The dry gaze touched Irena’s face and slowly slid away.

It paused briefly on the coat draped over her shoulders. A flicker of puzzlement passed over the duke’s arid face.

“How pitiful, feeling sorry for a beast you are about to devour. Foolish creature.”

But he soon withdrew even that splinter of interest.

The strict and heartless blue eyes that Irena knew so well remained as an afterimage, pressing in around her.

“You would not dare disappoint me with foolish thoughts. Irena, what could you possibly become if you left Walterburg. Stay silent and become the beast’s leash.”

The conversation ended there.

* * *

She could not remember how she had made it back to the annex. At some point, her surroundings had become familiar.

Irena lifted her head, which she had been keeping bowed the entire time. Beyond the second-floor window, a yellow light flickered.

“……Home.”

Home, finally. A real home.

As though only just realizing it, Irena rolled the word around on her tongue.

Only after the word, exhaled like a sigh, carried its warmth into her ears did the sandstorm raging inside her begin to quiet, little by little.

Her hands and feet, which had been clenched tightly for so long, trembled, and her insides went cold as though she had swallowed a whole block of ice that would not melt.

Yet as though unaware of this, or perhaps not caring even if she was, Irena smiled out of habit.

‘It’s fine. It will be fine.’

‘Because I’m going to leave. Because the medicine will be finished soon. Just until then……’

There was no object to what she was trying to soothe. The voice that murmured on until the moment she stepped into the annex was bleak.

The warm air inside wrapped around Irena like a blanket. She glanced at the coat rack hanging in the entryway and pulled Ikart’s coat more tightly around herself.

“It’s fine. Really……”

Her footsteps up to the second floor quickened.

It was not intentional. She simply moved instinctively, like a mammal swimming up from deep water toward the surface.

But by the time she stepped into the laboratory, she was nearly running.

“Please……”

She rushed toward a corner of the bookshelf and bumped into the table. Whether or not she heard the loud noise, her gaze was fixed on one spot.

“Hah…… hah……”

Her ragged breaths kept shaking her vision. She tried to breathe properly, but failed each time. Her madly trembling hands kept slipping, again and again.

With a crash, every book on the bookshelf finally tumbled down.

“Ugh, hh. Hah……”

She reached deep inside and felt around until something protruding caught at her fingertips. When she pulled it down, the floorboard on the opposite side clunked heavily.

She blinked away the blurring at the corners of her eyes and twisted the wooden plank.

Only after checking the topmost box among those stacked layer upon layer in the small space did her breath burst free.

“Ah……”

Irena’s hand, reaching for the box, stopped dead in midair.

With hands that were trembling, she could not touch anything inside.

<How amusing, feeling sorry for a beast you are about to devour.>

<Irena, what could you possibly become if you left Walterburg. Stay silent and become the beast’s leash.>

The duke’s words repeated themselves in her mind.

A beast to be devoured. Could that truly have referred only to the Crown Prince.

Perhaps her mother had been devoured by him as well. And perhaps Irena herself would soon be……

If she could not leave Walterburg, she too would remain a beast forever. A beast stripped of will and reason, tossed about this way and that, with nothing but breath left to it.

And someday, like those who had gone before, she would scatter like dust.

“I am going to live…… I want to live.”

‘How? Can you really live?’

“I am going to live freely, like my mother.”

‘Your mother died. The duke broke your mother’s wings.’

“I can do it…… once this is finished…… I will……”

‘Did saving the Crown Prince give you courage? How presumptuous. Who do you think you saved, you who cannot even save yourself.’

The questions, looping like a repeat sign, spun round and round without arriving at an answer, when.

“My lady, you’re back……”

Parcha, who had just stepped in, swallowed her words.

Irena, slumped in the middle of the wrecked room, was in a terrible state. Cold sweat-soaked strands of hair clung to her pale cheeks, and both knees were scraped and bleeding red.

Having also noticed the open wooden plank at her feet, Parcha set down the cookie ball she had been carrying onto the floor.

“You went to the main house.”

Parcha calmly straightened the coat on Irena’s shoulders. Branch-cold hands grabbed hold of the collar.

“My lady……”

Rather than offering hasty comfort, Parcha slowly closed the wooden plank.

Some wounds are torn open again by the mere act of being acknowledged. Knowing this, Parcha carefully supported Irena and brought her to the bedroom.

* * *

“I am absolutely not going to die.”

The next day, Irena opened her eyes and ran straight to the laboratory.

She tipped every last bit of the <Burst-of-Energy Vitality Restorative> and the <Fresh-Skin-Rivaling Wound Recovery Remedy>, both derivatives of the <Supreme All-Purpose Wonder Medicine>, into her mouth.

The sour, bitter, and fishy flavors all mixed together in her mouth and it was sheer torment, but Irena opened her eyes wide and chewed each one thoroughly.

‘It’s because my body is depleted.’

Sucking the last of it out of the tube-shaped opening, Irena ground her teeth.

On the days she came back from seeing that man, she hated herself for trembling like an abandoned dog in the rain.

‘Treating someone like a tied-up mutt. Insufferable man.’

Irena was no longer the small child left behind with her mother’s corpse, nor the crybaby abandoned in the black forest of Walterburg where wolves roamed.

So she could not afford to collapse and cry just because the fears of her childhood had been provoked.

‘I am the unofficially greatest genius apothecary in the empire.’

Irena deliberately put strength into her eyes and worked her mouth vigorously.

When her spirits sank, she took medicine, washed up, and moved her body. It was a simple and reliable method.

‘The nerve of him. Just wait until the day I leave.’

The tube was crumpled wretchedly in Irena’s grip as though it were the duke himself.

It was then.

“May you go bald.”

Irena blinked at the curse-laced words that had popped out of nowhere.

“……?”

She looked flustered even by her own words. Irena quickly glanced around the room. The small, narrow room held only Irena.

“Me……? Did I say that……?”

She had no idea what corner of her mind had been harboring such a thought.

She did not know why those words had slipped out, but when she turned them over and chewed on them, she found they were quite satisfying.

Irena listened to the voice sleeping somewhere inside her. And then……

“……May you spend your final years fighting your fully grown children over inheritance……?”

Even worse words followed, tumbling out before she could stop them.

“Oh……?”

It was quite a plausible scenario. It even had a degree of likelihood. Had the rift between the young duke who had left home and the duke not been rather deep?

‘What is this? Why has such a refreshing thought only come to me now……?’

It was not the sort of thought Irena usually had. It was as though someone were whispering inside her head.

Whatever the source, it was quite refreshing. She relaxed her mind and focused on the elusive sensation.

“No matter……”

She narrowed her eyes and chased the voice drifting through her mind.

“……No matter how hard he tries, the utterly useless XXX who can no longer function as a man…… hup!”

Wh, what is this? What are these vulgar, blunt, yet strangely cathartic and creative curses that bring instant relief the moment they are spoken? Just who on earth would……

At that moment, the empty medicine packet rustled in her hand.

Irena looked at the emptied tube-shaped medicine packet with fresh eyes.

“……This is the blood pressure stabilizer, isn’t it?”

Whatever the case, she was feeling a little better.

Come to think of it, a warm heat was circulating through her hands and feet. Her head, which had been aching, felt as comfortable as if she had breathed in fresh air. Irena’s green eyes sparkled.

“My lady, for breakfast…… what are you doing?”

Parcha called out to Irena, who was standing still and looking down at her hands.

“Parcha…… I think I’ve awakened to a new talent.”

“A talent?”

“Could it be that I’ve taken so much medicine that self-healing has become possible? The method is a little strange, but……”

“You, my lady?”

“I just said something incredibly satisfying and felt something warm slide right down past my solar plexus. So if I relax my eyes like this……”

Irena’s vacant eyes looked at Parcha. The moment her mouth fell open in concentration, Parcha startled and took a step back.

Irena opened her mouth with confidence.

“Parcha, this…… this……”

But for some reason, the satisfying words that had been flowing so freely would not come to her at all.

Instead, it felt stuffy and stifled, as though the back of her throat had been plugged with cotton. Parcha, watching her, drew her eyes together.

That’s not right. This isn’t how it goes……?

“So, you are…… a lacking but kind friend who is……”

Where had those vicious, mean words gone, the kind that would make the listener burst into tears and snot the moment they were uttered?

Parcha let out a shallow sigh.

“You, whose sensitivity is so overflowing that every last seed of reason has dried up……”

Irena scrunched her brow hard. The improvement in her condition seemed to be deteriorating rapidly. Unable to listen any further, Parcha offered a word.

“Just say something rude.”

“No, I…… that is……”

“Keep at it. I’ll go prepare breakfast.”

‘Why are you looking at me with such a pitying expression?’

It seemed her talent had retreated just as quickly as it had arrived. Unable to bear the pitying look, Irena gave up on her new talent.

“No, Parcha. I’ll be out soon.”

She averted her gaze awkwardly and opened the secret box. Inside it was filled with Irena’s treasures.