Duke, This Will Sting for a Moment - Chapter 53

The second day in Colina Rosa.

Yuriella spent time with Frost touring the outskirts of the city where reconstruction was in full swing.

The greetings from citizens welcoming the Grand Duke, who had poured a considerable portion of the northern finances and even his private funds into Colina Rosa’s reconstruction project, continued endlessly.

“Long live Grand Duke!”

The land of tears and sighs was slowly but surely coming back to life.

Dressed in a modest muslin dress with her bright strawberry blonde hair neatly tied back, Yuriella sat next to Frost in an open carriage, looking at the Grand Duke who made all this possible with admiring eyes.

“Thank you, Your Grace!”

Though their appearance was shabby, wearing clothes washed as clean as possible and scattering wildflowers they picked instead of bought flowers they couldn’t afford, the citizens’ eyes were bright and lively.

Yuriella could see that the Grand Duke was quietly biting his lip, trying hard not to let his eyes water.

How much he had hurt for his wounded people. How earnestly he had wished for their recovery came through palpably.

A purple violet flower flew on the wind and landed on Yuriella’s dress.

Yuriella picked up the flower and looked back at the road the carriage had passed.

A brown-haired girl, cupping her small hands around her mouth, shouted loudly to Yuriella.

“Your Grace! You are so beautiful!”

“Just a moment.”

Yuriella asked Frost to stop the carriage. She couldn’t just pass by.

The carriage carrying the Grand Duke couple stopped.

The Grand Duchess, escorted by the Grand Duke, got down from the carriage and walked straight to the girl.

“What’s your name?”

Yuriella bent down and asked the girl who had thrown the violet.

“S-S-S… Stella, Your Grace.”

The girl with freckles thickly dotting her nose bridge bowed her head deeply, her face turning red as a radish, too flustered to even make eye contact with Yuriella.

“Thank you, Stella. I really like violets.”

Yuriella’s white, slender hand cupped Stella’s left cheek and gently caressed it.

Half of her face, which couldn’t even feel her touch due to severe burns that had melted her eyebrow, eyelid, and cheek, was the reason Yuriella had stopped the carriage.

The unharmed other half was cute with sparkling brown eyes, round cheeks, and plump lips. If she hadn’t been burned, she would have grown up to be a very pretty girl who would have made the local young men quite lovestruck.

‘Perhaps this injury…’

Yuriella’s eyes darkened.

The girl’s burn scars were not old.

It wasn’t hard to guess why such a young girl would have such a large burn.

This village was one that had resisted the punitive forces most fiercely. And as much as the resistance was great, it was also a place that suffered extreme damage from the fire attacks of the punitive forces.

Stella kept flinching, not knowing what to do as Yuriella didn’t take her hand off her scar and just stared at it. It must look unsightly, how could such a noble person…

After staring with a dazed expression for a while, Yuriella asked the girl.

“Where’s your home?”

The blushing girl, hunching her shoulders, pointed to her house.

“I’d like to treat you. Will you allow me?”

“Pardon?”

“It might sting a little. But Stella is brave, so you can endure it. Right?”

Leo, the captain who was leading the carriage procession from the front, approached Frost with a puzzled expression.

“Your Grace.”

There were still many villages to visit. If they delayed, the schedule would be messed up.

“Let everyone rest for a moment.”

Frost answered without taking his eyes off Yuriella.

By now, Yuriella was walking towards the child’s house, holding Stella’s hand.

The Tower Master, disguised as Ricardo, the Grand Duchess’s personal physician, got down from the carriage behind and tried to follow Yuriella. But Frost blocked him.

“Ricarion. Take a look around the village with Delilah.”

“But Her Grace hasn’t fully recovered her strength yet-”

Yuriella, who had been caught by the saint candidate yesterday and had to use only her own strength to give acupuncture to many patients in the treatment tent, ended up groaning in pain all night.

Even though Airy and the Tower Master had jointly infused healing energy, Yuriella was pale not only in face but even in her lips.

Perhaps the pain in her heart was greater than the fatigue of her body.

The Tower Master looked at Yuriella, who was already far away, with a worried expression.

“I know my wife’s condition better than you do.”

Frost folded his arms and lifted his chin stiffly.

Although he had promised not to cross the line with Yuriella, it didn’t mean he would tolerate others crossing that line.

Shavell, who had been blankly watching Frost turn away coldly, let out a shallow sigh and took out a handkerchief from his dress pocket to dab at his wet eyes.

“It seems Darling Your Grace doesn’t even notice me anymore. Is it because Delilah is less pretty than Shavell? Oh, how sad this is. Sob.”

Ricarion glanced at Delilah with cold eyes.

‘What exactly is this person’s identity?’

Ricarion had already recognized that Shavell was a man when he came asking for an illusion spell, saying he wanted to go to Colina Rosa.

‘Why has Frost Ielheim been keeping this man disguised as his mistress by his side for three years?’

The fact that he was in drag meant he had a reason to hide from the world’s eyes so much that he needed to conceal even his appearance and gender. And if the place he chose to hide was under the wing of Grand Duke Frost Ielheim, he must be someone very close to the Grand Duke.

‘What secret are the Grand Duke and Shavell hiding?’

Ricarion Greco was originally a man indifferently uninterested in others’ affairs.

But the reason he could live a leisurely secluded life as the ‘Wise Man of the Secluded Tower’ was because the Tower had acted as a balancing force for the Empire.

As the Tower Master, the only thing he cared about was the Tower’s role as a balancing force. Only then could the Tower maintain its rights of extraterritoriality.

Thus, the Tower had maintained neutrality without taking sides with either the Emperor or the North.

When the Emperor was leaning, they supported the Emperor, when the North was leaning, they supported the North.

Just once, when he saw Solas’s corpse hung high on the Imperial Palace wall, Ricarion forgot his duty and ran all the way to the front of the Imperial Palace. He could only think of killing the Emperor.

But instead of killing the Emperor, he poured all his strength into incarnating Solas’s soul into a new body.

Instead of Solas’s revenge, he wanted her to enjoy ordinary happiness in her new life. For that, the Empire needed to be peaceful.

The reason Frost was able to safely escape the false accusation despite being designated as the ringleader of the rebellion was because he persuaded the great nobles of the East and West to pressure the Emperor.

Because the North where Solas would live as Yuriella shouldn’t be trampled by the Emperor again.

Ricarion narrowed his eyes, measuring the Grand Duke walking away. He’s in the process of figuring out what the Grand Duke and Shavell are hiding.

“Should Shavell try to have an affair too?”

Shavell grabbed Ricarion’s arm with a sulky expression and led him in the opposite direction of Frost.

“Then I would be honored.”

Whatever they’re hiding, as long as it doesn’t break the balance of neutrality, it’s not his concern.

But.

If it’s something that harms Yuriella. He won’t just sit back and watch, no matter what it is.

For now, he’s relieved to have confirmed that Shavell isn’t a real mistress. But if what they’re plotting underground becomes an obstacle to Yuriella’s happiness… Whoever it is, they should be prepared to have the Tower Master and the Tower as their enemies.

Ricarion, being pulled along by Shavell, looked back at Yuriella entering Stella’s house with a worried expression.

‘She shouldn’t overdo it. It should be fine since Airy is there, right?’

As soon as Yuriella entered Stella’s house, she closed the curtains on every window, and sent everyone out except for the Grand Duke, Casandra, and Stella’s mother.

It would be troublesome if word that she was using Airy’s blessing to do acupuncture leaked to Carina and the Imperial side. There were spies planted by the Emperor’s faction everywhere.

“Alright. Shall we begin now?”

Yuriella took out a portable silver needle from her handbag and started carefully pricking it on and around Stella’s burn scars. As the green light emanating from the silver needle slowly entered the skin, a shimmering green light rippled across the scarred half of the face.

“Does it hurt?”

“No. It doesn’t hurt.”

It must hurt quite a bit. But Stella bravely endured it, tightly clenching her small fists on her knees.

“Our Stella is even braver than the Grand Duke? Wonderful!”

Yuriella patted Stella’s round head after finishing with the needles.

Though he lost to the young girl, Frost’s lips curved up involuntarily, charmed by his smiling wife.

As the effect of the silver needles slowly spread, flesh filled in where the child’s skin had been blurred and melted, and the shrunken skin began to smooth out evenly.

Casandra, who was attending nearby, and Airy, who was watching hidden in the handbag, both felt their chests swell with pride as if they had done it themselves.

Stella’s mother burst into tears, covering her mouth with both hands, and fell to her knees in front of Yuriella.

“Oh my…! Oh, Your Grace…! Thank you. Oh, thank you so much…!”

When Casandra brought a hand mirror, Stella stroked her smooth cheek without a single scar, unable to even blink. Tears falling from her big round eyes soaked her fingers.

Yuriella pulled Stella into a tight hug and gently patted her back.

“You did well. You endured so well all this time.”

Even though Stella’s tears and snot were soaking the front of her dress, Yuriella didn’t stop patting and stroking the child until she stopped crying, just saying she did well.

And before leaving the house, Yuriella made one request to Frost.

“Could we stay in this village a little longer? I’d like to talk with the villagers.”

Frost saw Yuriella’s gaze slowly tracing around Stella’s house. He didn’t miss the deep sigh that escaped her rosy red lips either.

The Grand Duke once again did as his consort asked without questioning or arguing.

Leo the captain and the knights of Angelus set up temporary tents in the village square as Yuriella had requested.

The Tower Master and Delilah, along with Sandra, went around the village calling all the widows who had lost their husbands during the Emperor’s last punitive expedition.

What Yuriella had noticed in Stella’s house were the household items that lacked the touch of a wife who had lost her husband.

The cobweb-covered window frames. The pile of long-unwashed laundry in one corner of the room. Dishes with dried food residue and the musty smell inside the house from lack of ventilation…

Yuriella imagined in her heart what it might have been like when Stella’s father was alive.

Clear winter sunlight pouring through clean windows. Fluffy drying laundry and a delicious family meal cooking. Stella sitting on her reliable father’s lap.

The warmth of family that Solas, who was an orphan, had envied so much.

The family scene that Solas, as the punitive force commander, had ultimately destroyed…

Yuriella’s heart crumbled as she directly witnessed the deep sorrow and despair she had created for that family.

“While physical wounds can be stitched and treated with medicine…, there’s no proper medicine for wounds of the heart. Often, people aren’t even aware that such wounds exist.”

Yuriella pondered what the best she could do might be.

“Even if just for a moment, please, tell me your stories. I will listen.”

She asked to hear the stories festering and rotting inside them.

She had learned from experiencing with her subordinates who had wandered countless battlefields together that just pouring out one’s heart can alleviate half of the wound.

Frost nodded involuntarily as he watched Yuriella take the hands of each village widow one by one and listen to their stories.

He too had seen countless wounds and tears on the battlefield.

Soldiers weren’t skilled at killing from the start either.

Even if it was an enemy, taking a life left deep wounds in one’s own heart. Many of his soldiers tossed and turned all night unable to sleep. They would feel sudden fear, and eventually, some went mad.

‘I should have listened to their stories too…’

Along with regret, he couldn’t help but admire Yuriella anew.

How did she know? That sometimes just listening can be a great comfort.

The women, who were hesitant and shy at first, poured out their stories like a dam had burst.

Yuriella nodded her head to the stories they told without showing any sign of fatigue.

The sun had already begun to set, but the widows’ stories showed no sign of ending.

In the end, the Grand Duke’s party gave up on their next schedule and pitched tents on the outskirts of the village.

Late at night.

Frost, who was alone looking around the village to see if there was anything more he could help with, detected the movement of a person from the direction of the tent where Yuriella was staying.

He had been on edge, spreading his senses wide in case there might be an ambush, to ensure his wife was safe.

Yuriella was quietly walking alone in the opposite direction of the village.

Her feet were heading straight somewhere without wandering, as if she had a clear destination in mind.