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Chapter 07
With his final words, Kalix’s gaze slowly shifted to Odellia.
His eyes were deep and cool, as if piercing straight through her heart. They seemed both certain and yet somehow testing—an unreadable look.
Odellia’s breath caught in her throat.
She couldn’t tell whether his words were merely about finding a missing person, or whether he already knew the truth and was throwing out a hint. The air in the room silently spread an inexplicable tension between the two of them.
Her palms began to sweat. Her lips went dry, and cold sweat trickled down her spine.
“……Why are you telling me this?”
Her forced voice trembled.
Kalix gazed deeply at Odellia, then placed a heavy stack of documents on the table. They were records detailing the House of Rubis, their land, and what they had tried to protect until the very end.
“The Duchess told you to look into the House of Rubis, didn’t she?”
The corner of his mouth curved ever so slightly.
“With this, you should be able to find out enough.”
Odellia’s eyes widened.
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because from now on, you’re going to be very busy. I should help where I can.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m saying I’ve chosen you, the Golden Lion Hero, as my new faction.”
“You mean…… you want me to become your person?”
Kalix smiled faintly.
“Now that I’ve chosen you, you are my person.”
—
***
It was a day when rain fell in torrents. So fierce and thick were the drops that it felt like arrows filling the sky were piercing her entire body.
What she remembered from that day was only extreme hunger, extreme cold, and extreme rage.
The night she had picked up rags someone had discarded, wrapped them around herself, and snuck into a pigsty to escape the rain.
“Who’s there?”
“……Please…… save me……”
“……”
“Please…… save me……”
Young Odellia thus became the daughter of a butcher.
She was lucky. The fact that the place she had desperately crawled into that day happened to be a village of butchers was no different from giving her a second chance at life.
People of the lowest caste—those with no name, no family, who had suffered harsh glares and contempt—all eventually drifted there, they said. Odellia was no different, so perhaps it was fate.
—
*’From now on, you are no longer my child. Go. Run as fast and as hard as you can—until your shoes tear and your toenails crack. You must. Forget everything about your life here. Do you understand? You are a child who no longer exists!’*
*’Never look back! That’s the only way you can survive!’*
—
So she ran. She ran until she could run no more. She ran like mad, ran and ran until her breath came to her throat, until her legs gave out and she collapsed into the mud—but she got right back up and ran again.
The shouts of people behind her, the baying of unleashed hounds…… If she stopped, she would die.
The sky was overcast, and between the clouds came a tearing, splitting sound, as if the heavens themselves were cracking. The memory of that day—running through darkness so thick she couldn’t see ahead, with thunder and lightning crashing down—remained her nightmare.
“Hah!”
Even though she had abandoned everything to keep the past from tripping her up, still—
Even though over sixteen years had passed, still—
Odellia woke from her nightmare, gasping for breath. Her entire body was drenched in cold sweat.
Her body felt heavy, her clothes damp, her mood filthy.
As she caught her breath and looked around, the documents she had spread out on the table the night before lay there just as she’d left them.
The previous night, Odellia hadn’t been able to put those papers down until she went to bed.
Not so much because of the fallen House of Rubis itself, but because it was the first time she had truly learned the process by which they had been destroyed.
The documents were filled with cold, dry records. The words cut into her heart like a chilling blade.
The one who had accused the House of Rubis of treason was none other than Duke Devon, the father of the current Empress Fabbiana. And the one who had turned a blind eye to that accusation was the Emperor of the time—the biological father of Kalix and Liam.
Amid political deals and power struggles, the House of Rubis had been singled out as a scapegoat, and not a single person had stepped forward to prove their innocence.
According to these documents, both the rebellion of House Rubis and its fall had all been the result of a conspiracy.
Neither the loyalty of the Rubis family nor the prosperity of Talamand had been considered. To the powers in the imperial palace, they had been nothing more than convenient shackles to remove, convenient pieces to eliminate.
On the morning of what felt like her worst day yet, a sound that had been grating on her ears finally became clear. From the rustling of fabric to the hammering of nails—the entire house was noisy.
Wondering what Cedric was up to, Odellia got up and flung open her bedroom door.
“……What in the world……”
Just last night, this had been an empty townhouse without a single servant. Located on the edge of town and long unused, it had been poorly maintained—so much so that it was called the ghost house.
Odellia had never had any interest in decorating; the walls were covered with marks where frames had been removed, and cobwebs hung everywhere. The carpets and railings were mostly still coated in dust. Had someone kidnapped her and locked her up overnight?
The sparkling chandelier, the beautiful still lifes and landscapes covering the walls, the vivid foreign-patterned carpet on the floor—all felt alien. On the ornate consoles placed along every corridor stood candelabras, flower arrangements, baskets…… and even servants setting up sculptures.
Odellia closed the door and looked around. This was definitely the same room she had been staying in.
She opened the door again—and an entirely different world unfolded before her.
She opened it, closed it, opened it again, closed it again. Wondering if she was dreaming, she stretched her cheeks, and then, for a final check, she flung the door open—only to find servants, now properly uniformed, standing in a row and bowing to her.
Among them, an elderly gentleman with the most distinguished appearance smiled kindly and spoke.
“Good morning. I am Fevrett, the butler who will henceforth attend to Lady Odellia in full.”
A small, plump middle-aged woman popped out from behind the old butler, grasped Odellia’s hand firmly, and said cheerfully:
“And I’m Pigg, the head maid!”
“……I didn’t hire you all……”
“I did.”
“……Your Highness Kalix?!”
“These were originally the servants of my villa. As it happens, I won’t be visiting the villa this social season.”
“……”
Parting the crowd, Kalix stepped before Odellia and slowly raised his hand to the corner of her chin. Then he gently tilted her face upward.
“Surprised as you may be, don’t make such a dumbfounded face. With your mouth hanging open like that, you look just like a goby fish.”
“……!”
Should she focus on the kindness of having her chin closed for her, or on the sheer audacity of remodeling someone else’s house without permission?
At Kalix’s gesture, Head Maid Pigg and the servants behind her entered Odellia’s bedroom as if they’d been waiting for this moment.
“Good heavens, the dust on these curtains……! Lady Odellia, are your airways all right?”
“The bed has lost all its spring and the color has faded too—we’ll need to change the bedding as well.”
“I think a fireplace would work well here, and we can put the bathtub over there. Ah, and a partition there, and a sofa across from it!”
*Put the mirror here, put a vase over there, change the wallpaper to mint, no green*…… Feeling that if she stayed any longer, she’d lose her mind entirely, Odellia hurriedly fled to the courtyard.
“Oh, you’re up?”
“……Cedric?”
“His Highness certainly has drive, doesn’t he?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to make you breakfast, but I got kicked out.”
“What?”
“He said I’d only get in the way. Want to try some of this? His Highness brought it—it’s really good. Completely different from that éclair that got stuck in your throat—very moist.”
“What nonsense are you…… and what’s that you’re reading?”
In Cedric’s hands—a man far removed from reading—was a small, thick book. Odellia had only asked to change the subject.
“This? These days, there isn’t a woman in the capital who doesn’t know about this. While we’re at it, you want to read it too?”
“What is it?”
“Kind of like a book that reveals women’s hearts.”
“What?”
“Apparently it’s for ladies. I didn’t know much about it either, but my mother said reading it would make it easier to understand women, so I’ve been going through it.”
So saying, Cedric offered the book to Odellia as if recommending it. Her face, upon receiving it, looked as if she’d bitten into a whole unripe persimmon.
“*The Crown Prince’s Rose…… Dangerous Liaisons*……?”
What on earth was this bizarre title? As Odellia opened the book, her face grew even more peculiar.
