Stone Thrown into the Lake - Chapter 27

It was more common than expected that the relationship would go awry overnight. In addition, there were also cases where people who had been given completely different names in each other’s minds had to maintain the same type of relationship after that.

As such, Yvor Adela defined Ranan Elmund as her enemy, but that did not mean that she could not stop treating him as her father from that moment on.

Everything she wanted to do to her father right now was what an evil Queen would do. The snake, which was large enough to swallow a whole country, did not have to hesitate to hunt.

Anything could be swallowed and melted in the stomach, or the body could be tightened or bitten with venom to suffocate.

However, the current Yvor Adela was not the same queen as the snake, neither the king nor the kingdom. She knew it all over again that she was in the past and that she was young. Eighteen-year-old Yvor Adela was just a girl who knew she could turn blind and turn into a giant snake to spread poison for the sake of her brother.

The girl’s hunting method could not be the same as that of a snake, and she had to persevere and be prepared to take a break. Fortunately, she was used to such patience.

However, the change in the relationship is not one-sided. Yvor’s manifestation of change was enough to embarrass Ranan Elmund, and to some extent, break the trust he had previously had in his obedient daughter.

Ranan was not the type to easily overlook his anxiety factor. Everything had to be perfect, and always had to be prepared for the next best. Therefore, he must have decided that he could not present Yvor, who had a lot of anxiety, in front of the prince right now. This Yvor Adela thought as she watched the procession prepared under the castle.

Ranan Elmund, the prince, the prince’s knights, the knights of Serium Castle, and the fuzzy aristocrats around them were in a messy appearance, like a mixture of glass marbles, sand grains, and iron pieces. However, there was no denying that that was the most plausible form to prepare in a short time.

Ranan Elmund lived like the busiest man in the world, finding a way to hold the prince in until he had Yvor ready. The hunting of waterfowl, which was now dragging the prince, was also a task that usually took time to prepare for the boat.

Ranan pushed people into a place where time was scarce. Thanks to this, quite a large number of young people had to be called out. At a time when they were busy sowing, women were preparing for banquets, and the men were hunting for various kinds of events, so the atmosphere in the estate was not very good.

‘You will lose more than you gain.’

Yvor Adela saw Ranan’s back, entrusting the reins to his servant and then to another person’s back. It was so delicate and sweet that she was heartbroken by the Young Prince’s pain, but she knew one person she couldn’t appreciate. Sidis Murka, the prince, must have been eager to look good on Ranan Elmund.

‘Try hard somewhere else.’

Yvor thought in a tone close to ridicule. Enemy’s mistakes have always been pleasant.

She put on a light cloak and shifted her gaze to Sidis, who was riding on his horse. It seemed like the best ending would be if he lost his affection to Ranan, this estate, and her.

Yvor, who had let Ranan use Young Prince as he pleases, blurred her gaze a little in anticipation of that. It was a very passive method to use for kicking people out.

“Master, do you want to go out, too?”

Marie, who chased her closer to the window, asked. The maids, who did not have seeds to be planted in time or freshly ploughed ground, did not seem busy with their recent work. In particular, the children who had never had a formal banquet like Marie were excited with great anticipation.

“Oh, the Lord told you to stop by the lake for lunch.”

Yvor glanced at Marie. “He said it was sunny today…” Marie politely lowered her eyes and added.

This Yvor Adela smiled at Ranan’s orders, as she could see clearly inside and had no intention of hiding it. It was a cold smile as if it was winter alone on a sunny spring day, and there was nothing good in the raised lips.

Waterfowl hunting is done in the lake that ends at Serium Castle. The hunting grounds that Ranan caught were located diagonally from the castle. Since the lake is unusually narrow, if you look over the lake to catch waterfowl, you can see the shore of the lake on the other side.

Even though he did not want to put Yvor right in front of the prince, Ranan’s intention was even more apparent that he could not remove it from his eyes so that his interest would not be quenched.

Marie, realizing that the hunting grounds and the lakeside of the castle were alluded to, even without the intention of understanding Ranan’s intentions, exclaimed, “Oh my God.” She had her cheeks flushed red.

“He can see you from the other side of the lake!”

Marie was very excited, telling her to wear her conspicuous clothes, and saying that if she showed off her figure beyond the lake, the prince would fall in love with her at first sight. Yvor replied briefly.

“Tell them to bring my and Dew’s meal inside as usual.”

“But master, if you go out to the lake…”

“Marie.”

Yvor called her in a cold voice. Marie, who could not hide her disappointment, would do so a little later and bowed her head. It was because Lucy wasn’t by her side, she would have scolded her earlier. Yvor suddenly thought that it was a little disappointing.

She didn’t know her last all her life, but Lucy was the most loyal and wonderful maid Yvor Adela had. Lucy wasn’t with her right now, and it didn’t feel good because she was the child who liked Yvor the most.

How wonderful the little maid was, Yvor was willing to order her to look at every move of Ranan Elmund and every word she spoke.

The day after taking Ranan Elmund as an enemy, the first thing Yvor Adela did was light up her eyes and ears. Her meticulous ears were her dedicated maids, whom she had chosen with special care, to be her brighter eyes, and the servants she commanded to always take care not to cause any trouble to her or her guests.

And over the past few days, even though there was nothing special, those who became her eyes and ears have been diligently asking for the news. Especially about Sidis, and more precisely, most of it was about him.

“It seems that the knight who came as a guest drinks alcohol often, and I saw him yelling at the prince, and he went to places he has never been to before, so the prince almost lost his room, but the snack he gave me was delicious.”

“But whenever the prince disappeared, the housekeeper came and walked in vain. The prince praises the food, so the chef is very ambitious. The orchard keeper brought a lot of fruits. I saw the prince raising the gardener with his hands. And the prince’s knight had a fight with our knight, but it was a bit sad that our knight lost…”

Sidis Murka seemed to be quickly conquering the hearts of all sorts of people at Serium Castle. Yvor wasn’t interested in his good man anecdote, but she remembered that he seemed to dislike Ranan.

However, while the story of the prince came to her ears enough to build even a small mountain, there was nothing very useful about Ranan Elmund.

Yvor Adela thought about the relationship between Mrs Harris and Ranan Elmund, which she had never thought of in the past.

‘Do they have an unclean relationship?’

However, there were many things that were vague to just define it as such. Mrs Harris must have married Ranan Elmund as a matchmaker. When Rannan introduced Mrs Harris as the tutor of Yvor, she barely took off her mourning, and came to the capital to find work to sustain her life… Yvor Adela searched for a little more.

At that time, Ranan definitely had another woman. There was another woman before her mother, and Duran’s biological mother came out only after going back two more women from there.

On the other hand, Mrs Harris stayed with her husband or her husband’s grave on a country estate, which had reached the name of Wundt, until she came to the capital.

Then did Ranan visit her…?

But Ranan Elmund has always been a busy man in the capital. Even while Mrs. Harris taught Yvor, Ranan seldom visited them, even more rarely after she had descended to Serium Castle.

And during that time, Ranan had never been cut off from women. In the past, after Yvor met the king, even the new teacher Ranan assigned Yvor to nurture the charm of a woman, was also one of his lovers.

Ranan never hid his promiscuous love story from his daughter, and Yvor knew most of his father’s wives and didn’t care.

“…”

Yvor put off reaching a conclusion after a long time. No matter how much she thought of it, there was nothing to confirm their relationship. Except for one thing, the letters that Mrs Harris sent all the way from Serium Castle to the capital mansion. Yvor didn’t remember very satisfactorily whether she received a reply every time.

She wished she had made sure what Mrs Harris earlier had written on the letters she always sent. In the past, Yvor was in a hurry to add her letter to the message. Ranan received the letter, which was never delivered to Duran.

Yvor couldn’t help but blame the past ‘Yvor’ again. In the past, she had lived without the attention she should have given to the people she loved, those who cared for her, and even those who were hostile to her.

Yvor Adela’s past and life were no different from a castle built with sand and gravel.

Her eyes, which had been immersed in her thoughts and looked inside her, turned to the outside for a moment to ventilate. Now, the prince and Ranan’s party were almost ready to leave the castle. Yvor glanced at them meaninglessly.

And then, their eyes met.

It was Sidis Murka. She couldn’t tell what emotion those eyes or that face contained. Yvor was not so good with her eyes. All she could see was that he was looking at her and waving his hand lightly.

“Master, the prince…” said Marie. Only then did Yvor realized that Marie was stamping her feet next to her while she was lost in thought.

“…Continue?”

Marie answered yes with a face that seemed to be in trouble.

“It’s been going on for a while…! He waved his hand ten times. Oh my, and it’s the eleventh time.”

Yvor took a step back. As he knew she had seen, Sidis Murka stopped waving his hand after the twelfth time. He was indeed waving until she saw it. She had no idea why he was doing that or what he was thinking.

For Yvor Adela, Sidis Murka was still a stranger.

Yvor pretended to greet quietly. Sidis took off his hat as if greeting face to face.

She turned her body from the window where she had been standing the whole time. It was really difficult for her to see him looking at her, her gaze with neither temperature nor weight. The light coming in from the window was too bright.

“Marie, can you draw the curtains?”

Marie, holding hands tightly and alternating between the window and Yvor, made a crying face. It felt like she was standing in a play by a theatre troupe that sometimes stopped by the castle to look at the prince and the princess. But dreams were meant to be broken. She grabbed the curtain slowly.

And just as she was just beginning to untie the string that tied the curtains, peeking out the window at the prince, the door opened.

Marie immediately knew who was coming in through the door. It was because the air in the room had changed so much that even the woman who turned her back could feel it. The spring sun, which seemed to be staying outside the window, filled the room at once.

“…Welcome, Dew!”