“Even if you approach the young lady with your body adorned lavishly, it will only be an unforgivable sin even in death, and even if you approach with your body stripped bare, it will only make the young lady’s innards terribly nauseated, so for such a person to dare blame their own faults would rather be improper. Yes. You are… after all the young lady’s blood relative, yet a monster dragging the young lady’s ankle into the swamp.”

Griselda saw Johannes press his lips tightly shut. Below his deeply furrowed brow, his distorted eyes stared at her as if about to die. A chill-like heat seemed to be raging wildly in the center of his chest, behind his back. Griselda thought he would soon break into sobs.

“The murderer who harmed the young lady’s husband. It was you, wasn’t it?”

“……”

“With such a background, how dare you…”

Contempt was clearly evident in her words. She did not avert her gaze for a moment from the sinner with a seemingly noble face. When was it? She had long ago thought that the gaze of the monster silently staring at the face of the sister who had shared the same womb was not ordinary.

But because it had removed only the cunning stubbornness from a face that was the spitting image of the princess, leaving only a mature and kind impression, she had not realized it. Its deep, dark intentions.

At that moment, Griselda’s eyes flew open wide. A long flash of belated realization seemed to brush past her eyes. It was a tail of light that instantly illuminated even the corners of the floor. How could this be.

She had been deceived.

For quite a long time.

“How… could this be possible.”

She began to tremble with shocked eyes.

“I, not knowing this… like a fool… I built a bridge between the young lady and you.”

One step, then another. She approached Johannes without realizing it herself. She raised her twitching, dry fingers and briefly grasped his shoulder. As her uneasy suspicion turned to certainty, even the contempt she had felt earlier was gone. She felt only the sensation of anger at being deceived and shame at witnessing her own foolishness mixing like black and yellow oil, climbing up her spine. In the end, it felt as if the back of her neck had been cut across. Her shoulder blades were numb and hot.

“You didn’t… seduce your young sister when no one noticed, did you?”

“……”

“In the secret room I prepared… with the eyes of a horned beast… did you steal glances at that beautiful child every night? Did you covet her deeply in your heart…?”

“……”

“Did you… take her?”

To her question asked with bulging eyes and stammering, Johannes gave no answer. He only lowered his head, biting his lip. It felt as if his heart was collapsing.

“Answer…! Me…. What is that silence!”

The palm grasping Johannes’ shoulder finally tensed. The crumpled silver cup rolled off, making a dull noise.

Johannes, held by Griselda’s hand, just leaned against the table, offering no resistance to the nanny’s forceful gesture. His tightly closed eyes, the back of his hand propped against the edge, everything about him was utterly miserable. The hand habitually covering his eyes was trembling even more than Griselda’s shoulder.

Griselda swallowed. Is this, though a sin he committed himself, too difficult to accept? Does he find himself unclean? At least it doesn’t seem like a falsely fabricated attitude. To her eyes, slowly but finally, it became clearly visible.

A lump trapped like some essence inside a beautiful and sturdy body, unable to burst or melt. It was a spear piercing through Johannes from head to toe. Griselda could not help but see it. For she too had already experienced and knew it.

It was, so to speak, the spear of the defeated.

“You tried… but failed. You couldn’t undo it.”

Griselda asked pressingly.

“Am I right?”

“……”

“So… So… On the young lady’s wedding night…”

Griselda could not finish her words. Johannes. He remained silent in painful silence like a wordless confession, wearing the face of the heir who had carried the fortress’s expectations on his back with his pure spirit. Indeed, it was a face that might as well have no mouth at all.

For no matter what dejected expression that thing used to confess its sin, no one in this fortress would blame him. My lord, my lord. Please do not worry. Rather, voices comforting the heir seemed to pierce Griselda’s ears.

“Ah! Aah…! How can you be such a chilling person…”

Griselda stepped back as if pushing Johannes’ shoulder. She shook her head violently, as if convulsing.

“You! You said it was survival instinct. You must have wanted to live that badly. Enough to be content with just living even if you covered an already pitiful person with no one to rely on with all the infamy you possessed! Try to make an excuse. Wearing the skin of the ducal heir over the flesh of an almighty devil, what on earth were you so chased by? If you have even a shred of conscience, please be ashamed…!”

“You!

Suddenly, a harsh shout burst from between Johannes’ lowered lips. At that rough intrusion, Griselda stared at Johannes with startled eyes.

“What do you… know…”

Johannes’ upper body bent further. The way he faintly resented her and then exhaled once with a blue force after grasping his chest was exactly that of a person struggling to breathe. And then a voice that made Griselda doubt her own ears flowed from his lips.

“Almighty…? Me? Ah! I have no power at all! You say she’s a woman with no one to rely on. Right. That one thing is correct. But what? A pitiful person? Ha! Truly…! Truly! You are naive, madam…!”

Johannes cried out as if possessed.

What’s this? Suddenly formal speech. It had never happened before. Is the duty of a vassal so ingrained in the bones? Griselda felt as if she had been hit on the head and inevitably took a step back. She watched Johannes’ behavior with eyes fiercely mixed with surprise and disbelief. The devil, who was exhaling rough breaths in a collapsing posture, was raising sorrowful and resentful eyes. His pupils, long split in the broken white light, glared at her. Eyes like a dragon about to wail.

“You… don’t understand that woman at all. Let me say it again, the truly pitiful woman was ‘Giovinetta’. Because the only thing swayed by her fragile life was me, a blind lover. But in this life, your cheap sympathy would rather be an insult to ‘her’.”

…What?

“Ah, do you need to see her jumping vigorously again with silk-bound ankles? Do you need to reconfirm with your own eyes her tearful stubbornness? Indeed, she has come back as such a woman, so this time I…! I…!”

At that moment. A bead of sweat cut across his cheek and dropped from the tip of his chin. He seemed to feel dizzy as he was about to shout something.

“Freely…. To my heart’s content…. That child….”

The tall man who had deeply lowered his shoulders seemed to stagger back once before finally leaning his body and propping one arm on the table. He barely supports his whole body like that. He muttered painfully, lowering his forehead.

“Is this longing such a great sin?”

And.

“…I said.”

It fades.

“That day she… declared herself an idiot as a way of throwing herself away. It was no different from suicide. That’s the kind of woman Inette is.”

He straightened his body as if rising from a sickbed. Griselda’s gaze wavered along his nape. She could no longer read the inner thoughts of the devil, now showing only his back. Just a miserable back with nowhere to go.

“She… was so clever that she must have completely seen through me as time passed indifferently. So as a final revenge, she forgot everything, saying ‘You hold onto my shell and simmer for life.’ Ah… yes. Perhaps letting go of life at that moment was Inette’s last ‘voluntary act’.”

“……”

“So willingly deceiving me…. Leaving me on her own terms.”

The back of Johannes’ head was slightly disheveled. It was because he had dropped his forehead forward while touching the table with his fingertips. After wiping away the cold sweat beaded along his forehead line with the side of one hand, he continued speaking as if grinding his words.

“How moved I alone would be in that brief moment of the knife piercing… Knowing full well what expectations I would have at once, what hopes I would have as I rushed mindlessly to her feet. In front of me like that…. She laughed so happily that it was all mockery and that now you are left alone forever. I know. I know too. That child’s laughter….”

“……”

“You seem worried that a beast in human form might plant a seed in the pitiful young lady’s belly. But rather, I want to ask.”

Slowly, Johannes turns around. With a face full of weariness, he asked.

“Can you dare violate the corpse of a lover who committed suicide for all to see?”

“……”

“Unable to be punished, unable to forgive that miserable feeling, with such a body, can you dare to do that? I.”

“……”

“…I cannot touch even a hair on that child.”

After grinding out those words, Johannes closed his mouth. Griselda met his gaze with her own, unmoving. An instinct beyond reason was keeping her jaw clenched, preventing her from opening her mouth carelessly as well.

Though it was a stranger’s tragedy that she could not even understand, she did not know why it captured her attention so. Ah. Then she realized. What she was resonating with was not the background details she didn’t understand. The emotion that the man before her was revealing. That pain. That resentment. The lump that seemed to knead and crush the flesh of the heart.

That spear.

It was one of the few things she recognized in every detail. She could feel even the fine grain left after sanding as if it were her own.

“…However you look at it, it’s a lazy act. It’s all just the result and product of indifference.”

“…Perhaps you don’t know because you haven’t experienced it directly.”

“…I wonder if people have the capacity to wrap themselves even if they don’t have the capacity to care for others.”

“Here….”

Who is truly the worthless and pitiful person.

“So, in the end, you’re saying the princess rejected your courtship.”

Griselda cut off her own past voice with her own voice. There was no hesitation. It was very abrupt.

“No. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that you alone lost your resolve for some reason.”

“……”

“I’ll take this silence as agreement as well.”

“…How nice that you put it so easily.”

Johannes laughed lowly as if dumbfounded. His gaze looking down at her, damp with sweat, now looked utterly exhausted. It would not be surprising if he collapsed along with the table he was leaning on. Griselda paid no heed to his condition. She only stiffened her neck. She raised her forehead straight. Soon she raised the nail she had and drove it into the same place repeatedly.

“You are a devil. By nature, you are a threat to the young lady’s safety. I still cannot fathom why such a you resents the young lady so much as if you did something so good, why you treat someone who has just barely opened her blue eyes as a dead person. But, you know? To tell you the truth, I don’t really want to know.”

“……”

“If you cannot threaten the young lady and for that reason your demonic hands cannot sweep through this fortress, that is enough for me. I don’t want to know.”

“……”

“Perhaps your birth is painful? You should resent yourself for being born that way.”

“……”

“Wounds… everyone lives with them.”