“Aaaaargh!”
“You can keep your mouth shut if you like.”
“I... I really don’t know...!”
Duke Escra clasped the man’s right hand – the man who was tied to the chair and howling in pain – as if interlacing their fingers.
CRACK!
“Aaaagh!”
“Human bones are a lot weaker than you’d think.”
“J-just kill me... just kill me!”
“Of course you’re going to die.”
“Ghhh...”
“The only question is whether you die cleanly or not. So talk.”
Duke Escra met the man’s eyes.
“If you talk, I’ll kill you right away.”
“I... I don’t know... I really don’t know anything!”
“Tsk.”
Taking a step back, Duke Escra undid his cuff button and rolled up his sleeve. Then he approached the man again and yanked him up by the hair.
“Looks like you don’t want to die.”
“Aaaagh! Ghhhk!”
“Sounds like you still find life worth living.”
As the man’s screams began to echo again, Duke Escra’s eyes gleamed even more savagely. In contrast, the smile at the corner of his lips only deepened.
He’s gone completely off the deep end.
Watching all of this from one side, Count Alton let out a long sigh.
He hesitated for a moment over whether he should stop his liege whose eyes had so thoroughly rolled back in his head. No matter how he looked at it, this was pure venting.
Kais, you know this too.
That this man really didn’t know a thing about whoever was behind it.
Usually only the leadership would know; low-level assassins like him who actually carried out the work did nothing but take orders and held no information whatsoever about the people behind them.
Even if they were captured and tortured like this, the fact that they knew absolutely nothing was the best way to keep the secret.
And Duke Escra obviously knew that perfectly well, and yet here he was.
On top of that, he hadn’t even been laying hands on people himself lately...
Count Alton gave a small shake of his head as he looked at him, baring his cruelty like a fish finally thrown back in the water.
“I said talk. I’ll let you die comfortably.”
“Aaaaargh!”
It didn’t look like the screaming would stop for a while.
*****
“...What did you just say?”
“The Imperial Family has moved!”
Marquess Gabuel shot to his feet.
“Why would the Imperial Family?!”
It was already bad enough that Duke Sorpel, having heard about the assassination, was turning the entire empire upside down to find the people behind it.
How did he manage to track down all those branches of Khan, the assassination group scattered in secret all over the empire so well?
News came in almost daily that their branches were being destroyed.
“There was an official request from the Gracia Empire.”
“From Gracia?”
A formal request had come in stating that the attack on Camilla Sorpel, who had come as part of the delegation, was the plot of a wicked faction trying to sour relations between the two nations.
“They say the people behind it must be found and executed, no matter what.”
“Since when did they care so much about a delegation?!”
“They say Gracia will also actively assist in finding who’s behind it—”
KWA-RAAANG!
The unexpected turn of events left Marquess Gabuel thoroughly confused.
No matter how hidden an assassination group might be, if the Imperial Family itself stepped in, the story changed.
If a nationwide sweep started? It was entirely possible that ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) even the leadership could be caught. And once that happened, his name coming out would only be a matter of time.
“Damn it!”
Marquess Gabuel paced back and forth through his office, unable to hide his anxiety. Then he stopped for a moment and lowered his voice a notch.
“I have to move first.”
“Sir?”
“Lure the leadership out and get rid of them.”
“Lure them? But...”
“Put in a new request or something! Do whatever it takes to get close to the leadership somehow! We don’t have time! Hurry!”
“U-understood.”
*****
“So, what you’re saying is...”
Camilla paused for a moment, but did not take her eyes off Duke Escra as she continued.
“This ring is yours, Your Grace?”
“Yes.”
“And the person who gave this ring to my mother was you, Your Grace?”
“That’s right.”
Camilla fell silent again and pressed hard at the bridge of her nose, as if her head hurt terribly.
“Do you realize what that means?”
“Roughly.”
“So that would make you...”
So that would make you...
“My father?”
“Seems that way.”
Seems that way?
“Ha!”
That’s it? You’ve got nothing more to say than that?
What the hell!
Duke Escra nodded calmly, like someone answering some trivial question such as Did you have breakfast?, and for a moment, Camilla was at a complete loss for words.
But realizing this was not the time to be silent, she hurriedly went on.
“As you can see, it’s a very common ring. You could find something just like it at any nearby jeweler with no trouble at all, it’s just a completely ordinary ruby ring.”
So maybe you’re just mistaken, Camilla tried denying the situation first.
“Give it here.”
“The ring?”
“Yes.”
After a brief hesitation, she took off the ruby ring on her hand and handed it to him. Taking the ring, he quietly infused it with his own energy.
SSSZZT.
Then something astonishing happened. Red light flared from the ring and lightly scorched the paper on the table, leaving a mark behind.
A red rose. The crest that symbolized House Escra.
“It’s a ring that used to serve as the family signet.”
...Calm down. Keep calm. Fine, the ring might really be his.
“Then I suppose my mother lied. She said she got it from my father, but I guess she could have just picked it up off the street—”
“Red eyes.”
Once again, he cut off Camilla, who was trying to deny the situation somehow.
“It’s the trait of those who bear Escra blood.”
That was why, the first time he saw that girl, his eyes had kept going to her in spite of himself. Because he could see the family’s trait on her.
“So you’re going to claim that everyone with red eyes is from your bloodline?”
“That’s not what I’m saying, but... isn’t it a bit much to insist that all of this is just coincidence?”
...It was a bit much.
Damn it.
Looking at everything together, it really did seem like she was that bastard’s daughter...
Camilla clamped her mouth shut. If she opened it even a little right now, every curse in existence was going to come flying out.
“I understand you must be very shocked. For now—”
I said don’t talk to me!
Camilla sprang to her feet.
“L-Lady Camilla?”
“So what is this, then?”
Was that bastard really her biological father?
“Are you kidding me?”
Father? A father? Wow, fuck!
In that world and in this world, what the hell is it with all these so-called fathers being complete crap!
“Do you even know how old I am?”
She was seventeen, for god’s sake. What the hell had that bastard been doing all that time? Had it just never even crossed his mind to look for her?
A man sitting in the position of a duke – if he’d only wanted to, he’d have had more than enough time to find her several times over.
He hadn’t looked. Obviously.
“You can keep that ring, Your Grace. Now that the owner has shown up, I should give it back.”
With that, Camilla immediately turned on her heel.
She didn’t want to stay here another second. If she stayed any longer, she really was going to tell that bastard to go to hell.
“Lady Camilla!”
Just then, Count Alton called out to her in a hurry.
“Please, just a moment, just wait a moment!”
At his earnest plea, Camilla let out a short sigh and couldn’t help stopping in place.
After all, he’d been kind to her the whole time she’d been here; it felt wrong to just ignore him completely.
“Do you have something else to say?”
“You can’t just leave like this.”
“And if I don’t just leave?”
“N-no, but still...!”
Count Alton, who had hurriedly grabbed onto her, couldn’t manage to finish.
“L-Lady Camilla.”
Tears. Tears were falling from her eyes.
“U... hhh....”
Her lips clenched tight, tears spilling down nonstop – it was truly a pitiful sight.
Just watching her made his chest ache; even Duke Escra stared at her with a bewildered look in his eyes.
“Lady Camilla, please, calm down for now...”
“So what, am I supposed to at least shed a few tears and then go?”
Count Alton’s mouth dropped open again in a daze. Her expression, her tone – both had changed again before he knew it.
There was no longer any trace of sadness on her face as she swept a hand across the corners of her eyes.
It was hard to believe this was the same person who’d just been dropping sorrowful tears moments ago.
If anything, the faintly twisted smile on her face and the look in her eyes were ice-cold.
“If what you’re hoping for is a tearful reunion between father and daughter, I can give you as much of that as you like...”
I’m pretty good at acting, you know.
Family? Blood ties? She had never expected crap like that, not even back in the other world. There was nothing to be disappointed about in finding that her biological parents in this world were no different.
I’ve gotten along just fine without knowing until now.
Camilla gave one last look at Duke Escra, still sitting there with that indifferent expression, then turned away.
SMACK.
“Kais.”
As the door shut, Count Alton looked at him with a frustrated gaze.
“At times like this, you could stand to be a little more honest.”
He had arranged this meeting so they could explain the circumstances and the accident, so that there would be no misunderstanding. If he was just going to sit there with his mouth clamped shut, what was the point!
“......”
Even under Count Alton’s stare, Duke Escra only sat there in silence, staring holes into the ring Camilla had left on the table.
*****
“Ha...”
Back in her own room, Camilla FLOP. dropped into a chair and let out a long breath.
Her head was still blank. Her thoughts wouldn’t move properly, as if something were jammed tight in her skull.
She’d forced herself to act calm in front of Duke Escra, but she could hear the thumping of her heart echoing in her ears.
Her real dad, supposedly. She hadn’t even known he was alive, and she’d certainly never imagined they’d meet like this, in a place like this.
I thought he was dead.
There hadn’t been a single person who stepped up and told her about her father on their own.
She’d never been especially curious, either. He’d just been someone dead from the very beginning.
If, say...
If she’d still never found that ring the servants had hidden back then?
Or if she’d never received the Mana Stone mine from Duke Sorpel? If she hadn’t been included in this congratulatory delegation in the first place?
I probably would’ve lived my whole life without ever knowing.
There would never have been a chance for her to meet her real father like this.
“Shall I bring you some tea?”
“I’m fine.”
She gave a small shake of her head at Dorman’s offer of tea.
Wasn’t this the kind of time when she should be having a drink, not tea? She had, quite literally, just learned the secret of her birth.
They sell alcohol to seventeen-year-olds here, don’t they? Should I just get drunk?
“So you really did go and give the ring back.”
“......”
Camilla’s gaze drifted very slowly toward Dorman.
The red eyes that turned on him were growing colder by the second.
