Unable to see her during her time in prison, Iris was facing her mother for the first time in a full five years. She quietly watched her mother play with the toy, then raised a hand still damp with cold sweat and gently smoothed her hair.

Iris’s mother was once the owner of lush black hair. But her jet-black hair was changing as time passed.

Growing whiter and whiter, just like Iris’s own hair once did….

“Cindy, your hair is turning white too. With a little more time, the two of us will look exactly alike. So alike that people outside the castle won’t be able to tell who is who.”

“O-Outside the castle…? Nobody outside the castle will ever see me. I can’t go outside. If I go outside, the Master will bring a whip and hit me.”

“No. Someday you’ll be able to leave the castle too. Right now people don’t know you exist, but by then everyone will know….”

Having stroked her mother’s hair, Iris was now stroking her cheek. The longer her fingertips lingered on her mother’s cheek, the more tears gathered at the corners of her lovely eyes.

She hurriedly rubbed her eyes with her sleeve, but it was useless. The clear tears were already sliding down her cheek.

Once the first drop fell, the second and third followed, carving deep tracks of tears.

It was dreadful to call her own broken mother a ‘wild horse’ alongside Wilhelm, right in front of Michael. The wretched feelings that piled up bit by bit, from the reception room, or perhaps from the prison five years ago, finally burst and turned into a sorrowful sob.

Iris’s crying was always silent. Holding her breath while crying was a habit now, and even as she clung frantically to her mother like someone grabbing the last remaining rope, she didn’t make a single sniffle.

Throughout her daughter’s sorrowful weeping, her mother, clutching the pony toy, only stared blankly into the air. Having become so feeble-minded in her old age that she couldn’t even recognize her own daughter, she seemed to understand nothing about why Iris was crying.

The quiet sobbing subsided only after the smell of rain in the breeze vanished completely. Steadying her breath with difficulty, Iris whispered into her mother’s ear so the guards nearby couldn’t hear.

“You know, Cindy. That man made me a promise. If I keep up my marriage with Michael Hagbris, he won’t lay a hand on you.”

“D-Don’t lie. That’s absurd. M-Master made a promise to you?”

“Yes. So I will never divorce Michael Hagbris, even if the world collapses. I’ll hold on and somehow not divorce him, so all you have to do is stay safe like this. Understand?”

But her mother couldn’t believe the promise was truly made, and only shook her head like a broken doll. Only after Iris, fed up, shook her shoulders did she answer that she understood, and even that wasn’t said sincerely.

Iris had to bite her lower lip hard to hold back the sobs welling up again. As blood burst from her tender lip, the wind came once more and brushed the white hair of the lonely mother and daughter.

Spring was surely approaching the empire.

But for some reason, the wind that blew carried the chill scent of the winter sea.

***

While Iris was meeting her mother, Michael was continuing his unfinished conversation with Wilhelm.

It was long since Iris vanished completely beyond the door. Even so, with her no longer in sight, Michael kept staring steadily at the closed door for a while.

He turned his head only when Wilhelm, lighting his pipe, called his name.

Wilhelm was a ferocious smoker from long ago. Remembering the smell of tobacco clinging to Elias Hagbris’s clothes on the day he received his body, Michael let out a chilly sneer.

“To speak of a wild horse at such length. You must be very interested in horses, Duke Oppenheimer.”

“Isn’t a horse a symbol of wealth and power for a noble? In this empire, buying an expensive stud shows off wealth, and taming a fierce wild horse displays strength.”

“From of old, my house was respected for knowledge rather than strength. I’m not sure why one must risk danger to tame a fierce wild horse.”

“Accomplishing what others cannot is itself a symbol of power, Lord Michael. Everything I do, I do because it’s worth that much.”

Ah, is that why you killed my father too?

Because he was worth killing?

A pitch-black flame burned from deep in Michael’s chest. The more fiercely it burned, the harder his fists clenched, leaving deep marks in his palms.

He wanted to thr*st a sword through that expensive fabric of Wilhelm Oppenheimer right now. Then tear the corpse to shreds and throw it to the wild beasts as food.

Michael thought it fortunate that he didn’t bring a dagger. If one were in his coat at this moment, he would surely have stabbed Wilhelm without restraint.

While Michael suppressed the anger in his chest, Wilhelm blew out harsh smoke. When he held out his hand, the Oppenheimer family’s butler handed over the envelope he brought.

The envelope was lightly torn open in Wilhelm’s grip. When Wilhelm held out his hand again, a fountain pen was placed in it this time.

Hoo. Blowing out smoke, he spoke in a voice tinged with a faint smile.

“You seemed displeased with the northern mine, so I sold it. In its place, I bought land with the money from the sale.”

The empire had a tradition from of old in which the families of a married man and woman exchanged wedding gifts. Commoners gave jewels or livestock, but nobles did not. For them, the basic unit of a wedding gift was real estate.

When the House of Hagbris took Iris in as the lady of the house, it gave Wilhelm a mountain as a wedding gift. Wilhelm, seemingly to prove he was richer, gave in return the northern mine, far more valuable than a mountain.

But what Michael wanted as a wedding gift was not some northern mine.

He wanted only one thing.

“These are the lands the former Count Hagbris sold. Will this be enough as a wedding gift from our house?”

They were his father’s lost territories.

Michael stared with sunken eyes at the real estate documents Wilhelm held out before him. Even though he regained every last territory he had long aimed for, he couldn’t help feeling sick.

Michael had to make a great effort not to scowl in front of Wilhelm. He answered very belatedly.

“…Yes, that’s sufficient.”

Anger surged again, and Michael inhaled deeply.

It was land that never needed selling, were it not for Wilhelm pulling out his investment without warning and spreading rumors that the business was wobbling. It meant this was property he shouldn’t have needed to recover by such a squalid method.

‘Goddamn it….’

His heart was boiling, yet his mind turned cold in an instant. By now, the image of Iris trembling pitifully was long gone from before his eyes.

He didn’t want to guess or know why Iris Oppenheimer trembled before Wilhelm.

‘The vile bloodline of the Oppenheimer family….’

Two murderers.

Like father, like daughter!

Michael’s reason was blackened once more by resentment toward the Oppenheimer family. An insane urge to wipe out not only Wilhelm Oppenheimer but also his daughter Iris from this world surged up.

Michael’s hand signing the documents trembled finely with anger. If he kept smelling Wilhelm’s tobacco like this, he felt he would truly commit something irreversible, so he put down the pen and left the reception room without further conversation.

Even when he bowed to Wilhelm, his fingertips shook, unable to calm down.

If he dealt with Wilhelm Oppenheimer at the Oppenheimer castle, then at the Hagbris mansion he must deal with Iris Oppenheimer. Leaving the reception room, Michael thought how ridiculous it was that he must face father and daughter in turns, and he brushed off a servant’s offer to guide him through the castle.

He wanted to leave Iris in this castle and return to the mansion alone. But before he could act on it, Michael spotted her standing in the middle of the castle corridor.

Michael gazed at Iris’s back without making a sound.

‘Iris Oppenheimer….’

Wilhelm Oppenheimer’s daughter, who inherited his blood.

To Michael’s eyes, even Iris’s back looked maddeningly horrible.

After buying the empress’s old castle, Wilhelm remodeled it to his taste but didn’t change the overall structure. The castle’s corridors followed an old fashion and had columns without windows, so the blowing wind could be felt vividly.