ELND Chapter 49

Chapter 49

 With Another Man

“Looks like we’ve arrived, Your Highness Bianca.”

A couple of hours after departure, Mina drew back the window curtain and spoke.

Sure enough, soon after, the coachman approached and opened the door.

“We have arrived, Your Highness Bianca. Please, alight.”

Receiving the coachman’s escort, I stepped down and took in the bleak mountain scenery at a glance.

The maids who followed after me from the carriage scanned the surroundings with even sharper, wary eyes.

“Are we really meeting here?”

I asked Mina quietly, and she nodded slightly.

“Yes. I thought it would be better to meet beforehand and enter together. It might be dangerous otherwise.”

The early morning mountains were still shrouded in darkness.

Naturally, few people were around, and a thick fog hung in every direction.

The only sound in the quiet surroundings was the occasional rustle of fallen leaves, while the cold mountain wind kept hitting my cheeks.

The atmosphere carried an inexplicable chill.

I unconsciously shrugged my shoulders inward at that eerie feeling, when Mina quietly took my hand.

She must have noticed that I was secretly frightened.

“Your Highness Bianca, are you truly okay? Of course, we will protect you no matter what, but… for you to leave the Duke’s castle and come all the way to such a humble place yourself…”

Mina looked concerned, like a delicate plant grown in a greenhouse worried about fragile Rebecca.

Fortunately, I was no longer the delicate Rebecca of the past.

I was simply overwhelmed for a moment by the unique morning mountain atmosphere.

With five loyal half-demon maids around me, what was there to fear?

I shrugged nonchalantly.

“Mina, did I ever tell you about the Whack-a-Mole game when I met the cursed dolls?”

“Whack-a-Mole? What’s that?”

The memory of striking the heads of the cursed dolls that had attacked in swarms made me chuckle.

“Oh, it’s something like that.”

While having this lighthearted conversation with Mina, a sound grew closer in the distance: crunch, crunch—the sound of leaves underfoot.

At the same time, the maids’ expressions stiffened slightly with tension.

“They must be here.”

Mina said quietly, staring into the distance.

When I turned my head, I saw a man slowly emerging from the bushes.

Finally standing before me, the man straightened his shoulders and spoke.

“Your Highness Bianca, you’ve finally come.”

A subtle hostility lingered in the man’s eyes directed at me.

He scanned me silently from head to toe before nodding slightly.

“I am ‘Thompson,’ formerly the deputy steward of the House of Light.”

Thompson’s voice was as cold as the surrounding atmosphere.

“Of course, I’m not sure if Your Highness Bianca would remember me.”

When Thompson spoke with that hint of mockery, Mina glanced at me and forced a small smile.

“Ha… haha, Thompson! That’s rude, you can’t speak to Her Highness like that!”

I shook my head in response.

“No. Thompson is one of the people I’ve wronged in the past, so that reaction is natural.”

The village of Greyzone, located on the mid-slopes of this mountain, was home to former servants of the Twins family—people who had been harshly treated by Rebecca and even dismissed in the past.

Thompson, standing before me, was both a resident of that village and my guide for the journey ahead.

I lifted the corners of my lips slightly and spoke.

“Thank you for coming such a long way to help me, Thompson.”

For a brief moment, Thompson’s eyebrows rose.

He had never imagined hearing thanks from the infamous Rebecca.

However, soon his indifferent expression returned, and he let out a long sigh.

“I’m not helping you for your sake, Your Highness Bianca. I’m doing this reluctantly at the request of my old friend Mina.”

Thompson cast a dissatisfied glance at Mina, then continued.

“Are you really intending to go to Greyzone Village?”

“Yes, Thompson.”

At my firm reply, Thompson’s expression showed frustration.

“Like me, most of the villagers will not welcome Your Highness. In fact, some might be far more hostile than I am.”

“……I suppose.”

“I will escort you to the village as Mina requested, but…”

Thompson’s eyes sharpened for a moment.

“My courtesy ends there. If the villagers harm you afterward, I will side with them.”

“…….”

“I have no intention of helping you beyond that.”

I nodded slowly toward him.

“I know, Thompson. I don’t expect any further courtesy.”

Thompson nodded in apparent satisfaction and lightly tapped the carriage door.

“Very well. Then I shall guide you to the village.”

Meanwhile, inside the Twins Duke’s carriage, the duke’s family was following the trail left by the Duchess.

At that moment, they were on their way to the location reported by the knights who had just found her last trace.

Leaning on her nanny’s arm, Bianca glanced at Cedric, who was seated across from her.

Cedric’s face had grown noticeably haggard in just a few hours.

Bianca had resolved herself firmly, yet seeing her brother’s sudden deterioration weighed heavily on her heart.

Pursing her small lips, Bianca finally spoke slowly.

“Your Highness will be fine. And we will be able to find her soon…”

But Cedric simply stared out the window, unmoving.

He seemed lost in a mental quagmire, hearing and seeing nothing else.

At that moment, what Bianca saw in Cedric’s mind was no different.

Memories of Rebecca kept flashing through his thoughts—specifically, the day she declared their divorce.

The harsh words he had spoken to her resurfaced, along with the expression on her face as she heard them.

“Your obsession suffocates me. No, I can no longer bear you yourself!”

“I regret marrying you. Even if it was arranged by Manakin, this… something is wrong.”

He had wanted to wound her.

He resented her for tying him with loveless obsession and causing him suffering.

So he had spoken sharply, like a dagger.

“I wish… you would just disappear somewhere I don’t know.”

And that dagger seemed to pierce Rebecca’s heart as intended.

She lowered her head, unmoving, and only after a long moment did she speak again.

“If I had been from a noble family other than Kachis, you would have trusted my heart.”

“Then we… might not have been so estranged.”

Cedric remembered thinking, as usual, that he was frustrated with Rebecca trying to change the subject when things were disadvantageous.

Her Southern accent, so typical of her, also irritated him.

Her red eyes, glancing up at him, were filled with resentment and tears as always.

He had expected her to lash out.

But that day, her reaction was slightly different.

“…No matter how many times I turn back, as long as I am me, our fate will be the same.”

Rebecca muttered in resignation.

Yet her voice carried the usual mixture of resentment and love toward Cedric.

“But someday, you will love me. You are the man heaven destined for me. And then…”

Rebecca, tears brimming, looked at him fiercely, clenching her teeth.

She seemed driven by rage.

“At that moment, you will deeply regret this.”

For Cedric, her words were nothing less than a curse.

From then on, their emotions escalated until Rebecca declared the divorce and even slapped him.

Cedric exhaled slowly, recalling that day.

“In the end, Rebecca was right.”

As he reflected on the cruel words he had spoken, he could not help but feel regret.

If only he had not said those words, if only he had not looked at her that way…

“Then perhaps Rebecca would not have silently disappeared.”

No, perhaps they would never have divorced at all.

Now, the only reason he could blame for Rebecca’s disappearance was the secret divorce contract.

She had relinquished her husband’s rights by her own hand. There was nothing he could do even if Rebecca disappeared entirely.

He deeply regretted his past self for allowing it to happen.

But even so, he could not let Rebecca go.

If he did, he would never forgive his foolish past self.

“By any means, I must find Rebecca.”

Just then, as he exhaled anxiously, the carriage slowly came to a stop halfway up the mountain.

Peering out the window, the knights’ captain stood politely outside the carriage, opening the door.

“Your Highness the Duke.”

In that brief moment of bowing, Cedric’s questions poured out.

“Did you find any trace of the Duchess? Direction? Did you sense any presence of a man…?”

An hour earlier, at the last place where Rebecca’s presence was felt, Cedric had asked the same questions.

At that time, there had been no sign of a man’s presence, which had given him some relief.

But now, the captain’s words were completely different.

“Her Highness Bianca’s presence seems to be moving toward the upper part of this mountain. Not the summit, but a bit higher. However…”

The captain hesitated, then continued.

“This time, there is also the presence of a man.”

“…….”

“……A half-demon man.”

Cedric’s calm blue eyes rippled like a disturbed lake.

“Not just me, but all knights with tracking magic sensed it. It seems they met here and went up together…”

The captain continued, but Cedric felt a sudden dizziness.

As his face turned pale, Bianca could not hide her concern.

“Y-Your Highness…”

Yet at that moment, Cedric heard nothing around him.

Rebecca and Adrian.

The scenes of the two meeting and whispering love kept replaying, and with each vision, molten anger surged rapidly in his chest.

He leapt from the carriage onto the black horse the captain had been riding.

“From here on, I’ll lead the horse.”

Leaving only a command to follow, Cedric galloped off.

As his gaze hardened, the black horse’s mane whipped wildly in the wind.