“Whrrr, whrrr—”

Lian opened his eyes and heard a strange humming sound. His hands and feet were bound and his eyes were covered, which made it difficult to tell where he was. However, he could clearly sense a particular scent that confirmed this was no ordinary place.

The smell of blood.

A faint trace of it lingered at the tip of his nose. Judging by the weight of the shackles around his wrists and ankles, he could tell that they were made of solid iron. Keeping calm, he slowly pushed himself upright. Despite his vision being obscured, he sensed that one part of the room was brightly lit as he moved.

There must be some sort of light source in this otherwise dark room. Clicking his tongue, Lian let out a quiet sigh.

His plan to kill his father had completely fallen apart. The moment he entered the hidden underground passage of the mansion — the only person who knew about it — he caught the strong scent of sleeping herbs and poisonous plants. Then his body had gone limp and collapsed. Tassen had overseen Lian’s resistance to poison since childhood, so he was the only person who knew which toxins would affect him. This trap was clearly something the Duke had prepared in advance.

While Lian sat deep in thought, a door opened with an oiled creak. Whoever entered didn’t bother to hide their presence or soften their footsteps. They must have been the ones who had captured him and dragged him here from the mansion. And perhaps…

“You’ve grown a lot.”

Hearing the last voice he wanted to hear, Lian cursed internally. A middle-aged man walked up to him, crouched down and studied him as though he were a specimen.

“They say children grow up fast. Just as Tadelia said.”

Lian’s father, Tassen Huriet, spoke flatly, referring to something his late wife had once said.

“I didn’t notice when we were living together, but you’ve really grown in just a few years…”

Had those words come from any other father, they might have conveyed bittersweet affection, but Tassen’s tone was utterly hollow.

“Where did you move that woman?”

“That woman?”

“The woman who was rotting away in the basement? She’s yours….”

Lian asked about Tadelia as though she were some kind of disgusting creature. At that moment, a thick hand grabbed handfuls of his black hair viciously. The pain radiated all the way to his scalp, but Lian didn’t even grunt in response.

“Call her ‘Mother.’”

Tassen corrected his choice of words, his face devoid of emotion. He didn’t look like a man who was angry that someone had insulted the woman he loved. He was cold, like an administrator reviewing a document.

And, in truth, that was what he was. At Tadelia’s request, he was supposed to be a good father. A good father disciplines his son when he misbehaves. This, then, was simply a necessary corrective measure.

Most people would have been terrified by Tassen’s strange behaviour and obeyed him, but Lian, used to it, remained silent. Tassen exhaled deeply, showing mild annoyance, then pulled his hand back from Lian’s hair.

There was a loud thud. Lian’s forehead was slammed mercilessly into the stone floor. Someone beside Tassen gasped audibly, but the cruel father didn’t stop. He lifted Lian’s head and slammed it back down again. The blow was so forceful that the ground vibrated faintly. But Lian remained silent, his mouth firmly shut. It was only when hot blood began to pour down his face, soaking half of it, that Tassen finally stopped.

“You really haven’t changed.”

He knew his son would never call Tadelia ‘Mother’, even if his skull were crushed. And so, he let him go. At some point, the way he looked at his defiant son had become strange.

“Tadelia is resting somewhere else. Thanks to your very helpful little friends.”

Referring to a preserved corpse as ‘resting’ was grotesque. But Lian had no desire to correct a father who had gone mad long ago. Beneath his blood-soaked eye mask, Lian blinked slowly.

Who could it be?

He knew he was cornered, but Lian remained calm, trying to assess the situation.

Who had talked?

Not many people came to mind when he asked himself again. Only a few people had known about his plan to assassinate the duke from the outset. At least identifying the traitor wouldn’t be difficult.

Once he had escaped, he was determined to find out who it was, no matter how long it took. He had prepared this plan with great care. Because of that, his wrath over its failure would be neither simple nor swift. The informant must have chosen money, believing that Lian would die at the hands of Tassen, but Lian had no intention of dying.

After all, Tassen Huriet would never kill the son of Princess Tadelia.

“If it weren’t for your mother, you would have been torn to pieces long ago. And yet you tried to throw Tadelia into the fire…”

Lian didn’t bother denying it. Everything had already been exposed anyway, and he couldn’t see what was so wrong with throwing an empty corpse into the flames. In fact, wasn’t the duke more twisted for preserving a dead woman simply because he couldn’t let go?

Within the ducal estate, there was a basement that only the head of House Huriet knew about. If you pushed hard on the third bookshelf from the right in the duke’s study and pulled a specific book from a particular position, the shelf would fully recede to reveal stairs descending underground.

From the age of five, Lian had gone down there once every four days under his father’s orders. To spend time with Tadelia — or, more precisely, with his mother’s forever-still body. For reasons unknown, the duke had never accompanied him after the first time. Instead, he merely gave Lian instructions on what to do.

Lian had to greet her by calling her ‘Mother’. He had to recount what he had eaten and who he had seen. He had to kiss the transparent glass coffin in which she lay with reverence and affection.

Although Lian had never loved Tadelia himself, the duke wanted him to. At least, that’s how it felt to Lian. As though it were only right. As if he had to be forced to love his mother if he did not do so of his own accord. It was something he still couldn’t understand.

Once he was old enough to skip the dull rituals, Lian began examining the basement more thoroughly instead of talking pointlessly to the corpse. That’s when he discovered something curious. There were desks and chairs bearing the marks of frequent use, shelves crammed with thick books and even a fairly large bed.

The room was clearly furnished to confine someone, but it wasn’t a prison cell. No prisoner would be granted such spacious and comfortable conditions. It must have been Tadelia who had been imprisoned there.

Whether alive or dead, his mother had been imprisoned by Tassen and forced to live in bondage underground. Upon discovering this mundane truth, Lian lost interest in his parents and started reading the numerous books on the shelves. Then, when he was about fifteen, he stumbled upon an intriguing passageway.

He pulled out a book that Tadelia herself might have read and noticed that the centre of the hardback spine was oddly worn down. It was as if someone had pressed it repeatedly with considerable effort. The book was on the third shelf, where the books were tightly packed and difficult to remove.

Perhaps it had been too difficult for a woman to pull out on her own. Lian glanced at Tadelia’s coffin behind him, then inspected the bookshelf again. Pushing the shelf hard, he half-pulled the book out, just as he had done when entering the basement.

The bookshelf slid back smoothly, making Lian gasp. Behind it was a secret passage. Not wanting to *rouse Tassen’s suspicion, Lian had only confirmed the passage’s existence that day before leaving. However, after exploring further, he realised that the passage led outside.

So why hadn’t she escaped?

There was a mechanism inside the passageway that automatically returned the bookshelf to its original position when the lever was pulled. The same applied to the basement, meaning she could easily have escaped without leaving a trace.

Eager to find out more, Lian tried to ask her father a few probing questions without arousing suspicion. However, it became clear that Tassen didn’t even know the secret passageway existed.

Lian had once asked him why he had left his mother alone in the basement, where she could one day escape. He simply replied that there was only one door, guarded by a dog, so there was no need to worry.

That ‘guard dog’ must have been the Duke himself.

He used the study as his office so that he could keep an eye on Tadelia. While he worked there during the day, he kept her locked in the basement, only releasing her once his duties were done. He never tried to hide from his son the fact that he had imprisoned his wife.

Even after discovering the secret passage in the basement, Lian kept it to himself. He thought it might come in useful one day. And indeed it did. He took the same escape route as his mother had to flee the estate. On the day he was wounded by Tassen and escaped the estate, he fled to the outskirts of the capital through it. That was how he crossed paths with Hailla.

But who would have thought that Tassen knew about that passage?

“I knew you’d throw yourself in if I set the place on fire. It would make things easier, so there was no reason not to.”

Lian had planned to enter the basement and set it on fire. But first, he intended to coat Tadelia’s entire body in a potent paralysing poison. If Tassen tried to retrieve the corpse amid the blaze and was poisoned, that would resolve the situation neatly. Even if he were rescued early, the poison would leave him bedridden for life, only able to move his eyes.

“That passage was discovered thanks to that woman’s efforts. Don’t you think your ‘mother’ would have been pleased to see it used in this way? This is the perfect opportunity to kill you.”