A few minutes after the carriage carrying Grace departed, Walter and Joseph also passed beyond the castle’s main gate. Joseph, who was driving the horse beside Walter, tilted his head and asked.
“But Your Excellency, did that young lady give any hint... to meet somewhere?”
“No.”
At Walter’s light answer, Joseph narrowed his eyes and tilted his head.
“Uh... Then where are you going to meet her?”
Walter felt no need to answer and remained silent. What lingered in his mind were her eyes, as vivid as fresh green foliage even from afar.
Grace Taylor, who had been staring intently at him, turned around without a word and disappeared. Without asking where to meet, or even where he was staying. Which meant she already knew, and that she would come find him herself.
Walter urged the horse a little faster and headed toward the inn.
“Huh...? It was bustling until this morning. Are they not doing business today?”
Sure enough, the inn was completely empty. After entrusting the horse to Joseph, Walter ascended the stairs at a rapid pace.
The higher he climbed, the closer he felt to a refreshing forest. Skipping two or three steps at a time, Walter reached the top in an instant, stopping before his room door and taking a deep breath. Feeling strangely as though he should knock, he let out a short laugh, then held his breath, grasped the doorknob, and turned it.
The moment the door opened, Walter felt a forest pouring down upon him.
＊ ＊ ＊
Grace, who had arrived at the inn before Walter, stood blankly in the empty room before perching herself on the edge of the sofa.
Anxiety and honor were the first things she had discarded while preparing for the hunt. Yet for the first time in a while, impatience surged within her.
The moment she closed her eyes, dark eyes she had encountered earlier came to mind. A man who had even turned the magnificent chapel into a mere backdrop. When she thought of him, her palms grew damp with sweat.
Grace opened her eyes and took something out from within her clothes. An old emblem engraved with a roaring tiger carried her back to the winter thirteen years ago.
＊ ＊ ＊
That day, a beacon fire rose to announce the Crown Prince’s death. It was followed by news that all had perished in a carriage accident while traveling with the Duke and Duchess of Richmond to visit the ailing Emperor.
Inside the carriage heading to the capital with her parents, dressed in black for mourning, the whispered conversation between her parents had sounded strange even to young Grace’s ears.
“The Duke of Richmond said he would take measures beforehand to avoid the Empress, so perhaps His Highness is safe.”
“Then... the body is...”
“Shh. It was probably the young duke.”
“How pitiful.”
Her tender mother eventually teared up.
After traveling through the entire day, as they reached a certain ridge, the party discovered a knight who was nearly dead. At the horrific sight of the knight, her parents sent the young daughter back inside the carriage, and Grace strained her ears to the sounds outside.
Strangely, the knight’s voice came through very clearly.
“Is... His Grace... under the Grand Duchess's... protection...”
“I say!”
“Flee. They... will come soon. Be... be wary of... the invisible ones...”
The knight could not finish his words.
Her parents, who had been conversing gravely for a moment, had Grace get down from the carriage. Then, placing the dead knight’s emblem in her small hand and entrusting her to the escort knight’s arms, they sent their daughter back to Castle Taylor.
That was the last of it. The carriage of House Taylor was discovered completely burned, just like the carriage that had carried the Crown Prince and the Duke and Duchess of Richmond. The flames had been so fierce that the Duke and Duchess couldn’t even be properly recovered as bodies. The investigation team sent by the Empress concluded it was an accident, but Grace thought differently.
The Duke of Richmond who had prepared something in advance to avoid the Empress, the young duke’s body, and the Grand Duchess’s protection.
Though she was young, Grace pieced together those fragmented clues and became certain.
Like the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, her parents had also been murdered by the Empress. And the surviving Crown Prince had hidden himself under the Grand Duchess’s protection.
Grace swore revenge. And she prepared carefully, for a very long time.
‘A man with black hair and black eyes.’
That was all the information there was on Walter Richmond, who had been born a Crown Prince but became the Duke of Richmond while hiding from everyone’s eyes. Immediately after the incident, the young duke had secluded himself in the Grand Duchess’s residence under the pretext of poor health, and a few years later, he was sent to the Wall of Death with his household’s knights and wandered the battlefield for ten years.
How many men in the Empire had black hair and black eyes? But the moment Grace saw Walter in the hallway, she could tell at a single glance that he was the man she had been looking for.
Fortunately, he had answered her call, and he watched as the wedding broke apart into pieces.
Now what remained was placing herself in his hands. It was the most difficult yet most important thing in her future plans. She had not been nervous even during the moment she caused a commotion at the wedding ceremony, but her mouth went bone dry at what was to come.
As she had been imagining in her head for quite some time what kind of conversation she should have with him, a sound of footsteps reached her sensitive ears. Grace’s eyes snapped open, and she heard someone rushing up the stairs. He seemed to leap over two or three steps with ease, the sound approaching far more rapidly than his footsteps suggested.
It was that man.
The moment Grace sprang to her feet, sensing Walter’s entrance, the door opened without warning and a man who overwhelmed everything revealed himself.
＊ ＊ ＊
A darkness that devoured even light and sound.
Meeting Walter up close, Grace vaguely thought of darkness. Like the darkness of a moonless night that overwhelmed even time and space, the man poured in silently and coiled around her. She was not even conscious that she was holding her breath.
Despite being properly dressed in simple yet formal attire, a primal ferocity that seemed to tear at the skin could be felt. A height that demanded one look up for quite some time, and broad shoulders that filled the doorframe. Yet rather than stocky, he gave off a strong impression of being lithe. Probably due to the sharpness contained in his distinct, vivid features.
Grace exhaled her held breath and pressed her fingernails firmly into her palm. She could not afford to ruin things by being overwhelmed by his momentum. She bent her knee respectfully toward Walter.
“Please forgive my rudeness.”
Even during that time, Walter stared intently at Grace with a gaze that was stubbornly vivid.
The woman who had greeted him with graceful movements calmly raised her eyes. With sunlight streaming in at an angle, it seemed as though light emanated from the woman even in the dim interior, just as it had in the chapel. Walter swallowed the strange feeling and closed the door.
The thick air between the two people seemed to push them apart. In a fleeting moment where even blinking felt cautious, it was Walter who moved first. Unlike someone who had come running up the stairs skipping steps, he moved leisurely and heavily, like a predator prowling its own territory.
As Walter approached, Grace felt an invisible wave push against her entire body. Walter stopped a few steps before her and opened his mouth.
“Castle Taylor is in quite the uproar.”
It was a voice that scratched at the eardrums, terribly low and bewitching. Grace smiled faintly and nodded.
“I imagine so.”
Walter took out the wedding invitation from his breast and asked point-blank.
“The ‘sharpest blade,’ is that you?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want from me? What is it that you think you know about me?”
He kept his chin raised, looking at her only with his eyes. A sharpness unique to one who had survived while staining his hands with blood surged as if to tear Grace apart.
But she had no path of retreat either. Grace bit down hard on the soft flesh inside her mouth.
“I do hope you prove worth the long detour I took to come here personally.”
Walter, who had spat the words out as if mocking her, thrust his hand into his pocket and observed the woman standing modestly before him.
Was it because of the intense first impression in the chapel, or because of her neatly braided hair? Even though she had taken off the wedding dress, she looked like a bride who was about to hold a wedding ceremony.
Then, raising eyes that had been lowered, Grace opened her mouth.
“Make me Your Excellency’s official lover.”
“...What?”
Flustered by the brazen words, Walter echoed back a beat too late. Grace opened her round eyes wide and repeated clearly and distinctly.
“Make me Your Excellency’s official lover and take me to Richmond.”
Walter fell silent for a moment as if trying to gauge Grace’s intentions, then soon smiled sharply.
“Are you telling me to be that ‘hidden lover’ you boldly declared to everyone in the chapel? What exactly do I gain by becoming the paramour of a woman who walked into a wedding ceremony with the Empress’s nephew?”
“If taking control of House Richmond is Your Excellency’s ultimate goal, then you would have no need for me. But what Your Excellency truly desires is not merely that.”
“...”
“Is it not?”
Grace took a deep breath.
The reason Walter Richmond was absolutely necessary at the beginning of Grace Taylor’s long-planned revenge. Now, it was time to play her hidden card.
“Your Highness, the Crown Prince.”