TLSD 02

Chapter 2

As Elio came face-to-face with that chillingly twisted expression, her breath hitched. Had she wounded the pride of this noble knight?

“Look, first of all, please don’t misunderstand. I didn’t come here trying to do anything untoward with a pious, great knight like you using my body.”

“Right. As if you’d come to seduce me looking like that.”

“Exactly. That’s why I came looking like this.”

Watching for any hint of impending contempt in his eyes, Elio pulled her skirt up to her thighs with hands that trembled badly.

“I-I mean, with bruises like—”

She wanted to add that she would never dare try to seduce him with such a wretched, battered body, that she wasn’t some absurd creature like that, and that she just wanted a little pity.

Yet, the terrifying look hardening in the man’s eyes made her mouth go bone-dry. She felt as though she might choke and pass out right then and there. The man looked ready to banish her hideous appearance with a greatsword.

“I-I came because I have a favor to ask.”

She hastily pulled her tattered dress back down, blurting out the true purpose that had brought her to Carlos in the first place.

“I really won’t be a burden. Could you take me with you on your return journey? If you’ll just travel with me across the Ogre Mountains, I’ll find my own way from there.”

Her father was right. Meeting him was a stroke of divine fortune.

A chance to escape.

Because escaping a territory surrounded by the Ogre Mountains entirely on her own was impossible. She would have to grasp even the hand of the God of Death to cross them. She had to escape, no matter what.

“Of course, I’ll pay the price. You know healing potions are extraordinarily precious, right? I happen to know how to make them. I’ll brew you as many as you want.”

Desperate to prove her worth, Elio grew frantic. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her heart threatening to leap right out of her ribcage.

Hustily lifting the edge of the robe, she fished a small medicine vial out of her wet dress pocket.

“I made all of these myself. Try using it. It’s a genuinely top-tier potion, and since it’s a liquid formula, it’s easy to apply.”

Carlos took the vial into his hand. Elio brightened, holding out her palm.

“I’ll give you plenty! At least ten… no, twenty or more!”

Weighing the vial in his hand as if gauging something, Carlos uncorked it and poured the entire contents straight onto a handkerchief.

“H-Hold on, are you planning to use that much all at once? It’s so highly concentrated that just a few drops—”

Suddenly, a massive hand loomed right before her eyes, and she recoiled, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

Splash.

“……Ah?”

A soaked handkerchief was pressed gently against her bruised cheek. Holding her chin firmly in his grip, Carlos peered down into her fluttering eyes.

“Does it hurt?”

Of course it hurts!

Elio stared in bewilderment into the man’s pitch-black eyes before hurriedly dropping her gaze to his feet.

“No? Are you testing it on the bruising? This potion is so incredibly effective that if you just rub it into a bruise like this, it heals right away.”

Bending down on one knee, Carlos began slowly massaging her cheek once more.

An awkward silence filled the room, broken only by the sound of their breathing.

Elio tightly laced her fingers together, staring strictly at the blazing fireplace and swallowing hard.

That scar-covered hand moved as gently as if it were caressing a newborn baby’s downy hair.

Why is he doing this? She bit her lip, eyeing his merciless face with a confused expression.

Perhaps he found her pitiful. Or perhaps he possessed at least a shred of traditional chivalry.

Her tense eyes rolled cautiously, gleaming like someone who had barely managed to find a sliver of hope.

“How… how is it? Do you li—”

At that exact moment, the doorknob gave a sharp click.

Carlos instantly moved to block her front. Elio stared up with wide, startled eyes at the man now shielding her entire field of vision.

Bang! The door flew open with enough force to rattle the windowpanes, and a sorrowful, piercing shriek rang out through the room.

“How dare you! Violating an innocent maiden!!”

Startled by the deafening, out-of-nowhere bellow, Elio poked her head out from beside Carlos.

“Father…?”

The moment the count standing in the doorway caught sight of her draped in a massive night robe, his lips twitched. Behind his face, distorted by the effort of suppressing a triumphant grin, stood a crisp, pure-white clerical vestment.

As soon as Elio laid eyes on the clergyman standing with his hands behind his back, looking over her and Carlos, she stopped breathing as if she had just tumbled off a cliff. She felt dizzy, as though all the blood had drained from her body in an instant.

Violation… a clergyman bursting in out of nowhere….

It was blatantly obvious as a malicious scheme to smear Schünhardt’s name.

No sane person would pull a stunt like this. Her father’s profound stupidity made her stomach churn with nausea and revulsion. This wasn’t seizing a chance to make him a son-in-law; this was practically begging to be executed.

“I cannot simply overlook a forced nocturnal assault upon an unmarried maiden!”

With bloodshot eyes, the count shrieked loudly enough to raise the roof, digging his elbow into the clergyman’s side. Clutching a holy book and a glowing blue orb, the priest took a stride forward.

“In accordance with Section 25, Article 12 of the Holy Scripture, I shall inspect the proof of the wedding night. Every detail of this proceeding shall be recorded without omission within the blue orb.”

The clergyman strode toward the bed, his vestment fluttering. Just how high-ranking of an official had her father bribed? He bore a staggering four crescent-moon insignias embroidered upon his chest.

Elio bit down on her trembling lips and looked up at Carlos.

He took a slow, deliberate drag from the cigar resting in the ashram overflowing with butts. His cool expression, stripped of any readable emotion, felt so chilling that it instead resembled a volcano on the absolute brink of eruption.

“There is blood.”

Elio snapped her head around in horror. The bedsheets lifted by the clergyman were stained with splotches of bright crimson and dried white fluid.

“What on earth is that…?! No! We really didn’t do anything! I broke into this room without permission first—”

The clergyman cut off Elio’s frantic, scream-like denial.

“The lady’s honor shall be protected. This was not the lady’s fault.”

Elio stared blankly at the sheer shamelessness of the smiling priest. Whose fault was this fabricated wedding night supposed to be, then? For a split second, she heard Carlos’s unnaturally slowed breathing, and an overwhelming dread washed over her—the terrifying certainty that her throat would be neatly slit for treason any second now.

“In accordance with Section 25, Article 15 of the Scripture, if an unmarried maiden is lured and forcibly bedded, the suitor must pay the full bride price in full and take her as his wife.”

The windows rattled with a violent clatter, and the clergyman’s stern pronouncement echoed like a ringing in her ears.

“If you acknowledge this forced union with the Aquitaine lady and refuse to take responsibility, this matter shall be formally brought before a court of law. Until a verdict is reached, your marriage schedule with Her Royal Highness the Princess shall be postponed indefinitely.”

At the devastating words that cast total darkness over everything, Elio’s palms grew slick with sweat. To think he had been on the verge of marrying a princess!

She couldn’t even begin to guess who was pulling the strings behind this desire to stain this man’s reputation and manufacture a scandal about him assaulting a noble lady.

A filthy bedsheet—nothing more than a flimsy pretext for a dirty scandal. A backwater count and a fallen young lady were being used as disposable pawns in the imperial faction’s power struggle.

Cold sweat trickled down her spine. In a fight between leviathans like this, she was moments away from having her neck chopped clean off.

They can just quietly bump off a backwater count’s daughter where nobody looks, right…?

Just as she was chewing her fingernails down to the quick and desperately trying to wrack her blank brain—

“It would appear I was the victim of our wedding night.”

Carlos’s sarcastic voice cut through the air. Elio stopped breathing, her jaw dropping at words that defied all logic.

Judging by his expression, even the clergyman hadn’t anticipated this response; his face twisted uncomfortry as he cautiously tested Carlos’s mood.

“…Are you saying… you acknowledge that you shared a wedding night with the Aquitaine lady…? If so, your engagement schedule with Her Royal Highness the Princess will be annulled immediately. I shall issue an official statement to the Imperial Court.”

“Indeed. It seems Aquitaine treated me to quite a rare, illicit brew from the underworld.”

Carlos spoke with a low, metallic rasp, a mocking edge to his voice. Sensing the ominous tone—which clearly didn’t refer to any ordinary alcohol—Elio grew utterly speechless, stumbling forward to grab his sleeve. A gaze as fathomless as a midnight ocean wrapped tightly around her.

What on earth was that drink my father gave him…?!

“Are you trying to claim my daughter spiked your drink with something? Absurd! There is no way my daughter would do such a thing!”

The count cried out as if deeply aggrieved. Elio looked toward her father with a bewildered expression.

Her father twisted his mouth in a tortured grimace while his cloudy eyes glinted cunningly.

“…Still, knowing you intend to take responsibility for a woman who has lost her chastity eases a father’s troubled mind somewhat. In any case, since the wedding night was forced… you must naturally provide not only the bride price, but financial reparations as well.”

Struck as though by a bolt of lightning, Elio finally snapped back to her senses and shook her head frantically at the sheer absurdity of her father daring to talk about financial compensation. Whoever was pulling the strings from above to manipulate her father, she knew for a fact they would cast them aside like worn-out shoes once they served their purpose.

She poured out a rapid-fire torrent of words, pleading desperately toward Carlos, who stood tall like a grim reaper.

“I—I don’t need a bride price or reparations! We really didn’t do anything at all, did we? Who on earth would believe it was forced? A bedsheet can’t possibly count as proof, and even if we’re dragged into a courtroom, I’ll testify strictly to the truth, so you don’t have to worry! I will never say a single word against you!”

“Elio! Shut your… ahem. You stay quiet. Your father will handle this!”

“I swear it! You don’t need to take responsibility for me! Don’t worry, I’ll only testify to the exact truth! J—Just help me cross the Ogre Mountains…!”

“Elio!! Will you not be quiet? Do you think you can just leave without your father’s permission? An unmarried daughter belongs entirely to her father!”

The count reached out his arm as though ready to strike her across the head.

At that exact moment, Carlos turned around.

As his shadow fell over her, Elio’s throat tightened. The man she had thought might be her lifeline felt terrifyingly close to snuffing out her breath right then and there.

Blocking her from her father, the man looked down at her with a steady, searching gaze as a curl of cigar smoke drifted past the corner of his tilted lips.

“Permission, you say? Count. Why on earth would I need your permission? When I was the one who was clearly forced.”

“……!”

Forced? What on earth was he trying to imply with that line?

Just as the razor-sharp gaze of the inscrutable man became too much to bear, making even her fingertips tremble, his lips slowly parted once more.

“Much to my dismay, I am the one who was violated…. Yet our prospective prelate here insists on strictly notarizing this and demanding my responsibility, leaving me unable to turn a blind eye to a relation formed with a noble lady. I find myself in quite a quandary. Would it be better for me to take responsibility for the woman who stole my first night and obediently bring her back to my territory?”

The corners of his eyes curled in a fierce, savage twist.

“Or would it be correct to bind this woman and the count alike like dogs—charging them with the crime of serving vile, illicit brews found only in the underworld—and haul them off under collective punishment?”

Carlos’s darkened gaze swept past the flushed, sputtering count and finally stopped back on Elio. The moment her eyes met his, her entire body stiffened.

“My bold little lady. What is it that you want?”