Why the Northern Duke Wanders the Snowfields - Chapter 45

Before the trial even began.

While the square outside the ducal castle grew noisy, the inside of the castle was silent as a grave.

Taking advantage of that, two figures in black cloaks slipped quietly into the annex of the ducal castle. Agnes found the sleeping Kaeloc and gently patted his face.

“Wake up.”

But his tightly shut eyes showed no sign of opening.

“Why won’t he come to his senses?”

“It seems he took medicine made from Darut.”

The man examining Kaeloc leaned in and smelled the breath coming from the tip of his nose.

Darut was a vine used for insomnia, difficult to obtain and expensive.

“When you drink that medicine, your breath gives off a distinct rose scent. A small amount helps with insomnia, but if you brew it strong and consume a large amount, you fall into a deep sleep for a long time.”

“Find a way, no matter what it takes!” Agnes urged Tarion, her attendant and escort knight since childhood.

“In the past, there was a noblewoman at the palace who collapsed after abusing this medicine, so I once made something to wake her up.”

He took out a palm-sized pouch from his coat and opened it. Then he examined several small glass vials the size of his fingernail.

“I’m glad your hobby is making medicine.”

“I trust Lady Agnes will compensate me well for the cost of these medicines.”

While carefully inspecting the vials, the man spoke as if something had just occurred to him.

“Of course, don’t forget that I should be paid separately as well.”

He was a man who never took a loss, but if given sufficient compensation, Tarion would carry out any illegal task.

“I’m glad to have someone as worldly as you by my side.”

“I’m honored to be by the side of someone who perfectly satisfies my worldly desires.”

Agnes was of royal blood, and as a beloved cousin of King Maric III, she was able to bring one of the richest and most valuable territories in the Kingdom of Trilan as her dowry.

On top of that, the Bellone count’s family she married into was among the wealthiest in the North, able to provide enough riches to satisfy Tarion’s vanity.

The man smiled faintly and opened a vial, beginning to mix its contents.

“Hurry. Someone might discover the fallen guards soon.”

“It’s chaotic outside right now, so no one will come here for a while.”

Seeing Kaeloc lying motionless on the bed, worry began to show on Agnes’s face.

He was supposed to send word when he departed for the ducal castle, but even after a full day passed, there had been no contact from Kaeloc.

Through an informant, she learned that Aubrianna was still imprisoned and Kaeloc’s whereabouts had once again become unknown.

“Theo. It seems both your mother and father are in danger.”

Watching the baby playing with the maid, Agnes decided to act herself.

“I didn’t expect so many people to gather….”

Thanks to that, it had been easy to slip in, but she worried that the crowd’s curious frenzy might harm Aubrianna.

Tarion slightly parted Kaeloc’s lips and dropped a few drops of a dark blue liquid inside.

“How long will it take for him to wake?” Agnes asked while keeping watch out the window.

“If I made the medicine correctly, he should wake soon.”

Agnes narrowed her eyes and glared at Tarion from beneath her cloak. “And if you didn’t make it correctly?”

At the moment Tarion shrugged.

“Mm.”

Kaeloc let out a groan and abruptly opened his eyes.

Startled, Agnes held her breath for a moment and watched. As Kaeloc blinked, he suddenly sat up and shouted.

“You bastards!”

“Looks like I made it properly.”

Is he just the type to respond well to medicine? Tarion muttered, and Kaeloc turned his head and glared at the two of them.

“Who are you?”

Agnes removed the hood of her cloak and revealed her face.

“Are you awake now?”

Kaeloc’s eyes sharpened further when he saw Agnes.

Agnes was supposed to be at the villa, so the fact that she had come to the ducal castle meant he must have been unconscious for quite some time.

“How many days has it been?”

“It’s only been a day since you left the villa yesterday morning.”

Damn it! Aubrianna spent another day in prison.

Kaeloc cursed and got off the bed.

“Are you alright?”

“Other than a bit of a headache, there shouldn’t be any side effects.”

While Tarion answered confidently, Kaeloc had already kicked the door open and stepped out.

The noise coming from outside while he regained his senses made him quickly realize what was happening today.

‘How dare they touch what’s mine.’

Even if Agnes called him arrogant, there was no helping it.

Aubrianna was his. And he was hers as well.

He may have lived as a hunter in the snowfield without worries, but he wasn’t happy.

A body drenched in blood. Fatal wounds.

Seeing the traces of someone trying to kill him, he didn’t think his existence held much value in this world.

‘Was I someone who should have died?’

As he sank into a swamp of gloom from such thoughts, the silence and solitude of the snowfield pushed him into an even deeper loneliness.

He couldn’t find any reason to live.

Just when he grew sick of the life that felt like it would repeat forever, hunting for food and gathering wood to light fires to keep himself warm.

She appeared.

‘Right. It was Aubrianna.’

It wasn’t because she was a young woman who appeared before a man living alone.

His woman had appeared as his salvation.

His steps quickened. No one guided him, yet his feet ran toward the square.

“A witch?”

“Who knows what terrible things she did before seducing the duke?”

“They say she slept with every man in a village.”

“My goodness! Not a witch, a whore then.”

Amid the voices of the people, one voice lingered in his ears.

“I’m not a whore.”

Aubrianna’s tearful voice.

“All I want is to leave. Your Grace.”

Hearing Aubrianna call him not Kaeloc but Your Grace, he realized this wasn’t a hallucination but a fragment of a lost memory.

His head began to throb like it was pulsing.

“I don’t want this child.”

Each time Aubrianna’s voice echoed, his head tightened and pain seeped in.

What did I do to you?

“Please let me go.”

She tried to leave him.

In a memory whose time he didn’t know, he stopped running and bent forward.

“Ugh.”

“If I repay my debt, what do I want to do? Hmm, first, I want to go to school.”

“I want to visit the house I lived in as a child again.”

“You too, Your Grace? If the goddess grants my wish, I want to meet my mother.”

Her young voice chattering about all the things she wanted to do also surfaced.

Sweat poured down like rain, and his blue eyes flickered with a strange light before going blank several times.

After a while, when the headache tormenting him subsided, Kaeloc slowly straightened his body again.

Frowning at the lingering pain, he pushed through the tightly packed crowd.

And then he heard it.

‘Courtesan!’

Kaeloc wanted to kill Sion and Razen for putting him to sleep. But there was someone else he needed to kill first.

The blue eyes staring at Cedric, who, without knowing his place, wore the family signet ring and declared he would make Aubrianna a high-class whore, burned with searing heat.

“How dare you!”

At his roar, the people around him turned their heads.

At the same time, disheveled wheat-colored hair fluttered, and the pale red eyes he had always thought beautiful turned clearly toward him.

On the day when the snow that had piled up endlessly since he was a young boy finally melted, he went outside.

“Look. The flowers have bloomed.”

There was a small flower on the rough, hardened ground. Its translucent petals were fragile, yet strong. It was wondrous.

Aubrianna was the same. Slender and fragile, yet always strong.

The moment his figure was reflected in her wavering eyes, certainty finally settled in them, and Aubrianna burst into tears.

Every time he faced that wonder that was her, he had to steady the emotions that poured out of him. But now, there was no need to do that anymore. Because his wish had come true.

So.

The wish to see her face once more before he died.

‘I’m back, Aubrianna.’

Kaeloc’s heart didn’t just pound, it began to throb as if it would burst.

***

“Our baby….”

Aubrianna trembled in his arms as she spoke. She felt like she would go mad wondering if Theo was safe.

“Yes. Our baby.”

With a satisfied smile, Kaeloc looked at her face for a long moment.

“Let’s go see our baby, Aubrianna.”

It looked like a twisted smile somehow, and Aubrianna stared at him blankly.

The hand tightly wrapped around her from behind didn’t let her move at all.