Chapter 7
His resolute voice was like a blade.
Lirete’s resistance ceased, as if she had been ruthlessly stabbed by that sword. Meanwhile, Valderion’s low, murky tones sank in more deeply and intimately.
“I can’t bear to watch you cripple yourself with pointless antics right now. If you were to die from a careless move and your name manifested on me within that one year, I’d be done for as well, wouldn’t I?”
“……”
“That’s not a very agreeable prospect.”
Lirete’s fingers, having regained their original form, clawed at the carpet as if wringing something.
“After one year passes, if your name hasn’t engraved itself on me, I’ll let you go wherever you wish.”
“……”
“Even if that place is hell, I won’t stop you.”
In some ways, he was pitilessly resolute.
His tone was dry and parched: this relationship would begin with the Name and end with the Name.
But Lirete felt no sense of betrayal or disappointment. The words that he would release her after she endured a period of hardship dripped into her ears like honey.
Yet darkness rushed back into her mind in an instant.
Lirete stared only at the empty space before her, her eyes half-crushed with hope.
“……What if the Name appears?”
“…….”
“If my name appears on you, Duke……”
“That’s something to think about when the time comes.”
The possibility that they might be eternally bound to each other, like a spiritual servitude—he spoke of it far too lightly.
Valderion removed the palm that had been pressing her down and straightened his posture. Lirete, too, gathered her curled body and leaned her back against the bed.
“So if you have the energy to act like this, why not use it to recover your health?”
The man tidied his disheveled appearance from the earlier commotion in one swift motion. Beneath his effortless hands, his arrogant, cold features returned to their original state.
Lirete sat slumped and looked up at him.
The man parted his lips slightly as if to say something, then stopped. Instead, unlike before, he scrutinized her now perfectly moving fingers.
Soon, he turned without a word.
Lirete remained seated without moving until he left the bedroom, fidgeting with the fingers she had cradled in her embrace as if she couldn’t quite believe them.
—
* * *
It was a mild day for winter.
Valderion swept back his hair, swaying in the blowing wind. Perhaps because his surroundings were covered in gentle currents, he felt as if he had dropped into the middle of the ocean.
The underwater garden prepared in one part of the palace always evoked such a serene impression.
“Seriously, it would be so much better if we were on a boat.”
Dailun, on the opposite side, complained in a languid posture, like waterlogged seaweed, apparently interpreting Valderion’s gaze in some particular way.
Today as well, his attire was far from formal, closer to something haphazardly unfastened.
The reflections on the quietly flowing water were also black and white; though the two sat together, they presented complete opposites.
“There’s a pleasure boat that just came in from the Kingdom of Pontilly. It’s enormous and very luxurious.”
“Wouldn’t it be too cold for that?”
“You don’t know anything. Boating is meant to be done in winter.”
Chuckling and spouting baseless claims, Dailun took out a cigar and put it in his mouth. Valderion, already feeling a headache as if the pungent smell were spreading, answered with a sigh.
“I detest boating.”
“Well, you’ve never had a romantic bone in your body.”
*Romance.*
Seeing that even this chaotic, vulgar degenerate sought romance, Valderion thought anew that bloodline really was something.
Watching Dailun’s attitude—knowing one thing but remaining willfully ignorant of another—Valderion swallowed a laugh internally.
To be precise, he didn’t detest boating. He detested boating *with Dailun*.
If he were to board a pleasure boat and circle this vast, magnificent underwater garden, he would have to remain on the boat for a considerable time even after finishing the main topic.
To Valderion, that was a clear waste of time. Thus, the conversation took place not on a pleasure boat but in this resting area set within the underwater garden.
“So, how is it?”
After a long yawn, Dailun asked with a languid expression.
As if reading the unspoken question “How is what?” in the meeting of their eyes, Dailun curled the corner of his mouth.
“Lirete, I mean.”
“……”
“Is she doing well?”
The very reason he had come to see Dailun today was that woman. Valderion lowered his eyes and briefly reflected on the past few days. When he let out an involuntary sigh, Dailun found it so amusing that he went into a fit of laughter.
“I more or less expected that. She’s not the type to back down easily either.”
On that point, he readily agreed.
If not for her body being held hostage by the Name, the woman had such a fierce spirit that she would have likely left long, ugly nail marks on his unblemished face. Unlike her body, which was so weak it kept collapsing, the proof was her eyes, which never lost their spark.
“She reacts rather sensitively to sounds.”
Dailun’s eyes widened as if this report was quite unexpected. Soon after, grinning, he crossed his dangling legs.
Setting down the teacup he had been holding, Dailun tapped his own ear with his finger.
“Ah, yes. I used to shout loudly right into her ear.”
“……”
“I slapped her around a bit too? Her eardrums burst a few times because of that. That’s probably why.”
Though he had vaguely expected it to be from slaps or beatings, the utterly tranquil manner in which Dailun recited his misdeeds left Valderion momentarily speechless.
*Pure evil,* they called it.
Valderion sometimes thought of that word when he saw the Crown Prince.
*’He doesn’t bed his livestock, does he?’*
*’……’*
*’That’s all I was to him.’*
Was that why she had said such things?
Valderion suppressed the misty, lingering thoughts like fog and took a sip of tea.
“You didn’t arrange this meeting just to ask something so trivial, I assume.”
*Hoo,* Dailun exhaled deeply and leaned his upper body forward.
“So, what do you need?”
Was it the scent of the cigar? The tone that came across was secretive.
It likely wasn’t solely due to the hazy smoke and thick fragrance.
Meetings between the Imperial Family and the House of Justutia had always been like this.
The Imperial Family, like the sun illuminating the empire, and the House of Justutia, supporting them like the moon from the invisible darkness. The collusion between these two groups—it would not be an exaggeration to call them the sun and the moon—always carried a subtle, hushed quality.
Their close relationship originated from the first emperor.
The first Arden Emperor, who had pioneered barren, arid lands to establish the Alaint Empire, had a twin sister.
Since they were the ones who marked the very first step in the history of the Alaint Empire, there was no one who deeply understood their history.
Only one thing was passed down:
That the Emperor had harbored a considerable obsession with his twin sister.
Having achieved dazzling leaps since the nation’s founding, realizing national prosperity and military strength, and quickly establishing itself as a formidable power, the Emperor did not marry his sister off as a hostage to a foreign land as a cornerstone for further development.
Instead, as if determined to keep her within his line of sight, he granted her a noble title and created a domain solely for her within this land. It was a manifestation of an attachment so strong that even the four founding contributors who had opened the nation’s history with Emperor Arden could not dissuade him.
Thus, the House of Justutia was born.
Though its origin lay in the Emperor’s obsession with his sister, as the years passed, it established itself as a power structure supporting the aloofness of the Imperial Family.
It assumed the high status of the head of a noble house, carrying out the role of rectifying the discipline of the nobility, while simultaneously becoming a credible entity, mixed with imperial blood, revered like the Imperial Family themselves.
It was an unbreakable, powerful symbiotic relationship.
In this manner, the Arden Imperial Family and the House of Justutia, with their joined hands, protected the empire for a long time, while strictly controlling and developing this land.
“Considering you asked me to secretly take that woman out, I suppose you had some idea of this yourself, Dailun.”
“Hmm?”
“That even if that woman’s existence became known to the world, it would be of no benefit to me.”
Dailun slowly raised and lowered his eyebrows as if in affirmation. Valderion stopped there and closed his mouth.
No matter how much of a simpleton who disliked thinking, even he should have an idea of what request Valderion had come to make by now.
“Aha.”
“……”
“So, you’re asking me to keep my mouth shut?”
“For now, it’s one year.”
“One year?”
“I’m told that within that period, it will be decided whether it’s mutual or one-sided.”
“Hmm.”
“……”
“Right…… So if it’s one-sided rather than mutual, you intend to bury the whole thing as if it never happened.”
He had seen it precisely.
If the manifestation of the Name ended up appearing only on Lirete, Valderion had no intention of taking responsibility for her after the one year was up.
If the relationship ended like that after one year, even if Lirete truly led her fragile body to hell, he would not stop her.
If that happened, Valderion could return to the perfect life of a duke.
That is, even if Lirete’s existence became known to the world within that one year, it could never benefit him. Therefore, he planned to conceal Lirete’s existence—more precisely, the fact that his Name had manifested—altogether.
And the first step was to personally come here and seal the mouth of this unruly brute.
An ordinary person might have guessed as much through intuition, but Dailun was an arrogant brute who might let his three-inch tongue wag freely anytime, anywhere. Regarding the Crown Prince, it was necessary to be absolutely clear on the main point.
“Well, it’s not that I don’t understand your position. If you hadn’t been entangled in such trivial matters, you would have continued your blueprint for the future with flying colors.”
“……”
“Up to and including your engagement with the Margrave House of Floydens.”
