Rewriting the Trash Ending - Chapter 28

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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28.

***

Axid had returned, but little had changed from that first night.
The man who lay quietly beside her before sleep claimed her the moment she opened her eyes—only to vanish without a trace.
Looking back on it now, she wondered if he himself had been caught off guard by what happened that evening.

“If you don’t wish to suffer my wrath, I suggest you stop this at once.”

The thought of him shaking her composure like that, then fumbling for his own footing, made her want to laugh until she couldn’t breathe.
And here I am, wondering what I wouldn’t give to feel that again….
A rueful smile escaped her lips, since she couldn’t yet.
The Curse hanging over the Grand Duke’s line would be dispelled the moment she revealed the truth, but she had no way to explain how she’d learned of the previous Grand Duchess’s survival.
Worse still was the uncertainty of whether their reunion should happen this way at all.
She couldn’t bear the thought of her husband being wounded by a meeting so ill-prepared.
‘I’ll think about this later. There’s still time.’
She was setting aside thoughts she couldn’t yet untangle when she lifted the cold cup to her lips.
“Your Highness, Kaiden is here to see you.”
Lumière looked up at Hanna’s words.
“Kaiden?”
She’d heard that he’d been selecting members of her guard detail these past few days.
Had he come to inform her who had been chosen?
Lumière invited Kaiden inside.
But then—
“You’re… my guard?”
Lumière blinked rapidly.
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
Kaiden tilted his head, his eyes widening slightly.
“Because you’re the Vice-Commander.”
She understood well enough how crucial his position was.
The Vice-Commander, like the Commander of the Knights’ Order, could mobilize the army in a crisis.
Yet such a vital figure was being pulled from his post to serve as her guard knight.
“I’ll speak to the Grand Duke himself about this. It’s absurd—you as my guard?”
If Kaiden left the Knights’ Order, it could leave a gap in the Front Line.
That meant others would be in greater danger, and keeping him at her side within the castle walls—where she rarely left—seemed like gross excess.
“Do I displease you, Your Highness?”
“What are you saying?”
Kaiden grumbled with an aggrieved tone.
“You just said you’d speak to the Grand Duke about it. Aren’t you trying to send me away?”
“Don’t misunderstand. It’s not that I dislike you.”
“Then why?”
Kaiden pushed out his lower lip, waiting for an answer.
“For you, this is little better than a demotion.”
“A demotion? Do you really not understand?”
“Not understand? What do you mean, I—?”
The Vice-Commander who should be protecting the Grand Duke at the Front Line, pushed into a sinecure where he’d never draw his blade even once—what else could that be called but a demotion?
“…No, never mind if you don’t see it.”
Kaiden’s eyes held an odd gleam as he trailed off evasively.
What on earth was he not saying?
She narrowed her eyes, pressing him further.
“Have you somehow fallen out of favor with him?”
“Why does your reasoning always jump to that conclusion?”
“Because if that weren’t the case, someone as important as you would never be pulled from your post to guard me.”
Kaiden seemed to brighten at this. His lips quirked upward as he let out a soft cough.
“…Actually, I meant to volunteer first. But the Grand Duke gave the order before I could.”
“What do you—”
“In any case, it’s nothing like a demotion. So you can’t send me away.”
Kaiden even whistled, pleased by the personnel reshuffle.
‘Should I have a separate word with the Grand Duke about this?’
Though he regarded this marriage as a contractual arrangement, that didn’t make him the sort of man to take his responsibilities to his wife lightly.
So perhaps that was why the Grand Duke had assigned Kaiden to him—yet he worried whether the vice-commander’s absence might strain the Front Line.
But he soon shook his head.
There was no chance the Grand Duke had made such a decision without careful thought.
“Your Highness, I beg your pardon for the interruption, but letters have arrived for you.”
Hanna handed over the envelopes.
One was from the Mobert Countess, the other from the Oswald Countess Household.
“Pardon me a moment.”
Lumière sought Kaiden’s leave before opening the envelope from the Mobert Countess first.
It stated that she would arrive in four days’ time with the other ladies.
Another notification, nothing more.

“I told you time and again that you mustn’t let an Imperial into the inner chambers, yet you cast this old woman out at the door—and now see where it’s led?”

The moment that voice from her past life echoed in her mind—the one that had delighted in using her as a cautionary example of prescience—the notification to visit unannounced felt all the more galling.
She cast Magda’s letter aside on the table as though discarding it, then unfolded the Oswald Countess Household’s missive.
“The Coming-of-Age Ceremony, then….”
Erica’s paternal grandmother.
It was a formal invitation from the previous Oswald Countess, requesting that she do the ceremony honor.
In her past life, it had been cancelled by her death, but this time it seemed to be proceeding without incident.
‘I must go—of course I intend to.’
The thought crossed her mind that the Mobert Countess likely wouldn’t be absent either.
A woman so hungry for power and so fond of inserting herself everywhere wouldn’t miss such an important occasion.
Then a different thought struck her.
Why should I receive an audience from the Countess?
The Mobert Countess had committed breaches of etiquette twice over.
She was not someone worth receiving with proper courtesy, and Lumière had no wish to receive such an audience at all.
“Hanna.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Bring me pen and paper. I must send a reply.”
She swept Magda’s letter aside with a cold gaze.

***

It was the day after Magda sent her letter to the Grand Duke’s Castle that she summoned the ladies she had invited before.
“Now that everyone’s gathered again, we should finish the conversation we left incomplete last time.”
“…Of course, madam.”
Magda set down her teacup, lifting her brows slightly.
They’d all heard that the Finance Minister’s daughter had suffered a fit during the audience, and they seemed wary of becoming entangled in the matter.
It was true that a pointed conversation had taken place in the Greenhouse that day.
Magda hadn’t anticipated the Finance Minister’s daughter would have a fit, but that was purely an accident.
Yet here they were, cowering in fear like timid creatures.
Tsk.
She clicked her tongue softly, on the verge of scolding the ladies.
“Madam, a letter has arrived from the Grand Duke’s Castle.”
“Bring it here.”
She’d already instructed them to bring any reply as soon as it arrived, half-expecting it to come around this time.
She was curious to see how the Grand Duchess would respond.
But then….

[I received your letter.
There is no need for you to make the troublesome journey to the castle, and since the Coming-of-Age Ceremony for the previous Oswald Countess is to be held shortly, we shall exchange greetings there instead.]

“How dare she….”
No need to make the troublesome journey?
When the only elder remaining in the Grand Duke’s House was herself, those words sounded as if she were being treated as an outsider.
And what sort of propriety was it to receive an audience at someone else’s family ceremony?
Magda’s lips twisted coldly.
“So the Grand Duke won’t grant us an audience, then.”
“What? I don’t understand…….”
“Instead, she’s proposed we exchange greetings at Oswald’s Coming-of-Age Ceremony. What do you all think?”
The women’s expressions hardened like stone.
It wasn’t merely the awkwardness of meeting at the Oswald household that had grown so prickly.
An audience was no small thing for the wives—it was one of the crucial ceremonies of court.
A chance to make an impression on the highest-born woman in the realm.
But this? This was asking them to exchange a handful of pleasantries as though they’d happened to meet by chance, nothing more.
Though she’d aligned herself with Magda’s displeasure at the current Grand Duchess, now that she found herself on the receiving end of such dismissal, the sting was real—a sour taste lingering on her tongue.
“Didn’t I tell you plainly? We needed to establish dominance from the very start.”
A Coming-of-Age Ceremony? To exchange greetings there?
Attend, and she’d be dancing to that woman’s tune; refuse, and she’d be standing by while that woman played the lady of the house.
Neither choice sat well with her.
But if she withdrew now, everything she’d built would crumble.
“Fine. If the Grand Duke herself desires it, what choice do we have? We’ll attend with full courtesy.”
Magda’s lips twisted into a bitter smile.
Crushing a girl barely past twenty would be nothing—she’d spent decades navigating the Northern Region’s high society.
Yet as the other women watched her, a thought flickered through their minds.
…Perhaps they’d scratched at a wound that was best left alone.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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