Chapter 140

“Your Majesty!”

It was then that someone shook her to wake her up. In the dark of the night, Mirya’s face was obscured by the darkness, and looked bluish. Patrizia shed tears without knowing it.

“Ah ugh…”

“Your Majesty, did you have a nightmare again?”

“No, no…” Patrizia barely managed to shake her head. She wiped away her tears and stood up from her bed. She suddenly started to run outside of the Empress’ Palace. Surprised, Mirya tried to call out to Patrizia and stop her, but it was to no avail. She started to run.

“Damn, damn, damn!”, Patrizia constantly muttered to herself, started to run, and continued to run. She felt like crap.

Feel like shit, like shit, like shit! In the first place, the Imperial lineage was cut off from the previous Emperor. To blame someone, Alyssa should be blamed, and not me. She was also infertile, after all!

“Ouch!” she screamed as she tripped. Her foot had caught on a protruding stone, and she fell. She felt a warm sensation in her foot, and sharp pain penetrated the lower part of her body. She sobbed, pushing herself up from the ground, “Ahhh…”

It was miserable. It was terrible. Could she be so miserable? Patrizia felt the tears that had just stopped flowing again. Her tears wet her cheeks and flowed down her chin. She kept crying without even thinking about the fact that she had to stand up again.

“… Patrizia?” someone called out her name. It was a lovely and generous name, but Patrizia never felt more contempt for her name than in that very moment.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt somewhere?” Lucio bent down, and looked her over. She was clearly not good with just a glance, as he could see blood flowing from her feet. He scolded her in an angry voice, “What are you doing going barefoot like this during the night?”

“I…” Patrizia gave a different reply, instead of answering. “Do you know how much I despise you?”

“…”

“I hate you, Lucio. The little bit of sympathy and sincerity that I had for you that you undermined… I cannot forgive you.”

“…”

‘I regret having returned. Instead, I would rather just end it here. I should have ended my bad luck with you, and then just died,” Patrizia murmured to herself, and then everything turned black, as she completely lost consciousness.

Lucio screamed in a shocked voice, hugging her fainted body, “Empress? Empress!”

“…”

“Damn.”

It was already late. It seemed she had already lost consciousness. He called out to someone in the open air. Three or four knights in silver armor quickly appeared in front of him. He spoke to them in an urgent voice.

“Call the court physician and take the Empress to the Empress Palace.” Then, he immediately changed his orders. “No, I will take her directly to the Central Palace.”

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Actually, she had never regretted returning to relive this life. This life had been a gift to her. It was a life she had been given once again, along with the opportunity to reverse the tragedy she had faced previously. Opportunities to receive these kinds of gifts were rare.

“…”

With this life given again, she was once again able to be with her beloved family, and her sister would no longer have her head cut off by a guillotine. If she was careful, her family would continue to thrive for a long time. Although her personal happiness had to be given up, she considered this not so bad an outcome.

Then, she encountered the man who was her brother-in-law in her former life, and her husband in this present life. She had learned about the man’s trauma, how the man’s mistress had a hand in killing her sister, and how she had even gained the man’s heart. She had sympathized with the man, and had even felt some compassion for the mistress. At the time, she didn’t know it was a foolish thing to do.

It wasn’t until she realized that the two of them had played with her before she had even entered the Empress Palace that the bit of sympathy and sincerity she possessed was broken. She showed her genuine self to the man, but it was only deception and betrayal that was returned for her being genuine. She had received deep wounds full of pain she had no choice but to receive. There was no one that would not be deeply shocked, if the heart that had been carefully revealed was broken in such a way.

So in actuality, they had played with her. If they had not deceived her in that kind of way, the Empress would have been another woman. If so, Patrizia herself could have been happy with other men, and even if she couldn’t get married because of her being infertile, she could have spent a happy life with her family.

But after she became the Empress, there was nothing left for her. She was to forever live being mocked and despised, just because she couldn’t give birth to a child. Perhaps she was even going to follow the footsteps of that terrible dethroned Alyssa.

It was not a leap to think in such a manner. Alyssa had been a naive and good woman at the beginning. The palace was a place that had the excellent ability to turn even the goodness in such a person into evil.

She vowed to kill herself off if that ever happened…

Now, her mind was desolate, similar to the time when she had witnessed her sister’s death. Just like how her heart had felt right before she had died…

So in essence, basically nothing had actually changed. Only groaning within repeated pain, along with recurrent sadness.

That was why she would rather have just died together with her family back then. She should have just put a finish to it completely, and not restarted it all. She resented God, who had brought her back like this.

This was a punishment, not a gift, she thought, in desolate sadness.

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Translated by Haeli

Edited by RED