176.

As polite as needed but not backing down. Standing right on the boundary between coercion and request, not leaning to either side. Oh, damn…. Winfrid twisted his lips strangely. Somehow, he was weak to this aspect of his nanny. In the end.

“…Ah.”

He reluctantly opened his mouth.

He opened it wide enough for the inside of his throat to be visible. Griselda only raised her eyes to observe the inside of his mouth. Her gaze did not touch Winfrid’s palate or tongue. Rather, she thoroughly searched deep inside his throat, near the vocal cords.

Gradually, Winfrid’s cheeks flushed as he stood with his mouth open. This posture was somewhat embarrassing. As always, but recently, he found himself strangely feeling his heart flutter as well. This ‘examination’ treating him like a child was more uncomfortable these days for that reason.

“It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong. I’ve looked carefully everywhere and it’s clean, so it should get better soon. I’m not worried at all.”

Griselda, who made the diagnosis in a rather firm voice, pushed up Winfrid’s chin with her fingertips. Winfrid closed his lips with a ‘plop’ without resistance. As if trying to hide the flush on his cheeks, he unnecessarily fanned the air. How strange. Somehow, there was a taste of dirt in his mouth.

Winfrid’s respiratory system had been troublesome since before he could remember. His chest was often tight, and the wheezing sound when breathing was enough to irritate his own ears. Sometimes he even had seizure-like episodes at unexpected moments. The feeling of suffocation that gripped him each time. It was indescribable.

It was a fear of death too much for a small body to endure, so he often trembled with anxiety. He got angry at himself for trembling with anxiety. He got angry at himself for getting angry. The priests were of no help at all in this regard. They had given up on the illness he was suffering from. They said they couldn’t determine the name or cause of the disease. So there was no solution. Useless bastards.

But Griselda smiled brightly.

“Shall we go?”

She shook herself off and stood up. She immediately found Winfrid’s hand and started walking again. Winfrid walked silently beside her.

He quite liked her comfort. It was because her calmness, which didn’t directly console him or make a fuss, made his problems seem smaller. However, being too young to recognize this, Winfrid only described his nanny as a strange woman. A woman like a taciturn witch.

“…When will the ceremony be? I wish it would disappear as soon as possible.”

Griselda responded to Winfrid’s casually thrown topic with unexpected seriousness.

“You mean the young lady?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you hate your only elder sister so much?”

“Hate? Me? My elder sister?”

“Yes.”

Do I hate her?

Winfrid, furrowing his brow in confusion, unconsciously looked up at the sky where dawn was spreading. Certainly, the two had been at odds even before his sister was confined. From Winfrid’s perspective, it always felt like engaging in a losing battle for elder brother Johannes’s attention.

To make matters worse, his sister’s indifference added to his frustration. ‘How dare you intrude between us?’ Once, he had even received such a nonchalant question. How annoying.

Nevertheless, comparing the emotions of that time to the present, the texture was clearly different, like comparing hemp cloth to silk, which left him unsettled. Hatred? Hatred.

“Well. I don’t know. I just find elder sister unpleasant and irritating. These days she doesn’t even cry and is quite quiet, but seeing her locked up at the top of the tower makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s not like I have a prisoner as a sibling. It’s unsightly.”

“It’s not an entirely uncommon occurrence.”

“But not a common one either.”

Winfrid cut her off. Griselda stared at him blankly. He had been burying himself in books without much companionship, and it seemed he might have read something in detail recently. Suddenly, worry arose.

“Winfrid, sir. You must not convey such words to your elder sister. Knowing early would only make the young lady’s feelings more painful, while her situation wouldn’t change at all. Let her come to understand gradually during her time in the royal city.”

Winfrid blinked. Griselda’s tone was unusually firm. Although she often admonished Winfrid or made various requests, she had never worn such a stern expression. Winfrid, looking a bit flustered, made an excuse.

“I won’t tell her. We won’t see each other anyway.”

“Promise me.”

“Why do you need a promise? I can’t even remember the last time we faced each other.”

“Can I trust you?”

“…You have no choice but to trust me.”

Griselda’s eyes softened then. Her face showed relief and even bore a faint smile. What’s this? One of Winfrid’s eyebrows shot up. Strangely, there was something about Griselda’s relieved appearance that subtly twisted Winfrid’s guts. He couldn’t understand why. He stopped dead in his tracks.

“Do you like my elder sister more than me?”

He blurted out abruptly. While reason might not know oneself, desire knows oneself better than anyone. Griselda’s dry eyes widened. Winfrid pressed on impatiently.

“Are you more worried about her?”

“I worry about both of you.”

“But you’re my….”

“I nursed the young lady too. My heart can’t help but go out to her.”

“…”

“Do you dislike that very much?”

“Of course I do.”

There was not a moment’s hesitation in his answer. Griselda laughed sheepishly.

“Please give in a little, Winfrid, sir.”

“I don’t want to. Why should I?”

“The young lady will soon be leaving for a far-off place, you know.”

“…”

Winfrid’s expression crumpled completely. Perhaps due to his complexion being pale to the point of being ashen, when this boy furrowed his brows, it gave the impression of cracks forming on porcelain. Winfrid, at a loss for words, grabbed one of Griselda’s arms and put it on his shoulder. He buried the side of his face against the woman’s side.

Since Griselda’s words weren’t particularly wrong, he could only grumble inwardly. If she wants to get married, let her go, but don’t keep bothering people until the end. If he had his way, he would have dragged his sister by the wrist and thrown her out beyond the castle moat a hundred times over. Damn it.

By now, they were at the edge of the rear garden. In the distance, straight ahead, the four maids they had seen earlier were huddled together, whispering something.

“Those ones are still at it.”

Winfrid threw his irritation at innocent people as he emerged from the shadows of the garden trees. He couldn’t understand what good news they had to make such a fuss, and he didn’t want to know either. His eyes and ears were stinging, and he felt like tearing off all those chattering lips that couldn’t read the mood.

Oh my, poor young lady…. Oh my, poor young lady…. The maids’ faint sighs trailed long behind their pitiful traces. What a pitiful situation….

If only there hadn’t been a war….

She’s innocent….

Is this how arrows always come back on an unexpected path?

No one in Duke Gustavus’s household had anticipated that Count Milo, crushed like a bug by the ‘outrage’ suddenly brought on by the duke who had remarried a dozen years ago, would sharpen his blade while recruiting neighboring lords.

It wasn’t entirely baseless arrogance that the western duchy didn’t keep an eye on the eastern shadows. There simply was no reason to do so. At the time, the duke’s army had plundered most of the count’s wealth and cut the right ankle tendons of all the defeated soldiers, including knights. On top of that, they destroyed any visible sources of funds, such as mines. But how on earth….

What talent did that beggar have to raise new, competent knights and gather a large army? One of the elders who had participated in the ‘territorial war’ at the time clicked his tongue, muttering to his squire as if talking to himself.

“The duke, who wouldn’t normally let even one head go unchecked, for some reason wanted to maintain the count’s honor. That’s what led to this disaster.”

“…”

“We should have uprooted him completely, not even allowing him to maintain his title, as per custom.”

But it was too late.

Hadn’t they already lost a watchtower at the border? It was called a tower, but in reality, it was a defensive stronghold no different from a small fortress. The night the messenger arrived. It was such a great loss in the dead of night that even the iron-faced duke sat up in bed.

The eyes that stared intently at the helmet of the messenger, who was shaking like an aspen leaf while reporting the complete destruction of the watchtower, were like blue-hot molten iron. They boiled silently. It was anger of a different caliber. The result of that anger was the early marriage of his eldest daughter.

This was a preparation for a war that could break out at an unpredictable time, and also a warning that no further invasion would be tolerated. After the ceremony, the central king would become an ally of the western duke, so even if Milo had united the entire east, a large-scale invasion of the duke’s territory would not be easy.

The news of the arranged marriage, which seemed to have legs, reached the chamber of the marriage party truly late. The duke’s daughter learned of it at the very last moment within the fortress, even later than the deaf manure worker.

“Ah…! Ah! Finally…!”

Freedom.

The eldest daughter, who had been used as a shield, rejoiced as if shuddering.

Her legs gave out and she collapsed in her seat. She trembled for a while, covering her mouth. Then she suddenly turned to look at the duchess. The duchess, who had also sprung up from her armchair, was glaring like fire at the maid who had delivered the news, her whole body trembling just the same. Is she angry? Is she about to lose her mind again? But, mother.

The eldest daughter unknowingly called out to her mother. The duchess’s gaze suddenly turned towards her. A dangerous atmosphere pervaded the chamber. For a moment, the duchess’s thin arms twitched and bent as they raised. The eldest daughter couldn’t understand the meaning of that gesture.

It’s like someone trying to surrender. It also looked like a posture of trying to receive something placed in the air. At that sight, the eldest daughter felt something bubbling up from her solar plexus.

She couldn’t hold back. Finally, she turned her waist towards the duchess and crawled as if feeling the floor. For the first time in a very long while, she voluntarily crawled to her mother’s feet. The crumbling duchess received her daughter.

Mother. The dam of tears that Inette had been holding back by biting her lips finally burst. Mother. Mother. From that point on, she couldn’t control herself. What should I do? I am free. As if blaming, as if showing off, she vomited these words against the duchess’s thighs, then shook her whole shoulders and wept loudly.

The duchess was silent. Only the duchess’s thorn-like arms, fingers, scratched and gathered her bowed daughter’s back, nape, as if scraping. Scratching and scratching again, she embraced her frantically. Ah…! Ah! Finally, even the duchess began to wail. The floodgates of tears opened. Now no one could stop it.

Yes. Live. Don’t live like this body. Live fully. Go and be happy. The sound of swallowing tears was heard. So for that moment, there was no wall between mother and daughter. They cried for a long time.