Chapter 122
Lionel tightened his arms as he pulled the last traces of Agnes closer to himself.
The sound of the paper crumpling in his grip echoed meaninglessly through the empty annex.
Burying his face against the cold, thin sheets, he took a deep breath.
For a brief moment, the scent of old paper mixed with the icy air and filled his lungs.
The paper was nothing but rough and cold.
It was nothing like Agnes’s skin, which had always been warm.
As though hoping that even a little of his own body heat would warm the paper, Lionel hugged it even tighter.
Soon, the cold his body had endured after prolonged exposure to the winter wind gave way to a delayed fever.
His fingertips trembled faintly.
His temples throbbed painfully.
As every breath he exhaled grew hotter, Lionel curled himself into a ball.
Each time his chest heaved with his increasingly ragged breathing, the letters in his embrace crumpled with it.
Agnes had never been merely his salvation.
The small warmth contained within these letters had kept him human throughout the battlefield and allowed him to survive until this day.
Had those letters not existed, he would have lost his sanity long ago during the endless war.
Even if he had somehow endured, he would eventually have died at the end of one of those battles.
His remains might never even have been recovered, left to lie nameless somewhere in the northern lands.
In the end, it was Agnes who had kept him alive.
“You saved me—”
As if it were not enough that he had already cast the future that should have shone so brightly into the mud…
“—and in the end, I even stole your life.”
Keeping his feverish eyes tightly shut, Lionel whispered the name of the salvation he himself had destroyed.
“…Agnes.”
He found the very life that had driven Agnes to her death utterly revolting.
Lionel wished he would never have to open his eyes again.
Because perhaps then he would be able to see Agnes once more.
But he immediately realized how selfish that thought was.
He could not do that.
How sick and tired Agnes must have been of him.
She had only just become free from ever seeing his face again.
She had only just been able to breathe freely at last.
If he chased after her even into death and continued tormenting her, that would truly be something no human being should ever do.
“Then… what am I supposed to do?”
The words that escaped like a whisper were less a question than the remnants of someone left behind.
There was truly nothing left that he could do anymore.
Even knowing that death was far too convenient a pardon for someone like him, Lionel still could not bring himself to open his eyes.
He had no idea how he was supposed to endure this despair whose depths he could not even measure.
And yet, even at a moment like this, he still longed to see Agnes.
He still could not let go of the feelings he held for her.
He was once again surrendering to his own weakness before the pain Agnes had endured.
That was why Lionel felt as though he were losing his mind.
“So even until the very end, I’m still this kind of bastard…
I’m sorry, Agnes.”
***
Clatter.
The quiet sound of wooden utensils lightly knocking together caused a faint crease to form between Agnes’s brows.
‘Where… am I?’
The moment her consciousness returned, Agnes instinctively felt beneath her body.
As soon as the rough texture of coarse linen brushed against her palm, she sensed someone hurriedly approaching.
“Duchess! Are you awake?”
At the sudden voice nearby, Agnes’s eyelids trembled slightly.
When she forced her eyes open, the ceiling of an unfamiliar inn room gradually came into focus through her blurred vision.
Just then, Kain’s curly brown hair suddenly entered her field of view.
“K… Kain?”
“…!”
As Agnes’s lips moved, Kain rubbed his chest as though he could finally breathe again.
“Thank goodness.”
Kain let out a long sigh of relief before continuing.
“Are you hurting anywhere? You managed to get out of the carriage before the flames reached you, but I wanted to make sure.”
Agnes’s delicate brows furrowed even deeper.
Fragments of her memories before she lost consciousness resurfaced.
The bright red flames that had billowed upward like clouds from the torch dropped before Lionel’s knights.
The overwhelming heat rushing toward the carriage.
And the sensation of someone pulling her out of the carriage.
As those memories returned one after another, a cold sweat naturally ran down her back.
Only then did she truly realize how close she had come to being caught in the explosion and dying.
Meanwhile, Kain continued speaking.
Judging by the bread crumbs around his mouth, he had apparently been eating breakfast.
He was also holding a newspaper in one hand.
“Honestly, if it hadn’t been for that man, we would have been in serious trouble. Fortunately, we escaped the accident by the narrowest margin… but unfortunately, the coachman was caught in the explosion.”
Kain chose his words carefully.
It was as though he feared hurting Agnes, who had only just regained consciousness.
According to his explanation, the carriage had been violently overturned by the shockwave immediately after the explosion.
Although both Kain and Agnes had escaped from the carriage, the impact had thrown them a considerable distance away.
It had truly been a situation where calling their survival a miracle was no exaggeration.
Kain lowered his head briefly in silent mourning for the coachman who had failed to escape the accident.
Then he cautiously glanced at Agnes’s expression.
“Duchess, do you happen to know who saved you? That man came to see us yesterday, but he said something I couldn’t understand.”
“What do you mean?”
Kain scratched the back of his head.
“He said saving you was the price of some ‘cookies.’ Honestly, I have no idea what he meant… but anyway, he seemed to know you.”
Agnes recalled the face of the person she had vaguely seen pulling her arm just before she escaped the carriage.
The gray hair that resembled an old black-and-white photograph and the black eyes that matched his blunt personality were all too familiar.
It was not difficult to realize who it had been.
“…Lucian.”
Kain’s eyes lit up at the name that slipped from Agnes’s lips.
“So his name is Lucian. Though he seemed to belong to the Capital Defense Force, which is rather surprising. They’re on particularly bad terms with His Grace’s knight order.”
“The Capital Defense Force…?”
“Yes. You didn’t know?”
She had not.
At the same time, however, she had always suspected that Lucian was not merely an ordinary employee of the trading company.
Still, she had assumed he was simply another watcher placed there by Adrian…
Never had she imagined he belonged to the Capital Defense Force.
Only now could Agnes finally explain the strange sense of inconsistency she had always felt whenever she looked at Lucian.
The thick calluses covering the hands of someone who supposedly handled nothing but paperwork.
The habit of always standing with perfect military posture.
The peculiar aura Lucian carried was nothing less than the lingering trace of a soldier’s life.
Agnes slowly sat up.
“Ah…”
Her skin stung from the cuts and scrapes covering her body, but not so badly that she was unable to move.
In any case, that meant Lucian had been watching her under Jerome Winterbolt’s orders.
It was all the more unexpected that he had saved her.
And all because of a few cookies.
She had merely shared some snacks with him a handful of times.
She had never imagined they would be repaid like this.
She had never truly believed he was completely on her side.
Yet now that she knew the truth, she could not help feeling conflicted.
Then Agnes’s eyes landed on the headline of the newspaper Kain was holding.
[The Duchess of Valheim Confirmed Dead.]
The dull impact struck Agnes’s still-groggy mind, which had only just awakened.
Agnes pulled the newspaper closer and read the headline once more.
Watching her reaction, Kain quietly explained.
“The Black Iron Knight Order discovered the coachman’s body, but it seems they mistook it for Your Grace’s remains. The explosion and the fire were so severe that only part of the body was left…”
Agnes pulled the newspaper even closer and read the headline once again.
That was not the end of the article.
Even more shocking headlines followed below.
[The terrorist Raul revealed to be the biological father of the Duchess of Valheim.]
[The Duchess of Valheim dies while fleeing after evidence emerges that she had been assisting Rebelt.]
“According to Lucian, those above have already decided to frame you as someone who conspired with Rebelt… so he said it would be better if everyone believed you were dead.”
Agnes briefly wondered how her connection to Raul had become public.
But no matter how many times she reread it, the article’s intention was perfectly clear.
The report released by Jerome’s side identified Agnes as Rebelt’s accomplice.
“…Do you think His Grace knows about this as well?”
“If it’s already in the newspapers, then he probably does.”
Then how had Lionel reacted to her death?
Perhaps he had felt a little sorrow.
Or perhaps he had actually felt relieved.
Thinking that he was finally free from his guilt.
Whatever his reaction had been, it probably had not been that significant.
After all, Agnes had never occupied such an important place in Lionel’s life.
Remembering her own circumstances left a bitter ache in her chest.
She had never imagined that even Raul’s death would be consumed so easily.
Once again, she found herself forced to bear the blame for something she had never done, becoming the target of someone else’s anger and hatred.
Yet before resentment, what filled Agnes was emptiness.
She quickly realized that this article had never been written solely to target her.
She was merely being used as bait to tighten the noose around Lionel.
In the end, Jerome had been right about everything.
Simply by existing, she had become a tool for dragging Lionel deeper into the mire.
If that was the case, then she absolutely could not reveal that she was alive.
The mere fact that she had survived would become another poison to everyone, especially to Lionel.
If he learned the truth, he might believe she had deceived him once again.
She did not want to add any more painful ties between them.
She no longer had the strength to endure being hated for things she had never done.
Nor did she have the strength left to cry out to a world that would never listen, begging it to believe she was innocent.
“What are you going to do? Are you really going to keep hiding the fact that you’re alive, just as Lucian advised?”
With eyes as calm as a still lake, Agnes stared at the headline announcing her own death.
Under the current circumstances, Lucian’s advice was undeniably the safest and most practical choice.
Besides, pretending to be dead was also the surest way to make Lionel stop searching for her forever.
If she truly intended never to return to him, then disappearing completely was the better choice.
In that sense, this u
nexpected turn of events was a blessing neither she nor Lionel had intended.
“…Yes.”
And so, Agnes finally made her decision.
“I won’t tell anyone.”
She believed that this choice would finally sever the festering relationship between herself and Lionel completely.
Agnes truly believed that.
