Chapter : 77
When I turned my head at that shout, I saw some people being blocked by the guards at one side of the banquet hall entrance.
I could tell who they were the moment I saw them.
“Let go of me! I’m that girl’s father!”
A middle-aged man with the same blonde hair and green eyes as Eani.
“Eani! Eani Nasel! It’s your sister! Don’t you remember me?!”
A woman of the same age, with blonde hair and chestnut eyes.
Anyone could tell at a glance that they were truly Eani’s family: Baron Nasel and Aldine Nasel.
My eyes widened.
“To think I’d meet them… like this.”
In truth, I had been steadily receiving news about them through crows.
If they learned that I was engaged to Harthon and had become the owner of Tadivna Resort—
“They’d probably cling to me, thinking they could exploit anything.”
So I had tried to track their location in advance and prepare a plan.
But soon after my engagement, news of Baron Nasel and Aldine Nasel completely stopped, as if they had vanished.
“Of course, I had a hunch why…”
Still, to be thorough, I sent crows repeatedly to the last places they had stayed. But the crows never brought back any further news.
“And now… to think things would turn out like this.”
I watched Baron Nasel and Aldine Nasel as they tried to push past the guards and run toward me, tilting my head slightly.
“But how did they even get inside this banquet hall?”
This place was the central hall inside the Seind Duke Estate.
On top of that, it was a birthday banquet, guarded strictly by hundreds of guards and knights.
“Could Baron Nasel and Aldine Nasel, just low-level mages, really have broken through there?”
Or maybe someone had intentionally helped them get inside.
I turned my gaze to the most likely candidate: the Duchess of Seind.
When her eyes met mine, she flinched and shook her head desperately, strongly signaling that it wasn’t her doing.
“Hmm… then…”
Naturally, I shifted my gaze to the Duke beside her.
He opened his eyes wide and crossed his arms in a big “X,” clearly denying it was him too.
“Not them?”
Watching the Duke and Duchess, I turned my gaze back to the banquet hall entrance.
Baron Nasel and Aldine Nasel raised their voices even louder as soon as our eyes met, causing a scene.
“Eani! Our beloved youngest! Your father is here!”
“Your sister’s here too, Eani!”
“Wait a minute.”
Feeling something, I narrowed my eyes and stared at the two of them intently.
As I focused, I sensed a familiar trace of magic from them.
“This… is a spell of obedience?”
What… so could it be that the Tower of Magic is involved in this too?
Well, if the Tower had assisted, I could roughly picture how they managed to infiltrate this banquet hall.
I furrowed my brows slightly as I assessed the situation.
“But… something’s off.”
The flow of magic was subtly different from the obedience spells I knew.
It was clear someone had tampered with the obedience magic.
“I need to get closer.”
Just as I stepped forward toward the Nasel pair, Harthon grabbed my wrist urgently.
“Don’t go.”
He whispered, his face tense.
“Don’t go, Eani. Stay here.”
Harthon’s pale expression and obvious anxiety made me sigh softly.
“Yeah, I’d be worried too.”
The Nasels were the very reason the real Eani resented Harthon.
The true Eani had firmly believed she had been abandoned because Harthon had lured her family with money.
That belief had escalated their conflict into a full-blown rift.
“But ever since I lost my memories, that relationship completely changed.”
He seemed endlessly anxious and worried that I might meet my family, regain my memories, and leave him.
I understood him perfectly.
“Still, I can’t just chase them away like this.”
I needed to confirm my suspicions and ask them several things.
Just as I tried to soothe Harthon with gentle words,
“Harthon Seind! You cowardly bastard—!”
Baron Nasel shouted angrily.
“You used the power of the Duke’s house to forcefully take our Eani away! You made her go through all that hardship, and now… shamelessly engaged her?! Ugh!”
The guards hurriedly covered the Baron’s mouth.
Then Eani’s older sister, Aldine Nasel, started sobbing beside him.
“Eani! You’re being deceived! The wicked Viscount Seind is hiding the truth from your eyes and ears! Ever since your father and I failed to protect you, we’ve…” She choked on her sobs.
The guards then covered Aldine’s mouth as she tried to speak.
With their mouths blocked, the Nasels continued to look at me tearfully, desperately trying to plead, as if their family had truly been taken from them by the Seind house.
I slowly tilted my head as I observed them.
“Why are they acting like that?”
Short of being brazenly insane, no one could insult the heir of the Empire’s most powerful family inside the Seind Duke Estate.
If they truly wanted to meet me, it would have been much safer to wait until after the banquet and come secretly.
“That would’ve been the safer, smarter way.”
If they had brains, they would have known this.
Yet they stirred up trouble with provocative words anyway—
“So that’s why they were able to get past all those guards and get in here, huh?~”
Perhaps the Tower of Magic instructed them to do so.
“Harthon—.”
I opened my mouth to convey my thoughts to him.
Snap!
Harthon urgently covered my ear, muttering with a face as pale as chalk.
“Don’t listen.”
“!”
“Don’t listen, Eani.”
He stared at me, sweating coldly.
“Their story is a lie. So don’t listen to a word, don’t believe them.”
Please… please…
I clicked my tongue inwardly at his desperate, earnest whisper.
‘Wow, Harthon’s state is worse than I thought.’
He reacted unusually strongly to anything concerning my memories.
And now the very people who caused the rift between us had appeared and were making a scene, leaving Harthon completely confused.
“And so many people are watching this mess.”
Everyone at the banquet was murmuring as they looked at us.
As I considered how to handle this, a knight approached.
“Viscountess, what should we do with them?”
The knight whispered, glancing at me nervously.
He clearly wanted to remove the uninvited guests but hesitated because they were my family.
Harthon, still covering my ears, gritted his teeth and commanded:
“Take them away and tear them apart—”
‘Hmm, that won’t do.’
