Chapter 11
The doorknob turned so easily, it was almost laughable.
It had definitely been locked at first, when had it been opened?
“……”
The attic door swung open soundlessly, revealing the familiar hallway of the mansion.
Light she hadn’t seen in so long pierced her eyes, stinging them sharply.
She blinked, trying to adjust to the glow of the lanterns illuminating the house.
The maids whose voices she had overheard earlier were nowhere to be seen now, likely having gone elsewhere.
She tried to step out of the attic, but her balance faltered. Having spent so long curled up, her body refused to move the way she wanted.
Leaning against the wall for support, she barely managed to take a step. Shutting the attic door behind her, she slowly began to move forward.
Perhaps it was because everyone was resting, or because the staff had been called elsewhere, fortunately, there were few servants in the corridor.
Her bare feet, having been trapped in the attic all this time, stung sharply against the wooden floor, but there was nothing to be done.
Before she realized it, she had arrived at a familiar door, tightly shut, the door to the bedchamber.
She took a long breath in.
It had only been a month, and yet the entire mansion felt unfamiliar now.
With trembling hands, she pushed open the door.
And held her breath.
“Where are we supposed to clean again?”
“The young master’s room! He’s made a mess of it again, apparently.”
“Ugh, seriously. Has it been a month now? Why does he keep doing that?”
Frozen for a moment, she snapped out of it at the sound of the approaching voices and slipped inside the room, quickly closing the door behind her.
Clack.
“…Did you hear something just now?”
She held her breath.
“This girl’s been talking nonsense since earlier. Come on, quit it and let’s hurry. We don’t have time.”
“Y-yeah…”
Only when the footsteps and voices of the maids grew faint, and then vanished completely, did she let out the breath she’d been holding.
She turned on the mana lamp.
The room was in complete disarray.
Clothes had been pulled out and scattered everywhere. The pillows and blankets from the bed lay discarded, their insides spilling out.
Papers that had once been neatly stacked on the desk were strewn all across the floor.
Every drawer had been thrown open, their contents plainly visible even from a distance.
It was a sight entirely different from the one she remembered.
Even though they no longer shared this room, it was still called the couple’s bedchamber.
And so, for the sake of the Grand Duke who might visit at any time, she had kept it immaculately clean.
Yes, he could have come at any time. A story that, in the end, had never once come true.
She blinked for a moment, then slowly turned her gaze elsewhere.
The wreath she had received from the Grand Duke, the first and last gift from him, had once been dried and hung upon the wall. Even that lay now, crushed and ruined, discarded thoughtlessly on the floor.
Slowly, she bent down and picked up the withered flowers.
The slightest pressure crumbled them completely, leaving nothing but brittle fragments.
And in those crumbling pieces of flower, she saw herself.
No, not only in those ruined petals.
The scattered wreckage strewn about the room like the aftermath of a storm, the thick dust clinging to the windowsills that no one had bothered to wipe away even once, every wretched trace of this room seemed to point at her.
First, a puppet of the Emperor, of the Imperial Palace.
Then, a puppet of the Grand Duke.
No, calling herself a puppet was laughable.
Even a puppet is treated with some affection, handled with care. She hadn’t even been granted that.
It’s an artifact. If you change your mind, contact me at any time. I’ll send letters whenever I can spare the time.
Rather than live here, constantly scorned by people too blind to see what kind of person you truly are, wouldn’t it be better to live freely, using your abilities to their full potential? You know as well as I do how Spirit Callers are treated.
She didn’t know why those words surfaced in her mind just then.
Without thinking, as if possessed, she made her way toward the scattered desk. No, toward the drawer where the emerald artifact should have been.
“……It’s gone.”
There was nothing.
The box where she had kept the artifact lay wide open, its interior utterly empty.
Her mind went blank.
Only one thought gripped her now, she had to find it.
Why?
Because it was something Rhedin had given her. The only means she had believed could take her away from this place.
Who had taken it?
The answer was obvious.
Sasha.
The Grand Duke she had come to know all this time, no matter how deeply he despised someone, was not a man to lay hands on another’s personal belongings.
If it had been him who tore this room apart, he would have found the poison, been satisfied, and walked away.
She couldn’t imagine any servant acting on their own to invade her room either.
The fact that, even in this moment, she could still predict the Grand Duke’s character and behavior felt utterly pathetic.
It hurt. It hurt so much it suffocated her.
No matter how much she loved him, she could no longer endure it.
No, was it even love anymore?
A man with hair like scattered gold. A man with eyes blue as the sea. A man who treated everyone with warmth and kindness, everyone but her. And a man beloved by all, herself included.
It was agony.
What was this feeling?
Her heart was still beating. The same heart, still beating as ever.
But something had changed.
Even when she realized he had cast her into a world built on lies, even when she realized she had become a pawn for his revenge against the Emperor, her heart had still fluttered ceaselessly. And yet now, she felt nothing.
She didn’t know anymore what she was feeling.
Slowly, she rose to her feet and threw open the door.
Staggering, she began to cross the corridor, heading toward the room where Sasha resided.
The thought that she needed to hide from the servants no longer even crossed her mind.
“……Your Grace, the Grand Duchess!”
“How did you get out? Return at once. His Grace ordered that you were not to leave until the young master recovers—”
She came to a halt at the sight of the cluster of maids approaching with harsh, unfriendly expressions.
In hindsight, it was laughable. These women behaved as if they themselves were nobles, as if they were Grand Dukes or members of the imperial family, freely treating her however they pleased.
They had pushed her into that attic without hesitation, wielding the simple phrase ‘by His Grace’s command’ as a shield.
She firmly grasped the wrist of one maid who reached out to seize her shoulder.
Her arm trembled from hunger and exhaustion, but it was enough to stop the maid’s movement.
“What do you think you’re—!”
Perhaps it infuriated the maid to have the Grand Duchess, who had always been silent and insignificant, suddenly grab her like this. She shot her a look so fierce it could scorch.
Displeased, was it?
Would she have felt the same if it had been Sasha grabbing her like this?
No, more likely, she would have felt fear, knowing it came from someone in a higher position, from a mistress of the household.
“How insolent. Regardless of how His Grace or his little mistress treats me, I am the Grand Duchess. And before that, I am a princess of the imperial family. Even if the royal house may turn a blind eye to me, do you truly think they would overlook a lowborn maid like you showing such blatant disrespect to imperial blood?”
Of course, the possibility existed that even a letter of complaint would be ignored. Still, just a simple threat was enough to turn the maid’s face pale and make her recoil with a shudder.
She let out a hollow laugh.
Her voice had been sharp enough that even the other maids nearby startled, none of them daring to bar her path as she began to walk.
Before long, she reached Sasha’s room. Without bothering to knock, she flung the door open.
The servants inside stared at her as though they’d seen a ghost.
Soft pink hair fluttered.
Sasha, dressed in yet another extravagant gown, looked as though she had been about to go out somewhere.
For a woman who had condemned her to a month of torment with a single lie, she had the audacity to face her with a fair, untroubled expression, utterly shameless.
“Leave us.”
“But, my lady—!”
“It seems Her Grace has something she wishes to say to me. Leave us.”
The maids who had not hesitated to brand her an attempted child murderer, who had spoken openly about what horrors she might commit next, finally closed their mouths and filed out of the room at Sasha’s command.
The door closed.
Large green eyes looked at her, feigning a purity and innocence as though genuinely unaware of why she had come.
For someone who had turned an innocent woman into a criminal accused of poisoning a child, who had so gleefully orchestrated her suffering, those eyes were far too naive.
But she had no intention of indulging such things.
“The artifact you took from my room. Give it back.”
For a moment, Sasha tilted her head, feigning puzzlement.
Then, as though understanding, she reached into a drawer and retrieved something, holding it out with an air of careless amusement.
“Oh my, you mean this?”
The emerald-hued artifact shimmered in the sunlight.
When she gave a small nod, Sasha’s lips curled into a faint smile.
“No.”
And the words that followed were even more absurd.
“This isn’t yours. It belongs to Karl. Everything you’ve had until now came from Karl’s hands. I don’t know what he was thinking when he gave this to you… but, well, I don’t like you having it.”
She wanted to snap back that it wasn’t the Grand Duke who had given it to her. But a strange sensation, like something coiling around her body, made her hesitate.
The green eyes staring at her gleamed with a bizarre, unnatural light.
“Do you know something?”
Slowly, Sasha stepped toward her, still holding the artifact.
There was a glint of madness in her gaze. She took an instinctive step back, only to realize the wide open window was now behind her.
Like a courtesan seducing a man, the woman pressed her body against hers.
“I despise you. I’ve been meaning to come find you someday, thank you for saving me the trouble.”
Do you know something?
That sprightly, almost cheerful question came again.
“The one who poisoned the child… was me.”
Very slowly, she turned her head to look at the woman leaning against her.
Her mind felt like it had gone blank in a different way now.
“There’s no one else. I saw it. Lady Sasha put something in the milk bottle.”
The words of a maid she’d overheard just before leaving the attic flickered through her memory.
“No matter how much I try to crush your pride, you won’t break. And I can’t overpower you either. Even you coming here like this… it’s irritating.”
Bang!
“Sasha!”
The Grand Duke’s voice cried out his lover’s name as the door slammed open.
“And so, I decided on this. Even if it’s a little rough.”
Time seemed to crawl.
Sasha reached behind her and tossed the artifact out the window. And in the same breath, with strength from who knew where, she shoved her violently.
Her frail, emaciated body, half-perched against the window frame, wavered. There wasn’t even time to resist, her body fell backward.
“Sasha, are you alright?”
“K-Karl…!”
The Grand Duke barely spared her a glance as she fell, his words filled with concern only for Sasha.
As her body dropped, she caught sight of the woman’s lips curling into a smirk as she clung to the Grand Duke.
In that moment, it became clear.
The force that had once desperately tried to sprout from barren earth, that thing she’d called love, it had long since withered away within her.
The torment she’d felt had been nothing but the residue of lingering attachment.
And now, even that had turned to ash and scattered.
What remained, sprouting swiftly in its place, was hatred, for the Grand Duke, for the woman named Sasha.
That man would not bat an eye even if she died. And if it was by Sasha’s hand, all the more so.
The shame of having once loved such a wretched human being, of enduring every emotion by clinging to the thread of love, twisted in her chest.
She would no longer be dragged down by creatures like them.
She wanted power.
The sensation of her body falling through empty air drew terrifyingly close.
And then….
A voice called out to her.
[Do you desire us?]
