‘I knew this would happen.’
It was a thought that took over my head the moment I watched my little world, my family, the Raniero, fall.
Raniero Castle, where I lived, was falling apart. I didn’t even have to look outside to find out.
The fact that in less than an hour, there will be no more living things left here.
The gate was broken and the walls were torn down by the invaders.
There was no more safe place now.
My father had already been killed.
The same goes for my siblings.
It would have been no different for the servants in the castle.
Because those people are also the people from the Raniero family.
I couldn’t even move in my room because the commotion was deafening my ears.
I thought I had to go outside to look at the situation, but I couldn’t because I was afraid. When I went outside, I felt like I was going to die from a torn limb.
‘I’m scared!’
In the end, all I could do was hide in the safest place I could think of. It was in my small room, which they called the disgrace of the family, where no one remembers except for the occasional servants. I hid under the bed there.
Dust came into my mouth and the inside of my throat was rough, but I didn’t have time to complain about it.
Only the thought of fear filled my mind. And—.
‘I knew this would happen.’
And this thought again.
Not long ago, the only heir to the wolf family, Arsene Yeckhart, died.
The heir, who had received the family’s concerns due to his illness from birth, eventually ended his short life on the sickbed. The problem is that it turns out that Arsene Yeckhart’s death was not due to a chronic disease, but a murder committed by someone else’s scheme.
The head of the Eagle family, the head of the entire bird family—.
By my father!
When I was seven years old, a courtship letter arrived from the Yeckhart family.
The sender was the head of the wolf family, Kendrick Yeckhart.
The content was simple.
He wants to adopt a daughter from a bird family who has the strongest healing powers as his daughter-in-law.
‘The intentions are clear.’
It was a courtship with the purpose of treating Arsene Yeckhart’s illness by taking the daughter of a bird family who had healing powers as a daughter-in-law.
A reasonable price was also offered there.
So the bird family had no reason to refuse.
My father promised to send one of our direct line family members as a daughter-in-law.
The problem is that the child sent by the father was the only mutation in our new family.
‘You know what you’re going to do, don’t you?”
I remembered the day my father sent my half-sister, Schville, to the Yeckhart family.
It was common for all of Raniero’s children to be born with healing powers.
But Schville was a mutant.
Schville’s ability is to steal an opponent’s life force.
So my father sent Schville as Arsene Yeckhart’s bride.
In order to absorb all of Arsene Yeckhart’s life force and eliminate the successor of the wolf family.
I couldn’t help but be crazy.
I was only twelve years old, but I couldn’t understand it at all.
To kill the heir of the family was no different than turning the entire family into an enemy.
Although the relationship between the bird family and the wolf family has been bad for a long time—. It was an incomprehensible decision.
‘If this goes well, we will be able to break the wolf bastards’ high nose!’
My father laughed out loud as he said that, but I had a different opinion.
From the moment I heard that Schville was going to be sent, I thought this might happen one day.
However, I didn’t know that the entire wolf family that lost a successor would also lose their reason as beasts.
The wolves, who lost their senses, moved to fulfill only one powerful desire. They showed up much faster and more brutally than expected for the revenge they would have desired even if they hadn’t lost their reason.
‘Look at the results.’
My father was strangled by the torn walls after the limbs were torn off.
It would have been nice if it had ended there, but the furious wolves didn’t know how to stop.
The gates of the city collapsed and all the peaceful land of Raniero was ruined.
Raniero, a prestigious family who had maintained the position of the head of the bird family for six hundred years, was wiped out like that.
The only direct line left now is me.
The wolf clan noticed my presence and had been wandering around since before.
‘Are all the children of the collateral line dead?’
Since black smoke was rising endlessly from the outside world, the collateral line must not have been able to escape the anger either.
And I’ll be the same if I’m caught.
In fact, it was almost easy to live undetected yet.
I’ve been able to survive undetected all this time because my room was so far away.
‘I didn’t know it would be so helpful to be treated as a disgrace by the family.’
If it had been before I became a disgrace to my family and was imprisoned in a remote place, if it had been when I had a good room, I would have been caught and preyed upon by wolves.
It’s terrible just to imagine.
I held my breath under the bed. There was a faint feeling of a presence outside the door. I took a deep breath and rolled up my body to hide.
Can I stay alive?
Right now, outside the door, there were wolf families who bit my parents and brothers to death.
Raniero’s territory was burning everywhere.
Will I survive?
I wanted to live.
I always dreamed of a wide sky even when I was confined to a place where I was treated as a disgrace to my family and didn’t exist.
I really didn’t want to die.
‘If I hide well here, I might have a chance to sneak out.’
It’s really not an easy place to find.
It’s a place where even long-serving maids get lost—.
It was when I was planning to escape from the mansion.
“Cough!”
My throat was hurting and I couldn’t breathe.
Only then did I notice that it was all a mess.
A strong smoke from somewhere filled the large room in an instant.
The same was true under the bed where I was hiding.
“Ugh, cough!”
My eyes were burning with black smoke, and tears flowed down my eyes.
Since they could not find any survivors, it seemed that the mansion was set on fire so that I couldn’t escape.
I caught a glimpse of the flames fluttering through the window.
The floor was hot and the air was heavy.
In a sudden situation, the human form was loosened and the wings popped out.
I folded my wings quickly.
And I rolled myself more and more round.
I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t.
Because there may still be wolves roaming inside the mansion.
‘If I go out now, I’m going to die.’
If I get caught, my whole body will be torn apart like my father’s.
Even the healing power of the bird family was meaningless at this moment. Because we can’t heal ourselves. It was because that reason, that the entire family died without even trying to resist.
Am I going to die like that?
I barely grasped the one strand of my mind and threw it away.
The feeling of smoke filling my lungs was unpleasant. Maybe it was because I inhaled smoke, so I couldn’t think properly.
Ugh, uggh.
Every time I breathed, black smoke stuck to my throat.
But I could never get out of bed.
It was better in the fire than to tear my whole body.
My throat hurt from the smoke, and sweat flowed down from the suddenly heated floor.
The swirling heat engulfed the whole body.
To make matters worse, the burnt floor was crumbling down little by little.
‘…if I go out, no, I can’t go out.’
I’ll be dead if I go out.
I didn’t want to die.
Tears streamed down from resentment.
The back was hot, even if the wings were protruding on fire.
I don’t want to die, I want to live!
I shouted constantly, but nothing changed.
The house was being torn down by the fire. So, trapped in the flames, I slowly closed my eyes, breathing in the thick smoke to the fullest.
I’m only 12 years old.
I was the same age as the heir to the wolf family who died a week ago.
******
“Lady, wake up!”
A familiar voice shook me up.
I didn’t get up right away and tossed and turned.
This is because my mind was hazy and I couldn’t tell whether it was a dream or a reality.
“Lady Linsy!”
A hoarse voice urged me.
Eventually, I opened my closed eyes slightly.
And I checked the face of the person who was shaking me up.
—Adele?
As soon as I saw her familiar face, I felt as if I had been hit with cold water.
There’s no way Adele is in front of me.
She died about two years ago.
Adele was an unfortunate maid who was falsely killed when I was ten years old, falsely accused of revealing Raniero’s secrets.
She was also my maid until she was killed.
After Adele’s death, Raniero had no one to look after me.
The reason was my hair.
Blood-red hair and feathers are a symbol of curse to all beasts.
‘…This is my child.’
When my father saw my hair for the first time, it was the first word he uttered after a long pause.
That word made me a disgrace to the family and a cursed child.
The entire bird family changes their hair color after the first molt.
My father, Arthur Raniero, and the other siblings were all fine eagles with brown hair.
So I thought I would have brown hair, too.
I thought I was going to be a great eagle.
‘But I wasn’t.’
I had red hair when I was ten years old after my first molt.
My father, who cared so much about me, threw me away the moment he saw my hair turn red.
The reason Adele died was actually because of me.
Because I was a cursed child.
My father dealt with everyone who was close to me.
The reason was that she was close to the cursed person.
Thanks to this, I had to live in a room, even though I had one of the best abilities in my family.
No one was interested in me.
—Until the day I die.