When arriving at the scene of the terrorism, the flames had already been completely extinguished.
Instead, heat that had not yet cooled remained in the air. A scorched smell also enveloped the surroundings like invisible smoke.
Fortunately, the damage suffered by the Knights was not large.
It was because the location where the bomb detonated was near the prison holding prisoners, away from the Knights’ central building and the interrogation room. Whether it was a mistake or an intended calculation could not be known.
However, that did not mean there was no damage at all.
Ash-colored smoke was slowly rising above the blackened, scorched wreckage scattered over the ground.
It did not take a long time to recognize the shape of that wreckage.
It was a carriage.
To be precise, it was what used to be a carriage.
The wheels were half-crushed, and the side panels of the carriage were burned and broken into black ash.
And Simon was standing in front of that pile of ashes.
Lionel approached Simon with a fierce aura, failing to even feel the cold sensation felt on the soles of his feet.
“Why is the Chief Butler here? And at this hour?”
“……Your Grace.”
Simon dropped his head, failing to face Lionel straight on.
His face was already pale, with all the blood drained from it, turned ashen.
Not long after the carriage carrying Agnes left the Duke’s mansion, Simon had discovered flames soaring from that direction.
Surprised, he immediately pursued the carriage, but by the time he reached this place, the fire had already swallowed everything.
Simon, too, could not believe this current situation.
“……In this carriage.”
After catching his breath for a moment, Simon opened his mouth again.
However, his trembling voice could not be hidden in the end.
“Lady Agnes was riding.”
“……Cut that bullshit. I asked why you are here.”
However, Lionel merely repeated the same question.
Like a person who, from the beginning, had not even heard the words that Agnes was riding in the carriage.
From behind such a Lionel, one of the members of the Knights who was searching through the ashes pulled out a piece of cloth that was left unburnt.
Simon recognized at once that it was a part of the shawl he had wrapped around Agnes.
And beside it, one more broken glass bottle, with its leather melted and stuck to it, came out.
As soon as Simon saw that bottle, he knelt down right there as if he could no longer stand.
“I…… I gave it to her.”
The member of the Knights, who confirmed the owner of the object from Simon, opened his mouth cautiously.
“It seems…… the Duchess failed to escape from the carriage.”
Even at those words, Lionel did not turn his head.
He was still staring only at the pile of ashes.
His face was that of someone failing to accept the very fact that Agnes was riding in that carriage.
“It appears…… the Duchess has passed away.”
“Ha.”
A short laugh leaked out.
“Haha.”
Lionel laughed chillingly.
He was not generous enough to listen to a joke that was this unfunny.
Until just a few hours ago, Agnes was by his side. She was a person who held his hand, called his name, and had dinner together with him.
Such an Agnes, what?
“It’s not even funny.”
With a face from which laughter had disappeared, Lionel ground his teeth.
“Who died?”
And he spat out firmly.
“Stop talking bullshit.”
It is a lie.
There was no way Agnes could have died.
That single fact had to be a truth that would not change no matter what evidence came out.
It had to be so.
This square box of barely one pyung could not become a means that ruined her life twice.
It was not.
There was no way it could be so.
Lionel took a step. And another step.
Even while moving forward, staggering, he shook his head.
“Stop joking. She is alive, Agnes is.”
Lionel approached close to the pile of ashes while stepping on the snow that had accumulated up to his ankles with bare feet.
And he began to search around the pile of ashes like a madman.
“Agnes.”
A low, hoarse bass voice scattered into the snow.
“Where are you.”
Lionel pushed away the wreckage of the burned carriage with his hands and constantly called Agnes’s name.
“The weather is too cold. Stop it and come out. Hmm? Agnes.”
What are you going to do if you catch a fever again like this. Your body isn’t well either.
However, even against Lionel’s desperation, the thing that returned was only the sound of snow accumulating crunchingly.
Even until the darkness receded little by little and the sky began to brighten dimly, Lionel could not leave that spot.
His frozen feet lost sensation, and snow accumulated softly on top of his shoulders and head.
Despite that, not a single person could stop Lionel.
And around the time the dawn completely broke.
“Colonel!”
The shout of a member of the Knights cut through the air.
“Here…… this is…….”
Inside the pile of ashes, an object caught between the wreckage of the carriage revealed its form.
It was a wheelchair, scorched and broken.
Of the same shape as the one Agnes used to ride around.
At that moment, Agnes’s death became a fact that could no longer be denied.
But Lionel shook his head.
He could not believe it.
“No.”
Lionel began to rummage through the ashes, where heat still remained, with his bare hands.
“There’s no way that’s true.”
Even when his palms were burned by the uncooled iron framework, Lionel did not stop.
Like a person who was afraid that the moment he stopped his hands, everything would become a fact.
But even so, nothing changed.
“I wished for you not to leave…… I did not wish for something like this.”
While kneeling on top of the ashes, Lionel eventually bowed his head.
Scorched ash got on his face, and snowflakes landed on top of it.
Inside a sensation where coldness and hotness were mixed, he pressed his cheek against the pile of ashes just like that.
As if kneeling at Agnes’s feet and rubbing his unsightly cheek against the top of her foot.
“I was wrong. I was wrong.”
Even while knowing it was of no use coming this late, Lionel did not stop.
“Now…… I truly won’t have any greed.”
Saying he would lay down both the greed of asking her not to abandon him and the greed of asking her to stay by his side. Lionel cried out toward the ash powder fluttering in the wind like that.
“Right now, even this instant, I will let you go to the place you want. So…… please stop it and come out, Agnes.”
☆☆☆
“Tsk.”
Nick, who was watching Lionel collapsing in the heavy snowfall from afar, clicked his tongue shortly.
“Of all things, unluckily, why did the carriage the Duchess was riding have to get caught up in it.”
Nick knitted his brows as if displeased.
It was a situation where an unexpected variable had intervened.
As Raul expected, Nick was in a state where he had not yet escaped the central part of the capital.
Causing terrorist attacks continuously toward the outskirts of the capital to completely turn the attention of the Black Iron Knights that way, and then using that gap to quietly escape the capital by using the emergency passage remaining at the Duke of Guten’s mansion.
That was the initial plan.
But the situation was unfavorable.
Damnably, the Black Iron Knights intercepted the terrorism one step ahead every single time. The troops did not drain out as much as expected either, so moving was not easy.
Moreover, there was a separate, bigger problem.
After the incident where the Duke of Guten’s family violated their military duty, the fact that it came to be placed under the management of the Black Iron Knights was the biggest obstacle.
In other words, to approach the Duke’s mansion, a method to draw away the troops of the Black Iron Knights stationed there was needed.
So the thing chosen was today’s explosion.
In order to bind Lionel’s feet to this place by intentionally causing an explosion at the Knights’ building. And in order to make the knights deployed at the Duke’s mansion have no choice but to rush to this place.
Let’s say that choosing a time when people were sparse was the minimum of conscience.
He thought what meaning there was to reckon such a thing coming this late, but it was a kind of act like an expression of condolences sent to that fellow Raul. Since a comrade who had shared joys and sorrows for over a decade had died, his mood was not entirely pleasant after all.
However, did they say that trouble arises if one does a thing one doesn’t normally do? As if that was not empty talk, of all things, how could he have known that the carriage carrying the Duchess would pass through this place at that hour.
“Because of that, a bomb was detonated in an absurd place.”
If the explosion had been caused inside the Knights properly, he would have been able to neutralize the Black Iron Knights perfectly.
Because the carriage appeared, a surprised member detonated the bomb in an unintended place.
“There is no ill-fated relationship like this ill-fated relationship.”
Even up until the time he held Agnes as a hostage at the eve of the festival, how could he have known that a conclusion like this would lie in ambush.
Nick smacked his empty lips at the uncomfortable aftertaste.
“What do we do now?”
“…….”
Nick narrowed his eyes and watched the figure of Lionel, who was still rummaging through the ashes.
The situation had twisted somewhat, but looking only at the result, it was not entirely bad.
No matter what. Because the purpose of binding Lionel’s feet was perfectly achieved, as it turns out.
“What do you mean what do we do. We go to the Duke of Guten’s mansion as planned.”
☆▪︎▪︎▪︎☆
