Chapter 21
Kyrie Ehrenberg boarded the carriage bound for the convent with surprising compliance.
“What’s she up to?”
“Could it be remorse? Or despair?”
“Whatever it is, it won’t concern us for much longer.”
The Duke’s servants crowded at the windows, whispering as they watched her ascend the steps. Kyrie sat in a corner of the carriage, hands cuffed, her expression vacant as their murmurs drifted to her ears.
Soon, a familiar voice reached her.
“Is all the luggage loaded?”
“Young master.”
Footsteps approached the carriage. Clunk. Johansson opened the door and looked at Kyrie with a conflicted expression. Kyrie calmly turned her gaze past him, and locked eyes with the Duke.
“……”
As always, he stared at her in silence. As though something foul was before him. As though he were facing his own failure.
“Father.”
Before long, Veron approached and bowed his head to the Duke. Elise stood at a distance, waiting inside another carriage. The Duke turned and walked toward her with Beron in tow.
As if making an excuse, Johansson murmured, “Father and Veron are busy even without your matter.”
“Ah. Must be the engagement, then?”
Hitting the mark, it seemed. Johansson fell silent. Kyrie hadn’t expected any goodbyes from her family, and she wasn’t disappointed now.
‘Just as I thought.’
This was Elise’s matter after all, the “true” pride of the family, now to be engaged to the Crown Prince. Of course the Duke would be personally involved, sparing no effort.
Kyrie turned her eyes quietly to Johansson.
“Then why are you still here?”
Johansson looked at her as if troubled, then finally spoke.
“…I told you, didn’t I? You’d regret it.”
“Trying to offer advice now? Is that all you stayed for?”
Kyrie wore her usual smile. Johansson frowned even deeper and let out a sigh.
“…I’m your brother, Kyrie.”
“Is that so?”
“If you’d just listened to me, even a little, none of this would’ve happened.”
Kyrie only laughed.
She had known, for the past few days, that Johansson had been restlessly pacing in front of her room at night. Perhaps guilt had finally raised its head. Or something like it.
Then again, Johansson had always been like this. When the rest of the family stayed away, he alone would come, mutter nonsense, interfere with her plans, strike up conversations. Laughable, really, to think that such actions stemmed from a sense of duty or guilt.
Not that she had any reason to appreciate the effort. Now, all of his words sounded like hypocrisy, or deception.
When Kyrie only smiled in silence, Johansson swallowed hard and forced out his next words.
“If only you’d been a bit more obedient…”
“No, Johansson.”
Kyrie’s gaze swept him sharply. Her small lips parted slowly.
“If you hadn’t spent half your life blaming your own wrongs on me—”
“……”
“—and hadn’t joined the others in condemning me, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
Johansson clenched his lips and hardened his face. Kyrie smiled with indifference.
“But what’s the point in saying all this now?”
“What?”
“You’ve never once been sorry to me. Only to Elise.”
“What are you saying…?”
As he faltered, Kyrie’s smile grew even lovelier, the very smile he had always found unbearable.
“Isn’t that true, Johansson?”
“……”
“Aren’t you actually glad I’m gone? Now no one will whisper to Elise about what you did.”
“You—”
“You’ll regret it? Haven’t things already gone too far?”
Kyrie reached out and grabbed Johansson’s jaw. Her bound arms forced her to lean toward him, but in that moment, she didn’t care.
“…!”
Just as she expected, Johansson tried to swat her hand away. Kyrie leaned in closer and whispered into his face.
“What’s the harm in being honest, Johansson?”
“What?”
“With me gone, there’s no one left to tell Elise the truth.”
“What are you talking about…”
“You’ve lost her to the Crown Prince himself, so at least you won’t be called a coward now.”
As she spoke a truth she’d long known but never voiced, Johansson’s eyes widened in quiet shock. Kyrie whispered as if amused.
“Brother, huh? Imagine how disgusted Elise would be.”
“……!”
“Even if there were no blood ties, who loves their stepsister, Johansson?”
The moment his shame was laid bare, Johansson’s face crumpled. The corners of his mouth began to tremble.
“It was only for a moment!”
“Oh, I know. That’s exactly when you started being nice to her.”
“It’s in the past!”
“Think Elise will care about that? That a man she once called her brother saw her that way, even for a moment?”
“You…”
“And now the only person who knows this truth that me, is being sent to a convent.”
Kyrie added with mocking sweetness, her gaze locked on his frozen face.
“You’d better pray I never come back.”
Smack!
As her whisper ended, Johansson struck her hand away with trembling fury. His rough voice followed.
“No escort for the carriage!”
“What? But…..”
“That’s… Father’s decision!”
No matter how disgraced a noblewoman might be, sending her off without escort was a grave insult among aristocrats. But no one protested. Not the absent Duke, not Beron.
Kyrie smiled brightly.
“If that’s your choice.”
The guards who heard her wore scowls and shook their heads, as if looking at a mad dog truly beyond saving. Kyrie turned to them and said, sealing the matter:
“Didn’t you hear? Fall back.”
The guards, though murmuring uneasily, withdrew quickly. Truthfully, none had relished the idea of escorting the family’s disgraced daughter all the way to a remote convent.
Thud.
Even Johansson turned and walked back into the Duke’s residence, the door slamming shut behind him. Silence descended.
The coachman’s uneasy sigh drifted into the carriage.
“Damn it… just my luck, to get stuck with a woman like her.”
Hearing his grumbling, Kyrie’s smile slowly faded. Sweat dampened her palms.
‘Good.’
Provoking Johansson had been a risk, even for her. But she had learned something from the matter with Lexien: fear alone achieves nothing. Sometimes, avoidance leads to worse outcomes.
Johansson had always been the weakest to provocation. So she had struck deliberately, with truths she had never spoken until now, hoping he would act on impulse.
The best would’ve been if he pulled me off the carriage and beat me.
She had planned to use that moment to escape. If needed, she would break her wrist to remove the cuffs.
Though he hadn’t done that, the guards were now gone. Not ideal, but not bad either.
‘Now there’s a chance to run.’
In Kyrie’s case, the absence of an escort might even be to her advantage. As she began pondering how to escape, the carriage began to roll forward.
“Hyah!”
The carriage, moving at a steady pace, came to a halt on the outskirts of the capital, where the road split between the mountains and the main highway to Flovelle.
“Stop here.”
“And you are…?”
Kyrie peered through a crack in the carriage wall. A man with a scarred face was speaking to the coachman.
“But the mountain road….”
“You’ll be well compensated.”
Their voices dropped into fragments, then silence followed.
When the carriage started again, the road grew rough and bumpy.
‘…I have a bad feeling about this.’
Kyrie struggled to free herself from the cuffs. She twisted her wrist, slammed her hands repeatedly against the seat, hoping to break the bones or dislocate a finger.
“Ugh!”
After hours of effort, pain shot through her, but no success. Her injured head, still bandaged began to pound. Sweat dripped down her neck. She touched the fraying bandages.
“You know something? The lady takes a lot of work.”
At the sound of his voice in her memory, she shuddered involuntarily.
‘…I trusted him for nothing.’
‘Why had she believed he might become her salvation?’
Thinking back, it was foolish. Their first meeting had left a poor impression. Their conversations had been short, thorny.
He had dismissed her life choices as misguided advice, taken her precious pendant without permission.
And yet, he brought her to the Grand Duke’s estate, treated her injuries, and when she woke, he had been right by her side.
“Idiot.”
Kyrie muttered to herself with bitter sarcasm. After Lexien, yet another man she’d placed hope in, only to cling to that hope long after it faded.
Thud!
The carriage jolted again, more violently this time. The shaking intensified, as if rolling over an unpaved, treacherous path.
The convent’s still far.
Still, there was time. If she could free her hands, throw open the door, and leap…
Just as she braced her wrist against the hard armrest once more…
Bang!
Something slammed violently against the wall of the carriage.
