Epilogue
I SAT ON A ROCKING CHAIR IN THE MANOR, gazing outside. It had become an enjoyable routine for me recently. Outside, my great-grandchildren were desperately challenging themselves against the training facility. My children and grandchildren had also gone through this rite of passage.
The facility had deteriorated over time, but my kids renovated it and even added new equipment. According to them, the challenge is now a tradition of House Rosenberg. Personally, I didn’t plan for my children to undergo this training, but when they saw my squires’ kids taking on the facility, my kids wanted to join in. Fate was a funny and fickle mistress.
After Marius and I got married, my squires did as well. Richard tied the knot with Emma, Oscar married Isabel, and Lewis ended up with Alice. They were all perfect matches for each other, but they married less out of love and more from a sense of loyalty. They claimed that their children could serve my children. I didn’t find it necessary to force their kids to become squires too, but truthfully, I was happy I had their respect.
But that training facility really isn’t necessary for squires… I thought.
Perhaps thanks to that, though, our household achieved fame. Even neighboring nations heard of our family, and House Rosenberg became known for producing many great heroes of the age. To this day, we lent our support to the kingdom or worked behind the scenes as the true leaders, wielding our influence. However, our path to prosperity had been anything but smooth.
Shortly after my marriage, my father was killed. The cause was resentment. While I was blissfully unaware, it seemed that my father had used rather forceful methods to bolster his privileges and protect his interests. He always had a gentle smile plastered on his face, but all the while, he was plotting cunning schemes and conspiracies. He employed corrupt tactics to ensnare his foes. At first, I couldn’t believe it, but as I did more research, I began to find proof that supported these claims. My father’s evil side was brought to light.
I thought that my father had employed oddly skilled squires by his side, but perhaps it was to prevent his own assassination. Ironically, one of the squires he had hired for defense was related to a person who was destroyed by my father. And so, he met his tragic demise. With him now out of the picture, the nobles who despised House Rosenberg rallied together. Our household was on the brink of destruction. I had only just taken over my house and wielded no political power.
I considered the use of brute force to silence them all, but thanks to the support from Queen Eleanor, the noble children I had befriended during my academy days, and above all, my squires, I managed to peacefully end the entire ordeal. Had it not been for any of them, I would have had to launch a coup d’état.
Simply put, even if I hadn’t been executed in my previous life, I would’ve been destroyed in the future another way. I could only thank Marius, my husband, for providing me with a second chance at life. Though, truth be told, I was rather confident that my coup d’état would have been successful.
After my father died, my mother apologized for her behavior. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. It seemed my father had forced her into marriage, and because of that, the two didn’t get along. Furthermore, she was strictly prohibited from getting close to me. Ever since the confession, my mother transformed into a totally different person—she was more cheerful and energetic and became close to Marius and me. Because she hadn’t been allowed to rear her own child, she actively helped raise her grandkids—my children.
It was an odd feeling to see my mom shower my kids with the affection that I had never received. However, when I learned that she’d truly loved me all along, the scar in my heart that I had from my previous life began to heal. Right before my mother passed away, she told me her deepest secret.
“You’re not your father’s child,” she said.
I’d had an inkling of the truth for a while. I didn’t resemble my father one bit and had very little magical aptitude—unbefitting for a member of House Rosenberg. Although I was feared as a demon or a devil, I’d acquired my mana through the rigorous training that I had done ever since I was a toddler. It seemed like Marius also suspected that I shared no biological ties with my father. According to his theory, if I’d been related to the duke, I would never have received the death penalty.
“It doesn’t change anything for me,” Marius said. “You’re still you.”
His tone was gentle as he spoke to me.
“And unlike your previous timeline, there isn’t anyone around you who was attracted solely to your rank, is there?” he continued.
While I did have suspicions of my own, I had always been proud of my noble blood. It came as a shock to learn that the duke’s blood didn’t flow within me. But Marius’s kind words swept my negative emotions away. My father had killed my biological father. Frankly, I still struggled to process the truth. At the very least, my father had been very kind to me. But I knew that his kindness ruined me as a person in my previous life.
However, every year, on the anniversary of his death, I placed white flowers on his grave.
I led a long and eventful life. Combined with the previous one, I had lived over a century. In recent years, I had become more forgetful. My memories were muddled, and I would regularly end up mixing up facts of my previous life with my current one. I often reminisced about the past.
When was it again?
For the first time, my squires posed a request. They wanted me to name their dogs.
Wait, dogs? Did my squires take care of dogs? Or are these memories from my previous life? But Richard and the others weren’t my squires in my previous life… Well, whatever. It’s not a big deal anymore.
All I knew for sure was that I’d hated dogs back then and gave them random names at the time.
“Richard, your big pup will be Alpha,” I said. “Oscar, your black puppy will be Beta. Lewis’s brown pup is Gamma, and Isabel’s white one is Delta. Emma’s gray pup is Epsilon, and Alice’s red puppy is Zeta. That’s that.”
My squires shifted uneasily when they heard the names that I had given. I couldn’t blame them since I just listed letters of an old alphabet starting from the top. Plus, the names were in the order of how I obtained my squires. I hated dogs and refused to use any brainpower to think of the perfect names for them. The one positive was that these names were easy to memorize, and everyone learned them in a flash.
Yes, I should’ve remembered them all. They were Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta. Why did I forget them until now? How could I forget them after they put me through such awful experiences? How could I forget them after they pounced on me and were so close with me? For my sake, those dogs…
I’m feeling sleepy. I can hear the nostalgic barking of those dogs in the distance. Good grief, what will I do with you all? There’s no arguing with you. Whenever I returned home, you guys came rushing toward me to welcome me back, despite me explicitly hating you all.
You dogs are so troublesome. Really, you are…