‘Mother?’
Katherine, who had been smiling warmly only a moment ago, wiped her expression clean the instant Kael said it.
“It’s been a while, Kael. Have you been keeping well?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
‘Thud.’ Kael settled onto the sofa and crossed his legs. He lifted his teacup with the air of a man conducting business.
‘Katherine… was Kael’s mother?’
A cold sweat broke out down my spine. My mouth refused to open. I knew I ought to say something — anything.
“I — um… Dowager Duchess? The Duke’s mother…?”
“Dowager Duchess, is it, dear.”
‘Dear?’
Katherine’s neutral expression vanished, replaced in an instant by a smile of brilliant, radiant warmth.
“From now on, just call me Mother-in-law.”
She was watching my lips intently. Waiting for the words to come out.
“M-Mother-in-law…”
“Ohoho! How lovely that sounds!”
“……”
“I wasn’t trying to deceive you, I promise. I simply wanted to give you a little surprise. The look on a new daughter-in-law’s face is just too precious.”
Katherine gave me a bright, conspiratorial wink. Those sharply arched eyes, those vivid crimson irises.
‘How did I not know?’
My head swam.
Katherine had been Kael’s mother all this time.
‘Wait. If she’s Kael’s mother… that means the Dowager Duchess is in her fifties?’
Come to think of it, she had told me so herself — I had simply forgotten. But even so. How could a person look so impossibly young?
The room tilted gently.
“Kael. Where on earth did you find such a delightful creature?”
“On the street.”
“Well. Points to you. I never expected you to bring home a woman at all. She’s completely won me over.”
“Is that so.”
“Of course. You do take after my judgment, after all. Your father is rather charming too.”
“Hmm.”
Mother and son conversed without looking at each other, their eyes trained entirely on me. Four red irises, all fixed in my direction at once. I felt like the air was being pressed out of the room.
‘This is what it feels like to be a tiny person kidnapped by giants.’
I sat there frozen, doing nothing but blinking.
‘The maid who came to tell me about the visitor — she was very young, wasn’t she.’
About twelve years old, perhaps? And now that I thought about it, her expression had been oddly anxious. She must have been a maid Katherine brought with her.
And then — unbidden — a passage from the original novel surfaced in my memory.
‘Katherine was known to bathe in the blood of young maids. It was the secret of her eternal youth.’
My gaze drifted involuntarily to Katherine’s eyes. Now that I truly looked — those irises were a vivid, unmistakable crimson. Blood red.
I tried to steady my breathing. I pinched the back of my hand several times to force myself to stay sharp.
And in that moment, on the edges of my fading consciousness, I sensed something — a small, measured set of footsteps drawing closer. A slight figure moved through the blur of my vision.
“Sister-in-law.”
‘That voice sounds very familiar…’
“Oh my — Kayrin! What are you doing here?”
Katherine’s eyes went wide. Her voice rose sharply at the end. Kayrin bounced on his small feet and plopped himself down in the empty seat beside me. He looked up at me with wide, alert eyes.
I was now hemmed in between two nearly identical faces.
Kayrin. K-rin. Kay… rin.
So Kayrin was Kayrin all along — just spelled slightly differently. He had given me his name, but trimmed it just enough to keep me from recognizing it. Played on the initials and let me fill in the rest myself.
“Ah…!”
I made a strange sound and lost my balance.
That was the last thing I remembered.
* * *
“…Dear.”
“Dear, are you all right?”
My eyes flew open. Three pairs of identical red irises were looking down at me.
“‘Kyaa!'”
I screamed and shot upright — only to immediately lose all strength and nearly topple back over. Kael caught me, bracing a hand against my back.
“Ivelina. Are you all right?”
“…Yes. I’m f-fine.”
The crease between Kael’s brows was deep. He eased me down carefully and, with the most gentle and unhurried touch, brushed his hand first across my cheek, then my forehead.
“You’re clammy. Are you feeling quite unwell?”
“Goodness, this moment — go and fetch the physician at once! No, wait, I’ll go myself—”
Katherine looked ready to bolt from the room entirely. I raised one limp, unsteady hand to stop her.
“No, really — I’m fine! Just a few minutes lying down and I’ll be—”
“Sister-in-law!”
Kayrin appeared in the open doorway and padded over to me, something clutched in both small hands.
“Here. I got medicine.”
“What kind of medicine?”
Kael asked. Kayrin answered.
“Headache medicine and a sedative. You were holding your head when you fell earlier. So I went to the physician.”
“Give them here.”
Kayrin handed the medicine directly to Kael, who supported my back while offering the tablet and water in turn. I swallowed both obediently.
‘Oh, I feel awful.’
My head was splitting.
Was this real? Was I dreaming? I truly could not tell.
I had no strength left to keep my eyes open. I pressed my face into the pillow and sank into a deep, heavy sleep.
I slept for a full five hours. When I came to, it was already dinnertime.
The Hardeion family gathered in my bedroom one by one, as though they had planned it. I joined them at the dining table, feeling something between bittersweet and quietly content.
“Are you truly all right now?”
“Yes. Perfectly well!”
“Good. Ill or not, one must eat. Come, have some food, dear.”
My mouth tasted bitter — whether from the medicine or the shock, I couldn’t say. But if I claimed I couldn’t eat, or asked to stay in my room, they would only worry more. I didn’t want to cause unnecessary concern. So I came to the table without complaint.
I kept eating and kept glancing at all three of them.
The same blood, unmistakably. The same cool composure, the same cold impression, the same aristocratic grace — as though each had been pressed from an identical mold.
‘The power of shared blood.’
Looking at them made my chest ache. They were so obviously alike, and I had failed to see it. I felt rather foolish about myself.
Throughout the meal, Katherine’s gaze remained fixed on me. The sharp lines of her eyes stayed curved in warmth.
“Truly — where did you find this one? You, who used to flee at the very mention of marriage.”
Kael answered in a voice entirely devoid of inflection.
“I found her on the street. By chance.”
“You’ve been giving the same answer every time I ask, which tells me you have no intention of elaborating. Fine. Chance is good. There’s nothing better in this world than a love match over a political arrangement.”
I was only half-listening when Kayrin, pressed close beside me, began tugging insistently at my sleeve.
“Sister-in-law.”
“…Yes?”
“When is the wedding?”
Kael answered before I could open my mouth.
“Next month.”
‘This boy — he could barely bring himself to call me ‘sister’ before, and now ‘sister-in-law’ rolls off his tongue like it was always there.’
I should say something. Technically, I was not yet Kayrin’s sister-in-law.
“Kayrin — I’m not officially your sister-in-law yet…”
“But you will be soon. Can’t I just start early?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, but—”
“Then I will. Needs to feel natural by the time it counts.”
It already sounded perfectly natural, sweetheart.
“Right, Kayrin — that’s a sensible point. No harm in being prepared. Oh, speaking of which — dear.”
“Yes?”
“I hear you’re attending a banquet next week? Have you chosen your gown? Your jewelry?”
Katherine launched immediately into a volley of questions. I gathered the last scattered threads of my attention and smiled back.
“The Duke has bought me quite a lot already. I was thinking of choosing from among those.”
Oh — wait. Was it all right to say that so plainly?
In every story and in real life alike, mothers-in-law famously disliked daughters-in-law who spent their sons’ money.
‘Am I about to be put firmly on the wrong side of things?’
And then, like those young maids… would she…!
“Why don’t we choose together? Helping a daughter pick out her gown has been one of my great wishes. My youngest came out a boy as well, so I’ve been terribly deprived.”
The Dowager Duchess looked at me with burning, luminous intensity. The longing in her gaze was so palpable that I couldn’t find it in me to refuse.
“I… I’d love that. Though Kayrin is wonderfully adorable as he is!”
“He is, of course. But there’s nothing quite like a daughter — I always envied the mothers who had one. Enough talk! Let’s get started. I have so many things I’ve been waiting to do with a daughter.”
A soft, joyful flush was rising in Katherine’s cheeks, startlingly vivid against her porcelain skin.
And then—
“That’s enough for today.”
In the middle of the warm, easy atmosphere, Kael dropped his voice like cold water.
The temperature in the room shifted immediately.
My heart began to pound.
* * *
