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Chapter 50
‘W-What is this…?’
Lady Lillipen was about to let out a scream of shock, but she clamped her hand over her own mouth.
“Mm—!”
At that, Cassia narrowed her eyes and smiled.
“Hm. You grasp the situation faster than I expected, Lady Lillipen.”
“Definitely unexpected,” Edmund added from beside her, backing up Cassia’s sharp remark.
The boy was absolutely not in a dying state.
Moreover—
‘This isn’t anything like the near-mad condition I saw a few days ago!’
He looked perfectly fine—nothing like the child who had been trapped in darkness, screaming and begging to be saved.
Still covering her mouth, Lady Lillipen cautiously rolled her eyes around the inside of the carriage.
Inside the carriage were three people besides herself:
Edmund and Cassia.
And Cassia’s nanny.
That nanny was also the one who had first discovered the collapsed Edmund.
‘Can this really be a coincidence?’
The carriage was small; this was the maximum number of people it could hold.
The Duchess had refused to lend her own carriage, saying she didn’t want to get blood on it.
‘The nanny would obviously be on that girl’s side… and if Edmund is in on it too… then I’m the only one who’s been thrown in here alone!’
Of course, the Duchess had sent one more person along.
The gardener who was driving the carriage—no, the Duchess’s temporary footman.
The one who behaved like her tongue in her mouth, who had even wrung from her the promise that he would be taken back to the main estate.
The man the Duchess had attached to Cassia as a watchdog.
But…
As far as Lady Lillipen knew, there were suspicious rumors between the gardener and Cassia.
If they really were that close—
‘No way… don’t tell me even he is…?’
Cassia, wearing a relaxed smile, stamped a seal of confirmation onto Lady Lillipen’s fearful suspicion.
She knocked on the carriage wall and spoke to him familiarly.
“Faster. We need to escape as far as possible, as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, my young lady. Don’t worry.”
The gardener obeyed Cassia’s command as though it were only natural.
Only then did Lady Lillipen finally realize.
‘I’ve been caught in a trap from the very beginning!’
She couldn’t go anywhere in the moving carriage.
Even if she tried to open the door and jump out, the nanny and Edmund firmly blocked the way.
Everyone except herself was an enemy.
If she resisted recklessly, her life could be in danger.
Naturally, the Duchess—who had stayed comfortably behind at the villa—couldn’t help her.
‘My God…!’
To Lady Lillipen’s eyes, Cassia, sitting across from her with the corners of her lips raised, looked like the grim reaper himself.
“…Why is there still no word at all?”
Several hours had already passed since Cassia’s party had left for the nearby city’s physician.
The Duchess’s anxiety had reached its peak.
“Still no messenger from Cassia?”
“No, milady.”
“And the person I told you to send to the city again?”
“They departed on horseback earlier.”
Whether it was someone Cassia sent or someone sent again from the villa, it was physically impossible for news to have arrived yet.
But the Duchess neither knew nor cared about such facts.
‘At least tell me whether he’s alive or dead!’
If Edmund were to die right now, it would be a real disaster.
It was ironic that she had to pray for the survival of the grandnephew she hated and had sworn to kill—at least for this moment.
Then, less than two hours later, the person sent after Cassia’s party returned.
He carried completely unexpected news.
“Milady! This is serious! The city physician says there was no patient from the Cohen family at all!”
“W-What?!”
The Duchess felt as though all the blood in her body had turned cold.
It was only at this point that she finally realized her mistake.
‘I should have gone with them from the start!’
Chewing over her belated self-reproach, she unleashed all the servants of the villa.
“Find them at once!!! If you can’t, you’d better be prepared to die in their place!”
Terrified by the Duchess’s fury, the servants scattered in all directions to search.
More time passed, and as the sun began to sink…
Lady Lillipen was found wandering in a beggar-like state in a nearby forest—in the opposite direction from the city.
She was immediately dragged before the Duchess.
“M-Milady!!”
“What happened?! You said you were going to the city—why did you come this way instead? And where is the carriage? Where is Edmund?!”
The Duchess’s face, as she grabbed Lady Lillipen’s shoulders and shook her violently, looked like that of a demon.
Trembling, Lady Lillipen pointed ahead.
“O-Over there… at that cliff…”
“…What?”
This forest surrounded a valley, with a ravine running through its center, including a fairly high cliff.
Pointing toward it, Lady Lillipen cried out.
“The carriage fell off that cliff!! They must all be dead! Waaaah!”
And indeed, smoke was rising from the forest below the cliff.
A forest fire had coincidentally broken out where the carriage had fallen.
Only after men from the villa and nearby village had been called in to extinguish the fire could anyone approach the charred wreckage.
Three corpses were recovered from inside the blackened carriage, and one from outside.
A boy, a girl, a middle-aged woman, and an adult man.
Most of the bodies had burned, but identification was still possible through remaining clothing and hair.
They were undoubtedly the clothes Edmund and Cassia’s party had been wearing.
The long dark-brown curly hair burned and stuck to the fabric was clearly Cassia’s.
And on the boy’s clothes, bloodstained silver hair was found.
Faced with these results, the Duchess’s legs gave out and she collapsed.
“…This can’t be real.”
Her vision went dark.
‘This is the end—for me and for Patrick! My husband will never let this go!’
Cornered, the Duchess’s rage naturally turned toward the weakest target.
She grabbed the head maid by the collar and shook her violently.
“You! I sent you to watch them—what did you even do?! Why did things end up like this? Why didn’t you stop it?!”
Trembling with fear, Lady Lillipen gave her tearful testimony.
“I—I tried to stop it! But… hic… Edmund died on the way to the city…!”
“What?”
“That girl caused a scene because she didn’t want to take responsibility, and said we should just run away!”
“And you just let her?!”
Lady Lillipen rolled up her sleeve, revealing arms covered in scratch marks.
“Of course I tried to stop them! But I was alone—it was impossible! Especially since Marco was on that girl’s side!”
The Duchess was left speechless.
After all, she herself had assigned that man as a guard.
Lady Lillipen poured out her grievance.
“I told you again and again they were all working together!”
“You should have—should have stopped them!”
“I risked my life to stop them! We struggled, and I was thrown from the moving carriage—I nearly died! And then, because they took a wrong turn in the dark, the carriage fell off the cliff! Waaah!”
By the end, Lady Lillipen was wailing loudly.
Her fear, injustice, and anger felt so real that it was impossible to think she was lying.
Yet behind her fingers, Lady Lillipen glared secretly at the stunned Duchess, grinding her teeth.
‘Now you get a taste of it too.’
At the same time, a deep terror stirred within her.
She remembered Cassia’s light green eyes—the ones that had threatened her only hours before.
“If you want to live, do exactly as I tell you. Recite the words I taught you to the Duchess. And then…”
Everything Lady Lillipen had just testified was a script written by Cassia.
They had dressed similar-aged corpses obtained beforehand by the nanny in their clothes, attached hair, and burned them to fake their deaths.
And the four of them had already left this place long ago.
Alive and well.
Lady Lillipen could not reveal this truth.
Because earlier, a strange flame summoned by Edmund’s eerie red ring had wrapped around her.
She had screamed, thinking she was burning to death.
“Save me! I don’t want to die—huh?”
Though she had been engulfed in fire, it hadn’t been hot at all.
When the magical flame vanished, Cassia had spoken chillingly.
“That seal Edmund obtained is a magical artifact passed down through the heads of House Cohen. It can place a curse that burns traitors who disobey.”
“A curse? You mean…?”
“Yes. That flame just now. If you disobey Edmund’s orders, that flame will burn your heart.”
And Cassia’s words weren’t mere threats.
“I heard the Duke locked you in the dungeon, and the Duchess didn’t lift a finger to stop it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I have someone planted in the main house too.”
Then came the devilishly tempting whisper.
“Don’t you want revenge? After all your loyalty, they only ever abandoned you.”
It was an offer she could never refuse.
