Chapter 73
Just before, she’d expected something terribly secret and debauched.
“…It’s just a room?”
What greeted her instead looked quite ordinary from any angle.
No, maybe ordinary wasn’t the right word.
‘Ordinary for a commoner’s house in the countryside, maybe.’
But in the middle of a grand ducal castle, it was plain to the point of shabby.
Lucy tilted her head and murmured.
“A parlor?”
The tables were set with old teaware and trays.
‘For a parlor, there’s a lot.’
The layout was like a dining room, round tables with several chairs each.
With so many tables, more than ten people could gather at once.
The many chairs and tables were faded, and didn’t look fine enough for a ducal house.
The windowless gray walls gave a bleak impression.
The only light came from the dim orb in the ceiling, pale and sickly.
“Hm.”
Lucy let out a small, uneasy sound.
“…The duchesses must have had strange hobbies, in their own way.”
Well, in her old world’s history, a famous queen had built a fake village inside her palace.
‘Maybe some duchess wanted a taste of commoner life…’
“…Did she?”
The more she looked, the weaker that thought grew.
Up close, the chairs were smaller than she’d expected.
The tables, too, were oddly sized.
Even for noblewomen, they seemed too small for adults.
Then, stepping deeper inside, she found something stranger.
“There’s another room?”
At the end of the room, a door led to another space.
Lucy hesitated, then pushed it open.
Creak.
The old hinges whined, and the door swung wide.
The first thing she saw were bunk beds, filling the room.
Packed so tight they looked like a henhouse.
In the corner, cages were stacked as high as the beds.
Small cages, with short white hairs left inside.
“What is this?”
The place had gone from grim to eerie. Lucy felt a chill crawl over her skin.
These couldn’t all be beds for the duchess.
‘Then… a room for the servants?’
But the ducal castle had separate servants’ quarters. Why hide a dormitory like this?
Thud.
It was then.
Something caught at Lucy’s foot as she moved, lost in thought.
She looked down and flinched again.
A toy soldier with a broken arm stared up at her with a grim face.
Looking around, she saw a teddy bear missing its eyes, and the shattered remains of a porcelain doll.
It was like a scene from a horror film. Her skin prickled.
But through it, a sense of dÊjà vu flashed through her.
‘…Why?’
Something was familiar.
The small tables and chairs. The cramped beds. The scattered toys.
Lucy had seen a place like this exactly twice before.
One was the nursery in the shelter, made by renovating a whole classroom.
It had been meant for children fleeing disaster, but the children Lucy looked after never got to use it.
The shelter’s leaders had taken the room for themselves.
And the other one…
“Give it back!”
“No! It’s my bread!”
“Hah! You little runt! I’m the oldest in this nursery! You should be giving your bread to me!”
“Who says! Are you my grandpa? Waaah! Priest!”
“Why you little… trying to tattle… uwaaah!”
“…Good heavens! What in the world is all this!”
The body’s memories came seeping in, waking like old wounds.
From an age too young to remember her parents’ faces, she’d lived in the nursery attached to the temple.
This body had been small and weak even then.
So the bigger children tormented her, and the bread she was rationed always got taken.
When she finally fought back and was beaten for it.
Lucy had awakened her holy power without meaning to, to defend herself.
And without knowing how to control it, she’d thrown the other child to the floor.
‘…And of all things, a priest from the nursery saw it.’
The priest, who’d come in carrying water from the well, dropped his bucket in shock, his eyes trembling.
Looking back, it wasn’t pure surprise. It was greed, gleaming at the sight of an unexpected windfall.
‘Because being able to produce that much force with holy power wasn’t common.’
But Lucy hadn’t known that then.
When the priest told her to do it again, she’d been happy for the attention and shown off her new power, over and over.
‘And then I was dragged off to the capital’s temple and locked away.’
The priest had promised steak. Or was it pork cutlet?
The priest who’d looked after her handed Lucy over to the capital’s temple and left with a fat pouch, grinning.
From then on, Lucy had lived locked up as a test subject.
‘Anyway.’
But strange.
This place looked oddly, eerily like the nursery in those memories.
“…”
Lucy hunched her shoulders at the chill.
‘Could it have been a nursery for the duchess’s children?’
But if this was a nursery for the duchesses’ children…
‘The facilities should have been far better.’
The duchess’s children were the duke’s children too.
Raising them in a place like this made no sense.
A bad feeling crept in.
And through it, something Clara had said came back.
“Oh. And if you go to the west wing, you can see traces of His Grace’s childhood too!”
“…His Grace’s?”
“Yes. I heard he lived there until he was ten. Things he played with as a child… there should be portraits left too.”
The talk they’d had earlier.
Thud.
Her heart dropped.
Clara had said Edward lived in the west wing.
‘…Surely not. That proud man.’
He couldn’t have grown up here.
‘No. No way.’
Lucy shook her head, denying it.
Even as she thought it, she knew it was absurd.
How could the future duke, a dragon incarnation no less, have been raised in a place like this?
Edward had the face of a man raised spoiled and adored.
‘There’s no way a person could turn out so foul otherwise.’
But still.
The dread wouldn’t lift. It sat heavy in her chest.
The will to search for the duchess’s traces had already faded.
“…Let’s go.”
She had to get out.
The only thing on her mind was leaving this place and seeing the bright world again.
Lucy settled her churning stomach and hurried back the way she came.
Luckily, Clara still hadn’t returned.
As if nothing had happened, Lucy pressed the hidden switch on the vanity again.
Click.
The open wall slid shut.
“Found some good ointment, so I brought… My lady?”
Clara walked back in, right on cue.
Then she looked at Lucy, standing there, and blinked.
“My lady, you’ve gone pale.”
“I’m always pale, Clara.”
“W-Well, yes…”
Lucy answered smooth and smiled, but her heart was tangled.
The image of that old, dingy room still lingered.
And over it, Edward and his ever-confident smile.
Her mouth opened on its own.
“Clara.”
“Yes?”
“I need a favor.”
