The Young Lady I Want to Love (6)

Ashley drew in a sharp breath.

The castle garden was enormous. From one end to the other, people were so distant that their faces were scarcely distinguishable.

She had relied on that distance, and she'd been careless. She had forgotten to take an elf's extraordinary eyesight into account.

Her breath trembled. She struggled to keep her face composed, but the effort was almost beyond her.

The elf noticed everything.

She smiled with the unhurried satisfaction of a predator that had cornered its prey.

“I thought something was strange from the beginning. That day in the drawing room, you claimed to despise Master, but my provocation upset you far more than it should have. If you really hated him, you wouldn't have reacted that way, would you?”

“….”

“I wonder how long you've been deceiving me. How amusing. Did you imagine you could keep playing with me using such a transparent little trick?”

The red light in the elf's eyes turned cold.

Ashley feared the gaze that seemed to promise death at any moment. The very air grew oppressive. It was difficult to draw a full breath.

The corridor's temperature dropped so suddenly that Ashley could see the chill in her exhaled breath.

Cold…

She knew little of advanced magic, but she could tell that what was happening lay far beyond anything she'd encountered.

The frightening thing was that the elf didn't appear to be doing it deliberately.

There was no incantation, no conscious act of will. Her bad temper alone seemed enough. Mana escaping her body filled the corridor and turned her displeasure into a tangible force.

As Ashley understood it, even the archmages called superhuman couldn't wield magic unconsciously. Magic required knowledge and intention to shape it.

Yet the elf before her was changing the very air as though it were effortless.

Ashley was afraid. Yet the terrifying display made some of her suspicions seem less absurd than before.

“So… you were never an ordinary elf.”

Her voice shook, but the words came out clearly. Perhaps fear had driven her beyond caution. Perhaps her anger was simply stronger than the fear.

Whatever the reason, she would not yield.

“Tell me. Your capture by the slave hunters was a lie, wasn't it? You wanted to become Theorad's slave from the beginning. The more I consider it, the less any of this makes sense.”

Her breathing grew steadier. She caught her trembling hand in the other and went on.

“That day, Theorad went to the market to buy someone who could work in his workshop. He wasn't looking for a sex slave. The Theorad I know is upright and careful with his money. Once he's made a plan, he follows it.”

“And yet he came home with you, as though he'd been bewitched. Isn't that strange? Someone with power beyond imagining happened to be offered for sale at precisely the moment he went to the market. A man who had no interest in buying a woman for sex abandoned his original purpose and bought you instead.”

“…What are you trying to say?”

“That you arranged for him to buy you. And I believe you've been forcing him into things he doesn't want to do ever since.”

Ashley's expression hardened.

“You disgust me.”

The elf's shoulders jerked. She started to reply, then closed her mouth.

Don't let her words distract you.

What mattered was that Ashley had deceived her with the lovers' supposed hostility. Listening to more arguments would only waste time.

The elf narrowed her eyes.

“Don't change the subject. You're the one who tricked me, and—”

“The Black Flame Witch.”

The elf went still.

Why had Ashley said that name? How much did she know?

For the first time, a fear the elf couldn't explain crept into her thoughts.

“I began asking questions about your identity a long time ago,” Ashley said. “After the ball, I bribed servants at Deharem Manor to keep watch on you. At first, it was useless. You played your slave's role perfectly, and nobody could tell me anything about a red-eyed elf.”

“Then my informants across the Empire reported that the Black Flame Witch had appeared again. It was so unexpected that I began to wonder.”

Ashley had immediately sent word to Deharem Manor, asking whether the elf had been absent around that time. She had also paid contacts at the academy to investigate the witch's movements.

Earlier that day, Ashley had received a report from her academy contacts describing when Pares, a student there, had encountered the Black Flame Witch.

“The witch appeared in Baron Brenu's territory at exactly the time you left Deharem Manor. You went after a Minotaur for its milk, then returned to the mansion with pudding. The pieces fit too neatly to ignore.”

Ashley had made a separate effort to find evidence of the elf's whereabouts. Vendors and soldiers patrolling Pelgaroin had reported no sighting of an elf with pointed ears, shining silver hair and unforgettable red eyes during that period.

That absence, she believed, placed the elf outside the county—in the very territory where the Black Flame Witch had appeared.

“So I have no choice but to believe you're the Black Flame Witch. What would happen if everyone else knew?”

“…To anyone but you, I'm merely a slave. No one would believe such a story.”

“If it came from anyone else, perhaps.”

Ashley met her gaze without looking away.

“Do you think the daughter of Count Pelgaroin has no influence? The Witches' Association would have reason to investigate rather than risk a dispute with my family. They might even call in a skilled diviner to examine you. Then we'll see whether your identity can stay hidden.”

The elf's thoughts grew tangled.

She'd known Ashley was cunning, but not that she would investigate so relentlessly. It was troublesome—though not enough to make the elf panic.

“You're right about one thing,” she said. “But revealing what you know would be foolish. Have you forgotten that I could erase your memories?”

It was a genuine threat.

Ashley did not flinch.

“I've prepared for that. If I lose my memories and begin behaving like a different person, or if I disappear or die, the people I've entrusted with my instructions will retrieve a sealed letter and deliver it to the Witches' Association and the imperial authorities.”

Only the head maid and a handful of reliable informants knew where the letter was hidden. It carried the seal of House Pelgaroin, making it difficult for its recipients to dismiss.

That was the protection Ashley had devised. Unless the elf located the letter or silenced everyone who knew of it, harming her could expose the very identity she wanted to conceal.

“I don't know what you want from Theorad. But you clearly don't want this game of yours to end. If the truth comes out, the life you've arranged for yourself will fall apart.”

That, at least, was Ashley's gamble: the elf could still kill her, change her memories or make her disappear, but doing so might expose the very identity she wanted hidden.

“And I won't tell anyone, not even Theorad, that you're the Black Flame Witch. I have no desire to find out what you might do if your plans collapse.”

Ashley herself had no idea how far the elf's power reached. Recklessly spreading the information might destroy everything she was trying to protect.

The elf slave at Viscount Deharem's mansion is the Black Flame Witch.

A truth that could be put into one sentence had become a chain binding both women.

If either broke it first, she might lose what she most wanted. The elf understood that, and her hands curled into fists.

An insolent member of a short-lived race…

She could kill Ashley where she stood. She could strip away her memories and leave her unable to think clearly for the rest of her life.

But she could not afford to do either. She still needed to know whether the words Theorad had spoken eighteen years earlier had been sincere, and that meant maintaining her obedient-slave role a little longer.

Forcing down her anger, she accepted Ashley's terms.

“For now, I'll do as you say. But don't imagine your arrogant tricks will work forever.”

She sighed and walked past Ashley. Her footsteps sounded hollow against the corridor floor.

“I…!”

Ashley's cry stopped her.

They stood with their backs to each other as Ashley struggled to speak through gathering tears.

“I love Theorad!”

She had spent years loving him, knowing him as the person he truly was. She would not forgive the elf for trying to take him from her.

“And one day—even if I have to become the head of House Pelgaroin myself…!”

Ashley had never once wished to inherit the leadership of her house.

But her eldest brother had been lost in the war, and now her second brother was said to have joined the rebels. Those blows had changed the way she thought.

She did not want to lose another person she loved. Knowing what threatened Theorad while having so little power to stop it had become unbearable.

Then I'll seek power.

Only someone with real authority could challenge an injustice as great as this. For a daughter of House Pelgaroin, the one clear path to such authority was to become its head.

Ashley clenched her teeth, resolve burning through her fear.

“I will save Theorad from you. I swear it!”

Her voice echoed through the corridor, wet with tears.

The elf did not answer.

After a long silence, she continued down the hallway, her feelings more troubled than she cared to admit.