We're Married, After All - Chapter 31
Returning to the bedroom, I grabbed a slender candlestick made of iron wire. After confirming there was still wax left on the candle, I carefully opened the door. Fortunately, no one was around.
Barefoot, I stepped out of the bedroom. With every step I took, the coldness seeped into the soles of my feet.
It was an eerily chilly night.
But as I climbed about halfway up the stairs, a thought crossed my mind.
‘Has the weather been this cold lately?’
During the day, it had been an ordinary spring day. As soon as I realized that, something strange caught my attention. The candlestick I was holding was trembling. My hand—no, my whole body—was shaking.
I wrapped my arms tightly around my shoulders. My body, noticing the betrayal before my mind did, had gone cold. A chill seeped from deep within my chest, creeping up my throat.
At that moment, something surged up inside me.
‘I trusted you.’
Even if you didn’t tell me everything, I believed you wouldn’t deceive me again. That’s what I thought.
It had been a very long time since I had felt such deep disappointment. When was the last time I felt this way?
Was it when I found out Petios had escaped? Or was it the first time I realized no one cared about the prey I had caught?
‘No. I can’t waste time like this.’
I took a deep breath, pulling my emotions back under control. Danel was deliberately cutting down my free time. I didn’t know when I’d get another opportunity like this. If not for today’s coincidence, I wouldn’t have been able to make it up to the third floor.
With hurried steps, I made my way to the study. As I opened the door, the familiar scent of marigold wafted over me. It was the fragrance of the candles Danel often used.
The moment I recognized the scent, my stomach churned violently. The nausea I had been suppressing threatened to rise again.
“Milk… haah…”
Leaning against the wall, I steadied my breathing. Was it because of the painfully unsettled state of my stomach? Dried flower petals, likely from the milk tea, flickered before my eyes.
In truth, I had already thrown up once earlier, right before entering the bedroom tonight.
It had been during my usual nightly routine before bed. For some reason, the scent of the skincare lotion the maid applied felt particularly unpleasant today. Soon, a wave of nausea hit me so hard that by the time I regained my senses, I had vomited everything—tea as well as my dinner.
The maid was terrified. She was the same girl who had once angered me with an obvious lie. Perhaps fearing she might actually be dismissed this time, she immediately fell to her knees before me.
I didn’t scold her. I already knew it had been Danel who instructed her to lie.
There was no point in wasting what little energy I had left to get angry.
Instead, I simply ordered her to clean up the vomit. That was enough to turn the incident into a “non-event.”
The maid left the room, thanking me repeatedly. I was sure she hadn’t told anyone that I’d thrown up everything I’d eaten for dinner—not the maid who spiked my tea with sleeping powder, nor Danel, who had given the order.
“Haah… ha.”
A dry chill rose from the depths of my lungs. After a while, the nausea that had been overwhelming me finally subsided.
I locked the door to the study and lit the candle. Then I went straight to the fireplace and grabbed a fire poker. I had already wasted too much time—I needed to confirm things quickly.
Approaching the familiar bookshelf, I slipped the poker into the dim gaps between the shelves. Having done this once before, it wasn’t too difficult to unlock the mechanism. Yet strangely, the door wouldn’t budge.
Sensing something was off, I lifted the candlestick and shine its light between the books. Beyond the shelf, I spotted a new set of locks—two of them, in fact.
“……”
Disappointment gripped me first and foremost.
I decided to open the upper lock first, resigning myself to the situation as I began to work. The locks were far simpler than the original one, likely handcrafted by Danel himself. After all, he wouldn’t have been able to call anyone in to install them without clearing out the room entirely.
In other words, Danel had reinforced the safe’s security for one purpose alone: to keep me out.
I took a deep breath, struggling to stay calm. I didn’t dare move too much—I felt like I’d throw up again if I did—so I stood still, glaring into the darkness.
Once the locks were undone, I entered the hidden room. It wasn’t much different from the last time I’d been here. Nothing particularly extraordinary stood out.
No, that wasn’t quite true—there were things here, but not what I was looking for.
The items inside the safe were arranged with a clear sense of order, which made it easy to spot what had been added since my last visit.
With a sour expression, my gaze landed on a pair of underwear hanging on the wall. It was the very same underwear I had lost the last time I was here—the day I had woken up groggy from the sleeping powder, only to have Danel press me onto the desk and use his mouth on me.
