* * *
Petro opened his eyes, bound in iron chains.
He glanced around and quickly realized where he was.
It was the space directly beneath Zavad’s room—a hidden chamber accessible through a trapdoor in the floor.
“You’re awake?”
Petro flinched and raised his head.
A familiar face was looking down at him in silence.
“You… how are you—?!”
“Quiet.”
Ranshel brought a finger to his lips, letting out a soft “shh.”
“Your voice echoes through the walls.”
“……”
“Can you speak quietly?”
With a hardened expression, Petro slowly nodded.
“What brought you all the way here?”
“……”
“Why would you do such a thing? The young master protected you.”
“…What?”
His startled gaze turned to Ranshel.
Ranshel felt an overwhelming urge to slap him across the face.
“There’s usually a chair where the trapdoor is. Always in the same spot.”
“……”
“That’s where the young master always sits.”
Crouched in tightly, always in that same place.
First was the storage cabinet. Second, that chair.
Zavad had always known about the hidden door.
Because Petro had told him.
‘He probably never imagined it would be used to attack him.’
Ranshel peered into Petro’s memories.
He saw a younger version of himself and a chubby-ankled, baby-faced Zavad.
Between them stood that woman—Zavad’s mother and the lady Petro revered: Lady Charlotte.
“You weren’t strangers, were you— the two of you.”
Clang.
The iron chain binding Petro clinked against the floor as he shifted in agitation.
“What do you mean, he protected me?”
“Exactly what I said. I’m the servant who waits on the young master during meals. It’s easiest for me to notice when something’s wrong with the food.”
Did Zavad truly believe Ranshel was responsible back then?
He wasn’t a child naive enough for that.
“I asked the young master if he had any idea who might’ve put the worms in his food.”
“……”
“And he asked if it wasn’t me.”
Zavad wasn’t so ignorant as to not know that worms live in flowerbeds.
The moment he saw them mixed into his meal, he would’ve known—it was the gardener’s doing.
The reason suspicion against Ranshel didn’t deepen wasn’t because Zavad thought he was innocent, but because he’d seen Ranshel wave a worm in front of his face, tauntingly.
‘I didn’t think he’d take that as bullying.’
Ranshel had no trouble handling worms or bugs.
But to a delicate boy raised in isolation, it must have been traumatizing.
Even though Zavad knew Petro had sabotaged his food, he didn’t let Ranshel realize it.
Because if Ranshel spread the word among the other servants, Petro’s standing would have crumbled.
Instead of siding with a new servant, Zavad chose the gardener he had known since childhood.
To Zavad, Petro was more trustworthy than Ranshel.
Even if Ranshel might try to take his life, Petro never would—
That’s what he believed.
“Why would you do this to someone like that?”
“……”
“Answer me.”
Ranshel tightened his grip on the long scythe he held.
If Petro refused to speak, he wouldn’t hold back any longer.
Petro slowly blinked.
Then, his scarred, burned face twisted in anguish.
Tears welled in his eyes as he spoke.
“…I wanted to avenge my son.”
Ranshel listened, retracing the memories nestled within him.
Though fragmented—only 3% of Petro’s memories lingered— it was enough to understand what he treasured most.
Petro’s son had dreamed of becoming a gardener, just like his father.
But being formally employed by a noble household was no easy feat.
To catch their attention, one had to first become a top-tier grower, presenting rare breeds to renowned botanical exhibitions.
—Is that flower difficult to find?
At the time, the flower Lady Charlotte sought was the primula.
Rare in the empire then, but after years of effort, Petro’s son succeeded in cultivating it en masse.
He presented it to Lady Charlotte, then mistress of House Pomel.
Delighted, she decorated the palace with primulas— even placing them in her personal room at the Imperial Banquet Hall.
As the Emperor’s well-known mistress, Charlotte moved about the palace with a freedom nearly equal to royalty.
But there were rare cases—very rare—where contact with primula leaves caused hives.
Not for Charlotte. Not the Emperor.
The Empress.
It was misfortune.
On the very day the flowers were arranged, the Empress visited Charlotte’s room.
That was the beginning of the end.
—Was it you who cultivated and gifted that flower?
Under the Empress’s orders, the primula garden was burned to the ground.
His son, declared a criminal for insulting the Imperial Family, was locked in a hut and set ablaze.
Petro tried to save his son—but he had no power.
He could only watch, his body burned, as everything turned to ashes.
As he was gathering his son’s blackened remains, a soldier tried to comfort him.
He’d likely suffocated before the flames reached him.
Unconscious before the pain.
It must’ve been a relatively peaceful death.
Your son… must have quietly passed into the arms of the divine.
Those words pierced something deep inside Petro.
Was suffocation a gentle, peaceful death?
Does dying unable to breathe truly lead one peacefully to the gods?
Was he supposed to be grateful?
He would never see his son again.
The boy he raised with love, alone after his wife’s death, hoping he’d never feel lonely.
And now, he was gone.
So suddenly.
So senselessly.
The soldiers who downplayed his son’s death.
The Empress who gave the order.
Charlotte, who decorated with those flowers.
There were too many to blame.
But in the end—
He chose Zavad.
Why?
Ranshel’s fingers curled tighter around the scythe, listening to Petro’s voice and the broken fragments of memory— sharpening like a blade.
Tears streamed down the old man’s face, pooling on the floor beneath him.
“I never meant to kill him from the start. I just wanted to spread rumors that he’d gone mad…”
“Of course you did.”
Ranshel looked down at the weeping man with disgust.
If the intention had been simple murder, there’d have been no reason to go to such lengths.
No doubt the original plan had been to spread rumors—rumors that would travel past the domain walls, beyond the estate, all the way to the capital where the imperial palace lay.
Whether he had actually lost his mind or not, once the word got out that he was mad, he’d be useless as a political pawn.
The Imperial family would discard Zavad without a second thought.
His fate would fall entirely under the authority of the head of his house.
Then Duke Pomel, who had been waiting for an opportunity, would send him off to some remote monastery under the pretense of treatment.
After that, even if Zavad died an inexplicable death, no one would pay it much mind…
“But when it looked like the young master might die before getting cast out, you decided to take matters into your own hands and kill him yourself?”
“…At the time, I just felt like I had to. I couldn’t stop picturing him collapsing in a pool of blood…”
What kind of excuse is that…?
Ranshel, already annoyed, suddenly paused.
‘…Could this be a side effect of the scopole?’
Thinking back, when Petro collapsed before, he’d started to confess but then suddenly blurted out that he was going to kill Zavad, like he was possessed.
It must have been the drug—distorting reality and hallucination, triggering extreme behavior.
That meant this drug couldn’t be used again on others.
It could very well put Zavad’s life at risk next time.
* * *
