IBWCD 24

Chapter 24

Up until this point, Kalian hadn’t paid much attention to how she was treated and raised in her home.

No, he shouldn’t.

It was nothing unusual for an illegitimate child to be treated poorly in aristocratic society, and he had no reason to interfere in the count’s affairs.

He thought to himself.

The only reason he didn’t hesitate to interfere was because the Countess was using the dark arts to disrupt the order of the Empire.

That’s all.

But what he was feeling right now was far from objective.

Kalian felt uncomfortable and angry.

This uncharacteristically intense emotion was creeping up his spine, and it was annoying.

He wanted to check it out.

He wanted to know what this nagging feeling was.

“You’ve been eating that horrible stuff for three years and you’re fine?”

“If I’d taken it myself, I wouldn’t have lasted six months. Instead, the Countess tricked me into slowly becoming addicted to it by calling it ‘holy water’ so it would absorb into my skin.”

“Why?”

“Because she wanted me to die a slow, natural death after she got what she wanted from me.”

“Huh.”

He was dismayed to realize the nature of his discomfort.

It’s human nature to fear that you’ve harmed yourself.

Despite being cursed with this herb, suffering from a high fever and scorched earth, and being given a time limit, the woman was as nonchalant as if she were relaying someone else’s business.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing.

Kalian couldn’t predict what this woman with nothing to lose would do to uncover the truth behind her mother’s death.

A cold laugh escaped Kalian’s lips.

“So what are you going to do with this?”

“I’m going to go to the place that brought it in and see if they’ve been dealing in bulk.”

“If you ask.”

Evelyn stared at him, still.

Her face contorted in an odd way, as if she didn’t understand.

“I have to do something, it’s part of my purpose to find out who’s behind the Countess.”

“You look so easy at the top. Enough to hand over the ledger for nothing in return?”

She was speechless. He had a point, but she wasn’t without ideas.

Most of all, Evelyn wondered why the grand duke’s hair smelled like this.

The smell of raw herbs and enchanted musk were very different.

The raw material smells of decay, but when it is refined into a curse, the scent is neutralized to the point that it is usually undetectable to the sense of smell.

Evelyn was able to recognize the herb used in the curse because she had seen it, albeit briefly.

Her gaze returned to the hair, black as the night sky.

“By the way, that hair…”

She was about to ask him why with a serious face, but he spoke first with a reluctant expression.

“The Empress threw a teacup at me.”

She could tell he was in a bad mood from the moment she walked into the office, so there was a reason.

But what does that have to do with this?

Evelyn opened her mouth to reply, unsure of what to say, but he chuckled in disbelief and lowered his gaze to Iblis’s horns.

“The tea that was poured into my hair smelled like a curse.”

“You’re…?”

“Perhaps the Empress wished for my soul and body to be separated.”

The words startled Evelyn, and she jerked her head up, her eyes locking with his. The corners of his lips curved upward in a graceful line as he stared at her.

“You said there was someone who had a strange conversation with the Countess.”

“If it was a strange conversation…”

“Yes. The voice of the one who placed the Primal Stone in her mouth. Do you recall?”

A frown deepened on her brow.

“Are you suggesting that it was the Empress who was behind the Countess?”

In her previous life, the Empress had treated Evelyn poorly. She had never been invited to imperial events and had never heard the Empress’s voice.

But she certainly remembers the voice of the one who spoke to the Countess. Even if she had traveled back through the rivers of time.

Evelyn stared into Kalian’s eyes.

“Yes, how could I forget that?”

A shimmering, molded light flickered in the frosted gold eye.

“In four days, there will be a final interrogation at the temple. The Emperor and his wife will be there, as well as the High Priestess, so you will be accompanying them.”

* * *

The next morning.

Kalian summoned his lieutenants, Max and Dwayne.

At the abrupt order, the lieutenants, who had been conducting drills on the training grounds, hurried to the mansion.

As they walked down the hallway to the Oval Office, Dwayne spoke up, his face filled with anxiety.

“You don’t mean to reverse the order, do you? I’ve heard there’s a plague near the port of Litchev.”

“Of course not, my lord, you know that if it’s in Litchev, it’s going to be punished.”

“My maternal grandfather’s estate, where he didn’t even come to the funeral of his late ancestor. I wouldn’t want to go if I were you…”

Kalian’s mother, Charlotte, was the only daughter of the Parminion family, the only ducal family in the Empire, and a longtime lover of the Emperor.

Tragedy struck the day before she was to marry the Emperor.

The Empress slept with a drunken Emperor and became pregnant with his child.

According to imperial law, the woman who conceives the emperor’s first son must be crowned empress.

Unfortunately, Claudia gave birth to a son, and a devastated Charlotte refused the emperor’s pleas to become empress.

It was the deceased grand duke who proposed to Charlotte, who was about to give up everything and head for a monastery.

The Duke of Parminion was fiercely opposed, claiming that the whole thing was a ruse by the Grand Duke, but Charlotte eventually won his hand.

Afterward, Charlotte’s absence from the Empire caused a rift between the Duke of Parminion  and the Grand Duchess.

“My lord is not one to abandon a cause like that. Anyway, if you ask me to investigate the entire plague, I’ll bite my tongue in your presence!”

Max burst out laughing, and patted Dwayne’s shoulder vigorously.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure he’s summoned you here for orders to return, and it’s time for you to go home.”

But when they arrived at the office, they were greeted with news like a thunderbolt.

“You will be traveling via Litchev. We’ll be leaving as soon as the interrogation is over, so notify the knights and have them ready.”

“Lord, what the…!”

Dwayne’s eyes widened as he took a step forward.

His fists balled into fists, his eyes about to protest, when Kalian looked down at him calmly.

“Is there a problem?”

Dwayne met the frosty gaze and backed away, frozen by Kalian’s intimidation.

The look of unwillingness to allow any resistance instantly weighed heavily on the atmosphere around him. Benjamin and Max were silenced by it.

In the sudden silence, Kalian spoke low.

“I ask you again. Do you question my orders?”

Even if there was, heI doubts there was a knight in Blackwood large enough to speak up.

It wasn’t just because of Kalian’s power and outrageous brute strength.

There was a cohesiveness about them that was not found among the imperial knights or mercenaries.

Dwayne, in particular, had served Kalian closely for eighteen years, from the age of ten when he was sent into battle.

“I’m sorry, my lord.”

Only Dwayne, who scratched at his lion’s mane of brown hair, spoke hesitantly.

He could feel Benjamin and Max standing a step behind him, signaling him to stop, but he knew he had to say something.

“If it’s no secret in the manor that my lord has a mistress, why are you so tight-lipped with us?”

It was a rumor that had been circulating since they were stationed in Ferum, waiting for the gates to open at any moment.

A councilor had stayed in Kalian’s quarters and spent the night with the raging man.

As soon as the rumors began to circulate, a petite woman was noticed, and even the dullest of men couldn’t help but feel strange.

“Does she have precognitive powers or something? How could you be with a woman who might be a mole sent by someone else?”

“Perhaps I’ve been too kind to you lately.”

Kalian said in a low voice.

It was a warning not to cross the line.

“I would rather wield a spear alone in a demon-infested battlefield, and I will, if you ask me to follow you to Babel’s branches!”

Dwayne’s entire body seemed to stiffen under Kalian’s cold gaze, but once opened, his mouth refused to close.

“But I’m not going to let myself be swayed by the width of a wench’s skirt, even with a knife at my throat…!”

He slammed the back of his head into Kalian’s as he turned away.

“!”

Kalian stopped walking and turned around.

A cold gaze bore straight into him. No, that wasn’t the only thing he saw.

The massive axe that had been in Dwayne’s hand was now in Kalian’s, pointed at his master’s throat.

A trickle of blood from the blade’s crushing wound soaked the underside of his neck.

Sweat began to pour like rain down Dwayne’s face, a long scar running from the mountain of his right eyebrow to the tip of his left lip.

“Lord, Lord…!”

Dwayne’s arrogant face and emotionless eyes didn’t seem real to him.

“Do not betray my trust in you by your frivolous behavior, Dwayne.”

Picking up the bloodied axe, Kalian wiped it on his sleeve and thrust it into Dwayne’s grasp, staring him straight in the eye.

“You speak one more blasphemous word, and I will cut your tongue out.”

Dwayne realized his indiscretion and quickly bowed.

“…I apologize, my lord.”

With Dwayne begging for forgiveness, Kalian stalked away. Benjamin followed quickly behind him.

“I must stay in Eldin for a few days.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“That’s not necessary. You stay here and make sure the knights have the supplies they need.”

The knights’ loyalty to him was such that even the Emperor coveted it.

It was a shame that they should have made their day with something like this, but they didn’t.

Now that he had accepted Evelyn’s proposal, the knights were bound to follow her orders, and it would be useless for them to rebel because they were Moors.

“A lack of hierarchy leads to chaos.”

Kalian sighed.

He thought of her mother, who hadn’t set foot outside the castle since her marriage in the north, and hadn’t eaten or drunk since her father’s death.

“I wonder if a woman who can’t even accept what she deserves can handle rough men.”

Kalian’s dark eyebrows arched.