Loen stammered, looking surprised at the sudden attention.

“What’s the matter? Why are you so startled? Is something wrong?”

“Wrwrong? What’s wrong? I have to go first. I forgot to clean the second floor of the annex.”

Loen’s hurried exit from the kitchen seemed frantic.

Watching Loen’s behavior, the maids soon lost interest and started chatting about other topics.

Meanwhile, Loen, who had escaped to the back of the mansion, looked around. After a long inspection, confirming no one was around, she took out something she had hidden in her bosom.

An old, wornout brooch. It was the item that had caused a commotion in the mansion, supposedly stolen by Lina.

‘Will it be okay?’

Loen clutched it in her hand, reflecting on what had happened.

Last night. When she left her room in the chaotic mansion atmosphere, she overheard the butler and Emma talking seriously at the end of the corridor.

[Is Lina still missing?] [It seems she’s not in the mansion.] [Oh no…] [Although it’s unlikely Lina would, shouldn’t we check for missing items?] [Yes. As soon as daylight breaks. Let’s conduct a thorough inspection of the mansion.]

Loen, who had accidentally learned that Lina was missing, realized that the situation in the mansion was unusual.

Afterward, she hesitated for a moment before sneaking into the gallery hall’s storeroom. There, she took out the box with the brooch she had seen before.

‘It’s because of someone that Henry was chased away like that.’

Lina had caused Henry to be driven out of the mansion. Loen wanted to get back at her in the same way. But she never dreamed it would lead to a bounty.

‘What if it’s revealed that I took this…?’

Loen unknowingly swallowed. Then she remembered Susan, who was punished and driven from the mansion.

‘Will I end up like Susan…?’

But she soon shook her head.

“No. It will be okay.”

Now that Lina was gone, everyone thought she had stolen the brooch and run away. All the guilt would be placed on Lina alone. Loen’s hand, holding the brooch, tightened.

[This is the time separator]

A damp and sticky sensation, a disgusting smell that pricked his nose.

The moment something of unknown origin crawled up his body and strangled his neck, Valige’s eyes snapped open.

“Hurk!”

Valige suddenly sprang up in bed, heaving for breath, his shoulders heaving.

And the man who seemed to be trying to grasp reality looked around and soon covered his head with both hands.

His stiff, hardened hands, now damp with sweat, tousled his wet hair.

“Was it a dream…?”

He couldn’t tell how many days it had been. The nightmares only seemed to increase as the days went by.

The nightmares began to engulf his body right from the day the maid left him. And escaping from the nightmares, headaches began as soon as he opened his eyes.

“Ugh.”

A moan flowed from the man’s teeth as the pain began to gnaw at his head.

He had headaches even before he met Lina, but never like this. What had initially felt like being pricked with a needle now felt like being hacked in the head with a knife.

It was an immense pain, as if everything that had been suppressed was bursting out all at once.

Breathing heavily, Duke Valige reached for the cup on the bedside table to drink water. And at that moment, the illusions that he had only seen in his dreams began to climb up his arm through the cup.

Crash!

A strong breaking sound echoed through the dark bedroom.

Blinking his eyes, his arm was just clean, as if nothing had happened.

“Ha.”

The man let out a short breath.

‘Am I really going insane?’

In the dark room, remnants of the illusions from his dreams seemed to still be targeting his neck.

In anger that boiled over in an instant, he began to grab anything at hand and throw it.

The once sturdy white pillow had burst and lost its shape, and the torn blue curtain was pathetically hanging halfway from the window.

In no time, the duke’s neat bedroom had turned into a mess.

After the commotion, silence returned to the room. Valige, regaining his sanity, brushed his stilltrembling hand through his hair.

Wouldn’t this be the appearance of an addict who had quit drugs?

Barely breathing as his toes touched the ground in the water, the man felt as if he were walking a dangerous tightrope with death.

“That damned woman sent me the right person.”

He joked, looking at his trembling hand in pain.

If it was indeed true that Empress Lenisha had sent Lina, the snakelike woman had won.

“Really, this is a dog’s situation.”

Valige mumbled as he collapsed to the floor. His sore, cracked voice was painful to hear.

With a look of resignation, the duke leaned back on the bed, letting out rough curses fit for mercenaries.

And then he threw the sculpture rolling on the floor against the opposite wall. The weakly bouncing fragment scratched Valige’s cheek without mercy.

On the third night since the maid disappeared.

He had no choice but to admit it.

“My body cannot go back to how it was before I met you, Lina.”

Damn it.