By Zephyria 
Even if I stayed still, my eyelids kept falling heavily. Not just my eyelids. My tired shoulders and weakened legs also seemed to be digging into the damp ground.
“Ha, it seems you don’t even have the strength to wag that noble tongue of yours anymore?”
A vile voice echoed shrilly above my head. Jonas Grachio’s behavior, with his eyes all bloodshot, was originally like that, but now it had become so vile that it was disgusting to even look at.
He said he wasn’t planning on killing me in one go without making it painful if possible, and he seemed to be faithfully keeping his word, throwing punches indiscriminately. It was fortunate for me that he couldn’t maintain his sanity enough to entrust it to someone else and step back. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt, but it was bearable. Compared to the experiences of the past Iterations, where I had been thoroughly beaten by other knights whose grip was clearly several times stronger, or by the hands of professional torture experts.
He said he would give my dead body to Adrian, or if he arrived, he would kill me in front of him. It was a very ambitious goal, though I didn’t know if he could achieve it.
“…”
I had enough stamina left to chatter, but I bit my lip tightly and held back my words. It was to properly grasp the current situation, which was turning strangely.
“Haha, yes. I need to properly check out what kind of body Adrian Pearson, who used to act without blood or tears, is so unable to come to his senses over, and whether the taste of embracing a Dominant Omega is as good as rumored.”
His leering face twisted hideously. The hand that had been grabbing my hair slithered down like a snake and snatched my collar. Buttons fell off with a clatter. It was the right time to struggle, feeling threatened in my chastity, but I didn’t feel any particular sense of crisis.
Without bothering to resist, I quietly watched what he was doing, and as expected, this time too, the door quietly opened behind Jonas Grachio’s shoulder, which was seething with desire. The person who came in silently with a calm face was the Chamberlain of the Crown Prince Palace, who had led me here. As if he were changing the sheets of the bed, he blocked Jonas Grachio’s airway with a very businesslike and quick hand movement, without any emotion. With a handkerchief soaked in chemicals. In less than a minute, Jonas Grachio’s body lost its strength. He collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.
“…What on earth are you plotting?”
It was right after that that my lips, which had been tightly shut like a clam, moved. It had been like this since earlier. The Chamberlain, who was Adrian’s aide and had led Adrian’s knights and handed me over to the Duke Grachio’s family himself, took action whenever Jonas Grachio tried to cross the line in this way. Judging from the fact that Jonas Grachio, who had briefly lost consciousness and woke up, didn’t detect anything strange, it didn’t seem to be just a drug that made him lose consciousness. But neither the identity of the drug nor his own intentions. The Chamberlain didn’t answer anything. It was the same no matter how many times I asked, but I was quite confident in enduring tenaciously as well.
The Chamberlain remained silent and dragged Jonas Grachio’s body or threw it against the opposite wall.
“I didn’t know you would betray Adrian like this. Not you of all people…”
The voice, muttering in vain, was small, but it was enough to fill the small secret room, which contained only the unconscious Jonas and Nicole, apart from me and the Chamberlain.
The moment Adrian was mentioned for the first time from my mouth, there was finally a disturbance in the man who was no different from a wooden statue. His back, which had been about to leave the room, trembled.
The Chamberlain took out a pocket watch from his arms, checked the time, and then turned back and walked towards me.
“That’s an interesting thing to say, Your Highness.”
Even in this situation, he still calls me ‘Your Highness.’ Calling me Your Highness even before we officially held the wedding was only done by those who faithfully followed Adrian. That fact was absurd.
“As Your Highness also knows, I have served His Royal Highness the Crown Prince for a very long time. From before he could even speak or walk. From when he was a babe in arms who had to worry about starving to death, let alone the lofty glory he has now.”
He deliberately emphasized the close relationship between himself and Adrian to me. I had heard and heard enough in the numerous repeated Iterations about how many crises this old man had overcome to protect the infant Prince, who had not even been recognized as a Prince, from the Empress’s persistent abuse and had not been properly recognized by his father. In the first life as well, Adrian’s position was stabilized only after the Divine Mandate for me was issued, so it probably wouldn’t be much different.
“But what about you, Your Highness? You’ve only properly formed a relationship for a few years. Well, I don’t intend to act foolishly enough to equate the length of time with depth… Until recently, you didn’t even love His Highness, let alone deeply resent him, did you?”
I felt like I had been stabbed in the side. Did Adrian notice too?
Perhaps noticing my eyes wavering for a moment, the Chamberlain nodded leisurely and continued.
“Ah, there’s no need to worry. He’s not the type to be so sensitive to other people’s feelings or emotions. But those of us below are different. I won’t mention it again in the future, so don’t worry.”
“…”
“It’s just so strange.”
“…”
“To anyone, it would be more reasonable to think that His Incomparable Highness Adrian used you as a sacrifice to uproot his lifelong enemy, rather than that I betrayed His Highness, whom I serve with all my heart… Why are you so sure of my betrayal?”
No, let me ask differently. Why do you believe in His Royal Highness Adrian so firmly? A calm voice, without any change in volume, flew into my ear as if it were being engraved. His explanation was accurate. Maybe I too… If I hadn’t regained the memories of the first life, I would have thought that the Crown Prince had used me.
But now I knew everything. Adrian Pearson, how deeply that foolishly blind person loved me… How much shame he could endure just to not let go of me…
“Because he loves me. So deeply that it’s impossible to throw me away as such a trivial bait. I’m not shaken because I know that for sure.”
“…Is that so. What on earth is affection?”
The empty voice was full of regret.
As if the story was going to be long, the Chamberlain pulled up a chair that had been left in the corner and sat down, then opened his mouth again.
“It may be a bit of a predictable and cliché story, but I originally had a beloved son. I considered him a gift that my deceased wife left me as her last, and I raised him with great care, as if he would break if I held him too tightly or fly away if I breathed on him. Ah. If he were alive, he would be much older than His Royal Highness Adrian by now.”
His story, which had been forewarned to be cliché, was indeed as regrettable as it was trite. The intelligent son of a fallen noble, whose father had originally been working as a Chamberlain in the Imperial Palace, graduated from the academy with excellent grades without much difficulty and was assigned to the Imperial Palace around that time, and around that time, all the power in the palace was in the hands of the Empress and her brother, and he had to be cut down before he could even bloom as their entertainment.
“The Empress said she didn’t like the color of the fan that child had chosen. That may be a mistake in serving one’s superiors, but was it really a crime that deserved to be beaten to death? I heard that the Empress’s brother personally dragged that pitiful thing, who was begging to be spared, all the way to the compost heap in the garden and whipped him until he died, saying, ‘Isn’t it an honor for a lowly thing to be used as fertilizer for the Imperial Palace even after death?’ I was pouring tea for His Majesty the Emperor without even knowing what was happening. It was only by the end of the day that I heard the shocking news. I, this incompetent father, personally collected the body that had been abandoned without anyone daring to clean it up for fear of retaliation from the Duke and the Empress, only that night.”
There was not the slightest tremor in the Chamberlain’s voice as he continued to tell the story of how he had personally closed the eyes of the corpse that had not even been able to close its eyes. That sounded more heartbreaking than exaggerated sorrow or sadness.
“From that day on, I volunteered to serve the illegitimate child who had not yet been recognized as a Prince. I vowed to protect that illegitimate child, no matter what, so that the Empress would have a child or not, and to raise him to a higher position than the Empress and the Duke. Fortunately, His Royal Highness Adrian had a very strong and intelligent personality, so he accepted my loyalty when he was old enough to understand. In return, he promised to exterminate the Grachio name from this land and history so that not a single line would remain. Most of the people who are left outside now have similar stories and grudges to mine.”
“…I understand your deep resentment, but then you shouldn’t be doing this even more, should you?”
The wrinkled lips smiled. With the same gentle color as the peaceful afternoon when he asked, “What kind of tea would you like?”
“If His Highness, who is soaked in affection, hadn’t betrayed us, then that would certainly have been the case.”