CH 67

It was Damon who stopped Derek instead of Dietrich. I could see his fists trembling with a suppressed force. 

“Your Grace, please stop!”

I couldn’t gauge Dietrich’s reaction anymore because the cheek where I was hit was burning in pain. 

“Ugh.”

“Oh my.” 

Derek was trapped and unable to move in a blue spark I had seen before.

There was even a smell of burning flesh, but he opened his mouth regardless. 

“It seems Agares is already interfering. That’s it for today.” 

Derek said provoking remarks and left his place leaving only Dietrich behind. I lifted myself up taking a big gulp of air. 

He had hesitated whether to approach me or not, but it was then that he grabbed my arm and raised me up. 

“Did you read my letter?”

I grabbed Dietrich’s hand and asked. For some reason, my jaw was shaking making it difficult to pronounce my words properly. 

“I found a way to change Lagrange. It will be difficult for our generation, but we don’t have to create successors who are obsessed with the shadows.” 

“..........”

“Baal’s strength may weaken along with it but I will do my best to raise a purification tree and have it cover Lagrange--”

Dietrich’s transparent glassy eyes looked back at me. 

I bit my lips at Dietrich's gaze, as if there were not even a handful of emotions left, looking at me. 

“When Dietrich becomes the Grand Duke and decreases the use of shadows, Lagrange will be able to free itself from the demons.”

As I waited for him to answer, I became nervous and once again opened my mouth.

“How about it?”

“I can’t do that.” 

It was the first time. 

The first words Dietrich said to me, after meeting each other for the first time in three years, were words destroying the plans I had built in his absence. 

“I can’t do that, Anissa.”

“Why?”

Dietrich didn’t answer my question. He just stood up wordlessly. I barely grabbed his wrist as he turned around to leave his place.

“I kept waiting for you.” 

“..........”

“Always. Veronica said it was just a lingering attachment, but I kept waiting.” 

“Why?”

“Because I believe in you. That you would think the same as me. Because I believe you would feel sorry for the children of Lagrange like me.”

As if he found my words funny, a corner of Dietrich’s mouth went up. He spoke slowly. 

“I’ve never felt the same way as you, not even once.”

“Liar.”

It was difficult to read Dietrich’s aura. It didn’t look as contaminated as Derek, but it was veiled that I couldn’t ascertain such a possibility. 

So what I’m saying right now was close to a bluff. 

‘Maybe I just wanted to believe that, too.’

Dietrich walked away, neither affirming nor denying my words. 

He didn’t look for me again until Derek forced me out of prison. 

“Terrible. How could he not visit you even after a few weeks had passed?” 

Who was not looking for me? I smiled faintly because Derek seemed to be talking about Dietrich. 

“Didn’t your brother really care about you?” 

Derek frowned, feeling offended by my faint smile. 

“Your injury seemed to have healed well.”

Derek raised his hand saying he’d have to beat me again, muttering in a muffled tone as if he was just saying he left his house key. 

I wasn’t scared of Derek anymore, but I also didn’t want to get hit again. While I was trying to calm my trembling body, Damon stepped in front of me. 

“Get out of my way.”

“She’s still a child. If you want to punish her then use some other method--”

“This is not discipline. It’s guidance. Understood, Agares? I don’t intend to harm the sacrifice so don’t interfere.” 

‘Sacrifice?’

At Derek's words, the spark which had tightened around his body slowly subsided.

He pushed Damon away and finally seized me by my collar, raising me high. 

Slap. 

I swallowed the fishy blood, not taking my gaze away from him. 

‘That person is not my real father.’

So there was no need to be afraid. 

“If you want to resent someone, resent your brother.” 

“........”

“He doesn’t seem to be the least bit worried about you so I have to step up.”

‘What is he saying?’

I tried to figure out Derek’s intentions. It was difficult to read him because his emotions were jumbled and muddy with envy, malice, and fury. 

‘He’s also on edge.’

It seemed that Dietrich wasn’t moving the way he wanted him to. 

“Damon.”

“Yes.” 

“Call Dietrich.”

Derek briefly ordered and grabbed my hair. He caught me like a beast and dragged me out of the basement. 

“Nevermind. I’ll go myself.” 

My eyes stung from the sunlight I haven’t seen in a long time. While I was locked up in the basement, I couldn’t even wash myself properly, and tears flowed from my eyes, which hardly opened. 

‘I didn’t want to meet him in this state.’ 

I even learned how to braid my hair from Marilyn because I wanted to welcome him back after winning the war with my prettiest appearance. 

‘Because he must be having a hard time and would be exhausted, I wanted to greet him with my brightest smile, I had decided to do that.’ 

Derek trampled on my efforts in an instant and put me in front of Dietrich. 

I wanted to see him again but I also didn’t want to see him. 

Because I was afraid to confirm that his indifferent attitude was not a lie. 

I couldn’t bear to face him properly so I bowed down as if I was going to put my head on the ground. 

“Look.”

Derek pulled my hair up. Even as I held my breath with my neck twisted, I didn’t look at Dietrich. 

“I told you to look at your brother.”

“.........”

As I slowly turned my gaze at Derek’s command, the first thing that caught my eye was his black, wavy hair. 

As if the cool dusk had descended. 

“What are you doing?”

Black eyes which terrifyingly matched his hair looked at me. 

The seventeen-year-old Dietrich was so beautiful that I feel ashamed of my shabby self. 

‘His beauty when he was a kid didn’t go anywhere.’

He reached out his hand with his long fingers and snapped Derek’s hand that was holding my hair. As if he hadn’t exerted a great force, he quietly backed away. 

“......What are you doing right now?”

Dietrich questioned Derek with a calm voice. 

“Didn’t you say she wasn’t precious to you?” 

Derek continued, smiling slowly like a full-pledge beast. 

“Your sister is not precious, didn’t you say that with your own mouth?”

“I’m only asking because I don’t understand what you’re doing right now.” 

I bit my lip at Dietrich’s strangely calm appearance. 

If he had forgotten the bond he had with me and all our memories when we faced each other, I felt like the ground would cave in and sink me down, but fortunately, that didn’t happen.

Even if the heart I had cherished until now had become a piece of tissue paper, the world was still intact. 

“She’s a child who won’t become a successor anyway. She doesn’t even have any strong abilities and she can't be used in the long-term.” 

Derek grabbed my chin and shook it as he glanced at Dietrich’s apathetic face. 

“So it doesn’t matter if I kill her, right?”

“If you want to kill her then go ahead. Why are you showing it in front of my eyes?”

“...It doesn’t matter if I kill this child right now?” 

“Is this something I should care about?”

I was the one who received a greater shock at Dietrich’s response than Derek. I forced my eyes wide open otherwise I would have shed tears right away. 

It was only then that I could admit it. 

‘Veronica may have been right.’

That cold man was not the Dietrich I knew. 

“Don’t engage in violence. The succession is just around the corner. There will be a lot of eyes watching the North.”

“Ha.”

Derek threw me aside as if he had cooled down at Dietrich’s words. 

“This is just advice for the sake of Lagrange.” 

He calmly added while he held me, who lost strength on my legs and was toppling over. 

However, the hand holding me was so tight that at first glance I would have mistaken him for being angry. 

‘But his aura is calm.’

The color of Dietrich’s aura did not change easily, but it used to turn red when he was really angry. 

“You’re the one who said it doesn’t matter if I lock up your sister in the basement.”

At Derek’s words, Dietrich looked down at me instead.

He looked like he wanted to explain something, but I avoided his eyes because I was unfamiliar with him, who was much taller than most adult men. 

Derek looked at us for a moment before clicking his tongue and began moving away. 

“I guess it wasn’t a lie.”

I tried to quell my anger and took a deep breath. Looking up, Dietrich looked so different that he felt like a completely different person. 

‘Was it like this in the original novel?’

Did he really use so much of the power of the demon that he became a demon himself?

‘If he really became the demon Grand Duke like in the Rose Wars of Men, then he wouldn’t care what happens to me or to the children of Lagrange.’

I thought I had grown quite a lot over the past three years, but it seemed to have been nothing compared to Dietrich’s remarkable growth. 

He was about the same height as Damon, who was on the tall side for a knight, and looking at his broad shoulders that seemed to double mine made me believe that he’s an adult.

“.........”

Dietrich felt a little unfamiliar to me that I couldn’t push him further for an answer.