Chapter 58

Chapter 58

“Uh… May I ask why you’re asking?”

A hint of suspicion crept into Selen’s eyes as she looked at Leonard.

Leonard raised both hands to show that he meant no harm.

“I’m simply curious. I was wondering whether she’d ever been exposed to another poison made by an alchemist, like the one we’re dealing with now.”

“Oh, is that what you mean?”

Selen pondered for a moment.

Would it be all right to tell him? It should be fine, shouldn’t it?

In the end, her answer was rather anticlimactic.

“I don’t know. The lady never told me that much. But…”

“But?”

“I actually asked about it myself, you know? I asked Wood.”

Whether he’d been threatened or not, whether he’d done it intentionally or otherwise, the poison he had created had been used to kill someone.

According to the rules, he should have been dealt with alongside the other members of the Silent Swamp Guild.

And yet, he had survived. The only member of the Silent Swamp Guild to do so.

Moreover, although his movements were restricted, he was living comfortably, free to pursue whatever research he pleased.

There was only one reason he was allowed to live that way.

It was because of Irenea’s request.

It was only natural that Wood considered Irenea his benefactor, but even he couldn’t understand the reverse of that relationship.

“He said he couldn’t think of anyone who fit the description either, so he told the lady he must have mistaken her for someone else.”

“And yet Rin insisted that it was him?”

“Yes. Then she even gave him the recipe for a potion.”

Wood had been rather surprised.

It was indeed the recipe for a potion he had created himself.

How on earth did she know a recipe he had never made public?

Irenea’s answer was simply, ‘It’s a secret.’

There were other things he couldn’t make sense of, either.

He had made the potion according to that recipe and sold it a few times, but it was never something that would have made its way outside the back alleys.

And even if it had, it wasn’t the kind of potion Irenea would have had any reason to take.

No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t imagine that he was the person she was looking for.

And yet, Irenea insisted that it was him.

In the end, Wood gave up trying to figure it out and simply concluded that he must have helped Irenea in some way.

He decided that he could repay the kindness she had shown him by doing his best for her from then on.

“So what kind of potion was it?”

“I didn’t get that far. He clammed up and insisted he absolutely couldn’t tell me. So… I’m guessing it was something that wouldn’t do the lady any good, considering her connection to it.”

Selen offered her own speculation, wondering whether it might have been a poison.

Unlike her, Leonard fell silent, his expression thoughtful.

Only after some time had passed did he finally open his mouth, revealing the request he’d wanted to make to Selen.

“I’d like to commission an investigation into my dreams.”

“Dreams? What kind of dreams?”

Selen asked, clearly having no idea what he meant.

Leonard struggled for quite some time to find the right words to explain.

“Someone I know appears in them, but they look completely different from how they do in reality, and yet certain aspects of the dreams strangely correspond to reality.”

“That doesn’t sound particularly strange to me. Aren’t dreams usually like that?”

“I’m not someone who normally dreams much. Besides, the dreams I’ve been having lately are all connected.”

The dreams didn’t always follow a chronological order.

Sometimes he dreamed of something that seemed to have happened in the past, even earlier than the events in the dream he’d had the previous night.

At other times, he dreamed of something far in the future.

However, if he arranged all the dreams he’d had in the order in which the events occurred, they connected seamlessly.

For instance, Jenis being dragged away by Harry Miles because she couldn’t repay her debt, being abused by him until she died, and Leonard taking revenge on Harry Miles afterward.

Or the time he tried to teach a nobleman a lesson for stubbornly refusing to pay him after the job was done, only to take the man’s wife instead of his money.

“Hmm, that is a little strange. So what exactly do you dream about?”

“What I dream about is…”

Leonard recalled a dream he’d had a few days earlier.

On the first night he had fallen asleep with Irenea in his arms, he had a dream unlike any he’d ever experienced before.

‘Don’t look!’

Judging by the dresses women wore to balls, the back was considered one of the parts of the body that could be exposed without hesitation.

But the woman in his dream was different.

Normally, if someone saw a woman bathing, she would cover her front.

But this woman desperately tried to hide her back.

It was probably because of the scars covering it.

In the dream, she said that she had absolutely no worth as a woman.

Those scars on her back must have been the culmination of that brainwashing.

And so, he…

“Marquis Consort?”

“Ah.”

At Selen’s call, Leonard snapped out of his thoughts and shook off the lingering fragments of the dream crowding his mind.

Instead, he recalled the trembling sensation that still lingered at his fingertips.

Before coming here, back in their bed, Irenea had been half-asleep, wandering through the hazy world of dreams when Leonard’s hand brushed against her back.

She had startled violently at his touch.

Having shared a bed with her for several days, Leonard was certain of one thing.

It wasn’t Leonard’s touch that had frightened Irenea.

It was the fact that his hand had touched her back, at a moment when she couldn’t distinguish reality from her dream.

“Perhaps it’s just my imagination.”

When had he first started having these dreams?

Leonard remembered the exact moment they had begun.

“I think I’m dreaming about what might have happened if I’d never met Rin…”

After meeting Irenea.

It was precisely from that point onward that he had begun having these dreams.

“Marquis Waindal has returned!”

A soldier stationed atop the high watchtower spotted the Waindal banner and sounded the horn to announce his lord’s return.

The gates of the thick ramparts, built to keep ancient beasts from invading, slowly swung open.

The number of knights passing through the gates with weary, exhausted faces was nearly a third less than when they had departed a month earlier.

Yet neither the Marquis of Waindal nor the knights marching behind him showed the slightest trace of gloom.

Despair and anxiety spread even more easily than the common cold.

Since protecting the castle and the people living in its territory was their duty and responsibility, they had to be just as skilled at controlling their emotions as they were with their swords.

The Marquis of Waindal and his knights maintained their strong, confident strides beneath the gazes of the people who had come out to welcome them.

“Welcome back, Your Lordship. Are you injured anywhere?”

“I’m fine. More importantly, has there been a reply from El?”

“No, not yet… But the messenger should arrive soon.”

“I see.”

As though his hopes had just been dashed, a heavy shadow fell over the Marquis of Waindal’s face.

As if to console him, his butler spoke up.

“A letter from Madam arrived this morning.”

“Really? Where is it? Have you taken it to my study?”

“Yes. I’ll have everything prepared so you can read it as soon as you’ve finished bathing.”

He wanted to read his wife’s letter immediately, but as the butler had said, bathing had to come first.

After thoroughly washing away the blood and dust covering his body, he sat down at his desk, looking neat and composed, and began reading his wife’s letter.

‘There’s still no improvement…’

At present, the Marchioness of Waindal and Flint were staying at a villa near the entrance to the Veln Mountains, along the northern border of the marquisate.

They had gone there so that their son could recuperate and receive care after suddenly falling ill.

‘If only we could discover the cause of his illness.’

His son, Flint Waindal, was one of the five strongest and most skilled knights in the order.

Born a robust, exceptionally large baby, Flint had always been a head taller than other children his age.

He had never even caught so much as a common cold.

No, what was a mere cold compared to everything else?

Even after being beaten with wooden swords, he would never suffer so much as a bout of body aches.

He would simply get up at dawn the following morning, as energetic as ever, and join his training.

Even now, the Marquis of Waindal could hardly believe that the son who had once been so healthy had suddenly grown frail and sickly, eventually becoming bedridden.

‘If only we had an alchemist at a time like this… No, no. What a dangerous thought.’

Although he had offered the custody of Keltenah to the Crown Princess and pledged his loyalty to her, Waindal was still under the Emperor’s scrutiny.

That scrutiny would likely continue until the Crown Princess inherited the throne.

Until then, he couldn’t even so much as cough in the direction of the capital.

Even if it was for the sake of curing his son’s illness, the moment Waindal made contact with an alchemist, his entire house would be uprooted.

His younger brother, the Emperor’s consort, might even be put in danger.

‘Of all the women in the world, why did he have to set his sights on the Emperor?’

The Marquis of Waindal let out a long sigh.

He wouldn’t have found it nearly so absurd if his younger brother had coveted the marquisate instead.

In truth, there was only one thing his younger brother desired.

The Emperor’s love.

One might reach for the warmth of the sun, but in the end, all one would do was burn to ashes.

The Marquis of Waindal had tried to stop his younger brother, but he refused to listen and threw everything he had into pursuing his desire.

He had even gone so far as to ask his own brother to give up what was rightfully his and step aside.

‘Have I ever asked you for something like this before? Not once. I’ve never even coveted the things that were always meant to be yours. So please, just this once. Just this once, help me.’

If a child bearing his younger brother’s blood were born from the Emperor’s womb, the House of Waindal would be subjected to the Emperor’s scrutiny for the rest of its existence.

Knowing that full well, his younger brother had still pleaded with him through tears.

He had begged his brother to help him become a proper family with the Emperor.

‘And I wonder if he’s even happy.’

To prove that he harbored no ulterior motives, his younger brother had gone so far as to sever all ties with the House of Waindal.

In other words, regardless of their blood ties, the two brothers were publicly regarded as complete strangers.

That was why they never exchanged letters or communicated directly.

The only way the Marquis of Waindal ever heard how his younger brother was doing was through the occasional news conveyed in the letters his wife sent to the Emperor’s consort in her capacity as the Marchioness of Waindal.

He couldn’t understand how a life spent abandoning even one’s own family and groveling before the Emperss just to avoid being cast aside could possibly bring anyone happiness.

But what could he do?

That was the path his younger brother had chosen.

“Your Lordship, please excuse me for a moment.”

The butler entered, pushing a trolley, and poured the Marquis a drink.

Before the liquor in the ice-filled glass even had a chance to cool, the Marquis downed the strong drink in one gulp.

Rather than stopping him, the butler refilled his empty glass and asked,

“Have you finished reading the letter?”