Chapter 138
Sylvia said it clearly without the slightest tremor in her gaze.
If Kuinan hadn’t stepped in, she would have been the one forcing the poison down Rossa’s throat herself. She spoke nothing but the truth.
“I don’t understand you, Lady Rossa. Not nearly as much as I understand this man.”
How many members of the household had been harmed just to seize her alone?
The head butler had lost his life. Unlike the others, he had desperately tried to stop Rossa’s rampage. In truth, it was fear of the Grand Duke rather than loyalty that drove him, but that hardly mattered. One of the thugs had smashed his skull with a club.
Even after seeing someone die because of her own actions, Rossa had been less shaken than Sylvia.
Sylvia had already witnessed countless deaths in the swamp. Even with some degree of numbness, she had been shaken when someone she knew fell.
On the other hand, Rossa merely clicked her tongue as if inconvenienced, then turned away from the corpse without a second glance. She had dragged Sylvia upstairs, pinned her to the wall, pressed a blade to her throat, and ordered her not to move until her son returned.
And within mere minutes, just as Rossa expected, he had returned.
Seeing Sylvia held captive, her husband’s face had hardened with fury. The air around him had crackled with rage.
And yet he seemed far more human than Rossa.
In fact, he seemed more likely than her to value the lives of those in the household. He had never harmed them in front of Sylvia. Not even as collateral damage.
“I don’t know anymore. Whether you’re human, Lady Rossa or a monster.”
And whether her husband was truly a monster—or something else entirely. He felt like neither man nor beast, but something indefinable.
When he swallowed the poison without hesitation, she had pretended not to be shocked. But she had been.
He had expressed love for her again and again—almost painfully human in the way he did it.
‘Disgusting. And yet… familiar.’
The revulsion still made her heart pound, but in a moment like this, she was grateful.
She would never say it aloud, but she was grateful that he had killed those men. Grateful that he was about to kill Rossa.
That was why she spoke so bluntly.
‘Maybe he isn’t entirely a bastard.’
Watching him force poison into a human’s mouth, she found herself thinking that.
He wasn’t a good monster. But perhaps he wasn’t a purely evil one either.
Being a monster was itself an unforgivable sin. Yet Sylvia herself had already lost so much of her humanity, perhaps she was no longer in a position to condemn him.
The chaotic thoughts in her mind slowly settled.
“N-no… ngh—!”
He pried Rossa’s mouth open and poured the poison in.
She shrieked like livestock at slaughter. She struggled desperately, but she couldn’t overcome the monster’s crushing grip. Save for a few spilled drops, she swallowed nearly all of it.
Her face turned deathly pale. Then flushed red. Then drained white again.
Gradually, the light left her eyes.
For several long minutes, they watched consciousness fade from her.
The monster watched with interest.
The monster’s woman watched without expression.
At last, Kuinan turned back to Sylvia. He reached out and gently brushed her wound, asking if she was alright.
She barely ignored his concern. Her eyes remained fixed on Rossa’s convulsing body.
She felt relieved. And faintly bitter.
Bitter because she knew her humanity had shattered. Relieved because, with that humanity already broken, she could no longer feel deeper sorrow.
When she closed her eyes, Kuinan’s own eyes widened. He scanned her from head to toe, assessing her condition.
Then suddenly her body lifted from the ground. She knew who was carrying her. She knew where he was taking her.
But whether he stroked her gently or locked her away again, she no longer cared.
Seeing her lack of resistance, he grinned and carried her back to the bedroom.
That day, in a castle still littered with corpses, the two of them enjoyed a grotesque semblance of peace.
The bodies were cleared the next day. The monster handled it himself.
Sylvia only watched closely when he retrieved the butler’s body, her expression subdued as she stood nearby.
By the following day, the castle had returned to its usual calm, as if nothing had happened.
As always, the Grand Duke prepared a convenient explanation for the world.
He announced that Lady Rossa had met an unfortunate end in a tragic carriage accident. Her existence was erased.
And soon enough, forgotten.
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