Chapter 51
However, Victoria, who normally would have backed down by now, clung on unusually stubbornly this time.
“Then I’ll just go with Sir Sandor as far as the Witch’s Forest. Just think how unfair it must be for him. He’s done nothing wrong, yet that mother and daughter died, so how shocked and hurt must he be?”
“I said no, Victoria. I’ll go to the Witch’s Forest and bring back the truth from Young Master Sandor, so stay calmly at the castle.”
At his cold refusal, heat rose in Victoria’s eyes. Even as she shouted in front of him, full of hurt, Hannibal didn’t spare her a glance.
“Am I still not a Clayde? To you, I’m just baggage to be dressed up nicely and sent off to marry, right? I’m just the Clayde family’s property stuck in the castle, aren’t I? Aren’t I?”
“Anne, take Victoria out.”
At Hannibal’s weary glance, Anne moved in to stop her, but Victoria shouted even more fiercely.
“Why not me? Why only me—? You forced Father to let you go to the Witch’s Forest even though he said no, you fought with him every year over it, so why won’t you let me go?”
Thud. Hannibal put down his pen and looked at Victoria with a cold, cutting gaze.
“You just want to follow Sandor, don’t you? This isn’t you asking as a Clayde, Victoria.”
Her lips were tightly pressed in indignation, but her expression showed she’d been struck at the heart. Victoria trembled, fists clenched, then finally burst out the words she’d been holding back.
“You… you took that woman with you, though.”
“Victoria Clayde!”
Hannibal’s sharp voice rang out, and Victoria spun on her heel and stormed out.
Anne hastily bowed in apology and hurried after her, following her back to her room.
“He says no only to me! Only me! Fine, I’m the only bastard, I’m the only one who’s not really a Clayde! Then why give me the Clayde name at all? Why make me live here? They should have just thrown me out from the start!”
Victoria flung herself onto her bed and pounded the pillow in frustration.
“Why can’t I go? Why won’t he take me? They say Claydes don’t die even if they enter the Witch’s Forest. Does he think I’m not really a Clayde and that I might die if I go?”
“That can’t be. Anyone can see you’re a Clayde, my lady.”
There was no one else with such a mysterious hair color and oddly colored eyes. Before beauty, her looks first struck one as something wondrous.
As Anne patted her soothingly, Victoria blew her nose into a towel, then looked up with a pout.
Her gaze fell on the plate, and sensing her hunger, Anne quickly handed her a sandwich.
“But if only Claydes are allowed in the Witch’s Forest, has the lord ever taken anyone else there?”
“Mm-hm.”
Victoria downed half the sandwich in two bites, washed it down with gulps of juice, and cleared her throat.
“It’s in the Chronicles of Assad. The Witch’s Forest used to be the witch’s sanctuary, and only Assad could come and go freely—because he was the only man she loved. It’s the same for the Claydes. Anyone the Clayde loves can enter. No one knows how it works, but as the lord, my brother must know.”
Anne vaguely remembered reading it, thinking it was just a cute, fairy-tale-like story.
Like most founding legends, the tale of the first lord, Assad Clayde, and the witch Moira was full of myth.
It was said Assad proposed to Moira in the Witch’s Forest, and their first child was born there.
Assad Clayde lived until that first child married and had great-grandchildren.
While he lived, the Clayde family visited the Witch’s Forest every year to pray together, which became the origin of the “Night of the Witch” festival.
Anne ventured a guess.
“So the lord once took someone he loved there.”
“…Anne.”
Victoria pressed a finger to her lips in a shh, then began cautiously.
“There’s a reason my brother especially dislikes people from the capital—especially women.”
“I’ve always been curious about that, my lady.”
“Mm… well, when he was fourteen, my brother fell in love with a woman from the capital.”
“…Pardon?”
“Not so loud. No one talks about this openly.”
A man who now played the heartless wallflower at parties had once loved a woman?
Anne remembered the time not long ago when she’d spoken with Hannibal in the annex.
“What happened with Gray Benton?”
“Just curious.”
“Why? Did a fourteen-year-old boy not measure up in your eyes? Or did you think it was just a childish crush, not real love?”
So… he’d been talking about himself.
Had she somehow reminded him of that woman?
“Anne?”
“Yes, I’m listening.”
Anne shook herself from her thoughts and refocused on Victoria.
“He was serious enough to want to marry her.”
Before Anne could close her gaping mouth, Victoria delivered the twist.
“But it turned out she was a con artist sent from the capital.”
“A con artist?”
Victoria’s face darkened.
“She was a devotee sent by the Grand Temple. She lured my brother to the Witch’s Forest and then set it on fire.”
Though Victoria had only been eleven then, she shook her head as if it were yesterday.
Anne involuntarily covered her mouth with both hands.
If someone had set fire to the forest, the people of the Empire would have wanted nothing less than to see them hanged.
Victoria went on.
“Maybe because of the witch’s wrath, that summer storms raged all season long. Even the desert regions saw storms for three months straight. Countless creatures died. The oases overflowed with muddy water, and disease spread. Who knows how many people died.”
“How was it resolved?”
“My brother went alone to the Witch’s Forest. The very day he returned after meeting the witch, the storms stopped.”
Anne hesitated at the mention of meeting the witch, but Victoria continued without pause.
“Anyway, that woman—the con artist—claimed to be a baron’s daughter, but in reality she was a priestess from the Grand Temple. Lord Tegennes lodged an official protest, but she ran back to the temple. The Grand Temple replied that they would have her spend her life in prayer to atone for her sins, but they never offered the apology or reparations we wanted. They promised to compensate for the burned forest, but for the weather disaster they said it was the West’s problem. The Empire never officially acknowledged the witch’s existence, after all.”
In a dry land where even a drizzle once a year was rare, the oases were considered the witch’s blessing—a miracle.
For those who lived by that belief, such storms were not just a disaster but a deeply rooted source of resentment.
City dwellers in the capital could never understand.
“I understand now why the lord resents the capital and the Empire so much.”
“Mm-hm. Since that incident, my brother has never hired anyone from the capital. You’re the first outsider to be hired at the castle in ten years.”
“…I see.”
If that could be called an honor. Anne smiled awkwardly.
Coming to Hannibal Clayde with a recommendation letter from Elizabeth Benton of the powerful Idith Tara family had been the worst possible move.
Now she finally understood why Hannibal had disliked her from the start.
“No one knows what he said to the witch when he went alone to the forest. But from then on, the people of the West trusted Hannibal Clayde even more.”
“Did the lord himself say he met the witch?”
“Yes. He said he went to the forest and solved the problem. But after that, he told everyone never to bring it up again. The Count never praises my brother for anything, so he didn’t mention it, and with the lord against it, no one in the castle talks about it. So you keep this to yourself, too.”
“Yes.”
No wonder he kept silent—his first love had brought disaster to the West.
Anne could sympathize. She too had once trusted and clung to her first love all her life, only to be abandoned.
Because of that, she knew better than anyone what it was like to be unable to let go.
In her past life, Hannibal Clayde had died alone, she remembered.
He had lived only as the Lord of Tegennes and ruler of the West.
Was that really enough for him?
If it were, then walking alone at night to the annex would not have looked so lonely.
Why do you live? For what goal?
After giving up on love.
Since meeting Hannibal at the annex, Anne found herself thinking of him often.
That lonely, weary shadow he carried—he would have to hide it for the rest of his life.
Unlike herself, who had nothing and thus was free, Hannibal had to marry and produce heirs for the sake of his house.
