The pointless game of tag soon reached its conclusion. Iela, wrapped in a thick coat, went out in person to receive the man outside the annex.

With her maids and even Mayer trailing behind her in a line, she cut quite a dignified figure befitting a lady of the house.

Watching from behind, Anton privately thought she looked less like a lady and more like the head of a back-alley gang.

When she stepped outside, the man was on his knees in a sorry state. The marks of fierce resistance were plain to see. Of all places, the chest of the dress had been torn, leaving his chest plainly exposed.

He was lean compared to Mayer, but he had clearly not neglected his training, as his body carried a respectable amount of muscle.

The knights holding him captive were all murmuring with expressions that mixed astonishment and contempt.

They seemed appalled that one of their own had not only stolen a woman’s garment but had gone so far as to wear it himself.

“My lady!”

At the sound of approaching footsteps, the man spotted Iela and cried out with visible relief.

He had been all too eager to get along informally on the grounds that they were both of common birth, and yet now that things had come to this, the word came out of him naturally enough.

“Please clear this up quickly and let me go! No matter what I say, they will not listen!”

It was a night of sleet. Beneath the umbrella her maid held over her, Iela looked at the man shivering on the cold bare ground.

The cold was part of it, but the shame seemed to be the stronger force.

Iela took her eyes off the man and soon spotted Peter Carpenter and his group, likewise bound, though not forced to their knees.

“…My lady?”

Peter Carpenter’s hands twitched as though he had heard something impossible.

He had been about to dig at his ear, but the rope binding him prevented him from doing so.

“No, the young lady is, wait, if she is my lady then…”

Unable to conceal his confusion and rambling incoherently, Peter Carpenter finally screwed up his face.

“You set a trap?”

“A trap?”

“You knew who I was from the start and deliberately let things escalate.”

“I rather thought you revealed your identity with your own mouth.”

“Were you so desperate as to even feign a secret meeting with a servant? Well, I suppose a person of your standing, whom the likes of us are not fit to even look at, would want to resolve such a vulgar scandal by any means necessary. But what a shame. For you to show yourself like this, miss, no, my lady, is the worst mistake you could have made.”

Iela let Peter Carpenter ramble on as he pleased. From a certain point, his existence had not been particularly important.

Her reason for coming to the annex in the first place was that she did not want to share a bedchamber with Valentin, and to resolve the suspicion that had arisen from watching him deal with Anton.

By the end, her purpose had smoothly shifted to making an example of the man now kneeling in that wretched state.

“My information commands quite a price, as you can see. Which means it has earned a reputation for being reliable. And not a single person in this domain knew that the lord had a wife. On top of that, I witnessed the lady herself having a secret meeting with a mere servant. What a valuable piece of gossip this is. With this, I might finally escape the miserable life of a useless occult journalist and move to a gossip publication.”

‘What on earth is he saying.’ Iela gestured with her chin to the knight holding him.

The knight, quick on the uptake, stuffed a dirty rag into Peter Carpenter’s mouth. Iela looked around at the quiet that had finally settled and raised a single finger.

Her finger pointed squarely at Peter Carpenter.

“This one goes to the dungeon.”

It then moved to the group of mercenaries Peter Carpenter had brought with him.

“These ones go to the dungeon as well.”

It was entirely deliberate that she did not count the mercenaries as a group but pointed to each one individually.

“Dungeon.”

Her finger moved calmly, one by one.

“Dungeon.”

“Dungeon.”

“Dungeon.”

“Dungeon.”

The mercenaries, who had been lured in with the promise of nothing more than finding a ghost, erupted in protest at the prospect of suddenly being thrown in prison.

“D*mn you, Carpenter! You said this was a castle in name only with nobody in it!”

“If you had told us there was a knight order beforehand, do you think any of us would have taken your commission!”

“My lady, was it not thanks to us that you caught that pervert? Could you not show a little mercy on account of that!”

“Who are you calling a pervert!”

Whether it was Iela’s dungeon declaration that had cowed him, the man who had been briefly quiet suddenly bellowed.

“All of this was on my lady’s orders! I was nothing but bait for you lot!”

He then turned his face toward Iela with an expression full of hope. She rested her chin on the finger she had been pointing with and said,

“Was it?”

She smiled as she said it. The man’s face went pale.

“What do you mean, Sir Mivela, Lord Mivela! Please say something!”

Growing desperate, the man called out in search of the right lifeline. But unfortunately, Anton took one step back and made clear his intention not to involve himself in this chaos.

“…This cannot be, C, Captain!”

Mayer, who had accepted what he believed to be a purse of gold coins but was in fact copper, shrugged. The vertical scar across his face looked even more menacing in the torchlight.

With an expression that made him look every bit the villain, Mayer grinned.

“The situation is clear.”

His voice, conscious of the audience, was unusually precise in its pronunciation.

“A thief crept like a rat into the bedchamber of our lady, who had so graciously honored us with a personal visit to the annex to elevate the honor of our knight order. Upon investigation, conducted with my lady’s permission, the only persons who had entered and exited the room today were myself and that man. Whatever he had stolen would have been a grave offense, but of all things he laid hands on my lady’s nightgown, and as if that were not enough, he wore it himself, saving us the trouble of searching for evidence.”

Iela nodded repeatedly, expressing her agreement with Mayer’s speech. The murmuring among the knights grew louder.

The man, who had privately looked down on his colleagues who were from Valita and former mercenaries, earned no sympathy from anyone. They were all too busy agreeing that they had seen it coming and that it was no surprise.

“Come to think of it, he often skipped dinner, saying he was watching his diet.”

“I thought he was trying to land a wealthy woman and improve his lot in life, but it turns out that was not it at all…”

“No! That is not it!”

The man, guessing at the words left unsaid, thrashed about in denial. But public opinion had already turned.

Just as Iela was watching his downfall with satisfaction and was about to signal Mayer to deliver the final blow, she heard a sharp intake of breath from behind her. It was Anton.

Intending to tell him not to interrupt at such a critical moment, she turned around, and followed the line of his eyes, which were fixed in an unnatural direction.

“D*mn.”

She muttered a quiet curse. Of all times, it was during the silence created by Mayer’s speech, which had been building to its cl*max.

Iela’s curse spread nakedly through the air and reached everyone’s ears.

As the sudden profanity left people unable to hide their surprise, the sound of quiet, deliberate footsteps rang out.

“Mmph! Mmmph!”

Peter Carpenter, his mouth stuffed with the rag, writhed desperately. It was a frantic attempt to expose Iela’s secret meeting partner.

“My lord.”

Anton bowed his head quickly, and at that, Peter Carpenter fell silent. The knights also looked back and forth in bewilderment between Anton and the beautiful man who had appeared out of nowhere.

Iela stared at the man, whose exhaustion was plain to see. The distance from the main castle to the annex was not so great, yet he was breathing hard, and he was so otherworldly that he could have passed for a fairy emerging from the darkness.

As always, he appeared to have walked over in nothing but a thin shirt and the indoor slippers he wore in the bedchamber.

“Iela.”

He called her name in a voice scraped out with effort. Iela did not move. Valentin, likewise, made no attempt to close the distance further.

They stood facing each other for a time, as though in a standoff.

“I have been wronged, my lord!”

At that moment, the kneeling man lunged forward. It was because the knight holding him had let his guard down at Valentin’s sudden appearance.

“I have devoted my entire life to serving you, my lord! And yet a woman who only arrived a few days ago is framing one of your knights. This cannot be allowed! Please hear my grievance and…”

Valentin, pressing his fingers to his temple, kicked the man who was rushing toward him. It was a precise and merciless kick.

Iela, arms folded, watched the scene in silence.

Without a word, Valentin’s violence did not stop until no sound came from the man’s mouth, not even a gasp or a groan.

Valentin, who displayed a ruthlessly cruel nature with a face that seemed to have nothing to do with violence, was nonetheless captivating in a way that made it impossible to look away, like a scene from a masterpiece painting. At least, that was how it appeared to Iela.

“Iela.”

Valentin, not a single breath heavier, called her name as though nothing had happened.

Iela looked quietly at the hand he extended, then held out her own palm in turn.

It was rather like the way one would call a dog, and Iela felt no differently about it, but Valentin answered the summons.

The sight of him frowning yet dutifully putting one foot in front of the other gave Iela a considerable sense of satisfaction.

It was the kind of warm, pleased satisfaction one might feel when a fierce and savage beast followed only oneself.

Valentin, at last taking her hand, let out a deep breath. Color came to life in a complexion that had not changed in the cold or through the violence.

“I could not bear to wait any longer, so I came.”

His voice was gentle. His long, straight hand fastened the buttons of Iela’s coat.

Iela watched his fingers work the buttons deftly with one hand alone, then glanced around at her surroundings.

“What are you all doing?”

Those red lips parted and drove reality into the minds of those who had been frozen in shock.

“Lord Bahar has arrived, and you are not showing proper respect.”

Thud. Mayer was the first to bend his knee. Behind him, the knights lowered themselves with the heavy clank of iron armor.

The group of Peter Carpenter’s men, who had been standing awkwardly, belatedly bowed their heads, then stole glances at Valentin as though they could not quite believe what they were seeing.

If the rumors were to be believed, the lord of Valita should have been a hideous old man disfigured by a curse, yet here he was, a young man so beautiful he could easily make a living on his face alone.

Peter Carpenter’s mind was already working on where to sell this information and at what price.

Above Peter Carpenter’s head, a sound of soft, lilting laughter fell.

“These people are Lord Bahar’s nuisance, apparently. I was thinking of putting them in the dungeon, but I wonder if that might be too lenient a punishment.”

“Is that so?”

Valentin agreed in a mild tone and continued.

“Do as you wish.”

“As I wish.”

“Anything is fine. I permit it.”

“I only wish for Lord Bahar’s troubles to disappear.”

Beneath the shadow cast by the torchlight, Iela’s eyes gleamed. She was curious what answer the man who had captured her interest would give.

Valentin looked down at her quietly for a moment, then opened his mouth.

“If that is your wish.”

He crooked a finger to summon Anton and passed his sentence.

“Handle it.”

Anton, swallowing hard, wore the face of a man with much he wished to say, but in the end he offered no argument whatsoever and obeyed the command.