I'll Abandon the Fake Savior (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 16

Two hours ago, in the underground prison, rats scurried across the floor sniffing the air, while cockroaches and centipedes crawled along the walls.

“Cough, hah… cough.”

A woman spat out a cough streaked with blood. Suspended helplessly—unable to collapse or stand—with both hands bound by chains and fixed above her head, the woman was none other than Kendali.

Just a few days ago, this very Kendali Windsor had possessed everything the Windsors owned and acted as she pleased.

Her once-lustrous red hair, which she’d always had Yuricien fluff up luxuriantly, was now dry and pitiful. Her heavily made-up face was smeared with tears, snot, and saliva, leaving it filthy and blotchy.

There was no need to say it—she looked even worse than Yuricien’s face, which Kendali had constantly beaten until it was swollen. Gone was the proud, triumphant expression she’d worn when smashing all of Lillian’s heirlooms; now she looked utterly wretched.

Of all the vast Windsor fortune, she’d insisted on selling Yuricien’s dresses and jewels just to buy this dress, which now resembled rags.

In short, it was the kind of state that made one wonder if a person could truly fall apart so completely in just a few days.

“Cough…”

Her breath rasped as though her lungs had holes in them. Now she could barely feel pain, hunger, or thirst. She felt not just unbearably tormented but as if death itself loomed before her eyes. Kendali blinked blankly with hazy eyes.

Ever since Carly had dragged her here, only one thought had filled her mind.

‘Why must I suffer like this?’

No matter how hard she thought, she couldn’t understand why she belonged here.

‘I am a Windsor… I am a Windsor.’

Then why was she in this underground dungeon instead of the opulent duchess’s chamber overflowing with gold and jewels? Why here, when she’d erased every trace of modest Lillian and turned that room into her own paradise tailored to her tastes?

‘What… is the problem?’

Where had things first gone wrong?

Slowly, she retraced her past.

Kendali had simply wanted to live in this world with her daughter.

‘Even in a life battered about as an orphan, love had found her.’

Kendali, who had savored the tearful, dreamlike happiness of a promised marriage, lost her beloved at the execution grounds. She’d never imagined he’d kidnapped a child to demand ransom money just to marry her.

In the conservative Solzereon Empire, the label “unwed mother” carried only the stigma of vulgarity. A widow would have been preferable. At one point, she even began calling herself a widow—and it was then that she met a certain woman.

That woman, cloaked deeply in a rich navy hood, handed Kendali a small vial while she was being mocked by drunkards.

[Noble one, this is not the fate you were meant for—yet cruelly, you remain trapped in darkness.]

Normally, Kendali would have turned away, thinking she’d encountered some lunatic. But strangely, at that moment, she felt as if caught in a serpent’s coil, utterly unable to move.

[This potion shall grant your wish.]

The woman vanished without a trace. Had it not been for the single silver hair left before Kendali and the vial in her hand, she might have dismissed it all as a daydream.

At the time, Kendali paid no heed to the woman’s words.

‘Grant my wish?’

Such a potion couldn’t possibly exist. Even if it did, how had that woman obtained it, and why give it to her? Besides, the faint whiff she’d taken had been sharply foul.

‘Could it be poison…?’

She wasn’t certain, but poison seemed far more plausible than a wish-granting elixir.

Yet the vial looked far too precious to discard easily. In fact, she felt strongly that she must not throw it away. Recalling the strange woman’s voice, Kendali tucked the vial safely into her bosom.

Afterward, Kendali lived on as if that day’s events had been a dream. But when she could find no more hope in a life of mere endurance, a wish formed within her: to die. And she believed that wish might be fulfilled by the vial given to her long ago by the silver-haired woman.

Kendali committed an unforgivable act. She tricked Lafine, who was crying in her arms, into drinking a sip by calling it medicine—and then drank it herself. Kendali held Lafine close and waited for death.

Yet, as the saying goes, even when the heavens collapse, a way out appears.

Contrary to Kendali’s expectations, the potion was not poison. It was truly a magical elixir that granted her wish.

‘Because ever since drinking it, I’ve been able to use magic.’

With this magical power, there was nothing she couldn’t accomplish—not even seducing the great Windsor family, who stood shoulder to shoulder with the imperial house in the Solzereon Empire.

‘I felt like a god.’

Perhaps, in that very moment, Kendali truly was a god.

But how had she ended up like this?

‘Why am I here?’

Everything had been going perfectly.

She’d eliminated Jorgen by staging a carriage accident, and though Yuricien proved troublesome—strangely resistant to mind control—she was destined soon to be sold off to a man nearing fifty.

‘Then this Windsor will be mine.’

Lafine’s biological father had lost his life to the sword of the Windsor knights.

No matter how desperately he begged for mercy—pleading he had a pregnant wife, offering to have his wrists cut off, swearing never to show his face again—it was useless. The inflexible knight took his life anyway, for the man he’d kidnapped was none other than Yuricien.

‘So what if she’s a noble lady? It’s just another child. Must I raise the child in my womb as fatherless?’

From that moment, it was fair to say Kendali burned with vengeance against the Windsors. Perhaps that was why, as soon as she awakened to magical power, she immediately lured out Jorgen.

Afterward, everything proceeded smoothly according to Kendali’s will. But now, she had lost everything and plummeted into utter ruin.

“Cough…”

Once, she had placed even the name “Windsor” beneath her feet; now, all she could do was cough helplessly. It was despairing. Nothing could be more wretched. She regretted every moment of her life. She couldn’t understand why only she had to suffer so.

‘What will become of Lafine and me now…?’

Lafine, who had always lived trodden underfoot and never dared raise her head, believed that with Kendali’s newfound magical power, nothing was impossible.

[Don’t worry, Mama! If you’re truly innocent, the truth will surely come to light!]

Thus, Lafine never doubted that Kendali would somehow use her magic to prove her innocence and be released.

‘But… in my current state…’

She coughed again. Her throat stung from the blood-mixed phlegm, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry, Mama…’

Death was at her doorstep. She knew clearly: the true Windsors would never forgive her.

‘Because I am a commoner, and they are noble aristocrats.’

As she wept, lamenting her sorrowful plight, it happened.

Boom…!

“Guh…!”

A massive tremor shook the entire underground prison, and Carly, who had been resting briefly before Kendali’s cell, collapsed.

Squeak

At the sound of the rusted iron bars opening, Kendali blinked her unfocused eyes. There stood a woman.

The moment the blurry, fragmented afterimages of the woman coalesced into a single clear figure, Kendali’s eyes widened.

“You…!”

An expensive-looking navy hood. A single lock of silver hair flowing gracefully beneath it.

And a pair of mysterious, luminous eyes, each a blend of two distinct colors.

The woman smiled gently and spoke.

“There you are, precious one.”

She was a savior.

So much had happened at once that Yuricien’s head spun. As she pressed a hand to her forehead and groaned, Carly, who had received first aid, bowed her head deeply.

“I’m truly sorry, my lady. I let my guard down.”

“It’s not your fault. If you were overpowered, it means the Windsor knights’ defenses were breached as well.”

“Yes. Yuri is right. This is something we should bow our heads in shame over.”

Jorgen gently comforted Carly, telling her not to worry and to focus only on healing. Watching him, Yuricien’s gaze grew quietly deeper.

‘Carly was overpowered.’

That meant someone even more capable than Carly had taken Kendali and Lafine. But she couldn’t understand.

‘Why, though?’

Why would such a formidable person take those two? And why, after infiltrating the Windsor estate, had they left without laying a finger on Jorgen or Yuricien?

Moreover, Heathcliff’s announcement had come at the same time.

‘He… gave me a farewell notice.’

Her barely suppressed emotions throbbed painfully. But before she could fully process that feeling, a hypothesis sprouted in a corner of Yuricien’s ever-thinking mind.

‘Everything… happened too suddenly. Could this really be coincidence?’

Heathcliff, who had just issued a farewell and now declared his intention to pursue marriage with the Margrave of Hopgrand—could there be some collusion between him and the disappearance of Kendali and her daughter?

It was a horrifying theory, yet she couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility.