Lady Devil - Chapter 205

The incomprehensible emotions Griselda felt that night. The nightmare that scratched her eardrums with iron and filled her chest with unease was all buried by the sound of sleeping Winfrid’s breathing. No. It was buried.

So calmly.

After that, time passed without notice. Griselda merely stood in her place, closing her eyes and opening them again repeatedly. Though the scenery changed, each day was equally peaceful and uneventful, so she had no particular reason to pay attention to what was different. Except for one thing. The fact that Winfrid suddenly left for the monastery on his fifteenth birthday.

It was a daily life where nothing changed.

Winfrid was sent as an attendant to a renowned monk at a nearby monastery. Leaving behind his nurse with a burning heart, he crossed the drawbridge with his thin back straight like a blade, wearing the same expression as always, as if everything in the world was unpleasant and ridiculous.

Don’t wait for me. I guarantee, when I return home, I intend to choose an inauspicious day. Those were the last words the boy she had fed, clothed, and raised on her back left her with, smirking without even a glance at her.

Griselda hid in her bedroom and cried for a long time.

She had no idea when the child had grown up or what event had prompted him to vow to become a monk. Yes. When she herself was fifteen, she had witnessed the curse brought by the princess, miscarried her first child, and entered as the nurse for the Valdemar siblings. She was a proper lady with a decent husband, experienced, and capable of taking care of herself. She was an adult.

But isn’t that very adulthood denied to the second son of a noble family?

Those below the firstborn are destined to never fully mature. Unless the eldest son suddenly dies and their turn comes, they cannot have wives, concubines, children, or their own property, and remain minors even until the day soil covers their bodies and gravestones are erected. Even past forty or fifty, even with gray hair. They dare not receive adult treatment. The half-cripples of this era.

Is that why? Griselda could not comprehend the farewell. Even while knowing full well that Winfrid’s choices were already limited due to his fate from the beginning, she still couldn’t understand.

Is it a matter to be so easily approved, the decision of Winfrid who is still just an unripe boy? You are still young. It’s not the age to leave far away? It’s too early. The time. It’s far too early to send you away from this embrace. Dark. Dark. The hole pierced in this chest years ago suddenly turns painfully dark. Ah.

Ah.

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