“How could I ever raise my voice at Lady Meiyou? The Grand Duke is returning soon, and I was merely worried that Lady Meiyou might face severe trouble if even the stand-in is ruined.”
“Hmph, you must have earned your medical license by sucking up to someone with that slick tongue of yours.”
Extinguishing the magic-wrought flame, Meiyou clicked her tongue as she looked down at Shushu lying in the bed.
“Because you, you idiot, wouldn’t wake up, you have to meet the Grand Duke without getting proper training. If you’re found out as a fake, I’ll tear you limb from limb and throw you to the pigs.”
“There is no time. I will wash the young master first and take charge of his education.”
As soon as she left, the doctor, Joseph, picked Shushu up and carried him to the bathroom. He scrubbed away the grime and odor from Shushu’s body—accumulated because he hadn’t been properly washed during their carriage transit—using fragrant soap.
Though he longed to soak his body in a tub filled with warm water, such luxury time was not granted.
Shushu was immediately dressed in silk garments and forced to follow Joseph as they toured the castle interior.
“The place we just left is the young master’s bedroom.”
Joseph detailed the castle’s layout meticulously.
With so much information flooding in at once, his head spun.
“A nanny will accompany you whenever you move around from now on, so you don’t have to memorize it all. Just get used to it with your eyes.”
Walking down a long corridor, they arrived before a door made of elephant ivory.
Since it was intricately carved with wolves, he had thought it was merely decorative, but when Joseph pushed on it with his hand, the seams between the carvings parted and it swung open.
Inside the plushly carpeted room, despite there being no one present, a massive pile of firewood burned blazes inside the fireplace.
Feeling the heat for the first time since arriving in the North, the long-sleeved shirt and trousers he wore suddenly felt stifling.
A light sheen of sweat beaded on his forehead.
A massive bed sat right in the center of the room, suggesting it belonged to someone’s master bedroom, and a family portrait larger than his own height hung on the wall.
The portrait depicted a woman with pink hair and red eyes wearing an elegant off-the-shoulder dress.
That was likely the Duchess who had died giving birth to Damian.
Beside her sat a black-haired, golden-eyed Duke who looked at his wife as if he thought she was the most adorable thing in the world, and between the couple stood a child with a cold, bloodless expression, as if possessed by a murderer.
That child was undoubtedly Callix.
Callix seemed to have inherited black hair from his father and red eyes from his mother.
Damian, on the other hand, appeared to have inherited golden eyes from his father and pink hair from his mother.
Having been dragged here simply because his hair and eye color happened to match Damian’s, Shushu worried whether he would actually pass for a child of the Vesper family.
The Duchess and he shared not a single resemblance.
To call the Duchess his mother was far too…
“Ugly.”
Startled by the sudden voice, Shushu turned around.
“Even looking at her again, she’s sooooo ugly.”
The man nodded, critiquing the appearance of the Duchess in the family portrait.
To think a woman like that was an alpha—it was truly astonishing.
Rumors went around among nobles about strange drugs that supposedly turned people into high-tier genotypes, and it almost made one suspect she had found a real one and eaten it.
Otherwise, it made no sense for a mere commoner with no noble background to be born an alpha.
“Don’t go running your mouth so recklessly.”
Terrified that someone might overhear, Joseph clamped a hand over the man’s mouth.
Shoving that hand away, the man talked back with a dissatisfied expression.
“The Grand Duke hasn’t arrived yet. Honestly, you’ve got no spine.”
“You know how it is. You know how dearly the Grand Duke cherished the Duchess.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. What on earth was it about a Gem that made him fall head over heels for such an ugly, plain-looking woman and live like that?”
Not every noble awakened as a mage.
There were grades to their bloodlines, and the servants working within the ducal estate who came from noble families were either low-tier alphas or low-tier omegas.
Therefore, Charlotte—who had never experienced mana overload—could not understand why the Grand Duke doted so terribly on his ugly wife.
People commonly assumed the relationship between a mage and a Gem was simply that of master and slave, but it was nothing like that.
Mages became madmen who constantly begged for love from a Gem with a high matching rate, doing whatever it took to gain their attention.
They were so fiercely obsessed with their Gem that they would believe it if their Gem told them a rock was bread and eat it.
Why else would the Grand Duke keep gazing at his wife even while the family portrait was being painted, forcing the artist to paint her in profile?
The young Duke, who had awakened as a mage from a young age, was just as obsessed with the Duchess.
No matter that he had to leave for the battlefield, the mere fact that he hadn’t paid an ounce of attention to his infant child showed just how immense their affection for the Duchess truly was.
When the Vesper alphas returned, the fake Damian would undoubtedly bear the full brunt of their hatred for having “been born by killing their mother.”
“Why did you come in here? Get away. The young master is in the middle of his lessons.”
“Ah, well, I’m just trying to get a Gem ready before the Grand Duke returns.”
Charlotte clicked her tongue as she looked at the Gem hiding behind the door.
Evidently too embarrassed because there were people inside, the Gem hadn’t entered until now.
“What are you doing? Why aren’t you coming in already?”
He grabbed a low-tier Gem—who couldn’t properly purify mana—by the hair and dragged her into the bedroom.
He had wanted to supply a high-tier Gem, but because they were inherently difficult to find, this was all he had managed to scrape together.
“Yikes!”
Horrified at the sight of the naked Gem, Shushu recoiled in shock.
The thought that he would have to live a life like that if his identity as a Gem were ever discovered made his vision go dark.
“Such barbarism. Young master, let’s get out of here.”
Desperate to escape a human beyond redemption, Joseph pushed Shushu by the back and hurried him out of the bedroom.
Would he really be able to survive safely here?
What if the Duke and Callix figured out he was a Gem the moment they laid eyes on him?
Struggling to calm his pounding heart, Shushu followed Joseph back into the study.
Joseph pulled a book from the bookshelf and handed it to him.
It contained sentences so complex they couldn’t even be compared to reading a restaurant menu.
“Don’t tell me you can’t read?”
“……It’s becosh I’m still little.” (Baby talk)
“How old are you?”
“Sheven.” (Seven)
“Hmph—”
Joseph sighed, looking down at the fake young master.
Because Shushu was the size of a five-year-old Damian, he had assumed the fake young master was much younger.
