Charlotte - Chapter 30

Charlotte stood motionless in the hallway for a long time.

By the time she gradually regained her senses, sounds she hadn’t even noticed before began creeping into her ears one by one.

The servants busily preparing for her wedding with Leo were making a commotion—some loud, some quiet.

The sound of things being moved.

The sound of someone scolding another for putting something in the wrong place.

The sound of an irritated voice demanding clear instructions on where exactly it should go instead.

The sound of laughter as someone unfolded a design and pointed out the correct spot.

Listening to the sounds of daily life flowing around her, Charlotte suddenly dropped her head, clutching both ears.

“Ah…!”

A sharp, stabbing pain shot through her eardrums, as if she had just heard a terrible dissonance.

It felt like a piercing ringing had driven straight into her skull.

It wasn’t just her imagination.

After all, there was no way the sounds of preparations for a wedding between two people who didn’t belong together could be anything but jarring.

Even if they didn’t show it, every single person there must have been thinking the same thing.

That they were merely waiting for this disastrous performance to end.

***

When Charlotte returned to her room without accomplishing her goal, Mona was nowhere to be seen.

She had dreaded facing her again after exposing too much of herself, but fortunately, it seemed Mona had left on her own.

Not that it was surprising.

If anything, Mona had every reason to be taken aback—after all, Charlotte, the one who should have been the most pleased with Leo’s decision, had instead stormed out in anger.

How was she supposed to explain this? How could she fix it?

She needed to come up with an acceptable answer before Mona returned with questions.

Charlotte knew this, and yet, she simply threw her exhausted body onto the bed.

Her mind refused to function.

Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t see.

Her fingers and toes wouldn’t move, her entire body stiff as if paralyzed.

And worst of all—her throat…

It was failing her again.

“Hhhhk—!”

Just as she was counting the ways her body was betraying her, a sharp intake of breath sent her into a violent spasm.

“Hh—hngh—!”

She tried to inhale, tried to draw in the one thing she could freely consume in Rosa Castle—air—but nothing reached her lungs.

Blue-tinged veins bulged around her exposed throat, as if sending out a desperate SOS, pleading for oxygen.

But no one was there to see it.

She was alone.

And just like everything else in her life, she would have to endure this suffering alone.

Her numbed limbs thrashed weakly, only to send her tumbling off the bed.

She hit the ground hard.

And just like a wretched habit, Leo surfaced in her mind.

She couldn’t help it.

Because in every moment she hadn’t been in pain—Leo had been there.

“Leo…”

She whispered his name between fading breaths, as if it were merely part of her gasping.

“Hhh—hngh—hkk…”

She thought she had already lost her vision.

But a darkness even blacker than that was now swallowing her whole.

Is this what Leo’s world looked like?

The thought nearly stopped her heart.

***

I’m alive.

The first thought that crossed Charlotte’s mind as she opened her eyes was one of surprise.

The overwhelming sensation that had overtaken her before she blacked out had been so eerily similar to death that she had expected to wake at the gates of hell.

She had resigned herself, thinking, So marriage to Leo was never meant to be my fate after all.

And yet, it seemed the gods had stubbornly chosen her, this worthless woman, to be Leo’s wife.

Charlotte sighed in regret—for Leo’s sake—as she sluggishly pushed herself upright.

Only then did she realize she was in bed.

The blanket that had been covering her chest slid down to her thighs as she sat up.

An ominous feeling crept over her.

There was no way she had crawled back onto the bed in her unconscious state—the sheets were too perfectly arranged for that.

She turned to look around the room. The sunlight that had once filled every corner had now retreated to the edges of the window.

Just as she was lowering her feet to the floor, the door swung open.

Startled, Charlotte snapped her head up like a thief caught in the act.

Standing in the doorway, carrying a silver tray, was… Mona.

Mona, too, seemed briefly surprised to see Charlotte awake. The door remained awkwardly ajar for a moment before it clicked shut.

With silent steps, Mona approached the bed and set the tray down on the bedside table before finally speaking.

“It’s the same medicine you had yesterday. It’s meant to help calm your mind. I figured you might need it, so I went to the physician to get more.”

She held out a cup filled with the murky liquid.

Charlotte took it, frowning at the bitter scent that already stung her nose.

Then, without hesitation, she gulped it down.

Just as she had noted yesterday, it was a remedy with absolutely no concern for the drinker’s comfort.

As soon as the cup was empty, she gagged lightly from the lingering aftertaste.

By then, Mona had already retrieved the cup and now held a teaspoon up to Charlotte’s lips.

Charlotte glanced up at her before shifting her gaze downward, wordlessly parting her lips.

As she ran her lips over the spoon, an unexpected sweetness swiftly spread through her mouth, washing away the acrid bitterness.

The thick, syrupy liquid clung to her tongue before sliding down her throat. Honey.

Charlotte looked up at Mona once more.

With a quiet clink, Mona casually placed the spoon back on the silver tray, then met Charlotte’s gaze head-on.

“Didn’t I warn you before?”

Mona was the first to speak, her words cryptic.

Charlotte hesitated, worried she might make another careless mistake, and chose silence as her response.

“I told you to always be careful when you eat.”

Mona’s voice remained calm, but her meaning was unmistakable.

“I also told you that I was just dying to poison your meals.”

“…Ah.”

Charlotte let out a small gasp of realization.

She had never forgotten Mona’s warning—that moment had been seared into her mind along with the setting sun that day.

But what she had just realized was that the bitter medicine and sweet honey could very well have been poison.

She found herself staring into Mona’s eyes, unable to find the right words to say.

Mona’s gaze, almost unconsciously, sharpened into something venomous.

“It was poison.”

Her voice was disturbingly calm.

“Rather than let the lord spend his personal fortune, I figured it would be better for me to get rid of you instead. And since the wedding is tomorrow, today was my only chance.”

Charlotte lifted a hand to her throat.

She had survived earlier—when she had felt the veins in her neck strain with suffocation, when she had truly believed she was dying.

And yet, was death coming for her now—this peacefully?

“Shouldn’t you leave some last words?”

There was no expectation that Mona was lying.

They were not the type to exchange jokes like this.

And Mona had more than enough reasons to kill her.

“…So it really was poison.”

Charlotte swallowed, the lingering taste of honey still coating her tongue.

And then—

Crash!

Mona suddenly grabbed the silver tray and hurled it across the room.

Charlotte shot up from her seat in shock.

The cup, the saucer, the teaspoon—all the things resting on the tray scattered in different directions.

Glass shattered against the floor, leaving only jagged, glistening fragments.

“This is what you should have done.”

Mona’s voice yanked Charlotte’s stunned gaze back from the mess on the ground.

“You should have panicked. Screamed for an antidote.”

Her eyes burned with anger—but beneath it, tears welled up, brimming at the edges.

“You should have thrown yourself at me, clawing at my throat, screaming that I’d die before you would.”

And the moment those tears fell silently—

“That way, I could have kept knowing nothing.”

Charlotte realized she had just walked into a trap.

There was a black pit at her feet.

A hollow, sinking feeling churned in her stomach as she took a step back—

And was immediately stopped by the bed.

Mona hadn’t even moved, yet Charlotte felt as if she had been backed into a corner.

Her breathing wavered.

A strange, unsteady wheeze escaped her throat.

The medicine—poison or not—was failing to do its job.

“Princess…!”

Mona suddenly stepped forward—

And Charlotte instinctively scrambled onto the bed, retreating.

A purely instinctive reaction.

Mona froze, unable to reach for her, unable to touch the fear she had just caused.

Instead, she covered her face with both hands.

Her palms were instantly damp.

It felt as though she had swallowed something far more toxic than poison itself.

Because if it wasn’t, then there was no way—no way—her chest could ache this much.

She wiped at her eyes with those same wet hands, an utterly useless gesture.

Then, she looked at Charlotte.

Charlotte, who clung to the sheets as if they were a shield.

Charlotte, whose breathing was still uneven.

And Mona, unable to stop herself, confessed.

“I saw your back.”

Because there was no way to reveal the truth without causing pain.