Strut, strut.

There was clearly heard the sound of something hard and pointed tapping the floor. It was a noise that he could not ignore even though he was full of passionate feelings.

Kling instinctively shut up and stood up. Eckart also grabbed the Kimmel ring and snapped his finger once.

Snap!

A cheerful sound rang in the room.

Curtis revealed his position without delay. Near the small entrance on the second floor and the bookshelf, his white Eluang Knights uniform fluttered.

“.. Sir Curtis?”

Duke Kling narrowed his eyes and confirmed the identity of the knight.

But the strutting sound did not stop. That meant that the owner of this strange sound was not Curtis.

Eckart intuitively sensed who it was. He quickly gauged the source of the sound.

The owner of the sound was the one who was allowed to enter his palace freely at any time without his approval, someone he was close to or harmless to Curtis, who, in turn, wouldn’t bother to stop when he knew that her visit was not authorized in advance, and the one who knew she was an unwelcome visitor but didn’t reveal her identity first even at this moment..

“..Marianne.”

Eckart spoke aloud with a deep sigh. Soon, a splendid dress pushed Curtis out of the way and stopped before him.

It was Marianne.

* * *

Eckart’s study was calm. There was some dust and the peculiar smell of books wafting through the high bookshelves like the alpine ridges.

With the setting sun covering the shade of the bookshelves, Marianne was walking cautiously. To muffle her stepping as much as she could, she even wrapped his skirt with her hands and held her heels slightly.

It was a place she visited to see Eckart several times, but she had never walked up to the second floor. She glanced around her familiar and strange surroundings quickly. And then she picked one decent place. It was a blind spot downstairs, where she could see half the place below the railing when she stood at an angle.

“So.. Please make my daughter stay away from the fight.”

Her father’s voice, which she could hardly hear clearly outside the door, was much clearer here.

Marianne grabbed her lips and leaned her head slightly.

Eckart was sitting at his desk as always. Under him, Kling was kneeling with his head down.

Combining what he said earlier, she guessed that he was apparently requesting the emperor to exclude her from the ongoing scheme.

“Duke, do you know how selfish your request is?”

“I know. I’m a cunning and shameless man, so I have nothing to say even if you blame me for seeking my own private interests.”

“I think it’s very contradictory for you to say it when you know my point.”

“But Your Majesty, you will need me more from now on. Only when I stay beside you on the pretext of keeping my good conscience, you can fight your opponents.”

Both of them exchanged sharp words. Neither of them made a loud noise, but given the meaning of their words, it looked like they were pointing their swords at each other.

Marianne barely breathed back a long sigh. She just felt stuffy and frustrated.

The pain was part of the price she had to pay. She knew why her father was kneeling there and how Eckart would feel while listening to him.

In addition, the new trick over which the two might have been talking and arguing over was just a useless card. Although Kling vowed that he would use himself as a weapon to replace his daughter, she had no intention of conceding her role to anyone else. As she told Mrs. Renault, this was a fight in which no one could replace her.

“I think what you said is very arrogant.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Duke, you’re threatening him now. Do you think you can take responsibility for your crazy remarks?”

Nevertheless, the two were pointing the tip of their swords at each other. It was a meaningless battle indeed.

Mariane released the hem of her dress that she had been holding while listening to Eckart’s cold voice. It seemed that she would be better off stopping and mediating between them before the situation became overheated.

Actually, she did not hear Kling’s confession to Eckart about his secret promise with the late empress, so she didn’t imagine that Eckart would easily forgive her father and herself. But she thought her father should apologize to him. Not only was it right, but in fact he did not want to be hated by Eckart. She knew it was her own desire, but she didn’t want to be the type of woman who should feel hostile to him.

She thought this might be a good occasion for their reconciliation. Although she didn’t want to arrange a meeting like this, she had to arrange one someday. On this occasion, she might want to apologize to him for her father’s disrespect and tell her father to correct what he did wrong until now..

This kind of shameless and desperate wish of hers made her impatient at the moment.

“If you want to punish my disrespect, I will receive it gladly. Your Majesty, what I’ve got now is my daughter alone. I don’t want to lose a family member again.”

But the next moment, Marianne stiffened as she was about to turn around.

“.. Never again?”

Eckart asked in lieu of her who stiffened, leaning against the bookshelf.

“Were they involved in the death of your wife?”

“Your Majesty, they do not hesitate to do anything to beat their enemy. ”

“I know that. Maybe much more than you. Don’t you think they might try to kill you?” Eckart asked back coldly.

“Your Majesty, I wonder if they are already trying to do something..”

“Please answer my question first. Was it simply because of her sickness that your wife died or not?”

Eckart repeatedly demanded as if he couldn’t forgive his silence.

Marianne shivered like a man pierced by a sharp spear. She clenched her teeth before she knew. She could not spit or swallow her breath as she was choked at the moment.

She began to sense much more wicked and ominous feelings than what she had experienced in the bathroom of her mansion right before she heard from Mrs. Renault about her father’s secrets.

“.. Marie is building a greenhouse these days in the back garden of the Elior Mansion.”

Pressed hard by Eckart, Kling now began to reel off a long story.

“It wasn’t finished yet, but she wanted to show me around, so I took a walk with her..”

Marianne instinctively realized that if she wanted to be a little more isolated from the enormous secrets that bothered her all the time, she should run from the place right now.

“I saw a flower pot on the way to the garden.”

But she did not move even step. She couldn’t sit down, close her eyes, or going back the way she came.

Marianne was just standing there. She had to wait for her fate that would destroy her hope and expectations while standing.

Could it be that her first life had come to a miserable end because she didn’t know anything about these secrets?

In retrospect, she never fled from all the options of her life. She failed to run as if it was her predetermined fate and curse for her to realize a new and terrible truth every moment.

“My wife and daughter love flowers and trees, but I don’t really know much about plants. Every time I played a game of matching similar flowers, I mostly guessed wrong, and my daughter teased me all the time.”

“..”

“But I thought I could clearly detect that flower tree among many trees. That was the flower tree that Mrs. Chester gave Marianne as her engagement gift.”

The voice Marianne loved more than anything else was the ominous sign sent by God at this moment.

“Adenium.”

Her tears, welled deep inside her body, dropped when she heard that. Every time she blinked, her colorful dress got wet with her tears, but she didn’t even realize she was crying.

“Twenty years ago, Estelle received the same flower. No, maybe it was sent to me, not Estelle.”

The sunset cast a red light on her feet like blood. She closed her eyes, feeling as if she were suffocated by that redness.

She came to know about the story of her mother’s death through her father’s voice. She learned what the second gift Mrs. Chester had sent her was. She could imagine her mother who would have cared for the pot with a bright smile. She could imagine her father who had to bury his wife, holding a little daughter in his arms, and a dead maid who had been hung on a cherry tree in the back garden and the Adenium pot, from which no evidence could be found.

And she finally realized that even her previous life that she felt was full of happiness was a terrible fantasy.