“It seems we’ve arrived, Your Highness.”

Around two hours after departure, Mina spoke as she drew the curtains of the window.

As if confirming her words, the coachman soon approached and opened the door.

“We’ve arrived, Your Highness. Please step out.”

As I disembarked with the coachman’s escort, the desolate scenery of the mountain came into view at a glance.

The maids who stepped out of the carriage after me surveyed the surroundings with even sharper gazes.

“Are we really supposed to meet here?” I asked quietly to Mina who stood beside me. She nodded slightly.

“Yes, I thought it would be better to meet beforehand and go in together. In case it’s dangerous.”

The early morning mountain was still shrouded in darkness. Naturally, there were few people around and fog hung thick in all directions.

Only the occasional rustling of fallen leaves could be heard in the still surroundings, and the chilly mountain breeze continuously slapped my cheeks.

An eerie atmosphere that evoked an inexplicable sense of unease. Just as my shoulders unconsciously hunched, Mina discreetly took my hand. She seemed to have noticed that I was inwardly afraid.

“Your Highness, will you really be alright? Of course, we will protect you no matter what happens, but for you to personally leave the ducal palace and come to such a shabby place…”

Mina appeared concerned about Rebecca who had grown up like a greenhouse flower.

However, fortunately, I was not the precious Rebecca of the past. I was merely momentarily overwhelmed by the unique atmosphere of the morning mountain.

With five sturdy half-demon maids by my side, what was there to fear? I shrugged my shoulders as if it was nothing.

“Mina, did I tell you about the whack-a-mole game I played when I met the magic puppets?”

“Whack-a-mole game? What’s that?”

Recalling the scene of striking the heads of the magic puppets that rushed at me in groups, a chuckle escaped my lips.

“It’s something like that.”

I was having a silly conversation with Mina when-

Thud, thud.

The sound of stepping on fallen leaves gradually approached from afar.

At the same time, the expressions of the maids slowly hardened with tension.

“Looks like he’s here,” Mina said in a low voice, gazing into the distance.

Turning my head, I saw a man slowly walking out from between the bushes.

Finally standing before me, the man spread his shoulders and opened his mouth.

“Your Highness, you’ve come after all.”

The man’s eyes held a low-lying hostility towards me.

He silently looked me up and down, then jerked his head.

“I am ‘Thompson’, who served as the deputy butler of the House of Light.”

Thompson’s voice as he introduced himself was as chilly as the surrounding atmosphere.

“Of course, I doubt the noble Your Highness would remember me.”

As Thompson spoke sarcastically, Mina glanced at me and let out an awkward laugh.

“Ha… haha, Thompson! Why are you being so rude to Her Highness?”

At this, I shook my head.

“No, it’s fine. Thompson is one of those who were harmed by me, so it’s a natural reaction.”

Grayzon Village, located midway up this mountain.

It was a place where the former servants of the Twins family, who had been mistreated and even fired by Rebecca in the past, gathered to live.

And Thompson, who stood before me, was a resident of that village and the person who would guide me there today.

I slightly quirked my lips as I continued speaking to him.

“Thank you for coming all this way to help me, Thompson.”

For a brief moment, Thompson’s eyebrows rose high. It was an expression that suggested he never imagined words of gratitude coming from the mouth of the infamous Rebecca.

However, soon regaining a nonchalant face, he let out a long sigh.

“It’s not to help you, Your Highness. I’m only reluctantly assisting because it’s a request from Mina, a long-time friend.”

Thompson glanced at Mina with a disgruntled look, then continued.

“Are you really going to Grayzon Village?”

“Yes, Thompson.”

At my resolute answer, Thompson’s expression turned exasperated.

“Like me, most of the people in our village won’t welcome you, Your Highness. No, there will be those who act even more hostile than I do.”

“…I figured as much.”

“As per Mina’s request, I will escort you to the village, but…”

Thompson’s eyes momentarily sharpened.

“My courtesy ends there. Even if the villagers harm you afterwards, I will take their side.”

“…”

“Because I have absolutely no intention of helping you, Your Highness.”

I slowly nodded to him as he spoke with emphasis.

“I know, Thompson. I won’t shamelessly expect any further kindness from you either.”

At my response, Thompson nodded, seemingly satisfied, and lightly tapped on the carriage door.

“Alright then. I shall guide you to the village.”

* * *

Meanwhile, inside Duke Twins’ carriage.

The ducal family was following the traces of the Duchess.

Even now, they were heading towards the last location where the knights had found traces of her, according to the communication they received.

Leaning against her nanny’s arm, Bianca glanced up to look at Cedric sitting across from her.

Cedric’s face had noticeably become haggard in just a few hours.

Bianca had firmly resolved herself. However, every time she saw her brother’s face that had rapidly deteriorated, her heart grew endlessly heavy.

Pressing her small lips together, Bianca slowly parted them after a while.

“Her Highness will be alright. And we’ll be able to find her soon too…”

However, Cedric remained motionless, his gaze fixed on the window.

He seemed like a person deeply submerged in his thoughts, unable to hear or see anything.

And in that moment, what was going on in Cedric’s mind was not much different from what Bianca saw.

Memories with Rebecca were unfolding one after another in his head.

No, to be precise, it was the very day Rebecca declared divorce. The harsh words he had spat at her kept coming back to him. And her expression as she heard those words.

‘I’m suffocating from your obsession. No, I find you as a woman utterly unbearable now!’
‘I regret accepting the marriage with you. Even if it was an engagement decided by the Manakin, this is… something must be wrong.’

He had wanted to hurt her.

Because he resented her for binding and tormenting him with affection-less obsession.

So he spewed out sharp, dagger-like words.

‘I’d rather… you disappear to somewhere I don’t know about.’

And that dagger seemed to have precisely pierced Rebecca’s heart, just as he intended.

She remained still with her head lowered, not making the slightest movement.

It was a long while before her small lips parted again.

‘If I were a noblewoman from another family, not from the ruined Katins… you would have trusted my heart, right?’
‘Then the two of us… wouldn’t have been so misaligned?’

What did he think back then, looking at Rebecca who asked that?

…Ah.

As always, he was fed up with Rebecca trying to change the subject when things turned unfavorable for her.

Her distinctive southern accent suddenly grated on his nerves too.

In her red eyes that looked up at him, resentment and tears began to thickly gather, as they always did.

He thought she would soon start making a scene.

But that day, her reaction was a little different from usual.

‘…No matter how many times we go back, as long as I am me, our ending will be the same.’

Rebecca recited as if she had given up.

However, her following words were filled with resentment and bittersweet love for Cedric, as they always were.

‘But someday, you will come to love me. Because you are the man destined for me by the heavens. And then you will…’

Rebecca raised her tear-filled eyes towards him, gritting her teeth as she continued.

She looked like a person possessed by evil.

‘…deeply regret this very moment.’

At that time, those words were nothing short of a curse to Cedric.

After that, their emotions towards each other intensified more and more, eventually reaching the point where Rebecca declared divorce and slapped him.

A long sigh escaped Cedric’s lips as he recalled that day for a while.

‘In the end, Rebecca was right.’

As he mulled over the harsh words he had uttered, Cedric could not help but be filled with regret.

If he hadn’t said such things, if he hadn’t looked at Rebecca with such eyes. If he had…

‘Maybe Rebecca wouldn’t have disappeared like this without a word.’

No, there wouldn’t have been a divorce with her in the first place.

Now that Rebecca was gone, the only pretext he had to blame her was his rights under the secret divorce contract.

He had thrown away his rights as a husband with his own hands. So even if Rebecca disappeared like this, he could do nothing about it.

He deeply resented his past self who had made things this way.

But even so, he couldn’t just let Rebecca slip away like this.

If that happened, he felt like he would never be able to forgive his foolish past self.

‘I must find Rebecca, no matter what it takes.’

Around the time he was sighing with impatience, the carriage slowly came to a stop midway up the mountain.

Glancing out the window, the leader of the knights who had been standing outside the carriage politely opened the door.

“Your Grace.”

In the brief moment the knight leader bowed his head in greeting, Cedric’s questions poured out immediately.

“Did you find traces of the Duchess? The direction? And… did you not feel the presence of a man along with it?”

An hour ago, when they met at the last place Rebecca’s presence was felt, Cedric had asked the same question.

Back then, a fortunate answer came that there was absolutely no presence of a man felt.

That answer was the only thing that gave Cedric a sense of relief.

But now, what flowed out of the knight leader’s mouth was a completely different answer from before.

“Her Highness’ presence is headed towards the upper part of this mountain. Not the summit, but it seems she went up a bit further. But…”

The knight leader hesitated for a moment before continuing.

“This time, the presence of a man was felt along with it.”

“…”

“A half-demon man.”

A great ripple stirred in Cedric’s blue eyes that had been like a still lake.

“Not only me but all the knights with tracking magic felt the same. It seems they met here and went up together…”

The knight leader’s words continued, but Cedric felt his mind going blank for a moment.

Rebecca and Adrian.

Only the scenes of those two meeting and whispering love to each other repeatedly came to mind, and the more he thought about it, a lava-like burning anger rapidly seeped into his heart.

He immediately got out of the carriage and leaped onto the black horse the knight leader had been riding.

“I’ll ride ahead from here.”

Leaving only the words to follow him, Cedric spurred the horse.

As his eyes grew fiercer, the black horse’s mane fluttered more violently in the wind.