Chapter 40
She looked at the figure, then glanced up at the treetop from which he had leaped. She sighed softly and shook her head.
“It’s you again, Igor.”
Then, she plopped down on a rocky ledge and began sharpening her blade on an oil whetstone. At the sight, Igor, looking slightly surprised, carefully gauged her mood and asked.
“What’s this, Eredite? No attack today?”
She had always gnashed her teeth and attacked him whenever they met, but today she paid him no mind, as if she’d abandoned everything. Had she given up because her attacks never landed?
Giggling, Igor probed.
“Really? You’re not hitting me today?”
At the boy’s question as he crept closer, Eredite snorted.
“Leave while I’m still being nice!”
As if he’d ever take a single hit anyway.
Even when she attacked, Igor merely hopped, somersaulted, and dodged this way and that, only driving her further up the wall.
Before she knew it, she’d always end up playing along with the brat. Unwilling to waste her energy, she simply ignored him outright.
At that, Igor carefully edged closer and perched himself on a rocky ledge near where she sat.
Propping his elbows on his knees and resting his chin in his hands, he watched her work—but, as if itching with restlessness, he immediately picked a fight.
“Eredite, you’re not actually going to marry that Margrave Whatever, are you?”
It seemed he had listened to her entire conversation with Edawin, holding his breath from the treetop. Letting out a sigh, Eredite kept working and muttered.
“What if I do? I have no choice anyway.”
She swallowed the words that she had always been such an existence since birth—lest it sound like a complaint.
Whatever anyone said, Igor was the lord of an enemy nation.
She had no place to show weakness. To whom would she even show it?
“No choice? I’ve been telling you over and over to come over to Belluk. My uncle….”
“Igor.”
The moment Laegar was brought up, Eredite cut him off, her warning fairly sharp.
“Don’t come looking for me again. I’m not your friend.”
“It’s Grand Duke.”
Eredite stared coldly at the boy as he cupped both cheeks in his hands and grumbled sullenly.
“Fine, Your Grace. Don’t forget that you and I are enemies, Your Grace.”
“Tch, here we go again…. Ahk!”
Having been about to grumble carelessly, Igor leaped up from his spot with a yelp.
The blade, honed to a wicked blue gleam on the whetstone, had sliced terrifyingly through the place where he had been sitting.
A belated gust of wind sent dry leaves fluttering hazily through the air.
“…Eep….”
Wiping the cold sweat that had sprung on his forehead, Igor muttered something about not being able to let his guard down, then vanished in a flash.
Once again, he left behind words exceedingly uncomfortable to hear, lingering faintly in Eredite’s ear.
“I’m going to tell my uncle.”
Watching the cold wind fill the empty space where Igor had been, she snorted.
“Hmph.”
Tell him? So what?
It was pointless—telling the man who had toyed with her like a plaything.
To him, had Eredite been anything more than a pet? He must have inwardly sneered at the woman who had foolishly whined and whimpered, her memories gone.
As proof, he had not attempted to contact her even once after she had returned to Roan.
If Laegar had been the slightest bit shaken or had any lingering attachment, as Igor claimed, he could have met Eredite. He had the power to do so.
Suddenly realizing that she was, in a strange way, resenting him, she picked up the whetstone she’d been holding with both hands and hurled it.
Watching it smash to pieces against the rock, Eredite felt her own foolish heart shatter along with it.
Every time Igor had whispered to her until now, she had felt her emotions stir faintly.
‘My uncle’s condition is serious. He’s barely eating.’
‘For the peace of the Grand Ducal Castle, I need you to come back, Eredite.’
‘It’s an emergency, Eredite! Uncle hasn’t moved for three days! He’s lying on that long sofa, completely stuck there!’
But each time, Eredite wrapped her heart in iron plate.
Laegar—Morgadein the Seventh—was the Demon King. The Demon King was nothing but an enemy to Haldegard.
One who had even humiliated her so shamefully….
Lacking the power to exact real revenge, she was simply choosing the path of avoiding him instead.
“Fine. I’ll marry.”
The western canyon guarded by Margrave Rubel would not be as harsh as this place.
It was still rough terrain, they said, but the ground there wasn’t frozen year-round like here. The trees and grass remained green.
There, too, she would shoulder another duty under the name of Haldegard. Nothing would change.
No—if anything, leaving this place by any means seemed like a good thing now.
More than this place, where the poisonous memories of her time with him kept surfacing… any unfamiliar land, however foreign, would be better.
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