Chapter 17

“Mad Adelaide Millium. You truly are the shame of House Millium.”

Adel, not knowing what this surging feeling was, tried to put her letters back into the drawer. And there, she saw a sheet of paper whose color differed from the stationery she had sent.

The half-folded letter bore the imperial crest.

Please, let it not be….

But the letter she lifted was unmistakably from her sister. Bad premonitions never failed to come true. If Ethan had thought even a little about how much she was waiting for her sister’s letter, he could not have hidden it.

With trembling hands, she opened the letter, and her sister was angry. Rene had written that Herbron was no longer Adel’s home. So stop lingering and come to her at once….

When no reply came from her, her sister had sent the imperial invitation herself. The moment she read those words, Adel felt everything become clear. It was as though wings had sprouted on feet that had been unable to step forward out of cowardice.

So this is not my home. No matter how he tries to soothe me, it is nothing but hypocrisy. She felt pathetic for having taken even a little comfort in his actions and for having been so greatly relieved, and she could not stay in this mansion a moment longer.

Adel steeled her resolve, but she did not act on it immediately.

Though she could not know exactly why, Ethan was anxious about her leaving—anxious enough that even Adel could see it. So it was not a good idea to act rashly and declare she would leave this house.

Adel took a deep breath, put her sister’s letter and her own back as they were. Then, barely exhaling the breath she had drawn, she called for Ben.

“You called for me?”

“The scholarship certificate… I cannot find it.”

She tried to act as if nothing were wrong, but her breath kept catching, and she had to let it out in several short exhales.

“…I will find it for you.”

“Yes. And I will leave for the capital tomorrow morning. Prepare for me.”

“….”

“Ben?”

“So soon?”

“Yes. I heard Her Highness the Crown Princess’s health is not good, so I am anxious.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Ben asked if there was anything else she needed, then turned to leave. But he paused for a moment at the door.

“Madam.”

“Yes?”

“By any chance, are you… thinking of leaving this place?”

“What?”

“Are you thinking of casting aside the Devryan name?”

“Ben, how on earth….”

‘How is there nothing about me that he does not know?’

In the end, Adel burst into tears. Ben was not her father, but he was the person who had always made her think it would be nice if such a person were her father. As a retainer who served the family, she had never once openly expressed her feelings to him, but he was someone she held deep in her heart.

In her cold childhood, he had not stroked her hair with his hand, but he had made her feel that he was patting her again and again with his eyes.

So no matter how much she tried to feign composure, Ben must have known. That she was now standing on a raging wave.

“Do not worry. Whatever feelings you may have, I know nothing at all.”

“Y-yes.”

“Then I will prepare.”

“Y-yes, sob, yes.”

Even after he left, Adel wept for a long while. She felt as though she could never cry enough. As if everything would become lighter once she had poured it all out, her heart crawled endlessly along the floor.

What she was about to do was not merely tearing away one man she loved. The thought that she was cutting out the life she had painstakingly built, entire, scraped at her heart.

When the sun had tilted and she felt as though every drop of water inside her had poured out, Adel rose from her seat. Her exhausted body clamored for her to lie down at once, but she did not stagger.

She rose, took out a blank sheet of paper, and stamped the family seal at its end. Then she held that document to her chest.

* * *

Adel boarded the carriage to the capital without incident. When she told Ethan, who had returned to the mansion late the night before, that she would leave the next day, his lips visibly stiffened.

But when Adel called his name for the first time in a long while and asked again and again, permission soon followed.

She promised to stay at the Devryan countly family’s townhouse in the capital and set out on the road.

Ethan knew. He knew how terribly Adel regarded Max Millium.

But he did not know at all what Adel now regarded as even more terrible. To Adel, her father was still a fearsome presence, but now it was more urgent to get away from Ethan.

After traveling that way for two days, Adel broke her promise to Ethan and entered House Millium.

Her father, whom she had expected to seize her by the hair the moment he saw her, merely grinned as if something good had happened and told her to go and rest.

The sharp memory her father had left her with on the day she left this house eight years ago was still vivid. But apart from that terrible memory, her emotions had grown dull.

That she was no longer afraid of him was truly an astonishing feeling.

A day passed and night came again, but still unable to adjust to the unfamiliarity, she tossed and turned and barely fell asleep near dawn.

But Adel wandered greatly in a clumsy dream brought on by a power that had manifested unexpectedly.

Struggling with a body that would not move, she woke with a great gasp.

Because of the unexpected dream, Adel had to hesitate for a moment at the boundary between reality and power. Then she soon realized there was no time to hesitate.

“The palace! I must go to the imperial palace.”

Hailey, the maid who had just entered the room to wake her, was startled by the sudden outcry and came to her.

“Hailey, there is no time. Prepare a horse quickly.”

Adel tried to go out in her nightclothes, then barely rummaged through the wardrobe and threw on a black robe. Hailey tried to stop her, but she soon mounted the horse that had been prepared. In her arms, even a worn bow and arrows had been made ready.

When Adel mounted, two knights naturally followed behind her. The old horse recognized the feel of its master on its back after a long time and stamped its front hooves in good spirits, ready to run. As she galloped, the countly family’s knights followed behind her as well.

Though it was a road she had never traveled before, Adel did not hesitate. White breath rose from Adel’s mouth, accustomed as she was to Herbron’s mild climate. By the time her nose stung from the cold wind, the spire of the temple rising within the imperial palace began to come into view. And soon the imperial palace, standing tall over the vast plain, revealed its majestic form. But before she could even approach the palace, the sharp clashing of blades pierced her ears first.

“It is dangerous to go any closer right now.”

“Are you in your right mind? What do you think I came here to do?”

That Adel possessed the power to see the near future, and that she had married Ethan because of it, was a secret—but because of a series of large and small events, ten years later there was no one among the Herbron estate’s people who did not know. So the reason she would suddenly rush to the imperial palace at this hour could only be a matter concerning Ethan Devryan’s safety. At her shout, the knight quickly moved aside.

She had certainly seen Ethan in the dream. She wondered why on earth he, who should be in Herbron, was here, but she had no leisure to wonder about that.

At that hour, Ethan stood at the center of the Chande Garden, where the skirmish had broken out. Those confronting the imperial palace knights were, at a glance, of a very different appearance from the Empire’s knights. It seemed there had been trouble after Duke Sonnier, who had been sent as a hostage to an enemy nation, returned dragging a host of prisoners with him.

When several enemies closed in on Ethan, he did not hesitate and drew his sword. He began advancing, cutting down the enemies surrounding him one by one. But in that moment, the figure of a woman who could never possibly be seen in this imperial palace caught his eye.

“Adel…?”

Seeing her, Ethan became sharply wary. For Adel to have come to the imperial palace in such an absurd state of dress meant that some danger had befallen him. Her golden hair, which looked faintly red, rippled on horseback as she rapidly drew near. But then something utterly incomprehensible happened.

Naturally, Adel should have rushed to him without delay upon seeing him. But the moment he thought their eyes met, she turned her eyes away from him and began galloping toward the maze of the garden leading to the main castle.

Turning away from Ethan, Adel raced without hesitation down a path she had never traveled, tracing in order the scenes of her dream as they replayed before her eyes. When she reached the place where the main castle was visible, she came face to face with the terrible scene she had witnessed.

The man standing at the center of the enemy lines, facing countless foes, was unmistakably Duke Jacques Sonnier, whom she had seen not long ago.

He was a person unrelated to her. But the scene, like a revelation, would not let her turn away from him in the slightest.

Adel drew the bow from her arms without hesitation.

What he would lose here was not his life. It was his left arm and his right leg. So she had to strike down at once the two enemies aiming for him.

One bow, two arrows.

On the galloping horse, she held her back straight. The sudden burst of sunlight hindered her vision, so she chose instead to close one eye.

In the moment the two blades rushed at him from both sides, she held her breath and drew the bowstring.

Whoosh, thwack! Thwack!

Because she sent two arrows flying in a single draw, a small cut appeared on Adel’s face. Almost simultaneously with the sound of the arrows flying, she saw the enemies fall, struck by the arrows.

And then she met the Duke’s red eyes head-on.