The Weight of a Life Debt
I was nothing more than shit that couldn’t even be used as fertilizer. Yet the Duchess took one step closer to me and began spewing venom so vicious I never could have imagined it coming from her lips.
“……!”
Whoa… Our Duchess is straight-up pissed. Her wording is savage as hell.
For a moment my mind went completely blank and my mouth fell open. Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to hear such unfiltered sexual insults pour from the mouth of a romance-fantasy noblewoman—let alone from the Grand Duchess herself.
Just how furious and heartbroken must she be to soil her own lips with such crude, vulgar words just to tear into me?
But Carla’s venom had no handle. She was wielding a blade without a grip, one that required her to carve out her own flesh just to stab Lumikan and me.
Carla let out a deranged laugh.
“Carla! Shut your mouth!”
Lumikan shouted in panic, but Carla truly had nothing left to lose. She finally flung open the box of tragedy she had kept hidden all this time.
My heart sank with a heavy thud. The cruel fragments of truth I had pieced together that morning in the bathroom while staring at the scars on my—Sena’s—womb were now being dragged into the open by Carla’s blood-soaked scream.
Carla collapsed to the floor, clawing at her own hair as her body twisted in agony.
“M-Madam……!”
Carla collapsed face-first onto the floor and began to sob violently.
Now I understood why Carla had hated Sena so fiercely yet could never cast her out. Why she had to scream in anguish every time she saw her own son Lucian cradled in Sena’s arms.
To save herself and her child, the mistress had taken a fatal wound in her place and lost her own baby. She had been forced to live inside this cursed salvation. She had been vomiting up this vile, nauseating debt of life all this time.
The woman who had been sobbing on the floor suddenly jerked her head up and drove her gaze straight into the darkest, ugliest depths of her husband, the Grand Duke.
Tears of blood finally spilled from my eyes.
“……What nonsense are you spewing.”
Carla rose to her feet and spat poison directly into Lumikan’s face.
“……!!”
The Grand Duke bastard deliberately synced their pregnancy timelines just so he could secretly swap the legitimate wife’s son with the maid’s son?
Even the most trashy drama wouldn’t dare use a plot this fucked-up for fear of tanking their ratings. Yet the sight of that horny Grand Duke bastard standing in front of me made it all too believable.
Hmm… Yeah, that bastard would absolutely do something like that.
He wanted to give the woman he loved power and honor, but she kept rejecting it. So his insane obsession led him to the conclusion that even if it was her bloodline, he would make her child the rightful heir of the Grand Duchy. That hideous scheme was now exposed for all the world to see through Carla’s mouth.
“Shut your mouth, Carla……!!”
The Grand Duke’s most hideous inner thoughts, the very bottom he never wanted anyone to see, had been dragged into the light. Lumikan, now properly scratched raw, roared.
His shoulders heaved violently. Then the Grand Duke’s massive hand rose high into the air, ready to strike his own wife.
This crazy fucker’s gone so far he’s trying to hit his wife now?! Wait… he’s already done worse, hasn’t he? Like grabbing her tits.
Just before that hand could cut through the air and slap Carla’s cheek—
Swish—!
My will moved, but Sena’s body reacted even faster. Yet our hearts resonated, allowing us to move even quicker than that.
You insane bastard!!
I hurriedly wrapped my arms tightly around Carla’s waist and twisted our bodies. I shoved my back and the back of my head directly into the path of Lumikan’s descending palm.
SLAAAAAP—!!!!!
Beeeeeeeeeep—!
“Ugh……!”
Fuck… that hurts like absolute hell……!
If not for Sena’s durability, my skull might have cracked open. It was a full-swing slap delivered with the Grand Duke’s genuine fury.
You crazy son of a bitch, were you actually trying to kill Carla?!
Blood trickled steadily from between my lips.
“……!”
“S-Sena……!”
The realization that he had struck the woman he obsessed over and cherished so dearly left Lumikan staring blankly at his own hand, frozen in place. The eyes that hadn’t wavered even when he hit his wife were now trembling belatedly.
And Carla, who had been held in my arms and felt the full terror of death flying toward my back—
“Why… why……”
She looked up at my bloodied face with trembling eyes, then finally let out a scream like a seizure and burst into violent sobs.
Carla pushed against my shoulders and screamed like a madwoman.
“M-Madam……”
If only Sena had resented her and cursed her. Then Carla could have freely hated Sena as the mistress and breathed easier. But Sena had always protected her. Even after losing her child. Even after losing her womb. She had offered unconditional loyalty and sacrifice.
That suffocating sacrifice had bound Carla in place, gnawing away at her without mercy.
Lumikan, having regained his senses, reached out toward me.
The instant Lumikan’s hand was about to touch my shoulder, I whipped my head around and fiercely swatted it away.
Smack—!
I spat the blood filling my mouth and glared at Lumikan with wide eyes.
But upon hearing my shout, Carla collapsed inside my arms, shaking her tear-stained face.
Carla clutched my collar and wept.
Her voice cracked.
Carla’s poetic confession stabbed sharply into my chest. Sena, who had lost everything for her sake yet continued to stand by her side. To Carla, Sena’s very existence was a silent debt collector, endlessly demanding repayment for a debt that could never be repaid in a lifetime.
Madam……
My chest felt tight. I could feel the crushing weight of the pain these two miserable women had been forced to carry in their twisted, entangled relationship.
But even so, I couldn’t let go here.
I tightened my arms around Carla even more fiercely despite her painful confession and shot a glare at Lumikan.
“If Your Grace leaves this room, then I will let go.”
At my words, Lumikan hesitated, unable to reach out any further. Even though the woman he loved was now showing open hostility toward him in order to protect his hated wife.
I shouted again through bloodied lips to drive the final nail in.
“……Haa.”
Lumikan’s face twisted in utter misery. He clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly before finally glaring at me once, then at Carla in my arms once more. With a violent spin, he turned away.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
At last, the heavy footsteps of the Grand Duke retreating and kicking open the door echoed through the bedroom. Only after his presence had completely vanished did I finally release the tension that had been stretched taut and collapsed to the floor together with Carla.
“Hic… Haaaang……”
Carla no longer held any venom or frenzy. She simply leaned against my chest and wept bitterly like a lost child.
Toward the fading echo of the Grand Duke’s heavy footsteps. And toward Sena, who held her.
In a voice that had completely fallen apart, Carla whispered what seemed to be her final, sincere truth.
A mother’s trembling hand clutched the hem of my maid uniform as tightly as an umbilical cord.
I quietly stroked the back of this pitiful woman. What was I supposed to do with her, so small and fragile in my arms?
Comfort her? Pity her? No—any warm words would probably feel like a whip covered in thorns to Carla right now.
Just me being by her side……
Just as Carla had said. Even if the clothes I wore were as light as feathers, the body heat radiating from me was nothing less than a flame scorching her flesh.
A mistress who had lost her child for her sake and even stolen her husband’s love. For that woman to now play at being a knight and declare she would protect her—Carla would be lucky not to lose her mind completely.
Keeping Carla trapped here in the Grand Duke’s residence was no different from torture. Pretending to comfort her, coaxing her to stay, was nothing but hypocrisy—whispering to a condemned prisoner on the guillotine that everything would be fine, that it wouldn’t hurt.
Suddenly, the desperate plea Sena had written with a pen on the desk last night came to mind.
Return to Madam the love I stole in excess. It was love that Madam should have received.
— Sena
It was a plea of atonement, asking me to return the love of the Grand Duchy that Sena had received to its rightful owner, Carla. But after listening to Carla’s sobs, I decided to firmly reject that request.
Hey, Sena. Your request is denied.
If it was Lucian’s love, I would return it a hundred times, a thousand times. Because Carla is Lucian’s mother. Because Carla loves Lucian.
But the love of that beastly, horny, insane Grand Duke bastard? Return that to Carla?
That bastard’s love is nothing but excreted human waste that can’t even be used as fertilizer for the fields.
You can’t wrap up garbage and present it as a gift. The reason Carla had been going mad all this time was because she had been craving that piece-of-shit man’s love and devouring herself in the process.
If so, the answer was simple.
What Carla needed was an entirely different, pure, and flawless new love.