Chapter 33
Why?
His eyes, clouded with confusion, scanned the note from the beginning once more. Between the short sentences, the subtext slowly began to reveal itself.
Tom Philson. Dempis. And Charlotte Evanshire.
As she was a wise woman, it wasn’t difficult to guess she had concluded that Tom Philson had conspired with someone.
She likely would have quickly figured out who that someone was by considering who stood to gain the most from this incident.
‘And then what?’
Putting aside how she managed to secure the man at the heart of the case, what did she plan to do by sending him to her home territory? Was she using him as a means to protect herself from Padrick?
Even so, wasn’t it too reckless? What if something had happened to her while contacting Tom Philson?
“……Ha.”
When his overstepping thoughts eventually reached a vision of her dying, crushed under a chandelier, he hurriedly closed and opened his eyes.
Whatever Charlotte intended to do with Tom Philson was no longer any of his business.
His goal was to escape this place safely, not to uncover the truth by securing a witness.
In any case, after tomorrow, he was destined to be killed by a mysterious assailant holding a grudge over the late King’s assassination.
As if to engrave that fact deep within himself, Calyx put the small note in his mouth and chewed it for a long time.
When he swallowed, there was neither regret nor hesitation.
He simply sat there like a wax doll, devoid of emotion.
Before long, the clattering of keys was heard from outside. It sounded like a guard coming to collect the meal tray.
Calyx stood up quietly and pushed the half-eaten meal out through the slot.
The sound outside continued. The sound of a key repeatedly slipping in the lock.
“…….”
The thought that this was a sound a prison guard would never make caused Calyx’s steps to halt abruptly as he was turning away.
If it wasn’t a guard, then who was standing outside?
Thinking it certainly wouldn’t be someone with pleasant intentions, Calyx recalled the pen he had hidden in his clothes.
Finally, the lock fell away, and the door opened with a blood-curdling creak.
Calyx gripped the pen and lunged toward the door in a single bound.
“……!”
The moment he realized who was standing in front of the door, he froze as if someone had struck him hard on the back of the head.
“Anne? What did you just say?”
“Me? No……. Until just now, you were the one speaking, My Lady.”
Ah. At the maid Anne’s reply, Lottie let out a short gasp. Her face looked half-dazed.
Thinking that the young lady must be exhausted, Anne picked up the pace of her brushing.
Lottie stared at her reflection in the vanity mirror, trying to shake off the unpleasant feeling.
“I’m amazed every time I brush your hair, My Lady. How can it be so thick and soft?”
[The deposed Crown Prince, who was imprisoned in Roy-John Prison, met a tragic end in an unexpected fire, and in accordance with his former status as a Redbreeze, a respectful funeral was…….]
“If it hurts at all, please tell me right a—”
“Just now!”
“Yes?”
“You just said it. That a fire broke out at the prison!”
Anne only blinked her eyes, not understanding the situation.
Lottie approached Anne closely with a scowl.
“A tragic end. What does that mean? Are you saying someone died? And what’s this about a funeral?”
“O-oh, My Lady. What are you talking about? You’re scaring me……!”
Only when Anne started to tear up while clutching the brush did Lottie return to her senses.
She couldn’t quite remember what she had been saying until a moment ago. It felt like she had been dreaming.
“Sorry. I must be…… tired. I’ll get ready for bed on my own. You may go now.”
Wiping her reddened eyes, Anne hesitantly left the room.
Silence fell along with the sound of the door closing gently.
‘I’m hearing things because I’m tired. There have been so many incidents these past few months.’
Contrary to the thought that it was just exhaustion, sleep did not come immediately even when she closed her eyes.
After tossing and turning for a while, she finally fell into a light sleep.
[No. Just a little…… just a little more time……!]
And then the vision began.
It’s a narrow, cold hallway. She is running through it.
The sound of desperate, ragged panting echoes in her ears.
It’s a place she has never been, but her mind knows it is Roy-John Prison as if it were a scene from a dream.
She runs down the hallway and arrives in front of a solitary cell. The door is open.
No way.
Exhaling the breath hanging at the tip of her chin, she slowly looks inside, and red blood touches her battered feet.
It is warm, as if proving it belongs to someone who was alive until moments ago.
She follows the trail of blood with her eyes. He is there.
[Cal……yx.]
Beside his fallen form, an assailant stands with no intention of fleeing. Holding a knife dripping with blood.
The figure suddenly stabs her as she stands there vacantly.
Through her crumbling vision, she sees the assailant take out a match.
The moment her blood-stained hand touches the cooling body of Calyx, the lit match drops to the floor.
“……!”
With a cry that lasted through the night, Lottie woke from the vision.
Her whole body, which felt as if it were about to burn to death, was trembling violently.
“Just, what, is this…….”
Could a dream be this vivid? Could she conjure the interior of a prison she had never visited so precisely?
Moreover, the content of that dream…….
“Cal……yx.”
She tried pronouncing the man’s name just as she had in the dream. Her lips were trembling before she knew it.
His corpse, submerged in a pool of blood, remained vivid no matter how much she tried to erase it.
He’s going to die?
That man, who was as arrogant and confident as if he looked down on everything in the world, would end so miserably?
Tick, tick. The sound of her biting her nails tapped against the silence mixed with the darkness.
‘It was just a dream. A very nasty nightmare at that.’
So there’s no need to tremble in anxiety for no reason. You know better than anyone how irrational and ridiculous you look right now.
‘You’ve done enough for that man. You made a promise with Padrick to have him acquitted.’
Lottie’s movements suddenly stopped. Her face gradually turned pale and cold.
‘Are you really trusting that bastard to keep his promise? Sincerely?’
“Ha.”
It was a suspicion without any logical basis.
She knew that herself. However, she couldn’t calm her heart, which had begun to thrum wildly.
Is Padrick really going to break his promise and try to assassinate Calyx?
If so, what should I do first? Should I go back to Danger Palace? Meet Padrick and give him a proper warning again……?
‘Warning?’
How are you going to warn him?
You don’t even know if it’s something that already happened or will happen, so are you going to shout at him that you know he’s trying to kill that man because you saw it in a dream, so don’t do anything foolish?
“Dammit…….”
She was angry. She was angry that she was trembling in anxiety over a mere dream, and she hated the fact that she couldn’t do anything herself.
The knuckles of her hand gripping the back of the chair turned white.
It was a moment when one might even worry if her skin would tear.
“……!”
She heard something. It was definitely a human voice.
A mysterious voice, whose gender and age were difficult to guess, was whispering something in Lottie’s ear.
Startled, Lottie looked around the room. But all her eyes met were the darkness holding the moonlight and furniture that didn’t know how to speak.
“Who is it? Stop playing around and come out!”
The owner of the voice did not appear. Instead, the voice that was like a whisper grew a little louder.
Lottie frowned and listened to the voice.
It was still difficult to understand what it was saying, but she could tell it was a thoughtful and firm tone, as if trying to steady the heart of someone who was shocked.
[Don’t forget. You are…….]
At the same time the auditory hallucination faded, numerous visions washed over Lottie like a wave.
The panoramic view of Roy-John Prison seen in the dream,
The guards stationed at every entrance, and the side door that was the only one poorly guarded.
The guardroom visible upon entering, a guard nodding off with his legs on the desk because it was near midnight, and the bunch of keys hanging on the wall next to him.
“Just, what, is this…… Gasp!”
The visions surged without giving her a chance to blink properly.
The scene of stealing the keys and climbing the stairs, the ragged breath, the vision growing faint,
Passing through the hallway and finally arriving at the solitary cell—what was visible through the open door was Calyx’s corpse submerged in bright red blood.
[The deposed Crown Prince, who was imprisoned in Roy-John Prison, met a tragic end in an unexpected fire, and in accordance with his former status as a Redbreeze, a respectful funeral was…….]
“Please, stop……!”
With a faint scream, the wave of visions ended abruptly.
Lottie gasped for breath, hugging herself with both arms. The room enveloped in darkness came into view.
It wasn’t some unpleasant nightmare.
Before she had time to think about what had happened to her, her instinct, her intuition was speaking.
‘Calyx dies tonight.’
He will be reduced to ashes with the cause of death being a fire.
‘I have to move.’
There’s no time to hesitate. Move while you’re thinking!
The mansion was submerged in deep darkness as it was bedtime.
After quickly slipping out of the mansion, she immediately caught a passing carriage. The coachman was horrified when a noble young lady tried to board without even a servant.
Lottie spoke quickly.
“I’ll pay you double the market rate. When we arrive at the destination, five times more on top of that. The faster we arrive, the more your share will go up.”
Once Lottie climbed into the seat without even the coachman’s help, he had nothing more to say. It was also because the reward offered by the noble girl was excessively sweet.
Roy-John Prison, which would normally have taken nearly three hours, was reached in half that time.
After handing over her jewelry to the coachman, Lottie ran toward the prison.
Guards would be heavily stationed in front of the prison, but Lottie did not stop. Through the visions, she knew exactly where the guards were stationed as if looking at a map.
Entering directly through the side door where trash was moved, Lottie soon discovered the guardroom.
As she approached the guardroom with bated breath, an elderly guard was indeed dozing off exactly like the image in her head.
Lottie crouched as low as possible, entered the guardroom, took the keys, and came back out.
‘Don’t rest. Move. Charlotte Evanshire.’
Her heart beat so hard it felt like it would jump out of her chest. But it didn’t hurt at all. It felt like she was moving while borrowing someone else’s body.
Because she was pushing her body to the limit to move, Lottie did not notice the faint blue figure hovering around her.
At the moment her vision was about to grow faint, she finally arrived at the top.
