Carinne had been searching the main square diligently, but she couldn’t find Archen anywhere. Could he have returned to the mansion already?

After some contemplation, she shook her head.

Back in the prison, he had been so worried about her. There was no way he would have left without seeing the outcome of the trial. Besides, Duke Lucas was still here. They had come in the same carriage, so they would leave in the same carriage. That meant he had to be somewhere nearby.

Carinne, who had been circling the main square, decided to venture a little further out, just in case. Maybe he had gotten distracted by the smell of soap and was browsing the soap shop. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so she decided to check out the soap shop.

The streets beyond the square were surprisingly deserted. It seemed that everyone had gone to the main square to pray to the saintess.

She checked inside each shop through the glass windows, considering all possibilities. There were a few alleys at the edge of town, though she figured there was no way he would leave the main road for an alley, so she skipped those.

Then, Carinne spotted a familiar black carriage.

It was the carriage of the First Duchy.

Could he be inside? A thought immediately crossed her mind. The man she had met today had dark circles under his eyes. It was obvious that he had spent the night writing down the list of questions. He must be exhausted from the lack of sleep, so maybe he had fallen asleep in the carriage.

She rushed over to check inside the carriage, but… the one sleeping soundly inside was not Archen, but the coachman.

Now, the soap shop was the only option left.

It was just around the corner, and she would be there in a couple of alleyways. As Carinne hurried towards the shop, she suddenly felt a chill down her spine and stopped.

It was in front of a narrow alley.

The roofs were haphazardly tangled together, making the inside dark and hard to see. There was no way Archen would be in a place like this. After all, what could he possibly be doing in an alley? He wouldn’t be lying on the ground asleep, would he? Just stand here?

That was ridiculous.

Carinne shook her head firmly to get rid of the absurd thought and started walking towards the shop again. If he wasn’t in the soap shop either, then she must have gotten her directions wrong, and she would have found him if she had just gone back to the main square.

She took a few steps towards the shop, then… turned back to the alley.

A strange chill was seeping out from the dark alley.

Archen was not here, that was for sure… but why did she feel like she had to check this place out? Once again, a tingling sensation ran down her spine. Her whole body was telling her to check inside. It was an intense urge, an instinctual intuition.

Having made up her mind, she stepped into the alley.

She hadn’t taken a few steps when a pungent smell hit her nostrils. Oh no, was she about to witness a murder scene? With a pounding heart, Carinne looked towards the end of the alley and… saw him slumped against the wall.

“…Archen?”

She didn’t want to believe that the man sitting there was him.

No way. It couldn’t be…

There were a lot of blondes, so it must be someone else with the same hair color. However, the man was wearing a blue coat, and the earrings sparkling from his ears were the teardrop-shaped aquamarine earrings that she knew so well.

Carinne avoided the pool of blood on the cobblestones and approached the man. He was sitting with one knee propped up against the wall, his head hanging low. His hands were hanging limply by his sides.

Praying that it wasn’t him, praying that it was someone else wearing the same clothes and earrings, she bent down and checked the man’s face.

“Archen!”

Oh, it was him.

His face was pale, almost blue, and his lips were purple. His shirt was soaked with blood and cold sweat, and his cheek was ice-cold to the touch. She felt like crying.

This couldn’t be happening.

This shouldn’t be happening.

Carinne had tried so hard to save him, and she thought she had succeeded. She had let her guard down, and this was what happened.

“Why… how could this happen…”

As she sank to the ground and muttered as she sobbed, she noticed something strange. There were no wounds on his body, no matter how closely she looked. If he had lost this much blood, there should definitely be a large wound somewhere.

As Carinne examined the bloodstains, she saw the blood on the corner of his mouth and the strangely concentrated stains on his upper body, and she realized where the blood had come from.

‘…He vomited blood?’

And an awful lot of it, too. What could have caused him to vomit this much blood? However, if he vomited the blood out of his mouth, that meant he hadn’t been bleeding continuously…

Carinne urgently placed her hand on the left side of his chest. She could feel his faint heartbeat through her palm.

…He was still alive.

As she realized this, the sky, which had been dark and gloomy, seemed to brighten. Her mind cleared up like the sky that had cleared up.

She had to take him to the mansion right away.

She had to lay him down on a soft bed and call a doctor. She had to give him medicine and get him treated. Though first, she had to carry him out of the alleyway. She couldn’t carry him by herself, so she had to ask for help from someone nearby.

Carinne ran out into the street and stopped when she saw a carriage that was just about to leave. The coachman, who had been sleeping soundly just a moment ago, was now sitting on the with his eyes wide open.

Duke Lucas, who had recognized Carinne through the window, got out of the carriage and asked.

“What are you doing here?”

It seemed that the Duke was about to go to Archen in the carriage.

Carinne pulled the Duke into the alleyway. What happened next was a blur. The two of them worked together to carry the limp Archen into the carriage. There was no time to waste. To save time getting to the central square, she sent the coachman to Iris. She wanted to tell her what had happened and where to come.

Meanwhile, Duke Lucas took the empty coachman’s seat.

The carriage raced towards the nearby mansion of Second Duchy. She supported Archen’s body against her shoulder as the carriage shook. She didn’t care that his blood was staining her clothes. She warmed his cooling body with her own warmth and kept praying.

Please don’t die.

If she could save him, she didn’t care about anything else. She didn’t care if she lost all her money or had to give up her position as the Princess of Second Duchy. She didn’t even care if she had to go through the witch trials again.

…If only he could be healthy again like before.

“We’re almost there, so please hang on a little longer. Just a little longer…”

His breath was thin as if it could stop at any moment. She couldn’t take her eyes off his chest, which rose and fell slightly.

The time in the carriage felt like an eternity.

When they finally arrived at the Second Duchy, Duke Lucas carried him inside. Carinne led the Duke to her room. The Duke laid him down on Carinne’s bed.

One thing was done, and now it was time to move on to the next.

The only problem was that there were very few servants left in the mansion. After the maids who believed Carinne was a witch quit, there were only two servants left in the mansion. An old maid who had been with Duchess Tricia since the mansion was built and a dim-witted chef who didn’t know anything about the trial—that was it.

Even so, it was better than nothing.

After she told the maid to call a doctor and the chef to make some soup, she diligently wiped Archen’s face with a towel soaked in warm water. He let out a faint groan when the towel touched his forehead. Judging by the way his eyelids were fluttering, he was struggling with pain on the border between consciousness and unconsciousness.

The Duke sat next to Carinne and watched him. His red eyes were unusually gloomy, but it was unclear whether it was because he was worried about Archen or because he was thinking about something else.

“Can you help me change his clothes?”

After wiping all the blood off his face, Carinne pulled out a clean nightshirt from the closet. She couldn’t let him keep wearing the shirt soaked with blood and sweat.

The Duke looked at her with a sullen face as if asking why she was doing all that, but he reluctantly let her help him when she glared at him.

After wiping off the blood on his chest and changing his clothes, she sat down on the chair next to the bed and sighed.

She quickly got up and checked on Archen when he groaned and tossed around. Even after wiping and wiping, cold sweat kept dripping from his temples. This wouldn’t do. She couldn’t just sit still and do nothing. She had to do something.

Carinne got up from her seat, thinking of changing his towel. The Duke looked at her with an expression of incomprehension.

“What are you looking at?”

Carinne snapped sharply.

The Duke’s gaze, which had been suspiciously fixed on her since earlier, was getting on her nerves. What was he staring at when he wasn’t even doing anything?

“…Nothing.”

He muttered.

Carinne was about to snap at him again, telling him to spit it out if he had something to say instead of mumbling like a child, when the door suddenly opened, and a doctor carrying a medical bag, followed by the head maid, came in.

“Please step out while I examine the patient.”

The doctor opened his mouth as he opened his bag.

She pushed the head maid and the Duke out of the room and quickly left herself as well. Worried that she might be in the way, she went down to the drawing room on the first floor and anxiously bit her lip, waiting for the examination to be over.

A few minutes later, the doctor came down the stairs.

Carinne, who had been pacing around the drawing room anxiously, hurriedly approached the doctor when she saw him.

—