Chapter 52
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: The Grand Duke's Name
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“Then why... did you hold Karl back?”
“......!”
The grand duke's chilling breath settled over the bedroom.
“You, whom I thought of as no different from my own son... you, who claimed to love Karl so dearly... why did you make that child unable to stand?”
The grand duke's grip tightened.
Karla's pupils shook wildly.
'He... knew?'
The grand duke's other hand seized Karla's chest, right over her heart.
Grip.
“Agh...! Your Grace...!”
A sharp pain bloomed from her chest, crushed by the grand duke's iron grip.
Her eyes trembled with agony greater than the pain from her swollen breasts on the day she first nursed Kairun, when even a brush would draw screams as if her veins might burst.
A horrific pressure came with it, like forcing her delicate palm onto a rough wooden staff and clenching her fist to shatter it.
“Ngh...!”
But Karla swallowed the pain as a groan instead of a scream.
This was the breast that had nursed Kairun.
She had rationalized trying to kill her stepson simply because he wasn't her biological child, whom she had birthed and nursed herself.
'Yes... this is my atonement...'
The karma born of her twisted maternal love returned as pain through her husband's rough touch.
“Karla...”
Her ribs, starkly visible even through her clothes, brushed the grand duke's wrist.
“You've lost so much weight. Because of the poison.”
“......!”
“Did you think I wouldn't know?”
The grand duke laughed coldly.
“That you swallowed the same poison as Karl and are dying from it.”
The grand duke knew.
He knew she was the one who poisoned him.
And that guilt had driven her to poison herself as well.
He had watched it all.
“Ah, ahh...”
Terror-stricken, Karla could only gape silently.
Even in her silence, was it because he knew she was being blackmailed by Slokina?
To the shocked Karla, the grand duke began revealing his dark inner thoughts.
“Once bitten by a snake's fangs, it's already after the snake has fully prepared its next strike.”
The grand duke whispered lowly, without loosening his hold on her throat.
“Even if you realize it's lurking after your legs go numb from the venom, you can't rashly strike the snake's head. With crippled legs, you can't reach out far, and the snake will already be preparing its next venom in that gap.”
Slokina.
Those cunning snakes held Karla hostage.
A rash move could endanger Karla—and Kairun.
“So I needed time. After learning Karl was dying... I waited for a solid justification.”
“Wh-what justification...?”
“A justification for war.”
The grand duke laughed hollowly.
“My advantage over Karl is that I'm the sort of scum who can use even my family's deaths as justification.”
“......!”
“I waited for Karl to die. Only then would I have the pretext to thoroughly crush your homeland, that damned Slokina.”
A father who planned revenge holding his son's death hostage.
The father had stayed silent, waiting for Slokina to cross the line, for his son to breathe his last.
“Those revolting Slobenheim bastards... I planned to cut them down one by one with my own hands.”
A red glint blazed in the grand duke's eyes.
Fueled by the killing intent honed over years of watching his son die.
“The Slobenheim royals... I recited the names of those with that filthy blood every night. The king, the queen, and that second prince Oscar who blackmailed you.”
His grip tightened further.
“I thought of flaying their skins to hang on the walls, stripping their bones one by one to grind into dust on a millstone. Then mixing that powder with salt and scattering it across Slokina's fertile lands to make them barren forever, nothing able to grow eternally.”
His voice was calm, but the content was straight from hell.
“I'd pile their corpses into a dam to block the flowing rivers, letting the rotting water flood their royal castle. To repay them a million times—no, a hundred million times—the pain my son endured.”
“Y-Your Grace...”
The anger and madness that had bulked up behind her husband's silence grew destructively proportional to the depth of his love for Karl.
“It failed spectacularly, but... that's why I absorbed the foreign clans to build strength... and waited for you to see it through.”
The grand duke's gaze pierced Karla.
“But...”
For the first time, the grand duke's voice shook, after his earlier chilling words delivered so coldly.
“Today, you changed your mind. What changed you?”
The grand duke asked as if genuinely curious.
“All you changed was wasting away yourself and Karl. Was it Eisen? Or that irritating barbarian? The imperial prince? Or... just a final whim now that death is near?”
Tears streamed endlessly from Karla's eyes.
Her throat constricted, she struggled to move her lips.
“...Kairun.”
“Kairun?”
“That child has grown into a man who must stoop to meet my eyes.”
Karla recalled her son's gaze from earlier.
“And he showed me a side just like Karl... wanting to protect us all. He called a sinner like me 'mother' and helped me stand.”
“......”
The grand duke's eyes wavered.
Kairun, whom he'd seen only as an immature youngest.
That child had become an adult first, following Karl amid his twisted parents.
The grand duke asked no more.
One hand encircled Karla's throat again, the other still clutching her bony chest, as he bowed his head.
And claimed her lips.
“Mmph... mmph!”
Karla's scream muffled against the grand duke's lips into futile gasps.
The choking pressure and the hot invasion of her lips.
Her body heated under the intense kiss whose nature—love, murder, or punishment—was unknowable.
A long while later.
The grand duke pulled away.
“Hah... hah...”
Karla collapsed onto the bed, gasping for breath.
“Seeing you pant like this, your complexion finally has some color.”
The grand duke roughly stroked her cheek.
“But... you're still too thin.”
“......”
“Not like when you haunted the kitchens to learn desserts for Karl, burning your hands... laughing as you ate the ruined ones.”
Back then, Karla had been happy without guilt.
The grand duke remembered his wife from those days.
“Your punishment... I'll postpone until you regain that figure.”
He granted a reprieve from punishment.
But also promised another chance.
The grand duke sat on the bed's edge and rubbed his dry face.
“My final duty as grand duke... will likely go down as a failure. And you'll be the one recording it.”
The grand duke muttered in a self-mocking tone.
“Originally, after Karl died, I planned to pass the title to Kairun... and make cleaning up the bloodbath in Slokina kingdom his first duty.”
A heartless plan to hand his son revenge's blade atop his brother's corpse.
“Even the start failed. Kairun... saved his brother and ruined all my plans.”
The grand duke chuckled.
But a strange relief mingled in his laugh.
“Kairun... he'll learn much from Karl at the academy.”
“......!”
Karla's eyes widened.
Permission.
Permission for Karl to go to the academy—and for Kairun to accompany him.
“As early as tomorrow morning. Karl will head to Eisen Guard. There's the prince, but for such sudden matters, it's easier to coordinate with the academy from there.”
The grand duke said as he pulled the covers over her.
“You'll be unwell now too... but say your goodbyes. You won't see him for a while.”
“Your Grace... thank you... sob... thank you...”
Karla sobbed, clutching her husband's hand.
The grand duke gazed down at his wife, then slowly bowed his head.
This time, he kissed her makeup-smeared forehead.
As he drew back, he whispered lowly into the ear of Karla, who stared up blankly.
“And... not 'Your Grace.'”
“......”
“Kain. Call me Kain. I want to hear it from your lips again after so long, Karla.”
Kainharz.
Shedding the Northguard Grand Duke's mantle, he asked for the pet name used only as her husband.
“Kain...”
“Tonight... even if your thick makeup scent gives me a headache, I'll endure. I'll stay by your side until dawn.”
The scent of poison, illness, masked by makeup.
Embracing it all, the grand duke pulled his wife into his arms.
Spring blossoms were already blooming in Eisen Guard, but at last, the long winter ended in their hearts.
The next morning.
Silence hung in the Northguard Grand Duke's study.
The grand duke stood by the window, hands clasped behind his back, gazing outside.
Behind him stood Karl in his wheelchair, with the Eisen Baron at his side.
After a long time.
The grand duke slowly turned.
“I permit it.”
The grand duke spoke.
“Go to the academy.”
“......!”
Karl's shoulders jerked sharply.
The permission he'd dreamed of.
But the grand duke's words didn't end there.
“Go, receive treatment... and as you told me yesterday, stand again.”
Not just permission for convalescence—but acceptance of his son's challenge to prove the family's pride with his broken body.
“And... take care of Kairun.”
The grand duke's voice softened slightly.
“He has talent but is still immature. Guide him as his brother should.”
As his brother.
Acknowledging him not as the family's shame, but as a sturdy older brother to lead his sibling.
Tears Karl had held back fell, wetting his knees.
And from the wheelchair, he bowed deeply.
“Thank you... thank you, Father.”
His voice trembled, barely coming out.
“I will... I will become your proud son once more. In a way worthy of the Northguard name...”
“Yes. I expect it.”
The grand duke replied curtly and turned his gaze.
His eyes shifted to the Eisen Baron standing beside.
His eyes narrowed.
A sharp gaze tinged with an odd amusement.
“That said, Eisen.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Even traveling with the prince... bringing two large carriages is overkill. Too prepared.”
“......”
It was a subtle jab at how the baron, suspecting Karl's condition and family affairs, hadn't reported directly but orchestrated the situation indirectly.
'He knew everything yet chose to hide it from me. Sly fox.'
Had Eisen reported immediately, the grand duke might have refused Karl's convalescence out of pride.
Eisen knew the grand duke's temperament best, so he created an irrefutable situation—even using the grand duchess.
'That's why I've trusted you most. Like Kairun did.'
A light jab at that sly worldly wisdom.
Eisen read the grand duke's intent and grinned brazenly.
“You overpraise me. This old man nearing retirement just has short reach... so I prepared for contingencies in advance.”
“Short reach... that reached my bedroom threshold?”
“Haha, coincidence.”
The gazes of two old wolves clashed in the air.
The grand duke chuckled and waved it off.
“Enough. Thanks to you... I reclaimed what I nearly lost.”
He murmured lowly, looking out the window.
“I hope Kairun... takes after you. Not just a fool swinging a sword.”
“I'll do my best.”
Thud.
Eisen pushed Karl's wheelchair and left the study.
“And I hope your son... takes after you.”
The grand duke swallowed his regret alone for the soon-to-retire Eisen.