“Please eat.”

Aidel silently looked at the bread and water placed before her. As she just stared at the food with quiet eyes, Dylan’s gaze instantly turned fierce.

“You must be quite hungry after starving for so long… I guess the food isn’t to your liking.”

‘She still hasn’t properly grasped her situation.’

Dylan gave a cold sneer. As expected, those of noble birth were an impossible lot. They probably had no idea about the lives of lower classes who could barely eat even this bread and starved to death.

Recalling his own past of barely surviving that hell, Dylan’s eyes changed. He gazed at the duchess still sitting motionless with a chilly look.

Even though she was bound like livestock and had lost her freedom, a noble dignity flowed from her entire being. It wasn’t just because of her straight posture with her back perfectly upright.

‘She’s different from how she looks. She hasn’t raised her voice even once.’

It was because of the composure she maintained even in this kidnapped situation. The duchess remained calm even after regaining consciousness from the anesthetic. Unlike her delicate and fragile outward appearance, as if made of glass art.

‘But soon she’ll know too. What a living hell is like.’

Though he had no personal grudge against the duchess… Dylan despised nobility itself. And Aidel’s behavior as if she were a lofty noble irritated Dylan’s nerves unpleasantly.

“Ah, perhaps it’s difficult for you to eat in that state?”

The only way to eat with hands and feet bound was to lower one’s head and eat with the mouth.

“I suppose it’s unacceptable for a high noble to eat like a beast.”

Dylan continued in a mocking tone.

“But you’ll have to get used to it. Since you’ll be living a life worse than livestock from now on.”

Dylan expected the duchess to be shocked by his words, but Aidel’s expression remained calm. She raised her head and cast her gaze over Dylan’s shoulder.

Only then did a change come over Aidel’s face. With a darkly sunken expression, she opened her mouth with difficulty. A dry voice barely flowed through the cracks of her parched lips, having not properly consumed water.

“…I’m fine, so please give this food to the others.”

At Aidel’s words, Dylan looked back at the girls behind him. They were orphans kidnapped from nearby slums who would be traded along with the duchess.

Due to their low value as merchandise, the food distributed to them was even worse than the duchess’s. They were lower class people used to poverty and hunger anyway.

‘A woman who has never touched anything dirty her whole life, and never known hunger…’

What right did she have to pity them?

Even such behavior from the duchess seemed like hollow hypocrisy to Dylan. With a fierce look, Dylan approached the food he had given to the duchess. Then he stepped on the distributed bread and crushed it.

Removing his foot, Dylan bent down in front of the duchess as if to meet her gaze.

“Do you see? Crushed beyond recognition.”

Dylan held up the miserably crushed bread in front of Aidel’s eyes as if to show her.

“Your situation will soon be like this too. Because you’ll no longer be a top noble, but a slave of the lowest status.”

Aidel’s pale green eyes, which quietly gazed at Dylan, showed no wavering at all. Rather, it was a gaze as if carefully observing something. After a while, Aidel looked Dylan in the face and asked.

“Are you… a woman?”

“…Is that important? In this situation.”

Dylan’s eyes wavered slightly at Aidel’s sudden question. Watching this, Aidel became certain. Of the gender of this subordinate of Douglas.

Wearing men’s clothes with short hair and even an androgynous voice, Dylan looked like a man at first glance.

However, Dylan’s nose and below the chin were smooth without a trace of beard stubble when up close. There was no protruding Adam’s apple below the neck, the symbol of a man.

The look in Aidel’s eyes changed as she gazed at Dylan.

‘If this person is a woman…’

Perhaps she could be persuaded.

Aidel slowly opened her mouth while looking straight into Dylan’s eyes.

“If you’re a woman too, you’d know. Though the lives of the powerless are hard for everyone, it’s even more harsh if one’s gender is female.”

“…What do you know to say such things. You noble who’s lived your whole life without knowing hardship!”

Dylan’s expression hardened, flustered by Aidel’s words. Dylan asked angrily in an agitated voice.

“Do you know? The lives of lower classes who are sold, used, and discarded like objects!”

To Dylan’s reaction, Aidel calmly responded.

“That’s right. As you said, I may not fully understand their lives. However… as a fellow woman, there are things I can empathize with.”

“You empathize as a fellow woman? Don’t make me laugh. Even if the gender is the same, how can you empathize when the status is clearly different?”

“That regardless of status, a woman’s life is not free.”

Dylan’s expression seemed momentarily at a loss for words at Aidel’s unexpected statement. Looking at Dylan like that, Aidel continued.

“I was born a noble woman… but I was forced into an unwanted marriage with Marquis Chalet. It was a marriage that proceeded as if I was being sold. Like the trade you’re trying to make. Probably most noble women are like that too.”

Only then did Dylan understand why Marquis Chalet wanted to trade the duchess. Knowing well the marquis’s dirty sexual preferences, Dylan felt sympathy for the duchess, but soon steeled his weakening heart.

Who was pitying whom? Me? This noble?

“…Even so, don’t women who marry nobles end up living noble lives?”

If you had married Marquis Chalet, you wouldn’t be becoming a slave like this!

Dylan wanted to openly mock the duchess’s situation as resentment toward nobility welled up, but swallowed the words internally, unable to reveal the trade prematurely.

To Dylan’s words, Aidel shook her head.

“Would that make them happy? A life lived only under someone else’s protection without their own will. Moreover, by imperial law, noble women can’t even earn money directly unless they divorce. It’s a life where one can’t be independent on their own.”

It was the first time learning that noble women couldn’t be financially independent except in the special case of divorce. Dylan’s pupils widened slightly in surprise at Aidel’s words before narrowing again.

“Hmph! Even if noble women aren’t free, at least they won’t starve to death.”

Dylan retorted to Aidel as if telling her not to talk nonsense, throwing the bread he was holding at the wall.

“The freedom you speak of is a right that can only be thought of when one’s stomach is full! To those struggling between life and death who can barely make ends meet, such things have no meaning!”

“That’s right. One needs to have basic human rights to think about a better life. But do you know that what you’re doing deprives people of even the minimum dignity as human beings?”

Aidel’s voice, which had been calm without highs or lows throughout, pierced Dylan’s ears sharply.

“Even if they no longer go hungry… can you say the lives of those girls sold into slavery will be better than their past when they were starving?”

Dylan fell silent at Aidel’s sharp question. The image of his past self began to resurface in his mind again. The past when he lived like livestock without even being treated as human.

Moreover, the lives of female slaves were even more miserable than male slaves. In broad daylight and dark night… it was a life of being cruelly exploited in all ways.

Seeing Dylan’s face contort painfully, Aidel vaguely sensed that she had similar experiences in her past. It was what she had been guessing from the masculine attire and hatred of nobility.

“If you’re a woman too, you’d know. Though the lives of the powerless are hard for everyone, it’s even more harsh if one’s gender is female.”

Aidel repeated her earlier words. At her words, the image of the girls who would become slaves naturally formed in Dylan’s mind.

That image flowed like a lingering afterimage from a fragment of his own past. Dylan’s whole body trembled.

“So please… at least release those girls.”

Dylan unconsciously avoided the pale green eyes that met his with a desperate look. Clenching his fist tightly, Dylan shook his head vigorously as if trying to shake off the gaze holding him.

“…Don’t try to persuade me. Your fate, and their fates, are already decided.”

“No, if you help, we can change it.”

“Useless talk! If you keep making noise, I’ll have no choice.”

Dylan took out a glass bottle and cloth handkerchief from inside his clothes. When he opened the bottle, a sour smell wafted up. Aidel flinched as she recognized the identity of the liquid soaking the handkerchief.

“We need to move again, so if you won’t eat, just shut your mouth and sleep. Your Grace.”

“…Mmph!”

The familiar smell of inhalation anesthetic seeped into her nose and mouth again. Aidel’s eyelids fluttered before closing powerlessly.

.

.

.

Aidel regained consciousness because of someone’s voice.

“…Your Grace, Your Grace!”

‘Who is it…?’

A young, desperate voice pierced through her groggy consciousness. Aidel struggled to lift her eyelids.

“Are you awake?”

Aidel blinked her hazy eyes and shifted her gaze toward the voice. She met eyes with a girl looking at her worriedly.

‘A girl I’ve seen somewhere before…’

Aidel slightly furrowed her brow as if trying to recall the familiar girl’s face. Noticing her expression, the girl spoke her name first.

“I’m Joy! Do you remember me?”

“…Joy?”

“Yes! I’m Joy who gave you the flower crown at Maris Port.”

“Ah…!”

At the child’s words, Aidel recalled the incident at Maris Port during her recent honeymoon trip. Before boarding the ship, the nun and children from Maris Cathedral orphanage had given her gifts in gratitude.

− What’s your name?

− J-Joy.

− That’s a nice name that sounds joyful just hearing it. Will you put the flower crown you made on me yourself, Joy?

The face of the shy smiling child who put the flower crown on her with small hands stained with plant dye while making her gift now came back to her clearly.

“It’s Joy…! But why are you…”

For a moment, Aidel raised her upper body while steadying herself, feeling glad. At the same time, her expression hardened as she realized the fact that the child was here.

“Don’t tell me… you were captured and brought here?”

“Sob… yes…”

“Oh my… how could this be…”

As Joy’s face instantly blurred with tears, Aidel exhaled a grief-stricken breath.