Chapter 27
After starting the fireworks display and waving to the people of Lüsenford territory, Pheon instructed them to distribute plenty of meat and bread before coming inside.
“Your Highness! Welcome back!”
“Ah, they said the new Duchess couldn’t eat Ferenco. So we persuaded her to eat it! Hahaha!”
The moment he heard that damned Ferenco talk, Pheon looked up at Kaella, who was silently eating away. It had started again the instant he arrived.
Her pale face was blankly mechanical as she chewed. Seeing them stuff the tough, tasteless stuff that even the people here avoided into the young Duchess made his blood boil in reverse.
“Your plates aren’t empty yet, I see. Doesn’t suit your tastes either? Shall I have them cleared?”
The Duke, who had been laughing it off casually, now mocked them coldly as he strode past the massive dining table to the Duchess’s side.
“Don’t force it down. Stop eating.”
Ferenco. That damned Ferenco. Lüsenford’s massive deer dish, tough and flavorless. They’d eaten it in times of poverty, but things weren’t that bad anymore. It suddenly hit Pheon why he himself loathed Ferenco so much.
The Duchess had always hated Ferenco. She’d never touched a single bite. Yet now, she chewed and swallowed a big, slow gulp of it before looking at him with a drained expression. Then she whispered softly.
“It’s fine.”
Fine? What exactly was fine about this? Was it fine for a delicately raised Duke’s daughter to be forced—through nothing but barbaric insistence—to eat something she’d never wanted for the first time in her life?
“Don’t force it. Stop eating, now.”
He said it clearly once more. Revulsion surged within him.
These nobles who staked their lives on shoving this trivial food they themselves hated onto the young Duchess, while ignoring true matters of honor, faith, and loyalty—they disgusted him. And the castle’s native staff, from the head maid to the butler and head chef, who should have attended to the Duchess properly but acted on their own whims—his disgust toward them all turned inward in the end.
Before his regression, he’d secretly found Kaella frustrating for making a fuss over a few bites of deer meat and drawing more glares with her tactless behavior. He hated himself most of all for that.
It wasn’t as if the lady, raised on soft and flavorful foods, was overly picky—she just hated Ferenco alone. That was perfectly reasonable.
Seeing the head maid’s displeased expression as she looked at him, he understood what had happened. Ah. Now he got it.
It felt like the haze over his eyes had lifted and his dull mind had awakened. And the reality he faced was far more wretched than he’d imagined.
‘From the very start….’
He’d sworn never to repeat the same mistakes, to do everything right from the beginning. Yet here he was, still a stupid, pathetic fool who’d messed up again. And he’d even brought the Duchess along for the fireworks. First things first—he’d replace the head maid.
“Don’t eat it. I’m really fine.”
Speaking quietly as he sat beside her, Pheon pondered how to deal with these loathsome natives. Strictly speaking, Pheon was the outsider who’d rolled in, so he couldn’t outright dismiss people who’d lived here for generations.
As Duke, he had to govern them well, and it was true they’d been ignored and slighted back in Kline, so he’d made many concessions. But none of that mattered anymore.
If she hated it, then he hated it too—no one would eat it. If they treated the Duchess lightly, they’d treat the Duke lightly too. Anyone whose attitude changed based on the person was first on the removal list.
“Oh my. Your Highness. What’s wrong with your eyes?”
Just then, a sloshing “pfft” of a voice laughed mockingly.
“They look just like they’ve been stung by a bee. Bees in this weather? Look at those eyes. Oh dear.”
One noblewoman—who’d been plotting to snag the wealthy Duchess from refined Kline, who’d followed her loud-voiced husband here, right from the start—pointed at Kaella’s face and laughed.
Her eyes were strange? Pheon whipped his head around to check on Kaella. She sat still. No, not still—her whole body was rigid with tension.
“No, indeed. Your face is swollen, Your Highness.”
Amid the jeering voices, Pheon reached out. His heart plummeted, and his blood ran cold.
“……Urk…….”
An unbearable groan escaped, followed by ragged breathing.
“Kaella!”
In an instant, her eyes swelled shut, and she toppled backward.
“Miss!”
Mari screamed, and several people jumped to their feet. The hand clutching the chair and table—trying not to scratch her flushed skin or give in to her labored breaths—finally fell limp.
A high-pitched ring pierced Pheon’s ears. He forcibly held onto his reason as she staggered and fell all too easily, teetering on the edge of panic. No. He couldn’t lose it here.
“Call a doctor!”
Shouting loudly, Pheon caught Kaella—who was barely clinging to consciousness—and forced her to vomit.
“Kaella, stay with me. Vomit—now.”
On battlefields facing the Evil Dragon Overlante, when wounded soldiers numbered in the hundreds, Pheon hadn’t just commanded from afar. Knight Wilberg and Knight Renar rushed over, and maids shielded Kaella.
“Vomit, Kaella.”
Dying hurt. It had to hurt enough, ache enough. Kaella knew that better than most, having poured her all into her frail past life and lived it fully.
So she’d forced down enough Ferenco to hurt plenty, but she didn’t want to force it back up just to survive. In a place where good people were crushed by the loud ones, where no effort ever got through, it was better to die quickly.
But a firm hand pressed her swollen tongue and jabbed her throat. Kaella heaved it all up. Cramps wrung her stomach, tears welled in her eyes.
“Good. Don’t pass out. Look at me.”
Her blurry vision was a mess. She couldn’t see even if she tried. Kaella gladly surrendered to the welcoming darkness.
“Open your eyes, Kaella!”
*
The newly arrived Duchess had collapsed with a swollen face, unconscious. It happened at the welcome banquet on her first day in Lüsenford.
“Oh dear, she must have a weak constitution.”
After she’d been forced to vomit and carried off, someone muttered obliviously. Serious, sure—but just that serious.
“Why?”
The muttering noble blinked back at the glare from another noble, who’d stayed silent all evening as usual.
“Don’t you grasp the situation? If the newly arrived Duchess collapses, what do you think Kline will say?”
“What would they say….”
What could they say? Even if those soft-bellied Kline weaklings who couldn’t fight spouted their sly nonsense, what did it matter?
Amid the blinking stares, those quick-witted few with political sense—who’d kept quiet as a minority—had gone pale and squeezed their eyes shut.
“Everyone, be silent! Take your seats!”
Just then, knights under the Duke blocked the banquet hall entrances and shouted.
“Remain seated until the situation stabilizes. Do not touch the tables.”
“Why the tables?”
The knight replied coldly.
“His Highness the Duke has ordered an investigation, as the Duchess’s well-being was endangered by the food.”
With those words, several knights dragged out the head maid and butler. From the rear kitchen, the head chef was hauled out too.
The Duke had seized the complacent nobles by the throat and turned everything upside down. He carried the fallen Kaella to his own bedroom and laid her there.
“Tourberry? But Tourberry isn’t poisonous?”
The doctor who spouted nonsense upon arrival was immediately dismissed. The next one was summoned.
“She ate food that doesn’t agree with her body. It was poison to the Duchess.”
The doctor who gave an accurate diagnosis at first sight continued treating her. But he shook his head gravely.
“Ferenco is made with a Tourberry sauce. Even a small amount is dangerous, and she had far too much. Did the Duchess not know it was her first time with Tourberry?”
As if. Having grasped that Kaella had repeatedly said it made her itchy and short of breath—that it ‘hurt’—Pheon shook his head heavily. Kaella had known. And yet she’d eaten it.
“So she took it willingly?”
The doctor looked at Pheon in shock. Pheon, his face ashen black with despair, had no words.
Why had Kaella done it? Had she given in to the nobles’ pressure, nibbling a bit at a time until it overwhelmed her? No—her plate had been scraped clean. She’d chewed every bite thoroughly and swallowed it all.
Then… had she, despairing over marriage to a bastard like him, tried to end it?
The doctor glanced around fearfully, confirmed no one else was listening, then spoke cautiously.
“I’ve done everything possible, but I can’t promise anything. She can’t even breathe properly right now….”
The nobles dismissed her as a lowborn ‘woman’ pharmacist without a look, but she’d been recommended by the stablemaster at the Duke’s command to fetch anyone skilled—even the famed doctor who’d just cared for a woman in labor late into the night.
She’d met the Duke’s knights on her way home and been brought here. Facing the Duke’s piercing gaze—unaware the nobles hadn’t even met her—she trembled.
“Speak freely, without holding back.”
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. Right now, what matters most is whether the Duchess wants to live.”
Her blunt words froze the man who’d sat like a rock by his newlywed wife’s bedside.
Nothing had changed, but the doctor noticed the Duke had forgotten to breathe for a moment. And the already hostile atmosphere around him was now on the verge of explosion.
“Usually, you only question a patient’s will when there’s nothing left to do.”
The doctor bowed her head deeply.
“Yes, Your Highness. Even a sturdy soldier couldn’t withstand that much.”
Much less the patient lying there in such a pitiful state—a young Duke’s daughter prone to illness and weak against the cold, not some burly man.
He’d done to Kaella the treatments reserved for battlefield wounded. With her face swollen and blotchy, slathered in herbs, praying for the inflammation to subside, and already the doctor spoke of the worst.
“I’ve done my best.”
Pheon squeezed his eyes shut. To secure her airway, he’d forced her mouth wide and pinned her tongue; Kaella rasped roughly, teetering between life and death.
“She likely won’t make it through the night.”
The doctor staked her life on the truth. And that truth shattered the Duke once more. An inky, indelible sin surged at his feet.
“…Isn’t there any way? No method to save her at all?”
The Duke from Kline was said to be upright and unshakable, unlike the sly, cowardly Kline folk.
Even the street urchins of Lüsenford knew the tale. The doctor witnessed the supposedly unshakable man crumbling.
“I can deploy any means or method. Is there truly no way to save her?”
He couldn’t lose her so futilely. His desperate voice trembled. The doctor bowed her head.
“…We can only rely on legends, Your Highness. The miracle cure in His Imperial Majesty’s treasure vault, or….”
Everyone in Lüsenford knew that was little more than legend. His gaze demanded something realistic, reason slipping away bit by bit.
“There’s a medicine called Retillin that relieves these symptoms instantly, but… my master said it’s in the Evil Dragon’s domain. I’m sorry, Your Highness.”
Venturing into Evil Dragon Overlante’s territory beyond the border meant war at once. Anyone in Lüsenford knew it was too great a loss for the Duke guarding them.
You didn’t provoke the Evil Dragon. Its hellfire flames turned hard-won crops to ash; its minions from the dread woods and underground horrors reappeared beyond the walls—no.
How agonizing had last autumn been? Strangely, there’d been no clashes through winter into spring, but who knew when the next strike might come.
Lüsenford folk stayed ever vigilant. Sending people into the Evil Dragon’s domain was unthinkable.
“Not herbs, but medicine?”
“Yes. I heard it’s made by the spirits the Evil Dragon commands. It’s a very old tale.”
In Pheon-triggering Evil Dragon Overlante territory, best keep far from the dragon. So the doctor drew the line at an old tale.
“…Keep that silent. Tell no one.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Care for my wife. If you keep her breathing until dawn, I’ll reward you greatly.”
With that curt order, Pheon finally rose and left the bedroom.
“Wilberg, Renar. Guard the bedroom. No one enters except the doctor and her maid. Don’t follow me—protect the Duchess. Trust no one.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The few knights the Duke trusted bowed. Cloaked in black with his hood pulled low, the Duke quietly mounted his black steed and slipped from the castle. He sped beyond the gates, urging even greater haste.
While the nobles were confined to the banquet hall, the powerful warhorse left Lüsenford behind, galloping until white foam flecked its mouth.
The horse plunged into rugged mountains. Snow still lingered, cold winds howled along the path. Wide enough, but no soul ventured near.
Amid black branches, whispers of ominous presences seemed to stir. The sensitive steed sensed fearful gazes, veering off the path at times. Without its master’s soothing hand, it would have bolted long ago.
After galloping deep, ever deeper, the horse finally reared in terror. Darkness in the shadows coalesced into form.
“Easy.”
Tightening the reins, the Duke soothed his mount and faced the shape squarely.
“I need Retillin.”
The intruder into the dragon’s domain declared boldly.
