The Price of Saving a Vicious Beast - Chapter 35

After Killian left, Adelaide wandered her room alone in silence. The image of him as he quietly seethed with anger, wouldn’t leave her mind.

It was a foolish feeling, but despite how unsettling his emotional outburst had been… it also made her happy.

‘He said he loved me.’

Adelaide clasped her hand over her chest. Her heart pounded so hard it felt as if she could hold it in her palm. Killian’s voice when he confessed his love, begging her not to leave, still echoed vividly in her ears.

That alone was enough.

She would never dare to dream of standing by his side, but to have held his heart, even for a fleeting moment in her long life, that was more than enough for her.

‘If… when I come back, his feelings haven’t changed…’

A soft blush spread across Adelaide’s cheeks.

Of course, that was unlikely. Women of the high society would never leave a man like Killian—someone of marriageable age—unclaimed for long. By the time she returned from Clayton, he would surely have a splendid lover or fiancée by his side.

Still… wasn’t she allowed to hope, at least a little?

If, when she returned, his feelings remained the same, and if she managed to adapt well to Clayton’s society, shedding the stigma of her low birth, if she could be recognized as a proper count’s daughter among the nobility.

‘Then I’ll be the one to confess first, Killi.’

It contradicted her earlier resolve of being content with having held his heart even once.

But this was her true desire.

More than the suffocating monotony of her life, what Adelaide could not endure was the inferiority she felt every time she stood before Killian.

To her, trapped like a prisoner in a high tower with nowhere to go, Killian had been like a small window. Through him alone, she learned of the outside world. And as the years passed, she came to depend on him more and more.

The sun, the moon, the stars, she had seen them all only through that window. And at some point, that window had become her entire sky. That was why things couldn’t go on like this.

She couldn’t remain here, clinging to him, becoming a burden at his side.

‘I’ll work hard.’

The final month of the year was already slipping away.

For Adelaide, who had nearly been barred from ever entering society, this journey to Clayton was like a beam of light.

Her brother, rumored to be rising under the crown prince’s favor. Her father, already climbing the ranks as a secretary in the House of Nobles.

If she could be acknowledged in society as the daughter of the Eport family. then perhaps she could stand beside Killian with confidence.

But first, she had to successfully make her debut in Clayton.

Adelaide steadied her wavering resolve.

Standing by the window, she opened her jewelry box. The ring Killian had given her glimmered among the other ornaments.

She gently traced the fine platinum band with care.

* * *

Late at night, when everyone was asleep, a blazing inferno tore through the darkness that blanketed the Eport estate.

“Arrest everyone!”

The captain of the imperial guard barked the order, his voice thick with fury.

At his command, the guards moved in perfect unison.

Crashing and shattering echoed through the estate. Maids screamed as the imperial guards stormed in without warning, their violence cutting through the night air.

And everyone did not mean only the count’s family. The blades first turned toward Count Eport and his household, and then, just as mercilessly, toward the servants.

“What is the meaning of this?!”

In just a few hours, the young lord and his wife were meant to depart for Clayton.

The courtyard had already been filled with packed luggage, carefully loaded onto carriage wagons.

But the imperial guards dragged everything down and began hacking through it with their swords.

In moments, the front yard was reduced to chaos, belongings strewn and destroyed.

Still in his nightclothes, Roem was dragged out, his limbs restrained as he shouted furiously at the captain.

But the captain merely cast him a cold glance and ignored him entirely.

“It’s not here!”

“Search the rooms. Find it, no matter what.”

“Yes, sir!”

The guards who had been tearing through the luggage rushed upstairs without hesitation.