“Now that Your Highness has arrived, I’ll get straight to the point.”

Duke Evanwood began in a resolute voice, and Vanessa looked nervously between him and Jurgen. There was no doubt that Duke Evanwood intended to fulfill her wishes as written in the letter.

But would Jurgen allow it?

“We, the Evanwood ducal family, will protect Your Highness’s safety. We will pay as much ransom as you desire, so from today, Your Highness…”

“No. I refuse.”

Jurgen stepped forward, interrupting Duke Evanwood. He approached Vanessa and roughly grabbed her arm. Then, in a voice low enough that only Vanessa could hear, but filled with clear anger, he whispered,

“Trying to betray me again? Not a chance. You’ll never escape from me. Never again.”

Vanessa flinched and looked up. At that moment, Duke Evanwood shouted in an angry voice,

“Release her at once! Duke Drake! How dare you treat Your Highness so rudely…!”

“Vanessa Roengreen is my prisoner.”

“……!”

“Even if her original status was a princess of Roengreen, as the queen of Terevron captured by me, I have the right to decide what to do with her.”

“B-but, she is…! Before being Terevron’s queen, she is our direct royal descendant of Roengreen…!”

Duke Evanwood protested with indignation, but Jurgen merely looked down at him coldly, not batting an eye.

“If your loyalty to the royal family is so great, you should have prevented the misfortune of selling your precious princess to Terevron’s tyrant in the first place. Isn’t that right, Duke Evanwood?”

“T-that’s…”

Duke Evanwood’s face was filled with deep guilt as he stammered, seemingly at a loss for words. Jurgen stared at him with cold eyes and continued relentlessly.

“If you had protected her properly from the start, Vanessa Roengreen would never have become Terevron’s queen, nor would she have ended up as the queen of a fallen nation when Terevron was ultimately destroyed. …And she wouldn’t have been captured by me.”

There was a strange nuance in the last words he added, but it was unclear exactly what it was. Tightly embracing Vanessa’s shoulders as she looked up at him blankly, Jurgen delivered the final blow.

“It’s obvious how pathetic your intentions are, trying to play the role of her servant now. If you don’t want to test my patience any further, leave now, Duke Evanwood. As you know, I’m a fierce hunting dog raised roughly, and I bite without discrimination.”

✦ ✦ ✦

In the end, Duke Evanwood left the mansion without achieving anything, repeatedly murmuring apologies to Vanessa.

While it was true that Duke Evanwood hadn’t helped when she was forced into an unwanted marriage with Leroy, Vanessa no longer resented him for it.

That’s why the smile and assurance she gave to the Duke as he left the Drake mansion with a guilty face were not lies, but genuine.

Vanessa understood. The reason why Duke Evanwood and his faction hadn’t helped her back then. And why they were trying to help now.

‘My marriage to Leroy certainly benefited Roengreen’s national interests.’

Of course, Vanessa thinks it wasn’t right that she sacrificed herself for Roengreen. There were many days when she resented those who didn’t help her.

However, looking back, she had never shown them a reliable image as a royal.

Having grown up like a flower in a greenhouse under her father’s protection, she was indifferent to politics and thought that state affairs were not her concern. After all, she wasn’t going to be the monarch.

It was obvious how such a flowery princess would have appeared to her subjects. The existence of a princess who couldn’t keep Declan in check lost the trust of Duke Evanwood’s faction.

As a result, not a single servant stood by Vanessa when she tried to refuse the unwanted marriage.

But she thinks Duke Evanwood must have regretted it afterward. After all, Vanessa was the beloved daughter of the king he had sworn loyalty to, and selling such a princess to a tyrannical brute was something a servant should never have done.

He must have regretted it, which is why he came all this way to grant Vanessa’s request. The guilt-ridden expression he showed until the moment he left must have been genuine.

Of course, on the other hand, he might have considered reinstating Vanessa as Roengreen’s second heir to the throne to keep Declan in check. Or, he could set up Vanessa as a supporter for himself and his successor, who also held rights to the throne.

Vanessa wasn’t a fool, so she knew that if she joined hands with Duke Evanwood, she would be used politically. It was a hand she extended with full knowledge of that. She was confident she wouldn’t be hurt by the fact that someone was using her.

After all, Vanessa, who had endured a year with Leroy Terevron, was a different person from the princess who had been like a flower in a greenhouse.

That’s why she couldn’t understand even more.

‘Why are you…’

…getting angry.

“You’re nothing but a moth to a flame.”

Jurgen glared at Vanessa with blazing eyes. As Vanessa flinched and stepped back, he firmly grasped her shoulders with both hands and pressed her.

“He’s a servant who betrayed you. You were sold off because no one helped you, and yet you shamelessly ask for help? Do you know who they’ll sell you to this time?”

“Duke Evanwood isn’t that kind of person. And… I don’t understand why you’re angry for such reasons.”

“……”

Jurgen remained silent, gritting his teeth. As if he had collided with some contradiction of his own that Vanessa didn’t know about.

He closed his eyes like he’s trying to hide his emotions. When his golden eyes were revealed again after some time had passed, they held the same merciless coldness as always.

“The reason you asked Duke Evanwood for help was to escape from me, wasn’t it?”

As Jurgen’s words that hit the mark, Vanessa let out a small sigh and answered.

“…You know well. That I asked for help… did Duke Evanwood explain?”

“Yes. Kindly so. He thought I was abusing you like Leroy Terevron did.”

“It’s true that you’re imprisoning me and forcing yourself on me.”

“You are the spoils of war I obtained. Have you already forgotten?”

“…I’ve never forgotten.”

“I’ve never treated you like that trash did. Or do you want me to treat you that way?”

As Jurgen roughly grabbed her chin and asked mockingly, Vanessa trembled like a small bird fallen to the ground in winter rain and smiled pitifully.

“If you were to hit me… I wouldn’t even be able to pick up my bones, I’d be so broken I might die.”

“……”

His hand trembled slightly. Soon after, Jurgen released Vanessa with a rough movement and turned his back on her, messing up his hair carelessly.

Vanessa looked at his back with an indescribable feeling.

He was truly a strange person.

An incomprehensible man.

At first, she was just afraid of him, and her only goal was to survive the ‘Executioner’ who didn’t know what to do with her. But the more time she spent with him, the more those deepening questions confused Vanessa.

You say you hate me. You say saying you’ll break me. Yet why do you…

“…Duke, I don’t want to marry you.”

“……”

“And wouldn’t it be better for you not to marry me either? Why are you trying to take revenge on me through marriage? There are other ways to keep me bound. Above all, can you live while mixing bodies with a woman you hate so much? I… really don’t understand. I can’t figure you out at all. That’s why I want to—”

Vanessa clenched her fists and continued in a trembling voice. Not taking her eyes off Jurgen, who was still standing with his back turned.

“I want to escape from you even more. Even if I’m used by Duke Evanwood… I can’t live with a man who says he hates me. I don’t want my life to be mortgaged without knowing why…!”

Emotion crept into her voice as she spoke. The confusion and fear Vanessa had felt all along, the precariousness of walking a tightrope, and the desire to run away from him. All of it mixed together into a muddy mess.

And finally, the eyes of the man who turned around… were terribly hungry, seemingly ready to devour even that muddy mess.

Those raw eyes.

The emotion overflowing from those eyes… was something like madness.

For a moment, her breath got caught.

Vanessa looked at Jurgen, gasping as if she had forgotten how to breathe. Golden light flickered from him as he approached, staring directly at her. It was the energy of Vüs. The god of wisdom and madness…

It is said that the god of wisdom can look into the other side of the world because he is always mad.

Those chosen by this god were one of two: either they gained madness, or they were already mad enough not to need it…

“Since you don’t seem to know, I’ll teach you.”

Vanessa, who had been stumbling backward, tripped over her own feet and fell backward. Jurgen mounted her like an elegant predator as she collapsed to the floor. In that position, he grabbed Vanessa’s chin and continued speaking.

“What it means when I say I hate you.”