After the day he realized his love for Jella, Cail believed he could be happy for a long time, loving her by her side.

Cail’s world began to shake with the appearance of Yuria.

A hunting festival held to commemorate her birthday.

It was his duty to escort her, but that day, Cail couldn’t do so. Because Jella had eluded him.

“Today you don’t need to escort me.”

“Your Majesty…?”

“Duke Alpenhayer will be by my side.”

Looking at the bewildered Cail, Jella added indifferently.

“But, Your Majesty.”

At this point, she suddenly burst into laughter, cutting off Cail’s words.

“My, Cail. I knew you lacked tact, but do you intend to watch me having a tryst with my fiancé from the side?”

“…”

At those words, Cail’s mouth closed.

Niel, who was at a distance from them, was watching from atop his horse.

His eyes, looking down at Cail, were curved gently as usual, but that gaze was strangely cold.

Her fiancé, known for his kindness to everyone, was always like that.

He would look at him with subtle hostility and contempt hidden, knowing that he liked her.

If it hadn’t been for Cail’s exceptional intuition, he wouldn’t have noticed.

“So just for today, don’t worry about me and enjoy the hunting festival.”

Jella left those brief words and turned her horse to approach that man.

Niel immediately shifted his gaze from Cail and smiled softly toward her.

Cail stood rooted to the spot, watching the backs of the two as they disappeared, their horses side by side.

While he was standing there as if nailed to the spot.

Plop. Pitter-patter.

Raindrops fell from the sky.

The intensifying rain struck his cheeks as it passed.

Standing in a daze, Cail snapped out of it with the cold winter rain.

The rain didn’t seem like it would stop easily. The weather was cold. Even at this moment, he worried that she might catch a cold from getting wet in the winter rain.

Although he knew her fiancé was by her side, and despite her words that he didn’t need to escort her today.

Nevertheless, because protecting her well-being was the only reason he lived and breathed.

Instinctively, he mounted his tethered horse. He searched for her through the heavy rain that made it difficult to see ahead. Then suddenly.

Neigh-!

The horse carrying him slipped on the rainwater on a steep slope. Fortunately, he jumped off before the horse fell, avoiding serious injury, but in the process, he lost the horse.

‘This is troublesome.’

After rushing around worried about her well-being, he was now in a situation where he might cause her concern instead.

Cail looked up at the steep slope with his eyes painfully contorted at his own pathetic state. The dirt path was getting muddy and flowing down with the heavy rain. It looked a bit dangerous, but it seemed he could climb it without problems.

“Ah…!”

At this moment, a soft exclamation was heard. Turning his head, he saw an unfamiliar woman with blonde hair and purple eyes looking at him with a slightly flushed face.

“Hello, I…!”

The woman tried to say something to him, but Cail, who had never been interested in anyone other than Jella, simply turned his head and moved on. There was no time to linger in a place like this.

“W-wait…!”

Yuria urgently grabbed Cail’s clothes and called out.

Feeling discomfort at the stranger’s touch, Cail looked at Yuria with coldly hardened eyes.

“What is it?”

Startled by the cold gaze, Yuria released Cail’s clothes and mumbled.

“Well… I suddenly fell into this forest… the way out…”

“It’s that way.”

Cail gestured with his chin toward the slope above and turned his body again.

He could feel the woman timidly following a few steps behind, but Cail had no time to pay attention to that. The woman fell with a thud on the slippery slope, but he had no time to look back at that either.

People believed that Cail had rescued Yuria from the hunting grounds that day, but in reality, Yuria, whom he had met by chance, had simply followed Cail alone.

Cail was just jealous seeing that woman receiving Jella’s attention because she was injured, so he imitated that woman and pretended to be hurt to regain Jella’s attention. That woman had just that much presence to Cail.

But the next day, Niel Alpenhayer suddenly requested to break off the engagement.

“I apologize, Your Majesty. I have found a woman I cherish in my heart.”

Standing behind Jella, Cail looked at that man with hardened eyes.

Niel Alpenhayer was always a man who suppressed and hid his emotions in front of her, but at the same time, he was a man who loved her enough to be wary of someone like him with his noble body.

Wasn’t he the man who, just a day before, had let slip the hostility he was trying hard to hide in his gaze toward him?

Jella was furious, drawing her sword and chasing away Niel Alpenhayer.

Unlike her usual indifference to everything, she seemed to be disturbed by something, which made Cail feel strangely depressed.

It was as if she was struggling with the broken engagement with that man…

Shortly after, Cail discovered Niel walking alongside Yuria. So that woman was the one that man had cherished in his heart. It was incomprehensible, but that was all.

With other worries recently occupying Cail’s mind, there was no room for them to squeeze in.

‘Her Majesty is trying to distance me from her.’

She keeps trying to push him away from her side with words like don’t just stay by my side, live your own life too.

Originally, Her Majesty was known to be capricious, so perhaps she was getting tired of him.

‘Is she going to abandon me now?’

Wasn’t she known to be capricious?

He had heard that among gossip-loving socialites, bets had been exchanged for years about when she would abandon him.

That day too, he was returning with a gloomy mood due to her order to leave.

Cail discovered Yuria lingering in front of his bedroom.

“Ah, Sir Cail…!”

Yuria approached him with a brightly lit face.

“I’ve been waiting!”

Cail looked at Yuria with insensitive eyes.

‘That woman…’

She was the woman who had taken the fiancé from Her Majesty. But strangely, people cursed Her Majesty and praised that woman.

That fact alone was enough reason for Cail to dislike her. Even eye contact was unpleasant, so Cail ignored Yuria and simply entered his room.

“Wait, Sir Cail!”

At this point, Yuria grabbed the closing door and followed Cail inside. Then she looked straight into Cail’s eyes and said.

“You helped me so much that day, and I couldn’t even thank you. So I came to express my gratitude.”

“…?”

As Cail was looking at her with slightly furrowed brows, unable to understand her words.

Suddenly, he felt a strange impulse. Something very unpleasant and disturbing…

Cail unconsciously held his breath and stared at Yuria’s eyes.

“I… I heard from people. That the Emperor forcibly brought you to the imperial palace and is doing… very bad things…”

“…”

“Forcing someone to do such things is very wrong. I can help you… Kyaaah!”

Crash! Bang!

Cail instantly lunged at Yuria. In his hand, as he mounted the fallen Yuria on the floor, was a sharply honed dagger.

The sharp blade was piercing near Yuria’s eye. He was about to gouge out her eyeball.

Where the pointed blade had dug in, red blood flowed down her eye.

Cail looked at it with an expressionless face and firmly gripped the metal in his hand.

“Sa, sa, sa, sa, save…”

Yuria, with a terrified face, was trembling and barely holding him back.

There was not a trace of mercy in his cold and emotionless gaze.

This man truly intends to gouge out my eyes.

A fear she had never felt before overwhelmed her.

“L-let’s, t-talk…”

Just as Cail was ignoring Yuria’s plea and about to forcefully drive the dagger into her eye.

“Aaaaahhhh!”

With Yuria’s scream, a golden light deflected his attack.

It was the same light that had healed her limping leg the day she first appeared.

‘Is this what people call holy power?’

As Cail was watching the wound near her eye heal itself and readjusting his grip on the dagger.

“Ugh…”

At that moment, the residual magic of Helasio accumulated in his body reacted to Yuria’s holy power, painfully constricting his blood vessels.

The strength left his hand, and the dagger he was holding fell down with a thud. Taking advantage of this gap, Yuria quickly pushed him away and fled outside.

Left alone, Cail closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the rampaging magic residue to calm down.

The moment their eyes had met earlier, a strange impulse arose within him, urging him to kneel before that woman and show reverence. It incited him to serve that woman as his new master, not Her Majesty.

It was an unpleasant and terrible impulse even just to recall.

So he couldn’t bear that moment, and to break the impulse, he tried to gouge out Yuria’s eyes.

It was because his animal-like instinct recognized that those eyes were contaminating his mind.

‘Why did I feel such an impulse?’

Suddenly, a terrifying fear gripped him. He felt as if he had betrayed Her Majesty, and he became disgusted with himself.

Cail was already on edge these days, worried about being abandoned by Jella.

Even though he instinctively felt that woman had used some strange power, all of this felt like his own fault.

His blindly transformed feelings toward Jella made him unable to bear himself for feeling such an impulse even for a moment.

Perhaps Her Majesty has realized what a terrible person I am.

That’s why she wants to abandon me.

Because keeping such a weak and disloyal servant by her side is useless.

So, so…

The aftereffects of the rampaging magic residue numbed his reason, and an unfamiliar fear drove his thoughts to extremes.

If Her Majesty finds out, this time I will surely be abandoned.

No.

No, Your Majesty.

You told me to stay by your side.

Please don’t abandon me.

Please don’t abandon me.

Cail sat down on the floor, chewing his innocent lips and trembling with fear.