The Returned Husband Refuses to Divorce - Chapter 2

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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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1.
One day, without warning, Ines found herself thinking it.
When her husband returned, she would divorce him.
‘Why on earth did I come to such a decision all of a sudden?’
Strangely enough, there had been no reason at all—she’d simply woken from sleep and the thought was suddenly there, urgent and complete.
Even she couldn’t fathom why such a vow had surfaced without warning.
It was only that the stubborn obsession clinging to this manor—the desperate need to stay—had vanished in an instant, leaving her free of any lingering attachment to a marriage that had long since ceased to mean anything.
‘That’s right. When I think about it, maintaining this marriage was the real absurdity.’
It had never been a marriage born of love.
She and her husband had married solely because each of them needed the other—they had chosen each other as a solution to their respective crises.
It was a contract, nothing more.
Then, mere days ago, a letter had arrived at the manor.
The official homecoming of Zekard, the great war hero.
After five years deployed, her husband had triumphed over the monsters and returned victorious—a hero now, at last coming home in glory.
In other words, it meant their contract was coming to an end.
‘I’ve endured five years without incident. I’ve paid my debt.’
According to the letter, his return would come in a month’s time.
Long in some reckoning, short in another.
Ines considered her circumstances with cool clarity.
There was the former Duchess—a woman who despised her still after five years of marriage—whose face she’d nearly forgotten, her husband; and this cold, unwelcoming territory where no one wished her to remain.
There was no reason for her to stay anywhere.
‘Yes. The moment he returns, I’ll tell him. I’m leaving this place.’
Spring arrived at last.
Ines resolved to divorce her husband.
* * *
Ines Chartier had been a Saint Candidate.
More precisely, she ‘had been’ one. Originally, yes—but after entering into a contract marriage with Zekard at his proposal, her candidacy had been stripped away.
‘Even if it hadn’t happened that way, I would have been cast out eventually.’
The details were these:
“The Saint of this generation shall emerge from among you.”
At the founding of the Holy Empire Ethila, there were four noble houses known to have led the sealing of the Evil God and received the blessing of the Chief Deity Eternal.
Ines came from one of them: House Chartier.
“A Divine Oracle has descended upon us—one of the two sisters shall become the Saint. We hold great expectations for them both; nurture them well.”
When Ines was eight years old, emissaries from the Temple came to their home.
According to the Divine Oracle they delivered, one of the Chartier sisters would become the next Saint.
Moreover, when interpreting the various signs, they said this generation’s Saint would possess the strongest Holy Power of all recorded Saints—evidence itself that she would receive the full love of the Chief Deity.
Hearing the prophecy, Ines’s parents were naturally overjoyed.
House Chartier had been the only one among the four great families never to produce a Saint; it had been ages since even a humble Temple priest had emerged from their line.
To receive word of a historically remarkable Saint arising from such circumstances—they could not help but be elated.
“We understand. We shall raise the children righteously.”
And for Ines, that promise became the beginning of tragedy.
From that day forward, her parents subjected the sisters to brutal education.
“Why can’t you do even this!”
“Why won’t you stand!”
“If you haven’t memorized all the scriptures by today, you eat nothing.”
They had never been particularly warm parents. Especially Ines—lacking in charm as she was—remained distant from them, unlike her younger sister, who won affection with timely coquetry.
“‘It’s fine. This is nothing.'”
Whether by fortune or misfortune, Ines possessed an iron will.
She endured her education—or rather, her ordeals—with quiet steadfastness and dutiful resolve.
Had she wanted to become a Saint? It seemed she had not.
She had only wanted not to disappoint her parents.
“Why does Sister keep receiving corporal punishment?”
“Ines lacks sufficient aptitude. We must awaken her Holy Power through pain.”
Even knowing that her younger sister, unlike her, had never been struck once……she believed it was simply how things had to be.
Because she herself was lacking.
But what could not be done would not be done, no matter what.
“This cannot be! Such pure Holy Power!”
At last came the fated day, and before the vast crowd assembled at the Great Temple, her younger sister Elise awakened gloriously as the Saint.
“Indeed, the prophecy was true. Elise Chartier shall become a Saint whose name echoes through history!”
All around her, people cheered the birth of the new Saint.
By contrast, Ines…….
〈……I can’t believe they’re sisters. How pathetic.〉
A single, gossamer thread of white light, barely flickering to life in the palm of her hand.
That was all.
〈Congratulations. House Chartier finally sees the light of day.〉
People laughing with false warmth.
Her parents, feigning modesty while basking in praise, and the priests who fawned over them.
And…….
〈……Give up. You’ll never make it, sister.〉
My younger sister, pitying me.
No—Saint Elise.
I still couldn’t forget the look in her eyes that day as she gazed down at me.
Yet Ines endured.
〈’……It’s fine. I never expected anything anyway.’〉
She’d known the truth all along.
There had always been a vast gulf between her and her younger sister Elise.
But knowing something and making peace with it were two different things.
〈You’re truly worthless.〉
Eyes so brutally cold.
Contempt crystallized within them.
The moment the last glimmer of hope—that perhaps, just perhaps, she might become a Saint—vanished, Ines’s heart crumbled.
It was Zekard Evanhardt who reached out his hand to her then.
〈Let’s make a deal.〉
One day, Zekard appeared without warning and proposed a contract marriage to Ines.
He said he needed a wife in name only to secure his title.
A powerless wife who matched his station as a duke, yet could never truly influence him.
〈I leave for the front very soon. So you need only hold the position of duchess until my return.〉
The Northern Region of Evanhardt Territory was unimaginably distant for Ines, who had spent her entire life in the Capital.
Unlike the four great houses of the Holy Empire, House Evanhardt had been incorporated into the empire later, recognized for their accomplishments in subjugating Monsters, and thus lay far removed from the Capital.
But was there any other choice?
Ines had lived her whole life looking only at one Saint. When her world collapsed, he who extended his hand seemed like the most beautiful salvation imaginable.
Ines didn’t hesitate. She took Zekard’s hand.
It had been five years since she arrived in Evanhardt Territory with him.
‘So much has happened in that time.’
True to his word, Zekard departed for war the moment the wedding ceremony ended.
In this place where she knew no one, Ines had to wage a different, far more grueling battle than she ever faced in the Temple.
There were times when she thought it might have been better to remain with her family…….
‘No, stop. No more dark thoughts.’
However painful those five years had been, they were behind her now.
Five years.
Not a short time at all.
‘I’ll ask for a divorce the moment he arrives.’
By some miracle, this time the gods were finally on Ines’s side.
Ines recalled a conversation from a few days ago with her mother-in-law, Selena, the late duchess.
〈You’ve heard the rumors, I’m sure? That my son has taken up with a new woman.〉
Selena had put it this way.
Her husband, Zekard Evanhardt, had fallen in love with Saint Elise on the battlefield.
〈The new Saint is said to be very intimate with Zekard. It’s an open secret among the Order of Knights.〉
Not just among the knights—the rumor had spread far beyond the front lines to the Capital and even here in the Northern Region.
It had long since reached even Ines’s ears, though she had few confidants to bring her news.
The love between war hero Zekard and Saint Elise.
Everyone was captivated by this beautiful, magnificent fairy tale.
And so people spoke with one voice.
That when the great war hero Zekard Evanhardt returned, he would finally divorce his worthless shrew of a wife and achieve true love with the Saint.

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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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