Previously
Jeanne remains by Mael's side despite the risks, witnessing the open hostility and insults directed at him by the Queen's faction. She is suddenly framed for subverting the monarchy with enlightenment texts and is sentenced to exile in the harsh, barbarian-descended Duchy of Skadi.
‘Wouldn't it be better to just die right here?’
At that moment, my spirit had grown as frail as my dying body.
‘Just like this… to slip away naturally….’
Though in name only, I was once a member of high society, yet in a single moment, I had been cast down to an exile. Everything went dark before my eyes, and living terrified me far more than dying.
‘If only I could die.’
Perhaps death would truly be better.
While I thought this, the damp cloth laid over my forehead was constantly warming, and my consciousness kept slipping in and out. Unfamiliar voices chattered by my ears before fading away.
How much time had passed? A voice distinctly different from those that had surrounded me—remarkably powerful and deep—spoke above my head.
It was a strange man's voice.
It was a voice of astonishing resolve and authority, commanding enough to seize my drifting thoughts, which had been flickering like a dying candle.
In response to his question, words that sounded like the escort officer's excuses followed, though I couldn't make them out. I wondered who this stranger was. But even as I tried to open my eyes, I had no strength left to lift my eyelids. Gathering my final scrap of strength, I strained to listen.
Then, as that voice laced with utter disbelief rang out, my body was lifted into the air.
I was bound like rope within two solid, muscular arms.
* * *
When I opened my eyes, the usual painfully ornate ceiling frescoes were nowhere to be found, replaced by a vaulted ceiling of exposed stone. It was not an architectural style familiar from the royal palace.
Right. This was not the palace.
“Ugh….”
The moment I raised my upper body, I groaned and had no choice but to lie back down immediately. The sickness had left me so weak that even moving was an ordeal.
‘I'm still alive.’
Yet I was alive, in this unfamiliar place.
Gradually, sensation returned, and I felt something exceptionally soft against my back. Turning my head and sweeping my hand over it, I found a clean, supple sheet beneath me. It was not the damp, filthy cloth and stiff wooden slats that had threatened to break my back until now, but a plush mattress layered with clean fabric.
‘Where am I?’
Surveying my surroundings at last, I froze in confusion. Looking down from the bed, a dense layer of smoke covered the floor so heavily that the stones were hidden. The smoke was already creeping up toward the bed.
Startled, I leaped out of bed. A chilling shock from the cold stone floor traveled up from the soles of my feet, accompanied by a sharp, chafing pain along my inner thighs.
Surrounded by thick smoke that made it impossible to see an inch ahead, I clapped both hands over my nose and mouth and stumbled out of the room.
As the door opened, a hallway appeared, swallowed in the same dense mist.
Just then, a man parted the haze like a curtain and stepped forward. His frame was so colossal that had I encountered him in a forest, I might have mistaken him for a bear. Without even knowing who he was, I clung to him in sheer terror.
A blunt answer came back.
‘Fog?’
Come to think of it, the vapor wasn't acrid or hot. Rather, it felt damp and cold.
‘Good heavens….’
Realizing the truth of the situation, heat rushed to my face. The man looked down at me without showing any discernible emotion.
Releasing my grip and stepping back, I was finally able to observe the man properly.
Standing a full head taller than southern men, with broad shoulders and long limbs, his head seemed remarkably small by comparison, lending him an unreal presence. He had black hair, pale skin, and green eyes that felt chilling, almost like a serpent's.
The noblemen I had seen at the royal court were mostly blond, flaunting a peacock-like glamour, changing several times a day into garments smothered in lace. But the man before me seemed to belong to an entirely different species. That wasn't merely on account of his plain attire—a knee-length white tunic and trousers.
‘Somehow, he doesn't seem human.’
Looking closely at his distinct features, one might have deemed him handsome, yet I felt no appeal from him whatsoever. From the very start, he seemed like an entirely different breed from me. If he could manage a gentle smile, he would look far more handsome than he did now, but his eyes were as cold as ice, and his gaze upon me was fierce as a wolf's.
Reaching that thought, I realized I had been staring at him intently for far too long. He, too, was looking straight at me. Flushing, I bowed my head in respect.
‘De Skadi? Then he is that very….’
The Duke of Skadi himself. Overcome by terror at this unexpected encounter, I froze.
‘What should I say? Should I explain why I came here? That I was framed? But even if I explain, would he believe me?’
Gripped by fear at beholding a member of House Skadi for the first time, I couldn't utter a word for a long while. When I finally broke the silence, my voice came out raspy, cracked with tension.
“I already know of you. For from this day forward, I am your master.”
“…”
As I flinched, he subtly amended his words.
A Guarantor Lord was the guardian tasked with providing food and shelter so that an exiled convict would not perish, while also bearing responsibility should the exile flee. Indeed. He was my jailer, tasked with watching over me so I could not escape.
“The scheduled date of arrival had long passed without word, so I assumed you had fled. Or perhaps died to wild beasts. But when I inquired, I found you hovering on the brink of death at an inn on the edge of the territory. Believing you would simply die if left to recover there, I brought you here myself.”
That explained why I had opened my eyes to find myself here.
I could hear the sharp barb embedded in the end of his words. In truth, he didn't even bother to conceal his sarcasm.
‘Dinner?’
Though I had no appetite at all, I nodded for the time being.
With that, he was gone, just like the mist that rolled in only to gradually disperse as though it had never been.
* * *
‘What just happened?’
After he departed, dizziness overcame me, and I stumbled back into the room, sinking onto the bed.
A short while later, a young-looking maid entered with a food tray.
What she brought was stew. Mixed with various mysterious scraps of meat and vegetables, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the 'perpetual stew' I had eaten in dingy inns on the way here. The sort of stew that never diminished because whenever the pot ran low, whatever ingredients and broth were on hand were tossed back in to refill it. While it looked revolting, I had no desire to be picky about food after arriving in a place of exile.
‘Still, I must eat.’
Having barely eaten while hovering between life and death, I had little appetite, but wanting to regain my strength, I forced the food down. When I finished, the maid spoke.
A few hours later, the maid brought bathwater and poured it into the small tub in the washroom. Sitting in it, I mustered every ounce of strength I had left to scrub myself clean again and again.
‘Did I really present myself before His Grace looking this filthy?’
Watching the murky, darkened water drain away, a fresh wave of mortification washed over me.