Chapter 3: Her Ugliness

Black spots spread across Ailea’s skin. The remaining white of her normal skin color were but speckles of dots scarring her body. The color – a charred black – looked nothing like the skin color of a healthy living human being.

Embarrassed, Ailea hastily said, “I apologize for my appearance. However, if the groom sees the bride in her wedding dress before the day of the ceremony…”

Looking at her current state of appearance, it made it less difficult for Lawrence to mutter the words he prepared days ago.

“Rita won’t see me till I settle things with you.”

“…I’m sorry?”

Lawrence must’ve been referrring to the noblewoman that is Rita Brea, the daughter of Marquis Alex Brea. The House of Brea was a well-known family name that even the socially ostracized Ailea knew of its name.

“It’s why I came to visit you. I’ve no intention of marrying you, Ailea Elgar Ilyanna.”

Ailea lost her hearing as she zoned out momentarily, but when she came back to, she was met with cold, piercing eyes staring at her.

“I’ve heard that if people obsess over something before their death, they’d turn to ghosts and haunt you. You kept bothering me over and over about that ugly dress, so I sent you one. I guess you took a liking to it,” Lawrence spoke calmly.

Ailea paled at his words and she let go of the blanket she gripped tightly.

…So… it was like that…

She’d been dreaming a hopeless dream, a false illusion.

‘I dolled myself up so you would love me… so I’d not be lonely… so I can escape this world of cold darkness…’

As those pervading thoughts drowned her mind, she tightened her corset till she could not breathe and applied as much makeup as she could to the point that no one could recognize her. Her face was stark white in comparison to the rest of her black, speckled body. It was as if she’d put on a mask.

Though it proved challenging for her, she was finally able to don the wedding dress her prince charming gifted her. Towards the girl like her whose skin was blackened with dark spots, the white dress was awfully horrid in comparison to her black skin. It only further emphasized her ugliness.

The crown prince was six years older than the thirteen-year-old girl he was engaged at the time they met. He had no interest in underaged girls and went around fooling with women his age.

But when she grew of age, when she became the face of beauty, and when she suddenly caught the crown prince’s eyes and affection, she was struck with a mysterious disease and thus cast out of the Imperial Palace.

Ailea hung on to that brief show of affection he once showed her. He was the only man she’d ever known and the only once she’d come across romantically.

When they first met all those years ago, he looked at her mockingly and with derisive laugh, but to her, Lawrence was her first life.

She would marry him.

That false dream of marrying him since ages ago never changed… from when she was thirteen years of age at the time to when he gifted her the white wedding dress at the age of twenty.

Though their engagement was arranged by the emperor, when she donned the white dress, she thought she’d finally escape the cold, dark world she lived in and become his wife.

A hypnotized expression crossed her face and Ailea walked towards Lawrence.

He did not wish to be near her presence.

He took a step back.