The seam between the carriage and the horses came loose, and the coachman used his wits to barely climb on top of one of the horses, who was running straight ahead.

It was only a matter of moments before the carriage with Katya in it plunged off the cliff.

“Tia!”

Nikolai, who had been ahead of the pack due to the narrowness of the road, leapt off his horse and ran to the cliff.

She looked down the endless cliff, but the carriage had already disappeared into the darkness.

As the Grand Duke approached the edge of the cliff, as if to follow her, several knights rushed forward to stop him.

“Grand Duke, calm down!”

“You’re going to fall!”

“Let go of me, that’s an order! Tia……!”

Nikolai, who had lost his wife on their wedding day, was wailing with unbearable grief when he heard the sound of footsteps in the tunnel.

Everyone’s eyes were immediately drawn to the source of the sound.

A figure stepped out of the dark passageway.

“Your Highness!”

Nikolai spun around at the sound of the words, his despair spiraling downward.

Somehow, Katya hadn’t died, and she was alive and well in front of everyone.

The carriage that had fallen off the cliff was actually empty.

She was not alone.

She was with a man in ropes.

“Tia!”

Nikolai ran frantically to her and scooped her into his arms.

The man pushed against him was taken in by the knights.

“I thought you were……! How did you end up here…..!”

“Grand Duke…….”

“I’m sorry I yelled.”

The apology was soon out of his mouth as he gripped Katya’s arms tightly.

She was probably the most surprised right now.

Nikolai opened his mouth, trying to calm his trembling chest.

“Thank you…… for being alive.”

With a sigh, the exhausted Nikolai buried his face on her shoulder and whispered.

His deep voice was wet as if it had been rained on.

Boris and the rest of the knights had never seen the usually stoic Grand Duke lose his cool like this before.

What was going on?

Why did the Grand Duchess appear in a tunnel instead of a carriage?

“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you.”

Katya said, patting him on the back.

She was upset that this stupidly good husband of hers was apologizing to her when he should have been angry.

“Here’s how it happened…….”

It all started the day before the wedding.

While everyone was asleep, the coachman of the Grand Duke and Duchess of Smirnov, who was tasked with transporting the couple safely during their honeymoon, was diligently sweeping and polishing the carriage inside and out.

He had already cleaned it yesterday, but as he was trying to get some sleep, he remembered that he had left the job to someone else, so he came out again.

“As expected, it seems like they only cleaned the visible areas hastily. Anyway, young people these days are all tricks and no sincerity!”

The coachman grumbled, stealing a dry rag from the dust clinging to the underside of the wagon.

The gray-haired man had worked for the Duke of Smirnov for nearly forty years.

Naturally, he’s seen Pavtisky marry, and he’s seen the Smirnov sisters born and grow up.

Now in his sixties, his family suggested he retire, but he firmly believed he’s still fit and energetic.

Pavtisky knew he still wanted to work and assigned him short trips as long as his health allowed.

Originally, it was planned for his son to take charge of the arrangements for this honeymoon trip, but his son didn’t feel too enthusiastic about it. So he respectfully requested to accompany the duke on the journey.

The gruff coachman grumbled and cleaned, but he was actually thrilled.

He was happy to be a part of Princess Katarina’s big moment, someone he’d known since she was a little child, and to served the Grand Duke and his wife was the greatest honor of his life.

As he crawled out from under the carriage, humming to himself, he heard a very slight creaking sound coming from somewhere.

“Where did that come from?”

The coachman strained his ears and moved the carriage around.

As he searched for the source of the sound, he noticed that the left rear wheel was slightly lower than the others.

Upon closer inspection, he realized that the surrounding parts were fitted in a different way than the other three wheels.

The carriage had been ordered new by Duke Smirnov for his daughter and son-in-law, so the theory that it was worn out and only that part of the carriage had been repaired didn’t hold water.

“Someone must have tampered with it on purpose! How dare they play such tricks on our monarch? They deserve a thousand punishments!”

Knowing instinctively that this was not a normal occurrence, the coachman summoned Alyona to tell the Grand Duchess that he had something urgent to tell her.

Katya didn’t seem surprised by the report.

It was as if she had seen this coming.

She didn’t show it in front of Nikolai, but she was quite affected by the attempted assassination incident that occurred by the lake.

It was an arranged marriage, but she is now the consort of the monarch of this country.

She knew that this marriage wasn’t going to be all rainbows and flowers, even if Nikolai was passionately in love with her.

For a year, she would have to do her job as Grand Duchess.

“I’ll take care of this, so pretend you don’t know anything. And right now, I need you to call your son over here.”

“What? C-could my son involved in this?”

The coachman, who was a corpse except for his loyalty, asked pitifully, shivering.

Seeing him like that, Katya threw up her hands.

“No way! Could your son really do such a thing? I trust everyone working at our duke’s estate. It’s just just there’s something I need to tell him in advance. And it’s best if you don’t follow him on his journey.”

The words shocked the old man even more than his misunderstanding of his son’s involvement.

Katya soothed the disappointed coachman and sent him on his way, asking him to come with her when she went up to the capital instead.

Her plan was too risky for the old coachman, but he had no choice.

She surreptitiously called in a mechanic to check it out, and it turned out that the part had been tampered with very cleverly.

On the first ride, the wheels worked fine and no one could tell, but over long distances, especially up poorly groomed and rough mountain roads, the load was placed on the lower wheels, causing the parts to fall off naturally.

Instead of repairing the wagon or replacing it with another, Katya kept everything on schedule.

‘If they knew I’d seen through their plan, they’d try something else.’

It was best to solve the problem at hand so that there were no variables.

She was determined to use the situation to her advantage and catch the assassin.

The coachman’s son had told Katya that the carriage was going to crash.

So when the carriage came out of the tunnel, as she had arranged, she undid the seams connecting the carriage to the horses and jumped on their backs to escape his wrath.

“I figured that whoever had tampered with the carriage must have followed us to see what happened.”

As they made their way through the dark tunnel, everyone relying on small lanterns, Katya jumped out of the carriage without anyone noticing.

Fearing that her dress would get in the way, she changed into a pair of men’s hunting clothes that she had already prepared inside.

The clueless assassin stepped out of the tunnel and watched the carriage roll off the cliff.

That’s when Katya, hiding in the tunnel, yanked him from behind and stuffed his mouth with a handkerchief soaked in anesthetic.

In the mess of the accident, she wrapped him tightly in rope.

“In a pinch, I stuffed a sock in his mouth, so he won’t be able to kill himself like the last assassin.”

“Next time, you’ll talk to me before you do this.”

Nikolai said, pressing my forehead against her rounded one to see if she still wasn’t calming down.

“You’re just as guilty of not telling me as the Grand Duke.”

Katya gave me a resentful glare and pulled something out of her bosom.

It was a letter from an assassin’s body.

The content entrusted with an assassination request contained the seal of the Borodin family at the very bottom.

It was the ancestral home of Duchess Oksana, the wife of the late Duke.

How could they be so brazen as to send a letter with the coat of arms?

They made no attempt to hide the fact that they had ordered the assassination.

“Has the former Grand Duchess been targeting the Grand Duke, Your Highness, for a while?”

Nikolai wordlessly snatched the letter from her hand and burned it with a match.

The important evidence turned to ash and scattered in the wind.

“Grand Duke!”

“This is useless.”

Oksana was the concubine of the former Grand Duke, at least from Nikolai’s perspective, and she had a favorable reputation publicly.

She stood by Grand Duke Yuri’s side, replacing the wicked and treacherous Empress Tatiana, who had led the rebellion.

That’s what many of the people thought of Oksana.

“She’s not the only one out to get me. It’s not an exaggeration to say that most of the boyanin in the north are my enemies.”

Nikolai had the support of his officers and knights, but the majority of the boyanin sided with Oksana.

They made a big deal out of Nikolai’s alleged murder of his mentor, painting him as a tyrant.

Many people secretly believed that Oksana’s son Mihail would be crowned Grand Duke and the country would be restored to peace.

Nikolai was a bully to the good lords and great nobles in the eyes of the politically illiterate commoners, so if he accused his adoptive mother of being behind the assassination, the tables would turn in Oksana’s favor.

Oksana would put on a pitiful act and claim that someone had pulled the wool over their eyes, and she would win the sympathy of the people, including the boyanin.

“Poor old Grand Duchess, first, she sent her husband away and now she suffers under the tyrannical rule of her ambitious and cruel adopted son. You must be harboring such thoughts. That woman will find a way to sever her ties and escape, just as she has always done.”

Oksana knew full well that she couldn’t kill Nikolai with those ants.

Leaving the evidence behind was a warning.

A warning for the Grand Duke to step aside and abdicate the throne to his brother Mihail.

Katya gasped for a moment at the realization of an enemy greater than she had ever imagined.

Nikolai was a tyrant, walking on thin ice, threatened by the boyanins who opposed his policies and by his adoptive mother.