“And yet, Your Lordship, a wench like you……”

There was a grinding sound of teeth from Carlyle’s mouth, the tendons in his neck taut.

After the heretic incident, Sched had been frantically searching for that wench like crazy.

He had overworked his unrecovered body and had forced through incomprehensible decisions.

Riana had ruined Sched Lester.

His perfect and noble lord.

The flawless him, who had been like an impregnable fortress, she had completely collapsed and shaken him.

“Whose kid is that brat? Did she leave the Lester family and sell her body?”

At Carlyle’s sharp sarcasm, Louise raised her eyes.

She would accept criticism directed at herself, but she could not sit still and listen to him cursing the child.

“Mind your words, Sir Carlyle.”

“Who’s ordering who around?”

How dare a maid, to a knight.

“Isn’t that the only thing an incompetent like you can do with that pretty face after leaving here? It was your specialty from the beginning anyway.”

At Carlyle’s insult, Louise clenched her fists under her sleeves.

But on her face, she smoothly showed a smile.

“Sir Carlyle, you are always the same.”

A flawlessly polite and well-mannered tone. The meaning contained in those short words was significant.

Just as Carlyle was about to open his mouth in a fit of anger.

“Sir Carlyle!”

A cheerful and lively voice intervened in the conversation between the two.

Carlyle turned around as if annoyed.

“Sir Hedrick.”

“What good is it to intimidate a woman, haha.”

Louise remembered Hedrick.

That is, a few years ago, when she met Sched again in the forest while being chased by hunting dogs, he was the knight accompanying Sched.

Unlike Carlyle, Hedrick was a person who gave off a gentle and bright impression.

“Sir Hedrick. You know too, don’t you? What disaster this woman has brought upon the Lester family.”

“Still, if we threaten a weak woman, what will become of our knights’ honor?”

Hedrick’s gaze shifted slightly towards Louise.

“The harvest season is coming soon. Everyone is busy, there’s no time to be chatting like that.”

Hedrick tapped Carlyle’s shoulder good-naturedly.

Carlyle glared at Louise with eyes as if he would devour her right away, then abruptly turned on his heels.

Hedrick scratched his head and opened his mouth.

“Phew…. You should have tried harder to run away.”

“Pardon…?”

“It’s too obvious you won’t be treated well even if you come here. You should have endured a bit more.”

“Ah….”

“Ah, I’m not blaming you, Lady Riana. But it’s a bit uncomfortable for us too… It’s a bit unfortunate, that’s what I mean.”

Louise stood blankly at Hedrick’s words.

As if realizing his mistake, Hedrick smiled awkwardly.

“I said something unnecessary. I’m sorry. Get some good rest.”

Hedrick bowed his head and left in the direction Carlyle had disappeared.

Louise couldn’t move her feet for a moment, staying in place with a sticky feeling.

Her head started to hurt a little.

She tried not to be swayed by people’s words, but this time, the words floated around in her head like dirty debris.

But rather than the rude insults, other words stuck in her mind and wouldn’t go away.

It was the first time she heard about Sched’s broken engagement and that he had lost his Aura.

The story Eclas had never told her.

While hiding on a small island, covering her eyes with a veil and pursuing happiness, the things she had turned a blind eye to were being revealed one by one.

The tip of the pen swayed slowly and steadily.

His gaze, as if lost in thought, was fixed on the thick file of documents on the desk.

They were materials on black magic that he hadn’t looked at for a while.

‘…Can black magic be passed down to a child?’

Sched rubbed his face dryly as he put down his pen.

In the case of Mana and Aura, it wasn’t completely hereditary, but there was a tendency.

Children with strong Mana were mostly born under those with strong Mana, which is why the Grand Duke’s family often produced Archbishops.

Like Dietrich Lester and Giselle Marlhein.

Aura was similar, with the saying that Swordmasters pass down their blood.

Of course, mutations like Sched were mixed in from time to time, but…

‘There are no records of black magic being inherited.’

He supported his forehead with his hand and racked his brain.

The heretics recorded in history either died before giving birth to a second generation or were executed before it could be confirmed whether black magic was passed down to the second generation.

‘There are no records, but black magic should be similar to Mana or Aura.’

It was a story that would make Dietrich Lester’s eyes glisten with madness and interest if he heard it.

Feeling the word ‘black magic’ to be too burdensome, Sched irritably closed the file.

‘What were you thinking, Louise, having a child….’

In Louise’s eyes as she looked at the child, he recalled an old memory.

That warm and lovely gaze he had seen in his childhood.

Eve’s existence seemed to be turning Louise back into her old self.

So he couldn’t dare to shatter it.

“Haa….”

Sched sighed and threw his gaze out the window to cool his complicated mind.

At that moment.

“Ah, Uncle…!”

“Eve…?”

Outside the window, at the same height as the second floor, was Eve.

He thought it was an impossible sight.

There was no way that little kid could be at this height…

“I’m scared….”

He wasn’t seeing things.

The little one was dangling from an orange tree, trembling.

No, how on earth did a child that age climb a tree to that height?

If it were Lupus tribe children, maybe, but ordinary children are cautious even when climbing stairs, let alone climbing trees.

“Eve, come down right now…!”

As Sched opened the window and shouted, Eve sobbed.

“I caaaan’t…!”

Her tiny hands were tightly gripping the branches like a cat that had climbed up a tree and couldn’t get down, waiting to be rescued.

“Damn it…!”

Children, really!

It wasn’t a distance he could reach by stretching out his hand, nor a situation where he could jump over.

“Hold on tight!”

Sched immediately ran out to the back garden.

The servants who had discovered Eve were already standing under the orange tree in the back garden, fidgeting nervously.

At that moment.

“Oh, oh oh!”

Before Sched could even reach the tree, Eve’s grip loosened.

“Mom!”

The small body fell from the orange tree.

‘Damn it!’

Sched pushed past the servants, ran over, and stretched out both arms.

With a thud, the child’s body fell onto his arms just in time.

As he felt the small body touch his chest, a sigh of relief unconsciously escaped.

“Why were you up there in the first place…!”

“Uncle….”

Before Sched could scold her loudly, Eve hugged him tightly, snuggling deeply into his arms.

Her small head leaned heavily against his shoulder.

Her slender, platinum blonde hair, resembling Louise’s, softly tickled his neck.

Feeling the trembling of the frightened child, Sched couldn’t scold her further and roughly brushed back her disheveled hair.

What was this all about?

“Why did you climb up there?”

He patted the tiny back that seemed to fit entirely in his palm.

Then Eve lifted her head, her chin like a walnut.

“A bird fell down….”

“A bird?”

Eve pointed up the tree with her finger.

A small nest could be seen between the branches.

“I said ‘ho,’ and took it home….”

So she climbed up there to put the fallen bird back?

Just for that… a three-year-old?

It occurred to him that Louise must have had quite a hard time raising Eve.

“For things like that, ask other adults….”

Sched stopped mid-sentence as he was about to scold Eve, noticing her cheek.

The scratch she got from falling and hitting a branch was healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Sched momentarily glanced at the servants around them and tightly hugged the child, burying her face in his chest.

“I’ll take this child with me for a moment.”

Sched hurried up to the study with Eve’s face covered.

As soon as he closed the door, he let out a short breath.

“Hah.”

He put Eve, whom he had been holding tightly against his chest, down on the armchair.

Eve rolled her eyes, reading Sched’s unfamiliar demeanor.

“Uncle, what is it?”

Sched looked at the child who was innocently looking up at him, unaware of anything, and touched his forehead.

“You, the wound on your cheek heals very quickly.”

The shallow scratch on the child’s cheek had already completely healed and was no longer visible.

“Gasp!”

Eve covered her cheek with her tiny hand as if startled.

“That’s supposed to be a secret!”

Eve closed her eyes tightly and put on a strained expression as if trying to suppress something.

She seemed to believe that doing so would slow down the regeneration of the wound.

But the wound had already fully healed.

‘She’s making me anxious because she can’t control it properly.’

Sched slowly rubbed his forehead with his calloused fingertips.

“You still can’t properly control that power, little one?”

“I’m not little, I’m Eve!”

Perhaps feeling that Sched was disregarding her for not being able to control her power properly, Eve retorted more hotly than usual.

“Answer the question.”

Sched approached Eve, checking for any other injuries, and urged her.

Then Eve pursed her tiny cherry-like lips, hesitated, and began to speak.

“Mom told me to keep it a secret.”

“I already know, so you can tell me.”

When Sched met her eyes, Eve tightly gripped the hem of her dirty dress.

“…Mom told me to suppress this, but I don’t know how, Eve.”

For the first time, the shoulders of the brazen and fearless little one shrank, subdued.

Regeneration is like a reflexive action for ‘demons’ who possess the power of heretics.

Even without the intentional will to use heretical sorcery, the power that instinctively seeks life and strives to survive regenerates the body.

It’s similar to holding back a sneeze or a cough.

You can hold it back, but it’s not easy. It’s not something you can always hold back.

It requires practice and training to suppress it.

‘But to practice, you have to get hurt first.’

Because you have to stop the process of wounds healing.

But Louise couldn’t deliberately inflict wounds on Eve for that.

So there weren’t many opportunities to practice either.

‘She cherishes her so much it’s sickening.’

Sched sneered, thinking of Louise who treasured Eclas’s daughter.

Did she think she could keep the secret till the end with such a complacent attitude?

Sched stood up straight from where he had been face to face with Eve.

“Little one.”

“I said I’m not little!”

“Stubborn like your mother, I see.”

Louise was also terribly stubborn.

A person who acted delicate but never yielded.

“No! I take after my dad!”