Chapter 19
Before she could react, it felt as if her entire body had been bound in chains.
“Let go!”
Kyrie instinctively twisted her body, struggling to resist. But what bore down on her was an unrelenting, brutal force no strength of hers could overcome.
“What… is this!”
Kyrie forced her head to turn. On either side of her were the duke’s guards, pinning her down with all their might.
Unlike the one who had restrained her before to keep her from unwrapping the bandages, these men showed no such courtesy, their hands mercilessly pressing her into the ground.
The bandages that the Grand Duke had once so carefully wrapped unraveled into a disheveled mess.
“I said let me go!”
The moment Kyrie thrashed, something forced its way between her lips.
“No!”
She clawed at the floor, turning her head, and caught sight of Johanssen’s twisted face.
“Hold still!”
His expression was no different from when he had once hurled cruel words at her, wishing her dead. With trembling hands, he shoved something into the mouth of the girl pinned by the guards.
Kyrie immediately recognized the small, smooth, rounded object. She had once fed them to the crown prince’s attendants, and had nearly administered one to Lexion.
Once, it had found its way into her own mouth nearly every day.
A sedative.
If she swallowed it here, it would be the end.
“Let… go of this…!”
“Ugh!”
She bit down on Johanssen’s hand with all her might, but even so, the medicine spilled helplessly into her mouth.
A water bottle was immediately pressed to her lips, and she had no way to escape the cold stream pouring in. Her throat convulsed, swallowing reflexively.
Veron’s frigid voice fell by her ear.
“There’s talk going around that you pushed Elise down the stairs yesterday.”
“W-what…?”
What was he saying? She was the one who had been shoved in front of all those people.
She was the one discarded, told she was no longer needed and now they were saying she was the one who pushed?
“Fearing punishment, you fled and didn’t return. That’s what His Highness said as well.”
Lexion?
Kyrie’s blurred eyes darted to Veron’s face in disbelief. At that movement, the bandages clinging precariously to her head came completely undone.
What was this. Couldn’t he see?
I’m the one who’s injured.
“My father decided he can no longer stand by.”
What on earth… In the brief span of a single day while she had slept, what kind of rumors had spread? What absurd lies had twisted the truth this time?
As Kyrie’s consciousness began to fade, a streak of crimson hair passed faintly behind Veron.
“Do not worry, Elise.”
“Brother.”
“His Highness has also said he plans to announce your engagement. No one in the Empire will be able to harm you now.”
Elise.
She couldn’t see the girl’s face anymore. Her vision was entirely blurred.
The whole scene felt like an unbearable deja vu, as though she had been cast back to her stepmother’s funeral years before.
Disaster, memory, awareness, everything tangled into confusion. From Kyrie’s pocket, her mother’s pendant clinked softly, then slipped away.
No.
She had only just gotten it back.
Why now…
“…will be sent…”
“…soon…”
Why?
As her consciousness slipped, Kyrie’s ears picked up fragments of conversation exchanged between them.
She bit down hard on her tongue, but all she tasted was the thick, metallic tang of blood. Her focus drifted further and further away.
Help me.
The last thing that rose in her dimming mind was a pair of silver eyes, looking down at her.
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆🌷͙⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
“Congratulations, Your Majesty.”
A low, impassive voice brushed across the glittering marble floor.
“To think Lexion is getting engaged. As his cousin, I find it deeply moving.”
The emperor, hearing the neatly worded congratulations, displayed no change of expression.
For a man whose own son had, without so much as a word of consultation, abruptly announced an engagement, his composure could almost be called serene.
It had taken barely two days since Kyrie’s return to the duke’s manor for Lexion to declare his engagement to Elise Ehrenberg.
Upon hearing the engagement news that very afternoon, Dominic twisted his lips but, standing before the emperor, only spoke calmly.
“Well, it was about time for Lexion to marry.”
He traced the rim of his teacup with idle fingers. Yet, in the depths of his mind, Dominic was preoccupied, trying to deduce why his control-obsessed uncle was so unruffled by his son’s sudden engagement.
Was it the registry of noble weaknesses he would gain by tying himself to the Ehrenberg family?
That list of the aristocracy’s secrets, often rumored in Dominic’s own investigations. He remained skeptical it even existed.
Surely the emperor wouldn’t have allowed such a thing to fall into the hands of a mere noble family.
Though it seemed Lexion believed in it…
Then was there some other advantage?
As Dominic’s thoughts reached that point, the emperor spoke, his tone unnervingly casual.
“It’s just an engagement. Not a marriage, is it?”
“…”
“There are other houses still interested in Lexion. Nothing is decided yet.”
Ah.
So that was it.
Marriage and engagement were two different matters, and an engagement could be broken at any time.
In fact, with this engagement in place, the houses who had been coveting Lexion might even come forward, offering bribes to the emperor to have it reconsidered.
And that, apparently, was proving profitable enough.
Dominic concealed a wry grin behind a polite smile.
At any rate, thanks to those two getting involved, Kyrie Ehrenberg had come to him with her own proposal. From Dominic’s perspective, the engagement was no bad thing.
The emperor soon shifted the conversation.
“Grand Duke. I hear you behaved quite rudely toward Lord Melure.”
At those words, one of the cages lining the chamber walls gave a faint clatter.
Chlapak. Flap.
Dominic turned his gaze toward the cages.
The emperor’s eyes remained fixed on Dominic’s profile as he affected the voice of a concerned uncle.
“Is it not you who should be most eager for marriage, Grand Duke Haswell?”
“..…”
“As it stands, you’ve missed your prime age for marriage, always chasing off to the frontlines.”
Never mind that it was he himself who had blocked Dominic’s marriage prospects, yet the emperor acted as though none of that had happened.
Dominic made no effort to correct him.
“All this time, I’ve felt remiss for neglecting your marriage, and have been trying to find a match that would prove advantageous in every way.”
“Is that so.”
And the best the emperor could manage, after all that effort, was Lord Melure.
It was almost laughable.
No matter what, being of royal blood, the emperor must have feared what people would say if he paired him with a commoner.
“Still, after causing such offense, wouldn’t it be wise to meet Lord Melure again, offer apologies, and perhaps share some conversation?”
“In fact, I have already sent a gift. He seemed rather pleased.”
Melure adored gemstones as much as any man.
There were stones within Haswell’s holdings that even the Melure domain struggled to procure.
It hadn’t been difficult to smooth things over. That was part of why Dominic hadn’t made much fuss in the first place.
Chlapak.
The sound came again. Inside one of the cages, a silver-feathered bird fluttered its wing stumps.
Dominic’s gaze lingered on it.
The bird, its wings clipped long ago, either knew its reality or refused to accept it. it kept trying to take flight, only to crash back down against the cage floor with a dull sound.
That noise recalled an old memory, of a woman walking barefoot down the mansion’s corridor, closing the distance between them on soiled, pale feet.
The sound of the bird’s body colliding with the cage floor was much like the wet, sticky sound her feet had made as they lifted and fell against the marble.
And the look in her bright, brazen eyes, that had wanted him entirely, touched and then slipped from his memory.
The emperor set his cup down upon its saucer.
“Do you think a mere gift will be enough?”
“Your Majesty.”
“Would it not be better to visit personally, admit your fault, and beg forgiveness? Especially when even the Salt Principality is considering a match with you…”
“Regarding that potential match…”
At the emperor’s blatant suggestion, Dominic slowly smiled.
“There is something I would like to say.”
𓂃˖˳·˖ ִֶָ ⋆🌷͙⋆ ִֶָ˖·˳˖𓂃 ִֶָ
After being sedated, Kyrie was confined to her room for several days.
Every attempt to escape ended in failure.
“It already feels like I’ve entered a convent.”
Even as she mocked herself, the voices of the servants occasionally reached her from outside the door.
“How could she do that to Lady Elise?”
“She really is a woman we can’t allow to stay here.”
“Florabelle ought to be her grave!”
Kyrie attentively picked out the words buried in their conversations.
They were preparing to send her to a convent.
She had suspected something like this might happen eventually, but not so suddenly.
‘Could it be… Lexion?’
She never imagined he would give false testimony.
The Grand Duke hadn’t made contact.
Whether he didn’t know she was imprisoned or simply didn’t care what happened to her, she couldn’t be certain.
As time passed, the hope that had filled her heart gradually began to give way to doubt.
‘What should I do now…’
It was while she was mired in such restless, aching thoughts that someone entered her room without so much as a knock.
“…Your Highness the Crown Prince.”
To her surprise, it was Lexion.
