CHAPTER 64……………………………………..
“I told him to. From now on, call her ‘sister-in-law,’ not ‘young lady.’”
“We’re not even married yet—we’re only engaged. Isn’t it way too early for that? Isn’t this a little premature?”
Shevart shrugged annoyingly.
“Once you’re engaged, everything afterward is practically a done deal, isn’t it? What’s so premature about that? Don’t tell me you’re planning to run away and leave me behind?”
“…!”
He said it as a joke, but I could feel my heart pounding. I quickly looked away.
Sometimes this guy can be surprisingly sharp.
“Young lady, here you are.”
Just in time, the maid Britta came to find me.
“Oh? Young lady, you say? It’s ‘young madam.’”
At Shevart’s sharp remark, Britta—and Cauts standing behind her—froze and glanced at me.
I shook my head desperately, silently begging them not to call me that.
“Well, everyone’s looking for you two. Shall we go?”
As expected of a competent maid, Britta smoothly avoided any problematic titles and guided us.
It was a gathering of the extended Kereis family.
And strangely enough, the duke—who usually hated such gatherings—seemed to be in quite a good mood.
I soon learned it was because of Rhynes.
“How did you find such a cute, pretty, cheerful, smart daughter-in-law who treats her family so well? Hahaha!”
“You’ll soon find someone perfect for Terceurs too, big brother! Hahahaha!”
Since when did these two brothers get along so well?
After the Kereis brothers’ feud, or perhaps even in the entire history of the Kereis family, I had never once seen actual laughter between siblings.
Well… it is a good thing.
But why am I stuck in the middle of this?!
While I was getting increasingly irritated, the butler Deveue quietly approached me.
“From now on, I shall serve the young madam with utmost—”
Sensing the murderous aura in my eyes, he hurriedly shut his mouth.
***
After becoming the official fiancée, invitations poured in from everywhere.
I went from being a nobody living off the Kereis family to becoming the fiancée of their official heir—and everyone’s attention instantly fell on me.
“But nothing from the Alter family, huh?”
The Alter family was the background of Bianca, the original heroine of the story.
Well-known for producing brilliant scholars, they were basically the opposite of the brute-force Kereis family.
“Are they refusing to associate with me? Ugh, I’m tired.”
I swept the stack of invitations aside and thought.
Shevart’s figure flashed in my mind—he had returned home briefly because of the engagement.
He had waved cheerfully, saying he would finish the remaining semester and be back soon.
‘No. Don’t come back.’
I rolled off my soft bed and sat up.
My hectic days preparing for the engagement had flown by, but I still had something very important to do.
‘I need to go to the Northern Trencia Forest!’
Just as luck would have it, the duke was out on business.
I still hadn’t told him I planned to go to Trencia Forest.
I felt guilty, but I had no choice—he would definitely forbid it.
But I couldn’t just spend my life never knowing the truth behind Ron’s disappearance.
If the duke couldn’t uncover it because of his trauma, then I had to do it.
‘Ron, I’ll do it. For you—I’ll find the truth.’
Caw, caw.
“Looks like Lord Ter is here.”
Following Cauts’s words, I looked out the window.
Terceurs was standing there, his head hidden under a robe, tall and thin, glancing around nervously.
It was definitely him.
With Cauts’s help, I grabbed the rope from the second floor and climbed down.
“Lord Ter!”
“Lady Marianne!”
“You’ve seen him before, right? This is Cauts, the magic tutor.”
“Yes, I know.”
Night had fallen over the garden.
The three of us gathered in a small circle.
I was just about to take out the teleportation device when—
“Marianne!”
A furious voice made me flinch.
The duke had arrived.
“…!”
The hand holding the teleportation device fell weakly to my side.
All three of us—Cauts, Terceurs, and I—bowed our heads awkwardly before the approaching duke.
“Marianne.”
“…Yes.”
He was extremely angry.
“Cauts! Even you, Ter!”
“I—I’m sorry!”
We didn’t even make it to the forest.
We could only follow the duke back in silence.
Just like that, the plan ended in complete failure before it even began.
***
The office lights blazed brightly.
Sensing the tension, the servants quietly withdrew.
Only the harsh footsteps of the duke pacing back and forth echoed in the silence.
“To think you tried to slip away to the one place I forbid you to go—the moment my back was turned! Was everything I said so meaningless to you?!”
He slammed the table, making all three of us flinch.
“I’m sorry. I was only going to be gone for a moment…”
“Marianne.”
“I’m really sorry…”
The duke’s red eyes swept over us before landing on Terceurs.
“Terceurs—why did you get involved? You should know better than anyone that the Kereis family cannot enter Trencia Forest after what happened.”
With his head hanging low, Terceurs answered softly.
“I just wanted to help Lady Marianne. That’s all.”
Seeing him falter, I quickly cut in.
“It’s true. Lord Terceurs did nothing wrong. I begged him to help me. He refused at first, but I insisted. Cauts too—it was my request.”
“No, it’s my failure for not properly supporting the young lady.”
Cauts bowed repeatedly, calling himself at fault.
The duke’s eyebrows tightened.
“Marianne, no matter how curious you are, you cannot go to the Northern Trencia Forest. If you disobey again… I don’t know what choice I’ll be forced to make. And that teleportation device—confiscated.”
“What? B-but—”
“Marianne.”
“…Yes.”
A heavy silence settled over us.
Watching the teleportation device being taken away, I felt both sad and frustrated.
Why did I do all this? Why?!
It was all to uncover Ron’s disappearance—
a truth the entire family hushed up, a truth even the duke no longer tried to investigate.
“What if… what if you didn’t lose Ron that day?”
“…What?”
“What if someone orchestrated it?”
The duke’s face hardened.
I had never seen such a harsh, cold expression on him.
“You said you don’t remember the details of that day. And no matter how much you searched, you found no trace of Ron. If someone deliberately hid him… then I want to uncover the truth. For Ron’s sake.”
The duke let out a long breath before finally speaking.
“There’s something I must discuss with you alone, Anne.”
After Terceurs and Cauts left, he ran a hand down his face.
His blue hair slid over his forehead.
He pondered a moment, then spoke quietly.
“Anne… I suspected the same.”
“What? You too, Father?”
“Yes. Kereis brothers have always lived lives of killing or being killed. Shevart, Ron, and Crimu… none of them could escape that fate.”
Seeing my shocked face, he continued everything he had kept inside.
How he had secretly monitored his brothers after Ron disappeared,
how he kept watch on Shevart’s maternal relatives…
“Otherwise, Ron wouldn’t have vanished so completely. And when they realized I suspected them, they tried to brush it off, claiming some ridiculous story about Ron being eaten by monsters.”
“…”
“I was not myself then… nor was Aria.”
“And in the end, you never found the culprit?”
The duke nodded heavily.
After finding Ron in the slave market, he had desperately tried to learn the truth.
“I found something out, Father.”
“You found something? What do you mean?”
He leaned in.
I told him everything—
the mysterious flash of light I saw in the forest that night in the north.
After hearing it all, the duke looked stunned.
“Is that true? You truly saw that?”
“Yes. Every word of it.”
“….”
He fell silent for a long while.
Memories resurfaced—
Aria wandering the forest in tears after losing her son,
the pain of holding her collapsed body,
the rage and sorrow that stained the Trencia Forest.
If the forest held a secret—
and if that secret had taken Ron once—
he had to uncover it.
He could not risk losing Ron again.
By the time sunlight trickled through the window, the duke reached a decision.
“Anne… I will go with you. To the Northern Trencia Forest.”
“Father… are you sure?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t decide this sooner.”
“No—it means everything to me that you’ll go with me now!”
His answer defied everyone’s expectations.
And so Anne accepted it joyfully.
