Chapter 6
After staring at me quietly for a while, he held out his hand.
“Want this, at least?”
A cookie wrapped neatly in cloth rested on his palm. The part of the cookie peeking out from the edge of the cloth looked sweet.
Misunderstanding my hesitation, he tilted his head to the side slightly.
“Did you not get a proper meal because you were working?”
Apparently, he seemed to think I was a young maid of this estate, or perhaps the daughter of a servant.
It was understandable, since I looked far too shabby to be a daughter of House Heister.
Unlike my other siblings, who had red hair, mine was a faded blond as well.
My embarrassment lasted only a moment. When my stomach growled again, I swallowed my shame and took the cookie from his hand. Once I brought it right before my nose, the sweet scent overwhelmed me, and I began munching on it without thinking.
I could feel his gaze boring into the top of my head, but I couldn’t bring myself to look up.
After silently looking down at me, he suddenly placed the coat he had been wearing over my head. Though perhaps it would be more accurate to say my head got caught beneath the coat he tossed over me…
“Does Heister not even properly feed and clothe its servants?”
He seemed to have mistaken the faint trembling of my shoulders for shivering from the cold.
Even at his disparaging words about Heister, all I could do was silently chew the cookie.
For some reason, I felt that if I told him I was a Heister, his kindness would disappear. So I simply swallowed the cookie without saying anything.
I could feel him staring at me after returning to sit across from me.
“Eat comfortably. I’m not going to take it from you.”
At those words, seemingly indifferent yet considerate of me, the tip of my nose stung for no reason.
How long had it been since I’d experienced kindness from another person? No, this was the first time I had ever received attention that wasn’t malicious in the first place.
And so, like a duckling imprinting on the first being it saw after hatching from its egg, I ended up imprinting his existence deep within my heart.
The next time we met, it was as a daughter of Heister and a son of Baldomer.
He recognized me, and though he seemed surprised at first, his expression immediately twisted. Apparently, he thought I had deceived him.
After that, I encountered him several more times, sometimes by coincidence and sometimes through deliberately arranged inevitability.
And each time, his expression only grew colder…
But as a child, I neither knew how to stop the feelings I had for him nor how to hide them.
And before I knew it, I turned twenty.
My siblings of marriageable age had already married, and the daughters who had yet to marry were summoned before Father.
“One of you must marry into House Baldomer.”
Everyone was thrown into confusion by the sudden announcement.
House Baldomer was House Heister’s sworn enemy, so being told to marry into a house we had regarded as our enemy since childhood was no different from receiving a death sentence.
“It’s a transaction between our houses, so it cannot be undone. Your prospective husband is the heir to the house, so he won’t kill you recklessly.”
Put another way, that meant it was a position dangerous enough that death had to be considered a possibility.
No one could readily speak. It was obvious from their expressions that none of them wanted it.
“You ungrateful wretches! I gave you places to sleep, clothes to wear, and raised you, yet you can’t even do this much for your father! In that case, I’ll force one of you to…!”
Kallion, the heir of House Baldomer.
The moment I heard that he was the prospective husband, I stepped forward before Father without hesitation.
“I’ll do it. Father.”
“What?”
“Please let me be the one to marry him.”
I think that was the first time I ever saw Father smile.
I still can’t forget the way he heartily patted my shoulder and told me I’d made a good decision.
It was the first time in my life Father had ever touched me, but rather than feeling pleased, it felt strange and uncomfortable, as though a complete stranger were touching me.
After that, everything proceeded swiftly toward the wedding.
* * *
Looking back now, it had been no different from willingly throwing myself into a pit of fire.
Because after marrying him, both my child and I eventually met our deaths.
It wasn’t as though I had no suspicions.
I looked down at my hand, dyed orange by the sunset.
A moment later, a bright orange flame, as red as the setting sun, blazed above my sunset-colored hand.
The power of the Fire Spirit passed down through House Heister for generations.
The ability said to manifest only in men had awakened in me, and that ability had even been passed down to my child, Denion.
There was a high chance that the assassin who targeted Denion was connected to this ability.
Because Denion had been born possessing the abilities of both Baldomer and Heister.
I looked out the window, where everything was turning orange.
This time, I will not let that happen.
Denion died when he was three years old. So this time, as soon as I become pregnant with Denion, I’ll flee Baldomer.
Of course, before then, finding out who was targeting Denion was another task I had to solve.
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