CHAPTER 39……………
Now that I thought about it, it had already been a week.
I looked out the window and murmured,
“Yeah… he must have arrived by now.”
In that week, not a single letter had come.
It would’ve been hard to send one from the road, and by the time Ede could send one from the capital, it would obviously arrive after he was already back.
Aslan trotted over, propped his chin on his hands, and muttered,
“Uncle really did go far away, huh.”
Could you not say it like that? It makes me nervous he might really just disappear somewhere far away after leaving Ayla with me.
I opened my arms toward Aslan and Ayla.
They automatically nestled in on either side of me.
Hugging them both, I looked out the window and said,
“Let’s wait while thinking about what gift Sir Mente might bring for you.”
Aslan’s eyes sparkled.
“I want a long string! Feathers are good too, and I hope he brings yarn!”
Even if he acts like a person most of the time, his favorite things haven’t changed at all…
I laughed awkwardly.
“Well, we’ll have to hope Sir Mente magically knows what you want. What about you, Ayla?”
When I turned to her, she worked her lips for a long while without speaking.
I wondered if she didn’t want anything at all and felt a pang of pity—when suddenly,
“I… want a dollhouse. A really big three-story mansion one.”
“What? Ahaha!”
I’d forgotten—Ayla had gotten much bolder about stating her wishes in the past few days.
And a dollhouse was exactly the sort of thing a girl her age would want.
Maybe she thought I was laughing at her, because her face turned bright red.
“M-Madam, please don’t laugh.”
“Then don’t be so cute.”
With a grin, I ruffled Ayla’s hair.
From the side, Aslan jumped in.
“Not fair, me too, me too!”
“Haha! All right, all right.”
I tousled Aslan’s hair just as roughly.
Their hair turned into a mess in an instant, but when they met each other’s eyes, they both burst out laughing.
The sight let me blow away at least a little of my unease.
‘Please, Ede Mente—don’t die. Come back alive and safe.’
And make sure to come home with both hands full of gifts for them yourself.
That’s the only way Ayla can avoid the path the original story laid out for her.
“Your Grace, we’ve arrived.”
At that moment, Lloyd had just arrived at the Eckhart Duke’s townhouse in the imperial capital—exactly as Minerva had expected.
Wearing a white mask, Lloyd stepped down from the carriage.
The cool wind of the capital ruffled his mint-colored hair before passing on.
It was nothing like the warm breezes of the southern Mente or Fran territories.
“Welcome, Your Grace. Lady Priscilla is expecting you.”
As if they’d known exactly when he would arrive, the butler was already at the front gate, greeting him with utmost respect.
Taking a deep breath, Lloyd fully felt that he had returned to the capital—to his own home.
“Lead the way.”
“This way, sir.”
The butler began guiding Lloyd somewhere.
But following in silence, Lloyd soon sensed something off. He stopped and asked sharply,
“…Why are we going to my room?”
“If you go to Lady Priscilla looking like that, she’ll be upset.”
The butler’s voice carried concern as he glanced at Lloyd’s appearance.
Indeed, after traveling hard toward the capital and camping along the way, Lloyd wasn’t exactly presentable.
It was clear the butler thought he was doing him a favor.
That only made Lloyd’s temper flare.
“Does it look like I came here to mind formalities?”
“Even so, Lady Priscilla dislikes untidiness—”
“That’s enough. I’ll go to her myself.”
“Wai—Your Grace!”
Lloyd stomped off toward where he knew she’d be at this hour.
BANG. He threw the door open roughly.
There, with her back to the window, a middle-aged woman held a smoking pipe. Her elegant voice chided him.
“So noisy when you arrive. Your footsteps are loud enough to be heard from a mile away.”
“How long has it been?”
Her eyes sharpened.
“No matter how urgent, you should greet your mother properly, Lloyd.”
Tapping the ash into an ashtray, Priscilla’s heels clicked as she approached him.
Then she put the pipe to her lips and exhaled a cloud of smoke. The pungent smell made Lloyd’s face twist in discomfort.
FWIP—there was a sharp sound, and suddenly the suffocating feeling protecting his face was gone.
She had taken off his mask.
It was now in Priscilla’s hand.
Lloyd hastily covered his face with his own hand and shouted,
“W-What are you doing!”
“I can understand looking a mess after rushing here, but wearing a mask as well? If you don’t want your mother to act rudely, you should at least show her the courtesy first.”
With clear distaste, she dropped the white mask to the floor and crushed it under her heel.
CRACK—the mask split and quickly broke apart.
Kicking the pieces aside, she seized Lloyd’s hand and pulled it away from his face with surprising ease, as if his muscular arm had no strength at all against her.
She was beautiful enough to turn heads despite her age, with the same light mint hair and blue eyes as Lloyd—yet her face and expression were entirely different.
“It’s so hard to see your face. How long has it been? A year, since you adopted Ayla?”
While Lloyd stood there sweating and scowling, Priscilla smiled warmly and greeted him as though nothing were wrong.
“So, why has my son come to see his mother today?”
Her maddeningly casual tone made Lloyd grit his teeth and shake off her hand.
He seized the moment to say firmly,
“I told you to stay out of my house and out of Ayla’s life.”
“Well, what do you expect when you never let me see her?”
“Mother!”
The brazen reply made him raise his voice without thinking.
Yet Priscilla didn’t even blink at the sudden shout; she only looked pained.
“I heard a little about what happened with Deborah. You know that wasn’t my doing. Have I ever taught you by striking you?”
“But bribing the servants—that was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“That was your fault. If you hadn’t buried yourself away in the countryside, nothing like that would’ve happened to Ayla.”
She let out a small sigh.
Lloyd felt as though he were speaking to a wall.
A year without seeing her face, and she hadn’t changed a bit.
She was so unreasonable that he almost felt grateful she at least acknowledged the adopted Ayla as his child.
Which was exactly why he could never let Ayla go through what he had.
Clenching his fists, he said,
“From now on, I’m staying by Ayla’s side at all times—so you can’t pull anything.”
At that, Priscilla’s melancholy expression suddenly vanished, as if a string had snapped, leaving her face blank.
“If you want to raise Ayla to be a duke, you’d do well to listen to me.”
“I’m not raising Ayla to be a duke—when she grows up, she’ll become one.”
It sounded similar, but the difference was clear.
Ayla becoming duke was inevitable, but whether it was the goal or just the outcome was another matter.
Priscilla didn’t like Lloyd’s soft approach.
“I’m the one who raised you into a duke and put power in your hands, Lloyd.”
Her low voice and icy gaze made his instincts react with fear, a cold sweat breaking out on his skin.
But he couldn’t show weakness here.
Forcing strength into his trembling legs, he gave a crooked smile.
“You raised me well, all right—into a pathetic duke who can’t face people without a mask.”
Priscilla silently glared at him.
He glared right back, unwilling to yield.
To an outsider, the tension between them would never suggest they were mother and son.
Just when it seemed they might stare each other down forever, Priscilla moved first.
“Sigh… Fine. Even I can’t be too harsh on something like you and still call you my son.”
Turning away, her heels clicked steadily as she sat down on the sofa.
Leaning back, she took a drag from her pipe and exhaled.
Lloyd tensed—she only acted like this when something unpleasant was coming.
And as expected, his fears proved right.
“You’ve been associating with Princess Minerva lately, haven’t you?”
