SPRH 4

Chapter 4

“Gasp!”

I turned my head toward the man and drew a startled breath.

My right leg still draped over the railing.

‘Declan Pergnath.’

Now that I was actually facing Declan, I could only stare at him blankly with surprised eyes.

‘They said he was badly burned in a fire when he was ten. He lost his parents in that accident.’

That was why he wore gloves even in summer and covered half his face with a silver mask.

Thinking about it made my heart ache in a way.

‘They said he still sometimes feels pain in the burned areas.’

It wasn’t real pain—it must be trauma. He had witnessed his parents being swept away and killed by the flames right before his eyes.

‘If I told him that I feel a sense of kinship because I’m all alone in the world too, he’d probably laugh at me.’

My gaze briefly rested on his gloved hand before traveling upward.

In that instant, his eyes and mine locked precisely.

“Were you startled by my appearance? My apologies.”

He spoke in a voice resembling the chilly air of an autumn night, yet he did not release my wrist.

‘How outrageous!’

Feeling his gaze brush against my exposed calf for a fleeting moment, I hurriedly lowered my leg.

“No, Your Grace.”

I righted my posture and corrected his assumption. Then I shook the hand he held, silently asking him to let go.

From the moment I accepted that I had transmigrated into a novel, I had placed him as my number one candidate for a husband.

But I had to be careful. I couldn’t risk jumping into a fire while trying to avoid a piece of trash.

‘Hiding the fact that my ability has awakened from Declan will be terribly difficult. Perhaps even impossible.’

Declan’s first impression was exactly as the novel had described—a cold-blooded man, precisely that. His firmly set lips, as though he could not tolerate even a single flaw, made it seem no one would dare speak to him carelessly. His sharp gaze, suffocating in its intensity, made it seem impossible to utter a lie in his presence. Just his steady stare alone felt like it would make me voluntarily confess all my secrets.

“You say it isn’t so?”

Declan broke through my thoughts and asked again.

“Yes. What startled me was that a strange man suddenly grabbed my wrist.”

I calmly explained that I had certainly not been frightened by his mask.

“Is that so? Children usually cry just from looking at my face.”

“I’m a rather brave child.”

I answered while staring directly at his masked face.

“My, now I’m the one who should apologize. I’ve unintentionally frightened you.”

“It’s alright. Everyone says that, you know.”

My wrist was still held in his grasp. If anything, the grip seemed to have grown stronger.

“Even if everyone says it, that doesn’t make it a polite thing to say.”

He released my wrist—or so I thought—only to take my hand again, lift it, and bring it close to his lips.

“Allow me to apologize properly, Young Lady Liriope Akis.”

His lips pressed firmly against the back of my hand.

‘A kiss on the hand? From a man who supposedly never touches women with his bare skin?’

The lips of a man who seemed like everything about him would be rigid were surprisingly soft. The unfamiliar sensation left me unable to pull my hand away even as he lingered.

“Then I shall also apologize properly. I will never again attempt to die in Your Grace’s presence.”

As his lips left my hand, I answered vaguely and hurriedly pulled my hand back, tucking it behind me. Truthfully, I wanted to clear up the misunderstanding that I hadn’t actually been trying to die just now, but I kept my mouth firmly shut. I couldn’t risk revealing that I had been following the black-haired man in the garden because I’d mistaken him for someone else.

“Hahaha, now that’s a welcome thing to hear.”

Declan laughed freely.

‘He can laugh like this?’

I stared at Declan, surprised by these glimpses of a side so different from my frightening first impression. Then, a certain passage from the original work suddenly came to mind.

‘It said he became cold-blooded after losing all his subordinates in the monster war in some mountain range. That hasn’t happened yet.’

In the novel, he was a cold-blooded man who would not hesitate to kill even a child for the sake of revenge. He was also described as having a prickly personality, extremely averse to physical contact with others because of his burn scars.

‘It said he never even entered the bridal chamber with the wife the Emperor chose for him. He ignored her completely.’

He didn’t even share the marriage vow kiss with his wife. He merely scrawled his signature on the marriage contract, left his wife abandoned in a separate wing, and never sought her out again. The following year, Declan departed to subjugate monsters at the Emperor’s command.

[“Duke Declan Pergnath was impotent! I remain pure to this very moment!”]

Six months later, when news came that Declan and his army had been annihilated, his wife broadcast his shame to the entire world. Thus he went from being the Empire’s hero to the Empire’s eunuch. Having lost all his subordinates to the Emperor’s scheme, Declan returned alone a year later. And twenty years after that, the male protagonist visiting Declan—who was preparing revenge against the Emperor—was the opening of the novel.

What I had focused on here was that Declan was impotent, and that was the reason I had placed him as my number one husband candidate. If he was known to be impotent, he wouldn’t force himself on me.

‘To think such an excellent body is missing that function.’

Feeling unnecessarily sorry and regretful, my gaze naturally drifted below his navel.

“What are you thinking about so intently?”

Snap! He flicked his finger in front of my eyes.

‘Just thinking about how unfortunate you are.’

Since I couldn’t say that out loud, I simply smiled brightly. It was only natural that I would feel sorry for Declan, who possessed a physique superior to others. His offspring could have inherited that exceptional physique as well—what an enormous loss to the world of the novel.

Perhaps my smile displeased him, for his left eyebrow twitched.

“My companions have arrived. You should be safe now, so I’ll be on my way.”

Leaving those words behind, Declan vaulted lightly over the terrace railing.

—

Leaving the noisy banquet hall behind, Declan unconsciously touched his lips.

‘Liriope Akis, she said. Mental age of seven.’

Seven? The girl who had looked directly into my eyes when we first met and greeted me? She seemed to understand every word the nobles used at the banquet. Of course, she hadn’t responded to the rude nobles, but those were not the eyes of someone who couldn’t understand.

It was more like—the attitude of someone listening to a neighborhood dog barking as they walked past.

‘She stared at me intently when I entered.’

He, who did not even dance at banquets, never kissed the backs of women’s hands even as a courtesy. Knowing that people feared him, he never rested his gaze on anyone for long. There were only two cases in which he kept his gaze on someone for long: when they were someone he had to kill, or someone he had to protect.

And yet, a woman who was neither had caught his gaze. Specifically, eyes that resembled transparent blue glass marbles.

It was probably because of those blue eyes that he had impulsively kissed the back of her hand. It had been so long since he’d met eyes so pure, devoid of fear or disgust.

‘If she doesn’t flinch upon seeing my face for the first time, she’s no child.’

The red wyvern engraved on his silver mask had been deliberately carved to intimidate enemies he had recently fought in war. Hence the nickname that followed: the Monster Duke of the Silver Mask.

‘With burn scars all over my body, not just my face, it’s a nickname that suits me perfectly.’

He twisted his lips in self-derision.

—If you keep disobeying your mother, the Monster Duke will come and take you away!

In enemy nations, mothers sometimes said such things when scolding their children. Indeed, children who saw him for the first time burst into tears. Whether they were enemy children or children of his own homeland.

‘She seemed too composed to have a mental age of seven.’

If so, why was she pretending to have a low mental age?

‘There were bruises scattered on her legs. They weren’t marks from falling or bumping into something……’

He understood. The daughter born to the water spirit who had eloped with a commoner knight. If her mother had at least been alive, her life might have been less miserable, but unfortunately Liriope had lost her mother as soon as she was born.

‘Anyway, why did she make that kind of face earlier?’

He recalled how her eyebrows had drooped as she looked below his waist. Somehow feeling distinctly unpleasant, the hand that had been resting on his lips dropped.

Just then, a dark figure approached Declan from the shadows.

“Commander, why are you leaving so early? It’s a rare banquet—couldn’t you enjoy yourself a little longer?”

It was Jeremy Scott, with his short-cropped brown hair and sturdy shoulders—unmistakably a soldier. Jeremy was the son of the guard captain who had died alongside the late Duke and Duchess in the fire. He was also a close friend who had studied and trained in swordsmanship alongside Declan like a brother.

Jeremy, his brown eyes full of mischief, pointed toward a group of women.

“Enjoy yourself alone. And don’t drag the other adjutants into it.”

“But Commander. A strapping man needs a strapping night— Yes, Commander. I’ll enjoy myself alone.”

Jeremy ran his mouth until Declan’s murderous glare silenced him immediately. Declan took another step before suddenly halting.

“Look into Liriope Akis. And Philip Quaid as well.”

“Pardon? Understood, Commander!”

Jeremy’s momentarily surprised eyes sparkled with curiosity. This was the first time he’d been asked to gather information on a woman—he was clearly imagining something strange. Especially since he’d been asked to investigate the man she was supposedly engaged to.

“It’s not like that.”

“Yes, understood perfectly, Commander!”

Though Declan told him not to misunderstand, Jeremy ran off excitedly toward where the young ladies were gathered.