Chapter 115
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 115
At the Duke’s words, the Duchess burst into even louder sobs. Only after crying for a long time did she lean against her husband and fall asleep, as if she had fainted from exhaustion.
The maid she had strangled was escorted from the dining room by other servants. Having had her life threatened, she would no longer look at the Duchess with envy, but she would receive a massive sum of gold coins in return.
“Your Grace, are you sure we shouldn’t tell the Duchess about the rats?”
The question came from the servant who had just caught one. The rodent was immediately dropped into a water tank filled with holy water, its body joining the pile of corpses already submerged within. Doused in the consecrated liquid, the small rat soon died as its internal organs melted away.
“I refuse to think of whatever is inside that rat as my daughter.”
The Duke dismissed the matter, staring down at the corpse with utter disgust.
The water tank, now brimming with carcasses, would be moved to the glass greenhouse, where the sunlight was strongest. After much trial and error, and with Gabriel’s advice, they had concluded that this was the most effective way to dispose of the ‘rats.’
Yet, even after catching hundreds of them, there seemed to be no end in sight. They had to eradicate them quickly, to stop them from constantly appearing by his wife’s side.
“…Amaranth.”
Even in her sleep, the Duchess murmured her dead daughter’s name. The Duke’s heart wrenched. It was all his fault. If only he hadn’t allowed Amaranth to marry the Count. If only he hadn’t disowned his daughter. If only he had stopped his wife from going to the temple…
Overwhelmed by endless regret, the Duke stroked his wife’s cheek, where the dried, white tracks of her tears were still visible, and made a silent vow.
“My love. I will bring Amaranth to you.”
What came to mind was the monster he had seen at the banquet on the day of the Crown Prince’s assassination—the one that looked exactly like his daughter. He loathed the idea of bringing such an abomination into his home, but he could no longer delay. If his wife saw it, surely she would stop believing that the rat-gnawed ‘thing’ was Amaranth.
Faced with two equally repulsive options, he would at least choose the one that bore some trace of his daughter. Of course, the Duke’s decision was also heavily influenced by the Emperor’s threats and Gabriel’s advice. Gabriel had suggested that Evangeline Rohanson might be the key to getting rid of those ‘rats.’
Though the Duke had vehemently denied it and shouted in outrage at the banquet, he was ultimately forced to bring Evangeline into his mansion.
Ironically, everything felt like a farce, spinning wildly out of his control. To the Duke, this mother and daughter who looked so uncannily alike were nothing but a source of regret and misery.
* * *
After her husband disowned their daughter, Agera Hosaquin became an exceptionally devout follower of the Sun Goddess. She donated astronomical sums of money, and the temple was so pleased that they went as far as to grant her a private prayer room.
There, Agera prayed that the Sun Goddess would forgive her daughter’s transgressions. But despite praying every single day until her knees grew numb, her wishes went unanswered. Amaranth passed away, abandoned by her deity, unforgiven for her brief moment of folly.
Yet, Agera could not stop praying. Even though her prayers went unanswered, her faith only deepened into a blind, obsessive devotion.
Because they had already severed ties, Agera was not even permitted to attend her daughter’s funeral. Perhaps because she had been denied a proper farewell, she began to lose her grip on whether her daughter was alive or dead.
On some days, she would forget Amaranth was dead and beg the Sun Goddess to forgive her. On other days, when her mind cleared, she would pray for her deceased daughter’s soul. This cycle of prayer repeated for over seven years.
Yet, no matter how desperately Agera wished for her daughter’s peace, the doctrines of the Sun Goddess dictated that Amaranth could find no rest, even in death.
Her daughter had committed a sin so indelible that it would cling to her even if she were reborn. According to the priests, she deserved to suffer for all eternity.
Enduring these cruel pronouncements, Agera continued to pray day after day.
Then, one day, an angel descended in response to her prayers. With limbs charred black, yet bearing the sun and spreading its wings wide, the angel revealed to Agera the way to save her daughter.
If her daughter was doomed to suffer in death and suffer in rebirth, then the solution was simple: summon her soul and keep it by Agera’s side.
The answer was sorcery. And if there was anyone who knew the terrifying power of a spell circle, it was the Duke and Duchess.
Agera sought out a spell circle and secretly smuggled a shaman into the estate. When her actions eventually reached the Emperor’s ears, the Duke was forced to owe the Emperor a massive debt to cover it up. But she didn’t care. Once her husband saw their reborn daughter, surely he would understand.
Under her husband’s watchful eye, Agera bided her time, waiting for the perfect opportunity. Finally, a golden moment arrived. On the day of the Crown Prince’s birthday banquet, the Duke was away. It had been raining heavily for days, and even the sun was hidden behind thick clouds, unable to look down upon the earth.
That day, Agera cast the spell to summon her daughter. The torrential rain, which had been tearing at the earth, suddenly flowed backward, presenting her with an entity that defied all human reason.
What she had summoned was a charred, pitch-black mass, resembling the angel from the painting. As the mass squirmed, it seemed to call out to her, whispering, “Mom.”
Meanwhile, when the Duke saw Evangeline Rohanson at the Crown Prince’s birthday banquet, he had been unable to contain his mounting fury.
After taking out his anger on the girl who looked so much like Amaranth by throwing a wine glass at her, the Duke returned home—only to discover a raw, red mass encased in charcoal, pulsing with a rhythmic, living heartbeat.
Seeing his wife weeping, collapsed over the spell circle, and the lingering traces of sorcery in the room, the Duke realized he was too late.
Agera pointed to the red mass and introduced it as Amaranth. The Duke wept in despair that his once-devout wife had resorted to forbidden sorcery, but he could not bring himself to accept her words.
There was no way such a hideous abomination could be his daughter. Yet, seeing his wife’s desperate, frantic state, a creeping dread seized him—what if this truly was his daughter, crawled back from the depths of hell?
But to the Duke, his living wife was far more important than his dead daughter. Even if that thing really was Amaranth, it changed nothing. If word got out that Agera had dabbled in sorcery, their entire house would be executed for heresy.
Without hesitation, the Duke sliced the mass in half to kill it. His wife shrieked, weeping as if her own heart were being torn to pieces as she watched the lump split in two.
He thought that would be the end of it. But the next day, the mass he believed to be dead had survived, multiplying into two separate, living pieces.
To ensure it could never regenerate, the Duke minced the flesh into tiny pieces and scattered them over rat traps, letting the rodents devour them.
Focused solely on destroying the unholy mass, the Duke never dreamed that the minced flesh would survive even inside the bellies of the rats.
At first, Agera would shriek in terror at the sight of a rat. But after holding nonsensical conversations with them, she would cradle them in her arms as if they were her own daughter, refusing to let anyone take them. The Duke ordered his servants to hunt down and kill every single rat on sight.
But the rats that had consumed the flesh bred with terrifying speed; no matter how many they slaughtered, the infestation showed no signs of stopping. It was only after seeking Gabriel’s counsel and submerging the dead rats in holy water that their rapid breeding finally began to slow.
Every time a rat was killed, Agera reacted with such raw agony, as if her daughter were being murdered before her eyes, until she finally lost her mind completely.
In truth, the warning signs had been there all along. The very fact that she had dabbled in sorcery was proof of her growing madness. She would spend hours praying for her deceased daughter, only to suddenly act as if Amaranth were still alive.
And then, she had to watch the red mass she had summoned—the entity she cherished as her daughter—be sliced into hundreds of pieces, die, regenerate, die again, and ultimately be devoured by rats. Forced to witness this endless cycle of horrific, fragmented deaths, Agera’s sanity shattered entirely.
Her “dementia” was merely a convenient excuse the Duke had fabricated. Even a simple mental affliction would draw suspicious glares from the temple, but if anyone discovered she had lost her mind practicing forbidden sorcery, she would undoubtedly be swept up in the ongoing pagan massacre and burned at the stake.
That was why he had tried so hard to avoid any association with Evangeline Rohanson. But with Agera’s condition deteriorating by the day, he was left with no other choice.
* * *
Not long after making his decision, Duke Hosaquin smuggled Evangeline Rohanson out of the dungeon. He had planned to introduce them gradually, but the Duchess had wandered off her usual walking path, forcing an abrupt, unexpected encounter.
Having failed to supervise the Duchess properly—and worse, having been caught red-handed by the butler, Ricoradca—the maids on duty received a harsh scolding before they were allowed to return to their mistress’s side.
“Nigella, hurry up and help! The Duchess is heading to the glass greenhouse!”
Nigella hadn’t expected to be swept up in such a frantic commotion the moment she returned to duty. She nearly gagged as she recalled the rotting masses submerged in the greenhouse water tanks.
“What? But the greenhouse is full of… the corpses of those little monsters, isn’t it?”
“That’s exactly why we have to hurry! Here, take this.”
Nigella caught the massive bolt of cloth, which was longer than she was tall, and stumbled back as she struggled to balance its weight.
“What is this for…?”
“What do you think? To cover them up, of course!”
The Duchess’s servants, Nigella included, scrambled to carry the heavy drapes and cover the water tanks stacked inside the glass greenhouse. Since only a select few within House Hosaquin knew the dark secret of the greenhouse, the other servants simply assumed some major renovation was underway and paid it no mind.
Working frantically, they shoved the tanks into the corners, stacked them high, and threw the heavy cloths over them. The rush was so intense that Nigella didn’t even have time to feel disgusted by the fact that she was handling coverings for piles of dead rats until long after the job was done. Thanks to their desperate efforts, they finished just in time for the Duchess’s arrival.
“Amaranth, look. Isn’t it beautiful?”
The Duchess wandered through the glass greenhouse for a long while, proudly showing it off. Nigella followed closely behind, praying silently that her mistress wouldn’t notice the draped mounds in the corner. But her prayers went unanswered; the Duchess’s eyes drifted toward the covered stacks.
“The sunlight is so lovely here. But what is that covered over there, dear?”
“The sunlight was growing too harsh, Your Grace. We covered them temporarily so the flowers wouldn’t wither.”
“Ah, I see.”
Fortunately, because the Duchess cherished her plants, she accepted the explanation without further question. Instead, she ordered them to set up a table and chairs right next to the draped mounds, announcing she would have her tea there.
“To think they must huddle in the shade, hidden from the beautiful sun… Amaranth, let us sit beside the poor flowers and keep them company.”
Fearing that any attempt to steer her elsewhere might trigger another childish tantrum and shatter her fragile peace, the servants quickly obeyed. They all remembered too well how hysterically she had wept until the Duke finally relented and allowed her to take Amaranth to the greenhouse.
Nigella set the table, poured the tea, and stepped back to observe the scene.
At the tail end of summer, beneath the lingering warmth of the sun, a bizarre, childlike tea party was underway in the lush gardens of the Hosaquin estate—separated from a mountain of rotting rat carcasses by nothing but a single layer of cloth.
An elderly woman, her snow-white hair braided into pigtails like a young girl’s beneath a bonnet, stamped her feet in excitement.
“Amaranth, go on, try some!”
At the Duchess’s urging, the young girl lifted her teacup, brought it to her lips, and set it back down after merely inhaling the aroma without taking a sip. Her movements were incredibly precise, almost rehearsed.
“The aroma is lovely.”
She hadn’t even twitched her nose to sniff it, yet she offered a sweet, placid smile as she told the lie. But considering this was all just a game of make-believe, her effortless deception was easy to overlook. Besides, it wasn’t as if they’d prepared cold-brew; tea leaves wouldn’t steep in plain cold water anyway.
Ever since the Duchess had hurled boiling soup at the maids, severely injuring one of them, the Duke had strictly forbidden hot liquids from being served during her tea times.
Another of her fellow maids had recently departed for the countryside, clutching a small fortune in gold coins as compensation for being strangled. To Nigella, risking death once in exchange for enough wealth to live in idle luxury for the rest of one’s life didn’t seem like a bad trade at all.
“Isn’t it? I made sure they prepared the tea you always loved.”
“Thank you for your kindness.”
At the polite, formal response, the Duchess beamed as if she had been handed the entire world. Watching from a distance, the servants let out quiet, emotional sighs.
“How long has it been since we last saw Her Grace smile like that?” an elderly maid who had served the Duchess for decades murmured first.
A chorus of quiet agreement rippled through the others.
“More than anything, it’s amazing that she can hold a proper conversation…”
“When His Grace suddenly announced he was bringing Amaranth—no, Lady Evangeline—here, I was filled with dread…”
“I know. She can’t remember a single thing else. She’s completely forgotten even Butler Ricoradca, yet she remembers the daughter who married and left so vividly. It’s truly a miracle.”
“It really feels as though the young lady has come back to us.”
Having never seen the real Amaranth, Nigella could only quietly agree, marveling at how much Lady Rohanson must resemble her mother.