A Sinner Before Her
The precise terms of the contract forged between Raymon and Titania were known to only a privileged few within the Castrein Ducal Residence.
Thus, the lower-ranking maids and footmen had no idea that Titania had changed, much less that she had struck a new deal with the ducal house. Watching the steady stream of fine goods being dispatched to the fallen imperial princess after her collapse in the palace, they huddled together in the corridors, their whispers rife with venom.
“Isn’t that wretched princess just taking advantage of our young lady again?”
“Likely so. And how does she catch wind of things so quickly? It’s uncanny.”
“They say she didn’t even die. Does the young master really need to bestow all this on her? After everything she put Young Duke Raymon through all these years…”
“Who knows if her failing to wake up is even real? The trivial lies she used to spin were endless. At every turn, she whined about being frail…”
Watching the servants brazenly peer through the windows and wag their tongues right in the middle of the main corridor, Bibi found herself pondering how best to dispose of them for maximum satisfaction.
Purging the corrupt insiders who had been embezzling funds and thoroughly turning over the staff had certainly been the right call. But who could have predicted that the replacements, hastily hired to fill the sudden shortage, would prattle on so thoughtlessly about such matters?
Just as Bibi was debating whether to step in, a voice as cold as glacial ice reverberated down the hallway.
“I had no idea there were so many beneath me who took the Castrein name so lightly.”
The huddled servants gasped in horror, spinning around in a flustered scramble to excuse themselves.
“Y-Young Duke Raymon!”
“W-we were only speaking out of concern for you, my lord!”
“Indeed! We only feared that wicked woman might once again—”
“And who decided that standard?”
“…Pardon?”
“In whose eyes is she wicked, and in whose is she virtuous? Even if her past bears stains, she remains the betrothed of the Young Duke of Castrein and the savior of our young lady. To think I harbored so many servants who would dare insult the entire Castrein bloodline as incompetent fools dancing in a staged farce. Truly astounding.”
“Young Duke, please forgive us!”
“We will never wag our tongues so rashly again!”
Bibi blinked in mild surprise. She had been fully prepared to step forward herself if her brother hadn’t, but this was beyond her expectations.
When the head butler came rushing over in a panic, Raymon delivered his verdict without a shred of warmth.
“Send them all to the magic crystal quarry.”
“Young Duke!”
“If you believed that sins committed with your mouth would spare you the blade, you were mistaken. Hold your tongues before I come to regret my mercy.”
Bibi had caught it—the way Raymon’s gaze had lingered with quiet regret on the hilt of his sword. He had genuinely, if only for a fleeting second, contemplated cutting them down where they stood.
The Castrein Duchy operated two primary excavation sites for its magic crystals. One employed ordinary laborers with safety prioritized above all else; the other was a treacherous, perilous pit reserved almost exclusively for convicts.
In the past, he would have ignored their chatter or simply docked their pay. Or, more likely, he would have waited for the head butler or the head maid to discipline them for speaking of their superiors' affairs so carelessly. Raymon was undeniably the next master of Castrein and carried himself accordingly, but he had never before banished household servants to a penal labor camp over a single slip of the tongue.
Granted, they had openly questioned the discernment of the ducal house, insulting the family by implying they were being duped by Titania’s theatrics. Even so…
‘If he considers loose talk such an unforgivable sin, there’s no way my uselessly scrupulous eldest brother isn’t drowning in guilt himself.’
Bibi had heard of Princess Titania’s past behavior. She had listened to the accounts before ever stepping foot into the imperial palace—tales of the exhausting, appalling trials she had inflicted upon Raymon. Feats of harassment that made one shudder just listening to them, yet Raymon had endured them all without batting an eye.
Now, however, Raymon clearly harbored genuine affection for Titania.
He rationalized his actions by insisting that this level of devotion was only natural for the Castrein family’s savior, but expressing official gratitude was entirely different from personal pursuit.
One only had to look at Lisianthus. The boy who had previously refused to linger anywhere near the imperial palace now sought every possible pretext to enter the gates ever since Titania collapsed in the Empress’s Palace. And Raymon, despite being swamped with duties that left him no time to breathe, would track Lisianthus down like a ghost the moment his brother set foot in the palace, inventing all manner of excuses to drag him back home.
To Bibi, the whole spectacle was utterly absurd.
“Excessive excitement is ill-suited for a convalescing patient.”
“Come on, Brother! What’s your problem? I’m really just going to see how she’s doing!”
“Do you honestly believe your presence would be of any benefit to her recovery? Even during the Rose Palace arson, you troubled the ailing princess—”
“Hey, I told you already! That was completely staged! Man, she really has a wild streak. But, you know… now that I think about it, she… in that palace… No, forget it.”
“In the palace?”
“Well, it’s just… is she mistreated there? Surely not, right? But she said something about embezzlement that really pricked at me.”
“…Embezzlement?”
“Yeah. Said something like, ‘Take that, you thieving bastard in the treasury.’ Looking at how she dresses, you’d think she was living in pure luxury. Or is that not it? Was she just skimming off a massive budget?”
“……”
Raymon had fallen silent then, before relentlessly grilling Lisianthus on every single detail of the conversation he had shared with Titania during the Rose Palace fire. Lisianthus had answered obediently enough, though an instinctive unease seemed to gnaw at him.
“I really thought she was living the high life… Damn it, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Makes me wonder if she couldn’t even let her guard down under her own roof.”
“……”
Raymon had listened to his brother’s words in heavy silence. But Bibi, standing beside them in the corridor, had noticed it at once: the way Raymon’s face had drained of color, turning deathly pale.
That was why she had deliberately provoked him with the topic of marriage—to force him to voice whatever tangled emotions were festering inside his chest, to push him to find some kind of resolution. Unlike the flustered Titania, Raymon had pursued the engagement with an unnerving, almost blind resolve.
That alone was enough for Bibi to grasp the sheer depth of his feelings, but…
‘So please, do not use being my savior as an excuse to interfere with me any longer.’
He had been rejected. Thoroughly, cleanly, and completely.
“I don’t know,” Raymon murmured.
“About what?”
“The answer to my actions.”
Unlike his usual self, Raymon kept his gaze pinned firmly to the carriage floor, unable to meet even Bibi’s eyes. His voice was scraped raw and barely above a whisper.
“…Princess Titania is right. If she wishes to reduce grace to mere debt, then so be it. Her bond with you is not poor, and our engagement was only nominal from the start…”
A sharp twinge seemed to pierce his chest; his brow furrowed in visible pain.
“Besides, because I was too late, she truly…”
Whenever he remembered the moment Titania’s breath had guttered out in his arms, the air in his own lungs felt suffocated. He had stood vigil over countless dying soldiers on the battlefield; he had granted peace to the fatally wounded more times than he could count.
Yet holding something so fragile it seemed it might shatter under the weight of an embrace, watching her faint, shallow breaths fade to nothing against his chest… that was a horror he had never known.
And that faint, relieved smile curling the corners of her lips—as though she were thinking, ‘Thank goodness, it’s finally over this time’—had torn his heart to shreds.
It was a sensation completely foreign to him.
The moment her breath vanished, only to return.
His instincts had screamed at him.
Something had gone terribly, irrevocably wrong.
He had arrived too late. And for that singular failure, he might well remain an unforgiven sinner before her for the rest of his life.
“…I almost failed to save her.”
So it was only right that she resented him, only natural that she kept her distance. He told himself this over and over. Yet his golden eyes trembled violently, adrift like a battered dinghy caught in a tempest.
“So what you’re saying is, your conscience is eating away at you purely out of guilt?”
“……”
Watching his stubborn silence, Bibi let out a weary sigh. Sometimes, those standing on the outside could see far more clearly than the person drowning in the middle of it all. Raymon couldn't refute her claim of guilt, but Bibi knew better. Her brother was not foolish enough to force a marriage out of guilt alone.
“Good grief, I give up. Brother Lisianthus is practically bouncing off the walls, too. Honestly, if we could just take the two of you and split the difference, it’d be perfect.”
“…Did Lisian say something to you directly?”
One brother was digging his own grave, entirely unmoored by guilt, duty, and lingering regret over Titania.
The other brother had set a fire in the imperial palace hand-in-hand with her, only to ignite a blaze in his own heart, and was now constantly raving about her.
And the elder brother was reacting with razor-sharp sensitivity to the mere mention of the younger brother’s interest…
Bibi’s eyes clouded over with profound exhaustion.
For a fleeting second, she felt an overwhelming urge to find Sister Titania and tell her to pack her bags and run as far away as humanly possible.