Chapter 65

“Absolutely not!”

The two knights instantly raised their voices in surprise at my words.

“Please reconsider, my Lady!”

They tried to dissuade me, saying it was an honor to die for the Duchess, or something similar, but I ignored it all. I stood straight, intently looking at one assassin who was particularly tall among the group.

“…”

He raised a hand to control the assassins behind him. Just as I suspected, he seemed to be the leader.

He met my eyes directly and spoke to me in a chilling, grating voice that sounded like metal scraping.

“Very well.”

It was a voice so unnatural it sounded intentional. A cold shiver ran down my spine.

However, I stared back at him to keep from being intimidated.

Even after he agreed, the man made no move to withdraw his assassins.

I lightly scored my neck with the sharply gleaming dagger.

With a stinging pain, a trail of blood ran down. The sensation felt incredibly distant, even though I had done it to myself.

“Lady Chacha!”

The knight, startled by my action, tried to rush toward me, but two assassins immediately blocked their path.

I looked at that scene and then signaled to the leader again.

‘See? You have no intention of letting them go, do you?’

That was the meaning in my eyes.

Fortunately, he didn’t seem oblivious; I saw the leader’s eyebrow slightly twitch.

Seeing that, I shouted.

“My condition comes first! Make them all leave this place!”

The assassin leader glanced at the magical device on his wrist, then burst into loud laughter. At a glance, it looked like a communication device, but I couldn’t be sure from the distance.

‘Why is he laughing?’

However, before I could ponder the question, he lightly gestured to the two assassins blocking the knights.

Seeing his signal, the assassins immediately cleared the way for the knights. The bruised and wounded knights hurried toward me.

“Lady Chacha, you must escape!”

“We will hold them off, so please, in that gap…!”

“No.”

I refused their touch and shook my head. I spoke with a firm voice.

“Both of you, take Annie and Laura and get out of here as fast as you can.”

“Lady Chacha!”

“Informing the Duke of this situation as quickly as possible is the only way for everyone to live.”

“What do you mean…”

“I obey your command.”

As the female knight replied, the other knight beside her looked at her in disbelief.

The female knight seemed to have accepted in that brief moment that my judgment was the best course of action. However, her eyes, as she looked at me, were not without worry.

“…We will come for you quickly. Absolutely.”

She pulled the male knight, who was frozen in disbelief, and placed him on the coachman’s seat. I could see much hesitation and regret in her gaze, which followed me to the very end, but she eventually whipped the horses and moved the carriage.

A few assassins flinched as the carriage started to pull away. But at the sound of the leader clicking his tongue, the assassins did not move. The carriage quickly drove away through the gap between the unmoving assassins.

Clatter, clatter.

The sound of the wheels faded, and when the carriage finally disappeared from view, I slowly lowered the dagger.

Since the carriage had just left, they could have easily caught it if they wanted to. More importantly, since there was no way to escape, it was better not to offer meaningless resistance.

As I willingly walked toward them, the assassin leader looked at me with an expression of mild curiosity.

“Do you have something to say?”

When I snapped the question, he lightly shrugged his shoulders as if it were nothing.

“No, I don’t. And since more time has been wasted than expected… pardon me for a moment.”

Before he even finished speaking, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my neck.

As my consciousness faded, I heard the leader’s voice.

“Split up into two. Half clean up this scene. The remaining half, follow and deal with them.”

***

“Ugh…”

When I opened my eyes, I felt pain all over my body. The cut on my neck was stinging, and my limbs wouldn’t move properly.

As I shifted my body, I soon realized that my arms and legs were bound.

I took a deep breath for a moment, then struggled with my tied limbs to sit up.

The surroundings were completely dark.

‘Where am I?’

As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I could see the shabby interior. It looked like an abandoned hut that had been left neglected for a long time.

A damp, moldy smell filled the air, and the small window on the wall had a broken frame. Since it was pitch black beyond the window, the sun must have set a long time ago.

Just in case, I looked around the dark hut again, but thankfully, there was no one else inside.

“Phew…”

The voices I heard before losing consciousness were vivid in my mind.

Are they all safe? Did they manage to escape?

I was scared and anxious. But I couldn’t be consumed by fear, so I redirected my thoughts.

‘Helena.’

The only person who came to mind to pull off such a stunt was Helena.

The incident involving the slander at the Mabelin Duchy had already further narrowed Helena and her faction’s social standing. The fact that she had been severely scolded by her blindly adoring father and placed under house arrest for a week was already well-known.

‘Why go this far…’

Tap, tap.

Footsteps were heard. The sound grew closer and soon stopped in front of the hut.

Creak.

The door slowly opened with a chilling sound.

A woman wrapped in a deep cloak and two men entered the hut.

The woman seemed disgusted by the dust and smell of the hut, waving her hand and taking off her cloak.

‘…She really is predictable.’

As expected, the woman was Helena.

One of the men behind Helena was the leader of the assassins I had confronted. I couldn’t see who the other was, but he seemed to be her attendant, as he fetched a chair for Helena.

“The request was only for the kidnapping, so the remaining payment can be sent to the guild later.”

The leader spoke again in that chilling voice, then immediately left the hut.

As he opened the door to leave, our eyes met, and for some reason, he winked at me.

“?”

I frowned, dumbfounded, but he was already gone.

Sudden fatigue washed over me. I shifted to find a more comfortable position and didn’t even look at Helena.

She immediately scoffed and sharply unfurled the fan she was holding.

“Haven’t you grasped the situation yet?”

Helena seemed displeased that I wasn’t trembling in fear.

However, I no longer felt like accommodating her requests and moving on, like at the Imperial ball. We had already come too far for that.

‘Besides.’

To be honest, I wasn’t scared anymore. The remaining fear and anxiety had completely vanished. Facing this extreme situation while mentally exhausted seemed to have made me numb.

Or, perhaps it was closer to despair? Either way, my mind was quite pushed to its limit.

‘I’m just an extra, anyway.’

If I were the heroine, there would be a 100% chance the male lead would come to rescue me. But I was merely an extra. Would Nine really arrive in time to save me?

‘Maybe this really is the end.’

The realization brought a sense of futility, and my tension completely dissipated. So, I just asked Helena honestly.

“Helena, what do you want from me? What do you really want?”

At my sudden question, Helena’s eyes turned cold. But I didn’t care about the look, so I kept babbling.

“To me, you looked like you had everything. Yet, you always seemed empty.”

“…”

“It’s true, isn’t it? A person who truly has everything doesn’t need to be as greedy as you. They already have it all.”

I could see Helena’s expression growing fiercer with every word I spoke. But I had no intention of stopping.

“I know your feelings for Nine weren’t genuine love, but closer to a desire to collect. But you didn’t need to dirty your hands this much just to have him, did you?”

“…”

Helena’s obsession with Nine was because she couldn’t have him. If, unlike now, Nine had easily fallen into her hands, she would have tossed him aside like a spoiled child’s passing fancy.

Helena was always like that. She always wanted something, and once she had it, she lost interest.

‘She probably doesn’t truly know what she genuinely desires.’

It was only a guess, but since I was already here, I wanted to expose Helena’s inner thoughts. So that, even if she didn’t know, she might reflect on herself.

“What do you truly want? Think carefully. Are you just trying to fill that emptiness with something else?”

Sparks flew from Helena’s eyes.