-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: Playing with Fire
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Just then, other maids began to enter.
This time, they were accompanied by servants from the ducal household, who had come prepared with cleaning supplies.
The scale crest they wore so proudly made it easy to tell them apart.
Trash, and not trash.
The maid from the temple huffed and turned her back.
I let out a small sigh.
I was starting to get a sense of the relationship between the temple and the ducal family.
In , it was the temple that had revealed the markings on Kivrin's back to be a sealing spell.
The temple had warned that something was sealed within Kivrin's body, and its awakening would bring great disaster upon the empire.
At the same time, they also insisted that he shouldn't be treated as a monster without question.
It sounded merciful at first, but it was the temple that had branded him a monster in the first place.
But in , the temple was always on the side of 'good.' They were also a staunch ally of the heroine.
would dedicate several pages to describing the temple's good deeds.
But there was never any mention of them sending people to the ducal estate to drive a wedge between Winter and Kivrin.
I was starting to feel like the novel had scammed me.
I glanced at the servants bustling about.
The mansion was so large that the cleaning didn't look like it would be over anytime soon.
Seeing my chance, I went up to the terrace with Kivrin.
The knight who hadn't ignored my memo was waiting in front of the carriage.
If I shouted, the others would hear me. What should I do?
I emptied my pockets and found the three acorns Kivrin had given me, saying they were 'as cute as you, Cheria.'
I could only hope that knight possessed the outstanding skills befitting the ducal family.
I threw the acorns one by one with all my might.
The knight somehow heard the faint patter and looked up.
I stepped onto the railing and gave a cheerful wave.
Thinking I was about to jump, the knight scrambled into the mansion.
He was once again aghast at the wide-open terrace and began to question me.
"How in the world did you get this open?"
"Is Mother—I mean, the Duchess—not coming today?"
The knight frowned, as though he expected me to answer him first.
"She will be unable to come for some time."
"Why?"
"The people from the temple are conducting a purification. Doris should have been the first to arrive. Did she not explain this to you?"
So the trash—no, the maid—who barged in here and started a fight was named Doris. I'll have to remember that.
I tilted my head.
"Why are they performing a purification?"
"...For the sake of the Duke, the Duchess, and the Young Lord."
"Why?"
"...Are you making fun of me?"
"I'm not idle enough to be making fun of you, Sir Knight."
The knight glanced at Kivrin.
Kivrin spoke up instead.
"The pla-places I've stayed... are all conta-contaminated... so they said they need to be purified periodically...."
"..."
"Otherwise... M-Mother and Father... will be in danger, they said."
The knight swallowed hard.
Just as I thought. The temple was using Kivrin to blackmail the ducal family.
Wow, and here I thought my sister was the only one with a garbage personality. Turns out they're all birds of a feather.
Publicly, it might seem like the temple was diligently looking after the ducal family, but having read , I knew the truth.
There was no such thing as contamination.
Kivrin only began to harm people after he was released from the Snake Pit, where he'd been imprisoned until he came of age.
And that had been purely for revenge.
The knight, misinterpreting why I was biting my lip, said,
"You don't need to be afraid. This mansion is also filled with items imbued with divine power to prevent any contamination."
"..."
I suddenly wondered how much the temple had charged the ducal family for those so-called divinely imbued items.
Besides, if I couldn't even sense it, that meant the items contained as little divine power as Doris herself possessed.
Yep, looks like my parents-in-law got scammed too.
I stared intently at the knight.
The knight flushed, realizing he'd just told a ten-year-old girl trapped in a mansion not to be afraid.
"A-anyway, I'm not supposed to be in here. They're calling for heavy rain this evening, so please don't stay out on the terrace for too long."
"It'll just get locked again when the servants come to clean, anyway."
"That won't be today. No one is allowed to remain in this mansion for long."
"Because of that contamination you mentioned?"
"..."
The knight didn't answer, merely inclining his head slightly.
In the end, the knight was right.
The servants cleaned only parts of the first and second floors before leaving as if they were being chased.
Before they left, they found me and explained that they would be coming to clean for an hour each day from now on.
Whether it was Winter's order or not, at least the ducal servants didn't ignore me.
After everyone had gone and silence fell upon the mansion, I took Kivrin's hand and muttered,
"Young Lord, I don't like the people from the temple."
"What?"
"You healed my wound, Young Lord, but the maids from the temple say bad things about you."
If I were just a little taller, I would've grabbed her by the collar, just like I did with my sister. Seriously.
I tried my best to sound like an oblivious ten-year-old, but I had no idea if I was successful.
In any case, Kivrin willingly let himself be fooled.
"I d-dislike them, too. Mother and Father... they said it was okay... that I was born a monster... Th-they said they'd always stay by my side...."
"But did they change after the people from the temple started coming?"
"..."
Kivrin nodded.
In , Kivrin had opposed the temple.
Kivrin's goal wasn't the imperial throne, the typical prize for villains. It was bloody revenge.
I had a grasp of the situation, but the path forward was bleak.
I'm only ten, and I have no proof of the temple's misdeeds.
Even if I did, my parents-in-law wouldn't listen to me.
They might even think I was making up lies out of jealousy toward my sister, the Saintess.
It wasn't an entirely unlikely scenario.
All the circumstances were against me.
Mhm, in that case, I'll just have to flip the whole board.
I brought my face close to Kivrin's.
"Young Lord, don't you want to get out of here? Don't you miss the days when you lived with your mother and focused on your studies?"
"W-well..."
"Well?"
"I... wa-want... to leave."
Kivrin's face flushed red, as if he'd forced out those words with great difficulty.
"Then let's do it!"
"H-how?"
My eyes crinkled into a smile.
"Want to play with fire with me?"
* * *
The sun was setting.
To create the perfect alibi, Kivrin and I had changed into our pajamas early and were now stacking up mana stones.
We gathered every cooking utensil with a thumbnail-sized mana stone attached, and the pile grew quite large.
Kivrin, his complexion much healthier than when we first met, said,
"I think I ate t-too much. My stomach feels like it's going to burst."
"We needed to eat our fill today. We might catch a cold, you know."
After grabbing the diamonds from the dressing room, our preparations were complete.
I tied the object with the largest mana stone to a rope, and Kivrin and I backed away.
Taking a deep breath, I yanked the rope hard from behind a wall.
Boom!
Once one exploded, the others began to detonate in a chain reaction.
If we'd spread oil on the floor, the mansion would have burned much better, but we wouldn't have had enough time to escape. It was a shame, but this was the best we could do.
"Let's go."
Our destination, the terrace, was three stories up.
An adult might have survived the fall.
But for us, it was more than dangerous enough.
Our only safety measures were a rope tied to the railing and a blanket we'd thrown to the ground below.
Even if we were lucky enough to land squarely on the blanket, it seemed unlikely we'd be able to get up unscathed.
I just hope the people from the ducal family get here quickly.
"I'll go down first. I'll catch you."
I tried to figure out the best way to land to minimize injury.
I couldn't let Kivrin get another scale on his face from healing me again.
I grabbed the rope, lowered myself as close to the ground as I could, and then let go.
In that moment, a gust of wind swept over me.
Was it my imagination? Right before I hit the ground, I felt my body hang in the air for a split second.
Then, I landed as lightly as a piece of cotton candy settling on a blade of grass.
Huh?
Huuuh? What was that?
There was no time to be bewildered. Kivrin jumped right after me.
"Young Lord?!"
"Yes...?"
Kivrin blinked, completely unharmed.
He looked as though he didn't understand why I was so surprised, as if jumping down wasn't the least bit scary.
Are psychopathic villains extraordinary, even as children?
Then again, my sister isn't exactly normal either...
