I Was Adopted by the Villain Grand Duke Who Killed My Favorite Character - Chapter 7
Why sleep in the office when you have a room?
The Grand Duke was sound asleep, his head buried on the large desk piled with documents. In the darkness, the contours of his handsome face were faintly visible.
Silver hair flowed down his neckline and his pale eyelashes.
He had an incredibly beautiful appearance, befitting the official handsome man of the original work.
I carefully climbed onto the desk, trying not to wake the Grand Duke. His expression, usually stiff, was now softly relaxed.
‘His sleeping face isn’t scary at all.’
As I was about to leave after placing the letter and bribe, curiosity led me to reach out to the sleeping Grand Duke.
The warm touch of his cheek felt unfamiliar, making me curl my fingers.
‘He’s different from Juno.’
Juno’s skin, always chapped and rough, was never this soft. The feeling of his skin wrapping around my fingers was strangely addictive.
It seems he’s in a deep sleep.
I, who had accumulated some, no, quite a lot of emotions towards the Grand Duke, pinched his nose. His closed eyelashes fluttered.
Startled, I patted the Grand Duke’s back out of rhythm while humming a lullaby.
“Hush… hush.”
Fortunately, the Grand Duke’s tightly closed eyelids didn’t open. Relieved, I gently stroked his warm cheek again.
‘I miss it a little.’
Having been always close to Juno in this life, I’ve become accustomed to touching others.
“It’s okay. Everything will be alright, Liat. Every nightmare has an end.”
On the day I heard screams, Juno’s embrace as she held and comforted me was warm. I wonder if I could feel that cozy sensation again.
I struggled to lift the sleeping Grand Duke’s arm and placed it on my stomach.
“It’s somewhat different.”
The Grand Duke’s arm, limp from deep sleep, couldn’t hold me as tightly as I wanted. I even missed Juno’s arms which always hugged me so tight I could barely breathe, and the musty smell from not being able to wash.
“I wanna go back.”
I didn’t care what price I’d have to pay. I wanted to go back to when Juno was alive.
‘Even if it was hell.’
Despite the harsh conditions, the slave life shone brighter than any other moment in life. How did she become so special to me?
There had been kind people before.
But it was the first time I met someone who so intensely yearned for life while throwing themselves for others.
“Just like a protagonist.”
Why wasn’t Juno, who saved me, the protagonist of the original work? If Juno had been Hella, the original protagonist, she would have surely been happy.
In the original ending, Hella married the Crown Prince with everyone’s blessings.
[Beautiful flower petals scattered in the wind. Amidst people’s cheers and dazzling sunlight, Hella burst into a fresh laugh.
“Finally, all evil has retreated.”
The Crown Prince smiled at Hella’s words. As she said, evil had disappeared. A more brilliant happiness than ever before was waiting for them.]
On the other hand, the Grand Duke who had rebelled died amidst everyone’s mockery. The Grand Duke’s end, having lost even his retainers and two sons, seemed miserable.
The original work doesn’t mention why the Grand Duke rebelled against the imperial family. To the protagonists, the Grand Duke was just a cruel villain.
The description of the Grand Duke’s original ending was very brief.
[The people hurled insults at the Grand Duke as he ascended the guillotine. The Grand Duke accepted death without leaving any words.]
Suddenly, I wondered what the Grand Duke might have thought when facing death.
‘Did he regret starting the rebellion?’
Unlike me who had already lost Juno, the Grand Duke still had a chance. I whispered in a small voice into the sleeping Grand Duke’s ear.
Words that wouldn’t reach him in his deep sleep.
“You can’t go back once you’ve done this.”
So he should be careful.
I had no intention of telling the Grand Duke the specific contents of the original work. This world needs to reach the ending as in the original for my endless life to end.
I stroked the Grand Duke’s hair, which softly disheveled in my hand.
“Regret always comes too late.”
Someday, you too will lose many things.
Even if the original work had twisted with Juno’s death, it didn’t seem likely that the villain Grand Duke’s ending would change.
‘In all novels, villains become unhappy.’
I removed my hand from the sleeping Grand Duke and put down the prepared letter and bribe. The maids would return to the room where I was staying by dawn.
‘I should go back before then.’
I carefully climbed down from the desk, freeing myself from the Grand Duke’s heavy arm. The warmth of the Grand Duke that had just been touching me now felt distant, like a dream.
Before leaving the room, I turned back one last time.
Moonlight pouring in from the window enveloped the Grand Duke’s body, glowing faintly. The Grand Duke bathed in the soft moonlight, looked like an angel descended to earth.
I gazed at the Grand Duke’s holy-looking figure as if enchanted, then closed my eyes.
‘Can I become happy as per her last will?’
If Juno were alive, I wouldn’t have needed to try so hard to be happy.
Because Juno’s happiness would have been my happiness.
To hell with the original work, I never treated Juno kindly even once. Because I believed without doubt that the Grand Duke would come to save her.
If I had opened my heart earlier, we could have shared more stories.
“Seems like a fool.”
This life of being endlessly reborn without knowing why has taken many things from me.
Before being born into the world of the book, I forgot the faces and names of my original family.
I became awkward in relationships with people.
I couldn’t tell Juno, who loved me more than anyone, that I loved her too, that because of her, I found the courage to live again.
I was left alone in the world of the book like that.
***
After the Imperial Princess left, the Grand Duke slowly opened his eyes.
The small Imperial Princess was nowhere to be seen in the room. He couldn’t understand where she had left the maids he had ordered to look after her and why she was moving alone.
“She’s finally gone.”
Although he had been tired of the many documents to process recently, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed when the Imperial Princess entered.
‘If she were an assassin, I’d be dead.’
Usually, his senses were keen, and he would wake up at the slightest sound. He didn’t keep separate guards because he trusted his innate senses as a swordsman.
This shouldn’t have been possible.
Unless the young Imperial Princess was a born first-class assassin who could conceal her presence.
‘What a ridiculous thought.’
What could that tiny thing know?
He had woken up when the young Imperial Princess put her hand on his cheek. A curious gaze pierced down onto his cheek, prickling.
Wondering what she was doing, he left her be, and she fearlessly caressed his face. He felt strange at the touch that stroked him as if handling a treasure.
‘Is she not afraid?’
To act so boldly towards him, whom even long-time retainers feared. Sometimes, the child seemed like someone who had lived for hundreds of years.
‘Well, she did ask to be killed.’
What kind of experiment had she undergone in the Black Mage’s tower to end up like this? If it weren’t for what the Imperial Princess had said, he would have gotten up immediately.
“You can’t go back once you’ve done this.”
His blood ran cold for a moment at the words that seemed to see through his heart.
There’s no way the young Imperial Princess could know about what happened between the Imperial family and him. Perhaps, like him, the Imperial Princess had lost something precious too.
‘Is that why she’s like that…’
When he heard that the child who woke up after three days had gone to the garden, he thought she had run away.
She almost died because of that.
But when he met her, she was covered in dirt and laughing refreshingly. As if her feverish body didn’t matter at all.
No child he had met in his life was like that young Imperial Princess. That’s why he tried to leave her be, but his gaze unconsciously went to that precariousness.
“Unlike a child.”
Even when she vomited in front of him, the Imperial Princess seemed insensitive to her own pain.
Even he, with his dull emotions, was taken aback by her desperate gestures not to be hated. The child, accustomed to violence, expected nothing.
As if it was natural for someone to hurt her as long as she lived.
‘I still need the Imperial Princess.’
Uncharacteristically, he took care to change the Imperial Princess’s room.
The maids in charge of the Imperial Princess confessed that they had neglected the illegitimate Imperial Princess all this time.
“We did it all for Your Grace!”
“When did I ever ask you to do such a thing?”
“B-but, you said it was fine as long as the Imperial Princess was alive, so we thought it was okay!”
It might all be my fault.
Yurian, pressing his throbbing forehead, picked up the object the child had left. The round object wrapped in tissue paper was suspicious in its nature.
“Why tissue on the outside?”
As he peeled off a layer of tissue paper wrapping the exterior, more tissue paper appeared.
After hesitating, he continued to unwrap the tissue paper covering the object. Was there a reason it had to be so carefully wrapped in tissue paper like this?
He didn’t think that the Imperial Princess had given her gift to him a “pretty wrapping.”
After unwrapping twelve layers of tissue paper, this time a dirty cloth appeared.
“…A rag?”
Looking at the logo embroidered on the edge of the cloth, it was a rag commonly used in the mansion.
With a glimmer of hope, he unfolded the rag, and an unexpected item appeared.
‘Why the mansion’s magic stone?’
In the centuries-old Grand Duke’s mansion, there was a magic stone that acted as a core supplying magical power.
The problem was that no one knew its location.
Not long ago, there was a commotion when the magical power supplied to the mansion was suddenly cut off. Fortunately, it could be normalized through the circuit installed for emergencies.
To think that incident was the young Imperial Princess’s doing.
As he was gauging the authenticity of the Imperial Princess giving the magic stone as a gift, he unfolded the enclosed letter.
“What did she write?”
No matter how closely he scrutinized the paper, he couldn’t read the content written in sauce.
Yurian realized that the Imperial Princess had terrible handwriting. Well, it was impressive she could write at all, given the environment she grew up in.
“So… she wants to go back?”
Just as he managed to read the barely legible letters, the office door burst open.
The maid who entered the room shouted without catching her breath.
“The, the Imperial Princess has disappeared!”
The letter in indecipherable red writing and the Imperial Princess who vanished without a trace.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, he gathered all the servants and knights of the mansion. Even if she had disappeared, a young child couldn’t have gone far.
“Find the Imperial Princess and bring her back immediately.”
However, the Imperial Princess was not found even as the day broke. That child, who seemed to have no attachment to life, might already be dead.
Yurian set out to find the Imperial Princess, desperately denying the assumption that had come to his mind.
