Dieta (6)
Before her eyes, her mother hanged herself.
That was the story of her seventh birthday.
Whore's daughter. Abandoned child. Filthy blood. The servants' whispers and her half-siblings' mockery echoed in her ears. At a table no one came to, she ate the same cold food as always.
That was the story of her eighth birthday.
The servants' torment. Her brother's lies. Her sisters' testimony. Locked in her room for something she had never done. She spent the day watching the sunset fade beyond the window.
That was the story of her eleventh birthday.
No one.
Twelve.
Came for her.
Thirteen.
Slander. Lies. Things she had never done. Torment. Cold food. Mockery. Ridicule. Whore's daughter. Abandoned child. A day filled with nothing but scorn.
Fourteen.
In her solitary room, Dieta faced the mirror and smiled.
Fourteen.
The mask was complete. Even before her mother's grave, her eyes no longer wavered. She was certain she could laugh off anything now.
And so, on her fifteenth birthday, Dieta left the family.
Swearing that one day she would return to this place and devour them all.
A dark solitary cell where not a single ray of sunlight entered.
Dieta curled into herself, knees drawn to her chest.
Her ankle throbbed. She had barely slept in three days, and her eyes kept sliding shut—only for the pulsing pain in her ankle to jolt her awake again.
Sleep deprivation. Pain. And hunger.
Meals that reeked of drugs. Cloudy water handed over without even the pretense of concealment. She couldn't bring herself to touch any of it, not knowing what had been mixed in or what had been done to it. Everything in the villa was suspect.
There were no allies here.
Everything was an enemy. Everything was a trap.
Nerves stretched razor-thin brought exhaustion with them—but Dieta had no way to relieve that exhaustion now. The mind that three days of grinding had worn down was beginning to scrape bottom. Her mask trembled. Dull, sluggish thoughts turned the inside of her head to chaos.
A plan. A way out. Any means I can still use.
The usual her might have found a way. But even that was impossible in this moment, driven to the brink. Fog filled her mind; her thoughts would not connect properly.
And at last, Dieta hit her limit.
In the end, the mask covering her face came off.
The Gold-Swallowing Snake. The young merchant magnate who had written a legend of success in the City of Opportunity. A genius of investment. A prodigy among prodigies, gifted with every quality of a great merchant…
One by one, the glittering ornaments that had adorned Dieta Arvenia began to fall away. The mask. The merchant's uniform. The expensive accessories. Everything she had piled up to inflate her own worth peeled off and dropped.
And when everything had been stripped bare, what remained was neither the Gold-Swallowing Snake, nor the abandoned child of Arvenia, nor Dieta Arvenia.
What remained there was simply a girl, curled tightly into herself. A girl who had been wounded, broken, and left to fester—and who had dressed herself in splendor to hide it all.
Dieta curled a little tighter.
She hugged her knees and buried her face against them.
Her lips trembled. Her eyelids twitched. And then tears slid down her cheeks. She could not even remember the last time she had cried, but once the tears began, they would not stop.
The emotions she had pressed down beneath the mask were pouring out. All the things she had laughed off, ignored, pretended meant nothing. Those small, trivial things had found their opening and flooded over her. Dieta's shoulders shook faintly as she clenched her teeth.
The mask was gone.
She needed a new one.
Harder. More precise. A mask that would never come off again. Cornered, Dieta was beginning to break apart. That had been Osman's intention in arranging all of this—but there was one thing Osman had miscalculated.
A broken human does not necessarily give up.
Dieta was the stubbornest of the stubborn.
You could break her. You could not bend her.
Teeth gritted, Dieta spoke to herself.
I will trust no one anymore.
Tonight, once I have stripped away every last emotion and put on a new mask… I will never take this one off again.
You'll sell me off in a political marriage? Wring the last of my value out of me? Go ahead. Do whatever you like.
I will sell everything that can be sold. I will use every means that can be used. Even if I have to throw this body into a furnace, I will live for what comes next. I will return to this place. I will devour every last one of you.
…It is through hardship, trial, and pain that children become adults. In Dieta's bright yellow eyes, a pitch-black flame rose.
Let it be said again.
Dieta Arvenia is a genius.
She is simply not finished yet. Her talent for reading the flow of money, for measuring value, for seizing gold coin, is without equal. Given enough time, she possesses both the makings of a great merchant who could seize the trade routes and rise to the highest place—and the makings of a power broker who could bend people to her will.
But to become complete, there was one thing she had not yet been able to discard.
What?
Her humanity. The existence called Dieta behind the mask.
A genius who has tasted failure learns from failure.
There is a saying that pain which fails to kill you only makes you stronger. Contrary to her guardian knight's fears, Dieta would make no foolish choice here—neither ending her own life nor collapsing into despair.
She would become more thorough.
More perfect.
More ruthless.
But that was, in other words… the death of "Dieta." When this night passed, the girl called Dieta would be nowhere to be found. Only the Gold-Swallowing Snake would remain in this place.
Still… one night should be all right.
In a solitary cell where the passage of time could not be felt, the night that came was long, so long. The snake that had not yet shed its skin emptied out her emotions, determined to spend her last day as Dieta.
She cried wretchedly, shoulders shaking, face buried in her knees, forcing out choked, stifled sounds.
And then—
Thuk.
A wood chip fell onto Dieta's head.
Slowly, Dieta lifted her face. A solitary cell where not a single scrap of light entered. And yet—a pure white light was glittering on the ceiling.
Then— ssk.
The light moved. Tracing a rectangular path, it carved away a section of the ceiling. Only then did Dieta realize that the shining thing was aura.
Tak.
Through the hole cut in the ceiling, someone dropped into the room. The figure landed softly on the floor; darkness hid the face. Only a presence could be felt. Dieta, stricken with fear, sucked in a sharp breath—
Fwaah.
The unknown figure drew a lantern from inside their coat. An ore of sunset light faintly illuminated the room. In that dim glow, Dieta met the intruder's eyes.
"…Ivan?"
Grey hair and sunset-colored eyes.
Someone she had never imagined stood before her.
Dieta blinked blankly.
Was she seeing a hallucination?
Why was he here? There was no reason for him to come—and no way he could have.
"Your guardian knight, Pasion, asked me."
As Dieta sat blinking, Najin spoke. He set the ore lantern down in front of her, then bent his knees so their eyes were level.
"He asked me to serve as a messenger bird—so you could communicate with the outside. I came to take on that role, but…"
Looking at Dieta, Najin's eyes narrowed.
In just a few days she had grown gaunt, and the severed tendons in her ankle had caught his gaze. He let out a long breath and finished.
"Is there anything you need to ask of me?"
"How…"
Dieta murmured in a trembling voice.
The man who had suddenly appeared before her.
Dieta was considerably shaken by Najin's presence. Pasion's request? He would serve as a messenger bird? She turned his words over in her mind and blinked.
Her head would not turn properly.
Because the one sitting here was not the Gold-Swallowing Snake—just Dieta. The girl could not keep up with what was happening. The usual her would never have let such a perfect opportunity slip by, but…
"Why…"
The girl found herself murmuring.
"Why did you take the job?"
Was it because she felt a fondness for the man in front of her? Or because he was the only person she could treat without armor? Or because the time she had spent with him in Cambria had been genuinely enjoyable?
Or was it all of those things?
Dieta asked again in a trembling voice.
"There's nothing in it for you… It's dangerous. Getting involved with a ducal house means putting your life on the line."
She couldn't help it.
The brief joy of realizing he had come for her faded almost at once—because she had already decided that the man in front of her must not be tangled up with her.
"Why…?"
Dieta knew.
She knew how steep a price this work demanded. She knew it meant standing against the Arvenia Ducal House head-on—and that it might well cost a life.
Not as a merchant who never let an opportunity pass.
Simply as a human being, Dieta thought she must not drag this man into her situation. If he became involved with her, he would fall to the bottom too. She did not want to see this man—so like her, and yet walking a path so utterly different—come crashing down.
And more than anything, it was unfamiliar.
She had never experienced goodwill like this, never heard a story that turned out well, never lived anything that belonged in a fairy tale. And so, even in a situation like this, Dieta could not help but ask the question.
Why did you do it?
She had to know the reason.
"Why, you ask."
And to that question, Najin answered as if she had asked something perfectly obvious.
"We made a promise last time, didn't we?"
"…A promise?"
"That I'd help you once, no questions asked. We promised that."
They had.
No contract written. No trace left behind. The only evidence a memory of conversation shared while watching a sunset.
Just… that?
A promise no one would fault him for breaking—nothing more than a few words—and he would do something like this to keep it?
She blinked, unable to understand at all. Najin went on.
"So."
"You don't need to weigh the pros and cons either. Just say it. Leave the complicated why and how for later."
Ask me for help.
If you say the word—
"Then I'll help you."
Cost, risk, danger, the Arvenia Ducal House—none of it mattered. He would help. He had decided, so all she had to do was speak.
It was far too easy a thing to say.
Far too convenient.
And yet the moment her eyes met Najin's—looking straight at her—Dieta's lips were already moving. With tear tracks still wrecking her face, she spoke as if murmuring to herself. What slipped out was the girl's true heart.
"From this place…"
Dieta said.
"Please… get me out of this place."
A voice so small it nearly crawled into the ground. The moment he heard it, Najin gave a clean, decisive nod. He asked none of the questions—do you have a plan, what will you do once you're out, is there a method. Najin simply answered, short and plain.
"All right."
Najin rose to his feet.
He snuffed the ore lantern with a soft tak and tucked it into his coat, and darkness returned. In the cell plunged back into blackness in an instant, Dieta blinked—
KWAAAAAANG!
The wall shuddered.
Dieta flinched, then slowly opened her eyes. Through the rising dust, she saw it. Moonlight spilling into a solitary cell that had known only darkness.
Najin had simply kicked the boards nailed over the window and smashed them to pieces. Faced with an act so blunt it was almost refreshing, Dieta blinked blankly.
Moonlight—or starlight—poured in. Catching that platinum glow, Najin's grey hair shimmered.
"We can decide on a destination later."
For now, let's go.
Saying so, Najin stepped toward Dieta.
Thud-thud-thud.
As if answering the racket Najin had made, footsteps rang down the corridor. Knights, most likely. But Najin paid them no mind. He bent his knees and lifted Dieta into his arms.
Carefully, so his hands would not touch her ankle.
But firmly enough that he would not drop her.
Holding Dieta, Najin kicked off the ground and leapt out through the window. In the swaying world, Dieta looked up at his face. The deep-drawn hood hid most of it—but she could see his eyes.
Sunset-colored eyes.
As if spellbound, Dieta stared blankly into them.
"You expect me to believe that?"
Griffin, Knight Commander of the Arvenia Ducal House.
Having summoned every knight dispatched to the villa to hear their report on the previous night's incident, he slammed his fist down on the table.
"Not only did someone break into the villa, cut through the ceiling, and smash the window on the way out—and not a single one of you saw him? You think that makes any sense?"
The servants, fine. He could accept that.
The sudden fire had thrown the villa into chaos, and if a warrior of any real attainment set his mind on slipping in unseen, the household staff would never notice.
But the knights were different.
That trained knights had failed to detect it was a story that did not hold water.
"I asked you whether it makes any sense that seven knights were on guard and not one of them saw the intruder."
Seven. Fully seven well-trained knights.
And someone had slipped past their eyes and ears to openly abduct a confined ducal daughter? Griffin dragged a hand down his face and rose from his seat.
"Out of my way. I'll confirm it with my own eyes."
Heaving a sigh, Griffin started walking.
The situation had twisted strangely. This was an unforeseen variable—and the moment the report reached him, Osman too had gone wide-eyed. Of course he had. Something unimaginable had occurred.
Infiltrate a ducal villa and abduct a ducal daughter.
How absurd that single sentence was—and how great a storm it would raise—was difficult even to estimate. This was a major incident tied directly to the reputation of the Arvenia Ducal House, and a story that must never leak outside.
It had to be resolved before it grew any larger.
Clutching his throbbing head, Griffin examined the traces left at the villa. After confirming the path the intruder seemed to have used to infiltrate, he narrowed his eyes.
Seven Sword Experts.
To slip past seven of them without so much as a whisper of presence and carry off a ducal daughter—even for Griffin, a Sword Seeker, that would not have been easy. Charging in head-on and smashing everything would have been far simpler.
A ranger, then?
The first possibility that came to mind was a ranger.
Did Dieta Arvenia have any rangers among those she could call on? Certainly, Cambria had a few rangers of real ability.
The first name that surfaced was Kaufman Teosis.
Kaufman Teosis, ranger of the Techel Mountains—evaluated as a power on par with a Sword Seeker. If he had cooperated with Dieta, tracking them would indeed be impossible. But that man did not seem the type to set foot in something like this.
Just what kind of lunatic…
Griffin let out a long sigh.
The plan had gone sideways. The situation had overturned.
Moments like this demanded swift judgment and response. Having roughly calculated the severity of the situation, Griffin made his decision. He called over one of the knights following behind him.
"Tell Duke Osman."
He said.
"That I will form a pursuit unit and hunt down the scoundrel who infiltrated the ducal house."
And—
"That I myself will take the lead."