Cordelia Von Kleist was the youngest child of Duke Von Kleist — descendants of demons and powerful allies of the emperor for generations. She had been betrothed to Marquis Harry Roman when both of them were seventeen. Cordelia had no interest in the arrangement whatsoever. She despised the idea of marrying a human, but her family owed loyalty to the emperor, and Harry was the son of the emperor and one of his concubines, so she had to accept.
Her salvation came sooner than she expected. Harry had always tried to be courteous with her, but when a sweet young woman with an angelic smile entered the picture, the engagement became a problem for him. He did everything he could to convince his father to dissolve it — he wanted to marry the woman he loved. Cordelia didn't resist. She accepted the compensation for the broken engagement and moved on.
But she soon came to despise Agnes — not because Agnes had married Harry, but because Cordelia wanted something else entirely, and Agnes stood in the way of it. When Cordelia learned what had happened with the Crown Prince, and that he had died at Agnes's hands, she refused to sit still.
She infiltrated the palace. When she found the opportunity to be alone with Agnes, she drove a dagger into her stomach. Cordelia was captured and put on trial. Harry looked at her with pure hatred in his eyes, swearing that even if Agnes died, he would never consider marrying Cordelia — her act of betrayal would change nothing, because he had never loved her.
"And who wants your love?" Cordelia said without hesitation. "Do you think you're that important? Please. Look at yourself. Pathetic human."
She said it standing on the execution platform, kneeling before a crowd.
"Shut your mouth, you — why else would you do it? You pretended to accept the broken engagement, but you were planning to kill her all along. Damn demon," Harry shouted.
Cordelia let out a laugh — a mocking one, aimed straight at him.
"You think this is about you? When I found out you wanted to marry that ridiculous woman, I was the happiest person alive. I was free from an engagement to a filthy, worthless human."
Harry's hands tightened into fists.
"Don't lie. Why else would you want to hurt Agnes?" He leveled his sword at her throat.
"Because I lost everything because of her." Her voice sharpened. "Your whore went and seduced him — just to kill him. She deserved what I did to her. Because killing her wasn't the plan." A wicked smile spread across her face. "The plan was to inflict the worst possible pain on a woman like her."
Harry stared at her, confused. If it wasn't for him — then who?
"I wonder," she said, "how long will you love her? You'll see soon enough. My revenge will continue even from the grave. And then she'll remember she should never have looked at him in the first place." Tears began sliding down her cheeks.
Harry, in his fury over everything Cordelia had said, raised his sword himself. And soon, her head rolled across the platform.
When he returned to the palace, the physicians gave him the news. Agnes's wound hadn't been fatal, but the dagger had carried a poison only the Von Kleists could cure, and it had damaged her womb — she would never be able to conceive.
When this became known, the court began demanding that Harry take concubines to secure an heir, since the Von Kleists would never give the antidote to the man who had condemned and executed their youngest daughter. Harry refused. He couldn't break the vow of love he'd made to Agnes. But the relationship slowly fractured anyway. Agnes could barely endure the criticism, and Harry grew more pressured by the day. And as if that weren't enough, the Von Kleists rose up against the empire with an army of demons, and Harry's forces couldn't stand against them.
Soon whispers filled the court.
"The only man capable of facing this is dead."
"This is the end of the empire."
"We're finished. Without the Crown Prince, the empire cannot defend itself."
"His Highness Stellan would have ended this conflict already."
"It's all Harry Roman's fault — he executed that woman without weighing the consequences."
Harry couldn't bear the pressure. And just as the court had predicted, the Von Kleists took the palace. Agnes and Harry were forced to flee, abandoning everything. But their lives remained in danger. Duke Von Kleist wouldn't stop until he had finished what he'd started. And finish it he did — when he found them, he had them locked separately in the darkest dungeons, where they suffered in silence and shadow.
The man Cordelia had loved — the man for whom she had sacrificed her life to seek revenge — was Stellan. To her, he was the only human worth anything. She had always viewed humans as inferior beings, which was why she'd never wanted to marry the Marquis. When Harry married Agnes, she saw her perfect opportunity to be with the man she actually wanted. Unfortunately, he had chosen to fixate on Agnes instead of giving Cordelia a chance.
"Stellan, Stellan..." Stellan murmured to himself. "You were the most stupid villain who ever lived. If you'd died trying to conquer empires, it would've been honorable. But you were pathetic enough to lose everything over one foolish little woman."
He clicked his tongue, annoyed at having dredged up the story again — and the original Stellan's spectacular stupidity. But since he was no longer that man, things were about to change. And he couldn't deny it: Cordelia Von Kleist wasn't just an interesting woman. She was also the daughter of the empire's most influential duke.
From where he stood, he watched her across the camp, speaking with the Duke as they studied a map together.
"She'll be my empress," he said, a sharp smile crossing his face.
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