Baptism (4)
"Y-your eyes..."
The girl stared in horror.
The boy standing before her had eyes blazing with a brilliant golden light.
"So you saw..."
Roy, for his part, remained surprisingly calm even though a secret he had kept from everyone in the mansion had just been exposed.
He had planned it this way from the start.
It was a classic tactic—lure the other party into a mistake and seize the psychological high ground.
"Bella, was it? Who are your parents? I told you not to look back. Why did you turn around? If you didn't want to do as I asked, you should have said so from the beginning."
Roy quietly settled the mana he had activated.
The light pouring from his eyes gradually faded, returning them to normal.
"I-I'm sorry. I did it without thinking..."
"Do you always ignore what people tell you? Or did you just decide to ignore me? Are you saying my request wasn't worth listening to?"
"No! I really didn't mean to... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me."
The girl apologized over and over, her voice thick with tears.
Roy raised a hand and stroked his chin, studying her carefully.
Hmm...
Roy knew the noble class well.
The lower their rank, the more susceptible they were to authority.
The problem was that Roy currently possessed none of that authority.
But breaking a little girl like this and bending her to his will was hardly difficult.
Still, without properly gauging her nature first, she might leak useless information left and right. A certain amount of testing was necessary.
Even if word of the Golden Eyes got out, no one would believe it, and no one would dare come to the lord's mansion to verify it in person. That part didn't concern him much.
But the work ahead would make information security critically important. He would have to select only people he could truly trust.
I can't just recruit based on talent alone and end up betrayed again.
A memory from his previous life flickered through his mind. Roy stepped right up to the flustered girl.
Close enough that their foreheads nearly touched.
He watched his own reflection in her wide eyes and whispered softly.
"What you just saw... I've never shown that even to my own parents. And now you know. What are you going to do? Run off and tell your parents? Tell everyone? Then people will point at me and call me a freak, a monster. They might even burn me at the stake like a witch. Is that what you want?"
"I won't tell! Never! I swear I won't tell anyone! Please believe me."
Instead of pulling away, the girl pressed her face even closer, pleading desperately.
Roy had to take a quick step back.
Otherwise their foreheads really would have collided.
Even so, he couldn't simply take her word for it.
At seven years old, children barely understood what they were saying.
It was an age when they would invent any story just to escape the crisis in front of them—completely uncontrollable.
If she were the Misha type, that would be perfect...
This wasn't actually the first time Roy's Golden Eyes had been discovered.
The maid Misha had already caught him once.
But she was an adult, and a little intimidation had been enough to keep her silent forever.
In short, she was easy for Roy to control.
Of course, her loyalty probably stemmed more from the fact that two years ago, when his disappearance nearly got her thrown out of the mansion, Roy had thrown himself in the way to protect her.
With all of that in mind, Roy considered how best to handle the small girl in front of him.
Use the other party's desires...
A line from an ancient text floated up, but he had no way of knowing what a seven-year-old girl might desire.
And even if he found out, those desires would shift constantly as she grew older.
"I'm sorry. I really am."
When Roy suddenly fell silent, Bella apologized again while stealing nervous glances at him.
"What you just saw is an absolute secret."
"Yes."
"If you tell anyone... you absolutely must not!"
At Roy's firm tone, Bella squeezed her eyes shut and shrank back.
I really do need to scare her a little more... but threatening to kill her feels like overkill...
"I just can't trust you. How am I supposed to believe you?"
"I..."
"Go on. Say it."
"I don't have any friends... so even if I wanted to tell someone, there's no one who would listen. You can trust me."
"Most noble children don't have friends at this age. Neither do I. And what I'm worried about isn't you telling other kids. It's you telling adults."
"I won't tell any adults. My father isn't here anymore, and my mother... she... she's so scary she never listens to anything I say. She just gets angry."
"......"
Roy studied the girl again.
At first he had only observed her with the Golden Eyes for magical potential, so he hadn't expected her temperament to be like this.
This kid doesn't seem like a noble at all.
Just how badly had her parents treated her to make her this way?
She was completely withdrawn, extremely timid, and constantly watching other people's reactions.
"You said your father isn't around?"
"Yes... he passed away not long ago."
"I'm sorry to hear that. So what was your father's name?"
Roy was curious how closely related this girl might be to him.
The Greenhilt family had ruled this land for centuries, so their bloodline had branched like a tree into dozens, even hundreds of lines.
Among them, anyone within six degrees of kinship could be considered close relatives.
Of course, there were exceptions for those who had earned merit under the family name.
Or if someone showed exceptional mana talent, the main house sometimes adopted them into the direct line.
Over the seven years he had spent in the mansion, Roy had watched members of the Greenhilt branch families come and go many times.
He had also checked the family registry and already committed the key figures within six degrees of his father to memory.
If Bella's father was among them, it would be easy to gauge her family's leanings.
A household trying to stay in the baron's good graces wouldn't go around spreading my secret everywhere.
The girl didn't answer. She just stood there on the verge of tears.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
She shook her head hard.
Then she slowly opened her mouth.
"My father's name was... Billy... Billy Greenhilt."
"......"
The moment he heard the name, Roy froze in shock.
Good God!
Two years earlier.
Cliv Greenhilt, current head of the Greenhilt family and baron of the territory, had been reading the report on the incident that had occurred at the mansion during his absence when he nearly lost his composure.
The people who knew that fact... don't tell me!?
The masked intruders' goal had been the underground vault.
The moment he learned that, he went straight down to the basement.
He ordered the chief butler to seal the area so no one else could approach.
Then the baron opened the door to the secret chamber that had been passed down only to the heads of the family.
This can't be...
The stench that hit him was so overwhelming he nearly blacked out.
Two rotting corpses lay inside.
At his feet lay an empty golden goblet that had once held poison, and a emptied flask that had once contained the priceless Dragon's Breath.
"......"
Clamping a hand over his nose, the baron slowly examined the bodies.
Not enough time had passed for them to become unrecognizable. He identified them at once.
One was a man who had served in the mansion since the day the baron himself was born.
Boodle, the deputy butler who had devoted more than fifty years to the family.
Boodle had been the previous head's personal attendant and, at one time, the chief butler as well.
Did Boodle somehow overhear something from Father?
His father, the previous lord of Greenhilt, would certainly have known about this secret chamber.
After all, he was the one who had passed that knowledge down to Cliv.
But the baron shook his head.
His father would never have been that careless.
That conviction solidified the moment he checked the second corpse.
A man with a very familiar build.
Removing the mask filled him with dread.
Even without seeing the face, the body alone was enough to guess.
He had spent his childhood looking up at that broad back as they trained side by side.
"Brother..."
The corpse belonged to Billy Greenhilt, the baron's own older brother.
Roy recalled what had happened two years ago.
A woman named Veronica Greenhilt had stormed into the mansion and shouted at his father at the top of her lungs.
She was Roy's aunt by marriage. After identifying her husband's body, she had been unable to contain her rage and had caused a scene.
But the one who had actually committed the crime was her husband, Billy Greenhilt.
Driven by greed, he had not only broken into the home of his younger brother—the head of the family and current lord of Greenhilt—but had also set a fire and murdered two city guards.
Ana and Geren could easily have died as well. The crime could never be taken lightly.
And strictly speaking, the baron's brother had died for reasons that had nothing to do with the baron himself.
Billy had drunk the poison of his own free will, mistaking it for the Dragon's Breath.
"Veronica... no, Sister-in-law. You must take my words to heart. The crimes my brother committed are serious enough to warrant collective punishment of the entire family. If you continue like this, even with me as lord I will not be able to stop every eye and ear. Do not force me to take the lives of my brother's children—and yours as well—because of baseless rumors."
Fortunately, the matter had been settled quietly without spreading.
Thanks to the baron's discreet handling, only Ibaldo and Ana knew the full truth.
Most of the household staff would remember that day as nothing more than Veronica throwing a hysterical fit.
Both she and Billy had already earned notorious reputations among the servants for their personalities.
Roy, who had secretly drilled a hole in the wall of the baron's study and used a voice-amplification spell to eavesdrop on the entire conversation, had been deeply dissatisfied with how his father handled it.
He's going to pay for that someday.
Veronica clearly resented the baron.
And that resentment would someday swell until it returned in some form or another.
Bella, watching Roy furrow his brow and sink into long thought, spoke first for once.
"Um... is something wrong?"
"Ah, no. More importantly—can you promise me? You really won't tell anyone?"
"Yes! Never!"
The girl herself was innocent.
Roy stared at the young girl for a long moment and sighed inwardly over and over.
"Bella. Do you have any siblings?"
"I have two older brothers. And if you count my stepmother's children, five..."
Roy listened carefully as Bella described her brothers' ages and features, then added one more name to the list of people who might become enemies in the future.
Judging by their ages, for now he only needed to keep an eye on the seventeen-year-old.
Of course, Aunt Veronica would have to go on that list as well.
"Thanks for telling me. I'll trust you. And... let's be friends."
Roy offered the girl a bright smile and held out his hand.
"You're my first friend. Looking forward to it."
"M-me? Your friend...?"
"Yeah. You promised to keep my secret, so that makes us friends now."