The Triumph Feast of Betrayal
Attilenta, I love you.
No one in this world could ever love you more than I do.
"Attilenta. It's time to end this marriage."
My heart shattered the moment my husband Antoni—the man I had believed was mine—appeared on another woman's arm.
Of all places, it had to be the victory banquet. The very celebration he had sworn would proclaim my achievements to the world.
I had never once broken down. Not when my mother fell ill and died in my childhood. Not when even the servants sneered at me as a bastard born of low birth. Not when the King tried to sell me off—his own "chaste princess"—to an elderly nobleman.
Not even when Antoni asked for my hand before that same King, and I endured an unfamiliar wedding ceremony and an unfamiliar wedding night. Not even when he dragged me onto the battlefield, insisting he needed my power.
"Succession to the family line comes before everything else."
Antoni said it in a voice stripped of all warmth. It was a side of him I had never seen before.
"What—what do you mean, all of a sudden—"
My legs buckled without warning, and I could barely stay standing. Even back when our periodic attempts to conceive bore no fruit and the whispers spread everywhere that I was a Barren Woman, I had not crumbled. But now—
"Attilenta. You'll understand, won't you? This time as well."
Selena smiled at me sweetly, pressed close against Antoni's side.
In that instant, everything I had lived came apart into pieces.
Selena. She had been my pillar. After my mother died, I still had Gemma the wet nurse and her daughter Selena. When I finally achieved victory in the war, Antoni told me it was all thanks to me. I never doubted that it was they who kept my spirit steady. It had all been a delusion.
"Hmm? Attilenta. Answer me. The King commanded it—I had no right to refuse."
What are you saying, Selena?
"Don't worry. I'll see to the succession of the dukedom just fine."
Weren't you the one who said, at the very beginning, that the Duke made you uncomfortable?
"Attilenta. Honestly, your power is far too dangerous."
Selena whispered to me in that honeyed, cloying voice of hers.
Ah, Selena—my only friend.
"There were times when you said it was needed..."
I forced the words out through cracked lips. I had used my power far beyond what my body could bear, knowing full well the toll it would take—purely for my husband's sake.
Yet even as I stared at him with hollow eyes, his expression remained unmoved, cold as stone.
It felt as though someone had struck me across the head; my ears rang and went numb.
"An-Antoni. You said... you said you needed me..."
When I begged like a child grasping at straws, Selena hid her mouth behind her fan and cast me a look I couldn't quite name.
"Oh my."
I understood that look at once.
Attilenta, what did you imagine? Of course it only ever meant your power was useful.
"I intend to bring a petition before His Majesty. Together with the Duke."
Antoni took Selena by the waist and drew her into his arms. She buried her chestnut-brown hair against his broad chest.
"Go back to your rightful place, Attilenta."
The two of them standing together—his clear blue eyes, as clean as spring water, beside her gentle gaze—looked like a painting. I could feel every gaze in the banquet hall turning toward me.
To all of them, I was nothing more than a lowborn woman obstructing this perfectly matched couple.
Even though my place had always been between them.
"Se-Selena..."
Seeing the two of them pressed so close together right in front of me made it all the more real.
"That's enough, Attilenta. Have some dignity. People are watching."
A woman whose blood and bearing were unworthy of Duke Antoni—that was what I was to them.
"Hah, hah..."
I gasped for breath, clutching desperately at my chest.
"I won't deny that you aided my house. But as Selena says, I can hardly dispute that your power may become a threat."
How can you call it your house? When have I ever, even once, threatened you?
"Now, Attilenta. Go back to your room. I'll come visit you from time to time. Just like when we were children."
Selena pushed my shoulder away with a tender smile. My vision was blurring now, tears rising whether I willed them or not—and through that haze, I saw several royal guards approaching me.
They dragged me away without a flicker of hesitation. The people around them pretended not to know me.
I could not even scream.
And so I was locked away once more in the prison of my childhood—the room where I had spent my days as a princess.
It was a forgotten corner of the royal palace, an old room with only a single window.
All the years I had struggled to escape this room came crumbling down into nothing.
Nothing inside had changed. Even the bed where my mother had wasted away from illness lay just as worn and ancient as it had been then.
Tears spilled down my cheeks without warning. I couldn't even bring myself to wipe them away; I only sat there, mumbling to myself.
"...Did I get something wrong?"
They told me, plainly, that the victory banquet was for me. For us.
'Attilenta, your power is truly wondrous—so precious, so rare. Let's keep it between the two of us for now. You understand what I'm saying, don't you?'
Selena, who had worried for me and respected me from the moment she learned of my power. Antoni, who prized my gift so highly.
'Thanks to you, we won the war. So now it must be proclaimed before everyone, doesn't it? I look forward to that day, my lady.'
I turned their words over and over in my mind, weighed them a hundred ways, and still found no answer. Only one image remained: Antoni, solid and powerful, and Selena, the very model of a society beauty, clinging to each other in a beautiful pair.
All I possessed was the red hair that proved me the illegitimate child of this country's King—the hair everyone had been so quick to whisper was the mark of a witch.
And then, in that moment, I saw her: my mother, lying on that bed like a dried fallen leaf.
"Mo-Mother..."
My mother, with her vivid crimson hair like the evening sky, had been the King's mistress. And they said a single night together was all it took for me to come into being.
For a woman carrying the King's child to flee the palace was impossible. And the King never properly provided for us.
My mother died of a fever that a single dose of medicine could have cured—and that King never once sent it.
'A-Attilenta... I can't... I can't breathe...'
Now the hallucination was painting my mother for me, gasping in the grip of a burning fever.
I couldn't bear to face her lingering shadow. I turned away from the bed and made my way to the window.
The glass was hazy with gathered dust, but the brilliance outside blazed through it, vivid and merciless.
Tonight's victory banquet was a grand affair, destined to continue until dawn.
Light glittering in a hundred jeweled colors, the scent of wine drifting all the way to this isolated corner, the sound of majestic music.
But in truth, none of it ever reached this place.
A room without color, without scent. This was the 'rightful' place Selena had spoken of.
I sank slowly to the floor.
'What did you imagine, Attilenta? Have you forgotten what your mother told you—never to trust others too easily?'
Someone whispered to me.
My gasping mother. The cold Duke. The gentle Selena.
Yes. I had forgotten. Fool that I was.
"Ah, aah... So all of them deceived me—everything, for this one day."
I had understood the truth far, far too late.
As a child, I could not comprehend the King who turned his back on us, nor my mother, who had spent a night with a man like him.
Now, at last, I understood her completely. Because my circumstances had become her own.
Like my shattered heart, even my words fell apart as they spilled from my lips.
"...Mother, how could you have been... so very foolish."
My mother had been rumored to be a strange witch from a foreign land. I wondered how the King had ever come to meet her.
She told me so many stories, but she always avoided speaking of the King in detail—right up until the moment she died.
"How could you spend a night with a man like that..."
When I squeezed my burning eyes shut, my mother's voice echoed in my ears.
'Attilenta, do you know why they call me a witch? Above all, it's because my power does not align with the temple magic this royal family worships.'
With hands so parched and skeletal they seemed they might snap at any moment, my mother had gripped me tight.
'So, my child, never let your secret be discovered. Now, take this keepsake of mine...'
'Please, don't... don't call it a keepsake... *sob*...'
I wept and wept, unable to take any action at all.
'...The moment someone learns your true worth, they will try to exploit it. Never trust such a person easily.'
'Then what about Gemma, my nurse? What about Selena, my friend? They worried for you, Mother...'
Ah, Attilenta, you fool.
'If someone shows you kindness, you must return it in kind. But tell me, Attilenta—are you prepared to return malice for malice?'
'I...'
Only now do I think I understand the meaning behind the faint smile my mother wore in that moment.
She had failed at it herself—so she left her daughter a piece of advice meant to be carved into bone.
—
A Contract Marriage for Attilenta's Revenge
A long novel by Seo Huiji
Author: Seo Huiji
Publisher: Kwon Tae-wan, Woo Chun-je
E-book publication date: 2026-08-10
Price per episode: 100 won (Episodes 1–5 available free of charge)
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