I wanted to cry.

But I couldn’t.

Because my mother’s words were becoming clearer and clearer in my memory.

“Don’t cry. Smile. If you can’t — then stay silent.”

Smile, smile.

But I couldn’t smile either. So Adeline stayed silent.

Reginald appeared late.

He stared at Adeline with an impassive face and, saying he wished to speak, called her into his receiving room.

“Adeline. My only niece. Are you fearless? Or simply foolish?”

Adeline lifted her wandering gaze and looked at his face.

When she saw his face in the trembling candlelight, everything inside her twisted.

“Is it a shame I was a step too late? I should have kept her alive longer by any means... Ah, I mean — I should at least have tried supportive treatment.”

She wanted to seize his throat.

Reginald no longer intended to hide anything from her.

It was he who had harmed her mother.

“All right. Enough idle talk. You’ll be coming of age soon. Did you return because of that?”

But something was strange.

The denser her anger grew, the calmer her heart became.

Adeline felt her mind turn cold.

Smile. If you can’t — stay silent.

Right now, Adeline felt as if she were drifting in the middle of a boundless sea.

Clinging to the plank her mother had left behind.

She could not throw away that plank and drown.

At least for her mother’s sake — she could not.

Adeline awkwardly smiled at Reginald.

“No, not for that reason, Uncle.”

As if flustered, unsure where to put her gaze, anxiously picking at her nails.

“How could I become a lord? I can’t manage it. I was even disgraced at the palace and expelled from my position as a lady in waiting, and I still...”

The words her mother had left her were true.

The moment Adeline smiled, a faint interest flickered in Reginald’s eyes.

“Expelled from your position as a lady in waiting?”

“E-everyone said I was dull and foolish...”

Adeline deliberately wiped her bleeding nails against the hem of her dress.

“That’s why I didn’t want to go there. But Mother kept insisting that I become a lady in waiting to Her Highness the Princess...”

“My sister in law said that? It wasn’t your decision?”

“I didn’t want to, Uncle. I wanted to stay here. Every day in the capital was a nightmare for me. When I think of Mother sending me there, it hurts so much, hhk...”

To completely deceive Reginald, she needed to cry.

But no tears came, as though her body were broken.

Adeline sneered inwardly.

When you need to cry — you can’t. When you need to smile — you can’t.

Or is it the other way around? At what moments should one laugh, and at what moments cry?

Unable to find an answer, she simply lowered her head and hunched her shoulders.

“In the capital, all I did was blame Mother... It must all be because of me. Why am I like this.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Someone like me doesn’t even deserve to remain in her homeland. Father believed in me. And I... I’m still this pathetic...”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

That day, Reginald’s laughter echoed without end.

Of course, Adeline knew.

He was laughing, but inside he was calculating.

Whether to kill her or let her live.

“I lied and said I missed my dead parents.”

In the end, after spending several days in the lord’s castle, Adeline continued making excuses.

“I said Mother comes to me in my dreams every night and torments me.”

When she said she could no longer live in the castle,

Reginald looked wary.

She deliberately declared that she would establish a new home not far from him, in the area where the villagers lived.

“I could have simply run away... but my legs wouldn’t move.”

Because she had only ever been mistreated?

Or because things had only ever been taken from her?

Even in a situation where she did not know when Reginald might decide to kill her, Adeline could not completely leave the estate.

Her mother had said she was ready to give up everything to protect her daughter.

But Adeline herself could not.

Soon after, however, another event occurred.

“Uncle announced that the lord’s will, which he had been keeping, had disappeared.”

Raul and Enzo smirked.

“A lie. The will didn’t disappear — he destroyed it himself!”

Adeline thought the same.

The will had clearly stated what her father had left.

“Until Adeline Kaldenbein reaches adulthood.”

Until that exact moment, the authority of lord was transferred to Reginald.

“As soon as the lady approached adulthood, the will suddenly disappears? Nonsense. When [N O V E L I G H T] you pretended you weren’t interested in the title of lord, he must have relaxed a little.”

“Right. And when you said you would leave the castle, it must have seemed strange to him that everything was going too smoothly.”

Adeline nodded.

“Yes. In truth, I was being watched then.”

While she remained in the castle, she always felt a strange presence behind her.

Instinctively, Adeline decided it was an assassin.

Enzo spoke with a serious expression.

“There’s only one possibility. At that time, Reginald decided, for some reason, to keep the lady alive.”

He continued in a grim voice.

“But he was still nervous. So to secure the situation completely, he destroyed the will.”

To erase entirely the proof that the rightful heir was Adeline.

“...Probably.”

After that, she managed to leave the castle safely.

When she truly opened a pub in a busy part of town where the subjects lived, Reginald finally relaxed.

He even stopped sending people to check on her condition.

At the very least, she was fortunate that she still had money generously granted by the Princess.

With that money, she had been able all this time to cover the villagers’ dues.

Reginald seemed pleased that she was spending her fortune on buying some kind of coal.

But that was all. Adeline could do nothing more.

Even if she had wanted to, she could no longer do anything more.

Adeline smiled again.

“That’s why I don’t like talking about the past.”

Heavy exhaustion now lay beneath her eyes.

“They’re just desperate and hopeless stories.”

Silence hung in the room.

Adeline let out a breath.

“In any case, that’s why I know the castle’s layout...”

“So originally, Adeline onni was supposed to be the lord?”

At that moment, a cautious voice came from the side.

Turning, Adeline saw Tie looking at her with eyes shining with curiosity.

Adeline smiled faintly.

“If we speak honestly, yes, that is how it should have been. But now — no.”

“Because the will disappeared?”

“Yes.”

But even if the will had remained, the result likely would not have been very different.

Reginald was cunning.

He married a capable mage and completely made her his ally.

A portion of the collected taxes he always invested in the army.

So that no one would even dare think of taking his position.

Therefore, even if Adeline had tried to reclaim the title, she would still have had to face Reginald and the army.

There was almost no chance of victory.

“And back then, when you were in the castle, the one who kept following you — was it really a spy?”

Tie asked another question.

Adeline was so tired she failed to hide the dark expression and let out a heavy sigh.

But the curiosity of children at that age was perfectly natural.

She nodded calmly.

“Every day I felt someone’s presence. Probably.”

“Umm...”

“When I ate, rested, slept — I always felt someone following behind me. Uncle must have been watching me.”

For some reason, after those words, Tie looked away.

“But...”

The child looked awkward.

After hesitating, Tie glanced somewhere behind Adeline and spoke softly.

“Onni, actually...”

Sensing something wrong, Adeline frowned.

“What is it?”

Still pressing her lips together, Tie said quietly,

“Actually, from the very beginning, behind you...”

“Behind me?”

“There’s someone standing there... And I think it’s him who’s been following you all this time...”

The expression on Adeline’s face went blank.