Chapter 18

Adel slid down from the horse as if drawn by something. She was about to approach him to check whether he was unharmed.

“You… know how to shoot a bow?”

But in that moment, a familiar voice made Adel’s thoughts vanish into thin air.

“Adel.”

He called her name firmly once more, but she did not turn around.

“Has your power manifested?”

The fierce grip on her arm came first, and the ice-cold, furious voice followed. Having no choice, Adel turned her gaze to Ethan.

His voice was not loud, but never before had Adel seen Ethan this angry.

“It hurts.”

“Did you not see me being wounded by a sword?”

Of course she had seen it. That was her damned power.

“And yet you just passed me by?”

The Adel Ethan knew was not a woman who could simply pass by him while he was bleeding.

Her wretched, one-sided love had been so terribly long and so clumsily obvious that everyone in the Herbron estate knew of it.

“And yet, you just passed me by….”

Even though Adel had not said yes, he wore an expression of disbelief.

Slowly, she twisted her arm free from him and straightened herself before him. But opening her mouth was not easy, as though she had learned to speak for the first time today.

“Ethan only gets a small wound on the arm, but that person—the Duke—loses an arm and a leg. Those cannot be reattached.”

Terrible common sense.

To Adel, Ethan had been absolute. She was the kind of woman for whom, even if someone beside her were dying miserably, Ethan’s scratched pinky finger would matter more.

From such a woman came words so terribly reasonable, and in that same moment, the ten years the two had built up scattered into the air.

Ethan seized Adel’s arm hard and began dragging her along without another word. His grip was so strong that she had no choice but to be pulled along helplessly.

Feeling the depth of an emotion he could not even measure himself, he brought her to the carriage he had ridden in. His only thought was that he must take her back to Herbron along this road.

Soon the door of the carriage bearing the Devryan crest was thrown open, and Ethan tried to pull Adel straight inside. But in that moment, feeling someone seize her other arm, Adel and Ethan both turned to look at him at the same time.

The man holding Adel’s arm was Duke Jacques Sonnier. But the moment his hand touched her, Adel’s mind began to go faint. It was that sensation she had felt in the Herbron estate. With the ground seeming to fall away and her body seeming to float in the air, Adel put strength into her toes.

‘What… is this?’

But when Ethan sharply struck his arm away, Adel was able to gather her dazed senses. Then the Duke raised his sword and pointed it at Ethan’s throat.

“Duke Sonnier, what on earth do you think you are doing?”

“And what of you, Count, trying to abduct your own wife?”

“Abduct? What kind of rudeness is this?”

Despite Ethan’s agitated voice, Jacques’s languid gaze touched Adel once and fell away.

“Whether it is rude or not is for me to judge.”

“This woman is my wife.”

“My memory is not so poor that I do not know that.”

Even as a murderous gaze passed between the two men, Adel could not take her eyes off this man at all. She wanted to seize the Duke’s hand and find out what that sensation had been.

Perhaps feeling her gaze, Jacques turned his eyes to her. At the sight of the beautiful man drenched in blood smiling brilliantly, Adel lost all words. It was as though he held something inside her body and was manipulating it.

“Adel!”

She, who had been unable to tear herself away from Jacques’s eyes as if being drawn in, finally came to her senses at Ethan’s call. From Adel’s mouth, now steady, the words needed in this moment flowed smoothly.

“Abduction is absurd. The Count was merely trying to take me quickly from a chaotic place.”

“Watching you, my lady, you seem remarkably skilled at falsehood as well….”

“Address me properly. I am the Countess of Devryan.”

Ethan sharpened his guard like a blade between the two, who were locked in each other’s gaze. Jacques soon lowered his sword and took a step back from them.

“Very well. I understand clearly. So the Countess of Devryan is now willingly getting into this carriage.”

“Yes. That is correct.”

“Then I have been rude indeed.”

As Jacques stepped back, Ethan all but hid Adel behind his back.

“If you know you have been rude, I trust you will permit us to be on our way.”

Jacques shrugged toward Ethan. But he subtly shifted his body toward the carriage door and tangled his gaze with Adel’s persistently.

“Countess, since you saved my life, may I call on you separately to express my thanks? That would not be rude, after all.”

Before Jacques had even finished speaking, Ethan climbed into the carriage first and pulled Adel in after him. No matter how urgent things were, this was the first time he had ever climbed in first. Soon the door closed, and only Jacques remained in the Chande Garden, now noisy from the skirmish. Left alone, Jacques muttered to himself with no one to hear.

“What on earth did you see? Our wondrous second daughter of Millium.”

“Your Grace, are you all right?”

Just then, Enoch came running from somewhere and checked Jacques’s body here and there.

“I like….”

Because his master was about to deliver an “I like them” or “I don’t like them” assessment out of nowhere, Enoch began fumbling about to find his notebook. He had never seen the crest on the carriage that had just passed, but he could find out quickly enough if he looked into it.

“Absolutely… do not like.”

“Pardon? What did you just say?”

“What?”

“You like… ‘absolutely’ do not like?”

As expected, he merely glanced down at him and did not answer again. Enoch had never once heard the Duke attach a modifier like “absolutely.” That meant that because of that family, which belonged to neither the “I like them” nor the “I don’t like them” category, Enoch’s notebook would have to gain another volume.

“But… are you smiling right now?”

“Me?”

“With your face covered in blood, smiling so gently is truly terrifying.”

Jacques looked down at Enoch with a displeased face.

“By the way, where on earth have you been, and why are you only appearing now?”

“I am an aide, not a knight. Naturally, I went to request reinforcements.”

At Enoch’s words, he looked around and saw that the imperial knights, now greater in number than before, were bringing the situation under control. The chieftain of the allied kingdom and his subordinates whom he had dragged back with him were being carried away as corpses.

“Let us go.”

“Without meeting His Highness the Crown Prince?”

“Yes. Make up something appropriate about me being badly wounded.”

“You look perfectly fine to me.”

“Move quickly. Something unplanned has happened, and my head is a mess.”

“Unplanned?”

Enoch was confused. Had Jacques ever been the sort of person to have a plan?

“And since you seem not to know, let me tell you—I nearly died just now. So I need to go rest quickly.”

Enoch stared persistently at the Duke, who seemed the same as usual and yet entirely different, then soon moved.

For attempting to understand this man in the first place was a meaningless endeavor.

* * *

Ethan, who had driven Adel as if something were about to happen at any moment, for some reason said nothing after they got into the carriage.

But he kept clenching and unclenching his fists, his brow deeply furrowed with impatience. Because of that, blood kept welling from his wound.

“Adel.”

“Are you not badly hurt?”

“What?”

“I mean the Duke. He was covered in a great deal of blood….”

At the unexpected words, Ethan bit down on his lower lip.

“What on earth do you mean by that, right now?”

Even as Ethan asked, Adel was recalling the red eyes she had just met.

The Duke’s face, covered in blood, held the madness of a man who had just returned from the battlefield. Moreover, his shoulders, broader than Ethan’s, and his overwhelmingly tall frame were enough to make Ethan look shabby by comparison.

“Adel!”

At the sudden sharpness, Adel could barely meet his eyes.

“Should you not first ask why I am here?”

Ethan had followed Adel up to the capital the very next evening after she left. He had been so anxious he could not bear it. And when he realized she was not at the townhouse he reached late at night, he had rushed to the imperial palace before dawn.

He was desperate to meet the Crown Princess as soon as possible and find out her intentions.

And there he had seen Adel. The woman whose eyes no longer wavered at all even when they met his.

“Ah, right. Why… did you come here?”

“Ha.”

Ethan raised his arm to press his forehead, then groaned softly from the wound.

Seeing this, Adel, instead of asking whether the bleeding had stopped, tore the hem of her nightgown and went to him. And when she pressed the cloth against his wounded arm, she felt him flinch and pull away. But he did not stop her.

When Adel tied the cloth tightly, Ethan’s brow furrowed slightly.

“Where are we going now?”

“….”

“Count.”

“Home, of course.”

“Home? You mean Herbron? I have not yet met my sister.”

“You broke your promise to me. So you are going home right now.”

Adel glared at him with a deeply furrowed brow. And he, too, did not take his eyes off her.

“I cannot go all the way to Herbron in this state of dress.”

“There are clothes for you at the capital townhouse as well.”

“That is news to me.”

Ethan learned for the first time that Adel was capable of being sarcastic.

“In any case, we are not going to Millium. You are a Devryan.”

Adel simply closed her mouth. They said the only way to request a divorce was through the position of a member of the imperial family’s second wife, but right now, even that felt preferable.

Then it suddenly occurred to Adel that this situation was ridiculous. Not even a few days ago, her parched heart had cracked like dry earth at a single warm glance from this man, and now she did not want to remain by his side for even a single moment.

Could there be anything in the world as fickle as the heart?

And come to think of it, his behavior made sense too. This man’s heart must be as fickle as hers.