4. Memory Loss

Adeline squeezed her eyes shut.

In a situation where she could neither do this nor that, turning away was all she could do.

Just as she anticipated death.

“Ugh……”

The cool sensation aimed at her neck disappeared, accompanied by a groan wrapping around her ear.

Adeline felt the man’s hot body temperature spread from her waist up to her neckline.

After the suffocating moment, the grip that had severely bound Adeline also loosened.

Just as Adeline tried to turn her body to escape the restraint.

With a heavy thud, the man blocking her back suddenly collapsed while still holding Adeline.

Adeline was completely pinned down by his robust physique and couldn’t move.

After fumbling several times while crawling toward the shelf, Adeline eventually lit a candle.

In the faint candlelight, shapes began to appear clearly.

The man who had held a knife to her neck had collapsed covered in blood.

Adeline swallowed hard at the sight of the crimson blood seeping into the snow-white carpet.

“Hey. Are you okay? A-are you dead?”

She cautiously approached and examined the man. He seemed to be alive since he was still breathing heavily.

Seeing him unconscious, he didn’t appear likely to threaten her as before.

‘If I leave him like this, will he die?’

Adeline was confused.

After all, Duke Torpeo was Adeline’s hope and final lifeline.

However, seeing the man who immediately put a knife to her throat upon meeting her, she was filled with doubt.

‘Why did that reader say this man was the male lead?’

Would saving this man really help her escape her fate of an early death?

As her concerns deepened, Adeline was shocked to see the duke coughing up blood.

“P-please wake up.”

Adeline bent her knees to examine the duke.

He would certainly die from excessive bleeding if left like this. For a brief moment, looking at the duke who had held a knife to her, she thought it might be better to escape.

But if he was truly Duke Torpeo, couldn’t she beg him to spare her life in return for saving his?

Whether she died at the hands of the crown prince after leaving this place or at the hands of the duke, it would be the same fate.

If so, it would be better to take a chance with the duke, who might give her a slightly better probability of survival.

Swallowing dryly, Adeline decided to do her best to save this man.

⁕⁕⁕

Inside the bedroom, Adeline, who had barely caught her breath, turned her gaze to the tattered clothes placed on the bedside table.

Seeing the seal engraved with the duke’s family emblem placed on top of the pile of clothes, it seemed he was indeed Duke Torpeo.

Adeline lowered her gaze.

Despite the hot body temperature radiating from his body, the man’s skin was pale and bloodless.

He was a man on the brink of death.

Cold sweat dripping from his hair, soaked with sweat, flowed down the man’s thick neckline.

Just until recently, he had been pointing a blade at her.

‘If I find this sexy, am I crazy?’

Last night.

After moving the unconscious duke to the bed, Adeline immediately brought a doctor.

“Is this person going to be okay?”

“It seems he lost consciousness after being hit by a poisoned arrow, but I don’t know what kind of poison it is. Otherwise, they’re all just bruises.”

The doctor answered Adeline’s question indifferently.

“There’s nothing more I can do. Since I don’t know the poison, there’s no antidote, so we’ll have to leave it to fate. I’ll give you a general antidote, so feed him this. Ahem. Well then, I’ll be going.”

Silence descended after the doctor left.

As she had felt when she was restrained, this man’s physique was truly large.

Adeline had to lift the large unconscious body every four hours to administer medicine by pouring it into his mouth.

Supporting the man with her delicate frame was no easy task.

“Hey, you. I mean, Your Grace.”

Even though he couldn’t possibly hear her, Adeline continued speaking to the man.

“I’m saving your life even though you tried to kill me. Don’t forget this, okay?”

After struggling to give him medicine, Adeline quietly observed the duke.

‘By the way, who did this to Duke Torpeo?’

The empire’s only duke dying alone in a villa.

It was exactly as that reader had said in the comments.

Adeline found it hard to believe even though she saw it with her own eyes.

The Torpeo ducal family had been deeply connected with the imperial family for generations. The late empress was one, and the previous empress was also from the Torpeo ducal family.

The current imperial family did not treat the ducal family carelessly.

If there was someone in the Soltarius Empire who could threaten this man, the head of the empire’s only ducal family, it was almost certainly someone of high status.

Someone comparable to the emperor.

‘……Could it be the imperial family?’

She was already being pursued by the crown prince. The person targeting the duke must be someone of similarly high status, no less than the crown prince.

Adeline felt anxiety creeping up from her toes.

Clutching her pounding heart, Adeline hoped.

Please, she hoped that the man before her would become her winning card.

⁕⁕⁕

On a hot summer day, contrary to the cold winter.

For some reason, Crown Prince Trasi of the Soltarius Empire proposed a hunt to Duke Torpeo.

The Soltarius Empire, with its distinct four seasons, held an official hunting competition once a year under the imperial family’s leadership when the cold winter came.

It was a meaningful event where the imperial hunting grounds were opened, and the meat from the hunted game was distributed to the empire’s citizens.

“Duke, the weather is so hot and stifling. Let’s go hunting at the ducal grounds to stretch our bodies. How about Sahalan?”

The imperial family did not go hunting privately outside the official imperial hunt.

Moreover, Sahalan, which was on the outskirts of the capital, not the imperial hunting grounds.

The duke felt strange, but considering it was a proposal from the usually capricious crown prince, he didn’t think much of it.

“There’s no need to make a big announcement about the crown prince’s entertainment. Let’s enjoy it with minimal personnel.”

Because they departed for hunting like that, the entourage was modest for the crown prince and duke’s procession.

After traveling for a full day to reach the hunting grounds in Sahalan, the party was about to hurriedly set up temporary tents.

However, the crown prince, as if there was no need to rest from the journey’s fatigue, immediately proposed hunting.

“Father is unwell, and as the crown prince, I cannot be away from the palace for long.”

As if urging, the crown prince poured wine from a bottle placed on the pedestal into the duke’s cup.

“This is a specially prepared drink. Let’s have a glass and depart right away.”

The duke downed the glass in one go.

Since the crown prince had always enjoyed drinking with the duke, he didn’t suspect anything.

About two hours after starting the hunt, the duke’s vision began to blur.

Sensing something wrong with his body, the duke dismounted to take a rest.

As he was about to secure the horse’s reins to a tree. The duke quickly dodged at the sound of something cutting through the wind from somewhere.

But perhaps due to his increasingly foggy mind.

The cold metal that he couldn’t avoid in time quickly grazed the duke’s right shoulder. It was an arrowhead.

“Over there!”

Men wearing masks, who seemed to be the culprits who shot the arrow, rushed toward the duke.

Before he could fully assess the situation, the duke painfully mounted his horse again and began to ride.

With one hand holding the horse’s reins and the other tearing off the sleeve of his grazed arm.

“Urgh. Poison?”

The shoulder where the arrow had grazed had turned blue.

Just as his vision was about to turn white due to the poison, the duke stopped his horse. At his feet after dismounting was a cliff.

When it seemed there was nowhere else to escape.

“The game of tag is over. Just give up now.”

The masked men who had been chasing him had already surrounded the duke.

“Game of tag? Do you know who I am when you say that?”

“Of course. Casis Mile Torpeo.”

Looking at the masked men closing in, the duke drew his sword as if he had no choice.

“That’s the name of you who will soon die here.”

A sneer crossed the duke’s lips at the insolent man’s words.

The only duke in the empire wouldn’t be targeted by sending just any riffraff.

Clang, clang, the swords mixed relentlessly.

It shouldn’t have been difficult to deal with the duke whose movements had become sluggish, but they were persistently aiming for his face.

The moment the blade grazed the duke’s cheek, his hair, which had been tightly tied up, was cut off.

And the endlessly pushed back duke fell off the cliff.

‘Was this a hunt to hunt me?’

Had they discovered the secret he had kept hidden from everyone?

He couldn’t understand why the crown prince was targeting him so recklessly.

The duke who fell off the cliff sank into the upstream of the river, got caught in the current, and lost consciousness.

When he opened his eyes, he was at the seaside of Horn, the end of the world village in the empire.

Fortunately amid misfortune, the place where he opened his eyes was quite familiar to the duke.

Horn, the end of the world village where he had stayed as a child.

Thus, the duke, dragging his exhausted body, entered the villa and encountered Adeline.

⁕⁕⁕

On the 12th day of nursing the collapsed duke. The weather was particularly clear today.

The white curtains fluttered in the cool breeze coming through the open window.

The duke’s eyelashes trembled at the sound of the curtains gently swaying.

“Mmm……”

Adeline, who had been dozing off beside him, stirred at the low groan.

Nursing him day and night, Adeline felt her entire body heavy like a wet sponge.

Unlike the reality which was all about nursing, her dream was sweet.

She had been enjoying Darjeeling tea sitting in the rose garden of the marquis family.

“Mel.”

She had been muttering, wanting to add more honey.

Adeline’s mind gradually awakened to the feeling of someone shaking her shoulder.

The blurry focus in front of her eyes gradually adjusted, and her vision brightened.

Wondering who had woken her, she found red eyes looking at her.

And from quite a close distance.

“Hee, heek.”

Adeline immediately jumped up from her seat.

The duke. It was Duke Torpeo who had been asleep for 12 days.

Adeline was so flustered that she kept hiccupping.

‘He’s awake! What should I do…… How should I say what here……”

No, more than that, how could he wake up so suddenly?

She wasn’t mentally prepared yet!

“You’re… awake? Hiccup.”

Adeline asked while hiccupping.

The duke, who frowned as if his body hadn’t recovered yet, uttered his first words in a hoarse voice.

“Mel.”

Adeline didn’t remember the fact that she had muttered “Mel” in her sleep.

And in fact, she considered it a slip of the tongue. The duke who woke up after 12 days wouldn’t be looking for honey.

As if feeling a headache, the duke, who had been holding his forehead for a brief moment, raised his head.

Eyes faintly visible through the long bangs that hung down like drawn curtains.

It felt as if those chilling eyes that seemed to pierce through her were staring at her.

Adeline had to swallow dryly as she waited for the next words in tension.

She thought he might say something filled with killing intent like ‘Who are you to be in my house?’ or ‘I said I would kill you, yet you haven’t left?’

The duke, who had been facing her, slowly parted his lips.

“Is that my name?”

“……What?”

“Mel, I mean.”

Adeline, too shocked, blinked her eyes.

Asking if Mel was his name.

‘Could it be…… you’ve lost your memory?’