30 Chapter 30 (Edited)
Yuric and I sotis play together through the doghole, but we weren't this close. Because of my sudden actions, he sweated profusely in embarrassnt.
"Nyo! Nyo! You can't gow!"
'If you go, Dietrich will be in danger!'
I looked back at Derek while clinging to Yuric as hard as I could. From the mont he entered the room, his aura was becoming darker and darker.
"....ah. Your sibling?"
"Yes."
Dietrich answered Derek's question instead of . He ca closer to with a short hmm.
'Uhk, suffocating.'
As Derek's aura approached, it beca more difficult to breathe. He soon grabbed by the scruff of my neck. As I dangled in the air, I started wheezing out of breath.
"No matter how I look at you, you don't resemble Camille at all."
Ke, keuk!
Derek grabbed by my chin with the hand that wasn't holding up in the air and turned my face side to side. As he evaluated like an object, the courage that rose up within burned up.
"Your face is fine, so when you grow up I can sell you as a slave instead of your dead mother."
'Crazy bastard!'
Should you be saying that to a child? How could you say so nonchalantly that you're going to sell your child as a slave? Of course I wasn't Derek's daughter, but he didn't know of this fact.
"Camille didn't give birth as much as I expected."
"..."
"Hmm. Maybe it's more expensive to sell when they're young."
Derek's gaze felt unpleasant like a bug was crawling all over my face, but I was afraid of him that I couldn't answer back.
'I'm, I'm scared….'
My skin stung as I tried to endure the adult's bloody aura.
"She's a child with ability."
It was Dietrich, who had been unable to stand up due to injury, that got out of Derek's clutches.
".....ability? This here?"
"Yes. She's still just too young for it to be seen clearly."
At that mont, Baal seeped under my ankles. Dietrich seed to have issued an order.
Only then did Derek frowned at as if he had sensed the energy of Baal, then he grinned.
"Is that so? Then she'll sell more expensively."
He looked at and said, baring his teeth.
Dietrich tightened his arms around Anissa who was burrowed into his chest, filled with fear at the sight of Derek .
"A child with abilities will be very, very expensive. Like your mother."
At Derek's words, Dietrich smiled like that of a painting. When the neat and beautiful boy smiled as if it was carved carefully in clean ivory, Derek's face stiffened.
"Why are you smiling?"
"I just thought that Lagrange is so poor, father."
"What?"
"You're saying that you want to sell as a slave a child like this who isn't even selected as a successor candidate, but whose na is a Langrange, and not even completely useless when she turns into an adult?"
At Dietrich's question, Derek, who looked like he was about to swallow Anissa, shut his mouth.
"I am concerned with how much the honor of the Grand Duke, who rules the North with power and authority, will plumt."
Derek, who was hit hard in the bullseye by the boy, couldn't respond and chewed on his lips. Only after a thin silence did he answer.
"Right. Your words aren't wrong."
The man of power, who put the desolate north at his feet, laughed slowly.
"That child—right, what's your na?"
"It's A, Anissa…"
At Derek's question, Anissa stuttered and managed to finish saying her na.
"Anissa…"
Derek looked alternately at the boy and the child with cold eyes and then left the room.
"Bro….brother."
Anissa stuck out her head only after Derek completely disappeared. Dietrich straightened his small back and his trembling body started to calm down.
The boy looked down on the child who donned an expression of fear. Small, pale, like she's going to break if he just puts a little pressure.
"It's all right."
Dietrich wondered himself, as he also cald the child.
'Why?'
The boy had no valid reason to comfort the child. He didn't have to pretend to take care of her anymore.
With the attitude that he showed earlier of protecting Anissa, Derek would think that this child was Dietrich's one and only "precious thing".
But apart from the successor ga he played with Derek, on his own accord, he reached out his hand to Anissa who looked like a frightened small animal. The boy, hugging the child in his arms like a habit, stroked the child's head.
".....It's okay now."
He seed to have beco too used to it. As he aid to beco the Grand Duke, he'd beco used to taking care of Anissa without even knowing about it himself.
The act of taming soone carried the risk of being tad at the sa ti. Just as a person didn't know that the ends of his sleeves were getting wet from the rain, the boy didn't know about it either.
"Brother."
Dietrich, who was lost in his thoughts, raised his head, woken up by the voice that sounded like a young deer.
"Are you wokie?"
"..."
"Hmm?"
At Anissa's repeated question, Dietrich sucked in a breath.
'Ah.'
Holding Anissa, he could sll the scent of forget--nots which had not yet blood. Then, the boy suddenly realized. It was kind of a premonition.
It was dangerous.
He felt like he would cherish a child who should never be cherished.
Fortunately, Derek, who said he would sell right away, did not send a man to Dahlia Palace to catch .
I mused over the situation, burying my face in a soft blanket.
I only knew how cruelly the Lagrange selects the heir to their family, but I didn't know the process in detail.
What was described in the "Rose Wars of the n" was either a ga of killing brothers or a ga of conquering villages.
Moreover, the only person who knew the identity of the last gate was the master of the Lagrange who survived through the gate.
'Will it be okay?'
Although I had no doubts that Dietrich would beco the Grand Duke of Lagrange, I began to worry. I jumped out of bed and went out looking for him.
But there was no trace of human presence in either of Dietrich's room or corridor, only the cold breeze remained.
I swept my arms up and down from the cold coming through the window.
'I guess he didn't co in yesterday.'
After Derek's visit, I couldn't seem to see him any more. I grabbed the servants and asked them where he was, but nobody seed to know.
I searched all over the place to find Baal, but I couldn't even see the edge of the shadow.
I wondered if he was participating in a dangerous ga, so I turned and headed for the garden.
"Yuri."
I've been going in and out so much through the doghole into Liatris's palace that I had a smooth road paved. In front of , I found Yuric with his face drawn close to mine, his familiar face appeared above the wall.
"It's not Yuri, it's Yuric."
"Hn, Brother Yuri."
"Fine. Forget it."
Yuric, despite his grumbling, swung over the wall and landed in front of .
He'd been clumsy for a candidate since the first ti we t, but seeing him cross the wall that was higher than any adult man like it was nothing, he really was a successor candidate.
"Why?"
"Yuri, where is Detrie?"
"...why are you asking that?"
He laughed as if dumbfounded by my question.
"Brother Yuri is also a candidate. I can't see Baal, too."
Only Marilyn and I were in Dahlia Palace.
I was afraid that Yuric would turn around and go back to Liatris' palace so I held on to his sleeve and asked.
"Are you goeng to fight witt Brother Detrie now?"
"I also don't know. He and I have different rankings."
The difference between Dietrich and Yuric, who were currently vying for 1st and 2nd place with Alphonse, were a little less than ten fingers. Are all the gas participated according to the ranking?
"And I haven't even decided to challenge the succession yet."
'I shouldn't have called you.'
I pouted my lips at him and grumbled.
"Why is Brother Yuri so weak?"
"...I know right."
Yuric dropped his shoulders with a sullen face at my words. My heart weakened at the sight, so I snorted and continued.
"Does brother only have pretty eyes?"
"My eyes aren't pretty."
Yuric always denied it when I say his eyes were pretty, but he couldn't hide the corners of his mouth that went up. Was it because of his eyes that he can live even when he gets a scolding?
"Pretty."
I tried to cling to Yuric, who seed to be embarrassed while laughing, and concealed his face in both hands but at that mont, due to the increase in my visual range, I stiffened.
"Brother?
With the familiar sll of wood, I realized that the identity of the person holding was Dietrich and buried my nose on his shoulder.
"Sniff."
Wherever he had been rolling through the forest, Dietrich was covered with dirt everywhere. Nevertheless, only his face was clean and free of dust.
"Where habb you been!"
"I told you not to play with him."
"Uhmm."
'I think Dietrich did warn not to hang out with Yuric.'
I avoided his eyes and hesitated to answer. Yuric raised his voice as if he had just t him in ti, and jumped at him.
"The one who grabbed my ankle and summoned forcibly was your demon, wasn't it?"
Dietrich ignored Yuric's words and brushed the dirt off his shoulders. Thanks to that, the dust that was blown off flew on Yuric's white face.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing, so dirty! I'm asking if you're the one who summoned in front of father?!"
"And if I did?"
"What?"
"What can you do if I answer that I did?"
Dietrich looked down at Yuric and smiled crookedly.
'At tis like this, he certainly looks like a promising villain.'
"You need to learn how to bark at people."
At Dietrich's cold words, Yuric closed his mouth with his lips tightly pressed. He seed to have co to the conclusion that it was no good to touch him now.
If I left the situation alone, it looked like Yuric would cry soon, so to change the mood, I put my arms around Dietrich.
"Woof!"
At my absurd barking, he frowned his handso eyebrows.
"Woof woof!"
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