“You may raise your head.”

“Thank you.”

As Gilrod straightened up after responding, Idren noticed his face had reddened slightly. It seemed he either failed to control his emotions properly or blood had rushed to his face from bending over for too long.

Either way, the other party must have felt humiliated, so Idren paid it no mind.

He asked the man who had tried to stab him in the back numerous times.

“So what brings you to the castle?”

Originally, entry to the royal castle required the king’s permission, but as the head of a family belonging to the Council of Elders, one could pass through the castle gates once a month without permission.

Of course, there was the restriction of having to leave again before the sun had fully set.

Gilrod noticed the king glancing out the window. A dim evening was now settling around the castle. It would be dark in about half an hour.

Gilrod answered the king who was looking down at him with cold yellow eyes.

“I came to see my daughter’s face once, concerned about how she’s doing.”

It had been a month since his dim-witted daughter had fallen into the queen’s hands. According to the original plan, that should have been more than enough time for her to be kicked out.

But the queen had not expelled Siana. Gilrod had tried to meet his daughter, who would surely be doing nothing and holed up in her room due to her stupidity, but failed repeatedly. This was because Siana’s room was near the queen’s bedchamber.

Although it was a bedroom the queen didn’t even use, it was still the queen’s area nonetheless. It was a place he could not set foot in as he pleased.

Therefore, Gilrod had no choice but to wait for the king and queen to be away and then call his daughter out.

Now that he had given that stupid girl a good talking-to, she should behave properly.

As Gilrod recalled his daughter trembling before him, the king asked:

“Ah, you mean the wedding gift I gave to my wife?”

And Idren thought that the daughter this man was going on about was bothersome.

Since Ophelia seemed interested in Gilrod’s daughter, he had left her alone for now, but originally he had intended to drive out Gilrod’s daughter on his own. It was only natural, as he had no intention of allowing House Nebel’s eyes and ears in the castle.

From the moment Gilrod had dragged his daughter out, Idren knew what he had planned. He must have intended to have Ophelia send that daughter back herself in order to find fault with her.

If it had been a younger version of himself, he would have tried to keep Gilrod’s daughter out of the castle, so it was a somewhat logical calculation.

However, there were two things Gilrod had not anticipated.

First, no matter how immature and young he had been in the past, Idren would not have opposed if Ophelia had wanted to bring that daughter into the castle. Even if it wasn’t Nebel’s daughter but Nebel himself she wanted to bring in, he would have allowed it.

And second, he now knew that he must not directly lay hands on Nebel.

If Gilrod acted like a snake, he too had to act the same way. They had to sharpen their knives with smiling faces and offer each other cups laced with poison.

In his previous life, Idren did not know this and failed to cut the man’s throat. He was too inexperienced to know how to crush a snake’s head, and thus throughout the war with Brinwell, even though he was certain Gilrod was colluding with the enemy, he could not catch any evidence.

This time, he would sever this man’s neck before it was too late, to prevent such things from happening again.

Slowly running his eyes down that cleanly washed and oiled neck, Idren said:

“That is already my wife’s possession, so I don’t understand why you are concerned about it.”

“Your Majesty, the bond between parent and child is not so easily severed. Is it not natural for a father to want to see his daughter’s face?”

“I didn’t know you had such deep loyalty, to personally offer up a daughter you cherish so much.”

Though the king’s words were laced with coldness at the corners of his mouth, Gilrod answered without flinching:

“As one born of House Nebel, it is only natural to serve the royal family, so I did so.”

And that royal family does not belong to this green boy.

Although he now sat on the throne, Gilrod knew his origins. The king of half-blood lineage was originally a dog of the royal family. Raised to guard the house in place of its masters.

No one knew that the dog they had raised thus would end up biting its master’s throat.

The problem started from putting such a lowly creature at the master’s table in the first place. As someone who knew how to train dogs, Gilrod thought that if he had held the leash, he would not have made such a mistake.

It was then that the king, who had been staring down at him, opened his mouth.

“You speak of loyalty without changing your expression even once. I hope that loyalty is directed to the right place.”

And don’t set your sights on what belongs to my wife. You know well that I don’t understand the bond between parent and child. The king whispered as he placed a hand on his shoulder. Fingers that must have been engraved with coldness deep in the bone lightly tapped his shoulder.

As the king passed by after looking down at him obliquely for a moment, Gilrod thought there was something alien about him, but could not figure out what the cause was.

When Idren entered the room, Ophelia had already finished a quick bath and was lying in bed. Her eyes were closed so as not to disturb her rest.

As fatigue pierced the sky, Ophelia did not open her eyes even as she heard footsteps approaching the bedside. Idren stopped beside her like that, then stood silently for a moment.

When she opened her eyes at the sensation of something in front of her face, she saw Idren withdrawing his hand.

Realizing that the man had placed his hand over her face, she frowned.

“What is it?”

Then Idren got angry instead.

“Don’t keep your eyes closed. You make my heart stop every time.”

“Did you come into the room just to say that?”

Instead of answering, Idren climbed onto the bed. After staring down at her for a moment, he said:

“Gilrod Nebel met his daughter today.”

“…I thought so.”

Ophelia had noticed it from the moment she encountered the man she had seen in the hallway before.

It was something she had expected to some extent. She recalled the face of the woman she had seen about a month ago. Though hazy, she remembered how utterly cowed she had looked, not resembling her father at all.

Ophelia, who had been frowning for a moment, asked her husband:

“What was that woman’s name again?”

“Siana Nebel.”

“Right, anyway, I had been expecting her father would come looking for her soon.”

Having come to find his daughter, Gilrod must have thoroughly intimidated her. Ophelia knew how men with such mindsets behaved. They rob people of their judgment through constant whipping.

When one escapes from such people, it’s very confusing and anxious at first. With the constant control over one’s life gone, there’s doubt whether even oneself is disappearing.

Knowing this fact, Ophelia still did not go to see Siana, keeping her in the room. She ordered all the servants assigned to her not to speak with her at all. She also sent back all those who came as Siana’s maids to House Nebel. She ordered that all letters addressed to her be inspected and then burned.

Thus, Ophelia isolated Siana completely, separating her from her father.

Siana must have been anxious for days in that isolation.

However, as long as her body was comfortable, that anxiety would have turned into peace before long, and the more she felt at ease in that peace, the more guilty she would have felt.

Am I really allowed to enjoy this peace? Won’t I have to pay for everything all at once later?

But as time passed, she would have physically felt that such things did not happen. And that realization would have dimmed her sense of guilt.

Just as the bruises on her body had faded.

Despite being raised in a noble household, Siana did not receive assistance when changing undergarments or bathing. Ophelia knew what Siana had been trying to hide.

Because she too had once tried to hide the same thing.

However, unless scars remain, wounds tend to fade with time.

A few days ago, Ophelia heard news that Siana had begun to receive assistance while bathing. Even deep bruises wouldn’t last more than a month.

Upon hearing the report that Siana’s body had become unblemished like that of a pampered young lady from a noble house, Ophelia realized that her heart too had softened like her body.

In fact, Siana, who used to wake up punctually every day without being roused, had recently started to oversleep, she was told.

Gilrod had whipped that softened heart today.

It wasn’t hard to imagine how much Siana must have trembled in fear when her father, who had been absent without even news for over a month, suddenly appeared.

Because when she was young, she too felt the same whenever Mahanas returned after being away from the palace for a while.

However, Ophelia had not separated Siana from her father just to have her go through the same experiences as herself.

While it was true that she felt more inclined towards the daughter than the head of House Nebel, Ophelia had no intention of sympathizing with or giving alms to others.

Moderately warm sympathy only breeds bad habits. It makes one a mushy victim unable to stand on their own.

Ophelia had seen such weaklings many times. In the mirror of her childhood, in the tears she had silently shed at night, in the puddle of rainwater pooled beneath her lowered head as she begged before her elder brother.

She had seen enough, to the point where she no longer wanted to see it.