Prologue
“That man… they say he eats people. A cannibal.”
“A savage. Uncivilized.”
The voices of people gossiping about him lingered in my ears, riding the wind before fading away.
I looked up at the man standing in front of me.
His massive shadow, cast against the sun behind him, completely engulfed mine.
A biting wind slashed past me, so harsh it was hard to even remain standing. My shoulders instinctively hunched.
“Drink it.”
He thrust a bowl toward me, as if urging me to hurry up and take it.
His forehead, which I stared at blankly, was beaded with sweat mixed with droplets of blood.
His face, hands, and clothes were all soaked in blood.
Come to think of it, even in this freezing snowstorm, he was lightly dressed and sweating.
Doesn’t he feel cold?
Even though I had layered myself in thermal underclothes and bundled up in thick furs to block out the wind, I was still trembling. I felt pathetically weak in comparison.
Sniffling, I looked down at the bowl he offered.
“Before it gets cold. Quickly.”
His blood-soaked hands. The thoroughly wet bowl.
I didn’t want to, but I pulled off my fur gloves and accepted the bowl.
“Ah…”
The strange sensation that met my hands made my entire body shiver, and I couldn’t help but let out a soft moan.
A slick and oddly sticky liquid flowed over my fingers, dripping onto the snow-covered ground.
Red droplets stained the pure white earth like scattered flower petals.
Steam still rose from the unpleasant liquid that filled the bowl.
I glanced toward the altar standing behind him on the icy ground.
There lay a sacrifice. Something once white as snow, now completely wrapped in a blood-drenched cloth.
What could be under that cloth?
I was curious, but I didn’t want to think about it.
“You have to drink it before it cools. That’s the only way it’ll work.”
The head maid urged me from behind, impatient.
Still holding the bowl, I looked around. Everyone was watching me.
Some wore amused smiles. Others smirked with contempt.
“She won’t drink it.”
“The pampered princess from the South? Yeah, right.”
“She’ll probably end up begging to go back to the Imperial Palace, crying her eyes out.”
“What’s a weak Southerner like her gonna do here if she can’t even handle that?”
I stared down at the bowl.
I have to drink it.
They didn’t know.
That I was never some delicate flower raised in a greenhouse in the warm South.
I was a weed from the imperial palace—trampled over again and again until I was finally ripped out.
Now, I would take this blood as nourishment and stubbornly root myself in this barren land.
I would bloom as a poisonous plant.
One laced with deadly toxins, ready to devour the world.
Eyes wide open, I brought the bowl to my lips. I wanted to face this moment head-on, not run from it.
The foul stench, the thick, revolting sensation as it rolled over my tongue, and the raw, iron taste I had never experienced before all made me gag.
But in the end, I drank every drop.
If I was going to be broken by something like this, I would’ve never married this man in the first place.
I wiped the blood dripping down the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand.
Clenching my teeth so I wouldn’t throw it all back up, I stared fiercely up at the man.
“Well done,” he said, smiling down at me.
“Wow…”
It began with a murmur of awe.
“Woooah!”
“Waaaah!”
Cheers erupted around me.
I raised the now-empty bowl high for all to see.
“Long live the Marchioness!”
Voices praising me echoed across the snowy plains.
I would take root in this place.
And I would have my revenge.
On those I had loved so deeply—those who had utterly destroyed me.
