Chapter – 19
“Rona?”
At that question, the butler looked troubled.
“Where is Rona?”
“She hasn’t returned yet.”
Ileon answered calmly.
“She might be deliberately killing time somewhere.”
He had noticed it too. At first, whenever she was sent downstairs to do housework, she would go without suspicion to do whatever her employer asked. But at some point she had started returning later and later, only coming back after his seizures had ended.
“Send someone to Café Cardinal to meet her. Two or three people. If she isn’t there, search the surrounding area too.”
“Yes. I will.”
Café Cardinal was only about a five-minute walk from the Grand Duke’s residence. Sending guards might seem excessive, but a butler had no reason to disobey his master’s orders. After Bernard left the room to summon escort knights, Ileon let out a long sigh.
He was lonely.
On the comfortable bed of a mansion that should have perfectly shielded him from the storms of the world, he was instead abandoned alone in terrible pain. What an ironic loneliness.
When he opened his eyes, he desperately missed Rona, who used to comfort him. He wanted to send her away so she wouldn’t see him writhing in pain and feel sad—but once the seizure ended, he wanted to feel her tearful, pitying touch.
What a contradictory heart.
What would his former self have thought? If someone pitied him, he might have considered it an insult. But now it was different. Such feelings came from understanding and empathy.
At some point, simply having Rona serve him perfectly as a maid was no longer enough.
He wanted to get closer. To reach her.
Whenever he thought of Rona, he felt something undefined was missing—a kind of spiritual hunger. Without realizing it, Ileon licked his lips. The taste of blood rose from his cracked, rough skin. He probably looked terrible.
Even so, he believed that if it were Rona, she would gently hold water in her soft lips and bring it to him.
He sent her away so she wouldn’t suffer watching him, yet when he regained consciousness he wanted her immediately at his side.
“Rona isn’t some kind of pendulum clock.”
How could she possibly know whether he was sane or lost in a seizure?
Still, her absence kept making him anxious.
Just then—
Whoosh.
Ileon felt flames erupt inside his eyes.
“Aaaagh!”
The pain that struck the moment he let his guard down after the seizure had seemed to end was even more horrific for catching him off guard. He had never felt this kind of pain before.
“Bernard! Bernard! Aaah…!”
At Ileon’s groans, Bernard rushed in.
“Your Highness! Are you alright?!”
“My eyes… Are my eyes on fire?”
“T-that can’t be possible!”
Hearing the butler’s panicked voice, Ileon thought otherwise. He could vividly feel his eyeballs melting like candles in flame and flowing out of his eyes.
“That can’t be. My eyes are melting and running out.”
“Your Highness. No. That isn’t true.”
The butler choked back tears.
“Those are tears flowing.”
“Ugh…”
As Ileon writhed in pain, the butler stuffed a cloth into his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue. And so another long seizure began.
Meanwhile, in a more private inner room, Rona blinked.
Only Duchess Yuter and Iris remained with her. Using two large mirrors, Rona examined her back. On her left shoulder blade, above her undergarments that exposed her back and shoulders, she saw a strange mark she had never noticed before.
Five circles were arranged like flower petals, and in the center was a small pentagon glowing red.
“What is this? A tattoo?”
At her question, Iris removed her robe and showed her own back.
“Ah!”
It was exactly the same mark. Because Iris had a darker complexion, her mark looked more red compared to the pinkish tone of Rona’s.
“It’s a stigmata,” Iris said.
“The mark of a priest. It means you’ve become a servant of God. It usually appears near the heart, often on the back.”
“Appears?”
Iris nodded.
“Do you really not remember anything?”
Now it was Rona’s turn to nod.
“When you complete your training and become an official priest, God personally engraves it.”
“God engraves it?”
“Yes. It just appears after the ceremony.”
“Huh.”
It was simply fascinating. Only now did it finally feel like she was inside a novel. Until now she had only stayed at the house with Ileon, so she had never had a chance to learn about this kind of setting. She also wasn’t the type to carefully examine her naked body in a mirror while bathing.
She had possessed this body for about a year, yet this was the first time she noticed this mark.
However, the Duchess and Iris looked at her with deep sorrow, certain she was truly Elicia despite her lost memories.
Did the original Elicia die?
Is that why I ended up possessing her body?
They kept saying she was a priest, but she couldn’t hear any divine voice at all.
“Um… Iris?”
When Rona called her name, Iris brightened despite knowing she wasn’t remembered.
“If you’re a priest, can you hear God’s voice too?”
“Of course. Otherwise you couldn’t even come to Hadunsha.”
“Ah… then what should I do? I don’t hear anything.”
Iris and the Duchess exchanged complicated looks.
“And if I’m really Elicia, what happened? Why did I lose my memory and end up there?”
Rona explained she had awakened on the shore of Laurel Lake, nearly drowned, and had been found by a forest-dwelling couple.
Both women were shocked.
“Laurel Lake? That makes no sense.”
“Why?”
According to them, Elicia had disappeared while traveling to Grerosa for a sabbatical. Grerosa was where priests went to rest and spiritually heal after long service.
Her carriage had been attacked.
The guards were slaughtered. The accompanying priests were also killed.
Rona felt chills across her body.
This had happened to Elicia. And now that she knew she occupied Elicia’s body, it didn’t feel unrelated to her own past as Won Yoon-ji.
Wait… was anything like this in The Flower of the Blind Beast?
She didn’t remember anything about a grand temple or divine revelations. Maybe it appeared later.
“Laurel Lake is at least a week’s journey by carriage from where you disappeared.”
And the path included dangerous canyons.
Estimating the timeline, it seemed she had awakened at Laurel Lake only one or two days after Elicia vanished.
“Then maybe I’m not Elicia after all?”
Iris reacted immediately.
“You just saw the stigmata! How can you say that after seeing God’s sacred mark?”
Yes, but she still couldn’t hear any divine voice.
“Anyway, it’s late. If I don’t go back, they’ll worry.”
At that, both women looked shocked.
“Come to think of it, where have you been staying? We searched the entire empire. People thought you’d been torn apart by canyon waters.”
Her eyes reddened.
“I’ve been working as a maid at the Grand Duke of Clement’s residence.”
“What?!”
“What?!”
They both shouted at once, making Rona feel like a bombshell.
“I attended to Lord Ileon. I earned good money too.”
“Oh… dear child.”
The Duchess held her head.
“I actually came out today on an errand for His Highness.”
“You personally attended the Grand Duke?”
“Yes.”
Rona answered honestly. She lacked too much information to risk lying.
“You weren’t… involved with the Grand Duke…?”
“…No.”
He had a destined partner already. Though who knew what the future held.
She had woken up in his bed a few times, but nothing like what the Duchess implied had happened.
At Rona’s denial, Iris nodded.
“If she weren’t pure, the stigmata would disappear.”
“I see. Yes.”
Rona’s eyes widened at this new information. But they didn’t elaborate.
“Anyway, you are not Rona Herapallis. You are Elicia Yuter.”
“Yes, exactly,” Iris agreed.
“From this moment on, you must never return to the Grand Duke’s residence.”
“…What?”
The Duchess spoke firmly.
“You cannot go back to the Grand Duke’s house.”
Meanwhile, Butler Bernard felt like he was dying.
His master’s condition was clearly worsening.
Until now, Ileon’s seizures had shown certain patterns. But hearing him say such strange things—like his eyes burning and melting—was new.
It made Bernard wonder if the pain had finally driven him mad.
I thought His Highness had stronger mental fortitude…
Anyone else would have gone insane long ago from such suffering.
Even Bernard sometimes felt like he might lose his mind just watching.
Even after the groans stopped, they seemed to echo in his ears like hallucinations. Long after the room fell silent, he hesitated to enter the bedroom.
And they still hadn’t found Rona.
The guards sent earlier returned empty-handed.
Recently, Bernard had sensed something changing between the two. For six months they had maintained proper boundaries as employer and servant.
But recently those lines seemed blurred.
He had even witnessed his master receiving water directly from her mouth.
When he casually asked Rona about it, she had innocently answered:
“Because you said you do that too, Mr. Butler.”
Bernard had been dumbfounded.
To think his dignified master would use his loyal servant as an excuse to seduce her—was he truly losing his mind?
Still, failing to find Rona bothered Bernard deeply.
Click.
When he entered the room, Ileon turned his head and stared at him.
His eyes glowed red in the darkness.
“Untie me.”
