in fifteen days.

There was no time. She laid out her informal yet thorough plan as if it were a revelation. This was a chance to not live the way the world wanted, a chance to not be faithful to an arranged marriage, and a chance to discover true love.

True love… The thought thrown in at the end would have been a slap in the face if twenty-six-year-old Ines had heard it, but it was a very plausible topic for the romantic sixteen-year-old Ines. Love. Okay. It was indeed love...… It felt like it would make up for a failed marriage in which there was nothing left but deception.

That night, Ines went nxked into the old room where the painter's assistant was staying. The thought that there was no time, and the need to quickly seduce with her body, stemmed from a pragmatic choice born out of her own sense of reality.

"Senorita Valeztena...!"

"If you don't want to get caught, be quiet.”

It might have been a threatening line worthy of a villain, but for the man who couldn't take his eyes off her perfect body as if he were mesmerized, it sounded more like a cunning enticement.

However, despite his appearance as an eighteen-year-old, he was entirely inexperienced with women. He kept stuttering, ‘How dare I, how dare I, how dare I do such a thing with the duke's daughter, how could I dare such a thing...’—and since he couldn't bring himself to push her away with force, he eventually surrendered and became excited. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] She unintentionally accumulated various experiences in the numerous awkward relationships with the Crown Prince, so, in essence, it was a fight he couldn't resist from the beginning.

‘You're so beautiful. Are you a goddess? Is it a fact that what's moving on top of me right now is not a goddess but a real person…...?’ Sixteen-year-old romantic Ines had a tendency to find the young man's overly romantic and even cringe-worthy words amusing.

"In truth, I've been thinking since the first time I saw you. Someone like me could never even touch the fingertips of someone as noble as you in a lifetime, but I dare say I can't help but love you.”

“…….”

"Aah, you are so beautiful, noble, dignified, and graceful, so lovely...”

“…….”

“It felt like your noble eyes were devouring my soul…….”

Unfortunately, Ines had a weak stomach, so she was mostly focused on his face. After all, his face was much more beautiful than hers.

The painter might have called him by a name, but even then, she must have just heard it out of the back of her ear because she was only looking at his face, so no name came to mind, so she couldn't call his name and just kept her mouth shut.

The young man, seeming to sense her frustration, shyly smiled and said.

“My name is Emiliano. Please don’t forget.”

It was a smile that seemed to glow even in the dark. Her heart was so full that she felt like she could stop breathing for a moment. Ines tried to pronounce his name quietly.

Knowing love may only take a moment. To the point of despair.

She learned Emiliano's name and thus discovered love. And that was never a good thing.

They disappeared together from Perez ten days later, wandering far and living a happy yet impoverished life for five years. Eventually, they were captured by the Duke of Valeztena in a small port along the Calstera coast. Emiliano managed to escape briefly with the help of someone she knew, but in the end, he returned on his own and met his demise at the hands of Luciano.

In front of her watching. In front of their newborn son watching……

As she cried and hugged the body, Valeztena's private soldiers carried her like a piece of luggage and pushed her into a carriage. She pleaded for forgiveness at the royal palace in Valeztena, and they decreed a lifelong confinement for her, no longer to be the prince's lady. She was now a damaged possession, yet still Valeztena's noble daughter.

The Empress showed mercy to her, saying that it would be appropriate for her to become Count Almenara's second wife. Knowing her own shortcomings, she received the admiration of the world by congratulating her on how happy she would be if she lived and served her older husband.

Count Almenara was already well over fifty and approaching sixty, but a new, old husband was not a problem for Ines. From the beginning, it didn't matter if it was him or any other great man.

If it wasn't Emiliano, it didn't matter who it was.

She agreed to marry Count Almenara. And it was said that their child would be the adopted son of a lawyer who was a distant branch of the Valeztena family. As if to put Ines' scandal to rest, the family prepared a grand wedding. She followed every directive until she heard her father's words from beyond the wall, stating that the child's destination would not be the upstairs dwelling of a poor lawyer but deep beneath the closed grounds of a hunting reserve.

The duke said it was better to cut off dirty shoots before they grow any further.

Their sweet child was now a dirty sprout. As if she were now nothing more than a scratched object.

Ines decided not to resist. It was a world without Emiliano anyway. It was an unfamiliar sorrow she had never experienced before.

If this is what love is, then she had never loved Oscar for even a single second.

Ines loved Emiliano excessively. Without anyone to reciprocate that love, she felt unable to breathe. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] The child was evidence that Emiliano had once lived by her side, just a single piece. However, the world Emiliano showed her was too vast, and the child resembling him was too small to be sufficient.

Nevertheless, since he was still the only one she could love, Ines hoped that her child would at least not die painfully in an unfamiliar place.

So, she killed. With her own hands, she strangled the neck of the child, only three months old.

It was the last night she was allowed to spend time with her child. As the child was so weak, died very easily despite her weakened strength. And she, after hours of numbly watching the lifeless child, took her own life by piercing her throat just before dawn.

Twenty. It was a week before the marriage with Count Almenara.

"My name is Emiliano. Please don't forget, miss.”

Sometimes a name changes the world. For Ines, Emiliano was like that. He was the only color in a world that was all black and white. Is there anything better and more perfect than that? Was there anything more lovely and beautiful than that? If she could return even one of his fingers to this world, she would gladly break her neck and give it up. Emiliano was so great that even her hatred for Oscar turned into dust blowing in the wind. As she watched the blood pouring over the child, she thought of Emiliano.

The world changed, but Emiliano was not there. In the world he had altered, Emiliano no longer existed. If that was the case, she had to disappear too……

'Please don't forget, miss.’

She killed her own child. A woman like her might end up in hell. But even in hell, she wouldn't be able to forget Emiliano's name.

In the fleeting vision, Emiliano embraced her.

***

And then, Ines opened her eyes again.

This time, in a more distant memory.

Once, waking up again in the hunting reserve at the age of sixteen, she considered all of this a miracle. She rejoiced, thinking that even God must have found her unbearable suffering and granted her a chance to live again. Because there is no greater blessing than having another chance at life……

Ines stared at the reflection of a six-year-old child in the mirror.

“…It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

She thought a woman who killed her own child would end up in hell. However, where she fell was not a pit of eternal torment but a luxurious bed in the comfort of noble opulence, with nothing lacking.

Funny enough, she came back. [ʏᴜʟʜᴇʏᴜɴ] Now, long before all the misfortunes of life hit.

Ines, with nervous intensity, slammed the mirror to the ground, shattering it. Her petite fingertips trembled. This is hell. This couldn't have happened except in hell.

Perhaps, from the moment she shoved the muzzle of a gun down her throat in front of Oscar, she was destined to be punished.

There was never a chance, never a blessing from the beginning.

It was hell, repeating the same life over and over again to become unhappy once more.