Chapter 16
Of course, the waves of pleasure she got from rendering Laegar his bedchamber service each night were so immense that she scarcely had the energy left to feel bored. Still, Lucy felt a bit stifled nonetheless.
Noticing her listless air, Laegar did something unexpected one day—he opened a salon inside the Grand Ducal Castle.
He summoned young noble ladies of Lucy’s age and arranged for her to socialize with them.
It was, in essence, the Demon King’s attentive consideration: to create an environment that wouldn’t summon Lucy’s erased memories, and to soothe her boredom within it.
For a Demon King so depressed he contemplated his own death daily, it was a shockingly unconventional move, but he paid it no mind.
The northern nobles feared Laegar terribly, so each and every one sent their daughters to the Grand Ducal Castle, lest they be purged under the new power structure.
Among them, not a few houses secretly hoped their daughter might become the Empress of the empire.
Before long, however, rumors subtly spread that the noble daughters had been summoned merely to serve as playmates for the Great Emperor’s mistress, a woman named Lucy.
Everyone except Laegar could well imagine how wounded the young noble ladies’ pride must have been.
The more they conversed with her, the more the ladies began to scorn and torment Lucy, who knew nothing and merely beamed naively.
Then, one day, things reached the point where Lucy came back in tears.
She rushed at Laegar just as he had returned and was setting down his weapons. He caught her immediately, and as if asking what was wrong, met her eyes.
“Everyone is so strange! I feel like they keep mocking me… hic….”
Clear moisture began welling up in Lucy’s blue eyes. When he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted it up, teardrops trickled down from those gem-like eyes.
“What happened?”
“Why am I so bad at Belluk etiquette? Could it be that my origins are too lowly and I never learned?”
“…It must be because you lost your memories.”
Startled by his own consoling tone, Laegar minutely raised an eyebrow.
But Lucy, inevitably, shifted the focus of her lament to the very topic he wished to avoid.
“Now that I think about it, where is my family home? Where are my parents? If they’re still alive, I want to meet them!”
“……”
Growing displeased at where the flow of Lucy’s thoughts had drifted, he clicked his tongue and lied.
“You were an orphan.”
“…Ah.”
Lucy bowed her head deeply, as if disappointed by the simple, no-frills answer. The topic leading to her lost past had been blocked at the source once more.
She returned to the surface topic she’d originally meant to complain about.
“A-Anyway, I don’t want to go to the salon anymore. The conversation doesn’t connect, and they don’t include me. Whatever I say, they all just burst out laughing and mock me!”
As he watched the sapphire-blue eyes film over with moisture once again, the corner of Laegar’s mouth twitched with fury.
The thought crossed his mind that the young ladies were truly vicious and mean.
“And more than anything… hic…!”
Whimpering, Lucy finally burst into tears.
“They said I’m nothing but His Majesty’s mistress, so I’ll be cast aside once the season is over! Do I have to leave the castle soon now?”
At these last words, Laegar felt a shock as if struck on the crown of his head.
He didn’t know why he was shocked, but it was true that a lukewarm heat rose to the back of his skull regardless.
Flustered by his own agitation, he didn’t know what to do. His hand, having clenched into a fist, uncurled and stroked Lucy’s cheek as his lips parted slightly.
He felt as if he had become a father raising a daughter, and at the same time, as heartbroken as if he had made his truly cherished lover cry.
It was a kind of emotion he had never once felt before, so the shock was immense—yet the unfamiliar feeling did not quickly fade.
While inwardly condemning the nasty temperaments of those insolent young ladies, he immediately consoled Lucy.
It was something he had never done in his life, but his heart was in a hurry, so it came out well.
“That will never happen.”
“Hiiing, you’re lying!”
Laegar took hold of Lucy’s chin—she was rubbing her face against his chest, crying—and lifted it, meeting her eyes. A long thread of snot stretched from beneath her pert nose, all the way to his chest.
But he did not laugh.
“I will never abandon you, so Lucy, you must promise me as well.”
“…Hic… wh-what?”
“That you won’t abandon me either.”
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