Chapter 52

I froze with a forkful of neatly carved meat halfway to my mouth.

My stomach was screaming, but the eyes fixed on me were even more overwhelming, so I couldn’t bring myself to eat.

I covered my lips and murmured quietly, “Your Grace, did I do something wrong?”

The duke looked up from where he was sitting as if to say what on earth I was talking about.

“No, it’s just that I trained these fools poorly. I didn’t intend to raise morons who stare holes through a lady eating her meal. They need a special discipline program to fix their heads.”

“…Man, I’m starving! Let’s eat, let’s eat!!”

The moment he said ‘special discipline’ with emphasis, the quiet dining hall burst back into noise as if someone had thrown cold water on it.

The knights all bowed their heads to their plates and started carving like mad. Some were busy attacking an empty plate, others had ground the meat into pieces so small you couldn’t tell what it used to be.

A little insane, but I was tired and decided not to care.

“Oh my, this is delicious.”

“I’m glad it suits you.”

The rich meat melted in my mouth. Eating too fast from hunger, my throat got tight and I grabbed a cup.

I’m weak with alcohol, but there was nothing else to drink, so I sipped red wine just enough not to get drunk.

When my stomach felt comfortably full and I paused, the duke spoke.

“This morning… I showed a rough side of myself. I almost hurt you because I couldn’t control my strength. I’m ashamed.”

His unexpected apology left me blinking blankly.

The duke apologizing was so out of left field I had no ready answer. Not knowing how to react made me stammer.

His pupils darkened as he read my confusion.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“You can’t be unmoved after seeing that sight.”

“…”

“Even so, I’m not going to cower pathetically. You’re not a god. Even if you have overwhelming might, you’re still a mortal who can’t beat time.”

In short, whether he or I, after a hundred years we’d both be dust. Maybe the sense of fear in me is blunted from my past life.

‘But that’s the conclusion I came to.’

A short silence passed. The duke let out a low laugh, as if thinking something over.

‘A mortal… I’ve never heard that before,’ he said.

“If that was rude, I’ll apologize.”

“No, it’s fine.”

He raised his wine and took a slow sip, then looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read but somehow found pleasant.

‘I don’t know what to make of him.’

Was it something to like that the continent’s mightiest warrior was being called a mere human? He was inscrutable.

Giving up on figuring him out, I popped a honeyed fruit into my mouth. The sweetness was so thick it felt like a faraway haze.

* * *

Late that night after the banquet, knights who couldn’t sleep clustered on the parade ground.

Training in place of sleep was normal, but tonight their faces were oddly unsettled.

“What did I even see?” one knight said, waving his sword halfheartedly.

That remark set others off. They put training aside and started confiding their impressions.

“Has His Grace ever been the sort to neatly carve meat for someone?”

“I’ve seen him peel a monster’s flesh carefully.”

“Ah, I see that often too.”

On the battlefield the duke was awe-inspiring, fearsome and worthy of respect. In daily life he felt distant, almost not-human. Even the most scholarly ruler couldn’t hide all emotion, yet Edwin had always shown no feeling since childhood. Sometimes he seemed utterly emotionless, like time itself flowed past him and he watched.

That lack of ordinary human feeling, not just raw force, made the knights treat him as an absolute being they could not contradict.

“Did you see him laugh? He definitely laughed toward the duchess…”

“Hold on, think carefully. Maybe we all got our heads turned.”

“Or maybe it was just a smirk.”

“Remember, we’ve never even seen His Grace smile, so this is odd.”

Every hypothesis got shot down, and confusion only deepened.

“By the way, here’s a secret. His Grace lost his temper not long ago.”

“Hey, even he gets angry sometimes. Comparing that to this is—”

“It was when I spoke harshly about the duchess…”

The knight who confessed was kin to a respected physician within the inner wall.

‘Her ladyship made a fuss about a small issue and treated physicians like traitors, fining them huge sums as punishment. She went mad, it was a disaster!’ someone had whispered.

‘Did you really believe she’d keep to the inner chambers?’

‘You expect me to trust that?’

This was back when Elicia first married into Lombard. Back then hatred for the duchess ran high, and some argued she should be locked away. Those knights had been survivors of the northern wall’s collapse with the late duke, and they never forgave the Capital.

“I didn’t think what I said would be an issue, but the duke told us not to speak ill of the duchess with that tone,” one knight said.

“No wonder he was the only calm one when everyone was screaming to imprison her,” another said.

Some of Elicia’s actions were starting to trickle inside the walls. Most inner-wall folk weren’t in contact with the outside, but those who were had begun to doubt the old rumors about the duchess.

The knights had seen the scene themselves: the duchess eating peacefully despite witnessing the duke’s transcendent force, and the duke taking care of her with obvious tenderness.

“This might mean the duke has… a, a feeling for her…” someone blurted.

The thought was blasphemous; nobody wanted to finish the sentence.

Just then someone from the castle came running in, excited.

“It’s through, it’s finally passed!!”

“Sir Stephan?” they asked.

It was Stephan, the secretary who’d been ground down by endless castle bureaucracy. He’d never fit administration, but his long schooling had stuck him with the paperwork. He hated it but had the sense of duty to finish what he started.

“You’re saying it’s the budget?” someone asked.

“The slow bureaucrats actually approved it. I thought it’d take days, but it’s done.”

The knights, thinking he was joking, stifled laughter, then went quiet when Stephan acted.

He opened the pages stamped with the duke’s official seal.

Some literate knights snatched the paperwork and scanned it, shocked.

“It’s real.”

“It’s definitely the duke’s seal.”

But how? That morning Stephan had been wailing on the parade ground. How had this been sorted in half a day?

They flipped through the pages. Every signature box was filled except for the last one.

[ELICIA MARCEN VALDIN LA LOMBARD]

The benefactor who solved the budget that had been dragged out for over half a year, and might have dragged on another half year, was none other than the duchess Elicia, the woman they so despised.