🔊 TTS Settings
~Chapter 57~
“Fragile? Look at her. That’s the Kenwolf Duchess, the one everyone’s afraid of.”
Maybe that’s why everyone only stole glances at her but no one dared to talk to her.
‘People probably don’t want to greet her first unless someone of higher status does first.’
But that was only true for strangers. If they were close, it would be different.
If someone wanted to greet the Duchess, they couldn’t speak first, but they could at least show signs they wanted to be approached.
Yet no one did.
At that moment, Riden found herself wanting to sit across from the Duchess and start a conversation.
She was clearly losing her mind.
‘Are you crazy? Shopping and going to a café with your mother-in-law? That’s horrifying!’
Just then, someone called out to Riden.
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?”
“Young lady, I know it must be fascinating to see the Kenwolf Duchess, but staring so openly is very rude.”
“Ah… yes, I’m sorry.”
Riden bowed her head to the unfamiliar woman and turned away with a confused look.
As she walked toward the Count’s carriage, Samantha’s face, happily eating the dessert, kept flashing in her mind.
It was probably to keep her from changing her mind since rescuing someone from Siraka wasn’t easy, but still…
‘I’m grateful.’
At that moment—
“Young lady.”
As Riden was about to step onto the carriage, a servant from the Duke’s household appeared silently and handed her a letter.
[If you’re grateful, come to the Duke’s mansion.]
It was clearly an invitation.
Riden already knew why she was being summoned.
The Duchess had once requested that she meet Ethan deeply at least twice a month.
One of those two days was fixed every month—the night of the full moon.
The “thing” inside Ethan, which usually lay dormant, would always go wild and torment him whenever there was a full moon. And now, it was almost that time.
‘It won’t be as bad as that day when the full moon and the once-a-year Night of Feasting overlapped… but this time will still be hard for him.’
In the original story, Ethan had left the Duke’s mansion and only returned right before the first ball of the social season, which was probably around this time.
Back then, he had been appointed as the temporary commander of the Holy Knights and was going to be busy for a while.
Because of that, he wouldn’t be able to look after his knights for some time, so he planned to push himself and join the Duke’s knights on their expeditionary training.
At that time in the original story, Riden had visited Ethan and said this:
“If you must leave, please hold my hand for a moment. Just for a little while, that’s all. I can’t lift the curse, but I can at least make you feel at peace.”
‘Hold my hand… why did she say that?’
Ethan could calm down just by being near a child of Siraka, so why did she insist on holding hands?
When reading this part, she had thought that the original Riden had exaggerated her powers just to keep Ethan by her side.
Ethan thought the same.
He didn’t want to share anything with Riden except their political marriage.
His heart already belonged to the heroine, Maria, so he had no intention of even small physical contact.
So Ethan ignored Riden’s words and left for the training expedition, suffering greatly under the full moon.
When he returned, his already firm resolve only grew stronger:
‘I really can’t let the heroine stay near someone as dangerous as me.’
Thinking of the original story, Riden now stood before towering bookshelves in the temple, flipping through pages of ancient texts.
“Cough, cough!”
The books were old and dusty, sending tiny dust motes floating through the light.
‘I want to know more about Siraka.’
The temple’s religion was polytheistic, and Siraka was one of many gods—the god of healing and restoration.
He had once been a powerful god but had now declined.
These days, people wanted blessings for beauty, wealth, and prosperity more than healing and recovery, so they rarely served Siraka.
‘That’s why children of Siraka like me are so rare.’
Even as she coughed from the rising dust, Riden kept turning the pages. She needed answers.
‘Maybe I have more powers?’
Not just suppressing the evil god Berbes’s influence by being nearby, but maybe powers like visibly healing wounds or something even stronger?
‘Heal, purify, mass restoration! Don’t I have something like that?’
But no matter how many pages she turned, she found nothing about Siraka’s followers having such powers. Only Siraka himself had those abilities.
After reading until her neck hurt, the only thing she learned was that Siraka and Berbes had a bad relationship.
The two gods fought fiercely over and over, and the victorious Berbes split Siraka into six holy relics and threw them into the human world.
‘If Siraka were still alive, the Kenwolf Dukedom would’ve already been freed from its curse.’
And Berbes… he really did seem like an evil god.
‘It wasn’t enough to just win, huh? Did you really have to split Siraka into six pieces and throw them away?’
Anyway, Riden didn’t find what she was looking for.
She returned the book to the librarian and left the archives.
In the temple’s central garden, she saw priests sitting around a pond, washing their hands and faces.
‘Is that… holy water or something?’
She was about to pass by when one of them called out to her.
“Believer.”
The priest’s face was flushed red from drinking.
In this temple, priests could marry and drink freely.
Riden glanced at the bottle sitting in front of them and replied.
It seemed they were having a drinking party around the pond.
“Yes, Father? Why are you calling me?”
“I thought I should tell you about the temple’s central pond since you seemed unaware. This is the Pond of Purification, and believers often come to wash their hands even if they don’t have a reason. But you were about to leave, so… I had to stop you.”
It sounded like, “Why wouldn’t you do this amazing thing?” But to Riden, it felt more like drunk men wanting to mess with a passing woman.
“Alright, I’ll do it.”
She knew that in the novel, the heroine needed the temple’s help, so she wanted to avoid trouble.
Riden stepped closer and dipped her hands into the pond, feeling their quiet gazes.
“Then…”
As she pulled out her handkerchief and turned to leave, one of them suddenly stood up and blocked her way.
“What about your feet?”
“…”
“You should wash your feet too.”
“…”
“Is it difficult? Should I help you wash them?”
The drunken men snickered shamelessly as Riden froze.
They clearly didn’t think a woman visiting the temple alone could be a high-ranking noble.
Could they really be called priests?
Riden still felt unfamiliar with this place and even more so with the temple, so she couldn’t tell just by looking if they were high-ranking clergy or apprentice priests.
She hesitated, wondering if she should just ignore them with a cold glare and walk away.
At that moment—
“Ah! There you are, young lady. Let’s go.”
“…?”
It was the second son of the Florence Viscount family.
‘His name was Damian, right?’
He approached with a bright smile from afar.
“I’ll save you.”
As he brushed past her and whispered this, Riden felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
