Chapter 49

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“Madam, you made the right call. You’re about to see something incredible.”

“Oh really…”

“You won’t regret it!”

Ramon followed behind me, chattering without the slightest sense of timing.

I ignored him and frowned. My head throbbed. Today was supposed to be my hard-earned day off. The fatigue from the Barg Mountain trip hadn’t left my body yet.

So I had made the perfect plan.

Sleep until the sun was high, roll around in bed with Nero, eat a late brunch, lounge around until dinner, eat again, lounge more, and drift to sleep naturally. It would’ve been such a happy day.

Until Ramon started shrieking like a nightingale at dawn.

“Madam! Ma-a-dam! Ma-a-a-dam!”

“Berry, chase that creepy nightingale out… oh right, I gave her the day off.”

Half-awake, I shoved my face into the pillow and groaned. Since the Lady Olden incident, I’d dismissed all the other maids and only kept Berry, so if I wanted someone to chase Ramon away, I had to do it myself.

“Madam, good morning!”

“You really see that bluish sky and think it’s morning…”

“You’re the law of Lombard now. If you wake up, it’s morning.”

Ramon had top-tier administrative skills but absolutely no sense. Not that he ever needed to care about others’ moods anyway.

He barged in uninvited and kept begging me to go to the training ground because there was such an amazing sight to see.

“At dawn…?”

“You already know how skilled Lombard’s knights are. According to a secret tip I got from Berthold, today…”

I tuned him out and crawled back into bed.

But Ramon didn’t shut up. I threw every pillow at him to no avail, and poor Nero, unable to take it anymore, hissed and tried to escape out the window.

That’s when I realized the only way to silence the nightingale was to leave the room myself.

And so, sacrificing my peaceful morning, I got dragged to the training grounds far from the castle, built separately for security.

“Is it going to snow? I hear thunder…”

Walking down the Order’s corridor, the distant rumble snapped me out of my thoughts. The dim sky flashed with constant bursts of lightning. Ramon scratched his chin, confused.

“I’m not sure. The weather looks clear though…”

The entrance was heavily guarded, yet the inside was eerily quiet. No signs of people. Suspiciously so.

After a long walk, murmurs grew louder. A cluster of knights stood gathered, looking tense.

“Madam, allow me to quickly find out what’s going on.”

“Take your time…”

Apparently taking my sincerity as humor, Ramon laughed and went over.

I considered waiting for him, then shrugged and kept walking.

‘Lombard’s training grounds won’t collapse just because I’m walking alone.’

But the closer I got to the end of the passage, the louder the rumbling became. It vibrated through the building.

“An earthquake…?”

If so, that would explain the mood earlier. I vaguely remembered being told to get to open space during earthquakes, and the passage empties straight into the wide training ground.

I hurried.

And then—

“…What… what is this…”

The sight before me was overwhelming.

In the middle of the massive training field, a lone figure stood like a tiny dot. No one else around.

Each time he swung the greatsword, enormous flashes tore across the sky. The ground trembled under his feet.

The tremors kept growing until it was hard to stay upright.

“This doesn’t make sense… ugh!”

A violent shock threw me off balance. I was flung out of the passage and hit the ground.

A blazing flare of light surged toward me.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“…!”

Instead of pain, a huge shadow fell over me.

Breathing hard, I opened my eyes carefully. The sky had gone quiet in an instant, as if everything had been a lie.

“Are you all right?”

The duke stood before me.

Electric sparks still snapped from his greatsword.

He noticed my gaze. Without hesitation, he tossed aside the sword and dropped to one knee.

“Are you injured anywhere?”

“…No.”

“I didn’t know you’d come here. This is my fault.”

He picked up a shoe that had fallen near me and gently put it on my foot. Then he offered his arm for support.

“Can you stand?”

“Yes, I’m fine, I’m not— ow!”

As I grabbed his arm to rise, a sharp sting shot through my palm. I’d scraped it when I fell. A smear of blood welled up.

It wasn’t serious, but once I noticed it, the sting grew worse.

The duke’s eyes immediately fixed on my palm. The terrifying aura he’d shown moments ago evaporated.

“I’ll summon the surgeon.”

“It’s fine. This will heal on its own.”

“But you’re bleeding.”

“I’ve had much worse. Compared to that, this doesn’t even count as an injury.”

I spoke before thinking. I’d remembered when my fingers and toes hadn’t added up to ten, when my skin blistered and oozed.

A duchess shouldn’t say such things. Especially a princess raised like a greenhouse flower.

I worried he’d find it strange, but he only clicked his tongue softly, as if assuming I was exaggerating.

“Have the surgeon on standby.”

“Y-yes, sir!”

Before the knight even finished answering, the duke lifted me up and carried me across the training ground.

I thought about struggling, but causing a fuss would create more trouble, so I stayed still.

If no one was around, I would’ve said something, but every soldier’s eyes were on us.

I admit it. I’m the type who gets self-conscious at times like this.

‘Ugh… damn small-minded commoner instincts…’

I sobbed internally.

* * *

Once the duke and duchess completely disappeared, the frozen knights exchanged looks.

They really thought something disastrous was going to happen.

At dawn, their lord had been swinging his blade with a fury far beyond usual. Awe and terror mixed in their throats. No one dared approach him.

“But the moment he noticed the duchess, he sheathed his aura.”

“And all the rage vanished… he was calm.”

“What in the world is happening…”

Only one person had stopped him. The duchess. The daughter of the enemy who had driven the former duke to his death.

The knights had seen it clearly with their own eyes, yet they still stood there dumbfounded, scratching their jaws like fools.