WYDM 02

Lying on the bed, waiting for the doctor’s touch, his appearance made Sehera scream. Half his bed was soaked through with blood, and Ethan lay there weakly on top of it.

Deep, dark red wounds showed across his chest and abdomen. And through those split openings, some kind of indecipherable lines seemed to be drawn haphazardly.

“The stitches burst open again. If you’re injured this badly, you should have taken your time getting here. What do you expect, riding so hard? Of course everything tears open.”

“…Be quiet.”

Ethan, consumed by exhaustion and pain, couldn’t even produce proper sounds.

“Your Grace, what on earth is this? What happened?”

Sehera quickly tried to run the remaining distance to approach his bedside. But Gakun, the doctor’s assistant holding a rather large needle, blocked her path.

“Why are you blocking me?”

“I apologize, my lady.”

Gakun spoke firmly in a high-pitched voice but had no intention of moving aside. Staring at him for a while, she began to feel something was strange. Sehera’s head turned very slowly toward the bed.

She wanted to approach, yet a mere doctor’s assistant was blocking that path… The doctor, and even Ethan, said nothing about it.

“Your Grace…”

“Your Grace, inhale this. I absolutely cannot work without anesthesia.”

Sehera’s call was buried beneath the doctor’s words. Even as her gaze shifted from the doctor back to Ethan, Gakun remained completely motionless, blocking her way.

“Hah… This will take forever… And I feel terrible when I wake up.”

“But if you don’t use this, I cannot touch the wounds.”

“Your Grace…”

Sehera tried to call him but flinched for a moment.

The doctor called him Your Grace, the assistant called him Your Grace. And right now, here, Sehera was also calling him Your Grace.

For the first time then, she wondered what she was even doing here. What right did she have to be in this place?

It was said to be a long-standing engagement between their parents.

Duke Croft and Count Planer had such a deep, long friendship that they made such an oddly vague promise, and whether by coincidence or fate, Sehera was born exactly four years after Ethan’s birth.

She recalled how Count Planer would brag about Ethan, who grew more handsome with each passing year, almost like he was his own son.

But such marriage arrangements were common throughout the empire. Sehera held no complaints about such a marriage.

And even when she heard the news that the Croft Ducal Estate had fallen greatly due to a devastating war defeat and the Duke’s death, she wasn’t particularly shaken.

Everyone has their own lot in life. Sehera accepted that this was hers.

The Count’s estate wasn’t in good shape either. In the deeply scarred aftermath of war, it was difficult for even nobles to maintain everything intact.

Just like how the previous Duke, despite serving as Knight Commander and receiving the Emperor’s favor, collapsed from a single defeat and the death he met in that defeat.

So she thought her father needed the money. At least until Sehera arrived, it was a place that maintained its reputation.

But even that vanished after the Duchess passed away.

The sense of duty she felt when Ethan officially became Duke and she became Duchess was brief—Ethan left the house and began staying away for long periods.

And… it became like this.

“Ugh… Gah!”

“Y-Your Grace! Do you feel pain? Gakun! The anesthesia, quickly!”

Awakened from her thoughts by Ethan’s violent groan, Sehera turned to look at him, then covered her mouth with both hands and gasped breathlessly. The large needle Gakun had been holding was now piercing through Ethan’s flesh.

In the meantime, they must have cleaned and disinfected the area around the wound, because the split flesh was laid bare, and the needle was piercing through it—Sehera’s heart pounded so hard she couldn’t utter another word.

“Kugh… Hng…!”

Too shocked and having inhaled too sharply, Sehera’s breath caught in hyperventilation. Unable to inhale or exhale, if Gakun hadn’t given her emergency treatment, she might have fainted before Ethan did.

“Take the lady to her room immediately.”

When the doctor’s words fell, Sehera tried to object. Of course she couldn’t watch the whole thing, but she wanted to stay nearby.

But no one would allow it. Not even Ethan.

“Um…”

The next day, as soon as dawn broke, Sehera left her room and walked briskly toward Ethan’s room, only to have her path blocked by Leri. At Sehera’s puzzled look, Leri hesitated for a long while, trying to say something.

What could possibly make her hesitate this much?

At the time, she had no idea. Just how serious would something have to be to silence this straightforward head maid… She was truly curious, yet couldn’t shake an ominous feeling.

“My lady, His Grace… His Grace said that when he returns to the estate, you should not come to see him and should remain in your room. You should not come out in the future either, and even now… he asks that you return.”

Like she knew Sehera would come looking this early in the morning, she delivered such cruel words through Leri.

Would it have been less miserable if she’d heard it in his voice? Would she have been less hurt if she’d at least had a chance to question it?

She exposed her shocked and wounded face all too nakedly before Leri. She had no capacity to hide such things.

“What… did you say…?”

“My lady…”

Leri looked at her with pity as she stood there, muttering in a daze, unable to accept it.

Sehera continued standing there, unable to accept it, but she couldn’t enter that room.

The doctor and assistant, the head maid and butler, even the servant who brought firewood could enter to stoke the fire more strongly… Only Sehera could not enter that room.

Hurt became anger, and ultimately became humiliation. In this Croft estate, she had become less than the servant who brought firewood.

The only one who couldn’t pass through that door was Sehera.

“Your Grace… Your Grace!!”

Calling desperately was useless. The door before her eyes remained firmly shut, and no one told her she could enter.

“Your Grace…!”

* * *

“Oh my!”

Calling for him in front of Ethan’s door, she inhaled deeply and sharply as she lifted her upper body from where she lay. Once she sat up, she finally understood. She had dreamed of the past, when she sat collapsed and crying in front of his door.

“Huu, haah… gasp!”

The breath she’d inhaled sharply, she expelled after bolting upright. Sehera poured all her energy into calming her breathing until tears nearly came, then lay back on the bed, controlling her breathing so intensely her chest heaved.

As her breathing gradually calmed, the corners of Sehera’s eyes reddened, and finally tears began streaming down, forming rivulets.

She had dreamed of the past. It was so vivid—the sensation and emotion of breathlessness and legs cramping.

She had been abandoned by her husband, Ethan. In the ducal estate, the only person forbidden from doing what anyone else could do was Sehera alone.

She alone could not approach Ethan when he returned to the estate. She couldn’t disobey his command, issued as an order.

Not just then, but even when he left or stayed at the estate, she became unable to approach him.

However, Sehera was relatively stubborn and slow to give up. She ran to him several more times after that, every morning. When he left the estate, she went out to see him off; when he returned, she went out to greet him.

‘Don’t come to see me off next time either.’

This time, those words came from his own mouth. Looking down at Sehera directly.

That cool voice still seemed to echo in her ears. She vividly remembered him looking at her with that cold voice, with eyes that held no warmth whatsoever.

She remembered Ethan’s voice and gaze that had severed her sense of worth with a single stroke.

After leaving that cool remark, Ethan immediately turned and left the ducal estate. It was a resolute back that gave no thought to how the one left behind might feel.

* * *

She bathed her sweat-soaked body in drawn bathwater. Leri was busy with her own work, and the young maids were each busy with theirs, so though it was slightly bothersome, Sehera could bathe and emerge quietly.

Nearly a year had passed since Ethan returned so badly injured that he couldn’t easily leave and remained behind.

Until then, she’d been curious about Ethan constantly leaving the estate, and whenever he went out, he’d return injured without fail, which made her worry about him even more.

She wanted to know, at the very least, what kind of work he was going about.

Then, even though he pushed her away, wouldn’t let her enter his room, and ordered her to stay out of sight… she might have understood and accepted it.

Because she thought of herself as the lady of House Croft now.

But at that time, Ethan shattered even that resolve. It sounded like nothing more than: you’re nothing here… so don’t keep appearing and bothering me.

And so Sehera gradually became forgotten among the ducal estate’s employees. Aside from Leri, who occasionally spoke to her, no one paid her any mind.

After a very turbulent morning passed, Sehera appeared in the dining room once more.

But today, Leri wasn’t there. Thinking she must have gone somewhere because she was busy, Sehera walked toward the kitchen.

“So the lady doesn’t do anything at all?”

“Right? She’s got it made, hasn’t she? Even if it’s a run-down house on its last legs, it’s still Croft, you know? She eats three meals a day and enjoys living in a space like this, so what more could she want?”

The voices of servants chatting among themselves could be heard from the kitchen. She hadn’t peered inside expecting a warm welcome, but just as she entered the dining room, the voices reached her, and Sehera barely managed to stop.

With timing like a ghost, they were talking about Sehera.

“She just sits in the quiet estate waiting for her absent husband, and even when he returns, she just greets him once and that’s it, right? No matter what work he’s done or how badly injured he returns, she doesn’t even nurse him. If that’s all it takes to be a duchess, of course anyone could do it.”

“But didn’t she get stopped from even that! Ugh… She’d rush out first to check how he was injured and try to follow, but he earnestly begged her not to interfere.”

“Aha! I get it!”