The Survival Strategy of the Contract Duchess - Chapter 112

“Anyway, please go back quickly. If Her Majesty the Queen is really determined to apologize to me and is on her way down, you might be disappointed when you see her.”

“Th, that’s true. I understand.”

Lydian stopped himself from adding something and rose from his seat.

Lydian, who had neatly shut his mouth and stood up, swallowed what he wanted to say, looked into Sasha’s eyes for a moment, and then left the room.

“Are all the men in the Empire like that? The Emperor is also so tsundere.”

Kyler was originally the type of person who didn’t know how to express his emotions, so she thought that was why, but she felt like she had seen a different side of Lydian, who she thought would not hide his feelings and immediately express them to get what he wanted.

Not long after the Emperor left, the door opened again. This time, the sound of knocking and the head maid’s voice rang out first, and then the door opened and the Queen entered.

Midienna had a very gaunt face. She seemed to have put on some makeup to try to cover it up, but there were some things that couldn’t be hidden.

Sasha didn’t show any reaction even after seeing those parts right in front of her. She erased her expression as much as possible and rose from her seat to greet her.

“It must have been hard to come all this way. I should have called you first.”

Her voice was also quite subdued. She was the one who was in danger, but there was someone else who looked like the world was ending.

Whether she had repented or not, Sasha hated the sight of her greeting her in this state. Perhaps that was revealed in her eyes, as Midienna glanced at Sasha and immediately lowered her eyes.

“What do you have to say to me?”

She looked like a completely different person from the one who used to look down on Sasha with such confidence and try to belittle her.

Sasha may have come first, but wasn’t this the wrong time to say such things to her in such a weak voice?

“I came first. I thought Her Majesty the Queen would have something to say to me.”

Sasha spoke boldly, just as she had to the Emperor. Regardless of rank, she was now the one who had committed a crime. And she had almost lost her life because of that crime.

But Midienna couldn’t open her mouth easily. She kept chewing on her carefully made-up lips, causing them to become stained and swollen red.

“You said you told Kyler and His Majesty as well. Who was the one who should have received it first?”

“Th… to Kyler and His Majesty, I told them about my feelings all this time. To Kyler, I apologized by telling him about your whereabouts. And to His Majesty, I apologized for not realizing those feelings sooner.”

“Ah, so commissioning my father to hand over someone’s life to a monster is not something to apologize for, is it?”

Even until she came here, Sasha had come with good intentions. He had told her that she had gone to the mountains, so she had been feeling patriotic yesterday, or so she thought.

Midienna was only surprised by Sasha’s strong words and couldn’t bring herself to say the important things.

A time of silence continued to pass between the two. Sasha was giving her time to speak, but she wondered if she had been living like this, thinking that if the person who came to find her had nothing to say, then she didn’t have to say anything either.

“Do you have nothing to say?”

Midienna, who had been waiting for Sasha to speak, heard a thunderbolt from the blue. It was because her words didn’t sound like a question at all, and it seemed like she would get up and leave if she said she had nothing to say.

“You have nothing to say about plotting with someone’s life is that what you’re saying?”

“No, that’s!”

She knew that she wasn’t an easy person, but she never imagined that she would feel like she was being scolded like this. In front of the scolding Duchess, the Queen covered her swollen face and slightly lowered her head.

“I was sorry. I was only thinking about my own feelings and obsessing over something I couldn’t have, Kyler, no, Duke Ignote, told me that.”

Then Midienna’s mouth barely opened. Her voice was so small that you had to strain your ears to hear it, and she spoke haltingly, but Sasha listened to every word she uttered in detail.

“I plan to completely cut ties with the Ibern Marquisate. I don’t plan to actively participate in social circles, so if you could take care of it, that would be enough.”

Midienna flinched at the mention of the name Ivern and looked at Sasha. There were so many rumors about how she had been living in the Ibern Marquisate. Most people who didn’t know believed the Marquis’s words that she was sick, but some suspected the gaps in those words.

“I’m not asking you to actively explain. I don’t need that. Just make sure Elina doesn’t bother me again, and that people don’t make bad comments about me or Kyler, just do that.”

Midienna knew better than anyone else why Sasha was able to demand something so confidently now, so she nodded obediently.

“Okay. Still, I’m glad you admitted it and answered so cleanly.”

Sasha answered firmly until the end. Midienna was bewildered and stared blankly at the composure that couldn’t be seen in a woman who had survived a near-death experience.

“If you have nothing more to say, I’ll be on my way.”

Seeing Sasha, who was trying to wrap things up neatly and get up as if she had come to end a relationship with someone she would never see again, Midienna felt a strange sense of urgency and quickly covered her hand.

It was such an unexpected situation that she was startled.

“Why are you doing this?”

Instead of the resolute and decisive voice she had shown to Midienna until now, a lively woman’s voice popped out. Her eyes were wide open and she looked powerless, so Midienna was once again lost in thought for a moment.

“Ah, are you cutting off all ties with social circles? Ah, I will definitely keep what I said earlier.”

Sasha gave her a suspicious look because the Queen suddenly seemed to be holding onto her. Was this current appearance, with all the jealousy gone, Midienna’s true self?

Anyway, Sasha, who couldn’t find a reason why she was doing this to her when she hadn’t lost all her close young ladies and wives, stood up from her seat.

“I’ll have to come if there’s anything I need. Since my husband is Duke Ignote. Then, I’ll see you then. I’ll get up first.”

Sasha only left a slight possibility and left the place. She didn’t think she could judge the Queen right now. But as she had said, her husband was Duke Ignote, and unless she turned her back on this empire, she would need to engage in social activities, so she left that room for it.

It wasn’t that she was going to do everything her way, but that she wanted them to block the bad rumors they had spread, as well as anything that would embarrass Kyler.

It would have been more comfortable if they had been close friends who did it voluntarily.

Still, fortunately, it seemed like her relationship with the Emperor wouldn’t be ruined and would continue well.

“Was everything alright?”

Dylan, who had been waiting for her outside the Queen’s Palace, checked on Sasha as soon as she came out. She chuckled at the way he was checking to see if she was hurt anywhere.

“Everything was alright, so don’t worry. I told you, high-level personnel like you don’t need to come.”

“You never know what might happen. Are you going back to the mansion now?”

Sasha, who nodded, got into the carriage, and Dylan followed along. Sasha returned to the mansion feeling refreshed.

–

What greeted her when she returned to the mansion was Kyler, who was sitting in the chair in his study, deep in thought. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t even know she had come in.

Sasha quietly approached the serious-looking him and kissed him on the cheek as he looked up at the ceiling, lost in thought.

Sasha, who thought he would just be startled, was about to pout at him when she felt her body being snatched and floating in the air.

“Kya!”

Kyler pulled her body over and sat her on his thigh. Sasha, who was surprised but let him pull her as he wanted, lightly climbed onto him.

“What are you doing? You startled me!”

“Wasn’t Sasha trying to surprise me too?”

Of course, that’s true.

Sasha, who immediately backed down, wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him. She could feel the sensation of his firm and warm body.

“The Emperor came first and said things like he apologized and repented.”

Sasha started to tell him about what had happened at the Imperial Palace in a soft voice without saying anything else. Kyler started listening to the story with a smile, but his expression slightly hardened.

“So, I chased His Majesty away for coming to say that, and the Queen came in. I asked her if she was waiting for me to say that I had come, and then she started talking about apologizing to His Majesty and Kyler again. Ugh, my life was in danger, but is my life less important than her sorting out her feelings?”

Her voice, which had been reporting in a soft voice, gradually turned into a complaint. But it didn’t feel like she was being stubborn or annoying.

She had a lot to ask for and a lot to ask to be looked after as the Duchess, but she had been studying separately on her own to become a complete Duchess without showing any of that, so she should never be annoyed by these moments of expressing her emotions.

“Your life is more important than anyone else’s. It’s not just to me. It was such a big deal. I think it would have been more difficult to say.”

“Yeah. I understand. Because I trust Kyler.”

She loved the way his body came along as she hugged him tightly.

Well, her story ended so simply, and now it was time to listen to his worries.

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