Chapter 55
It was because it had once made the headlines in the newspapers—an item used to cut off a boy’s hands after he had promised his master he wouldn’t steal, yet committed theft in secret.
Not only was the price brutal, but with only two pairs existing across the entire continent, it was notorious for being nearly impossible to obtain… Oh? As it happened, I had a top-grade necklace made of Inhyeop stone and a pair of garnet earrings that I needed to dispose of immediately.
Thanks to that, I was able to get my hands on the magic tool easily—though, of course, Goetz had to run himself ragged to make it happen.
“Here. Take it.”
I handed her a pair of thin thread bracelets.
Even after taking them, Mrs. Becker looked as though she was on the verge of tears, unable to fasten them herself.
“Repeat the promise you made earlier—exactly as you said it.”
“M-Miss…”
Once these bracelets were fastened and the promise was made, breaking that promise would instantly result in both wrists being cleanly severed. It wouldn’t be life-threatening, but it would be a serious problem for someone trying to seduce the Count.
“If you don’t say it, I’ll go straight to your mother with the photographs, the necklace, and the earrings.”
Mrs. Becker trembled.
“You swore with such enthusiasm just a moment ago. If you truly meant to keep your promise, why would this be so hard for you?”
“M-Miss…”
I didn’t back down. Mrs. Becker looked more terrified of me than of this underground prison, her expression utterly stricken with fear.
‘Without evidence, Mrs. Becker will be released.’
And I had made sure she was convinced my mother wouldn’t be able to find that evidence. Mrs. Becker would put on quite the performance.
She would turn all of this into a false accusation against my mother.
‘And besides, Fernando and the Count aren’t on my mother’s side right now. Mrs. Becker will soon make an even more glamorous comeback than before.’
When that happened, her days of secretly moving about the mansion like this would be over.
She would replace my mother—who would lose all trust because of this incident—and I would be the one holding her leash.
First, I would cut off all my mother’s hands and feet—her underlings—and fill those vacancies with my own people.
As I came up from the underground prison, a marble pergola came into view.
Pale pink and light blue rose vines climbed the white, birdcage-like structure.
Seeing those pale pink roses made me think of Charlotte—the one I’d met yesterday in that dream-like mental debuff.
‘No, I should call it a re-experience of my past life rather than a dream.’
It had felt like I’d truly met her yesterday—
That moment when I, tongue cut and slumped in a prison cell, and Charlotte, flanked by Zion and the Crown Prince as her escorts, looked each other in the eye.
Pale pink hair. Light blue eyes.
A heroine made up of nothing but harmless, sweet colors like cotton candy.
Charlotte, who was said to give off the scent of real roses instead of an artificial fragrance.
Drawn to the roses as if enchanted, I headed for the pergola and sat in the chair placed in the center.
I brushed my fingertips over the petals of the pale pink roses that so closely resembled Charlotte’s hair.
“How could I get them to hate me a little less?”
The scornful gaze I’d received in that dream came to mind, and I couldn’t help but let out a faint laugh.
That was when it happened.
With a thud! loud enough to be heard clearly, someone suddenly yanked my wrist from behind.
“W-Whoa!”
“Babe, you okay? I heard the Count’s estate was on fire.”
I turned my head.
Panting heavily, a red-haired man came into view.
“Colonel… Victor?”
“You—huff—They said there was a fire. Why are you fine?”
Victor usually didn’t take things seriously.
It was a habit he’d developed after rolling around in the underworld where death could come at any time. Taking life seriously only made an already gutter-like existence even more miserable.
In his world, poverty, murder, and betrayal claimed lives daily. If you were serious about everything, you couldn’t stay sane.
“The other day, I heard the Albrecht estate had caught fire. Tons of people died. I was hoping that wicked woman got hurt real bad— not killed, of course—just enough to bleed plenty of purification out of her. Am I right?”
So it was strange—very strange—that he had bolted over the moment he’d heard the news.
Despite hating Odette so much, he’d run here in a rush, following the scent of roses.
And now the woman whose wrist he was holding was looking at him perfectly calmly, as if wondering what his problem was.
“Oh, I suppose the news got mixed up—it wasn’t the estate but the research lab that caught fire.”
She suppressed her surprised expression and offered him a polite smile, but Victor had already caught the emotions flickering in her turquoise eyes just before that—
Annoyance, discomfort, irritation. Realizing that made Victor feel like an idiot for standing there drenched in sweat.
‘Why the hell did I run all the way here like a fool?’
And all to save a woman who reeked so unpleasantly to him.
‘Who the hell spread that ridiculous rumor?’
That the Count’s estate was burning. Those bastards. When he got back, he’d put them through a death drill.
Feeling irritated, Victor spoke in a sweet, mocking voice.
“Good thing, babe. I thought I’d miss the scene of the century—you only get to see you die once.”
‘Yeah. So what if she really burned to death in a fire?’
Now that he’d said it, it almost explained why he’d come running.
Maybe he truly had just wanted to see the grand spectacle. Once he stopped lying to himself, Victor began to believe his own words.
That he’d run like a dog from outside the capital, that this was the first muscle ache he’d felt since becoming a transcendent—all because he didn’t want to miss watching her die.
His words should have been more than enough to get under her skin, yet Odette simply replied calmly,
“Wait just a moment. You’ve been sweating a lot—let me bring you some water.”
With that, she headed toward the water pump beside the annex.
‘A transcendent with fire abilities getting heatstroke? Zion would laugh his head off.’
And at night, no less. He unbuttoned his shirt roughly like the scoundrel he was, then suddenly froze mid-action.
‘Why’s she going herself?’
What noble fetches water for a commoner? More than that—why was she wandering around the annex without a single lady’s maid by her side?
Victor had once been kidnapped by a noblewoman and kept as her plaything. He knew nobles’ habits well.
The palm-sized corsets that had been all the rage for decades meant that fainting was standard, and with bad luck, those corsets could even kill you in the street.
Which meant there had to be an attendant nearby.
‘She’s the Count’s daughter and the Empire’s only purifier, yet she’s wandering around without even a single maid?’
Last time, he’d met her in the slums, so he’d let it slide—after all, a noblewoman sneaking there for shady business would obviously ditch her servants. But tonight?
High-ranking nobles often didn’t even know water came from a pump. For them, water appeared when they crooked a finger at a maid.
‘Something’s not adding up.’
Suddenly, the odd feeling he’d had when they first met came back to him.
“Here’s some water.”
His thoughts were broken by the woman’s voice as she returned with a clear water bottle and glass in hand.
“Still, thank you for coming to save me.”
Odette said it with a gentle smile.
Once he’d started noticing something strange, even the fragility at the edge of that smile felt suspicious—
As if it were part of a survival strategy.
