Hatred and Obsession
“Whoa. I’ve always wanted to step inside Baldrova Castle at least once, but I never thought an opportunity like this would come up.”
Erdes bounced forward with exaggerated delight, her footsteps dancing as if she were performing for an invisible audience.
The frantic gait was enough to make anyone dizzy, yet no one rebuked her. That silence alone spoke volumes about how grave the atmosphere had become.
“But why’s it so quiet? The regent himself escorting us already feels suspicious. Did you kill everyone because they didn’t meet your standards? Or are you preparing to stab us in the back?”
She certainly had a way with charming words.
“Everyone who works in the castle is an ordinary person. None of them are the sort who could handle something like this.”
“Ah, that does make sense. When the knights are a pretty-boy type and some crybaby who’s always sniffling, what kind of pathetic display could the rest put on?”
Erdes burst into peals of laughter.
She was acting like a spoiled child, yet she could never be dismissed. This woman was the continent’s foremost mage. Snuffing out an entire house with a single finger was no difficulty for her, and even kings bowed their heads at her arrival. She was a living catastrophe, a magical executioner.
Which was precisely why Ferda had driven every soul out of the castle. The people who served here were far removed from high ceremony and lacked the fortitude to endure that crushing pressure.
“Anyway, actually coming here feels significant. Baldrova Castle is truly vast. I tried sneaking in once before, but the barrier wouldn’t budge at all.”
“Am I supposed to be pleased by that?”
“Of course you should. This is praise from humanity’s strongest mage, you know? If I couldn’t break through, that means no other human ever will.”
Ferda muttered to himself.
For someone who got thoroughly crushed by me…
It was Goz who answered her instead.
“This building was constructed for a dragon. That a human alone cannot touch it is only natural.”
“Defending her just because you’re both dragons? Honestly, I never can figure dragons out.”
“Watch your tongue, Erdes Roton.”
“Yes, yes.”
Irritating as it was, Ferda found himself agreeing. People who hated Baldrova were suddenly speaking in her defense. Even sworn enemies apparently protected what needed protecting.
While Erdes continued her grumbling, they reached the end of the red carpet. It felt like standing at the tip of a fuse. Would this bomb detonate, or would it be a dud?
Carrying that thought, Ferda opened the doors.
The guest chamber was wrought of gold and crimson marble. A single maid who had completed every preparation in advance stood ready. She lifted the wide hem of her skirt and bowed.
“Welcome. I am Ruri, personal maid to Lady Baldrova.”
She stood demurely, as if nothing were amiss. Yet her eyes carefully avoided meeting Goz’s.
Goz himself paid Ruri no mind. Compared to when he had once tried to seize her, this lukewarm reaction felt strangely suspicious.
Meanwhile Erdes cackled and flung herself onto a sofa without the slightest invitation.
“Ugh, you keep making the atmosphere so murderous. This is why men are hopeless. In a place this refined, you should be laughing and chatting, hmm? You there, maid—will you bring me a cup of tea?”
“I shall prepare it at once.”
As Ruri moved to leave, Ferda raised a hand lightly and stopped her.
“Tea for the continent’s greatest mage—should you really be the one preparing it?”
“Then….”
“I shall pour it myself.”
Ferda had intervened because Erdes’s behavior was beginning to set his nerves on edge. Leave her alone and everyone would be swept into her self-centered whirlwind.
He made to serve the tea, yet he never rose from his seat. Shadows stirred at his feet, shaping themselves and rising. It was Ferda’s Shadow Hand.
Erdes’s expression hardened as she watched. Flaunting black magic so openly was no different from daring someone to kill you.
Ferda paid her reaction no heed and poured a cup with perfect etiquette.
“This is the finest tea harvested from the western highlands. Please enjoy.”
Warm steam rose from the cup set before her, but her gaze remained fixed solely on Ferda. Those lifeless, rotten-fish eyes looked ready to draw a blade at any moment.
“Unfortunately, I’m not thirsty.”
“Did you not just say you needed something to wet your throat?”
“Exactly. Women are impossible to understand, aren’t they?”
Murderous intent glimmered in her smiling eyes. Yet Ferda met that gaze head-on and took a leisurely sip of the tea.
That should shut her mouth for a while.
“Let us speak of the matter at hand.”
Goz shifted in his seat and leaned forward.
“Why you trespassed into another’s territory in secret.”
He intended to grasp the background of the incident first. Ferda answered him.
“There was a research facility of the demonkin nearby.”
“An imaginary research facility?”
“Did a landslide not occur in that area recently? As if something had exploded.”
“…….”
Goz offered no reply. That silence was confirmation enough.
“I discovered the site where they were conducting their project and intended to destroy everything. That is why I had to move quickly.”
“So you crossed over using the Bending Bridge and struck first?”
The words “Bending Bridge” left Goz’s mouth. That information had surely come from Erdes.
“Why did you not inform us?”
Goz asked.
“Because it had to be done in secret.”
“And the reason for that secrecy?”
“Did I not just say it was secret?”
Goz’s face twisted into something savage, claws ready to bare themselves at any second.
“Ferda Valdrova. Not only did you set foot in our domain without leave, you killed His son with your own hands. If you do not truly desire war, you will speak plainly.”
Ferda had no intention of fleeing a war that came to him. But he also had no desire to start one needlessly.
“As I said earlier, that Abel Silverwind—I did kill him. And it is also true that he caused trouble. Yet none of it was the result I wished for.”
Ferda added,
“He was a demon worshipper. He sought to seize power through rebellion with a demon’s aid.”
“How did you learn that?”
“There was no need for anything complicated. He spilled everything of his own accord. Whether he saw me as a fish already in the net or mistook me for a confessional priest, I neither know nor care—he confessed himself.”
Goz did not erupt at the words “demon worshipper.” That meant Sitri had stamped the contract seal with unmistakable clarity. The momentum had tilted slightly in Ferda’s favor.
Ferda decided to offer a few words that might prove unnecessary.
“Do you know what he said? That Goz Silverwind is nothing more than a usurper. That the power does not suit you.”
“So there are plenty of complaints on the Silverwind side as well? Don’t tell me some small fry grew greedy and started—”
“Silence.”
“I’m on your side, you know.”
Ferda cut off Erdes’s mouth before she could dig any deeper into the open wound.
“Doubting my strength is only natural. Challenging it is something any descendant of Silverwind ought to do. But if that strength is gained by contracting with a demon, the story changes entirely.”
What they sought was pure power—power forged from the blood inherited from the Lord of Steel and Wind.
“But what does that have to do with you killing him? Are you saying you did me a favor?”
“Hardly. I told him that if he wished to overthrow you, I would help.”
Wind began to rise. How could anyone not rage when told that an open conspiracy to murder him had been proposed?
“But he refused. Not because he was noble—because his plan of overthrow itself required me.”
The wind stilled.
“A mere human like you?”
“He said he would use me, string me along, then absorb that power.”
“Absorb whose? Baldrova’s?”
“Ruri’s.”
At those words, Goz’s body gave a slight start. Watching his reaction, Erdes cut in.
“Ruri? Who’s that?”
“There is such a person.”
Goz tried to brush it aside, but Erdes was relentless. Her eyes slid over to the silver-haired little maid, and she clapped her hands together.
“Don’t tell me it’s that little lady? Looking closer, it matches. There were traces of a small frame left—was that this little one? So this child is that—”
“Erdes Roton. I did not bring you here to chatter.”
Vertical pupils glared at her with open menace, more irritated than before. Erdes offered an awkward smile and made a show of zipping her lips shut.
Irritated, Goz’s gaze drifted unconsciously toward Ruri. She kept her back turned and could not look around.
Ferda continued explaining the situation.
“Ruri came to save me, and in the end she had no choice but to kill Abel.”
“Hmm, then shall we call in our miraculously surviving Ruri and have her testify?”
Do as you like. I have nothing to hide.
Just as Ferda was about to agree to Erdes’s suggestion—
“Enough. That is sufficient discussion.”
It was Goz who rejected the testimony. Erdes glared at him with open dissatisfaction at the interruption, then turned her eyes back to Ferda. She smiled sweetly once more.
“Well then, the two gentlemen’s conversation seems to have reached a suitable point, so I suppose it’s my turn to speak.”
There were turns in this conversation? With how much you’ve been barging in, I thought it was just a free-for-all of you saying whatever you pleased.
He swallowed the sarcasm.
Erdes stretched with a great yawn and wore a languid smile.
“Well, it was a moving story, Regent Ferda. But I’m afraid I can’t simply take it at face value.”
Exactly the reaction he had expected.
“There should have been traces of a deal with a demon on him, no?”
“Yes, I found them. Hidden in a rather clever spot, too. The heel of the foot? Well, no one bothers checking that thoroughly. Even Silverwind’s people could have missed it.”
She acknowledged that it had been placed where one might overlook it. Yet the way she looked at Ferda remained unsettling.
“But I am Erdes Roton.”
The continent’s greatest mage. Exemplar of mages, witness of history, war hero. Her word was law; she was a borderless tyrant of an executioner. At the same time, she was an authority on black magic.
People said love and hate were only a single sheet of paper apart. Erdes knew black magic as thoroughly as she loathed it.
“I can spot the schemes of those beggar-rag demon bastards in an instant. For example—the timing of when that seal was stamped.”
A smile curved Erdes’s lips, the smile of a spider regarding prey caught in its web.
“The contract seal branded on Abel Silverwind—the ink hadn’t even dried yet.”
Confirming the timing of a seal was something even Ferda had not known. He had never taken interest in contracts with demons. Or more precisely, their nature and such had been outside his concern. Only the methods by which demons entangled humans, and how to avoid them, mattered. That was where most people focused.
Erdes’s obsession, however, was far broader. She clung to everything entangled with black magic. It was a form of obsessive purity—the kind that would pour every ounce of fixation into washing the disease called black magic from the continent.
And that obsession was now driving Ferda into a corner.
“Shall I share my thoughts?”
She began laying out her deductions.
“Regent Ferda, you made ‘a certain deal’ with Sitri, the Great Demon of Hell. You said you came to destroy a demonkin facility, yes? That might have been the deal. And if it collapsed not in a few days but within mere hours—what then? Sitri would have an excellent pretext. Ignoring the proverb that one must never deal with demons, you quietly rode the Bending Bridge over.”
Her words were startlingly accurate, more than enough to make Ferda feel the pressure.
“But an unexpected incident occurred. The Bending Bridge you rode closed for some reason. Regent Ferda was left stranded like a solitary orphaned duckling, and Abel appeared. Was that unexpected event Sitri’s trap?”
With that question, Erdes smiled with her eyes and fixed her gaze on Ferda, trying to see past the mask he wore. Ferda strove to keep whatever lay beneath it hidden.
“No. No, that wasn’t Sitri’s plan.”
Had she read his expression? She moved on to another thread.
“If it had been such a crude trick, you would have noticed. You’re no fool, Regent Ferda. You would have checked multiple times that the Bending Bridge held no trap. And yet… even so, you couldn’t throw yourself into the return Bending Bridge. Which means you brought something out of that demonkin dwelling—something important enough to stake your own life on.”
His throat burned dry. She continued as if casting a hypnotic spell, twirling her finger in slow circles.
“Having you encounter Abel Silverwind was likely one of the traps that whore Sitri set. Someone to keep you from getting any other ideas, and to carry out punishment if you did. Even if he died, he would make an excellent card that could cause trouble later. But for some reason she didn’t use that trap. Instead she stamped the contract seal on Abel Silverwind and helped you.”
Admiration nearly rose unbidden—even while he was being cornered. Was this the depth one could reach by hating a single field this thoroughly? It was a profundity of an entirely different dimension from anything Ferda felt.
“Why would a demon help you? If she had simply left the seal unstamped, Silverwind would have come after you to demand answers, and you would have broken into a cold sweat trying to persuade them. War would essentially have been a foregone conclusion. Why would she voluntarily abandon the chaos demons love most?”
His mouth had gone completely dry. He consciously kept the tension from loosening, lest his throat bob with a swallow.
“The three clues that lead me to my conclusion are these.”
Erdes raised her index finger.
“First: you use black magic.”
Middle finger.
“Second: a Great Demon of Hell did not trap you but saved you.”
Ring finger.
“Third: a faint demon’s scent keeps wafting through this house.”
She drove the blade straight into the gap. Whatever else, the one conclusion Erdes must never be allowed to reach was—
Penelope.
He was already walking a tightrope over whether he had contracted with a demon or not. If she discovered he was hiding a demon here, Erdes’s hostility would tip completely. And that hostility would not merely be a nuisance. Erdes was the person the First Prince—second only to the Emperor in influence—sought to cling to. She would certainly put the brakes on the development of the Far East.
Everything was tangled into a headache.
And that’s not even the real problem.
If, in the course of explanations, it came out that she was a means of seizing the Great Demon’s lifeline, that would be far worse. Erdes would obsess over Penelope with every fiber of her being. That could not be allowed. Everything in this castle existed solely for Baldrova.
Just as Ferda opened his mouth to speak, Erdes smiled with her eyes and asked,
“You’re a demon’s child, aren’t you?”