“Uh…”
It was not the first time our bodies had touched, but this felt different from back then.
‘I definitely know that no one hugs a friend like this.’
Rastan lowered his gaze and met my eyes. For some reason, his irises, which looked slightly darker than usual, shimmered faintly.
At the suffocatingly seductive look in his eyes, I involuntarily drew in a breath, and Rastan opened his mouth. In a composed voice completely different from the feeling radiating from his whole body.
“Thank you. For saying that.”
With hands that felt hotter than before, he held me tightly and spoke softly.
“You said you cannot promise. But even so, I will hope. That you will stay here for a very long time.”
Unable to say yes or no, I instead tightened my grip on the hem of his clothes with both hands for no reason.
‘…Honestly, you make people feel bad.’
After staying like that for a moment, he slowly pulled away, looking regretful.
“As I said earlier, I will try to persuade Count Krone properly. Leave that matter to me and do not worry about it anymore.”
Not my fiancé Gerald, not my older brother Huan, not even His Majesty the Emperor, but a complete stranger like Rastan persuading my father. I couldn’t picture it at all.
But I had never seen or heard of him failing when he set out to do something.
‘When this man speaks with such confidence, he must have a way.’
I decided to simply trust him and nodded.
“Alright. Thank you so much.”
Rastan smiled softly and, as always, lifted one of my hands and placed a light kiss on it.
“It is my honor, my Lady.”
It was a slightly playful greeting, like a prince from a fairy tale, but it suited his absurdly handsome face so well that I ended up staring at him in a daze.
***
After returning to my lavish room, no, the Duchess’s room, I took out my small personal belongings bag.
Sally had already unpacked and organized the larger luggage while we were eating earlier, so I only needed to sort this one.
“Let’s see, the identification badge goes into the drawer of the bedside table…”
After putting the few items I had into appropriate places, I took out the last item.
It was a small wooden jewelry box.
Seeing it reminded me of the function of House Lansval’s heirloom that Frederick had explained.
‘He said it would help when I truly needed it. But then why…?’
Although I hadn’t been carrying this pendant pressed tightly against my body as Frederick had urged, it had still been kept close to me the whole time.
Yet when I was almost kidnapped yesterday, this pendant showed no reaction at all.
‘Does it only work if it’s actually touching my body? Or does that mean that incident was not the trial of my lifetime?’
If it had failed to activate because it knew Rastan would come, then it really would be a remarkable artifact.
‘Or maybe… is it an item so old that all its power has already drained away? Whether that power was magic or something else.’
I recalled Frederick’s appearance, which had grown noticeably fainter in color over time.
Whatever the power was, when it was contained for a long time in something that wasn’t a living body, it seemed to slowly disperse into the air after a certain amount of time. Much like how scents linger in objects.
‘Well, still, Frederick had some strength left until the very end. If this pendant had become completely useless, he would have noticed.’
Taking it as a final gesture of loyalty to Frederick, I decided to trust this pendant’s power for now.
‘From here on, I still have to bring down House Lansval, find Rosie, and secure a place to live. Who knows what might happen, so for now I’ll trust it and keep it on me. Just thinking that I have a last line of defense to protect me in case of an emergency is reassuring.’
Thinking I would carry it as a kind of talisman, even if only to humor myself, I found an empty necklace, attached the pendant, and put it around my neck.
‘For a talisman, it’s quite pretty.’
The tiny opal pendant caught the chandelier’s dazzling light and emitted beautiful, multicolored gleams.
I tucked the necklace inside my clothes so that the pendant wouldn’t be easily visible.
***
In the yard of the two-story house from which Evelyn and her group had departed, several large men’s corpses were strewn about haphazardly.
How much time had passed like that?
A man stepped into the yard.
Even if he had come knowing the situation, one would expect at least some reaction upon seeing the corpses, but his face was completely indifferent.
It was as if he were looking at pebbles placed in front of his own house.
He walked in slowly, then stopped beside one corpse and nudged its shoulder lightly, as if checking whether it was dead.
Seeing the stiff body sway, the man let out a snort of disbelief.
“Ha, stupid bastards. I told you to hold out until I arrived. Tsk…”
It was a flat, emotionless voice, with not a trace of pity for the dead.
His grayish-brown eyes, for some reason today, gleamed with a particularly cold, limestone-like light.
Then, somewhere, a blinking red light caught his eye.
The man immediately realized it was shining from the pocket of one corpse’s trousers and bent down to rummage through it.
When he pulled out what his hand found, a communication device was blinking. At the sight of it, the man’s lips twisted roughly.
“What, were you trying to steal it and swallow it whole? You bastard! Why do you think I gave her this, and you just had to mess with it?!”
With an irritated expression, he stomped hard on the chest of the already cold corpse.
“Because of you incompetent idiots, everything went wrong! Ha… where the hell did they go?”
The man stared quietly at the still-blinking communication device, then tucked it into his clothes and turned around. Then he spoke to empty space.
“Destroy the evidence. Track Evelyn’s location again.”
At that, black smoke like before coiled around the assailants’ corpses like snakes, and soon flames flared up there with a whoosh.
Even as the fire suddenly surged up behind him, the man simply walked away without looking back.
The light pouring out from the flames shimmered over his radiant blond hair in hues of sunset.
***
The next day, I headed into the city with Ris in a carriage of House Blake. There was something I needed to take care of quickly.
When I told Rastan that I wanted to get some fresh air outside, he immediately stood up and suggested we go together.
‘It really was hard to shake him off…’
He said that if he couldn’t go himself, he would at least assign several guards to accompany me, but I firmly refused.
“If I drag around ten or so guards in a crowded place, it will only make me stand out.”
Since the Lansval household believed that I had gone to my family home to recuperate, this reasoning did make some sense.
After earnest persuasion, I finally succeeded in going out with only Ris.
Inside the carriage, I repeatedly urged her to keep this a secret.
“Ris. Today, I simply walked around the Capital with you. We even bought a dessert at a cafe. This is exactly how you report it to His Grace. Understood?”
“I cannot do th–“
I grabbed both of her hands tightly and pushed through by force.
“I want to tell His Grace myself later. Now, promise!”
Of course, I had no intention of ever telling Rastan about this, but there was no other choice if I wanted to seal the lips of Ris, who was loyal to a fault.
There was a reason I was keeping the purpose of today’s outing this secret.
‘Because I’m going to place a request with the information guild to find Rosie’s whereabouts.’
It might look suspicious for an unmarried woman to be searching for a young child, but that was something I could cover up with an excuse somehow.
The problem was that the very reason I wanted to leave the Ducal estate was because of Rosie.
‘If Rastan’s information network reaches that far, he might interfere to prevent me from finding Rosie. He might even send Rosie far away.’
Had he not previously said he would send Dona far away for my sake?
He might be the type who quietly removes people who get in the way without drawing attention. So no matter how much he was on my side, I couldn’t be completely at ease about this matter.
Taking every precaution in my own way, I went all the way to a high-end information guild and placed a request to find Rosie.
If the place I had commissioned before was a mid-level guild, then this one was among the best in the Capital.
Naturally, the commission fee was several times higher, but now I had the means to pay it.
The value of meeting Rosie again couldn’t even be compared to that amount of money.
“Please make sure you find her.”
“There is no way our guild cannot find a mere child. You may rest assured.”
Seeing the guild employee straighten his shoulders confidently and pat his chest, I felt reassured, as if I had just eaten a warm bowl of gukbap.
