The Ugly Wife of the Shady Duke - Chapter 86
“Ugh.”
The black mist writhed towards Grace. She started to stumble backward but steadied herself and reached out slowly.
‘It feels so wrong.’
Thankfully, she couldn’t feel it physically, but as soon as the black mist touched her, she began to feel increasingly gloomy and her head started to weigh heavy.
Her brain felt waterlogged, a sensation Grace knew all too well.
‘It’s just like when I first entered this body.’
Voices echoed in her head.
<Why not give up? You’re going to fail anyway. Why even try?>
<Right, you, who can’t even make a firm decision, what makes you think you can handle this?>
“……Argh.”
Grace clenched her teeth. She wanted to let go and flee right then. A torrent of anxious, frightening, and negative thoughts invaded her mind.
‘I can’t let this get to me.’
She was often swayed by gloomy thoughts. But upon realizing the cause of this gloom, she saw no reason to remain under its influence.
‘Whether I’ll fail or not, I can only know if I try.’
Instead of succumbing to the sadness, Grace summoned thoughts of the things she loved. The labels on the flowers in the garden written by Benjamin, the aroma of the newly introduced coffee, the laughter of children, all the things she had started doing on her own.
“……!”
Then, a faint turquoise light flowed from her, engulfing and scattering the black mist.
“What is this…?”
As the mist dissipated, memories she didn’t even know she had forgotten began to surface.
It was a lost memory.
“What are you hiding behind your back?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Really?”
“……”
“Are you sure it’s nothing?”
“……I wasn’t sure if you’d like it.”
⋆★⋆
Benjamin hesitated, his hands clasped behind his back, unable to show what he was hiding to Grace.
Yet, Benjamin continued to linger around Grace without leaving her side. As she inspected the annex, she tilted her head, scrutinizing him.
“Are you going to keep it hidden forever?”
“Well, not exactly…”
He hesitated, his face scrunching up with uncertainty, brows furrowed like a puppy gauging its owner’s mood.
“You won’t be disappointed?”
“I won’t be disappointed.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Are you sure, My Lady? Truly?”
As Benjamin repeatedly pressed for assurance, Grace narrowed her eyes playfully and turned her head away.
“Well, I’ll try not to be.”
“My-My Lady…”
At Grace’s teasing reply, Benjamin began to sweat nervously. The servants standing at a distance giggled quietly to themselves.
The only person who could ever make the young duke feel this awkward was his wife, Grace Felton.
Averting his eyes and still gauging her reaction, Benjamin finally extended the hand he had been hiding.
“What’s this…?”
He turned his gaze away, seemingly embarrassed by what he held. Grace gently plucked the sparkling ring from his hand.
“It’s tacky, isn’t it? It seemed pretty when I bought it, but now…”
Under the lights of the festival, it had seemed nothing could be more radiant. Festivals have a way of lifting spirits, don’t they?
And they can also cloud one’s judgment. Perhaps Benjamin wasn’t so perfect after all, having been charmed by the red hue of a cheap and somewhat tacky ring.
Grace held the ring up to the light, the glass jewel shifting between crimson and gold.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Oh no, not at all. Such a thing can’t compare to you, My Lady…”
Benjamin started to say something but then pressed his lips together, deciding against it.
Grace tried the ring on, and it fit snugly on her pinky finger.
“It fits perfectly here. So, what were you about to say?”
“Umm…”
Grace, with the unsophisticated ring unfit for a duchess now adorning her finger, drew a gentle curve at the corner of her lips. Benjamin let out a short groan.
A flush of red spread from his ears to the tips of his cheeks.
“…This ring, it can’t possibly compare to you, my lady…”
⋆★⋆
Blink.
Grace, who no longer saw black mist emanating from the bed, blinked and slumped down in her spot.
She was drenched in cold sweat and shivering. It seemed she had exhausted some mysterious energy driving away the mist.
‘Unknown… but this power feels similar to something else.’
It was similar to Aria’s divine power. The temple priests had their own divine power, but it was nothing compared to that of a saintess.
‘The priests’ power didn’t shine, but Aria’s did.’
From Aria, a golden light had burst forth.
‘The color I just saw wasn’t that.’
But it was a color very familiar to her. Grace, still dazed, no longer feeling the ill-omened presence, looked at the bed and then pushed herself up from the floor with trembling arms.
She slowly approached the mirror across the room. There she was, soaked in sweat, meeting her own gaze.
‘It’s similar to the color of my eyes.’
The iridescence of that light closely resembled the color of Grace’s eyes.
Grace rolled her eyes, shifting her gaze elsewhere. It was the place where she had seen the ring in her recently returned memory.
The ring still sat in the jewelry box, tucked away in a hidden corner.
When Grace first saw it, she had wondered why such a ring was there, why it made her feel so claustrophobic, but now she realized.
‘It’s a forgotten memory.’
She had inherited all the memories of this body, but whether due to the prolonged sadness or the curse Aria mentioned, some parts weren’t clear.
Especially, there was a distinct gap of one year.
As the curse was repelled, and the specific memory surfaced first, flooding her with a sense of fullness, it seemed the original Grace, who was the original duchess, had treasured that moment quite dearly.
‘And that event definitely took place during that one year.’
Grace formulated one ‘what if’ hypothesis in her mind.
“……Can I, like Aria the Saintess, wield a similar divine power?”
It was possible that when Aria’s pendulum broke, she absorbed its divine power. But absorbing divine power didn’t necessarily mean one could use it.
She had never come across any tool that could absorb divine power, not even in the novel. Even if she didn’t remember every detail of the book, something like that would have stood out the moment she saw it.
‘Even if it were absorbed, using it to this extent shouldn’t be possible.’
If anyone could absorb and use divine power, then professions that applied divine power, like magicians crafting magical tools with their magic, would emerge and the world’s structure would have shifted somewhat.
‘So, is this because I’m the possessor?’
In some romance fantasy novels, when characters regress, possess, or reincarnate into a world with a concept of saintess, even if they weren’t originally the saintess, they gain the ability to wield divine power.
If anything, Grace considered her current self to be in a similar position to those characters.
‘Though I’m… nothing like the image of a saintess…’
She looked down at the twinkling glass bead-like ring and let out a chuckle. It was a self-deprecating laugh, but not as heavy with a burdened breath as before.
Just like in her memory, she slipped the ring onto her pinky finger, and it stopped midway.
It was a bit too small now due to Grace gaining weight since that year.
‘It’s a relief I’m slimmer than before.’
The old Grace might have fixated on the fact that the ring didn’t fit entirely and berated herself, but today, she managed a more positive outlook.
Grace flexed her hand, feeling the strange sensation within. The source of light that had expelled the black mist earlier still seemed to be present inside her.
‘But it feels like too much to use it continuously.’
Though it was her first time, she somehow knew. She instinctively knew how to use and breathe through this power as if it had always been a part of hers.
Looking around, she took solace in the fact that she had at least managed to banish the mist from the bed, reducing the unpleasant energy in the bedroom.
Initially, she had considered asking for a room in the main building, but she dismissed the idea as a bad move.
‘The likelihood that someone inside filled the mansion with these items is high. If not, there’s a chance they could leak information to the outside.’
But what if Grace moved to the main building?
They might notice her changes, or even if they didn’t, they could potentially move these malevolent items along with her.
‘I’d better recover this power somehow and fend them off one by one.’
It seemed worth the effort.
Each time she dispersed the mist, Grace recalled a piece of memory. It seemed she had lived shrouded in this fog, forgetting many things.
And as she did, the thick blanket of severe depression that someone had built around her lightened.
Grace tenderly touched the ring now on her pinky finger.
‘It was indeed strange.’
The Grace from the memories, contrary to the world’s view of her as always being gloomy and timid, treated Benjamin with a familiar warmth. So, when the current Grace initially kept her distance from Benjamin, it would have been natural for everyone to find it strange, yet no one did.
‘And the fact that it wasn’t me who banned Benjamin from the annex, but the original her…’
Was she really the same woman who spoke so familiarly to him in those memories? Grace furrowed her brow in thought.
