Interlude: Destiny’s Turning Point

The men were engulfed in fire. Hot, pale flames burned away all their screams, tears, and anguish in an instant, leaving nothing in their wake but black charcoal.

With each step Ada took, she claimed another victim. Her enemies swung their blades, but the weapons fell from their hands before the tips of their swords could reach her, the men losing their forms and crumbling to ash.

“She’s a monster!” Ada heard someone cry out, but the words didn’t cut particularly deep. Her strength certainly was on par with a monster’s, and either way, more and more of them had to die for her—or else she was going to pay for it.

The catch was that, most likely, they were all relatives of the Farzian royal family. As she gazed upon their pale shades of hair, for a brief moment, the woman stopped to wonder just what she was doing.

In the beginning, Ada never could have committed this sort of atrocity. She never would have desired to kill her fellow Farzian citizens or the nobles she may have passed in the street once upon a time. Nor had she wanted to leave the royal capital to come all the way to the plains of Sestina. She had simply been ordered to attack the Farzian forces from behind as they faced off against Llewyne.

Where did I go wrong? Ada reflected as she spewed flame. Would she have been alright if her fiancé hadn’t run off with another woman? Should she have found herself a different man the moment she sensed he didn’t hold any affection for her?

Or was the problem that she had fled from the church where her wedding ceremony was to be held?

◇◇◇

A little over a year ago, Ada had run away for the first time in her life.

She hurtled blindly ahead until she tripped and fell. After catching on a branch in the thicket she had wandered into, the train of her dress was in tatters. Nonetheless, Ada just kept on running for as long as she could.

The man she had been set to marry had left her at the altar. Who could have blamed her for fleeing alone into the wilderness?

She had always been lauded as a beautiful woman, with countless suitors lined up to request her hand in marriage. For her to have her husband-to-be run off on her was beyond humiliating. With the kind of despair she was feeling, she had assumed any reaction of hers would be justified.

And yet, her mother and father had spoken as if Ada was the one in the wrong. She had shouted at them and bolted, hoping they would at least care enough to comfort their distressed daughter, but it was questionable whether they’d even gone looking for her. If they had headed out on horseback, they could have tracked her down in no time, but there was no sign of them anywhere.

“Hah! I’m just their disgrace of a daughter, spurned by her betrothed. I’m sure they’d prefer I just disappear,” Ada muttered as she crouched down on some unfamiliar roadside, exhausted.

That was when the devil came along.

“Oh! The color of your hair is the spitting image of Annamarie!”

While she lay collapsed, a stranger wrapped his finger around a lock of Ada’s light-brown hair, ever so slightly tinged with red—a man whose face made him look like he had been cursed to turn into a bullfrog. His wide mouth and square jaw bore a very strong resemblance to the creature. Although they weren’t especially large, his bulging eyes only enhanced the impression.

“Take her away.”

At the demon’s command, his subordinates brought Ada to a noble estate. But instead of the manor itself, they threw her into a shoddily built shed on the premises.

There, Ada drank a beverage a servant had offered her without the slightest hint of suspicion... and passed out.

After that, she suffered for three days and three nights. When she stirred, conscious but hazy, her throat felt like it was burning. Then her stomach began to hurt, and before long, a heat coursed through her whole body, leaving her writhing in agony.

Once her condition had finally settled, she came face-to-face with the devilish bullfrog once again, a huge smile plastered on his face. Only then did she learn that the man was the viscount of Credias... and that she was his prisoner now.

“You are to become my bride. I found you collapsed on the road as my carriage drove past; surely this must be fate! I suffered quite the inconvenience when the girl I had chosen as my wife absconded, but now that I’ve gotten my hands on such a fine replacement, why, I couldn’t be happier,” the bullfrog announced.

Ada was stunned.

She had heard rumors before—rumors of a poor, poor girl named Kiara Patriciél.

Ada and her friends had gossiped about it during their tea parties and social gatherings. They had theorized that her father, the count of Patriciél, had been unable to reject Lord Bullfrog’s marriage proposal due to their good standing with each other.

How pitiful the girl had seemed. At the tender age of fourteen, she had been forcibly engaged to a repulsive man over forty years old.

There was no way it would have been a mariage blanc for appearances only, either. This was a man with a whole harem of mistresses. “The poor thing! If only Lord Credias were a looker, at least there would be a silver lining,” Ada had commented.

Those conversations, which had bordered on vulgar, had been nothing more than a fine sweet to enjoy with their tea. Oh, how she longed to go back to the days where she could revel in that sort of gossip.

But now, Ada could no longer deride the runaway Kiara as someone who “didn’t have what it took.” She had escaped from the devil himself. Just the thought turned Ada green with envy.

What’s more, if the viscount had been searching for a replacement as a result of her escape, that meant it was Kiara’s fault that he had gotten his hands on Ada. She hated the girl with every fiber of her being.

Why did you have to run, Kiara Patriciél? If only you’d stayed, this man never would have set his eyes on me! Ada lamented.

Nevertheless, Ada objected, too stubborn to lie down and surrender to her fate. She insisted that she had never agreed to this marriage.

At that, the viscount called for Ada’s father. When he arrived, he said, “It would be one thing if the only disgrace you’d brought upon us was losing your husband-to-be. We could keep you off in a corner of our estate, and perhaps one day, some fanciful man would desire to take you as his wife. But you spent the night in the viscount’s home without permission, completely unattended. If word spreads and it turns into a scandal, what choice do you have but to marry the man?!”

Ada was shocked. She never would have imagined that her escape route had been sealed while she was laid up in bed. If word got out that a lone woman had spent three whole nights in an unmarried man’s mansion, there would be no coming back from it. Ada had no choice but to consent to the marriage.

Furthermore, Ada had been brought up with the same traditional values as any daughter of nobility. Her previous fiancé was a man her father had chosen for her. She hadn’t held any particularly strong feelings for him; she had simply lost her head over the humiliating damage he’d done to her reputation by leaving her at the altar.

Ada didn’t have the courage to rebel against her parents and run off a second time.

Two weeks later, there was a wedding ceremony attended only by her closest relatives. That short span of time hadn’t allowed Ada a proper chance to prepare herself for what lay ahead. Left with no other choice, Ada had shamelessly groveled and pleaded with the viscount on the night of their ceremony.

“P-Please, have mercy! I’ll do anything else you ask of me, but please, at least wait until I’ve had time to grow accustomed to my new home!”

Ada had no idea what he might do to her if she refused to join him in bed. But no matter the consequence, she simply wasn’t ready to go through with it.

Fortunately for her, that seemed to strike a chord with Lord Credias.

“Heheh. It’s like Annamarie is here pleading for my mercy! How delightfully shameful. When you’re on your knees, I can only see your hair and your back, so you look even more like her. Your face doesn’t much resemble Annamarie’s. Kiara’s was a closer fit. That pure, helpless air about her really sold it... What a shame I missed out on her.”

Evidently, the viscount couldn’t bring himself to forget his late first wife. He always took a liking to girls with the same brownish hair as her. Ada had never laid eyes on either of the two, but according to the viscount, Kiara’s eyes and general aura resembled those of the departed woman.

Ada had more mature features. She was still only sixteen years old, yet she had already outgrown her more girlish dresses.

Ultimately, Lord Credias let her off the hook until he grew bored of his mistresses. Nevertheless, Ada had no time to hole up inside her room and lament her misfortune.

She was put to work sweeping the floors, dressed in the shabby rags of a servant, her hair worn down to keep her face hidden. If she refused, her grace period would be revoked; she had no choice in the matter.

Allegedly, the viscount wanted to inflict misery upon Ada in order to bask in the sense that he was tormenting his former wife. The man was twisted to his core.

Eventually, he got in the habit of bringing her along as a servant when he went to visit other noble houses. Word spread that not even Lord Bullfrog himself had taken a fancy to his new wife, instead choosing to treat her as a slave—and thus, Ada Forsén became the laughingstock of high society. As humiliating as it was, it was still preferable to being defiled, so all she could do was endure.

That said, Ada had the upbringing of a nobleman’s daughter; the grueling labor and painful cold of her new life left her bedridden with a fever more than once. Her only option was to push through, muttering “Better than being that viscount’s plaything” over and over like a mantra.

Half a year went by.

One day, Lord Credias suddenly summoned a tailor for Ada. When he ordered a handful of dresses for her, Ada had the sinking feeling that he had finally tired of his mistresses—but that turned out to be wrong.

“Starting next month, you are to go work for the queen.”

In other words, she was to become a lady-in-waiting.

Ada was ecstatic. Finally, the opportunity had arrived to escape her miserable days as a servant.

But in exchange, the viscount ordered her to swallow a mysterious stone. So long as she accepted that condition, he would keep his hands off of her for as long as she stayed with the queen. Ada happily gulped down the stone—and was consequently assailed with an all-too-familiar agony. After she spent another three days confined to her bed, Lord Credias told her, “You’re a spellcaster now.”

It was precisely because he knew she was someone special—someone with the aptitude for magic—that he had decided to let her serve the queen.

As much as she loathed the viscount, his words resonated with her. She was someone special. It felt as if all her days of suffering had all been leading up to this wonderful moment.

She had assumed a spellcaster could subdue just about anyone, but unfortunately, she soon discovered that Lord Credias was the one person she could never vanquish. Due to the process through which she had become a spellcaster, she couldn’t rebel against the viscount. She was informed that if she went against his orders, she would once again find herself reduced to a moaning, writhing mess.

“I am your master; this fact has been imprinted upon your very soul. If you turn against me, you’ll be forced to endure a hellish amount of suffering, only to turn into sand and perish at the end of it.”

To Ada’s great dismay, no sooner than he said it, Lord Credias killed one of his mistresses right before her eyes. And for absolutely no reason but to threaten her.

The mistress was handed a sliver of red stone, no bigger than a grain of wheat. After swallowing it, she thrashed about in agony until she eventually crumbled into sand. According to the viscount, that was a test of whether or not she had the aptitude for sorcery.

Ada was terrified. However, her fear was quelled by the exhilarating thought of going to the royal palace and leaving Lord Credias behind.

The queen she eventually met was a kind woman. Despite being hired as a spellcaster, Ada’s only real duty within the palace was to serve as her conversation partner. So long as she didn’t leave the palace grounds, she was free to wander the gardens and premises as she liked. Now that she had finally returned to her tranquil life as a daughter of nobility, Ada felt nothing but bliss.

What’s more, staying in the palace allowed her to catch glimpses of the prince she had always adored. He was the same age as her, a man with beautiful silver hair—Prince Reginald.

Ada had attended the New Year’s feasts in the past, but seeing as her father had no strong connections to the royal family, she had always been told to keep her distance. There was no benefit to getting involved with a prince unfavored by the king, in any case. A shame though it was, she had nonetheless admired his good looks from afar.

Plus, when Ada had just started her work at the royal palace, the prince had struck up a conversation with her. It happened when some of her former peers were ridiculing her over rumors of her mistreatment at the viscount’s hands. While he happened to be passing by, the prince sent the girls away and showed concern for Ada.

“So, you work in the palace, do you? For Her Majesty?” he asked. Ada nodded before she could stop herself. Word had it that Prince Reginald and the king did not see eye to eye with the queen due to her Llewynian origins; she didn’t want to admit to the truth only to be rebuffed for it.

The prince asked if she had a hard time serving as the queen’s attendant, and Ada replied that she had a comfortable life in the palace.

“Good. So you don’t hate living here,” the prince responded with a smile.

It was enough to make Ada delude herself into believing that the prince had taken a liking to her. Growing up, she had always been told how beautiful she was. Her husband never should have been such a horrible, older man. A beautiful man like the prince was the partner she deserved. After her first encounter with the prince, Ada became convinced of it.

Ada indulged herself with those thoughts, and the queen spoke to her after witnessing her and the prince together. “Reginald is yet another unfortunate soul. He spent his childhood years ostracized by the king, and now that his father has gone into hiding, there are few willing to stand behind him. I come from a former enemy country, so the boy is deeply suspicious of me. And yet, I do so wish I could find a way to help him one day.”

The good-natured queen was worried for the poor prince. Ada was in complete agreement, and she believed there just had to be something she could do for the prince as she was now. Surely she could use her power to support him. If a spellcaster were to swear fealty to him, perhaps the rest of the nobility would fall into line behind him.

Once Farzia was annexed by Llewyne, he would never again be tormented at the hands of the king. Moreover, she was told that if they succeeded, Lord Credias would be willing to divorce her.

“After that, you’ll be free to marry the prince. I suppose he won’t be the prince of Farzia anymore, but so long as he’s going to be with you, I wouldn’t mind giving him the rank of a duke and some land to the west of Farzia. As a wedding gift, of course.”

Ada lost herself in the sweet dreams the queen tempted her with.

From that day forward, Ada kept on dreaming of one day standing by the prince’s side.

“I must fight for that future.”

As she burned her own countrymen to ash with her magic, Ada told herself over and over: Don’t hesitate.