Chapter: 144
“Wait a second… so that lady is the Lord’s daughter?”
The butler struggled to hide his flustered expression as he tried to sort out the turmoil in his mind.
As he tried to accept the situation, memories of the various incidents he had encountered while serving the family over the years flooded back. Those experiences had taught him how to remain calm in any situation.
Before long, a serene smile returned to his face. Although the surprise wasn’t completely gone, he managed to reign in his emotions and avoid creating a scene.
“How can I be certain that the lady is of the Duke’s bloodline?”
The butler’s gaze shifted to where Iris and Lian were chatting.
“Could it be that he wants to keep at least his sister in a good family?”
Most residents of the castle were aware that Iris and Lian were suspected of being of the Duke’s lineage.
No one would dare speak it aloud (those who did were all chased out during their apprenticeship), but one could never be 100% sure.
If someone loose-lipped or bribed had whispered to Lian, everything happening now could be explained.
With slightly murky yet mesmerizing golden eyes, and hair whiter than Lian’s that shimmered with vitality. Stunning beauty and skin kept as flawless as a noble’s. Even their personalities mirrored that of the Duke.
If this was all planned and prepared, it wouldn’t be surprising at all.
“But… this old fool just wants to believe.”
He knew it was foolish, but he yearned to believe that the long-lost bloodline of the Duke had returned, like an ignorant old man.
Unlike the bit moist and gentle aura radiating from the butler, the atmosphere around Iris and Lian felt as solid and cold as the snow piled outside the castle.
Lian was merely stating something he had to say, a predetermined truth, but for Iris, it was a lightning bolt out of the blue.
Iris had gone missing as a baby—so much so that even the butler didn’t know her gender.
In the world she grew up in, she learned more about how close death was than the words “mom” or “dad.”
Carrying the bloodline of the Duke, famed for being the Empire’s greatest sword, and the hero who would save the world, she managed to endure through horrid circumstances. But even that had its limits.
Her first friend, the sister who shared food with her, even the one-eyed rat with which she had bonded over food—all of them had turned cold and still before her eyes.
With no one to lean on, her heart shattered easily. It broke and broke again until it didn’t want to hold any shape at all.
She blocked her ears and closed her eyes to survive. In the silence as quiet as death, Iris wished to sleep forever. Yet cautiously, a warm light approached her.
Iris’s heart, like land greeting the first spring rain after a long winter, slowly regained warmth washed in Lian’s affection.
Every word he spoke was like precious rain falling on her parched emotions, breathing life into them. It felt as though she had found the refuge she had so longed for.
However, a part of her heart remained anxious. Like a small boat swaying in the wind, her heart trembled a little more with each happy moment.
“Is it okay for me to be this happy? What if this happiness turns out to be fake?”
…Why is Lian taking such good care of me?
Whether it was money or power, in the Demon King’s Lands, love or affection demanded an equivalent price. Growing up in such an environment, Iris had always believed that there had to be a cost to gain something.
But Lian demanded nothing. He just poured endless, unfathomable affection on her. While Iris felt happiness, she also felt a growing anxiety that someday this happiness might crumble like a sandcastle.
But suddenly, the word “family” blew away her worries.
“We’re family! It’s only natural to care for and love each other!”
Because they were family, because they shared blood. Same white hair, same golden eyes.
Same… same… same…
To Iris, “family” was a get-out-of-jail-free card allowing her to receive affection from Lian without any strings attached. It was her privilege to love Lian openly, to whine, and to ask for hugs without reserve.
“I was going to tell you… I planned to… but got so excited thinking I could take you home that I forgot. I’m sorry, Iris.”
His slightly droopy white brows and lowered gaze were full of sincere apologies. Lian’s voice, usually as soothing as the warm sunlight on a spring day, sounded today like the eerie call of birds picking at a corpse.
“In the future -…”
His voice felt muffled, as if speaking underwater. From afar, sounds of cheers and applause began to emerge.
A foul scent filled the air, and desperate cries echoed. The stench was unmistakable.
It was, indeed, the smell of the Corpse Disposal Site. The voices from the Arena of Madness, and the chilling silence of her brother’s death that had been cooling down.
The moment Lian denied that Iris was family, she recalled the day Lian had completely left her side.
What had been buried inside Iris started to squirm.
“Would I love someone who’s not even family?”
“You’ll be abandoned.”
“See, you’re already packing up to leave, right?”
Those were sweet whispers that came along with despair.
“Let’s cage him.”
“Let’s lock him so he can’t go anywhere.”
“And shower him with love just like my brother did.”
“Just give back what you’ve received.”
She could chain his ankles or break his legs. Her brother, numb to pain, might just smile as if burdened by nothing at all.
“Let’s build a home at the edge of the world where no one can find them… just like those days when we were so happy together…”
At the moment when her head was drenched in madness, and her white hair began to tint gray, Iris shook her head slightly.
“No, I don’t want that.”
Her eyes, which had returned to their original color, were filled with moisture. Within her gaze existed both longing and emptiness, yet the insanity she had just displayed washed away like a tide.
“I don’t want to make my brother unhappy.”
While she yearned to keep Lian by her side, she also knew that such a desire was her selfishness. Iris genuinely loved Lian, and she didn’t want to cause him suffering.
So, Iris held onto him with desperate longing. Her fingertips trembled like a child who had been abandoned.
“I don’t want you to go! Please don’t abandon me!”
“I’m… I’m your little brother! That’s just natural, right?”
Tears filled her eyes and voice. As the first drops rolled down her cheeks, they fell like a waterfall that could no longer be contained.
In that instant, as if waiting for the cue, a warm embrace enveloped Iris. The hand patting her back carried all the affection Iris had so longed for from Lian’s stiffened body.
In his arms, she wept freely, as if returning to her innocent childhood.
*
“W-was that too sudden for you?”
Lian found himself dumbfounded on how to react to the sight of Iris, sobbing loudly. He cautiously patted her back, just as he had when she was little.
“…When did you grow so much?”
Just the other day, she seemed like she had only begun to walk (an exaggerated memory, of course), and now she had grown tall enough to reach his chin.
While every time she hung on his waist or sat on his knee he’d thought to himself, “Wow, you’ve grown!” it dawned on him only now how much she truly had grown.
Swoosh.
As her sobs morphed into gentle hiccups, her hands slipped down to wrap around Lian’s waist, closing the distance between them perfectly.
“E-eh?”
He was left speechless by the fact that the once warm body of a child had grown into someone so adorably shapely, touching him with smooth curves hitting him in all the right places.
“W-what am I thinking in a situation like this?!”
Shaking his flustered thoughts away, he awkwardly patted Iris’s back as her sobs filled the room.
The butler, watching from a distance, retreated into shadows.
“I’m curious about why I would believe the lady is the Duke’s bloodline, but… it seems now is not the time for that; I should quietly excuse myself.”
He silently exited the room.
Swoosh.
As the door closed soundlessly behind him, the butler fell into contemplation in the hallway.
“Regardless of the circumstances… only when the Lord returns can any confirmation be made.”
With a soft sigh, the butler reflected.
“…Although the Lord doesn’t speak of it, he gets wounded each time incidents like this arise, and I wanted to resolve matters on my own.”
While it was said that the Duke had gone hunting to blow off steam, he wouldn’t have ventured too far in these precarious times, with the Demon King’s Army lurking. The frontline messenger would surely be back within a few days.
Knowing this, he had put off communication while waiting for the Duke’s return, worried about the wounds the Lord might receive when he returned with high hopes.
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