Chapter 10
Ergon couldn’t take his eyes off the spot until the carriage carrying Agnes was completely out of sight. He had sent her off in the very carriage he had brought her in, unable to leave her alone in a place he had essentially dragged her to. Ian, who had been watching the whole scene, approached him from behind.
“I think that was a bit much.”
Ergon raised an eyebrow as if to ask, “Me?” and turned his body.
“There’s no way a young noble lady, barely twenty years old, has ever seen such a horrific sight in her life.”
Ian shook his head sympathetically. Then he crossed his arms and hugged his own shoulders.
“Even I’m so scared right now that I’m thinking of sleeping with my parents tonight. How much more frightened must Lady Agnes be?”
“Aren’t your parents in the countryside?”
“That’s not the point I was making.”
Ian, momentarily taken aback, scratched his temple. Even though the situation was understandably tense, his master wouldn’t have normally acted that way.
“Why did you do that? You’re usually so kind to women.”
Ergon was always courteous, polite, and considerate toward women. Until they wanted more.
“Did Lady Agnes perhaps try to touch you, Your Highness?”
“……”
Ergon naturally recalled the day he first met Agnes. She had been wearing a rather sensual dress, flaunting her seductive figure, but that wasn’t why his heart had stirred.
“You’re supposed to be so well-endowed, aren’t you?”
“……”
“No answer? Surely it’s not true?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“Oh.”
That smile he had seen then. Her large eyes had folded into crescents, and between her pink lips, neat white teeth had been revealed.
It was the first time. He had found a woman’s smile beautiful. So, as if bewitched, he had given in to her temptation. Well, in the end, her goal wasn’t him but her cousin’s broken engagement.
“Huh? You didn’t say it wasn’t, did you? Huh?”
As Ian fussed, Ergon turned his back on him. Anyway, Agnes would be safely returned home by the duke’s carriage, so there was no need to worry. More importantly, it was urgent now to find the poison at the guard captain’s house.
Late in the afternoon, it was Charlotte and Victoria who welcomed Agnes back to the count’s residence. Victoria blocked Agnes’s path as she entered the garden.
“I heard you went to the imperial palace?”
Agnes was too mentally exhausted to talk to anyone. The image of the guard captain swinging in the air still lingered in her mind like an afterimage.
But Victoria’s next words shook her to the core.
“Fine. I lost. I’ll tell you where you last saw Enoch, so give up on His Grace the Duke.”
The shock of the broken engagement must have been significant. Without thinking too deeply, Agnes quickly answered.
“Fine. I’ll do that.”
Finding her brother was the priority. Punishing her uncle’s family could wait.
“The last place I saw him was Olfus Hill. Since we’re on the subject, want to go now?”
Victoria crossed her arms and suggested haughtily. Agnes hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
She had secretly used her ability before the emperor that morning, and had just witnessed a corpse. In truth, she didn’t have the strength to lift a finger.
Even so, she decided to follow Victoria because her desire to know Enoch’s whereabouts was that desperate, and also because going back to her room would only make the dead captain come to mind again.
Shortly after, a carriage carrying Charlotte, Victoria, and Agnes arrived at a cliffside.
Olfus Hill was a series of rolling hills adjacent to the coast. The young knight who had driven them there escorted them down and quietly returned to the driver’s seat.
“This is the last place you saw my brother Enoch?”
Agnes walked slowly to the spot Victoria had indicated. Below the sheer cliff, blue waves surged. It felt dangerous, like the maw of a wild beast waiting for prey.
Suddenly struck by a sense of foreboding, Agnes started to step back.
Thump!
Victoria shoved her in the back with both hands. Agnes fell straight off the cliff.
“Enoch died here too. So you die here too.”
Victoria muttered in a somber voice, watching Agnes sink into the black sea.
At the moment she fell from the cliff, Agnes laughed instead.
After being done in like that before, she had trusted them again. No matter how exhausted and out of sorts she had been all day. She laughed at her own patheticness.
Splash!
Plunging into the sea, Agnes swam desperately through the cold water. But her waterlogged dress kept dragging her down. She remembered that she had deliberately fluffed up her skirt for her visit to the palace. Layer after layer of petticoats bound her legs, and the dark waves constantly crashed into her nose and mouth. Amid the pain of her lungs tearing, she held on with all her might.
‘What a waste of effort, you stupid Victoria. No matter how hard you push me, I won’t die.’
Even if she exhausted herself and died, she would just come back to life, as always. But this time, she didn’t want to die, not even for a moment. It was bad enough that she had fallen for Victoria’s cheap trick; dying would make her so angry she’d go mad.
So Agnes decided to live this time. She would survive this by her own strength and take revenge on those horrible people.
With that thought, she slowly closed her eyes. Her body sank completely beneath the water.
Victoria and Charlotte, watching from the cliff, smirked and turned away.
“Cough, cough!”
Fortunately, before the sun had fully set, Agnes reached a pebble beach behind the coastal cliff. She had deliberately swum hard to the opposite side from where she had fallen, afraid that Victoria and Charlotte might be waiting.
Unable to even stand, she crawled along the beach, a pitiful sight. The hem of her dress was torn to shreds, exposing her petticoats. If there was any luck to be found, it was that she had worn two layers of petticoats that day to fluff her skirt, and that the top part of her dress was relatively intact.
Having barely crawled to a spot beyond the waves’ reach, she collapsed onto the pebbles, exhausted. As she spat out the salty seawater, her blurry vision caught sight of rocks in the distance. A dark object was wedged between them.
‘What’s that?’
She felt an intense urge to find out immediately. Summoning all her remaining strength, Agnes staggered to her feet and walked towards the rocks. As the object’s shape became clearer, her heart pounded violently.
“Enoch… Brother?”
It was Enoch’s beloved coat and the shoes he often wore. Agnes rushed over frantically and flipped up the hem of the coat.
[Enoch]
A familiar name was embroidered on the hem. She had embroidered it herself.
“Why, why are these here…!”
The clothes and shoes of Enoch, who had disappeared three months ago, were found in a completely unexpected place. As if they had been waiting for her to discover them.
“Waaah!”
Agnes clutched Enoch’s coat and one shoe to her chest and wailed. In that moment, scenes wildly intertwined and flashed through her mind. At some point during her swim through the rough sea, her gloves had come off; her hands were bare.
“How could you do this to me, Uncle!”
“Jeremy, this is too much, even for you!”
“Don’t touch Agnes! I’m begging you! Please!”
“Just kill me if you have to kill someone!”
Enoch had been angry, pleading, and crying.
Jeremy had stabbed a dagger into Enoch’s neck, George had pushed Enoch off the cliff, and Charlotte and Victoria had watched it all.
“Waaaaah! Brother!”
Enoch had tried to protect Agnes until the very last moment when his own life was threatened.
Agnes felt as if every organ in her body was being torn apart. Her heart ached terribly, as if it had split into pieces. She gritted her teeth so hard to endure it that the taste of blood filled her mouth.
“Huuuh…! Hoo… Hoooh…!”
Agnes sobbed, replaying what had happened to her brother over and over. And she resolved once more.
That she would bring despair far greater than Enoch’s upon those who had been there the moment he fell from that cliff.
