FJ 26

Chapter: 26

Rumble.

Lenox Carlisle lifted his gaze to the darkened sky.

Lenox Carlisle lifted his gaze to the darkened sky.

Just before dawn. As if rain might fall at any moment, the capital’s sky was blanketed in heavy clouds.

“……”

And then he realized that he was standing alone in the middle of a forest on the outskirts of the capital, a sword in his hand. The black pool soaking the ground at his feet was the blood of monsters.

Fragments of last night slowly resurfaced.

Driven out of his senses by the thought that the woman who had suddenly run away might be carrying his child, he had chased after her in a frenzy.

As if that weren’t enough, he had clung to her pathetically, babbling about marriage and children, begging without dignity—only to then stupidly let her escape on a train when he saw her silently sobbing.

‘Well done. Truly.’

Wiping the sticky blood splattered across his cheek with the back of his hand, Lenox sneered at himself.

When his mind was in turmoil, wandering alone through monster-infested forests had long been a habit of his.

He didn’t remember how much time had passed. Judging by the numbness in the hand gripping his sword and the blood pooled beneath his feet, it seemed he had roamed the forest all night, hacking down monsters to suppress his emotions.

It had been a foolish thing to do, but after pointlessly pushing his body to its limits all night, his head was undeniably clearer.

‘What would I even do if I caught up to her?’

Last night, he had simply lost his head for a moment. He reined himself in.

Whether Juliet was really pregnant or not—what did it matter?

She was a woman who had run away of her own accord.

Even if she was carrying a child, who was to say whether it was conceived with another man, as she claimed, or was actually his? And if it truly wasn’t his, as Juliet said, then it was even more something he had no reason to care about.

Juliet Monad was nothing more than a bed partner he could cut off at any time with a half-hearted word of farewell.

Click. He ground the words out between his teeth.

“…I should have cut it off long ago.”

With that pretty face of hers, always wearing such a shadowed expression.

It was only that sometimes, when she seemed absentminded, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking and found it irritating—and for no particular reason, his heart had been drawn to her just a little more.

She was a woman who claimed she was sick of him and had now left for somewhere beyond his reach.

Why the runaway Juliet had chosen to head east, or whether she truly had a lover hidden away there, was none of his concern.

Whether she lived happily and ordinarily with someone else and had a child as she wished—or even if she lived miserably somewhere and lost her life.

If he simply never thought of her again, if he forgot her forever, that would be the end of it. He repeated it to himself.

‘If anything, this is for the best.’

After all, the woman who had constantly pricked at his nerves, yet whom he had clutched for seven years without being able to let go, had disappeared of her own accord.

He lifted his tired eyes and looked up at the dense forest.

Those restless emotions that had stirred without reason—he could just ignore them, shove them deep into his heart, and be done with it.

“…Simple enough.”

Seven years was more than enough time for such pathetic behavior.

With his thoughts cooled and settled, Lenox turned his body to leave the forest.

But as he walked toward the forest’s edge, he stopped short upon discovering a pile of bones. Beneath a tree lay a heap of human remains.

Lenox’s eyes narrowed.

‘A forest that causes hallucinations, is it.’

All these human bones scattered around his feet were not simply the remains of unlucky travelers who had lost their way.

The reason corrupted forests were dangerous wasn’t only because of mutant monsters. The forest itself exuded poison.

Harmless to animals, this toxin caused humans to experience hallucinations, as if intoxicated.

While subjugating monsters in the northern territories, dealing with territory residents addicted to hallucinations was also part of the knights’ duties.

Thanks to the Carlisle family’s unique constitution, neither the poison exhaled by dangerous monsters nor the toxins emitted by corrupted forests had any effect on his body.

But did that extend to the mind as well?

Though he had passed through corrupted forests countless times, Lenox had never once experienced a hallucination.

He paused and stared into the pitch-black forest ahead.

Then, from between the dark trees where nothing should have been visible, a pale, smoke-like figure slowly emerged.

At first it was fluttering hair and the hem of a skirt, and soon the full silhouette of a woman wandering alone through the uneasy darkness of the forest took shape.

The familiar outline of the woman appeared vividly before his eyes, as if he could reach out and grasp it—but Lenox didn’t even attempt a smile.

He couldn’t be certain whether what he was seeing was truly a hallucination, or merely his own imagination.

Rumble.

The woman, who had been glancing around in fear, suddenly turned toward him. Then, as if by magic, she broke into a radiant smile and ran toward him.

Without thinking, Lenox extended his empty hand toward the woman running in his direction.

“Jul—”

She looked so real, as though she might leap straight into his arms.

But like a ghost, she passed directly through him and ran behind him instead. When he turned around blankly, she was already embracing someone whose face he could not see.

Rumble.

Thunder rolled again. Clinging to the faceless figure, the woman smiled brightly, wearing a shy expression she had rarely ever shown him.

As if she had been waiting for this moment, she gave her secret lover a coy smile, wrapped her arms around his neck, and begged for a kiss.

Then she rested her cheek against the unknown man’s chest and whispered softly, her voice slightly sorrowful yet achingly tender.

“I’m pregnant.”

The neat lips that had once trembled and smiled beneath him moved again.

“So let’s run far away, together.”

Clang!

The sword he hurled in a fit of rage struck a massive old tree across from him, producing a brief flash of white light. At the same time, the slender female apparition vanished like smoke.

He pressed a hand to his eyes. Something hot surged violently up from within.

Sorting out his emotions? Nonsense. A sudden murderous intent flared up.

‘Should I kill them?’

All the effort of exhausting his body through the night to clear his head was obliterated in an instant.

Lenox Carlisle let out a dry laugh as he thought of his political enemies.

The Carlisle ducal house had many foes.

They sent assassins, formed alliances among themselves to keep the ducal house in check, planted spies. They tried every possible means to bring the house down—but what was the point of any of it?

“This isn’t your child.”

With just a few words, Juliet Monad had shattered him, burdening him with an overwhelming sense of defeat he had never experienced in his life. And all of this had happened in the span of a single night.

Until just moments ago, he had coolly judged that there was no way Juliet could have fallen for someone else.

‘There’s no way you could do something like that.’

It wasn’t so much a matter of trust as it was the belief that sneaking around with someone else behind a lover’s back simply didn’t suit Juliet.

He couldn’t imagine the prim woman whispering words of love or clinging passionately to someone. At least, not until just now.

…But was that really true?

“I fell in love at first sight.”

In the entire seven years she had stayed by his side, that was the only time Juliet had ever said something resembling a confession.

And here he was, the fool who had treasured that half-hearted confession like a priceless gem and lived smugly off it.

Looking back, though, Juliet had always been a woman with something secretive about her.

She had never expected anything from him, never fluttered with excitement. She had been like that from the start.

Of course, if he reached out his hand, she would smile. Sometimes she would even embrace him first. But that was all.

Strangely enough, there were moments when Juliet seemed, despite her age, like someone who had already endured a long, unrequited love.

During the seven years he had kept her in his grasp, unable to let go, she often behaved as if she were simply waiting for a fickle man to grow tired of her.

Though he found it odd, he had dismissed it as nothing more than the temperament of a calm woman.

But what if, in truth, there really had been someone else in Juliet’s heart?

What if everything she had shown him over those seven years was nothing but an empty shell—and there had been another person she had loved for a long time?

It felt as though he had swallowed a lump of fire; his insides twisted, yet his mind was astonishingly cold.

It wasn’t surprising that murderous intent toward a man whose face he didn’t even know—whose very existence he wasn’t even sure of—was boiling over inside him.

‘Where should I start?’

First, he would find them.

Even now, he still couldn’t quite imagine her smiling and embracing another man with that innocent face.

But he needed to know every detail of how that woman, who sometimes wore such lonely and hollow expressions, had been seduced.

If he crushed with his own eyes the hands of the bastard who might have touched her—would Juliet Monad cry and beg him to spare her lover? Or would she be terrified and run away yet again?

With a chilled mind, Lenox considered it. Either was fine. He would simply capture her again until she gave up on fleeing.

As the man strode unhesitatingly out of the dawn forest, he failed to realize that he was craving an emotion he had never once given to his lover.

The Duke of Carlisle returned to the ducal residence just after daybreak.

“My lord!”

Emerging from the forest, the duke dragged behind him a mutant white stag, its throat torn open and bleeding.

Elliot and the other retainers who had been anxiously pacing in front of the estate welcomed the sight of the duke returning unharmed—then flinched.

In stark contrast to his perfectly composed expression, a thick stench of blood clung to him.

The night before, the entire estate had been kept awake with anxiety after the duke, brimming with killing intent, had chased after his runaway lover.

Strictly speaking, they weren’t so much worried about the duke as they were concerned for the safety of the suddenly vanished Juliet Monad.

‘Don’t tell me…?’

The night before, knights including Hardin and Jude had followed the guidance of the sacred relic from the Grand Temple all the way to the station on the outskirts of the capital.

But after ordering the area around the station sealed off, the Duke of Carlisle had gone alone onto the platform to meet Juliet.

Not long after, the duke had exited the station alone, offering no explanation, leaving the knights behind and wandering the forest all night before returning.

The knights were dying of curiosity over what had happened at the station, and where Juliet Monad had gone.

“My… my lord.”

The words Is Juliet safe? rose to the tip of his throat, but Elliot didn’t dare to ask.

Thud.

“Eek.”

When Lenox tossed his blood-soaked gloves, Elliot yelped as he caught them.

Hardin quickly checked that the blood staining the gloves was black and let out a huge sigh of relief inwardly.

Though he didn’t know the exact circumstances, Hardin had vaguely suspected that the reason his master had lost his reason and chased after his runaway lover might have been because she was pregnant.

As the retainers exchanged frantic glances, Lenox strode past them into the entrance hall.

Then, as the man walked toward the bath, leaving bloody footprints on the smooth white marble floor, he suddenly stopped and turned around.

“Ah.”

After casually wiping away the blood trickling down his chin, he asked calmly,

“Which way is the Count Monad estate?”