I Killed That Woman
By the standards of the murim, he looked to be a master who had only just stepped beyond first-rate.
From the moment she took her seat at the table, Lady Hoian could not keep still. She forced a smile, as if nothing at all were wrong, but she had no idea where to rest her eyes, and they kept sliding downward.
Narien and the head maid are dead...
She clenched her trembling hands beneath the tablecloth, desperate to hide them.
They're dead. So why is that bitch perfectly fine?
Looking at Lilith, whose face did not bear so much as a scratch, Lady Hoian swallowed a groan. Where, exactly, had it all gone wrong? The wretch who was supposed to die had not died, and only her own blameless maids had.
Don't tell me Lilith...
Of late the girl's temperament and behavior had changed so completely she might as well have been another person. Even so, she did not look like someone capable of murder. With that fat body? Absurd.
Then who killed them!
The one conclusion she could reach with any certainty was that someone else had intervened. A knight had saved Lilith, or she had received Duke Briton's help. Her thoughts were tipping that way when the duke, who had been eating, spoke.
"I asked who killed Narien."
Lady Hoian started so violently she nearly cried out.
Th-the duke didn't kill Narien?
No. This might be a trap. She had long worked Narien like a servant, setting her to shameful tasks and heaping her with insults. The reason was obvious. A whore, daring to plant herself in a wife's seat? And there had been only one reason she had treated the woman kindly of late: she had needed her as a tool to kill Lilith.
Has the duke learned all of it...?
Yes. Otherwise he would never ask so openly. She was a breath away from throwing everything aside when words that shocked the entire table leapt from Lilith's mouth.
"Ah. If you mean that woman, I killed her."
She said she had killed someone as casually as if she were remarking on the weather.
What?
The other wives and young ladies were startled as well, but none so much as Lady Hoian.
She killed her own mother?
The table shuddered. Plates rattled, and the wine in its glass tossed and heaved, the tremor growing fiercer by the moment.
Crash!
It shook so violently that a plate tumbled to the floor and food went scattering.
He's lost his mind...
She had never seen him angry. Inside the house or out, he was a man who almost never showed what he felt. Duke Briton's face remained blank, and yet his mana churned without cease, so thick and so heavy that the pressure alone could have driven a person to their knees.
This man is different.
While everyone else trembled in fear, only the Heavenly Demon regarded Duke Briton at ease.
Fine presence.
By the standards of the murim, he looked to be a master who had only just stepped beyond first-rate.
"If that remark was a joke, I will not forgive it."
Well, of course he doesn't believe it.
Until only recently the girl could not even look him in the eye when she spoke. Who would believe her if she claimed to have killed her own mother?
"Does my word sound like a jest to you?"
The Heavenly Demon's face and gaze were utterly serious. She did not look away from Briton. Far from merely enduring the killing intent that stabbed toward her, she pushed it back.
"Is that so..."
Duke Briton nodded. He had seen the truth in Lilith's eyes. She had not even tried to hide it. Little by little, his killing intent ebbed.
"Then I will ask. Why did you kill Narien? She was your mother."
"Because she tried to kill me."
"She tried to kill you?"
Thuk!
The Heavenly Demon drove a knife into a cut of meat.
"Would you have me call mother a woman who brought her maids along to kill me?"
Duke Briton, now wholly convinced that Lilith spoke the truth, nodded.
"Quite right. In the face of death, parents and siblings are nothing."
"So I killed her."
How Lilith had done it did not matter. The question of whether she had sufficient motive had been answered well enough, and from the moment she withstood his killing intent, her skill had been proven as well.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
The anger was gone. Duke Briton was, at this moment, thoroughly delighted.
"Damn right! That's how it ought to be! I'm about to die, and I'm supposed to just sit there and take it without killing the other one?"
Why do those two get along so well?
Lady Hoian found the whole scene deeply unpleasant. At first she had privately called it a stroke of luck. Lilith had dug her own grave. She had been certain Duke Briton would cut the girl down himself. And yet what was this? The air had turned in an instant, and now he was praising her instead. The duke was a free-spirited man, yes, but a murder had taken place inside the mansion. His own wife was dead. Unable to bear it any longer, Lady Hoian cut in.
"Th-that's a lie! Lilith is lying, I tell you!"
Duke Briton's gaze swung to her.
She flinched. He was only looking at her, and still she could not meet his eyes. She shrank in on herself.
"A great many people fear me. One word from my mouth can cost a head. Lying to me when you might die for it? Nonsense. Everything Lilith said is the truth."
Clap. Clap.
The corners of his mouth lifted, and Duke Briton brought his hands together. A tiger wants a tiger. Until now he had sired nothing but kittens. He had never once seen a tiger. But the child before him had a tiger's quality.
"That spirit! That conduct! I like it very much! A child who inherits my blood ought to have this kind of resolve! If you were a son and not a daughter, I would have left you everything I have. A shame! A damned shame!"
"Y-you mustn't say such things! We have our son!"
Lady Hoian had borne two children. The elder was Tiribi Serna, seated at the table even now, and the younger was Tiribi Ain, away at the Academy.
"Hm. Right. There was that boy."
Of all his children, Ain was the one to whom Duke Briton paid the most attention. Part of it was simply that the boy was his only son.
"That one's still hard to place. Less a tiger than a wolf, I'd say."
And part of it was that the boy still had ample room to grow. After that morning's meal, Lady Hoian decided to leave Lilith be for a while and watch.
The duke has his eye on her... Killing her now would be dangerous.
Thanks to that, the Heavenly Demon was free to throw herself into training at her leisure.
The door to Lilith's room burst open.
"Hm? And what are you?"
The Heavenly Demon was famous for refusing maids. From the moment she opened her eyes until she closed them, a maid clung to her and tried to help with everything, and it was an intolerable nuisance. She did not mind them cleaning the room or washing her clothes. Dressing her, bathing her, even following her into the privy to wipe her afterward—that crossed the line by a great deal.
"Which is why I do not keep maids. So what are you supposed to be?"
The maid at the front of the group cried out in a bright, sharp voice.
"I'm Yure, the new maid! I've been assigned as Lady Lilith's exclusive attendant! Please look after me!"
She looked about sixteen, her hair tied in twin tails, fresh-faced and lively.
"I said I have no need of one."
Yure shook her head hard and beckoned to the maid waiting outside the door.
"Come in!"
A rumble of wheels. What the maid brought in was a wardrobe on casters, and from it hung dozens of dresses.
"From now on, you have to try each of these dresses on!"
"...And why should I?"
"Because His Highness, the Prince of Greece, is about to have his birthday!"
"...What does that brat's birthday have to do with me?"
Yure tipped her head.
"My lady, are you an idiot?"
"Hah? Did you just call me a fool?"
"If a noble doesn't attend a royal birthday, it's no different from betraying the royal family!"
She could more or less grasp the shape of it. Well, those who held power were all much the same...
"Tell them I am ill and cannot go."
"...Don't tell me it's because you're uncomfortable seeing him?"
"Him? Who are you talking about?"
A faint blush rose on Yure's face, and she squirmed where she stood.
"Oh, come on, my lady! Your fiancé!"
"What...?"
The Heavenly Demon's face twisted in an instant. A fiancé?
Th-that wretch Lilith had a fiancé too?
She raked back through her memories and found only a blur. Nothing surfaced. She had simply assumed no such thing existed...
An engagement means a promise of marriage...
"Gyaaah!"
It was so revolting that gooseflesh raced over her whole body, and the Heavenly Demon screamed. The flesh might belong to a woman, but within was a man in every way that mattered. Engaged to a man? Not unless one had gone utterly mad. It must never be allowed to happen.
"The rumors are already everywhere, you know? They say the whole reason you lost all that weight was for your fiancé!"
"D-don't spew that crap! Aaagh!"
The mirror that held the Heavenly Demon's ever-shifting face glittered in the sunlight. In the glass stood the Heavenly Demon—no. Lilith stood there as someone else entirely. The fat figure of before was gone without a trace. Her arms had slimmed, and her legs had lengthened until their lines stood out clean and sharp. It was the proof of how hard she had trained her external arts. Her shoulders had spread wider than most men's, and her firm thighs drew a sigh at a glance. Even when she had been heavy, her features had been distinct. With the weight gone, a slender face and strongly defined eyes, nose, and mouth conjured a beauty that seemed not of this world.
The only problem was that her chest alone remained as it had been. The abundant bosom of her heavier days had carried over, so that even thinned down she still possessed a generous bust.
"Come on! Let's hurry up and try on a dress first!"