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chapter 06
Clank.
After locking the heavy padlock and checking it several times, Idr smiled beautifully.
“Your thoughts haven’t changed in the meantime, have they?”
“The price of summoning a demon is not something you can bear.”
“I’ll experience it myself and decide that.”
“Have you never considered another method?”
“It’s getting late. Shall we continue this conversation tomorrow?”
Ignoring Deyan’s objection, she turned around briskly.
A moment later, the heavy iron door slammed shut, its echo ringing throughout the prison once more.
“…That fool.”
Unable to bring himself to look back, Deyan stood gloomily before the bars.
“Ugh! Aren’t you supposed to be a knight? Couldn’t you even take care of yourself? Why did you have to get caught?”
“…If you hadn’t become a hostage, I could have escaped on my own somehow.”
“Talk, talk, talk!”
Holdin irritably berated his superior.
His attitude was insolent, but Deyan didn’t seem inclined to scold him. Knowing this, Holdin only doubled down on his nagging.
“So what are you going to do now?”
What else could he do?
The only option was to pretend to go along with Idr and wait for another opportunity.
“Don’t even think about exploiting a gap in her defenses.”
Holdin saw right through him.
“The young lady is a complete witch! Just look at that two-faced personality of hers. And she’s frighteningly smart too!”
He looked ready to burst into tears as he ranted.
“I tried every trick I could think of while you were out, and she saw through every single one!”
Same here, Deyan thought.
But he kept it to himself.
Instead, he remembered Idr’s face as she had smiled calmly.
“…She’s too pretty to be a witch.”
Weren’t witches supposed to be ugly women with long noses and faces covered in warts?
The moment Deyan muttered that absentmindedly, he felt murderous intent from behind him and cautiously rolled his eyes.
Holdin was glaring at him as though flames would shoot out of his eyes at any second.
“Anyway…”
Deyan hurriedly tried to change the subject.
“The young lady found out.”
“Found out what?”
“…That I have a cursed body.”
“…What?”
Unfortunately, he had chosen the wrong topic.
Holdin’s jaw dropped.
“What did she find out?”
He grabbed Deyan by the collar with both hands and shook him violently.
“What do you mean she found out? How could she possibly find that out?”
“She noticed.”
“Noticed my foot! How?!”
“She said my injuries healed too quickly…”
“Then a normal person would just think you aren’t human, not jump straight to a curse—!”
Holdin’s eyes widened to their limit.
“You told her?”
“…”
“You did tell her! You absolutely did!”
Furious, Holdin smacked Deyan on the arm.
“…The young lady said she wanted to summon a demon.”
Rubbing the spot where he’d been hit, Deyan pouted.
Holdin nearly exploded.
“I was trying to stop her.”
“You really thought she’d listen?”
“I thought she might reconsider.”
“Ah. Ahahaha!”
Holdin’s shoulders shook.
He laughed mechanically like a man who had lost his mind, then glared again.
“And that’s why you told her everything?”
He sounded like a teacher trying to educate the world’s greatest fool.
“You think she’ll let us go after taking a few drops of blood? Don’t be ridiculous! She’ll kill us the moment she gets what she wants!”
“Is there really no room to persuade her?”
“Didn’t you see her grabbing me by the hair and waving a knife around? Persuasion, my ass.”
Snorting, Holdin launched into a stream of insults directed at Idr.
Starting with “split personality” and “witch,” his complaints eventually escalated into complete nonsense.
“She’s the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s a bit much.”
“Do you not understand irony? Irony?”
At Holdin’s sharp voice, Deyan plugged his ears with his fingers.
It seemed best to leave him alone until he calmed down.
“So, what exactly did you talk about with the young lady?”
After enough time had passed for his anger to subside, Holdin sat down heavily in front of Deyan.
Deyan recounted nearly every word of his conversation with Idr.
“The murder of the Grand Duchess, huh… That happened nine years ago, didn’t it?”
The Grand Duchess’s death had caused considerable controversy even back then.
Officially, she had supposedly died suddenly from an unknown illness.
But the Grand Duchess had been far too healthy during her lifetime for people to accept that explanation at face value.
“If she was really murdered, they probably covered it up to protect the nation’s reputation.”
“And that would make a proper investigation difficult.”
Deyan nodded in agreement.
Then Holdin raised a question.
“But why does the young lady think the culprit was someone powerful?”
“She must have some evidence.”
“Then she should have identified the culprit long ago.”
Now that he thought about it, that made sense.
Idr’s goal in summoning a demon was ultimately to find the murderer of the Grand Duchess.
If she didn’t know who the culprit was, how could she be so certain it was the work of a powerful figure from another nation?
Having found a flaw in his reasoning, Deyan proposed two possibilities.
“Either the Grand Duchess left behind a clue pointing to the culprit before she died.”
“Or she has suspects in mind but can’t move against them recklessly.”
Holdin completed the thought.
“Judging from the young lady’s actions, the second possibility seems more likely.”
Idr Hubert had already identified the murderer.
But the culprit’s power was so overwhelming that she couldn’t act carelessly.
So she had decided to summon a demon and seek revenge.
After pondering for a while, Deyan shook his head.
“No.”
“Huh? What isn’t?”
“The young lady really doesn’t know who the culprit is.”
“How could Your Excellency possibly know that?”
“Her eyes.”
“…What?”
Deyan remembered those green eyes, quietly rippling with fury.
Idr was angry precisely because she did not know.
If she already knew who her target was, she would have found a more practical method than something as absurd as summoning a demon.
“She’s trying to borrow a demon’s power because she doesn’t know.”
Maybe Idr Hubert had been pushed to her limits.
Thinking that, Deyan felt a faint spark of sympathy for her.
In the end, he voiced the soft-hearted thought he had been holding back.
“If we helped the young lady find the culprit, then maybe she wouldn’t need to summon a demon—”
“There you go again with that soft nonsense.”
Holdin immediately cut him off with a scowl.
And that wasn’t enough.
He spent the next ten minutes criticizing Deyan.
“Why do you always turn into the biggest fool in the world at moments like this? You can cut people down without hesitation, so why do you suddenly get soft whenever it comes to things like this?”
Every word Holdin said was true.
Deyan had grown up constantly craving human affection and connection.
As a result, whenever he encountered someone with a painful story, his heart softened.
Especially when family was involved.
And yet, the moment an order was given, he could mercilessly kill the very people he pitied.
That was exactly the kind of person Deyan had been made into.
“This is all the former Count Nemanich’s fault. That wretched man.”
Tsk.
Holdin clicked his tongue loudly enough for it to echo through the prison.
But there was no point blaming the dead.
It was far more practical to think of a way out of their current situation.
After a long moment of thought, Holdin finally seemed to reach a decision.
“Since the young lady will probably kill us either way, we might as well gamble.”
“…How?”
“From now on, Your Excellency, do absolutely nothing.”
Deyan had been doing absolutely nothing already.
Curled up where he sat, he blankly watched Holdin’s actions.
Looking proud of himself, Holdin approached the bars and shoved his hands between them.
Then—
“Young laaaady! How about having a little chat with us, huh?!”
He started shouting at the top of his lungs.
* * *
Warm sunlight filtered through the thin curtains and flooded the room.
“My lady. It’s morning.”
Giselle’s gentle voice called for me.
I could also feel a pleasantly cool breeze drifting in through the open window.
“Yaaawn.”
Stretching both arms high above my head, I sat up in bed.
Thanks to a rare night of deep sleep, my body felt refreshed.
