The bitterness spread across his tongue so sharply that every nerve seemed to bristle.

“…It tastes better suited to herbal tea than to wine.”

Come to think of it—when had she first begun urging him to drink herbal tea?

“Please finish it, Your Grace.”

“Shall I add some sugar?”

“I hope you come to like this tea.”

“We’ll be able to drink tea together in Levizan as well, won’t we?”

He used to love the sound of her endless chatter.

The sweetness of her scent filled his lungs so completely and intoxicatingly that he never noticed the bitterness of the tea on his tongue.

He had not realized that Sveta had been deceiving him.

A hollow laugh escaped his lips. Aiden let out a faint, breathless chuckle.

Even the moments when she had tricked him felt unbearably sweet. Looking back, he realized that he had loved everything about her.

Even her lies.

He loved the way she pushed him away and told him that she hated him too.

“Still… you are… lovely…”

The slurred words slowly forced their way past his lips.

His consciousness began to blur.

***

Aiden’s thoughts drifted across a darkened sky, clouded by anxiety.

Suddenly, grey clouds surged and engulfed him.

Rumble. Rumble.

The sky seemed to split apart, and the voice of Jace Gould slid into his ears like a serpent’s hiss. Jace Gould — the man who had killed his sister — laughed like a demon.

Having watched Aiden’s despair throughout the night, Gould brought yet another baby into the world.

As if to mock Aiden and promise that his suffering was far from over, Gould sneered with cruel delight.

“Guess. Should I kill this baby? Or let it live? Hmm?”

“Ugh…!”

“If you guess right, I’ll spare your life.”

Jace Gould spoke as though granting a favor.

“Or try to save it yourself. If you can tear the baby from my hands, I’ll let you both live. What do you say? Doesn’t that sound entertaining?”

Suddenly, the baby opened its eyes wide and started crying its lungs out.

Did it understand anything at all?

As if to dispel any doubt, terror filled its pale blue eyes.

Jace Gould shoved the wailing baby close to Aiden’s ear.

It was unspeakably cruel.

The baby screamed as though about to faint, flailing helplessly in the air.

“Haahhhm.”

When Aiden wiped away his tears and offered no resistance, Jace Gould let out an exaggerated yawn.

Each of his movements was calculated and deliberately mocking.

Aiden waited in silence, searching for the slightest opening.

The instant Jace opened his mouth again, Aiden seized the baby and ran without hesitation.

After all, he was only a small boy himself.

He had no power to save anyone.

Just a boy carrying a baby.

For Jace Gould, catching them would have been effortless. Yet he remained at the far end of the corridor, simply watching Aiden flee.

Then he shouted after him.

“I let you go on purpose! It’s more fun to catch you that way!”

Aiden ran as fast as he could.

Strangely, the baby stopped crying.

Silence fell around them.

The warm, small weight in his arms filled him with relief.

A warm, tingling sensation spread from his heart throughout his entire body.

‘Maybe we can survive.’

Hope flickered.

Only for a moment.

Jace Gould’s cruel voice struck him from behind.

“I’ll count to thirty, then I’ll come after you. One… two… three…”

Aiden left the voice behind him and burst out of the building.

Before him stood a steep, winding rock mountain.

There was no way two children could climb over it.

“Ten! Eleven…!”

Jace’s booming countdown echoed behind him, each number closing in like a death knell.

He could not be caught.

Without hesitating, Aiden ran towards the mountain.

A raindrop struck the bridge of his nose.

There was no path, no clear way down. Massive boulders and grotesquely twisted trees stretched out endlessly before him.

Whoosh!

In the next instant, the sky split open and heavy rain began to pour down.

Still, Aiden ran, his lungs burning, until a sharp metallic taste filled his mouth.

His short legs pumped desperately beneath him. Then his foot struck the slick, rain-soaked soil and he slipped.

The back of his head slammed hard against a jagged rock.

Pain throbbed through him.

He wanted to cry.

“Ugh…”

With great difficulty, he swallowed back the sob rising in his throat and checked on the baby.

Thankfully, perhaps because he had reflexively held it tightly, the baby was unharmed.

But it was raining.

If he slipped again, would the baby still be safe?

It would be better to hide for now.

Aiden sprang to his feet and crawled beneath the thick, protruding roots of a massive tree.

‘Here…’

The shadows were deep. It would not be easily seen.

Was the baby cold?

Its plump lips had turned pale blue.

Carefully, Aiden set the baby down.

“It’s raining, so stay here. I’ll find a way down and come back.”

The baby’s dark eyelashes fluttered open wide.

Tears pooled in his sky-blue eyes and trickled down his plump cheeks.

Aiden tried to calm the child as he whimpered and reached out to him.

“Even if it’s dark, endure it. All right? I’ll be back soon.”

There was no way the baby could understand him. And yet Aiden explained with desperate sincerity.

“It’s safe because it’s dark here. So you have to hide well. Okay?”

The baby curled its tiny fingers around his.

A faint warmth passed between them.

His heart ached again.

Gently, Aiden ruffled the baby’s dark hair.

A deep sense of relief filled him.

For some reason, he was certain that he would find a way down.

“I won’t abandon you.”

Aiden carefully stepped towards the narrow gap between the rocks. Gripping the long tree roots trailing down from above with both hands, he edged forward.

The rain poured down mercilessly, blurring his vision. Shaking his head to clear the water from his eyes, he took a wide step — and the earth beneath his feet gave way.

He fell.

From somewhere far away, he thought he heard crying.

It sounded like a desperate plea for help.

***

Aiden opened his eyes.

The faint, bluish light of dawn rippled across the curtains. He sat up and blinked slowly.

It was an old memory.

“So… what happened after that?”

When he came to after passing out, he found himself slung across the back of an old woman as she made her way down the mountain. She was a beggar who roamed the border region.

She carried him for months, all the way to Czernok. She never put him down once, treating him as though he were her own child.

They survived on mouldy bread and sour milk. Yet she always pressed the milk into his hands, insisting that a child needed to eat well.

By the time they finally reached the main Czernok estate, she was greeted with overwhelming relief.

—and a hatred just as fierce.

“My son is not dead!”

His father laughed heartily in delight.

“My son lives… while my daughter is dead.”

His mother looked at him as though she could tear him apart with her eyes alone.

He grew up under the crushing weight of these two extremes.

It was bewildering.

Charles Strilland inspected him with open satisfaction. Elise Strilland struck his smooth cheek with her fan.

To his father, he was a purebred stallion — something to be displayed with pride.

To his mother, however, he was a son she could not bear to love.

That became his identity.

The name ‘Aiden’ faded away. Only ‘son’ remained.

And so he grew up as the heir to Strilland.

All the while, something like silt gathered quietly in the depths of his heart. From time to time, it would rise to the surface.

Whenever his chest tightened, it rose to the surface.

It was guilt.

He remembered the baby with black hair and sky-blue eyes.

He believed that the child’s death was entirely his fault.

“That is why I…”

Aiden muttered incoherently and roughly pushed his golden hair, which had fallen across his face, back.

That was why.

That was why he had been so anxious.

He was afraid of losing her — the one who reminded him of that baby. Because he was afraid someone would hurt her.

That was why he had locked Sveta away.

It was his fault.

He had projected the pain of his past onto a woman who had done nothing to deserve it.

At the end of that dreadful dream, he found himself standing before her once more.

She stood on the edge of a cliff, smiling faintly as her body swayed.

The instant the image formed in his mind, his fingertips began to tingle. A pain too heavy to endure crept slowly upwards from the very ends of his body, threatening to consume him entirely.

“Sveta… I was wrong.”

Aiden murmured hoarsely.

“I should not have done that. I should not have confined you… deceived you… I should not have…”

The terribly cold words he had once spoken surfaced from his unconscious.

“You must not trifle with any other man.

This is what you must obey from now on.”

That very morning, his mother had summoned Sveta, forced her to kneel and wash her feet—then poured scalding tea over her.

Those were the words he had used to describe a woman who had suffered so much.

He said them because he could not bear to see her smiling at a stable boy.

He could not bear to see another man’s face redden while looking at her.

His demands had been absurd, born of petty jealousy.

Only now did he clearly see how cruel he had been to her.

“Is that why you left me? Because I… treated you so…”

That could not have been the only reason.

There were too many failures to count.

As soon as he recalled one, more followed, one after another.

His breath became shallow as though someone were squeezing his throat.

He clutched at his chest.

“If I could see you again…”

He would do anything if he could.

If she wanted to know what was in his heart, he would carve it out and lay it before her.

A sense of bitter regret lingered in the air, then faded away.

***

“Haaah…!”

At the sound of frantic sobbing echoing from the maids’ quarters, Meriette knit her brows. Deep, sharp lines formed between her narrow eyes.

“…Is it Beka tonight?”

With slow, measured steps, Meriette headed toward the room of the weeping maid.

‘I must calm her somehow. If not, none of the others will sleep.’

The steady rhythm of the head maid’s footsteps echoed through the dark corridor.

Recently, the atmosphere within the ducal estate had become increasingly fragile.

Her master appeared calm, but he was as unstable as a man walking across a spider’s web.

That thin thread would snap soon. Anyone could see it.

Preparing for an approaching storm, Meriette had warned the maids strictly.

“Any girl who dares to utter the death of the young lady of Baron Luce will be severely punished. Do you understand?”

Furthermore, the fact that the former duke had been wounded by an arrow shot by the duke himself had also been swept under the carpet.

The knights who had been present at the scene bore the burden of their silence.

That was how it was.

‘To carry one’s master’s disgrace to the grave.’

That was the pride of those who served.

Despite every effort to prevent it, news of Baron Luce’s young lady’s death spread throughout Renan in an instant.

It all started with one careless remark.