“Haah…….”
A faint breath flowed out from Agnes’s mouth as she was thrown onto the stone floor.
Her eyes were covered with a black cloth, so she could see nothing.
Because of that, her other senses had become sharper than usual.
Even the slightest sound and smell came as strong stimuli.
Drip—.
The sound of a droplet falling echoed loudly in the darkness.
Amid it, she could faintly hear the sound of water flowing.
‘Is this somewhere like a sewer?’
The thought arose, but soon scattered limply.
Whether from fever or pain, her mind sagged like wet paper.
“Cough……, cough.”
Dry coughs burst out in succession.
The pneumonia that had been worsening over the past few days deepened further in the damp and cold air.
Her body grew cold from the chill rising from the stone floor, yet at the same time it felt as though heat was boiling fiercely within her.
‘It hurts…….’
Her body, her heart, everything hurt.
How many days had passed since she was brought here.
In this place where not even light reached, even her sense of time had disappeared.
Now that she had disappeared, had Lionel Edmund Valheim. become a little more at ease?
She hoped so.
She hoped that her decision could at least once make him smile.
Agnes quietly pressed her feverish cheek against the stone floor.
However, even a brief rest was not permitted.
Irritated footsteps could be felt approaching.
From those steps, the smell of gunpowder seeped out.
From that smell alone, Agnes instinctively shrank her body.
Her breathing, quickening between coughs, leaked out.
Nick, who had approached right in front of Agnes’s nose, glared at her in displeasure as she struggled like a fish dragged onto land and dying.
“Damn it! I thought only her legs were ruined, but why does she have so many problems?”
Thud-!
Unable to contain his irritation, Nick kicked a stone lying nearby harshly.
The stone bounced up and grazed Agnes’s side.
“……!”
A sharp pain came, but Agnes bit her lips tightly and swallowed the groan.
That only irritated Nick further.
“Damn stubborn. How is it that you don’t make a single sound?”
“That is enough, Nick.”
Before Nick’s kick could be directed at Agnes instead of the stone, Raul Herben Guten pushed him back.
“Can you not see this woman’s condition? She is a patient.”
“Do I have to consider even that? Do you not remember how she almost got us caught because she started hyperventilating over a mere firework and slowed us down?”
Nick grumbled as if the excitement from the eve festival night had not yet subsided.
Originally. The words that there would have been no need to face such danger if they had not kidnapped Agnes rose to the tip of his tongue, but Raul Herben Guten held them back.
“Anyway, she seems to need medicine. If we leave her like this, something serious might happen.”
Nick snorted.
“What, are you worried she might die?”
And in the words that followed, there was a venomous joke mixed in.
“You are quite kind to a hostage. Ah. Is it because it reminds you of the past? Because it brings to mind your lover? Well, if your lover had safely given birth back then, she would be about that age.”
Nick bent down, stroking his short stubble.
“Oh, now that I think about it, they do look somewhat alike. What was the name again, Ile—”
“Nick!”
At Nick’s attitude of mentioning the dead Ilena, Raul Herben Guten finally raised his voice.
“No matter who you are, if you speak any further, I will not tolerate it. Nick.”
At the rare sight of Raul Herben Guten getting angry, Nick clicked his tongue and stepped back.
“You said your origin was the Guten Marquis family, right? I truly cannot understand the things nobles do. Just to obtain a single marquis title, how can you kill your own sibling’s lover and even the child in her womb?”
“I told you to shut your mouth!”
Raul Herben Guten’s voice trembled as he could no longer endure it.
More than ever, it was filled with anger.
Nick lightly raised both hands and shrugged.
“Alright, alright. Anyway, I am not kind enough to give medicine to a hostage. If it is really necessary, you can go up there yourself and get it. Though I do not know if it is possible with the Imperial army swarming around.”
After Nick’s footsteps completely disappeared, Agnes thought within her fading consciousness, intoxicated by fever.
Why did that man called Raul Herben Guten say that his lover resembled her.
What connection could there be with her.
However, the thought did not continue and slipped into the darkness.
Her body was heavy, and it was hard to breathe.
With her overly sensitive sense of smell and hearing, all kinds of stimuli continuously dug into her.
Among them, the most unbearable was the radio static.
From the radio that Rebelt kept on all day to grasp the situation outside, crackle-. buzz-. sounds flowed out at every moment.
And that resembled the sound of a communicator.
The metallic noise unique to splitting signals overlapped with Andrew’s treatment and dragged in the shadow of war.
In the darkness where nothing could be seen, the uniforms of the Sercadia army and the Black Iron Knights continuously appeared before her eyes like hallucinations, tormenting Agnes.
Her breathing gradually became more rapid.
Whether it was because of the chill of the floor, the unceasing dry cough, or fear, she could not tell.
However, it was certain that the boundary between reality and the fear within her memories was becoming increasingly blurred.
Even so, Agnes did not let out a single groan until the very end.
As if she wished for her existence to disappear from the world.
☆☆☆
“……”
In the cold silence, Lionel Edmund Valheim. stood with his head lowered, holding onto the desk tangled with scattered documents.
His body, supported by his forearms, trembled slightly every time he inhaled.
Agnes was not there.
Her soft platinum hair, transparent like shattering sunlight.
Her voice that calmly called his name.
Her light gray eyes that looked straight at him with uncalculated affection.
No matter where he searched in the mansion, they did not exist.
The ducal residence, from which she had disappeared, shook precariously as if its pillar had been pulled out.
Lionel Edmund Valheim. tried to deny that emptiness, but the sensation of his chest tightening with every breath only became clearer.
Lionel Edmund Valheim. felt a vibration as if it resonated inside his skull.
The source of that vibration was none other than Adrian’s voice.
“Th-the photo of her boarding the train to the South was fabricated! We found a woman with a similar build to Agnes! Hiiik!”
Adrian’s voice saying that the ticket reservation list had been manipulated by handing over some money.
It would not leave his ears.
He took out the bottle from his inner pocket to take headache medicine, but it was already empty.
Lionel Edmund Valheim. impulsively threw the bottle toward the wall.
Clang—!
The bottle shattered into pieces and scattered across the floor.
However, the pressure tightening his head did not subside in the slightest.
Lionel Edmund Valheim. roughly grabbed the documents spread across the desk.
There were the things he had believed to be the truth.
A blurry photograph of Agnes boarding a train.
And a forged ticket.
When he crushed those things that were no better than trash, the real truth hidden beneath them was revealed.
Numerous letters sent by Simon.
And the list of supplies Agnes had sent to the North.
And……
The torn Imperial Dance Troupe admission proposal that Agnes had handed over with trembling hands.
The crudely patched paper that had once seemed shabby now pointed to a clearer truth than anything else.
Something this obvious.
There had been countless opportunities to see the truth.
Yet he did not see.
He did not listen.
The truth Agnes had spoken with all her effort at every moment, he had deliberately ignored.
Hiding behind the certainty that he was right, he trampled over her.
Lionel Edmund Valheim.’s breath twisted.
At the suffocating tightness around his throat, he roughly pulled at his shirt collar.
The button popped off and rolled on the floor, but the constriction did not loosen at all.
“……Agnes.”
Agnes’s trembling fingertips, and the words she had mustered courage to offer while swallowing her breath.
And the expression of resignation she had eventually shown.
Only now did they begin to reconstruct themselves properly in his mind.
The veins on the back of Lionel Edmund Valheim.’s hand, pressing against the edge of the desk, bulged.
Agnes had not killed Cedric Alexio Valheim.
Was that all.
For over a decade, Agnes had supported his unit from behind the war, with those small hands.
Even though no one acknowledged it.
Even for the unit abandoned even by the Emperor, she had willingly endured hardship.
What had kept him alive and brought him to this place amidst the pouring bullets of war was not revenge or anything else……
“It was Agnes.”
Lionel Edmund Valheim.’s vision wavered chaotically.
“Why, why on earth did you go that far……,”
His throat choked, and the last syllable broke off.
Every step Agnes had taken……
Had been concern directed toward him.
And affection.
The moment he realized that fact, guilt surged like a storm and swallowed beneath his feet.
A deeper and heavier headache tormented Lionel Edmund Valheim.’s temples as if tearing them apart.
Cold sweat running down his forehead dampened the tip of his chin.
In Lionel Edmund Valheim.’s hand, one of the old toe shoes he had taken from the storage was still clenched.
From the beginning, he had known.
That it was what he had given Agnes in childhood.
But seeing Agnes cherishing it had been displeasing to him.
It had seemed ridiculous that she still held dear the relationship he himself had ruined.
So he deliberately pretended not to know and trampled and ignored it.
But he should not have done that.
At least he, of all people, should not have treated Agnes that way.
“……What on earth have I.”
A voice squeezed out, forcing its way through his choked throat.
“What on earth have I been doing to you.”
