Chapter 30
After leaving the VIP room, Mrs. Olden paced nervously in her guest room.
Elicia had started her period.
The Hemokaran medicine was supposed to work by now, but Elicia was still perfectly fine, with no changes at all.
The medicine was supposed to act fast—why was nothing happening?
And if Elicia suddenly got pregnant now…
Mrs. Olden bit her lower lip anxiously and suddenly turned her head toward the window when she heard a signal.
Four irregular knocks. The sign she’d been waiting for.
“Why are you so late, Sir Loter!”
She hurriedly pulled back the curtain and unlocked the window.
But the person she saw was not the one she expected.
“You wouldn’t even welcome a lover this eagerly.”
“You…!”
The clouds slowly moved away from the moon, and as the backlight faded, the man’s face came into view.
Mrs. Olden stepped back in shock.
The man stepped closer.
“Are you disappointed it’s not the one you were waiting for?”
It was Duke Edwin of Lombard—who was supposed to be at the northern wall by now.
He looked around the guest room, then closed the window and drew the curtain.
Even in the total darkness, his golden eyes shone bright.
It didn’t seem human.
Mrs. Olden was scared.
“Loter, you say? He was a well-known poison master in the capital. He pretended to be a fancy doctor, but there’s only a thin line between medicine and poison.”
“I-I don’t know what you mean. Sir Loter—”
Suddenly, Mrs. Olden realized something strange in the duke’s words.
‘…was.’
He spoke in the past tense.
Her eyes went wide in horror.
“Ah, you noticed?”
“Where is Sir Loter now?”
“Who knows? Maybe he’s having a nice reunion with his old patients. I bet they have a lot to talk about.”
A chill went down Mrs. Olden’s spine.
It wasn’t just because she realized Loter was probably dead.
‘Since when…?’
How much did he know?
She had tried so hard to make Elicia infertile.
She did everything secretly, spending lots of time and money to keep it hidden.
And yet, she got caught so easily?
Or did they know everything from the start?
Realizing this, Mrs. Olden collapsed to her knees at the duke’s feet.
“P-please spare me!”
“Why should I let you live?”
“I’ll tell you anything! Anything I know, whatever it is!!”
Mrs. Olden was desperate but also believed the duke hated Elicia. In fact, he didn’t just dislike her, he seemed to despise her.
Otherwise, there was no reason not to spend even a single night together as husband and wife.
Publicly, everyone thought they had, but as Elicia’s closest attendant, Mrs. Olden knew the truth.
“I know a lot about the madam. Much more than anything you could find out yourself.”
“No, you don’t know anything about her.”
“I’ve been with her since she was a child. After the crown prince and his wife died, I was ordered to look after her! No one knows her better than I do!”
She begged for her life, but the duke just scoffed.
He really didn’t care at all about Mrs. Olden’s information.
‘I have to offer him something else…’
Mrs. Olden clung to the carpet desperately.
Even if she survived tonight, she wasn’t sure what would happen next.
But she had no other choice.
She felt the duke’s gaze on her neck like a predator watching prey.
The duke wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.
“I have something else to tell you. Actually, I have a true master…”
“You want to give up your boss? That’s a big decision. But if you really want to be useful, you should think of something better. I already know who’s behind you.”
“W-what do you mean?”
Mrs. Olden panicked.
Her “master” had never even spoken to her directly.
To the outside world, they were complete strangers with no connection.
No spy could have discovered their relationship.
“You underestimated Lombard. Even if I let go of ruling, did you think it would be that easy?”
The duke seemed to read her mind and chuckled.
“For hundreds of years, Lombard has fought both monsters beyond the northern wall and the imperial family who fears and tries to control us. Did you really think we survived all this with just average skills? You should have remembered that.”
Mrs. Olden dropped her head in defeat.
Edwin’s lips curled into a cold smile.
“Is that all? Can’t you prove your worth?”
After a long silence, Mrs. Olden muttered,
“No matter how smart you are, you can’t know exactly who my master is. You don’t know how far their hands reach in Lombard…”
She glanced up at the duke.
He sat calmly on the sofa, one leg crossed, while she was still kneeling by the window.
‘Just one step.’
She could escape.
Even the duke couldn’t catch her in a single leap.
Thinking this, Mrs. Olden suddenly got up and jumped at the window.
She didn’t have time to unlock it—she planned to just break through and escape into the garden.
The window bars were thin wood, not real iron, so it should work…
‘Wait—?’
She jumped, but didn’t feel the crash she expected.
Instead of breaking glass, she only heard the sound of crunching, chewing right by her ear.
“Aaaaah! Aaaaaaaah!”
In the pitch dark, hundreds of purple eyes opened and stared straight at her.
“Let me give you a parting gift.”
She couldn’t see anything except those purple eyes. Only the duke’s calm voice echoed.
“You’ll meet those ‘hands’ soon enough. They’ll all be ‘inside there.’”
Crunch, snap—
With a sickening sound, her fingers and toes were slowly eaten away by the darkness.
Mrs. Olden screamed in pain, not even understanding what was happening.
But even her cries faded away into nothing.
The purple eyes grinned.
After a satisfying meal, a black cat licked its paw clean.
Just moments ago, it had been a greedy beast, but now it looked graceful.
[Humans full of malice really are the tastiest.]
“You didn’t have to hurry so much.”
[I was starving. How could I eat with you always watching me?]
“Don’t go around eating my people without permission.”
Edwin answered lazily. The cat narrowed its eyes.
They were bright purple now—not their usual amber.
Purple meant “monster.”
Only a great monster could have such intense purple eyes.
Edwin must have known that, but he didn’t seem scared at all as he faced the cat possessed by a great monster.
He even clicked his tongue in annoyance, and the monster lost its confidence and looked away.
[If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in such a miserable state right now.]
