Chapter 2
Lirete dreamed an old dream for the first time in a long while.
When was it?
A faded fragment of the past, so distant and hazy.
It might have been when her father, the head of the Blevit March family, would cast a gentle gaze upon her beneath the warm sunlight. Or when her mother, the lady of the house, would call her name in a soft, tender voice.
How old had she been then?
She couldn’t remember exactly, but it was long before she came of age.
An age when, including her debutante days, she had only looked forward to her coming-of-age ceremony—an age when she knew how to be somewhat innocent and naive, yet also a little shrewd…
“…”
Lirete slowly opened her eyes.
An unfamiliar ceiling, painted in oils, greeted her.
Aware of her body’s state—so weak that even swallowing was difficult—she squeezed her eyes shut tight, then opened them again. Her forehead was damp with sweat. As she tried to lift her hand, she suddenly felt a strange dissonance.
Her hand was wrong.
Even when she forced her fingers apart, two of them remained stiff, as if fused together into a single mass.
“Ugh…”
Gripping the sheets with her stiffened hand, Lirete sat up and gazed hazily into the air.
Where was this now?
It was a place she had never seen before.
Had Dailun, in his characteristic and unpredictable capriciousness, completely redecorated the interior while she had been languishing?
That couldn’t be it. She couldn’t find the usual cluttered, messy feel he preferred. The room, where she lay alone and isolated, was furnished with heavy but not unpleasant colors and objects.
Her weakly roving gaze stopped shortly after.
“…!”
Her pinkish eyes, their color only half-saturated as if marred by imperfections, widened as if witnessing something unbelievable.
What had seized her gaze was a large tapestry hanging on the wall.
Lirete rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. But what she was seeing remained unchanged.
It was a tapestry of dark brown, dyed with red pigment—the emblem of the House of Justutia.
*The House of Justutia? Why am I here…?*
Without even the leisure to calmly assess the situation and assert her logical reason, she sprang up from the bed.
“Ugh!”
Before she could take even a single proper step, her body collapsed. Just like her fingers, which had stuck together as if congenitally malformed, it seemed something had also gone wrong with her legs.
Lirete struggled desperately to stand upright. She tried so hard that the skin of her bitten lip split, leaving a faint taste of blood on her tongue.
Still, perhaps her condition hadn’t deteriorated completely yet, for she managed to raise her body and make it to the door. Pulling the doorknob revealed a long, narrow corridor. The interior, which blocked the winter air reasonably well, was eerily silent.
Carefully observing her surroundings, Lirete descended the stairs—down, and further down.
*This isn’t the imperial palace.*
Only after a few steps did she become certain.
This was not the place she had endured like a living hell. Yet, if her eyes hadn’t deceived her, and if what the tapestry suggested was true, then this place would soon become a hell no different from Dailun’s imperial palace.
She didn’t know why she had woken up here, nor through what path she had arrived.
She knew only one thing.
She must not stay here.
Just like the chilly silence that had assaulted her the moment she opened the door, there wasn’t a single ant inside the building. Thanks to that, since escaping the bedroom, Lirete had been able to flee the building without any hindrance.
Cautious as a mouse, yet quick on her feet, she finally reached the outdoors. And there, the sight that filled her eyes seized her by the ankles.
*What in the world…*
It was a mansion that conjured the image of a castle.
The majesty and vastness that naturally emanated from it were vivid enough to crush the spirits of any onlooker.
Its main body, built of stone, was topped with sharply pointed spires. The sight was piercingly cold, exuding an arrogant air of looking down upon the world. The white snow resting on the gray-blue spires particularly added to that effect.
This was no time to stand gaping.
Snapped back to her senses by the chilly wind that blew past with a *whoosh*, Lirete moved hurriedly. Slipping through the gaps between the buildings situated in all four directions, she spotted a vast forest stretching out behind them.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she ran toward it.
“Ugh…!”
Unlike the well-kept interior of the mansion, which was maintained because it was used for passage, the entrance to the forest was permeated with the full force of the cold winter. The unmelted snow scraped viciously against her bare soles.
Despite its soft appearance, the snow was so frigid that it made her nerves tense up.
“Hahk, huuh…”
Before long, out of breath, Lirete grabbed a tree and stopped.
This escape attempt, undertaken in such poor condition, was so grueling she wanted to abandon it immediately. Her lungs tightened from running, and perhaps due to the fever rising again, her vision blurred and cleared in alternation.
Still, she couldn’t stop.
Not here.
Gritting her teeth, Lirete pushed off from the tree trunk and managed one more step.
“Ugh…!”
And immediately, she fell.
She had tripped over a tree root, its shape hidden beneath the clean white snow.
Her frail body was buried in the snow before she could do anything.
She felt as if her entire body was freezing. Even when she tried to get up again, her will faded away, as hazy as her collapsed body.
Slowly opening her eyes, she saw sunlight streaming densely over the icy snowfield. The distant rays were one of the things she had longed for so much while captured by Dailun, suffering all sorts of indignities.
*Maybe dying here would be better.*
Lirete had made a decision.
She would absolutely not die by Dailun’s side.
If the moment of her last breath ever came, she had vowed not to leave her corpse behind with him either.
A life left to stagnate alone in this world, unable to follow her blood relations, had clung on desperately with only that single resolve. That resolve, on the verge of extinguishing but refusing to die, still made her hands and feet twitch.
But all she could do now was crawl through this ice-cold snowfield.
Her vision, clouded with heat, grew hazy and indistinct again. There was no reason to hold on.
Instead of resisting, Lirete slowly closed her eyes, as if swallowing acceptance.
—
*Bang—!*
The report of a gunshot split the air and shook the silent forest.
*Woof, woof!*
The vigorous barking of a hunting dog supported the sound. A black creature dashed out into the snowfield, full of excitement.
Valderion flexed his palm a few times, uncomfortable with the unfamiliar sensation.
“Tch.”
A sharp wind blew fiercely, mercilessly scratching his cheeks. Perhaps because his black hair, usually styled back neatly without a single strand out of place, was today left loose and free, it was caught fully by the wind.
As he roughly swept his hair back, he noticed his hunting dog, Kamon, who had been dashing wildly through the snow, now with its head buried in the ground, sniffing intently.
He dismounted from his saddle and approached.
“…Hm?”
A sound of puzzlement escaped him.
Kamon wagged its tail vigorously, looking up at him as if asking for praise. Valderion stroked its sleek head, then slowly crouched down.
Not long after, he gestured toward somewhere.
He was calling for his escort, who had been following while hiding their presence so as not to disturb him while he released a few foxes into the forest for shooting practice.
As someone revealed themselves, Valderion tapped the head of the woman lying sprawled on the snowfield with the butt of his gun.
“Why is this here?”
He tilted his head slightly.
As it happened, his mind was already complicated, which was why he had come to the forest.
He had no idea why the woman who had been peacefully asleep in the annex bedroom when he last saw her was now collapsed here on the snowfield like a corpse.
But even without knowing, he was not without knowledge of what action to take at this point.
“Pick her up.”
The knight, Tilinn, followed the duke’s orders without superfluous words.
Brushing off the snow piled on her body roughly, he lifted the small, curled-up woman. Kamon circled around them, barking loudly, *Woof, woof!* Taking a step, Tilinn suddenly spoke.
“My lord, her body temperature is far too low.”
Valderion clicked his tongue and looked at the woman in the knight’s arms.
He didn’t know what path had led her to collapse in this forest, but judging by her emaciated state, she was indeed in very poor condition.
Making a displeased face, Valderion gestured to the knight.
“Hand her over.”
At that single command, the woman, carrying the chill of the cold air, rolled into his broad embrace.
There was a saying about the Name, which was regarded as a kind of disease: it was a disease that healed upon contact. His hand extended willingly, wanting to test whether that was actually true.
Walking toward where his horse stood, Valderion looked down quietly at the woman in his arms.
Her complexion, so pale and emaciated that it wouldn’t have been strange if she had frozen to death, gradually—slowly but unmistakably—regained its color within his embrace.
It was a mere dozen or so steps to where his horse was.
That such a short distance had improved her condition this much.
“Ha.”
Valderion let out a hollow laugh at the absurd phenomenon.
It was only while riding back toward the mansion that he noticed the woman was barefoot. Roughly calculating the distance from the annex to this Alter Forest, he thought it was truly dreadful. And as that thought suggested, it also meant that his life from now on would be a path of considerable trouble.
*Crackle, crackle.*
Snowflakes, which he had thought had stopped, began to fall again as his horse galloped on.
—
* * *
Had she dreamt a foul dream?
That was the thought filling Lirete’s head when she first opened her eyes.
Otherwise, how could she explain this current situation—waking up to once again see the oil-painted ceiling she had thought she barely escaped?
Why?
Hadn’t she fled this place, buried herself in the snowfield of the forest, and awaited the embrace of death?
She wanted to believe she had simply taken her last breath.
But everything reaching her through her five senses was far too vivid to deny reality.
Everything was the same as before she had escaped.
The square-edged table, the curving vase, the unlit golden candlestick. Even the tapestry proving this was the House of Justutia.
Catching her breath, Lirete hurriedly tried to get out of bed. But unexpectedly, her ankle was yanked back.
*Clank.*
A strange sound came from her ankle, hidden beneath the blankets. Hesitating, she quickly threw the covers back.
There, fitted around her ankle, was a gleaming shackle.
