Chapter 27

“Father, how…….”

From the moment she entered the room, Kadenic had been erasing his presence in a corner, but Lachesis had still been conscious of him.

But the moment she heard her father’s words, Lachesis erased Kadenic’s existence entirely. The sheer shock that hit her was too great.

“How can you be selfish to the very end?”

The end of her voice, bursting out, trembled.

Whether Alfred knew the shock Lachesis had taken or not, he simply continued speaking.

“You are grown now, so you don’t need a protector who’s there or not there. I intend to spend the rest of my life here, Chessie. Atoning for my wrongdoing, offering prayers for Aisa’s well-being. I should have done this sooner. I wonder if someone so frail is living well…….”

Tears stained the corners of Alfred’s eyes.

She had long known that her father’s head was always, entirely, endlessly full of thoughts of her mother. But she hadn’t known it was to this extent.

Watching Alfred wipe at the corners of his eyes, Lachesis muttered bitterly.

“It’s not surprising. Since we were young, Father, you never had us siblings in your eyes.”

Alfred’s gaze—drifting through the air as if always searching for an illusion—turned toward Lachesis. Staring straight into his brown eyes, Lachesis finally asked the question she had buried in her chest for a long time.

“Is it because the three of us aren’t your biological children?”

“What? Chessie, what are you…….”

Alfred’s eyes widened. His lips, struck by panic, hesitated.

The fact that no rebuttal came immediately was no different from Lachesis’s long-stale suspicion being confirmed as truth.

‘So it was. The head maid’s words back then were right.’

When she was little and staying in the Deate lands, Lachesis had once been playing at exploring the mansion alone when she happened to hear, from a corner, the head maid chattering with the head footman.

“I feel so awful I could die for Miss Lachesis and the Heir! Even if they’re not biological children, still. How can the Earl not even look at those little ones?”

“Shh! Your voice is too loud. How dare you bring that up so carelessly. How can you be so reckless?”

“It’s because it breaks my heart. If Madame was going to leave alone like this, why did she adopt the children in the first place? She even brought in Miss Lachesis all the way from that foreign country. Was she resentful because her body was infertile…….”

What if she was caught eavesdropping? With her small hand clamped over her mouth, that was as far as Lachesis heard. A hand had suddenly reached from behind and covered her ears.

Startled, she turned around and saw Katrin with a stern expression. Katrin met Lachesis’s eyes once, then watched the corner. And only after the head maid and the head footman left did she let Lachesis go.

Lachesis rubbed at her ears, stinging from the crushing grip. Katrin grabbed her shoulders and warned her in a hard voice.

“Don’t take the head maid’s words to heart, Chessie. We are their biological children. You and me—exactly the same.”

“Mm…….”

Lachesis nodded like a good child, but did Katrin know? More than the head maid’s distressed voice, the tension and fear threaded through Katrin’s voice only made a child’s anxiety worse. And so those words became even harder to forget for a long time.

Right after that incident, the head maid was dismissed from the Deate residence. A servant who had worked in the mansion for a long time—someone even of head-maid rank—being cut off overnight without causing any major trouble meant there had been pressure from above.

Even at a young age, Lachesis saw straight through that fact, yet she never mentioned what happened to anyone. Not years later after leaving the earldom lands and settling in the Imperial City, and not even now as an adult.

It had been more than ten years, at a rough estimate. Perhaps because of that, she could bring it up relatively calmly.

“I admit that I was lacking toward you, Chessie. But never—on my oath—was it for the reason you said!”

Compared to Lachesis’s quiet demeanor, Alfred’s agitation looked even more violent. He flailed his hands and head, shouting his innocence.

“You are all the same—my children. That is, my biological children. I’ve never once thought otherwise.”

“I don’t know, Father. I often thought that if we truly were your biological children, everything might have been different.”

“An absurd thought! Chessie, you’re bio—……. Ah.”

Spitting it out reflexively, Alfred clamped his lips shut with an ‘oh no’ expression. He fell silent as if thinking something over, then shook his head and repeated the words he had already said once.

“You are—you are all the same, my biological children. That’s all I can say right now. But it’s my true heart, with not a single lie in it.”

He approached Lachesis carefully and took her hand.

“I didn’t know you were thinking such things, Chessie. I’ve committed so many sins…….”

It felt, somehow, like it was the first time she had ever held her father’s hand. Their hands had brushed plenty of times as she offered him a wine cup or tended his meals, but a brief touch and a firm clasp were different things.

Or perhaps, after laying everything bare, she was only now feeling emotions like this. Lachesis even stopped breathing for a moment, sensing her father’s hand as if it were the first time.

Big, warm, soft. The solid strength that wrapped around her hand made her want to lean on it endlessly. Even after bringing up his sorest nerve, the corners of her eyes—long dried out—felt as if they might finally moisten.

“That’s right. Father, you have sinned against us siblings…….”

Etching the sensation she felt now deep into her bones, Lachesis slowly pulled her hand out of her father’s.

“So repent at our side, not in the temple. That’s what I want. I’ll use any means necessary to pull you out of the temple.”

With that declaration, Lachesis turned her back. And without a single word of farewell, she left the room.

***

Before they knew it, only the two men were left in the room. Kadenic, who had quietly withdrawn to the back, slipped his pocket watch into his inner pocket and stepped forward. It was a little past midnight.

“It may take some time before you can leave the temple. Until then, please stay healthy.”

“I don’t mind that much…… but I’m worried. Do you intend to remain by Chessie’s side, Duke Marutia?”

“I would like to, but it isn’t easy to obtain Miss Lachesis’s permission.”

“Yes. Our Chessie isn’t a child who gives her side away so easily. But seeing as she laid her heart bare while you were here today, it will be different from now on.”

And Chessie is the sort with a face that leaves her no choice, anyway……. Alfred muttered the last words under his breath, then added,

“It’s a shameless request, but would you watch over her so she doesn’t overdo it?”

He sighed while staring at where the long golden hair had disappeared.

“Chessie’s temperament takes after her mother perfectly. She seems gentle, but at times she’s reckless to the point of being dangerous. Of course, to my eyes, that side of her is endlessly lovable, but…….”

With a slight frown, Alfred’s eyes held affection he couldn’t hide.

It would have been nice if Chessie could have seen that expression.

As Kadenic let that thought drift by, Alfred gave a short laugh. He looked like a doting father who wanted to brag about his child.

“You probably won’t understand.”

“No.”

Kadenic quietly lifted the corners of his mouth.

“I’ve thought the same way, too.”

***

Inside the carriage returning to the Deate residence.

Lost in deep thought, Kadenic stared silently at Lachesis sitting across from him. He couldn’t decide whether it was all right to bring up a long-held question today.

He had already experienced things like this countless times. But he had never dug into Lachesis’s deeper circumstances.

At first, he had no room to spare, pressed by the need to reach tomorrow. By the time he grew used to it, he worried that prying might offend her and ruin their relationship.

But now was different from before. He had taken off the slick mask of a gentleman he always wore, and there were more and more moments when he couldn’t keep up the smile that had been like a mask.

Even so, Lachesis smiled at him, and sometimes showed flashes of temper—acting more familiar and honest than on any other timeline. This time—‘today’—might be all right.

‘At this point, I have nothing left to lose.’

Because he had decided not to cling.

Even if he regressed again…….

Ah. Just imagining everything being erased and returning to a moment where only he remembered made a horrific sensation spread through his entire body. It was just as Kadenic couldn’t bear it and was about to squeeze his eyes shut.

“If you have something to say, say it.”

Lachesis spoke first, prim and sharp. Clinging to the golden gaze directed at him, Kadenic barely managed to rouse his sinking mind.

“And stop tormenting me by staring so intensely.”

“May I ask?”

Before Lachesis could even answer, Kadenic added impatiently,

“I think I need to know. I’ll clearly be of help in this matter.”

“It seems you were really curious. If you’re going to that extent.”

Lachesis let out a powerless laugh. Even her golden eyes, which always shone with clear light when she smiled, looked drained.

“I have nothing left to hide, so there’s nothing I can’t answer. What are you curious about?”

“Earl Deate—no, the former Earl Deate—devoting himself to the temple is not your fault.”

“Yes, it isn’t.”

“Then why are you going this far?”

“Because it feels like my fault.”

The contradiction didn’t make sense. When Kadenic lightly furrowed his brow, Lachesis realized how it must have sounded and continued explaining.

“I mean—not just this incident, but everything from the beginning. I have two great sins I’ve committed in life, knowingly or not. One is…… I can’t tell you, Your Grace.”

Suddenly, the gaze that had been tangled for so long snapped away. With her head lowered, Lachesis couldn’t continue for a moment.

With a sensitive instinct, Kadenic noticed her body and breathing were trembling.

‘Is she crying?’

It was a situation similar to the one in the rear garden before. Just like then, Kadenic felt himself stiffen in panic. It was a sensation he had never experienced—neither in the midst of battle nor with a monster right before him when his life was in danger.

He had never seen Lachesis cry, not even on timelines that were now gone. She had only ever seemed like a naive young lady who grew up amid the world’s bright and beautiful emotions, always smiling—yet from the rear garden, his judgment had shifted slightly.

Perhaps Lachesis couldn’t cry. Or perhaps she harshly disciplined herself so she wouldn’t.

It was the same now.