Chapter 30
The initially soft applause grew louder, mixed with cheers of excitement.
Startled, Aveline looked around to find knights packed closely nearby, though she hadn’t noticed when they’d gathered.
“Magnificent skills, my lady!”
“Your movements were so perfect and efficient, we watched breathlessly!”
“You’ve torn up the training ground, my lady!”
The knights each offered a word of praise, marveling at Aveline’s skill.
“Oh, it’s nothing really…”
Already weak to compliments, Aveline’s face reddened in embarrassment at the sudden shower of applause, unsure how to react.
While she had always wanted recognition from someone, this was a bit overwhelming.
Still, she couldn’t help but feel her spirits soaring.
“Ahem.”
As the knights looked on with expectant eyes, Aveline felt compelled to show them something more. She carefully picked up a few pebbles from nearby and began juggling them.
“Wow!”
When one of the knights exclaimed in admiration, Aveline’s juggling speed gradually increased.
“Hmm. This isn’t all I can do.”
Aveline demonstrated one of her specialties: ‘Swiftly throwing stones while juggling’.
It involved quickly striking one of the juggling stones to aim at a target. This was Aveline’s signature move that Sir Ridan had praised while laughing so hard his sides hurt.
“I’ll hit that door with this stone—”
“Oof!”
But suddenly the training ground door opened, and someone collapsed after being hit by the stone instead of the door.
Recognizing the person’s face, someone quickly approached and shouted:
“Count!”
What?
Surprised, Aveline stopped juggling and approached to check the fallen person’s face.
“…Father?”
Surprisingly, the person who had flung open the training ground door and been hit by the pebble was none other than Count Herolds.
“Move the Count!”
“Yes, sir!”
The knights efficiently carried the unconscious Count Herolds to his room.
“…What on earth happened?”
The butler was quite flustered when Count Herolds was carried in on a knight’s back.
“Well…”
“The young lady was demonstrating her skills to us when there was a slight accident.”
As Aveline hesitated to speak, one of the accompanying knights answered instead.
“…Skills?”
The butler asked as if to confirm what he had heard.
“Yes. It involved swiftly and accurately aiming stones while juggling to hit a target.”
“Then the target was…!?”
As the knight continued, the butler’s expression grew increasingly pale.
He clearly thought Aveline had aimed for the Count.
“No, that’s not it!”
Unable to bear it any longer, Aveline interrupted.
“Ahem. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I wasn’t trying to hit Father. The door was my target, but it suddenly opened as Father was coming in…”
“Ah, I see. So that’s what happened.”
Relief flooded the butler’s face as the misunderstanding was cleared up.
“What happened this time?”
The physician who had been suddenly summoned appeared, wiping his sweat with a handkerchief.
It was the same physician who had attended when Aveline had accidentally knocked Count Herolds unconscious by misdirecting her magic power last time.
“The Count seems to be collapsing frequently these days.”
The physician examined Count Herolds’ condition with a worried expression.
“Hmm.”
After examining Count Herolds for a while, the physician tilted his head as if something was strange.
“What is it?”
When the butler couldn’t bear it any longer and asked, the physician spoke gravely.
“His forehead… is dented.”
“Dented?”
“Look here.”
Where the physician pointed, the center of Count Herolds’ forehead, reddened from the stone impact, was very slightly indented.
‘This can’t be happening.’
Aveline’s conscience pricked her heart madly for unexpectedly gifting her father a dented forehead.
“Well, it should heal quickly once new flesh grows.”
“Phew.”
The physician’s words allowed Aveline to lift some of the weight from her heart.
“It would be a different story if it leaves a scar, though.”
No, she couldn’t lift the weight after all.
“I’ve applied an ointment that works well. The Count seems to have fainted temporarily, so I’ll write out a diet to replenish his strength when he wakes up.”
While the butler briefly left to receive the diet plan from the physician, the knights also returned to their training.
Left alone, Aveline sat in a chair beside the bed, quietly observing her unconscious father.
‘I think this is the first time I’ve been able to look at him freely like this.’
Aveline had rarely exchanged more than three sentences with her always-busy father.
When she was young, she had deliberately fought with Ares a few times just to talk with her father.
Even if it was just for the brief moment he scolded the twins, at least she could see his face.
‘As I grew a little older, I almost gave up.’
She had realized that no matter how hard she tried to catch her father’s eye, she could never reach his standards.
‘But to think he would do such a thing.’
Even thinking about it again, Melina Sroon’s story at the banquet was hard to believe.
That he had stormed into the Sroon estate early in the morning demanding an apology to Aveline, that he had searched through all precedents to avoid punishment for causing a disturbance at the imperial banquet, and that he had even recruited Ares early into the Imperial faction as a condition for letting it slide.
It felt somewhat disconnected from her father’s usual cold treatment of her.
For Aveline, who had never felt much affection from her nearby father, let alone the love of her mother who was far away due to illness, it truly seemed like a dream.
“Ugh.”
Just then, Count Herolds, who had been unconscious all this time, groaned.
“Father?”
“…What on earth happened?”
Count Herolds asked as he struggled to sit up.
‘Does he not remember?’
Well, it made sense. He had fainted as soon as he opened the training ground door, so he might not know what had happened at all.
However, Aveline, guilty of the deed, hesitated to confess her crime with her own mouth.
She was afraid her father would get angry.
But since she couldn’t hide it anyway, Aveline just blurted it out honestly.
“I was aiming a juggling stone at the training ground door, but right at that moment, you opened the door…”
“No, not that.”
“Pardon?”
Then what else could it be?
As Aveline blinked in confusion, Count Herolds spoke as if frustrated.
“I’m talking about that enormous flower basket that arrived at the estate today! Who on earth sent it?”
“…The flower basket?”
How did Father know about that?
“You seem to have forgotten that everything entering and leaving this estate is reported to me.”
Count Herolds added an explanation after reading Aveline’s expression.
“I was told there was no sender’s name, so I was coming to ask if you had any idea who it might be from.”
“So you came all the way to the training ground for that?”
Aveline’s heart fluttered, misreading the situation, at the thought that her father had tracked her location to come find her himself.
“Yes. Ugh… But why does my head hurt so much?”
However, Aveline’s fluttering quickly ended as Count Herolds grimaced and clutched his head.
“Ahem. Hmm.”
It was no wonder his head hurt, as Count Herolds’ forehead was still red in the center.
Fortunately, the bleeding had stopped quickly, and the doctor had applied an ointment that would reduce swelling and promote new skin growth.
Count Herolds’ forehead was shining red with the glossy ointment applied.
“So, anyway, who sent the flowers?”
Count Herolds, unaware of his own appearance, pressed again.
Aveline fell into thought.
She wasn’t sure if she should honestly say it was from Theron.
The reason Theron sent the flower basket was clear.
It was intended to remind Aveline of the conversation they had in last night’s dream.
At the same time, it was also meant to spread rumors that Aveline had received flowers from someone.
Just seeing her father rush over to ask who sent it was enough to know this wasn’t an ordinary event.
“Well…”
Bang!
“Father!”
The person who burst in, roughly opening the door, was Ares.
He seemed to have heard that Count Herolds had collapsed as soon as he got home, as he hadn’t even changed his clothes.
“You’re in such a state.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ares, who had given a light bow, raised his head and made an odd expression upon seeing Count Herolds’ red, shiny forehead.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sniff… it’s… sniff… nothing.”
Eventually, Ares lowered his head and his shoulders began to shake.
“Tch, crying over something like this.”
However, misunderstanding his son’s behavior, Count Herolds shook his head as if it were ridiculous.
“I’m… so… sor… ry…!”
Ares’ shoulders shook even more finely as he spoke, pausing between each syllable.
“I… just need a moment…”
Ares, who had barely squeezed out the words through gritted teeth, hurriedly ran out of the room.
A little while later, he re-entered, seemingly having calmed down.
‘Wow. He’s absolutely not looking at Father.’
Probably not trusting himself to hold back his laughter again, Ares kept his gaze fixed on Aveline the entire time.
When Aveline frowned her eyebrows as if to ask what he was looking at, Ares finally spoke as if he had just remembered something.
“Oh, right. His Highness the Crown Prince said earlier that he would invite you soon.”
“Me?”
Why on earth?
