A Most Bizarre Swindler
Pelens arrived at the Duke's office with Lefonya still tucked haphazardly under his arm.
Even before they reached the heavy double doors, Duke Craitan's thunderous roar echoed down the corridor.
"Here I thought the old man had gone senile, but he's still got plenty of fight left in him," Pelens muttered with a smirk, finally setting Lefonya down on the floor.
Lefonya let out a small breath of relief. She had been dreading the thought of him carrying her like a sack of potatoes in front of an entire crowd.
Brushing down her rumpled hem, she surveyed the hallway. A long line of people stood waiting in hushed apprehension, as though the Duke had barred anyone from entering. There was the butler, the head maid, several knights, and off to the side, Birdie and Becky, who had run off earlier to investigate the commotion. Behind them stood a handful of vassals, visibly trembling under the watchful gaze of the guards.
I thought they were being held in private quarters. Seeing them lined up in the hall made it look as though they were awaiting their turn on the executioner's block.
Wait... Lefonya's uneasy gaze shifted back toward the office, from which waves of sheer fury poured out. Then who on earth is in there right now?
"I am asking who dared! Who dared commit arson inside my estate?! Who threw that incense?!"
The crash of splintering wood punctuated the Duke's bellow, followed immediately by someone's desperate, tearful wails pleading innocence.
He really did drag them in to interrogate them. Lefonya's face hardened as her mind raced. The Duke was cornering the vassals to ferret out the culprit, just as she had feared. This was the worst-case scenario. I have to wrap this up somehow.
"Out of the way," Pelens said, cutting through her frantic thoughts as he stepped forward.
"Young Master Pelens?!"
Ignoring the startled knight, Pelens threw open the heavy doors that no one else had dared touch.
"Who is it?! I said no one enters without permission—!"
"Father."
"...Pelens?"
Now. Seizing the opening, Lefonya scurried into the office right behind Pelens's long legs.
The interior was a disaster. Several pieces of furniture were smashed to kindling, and an unsheathed broadsword lay heavy upon the polished desk.
"What brings you here so suddenly?" the Duke asked, his voice strained.
Pelens swept a disdainful glance over the kneeling, sniffling vassal on the floor before drawling coolly, "I get that you're furious, but take it somewhere else. You're scaring the kid."
Scaring who? Lefonya blinked and glanced around, wondering what poor child had stumbled into the crossfire. But no matter where she looked, there wasn't another child in sight.
When she turned back, she found Pelens staring directly down at her.
...Me?
As she blinked in sheer disbelief, the Duke followed his son's gaze and finally noticed the small figure standing in the room.
"Ponya!"
Lunging forward like a wild beast, Duke Craitan swept Lefonya up and pulled her tight against his chest.
"You're awake! How is your body? Does anything hurt? The doctor said you inhaled far too much smoke and that your throat was damaged—how does it feel? Say something to me. No, wait, if you're awake, why aren't you resting in bed?! Why did you come all the way here? I am certain I ordered the staff to summon the physician the moment your eyes opened!"
Swallowing with some difficulty against the barrage of frantic questions, Lefonya stared up at him.
Even when she had been engulfed in flames in her past life, weeping over blistering burns that seeped fluid, no one had ever looked at her with this kind of concern.
Was he... genuinely worried about me?
His expression was the same one she had seen right before losing consciousness. At the time, she had assumed her fading vision was playing tricks on her. But seeing it now, up close, he looked unmistakably like a father terrified for his daughter's life.
...No. Lefonya cut the thought short and lowered her gaze.
I'm not his daughter. I'm a complete stranger. There's no reason for him to care about me.
The person the Duke worried over was not Lefonya the orphan. She couldn't afford to be deluded. He was protecting the placeholder who occupied the seat of the young lady of Craitan—the substitute filling the void left by his real child. Seeing that substitute harmed had simply triggered his unresolved guilt.
Reining in her emotions, Lefonya answered softly, "I'm fine. ...What about Your Grace?"
"I am unharmed. A pathetic little fire like that is nothing to me."
"Mm."
"Ponya, you have nothing to fear. An assassination attempt under my own roof is an unforgivable offense. Whoever dared lay a hand on you, I swear I will hunt them down and—"
"About that."
"Yes?"
"Please just pretend this never happened."
The Duke's face twisted in sheer bewilderment. He wasn't the only one. The vassals waiting outside, Pelens, and even the servants standing within earshot all stared at her as if she had grown a second head.
"Ponya... are you asking me to spare the bastards who tried to murder you?"
He didn't even know whether there was one culprit or many, yet the fact that he used the plural proved he was already convinced the vassals were responsible.
"Yes. Stop looking for whoever did it."
Duke Craitan seemed entirely at a loss for words. His mouth worked silently before he finally choked out, "Why... why must you always be so kindhearted—"
"I'm not kind."
If she were truly kind, she wouldn't have thrown herself into danger in the first place just to set a trap for people who didn't actually set the fire.
"Let us... sit down first, Ponya," the Duke said, his voice tight. "You'll worsen your condition standing like this."
Waving a dismissive hand, the Duke dismissed the weeping vassal and the knights before shutting the office door tight. Only Pelens, Lefonya, and the Duke remained.
Once privacy was secured, the Duke approached the sofa where Lefonya sat and dropped to one knee, bringing his eyes level with hers.
"If you are saying this because you fear retaliation, you needn't worry, Ponya. I will never allow them to threaten you."
"It's not that."
"Then why?"
"Because there's nothing good for Your Grace in making enemies out of those people."
Lefonya's voice was terribly calm, as if she were discussing the mundane affairs of total strangers.
"I know they're the people who follow you."
For a five-year-old child to comprehend the intricate web of lord-vassal politics was impossible. Sounding too articulate would only invite suspicion, so she deliberately phrased it in simpler, slightly disjointed terms.
"You don't have proof, right?"
Of course he didn't. She had staged the fire herself; there couldn't possibly be evidence tying it to the vassals.
"...What makes you say that?"
"Because if you had proof, Your Gvace would've just caught the bad guy instead of shouting, 'Who set fire to my house?!'"
The Duke clamped his jaw shut. Beside them, Pelens sat with his arms crossed and one long leg draped over the other, quietly observing the exchange.
"If you keep cornering them when you don't know who did it, they'll just get angry," Lefonya continued.
"That is not something for you to trouble yourself over, Ponya."
"Think about where that anger will go, Your Grace."
It didn't take a genius to figure it out. The resentment wouldn't vanish into thin air; it would land squarely on the unpedigreed adopted girl who caused the rift.
"Let's just end it here," Lefonya said calmly, offering a small, reassuring smile. "You scolded them really loudly, so they won't do it again."
"Ponya. You nearly died."
"Didn't die."
"It was a catastrophe!"
"Nothing bad happened anyway."
The Duke's face crumpled in profound frustration, and Pelens, too, was frowning deeply.
"It turned out fine, so it's all good, right? ...Ah. If the bedroom burning down caused a lot of financial damage, you can just ask for—"
"That gold means nothing, Ponya."
Lefonya quietly patted her chest in relief. She had worried the property damage might spark an uproar, but true to his station as a high nobleman, such an expense was clearly pocket change to him.
"Phew. I thought it was a big deal. What a relief."
"You call this a relief...?!" Duke Craitan gritted his teeth, forcing down an explosive surge of emotion before managing to rasp, "Possessions are never a big deal compared to you."
Letting his words slide past her ears, Lefonya hopped off the sofa on her short legs. She had said everything she needed to say.
"It hurts. I want to go back and rest now. Can I?"
She had laid out the logic as far as a child could; he would have to accept it now. Lingering any longer would only invite unwanted scrutiny, and stepping away at the right moment would keep the Duke from digging in his heels.
Besides, I really am exhausted.
A child's frail constitution struggled far more with smoke inhalation than she had anticipated. Her throat felt as though it had been scrubbed with hot coals.
"...Of course. Summon the physician," the Duke conceded, unable to hold back a child pleading that she was in pain. "We must check Ponya's condition at once."
Done.
Supported by Birdie and Becky, who had been hovering anxiously outside the threshold, Lefonya made her way back toward the temporary quarters.
The heavy doors closed behind her with a dull thud.
"Ha."
Listening to the soft, pitter-pattering footsteps fade down the corridor, Pelens let out an incredulous laugh and raked a hand through his hair.
"Well, aren't we housing a truly terrifying little swindler?"
"Watch your tongue when speaking of your sister, Pelens."
"Sister? Since when do I have a sister?" Pelens gave a crooked, insolent smirk. "Does that look normal to you, Father? Even to someone who's never raised a child, that kid is completely unhinged."
He propped his long legs up onto the low table, lightly bouncing his heels.
"She didn't shed a single tear after waking up. She's five, isn't she? Shouldn't she be crying her eyes out from fear or pain? There wasn't even a trace of dried tears on her cheeks. And that's not all. When I cornered her earlier and tried to intimidate her—"
"Pelens." The Duke's voice dropped to a low, warning rumble.
Pelens merely chuckled, wholly unbothered by the hostility.
"She didn't flinch. Grown academy professors run the other way when I look at them, but she met my eyes without an ounce of terror."
"……."
"Did you hear what she just said? 'Didn't die. Nothing bad happened.' And then she worries about property damage and calls it a relief that we didn't lose gold? It gave me the damn chills."
"The physician mentioned that she tends to dissociate from her own trauma," the Duke said flatly. "A defense mechanism, he called it."
"Defend herself like that one more time and she'll be six feet under." Pelens rose from the sofa and strolled over to the Duke's desk, where a small silver frame sat among the documents. It was an old family portrait, painted long ago.
A time when the Duchess was still alive, and his baby sister was only a few months old.
"Someone brainwashed that kid and sent her in here with the explicit goal of becoming the lady of this house," Pelens said coldly. "Unless she's been trained from infancy like an operative, no five-year-old thinks like that."
After staring down at the portrait for a beat, Pelens turned the frame face-down on the wood.
"Pelens. You are mistaken. I was the one who proposed the adoption first."
"And she engineered the situation so you'd have no choice. Have you looked at her face? When I saw her, I thought Mother had crawled out of her grave."
"……."
"If it shook me that badly, imagine what it did to you and the rest of the household. She used some kind of trick, guaranteed."
Turning around, Pelens leaned back against the desk and stared at his father. His dulled blue eyes were frosty, looking at the man before him not as a parent, but as a complete stranger.
Father and son bore an undeniable resemblance, yet the air between them was utterly fractured.
"Did you want to play house, Father? Or did you drag her here on an impulse just because she wears Mother's face?"
"Pelens. I will not tolerate any further insolence."
"Right, of course. We never were a family, so playing house doesn't fit. I don't have a single memory of you acting like a father to me anyway."
"Pelens. Do you still..."
"If you're so desperate to play doting daddy with that stray, step down and hand over the title first," Pelens snapped, cutting him off without hesitation. "Don't bring some strange kid into the house and pit your sons against each other down the line. You should consider yourself lucky that I was the one who came. If our dear older brother had shown up instead, that girl would be dead already."
"Mind your words, Pelens."
Pelens simply shrugged, crossing his arms.
Yet, an odd, bitter sensation lingered in his chest at the thought of that audacious five-year-old dying.
The moment she had stepped out of the bedroom, his heart had fluttered with an inexplicable pang. It felt as though all five of his senses had burst open at once, much like the day he had first awakened his aura.
Her unruly silver hair had stuck out in soft tufts, looking like a little bundle of fleece, and those round crimson eyes had gleamed like a pair of ripe, glistening cherries. His gaze had been glued to her—almost as if he had finally stumbled upon something he had spent an eternity searching for.
...Except my lost sister couldn't possibly be five years old.
"Must be because she looks so much like Mother," Pelens muttered, clicking his tongue to shake the ridiculous thought from his mind.
What was the point of dwelling on a stray he was going to throw out anyway?
"Just so you know, I'm going to convince her to pack her bags and leave."
"Pelens. If you touch a single hair on that child, even you will not be spared my wrath."
Ignoring the Duke's venomous warning, Pelens turned on his heel and strode out of the office with heavy, sweeping steps.
The very next morning.
"Hey. Kid. Eat it already."
What is wrong with this guy?
"I'm keeping watch, so stop looking around and hurry up and eat."
Pelens stood rigidly in the center of the garden path, scanning left and right like a sentry on high alert.
Lefonya stared down at her tiny hands in sheer bewilderment. Resting in her palms was a towering pile of chocolates and fruit candies.
Is he trying to torment me... or is he trying to be nice?