No matter how much I thought about it, no clever solution came to mind.

‘If only I were the saintess instead of Freya……’

Would it have been easier to approach the temple and the demon sword then?

Just as that thought was growing in my mind, I heard a knock at the door. Thinking Claire had already arrived, I gave permission to enter, but unexpectedly, it was Chloe returning.

“What is it?”

I closed the book I’d been reading and asked.

“A letter arrived for you, Little Mistress. It seems to be from a friend.”

After Chloe delivered the letter and left, I leaned back leisurely in my chair and read it.

<……Remember what I said before? If you’d like, I’d love to invite you to my personal villa. If you have time, shall we meet there soon?

Freya.>

At the mention of an invitation to a personal villa, I thought about declining since I was too busy right now.

But I soon changed my mind.

‘I am curious about why she acted that way.’

I still couldn’t forget the look in Freya’s eyes that I’d seen on the day of the third trial, when I was heading to the carriage to return to the residence.

What was that cold gaze and expression directed at Theodore?

That piqued my curiosity, so I set aside the book about the evil god and wrote a reply.

※※※

After sending my reply, another letter arrived.

Saying she was glad I’d accepted the invitation, suggesting a date and time to meet. And that the personal villa was located here.

‘Is this it?’

When I stepped down from the carriage, I was met with a vast space.

Grass trimmed to a uniform height and beautifully blooming flowers. Bees and butterflies flying above them, and large trees. Against the backdrop of pleasant spring weather, I could see the villa prominently positioned.

“I’ll escort you.”

As I stood there turning my head this way and that to look around, an unfamiliar servant approached and offered to guide me.

Following the servant inside the villa and through a long corridor, the servant gestured to the right.

“Please enter this room, guest.”

Leaving the servant outside, I carefully entered the indicated room.

“Long time no see, Isabel!”

Freya, who’d been in the room, quickly ran over to greet me.

“It took so long that I was worried you might have gotten lost before even meeting the servant.”

Then she spoke with concern in her voice.

“I’m glad that doesn’t seem to be the case. You must be tired from coming all this way, so let’s go sit down.”

I was pulled along by Freya’s hand as I looked around the room.

Whether it had been newly built or left empty, this room had no furniture except for a table and chairs.

Only plain wallpaper met my eyes.

“But Freya, why did you want to meet at the villa today? Normally we would have met at the residence or a café like before.”

I asked about the part that had puzzled me on the way here.

Freya didn’t answer readily. She just smiled faintly at me.

‘What is this? This feeling?’

Though I’d been friends with Freya for eight years, that smile now felt somehow distant. As if an invisible wall had formed between us, it felt different from before when it seemed we could share everything.

Around the time I was getting that strange feeling, the smile disappeared from Freya’s face.

“I don’t think I can hide it anymore.”

Before I could ask what she suddenly meant, I saw it.

That expression, that gaze she’d given Theodore coldly was now directed at me exactly the same way.

“A few days ago, your husband told you that you seemed to be mentally synchronized with the evil god, right?”

At Freya’s next words, my mind began to go blank.

‘How does she know?’

That was something only Theodore and I knew, even within the ducal household.

So how could Freya know about it?

“You look curious about how I know? Ah, well, you would be surprised.”

While I couldn’t understand anything, Freya continued speaking.

“At midday like now, when you’re not affected, I deliberately called you here. To reveal a secret and to ask for help.”

“……?”

“I should explain this first. Why I’m not treating this clearly visible wound on my wrist.”

With those words, Freya began removing the gloves she’d been wearing one by one.

“You were curious why I left a wound that I could heal with my abilities untreated, right? It’s simple. I don’t have even a speck of healing ability.”

“What?”

“I’m saying I could never become a saintess from the start.”

At Freya’s casually spoken words, my mind became jumbled.

‘It doesn’t seem like she’s just saying it. So did I really hear that correctly?’

Freya’s expression had become close to expressionless, and thanks to her calm voice, the words she’d just spoken felt quite weighty.

‘But it’s strange if I heard correctly.’

Recalling the words spoken less than a few minutes ago, it was odd.

‘What help can I possibly give that she’s asking for help?’

No. More than that, what did it mean that she had no healing ability, and what did it mean that she couldn’t become a saintess?

From start to finish, it was all incomprehensible, and the confusion in my mind wouldn’t easily settle.

“You wouldn’t understand the request for help, the lack of healing ability, or the inability to become a saintess. I understand. I would have felt the same.”

Freya calmly continued speaking to me as I was so flustered I could only roll my eyes.

“But aren’t you curious? Why I said those things.”

Freya asked as if she could scratch an itchy spot for me. I carefully nodded without saying anything.

Freya lowered her gaze and boldly revealed the wounded area in front of me.

“You must have many questions, yet you haven’t asked a single one. Even though we’re friends, you’ve always maintained that line as if there was an invisible boundary.”

It seemed my behavior up until now had come across that way to Freya.

“In all the time you’ve been friends with me, weren’t you ever curious?”

Freya moved closer as if to narrow the distance between us, then said something meaningful.

“That you have the blue eyes that are a characteristic of my family?”

Blue eyes.

That was certainly a characteristic of the family Freya belonged to.

‘That is strange.’

Even when I first met Freya and became friends, I’d been too busy worrying about the twisted original story and changed future to think carefully about that part. Like ink spreading in water, that one statement made questions begin to arise.

Why our eyes were the same color.

“……Do you know?”

I answered in a trembling voice.

Before or after becoming friends, I’d never trembled like this while spending time together, but now was different.

The image I’d known seemed to have disappeared without a trace, making it unfamiliar and difficult to face Freya.

“If you want to know, I should tell you. We’re friends, after all.”

Freya smiled as if bestowing mercy, then erased the smile from her lips and revealed the truth.

“Listen carefully, Isabel. You and I are family, in a broad sense.”

At the expression ‘family,’ I narrowed my brow slightly.

“I mean it literally. So you could say we’re blood relatives.”

At the expression ‘blood relatives,’ my heart began to beat rapidly. It felt like Pandora’s box had been opened. Like I’d reached a truth I should have avoided.

So I unconsciously took two steps back.

“Sit down. I have no intention of sending you back right away. We haven’t talked about the secret yet.”

Then Freya raised her right eyebrow, walked up to me, and recommended I sit in a chair.

I plopped down in the chair as Freya instructed.

“Don’t be too surprised, just sit comfortably and listen. We’re friends after all, what would I do to you?”

Freya raised both hands in front of me as if she had no intention of harming me, but when I stared blankly at her, she lowered them again.

“Why I asked for help, what it means that I have no healing ability, why I can’t become a saintess. Why our eye color being the same means we’re blood relatives—I’ll tell you everything.”

“You know everything.”

“Yes. I’ve known from before. Much earlier than before I met you, Isabel.”

The answer made my mouth taste bitter.

I decided to listen, setting aside my pounding heart. If there was nowhere left to retreat, shouldn’t I at least listen?

“To explain what I mentioned earlier, you first need to know about the past.”

“How far back in the past?”

“The past before we were born. Everything started from then.”

Freya seemed to think she needed to talk while making eye contact with me, so she brought a chair, placed it in front of me, and sat down.

Then she began her story.

“Our family—the Delphiana ducal family—has been producing saintesses for generations. You know this, right?”

“Yes. I know.”

“The Delphiana family wasn’t well known to others, but it was a family that insisted on survival of the fittest. They hoped everyone born into the family would be born with strong abilities, and the head of the household favored people with such abilities. And they constantly evaluated them.”

Since it was a side not well known, I was intrigued.

The part I knew seemed like only a shallow truth, so I found myself listening more attentively without realizing it.

“The Delphiana family had quite a few children. They were constantly evaluated and competed with their siblings. They liked having their abilities recognized. But among those children, there were some who weren’t like that.”