Translator: Nox

The Mansion Awaits Spring

Chapter 6

Fortunately, Fezin, who shared the carriage with her, did not say a word to April.

He had always been quick-witted. Of course, there were times when his tactlessness made his arrogance even more insufferable, but for now, he remained silent.

Perhaps it was because she hadn’t been able to lie down throughout the interrogation, or perhaps the relief of going home had finally allowed her tension to snap; by the time April had managed to suppress her anger, she was overwhelmed by a heavy drowsiness.

She didn’t want to fall asleep in front of others and was desperately trying to ward off the urge when Fezin spoke in a tone devoid of malice.

“Just sleep. You look like a sickly chicken. It’s pitiful.”

“…….”

“Why the glare? I’m just stating my impression.”

“Keep your impressions to yourself when you’re alone. I’m not interested.”

The frustrating part was that this brief exchange was the least tedious moment of the long carriage ride.

April fought desperately to stay awake, and Fezin did not speak to her again after that.

Whether he truly found the “sickly chicken” sight too pitiful to watch or simply realized she couldn’t sleep because of his presence, he eventually moved to another carriage midway through the journey.

Not long after he left, April finally succumbed to sleep.

Upon arriving at the Runos Mansion, the policeman who opened the carriage door hesitated before speaking to Fezin.

“I believe she’s fallen asleep.”

Before Fezin could respond, Paul stepped forward.

“I’ll wake her.”

“Ah, no. I’ll do it.”

While the policeman hurried to wake April, Fezin pressed his fingers to his temples. Paul, who had followed him from the Rasa Empire, remarked, “If she’s asleep, you just wake her. These Grand Duchy Police really can’t do a single thing on their own.”

Paul voiced exactly what Fezin was thinking, and the Grand Duchy officers looked away, falling silent.

The atmosphere at the Grand Duchy Police headquarters had been a mess ever since the influx of officers from the Rasa Empire arrived with Fezin.

To Fezin and Paul—men who were born in the Grand Duchy, spent their childhoods on the Right Island, and grew into adulthood on the Left Island—the lukewarm attitude of the Grand Duchy Police was incomprehensible above all else.

Originally, the Right Island was a nation founded by seafarers. With snow covering the land for half the year and soil so barren that farming was nearly impossible, the people of the Right Island spent most of their lives wandering the seas, save for about two months out of the year. They were traders and pirates.

Though the island was now occupied by the Empire, and the churches that the pirates used to raid had been established by the Imperial family, the traditions of piracy still lingered in their culture.

A hundred years ago, the Emperor of the Rasa Empire had bestowed the name Dieus—the name of an ancient god—upon the Grand Duchy in an attempt to soothe the anger of the conquered. It seemed to have been a fairly successful endeavor.

However, as seen in Fezin’s name, the Grand Ducal family had preserved their traditions in their own way.

Fezin ‘Laine’ Dieus.

The waves were the only thing a brave seafarer was allowed to fear. Thus, the name of the ancient royalty of the Right Island was Laine, meaning “wave.”

In Paul, in Logan, and even in April, some tradition of the Right Island remained. Whether it was the belief that only the waves were to be feared, or the mental tradition of living like a scoundrel until fifteen only to gain the independence of an adult at sixteen.

Though April did not fall into this category as she had reached adulthood while under house arrest, everyone else had undergone the traditional coming-of-age ceremony of the Right Island.

To the people of the Right Island, becoming an adult meant being old enough to own a ship.

Whether such a spiritual culture had vanished in the span of seven years, Fezin and Paul found the Grand Duchy Police to be lacking in ambition and overly dependent.

They were beginning to understand why the elders used to click their tongues and lump everyone together as “kids these days.”

At any rate, down to every minor detail, the Empire-born police and the original Grand Duchy police found no common ground.

A short while later, a newly awakened April stepped down from the carriage.

It was her first time out in seven years, and since the outing hadn’t been a pleasant one, her expression was profoundly dark.

Without looking at her surroundings, she began walking toward the mansion as if possessed. She looked up at the darkened estate, now riddled with holes where the police had uprooted the stakes and overgrown with weeds.

Unlike how it appeared from the inside, the Runos Mansion seen from the outside could only be described as a “ruin.”

This was a mansion where even twenty skilled servants had been insufficient. It was never a building that April, who had been raised and pampered by those twenty people until her arrest, could have managed alone.

The holes left behind from the stakes being pulled out without the soil being properly replaced made the house look even more hideous.

Even the sparse, skeletal winter trees surrounding the Runos Mansion on the hill added to the desolation.

Many people stood there, but only Logan, who loved people as much as he loved mischief, offered her a word of concern.

“Still, the bones of the house are sturdy. It’ll regain its majesty once it’s repaired.”

April forced a polite smile at his kindness.

“Do you think so?”

“Of course! You must have many fond memories in this mansion.”

“Well.”

April stared blankly at the mansion and murmured.

“I don’t remember.”

“Pardon?”

“I haven’t looked back for a long time. There was no point in longing for something that wouldn’t return.”

She slowly turned her head to look at Logan.

He realized that April Runos was smiling. It was a smile so eerie that not just Logan, but several other nearby officers felt a chill.

Fezin, who had been listening to Paul grumble about the Grand Duchy Police, looked back at April, her golden hair fluttering in the chilling wind.

Her words—that she tried not to think of good memories—drifted on the wind and lingered in his ears.

---

For the past seven years, April had thought only of misery.

The memory of her lover being snatched away before her eyes, the ridicule and ostracization she faced in society because of it, the fury of her parents whose honor had been tarnished, the execution, and the subsequent execution that followed.

As long as her parents had attempted to kill the leader of this Grand Duchy, she knew she could never lead a peaceful life even after her house arrest ended.

Miller would undoubtedly try to kill her. One way or another.

This time, April turned her head to look at Fezin.

From what she had seen at the police station, the rift between the Imperial police and the Grand Duchy police was glaringly obvious. Even now, they stood apart like oil and water, speaking only within their own cliques.

The Grand Duchy police would inevitably lose out in the promotion race against the Imperial officers.

With that reality, they could never have been on good terms to begin with.

Simply maintaining the Runos Mansion required a vast amount of money.

To keep the estate, she had to reclaim at least part of her fortune, and to do that, she needed the only person with the power to oppose the Grand Duke.

And there he stood—a man making no effort to hide how exhausted he was by the mere fact of being in the Grand Duchy. There was no shield better than Fezin Dieus.

But what could she give him in return?

Confessing to being a witch would be Fezin’s greatest wish in this situation, but she couldn’t grant him that.

Then, there was only one other weakness of his that April knew.

“Have you met the Grand Duchess?”

When April asked, Fezin, who had been engaged in trivial chatter with his subordinates, looked at her.

He had been this way since they were young, but even now, Fezin bore a striking resemblance to a feline.

When seen at night, his uniquely opaque pupils made one feel even more unsettled.

Beautiful, and utterly insolent.

April thought that if she had power, she would have chased him away so he could never set foot in her territory again.

Regardless, Fezin was the only one she could even attempt to seek help from right now. Therefore, she had to find out exactly what he wanted.