Thud.

With a simple strike of the edge of his hand, Derek knocked the security guard unconscious, then sharply turned his head toward Evelyn.

“My lady! Why on earth did you come to a dangerous place like this?”

Derek’s gaze toward Evelyn was rather fierce. However, perhaps because his Imperial language was slightly awkward, he did not seem quite as intimidating as he looked.

“I had… my reasons.”

“What kind of reason could possibly bring you to a place this dangerous…?”

Derek turned his body fully toward Evelyn, apparently intending to press her for an explanation, when…

“What…?”

Jason, who had joined them late, came running over with a bewildered expression. Unlike Derek, who excelled at anything involving physical exertion, Jason seemed to have been delayed because he had taken the long way around along the proper route.

“…Don’t tell me you killed them all? You should have left at least one person alive to ask who was behind this!”

“You could have found a way to get here earlier, Jason.”

Derek replied curtly as he flicked his bloodless sword through the air.

“What?”

Jason’s eyes widened as he glared at Derek, clearly ready to start an argument.

“Enough.”

Kassian shook his sword once, not a single drop of blood staining its blade, then slid it back into the scabbard at his waist as he gave the brief command.

Jason and Derek immediately turned their heads in opposite directions and muttered under their breath.

Ignoring them, Kassian walked over to Evelyn.

“Are you injured anywhere?”

Evelyn gave a small shake of her head before thanking Kassian and Derek once more.

“Thank you very much. If the two of you had not appeared at such a timely moment…”

Evelyn shook her head as though she did not even want to imagine what might have happened, then continued while looking at Kassian.

“I would like to offer you proper compensation for your help…”

Kassian stared intently at Evelyn as if studying her. Then he finally spoke.

“I will accept your gratitude in my heart alone. We happened to have business with these men ourselves. More importantly, there may be others pursuing you, so we should leave this place first.”

“I think that would be best. My lady, let us leave this place quickly while we have the chance!”

The escort knight immediately agreed with Kassian.

Though Evelyn felt a little disappointed, she gave Kassian a brief nod of gratitude before turning away.

***

‘Who was that man who was with Evelyn earlier…?’

Alexis was lost in thought as he stared at the red wine swirling inside the transparent glass, constantly changing shape.

Several hours had already passed, yet the events continued to cloud his mind. The sight of Evelyn gazing at some man with an almost tender look in her eyes.

“Was it because she found another man after all…?”

Recalling the man who had been with Evelyn on Metton Street, Alexis came to a conclusion.

“Could it be… that I was genuinely in love with Evelyn?”

The words slipped from Alexis’s lips after he had spent a long while turning the thought over in his mind.

Then a hollow laugh escaped him.

“Ha… That’s ridiculous. There’s no way…”

He shook his head, dismissing the thought as absurd.

Evelyn had merely been a stepping stone to further his rise in society, nothing more and nothing less.

It had been a time when the reputation of House Ceres was growing higher by the day thanks to its successive victories on the battlefield.

That was when he happened to meet Evelyn by chance. She was far more beautiful than the rumors had suggested.

Her background alone, as a member of House Ceres, was more than enough to make her attractive. The fact that he could also feast his eyes on such beauty was an unexpected pleasure.

In particular, most of the young ladies he had met who possessed both an influential family and exceptional beauty tended to be aloof and arrogant.

Naturally, he had assumed Evelyn would be the same. But she easily defied Alexis’s expectations.

“I heard you’ve been spending a lot of time with Lady Ceres lately. So? What’s she like? Is she as haughty as her family’s influence would suggest?”

Even when other young lords showed interest in his relationship with Evelyn, Alexis could sum her up in a single word.

“What’s she like…? She’s nice.”

“Her face?”

“Her face is nice too, of course…”

“Sounds like there’s something else you find nice about her besides her face. Am I right?”

His peers continued throwing one vulgar question after another at him.

Even so, Alexis never once lost his smile in front of them. There was no reason to ruin the mood and make his relationship with them awkward.

‘Whatever you’re imagining, she’s probably even better than that.’

He responded to their lewd and indecent remarks with boastful jokes, but inwardly, he looked down on them.

‘Idiots.’

That was not what mattered. Her beauty might help with pleasure and entertainment, but Evelyn’s true value lay in her family.

Besides, the more Alexis got to know Evelyn, the more he genuinely thought she was a decent person. That was why he liked her even more.

Put another way, she was exactly the kind of person who was easy to hold in his hand and manipulate however he pleased.

His relationship with Evelyn proceeded smoothly. Of course, there had been a few obstacles.

Schneider Viscount and his wife were constantly eyeing the gold belonging to House Ceres, while her cousin Beatrice occasionally gave Alexis a peculiar, suggestive look.

But he did not consider either to be a serious problem.

Even if he could not separate Evelyn from House Schneider before their marriage, once they were married, he could simply remove them from Evelyn’s side.

Then, just when Alexis realized that Evelyn was gradually falling deeper and deeper for him, an opportunity presented itself.

“Alex! Alex!”

“What is it, Mother?”

“I heard the Young Marquis of Ceres is attending the imperial palace ball this time!”

The thought that he would finally be able to meet Evelyn’s real family, whose faces he had not even seen once throughout their entire relationship, excited Alexis.

“Of course, it’s a little disappointing that it isn’t Marquis Ceres himself, but it’s still undoubtedly good news. Alexis! You must never let this opportunity slip away. Do you understand?”

His father, Count Osment, repeatedly urged him to make sure he won the Young Marquis of Ceres’s favor.

The plan was simple. He would be introduced to the Young Marquis of Ceres at the imperial palace ball.

Just as he had done with Evelyn, he would use the information he had gathered beforehand to make a good impression on the Young Marquis.

After returning to the battlefield, the Young Marquis would tell his father, Marquis Ceres, about what had happened at the imperial palace.

Naturally, that report would include information about Evelyn’s lover as well. It seemed like the perfect way to help secure the marriage.

Everything had seemed to be proceeding smoothly toward marriage, until…

“I want to call off the marriage arrangement.”

An unexpected variable had appeared.

“I’m saying we should break up.”

It had felt as though the back of his head had been struck with an iron club, leaving him completely numb.

Perhaps he had let his guard down because winning Evelyn’s heart had been far easier than he expected.

If Evelyn had truly developed feelings for another man, then getting her to marry him had suddenly become much more difficult.

Worse, it meant she had decided that this other man was better than him.

“D*mn it.”

Bang!

Unable to contain his anger, Alexis slammed his fist hard against the table. Then he downed the strong wine remaining in his glass in one gulp.

“Is someone outside?”

The door opened, and along with the acrid smoke of cigars, the noisy voices from outside seeped into the private room.

“Six! We have six! The winner of this round is…”

“Again? Isn’t something wrong here? A six came up in the previous round too, and now again…”

The manager quickly entered the room and shut the door behind him. At the same time, the noise coming from the gambling den abruptly fell silent.

“Yes, sir. Did you call for me?”

The manager bowed deeply.

Alexis asked him,

“I heard there have been some men hanging around Metton Street lately.”

Because Metton Street was an entertainment district, quite a few travelers came there.

Naturally, there were plenty of unfamiliar faces as well. Still, the manager immediately realized who Alexis was referring to.

“Ah… You mean the trio. They seem to have wandered here from another country. Though, strangely enough, after that first visit, they haven’t set foot here again…”

The manager hurried to answer before Alexis could say more.

He seemed to have assumed that he had been summoned to be reprimanded over the recent decline in the gambling den’s earnings.

“Are they foreigners?”

The manager realized that Alexis’s interest was not in gold, but in the three men themselves, and quickly answered.

“I have heard that they were speaking in a foreign language, but…”