Chapter 6
I.
The first time I set foot in the ducal house, I was around eleven years old, just old enough to barely tell up from down.
A child from a tiny, remote village that’s since vanished even from the map. A stubborn survivor who managed to cling to life even after losing my parents and siblings to an unprecedented famine.
Perhaps it was thanks to such an unfortunate and wretched background that, after becoming an orphan overnight and wandering the streets, after two years living on the roads, I managed to be lucky enough to drift into the ducal house as a scullery maid.
Of course, not long after, something happened that made me seriously question whether that was truly luck. Still, for a rootless, drifting girl to find a place in a noble household was not a bad thing.
Thus, the House of Clausewitz, where I came to belong, was a family with an exceptionally peculiar background.
One of only three ducal houses in the whole Empire of Virol.
Even among them, it was the House of Clausewitz alone that was called by such ominous names as the ‘Duchy of Darkness’, ‘Devil Behind the Curtain’, or ‘The Viper of the Imperial Family’. All because of the unique role entrusted to this house.
To put it nicely, their role was the right hand of the Emperor. Put bluntly, they were the Emperor’s hunting dogs.
The ‘Black Bear Knights’ under the ducal house were a group mobilized for all the dirtiest and most sordid work in the Empire.
Not honorable, but dangerous enough to warrant ample rewards. Thus, regardless of birth or status, only those who could prove their worth through pure skill gathered there, knights brimming with youthful vigor.
Unlike other knight orders that valued loyalty and honor, the Black Bear Knights were wild and rough, and only the successor of Clausewitz could lead them.
The legitimate heirs of the ducal house were raised so that they could rightfully inherit that position, and each in turn raised their own successors in the same way.
So, when I first faced Claude Clausewitz, the sole heir of a house renowned for such terrifying prestige, I unconsciously held my breath.
For a moment, I was entranced by a face so fair and beautiful it could be mistaken for a nymph’s. But the closer I got, the more palpable the murderous air became. Instinctively, all the children, myself included, shrank back from it.
Claude’s first impression was more beast than human, as if he had been steeped in blood.
He was dazzlingly beautiful, yet at the same time looked dangerously precarious, like a legendary creature from old tales.
His dark, blood-red eyes seemed to exude a metallic scent, as if just meeting his gaze could make you smell iron. The moment you tried to draw close, he looked ready to tear you limb from limb with his teeth, not even allowing anyone near him.
Like a poisonous mushroom, every element that made up this boy seemed to signal danger. And yet, there was something about him that made it hard to look away.
Lined up in front of the Young Duke with children around my age, on the Duke’s command, his suffocating presence made me feel as if I might faint right then and there. Even so, I managed to endure, thanks to a streak of native bravado.
“What’s this? Are they here to be disposed of?”
Was he around my age? The delicate-looking boy swept his emotionless gaze over us and, with a mouth as pretty as a painting, uttered something terrifying.
“N-No, Young Master. His Grace has presented these children to you as a gift… If there’s anyone you wish to keep by your side as a playmate, you may choose and use them as you wish.”
A playmate? That was a joke only a passing dog would laugh at. To call us ‘friends’ and yet say ‘choose and use them’…
Though we were young, each of us had drifted here through misfortune, so we quickly picked up on how things were.
The head maid had carefully selected children of similar ages, but it seemed our fate was to become living playthings for this boy with a wicked temper.
I’d heard rumors of the cruelty of nobles, but reality was far beyond the imagination of common people like us.
And this was the House of Clausewitz. All kinds of gruesome stories began to vividly resurface in my still-childish mind.
Stories like the one about someone who, after becoming prey in a hunt, died pierced with arrows like a hedgehog, or the tale of another who, by their master’s orders, spent years crawling on all fours, only to be beaten to death like an actual dog.
A silent unrest spread among the children. We all stared intently at the floor, each one of us desperately hoping, please, let it not be me.
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