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Chapter 9
“Phew…”
Kallian swept a hand across his rain-soaked face, his black hair swaying beneath the relentless downpour.
An unmistakable look of displeasure spread across his shadowed features.
And for good reason.
The tower standing before him was infamous as the place where Count Lawrence interrogated heretics.
Imagining what was happening inside, Kallian tilted his chin toward the aide standing diagonally behind him.
“Benjamin, what do you suppose the Count’s daughter is doing in a place like this?”
Benjamin straightened his disheveled hair after spending the entire day rushing after him before answering.
“Hm… At the very least, I doubt she’s the one conducting the interrogation. She does carry noble blood, after all.”
That was true.
Even if she was only a half-blooded illegitimate child with no right to inherit the title, she was still a noble.
But what had she looked like?
Clothes worse than those of a maid.
A body so emaciated that her bones protruded beneath her skin.
A desperate voice begging him to confirm whether her mother was still alive.
She looked worse than a beggar from the slums.
The conclusion was obvious.
She wasn’t the one questioning others.
She was the one being questioned.
Recalling the pale green light that had lingered around her fingertips, Kallian drew his demonic sword from its sheath.
“I’ll find out soon enough… why it led me here.”
Whoosh!
With a fierce whistle slicing through the air, the massive stone door blocking their path split cleanly in half.
“Your Grace! Wh-What is the meaning of this?!”
The moment Louise heard that an uninvited guest had arrived, she hurried down to the underground prison.
It wasn’t simply because Evelyn had been imprisoned and abused there.
A secret was hidden beneath this prison—a secret that absolutely could not be discovered by anyone, especially not by the descendant of the dark mage standing before her.
Feeling her vision spin, Louise threw herself in front of the passage leading underground.
“This place is under my authority as the mistress of the Lawrence household! How dare you trespass and disrupt the order of my estate? Disciplining a maid is not against the law!”
This was the Count’s territory.
No matter how powerful a Grand Duke Kallian might be, he had no legal authority to use military force or enforce the law by coercion here.
Even knowing that, Kallian never slowed his stride.
His lips curved into a cold, crooked smile, as though a torrent of scathing words was about to spill out.
“A maid?”
Louise instinctively stepped backward.
Ignoring her, Kallian slowly surveyed the maze-like underground corridors before speaking in a chilling voice.
“So you’re calling the person who inherited the name and symbol of a noble house… a maid?”
The surrounding air froze instantly.
Not only the knights accompanying Kallian, but even Benjamin had never heard such murderous hostility in his voice before.
In the suffocating atmosphere created by the ominous aura surrounding him, Louise barely managed to gather enough courage to clutch at his rain-soaked sleeve.
“I-I was simply flustered and misspoke. F-First, why don’t we step outside and have some tea…?”
“So I should go that way?”
Without anyone showing him the way, Kallian naturally turned toward the left.
Louise’s eyes trembled in shock.
Still forcing herself to remain calm, she gripped her own thigh tightly and pleaded once more.
“I-I know this place can easily be misunderstood, but I was merely disciplining her over a personal matter. So, Your Grace, please…”
“Disciplining?”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but… Evelyn is engaged to Baron Fairfield. Rumors spread that she secretly entered your residence. As her mother, I had no choice but to correct such improper behavior before her marriage.”
Engaged to a seventy-two-year-old drug-addicted old man who could die at any moment.
Seeing through her transparent excuse, Kallian suppressed the curse rising to his lips and rubbed the vein bulging on his forehead.
He already knew everything about the Lawrence family’s financial situation and Evelyn’s circumstances.
Benjamin had investigated through the information guilds stationed throughout the capital.
“Bill Fairfield, seventy-two years old. He’s known for possessing abnormal sexual desires and buys obedient young women to serve him in bed.”
“The young lady happened to perfectly fit the kind of woman he was looking for.”
“The kind he was looking for?”
“A woman with no family to run to… and no one powerful enough to protect her. He probably figured he could do whatever he wanted with her.”
Suddenly, he remembered those eyes that had silently begged him to save her.
Eyes the color of fresh spring greenery.
Eyes that somehow felt strangely familiar—as though he had seen them once during his unbearably long life.
“Hm.”
Staring at the floor, he brushed the tip of his eyebrow before taking a deep breath, as if trying to erase the lingering image of someone from his mind.
He couldn’t understand why his mood had sunk so deeply it felt as though he were falling into the darkest abyss.
“Isn’t the one lacking decency the lady who became blinded by greed and borrowed money from anyone she could?”
Louise, the adopted daughter of High Priest Julius, had used religious offerings as an excuse to funnel the Lawrence family’s wealth into the temple.
Her extravagance knew no bounds.
When she ran out of money, she shamelessly borrowed more from anyone willing to lend it.
“If your goal was merely to erase those debts, wouldn’t it make far more sense for you to become the Baron’s mistress?”
With an indifferent expression, Kallian slowly drew Tartarus from its sheath and tilted his head, as though offering her one final chance to confess.
“I fail to understand why you’re forcing someone else to bear your burden.”
“You’ve gone too far! How could I possibly become the mistress of that insane old man…!”
Louise blurted out the words before suddenly realizing her mistake and biting her lower lip tightly.
Beneath the strands of black hair falling across his forehead, Kallian’s golden eyes darkened.
“I believe I’ve given you more than enough opportunities.”
As he muttered those words, a murky dark-green aura flared around his demonic sword like ghostly flames.
“You’re beyond reason.”
The Lawrence family’s inherited sword, Tartarus, normally radiated a violet aura.
But whenever it absorbed demonic energy, it emitted a dull green glow instead.
The reason its color had changed…
The underground prison had accumulated traces of cursed drugs and dark rituals used to cast deadly curses.
Kallian lightly snapped his fingers.
“So you dared use forbidden power to steal another person’s life.”
The eerie green aura surged into the air before circling around the collapsed Louise like the flames of hell itself.
“Demonic energy despises the righteous… and delights in corruption.”
He looked down at her coldly.
“Well? Wouldn’t you like to experience what it feels like to be consumed by a curse yourself?”
Louise screamed and frantically waved her hands as though she had seen a ghost.
“Ahhh! Stay away! Get away from me!”
The face of the dying Marcella appeared vividly before her eyes.
It was nothing more than an illusion created from her own guilty conscience.
“I… I was only following orders! What did I do wrong…? Aah!”
Finally, she crawled on her knees until she collapsed at the Grand Duke’s feet, trembling uncontrollably.
Kallian looked down at her without the slightest change in expression.
“Take her away.”
“Mmph! Mmph!”
Just a little longer…
She wanted to say something—anything.
But her mouth had already been sealed by a magical contract that prevented her from revealing certain truths.
She had been abandoned as a disposable pawn.
“How exhausting.”
After his men dragged away the struggling Louise, Kallian silently walked through the long corridor.
Then—
Clank!
Even within the pitch-black prison cell where not a single ray of light entered, he found a woman who seemed to carry a sacred radiance of her own.
His eyes narrowed.
Had she lost consciousness?
Evelyn hung limply from crude iron chains, both arms stretched high above her head.
“I’ll handle the rest. Everyone leave.”
Squeezing his broad frame into the cramped cell, Kallian dismissed all the knights before removing the chains and restraints binding her one by one.
Clang!
The final shackle hit the floor.
Kneeling on one knee, he carefully slipped one arm beneath her back and the other beneath her thighs.
Her delicate body melted softly into his embrace.
Warm.
Fragile.
Light.
“Haa… haa…”
Just as he turned to leave, rough breaths escaped Evelyn’s lips after being freed.
Thinking she had regained consciousness, he looked down.
Her eyes, however, remained tightly shut.
Even unconscious, her flushed cheeks burned with an intensity almost as vivid as the desire he struggled to suppress.
For a brief moment, memories of that night drifted back into his mind.
Kallian immediately forced them away.
Adjusting her securely in his arms to keep her from slipping backward, he carried her out of the prison.
Where should I take her?
Leaving her in the Count’s estate is too dangerous.
As he slowly climbed the spiral staircase while considering where she could safely stay—
“Th-This isn’t… a dream… is it?”
Evelyn’s clear eyes slowly opened.
Her face looked as lifeless as a finely glazed porcelain doll.
Yet that very emptiness revealed how desperately she had suffered.
It was the face of someone who had spent countless years surviving on nothing but resignation and despair.
“Unfortunately not.”
His answer was flat and emotionless.
The strange pounding in his chest was surely nothing more than the faint anger he felt after witnessing the scene of abuse.
As he adjusted her slight body more securely in his arms, her trembling voice reached his ears again.
“I knew… you would come.”
Seeing the expression of someone who had finally found the greatest hope of her life, a dull ache settled deep within his chest.
“I believed in you… truly.”
Born with the destiny of a Guardian, Kallian had been surrounded by the Empire’s expectations and admiration from the moment he entered the world.
There should have been no reason for those simple words—”I believed in you”—to weigh upon his heart like a massive stone.
And yet…
They did.
For the first time in a long while, Kallian found himself confused.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
After a brief silence, he looked directly into her eyes as they slowly began losing focus once again.
“I said I’d find you even if you fled to the heavens themselves.”
His golden eyes, once clouded with uncertainty, became perfectly still.
“I have no intention of letting go of someone I need.”
“So don’t even think about running away from me again.”
