Thank you, Kane Tootman for the support.
Gwen couldn’t hide the expression on her face. Looking at her stiffly frozen features, Dehart said dryly:
“Can you still claim to be innocent regarding her death?”
A silence fell over the room before Dehart started to read aloud the murder instructions written in Gwen’s handwriting.
It was partially burned and incomplete, but it was sufficient to confirm his suspicions.
“I…!”
“Take her away.”
“No, it’s really not true. I admit that I once had such thoughts, but I’m innocent. I really…”
“Disgusting.”
Gwen protested fervently, but it was already too late. Dehart sighed and shook his head. He only viewed her protests as the final desperate struggle of a guilty person.
“Dehart!” Gwen screamed.
“Escort Lady Gwen to the tower. Treat her well, lest anything unfortunate happens to her,” he coldly ordered , and Ryan immediately dragged her out.
Gwen struggled, but it was no use, and Rash, who had been staring blankly at the scene, was also dragged out with her.
Half an hour later, word spread through Hylend Hall that Rash and his wife had been confined to the tower.
***
“You know this isn’t enough, don’t you?”
“….”
“Sooner or later, the two of them will be released, probably by someone high-ranked official in the family like Lord Rymes, and when that time comes, it won’t be something that can simply be covered up as a family dispute,” Ryan warned in a low tone.
Dehart nodded heavily.
“You are right. It’s not sufficient to serve as evidence of murder.”
Still, he thought that Ryan’s statement was half right and half wrong.
“But it’s enough to reinforce the assumption that her death was not a suicide. And that’s exactly what I want,” the man added as he walked down the creaking, fire-scorched hallway of the main building.
“The suspicion that a dirty conspiracy lies behind her death will stir people’s emotions. I need that.”
Ryan followed silently behind him, occasionally blocking falling debris with his own body.
“Weddon drove her into despair, and this grand Hylend Hall killed her,” Dehart continued.
His empty voice eechoed down the corridor as he walked aimlessly before finally stopping in front of Rash’s chambers.
“So I need to know how she died and what kind of suffering she endured,” he said sharply as he entered the room, which only had the door frame left. “After all, I was supposed to be her husband.”
“Leave it to me,” Ryan said to his master, who began searching the ruined, charred room.
“That’s enough. Even though my eyes can’t discern truth from falsehood, I can still see what’s right in front of me.”
The man rummaged through the room, not caring that soot was smudged on his face and hands. And, finally, he found what he had been looking for.
“Looks like fire can be helpful sometimes,” he joked.
Inside the safe, where the complicated lock had melted away, was evidence of Rash’s schemes to tarnish Sebelia’s reputation.
“If only I had known this while she was still alive…”
His golden eyes trembled, and his rough voice struggled to break free.
“If I had, I could have punished those devilish people and comforted her, who had suffered alone all this time.”
But Sebelia was already dead, and all that remained was this disgusting pile of documents in his hands.
“Your Grace…”
“Enough,” Dehart cut him off as he rose from his place, handing the documents and some jewelry from the safe to Ryan.
“Ha,” Dehart scoffed with disdain.
The once luxurious room had been consumed by flames, now resembling a scene straight out of hell. This was the real Hylend Hall, the one the Inverness family was so proud of.
“…how lowly,” Dehart murmured as he looked down at his soot-covered hands. “If she hadn’t married me, she wouldn’t have had to go through all this.”
“The wedding was decided a long time ago,” Ryan remarked.
Right. It was a political marriage meant to strengthen their ties with the capital—this was the will of Dehart’s father, the former duke.
“Yes. He always loved that ridiculous idea of peace,” Dehart replied with a sneer.
Ryan urgently approached him, trying to say something to comfort him:
“Sebelia’s coming to Hylend Hall wasn’t your doing. It was just the circumstances. So please…….”
“No need to struggle to console me with that clumsy tongue of yours, Ryan.”
Dehart stared at Ryan with dry eyes, a bitter smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Because the outcome would have been the same no matter who came to me.”
“That’s…”
“She was just unlucky,” Dehart sighed as he brushed his hair back.
Underneath his dark hair, his weary golden eyes were shadowed by his eyelids.
‘The biggest misfortune of her life was marrying someone like me,’ he muttered with dull eyes as he started to rummage through the piles of books scattered near the bookshelf again.
Yes, if she had never married him in the first place, there would have been no reason for her to become a chess piece in the capital’s schemes.
Our relationship was wrong from the start; he thought.
Dehart recalled the day he first met Sebelia, managing to close his stiff eyes.
At that time, he should have refused to accept such a marriage, insisting that he could not trust someone born out of wedlock and demanding they bring someone else instead.
“Why did I hold her hand back then…?”
Dehart slumped back into a shapeless chair and buried his face in his hands.
“Ha, I’m exhausted.”
It had been over three days since he’d last slept. Even the herbs that were supposed to relax his body had not managed to improve his sleep.
Ryan gazed at his suffering master with heavy eyes. This was something he could not recklessly interfere with.
“Now go, and do your thing ” Dehart commanded weakly. “Go and search through my aunt’s room more thoroughly. Gather her servants separately for questioning….”
“And…yes, track down Peter Hansen and bring him here. He must be an accomplice as well,” he added.
Ryan appeared to contemplate for a moment but soon clenched his jaw tightly and lowered his head.
“I’ll report back as soon as I have something,” he promised.
But Dehart did not respond, and Ryan could only slowly turn around, and leave the room.
The last thing he saw was Dehart clutching ashes with both hands.
***
For a long time afterward, Dehart did not emerge from the main building, which had been horrifically burned.
“Your Grace, your meal… ahhhh!”
Several servants went in to check on him, but they could barely escape the suffocating atmosphere of death that hung over him.
“This isn’t enough. I need real evidence…”
His eyes were sunken and dark from lack of sleep and food, his jawline sharp, his clothes dirty with soot, and his hair a mess. Digging through the remains destroyed by the fire, he looked every bit the madman. But no one could stop him.
His obsession with finding definitive proof that Sebelia had been murdered had long since crossed the line of sanity.
So, as dawn passed and the morning light arrived, Dehart still had not emerged from the creaking main building, which seemed on the verge of collapse.
“Your Grace!”
In the end, Ryan, unable to wait any longer, set out to search for him. But Dehart was not in Rash’s room, nor in Gwen’s room, but instead…
“Get a hold of yourself, Duke!”
He was found unconscious in Sebelia’s small, suffocating, storage-like room.
***
Sebelia had a strange dream that night.
She dreamed of waking in her small room in Hylend Hall.
As if she had never left the estate, she naturally got out of bed and started her day.
She ate the soup and bread that a maid had tossed at her door, mended the half-torn sleeve of her dress again, and spent time staring at the wall. Then, suddenly, she had that strange feeling.
There was a peculiar sense of unease, the feeling that someone else was in the room with her.
Suppressing her fear, Sebelia turned around before jumping to her feat, startled.
“…Ahhhhhh!!!”
There was someone standing blankly by the door, which she hadn’t noticed had opened.
Sebelia hesitatingly stepped toward the figure, but in that moment, the world flipped upside down.
Whoosh—!
The once grayish room was suddenly engulfed in flames, black smoke surrounding her from all sides.
“What the……!”
Sebelia instinctively stepped back.
As she turned her gaze back to the door, she saw that black flames had already risen between her and the figure.
It was only then that Sebelia realized that the only person who could come to her room was Denisa.
“Denisa! Denisa, is that you?!” She cried out desperately, “Denisa, don’t stay here, run!”
The thick, acrid smoke filled her nose and mouth, and Sebelia felt herself gradually losing consciousness.
Then, a faint voice reached her ears. A soft and frail sound squeezed out in pain.
“Sebelia.”
It was so faint that she couldn’t even recognize whose voice it was.
“Gasp!”
Her eyes suddenly snapped open, but instead of the icy northern sun, soft and warm rays caressed her cheek.
“Ah…hah!”
It‘s just a dream. It‘s just a dream.
“Haah.”
With a sigh of relief, Sebelia sat up.
“Thank goodness it was only a dream.”
A dream where she never escaped Hylend Hall and burned to death with Denisa.
Ahh, how cruel.
Wiping the tears that had rolled down her cheeks, Sebelia smiled bitterly.
***
“Gasp!”
Dehart breathed heavily, like a fish out of water.
Cold sweat dripped down his body as he regained his senses.
“Sebelia.”
He looked around frantically, calling his dead wife’s name, but as if what he saw was a mirage, Sebelia was nowhere to be found.
“Sebelia, where are you, my wife…?”
He forced his battered body up and staggered across the room.
The image he had seen just after collapsing was still vivid in his mind.
It was the real Sebelia.
The breathing and living Sebelia , who was afraid of him, yet tried to approach him at the same time.
Dehart was sure of it.
The fake Sebelia, the one who appeared only when he used hallucinogenic herbs, always said what he wanted to hear and showed him only what he wanted to see.
But the woman he encountered this time was different. She didn’t recognize him and acted as if she had a will of her own.
At that moment, Sebelia’s final cry flashed through his mind:
[Denisa, don’t stay here, run!]
“Denisa, Denisa. Denisa… Wait.”
As he paced the room, he suddenly stopped in his tracks. He called out loudly for Ryan and, unable to hide the urgency in his voice, asked:
“Where is that woman, the one who was Sebelia’s nanny?”
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