"The wine you gave me... has the effect of activating mana."
Dane slowly rose from his seat.
"Then the Velvet Wisp accumulated in Your Excellency's lungs would cause the mana to flow backward."
Rose continued explaining as she stepped closer.
"You had my maid bring the wine, and you tried to pin it all on me?"
As strength filled Dane's grip, Joel's knees buckled helplessly and hit the floor.
"Y-Your Excellency..."
Joel stared into Dane's blue eyes, his lips trembling uncontrollably. Dane's gaze pierced through Joel like a flash of lightning.
"You are indeed my personal physician. How remarkably clever."
It was by no means a tone of praise.
"…!"
In that moment, Joel realized intuitively.
The Dane standing before him in perfect health, his lord...
'...He knew everything.'
He had known everything and watched him all along.
By now, Dane should have been trembling with betrayal and grabbing him by the collar. Or crying out in horror at this absurd situation.
Or he should have been interrogating him about when the deception began and why he had betrayed him.
But Dane did none of those things.
"……."
He merely gazed at Joel with dry, emotionless eyes, as if he had known everything all along. As if he had already processed every emotion that should have been directed at Joel.
It was like a reader who already knew the ending, watching the curtain call of a play that had already finished.
'How?'
Joel couldn't continue his thoughts any further.
Udeuk.
As Dane twisted his grip, Joel's wrist bones screamed.
"Aaagh...!"
The moments when he had played the kind, gentle physician, when he had brought Rose's herb purchase list and raised suspicions about her, when he had confirmed Dane's symptoms and tried to frame Rose as the poisoner...
All those moments flashed through his mind. What kind of face had he been wearing in those moments?
"--!"
Blood rushed to his face in an instant, his cheeks burning. A vicious dizziness washed over him, as if the ground beneath his feet had flipped upside down.
Everything he had prepared over the past few years, losing sleep night after night... had been nothing but a jest performing on the palm of his opponent's hand.
A sharp shame seemed to slap him across the cheek.
"Wh-where did you... how..."
Joel, who had been murmuring, realized something.
The answer was in Rose's contemptuous gaze, in Dane's cold eyes.
From beginning to end, Joel had never once escaped their sight.
"...You knew everything."
Joel's voice cracked wretchedly.
Fear, shame, and shock gathered together and transformed into uncontrollable venom.
"You knew everything, so why."
Soon, with bloodshot eyes, he began screaming at Dane.
"Why did you just watch everything I did!"
"Joel, what are you saying right now!"
Bill cried out in horror, but Joel didn't stop. He was now nearly clawing at the floor in a frenzy as he denounced Dane.
"My daughter, my young daughter is in Henrik's hands! You are the master of Schmaichel, are you not! Then why didn't you save my daughter! Why did you just watch until I betrayed you!"
Joel's face became a mess of tears and snot.
There was not a shred of remorse. Only the selfish rage of someone who had not been saved.
"How could I have told you the truth, Your Excellency! The moment I opened my mouth, my daughter would die! Were you testing my loyalty?"
The retainers in the dining hall were speechless at Joel's sophistry.
"That, that crazy bastard...!"
"Good heavens."
"Can't you shut that mouth?!"
Intense anger surged across the retainers' faces. Fabri in particular looked ready to grab a kitchen knife at any moment.
The sight of someone who had tried to kill his lord now blaming that lord for not saving him, claiming betrayal as a result.
"Joel, you truly are repulsive to the end."
Rose looked down at Joel and murmured coldly.
"You yourself betrayed His Excellency's trust. So—"
"Shut up!"
The moment Joel snarled back.
Ppeok!
Joel's body flew sideways,
Chaenggeurang!
sweeping the dishes off the dining table and crashing into the floor.
"Gah!"
Joel collapsed on the floor, spitting blood from his mouth. He hadn't even registered what had just happened.
Jeobeog.
Dane slowly approached him.
It was the footsteps of a predator about to sever the last breath of its prey.
"How dare you, with that filthy mouth."
Dane's lips twisted roughly.
"Y-Your Excellency..."
Instinctive terror seized Joel.
He knew bone-deep what kind of expression Dane wore when he was truly enraged, what kind of actions he took.
A face as cold as ice, where no excuse or plea would work. His own reflection upon it was hideously distorted.
He was going to die. Without even a moment for excuses.
"Your Excellency, please."
Joel prostrated himself at Dane's feet without even wiping the blood flowing from his mouth.
"My daughter was going to die... what choice did I have! You know, don't you! That fear!"
Jeobeog.
Dane stopped right in front of Joel.
"I don't know?"
Dane's low voice spread through the room, heavy with chill. Everyone in the dining hall shrank back, crushed beneath his killing intent.
"You think I wouldn't know the pain of losing someone precious?"
Joel trembled as he lifted his chin.
"Have you forgotten that I have such experience as well."
Overlapping with the figure of his master standing nobly before him, Joel saw the image of a boy wailing before his parents' coffins years ago.
'Young Master, please don't cry.'
"I simply learned not to show it."
Dane's coldly burning voice reminded Joel of something he had forgotten.
"Your Excellency..."
Dane too had lost something precious. So he would not be unaware of Joel's pain.
That realization drove Joel's head into the floor.
"...I'm not asking you to forgive me. How could I dare say such a thing..."
He abandoned all pride and shame, begging desperately, over and over.
"You may take my life. I will do anything you ask..."
Because the only path left now was to appeal to Dane's compassion.
Kung! Kung!
Joel's forehead split open and blood began to flow.
"Please, at least save my daughter. My daughter has committed no crime..."
He pleaded with difficulty in a halting voice that seemed ready to break at any moment.
"At least for the loyalty I've shown all this time, please, just my daughter—"
"You'll never see your daughter again for the rest of your life."
Dane's frigid voice settled on the floor like frost.
"The years of loyalty you devoted to me have already been paid in full by your betrayal."
"……."
"The only reason I'm keeping you alive now is because you still carry the stench of rotten bait to lure Henrik."
In that moment, Joel realized.
"The moment Henrik crosses this castle's gates, your usefulness ends."
Not even a scrap of emotion remained in Dane anymore. He was keeping Joel alive purely out of necessity.
"Loyalty is not something to be tested. It is something you prove on your own."
Dane said in a ruthless tone.
"You used your daughter's life as an excuse, and you were the first to throw away all the honor you had enjoyed as a retainer of Schmaichel and my trust."
Even without a blade at his throat, the back of his neck went cold. Joel panted under Dane's overwhelming presence.
"You should have come to me, knelt, and asked for my help. That was the minimum duty you owed me."
"……."
"But instead of trusting me, you chose the cowardly path of feeding me poison."
"Y-Your Excellency, I was simply as a father—"
"Joel."
Dane calmly cut off Joel's words.
"If Henrik had taken my daughter hostage, I would have protected Schmaichel even if it meant killing my daughter."
Dane's gaze was that of a merciless and stern ruler.
"That is the difference between a master and a slave."
It was the moment the single excuse that had justified all of Joel's actions was tossed into the trash.
"Ugh, ugh..."
Joel hung his head weakly.
The shame of having his ugly inner workings exposed completely, the helplessness of having nothing left to do.
Everything weighed heavily on his shoulders. He couldn't move a single finger, as if he had become waterlogged cotton.
"Since you attempted to assassinate your lord with the hands that were meant to care for life, those hands will never see the light of day again."
Dane declared in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Furthermore, I strip you of your position as retainer and all honors, for the crimes of deceiving your lord and throwing the house into chaos."
The retainers looked at Joel with somber faces. Rose's disgusted gaze settled upon him from above.
"Take Joel away."
Having finished speaking, Dane gestured to the servants with his chin.
Joel put up no resistance. He was simply dragged out limply by the servants, his eyes hollow.
The blood flowing from Joel's forehead soaked messily into the dining hall floor.
The end of the physician who had pretended to be so noble and competent was uglier and more miserable than a worm's.
Until Joel disappeared and the door closed, the dining hall was filled only with spine-chilling silence.
Tang.
As the heavy door closed, the biting air that had dominated the dining hall dispersed in an instant.
"Your Excellency...!"
"Are you truly all right?"
Selma and Fabri were the first to break the silence and approach. Bill silently watched the scene from a step behind.
"Shall I call for another physician? Your complexion is far too poor."
"Oh my goodness, my heart is trembling so. I can barely stand."
The retainers' worried gazes poured toward Dane.
"Rose."
Dane looked back at Rose, unbuttoning one button of his shirt collar as if stifled. Then Rose quietly approached and nestled into Dane's embrace.
"There's no need for that. This isn't poison—it's because of my Magical Device."
Then she began unbuttoning a few of Dane's shirt buttons.
?!"
At the sudden display of affection, the retainers' eyes widened.
Dalggak.
Rose detached the Magical Device from Dane's underarm area.
"Your heart rate still seems a bit fast. Forcing the body to simulate the reflux symptoms naturally puts a strain on it, but..."
After buttoning his shirt again, she pressed her ear to Dane's chest, listening to his heartbeat. Then she looked at him with a soft, tender gaze.
"Are you all right, Dane?"
"A little dizzy. But thanks to that, I got to watch him destroy himself."
Dane closed his eyes as he placed his hand over Rose's.
They were an incredibly tender couple.
"Then... don't tell me."
Only then did Selma, who had finally grasped the situation, gasp.
"Were all those fights you two had, screaming the castle down... all an act?"