Chapter 2

It all began when I regained my memories.

“You useless thing!”

My body was shoved aside amid a harsh shout. Cold soup and bread lay spilled across the floor.

A pair of fierce eyes glared down at me.

“Why, why aren’t you crying?! You have to cry so you can pay off my debts! Damn it. You little wretch. How can you not shed a single tear even after I starve you for days?!”

“……”

“Hurry up and cough up my jewels! You ungrateful brat!”

And then there were those cruel words.

“Clean up everything you spilled on the floor before I come back! If there’s even a single stain left…”

BANG!

The man who had shouted at me as he pleased slammed the door behind him and left.

Just like back then.

I suddenly came to my senses and hurried over to the corner of the room. I rummaged through the miscellaneous junk I had carefully collected until I finally found a mirror.

When I looked into it—

Messy pink hair.

Blue eyes.

Cheeks so plump they looked ready to burst…

There was no mistaking it.

I was a little kid!

But I had definitely died by being burned at the stake.

“H-How is this possible?”

The Brocia Empire was a nation devoted to the gods.

And I, an illegitimate child of the prestigious Count Amelot family, possessed a special ability.

The ability to produce jewels.

When other people cried, their tears simply dried up.

But I was different.

The tears I shed immediately turned into jewels, and the type of jewel changed depending on the emotion I felt.

If I cried from anger, they became rubies.

If I cried from sadness, sapphires.

If I cried from pain, emeralds.

And finally—

“If I cry from happiness, they become diamonds.”

In my entire life, I had only ever produced diamonds once.

It happened when my father, Count Amelot, gave me a birthday present.

Of course, it wasn’t intentional.

He had simply given me a teddy bear that my half-sister had thrown away because she thought it was ugly.

It just happened to be my birthday that day.

Still, it was the first present I’d ever received from the Count.

I was so happy that I burst into tears.

And unfortunately, the Count happened to see them.

The tears that had transformed into diamonds.

The moment the Count saw them, his eyes practically bulged out of his head.

“Cry more. More, I said. Hmm? Our family survives because you cry. His Majesty the Emperor loves your diamonds. We need to give him more. More.”

“We need to have a dress made for Emily, but we’re a little short on money.”

“I’m thinking of starting a new business, you see. I’m just a little short on capital.”

And so, I began to be exploited for their selfish desires.

“So hurry up and give us some jewels.”

Under the name of family, they forced me to make sacrifices and thoroughly exploited me.

Even when I wanted to refuse, I couldn’t.

Because whenever I produced jewels, they praised me.

I loved that pitiful excuse for affection so, so much.

It made me feel as though I really was part of a family.

There was nothing sweeter than hearing them tell me I had done well.

Looking back now, it was all meaningless.

“When I stopped crying, they completely changed.”

It happened on my tenth birthday.

Just like magic, my tears stopped.

I didn’t know why.

No matter what anyone did, I couldn’t cry.

My tear ducts dried up, and my emotions gradually began to die.

Jewels?

Of course, none came out.

Perhaps that was why my family slowly went mad.

They began tormenting me, cursing me for no longer producing the jewels they needed to present to the Emperor.

And then, when I finally couldn’t take it anymore and ran away—

“Demon! That girl has joined hands with a demon…!”

They framed me.

Then, in order to conceal their own evil deeds,

they got rid of me.

“…I can’t forgive them.”

Whenever I thought about that time, my teeth still ground together in anger.

“Baby, what are you doing?”

While I was lost deep in thought, Veronica wrapped her arms around me from behind.

I pointed toward the sheet of paper covered in little marks made with colored pencils.

“I’m counting the days.”

It had already been a month since I entered this prison.

Quite a lot of time had passed.

“Oh my. What a clever little thing. When did our baby say she was getting out?”

“In three months.”

“As expected, you’re getting out early. Is it because you’re a child?”

Veronica poked my chubby cheeks.

“What are you going to do once you get out? I still have another six months.”

“Bloody revenge.”

I clenched the colored pencil in my hand.

“I’m going to pay back everything they did to me. I’ll make them completely fall from grace.”

And then—

“I’ll crush them all under my feet.”

As long as it meant getting revenge, I was willing to join hands with anyone.

Even if that person was the most dangerous existence in Brocia—

a dragon.

“I have to recruit him.”

I was still young and weak.

On top of that, the Count Amelot family was an extremely prestigious household, especially in the capital.

If they discovered that I had escaped, they would undoubtedly come looking for me or try to harm me.

I needed someone powerful enough to protect me from that danger.

That was why—

“I’m going to live diligently from now on.”

“……”

“I’ll never live like that again.”

If I got caught like this, I’d be hurt all over again.

Hmph.

As if I’d obediently let that happen.

I pursed my lips and adjusted my grip on the colored pencil.

If I wanted to survive, I had to completely bring the Count’s family crashing down…

“Eek!”

“My Karin.”

Veronica suddenly hugged me tightly.

“Why don’t we really get out together? Do you want to live with your big sister?”

Ugh.

Not this again.

“You said you’re not getting out for another six months.”

“Then I’ll escape.”

Veronica casually dropped that outrageous statement and grinned.

“Don’t you trust your big sister?”

“I dooo. But I trust the prison guards, too.”

“This big sister is more capable and cooler than the prison guards, baby.”

With that, Veronica rubbed her face against my cheek.

We had already been together for a month.

Having given up trying to resist, I simply let her do whatever she wanted.

“I never thought we’d become this close.”

At first, I had been extremely wary of her…

But when I first arrived here and the other prisoners tried to attack me, she was the one who stepped in to protect me.

When I pushed her away because I didn’t want her around, or when I became sick and bedridden, she was the one who stayed by my side.

She was the first person in my life who had ever taken care of me like this.

Of course, I didn’t know why she cared about me so much.

Still, out of all the adults I had met so far, she was the kindest.

“Hmm?”

At that moment, I happened to look into Veronica’s eyes and my lips parted.

“Just now…”

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.”

“Did I imagine it?”

For just a brief moment, her eyes…

“They weren’t blue.”

They seemed to have turned—

golden.

But the question only lingered for a moment.

I shook my head.

“That’s not what’s important.”

Right now, I needed to think about one thing.

How to get my revenge.

That was all I needed to think about.

“Hmmm…”

It was a sunny afternoon.

After thoroughly enjoying my lunch, I recalled the carefully constructed plan I had made.

1. Recruit the Duke and make him my guardian.

2. Go straight to my aunt once I leave prison.

3. Dig up every secret of the Count’s family and find their weaknesses.

4. Take revenge on the Imperial Family that greedily took my tears.

The first thing I needed to do was obviously number one.

“Rodrigo Vancadium.”

It had been about three years since he was imprisoned in Izetail.

His crime was regicide.

He was currently serving a life sentence for attempting to assassinate the Crown Prince.

“If it had been anyone else, they would’ve been executed long ago.”

But behind Rodrigo stood the Vancadium family.

A powerful family that appeared regularly in the history books, and one of the three greatest noble houses in the Empire.

Descendants who inherited the blood of the dragons from the founding legends.

They were the Vancadiums.

Other nobles formed alliances with one another and waged wars, but the Vancadiums had stood proudly on their own for a thousand years.

It was the one place where human laws did not apply.

Even the Imperial Family couldn’t easily suppress them.

And Rodrigo was the current head of that family.

He couldn’t avoid imprisonment, but merely escaping the death penalty was already an enormous privilege.

But killing the Crown Prince…

…was something else entirely.