The Northern Archduke No Longer Desires a Savior
The morning sun had risen, but the bedroom curtains remained firmly drawn. The room, shrouded in darkness, was filled only with the lingering heat from our tangled bodies through the night and the musky traces of our lovemaking.
"……."
My chest felt tight. Looking down, I saw Elina Veronica buried face-first against it, clinging to me desperately.
Her limbs wrapped around me like an octopus's tentacles.
I'm suffocating to death here.
I tried to shift slightly, and she—who I'd thought was asleep—reacted instantly.
"Don't go!"
She jerked her head up. Her unfocused eyes trembled. Her face, pale and disheveled amid her tousled white hair, looked gaunt, but her gaze gleamed with a chilling intensity.
"Where are you going? Leaving me behind?"
Her nails dug into my arm. It wasn't pain that hit first—it was goosebumps. This wasn't love.
It was the desperate obsession of survival instinct, terrified her lifeline might snap.
"I'm not going anywhere, Elina. I was just thirsty and wanted some water."
I stroked her cheek gently as I spoke softly. At my touch, her taut nerves melted away like a lie.
"Ah... water...."
She let out a sigh of relief.
"Sorry. I thought... you'd vanished."
Her voice trailed off. I reached for the water pitcher on the bedside table.
But even that brief moment was too much for her—she wrapped her arms around my waist.
"I'll pour it. You... just stay still."
She snatched the pitcher from my hand and fed me the water herself, like a nurse tending a patient or an owner caring for a pet.
Gulp—! Gulp—!
Her gaze on my throat as I swallowed was viscous, sticky.
"Siegfried."
"Yes."
"From today, dismiss all the soldiers guarding my bedroom."
An unexpected order. She wiped the water from my lips with her thumb and whispered.
"I can't trust anyone. Just imagining those bastards listening to my breaths from outside the door... it makes me want to vomit."
Her paranoia had crossed the line. Even her own guards now felt like spies planted by the old fogeys.
"I only need you. Just you and me—that's enough."
She looped her arms around my neck and kissed me. Her lips, chapped and swollen from the night's abuse.
But she seemed to take even the pain as pleasure, delving deeper.
Perfectly broken.
I inwardly cheered. Isolation. It was the ideal scenario I'd hoped for. No room left in her world for outsiders.
"As you command."
She smiled faintly. It was beautiful, yet fragile, like shattered glass.
* * *
Afternoon, in the office. Elina sat on my lap reviewing documents, stubbornly refusing the perfectly good chair beside us.
"Reject this. The old fools' nonsense isn't worth reading."
She tore up a petition from the nobles. No doubt demanding an investigation into the hero's death and my dismissal as acting knight commander.
"Wise decision."
I wrapped my arm around her waist in agreement. That's when it happened.
Urgent footsteps—then the office door burst open. It was the newly appointed guard captain.
He panted, startled by our position, but averted his eyes as if he dared not comment, and reported.
"Gr-Grand Duke! Big trouble!"
"Barging in without knocking? You want your head on a pike?"
Elina glared icily.
"S-Sorry! But it's an emergency... at the south gate!"
"South gate?"
"An armed group of unknowns approaching! They claim to be... the Pantheon Duke's 'illegitimate son'!"
Leonhart Pantheon? Elina's brow twitched.
Baron Kallion, head of the northern nobles. The old man who hated me most and pressured her relentlessly.
"Illegitimate son? Never heard of a hidden bastard in the Pantheon family."
"He says... he fled family abuse and seeks your protection, Grand Duke...."
Bingo. He'd finally arrived. This world's true protagonist.
Leonhart Pantheon.
The name flashed in my mind. The tragic hero who fled his family's abuse, drawn to Elina by shared hardship, becoming her knight to save the north. But things were different now.
"Protection...?"
Elina's expression twisted subtly. To her, "bastard" was a complex, a raw nerve.
And now some unknown shows up claiming the same plight? I stroked her waist softly and whispered in her ear.
"Smell that, Elina?"
"...What smell?"
"The stench of a trap."
I stimulated her anxiety in a low voice.
"Escaping the Pantheon estate—the most heavily watched central noble house—to come all the way here? Too contrived, don't you think?"
Elina's eyes wavered.
"It's like... a play to tug at your sympathy. Using your bastard origins to slip in with 'we're the same,' lowering your guard."
"……!"
Her gaze hardened coldly. Gears turned in her head, it seemed.
The hero's assassination, noble pressure, and this timely sob story—it all looked like the old men's plot to break her.
"How dare they...!"
She gnashed her teeth. Empathy soured to disgust in an instant.
"Let's go. See what clown dares act before me."
* * *
Before the northern fortress gates. Amid the fierce blizzard, a young man stood wrapped in a tattered cloak.
Blond hair, blue eyes. Clothes ragged, body scarred—but his gaze burned brightly.
Leonhart. This dimension's protagonist.
"Grand Duke! Lady Elina!"
As Elina appeared atop the wall, Leonhart cried out desperately.
"I am Leonhart, bastard son of the Pantheon family! I fled their tyranny to come here. Please, take me in!"
His voice dripped with desperation. Naive eyes believing the fellow sufferer, the northern archduke, would understand and accept him.
But that innocence was the deadliest poison to Elina.
"Bastard, huh...."
Elina looked down coldly.
"So? Pitiful because we're alike? Hide in my arms?"
"Yes! I heard the north judges only by ability, not birth!"
Leonhart tried to prove his worth.
"Take me in! The Pantheons saw me not as kin, but a stain. I just... want to survive."
He shouted desperately. No political scheming in his voice—just raw survival instinct and pure admiration for the archduke who'd risen above the same pain.
"We're alike, aren't we? Bastards finger-pointed by the world, yet unbowed—let's show them!"
His plea shook the soldiers. But that purity was Elina's fatal toxin.
Idiot. Telling a paranoid 'we're the same' to her face.
I stepped closer to Elina and whispered softly.
"Hear that, Elina? Those revolting words."
Her brow furrowed. Her hand gripped the railing tight.
"Daring to equate himself with you. After all the blood and pain to claim this seat... some runaway pup trying to freeload with 'we're the same.'"
I drove the wedge home.
"Or... maybe it's scripted by the old men. Emotional blackmail, poking your sore spot of 'origins' to weaken your heart."
"……!"
Elina's eyes sharpened viciously. Fleeting kinship twisted to disgust, then loathing.
It felt like blatant manipulation, exploiting her trauma for favor.
"Disgusting wretch."
She spat.
"You, same as me? With your cheap tearjerker act to buy my pity? Think I wouldn't see you're the old men's clown!"
Leonhart below looked bewildered.
"Gr-Grand Duke? What do you... I'm not! I truly admire you...!"
"Shut up!"
Elina's roar echoed across the northern snowfields.
"Seize him! He's a traitor!"
"Shoot!"
At my shout, archers on the wall loosed their bows. Arrows rained down.
Leonhart drew his sword in panic, batting them away. His swordplay was no joke.
As expected of the protagonist. A few arrows wouldn't kill him. Deflecting a volley with a battered blade was knight commander level.
"Hoo...."
As soldiers marveled—
"Look."
I sneered.
"A bastard abused from birth with that swordsmanship? Absurd. That's the trained killer's technique of systematic upbringing."
One word from me, and soldiers' eyes shifted. Admiration turned to suspicion.
Not a pitiful fugitive—a trained assassin infiltrating via sympathy.
"Siegfried."
Elina clutched my clothes. She trembled.
Loathing for one who prodded her complex. Anxiety it might be real.
"You... handle it. That gaze... I hate it. Feels like it's piercing me."
She clung. Desiring to smash the mirror reflecting herself.
"Don't worry."
I kissed her hand.
"Anything that bothers Elina's eyes, I'll remove. Even if it's real."
I leaped from the wall.
Thud—!
Dust rose. I rose slowly, drawing Gram.
Golden mana enveloped the blade.
"Out of the way! I have words for the Grand Duke! We need to clear this misunderstanding!"
Leonhart yelled at me, eyes full of injustice and rage.
But even that gaze was prey to me.
"Too bad, kid."
I pointed my sword tip at him.
"Your Grand Duke's busy. Throwing tantrums at me."
"What?"
"And 'bastard alliance'? So cliché. Our Elina hates that mawkish crap most."
"Who... are you?"
Leonhart growled, sensing instinctively.
The black hand puppeteering the archduke from the wall was me.
"Me? Siegfried."
I grinned.
"The guy who claimed this spot before you arrived."