Blair swung the wooden plank a moment too late, but the man easily caught it and threw it away. This caused Blair, who had been holding onto the plank, to fall backwards.

“Ugh…”

The man grabbed Blair’s ankle as she tried to retreat.

“I didn’t free your arms and legs for you to do such cute things. You look adorable with that frightened expression.”

“Let go!”

Blair struggled desperately, but she was not strong enough to shake off the man’s hand.

The man pinned Blair down with his legs and pulled out a small glass bottle from his pocket.

“If you stay still, I’ll be nice to you. Be a good girl, okay?”

As Blair flailed about, screaming and grasping at anything she could, her hand caught hold of something. She swung it desperately.

“Argh!”

A sharp piece of wood scratched the man’s eye.

“My… my eye!”

In the process, the small glass bottle the man had been holding fell and rolled away.

Blair’s body began to tremble as she saw the blood dripping.

But there was no time to dwell on it. This was her chance to escape.

Blair exerted superhuman strength to push the man away and fled out of the abandoned house.

“Stop right there!”

The man staggered out of the house, chasing after Blair. In front of him was a lake, with a dense forest stretching out beside it.

In that brief moment, Blair had disappeared.

“Damn it…”

The man cursed under his breath as he looked around. He needed to catch Blair again and set up the situation before Wesley arrived.

‘There’s no ferry, so she couldn’t have gone towards the lake.’

Just as the man glanced towards the lake, there was a rustling sound from the forest. The man ran in the direction of the sound.

As the man’s presence gradually faded away, a held breath burst out from beneath where he had been standing.

“Hah…”

Under a large tree root at the foot of a small cliff leading from where the man had stood to the lake, Blair had hidden herself.

Blair removed the hand that had been covering her mouth. Her whole body was trembling and she felt suffocated.

‘Pull yourself together. You can’t collapse here.’

Blair raised her shaking body. Then she fled in the opposite direction from the man.

* * *

In the abandoned house where the two had disappeared, only red blood remained.

Herdin, who discovered it, approached and touched the blood with his gloved hand. It was still fresh. His eyes turned cold.

He quickly surveyed the abandoned house.

As is often the case in places long untouched by human hands, dust had accumulated thickly. And on top of it were two sets of footprints.

One belonged to a man, and the other was from a small high-heeled shoe.

Maids wear low shoes for convenience while working. Therefore, high heels belong to ladies and young misses.

Herdin spread his hand to gauge the size of the remaining shoe print.

The shoe’s owner had small feet. It was similar in size to what he had seen when he grabbed Blair’s ankle on the bed.

At the starting point of those footprints, there were traces of dust being swept away and bloodstains, and next to it, a sharp piece of wood with blood on it had been discarded.

If the attacker was the man, he could have easily subdued this small-framed woman with his bare hands without needing such a crude weapon.

In other words, it was more likely that the woman had used the piece of wood as a weapon.

‘That attack must have landed, allowing the woman to escape, and the man chased after her…’

Herdin’s expression hardened moment by moment as he reconstructed the crime scene.

Wesley, standing next to him, was momentarily taken aback by the development that differed from his plan, but soon spoke up nonchalantly.

“I thought I heard a sound… I guess it was just the wind—”

Before he could finish speaking, Herdin grabbed Wesley by the collar and slammed him against the wall.

At this, the knights of the Boldwin family who had been standing behind Wesley all drew their swords.

“What is the meaning of this sudden action!”

In response, the Delmark knights also drew their swords. The atmosphere, which had been like walking on thin ice all along, escalated into a volatile situation.

But Herdin, who had actually caused the situation, seemed unconcerned.

“This is your doing, isn’t it?”

It was a voice tinged with the cold darkness of the forest. In Herdin’s eyes as he asked this, there was certainty and clear killing intent.

Wesley flinched momentarily at this intensity, but soon shouted loudly with feigned composure.

“Wh-what are you talking about? My doing?”

“When a person survives countless brushes with death on the battlefield, they develop a certain intuition.”

In a place where it’s difficult to distinguish between friend and foe, one learns to instinctively differentiate between enemies and allies before conscious thought.

The battlefield is a place where if you aim your sword after judging, a blade is already at your neck.

“My intuition tells me you’re the enemy.”

“…”

“Can you assert your innocence?”

Faced with Herdin’s cold gaze that seemed to confirm his crime, Wesley swallowed hard.

But he hadn’t left any evidence of his involvement in this incident anywhere. The man he had entrusted with the crime had also disappeared.

Confessing to the crime in this situation where not a single piece of evidence had emerged would be foolish.

“This treatment is unfair! I was only trying to help, given that I had caused trouble for Your Excellency and your wife.”

As Wesley protested, he faltered upon meeting Herdin’s gaze. It was a look that seemed to see through everything.

The instinct of a beast to submit to a stronger predator made him want to avoid that gaze, but he felt he shouldn’t.

Wesley endured, meeting that gaze steadily. As if he were truly innocent.

After observing him for a moment, Herdin released Wesley with a cold sigh, almost throwing him aside.

A knight from the Boldwin family hurriedly supported the staggering Wesley.

Herdin approached the Boldwin family knights who were still pointing their swords at him and said,

“Move aside.”

Intimidated by his gaze and single word, the knights retreated hesitantly.

Herdin, who had come out of the abandoned house, looked up at the sky. The sunset was gradually spreading between the dense trees.

It was still early spring, so the days weren’t very long. Once the sun set, the temperature in the mountains would drop sharply. It would be almost like winter.

Suddenly, he thought of his wife.

A foolish woman who lived in a cold room despite having weak lungs that made her cough constantly, all because she feared fire.

“Knights.”

The Delmark knights assembled at his single word. Herdin mounted his horse again and ordered,

“Find her. As quickly as possible.”

The omitted object of the sentence was obvious without asking.

* * *

Night came early to the forest.

Blair pulled her clothes tighter against the chill seeping through the gaps and looked around.

‘Where am I?’

Having been dragged here unconscious by the man, she had no memory of the path she had taken.

She had just walked aimlessly in the opposite direction from the man with the sole intention of escaping him, but the entrance to the forest was nowhere to be seen. At some point, it felt like she had been going in circles around the same area.

Meanwhile, the darkness that had gradually settled in the forest pressed down on her frightfully.

Blair moved her feet busily to escape the darkness. Her breath was choked and her legs felt like they would be crushed, but if she stopped walking, it felt like the darkness of the forest would devour her.

“Haa… Haa…”

The heavy breaths she exhaled created white puffs in the air. Her body began to shiver.

‘It’s cold…’

As Blair was rubbing her gradually freezing body, something caught her eye.

‘A cabin?’

Like the abandoned house where the man had kidnapped her, it was a forest keeper’s cabin abandoned in various parts of the forest.

But this cabin too seemed to have been untouched by human hands for a long time, with moss thickly covering the roof and walls.

Just then, the cry of a wild animal was heard in the distance.

After hesitating for a moment, Blair stepped inside the cabin.

As expected, the inside of the cabin showed no signs of human presence. Only rusty pots and broken chairs were scattered about haphazardly.

Blair judged that staying in this cabin was better than wandering through the forest.

It was too cold outside, and her heels were all scraped up from the shoes she couldn’t bring herself to take off, making it difficult to walk any further.

‘If I wait, someone will come looking for me.’

Surely, they must be searching for me by now.

Blair searched the cabin for a blanket to wrap around herself. Having been kidnapped without wearing an outer garment, all she had on her body now was a thin petticoat and a spring dress.

The only meaningful find was a blanket so tattered it was full of holes. Blair made do with wrapping it around herself and sat down in a corner of the cabin, away from the windows. At that moment, something was pressed under her leg.

“This is…”

What was under her leg was a lighter. Judging by the faint sloshing sound, it seemed to have some oil left.

There was a fireplace in the cabin, broken wooden furniture that could be used as kindling, and crucially, she had a lighter in her hand.

But…

‘Fire…’

She couldn’t bring herself to light a fire, the most important thing of all. Just thinking about it made her breath catch and her vision blur.

Blair clutched the lighter with her hands trembling from the cold.

As if holding onto something she couldn’t use would somehow make her warmer.

In her gradually fading consciousness that flickered like a candle, she suddenly recalled a night from long ago.

A cozy winter night when she had fallen asleep feeling the warmth of the fireplace for the first time in a very long time, and the face of the man who had silently kept watch by her side.

‘You can’t sleep if you’re alone with the fireplace on.’

Recalling that voice without realizing it, Blair laughed at herself self-deprecatingly.

That of all people, he would be the first to come to mind in this situation… She found her own state laughable.