MDBYF ~ 06

Chapter : 06

The men who had kidnapped Clara collapsed onto the floor, covered in blood, without even getting the chance to scream.

It had all happened in an instant.

Clara stared wide-eyed at the scene, which had been stained crimson with fresh blood.

Then her gaze turned toward the man standing tall in the middle of the room.

The blond man had been staring at Clara as well. With his neatly trimmed blond hair swept back from his forehead, he plunged his bloodied sword into the table and pulled something from his coat.

A handkerchief.

Wiping the blood from his neck and clothes with the soft-looking cloth, he strode toward Clara.

Clara instinctively recoiled, and he lowered himself until their eyes were level.

“Miss.”

“……”

“How did you end up being dragged off to a place like this?”

He drew a knife from his waist.

A clean dagger, without a single drop of blood on it.

Fear immediately rose within Clara, but the blade did not cut short her life.

Instead, he used it to slice through the loose ropes binding her.

Josef, seated at his desk in his office and absently flipping through documents, soon stopped his meaningless movements.

The words would not register.

Something kept catching at his nerves, disturbing his concentration.

‘They say your fiancée has been missing for several hours.’

Even after dismissing the adjutant who had delivered the report and finishing the strategy meeting, Clara had not returned to the marquis’s residence.

She was still missing.

“Damn it.”

Josef finally set the documents aside and rubbed his throbbing forehead.

Of all times, she had to become a source of trouble now, at such a critical moment.

According to the additional report, Clara had gone into the city by car with an escort. She had stopped by a bookstore, but disappeared amid the confusion caused by an air-raid warning.

Josef considered the possibility that Clara had run away.

Perhaps, dissatisfied because he had not treated her as kindly as her previous fiancés had, she had chosen to express her resentment this way.

In other words, this might simply have been one of Clara’s foolish attempts at protest.

It was not until dusk that Josef finally ordered his men to search for her whereabouts.

If she truly was staging a protest, she could not possibly have made it beyond the capital.

Now, he was waiting for the final report.

“Where the hell did she go?”

Just then, the black telephone on his desk rang.

Josef immediately picked up the receiver.

—My lord.

“Speak.”

—We found the men who laid their hands on the young lady.

The fingers tapping against his desk suddenly stopped.

This was no childish protest.

“Urgh!”

A man, his arms tightly bound behind him as he knelt on the floor, was brutally kicked.

The guards of the security force who had gathered on Josef’s orders surrounded the man and were carrying out what they called “preprocessing.”

“Preprocessing” meant breaking a person’s spirit beforehand so that, by the time Josef arrived, they would immediately spill everything they knew.

Soon, the marquis whose fiancée had been stolen from him stepped into the dark room.

The bloodied man let out a terrified whimper the moment his eyes met Josef’s.

“I-I’m sorry. We didn’t know she was such an important person—”

Thud!

Another kick sent him sprawling across the floor.

Without sparing the man so much as a glance, Josef listened to his subordinate’s report.

“It appears that all the men involved in kidnapping the young lady are dead. He is the only one who survived and went into hiding, so he must know something.”

“I-I really don’t know anything! I have no idea where that woman went!”

As Josef took a step toward him, the guards who had been preparing to swing their batons immediately stepped back.

Josef crouched in front of the man and stared at him with eyes as cold as frost.

“Tell me where my fiancée is.”

“I really don’t know. I’m not lying!”

“Perhaps you’ll remember something once you lose a wrist.”

At that moment, the man’s right arm was firmly seized.

His face drained of color, and overwhelmed by terror, he began blurting out everything that came to mind.

“We didn’t take her away! Some guy showed up and took the woman from us! I swear, I swear it’s true! We were victims too, so there’s no way we could know what happened to her!”

“He took her from you?”

“I don’t know his name, but I remember what he looked like. So please…”

Josef nodded toward his men.

Finally released, the man, drenched in cold sweat and tears, barely managed to continue.

“He was incredibly skilled with a sword. He had blond hair and pitch-black eyes…”

Blond hair and black eyes.

At that moment, someone came to Josef’s mind.

But that was impossible.

However, as the man continued speaking, Josef’s suspicion gradually turned into certainty.

“……I think he was a Sentinel. There’s no way an ordinary person could move like that.”

All Sentinels were under the management of the state and, unless they had become crippled, could not escape its control.

There had been only one Sentinel whom the state had ever released.

Mikhail Rosenheiler.

A Sentinel with blond hair and eyes as black as the deepest night.

He had laid his hands on what belonged to Josef.

The moment he realized that fact, Josef was overcome by an emotion he could not even understand himself.

Drip. Drip.

Somewhere, the sound of water droplets falling echoed continuously.

The rhythm was steady, like the ticking hand of a clock.

Strangely enough, that trivial sound only made Clara more nervous.

How much time had passed since she had been brought here?

All the windows were covered, so there was no way to know for certain. She could only assume that quite a long time had passed.

The room in which she had been confined was not cold, but it was narrow and dark.

The man who had brought Clara here was nowhere to be seen.

‘That man.’

A large, nameless man with blond hair and eyes like obsidian.

There had been something about him that carried the same oppressive presence as Josef.

When he had first appeared, Clara had been certain of one thing.

She had believed he was someone sent to rescue her.

She assumed Josef had quickly noticed her disappearance and ordered someone to find her.

That was why she had followed the man without suspicion.

But now, Clara was not in the marquis’s residence.

She was in a cramped, unfamiliar room.

The moment she belatedly realized that he had not been sent by Josef, it felt as though her heart had dropped straight to the floor.

Had she foolishly trusted someone she never should have trusted?

She could almost hear the deep sigh of her fiancé, who was probably furious with her by now.

Even if she managed to return safely…

Josef would surely be furious.

He would say that she had made him waste his time and energy when he was already overwhelmed with the demands of war.

Despite having been abducted and taken to an unfamiliar place, those were the things Clara feared most.

What if he decides to cast me aside, saying I’m nothing but a nuisance who can’t even guide him properly…? What will I do then?

The man who had carelessly thrown her onto the hard mattress of an iron bed still showed no sign of returning.

Surprisingly, Clara’s hands were free.

Why hadn’t he tied them?

It almost felt as though he were telling her that he knew perfectly well she had no ability to escape, and the thought made her mood sink even lower.

Because it was true.

She was a woman with neither the nerve nor the courage to attempt such a thing.

Drip. Drip.

Creeeak.

The sound of dripping water was joined by the groan of old hinges.

Startled, Clara’s eyes widened like a frightened rabbit’s as she jerked her head up.

The large man appeared beyond the door.

The same skin-tight black clothes still clung to his body.

A pale light illuminated his face.

The man was beautiful.

Beautiful enough that it was difficult to believe he was the same person who had slaughtered those vicious-looking thugs in the blink of an eye.

“……”

That did not mean Clara could lower her guard.

He was beautiful, but he was also a man who radiated an equally dangerous aura.

Clara held her breath, unable to take her eyes off him.

She feared him all the more because she had no idea what he intended to do with her.

In contrast, the man seemed to have no particular thoughts about Clara at all.

After locking the door behind him, he strode toward the edge of the room.

He was not approaching Clara, but the room was so cramped that his presence still felt unbearably close.

Clara continued holding her breath as she silently watched his back.

He stopped before a basin filled with clean water.

Then, without the slightest hesitation, he pulled off his shirt.

The face of Clara—who had spent her entire life as a proper, modest noblewoman—flushed hot in an instant.