I’d been dragged here out of nowhere and was now under suspicion, but honestly, it didn’t feel bad.
If anything, it’s only natural that she doesn’t trust me.
I knew Celia was doing this because of her ill will toward me.
But setting aside whether there was ill will or not, thinking about it coldly, it was a suspicion reasonable enough to raise.
Until not long ago, I’d been nothing but an outsider with no connection to the ducal house.
And here I was, only just having come into the ducal house, suddenly claiming that a deadly poison was a cure for an incurable disease. Of course my words were hard to believe.
But it wasn’t a lie that this was a treatment.
Because it was information straight from the original.
In Future Saintess, the cure for Tamutar disease had been discovered by pure chance.
Or would it be more accurate to say it was a heroine’s buff?
The whole thing started when an assassin infiltrated the residence and force-fed Jayden gamjong herb.
Patient or not, Jayden was a Dragonblood, on whom poison barely worked at all.
Ordinarily it would have been nothing but a minor episode—a fever for a day and no more—but the problem was that Melody had no way of knowing that.
Thinking Jayden might die at any moment, Melody cries and feeds him spikeleaf.
Now, gamjong herb ranks third among assassins’ favorite poisons, but that’s only true of the present day.
In the future Melody had come from, seven years from now, it was barely used at all.
Because the antidote for gamjong herb had been discovered by then. And that antidote was spikeleaf.
“Uu-uu. Uu-uu. Waaah!”
After the antidote worked and Jayden woke up, he’s so moved by seeing Melody crying with worry over him that he becomes a doting big brother.
But that night, something strange happened.
The pain that always came at night from Tamutar disease had vanished completely.
The first time that had happened since his illness had grown severe.
Cain investigated the cause at once, and that was how he discovered the interaction between spikeleaf and gamjong herb: in the process of neutralizing gamjong herb’s poison, spikeleaf’s effect of suppressing a dragon’s raging power grows dramatically stronger.
In other words, if the two were combined in the right proportions, it would make an exceptional medicine that could improve Jayden’s condition.
But this was only evidence that worked from my perspective, someone who knew the original.
It’s reasonable enough to doubt.
Celia might be doing all this out of malice toward me, but that was a separate matter.
An unproven claim was something anyone might reasonably doubt. And I had an obligation to resolve that doubt.
No matter how much I explain, it won’t clear up her doubt.
…Then I’d simply have to prove its effect by taking it myself.
I would have had to do this eventually anyway. It had simply come sooner than I’d planned.
As she’d said herself, I couldn’t give something even I couldn’t eat to a child like Jayden.
Without hesitation, I put the poisonous herb clutched in my hand into my mouth and swallowed it whole.
“Miss Viola, what is the meaning of—!”
However much she’d been provoked into it, Conrad clearly hadn’t expected me to actually eat it, and he grabbed my arm to stop me.
Unlike his alarm, Celia only grew more triumphant.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to fake dying now? Trying to earn sympathy that way?”
But it was then.
“Viola!”
Cain, back in the study, seemed to have grasped the whole situation at once and came running straight to me.
Before the poison could spread through my body, I hurriedly took out the antidote I’d stashed in my pocket and swallowed it. I’d made it earlier from spikeleaf, just as a test.
Wow. But this is the first time I’ve actually swallowed such a strong poison…
Barely any time had passed since I’d eaten it, and the symptoms of poisoning were already setting in. My vision started to spin.
Ugh, I feel dizzy. I swayed before I knew it, and Cain caught my collapsing body and pulled me into his arms.
“Have you lost your mind? What were you thinking, eating poison—!”
His usually expressionless face showed anger he couldn’t deny, if only for this moment.
Is he angry? Why? Oh, right, come to think of it, had I not told him I had the antidote? My head wasn’t working well because of the poison.
“Haha, sorry. It really is potent… I did take the antidote right away, though.”
I forced a smile onto lips that kept going slack, but it didn’t seem to be the answer he wanted, and his eyes looked somehow troubled.
“Spit it out.”
He cupped my cheeks, trying to force my mouth open. Come to think of it, hadn’t something like this happened before too…? My mind was too hazy to remember clearly.
“It’s a bit late for that… If I spit it out now, the antidote would come out first…”
The terrifying thing about the Sweet Reaper was that it was absorbed instantly and spread through the body fast.
If I forced myself to vomit in this state, I might only bring up the antidote and truly meet my end.
“Oh, but don’t worry… There won’t be a problem like this when I give it to Young Master Jayden…”
I’d eaten the raw poisonous herb, which was why I was like this, but he’d be given it properly processed, so there wouldn’t be an issue.
I wanted to convey this to Cain, but the words wouldn’t come out right.
“And you say that now!”
I thought I heard him sounding angry again, but I wasn’t sure.
I was just so unbearably sleepy.
It probably wasn’t the poisonous herb, so maybe it was the antidote. Perhaps I should adjust the proportions a little…
The thought never made it to the end. I fainted right there in Cain’s arms.
The moment Viola fainted, Cain couldn’t say a word.
It felt as though his heart had dropped straight out of him.
Am I… startled? Why?
Not even in the countless times he’d danced along the edge of death against monsters had he ever felt this.
But if it wasn’t being startled, what else could explain this reaction?
His life had always been clear-cut, and yet at this moment, an unfamiliar confusion swallowed him whole.
His heart was pounding hard, like a man in a rage. The thudding was unfamiliar. His clenched jaw tightened on its own.
“Look at this! I knew it. She’s collapsed! I told you it was a dangerous poisonous herb… Gasp!”
Celia, who had been triumphantly pressing her argument in a loud voice, oblivious to the mood, couldn’t finish her sentence and fell silent.
Her triumphant manner vanished in an instant, and she began to tremble all over.
Even so, Celia had no idea what was happening.
Wh-why am I like this?
Since coming to the residence, this was the first time she’d ever faced Cain this close.
He’d always been away subduing monsters, keeping the residence empty of him.
So she should be hurrying to boast of today’s triumph to him—and yet, for some reason, no words came out at all.
There was clearly nothing there, and yet a terrible, crushing pressure bore down on her whole body, as if she’d come face to face with some massive monster.
In the end, the strength drained from her legs, and she collapsed to the floor.
That unpleasant feeling she’d always felt around Jayden—something she’d only ever recognized as simple discomfort—now hit her dozens, hundreds of times stronger, and terror swallowed her whole body.
It wasn’t only her imagination; even the servants gathered around were trembling in the same way.
“Everyone, out.”
What Cain said was terse in the extreme, but nothing more was needed.
The servants all hurried outside without a word. When Celia couldn’t get up on her own, two servants dragged her out.
At last, the surroundings fell silent.
Cain looked down at Viola in his arms. Her face, already pale as milk, had gone deathly white.
She’d taken the antidote, true, but she was still someone who’d swallowed poison.
There’s no way her body is fine.
She couldn’t have failed to know that. Then why on earth?
Even a newborn squirrel who didn’t know what its food looked like wouldn’t do something like this. Did this woman have no minimal survival instinct at all?
However much of an antidote there was, to willingly eat a poisonous herb?
His grip tightened little by little, but Cain forced himself to regain his composure.
The reason could wait for later.
Right now, laying her down comfortably came first.
“Your Grace, allow me.”
Conrad reached out an arm, as if to carry Viola himself, but Cain only gestured with his chin for him to step aside.
“Never mind. I’ll do it.”
