The one listening closely to the conversation was not just Odely. The merchants sitting across from the traveler joined in as well, each adding a comment.
“I heard he’s looking for his first love, the one he was forced to part with when he was young.”
“No, I heard the Grand Duke is searching for the perfect woman he saw in a dream.”
“That’s not it. They say he couldn’t forget his dead lover, so he keeps bringing in women who look like her.”
“…So which one is true?”
When the traveler complained that everyone was saying something different, one of the merchants shrugged.
“How would we know when even he doesn’t?”
“What? He doesn’t know?”
The traveler asked back in disbelief.
“A servant working at the castle said so. Apparently he barely remembers the woman. Maybe he forgot because he was young, maybe it was a dream, maybe he has partial memory loss… no one knows.”
He was holding those extravagant banquets every day just to find a woman he could barely remember?
“Isn’t that just insane?”
“Yeah, he’s gone mad. Completely mad.”
The merchant circled a finger beside his head as he added,
“They say it’s like he’s been possessed. Even the way he talks and the look in his eyes have completely changed. If you upset him even a little, people die. There’s no greater tyrant.”
His way of speaking had changed?
People died just for offending him?
No way.
Odely wanted to grab the merchant by the collar and shake him, demanding what nonsense he was talking about.
Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
“Hah… that iron-blooded Grand Duke…”
The merchant looked at the sighing traveler, paused for a moment, then continued in a low voice.
“Anyway, one thing is certain. The woman the Grand Duke is looking for has blue eyes. And…”
“Here.”
He tapped the area below his collarbone as he went on.
“She has a strange scar here. It looks like a half-circle sitting on top of a horizontal line.”
“A half-circle above a horizontal line… Wait, don’t tell me you’re talking about the symbol of the gods?”
“That’s why everyone says it might be a holy mark.”
Odely flinched and unconsciously touched her collarbone with her fingertips.
A half-circle above a horizontal line.
It was the scar she had gotten as a child while living as an experiment in the Cardel family.
It only happened to resemble the symbol of the gods by coincidence. It was neither a holy mark nor anything special.
It was simply the mark of sacrifice and abuse.
‘…Ludville remembered that?’
Putting all their words together, this was the story.
Lately, women had been gathering at the Grand Duke’s castle, even from distant foreign lands.
Noble illegitimate daughters, commoners, slaves, dancers, saints, princesses of fallen kingdoms… Their backgrounds and status were all different, but they shared one thing.
Blue eyes and a scar on the collarbone.
Anyone with blue eyes and that scar earned the right to attend the banquets held at the Grand Duke’s castle.
If one of the women caught the Grand Duke’s eye, she would be allowed to stay in the castle and treated with the greatest care.
As if she were an imperial princess.
But none of them stayed for more than fifteen days.
At some point, the Grand Duke would suddenly change his mind and throw the woman out of the castle.
Though he always sent her away with an enormous reward.
“They say some women even make fake scars before coming to the castle. Even if they’re thrown out, they’ll still receive a huge reward. And if they’re lucky, they might become the Grand Duchess.”
There was one more thing all the women chosen by the Grand Duke had in common.
Most of them looked weak and delicate, and each carried a heartbreaking past.
Because of that, the banquet hall these days was packed with women trying to outdo one another with stories of the most miserable and tragic past.
That similarity, too… reminded them of Odely.
‘I thought he wouldn’t remember anything.’
At that point, he was practically wandering around searching for people by instinct alone, holding onto nothing but a few faint fragments of memory.
Ludville had not forgotten Odely.
If anything, he was so obsessed that the people of the northern territory called him mad.
‘…Could it be that Ludville will keep doing this until he finds me?’
For the rest of his life?
‘No.’
I finally saved him, and this is what happened…?
Odely slowly unclenched the fist she had been squeezing so tightly that her nails had dug into her palm.
‘…I need to go see his condition for myself.’
Odely stood up.
There was no time to waste.
She had to leave immediately.
For the territory of Exepsion, where he was.
****
Without warning, a sharp spear was thrust in front of her.
“Who do you think you are, crawling in here?”
One of the guards suddenly appeared and looked the woman up and down.
His eyes were full of mockery and annoyance.
Chunks of ice hung from the hem of her robe, and snow and mud clung messily to her boots.
The marks of someone who could not even find a single carriage and had crossed the freezing northern wilderness on foot.
“Get out of here. Now.”
But the captain of the royal guards standing beside him carefully studied the woman’s eyes beneath the hood.
Ice blue.
A color as clear and transparent as ice.
He stared at her blue eyes for a moment before speaking.
“The scar.”
His voice sounded tired, as though this confirmation had been repeated countless times.
Odely lowered the collar of her clothes slightly without a word, revealing the scar near her collarbone.
“Let her in.”
The guard grumbled as he opened the castle gate.
“Now even beggars are showing up.”
The moment she crossed through the gate, the biting northern wind that had seemed like it would never end vanished in an instant.
And the season changed.
Unlike the frozen world outside, the air inside was warm, heavy, and sweet.
The scents of fragrant fruit wine, honey-soaked fruit, and countless flowers mixed together.
It felt as though she had stepped into an early summer garden.
‘So the rumors were true…’
The castle was in the middle of a grand banquet.
The melody of string instruments drifted from afar, and a golden-threaded carpet stretched along the marble corridor.
As the banquet hall doors opened, light, music, fragrance, and laughter poured out all at once.
The Golden Banquet Hall.
That was what people seemed to call this place now.
The ceiling was covered with gold-crafted chandeliers that glittered like stars in the night sky.
‘…None of this existed in my previous life.’
In only three months.
Odely looked around in confusion.
Waves of silk and lace.
The rich fragrance of fruit on the verge of ripening.
Smiles more dazzling than jewels.
Women with blue eyes, dressed in the finest clothes, laughed and danced together.
“…His Grace still hasn’t returned.”
At that moment, one woman bit her lip anxiously as she muttered.
“That woman they say is a saint, the one who just left with the Grand Duke… She can’t really be the real one, can she?”
Another woman let out a dry laugh.
“As if. What kind of saint would attend a banquet just to catch the Grand Duke’s attention?”
“You can’t be so sure.”
Odely quietly turned her gaze toward them.
“I heard she lost all her memories in an accident when she was young and was raised as a saint in the temple. If the scar on her collarbone is truly a holy mark… then she might be the ‘real’ woman His Grace has been searching for.”
“My, how dramatic.”
One woman sneered and hid her mouth behind her fan.
“It sounded convincing enough… but really? Do you think His Grace would fall for such an obvious fraud?”
“Well, even if he did, she probably wouldn’t last more than fifteen days. That’s how it’s always been.”
Even as they said that, the women kept glancing nervously toward the entrance of the banquet hall.
Who would be the one chosen this time?
Looks filled with anticipation and jealousy, hope and anxiety, crossed endlessly between them.
Bang!
Then it happened.
A tremendous crash exploded from the direction of the banquet hall entrance.
“Ah! You startled me!”
“What’s going on?”
The finely dressed women and their patrons stirred in alarm.
The string music stopped instantly, and every conversation fell silent.
Breaking through the commotion came the sound of footsteps.
Thud. Thud.
Steady like a trained soldier’s march, heavy enough to seem as though they crushed the floor beneath a massive body, the footsteps drew closer.
Everyone fell silent at once.
No master of ceremonies needed to announce the arrival.
Everyone already knew.
The owner of those footsteps.
Ludville Exepsion.
As he suddenly appeared, a horrible smell of blood swept through the hall, too strong to be hidden even by perfume.
“Gasp!”
“Ahhh!”
Everyone screamed at the same time.
Because hanging from his hand was a man, limp as a corpse.
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