Chapter 036
Entering Lerox’s bedroom, Sioden turned the chair beside the bed and sat. He didn’t want to face his father.
Turning his back to his father, Sioden said,
“I believe you know how the North deals with bastards.”
Unlike the South, which was lenient towards illegitimate children, the North eliminated illegitimate children as soon as their existence was known.
It wasn’t so much that he really intended to kill Merwen, but rather that he wanted to torment Lerox.
At that moment, Sioden felt a more intense urge for revenge against his father than ever before. He felt he could even sell his soul if it guaranteed his father’s most agonizing death.
Lerox retorted in the most despicable way.
“Do you mean to kill the child your mother cherished?”
“……Isn’t it wrong, disgustingly so, that you left evidence of your infidelity near your wife?”
As Lerox said, Evelyn truly cherished Merwen. While she didn’t even inquire about her legitimate child’s whereabouts despite months of separation, she would ask Merwen where she had been after only half a day away from the castle.
If Evelyn had known that Merwen was her husband’s child, would she have been so kind?
Sioden believed she wouldn’t have been.
Lerox protested with a cliché.
“The child is innocent.”
Of course, Sioden never intended to blame Merwen for being born.
He didn’t want to push her to her death simply because she carried Lerox’s blood. It wasn’t because they had grown up in the same house for over ten years.
Even if Merwen were a stranger he’d passed on the road, Sioden wouldn’t want to kill someone because of their parents. If he reasoned that way, he himself wouldn’t seem worthy of living.
However, Lerox would die soon. Sioden wanted his soon-to-be-deceased father to be miserable and insecure until his last breath.
That’s why he said those insincere words.
If there was something he overlooked, it was that Lerox always surpassed his predictions with his disappointing actions.
“So Evelyn didn’t reveal that Merwen was illegitimate.”
“……What did you say?”
Sioden rose from his seat, disbelieving. Forgetting that he needed to hide his face to avoid showing his emotions, he approached the bed to confirm the truth from his father’s expression.
Lerox shamelessly met his gaze without flinching. Looking into the eyes of the man, clouded by his approaching death, Sioden almost strangled him again.
Veins bulged on his clenched fist. Lerox, knowing what impulse his son was feeling, continued to speak.
“Evelyn knew. She asked me.”
“……”
“I answered her truthfully.”
“Now, not only are you deceiving me and my mother… .”
Before he could finish, Sioden realized that he might be the only one who considered this deception.
Evelyn knew the truth and remained silent.
She didn’t even leave a will regarding Merwen’s biological father.
His legitimate children, who shared the same father, didn’t go that far…
“If I die here, it’s all your fault.”
The voice of the woman, as sick as the man before him, echoed in his mind.
Lerox, his face white with rage, smiled at his son, who couldn’t speak.
“If you kill Merwen, you’ll be betraying Evelyn’s intention to protect her.”
“……”
“I know you can’t do that.”
Lerox said with conviction,
“Don’t you still act as if your mother were alive?”
It must have been a mockery.
Even after his father’s death, whenever Sioden recalled that moment, he thought the same thing: Lerox mocked him even as he was dying.
Evelyn hated him, and Lerox ridiculed him.
Why?
Why did his parents, consistently…
To Sioden, who was confused by a primal hatred and enmity that surpassed any familial affection, Lerox continued to bind him with chains.
“If you harm Merwen, you’ll never gain the loyalty of the vassals.”
With those words, which held a meaning beyond simple threats, Sioden lost his will to watch his father any longer.
As he left the sickroom, he ordered the physician waiting at the door.
“Stop the treatment.”
“……”
“Isn’t he already a man whose spirit is dead? There’s no need to try to save his body.”
Unlike the lord’s guards, the physician, who had no family to protect him, obeyed readily.
Lerox died soon after.
His last moments were agonizing. While he had been receiving life-sustaining medication mixed with painkillers, Sioden had stopped all treatment, so he must have endured the agonizing pain of his insides melting away with a clear mind.
It was what he wanted.
Yet, he didn’t feel relieved.
The day Lerox’s coffin was laid beneath the frozen ground, Sioden had a premonition.
He felt that for the rest of his life, he would be this suffocated.
☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓 ☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓
The unpleasant recollection of the past ended with Rupid’s words.
He still bowed his head as he replied.
“We were aware as well.”
“……What?”
had never once thought that the elders would reveal Merwen’s origins.
Given the North’s strong aversion to illegitimate children, he believed that had they known she was a bastard, they wouldn’t have treated her so affectionately.
Moreover, the vassals of the family, including the elders, had remained silent since the moment Merwen first entered the castle.
Even while Evelyn cherished Merwen like her daughter for over ten years, they had stayed silent.
If that silence was not agreed upon in advance with Evelyn, it was a clear deception.
Rupid continued speaking.
“Why would that be a blemish on Lady Merwen?”
“Do you really not know how the North deals with bastards?”
The man, older than Lerox and completely knowledgeable about the laws, said without blinking.
“If you two had married, Miss Merwen would have become a legitimate Raslet.”
What did I just hear?
Sioden blinked in disbelief.
“Right now, you’re telling me…”
Before he could finish his question, Rupid reinforced his point.
“While incest is taboo now, it was not impossible to marry within the family in the past.”
So Rupid was saying that he knew Merwen and Sioden were related, yet still intended to place her as the Lady of Raslet.
It was disgusting. Sioden suppressed the urge to vomit.
The man, perhaps resembling his deceased friend in his lack of tact, continued.
“The former lord also considered this point. While revealing the blood relation was unexpected…”
Sioden didn’t let Rupid finish. He rose from his seat and seized the elder by the scruff of his neck.
Throwing open the drawing-room door violently, Sioden tossed the man into the corridor.
“Get out.”
Rupid looked up at him with wide, bewildered eyes, as if he couldn’t understand why Sioden was acting this way.
It felt like he was the only one who wasn’t losing his mind amidst the surrounding madness.
“If you utter such nonsense again, I’ll cut your…”
Sioden suppressed a wave of nausea and turned his head away. He left the elder in the corridor and turned his back.
Bang.
Not long after he slammed the door shut, Ben entered to check on his master’s condition.
Ben approached Sioden, who was sitting on the sofa in the drawing room, his face covered.
“My apologies. I should have stopped him…”
Sioden shook his head at the apologetic man. How could Ben have stopped it?
Even Ben didn’t know that the elders knew about the relationship between Merwen and Lerox.
And yet, the elders had remained silent until now. They had kept quiet, acting as if they knew nothing, until he came of age, Lerox died, and even after the Emperor’s death.
He had always thought they should be rooted out, but now he felt that ordinary methods wouldn’t suffice.
If necessary, even if it meant beheading them all… Sioden remained lost in thought, his face still covered.
Then, there was a knock on the door.
“Your Grace, a letter has arrived.”
It was Rhys’s voice. Sioden gestured. Understanding his master’s intent, Ben shouted from beyond the door.
“Enter!”
Soon, the door opened and Rhys entered. Sioden raised his head. The knight, whose face had become sharper after experiencing many things with him, approached.
Rhys, stopping before him, took a letter from his bosom.
“The new Duke of Rowen has sent a letter.”
☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓 ☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓
The Duke of Rowen’s residence.
A sharp-looking silver-haired man with an eyepatch over his left eye strode briskly across the corridor.
Arriving at the lord’s office, he threw open the heavy oak door.
“Brother, haven’t you heard from Raslet yet?”
Iswen frowned at his brother’s behavior, which showed no consideration for etiquette.
Standing in the doorway, he glared at his brother with his remaining eye.
“Demian Rowen, I told you to get into the habit of knocking before entering someone else’s space.”
Demian perfunctorily knocked on the door. Three loud knocks echoed through the thick wood.
“Satisfied?”
While it was barely a gesture, Iswen didn’t rebuke him further.
Demian’s inability to control his temper was nothing new. Adding one more damaged door to the list wouldn’t change anything.
Interpreting the silence as tacit permission, Demian entered the room. The door he carelessly left open slammed shut with a loud bang.
Demian stood before Iswen’s desk, arms crossed.
“Have you heard from Raslet?”
“It’s not time yet.”
The letter had only just arrived, or perhaps not even yet, at Raslet.
Demian knew that.
He was just frustrated.
With a sigh, Demian looked up at the ceiling.
“Marrying her off like that wasn’t right.”
Iswen spoke to his brother, who began pacing restlessly around the room.
“Raslet was the best possible match at the time.”
“Best?”
Demian, who had been pacing, stopped abruptly. He looked at his brother with a calm face, asking him reproachfully.
“Knowing how Raslet treated Iella, you call that the best?”
He had heard that in the North, Iella had been unable to leave her designated area.
They had excluded her from everything, saying she was too delicate to withstand Northern culture, and they had ganged up to isolate her.
They had been so proud of it that all the news had spread to the South.
Demian gritted his teeth.
“We shouldn’t have pushed that marriage through.”
