Eric was dreaming—a dream shaped by memory. In it, there was a woman.
Émilie d’Orléans—his birth mother, the late Duchess.
The time was likely some twenty years ago.
At just four years old, young Eric had hurled a pebble at a playmate who tried to take his wooden horse, leaving a bruise on the boy’s face.
“Eric. Why did you strike your friend?”
Émilie's voice was stern, a tone rarely heard from her.
Eric, cowed by guilt, scuffed at the weeds beneath his feet and stared at the ground.
Émilie didn’t gather him into her arms or ruffle his hair as she usually did.
Hurt by her coldness, Eric pouted, his lips pushing forward.
She repeated, calmly but firmly, “I asked you—why did you hit your friend, Eric?”
Frustration welled up in him—at everything. He burst out:
“He started it! He touched my horse first! You said—if someone tries to steal from you or hit you, it’s stupid to just take it!”
He shouted, unable to contain the storm inside him.
But when he looked up at his mother, her expression had gone pale.
His breath caught.
I… did something wrong,
he realized.
Tears brimmed in Émilie’s eyes as she knelt before him, grasping his shoulders tightly.
“Who… who told you that?”
Her voice trembled as she demanded, “Who told you such a thing?! Tell me, Eric!”
Eric blinked up at her, confused.
“F-Father did…”
Her face hardened immediately.
Even now, years later, Eric still couldn’t understand why she’d looked so terrified that day.
His father's advice—
answer violence with violence
—was foolish, yes, but not entirely out of line with the old-fashioned ways noble households raised their sons.
And yet, from that day on, Eric remembered it as the beginning of his mother’s descent into instability.
“No, Eric,” she said, voice low with emotion. “If someone takes from you, if someone hits you… you speak up. You protest with words.”
Her hands shook.
“The real fool is the one who becomes just like them—the one who steals, or hits back.”
He could never forget her tearful face, nor the trembling in her voice.
“But Father says being too kind is weak… and weakness is evil…” he protested, voice small.
“No.”
Her eyes—deep, unwavering, chestnut brown—held him in place.
“Kindness is never foolish. What’s wrong is a world where those who do good are never repaid.”
Her words struck something deep in his soul.
A truth that echoed for years.
And as Eric reached out to hold her hand in the dream, her figure faded—
—replaced by another.
This time, it was Emelline Wedgwood.
The scene shifted to just two months prior.
Helena Wedgwood, Philip Wedgwood, and Emelline had visited the d’Orléans estate upon the Duke’s invitation.
Back then, Eric didn’t yet think of Emelline as “mad” or “peculiar.”
She had a simple face, sloped shoulders, and a soft, uncertain voice.
Her eyes—wide and shimmering like dewdrops—darted about nervously, unsure even when offered tea or guided through the manor by the servants.
Eric couldn’t help but watch her.
Why is she so flustered by everything?
The way she didn’t dare speak up against the subtly mocking servants irritated him—made him strangely angry.
Her mother, Helena, seemed fixated on earning the Duke’s favor and showed no interest in her own daughter.
A woman who cared more about marrying into a noble clan than about her child,
Eric thought grimly.
Philip wasn’t much different. He had an eye for the Duke’s valuables, but showed little interest in his sister’s discomfort. When Emelline had boiling water spilled on her—whether by accident or intention—while their father was away, it was Lily who scolded the servant in her stead. Yet Helena and Philip didn’t even react.
Emelline spoke with a timid, shrinking voice.
“W-Well, I suppose it could happen. Everyone makes mistakes…”
“You’re so kind, Lady Emelline.”
At that, Eric saw her expression harden. In that instant, the look on Emelline’s face was… chilling, as if every trace of the naive country girl from before had been nothing but an act.
Emelline, eyes full of undisguised scorn, murmured as she glanced toward Lily, who was too busy wiping down her scorched dress to notice.
“Kindness… is something only those with power can afford.”
She must’ve thought Eric, standing further off, hadn’t heard.
A woman who hated being called kind—and yet acted out every textbook gesture of it.
Eric returned to his study with a lingering sense of discomfort about that strange woman.
“Being too kind is a flaw,”
he remembered his father saying.
And over that old memory, he saw Emelline’s face again—full of dread, from when she was younger.
Eric rose from his chair. Whatever the case, if a servant had intentionally poured scalding tea on a guest of the Ducal House, that was something that couldn’t be overlooked.
He headed toward the stables, where the head maid said the servant was located. That was when—
“I oughta just kill you right now!”
It was Philip’s voice.
“Easy, easy. You leave marks, it’ll be obvious,” came Helena’s, two tones lower than when she had spoken earlier before their father.
Then came the trembling voice of the maid.
“M-My lady, you’ve misunderstood—”
“Misunderstood? I saw it. You poured tea on my daughter and laughed.”
Eric stopped mid-step.
“You keep acting up like this… and I’ll tell everyone what you and the stable boy get up to behind the barn. Sound good?”
The maid turned deathly pale.
“Y-You have no proof!”
“Proof? I don’t need proof. I can
make
proof. You know what matters more to the Duke than the truth? The honor of the Ducal House.”
Helena brought her face close to the maid’s, sneering.
“You dared to lay a hand on
my
daughter? You’re just an accessory in this manor. But then again, so am I. Let’s help each other out, hmm?”
As the maid collapsed in sobs, Philip and Helena slipped quietly back into the manor, unaware Eric had been watching the entire time.
Then, from near the rear gate where she’d likely been keeping watch, Emelline muttered to the retreating siblings.
“Told you we should’ve just let it go. Sometimes it’s better not to stir the pot…”
Her mother’s words echoed in Eric’s mind:
“Goodness must always be repaid.”
If that were true—then Emelline was someone who needed to be punished.
✵
✵
✵
Eric opened his eyes.
I waved at him from across the room, where he lay sprawled out on the bed, his wrists and ankles firmly bound.
“You sure like to sleep in, young master.”
Eric jolted upright—only to realize his arms were tied down. He yanked at the restraints, but they held firm.
“Ugh… In the capital, they sell all kinds of things,” I said with a playful tone. “Especially tools made to fulfill the… fantasies of noble young lords.”
I gestured toward the restraints binding his wrists.
“Are you insane?! Why are my clothes off?!”
Eric let out a strangled groan as he looked down at his bare torso.
His physique was lean and honed—each muscle defined like it had been sculpted from stone.
Damn…
There were things I could never see in Philip—things I found now, in Eric. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I spoke:
“From the very first moment I saw you, Young Lord Eric d’Orléans, I thought this—”
I leaned in with a languid smile.
“You’d look far better without all those layers of robes. Just like this.”
Eric’s expression twisted with something close to dread, as if he had just realized what sort of trap he had wandered into.
We were on the upper floor of
The Night-Blooming Rose
, inside one of its sealed-off chambers, where the doors were thick, the walls thicker, and a velvet-bed dominated the center like a king’s dais.
I sat beside him without hesitation.
“Looks like I was right. You’re far more pleasing to the eye like this, than in that pompous cultivator’s uniform you usually parade around in.”
I reached up, gently intending to brush his hair back, when Eric flinched like a beast ready to bite.
Goodness. How frightening. It felt like I’d tied down a spirit beast instead of a man.
I immediately drew my hand back and tried to soothe him.
“Come now, let’s calm down. We’re here to have a conversation, aren’t we?”
“A conversation? And yet you drugged me unconscious and tied me up?!”
His face darkened with fury, the veins near his temple twitching with suppressed rage.
Honestly, I felt a little wronged. I didn’t give him the sleeping incense—he walked right into it himself.
I only tied him up afterward.
Hauling an unconscious d’Orléans heir to a chamber had nearly broken my body in two.
Turns out even villainy requires physical endurance.
Back when Mother and Philip plotted wicked schemes, I was just the lookout. So of course my stamina was rock-bottom.
“I don’t enjoy crude words,” Eric growled. “Release me now, Lady Emelline, before I lose what little patience I have.”
“Hm. Doesn’t seem like you even
know
how to curse properly,” I mumbled, scratching my chin and ignoring him entirely.
I didn’t have time to argue.
Sunlight was starting to seep through the windows.
Only two days left.
In just two days, my mother would be dragged to her wedding altar like a lamb to slaughter—offered up to the Duke of Orléans.
I grabbed the sealed scroll and thrust it under Eric’s nose.
“You know what this is, don’t you? That’s why you took it. You snuck into the Duke’s study and smuggled it out.”
Eric’s pupils shook violently, but he was quick to hide it—already searching for excuses.
Rather than listen, I stood and paced the room, holding the document up in the growing light.
“I spent last night
thinking
, you know. Why would Young Lord Eric d’Orléans steal a ledger that might hold the Duke’s fatal weakness? Why bring it here, of all places? And what’s its connection to Princess Ella, the strongest political rival of Prince Robert?”
On that last line, I let my voice drop, aiming a finger at him like a spiritual gun.
In that moment, I was no different than a cultivator pointing the blade of truth at his neck.
I narrowed my eyes and offered him a cool smile.
Eric glared at me as though he might vomit from stress at any moment.
“Bullseye, huh?”
Chapter 15