RSHTV 09

Chapter 9

“…What a strange woman.”

At last, after leaving the Rosentin Count’s estate, Deminic took one more look back at the room where Bellona was staying and muttered to himself.

She was a strange woman, yet strangely trustworthy and oddly familiar.

From the very first moment they met, she had left a powerful impression on him.

Under the dazzling sunlight, she had casually swept aside her vivid red hair, completely unfazed by Deminic’s threats as she stubbornly said whatever she wanted to say.

She was truly refreshing.

Is that why I keep wanting to get closer to her?

It was a very unfamiliar feeling.

Normally, once he had obtained the information he needed, he would have simply stopped caring. Or, more simply, he would have killed her.

But he did not want to do that.

Raylon and Roxell, huh.

He still could not believe that the blood of the two most powerful families in the empire flowed through his veins.

Deminic had never thought that someone like himself could possibly have been born with an ordinary fate.

But his mother was a princess, and his father was a duke.

Deminic took the sapphire ring from inside his clothes and held it up to the light, lost in thought.

“Deminic, your destiny is not here. Remember that. When the time comes, and you are old enough to stand on your own two feet, I will tell you everything. Not now. It would be dangerous. If they happen to find you first…”

Deminic recalled the brown-haired, ordinary-looking woman whom he had regarded as his biological mother all his life.

She had been kind and gentle, but always trembling with anxiety as though she were being pursued by something.

Not long after Deminic had become old enough to understand right from wrong, and before he had even turned ten, his “mother” had died in vain after being struck by a carriage.

When he took out the bundle she had carefully hidden deep inside a drawer and checked its contents, he found the ring that Deminic was now holding.

It was obviously an expensive piece of jewelry, set with a gemstone valuable enough to buy an entire house and more. Yet even during their difficult circumstances, she had never brought herself to sell it.

Deminic had therefore assumed it must hold considerable meaning and carefully kept it safe.

“…It might suit her.”

The thought he had been lost in vanished the instant the sapphire’s blue color reminded him of Bellona’s equally blue eyes.

He was abruptly dragged back into the present.

“I will never betray you.”

Bellona’s repeated words echoed through his mind.

Regardless of whether he had decided to believe her absurd-sounding claim that she could see the future, she was truly an impossible woman to understand.

Why did she act so detached, as though there was nothing she could do about Deminic choosing the path to his own destruction, yet show an almost excessive amount of pity when she looked at the old scars from his past—wounds that Deminic himself no longer even cared about?

That was why he had told her everything about his past.

Even when he prodded at her, Bellona merely responded coldly without showing much agitation. Yet when she traced the scars on his back, listened to his story, and looked so gloomy, he had found himself strangely drawn to her.

They were already battered, ruined wounds, torn apart by the past.

Since bringing them up again could not hurt him, he wanted to seize the opportunity to glimpse Bellona’s true feelings.

Perhaps I am becoming greedy.

Every moment he had spent with Bellona was vividly engraved in his mind.

She was small and delicate enough to fit easily into his arms, yet her personality was as unyielding as her fiery hair.

Even the irritation that occasionally appeared in those clear, deep blue eyes amused him.

Deminic had a premonition that there would never be anyone like her in his life, either in the past or in the future.

He did not want to lose Bellona Rosentin.

He already felt as though he would soon lose interest in a colorless life without her.

Deminic slipped the ring back into his pocket and rolled it between his fingers as he merged into the bustling crowd of the city.

He then entered another temporary residence he had prepared while Bellona was asleep.

“Idiots.”

Looking down at the street where the busy holy knights had finally disappeared from sight, Deminic took out the transparent blue sapphire ring once again and carefully examined the inscription written in cursive.

“So this is the proof of my identity…”

He had already half-finished verifying the background Bellona had told him about.

Once he mentioned the Emperor and Empress, it had been easy to piece together all the fragments of the past from the High Priest, who had gone deathly pale and looked around in fear rather than simply answering him.

The Empress must think I’m dead.

On the day Deminic had barely managed to escape from the temple, the enormous flames that had taken the lives of his biological parents had risen over the place where the temple’s orphans lived.

Deminic had sensed something ominous with his sharp instincts and slowed his steps on his way back to his quarters.

The moment he saw the building going up in flames, he did not even look back. He escaped the temple through a small hole in its outer wall.

“To think you’d try to kill both parent and child in exactly the same way. What refined taste you have.”

His grip tightened around the ring in his palm.

Bellona Rosentin had practically spoon-fed him his past, present, and future, calmly laying out each piece so that he could identify his enemy in an instant.

She had made him feel as though she had told him everything.

But he could clearly see that she was skillfully avoiding revealing anything about herself.

That was what intrigued Deminic.

There were countless things she could demand from him, yet she remained indifferent and kept her distance.

Why?

It was a question that had been going around in circles in his mind since yesterday.

Bellona seemed completely sincere and clear in her desire to help Deminic, but she showed absolutely no intention of developing a personal relationship or sharing any emotional connection with him.

She spoke to him only when necessary, and even the information she provided was delivered plainly—just enough for him to make plans and avoid being caught off guard.

What did she really want?

The moment he remembered the words “engagement” and “marriage,” which Bellona had casually mentioned, an unpleasant emotion he could not identify swept through him.

What if the secret she’s hiding has something to do with a single man…?

As a noblewoman, a political marriage was inevitable for Bellona Rosentin.

But she did not look like a woman who would willingly walk down that path.

And yet, when he imagined Bellona having someone in her heart and dreaming of a future with him, an impulse surged within Deminic to eliminate that person, whoever he might be.

“This can’t possibly be about something like love.”

From what he had learned of Bellona in such a short time, she was the sort of woman who would raise those blue eyes even with a knife pressed to her throat and mock him by asking if he had finally decided to kill her.

There was no way such a woman would fall desperately in love with someone, desire only one person, and use her supposed ability to know the future to help Deminic for that person’s sake.

No.

He wanted to believe that.

Unless she has something on the Emperor and storms straight into the imperial palace, half-threatening him into blessing her marriage to whoever she wants.

That seemed more fitting for Bellona—the woman who had suddenly appeared before Deminic and casually thrown a necklace at him while telling him to stop using black magic.

But even that possibility irritated him.

If she had been the one to reach out to Deminic first, and if she had agreed to cooperate with him, then shouldn’t he naturally be her top priority?

He did not care if that was unreasonable.

Deminic wanted Bellona to focus entirely on him just as much as his own attention had begun to focus on her.

If I ever saw those eyes looking at another man the same way…

Whenever they spoke, her eyes sometimes burned with the intensity of flames.

And when she looked at his wounds and scars, there had been a soft, worried tenderness in her eyes.

He wanted to be the only one who possessed all those emotions.

It was then.

“I want death, Deminic Raylon.”

For an instant, a voice far too clear to be dismissed as an auditory hallucination echoed through his mind and pierced his ears.

Deminic froze exactly as he was, his hand still gripping the ring.

“What?”

There was no way he could mistake the owner of that voice.

It belonged to the very woman he had been speaking with only moments ago.

But a hallucination in Bellona’s voice saying that she wanted to die?

For a moment, he wondered whether Bellona had been right after all—that his mind, gradually being consumed by black magic, was slowly losing its sanity.

“You know nothing.”

This time, the voice whispered softly, tickling his ear.

Deminic stopped rolling the ring between his fingers and slowly raised it.

Was it his imagination?

The sapphire seemed to emit a faint glow.

“What is this…?”

Until Bellona had mentioned the ring, it had naturally remained inside its case and had not been brought out for a long time.

After Deminic had fled far from the capital and become so destitute that he was practically a beggar, his current master had taken him in. For a while, Deminic had completely forgotten about the ring.

He had heard that it was a gift from the First Emperor to the Empress, so he had wondered whether it possessed some special power, much like the black magic he used.

But within the range of his detection abilities, he had sensed nothing unusual.

Should I ask my master?

His master, who had taught him black magic, might know more.

It had been a while since he last contacted that stubborn old man anyway.

“…Why did I suddenly hear a voice?”

No matter how much he held and examined the ring, it gave him no answer.

Only Bellona’s voice from moments ago continued to circle through Deminic’s mind.

Preventing him from stopping his endless thoughts about her.