We were led to our quarters. In the room where only the three of us remained, Marie spoke hesitantly.
“Is what the Grand Duke said… the truth?”
“Nonsense,” I asserted. “It’s not even worth listening to, Marie.”
The more I thought about it, the more holes I found in the Grand Duke’s story. Elise, who was at death’s door, negotiated with the Grand Duke at the risk of her life? If she had that kind of mental presence, wouldn’t it have been right for her to take care of her own body first?
Even when compared with Marie’s past testimony, it didn’t add up.
When Marie met Elise that night, she hadn’t said a single word about Elise appearing to be injured.
So, did Elise meet Marie while perfectly hiding a fatal wound?
Or did Elise escape from Taylor John, meet Marie, and then get caught by Taylor John again to suffer a fatal injury before escaping once more?
Either way, it was far too contrived.
“Teacher is right. Grand Duke Kalan is clearly lying.”
Lure backed me up as well. Objectively, the Grand Duke’s story looked suspicious to anyone.
However.
“But… it might be true.”
Sometimes, what mattered in belief wasn’t the truth.
People always believe what they want to believe.
“What if the Grand Duke’s words are actually true? If Sister Elise really chose to sacrifice herself to protect me…” Marie hesitated before speaking as if pouring her heart out. “Then it means she doesn’t resent me.”
“What?!”
“Oh, please forget it. I said something strange!”
Marie stood up abruptly, trying to avoid the situation.
However, I had an intuition that I needed to hear this story properly.
“Tell me properly. What on earth do you mean by that? Elise resenting you?”
When I blocked the door and stood my ground, Marie didn’t know what to do and covered her face.
“…Do you really have to hear it? I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Please. Tell me.”
In a situation where we were surrounded by enemies, there would be no answer if Marie was persuaded by the Grand Duke.
If Marie wanted to believe the Grand Duke’s words, I had to know the reason why.
“…I have a dream every night. A dream about Sister Elise.”
It was a story I had heard before.
“Sister Elise smiles coldly at me. She tells me to join her and tries to drag me away by force. To a dark place. A place that is dark, cold, and deep.”
Marie trembled.
“It’s only natural that she would want to take me. If I hadn’t done something stupid, she might still be alive.”
“So, what does that mean? What did you do?”
“I didn’t open the door!” Marie shouted and then squeezed her eyes shut. “I was so excited, stupidly thinking she had come for dating advice, that I went out to the back garden without calling anyone! There isn’t even a door there that connects to the outside! She wouldn’t have even been able to get through that wire mesh!”
Marie’s breathing gradually became more labored.
“She… she was being chased by a killer! If I had just handled it a little better, if I had thought it was stranger that she threw a stone at the window, if I had gone out the front door, if I had called someone, if I had let her into the house, then she would have lived! If she hadn’t run out into the night streets, she would never have been unable to return!”
Marie slumped into her seat, gasping for breath.
“Wait, Marie. It’s better to stop talking.”
But her breathing didn’t calm down easily.
‘Damn it. I should have considered that Marie’s condition wasn’t good.’
I didn’t know she was blaming herself this much for what happened that night.
“Calm down. Let’s stop talking and slowly settle your breathing.”
But a broken dam couldn’t be blocked again.
“…She must have regretted becoming friends with me.”
Panting with rough breaths, Marie continued to speak incoherently.
“Because I’m a strange kid who has no interest in my surroundings and is only obsessed with plays. That’s why she ended up dying. Because I’m senseless and don’t know how the world works, because I’m a fool who only lives with romantic fantasies and can’t even imagine murder, she died! She definitely regretted being friends with someone like me. She must have died resenting me! That’s why, that’s why…”
Marie couldn’t lift her head and covered her face with her hands.
“For a moment, I wanted to believe the Grand Duke’s words. That she didn’t die because of me, but that she sacrificed herself for me. That she worried about me until the very end.”
“…”
“Isn’t it the worst? My sister is dead, and I’m actually thinking like this.”
“The worst? No one thinks that.”
“I think so! I hate myself so much I feel like I’m going crazy!”
What on earth should I say to calm Marie down?
Just as my mind was turning blank.
*Slap!*
Lure stepped in.
“Enough! Let’s stop here.”
Lure approached the slumped Marie and embraced her.
“Ah…”
It seemed that what was needed wasn’t words, but human warmth. Marie leaned into Lure’s arms as if collapsing.
“Marie. Your emotions have become too intense. Let’s stop here with the things you might regret saying tomorrow, and it’s best to sleep now.”
As Lure whispered in a soft voice while stroking her back, I could see the strength gradually leaving Marie’s frantically trembling shoulders.
Her breathing had returned to normal.
‘Phew.’
I let out a sigh of relief and quietly stepped out of the room. I thought it would be better to leave the rest to Lure so as not to provoke Marie further.
Maybe it would be better not to bring up this story at all for the time being.
‘But… what else can I do in this situation?’
Caught by a sudden sense of frustration, I looked up at the sky outside the hallway window.
Perhaps because winter was approaching, the sun had long since set early. However, the stars were packed so densely that they seemed to fill the sky, so it wasn’t completely dark.
“Is this why it’s called the Celestial Tower…”
I stared blankly at the sky and muttered something trivial. My white breath spread out in a blur, disorienting my vision.
‘Marie… seems to resent herself.’
I understood.
I probably would have felt the same way if I were in that situation.
Who could maintain their sanity if they thought they had missed the chance to save someone precious?
Excessive self-reproach isn’t right, but I also understood that Marie’s way of thinking wouldn’t change just because an outsider like me said a few words.
That was why I was anxious.
‘Marie will definitely be swayed by the Grand Duke’s words.’
Because the truth is painful, but the Grand Duke’s lies are sweet.
Marie was incredibly young, and her mental state was unstable. Her self-esteem was low, and she had no one to lean on except Elise. The Grand Duke would surely try to win her over by stimulating her fragility.
Today’s nonsense was likely just the beginning.
Just how long would Marie be able to withstand those tricks? Even if I did my best, could I defend not just Marie’s body, but her mind as well?
Struggling to suppress my anxious heart, I gazed at the stars for a long time.
***
Ominous premonitions were never wrong. From the next day, the Grand Duke began calling for Marie immediately.
The excuses were varied.
To discuss the plan to protect Marie from Taylor John. To deliver Elise’s will and the keepsakes she left behind. To get close to the bride-to-be he was to marry in a few days.
The schemes that started from those excuses were even quite clever.
“The Grand Duke assigned guards to me.”
The Grand Duke assigned ten guards as Marie’s escort. They were all shadowless people, and they were very favorable toward Marie.
Marie seemed to feel a sense of stability rather than anxiety from the Grand Duke’s people.
“The Grand Duke said he would closely investigate the attack I experienced.”
The Grand Duke publicly set out to investigate the attack on his fiancée. In the process, it was revealed that the coachman Clinat had been injured while confronting the attacker, and that the coachman Jackson had thrown away a broken oil lamp without much thought while cleaning up the scene.
Marie began to doubt whether the attack that day was truly the work of an insider.
“The Grand Duke told me stories about what he and my sister shared while she was alive. I shed tears without realizing it, and he handed me a handkerchief.”
The Grand Duke enchanted Marie with Elise’s name.
“He says… he likes me.”
He seduced her.
“He said he was always curious about what kind of person I was while listening to my sister’s stories. But meeting me in person, he said I was an even more wonderful person than he had heard, and that it seemed to be his good fortune to marry me.”
Marie confessed to me with a flushed face.
“No matter how much I think about it, I don’t think Grand Duke Kalan is Taylor John.”
4 days.
In just 4 days, Marie began to waver.
***
“Haaaa…”
I let out a long sigh.
Lure approached and whispered to me.
“Can’t we separate Marie from the Grand Duke even now?”
“No. We have to find the marriage certificate to send Marie home.”
The marriage certificate was definitely being kept somewhere important. It would be hidden in the Grand Duke’s office, his bedroom, or perhaps on his person.
Naturally, to investigate such places, there was no choice but to meet the Grand Duke.
‘The problem is that instead of finding the marriage certificate, it seems like she’s just building up favorable feelings day by day.’
“I don’t understand,” I lamented. “How can she trust the Grand Duke? The more I see him, the more suspicious he is.”
“Well, I don’t know. I can understand Marie.”
“What?”
“The Grand Duke is so gentle with Marie. Just listening to him speak, he acts like a man who is so in love he doesn’t know what to do. He comforts Marie’s wounds while talking about Elise, he always moves as if to protect Marie, and above all, based on looks alone, he doesn’t look like a killer at all.”
I fell into further confusion at those words. I could accept everything else, but he didn’t look like a killer?
A massive physique, a serious low-pitched voice, and an archaic and suspicious way of speaking.
‘Doesn’t he look like a typical killer no matter how you look at him?’
“Is the Grand Duke… handsome?”
“Why are you acting like that when you saw him too? To be honest, if it weren’t for this situation, I don’t think it would be strange if Marie fell for the Grand Duke at first sight.”
Is that so? I guess a face is the greatest justification.
“Surely you haven’t developed feelings for the Grand Duke too, have you?”
“Ugh. What are you talking about? That’s not my type at all.”
Lure snapped. That was a relief, at least.
“What happened with gathering information?” I asked, changing the subject.
For the past few days, Marie had spent her time meeting the Grand Duke, and I couldn’t tell if she was searching for the marriage certificate or going on a date. I had been protecting her.
The only person among us whose hands weren’t tied was Lure. She was the right person for the role of information gathering.
“You approached the low-level staff rather than middle management like I told you, right?”
“Of course. I talked to them, and I found some suspicious circumstances.”
Lure lowered her voice and whispered.
“As it turns out, it seems the Grand Duke made quite a tidy profit through his marriages.”
Lure explained that the situation of the Grand Duchy was actually much worse than what was known to the world. The Grand Duke’s support base was also precarious, and there were many who threatened his position.
“But through the last three marriages, the situation was reversed.”
Three brides had come to the north.
All of them brought massive dowries.
“I heard that Elise brought a dowry so large it almost collapsed the Marquis of Crimson’s family. In fact, it was more like a contract payment than a dowry, as it was decided that Elise would become the Grand Duchess and manage that money for a joint project between the Marquis’s family and the Grand Duke’s family.”
However, Elise had died pointlessly.
“The Marquis of Crimson appealed everywhere, saying his daughter’s death was suspicious, and even tried to sue the Grand Duke directly, but he failed completely. He had used so much money for his daughter’s marriage that he didn’t even have the money to fight a legal battle against the Grand Duke. In the end, the Marquis lost his daughter, his wealth, and ended up in a miserable state.”
“That’s… unfortunate.”
“The second bride, Sarah, was a widow. Originally the only daughter of a wealthy family, she married a man from a similarly wealthy family, but soon after, her husband passed away and her parents died as well, leaving her alone.”
Sarah supposedly brought her entire fortune to the north. By now, that vast amount of money would all be in Grand Duke Kalan’s vault.
“Do you know what’s really strange?” Lure said in a meaningful voice. “Sarah loved her first husband so much that after he passed away, she supposedly never intended to marry again. She used to say that habitually until just 1 month before she married the Grand Duke.”
Of course, a person’s thoughts can change at any time, but 1 month?
To have her resolution flip like a palm in such a short time was a suspicious story.
Above all, I had heard a similar story in the past.
“Didn’t you say Elise also said she would never marry the Grand Duke?”
“And yet she suddenly married him, and suddenly died.”
And here was the third bride.
A young bride who had brought a massive dowry to match the status of a marriage with a large rank disparity, and who had declared she would never marry the Grand Duke of the north.
But currently, she was a bride whose heart clearly seemed to be wavering toward the Grand Duke.
“This won’t do.”
Feeling a surge of anxiety, I stood up abruptly.
“I need to have another proper conversation with Marie.”
“Good luck, Teacher!”
Leaving Lure’s encouragement behind, I knocked on Marie’s door.
Vowing to suppress my impatient heart and have a serious conversation this time. Even then, I had no idea what words Marie would utter.
“We’re going to attack the Grand Duke in the middle of the night.”
“Huh? What?”
Marie said with a determined face and shining eyes.
“That’s the only way to survive.”
No, what on earth?
Weren’t you about to fall for the Grand Duke’s persuasion?
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