Chapter 72
“It was seventeen years ago. My deceased daughter, Aira Chandler, was chosen by the black dragon at our estate in Vicrea.”
Count Chandler said. Simultaneous commotion arose from the nobles’ section. Hendrick, who had known nothing about the black dragon, sought out Sian with his gaze in the suddenly tumultuous assembly hall.
Carl also looked at Sian sitting far in the audience, but no particular emotion could be read from her expression.
It was impossible to know how to interpret her calmness now, when she had shed tears earlier about being too afraid to reveal herself as the black dragon’s master.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Hendrick asked Carl in a lowered voice. But Carl had no words to answer with.
Sian had clearly said that Revenant knew nothing about her birth. Carl’s mind became complicated with questions about how Count Chandler had come to appear here as a witness to the black dragon, and why he was revealing this fact now.
Look here, the incidents that have struck the Empire were indeed the black dragon’s doing.
Commotion poured down like heavy rain as people everywhere whispered and made their own judgments. Sian quietly twisted the corner of her mouth into a smile.
“Silence!”
The surrounding noise was so loud that Count Chandler’s voice from the center of the platform couldn’t be heard. At Hendrick’s gesture, the attendant shouted loudly enough to overwhelm the assembly.
Because the commotion arising from Count Chandler’s statement had been so intense, the silence that followed the next moment was heavy enough to weigh on one’s shoulders.
“Count Winston Chandler. Your effort in coming all the way from the distant west to address the capital’s turmoil is commendable. However, what is the meaning of this? Seventeen years ago seems far too long past.”
Hendrick spoke, showing signs of suspicion.
“Seventeen years is but a moment compared to a dragon’s lifespan. The black dragon that came to my daughter one day bore a striking resemblance to Pegadrasil, the mortal enemy that the great founding dragon Yggdrasil fought with his life. Therefore, I, who had received the mission to protect the Empire and was guarding my domain, concealed the truth out of fear of the chaos that this dragon and my daughter chosen by it would bring to the Empire.”
“Concealed…?”
Hendrick quickly realized that the circumstances the Count Chandler spoke of aligned with the circumstances Sian had previously been unable to speak of, saying she would “handle it.”
“I too have seen the contents recorded in the noble registry, Count Chandler. It was recorded that from when nine-year-old Aira Chandler began suffering from high fever until her death, the moon did not rise.”
Carl interjected. Count Chandler bowed his head solemnly.
“The dragon that chose my daughter was so enormous it blocked the moon. The records until her death represent the days I spent agonizing over what to do with my daughter who had been chosen by the black dragon.”
“Then, the black dragon’s master didn’t die?”
Carl’s brow narrowed sharply. Count Chandler raised his head to look at Carl. Even as the conversation between Count Chandler and Prince Carl continued, endless murmuring noise continued from the seats where the nobles were gathered.
The Marquis carefully clasped his hands together as he watched the chaotic situation in the assembly hall.
Though he didn’t directly turn to look, he was acutely aware of a single presence in the empty audience seats—a woman with platinum blonde hair identical to Count Chandler’s.
‘That child will try to hide her identity as the black dragon’s master by any means.’
Revenant’s voice echoed in the Marquis’s ears.
‘A black dragon beside the successor of the sacred silver dragon Yggdrasil? Preposterous.’
Revenant’s satisfied smile and expression had been almost chilling.
‘Make sure to expose that fact in front of many people. And reveal that the one Count Chandler tried and failed to kill is none other than the Prince’s fiancée, Haley Dude.’
The Marquis could hear his own heart pounding in his ears.
He had already learned from Revenant that the Prince’s fiancée was none other than the black dragon’s master, and had agreed to Revenant’s scheme to use her as a weakness, taking his place in the noble assembly.
However, he hadn’t expected her to come observe in person at the assembly hall, where those without names recorded in the noble registry couldn’t attend.
To come deliberately to see and hear the discussion about the black dragon…
Whether it was boldness or something else entirely, he couldn’t tell.
Moreover, to maintain such a composed expression even before the father who had tried to kill her.
The Marquis moistened his dry lips and watched Sian from the corner of his eye.
As if everything happening before her eyes had nothing to do with her, the Prince’s fiancée remained calm without a single change in expression.
“My daughter Aira Chandler died that day recorded in the noble registry. At least, she died to our Chandler family, and likely in reality as well.”
While the Marquis was watching Sian, Count Chandler responded solemnly to Carl’s question.
“Because I poisoned her and abandoned her in a forest frequented by wolves.”
The commotion, which had briefly subsided, erupted again at the heartless father’s belated confession.
“You deliberately killed her?”
“How cruel…”
The atmosphere instantly descended into chaos, with condemnation of the heartless father who killed his own child overshadowing the confirmation of the black dragon.
“Silence!”
The chief attendant’s loud voice subdued the atmosphere.
“Dear Count Chandler. Do you realize what you are confessing?”
Carl, who had known about the black dragon’s selection and the resulting waves it caused but hadn’t heard the details beyond that, unconsciously bit the inside of his cheek with his molars.
“Before testifying about the black dragon’s existence, you are confessing to the crime of filicide.”
Hendrick too frowned at the unpleasant circumstances as he rebuked him.
Nine years old. A young daughter of merely nine—no matter how afraid he was of the black dragon, he had poisoned her and left her as wolf food.
‘Her hands are rougher than I expected.’
Carl remembered Sian’s hands that he had held in the carriage returning from the Carter mansion. Small and slender, yet as rough and weathered as any man’s.
It was in that carriage that he became certain Sian was the black dragon’s master. He had half-suspected it through Michael’s message, and became convinced when hearing about Revenant using the black dragon story as bait.
Why specifically a black dragon?
The answer to that question came together quickly. Because Sian, whom Revenant considered an enemy, was the master of an ominous black dragon that might be Pegadrasil’s successor.
Carl felt a strange pity for Sian as she deflected, acting as if it had nothing to do with her.
There seemed no other reason she would have been expelled from her family. And if that assumption was correct, Carl thought nothing could be more heartbreaking than those rough hands.
Silver and black justice. It was incomprehensible why stories that had been contentious during the nation’s founding should still have such influence after more than a thousand years had passed.
Perhaps he thought this way because he himself was the master of Idelin, the glorious dragon praised as Yggdrasil’s successor.
We’re in the same situation. Carl suppressed his bitter feelings as he thought.
Twelve years ago, though he had only glimpsed the platinum-haired girl for a brief moment on the road to Ivarid, perhaps the reason he remembered her for so long was some strange instinctual pull of recognizing one of his own kind.
Carl suppressed his expression from contorting and instead clenched his fist tightly on the table.
“I will pay amply for my crimes.”
Count Chandler humbly bowed his head, accepting Hendrick’s condemnation.
“Perhaps the Count will end up paying a lighter price.”
Antonio, who had been silent, spoke up.
